How'd you get your legs in that position? Geez, I want to try to do that and see if I can do it. It looks impossible. It does look impossible, but I'll do it anyway. I remember I was in New York subway once. Boston, I think, actually. And somebody was sitting cross-legged in the subway like that, and I thought, I hope Zen doesn't mean you have to do that. So, As you can see, I've been living long enough to talk forever.

[01:07]

It'll come to an end at some point. And various people are asking me for the last couple of years if I would do an oral history. And someone actually started in New York, did 10 hours of recording. And I don't know. I've lived all these years... for the Sangha. And I've lived assuming the Sangha is my relationship to the world. And now that I'm somewhat retired, I'm surprised that all these things are going on in the world which I have not felt any relationship to until recently.

[02:23]

And some people in New York want to auction off my archives. What archives? An email or two? Man, I was told when I was in Boston that the Harvard Divinity School would like my papers. I mean, what papers? And I was told when I was in Boston that the Harvard Divinity School wanted my papers. What kind of papers? Yeah, but anyway, so I guess I'm asking because like this morning I didn't tend to talk about all that stuff as the Kirushi and the Japanese tea garden and so forth. You know, and it's related to practice and the conditions for practice and what happens in the context which develop into practice.

[03:37]

So how do you feel? I mean, is all of that stuff this morning like interesting to you and should we continue sometimes in similar veins in the doorsteps, or shall I try to concentrate on more specific dharmic teachings? Yes. I wasn't there this morning. Shame. I know. I'm just kidding. That's all right. And at lunch I heard that you talked about the beginning times in the USA and talked about Suzuki Roshi.

[04:58]

And at the end of the morning, you entered that gathering in and granting way. Who's giving you... Are people rushing into the kitchen and giving you a report? No, it was during the meal. Oh, I see. It would be nice. Yeah, the first thing we... First I thought, what a pity, because I like to join when you give anecdotes of former times. I get a feeling of Suzuki Roshi when disciples of him who really lived with him talk about him. And that is also a connection to the recent teaching lineage.

[06:21]

And as I heard that you entered later into dharmic topics, I was very relieved and thought, oh, maybe this afternoon I get something of it. To answer your question, a mixture of both, I would find wonderful. Well, maybe we could rewind this thing and... We'll start over. Vielleicht können wir das zurückdrehen und nochmal anfangen. Okay, thanks. Yes? Wenn du so sprichst wie heute Morgen, dann erhebe ich das als ein Lehren in Metaphern. If you talk like this morning, I experience it as teaching in metaphors.

[07:28]

I retain these images very long and I get in contact with the history. And I am fascinated by your consequential mind of inquiry. I wish I would have some of it. Like the question, if there is no duration, why do I experience it? These sentences are spread over like raisins or like small jewels in your talk. And therefore, I would really like to ask you to continue that.

[08:54]

Well, let me see. I think raisins are easier to bite into than jewels. Yes. During lunchtime I was asking myself a little bit more closer, what is it that contains or what makes duration? And you said it is the sense fields. But if I listen very closely, I perceive different tones. It's like tone, tone, tone. and if I look closely I also see movement.

[10:16]

I remember you once told me that when you were eating you looked at a flower in the 1960s and then you discovered that it really moved from second to second. I remember you once told that you observed a plant during a meal, a flower, and it really moved from second to second. In a vase, yes. Yes, in a vase. What makes the duration? Is it the mind or the mind-field? What makes the duration? Is it the mind, the mind-field? This is what I ask myself. Well, keep asking. You know, I'm not... You know, I really don't... I mean, I have a real strong feeling about practicing with you.

[11:21]

But when I sit down here, I have absolutely no plan and I start talking, you know, what the hell am I talking about? Where did that come from? And on one hand, I trust it. But if I was just talking to a person who was, say, Ulrich or somebody, and it was on a tape recorder, I'd think, well, good, they can just edit that. So I'm not looking for praise or anything. I'm just looking for, you know, how I should continue these meetings if we do. Yes, Ulrich? The first day there was this term, uh, .

[12:29]

Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you. In the vein of the anecdotes, suddenly the four marks appeared and the first two were mentioned. And concerning duration, it was rapidly going deeper and deeper. Duration is duration of activity and not entity.

[13:43]

And in a way, it is created by the sensorium. But you gave the example that you took the glass and said, this glass probably has a longer duration than me. And so a plastic cup, maybe 500 years. So you made the example of the glass. You said the glass probably has a longer duration than me and a plastic cup, maybe 500 years. So we're talking about the same activity. But these are activities and not entities. But what is the activity of 500 years and then I think of hyper-objects. So climate change or transmission of the limbs.

[15:03]

So this appeared very rapidly and in my head it's not sorted out. Especially concerning the sensorium. So I would like to hear some more in this vein. Okay. Yes. I would like to relate to the doorstep sign of four or five weeks ago. And then I understood that it is about to continue one form of practice beyond your departure.

[16:21]

My permanent departure, you mean, right? Yeah. Okay, yeah. And it did not surprise me that you spoke of Suzuki Roshi, because that has triggered several things for me. The first one, what do we relate to? I wasn't surprised that you talked about Zuki Roshi. It triggered different questions in me, and one was, what are we concerning, or what we relate to? So what's our... What is... Describe it from my personal view, what is...

[17:25]

the teacher behind my teacher, which is Suzuki Roshi behind me. Yeah, this is the teacher behind my teacher, Suzuki Roshi. And she began to unfold his practice in the USA. And we brought that practice here at Johanneshof to flowering also. And I try something similar in Göttingen. And especially in Göttingen, that's the other aspect which I'm touched by through your reports. We have that teaching lineage with the ancestors in our back.

[18:50]

And at the same time it's very fragile. And it's always a try or try and error, how it goes on and also failure. And you and Suzuki Roshi are examples for trying it again and again and be successful in quotation marks. And I experienced something similar in Göttingen, I don't want to compare it, that in the beginning I sat in the zendo and there was no resonance.

[19:57]

and together we developed a buddha field in the sendo and around And we recreate this Buddha field and I found it so unique and we have to recreate it again and again. And in this frame it's good to hear that other people did that before us. So we can build on that and at the same time we have to start from the beginning again and again. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. I found it very interesting what you talked about the history of Suzuki Roshi.

[21:27]

I found it very interesting what you talked about the history of Suzuki Roshi. And I find it important that we, as Johannes Hoth Sanger, know where it came from. And it gives a depth from which I would say because I didn't know it before that I missed it or that lacked.

[22:31]

And we have the Buddha ancestors which we recite every day. But nevertheless there is an additional closeness or intimacy with that lineage. because we know Roshi, but we don't know, at least I don't know, Suzuki Roshi, and through that we get another contact. And what I would like to add as a personal experience, As Roshi told how Suzuki Roshi introduced the group again and again into the field of these two terms,

[23:49]

Yeah, and we know about host and guest since some time, but this condensed it in me. And I remember when I started here 15 years ago, I was thrown into very different fields. I was thrown into very different fields. to think non-thinking, and I will never forget that. And I grappled with it inwardly and outwardly to come near something that I could understand. So I remember Norman Fisher was here, and I asked him, could you say that in a different way, because I wanted to understand it.

[25:31]

And he said no. What does that mean? Roshi challenged us strongly and thrown us into deep water. in which I still swim only. But it's better. And perhaps that's a difference to Suzuki Roshi. You mean he threw us in shallow water? I nearly drowned. I mean, you know, you can drown in a few feet of water. Okay, thanks.

[26:56]

For me it's, I think, the decisive... For me the decisive thing is no matter what the main doorstep is or anything. This is not the impulse for me to come here and join. The impulse is to be together with you, Roshi, and the Sangha, and to practice. There's always something happening and it's always to the point.

[28:16]

And I really like stories and to hear about your experience with Shunryu Suzuki and not read it in books. Yeah, okay. You know, we talked about trapdoor Zen. Let's, you know, just kind of play with words. But I did have the feeling in those days, in the 60s, that I was a participant in the situation. Also, das ist vielleicht ein Wortspiel, aber ich hatte das Gefühl in den 60ern, dass ich... But I always felt also like I was an observer of the situation, almost as if in the middle of the Page Street, Bush Street rather, Zendo, there was a trap door, and while everything was going on, my head was up in the trap door listening.

[29:47]

Yeah, you couldn't see the lines of the door, but I could push it open and listen. So don't be surprised if 10 or 15 years from now suddenly there's a little thing and somebody pushes the door up and you see me, my head up here, listening. And if I drop the door quickly... you'll say, oh dear. Oh dear, I said. But anyway, the funniest... The line I like best... The line I like best in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

[31:02]

fellows just died and he's looking back from the bardo. And he's watching them do the ceremony for his funeral. And he says, they're already messing up my funeral. So, Yeah, you know, I mean people, we look at this place as an institution and it's become more and more of an institution. It has buildings and staff and leadership. please understand it's really still developmental and it could fall apart in an instant.

[32:26]

Just a few people deciding to do something else or having something terrible happen, like happened to Peter Zipzer. And just recently, Dieter was going to leave, but now he's going to stay, he tells me. And Paul is leaving. Yeah, and Anna's leaving. It doesn't take much for this whole place to go boom. Nicole just called me. She says she likes Tokyo so much she might decide to live there. I try to take her back. You'll go after her. Then you stay, too.

[33:43]

Yeah. And I would try to get him to come back, but he was the first director, but they wouldn't let him go. in Göttingen. But it's probably better that it failed than it goes ahead dead. Recently the Some months ago I had a whole letter written to the Soto Shu about it, but I never sent it. We were invited to a meeting in France, I guess, of the Soto Shu European leadership. But the piece of paper said, if you wear a rakusu like this, you can't come.

[34:47]

You have to have a ring on the rakusu. And if you don't have those white tabi for your shoes don't come. I mean, they're just nuts. They're just nuts. Because they are requiring Soto-shu in America to be continued like Soto-shu in Japan, which is one reason Suki Rishi left Japan, because it was so institutionalized and dead. I know some of these people and they're quite nice people, but they... They don't know how to get out of the rules of how Japanese view of how Zen has to be transmitted.

[36:02]

So when I was received transmission from Suzuki Roshi. He said, you're supposed to finish transmission by going to Japan and be king of a heiji for a day. And he said, I hope you never, I know you never want to do this, he said. So please go to the White House and wave your whisk at the president, he said. But it's very easy to get into an institutional trap and continue the formalities as a social institution and not a realisational institution.

[37:03]

So the danger is we'll continue in a dead way, or not at all, or maybe we just have to, as I said, trust and love and see what happens. Also die Gefahr ist, dass wir als soziale Institution weitermachen oder vielleicht gar nicht. What was the second part? And see what happens. Oh, yeah. Und schauen, was passiert. Trust and love. Oh, yeah. And, yeah. Trust and love. And see what happens. Und schauen, was passiert. Yeah. Okay, so anybody else want to speak about what we might look into? Imagine Sekiroshi just appeared and he said, you have one question, what would it be?

[38:21]

The fourth point of the four marks. Oh. Well, the third point is, of course, dissolution. And that just happens because everything is changing. But the fourth is disappearance, which means you yourself disappear. Wipe the slate clean. Aber der vierte ist verschwinden, was bedeutet, dass ihr selbst die Tafel reinwischt. You russer the tabla. Also ihr wischt die Tafel leer. Because you yourself are a participant in starting anew. Weil ihr selbst daran teilnehmt, eine neue zu beginnen. Ja. and to find new ones. I'm interested in your attitude, as you wrote yesterday, that Suzuki Roshi... Unfortunately, I can't understand anything.

[39:46]

I'm interested in this attitude or from which inner being Suzuki Oshii has bonded with the tea bowl she takes on herself or this feeling before going into contact with where it comes from. I'm interested in the attitude or the way of being that you described yesterday, like Suzugi Roshi is turning to the teabowl and taking it into its body space and so on, out of which attitude does it come? The important, for us, for practitioners, the important point is to notice that these small differences are

[41:00]

reflections of a different kind of world than we usually live in. And if you, for example, if you're living, if we as practitioners notice this kind of activity, and we can use the orioke meals as our own experiment, So if you're doing things with two hands, when you pass something, we pass the cards down and things like that. At some point, if you...

[42:02]

If we're doing it, we're not talking during the meal and things. At some point, you actually feel you're in a shared liquid field. And the Oryoki, the bowls themselves and how you use them, feel like they're part of you in a way that changes you as you use them. So we could even say that the third and fourth mark are happening of the four marks when you pick your... I mean, there's a reason why the... first bull in the monk's version or the practitioner's version has no base.

[43:36]

Because it's a metaphor for the Buddha's skull. So you actually don't, it's just, you actually kind of live that metaphor, and you always, when you enter that bowl, you bow, and when you leave that bowl, you bow, but from the third and second bowl, you don't bow in between. And if we're actually not in our thinking and, you know, this or that, but actually each of us in the law of a group of 10 or 20 or 30 people are feeling This could be, this is Buddhist skull.

[44:56]

Also, when we are not thinking around, but Yeah, then there's a kind of attunement, like when we chant and everybody feels they're in the same range. So you feel a kind of obligation to this larger sense of practice. if a significant percentage of those of us who are having the oryoki doing the eating orioki through the orioki together, you actually feel, yeah, this could be the Buddha's skull.

[46:12]

And when you eat from it you feel your spine and the spoon in a relationship to the food in the skull. If several of the people feel that, there's going to be a palpable feeling of, well, I mean, really what you're talking about is the Buddha as a hyper-object. Because we actually have this skull, and most of the skulls of our Dharma ancestors are gone, disintegrated. Yeah, but the Buddha did have a skull. Yeah, he was a person who could die.

[47:26]

And so you feel that in the bowl in your hand. And you're eating with not on a table. You're eating from your hand with the Buddha's skull in between. You're eating from your hand with your hand, but the Buddha's skull is in your hand. in between you and your hand. So I mean, these things are actually meant to be enacted. Like this.

[48:31]

Not just, oh yes, sometimes called a skull. And my whole hand, by doing this, is... I don't know, kind of full of vibrations. Yeah, it has a different kind of existence than usual. But then you notice... Why don't you enact this? Because I'm actually more interested in what I'm going to do next. I'm actually more interested in whether this person likes me or doesn't like me. Now, when I was in the zendo this morning, before I went upstairs to do doksan, I could actually feel the host mind in the zendo.

[49:38]

The host mind being the mind which doesn't invite thoughts to tea. But this practice is about deeply realizing that host mind as your body. So when you're then, if you're willing to believe in lay practice, in the ariyoki practice, you can bring yourself into host mind And you can just enact anything. You can feel the Buddha's skull in your hand, and you're not thinking about who you are, etc. So, Tsukuyoshi clearly in those early days waited until he'd gotten people the feel of host mind sufficiently that he could teach us.

[50:56]

I remember he called me to his room one day. He said, I've seen you've taken care of finding some way to support yourself. I had a job at the university. I made $319 a month before taxes. But I have managed. And he said, I see you've taken care of coming here every day and taken care of being married and have a little baby. Sally, who's now in Japan with... So he said, now that you've taken care of your life and you're able to come here regularly, I can start to teach you.

[52:07]

So he clearly was waiting for people to demonstrate that their host mind was their priority, an actual lived priority. Er hat darauf gewartet, dass Leute ihm zeigen, dass der Gastgebergeist eine wirklich gelebte Priorität ist. It's a nice ideal. Es ist ein schönes Ideal. Someone else or shall we pretend to have a break? I think it's time to pretend we're having a break. Thank you for translating. I wish I could just lift up now and sail up the stairs.

[53:39]

I'd like to not change my position. It feels so good.

[53:42]

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