Do you know the word meddle? Yeah. Interfere with? Ah, to meddle, yeah. So I feel I'm meddling a bit in how we're put together. I feel I'm meddling in how we're put together. And I need your participation to to think about, find out how to continue. It's not so much that I want to meddle in how we're put together, but rather to make us notice that we are put together, and to feel how we can participate in that, how we can participate in that being put together, and how deeply really we can participate.

[01:20]

Yeah, so does anybody have something you'd like to bring up? I was thinking about syntactic and paratactic, what happens today. I felt in a sense a differentiation through my practice between A first feeling of trust by practicing?

[02:41]

A differentiation between this trust, this first practicing trust and the trust that comes up now after years? And it feels different. So that I have a question, what can or what is this trust action? It doesn't feel that kind of permanent existing trust they had in the beginning. Did you say that all in Dutch? Not yet. And so a differentiation between a trust what I now have, which is not the same through the practice over the years, as at the very beginning, i.e.

[03:47]

a trust that at the beginning seems permanent. When I sat down, I had this trust in myself that it is good to sit down, and the trust that I now feel is So in the beginning an important part of your practice, dynamic of your practice, was trust. And now there's a different kind of trust. Is it the old trust still there or is it a new kind of trust? I would say I'm not so dependent on that first kind of trust. And could you distinguish more clearly between the two kinds of trust?

[04:49]

It doesn't feel so personal to what I do. I would say the first kind of trust was an invitation to continue practicing. In other words, you trusted in practice well enough to continue and see what happened. Now the trust I feel now is just trust that exists but it doesn't have that feeling Is the first more like confidence and the second more like acceptance? Well, I don't hear a question there, but I hear a report.

[06:28]

News from the front. Well, I think, yeah, that's the case. Yes, I think that's the case. And I actually don't think one can practice Without trust. For a number of reasons. One is your... If you're going to practice, you have to explore it enough to say, well, it makes enough sense for me to trust it. And you have to trust it enough then to take, let it take you where it goes. That's not so easy. Because we're actually quite scared it might ask us to change our life. I don't want to be a monk and have a shaved head.

[07:51]

But that is a kind of trick of the ego to get you not to trust. Yeah, because... I think what's really a fear of your changing your view of the world. And that is actually harder than changing your life. Because you're changing your life in the same world. But can you keep the same life in a different world? Okay. And we also need to trust because a positive frame of mind makes practice work. A positive frame of mind makes practice work.

[09:15]

If you have a too negative state of mind, you don't notice anything. I don't mean you shouldn't be critical, but that's different than being negative. Okay, someone else? Now, none of you can say, I hate speaking, I'm too shy to speak before a large group. And if you expect me to talk, because I'm quite shy to speak before a group, it can't all be completely clear yet. Yes. I have a question. I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to meditation, but my aims are just to find myself, to find peace.

[10:25]

And I have just one problem, because I think as long as I haven't solved my problems, what you said before, the negative things in my mind, Can I get to the point that I can easily do the meditation or does it need to do something else before? The reason I want to practice Buddhism is that I want to find peace with myself. I would like to follow up on the statement made by Mr. Roshi earlier, that one should always remove the negative thoughts from one's head. And I think that if one has these thoughts, To understand correctly, one question is, there are certain problems in your life that are bringing you to practice. To consider.

[11:43]

Is that correct? Yeah. But then also you wonder, maybe I have to solve my problems before I can practice. Yeah. Is that also true? And both are true. But practice is a process of solving one's problems so that one can practice. Yeah. Now, if you're quite new to practice, and you're entering into the seminar. I mean, this seminar is necessarily you're entering into a stream that's already flowing by.

[12:49]

In other words, I'm practicing with a number of people in both Europe and United States. and over each year trying to develop certain ways of looking at practice, deepening our practice. So I have to, you know, I think I don't have too much choice about to continue that. And how can it be useful to you? Well, one of the things is that I feel it's always necessary in practice to keep going back to the beginnings and deepening the beginnings. So I'm also talking right now about the beginnings of practice, you know, don't scratch.

[14:05]

That's pretty much as beginning as you can get. But I think you need, if you're in the midst of this, to take what you need from... the seminar without trying to make sense of all of it. Not that it's so hard to make sense of, but it depends on familiarity, a lot of it depends on familiarity. We could say that all of practice is a process of finding one's ease.

[15:10]

So first of all we notice we're not at ease. And we notice that that this ease is not discovered through accomplishment. There's a certain kind of satisfaction that occurs through accomplishing things. But you may be very successful in what you do, but still not feel at ease inside. So first you need to see that being at ease is somewhat independent of one's life situation and problems.

[16:12]

But you can be at ease in any situation. And the kind of comic book version of that in Zen is a guy is hanging by his teeth on a rope off a cliff and the rope is fraying Coming apart. And there's a tiger at the bottom of the cliff. And this is really stupid Zen.

[17:19]

But it does actually convey the sense that, okay, what do you do? Oh, what a beautiful flower grows here on the side of the cliff. But it is true. And the truth of it is in discovering an ability to pause, an inner pause in the midst of situations. And we know there's almost two kinds of time. There's the time that we're caught up in, we have to go somewhere and do this and that. And there's the time which... There's almost a kind of timelessness.

[18:25]

The simple example, you're on a bus going somewhere for an important meeting and the bus is stuck in traffic and going to be half an hour late. And it's too far to walk. You might as well enjoy yourself on the bus. We all know that, but it's difficult to do. But it is possible to talk. Can you just let it go and be in the bus? Because that's the bigger fact of your life. The biggest fact is you just are where you are. And the sense of place as also who you are, what you are, is a big part of coming into the fullness of being.

[19:38]

So practice is a kind of dialogue in this sense. But here you are, you sit down, you're going to sit for half an hour. It's not going to change. The problems of the world can wait half an hour. And the problems of the world can wait half an hour. I remember that when I first started meditating, people would say, how can you waste 40 minutes a day? This was back in the 60s. There are so many important things to do. But if I said to the same person, jeez, I watch the news on television 40 minutes a day. Or I sit in a cafe with a coffee and a newspaper 40 minutes a day.

[20:53]

Nobody would have told me I was wasting my time. Why does meditation suddenly feel like, oh, what is that? I mean, nowadays there's a big acceptance of meditation. But when I started, there wasn't. But if we do sit down and really not do anything, and Zen meditation emphasizes that you don't do anything, You kind of try to find your posture. And you may count your breaths. And you might not scratch. but you don't do much else and that's quite difficult to do not doing or to allow not doing to happen but in that you can notice am I really at ease or am I not at ease and then there's a kind of craft practice

[22:18]

To see if you can find your ease. Sometimes I feel more at ease than others, you notice that. And you notice how your body feels when it's more at ease. When your body gets familiar with that feeling, even remembers it, you also notice whether it occurred through concentration or it occurred through not concentrating. So it's a kind of craft you have to engage in yourself. But it only will happen, it only works. If you believe it must be possible to be at ease.

[23:45]

If you really believe it's possible, in the midst of any situation, you can find your ease. Of course, I'm not just speaking with you now. But all of us, we have to believe, trust it's possible or it won't happen. Or be open to it being possible. I remember I bent a spoon once. I've been in Moscow and my friends and I flew out and we decided to spend a few days in England. A friend of ours invited us to come to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, England.

[25:09]

Rupert Sheldrake. So there was a big conference of, England likes these things, of psychics gathered. So I'm walking down a hall with some friends and somebody opens a door and says, we're having a spoon bending party, we want you to come. I'd heard about spoon bending, but I had no interest at all. I'd never been invited to a spoon bending party before. I said, okay, let's go. I said, okay, let's go. So I already knew that I could douse, you know, douse for water and things like that.

[26:25]

So they told me to douse for the spoon first, so I did that. And I had no idea if you could bend a spoon more or less with your mind. You know, I was brought up in a scientific family. And it's been very hard for me to extend my belief, notice my experience, which goes beyond what science could explain. So I... Before I had this book, everybody, you know, there's about 50 people in the room. So I have this book. So I'm rubbing it and pushing it. And I knew that if I believed it wasn't possible it wouldn't be possible.

[27:36]

But I didn't believe it was possible. So I had to establish a neutral state of mind that it could be possible but I didn't know. So the night before, I saw I was just really neutral, not even paying much attention. Like sometimes when you're not concentrating in zazen, you find yourself most concentrated. No, I was like that. Then I felt a kind of state of mind I know. You know, I could tune myself to a state of mind I'm familiar with from Zazen. And when I did that, that spoon felt strangely plastic, and if I just pushed with my thumb, it bent.

[28:41]

Not only bent it that way, I bent it this way around, against the side. And I noticed that a number of the professional psychics there had face-saving bends. Oh, yeah. And I noticed that when I was around, a person who was good at it. Some people were unbelievable. They'd hold a fork and the spines would go like that. So when I was near that kind of person, my spoon just kind of melted almost. Yeah. It was quite, you know, I was quite surprised.

[29:51]

And I... And a friend of mine, Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, I showed him the spoon. And he said, oh, this will show how Christianity and Buddhism are the same. I thought this was a pretty crazy thing for him to say. But he meant there is some fundamental truth that both religions are getting at. I don't know if I think that. Anyway, it was interesting. And I'm so uninterested in it, for years I never tried it again.

[30:52]

And then one day I tried it again and there's certain conditions under which I can know it'll work and others when I know it won't. The point of my story is you either have to have trust or better even an openness to things being not predictable. And to deeply find your ease is more difficult than bending a spoon. And after 10 years of practice, there's a different kind of ease. And after 20 years of practice, there's another kind of deeper ease. So for any of us, I mean I'm talking about a lot of different things because there's a number of you here.

[32:19]

But practice works if you take one thing and stay with it. But even staying with one thing leads to questions and doubts. And I'm trying to respond to some of those things I imagine you might question yourself about at some point in your life. That was a rather long response. Someone else? I cut back to the example in the bus. My question is, do you have a goal, an aim to reach such a point?

[33:34]

Or do I reach that goal by not having any goals? You don't have one mind. We have several minds. And one mind can have goals. And another mind cannot have goals. And practice is that our more fundamental mind has no goals. But there's going to be certain goals.

[34:36]

I mean, we have certain goals. We'd like to feel better or whatever. Mm-hmm. Dogen says, he lists in one section of his teachings different kinds of minds. And one of the minds is discriminating mind. And he just assumes discriminating mind is very useful for you know, doing mathematics. Planning your things in your job or whatever.

[35:37]

But from the point of view of practice, discriminating mind is important because it's from discriminating mind that we make the decision to practice. But it's not within discriminating mind that we practice. But there's some dialogue between discriminating mind and non-discriminating mind. Now, this experience in a bus was a... common experience, but it's also a personal experience of my own. Is it many times before I started practicing, it was clear to me that I'm stuck somewhere and I might as well enjoy myself. I mean, I understood that, but only to a very limited extent could I do it.

[36:59]

But after I started to practice, I had no thought about that particularly. But I remember I was on the way to work in a bus and it was stuck in the traffic jams and kind of, I don't know what it was, I can't remember. And I said, geez, well, I can't, I probably got 10 minutes at least with nothing to do, so I don't know, I didn't do anything. But before it was just an idea. Jetzt tue ich einfach nichts. Und vorher war es nur eine Idee.

[38:01]

Aber diesmal ist sozusagen diese Idee auf fruchtbarem Boden gefallen. Und ich hatte das nicht geplant oder mir vorgenommen, sondern es war irgendwie wie fruchtbarer Boden da. Warum nicht? Jetzt lasse ich es mir wohl sein. found myself completely at ease with no thought about my job or whatever I had to do. And not only did I find myself with no thought at all about what I had to do, my body remembered this experience. The body remembered this experience. And ever since then, I have never been pressured by what I can't do anything about.

[39:13]

And that's clearly the fruit of practice. It wasn't really a goal of practice. But because I practiced, my body, not my mind, but my body knew this ease. And never forgot how to go there. Yeah, it's a big change. I didn't expect it. I'm just a kid, you know. I was, I don't know, 26 years old. Suddenly this happened. Yeah. Okay. Now, it's 12.30.

[40:16]

And we're going to meet again at 3. Until we did last year, I think. Yeah. Next time. Next time is tomorrow. And... So the break ended at quarter two. So we've been sitting here for 45 minutes. That's probably enough time. And if we stop soon, then we have two hours and some for lunch. That's probably... We're going to have lunch over there this time again, or are people just going to restaurants? No, we... Just, we'll figure it out. Okay. Okay, so let's sit a minute. Also, wir werden jetzt eine Weile sitzen.

[41:15]

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