I'm sorry I was a little late getting here. But the traffic light at the roundabout was only green and orange for about four seconds. I don't know what was wrong. Two cars could get through and then it would change and the traffic was really backing up. So, was it 3 o'clock? Was everyone back? Was it time enough? Or was it tight? Was it okay? And does someone have something you'd like to bring up from our discussion this morning?

[01:02]

Yes. I asked myself this morning, if we now meet this distinction between a lay practice and a monastery practice, whether the ideal is actually the same. So I wondered this morning if we now have this distinction between a lay practice and a monastic practice. And I'm wondering whether the ideal we are practicing toward and that we are practicing with, if that's the same. You have to say that again in some other way, in an additional way.

[02:05]

The practice we're aiming toward is the monastic practice is the ideal, but we're also heading toward this idea? No, no. If we have this distinction between there's something like a monastic practice and there's something like a lay practice. And for some people, not as additional, for some people, there's only going to be a lay context in which to practice. And for some people, they have more the possibility of also practicing in a monastic context. But I was wondering, is the ideal that we are practicing with and that we are also practicing toward, would that be the same in lay practice? Oh, for the lay practitioner and the... I'm not sure it makes any sense to say the ideal. Different is different.

[03:06]

But I think that the, I mean like take a big ideal, Buddha's enlightenment. Is Buddha's enlightenment going to be the same for a lay person and a monastic person? Yes, if you believe in God. Because to imagine that anything is exactly the same, including Buddha's enlightenment, is the same for every enlightened person is like believing in God. Because if you think that way, then you have to think there's some intrinsic, essential nature that we realize through enlightenment.

[04:14]

And the most fundamental teaching of Buddhism is there's no intrinsic basic identity or enlightenment. So as I say, Buddha is the beginning of our practice, not the end of our practice. But two monastic persons will also have, let's say they both have enlightenment, they live a life that's enlightening and have had enlightenment experiences. Their experience and their expression will be different from each other. So if you look carefully at different lineages, for instance, is not only do two individuals have different experiences.

[05:43]

One of the interesting things Sukhirashi said was each of you will have your own enlightenment. If but two persons who are in the same lineage will have realization experiences that are more similar to each other than persons from different lineages. Okay. Now, this is an extremely positive thing to say. Positive in the sense of optimistic or in the sense of... Positive in the sense of good.

[06:44]

I mean, if you... Is it okay? If... Now you might think, oh, I'd like to have the surety of an enlightened experience that the Buddha had and it's ahead of me or nearby or something. Well, that's, yeah, there's a certain kind of, well, at least that's sure. Yeah, but unfortunately that's not the case. And that's a very confining idea. It turns practice into a staged practice where you do this step and then you do that step.

[07:50]

It's a kind of confinement. So it's a very positive thing to say. What I said is very positive because it's a world of infinite possibilities. And it means you will mature in the sense of Buddhist maturity within the infinite possibilities of you yourself. Sorry, can you say it again? You will mature in Buddhist sense within your own possibilities, not Buddhist possibilities, within your own possibilities. And those possibilities are... momentarily incremental and virtually infinite.

[08:54]

So Buddhism is, we can say, practice is how to bring yourself into that incremental momentariness. Now this is one of the reasons that, in my opinion, is that Zen doesn't teach a staged Zen practice. Yeah, so the basic concept in Zen is much more evolutionary than developmental. Rather than developmental. You have to speak about the difference between development.

[10:11]

Really? So Germans develop and evolve at the same time. Would you say something about the difference, please, between evolution and development? Sure. Now? By the way, when I say these things, because they're sort of a little bit on the hair-splitting side, then I think they must be kind of boring for you. But they're actually extremely important. Because you're making decisions, if we're making incremental decisions on a world that exists momentarily, Slight differences make a big difference.

[11:19]

That's a very slight difference. But over at the wall it's wider than that tapestry. So if a slight difference persists, it goes in a quite different direction. And how you describe your practice to yourself, the language you choose to describe your practice, shapes your practice. Okay, so as I've said occasionally in recent months, you're making this distinction between devolve and evolve. It's the same word in German.

[12:34]

Okay, in English at least, to devolve. Volve means to roll. Yeah, so... Anyway, and devol means to roll up. To finish. Yeah. And evol means to let it roll out and keep rolling. So I make the distinction, it's the difference between in a similar way, between understand and incubate.

[13:37]

Understand is to get under something, stand under it and hold it, there it's in place, now we know what it is. Incubate is to put it out there and see what happens. It keeps changing in each situation. Okay, so basically the effort to understand practice is understandable. But actually it gets you not very far in practice. You really need to let your practice incubate.

[14:38]

And understand and develop, assume a static entity world. And evolve and incubate. Assume a world that's always in a momentary uniqueness. So plants, animals, and our own inner and outer life can evolve. And go where you haven't gone before.

[15:59]

And go to where you can't think yourself to. No, you can just stop. As a child you thought various things and your intentions have carried you. And those intentions are powerful in that they direct attention. But if you stick to your intentions too strongly, you're going to be rather unhappy. Because you're always going to feel you've slightly failed, or you're not who you really are, or something like that.

[17:05]

Weil du immer das Gefühl haben wirst, dass du so ein bisschen versagt hast, oder du nicht wirklich der bist, der du wirklich... Sorry, and you're not... You're going to be really very happy, because you'll think you're slightly failed, or you're not who you really are, a wannabe. Also du wirst immer das Gefühl haben, dass du leicht versagt hast, oder dass du nicht wirklich die Person bist, die du wirklich bist, oder die du gerne wärst. Now think back right now on what aspects of your life could you have imagined as a child? I certainly couldn't have imagined I would be sitting here doing this. I thought I was going to be a fireman. Or a pilot. Or I don't know what I thought. I didn't think much actually. But in some ways I can see there's aspects of my earlier life which anticipated, you know, liking to do nothing better than something, for example.

[18:19]

I'm doing nothing all the time, right? But still, I didn't pick this as a career in high school. My teachers would have really laughed at me. Anyway, so maybe what we can try to speak about is this. Is it really possible to know the world as moment by moment unique? And if we can, how does that incubate identity? I mean, one of the big questions is how do we maintain a stable identity over time? And as a Buddhist, no self, non-self, all self, you still have to maintain some kind of identity over time.

[19:42]

Do we do that in the city or the monastery or the mountain or our garden hut? And Schopenhauer said, we only know ourselves really when we're alone. Because only when we're alone can we know freedom. These are nice things to say. And there's some truth to it. But he wasn't alone when he was born. And his language is not alone. He didn't make it. He lives within his language. So what does alone mean?

[21:00]

Well, certain kind of experiences, 30 inches from, you know, etc. So how do we immerse ourselves in life and separate ourselves enough to know ourselves? Wie setzen wir uns voll und ganz dem Leben aus und trennen uns auch wieder, schaffen auch wieder genug Abtrennung davon, so dass wir uns kennen können? I'm certainly speaking about this with you. Ich spreche da ganz gewiss mit euch drüber. I'm not thinking this through all by myself. And somehow speaking with you and hearing you speak too is for me something more subtle happens than if I try to think through it by myself.

[22:07]

And for me, when I hear you speak, and speak with you, and think with you, then something much more subtle happens to me than if I had thought it through all by myself. Now... Much of Chinese Buddhism, and I just say this to put this in, to show that we're on the edge of what Buddhism is. Much of Chinese Buddhism, including Chinese Zen, developed within the concept of a fixed enlightenment experience, and an intrinsic self disguised as something like original mind.

[23:20]

And scholars I respect So this is probably because Chinese national culture needed to go that way. And as a result, they ignored more developed Buddhist logic of Dignaga, Dharmakirti and so forth. which attempted to establish that this was not the case. So Buddha nature is a really difficult term to use. Because Buddha mind I'm willing to use, but Buddha nature implies some sort of, it's a way of hiding the idea of an intrinsic self.

[24:38]

So we are trying to practice Buddhism in a Western culture which emphasizes individualism. And in our Dharma Sangha Europe case, in German and English, and developing a kind of technical language of our own for this fourth mind, and which puts us more for reasons of history than our individual brilliance, that locates us for historical reasons, On the edge of what Buddhism is.

[25:55]

And being on the edge, we can keep trying to see, turn our experience into Buddhism or not. So all of Dharma Sangha Europe is an experiment in what Buddhism can be and will be, maybe, maybe, can be, will be, in the West. And of course, by the way, everyone at Yonassaf doesn't feel like, we don't want all those lay people coming here. They're just a big nuisance. All of them, everyone there is very happy when any one of you come.

[27:03]

But when any one of you come in numbers above 40 or 50, that's something else. And even some people there, about half the staff or residents, welcome the 50 or the 60 or whatever. But you have to see that the archetype of the person who will say, I don't need a lay life, I'm going to live at Yanisov, is going to tend toward wanting to make a certain kind of life at Yanisov. But you also have to understand that the archetype of a person who says, I don't need a lay life, I'm going to live at the Johanneshof, will lean in the direction that he really wants to practice at the Johanneshof.

[28:24]

So, anyway, what else? Yes. Yes. mich beschäftigt eigentlich in letzter Zeit die Schüler ihrer Beziehung, also deine, Michael. What I have been concerned with recently is the relationship between student and teacher, so the relationship between you and me. Oh. Sorry. But I've noticed that there are certain experiences that I can only make when you're there because your field or something inspires that. Sounds good.

[29:25]

So for example, when you just explained how to put on the raksu and showed the soto sign, put it up on the above the spine. then I just had this feeling that developed there that I didn't have there before. It seems to me that I can do it only when the world is intense enough. And I often can't get it out of myself. So I actually only need to play.

[30:34]

So what I notice is that I need these bodily, physical experiences. It doesn't help if I just understand something, I need the experience. And it seems to me that I can only make the experience when the field is somehow intense enough or something. Somehow I do need your presence as a kind of mirror or something. And so I wonder, how can I even make a particular kind of practice experience without this relationship between student and teacher? Well, you have lots of experiences that are not related to me. But there are experiences related, I think, to you and I and also to the sun.

[31:46]

Yes, exactly, but the feeling on which level it is felt, or rather I have the feeling, it takes place on different levels. And the feeling for me more from the experience of the Buddha spirit or from the Zen spirit, it takes place more in the relationship with Roshi, and not in the relationship with the Sangha, that's a different level. Yes, but somehow I feel like experiences happen on different levels. And it seems to me that experiences that have more to do with Buddha mind happen more in relationship with you and not so much in relationship with the Sangha. That's a kind of different level experience. And the main thing is also that somehow I can't really bring myself to that place or I have a lot of difficulties bringing myself to that place.

[33:04]

And that is something that I'm trying out and I wonder how can I work with this. Well, it's very much like what I said this morning about the African father saying to his child that if you're going to inherit the way these experiences enter you or speak to He didn't say learn. Or discover. Or uncover. He said inherit. Okay. So in this case a father or a teacher was implying that they're inherited. And that's what makes two or three lineages different, because there's a different inheritance going on.

[34:25]

They're inheritances within our own capacity. But we are such complex and subtle beings that there's going to be differences. There's not sort of one pattern there waiting to be discovered. And that there isn't one pattern, it's our freedom. Okay. Now the ingredients. Let me just say some basic things. The prologue day is great. We can just talk about anything. Tomorrow we have to act like we're going to talk about the topic. And we can do some basic things, some sort of reviews. Yeah. Now, to study physics, you need higher mathematics or something like that.

[36:04]

To study Buddhism, maybe you need higher orders of mindfulness. Yeah, but you don't really need anything but your own ingredients, as I say. It's your attention, your intention, your breath. You put these together in different ways and you end up with a different kind of life. So you all start with the ingredients you have. But if we rearrange those ingredients, like simply bringing attention to our breath rather than bringing attention to our thinking, not only to the rearranged, reemphasized ingredients,

[37:13]

create a different person. But the evolution of the ingredients in a certain pattern, the incubation of a certain pattern of ingredients, It produces new ingredients. Ingredients you didn't have before. Okay. This, again, you can't think your way to. It's so subtle, you can't get there by yourself. I'm sorry. If you think you can get there by yourself, that's again believing in God. I mean, it's... Concern about abortion is a belief in God, of course.

[38:32]

Fundamentalists see the embryo as having everything there, soul and everything that's going to... It's a fully equipped seed. So you're killing the person. But for a Buddhist, even if the person is born and doesn't have two parents, they're not considered to be complete. And doesn't have two parents? If you don't have two parents, you're considered probably not going to make it. Okay. In a developed sense.

[39:33]

Okay. And it's very clear now, as Alan Shore has shown, that the child brain develops more outside the embryo and from environmental influences rather than genetic program. And so you inherit your genes from your parents. But you inherit much of your mind from how your parents relate to you. So I was lucky enough from my point of view, vastly lucky, to inherit from my teacher, Suzuki Roshi,

[40:40]

who is also David's teacher, a way of existing, a way of being with myself and with the world, that college or... Western culture, none of it would have given me. And my life is entirely formed by trying to make it possible for you, if you want to, to inherit it as well. And to inherit if you happen to live in Crestone or Yonsef and inherit it if you happen to live in Berlin or Hanover.

[42:01]

And you will prove whether my hope is successful. And I am an imperfect realization of what I inherited from Suzuki Roshi. And one of the ways I'm trying to perfect my inheritance is to let it be inherited. The process of inheritance gives the inheritance to me. Does that make sense? I mean, I need you.

[43:17]

I can't inherit Sukhirishi's teaching without also inheriting it through and with you. Neil, you wanted to say something? Yeah, I feel the same as much as possible. There is a saga that the founder of our lineage sort of got that met without having the teacher who he inherited it from. How do you know that? It's a saga. Oh, the story. The story, yeah. And that's why there's seven Buddhas before Buddha. Wow. So they made the story a little more complicated, because they realized they had a problem. So they said, oh, there must have been, and so they said in Buddhist before Buddha. Their names are hard to pronounce, it's true, but... Stagmark? I think I've been around in the Sangha long enough so that I can say that I have a sense and a feeling for the Sangha and for the lineage.

[44:49]

You have been around. I remember you from very early days in Berlin. Ja, du bist wirklich schon eine Weile dabei. Ich erinnere mich an dich von den ganz frühen Tagen in Berlin an. Thank you. And in February, I had with the Sangha, when we developed the koan number five, the price of rice in Du Ling, I had a very crucial experience. auch nicht zuletzt dadurch, dass du das Thema häufig ansprichst, mit diesem Gedanken beschäftigt, was wird aus uns, wenn Roshi mal nicht mehr ist?

[46:04]

We are all, even beyond the fact that you keep mentioning it, we are all already concerned with this question of what is going to happen to us when you don't exist anymore. I think he'll have a good time. And we spoke about this koan and developed this koan for the very first time. It was not the case that you had already taught this koan or developed the koan for us. We, as a sangha, entered the koan for the very first time. This is the kind of... weekend seminar that precedes the Winter Branches that you do by yourself, the Sangha Desk.

[47:06]

At the end of this koan, I had the feeling that together, as a sangha, we could develop this koan with so many different facets and with so much wisdom and insight alone, without Roshi, as I never believed. And toward the end of this koan, I had the feeling that we as a sangha developed this koan with so many facets and aspects and with so much depth or something that I could never have imagined without you. Oh, that's wonderful. And I was very surprised about that myself. And for the first time I had the experience of a kind of freedom that came from that, a kind of freedom from a dependence. And then I also remembered the story that exists in Dekogoku about Dogen as Dogen Star.

[48:39]

and in the Sangha there was a great ambiguity about how the Sangha should proceed, because Duggen was a great, gigantic teacher. And then I felt reminded of the story about Dogen, that there was this great ambivalence and quarrel in the Sangha after Dogen died, because Dogen was also such a great teacher. And I think that the greater the teacher is, the more difficult it becomes for the successor. That's why I try not to be too good. And her successor Tetsugikai also had so much difficulties that he had to leave Eheiji and founded his own monastery.

[50:18]

and he, so to speak, as a high-potential grandson of Dogen, completed and continued Dogen's work. This is a great lesson for our current situation in our Sangha. And the fact that Keisan Jokin followed him, and he was a very, seemed to be a very potent successor of Dogen's lineage, and to the extent that we can speak about completion, also completed Dogen's work. The fact that he followed Tetsugikai, that for me is a very important teaching for our present situation and for our Sangha. It's true, it is. Well, it makes me very happy what you said. Because, you know, for me this is the most wonderful form of friendship.

[51:37]

So it's wonderful for me to be able to practice with you and others for so long. But what I want is, the result is, each of you has the deepest kind of freedom. The other part of the Berlin Sangha? I would like to go back to what Giel said before. Another example, apart from Uda's suggestion of the Uli, something that struck me directly was Banke Yotaku. What is the meaning of the word God-belief?

[52:39]

I now have to go back to what Neil said and refer to that. And what came up for me is the question that comes along with the story of the Zen master, Bankei, who had an enlightenment experience that again suggests that there is something close to believing in God. You know what I mean? How can you understand that? He had an enormous influence. He influenced many teachers and also the school. How is this development, this leap, how can you explain that? So how can we, in this context, understand and explain this, that he also had enormous effects.

[53:56]

He had a large number of students and also developed. What did he develop? He developed the . He also developed the Rinzai school to a large extent and had influence on other teachers who came to him from the Soto lineage. And how can we explain and understand this from the point of view that you just introduced? Did Banke say he had Buddhist enlightenment? Where do you get this, that it was connected with Buddhist enlightenment? For me, this is a kind of archetype of this kind of... Yeah. That's just the category I put there. Yeah. Yeah, Banke is a wonderful teacher.

[55:13]

Okay. When someone says they're in love, I've just fallen in love. Most of us, I hope, know a little bit about what that's about. I know a number of people who never really fell in love until they were 60 or 70. Okay. So we know what the experience of being in love is. But even if you fall in love five times or ten times or two or three times, big time, each time it's a little different. But we all know what being in love is.

[56:16]

And being in love is something like enlightenment. Except that you don't have an object that you feel attached to. You no longer feel you need someone to fulfill that in love experience. It's simultaneously fulfilled. But let's say, for the sake of this conversation, that we all know what being in love is. But we also know that being in love is different, somewhat different for each of us. So when I hear, know about, read Banke's enlightenment experience,

[57:32]

It's a enlightening activity. Or Dungsans or Matsus or Buddhas. Yes, they're similar. But strictly speaking, you can't say they're identical. And it's healthier, I think, to practice assuming they're not identical than trying to assume you're trying to achieve some particular kind of state. If you tried to fall in love, that's the kind of person I want to fall in love with, and I think I'm going to make an effort to fall in love.

[58:41]

This probably doesn't work. Let's call it an arranged marriage. And I would be very happy I'd be very happy to arrange your enlightenment experiences. With what? Don't you do that with us all the time? Well, I used to try sort of, but I failed so much. I leave it up to you now. I try to create the possible conditions, but most of it's up to you. Okay, let's have a break.

[59:38]

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