when you're sitting on the cushion you take your knuckles or your fingers and you push straight down at your side lifting yourself up off the cushion a bit and that feeling and then let yourself back down is about where your back should be The feeling is also a little bit like someone's taken hold of you here and lifted up. And you want that same feeling through the back of your neck as if your head is being lifted from a little bit toward the back of the head. There's more emphasis on the exactness of meditation posture in Zen Buddhism than in any other form of Buddhism I think. Maybe later in the morning I can tell you the reasons for that.

[01:25]

And some of you are sitting flat without a cushion. And maybe your body, you've always been able to do that. Or maybe it's from practicing yoga. But in any case, it's better to have at least a small pillow under your bottom. It can be fairly thin. But it does make it... easier for you to find your back position. And a slight angle like this of your legs in relation to your back is better for meditation than a right angle. That's all Have a good breakfast

[02:57]

Good morning. [...] For those of you for whom sitting 20 minutes or 30 minutes, this morning it was about 25 minutes, is too long. You can sit after it becomes too uncomfortable. You can sit like in this position. Or any way. This is a kind of standard rest position. We might as well be standard. So anyway, in Seishin for beginners, sometimes they sit this way after a while.

[05:17]

Again, the idea is to keep your back straight. I'd like to teach Zen to you partly as just common sense.

[06:18]

Really not having much to do with it being Buddhism. I suppose I'd also like to teach you Zen as Buddhism. So as common sense, then it's just a very practical way to get to know yourself. And even as Buddhist practice, the emphasis in the Zen school is to make this practice your own. To make this practice your own. which is pretty much the same as teaching Zen as common sense.

[07:45]

So this morning I mentioned for those of us who sat at 7 o'clock that there's quite a lot of emphasis, particularly in Zen, on the accuracy of your posture On the exactness of your posture. And so rarely do we in Zen do guided meditations.

[08:55]

Although perhaps these lectures are guided meditations. And sometimes during Zazen a teacher or I will speak a little bit Und manchmal während Zazen spricht der Lehrer oder ich auch ein paar Worte. But in general in sitting we want you to be on your own. Aber ganz allgemein gesprochen möchte man, dass während des Sitzens man alleine ist. And Zen traditionally doesn't give you much of a map of what's happening. Und die Zen tradition gibt einem nicht jetzt eine Karte von dem, was sich ereignet. Because if we give you a map or give you too much in the way of guided meditation, you can have the feeling that you're doing something that belongs to Buddhism and you're conforming to it.

[10:00]

So although we give you exact instructions about the posture, still it's obviously your body and your experience. So what happens during zazen in the beginning period of meditation? is just what you discover. So there's various motivations that would make you want to sit. One is to free yourself from your thinking mind. Because I think it's possible for us to notice that our thinking mind is where most of our anxiety and problems and compulsiveness is.

[11:18]

And if it can even occur to you for a moment that these thoughts are not the all of you, then you can practice to get the kind of calmness which frees you from thinking mind. And also sitting, as I've said, puts you in much closer touch with your health. Your mental health and physical health. And another motivation is that if you're the kind of person who asks yourself fundamental questions, If you've remained enough of a child to ask yourself fundamental questions. Like, what am I doing here? What are we doing here?

[12:29]

Oh, you know, who am I? Or how am I living my life? And so forth. If you ask, if you're the kind of person who wants to, who has the courage or childishness to try to find out what this life is, then this practice is a great discovery. Maybe it means to do this you have to feel free of your parents. Many people don't start looking at life directly until both parents are dead.

[13:30]

And you feel you're out there. And there's really no one left who promised to tell you what it was all about. And also we become more aware that we're going to die once our parents have died. Usually we don't think we're going to die before our parents. So as long as they're alive, we feel safe. But once our parents have died, we feel more exposed.

[14:32]

So many people don't get down to the business of life or looking at life directly until they feel this exposure that comes with the death of their parents. So Zen practice is also called home-leaver practice. Because you have to be prepared to leave home. And literally find this posture your home. Because when you leave home you want some sort of substitute security. So we want to give you something, some kind of security. What little kids cross their fingers and things, you know.

[15:36]

So we have you cross your legs. And we don't want to give you too much, but because when you uncross your legs, you know, it's like there's your fist and there it's gone. So we tell you, please depend on your fist. Sometimes it's gone, sometimes it's there. So this posture is like that. And I think it takes some encouragement from someone so that you can know the resources of you yourself.

[16:37]

And you can come to trust or try to trust that each moment is enough. That just now is enough. And so during the today and tomorrow I will give you occasional small practices that you can use now or come to in the future. And one is this phrase, just now is enough. And it's absolutely true. Even by definition. It has to be enough. What else do you have but just now?

[17:38]

So when you're feeling distracted or whatever, even a nice spring day, you can say, just now is enough. And to really have that kind of faith means to really have that kind of faith is necessary for this practice to work. So if just now is enough, how do we get close to just now? And the common sense answer in the Orient is sit down. And zazen literally means zah is to sit and zen is absorption or concentration.

[18:42]

In the Soviet Union they have a custom that when you're getting ready to go to the train or airport And usually the house of the apartment is full of people packing and trying to leave and friends arriving to say goodbye. And somebody else is starting the car. And then they always insist, everyone sit down. So everybody in the room sits down. They all sit there a moment and look at each other. And then they get up and go. But that spirit is the root of zazen. So instead of waiting for the airport or just for a moment, every day just sit down. Sit down in the middle of your life.

[19:48]

And you just begin to become familiar with your breath and your mind and your feelings. We want to do all this studying of philosophy and psychology and sociology and often we don't know the difference between emotions, sentiments, feelings, thoughts. Thank you for translating so well. I've been coming to Europe since 1983, is that right?

[20:49]

When was the Altbach conference? 1983. These guys back there got me to come. So if you have any complaints, you should talk to them. Anyway, so for many years I decided not to do seminars or conferences and lectures and so forth. But they wrote me such a convincing letter. It was the first letter I'd gotten. I used to get one or two a month, which I somehow couldn't refuse. So I said, okay, if you can write me a letter that good. And then I found such wonderful people here and such realistic and fresh interest in Zen that I've been coming back.

[21:50]

And then I met so many wonderful people here who were so fresh from their attitude and were so interested in seeing me that I decided to come back. You're very smart and you don't know much about Buddhism and you're willing. It's a good combination. You're very smart and you don't know much about Buddhism and you have good will and that's enough. Very good. And so having Martin and Dieter come join me and Beate and other people who have practiced with me before and have David operating the machinery and Ulrike translating notice the vanity there she wouldn't translate actually helps me a lot in finding out how to practice with you and to feel supported in doing this with you and to feel supported in doing this with you

[23:29]

And I thank all of you for being patient with my lack of German. But if I spoke German, see, you wouldn't get her. And this way you can hear it twice, which is probably good. We should probably have five translators in each translation. But maybe each one of you is a translator. So really the initial practice in Zen is just to really become familiar with yourself. You have to love yourself and care about yourself enough to want to become familiar with yourself.

[24:35]

And you have to have the courage, your adventuresome spirit that makes you want to find out your own way and not just accept some system so Zen practice really is asking you to find out your own way and all we're giving you is this posture and then I'm trying to remind you to look at your own views and ways of doing things Then as you know more know more about yourself are more familiar with yourself then you can start seeing do Buddhist ways do more developed Buddhist ways of practice make sense. And at that point, too, you can find out whether some psychological program or therapy is helpful to you.

[25:52]

Or acupuncture or whatever you want to experiment with is okay from the point of view of Zen practice. But one thing that is important if you're going to have a practice is that you have a home practice. someplace you bring everything home to. And if you have a major question in your life, you bring it home to your home practice. So somebody might do zazen, and yet their home practice in Japan might be the tea ceremony. Somebody in Japan might do zazen, but their home practice might be practicing the tea ceremony.

[27:15]

Or it might be tai chi or yoga. But for me, my home practice is zazen. So I look at whatever I do or whatever other things I study and I bring my experience of these other teachings and understanding how do I say this? I bring other teachings, shamanism and psychology and philosophy, to my practice of Zen to reach an understanding of them.

[28:16]

But first it's necessary just to become very familiar with yourself. And hopefully the absence of self. Because when you sit and you try to become familiar with yourself, it becomes less and less clear what self is. It becomes hard to locate a self. What you can locate is various thoughts, feelings and perceptions, and sentiments and so forth. And it's useful to not assume that the distinctions that language makes are accurate.

[29:25]

Language makes distinctions between time and space mind and body feelings and thoughts and I don't know in German but in English emotions and feelings sensations, sentiments, perceptions, and so forth. All of those are summed up in Buddhism in what's called the five skandhas. Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. Extremely important teaching in Buddhism. And feelings covers lots of territory and perceptions and so forth.

[30:31]

And this is a dynamic substitution for self. Because everything you see in the world can be explained through these five. And you never need the idea of self. So you can use these five as a way to give some form to your practice. Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses or patterns or gatherers, and consciousness. But you shouldn't think that these five are exactly what you are.

[31:54]

If you're going to know yourself know yourself existentially and directly you should have a sense of how you yourself are put together and how you function. So you want an access to yourself through awareness but not through thought. Or thought comes second, or is a mere formulation and not the leader. Or even if you lead with thought, the fruition is in awareness, not in thought. So usually the first way to begin this exploration is finding a way to sit still.

[33:12]

And be able to sit still despite being distracted or nervous or something. and then to identify with your breath connect your awareness with your breath and try to move your awareness through your body through your breath Through the vehicle of your breath. So you don't want to breathe just with your chest. You want to breathe with your whole body, but certainly with your hara or diaphragm. It's good if you can feel your whole torso is breathing, not just your chest.

[34:21]

And when you can have the feeling that breath is breathing itself, it's not you that's breathing. Does that make sense in German? I hope. So if breath can breathe itself, you're already much calmer. When we can't let breath breathe itself, When we're always trying to control everything then if we're anxious our breath is fast and our heart is pounding.

[35:25]

But if you can just release your breath to be its own person in a sense you'll find yourself much calmer. And it's a tremendous tool if you want to use it for exploring feelings and the arising of feelings and how feelings become thoughts and how thoughts are the patterns of self. And how physical sensations become thoughts and feelings. And so forth. And knowing that at least in Asian culture and Buddhist culture there's no philosophy until you know that. Unless you know that, know just how you think and feel and function and can be in the midst of the participation of that.

[36:31]

I'm sorry, I got lost. Yeah, me too. Until you can be in the midst of your feelings and thoughts and the arising of feelings and thoughts, until you can do that, philosophy is silly. It's some kind of exercise of the head. And about things which may have very little relevance to how we actually live.

[37:32]

So as they say, in English at least, you should be grounded. So maybe you should be bodied. And bodied in the sense that you are in the midst of feelings, thoughts, and so forth. If you've ever had a lucid dream, lucid dream is a kind of technical term. which means a dream in which you're aware that you're dreaming and can participate in the shape of the dream. If you practice, your whole life can feel that way. Not just like a dream, but like you're in the midst of participating in the shape of your life. And you know your life belongs to you.

[38:47]

You can't blame it on anyone else. Or you can only blame a little bit. And it's not very fruitful. So why don't we take a... little break and for a few minutes and then I'd like to have some questions from you. Okay. Excuse me, I just want to say something.

[39:51]

Sure. It likes to turn. Okay, I'm just trying to make this practice practical and accessible to you. So this practice can be your friend. Your good friend that you feel quite easy with.

[41:05]

And you can help me in doing that by asking me some questions and sharing with each other. your own feelings and fears about practice. And I'd like you to be able to ask questions so that I'd like you to be able to ask questions as if no one could hear you but yourself. And there's a tradition in Buddhism of asking questions in that way. And asking questions for yourself. And asking questions for everyone at the same time. And asking questions that should be asked even if you think you know the answer. actually if it's done formally you sit a certain way and you bear your shoulder and ask a question but we won't require any bearing of shoulders uncovering one shoulder but you can bear your heart

[42:30]

So, the woman there in the orange-red hair. The woman first. Die Dame zuerst. Ich bin gekommen. Ich war schon in Syrien. Ich war schon in Frankfurt. Aber ich fühle jetzt... The first success and they are not pleasant. I feel my blocked energy channel and the pain, the blockages and above all what is not pleasant, I can not put it off. So unhurriedly, sometimes I wake up at night and feel how the energy channel is blocked, how something goes through again. And when he stood behind me with the medication, it was all gone. and it was a warm feeling and energy rose, everything was dissolved, but when it went away again, it was a state of mind.

[43:53]

And I would like to thank you for that. She's never going to be able to translate. well she met you before in Zurich in Frankfurt and right now she's experiencing first success in doing zazen meditation but on the other hand she's going through some painful experiences for example like what she calls her energy channels are blocked and stuff and she feels it especially at night and during zazen when you straightened her back all of a sudden this was gone she felt warmth And she's very grateful to you.

[44:54]

And now the question, did you do that on purpose? Did you feel her blocked energy? And how to kind of improve this situation on her own? Does anybody else have any question or comment about when I was straightening postures? Yeah. Well, I was drawn back somehow. I felt as being like this. Mm-hmm. Too far back. Yeah. When you stood behind me, I was... I pulled you back. Yes, that's true. But you didn't touch me then, but I... But you felt pulled back. Did you feel that was a straighter posture or too far back? Now, I felt when you straightened me up then, this was the... I was sitting straight then, but before I was drawn back somehow.

[46:09]

Did you translate that? Anyone else about posture? And when I was straightening postures. Does anyone else have a question about posture and correction? I had the impression that I was sitting on a chair. And it was exhausting. Well, after he straightened his posture he felt a little bit sitting like out of balance. But after a while he adjusted to it and actually felt his breath more going through him than being outside him.

[47:16]

You were sitting quite crooked. Not that bad. I'm exaggerating. Yeah, it's nice to know where our body is. We don't always. And as your practice develops, if your posture is crooked, you're more likely to have out-of-body experiences. Have any of you had the experience of, when you're going to sleep, suddenly feeling you're up above your body or somewhere in the room? Yes. If you put up your hands, those who've had that kind of experience? Yeah.

[48:32]

Because it's actually fairly common. And if you when you're sitting if you get in the habit of sitting crooked and none of our postures are going to be perfect and they're always a little crooked but if you're quite crooked you're only slightly off but it's your habit. When you get to the point where you can drop body and mind and have this experience of a boundaryless body, if you're not sitting straight, you'll feel very cockeyed and tipped. Yeah, crooked.

[49:44]

So you're sitting like this, but you're a little bit like this. But you can feel like your body is way over, horizontal almost. Or even upside down. Or somewhere up here. But as soon as you center, fairly, you know, quite straight for you, that experience will center around you. And then the boundaries will disappear. No, I don't guarantee that's for everyone. We all have our own experience. But what I'm describing is not uncommon. So finding your most centered way of sitting is important.

[50:46]

Because this wider, more spatial feeling of the body exaggerates any incongruities in the body. Okay, when I straighten your postures I feel your body and your back as a kind of energy field. So I straighten your back if I can. And sometimes I can't because your backs are completely not responsive. And I can do only some, sometimes I can't even do mechanical corrections because your body is held very tightly.

[52:00]

But I can feel the energy in your body. And sometimes I try to reconnect it. And I promise to always stay behind you the rest of your life. Like your guardian angel. And I'll be sitting on your shoulder. Don't believe that. Oh... Okay, some other question? Yes? I'd like to know when and how you started getting into the Buddha.

[53:05]

Oh. Gosh knows. I wonder if it's important. Uh... Specifically, I began being interested in Buddhism when I was about 20. And I'd been reading a lot of philosophy and psychology and so forth, literature, to try to see if I could come up with a man-made explanation of what's going on. And I came across Buddhism And it just made tremendous sense to me. In fact, Asian culture in general made tremendous sense to me. I can remember sitting in a lecture of Reischauer, who was the ambassador of Japan for a while. He was my teacher at Harvard. He happened to quote Basho's famous poem

[54:24]

and I'd never heard it before and in the lecture he just mentioned it old pond frog jump in water sound and for some reason it totally wiped me out And I was sitting there with this kind of shimmer and... And Raishar said, you know, I don't really understand this poem and I just told you because it's famous. And I thought, my God, he's the expert on Japan for America. And he can't feel this poem. Anyway, I can't explain, but for some reason I felt, I feel much more at home in Japanese culture than I do in America or European culture.

[55:58]

It just makes, I mean, it is really true. I mean, Japanese history and psychology and philosophy just makes sense to me. I have to make a real effort in the West. Why would anybody think that way? So when I'm trying to teach a Western Buddhism, it's a real effort for me. So I don't know the answer to your question. Though my teacher used to say that he thought New England transcendentalism was a good preparation for studying Buddhism. And he said, I won't live that much longer. I need people to study with me who are already well prepared. And my family was involved in Transcendentalism and New England way of thinking for many generations.

[57:08]

And my teacher thought that was a good preparation for me. So that may be true, I don't know. And you, way in the back, you had a question earlier. I almost forgot. Yesterday it was said that the energy flow, when you fall down, that you get cold fingers or cold hands, and by concentration you can warm up the energy flow again. How do you get to sit with your feet on the floor and warm up your hands, but you get a hard belly? How can I warm up my belly? Well, yesterday you talked about energy flow and so forth and how to warm up fingers and legs. And his fingers and legs are always warm, but his stomach is cold.

[58:20]

How can he warm up his stomach? Share the heat. Let me say something about questions. I would like, even though each of you don't ask a question, and I'd like each of you to have a third generation question. In other words, what I mean by that In other words, what I mean by that is that you first have a question arise And you give it some form in your mind. And then you say, what is the root of that question?

[59:26]

What is really essential in this question? So you make it simpler and more essential. And then you do that once more. And that's a third generation question. And then you ask that question. And that question you should be willing and ready to ask three times before you get an answer. You should expect to be ignored the first two times. That's actually the tradition of asking questions in Buddhism. Why do you like to have everything explained?

[60:30]

Because she's curious. I like your curiosity. But the first thing she said to me yesterday It was first she wasn't sure she wanted to come. She wanted to test it out for a while first. Is that right? Did she tell you that, why she came? She didn't want to do satsang, but she dreamed about you. Anybody else dreaming about nothing? The dreamers sit over in this corner. And the ones I'm dreaming about sit in this corner.

[61:32]

You go, you leave. And then she said in Altbach, I said this generation belongs to women. And she asked what I'd done about it since Altbach. What was your other question? Oh, about the difference between women and men's religious experience. I don't mind answering any question. But I actually don't like asking questions which are too quick. If I say something and there's almost too immediate a response, what's that about or why, I'd rather not answer questions like that.

[62:48]

If the why comes six hours later, if the why comes six hours later or the next day then I feel it's percolated anyway I'm interested in slow messages not fast messages like percolate like coffee do you have percolators in Germany? Not really. Actually, in the States, it's coffee machines in the 40s. You weren't making much coffee in the 40s, probably. Mostly because you're too young. The espressos are more popular. The espressos are more popular here. Yeah. It's true.

[63:59]

Okay. I do want to respond to the, I would like, I'm quite happy to respond to the question about women and men, but again I'd like to wait a little while. Okay. And many of the things I'm telling you, you certainly don't have to accept. But the reasons for them can't be explained easily. And you have to find them out for yourself. So one more question. Last night when you saw the ant, you said the ant is too smart to let herself be caught for freedom.

[65:10]

How to handle this smartness? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. There's a Zen story, which I think I mentioned to the Zurich seminar last September. Some of you were there, I believe. And again, for those of you who have come to other lectures and seminars I've done, I apologize for repeating myself sometimes.

[66:11]

And I really like to find new ways to say things all the time. And I don't like repeating myself. But it takes time to find ways to make things clear. And since many of you are starting practice anew, I have to find ways of talking with you that seem to work. Anyway, the story is Sao Shan is asked by Ching Feng Shi, I think his name is. Good work.

[67:11]

We used to do a lot of work in the years ago in the housing projects in the slums of San Francisco. And we were having a... There had been this Chinese woman who had come to the housing project. And this very large black woman couldn't remember her name. And she said, oh, you know, one of those names like a fork falling on the floor. And she said, oh, you know, That's what your pronunciations have been.

[68:22]

Anyway, anyway, Zal Shan says, why did you come here? And he says, to erect a hut. To erect a hut, to make a hut. And Zal Shan says, is it completed? And Ching Fang Shui, the monk, says, this side is completed. And Cao Shan says, when will you complete the other side? And Ching Fang Shui says, I'll let you know when I start. And Cao Shan says, correct, correct. So this story, just don't worry about what it means. So just where you are, let's sit for a few minutes.

[69:25]

Maybe I'll try to respond a little bit to several questions or discussion or two I had briefly during our break. I think science is lending a lot of useful information to the development of meditation practice. And I think it will actually affect affect the development of meditation practice.

[71:37]

For many of these things it's important to get the correct view or the view of the possibility first. That's not the realization of the practice. But the view of it is necessary to trigger or make possible the realization. So I try to, and with your questions, try to be quite clear about practice. for your views will make possible your realization. It's very difficult for meditation practice to break through views that can't hear or see meditation. though if your views are tremendously rigid and the opposite of meditation practice.

[73:02]

If you have a big enough crisis in your life, you might break through almost anything. But I'm only trying to create small crises in your life. big crises are your own doing someone there's been some interesting work done which is I believe occurred mostly by accident And one of the people doing this kind of research is a man named Condon, C-O-N-D-O-N. And he took four and a half seconds of a Gregory Bateson film And of a Gregory Bateson film of some people having dinner, a family having dinner.

[74:18]

And he watched that four and a half seconds at various speeds. Slow and fast. And over four or five years, he watched it 13 million times. Until he'd gotten what he felt was all the information he could get out of it, or had the patience to get out of it. And he studied all the rhythms of the people and their movements and eye movements and mouth and body and arm and so forth. And what this kind of work has shown is that there is an absolute synchronicity in what's happening in this room.

[75:20]

is that our bodies are moving in a very high order of synchronicity. And in fact, if you measure our brainwave patterns, our brainwave patterns are in sync. And one of the differences between Japanese culture and Buddhist culture And one difference, for example, between Japanese and Buddhist culture is, let's just say Japanese culture, is the Japanese, let's say, let's make it real normal, in a meeting of Western businessmen with Japanese businessmen, The Japanese businessmen actually try to establish physical synchronicity with everybody in the meeting.

[76:36]

They call it harage, belly talk. They're actually supposed to be able to read the thoughts of everybody in the room through their belly. We just don't have ideas like that. They'll actually talk about it. But if you're somebody in your... If you work in a corporation, suddenly, would you bring your belly to the meeting, please? But in Japan, there's this conscious sense of doing this and then also controlling the opportunity of the other person to think about something or make decisions. So if you're leaving on, they know you're scheduled to leave on Wednesday, they'll try to schedule your time

[77:47]

and affect your time, it's difficult for you to really think clearly about the contract. And it's not even manipulative, it's sort of more self-interest. It's not thought in a manipulative sense, it's just the way you are with people. And the more you trust the other person, and the more they trust the German or, excuse me for saying German, what do you say, Deutsch? Deutsch businessman? Or American businessman? the more they trust that this western businessman really wants a win-win situation.

[79:02]

Where everybody wins. Then they'll open up the space and allow a genuine dialogue to happen, a multi-log to happen. But if they feel you're coming to get an advantage and to get a contract which will serve you better as the situation changes, They'll try to control the space and time so that you can't do that. And they don't think of it so much as trying to have logical negotiations but rather to create a kind of time-space atmosphere which you can't function in.

[80:05]

Yeah. Western businessmen haven't learned that But they're just coming from a different culture. And the Japanese have made a very big effort to try to understand these things. There's another word Japanese businessmen use, Nemawashi. It's actually Nemawashi. It actually is the way they transplant trees. And how you transplant a tree is in Japan, and you see them in all of the nurseries all over the place. And I always wondered what was going on. But they dig a tree up, cut a lot of its roots, bind it back up with straw and rope, and put it back in the ground.

[81:19]

In the same place they dug it up. And then they won't transplant it for one to several years. And if it lives, after it's been dug up and put back in the same hole, then they'll transplant it. But they just won't dig up a tree and then transplant it. That's considered irresponsible. You have to find out first if the tree survives. So this word has come to mean making the proper kind of preparations for a situation. So that this kind of high-context, high-information culture, which Japan is, is also a characteristic of the the situation which Buddhism developed and Buddhism influenced.

[82:38]

There's the strong sense you have to do most of your homework yourself. And most of the homework means that before the teacher in Zen will teach you too much, You should be 90% there. The last 10% is the hard part. So as much as possible you should know, as I've been saying, your feelings, emotions and so forth. And how you are affected by other people. And how you can let that in or screen it out.

[83:39]

And the main way of screening in a body culture is how you handle your energy and your hara. I don't know if it's useful for me to tell you these things, but anyway, I'm telling you. For instance, I've noticed sitting in a restaurant or something with a group of people who meditate, And in fact this particular group of people I don't think understood Buddhism very well. But they practiced meditation for all of them for at least ten years probably.

[84:40]

And meditation had become a kind of physical habit for them, like eating, sleeping. I was just having a discussion with him. And it suddenly struck me that while we were having this discussion, we were all aware of what the waitress was doing. And what the particular song on the radio was in the background of the restaurant. And how the words of the song were interspaced with the words we were saying. In fact, people were syncing their speaking with the word songs.

[85:55]

The song's words. And allowing the song sometimes a little pause to emphasize something being said in the sentence. And we were all doing it. They were doing it without any sense that this is unusual. They just come to do this from the practice of meditation. Because you don't, from meditation... Well, let me finish my sentence. And it struck me because it suddenly dawned on me that I never had that experience in the United States but always in Japan. In Japan it's just the way it is. And as I've said before about this in Japan if you inhale in a word or exhale in a word It's a slightly different feeling.

[87:09]

Or if you make a nasal sound as your between words. In other words, all of it, including the spaces, are language. We Northern Europeans, most Europeans and Americans, tend to filter out what's not the words and put everything else into a background. And if your identity is in your mind stream, And your mind stream. You have to do that. Otherwise you can't make sense of things. Because you have to filter to make sense of things. But if you filter with your body you can allow a much more complex environment of sound and thoughts to pass around in you.

[88:20]

And also if you have a sense of multiple identity and not single identity, you're able to allow more perception, more multiplicity in your perceptual field. then we can allow a greater diversity in our field of perception. And we can allow more incongruity without trying to make it all fit together. In other words, dissonance and difference just become message rather than dissonance. Dissonance becomes message rather than dissonance. And I'm saying these things to you not to say you have to become Japanese to become Buddhist. But that there are more possibilities of being than we know about. And more possibilities of being than maybe anyone's ever experienced yet.

[89:22]

All the possibilities have not been realized yet. And as we have the idea that the artist, the poet, the painter sometimes goes ahead of our culture, in cultures with teachings like Buddhism and Shamanism, The shaman and the bodhisattva are thought to be people who, either through initiation or inclination, Explore the possibilities of being for their culture at that time. So if you can just in a few minutes we're going to break for lunch.

[90:59]

And your stomach is going to be speaking to you. But try to see if you can walk to lunch. or drive your car with your hara without having an accident. But see if you can get a sense of consciousness or your center here, not up here on your shoulders. And I would like you all to get to know each other during these two days. And feel friendly with each other. But I'd like you especially to emphasize getting your hara to know each other's hara. And when you're with each other, these friends and new acquaintances, try with your hara to create the space that allows the other person to be whatever they are.

[92:16]

So you can say, you can ask your stomach, stomach, let this person, saying to your own stomach, stomach, let this person be whatever they are. That's what I call leading with words. Words can be very powerful that way. But the words just lead you so you can remind yourself to let your stomach create this opportunity. One last thing I'd like to mention is that about Japan, an example I've been using recently is the Noh stage in Japan, the Noh theater stage is divided into two sections. And the front section is like our usual state of mind.

[93:39]

Our foreground life, which got us to come here to this seminar, in the back part of the stage, The sacred time. Or stopped time. Or dream time. Or the time which knows the precise moment something happened. The precise moment some event in your life happened.

[94:17]

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