At least a regularity for which you decide, for example, five days a week I will do this, whether I am sick or healthy or busy or not. So this regularity has a quality of cutting through. When I was talking to you about the bones and the spine, I noticed that a part of my spine is much more unbalanced than the rest, where it feels so wide and clear. There is a part where I think it's closed, and I notice that it disturbs me in between. And then when I breathe in more strongly, it even cracks. And I think, man, that's really... It's almost as if the lime is crackling. And then I think, it's kind of stupid to deal with it. I don't want to deal with it at all. And then I come to a slump. Between the... That's just the desire that it feels light and apart.

[01:05]

And I become impatient and then I let it be again. So it's such a... What spoke to me when you talked about working with the spine in addition to this other thing... This morning you mean? Yeah. And what I noticed in my spine there's an area that is blocked and then I approach it in sitting and then I breathe into it and it starts cracking. I can almost feel the chalk falling out. And then I get impatient and frustrated and I don't want to deal with it. It's tricky. Just do it again tomorrow. Just try again tomorrow. That collides with a thought that I have always stuck in my head. You should not change your attitude while sitting, so to speak. So you can now experiment with it, that's good. It collides in thought.

[02:12]

I've sort of taught myself or forced myself to sort of believe that during sitting you're not supposed to change your posture. You do what you want. Buddhist beliefs are not behind the curtain. It's good to sit without moving and so forth, but if you want to explore something, this practice belongs to you. You know, there's some people here who haven't said one word since we've been here. And it makes me feel a little funny, and I think all of us would like to have your voice in the room.

[03:13]

That was the Buddhist police speaking. I want to thank everybody that it was possible for me to enter later and to be able to come. Good, we heard your voice. Then I give you my voice too. A lot of things just make me quiet and thoughtful and clarified in me, and that's why I don't talk too much, and that's good for me. Normally I talk a lot, and for me it's quite good if I don't talk too much. And more specifically, I would like to say that it has been very rewarding for me, how Roshi has connected me today, that there is immediately a complete awakening.

[04:41]

A lot of the things here made me turn inward and just be with myself and to be silent. And I should say that normally I'm not like this. I speak a lot. And to be more specific, I want to say it was really helpful when Roshi touched me this morning. It really gave me a different feeling. Okay. Thank you. Yes, then I will continue. I would also like to thank you. For me it is also the case that I have received a lot and am very fulfilled. I have been very much catapulted into my practice through a personal experience. I also want to thank you I didn't mean to get a lot of thanks, but...

[06:11]

Coming here, you know, I hadn't lost touch with my practice, but sort of I'd moved away from practice somewhat, and through deep experience I had here, I reconnected with something that literally kind of catapulted me back into my practice. And I came to the recognition that suffering is really a good way, not only, but a good way to really get you started again. So that's what I'm taking from here and that's very good for me. I had some very deep high points. It makes it possible for me to feel a very deep connection with myself and not with what we are doing here and with Roshi.

[07:42]

And also to be aware and to feel the connection between you and Roshi. And with the group. It was really a piece of practice to stand up and to drive away. It was really like that for me. All my colleagues and professors were here. And the other thing that really touched me deeply was yesterday afternoon, this round in our group. And for me personally to really feel and also to get closer to what I have already said in the group, this closeness and the activity in her, that moves and occupies me very much. Yes, and for me personally, the courage to live in the moment and the gifts that come to me through the conversation in the group.

[08:56]

And the exchange with all the women, when we walk, when we go, when we eat, these are things that come deep into my soul. And the spirit and the soul that gets so close to me, that's really a gift. I received so much being here and one of the real deep high points was Monday morning when you talked about your personal experience and your personal suffering and how you worked with that. And that helped me to establish deep connection with you and myself. And that's very helpful. And also to feel the connectedness between you Ulrike, between us two. And another deep experience was what we experienced together in our group yesterday.

[10:07]

So all that together made me realize to treasure the present moment and all the gifts that are there for all of us. I really want to thank everybody for the exchange, if it was on walks or meals or being together. It's really in my energy now to go on in this work during the year to have kind of this this workgroup in the Sangha working in this way of being and in this way of exchanging so that we can go on in this deepening process in my everyday life and in the exchange because what I really realized was that this is the kind of support which helps me going on in this What I just wanted to make clear is that this piece of energy that is there now really in this way of doing, to continue in the group and that we can give each other more support.

[11:25]

We talked about it today. I just feel that it's just there now. Very grateful. Maybe, maybe. I already told them something or two in one of the quiet woods. And the other thing that has moved me a lot is that years ago I did a work with a very great woman, Laura Schiebelnheizer, which she called the face of time, which is body work.

[12:27]

and I have heard so much of it here again in an extended context, and that makes me very happy, and I am happy to be able to deal with these aspects again, to be able to deal more with this body and the head. Just hi. One of the reasons I was somewhat quiet is that I got a lot of information and nourishment for my head and because I'm not so familiar for it sometimes was a little fast and I needed a lot of time to absorb it and process it but what it did to me was years ago I did some work with a woman I appreciate very much, Laura Schielen

[13:42]

So your daughter's named for? And she taught something which was called space and time, and that connected the head with the body. And what I experienced... For me then, yes. It was a lot of care, for example, how I stand, I walk, up to the smallest parts, one step, and I take one step, the next step takes me. It was a lot of mindfulness taught how to get into the body. So what I experienced here that you opened up a field that reconnected me with this way of incorporating or embodying things again in a much broader field context.

[14:45]

So I really feel this is where I'm at again and where I want to continue to physicalize certain things again, get in touch with my body. So that I'm very grateful for. Okay, thank you. Well, not to interrupt, but... There's this idea of a lie of Tathagatagarbha, which sometimes is translated as Buddha nature. Sometimes it's translated as Tathagatagarbha means Buddha qualities or coming and going. And garbha means, interestingly enough, both embryo and womb.

[15:56]

And the word suchness is in there too, tathagata. And tathagata garbha, as I said the other day, everything that we see can be called the tathagata garbha. It's a word for the universe. It's a reality, but it's not a reality that's passive, just waiting for us. It's a reality we activate. Like the sun activates our solar system. It requires the sun, the moon, it requires all of this to activate itself. So if the sun was different, we'd be in a different kind of solar system.

[17:00]

The sense in Zen and Buddhism is we have that choice all the time. Just let's go back to the example that we had together. in dissolving the self-other distinction when I was speaking with you and you were speaking to me, I said it also immediately changed my body. And I described that change as a Dharma position in which my body was more open to the Buddha Dharma. So by experiencing something as Dharma, I opened myself to Dharma.

[18:14]

Okay. So there's a possibility of a certain Dharma activity. Now, we have this old house, Johanneshof. A former Steiner anthroposophical kinderheim. And former farm and barn. And we have, you know, put in... We have this nice early Edo period Buddha from the 1600s. And we have, you know... clean floors and a zendo and stuff like that.

[19:26]

Okay. So when people come in, they feel something is different than going in another farmhouse, say. So we've tried to create the building so that it creates the possibility of Dharma activity. And that's our first priority. At a certain size or certain kind of activity, you lessen the possibility of Dharma activity. And sometimes when I'm at I allow myself, find myself, being carried by the Dharma presence of Johanneshof.

[20:36]

But sometimes I feel this Dharma activity very strongly in my body, shall we say. And I feel sometimes just the way I'm walking down a hall turns the whole building into a Dharma practice center for me. No, I haven't asked anybody else if they think it has to, but for me it makes the building much more of a dharma place. So again, somehow in my backbone, if I feel this, it turns the whole building into a dharma place. Or my, in dissolving the self-other distinction, made my body a Dharma place. So when I do that, when all things are the Buddha Dharma,

[21:38]

There's enlightenment present as well as delusion. So I think that our seminar here, I, from my point of view, would define it so that a Dharma activity or presence is possible here. It means we shouldn't get too large, probably. I mean, ideally, you could be the whole planet, but in fact, since it's an activity, a manifest activity, it does have a field, a realm. And I think this sense of Dharma activity is carried in this group especially by those persons who have been here from the very beginning. And those two, mostly the same people who know each other well outside this seminar.

[23:20]

So that's what makes this seminar more fruitful, I think, than average, not just because of the topic, because we all happen to be psychotherapists. We could gather a group of psychotherapists, it wouldn't be the same. So everyone who comes here just once or twice or a few times benefits from those especially who come here every time. So this is a kind of definition of a dharma. We've created something very precious here that requires us each separately and together to continue it.

[24:20]

And although it's always different, Still, something is continuing that's unique. And its uniqueness is that it could be completely gone if we stopped meeting or the meetings were significantly different. That's why... That's one reason we hesitated to open up the seminar to barbarians from Kassel and things like that. I mean, the farther you get from Rome, aren't there barbarians up there in the north somewhere, Hamburg? I mean, this isn't Rome, but it's the seat of the Holy Roman Empire.

[25:32]

I know a little history. So this, when we find our immediate realm, or the world, a scene of Dharma activity, This is what's meant by the Tathagatagarbha. And that Tathagatagarbha, which includes all of us, it's also a name for our own Buddha nature. which is interdependent with the phenomenal and sentient field. So in that sense, the Tathagatagarbha and the Alaya-Vijñāna have an interplay.

[26:33]

So the alaya-vijnana is this reservoir of all your stored experience, which is constantly interacting with the world when you have your continuity embodied in the present. And it generates itself a Tathagatagarbha. And the generation of a field of Buddha field or this sense of a womb embryo situation Also in folds in our Alaya Vijnana. So the Alaya Vijnana and Tathagatagarbha are interactive complementary ideas. So we could add a seventh here, which is the perception is in a Buddha field, or in the field of the Tathagatagarbha.

[27:52]

So maybe we should have a break. We can drag our Buddhafield downstairs. To help me, you know, make sure I don't do too much harm. Okay, so is there anything we would like to talk about at this point? I have a question regarding the Sangha

[29:23]

I just wanted to ask if it is possible And also if there are ideas or suggestions, I would just like to So we have ideas of, we want to support each other, so that we can bring certain things that we have discussed here into everyday life. And how we can then work together, if we are together, as focused as possible, so that we can really use the time we have together. We have felt that it is really about this deepening now, about implementing it, and that we can keep the questions better for the year ahead.

[30:35]

Yeah, we as Sangha where we live, we are in the process of wanting to deepen and the practice there as Sangha and also make it denser. So the question is maybe you have some ideas that would be supportive for us how to do that because we also want to meet and discuss the things you've presented here. maybe in groups of two or whatever, and find ways how we can sort of transport these teachings also in our everyday life. Maybe you have some ideas that could make this process deeper. I don't know. I'm glad to know you're doing it. But... You know, if I'm ever in the area where you'd like me to come, like if you were designing a little meditation hall or something, I might have some ideas, but basically I'm just glad you're doing it.

[31:51]

Yeah, also wenn ich in der Nähe wäre und ihr zum Beispiel irgendwie Hilfe braucht, so eine kleine Meditationshalle zu bauen, dann hätte ich vielleicht ein paar Ideen. Ansonsten freue ich mich einfach, dass ihr das macht. Yes, yeah. In this context, my question is, what importance does Sangha have in its development? In the development of a Dharma therapy or in the development of one's own practice? Your own development in practice, in meditation practice, it's almost equally important with your decision to do it. And maybe in the larger sense, I might speak to that before we end.

[32:52]

But after all, your interest in practice is already part of what's happening here and part of your friends here. That's already Sangha. So the more you develop that Sangha, which is not a social event, It may have social dimensions. And it may have work dimensions, like you work together or something. But a Sangha is those people who can feel each other's practice. And whose deep intention is to support each other's practice despite any other difference. and even I've noticed myself, is that I've seldom seen a person start to practice who doesn't have a friend who's been supportive of their practice or part of their early practice.

[34:22]

Sometimes one of the friends drops off and stops, but they were part of the initial process of developing practice. And one of the key stages in one's own development practice is when at some point suddenly you stop practicing for yourself and you really practice for other people. And you go to the Zendo simply because, or primarily because, you know, because other people are in the Zendo. And you know what it's like when there's one less person or there's a hole where you usually sit.

[35:24]

Okay, and Christina, you were going to say... Oh, you were going to say something too, right? No? Christine. I don't know whether this really fits here, but my question is how do the five skandhas come into play here? Well, the five skandhas are part of the perceptual process. Just like the vijnanas. The vijnanas are the sixfold, but we could make it more complicated and put in, but one of the, I mean, the skandhas is part of the vijnanas and vice versa. A vijnana, one of the vijnanas is one of the skandhas. Yeah, but the vijnanas are part of it and it all folds together, the skandhas and vijnanas, and we could make it even more complicated now. I mean, if you want to take a menu for practice, you just look at the Heart Sutra.

[36:43]

Okay. Now, there are aspects of practice, like I mentioned these six, right? But I put on the, well, I added a seventh, the Buddha field. But the Buddha field is a little bit like, you know, a kid, with a kid, kids like to count your fingers, one, two, three, four, five, you know. And I always like to play with kids and get them to count the spaces.

[37:48]

There's only four, one, two, three, four spaces, right? And I say, why are there five fingers and four spaces? Then I say, well, what about this space? And that's a different realm than the fingers. So the seventh point includes all these. So you can't really list it. Like the sixth finger is the space. And so when it appears, like the seventh finger aspect here, if we thought of it that way, appeared here in the room before the break. So it becomes part of the list, but we don't write it down. And there's many aspects of teaching it like that.

[38:50]

You create a list so that maybe the seventh, eighth and ninth appear in the room, but aren't written down. But sometimes they're the ones you remember most deeply, not the ones you write down. So that's why, in a sense, a teaching like this is inherently oral, or face to face. Don't you have an expression in German, four eyes, or we need a four eyes meeting, or something like that? It's like that. And Dogen speaks about face-to-face transmission or warm hand to warm hand. Buddhism is a history of development over generations.

[40:22]

And even sutras are often a text. We might create a Dharma therapy text. And it might be developed in this group. And then there's a Dharma Sangha Austria. We have a legal organization called Dharma Sangha Austria, which Eric and others put together. It's mostly so that people can have receipts. So there's Dharma Sangha Austria, this group, and there's Dharma Sangha Europe and Johanneshof. And we might pass that text around, Crestone too. And then we'd each try to practice it. Try to make sense of it.

[41:45]

In America, for instance, there's a difference in therapies, whether the East Coast, Midwest, California, etc., It's partly because like Midwesterners have their midlife crisis at a different time than East Coast people. The midlife crisis in the East Coast is more like 29, and in the Midwest it's more like 35 to 40, and in California it's more like 45 to 50. So there might have to be a little different Dharma therapy, depending on where it was even developed in the United States. So at some point we might get all these texts back.

[43:01]

And then you try to make sense of it and put it together in a wider text that reaches more people. And I believe that's just exactly how the Lotus Sutra was developed. It was first a text for a small group of subsidiary groups. And in that way, with groups of people both that are contemporary with each other and groups of people over generations have developed the teaching. I mean, much of what we've talked about has come out of this Dignagas, who lived in the fifth and sixth centuries, statement that perception is cognition without conceptualization.

[44:09]

Yeah, and you can see that that is, as more and more people practice it, problems arise. Is there a substratum or is there a ground of being or is it, you know, everything is causing itself. I mean, all these questions start arising and the idea develops. And I am convinced that we're part of that development. It's partly just as soon as it comes into a new culture, there's this kind of development. And when there's a creativity of a new Sangha. So... So it didn't just stop back in the 9th century or 12th century or something.

[45:22]

Okay. So that was a little bit of an introduction to this, one of the ideas of this Tathagatagarbha. If we could say that, you know, we generally say that Mahayana is the bodhisattva vehicle. But we could say that Mahayana or late Mahayana is the Buddha vehicle. The Buddha kaya. Because Bodhisattva still has the sense of like the earlier Theravada or early Buddhism, a sense of the arhat, who in a simple sense realizes through himself. And then you have the bodhisattva who realizes through the power of dedicating your practice and life and energy to everyone.

[46:32]

And then you get the sense that the whole world in its all-at-onceness is the vehicle of enlightenment, not the individual. So it's a kind of understanding of the world as composed of knowledge, which we could say in fact it is. Knowledge which wants to realize itself. Because, and that's not such a strange idea, everything's changing, and that changing is a movement toward completion. And we're part of that movement. And even if, you know, speaking more specifically about Buddhism as a practice, because this, and also I think the idea of a

[47:48]

personality that's the field of the present. Is perhaps an idea that can inform one's own thinking about things. But I don't think it's, at least my impression would be, it's not something that can be part of a Dharma therapy because it's so thoroughly dependent on realized yogic practice. But at the same time, we all have intimations of all these things. All these things exist in various, at least small parts in each of us. So I'm speaking about this Buddhakaya in that sense. And sometimes we say something like, the Buddha's foot told this sutra. Or people listened with their feet, knees, hands, and shoulders.

[49:28]

But in fact, we do something like that. That's what it is to be face-to-face. It's not just face-to-face, it's shoulder-to-shoulder and so forth. Then you have the idea that the Buddha told Khrushchev to partly assist the Buddha, only could do so much in one lifetime. So then you have a teaching that goes beyond the historical Buddha. But there's some feeling that what Buddha, what was essentially the realization of the Buddha continues. And that continuation is a can teach us. And that continuation is the Buddha speaking to him or herself.

[50:53]

So you have the image of the Vajracana Buddha. But Vajracana Buddha is always a nimbus, an aura surrounds the Vajracana Buddha. And the major figures of Vajracana, the nimbus, the aura, has many other Buddhas in it. And this is like this Buddha is teaching this Buddha, teaching this Buddha, because the aura is the Buddha, not the Buddha figure. The whole aura is the Buddha. This is a kind of idea of Sangha. The Sangha is telling, somehow, it's not me teaching you, it's all of us together creating something that teaches us. So my responsibility is not so much to teach, but to create a field which teaches us.

[52:13]

So that's again the idea of the Tathagata Garbha. And it goes beyond the idea of the Bodhisattva. Because it's not just the Bodhisattva deciding to give up enlightenment for others. It's already everything all at once is the Buddha. So this is why this teaching of this alaya-vijnana developed in the immediate present.

[53:26]

It's part of everything all at once. Not everything over time, everything right now, all at once. Whatever is here is everything all at once makes this possible. And again, go back to my teacher while I lived in Japan, Yamada Mumonoshi. To repeat what he said a little more clearly. He said that the single most important thing is To have a deep respect for yourself. To develop a deep respect for yourself. Knowing. Which is parallel to or part of the condition for knowing. that everything in the universe is working to make this moment possible.

[54:46]

Anyway, I think that's enough for us for this seminar. and happy if you want. Anybody wants to bring up anything? If the electronic, anybody would like my email address for the electronic Buddha field? Somebody set it up for me, so I only read my email once. It's rbaker108 at, I guess, AOL.com Could you write it on Monday? And where you have dots and where you don't have dots.

[56:08]

But it's all AOL.com is always the same, isn't it? I mean, our baker is a dot in between? No, just our baker. I don't want to put my email as the seventh thing on this list of perceptions. And I think it doesn't matter whether they're capitals or small. Any cigarette that was numbered one way? What? Any cigarettes that was numbered one way?

[57:09]

Cigarettes? Significance. Cigarettes. Secrets. Secrets. No secret. Secret, eh? No, a friend of mine just picked wide the number 108. There's 108 beads in Mala and things like that. And actually 108 is a, I think the panashas are divided up into versions. It's a magic number in many sacred, sacred traditions, including Egyptian. The 108 is there because there are 108 men in Mala and 108... Please? 108 names of God? Yeah. Whoa. Don't embarrass me. But Christian Becker came down and set up my computer, so that's what he chose. Isn't that what you do when you do?

[58:15]

I don't know. Do you use email? No. In English it means each, like five bananas each. But it's on the keyboard of typewriters, so I think they just picked it because it was there. at 75 cents apiece or something. All right, shall we sit for a few minutes? Thank you again so much for having me join you again this year.

[59:33]

It's my thoroughgoing pleasure. And somehow the self-selection process, now that we opened it up, has worked very well. We can't imagine anymore doing it without the barbarians from the North. We won't speak about the barbarians from across the sea. And Again, I touched by how much work it is for Siegfried and Christina and Guni to do all this, and I appreciate it. I know people thanked you earlier, but thank you very much. And I also know how much work it means for Christina and Siegfried and Guni.

[60:39]

And even if the people thanked you before, please... Yes. Not enough. Yeah, because there were a lot of phone calls during the year and decisions, and for a while it was only 12 people, and they wanted to know if we should cancel, and I said, well, let's try, so... Ulrike drove a very far way to come and help us. Very far north. Yes. entering the path of going beyond.

[61:42]

Carrying the moon and sun on the staff. Protecting that which cannot be transmitted Meeting the secret teacher

[62:08]

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