I wanted to start out sitting a different way this year. And I even started the last seminar, a regular, I call it a regular seminar at Braston Beard. That doesn't make you the irregular seminar. But the regular seminar, so-called regular seminar, I wanted to, I even thought about, I wanted to think with the participants how we should continue or if we should continue. Yeah, and I don't know why exactly I didn't tie.

[01:04]

I didn't tie. I assume somehow we'd continue because you've signed me up to a contract, lifetime contract. And it's just, you know, it's a part of our... has to be part of my trying to, and in fact, sort of retiring at Crestone and in Crestone.

[02:09]

I mean, I don't see there's any ammunition in what I have to do. Diminution. Diminution means lessening. I don't see that there's any lessening of what I have to do. But I am definitely giving less lectures. The last practice period was led by at Crestone by Christian Dillow. And that's one of the reasons he always likes to be here if he can, but one of the reasons he's not here is because he's basically running the place now.

[03:15]

And Nicole is here this year. When was the last time you were here? Six years ago. And But she's now living at Johanneshof and is the director. We had no other choice. No, she's learned everything at Crestown and she's good at the accounting and Katrin decided to move to Hanover. I don't want to make her feel important. But we're lucky that she's director.

[04:50]

And through her help, mainly her dynamic, we're changing the kind of culture of the place. It's giving it a more... finding ways in which those who live there in the larger Sangha in Europe can participate in how the place develops. So for me, I think this is, most of you, some of you have never been to Johannesburg or Christchurch. Also für die, die noch nie auf dem Johanneshof oder Crestone gewesen sind.

[05:52]

I'm waiting. Ich warte auf euch. But for me it's all of one piece. What happens at Crestone and what happens in Yanisov and what happens here. Für mich ist es alles wie ein großes Stück, was in Crestone passiert und auf dem Johanneshof und auch hier. And this next practice period coming up in September, the third practice period, the third 90-day practice period at Johanneshof, will be led by Paul Rosenblum. And Rosenblum Roshi is one of my... most senior successors. Senior sounds old.

[06:55]

He's not the oldest. Well, he's older than most of them, except me. so also simultaneously you know last year I gave you the the statement of Dogen's and let me just run through again a way of I think it was one of the first times I emphasized this phrase, this statement of Dogen's. Which is, sometimes, And as I mentioned, sometimes, and we mentioned the regular seminar I brought it up to, sometimes we know Dogen means among various times we could establish on choosing a particular one.

[08:21]

I, in this case he chose his name. Did you say times or identities? Sometimes. Times or identities? I said sometimes. He get paid. among the possible times you can pick. Now already that means that right now there's different possibilities of durative experience. experience that has duration. In other words, obviously a child, Sophia is now 14, her months are different than my months.

[09:40]

And So we can bodily, through our bodily pace, among other ways, establish a kind of experience of the passing or slowing of time. So he chose his temple, Ehe, as A-Ehe. I might choose I, Rostenberg, or I, Crestone.

[10:48]

Enter an ultimate state and offer discussion. It's translated profound discussion, but I think offers a discussion from this ultimate state. Simply wishing and then speaking to the assembly of several people, whatever it was. Simply wishing all of you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind. And as I said last night, when you hear a statement like this at Cottage Castle,

[11:56]

It's good to hear this as if it were really in the context of your life. In other words, when you were in school or now if you go to somebody's lecture, does anyone say to you, please be steadily intimate with your field of mind? Probably not. So when you say, hey, nobody said that to me before, they tell me to understand and learn, but not just to be simply intimate with your field of mind. So when it's not something that occurs to you, but now we're speaking about it as if it could be part of your way of being,

[13:21]

We have to ask, I think, what's going on here? What kind of experience of being alive is being pointed to? Okay, so I brought that phrase up last year here. But that marks a shift in what I'm teaching. Because I don't usually speak about, Dogen says, an ultimate state.

[14:43]

He means a samadhi. But he doesn't mean just kind of... He doesn't use the word samadhi, though he does later in a similar statement. So I have refrained from teaching over the years much about samadhi or ultimate states as an art. And the biggest topic I've refrained from speaking about is enlightenment. But now since I seem to be getting older and seem to be retiring or something like that, to some degree.

[16:04]

Yeah, I want to change, I want whatever I'm doing in the next few years to be as effective as possible. So I want to find a way to be more engaged with you in the seminar. So one idea is let's sit differently. And one thing we've done is we've broken the symmetry of the room. That makes it, for me, that's quite a big difference to get the room to learn. Also für mich ist das ein ziemlicher Unterschied und eine Art, wie wir den Raum dazu bekommen können, zu lernen.

[17:22]

And I'm not sitting on a platform, so I don't feel, I like being able to see all of you, but this way I feel more bodily connected. Also ich sitze auch nicht mehr auf einem Podest. Am Podest gefällt mir, dass ich euch alle gut sehen kann, aber hier fühle ich mich mehr geerdet und mit euch mehr verbunden. So I feel fine sitting on the floor, but I can't get up. My knees don't work well enough so I have to, you'll see me going on all four From a platform it's easier to get up. Yes, a night hoist, a night hoist. To get those knights on horses with their heavy armor, they had a pulley system. But then I'd need a horse, and that would really be cheating on how I teach.

[18:26]

But then I'd need a horse, and that would really be cheating on how I teach. So one thing that remains the same, and I did mention this when we changed the room like this in the last seminar. Part of the ingredients of a seminar is my feeling the presence of all of you. And so if half of you were sitting behind me, it would be a little more difficult to feel all of your presence. So we still have a situation where I'm sort of in the front of the room, I'm sorry. Anyway, I'd like to explore this.

[19:40]

And I'd like to hear from you too. Because what I'd like to do is to go into some of the teachings with more detail and depth. What would probably be most common when Sukhirishi got older he was planning to just because I was his senior student, just go off with me to somewhere in Arizona and we practiced together.

[20:41]

So I asked Norbert if he'd come, but you said no. Anyway, we talked Sukershi out of doing that. But it would make sense and traditional for me now just to concentrate and practice with five or six people. After I said that a while ago, somebody said, they came to me and said, that's not a nightmare that I wasn't among the five or six people. Well, I mean, of course, it wouldn't be any different than this. It just would be less of us. But I do want to find some way to do as much as possible.

[21:42]

makes us an effective time we spend once a year together it seems. So tomorrow I thought I might start with where we left off last year. But also I'd like to hear from you. What, if anything, you'd like me to go through again or open up more if I'm able to? When we do a seminar every year now, what year? Something happens in the process whether you in fact we are doing this together. And I discover ways of speaking about practice that I didn't know or hadn't done at the beginning of the seminar.

[23:22]

So I'd like to, anyway, enhance that process. Yeah, now, one of the things we did in the last seminar, I don't know, again, I'm just experimenting. What we did and what we considered is like next year we might have Friday I say something morning and afternoon. But that starts on Thursday evening. I know, but that was that seminar. But the regular seminar starts Friday, not Thursday. So Friday I would say something, but Saturday... I wouldn't even necessarily participate.

[24:52]

People would just talk among themselves about what they are doing. And then maybe I'd speak again on Sunday or I don't know. You know, I'm trying to figure it out. I'm being vague very partly because I don't want to make decisions right now. And one thing we could speak about, for instance, is I don't think I spoke to you last year about the word Hishirio. And Dogen has said that Hishirio, H-I, S-H-I, are viable. is maybe the single most important word in Buddhism.

[26:16]

Now, it may be, it's one of those words that is probably actually impossible to translate. But it means something. One translation could be immeasurable thinking. But when Yaoshan was asked what he does when he sits, and he says, I don't think. And so the disciple says, what is this not thinking? He says, I think non-thinking. And the word he uses for the Chinese version was Hishiryo.

[27:19]

Now, as a dynamic of practice, it would mean something like to notice without thinking. Now this brings up a lot of interesting questions. If through Zen practice you primarily notice without thinking, how do we accumulate our experience? Because our experience is mostly through patterns, words, etc. And if you're just in a wordless mind and you're noticing without words, without thinking, how can that work?

[28:22]

Wenn ihr einem wortlosen Geist seid und ihr bemerkt, ohne zu denken, wie soll das funktionieren? I think if we look at it, we'll find out it's not so infamilier. Ich glaube, wenn wir uns das genau anschauen, werden wir sehen, dass uns das nicht fragt ist. But exploring why all of Zen Buddhism, which is the most practical and experiential form of Buddhism, Practical and experiential form of Buddhism would emphasize your main way of being in the world is noticed without thinking. By the way, as you know, when I'm at a loss for words, I just create one.

[29:34]

So what we're talking about is really not philosophy, not a love of wisdom. What we're really talking about is something like experience, which is such a clumsy word. It doesn't have the love of experience or something. Okay. Anyway, so anybody have something you'd like to say? First, are you willing to experiment with me these days?

[31:01]

We've got two experimenters here. Yes. Last week I met Rick Hansen and Chris Germer. Do I know them? They know you. I found an expression One of the statements I gave you last year was that The Bodhisattva, this is like starting tomorrow, the Bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body.

[32:14]

The Bodhisattva contemplates the physical body from the attentional body. One of the things we could talk about is what would be meant by an attentional body. And from that point of view it's a much better word for practice than mindfulness, which is so au courant these days, would be bodyfulness. Yes, hi.

[33:16]

So I came here to Rastendak this time and I think I have I'm able to bring my practice into my work as a therapist. But last week something terrible happened that threw me off my track because the 15-year-old son of my friend drowned. Accident. He was sailing with his father and drowned.

[34:35]

And he wasn't found for a whole week. And so we have been taking care of his mother for one week. So I notice I lack any tools. that my Buddhist practice, my psychotherapeutic training, I have no means how to feel into the situation. There's one hand a fear of those emotions that arise, and at the same time an astonishment that my praxis and I have nothing to do with it. And then an astonishment that my practice is not happening, it's not sufficient.

[35:56]

I hear you. If I can say anything about practice in relationship to this tragedy, let's see what comes up during the seminar. Let's see what will come of it in the course of this seminar. What would be important to me, I don't know, I'm a little confused right now, there is always something like, we can almost deal with a sauce in the world as long as we have the idea, we can act or we can simplify it.

[37:12]

So for me, what is in my mind a kind of distinction that we can deal with suchness of the world while we are able to act, or when we are able to act. And if a thing like this happens, there is no field of action, there's just a stop, just an end. I don't understand. Is there anything on anyone's mind that you'd like us to speak about during the seminar? Yesterday you had this wonderful lecture in Cottagegasse.

[38:32]

Oh, I did. And you gave us the practice instruction. And you made the suggestion which is very valuable for practitioners to come out of the mental realm into the body. Just to notice, to see that we can be localized in the thinking mind, but that we're also able to move it somewhere else. This is a very basic instruction, but we really need it because in our everyday life we so easily swap back into the thinking mind.

[39:55]

And one of the two questions which were posed after the lecture was about What is it about emotions? And you made suggestions how one can practice with emotions. Today I thought about it and driving here we talked about it. Mein Erfahrung ist, dass es einen besonderen Mechanismus gibt, dass mit der Verschiebung dieser Lokalisierung aus dem Denken man in den Körper hinein, man glätzt in eine Art von

[41:10]

So there is a mechanism in my feeling that by moving your location from the mind into the body that there is a field that includes everything. And I call that like a jungle of feelings, identities, emotions and thoughts. Structures, yes. Identity and structures of personalities. Contents of feelings. experiences that immediately appear in emotional structures, or not emotional, but into the structure.

[42:24]

There just needs to be a small bodily sensation that leads you right back into emotional sensations. And this is how my observation is that this process of chasing the consciousness into the body, this process of chasing the consciousness into the body, So it's my experience that this shift from the mentations sphere into the body is also letting yourself go into this bubbling jungle of all these things. That's Tarzan. So I'm wondering in the West, do we have to deal with the identity structures that appear in our practice?

[43:30]

How else? There is no other possibility. For me, it's a request if we can keep this in mind and look at it with more detail, maybe also with the help of all these wonderful therapists that are here. Yeah, that's right. They are really wonderful. If I speak about this, I'd like to speak about it as a process of noticing, noticing distinctions, and developing the skill to make use of those distinctions.

[44:53]

If all we've got is this, what Dogen calls the true human body, then our skill, noticing, is very important. And we've got to be able to notice outside the context of language. So we need a noticing that isn't guided by language and cultural forms. Okay, so... Is that enough for now, or is there something more we should talk about before we end the first evening?

[46:13]

Christine? For me it's not something that I want to speak about. I am wondering if we can do motion meditation like Kimi together. Why not? But should we have it in the morning meditation or should we... Should we talk about Kenyan? Or do it some? Or some woman? Why didn't you pick Kenyan? I'm going to focus on the body while the body is moving.

[47:34]

I'm making the experience that if I direct my attention to my body while I am in motion, that this is closer to everyday world. Like cooking or doing something that one does every day. OK. I'll explore that. Yes? Last year. You said that Zen could contribute to trauma. You said that Zen can contribute to trauma.

[49:00]

I asked to trauma work or trauma itself. She says trauma. And that you promise to think of things, talk about it or think about it. I remember. I'm just in the midst of a trauma. Okay. I'm engaged with a similar question as Sabine. How do I deal with catastrophes, traumas, How do I meet catastrophe or trauma? How do I relate to problem of the world, problem of human beings?

[50:08]

That they can touch me without freezing me. Without repressing them. or without over-activity, over-agitation. The compassion or noticing without identification. Without being destroyed. Okay, this is good. The frog has something to say too. I didn't mean you. I don't know. In what way this, which is sticking to my head, has to do with these topics?

[51:45]

So I got that the body-mind is being experienced through the mind-mind, you know? Yeah, yeah. I can't get rid of an image because I read an article about fascia. Fascinating, yeah. because everything is taken away from the body and only the fascia remains, then the perfect shape remains. From every organ, from the whole body, you have the perfect shape and we can

[53:02]

There is a sense and we can, in principle, that it changes everything and that it fits here. There is a state that goes through the most powerful elements. They are all in there and for me that is so ideal. There is form, the perfect form, and at the same time it is So the image is astounding. So if you took a body and took everything away that isn't fascia, Every shape of the body, every organ, everything would still exist like a shape.

[54:07]

So weit bin ich gekommen. This is a perfect form. A kind of shell or outline. A perfect form would be there. Okay. Perfekte Übersetzung. Es fehlt noch die Hälfte, aber... and all these nerves that we feel in our body, that changes into a fascia, so to speak. We perceive through this form. So all the nerves, the endings of all the nerves, they touch these fascia, and everything, our experience of ourselves is through this connection, through this fascia. So you have to feel the fall, and when you feel the fall, you...

[55:17]

Yeah, if I say it, it will say, ah, but I don't imagine. You can feel the form through this nerve-facet connection and then transcend it. Yeah. It's happening simultaneously. Yeah. Well, one thing I'd like to see if I can do this, we can do this these days, is I brought it up in the latter part of the last hour or so of the regular seminar. And I don't feel I found any resolution or reached any resolution in speaking about it.

[56:25]

And I felt a little depressed. Like I'd failed. And not for myself, because I don't mind failing. Most of what I'm doing is always sort of failing, trying to make sense of my failures. But when I fail you, I know... Yeah, so I thought, then I thought, oh jeez. I went over my head, I can't make sense of this for people. Yeah. So then I thought, well, let's just do it with the psychologues.

[57:58]

See if we can find a way. And that would be What I think is going on in Zen practice is a series of different emphases than we make in our own life. But those different emphases end up producing a different kind of person. And I think if we can look at that different kind of person, which is generated through different emphases in their experience.

[59:28]

If we can look at what this kind of person is. But we're speaking about Possible potentials of one person. No, a potential of people who practice. In a certain way. To actually look at what that kind of person is, likely is, and then decide, hey, this may be great, but we don't want to be this person. Because, yeah, maybe this person is free of mental suffering, but maybe it's not the kind of person we want to be. So to me it was a kind of challenge in meeting with you, can we bring this up into an experiential reality for us?

[60:47]

But my hesitation is, this is kind of, we could say, advanced teaching. But maybe it's for people who want to make this their whole life, and you guys have better things to do. So we can look at it, as I might with my senior practitioners, as a way of being. But maybe it's also interesting to look at it together as a possible way of being, which we're not necessarily committed to doing, but it's one of the alternatives.

[61:56]

So I'm talking about something that I'm not talking about, and yet... Sorry. All right. Yes, Andreas. Last seminar last year, you spoke about the Anaya Vishnaya. Yes. So I for just myself wished that just sometime this weekend that you speak about the state of mind Samadhi and this all-encompassing field of Alaya Vishnayana.

[63:26]

And how out of this our perception arises and or creates that what we call world. Okay. I mean, I'm always, by implication, speaking about the Allaya Vishnu. Because it's the kind of... actualization of all of practice. Now, but, and I'm going to stop after I say this. But if there were say seven of us here, What I do is much more basic. I would do nothing but speak about the eight vijnanas, or maybe even the first three vijnanas.

[64:44]

And make sure everyone in the room, the seven, let's call it the seven, Because you're all the seven, you're extended seven. I would make sure that everyone had mastered the practice of the first Vijayana before we went to the second, and the second before we went to the third, and the third, and maybe it might be a year before we got to the eighth. And that's it, really, really seriously. Doing it in any other way is sort of like a Hollywood movie. I'm not sure. In other words, I'd say things that might be interesting, but to really actualize them, I don't say them.

[66:07]

Suzuki Roshi said to me, do not make Buddhism exciting. So don't make it too interesting. But that's hard. You know, you're sitting here and I want to be interesting. Can you wait till tomorrow, André? I say, it's all right. In relation to the group and to the... tragic event and also what I feel, also from Christine, I would be happy if we all talked about how we are now dealing with our emotions.

[67:16]

What is the basis here? Every single one of us So in regard to this terrible situation and to that which Christina mentioned, I personally would be very interested if here we can share how each one of us is practicing with emotions. Okay. Thank you very much.

[67:50]

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