I were in your shoes and your cushion. What I would make of what we talked about yesterday. I didn't take the train for... the Black Forest this morning, so I thought I'd come back anyway. Yeah, yeah. So I shouldn't... Well, I thought we weren't going to be amplified. Christian, I'm off. So I stressed a little bit and sat for an hour or so.

[01:07]

And I wondered if the sitting helped anyone and helped me. So I thought I should speak about what practices we already do And then also I wanted to deal with the idea of creativity that was brought up yesterday by someone over here. Are they still here? They clearly didn't come.

[02:25]

Maybe. And I did have, I do conclude that Let me put it this way. When we talk about something which is the subject of this weekend and Friday night, vocation and profession, and in the and in a culture which has German culture, which has so much a sense of being called to do something implicit, as I understand it, in the culture.

[03:28]

I mean, my feeling is in Germany there's almost an undercurrent of gods or mythology present in the culture. And at the same time, it's about as professional emphasizes professionalism as much as any culture I can imagine. And in a good way. I went with someone recently to get some glasses and help me be with them while I get some glasses. Yes, please. And this guy was unbelievably professional in the way he measured her eyes.

[04:52]

Glasses? Yes, glasses, of course. Glasses, yes. The summer morning. It was about half an hour. Did he say something else? He said glasses on the way up. Glasses, yes. Glasses, yes. Glasses, yes. So I think that when you try to look at a question like vocation and profession, you're looking at something that's really at the root of our thinking, our mindset. So my feeling is you have to really in the end practice comes down real practice to answer a real question like what you're going to do with your life It comes down to studying your mind, studying your feelings.

[06:13]

So that's probably what I'll talk about this morning. But first I'd like to see, do any of you have something you'd like to bring in? Oh yes, okay. I think there was something mysterious or something not, at least not from my point, quite understood about the Existing, not existing, real and unreal. And I think it would be helpful if you could say a few words to that. What is your problem? I'd like to hear it again. Every time we say mysterious, it appears. Are you speaking for others or speaking for yourself?

[07:39]

probably a little, I found, I was thinking about it and I stumbled upon a citation from Laman Pang on his deathbed. I'm sorry, it just came to my mind. He said, it sounds like a dog, beware of taking as empty all that is existent and not to take as real that is non-existent. That was about his last words. Yeah. The same thing I suggested. That's why it came to my mind. But I found this... It's the last thing you decide to say to it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But the idea of... We are used to having a thing we can touch, see, feel, that we have taught and brought up as this exists.

[09:11]

This is solid, I can touch it, I can knock at it, and it exists. And the idea that it doesn't exist is absolutely ultra-contrary. It's overcome and given to us. It's against intuition. I'm going to assume, yes. They said at home I had to retell what we talked about and I came upon the same problem of existing and not existing and the example you gave when

[11:03]

filling the contents of the cup into the bowl, into the bell, I thought the person who said I'd never become a Buddhist, for him it might have beaten the It might have been the thing he more remembered probably than the color and shape of the cup. And also for me this was very sort of instructive because I got a better feeling of what he meant was this is the reality. Yeah, the relationship. Anyone else want to comment on this? Yeah. You mean? You mean? OK. When we're entering this philosophical discussion, I would rather like that it could be, for me, as practical as possible, but not as cloudy.

[12:18]

Yeah, I understand. I think life is inherently philosophical. Or it's... In the sense that we are guided, shaped by view. And philosophy and poetry are both examinations or expressions of those views. And the Greek philosophy was something that made people's lives better. And philosophy has become, I think, in our centuries, recent centuries especially, a highly professional and rather isolated one.

[13:26]

Ordinary people fly. So I agree with you. I'd like to make it as practical as possible. But it does require some mental work. It's not important at all. Yeah. I think this is a very practical example of what we have here, and how we have to deal with it and how we have to deal with it. Thank you. I came upon a practical application of what you said about the relationship, I think, because my problem is it's difficult for me to throw things away.

[15:14]

But as I regarded it under the aspect of what sort of a relationship do I have to my belongings, things that are around me, in this light, it sort of became easier for me to throw things away after having analysed them, had analysed my relationship with them. Interesting. I often find it helpful to give something away by giving it into a new relationship. To pass something to somebody, you can use it. Then the relationship continues and you are good about it. Yes. I don't think that it helps talking about existing or not existing, because it has to do with the interpretation of the... Was that what you said?

[16:36]

The interpretation of what exists or doesn't exist. But the interpretation of the term exists. And is it that true? What I wonder is that we have the idea that we have talked about yesterday and we have already been talking about it for two or three hours. I think that is really a problem. This is a problem which can't be solved by thinking and arguing. And we'd rather have to digest this. And it seems to me that 24 hours after having heard his own arrival, he's sort of acting in opposition to this. Yeah, that's true. But let's continue anyway.

[17:37]

Because we're having fun. And there will be 24 hours tomorrow that we can contemplate this thing. Yeah. Now they are not farming. The second thing is that the European culture is so good and so real that the big farmers are not farming anymore. I'm a scientist, a natural scientist and so of course used to exact thinking and I think in our culture, our culture is very much addicted to material thinking, materialistic thinking.

[19:01]

So this is probably quite a big hindrance to our understanding and letting ourselves into other cultures and other ways of viewing the world. Yeah. Mm hmm. struck me was the, what we talked about meaning and value. Value has a close connotation for me of, what in the world, . Evaluation, giving something, it's measuring something of measuring the value.

[20:07]

And this has a sort of more negative connotation, don't you see? Hmm? Yeah. Especially in German, yeah. I'm just curious. In the fort, there was a construction on the left, and the people that put the bicycle in front of the place, it wasn't managed to be, it didn't work out. I'm on the roof. Because the construction is on the roof right now, and if someone looks at the bicycle safety, it's not working. It's not working. It's okay. They are chained together.

[21:21]

Shall we continue the discussion or take a little break? He votes for a pause, though. Have some tea or something? Okay, let's have a little break. Continue. Continue after the break. Well, I'll have to make a decision, so we'll have a little break. Let's have a stretch. I watched, we have this new center, Dharma Sangha here in Johannesburg, over the mountain from

[25:13]

Freiburg to the east. And it's a former anthroposophical kindergarten. And then it's been a farmhouse and into a kindergarten and so forth. And then it became a meditation center connected with the Graf von Durkheim Rute Community And we moved in in July and more fully just recently And it looks We went over all the details recently with the county, and it looks like we're pretty secure there for at least a couple of years, and then we're going to have to get the next down payment, I mean, final payment.

[26:27]

And we looked at everything that was part of it in detail, and all the calculations and so on, and it actually looks like we're going to be able to And it looks like we're doing this responsibly, I hope, and carefully so that we can make it press for practice in perpetuity. It's kind of a funky big old building, you know, but I like it. Makes me feel good. I have some pictures of what turned into an opening ceremony this last weekend and we must look at it. I mentioned it partly because there were a lot of

[27:31]

Parents with children there, as I said yesterday, were at the opening seminar and ceremony. Of different ages. And I have a grandson who is 14 months and not so in a pension. And I have a grandson who is 14 months and not so in a pension. And my impression is that there is a very mutually supportive relationship between naming things and venturing into the world. The more the child seemed to be able to name the world and make sentences about it was corresponded to his or her confidence. Trying things by themselves, climbing up on labels and things. I think our investment in language and names is very deep.

[29:10]

It's not just about communicating with others, it's really about finding ourselves as an alive person. And there's a teaching in the, which I don't think I'll try to go into detail, but it gives you a sense of these things, in the Lant Patara Sutra. Which is in a sense, which says there's a syllable body, a name body and a sentence body. which means we should come to know ourselves and others at the level in which we embody the world, what we call syllable, in which we embody the world as names, in which we embody the world as sentences.

[30:50]

And there's a difference if I, Marina's sitting here, if I just name Marina, Marina, without thinking about it, I'm in a different state of mind than if I start to think about Marina as this kind of person or something. But if we just hum together, like babies, ba-ba-wa-wa, mama, papa, This is another kind of connection.

[31:52]

And one of the teachings has this, has baby talk in it. It says, is anything being said? And one of these teachings in the Lankavatara Sutta also has a line that contains this element, Baba Wawa. And the next line is, is anything being said here? And the basic process of Buddhist practice, which I'm still speaking about as a kind of basic wisdom, is to analyze things intellectually or analytically as thoroughly as one can.

[32:55]

So you make things quite clear. And you see if that clarity is in contrast to your habitually held views. And then if it is, you hold those two present in your mind the view you originally have and what might be the case that you can understand cognitively. I agree completely with what you said.

[34:11]

But I would not try to get to the point that you pointed out too quickly. Because, like these little children, like us adults, we invest ourselves in words and ideas. In the world? In ideas and views. In words. So, at least I don't know about English. I mean, I know in English, I don't know about German, but The word existence really is something we kind of put ourselves into. The world exists a certain way. And once we say that and examine it, all kinds of ideas of reality come into that and are kind of packed into that.

[35:14]

And if we look at it more closely and examine it, then all kinds of views and ideas come into existence. So, again, what he said is right, is that what we're really talking about is a definition of what we mean by exist, and this exists. And I maintain that that's worth examining. First of all, we have to do it intellectually or cognitively. But just, and I don't think it's that hard to understand cognitively.

[36:31]

The problem is changing our investment in how we understand it. So if I think, if I emphasize this glass, of course this glass exists. But what did Laman Paine say when he died? Yeah, but because it's precise. I beg you to regard as empty all that is existent.

[37:33]

From the point of view of Buddhism, this is non-existent Yeah. Thank you. my question is if there is a correspondence to what you said to western physicists saying that for example in the end everything is in a heap

[39:14]

What did you say? In the end, everything is mine. So this matter, as we commonly view it and experience it, is also not in the common way real. Yeah. Now, this is Heisenberg, you said, didn't you? Well, a close friend of mine, Hans-Peter Dürer, with Heisenberg's He was or is head of the Max Planck Institute in Munich. We've discussed these things very intimately and long. Right, basically we agree. But let's try to make it simple. The difference here is, do you invest in the object as existing, or do you invest in the relationship as existing?

[40:20]

And both things exist in different ways. The relationship exists in one way, And the glass exists, the object exists in you. But you have a both practical and I'd say spiritual choice. Where do you find reality or invest yourself? And I think it's much more... Fact is, investors have no message. And to change that investment, if you really change that investment, it is a common precipitate of an enlightenment.

[41:55]

And if you change this view, if you really change it fundamentally, then it is a frequent trigger for enlightenment experience. Because enlightenment, generally, satori, whatever we call it, generally occurs when two views are in conflict. And there's different levels of views which come into conflict. And resolving that produces different kinds of opening experiences. And the dynamic of this is that you have view A and view B. And you have the conflict.

[43:15]

They don't quite agree. And you shift your investment from one to the other and find one of them has many more cilia that reach into... So what are the ingredients of this soup? You have view A and view B. You have the conflict. You have the resolution. So in some ways, the more deeply you hold a wrong view, the more likely your enlightenment experience is going to be part of it. So I could say if you're going to be deluded, be really deluded.

[44:34]

But then, okay, that's enough. I'll get myself a trumpet. Someone had, yeah. Why? Oh, it may not be? Oh, what I was talking about. Yes. For now, I think best is perhaps to leave that as something you can intuit.

[45:41]

Now, I'm happy to... I would like to carry... the discussion a little further, but I'm happy to have something else. Yes? I'd like a little flashlight. What's the force behind the shift? Because you are living both views. That's And that's an energy that's invested in both views. That is, I live both views although I negate view B. Yes. Is it the force that I live something which I denied or negated before?

[47:06]

Good question. This is interesting to me. There's a lot of Buddhist thinking just around what you just brought up First of all, it's assumed that we actually live according to how things actually exist But we may have views that are actually in conflict with how things actually exist. But we are so complex as... living beings, is that we can put reality off the shelf and leave it there and live in a very unreal way most of our life.

[48:18]

No, I think at a time of crisis or illness or death, Sometimes reality comes off the shelf. Now, unless you'd like to wait for illness or a crisis, let's take reality off the shelf, you know, now. And if you don't want to wait for a crisis or a disease, then let the reality of reality come down from the shelf now. So, practice is to take reality off the shelf. And sort of put it in front of yourself and say, could it be like this? And the reason why Zazen practice is so important Because it puts you into a reality that's in contrast to your usual reality.

[49:33]

So here's a basic pattern. A person has certain kinds of experiences or meets a teacher or some intuition, then they start to practice. And they have some good experiences from practice. So they decide to continue. But then those good experiences or experiences of some clarity or something. And other experiences that happen implicitly that we don't recognize or notice begin to leak out of Zazen into our daily life. So Zazen gets often quite boring and they say it's a flat learning curve.

[50:49]

This flat learning curve is kind of pushing things out into our daily life. And so you say, geez, nothing happens in Zazen, but recently I was walking down the street and I saw this... Suddenly changed my mind about things. Then the choice comes, do you become adept or a passive meditator who lets meditation now push you around instead of the world? And the adept says, OK, I can see these things happening in the world now. They don't happen in Sasi anymore, but I'm going to consciously bring them back into my meditation.

[51:57]

So this is a really full exercise, like in a way being a scientist, but you're being a scientist at your own life. or a poet at your own mind. Something else before I go on with pre-munch discussion? Yes. This is what it looks like from the outside.

[53:07]

I think it's very important that we have a place where we can talk to each other. I think it's very important that we have a place where we can talk to each other. I think it's very important that we have a place where we can talk to each other. English. what I wanted to say is for this example of real and not real if we find this is cold and hard and has a certain texture and so on when we are dreaming we may find the same object or a similar object with a very definite texture and a very definite color and temperature and we might even have a feeling of more reality so to say in a dream

[54:14]

That was my part that came to me as being what was real. Yeah, okay. But from my point of view, as I would put it, the glass is its coldness, its texture, etc. All those are relationships. And the glass might reappear in a dream as something that's cold, with a certain texture, etc., but might not be a glass. But it might have the coldness and the texture. Yes. Concerning the theme of this weekend, also there is this basic Buddhist compassion, and I, being a lawyer, sort of fight with the problem of how much compassion can I have with also my clients, but also the opponents, yes.

[55:54]

Yes, I can imagine. Especially as it's defined as winning and not what's true necessarily. I have some friends who are lawyers sometimes. one of the founders of public interest law in the United States. Public interest law. And he just at some point decided to only take cases that he either felt he could really help somebody or help society Or he could use to clarify issues that should be clarified in society. But I think that the more one adheres to one's own, I don't know how to use this word now that it has other implications in German, own values,

[57:30]

somehow you can maybe plot a course in your profession that's satisfying. But I mean, the more you, so to speak, his, yes, difficult word in German, but his inner values, so to speak, really attach, yes, the more you, or stay true to him, perhaps, the more you will also find a way somewhere, where you, let's say, also get through, also in this, Okay, let me go to what I, if I define practice as let's say forgetting yourself. Or I define practice as a feeling of larger sense of being, then what, to my mind, are the main meditative practices in our society?

[58:47]

What are the main meditative practices in our society? I would say that one of them is crowds. And not stows. Not stows, yes. But just crowds of people. And I think that crowds are not just a byproduct of cities. They're actually one of the factors that generate cities. And when you build plazas at some point, And if you construct cities, if you build cities, and if you build places, if you build large open spaces, is it possible for people to gather there?

[60:11]

And so what I'm trying to do here is also look at what do poets do in order to derive their inspiration. And I think we can look at what poets do, and it's very similar to what meditators do. Or what we do to solve, step two, two, two. solve our need for meditation. And it was first noticed, I believe, when you started to have huge cities. Paris was one of the first. And Victor Hugo, the French writer, speaks about being lost in a crowd like being lost in the surge of the ocean.

[61:29]

And crowds are classless, like who gathers to see a fire. Lots of people. And Hugo also spoke about the city as teeming with dreams. And both Lear and Charles Dickens, all of them, really drew their inspiration from crowds. And Dickens was a person who drifted aimlessly in the city, kind of like in a trance state, following the crowds, and from that deriving his books.

[62:34]

And Dickens was someone who let himself be driven aimlessly through the city, he followed the people, the people's collection, and from this driving, he simply created his books, so to speak. And Baudelaire spoke about the heartaches of a thousand natural shocks of being in a crowd. And there's even, there are two words in French, one being, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing them correctly, flaneur and badeau, I think. And a flaneur is somebody who entered the crowd but didn't lose their individuality and just observed. And a flaneur was a person who lost their individuality and just merged with the crowd.

[63:50]

And these folks actually thought about this. Words were developed. And there was a, you would lose yourself and then come back to being an observer and then lose yourself. And there was a kind of ecstasy. Ecstasy means out of place, ecstasis. And there was this change movement, to completely lose yourself and to dissolve, then to come back again and to be an observer. And as I said, words were added to it. And it can be such an ecstasy in the sense that you stand out of yourself, so to speak, in this change movement between dissolving and coming back and gathering again. I am now living in this very small town called Grossherrischwand.

[65:08]

And there are no crowds. Unless we have an opening ceremony. And if I go down the street, everyone knows exactly what I'm doing. There's that funny rich American who bought this building in our village. That's one of the rumors that I just can't stand much. But in Berlin, I can go shopping and lose myself between errands in a crowd. I think it's one reason people live in cities big enough to produce crime. Sometimes we go out from our apartment just because we want to be in a crowd for a while.

[66:11]

And we say it's because we had to buy some toothpaste, but really it's about being in the crowd. Another, I would say, meditative practice for us is in the movies. And many of us make decisions, bad decisions, after a movie. So if you're trying to work through something, better choose carefully what movie to go to. You might come out thinking you're Arnold Schwarzenegger. An illustrious Austrian. Another is public transportation. Subways, trains, things like that.

[67:46]

And I have a little label here. There's a bookmark in our book this moment. And it's from Japan. And it says, Anglo-Swiss Tansy Chocolate. Anglo-Swiss? Well, you know it has nothing to do with either England or Switzerland. The Japanese just label it, you know. Anglo-Swiss, fancy Czech. There was a one, there's a big coffee company called the International Coffee Company. And their motto Just below this earth international copy it says Dedicated to the persistent pursuit of data And this big sign with the globe on it and the company logo says Dedicated to the uninterrupted pursuit of solutions

[68:58]

I was in the train No rushing express Such as bears you great distances But the sober train which goes to no place of importance which lets you see the white steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow all you pass. I couldn't resist it. And I just came up here by plane from Heidelberg. And I did it specifically because it's a much more meditative time than driving a car.

[70:26]

Although I think driving is also, for those of us who like it, a kind of an OT. I certainly, after five or six hours, are in some sort of trance. I hope the other guys are in trance too. So we're really communicating with each other. So I feel again that there's this... These practices we are already engaged in.

[71:41]

And that we enter because we have a need for some kind of looser meditative space. Now, if you want to work on something more, shall we say, intentionally, you create that kind of space that you have on the train or in a crowd, or walking in a park or nature or something like that. And taking walks is another way in which we try to create meditative space for ourselves.

[72:53]

But mindfulness is a practice in which you try to bring that meditative space into your body through your breath and attention without it being dependent on crowds or trains. One of the problems we have, but this word intuition, there's two words that bother me a lot. that are used all the time, natural and intuition. Because I think natural hides something from us and the word intuition hides something from us. And we happen to be a culture which emphasizes being creative or creation more than generation.

[74:04]

It's said that God created the world ex nihilo. Out of nothing. In yogic culture, there is no nothing. Nothing is not possible. Now, we think there's something nothing, so maybe the Big Bang theory is related to that we still have to have a nothing from which things proceed. Do you understand that the idea that there has to have been a nothing is an idea? We could also have the idea there has always been a something. And that's a different idea.

[75:26]

I mean, it's different when you think there's always been a something. Now, if you think in terms of creation, your idea is you have to create something new. But implicit in what I've been speaking about is something is born, but it's generated out of the world rubbing up against itself. No, I think that Two cultures, one which emphasizes generation, one which emphasizes creation, will actually be creative in different ways. They will be what? will be creative in different ways.

[76:44]

One will emphasize the newness of what's thought up and may even intuitively, implicitly hide where the ideas came from. and the other culture will emphasize all the things that produced the idea. So one will emphasize the craft of the the craft that produced the idea, and the other will emphasize the intuition that produced the idea. Now, why am I talking about this? Because I think that coming to a decision about what your profession is or vocation is or how you exist, how you want to exist, it's better to emphasize the craft of it than the intuition.

[78:03]

And it's a matter of emphasis. Emphasis and definition. But what I'm talking about is And I think it's useful, thinking about culture, to emphasize more the craft, how we rub up against the world. If I'm on a train, riding in a train, I'm rubbing up against the world in a certain way.

[79:14]

Okay. So I think, I hope you got the idea. And generation... that something's born tends to emphasize continuity. And generation almost emphasizes what's kindred to it, what's family. Now, in a culture which emphasizes generation, a person doesn't exactly die. Yes, how can I make sense of that? There are more, and so Abde says, When they're dead, they're hidden from us.

[80:25]

They're not gone. So let's imagine a tree in the forest. There's a little tree growing up. And their mama and daddy tree over here are great big trees. And this tree feels very happy because mama and daddy created this big space with light going down and leaves. And the little tree is very lucky, because the mother and father tree have created this space where light is thrown down into this small room. It's like a children's playground. Okay, so... Oh, the clock didn't go back an hour. We have to put the clock back an hour. I thought, could I have talked to... Okay.

[81:29]

So what does this little tree experience? It experiences, yes, Mama and Papa, but it experiences the environment that Mama and Papa created. And I feel that German people, maybe since the war particularly, but in any case, are much more aware of this factor than American people. I mean, most people I know, their parents lived somewhere under this building. In America, the plum tree would have already gone to California. So, The little tree is growing up.

[82:36]

For some reason, one of the parent trees is cut down and dies. But the environment that the tree created is still there. So the papa tree is gone, but... It's more like Papa is hidden because much of what Papa did is right there, all around, immediately pleased in way of likeness and so forth. So the emphasis is not on an afterlife, but how subtly Papa continues in the forest, even though the tree itself is gone. So when you do in Zen a funeral ceremony, often the gloss of it is reincarnation.

[83:38]

But really what you do in the ceremony is how... the environment of that person is still alive in others. And that continuity has to be taken care of. So there's a difference whether you seek creation or gentrification. In German? It's not as clearly distinctive as Generation and Creation.

[84:43]

This creation and creation. Who knows it better? Have I understood this correctly? This would be to live presently. Yeah. At least. In the present. But what is the present? So what I'm saying is, yes, live presently. And the present is relationships. And to invest yourself in those relationships. And those relationships and the present relationships.

[85:43]

Just your sitting, just your walking. Can we ask you to describe a yogic Big Bang because the cultural difference becomes very clear here. And so, Because after Big Bang, everything that existed has been brought or created, matter, energy, natural laws, and everything else has no real existence.

[86:52]

I would rather have that conversation with you. I don't think it But it is an interesting question. What would be a yogic culture's view of trying to take the same information and make a theory about it? Like somebody said, you could create a universe in your garage. Because the original thing was so tiny that it popped out that it could be in your garage. So if you put the ingredients together, which also must be here, you could create another universe in your garage.

[87:55]

If you put these things together, which all have to be here, and put them together like this, then you could make the whole universe in your garage. Your garage would soon be extended. But your garage would soon expand on its own. Maybe you can drag them. Yes. Yeah. My question was, as I probably spoke to you already, is that being a psychiatrist, we are educated as dealing in patients only mainly...

[88:59]

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