On this first seminar I do with you when I first returned from the United States, we have some custom of having a meeting or a gathering or a discussion of, you know, this year, what's been going on and so forth. This is one of the times when more people than usual, more persons than usual are together, who have been practicing together a long time. So we had, you know, some meeting and it was suggested and it seems like a good suggestion that we do it this evening.

[01:08]

I'm sorry, but probably instead of Zazen. And what time would be good? Does anybody know? Evening meal is over at 7.45. Oh, 19.45. Yeah. 1945, I was nine. Okay, good. I'm looking forward to it. What I found to say just in the time before lunch there

[02:14]

was the fruit of the small groups and our discussion because it helps me find a basis, a base from which we can, a common basis, shared basis from which we can speak. It's not only that it's not only that we create a shared basis and then, you know, it gives me a chance to say some things that depend on that basis. But it's more like, it's also, rather, also, in addition, that We understand things better for some reason.

[03:52]

We're more likely to understand things through the Sangha than through our own individual practice. At least certain teachings, particularly teachings that involve a... a shared assumed world, reach into us more effectively, more powerfully, when some teaching is being understood by, practiced by others as well. So each of us gets a little bit and then

[04:56]

suddenly it coalesces or comes together for all of us more. So doing a seminar like this for me, there's always a kind of sacredness to it, but also it's just simply a way of practicing. Because again, it's not just me saying something I know, but rather discovering something with you and evolving it with you. I don't want to over-emphasize this point. But I think it's, you know, maybe since it's, for me, the process of a seminar, it's good that we might maybe understand it. So let me start out by asking, does anybody want to say something about anything or in regard to what we were just discussing?

[06:19]

Yes. Two questions. I think the same words but different themes. One is what you said the first day about this seeing things not connected, this paratactic thing. I'm not sure how to do this. Seeing things side by side. I wonder whether it's the same or it at least leads to the same as seeing things as they actually are. Okay, German, please. So it's always about this not being connected, once what was the topic from the first day, so this paratactical, so not seeing things connected, where I ask myself how that works, or whether that is the same, or leads to the same, at least, as when you see things in their so-being.

[07:35]

Oh, not to see things as they are or seeing them in their thusness. Well, if I were encountering these ideas for the first time or at any point even now, I would practice what can be practiced try out what can be tried out, and not try to connect them or draw conclusions in advance of what they might be. So I use this fairly uncommon word, paratactic, It just simply means things placed beside each other. And like words that are placed beside each other or even chairs that are placed beside each other.

[08:49]

If you imagine maybe placing chairs beside each other in a way no one could sit in them. They're chairs, and they're just there, but you can't use them. You can't. They're not connected or something. So then, you know, taking that, whatever that is, why did I bring it up? I don't know. But if it occurs to me, I might try to feel that, feel things just placed beside each other. Yeah, see how, see what, yeah, like that. And then... Things as they are is a much more abstract idea.

[09:52]

But then I'd ask myself, when do I feel things as they are, as they actually exist? Do I ever have the feeling that, hey, this is how things actually exist? Sometimes we come to that feeling when we really feel at ease. The sense of finding your seat as an expression in Zen practice. And you've come to really feel exactly just where you are. No urges to do or change, etc.

[11:07]

And sometimes when we have that experience, we have a feeling, oh, this is what it means to be alive. I'm alive. Or we have a feeling, this is, yeah, this is how things actually exist. Now I'm just giving an example. But it's interesting, when you have that experience or know that experience clearly, it actually becomes a measure of one's other experiences. And you notice how often you don't feel it easy, you don't feel, well, this is how things exist, or this must be what it means to be alive.

[12:09]

So then I might say, does this have anything to do with this setting things side by side without connecting them? Yeah, so like that, I mean I would try the things out and see how they happen to relate. And then you brought up a third thing, thusness. And that's a nice thing to puzzle thusly over. It is? Yeah, it is, but it's kind of because it's a puzzle. It's much cuter in English. Oh. To muse things over, to think them over.

[13:12]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Another question? No, no. You're good. I'll be here all afternoon. This is what you said before lunch about the feeling being connected and not connected and the power which lies between... Between the two, yeah. Between the two. Yeah, in the relationship, yeah. Does this mean that I feel the connection between these two and I really deeply realise that the one cannot exist without the other? I think that's a too dialectical way of thinking.

[14:13]

Yeah, I mean, on one level, white can't exist without black and so forth. But this is really a matter of the relationship of emphasizing one or emphasizing the other, not a relationship of them conceptually. It's more like you can be in your house, you can run out in a field. Well, the field could exist without the house. But you do experience something being in the field when you were just in the house. It's more like that kind of relationship. You notice what happens to you when you go from one kind of experience with people to another kind of experience, either in yourself or with other people.

[15:50]

One pushes you in one direction and then the other one pushes you back in the other direction. And that push can be actually the energy needed to break free. So the Zen teacher is working with that or feeling that in people. And sometimes the Zen teacher, if he could or she could resolve a situation in a student or answer the question, doesn't want to. Because you resolve it, you take away the energy. of the problem. So a Zen teacher shouldn't be always friendly and nice. Sometimes there should be a kind of problem. Yeah, and some Zen teachers find it no problem to be a problem.

[17:12]

And some of us who are so nice, we have to make an effort to be a problem. Yes, yes. I'm not describing myself. Okay, something else? Yes? I have noticed that for me the attitude is a very important point, as well as an indicator in what kind of, whether I am more in the mental mind or whether I am in a more physical field of perception. Okay, I just remembered that the posture is for me like an indicator if I'm more in a thinking mind or more in a perception feeling.

[18:20]

Your posture in zazen, you mean? If you're in a more perceptive bodily feeling or in a kind of mind. But also the posture in a normal life. Yeah, I understand. If I am mindful or not. Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah, that's the way it is. I have a question about the koan you mentioned in February. I don't dwell in my body with breathing in. But we should be in the body and in the breathing.

[19:39]

Breathing in, I don't dwell in mind and body. Breathing out, I'm not. caught by myriad things. Yes, that's the way it is. It's the same Andreas. Okay, that would take a little time for me to say something about, but I'll keep it, I'll hold it in mind. Okay, somebody else before I see if there's something I can say about something or other? I have a question.

[20:57]

At last. Which I, it's kind of a theoretical, but I just didn't get, you have this bouncing from connected to unconnected and back and forth, and then you use the energy of the unconnected world to kind of pop out into enlightenment, yes? And you have, you've said this is the same as in the yoga chara, the... Relative, absolute, and imaginary. So I cannot, I thought that these have now got three locations and those three things have those three names. But it makes no sense which one is which. Because for me it could be the relative is the unconnected one because you want to not be there. The imaginary is the imaginary better world. That's where you're connected. And the Absolute is then when you pop out. And it doesn't help anything if I think of it like that.

[22:03]

This is more theoretical. I can't quite understand it. We talked about it. We are once connected and once in an unconnected world and always go back and forth. And in this unconnected world, this is our normal world. And we take this energy from there to jump out of these two worlds. And now there are these three terms of the Yogacara, the relative, the absolute and the imagined world. Well, why don't you just stay with what I said about In most of our life we're involved with people who see things as separated.

[23:14]

But through practice, in the Sangha and in meditation, we may find ourselves connected to ourselves and to other people in some new way. it doesn't compute or we don't experience it when we're in the usual situation. That's all you need. You don't have to relate it to this yoga chara. Yes, thank you. but you can see that I mean if I had the flip chart which I don't need it now but I would draw three sections and usually we're going from the imaginary we can call the imaginary what everything that's about you now that wouldn't exist if you died tonight.

[24:37]

All those things you're planning, thinking about, have to do. Oh, they're real to us, but if you die tonight, they're not too real. I'm not wishing any problems on you, but... So, if you go back and forth between what you have to do and think about in the list, like you mentioned yourself, didn't you say you're always living toward the list you have to fulfill, right? Yeah, and someone else too. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you see things as relative or you have the feeling of, I don't have any place to go or anything to do.

[25:47]

That's relative? Yeah. You'd see that, let's not try to, okay. No, it's because relative has two meanings. One is it's important and one is just relative. No, relative means in Buddhist terminology that things are interdependent. Yeah. So when you're in one... Let's just say when you're in one area, it... It's too hard to explain. It's too simple to bother to explain. Basically, you have a situation where you're going... you're drawn toward one and then when you're there you're drawn toward the other. And you can understand that in relationship to many teachings. And that dynamic of being drawn toward both successively is a kind of energy. You mentioned to me that when you were young, somebody told you something about chemistry, you're studying chemistry.

[27:08]

Do you want to tell us that? When you were young, you told me you had an experience in chemistry lessons. We learned these periodic tables. At some point I noticed that these things on the table differ only by a different combination of particle composition and that they are actually the same particles. So I was in chemistry and I learned that the different materials are just or the elements or what you call it, I don't know.

[28:25]

Atoms. Just are different by their different combination of things. They're the same things differently combined. So I was like, why is the table a table? If it's the same as air, it's just a different thing. Why doesn't the table just, you know, why is it staying a table? So that was the idea. When you have a... That thing from a long time ago has stayed with you. because there's a certain energy in it. In other words, you're looking at everything and you're seeing it's all the same thing in different arrangements. I mean, that's the very basis of koans and gate phrases and so forth. You see everything is the same or somehow is the same but yet it's different.

[29:29]

And it's not resolvable. And there's an energy in that. And if you pursue that, which is the same as connected and not connected, Yeah. Okay. That's all. Maybe, could you open this door for us? It is open, okay. Maybe we need one window over there open or something. But that one chills you guys. But just open that one, let's say, in the outside. And then the outside, the little one. It's open there. Oh, it is open? Oh, I see, it is open, yeah. Now, Sophia, going back to Sophia, composing herself, this simple act of composing yourself,

[30:49]

may be something close to our true nature. Or this finding, as I said earlier, your ease or your ease in sitting or in just being. So I mean I bring that up just to bring up some idea, introduce this idea of one's true nature. And so now I'd like to bring up something else that's struck me and I've mentioned it now and then.

[32:07]

Which is some of you have taken walks in this big forest over here. There's pretty big forests almost in every direction, actually. But anyway, this one's quite easy to get into. As I mentioned to somebody at lunch today, Marie-Louise and I got quite lost in there a few years ago. Five years ago? I'm not that old. You didn't have to say. Anyway. And it was a peculiar day because it was quite warm and sunny and we had very short summer clothes on, you know. Also, das war ein merkwürdiger Tag.

[33:14]

Es war ein sehr heißer Tag und wir waren kurzärmlich angezogen. Und da war eine ganz andere Wirklichkeit da im Wald. Ja, und das war eiskalt da drin und es war so ein Schnee, Regen oder Hagel. Yeah, we were haggled, whatever that means. But we were... Hail. Oh, hail. We were haggled anyway. That's drunk in German. That's drunk? No. When you're drunk in Germany, you're hit by hail? Yeah, sort of. Haggle. And we were just in there. You know, in Japanese there's a whole bunch of words for I, for self, etc. It's always amused me that we have, yeah, like there's 35 or something.

[34:18]

And in English we don't have very many words for selfie. We've got at least 35 for how you get drunk. So anyway, we were in there and freezing cold and we really got lost. And it was kind of fun, except it was so cold, it was a little worrisome. Did we see somebody eventually? No, we found one of those more solid roads and signs, which we didn't know those villages either. Eight kilometers to some village we didn't know. But in such a situation, imagine someone appears. I brought this up before, but it's one of those things that stays with me. Now, I don't care who this person is that appears.

[35:33]

I'm very glad to see them. A being, a human being. Chocolate cake, ice cream, human beings. A warm fire. Yeah. He might be somebody I could imagine really disliking in normal circumstances, but in this one, I am so happy to see it. Yeah, okay. I think we would all feel that way after a few hours in the icy rain. How do we get out of here? Why don't we feel that way every time we meet anyone? That's my question. I would like to try to at least say something about it.

[36:50]

And I would consider it a great success if I and all of us could feel that way when we met anyone. It's a commonplace situation and question. And we all know it and understand it. I mean, know about it. We know the experience. But all, I would say, none of us understand it. Why is something so simple, actually, so that reaches to the depth of what our life is? So let's take one of those breaks. Which you've been sitting a while. Okay.

[37:50]

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