Is there anything I said that struck you or stuck with you? Yeah, what's that about kind of feeling? And some of you had, yeah, interesting things and helpful things to me to say. And at some point we couldn't respond to everything that you might bring up. So I'm asking for the sake of the new people, partly, who are here, Is there anything that stuck with you or struck you from yesterday that you could bring up for the sake of the new people who are here?

[01:12]

Or for me, you know, mainly for me. Is there anything that stuck with you or something that moved you from yesterday's day that you would like to address again in the sense of the new people or mainly in my sense? Yes. Okay. Anybody? Yes. I would like to come back to change. This is a point that I don't know if it is clear. Roshi says Dharma holds, or Dharma holds. I would like to know a little more about what exactly is what holds. So I would like to come back to the point of change. There's something about it that's not clear to me. You said yesterday, Dharma holds. And that's something I'd like to hear more about. What exactly is that, that holds?

[02:14]

Yeah. No one knows. But we can say something about it. Okay, so I won't forget. Yes. A practical question. Are there any tricks how I can accomplish the mission not to move? Come to a sashim. Okay, thank you. Yes, thank you. No, thank you. Well, it does help if people are sitting around you who don't move. It doesn't mean you have to feel like, I can't move at all. I mean, again, the Buddhist police are... We don't have that security.

[03:16]

We don't hire them. It doesn't mean that you are not allowed to move at all. So again, the Buddhist police, we don't have such security. We don't order them. I have something related to this, because this morning I almost fell asleep several times. I couldn't do anything about it. Then I woke up again. Related to that, today, this morning, several times I just fell asleep. There was nothing I could do about it. Wasn't the case yesterday, but today I just kept falling over and wake up again. I do too. Sometimes people worry about me. I'm going to hit my head on the wall and fall off the platform. Okay, something else? Yes. Fritz. What impressed me was what you did this morning. You came in and you went up to the altar.

[04:51]

And you looked at the Buddha and I could see your face. I was sitting over there and there was this facial expression of, oh, what is that? Then you took a stick of incense and then you had this smile on your face as if you were saying, what the heck am I doing here? How do you know that? Yeah. Yeah, oh, gee, I was discovered. Yes. I had wild dreams last night and woke up.

[05:55]

And after that I felt very calm. And it was as if I understood through the dreams that I can't change anything. It was very touching for me. It was also about my parents. And the suffering that I felt ever since I was a child coming from the war And then you spoke about how you met Suzuki Roshi.

[07:13]

And I had that feeling with my former teacher. And it was unavoidable. And then I keep having this feeling also with you. And that's good, and through that I can't do anything, that was a big relief. And through, since I myself can't do anything, this change occurs, can occur.

[08:19]

Okay, thanks. Yes? I looked at myself, how thoughts, views, or mental formations, or attitudes, I looked at how, for me, from thoughts, views or mental formations or mental postures arise. And I think that, for me, other people are very important. In our case, the Sangha. And in a more mysterious way also the bells and whistles. Thank you for that, by the way. I can create spaces or trees where it is easier for me to let thoughts that are plausible become attitudes.

[10:00]

And now I wonder how I can manage to also in my daily life to turn thoughts that seem plausible to me, how to turn them, how to create the spaces in my daily life that would allow me to turn thoughts that seem plausible into mental postures. Well, my experience is that basically, if it feels like it could be and ought to be more of a view than just an insight, What I do is I try it out. And I try it out by experimenting with language to which sticks. There's some things because I think that the way we work, we have to give it enough conceptual form that it can be repeated.

[11:42]

Now, there are things I've noticed I have not been able to find, at least in English, any words that allow me to sustain repeated noticing. And that I tend to hold in the background as a feeling, a presence, but not an articulated presence. But I try out, usually I try out some kind of English which I repeat to myself and it sticks or it doesn't stick. Aber normalerweise probiere ich irgendeine Form englischer Worte aus und dann wiederhole ich sie für mich und dann schaue ich, ob sie hängen bleibt oder nicht.

[13:04]

And sometimes it just doesn't stick. And then when I'm doing something like this, suddenly I say it in a way that sticks. I don't know what happens, it just pops up. And sometimes when I type it, I intend to type something and I type it the wrong way and then, oh, that's better. And then I use that. And once I really establish it as a concept and am able to repeat it, Und wenn ich es einmal wirklich als Konzept etabliere und in der Lage bin, es zu wiederholen, dann ist es irgendwann so, dass es noch nicht mal mehr versprachlich ist, sondern es wird zu einer Sichtweise, die keine Sprache mehr braucht, um präsent zu sein.

[14:26]

So this is an example, excuse me for talking at some length about something so simple. This is something that I feel, or an insight, or I feel out of my unlanguaged experience in Zazen. And I give it some shape. And then I return it into my practice. And this then changes my practice. And it's interesting because it's what's led to many of the things I'm presenting to you as practice you will not find in any Asian teachings.

[15:28]

At least not in the particulars and sometimes not in the connectedness. And why is that? Because I found, I made a decision. Well, first I made a decision. Having no capacity for language, excepting some capacity for English. But I'm very visual. I have to see the language in my, even English words.

[16:30]

If I lose the spelling, pretty soon I don't know how to pronounce the word until I restore it to its spelling. So, I mean, it was a wise decision, but I didn't realize I had this incapacity that I decided to try to discover my practice with others entirely in English. I made the decision because I didn't think that words... like Hishirio, for instance, or many Anapana or something like that, had any filaments in Western languages.

[17:44]

Yeah, and... So I thought, we've got to find English, because English words reach out into the language and the culture. And since English is just a dialect of German, it works pretty well. With my translator. Translators. And because English is ultimately just a dialect of German, it works pretty well with the help of my translator into German. Not that I really understand them, but they're fun.

[18:48]

Okay, so now I made this decision that adopting a bunch of Pali and Sanskrit words was not the way I wanted to go. Plus, it happened to coincide with my not very good language ability. So, the result is... which I had no intention that it would go this way, it just happened, is that by trying to discover language for my experience of practice in English, made me establish more and more a way of speaking about practice that required other words from English to support it.

[20:16]

So, in effect, Just by practicing now for over half a century. And primarily in English and secondarily in German. I've in effect established a way of speaking about practice in western paradigms which doesn't have an equivalency in Japanese or Chinese. It's not that I'm super creative or anything.

[21:31]

It's just that I got stuck in English, so it happened in English. And it's only recently I sort of recognized the extent to which that's the case. So for us, I think practicing, it's useful because I can kind of convey to you the craft of practice in terms which are supported by our common Western culture and at the same time contradict our Western culture. Because we're weaving a... practice in the West that's not Western.

[22:50]

And if I was using Sanskrit or Pali words, if I was a real scholar, I would not be able to show the contradictions so clearly because they'd be, the Sanskrit and Pali doesn't contradict with Western culture, it's just different. I don't know if any of this is interesting. Did I lose all of you in this conversation? Neil? It's interesting to me because I try to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Is it that you fill the words with your experience and then also that you discover words contain some content, spiritual content, which we can sort of relate to.

[24:04]

I'm always looking for German words somehow spiritually filled expressions which we can use or make use of or relate. What is a spiritually filled expression? Let's say I have some spiritual experience of space or whatever and I try to express it. And if this is true, I think it conveys something to others if they really listen. We hope so, yes. So this is what I meant. Also, sometimes you find in the language, you find words which feel wrong in a way other people might have expressed their experience and expressed it in these words. This was with me. Meine Frage war... Oh, yeah, that was supposed to be Deutsch first. Okay, I know. Because I like to not understand first.

[25:07]

Do you use the English words that you use with your spiritual experience? Or are there words that you discover that already have something like a spiritual experience? Because that's what interests me the most when we use it in our German language. Thank you. Otmar? No, Otmar first. What I also find interesting through listening is the German language, how you can discover it and also use it. What I find interesting also by listening is to find out how the German language can also be discovered and used.

[26:17]

There is a certain logical practice or a meaning in the words that we may have lost because we understand the word differently. But if you take the word literally, how also in a yogic practice there can be a yogic meaning to words, which sometimes we've lost in just saying the word in ordinary ways. But when we actually go back to the literal meaning of the word, then oftentimes it can be used for a yogic practice. Yeah, I find that true, too. For example, there is this word Verstehen or Verstand. When I ask someone, do you understand that? For example, there is this word understanding. If I ask somebody, did you understand that? Then normally we immediately go to our thinking and wonder, we think about it and then have we understood that?

[27:21]

But in terms of the actual meaning, there's also a bodily presence through it being standing. There's an understanding in it and that bodily presence we've sort of lost because that's not how we're using that word. And when one investigates language in that way, then it keeps becoming clear how much even our mother tongue has to offer that we've oftentimes lost because that's not how we use the language. Yeah, I think that we have to be careful that our practice is the measure of what language we choose, what words we choose, and we just don't, oh, that's interesting, and let's let practice go the way the language directs it.

[28:46]

We have to kind of keep having it true to our actual experience, which is not necessarily languaged. So there's three here. One, two, three, but let me say something before. Okay. One of the interesting things about Zen practice, it looks like there's nothing to it. Well, you sit down and you do Zazen and there ain't too much instruction beyond that except don't move. While more early Buddhism, Theravadan Buddhism, will give you specific things to develop compassion, to develop bliss, to develop one-pointedness and so forth.

[30:04]

Während der frühe Buddhismus, zum Beispiel Theravada Buddhismus, einem ganz spezifische Anleitungen an die Hand gibt, wie man zum Beispiel Mitgefühl entwickelt oder Kontraktion, Einspitzigkeit oder Glückseligkeit oder so. Aber tatsächlich entwickelt sich die Zen-Praxis in Stufen. But we just don't tell you what those stages are. Because it's much more important that you discover them for yourself. And it's the difference between, as I put it briefly, sculpting a Buddha and weaving a Bodhisattva. And those are just the best words I've found so far for it.

[31:07]

I mean, in early Buddhism, for instance, distractions are considered to be hindrances. And you try to eliminate distractions and achieve sustained attention and so forth. So you, from my point of view, we could say that's like you're taking Buddha as a goal and you're trying to sculpt yourself into a Buddha. Take off the hindrances, get the nose right. No, that's impossible for me. So, but the Zen approach is not that distractions are hindrances. Aber der Zen-Ansatz ist nicht, dass Ablenkungen Hindernisse sind.

[32:16]

Distractions are your experience and they should be incorporated in your experience. Sondern Ablenkungen sind deine Erfahrung und sie sollten in deine Erfahrung eingebunden sein. Perhaps transformed by the incorporation, but that's very different than excluding. Vielleicht so, dass sie transformiert werden durch das Eingebettetsein in der eigenen Erfahrung. Aber das ist etwas ganz anderes, als sie auszuschließen. Im Zen versuchen wir eine einschließende Stille hervorzubringen, die offen ist für alles, was geschieht. A stillness which is not disturbed by distraction.

[33:16]

This is really central to Zen practice and fundamental to what you're doing if you're a Zen practitioner. Okay. So... So as a result, you are weaving your life into your practice. And if I give you stages, you're sort of saying, well, I'm trying to do this stage and my life is telling me that. And, you know, that doesn't work in Zen. So, realisational Zen practice is rooted in your noticing the stages. And then you articulating those dangers that arise in your life a little differently than other people's lives.

[34:40]

We may get to similar places in practice, but our route was different. Like in Google Maps, this one takes 10.5 years to get there, and this one takes 7.3 years to get there. So wie bei Google Maps, wo du dann sehen kannst, ja, das braucht jetzt 10,5 Jahre, um da anzukommen, und die andere Route braucht 7,3 Jahre, um da anzukommen. If I'd looked at my map and it said 55 years, I'd say, oh, God. Wenn ich mir zuvor meine Landkarte angeschaut hätte und gesehen hätte, das braucht 55 Jahre, dann hätte ich gedacht, meine Güte. Suki Roshi, I remember I asked him once, I was sitting in the back of a car, and I said to him, Do you think I can do this? He said, yes, if you just continue.

[35:42]

Okay, well, all right. So that's at the center of Zen practice is the sensitivity to your own practice and to and how you evolve your practice. Zakaria, she used to say, don't develop concentration. developed the ability to be ready to concentrate. He also said, you will each realize your own enlightenment.

[36:43]

Er hat auch gesagt, jeder von euch wird, du wirst deine eigene Erleuchtung verwirklichen. So in this way of looking at it, Buddha is not the goal, Buddha is the starting point. Und aus dieser Perspektive das zu betrachten, ist Buddha nicht das Ziel, sondern Buddha ist der Ausgangspunkt. And each of you is the end point. Und jeder, jede von euch ist der Endpunkt. And our shared end point is important too. Und unser gemeinsamer Endpunkt ist auch wichtig. There's two invisible sanghas. Da sind zwei unsichtbare sanghan. One invisible sangha of Dogen, Bodhisattvas, has led to us now. Eine unsichtbare sangha mit Dogen und den Bodhisattvas und so weiter hat zu uns jetzt geführt. That's the invisible sangha of the past, which... We would not be able to think this all up ourselves. We have realized it through the practice of others. And then there's the invisible Sangha of the future, which is our immediate responsibility.

[37:55]

Okay, okay. Yes. You ask for example, da sein, zeitgeist, then you have really problems to translate into an American language. Zeitgeist, was hast du noch gesagt? Da sein, Weckschmerz und Schweinehund. Schweinhund? The inner Schweinhund. The inner Schweinhund. Well, I know that pretty well, actually. Yeah. What was the other words? Well, you asked for examples of German words that carry a feeling like that, and there are some.

[38:55]

One is the world weariness, actually. World weariness? Yeah, like the world hurts you. Yeah, I know that. So Weltschmerz or that German is a good word, zeitgeist, the mind of the time. Those are examples. Well, those have almost become English words. I mean, in any philosophical text. There's too much culture context hanging on them. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. I wanted to say something about words and practice. My experience was that I started to practice ten years ago and simultaneously also learned English again. And I didn't try to learn it the way I learned it in school, but I tried to feel the words and maybe that was also connected to starting to practice.

[40:06]

Parallel dazu habe ich dann auch nochmal das Deutsche neu gelernt, weil ich auch die Worte versucht habe zu fühlen. And simultaneously I also relearned German because there too I tried to feel the words. Und was ich besonders freundlich finde, ist, wenn ich jetzt mit Menschen rede, And what I find interesting is when I speak with people, be it privately or at work, I try to experiment with what I feel in the words. And then what happens sometimes is that through that it seems like some sort of spaces are opening up. And even with people who don't practice, or at least I don't know that they practice,

[41:16]

But then a particular kind of connectedness can appear and a different way of being together. I think that's all completely true. That's certainly my experience and my effort, and I notice the connectedness which occurs. Thank you. Yes? I recognize my practice. I often times in my practice sort of get stuck in the gap between thinking, non-thinking and then seeking words for my experience. Then I think a lot.

[42:54]

Yes, when I think, I think. But then I lose something, namely the physical, the yogic reference to what I have learned, how to grasp it in a form. Yes, so in thinking, not thinking, something gets lost from me, which is the yogic relationship to bring form to something that I've experienced. Yes, then I know how to leave, so if I go somewhere else, I have to do a little fishing. I think it's good to fish until you get tired of it. Yeah, and I think you hold the intention, but, you know, see what happens.

[44:14]

Okay, so maybe we're supposed to go have lunch pretty soon. One o'clock is lunch, is that right? So let me say something... Jeez, I say the word lunch and people jump up and start leaving. I didn't mean that as a signal. I meant that to stay. Okay, so I'd like to say something about, you know, The most simple of our practices. Which is counting the breath. Okay. This is, at least we give that instruction in Zen.

[45:19]

We don't say count to a thousand, we say count to ten and start over. And we don't say count the inhale and the exhale, just count the exhale. No, you can experiment with going to 100, you know, I've done all that fooling around, or experiment with counting inhale and exhale. You can try all those things. But simply counting the exhales to zero or to ten and then starting over is good enough. Okay, so when you do that, you're developing the habit of relating cognition or relating language to your body. Wenn du das tust, entwickelst du die Gewohnheit, Kognition, relating cognition or?

[46:45]

Language, words, counting. Kognition oder Sprache, Worte, das Zählen, mit dem Körper zu verbinden. When we teach a child its ABCs or one to count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or ABCDEFG, etc., Wenn wir einem Kind das Alphabet beibringen oder das Zählen beibringen... We're basically teaching the child to organize their mentality in categories. Dann bringen wir dem Kind im Grunde genommen bei, sein Geistesraum in Kategorien zu organisieren. And when you... When in Zen practice or Buddhist practice in general, you bring the counting, the ordering through the breath You are now linking the body and the mind.

[47:50]

You are bringing, it's a primitive process, an intentional, a primitive, I would say primitive, process of embodiment. Das ist ein primitiver, ein absichtsvoller und ich würde sagen ein primitiver Prozess der Verkörperung. So if you get used to and can sustain counting to ten most of the time, I mean much of the time, you may only count to one. But, you know, and you do one again. Anyway, you're beginning to be able to bring attention and intention together with the body. Now, attention is an aspect of consciousness.

[49:10]

But attention is also its own mind separate from consciousness. And I can speak about that if you want, but that's enough for me to say it that way just now. So at least we can say attention is a form of mind. So you're bringing mind to the breath. And the breath begins to influence the mind. And the mind begins to influence the breath. It's a very simple instruction, but it has a tremendous depth in your life. And you begin to really feel, feel words. You begin to feel embodiment. Okay.

[50:20]

Now, the next practice in Zen, usually, is to follow your breath. Now, this can lead in many directions. It becomes a tool, a little flashlight, by which you can explore your body. You can literally follow this little breath flashlight down through and around your organs and up through your lungs and so forth. And you get to feel that inside and outside are just two aspects of each other. A Mobius strip. So the simple practice of following your breath is itself also transformative.

[51:21]

Okay, and by following the breath, you're beginning to develop an interior attentional space. It's almost as if your chest, your torso, was an innerly lit space. You feel your body, your torso, as an interior space that's visual, but not visual in the usual way. So you're experiencing an interior attentional space. And unless you do something like this, you just have to see the world out there, but you don't feel the world in your inner attentional space.

[52:36]

So a mature practitioner feels the inner attentional space simultaneously with the outer attentional space. And then, as you continue this commitment, and really it takes rigor, you can't let up for a moment. If you go back to your usual stuff and stuff like this and everything's fine, then you go to practice again, it doesn't ever have catalytic depth. Particularly for the layperson. As I said yesterday, the layperson needs twice the intention of the monastic practitioner.

[54:09]

So the sangha is not going to do it for you as a lay person. So you have to have a kind of fierce, unrelating intention or your lay practice doesn't work very well. I'm sorry to say that, but anyway, it's the way it is. Okay, so if you have this, develop this inner attentional space, And you feel its presence in all circumstances.

[55:10]

Then it becomes subtle enough that the outer, as I said yesterday, the outer attentional space is actually externalized interior attentional space. And you feel the outside world in your body. And you feel other people, persons in your body. And it's incredibly intimate. You become a breathing space, as I've said, which immediately recognizes other person's breathing space. And as I said yesterday, we're here, we mostly have hands and feet and bodies and heads and things that we share that goes beyond our personality differences.

[56:23]

But we also, I mean, the more you develop this interior attentional space, this breathing space we are, more than we are a separate person. Je mehr du aber diesen Atemraum entwickelst, der wir sind, der wir mehr sind, als dass wir eine getrennte Person sind. Somebody comes up to me, I'm just joking, but somebody says, are you Richard Baker? Wenn jemand mich anspricht und fragt, bist du Richard Baker? Well, I don't know, I kind of forget. But I guess sometimes I am. But I know always I'm a breathing space. That's what I really know. And I feel you're the waitress or whoever it is, breathing space.

[57:33]

That's more powerful than gender differences, personality differences, age differences, and there's an immediate connectivity. That's one of the most obvious secrets I can reveal. Thank you very much.

[57:48]

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