chakra really has for me developed out of our dialogue. And I'm very grateful for that. Very grateful. I had no idea. It did feel a little different. And at this point I would like to say something personal. From my relationship, says Atum, to Beka Roshi in our encounter and what I have heard and learned there, this area has simply opened up in my own body and I really feel a living thing there. And Roshi then funnily says, yes, he has already seen that something has changed with him. I'd also like to say we have to be a little careful that we don't turn these terms into a kind of division. We used to have two superior centers in Seattle when I moved there and I very quickly learned that one defined itself as the center of the heart and the other defined itself as the center of the soul and each one thought that they were better than the other.

[01:29]

Yes, we have to be very careful here that we don't use these terms to call out any divisions. For example, these two Sufi centers in Seattle, the following happened. One center simply evaluated the heart higher than the other, the soul, and each thought that one center is simply better than the other. So we have our places of natural affinity at certain stages of our life, but we don't have to build a mythology around why it's better. Also, a lot of it really is semantics. And I'm anti-semantic. Anti-semantic. Yeah.

[02:52]

I want to briefly summarize the question again. I think it's about how you can practice a religion in which there is no God. I think you'll read the Christian background. Buddhist foreground can answer this question.

[04:54]

Are you serious? But you have to translate to me. Yeah. I have to do everything today. Yes, this is a question that is very familiar to me, which I have had for a long time. I grew up in a Christian context and was a very pious child. I really prayed a lot and also had deep mystical experiences as a child. In the church and while praying. And at some point when I grew up, a process took place where this access was closed to me. For various reasons. And I then tried for a long time to live in the feeling that there is no God. Or in such an agnostic area where I said, I will never find out whether there is a God or not.

[06:00]

In this respect, I give up. And then this search actually started in other cultures, after a religiosity in another culture, because I was too obsessed with my own culture to have access to it. And I have to say, through the practice of meditation now, as I mainly got to know them through Buddhism, where this ballast is not there for me, where I don't have to deal with it, God or not God, and how is this God? That I got access to experiences again, which are very similar to the ones I had as a child, when I, so to speak, believed in God. And in this respect, Buddhism has simply given me access to a deep religiosity, which is no longer dependent on a god. And Roshi sometimes annoys me, so I actually still pray to a god, Buddhist or not Buddhist.

[07:08]

Just don't translate the last part. Thank you. Well, I try to abbreviate it a little bit. I was raised in a Christian tradition, and I was a very religious little girl, and I prayed a lot, and I had very deep mystical experiences in church and praying. And growing up, something happened, which would be to... I would have to go too deep into the matter that I lost that contact And I sort of prepared myself reading a lot of literature and existentialism and I toughened myself up and I said, I don't have to believe in God and I don't need God. And I became more of an agnostic saying, well, I'll never be able to find out whether God exists or God doesn't exist.

[08:16]

And I turned toward another culture. I turned toward Asia because I felt without the baggage of my own culture, you know, it would be easier to find an access again to some kind of religious feeling or religion I could practice. And I discovered meditation mostly in Buddhism. And meditation really helped me to reconnect to those experiences I had as a child. And now they don't depend on a God figure anymore. But I feel I'm a deeply religious person, and somehow now my Christian upbringing is integrated. And I have to admit, once in a while, I still pray to God and worship Him. Rasha teases me about it, of course. The idea of no God in Buddhism really means that there's nothing outside the system.

[09:33]

Die Vorstellung im Buddhismus, dass es keinen Gott gibt, bedeutet eigentlich nur, dass es nichts außerhalb dieses Systems gibt, in dem wir sind. Es ist alles hier und alles muss man hier finden. Und das bedeutet, dass man einfach tief sich auf diese Situation hier einlassen muss, wenn man möchte, dass alles hier ist. But I do admit that sometimes, even in recent years, I've been quite desperate. And I've laid down in bed. And involuntarily, I say to myself, oh, God, what am I going to do? Please help me. And then I think... And then I think, so pull yourself together.

[10:48]

And I have actually trained myself to not think that, because it turns me outside to do it. But more seriously, when you develop this wide mind of practice, it becomes so... you can turn to it really and solve problems. You can find ways to bring your foreground self into this larger background and find you start living the answers later. So now when I would have the inclination I might have had to pray,

[11:53]

I turn myself over to this larger sense of mind. and try to live then to bring this into actuality. I try to live the presence of this heart-mind in my activity. With the faith that the presence of that is all I can do and the best I can do to move into more cohesion or solution. It sounds good, but in many ways I'm still a mess. So I'm telling you what I practice. That's funny, you don't look Jewish. Didn't I tell you?

[13:37]

That reminds me to add that the person I know best who fully in every way believes in God is Ivan Illich who is half Jewish And he was Pope John's secretary also for many years. And the presence of God is so palpable with him that whatever this is, I believe it. In fact, at his 70th birthday party, he asked me to speak. In fact, it was on his 70th birthday that he asked me to say something. And although I said this in a joking framework, there was a great seriousness in what I said. I said, if I had met Ivan earlier, I would probably be a Catholic today instead of a Buddhist.

[14:46]

I was thinking that in a sense the I think there's a danger in either extreme. And at least the Buddhism that I learned always had this feeling of the... I said what I learned was this term, the lord of the house. I mean, that there was that which was inclusive of all, but it... has a presence, it is a presence, though when not understood, Buddhism is described as the no-God religion. And Christianity, Judaism, Sufism, Islam, in a sense, on the other, in its extreme, everything is in the hands of God. and I put everything out to God, and I don't have to take any responsibility.

[16:38]

And I think that when I said, it's funny, you don't look Jewish, what I meant was that... What you described in terms of what you do to me would be a description of prayer. That I move into a prayer mode and part of what I want to do is, in a sense, dissolve the very ego that thinks there is someone out there to pray to that I am far away from. And... And through... Oh, sorry. LAUGHTER Well that's a challenge. Rabbi David says you have to be very careful about the extremes or just extreme attitudes. And the kind of Buddhism that he experienced is simply that there was always this feeling of presence, an all-inclusive presence that you can also give yourself.

[17:52]

But there are also Buddhist schools or directions that are simply very, very sober and they simply emphasize very sober and And on the other hand, there are these religions, Christianity, Judaism, Sufism and so on. There is also this extreme where everything is in the hands of God, where there is very little self-responsibility. And that is of course the other extreme and what Rabbi David said when he said to Beka Roshi, he does not look Jewish at all, that what he described really felt to him as if it were just a prayer. So he is also in this state of surrender and when you really pray, a prayer really takes place, then the ego also dissolves. In the sense of this separation, that there is something out there that you are not yourself and that is simply expressed by this ego. And you'll bring the Christian tradition too.

[19:12]

It's great. I have a question. the different paths that all lead to one mystery, but to different places. And I didn't understand that, to different places. I would like you to tell me more about that. And will we all get to a different place every day? And will we create a new dialogue? I didn't understand the last part, that the souls come to different places anyway. Yes, there are actually many questions that have the same meaning. Different religions, different places. Manuel?

[20:14]

Well, a lot was stirred up in her through your remark that different religions go different paths, go to the same mystery, but arrive at different places within this mystery. And that stirred up a lot of things. For example, the question, what do you mean with a different place within the same mystery? And then she has this image that each soul arrives at a different place anyway. So how does this go together? And don't we, through the way we are together here, don't we create a new path that leads to a new place in this mystery? And how do we this all, you know, correlate with the souls and the places and all that? Okay? Okay. It doesn't correlate. From a Buddhist point of view, that's great. One phrase I would not use, that atom uses, for instance, is toward the one. From a Buddhist point of view, there's simply no such thing as one. That's a theological idea.

[21:49]

It's like it rains. You can't find the it that did the raining. We may create a path right now. And we may feel a unison, even unity in that path. But each moment that unity is being reformed. And each moment that unity will be different. For example, my teacher used to say, we all have our own enlightenment. There's no one enlightenment that you realize, though there are a lot of similarities. In Judaism, in some of our prayers, we say, when we talk to God, and we say, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

[23:08]

And in Judaism, when we pray to God, we pray in the name of Isaac, in the name of Jacob, in the name of Isaac. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of each. The God of Abraham. We don't say the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But we said the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. That each one has their own experience of God. And each experience is different, though similar. And yet, to me, in a sense, coming back to the question here, what is found in that relationship to the Beloved,

[24:18]

Is where I find the different place in the mystery that we come to. I remember the first year Richard and I did the program at the camp together. One of the things we agreed upon at the end was that Richard didn't have to give up any of his Zen Buddhist experience in order to enter into the Sufi experience. And I didn't have to give up anything of what has been for me arisen out of my path in Sufism in order to enter into the Zen Buddhist practice.

[25:23]

I remember when Richard and I first learned together in the Sufi camp. We then found out at the end that none of us had to give up anything from his tradition. Richard didn't have to give up anything from his Zen Buddhist tradition to get to know something about the Sufi way and to go a bit on the Sufi way. And for me it was exactly the same. I didn't have to give up anything from my Sufi tradition to get to know the Zen way. And I would say that in my experience with David or when I studied with Reb Salman Shachter, I didn't have to give up the Christian part of me. I didn't have to give up the Sufi aspect of me. And so it goes for me in my experience with Reb David and Reb Salman Shachter, that I don't have to give up anything of my Christian tradition in order to get to know this Jewish tradition. And one of the gifts for me of living and working in Europe these past several years was to really be able to feel what I would call the soul of each country through the people I worked with.

[26:31]

Now, I know the word soul is problematic, but actually soul is used in about 40 different ways. So I'm going to use it in a particular way. Ich weiß, dass der Ausdruck Seele etwas problembehaftet ist, aber es gibt ungefähr 40 verschiedene Definitionen des Wortes Seele und ich verwende es hier in einem ganz besonderen Zusammenhang. And I have felt blessed in my life to experience what I would call the soul of several traditions. I certainly, it would take me another whole lifetime to know the detailed encoding in the Jewish tradition of its teaching or in the Buddhist tradition of its teaching. I don't know that embodiment, but I have felt touched by the souls of those traditions.

[27:47]

Und ich würde sagen, dass ich wirklich noch mehrere Leben benötige, um wirklich mich tief auf die jeweilige Tradition einzulassen, um wirklich die Verkörperung, das zutiefst eingebettete, die Seele dieser Religion kennenzulernen. Und so kann ich nur sagen, dass das, auch wenn mir das nicht gelungen ist, ich doch zutiefst berührt worden bin von diesen verschiedenen Traditionen. And I feel deeply grateful that they're not all the same. Just as I'm deeply grateful the souls of different countries in Europe have their own particular beauty. Now maybe a common meeting place is that they have arisen out of human experience. So I think often sometimes we have to be careful in our desire to make everything the same because that's kind of comfortable.

[29:06]

We lose the incredible soul of each tradition. And when Richard was speaking the other day about the difficulty because English and German don't have the equivalent words that arise out of the tradition of Buddhism. Well, I was thinking, actually, Richard, you're quite lucky. Because we have this term God that has such baggage with it. And that even to use the term brings up such a whole history in people that it's difficult for it even to be heard in the way that it's being used.

[30:25]

And if I gave lots of descriptions of what harp may mean, I could probably give lots more about what God could mean. And if I only mention the word God, then each and every one of us immediately has some associations and some experiences and understandings of what that could mean. And everyone only hears their own understanding and does not even come with what I mean in the context of God. And we talked about how many different aspects the word heart alone has. But with God there is much, much more. And what Richard said in his wonderful description about what he does now instead of call out to God. That didn't sound any different to me, actually, than what I would call the root experience of prayer. Because what I heard, and this is using my language, is that at a certain moment there is the experience of surrender.

[31:34]

A kind of surrendering of the perspective that one is caught in in that moment. And the surrenderer opens up to that reality that is there. Well, to me, that's also the experience of prayer. I'm really happy to find that the three of us pray together. We pray the same way. Sukhiroshi once came, my teacher came to visit me in Japan, actually, in Kyoto. I was studying in Kyoto for some years at the time.

[32:59]

So I... One evening he gave a talk in Japanese. And I gathered a lot of people... and other folks to come and meet Suzuki Roshi and hear him. And a lot of Japanese people. And the next day he talked again in this little house I had to a number of Westerners who were in Kyoto. But a lot of the Japanese came to the second talk as well. And after the first talk, they said, Oh, gosh, it's the same old Buddhism of funeral ceremonies and, please, I can smell the incense now.

[34:03]

And after the first speech, you said, oh, God. Oh, God. I said, gosh. Oh, God. They just... And then the next day, after his English talk, they said, it was wonderful, so fresh. It was a whole new, what a great teacher. I heard Buddhism for the first time. They couldn't hear past their own language. Yeah. In Japanese, but in English they could hear him differently. That's why I'm trying to create my own vocabulary. As Atum adroitly noticed. Think another question?

[35:36]

Is meditation a better form of psychotherapy that speaks about it? Yeah. He would like to know from the three of you something about the relationship between psychotherapy and spiritual practice. For example, Atum talked a lot yesterday also about the importance to deal with the shadow. And from Belkaroshi, he heard this morning about carrots cooked in different kinds of soups. So is maybe meditation the better kind of psychotherapy that surpasses psychotherapy?

[36:38]

Meditation is definitely cheaper. Don't I know it. You have done both. Also die Leute, die ich kenne, die beides getan haben, die haben berichtet, dass sie einfach beides tun mussten, damit jeweils das eine und das andere sie wirklich vollständig tun konnten. that doing therapy without engaging the spiritual dimension, the soul, the heart, whatever word we want to use, doesn't reach to the inner, inner core of one's

[37:57]

Again, what I've heard from others, experienced for myself, that meditation may carry me in many ways beyond the personal conflicts, but unless I really enter into it, they don't really go away. I don't know that they go away anyway. And I'm not saying psychotherapy, meaning sit with a therapist or spiritual meditation, sit and meditate. But somehow both of those practices are an important part of the whole.

[39:11]

And I guess one other thing I would say is, for me, much of Kabbalah that I've studied... And much of what Judaism really is is very deep, serious, psychological work on oneself. That is part of the spiritual work. meditative, prayerful God path. And my understanding of other traditions is that there is deep, deep inner work required also. For me, it's a really vast area, the question.

[40:44]

And it's hard to answer it in a general way because I think it depends upon the individual and where they are in their life and the kind of meditation practice and the kind of therapy and who the therapist is and who the meditation teacher is. There's all these variations. So I want to start by acknowledging that piece. And I find it very difficult to answer this question in general, because it depends very much on who this question is related to. For example, what kind of psychotherapy someone does, at what time in his or her life, what kind of meditation practice this person has, what kind of meditation teacher, how the two go together. So this is something very personal. And to say, first of all, personally speaking, both have been deeply valuable in my own life. And I would say, like David, most of my long-term friends who have made the spiritual journey have also been deeply involved in both.

[41:55]

And I would say for myself and at least for some of those people, I have found them deeply complementary and quite integrating, ultimately. And what I can say for myself, and I think I can also speak for some of my friends, is that both have led to a process of integration and that both traditions complement each other. And to say one of the exciting things in our time is this dialogue between spirituality and psychology. And it is a developing dialogue. It's quite a new discipline in the West.

[42:57]

It's still developing. And I do see a value in in some situations of defining the parameters of psychotherapy and the parameters of spirituality. But something I've been doing for the past several years is a series of training for psychotherapists that look at the sacred dimensions of psychotherapy that are inherently there or potentially inherently there.

[43:59]

sacred time, sacred space, silence, sacred story. These are elements that can inherently be there that are also the basis of meditation. And so this sacred core in psychotherapy has something to do with the sacred place, with the sacred time, with this sacred... What was it? Holy, a story with the Holy History. And they may never be explicitly identified. But I do think for many people today, psychotherapy has become a form of spiritual practice or a place where the religious is accommodated. Let me invite our unofficial member, Ulrike, since she's been deeply immersed in both the Buddhist traditions and psychotherapeutic traditions.

[45:47]

Recently, one of the German psychological associations was invited to give lectures to them on meditation. So maybe you have some thoughts about this, Boris? Yes, I do, but I'm too much in translation mind right now in order to find some part of my brain still sort of fresh. So it... Would you like me to say something while you freshen your translation brain up? While you freshen your lecturing brain up. You had all this time to think about the question.

[46:56]

I thought I could pass it off to you. I often say Buddhism is a mindology and not a psychology. It's really a study of how the mind functions much, much more than a study of our story. I think psyche is rooted in the idea of story. And I think so. I think there's a problem in Westerners' practice of Buddhism. Because I would say, technically speaking, our identity is formed in what we would call the fourth skanda of associative thinking.

[47:57]

And the Japanese... And my impression is that Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, at least, identity is formed in the feeling skanda. And the way they think about things is not so dependent on their story. So Asian teachers may be a little too quick to say, put aside your story, these things aren't important. Und asiatische Lehrer sind ein bisschen zu schnell dabei, einfach zu praktizieren, zu sagen, also lass doch einfach mal deine Geschichte los, die ist nicht wichtig. Und wir sind jedoch Westler und wir müssen unsere eigene Geschichte reifen. So I think that in Western Buddhism it's very important that we understand how to mature our story enhanced by the practice of meditation.

[49:13]

But I have met quite a number of psychotherapists Ich habe ziemlich viele Psychotherapeuten kennengelernt, denen aufgefallen ist, dass Psychotherapie mit einigen Leuten einfach besser funktioniert hat als mit anderen. Und es hat sich oft herausgestellt, dass das Leute waren, die meditiert haben. They were seemingly able to hold themselves in place to hear what was going on. Yeah, and likewise I know therapists who then found psychotherapy for them wasn't a satisfying practice until they also started to meditate.

[50:18]

But in a very simple sense, the difference between a mindology and a psychology would be instead of going back to the things that happened to you that led you to enact a certain kind of behavior, You might also do that, and certainly the most thoroughly psychological meditation practice is the skill of following thoughts, moods, etc. to their source. But that source is discovered to be not only in story, but also in structures of mind, which allow you to perpetuate certain feelings. and the buddhist approach would be noticing those structures of mind transform the structures of mind that continue the suffering and for us westerners also understand it

[51:53]

in terms of how you develop your story and mature your story. I just wanted to add one thing. From what I presented this morning was the idea that something that I can work on in a more mindology place Is at the same time affecting other dimensions of my being? And so sometimes it's the psychology and sometimes it's the heartology and sometimes it's the mindology.

[53:20]

But wherever I focus in... I think one of the important things is when we recognize and acknowledge that there are more parts of our being. then as I work on my story, I'm working on other parts. And as I reach other parts through my meditation or something, it affects and changes my story. In Judaism, we talk about a process called tshuva, which in a simple level means, oh yeah, I did something wrong and now I feel bad about it and I'm not going to do it again.

[54:31]

But on the true levels, tshuva affects a total change in my story and mind and heart. That it actually changes the earlier situation that created the problem. So I don't carry it around anymore. It's the movie, what was it called, Back to the Future. So like in the movie Back to the Future.

[55:34]

And the real work is simply to really change what was. And this changes the present and also the future. So would you say that Juvah would be better translated by shame than guilt? Neither. It's a clear perception of something where I've been out of harmony. Seeing the disharmony that my out of harmony has created. And ideally reaching the source of it. That changes it. So it doesn't mean perhaps for somebody shame may motivate them, but I don't think it's such a good motivator.

[57:02]

In Buddhism, we also have this practice of Naikan, which seems to be very similar to what you just described, where in a retreat, Sashin-type situation, a person goes through every single moment in their lives where they feel they have wronged somebody, and also not in a simple guilt. Yeah. sense, but just thinking that this affects your entire life, that if you've hurt somebody and that you kind of undo this and in yourself you apologize for this and that also your structure, which is the basis of who you are, is changed. So I think that's very similar. In Buddhism there is a practice that is very similar to what Rep. David just said, the practice of naivety. It is often misunderstood in the West that there are only sins and sins or something like that. And you are in a retreat situation, similar to a Sechin. And you go through your whole life now and try to remember every moment where you hurt someone. What's

[58:05]

What you said, as far as I understood it, is usually translated in English from Buddhism as a fear of shame. Basically, the idea is, unless you can feel that one of the cores of what it is to be human is the capacity to feel shame. And if you cannot, you're not fully human. Feeling shame is exactly as We understand it exactly as I think you said it. You recognize something you've done. It makes you feel ashamed.

[59:35]

And you have the capacity to feel that. And you vow and fully intend not to do it again. And that frees you into the future and transforms your karma. And it seems quite different than the process of guilt, which often sticks to you and makes you feel wrong. This practice makes you feel you can be right. Not that you're wrong. Doesn't that sound similar? Did you want to add something? Isn't it that the tshuva is only complete when a situation rises again in your life where it's possible to act in that way again and you don't?

[60:57]

Then it's complete. Then, you know, the vow not to do it is not enough until you really present it again with the chance to choose to do it or not do it again. This thing with shame, and maybe it's my personal, you know, whatever with that word shame and guilt, And I have a feeling that this is probably a beginning point for our next session. I think this talk about guilt and shame and karma and fixing and whatever may be a very rich place to...

[61:57]

Shame is only the best English word that people have found. It's not, of course, the... Sociologists started using it. I'd just like to offer just some wonderful insight from a friend of mine, Francis Vaughan, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology. We were discussing shall we say, the place where people get lost in the psychological and in the spiritual. And I really appreciated her such clear insight and capacity to just express it quite simply.

[63:00]

Und ich schätze sie einfach sehr, diese Einsichten, die sie da gehabt hat. That when spirituality, spiritual teaching, spiritual practices are used to avoid, it's a misuse. Spirituelle Übungen einfach dazu benutzt werden, um etwas zu vermeiden, dass das ein Missbrauch ist. And when psychological work, in terms of working, shall we say, a wound becomes repetitive and one becomes caught in the wound. And when psychological work, for example, working on a wounded area, becomes repetitive, one becomes circling the wound over and over and over again. And I don't mean, I mean circling it as opposed to a spiral in working the wound, where if it comes around again, there's a new level of realization that arises out of it.

[64:38]

And when this kind of encircling, being caught in the circle of the wound occurs, something has become distorted in the psychological work. And another piece that she said in this conversation, which I thought was such a kind of gem of insight, is she said there's often a point in a person's life where they have to look at their story. And perhaps especially at the shadow pieces of the repressed or denied pieces. And to be willing to make the journey into the suffering contained there. But the difficulty comes when one becomes so identified with one's wounds or suffering that it creates a specialness around it.

[66:14]

And what she speaks of, that's a delicate phase often for people to get out of. And she spoke of the phase that gets you out of that is after having fully attempted to deeply acknowledge your own wounding, to then recognize that your wounding is not special. Every person is wounded. And the evoking of compassion out of that for the human situation. Okay.

[67:30]

Thank you for the afternoon. Thank you. Can you ring the bell for us? My job. One, two, three, up. is it jewish to have a bell that's a lemon so you can eat it

[68:34]

O go in beauty, peace be with you, till we meet in our hearts in the light. O go in beauty, peace be with you, Till we meet in our hearts in the light. O go in beauty, peace be with you. Till we meet in our hearts in the light. Thank you. I was weighing between that and gate-gate, paragate, but...

[71:19]

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