I feel your question. I'd like to be able to respond to it. And I don't want to just say that we only feel connected with what we're connected to. But just let me take one example as a yogic practice. That I've decided to remind myself every time I teach remind, bring up again. When I look at you, I'm looking at you and you're certainly a different person than the two people beside you.

[01:05]

But there's also a tremendous similarity. Not only that you're both, all three... More or less from the same culture, I think. And you all three seem to be women. So there's some similarities there. But simply, when I see you, I'm simultaneously seeing my own mind see you. I don't just experience my seeing you as a unique person. I also experience my mind seeing you. Whatever I look at, I have that experience. That alone starts creating a feeling of connectedness.

[02:18]

But I don't think I've sufficiently responded to your question, but that's the best I'll do now. Yeah. I think it's a little bit difficult to see the difference of, usually connectedness is something, we know something about somebody and we like them more, and it's on that kind of knowing level and not so much on a physical level. So maybe if it can slip in a different level it's easier to So I have this feeling that if we normally have the feeling that we are connected to someone, it is on a level where we know something about someone, understand how they work and so on and that you feel a connection on such a level and it is less on a

[03:40]

Well, I like difficult questions. And I'm only able to respond, though, to a difficult question if you're also interested in this difficult question. Because it's very clear to me that if a majority of us or quite a few of us can get a feeling for something. I can feel if you have a feeling for it.

[04:46]

Then that feeling in the room makes it much easier for any one of us to understand something. Because some of these things have to slip under our habits of thinking. And how can I get it so we all slip together? I think it's almost time for us to stop for lunch. And maybe, I mean, this afternoon I might speak about the difference between a mind culture and a body culture. Now this way of looking at things that I'm speaking about which you may think I have talked about or practiced or understand to some extent

[05:53]

because I lived in Asia and Japan for a lot of years or because I studied Zen but for me it's more that I felt in our own culture one stream in our more than one stream, various streams in our own culture leading in the direction that I've lived my life. So I think what I'm doing is a Western development. I think it's particularly true in Western poetry and painting, but also where Western science has brought us to,

[07:15]

And it's also where many Western philosophers stopped. I would say that all the famous names, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Whitehead, and so forth, William James, came very close to what this yogic practice is about, but they didn't have yogic practice. So they got to the point where it looks like this, but they didn't know how to make sure it was like this. But the specific way I'm speaking about it, which I was led to, was created in India and developed in the Far East, China, Korea, Japan.

[08:54]

So in a way, those who practice together and myself are bringing something, this yogic practice from the Far East, but it's meeting something that's led to it in the West. And one of the differences is you can see in the yogic cultures of Asia And Japan is the only one I know well. A different conception of what the human body is. And a different pace in how you know the world. So I wanted to give you one little example of it, because when I went upstairs, I happened to have a cup of tea before I came back down.

[10:26]

So I was using this little teapot, which is clearly a Japanese or Korean style teapot. This This rough country style of pottery, actually Japan learned mostly from Korea. But, you know, most would say, well, that's kind of nice. They decorated it and so forth. And you might say, why doesn't it have a handle? Well, it's a backward culture. They never thought of handles. but it's actually because they want you as most of you know to do it use it with two hands.

[11:34]

And the hand of the potter is present on the cup, on the teapot. Where is it? Well, that's his thumb right there. He glazed it and had his thumb there. You can just see the thumb. See the thumb? So it means you don't put this down anyway and it doesn't quite fit otherwise. It fits best where you can see where he held it as he glazed it. That's actually a small difference, but it's a different kind of body, different kind of culture.

[12:35]

And it's so unfamiliar to us that most Westerners, I've never shown this part to a Westerner, and they've seen the thumb. But I'm so used to these things, I say, oh, there's the poor guy's thumb. And he did it intentionally, of course. I mean, but... Most of a potter from another culture would have moved his thumb here and then kind of painted there, too. So if we study some Asian culture, we can see the effects of a yogic culture. They're not always good, though. Let's have some lunch, yogically or not. Thank you for translating. Thanks for speaking to me. So should we start out with anybody who has something else to say?

[14:05]

Yes. I thought about what it is that connects you when you sit with someone. So I've been thinking about what we said that something connects us when we sit so I thought about what is it that connects. So then I noticed it's not in this ordinary categories of I like this person or I don't like him. It's somewhere underneath that. Maybe I noticed it first but Then this gets less important and I notice that I kind of compound the person with those things.

[15:11]

I put them together with these qualities. You mean when you get to know someone better, when you know them in a In the usual way, you put these things together through your own experience of the person. When I sit with him or in a group, the majority of this, it's got less, I think. Yeah. Other things make that I can feel well in the same way. Yeah. I mean, the most obvious example for those of us who do sashins is you sit beside a complete stranger for seven days. You know a great deal about them. Sometimes it's not so interesting. I mean, they make strange smells and things like that. You don't talk the whole time. Afterwards you feel you have some kind of knowledge or knowing, familiarity with the person. It's not, yeah, it's a kind of body contact, a kind of body, spatial body contact.

[16:42]

Yeah, I'm not trying to, you know, there's lots I could say about just this, what we're talking about, but it's more interesting to just touch on aspects and then begin to notice it for ourselves. I mean, it's like emergencies bring people together in a certain way. You feel some kind of closeness in a bad storm or a big storm. Or if you get lost out here in these woods for a storm and for five or six hours and suddenly somebody appears, you don't think, do I like this guy or not?

[17:54]

Yeah, just, yeah, you... feel something. Anyway, someone else? Yeah. So when I assume that I have to create first disconnectedness and separation, So is that the kind of goal of meditation and development, that I consciously can kind of swing between these two poles? I would say that the maturity of practice would be that you feel both simultaneously.

[19:02]

But in the beginning, when you start noticing these things, it's more like going back and forth. But going back and forth is actually harder than simultaneous. Because they're really different kinds of minds. They're all like different layers. And it's easier to have the layers simultaneously than to shift. But it's first to shift. And I think even though this is a funky old farm building, anthroposophical kinderheim, I think that many people, when they come here, feel something a little different than they feel at home or at their offices.

[20:19]

Because a somewhat different mind is creating this place. And one of the keys is pace. If there's a different pace, there's a different context. What's the difference between taking a walk, riding a bicycle, or driving a car, or flying over a country in an airplane? You can't say one's better than the other, but one's certainly different. Yeah. Someone else? Anyone else? Since this morning I was thinking about the sentence which you said this morning, that the world is rooted in our views.

[22:11]

So it's true for me and it's not true for me. So for me the world is also rooted in Feelings and moments and views about the world. This can of course also be seen as a perspective when I think about it consciously, but there are sometimes moments that lie in front of this consciousness, and this is actually the root cause for me.

[23:22]

So these moments, they can certainly be looked at, if you think about them longer also, is that views are included, but sometimes I have the feeling they are like moments before the views kick in or something. So they're rooted in that place. Well, this is Zirkauf. That's a very physical feeling. Yeah, okay. I would still say in the sense that Buddhism means views as the beginning of the eightfold path, that the way in which you allow yourself to enter a situation, say primarily through feeling,

[24:33]

is a view. And that... Now, we all have times in which we notice the world just through, say, feeling. And they may represent little even enlightenment experiences, little times in which we felt the world differently. But I don't think those shape our life much until there's a view that accompanies them, that allows them to shape our life. What do these new views integrate, those enlightenments?

[25:42]

Well, let me just start. So I would say what happens in at least one kind of enlightenment experience is we've accumulated a number of experiences that are outside our view Just moments of feeling or insight or something. Observations. And they accumulate, but they have no place to rest. And they are often in contradiction to our usual view of things. But when they accumulate enough or you practice enough that it shifts your view, they create a new view and that new view, that experience of it, is often an enlightenment experience.

[27:16]

If you have practiced enough and collected enough of these, then a change or a shift can take place from which a new perspective emerges, and the experience of this new perspective So, I'm not disagreeing with you. What I'm doing is trying to illustrate my working with the tradition. Okay. So, I have to say, okay, yes, Gaurav's experience sounds right to me, clear, I know you well, so yes, I know. But why does the tradition see that as a confirmation of views and not a disagreement with views? No, maybe the tradition is wrong and we should start changing it.

[28:37]

And instead of right views, it starts with right feelings. But I think if you really think it through, right views is a better place to start. Okay. Someone else, anybody who this doesn't make any sense to, or somebody who thinks we ought to go a different direction? Don't you think you're using up your quota of questions? Yeah, go ahead. A question that comes to my mind is that I have the idea that the way I feel, that there are still views, that if I had different views, I would feel the same thing differently.

[29:40]

Sometimes I have a feeling that the way I feel is based on the views which are underneath it. So if I had different views, I could feel differently towards something I feel a certain way now. Yes, I think that's true. I mean, a practice I suggest often And one needs some kind of Pavlovian dimension to it. What's a Pavlovian dimension? Pavlov. Pavlov? That psychologist. Yeah, who trained dogs to, you know... Okay, people know what it is. Anyway, for example, you use something as the reminder. For example, you come into a room. This is an example I've used recently. And you stop at the threshold. Or I like to say the entrance.

[30:43]

And you let yourself feel the room physically before you think the room. You don't come in thinking, you actually stop and feel the room physically and then let yourself think about it. Through such little things you try to develop little habits that begin to permeate or penetrate your daily activity. Okay, that's maybe enough unless somebody else wants one other person.

[32:13]

Okay, I said I'd talk about a body culture. And I haven't talked about this for quite a while. Although anybody who's been practicing with me for a pretty long time knows I've gone through this before. Because it particularly struck me powerfully when I returned to San Francisco from Japan after being there for four years. No, when I went there I was already rather alerted to the differences. But because it's the kind of thing that Suzuki Roshi noticed.

[33:19]

But I was just really struck when I was there at the pervasiveness of this different culture. Now, there's lots of books around now on Japanese design. But there's only one person, I think, who writes about Japanese design and architecture who actually recognizes that it's not about design, it's about a different body.

[34:23]

And you can... I mean, you can almost always spot a, say, teacup, bowl or something made by a Westerner in the Japanese style. It's absolutely obvious that it's not made by a Japanese person. And I remember I took a bowl from a potter closely connected to my teacher. Ich habe einmal eine Schale genommen von einem Töpfer, der sehr eng mit meinem Lehrer verbunden war.

[35:30]

Who was a good potter and a nice guy and so forth. This potter friend of Suzuki Roshi was a good nice guy. He was a good nice guy, yeah. Also dieser Töpferfreund von Suzuki Roshi, das war ein ganz so netter Kerl. And I brought this tea bowl that was given to me to Nakamura Sensei, who was a very refined, elegant lady who lived with us for 20 years or so. It was a nice summer tea bowl. And she took one look at it and she said, he doesn't drink tea. And it's true. I knew he didn't do the tea ceremony. He didn't know he drank tea, ordinary tea, but he didn't do the tea ceremony. And I said, how do you know?

[36:34]

Because it looked very similar. She said, because there's no place on the bowl where the lips feel good. So I began to be, you know, she was a great teacher for me, this Nakamura sensei. Now, Again, you might think that... I'm just going to give you examples because what I'm trying to do today before we get into the seminar tonight is just find some examples that are understandable of what happens when you have a different body. Okay.

[37:39]

Now, again, we all know that teacups and bowls and things don't have handles. And that's... I mentioned that earlier. That's because you're expected to do things with two hands. Now, this example of two hands, I've mentioned a lot. Because, you know, Sukersi was asked once, what's the difference, what do you notice being in America? I don't know what we expected him to say. But what he said is you all do things with one hand. So I began to watch him. I noticed. And if somebody asked me for the salt... I'd pass them the salt.

[39:00]

Here, have the salt. But Tsukiyoshi would pick up the salt, bring it into his body space, Put two hands on it and turn his body toward me and hand it to me. And I felt he was passing himself to me, not the salt. Now that is really a huge difference. To use any opportunity like this to establish some kind of relatedness. And it's almost assumed in the yogic body that there's a kind of light here that you are turning toward people and toward the world.

[40:05]

And when you get this, you can see that this way of looking at things pervades the culture. It explains why you go into restaurants which have more cooks than customers. You go into a restaurant, really, and there's about four men or three women and two men all cooking. And you usually, often in such restaurants, you sit at counters. And this has been adopted a lot in the West nowadays, but the cook serves you the food.

[41:16]

And you watch the cook prepare the food and you can make suggestions as he goes along. And until recently in Western restaurants, you never saw the kitchen. You didn't want to see the kitchen. So that the emphasis was really on the relationship of the cook and the person eating, not so much the food. But if you see the customer, the food's usually better. And if you go to a restaurant regularly, And you can clearly enjoy the food.

[42:24]

The price goes down. Really. I mean, you go in and your first night you're there, you're with some friends. They give you this piece of paper. You don't know what the heck they did. They just hand you a piece of paper with 3,000 written on it. So you pay 3,000 yen. But you go back and every now and then and you really like the place. Next time you eat twice as much, you brought two friends and it's 2,500. There's no real sense like we have of a contract. And that made Western businessmen nervous for a while. A contract would be signed and thrown in the wastebasket as soon as the Westerners left. Because you did it what's fair, depending on business conditions.

[43:34]

But within that framework, people were very honorable. So I again would say this actually comes from a different kind of body. No, you've all seen pictures of Japanese houses. What's the basis of the design? Where is the design of a Japanese house rooted? It's rooted in this posture. Because this posture is an ancient Chinese meditation posture. And a cultural decision was made Which I think most Japanese people have forgotten about.

[44:57]

That the culture as a whole, people as a whole, will be better if they sit in a meditation posture all the time. So they designed the houses so you can't almost sit any other way. There's no chairs. And the floor is grass. And why is it grass? Not only is it soft and pretty, but it smells good. You want the house to smell good, because that's part of the smell. sensual and sensorium dimension of a building. And they didn't heat their houses. Sie haben Ihre Häuser auch nicht geheizt?

[46:12]

Well, this seems nuts. It's as cold as this or more, and they don't heat their houses. Und es scheint verrückt. Es ist ja so kalt wie hier oder kälter, und dennoch heizen Sie Ihre Häuser. But if you talk to a traditional Japanese person, in the years at least I was in Japan... Wenn man jetzt mit einem traditionellen Japaner spricht, zumindest in den Jahren, als ich dort lebe... It's cold as... Your body is cold. Let's heat your body instead of the house. It's very expensive to heat the house. We'll just heat your body. So you have little tables with blankets around them and heaters underneath the tables. If you, on a particularly cold day, arrive at someone's house and nobody seems to answer, and you think, I know the wife, the house-frau is home, So you know them well enough, you open the door and... Nobody answers.

[47:31]

You say it a couple more times and... the blanket that covers the table lifts up and she's under the table. All. It's the only warm place in the house. And they're convinced, and I was convinced too, that you're healthier when you heat the body and not the house. And you develop a different relationship to your body heat. I remember when we were When Tsukiroshi was giving a lecture in San Francisco in the early 60s, like I asked you to open the window a little farther, people were always asking Tsukiroshi, or just getting up, let's open the window, let's close the window, it's getting too old, etc.,

[48:34]

And I was sitting about where you're sitting, Gerhard. And I heard him mumble, why don't you adjust your body heat? But we don't have the ability to adjust our body heat. That's a different body. No, I'm not recommending we all build Japanese houses. But if you just do things like, when you open the door, feel the room instead of think the room, You can find you come into a different pace in the room.

[49:49]

And probably even after thinking about things, you still feel the room. And there's, like just right now in this room, there's a certain feeling. The room we think remains pretty much the same. But the room we feel is always changing. And you can't grasp it exactly or say what it is. And you can decide to emphasize feeling more than thinking.

[50:52]

But just now you can not think so much about what I'm saying, but feel us all feeling what's going on now. Because I'm trying to speak to your brains, to your cognitive faculty. But I'm also, I want to, I feel, I enjoy most speaking to your feelings. And if I locate myself in speaking to our feeling, I can feel my center of gravity lower. And my breathing is different.

[52:31]

And you suddenly realize what this famous hara, simple hara is. And Graf von Dürkheim, who founded this place and Rütte nearby, wrote a book in, I think, the 60s sometime, introducing the idea of Hara to the West. He came from being in Japan a long time. He came back with this sense of horror. And if you, on the cover of the copy I have upstairs, is a medieval statue of the, western medieval statue of the Virgin Mary. And what she clearly has is horror.

[53:54]

And if you look at statues from the Middle Ages, often they have this sense of horror. So it's maybe a dimension that we don't notice so much anymore. But now that the world is so in touch with itself all over, the world all over is in touch with itself, the various traditions and practices are in touch with each other. We have a chance to actually go back in our history and go forward in our history and begin to feel these different human possibilities. And I think human possibilities may be that no one's had before.

[55:06]

For me it's definitely the adventure. The adventure of this relationship of mind, body, and phenomena. Now, just to give a couple other examples of this, since I lived in Japan, this Japanese body culture. So that you can see the conceptual differences. What's the main difference between Japanese cuisine and all other cuisines? This is something Tsukiroshi pointed out to me. The food is mixed in the eating, not in the cooking.

[56:31]

They give you a whole lot of different things, and you tend to put them together. They do as little as possible to each thing. So there's a lot more raw food, not just fish, or somewhat raw food in Japanese cuisine. And partly because of this sensorial approach where you, the eater, is part of the cooking process, They use many many many more ingredients than we do. I don't remember exactly, but in Western cuisine in general, there's, I don't know, 90% of the cooking is about 10 different ingredients, vegetables, meats, and things.

[57:52]

In Japan, it's something like 80. 80. 80 from 90 to 80 or from 10 to 80? To 80, yeah. Then it's like 20, you know. So there's, I don't know if that's correct. It can be. No. If you go and, if most of our food is broccoli, potatoes, nowadays rice too, carrots, etc. The list isn't very long. The list of ingredients that go into Japanese meals over a year is, I mean 80 would be a low estimate. Oh, 80 things.

[58:59]

80 things. Okay. And this comes from, you know, different culinary tradition, but it also comes from a different sense of pace and context. But it also derives from a different context and pace. One last example is the robes. Like I wore this morning. They're very clumsy. They're very difficult to handle. Like the Japanese houses are designed to make you sit Seiza.

[60:01]

The Japanese robes are made to, kimonos and so forth, are made to work when you sit Seiza. To drive a car in robes, a Volkswagen, is worse than talking on a cell phone. Your sleeve, which is that long, would be under the hand brake. Your robes would cover the brake pedal and the gas pedal. It just doesn't make sense. It's not... Our cars are not designed for the body of a Japanese person.

[61:13]

But it does explain something why Japanese cars were so successful. Because they clearly designed a car not to get from point A to point B. Sie haben eindeutig nicht ein Auto entwickelt, was darauf angelegt war, einen von A nach B zu befördern. But to be a kind of nice way to get from point A to point B. Sondern dass man auf angenehme Art und Weise von A nach B gelangt. And the way the cloth is, generally they just take it from the loom, and the width of the loom is the length of your sleeve. Und also auch die... And the lower your rank is, for example, in monastic or social life, No, that's right.

[62:20]

The lower your rank is in monastic life, the bigger your robes are and the longer your sleeves and everything. you can't even put your hands down because then your sleeves are cleaning the floor. So it forces you to walk in a yoga posture. But when you're higher up, you can have shorter sleeves and only the top guys can walk with their hands down. In social life it's the opposite. The higher up you are, the slower they want you to move and the longer and more complicated the robes are. Have you ever seen the Japanese movies where these guys, the pant leg is about half a meter longer than their legs?

[63:31]

So they have to walk, they have to lift their foot and swing the pant leg like that. Yeah. It made for a very graceful insect-like movement. You know what the reason for that was? To make it difficult for these court nobles to fight in court. You can't find your sword. You're tripping over your... So, one last thing. If you approach a Japanese building or a temple, like, say, the The gate is here and the main building is where Andreas is.

[64:55]

And you're in a hurry and you want to get there. But they've got a bunch of bushes and a pond and everything else between me and you. And the path goes this way. So you start out this way and the steps are fairly wide. And then suddenly it goes over a little stream with... with spaces between the stones into the stream. So you have to kind of slow down and step carefully. And then by the time you get to Joe, the steps are shorter and shorter. And then you get over here somewhere and it goes up a hill for no reason.

[66:11]

And so you go up and that slows you down more. And then you come to the door and you enter at the pace they want you to enter at. Because different buildings should be entered at different paces and they establish this by the way they create the path to the building. This is not about design, it's about a different body. And these different bodies already reside in us. And sometimes they come out on vacations.

[67:24]

Or when we're sunbathing. Or when we take a walk in the forest. Or camping out or something. And sometimes we like those bodies better. But we don't know how to bring them back into our daily life. Yeah, that's enough. Sorry for all that stuff. Okay, so let's take a break. That's determined by the body culture of the buildings, meaning the number of toilets. I want to get across to you that we're talking about different bodies here.

[69:35]

Not different minds. Of course also different minds. But we're talking about an embodied mind. I mean, we're an experiential living continuum. And we're continually being shaped by our context more than we're able to recognize. Because we have this really strong necessity to establish a continuity of a single self.

[70:48]

Continuous self? Yeah, continuity of a continuous. Of a singular self. And if we don't loosen up that idea, most of the fruits of practice will pass us by. I think Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson did a good job in their book, Embodied Minds, I don't know what it's called, but of establishing from a scientific point of view, as much as possible, this sense of a... this lack of a continuous self.

[71:58]

So, Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson in their book Körperlicher Geist, or I don't know exactly what the title is, have tried in a scientific way to address this lack of So it's a lack of the self which they just studied. There's no continuous self. And just the way the senses work, if you study the way the eye works and the ear works, we're constantly shaping, we're constantly developing what kind of, how we know the world. But what I'm trying to do today, or what it seems to be I'm trying to do, is emphasize that we think about this in terms of different bodies, not different minds.

[73:02]

I would maintain that if you... You know, I haven't done it, but if you take the local... village, different areas, kind of costumes for festivals, for carnival, not carnival. And you looked at how they're buttoned, where the waist is, and so forth. Oh, not the carnival ones, but the everyday ones. Yes, that they wear on... That's about actually a different body.

[74:19]

And I bet if you even studied the buttons and where it's tied, you'd actually be able to see some kind of lines of an energy system. And... And if we put them on, if I put them on especially, I would feel uncomfortable and strange. And the few times I put on anything like that, anything even close to that, people say you look like a supporter of Haider. And I think if you take the costumes of carnival, we're also talking about a different body. And we're talking about a different kind of behavior during carnival than at other times. And I think nowadays these movies, like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, are actually an exploration of different bodies.

[75:56]

In the 15th century, when the sheriff of Paris Paroled the city, always accompanied by six or eight musicians. The local people would say it really warns the criminals that he's coming. And the bishop of Evere always traveled with a group of musicians and drums and flutes. This is a rather different world. Can you imagine the local policeman here traveling with a group of musicians to... It's just a different world.

[76:58]

And it's not just a different outside world or behavior, it's a different body. And the Middle Ages, they used to have what are called minions. Usually these are only kind of, you know, aristocratic people because they only had, only people had the leisure to lead the beautiful life. A beautiful life instilled in the idea of the West. You still see it in fairy tales and in the celebrities of the British royal family and things. instilled in the Western culture.

[78:16]

Yeah, still now, children talk about... Sophia's reading about the Kleine König. She likes crowns. Yeah. Okay. So... In those days, these folks often traveled with a minion. And a minion is a kind of doppelganger. Someone who dressed like you. jemand, der sich gleich wie man selber angezogen hat. And if two people from different countries felt they really loved each other, it wasn't supposedly a homosexual love, but they just loved each other, they both dressed the same way.

[79:16]

Selbst wenn es Leute, die in verschiedenen Ländern gelebt haben, das Gefühl hatten, sie lieben sich, dann haben sie sich auf gleiche Art und Weise angezogen. Und das soll... And men and women who could afford these luxuries often traveled with somebody who dressed exactly like them, just for a kind of emotional support. I want you to really get that this is a different world. There's not a continuous human nature with different styles and history. It's different kinds of people. You know, I think I'm belaboring the point. But I find people still ask me, is this about really just a different style?

[80:23]

The Japanese conception of clothes, for instance, is your body is free inside the cloth. So you put clothes loosely over you and your body is very free and open inside. You're kind of naked inside. In fact, women used to be until a famous Tokyo fire. There was a hotel and a lot of women had to jump out into these nets and they were naked underneath their clothes. So after that they began wearing some clothes under their kimonos. But we design our clothes to fit our body.

[81:45]

So we're free outside our clothes, not inside our clothes. But the difference is, you know, we have to wear warm clothes in the winter. In these other kind of clothes, you kind of open them up in the summer and you close them up in the winter. Your body, you're like you're in a little sleeping bag. Der Unterschied besteht darin, dass wir Sommerkleidung brauchen und Winterkleidung. Und diese andere Art der Bekleidung bedarf nur, dass man sie ein bisschen mehr aufmacht und so weiter. Das passt sich zu den Gegebenheiten an. Man ist eher wie in einem alten Schlafsack. And normally I wear western clothes. Und normalerweise trage ich westliche Kleidung. But I find a different body when I wear these traditional clothes, which are Japanese, but they're actually Chinese. Can I say something? I did this tailoring apprentice and we had this old kind of super precise teacher.

[83:12]

And she would always say, don't put on your clothes, carry your clothes. And we have two words in German, so you're not just in them, but you kind of wear your clothes. Also, ich habe eine Schneiderlehre gemacht und hatten wir so eine So we know a different body feeling when we wear different clothes a different way. It's true. And I think from when I was young to now this stretch sports clothes that everyone wears, tennis shoes with business suits, things like that. Not tennis shoes, running shoes. The difference between when I was young and today's stretch sports clothes and the sneakers you wear to wear a suit and so on...

[84:17]

And soon I hear they're going to have spray on electronic clothes and they'll have sensors built into the clothes and so forth. They've already got the fabrics. Anyway. I think this is a different body. A different kind of body wears these plastic clothes. And it changes us. Of course, what I'm talking about is that the body of meditation, and you've got to be open to it, or it's good if you're open to it, you begin to have a different kind of body. Excuse me. Through the practice of meditation, And if you're open to it, it happens more likely. You begin to have a different kind of body.

[85:20]

With different satisfactions. For instance, in Sashin you can eat the most boring food and it tastes good. Your taste buds change. I don't know what happens. And you think a bit differently in this body. But when you're in the midst of a culture, you don't notice these things. So I mentioned what you mentioned earlier about your experience of asking, when you were working in an architectural office in Japan, you asked people why they didn't design chairs. No one thinks about it. If your culture doesn't have chairs, you don't think. Why don't we design chairs? Are they stupid or something? They just don't think of it.

[86:23]

Also, wenn eine Kultur keine Stühle hat, dann kommt sie gar nicht dazu, drüber nachzudenken, weshalb sie keine Stühle haben. And if you asked the average Japanese person, or even very intelligent and informed ones, what is happening in the shift from the traditional houses to modern houses, to your bodies? No idea. Wenn man jetzt selbst sehr gebildete Japaner fragen würde, was... Okay, I belabored the point enough. Does anybody have anything you want to bring up? Yeah. So why, especially in Japan, they just adore and want to have Western lifestyle? They want to have Western houses, they want to have German cars, they want to eat Italian food, and they love Mozart.

[87:47]

True. Because we were unable to convert them to Christianity. But we converted them to our Western way of life. And for the kind of life which is predominant in the world today, Und zu diesem Lebensstil, der jetzt auch der dominante ist in der Welt. After all, cars are a lot more convenient than palanquins. Denn Autos sind schließlich einfach viel bequemer als Senften. When I went to Sukershi's temple, there was still a palanquin in the temple. You know what a palanquin is? Oi, oi, oi. Yeah, like that. Meh. Whereas his predecessor would go from some place, somebody would carry him in this little thing. Now the guy prefers a Honda. Well, this is understandable, but it's taken some generations. I think Japan has been under... One of the questions that historians ask is why has Japan been able to westernize faster than any other Asian countries?

[89:46]

And probably, I think the answer is, is because they westernized their bodies so slowly. So they didn't lose their way. And Japan had learned over a couple millennia to adopt Chinese culture while maintaining their own culture. So they became skillful at adopting other cultures and yet keeping their own culture. Their own culture. But they're losing it now, I think. At least when I lived in Japan in the late 60s and 70s,

[90:50]

I was just surprised at how intact the culture was under a veneer of Westernization. But with this generation, it's changed. At least that's my perception. Anything else? Yeah. Is it like that in our own culture, a little bit like that, like we have different bodies for the people who live in houses, different who live in trailers? I think so. No, I think so. Yeah. Okay. And I think different generations.

[92:10]

There's a different body if you walk into one room in a different room. Yeah. If you were a Thai. Yeah, true. But at a cultural level it's a much bigger difference. Yeah. Would it be a kind of goal or something of Zen to reside in many different or as many as possible different bodies? Well, it sounds like a good idea, but you might get a little confused. But it is the idea that you notice that in each situation your body is slightly different.

[93:00]

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