He like Fritz Schumacher. I don't know if you know who Fritz Schumacher is. Small is beautiful and... I don't know if you know Fritz Schumacher or if you know who that is. What is the German translation? This is just an aside, but they were both interred in England as Germans during the Second World War. So they lived in some sort of camp. I mean, I guess it wasn't an unpleasant situation, but anyway, they lived in some sort of camp. They weren't prisoners. Schumacher's father was a diplomat in London. But anyway, it was a kind of period of meditation for both of them. And Schumacher is the person who started the idea of Buddhist economics in his book.

[01:10]

Schumacher was quite a good friend of mine. Konzi I knew quite well, but he wasn't exactly a friend. Okay, someone else? Next person. Plum lines and experiences. Plum line and experiences. One person talked about finding situation that brings her into contact.

[02:11]

And I guess that she also meant in contact with people but also stepping out of being separate. Someone else talked about using the name Christ. Yeah, as a practice. And someone else talked about Taking, yeah, going into nature.

[03:25]

And also part of the discussion was to always come back to simple activities. And we added to the saying, to become quiet, we added to come to the center, to get to what needs to be done. Okay, thanks. 100? No. In our group, I think we also chose data at the beginning.

[04:34]

We talked about states of mind which we didn't like, which we don't like very much, but they come out Affected. I don't know the English translation. Affect? They come out. They come out uncontrolled, like instantly. Out spontaneously. Spontaneously? You know, it's more like emotionally in force and then you can break out or not always anger with the... Affect. Affect, yeah. You can just act and you have no control.

[05:43]

Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, so, for example, anger can be something that you get into anger. So, this is Feingas. anger can be something like this, it gets more and more and you can destroy something, you could, but the mind structure also can be somehow destroyed. So one way to deal with it is practice, for example, in terms of watching it. And when you start watching it, it changes or it has different results. And also that it is very helpful when you have a kind of taste of a calmer state of mind, for example when you can completely stop in hearing and that it is easier to remember and to go into this state.

[07:04]

Also, it might be very helpful to have kind of a taste of, let's say, hearing, just hearing, and then on that base it's easier to remember. And what helped me in my practice is something you said like 10 or so years ago. Water has the tendency to return to quietness or calmness. And in a situation where I'm really upset, I remember this picture and that calms me down, just to remember it. Your friends must be grateful. And going back into this upright posture can be protective and also can be kind of an anchor.

[08:34]

Okay. Anton? Yeah, I didn't understand enough to give the full report, I don't think. Yeah, but just whatever you feel. Well, I described an experience of my own. Just coming back to the physical experience of a kind of angry response to an argument. And just finding some stability in that, and from that perspective, being able to observe my mind spinning. Yeah, just somehow.

[10:08]

after a while of doing that and finding some kind of peace and being more centered. So identifying myself more in the present moment with the physical experience and the result of that argument as opposed to the planning of how I'm going to get back at the people Who do I have the argument with? But allowing that all to go on in the mind. The selfish thoughts to just live their life in course. Yes, thank you. Akash? My group has already reported that during the duplet I discovered that... I have told you.

[11:27]

You want to do both? So I discovered when we talk about this point of silence that there is a difference for me that there is a mental or mind expression and a body expression. And I can't make a real connection between the two.

[12:31]

Can you give me an example of what you mean by a body expression and a mental expression? That the bodily experience would be that I find my spine and my stomach I experience it as a column. It's an energy that stabilizes me from the back. And I experience it as a silent or quiet support. Mm-hmm.

[13:40]

And on the other hand, on the mind level it would be like remembering experiences or situations where everything was okay. No doubts. For a long time I had that experience that I woke up in the morning and for the first two minutes everything was OK and then all the lights went on. All the lights went off. Yeah, I'm just translating. Looks like switches. I'm here and I have to do this and this and this. Yeah. Well, I realize sentences like

[15:00]

interesting that remind me about these nice experiences and try to weave these sentences more and more into my everyday practice and it seems as if it slowly works The sentences which remind you of good experiences? Yes, but for example, there is no place to go or nothing to do. Oh, yes. It would be an example where I have a feeling of sadness in my heart. That's an example where I can bring my feeling from zazen into my everyday life.

[16:10]

Through that expression. Durch den Ausdruck. Yeah, I wouldn't describe that as a memory of some good experience. I would think that you mean when you say the phrase, the phrase becomes the experience. It's not so much a memory, though it might have a quality of that, but it is an experience itself, not a memory of an experience. I hope. That's the way it's supposed to work. We're just, you know, I mean, this isn't even Buddhism. We're just talking about how to live, how to notice, how to know. Boris?

[17:22]

I spent the time of the small groups in bed. How was that? It was a very small group. I prefer to be well. I have a question concerning your talk this morning Especially to this shift from Taoism to Zen? No, that's not what I meant. It's not a shift from Taoism to Zen. It's just a shift that I call Taoism. Taoism and Zen is one thing.

[18:31]

Both Taoism and Zen emphasize this shift to the process of identification coming through immediacy. Both emphasize that the process of identification through immediacy It's not that simple. What? I would say it's not that simple. Yeah. To do this change. No, I didn't say it was simple. It sounds simple, but it's not. So when you talk about psychotherapy, it's like... So the question that comes up So these situations that these people try to look into, these men, and even if their method is maybe not adequate,

[19:53]

But this is something that exists. What is? Everything that comes up in the childhood, like anxiety and anger, and that then continues into the other life. For me, this is the first obstacle in the way of these two things, the sense of history, that is, between the fact that I identify myself with some fantasies and that I can identify myself with the universal situation. And that exactly stands in between or hinders this shift. On the one hand I identify with all this and it hinders the shift too that I can identify with the immediate situation.

[21:24]

I understand. This morning it sounded as if one could make this shift to work with this problem. And it seems to me that you have to go through this pain, through this resistance in order to come into this immediacy. Or to have the trust or the motivation to let it happen. Yeah. Okay.

[22:24]

I think... I agree with everything you said as far as I understood it, except for the last part. I think it's important and for some of us more important than for others, to really work through our personal history and our psychology and so forth. And I think there's ways to do some of that through Zen practice. And I've often thought of writing a book called something like The Psychological Uses of Zen Practice.

[23:47]

psychological uses of Zen practice. But even so, although you can make psychological use of Zen practice, I don't think that's a substitute for psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. It might be for, you know, at least it's... But it could be certainly a supplement or a support. What could be? To using Zen practice in a psychological therapeutic way could be a support or supplement to psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. But independent of the psychological uses of Zen practice.

[25:05]

I think it's possible, I know it's possible, to practice Zen in a way that parallels and supports psychotherapy. glaube ich, dass es möglich ist, Zen in einer Art And one of the points I was trying to make this morning is this attempt to realize a basic mind, or imperturbable mind, can be parallel to one's psychotherapy.

[26:16]

And can be, in fact, quite independent of it. And, yeah, certainly one's states of mind, psychological states situation, moods, etc., interfere. Certainly one's states of mind, blah, blah, blah, interfere. But it's also possible to, you know, in the sense that you can find your physical posture no matter what kind of mood you're in. But in a certain way you can find your physical attitude, whatever happens, no matter what state of mind you are in. Anyway, that's all. I think it's possible to do both at once. And I think that the fact that Zen is not really a psychology, but as I call it, a mindology, makes it possible

[27:25]

When you see that they're really separate, you can practice them together much better when you think that there's a Buddhist psychology which somehow overlaps with Western psychology. If I say there's a Buddhist psychology, then I say, oh, you don't need to see a psychotherapist. You can do everything with Zen. I don't think that's true. Certainly I found psychotherapy at two or three different points in my life quite useful. Okay. What? Of course. And I have the feeling that you can actually, because you sit with your whole person and your whole body, just translating.

[28:50]

How can I say? For me, sitting is a complete part. It sounds strange to me to say certain questions and problems belong to the sitting practice and others belong to psychotherapy. My experience within psychotherapy that many connections became conscious but they became part of myself in the end through sitting.

[29:50]

Yeah, so they work together. That's my point, that they can work together. You don't... I don't think... I think the question I want to ask, why Washington doesn't emphasize it, why he doesn't emphasize it, So the question is, why is your emphasis not on my actual feeling like pain and anxiety, but more that you want to find this basic mind directly? So you're not emphasizing through these feelings and emotions, but the direct connection to basic mind.

[31:26]

Well, that's what the topic of this seminar is about. So that's what I'm emphasizing. And that we can take this effort to realize a basic mind as... particular way of practicing. That is different than practicing the four foundations of mindfulness. Different than lots of practices. So we could also talk about how you can practice with your emotions. But right now I'm speaking about how we can practice this discovery of an imperturbable mind.

[32:31]

I mean, I don't know if this makes sense, but it's that your right hand can discover your left hand. Something possible outside your mind. your psychological processes. And it then would support your working with your psychological process. I mean, it's just as simple as... If you find your posture, then maybe somehow you can work with your own internal processes more clearly, if you find your posture. What I'm calling basic mind is finding a mental posture. What you can find in the midst of everything else going on. Isn't the confrontation and the actualizing of problems, isn't that a moment of immediacy?

[34:02]

And isn't that the result of analysis? Psychoanalysis or something. Yeah. Whatever is there is your immediate situation. But your immediate situation is not what I mean by immediate see. And mediacy, we could say, is... Okay, we could call it the more technical term, thusness.

[35:14]

Thusness is something... inseparable from your immediate situation, but but free of your immediate situation. We say, there's a sense saying, no mind in things, no mind in things, and no things in mind. Well, again, we can take the simple example of being on a bus.

[36:26]

And you're late. I have mentioned this recently a number of times. You're supposed to be at work or you're supposed to be somewhere and the bus is late and there's a construction site in front of you and blah, blah, blah. And there could be lots of problems. You might lose your job, your girlfriend, I don't know what. That's your immediate situation. But it's also a fact that You can't get out and walk. That doesn't work. You might just suddenly say, okay, I'm not going to get there, so I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to think about it until I get there.

[37:36]

Right now I'm going to enjoy being in the bus. Or I'm just going to be in the bus. Or it's like I say, there's a beautiful meal in front of you. And you're really hungry. And then somebody comes and takes it away. At that moment, then you enjoy the sunlight on the table. That's basic mind. Somehow, you can come to a mind which... You don't have to think about anything until there's some point to thinking about it. And it's a kind of...

[38:37]

It just happens sometimes. It's an enlightenment experience. If you're in the bus and you really suddenly just feel free of whether the bus ever gets there or not... Yeah, you do. And you're not going to make up excuses when you get to work late and say, that was a construction zone. That might just be, you know, nice that you weren't disturbed by being late. It might be just that you weren't disturbed by being late. But if you've been practicing, and sometimes these things seem more likely to happen if you've been practicing, you're in a bus just like you've been before and been stuck or late and not going to, you know, etc.,

[39:58]

But this time when you relax, say, I'm not going to get there, you never leave that relaxation again. It just happens. And it seems to happen if you've been practicing. It might happen anyway. But practice, you know, is what? Someone said, Enlightenment is an accident. But practice makes you accident-prone. And if that simple experience happened in the bus like, and then from then on you never were anxious about being late again, we could say you had a small enlightenment experience.

[41:22]

And then your immediate situation was transformed into the thusness of immediacy. Acceptance. Acceptance is the dynamic of practice. Practice rests on generating an initial mind of acceptance. Now, your second response may not be acceptance.

[42:23]

Deine zweite Reaktion mag nicht Akzeptanz sein. But your first response is acceptance. Aber deine erste Reaktion ist Akzeptanz. And Suzuki Roshi, I was looking at this new book of Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So, that Ed Brown did. Und ich habe mir wieder Suzuki's neues Buch angeschaut, Not Always So, das von Ed Brown herausgebracht wurde. And it looks pretty good to me. It looks like Ed did a good job. And he, on the back of the jacket, He quotes Sukershi saying, always start from yes. And that's also the initial mind of acceptance. And you can practice that in practical things. Let's all go to the movies tonight.

[43:43]

Yes. Oh, but actually I can't because I'm, you know... But you say yes first. You just get in the habit of yes. Let's fly to the moon on gossamer wings. Yes. On what wings? It's a song, to fly to the moon on gossamer wings. Gossamer is like lace or something. Gossamer is a kind of lace. Don't worry about it. Just try it. Let's just, you know... No one's ever asked you that. They say, hey, Gerrit, let's fly to the moon. Let's fly to the moon. Okay.

[44:45]

Something else we should talk about? Yes. I'm busy since this morning. Also this... Tao Zen switch. Shift, yes. Since this morning this Tao Zen shift I'm thinking about. So you explained that here in the West we basically identify with our thoughts. I think everyone does, Japanese folks too. Okay. My question is, you explained the direction of identification with the breath. No, identification with thoughts.

[46:05]

From thoughts to the breath. In the past I've talked about that, yeah. I asked myself if people in yogic cultures, adults, quasi den umgekehrten Schritt... if they have to do the opposite step to realize the whole world. So the identification with the thinking and the breath. You mean you think that a person You imagine a person who might automatically identify with the breath, but not thoughts, would have to make the shift to thought.

[47:08]

and otherwise he would be limited. I understand your question, I think. To identify with your thoughts, I think, in any culture is a delusion. It's like, well, identifying with your job too much. You know, do your job, but if you identify with your job and you lose your job, you're in trouble. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to have your... I mean, if you think you're going to have your job all your life, you know, probably a mistake. Now, I think that... All cultures, I mean, I'm an amateur social anthropologist.

[48:44]

Yes, so I think anthropologically and I make anthropological observations. But even if I was a professional anthropologist, nobody knows really how to answer these questions. But I think that all cultures have to socialize the individual, the infant. I mean, Sophia is going through a period if she meets a stranger and spits on them.

[49:53]

And even in yoga cultures, this is not really considered acceptable. Somehow we have to get her to stop doing it. She thinks it's cute. She gets a lot of attention. And this poor woman walks by and says, nice little girl. And then you tell her, You just made that woman feel pretty badly. Or she might spit again. But you can have different strategies of what good and bad are about. Yeah. And two strategies I noticed in Japan, which I think...

[50:56]

are different than our strategies, for example. One I'm not sure I like, but we tend to say yes or no. Japanese, they say yes or no, or they ignore. The kid asks for something. You don't say no to them. You don't say yes to them. You ignore their request for weeks and weeks and weeks until the child begins to think, this isn't an alternative that's possible. What is not an alternative? Whatever they're asking for. I don't know if that's good. I mean, I see it's bad, I think. But on the other hand, when you say no to something, they think the alternative exists.

[52:34]

So it's a strategy to removing something even from yes or no. Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't do it to my child. Okay, but some other things are quite interesting. For instance, they have races in school. My daughter Sally, as I said, who's coming here the first... week or so of july who now she called me on the other on the phone the other day and she said pop I think I'm middle-aged. I'm 40. Hi, Sophia. I wonder if I'll have another child when I'm 90. No, I don't think so. Anyway, when she was in kindergarten in Japan,

[53:36]

They have races, right? And so... They have a group of kids here lined up to race, right? Maybe six kids. And about two meters back, they have another six kids. And two meters back, they have another six kids. And two meters back, they have another six kids. Yeah, so they've got about, I don't know, 36 kids all ready to go. And they say, get on the mark, get set, go. And all the kids go off at once. Of course, some of the fastest kids are in back line and some of the slowest and et cetera. At the end, they all cross the street. You have no idea who won. Natürlich hast du einige langsame Kinder in der ersten Gruppe und einige schnelle in der

[54:57]

So kids are taught to make their best effort, but not to know who wins and who loses. So you end up with a more cooperative than competitive culture. And that may be good. And another one is they had a game where they have a pole and a basket on the pole. And they have about 50 red balls and 50 white balls.

[56:04]

And there's a red team and a white team. Yeah, the red team has red hats on, the white team has white hats on. These little tiny kids, you know, you have. Okay, far beginning. So all the kids have white balls, etc. And you try to throw them into the basket, which is held at the top of a big pole, and two kids hold the pole. So... They say, go, and all the kids go. The white balls are being thrown up, and red balls are being thrown up. And most of them are missing, of course. They're all falling back down, and you're picking them up again and throwing them up. And it's a kind of a little thunderstorm of red and white balls. And they try to throw the balls up there, and most of them, of course, fall apart. And it's like a thunderstorm of... And the kids are laughing and they're falling on top of their heads and everything.

[57:06]

Finally they say stop. And there's about a third of the balls are in the basket and the rest are on the floor. So then they have this, they bring the basket down and one of the red team and one of the white team throw the balls in the air. And they throw them in simultaneously. Which, the balls out of the basket? Yeah, they take one at a time out of the basket. Yeah, they throw it again. Ein! I'm better at Japanese. Ichi! Anyway, they go up and pretty soon... 14 red balls and 18 white balls. And the, because you only hear the white team calling the numbers.

[58:11]

And the white team cheers, they won. And then they start the second game. And everybody takes their hats off. And inside the white hats, they're red. And inside the red hats, they're white. They push them the other way, and suddenly the white team becomes a red team. Yeah. Now, I never understand why, if you live in Boston, you really cheer for the Boston Red Sox. They're not even in Boston anymore, are they? If you're in Munich, cheer for the Munich Red Sox.

[59:12]

The München football team. These are things I don't understand. I mean, that's just beyond me. It's like nationalism is beyond me. As a kind of fun, boy, I almost got beaten up once at a 49er game. It's a Super Bowl. The 49ers were playing and there were several 49er, ex-49er players at this party that I was invited to. In the middle of the game, the 49ers were ahead. So I said to everybody, don't we feel sorry for the other team?

[60:24]

Let's cheer for the other team during the second half. Boy, I was going to... I learned never to do that again. Practically locked me in a closet. We should stop soon. Now, one of the things that came up with Andreas' comment yesterday, I believe, Is there a mind, what was it, Andreas, between us or outside the body or outside the brain? Or somebody brought this up. It's like your group mind.

[61:30]

Yeah, there certainly is. And in order to give a lecture, I try to feel or I do feel, I don't try, I feel... I mean, I don't know if I do, but my experience is I feel you individually and together. in a variety of ways. And if I have that feeling, I can find something to give a lecture about. And so I can't really prepare because I don't know exactly how that's going to feel when I'm in the middle of the room.

[62:42]

I mean, I can have some general idea about possibilities, but I can't really prepare. Okay. Now what Zen assumes, in its practice, is that there's a... That kind of, let me say, the basis of mind is actually, we could say, rather simply, physical. So the physical mind can feel

[63:46]

The mind of others. So der körperliche Geist kann den Geist anderer fühlen. And if language is involved, you can't usually feel the mind of others. Und sobald Sprache involviert ist, könnt ihr den... You can't feel the mind of others if language is involved. And the sense of a group mind is established bodily. And to some degree, it's always present. But it becomes imminent or more present. or stronger or imminent, it becomes manifest, if there's a common metabolic pace among the people.

[65:14]

So if we want to If we want to act within this body-mind field, we have to discover or feel or enter into the pace of the other person and the overall pace. Now, practice is to Give that your primary sense of another person, not your thoughts or personal experiences with the person.

[66:36]

Praxis beruht darauf, dass das zu eurer grundlegenden Erfahrung zu machen und nicht das, was ihr, wenn ihr jemanden trefft, über die Person denkt oder merkt, One of the things that makes bodhisattva practice possible is you can relate to each person independent of that you just had a fight or you had a bad time with them or they betrayed you. You can still react to them at the sense of a bodily mind as if that history didn't exist. It doesn't mean that you don't know that this person has betrayed you or you... betrayed them or whatever.

[67:46]

And betrayal is one of the most difficult of all things to forgive. You can forgive someone being mad at you, but it's hard to forgive someone who's betrayed you. So it doesn't mean the betrayal is gone or you've forgotten about it. Or it's resolved. It just means you don't have to react on that level. It's like you can put it on a shelf unless it's something you can deal with. So in a yoga culture, the idea of healing is not

[68:49]

The same as in our Western culture. There isn't so much emphasis on trying to heal wounds. You'd like to resolve these things, yes. But you don't have to live in your wounds. You can put them aside and live in another kind of way of being. And you may want to live those wounds sometimes because you learn so much from them. Now, one of the practices I really like in monastic practice, formal practice, which I don't think it's so easy to get the hang of, feel of, unless you have lived in a monastery for a while.

[69:57]

Is this practice of stopping and bowing to each person? Stop and bow to each person you meet. And one of the And when you get the habit of it, even if you're in a city, you feel that with each person you pass. You know, if you've lived at Crestone, for instance, as Earhart just came back from Crestone, And there's, you know, bears and mountain lions and such things around Crest Town.

[71:25]

Yeah. And Dieter, who's not here now, seems to have an affinity for mountain lions. You'd have to ask him, but I believe on both his visits, he's on his first day or something, seen a mountain lion. Most of us never see them, but he's seen them twice, I think. And most of us who've been there for very long have all seen bears. In fact, Gerald had quite an interesting experience with one. If I remember, a young male bear, a little smaller than you. These male black bears standing up are bigger than you.

[72:27]

This was a somewhat smaller one. You should tell Stuart what I'm trying to say. So you came out and were trying to scare it with a pot and a pan or something? Well, I came out after Zazen walking to the main house, and there he was standing in front of me. So what did you do? We just looked at each other. Oh, good. Yeah. I was just stunned. I just couldn't do anything. I was just looking at him. He was looking at me. Then what happened? Then he walked away. So he somehow he walked away and He was in fear, I guess. And then he climbed a tree. And I walked to see what he was doing, and he started peeing at me. He scared him pissless.

[73:45]

Now, when you have an experience like that, you want to bow. I mean, it's not like passing a tree. I mean, he's come out in the morning from Zazen. A tree has been there. It doesn't startle him. But a bear... This is not a tree. Yeah. I know you're not a tree. A friend of mine, I was supposed to go on this trip, but I didn't know how stupid of me. He went up and was boating with whales off the coast of Alaska.

[74:46]

And bears know that you're not a tree. I mean, whales know that you're not a tree. And my friend was sitting in this boat, and suddenly a whale breached right beside it, coming up out of the water, standing straight up on its tail, and then went right straight back in, you know, in the water. Anyway, it could have fallen this way. This way it just went right up and came right straight back down. And I said, what did you feel? And she said, I thought I'd seen God. I mean, it's beyond, you know, right? Well, I'm telling this story because You can feel something like that when you meet a person.

[76:22]

It's an extraordinary thing, each of us is. So the practice of stopping and bowing before each person and finding your plumb line and then Getting it up toward the other person. It's like bowing to this bear, bowing to this whale. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[77:30]

Can I come with you? Do you need a shisha? I can probably manage, you know, alone. You can come if your legs are hurting, you want to get up, it's all right. I like being helpless and everybody has to take me to and from the Zen Do. Actually, again, monastic life is structured so you hang out together a lot. You have to do things together a lot. It's nice. And you design the grounds so the paths make you pass each other a lot. There's no shortcuts. You have to go these long ways. Are you ready? One, two, three, let's go. So please tell me something.

[80:02]

Yes. I didn't want to say something, but I wanted to ask something. Oh, that's all right. two aspects I didn't quite understand this morning. Yes. The one question was, why are there no exercises or... Yeah. Why... Why is there no specific guidance in Zen? I understood the first reason, but I don't remember the second reason.

[81:05]

The first reason was that we... that practice is more your own when you make it your own through your practice, through your own discovery. That you understood. And the second reason is, and put it slightly differently than I did this morning, is that Buddhism assumes there may be an evolution of mind and body. is that Zen assumes, not all Buddhism assumes, that there is an evolution of mind and body.

[82:30]

In other words, we're not necessarily the same person as the historical Buddha. As the historical Buddha may not be the same person as 2,500 years before him. And that Buddha may be different than Monkey Buddha. 250,000 years. So it assumes that you can't really tell people what practice should be because we ourselves are changing. So we can tell you something about how to go about the process of discovery, but we don't want to tell you what you're going to discover.

[83:38]

Is that okay? I don't know if it's okay, but... I understood, and I could develop more questions, but I can leave it at that. Oh, well, we may come back to you, now that you've started talking. Okay. Someone else. Yeah. Oh, you're starting already. I had two questions. What I didn't understand is the wrong way to the left or right.

[84:48]

What I also didn't understand was this wrong path, the wrong turn. Oh, yeah, I'm glad when people don't understand. Yeah, I really like when I give lectures and everybody says, oh, yeah, I understand. I think, I don't understand. Why do they understand? Also, ich bin manchmal irgendwie, verstehe ich das nicht, wenn ich einen Vortrag gegeben habe und Leute sagen, ja, ja, ich habe alles verstanden. Und ich selber verstehe einiges von dem, was ich sage, nicht. Um Well, there's just lots of aspects of that. I mean, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's just maybe too flip way to say it. But, you know, if a student is, say, quite good,

[86:02]

And practice goes rather fast for them. Sometimes they don't really have a deep understanding because it makes too much sense too quickly. Does that make sense? Yeah, so you want... So you want to try to push them in a direction where they really have to get it to get it, or a wrong direction which they discover is wrong. Like you might say to somebody, I'm just making this up, Please come back to me when you can sit absolutely still, inside and outside.

[87:15]

And after a year or two they come back and say, I can't do it. Then you start something else. But the process of trying to sit absolutely still inside and out is very fruitful. But the example I gave of the restaurant is that you don't want to get stuck in sort of like, I have to eat a certain way, I have to do everything a certain way. But on the other hand, you don't want to... you still want to eat carefully.

[88:33]

And if possible, generally, we try to be vegetarian. But one of the things that happens in Japanese monasteries is they try to get you drunk. And I'm not a drinker. But I have a rather large capacity. I don't get drunk very easily. And one time the Antaji Roshi had this party. They have parties every once a month or so and they try to see if they can get people to misbehave or lose it or something. It's a bit like Plato's Symposium. One of the structures of that is who gets drunk first, the comedic author gets drunk before the author of tragedies and so forth.

[89:55]

The philosopher gets drunk last. So, you've all read Pledius' Symposium, probably, or maybe you thought about it. You have to read it at school, don't you? No? Anyway, that's what happens in Plato's Symposium. So anyway, Uchiyama Roshi, they were all drinking sake. So they had the monks filling my glass. And a big glass, you know, bigger than this.

[90:59]

And they kind of insist you try to drink it, and then they fill it, and before you have a sip, they fill it. So I just said, okay. And I went up, sat beside Uchiyama Roshi. I squeezed in between the monks. Whenever they poured sake for me, I poured sake for him. He gave up pretty quickly. Yeah, so it's that kind of fooling around. Yeah. And the monk who loses it quickly, who can't handle his liquor or doesn't have sense enough when to stop, you kind of get him out of the monastery.

[92:01]

On the one hand, if they couldn't get you drunk at all, they'd think you were a little uptight. If they couldn't get you drunk at all, they'd think you were a little uptight. But if they could get you drunk more than twice or three times, they'd probably want you out of the monastery. Because our practice is about not losing it. Yeah, but also not being uptight. Yes. The chanting every morning.

[93:20]

Is there no reason to wish to understand what we're saying? My Japanese is not what it used to be. Is it senseless to ask you? Senseless? Yes. Is it zen-los to ask you? I'm relatively new at this. And what kanji will sense you? I'm curious. Is there no reason to want to understand a bit about what? Well, the German translation is said immediately following the Japanese. And we chant it in German.

[94:33]

That's a translation. Yeah, yeah. Anything else? Yes, there are a few other passages. No, but wait a minute. Wait a minute, yeah. No, I know. It's true. I was going to come back to it. I knew it wasn't that easy. You know, every morning, Brecht, I wonder that. Maybe people would like to understand. Maybe we should chant in German or something. Every morning I think of that and every morning I decide to do nothing about it. And that's been going on for 40 years. That's a lot of mornings. Sorry, but... How do you translate that?

[95:54]

I tried, you know, I tried to... Not that this is exactly relevant, but I did try chanting for some months maybe in San Francisco... with no Japanese at the beginning of the lecture, just English chanting. it was harder to give the lecture. Because for some reason, if everyone chants in a language they don't understand for a while, then I can just talk about almost anything. Yes. If you get into the ordinary understanding group, then it's hard to push the sentences apart.

[97:12]

And I suppose, I mean, I assume that at some point after maybe some groups already chant entirely in German or English or something, But I don't know, you know, we have some chance in English and I don't, you know, in America we have quite a few things translated into English and I just don't like the way it feels or the understanding that comes through the English. So at least probably during my lifetime I will have a portion of the service in Japanese. My one advantage at least of chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese is that it's really a kind of Sino-Japanese.

[98:51]

It's not really simple Japanese, even for Japanese people. The everyday Japanese is Sino-Japanese, which is not so easy to understand for normal people. is that if you do go to any place in the world where there's Buddhist chanting, this is quite familiar. And syllabic chanting is different than our... They don't have an alphabet, they have a syllabary.

[99:43]

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