Yeah, this seminar is, you've probably noticed, a day longer than others. And the prologue day a day earlier. So I don't, you know, I'm not used to doing seminars a day longer. So I have nothing to say today. You know, I'll go home early. But it is the case that what is the rhythm? I mean, you know, this seems like if you do a seminar for as often as I have, I don't know, 100, I don't know how many, but lots. There's a certain structure to it that, you know, maybe it's not noticeable, but it's something that, a certain structure to what I can talk about when and how I should end.

[01:21]

It took me a few years simply to learn, just to learn not to download Sunday afternoon. Do you remember? You liked it though. Everything I didn't get to in the seminar Sunday afternoon... Now I'm much more tamed. And I considered having a second day yesterday afternoon, perhaps a second time of small groups. And I think if we went one more day, I would have small groups today.

[02:31]

Because they help me a lot. And also I think it's useful for you all to speak in German with each other. But here we are. We have to start this morning and we will end at one o'clock, something like that. Is that right? So that you can leave for your various destinations. Now I'm I try not to be too esoteric in what I talk about. And when I start talking about my cheekbones as antenna, I think, what the hell am I talking about? I've gone over the edge here.

[03:51]

What I say is true, but I shouldn't say it. I can see somebody does a cartoon of me and there's little antennas sticking out. But anyway, I'm really trying to suggest something. Wittgenstein is famous for saying, the human body is the best picture we have of the human soul. And in Yogacara, Buddhism, Zen, we might say, we could easily say that human body is the best picture we have of the mind. Certainly, if we think of the body as an image of the mind, we can engage with the body as and through the mind.

[05:00]

Now, the point of what we've... You know, there's so much... So much we haven't... Excuse me now. I've got a better word for engage. Also, wir können uns mit dem Körper durch den Geist verbinden. Okay. Good. Thanks. What we've come to is with a number of leaps or jumps is that we have a choice about reality. You can really, I think, sense that there's not only in us, but in the world, a number of different realities.

[06:29]

I think of the Australian Aborigines, though I'm not suggesting you all go to Australia or anything. But what I've read and seen some documentaries... They have a very different sense of reality than we do. And they live in a very different perceptual world than we do. There's even from centuries ago indications that they were able to see the rings around Saturn. And again, at least in anthropological literature, they're famous for what's called dream time. My impression is the first thing they do in the morning is discuss dreams as real, bad or good.

[08:11]

Not just the good ones are real. It would probably be inconceivable for them to say it's just a dream. Well, if you start your day that way every day, even that, you'll live in a different reality. And as you know, part of the practice in Zen is to bring the feeling of the dream into your day without trying to analyze it. So we have a choice about reality.

[09:25]

In a sense, you can choose what kind of reality you want to live in. So Buddhism doesn't exactly say, at least Zen doesn't exactly say, what that reality is. But it does say that you can do certain things which will create the basis for a different reality. Now, much of that is, and that's my problem with being too esoteric, is resolved, expressed, articulated through monastic life. Although I know a lot of, you know, smart people in New York and such places who really hate the idea that there's a craft to Zen or a monastic dimension to Zen.

[10:45]

A craft with a monastic aspect. I mean, they really don't... They want Zen, and a lot of people are very interested in Zen, to be mind and attitude and something we all can just express by being creative. And there's certainly, yeah, there is that aspect of Zen practice. Zen understanding. But that's a kind of... byproduct or aspect of Zen that can be part of society and art and so forth. You know, that's Zen as it fits in. Or something like that. But strictly speaking, practice is as much a craft as anything else.

[12:02]

And much of that craft is developed in monastic life. But since I have such compassion for you love for you and I respect the jobs and work you do in the world and the families you have I'm doing my darndest to see if the dimensions of practice that are really rooted in monastic life can somehow be part of our life here this sort of semi-monastic place. And can be implicit in the way I'm teaching and what I'm teaching. Of course, sashins in many ways are lay...

[13:44]

units, lay person's units of monastic life. Yeah, so, and the problems I face, you know, some are like, how much should this be lay? Should I be wearing robes now? How much should this be lay and how much should be How much should it be adjusted so it works primarily for lay people? And there's no question that this should be a place for lay people. But then does the way Johannesof is draw Crestone more in this direction? Ist dann aber der Fall, dass die Art und Weise, wie der Johanneshof ist, vielleicht Creston mehr in diese Richtung zieht?

[15:09]

And I worry sometimes, Creston, I mean, people who have only gone to a seminar, say, in Hannover. Also... Bravo. Ho, ho, ho, ho. But it's an English family, the Hannovers, right? No, excuse me. They come here and they think, this place is weird, all this chanting and people running around in long black skirts. Why the heck do they chant in Japanese? We have a yoga teacher in Crestone who insists we start the class by chanting in Sanskrit. I remember feeling, what the heck does she want me to do that for?

[16:28]

And I thought, what am I doing? And then, if you get used to this, you go to Creston and you think, oh, my God. Really. So I don't know. So it's an experiment with us, but then I must say, the experiment, when I look at your practice, I think the experiment is working. Okay. Anyway, last night some people wanted Beate Stolte and perhaps Eduard and...

[17:29]

Erhard to, I hadn't forgotten, Erhard to say something about the practice period in Crestown since they were just there. I don't know if you feel like it, but could you say a little something? Also gestern Abend wurde ich öfters gefragt, ob vielleicht die Beate Stolte oder der Eduard oder der Erhard, die gerade in der Praxisperiode gewesen sind, etwas darüber sagen möchten. It wasn't really Beate's first time there, but the first time for a full practice. In the end, it's a seven-day session. You have to know Creston a little bit.

[18:37]

It's situated very high in the Rocky Mountains, 2,500 meters high. It was a spectacular view and a very open and wide valley. It's just around that time a violin gives a very different impression, different silence or quietness, and it's a very isolated place. You drive one hour to the next grocery store. You said already that outer circumstances vary and contribute to come to kind of co-alterns in a different pace. You kind of have to let them into a different pace. And three months is surprisingly long and surprisingly short at the same time.

[19:37]

The length seems to come from it. It has a five-day rhythm which always repeats itself. This time we ate all three meals classically in Oryoki in the center. What many of you know from Sashin, And those many repetitions in the sketch, for me, felt like the process. I think you can also say something about it. It leads to that at some point you get the understanding that the whole life is just like that, and you can only forget what else is possible with this existence. And then new, new, new things appear, also in practice, which you can experience. You cannot have like that for me.

[20:51]

This is an example. What does really matter? How much time do you need? In the morning you have one hour to read. For many hours you get up at 3.30 and you have many hours of zazen and you get up in the middle of the night to miss the zazen and you miss a very long service and much more recitation than here. Then you have all the yogi. That's also the other hour. And then you come out of the chamber, and it's bright, and it's already shining, and the sun is shining, and then you go into the main hall, and then we sit in a room, and it's partly a hospital, and then it's 20 years old. It's 20 years old. 30, even minus 30, let's say, I don't know what this is.

[21:53]

And then you make on the fire, it gets warm, you get the warm tea, you sit together, all happening in five minutes. And everybody starts reading. You don't read together, you just each one reads by themselves what they want to study. And this also has such a long and creative time that you get a real quality of it. You can really intensively, intensively, she gives a lot of tea shows and in between lots of opportunity to go to the doctor. Looking back on that, I think it's a big shoulder to practice. to go, to kind of dig in more and more deeply into a subject.

[23:06]

And in the end it doesn't make such a big difference to the usual day anymore, to the usual subject. But for the practice it kind of densifies a bit more. This in the view I see as a big chance. practice period. I value this. That text that this was the 11th practice period always repeats it. There are always some difficulties about that for many lay people. The kids just come three months and leave your job. And those who don't want, they can't pay for the practice period. And so sometimes they have to come and master some difficulties.

[24:06]

But all it usually, until now, it always happened. And I hope in the future it will exist. I should go here. I can watch it. I can just follow what you're supposed to say for me. This is an amazing, incredible, epic choice. It's nice to hear it this year. in this year that might mean starting this it has never been away this must have just seemed this transition compared to this seminar we all go home and it just continues the next day and the next day it's nice that you there can still remember peace You can really stay in it.

[25:13]

The subjective experience is the first half. This takes really long in the second half. The longer it goes in the second half, it goes much faster in time. From the layman's point of view, it feels like he is somewhere in the wilderness. He is somewhere in the wilderness. And it's all pine trees in the middle of the forest. And it feels like, it looks like a well, but it's not really a well. It's very dry. The dormitory is very... Very great.

[26:25]

It's such a nice place, I don't have to teach you. What is Tangario? This is Tangario. It's nice. I say, what is Tangario? And it's so little populated there. that it doesn't feel like you're somewhere in the city. From the sounds, in my first time, you only hear natural sounds, the wind in the trees, the birds. There are not so many birds here. And I noticed this time that there's much more planes flying across.

[27:29]

And other than that, there's absolutely nothing to hear. The dog, you should have forgotten. It's really a big hound, yes. A big hound. And it's very well-immune in general, yes. That's how I've never experienced a dog. You know, speaking about the... Airplanes. If you take a ruler and you put it on Los Angeles and New York, it goes directly over Crestone Mountain Center. But it's far off. It's some kind of sound. But I know my friends are flying over.

[28:30]

And Eduard, who became Eddie, that you said even at your job they call you Eddie sometimes. And now Eddie is speaking. For me it was the first time I was in Crestone and it was the most wonderful experience in my life. I can't describe it in words. It's just great. But what made it special for me was the opportunity to come there, to be free from my job. The seminar in November was very helpful to me. and this was the seminar in November which you spoke about intention and after the seminar I really had no idea what was happening and told him and I didn't expect it but I could not even imagine it was possible and it just worked and they made a deal with me

[29:51]

And that's how it was possible that I got three months off And of course three months for the practice. I used to have four weeks here in Johannesburg for the whole time. But three months is something different. The duration, that you get into this routine. that you always work on yourself. And you learn, you ought to learn to recognize your own expectations. You don't expect much from the moment that something comes, just to accept it. It's a thing for me. with the main effect result not to expect anything.

[31:00]

Just fall into it and to accept what comes towards you. And this also is fun. Okay, thank you. So you can see why I'd spend part of the year in Creston. But the problem with these descriptions is they're after the practice period is over. After the second half. It's like people's descriptions of a sashin after it's over. And of course, Gerald and Gisela and Ingrid and René and Gunda and Marie-Louise and Katrin.

[32:12]

You were there five years, right? Have all been there and crossed their legs and hoped to die. So if we want to practice as laypersons, Or we have to because of our circumstances. Or just because we want to prove that lay practice works. That's a deep reason. You have to really, as Eddie said, really bring your intention, not just leading to Crestone, but your intention into your activity.

[33:20]

And the craft of practice becomes more important Because in a monastery, if you stay there too, like Ulrike Dillow has been there, what, five years now? You were there five years? Something's different about the third year and the fourth year, isn't that right? Sometimes not much happens for the first three years or so and it starts to come together after a while. So monastic life is designed to do much of the work for you. So the lay practice is more difficult because you have to do it more for yourself.

[34:23]

Okay, so I'm trying to see what aspects of the craft and what images and attitudes can bring us most fully into the path in our daily life Because that's also the ideal of Zen, that daily life is the most fundamental way to practice. the most fundamental way to practice.

[35:34]

Even as Gerald and Gisela found by taking a year or two off, just to see what happens with your life after years of doing this kind of life. So now I think it's a good time to take a break. And we'll come back and see what happens. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thanks for traveling. That's one of my Mexican ones. You can ask somebody I want to know. Ask Gisela.

[36:27]

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