stop that god so much english my german is so much better but i do it in english i'm born in northern germany People actually don't know about that part. It's north of Hamburg, and it's just 50 kilometers wide. It's a half island, and just 110 kilometers long. So it's really a little part in the very north. Its border is to Denmark. And there's nothing, just agriculture. And there I'm born. And it's very flat and very stormy. It's between two oceans. It's between the Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. So a lot of wind and rain. And Sonja once asked me whether I knew very early that I want to become a priest. And then I thought about it later. Yes, I was eight. And then I knew I wanted to become a priest. It's a Protestant area. The whole north of Germany is almost all Protestant.

[01:09]

And, you know, we had religion at school one or two hours a week. And the teacher pointed out that there's a program for kids at the church. And I liked the stories they told us during the lessons, religion lessons. I liked the stories. And so I asked my mother whether I could go to church. And yeah, she supported that. I have two brothers and sisters, and there are three older ones and one younger. One sister is younger. I didn't really grow up in a spiritual way because Protestant, it actually doesn't mean anything. It's, my father wasn't, no, I mean, in Germany, I mean, everybody is Protestant and nobody goes to church. It doesn't, I mean, it's like nothing. I don't know how to explain it. Yeah, that's the way it doesn't mean anything. And so my brothers and sisters didn't really like it and didn't understand because they had to give me a ride or walk me to church, right?

[02:18]

Because I insisted for the eight years that I wanted to go there. So I liked the cookies and the stories. And we got little pictures, you know, with, yeah. So they got my senses. And... Yeah, and I stayed with that. My father was an atheist, but he was a giant for me too, but in another way, not about religion. And my mother had just this naive but supporting way of praying with us at night, sitting at our bed and doing these little prayers, and it felt very comforting. I don't want to make it smaller than it was, so I felt very comforted. and safe, and later I noticed that it's very important to have, you know, so I, yeah. I thank them very much for that feeling that I had when I grew up, that I felt taken care of and supported and safe.

[03:18]

When I was 12, I had that teacher in religion and French, and I liked her very much. So I liked religion and French. And she was the wife of our priest, and she got me into religion. work at church, you know, doing social work and homework with kids and writing leaflets about Africa and fair trade. And so all my teen years were actually, you would call it activism and it was in a lot of areas like work at church then in my clique the boys were usually two or three years older so they had read Marx you know other socialist and communist writers and so I read them and So we were all communists and we wanted justice and food for everybody. And I was not so much an ideologist, but I wanted justice. So I thought it was right to be communist and socialist.

[04:22]

And There were still some results, like we found at the health food store in my little town. It still exists, yeah. And newspapers and later the Green Party, that still exists. And we don't know for how long, but it's still there. And the first free radio station. So we did, you know, a lot of political work, organizing all these demonstrations against atomic power and getting beaten up and, yeah. Not me. I mean, that's another part that I had the feeling that I was safe and, how did I say, taken care of, that in my life I had the feeling that I got away with a lot and that I owe other people a lot. Like when we went to Brockdorf, you know, and people around me got beaten up. It was like the policeman came, pushed me aside to beat up my friends. It was as if I was invisible, you know.

[05:25]

I was never harmed all my life. I always got away with stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think that I would tell this, but I once wrote a leaflet, a political one, and another guy went to prison for that. But I didn't know at that time because it wasn't in the newspaper, so I didn't know that actually somebody paid for something I did. So I had the feeling that I got away with a lot of stuff and that I owe people, that I owe my parents and I owe friends and colleagues. I had one colleague, for example. And from 17 to 18, I spent one year in Marin County, Redwood High. I know, close to Green Gulch, but I didn't go to Green Gulch then. It was more getting into drugs and, you know. It's important, too. So... When I went back to Germany, I didn't fit in anymore.

[06:28]

That year affected me that much. I did go back to school. Actually, I would have had another one and a half years. And I just went half a year, and then I couldn't fit in anymore. It was so tight. I didn't make it, and I knew, no, I don't need that. So I started working and decided to travel, making money and travel. And I dropped out of school. I was 18, so my parents couldn't do anything. When I came back from that traveling, yeah, it was around 20. On my 20s, there was a whole shift from activism, from political activism to art. Because I went to drama school for three years and started acting and dancing. You won't believe it, tap dancing. So really... objective way of addressing the full range of our emotional and psychological life.

[07:32]

relating to them. Oh, gosh, all my secrets. And, yeah, I went to a drama school, but somehow, I mean, I liked it and I enjoyed it, but somehow I had the feeling that's not it yet. And then I heard... The directing school in Vienna, and actually I wanted to go to Frankfurt. There was a dance theater school, and I wanted, you know, with Pina Bausch, with Mike Noherny and Susanne Dinkel, and I thought I would apply for that. And I said, oh, I could go to Vienna, you know, on my way down to Italy. And I take the test, and then I know what they ask me in Frankfurt. So it was like a run through, a try, how to, yeah. and i went to vienna and took that test and they took me they accepted me for directing and i didn't plan it but the moment it happened and it was i was accepted i knew i had to do it i mean it was it's a it's the most famous school in german for german theater it's in vienna it's

[08:41]

I knew it's chance. I didn't know where it would lead to because I had just, I didn't plan it. So I had my boyfriend in Germany and my family and my flat and everything. So I went back from Vienna to Kiel, gave everything up in two days and moved to Vienna. And two days later the school started. And that I did for four years. I started directing and directed and got more and more into art. And that was a big shift, you know, from the Protestant agriculture north and political to a Catholic... a country like Austria, for you it might be the same, because in both countries they speak German, but it is quite a stretch. It's more conservative in one way, and the men would kiss your hand. I had to get used to that. Not all of them, but it could happen. So you always have to be prepared, you know, clean nails.

[09:45]

God, it was so embarrassing. Oh, gosh. Yeah, and, you know, the professors and people, they wanted that you, you know, call their title, not their name, but their title. I had to get used to that. And it was the first time I was away from my home, I mean, except Marin County, but even there I had that family... And in Vienna, suddenly all my support system was gone. No car, you know, and everything was new. And that was pretty... And no money. That was very hard. But I went to school from the morning to night, so there wasn't even time to get jobs and make some money. So my parents supported me until I was 28, you know, until I finished school. So my twenties were all in theater. And in my thirties, I mean, it was always the seeking for, I mean, I was a Christian mystic, and I had, of course, all the Catholic friends in Austria, and they were into religion, and it's very religious in Austria, and the religion is there in everyday life, you know, it's present all the time, it's...

[11:06]

Not like Northern Germany at all. And I liked it. It spoke to me. I think because I didn't grow up in a Catholic country, I had no resentment. So I could look at it more openly. So I got to know the Christian mystics. And finally I read a book by David Stein Rast about gratitude. And then I thought, yeah, there are Christians who have another way and who can express it in our language of today. Yeah, that's it. Then I heard that he founded a place not far from where I live in Salzburg, a little monastery. And I got a program, and then I read the explanation over New Year's, and I thought I'd check that out, and I did. Again, I thought he would be there, right? Because he founded the place. So I thought I would go to a Christian contemplation over New Year's, and it was a Buddhist New Year's machine, but I didn't know.

[12:09]

Because, well, in the program it said, like, Soji and Kinhin, and I had no idea, right? So... So I went, and it was led by Paul Disko, who was a, or still is, can I say? Yeah, he is a Zen center priest. He had built the Zendo and was... Yeah, he was around. So, he was... He was the co-founder of the David Stein Rast. They called it an economical center for Christians and Buddhists, actually for all religions. Everybody who wants it again. Not economical. Although it is. It is. It is, as much as we are. Yeah, and I sat down, everything looked really strange and black, but just like now.

[13:11]

But it had something, and I sat down, and I really felt something in my life. I crossed my legs, and I still have that feeling. I sit down, cross my legs, and I was so excited, also like now. You know, my heart was going like that all the time. And I was just so grateful. And I didn't know what to do because I'd never read anything, didn't know anything about meditation. So I was thinking and singing in my mind, you know, because I had no idea what to do. And I thought, yeah, I thought it was about doing right. Now we know better. And it took me about 12 years. Yeah, it was just great. And I stayed. It was supposed to be four days. I stayed two weeks. And I think I never left. During the next decade, I went as much as I could. And it was... Yeah, my thirties were between half a year. Half a year, I did Veda, I made money.

[14:15]

And the other half of the year, I went to retreats, sessions, different places. I came here in 96. Quite naturally... to Tassajara for, I think it was even then, three-week work period in September. More than now. And then I went to Gringotts for two practice periods, in 96, 97, with Norman Fisher, then January with Reb. No, they led it together. And I knew I would come back. It was in the rising of some So in the 30s, yeah, there was a lot of theater, and all my interest and ideas about spirituality went into theater. That was my means somehow. We made plays about stories from the Bible, about the book of living and dying, about communication between men and women, about... Yona and Jonah and the whale, about... And also very, again, a lot of social work, like we found in the clinic doctors, you know, the clowns, the actors who go to hospitals, and we found it in the meniscus theater in Vienna.

[15:30]

I worked with young people, drug addicts, and we made train spotting, you know, we did train spotting. Contrast. Yeah, so I had the feeling that it all came together. all my interests and love, because I really liked working with people and doing theater and creating things. And still, I had the feeling at one point, now I want to shift, even half-half, you know, half theater in the year and half of the year in retreats. I want to do this, what we do now, 100%. At one time, I... Sometimes it's described as impulses. Yeah, I had the feeling I had to do it. I want to do it, I have to do it. And the term in Sanskrit includes all of those. Yeah, it was in 2002 I got ordained by Vanya. Ruben Chino had died.

[16:34]

Ruben Chino, though she was Vanya's teacher, usually they did ordinations together, but he had died one month. He came over for the summer retreats and for my ordination, and then a month he died in Switzerland before he could ordain me in August 2002. Pay attention to what's going on. And then as Sethbo said, the whole world itself, you start to take responsibility for subjecting to what's going on in your life. Yeah, at the beginning of 2002, I had lived another four months at Green Gorge to see whether I really wanted to apply for the priest training. And though I knew already I wanted to, but I thought no. Look how it is in other formats. Going to Green Gulch was fine, and I took a year and came back. In August I was ordained, and then I finished all my theater work until October. Then I moved to Green Gulch in October 2002. Yeah, and since then I'm sort of around.

[17:34]

Um... And this is the grind of the first aggregate, the physical world, the here and now of existence. Well, things came up to my mind immediately. One was joy, which I don't know where it comes from, and the other is trust. which I know a little bit where it comes from. What I mentioned before, like, from my parents, it started very early. I know that everybody is that. And I was very impressed by my father, too. I mean, he was not, you know, we were working class, and he was not as famous, but it was... In his way, he was so... I know that I was impressed by the things he said, and the older I become, I thought, oh, wow, they were so zen. Actually, everything was there.

[18:36]

Why didn't I see that before? You know, it's amazing. So I remember when I was 12 or something, I had already a social consciousness, so I know it was about 12. My mother would argue with him because he used to give away once in a while all his money, you know. They would get their payment every two weeks. And he drank, too. I mean, I don't have to hide. But he gave money to everybody who knocked at our door, you know. And the people knew. So... So there were still some homeless, you know, like lost people from the war. Yeah, still in the late 60s, early 70s. And, you know, they were lost. They still thought it is war. So they had still all pegs and everything. There's some turning away or turning to a life. It's given rise to...

[19:39]

My mother, of course, you know, opens the door and gives me the money. And my mother would say, how can you do that? You know, we are really seven, eight people. I mean, five kids, the two of them, and my grandmother, father's mother, lived with us. So we were really a lot of people. And always all my friends at our house meeting. So we were a lot of people. And he gave that money away. And she said, how can you do that? We really don't have anything. We never have anything. We don't have anything. And he said, start. We have everything we need and even more. And I stood there, you know, and thought, that sounds good. I can relate to that if it's... Yeah, I felt somehow in my heart, he's right. And that was my feeling inside. We had everything, you know. And one idea is that by being that fundamental with our spirit, it gives a taste. It sends itself. And it starts to loosen it up. I was a super president.

[20:48]

The purple studied nowhere in the midst of all that. Trust, yeah. So in my parents, trust in people. I lived all my life actually in communities, you know. And in a sense, spaces have a similar primacy to them. I mean, theater work was for me working with people in a team. So trust in people was always very supporting for me. And then the trust in my inner voice, sometimes the call was so strong that I just knew. I leave Germany and go to Vienna and I leave Vienna or... It was so strong that I actually didn't have to decide. It was decided already. So following that voice and trusting that voice, you know... Trusting that voice I got around a lot of trouble, you know. I was never involved in accidents or things like that because I always got hints before what I should do and I followed. And now it's the teaching, a phrase or a word or one situation with you guys.

[21:56]

There's so much teaching and it's so inspiring. Yeah, and I have trust in that. So I do have a lot of trust, because once I said, oh, now I know that I can sit and I don't have to do anything, you know, after 12 years. And he said, didn't you have trust before? I said, no. So I did have a lot of trust in people and everything, but not that I, you know, I didn't trust that it was enough that we sit and relax and try to be in awareness, you know. So now I can have trust in that, too. And, yeah, and now my life is a bit quiet, but I want to do that 100% too, you know, and thus my body and mind deeply more apparent.

[22:40]

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