Does someone have anything you'd like to bring up? There's an arm I see. Yes, please. It occurs to me that when I am asked whether I am a Zen Buddhist, I sometimes have the feeling that I am separating myself from my opponent, if I may say so. So while listening I noticed that if I'm asked, are you a Zen Buddhist, I separate from the person in front of me if I say yes. It often feels like a difference. And what would for me be much more a much more closer or appropriate sentence that I don't know if I am a Zen Buddhist but I know very clearly that I am an active member of a Zen Buddhist community

[01:31]

And that feels much more connected in a dialogue with people who ask me such questions. Yeah, I understand. But that could change. It doesn't have to remain or stay like that. It's just my momentary attitude towards him. And another thing which I notice through listening, when it's about the topic of a decision, of a made decision, If I look back in my history, I believe that this was one of the most important decisions of my life.

[02:52]

I decided to practice Lai for about 33 years. I decided about, I can't say it exactly, but about 33 years ago I decided to be a lay practitioner. And it was clearly a decision against monastic life. That's why I've hidden your robes in a drawer. Das ist, warum ich deine Roben in einer Schublade versteckt habe. Ja, aber ich weiß, dass ein Laienpraktizierender Buddhismus absolut unmöglich ist und mein eigenes Laienpraktizieren absolut undenkbar ist, ohne monastische Anbindung.

[03:58]

So I know that lay Buddhist practice is absolutely impossible and that my own lay practice is impossible without connection to monastic life. But with these connections and I feel that too it is possible to a high degree to practice it in a Western context. I also have a question about decision-making. I also have a question concerning decision. In the library there are lots of books like Zen and Creative Management.

[05:00]

In my life, it seems to me that you often have a book or something on the side. And in lay life, one has a book on the side. Okay, you have a job. Is this decision, can it include several streams? Or can several streams, several deep decisions stand side by side? And in this decision, can there be different... can that enclose different streams of decisions? Can they stand side by side? You mean, using Zen as a buzzword, can that stand side by side with practice?

[06:13]

Yes. Yes. Yes. I think for example in Australia there are a lot of people who are Zen teachers but at the same time psychologists. I think for example in Australia as here there are lots of people who are Zen teachers but they are psychologists at the same time.

[07:15]

You mean, does that work? Yeah. Well, I think Gerald could speak to that. Because when he was at Crestone, if I remember correctly, you found you'd been a psychotherapist for a long time and you found that The relationship, if you shifted to somebody who came to Crestone and you related to them psychotherapeutically, it was quite different and inhibited the way you could relate to them as a practitioner. Now it may not be as a more mature practitioner now, it may not be the same. How is it? So, when I remember when you were in Creston, you said that when someone came to Creston and you devoted yourself to him as a psychotherapist, then that made a big difference and actually prevented you from

[08:23]

Zen teacher. And it may be that this has now changed with maturity. Can you say something about that? In Kestor it was so that I, together with Roshi, from my impulse, decided to devote myself entirely to the practice. In Creston it was like I decided from my impulse that I would devote myself totally to practice. So I worked as a therapist in Colorado Springs and I felt like it was falling apart or it was falling into two parts but I wanted to devote myself totally to practice and I was supported by your worship.

[09:58]

And this was a good decision, but now I work in Göttingen as a Zen practitioner and a psychotherapist. Tendenziell, die Grenzen sind manchmal ein bisschen fließend, tendenziell versuche ich das auseinanderzuhalten, And as a tendency, sometimes there are little overlaps, but I try to keep apart the people I work with as a psychotherapist and the people who come to the center. And it's often the case that when the psychotherapy ends, then they appear in the Zen. And of course my Zen practice has a big influence on my work as a therapist, but this is another topic.

[11:03]

Are we approaching what you wanted to speak about, Matt? I've discovered in the early days of practicing in the 60s and 70s in San Francisco. And I think it's partly because the context of doksan, of one-to-one meeting, and meeting with a therapist in those days, it was usually before group therapy, It felt like, for people, it felt like it was some kind of iconic version of a psychotherapeutic context. Iconic? Okay. Yes, I think this is because this one-on-one meeting in Dokusan was a kind of iconic version of the psychotherapist's conversational therapy and at that time there was not much group therapy.

[12:34]

And since I was a kid, my mother spoke about Freud and psychology somewhat. So in high school and in college I studied psychology some. And my parents... My grandmother's house burned down, or half burned down, in my grandmother's house in Maine. So when I was, you know, I don't know, seven, let's say, I worried about my family's house burning down. And so after my parents went to bed, I would go out in the night and circle the house walking and make sure it wasn't burning.

[13:53]

And then I'd go back to bed because I wanted to protect my family. After my parents went to bed, I went out and walked around the house to make sure that it wasn't burning. Then I went back to my bed because I wanted to protect my family from burning. This was in the 40s, 1940s, before anybody here was born except me. And my father would... And my father noticed that I was doing this at night. He'd look out the window. What the hell is he doing? What is Dickie doing? Yeah. So after a while, he asked me, and I said, well, you know, I was making sure the house was not burning, and I didn't want, you know, to... In those days, psychotherapy and psychology and psychiatry etc.

[14:57]

were not readily available anywhere. So my father drove me all the way to Chicago to see a psychiatrist. So I thought it was kind of interesting. He asked me, how do you like your brothers and things like that? And I thought, well, I don't know. I don't know what that could do with anything, but I would say they're all right. But I had two or three visits with this guy, and he gave me intelligence tests and things like that.

[15:59]

Yeah, and then when I was in college, I looked depressed, and somebody would come up and say, you better go to see a psychiatrist, so then I'd go do that, right? Why not? So I did it at various points in my life, various psychotherapeutic contexts, and I also studied psychology, and so I knew something about it. So in the early days of Zen Center when I was the teacher, was in the 70s and 80s. People had psychological issues more than dharmic issues.

[17:01]

But I really tried to separate and make sure that I spoke to people about practice and not about psychology, but I listened to what people had to say to me. And I very carefully tried to limit my conversation to people. Now what I'm talking about here is just the process of how we develop a practice relationship in a society which has developed a specific idea of how you relate to psychotherapists rather than your uncle or aunt.

[18:19]

And you can trace the history of psychotherapy confession and so forth, but in any case it's a big part of our Western society. So I tried to make a real clear distinction between suggesting things about the craft of Dharma practice and just listening to what someone said about their psychological situation with their family or their spouse or whatever. And I found it couldn't be kept separate. And I tried to limit myself.

[19:39]

And I would say, I'm just repeating back to you what I've heard from you. I'm adding nothing, but they took it as advice or suggestions, etc. Okay, so then you get the classic projection going on on you as a therapist involved in their family, different than as a Dharma teacher. And I kept being astonished because I had no idea sense that I gave anybody any advice, but they were sure I'd given them advice.

[20:40]

And then I, so at some point, I stopped completely Being willing to even listen to people's problems, personal problems. As soon as people bring up personal things, I don't want to know anything about their family, their background. I won't hear it. My body says, don't tell me. So I have to be very careful. I've decided to be, maybe nowadays it's not so necessary, to be very careful that I keep the Dharma relationship separate from any other relationship. And I've also learned that I've got to keep the friendship relationship separate from the Dharma relationship.

[21:57]

So when I meet somebody and I think, yeah, they seem to want to be a friend, I would like to be a friend of theirs. I know from experience, if I make a decision, they'll never practice the Dharma if I decide to be their friend. It's like somebody says, I'm a student of the Dalai Lama, and somebody else says, I'm a friend of the Dalai Lama. Most people prefer, they feel more power in themselves if they say I'm the friend of the teacher than if they say they're the student of the teacher. So I make sure that I

[23:15]

don't have friendship relations with practitioners. I don't see them, I don't go out to dinner with them. If they lend me their apartment in Berlin, I won't take their apartment in Berlin, etc. I am very clear that I do not have a friendly relationship with someone to whom I have a dharma relationship. If they invite me to dinner or if they offer me an apartment in Berlin, then I do not accept it. Just a small remark before we go into more detail. I will sign everything you say and So, as a little addition, I would subscribe everything you say, but projection happens nonetheless.

[24:30]

Yes, but it happens differently on you as a Dharma teacher than as a therapist. And it can be handled differently. That's my experience. It's significantly different. I agree if someone has that experience that you have, but many of the problems we have with teachers and their... Yeah, but I'm not that teacher. No, no. In the last year or two, it's partly based on that they can't handle the projection. Das heißt Gegenübertragung. Counter-projection. Counter-projection. And this projection and counter-projection, that has to be, one has to know about it, and then one can deal with it. But that's very important. Well, if I feel projection in any way that tends to be psychic, I just stop being the teacher for that person. I don't see them anymore in Doksana. No, I'm sorry, that all happened in English.

[25:36]

So I make here a statement that I'm a Zen Buddhist mother. A Zen Buddhist mother. Does that require your children to be Zen Buddhists? No. I think you can be a Zen Buddhist baker as well as a Zen Buddhist chef. Yes, I think so too. What I say I'm a Zen Buddhist mother is because my role as a mother through the experiences that were given to me here and one of the big words I can use for that is acceptance

[27:12]

And it is not only an acceptance that I say, okay, it is already good the way you are, but it is again and again the challenge to see this person as a Buddha. But it's again and again an aufforderung. It requires again and again to see this human being as a Buddha. Even if I interpret Buddhahood just as I understand it. And I would add in brackets that my experiences with Ravi schon so war, dass ich sehr erstaunt war, wie man diese beiden Dinge oder wie er diese beiden Dinge zusammenfügen konnte.

[28:39]

I was astonished how he could combine these two things. Yes, he's exceptional at that. He has a real sense of how they're separate too. Yes? I can't hear you. I would like to add something to understanding as we talked about it yesterday concerning books. The key to experience is my body-mind.

[29:46]

And no book can give that to me. The experiences I made on the cushion A strong experience was for me to enter a Zendo. first as it was empty, but a much more powerful experience was to see sitting and sleeping human beings in the Sangha.

[30:55]

And this is what I share with the Sangha community. In this respect, I also define this friendly term. And that is what I share with the Sangha, so I define the friendship relationship. More in the philosophical sense, not individually, but today I said, when I come to the Johanneshof, I am happy More in a philosophical sense, not so much in an individual sense. So when I come here, I am happy or I rejoice in meeting people here.

[31:56]

Because we do everything together. Yeah. Also I'm concerning what Ulrich says because the everyday life can be very complicated and sometimes over challenging for us. And the power and the energy I get here with all the Sangha members. And to be sure, through you, Doshan. I'm sorry. Thanks.

[33:02]

Ulrich, I rarely say to somebody I'm a Zen Buddhist. If I have to say something, I say I'm a practitioner of meditation or something. But I frame the original question as somebody saying, oh, you're going to Johanneshof, are you a Zen Buddhist? In that context, I'd say, yes, bet your life. But I formulated the question in such a way that, okay, when someone asks, yes, you're going to Johanneshof, are you a Zen Buddhist? And I would say, yes, bet your life. In the early days of practicing sukiyoshi, we went through the RDM shaw,

[34:04]

which was rather a missionary, Christianized translation of the Blue Cliff Records. And so Sikirich had to keep redefining things, which had a good side because he had to really decide what English words to use for terms and I have the copy of the book he had and he has got little kanji over words and then he's got English versions of the word because he had to explore what made sense to him because this missionary type text didn't serve the purposes of Zen practice. He also had a good side. He really had to establish English words for it.

[35:29]

And I have his book, and there are small signs and kanjis about certain terms. So he decided to go through the entire 100 cases of the Blue Cliff Records. And we do one a week or one every couple weeks with two lectures a week, one on Wednesday night and one on Sunday morning. And Sunday morning was often more of a general kind of... encouragement talk about life and practice, and not necessarily about the koan. So we would go through it in detail, each koan.

[36:45]

It was kind of great. Here we were with a bunch of young Americans who knew nothing about Buddhism, and here he was reading these koans to us. And so he discussed them and often reading the text, he was a little slow in English, he would ask me to read the text. certain passages. Would you read this passage? So I sat in the front, in the middle, so he could hand me the book and ask me to read. And we didn't tape his lectures at that time because he thought we shouldn't tape the lectures.

[37:58]

We should just be present during the lecture in a way that we didn't have to listen to it later. And as I think I've mentioned before, we eventually did start recording the lectures because suddenly these little mini-recorders appeared and people were secretly recording his lectures anyway with the... So he said, okay, we'll do it. And although he even kind of put down the idea of taking notes, he did let me take notes, and I have 50 or so books of... real fast handwriting, word for word, of all of his lectures in the early 60s.

[39:07]

And although he actually suppressed the fact that one makes notes, he allowed me to do so. And so I have 50 notebooks full of notes from his lectures, word for word. And in general, he did at one time give a rather detailed teaching of the craft. I mean, Zen is really a craft. like music is a craft or painting is a craft. It's not really a practice, it's a craft. How you understand it is fairly unimportant. How you do it is what's essential. And that's one problem with smart people.

[40:19]

They often understand it, but they don't know how to do it, but they think their understanding is a substitute for doing. Okay. So the three bodies of Buddha is one thing. He did go through the craft of this view, which is really the Buddha as a hyper-object. The Buddha exists in ten directions, three times, and in several ways of viewing it, like the Dhammakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. That he presented the Buddha As a hyper-object.

[41:26]

In other words, extending in space and time in ten directions and three times. Which is, you know, very different than a revealed teaching by a Buddha, which then mostly ignores the historical Buddha. It's a realisational practice and the potentiality of realisation is in ten directions in all times. And he tried to... But since, you know, most Westerners think of Christ and God and Muhammad and so forth, and they don't think of the... Whatever the Buddha is, it's all around us all the time.

[42:34]

So most Westerners think of Christ or Muhammad... So occasionally he spoke about the craft of specific teachings. But mostly he just read these koans to us or spoke about the koans to us and then I usually would read it aloud. So, here he was exposing to us the most evolved of Zen Buddhist teachings but not explaining anything. geöffnet, aber ohne zu erklären.

[43:52]

Those who wanted or those who came to points they didn't understand could talk with him privately or personally about the points they thought they should understand and didn't. Und die, die wollten oder an einen Punkt kamen, wo sie nicht verstanden, die konnten mit ihm privat sprechen But again, he just kept presenting this stuff to us without explanation. But there are certain teaching devices in practice that he would present. Now, it would be like host and guest. Or it would be like the granting way, and in those days it was translated as the grasping way, the granting way and the grasping way.

[45:03]

No, grasping is a literal translation of the Japanese-Chinese word, but it actually means the gathering in way. So the teaching device is the granting way and the gathering in way. So when I look back on it now, what did he expect us to learn from saying it's the granting way and the grasping way? What did he expect? What the heck was he doing? And I would say that he decided we don't know anything about Buddhism. Ich würde sagen, er hat entschieden, dass wir nichts über Buddhismus wissen.

[46:33]

We're completely locked into our Western views of time, space, etc. Wir sind völlig in unseren westlichen Ansichten über Raumzeit und sowas eingeschlossen. So he made a decision that maybe I can change the way people conceive of their relationships to each other in the world. Almost every koan has an example where the device of the granting way and grasping way or host and guest are part of the koan. But you could practice with him and go to a lecture or one or two a week for a year and do that for two or three years and you'd come away with nothing but the granting way and the grasping way.

[47:56]

But of course he was such a great person and you'd feel something when he said these things. But still, the other day I thought of this. What the heck did he do for several years just telling us about the grasping way and the granting way? And it took me a while to discover that he thought, unless we start using these devices we won't be open to the teachings on any more sophisticated level. before we take these devices or methods, then we are not at all able to receive the refined teachings.

[49:16]

Yeah, and I remember Kobenchino Roshi who came to assist Suzuki Roshi, and had gone to Kyoto University, Buddhist studies, which is most Soto priests don't go to Kyoto University, they only go to the Soto University. And Kobin was from a multi, several generation Buddhist family, which Suzuki Roshi was not. Suzuki Roshi's grandfather had been a farmer. And I remember Kobunshino Sensei then, but now we call him Roshi.

[50:19]

Saying to me in Tassajara when we first, in 66, 67, did start doing practice periods, saying to me in some puzzlement, why is Sukrishi not telling you any of the teachings? He just tells you this simple stuff, grasping way and granting way. And I remember listening to Tobin, and, you know, he knew more than I did, so I was, yeah, but I felt intuitively I... felt and came to know that he was preparing us to study and he wouldn't go faster than he could prepare us.

[51:21]

So I thought the other day, maybe I should try to give us a feeling for... why he was doing that and what is the practice of the grasp, so-called grasping, and granting way. And so one day I thought it would be good if I just gave the feeling why he gathered us this and gave us this way. So, if you'd like, tomorrow I could try to say something about that. Now, I suspect it would be difficult for you all to say right now, no.

[52:27]

But privately you can tell Andreas no and then Andreas can tell me. Otherwise I'll try to say something about it tomorrow. Sonst werde ich morgen etwas darüber sagen. I apologize for last night. I forgot it was an Oryoki meal. So now I hope I'm stopping in time for the Oryoki meal. Also ich möchte mich für gestern Abend entschuldigen. Da wusste ich nicht, dass es eine Oryoki Mahlzeit ist. Und ich hoffe, wir sind jetzt zeitig genug für eine Oryoki Mahlzeit. And I also have, with Jonas and others, have a meeting with the plumber today. Not right now, six o'clock.

[53:30]

And so I think the next big step we have to do here is to get enough showers, toilets, bathtubs, et cetera, in both buildings that we don't have so much queuing and it's easier for people to come here as residents and practitioners. So Yonet has come all the way from Bucharest and the plumber has come all the way from down the road somewhere. I think the next big step that we have to take here is that there are enough toilets, bathrooms, showers, so that guests and residents do not have to stand in line. And Jonas has now come all the way from Bucharest and the Klemptner comes down the street from somewhere. And Yonitz has magic fingers and software.

[54:32]

And rooms and things just flow out of his fingers. And there's about 30 different possibilities here. But where are the pipes? So now with the plumber, we're going to figure out where the... He knows where most of the pipes are, but we're going to make sure. Because the next step in making it a place where people want to stay and practice is to have some bathtubs and showers and toilets. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for translating.

[55:36]

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