Is what I just did traditional Buddhism or what? I don't know. I remember when I was in college, there was some kind of service where they had various religions represented. And it was in what's called Memorial Chapel or something in the middle of the campus. And the various folks from the religion, various religions, got up and went up to the podium and started speaking. And there was a Japanese Buddhist who was there. And he got up and he went up to the altar and bowed and then he went to the podium.

[01:16]

And watching him do that is not why I'm here. But it did impress me. And I think Buddhists from other countries would have done it too. It was a sense of what's sacred and not what's religious. So for me, it's something like that. You look sacred enough to me, so I'm not. So, um... I'd like to hear whatever thoughts you have about what I said or whatever you want to talk about. And I'd particularly like to hear from people who are new to being here.

[02:18]

You have my permission. Almost my command. No, no, my permission. What I feel reminded of when you speak about bowing is my experience in my first sesshin. That I got there and I didn't know anybody. This wasn't with us, though, was it? No, this was with Roshi. Anglo. Yeah, I know him quite well. And I know that what impressed me most there is that I got to know a way of meeting people that I hadn't encountered before.

[03:36]

Not the way of meeting people I hadn't encountered before. We got up very early and throughout most of the day we sat like this. And we didn't speak with each other. Except for the most necessary pragmatic things. So I sat in between two people that I didn't know at all. For five days, I think. From the morning to the evening. And she had her own extreme situations, because we sat all day. From the morning until late in the evening.

[04:40]

And I had my very own situations, since we sat like this all day long. And they sat next to me all the time, just like that, and had their own difficulties with it. And they sat next to me just like they did and they had their own problems, difficulties. And I got close to them in a way that I hadn't been able to get close to my very best friends before. And for me that was like a kind of response to a question that I've had before. How do I want to be with people? And what can relationships with people be like? And I always had a sense of lacking something, even though I have always had intense friendships. And what I lacked in my friendships before, I found that there.

[05:49]

You have no thoughts about what I said? I better go home. But this is home. I have no thoughts about what I said. Then I'll go home right away. But this is already home here. I would be interested in why certain components of traditional Buddhism are taken over and others are not. I'd be interested in hearing why certain constituents of traditional Buddhism are being taken over and others are not. And in particular, and this has a lot to do with myself, why do we have to get up so early? Okay. And if there's a special reason for that. Okay.

[07:13]

Well, most of... Yeah, I'll come back to that. Anybody else? Yes. Yeah. I was very interested in this aspect of language. To speak about Buddhism in English is something else than speaking about it in Japanese in the traditional way. And my, well, my request, intention, request maybe, and my request is that in our language we can never... We can never understand what the other says, what he means when he says what he says. You mean a German speaker can't understand what another German speaker says?

[08:19]

Yes. No matter what he says, this is hopeless. In a way. If someone here says table, we have 35 different tables here. And this being open for the meaning of the language, this is for me a form of respect of the other person. And to be open for the individual meaning of the language, that means for me to respect. And that's what I find here. Okay. I mean, of course, as Frank's example, there was no conversation, but he had a feeling of understanding these people without language. Of course, in Frank's example, for example, he didn't have any language contact with the people at all and still had the feeling to understand the people completely without language.

[09:24]

Okay, let's take a look. Yes? I would like to add something here. For me, too, the aspect of language was very, very important. I think that this is also the way of Buddhism here in Germany, that we learn to express this truth in German, in our language, and thereby discover this truth again for ourselves. I would like to add to that this aspect of language was very important to me as well. And I think that this is also the way of Buddhism here and in Germany in particular, that we have to learn how to express these truths in German and have to discover our own way of doing that. Let me just add to that. I don't want to speak really to the questions.

[10:25]

But let me just add to that. There has to be some expression in German or in English if most of us are going to understand or practice Buddhism. But if we're going to understand Buddhism deeply, we also have to find a way to express it to ourselves. And also be free from expression. Yes. What comes to mind is when you're talking about a dream, an inner dream. For me, it's the association of ancient future, something very old, but in the future. Ancient future means...

[11:27]

What I'm looking for, this inner stream, is beyond time, so that otherwise comes the ancient future, and I should let it flow through myself, through my being, and watch out how this would be manifest, being one wisdom tradition from one culture to another, being the bridge over that. Good, thanks. Thanks to self-touch. What came to me spontaneously with Roshi, when he spoke about the inner flux, this ancient future, how do I speak German, ancient future, In the philosophy of Perenis there is also a cross-sum of all spiritual traditions.

[12:28]

I have to say this to myself in German, and that is the point that I concentrate on the inner river, the eternal river. Okay, thanks. Well, one small crisis we have every year. We have every year. It's what will be the titles of next year's seminars. I never know what to know. Pick anything. Open the phone book. But we have to pick something that makes some sort of sense. So now we've got one, the ancient future of Buddhism. I like that, the ancient future of Buddhism.

[13:39]

Susanna? Boshi has not yet spoken directly about it, but for me the decisive factor is the practice of mindfulness. where she hasn't spoken about it directly, but the crucial thing for me is mindfulness practice. And I join Frank because I think that through that we can be... I need the verb, sorry. We can be close, or what do you want to say? Through that we can open to people, to nature and even to the dishes.

[14:50]

We can open and feel them. Okay, thank you. That for me would be new Buddhism. Okay, well, the people have been washing dishes for centuries, but... And hopefully washing them mindfully. Yeah, yes, it's true. But what is mindfulness or alertness? What is Buddhist mindfulness? And what is mindfulness in relationship to zazen, etc.? Yes. For me, traditional Buddhism is part of something that concerns form. For me, new Buddhism has a lot to do with formation and forming

[16:00]

old Buddhism or traditional Buddhism has a lot to do with forming and formation. Forms. Mine's the forms or mine's the foremen? Form. Yeah, with forms. And that was most obvious to me when we started to recite the patriarchs in the beginning of the first session. Mm-hmm. And the experience of zazen, for example, is what to me means new Buddhism because that is where I am making my own new experiences. So zazen somehow brings out a new you or something like that. Or a different you. But at the same time, I feel that there's a connection to this ancient stream, maybe, that you also talked about, and the stream that has been existent forever.

[17:42]

And I feel like it's something that, at the same time, I am generating in you. I hope. I think so. What I actually wanted to bring as an example is, when we did the Shins in Rosenburg, And the example I wanted to give is that when we did sashins in Roseburg, we got there and that was a room or a space that was used in a more or less intense way. And it took us a day until this room that was entirely empty, until that contained the atmosphere of a sashin. And after the Sashin, because everything was dissolved again, it was suddenly completely gone again and it was the old room that was empty.

[18:49]

And the whole thing, which was connected to the feeling of Sashin or of sitting, was produced and went away just as quickly. And it was created by us, that we created it together with the circle. And after Sashin was over and we took everything out it was just the same old space again that was empty and there was no trace of Sashin left and it was us generating this atmosphere of Sashin and it also left with us again. On the one hand, this tradition, to create this form, to create something completely new, is created when we create something completely new with our own things. This connection between the tradition, the form, and the creation is created by us. And that for me is what new Buddhism is also about, the connection between the old forms and traditions that then we also generate and we fill out or something.

[19:57]

Yeah, that's true, completely true. Thanks. Yes, Melita? How did it go? It was a bit strange when I said that now I was with Roshi and he was talking about the new Buddhism. I was here last week and Roshi told us, for example, when we were doing the Khorin study in the Sangha, imagine, four or five hundred years ago the people did nothing other than what you are doing right now. I felt a bit funny thinking about coming here and knowing that you'll speak about new Buddhism now, because I was here last week and one thing you said was that when we talked about koan studies was, well, just imagine four or five hundred years ago people did nothing but that. And I had this picture the whole week, because it was a very intense week here. Yes, how was it back then? Did they, just like my friends now, talk about Koans? Did they talk about their personal worries? Did they laugh and cry together?

[20:59]

And I had this image all the time and it was also a very intense week. And I had this image and this question, what was that like then? Did they also speak about koans like I'm doing with my friends now and did they speak about their problems and about their lives? And Nico said one sentence that reminded me of this. And he said that the sendo is the... What did you say first? The sendo is the... Is the most important place. the Zendo is the most important place and it's the place of our deepest and our most adventures. And I'm just interested in sitting here with all these feelings now and seeing what will be new now. Okay.

[22:18]

I can't promise, but... Okay. A thought arose for me that has a very intense effect for me, within me. I imagined that Buddhists many centuries ago, but maybe they had a seminar just like this and they called it New Buddhism as well. Probably. And for me, it has somehow reversed the current. There is not only a traditional current from then to today, but also a current from today to then. And for me that somehow also reversed this flow that we are speaking about, that it feels like there's not just the flow from then to today, but also a kind of flow from today to back then.

[23:40]

And for me that lets the terms traditional and new appear in a very new light. Yes, thanks, Daniel. Peter? In the last few months, in connection with the koans, Throughout the last month, in the context of the koans, we talked about Buddhism not being cultural conditioned. that the freedom from culture was actually important for it coming from India through China to Japan into the Black Forest now. And then I wonder if that is the case and us who are practicing here we experience that every day.

[25:08]

Then what in this context does old and new mean? That's what we're asking. And the Japanese name we gave to this practice center, Genrinji, literally means black forest temple. But in Buddhist terminology, that character black means mysterious or unreachable. And the Rin part, which means forest. Buddhism means the Sangha, those who practice. So in Buddhist terms, this is the mystery of those who practice together temples. Well, there is definitely a culture in Buddhism and there's Buddhism trying to be free of culture.

[26:30]

It also has to be something we look at. Okay. Nico? It appeared to me that we use traditions and traditional forms to generate the new. And that the meaning of the new that arises for us is also a confirmation for the traditions. And for me our practice is happening within this field of forces. What time is lunch, by the way?

[27:58]

One o'clock. One o'clock. Thanks. Someone else? Yes? I would like to say something about the title, New Buddhism. I think that the terms new and old need to be applied to something like Buddhism that's happening in a semantic space. And that we always have to also look at the fact that there's another space, which is the space of practice. And terms like new and old don't fit into that at all, but somehow these two spaces also connect. Thank you.

[29:00]

Yes, I am here for the first time since yesterday, and for me everything is new here, I have already been busy with Buddhism and meditated, but what is here is all new, and in my life tomorrow morning it will be quite new again, so there will certainly be old things that I will try to overcome, I am here for the first time now and for me everything in here is new. And I've been reading about Buddhism and I've also meditated, but still everything that's here is very new to me. And also the day tomorrow will be entirely new for me. And even though there are things that you carry from the past, Like old images, for example, that are also being superimposed through Christianity. Nice question.

[30:09]

And I have a question about language barriers. Of course there are language barriers. But is it not such that when something is being translated to me in German from Japanese or whatever, that whatever I understand at that moment, that that is right for me at that moment? That's the question. I like the basic attitude you're expressing. But I can't say that however you understand a term is right for you at that moment.

[31:31]

It is what you feel at that or understand at that moment. Es ist das, was du in dem Moment fühlst oder verstehst. And has to be understood as that and accepted as that which you understand at that moment. Und muss auch als das, was du in dem Moment verstanden hast, verstanden und akzeptiert werden. And then accepting it, you then examine it, is it right for me? Und indem du es akzeptierst, kannst du dann auch untersuchen, ist das richtig für mich? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, please. I grew up with a Christian influence. Really? A few of us did, I think.

[32:32]

But my question is, am I developing new Buddhism or new Christianity? Well, that will be up to your own inclination and creativity. Probably if you practice here and with me, you won't do that. But I have no objection. And there are, you know, I've practiced with over the decades with an awful lot of people. I know one person who became a Protestant minister through practicing Zen. And I know another person who became a rabbi through practicing Zen.

[33:42]

And there's a lot of people who've renewed their Christianity or Judaism through practice. But as soon as you start using Christianity to develop a way of being in the world that's free from belief, you're probably a Buddhist. If you start out with material and then you rearrange it, that's basically what Buddhism does. Okay, someone else before I sort of say something or other?

[34:49]

Yes? Dorothea? Yes. When I think about old Buddhism, I think about monasteries and monks and monasteries. And when I hear new Buddhism, I think it's more something for everyday life and for everybody. but what that should look like I'm not so sure about whether it's beyond feeling well and yeah feeling better and making everyday life a bit easier whether it's beyond that that's a lot yeah yeah

[35:57]

What this new Buddhism should look like that somehow is still open and I don't know. Yeah, I think we do have to look at it in sort of general terms. What do you mean by new and old without kind of going into it philosophically? Just, you know, new Buddhism is my daily life and old Buddhism is monks. I mean, monks. Yeah. Yes, I think we have to look at it in general terms, without going too deep philosophically. But just to see old Buddhism, that means for me monks and new Buddhism, that is my everyday life. Okay, someone else? Yes. What impressed me the most about the lecture was the image of the river, which is in the middle, so to speak, a kind of freeing of cultural mingling.

[37:23]

And on the side are these things that are washed away from the shore. What impressed me most from your lecture, or maybe what stayed with me... This morning, you mean. Yeah. Is this image of the river with the clear stream in the midst that maybe is free of contaminations from the side. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And what this image carries is that it's a movement, a movement of what's in the river and has always been there. The main question is how to keep it as a river, without freezing it or putting it in forms. And the core question is how can you let it flow so that it continues to flow without freezing it and without hindering it so that it has to stop or get stuck somewhere?

[38:36]

And in that context, for me, it's not anymore about getting rid of culture because culture is also used as an expression of the flow. but to make the stream transparent for that which is culture-free within it. So that means to express within a cultural form something that makes clear that this goes beyond the cultural form. Yeah, okay.

[39:44]

So we could say maybe that the water of Buddhism is sometimes an ocean, sometimes a river, sometimes a stream. And it's been flowing from before Buddha's time and often flows and flowed through Indian culture. It flowed through the yogic posture of meditation. And it flowed, of course, then through Chinese banks and other East Asian country banks. And it flowed through California banks. That actually has something to do with how it exists in America. And now it's flowed into this fairly remote, from my experience, remote part of Germany.

[41:12]

Without banks, a river doesn't flow. So what banks do we give it? I remember when I first when I first first lecture of Sukhiroshi I went to I'd been on the way to a samurai movie and a meal in a Japanese restaurant there was a painter artist friend of mine And I was in a bookstore and this guy told me I should go hear Suzuki Roshi, the proprietor of the bookstore. So I went, you know, what the heck, got nothing to lose.

[42:14]

And here was this little guy who appeared. Would be a very big part of my life. And, uh... The first thing that impressed me was he was exactly what he was speaking about. And I'd studied with, I'd gone to lectures with leading theologians and Christian theologians and philosophers and never felt that. It doesn't mean there aren't such people. I just didn't know them. Certainly the Christian philosopher Ivan Illich, who was a good friend of mine, was exactly what he was speaking about. Yeah.

[43:24]

In fact, I told Ivan's 70th birthday party, he asked me to speak, say something. Yeah, and I said, well, if I'd met You, Ivan, before I met Sukhiroshi, I might be a Christian today. Because our life does flow through this human space we are born into. and in which we die, does flow through the many persons we are and the many persons we know. So, you know, I felt that it was Sukershi. But I also felt, and I had read quite a bit of Buddhism in previous years, I felt this ancient person from the Tang Dynasty or Song Dynasty had reappeared.

[44:48]

It couldn't have been different from what I'd been studying and reading. So I saw my ancient future. Yeah. Okay, and... Like Mahakavi, I remember our setting up the Zendos in Roseburg. Yeah, and it was funny. Otmar remembered, and you'd remember, and you'd remember, you were married there. Anyway, a lot of us were there. That was quite a while ago. That was in the mid-80s, I guess.

[45:51]

Mid-90s. All the 90s. All the 90s, okay. Yeah. Well, I postponed for a long time doing Sashins because I didn't want to get stuck in Europe. I knew once I did Sashins with people, I couldn't leave. It's not fair to introduce people to Buddhism that deeply and then say, goodbye. Goodbye. Okay, so we did sashins. And we had this kind of shapeless room. Then we had to turn it into a zendo. Okay. So we put out the pillows and all that stuff. But we not only had to put out pillows and make the altar work for us.

[47:05]

We had to buy all these, I mean the place was for Buddhist groups to go. But the two people who ran it were both cooks. One a trained professional cook. They expected to do the cooking for us. I said, no, if we're going to do sashins here, we need to do our own cooking. And serving. So we need pots, certain kind of pots we can serve people in. Then we need a storage area here someplace so we can store the pots when we're not here. And then we needed, I know this now, we even bought them a refrigerator, an additional refrigerator.

[48:20]

So then we would set this room up. Pretty soon the room, the architecture became the people. Because in each wall there'd be one person after another. And then those spaces became each person's individual agony, bliss. So suddenly for me, you know, in the middle of the sashim, this is where so-and-so was sitting, and this is where so-and-so was sitting, and each one in a different kind of event.

[49:26]

It became an intense world. Yeah, I mean, really, people's lives change sitting there sometimes. And then at the end, as Mahakali says, we take it all apart. And in this corner there would be a little whisper of agony and over in that corner a little... Filament of bliss. And a few insights were floating out the window. There's no way in my life experience whatever I did, whatever I studied, whatever I thought about, there's no way I could have thought up a sashin.

[50:45]

My friends and I used to go down to a big old Victorian house south of San Francisco along the coast. Meine Freunde und ich sind immer runtergegangen zu einem alten viktorianischen Haus, das an der Küste irgendwo entlang der Küste lag. And several branches of their family would use in the summer. Und verschiedene Zweige der Familie haben das während des Sommers immer wieder benutzt. And we would all sit in the morning because we knew how to sit in the morning. Und wir haben dann morgens immer zusammen gesessen, weil wir wussten, wie man morgens sitzt. Das hatten wir gelernt. But, I mean, I could sort of thought up sitting maybe. Not this posture. This took me forever to learn. But I could never have said to 50 friends, Or 50 people I didn't know.

[51:56]

Would you please join me for a week sitting still? You've got this little cushion. And please sit there for a week. One I would have been very unconvincing. But I just wouldn't have imagined doing it. I had to inherit it. And I had to have lived it repeatedly before I had the nerve to suggest it to anyone else. I mean, I don't want to put anybody through what... Oh, good. Okay. So I inherited traditional Buddhism.

[52:58]

I couldn't have thought this up, and it took centuries to think it up. Even this little seminar we're doing. There's a whole tradition of doing weekend seminars in Germany that have nothing to do with Buddhism. But the way this works has taken me a long time to develop. Just that some of you come on Friday and more come on Saturday. So what happens Friday? flows into Saturday with newer people. That's all a kind of institutional development. So what we're doing here in my lifetime has been developed out of a model of weekend seminars. Which is somewhat related to Sashin.

[54:12]

So what we're doing here in my not wearing robes and all is, except a little one, is something new. Okay. Sukhiroshi, two anecdotes. Sukhiroshi, one time we came up from Tassajara, we founded a first Zen monastery in America, in the West really, it was founded in California. We were invited to a stop at a summer hill type school. Is that a special school or just a summer school? No, it's a special school. Which was... Um,

[55:30]

Summerhill School was the school in England somewhere which gave no one rules and all the kids could do what they wanted and stuff like that. It was a kind of chaotic mess. But it was a big influence on schools in America actually. And this school was a kind of version of Summerhill School. So we arrived, Sukhirashi and I. It's interesting. These buildings now belong to Kobuchino Roshi's lineage. Anyway, we stopped there. And the entire grounds were littered with cigarette packages, Coca-Cola bottles, all kinds of crap.

[56:33]

And Suzuki Roshi was there to give some talks and teach people how to meditate. So he looked at this place and he said the first thing we're going to do is clean this place up. So he spent the whole day cleaning up all the cigarette packages and junk. Sweeping and Mopping the halls and so forth. Washing windows. Yeah. And then he said, then we drove to San Francisco and said, looks better, doesn't it?

[57:37]

And we all left. There was no lectures, no Zazen, no nothing. But years later I met a woman from, at a lecture somewhere, a woman from Oregon. This is like 20 years later. She said, you won't remember me, but I was a high school student at this school. And I was so impressed by this little guy who got us to clean up the place that I started meditating. And I've been meditating ever since. And now another time we went to Stanford University where he'd been asked to give a talk on Zen Buddhism. And he got in the room where there was the professor and Sukhiyoshi and I was helping him.

[58:46]

And me. Me and the professor and Sukhiyoshi. Okay, that's it. Yeah. And students. The university students. And he took a look at them and immediately said, would you all push the chairs back to the wall? So they did. Then he said, please sit down the best you can. And then he sat in the front, cross-legged. And after 40 minutes, he got up and left. He never said one word. And these poor guys were sitting, guys and girls, were sitting on the floor with their legs, you know, on the hard floor, you know. I've never met anybody who was at that class since then.

[59:55]

They may never sit again. But what are we doing? How do we bring Buddhism here? Ulrike remembers she was the mother of the Dharma Sangha for many years. Before we were here, she was the person who really kept in touch with everybody and translated and so forth. And helped arrange what happened at Roseburg and so forth. All this is part of this process of making Buddhism new and finding what traditions work and so forth.

[60:59]

But just as I never could have thought up a sashin, now we have this place somehow. And we don't quite have the same experience we used to have. Coming into a nondescript building and turning it into a practice place. Yeah. When you come here, it's already been turned into a practice place. But still, what... It's still, we need to see it as something we're doing and deciding if it works. And the last thing, getting up early in the morning? I mean, you know, it's also Catholic monks get up early in the morning.

[62:12]

Of course, in the old days, very old days, there was no light. So people went to bed when it was dark. And then you can only sleep so many hours, particularly in the winter. So in the dark winter and You go to bed at 7.30 or 8 or 8.30, no light. You wake up at 2 in the morning. What do you got to do? Well, let's chant together in the dark. I mean, Catholic monasteries developed the schizo and it had something to do with, you know, etc., And then after a while he'd say, I'm tired of chanting, let's take a nap. Now Zen, if we wanted to say something that applies to all aspects of Buddhist practice,

[63:16]

Any adept Buddhist practice is about moving the primary territory of your life outside of consciousness. Zazen is about moving the primary territory of your life into a wider sphere of mind than consciousness. Into a wider space of consciousness. of mind than consciousness. Okay. Daylight belongs to consciousness. We wake up into daylight and we wake up into consciousness.

[64:37]

It's very difficult to get yourself extricated from that relationship. That's why some people, artists and other writers, work late at night, because it gets them out of the daylight consciousness. Okay, so that's one reason. To step out of the relationship between daylight and consciousness. Okay, another reason, though this may sound... is to discover your own power. I mean, the sun gets up because the sun gets up. But I get up because I get up.

[65:56]

I'm not going to be forced into getting up just because the sun comes up. The sun does its thing, yeah, and I do my thing. Believe it or not, there's some kind of power in that just deciding to get up because you get up. And then traditionally you get up before first light. And we're not doing that here because we're making it easier for all you lazy laymen. No! Because at first light, the birds start to sing. And one of the reasons Zen temples traditionally have gardens, which we, mostly thanks to Atmar, we've created this wonderful garden around here.

[66:58]

And with gardens come birds. And the birds are part of our meditation. And so you're beginning to wake up, coming out of the nighttime mind into consciousness. But not fully into daytime consciousness. And you're in that mix of minds between non-dreaming deep sleep, dreaming sleep and consciousness. And you're discovering a mind that overlaps non-dreaming, deep sleep, dreaming and waking mind. And you're getting familiar with that overlap which isn't available to us in consciousness.

[68:12]

Very little. So you're in the process actually of creating an overlap between these three minds we're born with. And developing the basis of a mind that's not just these three minds. And partly we're bringing non-dreaming deep sleep of a kind of subterranean mind flowing into zazen. And with practice into consciousness. and through the practice into consciousness.

[69:25]

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