Of course not. You've had lunch and you've had the energy or the nap. I mean, the energy. You know, I'd like to hear what you have to say. If I say so much, as I said quite a bit before lunch, It helps me a lot to feel, to have a response. Is the reaction the same as your response? It's, yes, I mean... No, Eric says no.

[01:04]

Well, a response in English is not the same as an answer. What would you say? Yeah, what would you say? Yeah. Is answer, is a response the same as an answer? A response? No, response is... Not necessarily an answer, it's just a response. That's why I'm saying reaction and answer. A reaction is not necessarily a response. That you're all breathing is a response. Yeah, but if you could breathe over your vocal cords, You know, I apologize a bit for saying this really needs to be done if you're going to practice.

[02:10]

Because Whatever you do is okay with me. But at the same time, if possible, I want to continue to practice with you. And I want this practice to continue. And as you know, I've been mentioning recently that we have created a contemporary sangha. But have we created a generational, can we create a generational sangha? My job is to have a known address.

[03:18]

And then if somebody shows up, I practice with them. If they don't, I don't. And I have lots of known addresses. One of them is here. I think I've probably been here, I don't know, some in 30 years I've been here probably... more than a year of just being here. In 30 years, you've been here more? In 30 years, adding two weeks for each year, that's 60 weeks, which is more than 52. Someone asked if I'm coming back next year. And I said, as long as I keep making it up that hill. And I'm definitely stronger than last year, a little bit anyway, but that hill, they made it steeper, I'm sure.

[04:51]

But Tsukiyoshi gave me one job, which is to have at least one disciple. Nämlich mindestens einen Schüler, Schülerin zu haben. And one disciple means enough disciples to have a generational son. Und ein Schüler, das bedeutet, das reicht aus, um eine generationsübergreifende Sange zu haben. And Sukershi at one point said to me, you're making this Sangha in San Francisco too big. And I said, you know, but in Japan, if you decide to practice, usually it's a lifetime decision. And if you make a decision not to make practice your main focus, you put your robes in a drawer somewhere and don't wear them.

[06:29]

But I said, you know, still, most people make a decision, they stay with it. In a lay practice, most people don't stay with it. But at the same time, I'm impressed with how much so many of you lay and, yeah, we're really lay, adept lay sangha. How many of you, how many of us, because I'm one of us, do stay with it? But the way we stay with it, can't we make a generational song? Such a little thing is that perception is non-conceptual if it's going to be rooted in the truth.

[07:35]

There are so many small things like that which practice really turns on these things, and how can we actually share them with seeing each other a few times a year? There are so many small things like this aspect. And the practice is really dependent. It has turning and fishing points in all these small aspects. And how can we really implement all this if we only see each other a few times a year? So while on the one hand I accept whatever you do, it's, yeah, why not? It's great. At the same time, my job requires me, my job description requires me to make it as clear as possible what practice that can continue generationally consists of.

[09:07]

Okay, excuse me for being so serious. I'm sorry. But please, what would you like to say? Yes, I'm sure. Before lunch, you told us how you traveled with Brother David Stein in the past and spent the night at different monasteries. And that's what you do, that's what you do in Odysseus.

[10:16]

If you pay attention to these four points, you can quickly see the world. And that in Buddhism, to just make it brief here, how in Buddhism you can just cross something out if you don't like it anymore. Yeah. That's it. That sounds very simple, very easy. No, it's the answer here. But I actually think that that's very difficult. . And somehow my impression is that in Buddhism and in Zen, yes, things have changed over the centuries, but my impression is that they've changed slowly and that when something changed, it was considered with great care and insight and differentiatedness.

[11:42]

Yes, I would agree with that too. I would agree with that too. But it's like, yes, and part of the, there's lineage practice. And then there's institutional practice. And traditionally you chant the lineage of your teachers and you chant the lineage of the center, the temples. And creating an institution that will survive is different than creating a teaching lineage which will survive, but they're interrelated. The temple, I may just use the common word for a Buddhist practice center in Asia,

[12:50]

Der Tempel, einfach um das übliche, gebräuchliche Wort für ein buddhistisches Praxiszentrum in Asien zu verwenden, ist ein Anker für die Praxis der Einzelnen und, so wie ich das häufig sage, ist auch ein Hafen, von dem aus sie davon segeln. In East Asia, if you're in If you say you're just a practitioner and you don't have a related temple, they don't really take your practice seriously. Okay. Now, once you have a temple or a practice center, That's part of the society. And how to create it as part of a society is different than how to create a practice that will go on in an individual society.

[14:18]

And how to create the practice center in society so that it might have a beneficial effect on the society at large. So we have a center. The main center is Johanneshof in Europe. And partly because we have a center, Deutsche Buddhist Union came to us and they have over the past. Will you participate? And usually I say, well, I don't know.

[15:23]

And then they forget about it for a year or two. And a while ago they asked again, and they asked Nicole, and I said, okay. And Nicole went to the meeting, or one of the first meetings, and she suddenly found she was on the council of the Deutsche Buddhist Union of 12 people. 11 p.m. And then... I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Why are you blushing?

[16:27]

My bad conscience for doing what I did. My guilt. Okay, and now all the more monastic centers than ours. The women who are practitioners virtually all shave their heads. And follow quite strict rules of mostly Theravadan practice. And they don't take what we're doing seriously or take her seriously.

[17:39]

Yeah. But then there's a whole lot of people who want her to support Buddhism which doesn't shave your head. And my own opinion is that it's so clear this is going to be a lay practice basically in the West. The groups that follow the the tradition as it grew, developed in medieval Asia, East Asia, are going to end up strong but isolated. Okay. And there is a big problem in trying to make practice understandable to a large population.

[18:58]

And one of the main ways that's been done is the concept of merit. And that our practice accumulates merit, which is transferred to the society. And And that I can transfer merit to any one of you. I'm trying to do it all the time. But I don't have much myself, so, you know, go ahead. Okay, well, this is an idea I've dropped. You know, I didn't ask anybody.

[20:15]

We just don't chant about merit. And the Buddhist police and the security patrol have not heard about it yet. But I do think we have quite a lot of freedoms to make fundamental decisions like to not use merit to justify the relationship to a large population, etc. And Zen only gives lip service to reincarnation. And I have no problem with dropping the concept of reincarnation to make your practice more serious.

[21:27]

I only get lip The tradition then gives only lip service to reincarnation as a way of encouraging people to practice in this lifetime because their future lifetimes might be realized. This is not to deny reincarnation. I just have no interest in it. I have had enough of one life.

[22:28]

And I don't think it's... And there's no teaching in Zen that depends on the concept of reincarnation. So if I've been reincarnated, I haven't noticed it. So I feel like Bertrand Russell, supposedly, before the pearly gates. Bertrand Russell before the pearly gates. That means arriving in heaven. And he was a confirmed public atheist. And someone has asked him, what if you end up, you die and you end up in heaven, Bert? He said, what would you say?

[23:39]

And Russell said, I would say, sir, you should have given us more evidence. Well, that's how I feel about reincarnation. And I've had several conversations with the Dalai Lama about it, and He said, they say I'm a reincarnation of Manjushri, but I don't know. And I've had a number of tulkus who were reincarnated, so and so and so and so, who look at me and they say, reincarnating, they give me a wink. So my point is, we do have quite a lot of freedom to make the practice what works for us. I would like to say Zazen isn't necessary, but I'm afraid it is.

[24:49]

Oh, sorry for all that. That must be brewing somewhere. Someone else. It sounds very complicated, but I'm not sure. I think I remember when I was reading in the book, The Beginner's Night, it said transformation does itself when you are making stuff.

[25:53]

If I understood what you said, yes, zazen, but non-conceptual zazen does it itself. It's not just the posture itself. It's the posture with the mental posture of... a non-conceptual mental posture, which makes Zazen powerful, transformed. Okay, Eben. Etwas ganz Spannendes in diesem Zusammenhang empfinde ich, wie verschieden sich so etwas wie Commitment anfühlen kann.

[27:16]

Something quite interesting in this context I find is how different commitments can be. Different commitments. Und jetzt weiß ich gar nicht, was dein deutsches Wort wäre. Yes, it's hard to explain. Sometimes I say inner connectivity or connectivity. Yes, because as I got to know it in practicing with you, Roshi, in practicing with the Sangha, in the process of this emergence and transformation of our temple, our place of practice, there are very different attitudes, The way that I've gotten to know this, become familiar with it throughout the development of practicing with you, Roshi, and practicing with the sangha, and the development of our practice case,

[28:28]

is that there can be various different attitudes or postures that coexist with each other. And the one, for example, is to fully suspend or immerse oneself into the process or into the development. And the other is what we could call a democratic process of developing something together. And as somebody said recently, we've never voted whether somebody is enlightened or not. Nor in our lineage that transmission would have anything to do with the democratic process. And to feel that, to take over our modern feeling of responsibility,

[29:37]

And this, to feel this out, to suss that out, how in our modern society to, to participate, to take responsibility and to participate also means to engage in a democratic process. That really sometimes doesn't go together with the trust of just immersing oneself into the process without knowing what will come out in the end. Well, we also don't, although it used to be done in effect by families, we also don't, it's not a democratic process of who you decide to marry.

[30:55]

So not everything can be democratic. Now I feel that I maybe made it feel like that most of you who have families and jobs can't practice in a way that creates a generational sangha. And I don't think that's true. The main dynamic of practice is your commitment, not your intelligence or the time you are in a practice center. And so I think that if as practitioners, and I consider myself a lay practitioner with a certain kind of responsibility,

[32:21]

We can discover together what aspects of practice are most essential and can be brought into our ordinary life This will be an extremely creative watershed within Buddhism since Buddha's time. So since I really believe that practice will not be primarily monastic in the West, Weil ich wirklich glaube, dass die Praxis im Westen nicht hauptsächlich eine klösterliche Praxis sein wird.

[33:54]

Dann frage ich mich, wie können wir als Laien eine Praxis entwickeln, die überdauern wird. This is, I would call, a watershed. Do you know the term? Another watershed is the concept of, this is just an aside, sort of not really in the theme of what we're speaking about, In East Asian Buddhism and in India too, there's no concept of progress. When we can say to be in accord with all beings or to save all sentient beings, I don't like the salvational thing to say, but that's the way it's usually translated.

[35:16]

This has nothing to do with society. This means that each individual has a chance of being realized, but society is always going to be governed by greed, hate and delusion. But democracy depends on, I feel sure, the imaginal realm, we can call it, of the potentiality of progress. But democracy, I'm sure, is based on the proposed area that results from the idea of progress.

[36:19]

democratic institutions are assumed that there are ways to make a society that benefits the whole society. There are many in East Asia change has been so slow as it was in most of Western history. Western society. In medieval Western society, so-called. So there was no experienced in a century of much change happening.

[37:40]

And there was no concept of individualism like we have. So it was just assumed most people will be governed by greed, hate and delusion. So now Buddhism is going to be in the West in definitive ways. And it's going to be a lay practice. And it's going to be be assumed without the concept of merit, that somehow society as a whole can be affected by Buddhist practice, because society can be itself developed.

[38:47]

Und auch ohne das Konzept des Verdienstes wird davon ausgegangen werden, dass die buddhistische Praxis einen Einfluss haben kann auf die Gesellschaft als Ganzes, weil sich die Gesellschaft als Ganzes entwickeln kann. Sea changes? Like the tide. Like the tide, yeah. So what am I sitting here thinking, how can we be part of these, we are part of these, we are these, manifesting these, expressing these, basic changes in the history of Buddhism. So I'm emphasizing certain aspects of practice, not to make you feel excluded, but to ask you, how can we include them?

[39:51]

Because if we can create a world which the imaginal realm is, in the sense that it's an expression of the potentiality of society, if the imaginal realm is as an expression of the potentiality of society. That it's possible to have a society in which awakening is possible. We can develop a psychology and an approach to the world which assumes that mental and emotional suffering can be ended.

[41:24]

And that we can live in a way that's beneficial to us and to others. And for the planet. And that we can live in accord with how things actually exist. Not as entities, but as... interactional... nicht als Entitäten, sondern als Felder, als wechselwirkend ineinandergreifende Felder.

[42:32]

Of having continuity through their interactions, but not through their entityness. Die Kontinuität durch ihre Wechselwirkung haben, aber nicht durch ihre Dinghaftigkeit, ihre Entitätenhaftigkeit. Yeah, I don't know why I said all those things. Jetzt weiß ich nicht, warum ich all das gesagt habe. That's your fault. I'm sorry. I didn't say your fault, but both of your fault. You can both take the responsibility. So anything else before we have a break? Yes. And this morning, you spoke about that it's important for us as practitioners to see consciousness. And the question is, how do we do that?

[43:36]

And you described or you called it non-conceptual knowing. And in the past, you've mentioned that there is this fear of noticing. And my question is, is the sphere of noticing a place where one can settle in order to see, to notice consciousness? Yes. But let me approach that as a possible topic after the break or tomorrow.

[44:42]

Because getting a feel for that and the physicality too of that is essential for practice. Anyway, my job description includes all of you. Maybe you didn't know that. But that's how I feel. Thank you very much.

[45:05]

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