Take it easy. Take it easy. I would try, I would not strive, yes. So neither, whether we now, whether you are a good person or a bad person, whether you are in the kitchen or not in the kitchen, whether you are translated or not, that is not important. Just not to continue this story and try to just drop this story. Yes.

[01:01]

Also, in my opinion, Vivienne Crest and Horne were very much present. If I remember correctly, the theme was very much present, especially when the people were walking around. where Roshi also said that this is not the way to be. This is how you destroy people. And I think that this is certainly a point when you don't live in a monastery, but simply have the practice in everyday life. And all the others, more or less, most of the others don't have a practice and you don't have a teacher with you. You can go for a walk with this structure much better. I thought, I said, when we were at Crestone and Eric was Tenso, this was a point where the structure really came out.

[02:29]

And I remember that you also said to him, in that way you cannot be the Tenso because you really, you hurt people or something like that. So I think that also because we don't live in a setting where people are practicing together, We don't have the opportunity to break up structures together. Maybe it happens in the monastery life, I think, that structures are in relationships can be broken or can be, I don't know, seen and dissolved more easily. Because in the everyday life, you just are alone with the practice. There is no teacher and there is not a group which practices with you. And so you can... carry along your structure and you practice on your own. So it's not, it's much more difficult to change. And somehow also you have to keep yourself together in everyday life.

[03:35]

I mean you cannot, if you have to be the sociologist, you cannot say somehow I don't want to be perfect or I don't want to give up this trying to Man kann es nicht aufgeben, auch im Alltagsleben zu sagen, ich möchte irgendwie was vollbringen. Man muss da irgendwie auch einfach dranbleiben. Im Kloster kann man dann einfach, ja, ob jetzt der Tänzer kocht oder nicht, ist letztlich wurscht, weil irgendjemand wird dann schon kochen. Also da fängt sich auch die Gruppe dann auf. Aber im Alltagsleben, ich meine, wir wollen einfach, dass so ein Geld überwiesen wird aufs Bankkonto und dann müssen wir auch brav sein bis zu einem gewissen Grad. Ja, ich leite die Diskussion. Ja, ich leite die Diskussion. Ja, ich leite die Diskussion.

[04:36]

Breaking up, this makes me self-tribe. Or breaking up structures. I turn to practice the five cycle therapy. Sorry, my feeling is you are trying to be perfect and my weaknesses, they will stay with me, my wife maybe. Go along with it But the interesting thing was that you said, that you told us that the practice, on the one hand, has a structure and on the other hand, it continues to practice.

[06:06]

At the same time, I think that the spiritual structure supports you, but at the same time also supports your maka. And I think, And I was pregnant. Psychotherapy for men and women. Psychotherapy for men and women. For me the good thing about the practice was that it was no longer about the stories. um...

[07:17]

It's like a narrative. A necessary narrative. Mm-hmm. I'm interested in that.

[09:05]

That was nice, thank you very much. The wonderful therapy success, I still have it, but it is clearly identified with stress situations and I can deal with it. Es ist mit Stresssituationen verbunden, also es ist ganz klar, besonders bei beruflichem Stress, aber interessanterweise viel stärker eigentlich bei so privaten Stress, so Verantwortlichkeitsstress, wenn die Christine zum Beispiel irgendwo hinfährt und die und ich habe irgendwie das Gefühl, ich bin jetzt nicht nur für meinen Beruf komplett verantwortlich, sondern ich bin auch vollkommen für die beiden Kinder verantwortlich und dass das hin und her, dass das alles klappt und dass da keine Katastrophen und nichts passiert.

[10:32]

Das ist irgendwie so, ja. Aber es ist, ich meine, ich bin ja früher dann einfach nur so gefahren und es war irgendwie, It's so that you cannot control it. So the other side of... Subject to. Subject to, yeah. something I found interesting in what I heard, which follows for me the feeling of something Roshi was talking about yesterday, which is that the understanding was already there, but the importance of speech And my own feeling is the body and the breath joined with speech was something I found, I resonated in what you were saying.

[12:00]

So sometimes I think there's a lack of understanding, and talking can bring the understanding. I'm not sure the exact word you used, but I think it was organizing what your understanding was through speaking it. And I felt that organizing as joining the breath and the speech. That was the organization. I felt. Wow. Also etwas, womit ich ziemlich lange so gekämpft habe, ist, ist das bei mir dieses Gefühl von, also ich ärgere mich einfach, ja, diese Ärgerlichkeit, ja.

[13:16]

Und das ist beim Sijin, beim Sijin ist das ziemlich, ist es eigentlich, passiert das, da kann man das sehr gut experimentieren und erleben, ja, also. And you see a person who does something, yes, somehow, how do they look again, or what does he do again, or how does he sit there again, or how does he hold that, and what does he do again, and so on. And what I somehow missed in practice is somehow, and I discussed this with Roger, What can I do with this annoyance? Because irritation is annoying. Irritation is too strong a feeling. Annoyance is more. Also es geht um Ärger und nicht um Zorn.

[14:36]

Was lacht der so? [...] It's okay. You're perfect. Thank you. Okay, so I'm perfect. But I didn't find any access. Of course, you can try, you go around and think, no, I'm not annoying now, or I'm watching now that I'm annoying and so on, but it doesn't really work for me. Because somehow no one sat down with me and said, why are you actually so angry now?

[15:48]

And what does that mean? Why are you so angry now? I didn't sit down with anyone and said, and we talked about why I'm actually angry. Why are you so angry? Und insbesondere nicht im Sinne von einer so, natürlich kann man dann auf der Ebene sprechen, kann sagen, okay, der stellt immer das kommerziell falsch hin. Aber auf einer tieferen Ebene, warum stört dich das, warum gerade das, ja, es gibt hunderttausend Fakten, über die man irgendwelche Emotionen entwickeln kann, und warum gerade über das, ja. And that has enabled me to do psychotherapy, that I can look at it more precisely. And then I can, for example, in another session, I can see... Der ist ärgerlich, ja.

[16:53]

Also wie sie der für heute ist, finde ich wieder einmal ärgerlich. Und dann kann ich mir anschauen, okay, warum, aha, ich finde das ärgerlich. Warum ist das eigentlich ärgerlich? Warum ist das ärgerlich? And then I say, that's why it's annoying, because he wants to be so perfect somehow. And then I always think, aha, I find that interesting, so why do I go into competition with him, why, how to be more perfect than he is perfect, or why does that annoy me? then I think, aha, this is somehow interesting, this is exactly, this is exactly the thing, I want to be the most perfect, and I want to be, and then I want to be recognized, and then suddenly this annoyance is gone, and I see, aha, this is his place, and this is okay. But that wasn't possible for me.

[17:57]

There was a possibility to get away, to try to get in touch or to suppress it. For me, I didn't see a way. For me this is very interesting, because I can actually think the other way around. This question of the other way around in personal life processes is very interesting to fantasize about, but I can't stand it that way. That's why it's very difficult for me to stand in the light. For me, when I ask myself what is the difference between my own experience of psychoplasm and intersemination, and here it is very distinct, especially in the session, that the sessions are very intensive,

[19:22]

with such a luxury of time, to sing with myself, that I don't have to do it myself, I can sing with you, in detail, in my own thoughts, in a superb way. That's why, in the truest sense of the word, there are illusions. And what's interesting for me is that at the time, Mövick was very much involved in the problems of my health, which I did not experience in South Africa. So I can say directly today that for me the group situation, the most difficult situation, but also the most difficult situation, at the time when I found out, is much earlier. was not really influential enough to do this fine work. This fine work has been very difficult for me. First, because it is very difficult for me.

[20:29]

That leaves me completely alone in myself. It is relatively difficult for young people to express themselves in a serious way. expressing yourself and you don't have much opportunity except... It's weird. So you get your own pattern played back when you get it played back. And that was the difference between the Sesshi groups at Dharamsanga and at the Sesshi Stigl.

[21:31]

There is a choir that has touched me, touched and heard me. And I have a new chance. That, for example, the perfection, I mean, it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to work in the group, because when you're in it, you just sit there. It's a different situation. Felix, can you do that a little slower? That was interesting, but hard to translate. Okay. We have the last word, the difference between one sashin and another sashin. That's really interesting. There was a difference in the atmosphere between the sashins in the Danza. The atmosphere. So what's the difference? So at the beginning or right before? Somehow this fear was more forgiving, taking you right.

[22:57]

More forgiving? Yeah. Feeling the experience of being together. in the group, this kind of social experience? That it gives me the chance to take back my very small, my very small problems. problems I get them mirrored for the group. For example the question of being perfect or being accurate. to see perfection as something necessary in the case where the food has to be delivered on time because as the one who sits inside I know that I am almost at the end of my power to have patience

[24:13]

my strength, and I keep a belief in being patient, and I find my health. Good. The question for me is not whether the accuracy is good or bad, but rather how do I guide this accuracy through, for example, with others. How do I deform this accuracy of ours? How do I... How do I... I would like to say two things about it. The first one is rather subversive. The fact that food is brought to the broadcast regularly is a minor problem, it is a smaller problem.

[25:31]

Here, perfection is referred to much earlier, namely, what does the food look like, and so on and so forth. And there is a wide field of perfectionism. Yeah, but different things irritate different people. But what I actually, the important thing I want to say, or what is important for me, is that I don't say, for me it's not so, of course after I had this experience, to do both, to have psychotherapy and to practice Zen, I can of course say that it works wonderfully for me. There are no deficits, it works very well for me. But it fits together very well, it fits together very well for me. Of course there were hours of resistance, but for me it was never a problem in that sense, because for me it was always the hours when I generated material, when I was able to work in the next hours.

[26:50]

But through this seeing practice, I think I am so familiar with myself that And during this same practice I was so familiar with the deep situations, almost like an elevator, where I can go down and where I can go up again. For me that was somehow... For me it was always in a structured, familiar space. But it was somehow like when you sew things together. If I remember correctly, we started discussing what is the difference

[27:56]

And if I observe it now, then I have the feeling that in psychotherapy and in practice it differs only by the fact that it is called a psychotherapy. This is my answer. It seems that psychotherapy takes place where I define it for myself or where I design it for myself. and I can expand it and shape it. And I think, what I also noticed, or what I heard, is that both offer rituals that offer order and process. So there is togetherness, but also difference. We can both live in it. What I'm noticing right now is that there is no clear limit, no clear difference between the two. Oh. Okay.

[29:10]

I would like to, from my point of view, I would like to talk a little bit about differences, especially the last two weeks. For me, practice is a matter of relationship with myself, where I and I want to sing the organ. The psychotherapy for me, where it is put in a relationship frame, where I am always the main subject, but where it is worked with a second person, mirrored when the relationship comes. So it brings an outsider to me, damit auch neue Ideen einbrennen und neue Sichtweisen, neue Strukturen, die ich in meiner Supernicht-Kognikation kenne.

[30:30]

So it's both a very intense topic of relationship. But in practice, I feel more drawn back to myself and to the possibilities that I have with myself. And in therapy, there is still an exceptional dimension to it. I would like to continue with my experience. If I look back at my process, then I have our psychotherapy I really also made love experiences in the sense that I felt really understood and accepted the way I am. And I experienced that incredibly hotly and how I felt there.

[31:32]

I realized that I was missing something. And that's where I started to deal with spiritual practice. And what I see here as so enriching are these process of realization. And there I notice that these processes of realization, through the practice of awareness, that they have an effect on my psychoperiodic work in a certain way, so that all my physical functions and also my ability to love, in particular, a lot more, and that is that there will be this tolerance for everything that is, where I also notice that the theories of psychotherapy are all too narrow, and where for me this is one that has really become a meta-theory, where all these other theoretical concepts have space, and I am

[32:48]

I don't mean that psychotherapy has nothing to do with it, but we have a bunch of theoretical approaches and elements, and we are beating around the bush, so there is no superior excuse. There is no super-ordinary psychotherapeutic theory. There is this system-therapeutic, structural therapist, the Rogerian, the analyst, and it is almost partly like a Babylonian language confusion, and we all talk about psychotherapy. I don't think we know at all what actually is a super-ordinary psychotherapeutic theory, and I notice that because the Buddhist teaching is incredibly fascinating to me, because it is such a well-ordered theory building. I notice that this knowledge gained through the Buddhist teaching, that this was such a great, significant element that I was able to have.

[34:03]

And also a reflection on my personal experience, also on my relationships. I notice that a certain metaphor is appearing again and again. It speaks to me like this. It is this metaphor of cooking, of cooking soup, frying. And I like it very much. How do you feel at the moment, as if you are really busy in both, both in psychotherapy and in practice? It seems to me that as a hygienist in a psychiatric hospital I am somehow so busy being cooked with the young people and I think that's great. And that in practice that is also the case.

[35:06]

But if the practice helps you, then don't just look at it as if it's a simple subject. It's like throwing in a whole bunch of different things into creation. So one knows whether one also wants to get a feeling for it, where it all comes from, and as if there is a greater connection. Yes. And I think if you are a therapist, then you might also deal with it, with the phrases.

[36:35]

It's necessary. I'd like to, if you're willing, to continue this discussion after the break. I'd like to say a couple of things. One is, it strikes me, you know, because I always feel badly about the sessions are difficult and painful and such. And I'm always wondering, how difficult to make them, how easy to make.

[38:00]

But it's clear from what both Felix and Eric said, the pain and difficulty, Sashin was a big part of it. There is an assumption in the conception of Sashin That mind and body can actually be very relaxed together and there's no reason a Sashin has to be difficult. And the difficulty really comes from these cracks and so forth that you can't kind of make... So there's a lot of questions here.

[39:05]

I mean, if you make the sashin too difficult, then I have... Usually there's often one or two people every now and then who are upset for a year afterwards. They get into a state where they can't handle it. It's too much for them. And if it's too easy, then you can still stay in your social space. So this way of working with to create this kind of situation with others is very specifically Zen, and it's not even other forms of Buddhism. It's very specifically Zen as well as not being psychotherapy. Now I'm touched really to be part of this discussion with you.

[40:05]

And I think we don't, you know, we don't, We only know part of the picture. And I certainly only know part of the picture. But I've learned a few things. Not enough, but a few. And one thing I've learned in this... lifetime in this stage of practice. Because I cannot practice Zen with people that also have a psychotherapeutic relationship.

[41:07]

I don't know what your experience with therapists are, but My impression now, I guess mostly you don't know with your clients afterwards. Some become friends, but generally they don't become friends. They're people you don't see. And practicing with people, I have to keep seeing them. So I've had to learn to be careful not to damage the relationship. And also the styles in practice. is that you don't relate to the people you're practicing with at a social level or even an ordinary friendly level except to the degree to which the person is sophisticated enough to know this is a kind of

[42:32]

you're being friendly, but it's not really the real relationship. Because you, and you can feel it more pronouncedly at a place like Creston. One person was at Creston recently, a man that is about 60. Rather brave and old to come to Creston from Creston. And as a child, he felt quite abandoned by his family. And here I'm just trying to point out some differences. Anyway, he felt rather abandoned. He's had a very successful professional life. But at Creston he felt it was cold and unfriendly and he felt abandoned again.

[44:05]

Because you're left alone and you're not given much ordinary support. And what we're waiting for is literally till you feel already connected. And once those channels open up, then there's a lot of feelings of support and connection. But we can still hold back to see if they can, I mean, you know, like Tsukiyoshi went through a long period of various ways of not greeting me, not smiling at me, not giving me anything I needed back until I didn't need it.

[45:10]

And Eric used to drive me a little crazy. Not me personally. Because I loved him, so it was okay how hard it was. But he used to get so many other people mad at him. And he's so intelligent, and he made other people feel lessened. I didn't know what to do about it. For me it made no difference. It didn't make me feel less intelligent. Because I... I could feel him in the future.

[46:13]

I could feel what he was really like, so I related to what he was really like, not his immediate habits. But there's really not much I can do in a situation like that. Now, recently we had a situation twice at Creston. Well, there was some kind of similar, different, but somewhat similar situation, two people. And it took me three years or so of waiting with each person. before I saw the opportunity to crack the situation. So I know the basic tradition of Zen. So it's in the living together over years till these little opportunities occur. But really the situation itself, if you look at it, tells you what's going on.

[47:32]

So that's actually again different than psychotherapy. You don't have that opportunity in psychotherapy. I would be interested, Mikael, if you've known Eric for many years, if there's some difference between before Zen, after Sufism, before psychotherapy, and the same with you. I don't mean to make you the object of inquiry. But I mean, I think what you're doing is a good example. What's clear, I think, is that from everything I've seen, and you said here, is it psychotherapy? Having done psychotherapy helps in practice.

[48:49]

And practicing Zen seems to help the psychotherapeutic process. Yeah, no, we can't really say, we can't be objective, because you did Zen before psychotherapy, you did psychotherapy before Zen, I did psychotherapy before Zen, and so forth. But we can begin to accumulate experience. And some levels they are quite similar, and other levels I think structurally and in the way they both come into some depth of the person, I think they're different. And let me just say that when I practice with people, lots of people drive me crazy, and I'm just...

[49:50]

Anyway, so why don't we have a break? Come back at 10 to 12. Everything. For me first of all the main difference between psychotherapy That in psychotherapy I was much more somehow encircling or circling around my personality or myself. My personal interests. And what I learned from that was a lot of the potentiality of reflecting and of observing, developing this observing quality to see patterns and recognize them.

[51:43]

A Zen or a spiritual path somehow leads out of my personal life. And in that sense, it really is, in some way, it's the opposite. So for me, this is a lifelong path. And psychotherapy is not a lifelong path if I'm the client.

[52:49]

And for me is a spiritual path or Zen, it's somehow that which holds and carries all that. It's not, I don't see them as having equal value or . In the sense that Zen is, and also other traditions, they are more encompassing. Yeah. Encompassing. Encompassing. And for me, for the... the spiritual... the spiritual...

[54:03]

So my spiritual experiences and what I did, they much more brought me to existential questions. So, for example, you touched me yesterday and what happened between 30 and 40 was that I really took a conscious decision that if I die, I want to die consciously. With awareness. So this was for me the point where I started looking for something outside or beside psychotherapy.

[55:16]

Okay. I have to say something. I know it's difficult. I want to say something personal and by that that I can really go along with you well and understand very well what's going on. My life script somehow is that I should disappear and especially for somebody else I should disappear. And doings who make me disappear always interested me somehow. Something which was going on or which made me disappear. And sinking into the stillness.

[56:35]

And when I started noticing it and cultivating it. And soon then I discovered that this also is some kind of a , you know, something which, yeah. And then what I learned from Richard was to mark this sinking with something else, to mark it. And so I'm always doing that and that's what I'm doing. What do you mean by that? This certain going in the direction of suicide to reframe it and give it another meaning.

[58:05]

And it works and it really comes to me again and again. Well, you're quite good at disappearing. But I like it when you appear too. And what Horst said was interesting. That for you, practice is this process within yourself. And I think that's true of a lot of lay practice nowadays. Because, but it's certainly not... typical or example of traditional Zen practice.

[59:23]

Because I think Eric would say, and I would say anyway in relationship to Eric, that the intimacy of our relationship is a very big part of the practice. Or the feeling of some relationship and connection. And in fact, I almost cannot imagine practice without that feeling. Doesn't mean you can't practice that way, but it's, yeah, anyway, not the way Zen practice is constituted. Even though Sukhriyashi has been dead a long time, I feel I'm practicing in his space.

[60:31]

And that makes it something different than just practicing in my own space. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that you also don't have a feeling of practicing in our space or in the space of others yet you're intimate with. Because that's always going to happen too. But it's perhaps different when it's formalized. When it's more kind of a conscious or intentional feeling. Okay, you were going to say something? Yes. For me, I always... As I decided to practice in the lay life, my question always is somehow, how can this be done?

[61:53]

So what I saw now in the first part of this morning is what is missing or somehow... what is difficult to do in a lay life because you don't have monastery and so on. And at the same time I experience in my practice I experience in my practice things which it's difficult to acknowledge in lay life. One example of that is this experience of a body which other people are part of.

[62:58]

And this is so strange. I cannot think it up, but it still is there. So this is just a question of how do we develop practicing in lay life and allow these parts of practice to grow and be there.

[64:03]

Yes. but not psychotherapy experience, but practice. What is more and more important to me, the importance of Dhamma Sangha and Buddha becomes more and more conscious or clearer. It was not mentioned before, but it is always about the practice and the teaching. And that has a certain effect or not, and I compare it to psychotherapy.

[65:14]

But what is very important in practice is the teacher. because you meet a teacher and they make the decisive decision to practice, because you see him and think, wow, how did he do that? Should I eat something? As you wish. Or what do you want? So what gets clearer to me is the importance of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So because what we are doing here is we talk about the difference of psychotherapy and Zen and we're talking about practice. The practice is... In the morning discussion, it was sort of isolated.

[66:15]

Either it was therapy or a practice, but practice was talked about a little like a method. But for me, this Buddha-Dharma-Sangha combination is very important, because you meet a teacher, and that's sort of the initial start of the practice. Because you see a person who has practiced for a long time, and they say, how does he do it? So that's a good start for the practice. And the second is the teaching, which you do, you listen to, and you do it. And it's extremely important to have the sangha, the people you practice together, which helps that it can continue.

[67:17]

It's the most important thing for continuing practice. So it's not like you withdraw and you practice on your own like a hermit, but it's much more fruitful if you do it together. And I think that also in lay practice, if you have dharma brothers and sisters, then it's not so far from monastic practice. Apart from that there are much more influences in your daily life and you cannot spend all day long with your Dharma brothers.

[68:52]

Yeah. Yes. I would like to speak about the differences, which are also what came up for me. At first there was the discussion what makes therapy possible, what does Zen make possible. So I realized there's a difference that I did a body therapy work. So what was most important in that therapy is the bodily experience and going through, following the feelings. And then, after you have gone through all these feelings, this state of, which we named, phrased, oceanic feeling, feelings of feeling.

[70:47]

and it was not so important to understand but the bodily structure changes anyway. After having done this for six years and also learning how to do it and I developed a quite good bodily feeling out of that Then I changed to the systemic therapy. And all at once there were so many possibilities which had not been before in this body work. And I had the experience that I understand what I was working on before and something more.

[72:04]

I understand this and something more. In 1990 I met Siegfried Essen and Richard at this conference, Buddhism and Psychotherapy. At that point I decided to go into this systemic approach and then it took me some more years to go into Zen. So I made the decision then, but it took me some time to... Come to the essence of Zen. I'm just joking. But when I decided to practice Zen,

[73:05]

It was not like I'm trying to learn this systemic approach to do psychotherapy. But there was something in this koan which attracted me. And Richard as a person where I felt that I somehow be at home with you. Okay. And somehow it feels like I didn't want anything from Zen. And at the same time it's that I do it and that I consent, agree doing it, consent doing it.

[74:27]

And very often I ask myself, why, why, why? And sometimes I get answers, like at this practice week at Johanneshof. And this was an experience which very much changed my life. I was really exposed to my narcissism for three or four days. Why am I doing that to me? Am I stupid getting up at four o'clock and sit and being silent and working? And then facing the wall, having to look at the wall.

[75:37]

And then I was sitting there facing the wall. And then I only can describe it by this word of love, an enormous feeling of love. A feeling like loving this world and at the same time the world. And And this together with the sentence, if I can do this, everybody can do this, the world can do this, everybody can do this for themselves.

[76:42]

So I'm grateful for that Zen gave to me. Yeah, okay, thanks. Well, you know, when I try to, for instance, hopefully this afternoon, maybe we can speak about, we have an empty afternoon. And, but also I think we could also, maybe this is enough discussion today and we can,

[77:59]

not break up into a smaller group. So we'll see about tomorrow. But if I'm going to speak about this topic, elusive topic of emptiness today, I try to have some, to the extent that I prepare, I try to have some overall feeling of how the different ways of we can speak about or experience emptiness have some common basis. At least how they relate to each other. How these various aspects or approaches relate to each other.

[79:04]

But in terms of this relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy, or the relationship of lay practice in Zen to monastic practice, I don't have an overall picture. There are certain facts, and I have to deal with the facts. And there's my own personal commitment which may be contrary to the facts. Okay.

[80:15]

The fact is In my experience, is that there's a big difference between people who practice mindfulness and people who practice mindfulness and physical zazen meditation. And there's a further difference between people who practice zazen and mindfulness and also do several sashins. Yeah, and it's very different for me to speak about practice to people who've done Sashins.

[81:18]

Okay. And then, to go a step further, there's a very big difference between people who do sashins and people who do two or three, a couple practice periods at least. I would say that I think most of you who've done sashins recognize there's quite a big difference between before you do a sashin and having done a sashin. It's a pretty big difference. Almost like a difference of being in reality and only partially in reality.

[82:32]

At least a certain kind of reality. Okay, I would say the difference between doing sashins and being a practice period is at least a factor of ten. And then between a practice period and say two or three to four years in a practice situation, there's a factor of about 20. But more than that, I don't notice much difference between people who've practiced, say at Crestone, two or three years and people who've practiced 10 years. There's a difference in refinement, depth, but not such a big difference.

[83:36]

Now, another big difference is the degree of commitment. If there's a commitment to practice that you're just going to do it, whether it's good, bad, right or wrong or anything, that makes a big difference. And that degree of equipment is so important, it's almost equivalent, maybe greater than whether you do practice periods or not. Okay, so I'm just saying what I see and who I can talk to and how I can talk to people who practice. Yeah, what I feel.

[84:42]

Okay, now, if this is my observation, then I should just live at Creston. And I have, yeah, often considered that. But my commitment may be contrary to that. You know, if we look at early Dogen, Dogen speaks about, you know, everyone practicing. By the latter part of his life, he says only monks can practice. Only monks can understand.

[85:43]

And I would say that Thich Nhat Hanh seems to have come to a similar conclusion. He started out being very committed to lay practice, which I think he's still committed to, not that I know exactly. But in my conversations with him and in other people I know who practice with him, he seems to really think only monks can do it. But I am not going to change my commitment. Which I haven't for 45 years. Which I'm committed to lay practice. And men and women practicing together equally.

[86:57]

And so that commitment keeps me trying to find the right mix or some kind of mix. Like part of the mix is my commitment to this group of people that's at least this year dwindling. To meet with you once a year for longer than I meet with any other seminar. At least as long as it remains mostly the same group. I think if the population changed considerably, I might not continue.

[88:04]

So, and I'm trying to find out, you know, like you came to a practice week, and that made a big difference for you. So what makes your practice weeks, sessions, the possibility of going to Johannes Hall for Crestone, works? I don't know. I'm trying to find out. Now the difference between let's say two or three years at Crestone and doing Sashin, is partly the degree to which one is immersed in practice.

[89:24]

But this difference has a lot to do with the difference between those who can continue the practice for others and those who can continue the practice for themselves. Big difference I see is somebody stays at Crestone three or four years, they're people I can depend on more to continue the practice than others, continue the practice with others. No, I'm very interested and supportive of the interesting kind of combination that Christina and Eric have made. And Michael.

[90:27]

You know, the Vienna gang used to be quite a few people. The Wiener Bande. But now it's down to really about three, right? No, it's not true. Well, I don't see any of the others. No, no, I think basically for a time it was true, but I think with changing the location to coming to Bibelsstraße and now more people come, that it's true basically the call is someone. Well, in relation to me, it's mainly you three. And Krista's, yeah, I suppose so. Okay. Well, so they, this is a couple who practice together.

[91:34]

And they've also created a separate sitting group to practice with others. And they also make an effort that impresses me, especially with a family, to come to Johanneshof for considerable lengths of time. And they seem to have the alchemy of the commitment to practice, too, working. So I trust that they're actually creatively making a situation which I can trust them to continue the lineage, to continue the teachings. So anyway, I'm just trying to share with you my own

[92:35]

sense of some of the lineaments, lines of shape of practice. And the dimension in which this is Sangha, If there's a complexity of involvement, commitment, and so forth within the Sangha, everyone benefits. I don't think it's, yeah, I think it's important now that somehow this group that we meet with has begun to include Erich and Christina on a regular basis. And we snuck Michael in today. So for me, the richness of the situation where we can talk to each other is all of these are aspects of it.

[94:03]

And once, for example, Walter's done Sashin's, I feel Walter's presence in a different way than before you did Sashin's. So I feel that your intention may be various, but at least partly for me, you are helping me participate in developing some kind of way we can practice. And we have to accept our actual life situation. You know, profession, children, you know, and so forth. So I, you know, that's all. That's enough said about that.

[95:03]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_67.38