Yeah, good morning, everyone. Thank you for still being here. Guten Morgen euch allen und danke, dass ihr immer noch da seid. I think Hoichi, Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi made this for me. I should write on these things, but I'm pretty sure he made it for me. And he's coming to, I think, we're pretty sure he and his wife are coming to the opening celebration in July. We had a little crisis about it because one, just as I was inviting them, my friend died and I didn't write right away as a result. Yeah, and then I didn't really get it that there's a solar and lunar calendar in Japan.

[01:14]

Yeah, I'm mentioning this just to share with you that he and his wife are coming, but also just the practicalities of life. So... Obon, what's called Obon in Japan, is in August. What I didn't know, according to this other calendar, it also happens in July, which is also the seventh month of the year. So I felt good that we had scheduled it in July and not August, because I know in August no Japanese priest can come to...

[02:38]

can leave his temple or her temple. Sometimes, I forget now, but sometime, I don't know, in the 1700s or something, the Japanese government has a process of census and... Population control. Population control. which is what census is about. Oh, sorry. Then I... Census? Census. Okay. Volkszählung. Okay. Und Bevölkerungskontrolle. What did you say? Censorship then maybe is the... No, not censorship.

[03:55]

It may result in censorship, but you know. Anyway. Required every Japanese person to be registered with the Buddhist temple. And then Buddhism has this practice of respecting your ancestors. And your ancestors are buried back there at that temple that your family lived next to in the 1700s or whenever it was. But not everyone lives near their family temple 300 years later. So in Japan in August, everyone goes in all directions back to their temples, their temples from hundreds of years ago.

[05:08]

And in Japan, in August, everyone travels across the country back to the temples, to their family temples, where they were in touch with their family 300 years ago. So you can buy a first class ticket on a train as... whatever in August and you end up standing in an aisle not able to lift your arms because there's so many people. During Obon someone came to visit us where we were in a an abandoned building that we fixed up on the beach in northwestern Japan.

[06:19]

If I tell you all these stories, we'll never get to the Virginianas. Anyway, this person came to visit us. And she was on this train, unable to lift her arms, right? And a man right in front of her fainted. And as he fainted, this person took hold of his arm to keep him from falling. And his arm came off. It was a false arm.

[07:27]

And so she was standing there with this arm in her hands and he'd slumped down to the floor amongst everyone's feet. She almost fainted. So at the next station, which was 10 or 15 minutes later, somebody announced, everyone pick up their luggage. So everyone picked up their luggage, and then the luggage which wasn't picked up, they carried out and put it on the platform with this guy who was still horizontal. Japan is very business-like, like this. So as they pulled away, here was this guy on the platform with his luggage.

[08:30]

So if you invite a priest to come during Obon, they say, are you crazy? I can't leave the temple. And then I was written, in our correspondence, I found out July is also a month in which there's Obon. Not as bad as August, but still demanding. So when I realized this, I wrote and said, oh, please. I wrote through translators and directly to Huichiroshi's son, who speaks English pretty well. When I'm in Japan, my primitive Japanese comes back, but to write a letter in Japanese would be not possible for me.

[09:55]

So I said to them, look, if you have to come and fly in just before the celebration and fly out, please don't come. We don't want you to have this kind of experience. I said we'll have a special Suzuki week in 2017 in which you can teach us things about chanting and ceremonies and things like that. And I had Huitu Roshi's American disciple phone him, and it turns out that they're going to try to come for at least 10 days. He said, he really, Shungro, his son said, he really wants to be here for the, you know, new Zendo and the new Buddha Dharma Hall.

[11:34]

This will become the Buddha Dharma Hall. So we'll see. Okay. Now... I can drive him. No, the rule is that he was willing to come but never to get in the car with you. We had to promise that. On our 10th anniversary, they did come, and then we visited together with them in Freiburg. And Andreas... was going to drive them to the Stras... to where?

[12:53]

Strasbourg? Yeah, Basel Airport. The Baden... Basel. The Basel Airport. And they were flying to Paris. No, no, to the train station. Yeah. They had a special ticket for a special train. Oh, okay. Yeah. So we were having such a good time that they left a little late. Andreas was supposed to take them by train to Basel. They had a fixed train ticket, but we enjoyed the time so much that they left pretty late. Andreas is known throughout the German-speaking world by the police. For driving at speeds that are only allowed in space. People have to stand in for him when he gets tickets so he can still drive.

[13:53]

They take the tickets for him. Am I exaggerating a little bit? So while they're driving and he's driving them, supposedly they were saying, we don't have to go to Paris, it's all right. We can miss the train. And then he said, maybe, yes, but then you will drive us to Paris. Oh dear. Okay. They didn't ask not to be driven by you.

[15:06]

I just made that up. Now, this latter part of my teaching and practicing time with you. I wonder how much I should speak about you know, my own practice and my own experience. And things like, you know, Hakuin Zenji, the Eikaku Hakuin, you know, marks his life practice by four or five turning point enlightenment experiences. And we don't speak about such things much anyway. But it is the case that any acknowledged teacher should have

[16:06]

enlightenment experience and be free of mental suffering. Otherwise, this is silly what we're doing. So I was wondering, you know, should I speak about my own experience of freedom from mental suffering. And then partly I'm bringing this up because both Otmar and Nicole told me in their group we were in the same group. In their group you were speaking about suffering a lot. And I didn't really understand that, how the Vijnanas led to speaking about suffering. But I don't always understand everything, so anyway, I didn't understand.

[17:29]

So I thought maybe I should speak about it to give it some reality. So I'm going to speak about it as kind of an experiment and see what you think. We don't speak about it, partly because we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we have experiences others in the Sangha don't. And the style of our practice is more to let you motivate yourself rather than me to pressure you. Anyway, I was at Tassajara for the first practice period. And I was a Shusso, so I was the first Shusso.

[18:47]

Naturally, how could it be possible otherwise? And I had founded and found Tassajara for Suzuki Roshi. And then he established the first practice period. And we discussed quite a bit whether we could do practice periods at Tassajara. And he was very clear, practice periods should be three months long. There's no such thing as a practice period shorter than three months. Like there's no such thing as a five-minute sashim.

[19:50]

And it's just like there's no such thing as a five-minute sashimi. I mean, maybe some of us would like a five-minute session. Ariel on the mark, get set, boom. Okay, it's over. And certain kinds of facilities are needed for three months of us living together and not being able to leave the campus. Es braucht nun mal bestimmte Gebäude, bestimmten Gebäudekomplex, wenn wir drei Monate lang zusammen auf einem Campus leben sollen, ohne den Campus zu verlassen. So once we took occupancy of Tassajara, Sukirashi studied the facilities, wrote to Japan, got approval to do practice periods, and we did the first practice period. And I followed those same rules and same procedure when we decided to do practice periods here, only when we increased the size of the campus.

[21:07]

As most of you know, I wouldn't do practice periods when we just had Johanneshof. So anyway, we had this first practice period. And for me, I was just learning what practice period was and also just living my practice life there with Sukhiroshi. Sometime in the first month or six weeks or so, And at some point in the first month or in the first six weeks or so? I realized I no longer had any mental, emotional suffering.

[22:23]

Yeah, and I didn't, you know, this was all new to me, and I was fairly young. Mid-twenties. And I didn't know what to expect, but, you know, this seemed nice. And I didn't know what I could expect, but it seemed nice to me. And I knew about things like stream-enterer and once-returner and never-returner. I felt, yeah, that's sort of what happened. And I knew about such ideas as coming into the stream or once-returner or never-returner. And I thought, yes, something like that has happened. And then at some point I realized not only am I free from mental and emotional suffering in this practice period, but I think it will never come back.

[23:35]

And then at some point I understood, I had the feeling, I think I'm not only free from spiritual and emotional suffering during this period of practice, but I think it will never come back. So it was clear, obviously really clear, that Sukhirishi was free of mental and emotional suffering. So I thought I should acknowledge it, to recognize it with him in some way. Although I was sure he'd already noticed. But, you know... This was kind of a refreshing and nice experience or feeling. So I thought, hey, I know one other person who's like this. I ought to share it with him.

[24:38]

And when you have an experience which is different than anything else in your life or anything else you've known before, with others, it's kind of nice when somebody else shares it with you. Yeah, so I went to his cabin and kind of As an aside, as an aside sort of mentioned. And he basically said, yes, it is possible and I acknowledge that you've realized this. So if I at this point try to restore

[25:48]

describe why what this seemed to consist of this experience I would say that I no longer had any identity which functioned as a source of suffering or suffering stuck to. You know, before that time and before I started practicing, I had such a complicated mental activity and process which I couldn't sort myself out of mentally.

[27:23]

I thought I was going to end up crazy probably. And I just simply couldn't sort it out mentally. And when I met Sukhiroshi and saw someone who had sorted it out and I saw it was rooted in this physical practice I really made a as thorough an intention as is possible to get out of this mental complications. So what had happened in the previous year, several years I'd practiced before Tassajara with Sudokirishi, Yeah, there were about five years of practicing with him on a daily basis before we started Tassajara.

[28:46]

I had somehow managed to free myself from any imagination of myself in the future. And I'm describing this just because this is an aspect of our practice. Should I share it or not? But anyway, I'm sharing it. So I freed myself from any idea of a future identity or an interest in a future identity. And I freed myself from any expectation that came from my family. Which had been a process that had been going on for some time.

[29:47]

And I freed myself from any expectations from my culture of how I should be, should I be a success. I couldn't care less. Yeah, so somehow this left me just in the immediacy of successive moments, and this was quite enough. And I found this wonderful friend I loved, and I could hang out with him and do things like start Tassajah. But I still had an identity that wanted to continue practice for Suzuki Rishi.

[31:05]

I was determined to make it possible for people to practice with Suzuki Roshi. And that led to, you know, and eventually in the future led to getting Green Gulch. Yeah, because when I came back from living in Japan, he sent me to Japan for four years. When I came back from Japan, not too long before he died, some months, We discussed what we needed to make a practice center work for Western students. And it was at that time, and no families sent their kids to Zen monasteries.

[32:45]

They might send them to college, but not to Zen monasteries. So we had to create some kind of self-creating, self-sustaining community, and we decided that needed a third location. So me in a tent in Palo Alto or someplace, I heard about Green Gulch and we got it. And my desire to make this place work is the continuation of the same intention. But now I don't want any businesses attached to the Sangha to support the Sangha.

[34:06]

Because they start wagging the dog. The tail wags the dog instead the dog wags the tail. Do you have an expression like that in German? So instead of the Dharma motivating this nasally sensitive dog, the tail begins to wag the dog. You understand the image? So I thought, when we started this place, I said, no businesses.

[35:09]

Yeah, because we started all kinds of, you know, restaurants and grocery stores and bakeries and everything to make the Zen Center of that time work. Weil wir im Zen-Center der damaligen Zeit alles Mögliche ins Leben gerufen hatten. Restaurants und eine Bäckerei und Supermärkte und so weiter. Okay. Supermarket? You said grocery store. That's not a supermarket. Oh. The supermarket is big. It's super. This is a little corner grocery store. Okay. I never started a supermarket. I worked in supermarkets. I was the assistant manager of a supermarket in high school. Ich war der Assistenzmanager von einem Supermarkt in der Gymnasialzeit.

[36:10]

You're learning a lot about my life. Sorry. Bedbugs, supermarkets. I'm sorry to burden you with this. Okay. Now the main topic I wanted to speak about is too late. Which is, I told you I was telling too many stories. I warned you. Yeah. But I didn't stop. Anyway, what I wanted to speak about is the suffering of Zazen and the suffering of Zazen in Sashin. And what that's all about. Now, since we don't have a discussion meeting this afternoon,

[37:12]

And that's a question. We decided to have Thursday afternoon open or free in the winter branches, but this is one day shorter. Maybe we should be meeting this afternoon. Yeah. But Atmar and I decided to try this Thursday and see what we all think. So the next time we meet will be tomorrow morning for Taisho. So maybe tomorrow I'll... speak about four and a fifth way in which it seems like there's pain in Sashim.

[38:44]

Or more than seems like. Reason why there's aspects of something that looks like suffering. And how that's an essential part of our practice. Not actually the suffering. But the process of developing a posture which allows mental and physical, nearly absolute mental and physical stillness. Because unless you learn, unless you discover this mental and physical stillness, really discover it and live it,

[39:46]

The basis for freedom from mental and emotional suffering isn't there. Nor is the means to observe the mind and body. Und dann gibt es auch nicht die Mittel, um Geist und Körper zu beobachten. Because, as you know, we say, how can the eye see the eye? Weil, wie ihr wisst, sagen wir so etwas wie, wie kann das Auge das Auge sehen? Well, we can ask, how can the body observe the body? Wir können auch fragen, wie kann der Körper den Körper beobachten? Well, it's the still mind and body which observes the active and still mind and body. Maybe that says it all. Or maybe I should review a little bit the five aspects.

[40:59]

Okay, thank you very much.

[41:18]

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