I have the feeling that the camera is really aiming directly at my neckline. Is that... Does that work differently? No, okay. Oh, okay. That's how it looks. Okay, because I'd rather be there all the time. Now it's really... No, I think we'll leave it like that now, right? We still have two minutes left. That's fine, I'll get used to it. But can you look at my... Can you look at my eyes a little bit? If that's the case now, I assume that when I look into the camera, people will probably have the feeling that I'm looking down at them. Right? Or is that okay? It doesn't work, wait a minute. No, that's not true. No, no, no. It's okay. I'll be right there. Yes, exactly. That's good. Yes, super. Do I have to ring? How is that again?

[01:06]

Yes, that's right. Otherwise, people don't stop meditating. Thanks for the beshite. Hi, Nicole, you look very nice over there across the Atlantic.

[02:31]

Thank you. You're welcome. I guess we're starting. I'm translating phrasal path as mantric path. I hope that's okay. Okay. I think the word mantra in German has a slightly different connotation and weight than in English.

[03:55]

But if this translation is a mantra path, the path of working with terms and sentences, mantras, if it works, it's good. And these are expressions that you won't find in Buddhist texts. At least I haven't found it like that so far. But these are expressions, formulations that I have discovered and developed in my attempt, where I try to use this path, this Buddhist path, in Western paradigms and in English, in Western languages,

[05:24]

um, diesem Pfad, um, Worte zu verleihen, den, äh, ich durch Suzuki Roshi gefunden habe und mit ihm entwickelt habe. Good. Deine Stimme bricht in meinem Ohrstück, ist sie in kleine Bruchstücke unterteilt, aber ich glaube, ich kann das erkennen, wenn du aufhörst zu reden und dann fange ich einfach dann an. Mir begegnen viele Gegenargumente oder zumindest so ein Gefühl von Zurückhaltung, wenn es darum geht, dein gelebtes Leben, den Ort deines gelebten Lebens in

[06:53]

in the path of the following moments and not in the stream of cognition or in the path of cognition. Wir alle haben ein äußeres Leben, das in den drei Zeiten spielt, in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. But for a Dhamma practitioner, we place our inner life in a journey of successive moments. Eine Gegenwart, aus der heraus sich die Vergangenheit öffnet und die sich in die Zukunft hineinöffnet.

[08:15]

Damapraktizierende sind so etwas wie Maler, für die die Leinwand die Vergangenheit ist. Der Pinselstrich ist die Gegenwart. Die Pinselstriche sind Damas oder Gesten. And the colors are the potentials of the future. With every brushstroke, you open up the past and open up the potential of the future.

[10:11]

This kind of feeling is the journey of successive moments and the gestural journey. Und wir können die Lehren dann verstehen, weil in den Lehren häufig von einem Pfad aufeinanderfolgender Momente und einem gestischen Pfad ausgegangen wird. And from the perspective of the Dharma, we have a metabolism, a pulsating metabolism, a rhythm, a breathing rhythm, a pulsating breathing and a heart pulse, a heartbeat.

[11:29]

The whole thing in both particles and waves. And we have a hormone pulse. A hormonal pulse. The feeling in the yogic Zen practice is And although the word yoke in English, so something like colour, is perhaps a too simplifying translation of all that is meant with yoga, what happens here is that we look at all the pulse rhythms of the outer world, the environment, the world, the rhythms, the

[12:54]

Mm-hmm. And the wisdom here is that we establish our own pulse, our own rhythm, with which it is easier and which is probably open to connecting with the rhythms of others. And the four Brahma-Viharas, boundless friendliness, empathetic compassion, unconditional compassion and empathy, all these are ways that we swing into the impulses of others in the world through these four qualities.

[14:25]

And that actually seems to be the way we exist in these pulsating rhythms, in a kind of membrane in which the 10,000 things that existed back then. And my feeling is that a difficulty that we have with this path of following each other in comparison to a cognitive path is that we have the impression, the feeling that time flows outside of us and this view is very difficult to question or shake.

[15:50]

And I play with words, sometimes I form new words, sometimes I break up old words and reorganize them. And I do this to bring our world view habits a little bit apart. Und das ist genau das, worum es auf dem mantrischen Pfad geht, der Arbeit mit Sätzen und Wendungen, nämlich unsere Weltsichtsmuster aufzulockern oder aufzubrechen. I could say, for example, that the present is a series of appearances.

[17:09]

Und du könntest das Wort Dharma so verstehen, nämlich die Erfahrung als eine Aufeinanderfolge von Einheiten, series of units, oder eben Erscheinungen, so wie ich das das letzte Mal gesagt habe, zu erkennen. Okay. But the word appearance in English and German also has a visual connotation, something that appears. Yes, shine like something that you, a visual appearance. And back then, however, there were many more events events than they are phenomena. And sometimes

[18:48]

Sometimes I try to mix up my own word search in my brain, where my brain tries to represent things as continuously as possible. Deine Worte brechen in Einheiten, die kleiner sind als damals auf im Moment. And sometimes to deal with this visual connotation in the word appearance, I put these two words together and say, in German it sounds terrible, even worse than in English, or something like that.

[19:58]

And if I say it like that, and maybe in English appear events, but if we want to put it together in German, maybe Erscheignis. If I use that word, then I ask myself at the same time the question, wait a minute, what is this really an event, an appearance, what happens there in this moment of sensual perception? And that might be enough for one round. And now I can continue talking about what I call the Mantric Path. And as I spoke about Dahui, he assumed that the way words are used in koans, that this is a way to get to the source of the words, to the point where the words form themselves.

[21:33]

And, as I said, Dahui had the impression that using these monastic mantras could also be a way for lay practitioners, at least those who practice with a high level of connection, to make use of it. And this kind of vision for the lay practice is also the origin of my idea of a path that follows each other and a gestural path, because both are actually paths that we discover in the sacral life.

[23:06]

But there is no reason for these paths not to be rooted in the lay life as well. I wasn't going to. Ich habe jetzt gefunden, dass vielleicht die beste Art und Weise, über diesen mantrischen Pfad zu sprechen oder den aufzuzeigen, ist, ein Beispiel aus meiner eigenen Erfahrung zu verwenden.

[24:22]

It was a kind of operation in which I didn't know what I was actually doing, but it turned out that it was an operation that changed my life. I think it must have been 1962 or 1963 when I lived in San Francisco. I worked in a book trade and then also for a branch of the University of California. And I was in the final year for Asian history.

[25:35]

And newly married to a child who is now 50. And so I had a lot to do and constantly had to go to many places. And also because I had just recently more or less graduated from college. There is such a pressure that you participate in what your own generation is doing, that you follow your own generation and participate in what happens in culture.

[26:45]

But I didn't have much connection with most of the people in my generation. And what daily life has offered me seemed almost not to be real or at least not to satisfy me. And Suzuki Roshi, with whom I practiced and who held lectures twice a week, mostly about koans from the Hekigan Roku, the writing of the Smeraknen Felswand.

[27:58]

And so I knew, I knew the idea of Wado Wendesatzpraxis. The repetition of a sentence, as long as this sentence gains presence and becomes almost foggy from the words, disappears from the consciousness and instead is absorbed by the absorbing spirit. And I also knew the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, which is roughly translated as non-doing. And I don't really know how I got into this practice, but what I described now were the ingredients that I put together to create the practice.

[29:30]

And I felt driven. I always had the feeling, okay, now I have to go there, now I have to go there, then I have to do that. And it wasn't pleasant. I didn't feel comfortable in all these things that were still to be done. And then I asked myself if I can be aware enough to notice it. Every time I have a feeling that I have to go somewhere or that I have to do something, I always notice it when it comes up. And And so I intuitively made the decision that every time I have the feeling that I have to go somewhere, that I would disagree with the feeling of going nowhere with the sentence.

[30:55]

And every time I have the feeling that I have to do something certain, that I disagree with the sentence, there is nothing to do. And that must partly have come from my choir practice studies with Suzuki Roshi and certainly also from the question of what does Wu Wei mean by doing nothing? How can you do nothing? Es war wirklich ein Akt der Verzweiflung, dass ich entschieden habe, etwas zu tun dagegen, nämlich dem Gefühl, ständig etwas tun zu müssen und ständig irgendwo hingehen zu müssen, diesem Gefühl zu widersprechen.

[32:01]

And then I formed this intention, this intention, which I really intended completely. Namely, that I had the feeling that I would have to do something with this intention, this feeling of constantly having to do something, to have to go somewhere. to resist for so long, to resist for so long until, and maybe until the end of my life, until I really had the feeling that there was no place to go to, that there was nothing to do. And that was an interesting challenge, the question of whether I can really remember it every time when the feeling arises that I have to go somewhere or that I have to do something. And the experience, it can also be that it was partly inspired by James Joyce, that I was at least familiar with his idea of the stream of consciousness.

[33:52]

So I formed this intention and what I then discovered Was ich entdeckt habe, ist, dass ich immer besser darin wurde, dem sich irgendwo hingehen zu müssen, dem getrieben sein und dem etwas tun zu müssen, mich da herauszulösen aus diesen Gefühlen. And at some point there was something like a fundamental presence that I felt in all my thought formations that was free from all evaluations, such as whether I am a good person or a bad person or something like that.

[35:00]

And so what happened there? What did I discover when I did that? Now, what did you say? Mindstream or? Mm-hmm. Back then, I didn't have a precise vocabulary for these things, but I noticed that I was actually always in it, in this stream of the spirit.

[36:19]

And I had a feeling that it was like a tissue that was continuously being woven. or like a surface where I could feel when the landscape of this surface was influenced by my emotions or my mood or whatever. And in this fabric and in this landscape I lived. And that also went directly into my sleep.

[37:30]

And dreaming became part of the same topology, of the same tissue. Es war also ein ziemlich großer Wechsel von der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft in einer äußeren praktischen Welt hinein in diesen fortwährenden Aufmerksamkeitsstrom einer inneren praktizierten oder praktizierbaren Welt.

[38:36]

And the next thing I did was that I started to develop an inventory of all the different types of to-do's and to-go's that I created an inventory for. Some came from the culture, some of these expectations came from the culture, others came from my psyche, again others came from worldviews and so on. And some were just practical, pragmatic, like, for example, I have to get to my bike quickly now to get to the bus stop in time to get the bus to be in Berkeley in time.

[39:50]

And so I conducted an investigative investigation to see when these feelings were more culturally shaped, when they were psychologically shaped, when they were socially shaped, when they were fears or needs and so on. And it was then possible for me to eliminate the psychologically shaped to-go's and to-do's, so that they, whenever there were fears or something like that, that they were almost like simply out of the stream of the spirit. And at some point I had a pretty, I would say, a purified, a purified spiritual field, a spiritual fabric in which I could live.

[41:39]

A realistic field of the spirit. And I had the feeling And I had the feeling that it belonged to me, it was mine, it wasn't somehow added to me or something, but I had made it my own. This physical spirit, this physical spirit flow. And at some point there was something that turned around from this stream of spirit where I had the feeling that there were always places that I had to go to and things that I had to do.

[42:48]

And so I went into a stream of spirit. So I turned into a stream of spirit in which I really had to do nothing fundamentally or had to go nowhere. And that was a continuous process that took place for almost every waking moment and even beyond the waking moments, for nine months. And then I forgot about it for about three months. At some point, I don't remember exactly, but I think in December or so, I noticed that I hadn't done it for a long time.

[44:13]

And I thought, well, now I've lost my intention. And I was surprised because this intention was so strong and it worked almost continuously for nine months. And I was surprised because although I had taken it so seriously for nine months, when I had forgotten and then remembered it again, I had no feeling that I had done something wrong or something like that, but I simply resumed the practice and then did it again for three months. I would say that I did this practice for about a quarter of a year.

[45:22]

And ever since then, I've never really had the feeling, I've never really felt driven. Of course, there are always things I have to do and places I have to go to, but fundamentally there is no pressure. And I just refused to sacrifice my mental state. And this practice taught me how to develop a kind of continuity or stability. This practice showed me how to, can you say that again?

[46:45]

Okay. Also, diese Praxis hat mir gezeigt, wie ich meinen Geisteszustand nicht, wie ich das machen kann, dass ich den nicht opfere und einen unerschütterlichen, gleichmütigen Geistesfeld aufrechterhalten kann. And when I started one and a half years ago, I had no idea that this would be the result of this practice. But this turning point has taken my worldview apart and then sewn it together again in a new way to weave the world.

[48:15]

And that was a lay practice. Tassajara was not founded at that time, although I considered San Francisco as my monastery. But that was a lay practice from which I simply decided to carry it out day and night. The first koan in the Book of the Bright Relentlessness in Shoyuroku. In the first chorus there is a poem. The unique breeze of reality. So today I would say instead of reality, relationality, or instead of reality, relationship.

[49:40]

And that means that the unique relationship, the unique breeze of these mutual connections, you can see it. Diese erste Zeile dieses Gedichts ist ein Korn oder eine Übung. Siehst du die Einzigartigkeit der Brise, der Beziehungszusammenhänge, Do you see that? Do you see that?

[50:41]

And unique and Einzigartig in diesem Fall bedeutet damals die einzigartige Aktivität der Beziehungszusammenhänge And the second line goes like this. fortwährend den Webstuhl und das Schiffchen laufen zu lassen, das ist der Pfad aufeinanderfolgender Momente.

[52:06]

Und das Schiffchen dabei ist so wie die Pinselstriche. Und ich kann dem nicht widerstehen, Sorry, when I speak, I can't hear you. You have to say that again now. Okay, so I'll translate the part I understood. Matisse comes from a family, many generations of weavers from such a family. And you can see in his paintings how he creates a fabric of the world with color.

[53:15]

Also dieses fortwährend den Webstuhl und das Schiffchen laufen lassen, den uralten Brokat zu weben und dabei die Formen des Frühlings einzuweben. Das sind die drei Zeiten, wenn sie in der Alchemie der Gegenwart wurzeln. to weave the ancient brocade and the forms of spring, the ancient brocade, the past, and the forms of spring, the future, into it.

[54:29]

And the fourth line, in the fourth line it says, but nothing can be done against our lack. And this is a fact of the world, unfortunately, but it is also a challenge. Kannst du etwas dagegen tun, deine Energie zu verlieren, deinen Geisteszustand aufzugeben und so weiter? Und eigentlich heißt es in der Zeile nicht, da geht es nicht um unser Leck, sondern es geht um Manjushri's Leck. And Manjushri is the conceptualized identity of wisdom that is effective in our lives.

[55:53]

And what is written there is that even the Bodhisattva of wisdom has a lick. And that also means that this whole choir collection is a kind of lick. And again, the challenge here is, can you, can we do something against our lick? kein Leck.

[57:09]

Vielen Dank, dass ihr wieder bei mir wart. Ich versuche jeden Sonntag zu machen, dass es 40 oder 45 Minuten sind. Jetzt sind es wieder 50. Und wir treffen uns um 5 nach 5. At 5 past 5, 5 minutes past the full hour. Let's meet again for the discussion. Thank you.

[57:35]

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