Okay, well I'm sorry I can't speak German, but I have my friend here to translate for me. We have this question that was announced, which I take to mean, ask, is a Western Buddhism possible? And that's not actually an easy question to answer. Of course, a Buddhism in the West is possible. And I try to practice a Buddhism and teach a Buddhism in the West that will survive.

[01:04]

But whether it will survive or not is quite different from whether it will flourish or not. And it won't flourish unless it's a Western Buddhism, not just a Buddhism in the West. And there's, of course, in America, there's Thai Buddhists and Japanese and Korean and many Occidentals who are practicing Buddhism. But this is a Buddhism transplanted in the West. It's not a Western Buddhism. And so to look at this question which was given to me, so I'm trying to see if I can answer it. And I'd like to try to answer it so it might be interesting to you or useful to you.

[02:07]

But we have a Western tradition. If we say start with the Greeks, it's 2,500 years old. And it's inseparable from 2,000 years of Christian or Judeo-Christian tradition. And I don't see that adjusting to Buddhism much. So we have to ask, what is there in the West that will let Buddhism in? Where are some openings or fissures, stress fissures like where a volcano opens? And probably the openings in the tradition, in the Western tradition, are both through science and psychology.

[03:27]

Now, I don't think science or psychology should be used as a Trojan horse to get Buddhism into Western culture. If you do that, the Trojans take over. So, somehow we... I think we can see, though, that science and psychology do create some possibilities for Buddhism to actually become a Western Buddhism. I mean, there's already a lot of stresses, and there has been since Galileo, between science and the Western tradition. Since Galileo, there's been stresses between science and the traditional culture.

[04:43]

So science attempts to study, science believes, assumes, that the material world, biological, physical world, is analyzable and understandable. And Buddhism also is ultimately based on two things. One, that everything changes. And a belief in and a practice of a heuristic inferring consciousness. That you can study yourself and the world through evidence. So in that sense, psychology, which thinks you can study the person and understand him or her, and science, which thinks you can understand the world.

[05:51]

So then we have to ask, what kind of Buddhism are we talking about that might come into the West? I would say what we have, you could divide Buddhism up into religious Buddhism, cultural Buddhism, practice Buddhism, psychology Buddhism, and philosophical Buddhism. And I don't think that religious Buddhism and cultural Buddhism have too much connection to the West. To some extent I teach religious Buddhism, but for the most part I teach practice Buddhism and loosely psychology Buddhism.

[06:54]

Now, strictly speaking, there's no Buddhist psychology. Buddhism is a study of mind, not of psyche. And the fifth one is philosophical Buddhism. What is the basic view? And the basic view of Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in particular is that there's a big mind that we can distinguish from our foreground mind. And this is not, the West, in Western psychology and philosophy, et cetera, we don't really understand that or accept it. And I think this is the main point in which a Western Buddhism can develop.

[08:32]

And by big mind, it's rather difficult to explain what I mean by that, but if you imagine you are looking at some trees and seeing the leaves move, As you watch the leaves move, that movement is only possible because of the stillness of mind. And the basic practice in meditation is really to begin to see not just the movement of the leaves, but the stillness of the mind which allows the leaves to move. And so in order to come to this, you need to practice meditation or mindfulness. Now I can't in a public lecture give you much sense of this practice of big mind, but I think that if you take this image of the leaves moving,

[10:32]

And you find a way to settle that feeling into your body. You can basically shift your sense of location from the moving leaves to the stillness of mind. And many of the practices in Zen are an attempt to, we could say, remove the thought coverings, the film of thoughts that's on everything. And that's the meaning of the word thusness, to just see things before you substantiate them with thought. Now, one of the examples I could give you is, try to give you a feeling for this big mind, or still mind, is we have a habit to substantiate everything.

[11:58]

Want to say that much? And an example of that is if you took the word wave, W-A-V-E, and you rearrange the letters. when they're mixed up, A, V, W, E, say, they're just other. And when you, but as soon as you put them near to each other, they suddenly become the word wave. Well that habit, we have a habit of substantiating things and suddenly you see things as wave, chair, particular person and so on.

[13:02]

So the practice to realize this big mind or original mind is to see if you can hold your mind at a place before you substantiate everything or before thought arises. And it's not so, once you see that as a possibility, it's not so difficult. Once you see that when you're looking at the leaves or anything, that what makes that possible is the stillness of mind. So you can begin to practice that stillness of mind. And one way is to see if you can hold your mind before thoughts arise. Now this is something that can be brought into Western psychology.

[14:21]

You can fairly easily, in various ways, without being a Buddhist, teach the possibility of holding the mind before thought arises. But it's not really exactly, I mean, we say before thought arises because you don't have much language for it, but it really means before substantiation arises. Because a kind of thinking goes on a kind of a mental activity goes on, which we could call a kind of thinking, even if you're not substantiating everything. And the biggest word for the word Buddha is tathagata. And tatagata means to hold, it's a word that means thusness in a simple sense.

[15:38]

It means that Buddha mind is holding the mind in thusness or before thought arises. Now, I'm assuming that many of you practice meditation. One way to practice with this, another way to practice with this, which allows you to not interfere with your mind, Because if you do meditation too much, it's just your personality or your habits doing it. So you want to practice in a way that you can not always be correcting your mind. So how do you practice if you don't correct your mind?

[16:50]

Well of course anything you do is a kind of correction but you make it as minimal as possible. For example you sit down you try to keep a posture that allows you to stay awake. And then you can attend to your attention. So attention will focus on your breath or on an itch on your face or your uncomfortable legs or something. Instead of correcting that, you just keep your attention on your attention. So wherever your attention goes, you go with your attention.

[17:57]

This is quite interesting because one is you basically aren't correcting your mind, you're just letting it do what it does. But in the process you're creating a stream of attention that runs through the various things your mind moves to. That stream of attention is another contact with this original mind or big mind. And also, when you follow where your attention leads you in meditation, it ends up to be a kind of visualization based on the body. Because a certain kind of pattern begins to come up that you see from where your attention goes to.

[18:59]

Rather than describing that in more detail, I suggest you try it. It's really quite interesting which itch leads to an itch somewhere else in your body and leads to another itch somewhere else in your body. And you can actually, if you can really just follow your attention, you begin to see patterns in your body and in your associations that have to do with tension or another view of your body than your usual way you think of yourself. Now that process of doing that is also a process of coming closer to this, to thusness or before thought arises. Now, I'm wondering what I can say that isn't too much dependent on your finding a way to being skillful at practice.

[20:47]

One way to practice is to begin to see, for example, I mean, not only do you try to sit straight, but when you hear something, you hear yourself hearing it. All these are methods, like when I see you, I see, not only do I see you in front of me, I see an externalized visual image. But I also see an internal image. And I see the consciousness on which these images are. and this coming to this awareness is basic Zen practice and basic Buddhist practice and I do think it can be it's this original mind it doesn't mean original in the sense that it's at the beginning of time or something like that

[22:08]

It means that it's a source mind, it's at the source of what we think and do. So if you can practice in a way that gives you a sense of this source mind or original mind, Or a sense of the fact that what I'm seeing is both you and inside myself too. If you find a way to keep reminding yourself of that, it actually begins, at some point there's a shift in you and you rest in that unmoving mind rather than in the foreground mind or the comparative mind.

[23:15]

And then your comparative mind isn't a problem because it's rooted in this big mind or original mind. And this so-called original mind is free of any particular culture. So when you, if you, each one of us can recognize or have some direct experience of, practice of this original mind, this will be the seed from which Buddhism will develop in the West. From which a Western Buddhism will develop. And I think that that seed, we can call it a seed mind or original mind, will then, not only does it change you personally, how you function, The dynamic of how your memory works, how your perception works, changes when you begin to rest in this unmoving or original mind.

[24:39]

But it'll also change how we practice psychology. Anyway, I think that's enough of a general picture. Is there anything anybody would like to ask me about? Yes. and there exist a lot of stories about him I read a book about Isandosi

[25:41]

There is a lot about you in the book. I haven't read the book, but I know that that's the case. What is your opinion now about this? About which? Yes. In the book, there is described why you left the monastery. It is described it was because of sex. I don't want to say more to that. What is your opinion? I don't know. The question was why he doesn't talk more about it and he said everybody should read the book.

[27:12]

Well, I don't know what's in the book because I haven't read it. It was written by a friend of mine. And his son was my student. And what happened in 1983 is extremely complicated. And it's mostly, there's a public view of it, and it's mostly politics, I think. I'm very clear about my relationships to people and to Suzuki Roshi and to the people I practiced with, and for me there's no problem. I'll just say that... This is really a problem within American Buddhism, not here.

[28:18]

But it would be very good in America if it could be understood what really happened because it would help the whole Buddhist scene in America. And that may happen. There's a new abbot going to be at the San Francisco Zen Center in February who's a friend of mine. And some other things are happening which may change the situation. But as I say, I haven't read the book, but I agree with you that some kind of, I assume I'm agreeing with you, that some kind of better understanding could come out of it. Why should it only help the American police scene and not also the Austrian?

[29:20]

Well Mike, but I don't think you're involved in the same kind of I don't, you know, my impression is that the European Buddhist scene is not involved in the same kind of, doesn't have the same problems the American Buddhist scene does. I don't think so, but I don't know. What's his name again, the other one? What did you learn from that? I learned to continue practicing.

[30:24]

Yes? I liked when you talked about the transplanted Buddhism and the Buddhism in the West as the second element and the beginnings of a really Western Buddhism. Can the three streams establish a relationship? The three streams? What three streams? The transplanted Buddhism, the Buddhism in the West, and the Western Buddhism. Oh, I think they will, yes. and they're all it's all stages in developing a western Buddhism but I don't myself think I'm not interested in how can I put it in adjusting Buddhism to the west

[31:48]

I think I'm more interested in teaching Buddhism as authentically as possible and finding ways through that it becomes Western. And it's not, as I said in the beginning, it's not an easy question to answer. But my own feeling is this, what I'm traditionally called original mind, is the key to the development of a Western Buddhism. Buddhism is having an enormous influence on our society. its ideas and so forth, and on many scientists and psychotherapists and so forth. And that helps the development of Western Buddhism, but that's not Western Buddhism.

[33:06]

So Zen practice can be useful to us individually in that it is also the key, most direct key, particularly from the Zen point of view, toward your own realization and your own development of a Buddhist practice. Yes. When you say the original mind is a mind of grace, in some other way, the original mind is always a way-seeking mind. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how these two images can go together, and they do. That would be interesting to hear some of that. Yes, German.

[34:19]

No, you can say it yourself. He said that the one who is calm is calm. And in many books it is often said that the one who is calm is not calm. The one who is not calm is probably looking for a way, or is looking for a way. Maybe he doesn't even know what it is about. Yeah, way-seeking mind means two things. One is that everything's changing and the response to that is practice. And the second part is that the root of every state of mind is your intention. Or your view. But behind your views and what can develop your views is your intention. So your intention is when you're

[35:21]

When your mind of practice is based on the intention of seeking the way, that's way-seeking mind. Sorry, I lost... Yeah. In the deepest sense, it means... Sorry. In the deepest sense, it means that you... that... Your intention can awaken what we call your fundamental endowment. So there's two ways of practicing here. One way is way-seeking mind that's manifested in the many small things you do in mindfulness practice. That particularly as you substantiate less, it becomes very subtle in how it's present in your activity. And the other is, it creates a situation where you can have a sudden shift

[36:37]

from your comparative mind to this unmoving mind. And as we just discussed in a seminar in Berlin, the most classic koan is Mu, which is to bring, or you could say, Buddha nature, no Buddha nature, to challenge yourself for the possibility of realization. And to just keep that however the question arises in your mind or in your consciousness, present with you is also way-seeking mind.

[37:59]

Yes. Well, I fall to what you said is that you think it is the first one. You were describing kind of changes in your own way of seeing or in your own way of... Yeah, mind in any way. ...your mind. Now, what I would like, what I'm asking is... If many people practice, what happens on a culture or what are the changes happening on a culture or on a social level?

[39:03]

Or what would you envision that might change at this level? I can't answer the question. I myself feel that it's a, at least for me, it's definitely a more accurate and integrative way of being. And gives me a sense of ease and friendship which I can't imagine any other way of coming to. So I have to support that in myself and with others.

[40:14]

What the result will be, I don't know. One of the aspects of our world is that anything can be corrupted. And everything at a social level, certain things are extrapolated from it and simplified and then changed into something else. So there's no way I can know what will happen. or even guess because what's going to come to this even if the West say the West developed and I think it will the basic views of Buddhism what will come to the surface

[41:17]

through those views and Western culture, we don't know. But we can see in the environmental movement, which has a lot of Buddhist ideas in it, that on the whole it's pretty good, I think. Yeah, so all I can do is do what seems, each of us do what seems right and hope for the best. But there's always, and Buddhism's based on this idea, that there's a certain amount of chaos in whatever happens, and that's where the creativity is. But there's also an own organizing or self-organizing process going on. And the basic, if we get a little more technical from a practice point of view, the basic process of perception in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism,

[42:32]

Is to see You just see things You stop You let things be That means you allow a self-organizing or own-organizing process to occur And you throw everything and you let go Now, that what I just described is only possible if your mind and body are wedded together. So each moment of perception, each dharma, is also allowing an unorganizing process to occur. You see, you don't substantiate. This is happening like that.

[43:45]

I see, I let everything be, and I let it go. And the result is, there's a fluidity in the world that's not there when you're always trying to make it fit your perceptual molds. So it means that the world isn't predictable. But I think that, for me, that's better than trying to predict it or control it. So by definition, I can't answer your question. What? Yes. Yes. Or do you see the role of the teacher in practice? Well, there's two.

[44:46]

There's Tathagata Zen and Ancestral Zen. And both are... Actually, they work together, but let me describe them separately. Tathagata Zen means that the teacher introduces you to the mind which teaches you. That's the modest way of what I'm trying to do tonight. And the teaching of the Heart Sutra is really to show you the mind which taught Buddha. So if you come to understand this original mind, or have a feeling for it or a taste of it, it begins then to teach you. So the teacher's job is then to see you enough or for you to be with the teacher enough that that happens.

[46:04]

And that can be not very often. But the teacher is still pretty much

[46:08]

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