Yeah, so first question, shall we start with meditation at the beginning of the morning and beginning of the afternoon? It's okay? Any strong objections? No. Shall we start with, you know, one hour? Ten minutes? Half an hour? Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes is okay? All right, okay. So that's one decision made. And what kind of... I mean, if you have any idea what kind of format or... How do you want to do this? I mean, I would really like to start with you just asking some questions or making statements or starting a discussion. Kind of like lay out the territory that we're interested in.

[01:03]

Okay, so then start. Yes. I think the differences you made between meditation and psychotherapy are not, from my point of view, not the real differences. Okay. Because the people we work with have completely changed their desire and their wishes have changed in the last 10, 20 years completely. And also the psychotherapy itself is object to changes.

[02:17]

And the tendency is not to ask for reasons. There is a big movement of resource-oriented psychotherapy, primary psychotherapy, which is no longer researching the causes. So it's no longer looking for causes like primal therapy and source-oriented therapy. Okay. So there are different views of human beings. You are saying there is no psyche and no unconscious? This is different in the psychology and that's something I would like to talk about. And what is self in psychotherapy and self in Buddhism? And what is self in psychotherapy and self in Buddhism?

[03:33]

What about the intentions? The intentions in psychotherapy are completely different than in Buddhism. Okay. Thanks. I actually prefer you to, if you will, speak in German first and then English second, if you want to do your own translation, or he does the translation. But it seems better to me that some people know English so well they just start in English and then they have to translate. I'd prefer you to start in German, but it's up to you. Okay. I said it more complicated than that, but that's fine. Yeah, so, yeah. I always find it difficult to talk about differences on a very theoretical level. And for me the access is more in what I am doing.

[05:01]

And also in our preparation group there came up a kind of difference. So the group was more like from the point of view that Zen And Buddhism is something much bigger and wider and older than psychotherapy And some of them have been psychotherapists in the first place and then got to know Zen and for me it is not the difference between therapy and seeing practice, but what interests me is this space where I can understand my psychotherapeutic work as part of my seeing practice.

[06:15]

So it's not so much about the differences between Zen and psychotherapy, but more that I realize my psychotherapeutic work as part of my practice, my Zen practice, my Buddhist practice. And I'm interested in looking at what comes out of it, without it being a combination, it's something else, but let's look at it. And I'm interested in looking at this without mixing it too much together. And I'm still searching. Do you mean that your study of psychotherapy, your observation and thinking about psychotherapy, Meinst du, dass die Arbeit oder deine Sichtweise der Psychotherapie sehr stark bezogen ist auf die Zen-Praxis oder ist es mehr deine psychotherapeutische Arbeit mit Klienten die auf die Zen-Praxis bezogen ist?

[07:32]

That's an interesting question. Sorry. I feel my Zen practice as a bigger space and the psychotherapeutic practice is like a space in this bigger one. In my own practice I find it useful is if I'm symptom-oriented or solution-oriented and if I'm sort of rooted in the Medici.

[08:51]

And that includes a lot of the body, the attitude, both from the client, but also mine, which arises through it. It is also about relationship, there is a lot about relationship. And somehow almost then this shaping, Zen allows us or the practice allows us to form our life. And, okay, so you said that the Buddhist practice allows us to shape our lives and also maybe the lives of others.

[09:53]

And it's rooted also a lot in the body presence, in the... views and also in the posture. But I also find it interesting and also very helpful sometimes to look at the past and let sort of It is very interesting to take the past with us and also to see what beliefs, what worldview has flowed into it, how it has embodied itself, in order to find a possibility of fluidity that can dissolve it again. but it's also important sort of to get to know some of the past influences which led to the views and to the posture and to the body structure which is present so that it can sort of get some fluidity.

[11:26]

For me, For me it feels that the psychotherapeutic work for me is also a practice and also a practice of compassion. Okay. Yes? My experience is that what I study at the university is clearly different from my practice. What are you studying at the university? Psychology. Mathematics. Mathematics.

[12:27]

Well, that's clearly... Well, no, maybe English. And so far as I have the feeling that the concepts with which I am familiar at the university, they feel to me as if they are studying the horizontal aspect of the world. And And it's because I have a feeling that the concepts I get familiar with at the university are more located in what I would call a horizontal aspect of the world. that my studies are completely independent of my practice. I can practice without studying psychology, of course. But my practice greatly influences my understanding of studies.

[13:33]

And I have a feeling that I can clearly practice without studying psychology. It doesn't influence practice so much. But practicing influences my understanding of psychology a lot. And that's because I have a feeling that practice is also studying what I would call a vertical aspect of the world and kind of a bigger context maybe. What I'm interested in talking about in this seminar is the difference between and also more the relationship between change and transformation. Yes. when talking about psychotherapy in general.

[14:57]

I feel a little strange when in general we talk about psychotherapy. In modern psychoanalysis there has been a discussion about the so-called common ground for about 20 years. Since 20 years in the modern psychoanalysis, there is a discussion about the common ground. The common ground among various schools of psychology? Yes. This question about the common ground refers to the fact that within psychoanalysis there are different... So there were developed many paths within the psychoanalysis. That's related to that, the core ground. So, for example, if you discuss a patient with other colleagues.

[16:13]

It is very, very difficult to really come to a common understanding. You can even find that at the same institute or among colleagues who actually represent the same direction. Do you even find that within the same institute or within colleagues which are in the same tradition? It becomes much more extreme, of course, And it becomes more difficult and extreme if you go to international conferences and try to talk about certain cases. within psychoanalysis, as a small direction of psychotherapy, how it works for us as psychotherapists.

[17:25]

I think there are now 500 or 600 or 700 So I'm asking myself this question, how do we come to a common ground when it's already so difficult within psychoanalysis? So we're having like four or five or six hundred different traditions in psychotherapy. How can we come to a common ground? Who is Buddhism? In addition, maybe Buddhism would be the common ground. One of the possibilities. Let me just put in a little personal historical note here. By some good fortune, one of my very closest friends is Michael Murphy. And he's the most natural, I would say, excuse me for... sending anyone here, the most naturally gifted meditator I've ever met.

[18:39]

From the time he was in his early 20s until he was about 32 or 33, he just simply meditated eight hours a day. Just sat down and loved it. Then he decided to do something in the world. It used to be a bellhop at the Fairmont Hotel. Er war Fahrstuhlführer in einem Belmont Hotel. But anyway, his family had a summer home on the Big Sur coast. Also seine Familie hat ein Sommerhaus an der Big Sur Küste gehabt.

[19:43]

And he turned it into Esalen Institute. Und er hat es in das Esalen Institut verwandelt. And I remember Fritz Perls was, I used to see him now and then there. And Fritz said to me, I'm the Zen master at Essel. Okay, Fritz. And Sukhiyoshi asked me in the 60s that he would like to know more about psychology. And Suzuki Roshi asked me in the 60s, or told me that he wanted to know more about psychology. And he had actually studied quite a lot of Western philosophy, Kant and Hegel and the New England Transcendentalists. But he didn't know much about psychology.

[20:51]

So I tried to tell him what I could, what I knew. And I asked Michael if we could organize a conference in Esalen, really for the purpose of teaching some psychology to the security. So we invited the current then president, I think, of the American Psychoanalytic Association to join Suzuki Roshi in doing a seminar. And... Actually, this guy wasn't very fluent with ideas. So the discussion was not very exciting for the participants, but maybe something was learned.

[21:57]

Anyway, the point I'm making is I think both what you did said and what you said. Since the sixties there's been a tremendous flowering of psychotherapy. And also at the same time a simultaneous flowering of all kinds of Buddhist groups and meditation groups and Sufi groups and so forth. And they all are part of the same historical moment and share a lot of views. And you can tell me more, but my impression is that psychotherapeutic practices and the various schools have seems to me have diverged quite a bit from the study of psychology itself.

[23:23]

My impression is that many ways to do psychotherapy. So it was dependent on the study of psychology that so many psychotherapists... No, the opposite. So it was independent. These things developed independently of psychology. that these many schools of psychotherapy seem to develop through the practice itself of psychotherapy, the craft of psychotherapy, rather independent of its psychological roots. So my impression is that sometimes the craft of psychotherapy is much more subtle than the psychology which was once its source.

[24:34]

And then it seems to me psychology has gone into other fruitful areas of research and in particular recently into neurobiological research. I have a question that concerns me the most. So I have one question and that's the question about the I. The I, the pronoun. And so many people come with the I which should be more harmonic.

[25:45]

Harmonious. Harmonious, yes. And that's how we get to search within psychotherapy for that. In other words, in therapy you're looking for a way to make the person feel more comfortable with his sense of identity or something like that. and to feel better with a kind of identity and with a kind of identity so that they feel better. And I experience Zen Buddhism in a very different way, because the question of the non-I is very central. Then realizing that the question in meditation and Buddhism is more towards a non-Buddhism.

[27:05]

That's how I realized. I can't even ask a question. I really don't get it. Well, I'd say the main difference is I understand it. And it's probably now in current psychotherapy much more similar to Buddhism, perhaps. But, I mean, I think to some extent we're going to have to talk in rather simple black and white emphases to kind of... And then maybe make it more... more subtle. So on the one end of the spectrum you have seeing the self as an entity. And the other is to see the self as function, a way of functioning.

[28:12]

And Buddhism, I would say, on the whole, sees the self as a function, and there are four primary ways, territories of its functioning. And the self is a construct that swims in the in the water of consciousness. Now, if that's what the self is, that leaves a lot of territory where we find meaning, etc., out of what Buddhism means by the self. And one other thing I'll say at this point is the self in Buddhism is not the observer. The observer is a much wider functioning of mind than the self. So you have to distinguish between observing mind and observing self.

[29:16]

Okay, someone else? Yes? One of my themes is... It touches me very much if I get in contact with suffering in psychotherapy but also with friends and other people. Yes, now quite concretely it is also about a deathly ill girlfriend, which I booked yesterday and where I also said to myself, how can one turn sorrow into joy and into an inner strength?

[30:25]

But you also have to live that yourself. So you also have to love yourself. And especially there's a case that I just visited a friend who is on the verge to die and she's suffering a lot and I did ask myself, how can I change it into happiness, but that means that I also have to be able to limit. May I ask the question again, as a therapist, again and again, what is the limit between experiencing with the other, swinging with the other, and at the same time letting go, but carrying the other, carrying the other and still being able to let go, this thread, this inner strength, which I think is also necessary, You're going to have our translator lost.

[31:29]

I gave this example of this friend who is terminally ill, very touched, and so for me the question as a therapist, but I think also as a human being, is whenever I meet suffering, another person you know how do I find the right balance between swinging with the other person between empathy and at the same time being able to let go and be in contact with you know the source of life with joy not being totally swamped you know by something but being able to It's like a beacon of light and how can I, you know, how can I get that back? This, you know, this border between me and the other, between suffering and joy, how can I keep the balance? Where are, where is the source? I've changed a little bit in English, but that's actually the topic. A change a little bit in English, but that's... Yeah, okay, I understand.

[32:48]

Yeah, thanks. I could say something about the dynamic and craft of the practice of compassion, which is closely related to what you said, but I think now I have to listen to it. I could say something about the dynamic and the craft of compassion. That's the topic you mentioned, but first I would like to gather more questions. Yes. I see it in the same way as Ralf, namely that there are probably many different psychotherapists sitting here, which is the question of the common language, and I assume because we practice together that this is the most common.

[33:55]

And for this reason I would be interested in which commonalities or differences the preparatory group I see it quite similar like Rob mentioned that here are sitting plenty of psychotherapists from different schools And maybe the most common thing we have is that we practice together in one school, more or less. You mean practice together in, by practice you mean Buddhist practice or psychotherapeutic practice? No, no, Buddhist practice.

[35:00]

So the question is how to understand each other, how to speak the same language. and so that's why I wonder what the preparation group has prepared, what were the questions, the similarities, the differences because out of that this seminar came in existence and maybe that's where we can go further. For me the The main thing is that we practice together and this experience is a special angle. Not everyone here practices together, but quite a few. So Norbert or Angela, do you want to say something about any of the... So Norbert and Angela, would you like to say something about the main questions and concerns of the preparation group?

[36:07]

This is the first topic here. The difference between doing therapy as a Zen practice, which means the direct relationship to my clients, Or was it then practiced as a part of therapy? It means I meditate with, for example, clients. In my interest I want to figure out how to To practice with your clients or to bring practice to your clients? Can I do therapy so that it is practice for me? Like sitting, like cooking, like martial arts. Okay. Like cooking and eating and... Asian martial arts.

[37:26]

I can only add that a lot has already been said about what we discussed in the small group and that we were a very large spectrum in the small group, that we have brought together very different views. So a lot of what we had talked about in the small group, we mentioned already here, and there was a wide spectrum of different views within the small group. One aspect was that some of the people in the little group had done psychotherapy for a long time, and that was their access, and others had come more from the meditation area.

[38:34]

No, you don't mean done psychotherapy, you mean practiced psychotherapy. Practiced psychotherapy. So that influences the clients if they know, for example, if the psychotherapist is a practicing Buddhist, they come with different questions. Okay. And for myself, I can say again that I find it interesting that I used to practice very separately and that therapy had a lot to do with emotions and feelings for me. It's interesting that in the beginning I separated these two very much and psychotherapy is very much related to feelings and emotions.

[39:38]

or also work on the body and consciousness on the other side, or what you mean in the Buddhist sense. It has changed in the last ten years that I put more emphasis on the body and on the consciousness. Exactly. Mind and consciousness is more important. And that the feelings actually happen more like the changing weather in between. And the feelings is more like the weather that's constantly changing. And the question that concerns me more and more is how to solve fixed opinions. Although I have already understood a lot about it in the Buddhist sense, I still find the implementation very difficult. And one of the main questions I have that I have certain views which I'd like to change, but to really change it within my practice seems to be really difficult.

[40:53]

Your own views. My own views and from the clients. Even if I have the... impression that I understand how it works, but how to manage it in the context. We can discuss about this. What's the craft of view-challenge? [...] What's the I was part of a group that had no idea about Buddhism. I had a training in client-oriented psychotherapy. Now, is there such thing as therapist-oriented psychotherapy? Maybe Rochester. Focusing gently. And then I was part of a client-centric body psychotherapy.

[42:08]

And then I was part of the development of a client-oriented body psychotherapy. And the main basis within these years was to practice... What's that? To suspend... Yeah, to suspend... Concepts. Concepts. And to practice mindfulness. Maybe focusing, yeah. And... Then I got to know Buddhism and I had a lot of trust because there are so many similarities. And Buddhism went several steps ahead, especially with the concept of with the emphasis on impermanence.

[43:35]

So in that way I didn't have to change so much my psychotherapeutic work but I myself changed within my Buddhist practice. Do you think it made you a different kind of psychotherapist? I don't know. I'm just there and something was added. Okay, yes. Angela had said that the feeling is like the weather. Is this how Buddhism looks at it? at feelings because we in the West look at it differently when we look for example at neurosis.

[45:14]

How do you look at it when you look at neurosis? So you have conflicts which have been resolved and they are within the psychotherapeutic work, they are being resolved. I see. Emotional conflicts or... Emotional conflict. View. Not only. Oh, not only. Okay. I think we would make a distinction in practice between emotions and the service of the self. and emotions which, let's call caring, caring about the world, which underlie thinking and are more fundamental than thinking.

[46:34]

Which underlie thinking and are more fundamental than thinking. That thinking actually rests in a deeper strata of feeling and emotion. I mean, for that, I'll just say that much. And Gerald started practicing 20... How many years ago? Some 20 years ago. He's been trained and practiced as a psychotherapist. And when he first was living at Creston, Mountain Zen Center, where we lived together for quite a few years, 12 years.

[47:39]

Yeah, and a lot of people show up at the door who, you know, are there for various reasons other than Zen practice. In the 60s, they came for every reason but Zen practice. But over the years, it's become clearer what Zen practice is, so there's a selection process, self-selection process. It's become clearer what Zen is. But still, people show up who, you know, would want to relate to practice Zen, but also they'd feel Corral's presence as potentially a therapist, and they'd want to relate to him as a therapist, and he found he had to... Boy, what did you find?

[48:51]

Why don't you say something? In German, but... Of course, many people also came because of the Zen practice, but they then also referred to me as a psychotherapist. And I had the problem mainly that when I work psychotherapeutically with the same people with whom I sit, that there was a kind of mixture, especially in the sense of projection, And because I was very much at the beginning of my practice, it made me a little confused in my practice, in my beginning practice. I wasn't quite sure what I should focus on. And then I decided to focus solely on my Zen practice. And then I also said, I don't work therapeutically at all. I realized that a few years later. also because we needed money, and then it was also easier.

[50:01]

But I always went back to what I said, my primary basis of design practice, and that's what I refer to first. I'm starting to try it differently in Göttingen now, that I'm starting to work in psychotherapy again. So I said that, especially in the beginning, I refused to work as a psychotherapist because I wanted to strengthen my practice in the first place and I also didn't want to get confused if I wanted to work as a psychotherapist or not and for quite a while I just put my emphasis on practice which I changed for one or two summers later when I worked in Paraguay Springs and I'm also trying it out right now and working again but my main emphasis and practice is meditation still I asked him yesterday he drove me from

[51:08]

Gerhard drove me back from Hannover yesterday and we had a conversation. Yes, let me say a couple of things. You know, Zen is... Buddhism is about 2500 years old. The Zen school is about 1,500 years old. And the first 500 years of Zen practice, which is primarily a Chinese school of Buddhism, the first 500 years there was lots of differences about what it is, what practices should be, what, you know, there was not a common view.

[52:27]

Zen was indistinguishable often from any other school of Buddhism or other views, Taoism, Shamanism. Zen was also indistinguishable from other Buddhist schools and also from... And about a thousand years ago in the Sun Dynasty, there was a big effort to consolidate and come to an agreement on what the Zen school is. And to give it a historical basis, to some extent, the Sun Dynasty people, brilliant people, Re-wrote Tang Dynasty Buddhism. To give the school that developed of Zen in the Song Dynasty, they wanted to have roots in the Tang Dynasty.

[53:35]

Yes, the previous dynasty. which is 600 to 900 about. So most people think that, ah, these great people in Matsu and others in the Tang Dynasty actually were created by Sung Dynasty people. I mean, Matsu was a real figure, but the kind of style of a Zen master that he represents was kind of added to him in the Sung Dynasty. Now, my point is that it took 500 years to come to a common point of view. And we think, well, We communicate much more.

[55:13]

There's more journals and all that stuff, right? more conferences, more telephone calls, more e-mail. But it's not really that different. These people often all lived near each other, were in every few days connection with each other. New ideas in southern China would reach Korea in two or three years. How long many years does it take to get an article published in a journal? Might be a year or two years. I was sort of living in the midst of the New York art school in the 50s and 60s in New York.

[56:24]

And the history moved very rapidly because all these artists were influencing each other. so it's really there are periods of time in Chinese history a long time ago where there was this intensive interaction where things developed very rapidly but still took 500 years But the whole thing was really put together in probably 75 years or something like that. So what I'm talking about now, what we're practicing, is really a school that... developed very rapidly during a period and then has been refined over the last thousand years.

[57:28]

Well, that's enough. Anybody else? Somebody else want to say something? The way of dealing with the wishes of change or self-improvement of clients and the And the attitude of sitting still, still sitting, habit, or this little saying, nowhere to go, nothing to do. There is a sentence by Mozart, you have to go somewhere and do nothing.

[58:39]

Is acceptance itself change? The acceptance of the situation is the real change. Yeah, I would say more than just that, but yes, that's true. Someone else. I love hearing this, by the way. I'm enjoying myself. Yes, you were going to say something. Yes. Okay, I'm working with kids and teenagers.

[59:50]

Behind the staff, would you? Behavioral therapy. And I think it would be a catastrophe if I would not meditate and sit. Just for your own survival, you mean. For the children too. Because you are not taught to listen. You really don't learn to listen. Unless you learn to sit. Is that what you're saying? I learn it through sitting. I learn to listen to myself. Since I'm working with kids, I don't have the medium of the speech as much as with working with adults. My question is... The kids who are coming to me are very dependent of their field, of their family and teachers and so on.

[61:12]

But most of their suffering comes out of this field and not out of themselves. And they can't do much about the field in which they're growing up and living and so forth. Where's the suffering? Where's the source of the suffering? Because their parents are a kind of sick. Is it responsible to give their own Yes, so it is to give them a feeling of freedom, that they are living in this world, they are persons, they are entities, they are supposed to build their own self-esteem, but there is the other side, where they are completely free, where there is brutality.

[62:23]

Or is that an integration? I don't know. Okay and responsible to give them an idea of freedom although there is all this feel that makes them suffer or is that something a step too far to give them the feeling of you are free. What kind of freedom? Sounds okay to me. At least to know the possibility. One of the jobs of practice, at least, is to show the possibility of choice and freedom. If you don't know it's possible, then it's very hard to are to imagine your life. And imagining your life is part of creating your life.

[63:26]

But I don't know if that responds to what you're saying. Let me give you a little formula for... the physical practice of Zen. The practice of Zen is more than any other Buddhist school, emphasizes not initially understanding, But posture. Sitting still, not scratching. And sitting for a specific length of time. Those three things. And the specific length of time is so that you don't sit within the...

[64:30]

within what you want to do or what your ego wants to do. You sit within, you stop whether you want to stop or not, and you continue whether you want to continue or not. So you're taking the sitting out of the context of immediate preferences. But you want to put it in the context of larger preferences. You want to put it in the context that you can do. If you can't do two hours, you don't do two hours. You do 40 minutes or 20 minutes or so. Then you don't scratch and things like that. Okay, so what's the point of that? The point is to break the connection between thought and action.

[65:33]

die Verbindung zwischen Gedanken und Handlung zu unterbrechen. So your body comes to know, and then you come to know, whatever the difference is, that you can sit without moving, no matter what happens. Also du beginst zu wissen, und ich beginne zu wissen, was immer das heißt. What was the last part? No matter what happens. In other words, you can engage, sort of, in some kind of psychoanalytic, personal psychoanalytic process. Because you can get free of the consciousness editor. and entering a mind much like free association, and just let yourself feel anything. So now an important part of practice which doesn't come up so much between the teacher and the student, teacher and the practitioner.

[67:07]

But it's in the territory of the practitioner, him or herself. which is to really let things come up and exaggerate them, exaggerate your fear, exaggerate your emotions and just sit still in the midst of it. So you develop a territory, you articulate a bigger and bigger territory where you're neither expressing things exteriorly nor repressing things. And that becomes the territory of acceptance. And the territory where, as you said, you listen to yourself.

[68:13]

Now, another where Mea mentioned... Here's where your personal history comes in. Zen does not emphasize rebirth. But it does emphasize going back through your own personal past lives. A part of practice for a serious practitioner is reviewing their past life. Now again, this isn't much to do with the interaction between teacher and disciple. Nor is it, nor are any particular teachings related to this.

[69:22]

It's just an assumed preparatory practice that's as part of zazen. And you can become, after a while, you can get quite good at it. Like you can create the image in yourself or the image will pop up in yourself of yourself sitting at a third grade primary school desk. So you don't start thinking, why did that come up and what does that mean? You just look at it and explore it. So you keep coming back to, say, that third-grade desk. It's the kind of mind that you might reveal under hypnotism, for instance, in a car accident, where there's a lot of people see the accident and no one remembers the license plate, but you can hypnotize a person and they can tell you the license plate and all kinds of details they can't consciously remember.

[70:45]

So you work with the light on the third grade desk, say. Then you explore to see if you can see the rest of the room. Then you start seeing the teacher and then the other students. And then you work backwards in time to the earlier part of the day. Or you work forward to when you went home on the bus and then what happened that night and what happened the next day.

[71:52]

Or we get so you can open quite a clearing in your memory. Now, the yogic skill to do this doesn't mean you necessarily go over every minute of your life until you're 33 or something. But you have the feeling that you have the power to go back into any period of your life and open it up in detail. Now, I mention this as a kind of fairly ordinary practice an adept, a monk in which you're definitely dealing in a very particular way with your personal history but it's not a thing I think you can ask a client to do

[72:54]

Although, if you could do it yourself... You probably could do something similar by saying, yes, why did that image come up? Stay with that image. What feeling does it give you in your body? And so forth. And the ability to hear yourself in that way to hear yourself, see yourself, know yourself in that way, without flinching. In other words, once you know that you can feel anything, the most murderous part of you, without acting on it, it gives you tremendous freedom to explore yourself. And one compassionate view you start out with is the most, any person in the world, the most horrible person in the world, it's also me or could be me.

[74:24]

So then you think, do I have that person in me? Could I do some sort of horrible crime? Maybe you come to the point, I couldn't actually do that, but I can feel how it's possible. And this is one practice of compassion. To imagine that any person in the world, you know, the Hitlers of the world, could be you. Then you can actually be with others in a new way. Go crazy with them. And another aspect, what you said, visiting somebody in the hospital. One of the practices, the craft of compassion,

[75:26]

is, as you said, empathy. But we say, really be willing to switch places with the person. And so, really you practice with, I would be willing to be dying right now of this disease when you feel that the person in the hospital feels much more connected with you at the same time you know although you'd be willing to be there right now you're not there And that place of not being there is also an acceptance of being willing to be there. And that, I think, creates some of the feeling you're saying that a kind of simultaneous joy in life, even though you're willing to see it be the other way.

[76:59]

So the practice would be, when you go to see somebody in the hospital, is on the way there you really get yourself, so you'd be willing to switch places with them. But they also want to feel better. They don't want to suffer. So you don't want to just engage in this terrible suffering. You want to also feel you're free of suffering. What I'm trying to do here is present things which... Is there things we can learn from this kind of approach that maybe we couldn't do unless we're more of a monk-like practitioner?

[78:04]

Or are some things just too different? Or can we learn from them and make use of them in psychotherapeutic relationships? I don't know if that little riff is helpful enough. Someone else? See, I'm afraid if I talk too much, I'll stop you talking. But if I don't say anything, I shouldn't have come. I'm not a psychologist and not a psychotherapist. And I have experienced many psychotherapies. therapies and they helped me a lot.

[79:23]

And I would like to add a very important aspect which is the body. And my experience is that I manifest a lot of ideas, views and experiences in my body. and it can be freed through body feeling or body work and also it can happen transcend these feelings and views and whatever they are. That helped me a lot as a preparation for Zen practice.

[80:28]

So in that way Zen was not only an idea or a feeling but it was a practical bodily experience. May I ask a question? Of course. May I just add something? or I experience it this way, that Zen is a very deep access for me.

[81:29]

And the first thing when I regularly started Zen was that I stopped deceiving myself. There was still an aspect during the elaboration of my personal story, that there were still areas where I, when I wanted to look around and have made up my mind, so to speak, and when I sat on the cushion, it didn't make any sense to me at all. So I just was going to refer to this like Zen is something very profound and deep and when I started practicing on a regular base I realized that I had for many years cheated myself within the psychotherapeutic training and practice so in terms of that there still were areas which I hadn't looked at and I just ignored them and I immediately stopped doing this because it seemed to me a waste of time just going on doing this while I was sitting all by myself on the cushion so I became much more

[82:49]

On a certain level, more realistic and more… I mean, while you were sitting, you thought, it's no reason to keep cheating myself. Right, exactly. So it was like I took myself much more seriously from that moment on. There is something I am returning back to again and again. It is a very radical self-responsibility. or to realize that I'm creating.

[83:53]

And I think that's a result of my practice which refers back to my work. namely that .... that I have the feeling that for some people there is within their biography and the work with it and also all the solutions that can be worked out, not enough form. So that connects to something that for the clients within their field where they try to look for, to resolve things and work on things, that there's the feeling there is not enough base or ground within their biography of their life.

[85:05]

And I think it's necessary to create the access to territory outside the personal history. And that's definitely something within my process. Somehow these two are connected. They open a field. This is what just came up. It's a little bit connected to what you asked about the young people, whether it is permissible. And it connects to what Isabella said, working with kids, is it okay to open this kind of a space when on the other side they are so much dependent?

[86:28]

Yes. I can confirm it, because I also work with children and teenagers, and they ask very concrete questions. My own experiences are along the lines of what she said. They ask very concrete questions like, Do you believe in God? Is there a life after death? and I personally experience that they are really looking for an encounter and an honest answer. My experience is they are really searching, they want a true, they want a true answer. They are searching and so you are there. You are sitting there at this point and I... The only way for me is to be honest and to share my opinion, what I believe, what I experience. So that's my choice in that situation.

[87:38]

What I answer truly, what I believe and what my experiences have been and my experience is that this is a very important dialogue, that I am very personal. It's a very personal dialogue and it is good. In that moment it's not a therapeutic question but it's a question, what do you think, what have you experienced, tell me. But why isn't that therapeutic? It changes. This is a good question you ask. What I learned was a certain abstinence, to show my personal opinion. What I've learned is abstinence as a therapist, not to show my personal views. I see. So the therapeutic relationship is to keep a little distance and sometimes you don't have that distance and that's also helpful.

[88:49]

Yeah. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, I have a topic that concerns me very much, both in practice and in therapy, which is trust. As a basis to accept something at all or as a basis to be able to be here and now at all. So one theme I agree with is in practice and therapy is trust as the basic attitude to see what is, do, accept what is. And I think it's also a joint between me and the world and between me and clients.

[89:53]

A connection. And I see that trust also creates a connection between me and the world and me and my clients. Okay, yes. Yes, yes. Come back to the history of Zen. It took about 500 years in the Song Dynasty to put all this together. Is that my right understanding? It took some decades or a hundred years or so in the Song Dynasty to put together the previous 500 years into one school. For the history of psychotherapy it would mean that Freud had this modern psychotherapy about 100 years ago.

[91:15]

So that means that Freud found psychotherapy 100 years ago? Yes. So then we would have 400 years. So we had like 400 years. Maybe that's why we're sitting here, to make it faster. So for me there's a very important distinction between posture and technique? Oh, attitude. Attitude is great. Attitude and technique. I think, for example, that the question of the psychotherapeutic attitude I think that it's much easier to come closer as a psychotherapist when we talk about the psychotherapeutic attitude than about the psychotherapeutic techniques.

[92:24]

So I'm working at the University together with Heinz Dauber. He is a Gestalt therapist, and it took many years before we... Some years. Some years. Before we... find our, yeah, like a same style. But I'm sure that he technically works completely differently than I do. But where we come together is the attitude. So for me, for example, a central concept is the participating observation. One of the main attitudes is the participant observation or participatory observation.

[93:49]

That's something that connects us and also connects us with the students and makes connection within the seminar possible. And what do you mean by participatory observation? To get on the same wavelength within a relationship. Because, for example, the students give you a certain role.

[94:55]

And participatory means to take this role. To accept the role. To accept the role, to be a role responsive. As a teacher. As a teacher or as a therapist, but at the same time try to observe this and think about the meaning of this interaction. In a certain way it's a paradox. Yeah, I understand. It's a paradox. And attitude means to accept this paradox, to stay in this paradox without resolving this paradox.

[95:58]

Does that reduce transference? It differentiates transference. It has to do with transference also. So he said, talk about three pillars, posture, time, and don't move. Posture, time, and don't move. And I can, and you have no, you have no transmission and counter-transmission. Because you have no transference and no... Counter-transference. Counter-transference. In this... In Zen. In Zen. In Zen. Okay. So there is... You said... So you said the practitioner is with him or herself.

[97:00]

Oh, I see. And... In therapy, it's not really different. In some therapies, especially what I experience, you have a certain posture. In therapy, you have a certain posture. Either you lie down or you sit down, and you come with a certain posture, So you come with a certain posture into the situation as a therapist, like you sit or you stand, or the way you sit or stand. And there's a certain time you begin, and after 60 or so minutes it's finished. And you are still, that is, in the therapeutic sense, I would say, everything that comes up, you do not act out.

[98:04]

and you're still, that means that whatever comes up you don't act on. So metaphorically it's quite similar. And in Zen you have a transference to the teacher or to the teaching And in psychotherapy you have the transference towards the psychotherapist who gives the room that anything and everything can happen. And for both the idea is to come to a deep acceptance of yourself. So the difference is that you do psychotherapy for a certain length of time, so many hours, And Zen practice is if you're lucky or not for the rest of your life.

[99:33]

Okay? It's the difference. Is it lucky if it's not for the rest of your life or lucky if it is for the rest of your life? This is the main difference. Okay. The big question then is do I come to the point of deep acceptance and what happens if I get there? That's the main question for me. Yes? I am concerned with two lines of development in myself as a Zen practitioner and as a psychotherapist. For me it would have been... I started studying psychology, I haven't sent it yet.

[100:50]

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