Thank you for being here today. It's nice to see you all. And, yeah, I've done this so often, sit down and cross my legs and then try to say something. But it's always like it's nearly the first time for me. And now we have this topic, Sangha. And on Friday, Friday of a three-day weekend. I like to, as you know, go in a somewhat different direction than straight into the topic.

[01:03]

Yeah, so, I don't know. I don't have this sit before I start talking, things like that, some difference. Some transitional time before we try to enter the topic directly. Yeah, some time before we enter the topic directly. It's sort of like if you approach a building and you don't go inside, but it's a new building. Some architect, you sort of look at it from outside, but you don't go inside yet. Yeah.

[02:05]

And we've been the last six months in the process here in Germany, of Europe, of creating a sangha, I can say that. Yes, a Sangha which has more developed relationships with each other and not just to me or to the place. And Gerald is developing a Sangha in Göttingen. And the Buddha sent his disciples out in all different directions.

[03:08]

You have to all go in different directions, he said. So there's a saying, you were born in the same lineage, but we die in different lineages. But do those different lineages create a sangha or different sanghas? So... Yeah, what is a Sangha? It's a big and it's a rather subtle question actually. Subtle.

[04:10]

Yeah, I mean we take refuge supposedly in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Well, and we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Yes, in China. Oh, I forget the century, actually. The Sung Dynasty. There was a big effort to create a Sangha. And it really meant, in contemporary language, a paradigm shift. From a Yeah, from those days, basically indigenous shamanic culture.

[05:10]

Right. blood sacrifice and so forth to make sure the crops grew and things like that. And they tried to cut the Buddhist teachers, particularly the Tien Dai teacher. the Buddhist teachers, particularly a Tendai teacher, kind of organized a number of rituals, for example, releasing living creatures. And so in contrast to some kind of sacrificial, sacrificing the life of an animal, he started this process, a ritual of freeing animals.

[06:18]

So the idea was, of course, to counteract the habits people had. So is every person you meet, anyone you meet on the street, on a bus, such a person a member of the Sangha? Well, if every person you meet is a member of the Sangha, then the word has no meaning. When is the person you meet on the street a member of the Sangha and when are they not? Or when, in your feeling, are they a member of the Sangha or not?

[07:21]

The question of Sangha really brings us to a version of the question of what are other people to you? What is your relationship to other people? So your own personal examination of what are your relationships to other people is the basis for understanding what a sangha might be. So if you want to seriously take on the question, what is a Sangha? And if we really want to ask ourselves the question seriously what a singer is...

[08:52]

Actually, what are our relationships with people? What is our relationship to ourselves? In Buddhism, you do not sacrifice yourself for others. You help yourself first and then others. This goes back to the historical Buddhist time. Doesn't mean you don't help others. But your emphasis is I can't help others solve problems until I've solved my own problems. It doesn't mean you don't share your food and so forth. But the emphasis is on... Freeing oneself from suffering as the basis for freeing others.

[10:13]

Tsukiroshi used to feel that, said quite clearly, that usually if you don't free yourself first, you cause more trouble when you try to help. Don't understand this in some kind of absolute black and white terms. If you don't understand that. Don't understand it in absolute or black and white terms. So Sangha starts with studying the observing, developing relationship to yourself. How do I actually exist?

[11:26]

When do I feel most comfortable in this existence? When is just being alive satisfying, without doing anything? That can be a kind of goal, or can be a goal. When you notice more and more, you just feel being alive without doing anything or accomplishing anything. is satisfying. Maybe on our deathbed we might enjoy our last moments. Just being alive for a while. Hey, a little while more. Great. We all have a little while more. That's all. But really what is meant by this, I think, takes some time to absorb.

[12:35]

Because it's an attitude in some kind of, you know. relationship with attitudes we already have. So then what is your relationship with your family? The people you're most genetically similar to are your brothers and sisters? More than your parents. But do we feel close to our brothers and sisters?

[13:46]

Sometimes. But I know an awful lot of people hardly ever see their brother or sister. They might be friends with one sibling, but not another sibling. So what is it that makes us feel close to one sibling and not another? What is it? I miss sibling instead of twin. Sibling is any brother or sister. Yeah, and twin is better. Sorry. But if you're a fraternal twin, people often ask, if boys and girls, they say you're twins, people say, are you identical? Yeah. Well... But in fact, it's actually genetically possible to be, as neuroscientists, I guess, define twinship. You can be opposite sex and be identical.

[14:46]

It's about the percentage of genes you have. But we don't necessarily feel close to our siblings. When do we feel close? Or sometimes we feel differently about if we have several children, different children. So Buddhism says, you know, look, study. What's already existing in your life? Would it be possible to have some relationship? Or when do we feel close to another person? Or when do we find we can identify ourselves through another person?

[16:17]

In other words, what I'm saying is, let's study and notice how we ourselves already function. And then, Look at what Buddhism means by Sangha. Now, for some reason I was, you know, maybe because Gerald's here or maybe because we have a Zendo here, just thinking, what makes a Zendo? What makes a room a Zendo? And it's somehow parallel for me of what makes another person a member of the Sangha or not.

[17:24]

Now, perhaps we can extend our feeling of Sangha to every human being. Every living being. In the Song Dynasty, one of the things they tried to establish was the maintenance, the protection of the natural cycles of the ear. The protection, the maintenance of the natural cycles of the year, the seasons. Of the year, yeah. And as a result, Buddhism's convinced the society that they were better at it than us. The local gods.

[18:38]

So I see Blair is trying to convince Washington to maybe worry about global warming. So if Buddhists were in competition with fundamentalist Christians in the United States about who maintains natural cycles best, I think Buddhism would win. Scientists and Buddhists would make a common cause. And in fact already have. Okay. Now I mention this only to... That's all right.

[19:43]

I mention this only to put the idea of Sangha in a wide scale of society itself. Because we create ourselves We tend to think we create ourselves in private space, but in fact we create ourselves much more so in public space. But what is social and public space? Yeah.

[20:44]

You know, I'm reading recently how Grimm of Grimm's Fairy Tales in the United States Grimm. Jakob? Jakob? Jakob Grimm. Jakob. And his brother. He had a brother. He had brothers, yeah. The brothers Grimm. In, I don't know, 1819 or something, published the Deutsche Grammatik or something like that. Die haben also eine deutsche Grammatik veröffentlicht im 19. Jahrhundert, glaube ich, ja. Early 19th century. 31 volumes. 31 volumes? This I didn't know. No wonder it's never been translated into English. Kein Hänger bei 31 Bänden, dass es nie ersetzt wurde. Yeah. Well, he was the first person to really emphasize the roots of Germanic languages.

[21:49]

English, Dutch, excuse me, and etc. Of which languages? Germanic languages. Germanic, yeah. And he, in a way, created a kind of cultural shift. A new paradigm. From what I've read was the basis for, part of the basis for the many little German principalities beginning to think of themselves as possibly a German country. So this is a cultural shift. And also when you study vegetarianism. And from ancient times until today, vegetarianism has traditionally been connected with social protest.

[23:08]

And you can say that Buddhism in the United States at least has made more progress, progress? through food culture than Dharma culture. Yeah, I mean, the book of Tofu which a student of Sukhiroshi's wrote, has had more influence, perhaps, than Zen mind, beginner's mind. Tofu got to Chicago before Buddhism did. I can go into this at some length if you want, but I'll leave it aside for now.

[24:13]

Okay, so let me just speak about what makes a room a Zendo. Because a room is just a room. But when is a room a zendo? Well, first of all, when there's a sense of two different spaces in the room. Somehow, yeah. It's just a little tiny translational thing. Translational? Yeah, okay. When you say space, we use in German the same word as Raum. It's a room.

[25:13]

But we don't so much differ between... The space of a room and the room of a room. We don't have different words for that. We always say Raum. Okay. Just to... Just okay. Yeah. So when you're in Crestone, you've never been there. Oh yeah, a long time ago. When you're in Crestone, and the valley in front of you is the size of the state of Connecticut, Do you say, look at the room? Is that what you'd say? You'd say it just like it, without any feeling of it being a room. You wouldn't now.

[26:16]

You wouldn't have a figure. What? What would you say? Wide, a wideness, you would say. A wide room. Round. Would you say room? You would say how wide this is or how spacious probably. But spacious is roundish? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Weidräumig. Weidräumig, genau. Wide roomy. Weidräumig. That means really. Really big. So the German word for universe is world room. Really? How great. World room, yeah. So does it have the feeling of a container? It can have, but it may have an infinite connotation also.

[27:19]

When you say world, room, world, universe, it may have an endless connotation also. Okay. Well, like in our Zendo, there's the space where the Buddha is and the altar, and there's the space where we sit. Yeah, and when you enter the Zendo, the idea is... that you somehow face the Buddha. Meet the Buddha face-to-face. Or you meet yourself as the Buddha face-to-face. So how do you do that? Well, in a small room like ours, you can't really do it. But in a big zenda like at Crestone...

[28:20]

You put the Buddha on a platform and you put the sitter on a platform. So they're both on platforms. And you define the room And you define the room space, the Raumraum. By the activity in the... By your activity in the... room and in the space. Just testing your translation abilities. So typically you make an imaginary line dividing the room in half where the Buddha is.

[29:52]

And when you're in the activity of relating to the altar or sitting, you do not cross that line. And that is probably the single most important thing that makes the room a zendo. When you're cleaning, you can cross it. Then your activity is not Somatic activity, it's cleaning activity, so you can cross. Or if you are close to the altar, you go around. to get to the other side of the altar, you just don't go across.

[30:58]

Yeah, and that is part of beginning in your activity to recognize that there are two spaces in the room. Now, if you're a person who thinks the physical room is its reality. Then you're deluded, I'm sorry. In other words, if you think the physical room is an entity and real, this is the, you know, Yeah, a secondary truth.

[32:06]

The truth of the room is its activity. It was designed for a certain activity. You know, it's designed to protect you from the rain and snow or something. Designed to sleep in or talk in. So it's already an activity or defined through being an activity. As if, you know, if you go into a room... But it used to be a living room and you come to visit somebody and now it's a bedroom. When you walk in the room, you feel differently than when it was a living room. So the activity really changes your... The activity of the room changes your feeling for the room.

[33:22]

So the activity of somatic practice should change the feeling of the room. So you have to think carefully about how you enter. How you enter the room. Are you okay? Moderately. Moderately. You know, you can't sit in a chair. I'll sit on the chair with you. I mean, not the same chair. If you're not disturbed by it, we'll just wobble around a bit. I don't mind. That's good. So when the doshi comes in the room, doshi is whoever is leading the service.

[34:33]

So the room starts with the Han. Yes. So when we hit the Han for 15 minutes, we're saying the Zendo room is ready for somatic activity. Is somatic an activity? Well, okay. So during the second round, you enter. And you enter with the feeling, this is where I'll do Zaza. And we don't enter that way when we're just going in to clean it. It would be rather funny to have three rounds for the cleaners.

[35:36]

That's an idea. We could work on that. And then during the third round, The doshi enters. So the room is already settled. The room is defined already by the activity of the sitters. In fact, they look like part of the wall. They're just sitting there straight. And we have lots of koans about the pillar, the pillar of the Buddha. Yeah, so, I mean, it's good that we're not the pillars, because sometimes if we were the pillars and we're half asleep, the whole zendo would... What Bodhidharma is called the wall-gazer.

[36:42]

Not because he's looking at the wall, maybe, but because the wall is looking at him. Nicht weil er an die Wand guckt, sondern weil die Wand ihn anguckt. And then what does the doshi do? Was macht der doshi dann? Goes to the altar, defines that. Er geht zum Altar und bestimmt diesen sozusagen. And then walks around the rectangle. Und geht dann das rechteck herum. And not the physical rectangle of the room, but the rectangle of the people because you follow in the corners and so forth. So you're defining the room as the activity of practice. Yeah, so you're not letting the walls define it. You're defining it by sitting down, and you're defining it by the doshi walking down. And then everyone...

[37:55]

It's already quite still. Then you hear the doshi arranging his robes or her robes, etc., and then becoming still. So there's several stages. There's the second round, and then the third round of the Han. And then there's each person becoming still. And then finally there's the doshi becoming still. This is a process actually of shifting from one kind of space to another kind of space. How does soviet space into somatic space? Namely, from social space out into samadhi space.

[39:08]

Okay. Is the Sangha something like shifting out of social space into somatic space? And what would be somatic space with each person we meet? I think it's time for a social space. Thank you very much.

[39:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.2