Well, how are we all doing? The gates. The food was good. It was good, yeah, I agree. I think maybe it's a good time to give a bow to the kitchen crew. All of them. Thanks a lot. And I apologize for the last session being a little, maybe unnecessarily intense. But, you know, if we're going to talk about lessness, we have to have a little bit of sensation of it. Yeah. Okay. So I'd like to end with really mostly what any questions you have.

[01:17]

Any discussion, how we can further clarify this practice that we share. Yes. I find it difficult to take it into the real life or everyday life. As I worked in the kitchen, I was very busy and I felt like falling into the same habit, always being too busy and losing myself. So the last time I tried to But I didn't really get down to myself.

[02:19]

So maybe I'm not so much disciplined. I don't know. I expect too much. I don't know. What? German, please. German. Well, when I was working in the kitchen, it was often like this again, that I don't get confused. On the one hand, I'm always working very well, and then I'm standing next to myself at some point, and I'm so tense, and that's not good. And then I try, as I've done lately, to breathe through, but I don't really get down there either. It's not as helpful as I thought it would be. I thought, is it just for the calm hours of the day? Just after sunrise? Or is it really for every moment of the day? Every moment's the same.

[03:43]

But, look, you didn't notice the difference between this state of mind and the state of mind you had in the kitchen. That's the beginning of practice. So you've begun to practice. This is good. And you noticed that you fall into a habit of being too busy, or something you said. This is good. So now you can form the intention to not fall into the habit of being busy. That's practice, just do that. And not to measure it and say, oh, well, I'm not learning, etc. If you want to do this badly enough, Strongly enough.

[04:47]

Yeah, you've formed this intention. And the intention needs the strength of everyone. You probably can't have a deep enough intention unless you intention includes doing it for everyone. But you can't expect to have everything. I mean, we have the idea that, well, I can just take practice and sprinkle it onto my everyday life like salt and pepper. And then everyday life will taste much better.

[05:49]

But you want to continue your everyday life. If you want to practice seriously, you have to adjust your everyday life to support practice. And it doesn't have to be a big change, but you have to you know, figure out some way to have a schedule which allows you to do zazen fairly regularly. And don't just get carried along because you're smart and you can usually figure it out without zazen. Because it only gets into the cells through zazen. And that whatever you decide to do be regular is far more important than how often.

[07:18]

It's the regularity that cuts through everyday habits, not the quantity. So say that you think you can sit seven days a week. Say every morning for 30 or 40 minutes. Then make a schedule where you sit five days a week. And consider if you sit seven, that's extra. And then sit five days a week, whether you're sick and healthy or whatever happens. Some sort of pattern like that is necessary. So that's good.

[08:19]

And if you do that for a while, generally this starts all this stuff at first which doesn't make sense. Suddenly you find you're doing it. On the whole, I'm much more impressed with your practice than you are. All in all, I am much more impressed by your practice than you are yourself. Because you're in the midst of practice and you see it's... But I see that you don't know how well you're doing yet. And I think that if you continue, this will bear fruit for you and also for your friends and even our society. I have such ridiculous big ideas. What else? Yes? For me, it's always this point, or rather this point, to experience the moment without the concept or ideas that lie about it.

[09:46]

And something changes there, I notice. The one thing is to let go of the idea or concept. There used to be a lot of fear there, and now again and again. For me, it's about experiencing this moment and I notice a change. Formerly it was that when the concepts, when I take the concepts away or leave the concepts away, formerly there was much fear and even now there is still a little. But they have changed something. Also, it starts to begin, there comes a foil of... Strangely said, joy is arising. Don't tell anyone. Any certain energy at this moment. And Maya, you wanted to say something?

[10:56]

Yes, I wanted to say something, but maybe life will take care of it itself. Well, then we don't need the seminar, so let's... Yes, I would like to go to this part of the more... This memory consciousness, which on the one hand goes directly to the thinking consciousness, and on the other hand, when it shifts more and more and comes together with the body, with the heart and with the senses, then I notice, so it pleases me, and at the same time it creates problems in my outer world, or I create them, because I am no longer so reliable, I am no longer so constant, I change, I actually become a new being again and again, and yes, I do that myself,

[12:10]

English, please. Oh, wonderful. Okay, so when I'm shifting more from these thinking states to the ones connected with the senses and heart and body, I'm getting more and more into states Well, I'm becoming always a new person from situation to situation and which sometimes irritates or makes me insecure and also is sort of unstable and changing also for the environment. And so there's this accountability or reliability which was there before is vanishing, so sometimes difficult.

[13:28]

What do you mean by accountability? or somebody could count on me, that I will be this way, or I could count on you, that I will... Realise that it is probably... Yes, maybe. I think it's often a threat to old friends when we start to practise. They feel us becoming different or changing and they sort of don't like it too much. It's like Parents don't like us to grow up and be other than they wanted us to be sometimes. But I'd like you just to... One of the Chinese words for love is to watch.

[14:38]

And it's the watching that parents do who watch their child but give their child freedom. It's a kind of detached, but very intimate love, and very trusting love. But if you have new friends, They like it that you're changing all the time. Because then they have several friends in one. Keith Richards was asked, what about Mick Jagger? And Keith thought for a while, he said, well, he's a lovely bunch of guys.

[15:44]

But, you know, it is... If you start to practice seriously... Now, I mean, I should just say this as a kind of warning, cautioning. And... And just to look at, to understand the situation, the reason practice has been developed primarily in monasteries. It's because practice is much, much, much harder to do in lay life. You may think monastic life is difficult, but it's a much easier place to practice. And it's supportive of practice.

[17:14]

So you can kind of let go. You don't have to worry about your next meal or your job or anything. You can kind of become lose it for a while. And you can really let go of everything. You don't have to worry about your work. You don't have to worry about your next meal. You can really let go. Yeah, and generally when you enter a monastery, which isn't possible in the smaller practice centers we have, for the first few years you don't have any responsibility except to kind of like follow the schedule. Because as I said earlier, your construction site you're living, but at the same time you're a construction site. And walls are coming down while other things are going up. And sometimes a wall comes down that you kind of were depending on.

[18:16]

Sometimes I get hit in the hand. From which you were also a bit dependent. Yes. So that's why you need to anchor yourself. That's another reason why we anchor ourselves in the embodied present. But, I mean, an example I use sometimes of this. As you know, maybe sometimes in Zazen you've had the feeling of like you're sitting, but you feel like you're over here, sort of, or tipped, or something like that. You're changing the way to locate yourself. And as we say, your thought... your thought coverings are cracking open. Because you don't live in a physical body, you live in a thought body.

[19:36]

And when that thought body, which is always measuring yourself to outside things and adjusting by visual perception cues, etc. Have you ever walked in the dark and got a little tipped and it was hard to get yourself to figure out how to stand up straight maybe because it's so dark you can't see anything? Well, this kind of thing can happen to you like while you're shopping at Kaufhof. like you might be standing at the counter talking to the clerk and you feel like you're like this and you wonder if she's noticing and she says would you like a glass of water you look like this

[20:42]

And you say, thank you, and you throw it over to the last one. Oh, oh, excuse me. Thank you. Because you've lost the usual proprioceptive sense of how to establish your balance. Because it's changing. Like if suddenly you find yourself locked into this poor clerk in some kind of connecting way. You might feel, and she feels zapped, you might feel, you might lose your sense of relationship to the phenomena, but more to this one thing.

[22:12]

Now, in a monastery, it's not a problem. You can all walk by. This is a real example. It's happened to me, and I know it's happened to other people. I didn't. I never threw a glass of water. So you have to kind of like, okay, what's going on here? And you have to move your energy down into, not really your stomach, your heart or your gut. And bring your energy up your back and you can come back into your own power. But anyway, these kind of things happen.

[23:30]

If you do it in lay life, your practice has to be pretty regular and with some faith and confidence. But we're doing it, and many of you are genuinely trying, and I applaud you for that. I know, although I started Tassajara as a monastery, The first five or six years of my practice were entirely in lay life with family and full-time job and full-time graduate student and so forth. So I know the problems. Okay, what else? Yes, way in the back. This is a related question, actually.

[24:38]

I sometimes wonder if by doing this kind of powerful practice together we're not kind of also a bit like pushing the river and interfering with the kind of natural process or kind of immune system between opening and closing or something. Like, for instance, if I'm sitting here, you feel when the person next to you doesn't have room or isn't well. And it's just, on a deep level, it's perfectly impossible for me to sit well unless the person next to me can sit well also. And I've noticed sometimes, and I know other people too, when you come back from an experience like this into an ordinary environment like a part of Frankfurt where people do jobs that they don't like, and you come with this kind of a sense, and it could be just some little thing, somebody smashing your door carelessly, not even anything aimed at me.

[25:43]

And it's going to sound really tacky, but it feels like that unconscious pain, someone else's pain or some collective pain in my body. And it's like it gets too much. It's like something's too open. Yeah, yeah, okay, Deutsch, bitte. really that you can't sit well when he can't sit well next to you. That it really just goes like that. Then you feel how your body is. Do you have space or something? So it can't be any other way. And if you then, with this openness, according to such an experience, such a powerful common practice, we go back to the answer, or I know it from others,

[26:44]

and then you come into a situation where no one attacks you, but only someone knocks on the door or is rude, just so careless, then it is sometimes like that, although it sounds completely stupid, but as if it were the unconscious or collective pain of someone else who is always happening in the body. Yeah, I understand the problem. And again, if your thought body begins to be more thinner, It doesn't protect you as well. And in general, you're more open, so you're more vulnerable.

[27:46]

And if you're shifting the way you identify yourself, you also become more... For a while you go through a stage where your usual ego strength isn't there. But if you know that if the person next to you is suffering or having difficulty sitting, That also makes your sitting difficult. Then you also know that if your sitting is strong and confident, it will help the other person's sitting. Now, Sukhyoshi said, We live in this world in order to express our Buddha nature fully on each occasion.

[29:08]

Do you have anything better to do? I mean, this is a good way to look at life. Yeah, and this is also compassion. To express your buddhi nature as much as you can fully on each occasion. So this exists at every level. Very practical levels. The person next to you is having a hard time sitting. So you internalize their difficulty and sit through it yourself. But I know the feeling, you know, one reason in seminars I ring the bell so quickly. In Sesshi night we have an agreement the bell is going to ring every 40 or 50 minutes. But we don't have that contract here.

[30:18]

So after 10 or 15 minutes I can feel some of you start to suffer. And then immediately my legs start to hurt. Pretty soon I'm like, yeah, that's it. But if it's a sashin I can sit, you know, or I can sit here when I'm talking for a pretty long time. But if I stop more often, my legs start to hurt. Mm-hmm. So when you hear this guy slam the door and it crashes right through your sensibility, maybe you do something crazy like shut the door in your mind very gently. And more particularly, we're talking about the difference, again, as I spoke in the past, about the difference between sealing yourself and armoring yourself.

[31:40]

And we don't want to armor ourselves. But you need to seal yourself from the center. And that's another one of the practice skill. Yeah. But you know, you can do it. Okay. I just wonder if maybe in some way this relates to our Western German religious and political story, that we have this big thing also with guilt, and like anything else, compassion is somehow nailed to sacrifice and suffering. Maybe it's just old issues that get triggered with us. I'm putting this out because I think maybe some other people are going through something like that at times.

[32:41]

compassion or um and sacrifice and suffering and that there is something mixed up for us or that you come across such collective things. I only say this in case someone knows about it. If you say so, it must be so. But I can't speak to that, of course. But I do find, in general, I didn't tend to come to Europe or even Germany to practice with people. But more than other European countries I've practiced in, I find Germans in general are more willing to study their life. And they're more willing to imagine a different future than most other Europeans.

[34:07]

And as a national trait, you have a lot of energy. And this is also necessary for practice. So, I think I'm very happy practicing with you. I feel... I don't know if you'll accept me, but I'm beginning to feel rather German. I have to apply for admission, but... Russell, this is the first time you've been in a seminar here in Europe. And, um, why don't you say it in Deutsch, please?

[35:22]

And Russell's the director of Creston Mountain Zen Center. He's here spying. And so how do you feel about being in a seminar like this and there's translation going on and everything? Can you say something about it? Maybe he should translate what I said. I think that the translation itself is an important part of the form and why it works so well the feeling in the Sunnah is different from one that I've ever seen before that we've had in the United States and it's quite good I think it feels quite good

[36:28]

I think this is because of the space that is allowed by the translation. So this, first of all, allows me and I'm sure most of you to hear things in two different ways. And also allows Roshi to have a space where he feels something coming back from the group. And my sense is that this process is always forming the seminar. And that it gives it a kind of unspoken conversation that

[37:30]

A non-verbal dialogue is a lot to flourish. So this has been the most interesting thing. And I think if there was some way, I even thought that perhaps we should translate you something else in American. We pretend someone doesn't know English. Oh, this has to be translated. Anything else, Russell? No, that's the main thing. It's wonderful to be here. And thank you very much. I hope that the next time I come, I'll be able to speak some German.

[39:05]

You had something to say? Yes. that words or stories like the story before, the story of the stick, enter you and during the meditation you hear words or feelings or so on, and you suddenly have such a, like a beat in your stomach or something like that, it drives you crazy, you even start to cry or something like that, like I said earlier in the story, Yes, he took it with him somehow. There is a bit of a surprise, you can't really start with that, I don't really have a personal relationship with him. Or maybe I have some words that are said that bring something to my mind.

[40:08]

And I don't know where all this lies. Especially when I start to cry, or maybe when it's going well, a happy feeling arises. And with these feelings that suddenly come up, I can't go around. It's sometimes very extreme. um words which have been said stories which have been especially this story about the dying people have affected me very strongly and it's like really at something hit me and even and it makes strong emotions come up and give rise to tears and also to joy sometimes and i can't actually exactly say how how this affects me but i just feel it very strongly and have some difficulty of dealing with this in short I'm sorry but on the whole I think it's good yeah

[41:16]

To try to open, to allow more of everything to pass through us. And sometimes it's too much. But then it puts a challenge to our practice. And it's one reason immovability or stillness in sitting is emphasized. Because you come eventually into a place where things don't disturb you. You can be completely open and they don't disturb you. And our life is fundamentally emotional. I would say all real thinking arises from emotions.

[42:28]

It doesn't have to be emotions rooted in our personality. It can be emotions rooted in caring and compassion. Rooted in this way we all exist. In a way we have to become both stronger and more open. Anyone else? Something else? Yes. When I start to sit, there are first of all many distractions. That is possible, because after a while it calms down. But then comes the next problem, that I become tired, sleepy.

[43:29]

And beyond that, when I sit even longer, comes the boredom. How should we deal with these problems? Sleepiness, tiredness and boredom. When I start sitting, usually the first, when I start sitting, the first thing that comes is distractions. Then distractions. Oh, distractions. Yeah. The next, then when I continue sitting, then comes sleepiness, fogginess. I'm familiar with these things. Yeah. And then when I still continue sitting, then comes boredom. Yeah. So how to deal with these things and how to overcome them? Basically, you have to just accept them.

[44:31]

But you can only accept them if your intention to practice is deep. And that your faith in the process of practice is deep. Distraction is a habit of the jumpiness of mind. Sleepiness and boredom are defenses of the ego. We become sleepy when things come up that we don't want to think about. And they're often not psychological things, they're reality things. We have a slightly different feeling about how the world might be. Have you ever noticed that when you're, say you're sleepy and you're reading a book.

[45:46]

Perhaps in bed or something. And you're reading along and you fall asleep. You wake up, you start reading again. You can go back a couple pages and stay awake until you come to that same point. Then you should study that particular sentence of him. And when you get better at sitting energetically through sleepiness, And then boredom sets in. It's the last defense, almost the last defense. After that can come, if your ego is particularly mean, threats of craziness and suicide. He's relieved someone noticed.

[47:05]

First it scared me. And then after a while I used to think, well, I need a good night's sleep, so I'll worry about it in the morning. It will be tomorrow morning's problem if I'm crazy. But each of us is the most extraordinary thing, object, unit, being that as far as we know, the cosmos is produced. How can you be bored with that? It means there's some kind of linoleum surface or something in you that you can't really experience yourself directly.

[48:26]

Yeah, so, but if your intention is deep enough in faith, then these can be interesting processes of distraction, sleepiness, and boredom. But if your beliefs and your intentions are deep enough, then this sleepiness, the boredom and the distraction can be interesting processes in themselves. With the distractions it is possible to disappear from one's own self, but with fatigue or boredom I have to do something actively. Distraction is not so bad because they tend to disappear themselves, but sleepiness and tiredness, I have to actively do something to get them to disappear. Yeah. You want to know what to actively do?

[49:47]

Sleepiness, you keep trying to wake up your body, not your mind. So you keep trying to see if you can... lock into some physical energy which just stays. You know, there's a new book out, fairly new, I guess. It's called Crooked Cucumber. Crooked Cucumber. And it's a book about Suzuki Roshi's, a kind of biography of Suzuki Roshi. I think we have some copies here and it's in the process of being translated into German. But I don't know when it will be out next year or something. Anyway, we brought a bunch of copies from the States.

[50:54]

There are some from the States if you'd like to read it. It's quite a good book. And David Chadwick wrote the book. And he's really a great guy. Very funny. Able to fit in anywhere, make any group of people or individuals, no matter if they hate each other, have a good time. So he was the perfect person to write this book. But when I was At one point, he was my shuso, or head monk, during practice period. At Tassajara.

[51:57]

And David's one of these guys who, you know, when he wears his robe, it's always like this. And by comparison, I'm Mr. Neat. Okay. And I'd heard that during Nenju's ceremony... And during the Nenji ceremony, I heard, when I wasn't there, that he was so sound asleep during the ceremony, that he was so sound asleep during the ceremony, and all the monks, all the practitioners, go past the head monk's seat and bow to him. And during the ceremony... And he is sitting with his head on the meal board. And everyone's bowing to it.

[53:14]

And I heard this, and I thought, this is too much. So when I went back down to Tassajara, he was... I'll pretend that he was actually on this side, but I'll pretend he was here. And he... While we were sitting in the zendo together, he was just completely sunk. So I decided to hit him with a stick. So I'd be sitting like this, and I'd wait for a little while, and he'd be... So I'd move my hand and pop, he'd be straight. So I would, you know... I tried for several days. I'd move a finger and he'd be... So one day I left my regular stick right in front of him.

[54:30]

And took another stick and put it behind me. And... And we have quite big sleeves, you know. So this hand went around in the sleeve. And I left the sleeve very still, you know. And I really got it. So I sat, and we sat, and he was quite straight. Ten minutes later... So I had to trust.

[55:48]

His intention is deep. His intention is deep, so I'll let him sleep. David is the kind of person who wouldn't mind at all that I just told this story. And he tells something else that I don't even know about. It's worse. Ah. In boredom I think you just have to wear out the ego.

[56:53]

You just keep doing it and eventually the ego says, oh, this guy is too much and he relaxes. The ego is a simplification of the problem, but it... A simplification of the problem by itself. You had something to say? The sentence doing and not doing repeatedly came to my mind and during the seminar I thought it must have to do with this embodied, this bodily or embodied feeling.

[57:55]

And is there a connection? Yeah, probably, I don't know, but probably. You have to find out for yourself. But I think you can trust. If you think it does, probably it does. Okay, so we should end pretty soon. And several people have said they'd like to speak to me about coming to Saschin and various things. And I don't know who has to leave first to drive where, so why don't those who would like to talk to me about coming to Saschin or whatever speak to Beate as the director in Shisha?

[58:56]

So I can, and then you tell me what to do. I will follow instructions. And probably meeting in the Zendo is most convenient. Anybody have anything else you want to say? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And I'd like to thank, actually, Beate as the director and Dieter and others who've been carrying us forward here while Gerald and Gisela have been away, especially, who, and Gerald and Gisela, send their greetings. They called me up just before the seminar and said hello to everyone.

[60:00]

And I'd like to thank, especially, Beate and Dieter and the whole team So to keep this place going, Birz and Monika and Petra and Beate and many people are doing this as well as those who work in the kitchen. And I don't know why this place works. We didn't have any plan. We didn't know who would live here, but somehow we're going along. So far, enough people. for one reason or another, decide they'd like to stay here for a while and then we can continue.

[61:09]

But their decision, Sabina too, just came back and away for a while. Their decision really makes it possible for all of us to be here and have a good time with the Dharma. And I think get a real sense of practice that we can bring into our lives. and come maybe closer to expressing our Buddha nature on each moment. And I think you found out how Each moment is a dharma gate.

[62:17]

And it's not just a simple choice between this samsara and dharma, but a choice of how each moment appears to you, how your present and so forth. And how that is actually a process of wisdom and compassion. And knowing that is to express your Buddha nature in each moment. So maybe we could sit for a few minutes and... Well, we should also thank our transmitter. I didn't think you'd get better, but people tell me you're getting better and better and better.

[63:18]

Are you here? Okay.

[63:35]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.15