So some of you, Cheryl and Dennis, you haven't been warned. I would be giving this talk. Sorry about that. I don't have much routine doing this. I don't know where to put my shoes. My shoes were actually on the wrong entrance. So please be patient with me. I really don't know what I'm doing. But I thought I wanted to continue our seminar discussion and Christian's last lecture by speaking about a very simple list, a statement that Baker Roshi made quite a few years ago. He said, He said during a sashin, you really only need three things. You need intention, practice, and patience.

[01:04]

If you have these three, your practice will mature. So, much of what I heard during the seminar, and I also hear, and hear also within myself, the questions that are being asked and the way we engage with practice, much of that are questions like, well, how do I do that? You know, there's these teachings that are presented, now how do I do that? And that's like Erhard brought up, how do I establish continuity? Like Dorothea said, how do I participate in my experience? How do I enter a zone of nourishment and then stay there? I guess these are the questions that we have, and when I thought about how do I do that, I was reminded of this list, intention, practice, and patience.

[02:18]

So if we look at this, then first of all, there is not much of a secret there, right? If that's how we can make mature practice with these three ingredients or conditions, then that is something everybody can do. There's no big mystery, nothing hidden, no missing link. But it may be the case that we have to investigate our intentions more deeply than we would commonly do. And it may be that we also need to work with them and purify them. And it may be the case that we also need to ask ourselves what is practice.

[03:32]

And we may have to investigate what we think patience is and how we are patient when we think we are patient. So that's what I would like to speak about. And then we also, part of our discussion has been the obstructions of practice, you know, emotions like fear, or just general how to work with emotions. And I want to see if somehow maybe I can, in the context of this statement, of how to mature practice, as Bekaroshi says. I can also speak about how that takes care of, or maybe as a way of engaging the obstructions of our practice. Am I speaking loud enough, by the way? Okay, so let's maybe look at this rather systematically and just start with intention.

[04:46]

I think intention, our intentions, that's a broad category. You know, we can just think our intention is everything we want. But that's not, I think we need to be a little more discerning about it. Like if we want a cookie and grab it and then eat it, that's rather different than the wish, for example, to let's say become a medical doctor. So there are several layers of things we want which can also just be an impulse. And several layers and depth of intentions that we can hold. and have and that can structure our experience and our behavior, mostly. Can guide our decisions. So... as a kind of map for me that when I thought about how do I work with intentions, I came up with a little map.

[06:03]

First of all, you need to notice them. Notice what one's intentions are. Because our intentions can be different from, our actual intentions can be different from what we think they are. So first of all, we need to notice our intentions. And we have to be honest to ourselves too, with ourselves. Ideally also with others, but at least with ourselves. And, you know, one example that I thought of this morning, where my actual intentions and what I thought my intention was, was quite... what's the word, it wasn't the same anyway, quite different, was when I used to visit an old woman, she was my neighbor,

[07:09]

And she was 96 years old and about to die and I visited her regularly. She was a really interesting person. She was known as having a kind of photographic memory and she really, remembered almost everything she read. She could recite so many texts and she remembered many things she had seen very clearly and pictorially she could describe them very well too. So she was interesting to be around. Definitely she also knew my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother and so forth. She was certainly fun to be with. But one time I walked over there and I suddenly stopped and I wondered, why do I visit her? You know, I was a rather busy teenager, I would say. I was graduating from high school and I had to go to parties and I had a boyfriend and so forth.

[08:17]

So it was kind of an odd thing for me to do, to visit this old woman. And I asked myself, why do I do that? And what dawned upon me was that I had a hidden idea of needing to do good things because I was afraid I was maybe too bad a person. And at that time, I was still pretty young, I kind of believed in heaven and hell and these things. At least I wasn't sure. And I realized I actually really just wanted to buy my ticket to heaven by visiting her. So I felt terrible. I felt like I was abusing her and I wanted to do something good so that other people would see me as a good person and so that I would maybe gather good karma or something like that. So that was a case where I realized that my intention actually was quite selfish, but my action was made to look as though it was to help another person.

[09:23]

And that required some honesty on my part. It required that I was willing to look at what I was actually doing. And although it was uncomfortable, just tell myself, well, this is selfish behavior. Okay, so let's just take that and say, let's look at what what our intentions are and try to really see when we, every time we say something, every time we think something, we feel or we do something, trace that behavior back to where it comes from. And I think we can all do that. We can all have a feeling for where do I come from when I do such and such. And actually the intention, for my feeling anyway, determines the behavior much more than the purpose of the behavior.

[10:42]

It kind of, the intention, the space you come from when you do something kind of gives your behavior a flavor that really everyone can see. It's a little bit like Christian brought up the other day. You know, we try to we try to do all these things and appear a certain way, like we try to appear as a nice person or as a generous person and so forth. But then really we just appear as the person who's trying to appear as a nice and generous person. So your intention is kind of gets expressed along with what you do. And when that is not in accord, when you're When your deeper intentions, when your intentions are not, are kind of concealed, you're trying to pretend you are something other than you are, it feels a little awkward.

[11:52]

I think for yourself and also for others, and it's noticeable, kind of not nourishing. We need to understand what our intentions are and then see if we can act in accord with them. That is also what this word authentic, I think, means in common language anyway. We understand as authentic when we feel a person as authentic. We feel that they act in accord with their intentions. That what they say they are is what they actually are, what we feel they are. And I think it's, for me, that's quite a relief. It's also a way of, I think, speaking about truth's body. You... You...

[12:58]

Allow yourself to be known by others. And you just try to be the person you are. You know, you don't try to be something other than you are. And then when we are more familiar maybe with what our intentions are and have some sense of an inventory of, well, these are the places I usually come from when I act, then we can start digging for the deeper intentions and we can start asking ourselves, what do I really want? I guess the ultimate question for that is Suzuki Roshi's expression of the inmost request. What is my deepest inmost request?

[14:03]

And for me it's been one of the one of the most important anchors for my practice over and over again to clarify what my request is. What am I actually doing here? And why am I doing this? So then when we have a sense of we ask ourselves the question of what is my inmost request and become more familiar with it, then we have to find a way to locate ourselves in that feeling of that inmost request and to hold it present in the field of our activities.

[15:08]

Just always have it there. We do something and somehow stay close to this inmost request. Don't go too far away from it. Yeah, okay, so maybe that's even enough to say about intention, I think. We've all been practicing for a while, so all quite familiar, I think, with the question of what intention is, and you all know how to probe your behavior and how to ask and find your intention. You know, I think we can become quite good at when we observe our thinking, when we observe how we feel, and when we observe how we act.

[16:22]

With some practice, we can become quite good at always simultaneously also seeing where that comes from. Simultaneously feeling our intention in our behavior. And that's quite useful. Okay, and then there's practice. Intention, practice, patience. Practice, what is practice? Well, practice is a lot. It's everything we do here. and much more than that even. But just as a very general way of nailing it down now, let's say practice is to enact the teachings. Practice is to receive the teachings and to bring them in your situation.

[17:30]

What does that mean? Now, your situation without practice would in most cases probably be a situation which is governed and structured by likes and dislikes, by habits, And it's usually a self-referential situation. Let's just put it that way, in a very general sense now. And let's call that a karmic situation. karmic situation as the situation which is structured by habits which are based on likes and dislikes. Or we could say more strongly which is habits which are based on aversion and desire. Trying to move away from what threatens us or what we don't like and we're trying to move towards and possess what we want, what we do like.

[18:47]

And we accumulate experience in that way form habits, and that becomes our situation. Like Christian said, I'm an intersection of many experiences. So we become the result of all of our experiences and even the enfolded experiences of those around us or maybe our culture. Okay. And now if... If mainly what we live in is a situation governed by accumulated experience which was based on likes and dislikes, then enacting the teachings means that you replace these habits by the teachings.

[19:51]

The teachings are not based on likes and dislikes. The teachings are based on compassion and wisdom. Wisdom is seeing clearly, and that means the willingness to see clearly. It's seeing things as they are. as much as that's possible, seeing things with less self-involvement. And compassion, what is compassion? Well, it's a sense of inclusion, I think, a sense of this is also me, at least that kind of sense, this is also me, is a feeling from which compassionate action can arise.

[20:59]

So if we say that we are now introducing into our immediate situation the sense of the willingness to see clearly and the sense of this is also me, then we are structuring our experience and our situation very differently. I had a, it just comes to mind now, I don't know why, we'll see if that actually fits, but I met a pilot The last time I flew to Germany, he wasn't the pilot of the plane I was in, but he was just sitting next to me, just a passenger, but he happened to be a pilot. And...

[22:03]

This guy, he seemed quite intelligent and really nice, but he asked me the most provocative questions you can imagine. So first of all, he asked, well, where do you come from? What do you do? And where are you going? And so forth. So I told him a little bit. I said, well, I live in Colorado. And he just continued to ask. So at some point I said, he asked, what do I do professionally? And so forth. So at some point I said, well, I live at a Zen center. And then he said, oh, and that's also why you have no hair? And I said, yeah, it's also why I have no hair. And he got really skeptical. And he said, okay, so I mean this really nicely, but now, why do you waste your life and look funny? And I did not know what to say.

[23:06]

I stopped myself from saying what I wanted to say. I took a break. I figured, geez, that is a really provocative question. My first impulse was to just say, I don't look funny, you look funny. And, you know, he just, with the way he asked that question, he just pushed all my defense buttons, all of them at once. And I realized, you know, I was in that situation. I was about to defend myself big time and attack also. But I didn't want to be there. I just didn't want to. And so I, with all intention I had, I pushed away that defense and attack response. I just said, I have no idea what I'm going to say now, but I'm not going to say that.

[24:13]

And then I went blank. Really, for a moment, I had no idea how I was going to respond to that question. And suddenly I found myself saying, it's my path. I am living my in most requests. And he said, oh. From then on we actually were able to speak properly. And it was interesting to me because I did something new there. I just pushed away all habitual responses which were very clearly based on trying to avoid what was painful and trying to somehow get out of the situation a better feeling by attacking him or something. It was clearly based on self-referential, self-defensive behavior somehow.

[25:18]

And I just did not do that took a moment, concentrated on whatever I felt my inmost request was, and I just said that. I just said, well, it's my path. I am living my inmost request. What's he going to say to that? That was really interesting for me to see, because I found that by maintaining the integrity of my path, I was able to shift the situation from a karmic situation into a much more fruitful, more creative, more open, I would say, a dharmic situation. Why not? And we established a good conversation. We were sitting next to each other for 10 hours on that flight. It would have been quite awkward to not get along with him. And he ended up being quite interested in what I did, and you know, he then after all asked, well, or I was able to question his assumption that meditation is a waste of time.

[26:26]

And we got into a conversation that I think was fruitful for both of us. So yeah, I guess that maybe is an example for what it can mean to replace Replace habits with deeper intentions. If you structure a situation through your deeper intentions. Okay, so practice. So we practice, we enact the teachings. And it's a way of reprogramming ourselves. We find suddenly new behavior becomes possible. And then we follow the whims of that new behavior when it's nourishing.

[27:27]

And how do we do that? We do that with full engagement. That is another important, I think, aspect of practice, that we just do it fully. I have to... have to bring our attention to it, not half-heartedly or something, but just fully dive into it and trust it. And we can already see how how intention and practice, they work together. Your practice gets fueled by your intention. The energy your practice has

[28:34]

is a sign for how present your intention to practice is. You know, where else would the fuel for your practice, the fuel, yeah, well, maybe the energy for your practice, where else would it come from but from the strength of your intention? So you hold your deepest intentions, your practice intentions, which may be the vows to save, to be in accord with all sentient beings Or it may be the longing, maybe a longing within you, a longing for freedom, a longing to stop this limiting situation. How present can you hold that in your activity? The more you can hold it present, the more it can become the anchor or the the focus, the source for your activity, the more your practice will have energy. Okay, and then there's patience.

[29:47]

And I cannot overemphasize the role of patience, at least in my practice. I'm finding it to be, at least these days, that's something also I am working on right now. I just focus on patience, mainly. So much is about patience for me. And fairly recently, I had a conversation with Roshi, Becker Roshi, and I said, said something like, I don't exactly remember, something like, oh, I have many questions, but really my feeling is that the most definitive answer to all of them is patience. And then I said a few other things, and after a while I said, and then I have this and this questions, how do I do such and such? And he said, patience. So yeah, it's... Patience is not to be underestimated.

[30:50]

And then what is patience? My foremost association with patience is sitting in my dentist's waiting room and waiting for the doctor to come. I go there with a problem, I wait for the doctor to come and fix me. Now, I'm afraid that in Buddhist practice there is no doctor. I'm afraid that no one will come and fix me. Actually, it may sound funny, but in some subtle ways I do think I used to have that view, if I just hang out with practice long enough, or maybe even hang out with Baker Roshi long enough, eventually he'll fix me. Or eventually I'll have an experience that will fix me.

[31:57]

And that's also one way, one other way of looking at this discussion we had about how to view enlightenment, where Christian said, well, there can be a subtle tendency to wanting to possess it. You know, I think that's another expression of that, that we think it will come and fix us, or the teacher will come and fix me. In my case, the only thing Deg Hiroshi fixed was that thought. Fixed a lot of things, but also that thought. So I don't think that that's how it works anymore. It is... Patience is not most fruitfully viewed as waiting. And we need to investigate if patience has this connotation for us that really we are practicing with intention, but really we are just waiting for something to happen.

[33:09]

that can be rather boring. It's like when I tell my youngest brother, Jonas, I say, Jonas, just be patient. He goes, oh, it's boring. And why is it boring? It's boring because if we are waiting, then the situation is still just seen in the light of something that is yet to come. And it's the

[33:43]

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