If you will, I'd like to continue our discussion some before I see if there's something I have to say. Wenn ihr wünscht, dann möchte ich gerne mit unserer Gespräch und Diskussion fortfahren, um zu sehen, ob ich danach noch etwas sagen kann. In particular, I've suggested a number of practices, and I'd like to have a feeling from you if the practices make sense or you've done them yourself and so forth. And also, it's helpful to me to know when something isn't understandable. I mean, we actually, I think everything I said was pretty simple this morning, yet at the same time, it kind of piles up. and you have to sort of untangle the pile.

[01:04]

Yes. The directors, you know, they're supposed to do this. I would like to bring up the point with the questions. Oh, my goodness, okay. These questions, where one doesn't know the answer, I would like to bring up the following point. For me, there is also something to it, a kind of love, a constitution, which on the one hand is completely normal, but on the other hand is so normal that you don't really realize it. Because with these questions for me there belongs some kind of liking and some kind of disposition maybe that is on one hand very normal but on the other hand not normal at all.

[02:43]

So if I ask myself what is well, So one can come up with many kind of concrete answers like chaos. Concrete? Anyway, yeah. You have a new kind of chaos. A new concrete chaos. What I like to understand is activity. Not to see things anymore, but to experience activities. And that means also that I cannot be the one any longer who does things and grasps things and understands.

[03:49]

These life questions, as I call them. They do something with me. They do something with me insofar as I'm willing to have it done to me. And ideally, they make me alive. Part of it is that I'm willing to feel, to explore and to undergo this. To the world as activity. No.

[05:10]

Okay. Yeah. the other co-director, and now you don't have to translate for her, but if you want to say something there. So I speak English and he translates me into German. All right, fine. That's good. I always prefer starting with German, though. But we can do it this way. No, we can do it this way. Among the many practices you gave us, what came to my mind this morning is the practice of turning words. This is a practice from the very beginning when I heard the first time addressed me.

[06:24]

I always do it, in fact. The turnings themselves change from time to time, but I come back to those who have been practicing for a month or two years before. And somehow I think it also fits with what Frank said. And this refers to and fits to that what Frank just said? Because I can't really say why I choose one or the other word. It's just intuitive because it appeals to me. Because I really can't say why I choose this and that turning word, it's just that it addresses me, it appears in me. But it does something with me. And it does something with me that I have the intention to practice with it.

[07:50]

does that there is the willingness or readiness or the intention to practice with this particular turning room. They repeat it, for example, mornings in zazen to keep it in mind and in memory. And it's not so that I think about it all the time, especially when I'm busy, but during the day it appears, and this at a moment when it does fit very well. It makes me stop. Ideally. And over a longer period of time I notice that something has changed in my behavior and my reactions.

[09:03]

How I feel in certain situations. You know, turning word practice is something I learned from Suzuki Roshi and Koans. But the degree to which we practice it, I think, is particular to our Dharma Sangha Western lineage. I found it the most fruitful way to develop my own practice to extend the use of phrases into my everyday life, ordinary situations.

[10:17]

And when I moved to began coming to Europe regularly and then moved to Europe about half of each year I was in Europe immediately practicing in a primarily lay context. While in the United States I was practicing up until 1983 in a primarily monastic context. And then I found, being in Europe, that to extend genuine practice, let me say that, genuine practice, within the field of lay practice that I found myself.

[11:34]

Then I found in a way the best substitute for much of monastic practice, but not all, has been the use of turning word phrases. And it is a skill that takes a little while to develop. As a mindfulness practice. Or we could say an attentional body practice. But I find most of us pick it up pretty quickly. When you say, Katrin, it does something to me, how would you define that me?

[12:46]

Okay, let's put it that way. It does something to my habits. Because it somehow stops me, it makes me notice the habit that is active in that situation. And it can also make me notice my view onto that, my perspective onto that situation. And sometimes, I mean, of course, it always depends on the situation and the turning point, it also can make me notice how I actually feel.

[13:50]

So mostly I would say it makes me stop and notice something that I hadn't noticed before. Okay, so it makes you stop and notice. And here we're using words. It makes you stop and notice. And as you put it, it makes me stop and notice. But when I ask you to define that me, you define that me as my habits. Okay, so it means you and we all notice our habits as being exemplifications of ourselves or of me.

[15:19]

Of me. Okay. But if the practice of, in this case, turning words, makes you notice your habits, and makes you notice that you can change your habits, and at the same time you define those habits as me, me-ness, You've made a big shift from the usual way of identifying me as self Self as identity.

[16:30]

Self as fate. Self as what we hope becomes beautiful and wonderful in the future. to, it's my habits. This is really a big change. Because we don't identify with our habits as self. We identify with our habits as the way we happen to live and do things, but it's not the same as my identity. So I would say that the practice of turning words, one of its byproducts, or my products,

[17:38]

is a shift to, in effect, noticing appearances. and noticing that you experience yourself as appearances shaped by habits. Now, I mention all that, Because what I see in our practice together and our practice supported by each other is that if you do introduce something that's somewhat different from the usual way we function And we introduce it with conviction and repetition.

[19:14]

Of course repetition is never repetition because it's always different. It has changes, it makes changes which ripple through all aspects of our life. It's quite extraordinary. Yes, he's an assistant director. No, I'm just teasing. When you mentioned telling words, I noticed that recently I haven't used them. And I wonder if instead of turning words, I use pauses, the very specific perception of pauses.

[20:40]

And it seems to me that instead of training words, I'm using pauses, I mean very conscious pauses or pausing. And I ask myself whether this works similarly because attention is directed in a certain way. It is about noticing being attached to thinking. and the impulse comes, I think, through the breath and then the attention becomes becomes very bodily or goes into the body so I feel into myself

[21:57]

or my intention goes to whatever the sense is. bring in or present me with. And this becomes a very natural process that happens again and again and again. And for me, this has become kind of more natural than the practice of title words, at least these days. Okay, but didn't you, I like what you said. But didn't you practice for some time to pause for the particular?

[23:24]

Don't you think that introduced you to the potentialities of pauses? So that turning word was the route to the pathway to practicing with pauses. And I don't think I could have pointed out to you the fruitfulness of pauses without the phrase... So the whole concept of the fruitfulness of pausing The whole concept of the fertility of pauses is related to discovering the world as appearances.

[24:31]

Yeah, and the appearances, which, as with Katrin, make you notice. So as a teacher, I don't know how I could have presented this without working with, initially, The entry through turning words. So from my point of view, what you described is an extension of or a maturing of turning word practice. I would like to extend somewhat what Peter said. The whole topic of noticing differences, turning words

[25:46]

And also what came from the group as possible reactions. It's all very much in the realm of mental exercises. And these mental exercises they still involve a kind of eye and an eye that can notice and that can do something better maybe?

[27:06]

And what I still miss is simply this body movement where perhaps a lot of it is even under pressure, where you just say, just sit back and sit still. What my feeling is still missing is the more bodily aspect where the entrance maybe is, well, let it all aside and just sit down and sit still. And that's what I like so much. There is no need at all to observe the breathing and the posture and just stay there. And that's somewhere not anymore. It then goes away from this spiritual practice. It's maybe just a physical practice. And what I really like is what Suzuki Mashi said that just sit down and watch your breath and your posture and that's enough and nothing else.

[28:16]

And leave all these mental exercises to the side. I mean, the spiritual education, it certainly helps, because it is a valuable access, but there is also this access and this willingness to say, I just want to get into this hold. And the plantal exercises are certainly very good and very helpful, and they are one entrance, but there is this other entrance, this one in the entrance, and to be willing to just do that and sit still. And since the development of Sangha and Lion Sangha From my own practice, I have to say that it is then also an access where I may need a more holistic practice, where one simply says, every morning and every evening, nothing more than that.

[29:19]

And you also mentioned lay practice and the lay sangha. And maybe what I'm pointing at is more the monastic practice that every morning and every evening just sit down and sit. Yes, I think you're right. the need to emphasize mental formations in practice is more characteristic of lay practice as we're developing it in the Dharma Sangha. And when I was teaching in the United States, primarily before 83, I followed the traditional practice of giving almost no explanation and depending primarily in practice

[30:48]

on the apprenticeship relationship between the teacher and the practitioner. And when I came to Europe, I just simply had, if I was going to find a way to engage lay practitioners in practice, I had to use more mental formations. Now, I'm specifically using the phrase mental formation instead of mental exercises. Because Because mental exercises, at least in English, sounds like it's mostly mental and not an embodied practice.

[32:35]

And the phrase which I'm using, mental formations, The phrase I'm using, mental formation, is characteristic of the most advanced forms of Buddhism. Late Indian Buddhism. Dignaga and Dharmakirti and so forth. And all of them are saying there are certain practices you can't reach unless you first create a mental formation We could say a mental posture.

[33:41]

And Buddhism is primarily, as a yoga, Buddhism is primarily a yoga of mental postures. It's rooted in, based in, and explored through this basic posture. But the realized physical posture, lotus posture becomes the medium through which the mental postures or mental formations function. Now the skill of the teacher

[34:42]

is shown in the degree to which he or she can create mental formations which don't function only as mental exercises, or not at all, but lead directly to embodiment. Now, I mean, Suzuki Roshi was really an extraordinary teacher. Many had a magical ability, uncanny ability, to put things into English which don't belong in English usually.

[36:06]

But he still was teaching in a primarily immature Sangha. And what you teach is shaped by your Sangha. In the ten years or so he had in America, this Sangha simply was, I mean, most people two or three years, or a few months, or a few people seven or eight years. There was nothing comparable to your maturity or most of your maturity.

[37:18]

So what he taught in his writings, if you extend it, was the whole of Buddhism. What he taught in his speaking and then eventually in his writing. I mean, he didn't write it, he spoke it, but we turned it into a book. Yeah, was... As I said, if extended, it reached into all of Buddhism. But the shape of it, unless you knew how to extend it, was pretty simple, pretty much for Buddhism. I remember Kobenchino, a sensei then, and Roshi later, At Tassajara. Saying to me, Suzuki Roshi doesn't teach any advanced Buddhism.

[38:21]

Why doesn't he do it? And I remember saying, it's good enough for me. Yeah. And at the time when Koblenz said that to me, I didn't really understand what he meant. Because I found nothing missing. But also because I had a lot of personal contact with him. I mean, almost every day I had some private time with him. And I was able to explore and extend the practices that he presented.

[39:32]

So, it's true that that especially the most traditional way Buddhism is taught is something like just sit. Die ist just sit. Just sit. And just sit enough. Quite a few hours. Sitz einfach, aber sitz auch genug. Vielleicht ein paar Stunden. Now in Rinzai or Linji teaching. Und im Rinzai beziehungsweise Linji lehren. You sit 30 minute periods and not 40 or 50. And those 30-minute periods are much more, because you work with koans, more specifically than in Soto. are much more explicitly shaped by mental postures.

[40:40]

But as I pointed out in the past, what is Zazen? Zazen is a physical posture that you discover and And it's also a mental posture. Because sit still is a mental posture. So it's the combination of assuming this posture And then taking on the mental posture of don't move or sit still. And I've also pointed out a number of times the dynamic of the two-fold modalities of mind embedded in the phrase, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[42:07]

So if we can in Europe, I would like to have a larger spectrum of our practice monastic. And if we do get this place next door, which at present it looks like the Sangha wants to, But we don't know yet if the financial resources are actually there. But if we do get it, next fall to I would like to lead with you a three-month practice period.

[43:33]

So we don't need to be so dependent on mental But I don't know if we're going to go there. Now there was something I was looking forward to saying perhaps. What you guys have been Guys means gals too in my mind. Have been so beautiful and wonderful. 52 minutes have passed since we started. So I have to put off whatever I might say. Until after the break. Thank you very much. Thanks.

[44:41]

I had dual translators this time.

[44:42]

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