I think because of the Koran that we talked about a bit, yesterday I realized something that I didn't know before. I think through the koan that we discussed, something became clearer to me, or I became aware of something that I knew, but hadn't really felt before in the same way. And it had something to do with these ten directions, but it also had, I think, we didn't really get into it, but I think it was also, I looked at the koan like this, I think it was also in the koan like this. we spoke about the ten directions had to do with the ten directions, and I didn't look at the koan very thoroughly, but I think that also was part of the koan. Yes, it was. Yeah, go ahead. It was part of the koan, that's all I'm saying.

[01:05]

But how do you know what I want to speak about? Before, when you said the ten directions. No, the ten directions for sure, but what I want to... Now I'm ready and now I'm listening. Okay. Because what I have become aware of is how much everything I experience is such a strong mirror in my own perception. What became clearer to me is how much everything I experience is a mirror of my own perception. Yes. I read that a lot and I think there was something along those lines in the koan also but also in for example in the in doing the orioki um

[02:36]

Yeah, vielleicht sagst du dich mal kurz selbst. Okay. Also, sozusagen, was ich einfach so interessant finde, ist... Englisch, oder? Ja. Mach mal dein Englisches. Ah, okay. So, for example, in Oryoki, eating in Oryoki, it's not... It's like the situation... Maybe I say like this, the situation is not colored or it's not good or bad. Maybe it's neutral, I don't know. But it's something of me bringing in this feeling of, oh, I really don't like this. Oh, I really like this. And for example, Orioki, like this experience, I had it tons of times. Oh, it's so annoying. And then, oh, it's the best thing I could ever think about. Yes, with this Orioki, especially this how great I sometimes find it or how stupid I sometimes find it.

[03:45]

And somehow it was for me, in some way it was impressive for me to notice how it really always plays a role in my whole life. So actually I always do the same things over and over again and my relationship to it actually changes all the time. And to realize how much it is a reflection of myself and not these things that are actually the bad or the good. So for me it was just very impressive to notice how it's like that throughout my entire life, where basically I'm doing the same things over and over again, but my relationship to them changes. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not great at all. Oh, sorry.

[04:50]

Yeah, and it's just... Just realizing that it's me, in a sense, creating this problem, I would say, and it's not the thing. And it sounds so simple, it almost sounds a bit stupid. I mean, if you look up Zen literature, you'll find something like that pretty quickly. But somehow I found it impressive. It sounds very simple. I mean, like when you look at a Zen text, you immediately find something like that. But still, for me to actually see that is something that impresses me quite a bit. Good. The third Dharma ancestor who wrote Faith and Mind... Der dritte Dame, der dritte Patriarch, der Glaube an den Geist, faith in mind, zutrauen, Glaube an den Geist geschrieben hat.

[05:57]

Yeah, the first line is, the great way is not difficult, only don't pick and choose. Da heißt es in der ersten Zeile, der große Weg ist nicht schwierig, wähle nur nicht aus und suche, was sagen wir im Deutschen, suche nur nicht aus und wähle nicht aus? Ich glaube es nur, solange du nicht wählst, so kenne ich es. Nur so heißt es? Ja. Ja, okay, solange du nicht wählst. And then when you hear a phrase like that, there's always someone who says, well, I'm not going to put gasoline in my diesel car, so I'm picking and choosing. This is stupidly logical.

[07:03]

But to take a phrase and only don't pick and choose and see what happens to you when you notice picking and choosing, it's asking you to notice picking and choosing. Anyway, and I did put gasoline in the center's diesel car once. But if you do take such a phrase and you simply repeat it, the word for meditation in Tibetan Buddhism, I believe, is a word which means something like getting used to, getting familiar with. Something happens. Every time you pick and choose, you notice, oh, I'm picking and choosing.

[08:12]

Something transformative happens just from that first line of faith in mind. David is the son of friends of mine from the 80s. And when my wife was given an apartment in Freiburg by her family, all the friends I'd known in Freiburg from the 70s had moved away.

[09:15]

Da waren alle Freunde, die ich in Freiburg kannte aus den 70er Jahren, die waren schon weggezogen. Die einzigen, die noch übrig waren, die ich kannte, waren deine Eltern. Die sind beide Architekten. Von sehr schönen, modernen Gebäuden, ziemlich viele in Freiburg. But I remember when I first saw Stefan, you were a little tiny boy. I'd known your parents before they were married, but this time you were a little boy. And see, he gives me a chance to tell an anecdote. So I kind of hoped Stefan... his father, would bring him out here. He wanted to come out and visit because I thought you might like the countryside.

[10:25]

But that didn't happen. So when I first began using the apartment, we asked David if he would sort of take care of it when we weren't there in America and stuff. So then he did that. It was nice to get to know him. He's a nice little kid. Anyway, then he didn't become an architect. He became a lawyer. I never thought you'd become a lawyer. So at some point, being a lawyer, he decided maybe the Dharma, another translation for the word Dharma is the law.

[11:33]

So he thought, maybe I should look at the Dharma law. So what made you decide not to go into a law practice and to waste your time with this, you know, stuff? Um... Do your parents approve? Yes, very much. In German, right? Yes, in German. She'll whisper in my ear. Oh. One of the first, for me actually, one of the first encounters with Baker Roshi

[13:02]

The response is quite personal. I've always been looking for a person, for persons. The thing has always been rather arbitrary or not so important to me. For instance, in school, in one year I loved chemistry and in another I hated it. And it wasn't about chemistry, it was more about the teacher. But I've never seen people in anything where I thought, oh, this person I really think is good.

[14:21]

Yes, and for me as a teenager, when I saw Becker-Rosche for the first time, or I don't know if it was the first time, or after several times maybe, I had the feeling that there is something special about it. And for me, as a youth, I don't know if that happened the first time I saw Baker Roshi or maybe after a while or so, but at some point I started feeling that there's really something different happening or something unusual. Really? Okay. Strange guy, right? Well, I get a kind of carelessness and... I'd call it a kind of ease and maybe joy and aliveness that I just was impressed or that just made me was impressed by.

[15:41]

And then, um, vielleicht, ja, um auch ein kleines bisschen To say a little short thing about that. A small anecdote. A small anecdote. One time I got the task, I think Baker Roshi asked, through my father, I had been taking care of the mail. And then he asked if I could put together a cupboard or a shelving something for him. Maybe it was cleaning the windows.

[16:44]

I don't know. There were both. And I had asked my father many times before, tell me what exactly is Baker Roshi doing? What is that? And I think Baker Roshi's neighbors also had been asking for a while. But maybe differently. And my father always answered, Baker Roshi is doing the highest way of not doing anything, the highest form of not doing anything. And then I cleaned the windows.

[17:47]

And then I wanted to know from him, what are you doing? What is it that he's doing? So I asked him, what are you doing? And he invited me for a tea. And then he told me what he was doing. And he started by saying, and that's just something that's still present with me. You have probably heard that before.

[19:01]

That as a human being we often times aren't in charge of our own attention. So that attention goes here and there, but we don't have it under control. And that where your attention flows, your life flows. And then he said that in Zen practice we learn to train our attention. and then took out a small flower and said that the advanced practitioner has the ability to direct his attention to this flower and it simply stays there.

[20:03]

And then he said that an adept practitioner is able to bring their attention to the flower and it just stays. And at the time it was clear to me that I couldn't do that. It wasn't just about attention. But that coupled with something that also intellectually really convinces me and the feeling, the overall feeling I got was, yeah, sure, that makes sense. And that made me, for me it was somehow clear, I have to.

[21:25]

For me it was somehow clear, I have to, so I have to do that somehow in my life. So also this feeling, no matter what he does, I have to try it out in my life, in any case. And for me it was clear that somehow, no matter what this guy is doing, I somehow have to really give it a shot, really have to try this in my life. And then it was actually always present and I would have preferred for it to not be present anymore. Because it's easier. Well, I always imagined, I mean, it's nice to know that the time we were in the apartment together and things like that was part of your decision. But I always imagined you got to law school and said, geez, Buddhism might be more interesting than this.

[22:26]

But what happened when you got to law school and decided, oh, I'd like to do Zaza and got in touch with Nicole and started a little sitting group? It's nice to hear what it has done for you, the time when we were in the apartment, and that it has shaped you so sustainably. I always imagined that something that might have happened for you is that when you studied law, that you might have noticed that Buddhism somehow interests you more. I think this basic feeling that I have present as a feeling and as a thought, some sense of this can't be it. That happened sometime back then.

[23:36]

And that's what got me to say, if that can't be everything, I have to do something. And that is what at some point got me to say, okay, well, if this is not everything, if this can't be everything, then I just have to do something about it. Okay, thanks. We're supposed to go have lunch, so let me tell you an anecdote about batshit. Okay. Kaka? That's only a kid's word in English. Yeah, you can do that. It's a grown-up word here. In Portuguese? Cocoa.

[24:54]

See, that's universal. So his father was renovating an apartment across the street in a building, in the attic of a building, which actually had been the same architect as the building our apartment was in. The same original architect. He was redoing an apartment across the street, renovating it. And he had to get permission from the city government to do the renovation. And at some point they told him, don't take the batshit out of the attic. And there's two kinds of baths that were known to go to that attic once a year, I don't know when, you know. So your father called the people who were working in the apartment and said, leave the bat shit in the attic.

[26:12]

And the guy said, we already shoveled it up and threw it away. And then the high school where you went had batshit in their attic. Didn't your father ask you to go collect some batshit? So he went to his high school and got batshit, but not two kinds. There was only one kind at your high school. But your father went up, you brought it, and your father went up and distributed it. Yeah, so thank you very much.

[27:18]

All right. Thanks for being here for your step, Sam. And we'll decide whether we continue or not. We have one more at the end of the month, I believe. In July. Okay. Oh, in July. No more in June? No. Okay. All right, in July. All right. And then at some point, depending on who comes and how it is, we'll decide how we continue and if we continue. Yeah, technically speaking, we have them scheduled all the way through November. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So please, if you think the format or how we do it or how many days it should be, Or no anecdotes or something like that. Tell her, because I always do what she tells me to do. Thank you very much. It's been fun to be with each of you. Great.

[28:27]

One of the nice things about practicing Zen is you meet awfully nice people.

[28:30]

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