Well, I find what I'm doing these days, I'm teaching a lot less in general. Is I'm kind of re-saying what I said before. or reformulating what I've said before. Can you hear both of us okay? Yeah, and also finding when I speak about, which I'm often doing, the basics I've been working with now for 50 years or more, I'm finding steps or aspects within the basic

[01:01]

practices that now I feel it's good to bring out. And most of you know I'm always speaking about two things, which is the relationship between sustained practice together and independent lay practice. And the second one, please. I mean, these are the ingredients of my life here and in Crestone, Colorado. Okay.

[02:24]

And... Whatever I'm concerned with, it's always rooted in how can we make a practice which sustains itself over generations. Of course I'm interested in your practice. The intimacy of your practice. And again, I try to lead a life and be present in a way that I find an intimacy with your practice.

[03:25]

And somehow that is simultaneously for me an intimacy with those with whom you will practice in other circumstances and in the future. gleichzeitig eine Vertrautheit mit denen, mit denen ihr praktizieren werdet in anderen Umständen oder in der Zukunft. So there's three interrelated... ways and phases or aspects in which the teaching is, the practice and teachings are transmitted. And one of course is developing, passing on, evolving the teachings themselves, the practices themselves.

[05:04]

And the second is creating, developing a sangha which can pass the teachings on and continue itself. Und das zweite ist, eine Sangha zu entwickeln, die die Lehren weitertragen kann und sich selbst entwickeln kann. Und das dritte sind die institutionellen und die materiellen oder physischen Zusammenhänge in denen sich die Praxis entwickeln kann. So wie dieser Raum oder dieses Gebäude. Oder mein, dass ich das hier trage. Oder eine ganz bestimmte Art und Weise mit anderen gegenwärtig oder präsent zu sein. So that's the larger context.

[06:22]

And I find myself, as I said, really looking again at what I've been doing for half a century. Okay. Oh my goodness. All the way from Berlin. The helicopter landed right out. There seems to be a seat for you right there. For example, let me look at something very simple with you.

[07:48]

One of the rules of being in the Zendo, or being here in this room even, is that you don't look around. Now, in the seminar room, it's okay to look around. But in Zendo, we don't look around. It's one of the really basic rules, like don't move, don't scratch, you know, things like that. And it seems rather... These things, don't scratch, etc., seem rather... kind of obvious and not so important. But if you really develop the habit in the Zendo, during Zazen and before and service, etc., of not looking around,

[08:57]

I think you'll find the way to do that in a kind of natural way. You don't... think the location of the room, but you feel the location of the room. Nämlich indem du den Ort, den Ort, dessen du nicht denkst, sondern spürst. Yeah. Yeah. And feeling the location of the room arises from feeling your own, feeling the location you are in the room.

[10:19]

Now I don't know in English if I say to feel your location is rather different than feeling the location you are in the room. You are the location but not exactly own the location. In a way you make it your own by Feeling the location of the room as the feeling the room as location.

[11:24]

Du machst dir diesen Ort sozusagen zu eigen, indem du den Raum als einen Ort spürst. Now these seem like very small distinctions. Und das klingt nach sehr kleinen Unterschieden. And I'm using language to make them. And our meditation experience ideally is not languaged. So you can see, maybe this is for those who are new to the way I talk about these things, It may seem rather, yeah, rather nuanced, and then it has to be passed through German. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay.

[12:39]

But if you do in the immersion, I mean, a practice at a center like this is a kind of immersion in a field of proximity of others. But the practice at a center, in a center like this, is a kind of release, of giving in, in ein Feld der Nähe mit anderen. Simple proximity, not comparative thinking or anything, just proximity, near each other. Einfach Nähe, nicht die Art von Vergleichen oder comparing all. Without comparisons. Also ohne Vergleiche, sondern einfach Nähe. So you live in a field of nearness... of nearness but not comparison. And that all can simply and profoundly arise from not looking around in the zenith.

[13:44]

And all of this can very easily and at the same time in a profound way arise from not looking around in the broadcast. You get used to just feeling the room, not caring what's going on in the room, because what you feel is enough. You get used to just feeling the room and not caring what's going on in the room, because just feeling the room is enough. If someone faints, which occasionally happens, falls down, you don't even notice it unless you're right next to him and it can help. Okay, so now we have this name for this seminar, Change, Changes, Changing, or whatever.

[14:56]

We could have a lot of versions of that. Now, I don't think right now I can give you much feeling for change, changing, changing. But maybe by Sunday morning we might have gotten somewhere. Okay. Okay, I've always said, you know, Buddhism is basically a teaching about change. And teaching about change then includes that things are interdependent. So the word change is just a way of saying everything is interdependent.

[16:08]

Things change in relationship to each other. Yeah, okay. So this is a kind of, what I'm doing right now, is a kind of review of basic Buddhism. Yeah, and I'm hopefully talking to your experience and not your heads or intellect. Because this practice is to immerse yourself in the experience of change.

[17:09]

Okay, to... to... Maybe first to immerse yourself in the recognition of changing. And recognition is to recognize, to re-notice. And... Erkennen bedeutet, etwas noch einmal zu bemerken. That sound all right, what you said?

[18:10]

Okay. Because we think everything changes. I mean, it's easy to understand that's the case. What we think things change in contrast to things not changing. And of course that's relatively so. And of course that's relatively so. But in fact, we shouldn't even need the word change because there's nothing that doesn't change. And we think, and most cultures assume, there are some things which don't change. Und wir denken und die meisten Kulturen gehen davon aus, dass es einige Dinge gibt, die sich nicht verändern.

[19:27]

There's God somehow which doesn't change. Es gibt irgendwie Gott und der verändert sich nicht. Or there's space which doesn't change. Oder es gibt Raum, der sich nicht verändert. Well, time changes, but it changes, you know, in some kind of orderly way. Und die Zeit verändert sich, aber sie verändert sich auf eine geordnete Weise. But none of this is true. Aber davon stimmt nichts. There's no universals. There's no universal earth. We can see it's changing a lot these days. It's summer outside. Not quite today, but you know. And we're constantly making the space we're in. I know it's hard to imagine it, but there's no space there before we make it.

[20:27]

Before we made it, the trees made it, or the farmers who lived here before made it, or there was a volcano, or an ice age. Before we made this room, the trees outside made it, or the farmers who were here before, or the glaciers in the ice age made it. What's important right now is to feel yourself in the midst of this space changing. Yeah, changing by our being here together. And in this proximity which itself will evolve. And I'm trying to stir the pot a little bit with some words.

[21:34]

Okay. So we could say, I can say, there's only changing. Also wir könnten sagen, ich könnte sagen, es gibt nur Veränderung. Also brauchen wir das Wort noch nicht mal. Aber die Dinge verändern sich relativ zueinander auf unterschiedliche Arten und Weisen. The other day I was doing a meet with people in northern Colorado, twice a year usually at a Chautauqua Center.

[22:44]

You don't need to know what that is, but anyway, it's outside of Boulder, Colorado. Yeah, and we had a seminar we called Weaving Our Personal Narrative. And somewhere toward the end of the seminar I asked everyone, What made you decide to continue practicing? What made you decide to practice and what made you decide to continue practicing? Almost everyone said, I felt like I was coming home.

[23:49]

Yeah, they weren't at home, they were at the Chautauqua Center, and when they had that experience of feeling they were coming home. They were, I don't know where they were when they were, but it wasn't probably where they grew up. So listening to them and continuing conversation, it was that they were coming home to some feeling of aliveness. I would say they felt that they were both discovering a feeling

[24:59]

a feeling of aliveness or beingness. And also simultaneously recovering a feeling of aliveness. Now this is, to the extent this is true, and I think it's often the case, this is very precious. What is this thing we're calling practice? Yeah, sitting, usually trying to sit still. And what is stillness in the midst of changing?

[26:26]

So you're trying to sit still. We could say there's various contexts in which you might feel this recovery of aliveness. And you can explore this yourself. I don't have to find words for all the potential experiences. What has brought you to deciding to look into practice or to practicing? And what has kept you practicing? Und was ist der Grund dafür, dass du mit der Praxis weitermachst?

[27:41]

And say it is something like feeling refreshed or at ease or something new in some new way. Und sagen wir mal, das ist so etwas wie, dass du dich erfrischt fühlst oder so ein Wohlgefühl oder eine Leichtigkeit spürst. And something maybe old that you missed. Yeah. And why would, why would, whatever the practice was, or whatever we call practice, let's just say it's something like sitting still. The effort to sit still and do nothing else but sit still makes us feel what it is to be, to be, to be alive. Warum gibt uns dieses stille Sitzen oder die Bemühung, still zu sitzen, so ein Gefühl davon, was es bedeutet zu sein oder lebendig zu sein?

[29:10]

Stillness is a way to observe oneself. Stille ist ein Weg, sich selbst zu beobachten. Now, you know, we have this Socratic dictum, know thyself. Es gibt dieses sokratische Diktum, erkenne oder kenne dich selbst. And we don't say know yourself or know myself, we say thy. In English we say that. Ja, da gibt es jetzt diese Unterbreitung, dass man nicht sagt dich selbst, sondern eben thyself. it makes it sound more... Maybe it's a little theology there, or spirituality, thy self. Spirituality. Well, I mean, I suppose in Zen we might say... sit still in order to know thy inner experience sit still in order to directly know

[30:35]

the inner experience we sometimes call ourselves. And I think it's important the way I just said that, just by chance, the inner experience we sometimes call ourselves. Because when you too much call it yourself, then you're suddenly involved with how you think of others and how your culture thinks of you and so forth. How can we open ourselves to our experience, whatever it is, and whatever it might be, without restraint?

[31:58]

But of course, in our culture, particularly in the West, there's an inner fear. There might be some uncontrollable dark side or... you know, the death wish, you know, what's going on. You better be careful. So how can you have confidence just to be open to whatever your experience actually is, fearlessly? Wie kannst du dieses Zutrauen finden, einfach offen zu sein für das, was deine Erfahrung tatsächlich ist, egal was sie ist? Teil davon ist, dieses Zutrauen und eine Art Furchtlosigkeit zu entwickeln.

[33:17]

And that fearlessness can't just be mental. Mental fearlessness is not very powerful. It's called stupidity or abandonment. Oh dear. Being abandoned. So the physical posture in which you don't move and know you won't becomes the root of fearlessness. So it comes back to, again, very simple things. We sit 30 minutes or 40 minutes or 50 minutes.

[34:28]

Rinzai tends to sit the other school, main school of Zen, tends to sit 30 minutes. Im Rinzai, in der anderen Zen-Schule, da wird normalerweise 30 Minuten gesessen. Soto-shu, which is more our school, tends to sit 40 minutes and sometimes 50. Und in der Soto-shu, und das ist eher unsere Schule, da wird entweder 40 und manchmal sogar 50 Minuten gesessen. But whether you like it or not, you sit the 40, let's say 40, the 40 minutes. And you don't sort of say, oh, today I feel really great. I guess I'll sit 62 minutes.

[35:29]

Of course, that's okay. There's no Buddhist police hiding in the curtains. You sat 62 minutes. 20 euro fine. Sit 62 minutes if you want. But the rule is, if we're going to sit 40 minutes, you sit 40, not 41 and not 39. It seems ridiculous. But it develops fearlessness. You know if it's going to be 40 minutes, you can do it. And you know when the period ends, you can get up.

[36:43]

So there's many aspects of this simple act of sitting in stillness, not looking around the zendo, etc., which are actually very ordinary things, which are catalytic, transformative, alchemical, shamanic magic. Yeah, don't forget that. So that's a good place to stop, right? But I hope I can get some of these nuances in their power across. With her help, of course. Thank you very much.

[37:44]

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