There have been a couple of famous Zen masters whose leg didn't work. One of the most famous stories is when he was just about to die, he sat in front of everybody and his leg still wouldn't work, so he just took him and broke it. He says, okay, you're going to obey me in death. No, no, no, I don't mind. It's not a recommendation. But if you do it at the last minute in 20 or 30 years or 50, it will be very dramatic. As at least some of you, probably most of you know, I've been writing for the last 10 weeks in Freiburg. As most of you know, in the last ten years... Ten weeks.

[01:12]

Ten weeks. That's true, but that was 20 years ago. So I wrote the ten weeks in Freiburg. But the first time I've had day after day was I could stay in sequence, not a little bit here and a little bit there. And it's been very satisfying to do it. But it's quite different from speaking with you now. Because when I'm speaking with you, I'm getting constant feedback. And writing, I'm not getting any feedback. So I guess I, in the process of finding out how to sustain a continuity... I let the writing itself give me feedback.

[02:30]

At some point I found the language itself would come together, which was a kind of feedback. And the other is I finally decided to write a book for nobody but me. Because whenever I thought about this, will this be understood? I'm just going to write what I like and if no one reads it, I'll still be happy because I like it. I would say, if you want a report, I get about half done with what I'm willing to publish. Some years ago, the publisher wanted to do a book of several hundred pages, and I wasn't satisfied with it, so I took it back from them.

[03:57]

So I'll see if I can continue when I'm back at Crestone. I never have been able to write while I'm living in a practice center, but we'll see. I'll try again. It's also nice that while I'm sitting here now... my buddy here. I have to speak in a way that's understandable because otherwise he can't translate. Yeah, so once he's translated, I think maybe it was understandable. Not that I'm trying to say anything particularly complicated, but

[04:58]

It's reassuring to have it understandable. And you're having hip problems, right? Quite a bit. Ear problems. I guess some of us are getting older. It's better than head problems. Okay. I'm very grateful that you're here. And I think there's some... About a third of you have not been to a winter branches before. So I don't know exactly how to bring you up to date if there's such a thing. But perhaps those of you who have attended the previous two or one of the previous two...

[06:34]

have a feeling in the discussion in the afternoon of kind of trying to bring every group onto the same page, as we say. Do you have the same expression on the same page? No. And that's... part of the point of the winter branches program, seminars, is to get us on the same page. Yeah, because... What we're doing, trying to develop an adept, let's call it an adept lay practice, is an experiment.

[08:00]

Because all, in the previous, all developed practice was done in monastic settings in a face-to-face basis over many years. Yeah, and that was partially because it's a good way to teach. And partly because the development of such institutions was possible in those days. It was a way of... people in the society decided to live together and stayed together and the social economic conditions supported it.

[09:12]

We don't have the same social and economic conditions. And so whether we can even support a place like Johanneshof over the long run, we don't know. Because it has to work for the lay people. It has to work for the resident Sangha. In fact, we had a board meeting, Dharma Sangha Buddhist Studium Centrum board meeting last night. to discussing how to continue Johanneshof.

[10:14]

So Johanneshof itself is an experiment and The winter branches is an experiment. Both to see if we can develop an adept, accomplished lay practice. And I'm continuously and genuinely impressed by the development of our practice. I often tell you or often say that it's very different than 10 or 15 years ago in Europe and very different from the 60s and 70s

[11:19]

America. My experience. But if I were going to be critical of our practice, I would say that It's uneven. It's skewed in the directions of our circumstances and needs. Skewed means S-K-E-W-E. It goes off in a tangent. It's supposed to go this way, but it goes that way. It's skewed from what? It's skewed, which means it's... The sentence, please. Just that, it's skewed.

[12:31]

Yeah, and... And it's also uneven in that we're not all at the same point in practice. Part of my idea, to go back to the Arbidharma, was that it may be a way to put us all more on the same page. And it may be a way to give all of our practices, which is variously developed, a base. Now I think the first winter branches I would say overall we just kind of like Well, this is different than the seminars before.

[13:47]

That was the overall feeling. And the second winter branches, I felt we were much more engaged in what... In a text and in accepting how to study together and study more traditionally Buddhism. And one of the things I hear quite often, both in Dharma Sangha in the States and here, and, you know, Dharma Sangha in the States and Crestone got kind of jealous of they can't participate in the winter branches, it's too far away, and why is this happening here and not in the States, you know.

[15:00]

So they decided to do their own winter... They're calling it Winter Mountains. So they tried to get... I made that up, didn't I? I mean... But they've got some Abhidharma texts and they're meeting actually this month for a month. And they just started November 1st. From the States and from the United States and from here, what I hear often is the complaint about the lists. About the what? The lists, the Abhidharma lists.

[16:01]

Oh, yeah. The long, boring, you know. And, yeah, I understand that. And it's certainly the case if you look at the lists for their content. The content is really quite unimportant unless you see that the lists are a tool. It's a tool and a process. And it was an attempt, historically developed from an attempt to take the Buddha's teachings... in the various forms they existed in the early days and organize them into

[17:03]

take up the essential points and organize them into a practice that one could do. Now, once it got started, it got a little bit went over the top at some point, got much too philosophical and so forth. At least for most of us human practitioners. Yeah. But it's important to understand the list as a process and a tool. Now, I'd like to start out this week with giving you a feeling for that. So, what's the first, simplest list in your life? mother, father, and you.

[18:35]

That's a list. It's a list. I mean, it's a list when you try to look at who you are and what you're doing. If you take your mother and father for granted and don't think about anything, perhaps not a list. But when you start thinking about yourself and you say, geez, look, I'm my mother, I'm made up from my mother and my father. And from me, from my own experience. It's interesting, you know, you see kids like the Alldog kids. Then they look like one parent when they're little, and they look like another parent a couple of years later, and so forth.

[19:52]

And then in just moments, the expression of Beate can go across the face, and the moment-like expression of Nico goes across the face. Now that's just a fact. But when you turn it into a list, it becomes a teaching. When you stop and say, yes, I'm partly my mother, partly my father, and other people too, but let's start with the three. And then half of you are psychotherapists. You call up one of you guys and say, I want to talk about how I'm put together. Not half of you, but quite a few. So that's basically using a list as a teaching. I'm sorry to be so simplistic, but it's like that.

[20:55]

Without, again, let me just repeat myself, without the concept of these being three separate parts of our life, which is a list, three separate parts, you wouldn't study yourself in the same way. Okay, so what's the most basic list in Buddhism? It's a list of two, you and the Buddha. And then you can ask, what is the Buddha? Well, if you're going to ask, what is the Buddha, you first of all have to ask, what are you? So in a way we have a rather simple shift from mother, father and you to bringing in the world or other people or something through what is the Buddha.

[22:37]

Now, is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost a list? No. In a Buddhist sense, it's not a list. It happens to be three things. Yeah, but it's not... It is three... I'm not very well informed about Christianity, but it's not three... It's three aspects of God, Jesus, etc. But then, let's say Father, you don't say, what is the list by which I can approach the Father? If we say Buddha, we say, oh, Buddha is actually these aspects, and we can approach Buddha through these aspects.

[23:53]

Anyway, I didn't say that very well, but the way Buddhism, the dynamic of a list in Buddhism is... Yeah, I think on the whole very particular to Buddhism and also similarly in Hinduism. Okay. So, now what is another... Very simple list in our practice. As Ken, keeping it simple, you and Zazen. Zazen is something you add to your life. So there's me and there's me when I do Zazen. Now that's parallel, another form of there's me and there's Buddha.

[25:22]

And there's me, and when I add Sazen. So it's the first question you ask yourself, what happens when you add zazen to your life? And then... Zazen can open up into lists. And you. Okay. So what is the, from the point of view, now, first of all, it's whenever you start a practice. It's good to look at what you already do. Because if you look at what you already do, say, to study yourself, you'll be much clearer about whether you need teachings and what teachings you need.

[26:33]

Now, I wrote a piece for Zen, it's actually a topic section from the book. On the Eightfold Path. And one of the things I say in it, I think I say it there, is for me the teachings are like a garden hose from the past. And the plants don't care whether they get the rain from the sky or from a garden hose. Here we don't have to worry too much, but in Crestone we have to use the garden hose a lot. Yeah.

[27:48]

So you have to decide what, you know, what teachings you want to bring into your life. And I think you don't just study Buddhism. You say, what are these teachings do I want to bring into my life? Because the teachings are based on the insights and wisdom of other people, that are us, other generations. So in a way, the insights and wisdom of... other people are most powerfully catalytic in our own life. When we have a sense of our own wisdom and we have a process of coming into insights about our own life.

[28:54]

To just approach practice to learn it, this is what a scholar might do, but it has very little to do with practice. So the insights and wisdom of other people and other generations most profoundly affects us when we're engaged in our own wisdom, discovering our own wisdom and own insights. So real practice starts when you recognize that your life itself, living is a kind of practice. And it's not something you accomplish after a certain number of years.

[30:23]

Your whole life is an evolvement of practice. And when your whole life is an evolvement and a practice, You can very fruitfully bring in the wisdom and insights of others. And that then produces new insights in yourself. This is the process. What I've just described is the process of real practice, of adept practice. Was ich gerade beschrieben habe, ist der Prozess wirklicher, beziehungsweise von adepten Praxis?

[31:26]

If you're here just to learn something, you don't get thrown out, but it's probably not so useful. Wenn du hier bist, um etwas zu lernen, dann wirst du zwar nicht gerade rausgeworfen, aber es ist nicht so hilfreich. So, again, sticking with the topic of lists, Buddhism is nothing but lists. So instead of saying, I don't like these lists, stop for a minute and say, there's nothing but lists. What's the teaching of the... What Buddhism? The Four Noble Truths. That's a list. What is the fourth of the Four Noble Truths?

[32:30]

The Eightfold Path. That's a list. So the Four Noble Truths expand into the Eightfold Path. And the eightfold path expands into the five skandhas and the 37 limbs of enlightenment and so forth. Now, I'm not making a computer analogy to us as human beings, but just using a computer as an example. I mean, what is a computer? A bunch of lists. You pull down this and you click on that and then it opens up and you click.

[33:35]

That's a bunch of lists. And there would be no access to the software or hardware without the list. Mm-hmm. And I'm fairly stupid about computers. I used to be smart, but they got smarter than me. I mean, up to about ten years ago, people asked me for help with their computers. Now no one asks me. Now I ask Frank. And then Frank calls someone else. I just discovered the other day, you know, because... Sorry to be so stupid, but, you know, computer programs used to be separate units within the...

[34:44]

like Microsoft functioned on top of, in my case, the operating system. So it took me a couple of years or more even figure out what email was. I don't like emails much. I have over a thousand on my... computer writing. You see, I don't respond much. Anyway, so, but there's, now I know that there's this e-mail program and there's my Microsoft program. So, when I want to send an e-mail, I go to the micro... write it in the Microsoft program and then I go to the email program and then I copy it in, you know, etc.

[36:02]

And then the other day I wondered in this Microsoft list what this thing send meant. So I clicked, I had written something, and I clicked on send. It went right to the email program and sent it for me. And I thought I had to pick it up and bring it over to the email program and that, etc. Well... Meditation practice is a lot like that. Meditation? Meditation practice. You sit there, you know, the screen is there and the cursor of attention is wandering around. There's nothing, no lists. This is uncorrected mind and thinking, non-thinking.

[37:07]

And for some reason the cursor of attention on the blank screen just stops somewhere and then suddenly send appears. And you're sent to a whole new state of mind you didn't know existed. And you're sent to a whole new state of mind you didn't know existed. And it's things you wouldn't discover without noticing the send and then waiting and seeing what happens. So partly the list, the dynamic of a list is to begin to notice ourself in particular ways. So that's enough on talking about lists. I'm supposed to stop in what? No, half an hour, huh? Supposed to stop at 11?

[38:39]

Yes, 11. Okay, so it's 10.30. So, does anybody have something you want to say? Uh... I was just thinking about your recommendation that we should first analyze where our practice is and then see what we study in accordance to where our practice is. This is one way to deal with it, I found it very tempting just to follow what you offer me.

[39:44]

You mean over the last 20 years or just to today? No, no, more than 20 years. And it's like I have a guide who makes suggestions. and just have the trust that I try what you offer. So I'm just bringing in the relationship between amongst student and the relationship between student and teacher, but also amongst ourselves, where I also get suggestions, why don't you look into this book and why don't you do this. So it's like a net that occurs. So that I in general never feel really all by myself or alone in the practice. So I just wanted to add this to what you said.

[40:49]

OK, good. Thanks. Roshi talked about the fact that we should look at where we stand with our practice and then go on this basis and see what we add to our practice. And my experience in the last more than 20 years is that it has always been good to follow what Roshi has presented to me and to take him as a guide and also to have the confidence to practice what he suggests to me. And also to see that my fellow practitioners, namely you, Someone else? Yes, no one? Yes, but if you do what Roshi just said, then this will come out.

[42:10]

I am very grateful that you chose this article for us to read. If you do what? Yes, the sentence will be a little long now. If you do what Roshi just suggested, then this will come out. When you do what you've been suggesting. Then, for example, this can come out, what I have read at Thich Nhat Hanh in this article, Then it may happen that this comes forward, what I read in Thich Nhat Hanh's article. Yes, I find that quite unheard of, so to speak, when he says, I mean, Sebastian Toschi has already taught, but he says that so explicitly, the twelve songs have positive sides that Buddhist teachers have overlooked since Buddha. I think it's absolutely, we have it saying when we say there's something unheard of, it's just, it's incredible that Buddhist teachers since Buddha's time have overlooked that what he says, the positive aspects of the 12-foot chain of causation, and only present it as negative way.

[43:13]

And that's, I believe, is because he also listens to his own practices. Well, this just shows we can contribute something to this 2,000-year, 2,500-year tradition. Yeah. I had to talk about lists. I had great difficulties to keep all these lists in mind. So I started to hear all the tapes about winter branches and wrote down and started with other books and was sometimes pretty desperate that nothing goes in my mind.

[44:14]

And then I remembered my experience as actor said to study a role for theater it keeps in mind when it's really embodied when I played it and I have the movement and all these things in mind and then the text is not a problem and so I think it takes a lot of time and patience to practice with this list so it gets really in the body and And the difficulty sometimes is that if you read parallel books, the descriptions of the expressions like manas, manavijana, in the different teachers are very different. So it's... So I like the text of Thich Nhat Hanh because he puts mindfulness in the center of the medicine.

[45:26]

And this is something I understand and I can practice. And I like too this, what he said before, that all these fields and structures of mind are some kind of ambivalent. ambivalence ambivalence so it depends of your mental development what kind of nature say develop by time and it's not it's not something for instance the notion of of kleshavishyana could gives the impression of something which is in you and which is not good. So this is something more a process, which again, a dialogue.

[46:36]

Okay. Go ahead, Peter. Yes, I really had great difficulties in shaping all these lists in the earlier winter branches and I made great efforts to listen to all the pages again, to write them down, to read books in parallel and then I simply realized that I want that in my head because it is simply not in the body yet. And I think for me Thich Nhat Hanh was in this respect an easier access than he actually puts attention in the center of his statement. And attention is simply a tool with which I find easier access to individual points of this list. And what I also liked about Thich Nhat Hanh's text is that he represents these parts of consciousness as open, as ambivalent, so to speak, and makes attention dependent on where to go.

[47:49]

Yeah. Thank you. Exactly right about, particularly about embodying the list. Someone else? No, you meant? Let me ask, how many people have read the Thich Nhat Hanh piece? Well, that looks like everyone. And was anything else suggested other than the Thich Nhat Hanh piece? Is that the only thing you got? Other... Yeah. Oh, so... So only that?

[48:55]

Yeah. And Crestone made a little booklet, a compendium, right, that was sent to us of several things and some articles. And this is a... Maybe it's not possible, but if we're going to make the winter branches work... I don't know if that's possible. Christian has put together a small booklet about literature. I don't know if that's possible, but if we want the winter branches to work... Practically speaking, the winter branches group has to make it work, not Johannesburg. If you expect the Johanneshof to do it, they just can't. They're so busy with seminars and just surviving, they can't do this kind of thing for the whole Sangha. Maybe in a secretarial sense.

[49:56]

In the sense that, could you Xeroxes and send it out? That we can do. But I'd hoped after we had a meeting, after the second one, I guess, of a group of people, that a whole booklet would have been produced by this time of texts from the Internet and from various books. So you'd all have a... Yeah, and I can't do it because I can't do it in German. I helped put together the list that Crestone's using. But, I mean, we're making progress. We have a text. You've all read it. This is good.

[51:07]

Okay. But I think these winter branches, as they continue, have to also be a learning process for the group to figure out how we're going to continue this and help the resident staff here, which changes and so on, help continue it too. Now, I'd like to know... From all of you, or a few people at least now, what parts, like Lohna pointed out, a part that stood out for her? What parts in the Thich Nhat Hanh text particularly interested you or stood out for you? I would like to hear from a few others of you, like Lohna has shown here.

[52:08]

Which parts of the text stood out for you? Which ones interested you? Yes, Gerhard? For me, this is exactly the starting point that he is talking about, how to get out of this negative network. For me, it is exactly the point where you get access, how to get out of this negative process. Peter has mentioned one aspect, which is the bringing in of mindfulness. And if you imagine this twelve-cylinder circle, exactly the bringing in of mindfulness where there is contact, within the realm of sensual consciousness. Yes, and where feelings occur. Because here there is clearly the possibility that wanting, wishing and grasping

[53:11]

where then is the possibility to stop the wishing, the willing and the grasping and to sort of neutralize or refrain from grasping, attaching. And with that you break a whole bunch of relations within this net of twelve points. One aspect of the other is the change from not knowing to clear insight. What I see is that meditative experience comes in quite strongly here.

[54:33]

and also among us how we get means to dissolve ignorance and And come to insights. Yes, and quite concretely, this is the first of the Eightfold Path to develop right views. And this seems to me to be a very important basis, in addition to the attention, this whole 12-dimensional circle of the negative with the positive aspect.

[55:44]

And this with mindfulness seems to be very important to transform this 12-fold chain from ignorance to clear insight. These are clear starting points where our practice can be implemented. These are quite clear points where our practice can sort of come in and get effective. So how you can bring practice itself into the teaching of the 12-fold etc. ? The first point is that it helps me to dissolve wrong views. For example, because the connections are seen through easier. So in short, it helped you notice your own experience and noticed some relationships you probably wouldn't have noticed until you read the teaching.

[57:09]

I would say that it has actually become clearer in the work with it how important it is to be careful. dealing with it, it became quite distinctly clearer to me how important mindfulness is in noticing sense perceptions, but also mind perceptions. It's easy in my daily life to see the upcoming and development of wishes, desires and so on in my daily life. Very good. That's exactly what these lists in this particular teaching is meant to do.

[58:26]

It helps us notice. I have what's called a Charlie horse. Charlie horse? A Charlie horse, yeah. Athletes get it when a muscle tightens up and won't relax. A cramp, yeah. Goodbye, Charlie. I'm really bunged up a bit because I had nearly a serious bicycle accident about it. A week or two ago. Bike? Bicycle. Bike wreck. Bike wreck, yeah. Actually, the bike didn't get wrecked, I did. Yeah, I was going just to, I don't know, I'll tell you. I was going along a street which has streetcar tracks in the middle. And a wall between the street and the streetcar tracks.

[59:32]

And there's a little sidewalk about this wide. So I was going along and And my neighbor, who bicycles to the top of the Black Forest and to France and all, he thought my tires were a little soft. So he filled them up so they were like iron. So I'm going along and I can hear cars coming and I thought I'll go up on the sidewalk and the sidewalk is only about this high. So I turned at a good angle to hit the thing, and the tires just flipped.

[60:40]

The wheel went right angles to the bike. And, uh... And, uh... Sorry, I can't get my legs to stop cramping. So because normally my softer tires just grab the curb. So I and the bike went like that, right? And luckily I had a helmet on. I went right into the corner of a big stone building with my head. Boom, and my head just glanced off. It was great. But my arm and this all swole up and this finger still, I can't put any weight on it to bow. But most of it's all gone down and my legs and back are sort of more or less functioning now.

[61:56]

But it's lucky I had a helmet on or I might not be here with you right now. Now, I thought also that this piece on the practice of the Eightfold Path that I wrote might be useful for this week in the Winter Branches. And to tell you what I mean by the so-called topics section... I mean, what I'm doing is when I come to something that I have to refer to, but it's not part of the main text.

[62:59]

The topic section, as I'm conceiving of it, is like huge footnotes. So this is, I don't know, how long is it, 10 pages, something like that? It's text. It's text, yeah. In English. What, 12? 12 pages in translation. It came today, okay. Okay. Christian Dillow has translated and just sent it today. So in it, I'm speaking to something Peter said.

[64:10]

In it, I suggest at the end a way to practice with the eightfold path. The whole thing, in a way, is about how to practice the eightfold path. And there are many ways to practice, and there are many ways I've practiced with the Eightfold Path. But I would say that this is the conception of the Eightfold Path that I find, through the years, is probably the most useful. So the practice itself is based on the Abhidharma, but the conception is Madhyamaka, Yogacara, Mahayana.

[65:13]

One of the things I say in it, and you can apply this to the 12-fold. codependent arising or to the eightfold path which is when you sit down to meditate okay so again what are you doing you've got your life you add into your life sitting So what are you adding in to this soup of yourself? Okay, so you're adding the posture of sitting down. And I suggest you think of it that way. You don't just sit down.

[66:48]

You have a feeling that you're bringing a particular posture into the body stream, the mind stream. And then once you've found your upright posture, It's useful to bring in something that tends to join body and mind, weave them together. And the most common way to do this is to bring in attention to the breath. So you count or follow your exhales, your breathing. Now, Abhidharma practice assumes you bring, decide to, in addition to, instead of, or afterwards,

[67:49]

You bring in the list, a list into your sitting. And in all of these things, at least in English, and I'm sure in German too, we have problems with the words. The word right drives many people crazy. The word what? The word right. Right. Right? Yeah. So, and actually it's not such a good translation. Something like perfecting is better. Okay. But saying completing views, completing intentions, anyway, probably easier just to say right, but no, you don't mean right in the negative sense.

[69:10]

How can right be negative? So instead of counting your breath, I suggest the next time you do zazen, bring in the twelve or the eightfold path. So you just use the word, and I say something about it in the text. First of all, you do it like you've learned A, B, C, D, or 1, 2, 3. You learn it like that. So you say... Instead of one, you say right views.

[70:26]

And then the next breath, or after a few breaths, you say right intentions. Or perhaps just intentions. Without the right, just intentions. And then speech, etc. Anyway, you get so that you really feel like you feel 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in your body. And if you know the basic lists of Buddhism, the way you know your alphabet or counting, In the sense that Gerhard was speaking about, it helps you notice your own behavior.

[71:34]

When the list is just part of the presence of way the mind is structured in notice. Then this practice, the list, starts opening up. So you really, in this practice, you want to start with one list or two lists and begin to embody it And don't worry about, unless you want to be a Buddhist computer programmer, how the lists extend out into the 1,343,000 negative emotions. If you get there eventually, maybe it's good.

[72:35]

You just really want to work with one or two lists and get the feel of it in your life and in your activity. Then you're bringing the practice into your practice of discovery. You're bringing a teaching. Then in your living, you discover the teaching. Okay? Thank you very much. See you later. Bis später. Bis später. Bis später. Tschüss. Bis später.

[73:39]

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