Did you have a topic today? I don't know what it was. What was it? Oh, thanks. I'll find out by asking you to give me a report. Please tell me something. This is our last chance to talk for a while. Yes. The topic was, what did change in our relationship to Koans? Oh, during this week. Yeah, okay. And our group, Everybody Was Content, was lately come at the end of this week, suddenly, including the whole week, of course, but it appeared at the end of the week.

[01:02]

Everyone was content with that. implying that you weren't content during the week. I wasn't in the group, no, no. Okay, go ahead. Although so much is being left open, undecided, undissolved. This characterizes what has changed during the week for most of us, which is the access to what has changed during this week. The way you approach the koan and the way you work with the koan.

[02:05]

Yes. We got many hints how to go at or deal with the koan. The text part was completely incomprehensible at first, but after reading it several times and working with it, something suddenly came up. It was completely incomprehensible. And each of us, everybody had made experiences with, through reading, hearing, repeating, that what had been inaccessible or closed then opened up and became accessible. Insgesamt hat das für alle eigentlich relativ viel Zuversicht und Hoffnung gebracht, selbst auch mit einem Chor anarbeiten zu können. And this brought about hope and confidence.

[03:08]

Confidence, thank you. Confidence that they were able to work with the corn on their own, independently. I think it's important that there is a week's time and that the same text is always being worked on and read. Because if you read something for yourself and just don't understand it, then you usually forget it after the second or third time. That's why it's so important that this is a whole week and it's read again and again because when one would do this at home and you wouldn't understand it, after the second time probably would put it away and not consider it. And so this approach, so to speak, to let the text open with time, has a lot to do with simply trusting an experienced teacher who also gives the hope that it will work. And this approach, getting over time this access to the Kauen has much to do with an experienced teacher in whom you have this trust to work and function that way.

[04:31]

Otherwise we wouldn't try it on our own. Really? The other point was that working in a group was helpful for each of us. In the small groups. I think the koan, you know, just if you're practicing Zen, you're in a lineage and you know these koans are an essential part, a central part of Zen practice, particularly lineage practice. I think that, well, just because you recognize it's important, you study it and it would be maybe enough, but I think it really does take some kind of oral transmission.

[05:46]

Or face-to-face transmission. And that's part of that story of young men raising his hand and lowering his hand, that you can't get reading. Okay, someone else? Yes. This approach to a koan in a group was for all of us new and surprising. And we started with telling each other if and in what way we were having contact with koans.

[06:54]

And exchanged what did happen with us, each of us, during this week. And found views, outlooks, how this would continue for each of us. What grew was a trust, a trust especially in intuition. And how different the single situation before had been from each of us and Korn's background also was. And how dense the work in this group had become during this week. Did you stay in the same group day after day or did you switch around?

[08:12]

Three days. Yeah, okay. Thanks. In a way it was a pity that we would have known what they or those in the other group had said, but the advantage of staying together was that the work became denser, more dense. The quality of the exchange did change. And what you showed up especially was that the personalities got less important and we could work rather with the raw material. Okay. In the first part, we talked about the possibility, just as we worked with it so far, to get in touch with a core and then to forget it again.

[09:31]

And that sometimes only after years it suddenly comes back and brings about aha experiences. The first part and how we told how we did or had worked with the current reform, that is reading it, putting it away, letting it rest for some time, probably even years, and then let it pop up again and come into contact again with it again, but after a long time, probably. Yeah, it's not bad. Yes. The question is how to uphold this question, how to carry on this question. And what you definitely did open up for us this week is the feeling of being in the lineage. Oh goody.

[10:32]

I would like to add to that group. And what we also found out was that to hold up and keep the tension between the question and the possible answer. Mm-hmm. And someone said she had a lot of resistance against the Koran work. And the resistance was then the access. And then it was for her such a picture, a Koran is actually like an encounter with a person. It was very complex. You will never understand it. You can still experience it again and again. And with every encounter, maybe another small or big thing happens again. One person said she'd had quite, she had felt resistances against koan-koan work, and especially these resistances then became the entrance into the koan.

[11:50]

So it was felt then afterwards that... meeting a koan or coming into contact with a koan was as complex as coming into contact with a person another person personality and with different with each meeting different aspects appeared like And another aspect came up in our group, it was actually life itself is a koan. And why shouldn't we go at it this way, but what state or posture of mind should we hold up this, come on, life itself? As you know, that's a big emphasis of Dogen is to understand koan work in such a way that your life situations become your koan.

[12:56]

You made it easy for us. Curiosity appeared and yes, certain joy. I'm tired after all these years of hearing about the resistance to Koans. I'm tired after all these years of hearing about the resistance to Koans. The group wished to have once a week a telephone conference about that. With whom? Well, I suppose this might be quite amusing if I got a phone call that said, well, there's 11 of us on the line here. Would you tell us about young men waving his arm around again? Okay. Yeah, David? Our group, one aspect was a great relief.

[14:21]

That it is possible to work with Koans if you are not on level four already. Oh, but you all are on level four. Yes. And another aspect was to have had the permission after this week to ask ourselves real questions relating to the koan. the aspect of the rhythm of a koan. And for me this week was especially important because the rhythm of a koan was apparent especially, or became apparent.

[15:34]

Especially the aspect, how do I move from sentence to sentence? Wie lasse ich Zeit oder Raum für die Möglichkeit, dass der nächste Satz nichts mit dem ersten so tut? And how do I let space and time be in such a way that the next sentence has anything to do with the sentence before? The aspect of the loose... Yeah, yeah. The loose tropes floating around, waiting to be. Yeah, like the structure of a building, you know? Put together, yeah. That was very visible to me, especially with Teixo, how it is possible to move in this structure. Two aspects of the same group I want to shed more light on.

[16:50]

is allowed to ask questions to me through the Teshu that you gave to Roshi today. In the sense of simply asking questions from the Zen spirit, the beginner spirit. And especially relating to the task you gave today, for me this permission to ask questions and especially out of this mind, the same mind like Zen mind, beginner's mind was given to me and with this I failed especially. We have in our house a three-year-old girl who asks these questions. Why is there a moon and why are there trees and why is the sun there? And that encouraged me to approach the koan with these live questions.

[18:29]

And another aspect which became clearer to me is that working with koans is a koan practice. And the question in the group came up, what does it mean in the sense of continuously working? David has mentioned it, how to deal with sentences. What exactly does it mean to have a core practice? What is a Sazan practice? A question appeared. What does it mean establishing a Kohan practice? Like the aspect David said, working with the sentences. What does it mean establishing a Kohan practice in relation or comparison to Zazen practice? To other aspects. Yes, Advaita. I'd like to report from the group

[19:32]

Oh, good. I'm able to. Well, we'll see. There were many ingredients this week. There were fundamental questions, personal questions. There were exchanges. Out of this... Milage. Milage. We spoke today about... The common reaction was it opened more. It made it possible to open more. And also it put questions in the middle, also forbidden questions. So it made

[20:34]

radical questioning possible and it felt I was looking for a word like the koan gave us a structure it didn't give us a structure it gave us a space with a kind of flavor with a kind of direction but it made it possible to exchange about something which we otherwise couldn't have spoken about What's an example of a forbidden question in the center? Was young men gay? Many forbidden questions about having doubts and being able to speak about it. Also, this morning about should the lineage go on?

[21:58]

These are so fundamental questions to be allowed to ask. So, for example, questions about the doubt now. Roshi asked, what are then forbidden questions? Questions about the doubt that one has. Or just questions, as you said this morning, should the lineage be continued at all? So these fundamental, these fundamental questions, So it encouraged to ask more fundamental and also gave trust to see. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's good. Okay, thanks. Yes. In this context, a question came to me. We have a very In this relation, a question came up for me, in our group we found quite some intimacy.

[23:06]

And it was a real richness in this group. And my questions always appear after the groups. And this time it was a question, who turns whose nose? And this time it was a question, who turns whose nose? We are very, and I enjoy that, I enjoy that very much, we are very empathetic, we share, we wait, we go into each other, and I enjoy that very much. I enjoy this very much. We are very empathetic and we listen to each other. We react to each other and are quite intimate. But the question remains, who turns whose nose? We worked with Saskia and I worked with her and we argued about it and afterwards it became clear that I have to turn my own nose.

[24:19]

Both persons. And apart from this very fundamental question, my question remains, how do I allow myself to turn your nose around? Well, I mean, you can grab it if you want. It's big enough to reach. You know, I had this image, you know how people sit around... Often dinner tables and everybody holds hands. So the whole group is holding each other and they say, one, two, three, and everyone's going. I add to that, and I say it in my own words, but before that, there was a somewhat uncanny feeling of harmonizing.

[25:51]

Harmony, yeah. Harmony or harmonizing. The question appeared, where is the shadow of this harmony? Just harmony won't lead you very far. You have to ask something, really ask and demand something. Yeah. Harmony is a good basis for discovering difference, though, too. Okay. Yes, Ricard? I see your name on the Doxan list, and I think I'm seeing myself. I told Frank to bring in a mirror. Yes, go ahead. I asked a few years ago if it makes sense to read Koans without an explanation. Years ago I asked you if it's useful or does it make sense to read koans without getting an explanation with them.

[27:40]

What did I say? It does make sense. It's good. And then I started reading koans. And for me, I read it in a very innocent way, without thinking too much about it. I read it in a somewhat innocent way, without giving it too much thought. We have written down individual sentences and words over and over again, and that has helped me in my practice. But single sentences and words surfaced again and again and that helped my practice. And I'm really astonished about the complexity, about the density and the different levels of the koan. And it was somewhat exciting to see and sense that there are these different connections between the cohorts and that was also felt and expressed in our group.

[29:10]

In some ways we can liken them to geological formations. You go along and this is sandstone and there's suddenly granite. And it's actually at different levels pushed up to there. So this sentence may not relate to this sentence until you see that it's actually an earlier formation pushed to the surface. Does that make sense as an image? So when you start paying attention to this one, it draws you down into this other level. Yes, Dieter. Maybe what Roshi just described is also a reason for the harmony in the groups. that what you are describing doesn't right now may be a reason for the harmony in the groups.

[30:25]

The sense appears not about being right or wrong, but about approaches and entries, entrances. It's more like, I would call it swimming bubbles, like these tropes which move around each other. And for each of these tropes you can use a different direction. There isn't one given direction. You can choose. I think this has shown itself in the groups, that you simply listen more openly and no longer try to bring conversations into a direction so strongly.

[31:29]

And it showed in the groups that the listening to each other is more open and not so much as forcing or urging a certain given direction. No, that's good. This reflects the multileveledness. Yeah. Well, also there's a kind of At any margin or border, there's a kind of effervescence, like boiling water. OK. Yes. I didn't know before that the karma is stored in language so deeply, and it has a connection with details, a picture.

[32:43]

But I found it very interesting just to take, first of all, a turn, make presence, Why don't you speak German and then translate yourself unless you want him to do it. It's all right. When I take a term like presence or what means the whole world, what does it mean? This kind of question The kind of question, who belongs to the Holbein, who's included, this kind of research or this kind of trying to find out?

[33:59]

This freed myself that there is anything right or a concept of this is right. And I think it will be real fun to proceed now and having experienced this karma, how to get free or free oneself of karma. just through this sort of research with one word or with a word okay that's right in fact I'd like to sort of speak a little bit in that direction before we end today yes

[35:33]

In our group we also talked about the site moment or the construction site moment. And how the koan, one person used it through the week in relating to other people as Matsu and they being Bajang and back and forth. And one person used it the whole week, so to speak, that you yourself and others here from us, so to speak, Matsu or Bajang were the whole week, that it was also us. So the vehicle of the koan was used as a way to articulate life experience, not a story in some ancient time in China.

[36:45]

And the commitment and intensity of the... Support provided by everybody here this week made this possible for people. So it almost seemed as though the Koran was telling our story. Let me say while I think of it, this way of working with koans in a group, yeah, I don't know, it's probably fairly unusual. But I think that for us Westerners it's probably a very good way to go about it.

[37:53]

I think you feel that way too. And particularly in the lay situation where we don't have dokes on every day. I mean, traditionally, when you work with a koan, you have doksan every day with the teacher. You'd kill me if you tried to do that. But it's also, I think, in the nature of koans. As doksan. very evolved wisdom literature. Okay. But also it is necessary to work with koans on your own as well. The koans assume a certain conception

[38:57]

of the person. And that conception implies a way of working which you also work in an indwelling way. But I'll come back to that. Munna? I want to, in our group, we ask ourselves if the awareness of the awareness of the awareness and the space between the question and the answer to what is happening there.

[40:17]

To what is happening there? To the space between the question and the answer, to make the attention focus on the attention. If we ask ourselves in the group, if in the space between question and answer it so happens that there is this attention being put on attention itself in this space. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm not going to say anything about it, but I hear you. If the question is more precisely, is it being in the space between question and answer? Is this that situation where attention is put on attention? Yeah, I understood it was a question.

[41:36]

I was avoiding it. Well, you certainly could. But... I would say that the... if we imagine there's this space between question and answer, that you suspend attention, kind of floating attention. Kind of open, floating attention. But in relation to what you just said, I've been trying to think of a way to give you a way to practice with... not bringing attention to attention, but settling attention on attention.

[42:40]

And I think at least what would work in English, probably, is what works for me anyway, is to use, to join awareness to awareness. Those four words, for me in English, make it happen. Which if I say, settle attention on attention, it's a visual concept. But if I say, join awareness to awareness, I can physically feel it. It's not so easy to...

[43:44]

You can't analyze what does it mean to join awareness to awareness. But Sukhirashi once said, it's like a rock in a river. Not a rock in a river, but a rock and a river. It doesn't make sense, he says, but we feel something. Sometimes I have a feeling it flows like wine and tastes like water. What does that mean? Okay. I better not use that as a phrase. Okay, someone else. Yes, Agatha.

[45:06]

I always get the emphasis wrong. I just wanted to say one last thing, to draw attention to the truth. What add to the last, joining awareness with awareness? To awareness, yeah. To awareness. We also talked about that in our group. Mm-hmm. for example we had questions what is reality since childhood or we had certain experiences yeah But what the work with the koans has now provoked is actually that there are different possibilities from different positions to test this something and then also a

[46:34]

ein Stück Achtsamkeit hinzuzufügen. Also ich kann es nicht sprechen. This work with Koans made it possible to notice from different positions now and add... Sagtest du Achtsamkeit? Oder Gewahrsein? Also das ist, was wir jetzt gesagt haben, Achtsamkeit. To put attention or settle attention on attention and add this to it, to this noticing. And especially this koan number 53 was for some of us moving in the way of being in motion. The sentence like he is polished like a diamond and shines from every side.

[47:49]

Yes. And this dialogue and play between conventional and fundamental truth. Good, okay. And what you added, how we can practice that? With maximum greatness? It's like a sort of posture evolving stronger, like a feeling like mindfulness to mindfulness. Okay. Thanks. Frank? I don't think this is fun.

[49:12]

Nothing is there. Only now is there. And we don't get it. In the moment of the group, when they were together, you can only experience it now. It was also difficult in our group because the moment in the group only then and there can I experience it. I try to understand and then I shan't understand. And I try to trust the non-understanding but I only learn to understand. again and again and notice that I evade. I sit here and think what will I say when Roshi asks me.

[50:24]

I listen to what they all say, Dr. Evelyn Paul. What? He said, I don't listen. I don't. Then I don't listen what they say because I think so much. Thank you. It's difficult and it's not fun. And why do I do that? Not because it's fun. Not for me. I don't do that. But I feel this is a single chance, single occasion. To notice that I don't listen to what Agatha said, to notice that I'm thinking, what will I say when being asked and so on, just to notice that. And when I talk, for moments just talking, Sensing how I breathe, how the breath forms into words, how the words themselves go back to the present.

[51:35]

I breathe, I get air. This is nothing special. And somehow this is it. I don't understand that. This is the smashing thing about the koans. They are thus. Well, thank you for your honesty. And maybe we need an intervention. We'll get everybody in your group to sit around you and hold your hand. They can all be around you. And then you can, you know, with a lot of support, you can say something. There's some experts in this room on how to do that.

[52:39]

You mean the koan or the stories about the group works? What is no fun? She asked. Okay. Okay. So maybe it's time for me to say something. No? Yeah. Oh. Please. Go, Roshi. Go. Okay. I should have worn my football shirt.

[54:08]

Yeah, okay. Well, one question that comes up for me and we talked about it before this winter branch is convened. Should we accept 50 people? I think in the end we accepted 54 or something. But Otmar was calling me around 40 and saying, should we stop? So we thought that the upper limit should be five tables of ten each for the eating. And the building gets a lot of people in rooms and so forth. So one practical question is, did it work for you okay to have 50 or would you rather have 35?

[55:25]

Yes, we are okay. More also okay. Because so you come together all and we have a good relationship coming up. Yeah. Is that the general feeling? What? More density. The problem is, if you'd said 35, I'd say, will you choose the 15 who shouldn't be here? What? It's very nice with this amount of people, but some rooms are really packed.

[56:30]

What? Window opening and hiding these things in packed rooms. Well, we could take over the Waldheim, but then you have to drive over here and stuff. Well, I don't know. It's going to come up again. What a patent, yes. Okay, so let me speak about how that affects the way I teach, though. I mean, what happened during this seminar is perfectly okay with me. Yeah, I mean, I had fun with the Tay shows, and I did... find something new, as far as I'm concerned, every day. But I just did a seminar in Crestone with the same schedule. But we had, I can't remember, 15 people instead of 50.

[57:33]

Okay, what's the difference? Well, what I speak about is of course partly related to the koans. But it's very much also related to you as a specific group of people. And I somehow find I have to speak to each of you separately as well as together. Or I have to touch on things that I feel relate to you specifically, but maybe not to you.

[58:46]

So what happens is I give a tesho with more topics, more aspects than I'd give a tesho for 15 people. If I have to only consider 15 individuals present, not 50. That creates in some ways a more complex teisho. But It also creates a simpler tesha. Because I don't go as deep. It's not that I can't go because of you.

[59:48]

It's just that with 15 people, I can begin to hone in on one or two aspects and develop it over the days. Here, there's too many themes for me to develop it. in the same way. So if we did three groups of 16 or something here, a week apart, one after three. I would actually have spoken quite differently about the same koans In the first week to this 16, in the second week to this 16, in the third week to this 16. I mean, it's not something I plan, I just see that's what happens. So in a way, it requires more from you as a part of a bigger group to carry it on yourself than if it's a smaller group and then I can carry it for a greater time with you.

[61:13]

You know, I used to, at Sunday lectures in San Francisco when I gave them, there were commonly 400 people. And that's okay. It's okay to speak to that many people, but it's something very different than 50. And you can throw out some hints, some sparks to a group of a large group, but you can't develop it. So for what we're trying to do here together as lineage teaching, there's a critical mass, there's an effective critical mass.

[62:19]

It might be 15, it might be 50, or it might be somewhere in between, but that's something I want to discover with you. As Coco said, I think maybe it could be 60. But I don't know. At some point it's too many. Particularly if I'm going to do duksan. Okay. in German you said the last winter twigs you talked about what was actually best that everyone was there when a winter twig was given last winter twig branches you said it would be actually right or ideal if everyone would be there if there's a winter branches week

[63:40]

If everybody was part of Winter Branches, well, that'd be great, but I don't know if I could do it. I mean, it would be a nice feeling, because then I would have to... Yeah, to continue. It was another way of that it was better to continue. Because otherwise, if you see a person and you know he or she wasn't there last night... Yeah, no, that makes a difference. Yeah. Yeah. But the consequences, if there are so much people, a member of the Windertzweige, it's full. Yeah. Yeah. Well, these are things that we have to work out. And I appreciate the general feeling seems to be... I appreciate finding out that the general feeling seems to be that this group of people was not too big. David, you had some reservations about how big this group was getting, but how do you feel now that you're on the other side of it?

[64:44]

I'm still reserved in some way. You had to cook for a lot more people. For me it's a different experience whether I'm with 50 or 15 people. I just can't sort of acknowledge this. I don't know if it's good or bad. Yeah. It's different. It's different. If you want to have 15 people come to Crestone, but not all at once.

[65:46]

So I'm going to have to stop soon. But Annetta? I just wanted to underline what you said. I want to sort of strengthen that I can feel what you said. Last time we were a smaller group and you went right into detail and specialties of the khan. We addressed also the topic and I find it quite okay and all right if we're such a big group, a large group. Actually, I would have liked to ask you to go more into the details of the Koran. And then my feeling was it would have been too much. And I'm not so sure if you have to really go and answer every question in detail.

[67:13]

Well, this I will never do. But you all experience the difference between the small group and the big group. When you break into small groups, you can have a different kind of conversation. So now let me speak about what I meant by the koans conceive of a certain kind of person. Okay. We can understand the development of Buddhism over 2,500 years.

[68:14]

As the development and evolution of the concept of Buddha. And the simultaneous, parallel and interdependent development of the concept of the person. because if the Buddha and the person are linked by enlightenment, or we should really say, as Heike would have said, cultivation and realization, or cultivation and enlightenment.

[69:17]

Now you can see that, can't you? That if there's a concept of a person... If the concept of the person and the Buddha are linked, which is what the teaching of Buddhism is about, then if one develops, it's going to affect the development of the other. Now, the two key aspects for our lineage that are crucial in this mutual development are the concept and teaching of the three bodies of Buddha, the Trikaya. It was one of the things that very early on Sukhiyoshi taught.

[70:18]

I remember he put it on a blackboard. And I remember I came back later and went into Sokoji and copied it all off the blackboard. I still have my... So, the three bodies of Buddha are really about developing the possibility of the person's relationship to the Buddha. Now the other development is the concept of the Alaya-Vijjana. And the Alaya-Vijjana is by most scholars or most commentators confined in English

[71:20]

to Freudian and Jungian concepts of the unconscious. Let me see if I can give you a sense of the Alaya-Vijñāna as I understand it and experience it, and that you can find almost zero of what I'm talking about in the literature. Let me try to give you a feeling of how I understand and experience the Alaya Vishnana. And you will probably find almost nothing about it in the literature. No, we can talk about the eight Vishnanas sometime, and we have in the past, but right now I'm only speaking about the Alaya Vishnana. Wir können zu anderer Zeit mal über die Vijñanas sprechen, und wir haben das in der Vergangenheit auch getan, aber ich spreche jetzt nur über das Alaya.

[72:45]

Because, of course, the eight Vijñanas, Alaya is the eighth, are an interrelated concept, a kind of expanded five skandhas in how we function. Natürlich sind die acht Virginianas, und das Laie-Virginiana ist das achte Jahr, ein untereinander, miteinander verbundenes, sind untereinander verbunden und sind in gewisser Weise, in einer anderen Weise, auch wie die fünf Skandas es ausdrücken, auf andere Weise, wie wir funktionieren. Okay, now... I mean, it wasn't what I said? Or I wasn't clear? Okay. Well, it's not so important what I said. But I said that the eight Vishnanas... are a way of conceiving of the person that's conceptually related to the functional categories of the five skandhas.

[74:13]

But that right now I'm speaking about only the eighth vijnana. Which is the The concept of the eighth vijñāna transforms the concepts of the first seven, which were earlier than the development of the alaya vijñāna. In other words, the Alaya-Vijjana is a rather late development in the history of Buddhism. Now, the sense of the Alaya-Vijjana is... It's like, well, there's two words that sound, are pronounced nearly the same, alluvion and alluvium.

[75:17]

And you don't just use the English words. And one is spelled O-N and the other is spelled U-M. So, eluvion, O-N, eluvion, O-N. Okay. And eluvion means the way a stream or something like that washes, it actually means to wash, washes against the side of the stream, the banks of the stream, and picks up soil and sediments it. And alluvium is the soil that's deposited. Like New Orleans is a whole bunch of alluvial soil making a delta. Much of the problem with what happened in New Orleans is the damming of the Mississippi River.

[76:24]

Controlling the flow of the Mississippi River. But that's only indirectly connected with the concept of the Elisabethan. Well, you can think of Manas as the damming or editing part of the mind, and it's a little bit... Yeah, because old Orleans is gone. Okay. Okay. So, the idea is that our... our life experiences, our lived life, is like water flowing against our continually changing immediate situations. And as this lived life flows like water against the world, against other people, against your situation, you know, it collects seeds or soil or something like that.

[77:58]

And that sedimented in us Partly as karma. Partly as sediment, do you understand? It's sedimented in us partly as karma, partly as memory. But it's also sedimented in us as memory. seeds as potentials as cradles well I don't know what word to use a cradle is of course what you put a baby in I've always wondered when you put a baby to sleep why do you tell it that the tree is going to break Rock-a-bye, baby, in the treetop.

[79:15]

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. We don't do this. No, we don't do that. Oh, we do it in America, and then you wonder, why the hell do you... Yeah. Now we know what's wrong with America. Yeah, we don't do that. Only in interaction with other people or also by own action of the person? In all activity. You're sitting next to these two people right now. That's sedimented in the Alaya Vishnayana. But a cradle doesn't just mean a baby's cradle. A cradle is also what you use to get gold out of a stream. And a cradle is a form on a scythe you know, that you cut wheat with or something.

[80:23]

The cradle is a form on it that as you cut the grain, the grain falls into the cradle. So you can see I'm struggling to find words for how the laya vijnana functions. So the laya vijnana is karma, memory, seeds. Potentials and folded up patterns in folded patterns that aren't your memories. that are not your memory and were not your experience.

[81:26]

But there's things that touched you but you never opened up in your experience so they were never memories. Are you following me? Yes. How many years have we been practicing together? 18 or 19 years. Sorry. And I've developed so slowly and you've so quickly. We're going to end up, you know, where a roca is. A roca is the little porch outside of a Japanese building, you know. We're going to end up rocking on the roca, you know. Putting blankets around our legs. Okay. All right. So... Perhaps I meet him on a subway.

[82:44]

I just have the experience of being beside him. And a seed... A pattern of what he is passes to me, is sedimented in me. And so sometimes later, some other situation happens, and everything that I have learned and felt through Neil opens up in me, independent of Neil, because the seed of Neil is planted in me. So if you look at Sophia, you can see patterns in myself and Marie-Louise that have opened up in her. And patterns from her grandparents and my, you know, that opened up in Sophia.

[83:52]

Okay, so if Sophia had never been born, those patterns are still there waiting to open up. Now, of course, the lived life of Sophia opens up those patterns differently than my lived life would open up the same patterns. Now, if you understand this concept, and you've got 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years of life, virtually an infinite number of possibilities are there. In no way limited to your experience. So, this also helps explain some child prodigies, young geniuses, Mozart types, right? And people who say, oh, this must be a reincarnated person, because look how much they know, and they're only eight or eighteen.

[85:12]

The concept of the live is, Jana says, that only in a few years you accumulate the potentials of numerous lifetimes. Do you know what trawling is? T-R-W-A-L. T-R-A-W-L. T-R-A-W-N. Yeah, it's deep sea when they trawl at the bottom of the ocean. They try to trawl, yeah. But you can trawl at thousands of feet, you know. So if a koan is trawling, the alaya vijnana.

[86:22]

And it can draw up experiences you've never had but were there as seed patterns. And it's because of experiences like that That you have concepts of the macrocosm and microcosm. Because the experiences that can come up with you in you and often do to some extent in dreams, which aren't, you can say, I've had some dreams that are not related to my experience at all. But they were there as seeds. So it makes a mistake to sort of analyze dreams to find out your experience. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Oh, cool. Yeah, but the collective unconscious is the theological one.

[87:31]

Can I ask a question to this dream? Yeah, sure. It rarely happened to me, but it happened to me that I met someone. And after a while, I got a dream, which was nearly like a film script. And let's say I saw an aspect of that person I had noticed before. And the first time I had this dream that... but it always turned out to be the right perception. So I was always... Yeah, it's like that. This is a kind of example. Deutschbitte? And probably, yeah, Deutschbitte. Well, I have often had that I met someone and then I had a dream, it was almost like a script for a film, with the settings and everything. And I got information or a perception about this person that I didn't have until now.

[88:35]

And in the beginning I just thought, no, that's too much. And in most cases it turned out that I had perceived something in the dream, which I found out very much later with the person. And that's always true. May I ask a question, too? Yeah, well, let me just say that in cultures which on a big scale practice mindfulness... Can I tell you something that's a little embarrassing? Everyone has gone from Crestone up to... boulder where they've taken over the bed and breakfast and holding a seminar mostly being led by Christian Dillo. So Marie-Louise and Sophia have the job of making sure that once a day incense is lit in the altar in the zendo. Because everyone's there.

[89:45]

And so... Because that's the minimum you should do, light incense on the altar once a day. So they go around and water all the plants and light the incense. Okay, so they went past this one room and all the windows. The doors were locked, but the windows were open. And they went by the next room and again, one door was open and windows were open, but some doors were locked. Same with the third room. Then they get to Christian's room. And it was locked and the windows were locked.

[90:54]

And Sophia said, you see the difference between Germans and Americans? She said, you see, Germans are more careful. They close doors and lock them. And then Sophia said to Marie-Louise, let's see what Papa did. So they went to my room and it was locked. Oh, yeah. Papa's in between. Okay, anyway. This was a little wisdom passed on to Marie-Louise. Okay. So, in the Noh theater, There's five categories of plays in the Noh Theater. And one classic category in films, in the Noh Theater, is one person comes out, because they're all in, persona means mask, you know, they're all in masks.

[92:08]

So one person comes out in real time and tells another person something that's happened to him in their talk. And sometimes it's a military person confessing his war crimes to a Buddhist priest. Or it's just an encounter between a beautiful woman and another person or something. Then in the next scene, the person who was told the story in another part of the stage is represented as dreaming. But now they're enacting a dream that was a seed from the other person. And then the play develops through the dream and not through the real time.

[93:25]

That's exactly what happened to you. But again, it's a theater based on the concept partly of the Ilai Vizniana. And it's really Buddhist. The Noh plays are really, on the whole, Buddhist conceptions. Okay, so what were you going to say? Holotropic breathing. Is this about the same? Well, I've never done it, but you know about it. You teach it, right? Stan Grof's Holotropic Breathing. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And that's related to LSD. Okay, so anyway, we've got a big picture here. Okay, so in other words, You don't need the macrocosm, microcosm kind of mythopoetic vision of the world.

[94:33]

Which is usually carried too far and made too exact. And Buddhism doesn't really buy into the macrocosm, microcosm. I mean, heaven and earth and I share the same root. Myriad beings and I share the same body is similar, but it's another concept. share the same body. Could you say the last sentence, please? The myriad things and I share the same body.

[95:37]

Yeah, myriad things and I share the same body. Yeah. Then? That's all. But you said, you finished your sentence then. It's a different concept than macrocosm and microcosm. Okay. I mean, it's a... Anyway, let's not get it. We'll be here all night. So the Alaya Vijnana... And koan work developed simultaneously. Because koans assume you control your experience with phrases and bring up experiences even from the lineage and so forth. Now, it's too much to say. A woman carries within her eggs of generations and generations. future generations.

[96:55]

Now, we don't want to carry it too far, but the alive asiana is a concept that in us, through just the encounters we have, There's almost, just through the encounters we have in our lived life, the water of our lived life, gathering and sedimenting experience. There's a potential there of unfolding experience. many dimensions of experience, including the Buddha's. So koans and the tropes and koans and the images are meant to be a way to trawl for the Buddha in your own experience. And koans and the tropes of koans are thought of as a way, so to speak, to troll for the experience, for the Buddha in your own experience.

[98:15]

So the concept of the Ilayat Hishyana is the Buddha... is in us already, but not as something we uncover. But of an immense possibilities of how we're human. Which the historical Buddha realized. But each of us can realize. Like each of us can have a baby, sort of. And so this is a way to draw out those aspects of being human. So the Koan work, as I described today, assumes the dynamic of the Alaya Vijnana.

[99:19]

Okay. Is that enough? Oh, never enough. Enough, enough, enough. It's glossed as Buddha nature. Okay, unless it's really essential. No. Are some seeds passed on as a heritage? Genetically, no. But they're being passed on all the time. Oh dear. He got lots.

[100:31]

If the soil is plowed. When the soil is plowed. And fertilized. Yeah, you are.

[100:46]

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