As most of you know, I don't like to start on Friday with meditation before the session. Because I really want to be as much as possible, given that this the whole atmosphere has something to do with meditation. But at least as much as possible, I'd like to be with you in the mode of mind, the state of mind you arrived in. And since my life has become, I don't know, has happened to become, located in and located with others in

[01:06]

what I'm calling institutional practice. Now, institutional practice I was always in rebellion all my young life against institutions. I refused to wear ties. I refused to receive a college degree and all that stuff. But at some point, the word, the idea, the concept of institution became very positive for me.

[02:29]

Yeah, and I think maybe the negative side is a useful way to enter the positive side. I mean, this language we're speaking is an institution. It's a social institution. Okay. So when I say institutional practice, what do I mean? Okay. I mean that what does institutional practice give us? Now I'm also emphasizing, you'll see, individual practice. an essential inquiry for us, wondering why Bodhidharma showed up.

[03:47]

What is the relationship between individual practice, your individual practice, and mine, and mine? Hey, that's suddenly an institution. Again, what does institutional practice give us? first of all, gives us the teachings. When Bodhidharma, mythical, real, whatever, Bodhidharma came to China, he brought, or said to have brought, the Lankavatara Sutra.

[04:51]

Well, the Lankavatara Sutta, it's great. I mean, I read it extremely carefully years ago, a sentence or so a day or a paragraph a day. The Lankavatara Sutra is a creation of institutional practice. So, institutional practice gives us the teaching. Now, we can talk about that more, because, you know, what practices naturally arrive from zazen? naturally arise from our intuitions, our inner requests. And we should really look at that because then you can look at how far does our

[06:02]

Intuition carries. You mean most of us need to discover and are lucky if we discover our life is good enough as it is. And so we want to trust our life good enough as it is. But still, what is the relationship of individual practice to institutional practice? Okay, institutional practice not only gives us the teaching, it continues the teaching. And institutional practice establishes a normative identity for a practitioner.

[07:23]

No, that's not what most of us might think of. Because we, in a way, our movement to practice is a movement out of societal identity. But it's actually rather helpful to have a societal identity which is at least accepted by a society. When I was young and living in New York, there were certainly a lot of gay people in New York. But they weren't called gays, they were called queers.

[08:35]

And it was a positive term, all in all, in New York at least. But now it's a huge, huge shift that Being gay is a normative identity now in our society. Almost. You don't want to get stuck in the archetype of the poet or artist or something like that. Jungian terms. You don't want to get stuck in the archetype of the poet or the... But still, the fact that the last 20, no, I'm not that young, the last 50 years or 60 years have established an identity for a practitioner which I think is helpful.

[09:56]

Yeah, I mean, Nicole is younger than most of us, some of us. She's getting older, though. I've noticed she's getting older. Oh, well. Quit complaining. But I think that probably starting when she was 17 or 18, it's been useful to get her parents and her college professors and all to sort of accept that there is this identity of the practitioner. So I just want to bring that out as a probably not so noticed aspect of institutional practice. To be a poet is an institutional identity.

[11:06]

That may be motivated by an inner request which is not societal. But you have to read other poets, etc., to begin to write poems in a vein anybody else will read. Okay. Now, Institutional practice also lets us meet other practitioners. And here we're doing it. And there's a support in meeting other practitioners.

[12:08]

Your individual practice goes on mostly wherever you live. It's kind of good to meet other practitioners. And it's through institutional practice usually that you meet teachers. And to continue a bit, it's institutional practice which creates the sites of practice, S-I-T-E-S. So I would say those in some ways are the main things that institutional practice does. Okay, now let's assume that it's valuable to create a site for practice.

[13:12]

Yeah, well, of course, it's the site for practice which helps create places to meet other practitioners and so forth. But it's the site for practice which allows you to establish modes of practice. Yeah, and allows you to establish what a life would be as a way of practice. A life would be what a life as a way of practice would be.

[14:15]

And there are some teachings which I would say can't really be learned on your own. I think the six parameters really can't be learned on your own. I would say the way to function within the two truths can't really be learned on your own. And I would say the flight, you know, like a flight of wines, I don't know what you say, a flight of stairs, right?

[15:26]

Yeah. A flight of birds. Yeah. And there's also often used now a flight of wines, which wine goes which course and things. Wine, you mean the twigs? No. Yeah, danke. Okay. Not translatable. How do I particularly, when you see what I'm going to say, to learn a flight of samadhis? That's easy. Eine Flucht, also hier wie eine Treppenflucht oder so etwas. Ja, eine Flucht ist das deutsche Wort davon. Eine Flucht. In a certain context. I couldn't think of any words. He said it, right? Okay. Let's just go back to a pause for the particular.

[16:57]

You might discover for yourself certain kinds of pauses. The poet Gary Snyder. He's an old friend. Friends of Len. They live near each other. And I have a book I'd like some of you to look at called Earth Household. And I tried to order it in German, but it doesn't seem to be translated in German. But he wrote it, I think when he was only 25, and it's an amazing book about, much of it about practice in Japan and with his teacher.

[18:00]

But Gary, for instance, feels that, I mean, who knows, you know, but he's got a strong anthropological academic background. He feels maybe meditation was discovered by hunters. Because hunters, to hunt, have to stay very still often. Because hunters, to hunt, And perhaps you have to enter, not a flight, enter a samadhi with the animals.

[19:07]

Yeah, and I feel that the animals, my experience of the deer and animals around Crestone, etc., is there... in the Sambhogakaya body the way we aren't usually. Now I know a number of instances, which I won't go into because it takes forever, of really establishing kind of rapport with the animals. The animal's not afraid of you and then you kill it. That's we humans, you know. So, but still, even those hunters, although this may have naturally arrived, I'm sure this technology, it's a kind of technology, is passed from hunter to hunter.

[20:20]

I'm sure in any tribe, New Guinea or anywhere, hunting is an institution. Okay, so my guess is if you didn't have some contact with our Dhammasanga practice and so forth, and Buddhism and Zen in this lineage, you probably would not get the incubatory significance of pausing for the particular. To just pause at each particular. Okay. Now what are you doing when you do that? You're peeling back the consciously given world.

[21:40]

As the job of consciousness is to create a predictable world. At least a way of relating to the world as if it was semi-permanent. And relating to the world where semi-permanent is, in the end, delusional. is in the end delusive. So you pause for each particular. You pause for each particular. You're kind of peeling off the layer of consciousness over the manifest world. And you're beginning to experience the world as a succession of particulars, as a succession of dharmas, what we call it, and you begin to discover the sensorial mind and body,

[22:56]

is actually also a succession of particulars. And the pause for the particular is also a pause for the mind in which everything appears. So this simple skill of pausing for the particular after a while enters you into the mind which appears on every particular. And then you discover that the world that you know is also always mind. Yeah. And once the world is always also mind, The way psychology functions, your psychology functions, the way attachment functions, perception functions, everything changes.

[24:41]

So I stopped. So now, maybe, because this morning I didn't think left much room for discussion, I would like to hear from you. It's your job to talk as well as mine. I'd like to hear from you what institutional practice means to you. Since I didn't leave much room for you to speak today, and since your job is the same as mine, I would like to know what institutionalized practice Even if you live in a monastery as a lay person or a monk your practice is fully an individual practice and has to be viewed that way otherwise institutional practice becomes deadening. But in the West we now have these It's primarily a lay Sangha.

[26:11]

And how does institutional practice, coming to Sashin, seminaring together? Seminaring together. Oh, let's seminar together. What should we do this weekend? Oh, let's seminar together. Yeah. That then becomes part of your daily life wherever you are. So, what do you have to say about the relationship between individual practice and seminar practice? Institutional practice and individual practice? Okay. Nicole, thank you.

[27:15]

That the view or the picture view I have of myself has totally changed since I've been in Freiburg. Totally changed? When I'm in Freiburg. That a part of me appears when I'm in Freiburg and go through the city, which I haven't... It wasn't there when I was living in Crestone. And it's not also when I'm here. It's not present. And I see that... It's as if... I started with a presence of... I started to

[28:39]

visualize or imagine what the presence of the kind of person I could be. I started to visualize that. You could be instead of being a monkette. No, just that. Usually I'm a monkette. But it's hard for me to put words to it. There's a feeling of a presence of where I'm moving or something like that. Like myself, one step ahead of myself. I have a feeling that this is a picture of myself, as I am, a step ahead of myself, my next step. It's like a presence in me. And that's why I started asking myself, how do I look there? How am I there? When I'm in Crestone, I have a clear sense that the institution gives me a practice identity.

[30:02]

It's as though my place in the world is defined through the monastic context of my practice identity. And in Freiburg I sometimes feel lost. And then I notice that something else is appearing in me, where I suddenly see myself differently. And I notice that when I then want to maintain my practice, I call it practice identity, so really a monk, I am noticing that when in being in Freiburg, I'm trying to maintain what I am now calling a practice identity, being a monk in the midst of the city.

[31:14]

And I feel as though there's a kind of pull, as though everything around me wants me to participate in the way that everyone else is participating. And it's actually really, I'm finding it hard. It takes some real effort. It kind of, yeah. It takes some courage, actually, to pull my identity out of that kind of participation. And you don't feel you can just go into it freely but maintain your practice identity? What do you mean? Say that again? You're in a cafe, a Kisa 10, a Freiburg Kisa 10, and you feel, I don't know what, all kinds of things are happening. Three people have called you on your cell phone. Yeah, like that, right? And you feel drawn into wanting to be.

[32:21]

Can't you allow yourself to freely go, or could you allow yourself to freely go and still maintain your practice sense? You should try it, maybe. Sounds good. Yes, you should try it. That's the practice of the two truths. Yeah. But I think that's what many of us, if not all, experience when we start practicing, we come again for the Shin Seminari, whatever, and we feel really good. We go back home, wherever, daily life, and this is what you say, it's the same, it's kind of suction, drawing, you know, like, Drawing us back. And I think this is sometimes... But isn't it good to also be an ordinary lay people like everyone else? Yes. Yes, but it's different from... Yes, naturally, but it's what you just said, moving freely to and fro, that's not so easy. Yeah, okay. This is what I think really needs years or many years of practice.

[33:25]

More of some definite experience. So what you say, I think we know that too, when we were at a seminar and then we come back and then it pulls us around again and then it's like the juice comes out. After a week at least it's gone. That's how it feels. In my case, I'm a young woman without hair. And the whole world reacts like that to me. At first I was asked if I'm actually a tumor patient. Most people don't think I have a very radical mind. But that's the second closest conclusion. It's as if my whole environment reacts to me with a question. What are you doing? Why do you look like this? The identity is already there because I wear it so clearly externally. That's a bit of a new dynamic. and being a young woman with a shaved head, I'm usually looked at as, oh, are you a tumor patient?

[34:35]

Yeah, I can't sit around and cripple with an arm. That also adds to the difficulty. I heard you say something. Okay. Oh, I know, it's a mean streak in there. It's the middle way. I can agree to what you say. It's okay to go back to lay life. And I do experience also this being immersed into professional identity, personal identity. And what I notice is We talked about it in the last Rosenblum seminar, that the Johanneshof as a building, as a place, as this compound, acts on me as soon as I come here.

[35:42]

When I drive through the gate, when I drive my car, it's something that happens, letting me ease down, a little less hectic, and I find these changes very interesting. I wish I could be more calm in my normal life, but every time there is something that back and forth. And to just enter and come home, in a sense, that's for me a part of institutional practice that I really need. So in other words, it's useful to you or helpful to you that Yohannesov exists even though you're living in... And sometimes when I write the Essence at Home, you know, If something comes up that is your household or restaurant or whatever, you know, a little, ah, okay.

[36:48]

Not always, but for me that's enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. And institutional practice for me also is the rituals, the form, the field, the need to learn. That being carried forth, I can't do it all by myself. Okay, thank you. Elke? About that half of what Nicole said.

[37:58]

And what I noticed is that you have to be in the same layer or the same level of communications. If you're different, it gets difficult. And it's an effort. And there's some kind of translation has to be going on between these different levels and layers. Okay. It's difficult to live in these different worlds or contexts and this is what we have to learn. Former times it was difficult for me on the one side the spiritual life and the so-called normal life. Now I really enjoy my life in my work and with my friends and I don't have the feeling that I

[39:21]

I don't have to show my spiritual side but when people ask me they can ask me and I can answer and I feel I'm totally relaxed about it and it is so... I enjoy it so much that I can I can lean back and enjoy. Just yesterday I had people ask me about my life, about Purnima and about all the stories. I could totally relax and tell them everything that they wanted to know. And I like the Johanneshof because it gives me an anchor to my spiritual side, although I'm not very often here, but I know I can always come here.

[40:24]

And it is also, I see the... the development that grows in many different ways. In you and here? Yeah. Now you practiced, and you mentioned Puna, you practiced in Puna and with Rajneesh for a while. Is there some different kind of integration between Rajneesh and Zen and ordinary life? But the time with Rav Nish was different and today I see many things different as I did at that time. But I find that this Zen gives me, made everything much more pure and also gave me much more ground.

[41:27]

Now none of this occurred in Deutsch. So the time with Osho or Bhagwan, as I used to feel, was simply important to me. And today I see some things quite differently from then. So I have different values ​​today. At that time there was a lot more beguiling and also everything was a little bit painted off and made pure. And that's also what I find very fascinating at the Seine. This, really, this sharpness and this straightness and yes, nothing around. Especially the one point in this and nothing around it.

[42:30]

I want to come back to individual and institutionalized practice and get a connection to space. I experience that everyone who is sitting here has his individual space. And everybody brings this here. Then this comes up, what I experience as institutional space. Which one? When I'm alone, I have my individual space and also the so-called other room, the common room, so to say, space.

[43:58]

Shared space. Shared. Because of the experience. Because of, yeah. Danke. Im Grunde kommt sowohl auch bei der individuellen Praxis als auch bei der institutionellen Praxis für mich, eigentlich ist es für mich ein Raum. Actually, the individual and the institutionalized practice for me is one space. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. This side of the room is blinded over here, but near silent as well. Felix? Now I practice. Ich parketiere schon relativ lange. I practice quite a while and I'm in different identities of individual and institutionalized practices. Identities. Intensities. Intensities. Some of the times I did more sesshins, some years not at all.

[45:19]

It was important to me, and sometimes it suited my life, and sometimes it was not, to be institutionalized more intensively and to practice more often. Sometimes it was more important and sometimes it was fit better or not better into my life to practice more institutionalized. Yes. From this experience I can say that it is really important for me to have institutionalized practice. And out of this experience, you can say that it's important for me to have this institutionalized practice. By the way, we shouldn't say in English, institutionalized. That means you've been put in a mental hospital. Or something equivalent. Institutional practice. Institutional practice. In German, it is also called institutional practice, not institutionalized. In German, I think it is quite similar to institutional practice.

[46:37]

Okay. Got it. Yes, Ulrike? For me, there is a lot of similarity between science and Buddhist practice, for example. A scientist would never come up with the idea that he could do research alone. There's quite a parallel between science and Buddhism on a practice basis. Scientists, it never occurred to him or to her that you can do research on your own. You always need a team and an institution that gives you the opportunity to be a scientist. It seems to me also, you said that in Deutsch as well, right? It seems to me also that scientists have a similar problem to Zen practitioners or Buddhist practitioners, which is the commonsensical world or commonsense world,

[47:42]

It's not the world of a quantum physicist. And in fact, for many scientists, the world is not what most people think it is. It's the evidential world of science. Once more, please. So for many scientists, the evidential world of science is not the world most people live in. So you have to learn to go along with your friends at the same time as you realize that Actually it doesn't really happen that way. Daniel Dennett, for instance, goes into some detail about the dissonance between the scientific view and the common sense view and how you kind of make sense of that. Daniel Dennett.

[49:06]

Daniel Dennett. Okay. Someone else? Yes. Yes. And ten years is too long to be able to connect again. Until then, it's always the case that the institution here, as in Wilzburg, is like a bath. You dive into it again. You take it home again. And after such a long time, it just takes a little longer. Me, having now had a break of about ten years, not having come here... I've noticed, but I missed you. His brother gave us some wonderful paintings that are over in the other building. which always remind me of you. I know that.

[50:07]

After such a long break, it's difficult for him to... It has been always... Before, it has been taking a bath, immersing himself. And now, after this long break, it takes longer to immerse himself in. Mm-hmm. But you look like you feel pretty comfortable here. Yes. Okay, good. Yes, Gerald? Gerald in Goethegim is also establishing institutional practice. I'm trying to figure out what that is. Yeah, good, please. In Göttingen we practice regularly, daily. I see when other practitioners enter our practice rooms, something just falls off them.

[51:21]

It's as if some other identity appears and something specifically personal stays outside. And when they leave, this change takes place the other way and the societal person appears again. And I personally experience when I practice on my own, individually, there is a personal part which stays outside when I'm either in Crescent or here practicing? In Goettingen. In Goettingen.

[52:31]

In this area or in this practice place or in Goettingen. So, yeah. And this is very much related to practice, but also that's the link to the practice room, the space. People come in and believe something stays out, outside. And something different appears when they enter. Okay. Yes? Strongest for me to notice is when I'm here the sitting in the mornings and evenings which is totally different at home. And as Gerald said, the room is important and who is present in the room, too.

[53:48]

And as Gerald said, the room is important and who is present in the room, too. You just said... One second. It's highly interesting for me, noticing this changed and noticing where I'm standing at the moment, so to say, and relating to Nicole. Yes, I can also see how I can hold a certain attitude, where I cannot hold a certain attitude. I noticed also where a certain posture I can't hold. And recently I had this work week where people also, where we weren't familiar with the structure of Johanneshof, and where everything was quite vivid, but I sort of drowned, nearly, practice-wise.

[55:21]

I saw some pictures of you drowning. Gottmar sent me pictures of you during the work. You didn't look like you were drowning. She answered my emails because Catherine was away. It was nice to get emails from you, though. Emails are terrible. They're like a water wheel that keeps pushing you upstream. And you end up way upstream behind hundreds of emails and you can never... Anyway. Yes, Dorcas? So there is a way for us to... Deutsche first, bitte. I'm not sure... Okay. No, it doesn't work. All right, English, fine.

[56:22]

I think I'll just disappear. To become healthy Zen schizophrenics. A healthy Zen schizophrenic. Yes. Please don't put that, you know, in our brochure. Instrument. We don't have a brochure. Yeah. Okay. That's fine. I should have done this. I would say, in the context of what you've been saying to me, I would say that for most of us as practitioners, again I'm trying to keep this conceptually simple, you discover through sitting a distinction between consciousness and awareness. Entdeckst du beim Sitzen eine Unterscheidung zwischen Bewusstsein und Gewahrsein?

[57:37]

And the distinction between your usual cultural and social experience? Und eine Unterscheidung zwischen einer gewöhnlichen kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Erfahrung? And something maybe a yogic cultural identity? Or an identity closer to your innermost request. And as long as that's a shift into an experienced world through awareness, as long as that's an experienceable, an experienced world within awareness, and as an experienced contrast to, and a world experienced through consciousness.

[58:46]

And consciousness is structured by your culture and by the structures of self. We may feel more supported in awareness when we're at Johanneshof or at Göttingen or something. But when we leave, the ordinary world we live in is defined through your consciousness, the way society establishes consciousness and everybody else establishing consciousness. And there's this shift you feel between the two. And often... Being a person in the usual social and societal sense is compassion.

[60:06]

It's a way to be with others. So let's say that the person with a fairly developed practice who is also a lay person. We could say the second stage or another stage is that your sensorial modes have changed. You actually are perceiving everything through your senses differently.

[61:07]

You're perceiving everything as changing and everything as ephemeral. You're perceiving everything as changing and everything as ephemeral. Not graspable. And you're experiencing everything as mind. When that happens, the shift is different. And then the third stage, we could say, is when the, using the word incubated again, when the incubation of this sensorial state when the incubation of this sensorial-sensorial difference has really taken hold,

[62:11]

You're physiologically different. Your wiring is different. Then we could say you're a realized person. Okay. Well, well. Okay. And all of this happens in the zendo as well as in your life. In the practice room, the unseen space in which you enter your own unseen space, you're supported in this unseen space, which then becomes seen in all of your daily life. So maybe we should take a break.

[63:30]

Not maybe, for sure. And then let's go after the break, or during, no, sort of after the break, go and look at the space in the China Ray with our crafts people. And tomorrow we'll talk more about practice as a craft. That's what it really is. Okay, thanks very much. And thanks again for translating. Noble translators. for the help of my friends here. I said, well, that's what knowable...

[64:24]

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