The shape of an ocean wave... ...is the shape of the wave returning to stillness. If you just think about that for a minute, you can see that the wave is... The whole shape of it is determined by its returning to stillness. That's just right. And a tree, again, thrashing in the wind, you can feel the rootedness of it. Rooted in stillness. Now, the tree and the ocean wave, in a sense, we could say they already know stillness.

[01:03]

Der Baum und die Meereswelle, ja, wir können auf eine Weise sagen, die kennen die stille Scheune. So it's easier. They know what they're returning to. Die wissen, wohin sie zurückkehren. One of the problems of us human beings, ein Problem von uns Menschen, we've been so involved with our active consciousness, We are so involved with our active consciousness and so identified with our active consciousness as if our consciousness and our thinking were virtually the whole of our world. We've lost touch with a deep knowing of stillness.

[02:28]

So, as most of you know, Zen practice, especially within the schools of Buddhism, emphasizes sitting meditation. And I would like to think that you don't have to sit. Because I would like all of you to be able to... Some of you are not going to start sitting every day. Ja, weil ich weiß, einige von euch werden nicht anfangen, jeden Tag zu sitzen.

[03:31]

Ja, und ich möchte euch auch dazu gar nicht zwingen. Buddhismus sollte. But, you know, I think we probably need some taste of it. Because to really have the feeling of returning to stillness, we need the feeling of stillness first. Because to really have the feeling of returning to stillness, we need the feeling of stillness first. And that stillness has got to be outside our conscious thinking. It's nice to have a calm mind. But a calm mind means really a calm consciousness. I'm speaking more about this field of mind being calm.

[04:51]

So practically speaking, if you want to sit, I would suggest that you sit at a particular time. Yeah, for a particular length of time. Even if you feel like sitting longer, you usually stop after that length of time. If you really want to sit longer, please do it. There's no Buddhist police watching you. But still, if you sit the length of time you want to, short or long, you're really sitting within consciousness, within ego. So you want to do something outside of whether you like or dislike.

[06:12]

So it's good if you say, you know, okay, I can't do seven times a week, but three times a week I can do. So you, then I'll sit. Let's say 20 minutes or 30 minutes. So you, you know, have some stick of incense or a clock or something. Or your body knows. And if you want to sit longer, you get up for a minute or two and then sit back down after the time you've decided. Some simple practice like that actually can introduce us to stillness. Kann uns einführen in Stille.

[07:24]

Because often you want to get up. Weil häufig möchtest du aufstehen. Or you want to scratch. Oder du willst dich kratzen. You just resist scratching, you resist getting up, and you just stay there. Aber du widerstehst dem Aufstehen, du widerstehst dem dich kratzen, sitzt da. Pretty soon when you know, your body knows, you're not going to get up. And soon your body will know that you won't get up. Your ego and your body say, well, I can wait 20 minutes, you know. I'll get him after 20 minutes. I'll get my hold back on him. So after a while, that time you decide on, 20 or 30 minutes, becomes a little vacation. And you begin to touch some kind of stillness. And as I said earlier too, there's a kind of grammar of the body in the mind.

[08:26]

And as I said earlier today, there is a grammar of the body in the mind, in the spirit, and a grammar of the mind in the body. So maybe it's not understandable, but it's the way I'm expressing it right now. And there's a posture that allows this stillness to occur. And if you sit for a long time, Yeah, this is just an example for you who asked about suffering.

[09:49]

You can sit and it's pretty painful. And then suddenly you can go away. And a moment before you thought, I cannot stand this any longer. And then it's gone. Unfortunately, only for 10 minutes, you know. But during those 10 minutes, you know, there's some kind of mind-body posture that doesn't bring this pain into me. No, I can tell you that with my lips. But that's not the same as you're having the experience of. If you have the experience of it, you'll never forget it.

[11:05]

It becomes something you know is possible, but what I say you'll forget later this evening. And the thinking of the mind also tends to come into a kind of silence. It's somehow that if you If your body becomes still, this deep stillness outside of ordinary consciousness, and your mind, that stillness draws the mind into stillness or silence, And that silence of the mind or stillness of the mind draws the body into a deeper stillness.

[12:09]

Now, if you know this feeling or even taste it a little bit, Yeah, I'm not saying you have to become a hero or martyr of painful sitting. Just to know it enough to know it. Then you can begin to feel in all your postures that all your different postures are also returning to stillness, like the wave. And you can feel your mind and all its thinking and anxieties, etc.,

[13:15]

You can feel it returning to silence. It's said that a bodhisattva who courses in difficulties, courses, do you know the word courses? Courses is like a boat goes through the water. I like the word courses. It means it moves, but it's usually used of a sailboat or something. Any sailors here? What would you say? So a bodhisattva who courses in difficulties is no bodhisattva. A bodhisattva courses in ease and uplifts.

[14:28]

the minds of others and oneself. And this word cittapada, which means to uplift the minds of oneself and others, It's very much like being in love. You know, I think that you could say that if you're in love, you feel uplifted. And you often feel like And other people feel uplifted. Boy, it's nice to be around him or her. She must be in love. So we know that being in love is a human capacity. It's a mind you can have. Do you really want to wait till you find Mr. Right or Mrs. Miss Right?

[15:58]

And then Mr. or Mr. Right don't turn out to be right after all. But, yeah. There's something about this coursing in ease. Yeah, at each moment there's often difficulties. But even in those difficulties, which usually are thoughts, But if those thoughts keep returning to... But turning to silence, we can call that coursing in ease.

[17:06]

And we can say then that such a person is coursing in wisdom. Yes, so I've talked about the stillness of the body and the stillness of the mind. Yes. What about self? What about thoughts about self? Well, it might be good to have a definition.

[18:07]

There's a lot of talk about them. in the air about Buddhism and something to do with being free of self or something. But it might sound like a nice idea or it might sound like a scary idea. But how do we... But what kind of entry can we get to this idea? Because I think we'd all agree that a really selfish person is probably not a wise person. But if you say to be selfless...

[19:07]

Aber wenn wir sagen selbstlos... That sounds a little too... Artificial. And people who are too selfless seem to be, you know, are always being nice. They seem to be prone to cancer and things like that. So we don't want to be that selfless. So what do we mean by Yeah, not being so selfish. Or not being caught so much in comparative self. Well, one definition of the absence of self sounds too simple for me to tell you, but I'll tell you anyway.

[20:22]

The absence of self can be defined as when thoughts don't return to self. So you can have a, yeah, you can notice that. Das kannst du bemerken. The absence of self is the non-returning of thoughts to self. So begin to swim in the inventory, the topography of your own thinking. You've practiced mindfulness enough, shall we say. Yeah, that you can be present, present in the midst of your thinking.

[21:30]

And maybe tomorrow we can see, what kind of observer is that? Or what is it to be present to your thoughts? But to some extent we can do it, of course. To some extent we can do it, of course. And it, yeah, often this is something that doing meditation helps you notice. Yeah, you're trying to sit. Yeah, try to find a posture. Yeah. And you let your mind, your attention settle on your breath.

[22:35]

But various thoughts come up. You can just observe those thoughts coming up. Now, just that you can observe your thoughts coming up. As my teacher used to say, as basic meditation advice, Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Let them wander about the house, but don't invite them to tea. So that's interesting.

[23:44]

It means mind is not limited to thoughts. So you can, some kind of, some quality of mind can just let thoughts come and go. Without engaging with them. And then if you can get the feeling of that, you can begin to notice that to what extent they keep referencing you, to what extent they're self-referencing. Somehow they're about what kind of person you are or what kind of person someone else thinks you are, etc.

[24:53]

So the absence of self is when these thoughts, you may have thoughts, but they're not always about yourself. They're not about what you like and dislike. Maybe it's like seeing a movie. You're just not about yourself. It is about you, but it's also just thinking. So this is a kind of practice of mindfulness to notice how many of your thoughts are really self-referencing and begin to feel

[26:07]

See if you can walk along the street without so much self-referencing thinking. So you're already experiencing, if you do that, something like an absence of self. So then you already experience a absence of yourself. Mostly I want to start on this subject we have.

[27:48]

The path of wisdom. Tomorrow. Because if I start in it now, we can't go very far. So I want to give you some feeling or taste of what wisdom might mean in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. So one is that when you feel feel the field of mind more than the contents of thoughts. More than the contents of consciousness. And also when you course in ease rather than difficulties.

[28:49]

I mean, at any moment there's all kinds of things you can pay attention to. I think you have to take this kind of inventory for yourself. Does your mind for some reason gravitate toward difficulties? Yeah, I don't know. Little Sophia, my little daughter, is screaming at me. She's in a fragile mood. Yeah, I can think, oh, God, she's in a mood. I'm not going to get anything done, et cetera.

[30:09]

But I can also say, what a, I mean, you're going to think I'm nuts, but what a beautiful little child. Look at her crying. And I can just sit down on the floor with her. In some other kind of space. Because perhaps my space is part of what's making her cry. To course in ease. Yeah, it can mean something like, I don't know if you've ever noticed, sometimes you walk down the street and lots of people smile at you. And sometimes you walk down the street and everybody's kind of... What's the difference? What makes the difference?

[31:18]

If you're coursing in difficulties, they're all going to be kind of... If you're coursing in ease, people tend to smile at you. Also, wenn du in Schwierigkeiten kreuzt, dann begegnet dir das... Und wenn du im Wohlgefühl... You just give a lecture, I'll sit here. Und wenn du dich im Wohlgefühl bewegst, lächeln sie dich an. And wisdom is when you have less self-referenced thoughts. No. What happens when this is the case? Why do we call this something like wisdom? I'll leave it at that.

[32:27]

But I'd like to remind you of one thing that should be taken for granted in practice. There's certain things I decide I should remind us of all the time. Please remember that all perception points at the object being perceived and points at the mind perceiving. That's a fact. But how often do you remember it? Because if I throw this out here, you better know it's coming and you catch it.

[33:32]

So it's necessary for us to know that it's a physical object in the world being thrown at you. But you can catch it because your mind is calculating the curve and catching it. The philosopher Wittgenstein says, There's nothing in a scene that tells you it's seen by mind. This you have to remind yourself of. So I'm seeing all of you but I'm also No, sorry, I don't mean to embarrass you.

[34:44]

You're in my mind. And I'm so used to it, you know, that it seems like you're all cuddled in blankets in my mind. It's all very cozy. I can tuck you all in, you know. So I know that there's an intimacy of seeing you as my mind sees you. And I know that you go beyond what I can see. But I can pay attention very carefully to what my mind and body let me see. And I know that although you think I'm out here sitting here, which I am, I also know that I'm in your mind.

[36:16]

So what's in this room? There's a lot of mind here. Yeah, and we're all in each other's mind. Yeah, that's the way it is. And if you get in the habit of reminding yourself of that. I don't know, it's some kind of really connected feeling of the world. I mean, one feels one belongs in this world.

[37:19]

We don't know quite what it is, this world. But we know we're not separate from whatever it is. That habit of mind of knowing everything points at mind, is also one of the entries to the path of wisdom. Thank you. So let's sit for a moment or so. And as most of you know, I will start with three rings and end with one.

[38:39]

This seminar will have some power for us. If we cook the ingredients of the seminar. And I've given you some ingredients. whether you exactly make sense of them or not. This evening, stir them into your thinking, into your observations. What's that? What's that? Less self-referencing thoughts.

[40:57]

What's this? To coarsen ease. What's this? A mind not so structured by consciousness. What's this? Mind that is not so structured by consciousness. What is this? A mind in which the whole world shines.

[42:06]

What's this? Mind in which the whole world shines. What's this? Thank you very much, all of you, for being here this evening.

[43:20]

And I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at a time that has not yet been determined by me. Can we open a window a little bit, maybe? Partway or something. May we put a yellow cellar in front there? Thank you. Now, despite the fact that I've been doing this practice pretty long time, it's difficult for me to know how to actually in a real way speak about the path of wisdom.

[44:38]

The word prajna is what's translated into English as wisdom. And Prajna in Hinduism, before it was Buddhist, or in Indian culture, meant, well, anyway, I won't go into the details, but meant when the mind is identified with non-dreaming deep sleep. Non-dreaming deep sleep. No. That's not much of a help, I think.

[45:48]

Well, what's the path of wisdom? Sleeping deeply. I mean, what's going on? Why is this translated as wisdom? And it means objectless mind. And it means a mind without objects. Or originally it was sort of mind so identified with the world it was the same as the world.

[46:48]

Also, ein Mind, der so identifiziert ist mit der Welt, dass er die Welt ist. So, can we imagine a mind so identified with the world? Können wir uns ein Mind vorstellen, der so identifiziert ist mit der Welt? In Hinduism they'd say it's the same as Brahman itself. In Buddhism this sense of a mind identified with the world remains. It also means a mind as the word begins to take on meaning in Buddhism.

[47:52]

Es bedeutet auch ein Mind, wie Bedeutung anfing in Buddhismus zu haben. It also means a mind shaped by emptiness. Es bedeutet ebenso ein Mind, der durch Leerheit geformt ist. You know, I'm not here to sort of... do a seminar with you on kind of wisdom in some kind of nice sense. If I knew what nice wisdom was, I don't know. I'm trying to, in myself, come meet the challenge of And Buddhism is in the end about wisdom. But translating it with this English word, wisdom, isn't really much help.

[48:56]

It only shares with the English word wisdom really the sense that it's the highest way we can be. The most developed way we can be. So it also means a mind in Buddhism shaped by emptiness. Okay, well, I think that's maybe closer to something we can work with. Yeah, and also a mind... shaped by emptiness is also considered to be an enlightened mind. But I think then we have to relate to the enlightenment as an experience and enlightenment as a way of being.

[50:18]

Yeah, we can't solve these problems. Buddhism hasn't solved these problems in 2,500 years. We're not going to do it by tomorrow. But maybe we can. What I'd like to do is to have the seminar be a process of initiation. that I hope maybe we can initiate ourselves into a way of knowing or feeling the world that will lead us to some can lead us to some, in the next days, weeks, months, some intimation or experience of what is meant by wisdom.

[51:46]

Yeah, and here I'm talking about wisdom with you, and we live in this world which is so, I mean, full of right now war threats, terrorist threats. And constantly exchanged violence and killings in Israel and Palestine. What does our sitting here talking about wisdom have to do with this? Well, we could each of us intend to end war. But we're not politicians.

[53:04]

We don't have any influence, particularly. But in my personal opinion is that probably, we did end, we've sort of ended slavery. Not really, but in a large measure, anyway, in large parts of the world, slavery has been ended. As a friend of mine says, if we can end slavery, we can probably end war. And I think we're, my own opinion is, you know, we're at a very early stage in civilization.

[54:07]

And I think we haven't yet learned how to end war, but I think we will. My guess is actually fairly optimistic that within 50 years we'll end war. Maybe something worse will come up, I don't know, but maybe we'll manage, if we manage to get through another 50 years. Probably I won't live to see it, but I'll make an effort. I think if each of us intends war, there to be an end to war.

[55:24]

And we can really hold that intention as a view. But there really isn't an alternative to ending war. I actually think that will make a big difference in the world. Makes a big difference. Why and how I think that makes a big difference, I'll try to speak of later. Okay. Here we have a definition of wisdom in the West. Not bad, but quite different. In fact, extraordinary to understand and know what's true, right and lasting.

[56:44]

Through living our life. But that still implies knowledge, knowledge accumulated through living. This is... I would say wisdom and Buddhism could be... caught in the phrase, not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is nearest is a phrase from a koan. Das ist ein Ausspruch aus dem Kuren. We could say not knowing is nearest to wisdom or something like that.

[57:46]

Also wir könnten sagen, nicht wissen ist dem Wissen am nächsten, der Weisheit am nächsten. What is this not knowing that somehow may be related to prajna, to deep sleep? Und was ist dieses nicht wissen, was nahe ist prajna, dem tiefen Schlaf? Yeah, or at least to how the world actually exists. To be inseparable from how the world actually exists. That's worth thinking about. But I think I need I need some example of how different these two worlds are.

[58:49]

And in a way, we have an advantage in this difference. Because enlightenment is about turning the mind around out of its habitual views. And if the contrast is big between views, the turning around is more likely and more powerful. Okay. So I thought one example I could use is, I keep bowing, I'm sorry, I keep bowing.

[59:51]

I feel I'm bothering you with my bows. But it's a very deep habit of mine. And I would say the central act of compassion... is the bow. So when I have a chance and nobody's going to think I'm too weird, I tend to bow. And when I have an opportunity and the others don't think that I'm too weird, then I bend over. Yes, in the Hannover Railway Station I try to resist him.

[60:59]

And in Hannover Hauptbahnhof I try to resist him, to bend over. I don't always, but I try. All right. So let me try to give you just a sense of this yogic sense of balance. And it comes out of monastic practice where, you know, I don't know if it's really monasticism in our Western sense, Und ich weiß nicht, ob es wirklich Müllstum ist in unserem westlichen Sinne. But it's a light designed to increase the likelihood of realization. Es ist eine Art zu leben, die die Verwirklichung fördert. No, no, you can stay.

[62:11]

So, say that I... I'm sorry, Heinrich, I have to use your word. Since our names both start and end with rich. Okay, so say that Heinrich and I are in a monastery gate. Let's assume Heinrich and I are in a monastery. Or even in his beautiful seminar house. Yes, now you know, he is our host. So he comes towards me, I come towards him. And I get fairly near him, some distance. And I actually physically stop. And I usually put my, stopping means my feet are together, but my ankles are separated by that much distance.

[63:18]

Now, again, I don't expect you while you're having coffee up there to all be checking. I'm trying to give you an idea how different yogic culture is from ours. There's no idea of natural. This is a hairstyle, it's not natural. None of you have natural hair. It's all some kind of style. Even if you just let it grow and never touched it, it wouldn't be natural.

[64:23]

It would smell. So I stop. And I bring my hands up and I bow. And he does the same thing. What is this bringing your hands up? What kind of body is imagined when I bring my hand up? Okay, as all of you know, if someone's coming in the door or someone's behind you, sometimes you can feel them. Wie ihr alle wisst, also wenn jemand hinter dir ist oder durch die Tür eintritt, könnt ihr sie fühlen.

[65:31]

Ja, und dann dreht ihr euch um und der schaut euch an. Wer hat schon diese Erfahrung gemacht? Do you know that Western science completely denies the possibility? And I know scientists who try to study this, who are professors at universities, and the university tries to get rid of them. And I know there are professors who try to prove this, and the university tries to get rid of them. There's only about something less than a dozen scientists in the Western world seriously studying how is this possible. And there are about a dozen scientists in the West who seriously investigate how this is possible. I know a woman, a neurobiologist, And she belongs to a society of neurobiologists with 50,000 members.

[66:35]

But there's not a dozen scientists trying to study something like that. There's a few. And one of the places in his study is an institute started by one of the astronauts who world changed when he looked back at the Earth and felt some new world. And an institute was founded by an astronaut who saw the world in a new way when he came from space. But in the yogic culture it's just assumed there's a kind of presence. Which blind people can feel. How would it around the world? die Blinde fühlen, wie sie sich in der Welt orientieren.

[67:37]

So, if I bring my hands together, actually I'm kind of bringing this wider presence or subtle body together in my hands. Und wenn ich meine Hände zusammenfüge, dann bringe ich diesen weiteren Raum zusammen, And I bring it here and I bring it up through my... I stop here. And in some kind of interiority of the heart here. And some lineages just bow from there. Our lineage tends to bring it up into a more shared space and then bow. Now one of the things that I told you many times, but it had such a big effect on me.

[68:44]

In the early days of my teacher being in the United States, someone asked him, what do you most notice about being in America? in the USA. Those of you who don't know the story, can you guess what he asked? He said, you all do things with one hand. I'm going to write that. What the heck is he talking about? Everything that's happening in America and all this stuff, we do things with one hand? He was clearly coming from a different world than I grew up in. Would you like this beautiful Buddha here? This is my room.

[69:58]

I still look down here. It's a really nice shot. Okay. But if Sukhiroshi... Then I watch Sukhiroshi carefully and he would pick something up and he wouldn't do that, first of all. Pick it up and... bring it into his body, almost as if to give it a feeling of mind. And he put it in his other hand. And then he turned his body and passed it. And I discovered he passed the salt and pepper that way too. And what I always felt was deeply acknowledged by him.

[71:02]

He used the salt as an excuse to pass himself. In this Buddhist yogic world, you can't ignore anything. So each person you meet, you could say is your friend. One of the aspects of wisdom is that you feel each person you meet is your friend. Das ist ein Aspekt von Weisheit. Jede Person, der dir begegnet, ist dein Freund. Or at least that's the initial feeling. Zumindest ist das das anfängliche Gefühl.

[72:13]

Okay. So the bow represents a kind of expression of this feeling. So each person you come to, you stop. And he can get the feeling that my words don't mean much. I don't know what this is, this thing that I seem to occupy this place. People sometimes ask me, what is this? And it's actually a small version of Buddha's robe. But it's the custom for me to wear when I'm talking about Buddhism or practicing Buddhism. What is the meaning of it?

[73:31]

Really, the meaning of it is the wearing of it. Before, some of you would like to have one, and you asked me if you could have one. Can you tell me what you think it's all about? But neither of us can say much until you just happen to wear it. The meaning of it is the wearing of it. And the meaning of the bow is, I don't know what to say. What is this? I'm saying something about it when I do that. I bring my hands up and bow. Now, if I'm not in a place where I can get away with it, like Heinrich's seminar house, I do an inner, I call it an inner bow.

[74:53]

Every person I meet inside, Pause momentarily and feel this sense of above. Well, I follow the customs. I just walk by people and things like that, but inside I feel some kind of a little bow of acknowledgement. It's just my habit. Okay. Now... I was just with you two weeks ago, I guess.

[75:54]

I was with Ivan Illich in Bremen for three days. And he says in his early books, I think it was Energy and Equity, something like that, Also, und er sagt in einem seiner frühen Büchern, ich glaube, es hieß Energie und Gleichheit, dass er Bewegung missverstanden hat. Dass er damals gemeint hat, dass Bewegung heißt, von einem Platz zum nächsten zu gehen. And his view has now come quite close to the view I would call a yogic view. You know, I did a seminar once. Geez, where was it? I don't know. a year ago in a conference I think in Bremen and there was a Chinese woman in my seminar and she was maybe 70 years old and she'd been in Germany since she was 20 and I talked about some things like this

[77:30]

And she said, came up to me afterwards and she said, you know, you made me remember when I was young, everything was a posture. She said, I was taught how to sleep. This is a better posture than this other posture. Women should sleep in this posture, men in this posture. You should start out the night in this kind of posture and change into that kind of posture. Maybe that's going too far. I like to watch Sophia sleep and she changes her posture.

[78:41]

But I can tell something about how she's sleeping, of course, by observing her posture. And once I started practicing, I taught myself certain postures. The simplest one I just learned to sleep with something in my hand. So there in the morning. So that it's there even in the morning. And that has something to do with awareness. Like you can decide to get up at a particular time in the morning without alarm clock. You're not conscious, but something knows what time it is.

[79:43]

Now I call that awareness. And wisdom has something to do with developing, activating this awareness, not consciousness. Anyway, sometimes I wanted to wake up with my left hand or wake up with my right hand, and whatever I decided would happen. But I went further. I had a little coin. Kalachakra coin I used to sleep on in my forehead. Keep it there during the night. And to let you know how nuts I am, I really actually have more Buddha statues. And to show you how crazy I am, I sometimes had little Buddha statues on my head. Never this big.

[80:58]

But a little one that I could feel and sleep in such a way that it was still there in the morning. It's interesting, you develop a kind of awareness of the room and what's happening around you while you're asleep. So there's some interesting things about even working with your posture during sleep. Okay, so now... I don't know if this makes sense, but Illich said... that he realized he was deluded by Cartesian space. He was going from this three-dimensional point to that three-dimensional point, and his feet were meant to do it.

[82:25]

Yes, and he said anthropologists have shown or demonstrated that most cultures Don't know, don't think in terms of three-dimensional space. And I think Illich would say that before the 12th century, 13th century, Westerners didn't think in three-dimensional space. So what am I getting at? Well, first of all, let me just say about this feeling of your feet being this far apart. If you do take some decision like that, you begin to know where your feet are.

[83:29]

And a little thing like that, after a while you don't feel your feet are down there. Your feet are only down there if you think you're up here. When you don't feel you're up here, begun to weave mind and body together. Okay, so what is the idea in yogic walking? And what is the idea in yogic walking? What is the idea in Buddhist practice in walking?

[84:35]

What is the idea in a no actor, you know, no actor, Japanese actor walking? What I... Of course, it's theater. The Noh is theater. Ja, Noh ist theater. But when I first went to it, one of the things that struck me that any time you took a picture, say, let's take a photograph of the actors, it's a fantastic photograph. They're always in a posture where there's energy or presence. They move from one such posture to the next, and their whole body exhibits it.

[85:38]

Okay, so naturally, even in yogic cultures, they want to get from, you know, from the bakery to home. Ja, und natürlich auch in yogischen Kulturen wollen sie von der Bäckerei nach Hause kommen. But their sense of walking is different. Aber ihr, ja, Sinn vom Gehen, fürs Gehen ist anders. You know what Japanese shoes are like. Ihr wisst, wie japanische Schuhe sind. And if you really have the traditional ones, wenn ihr wirklich traditionelle japanische Schuhe habt, it makes you walk differently. And you're supposed to have, I don't know, I'm telling you all this stuff. The rest of them are always buying them so that they are longer than their feet.

[86:41]

But you don't do that. You buy them so they're about... This small, toward the middle of the heel. Because you walk with your foot parallel to the earth and you put it down. You kind of slide forward. And your feeling is here. My heel doesn't come down first. The whole foot tends to come down at once. I'm not suggesting you learn to walk this way. Let's just study martial arts with her. I'm just trying to give you a sense of let's realize what a different world this wisdom is in.

[87:48]

Walking is different because the idea of walking is to let the earth come up through you. So the feeling of, if I go from here to there, is that each foot, as I said yesterday or during pre-day, you walk as if the earth might not be there. The practice of The internalized practice of emptiness is to take nothing for granted. Everything is an assumption.

[88:51]

Even will the floor be there? So you step forward with a kind of aliveness that might not be there. And you feel the floor come up to meet your foot. And there's a feeling of the earth coming up through you. And Zen is called sometimes heel breathing. And in Zen it is often called Ferse breathing. You feel like you are breathing through your feet. And when we do Kin Hin walking, slow walking. Excuse me. I think it's so formally the way I used to do it.

[89:58]

You step forward on the exhale. And you lift on the inhale. And you feel the whole energy coming up through your back, through your head and down.

[90:16]

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