You know, I thought of this, I wanted to do something like this, Doorstep Zen, which we're figuring out what it should be. Yeah, as long as I'm still alive and able to travel back and forth every six months. And I'd like to be available to look at practice together with you. So it's like what you might like to still bring up to me. Yeah, and at the same time, what I might think you, ideally, we as a sangha and some of you as individuals, we ought to know about.

[01:17]

Because in my own sense of directionality or intention is how this can happen. how individually your practice will contribute to the continuation of this practice. In the future, we have these buildings that are going to continue to exist for a while. How are we going to use them? And my intention behind it, or the direction I'm trying to go in there, it's about the question of how you as individuals can and will contribute to the practice of the Sangha and the continuation of what we're doing here. So we have these buildings here, and the buildings will continue to exist. And how you continue to do this, how you use these buildings, how we use this place, that's what I'm talking about.

[02:24]

And by chance, bringing up this koan, which is related to the Dharma positioning device, phasing device. Yeah, that really doesn't work so well, phasing device, phasen, phasen. Well, then you have to say something else. You say what you want, I say what I want. Okay. I say what I want. Your braids get bigger. Hi. I can't. And what I said yesterday afternoon was what surprised me is, you know, in this koan, again, how is someone really unless you really immerse yourself in this practice.

[03:34]

How is someone to know that the Ten Directions is actually a kind of dancing in a roundabout? Is that translatable? Well, it's strange. Because you really have to get it that everything is... There's another... Hi, Guy. How are you doing? There's only 20% of the insects that were here about 20 years ago in Germany. So you're a lone survivor.

[04:38]

My insect collecting apparatus, in other words, my car windshield... In both Germany and in the west of America, Colorado, does not collect insects anymore. It used to be, I bow every time an insect hits the windshield. I used to be bowing and trying to drive at the same time. Now I have to bow. You just noticed that? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it takes quite a few, I mean, it takes quite a bit of time to

[05:39]

to really see how practice is put together so that it helps people practice on their own or independently. Man braucht wirklich eine ganze Weile, um herauszufinden, wie die Praxis zusammengesetzt ist, wie sie funktioniert, um Menschen dabei helfen zu können, auch allein weiter zu praktizieren oder Menschen überhaupt in der Praxis helfen zu können. And you can see, we discussed yesterday afternoon how the compilers of this koan used the myth or image of the Buddha holding up a flower and Maha Kashyapa smiling. to represent the realization that is not limited to or contained by the teachings.

[07:06]

And that also can be understood to mean that each of us, each one of our actions are potential raising a flower for oneself and for another person or for And that can also be understood in such a way that each of us and each individual of our individual actions can also be a gesture of this kind, to keep a flower high for ourselves or for others. I don't want to go back into the koan at this point. We'll see if I feel like it later. But I'd like to just have anything you would like to bring up now, this morning.

[08:32]

Bring up to me and bring up to the Sangha, to the group. Für den Moment möchte ich lieber schauen, was ihr noch ansprechen möchtet, was ihr mit mir ansprechen möchtet und auch mit der Sangha und der Gruppe. Ich würde gerne einen Aspekt ansprechen, der mir gestern in den Sinn gekommen ist. I would like to address one aspect that occurred to me yesterday. Several years ago, I asked myself the question, where or what do I want to gain mastery in? And Roshi once described it as, in English, to put all my eggs in one basket.

[09:50]

How do you translate that? I actually say, all eggs in one basket. Okay, good. Understandable, right? I just have eine Karte setzen. Is that a German expression, too? No, but we actually put everything on one card, yeah. I see, but you'd only have 10 eggs anyway, and we'd have 12. Okay. And in Crestone I made a decision not to strive for mastery in psychotherapy, but in Zen practice. Thank you. When we first were in Crestone together, I asked him to come from Japan to help me since I was given Crestone.

[10:53]

For the first two or three years there was almost nobody there, right? Just us. I still went to Germany sometimes. I'd come back and he said, I'm lonely. Can't we find anyone who wants to be? We'll wait and see if anybody shows up, right? I don't understand. At least you're not lonely anymore. Okay. The reason I'm addressing this is the context in which we've discussed our larger situation yesterday.

[11:57]

to be as good as possible to be able to give as much support as possible to myself and others. And in this context, I find it quite helpful. I just say it kind of like casually like this. I find it helpful to try to be as good as I possibly can be in this context in order to be helpful as helpful as I possibly can be for others. And this practice, there's something about it, which through the decision I made in Creston, there's a way in which many doubts just fell off. And also in view of this catastrophe and the catastrophes that we may control, the practice gives me something where I can say, yes, that's right and good to do.

[13:31]

And also in the middle of these catastrophes that we possibly are about to face or are facing, the practice gives me something that allows me to say, okay, well, this is something that's a good thing to do. One big aspect of that is letting go. And Roshi, you once said that everyone who enters the Zendo is a potential Buddha. Every new person who comes into the Zendo is a new Buddha. We have so many students in Göttingen and they show up and sometimes there are 10 or 15 people and you all treat them like impossible bullies.

[14:42]

Well, it's true, isn't it? Insofern ist das, was wir hier tun, What we're doing here from this point of view, it feels right and it feels important, especially in times like this. And that's just, I just wanted to bring that in, in the face of what's currently happening and what we are, what we are doing does make a difference. Okay. Please don't wait for me to say so.

[15:55]

And when I raised my hands, I thought, wow, I am connected. I can feel it. I don't know what I can feel. And then the next thing, into the active dharma, into the process of teaching. And the last thing, the most moving thing, came into the sangha, into the people. And then, wow, there are so many of them. Also einmal kognitiv denken, das sind schon eine Menge auf der Welt. Und aber auch vom Gefühl, wo ich dachte, wow, da kann ich Kraft generieren. This morning I thought, while bowing, I had this feeling of taking refuge through the bowing. And for myself, I no longer refer to taking refuge. I no longer say taking refuge to the Buddha, but in Buddha.

[17:21]

And as a field, taking refuge into the field of Buddha and into the activity of the Dharma. And then what was most touching for me and having an actual sense of taking refuge in the Sangha, but with the feeling of, geez, that's a lot of people. There are a lot of people in the world. And so, yeah, with that feeling, I had a sense of being able to generate a particular kind of power, maybe, through doing that. Participation. If you were going to never be here again or see me again, what would you like to ask or mention or wonder about?

[18:34]

Wenn du vielleicht jetzt nie wieder hierher kommen würdest oder wenn du mich nie wieder sehen würdest, was würdest du dann gerne fragen oder was geht an dir vor, was würdest du dann gerne ansprechen? Where's the bathroom? One question I have is the difference between birth in the four marks and appearance in the dharmas. Well, do you feel any difference? The Four Marks, I would say that birth is more, it's instead in mere sense.

[19:36]

With the Four Marks, I feel that it arises in myself. Well, you can try appearance, you can try birth, you can try as you wish. But appearance in the Four Marks is what you do with what appears in the five dharmas. But in the Four Marks it's more like letting something take form in you. Something like that. We don't know. We're not dealing with the Chinese or the Sanskrit words. We're just trying to deal with English and German words and how it makes you feel. I'm sorry. I don't think you have to translate that. Okay, well, that's good. I was thinking about something else. Really? What were you thinking about?

[20:39]

Well, I say, a question that I have, but I try to formulate it. In principle, it's about trust in the tradition. Well, just a question I have, but I'm trying to look at how, I'm not sure it can be asked in a general way, but I'll just share where I'm at right now with that. The basic territory of the question is, trusting the tradition as one aspect of what we're doing trusting the tradition and the other aspect of trusting how things make sense in our own experience um And if we weren't there anymore and we had to make decisions about what we do and how, then I would ask myself, what do you trust in?

[21:45]

How do you proceed in this field of, okay, we have learned things this way and that way. And... It's a little bit... I'm going to talk into his head now. It's like he says, where should I go? I can't come up with everything. The ten directions would never have occurred to me on my own. What if there are a thousand things that are very important to me, but they wouldn't have occurred to me. And then you let them go because they no longer make sense to you. So the problem I'm describing is something along the lines of, you know, it's like you say, how to conceive of the ten directions. Well, that wouldn't have occurred to me. And there are many things like that. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. So there are the ways in which we're learning how to do things, the forms and how we do everything.

[22:46]

So, and then I'm wondering, but then there's, so there's a certain trust and there's probably a reason everything is done this particular way. But then if it doesn't make sense anymore, how to respond to changing contexts, but at the same time, if you change it, then it's maybe gone. And maybe the forms... but carry an important dharmic import that we don't want to lose. So just in some general way, if you have any guidance for how to approach the relationship between contextual change and trust in the tradition. Okay. Well, I was thinking about something else while you were talking. Okay. You want that to be a power thing between us?

[23:56]

You're going to lose because I'm your translator. No, actually, I think I'm going to lose now that I think about it. Yes. Does anybody else here think they can translate? No, no, I was just teasing you. You know, if we imagine, I would like a certain kind of person to exist in this world. Like in high school, you want to hope some of your teachers are good teachers or good examples or something. As I mentioned before, I have this daughter who just graduated from high school. And when she was in high school, first here in Germany and then in... in America, in Vermont.

[25:17]

And she was like, none of these teachers I really can, you know, I don't feel they really know what I want to talk about, what I want to learn. And I said, well, you've got to, you can't expect too much of high school teachers or anything. You've got to find a way to make them give you or help you with what you need. If you're going to be educated, you have to make them help you get educated. And that seems to have been a turning point in her relationship to how to make her school work and she ended up doing extremely well in the school, I think partly because she decided to make it work.

[26:38]

She even created two physics courses which the school had, she wanted to study physics in a certain way and the school didn't offer that so she created a special program for herself and then they've turned into two courses the school offers in physics. And that was a real turning point in her work with how she interacts with the school. For example, she wanted to learn physics in a certain way, but that wasn't offered in the school. And then she founded her own program for it, and in the end it became a teaching subject that was offered in two versions of the school. And that's, you know... That's not because she's particularly smart, though I suppose she is fairly smart. It's really because she decided to take charge of her own education. Okay. So you might think for yourself, what In this lifetime, what kind of person do I hope exists on the planet?

[27:56]

You hope it's not many of the leaders we have in Europe and America. And you can think about it in your own life span. What kind of human being do I wish that this kind of human being exists? And then it's probably not, it's a role model, and the role models for it are probably not many of the political leaders that we have in Europe or in America. And if you inform that idea... you make it more likely you'll meet such a person. And when you do meet such a person, you're more likely to make them into the kind of teacher you need. So you... You may have some kind of idealistic idea of what kind of person you hope exists on the planet.

[29:06]

It probably would likely be too idealistic or unrealistic. But the existential conclusion is, well, if I do want such a person to exist, I have to be that person. And the decision that you have to be that person also makes it more likely you'll meet somebody who helps you be that person. Und dieser Entschluss, dieser Mensch zu sein, erhöht dann auch wiederum die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass du andere Menschen triffst, die auch so ein Mensch sein wollen.

[30:07]

Es ist so eine Art innere Chemie, die innerhalb der Chemie der Welt stattfindet, wirkt. And then you discover, yes, I'd like to be this kind of person, but then you have a whole bunch of psychology which is interfering. So what are you going to do with this whole bunch of psychology you've got that's pushing you in all kinds of directions like... I'll have three chocolate bars, thank you. Or whatever. And because we are multigenerational beings, Many people have asked this question in the past.

[31:18]

And one of the streams, there are many streams, one of the streams in which people have asked themselves this question and tried to answer it is Buddhism. So Buddhism then becomes tools or practices or a craft by which you can explore yourself and your psychology and your habits and your upbringing and so forth. And then Buddhism becomes tools and skills that you can learn to study your psychology and the way you grew up and your culture and so on. Yeah. So, like this poem, I read some of it to you yesterday.

[32:24]

It's written by people who tried to put together some kind of pedagogical instrument which will help you discover how you really want to follow through on how you really would like to live. Yes, so I said that. Yes. I have such trouble saying something because I have so many thoughts at once that then it's too much and then I end up just not saying anything but now I'm I made a decision that I will say something okay and here's a salad bowl yeah I found the term doorstep Zen so interesting and so I came.

[33:47]

All the way from Hamburg. Or from the North Pole. From the North Pole? Is she Santa Claus? We don't know. And it's like in daily life, particularly in my life, I had a chance to stay where I was, not to do any step forward. In your personal life. Or sometimes I'd have the choice to make a step forward through the door. The other question was to go back to where I came from, but I didn't find a moment near Dortmund.

[34:57]

And another option then is to step backwards and to go back to where I've been before. And then there are still many side paths around the door, around the left with all the sacks and the experiences and the pain, around the right with further experiences and pain and deep collapses and so on. I have chosen everything for myself, both backwards and sideways. And then I went forward. And then there are all the sideways that I could go like left around. And then there was all the experiences waiting there for one and all the pains and learning opportunities and so forth. And same the other way, right way. And eventually, but each of the paths I've taken, I've made a decision to do so. But in the end, I've decided to step forward. I met Roshi in 1989 when I was miserable or doing very badly. And in the same year, I also met my Qigong master. And he was specialized in still Qigong.

[35:59]

That's why it's English. And the two of you, both these teachers, for me, were saviors. It sounds a little schmaltzy, maybe, but... Banal? Banal. Banal. Well, I'm happy to be a banal savior. I'm very pleased. And what I found so fascinating about Roshi is that he gave so much. And he still does. And since I've known him, now for 30 years, he's given so much.

[37:02]

To us all. To me, too. And what I found so fascinating about meeting you is how much you've always given. And you're still doing that, but having given so much to all of us and to me personally. And yesterday when you spoke about in the koan to cut off the roots of mental activity. Same thought. I also learned from my Qigong master around the same time, 30 years ago. But he spoke about cutting the roots of the six senses. Seeing, hearing, smelling and in addition to the five also thinking.

[38:17]

which I also learned from Roshi, but from both. We had two teachers. But in the end it was so wonderful, it went so wonderfully together. It fused, as well as the exercise from India to China came. We learned that it worked. And it is this spirit that is behind it that has fascinated me so much. And so these teachings for me with the two teachers that worked together so wonderfully and formed a kind of, it was fusing. It was fusing, but in a similar way as how the teachings from India came to China and entering China were fusing. Yeah. Man hört und hört nicht, man sieht und sieht nicht, was ja nicht heißt, dass man alles ignoriert. Ich habe es überhaupt nicht ignoriert, was doch gestern dein Thema war, ich weiß den Namen jetzt nicht. Paul. Paul. Natürlich, ich bin auch zutiefst betrübt über die Entwicklung der Welt.

[39:33]

But still I stay with myself. And seeing and not seeing, it's all there. And still it doesn't confuse me. It doesn't make me unhappy. I don't commit suicide. I don't give up. I don't do all that. And still I see it consciously. And still I stay with myself. So there's seeing and simultaneously not seeing, hearing and not hearing. And in relationship to this topic we discussed yesterday, Paul brought out in a certain way, of course I'm very concerned about the state of the world and But at the same time, I stay with myself. And so I don't have any thoughts of suicide or anything like that, but I see how horrible it is, but I stay with myself. And this koan, which Roshi emphasized yesterday, I mean, I'm pretty sure that he experienced some koans very intensively, but yesterday it was the koan, and it always bothered me very much, like other koans, I just don't necessarily call them koans, they are just thoughts of the spirit that I have.

[40:49]

And so you spoke about this koan yesterday, and I'm sure you studied many koans intensively. And for me too, I have studied several koans, but maybe I don't usually call them koans, but more thought forms that I have. And I understood it like this yesterday, when Roshi started to say, yes, at some point he won't be anymore, which is quite natural, we won't be anymore at some point. and is always thinking about how we can continue. I found this choir like a push, like an impulse, a thought or a request to us, that we stop and that we manage to cut through the roots of the metal activities. And I found this Koran to be something like a push or an encouragement for us to do that, to be like that, to cut off those sources of mental activity.

[41:54]

And to cut off the senses. And still be in the world. Thank you. No, I got that. She helped me. And still be in the world. And still be in the world, yes. To see everything and still don't see it. And you're concerned, you feel empathy, everything. And yet you stay with yourself. But that was like a... I don't know if that's the right word. It was like a little scream from Roshi. That was for me like a little roar or outcry from you and your hope that we may continue. And he says, he talks about the houses, the buildings, it's all there.

[43:20]

There are the forms and the uniforms. I've never worn one because I didn't think it was important to me. I ordered one, the robes he wore, I put it back. It wasn't important to me. And so you spoke about the buildings and so forth and everything that's here. And we are wearing these ropes. And for me, for instance, the rope, wearing the rope has never really been so important. I once ordered one, but then I sent it back. I looked voluminous. Verity. Einzelkeit. I don't know. that we transcend the housing, the housing, everything that exists externally and also the forms, the very forms and the uniforms, that we transcend them.

[44:31]

Everything is there, wonderful, we see it and we practice it, we use it, we need it as a structure, as a hold, but that we transcend it. And what I understood from what you said yesterday was a feeling of where there are all these forms and we have all this and we use it like maybe a uniform or like a building, like the structure of a building or something, but the point is to transcend it, to go beyond it. And to order them... Into an empty space. Into a space that we may not know yet. And that has something to do with trust and a willingness for risk. And that for me, I've never been tied to the forms.

[45:36]

I've always been willing to take risks and to just jump. And to be willing to take that risk, to live with that kind of uncertainty, maybe even to love uncertainty. But to have that willingness and to enter that unknown space, maybe for me that is also what, maybe that's what you meant by... With him and with the teaching, I was always there in the spirit. And that was obviously in me.

[46:37]

But I learned, and I thought that was so great, to take things seriously and yet not take them so seriously. His humor is so wonderful. And this light, loose, and the stories, we are not used to them in Germany. At seminars, we are usually very serious, structured. And these stories that he always tells are so wonderful. It is something very mythical, something very archaic. People used to live from stories. And one of the things I learned from you is to take things seriously, but at the same time not to take them seriously at all. And for me, your humor is very important. And I mean, I think in Germany, we're very serious when we study something that we don't tell stories or anecdotes. So we're not used to that. But there's something mythical about that. And The ease it brings in is important.

[47:37]

And how can you adopt ease? If you risk... And how can you adopt this ease in just being as you are in the middle of all of these psychological conditionings that we are in the midst of and that we are surrounded by? I learned from two teachers who were very similar, although they are very different. I teach as I am, and I try to carry on this spirit. And that's what I wanted to say, even if I wasn't here so often.

[48:41]

The spirit is always there, and so I continued to work, and so I continued to live, and also to feel. In that sense, I carried something with me. In a small sense, we can't do much more. And although I haven't been here for such a long time, for me the spirit, and that's basically what I wanted to say, the spirit has always been there. And I've been carrying that into my work and teaching, which I've been doing for more than 30 years. And the spirit is present. And from that point of view, I feel like I've also participated or contributed in what we're doing. It always feels like you hadn't left. You know, you mentioned what I said yesterday about it is necessary to cut off mental activity and cut off understanding before you can reach realization.

[49:59]

Yeah, and so what I... wanted to present was, you know, when you first, when I first would look at something like that in the 60s, say. I would wonder what, you know, yeah, it sounds good. I mean, maybe it's good. I don't know. And I mentioned my experience of seeing thoughts like billboards and then noticing the space between the billboards and then noticing fundamental mind, something like that, that wasn't shaped into the conceptual billboards.

[51:04]

So what I'm trying to say here, I'm looking at, I've been doing this since 1960, 60 or 61. And what have I been doing? Well, it started working for me immediately. So then I have to ask myself, how did it work immediately when I only provisionally understood it? And then how now should I bring something that normally you wouldn't know about except through long practice? And is it useful for me to bring in such things?

[52:30]

And then it says here, much like you just said, seeing, hearing, awareness, knowledge, these are not one and the same thing. And then it says here, much like you just said, seeing, hearing, Awareness, knowledge. And then it says, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind are all at once a hammer, head, a hammer without a hole. a hammerhead, if you have a hammerhead, you have to put a stick in it. Oh, and it doesn't have a hole.

[53:32]

And it doesn't have a hole. So here it's a Zen way of, poetic Chinese way of saying, we have these six senses, including mind, five physical senses in mind. Und hier ist es so eine Art chinesische Art zu sagen, dass wir haben diese Sinne, die fünf physischen Sinne und den Geist. And they could be used, but in this case they're like a hammer, but it hasn't a hole, so how are you going to use them? Und die könnten benutzt werden, aber in diesem Fall sind sie jetzt wie ein Hammer ohne Loch. Also, wie benutzt du dann den Hammer? So this presents again something that kind of works in you. And okay, then the question is, if I again look at what I've been doing all these years, why does it work in you? Well, something happens if you do zazen or some practice regularly.

[54:47]

So your interoceptive core becomes tuned. So somehow these things that you imagine, what kind of person, etc., they're to recognize them in your own activity or in others or in situations is increased by somehow having a daily practice.

[55:48]

A practice which tunes you and then you hear when things are out of tune. So for example, by tuning yourself, you start noticing when things are out of tune. So the daily or regular practice is somehow giving dimension to what you don't yet understand. So I was working in a warehouse in San Francisco. And I was on the way back to the warehouse. I'd had lunch somewhere nearby. And like Clinton, I've never smoked. Or no, never inhaled.

[57:16]

But it's true. But I used to smoke cigarettes and blow the smoke up my nose because everyone smoked, so I would do that. But I really did never inhale. It was like putting sandpaper in your chest. So I'm walking through this back alley which had some railroad tracks that stopped at the warehouse so you could bring a railroad car up to the warehouse earlier days when it was a different kind of warehouse. So I think actually there was some situational poetry because the train track, the train line ended there. And the back door to the warehouse was right there.

[58:36]

So I finished this pack of cigarettes. And I scrunched it up. And I threw it down on the railroad track. And then I walked a couple more steps to the warehouse door. And I thought to myself, because, you know, working in a warehouse, I also had to sweep the warehouse and clean it. And I knew if I'd thrown that down in the warehouse, I would have had to sweep it up. So I had taken two steps and I thought, no one's going to clean that up. And then I thought, why... would I notice that no one's going to clean that up?

[60:03]

Of course, we're taught not to litter, and my mother would always get mad when she saw a car throw somebody out. In a car, someone throws something out the window. She'd honk at them. Yeah, so I knew not to litter, but still I threw it down. And then I thought, well, why did I throw it down? And I realized I thought God would clean it up. Or nature would clean it up. And then I realized I think there's a difference between outside and inside. Now that insight would not have occurred if I wasn't doing daily Zaza.

[61:15]

I have many times up to that point, I was in my 20s, had thrown things down and I hadn't thought, I think there's a distinction outside and inside. So somehow the daily practice makes you sensitive to realisational possibilities. Because in your daily practice you're not only developing attentional skills and so forth and so on, You're also tuning your interoceptive core. And when that is tuned, you actually have a different mind, a different kind of receptivity, different kind of receptivity, attentional receptivity.

[62:46]

So you're more likely to have an insight. And you're more likely that that insight becomes transformative. Because you really can feel the difference between being tuned and out of tune. And you're not pushed around anymore so much by, oh, I'd like a cigarette or I'd like some food or I'd like a partner or something like that. You're much more in the midst of your own intunement and out-of-tunement and feel and realize now it's your own power. You're not so much pushed around by what culture and society and ambition wants you to do.

[64:07]

You can feel your own power. So when I threw that cigarette, crunched up cigarette package down, and I recognized suddenly, I was stopped, frozen in my posture, that this, uh, that I make a distinction, an artificial distinction between inside and outside. And I went back a couple steps and picked up the crunched up cigarette package.

[65:12]

And went back to work in the warehouse. But I not only had an insight at that point, but I never again in my whole life made a distinction between inside and outside. Right now, I feel I'm in a big inside. And we're all part of this big inside. Now, what's interesting for me is I'd thrown things away before and not had that happen. But because I was doing daily practice, I both had the insight and the insight became an actual shift in how I have lived ever since. So there's a kind of miraculous and marvelous way that

[66:29]

daily practice and exposure to the teachings begins to work together. It begins to bring future understandings into the present. Es gibt so eine wundersame Art und Weise, wie das Ausgesetztsein der Lehre ausgesetzt zu sein und die regelmäßige Praxis zusammenwirken, die zukünftige Möglichkeiten den Weg ebnen. Yeah, and in this sense, you know, I think it requires, as some of you have said, a large degree of trust that the daily practice and the teachings work together in a way that you can't think your way to, but evolve.

[67:55]

So I don't know if that makes sense to you. Let's leave it at that for now. And I think we would like a break. I think we need a break. That was a yes. That was a yes? Okay. That no was a yes. I understand that.

[68:35]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.97