I would like to know whether it's possible whether it's to be a Christian and Buddhist at the same time I know many of us would like to be. And if you take Christianity and Buddhism as teachings, Yes, that must be possible. But if you take them as truths, or Christianity as a revealed teaching, then probably they don't fit together.

[01:11]

Or at least some Christians won't think they fit together. Some Buddhists maybe too. Since Buddhism is a practice more than it's... Yeah, it's not really a belief, it's a practice. It's quite easy to be ecumenical. Open to all... When I was in college in the big Protestant non-denominational but Protestant in flavor church in the yard

[02:25]

They had people from a whole number of different religions giving talks. And everyone just went up to the podium and talked. Except the Buddhist. He went around bowing to every Christ figure and every Virgin Mary. Nur der Buddhist nicht. Der ist herumgegangen und hat sich verbeugt vor jeder Christusstatue und vor jeder Statue der Jungfrau Maria. Aber das war ziemlich einfach für ihn zu tun, weil er hätte sich auch vor der Wand verbeugen können. So the answer to your question is really no one knows the answer.

[03:32]

There's no question that Christianity will influence Buddhism and vice versa. But whether in a fundamental sense you can do both at once, no one knows. But I can say that virtually everyone A very large percentage anyway of Catholic monasteries in the United States have people doing Zen meditation. Since there's no God in Buddhism, they can adopt the technology of meditation. But does the technology of meditation then change their world view.

[04:35]

All I can say is, and this is from a Buddhist point of view though, that you or anyone who has this question, Ought to trust your own experience and trust where it leads you. And if it leads you to Christianity, this is good. I know two or three people who started out doing Zen and ended up to be Protestant ministers and one a rabbi. And they felt that meditation made them understand what their own religion was all about, their birth religion. One of the One of the people who are concerned, interested in this question, this Buddhist-Christian dialogue, many of them feel the idea of Buddha nature

[06:09]

is where you can see the possible relationship and the differences most clearly. But if you treat it just as a way of understanding yourself, there's no reason you can't be a Christian and use this way of understanding yourself. Okay. The best I can say. Yeah. Someone else? Yes. German or English? Well, you have to do it in both. German first is better for me. Should I translate you or do you want to translate yourself?

[07:20]

Aha, that means I should translate you. He doesn't understand German. My eyes, shall they fix a point, and shall they be kept open, or shall they close it? What happens if I feel tired? If my mind is going way too quickly? So what happens then? So I go for a while in the setting of the beginning. Can you say that again in German? For me, it's the first time that I try to sit down and ask myself the question, do I keep my eyes open, do I fixate on death?

[08:20]

These aren't strict rules, they're customs. What custom is to have your eyes gently aimed at a point above your height away from you. But focused would be too much to say. And the custom is, again, your eyes are kind of Just open a little bit so some light comes in.

[09:43]

And that does help you actually keep awake too, if you're sitting. And what you don't want to do with closed eyes is trigger sleep. But you don't want your eyes to be too wide because they make you too conscious. So you're using your body to kind of keep you from being either asleep or too conscious. But once you've been sitting for a while and you don't fall asleep with your eyes open Then it's okay to close your eyes somewhat.

[10:45]

But then they, I think, should be lightly closed with a feeling of light. But they don't have to be completely open. Some people recommend that if you get too tired or think too much, one teacher even recommends that you have a notebook and if you think too much, write everything down. I actually can't imagine doing that myself. And some people recommend you get up and walk around if you get too tired. And if you're sitting by yourself, that may make sense.

[11:52]

But part of what I said earlier don't scratch. It's also to sit a specific length of time and get up when that specific length of time is over. And not get up when you want to. So it's actually good to get a habit of not scratching and not getting up. But when you've decided to get up, like say you decide to sit 40 minutes, when 40 minutes comes, you get up.

[12:59]

Because what you want to do, I'm answering somewhat thoroughly, because maybe it's useful to everyone. Because you want to develop a habit of knowing you're going to sit a certain length of time, 30 minutes or 40 minutes or something. And that's also a kind of power to go into meditation and completely let yourself go into it because you know you're going to come back up. So I think it's better to take a time and then if you're tired you wait till then and then you get up and walk around if you want to sit a second time. That if you're going to sit some specific length of time, and if you're tired, if possible, stay till the end of that time.

[14:15]

And then get up and walk around. Joshua? I know somebody who got out of the army by refusing to get up. Hmm? Hmm? Somebody I know named Rue Vane was drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War. And when he was in training camp, they told him there was religious freedom. Marie Louise went to Catholic boarding schools where they also told her there was religious freedom. In the sense that you didn't have to go to church if you didn't want to.

[15:22]

But if you didn't go to church, they came and found you under the bed and asked why you weren't going to church. But if you didn't go to church, Why did you decide to not go to church? Anyway, so this guy named Ruvain, who was quite a character, told them he was a Buddhist, but there was no Sunday services for Buddhists. So they said, well, you can do your own service on Sunday. So he asked... Anybody who doesn't want to go to Jewish, Catholic or Protestant services can join me. Well, a large number joined him. And he taught them all to sit out in the field under a tree.

[16:35]

And he told them not to move until he rang a bell. So about the third Sunday, some officer came over and wondered what these... You've got all you slackers... Slackers? People who don't do what you're supposed to do. What all you slackers were doing... Under a tree on Sunday. And no one answered. No one scratched. And this officer got quite angry and he... walked around the circle and he started shouting, get up, get up, I'm ordering you. No one moved. And finally, after 30 minutes, Ruben rang the bell and everybody got up and they had him leave the army. And after 30 minutes, This incident was a reason why he was released from the army.

[17:52]

He was a kind of troublemaker, an organizer. He was a kind of troublemaker, an organizer. He was a kind of troublemaker, an organizer. Does anyone else have a question? as far as I understood I should meditate to change my world view a deeper understanding of being. And in all the books they have said, to good others.

[19:01]

For the benefit of others. For the benefit of others. I don't understand how the benefit of others there is, when I sit and meditate. Could you say that again in German, please? Yes. So, in every book there is a symbol of all people, all beings. And I don't understand what I am meditating on now. I don't know, I'm sitting here for three hours and I'm afraid I don't understand how it works, that I am a symbol of the other, that I am a symbol of the other. So you're saying that you understand on the one hand that you're meditating, you're asking how does your personal meditation benefit others?

[20:03]

So as far as the books I read, in each book I found this kind of sentence, like sitting for the benefit of others, for the benefit of all beings. Believe it or not, I don't know how to answer that easily. Can we open your door? At least for a while. If it gets too cold now, we've got three open, but let's see what happens. For the benefit of others means you're not meditating to get more personal power or improve yourself simply, etc. So there's one aspect which your goal is what your goal is.

[21:21]

So as far as I understood, the goal is to get a deeper understanding of the world, to get a worldview with deeper understanding. Yeah, I understand. Okay, so maybe by bringing up this different worldview, I confused the issue a little bit. Because basically you're just practicing to find some inner calmness, let's say. Maybe we need to close one of the doors, if you would. I think we can leave one open unless it makes you cold.

[22:50]

Let's leave one open for a little while. If you get too cold, then close it. So, I think it's easy to understand that you don't meditate for selfish reasons. And to meditate effectively, you need to be open to whatever's there, whatever happens. And you don't want to meditate within your thinking only. And this is already in a way a sort of change in worldview to not meditate within your thinking because your worldview is in your thinking. Wonderful question. Yeah, but you're not doing anything special, you're just sitting down.

[24:03]

In a chair or in a cross-legged or whatever. Ideally, whatever is there is what you are and what the world is. But if you can discover what the world is like, or know yourself better, it means that other people can too. And in a way, if you can't do it, it may mean that others can't do it too. At least for sure, if you can do it, others can do it. You create the possibility of others also discovering how we actually exist.

[25:09]

Now the question is, does this really benefit people? Well, in a deep sense, I think it does. But it depends on what you mean by benefit. I had a friend, Mickey Stunkard, who was one of the pioneer doctors of... Bulimia. And what's the other, what's it called? Anorexia. Anorexia. He was one of the pioneer doctors of anorexia and bulimia. And he was head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

[26:15]

And he was one of the pioneers in Zen practice in the United States. This is just an anecdote that what you said made me think of. And a woman doctor who was a colleague of his at some university in Chicago or something, started meditating because of Dr. Stunkard. And I think she was a girlfriend or something, I don't know, but anyway, he wasn't married. And she didn't know anything about Buddhism, wasn't interested in Buddhism, didn't know anything about benefiting others, you know, except as a doctor.

[27:41]

But because Miki did it, she started doing it. And after about six months, I met her and Miki when they came to visit me in San Francisco. And she said, You know, I don't know what's happening with this meditation stuff. I'm just sitting there. Nothing much happens. But strangely, everybody at work is treating me much nicer, better than I used to. And I wake up in the morning, I'm in usually good mood. And when there's a dispute in the hospital, they usually ask me to come and sit with, listen to the both sides. And she was quite convinced it was related to her meditation because she stopped for a while and then people started treating her differently.

[29:03]

So she clearly thought she was benefiting others, but she had actually no intention to do so. Okay, someone else? You walk. Yeah. At the beginning, what I heard or understood, in connection with the practice of sitting, was the idea of separation or separation of thoughts and actions. I don't understand it at all, because my impression is that all this is something that most people are good at.

[30:31]

Yes, and that's a question. At least for me, the idea of the practice of sitting is also about getting into kind of decoupling or distance between thinking and acting, or thinking and doing. That is at least the way I understood it. I'm not sure if I'm right. But if I understood it right, my question is really, How come that is an issue? Because my understanding is most people are very good at separating between thinking and doing. How come it's not the other way around, that we think about thinking and doing?

[31:33]

Okay, that's good. I like that, yeah. Well, if we assume that consciousness, if taking Freud's view, that consciousness suppresses or edits out those things it can't deal with, Now, then what meditation does is create a space where those things can come up and you're not afraid to... they come up because you know you don't have to act on them.

[32:40]

So it creates a space in a way outside of the editing of consciousness. And you can then really look at, say, how aggressive you might be or hateful or... whatever act or feeling that might scare you or something, you can let all of those out and have the freedom not to act on. I don't mean that We're all sitting on a kind of bomb of aggression that we need to let out. But when you do practice in the way I've been speaking,

[33:55]

you begin to find a greater complexity in how you feel about your spouse, your children, yourself, your job, and so forth. And often a territory of sadness or suffering that you really keep away from yourself. And it's not a psychological dissociation where you separate yourself from your feelings and actions. Yeah, but it's more that you find yourself much more connected with your feelings than your thinking. freedom not to act on what you think.

[35:32]

allows you to explore your feeling and thinking in a much wider way than when your thinking is part of your daily life and you have to do things and so forth. So in a way it's a kind of psychoanalytic process. Part of you is listening like the therapist might listen to you lying on the couch or something. And you can begin to free yourself from the editor we all have. There's two aspects, the main aspects of Freud had people free associate. But one aspect of free association was also, another aspect was also what Freud called, I believe, the evenly suspended attention of the therapist.

[37:06]

So in learning not to scratch, it's also to come into a kind of evenly suspended attention And you can begin to feel what kind of person you are. And sometimes it's not the kind of person you think you are. But then it can become a deeper familiarity with the kind of person you actually are. Anyway, this is one of the psychological aspects of sitting practice.

[38:09]

Okay, let me say two more aspects of this still sitting. Because by not scratching and I'm using not scratching just as way to say sit still. To see if you can find a way to sit still. You also, as you come into a real stillness, not only an outer stillness, but an inner stillness, you find a sense of ease. You find a sense of ease. Where you don't need anything.

[39:35]

Where you feel you have everything you need. A sense of ease with no anxiety. A sense of A sense of ease with nothing missing. A sense of completeness. And it's strange that just coming into stillness lets that happen. But of course if you are anxious, or feel you need something, you're not going to be still. So coming into an inner and outer stillness, we begin to notice what disturbs that stillness.

[40:38]

Or how to make a big enough space that things don't disturb us. It's not that we push things out. We let everything in, but it doesn't disturb us. And we could say, you could just give one instruction, sit until you really find your ease. Who could say that there's anything wrong with that? Sit until you really find your ease. Sit until you really find your ease. And now, ten years later, I'll ask for the first report. It takes, actually, all your lifetime you're noticing your dis-ease and your sometimes deeper and deeper ease.

[41:48]

And that feeling of ease sometimes takes the form of this is what it's really like to be alive. I feel like something like, this is a whiteness. And when you have that kind of feeling, it's actually a kind of measure for the other activities in your life. So that's a second aspect of this. Don't scratching or finding your stillness or ease. But there's a third aspect I can...

[42:50]

we can look at. Everything's changing, but at the same time, everything is staying. Everything's moving, the trees are moving, but at the same time, they're still. and we tend to with consciousness notice the movement but if you really look at the movement as I often point out If you really feel the leaves, you can feel the trunk of the tree in the leaves. And you can feel the roots of the tree in the leaves. Needles. Man kann auch in den Nadeln oder in den Blättern die Wurzeln des Baumes bemerken.

[44:13]

Because the leaves are always moving but returning back to the stillness of the trunk. Weil die Blätter und Nadeln sich immer bewegen, aber gleichzeitig auch wieder zurückkehren in die Ruhe des Stamms. Yeah, and a more classic example is if you look at the shape of an ocean wave. The shape is its attempt to return to stillness. No matter how rough the ocean is, the water is trying to return to stillness. Otherwise it would just fly off somewhere. When you discover, feel the stillness in yourself, you start feeling the stillness in everything else. You feel the leaves of the trees are entering into your own stillness, even in their moving.

[45:23]

And you look at a person and you feel their thinking and acting, you can also feel their stillness. So we could call this a spiritual dimension of practice. Because you start simultaneously feeling people's activity, In their very activity you feel their stillness. No, we're supposed to stop at five, right? So the people who are arriving can find their rooms and all that stuff.

[46:26]

I think we ought to take a break now until... maybe only 15 or 20 minutes, and then we'll have a short half hour until we end.

[46:41]

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