Amen. I think I already know one mistake I will make tonight. I say too much and I speak too much. So please forgive me and Have patience with me. A disclaimer. This is a student's talk. Marginal remarks from a perpetual beginner. I do not understand Buddhist teachings. However, they have deeply touched my life. I'd like to speak about this touch, the overlap between Buddhism and my life.

[01:10]

And as it is a student's talk, I apologize beforehand, as you might not get any help from this. Last June, I gave away seeking my talk at City Center. I think I fulfilled the usual formula. I told my story as a straightforward linear narrative. I told my biographical facts. Today, I would like to speak about the same life in a different manner. I have asked myself, what might be helpful? How can I speak about myself in a way that will help my fellow practitioners? I would like to speak about marginal things, stuff that only finds its place on the fringes of our existence.

[02:24]

I'd like to explore the role of dreams and of the mysterious in life and in practice. I would like to speak about my life and not overlook the basically indeterminate nature of our existence. I strongly feel that these issues are often neglected in speaking about oneself. as they are not very respectable in a rationalistic and technological world. Personally, I also feel they are not so much spoken about in a practice that often equates awareness with a limited notion of rationalistic consciousness. Thinking about this talk,

[03:32]

Way-seeking mind has become a strange expression for me. We usually understand it as being about a mind, a self, seeking the way, seeking wisdom and compassion. But for this talk, I would like to suggest an understanding that might be a little unfamiliar, more mysterious. Listen to it. way seeking mind as the way seeking the mind as wisdom and compassion seeking us. Again, forgive me, before I say a few things about how the way has been trying to seek out this mind, I want to share a few thoughts that have guided me lately. actually three.

[04:33]

First, according to our teachers, we are always immersed in wondrous dharma. I would suggest we understand this term as an invitation to open up to a child's vision of the world, a wondrous world of inexhaustible mystery. I think It lies in the nature of mystery and it cannot be known. However, what we can do is we can become intimate with it. We can become intimate with our lives and the lives of others. And indeed, staying close, being open and observant, constantly letting go of what we think we know. The path of intimacy, the path of practice unfolds.

[05:40]

Second kind of thought. On occasion, when I'm in touch with the sense of the mysterious and look into my actions and the actions of others, and actually I mean any action, it seems clear to me that our deepest intention is to support each other. We want to support each other in living lives of kindness and harmony. I know that all too often it doesn't look that way. Often we see expressions of greed and anger and are hurt by them. However, When we look deeply into these expressions with a mind that is willing to let go of its preconceived ideas, the intention to create a light of harmony shines forth.

[06:47]

Of all people, Sigmund Freud helped me not to understand, but to taste this truth. He said, quote, Our deepest perversions cannot be separated from our highest aspirations to love. Our deepest perversions, any action that arises from a feeling of lack or enmity cannot be separated from our aspiration to deeply care for ourselves and others. One more I understand that we cannot know how to make a life of kindness and harmony happen. It's kind of important to me.

[07:48]

All too often in human history it was a belief in intrinsically good or bad activity that brought terrible hardships over beings, humans and others. And yet, I have deep faith that we can train ourselves in compassionate action. In the Book of Serenity, that's a Chinese Koan collection, very old stories, compassion is characterized as something that is like reaching out for a pillow in the dark. In other words, it's direct responsiveness, spontaneous and unique. I feel like a dream at night.

[08:51]

It rises out of the vastness, I would say, the dark matter of awareness. cannot be premeditated. It is meditation. So when do things actually begin? Only a few weeks ago, my own idea is about when the thought of wanting to be helpful, when way-seeking mind arose in my life, was creatively challenged. Last year, and some of you might remember this, I went through a very painful and sad love relationship. The person I wanted to be with suddenly felt any major conflict that I remember stopped communicating and seeing me.

[09:53]

I felt abandoned. Suddenly, the deepest moments of my pain I had three verbal memories of the first six weeks of my life. So I was, one could say, prematurely born in Wiesbaden, Germany, roughly half a century ago. To this day, I wonder whether I left my mother's womb early because I was too curious about life. Or because I imagined that this move would be an easy exit from a painful existence. We are complex beings, so maybe it was a mix of both. I spent the first six weeks of my life in an incubator, so time without human touch, without being held

[11:04]

are being talked to. Last spring, in this painful breakup, I had memories of this time, sensual memories, glaring, aggressive, white surgical light, the smell of cold steel, and very directly and painfully, the sense of being trapped in a box. I went to see a wonderful woman, a somatic experiencing practitioner who specialized in working with pre- and post-natal trauma. Not too long ago, I think it was our seventh meeting, she suddenly said, I think this little one, and she meant me, took care of all the other little ones in the room. Now, When she said this, I felt physically hit.

[12:07]

It was a match point for her. Later I felt her remark was a skillful means to open me up to the unfamiliar, the mysteriousness of life. She set a beginning before any memory of beginning. This helped me to think that all the premature babies in that room had the same intention. That afternoon, when I went away from our meeting, I thought of Dogen's words. Buddhas often do not know that they are Buddhas, and yet they go on actualizing Buddhas. Compassion is like reaching for a pillow in the dark.

[13:09]

How mysterious, how deep life is. Can you perhaps feel it in your own body and mind? I grew up in a working class German family. My grandmother, mom, dad, myself. To put it simply, I felt out of place. It was a life deeply scarred by the post-war inheritance of fascism. I was met with deep fears of self-expression, distorted, semi-conscious views on rightful gender expression. Life steered the impulses of greed, to forget years of hunger for food, sex, and physical safety.

[14:15]

I would say it was a life that was not in touch with its spiritual lack. My strategy as a boy was to dream myself away. I devoured books on exotic cultures. In my neighborhood, I went on expeditions as an amateur archaeologist who at the age of 10 made his most exciting discovery, a Napoleonic coin from 1812, unearthed on the dirty banks of the river Rhine. I congratulated kings and queens to their birthdays. and I was in ecstasy when their secretaries actually wrote back. I basically looked for a second exit after the first one had proved to be disappointed.

[15:18]

I feel a second chance for this opened up in a big way when I was 16. There was a Dharma gate so big that to this day I do not know whether I experienced just another premature birth or if at this point I was initiated into the way of our practice. However, I can say this. I encountered beauty. I was initiated into a dream. It was very simple. For the first time in my life, I visited a theater performance. Now, please, allow me to meander again in this dream narrative and mention that in Buddhist rhetoric, our life is often compared to a dream, a mirage, mere reflection.

[16:37]

The Dogen scholar Hee Jin Kim writes, wrong quote, the word dream connotes the evanescent and short-lived nature of life and reality. It is a metaphor for the non-substantiality and emptiness of things. In official Buddhist discourse, it represents the illusory and irrational versus the reality of awakened mind. But Dogen brings the peripheral, obscure, and dubious to the center of our awareness by giving them fundamental salivic significance. Dogen teaches the identity of dream and awakening. And then he quotes Dogen, dream and awakening are originally one. With Dogen, I would say, that evening when I was 16 and watched The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play, I entered a vision of expressing a dream within a dream, which has more or less guided me to this day.

[18:03]

For me, this was a major turning point. Please allow me to dwell on this experience for a moment and let me take a closer look. The Tempest is a meditation on discovery and plague, external discovery of the yet unknown lands and cultures beyond the English horizon, internal discovery of our deepest often hidden intentions. It's also an investigation into dream or play, play as in theater, but also as our most basic human activity, karma of body, speech, and mind. So at the impressionable age of 16,

[19:07]

I met another teenager on stage, Miranda, and her father, Prospero, a man old far beyond his age. It was as if I was looking into a mirror. Miranda, curious, seeing basic goodness in life, reflected my own still childlike sense of wonder and my wish for harmony and intimacy. Prosperal, world-weary, a man who had witnessed hate, greed, and delusion embodied those aspects in me that were far older than my age. He stood for a disenchantment with life, which I had felt as far as I can look back. I was in tears when Miranda, upon encountering human beings for the first time, says, oh wonder how many goodly creatures are there here, how beauteous mankind is, oh brave new world that has such people in it.

[20:37]

At the end of the play, Prospero has a final monologue. In the performance I saw, the entire set had been taken down. The empty stage began to rotate, and the actor said these words. Our revels now are ended. These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits. and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud caped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yeah, all which it inherit shall dissolve. And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.

[21:39]

We are such stuck as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a slip. The stage was bare, as if to underline Prospero's vision of the impermanence and insubstantiality of our existence. turned, just like the ever-changing turning wheel of samsara. That evening, something became conscious in me. Since then, I deeply feel my life has been revolving around harmonizing the experience of a dream-like existence that is nevertheless marked by very real suffering, with a wish to realize Miranda's vision of a world of beauty and harmony.

[22:48]

Now, decades later, I would say, if we look deeply into our lives, we find that they are elusive, bottomless, like a dream. a baseless fabric. And yet, it is exactly this vision that allows us to see and work for beauty and harmony. Miranda and Prospero are facets of the same reality. That evening, I literally decided to work in theater. I wanted to express such beauty and such pain. When I was 20, I started to work for the stage. When I was 23, I saw a dance company that met my aesthetic longings.

[23:53]

I had the good fortune to perform with it for the next 12 years. Other changes occurred in my life. I moved to a large city. Frankfurt, I met my first partner, Johannes. Life seemed to give me what I wanted. And then, one night, I had a dream. Entire months of my early twenties have vanished into the thin air of forgetfulness. But this dream stands out as if it was more real than most of my experiences. at that time. It was very brief. The Chinese goddess of the cooking arts appeared in my sleep. She introduced herself as goddess Zep. She didn't say much, only this.

[24:56]

When you cook and you completely concentrate on cooking, when you give your heart to it, She would have a happy life. At that time, I was totally oblivious to Buddhism or East Asian philosophies, but this dream shook me up. I was not only touched by her words, but by her presence, her composure. She embodied her teachings. Now, is it too ridiculous to say that Kuan Yin paid me a visit in my sleep? I don't know. However, I know this. I received my first Zen teachings. Last spring, when my heart was broken, I worked in the kitchen.

[25:58]

For a while, all I could do was to take refuge in chopping vegetables making soups, whipping salad dressings. And I can tell you, it worked. Every day, joyful mind rose. Kind mind appeared in the middle of an ocean of misery. I feel this was truly wondrous. I took the goddess's teaching to heart in my theater practice. Our little company grew, became known, and we performed more and more. Several summers we had the wonderful opportunity to perform in the large garden of a villa in Rome. One March, in a bitter cold winter, we were the first avant-garde company to perform in the Soviet Union since the 1930s.

[27:07]

Moscow was on the brink of collapse, but people were not only starved for bread, but also for culture. For me, this was a very joyful time in the middle of misery and big change. I traveled to New York to spend time with friends from La Mama Theater, and I spoke with the director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music about performing there. I mention all this because it was a time of blissful success. And yet, and yet, I became very aware that in the middle of all this, something was missing. With all these gifts, I was still not satisfied.

[28:14]

I don't remember when I became interested in Buddhism. However, I do remember that for a while I carried D.T. Suzuki's essays on Zen Buddhism around. One morning in Paris, after a performance the night before, I sat in a cafe and thought, There is some practice these Zen people do. I have to look for it. That afternoon, I flew back to Frankfurt. When I entered the subway station, I saw the ink drawing of a monk sitting in Zaza. It was a poster for a retreat that started two days later, 45 minutes away from my home. I called the next morning, and without ever having said, went into a nine-day sashim of Tetesimaru lineage.

[29:20]

Little did I know what I was getting into. That was in 1984. I was young, arrogant, and used to getting what I wanted. I could do lots of things with my body. But when I was simply asked to cross my legs and sit upright, I could not do it. I spent nine days literally trying to figure out how to sit. From the beginning, I was not just uncomfortable, I sat in deep physical pain. My mind was constantly racing. How can I make this work? How can I get out of this? Even today, I wonder why I did not leave.

[30:28]

How these painful beginnings turn into my life's practice. Thinking about this, looking back, I would say that right from the start, Zazen had begun to teach me. That I cannot do Zazen, but Zazen is doing me. Viscerally, in the middle of my aching body-mind, I was taught the Four Noble Truths. However, all this did not enter my consciousness directly. Reflecting upon this, I am reminded of Dogen's reassurance. When you first seek Dharma, you imagine that you're far away from its environment.

[31:32]

But Dharma is already correctly transmitted. You are immediately your original self. When I look back at 25 years of Zazen practice, I can see my intentions lined up over time like pearls on a string. At each point in my history with Zazen, I had an idea what Zazen was or what it was good for. This was myself seeking the way. My ideas changed, but zazen didn't change. This was the way seeking me. In other words, I spent years sitting zazen thinking that the true zazen would happen either now, soon, or never.

[32:42]

Just as I spent years of my life thinking that my true life was going to happen sometime in the future. However, right from the start, Zaza, life itself, is already correctly transmitted. In other words, this is it. It doesn't get any better. This young, arrogant dancer sought fulfillment to his spiritual longing. And he only did not run away from his first sashin. The thought crossed my mind many times, every day, because dharma is already correctly transmitted. Sincerely, this is the only answer I have. For 10 years, I practiced with my German Sangha, went to Sashin.

[33:52]

Over time, I established sitting practice and became enchanted with a way as we only can be with someone or something that we cannot understand. All this time, I continued to perform. We started to show our work in major festivals. But at the height of our career, I think in 1993, the whole thing fell apart overnight. It was a rude awakening from a beautiful dream. Painful awakening. I didn't know what to do. I had also done graduate studies in English literature. And as I didn't know what to do, I applied for a research scholarship for UC Berkeley.

[34:55]

And to my surprise, I received the grant. I came to San Francisco, and being interested in Zen Center, I visited on my second day. I was surprised by the differences within the unity of practice. Many people here practiced residentially, whereas the Deshimaru Sangha I was familiar with was a non-residential practice community. Zen Center offered classes, stressed study, while my German teacher, Tenryu Lutger Tenbroil, stressed Zaza, and some physical labor. It was all very interesting and confusing at the same time.

[35:57]

I signed up for a class with Michael, as far as I remember on Dogen's poetry, and after a presentation I gave, he said, you might want to meet Reb Anderson. His cautious words I feel now were like softly touching a ball that hit other balls until there was a stream that couldn't be stopped anymore. I read an essay by Reb and didn't understand a word. At that time, this didn't happen to me very often. Now it's happening more and more. I stopped my studies at Berkeley. and misappropriated German government funds for my first practice period at Green Gulch. In the Deshimao Sangha, we didn't practice Doksan.

[37:02]

And for the first time, I entered Reb's cave-like Doksan room at Green Gulch. Without warning, I was struck with a feeling of terror. I couldn't say anything. But when I finally opened my mouth, I was surprised by my own words. It feels like I met my executioner. Reb, after a long pause, replied, do you know what the word to execute means? I guess I simply shook my head. And then to my amazement, I saw him reach out for Webster's Dictionary. Time passed. And when he looked at me with a big smile, he said, isn't that interesting?

[38:11]

Originally it means to follow a way to its end. Do I dream this? Were these words really said? This meeting, for me, stands out in some timeless darkness, just like the nocturnal meeting with Goddess Tsur a decade earlier. Excuse me, but I find it's a mysterious expression. of the way, seeking the mind. I didn't leave San Francisco after my research year was over. I tried to weave together a lay life steeped in monastic practice. I met Jonathan, who also practiced the Zen Center. and we spent our life together for almost 10 years.

[39:17]

I'm very happy that we still have friends, and thanks for being here. I had to work. I started translating Buddhist books from English into German. Reb's first book, Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains was first. The Baker's dozen followed over the years. To translate was a wonderful way to be immersed in study. For some years, another student of RIBS, Fred Moroff, gave me work in his company, producing classical music CDs. The important thing about this job, I had three months of unpaid vacation. So for 10 years, I could do one practice period a year at either Greenwald or Tassajara.

[40:23]

In 2004, something in me deeply longed to return to Europe. I moved back to Frankfurt and translated a lot. Sometimes I jokingly say, this was my true monastic period. I shut the phone off in the morning and for eight, nine hours concentrated on translating Dharma. I met Reb regularly during his retreats in Europe. In 2005, during a retreat at Felsentor in Switzerland, On the last evening of Sushin, I was asked into Doksa. I never made it into the Doksan room, but while sitting in the waiting area, something in me deeply, deeply, opened up to the suffering in us humans.

[41:30]

I cried and cried, not about anything in particular, I just cried. The next morning, when I finally saw Red, I said, last night, waiting outside might have been my most important doxa. He replied, yes, I saw the tears on your sleeves when I walked by. Then I said, would you be so kind as a Zen priest? Rep smiled and said, yes. Right then, we heard the bell that ended the last period of Zazen for the Sashin. We got up for the closing ceremony, packed, and friends and I drove Rep to the airport.

[42:35]

That was actually the extent of our conversation about ordination. A year later, with an almost finished okesa, I returned to Gringos and spent exactly 365 days there. I had a very round experience. I arrived in the beginning of January. My ordination was to be in August. Work was hard, but I took it on. I often felt very lonely at Gringottsch. However, I did not think that this would stop me from ordaining. And I think it didn't. I had a deep wish to practice Zazen. But that summer, a hush yet persistent voice appeared in my mind.

[43:42]

You are not a priest. Red made me his deepest gift ever. He left me profoundly alone. By this I mean he was always there, but he didn't try to figure anything out with me. Steve Our then newly installed co-abbot said, listen to all the different voices in you and receive them as a friend. Good advice, which allowed me to go deeper. August Hashim came up. I thought I would ordain and took the doubt I felt as a natural response. We even had our first rehearsal for the ceremony. For the first two days of Sashin, I sat in a concert of disparate voices.

[44:51]

Then conceptual thinking slowed down. On the third day, I felt entrapped in something that I would describe as a leaden armor that closed around me, a deep heavy, metallic feeling pressing down on my body-mind. It was very painful. On the fourth day, I said to Reb, I would like to step out of Sushi and go up into the hills. As always, he was very supportive. It was a bright, clear day. Up in the hills around Gringosch, I sat down and simply looked at the vastness of the ocean. More and more I came to peace. The ocean taught me the vastness and depth, the kindness and equanimity of our own mind.

[46:05]

The following night I had this dream. I lay in a small prison cell, completely naked. A guard entered and sailed. It's the night of your execution. And by the way, you will be quartered. I didn't feel much. I felt ready to surrender. I lay on my side and looked down on my naked, frail body. Then a little kitten appeared from near the solar plexus. Her warm, tender fur touched my skin. At the same moment, a voice very powerfully said, no. I immediately jumped up and out of a window that I had previously not seen.

[47:16]

Next thing, I found myself high up in the sky, falling toward the earth like a rock. I thought, instead of being quartered, do shadow to pieces. Immediately after this, There was another powerful no and a voice, just surrender into the arms of God. Right then, the speed with which I fell slowed down, and I landed softly on a green meadow. Please. Be free to substitute the word God in this dream narrative, words like goddess, reality, dependent core rising, emptiness, Buddha nature, or term of your own choice.

[48:23]

Right when the dream ended, the wake-up bell rang. It was the fifth day of Sashim, two days before the ordination. After Reb's lecture, I went forward and said, very joyfully, I say no to priest observation. For me, this no was a big yes to practice. Here I am. This was one of many possible stories about my life. If we look into our memory with a clear eye, we see that it's always changing.

[49:27]

Life unfolds like a current, like a stream. There is no fixed point. where we could stand and say, this is it. Both Buddhism and theater share the wisdom of life as a stream, as a dream. I know it can be scary to touch this deep dimension of our existence. But I would like to encourage all of you to do so. And also, although I didn't say much about Zazen, I would like to encourage us to practice it. Most of this talk comes from my Zazen mind. So this is my dream, that we come together and settle our lives in Zazen.

[50:34]

sitting in the immediate present, letting go of conceptual thinking. This prison cell in which we feel quartered, cut up, separate, unfulfilled, we surrender into the embrace of reality. Then reality itself teaches us and shows us basic kindness, intrinsic goodness and completeness of our own mind. I feel very grateful for your attention. Thank you. I'm curious, but maybe you would like to go to bed Would you like to express yourself?

[51:46]

Say something? Ask something? sorry to disappoint you. No. There's nothing that will explain this. And yet I can say I am very grateful that I went through this process of preordaining Also, kind of miraculous, it came to me at a certain point. It was really exactly 365 days, one round year, to deeply look into this, to open up to all the voices, all the contradictions, to painfully understand at a certain point, I will not be able to figure this out.

[53:03]

Voicing yes, voicing no, voicing maybe. I feel this strange karma. I say the deepest teaching for me was to just stay with what was happening and to open up more and more and more. And to my own surprise, the no-peer. I could say to really being true to myself.

[54:10]

follow my deep faith in Zaza. I wish you sweet dreams. For me, this was a very joyful time in the middle of misery. and big change. I traveled to New York to spend time with friends from La Marmar Theatre, and I spoke with the director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music about performing there. I mention all this because it was a time of blissful success. And yet, and yet, I became very aware that in the middle of all this, something was missing.

[55:27]

With all these gifts, I was still not satisfied. I don't remember when I became interested in Buddhism. However, I do remember that for a while I carried D.T. Suzuki's essays on Zen Buddhism around. One morning in Paris, after a performance the night before, I sat in a cafe and thought, there is some practice these Zen people do. I have to look for it. That afternoon, I flew back to Frankfurt. When I entered the subway station, I saw the ink drawing of a monk sitting in Zaza. It was a poster for a retreat that started two days later, 45 minutes away from my home.

[56:29]

I called the next morning, and without ever having said, went into a nine-day sesshin of the Deshimaru lineage. Little did I know what I was getting into. That was in 1984. I was young, arrogant, and used to getting what I wanted. I could do lots of things with my body. But when I was simply asked to cross my legs and sit upright, I could not do it. I spent nine days literally trying to figure out how to sit. From the beginning, I was not just uncomfortable. I sat in deep physical pain.

[57:33]

My mind was constantly racing. How can I make this work? How can I get out of this? Even today, I wonder why I did not leave, how these painful beginnings turned into my life's practice. Thinking about this, looking back, I would say that right from the start, Zazen had begun to teach me. I cannot do zazen, but zazen is doing me. Viscerally, in the middle of my aching body-mind, I was taught the Four Noble Truths. However, all this did not enter my consciousness directly.

[58:39]

Reflecting upon this, I am reminded of Dobin's reassurance When you first seek Dharma, you imagine that you're far away from its environs. But Dharma is already correctly transmitted. You are immediately your original self. When I look back at 25 years of Zazen practice, I can see my intentions lined up over time like pearls on a string. At each point in my history with Zazen, I had an idea what Zazen was or what it was good for. This was myself seeking the way. My ideas changed, but Zazen didn't change.

[59:47]

This was the way seeking me. In other words, I spent years sitting zazen thinking that the true zazen would happen either now, soon, or never. Just as I spent years of my life thinking that my true life was going to happen sometime in the future. However, right from the start, zazen life itself is already correctly transmitted. In other words, this is it. It doesn't get any better. This young, arrogant dancer sought a fulfillment to his spiritual longing. And he only did not run away from his first sashim. The thought crossed my mind many times, every day, because dharma is already correctly transmitted.

[60:58]

Sincerely, this is the only answer I have. For ten years, I practiced with my German sangha, went to Seshin. Over time, I established sitting practice and became enchanted with the way, as we only can be with someone or something that we cannot understand. By this time, I continued to perform. We started to show our work in major festivals. But at the height of our career, I think in 1993, the whole thing fell apart overnight. It was a rude awakening from a beautiful dream, painful awakening. I didn't know what to do.

[62:01]

I had also done graduate studies in English literature, and as I didn't know what to do, I applied for a research scholarship for UC Berkeley. and to my surprise, I received the grant. I came to San Francisco, and being interested in Zen Center, I visited on my second day. I was surprised by the differences within the unity of practice. Many people here practiced residentially, whereas the Deshimaru Sangha I was familiar with was a non-residential practice community. Zen Center offered classes, stressed study, while my German teacher, Tenryu Lutger Ten Broil, stressed Zase, and Samu, physical labor.

[63:12]

It was all very interesting and confusing. At the same time, I signed up for a class with Michael, as far as I remember, on Dogen's poetry. And after a presentation I gave, he said, you might want to meet Reb Anderson. His cautious words, I feel now, were like softly touching a ball that hit other balls. until there was a stream that couldn't be stopped anymore. I read an essay by Reb and didn't understand a word. At that time, this didn't happen to me very often. Now it's happening more and more. I stopped my studies at Berkeley and misappropriated German government funds for my first practice period at Gringosch.

[64:16]

In the Deshimaru Sangha, we didn't practice doksan. When for the first time I entered Reb's cave-like doksan room at Green Gulch, without warning, I was struck with a feeling of terror. I couldn't say anything. But when I finally opened my mouth, I was surprised by my own words. like I met my executioner. Reb, after a long pause, replied, Do you know what the word to execute means? I guess I simply shook my head. And then to my amazement, I saw him reach out for Webster's Dictionary. LAUGHTER Time passed.

[65:26]

And when he looked at me with a big smile, he said, isn't that interesting? Originally, it means to follow a way to its end. Did I dream this? Were these words really said? This meeting, for me, stands out in some timeless darkness. just like the nocturnal meeting with goddess Tsur a decade earlier. Excuse me, but I find it's a mysterious expression of the way, seeking the mind. I didn't leave San Francisco after my research year was over. I tried to weave together a lay life steeped in monastic practice. I met Jonathan, who also practiced at Zen Center.

[66:33]

And we spent our life together for almost 10 years. I'm very happy that we still have friends. And thanks for being here. I had to work. I started translating Buddhist books from English into German. Reb's first book, Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains, was first. The baker's dozen followed over the years. To translate was a wonderful way to be immersed in study. For some years, another student of Reb's Fred Moroff gave me work in his company, producing classical music CDs. The important thing about this job, I had three months of unpaid vacation.

[67:36]

So for ten years, I could do one practice period a year at either Green Gauch or Tassajara. In 2004, something in me deeply longed to return to Europe. I moved back to Frankfurt and translated a lot. Sometimes I jokingly say this was my true monastic period. I shut the phone off in the morning and for eight, nine hours concentrated on translating dharma. I met Reb regularly during his retreats in Europe. In 2005, during a retreat at Felsentor in Switzerland, on the last evening of Sesshin, I was asked into Doksan.

[68:38]

I never made it into the Doksan room, but while sitting in the waiting area, something in me deeply, deeply, opened up to the suffering in us humans. I cried and cried. Not about anything in particular. I just cried. The next morning, when I finally saw Red, I said, last night, waiting outside might have been my most important doxa. He replied, yes. I saw the tears on your sleeves when I walked by. Then I said, would you be so kind as a Zen priest? Rep smiled and said, yes.

[69:40]

Right then, we heard the bell that ended the last period of Zazen for the Sashin. We got up for the closing ceremony. packed, and friends and I drove Red to the airport. That was actually the extent of our conversation about orientation. A year later, with an almost finished Okesa, I returned to Gringach and spent exactly 365 days there. I had a very round experience. I arrived in the beginning of January. My ordination was to be in August. Work was hard, but I took it on. I often felt very lonely at Green Dutch. However, I did not think that this would stop me from ordaining.

[70:47]

And I think it didn't. I had a deep wish to practice zazen. But that summer, a hushed, yet persistent voice appeared in my mind. You are not a priest. Reb made me his deepest gift ever. He left me profoundly alone. By this I mean he was always there. but he didn't try to figure anything out with me. Steve, our then newly installed co-abbot, said, listen to all the different voices in you and receive them as a friend. Good advice, which allowed me to go deeper. August Sashim came up.

[71:50]

I thought I would ordain and took the doubt I felt as a natural response. We even had our first rehearsal for the ceremony. For the first two days of Sashin, I sat in a concert of disparate voices. Then conceptual thinking slowed down. On the third day, I felt entrapped in something that I would describe as a leaden armor that closed around me, a deep, heavy, metallic feeling pressing down on my body-mind. It was very painful. On the fourth day, I said to Rebbe, I would like to step out of Sashi and go up into the hills. As always,

[72:51]

He was very supportive. It was a bright, clear day. Up in the hills around Green Gauche, I sat down and simply looked at the vastness of the ocean. More and more I came to peace. The ocean taught me the vastness and depth kindness and equanimity of our own mind. The following night, I had this dream. I lay in a small prison cell, completely naked. A guard entered and said, this is the night of your execution. And by the way, You will be quartered.

[73:54]

I didn't feel much. I felt ready to surrender. I lay on my side and looked down on my naked, frail body. Then a little kitten appeared from near the solar plexus. Her warm, tender fur touched my skin. That same moment, a voice very powerfully said, no. I immediately jumped up and out of a window that I had previously not seen. Next thing, I found myself high up in the sky, falling toward the earth like a rock. I thought, instead of being quartered, who shattered to pieces.

[74:58]

Immediately after this, there was another powerful no, and a voice just surrendered into the arms of God. Right then, the speed with which I fell slowed down, and I landed softly on a green meadow. Be free to substitute the word God in this dream narrative of words like goddess, reality, pendant core rising, emptiness, Buddha nature, or a term of your own choice. Right when the dream ended, the wake-up bell rang. It was the fifth day of Sashin, two days before the ordination. After Reb's lecture, I went forward and said, very joyfully, I say no to priest ordination.

[76:09]

For me, this no was a big yes to practice. your end. This was one of many possible stories about my life. If we look into our memory with a clear eye, we see that it's always changing. Life unfolds like a current, like a stream. There is no fixed point. where we could stand and say, this is it. Both Buddhism and theater share the wisdom of life as a stream, as a dream.

[77:13]

I know it can be scary to touch this deep dimension of our existence. But I would like to encourage all of you to do so. And also, although I didn't say much about Zazen, I would like to encourage us to practice it. Most of this talk comes from my Zazen mind. So this is my dream, that we come together and settle our lives in Zazen. sitting in the immediate present, letting go of conceptual thinking, this prison cell in which we feel quartered, cut up, separate, unfulfilled, resurrendered into the embrace of reality.

[78:20]

Then reality itself teaches us and shows us basic kindness, intrinsic goodness and completeness of our own mind. I feel very grateful for your attention. Thank you. I'm curious, but maybe you would like to go to bed whoever would like to go to bed. Would you like to express yourself, say something, ask something? I'm sorry to disappoint you.

[79:36]

No. There's nothing that will explain this. And yet I can say I am very grateful that I went through this process of preordaining Also, I find it miraculous. It came to me at a certain point. It was really exactly 365 days, one round year, to deeply look into this, to open up to all the voices, all the contradictions, to painfully understand at a certain point. I will not be able to figure this out. A voice saying yes, a voice saying no, a voice saying maybe. I feel this strange karma. I say the deepest teaching for me was to just stay with what was happening and to open up more and more and more.

[80:51]

And to my own surprise, the no appears. I could say to really being true to myself. follow my deep faith in Zazen. So, I wish you sweet rooms.

[82:00]

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