No, but you have this understanding that the teacher is the relationship. The whole nature of teaching is it blossoms in the relationship. It doesn't blossom in you all by yourself. The way in which it can be transmitted. So it's better to practice with a dead branch in this generation than to go back and study the historical Buddha. Of course, again, that kind of scholarship is fine. But it's not a linear teaching. And when Sukhiroshi was... And when Suzuki Roshi was in San Francisco, he was just one of several local Japanese priests for the Japanese people who lived in San Francisco.

[01:42]

And he was called Suzuki-sensei. This is the way you refer to anybody who's a teacher, a high school teacher, and so forth. And he didn't say anything else. He didn't say he was a Zen teacher. But he sat every morning. So various people decided to, well, he sat every morning and he was kind of likable. So before I came, and at the time I came too, a few of us just joined him in sitting. And we didn't know whether he was a good or bad teacher. And there were several people at that time who were quite serious. And we divided into two kind of groups.

[03:00]

The group that wanted to go to Japan and study Zen there. And the group that said, I don't care whether Sukhiro is a good teacher or not. We love him. We're just going to hang out with him. And I didn't care if he was a bad teacher, a good teacher, completely wrong, or he was actually secretly teaching me Christianity. It was all right. I love Ivan Illich so much. At his 70th birthday. Although he's half Jewish. He's thoroughly Catholic. He asked me to speak at his birthday party. And I said, if I had met Ivan earlier, I'd be a Catholic today.

[04:12]

I don't know if it's true, but for me, warm hand to warm hand was more important than some idea of the teachings. It was more important to me than some kind of particular teaching. But I was already, both universities I went to, involved in studying Chinese history and Japanese history. Okay. Well, we're making great progress here. Now, if we look at the translation in the book, I'm afraid I have to say, look at the title. The harmony of difference and equality.

[05:22]

I don't know what it says in German. But the harmony is wrong. Equality is wrong. And I'm afraid in this translation And we continue. I'm afraid in this translation. That they paid attention to the dictionary meanings of the words. And not to what's actually being transmitted by Shido trying to bring words into a context where you can intimate what they mean. As it says in the Sandokai itself, hearing the words, you should understand the source.

[06:27]

Die Worte hörend, sollst du die Quelle verstehen. The source is this text. Die Quelle ist eben dieser Text. The source is the context, not the language. Und die Quelle ist der Kontext und nicht die Sprache. And then it says, in the book translation, the mind of the great sage is intimately transmitted from west to east. Look at the difference. It's intimately communicated between East and West. The book Transformation is just history. Yes, it went from India to China. And it was transmitted. So what? That's okay. But it's not what this poem is about. Intimately communicated... Back and forth, west and east.

[08:09]

In all directions. Okay. Now, people's faculties may be keen or dull. Now, this is again like your phone call. Oh, yes, Harry. yeah we've got to get this business plan done yeah we may not be smart enough to really compete with those other companies yeah neither of us is that smart We have a good business plan. And it's based on a kind of global vision, not like these other guys who are just, you know, trying to be successful in Baden-Württemberg. Because in our business plan, there's no southern or northern, you know. No, it's kind of like that. So again, we have here, first there's this historical situation, East and West.

[09:25]

And then there's the political situation. Because already by Shido's time, there was a sense of different understandings. And it's interesting, you know, Shido is, Shido was called south of the lake. Because he was, where he lived was, the Chinese word meant south of the lake. And where Matsu lived, who was the other great, one of the really great Zen masters. And they were the same generation, great grandsons of the sixth patriarch. Die waren von der gleichen Generation, also sie waren die great-grandsons, die Urentelkinder von dem sechsten Patriarch.

[10:36]

He was called west of the river. Der wurde westlich des Flusses genannt. And it used to be said that between west of the river and south of the lake. Und es wurde gesagt, dass zwischen... You're crazy. South of the river and west of the lake? Yeah, west of the lake is a place, like West Lake. But now you changed them, but it's maybe... No, West River and South Lake. See, it's between east and west, communicated, you know. It says, people wander about between West River and South Lake. And all those who don't meet either Shido or Matsu remain ignorant. It's kind of a great thing. People wander out between these two great... And all those who don't meet either of them remain ignorant.

[11:51]

So in a way, Shido is here trying to let you meet him and let you meet meet Matsu, too, as well. Because he says, in the path, there's no southern or northern. And Matsu and Shido used to send their students to each other and to each other's disciples. And Matsu used to warn his students, beware of the slipperiness of the clifftop. Because Shido was called the cliff top.

[13:05]

Beware of the slipperiness of the cliff top if you go to see him. These guys had their little dramas. Or big dramas that lasted until today. So in the path there's no southern or northern teachers. Okay, so I'm a student. What do I do? Yeah, I might be a little dull. I know I'm a little dull. And do I go to a southern teacher or a northern teacher? What do I do? It says it's intimately communicated, but to me? It says the spiritual source shines clearly in the light. Well, that's nice.

[14:19]

But do I see it? So this is it. It shines clearly in the light. I haven't seen it recently. Yeah, this is... This is the good news, but... Yeah, but... Yeah, hmm... How do you see it? Please help me. Now, what does that line exactly parallel? It's a restatement of the first line. The mind of the great sage of India. Okay, so we're already defining what mind is. The mind of the great sage of India... is right here.

[15:33]

It seems to be everywhere. It's intimately communicated. And we have a global vision. The poem has carefully found an excuse to mention the four directions, east, west, north, south. So on one level, the text is just getting the telephone conversations started. I'm telling you it came from the West and there's no North-South schools in China. But the meta-text has said North, South, East, West. Okay, the spiritual source shined clearly in the light. Our spiritual source is the mind of the great sage of India.

[16:47]

Unsere spirituelle Quelle ist der Geist von dem großen Waisen aus Indien. Und es liegt nicht irgendwo zurück dort in der Vergangenheit. Es scheint nämlich ganz klar im Licht, leuchtet. Es ist die Quelle. Wo ist denn diese Quelle? Wo leuchtet das denn? Und auch noch ganz offensichtlich. Yeah? In the light? Help! I feel like Charlie Chaplin. I don't know what's going on here. This person I mentioned the other day met Charlie about the orange and all that stuff. And he asked Charlie Chaplin. He met him once before Chaplin died. Chaplin says, how do you do this? He does some little thing with his hand and thing in the movies. And this person said, how do you do that?

[18:02]

He said, I've been doing it for 30 years. So this is the first challenge along with the title itself. Now the question is, is the poem going to help us? Is the poem going to show us the source? Is the poem going to show us shining? And is the poem going to show us what it means by clear or clearly? And is the poem going to show us what is meant by light? So now you can see the foreground of the poem is coming into place. Jetzt seht ihr, wie der Vordergrund dieses Gedichtes ankommt.

[19:11]

Es wird versuchen, wenn es ein gutes kleines Gedicht ist, euch in die Quelle hineinzuführen, in dieses Leuchten und in das Licht hinein. Well, great. The next line helps a lot. The branching streams flow in darkness. I was just getting ready for the light. Yeah. And then it says, you don't know what that means, but you're now going to also try to understand what branching streams are and darkness. And what's the difference between shining and flowing. Okay, so then it says, grasping things is basically delusion. Okay.

[20:23]

So what is this line? Grasping things is basically the root. This is the first instruction. Okay. So this is where you first know what to do. Up to now, the poem has challenged you, presented an image of the mind, a mind that's everywhere present, Yeah, and like some new age, you know, schmaltzy understanding. Sometimes I say newage. Just happens to run with sewage. So, how is this not just a newage understanding?

[21:29]

Yeah, the mind is everywhere present. Yeah, it sounds great. It makes me feel good. But it's like believing in God. Do I believe that? The mind is everywhere present. Do you have any proof? Well, I mean, if you want to believe it, go ahead. How do you practice the mind is everywhere present? Or how do you discover what Shido means by saying, implying the mind is everywhere present? And is the mind everywhere present?

[22:30]

Then how is it intimately communicated? Mm-hmm. Where does this communication take place? Okay. So what we're doing here is building up an engagement with the poem. Yeah. Marie-Louise said, do we really have to talk about this poem? This is the best sleeping pill I've ever seen. I said, thanks, your husband has based his life on this poem. Yeah. Okay.

[23:51]

So she, while I took a nap today, she read a little bit of it and suddenly had a pretty good understanding. And she got quite mad at the one in the book. Because so obviously stupid. I'm sorry. We didn't turn the tape recorder off. So, grasping things is basically... So this is the first instruction. How are you going to do that? How are you not going to grasp it? That's where you have to stop and practice. Can you, before actually you proceed with the poem, you work at least as far as you can in the next few days with stopping grasping at things?

[25:13]

at least to come to the point where you see that your habit of grasping at things is deeply ingrained. Dass ihr seht, dass eure Gewohnheit nach diesem Greifen zutiefst in euch drin ist. To feel yourself doing that, not just know, oh, it's probably true, I did that. Dass ihr fühlt, wie ihr das tut, nicht, dass ihr nur denkt, ah ja, das ist wahrscheinlich schon wahr, dass ich das... Now you have to start looking for not just some kind of generalized way to stop grasping at things. Jetzt müsst ihr nach Methoden suchen, wie ihr... You have to discover the craft of not grasping at things. When Suzuki Roshi said, these are your glasses, he was teaching not grasping at things. He said, these aren't my glasses, they're your glasses.

[26:44]

What do you know about my tired old eyes? So you let me use them. He's not grasping at his glasses, he's just using them. Or as I've said this morning, to rename the world. It's to not call these glasses, but call them a percept object. And you might even take that as a little mantra. The percept object, my glasses. They're playing our song. But you don't say it out loud.

[27:45]

Yeah. Maureen's an architect. Her boss comes in and tells her to do something. And said, yes, I'm listening to you, you six-fold object. Yes, no, I'll pick up this percept object and I'm going to do your drawing for you. It sounds like a pretty good guy, but some bosses would... relieve you of responsibilities. And then only you could do voluntary work for Johanneshof. Okay. But you can think that way. I'm going to take the car train back to Lorac.

[28:59]

So I'm going to enjoy being in the percept object of the train. Which immediately makes me realize the percept object is also those funny old seats. And the wonderful things that pass by the window. And the many conductors who come from every part of the world but Germany. Okay. So you begin to work with the first instruction, which is, if you want, this is a prescription. It's an anti-delusion on it. So you have to take the pills twice a day for ten days.

[30:20]

So this prescription says really get a feeling on not grasping things. As I said this morning, see things as non-things. Or see things as activities, not things. See this pencil as an activity, not as a pencil. Mm-hmm. see our relationship as a relationship, not as a me. Andreas is not Andreas. Andreas for me is Andreas Richard.

[31:22]

And Richard Andreas. That's actually what I know. And that may lead me intimately into knowing Andreas somewhat as he knows himself. But my date to knowing Andreas is not to know Andreas, but to know the Andreas in me. As Suzuki Roshi says in his lecture, If you think your friend is in San Francisco and you're at Tassajara,

[32:24]

This is delusion. Your friend is here. If you think Buddha is in India or in the past, you don't understand fundamental time. In any way that Buddha is real, he's here. auf die einzige Weise, wie Buddha wahr sein kann, ist, dass er hier ist. Kein anderer Buddha ist echt. Wenn das eine Tatsache ist, wie kann ich denn den Buddha kennenlernen, der dort ist, also hier ist? one of his renaming of the world. Instead of saying, you're Buddha, you're Buddha.

[33:25]

One day he said, you're always showing everyone what kind of Buddha you are. So Matsu and Nanaku are walking along. And some geese fly overhead. And the teacher says, what's that? Geese. And the teacher says, Where have they gone? They've flown away. And the teacher picks his nose and says, When have they ever flown away? So we can stop right there with the first instruction.

[34:27]

Now we're going to go next to merging with principle is still not enlightened. What is that practice? Even that practice is not enough. So this is a clear instruction. If you do the text, the text will reveal itself. You don't have to understand it. You just have to do it. Whether you're keen or dull. Yeah. Thank you very much. What for? Work on a translation?

[35:44]

No, that's okay. Okay, so, hi. Hmm? Hmm? So why don't we start with some questions or discussion? Yes, please. We had a very intense discussion about the meaning and the possibilities of practice.

[36:55]

Each sense and every field interact and do not interact. When interaction, they also merge. Otherwise, they remain in their own states. how you can practice with that phrase. So every sense and every field of thought interact and do not interact. But if they interact, they melt. Otherwise, everything remains in its own state. In the beginning we had the question, and each kind of specific sense field, or is it each field and all sense fields together? So we've had a discussion if merging means loaded consciousness.

[38:12]

Loaded consciousness like this, as in the skandhas. We also ask ourselves, How? Do you want to add something? Do you want to add something? Only parts I can say about that. The most interesting thing for me about the discussion was to notice what part is an intellectual kind of working with it and to kind of enter into each word profoundly or other people try to create a practice from that.

[39:21]

We looked at the flower which was on the table and looked at it. And then we asked ourselves, what does it mean going into the field here? And then we reminded ourselves, it remembered us of breathing instruction by you. The space around the breath. First you go to the pauses and then to that what is around. And how difficult this is if you don't have sitting practice. To get this kind of one-pointed concentration or attention to enter this merging field. Yeah, I agree.

[40:30]

I'd like to be able to say that mindfulness practice is sufficient for practice. But either for the amateur or the professional, both need... If you really want to go into practice, you need to do sitting practice. For the amateur, because you don't know what you're doing, and you just sit, and sitting does a lot of it for you. If you can let go of your hold on the world and really look at what happens in sitting practice be willing to look at what happens in sitting practice. And usually it's necessary to have a kind of deep faith in sitting practice to let go of the world.

[42:00]

And then for the pro... To open up what you experience, you really need sitting practice. To slow down enough so that your mind doesn't take you to the next step, but your practice takes you to the next step. Because the next steps or the process is not mentally predictable. Now, just to speak generally about what Gerhard brought up.

[43:18]

Again, this is not trying to be a consistent philosophy, but trying rather to be in the to engage us at the level at which we notice things. So you could say that senses and the sense field are inseparable. But in fact, practically speaking, we human beings, we notice the sense, and then it takes a while before we notice the sense field. And quite a lot of things happen in that process between noticing and not noticing.

[44:22]

It's like if you, it makes me think of, if you have too good a student, You give them wrong instructions. So they go down some wrong paths. Then they have to figure out what's wrong here. Because you want the process of teaching yourself to occur, not practice to teach you too quickly. The level of the teaching of Shido is trying to teach you so you can recreate the whole of Buddhism, enough Buddhism for your life, from the beginning.

[45:25]

You're not depending on the teaching to teach you Buddhism. You're depending on the teaching to show you how to recreate Buddhism itself. So it becomes your teaching and not the Buddha's teaching. Okay. So is that enough for now on what you said? I can come back to it too. So someone else? The other groups just sat around and ate marshmallows.

[46:50]

The eyes, if he sees objects with the eyes, it's real bad. With the ears, he can do it much slower. The Dhamma Sutra emphasizes that the ear is the most likely vehicle for realization. I mean, there are lots of reasons. The ear is less connected immediately to Language and thinking. You more hear the sound of the word than think the word. And there's more spatial connectedness in hearing than there is in seeing.

[48:00]

If I see a bird, it's way out there. But if I hear a bird, and I hear your pencil clicking, they're all right here in my ear. Yeah, so there's more... Anyway, that's also the case. So there's various reasons why hearing... And you can hear... your own mind hearing much more tangibly than you can see your own mind in seeing. Also man kann viel fassbarer oder leichter sein eigenes Hören hören, als dass man beim Sehen den eigenen Geist im Sehen sehen kann.

[49:11]

What do you think, Petra? Any questions? Can you retrieve one of them? Some time ago at home, it happened often to me when I looked at things, flowers or the hair of my husband or anything. She doesn't have this experience.

[50:41]

that around this the term of it and the form fell off. And something really profound series remained. and never in my life have I experienced such a seriousness or something and then sometimes kind of a state is coming feels like a vacuum and I'm very sure it's not a depression or something similar to that Do I want to get rid of this vacuum or not?

[51:57]

And then also I don't know what to do about this anymore. Or if I want or don't want. And then I would really need somebody, kind of. And then of course there are the kids and they can't pull me back into normal. Good, thanks for the kids. Yeah, I mean there's a problem in starting to practice. You can, particularly in the early stages of practice, you have experiences which are Familiar but different at the same time.

[52:57]

Or experiences themselves which aren't so... Unusual. Just to see things more clearly or extremely precisely. Or in some big, quiet realm. Yeah, but, you know, the experience itself is not so unusual. It's not a delusion. The experience is unusual in that it stops us. It stops us more than you'd think just seeing things in a particular unusual way would stop us. It stops us almost as if the water in a river suddenly wants to flow in a different channel than usual.

[54:11]

You're not sure you want to let this water go into this new channel or make a new channel. And the experience itself isn't so fearful. But if you have a family like Petra, you think, maybe this would take me away from my family. So you want to bring the water back and . Or if you have a job, you may think, geez, maybe I don't want to have the life I have. Yeah. So people like Shido and Senjou are trying to give us an opportunity to practice and to deal with the experiences of practice.

[55:49]

How to practice and how to deal with the consequences of practice. And now this, I put this on the board. Oh, by the way, yesterday I said Matsu and Nanaku, it's Matsu and Baijang who the story about the geese is about. Seng Chau was one of the first Chinese Buddhist ancestors. He was connected with Sun Lung or Madhyamaka school. And he tried to kind of bring together Indian thought and Chinese thought.

[56:58]

And one of the things he said was, which is the basis of one or two koans, heaven and earth and I share the same root. Myriad things and I share the same body. So you might hear that. And you've practiced enough to suddenly think it has some vitality. But you don't know what it means. Or you don't know if it makes sense. But when we look at the beginning part of the Sandokai, we wonder, is the mind Shido is implying, does it make sense? So, and Senjou first studied Taoism.

[58:11]

And at some point he switched over to studying Nagarjuna and Kumanojeeva. Which one is the second one? Kumara Jiva. And when Shido heard this statement, like you and I might hear this statement, We don't know much about Shido's life. We do know he heard this statement. Shido was born in 700. Quite a lot longer.

[59:12]

As much longer as America is old, the United States is old. Yeah, he heard this and he was, as they say, Shido was greatly enlightened hearing this. He engaged this. What is it? In a way, I put this on here because we can look at the Sandokai as rooted in this experience. How are we all connected? What does it mean, heaven and earth? And there's a whole tradition that again goes way back to pre-Buddhist.

[60:19]

Into the Rig Veda. That human beings push heaven and earth apart. And create duality. So that there's space for human beings. So that a kind of dualism makes space for us human beings. But that dualism is always collapsing again into us. And we make space for all kinds of beings and time. So if we are the ones who push heaven and earth apart, yet then we must share the same root.

[61:25]

And this is often practiced with, so when you sit, you sit with a kind of verticality as if heaven and earth were connected through your body. So this is a statement about how are we connected. In what way do we share the same body? In what way do the dimensions of our body is the space of our body? In what way does our conversation Give us some, because our conversation, give us the feeling of some kind of shared body.

[62:55]

I have a friend who works at Esalen called, named Steve Beck. And I think I've told this story now and then. I was touched by it, impressed by it. He's a very down-to-earth guy. He likes the idea of practice, but he doesn't practice very much. I mean, you know the big difference between those who practice and those who don't is those who don't, don't. Practice works when you actually do it.

[63:56]

You can live on the periphery of practice for years, and practice is actually a little bit confusing that way. But Steve's the good guy and he's in charge of the grounds, the grounds? The property of Esalen, which is quite large. You all know what Esalen is? Oh, it's a... the first growth center, human potential movement center. It's on the family kind of summer place of Michael Murphy.

[64:57]

It's one of my closest friends. He inherited this property and just started inviting people like Herb Maslow and Fritz Perls, who started Gestalt therapy and things. He invited them to come to this cliff hot springs on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. And it turned out, particularly in psychology, to be one of the most influential centers in the world. Many Europeans, Germans especially, have studied there or taught there. Anyway, Steve Beck is head of the grounds in Georgia.

[66:10]

So Steve was sitting on his front. He lives up in the canyon. Und Steve wohnt in dieser Schlucht etwas weiter oben. Sitting up on his front porch, sort of. Und er saß auf seiner Veranda vor dem Haus. And there's about 35, 40 feet off to the left, there's a pond full of thousands of frogs. Also links von seinem Haus, so 10, 15 oder 20 Meter, ist ein kleiner Tümpel voll mit Fröschen. And they're all going to... So it's nice sound. So he's sitting there like this, you know, and listening to them, he sort of turns his head and they stop like that.

[67:17]

Not like... Hey, somebody's looking. They stop. No. Instantly they stop. At night. At night, yeah. It's pitch black. They can't possibly see his head. Anyway, they're down in the pond. At first he doesn't notice, he looks over, and then he's listening, and they start quack, quack, quack, quack. He looks again, they fall dead silent. So then he looks to the right. What kind of mind is this? We have no theories for this kind of thing. What do the frogs know that we don't know? What do the frogs know that we don't know?

[68:34]

Okay, someone else? So Zazen practicing seems to be the most important. But I sit the whole day. In the evening or in the morning, I really cannot sit anymore. You sit the whole day? Yeah. Why is that? She's sitting in a chair. Oh, I see. So, because you're sitting in an office or something like that, or a desk, it's pretty hard for you to sit when you get home.

[69:46]

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, I think, to me at least, cross-legged sitting and sitting in a chair are really quite different. I find almost no connection. Yeah, and I think you can sit 20 minutes or so, at least, find some way to do it. You can't do it? It just doesn't work. I try since years to sit.

[70:51]

Fifteen years, just to sit in a group. Well, then you'd better join a group. I don't think the reason is because you sit all day. There has to be some other reason you're resisting sitting. But it's pretty hard to sit. I mean, as I've often said, I designed my life to force myself to sit. Yeah, so if I come up here, I can't come up here and just holiday. I come up here and you guys say, won't you sit with me? So I say, okay. Okay. So where I live, you know, I try to sleep in, and downstairs they're going, fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

[71:54]

Mm-hmm. In my case, we're doing a lot of standing meditation. I don't know if you know that. I didn't know that. I know about standing meditation. As part of martial arts, you... It's half an hour, 40 minutes, we're standing. As Qigong or martial arts?

[72:58]

Okay, Qigong. But I experience that something very different from Zazen. Yeah, I think so too. I'd be interested in how you describe or see the difference of the two. Well, my experience when I studied with... Ah, a very unusual Qigong teacher from China who lived in San Francisco, one of the first Qigong teachers in the United States, I guess. In my experience of standing for half an hour or an hour... Is it... It awakens your energy in a way that's very powerful.

[74:01]

And quite wonderful, but it's not the same as sitting. Yeah, so... I don't know if I can say more than that. Because then I'd have to talk about what sitting is like. And I'm always doing that. Could one say that you can't reach as far with the standing meditation than with the sitting meditation? I don't like to make comparisons. But it's just different. It's just different.

[75:05]

And they're not really comparable. Okay, something else? I have a question. The practice of sixfolding in folding of the senses. In the beginning I tried to do all of them at once. That's like impossible. Is it meant to be that I start with the nose sense and ear sense and then do I go through the whole row? It seemed for me simpler to remain in one. Whatever you like. It's your doing it. So take a teaching, but then trust your own way of doing it.

[76:09]

And stay in just one, but even staying in one, you have a kind of awareness of the others. And if you want, you switch to another for a while and then go back. Okay. Yeah. You've been very touched from what you said this morning about time. You said that whether we want to live like... You made the comparison about the time children feel and adults feel, and whether we want to live that time that a month seems like a year or a year seems like a month. And that really touched me because the last three years in Berlin where I started working, it felt like it was just three weeks or three months.

[77:09]

And my ex-boyfriend told me, you've been gone for three years. I couldn't believe it. It was like someone hit me or shaked me. He noticed, huh? So that created a feeling inside me that I said, I want to change my life. But how could we do it? You cannot take time back. You can't wind time back. No, you can't, but you can wind it forward. But how can you make slow motion? Deutsch. This is really much easier. Hoshi told us this morning that it makes this difference clear how to feel children's time and how to feel adult time. because I was in Berlin for the last three years and it seemed to me that it would only be two or three weeks.

[78:16]

And at some point my friend said, you've been gone for three years now. And that was really like being shaken or hit with a hammer, because I didn't realize the time at all. That's why it moved me so much this morning and moved me so far that I think, what can I change in my future life? What can I do in my coming-up life that doesn't happen to me in the next three years? Well, you can start to practice. I'm trying to make practice an ordinary part of your life. Find some way to design a day where practice is as ordinary as washing your face or going to sleep.

[79:18]

Du kannst dein Leben so einrichten oder entwerfen, dass das Praktizieren etwas so Normales wird, wie sich waschen in der Früh oder schlafen gehen. Wenn du das tust und in die Gewohnheit des Sitzens gelangst, oder vielmehr, dass es zur Routine wird, ob du das jetzt möchtest oder nicht, und wenn möglich, jeden Tag, Some days might be, for various reasons, might be only five minutes or ten minutes. And you try to do it at the same time. This is like pot and lid fitting. Pot and lid means, in this kind of poetic language, the appropriate time.

[80:24]

To know when time is ripe to act. But part of Zen teaching is to turn every moment into the moment that's time to act, right to act. That's one of the teachings of that cloth I put down, that I bow on. In a way, it's as important as the Buddhist robe, the okesa. Because Buddha's robe connects me back to the mind of the great sage of India. But the bowing cloth makes a mandala. And it's made so you fold it back to make a little perfect mandala. So wherever you are, you make the mandala.

[81:42]

You don't look like Castaneda did all over this porch for the right place to sit. Okay, so you sit every day and if possible in the same place in your house. Whether you want to or not. And even if you don't want to and don't have time, you can usually spare at least five minutes to just go and sit there a minute before a taxi arrives or something. because if you do it at this if possible every day and at the same time independent of whether you want to or not this other kind of time begins to surface in your life

[82:57]

It begins to interpenetrate your work. You don't have to change your work necessarily. Why don't we go back to the text? We can look after it. So we left off with grasping things as basically delusion.

[84:28]

Okay. And by the way, the name of Johanneshof, the Japanese name we gave it, means simply black forest temple. But black also means mysterious or secret workings. Schwarz bedeutet Geheimnis oder geheimnisvolles Schaffen. Yeah, I guess so. And forest, you can see the two trees, means also the sangha, the people who practice together.

[85:30]

And this is temple or sacred place. So Black Forest Temple also has a name related to the Sandokai. Which is mysterious working in the dark of the roots of the Sangha. So that's Genrinji. And Ji means temple. Ji means temple. And we found a time if we want to do something like this next year if some of you would like to rejoin this. And by chance because my schedule is I mean you can see what my schedule sort of Looks like in a year.

[86:40]

This year, but next year is the same. He says the colored ones are the holidays. And next year looks exactly the same. My whole life is a holiday. I do just what I want with wonderful people. And I stay out of the rain and eat food. This is enough. But by chance, Frank has a similar schedule, but by chance we both have the first two weeks in September open. So it could be... So which do you like better, the first week or the second week? You'd prefer Sashin? But we... Practice week and the Sashin.

[87:51]

Oh, my goodness. Well, that's a big job. You bring all those bowls up here and set up the whole place as a Sashin. And what would happen? Everybody would go to the Sashin and nobody would go to the practice week. And what happens then is that people only come to the Sashin and nobody to the practice week. Teaching week. Okay. So I wanted to discuss the details with you more some other time, not during the seminar. Okay. So we go to grasping things is basically delusion. Now, we eat again at quarter to seven, right? Yes. Okay. And so I said that was the first instruction.

[88:53]

And so you try to do that. Even if you study the whole thing, you go back to, as your first practice may be, noticing how you grasp things. Because everything you grasp makes a dent in your mind. When you look at a tree, and you ascertain it as a tree and say not as treeing but as a tree, a thing it kind of shapes your mind for future trees and so forth. And So you want to keep trying to peel things off, not give them so much permanence.

[90:12]

Just get in the habit of seeing things as impermanent. We are noticing mind on everything. Okay, so now the second thing, merging with principle is still not enlightened. So principle means enlightenment. Or principle means emptiness. The first principle is emptiness, the second principle is relative. The second principle is relative. So if somebody asked me, and I gave a traditional answer, like somebody asked me, what is enlightenment or what is emptiness?

[91:19]

I could answer, if I answer, it's already the second principle. So a way of answering is to say, answering itself is the second principle. So how do you merge with principle? So to notice that you merge with principle, we could almost say it's the second instruction. And merging with principle is a way of not grasping things. So what's an example of merging with principle? That would be to dissolve the constituents.

[92:21]

to see that consciousness is a construct and to reverse that process. Okay, so here we can have the four marks which are birth duration dissolution and disappearance. So again, if I notice Jörg, for instance, if I notice Jörg, he appears. He appears in my consciousness. And he makes a field of consciousness. As I always point out.

[93:39]

And it's different than if I look at Andreas, a different field of consciousness arises. And if I look at Jörg, there's a certain duration to the field of consciousness that occurs. If I look at this, I have the Jörg field and the Andreas field. And when I look at Andreas, the Andreas field shifts to the top. I can't hold those because everything is unique and impermanent. So it disappears. But I can actively let it disappear. There's a difference between awareness, sort of general awareness, and determinate awareness.

[95:01]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.79