I had no intention to speak implicitly and explicitly about transmission. I suppose it's inseparable from the title of the seminar with the title which I didn't know. Yeah, but still somehow, I'm just giving examples of what I was talking about. My, or this, God, that's a great flower. I mean, Buddha, that's a great flower over there. Wow, what is it?

[01:02]

In English? A lily? Half lily. Half lily. Oh no, that's the posture that I used to sit in. The half lily. He's been practicing with me too long to remember these things. This is almost a tree lily. It's great, okay. So exemplifying what I've been speaking about. I didn't have any intention at all, mind conscious intention to speak about transmission. Also ich hatte überhaupt keine bewusste geistige Absicht, über Übertragung zu sprechen. And not only did I speak about transmission, pretty explicitly.

[02:09]

Und ich habe jetzt nicht nur ziemlich explizit über Übertragung gesprochen. And the multi-generational continuity of the practice is rooted in the transmission. Transmission, let's call it. And as I said, I didn't intend that. Even though it's circumstantially present. Obwohl das aus den Umständen heraus da ist. Yeah, but more than that, I don't know what, when I sat down with you in this many-eached, many-eached, many-faceted starting space.

[03:17]

Aber mehr noch, als ich mich mit euch hingesetzt habe in diesem... Yeah, there's a mutual... To give it a name, let's call it a mutual breath body. Which is invisible to consciousness. Though consciousness can notice its affects and effects. obwohl das Bewusstsein seine Auswirkungen und Einwirkungen kennen kann, aber der ist unsichtbar für das gewöhnliche Bewusstsein, und wird in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß miteinander geteilt, I have a beautiful porcelain statue of Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva of practice, the craft of practice, sitting on my desk in the Janasovar.

[04:43]

Ich habe eine wunderbare Statue von Samantha Badra, eine Porzellanstatue von Samantha Badra, dem Bodhisattva der verwirklichten Praxis auf meinem Schreibtisch im Johanneshof. Michael helped establish the transition of this statue to my desk. Thank you. Yeah. And it's this kind of glorified figure, female figure, really. Sitting on an elephant. Completely beautiful, charming elephant with a little smile. And she, Samantabhadra, is sitting... The statue is indicating that she's sitting in a fully realized samadhi.

[06:04]

And her eyes are closed. Or virtually closed. But the elephant, the charming elephant's eyes are open. And in Buddhist iconography, the elephant represents our animal nature awareness. And in the Buddhist iconography, the elephant represents our animal nature awareness, which never doesn't sleep. It's always present because consciousness When consciousness is absorbed in samadhi, the flow of the animal nature awareness flows up into the samatabhadra.

[07:11]

We talk in English, an English expression must be in German too, I suppose. When something is not recognized by a group of people, it's sometimes called the elephant in the room. Do you say that in German too? Yes. But right here, from this point of view of yogic practice, the elephant in the room is our animal nature, mutual animal nature awareness, which is oscillating and interrelated, but not available to consciousness. So when I came into the room, I was wonderfully surprised to see that someone was here and that it was you guys.

[08:37]

So all the way upstairs and then coming back down, I felt this animal nature awareness beginning to mutualize. And it seems that the message I got from this elephant in the room was talk about transmission. No, maybe none of what I've just said is true. But it's true to my experience. And it's true, and I can only speak about it metaphorically. But something made me talk about transmission. I had no intention to talk about it. So whether I'm right or not, I'm accepting it as what we should talk about.

[09:50]

Also, ob das jetzt stimmt oder nicht, akzeptiere ich einfach, dass es das ist, worüber wir sprechen sollten. Also, nachdem ihr mir ja das Thema gegeben habt, gibt es irgendjemanden, der etwas dazu sagen möchte, jetzt, wo ich da eine Weile drüber gesprochen habe? Yes, Christine. Although I like listening to you and feel taught, and I appreciate what you just said, I have a feeling that this is not why I came here, but more from a feeling and from an intention.

[11:07]

And that's something I feel now, and I think that that's also what brought me to practice. And what is it that you feel now? That this is something precious and that I want it to exist in the world. and that we can together discover it and develop it. And it is not dependent on being said, although it can... Not dependent on being what? On being said.

[12:08]

Said, okay. and one can't say it, it is still, it's just there, still. But if I hadn't said something way back there in Poland, you wouldn't be here right now with me, even if the unsaid is really what it's about. And the ancient, yet not decrepit, Wiener Bande has both got their hands on it. Okay, yes. For me, you could have said anything. I didn't understand anything. You didn't understand anything I just said?

[13:09]

In Poland. Oh, in Poland, you didn't understand. Lots of people have that problem in Poland, especially right now. It was the space we shared, it was the presence. Body to body. Okay, this I like. You could have said nothing. Well, I had to pretend to say something. The seminar, we're just going to sit here the rest of the next days now, and these guys are going to vibrate. Yes, Eric? Yes. If you remember back to this morning in Krakow, it happened in a strange circus tent.

[14:30]

I remember. They had to give me a coat. It was freezing cold. It was really cold and somewhere in the corners there were these camping stoves. And it was a really strange event. There was an American TV preacher. And a German Indian. and they took up a lot of space also time and you didn't say much at all all you said was I do Zazen

[15:32]

And if you would like to join me and sit with me. That was what you said. And Christine, Michael and myself, we did not come to see you. But we looked at each other and we thought, well, that's where we'll go. We want to see that. So from that point of view, I think it is not really necessary to say something. Well, you've lived through a lot of saying. The last couple decades or more. But just to notice that actually it's not necessary to say something. Okay. There was a point at which when I had to give a talk in Vienna quite a few years ago and someone who I was staying with raced to the lecture at high speed.

[17:14]

I mean literally driving in short streets, sometimes 100 kilometers an hour. This is not exaggeration. Sorry, get out of the car. I had no pedestrians who were killed. And went in and I looked at all these people who were there to hear me say something. And I realized I had nothing to say. I couldn't imagine why these people were here and why I was there and what use could I be Ich konnte mir nicht vorstellen, warum all diese Leute da sind und warum ich da sein sollte und was hier gemacht werden sollte.

[18:19]

So I sat there rather blocked. And finally something happened. But afterwards I got a little mad at the Veenabandha. I said, you guys are supposed to rescue me when I'm, you know, like I said, start asking questions, help. But now... Every time I'm in a situation where I wonder what to say, the Wiener Bande first. Christina puts up her hand. And I think, ah, they remembered what I said. I think she said, even if we don't want it.

[19:19]

Yeah, okay, thanks. Yeah, so someone else wants to say something. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. In India, the shadow pact, the energy transfer, is the only way to get further. My question is, in what way does Buddhism transfer to this energy transfer, or is it more a consciousness transfer? A comparative question. In India it's said that Shaktipat is an energetic transmission and it is said that this is the only way to proceed on the inner path.

[20:26]

And I wonder in Buddhism to what extent or is it also an energetic transmission or is it more like a transmission of mind or consciousness? Yeah, it's energetic. No. Yeah. But of course I wouldn't say mind in the usual way mind is thought about as separate from the body. One of the shifts I've been emphasizing recently is mind is inseparable from the body and body is inseparable from the mind. And when we say there's no mind without a body and no body without a mind.

[21:33]

No human body. Okay. So to say mind and body is a conceptual mistake. It's like, you know, we say, the example I've been using is, this is a hand that I can sometimes call mine. It also belongs to the generations of hands. Look, if I see a little rabbit in the thing, it has these little ears, right?

[22:38]

Those ears belong to that rabbit, but they also belong to generations of rabbits. That's how I know it's a rabbit. And this foot, which these feet, which belong to the generations of feet, are in the part of the bodily spectrum. If we say hand or say foot, they're different, but they're still part of the same body. And mind and mind, body, mind, we can make a distinction between mind and body, but it's in the same spectrum.

[23:41]

It's not mind and body. It's body, mind, and mind, body. And that is an energetic event which is transmitted. Okay, someone else? This phenomenon of transmission, isn't that also what happens between parents and children?

[24:47]

there is a practical difference. I mean, it's not this conscious education, but this unconscious, physical acceptance of cultural consciousness. Or is there a qualitative difference? And I don't mean the conscious education or raising of the child, but I mean the more unconscious acceptance or absorption of, let's say, the culture or something. Well, of course, there's lots of parallels. But... Well, we don't quite know. We can certainly call one a continuation or one a transmission and so forth.

[25:57]

But the word transmission in Buddhism is related to a shift from views to no views. So what I have three daughters, right? So what I'm transmitting to my daughters is a... And she's having transmitted to her by all things at once is her, our culture. But I'm trying to interfere with that to some extent. You know that there's a... I think it was Piaget who was so excited about studying children.

[27:26]

And I believe he was in Seattle, Washington at some point with some kind of place where he was giving a lecture or something. And he was staying with some family. If I remember the story right. And the child of this family was blind. Yeah, so the kid was playing and crawling. He was still an infant. And they put the baby to bed at some point, but the toys the kid had been playing with were here and there in the room. And when they brought the kid down in the morning, the kid started crawling around and crawled directly but blindly to the toy that he'd been playing with before.

[28:41]

And supposedly Piaget exclaimed, yay, object permanence. Okay, recognizing object permanence, things are where they are, you know. But a cruel parent who was pretending to be wise, Buddhist, Buddhistically wise. Every time the child crawled toward the object, you'd move it away and say, yay, object impermanent. But that would be kind of cruel to the blind child.

[29:44]

but something like that is transmission in Buddhism to interrupt your usual way of knowing let me use this opportunity to say something about this shift which I pointed out only very recently What's interesting about the shift? I know the shift, I know the experience of others with the shift, but there's the degree to which it's the shift and not the shift from to, I didn't really get it until recently. So it's not so much you have a shift from A to B. You might have a shift from the Western worldview to the yoga worldview.

[31:30]

Or you might have a shift from a depth of believing you're not okay to you are okay. But so it's not what you're shifting from to, it's the shift itself. Okay, now, what is the shift itself from and to? There's three ingredients. There's A and there's B. And there's the immeasurable between A and B. Now, I keep trying to find, again, metaphors to reach into this stuff.

[32:52]

And I told John yesterday, this friend of mine, talking to a woman physicist, I think, who said this one of those weird calculations which mean nothing but mean everything. And yesterday I spoke to a physicist friend of mine about a physicist who has made one of these strange calculations in which she calculates everything possible, which means both everything possible and nothing at all. Yes. This was relayed to me at a concert, listening to my middle daughter sing Xerxes in Handel's opera by the same name. And I had never heard her sing like this before, so I... had to be in California for a funeral, so I went to it.

[34:02]

I can see my daughter saying, Dad, I'm a living person, but it's a dead person that brought you to hear me sing. Yes, that's why I'm retiring, but you're doing it right. Okay, so this guy said to me that this woman said to him we're looking at a history here that in any one second of the human body dass in jeder Sekunde im menschlichen Körper mehr Dinge passieren, als all die Worte zusammen, die jemals in der menschlichen Geschichte geschrieben oder gesagt wurden. It must be true, but I'd like to see the calculation and the research.

[35:32]

Yeah, and the implementation. In any case, the power of this image is that everything we know as human beings... doesn't compare to a second of what's going on in the body. Okay, so sometimes when I'm in, very often when I'm in Crestone, I'm in communication with Nicole, who is director of the Anasol. And she says, did you read my email? I said, yeah, somewhere. I don't know where it is. I'll look for it.

[36:32]

And she'll say, well, I'll send it again. She's in Germany, which is nearer than Rostenberg. But she pushes the key and boop, it appears on my screen. I mean, it went through lots of servers and computers and, you know, boop, it's on my screen. So we don't have conscious access to the instantaneousness of our lived life. But it's a fact of our lived life. So what happens when you shift from one view to another view is you have an in-between instantaneity of no views.

[37:48]

And that no views, which you can be present for bodily, but not consciously, For an immeasurable but experienceable moment frees you from views. And that can free you from views the rest of your life. So the shift is really what's meant by transformative practice and transmission. And sometimes we experience it as an image.

[39:07]

I know a woman whose enlightenment experience was she was totally distressed she was completely upset she couldn't figure out what to do and in her mind she was in a bed I think she was actually in a bed And she knew she had to turn and she didn't know whether to turn to the left side of the bed or the right side of the bed, you know, etc. And suddenly, in her mind, the bed shifted 360 degrees, and she ended up in the same position, and she felt fine and has never had a problem since. She couldn't believe it.

[40:24]

She said, I felt it shift 360 degrees. I was in the same place, but I haven't suffered in the same way since at all. So this shift is in addition to the transmission of culture. Okay, someone else? From what I understand, transmission depends on interdependence.

[41:30]

Oh, okay. It's based on interdependence. But it's something like a special case. And now there's something difficult about it because it's a conscious activity. But that doesn't mean that consciousness plays a role in it. And it leads to wisdom. Okay. Except I don't think we can say, based on, or something like that, interdependence, But if we're not careful, that statement drifts into the view that there's such a thing as not interdependence.

[42:42]

There's only interdependence. There is nothing but interdependence. So then we have to talk about the various dynamics of interdependence. And what you're bringing up is the role of consciousness in this process. Mm-hmm. And consciousness does seem to be part of the dynamic. Usually. At least in teaching practice.

[43:55]

Though I know people who have been hit by a car that came up on the sidewalk have been enlightened by the experience. So let me give some more pondering to how the dynamic of consciousness is part of the realisational shift Okay. And yes, Regina? Yes. You've described before how you swim through space.

[45:05]

And by doing that, generating space. Yes. is then part of that shift that transmission is flowing back from this space, although whatever space that then would be. Yeah, why not? Yeah. You're creating a current which is flowing against you. It's interesting, the word insistence, the etymology of the word insistence means to come against a wall.

[46:09]

You come against something which pushes back. The etymology of the word insistence in English means that you Yes. What? Insistence. This has reminded me of a psychotherapeutic topic. Yes. That contradictions, if they are not resolved... that they create an ambivalence, but also a space that, or yeah, some leeway that elicits a new dynamic.

[47:17]

Yeah. Yeah, I think if you feel ambivalent about something, you want to study it immediately. You want to press up against it. Because really, maybe it's not ambivalence, it's multivalence. For instance, if you hesitate in a group to speak, You don't have the same hesitation when there's just one or two people. So then you notice, well, why do I have the hesitation in a larger group? Is it because it's more complex to speak to a larger group? Even though you might say the same thing.

[48:18]

Or is it because you feel measured by others in the larger group? If that's so, then the practitioner immediately says, there's no reason for me to feel measured by others. I want to get around that. And so then they'll start speaking when they feel measured. At that point, they'll speak to get over that blockage. And for a practitioner, if you notice that, then a practitioner would immediately think, okay, there is no reason at all that I have the feeling that I am being measured or evaluated by others when I speak. And a practitioner would then speak in exactly this moment. And then what is your idea?

[49:30]

Are you positively measured or negatively measured, et cetera? It's interesting to explore this. This is the craft of being alive. Okay, should we stop for lunch? Oh no, but Veena Bhanda has, you know, holds the floor. Yeah, I love her. impermanence and change. We've always dealt with this topic. But a little while ago, our dear friend Neil died, and it was so sudden. And that's also part of history.

[50:38]

And with Neil, and I'm sorry for those people who are not interested in this history. And with Neil, who I think has never been in Rastenberg, we've practiced for 13 years. And it's just an infinite story or history that we share with one another. When I heard that Neil had died, it was entirely not graspable, and that happens oftentimes, that one just can't grasp it. But in the time afterwards, I also had an experience that Neil starts, I feel Neil is becoming alive in me in a way that is also unfathomable.

[51:45]

And I've never really understood what this impermanence really is. And Neil has given me a real push in this regard. Well, you're describing impermanence. Niels and your own. You know, it's completely unacceptable to me that Niels died. And I don't really accept it. At the same time, I have to say, I completely accept he died. He's gone. You had him fill a prescription for me just before he died, trying to keep me alive.

[53:03]

And I was thinking, do we have a building we could name for him? The Neil McLean Zazen Room or something. or a doorway that says, I'll help all those who enter here. And that was what he was like. But he spoke to me quite often in the last three or four years of how he could continue his practice. and that he didn't think he could do it as a monk or a monastic. And it didn't make sense for him to move to Crestone. He still was working as a medical doctor. He talked about living in Crestone. So that was not a misspoke.

[54:34]

Okay, okay. And then he just recently got remarried, or fairly recently. Yeah, so anyway, we spoke, and he was exploring how he could move to and live near Johannesburg. And how he could practice as a person with an established lay life, with simultaneously a complete commitment to practice. So all I can do to honor him and to express my love for him To make it possible for all of us to continue practicing in the way he wanted to continue practicing.

[55:51]

Thank you for bringing up Neil to us. And what's interesting too is that, you know, this sangha wouldn't be here if I didn't come to Europe. And this sangha wouldn't be here if I hadn't met Sukhriyashi. But it's not me and the lineage which creates the Sangha. We are instrumental in creating an opportunity. But a Sangha is created when somebody decides to take it seriously and do it. So he came to the first two sushins I did in Maria Lach.

[57:01]

And he was this young, rather feisty doctor finding fault with things. Yes, but he decided to make this his life. And without him we'd have a different sangha. And he translated what was my main translator for many years. And he had a real feeling for the German language and literature and English literature as well. And he had a real feeling for the German language and for the literature, also for English literature. And there was a wonderful literary depth in his translations. So I bow to you honoring Neil MacLean. So let's have lunch. I hope I'm on schedule.

[58:20]

Am I early or late? Oh, well, you're the boss, so... Well, someone's... I hope someone here is the boss. Okay.

[58:33]

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