What I also want to mention the amount of work was really for me it was reaching a limit or it was The amount of work for you or the amount of work for all of us? For me. It's your personal feeling. It's my personal feeling. The number of hours of work. The amount of time. I would have liked to have more time for myself. Also to have time to read, there is such a great library there. Also the question and answer meetings, I was not completely satisfied with that.

[01:15]

Yeah, it's important that everybody expresses how they feel, but maybe we should also have brought up questions What is this practice? What is this house we are living here? And what is Buddhism? Well, you know, maybe we can take your considerations into account next time we work out the schedule for the next practice, next work week. Maybe we can include your thoughts when we work out the schedule for next year. But you could also come back another week when it's not a work week and be here partly to practice and partly as a guest and you can read as much as you want.

[02:28]

So we actually, I mean, I'm not joking, we'd like to have various ways people can be here that make sense to a particular person at a particular time. Dieter? Das auffälligste für mich diese Praxiswoche war die leichte Stimmung. The most noticeable thing during this work week was this atmosphere of lightness. Das spiegelt sich auch darin, dass das Haus immer heller wird und auch flächiger. It's also reflected in how the house gets more light in this.

[03:42]

What's the thing? Fleshy, yeah. I don't know. And more unpasted, just white walls. Yeah, yeah. Less things, yeah. My feeling about it is that we make the house more our own. Before, there was often the feeling that we had the story or the stories of our actions. In earlier times, we more somehow took over what we got from our predecessors, and that we kind of filled in the gaps they left. And I can still remember how impressed I was at the opening ceremony of the Roshi as the first one who read out to me the name of Döra, as if we were a mouse and somehow ended up in an unhappy state.

[05:11]

We started to close it off. I can vividly remember how impressed I was when Roshi, during the opening ceremony, read out the names of all the people who lived here before and how their living here ended in a somehow unfortunate way. For me now, I feel that we reached this point from where we go from filling the gaps to recreating this place. And this reminds me a bit of how Bourdieu found an image for culture. That reminds me of how Bourdieu found an image for culture.

[06:20]

He said, culture is like a building, a house that is built slowly. What anthropologists do wrong is that they look at it as if this house was planned exactly as it would be when they look at it, as if one architect had planned it. The mistake anthropologists make is that they look at the house as if it was planned the way they see it. They see it now. Actually, it has developed slowly and everybody's work leads to what it is now.

[07:23]

And this becoming also means that it's never complete, but that we're always underway, that we build continually. And this, um, yes, this ability to cooperate and this cultural image, we also have a bit of a different, also in addition to what Roshi said about, um, Yes, about proportion, he said that it also took me a bit from the feeling of ignorance, or the feeling that it is possible to build something. This image of culture, also what Roshi said about proportion, took away this feeling of powerlessness and showed me that it's possible to create something, to build something.

[08:53]

Thank you. Yes, for me it was the experience during this working week, the way I was able to work here, that I always had the experience that I was able to bring things to their right place for moments. And I also noticed that this right place is only a right place for a moment. It was really an important experience for me. And I was also able to reconnect with the house and with the ...

[10:00]

The beauty of this place and our practice, which also lies in its imperfection, or in this imperfection lies itself a great perfection. So during this work week for me an important experience was that I could find the right place for things. And I experienced how a right place can only be a right place for a moment, and in the next situation you maybe have to find another right place. And also I reconnected myself to this place and to our practice and found its beauty again, which also is based in its incompleteness, or there is some kind of perfection in this imperfection.

[11:23]

So this was an important experience for me during this week. And in addition, in the lecture that Roshi gave yesterday, I was very touched, as he said, what it means to live in peace here on this earth or to try. I also was very touched by how you, yesterday in your lecture, mentioned what it means to try to create peace in this place. My feeling is that it has to do with living with imperfections and also with the knowledge that we need help from all of you who have come here.

[12:33]

And I think it's this this creating pieces depends on that we that we get used to or that we know that we have to live with imperfection and that we need help from other people that they bring their effort here. Yeah. Let me make a few remarks, okay? A concept of Sangha is not to make the whole society a Sangha.

[13:44]

That was actually Chairman Mao's idea. We don't need Buddhism. The whole society will be a Sangha. But that's impossible. And it's not the concept of the Sangha. Society is always going to be ruled by some version of greed, hate, and delusion. The concept of Sangha is that within society there are these little nodes, nodules, of an effort to have a more perfected society. So there's naturally going to be a difference when Andreas goes to work in the center, which he's responsible for, It has lots of good aims and does good work, as far as I know.

[14:59]

But the thing really isn't to be a Sangha. So his way of being part of the Sangha is to try to find some places where he can create a feeling of Sangha. So I suppose there's three ways you're trying to do that. You come here and you try to make this as good a place as you can. You try to be part of the Hanover area sitting group. And now you've organized a Dharma Sangha seminar next year in Hanover area.

[16:20]

It's assumed that if people do those things, It affects the whole society, actually. And the effort is to do those things, optimal things, within the whole society, which is Sangha. I always want to emphasize how young our world is, our society. As I told you, my mother just died. But if I talk to my mother, her memory goes back through her great aunt and so forth to about middle of 1850. And the younger ones here will certainly be alive in 2050.

[17:23]

Oh, I have some connection with you younger people. So that's a 200-year stretch. Ten 200 years go back to Christ. So in this unit of 200 years, how much has happened? Not much. What real progress? Some progress, maybe. And no matter how fully I devote my life or you devote your life, maybe it has some small effect on the next 200 years. All in all, more and more people are able to live together in some way.

[18:46]

And I think one of the problems we have right now is actually lots of people in the world live together pretty well. How do we make use of that togetherness? Mostly it's a form of, I would say, economic exploitation. We use the social togetherness that we've developed not to develop a healthier, happier society, but to make money and to use it for all kinds of things. So we function as a society with less greed, hate and delusion. We function as a society with less greed, hate and delusion.

[19:56]

But then if you can think of an idea which everyone buys, you can function, you can satisfy your greed. So if everybody's in agreement, it allows a different kind of greed, hate, and delusion to work. Is it bad or good? I don't know. It's just the process that's going on. Look at the decision you had to make. Are you happier doing what It's just asked of you?

[21:00]

Or are you happier doing what you really like to do or feel is a good, better work? That's a very complicated decision. It's not an easy decision. Because there's two different levels there. And if you ask, yeah, is it okay to be happy? That's actually a third level. Because we don't have much permission in our culture to be happy. We feel if we're happy we're not working hard enough or not taking care of people, we're not suffering or something. We commonly sacrifice our happiness in the present to the future where there won't be any happiness anyway.

[22:11]

Sometimes the work ethic is a death ethic. It kills people. yeah but of course among the choices I think happiness is always the best there's no question about it but can you make the choice yeah And Dieter said, you know, that Deshan, Teshan, when he burned the Diamond Sutra, he said something like, all the understanding of the secret workings of society

[23:29]

Understanding of how things actually exist is no more than a drop of water in a vast valley. Because things happen in a way that's beyond any kind of understanding. So we have to work on decisions like, how do we make, do we just do what everyone's asked, or do we somehow do what we really need to do? Or what we really want to do. I think we should do.

[24:36]

I think it's right. I mean, the basic bodhisattva practice is to go along with others. But that also means to go along with the best side of the other person, not the worst side of the other person. And that means to go along with what's best for all people, not just the person you're in front of. How do you decide this? At the end you have to trust your feeling.

[25:36]

That's all we have in Buddhism anyway. There's no outside rule book. Let me come back to little Sophia. Sorry. Okay. She's been a very tolerant baby. And people, when she was younger, were always asking, doesn't she ever cry? Well, yes, she does. I can assure you she does. But she's been really very tolerant. You change your diapers, you put on her clothes, whatever, she helps you to do it. From the very beginning, after two or three times of putting on diapers, she lifts her legs up and waits for you to wipe her and everything.

[26:53]

From the beginning, she helped us change her clothes. She stretched her legs so that... She smiles at us when we put on her clothes. Since she started to crawl, that's changed. Now she has projects. She has things she's planning to do. And if you take too long changing your diapers, she's not going to wait for you. And if I insist on buttoning that last button, she's going to, to hell with you, Dad. Yes, and so there's conflict. I'm trying to get that last button buttoned and she's screaming like mad because she wants to grab the light cord and pull it so the light flips up in the air. She discovered if she pulls the lamp, why can't you pull this cord that goes like this?

[28:14]

Okay, so I have to accept that, but there's conflict. The conflict is good. I want her to have conflict. Um... Okay, but she also has to find some way to modulate that conflict. I have to accept it, but she has to modulate it. Adjust to. Modulate it. Now, do I relate to her in such a way that basically she learns to repress it? Do I force her to behave a certain way?

[29:29]

I can't let her do everything she wants to. And I think the sophistication at which that occurs has to do with the whole quality of a society. I talked to a lot of people in America and Europe. They were taught to behave a certain way and repress how they wanted to be. And then they carry that all their life. I don't know what the answer is, but I think... Conflict is something good. And I don't think we're going to get rid of it.

[30:34]

But it's got to be in some kind of more and more And we could say Buddhism's about that, to create a context for the complexity of what human beings are. Let me tell you one little story some of you know about my older middle daughter, Elizabeth. She was about four, I guess. This was 1982. She was born in 79. This was 1982. She was... Three and a half or so.

[31:43]

And she was doing, she actually was doing, Virginia, her mother, was bringing her to a gymnastics class. She was doing these kind of gymnastics from a chair to a couch and back, and she almost knocked over this great big chair. And I was getting ready to go to Tassajara about 10 o'clock at night to the Zen monastery where I had to go. So I said, Elizabeth, cut that out. You're a little girl. Girls are supposed to sit on a couch holding a little doll to their chest. And stare out into space with a benign smile on their face.

[32:57]

And she said, Well, son, don't. And she said, And she said, and I'm the leader of those who don't. So I said, whoa, okay. That was great. And one, excuse me, something similar, Sally, when she was little, she wouldn't do something Virginia and I wanted. So finally I said, Sally, look, Ginny and I made you. You belong to us. She said, it's too late now.

[33:59]

I belong to me. So some spirit like that we need. Yeah. And yet we are somehow one big body, too. Thank you very much. Thanks for translating. You're welcome. I want to say goodbye quickly I have to go quickly and I will come back thank you

[34:55]

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