And the cat's name is Karma. No, it's named Charlie, actually. I get used to, I somehow, you know, since I'm so dependent on a translator, I apologize for that. So möchte ich mich doch einmal entschuldigen. But I get so used to a translator, I think the translator is permanent. Und ich gewöhne mich dann wieder so daran, dass ich schon glaube, dass das eine Dauereinrichtung sei. So I'm actually quite surprised to see Ulrike here and not Gerald. Und so bin ich also im Grunde wirklich höchst erstaunt, Ulrike hier zu sehen und nicht Gerald. But Ulrike has translated for me more than any other living being. So I could let her give the lecture, but I'll pretend to say something. Yeah. And tomorrow evening we'll, as I think Gerald told you, we'll have a lay ordination ceremony for four people.

[01:30]

Yeah, and it's really a kind of fruit of the subject of this To decide to be ordained is a kind of fruit of the subject of our weekend. The subject being causation and realization. Or causation and enlightenment. And I in general prefer to use the word realization. Because we have some experiential, at least in English people use the word experience.

[02:31]

Use the word, excuse me, realization. But you don't use the word enlightenment very often. So it has kind of too special a meaning. But we'll use and talk about both realization and enlightenment this weekend. And there's four main ways I think about enlightenment, which if I make you familiar with them, I think you'll see, those of you who we've practiced together for some time, you'll see that I think probably everything I ever talk about is related to these four ways of understanding enlightenment.

[03:40]

Is there anyone here who's here at Johanneshof for the first time? Oh, but you've been here this weekend. Yeah. And anyone here who's not familiar with zazen practice, with sitting meditation? Well, you're all professional meditators. Actually, nowadays it's quite hard not to know something about sitting meditation. But when I started, it was considered something very weird to do. So if we pay any attention to the topic of this seminar weekend, we'll have to say something about causation. which means we have to say something about karma.

[04:59]

And if we want, we can say something about death or dying. If you promise me, you won't get depressed. Because the idea, at least historical idea, of karma is very connected with the idea of what happens when you die. So we should speak about karma as a process of life and as an understanding of also how we die. So I'm just throwing some things out this evening. And if we speak about karma, we have to speak about dharma. Because Dharma is the central idea in Buddhism.

[06:20]

And karma is understood through the teaching of Dharma. Overall, the most important thing to know about karma in Buddhism is that it's conditional. And it's not deterministic. And that it's conditional means simply that it can change. That it's subject to change. And it's subject to your changing it. And it's part of the process of change. So part of it, the teaching of Buddhism is simply How do you live the activity of change?

[07:33]

What is the activity of change? And should we bring direction or intention or purpose into it? And certainly the idea of causation has, as well as something causes, it's also intention and purpose. Okay, so... Right now, if we stop now, we'd have to talk about all of Buddhism. But we have to focus somehow. In any case, if we talk about causation, And we talk also about realization and enlightenment.

[08:53]

We'll also have to look at, is there a causal relationship? Is enlightenment caused? What's the relationship between the understanding of causation and the understanding of realization? Now I think it's helpful just to think these things through aloud with each other and in ways we can practice because for me practice is doing the teaching Even being mindful, you do mindfulness. It's a way of acting. So although we use this weekend to talk through some basic teachings in Buddhism, for the purpose of understanding better what Buddhist teaching is and Buddhist practices but also so that we open up our own thinking

[10:15]

Because my contention and experience in the West is that we have to understand Buddhism much better than they do in Asia. Because if you're in a culture that more or less supports the practice, And there's an intuitive understanding in general of practice. That can support your practice. But when the culture that we live in doesn't have much idea about transformative practices. A lot of them are being introduced, but if they're really going to affect us, we have to see how they are supported by or contradict our views and habits. So one of my purposes in thinking this through with you and that also means to find out how to think it through with you.

[11:55]

So I want to have some discussion with you And I need to feel how you are understanding what we're talking about. Because one of my purposes in thinking this through with you is to get you to think through these things in your own life. Because you are all affected by causes. You're doing things all the time that affect you. And there's always the possibility of realizing something about your life that's transforming you.

[12:59]

So we need to rummage through in our own life as well as look at Buddhist teaching to open up a real clear practice for yourself, if you want to practice. I'd also like to take as an opportunity this weekend to speak about what I call the five fundamentals of Zen practice. In my about 40 years now of practicing, I think if you understand, have a sense of these five fundamentals,

[14:10]

It's all you need to have a realizing, enlightening practice. And they're all focuses of things you can do. Now, because that's the heart of the matter for me, what you can do, what you can practice. Now, for each of you, Emphasis will be different, but still I think all of you can have some contact with these five, what I call, fundamentals. One is simply this sitting posture. And what happens when you assume this posture?

[15:42]

And it is rare to do this sitting practice. Maybe you have something in your mind. Lots of people are doing it and hear it. But it's actually rare. And without the support of a place like Johanneshof or other people you sit with, it's very hard to sit regularly. And you may sit enough to feel better, to have some... If you're interested in sitting, you may sit enough to feel better, to make things work better in your life. And if you're smart, you believe that sitting is important.

[16:46]

But you believe in your smarts more. And you think most of the time I can make up for the times I don't sit because I'm so smart. Yeah. Ain't true. Something happens through daily sitting, if this is a path you choose, that is not in the realm of ordinary understanding. But the faith and commitment to do it has not easily come by. Not many people, even in Asia, actually sit regularly.

[18:00]

They sit for a few years as a practice, but to really sit as just part of their lives, like waking and sleeping, it's rare. But what's wonderful in the West is both in the United States and in Europe, many people are actually trying to sit. This may seem strange, but I think to introduce this sitting posture to a culture is a real change in paradigm, a real fundamental change in the culture. Because when you introduce this posture, Denn wenn man diese Sitzhaltung einführt, da führt man einen Geisteszustand ein, mit dem man nicht geboren ist.

[19:03]

Ihr seid geboren mit einem Geisteszustand des Wachseins, des Schlafens, des Tiefschlafens, des Träumens. Aber Zazen ist keiner dieser drei. It takes some time and skill or practice before you really develop a clear zazen mind. At first our mind is a mixture of stillness similar to deep sleep Associative dreaming mind. And our thinking, usual thinking mind. But eventually you begin to find a mind that includes these three and goes beyond these three. And that is inseparable from body, mind and phenomena.

[20:22]

And this is the basic teaching of Dharma. So to practice to some extent, either in homeopathic amounts or somewhat larger amounts. Yeah, even 10 minutes a day is a big difference than none. But 30 or 20 or 30 or 40 is probably better. But don't worry, it's not true that if one hour of satsang is good, ten hours are better.

[21:22]

You don't have to think that I mean a minimum of eight hours a day is necessary. Forty hours a week. No, it's okay, just some. So that's the first fundamental. The second is working with, practicing with, bringing your attention to your breath. Being aware of your breath. And the third is the practice of mindfulness. Now, you can do these three things. You can work with your breath, you can practice mindfulness, and you can sometimes sit.

[22:30]

You could call it a kind of natural practice, not even natural Buddhism, just a natural practice. Now, but to really make it work, you have to bring wisdom teachings into it. So the fourth fundamental is certain wisdom teachings, not a lot, but certain wisdom teachings need to be brought into your practice of mindfulness, mindfulness of breath and zazen. Und so ist es einfach wichtig, dass bestimmte Weisheitslehren, nicht viel, aber ein paar, dass die einfach mit einbezogen werden in diese Praxis des Sitzens, der Aufmerksamkeit auf den Atem richten und der Achtsamkeit. And the fifth is related wisdom phrases. Mantric-like wisdom phrases. And these are unique, pretty much unique to Zen practice.

[23:49]

And there's traditional ones that come up in the koans. And there's ones that I've made up. And there's ones we can make up together, or you can make up. These wisdom phrases can be tailored to your particular practice. These wisdom phrases are a way of applying the teaching. And a way to find antidotes to your own views. Antidotes that can, by shifting your views, can be a realization experience. So the... So the alchemy, the transformative aspect of these first four fundamentals, are often found in the use of phrases.

[25:18]

Hmm. Now I consider this evening starting out with some discussion of these four, of five, of mindfulness. Because mindfulness will probably be the most likely the most common practice for us. Even zazen practice is a form of maybe condensed mindfulness. But there is a difference.

[26:48]

There are some things that you cannot realize through mindfulness practice that are possible through sitting practice. And mindfulness is what probably, again for most of us, gives us a continuity to our practice. Because when you start practicing mindfulness you're bringing a new kind of continuity into your life. And we usually find continuity in our thinking. So the simple practice of mindfulness begins to shift your continuity of the world.

[27:58]

Begins to shift your shift your sense of experience of life into the present. And shift from how we're usually... usually find ourselves in the midst of causes from the past. Mindfulness opens you up more and more to the present as cause. This in itself is a dynamic shift in the way karma functions in your life.

[29:06]

So, if your karma is conditional, the moment at which change is possible is the most important point. And that's only in the present. So the practice of mindfulness actually enlarges your sense of presence and deepens your sense of the present. and opens up the present as first cause in your life. I think that's probably enough for this evening. Yeah, kind of. I think maybe tomorrow morning, after we've had a good night's sleep, we can look at mindfulness, start out probably looking at mindfulness again.

[30:26]

thank you very much thank you for translating you're welcome it's nice to practice and work with you again my pleasure too I've been an American I think it was last fall sometime I don't remember when a while ago good night Gute Nacht. Gute Nacht. Is that yours? The child? Good morning. Good morning. Ja. You know, when I come in in the middle of the period, it's nice of you to bow to me when I bow to sit.

[32:39]

But actually you probably shouldn't even notice I've come into the room. So at the beginning and end we exchange bows, but in the middle of Zazen usually you just keep sitting. And ideally you don't have a watch or measure the length of time. There's got to be some place in your life where you don't measure. So you want the feeling of disappearing into your sitting. And sitting and sleep are about the only place you can do that. To have this feeling of disappearing into sleep or disappearing into sitting.

[33:52]

Of course we disappear into sleep in order to wake up. I mean, we could say maybe the fundamental reason we sleep is in order to wake up. You say, boy, I better get some sleep tonight because I've got to be awake tomorrow. So there's kind of maybe... immediate reasons why we fall asleep. We're tired, it's dark. But the deeper, more fundamental reason we sleep is so that we can wake up.

[34:53]

And that's true of zazen too. There's various reasons why we decide to sit. For example, the wake-up bell rings. And your roommate decides to go to zazen. And you're embarrassed to stay in bed. Though you thought of it. So that's a kind of... immediate reason. But the deeper reason, which is sometimes hard to remember, is we could do zazen in order to wake up within ourselves.

[35:57]

Just as it takes a little while to find your posture in sleeping. Sometimes I sleep on my side and I can sometimes never figure out where to put my arms. They're often sort of in the way. Once I fall asleep, something figures out where my arms should go. And when we first do zazen, it takes, I don't know, five to ten minutes, I think, to find your posture in zazen. You have to kind of locate this lifting feeling.

[37:06]

And then see if you can express this lifting feeling throughout your body. And then you find your head is cockeyed or neck is stiff or something. So generally we start out sitting by rocking back and forth a little, and forward and back, sideways and sideways. And then as we come into a centered position, we can start this lifting feeling in our body. And it's not just done by willpower. It's done by some kind of coming up into lifting. It's very strange, you know, it's a kind of lifting ourself up into a new space.

[38:40]

A new space kind of opens up as we lift into our postures. And if possible, lift up through the back of the neck and back of the head. Quite a few of you sit, even those who've been sitting quite a long time, with your head rather forward. And frankly, I'm tired of straightening it. I come and sometimes try to straighten your head, but now I give up. If you want to keep your head that way, it's up to you. After all, it's your posture, not mine. Well, that's not quite true.

[39:50]

Because your posture affects me. Yeah. And a couple of you sit with your head back. Not so many, but some with your head too far back. And that almost always means you're thinking too much. And this kind of posture usually means you're indulging yourself in daydreams. It's funny, you know. This posture is so sensitive. Let it... That for me, you know, every time I sit it's slightly different.

[40:53]

And then you, after discovering, coming up into this lifting feeling, And if you really do come into this lifting feeling, opening up your backbone, physically opening up and spiritually opening it up. It's almost like you lift your head above the karma. So you're lifting pretty soon.

[41:54]

Either the karma starts to settle or you get your head up above it. And you start to feel something clear. Yeah. Look at an army up there. Yeah. Wasn't it Berlin where we had a scream therapy upstairs once? For the first two days? Rebirthing, yeah, I mean... We all wanted to be midwives, but it was... Finally they calmed down. And then next, you know, you try to discover this relaxation or ease in your posture.

[43:06]

And that's actually more difficult to do. Because then you really start running into your karma. This movement you can kind of get above your karma. But this movement is more moving down into your karma. See if you can relax throughout your body. And your karma says, you must be kidding. You relax. I'll show you who's boss. And then your back starts to hurt. And as I said the other day, if you can actually find real physical ease and relaxation in your posture, this is a huge accomplishment.

[44:20]

And I'm afraid to tell you it will actually take a few years. Even after you begin to feel pretty relaxed and your body and back start feeling soft, still there are deeper relaxations that take time. And so I said last evening that one of the fundamentals of Zen practice is Zazen. Zazen is Zazen. And I like to teach Buddhism and say Zazen isn't necessary.

[45:37]

And ideally it's not. And mindfulness in a sense is more fundamental. And for lay practice, mindfulness is probably the essential practice. It's still something you have to do. But it's much easier to fit it into your day. than zazen is. I mean, one stage of practice is you try to fit mindfulness into your day. A deeper step is when you try to fit your day into mindfulness. This is the shift from bringing mindfulness practice into your life.

[46:50]

Bringing Zen practice into your life. And bringing your life to Zen practice. It's a small shift. It doesn't mean that your life has to be different in its details. At least not in the big details. But it's a big shift in the context of your life. Now, what I've just been describing is basically working with your karma.

[47:56]

And I... I'll... Somewhere in there I have... Maybe I could do it now. Thank you. Yeah, those are the five I mentioned yesterday, last night.

[49:05]

Now, one of the reasons I mentioned why I'm behind this list is they divide up into or help us see the relationship between what I would call everyday practice and adept practice. Because when you... Let's call... Let's say karma practice is everyday practice. And dharma practice is... adept practice.

[50:32]

And I am making the distinction in this way to show that they are one spectrum, they're a flow. But it's a I mean Everyday practice leads right into adept practice. And adept practice is a kind of version of or supports everyday practice. Or flowers in our everyday practice. But there is a difference in intention. And most of us see the point of, let's call it karma practice, and it's rather harder to get a real feeling for dharma practice.

[51:38]

Karma practice is about the world... you live in. Dharma practice is about the world you don't yet live in. I would really like to go as slowly as possible in this. Gerard last night said, my half-hour little list was pretty dense. It was just a list, but maybe it was a little dense. We could do a seminar on each, or five or six on each aspect of the list.

[52:40]

But really, the secret of practice is to go very slowly, really being present in the details of your life. And if you look at something like the Avantamsaka, the Flower Garland Sutra, I mean, literally tens of thousands of practices are described. But each person, there's a whole dialogue number in it. Sudhana goes and speaks to people and says, what is your practice, blah, blah, blah.

[54:01]

And each one says, oh, I only know about this practice, and it leads to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How could I know about all these other practices? I can only do this practice. So there's this basic style in Buddhism of an infinitude of practices. Based really on the realization of one practice. So although I present quite a bit of things to you, I can't keep up with the Flower Garland Sutra. But I present a few things. But it's up to you, your character, your intention, your power, to choose one and practice it.

[55:18]

And it's strange, when you really practice one thing thoroughly, In the details of your life. And in the thoroughness of your intention. It surprisingly opens up or allows you to taste, see many practices. So just to go slowly in your sitting. Coming up into a lifting. Coming up into waking up in your life. Waking up into the present.

[56:30]

And then with that feeling moving back into your karma through the physical act of coming into relaxation. Mm-hmm. This is, again, just to do this. If you really are serious about wanting to have a life that works for you, what could be more important than just being able to be relaxed? And as you can become more relaxed, You feel that relaxation is inseparable from trust. Yeah, from trusting yourself. From trusting the stuff of yourself.

[57:34]

And if I meet someone who could possibly be interested in practice, And of course I often do. If I sense they have some intuitive trust in things as they are, if they'd like at least to be able to trust things as they are, If they'd like to be able to just have a physical trust of themselves. And even though their mind might be scary or compulsive or whatever.

[58:39]

But they'd like to be able to trust. They think it should be possible to trust one's own mind stuff. If I feel that implicit knowledge or intention, desire in a person, this is a person who could make Zen practice work. If I feel they want some explanation, they want a better road map to the way than their society gives them. And what they'd really like from me is some kind of road map, or a good one, but still some kind of map.

[59:47]

Then I think, well, maybe they should practice some other kind of Buddhism. Or if they really don't want to study themselves and they just want to depend on faith or a sense of grace. That's an important part of Zen, but if that's your main emphasis, then probably some other form of Buddhism is better. Unless you have no choice and you have to live next door to Johanneshof. Then we'll try to give you whatever kind of Buddhism you want. See, I haven't gotten very far.

[61:13]

We've just started sitting here. We're covering the first five or ten minutes. And now we've already, though, in ten minutes to come into something so fundamental. Imagine ten minutes of sitting. Can you trust the stuff of yourself? Can you trust your mind? And if you don't, But you want to. Are you willing to deepen your intention to come into this trust? This is all basic stuff. It's not even part of the teaching. It's just part of doing this practice.

[62:14]

Doing this practice with an intention to do it and a faith in the practice. And again, it's a big thing if you can come into a fundamental trust of yourself and this, our existence. And a fundamental trust of each situation. Now, let's see. You've been sitting for about an hour. Maybe in Not too long. We can have a break. But I want to point out before we have a break a basic dynamic here.

[63:28]

That is at the center of practice. At the center of acknowledging that everything changes. That your karma is not deterministic. It's conditional. And you create the conditions for its change or transformation. But self is not permanent. Or inherent. Permanent means it's predictable. inherent means it has some quality that's constantly being fulfilled or unfolded. And it makes a difference if you practice with the idea that you're uncovering your true nature.

[64:51]

than if you're generating your true nature. And many of us practice with, and many Zen teachers don't think rigorously, have a pedagogy By that I mean a way of presenting practice. The Zen teacher just says, do this or that. But behind that, in the way they tell you, And in what sequence they tell you things. And how they tell you to use concentration and intention.

[66:00]

Is a pedagogy, a way of understanding practice. No, you don't have to know this. A good teacher should know it. But maybe it's better for the practitioners not to know it. But again, as I said here in the West, we're reinventing Buddhism. We have to reinvent it in the... values and debris of our own culture. To see what we can develop and what we can resuscitate. In our society, because karma is societal as well as individual. So within our society as well as within ourselves.

[67:10]

So we're not talking really, I think in Buddhism strictly, about oneness or unfolding or uncovering. We're talking about not one, not two. The intimacy of not knowing exactly what's here. There's many of us and there's each individual. And we can't say there's some kind of sameness. There's some kind of sameness here instead of oneness. and sometimes there's an experience of oneness and yet there's separateness and individuality and those are two aspects we can experience and there's actually not so much a merging of them but a shift between one and the other

[68:34]

And there's an intimacy in that. Just like at each moment there's order, some kind of order, and there's also the possibility of disorder. or chaos. And chaos and order are something actually flowing together all the time. And you can't free yourself from that insecurity. That security-insecurity. Mm-hmm. And there's an intimacy and confidence and courage in knowing that. You have to come into your own power. You have to settle yourself within yourself. So we here have what I would describe as the basic acknowledgement of change.

[69:53]

is an activity of acceptance and completion. I'll give that as the basic form of the equation. Acceptance and completion. We can also put other words on the equation. The two sides of the equation. Like we could have ja. And the other side we could have mu. So one side is maybe or welcome. So your initial position in the world is welcome. Your initial position in the world, your initial perception is welcome.

[71:20]

It's not, I don't want to hear that or something. No, what you hear, welcome. Or acceptance. And the first is always acceptance. It's not gewissen. Is that right? It's not should. It's not have to. It's acceptance. In your posture, let's just stay with something simple. In your posture, you have to accept your own posture. But you're being informed by an ideal posture.

[72:23]

And you can't separate the acceptance of your posture and the presence of an ideal posture. There's no meaning or even capacity to accept, lest it's in the context of an ideal posture. And you truly discover acceptance through knowing an ideal possibility. And this is the basic idea of a Buddha being present in our lives. So you accept your posture, but you're informed by this lifting feeling.

[73:27]

And sometimes the lifting feeling is quite strong, clear. And sometimes it's not so clear. So, But in the end you accept your posture. With or without a lifting feeling. And this is also an act of coming into the present. So we don't, you know, this is an enlightenment teaching. And Just to work with yourself this way is you're already working in the field of enlightenment.

[74:28]

And although you don't completely relax, you have the intention or feeling, desire to relax. You don't sort of say, oh, I should be more relaxed. You... You say, oh, not so relaxed today. There's some kind of acceptance that has to be the basis. But that acceptance, again, isn't a dynamic unless it's also there with other possibilities. So we can have completion, or ja, or welcome, openness,

[75:30]

And then the other side we can have is to complete our posture. Or to absorb. Or stabilize. Or settle. Now, Dogen puts this at the center of Zen practice. And as I've told you now and then in the last year or two. The phrase genjo koan, the most characteristic phrase in his practice, his teaching, means to complete what appears. Knowing each particular is also universal or interdependent with everything.

[76:49]

So here's this dynamic of what appears, to accept what appears. And to complete it. But we don't know quite what it is that appears. Because there's a mystery to the present. It's a mystery that there's any duration to the present. And you're generating in your mindfulness a duration of the present. And what is this duration? What appears? This is the craft of practice. The dharma of practice. The dharma of practice is to shift your primary cause, condition of causation, into the present. Karma practice is to see the primary cause in your life as things arising from your past experience.

[78:06]

So, dharma practice is to open up The conditional, dramatic, fluid, unpredictable, absolutely unique present. And it always flows in this dynamic of acceptance, completion. This whole room is seeking a place in you. By this whole room I mean each of you, each person of you.

[79:23]

The interiority of each person. Each of you. That's different if you were sitting in this room by yourself. But we're now sitting here together. And the whole room is seeking a place in you. And your practice is to give it a place. If you fight it, it makes you kind of sick. But we have to have a place. We have to create some kind of space and Stability to allow the room to have a place in us. And each of us wants to, although it's at a physical, this isn't a mental experience. This is more a physical experience. And we all go through a kind of fighting it, resisting it, opening ourselves to it.

[80:29]

Cautiously opening ourselves to it. And according to the degree of concentration and shared intention in the room, we feel safer and more open. And this the room seeking a place in us becomes more true and strong. And if in some fundamental trust, and if we can allow the room to find a place in us, The subtle body we've generated to find a place in us.

[81:42]

And we can allow that to be absorbed or settle in us. Then we also complete the body of the room. We can't say where the boundaries are exactly, but we complete, let me say, the body of the room. So this dynamic of acceptance, opening, and completing and folding out It's not just the personal opening into the present, which includes the whole subtle body that we are always generating, that is the extended present. The fact of the present.

[83:00]

And assumed in this way of thinking and practicing, which is fundamental to Zen, is the sense of consciousness, awareness, extending beyond our body, pervading the immediate situation. You know, like you can feel somebody behind you, which you can't see. Or the many kind of, as I spoke about recently, out-of-body or near-death experiences. There seems to be a kind of fact which we can't prove. that some kind of mind, consciousness, awareness, extends beyond the body.

[84:03]

Even though many of us don't believe it, most of us actually act as if we believe. It's a kind of knowledge we assume but don't believe. And there may even be a sense in here of mind, consciousness, awareness being non-local. Some aspect of mind being wider even than this immediate situation. So I say these things to bring us into the mystery of the present and the mystery of our own becoming and being individually and together with each other, and with everything that is.

[85:09]

Okay. So let's sit for a moment. How are we doing?

[86:32]

Is there anything you'd like to bring up at this point that you feel you should reveal to us? So far, are we making sense? At least am I making sense? How far have we come? Does it make sense? Do I make sense for you? Were any of you here earlier? Yes. May I still ask a question? I have a question whether it is possible to ask for a further correction from you for the posture.

[87:43]

Could you please sometimes look at... You're not one of the ones I'm refusing to straighten out. Not everything points at you. What is that song? You're so vain, you think this song is about you? No, your posture is actually pretty good, I think. But I will look tomorrow. Okay. That proves he was at Zazen this morning. Can anybody prove they were at the seminar this morning? Yeah. I didn't catch the dynamic between acceptance and completion.

[88:45]

That's the necessity of this dynamic. Okay. Deutsch, bitte. I'll try to make this clear because it's fundamental to what we're talking about so maybe I will keep approaching it But it's basically the same kind of dynamic as accepting your posture, but recognizing there's possibilities of sitting that aren't just your usual posture.

[89:49]

You talked about how different teachers present the teachings in terms of some talk about discovering or unfolding, and others talk about something like, I haven't got it exactly, like creating. Can you make this a little bit clearer, this point? I would like to hear more about that. I don't know if I can make it clearer. But because I mentioned what I said because I wanted you to be aware that the views we have, not only the views we have from our culture but the views we have from within Buddhism and from our teacher influence how we practice.

[91:33]

But it's a big next step to explain what those differences are. But let me just mention one of the most common. Buddhism, Zen emphasizes the idea of original mind or original face or something like that. And it's very common within... It's not in the koans, but it's very common for Zen teachers' commentary... To assume that original mind is something that's there that we're uncovering.

[92:35]

And you can practice that way. And I think you can practice that way fairly effectively. Up to a point. But to assume that original mind is something that's theirs, equivalent to believing in God. Or belief in a world that's given to us and not a world we're generating. So at a more subtle level of practice, it's important to know that original mind is something we generate. And you practice differently when you understand you're generating original mind and not just uncovering something that's there.

[93:44]

Can you tell more about it? I've told enough. now you just practice with it but it doesn't make sense to get that into that depth for a weekend seminar if you want to really know more about it you'll have to move here and I'll talk to Jutta about that yes I think I somehow begin to understand the accepting part, which is a very active denial. The completion part of it I still can't somehow feel.

[94:46]

Okay. Deutsch, bitte. well this is very important that we understand this and it's not so difficult to understand but it's more difficult to feel Aber es ist schwieriger, das zu spüren. And sometimes we feel it, but don't recognize we feel it.

[95:26]

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