So for those of you who are new here including the translator Yesterday in reference to my email I sent out to the participants We went around and people spoke to aspects of practice which had been significant for them. So I think we should just continue at least the group that was here from yesterday.

[01:06]

And Ingrid, who was here yesterday, I just was informed, just left because her father is dying, I guess. Already this morning? And you're back? Last night? Yeah, five o'clock. Five o'clock. This morning? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So whether we should do that with the new people, I don't know, but... we can decide sometime in the next 15 minutes. So some of you are changing positions so that you can do it again or so that you can avoid doing it? Yeah.

[02:16]

What? Do it again, I guess. Oh, okay. Well, you're the starter today, right? So you can't do it again. No. And I'd also like to know anything you'd like to ask me Because I'm pretending I'm already dead. Since most people in my genetic line have lived to be at least 96... At least genetically, I'm probably not going to perish right away. But I want to make space for people to do this on your own, like... Nicole leading the practice period now.

[03:34]

And not myself being around like a mother hen. I don't know if I'm much like a mother hen, but... And I cancelled, or we took out of the schedule for next year the doorsteps in. So this month and next month are the only institutionally defined ways I can meet with people. Also sind dieses Monat und nächstes Monat die einzigen institutionell definierten Ereignisse, wo ich mich mit Leuten auf diese Weise treffen kann.

[04:40]

I really don't know if that's a good idea not to do it this way. Und ich weiß wirklich nicht, ob das eine gute Idee ist oder nicht, es auf diese Weise zu tun. But I actually feel that it's more useful if I write things now than if I do face-to-face teaching. Yeah, and... If those of you who have been practicing a long time continue the practice, that's just as good as me being around. When people do show up, I'll continue to do doxa. Wenn die Leute dann doch kommen, dann werde ich weitermachen, damit Docs anzugeben.

[05:48]

But, you know, I don't know what process I should follow in this retirement process. Aber ich weiß nicht genau, welchem Prozess ich folgen sollte in dieser Entwicklung des mich-zurückziehens. But we're experimenting. And I don't know what, I don't really have any idea what to do. I keep, maybe something will appear. But Beate, I think you're next, right? Until now I participated in all the doorstep meetings. He only speaks Swedish and English.

[07:07]

Okay. So your voice has to be a little bit louder. Thank you. What concerning practice, meditation practice to... bring attention to the spine, breath, and body is going on. It's the most important thing for me. And the meditation. Yeah. And I have not been part of this for such a long time. I have said six to eight sessions so far. Some people would think that's a lot.

[08:08]

Yeah, perhaps. And in November I will be ordinated together with Bernd. Oh. Can I come? I hope so. This man in black. And for that reason, there is a kind of pressure that for as long as it's possible, I want to learn as much as I can and take with me as much as I can. As long as he is still here. And that's why I used every opportunity and came to every doorstep there was.

[09:09]

And my impression is that it's very intensive and I'm learning very much. And in the meantime, what I have been practicing with is the entire earth, is the whole human body. And say yes to every moment. And say yes to every moment. Do you say it to yourself in English or German? I don't know. But you feel it.

[10:10]

And I find them very powerful. And then... And visualizing, like you described to us during the first doorstep, all beings. All beings. All beings. Well, most all beings. Not all. So I like that very much, also because I'm in a difficult separation process. I'm sorry. And I'm learning very much on the one hand, but still a lot is kind of like a riddle for me.

[11:22]

Actuality, actionality, and relationality. So I'm very fascinated by this connection between actuality... And actuality. And actuality. And actuality and relationality. And beyond that, we said last time, okay, we take this term, but we bring in the possibilities, the diversity of possibilities. And last time we said, well, we take this term and we bring into it the possibility of choice, all the possibility of choosing. And this is really working within me and I really would like to know that. Okay, good. And I'm looking forward to November.

[12:43]

Oh, already. So doing Sazen in the morning and in the evening is the anchor of my daily schedule, my daily life. And looking back, what I'm wondering about is how sitting changed during this time. Above all, what happens during sasen and what appears? If during satsang a kind of awareness arises that seems to carry everything,

[13:56]

And this kind of permeates the whole day. And this kind of permeates the whole day. Are there signs of practice, ways of practice that play a role in sasen as well as in daily life? Insofern schließe ich mich auch dem an, was einige gesagt haben, dass irgendwo die Praxis nicht mehr abgrenzbar ist vom Alltagsleben, sondern dass das mehr oder weniger ineinander fließt. So I agree to what other people brought up and shared, that it's not possible anymore to draw a line between what is practice and what is everyday activity.

[15:16]

What is very important for me is the practice with the breath. during sitting as well as during the day. For a long time I have been playing around with, during my work time, and being with others, trying to stay with the breath. And that was actually quite difficult, and often it bothered each other.

[16:16]

And it was relatively difficult and often it felt as a kind of disturbance. And at some point I managed to develop a feeling through my whole body, as if the whole body was breathing. And at some point, somehow succeeded in a kind of, a feeling arose in my body as if the whole body was breathing. And the feeling of a kind of enveloping feeling of this breath arose without it disturbing the activity. To the contrary, it is quite similar to the feeling that arises out of sitting.

[17:25]

And I really miss it when I realize that I have lost myself somewhere in activities and am exhausted and burned out. And then I wonder, where am I now? And I really miss it when it happens that it comes to my mind that I have lost it and that I feel somehow exhausted and somehow I notice where have I gone. Sometimes I enter breath consciously and sometimes by itself it enters my field of awareness. And it is also similar with certain body regions.

[18:40]

Consciously, this happens to me with the forehead chakra, I consciously find my way there. For example, when I have a difficult situation. And it's similar with different spheres of the body. Consciously, I do this with the stirn chakra. Forehead? No. Third eye? That I'm consciously bringing my attention to it when something difficult happens? Yes. And it's interesting, it's enough to just go there for a very short time and And it's interesting, it takes only a very small time, maybe three breaths, to bring my attention to this place.

[19:40]

And things happen differently. And also some kind of physiological feelings arise, no? Physiological? Bodily feelings arise that I cannot explain in a physiological way. Even being a medical doctor. And I also use them for decisions. For example, in situations where I do not know what is the right thing to do, Then I imagine that I do this and feel how it feels.

[21:04]

Most of the time I feel it somewhere here in the chest. then I am addressing a certain kind of decision and I'm feeling how do I experience it and I feel it in the upper torso in the chest area there are other elements in my daily life turning words are very important And there are other elements in my daily life. Turning words have become very important for me. And it's very interesting how fast a point of view or an attitude can change. In sitting, for example, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

[22:07]

This is extremely powerful. For example, during sitting, this nowhere to go, nothing to do is extremely powerful. And some turning words come from koans, or they are And some turning words arise or come out of koans and there are also small phrases out of koans that you can use like a turning word. For example, there is always one who is not busy. Or in another relationship I don't know who was visiting the continent. or this knocking on the coffin in the koan, and then this phrase, dead or alive, in this koan, where I don't know who pays this condolence visit.

[23:23]

Und da komme ich zu einer Praxisform, die ich sehr geschätzt habe in den vergangenen Jahren, und das ist der Umgang mit den koans, vor allem mit den Peterzweigen. This brings me to a way of practice that I treasured very much during the past years. This is dealing with koans during the winter branches. So this time of spending one week with sitting and dealing with the koan and also the possibility to get familiar with the koan in advance already was very important for me. And I experienced again and again how often the case or something else within the koan was completely in the dark.

[24:31]

And during this week, suddenly things show up and become clear. All in all, I have to say that many elements, probably also many that I now forget or that I don't like, have influenced my practice and still do. All in all, I would like to say that many things also that I don't remember, things that I don't remember now, cannot bring up now, are very important in my practice. And I feel deep gratitude to you, Roshi. And to all of you who are here and who are not here, that we can do this together.

[25:47]

Yeah, thank you. And Rick is someone we practiced together in the early 70s in San Francisco, in Tassara. And he suddenly wandered in the door. He got lost on the way to Sweden. And so he's the last person, I think. Also, Rick ist jemand, mit dem Roshi in den 70er Jahren in Tassara praktiziert hat. Und er ist plötzlich zur Tür herein gekommen. Und er ist jetzt der Letzte hier. Several people have asked me how it happened after 40 years that I came to look up Pekaroshi again. I thought I'd give a quick summary of my practice, ups and downs. I spent a year at city center and then a year at Tassajara and then went back to Alaska.

[27:05]

My parents needed me and I went home to help them. And I intended to return to Zen Center. I had a very warm feeling and planned with no definite time frame, but I very much intended to return. But life happened. I got distracted and things happened. In 1978, I had a chance to go to China and went to Japan for a month. First, since I was going, and then in China, I had a copy of Zen Mind.

[28:18]

I had heard about the Chinese, that there was a Chinese Buddhist association, and I found them and gave them this book, although we couldn't communicate, except with the book. Im Jahr 1978 bin ich nach China gereist, zuerst einen Monat nach Japan und dann habe ich in China erfahren, dass es eine chinesische buddhistische Gesellschaft gibt und ich hatte eine Ausgabe von Zen Mind Beginners Mind mit und ich habe ihnen dieses Buch gebracht und so haben wir kommunizieren können, obwohl wir nicht miteinander sprechen konnten. And then part of that trip, then I went to Thailand and Burma and India. And I had another chance to go to India in 1984 and traveled all around the countries there. And then I met my wife in Bangladesh. She is Swedish, and that's how I ended up in Sweden.

[29:37]

And meanwhile, we had started a little... The second time I went to India was with a Tibetan friend from Alaska. We had a kind of mixed Tibetan and Zen meditation center in Anchorage. Auf der zweiten Reise war ich mit einem Freund unterwegs, der eine tibetische Praxis ausgeübt hat, und wir haben dann eine so gemischte zen-tibetische Gruppe gegründet. But my daily practice was, so we were meeting weekly, but my daily practice was, I think, pretty much gone at that point. And then we lived in Washington, D.C. for six years, and there was no group nearby. So there was no group practice during that. Well, this time I often wear a mala.

[30:41]

I always identify as Buddhist. Then we moved to Sweden and Well, life continued. But finally in 2013, well, I should say, sometimes there would be a problem perhaps with my wife. I would feel some problem. And then I would sit to try to deal with this. And then she would say, so what's wrong now? If she saw you sitting, she knew there was a problem. She knew there was a problem. So that couldn't end to that because I didn't feel like talking about it.

[31:41]

That's why I was sitting. So then in 2013, six years ago, I was visiting my sister and her husband in Alaska. And she's a very domineering personality and very hard on her husband. And I had been there four years in a row for various reasons. And the first time I went, I had had medical problems, and she was very solicitous. But by the fourth year in a row that I was there, she was treating me the same way she treats her husband. And it was too much, and I had to start sitting again. Okay. Okay. So in 2013 I traveled to my sister in Alaska and spent time there where she lives with her husband.

[32:42]

And she is a very dominant personality and she treats her husband not so nice. And I drove four years in a row. The first time I had health problems. Unfortunately, the group that we had started in Anchorage earlier continued and evolved into a Zen, strictly Zen place. So I went and started sitting with them. And then I've continued with daily practice since then, just 20 minutes in the morning, but regularly.

[33:47]

My memory from Tassajara and Zen Center was that it was always 40 minutes. And so it felt wrong to me when I ever didn't sit 40 minutes. But now it seems to me it's whatever works. And what I remember about the city center in Tassara, the sitting periods were always 40 minutes long. And I had the feeling that if it's not 40 minutes, then it's wrong. But now I have the feeling that it doesn't matter. And now it turns out there's several groups in Yurtborg where I live. There's the Soto group, the Rinzai group, There's a Chan Chinese group. There's a Volvo group. There's a Volvo group, yeah. That's where the Volvos come from.

[34:48]

The Volvo factory. There are different groups in Gothenburg where I live. A Soto group, a Rinse group, a Chan group and a Volvo group. And there's a little group that I actually sit with now that's called Zenfegen, the Zen way, it means in Swedish, which is very loose and not really Buddhist at all, although we just read Zen Mind for a discussion group. And then there's other... Yeah, there's other groups in Sweden, and I've sat a few sessions with various places in Sweden. Since I've started sitting again, and especially sitting a session, I realized one

[35:54]

I think when I was young we had the idea not to move, and I don't think it mattered. I probably didn't sit straight properly, and sometimes he would come and straighten me up with the kyusaku and so, and that always felt very helpful. But I think when I was younger I could sit, if I was a little bit off or something, I think it didn't matter because I was much stronger. Seit ich wieder mit dem Sitzen begonnen habe, habe ich mich erinnert, dass wir in der Sahara immer uns bemüht haben, sehr gerade und unbeweglich zu sitzen. Und das hat, wenn ich ein bisschen mich zur Seite gelehnt habe, dann hast du mich oft korrigiert und das war gut. Aber ich glaube, als ich jünger war, hat es nicht so eine große Rolle gespielt, weil ich stärker war. But now I find, especially sitting more than just 20 minutes, if I'm sitting in a session with a group or so, if I'm not properly balanced, my back starts to ache.

[37:18]

And I realize how heavy my head is. It has to be. balanced properly and my shoulders maybe pulling back or so trying to balance and I'm aware of all this. So I'm constantly, if I start to tense up or so, then I'm constantly working with that balance. And I think that, plus of course working with the breath, just just keeping aware of breathing helps to keep a little distance from things, from, I don't know, helps to keep a distance from things that might be upsetting or if it feels right to come out of that and to respond, but sometimes it's helpful to take a breath and step back

[38:32]

Und ich merke auch diese Aufmerksamkeit zum Atem. Ich merke, dass es hilfreich ist, Dinge, die aufregend sein könnten oder die mich beunruhigen könnten, einen gewissen Raum zu schaffen und die Möglichkeit zu haben, zu agieren, aber auch diesen kleinen Raum des Atems. So, mentally, for some reason, I often think about, I studied a fair amount of theology and so in college, and of course was raised in a Christian environment. And so I think about, I try to translate and I try to understand what does God mean to people and what is worship? Somehow that seems to connect to Zen practice.

[39:36]

I think you said yesterday something about why there are And yesterday you said Sorry, I'm lost. Can I say that again? Yeah, please. Just the idea that why does anything exist?

[40:38]

Somehow, sometimes it's helpful to me to come back to the idea that why is anything here? It could all just disappear in a flash, but it's here. Why is it here? So sometimes I just wonder and ask myself, why is there anything at all? And for me there is also a connection to seeing with this idea of God and this worship. In Christianity there is this idea that God created the world. Yesterday you said, Roshi, that everything will be created now in this moment. And for some reason, I often perhaps don't quite know what to do or have some ambivalence about something, about what I should be doing or what's worth doing or something. And then I think about worship. It seems, what should humans be doing?

[41:42]

It's like, in a traditional... It's like God wants people to worship God, but what is worship in our context? What is worship? I think just sitting. I think just being in the universe is worship. And sometimes I also ask myself and have a certain ambivalence about what we should do or what I should do. And in Christianity, I want God, yes, to honor the human God. And then I ask myself, what does that mean in our context? What is this worship, this veneration in our practice? And I think that's the sitting, the sitting practice. Anyway, so through all these years, I've always, well, I was back to visit Zen Center in Tassara a few times after the period when I lived there.

[42:56]

But then after a while, you weren't there. And so I've been curious over the years, how were you doing and where you were? And I heard at one point that you were in Santa Fe. Okay. I think you had a group there. Maybe I should stop for you. And in the time after I lived in the Zen Center, I went to Tassahana and also to the Zen Center a few times. And then there was the time when you were no longer there. And I asked myself what you were doing. Then I heard that you had a group in Santa Fe, which was also the case. And I graduated from St. John's College in Santa Fe, and so I was back there to visit one time, and I looked for the center, but I found something online, but I didn't have much time, and I didn't find it. But I had the idea for a long time, still, that it would be great if you or some Zen teacher could give a lecture at St.

[43:59]

John's, because it's very Western, intellectual. I know St. John's quite well, yes. I assume you've not given a lecture there, or I hope you have, or wish you could. I've sent students there. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing so much of what's happened to you. Yeah, so then just to conclude, then finally I found out that you were here. So I live in Sweden and I'm on my way to Athens for Democrats, American Democrats meeting. And I thought, I can come this way. The American Democrats could do better in the United States. I work with Democrats abroad, which is trying to get American expats to vote.

[45:05]

The reason is obvious. Well, you know, yes. It's interesting how you said you wanted to go back to Tassajara or San Francisco Zen Center, but life intervened. And such a statement implies that there's a kind of inner life which is interfered with by the outer life. And the problem with lay practice is something like that is the case. But then spousal life brings us back to practice. Sometimes sibling life.

[46:07]

So it's time for a break. And maybe I could say something, if it's okay, when we get back. But also, if there are some of you who've been here who haven't said something, would like to, you can just speak up after the break. Thank you for translating. You're welcome.

[46:47]

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