to be standing by us at the end of the year, and with room, you can also bring forward my switch and talk about it. Thank you.

[14:50]

Thank you. Thank you. And we will be able to welcome you. Crestone, and elsewhere, attending with Dr. Richard Baker, who will be speaking here on Saturday as well.

[15:56]

And so Nicole is the abbot of the international nonprofit organization Verna Sangha, and it's two beautiful Zen centers. If you have a chance to check them out, please do so. Crestone Mountain Zen Center. That's in Colorado, Crestone, Colorado. And also the Zen Buddhist Center in the Black Forest in Germany, Johanneshof. And so, as I said, Nicole is a Dharma successor of Tantali Richard Baker. And started practicing in 2001 and received Dharma Transmission in 2017. Also is a graduate as a psychologist from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, and also trained at the School for Body-Mind Centering. So it's been a joy I've gotten to know and recall over the last number of years through our connection with Richard and other events, and it's been a delight to have you here and continue this warm connection.

[16:59]

And thank you so much for your turn on this evening. Oh, wait, I'm being broadcasted in the loudspeaker? Oh, wow. Welcome. Hello. Good evening, everyone. And thank you, Abbott. David Tenzen. I want to say, first of all, You just said a warm connection. Yes, totally. I'm deeply, deeply grateful and appreciative for how friendly, just extremely wonderfully friendly, you know, not that, not some kind of spiritual persona type friendliness, but real genuine friendliness, Beka Roshi and I.

[18:03]

have been receiving here. And it's really been a wonderful time to have the opportunity to practice with you and be in the presence of this amazing place. You've already learned so much. Thank you. And for tonight, by the way, I do need to figure this out. The way I speak now, you can hear me okay? Okay. I'm not used to speak with loudspeakers, but that's good. Okay. Yeah. I thought for this time we have together tonight, mostly I just wanted to hang out and continue a Dharma conversation, which you're talked and which maybe hopefully some of you were part of Abbott David's talk on Saturday.

[19:09]

There are a number of points from that talk that actually have been working in me and which I think are highly relevant and helpful for just for the lack of a better, broad term for our world today, whatever that is exactly, but our world today and what to do. And I'm not going to comment really on the koan that Abbot David discussed very insightfully. That was very helpful to me. But more bring out certain points that are particularly alive in my practice right now. And so this koan, for those of you who haven't been in Saturday's talk, the core two lines in that koan are, this is Master Dijang and Master, I always don't pronounce that right, Shushan.

[20:17]

Shushan are in the fields and Shushan asks, let's just assume a sincere question. We don't know exactly because there's a lot of relational stuff going on between the two, but let's assume he's asking a sincere question and he asks what to do about the world. And again, I do think, at least for me, that's a relevant question, what to do about the world. How do we know what to do? And then Dijang likes so often Zen teachers in their frustrating manner. They never really tell us what to do. I don't know if you've had that experience. I surely have. What to do? Please tell me what to do. And they're just not going to say what to do. So Dijang, in a similar manner, says, what do you call the world?

[21:25]

So he asks a question back into the process. Of course, implying, though, if you want to know what to do, you have to know what you're calling the world. If you want to know what to do, you have to get a perspective onto the views that your actions may be arising from. Your actions will be an expression. of your views. And not just views in the sense of, you know, opinions or complex conclusions we've drawn, but here he points even more deeply what you call the world. He goes at the level of naming, just pure naming, naming the world. What are the names in which the world appears to you.

[22:28]

So Dijang is, again, Dijang is bringing this kind of question into Shushan's process of asking how to act, what to do. And I do think that's going to be my statement for, well, one of the at least opening statements for tonight, I do think that that is an utterly relevant addition, that question, what do you call the world, to our societal conversations today. I do believe that no matter what we look at with regard to societal transformations, and there are many kinds of transformations that are needed for various different kinds of reasons, not just, you know, We know, but ecological catastrophe, do we call it?

[23:32]

Do we call it climate warming? That's a different kind of name. That sounds like, oh, nice, there's going to be avocado in my garden. Or do we call it climate catastrophe? Ecological catastrophe. Makes a difference, what we call it. or be it systemic injustice, oppression, all kinds of, you know, or the global issues we're dealing with, no matter, I think those of us living in, at least many of those of us engaged in contemplative practices in Western societies, Europe or the US, many of us are, I would think, engaged with a sincere, questioning of our views. And the world's favorite genius, Albert Einstein, I think one of his, besides the theory of relativity and other great things that he came up with, one of the really useful things he said is, the thinking that created the problem can't solve it.

[24:48]

So the thinking that Sometimes that's also translated as the mind in which the problem is a problem, in which the problem was created, from which the problem was created, is not going to be the same kind of mind that can solve the problem. So from my point of view, that's where wisdom practices, wisdom practices come in in an utterly relevant way. I do think the kind of societal transformations that we are going to need will require a wisdom component, a wisdom practice component. That's my view. That's the position I am taking. I think we have a lot of other components. We have a lot of intelligence. We have a lot of technology. We have, I don't know, whatever else we have.

[25:50]

resources of various kinds, but from my point of view, again, the position I'm taking, one of the missing elements is wisdom. Then, of course, though, if I'm going to say that, I feel like I should define what I mean with wisdom in this particular case. And, of course, I'm a Zen practitioner, so... what I mean with wisdom, I was always very grateful to the Buddhist teachings that, you know, even though teachers don't tell us, me at least, never exactly what to do, but teachers have, Beka Roshi specifically, has told me very early on and never made a big secret out of it what to look for or... how to view things. Like, wisdom views aren't a big secret in Buddhism.

[26:54]

We know what they are. And basically, they're pretty simple. Wisdom views, the core views that I want to point to today. Wow. That's normal for here, right? Like that would be an instance of it. The world isn't predictable. You know, it's like, of course, we know in emergency situations, geez, I didn't expect that. But so one of the core wisdom view in practice is everything changes. Everything changes. Everything changes. We say in Greek philosophy,

[27:56]

The only constant is change, right? Now, from a Buddhist point of view, that's not even true. Change isn't even a constant. Change changes too. Change changes how change changes. It's highly dynamic. It's so dynamic. There is no ground. Change changes. Everything changes. And everything changes together. us sitting here is changing together. Everything changes together. These are, I would say, the core wisdom views of Buddhism. They're pretty easy to understand and not always so easy to embody and act from them what to do about the world. What does that mean? How do we derive our actions?

[28:58]

once these views have become really clear. Well, I should add in a third kind of consequence out of the first two, which is very impactful, though, of course, you know, with the first change and permanence, the second interdependence, everything changes together. And then the third, which again is a kind of like, that is part of the same equation is, if that's so, then nothing has an inherent self. Not even you. Nothing has an inherent self. We're all changing together continuously, bringing each other's experience forth, co-arising. So if these are wisdom views, and that we can maybe explore a little bit at least tonight, How would that lead to? What kind of actions would that lead to?

[30:00]

And how would it lead to what kinds of actions? What could be the process? What could be the craft? Of course, again, that's why I emphasize not so much just Buddhist philosophy, but Buddhist practice craft or wisdom practice craft is to, once views are known, We can examine them. We can think about, are they really true? And we would want to, as practitioners also, we would want to really look into, is this true? In the case of change or interdependence, yeah, that's both true, but also we can say it's sometimes, you know, like when I go outside, then that big tree, was there yesterday, and I expect it to also be there tomorrow.

[31:02]

So that didn't change, did it? Well, if I look closely, yes, the tree actually changed. But there's also permanence. Otherwise, I'm from Germany, and just recently, to many people's surprise, our train system just turned into a complete mayhem. you look like you've taken a German train. And once predictability wasn't available for German train customers anymore, it really wasn't, it was a big surprise and a big problem. So yeah, normally we expect predictability because it oftentimes works. It's kind of, but then we're surprised when it's not as we expected, when it's not predictable. Would you agree? Are you surprised? Like, oh, I expected that to still be that way.

[32:03]

But that means that you're inhabiting, that we are inhabiting, a view of permanence. If change is the surprise, then that notion, that experience, the surprise itself, the experience of being surprised, then that is a symptom of inhabiting permanence or of living a view of permanence. And now Buddhism isn't saying that permanence isn't true. It's relatively true. I love that about Buddhism, how it has several truths. It's relatively true. It's just not fundamentally true. And that's the wisdom choice. We could turn it upside down, but Buddhism says, yeah, do that, but then you're not living wisely. It's better to expect and to live in impermanence and be happy and appreciative of when things do work out the way you expect it to.

[33:08]

But, you know, like that. Then it's not surprise and disappointment. No, it's appreciation and gratitude when something does work out. If we're inhabiting change and impermanence as a truth, a more fundamental truth. So again, we can examine, and we should, of course, as practitioners, we always want to examine our actual experience, right? Not just our thinking, but notice the symptoms in how our experience is put together. So we could look in a similar... way into the experience of interdependence, and what is that really? You know, when do you feel, start putting on that lens of, when do I feel that another being, not always even a human being, but just something other, is part of me?

[34:17]

When do I feel that I am part of something other. How does that work? And is it really other and me? What are the layers here? So for me, what has become such a fruitful process, which then made me decide, as Abbott David introduced, I studied psychology, and I had to at some point decide whether to... pursue the path of practice or Zen practice or whether to move on in academic psychology. And what kept me in practice was very, very clearly the process of trying out views and then exploring them and then living questions. I loved the idea of living questions. In academic psychology, everything seemed to always be about definitions and answers, and I just loved the idea of living the questions.

[35:25]

So I ended up here rather than at the university. But yeah, anyway, so wisdom views. Yeah, so I guess what I'm Suggesting here, as part of practicing with this koan that was brought up on Saturday, or as part of the questions, whether even independent from the koan, when I ask what to do about the world, to first very deeply again look at what are the views that my actions are an expression of, what is the, you know, like I may have an impulse to do this or that, to, oh, it can be anything, but we did just yesterday in a restaurant, for instance, have a very difficult conversation with another customer who, it felt a little bit like that person was trying to pick a fight

[36:43]

And that's such a situation. It's interesting. We didn't do anything but just leave the restaurant and we were happy with the food. And it seemed like this person didn't want us to be happy with the food. I still don't quite understand, but he was very unhappy that we were happy with the food. There was a real tension there. And... So those are the kinds of situations when interactions have, in this particular case, have forms of aggression in them. What to do? What to do? Should I show him his place? Should I try to be nice? Should I just walk away? Should I... There's so many options. So whatever comes up, I've been thinking about that... over the evening, what should I have done?

[37:45]

I didn't do much. So I was wondering, what should I have done? What would I have felt better with? And I can see, though, how all the different alternatives, just walking away, is an expression of a particular view of this person, of what's worthwhile, of what makes sense to do, of what's important, or engaging with this person as another kind of is an expression of another kind of view. As practitioners, I would say, to look for views, which the views of impermanence and interdependence are such views that open up inner space rather than closing the experience that's there. Do you know that difference?

[38:46]

That's, I think, a really important difference. We can hold views that open us into an experience and even a phenomenon that almost like we can hold a certain openness, openness in view that inquires, that calls forth, what's going on here? What is this really? Rather than close it off, put a label on it and you know, park it into one of our inner drawers or categories. So what are the views and how do the views function such that they call force the world, such that they allow for the world to speak to us, even to sing to us? As Baker Roshi oftentimes quotes Suzuki Roshi, He asked this question, when is a tree a tree? And when is a tree a poem?

[39:49]

So, again, if we, what is it that Zen practice and contemplative practice, with the intention to inhabit wisdom views, what is it that that can specifically bring into our world today? Well, I would say, for one thing, trying out these very particular views and inhabiting how can they open the world, how can they call forth the world, how can our eyes be such that they see more and not less, that the world is coming forward into our senses, into our eyes, our ears. When is it a poem? not necessarily a nice poem, but something that speaks to us, not always at all, not always at all in a rational way or in a conceptual way, but so much more often just, you know, the way maybe music does, in resonances, dissonances, feelings, non-graspable feelings.

[41:07]

in bodily ways of knowing. I do think that is, for instance, one of the, like Einstein says, you know, what is the thinking, what is the mindset that is creating certain problems? It is a particular kind of epistemology, a particular kind of idea that the world exists in the categories of subject, verb, and object. It's like the DNA of, it's not even Subject, verb, and object is the DNA of our language. That is present in any languaged view we hold in English or in German, for instance, as well. But that's a view. Does the world really exist as subjects, verbs, and objects? No, it doesn't. It exists in so many other ways that aren't captured by that structure. So what are the views that allow our experience to open into a world that may defy any structure that just wildly unfolds?

[42:25]

What is that like, and how do we learn it? I think the good news is that we can learn it quite simply as we do. in how the practice of still seated meditation is conceived and then practiced by all of us. Just this one square meter of where the time and how we sit and everything depends on what kind of meditation instruction you've gotten. But I've gotten a very detailed one about the precision of how exactly everything has to be, which hand lies in which hand, with what kind of pressure the thumbs are touching. Like, very detailed. So there's a lot of structure in the bodily posture. There's a lot of structure in the schedule. The bell is ringing at exactly 30 minutes and not 31.

[43:29]

And even if you feel like sitting another three minutes, nope, that's it. So it's clear structure. But within... that define time and space of that one square meter, and those 30 minutes, there is no structure. Nobody tells us what to do. It's the permission to release all the structures, all the names, all the grammars, all the architectures of our thinking. Release that maybe into gravity, into vastness, into unstructured time and space. And I think if we can learn, at least that's my experience, to stay with that process and to learn the unfolding of releasing everything literally into

[44:36]

unstructured time and space, and trusting that it, unstructured time and space, which is as vast as the stars, boundless, that it will be there and hold and carry. So, yeah, maybe from, I guess, just the to be sensitive to may sometimes be a tender or gentle, tiny little feeling, sometimes like a light or just a tingling that can arise in that unstructured, vast time and space and be like the seed or the beginning of a different way being in this world that is constantly changing together.

[45:42]

Okay. I think that's all I have to say for tonight. Where's our Ino, Sama? Do we have time for questions? Yes, actually. Yeah, we have some time for questions. Comments? Our comments, yes. If you have a question or comment for Nicole, please raise your hand and I'll bring you the mic. Good evening. Good evening. Hi there. My question was about the restaurants. So I don't understand... Was the guy the surfer? No, it was another customer. It was a customer? Yeah. So he wanted to bring you down on your good mood? Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's a shame.

[46:49]

I know. Thank you. Yeah, it was interesting, though. I mean, it was like this person's... Basically, and that's where it becomes like in other situations... his experience was different from ours. And he just had a different experience. He didn't like it, we liked it. And he somehow couldn't quite tolerate that we had a different experience. So he simply accused us of lying. And no, we just liked it. It was very different to negotiate that because, you know, that's such a big point here. What if... Like, so much of Buddhist practice, it really begins when we realize our perception of the world is not the objective world. It's just views precede perceptions. So it's our subjective experience, our experience.

[47:51]

So yeah, that makes it difficult, doesn't it? Yeah, thank you. German train rider. Oh, you come from England. England, the German trains have a particular reputation. I understand. English trains do too, though. At least we have trains. space beyond language. How do you experience the space between the languages? What you might say in German and what you are saying in English and where that opens up.

[48:56]

Thank you. Thank you. That is very interesting. I can just tell you a very short anecdote. I recently had the task of saying... But I speak spontaneously, right? I don't usually speak from a script. But my task was to give the same message, just a three-minute message, once in German and once in English, right? And just to work from feeling. So I did German first. And then every time, I mean, we just gave up after 10 times, every time the English would be radically different than the German. It's just a completely, it unfolded differently. And so it's interesting that language is a medium. That would be my short answer to your point. I do experience language as a medium, and I feel that feelings unfold differently depending on which medium it is.

[50:01]

Actually, I feel like I'm a different person in English than in German. So I couldn't give... the same talk in German, Norway. Thank you so much for your talk. I really appreciated so many turning words. I feel like I'm spinning. I really appreciate, I just want to express my gratitude for what you were saying about language as well. As someone who's slightly on the spectrum, I'm very literal and I rely on language a lot in terms of how I perceive and function in the world. And that image you created of when we're sitting Zazen, how we can just let our language and the structures with which we see the world fall away was just fantastic because I've often thought about letting my views of the world fall away, of course, but of course our views are so informed by our language. Yes. I'm bilingual too, and I speak Italian, and the Italians are much more like... They use their hands a lot.

[51:09]

But that was also very true, and I trained at a place called Fudenji in northern Italy for quite a number of years, and I learned there as well that Zazen, or learning Buddhism in a different language, really affected the way in which I was learning. And I remember my teacher over there for a while saying... ah, language is not your friend. Don't worry about the language. Like, get to the underneath, get to the core, you know? And I really feel that you brought that forth tonight, so thank you so much. Well, thank you, yeah. Thank you. Question online? Yes, when you... talked about the thinking that created the problem is not the thinking that can solve the problem. One of the, something that keeps going through my mind is that according to Buddhism, everyone has Buddha nature.

[52:23]

Right? Yeah. That's a view. Exactly. Yes. And so, therefore, Trump has Buddha nature. He's a sentient being, technically speaking, we think. He is a sentient being. I mean, is there some way that Buddhism can interact with this phenomenon of this... human being that is radically different and could shake things up or... I don't know. I mean, that keeps on coming through my mind. Yeah. And you're, if I understand correctly, though, primarily asking about your, I don't know, I'm just going to call it attitudinal relationship to a person like that.

[53:27]

No, I'm talking about that person. Oh, I see. I'm talking about the world now. The world now and that person. And is there something radical that Buddhism can contribute to? Yeah, my view is... Let's see, I have three minutes to answer that really big, important question. Thank you for asking it. I try to make this super concise. My view right now, and that's only from this local perspective, right? I mean, other people may have a lot more, a lot broader way of what they can do. What I think I or a lot of Buddhist practitioners right now can do And that's not just specific about Trump, but I'm looking more at the really harmful phenomenon of populism. I think the two aspects that wisdom teachings and compassion teachings are bringing in, they should, from my point of view, not actually... They are just human view, just human basics.

[54:41]

The idea of wisdom and compassion. They shouldn't be... in any particular political party, ideally, in an ideal world, and that's not our world right now, in an ideal world, to say we're going to have a real commitment to facts. How we call facts, that's a different question. Even a language, as I just pointed out, is going to have different names for facts, but there are facts. And to deny that there are facts... and instead to just make up narratives that serve a particular self-serving purpose, that is harmful. And that should be independent of any political party. To do that is harmful action. So I think one of the hopes that I have for why I say I do think wisdom has a big voice, something to say here, is that at least I can only say for the European conversation, which I'm a little more cued into, is I don't think...

[55:42]

it's articulated enough yet, how it should be a basic human value and how it works to stay related to a commitment with facts. It's a little bit, I see it in Europe, sometimes at least almost instrumental, but if it works to lie, if that gives you more votes or something, then as if that's acceptable. So I do hope for traditions of wisdom and compassion to, and there's a lot more to say about the compassion part here, but to just articulate really clearly what the basic premises of these human values are and to call them in, to hold people accountable when these basic values, because they are destroying our world when we think we can just, they're destroying us. We keep externalizing what is being destroyed here, but it's our own. suffering we're creating.

[56:44]

So that's the main thing, I think, for our wisdom tradition, to voice that very clearly, vehemently in all kinds of different conversations and point out the harmful consequences of when we lose touch with, like in Buddhism, we would say suchness, how things actually are, independent of what they are called. There is something there. There is something that's clear and that can be said. and so forth. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Nicole. Yeah. Thank you. If they share it with you a man or [...] a man

[58:08]

To ask why we are not going to be mistaken, he is stronger down to bless us. I have no doubt to be able to walk around us as we went to do it. We believe that we are not going to be able to do this because we are supposed to be somewhere so. I have no doubt to be able to walk around us specifically from the midst. Thank you all for coming.

[61:11]

A couple people could stay behind and help put the moving politics together. I'm the chair. If you're putting on a chair, oops, I have to be back to pull back. Dining room. And the Zafus go on these racks over here to our left. Thank you.

[61:30]

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