When Christian picked me up, I thanked him for picking me up. Then he said, thank you for coming. It sounded as if I had a choice. To be here in the new house and in the new program, it seems as if Suzuki Roshi's dharma has roots in Germany, with a place, a house, and it all feels very new and very peculiar. And sometimes I wonder what Buddhism will look like in Germany in one or two generations, when we look at the future.

[01:26]

It's hard to say, because it's different in all countries, but it looks like at least in Germany, Buddhism is no longer a sect. Even my mother knows who the Dalai Lama is. And there are broadcasts on the radio and on television, actually relatively regularly, that bring pictures and language about Buddhism or from Buddhism. And it was a long way from Japan that Suzuki Roshi brought Buddhism to America and then Becker Roshi to Germany.

[02:32]

And yet very quickly. Sesshin is called to gather heart and spirit. And in order to be able to do that, we have structured this week in the course of the day very, very simply. We have really reduced life to the most necessary. Wie Gisela gestern Abend schon sagte, es reduziert sich wirklich auf gehen, stehen, sitzen und liegen. Und darüber hinaus auf gemeinsames Essen und gemeinsames Sitzen

[03:45]

And the whole thing in silence. And no obligations outside. We are simply connected here for a week, more or less. Nevertheless, some of you and I will always ask the question or ask in the direction of what we are actually doing here and what the whole thing is supposed to be. And I think that this question can and may arise in the Sesshin, but it is actually a question that we would have to ask ourselves every day.

[04:50]

Although I have to say that I don't think the question as such is properly asked. Instead of saying, what is this actually supposed to be, I think we should ask more in that direction. What is it? What is it? I think if... Wenn das Leben ein Geheimnis zu offenbaren hat, dann werden wir dieses Geheimnis nicht mit der Frage, was soll das denn hier herausbekommen, sondern ich denke mehr mit der Frage, was ist das? Was ist das Geheimnis? What other things do we do here besides standing and walking, sitting and lying down and eating?

[06:19]

And I simply bring these questions back into consciousness, simply to make them present and also to demonstrate the simplicity of what we are doing here. and we have an appointment. We have an appointment with ourselves that whatever happens, we stay seated. No matter what impulses come and what thoughts come, we look at the whole thing and stay seated. And we observe our thoughts, we observe our breath, we work, maybe in a choir, and we stay seated. And that also means that we follow the schedule completely.

[07:26]

give ourselves a week, this completely pre-structured week, and see what happens. And what it ultimately leads to is that we first study ourselves, and then hopefully at some point And just being able to sit without a goal and without doing anything, just sitting. A few days ago I had the opportunity to watch a film called Awakening.

[08:57]

I watched the film several times and it still moves me. It's a film about psychiatry, where people are completely exhausted. And apparently not only externally, but also internally exhausted. And a new doctor comes to the station and he starts a new project, completely new, he comes from the scientific direction and has actually never worked with patients. And he then manages, with the help of drugs, to bring the people or many of the people on the station back to this world, at least temporarily, so that they can move again.

[10:11]

and Robert De Niro plays one patient and Robin Williams plays the doctor. There is one scene that is very close to me again and again. Robert De Niro wakes up from this catatony and this starvation and he just looks around. He looks out of the window And he looks at the fan in the upper corner of the room. He looks at the sheet of paper on which he tries to write. Loads of simple things. And in the course of his at least temporary healing, it comes to a point where he becomes very angry and says, it is not we who are missing something, it is the others, the doctors, the institutions who are missing something.

[11:36]

And he makes it very clear that he is in the middle of life, that he really gets an insight into what he is actually doing in life. And the fan in the corner of the room and Encounters with the doctor, a dance with a young woman who visits her father regularly in the clinic. And later the drugs no longer work and he sinks back into this starvation. Suzuki Roshi expressed it in such a way that he said, what is our deepest desire?

[12:59]

What is our deepest desire? And when it is not here and now in the moment, when is it then to be realized? Coming from psychology and from psychotherapy, I have been interested in the question for a very long time, what actually hinders us not to live or to see in life? There was a conference here in November in Thothmos, Spiritual Emergencies, a story that was called into life by Stan Grof and Christina Grof at the beginning of the 80s, end of the 70s.

[14:37]

I don't want to go into details now, but the concept is that many crises that we have in life, up to the attempt to commit suicide, are ultimately spiritual crises. And one of the speakers was Christina Grof, And she spoke about addiction. And she described what it means to be addicted as a person, namely to have something, a drug or alcohol, that you can't get rid of anymore. And she then turned the curve bigger and said, Actually, the attitude of dependence can often be applied to the society as a whole and transmitted.

[16:00]

We make ourselves dependent on things outside. One car is good, two cars are better, more, bigger. And then it goes to the point a hundred bombs are good, a thousand bombs are better. And that ultimately leads to the fact that the earth is brought to the edge, both ecologically and economically. And for me, the question was again, What is our structure? And this is not a new problem. What is our structure? That we become addicted to things outside.

[17:02]

And it is so pleasant that for at least seven days we simply wipe away these external things. And on the pillow, although we have the impulses, we simply do not react to them. And I would also describe this addiction behavior as greed. Greed for more, for better, for greater. And the hatred that the others have more and I have less. based on the permanent comparison of myself with others, and simply also the reflection of what my actions really have in consequence, cause and effect.

[18:07]

And if we just look at these three things, then the question arises, why can't we actually see that in life, that the question is not so easy to answer. A small digression, Sogyal Rinpoche was also at the conference and he gave a very touching lecture. He is someone who travels a lot and actually travels from one conference to the next and made that the topic and then publicly asked himself the question, why do I actually travel? I always say the same thing. And then he told me that he was in France with his teacher and they went to the stage and the teacher stood still, looked at the 1,000 or 2,000 people and said to Sogyal, who of them is actually practicing here?

[19:35]

And that... has moved Zogeal and me very much when I heard it. It's really about practicing. And if we don't see ourselves here as a separate center, but in the line of Beka Roshi and Suzuki Roshi and Dung Shan, then it's really about practice. And I don't think it's about bringing Buddhism to Germany or the West, but it's more about

[20:36]

life form that we practice daily. And this life form is very concentrated and very condensed. Some of you have certainly had the opportunity to read the new program here from the house, and in the first part we briefly introduce ourselves, and then it says that the spiritual guide has Beka Roshi in the line of study of Suzuki Roshi and Dungsha.

[21:47]

And Dung Shan was always a character that fascinated me on the one hand, but on the other hand I often didn't really understand him. He is the one who who had already entered the monastery very early on, and one day recited the Heart Sutra, which then says, no eyes, no nose, no ears, no mouth, and who goes to his teacher and says, I don't understand that, there are no eyes, no nose, no ears, no mouth, but I have eyes, nose, and so on, and the teacher is completely flat and does not know an answer to that, sends him on and he sees several teachers until he lands in Hungary. And to this he then asks another well-known, famous question.

[23:09]

Who can be the Dharma to listen to senseless beings. Who is capable of that? And then Ungarn says, the senseless beings. Then Dungsan says, can you hear that there? Then Dungsan says, If I could hear it, then I couldn't hear my own speech. And then the next question, and why can't you hear it?

[24:13]

And then Dungsan takes his waddle and waddles back and forth and asks, Dungsan, can you hear it? Dungsan says, no. On top of that, Ungarn says, if you can't even hear my teaching, how will you be able to hear the Dharma of the non-feeling being? And later, Ungarn says, the beches, the trees, the stones, the birds, teaching the Dharma. And Dungsan has some knowledge and later writes a poem that ends with the two lines, If you hear with your ears, you will not hear.

[25:18]

When you hear it with your eyes, you are already very close. What is this? Was verpassen wir? Wie weit ist das, was wir verpassen eigentlich von uns entfernt? Was ist es?

[26:22]

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