I like to speak about what I don't know how to speak about. Because the experience I have of trying to make sense of something, not just for myself or to myself, Not just for myself, but to myself? Not only for myself, but also to myself. Yeah, because then I bring each of your perspective, at least to the extent that I can feel it, into what I'm speaking about.

[01:01]

Which then opens up dimensions that I couldn't have discovered all by myself. So I spoke yesterday about this koan because I I wanted to introduce us to a way that we can introduce ourselves into the tradition. And to recognize that this is a basic position, this koan represents a basic position of Zen practice.

[02:22]

And we can also see in it, though I haven't yet spoken about it, I referred to it, that it on the one hand represents an illumination of our own thinking, the thinking we've inherited. Yeah. So we find ourselves with this image of the loom actually weaving our own views, weaving into the woof or weft of our own views, the views of this East Asian Chinese thinking.

[03:40]

This puts our own views into relief, And also puts these East Asian and Buddhist, they're not exactly the same, East Asian and Buddhist views into relief. Which creates a kind of entanglement that I find very fruitful but hard to speak into and with.

[04:47]

This is a recent term in physics, the qubit. Q-U-B-I-T. Okay. You can just say Q-B-I-T. I think physics is sort of... non-linguistically limited in that. The qubit means something that can be in two positions at once, simultaneously. And this colon is in two positions at once. Dieser Koan ist gleichzeitig in zwei Positionen.

[05:50]

One says the basic teaching is the simplicity of Mr. Who and all his epithets ascending the seat. Einer sagt, die grundlegende Lehre ist die Einfachheit von Mr. Who und der Art, wie er einfach auf den Sitz steigt. The 10 epithets of Buddha, the 10th one is Mr. Who, or the world-honored one. And the first is something like the worthy one and so forth. I think that's the second one. The first one is the one simultaneously is going and coming. This all means these are not identities but positions, positions we can take too.

[06:54]

So this is asking us to put ourselves in the position of one who's enlightened, or put ourselves within the potentiality of awakening. And that potentiality of awakening is as simple as ascending the seat, raising your eyebrows, and so forth. So that's one position. Just the exquisite Phenomenality of immediacy.

[08:13]

Einfach die exquisite Phänomenhaftigkeit der Unmittelbarkeit. Now the word exquisite has come to mean beauty. Das Wort exquisite bedeutet häufig Schönheit. But actually the root of it actually means this seeking of beauty. of absolute preciseness. Exquisite, you're looking for absolute preciseness. So as it says, Wolf leaves the shuttle and makes a precise fabric, precise weaving. And this is an analogy for, or metaphor for, for the exquisiteness of immediacy.

[09:22]

And that is a metaphor or an analogy for this, I say in German, exquisite, exquisiteness of immediacy. So as the koan quotes Shwedo, one of the famous Zen masters, if there had been someone there who understood the multitude of immediacies within circumstances. In other words, if there had been someone there who'd understood the multitude of immediacies within each circumstance, As with the word Saindhava.

[10:32]

And Saindhava is a Sanskrit word which means both salt and horse. So it's just used as an example of, you have to know whether it means salt. Pass the horse, please. No, no, I mean salt. Das ist einfach ein Beispiel dafür, dass du wissen musst, erkennen musst, ob jetzt, wenn das Wort Sandara benutzt wird, Salz oder Pferd gemeint ist. Bitte reich mir das Pferd. Nein, ich glaube, ich meine Salz. So again, says, if there had been someone there who understood the multitude of circumstantial meanings, would never have had to raise his juridical gavel. So that, again, this is the position that circumstances are the fundamental teachings.

[11:57]

But then Guifang's Shredo statement, Manjushri's gavel and leaking, all of these are the teachings which help us enter the exquisiteness of the mediumship. So this koan takes two positions simultaneously. One, we don't need teaching, and two, we need teaching. And how to turn teaching into the teaching you don't need. Okay, so that's the basic position of the koan.

[13:08]

A kind of conundrum. So yesterday I said to Nicole, before our evening repast, I said, did you make any sense? I was kind of in the middle of this koan. How did you feel? I asked her if what I said made sense. I was in the middle of this koan. How did you feel about it? And she said something like, well, I'm also the translator, and I don't know what's going on, and yet I do know, I sort of feel something. And I said, maybe you could say that tomorrow. And then he said, well, maybe you could say that tomorrow. So I asked her, tomorrow morning, please say something for a while.

[14:24]

And she said, you mean a couple of minutes? And I said, yeah, maybe longer. Yeah, so there she is. That was the introduction. But I can't, I don't think, speak and translate for you. I mean, maybe. I probably, I mean, you almost could. But you don't have to worry about me. Maybe I'll sneak over next to Christina. Ask her to translate. Yeah, but then we're interfering. Okay, so. Yeah, okay, um. I also said to Oshie yesterday that for me it was like that in the middle of this lecture.

[15:29]

I think he said an incredible amount of things yesterday. And for me, a parallel image has come off, and that was like a lady talking. By comparing an incredible number of individual drops, where I have a feeling about which direction they are coming from. But to grasp every single drop in detail, that was too much and too fast. And that's how I perceived it yesterday. And what I also noticed is that I always listen to Roshi with a feeling of Was hinterlässt er da auch? Also das ist vielleicht ein Stück weit spezifisch, weil ich natürlich auch an den Johanneshof denke und in meiner Position dort als Direktorin mich darum zu kümmern, wie das alles weitergeht, höre ich immer auch mit dem Ohr, was hinterlässt er da eigentlich?

[16:38]

And I don't know if we still have time for that. That's not the aspect I want to talk about today. but at least I wanted to tell him that yesterday, I called it a kind of Buddhist manifesto for myself, what I heard there. And I found it very enriching to take on this position. There are these four aspects that are directions and that you can orientate yourself on. So that's one aspect that really came to me. That is a statement that he makes. And for me personally, it's like, there is this Dhamma rain and now I have to find my way in the landscape in which this Dhamma rain takes place. And yesterday I noticed quite strongly that I already have something like my own practice stream that flows into this landscape.

[17:45]

These are my own themes that are current to which I also work specifically. And the Dharma rain sometimes falls into the stream and sometimes doesn't. And some drops, they somehow fly so far away and over time, sometimes I notice how a new plant grows somewhere in the distance or over a long time. And that I can then suddenly connect it with a sentence. that I heard a long time ago, some drops just sink. I think most of them sink somewhere in the ground and I don't know what they do at all, what fruits grow out of it. And some fall directly into my concrete stream of practice, where I can see immediately, oh wow, okay, this is now relevant for my topic and I pick it up directly and pour it into the questions I have.

[18:55]

And so it's actually the first thing that I've been working on for a few years now. Namely, I hear like two ears. And that one ear, that is the ear, I would now like to stay in this picture, that is the ear in which I take in the hold of a fertile ground. I give myself this instruction. Just listen as if you were fertile soil. And now seeds fall in, now rain falls in, and I don't do anything with it, but I just pick them up. And this ear, of course, you can say that it is a spirit that I teach myself to touch with it. And in this spirit, I have noticed, it is important, I am privileged as a translator, I have to do that, I have to recognize the differences that are made, but I don't have time to think about it.

[20:11]

So this is also this ear, this is a non-comparative, but distinguishable ear. an ear that does not go into further expression. Cultivating this kind of mind, like a distinguishing but not comparable receptor, so to speak, that is a mode with which I absorb this teaching. Yes, and then there is one more thing that is interesting to me in this state, that I always try to move in this spirit exactly between the known and at the edge between the known and the unknown. And I take this sentence for myself, some of you may know it, it's actually about the truth of the non-feeling being.

[21:18]

A national teacher asked, what is the teaching of the non-feeling beings? The monk, the traveling monk, said, I don't hear you. I don't hear the teaching of the non-feeling beings. Then the teacher said, don't hinder what it hears. Don't hinder what it can hear. And that is also an instruction that I take into this ear of simply recording, simply to move me to this edge and to preserve the openness to what may be completely new and does not fall into a single category that I already know. to see if I can just hear and at the same time not to prevent what somehow hears even more, which also hears what I don't hear. Yes, and then there is also this, as I said, where the rain falls into the streams of my own practice.

[22:30]

And that's an interesting, for me, a very concrete interface, where the practice becomes really personal, where it somehow meets my flesh and blood. and has effects there. Because in what I now call the stream of my practice, of course, my entire biography flows with it. Whether it's psychological or physiological or just habits at all, they all flow with it. And that's where Dharma rain falls into. And I notice for myself, When I start to deal with this, I have a topic yesterday that is relevant to me, from what Roshi is talking about, is this statement, consciousness is invisible. And his challenge is, look, can you get the consciousness in view? and the construction process of consciousness, you can participate in this.

[23:45]

You can participate in the way the world appears from moment to moment as a fabric. A lot happens to me when I hear it and when I let it get to me, because at first it's not my experience at all. So I don't see directly where in what I see and hear and where the consciousness is concrete. And then I start to deal with it. What is consciousness? And this is a different ear with which I hear. It's not just hearing and not thinking about it, but I really go into a very specific work at a certain point. And I notice when it starts with When we first get a glimpse of this consciousness, what is it that is so invisible?

[24:56]

How can it be that there is something that I cannot see? One thing that comes to mind is, I always think I see one world. I always think what I see or hear is the world. When I take Roshi's theory seriously, then he sees a doubt in it. And this doubt is a starting point to start something that I think is given, namely that this is the world and that what I see is real, as I see it is real. And that, for example, the people I have known for a long time, let's say Eveline, Regina, Danico, that all that I know of you, that this is given, all of this is suddenly challenged. And in the moment when that is challenged, that's when I feel something. That's when I start, that's when my own views are challenged.

[25:57]

For me, the first views that are challenged are convictions of self-image. And that can be anything. It can be something like, if something like this comes up, how do you make the consciousness visible, then something like this could appear that I can't do. Or something like, yes, I can do it anyway, I don't even need to try it out, that's it. And this, it can also be something like, others have to do this, or something like that. So any form of convictions that suddenly, with which I put myself in a relationship, to the fact that a Dhamma talker peeped at me. And these convictions, again, I find it very important for me to go in there and not ask, where do they come from? Or not so much, I don't even want to recognize the origin, but first just how they work, how, where do I feel.

[27:04]

If I look at myself now, yes, making consciousness visible, I can't do that. Then I can take a look, when I take this sentence, this self-image, conviction, I can't do that. How does it feel when I say that? How does it feel, where do I feel that in my body, what does it create for a posture? Are there pictures of it? For me it's often like this, when I look closely, I don't say I can't do it, I say I can't do it yet. And then I can feel this yet, and then, where is this yet, what do I believe there? And then I realize, oh well, then I feel there now in my specific case, I can perceive something like, aha, I think so, that I'm still growing, and when I've grown, then maybe I can do it. then I notice how central this is still in my self-confidence. And these are very concrete, where it really becomes personal, where I really go into the biographical work and deal with the self-image.

[28:16]

Okay, these are things, once I've identified them, then I can change them. At least that's how I feel. Then I can question them. Can I ask, is this really true? Can I not do that yet? Well, I haven't tried it yet. Maybe I'll try it out. And these are these, I find these sentences, they are for me, I find them very exciting. In the meantime, I have developed a kind of way where these sentences that come out of the biography and place themselves in the present tense, and then somehow as a position in relation to the Dhamma talk, they have in the meantime something like a voice of their own that I can recognize. This is a very own voice. And I know it very well, to be honest. Okay, and then I'll try to stay a little bit in the frame of what we've been talking about the last few days.

[29:18]

My experience is that Jetzt ist es mit dem Selbst so und mit dem Selbstbild so, der Roshi sagt häufig, der Fisch des Selbst, was ich im Englischen lustig finde, weil das heißt the selfish and the fish itself, der Fisch des Selbst, der schwimmt im Gewässer des Bewusstseins. And if we now say something like, for example, that the being is hidden behind consciousness. That was one of the aspects we talked about. My experience is also that consciousness is hidden behind the self. The self is like a fat fish that swims around in consciousness and draws all the attention to itself. And this is, I think, the problem. For me, this is actually the biggest problem with what we call ourselves or what we may experience as a self-image or as a conviction of ourselves, is that it draws enormous attention.

[30:22]

This is the bond of attention, the bundle of attention. that happens in the self, I keep in my practice and especially in this context, make the consciousness visible, because that is actually a central difficulty for me. With self-portraits it is just that they always have to be confirmed. And this is just a little excursion, because this is an aspect that I've been observing extremely lately. My self-images, more and more, become quite transparent for me. I hear them as voices, I can feel them, physically feel them, when they appear, ah, this is this form of self, which either makes itself small, or the form of self that has to prove itself. And in terms of activity, it's like a shadow boxing for me all the time.

[31:28]

It's a bit like my self-portraits. One shadow, they always go into a little ring fight against the pictures that others have of me. Then there are the shadows of the pictures that others have of me. And I'm constantly trying to convince the images that others have of me that the image that I have of myself is wrong. And that also draws a lot of attention. Now everything works great in the water of consciousness. And there is again this link for me. There is a very personal conviction, which, of course, can then once again take a step on a more fundamental conviction. So if you now say this fundamental consciousness, that is what makes the world predictable.

[32:33]

It is also that, the structure of the spirit, that gives us the feeling that there is a world out there, And this is the world in which we can act in a planned manner. This is the world that we can foresee. And the world in which a lot of things that I know exist. If I loosen these structures, So if I loosen these structures and instead look more, I can locate myself in the feeling of connection, then there is really an effect of change. So that is clearly my experience, that then in the feeling of connection, however I build it up, I do these things very concretely. So I really just do it hand on the ground. And wait until I feel the ground as the ground, until I have a feeling, and then a gratefulness rises in the hand.

[33:35]

And until something happens, just try it out. The same with people somehow. So really wait, expose yourself to it. In the field, the intention can be The question can be, what is connection? And to become concrete there, first of all, connection to what? So not as an abstract upper intention, but as a very concrete intention connected to what? And then the individual connections begin to allow themselves, so to speak. And then I can notice where it is easy for me, where it is difficult for me, and so on. My experience is that if I... ...complete this change, something like space will actually connect me. This whole world view. Many of you have probably experimented with this. For me, space connects. It starts here. Space starts here. And when it connects, then it is as if the room, like a tender hand, gives the body a tender embrace.

[34:50]

And to allow that, to let that into me and to expand this kind of feeling, so to speak, there it is already so that these shadow box fights die sind da gar nicht mehr interessant. Und so arbeite ich halt mit unterschiedlichen Qualitäten, die unterschiedliche Weltsichten verkörpern. Und wovon, also das versuche ich eigentlich dabei deutlich zu machen in dem, was ich sage, dass das eine sehr, für mich ist es eine sehr persönliche Auseinandersetzung, die ganz tief in meine Biografie hineinweift. And where exactly the sentences that keep me away from it, space as connecting or other people as close to me, where exactly these sentences come to the fore. My experience is also that it hurts.

[35:51]

And that it can also cause shame. Yes. Wenn ich in dieser Auseinandersetzung, wird ganz vieles sichtbar. Da werden Sichtweisen sichtbar. Persönliche, biografisch geprägte und auch kulturelle. cultural or maybe even views that are essential for the structure of consciousness. And maybe I'll just take that as an example for that. You don't have to do that yourself, but that's the kind of process that happens for me.

[37:03]

When the Rashi speaks about it, make the consciousness visible. And I just wanted to give that as an example.

[37:11]

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