I'd like to have a discussion among us, but I think it's too early to try to have small groups. You're too early even to... Too much discussion right now. Because I think I should today finish this third experiential time, gestational time. And what Dennis brought up about wanting to help people or be a aid to people who are suffering, And Martin has spoken yesterday in Hanover about the context of suffering. And the aim of Buddhism is enlightenment or satiric enlightenment.

[01:02]

is enlightenment and simultaneously to free you from suffering. But that's not quite right. It depends what you mean by suffering. The aim is to free you from the modalities of mind that cause suffering. Or to free you from the attachments which cause suffering. It's hard to know what words to use, but certainly if your parents die or your spouse dies or your friend dies or something like that, it would be weird not to feel grief.

[02:31]

But grief is not... I would say grief is not... We don't have... We can... You can have grief without suffering. When Schwantz's wife died, of 30 years, someone went over to console him. And they found him out in the backyard with a bell and a drum and singing and banging away, you know. And that's how he expressed his grief. It's happened. It's happened. She's gone, but Now, let me speak about gestational time.

[03:45]

Now, what if we try to keep this scenario in the psychotherapeutic context? in the psychotherapeutic context. So the therapist is locating him or herself in bodily time. I mean, the Zen therapist is anyway. And in a way, waiting to see what happens. And as much as, you know, when practice allows one, it's in the midst of his or her breath.

[04:57]

And the client comes in the room And you immediately have to externalize this bodily time to contextual time, if you haven't done it already. But it's a new contextual time when somebody comes in the room. Es ist eine neue kontextuelle Zeit, wenn jemand den Raum betritt. Okay. And you notice, in a sense, you feel yourself in contextual time.

[06:04]

I'm looking for words here. You allow the contextual time to develop or happen. Du gestattest dieser kontextuellen Zeit zu entstehen oder zu passieren. That's the best word I can think of. You don't try to do it or do something, but you allow it. Und zwar machst du sie nicht, sondern du schaffst den Raum für das Entstehen. The allowing assumes that everything is an activity. The context itself is an activity. So you're allowing something to settle in the context without as much as possible disturbing it by consciousness.

[07:06]

All right, you're allowing contextual time to happen. And maybe it will become a resonant field. where you both feel you're in some kind of shared medium. Okay. Okay, and this is really a kind of craft. As more and more allowing things to happen and not interfering. And as much as possible having no intention present. But sometimes, you know, nothing's happening and you need to bring a little intention into it and see what happens.

[08:24]

And you can bring intention into the situation. Simply by thinking an intention and nothing else. Or if you need a little more, you can kind of straighten your back or move your hand. And you find out or lean forward to create a different shape space between you. Okay. Now, gestational time. Now, gestational time, in the real sense, is you need to know simultaneous time.

[09:59]

So what do I mean by gestation? Well, on my kitchen table there might be a banana and an avocado. And the banana has already got black lines here and there on it. It's clearly ripening in its own banana time rate. And the avocado is ripening at a little different rate. So there's avocado time and banana time. And there's carbon-14 time. Which is 14 molecular disintegrations, I believe, every minute. over millennia, hundreds of years.

[11:14]

So there's carbon-14 done, not sitting, yeah, there's carbon-14 certainly sitting on my cabinet. I'm full of carbon-14. It's disintegrating. You too? Any carbon, any carbon, yes. Okay, so the banana and the carbon-14 and the avocado are each in their own time. And it would be interesting to see if I move the banana and avocado closer together if they start ripening fast. Separate. Yeah, that's it, right. Now, when the Zen therapist is with the client, if the Zen therapist establishes a simultaneity time, now, I described earlier, simultaneous time is time which stays.

[12:44]

Simultaneous time has a depth to it. So you're looking into interdependence itself, all the things at this simultaneous moment. But what I'm calling temporal time or clock time is rather thin. Yeah, okay. Again, like childhood is, you know, from about, as I've said, about 5 to 15 is time which stays. Kindheit im Alter von 5 bis 15 ist eine Zeit, die bleibt.

[13:54]

Or maybe earlier, the hormones of desire, you know, etc. Pretty soon, time starts rushing away. Or rushing toward the other gender or the same gender, I don't know what. So maybe the time that stays starts leaving with puberty. But as all of us know, I think those 10 or so years of childhood are present the rest of our life. You might be 40 or 50 and you still think that childhood was half your life. So the time that stays feels different.

[15:02]

And this is not just available to children, it's available to you too. And those of you who do sashins and things have experienced the difference between time that stays and time that doesn't. The more you're in consciousness, the more time doesn't stay, it keeps rushing toward the bell, when is that bell going to ring? But if you don't make any comparisons, you don't even know that a bell exists.

[16:04]

And you know you have to be alive somewhere. I might as well be alive here. What the heck? Yeah, and what, you know, one of the things like in one of the koans, it says, those who sleep with their hands, Those who sleep on the same meditation platform or something like that. Because the tradition in a Zen practice center is you sleep where you sit. Often people think Japan, because they have not much space in a large population, they have small rooms and they sleep in their living rooms.

[17:34]

But Japan is very implicitly and explicitly a yogic culture. And they feel you should not architecturally separate waking space and sleeping space. So you sleep on the tatamis? and you wake up and then you put your sleeping stuff away and then it's your living and a lot of Japanese people don't live that way anymore I know one I think Korean woman who practices Zen with us sometimes And she lives in Korea half the time.

[18:53]

And she has a western style house. And they think it's terrible that she wastes this space with a bed. It's such a beautiful space to sleep in, but why do you put a bed in it? It takes over the bed and you can't use it for anything else. Because it's a basic kind of assumption. It's best to mix together sleeping mind and waking mind. So one of the things you do, and what I'm trying to do right now, because we're designing a Zendo in Ioannisov, I think we can create a 40-seat Zendo.

[20:05]

And I think we can create 22 seats where people can also sleep. In other words, it's a meter by two meters. And we can have 22 places where people can sleep. That means one by two meters. And then there will be 18 seats where you... It's only one tatami wide. One tatami on all four sides. And then there are 18 seats that That's all we can fit into the room. Anyway, because the idea is if you're going to live there for three months, it's best if you can.

[21:22]

Not everybody has to. Sleep there. And when you get up, you just sneak from the, as I put it, sneak from the horizontal meditative position up into a sitting position which isn't fully standing up. Man muss da nicht schlafen, aber man kann darin schlafen und wenn man darin schläft, kann man sich... And then you try to use your yogic craft skills to not fall asleep. and to not go into consciousness. You're trying to discover a posture which allows you to neither be conscious nor asleep.

[22:28]

All right, now let's assume Okay, and this consciousness puts you immediately into temporal time. You have to stand up and not fall down. And there's always things to be done. Okay, now... What the Zen therapist wants to do is somehow establish a resonant field that we could call simultaneous time or the time that stays and doesn't go.

[23:35]

then what you can see it's almost like there's a column of immediacy and Dogen says something like place yourself in immediacy and be steadily intimate with your field of mind Steadily intimate with your field of mind. So if the Zen therapist is steadily intimate with his or her field of mind, you can begin to see in the client, whatever, the other practitioner, various kinds of gestational time. Oh, there's a little banana time.

[24:48]

Oh, and there's several avocado time. And there's an expiration date. They thought they were going to die at 33, and they didn't. You can begin to see, by being in simultaneous time, you can see what's not in simultaneous time. Maybe I can tell you the little Zen koan story. mentioned in Hanover. Is that all right with you? Wu Dong and you don't need to know the names, but Wu Dong, Jin Shan and Xu Shan and Saiyan four real guys are in East Central China in Zhang province near about a thousand years ago you know it's not so different from us

[26:22]

It's stormy and the rivers are swollen outside. Like when I left you guys in Austria, I drove, I couldn't drive through. I couldn't drive through. We just did it before they closed it. Yeah, and I got as a freeway on Albanzer Tor, all closed and deck and door, where was it? Deck and door. Deck and door, yeah. So these four Chinese guys are going along and there was a German police saying it's closed. So they looked for the nearest temple, you know, the pension at the time. And they went in and sat around the hibachi, the brazier. And they didn't know whose temple they were in.

[27:34]

And they were, you know, talking away and having a good time. Two of them were already head of their own temples, and so they were kind of like full of themselves, maybe a little bit. And Dijan, who was their host, who they didn't even know, I would describe what he saw. He saw four monks mature enough to be in their bodily time. and enjoying their friendship but not really being in a resonant field so he went over to them after a little while and he said excuse me for bothering you elders

[28:36]

But are the four of you different from the mountains and rivers or the same? Now what is he doing? He's entering their approximate contextual time. Almost approximate. Approximate, almost. And he's bringing in a little gestational time. He's saying they're not really in the same resonant field. So he fools around.

[29:55]

Excuse me, elders, are you guys the same as the mountains and rivers or different? Of course they were there because of the context of the mountains and rivers. And Shushan, who later became a famous teacher, said, um, identical. Okay. And Di Zhang held up two fingers. Xu Shan said, different, different. And then Di Zhang left. And one of them started making fun of the proprietor of this pension. Oh, let's not take this guy too serious.

[31:01]

You don't find the tusks of an elephant in a rat. But fire. Isn't that a great remark? And... Farian, though, says, wait a minute, he may have something. But Farian says... So they all got ready to leave the next day. The weather presumably cleared up. And at the gate, Fayan said, you three go on alone. I'm going to stay with Dijon. So he stayed with Dija. And later, a year or two later, the other three came back and they all became students at Dija.

[32:06]

And Fayan became head of one of the most famous Buddhist schools called Fayan Shu. So this is an example of Dijon seeing the contextual time and entering with Gestational time. Which ripens, started ripening right away. And the banana, Fayan, stayed right away and the three avocados came back later. So now you understand. Now he understands everything.

[33:33]

Somebody want to say something? Yes. What is the time? It is Cairo. It is your time. So there's chronos, the time that sort of clicks. And kairos, that's your time. And kairos, it's your time. Yeah, okay. I know the terms. I haven't really studied the idea of kairos. But yes, I understand. I think that's right. I haven't studied that, but... I think that's right. Kairos is someone who has the glass and a bit of hair in the back.

[34:41]

And you have to be quick to pack it up and dress it up. Okay, Kairos, the myth is that Kairos is someone with a bald head, but he has this kind of tuft of hair, and you have to really be quick to drag him, otherwise he dissipates or is gone. Okay. I'll stay a little longer. I try to imagine what it could be that in therapy time during therapy time where can I see that the client is not in a resonant field with me?

[35:49]

If I've understood correctly, those are the elements Within or through which development is possible. Into which this gestational time ought to enter. I don't know, you're just going to have to do it, try it out. I mean, it's just like I can't tell you how to swim. You can move your arms and stuff like that, but... Yeah, so... It's a... You know, all of these things are a kind of craft.

[36:56]

You have to get a feel for it. But I'm sure that every therapist and anybody... says to a child or to a friend, well you know maybe you might consider carpentry. But you might even present it as a joke. But a few months later they say to you, I think I got a job with a carpenter. So we do things like that all the time. You say to your teenage kid, of course you don't have to go to college. Yeah, but then they go to college. But they have to have the freedom of not going.

[37:57]

So what is the difference here from that and, you know, etc. ? I think it's the bodily and conceptual awareness of the movement from bodily time to contextual time to gestational time. I think how this is different in a yogic context from what we all do ordinarily, is we're perhaps more bodily aware of our resonant connectedness in situations and we know exactly we feel more exactly in an almost acupuncture way a kind of acupunctural relationship to contextual time and gestational time

[39:18]

And that accuracy is possible, if it's the case, when you're rooted in bodily time. Okay, yes. Does this gestational time need to base on a lack of contextual time? It can just be there just like something positive. Sure, sure. Oh, yeah. Does this gestational time, this maturing time, always have to be based on a lack of contextual time, or can it also be done separately?

[40:34]

I mean, let me try to... I could maybe use Basho's poem that you mentioned. Okay. Because it's obviously, and Andrea just stated so. because we live these worldviews and our language is rooted in these worldviews it's very difficult to peel the words we use off the worldview Okay, so Basho said about a poem that he wrote which didn't win a competition even though he was one of the judges.

[41:46]

He said, well, it didn't deserve to win. Because it wasn't well tailored or properly dyed. because it was not properly cut and not properly colored. And it is clear at that time that he and he had the feeling that he would like to write a poem that felt tailored enough that you put it on and you liked the way it was dyed so after a while you get used to wearing it

[42:59]

Und dann mit der Zeit gewöhnt man sich daran, das zu tragen. And then the poem began to affect. Und dann beginnt das Gedicht zu beeinflussen oder zu verändern. And I think I went through this in Reistenberg, but if we take a very simple poem he wrote, sitting quietly, still sitzend, Now, first I'll just say it fast. Will you translate that fast? Sitting quietly doing nothing, spring comes, grass grows by itself. But what he really wrote, all of these things happen simultaneously. It's not a temporal narrative.

[44:13]

I saw the beautiful bamboo blowing in the wind and I felt, you know, what it was like when blah, blah, blah. This is Sitting quietly. In the same column of time. Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows. By itself. Now, these haiku poems, which most Westerners who imitate haiku poems don't get, it affects you because it's happening in a simultaneous frame. Many Western haiku poets don't understand this, that in a frame of simultaneity So there's sitting quietly by itself.

[45:33]

Doing nothing. Doing nothing is doing itself. Spring comes by itself. And grass grows. grass next so that the simple line his effort is to locate you in simultaneity and once you're there you can wear it. Now I think if you took an inventory of the most vivid memories you have, not necessarily car accidents,

[46:40]

vivid memories you have, I would bet a large percentage of them are when you experience simultaneous time. But even in car accidents, often time slows down and everything is happening in a time-less sphere. So the basic teaching of Zen practice is fundamental time is simultaneous time. That's your default position. That's your reference point.

[47:56]

And you're going from simultaneous time to temporal time and then back to simultaneous time and then into temporal time. And a lot of people are writing books now about koans. Analyzing koans. And sometimes very intelligently and well-informed analysis. But often they analyze it as if it had a meaning. Does your favorite sweater have a meaning? Is this something you wear? So the koans, if you practice koans, You spend time with them and spend time with them and spend time with them until they begin to feel tailored to you.

[49:15]

And they're usually actually intelligently designed And in general, they are very intelligent. Like a time-release capsule. You know, a pill you take and it lasts over... What is a time-release capsule? A tablet that... A tablet that dissolves in different times. There is something like that in the Quran. So it's not meant to be understood. So it's not something... So it's assumed that a koan will give you one fairly quick understanding within a few readings. And then you find out later that meaning was a kind of trick.

[50:19]

And then you get past the trick and then, ah, it's much deeper. So there's usually three or four layers of meaning. realizations that people know are there. And then there's endless possible meanings as you live the koan. Yeah, so the teachings are designed for gestational time and not for the present moment of reading.

[51:26]

Some of you have Raksus. The group in Budapest made this for me. The Yoken Roshi's group made this for me. And when you get a raksha within the Dharma Sangha, you take the precepts. No one tells you to follow the precepts. Because you don't follow the precepts. No one can follow the precepts. But you hold the precepts. And then the precepts begin to affect how you act and think about things over time.

[52:33]

So strictly speaking, you can't break a precept. You can only perhaps learn from breaking it. But that's not an excuse for breaking it. I'm learning. So you hold the precepts and they ripen in you. So anyway, these concepts of time produce a different kind of teaching and a different kind of relationship to the teaching. And a different relationship to the practice.

[53:46]

And I think it can be intimately related to psychotherapeutic practice. Because it's such a complex situation. There are no rules. There's some craft and traditions. And you just have to become more and more present in the situation and subtle within the situation. And as I said, the main vehicle of Zen practice is meeting and speaking. Just what happens when we're doing what we're doing. Okay, thank you very much.

[55:00]

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