We'll begin. Okay. Um... In our group we talked about the rules, as Suzuki Roshi mentions in the text. And how important it is that they are not too strict and not too lax. And that there are rules, for example, here in our schedule. And, for example, that one can set rules for oneself in everyday life in order to practice. and that it's much more difficult to follow one's own rules by oneself than do it here.

[01:07]

And we also saw a connection to what Rashi talked this morning about being at the edge of order and disorder. And the question is... Where did you see that in the text? We didn't see that in the text. Oh, you just spoke about it. Okay, fine. Having rules and having no rules is kind of similar to order and no order. Okay. And we felt, or the question is, how do I know, how can I notice when I'm right at the edge between order and disorder?

[02:10]

Don't you find it pretty obvious in the kitchen sometimes? That's an easy case. That's an easy case. Samuel, who's next? I would like to add something to that question. How do I set my rules and how challenging do I want my rules to be? When they're too lax, I under-challenge myself and I don't come to that breaking point of my own barrier. Yeah, and when they're too strict, then I just fail. My question is exactly in that area.

[03:42]

How do I find that pivotal point where I'm challenged enough and not under-challenged? Okay. Thank you. I'll try not to respond right away. I'll just listen first. And then we'll discuss this sentence of Bodhidharma. If you want to observe the fish, we have to study or look at the water. For the fish the water is the physical medium or element in which it can only survive.

[04:54]

And for us human beings it is the air that enables us to live on this planet. but on the other hand this spirit in which we are, which allows us to live on a level of consciousness, which is just as necessary as the air for our physical And on the other hand there is this mind that's equally necessary for us to survive, equally to equal to the air or the water for the fish. Yeah, that's what he means. And what Bodhidharma meant, if we can imagine what Bodhidharma meant. Okay.

[05:56]

Who else? Who's next? The law of entropy, that's a little scary, reminded me of the Woody Allen movie Manhattan, where this little seven-year-old didn't want to go back to school. It's a little bit like I feel. I mean, you don't want to come to Teisho tomorrow. You don't want to come to Teisho tomorrow. If you answer the question, I'll come. Well, what brought me to Zen was this feeling of having no support system and it was almost like it broke me.

[07:07]

And an aspect that I would have liked to further fill out is the question of what can create trust, because we have probably spoken of trust, trust despite, I'll call it trust despite helplessness, also as a counterpart to fear, because it makes you afraid, helplessness makes you afraid, and what the power of trust is more precise, we have not yet understood. And maybe we go into that a little deeper to on one level develop trust, trust that it's sort of something that holds this or resonates with this feeling of having nothing to hold on to that is so scary. Yes. That's your answer. Okay. Yes, that was the answer. Then I'll come too. Yes, yes, yeah.

[08:28]

Yes, I also didn't like to hear it this morning. You said about the chaos that it's right next door. And I felt a little bit the same way this morning that I didn't particularly like listening when you talked about the chaos that's pretty much right next to us. It's exactly right what you said. Every decision I made in my life was to increase security and to increase order in my life. The feeling of being out of a chaos, maybe a life chaos, but also a cognitive chaos, this dancing monkey, in structures, in planes, To deal with the chaos, mental chaos, chaos in my life situation, to sort of fuel it into a direction that creates more order.

[09:51]

And I was quite successful in that. And now you've reminded me of it again. Now you reminded me of it, and of course I know it's true, but I'd like to push that thought away, that it can stop any moment. It'd be over. I can't help it. Ich kann auch nicht mal sagen, dass es mir Angst macht, aber es ist einfach ein scheiß Gefühl. I wouldn't even say it scares me, but it's a really shitty feeling. No, let's have an analysis between being scared and feeling shitty. Das wollen wir jetzt mal untersuchen, was der Unterschied ist zwischen scheiß Gefühl und Angst haben. Ich würde sagen, es ist ein Gefühl von Fallen. It's a feeling like falling. Without bottom.

[10:54]

We're all falling right now, actually. But nicely at the same speed. The floor is falling with us. Well, I think that's why you have a spine and breath. If you can bring, I mean really, this is so practical and simple, if you can bring the core of awareness out of its sort of dispersion in thinking, You can bring it together in this locus of spine and breath. You can still have the order that's there. But you have this sort of confidence or equipoise. To be closer to the awareness of the disorder.

[12:16]

When you approach it by thinking, then you feel frightened. Yes. Recently I was outside in nature. Nature is in here too. Yeah, I know what you mean. I was outside the door here. Yes, I know. And I was concentrated on the spine and the breath. And then when I move outside my thoughts, Then I experience the natural world much closer and everything is really more intense.

[13:29]

And everything that appears in this feeling, the unpredictable things, could also be a little scary. Snow falls off a branch. So everything that is unpredictable outside there, and that's potentially scary, makes it insecure to live that way. If you live in such a world, you experience insecurity. So my thoughts, moving within the realm of thoughts is a protection. Because you don't perceive everything. That's right. But it's not the way it is. No, what you said, you said very well.

[15:02]

But if you look for mental security, it's okay until things fall apart. then it is also okay, up to the point where things break apart. And then, of course, you look for another kind of security. Yes, when things fall apart, then you have the attitude, yes, somewhere it was to be expected. And that's another kind of security. In our group it was also in this direction and if I can connect to Dorothea's walk. If you go for a walk up here, nature seems to be in order somehow. But interestingly, you always see the clouds of a nuclear power plant here. But interesting enough, you always see the cloud coming off an atomic plant.

[16:24]

I know. On the Swiss side. Always you see it. German-financed Swiss on the Swiss side. Yes. And the wind always will blow us on the German side. Also ein von Deutschland finanziertes Schweizer Atomkraftwerk, das aber alles hier in Richtung Deutschland bläst. So you can always imagine chaos behind order. But I always ask myself the question, is it not the case that through practice there is always an order in the midst of every chaos? But what I'd like to add is, isn't that so that through practice you always create some kind of order and structure beyond chaos?

[17:31]

Very fundamental practices like to just accept things as they are or to be still or to follow the breath. Isn't that some kind of order behind any kind of chaos? I wouldn't say, I wouldn't in English anyway say the chaos that's behind order. I'd say the chaos, which is the other side of order. They're inseparable. And the practice is to establish yourself at that edge. It's to establish order at the edge of order.

[18:42]

Something like that. It's one of the reasons in Zazen we don't give you any structures. So there's not stages we give you to give you a sense of all. There's these steps that I do. Anyway, that's enough. I don't want to get too involved in the discussion at this point. I walk behind Dorothea and also taking the path where Ottmar usually goes. I want to come back to the weekend. You talked about the three minds. And what I heard for the first time was that waking mind is the mind of awareness.

[19:57]

So when we are on a walk and we follow these paths and we see the atomic cloud, then consciousness tells us how to interpret this and whether we feel secure or whether we are scared. And what was new for me during this last week and that the mind of awareness is like a container. This is the way I heard it. And maybe I shouldn't say mind, maybe I should say consciousness, but these liquids are in the container and they have different viscosities. So I said metaphorically, awareness is more like a liquid.

[21:21]

We can think of waking mind and the three minds more like containers that we can fill with awareness or fill with consciousness or whatever. I mean, it's just a kind of clumsy metaphor, but it allows you to think about these things which are a little bit unthinkable. Is it that you mean the three minds you can pour these liquids in? Or in one of them? Yeah. The three minds. Okay. Now my question. Okay. I am now at the waking mind. How can I observe my mind that moves along the edge of chaos and order?

[22:28]

in relationship to waking mind, how can I observe my mind that moves along at the boundary between chaos and order? I don't mind this in this relative sense that you hear some terrible news like the house is burning or something. Or you get a bad health diagnosis. Yeah. How do I observe my mind or what happens when I observe my mind being right on this edge? How do you observe your mind when it's on this edge or how do you observe that it's on this edge?

[23:46]

It's so that the mind Maybe the streams are even parallel of chaos and order, but The way I understand, Uli, is how does sort of the mind observe itself really going over the edge? Is it like a temperature change or does the mind feel a viscosity change maybe?

[24:59]

Okay. Okay. Well, first of, you know, we can use metaphors to get a feel or a direction towards something. But if we then turn the metaphor into some sort of fact and then we analyze from the metaphor and not from the experience that the metaphor points to, we get ourselves in a pretty complicated situation. But I think I understand the thrust of your question. And it's part of what I'd like to continue with and come back to. Let me just say now, as I said, maybe order and disorder, while it is factual, it's maybe a little too dramatic for our usual way of thinking about this.

[26:27]

But when you feel that everything you look at is simultaneously mine, you're at an edge. Or every time you see something, you hear something, it's like you heard it for the first time. It's quite fresh and unique feeling. That's an edge. When every time you look at something or feel something, it feels more unpredictable than predictable, even if it's just this bell sitting here. That's an edge. And this edge is our instructor. Okay. Yeah. Yes, Tara? The Teisho picked me up this morning where I actually was.

[27:54]

And I'm right in the middle of order and chaos. but my feeling is, or at the moment my problem is actually that I notice that I have the tendency to go to order again and again, to install a new order again and again, because to go to the spine, to go to order, is a form of order for me. So my question, my problem maybe is that whenever I'm, you know, moving toward chaos, I tend to establish a new kind of order and even going to my spine, that's establishing an order. That's right. And of course doing that I create predictability, I create security, building up a new comfort zone.

[29:00]

I have a deep feeling to change sides, otherwise I will never be able to arrive in the present moment. My problem is that I have the feeling that I have to get rid of these identifications. I have the feeling that I have always tried to create my own order. on this level of species and this identification so that it should always get better, it should be good, it should go in the direction of comfort or predictability.

[30:23]

So I have the feeling My feeling is I want to really go beyond the tendency that I have to create more predictability, establish a new comfort zone. I want to look at things from the other side of security and predictability. So I always turn in the area of identification. And I identify with, you know, this tendency and this habit to create comfort. And then I try to loosen it, lose this identification with it. And then I go back to square one. I mean, it's like I go around in circles. And that's what I mean by changing sides. So just getting away from this identification. But it's...

[31:23]

That's what I mean with changing sides. I want to get away from identifying with this. Well, that's where I am. I understand, I think. Well, since you've established a certain language here, I... I think I should respond a bit to you, because I might not come back to it with the same language. You might try creating a phrase from the other side. So that you... When you feel this tendency to head for the comfort zone, you say something like from the other side.

[32:32]

And see if adding that to the ingredients helps. And one of the things I think I've been mentioning is to view everything as an ingredient. An ingredient has no separate existence except as part of other things. A carrot isn't an ingredient. Until you're thinking about what to do with the carrot.

[33:39]

So if everything you see is an ingredient, an activity, you know, you want to somehow kind of get yourself into seeing everything as, I've said, activity or an ingredient or... And maybe the idea of using, trusting a process can help. In other words, if you feel you're in this situation where you're looking for a comfort zone, Maybe it helps to trust the process, trust it as a process, rather than trying to make it more secure. Because I think all of us have some sort of feelings that you're expressing.

[34:46]

Okay, someone else? You haven't said anything yet. I do too. But I have to keep being next. I'm just teasing a bit. We'd just like to hear your voice. What is your name? Letizia. Letizia. Very nice. Is it Italian? Yes. Oh, hi. We would like to hear your voice. Okay, Suzanne? I was in the group of Dorothea, Tara and Dirk, simply so that it fits together. And the topic was, we talked about trust and fear, part of it, and we talked about We talked about the trust in the spine and the breath and the body in general.

[36:00]

I realize that my trust is also based on the fact that I know that we have a teacher who speaks about it, that we have a sangha where we can share it, and that I know that this has been an issue for people for thousands of years, or in the line. Personally, my trust is based on having a teacher I can discuss this with and having a sangha I can discuss this with. That it's a tradition that's thousands of years old where people discussed very similar things with each other. Just to add it. Oh, okay. Then why is that... one sentence to add to that? Yes. Is there a connection between on one hand trusting the process and on the other side the postulate that I should see mind on everything I see, every phenomena?

[37:27]

You should trust the process that arises when you see mind on an object. Yes, Andreas? Maybe two things. But yesterday, what you said here, I think, the words of Shunji Utsuki, from which people do the words come from? I have two things, and one is, you know, you talked yesterday about the mind of Suzuki Roshi and the state of mind in which he spoke these sentences, the different levels he addressed. That's helped me actually to trust or trust more the intuitions that I have when I study things.

[38:48]

And I want to add to what Dirk said, you very clearly spoke how on one hand you observe an object and then you observe the field this object arises in, the mind. It's a difficult thing to do for me. It's easy to say that, but to do it, it's a lot more difficult. It's difficult to observe the mind, the field in which things arise. And I found a practice, it came from a conversation, that helps me to practice, as they say, shift your mind from the object to the field. A sentence like that helps me a lot, when you said that you simply make this change.

[39:52]

When I practice this and I see an object and I concentrate on the object, then I use the sentence. Use which, what sentence? The sentence, shift your mind from the object to the object. Yeah, and what happens when you do that? Does it work? Does something happen? Yeah, and it helps me. Oh, okay, good. This is easier for me than to try to do it, which is the best object, and now I won't put my mind to the mind. Yeah, okay. Sukhirashi says in here, have... understand and have belief, or belief and have understanding, or something like that.

[41:09]

He says... Yeah, right in the beginning he said, in the second paragraph, the main point is to practice seriously, and an important attitude is to understand and have confidence in big mind. To understand and have confidence in big mind. So he's speaking there about a particular and very traditional... dynamic of Buddhism.

[42:11]

He's putting it very simply, though. In other words, you establish something in understanding that you, through inferential reasoning or through the trust in a teacher or your own analysis that everything's changing, for example. Or that any perception, anything you see or know, is happening within your sensorial field and your mind and in cognition. So by reasoning you can know that. But the job of consciousness as I say is to protect us from ticks and tigers. And so consciousness always externalizes this information.

[43:39]

Because, I mean, I have never seen a tiger running in this room, but you know, it's possible. Some of you are tigers. Okay, a tiger. Just like Tigger and Winnie the Pooh. Tigger, tiger. Okay, so you conceptually understand this. Then you develop a faith or confidence or intention. Okay. To actuate or actualize this. Um, das, ja, zu aktualisieren, also für sich persönlich erfahrbar zu machen. And then it segues, segues, flows into an actual experience. Und auf diesem Weg fließt dann auch eine Erfahrung hinein.

[44:48]

Okay. Now, it doesn't flow into an actual experience simply because you have faith in it. In other words, the dynamic of a conceptual understanding When that conceptual understanding is repeated moment after moment, at some moment, is itself a dynamic. And it's a dynamic which makes you notice And that noticing, that increased noticing or that noticing of differences you hadn't noticed before, Because of the conceptual understanding, the conceptual understanding changes how you notice things.

[46:08]

And you can keep sustaining that process through, as he says, confidence or faith. And that new way of noticing things flows back through that new way of noticing into experience. Is that clear? Much of so-called dharmakirti type, you know, all the kirtis, their understanding, much of what they talk about rests on this dynamic. So it's not faith or belief in something that's not real, or you can only know by faith. It's enough faith and an understanding that the understanding becomes affirmed by the flow of experience.

[47:25]

And there are some understandings which you can't get to really except through starting with a conceptual understanding. Your experience can carry you so far. Then through that experience you can see that Something doesn't quite compute. So then you make it compute. So then it's just an understanding, but it's not your experience yet. But the way you compute that allows information to start flowing in, and then it becomes understanding.

[48:49]

I guess we should have called this the basics of Zen practice and beyond the basics. Because this is sort of beyond the basics. Or it extends from the basics. Okay. Yes. So one example for me how I moved from a concept or conceptual understanding to an experience, which was new for me, Well, I was in Tibet at Mount Kailash and it's called the Axe of the Universe.

[50:00]

Werner Herzog filmed that and made a movie out of it and then the Dalai Lama, His Holiness, was interviewed. And there he said, isn't everybody the center of the universe? That sort of brought home to me something. He's a good guy. Now, here I am. But here's my breath and I completely trust in breath and I don't try to store breath. Where the hell would you store it? In a backpack, you know, full of breath. I just don't panic. I just wait until the next breath comes. But now all this comes together, you know, the concentration or attention on the spine, which is according to the Dalai Lama the axe of the universe.

[51:23]

And my total trust in the breathing, which I... And then comes the Zen statement that the true human body is the universe. So now I can fully... Now [...] I can fully... Well, I just, through this process of trust and understanding, you know, I arrive at the bliss body. Yes. But it's sort of, that feels whole. I bet. Whole.

[52:24]

And this is... Okay. Thank you. Could those of you who were in the weekend seminar stand hearing the story about the goshawk again? Please. What did he say? It's probably a hawk, not a... Not a peregrine. But at least he had a peregrine before and it was smaller. I still should look it up. But anyway, it's called in America goshawk. Also, können die Leute, die am Wochenende da waren, jetzt nochmal die Geschichte von diesem Vogel, die am Wochenende da war,

[53:28]

And I'll try to tell it much shorter. Not shorter. Longer. Anyway, I have this brother-in-law. My brother-in-law from my first wife. My in-Buddha-in-law. No, I don't know. Anyway, he built the Zendo, the interior of the Zendo at Crestone, and he built the Duxan building I have. Because he and Paul Disko are the two... best trained wood joinery temple carpenters in the United States. Japanese wood joinery. Anyway. So he lives up in the Sierra Mountains, near where I used to live part of the time.

[54:55]

And he's a big shop there and thousands of logs, not thousands, but hundreds and hundreds of logs aging and so forth. Anyway, he got so that he really likes falconeering. So every year or two he has a new falcon or peregrine or whatever. And this time he decided to get a grass hawk. And a goshawk, I guess, from what little I know, hunts in forests, so it finds, it can fly through the trees, between the trees, and it's got about a four and a half foot wingspan.

[55:58]

And these birds can, I've seen him with this bird. I mean, once he lost a bird, and he was hunting up and down the California course because he had a little buzzer, you know, a thing on the bird. He was driving 100 miles north of San Francisco, 100 miles south, and this damn bird was going back and forth. He finally found it on a cliff in northern California. I think it took him six days of driving back and forth, located. Anyway... And they, you know, they plummet at you, or they plummet at a poor rat for 50, 60 miles an hour or something like that. And he says this hawk, this goshawk, can fly through, between trees at 50 miles an hour. And he says it's quite amazing when it comes to visit him, and it comes roaring to the trees suddenly.

[57:10]

Okay, so he noticed that in one of the trees near where he lives was a goshawk nest way at the top. And he's scared of heights. It's kind of too many, because he has to... When he builds buildings, he has to walk on beams, carrying beams and stuff, but somehow he handles the fear. He likes the edge maybe, I don't know. So he gets spikes for his feet so he could climb up this tree. And he put on a mask because he knew the mother would start attacking him. So he terrified, climbed up this tree with the mother kind of like trying to jump at his head.

[58:26]

And he told me that I think about 40% of the hawks die in the first year or so because they don't learn the skills of hunting and getting through the winter. So anyway, he climbs up this thing and finally gets to the nest and gets a baby and comes down. And he thought it was a girl, so he named it Iris. But it turned out to be a boy. He saw no reason to change his name. It's called Iris. Iris. Okay. So he was told by somebody he knows who's the leading expert in falconry in North America who's Canadian.

[59:36]

If there's a period of a few days, if you release the bird at the right time, it will become wild and survive, but will stay bonded with you. And according to this guy, there's only two people in America who have managed to do this, and Lenny is one of them. So I was talking to Lenny the other day on the phone. He's on the board of the Dharmasanga. And while I'm speaking to him, And while I was talking to him, he said, oh, here comes Iris.

[60:44]

And Iris flew down where he was and where he was phoning from just outside his window. So he went from the phone, Iris, I'm here. Anyway, so... Supposedly, I never heard of this before, but Iris likes to play. Whenever she wants to play, he signals that to Lenny by moving his head back and forth. And he'll actually pick up stones and throw them. I've got a big enough beak, but somehow I don't.

[61:45]

So, did I tell you what Sophia said to me the other day, driving her to school? No, I probably didn't. I'm driving her to school, and she says, You know, I don't, because Marie-Louise had just told her she was something like me. Whenever she does think Marie-Louise doesn't like, she says that she... Marie-Louise said that she likes being like you, Daddy. So Sophia, when I'm driving her to school, Sophia says, I like being like you, Daddy. But I don't want your nose. And I said, well, but it's okay in my face, isn't it? She said, no, I wouldn't notice if it was.

[62:46]

She wouldn't notice that it was big if it was okay in my face. I said, well, thanks a lot. Anyway, So, and Lenny will get a stick and throw the stick and the bird goes over and gets the stick and brings it back and stuff like that, right? He said a couple of days before he'd been playing with Iris. And after about 45 minutes Lenny got tired. So he went over and sat by a tree leaning on a tree. And he had one knee up. And Iris came over and sat on his knee.

[63:49]

And he said, for 20 minutes we watched the sunset. I could see the sun in his eyes and he was looking at me and we just looked at each other and looked at the sunset for 20 minutes. And Lenny said he was It was in some sort of state where there was, as I put it, no other location. And my experience living in Crestone and other places where there are wild animals, is part of the quality of wildness is no other location. Not only no other location, but at each moment things are unpredictable. I mean, he and this bird are bonded, but still, you don't know what's going to happen.

[65:11]

And there's some kind of bliss body or ecstatic... feeling when you're in a situation where there's absolutely no other location. And that no other location is a kind of edge for sure. So Lenny said after a while, after 20 minutes or so, he had to go cook dinner. So he said he was going to get up, so he put his arm up. And the heart landed on his wrist. And the bird landed on his wrist.

[66:24]

And they looked at each other and then he put his arm up and off it went. Well, my point is that somehow what Sukhriya is talking about and somehow what we can practice is this no other location. It makes everything absolute somehow. And it makes the space you're in alive and full of energy. Okay, let's sit for a moment And there's no other location which is we could say means to be here now or something like that.

[68:52]

But I think if we say no other location it's not somehow wider than here, now. And no other location is also three locations. What do I mean by that? Well, if there's no other location, There's still the possibility of another location. There's always the alternative. And in our practice, we can feel the absoluteness of no other location. And we can feel the edge where

[69:53]

we could retreat from no other location and to some kind of mental safety or order. So already there's a dynamic of no other location and always the possibility of an alternative. And no other location is the essence of unpredictability. No other location is the name of aliveness. So no other location is always moment after moment changing. So there's the experience of no other location. There's the always changing no other location.

[71:13]

And there's the alternative to no other location. And that kind of situation is the dynamic of practice. Not just to be stuck in no other location, because no other location is alive. that we are stuck there and have no other place, but this is vitality. Full of life with alternatives and changes. And it takes your energy and vitality to really dwell in this place that knows no other place. Let's practice no other location.

[72:35]

Let's discover ourselves sometimes in no other location. And let's know each other sometimes in no other location. It's very close to danger. It's very close to love.

[72:58]

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