Let me discover how we find our place in the world. And I've looked at it that way because it's the most I can offer from my experience is to look at it that way. And I have expanded that to be not just vocation and profession, but also a general sense of longing. We don't know for what. And also our desire for a better world, the way we'd like it to be.

[01:06]

And then also that place of tension or decision within our profession, how we make that as it is more a vocation. So what I've had to emphasize is that process by which we come to decisions or let decisions come to us. So I've tried to, in some sense, create a kind of Rorschach of sowing seeds. And I tried to give you a sense of how we can make decisions at different levels of mind.

[02:35]

How we could describe the... Thinking through something in mindfulness. Perhaps we could call it confluent thinking. To confluent meaning to let things flow together. So there's linear thinking now, I'm suggesting. Think things through in a straightforward manner. And confluent thinking where you create a mind which lets things flow through. That's right. Sounds good. Please. And confluent thinking requires a trust in the world.

[04:31]

And to engage yourself in the body of the world and in your own present body. And to engage yourself in the larger presence in particular and vastness of each human being. And to engage yourself in the larger presence in particular and vastness of each human being. And one is a kind of philosophy as poetry or spiritual way of being. Opening up these should I say gaps, of mystery.

[05:45]

Allowing the spaces between things, mountains, to tell you something. And I'm suggesting that you need You can do this in an occasional way, on walks, on just being in a city, taking a bus or something. But you can also do it by calling up this confluent mind of mindfulness. Hold this mind and hold in the presence of this mind your... Dialogical situation.

[06:55]

A situation of dialogue. The problem for us is we are so often thinking about ourself. Which is really not selfishness, usually. I think the tension there is not selfishness, but rather that our self isn't really our self, it belongs to others. I think if you pay attention to your thinking while you're thinking about yourself, You'll discover you're actually thinking about yourself in relationship to others almost all the time.

[08:10]

How this self is seen by others. How would you explain it to others? So it's good to withdraw ourselves from this kind of Outer self-involved thinking. To uncover our true voice where we're really speaking to ourselves. And if you discover this voice, this true voice, you'll discover much more than your vocation. And if you discover this true voice, then you discover much more than your actual calling.

[09:26]

Make me think today about why I'm talking this weekend. I've been thinking more about why I don't know you, too. Especially on this weekend, I've been thinking more than ever about why I don't know you. I'm even more with you, you know, on your end. guiding right of the PC university. Has been spending, I've seen quite a bit this group here. The training. And he's up to now six words in German that I know. Er hat es zu sechs Worten gebracht in Deutsch, die ich kenne. At least half of those words I knew before I came to Germany. Die Hälfte dieser Wörter kannte ich schon, bevor ich nach Deutschland kam.

[10:27]

Like the Zoom type. Now, why could I be so stupid? Warum kann ich... Warum... Well, I may just be stupid. But, you know, I try to, you know, I don't always know why I do things. But I think part of it certainly is that I'm here to practice with you. And I'm not here to participate in your society. It's a kind of discipline, kind of monastic practice, actually. I don't have to know you as most people would see you as having a certain place in the society.

[11:31]

I don't know the social code. I don't know the social code, the social language. In America, I know exactly. Somebody's wearing this, or wearing that, or wearing this. This way, that way. I know exactly what it means. In America, it's clear. It's clear to everyone, if he wears the scarf like this, or the hat like that, or the blouse like that, exactly what it means. Many Europeans don't get it. In movies, how often American movie plots turn on what they're wearing in the first scene in contrast to what they're wearing in the last scene. And what few Europeans realize is that in American films, the situation is that the films actually revolve around the difference that the actors carry in the first scene compared to the last scene. And that's indicating how they've changed in duration. And that's indicating how they've changed during the course of this light play.

[12:33]

Yes. I don't know anything about you. I just see you and you just appear before me. It's great. I only know you as you magically appear before us. Some of you wear bright colored shirts and some of you wear black shirts. And I have no idea if it means something. Anyway, I think it's partly black for them. Nick? You also have to find that state of mind that allows you to be like that yourself.

[13:39]

And I say that mainly because I believe that it is important that you find this state of mind that allows you to be like that, even though you are German. ...in the world without thinking about it, simply. In order to allow the confluent to have its own intelligence. I'm going to be doing a seminar next week We can, even in Berlin. And at, I don't know, somewhere in Berlin, right?

[14:40]

I just follow instructions. The same building as last year, right? And what's the topic? The patterns and freedom of causation. I didn't say that. The structures and freedom of causation. Wow. You better get ready. Okay. Now, if I talk about something like that, what I've tried not to do this time is I've tried to present This is a kind of basic wisdom, a sense coming to the sense. And also the sense coming to... I've not given you any specific teach.

[15:58]

Because I'm not assuming you are all Buddhists or something like that. But, you know, next week I will probably do a book chart, even though you presented me one this time, thank you. I don't know what I'll do yet, but probably work through something more particular. Well, I think I've I've given you as much as I can about thinking things through at a number of levels. The way that I hope would help you come to your vocation or come to your vocation within your present profession.

[17:15]

You have this life, you might as well enjoy it. And I think if you lead it for yourself, you are most likely to lead it well for others too. And if you lead your life well for yourself, then it is quite likely that it will also be good for others. It may take some rearranging and confidence, but hey, why not? What you got to lose? All you got to lose is your life. And you're going to lose that anyway. So, have some confidence. I mean, as I often say, if you're not going to enjoy yourself, who is?

[18:25]

Okay, so now I'm finished. Unless you have something you want to discuss about practice, you want to talk about... And if you want to talk about the practice or something you should talk about. Yes. German. No, I should know German.

[19:49]

What happened? Yeah. I think you have to make a choice. And it's the choice and the commitment that make the alchemy practical for it. But I don't think you have... It means you have to exclude other teaching. I think, in fact, the more deep and stable your commitment is, the more you can bring other teachings into the teaching. But there's a synergy to practice.

[21:11]

In other words, the parts add up to more than their sum. And if you mix too many practices together, nothing adds up, even to a sum. And there's also a sequence, you know. There's like practice C, A, B, C. Practice C can't be taught. Until practice A and B... have been accomplished. And if you don't make a commitment to a teaching, you never get past A and B. Well, I was doing A, B here, A, B there, and so forth.

[22:18]

And this also... Practices which can't even be imagined until you've done A, B, C, D, and E, and F. And even if I told them to you, you wouldn't believe me. So that kind of... Magical chemistry is necessary. But, again, you can bring in other teachings and practices. One reason I'm very careful not to talk knowledgeably about Christianity or Sufism and other things, which I've studied some,

[23:32]

And one of the reasons why I don't speak with full knowledge or too much knowledge about Christianity and Sufism, although I have studied a lot of it, is that I really know the difference between knowing something from the outside and knowing something from the inside. I know many Buddhist practitioners and Buddhist scholars who write about Zen. They do not know what they are talking about. No way to tell. So I know I don't know anything about Christianity and Sufism or other teachings from the inside. So comparative religion except in a very kind of outer sense is not really possible.

[24:35]

No. The same holds true for this in relationship to a teacher. The chemistry is a little different. In other words, there's something that we call Trafagetism and there's something we call Ancestrosy. And Tathagata Zen and Ancestor Zen interrelate. You can't completely separate. But if you emphasize Tathagata Zen, you emphasize that the truth is present here just now, and there's nothing missing.

[25:54]

If you don't understand it, it's because you don't know the mind where nothing's missing. And Tathagata means to generate the mind where nothing's missing. So Tathagata Zen practice is to... emphasizes a notation practice through which the world talks to you and teaches you. Do you understand what I'm saying? [...] then a teacher for what is a teacher for a teacher is to show you the harbour to show you how to sail out of the harbour

[27:13]

Wave goodbye if you sail away. Yes. And to, if possible, give you the sea anchor you know, the sea anchor you need to anchor yourself in uncharted waters. Now, if that's the kind of teacher you need, you can have several different teachers. In this sense, the whole world is imagined as Tathagata or Dhammakaya as a kind of presence which teaches.

[28:36]

A flower sounded bamboo. The ocean. That has to be post. What's the condition of that? But that distillation is in the flower or the potion or whatever. But the distillate that is in the flower, or in the sea, or whatever, is also in us human beings. An ancestral practice is to discover The truth also through another person. So that's considered to be a deeper pregnancy. And more, you know, you're more mainlining the teaching, you know.

[29:52]

More what? Mainlining means injecting it directly into a vein. You should know about that. Well, we do it, but you don't call it mainlining. Well, when you say it rubs, it's called mainlining. I like working with you. You make everybody happy. And also it's considered that if you want to teach others, it's much better to have a teacher. Because through being taught, you learn how to teach. And also, if you don't understand the teaching in this way, through another person, it's very difficult to teach to someone else.

[31:17]

So, in fact, we have a mixture of Tathagata Zen and ancestral Zen, which means the lineage of teachers. And the mixture depends on the kind of commitment you can make to a teacher. And the mixture is characterized by the contribution that you can make to a teacher. Your job, your situation, your future. Not so much by your profession or your living conditions or all that. And if you happen to meet a teacher with whom you have the affinities that allow this chemistry or lineage to happen. To some extent, a little bit like, yes, if you go out, you know, if you were raised by wolves, you might create the language.

[32:34]

But you probably bark more than talk. And the language you created probably would be German or English. So nobody much would pay attention to you except some other person raised by wolves. Romulus and Remus. So, again, there's a language, as we talked about, it's You said you're a different person in English than you are in German. Can you be a person... Who are you when you're speaking your own language, which is neither English nor German? Your teacher is that person who speaks that language.

[33:55]

And the lineage, there are those persons who have spoken that, and this is my experience that actual language gets passed down. And the ancestors were the ones who spoke this language. And it is, in my experience, a language that is really passed on. And maybe again, that's why I don't speak German. Again, it's one reason I don't speak German. How many words do I know now? Eleven. I'm getting up there. Eleven words already. Yes, but yesterday it was only five. Last night I knew, please pay. Yesterday already, please pay.

[34:55]

Already paid. He lied, he said only six, but it was already eleven. Okay, so Mario, thank you. One more pass. Yeah, good group to have conversation with. It's a group with which you can have a good conversation. Yes. I would very much like to ask you if you have any questions. I would like to ask you if you have any questions. I would like, without exactly knowing what to ask, I would hear something about the connection to pain and disease or illness. The position of long-time practice on Zen and the relation to pain, disease, sickness, illness.

[36:10]

Does Zen cause you to be sick? Does it cause you to be free of sickness? What do you mean? Yeah, I don't know if I can respond much to that. I would say there might be a case for a certain kind of tension in unresolved Zen practice which can make you sick. And to emphasize the medicinal side of practice as a kind of specialty of practice. I realized that I've noticed that I've actually emphasized this more than most practitioners.

[37:25]

But I've no way emphasized it as much. Or that I would have become sick. So it can be something you really emphasize instead. It just means basically you learn how to work with, to discover your body visually and emotionally and how to work with your immune system. And the whole world is your immune system. Okay, back against the wall here. Yes. Thank you.

[39:02]

Thank you. What we had before, this tangential thinking about when you have, for example, three possibilities of professions, and you meditate upon them, and you make tangential thinking, and all this, what you explained before, this is marvelous, and the world is going fine, but is there also something to say when there is no possibility yet where to make a decision at all? and they don't have anything to choose. Well, you need nothing to choose, so why bother? Can I change positions with you? It wasn't a choice for him. Well, my experience is that if I looked at any period of my life, one hour, one week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, etc.,

[40:31]

There's, you know, I'm alive. Things are happening in my relationship to people and situations. And there's many possibilities in how these things, which are part of my immediate situation over a particular length of time, can be together or apart. Sometimes it's very mild and subtle, and sometimes it's quite... And my... I find what I've developed as a habit, a practice, is that I would say that I have kind of dialogue with what's happening in, shall we say, a two or three week period.

[41:44]

And then I had a larger dialogue going on with what's happening in the next two or three months. And I resolve those to a certain attitude which I feel and I hold in my body and I work with. And those two are in dialogue with each other. But then, for example, I have to I do quite a bit of teaching in the next four weeks, five weeks.

[43:23]

I probably have to give you a program about 50 to 70 lectures. Subjects I don't know what to say. But that's already something. I can only answer this by giving personal example. And then I have a number of people I practice with, quite intimately. And there are aspects of practice, for instance, when a person becomes quite developed, and often it happens that they start practicing with somebody, it's very difficult when you get along.

[44:26]

The ideal situation in practice is when you're quite mature or pretty good, you then have to practice with on a daily basis somebody you can't stand. I can understand that you can't solve that problem. You cannot solve any big problem. If you can solve this problem, you can solve a big problem. So there's a certain number of situations like that in Crestown and Johanneshof. Or in Pending. Five to six. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All those things I let float.

[45:49]

I keep them in mind. And I somehow assume by mid-December I'll still be alive. Might not be, but... Yes. What do you think about punctuality? Yes, punctuality. I think it's important to be punctual. I think it's important to be punctual. Why did you come late today? Oh, because I like to come late. Because I like to come late. I was downstairs with them at 5 minutes to 2.

[46:52]

Isn't that the case? And I said, I'll see you later. And then I said, I'll see you later. And then I said, I'll see you later. And if I'm going to give lectures, I have to be active. Heal my schedule up. And when I hold lectures, I have to think about my schedule, which is a bit different. So my particular notion, I always particularly come a little bit after a certain cycle. But also the custom is one reason I'm in Europe and America. It's not good if I'm always at the monastery. Okay. Okay.

[47:53]

my situation is this that i have a feeling of actually what would be right to do perhaps I have a severe lack of discipline, and I really don't know, should I go into this? What should I do with this? Just not having any discipline at all, which really bothers me. How should I work with that? How should I use probably this energy of that? Yeah. Yeah. yeah I was still thinking about yeah to try to I was to try to for some strange reason it's in Sashim too I find it useful to I find if I

[49:57]

For example, follow the schedule of the session. Exactly. I can't think like that. So if I'm not present while other people are sitting, I feel that very deeply somehow. When I'm not present, while the people are sitting, then I feel it very deeply and it helps me somehow. But I'm also... But it's not just that simple. Anyway, what I would do, I would work with just exactly what you just said. In other words, what you said is you have an intuition of what you want to do.

[51:12]

But you also feel you don't have the discipline to accomplish it. Right. So this is what's in your soup. Now you have to cook it. So you respect your lack of discipline. I don't mean you shouldn't have discipline, but right now what has floated to the surface of your mind is, I don't have discipline. I don't know if that's a joke. That might be an excuse to discipline over here. It's more complex than maybe just blowing me this year. Yeah. So I would think of words or description not as the truth but as something that flows into the surface.

[52:15]

It's not as the truth, but it's something that's floated to the surface. Now, we don't have much contact with what's below the surface. We have contact with what's floated to the surface. So I think you have to respect that and not try to change it. Particularly not by changing it on the surface. But take all the aspects that get slowly to the surface and now hold them in mind. and gently ask questions about them. What? Next two or three days? You might ask yourself, why do I say I don't have this? How does it serve me to say I don't have this? What disciplines do I have?

[53:47]

What do I mean by discipline? You just let that float around without thinking constructively about it. And then you take After two or three days, I have an intuition for what I want to do. Then you should jump and think about it. Follow that with question. What would it be like if I realized this? It would be consequent. And you trust that some dignified mind will come up, which probably, sometimes when we do that, we forget about it.

[54:58]

But then two or three weeks later or two months later, we realize we're living the change we want. We named the change without even noticing we named the change. A story I was told by the Ahud, I'll tell you again. It was funny because I practiced for many years with asking us, holding a question like this in mind. Very small one, very little incremental questions and big questions. Buddhist questions, philosophical questions and personal questions like, why don't I get along with my spouse? And I don't try to answer them, I just hold them in my mind.

[56:16]

Or one time I was doing something like that with some question if you will. And you never know when you're trying to stay present with a question whether it the tangential things are part of the question or not, or are they distractions? What is the tangential thing? Whether they're tangential to it, related to the question, or whether they're distractions. I was concentrating on the question pretty much more than I would now. Not that I used to focus more. And I can... Sort of visually and orally I could hear a phone ringing.

[57:21]

In my mind. And I thought, what a distraction. And then I visualized the phone and it was a brown tone. In those days they had no design of phone. I imagined it to be a brown phone. Back then, there were no designer phones. It was a brown phone. He wanted to extract. But it kept ringing. So I said, how will I go and answer it? In my mind, I want to go and answer it. He told me the answer. He told me the answer. You never know in this confluent thinking what's part of it or what's not.

[58:29]

It's a kind of craft you have to make. The secret might be your friend's comment about aggression. And the secret could be the comment of your friend about aggression. I'm keeping what floated in my... It's yours and mine. I keep it in my confluent mind and let it flow. Yes. What is when you have several questions? Quite a lot. Yes, hold them all.

[59:10]

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