one of many descriptions about many worlds and about many possible worlds that arise through their description. That's a different statement. It's not one language about one real world. It is one of many possible languages about many worlds. From that point of view, then, knowing that the language is one of many possible languages, you can change that language. The point isn't that the language isn't an accurate description of the world. So you better drop language and just live in the world. When you do that, you just find you're in another language.

[01:01]

The point is, you can change your language. No matter what you do, you're going to be living in language. Or living in a field of thoughts, feelings, objects, etc. Yes, Hermann? I had another thing. My fantasy was to reach beyond language and then to switch from this to a point of language. Yeah. Well, you want to say that in German? Okay. This is exactly what this Koran is about. One of several things it's about. It's exactly about this. So it says, yes, there's knowing, there's language. There's not knowing.

[02:35]

And not knowing is nearest. And Fayan is enlightened on this statement. But even when not knowing is nearest and there's enlightenment... Still a pattern is created. It says that, right? And it means still a language is created. Okay. So how do we get, we all would like to get Herman to a point where he's beyond language. Not because he talks a lot, but because we know he'd be so happy. Did you translate what I said? Yeah. Oh, I didn't think what I said was funny. Hey. Pass out.

[03:48]

What's that mean, fuck off? This is the theater of the absurd up here, you know. I always take off. You can't hit a woman with a Buddhist robot. The sense of it is, I don't know if I can, here's my sense of it. Is you can't get outside of language. You can't get outside of language by going from language to what is described by language.

[05:01]

There's no possibility yet. You cannot. You cannot. Whatever you do, say that I try to become that pillar. I try to get outside the language of seeing that pillar or deciding it's between me and that other wall or deciding that I can't run through it I'm always going to be in a relationship to that pillar maybe I could become the pillar So I decided, okay, I'm going to run full pell-mell at that pillar and hit it and go right into it. Now, we know this is not a science fiction movie where all possibilities are possible.

[06:06]

So I run at the pillar. And what have I hit? Language. What did I hit? I hit language. I'm never going to do that again. That's language. If I run into the pillar and I hit when you when you teach a child to not touch a stove It touches the stove gets burned pulls its hand away. That's language It knows not it what Everything If I hit my hand on the stove, it's an experience. It's not name, but it becomes language because you know not to do it again and Okay.

[07:08]

So, it's about when I... I didn't understand it when he said, he's running to the plow, he hits his head and it becomes language. And he said, it's the same when you say to a child, you shouldn't put your hand on the stove. Okay, the child puts his hand on the stove and burns himself. And this experience becomes language. What Beate said, you should please define what he understands by language. Now you told us the story of waking up in the morning. And I said that what you felt became language. It became a view that affected your and changed your view. We're not limiting language. I think I've made completely clear. I'm not talking about languages, German or English. Language here means pattern, anything you use to communicate. Excuse me, somewhat I guess we all assume it's something verbal. No, not verbal. Even if it's not German. Well, that's why I said vows, views, and vision are your language.

[08:12]

Vision is not Dreams are language. It's not verbal. Giulio just raised one finger to get my attention. That's language, obviously. Yes. Just so somebody understands, wouldn't it be right to say that with practice, the language becomes like, as a symbol again, fewer words can maybe those moments of a language that language is just one word. I don't think I want to spend time on what she just said.

[09:19]

Maybe I will. But I think all of us should say things like that. And you should say them to yourself so that you hear yourself saying these things. What do I mean? Okay, so when this koan is talking about knowing and not knowing, it's talking about knowing as a kind of grasping something, and not knowing is a kind of language in this koan. So it says just affirm totally when affirming. It means if you say something or do something, do it completely. But that's a unit or a language, you can say. Okay.

[10:44]

And then it says, but don't settle down in affirmation. Now, that doesn't mean there's an absolute behind language that you can settle. No, there's no place to settle. And when you deny, deny totally when denying. But don't settle down in denial. And then it talks about the five ranks, which I don't have time to teach you. But it's just the five ways you can have absolute and relative related to each other. And that is a particular teaching which I'm not going to. But then it says, but just this enlightenment creates a pattern. So, the pattern is not... I mean, what is it?

[11:56]

It's a story. It's a view. Okay, so let me try to... Do you want to say something? And then when I die, this is just a language. Oh, no. I asked, yeah. I wish you'd asked him, you know, actually. Actually, it would have been better if you asked him. Um... I'm not stumped, I'm just trying to figure out.

[13:07]

Stumped means you don't know what to say. Like a tree cut off, stumped. We would all really like to see that happen one day. Well, I am stopped in the sense that I don't know how to say what I think about these things. I mean, I guarantee you I don't know all the answers. And I guarantee you, I don't know all the answers. But most of the things we bring up, I've thought about it quite a bit. And I've also introduced the topic, so I've also thought about this topic quite a bit. Now you could introduce some topics I'd have nothing to say about, I'm sure.

[14:09]

Okay. From the point of view I mean, you die within language. If I am helping a person die, as I have a number of people, There's certain language things I do that helps the person die. I sit down beside them. I sit a certain way. I touch their body in certain specific ways. which let them know that I'm there.

[15:15]

I touch their body in ways that create affirmation and feeling of support. Then I touch their body in ways that pass my energy into their body. This is all language. Then I adjust my breath to their breathing. And if possible, I adjust my heartbeat to their heartbeat. And then I sit in the same physiological field that they're in. And then I begin to feel their breathing. If it speeds up, I can slow their breathing down. I can go with their breathing and so forth. Then I start speaking out loud to them, saying some things. Talking about anything.

[16:19]

Then in between the talking about anything, I start saying other things, Buddhist things or other kind of strange things. Then I begin saying things under my breath. and saying things in my mind. If my breath and body is really connected, I can feel them feeling what I'm saying in my mind. Do you know how I know when to ring the bell when you guys are all sitting? Because my leg starts hurting. And pretty soon my leg hurts so much I think, shit, I better ring the bell, my leg hurts. So I ring the bell. And my leg stops hurting. And all you change your posture.

[17:24]

But I don't change my posture. I keep the posture exactly the same. My legs no longer hurt. So my leg wasn't hurting because of my sitting. My leg was feeling your hurting. Because I feel no need to change my posture after I ring the bell. And that's just a simple situation of my body talking to me about your body. And it can be that way even more so when somebody is dying. So there's a tremendous amount of language going on and the person is talking to themselves about dying. And people commonly will say, my legs are getting cold. And they can talk to you as they feel death passing up their body. It's all language.

[18:42]

And if the language is right, you die beautifully. If you're telling yourself, why me? Somebody else should be dying. You're going to die badly. We still haven't gotten Herman out of language. I think we have to get Heike into language. I would say something like this if I was gonna be mechanical. is that we live in an interactive field.

[20:02]

Our heart is beating, our red and white corpuscles are going around. Our nerves, the electrical fields of our body, the chemical fields, everything's happening. You are, each of you, the most complex event on the planet. There's nothing as complex as you on the planet. And that complexity is a field, and you have a consciousness that appears within that field. But that field also includes the phenomenal world in everything language brings to you. Now, what you can do is you can dissolve the field of language.

[21:08]

Or you can go to the source of the pattern or the source of the word. Now, this is what's meant by original mind. The source, but it's not exactly like there's something prior. Original mind is really kind of difficult because it suggests an originating mind. And what it actually means is the most inclusive mind. Actually, it's a term in Buddhism which has many meanings, actually.

[22:16]

But it can also mean primordial mind. And it can mean like Suzuki Roshi's, the title of Suzuki Roshi's book, Beginner's Mind. So this is why it's saying in this koan, before a thought arises. Hold to a moment, to the moment before thought arises. Okay, but it also says here, This is why Xuansha did not leave the mountains. Baoshou didn't cross the river. Without going outside the gate, they knew everything in the world. That means everything in the world is here.

[23:17]

You can't go out into the world that language describes. You can't go to the moon with the astronauts and come back with a handful of dust and say, this is the moon. That's just a handful of dust that's in the field of you now, not in the field of the moon. When you see the moon, what you're doing is seeing the moon. When you're walking on the moon, what you're doing is walking on the moon. There's no way to get outside of... So you don't have to leave the mountains. You don't have to cross the river. Bodhidharma never came to China. The first patriarch never went to India.

[24:38]

I have a question. The problem with language and the true nature is the same as the emptiness and all. We can't really separate it. This is the same relationship between the former and the past, which I also want to separate from each other. Okay, people often say that I become too theoretical sometimes in these seminars. But maybe I'm being too theoretical now, I don't know. And if you don't examine those theories, your practice will only go so far.

[25:41]

It's like a story John Halifax told in Creston a few weeks ago. In her first field trip as an anthropologist in her 20s. She was trying to study these people, North African people. And she was trying to enter their culture and find out how to think their way. And to do that, she had to leave her own cultural assumptions behind. So she was trying to, and then she realized, well, I'm leaving my own cultural assumptions behind, but I can't really be part of their culture because I'm not part of their culture.

[27:00]

And she suddenly found herself in a gap between her culture and their culture and she wasn't anywhere. And that was the seed of her becoming a Buddhist. And what would we call that seed? Emptiness. It was the gap between which you can hold for a moment, but then suddenly you're in one language or the other as soon as you do something. Even that gap becomes a pattern that we call emptiness. So the gap becomes language. So she can talk about how she's a Buddhist by describing this gap, which becomes language.

[28:03]

Now, what is Buddha nature? Buddha nature means that nature which dissolves all natures. Because it's no nature. But it is a nature because it's a nature which dissolves all natures. So the experience of emptiness or the experience of this gap melts your problems. So That's why they say not knowing is nearest. You can't not know, but you can approach not knowing. No. Okay. Yeah. Any language you'd like.

[29:26]

How it happened? I told you before, sometimes when you explain something, I get a feeling about it. It's like when you're feeling like you understand it, but I can't realize it in my reality or interpretation. God is speaking to you. So I ask, how can I do it? Yeah. I have a lawyer and have heard what you've said. It's not very clear. It's just this feeling from what you've said. And to be fair, I'm not so fast as to feel that I understand it. But I think it's not often... Every word is accompanied by a feeling.

[30:34]

In the system of the five skandhas, feeling, non-graspable feeling, do you all understand the distinction I'm making between emotion and non-graspable feeling? Does anybody understand? Does everybody understand? Anybody want me to try to give an example? Okay. Simplest example is that right now there's a feeling in this room. You can't say what it is. And if you try to describe it or grab it, it's gone. An emotion is something you can grab. I'm angry, I'm angry, you can feel you're angry, you can pay attention to it, you can't pay attention to a non-graspable feeling.

[32:06]

But it's always present. It's what accompanies every mental formation. On one hand, it's as simple as, say I say, I'm listening to you. Or I say, I'm listening to you. I mean... There's so many ways you could say that. The words are exactly the same, and what's different is the feeling. That's obvious. We all know that, right? But our tendency is to give priority to the words over the feeling. Now, if you really begin to pay attention to the feeling rather than the words, and you give priority to the feeling, Now, practice means to feel or hear the feeling as prior to the words.

[33:17]

So then you could have words which say one thing and feeling which says another. And feeling is carried in the context of the story. So the koans often say words that sound like the opposite, but if you're reading the context, the feeling tells you what's really being said, even though the words say the opposite. Okay, so if every word is accompanied by a feeling, I'm trying to make a simple picture. Every word is accompanied by a feeling. The feeling not only arises from the word, it also arises from the context in which the word occurs.

[34:20]

It also arises from the assumptions that aren't in the sentence. So the feeling that accompanies the word has got much more information in it than the word. It covers a lot more territory. It reaches into awareness, it reaches into consciousness, it reaches into dream mind, it reaches into waking mind. And it reaches into the people around you. One of the psychological problems people have is parents teach children to pay attention to the words while their feelings are saying something very different. And we, the parent, thinks the child is paying attention. I told you to pay attention to the words.

[35:35]

And this training to pay attention to the words, I watched, I mentioned on a trip, Ulrike and I took to Hamburg. It was Saturday and a lot of children were there with their parents shopping because Saturday the stores were open. So by afternoon there were a lot of crying babies and upset children because they'd been pushed around all day in these carts. And if the baby was pre-language and the baby was upset, the mother or father held them to their body. As soon as the child was in the world of language, the mother or father tried to talk them out of being upset. I can't tell what they were saying in German, but they were saying something like, come on, there's no need to be upset, there's no problem, and blah, blah, blah.

[37:09]

Can't you see your little brother is blah, blah, blah? But the child was crying out for physical contact. If the mother just reached and embraced the kid, he wouldn't stop crying like that. To have a friend once, we were walking along, an old friend of mine named Earl, and we were walking along in a housing development in New York, Long Island, New York. And this neighborhood kid was a real ruffian. He was about eight years old. And he lived in the next door house. His little brother, actually, his sister, had been killed by putting her finger into a light socket. This little boy would spit at you, throw stones at you, shout at you and stuff.

[38:19]

And every time Earl and I went out for a walk, this little kid was like, wow. He was incorrigible. incorrigible means uncorrectable so we went out for about our third walk and getting pebbles and stuff thrown at us and little stones and we walked about 20 feet away from the kid and he was behind us and Earl turned around got down on his knees put his arms out like this The kid stood there and looked and then just ran right into Earl's arms. And they laughed and they hugged and then he walked with us and he worshipped Earl and me from then on.

[39:23]

Anyway, that's just an anecdote. But we... So you begin to recognize and hear feeling as well as the words. So when you have an experience like you had, what an accomplished person in Zen practice would do is not try to remember the event or analyze it or think about its meaning. and that's perfectly okay to do it at least up to a point that's natural but with more experience what you do is you just remember the feeling of it you let your body remember the feeling If you want to understand this teaching, let your body remember the feeling that's present right now.

[41:05]

All the teaching is in that feeling. When you reproduce that feeling in your inner language, it will come back. Now, those feelings are the language units. Those feeling units are the language of interior consciousness. The interior consciousness does not speak German or English. But it speaks, it has its own units of speech. Speech, language. And when you begin to use those feeling units and other things that are in this kind of language,

[42:06]

Just as your parents and your culture educated awareness into exterior consciousness, which can count to ten, Buddhism, meditation, koans are educated awareness awareness into interior consciousness. Now when my legs start hurting because your legs are hurting, that's interior consciousness communicating. And it doesn't have to do it through words. And that's what I meant last night when I said, on some way, we are all holding hands right now. Now, when you start finding your ease, When you start giving up investing your identity in descriptions and you can let go of the descriptions and just feel a kind of ease and let the world be loose.

[43:40]

When you look at things, each thing has a kind of brightness. Everything has a clarity and brightness. Really a luminosity. And when you recognize that that light doesn't just arise from the flowers, but arises from you, And light is just a word for it. It's not exactly a light. It's a feeling that the best word I can find is light. That's what's meant by clear light. And then you have the experience, well, I've had this experience, I had a taste of it, I had a little fruition experience, and now I'm going to lose it.

[44:44]

It's not exactly losable. It's constantly refreshing itself. You just have to be enough at ease to notice it. This is why in Tibetan, in Dzogchen, Rigpa or presence also means light. And why Suzuki Roshi talks about no gaining idea. To really have no gaining idea is a tremendous relaxation. Yes. Is it possible to have fresh experiences before they turn into language? It was with dying or with enlightenment.

[45:46]

The Quran, it is said, immediately it becomes a pattern. But isn't there a moment of experience without language? Yeah, but then you set that aside. But as soon as you hold that moment, it becomes language. But this is a very immeasurable moment. Can you say that in German? As it is called in the choir, this illumination immediately becomes a pattern, a pattern. When I was about to die, I said, no, no, because the difference between experience and the transformation of a person into a character, that is, to hold on to an understanding, Okay. It's not exact.

[46:50]

Let me give you an example. It's not exactly. Okay. Okay. Can I go on? It's not exactly that it's not language. It's that you are language. See, I can say both. I can say it's not language, I can say it is language and you are our language. Like they say, this very mind is Buddha. And when the teacher heard that he was being quoted and his practice was, this very mind is Buddha, he said to this guy, tell him I've changed my mind. This very mind is not Buddha. So he went back to this guy and he says, the Roshi now says he doesn't agree with the practice he taught you.

[48:08]

This very mind is not Buddha. He said, all very well and good, but this very mind is Buddha. You can have a lucid dream. Okay, so in a lucid dream, you know you're dreaming. It means you can be the observer of the dream. Okay, so you can move yourself out of the dream in your mind and see the dream happening. You can watch it. It's way down there. You can feel your bed. You can feel the room. You can feel the night air. You can feel some thoughts like stars at dawn. Am I getting too poetic? Anyway, you can feel these things.

[49:19]

You can feel the presence of these things. And it's clear the dream is language. It's talking about your life. Then you can make a decision, think I'll participate in the dream. And zoom, you go down in the dream and suddenly you're a figure in the dream. It's still language. Except now you're not outside it seeing as language, you are it living and dying. And when you're completely disappeared into the fabric of the dream, you are the dream. When you're outside it, when you're within the dream but outside it observing it as language, you still are the dream. So you are the dream and it's also language.

[50:29]

So in that sense I could say it's all language. But you don't notice it until you become an observer of it. But it's still, in that sense your red corpuscles and white corpuscles are language. And white corpuscles are language. Your immune system is a language deciding what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you. So basically, to go back to what you said, feel it, you remember something with your body. And I would say that what this koan is saying is don't just look, when you want to know yourself, don't just look to your mind. Don't just look to your thoughts. Don't look to understanding to know yourself.

[51:40]

Look to a physical sensation of knowing. And you can have a continuous physical sensation of being completely here, completely intact and completely connected. Man kann eine fortgesetzt Empfindung oder Wahrnehmung davon haben, dass man völlig da ist, völlig intakt. don't lose touch with that physical sensation. You're almost unflappable. And in Zen, this is called the Iron Man. But it means you can... That's right. It completely means, yeah, we need more powerful women in this world.

[52:47]

We've got enough, we just don't notice them. It means you've come to be in the stream of your softness. Because this ability is really when you're really completely at ease. And that softness and ease is the strongest you can be. So in zazen, after you develop past or along with counting your breaths, you begin following certain sensations of ease or bliss or other things that arise that begin to be your focus of concentration. As I said in the last session, locate a feeling of softness and stay with that feeling of softness.

[54:02]

So these koans in my teaching, you don't really have to know much. Some feeling will arise. That feeling contains the whole koan. Stay with that feeling and let it open up in your life. And the teaching will be there. Like you might stay with the feeling of a dream and then stay with it during the day. And if I talk any longer, my eyebrows are going to get really long. So let's take a break for at least 20 minutes.

[55:03]

Thank you very much. People say to me, what is your name again? That's right, Maike. She said, and I often hear it, and I've heard it from people last seminar, that sometimes what I say is too theoretical. I actually don't know quite what is meant, but I know the feeling. Hmm. Anybody have anything? You know, I don't... Is there anything you want to say about that?

[56:19]

Is there any way you'd like me to teach differently? Is there anything you wished we'd done this time? I've noticed something, if I can say that. Yes, please. You might say what I said, though, and... I'm getting confused with my difference roles here. What I noticed this morning in myself, when you teach something very compact and intense, like this exercise with the flowers, knowing or non-knowing, and when it's introduced the first time, it almost threatens my normal identity. Not almost, it threatens my identity. I get in touch with a lot of emotional stuff underneath.

[57:24]

And I could feel that also in our group. And I think this is why it was quite interesting to be in that group. A lot of emotions surfaced. And I've observed that actually people start saying things are too theoretical, not because they actually are, but that the emotional aspect of the teaching somehow is not brought back into the seminar with you. No, back to you. Then the seminar carries on this kind of, not theoretical, but on this level where you radiate actually this brightness, this clarity, and all these feelings, these emotions that are out there in the people kind of bounce back. Maybe I pronounced it too theoretically. Should I say it in German? What I noticed this morning is that when you imagine a new exercise or something new, then it is something very dense, something very powerful, something very powerful.

[58:35]

That's how I experience it. And it threatens my normal identity. And that's where I come across a lot of emotions. there comes everything possible up. And I then brought that into context, that at that point participants from the seminar often say to him, the seminar is too theoretical, or what he says is too theoretical. So I don't believe that anymore, but simply the emotional level that we all suddenly reach in the seminar, that a lot happens, fears, Aggression sometimes. They don't come back to him. He deals with it in a more emotion-free space. And all the feelings through which we go through, they really hit him. I don't know how to describe it.

[59:36]

I noticed that I'm totally agressive today. I'm totally agressive. Even when I meditate and sit down, I always feel like I have to do something. Otherwise it's not really my style. And the last two parts are also very funny feelings. A feeling that I know from my childhood. I'm afraid. Fear is a feeling of fear. It's really the feeling that's so different from the last two days, since it started. I think it's more because it's just too much to coordinate all of a sudden. The feeling is to listen to each other again. It's true. I don't feel it. It's the same with me. I always get the feeling, wow, what is this? I don't get it. I've never been able to control it. But I know by now that there will come a time when she will explain everything again.

[60:39]

And I think, oh, that's it. What was quite a lot about it now? You want to translate? I mean, she said she completely agrees. She felt a lot of aggressions the last days and a lot of feelings that came up from her childhood. I mean, fear and aggressions. And she was kind of lost in this. And Anita said, yeah, she kind of starts getting a headache and feels an egress. And from her experience now that this also happens, she knows it will open up again. Anyone else? I feel fine. That's your problem. You wanted to say something?

[61:50]

Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Did you? I have also sometimes this feeling of not understanding. Sometimes there is also some feelings there and when I have When I had the feeling of understanding, although not the meaning I get, but I get some clarity with it, it's for me no problem. But I also noticed a lot of times, you just take a time, and I have to bring you more in within your circle, you start to explain, then you break your face like springs. together and at the end it becomes clear. Just to wait and keep on listening. What about you?

[62:53]

I understand that sometimes I don't, but I don't really care about it, because I've experienced it. And I understand that because I've experienced it myself. What I don't understand, what comes to me theoretically, I also don't understand a lot of things, but I don't worry so much about it anymore because my experience also now with the seminar is if I have a kind of familiar experience, then later I will understand. Okay. Yeah. It's the first time for me to be here in a seminar, and I can say I hardly understand anything.

[64:02]

You feel you've entered the stream. A little bit. Put your fingers in. You put your fingers in. The big toe. Oh, the big toe. OK. Yeah, sure, please. Yesterday I also had a pretty bad headache, so I went home in the evening, she had a full head, I thought, how is that going to be tomorrow?

[65:05]

Yesterday I felt really overloaded and had a headache and last night I wanted my God, how will it be today? But today, I must say, I feel really something clarified itself in me, and I feel an open space. And particularly this example you brought up with your friend and the little boy, that really helped me feeling this. Yeah, I thought today was heavier than yesterday, though. So it's interesting that you found yesterday heavy.

[66:09]

So let me say something. Unless somebody else wants to say something right away. Yes, go ahead. I would like to say something to this language. What you did there was really interesting. You put your hands so, but you were sure that he wouldn't come. And he was sure that he wouldn't go. But on the same time, the gesture was so that it works and creates a great feeling that he has a possibility. And he already came. It was so quick you didn't see it. Yeah.

[67:10]

No, it's true, exactly. Now can I say something, too? I had plenty of chance, I must say. Sorry. First of all, you know, I'm not such a good teacher. Sorry. And sometimes I think I'm making small improvements, but I'm doing the best I can, but I'm not such a good teacher. Also, I don't entirely know what I'm doing. In other words, I feel something very clearly, and I follow that feeling, but I always don't know what I'm doing. But I trust, forgive me for sounding like a koan, but I trust that not knowing. Like telling that example about the little boy.

[68:12]

It came up, and as many things come up, and I thought, this isn't really relevant, I won't say it. But I clearly felt, I know the feeling, this is going to come out and should come out, and I will say it. So I let it come out, though I didn't know exactly why. And many of the subjects I speak about, I actually feel from you. I listen and say something. Like my legs hurt, I listen. And often you come to me and say, you know, you said just what I was thinking about or what I was planning to ask you or something. Okay. I also have to confess that I'm trying to kill you. And in the koans it often talks about so-and-so, you will kill everyone in your generation or you'll do something.

[69:53]

But I also, if you'll forgive me for saying something so schmaltzy, I also completely love you. You know, I'm not such a new age type, so I don't usually say those kind of things. But I trust my completely loving you. And I don't want to really hurt you, killing you. So I have to protect you in some way. But I want some disturbance to come up like you have. And I want some of you to have headaches and be tired. Because something should happen to us. Mm-hmm. Also, trying to have a protective, even though I may be saying things that hurt you in some way, I'm trying to talk at a feeling level which supports you.

[71:16]

So you can get in yourself and how you can deal with difficulties and feel supported at the same time. And also while I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to speak to you at a kind of interior consciousness level. I find it really hard to translate right now because I'm getting so disturbed by what you're saying. But I also want to maintain the exterior consciousness level. So if you say to me, you ask me a question that requires a theoretical answer, I could answer what I think you're really asking.

[72:34]

Or I could answer at a feeling level or a zen level. But I also think it's important to maintain the level at which it seems to be happening. But I think we're in very intimate connection with each other. But we also have to maintain our separateness and our usual views. So sometimes I answer a question at exactly the level it's asked, just to maintain the usual way of thinking, even though it's a little too theoretical. But I also happen to believe that even though you're asking a theoretical question to, say, deflect an emotional level, I also know that at this theoretical level, it's often the level that we talk ourselves out of practice or into practice.

[73:52]

And Buddhism has a highly evolved philosophy that parallels the practice. So I feel it's important to give you some of those sometimes. Why does what I'm saying upset you? Because I feel if somebody like Maika comes to a seminar and she doesn't know you, and I don't think there's really this kind of contact where you can say, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to do something to you that hurts. There is not this kind of permission. And I feel very protective, and I know this very well, and I know Maika is going away from the seminar, and in some way she's kind of really left alone with all this stuff that's stirred up.

[74:56]

So I feel, I mean, it's different in a session, yeah, when you do this to people or you teach on this kind of level. But in a seminar like this, where somebody like Michael comes, who's a lot of stuff surfacing through this, I just feel very protective. And I felt, I feel on some level, there needs to be more contact or more permission than to say something like this. Do you agree? You want to say it in German? I was almost disturbed by what he just said, because on the one hand he was right, but on the other hand, if I come to such a seminar and would be very new, I have the feeling that I would like to give such a teacher the permission to hurt me or to teach on this level where so much happens to me. Because after the seminar I go out From my experience, a lot of times there are conflicts.

[75:59]

Emotions, which was for me a problem to go on with, the process, just the process which I had to go through these emotions brought me sometimes much more than just sitting and having an odd feeling. I think it was very much for me to practice also to go through things which are for me hard. difficult because I think it's impossible without this. We have to go to such things in order to realize other things, which are nicer emotions or happy emotions. Yeah. Deutsch? I used to have an emotion that was very difficult for me.

[77:28]

I didn't want to do it, but it brought more to me. An emotion that was beautiful, that was good, that was warm. And I think that you just have to go through it. You have to go through the same emotions Well, I brought up the process. In some ways, I feel the seminar was over at the break. But then sitting here I felt to bring up the process of the seminar itself might be part of the seminar. Now, Micah, is it okay if I continue to use you?

[78:46]

You've become an example. Can I use you as an example? When there's a new person in a seminar, I pay a lot of attention to them. And last night, Micah happened to sit beside me at dinner. And she told me a little bit about herself. And in the middle of that, I felt an amazing strength in her. But there are other new people. You're a new person in the seminar. And, you know, I'm not, this is not, I feel, I have to teach Zen. And Zen is about how we exist. And that's not always the way we think it is.

[79:48]

And noticing that is difficult. Sometimes. So, even though I'm saying things that I know are Sometimes disturbing, I can feel them being disturbing in people. I can feel a person making a decision to leave or a person making a decision not to come back the next day. I can feel their strength too. And even though I'm saying things that may be a little disturbing, or this situation brings up things in you that are disturbing, And I specifically used the word kill to startle you. But it's also the word used in koans repeatedly, meaning to kill the ego, to source, and so forth. So I wanted to make more apparent what's under the surface of just a weekend.

[81:02]

At the same time, my basic experience, Ulrike, is particularly in a seminar. I'm always speaking to people's strengths. And I don't deviate from that. So I think a situation in the context of doing zazen even is disturbing. And if I discuss these matters that the koan brings up, it's going to make you have a headache or be tired or something. But I feel that's okay. Or it's what this situation is. And I feel it's okay if I keep speaking to each one of you individually, not collectively, if I speak individually to each one of your strength.

[82:21]

And I try to do that. And it's just not Micah, it's each one of you. So I trust her strength, so I feel okay. Even though you may have had some difficulty that you described. And I also feel not only your strength as a person, but you've had enough real contact with practice to actually have several big toes in the stream. Maybe you're even able to stir up the water a bit. Seven ways across and eight ways up and down. Okay. Anybody have anything to say to all this stuff?

[83:34]

Yeah, I want to say that the problems I have that I really feel is a gift and I would rather deal with them. What do you mean by killing and by you? If that's the way you understand it, there's no problem. Did you understand? That was a non-theoretical answer. I could have given a theoretical answer.

[85:06]

This is fun, don't you think? It's serious fun. Mm-hmm. I had a really stomach ache just recently and right now I feel it's kind of getting better. Good. No, no. That's, you know, we notice those things. We're talking to ourselves. But, you know, practicing Zen is like falling in love. It's dangerous. But you wouldn't want to eliminate love from the world, right?

[86:09]

After the third time your heart's been broken, maybe you would. But there is a problem here, as Ulrike said, we are all separating some. And that problem really is a practice brings tremendous intimacy between us, among us. But we can also know, we should know that this intimacy is your own treasure. It can be awakened in many situations, not just practicing together. But coming to a seminar, hopefully, is a little bit like going to a gas station.

[87:19]

You fill up your tank, a little bit at least. Sometimes you take your engine out and put it in the trunk. Then by the time the seminar ends you put the motor back in the front. I no longer know what I'm talking about. Also, ich weiß nicht mehr, worüber ich eigentlich jetzt spreche. Yeah. I'd like to say that what touches me very deeply in the last speech you gave that you sometimes use the word trust and faith, not only speaking but radiating. And this is the background for this sometimes frightening aspect of . Thank you very much. I feel touched when the sound of the word trust, sometimes even belief, is used.

[88:33]

And it's not just a word, but also a feeling that it communicates. On the way, something, attitude. And it gives me a good mental background to sometimes calm things that are sent to us. So why don't we sit for a few minutes and end?

[89:00]

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