Now since I've been practicing with so many of you for so long I hope you can share your experience in relationship to what we're talking about and any ideas and questions you may have And the most fruitful often are problems that you can't answer, but the problems make us think. I saw that you have some kind of brochure flyer for this event, right? And it says the processes of consciousness or something like that? Consciousness in psychotherapy? Oh, in Zen too, okay. Zen, I'm saying psychotherapy.

[01:01]

Because, I mean, in that regard, is noticing that one of the contents of consciousness is consciousness itself. Can that be part of psychotherapy? Is it already so? And if it's already so, is it already so in a way that's similar to it's already so in Zen? So anyway, that's an interesting to me problem, a fruitful problem.

[02:04]

So I said, because I've been practicing with so many of you so long, there was a way of saying I hope we can have some discussion regularly in this seminar. For those of you who are new too, you have full permission to say anything. Don't be intimidated by all the experienced old adepts around you. And also, you know, because this really is for me, and why I do it, is the meeting and speaking that develops the practice. It's the essence of the horizontal lineage. So before we have some discussion, let me finish to some extent at least what I started before the break.

[03:31]

Okay, so there's karma biting my... No. Okay. so as a new practitioner in the West I found that I had to particularly as I said before confront the world views of the West and I would in addition to the world views of the West my own experience which is developed in the context of the West.

[04:32]

And my own psychological problems. So I found that actually it's very useful to extend this koan practice of turning words To everyday situations. And everyday situations that one meets by trying to bring this traditional teaching of millennium and a half old to millennium and a half old. Yeah, into the West. And I particularly, two things, I noticed that when I came to Europe,

[05:33]

Which I often have to, I'm sorry, he won't be embarrassed by this, I have to credit Martin with that. Because I gave a talk, you know, I didn't want to have any public identity when I was in the United States. I've unfortunately ended up with more public identity than I need. So although I'd earned my living for some years organizing conferences, I never participated in them. Ich hatte meinen Lebensunterhalt mehrere Jahre damit verdient, dass ich Konferenzen und Kongresse organisiert hatte, aber ich habe nie an einem solchen Kongress teilgenommen. But then I did in 1983, because a fellow who has since disappeared, Knut Flughaupt, Plowhead,

[07:01]

Yeah, wrote me a letter which I said, this is such an interesting letter, I better accept. So I went to a conference in Alpbach and also in Davos. And I had no intention at all of being in Kassel at this moment. But this guy kept inviting me back every two weeks. And he gave me a room to stack my stuff when I was away. That's right next to where I live now in Freiburg. And one time I came to Europe six times in two months.

[08:09]

Six weekends out of eight weekends I flew to Europe and then flew back. And it was, you know, not entirely his fault, but partly. And I, at some moment, thought, this is a little crazy. So I began coming here for longer periods. So here I am. Okay. Usually six months a year in Europe. Okay. By coming to Europe, I found, you know, I'm primarily practicing with laypersons.

[09:13]

In the United States, I was almost... entirely practicing with monastics, not necessarily monks, but people living in monastic practice. So you're always speaking to the initiated context of practice. Well, it's not the same when you're talking to people you've never met before and who don't know anything about Zen monasticism. Yeah, so I found, you know, I didn't have any idea what to do, but I found that if I extended this practice of turning words into people's ordinary situations, it actually was a way to bring monastic practice into lay practice.

[10:29]

And it was in 1983 in Davos that also I met Gerald. And we've been Geralding ever since. Roshi-ing and Geralding ever since. Okay, so it just developed. I found it useful to extend this practice into as a lay practice, unrelated to koans. And I also, after a while, found that the sangha I practiced with in

[11:33]

California, which was pretty large, hundreds of people. Just the mailing list in San Francisco was 12,000 people. Not 12,000 people came to seminars or lectures, but usually 400 came. But I found that actually the turning work practice, except related to koans, didn't really work for people. And I found that it worked better in Europe. Now, I don't think it's because Europeans are intrinsically better than Americans.

[12:55]

After all, Americans are Europeans who abandoned Europe. Although the first joke people told me when I came to Europe What's the difference between America and yogurt? One has a living culture. Of course, being in San Francisco in the 60s and being part of a whole lot of stuff, I disputed this claim. But very clear European yogurt was better. American yogurt I can hardly eat. Yeah. And I think it's because the maturity of the practice now, and I hope in America too, is so much better than it was in the 60s in America.

[14:30]

The practice nowadays in the... Oh, it's not the 80s anymore. 90s, what is it, the 2010s. What I'm surprised with is how mature and developed the practice is in Europe and particularly in without, for the most part, monastic practice. So as a result, I don't think if you practiced with any other Zen teacher in the present time, nor in Asia would you find anyone who uses turning words to the extent that we do in the Dharma Sangha.

[15:36]

And that has not been any plan of mine. It just happened in trying to make practice work. So one of the problems I may try to enter during these two days Is this turning word practice something useful in psychotherapy? And what are the conditions that make it work in Zen practice? And are those necessary or available conditions in psychotherapy?

[16:46]

Okay. Thanks for trying to make sense of what I'm saying. Okay. Now, anybody want to say something? I would like to relate to something that you said yesterday in Hannover. You spoke about the present as practice. The fourth aspect you mentioned was unified relatedness. And you said that we assume to live in a world where there is a greater relationship, this unified relationship, a primordial relationship that carries everything.

[18:03]

You said that we assume that there is an original, a basic ground. A ground of being. A ground of being. Most of us do. Yeah? Yeah. Let me just say, if we don't individually, it's still built in the assumptions of our language and culture. Even if we don't do this individually so explicitly, it is anchored in our culture and in our worldview. And then you said that this does not exist in Buddhism. In the Zen practice it means that we live a united self in a world that is not united. In the Zen practice, we live a unified self, which is not unified in a non-unified world.

[19:10]

Okay, so in the science of psychotherapy and psychoneurobiology, One of the three important pillars of psychic health and as a condition to be able to deal with crises and kind of breaks big problems in life? That there is a feeling of being joined, related to some, like, overall being, and that through that there is some feeling of sense that life... It's possible to heal, yeah.

[20:43]

and I don't know how these two things can be joined or how they relate to each other And you said we should try to feel how or what the sentence already connected might change. I find it very difficult to be precise in my questions, but I'd be very grateful if you said something in this context. I think you were pretty precise. Well, already connected does presume a prior connection.

[21:58]

But the spectrum of connectedness can be quite wide. Yeah, we are connected because we're both human beings and Westerners and so forth. And in this generation, and blah, blah, blah. That's quite a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a spiritual or cosmic connection. Okay. Now, this is a... from my experience, such a subtle and complex question.

[23:00]

I think for the most part I would like to leave it to see what we can do during these two days to approach it. Yeah. But also, maybe we can simplify your question so that we can think about it. Can we heal ourselves in a world which is not whole? Of course, in English, heal and whole are the same word. I mean, etymologically. Can we heal ourselves in a world that's not whole? Or do we need the wholeness of the world in order to heal?

[24:16]

And I would say in Christianity you need God or some presence of, you know, a traditional Christian would think Jesus would heal you. At least that's what they say on television all the time when they're When you hear these preachers, American preachers of course, who are fed on American yogurt. But let's just keep it fairly simple. Can you heal in a world that's not whole? Maybe the healing would be different. Now, let me say in this regard again that I would just say that a useful worldview within Buddhism is to view the world as diverging and it also can converge

[25:30]

and just very simply now without being cosmic or spiritual we have converged for two days and this evening this afternoon we'll all go somewhere and we'll come back tomorrow And tomorrow afternoon we'll all diverge and some of you will see Norbert Nagel again and some of you will see me, but most of you will go somewhere else. And as at least a large number of astronomers would say, as I've said, the universe itself is diverging, expanding. And sufficient millions of years from now, astrology will mean nothing.

[26:58]

Because when you look up into the night sky, there won't be any stars there. They'll be so diverged in the expanding universe. So are things universal or unified, or are we actually in a world that all kinds of separateness are occurring, and temporary convergence. That's really basically a question that can't be answered. But it can be aesthetically answered. For example, The question, does the universe have an end?

[28:18]

Was there a beginning of time? Or has everything been going on endlessly? There's no beginning to time. There's no end of the universe. At least at the present time, this question cannot be answered. And if you say it has a beginning, as Western culture tends to say it has a beginning, You have a problem. What was before the beginning? Or what caused the beginning? Or what does the end of the universe look like? We don't. We can't answer these questions.

[29:19]

Buddhism has decided It's always been there. There was no beginning. It's a kind of aesthetic decision, a practical decision. So Buddhism has decided over centuries, we don't like the idea of a beginning because we don't know what to do with that idea. We like the idea of it being beginningless better. No, this isn't just arbitrary. It makes a difference in how you live your life if you think things are beginningless or you think things have beginnings. Of course things have some kind of beginnings, but fundamentally they don't. And then more practically we have to look at how the concept of unity or oneness functions in our life.

[30:27]

Unity or oneness functions in our life. I was trying to find two words like unity and oneness. It's only one word in German, einheit. Well, that makes sense. It's one. Okay, good. Okay. So, someone else. That's enough for now to speculate on this very problematic problem. What? Einzeit. Okay. Yes. Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist? Ja. Unser Zeitgeist hat auch Our zeitgeist has also sentences, phrases. For example, just in time. Can a sentence like this also lead us to the source? Just in time.

[31:48]

I mean, I don't know quite what that means. I mean, I'd have to think about, it has meanings in English, I don't know what it means in German, but I mean, like, Angela and I, with the dog, arrived just in time for the period of Zazen to end. Is that what you mean? So I have to think about what this sentence could mean. So, for example, Angela and the dog and I just arrived on time this morning to finish Sazen. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean something else? I think that comes close, because the goal is always to be there at a certain point somewhere. She thinks, yes, that's the meaning, because the aim is to be at a particular place at a particular time, just in time.

[33:11]

But I'm a person who's always late. I've never tried to be in time, because it seems rather arbitrary to me. Now, in English, we do just in time could also mean only time. We are only in time and not somewhere else. But let me You know, I have to ponder what you said a bit, but let me say, yeah, go ahead. Is a phrase I've suggested to people to practice with, is just now arriving. And I think that that's useful to practice with sometimes when you want, on every step.

[34:30]

Just now arriving. Dogen has a phrase, arriving hinders arriving. Dürgen says that the arrival hinders the arrival. Yes. Okay, Simone. Or even hinders. That's kind of the first question. I was also asking if psychotherapy and, for example, Zen aim in the same direction. My question is, and I've been wondering about it, whether psychotherapy and Zen aim towards the same direction or into the same direction? What do you think? Okay, stop, otherwise I can't translate everything.

[35:31]

So I think it's very individual how everybody here defines psychotherapy, but I also think it has to do with healing and kind of making normal again or making functioning normally again. You said heal, so what is it, in which direction should people develop, move, in quotation marks? And is there a similar idea or concept in Zen, you mentioned the word healing, like to heal people, or is there a direction in which people should go? And how can these turning phrases make sense and is there a similar aim in what we do? Which we are you?

[37:07]

If you talk about the two subjects, is it a similar aim for you? Let me think about it, or let me say something. First of all, all Buddhist teachings... are in the context of enlightenment. Now, I think that may overlap with psychotherapy, but I think it's different. Okay, so what that means is all Buddhist teachings either are conducive of enlightenment or are expressions of enlightenment.

[38:07]

Conducive to realizing enlightenment or expressions of enlightenment. And if you read Dharmakirti and Buddhaghosa and these folks, They're simply not interested in a lot of ontological and other considerations that aren't related to enlightenment. They're not interested in philosophical questions that aren't related to enlightenment. So that's kind of interesting. I think when you read these guys, you say, well, why don't they think about that? That's interesting. But that's just from their playing with mathematics or something. It's not interesting to them. Someone asked Sukhirashi, if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, was there a sound?

[39:13]

He said it doesn't matter. Okay. And all Buddhist teachings are in the context, and here it's more like psychotherapy. Does it relieve or end suffering? So all Buddhist teachings are aimed at lessening or ending suffering. But for a Buddhist teaching, self itself is the source of suffering. So there would be little aim at healing the self. But there would be definitely an aim at functioning well.

[40:48]

And... So from that point of view, you might analyze self, what aspects of the self as a function are necessary for functioning, but are not necessary for perhaps your narrative identity. So how would you go about so-called healing? Okay, now let's make it a little more personal.

[41:59]

I myself have never been interested in healing. In fact, I would rather not heal. I find the problems more interesting. I don't want to get rid of them. And so I want to be able to put the problems on a shelf somewhere and not always live them, but I don't want to have them disappear. So in a sense we could say, I want to keep the wound open, but I don't want to always live in the wound. So that's a rather different attitude, probably, than most psychotherapy. But not all. Okay, and in general, for instance, this is expressed in small ways, right? There are slightly different attitudes.

[43:16]

There was a very interesting, alert young Chinese woman at the seminar yesterday. Sitting right in front of Jeanette. And I said, and I didn't know, she didn't actually confirm what I said, but because she was there, I said. We in the West imagine the future as something we go into. And because we want to go into the future, we want to make it predictable. So we do all kinds of things to make it predictable. I told my I had two cataract operations last year.

[44:31]

So I have these plastic eyes. I'm soon going to be bionic. I'm too implanted. And I can see quite well as a result. As long as it's not too near. Okay. And I got some glasses because I didn't have driving glasses. Because my eyes are now good enough, not really to need driving glasses, but it kind of helps. So I got some driving glasses. And it came up that I have no health insurance. He actually said, it's unheard of for a German person not to have health insurance. He said, like that. And I said, I don't want to prepare for the future.

[45:36]

And I agreed that it may be relatively or even quite stupid of me. But I just, you know, and when I'm sick, for instance, people are always offering me aspirin or this or that or this remedy. I never make an effort to get well. you do this or that and you get rid of your cold. I don't know what's wrong with the cold. It feels rather interesting. So, I mean, my example about the Chinese woman is, at least in some parts of China, the concept is not that you go into the future. is that the future is coming to you.

[46:48]

And it's always arriving. So you don't try to prepare for the future. also versuchst du nicht eine vorhersagbare Zukunft vorzubereiten oder dich darauf vorzubereiten. Du versuchst bereit zu sein für die Überraschungen der Zukunft, die ja gerade jetzt andauernd ankommen. Wahrscheinlich ziemlich schlecht für das Versicherungswesen in China. In any case, it's just a little different way of describing it, but it makes a difference in how you function. So, I try to, when I'm sick, have the flu or cold, which happens occasionally. I just try to notice what's going on.

[47:50]

For instance, I've discovered, as I said the other day, that people tell me my hands are always warm. Are they warm? Yes. I don't know. I don't go around and say, ooh, a warm left hand or a warm right hand. But people tell me when I go around holding hands that they're warm. And I think that's from practice. It's actually considered to be a sign of practice that your feet and hands are always warm. It does seem to be the case in my case. But I notice, for instance, that if the tips of my fingers get cold, If I don't do something right away, I will get a cold or a flu in about three days.

[49:09]

So I'm not particularly looking forward to getting the flu. Hey, the flu, this is great. No, I don't look that crazy. But when it arrives, I say, okay, here we are. This is what it is to be alive. But when my fingertips are a little bit cold, I immediately start doing things which usually warm my fingertips and then the cold doesn't happen. So by looking at my condition, rather than looking to change my condition, I always look at my condition. I never try to change my condition. So when people offer me suggestions on how to get better when I'm sick, I'm always a little annoyed.

[50:18]

And it was terrible in Santa Fe, because half the population of Santa Fe, New Mexico, are healers. You fall down on the sidewalk for some reason, you trip over something, you're surrounded by healers, and you think... So my point here is, there's slight differences in the attitude toward healing. And I don't say one's better than the other, it's just different. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other, I'm just saying that they are different. I would like to follow up on that.

[51:28]

I have the question whether You mean that a very big guilt, an inclination to a big guilt, or a strong narcissistic inclination, or another neurotic loneliness, one-sidedness, represents an obstacle for awakening or enlightenment. The question has to do with this other question before. Do you think that either a tendency to feeling guilt? Then second, a narcissistic tendency. And third, or any other neurotic tendency, is hinders or is an obstacle to enlightenment. For sure.

[52:30]

Yeah, that's for sure. And I often suggest that people, I try to keep my friends who are psychotherapists busy, and I often suggest, hey, a little psychotherapy would be good. Or a lot. And I, years ago, did psychotherapy myself. And found it very helpful. But what you brought up raises a rather complex question, which relates to the title of our seminar, which I just found out a little while ago. is really what constitutes consciousness.

[53:40]

And, you know, maybe I'm going to have to get into this. Probably after lunch it would be nice to speak about it. But there's a word called vasana in Buddhism, Sanskrit word, which means the fragrances or perfumes that affect consciousness. But, you know, the word is translated as perfume. But it really means the... It has a much stronger meaning than just fragrance.

[54:49]

What are the various aspects that consciousness carries into the present? How do your previous actions perfume, in a sense, present consciousness? And so this is also concerned with, you can also, it's related to a word and we can put them together, for seeds. Seems like the seed of a tree. Okay, so a tree produces seeds. And the seeds that a tree produces can produce another tree. So in this kind of overall concept conscious now, consciousness is imagined as being something like soil.

[56:04]

and by your actions you put a seed in that soil and that seed perfumes consciousness but it can also lead to another tree so then it becomes a study of consciousness What kinds of actions become seeds within consciousness? And what kind of consciousness that you have in the present moment allows the seeds of the past to start growing? And what kind of consciousness now does not allow the seeds of the past to start growing?

[57:22]

So, and in this sense, karma and guilt are part of these seeds that affect present consciousness. So we could say that certain traumas in the past cause suffering in the present. Although the seeds were in the past, the suffering is in the present. Obwohl die Samen in der Vergangenheit waren, ist das Leiden in der Gegenwart. So do you look at the seeds of the past or you look at the suffering in the present? Und schaust du dir die Samen in der Vergangenheit an oder schaust du auf das Leiden in der Gegenwart? And what kind of consciousness suffers? Und welche Art des Bewusstseins leidet?

[58:24]

And do you have a choice about what kind of consciousness you live within? Und hast du eine Wahl, in welcher Art von Bewusstsein du lebst? These are all the questions Buddhism tries to cope with. And that sounds like an awful lot of stuff to think about during lunch. So, Norbert and Angela...

[58:43]

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