So I'm trying to speak to things you already may know about or sense. Ich werde zum Teil wohl über Sachen sprechen, die Sie schon kennen. that perhaps our discussion today will give you more permission to study yourself. And also I'm trying to speak to What are our human capacities? And I could say also our Buddha capacities. Which is just a way to really speak about our deeper human capacities. And also not just about our deeper human capacities, but also the power of our vision and intention.

[01:17]

So we had a couple of questions at break, which I asked the two people to bring up again. One of them was about books. Yes. Why don't you say it again? If you recommend a book containing Babes of your thoughts. Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. And also, again, Zen in general. There's a lot of Zen in general around, you know, in the air. And what we need is probably Zen in specific. But the problem is Zen has not been developed as a lay teaching.

[02:45]

It's primarily been developed as a monastic teaching. Because it's thought to be best communicated just by the entrainment of bodies, the connection of people who do it with another person. And I'm trying to speak to you about what I would call an adept lay practice. But there really aren't any books about it. I'm just, I hope, finishing writing a book called Original Mind, The Practice of Zen in the West.

[03:54]

You know that. But I hear I have one reader out there somewhere. But I had to ask the sangha in America in Colorado and here in the Black Forest in Schwarzwald. A request I have never made in 38 years. Could I be free of the schedule except for specific teachings, times I have to teach? To just write and sleep.

[05:00]

Because it's not really, if I have to teach almost every day and things, it's almost impossible to have the kind of time I need to write. Right. So doing that, I've finished about 180 pages since April. So if my friends keep supporting me, I might finish by, you know, so it comes out next fall. And in that book I'm trying to talk about things that for the most part have never been written down in Zen practice before. And that are more lineage teachings. But I'm trying to do it in a way that is more helpful than not. But mostly in answer to your question about books.

[06:03]

You just have to, I think it's best to pick up Buddhist books and read a few sentences and if they seem intelligent and they make sense to you, read the book. That's what I do. If I find a few stupid sentences somewhere in the book, I put them down. Too many generalizations and no details. Because there's an extraordinary amount of books out, but But the kind of things I'm speaking to you about today, I don't think are in any book. But what I'm talking about to you is quite obvious. It's just how we live, how we exist. But in very big general, Zen is a school within Mahayana Buddhism.

[07:44]

Some people consider it a a third school after Mahayana Buddhism, the way Tibetan Buddhism thinks of itself as a third school. But for me, Zen is just a Buddhist practice. which emphasizes sitting meditation and the practice of mindfulness as an attention to attention itself. Not just attention to, as I said the other day, washing dishes and driving a car. We all bring attention to that. Or your mother will be mad, you know. If you break the dishes.

[08:49]

But to bring attention to mind itself, the mind that arises when I look at you. If it's just as I can hear my own hearing, I can see my mind seeing you. And when I know you're all appearing in my mind, I like you, because I like my mind. And I can brighten the image, you know, and things like that. But you're doing most of the work in brightening the image for me. And within Zen as a school, within Mahayana Buddhism, which emphasizes cross-legged sitting, and mindfulness practice, it's mainly a Yogacara, it's a mixture of Yogacara, Madhyamaka, and Huayen teaching.

[09:56]

I don't know if that helps anyone but that's Zen in general. And it's the most unprogrammed probably form of meditation. As I said earlier in which the emphasis is on the posture, but leaving the mind alone. Okay, someone had a question about koans. Yes. I'm a Zen student and someone gave me a koan. And before I became a koan I experienced being relaxed and being quiet. And since I have a koan I feel a tension.

[11:17]

I come to a certain point and then I become restless. And it feels like a wall. Yeah, well I... You know, I don't know exactly... What is a koan? This is Zen in general. Zen in my own mind. Okay. A koan is a teaching story. Which turns on a phrase or phrases which reflect wisdom rather than ordinary consciousness. Yes. So I'll give you a koan my daughter taught me. I'm riding in the car with my daughter who was in a car seat, so she must have been two or three, I don't know.

[12:32]

Since she was speaking, maybe she was three or something. Anyway, little girl. And I'm driving. And she is sitting next to me and she is falling asleep, nearly asleep. And she nearly hits the dashboard, you know. So I said, Elizabeth, watch your head. She said, you watch it. I can't see it. Yeah, koans are something like that. Koans are something like that. So I don't know exactly what kind of teaching method your teacher is using.

[13:55]

So the tension might be good. It may show you where that wall is that you come to. But we have to be very careful with intention and koans and so forth. The basic idea, in my understanding, is to hold something before you but not exactly try to do anything with it. So if you, say, have a koan, say that we, I'll give you a simple phrase, just now is enough. Now, just now is not enough if you need to have lunch. But in some absolute sense, just now has to be enough.

[15:08]

Because all you've got is this just now. So if you can never be satisfied with this just now, you're always in some kind of distracted, disturbed state. So you can practice with a phrase like, just now is enough. And you don't think about it, you just say it to yourself. That's like a koan is like that. So you just say, just now is enough. Or I gave you, I gave the a small practice the first day of this Congress. We assume we're separate. But actually we have a view that we're separated.

[16:19]

And that influences our perception. But if you had the view before thinking and perception arises, already connected, that view contradicts or is an antidote to already separated. And so when I look at you, I feel Already connected. Just now is enough. And I just repeat that or have the feeling of that on each perception. It begins to change things. And my perceptions begin to show me how we're connected or let me feel how we're connected.

[17:26]

So to work with a phrase like already connected is like to work with a koan. And many koans are just more developed versions of such phrases. And the story might be very simple, Gerald might say to me, I'm looking for you. He says, I'm over here. And I might say, oh, I never knew you were over there. So that's answering from another point of view. That's answering from the point of view of no over there.

[18:31]

There's only connectedness. So he'd say, why did he say that? But then he might work with how he mentally creates an over there and a here. It's one of the most basic things we teach children. It's why we teach them the ABCs or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Because when you begin to say 1, 2, I begin to structure the mind so it can separate this from this. Over there and over here are ways we actually are mental structures. And then they coincide with the way we function in the world.

[19:42]

So koans are meant to challenge our habits of ordinary thinking. And open us to both ordinary thinking, which we have to have to function, or the more timeless, subtle way we also live. So the best is just to hold a koan or phrase in front of you rather gently. But with a deep intention to hold it in front of you. But not an intention to understand it, just an intention to hold it there. Do you understand the difference? If you're trying to understand, then it's coming from some smaller mind.

[20:57]

So, I don't, I mean, yes, I try to understand the world and so forth, but more deeply, This is it. That's all. This is where we live. We are born into this world and we're all interrelated. All of this is my true human body. And there has to be one level of mind where I just trust. Each moment we're born and we die. And this moment is completely unique. If you think it's not unique, you have some idea of permanence in your head. It won't be repeated.

[22:01]

As I say, we've created something coming in this room that never will exist again. And to really know that allows you to trust and enter the feeling, the non-graspable feeling that's present. Now it's true I'm coming back to intention and will. This is quite a subtle question. Because I have an intention to sit down. And I have an intention to sit still. But it's a... Hmm. Dogen says, when the self advances and reveals all myriad things, that's delusion.

[23:20]

When all things advance and reveal the self, that's enlightenment. So when the self advances trying to understand in the usual way, and again, many things we have to do that way, but if it's where you live and what you depend on, it's a kind of delusion. When you have a mind that's so open that all things reveal you, we call this realization. So you have to be a little careful with intention that's too directed or forced.

[24:29]

But if you just for instance do a simple thing like sit still, and you have an intention to sit still, but you don't force yourself with rigidness, you just let stillness, mental and physical stillness come into your body. You develop what we call a will body. A body which has power and stability just in being, not in doing. You can direct that toward doing, but it always returns to this stillness. So the use of will and intention, maybe it's better to say willingness than will.

[25:45]

Sorry, it's hard to say what this is. Okay. Something else? I'd like to add something to the question about the quran. Yes, please. Does the teacher choose a certain quran according to the personality of that person? Yeah. That means that the teacher knows the student very well.

[26:48]

Hopefully. But that's, I think... They have big rats. What's the creature we used to have at Johannes? Like a weasel? Marmot? When we first moved in, we had these guys. When we first moved in, we had these guys. Okay. The teacher is not the teacher.

[27:50]

The teacher is the relationship that the two people who are practicing together develop. The relationship is the teacher. And that relationship is in fact knowing, a kind of knowing. So that knowing and connectedness should be present independent of whether it's a koan or not. Now, after Hakuin Zenji in Japan, in the 15th century, a system of the teacher giving the koans was developed. But a more ancient system is the teacher just presented koans in the middle of conversations or in the middle of activity.

[28:59]

Or in a lecture or something. Or just walking along. For example, two famous teachers to a teacher and a disciple who later became a famous teacher. We're walking along. Matsu and Nanaku. And Some wild geese flew overhead. And the teacher said, what's that? This is a big question. What's that? And Matsu said, the disciple said, wild geese. And the teacher said, Where have they gone?

[30:01]

And the student said, They've flown away. And the teacher grabbed... grabbed the student's nose and really twisted it. He's got a good nose for that. And said, when have they ever flown away? Like is he identifying with the geese or is he identifying with the mind in which the geese appear? So most fundamentally koans are given in just this kind of way, nothing to do with lectures or something. And so maybe I've given you some koans here.

[31:10]

And maybe you heard one of them and you heard a different one. And then do you take it? Do you start holding it? But if we work together, I might at some point say, yes, I would suggest you look at this koan. But I prefer a more natural method where they appear and the student chooses them as much as the teacher gives them. Okay. Someone else had... Yeah. Surya, it's about aggression and fear. You don't let it out like we... Now, won't you stop a minute? You translate.

[32:23]

In this society it's said that you should express anger and fear so that you don't get sick. Yes. And that was also talked about yesterday in one of the talks that was given on the panel. Yes. Okay. Yes. So, how do you deal with anger and fear? And it seems as if you're very relaxed and joyful. Yeah. Well, I actually don't have much fear.

[33:29]

Yeah, I'm too old. Whatever happens is okay. And it'll probably be interesting. But sometimes I have a little bit of anger. No? Sometimes. But I think first you need to, if you're practicing meditation, Now we're talking here about a whole different dynamic of how you function. And you can't take just little phrases, what I might say, and then apply them to your life, unless you're also going to practice with them. Because it's probably true.

[34:35]

If you don't express your emotions, it may make you sick. And people who are always nice and doing things for others are often the people who get sick. Okay, what's the different dynamic? I'll just give you a few examples, one or two. First of all, if you practice mindfulness, Okay. You're bringing your attention to what you're doing. You bring your attention to your body.

[35:36]

And you bring your attention to your body. And you bring your attention to the field of mind, not the contents of mind. Okay. The contents of mind are like the words on a page. And the field of mind is like the page. That's a little maybe harder to understand, but let's just say if you practice these four foundations, they're called of mindfulness, and you do bring attention to your the phenomenal world, as it appears as activity, walking, looking, etc. And you keep bringing your attention to your to your body and your emotions and just letting them be noticing what they are not trying to change them and you bring your attention to your breath okay

[37:00]

I'm going to go there, behind you, if it's all right. Now, we all... Buddhism is not, as the Geshe said yesterday, about getting rid of your thinking. It's about not identifying with your thinking. Or living in your thinking as you all the time. And so Buddhism is, when we talk about Buddhism being about non-self, or a freedom from self, we mean a freedom from self as permanent or inherent. But we don't mean a freedom from the functions of self.

[38:27]

Because you have to function through a self. What are the three functions of self? And one is very simple, separation. One is connectedness. And one is continuity. Okay. Separation is real simply, again, I have to know you're over there and I'm here.

[39:40]

And you have to know his voice is his voice and not something you're hearing only in your head. We have to be able to make those kind of distinctions. And the immune system is a kind of self. The immune system knows what belongs to us and what doesn't belong to us. So we have to function that way. We also function through connectedness. Mostly, because we emphasize this, this is kind of politeness and being nice and so forth. Da wir oft die Sendung mehr in den Vordergrund rücken, erscheint das Verbundensein als Freundlichkeit. We feel separation as the primary dimension. We don't feel connectedness as the primary dimension.

[40:42]

Für uns ist das Getrenntsein die grundlegende Dimension und nicht die Verbundenheit. Some cultures feel separation as the secondary dimension. In meditation practice and yogic practice, you end up feeling connectedness is what you feel all the time, and separation is a distinction you make. Now, continuity... And continuity? We have to have continuity. Well, mostly we have to have continuity from moment to moment. And when you don't feel a continuity from moment to moment, like say I'm looking this way, and I turn this way and I can't remember that. Or I turn this way now and I can't remember you and I don't know where I am. I'm in trouble. But actually experiences of timelessness are something like that.

[41:59]

The world where everything we need is here, is a world which isn't based on past and future comparisons. And in this kind of world, we feel far more connected than we feel separated. But our culture teaches us how to function through separation. So if you begin to practice meditation and you find yourself feeling more and more connected all the time. For some people it's a little disorienting at first. And for people with a weak sense of self, what's called borderline cases.

[43:20]

They have too much connectedness and they don't know how to establish separation or they get... It mixed up. So what I'm pointing to is if you look at the functions of self, you're looking at the way a culture... nourishes its participants. And when you change that, it's a big change. Now, we primarily establish continuity through our story. Und wir stellen Kontinuität hauptsächlich durch unsere Geschichte her. Ich bin die und die Person. Und es ist mir möglich, durch diese Krise hindurchzukommen. Ich muss vielleicht den ganzen Nachmittag spülen, um da durchzukommen, aber ich werde es schaffen. That's establishing continuity through thinking.

[44:34]

Now, if you practice mindfulness so that you keep bringing your sense of location out of your thinking into your body and your breath, and into the phenomenal world, so I'm not thinking, I'm just a walking person. I'm not Richard Baker, I'm just a walking person. Ich denke nicht, ich gehe. Ich bin nicht Richard Baker. Ich gehe. If someone asked me, who are you? I say, walking on the... Excuse me, Richard Baker. Und wenn mich dann jemand fragen würde, wer bist du? Dann würde ich sagen, oh, eine gehende Person. Nein, ich bin Richard Baker. And when the Buddha was asked, who are you? Und als der Buddha gefragt wurde, wer bist du? Are you a king or a sage or something like that? Bist du ein Heiliger oder ein König? Then he said, awake. Dann sagt er, erwacht. This was a real answer for him because that's what he experienced, awakeness. Okay. So, when you begin to move your sense of location and sense of identification into your body, breath and the phenomenal world.

[45:51]

You have a different psychology. The dynamic is different. Anger and emotions are different. The way you absorb your behavior is different. If I'm angry because somebody said I was a schmuck or a jerk or something, you know, yeah, I... I hear it and I think, yeah, that's right. But if my identity is my thinking, it's very damaging and I'm liable to be angry. But if my identity is here in this situation,

[46:51]

you're still here and you may have said I'm a jerk but all the rest of you said I wasn't so bad so why should I get angry I'm much less likely to get angry. So what you've done, when you shift your sense of continuity to the immediate situation, you've changed the dynamic of your psychology. And in fact, psyche, basically, I think it's best understood as story, the story of who you are. And here's a very dangerous part, because in Buddhist meditation, you can suppress your story. And we shouldn't do that.

[48:09]

We are Westerners, and Westerners, we mature ourselves through our story. So I think we should use meditation so that we can mature our story as continuity. But it's healthy to also have other kinds of continuity in which you locate yourself. And when you're anxious or in a crisis and you go wash the dishes, you're basically trying to locate yourself in the continuity of the phenomenal world. Now, emotion, I like the word emotion in English.

[49:27]

And it has this motion in it, movement in it. Now, all mental phenomena is accompanied by non-graspable feeling. And let me... In this room again, there's a kind of feeling we've created. If one person walks out, the feeling changes a little bit. If one or two more people come in, the feeling changes a little bit. And moment by moment, it's appearing, this feeling. And it's changing all the time. In my opinion, the most real thing that's happening here.

[50:31]

And the more you are in this field of non-graspable feeling, the more you'll probably be healthy. I would say it's the present as presence. Not as some kind of container called here and now. But a presence in which your own past and possible futures are emerging. Now, this non-graspable feeling, which is present if you're alive, is he alive or dead? Oh, alive. How do you know? He just gave me a koan.

[51:39]

Okay, thank you. I don't. This feeling, which is... aliveness itself becomes emotion. And it's rooted in caring. And the word think and thank, as I pointed out, is the same root in English and German, I'm sure. And I think it points to the fact that thinking is in root a form of appreciation. If I look at you, It's because there's some kind of appreciation just to notice you.

[52:46]

And all emotions are rooted in this caring. If I'm angry, it's because I care. I don't care. If I'm angry, it's because I care. Oh, sorry. He doesn't know that all the time. Also wenn ich wütend bin, dann habe ich schon das Gefühl, dass sie mir wichtig sind. Now, practice is to bring emotions, discover the root of caring in emotions. So if I'm angry, I pay more attention to how it's rooted in caring than how it's rooted in some kind of threat or...

[53:52]

Also wenn ich mir die Wurzeln von Ärger anschaue, dann schaue ich mehr in Richtung von unterstützen und sich kümmern, als im Sinne von getrennt sein. Now, this non-graspable feeling, dieses Gefühl, was ich nicht greifen kann, it becomes appreciation and then caring, wird Anerkennung und dann kümmern, love, gratitude, and so forth. And the more it becomes in the service of self, and the self as separation, then it becomes anger, jealousy, etc. And then it becomes anger, jealousy, etc. Now you can see this is a different system.

[55:07]

Instead of trying to get the emotions out of the barrel, Because if they stay in the barrel, you get sick. We open the bottom of the barrel, just let them fall out. Now, I don't know if you can apply this. You have to do some meditation to get this feeling. And the more you have this kind of feeling, then anger, for example, is a kind of language. And there's a difference between outrage and rage. For example, if... If something happens that a person makes you angry, that can be rage.

[56:20]

But if it's because of some kind of fundamental thing like war or something, we can have outrage that people do those things. An outrage is a kind of compassion or strong feeling about what human life can be. So working with our emotions in the vision of how... a human being is in Buddhism, is different than when emotions are viewed as something that's in a container that has to come out or something. But what I found useful is to say that somebody has gotten me quite angry. If it seems to be something I should legitimately be angry about, I may then decide to be angry as a form of language.

[57:28]

So they understand how I feel. Yeah. Or I may, if it's more personal and it's not necessarily justified anger, I probably won't express it. But I'll say, I might say to the person, you have made me very angry. So it's a kind of expression of it, but you know, it's... But you have these kind of choices without any suppression. But it's useful during meditation practice to exaggerate your emotions.

[58:29]

To feel how deeply your anger and grief go. So it's good to spend some periods of meditation in as much grief as you can drag up. And if you give yourself permission, you may find there's an awful lot there. Personal grief and sadness about this human life. Und je mehr Sie das zulassen können, desto sauberer werden Sie sich fühlen. Gereinigt. Now, one other example of how it's a different process, a different dynamic.

[59:53]

This is a practice I call counting to one. And it's not yet one. Which is you try to count your breath, say. Okay. And you count your exhales. And you seldom get past one. One. Two. And then you're thinking. And you're thinking for two reasons. One reason is because you implicitly believe in a permanent self as thought. So although you've moved your sense of location, which is very easy to do to your breath, it's the easiest thing in the world to do.

[60:58]

But to keep it there for... A few hours is one of the hardest things in the world. Why is it so hard? Because basically we believe we live in our thinking. But there's another reason. There is a kind of dynamic to the thinking that has to work itself out. So let's imagine now, instead of blue and green, We have two minds. One is chicken broth and one is beef broth. hühnchensuppe und das andere ist bouillon.

[62:09]

So, okay, conscious mind is beef bouillon. Und der bewusste Geisteszustand ist bouillon. And meditation mind is chicken bouillon. Und der meditationsgeist ist hühnersuppe. So normally, when you're thinking, you're Always your karma, your personal history is coming into your thinking. And it's there for a while and then you restore it in your warehouse. And mostly it's been created in your conscious mind. Okay, so now you're meditating and this is not sleeping mind and it's not waking mind. It's chicken soup mind.

[63:11]

So now all your memories and associations are coming up into chicken soup instead of beef soup. That changes your karma. Changes your karma into chicken soup. I mean, I'm trying to be fairly simple here. But as I say, you either cook your karma or get cooked by it. Okay. So, If you keep bringing your story up into the spacious mind of zazen, first of all, many things that you didn't remember or didn't think were important start coming up.

[64:14]

And your story begins to come together in this less self-dominated mind. less comparative mind less dualistic mind so generally I would say a beginning meditator spends the first two years re-cooking his karma So this is already a very different process than psychology, which is working primarily with consciousness. Unconsciousness is a version of consciousness. Now one of the problems with what I guess in Germany is called patchwork Buddhism or patchwork Zen or something.

[65:15]

Shopping mall Buddhism, you know. You take a little New Age stuff, a little Buddhism, a little Hinduism, some Christianity, and a lot of psychology. And you have something that It's quite interesting. And it may actually give you a sense of well-being. It may help. But at a fundamental level, it doesn't work together. Because some of the teachings of psychology work together. when you're emphasizing separation.

[66:20]

And don't work very well when you're emphasizing connectedness. There's those kinds of differences. So it's best to know one way thoroughly. And to study many ways, but to bring them into the one way you know thoroughly. So many aspects of meditation work very well in Christian practice and Christian monastic practice especially. But not all aspects of Buddhism work well in Christian practice. I think it's very important to realize there's no such thing as Buddhist psychology.

[67:29]

Because there's no emphasis on the psyche in Buddhism. And if you think there's a Buddhist psychology, The problem is, then you'll think Buddhism can solve all your problems. But no, some problems you have, neurotic suffering, for instance, neurotic suffering, it's best to work with Western psychology. Existential suffering, it's best to work with Buddhism. And existential suffering, it is best to work with psychology, with meditation and Buddhism. So it's best that we see Buddhism as a mindology, not a psychology.

[68:39]

And Buddhism is, as a mindology, a study of how the mind works, It's a very good companion of Western psychology. But if you mix them up, you don't see how either works. So I think that mind Buddhist mindology and Western psychology may be a happy marriage. But we should understand their separateness. I think we've talked more than enough. Whenever I feel I talk too much, I think of my eyebrows.

[69:53]

They say in Zen, if you talk too much, your eyebrows get too long. So let's sit for some minutes. So once you've established your posture accepting your posture as it is but it's still informed by the ideal posture

[71:29]

And you can't separate, actually, the feeling of an ideal posture and the posture you're accepting. Still, basically, you establish your posture. Accept your posture. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Just let them come and go. Don't scratch. Leave yourself profoundly alone. Trust your true nature. As water finds its course, your true nature will find you.

[72:59]

If you can just sit still enough so it can find you. And you just have to sit still enough so that it can find you. A little bit each day is enough. With practicing mindfulness during your ordinary activity. It's been a great pleasure to spend the morning with you.

[77:46]

Thank you very much for your presence and your questions. Thank you for translating. And I hope I see you all again soon.

[78:22]

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