Well, the seminar begins this evening. So what are we doing here? And I'm trying to figure that out. And each day, this year and last year, I've started seminars, partly started them early on Friday morning for those who could come. Yeah, and I don't know. I haven't found exactly yet what the pre-day or prologue day should be. And I thought that probably not many people would come because usually it's easier to get off from your work and so forth from Friday evening.

[01:02]

So I only expected in the Friday morning adept practitioners who'd given up ordinary jobs. Or the independently wealthy who've never worked. Instead, I find lots of pretty new people are coming. I talk about it every day. I start by talking about what are we doing. Because I guess I want you to share in this experiment, or be aware that you're sharing in this experiment. Even Marie Louise's main job, other than some architectural duties around the place,

[02:16]

Und selbst Marie-Louise, deren Hauptaufgabe, abgesehen von einigen architektonischen Pflichten hier im Haus? Ihre Hauptaufgabe ist, sich um unsere Tochter Sophia zu kümmern. Und ich möchte, dass sie übersetzt, wenn das möglich ist. So Sophia is... spending most of the next three days away for the first time ever. She'll come back at lunch for some mama restoration time. And we'll see how it works. So Sophia really doesn't know what this prologue day is. Why should she be in somebody else's house right now?

[03:37]

Yeah, but the whole way I teach is trying to adapt practice designed for monasteries. To what I would call serious or adept lay practice. Strictly speaking, monastic practice means most of ten years in a monastery. That's different. Even if some of us are ordained as monks, that's different than most of us can do. So I think this is a fundamental experiment. to see how this practice, which goes back 2,500 years, and has primarily gone back institutionally 2,500 years or more, the Buddhist monastic tradition,

[05:14]

tradition is probably the oldest institutional tradition in the world. So now we're trying to widen the idea of what a Sangha is. So the core of a Sangha is not... developed just through the buildings and grounds of a monastery. And the teaching and way of life that's possible in such buildings and grounds. Again, this is pretty obvious, but I bring it up so that we can be more aware, remind ourselves of what we're doing.

[06:45]

Yeah. So I want the prologue day to be different from the main seminar. And as I'm saying, I still don't know quite how to do that. It took me, you know, this is a very simple thing, Friday through Sunday for the seminars. But it actually took me some years before I could really feel, let my body feel how to do it. So now I'm doing this prologue day and as long as people come, I'm committed to doing it.

[08:05]

And finding out how it should be, we'll find out just by doing it repeatedly. Because I don't think I can think it out. If I think it out, I'm not doing it with you. So this is, since there's so many of you who are pretty new to our practice, a few of you in a way, I should, you know, to some extent this has to be an introduction to practice. Or a refresher course. And, you know, practice, there's... Some people have the idea that practice should be just sitting and there's no talking and blah, blah, blah.

[09:11]

I mean, no blah, blah, blah. But practice is wedded to teaching, and teaching is primarily situational and oral. So when you can emphasize the situational, in other words the way of life, the more monastic way of life, then there can be less oral teaching. So at Crestone, for the practice periods, we have actually far less lectures than we have here. Three months of lectures might be equivalent to two or three seminars.

[10:31]

Yeah. So what I'd like this seminar to be, including this pre-day or prologue day, is within ourselves and with each other, as it's possible, it can be a sharing of our experience, practicing. And also the immediacy of our practice right here, and that's now, from last night for now until Sunday afternoon.

[11:48]

For we're engaged in some sort of experiment right now. How are these days, until Sunday, practiced for us? And practice with each other. I mean, monastic practice is kind of a way of life, just doing things together. And doing things with each other in a way that interrupts our usual habits. We're doing things together in a way that is rooted in a different conceptual basis than our usual way of life.

[13:19]

Yeah, there's many differences. But one thing, here our topic for this seminar is daily practice. So maybe we can have this today, a day of definitions. We don't have to go anywhere. Once a seminar starts in the evening, we have to kind of somehow get to Sunday afternoon. But today we can kind of lull about in the practice. Lull? Lull. Lull about. Lull means you don't do anything if it's sunny.

[14:22]

It's like a cat in the sun or something. means to not do anything and enjoy it. It's a hard thing for many of us to do, not do anything and enjoy it. So if we're going to have to, you know, and let me say, I usually don't start the prologue day with Zazen. But I just did a seminar in Kassel. And I asked at the end of the whole seminar, what would you suggest? I mean, any comments, prologue, etc. ? And the most common comment was, let's have at least a little zazen on the prologue day.

[15:32]

So instead of starting with half an hour as we will tomorrow, I started with 20 minutes to be a little different. Don't ask me why I'm doing it. I don't know. I'm trying to feel this out. Why did they want to start with meditation? Well, I mean, many people would say, oh, I feel calmed down. I feel, yeah, calmer.

[16:38]

But from my point of view, it has not much to do with your being calmer. I mean, if you want to be happy, if you're calmer, but no. Okay. What it's really for me is Zazen introduces into you a different mode of mind. And then I... then I speak to this different mode of mind and not your usual mode of mind. I don't want to really speak to your look-around, interested-in-everything mode of mind. I'm, yeah, I want a more settled mode of state of mind. But in a way, if we meditate a lot before we talk, then it's too easy.

[17:58]

I think it's too easy. But then, on the other hand, if we meditate a lot before we speak, then it's just too easy. And I like this difficulty of this mixture of the mode of the mind in which we are. In Sashin it's different. Different or difficult? Different. It might also be difficult. I mean, Sashin is designed to bring us into a different mode of mind. And a shared mode of mind. Where there's more intimacy in the sharing of our mind than I think even you do Sashins imagine. Can you follow that?

[19:07]

No. That there's more intimacy in how the mind is shared during Sashin than even Sashin practitioners imagine. Okay. It's a more... It's more intimate than practitioners imagine. What do you say when you feel intimate with your baby? Cuddling? Kushal? I hear now there's Kushal Rock, isn't there? Something like that. So, I don't, yeah. I mean, we could, it's a, because you could, describe the whole of practice as becoming intimate with yourself and others in the world.

[20:27]

And so she not only brings us into a to a considerable degree of shared mind, it also locks us into a shared metabolism, something like that. Yeah, and that's good. But after sashins, people have often a difficult time wondering how to bring this into their daily life.

[21:38]

In seminars I'm trying to find some territory in between ordinary daily life and Sashin. And the practice week that follows this And the practice week that will follow this seminar is another way I'm trying, we're trying to find something in between monasteries, sesshins, practice week seminars and watching TV. Fancy cooking. What's that?

[22:40]

Watching TV. Is that how you say watching TV in German? Yeah, and monastic practice, like at Crestone, usually gives us a very focused and shaken up and renewed point of view. I think it's harder for older people What do I mean by older? At least my age, no.

[23:42]

Because you already have habits and the deeper your habits are, it's hard to get married when you're older and things like that. But it also seems to be hard to get married when you're younger. You pick the wrong person when you're young. You pick the right person when you're older, but you already prefer to live alone. Or something like that. So if we're going to have definitions, we have to define daily. We have to define practice.

[24:44]

Yeah, that's our topic. Okay, so... And I think we're going to have to also put this in a context of formal practice and informal practice. Life here at Johanneshof is somewhat informal practice. And I'm calling what we do in our daily life informal practice. Und das, was wir in unserem täglichen Leben tun, das nenne ich informelle Praxis. But of course, if you live in a place like this or Creston, it's still daily life. Aber ob ihr jetzt hier lebt oder in einem Ort wie Creston, es ist trotzdem tägliches Leben. But there are differences, so I think we should, we're going to have to try to see what the differences are.

[25:49]

Aber da gibt es Unterschiede und jetzt wollen wir uns einmal anschauen, was diese Unterschiede sind. I think if we see the differences, we can practice both formally and informally with more power. Okay. So, just simply daily, yeah, it means every day. How can we practice every day? And there's a saying in Buddhism, don't suffocate yourself with practice. Don't force yourself to practice every day when it really doesn't work for you. Really make practice fit. I mean, practice... We have to give ourselves over to practice.

[26:55]

But we also have to find a way that practice fits us and fits our particular daily life. Yeah, so on the one hand we We adjust our daily life so we can practice. On the other hand, we find a way that practice fits our daily life. And not all practices fit into daily life. And then practice isn't just like being natural. Natural is actually a funny word.

[28:02]

It doesn't mean much. I mean, in Western culture, it means something. I mean, cities are just our natural way to act like termites or bees. So this... From the point of view of the yoga culture, everything is form. There's no sort of natural where you don't, you know. Is this a natural haircut? As a Gerhard, it's half natural. Actually, for me too, it's half natural. But if I just let it grow, that's also a choice. It's not natural. Or comb it or wash it.

[29:16]

That's all doings. That's all form. So what form do we give our practice? And it makes a difference what form we give it. And it makes a difference whether and how we bring teaching into our practice. And it makes a difference whether we, how well we understand practice. It makes a difference whether we practice with a sangha or with a teacher and so forth. These are all choices. So daily practice is feeling our way through these choices.

[30:17]

But we can't have a daily practice unless we have an intention to practice. Wir können aber keine tägliche Praxis haben, wenn wir keine Absicht zu praktizieren haben. So what's intention? Was ist also diese Absicht? How does our daily practice nurture our intention? If your daily practice doesn't support your intention, you won't practice daily. So we have this simple topic, daily practice. But if we look into the web and weave of our daily practice, It's very intimately, it's very connected to the simple details or the complex details of our daily life.

[32:03]

As I'm trying to feel out how to practice with you in seminars and on this prologue day, And so wie ich heraus spüren möchte, wie ich mit euch in einem Seminar oder an einem Vortag praktizieren kann, so wird jeder, der auf einer regelmäßigen Grundlage oder regelmäßig praktizieren möchte, the texture of their daily life. And then, of course, I think with daily practice we have to include weekly practice.

[33:06]

What practice should we do once or twice a week? But I think it's about time to take a break. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll take a break. Can you stop in the middle of the day like this at your office and say, okay, it's time for a break, let's all sit?

[36:15]

You know, not any office I know. But you can at 10.30 or 11 o'clock in the day. Bring your attention to your breathing in this way. Bring the feeling of sasen into your backbone, etc. Bring the feeling of sasen into your backbone, etc. So this experiment of daily practice continues during our break too.

[37:29]

Thank you for translating. I do it many times with my hair don't, not giving me much protection. I said to somebody once, how do you like this hair do? They said, what do you mean, a hair don't? To translate it, well, then forget about it. So of course, weekly practice can be lots of things.

[39:32]

For many people, it's quite useful, helpful to sit with a group once a week. And for some people, they like to have a discussion once a week, sometimes the same time as the sitting. A discussion of the practice and teaching. And some people like to have a quiet day. They take one day where they don't speak and don't watch TV and so forth. You can also just spend some quiet time with friends or your family as part of your weekly practice. These different things, it has to see what works for you and what neighborhood you live in and so on.

[40:39]

Okay, so we've talked a little bit about daily and weekly. Yeah. And what are the main practices you can bring into daily life, weekly practice? weekly practice, formal practice, informal practice. Well, the main two practices are zazen and mindfulness. If you're doing formal practice, you can do more zazen, and lay practice, probably your emphasis is primarily mindfulness. In fact, I would recommend most lay practitioners not do too much zazen outside of a formal situation.

[42:03]

I think one or two or maybe three periods a day is enough for a lay practitioner. Because I think zazen should be something that works with your daily life, isn't a kind of substitute to a larger proportion of your daily life. Okay, so zazen and mindfulness. Okay, and what is the medium of zazen and mindfulness? Yeah, the medium, that's good enough.

[43:29]

Well, I think primarily and traditionally it's the breath. Yeah, and awareness of the breath. Und das Gewahrsein des Atems. Or let's say attention to the breath. Oder wir können es auch die Aufmerksamkeit auf den Atem nennen. Yeah, and attention to what though? Not as well as the breath. Aufmerksamkeit auf was? Also auf was zusätzlich oder gleichzeitig zu dem Atem? And attention, I would say, to breath, body and mind. Aufmerksamkeit würde ich sagen auf Atem, Körper und Geist. And for lay people, I would also say something, I don't have a word for it, being space.

[44:34]

The horizon of our awareness and activity. I mean, you know, the horizon or being space is what monastic practice primarily defines. And we're in the process of trying to, it looks like we're going to do it by part of the farmhouse next door, which has been divided into what can be two fairly large apartments.

[45:40]

Yeah, and there's many. They're good neighbors and I'm happy that they're there. But if they ever sell, it allows us to widen the horizon space of our practice. Yeah, the most extreme version of that is you draw a circle around yourself and you stay in it for three years, three months, three days, three hours, three minutes, three seconds. Through phoenix. No, no, there's no phoenix anymore, are there? So monastic practice is also that you create a horizon and you don't leave it for some length of time.

[46:45]

Traditionally it takes three months. So to live together for three months, a group of people of 20 or 30 people, you need a little bigger space than this property. So if you understand that the monastic practice is a being space in a particular horizon, And you don't leave that horizon.

[47:55]

Mm-hmm. then I think you can understand better or have a feeling for developing some kind of horizon in your own daily practice. Maybe you only do it for two or three months of the year, narrow your horizon. You know, when I first started to practice there was no Buddhist monastery in the United States.

[48:57]

Als ich zu praktizieren begonnen habe, gab es, wie ihr wisst, keine buddhistischen Klöster in den USA. So as I've mentioned, I tried to pretend San Francisco was a monastery. Und ich glaube, das wisst ihr, dass ich das schon gesagt habe, dass ich einfach so versucht habe zu tun, als sei San Francisco ein Kloster. So what's the, I mean, yeah, how do you turn a city into a monastery? Well, I tried to create very specific routines for what I did in the city. So that I could keep my mind and body concentrated. And I had certain walks I did, which would be like it was on monastic grounds. So I would take specific kind of walks as if I was...

[50:16]

usually along the same route as if I was in a monastery. I'm not suggesting you do any of these things. Some of them maybe, but not all. I did them because I wanted to do them and because they worked for me. At other times it works for me to do something quite opposite. As I also, for example, just by contrast, like to get lost. And if I have to drive somewhere, I often drive as much as possible so I get lost. I take wrong turns and things like that.

[51:41]

Marie-Louise doesn't always appreciate it. Usually I do it when I'm by myself. But that's how I found Tassajara, the monastery in California. I just said, where does this road go? And I just kept driving on it. And I ended up in a canyon where there was no road out of the canyon except to turn around. And I thought, hey, this is a good place to found a monastery. And then a year or two we did. And then I thought, hey, this is a good place to found a monastery. And then a year or two we did. So I practiced living in a monastery, not getting lost, and when I got lost, I found a monastery.

[52:47]

So you see why I can't recommend anything. I don't know. Now, I think for the lay practitioner, they primarily will bring attention to their body, breath, and being space. And the And the adept practitioner or monastic practitioner will more bring awareness rather than attention to their activity.

[54:02]

Okay, now what's the difference? So I have to define now awareness. Awareness is knowing or cognition with no trace or little trace of conceptual mediation. conceptual mediation is like negotiation? Yeah, in between, intermediary.

[55:04]

Von einem konzeptuellen dazwischen sein. Now, as soon as I say that, we're talking... Not a bit of conceptual mediation there. So good conceptual mediation is something between concepts, or it's some concept of something between them? Well, I'll try to explain. Okay, sorry, I couldn't translate it. No, no. Vermittlung. Mm-hmm. Okay. So if we take awareness in this more technical yogic sense, then this can, for the most part, only be developed through zazen. And then supported sufficiently, sustained sufficiently by a particular kind of daily life.

[56:18]

We could define being concentrated as the ability to sustain awareness. Okay. And you can discover awareness in your zazen practice. But to sustain or maintain it in your daily life probably takes some monastic practice to be able to do. However, to maintain this in daily life probably requires a monastic practice.

[57:21]

So how could I describe in some easy way awareness in the way I'm defining it? Yeah, so let's imagine a blind person. And you give them an object which they don't have any idea about. So they just feel it. And it's not a book, so they don't conclude, oh, I know what that is, it's a book. But if they just relate to their Whatever they experience of this object, we could say there's no trace then of conceptual mediation.

[58:51]

You know, the story of the Asian story of the elephant. You know, one guy thinks it's a tree, another guy thinks it's something else, right? Because they can only feel the legs. The way I'm speaking is you wouldn't think it's anything. You wouldn't think it's a leg or a tree or whatever the story is. and you certainly wouldn't imagine it's an elephant unless the elephant got annoyed and sat down on you okay so if you can imagine say looking at a tree And be able to hold back thinking.

[60:22]

Yeah, and just know whatever you felt or experienced of this thing that's usually called a tree. That would be to have no conceptual mediation. So, okay. So now in our practice we can perhaps notice the difference between bringing attention to something and bringing awareness to something.

[61:28]

Attention is very important. But the way it focuses is useful. It's an important part of practice. So you bring attention to your breath or to your activity. And you just rest in that attention. Sometimes you bring awareness to your body and breath and so forth. And then there's no attention or focus or concentration in the usual sense. It's just a kind of acceptance.

[62:29]

It's just a kind of acceptance. And whatever appears is your life. And there's no idea it should be different than it is. And strangely enough, when you feel there's no need or idea of it being different than it is, It's also the very point where, the most transformational point, Okay, so we have mindfulness and we have zazen.

[63:38]

And zazen helps us to transform or to discover awareness in the midst of attention. And to have a clear enough experience of physical knowing of awareness, and that you can practice both attentiveness and awareness during the day. that one can practice both, to be attentive and to be careful.

[65:02]

In this way, zazen and mindfulness practice in anybody's life work together. Okay, now, what is practice? I mean, most of us nowadays have a familiarity with it. But when I started to... Nobody understood what practice was. It sounded weird. It was like somehow you're going to practice the piano all day. You sat down at the keyboard of Zen. But practice means not something like in its roots, to enable.

[66:09]

So it's not so much to practice the piano, but to enable the music of yourself. Okay, so practice is to... Yeah, simply we can say practice is the Buddhist response to change. Oh dear, now we have to define change. There's no end here. We peer into this web, the weaving of our daily life. So practice is the Buddhist response to change.

[67:13]

The recognition of change. The awareness of change and the acceptance of change. So now when you understand that, you're actually bringing teaching into your daily life. So if you find a way to bring both awareness and acceptance into your activity... Now you're adding a teaching to mindfulness and zazen. Now, this can be done anywhere, of course.

[68:30]

It's not natural, but it can be done anywhere. But some situations support our doing it more than others. So we want to find the most supportive and transformative situation in which to practice mindfulness and zazen. To practice mindfulness and zazen. But at the same time, if you really practice acceptance, You have to make your immediate situation the transformative place. So practice is always in this kind of dynamic of acceptance and transformation. Of change and what doesn't change.

[69:48]

Karma is change and the effects of change. And Dharma is what holds, what doesn't change. So now we're, yeah, moving in our mindfulness and sasen practice into being informed by the teachings, not as sort of ideas, oh, I've heard about karma, into our into the presence and experience of karma, dharma, change and so forth into the actual as our actual experience

[70:55]

So mindfulness then is just a word for attentiveness and awareness? And attentiveness and awareness to what? To what appears. Okay, so now we can also define change as impermanence and momentariness. You can define it as impermanence and momentariness. And this is another distinction like attentiveness and awareness which is a

[72:16]

which are expressions of the degree of maturity of your practice. So impermanence is a recognition. Unvergänglichkeit ist eine Erkenntnis. You recognize that things are impermanent. Man erkennt, dass Dinge vergänglich sind. And the recognition that things are impermanent is, you know, the recognition of change. Und die Erkenntnis, dass Dinge vergänglich sind, das ist auch die Erkenntnis der Veränderung. So you can say everything changes, but then it becomes more personal. and deeply rooted when you say they're not just changing, they're actually impermanent. They're not just changing location or you're not just walking around in circles.

[73:39]

While they're changing places and you're walking around in circles, everything is changing into something actually unique. into something unique. How do we... I mean, the meaning of impermanence as practice, means to see everything, to know everything in its particularity and uniqueness. Well, to do that, you really have to change your habits of mind. How do we change our habits of mind?

[74:47]

Well, again, it's teaching that makes us notice we need to change our habits of mind. And it's teaching which gives us hints about how to change our habits of mind. And the teaching is always, I think you can always look at the teaching as hints more than instructions. Particularly in Zen. Even if the hints are presented as instructions or look like instructions, 90% of what you're doing is noticing, following, participating in your own experience.

[76:09]

And the instructions keep giving you something to let your experience flow past or flow through. And you don't so much follow the instructions as you Discover how the instructions affect your experience. Okay. So everything's changing. It's impermanent.

[77:20]

And although impermanence is a kind of philosophical idea, you can practice with it just by reminding yourself that things are impermanent. And develop the habit of noticing things the impermanence more than noticing the continuity. I know I discovered, I mean, well, and one way to practice that is direct perception. And that's something else we could discuss. But I remember practicing direct perception.

[78:23]

It was important when I noticed, because I used to practice direct perception with Flowers that would be on the table in a vase or my house or a restaurant or something. And I would try to just notice them. Then I would notice that I expected them to remain the same. After all, when they're painted, they're called still lives. It's very interesting actually that so many European painters of the last century so much of the time

[79:25]

painted bowls of fruit and flower vases and things. What a shift from religious objects. Yeah, and maybe the still lifes are religious objects. Maybe we're looking at the stillness of the mind that the painter needed. And then if we look at the source of much contemporary French art, Cezanne, He painted still lives. But he painted them with the feeling of them visually changing. We can take hope from him, too, because he couldn't paint very well.

[80:42]

I mean, he couldn't draw very well at least. So we may not be able to practice very well, but if we have some other qualities of intention primarily, it may be okay. So, you know, I looked at the vases sort of as not the stillness of life, but still lives, a still life. And I tried to take away my... view that they remain the same moment after moment.

[82:00]

And I began to find that often the flowers in the vase moved. Hey, you got cut off. What are you doing? You know, you're just sitting in this. But they'd move slightly sometimes. So a tiny experience like that in the plowed field of practice can actually break through the sense that anything is permanent. Okay. So, Impermanence is a practice idea that you bring into your mind, into your presence, and let yourself recognize, start to recognize impermanence.

[83:21]

Now momentariness is not so much a philosophical idea. It's an experience. But do we have the Attention will not reveal momentariness to you. Attention is usually informed by ideas of permanence. Attention itself is to keep bringing attention. The nature of it is a kind of continuity.

[84:42]

But awareness and acceptance is more open. and developed fully allowed awareness, fully allowed, permitted. No, can you say the whole sentence? Awareness developed, Or fully allowed. Is open enough to notice momentariness. To notice uniqueness. Now, just in these small distinctions between attention and awareness and impermanence and momentariness,

[86:07]

We are deep in transforming our world. Deep into the practice of Buddhism and of our own life. For when you really, as your normal, natural, normal, usual habit, Find every moment unique. You're in a different world. A world which that simply knowing the world in that way is itself an agent of transformation. Okay, so I think that's enough to stir up the idea of practice a bit. This afternoon I'd like to think a little bit about what our practice is

[87:24]

And this afternoon I want to think a little bit about what our practice is. What the nub of our practice is. And we can probably find a few other things to continue in this vein, in these definitions. Just looking under the surface of this word change, Okay, let's sit for a few moments. And then I think we have lunch in a while.

[88:27]

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