I was desperate because I didn't want to be there at all. And she had already reported to us at the weekend to be in Tassajara. Yes, and we went there and I knew I had come home. It was very simple. And although that is normally not possible, I asked there if I could stay as a guest student. And because I had come so far, they said yes. Yes, and they gave me a note with the schedule. And it was just a time of madness, of change, of new, of moving on. And the people there always asked, where are you going when you leave here? And I always said, to Santa Fe. And then they didn't ask further, because somehow it was clear. Today I know they didn't ask further because they didn't have to ask further.

[01:03]

Because Baker Roche lived in Santa Fe, only I didn't know that. And the whole time I was in Tassajara, I didn't find out. And I have another friend in Santa Fe, who I then visited. And there I only got it out of coincidence, because she didn't know either. But that's another story. Because I then found out that Bekaroshi is in Santa Fe. And then I got his phone number and called him. I then went back to Frau Tvidi. Then I told her everything. She looked at me so grinningly. And then I was there a few more times. But she has now closed the group for two or three years. It's too old. And now... Another encounter with her was possible because of an outburst from the outside, because a certain newspaper did an interview with her years ago.

[02:15]

They finally want to finish this now. I was asked to make contact. I just noticed how much I somehow let this relationship slip inside me, because I will surely write her a letter for three years and thank her that she really put me on the right path and just tell her what happened to me. And that was very difficult for me. I don't know why either. Because writing this letter something similar had to happen, like the fact that I'm sitting here now. You have to let go of a lot of things. You have to let go of... I have to let go of the wish that I would like to write her a letter that she likes, that she is happy about. I basically have to let go of the expectation that I will read it at all.

[03:18]

I have to... who let go of fear that she might be critical about what I do. And you have to imagine Mrs. Tviti, she is a woman who can be very, very loving, but also really very, very strict and hurtful. Ja, und ich hatte also das Thema Loslassen, Körper und Geist loslassen. Und eines Sonntags, und die Sonntage sind sehr schön, weil es da so still draußen wird auf der Straße und in den Häusern. Ich habe mich an den Schreibtisch gesetzt, habe ihr einen ganz langen Brief geschrieben und habe ihr einfach mal gedankt. Ich glaube, ich habe noch nie die Worte gefunden, zwei Seiten lang nur Danke zu sagen, immer wieder in anderen Worten. And there I also felt what mistakes I often made on my spiritual path, that I always wanted to have.

[04:30]

Want to have, want to have, want to get. And you are also very needy. You also need a lot. I need a lot. But you also have to go back. You have to give something back, also to his teacher or his teacher. And when you give back, you have to let go of a lot, the expectation that you have with this giving back, that something will come again, that you will get something again. And I even went a little further. I thought to myself, I want to give her something. And it was almost even more difficult. Because I know that if you send her money, she will immediately pass it on to some people who need it more. And she is very, very, very needless. Well, I found a present and I packed it. I made it really nice. Wrapped it in and flowers added to it.

[05:35]

I put it in the post office and let it go. Really let everything go. Probably I will never hear anything from her again. And then a few days ago I went to the mailbox and there was actually a letter from her, no longer written by herself because she can no longer write, but she dictated how much she was happy. That's why I wish her all the best on my way. I don't know, it doesn't touch me that much. She wrote that every path is the right one when the heart is with you.

[06:57]

Das war so ein Geschenk für mich und das Geschenk möchte ich euch einfach zurückgeben, weitergeben. Denn mein Herz ist wirklich auch bei euch und bei dieser Praxis und bei Beka Roshim. Would you tell me later what to do? You have to listen to the tape. Is it always going to be like this? Well, why don't we take a 10-minute or 15-minute pee break?

[08:12]

I mean, you know, something. And then I'll try to say a few things before we end. Okay? Well, I'd like to be able to think that I could say something It follows up with what Ulrike said, but since I had no idea what she said, except I heard the word Tassajara a couple of times. But maybe it'll be Rorschach enough that it will connect. But I liked the word guest student which appeared. Because I remember when we were developing Tassajara, first we had just the practice periods, but then we thought it's not fair to keep such a beautiful place away from

[09:28]

The people have been coming over the years, so we opened a guest season in the summers when we didn't use it so much. So we had guests, and then we had the students who stayed over to take care of the guests, and then we began to have people who appeared who weren't students and weren't guests. So we called them guest students. We didn't know what it meant. . . . This category was the lowest kind of being.

[10:29]

And I had no idea that a guest student would rescue me someday. That Irina Twini would aim her Sufi gun and shoot Ulrike across. bounce off the category of guest students, come to Europe. Yeah. And then you and many of you here sort of basically created the Dharma Sangha so I could sit here next to flowers and talk a lot. So I'm very grateful for this guest student category. Thanks for being a guest student. I learned how to be a waitress.

[11:34]

We're not going to open a restaurant. Okay. You know, I think one thing you can sense, and Goertz brought up this idea of who does things, is this practice of the five elements. Now, a number of people have asked me, I'll come back to that point in a minute, but a number of people have asked me about the five skandhas and others of the teachings that are part of what I'm trying to present. And some people have asked how to find out about these and others how to practice them.

[12:56]

Then how to practice these things primarily is to hold them in view. In other words, you can count your breaths and you can do things like that, but more subtle practices like the skandhas and the vijnanas and the elements, you can't do much. You have to hold them in view. And sometimes you can run through them like playing the scales. But mostly you hold them in view and let that begin to inform and influence what you do. So certain exercises are quite simple. You can really do them, like counting the breath or following the breath and things like that. But other exercises, like the skandhas or the vijnanas, are much more subtle. And you can't practice them directly in the simple sense, like counting the breath, for example. And maybe sometime we can have some seminars which are just meant to teach specific things.

[14:27]

And maybe someone else could do that, because I find myself usually wanting to work with something, discover something with you. But let me come back to this sense of the doer who does things that often concerns us naturally so much. And from a Buddhist point of view, this is a question of the basic direction of being. Buddhism assumes, and I would say through its practitioners discovers, that there's a basic direction in just being alive toward wholeness and health.

[16:03]

And when you practice with something like the five elements or the skandhas, etc., you can begin to see yourself, discover yourself, in not only detail, but a clarity that allows you to see the detail. It's basically nothing very special. It's a kind of ordinary sense, but made more clear. Let's go back to waking up in the morning and feeling the sun come up in you. Or some intention comes up. Yes, I'll go to zazen and without, as much as possible, not as a habit, just discovering what's there.

[17:27]

Or you have some other intention, like, geez, I better wash my face, I feel all sticky. And underneath that, there's some deeper feeling of I'll feel better if I do this. Well, this is basically a direction toward wholeness and health. But pretty soon you can feel, well, I'll feel better if I wash my face, but I'll also feel better if so-and-so calls me and tells me such and such, and then I can, you know, Oh, you can feel, I hope so and so doesn't call me and they've actually perished over the night. So this basic motivation can get quite corrupted.

[18:29]

And mixed up with your history and pretty soon it's a kind of almost fairly reified concrete object that controls your day. And the trajectory, when a bullet follows a course, the trajectory, The trajectory of this motivation now globbed up with lots of who's and needs and so forth. Becomes a point of view from which we start making decisions. I want it this way, I want it that way, etc. And we call it who is doing it.

[19:49]

We call it the doer. And once it becomes a who, and you think it's a real thing, it's very difficult to answer the question, who's doing it? But through practice and reconfiguring yourself through the skandhas, the vijnanas, you begin to take slough off that encasement. And we can see that at root there was a certain motivation or intention that we encrusted with things.

[20:50]

So the Eightfold Path starts with right views. And views in Buddhism are those things which are pretty much incontrovertible. They're true. Like a view is everything's changing. But all people are equal would be an attitude. Because all people are not equal. But if we said all people are different, maybe that's a view. Or if we said all people are both equal and different, maybe that's a view. So you begin to see what views you can hold without any doubt.

[22:21]

The most basic one is everything's changing. Now the attitudes that you develop in practice are the instruments of views. Now, when you start to practice, what you're doing is you're beginning to wonder if the views and intentions and so forth that guide your life, that you call the doer, are really the one you want to be doing your life. So you begin to wonder if the bodhisattva motivation might be the intention which began, which you could develop into the point of view you used from which to make decisions.

[23:48]

In other words, the bodhisattva became the doer rather than your personal history. And then you think about whether this Bodhisattva view or motivation, whether you can't really take it in such a way that you put it on this basis, from which normally this tour and actor develops through other views. And whether you now simply do not have this Bodhisattva motivation as a basis and not a personal story. Now, the bodhisattva motivation is necessarily part of your personal history or takes into consideration your personal history. But it's a different point of view. You're beginning to work with a different point of view from which to look at your experience. And discover your experience.

[25:02]

So, now, when I first started practicing, the two people who, for some reason, inspired me the most, other than Suzuki Roshi himself, was Wong Bo and Naropa. And the two people who inspired me the most at the beginning of my practice, apart from Suzuki Roshi, of course, were Wang Bo and Naropa. And Tilopa was Naropa's teacher, and they were pretty far-out crazy guys, and I thought, they said, this is a teaching for the irremediable, irremediable types, and I felt irremediable, so I thought, hey, I can learn from these guys. No guest student had come to rescue me yet. So Tilopa, his name means sesame smashing person.

[26:20]

Because the way he earned his living was crushing sesame seeds and selling sesame oil. And Naropa was called, his name means the indomitable one, a little bit like Akshobhya's name. But Naropa practiced for 12 years with Tilopa and Tilopa never gave him any initiations or he waited for 12 years. And Naropa, I would guess that during those years, it took him 12 years before he realized an objectless state of mind. It's like you can't really give an initiation to someone as long as they'll turn it into an object.

[27:29]

Oh, I've received an initiation. Or more subtly, like when Herman discovers that Jutta's not home and he says, oh, she's not home, he's turned that into an object called not home So when you have realized a mind of unfindability is the best time to give somebody something like an initiation. Now, But initiations in practice, there are outer initiations which are quite important.

[28:32]

But most of the initiations are inner initiations that you recognize for yourself. Now, the first initiation that arises in you and that you can give yourself is the decision to practice. That you recognize the possibility of practice. Now, it becomes an initiation the more you recognize it and say, hey, yes. And I had, you know, I've told you various anecdotes.

[29:38]

I had several recognitions myself, some with Tsukuyoshi and one, for example, with a friend. And I mean, since it's a very short little story, I'll just say that I went to a bar where this guy, I'm saying goodbye to him, and he said, he's leaving the next day, and he said to me, you know, Dick, if we were really serious about life, we'd just practice Zen the rest of our life. And I said, yes. And it's like... So the next day I called him up, I was taking him to the airport, and I said, thanks for what you said last night. And he said, what did I say? I don't know. He still doesn't remember it.

[30:45]

So it's like that. At some point you recognize the possibility of practicing. And you recognize... And it's the first step, the intimation, as I said earlier, that you can take responsibility for your life. That you can be the potter of your own life. And on the Dharma wheel, the potter doesn't have to be the potter you've grown up with. So I just tried to discover who this potter could be, other than the mess I was in, by getting to know Suzuki Roshi better.

[31:54]

So I let him turn the wheel with me and I let the Sangha turn the wheel and the Dharma turn the wheel. So that's That first recognition, Dogen calls initial enlightenment. Because the more deeply you recognize it, it means you've stepped outside your culture at that moment, you've stepped outside your personality, and were willing to start your life afresh. And unpacking that really is much of practice and much of Dogen's teaching is how to unpack that.

[32:56]

So we could say that's the first initiation. And you give it to yourself, basically, and you may then later have a ceremony and wear one of these bibs, something like that, to recognize you've made the decision. And this is so you don't spill too much food. Because you can't clean them, so you can't spill anything. Now the second initiation, we can call it that, is when you really make the determination to practice. Now we can look at this determination to practice in terms of the five fears. Because this determination to practice comes from in a way freeing yourself from the knowing of others to enter a deeper knowing.

[34:44]

To free yourself from the knowing of others the mind of others, to enter a deeper knowing. And I think we can look at the five fears here because they are very useful. And the first is the fear of loss of livelihood. The second is the fear of losing your reputation. The third is the fear of death. The fourth is the fear of unusual states of mind. The fifth is the fear of speaking before an assembly. And the antidote then to these fears, you now devote your livelihood to practice.

[35:56]

To your own practice, to helping other people practice and so forth. Like Tilopa grinding sesame seed oil to support himself to practice. Or like Suzuki Roshi during the Second World War, they took away the bells and everything and melted them down for weapons. And they refused, they ordered everyone not to support the temples or the priests. And they tried to force all the priests to take jobs in the war effort.

[37:10]

And he said, I practice Buddhism. Somehow my practice will support me. And after a while, the villagers began hiding little bowls of rice in the grass near his temple, which he discovered, and so he was able to eat during the war. So you... on some way or other, make your livelihood the livelihood of practice. I mean, this is a serious determination. And then you, the next is the fear of loss of reputation. Your reputation becomes your practice.

[38:12]

You decide to know others through your practice and to be known by others through your practice. No, I'm not saying as lay people you can suddenly, you know, change whatever you do into practicing with people, but still you can have this intuition, intimation, and let it grow in you, in your life. And so third is the fear of death. And you transform through practice the presence of death in your life.

[39:35]

Fourth, the fear of unusual states of mind. Which is one of the keys for practice, because zazen practice Mature jasin practice enters you into incomparable and unshareable states of mind. So you make a decision to explore all states of mind and all aspects of being with courage. This is what life is.

[40:36]

I'll enter this life. And fifth is the fear of speaking before an assembly. Which means you're willing to speak from the conviction of practice under any situation to your nation, to your employees, to your employer, to your friends, etc. Das bedeutet, dass man willens ist, wirklich von der Überzeugungskraft seiner Praxis zu sprechen, und zwar jederzeit zu seinen Freunden, zu seiner Gemeinde, in der man lebt, zu seiner Nation. There's a certain strategy of consequences, but basically you're willing to say in front of people, this is the way it is. This is when you realize true self-sufficiency.

[41:39]

So this is the initiation of the determination to practice, which has to take the form of certain initiations in your life activity. You have to have certain expressions in your life itself. So, And what I'm speaking to you about here is what I said I would do yesterday, is the structure of the path. From the point of view of initiations.

[42:40]

Initiations you give yourself and initiations that are then also in various ways recognized by your teacher in the Sangha. Now the third initiation, a difficult one for us, is the thought of enlightenment. Now the first aspect of that is you imagine the possibility of enlightenment. And the first aspect of it is that one simply imagines this possibility of enlightenment. Yes, and not in the sense of, oh, this is all really a bunch of crap, and it may not even exist, and if so, only for some heroes from the past. And one of the big, I don't know about European Buddhism because I'm not too aware of it, you know, I just hang out with you guys in little dark rooms, I mean bright rooms.

[44:04]

But American Buddhism is in a tailspin crash. Because you have a lot of people started to practice and started to practice seriously. Very few of them have realized enlightenment. They've been doing it 30 years or 25 years and they're 35 or 40 years old and they want a career as a Buddhist. So instead of saying modestly, well, I haven't realized enlightenment, but I can do the work of practice, I can teach Buddhism, and I'll help other people, maybe someone will realize this.

[45:12]

And that's not just the fault of this simplicity of, you know, uncultivated Americans. It's also that the Asians have brought a complex system which both acknowledges and pretends not, et cetera, and we don't get the system that they operate under, which allows both recognition and et cetera, blah, blah. But what's happening officially, virtually, is the groups and the leaders are basically saying enlightenment is not important. And they're rejecting the authority of lineage.

[46:22]

The groups and the leaders are basically saying enlightenment is not important. And they're rejecting the authority of lineage. It's not modern in America. And And as a result, there will be Buddhism, but at least Zen Buddhism is not surviving very well at present in America. And it turns on these points of both lineage and enlightenment. And it is involved in the psychology, the politics of psychology and equality and all that stuff.

[47:40]

Which in many ways is good, but it oversimplifies things. Okay, so you actually are able to recognize the possibility of enlightenment. Second part of this is you don't wait for it. If you wait for it, then you have to ask, who's waiting? You don't wait for it. Any idea of waiting for it? Deep doo-doo. Okay. Third. In no way do you practice that's dependent on or needs enlightenment.

[48:55]

You just practice. You don't think about it. But on another level, you don't lose sight of the possibility. If not for you, at least for others. So the fourth part here of this thought of enlightenment is that you actually realize, I can't do it for myself. I'm too small a guy. I have to do it for others. I just can't have a deep enough motivation if it's for me. Heck, I'm pretty happy, I don't need enlightenment.

[50:08]

But you look around the world and you say, hey, the world needs something like enlightenment, somebody, some person. So you decide very deeply, holding this possibility of enlightenment, you decide to realize it for others. And fifth, you never forget also, or you recognize, that whatever enlightenment is, it's right here. It has no meaning if it's over there. Or it's in the future, or it's in the past. It's only possible if it's always here. Whatever enlightenment is, you are in the midst of it right now.

[51:31]

You may not have been initiated by it or recognized it or experienced it or based your life on it, but it's here. You know that. And sixth, you never waver. You never waver from the possibility that you can realize it for others. I didn't say this was easy, this structure of the path. But this is a deep reconfiguring of yourself or deeply changing the intention which becomes the who of you.

[52:47]

So as I'm presenting it, teaching it, the thought of enlightenment is in these six parts. And recognizing and articulating these parts is the initiation of the thought of enlightenment. And that's held as a presence in you and allowed to inform what you do. And fourth now, third was the thought of enlightenment, and fourth is a recognition of the path of the craft of practice.

[53:50]

You recognize much of what I've talked about today, the Dharma, the initiation into the skandhas, into the vijnanas, and all of these at certain points, like in the transmission, there's actual initiations for each of these teachings. And the fifth, the last is the Sangha. You recognize that you really have to practice with and for others. that you most deeply discover your practice by practicing with others. And in the interdependent world we live in, there's no other choice. Now the thought of enlightenment creates a Sangha too.

[55:14]

The thought of enlightenment creates the Sangha that inspires you to practice. And in that sense, Shakyamuni's Buddha Sangha was the sick person, the corpse he saw, and so forth. Those that inspire you to practice is your Sangha. And the sense of Sangha in this fifth one is the Sangha, those with whom you share your practice. Now these five, if you look at them, are also a way to practice with taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. The thought of enlightenment is taking refuge in the Buddha.

[56:14]

And the practice is there, taking refuge in the Dharma. I've also come together in a vision. If you realize these five initiations in yourself, That vision functions in you with a kind of one-pointedness that you can see a little Buddha statue on the dashboard of a car and burst into tears. Or you can feel these five initiations bring the whole practice together in a vision whether you look at a flower or a face or look at yourself I'm getting too tired.

[57:43]

Can you just say it once more again? And these five come together in a vision, which, whether you look at a flower or a face or yourself, give you a deep sense of recognition. I think that's probably enough. There was a couple of other things I might talk about, but it's almost, it's after four o'clock. I can continue transitioning to just any shorter units. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's sort of different topics, so I can wait. And it's after four.

[58:46]

That seems like a good place to stop. And this phrase that Ulrike chose, dropping body and mind, from Dogen.

[59:49]

These five initiations, we could say, are the vision that bring you to the point where you can drop body and mind. And there's the activity of releasing yourself into the world. And some practices release you into the world. As the practice of Mu can release you into the world. And another is to center yourself, to feel yourself centered and cohesive. And the third direction and practice, each one of these different practices and different koans represent, the third is to illuminate the mind itself.

[61:05]

And you can feel these different directions in the questions you ask yourself about Buddhism and the existential questions you ask yourself. That some of them center you and bring you into a cohesive, a visceral cohesiveness. And some center you, I mean some illuminate your mind, allow you to see how your mind and consciousness exist. And others release you, as I said, merge you with the world.

[62:15]

So that you can honor each person you meet bathe in the presence of each person you meet in each situation. And I'm sorry, I got a little ahead of you. Thank you very much. No, we should probably sit for three hours now, except that I know you have travel plans. Yes? Could you just mention the theme of involving children just for information?

[63:20]

Yes, during this seminar, through the presence of Yannis, the idea came up, and as I said, it is really in the state of mind, and we need suggestions from you, or feedback, that we simply say, one seminar from Roschi's seminar next year, that we want to create or organize a possibility, that parents bring their children with them, and that we simply consider that it should not be a seminar only for parents and children, but that this seminar also creates a possibility for child care and that maybe one morning or a period is also done with these children and that they can simply experience what the parents are doing here and what they are doing here. I'm very touched by how composed and Buddha-like Janus has been during this.

[64:23]

And hearing his little hums and sucking noises and things like that has sort of, I think, initiated all of us. I hope that you can bring him to every seminar from now on. He doesn't have to pay. Thanks. I understood that. Thanks.

[65:01]

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