to say something. It doesn't make sense to you to ask me, okay? Okay, sure. Anyway, the title of this talk is The Body of the Whole World, isn't that right? The title of this talk is The Body of the Whole World. The Body of the World. So I think we have to start out with this physical body. And for some of you at least, we'll be having a seminar Saturday and Sunday, and we'll try to look at these things in some detail. So tonight, at least tonight though, I'll try to paint a picture of how the body is seen and understood in Buddhism. The...

[01:01]

I guess we could say in Zen Buddhism particularly, the body is the main vehicle of the practice. Now when you bring your attention to your breath, I'll go in short sentences, okay? When you bring your attention to your breath, you're not just bringing your attention to your breath. You're actually recognizing that your breath is in itself consciousness. Now one of the truisms of Zen, Tantric, late Buddhism is that all mental phenomena are also physical and all physical phenomena are also mental.

[02:29]

So first of all, we have to understand a bit about how Buddhism understands the body. Now, recently I've, it's dawned on me recently how much through Zen practice you develop interior space. And I've been practicing quite a long time. So it's long enough that this development of interior space has been gradual enough that I sort of didn't recognize What a difference it is before I did this.

[03:31]

Thanks. So... What about when you bring the body to the breath instead of the mind to the breath? First of all, you've got this physical body. And in Zen practice, because it developed in China, is embedded in the everyday life in a way no other Buddhism is. So there's a really radical emphasis in Zen practice, because of how it developed in China, in that this everyday life is the scene of our existence.

[04:42]

and that everything that you need and everything that exists is present now Now, I should introduce an idea here which is the divided world and the undivided world Now, usually that's called form and emptiness But I think form and emptiness are harder to get the feeling of than if I say the divided world and the undivided world. Now this sense of a divided world and an undivided world or an absolute and relative is... is essential to all later Buddhism. So, when I'm thinking in language, I'm thinking in the divided world, usually.

[05:53]

And ask you to look at it without any other associations. Or just name it, flower. So you have nothing else, flower. And we don't have time to practice with that this evening, but if you do do that, you'll see that actually you're using language to shift the level of mind. Shifts the level of mind. So if I say, oh, this is a flower, look at the flower, the language or the grammar puts you in a mind which is we call the divided mind or representational thinking. But just to name something without any other associations, you're using language, but the language is closer to the undivided world.

[07:25]

So that's a pretty simple practice, just to name something. So, das ist relativ etwas Einfaches, nur etwas so zu benennen. So, when you practice meditation, one of the basic instructions is, when you have a long breath, you say, ah, this is a long breath. When you have a short breath, you say, this is a short breath. Also, bei der Meditationspraxis kann man zum Beispiel sagen, aha, jetzt haben wir einen langen Atemzug, oder jetzt haben wir einen kurzen Atemzug. Now when you do that, you're not just bringing your attention to your breath. Now when I first started practicing, I thought, gosh, I'll just bring my attention to my breath, I don't need to name it.

[08:28]

And it was quite a bit later that I realized that naming it is different than just bringing your attention to your breath. Bringing your attention to your breath is one kind of event, and then naming it changes the level. Now my teacher, when I first started practicing, told me to put my mind in my hands. And I'd had a good education, relatively good, and no one had ever told me to put my mind in my hands.

[09:35]

And I had really no idea of what he was talking about. He also told me to breathe through my feet. You know, I was a rather literal type person and I... What's that? He's obviously talking about a different kind of body than I'm aware of. Because he was a very convincing, sweet person. And he said it as straightforwardly as he'd say, have a cup of tea and breathe through your feet. So I had to spend some time with these things, put my mind in

[10:37]

put mind in hands and breathe through my feet. Now also there's a phrase from some Zen teacher. He asks, what world are you going to put your body and mind into? You could say, what body and mind are you going to put into the world? But this guy said, what world are you going to put your body and mind into? Meaning both. And another famous Zen phrase from Dogen is dropping mind and body. So I will try to, in the seminar, sort of try to talk about mind and body and the world in such a way that those statements make some sense.

[11:48]

This is your body. And this body that Buddhism talks about is also yours. Okay. Now, there are... In Buddhism we talk about the four elements. Now, this is also an idea in the West, too. Of course, it's obvious. Of earth, water, fire, and air. But what this is, is not a... It's not a scientific division of the world. It's a division that you can identify with. So the earth means the structure of your body. The solidity of your body. Now, another characteristic of Buddhist practice is that you look at things in a way that's called Dharma.

[13:31]

Which means to look at things in units. I mean, a simple example is, you know, I pick up these beads. I do it in such a way that as I pick them up I feel a sense of completeness. And if I put them in my other hand I do it the same way. Or I put them down. So you develop a sense of completeness on each thing you do. A year later you may feel more complete. But if you're always doing the little units of your life incompletely, you're going to feel incomplete. It's that simple, the idea.

[14:33]

And that's also embedded in the idea of, oh, now this is a long breath, or now this is a short breath. Okay. So the sense of it is, in this kind of practice, is to see things within the limits that you can see them. And the sutras use phrases like reality limits or the horizon of an event. Horizon of an event. Okay. Now, part of that is that you... Well, for example, let's take the word vijñaya.

[15:36]

And it means sense fields. It means the senses. But it actually means to know the parts together. Or the word citta for mind. As in bodhicitta and so forth. That word citta means mind and everything that accompanies mind, that goes with mind. So it means anything that has the aspects of mind about it, including the object of perception, is part of mind. So the word citta means everything associated with mind is mind and it has a second meaning which is the unity of that. So when you take something, that was all to go back to the four elements. So when you take something like the earth element or the structure or solidity of your body, you actually try to get a real sense of the solidity of your body.

[17:03]

Now, since Buddhism emphasizes interior space as much as exterior space, you also try to realize that from interior space. Now, for most of us, I think, we think of interior space as that space where we can think something which no one else knows. And usually you're wrong. I mean you only think everyone else doesn't know. Everyone knows. They may not think they know. Okay. So, mostly our sense of interior space is private space, which is defined from the outside in.

[18:19]

Now, as a matter of emphasis, Buddhism tends to define exterior space as defined from the inside out. It's okay, everybody got the idea. Okay, so when you try to get a feel for the solidity of your body, It also means to stand, just how you stand on the earth. And you're taught also to stand certain ways, like with your feet this distance apart. Or right under your shoulders. and this actually you can begin to feel energy coming from the earth you can feel at least the earth supporting you now as you get more subtle in this practice I can say something like actually the earth starts you learn to stand in a way that the earth nourishes you

[19:33]

Alright, so you begin to get a physical sense of yourself in the world. And the physical sense of this room as you also. And you can start to Yeah, and you can start to feel the stuff of yourself. What do you mean with stuff? One thing done. The things, you know, the stuff, what do you... Consistency. Yeah, the substance of yourself. The substance. Okay. Then you practice knowing that from the inside by beginning to look inside yourself as if you had a little flashlight. Now, much of Buddhism, the bigger picture of Buddhism is mindfulness. Mindfulness, the practices of mindfulness. You can use the word mindfulness.

[20:49]

But there's no... Anyway, some of these words are hard to translate. But there are some things that are really almost impossible to learn unless you practice Zazen meditation. For example, this ability to look inside your body with a kind of flashlight of attention is hard to do no matter how mindful you are waiting for the bus. And you've probably missed the bus. Okay. Thank you, Yvonne. Don't get jealous.

[22:10]

Thank you. So you practice trying to get a feeling of your body from inside. As almost as if you could sort of feel your bones inside your flesh. And again, the muscles, your organs and so forth. And you can actually do it. But it takes a kind of development of a subtle way of seeing. Now one of the main problems with teaching Buddhism is in situations where people are just taking a little bit of it.

[23:16]

is that you try to make it your own too fast, or say, oh, that's familiar to me, I know that, or something. Now, it's important that what I'm talking about or a teacher's talking about, you can sense as familiar at some level. But it's important not to be too quick to identify it with what you already know. Because you take its power away. You should let it cook in you. And because, you know, you... If you understand that in Buddhism, I hate to start to use the words, but in Buddhism this is the difference between understanding things at a gross level or a subtle level.

[24:17]

And it's the difference between knowing things in the divided world or knowing things where they're at the edge of the divided and undivided world. Okay. If you don't find out how to listen to yourself with subtlety, you won't be able to develop something like being able to see or feel inside your body. Okay, so what you do in practice is, and I'm trying to, coming to Europe now so many years, each year I'm trying to give those of you who want a little more practical and subtle way of looking at practice.

[25:19]

Okay. Okay. All right. Now, next is water, the water element. And that means you begin to feel the fluidity of yourself, all the digestive juices and so forth. And that also means you begin to feel the pliancy or softness in the structure and physicalness of you. So it's not just a matter of the physical element and the water element. It's also a matter of feeling the water element in the physical.

[26:31]

Okay, now without going into the details of these practices, you also have air in your breast. So in this sense, you've moved the body, the attention of the structure, the physical stuff of the body, and the liquidity, pliancy of it, to the breath, and also the spaces, the cavities of the body. And as you move into the cavities and spaces of the body, you're also moving into more formless things like the field of hearing. The field of hearing. The idea of a field of hearing and not just an object of hearing and the ear is essential to Zen practice.

[27:37]

Not just the ear and the object of hearing, but the field that's created. In Buddhism. The field doesn't actually require an object of hearing. Although you practice with the field arising through an object of hearing. Okay. You're still with me more or less? Yes. Okay. So what you've done here is you brought the physical stuff of you and the liquidity, pliancy of you into your breath. And your breath and the air and the space is into kind of like the field of thought and hearing and the senses. Okay, so what you've done, again, is you've brought the physical world into consciousness.

[28:54]

And you can feel the consciousness, what can I say, you can feel a kind of pre-conscious physicality before it crystallizes into consciousness. Also spürt man eine Art pre-conscious Christianity. You can feel a pre-conscious continuum before it crystallizes into consciousness. Okay. Now, this is not that big a deal. But you have to develop a kind of other way of feeling your body than just thinking about it and looking down at it from the outside. Should I go in shorter units? A little bit? Alright, okay. Now, another essential idea in Buddhism is the ability to shift where your sense of identity location is.

[30:06]

Also eine zweite wesentliche Idee im Buddhismus ist, wie kann man die eigene Identität verschieben. So when you bring your attention to your breath, you're also beginning to be able to shift your attention. Also wenn man die Atmung beobachtet, kann man auch You're being able to shift your attention out of representational thinking into your breath. Now, once you can do that and you really sense that, then you can shift your sense of a location lots of different places. And when you're really good at it, it's called wisdom. And technically the word prajna means to be able to shift your sense of location. Okay. Now, the chakras, which we don't talk much about in Zen, are

[31:08]

Actually just different places you can locate yourself. Does that make sense? But we don't teach them from the outside because then you learn them as a system and usually it's two-dimensional. So you begin to have this practice of recognizing the solidity of you and the liquidity and so forth. The fluidity. And you begin to have a kind of inner seeing. Now, in Chinese and Japanese, the word for mind is also the word for heart. And that's not just because there's a confusion. I think it's the same. It means that the mind is outer seeing and the heart represents inner subtle seeing. So you can begin to develop... That's why in Tibetan Buddhism they practice visualization so much.

[32:40]

It helps you develop an inner seeing. and linking that seeing with imagination. Okay. Now, in Zen, again, because there's so much emphasis on everyday life, all these practices are much more disguised. But you learn to, not just for me, not just to see this room, but to visualize this room. So seeing is simultaneously an act of seeing and visualization. Now, if I've developed what I'm calling for now an inner seeing, I also see... with a kind of feeling that's initially not visual, I feel more articulately you inside than what the visual information.

[33:57]

Now, what is your name? Shunya. Shunya meaning emptiness? Oh, goodness, you're a good example. Okay. Now, Shunya, sitting here with red hair, is, if you don't mind my saying so, but your name would suggest it's okay with you, is impermanent. Sorry, but your name would imply that you are impermanent. And when you look at the many causes that produced shunya we say one doesn't produce one. It takes two parents and it takes clouds and dinner and all kinds of things.

[35:02]

There are so many causes that go together to produce shunya. Now early Buddhism emphasizes the sequentiality of the causes. Later Buddhism emphasizes the simultaneity of the causes. And that right now there's innumerable causes arising in you that support your existence. So that's the idea of interpenetration. Interpenetration. Okay. So from one point of view we can say that you exist interdependently. interdependently and you exist through interpenetration.

[36:11]

That's how you actually exist. I can't see that. I can look at you but I can't see the interpenetration. So what my eyes show me when I look at you is how you don't exist. my senses make a picture of you but that's not how you exist how you exist I can't see so I can look at all of you and say what I see doesn't exist and how you exist I can't see it's fun Okay, now this sense of the heart as seeing means, and it just doesn't mean here, it means a way of seeing where you're seeing more the undivided world.

[37:18]

Now, the divided world and undivided world are arising simultaneously. And it's just a loop. I can't see them exactly, but I know they are arising simultaneously. Now, when I gave you this phrase earlier, just now you have everything you need. In the undivided world, no, in the divided world that's not true. It's true in the undivided world. So, when you take a phrase like Just now is enough. You are using language to get yourself closer to the undivided world. Now, let me give you a phrase of Dungschan's, who I like a lot.

[38:18]

And someone asked him, among the various bodies of Buddha, which one does not fall into any categories? Now that's, to simplify that, that's like saying, in what way does the world not fall into any categories? And Dung Shan said, I'm always close to this. But you can begin to have this sense of I'm always close to this. Okay, how do you get close to this? One way is you begin to create a physical sense of the merging of mind and body. So you can practice with... I'll keep it simple. You begin to have a physical sensation of mind and body together.

[39:34]

at a kind of point of merging. As if you could almost feel things becoming physical or turning into feelings or turning into thoughts and you can sort of feel yourself at that point. And it's a kind of feeling, actually, a kind of soft spot or emerging... fluid spot in you. And we can almost say it's a kind of inner center or meta chakra. It's the sense that you move from chakra to chakra. Okay, so then you have created interior space. And when you've created interior space which defines the outer world, and you can feel the outer world by actually developing the practice of the sense fields, because the sense fields, again, are closer to joining outer and inner worlds,

[41:10]

The sense fields, the sense fields are closer to joining the inner and outer world. Okay, so as you begin to... So first of all you create interior space. Then you clarify how you perceive exterior space. then you join interior and exterior space. And you also have a feeling of joining this merging of mind and body. Now the more you can have that feeling, you're closer to the undivided world. You're closer to experience of how all this actually makes a wholeness. And from one point of view, it's a wholeness of form and articulation. And from another point of view, it exists without those articulations.

[42:13]

Is that enough? Is that enough? How are you doing? Okay. You understand things. I'd really like to make, instead of just giving you seeds that might last for a few months, I'd like to really find out together how we understand something. And the advantage of that Is it any aspect of Buddhism that you understand well, the whole rest of it opens up for me? So if we understand one aspect well, that's good. So, okay, thank you very much.

[43:13]

Whoops, yeah, go ahead. Difficult to understand without practicing. I would like very much to do a beginning. Oh, we'll do... Yeah. Okay. Well, the other thing, I mean, tomorrow, once I find out how much experience you've had with sitting... Um... we'll sit more than I usually have been in previous seminars. So generally, you know, it's funny, when I sit with a seminar... And I'm quite used to sitting, I mean, sometimes several hours at a time.

[44:23]

But I'll sit with a group of people like this. And after ten minutes, my legs start hurting. And I think, oh, God, and I know that my legs are... It's because your legs are hurting. And so... What I have to do if I want to sit longer, I have to shift which of you I identify with and then I know when to stop for the people who sit moderately well. I have to shift. I have to shift who I identify with so my legs don't start hurting so fast. Okay. Now, do we have, Yvonne or Marianne, is there a blackboard here we have or anything like that? Okay, that'd be good. For tomorrow. For tomorrow, yeah. Okay, so we'll do more meditation and I think I'll teach the eight vijnanas, the sense field practices and the storehouse consciousness.

[45:31]

And in addition to zazen, I'll give you practices to realize the vijnanas. Well, I'll say a little something and you can ask me later, or you can ask me later about things. The basic practice of of Zen meditation is uncorrected mind. Now there's a world of things in uncorrected mind. And that's partly the point of describing practice that way. And the main idea in zazen sitting is to become familiar with a state of mind that's neither waking nor sleeping.

[47:05]

And the most important aspect of the of sitting practice is the posture of your backbone. So if you're sitting on a chair or however, the important thing is to have your backbone straight. Virtually all yogic Hindu and Buddhist practices, the backbone is straight and the back of the neck is straight up into the head. You don't sit like this or like this. So you have a lifting feeling through your back. And up through the back of your neck.

[48:10]

Which pushes your head a little bit forward. And then a relaxing feeling down through your body. So although it takes a little while to learn the posture, the main point is the way you can be relaxed in the posture. So you don't have to use much musculature. And if you have trouble, I mean you or anyone, keeping your back straight? Just put more pillows under your bottom. If you get your bottom high enough, your back will be straight. You can sit without a pillow.

[49:12]

Even if you can sit without a pillow, it's better to sit with a pillow. Your back tends to be bent. And you can also sit this way. which is actually a pretty good posture. But again, and it goes way back in Chinese history as a meditation posture. And as you may have observed, Japanese culture bases its architecture and furniture and lack of furniture on this yogic posture. So there's a certain kind of consciousness that goes with this posture which the Japanese have tried to build into their culture. So this posture is fine for doing things but for meditation it still requires your musculature to hold you up. So if you're going to sit regularly, it's better to learn to sit this way because the structure supports you.

[50:24]

Okay. So why don't we... And I will straighten some of your postures. Ulrike went off with my bell, so I borrowed one. I spoke to her this morning. She asked me to say hello to all her friends who are here. She's going to try to come back tomorrow, or tonight. But I feel very lucky in finding such a good substitute. So what I usually do is ring three bells at the beginning of the period.

[51:34]

And one bell at the end of the period. Please sit in any way that's comfortable for you.

[52:44]

You don't have to start the tape recorder quite that fast. I know. The fastest tape recorder operator in the West. Now let me ask you another question. How many of you are psychologists or are seriously studying psychology? How many of you are studying process-oriented psychology? One, two, three, four, five, okay. Well, you might help me, actually.

[54:19]

You know, I know a moderate amount about psychology. And Claudia, you're a Jungian, right? Anybody else a Jungian here? Oh, okay. Anyway, I know a moderate amount about psychology. But my conceptual understanding of psychology was come to in the 50s and 60s. And psychology has changed a lot since then. And certainly the background of Jung and now Mindell's work is quite different, I think, than psychology of that time. So some of the questions I would like to bring up during this seminar that I might ask you at the end

[55:21]

Is Buddhism or the Buddhism I'm presenting a religion? That's why I wore my outfit today, to bring that question up. And in what way do you see that psychology and Buddhism are the same and are similar and are different. I don't feel like some Buddhist teachers that if you look closely enough at Buddhism, everything is there. In some sense that might be true. But in a practical sense I think it's the wrong attitude to take toward Buddhism. Buddhism has been developed over the last

[56:37]

2600 years and really longer. But there's been no new developments really since about the 15th century and probably the 13th century. Maybe there's not much need for new developments. But in any case... What Buddhism tries to be does not exclude other teachings or ways of understanding the individual. Buddhism was worked out over those thousand, two thousand years by really millions of people, thousands of people working closely together. It was, as I say, sort of the Max Planck Institute of Consciousness, spread out over centuries with people, all the people working together and trying to work out these things.

[58:03]

Now, So some of the things I'm going to try to present to you this weekend were actually elements of discussion and disagreement for centuries until what I'm going to present to you was pretty much settled on. And the way I see it is particular also to Zen and to my lineage and to my own experience. Now In the West we have words like self.

[59:19]

Identity, soul. Ego. Script. Unconscious script. And the unconscious. Sorry. The unconscious. The collective unconscious. Yeah, and then id, ego, and all that stuff. Id, ego, and superego. Id, ego, superego, and so on. The parental family fighting in the mind hid ego and superego. Okay, now we have not worked out the relationship between all those things. And our philosophy tends to be do it differently or better than the previous guy. And Buddhist teaching has been developed in a very different kind of mind.

[60:22]

Which is, the previous guy is right, but let's make it more inclusive. So there's been a constant and rather consistent development of terms over centuries. In fact, there's such an emphasis on that, if you and I, if we all get together this weekend and we developed a whole new understanding of the five skandhas, We would say, yes, this was actually the work of the 5th century teacher, so and so. We'd do the work anonymously and push it back in history. And that was actually done.

[61:40]

The teaching I'm going to be giving you is mostly from the Lankavatara Sutra. Lankavatara Sutra. Lankavatara Sutra. Vatara Sutra. And It was written by some anonymous guy or a group of people. But by calling it a sutra, they attribute it to the Buddha. Now this isn't exactly dishonesty. It's more the feeling like if you... When you come to a certain kind of... feeling that produces a poem. What characterizes that poem is that it belongs to other people. And the quality of a good poem is everybody who reads it feels, I could have written that. And so, on the one hand, the poem is the most intimate part of you, and yet it feels when other people read it, it belongs to them.

[63:06]

So, in the sense of Buddhism, when you come to a teaching which really belongs to others, you say it does, or you say it's the Buddha's. and it's actually thought to be discovered through the Buddha's state of mind which you've realized as you might discover something through the poet's state of mind okay now I would like to try also during this weekend to use some terms that come from psychology or are used by psychology. Now, I think it would be counterproductive if every time I use such a term, you guys say, oh no, it's supposed to be used this way or that way.

[64:11]

We'll never sort that out. partly because we've never taken on in the West to sort all these terms out and make them work together. So the nature of them is they're used differently. And I'm in fact trying to develop in English and with Ulrike's help in German and now with your help. Buddhist terms in English that cover a certain territory. So I'm using the English words in ways special to Buddhism, not so much the common usage. Now, one reason I'm bringing this up is because ever since television, people use the word channel. Yeah, and in Buddhism I've been using the word channel since the 60s. In Buddhism we have used this term since the 1960s.

[65:30]

And NLP, I believe, uses channel switching. And I believe Mendel uses channel. So when I use it, I'm just an amateur at using this word. I haven't defined it as a technical term. So I'm going to use it probably a couple of times to find out maybe near the end of the seminar, we could be clear about how it's used in a more precise definition. Anyway, but I'm going to use that and other terms rather loosely. Now, let me say something about sitting posture. In general, in zazen posture, we put our hands together.

[66:34]

And either this way or just any old way. Now, you can put your hands on your legs if you want to. That's different, but it's okay. But in zen, you wouldn't put your hands too far forward because it pulls your lungs forward. So if you put your hands on your legs, they should be back far enough that they don't pull your shoulders forward. Now, in general, in Zazen practice, the emphasis is on this posture and putting your hands together is on consolidating your heat. And bringing all the channels together. So you put your hands together which makes energy flow differently. And you put your tongue at the roof of your mouth. Now I'm explaining some of these things.

[67:35]

And generally, Zen teachers don't explain these things. They just say, put your tongue at the roof of your mouth. And they will say sometimes, oh, it inhibits saliva. Which is also true because your stomach begins to function differently in zazen and then you produce saliva. But why does your stomach begin? because you've actually had a shift in your mind to a different part of your mind being active which activates the older part of your brain in your digestive system which then activates your meridians and channels which is one of the main connection points of the tongue to the roof of the mouth.

[68:59]

Now, this is not taught. I should say something about why this is not taught. And I repeat myself a lot with these things to those of you who practiced with me before. But it keeps coming up with people so I should say something about it. There are two main reasons. Or maybe three. One is that Buddhism as a religion doesn't want to look different than ordinary people. So you don't want to... Michael Murphy is a good friend of mine who is founder of Esalen Institute. And I talked with him the night before last on the phone. I talked to him the night before last on the phone and he's written this big book on bodily transformation and supra or meta abilities and siddhis and he's getting criticized all over the place

[70:17]

Why are you emphasizing this? It's not right. We're all ordinary people. Don't emphasize special abilities just because you're special. And he's getting other criticism that's disguised as something else, but that's the background of it. So Buddhism long ago learned, don't talk about it. But it's also simultaneously thought that the best way to help people is to develop these abilities. But you don't want the development of these abilities to help people separate you from people. So they're constantly disguised. Now, another, but they're actually, if you're practicing regularly, they're not a big deal. They just happen. Okay. Now, another reason is that most of them are best learned from inside.

[71:47]

And they don't really exist in our ordinary way of thinking. So they should not be taught through our ordinary way of thinking. However, We don't have much territory, us Westerners, outside of our ordinary way of thinking. We have a very highly developed way of thinking, but we've not paid too much attention to these other dimensions. You could make a case that Asian cultures have paid too much attention to these other dimensions. I'm not making that case, but you could make it. Now, the experience I've had is that If I don't teach these things with more explicitness, most people don't get the practice.

[73:05]

May I ask you a question? Sure. Were you born in China? No. Were your parents born in China? And they were in China until they were how old? beginning of the 20s, 18, 23. Because my guess is, and I don't know if later you could have something to say about this, is that much of what needs to be taught in the West doesn't need to be taught in China and Japan because it's built into the culture. So I find two things. One is often Asian teachers don't know what we don't know. I mean, real simple things. Just the idea of being able to shift the location of your identity, they don't realize that's a new idea for us.

[74:08]

We do it, but we don't notice that we do it. Now, a third thing is this sense that When Buddhism entered Chinese culture, it entered that part of Chinese culture which was highly urbanized and literate. Even if these guys lived in caves in the mountains, they were basically very sophisticated urbanized cats. So in Tibet it was different, for example. Buddhism entered a culture which didn't have cities, people lived in remote regions and were uneducated.

[75:15]

So in Tibet, Buddhism developed outside the culture. and then influenced the culture. As a result, you get this very clear delineation of Buddhism. In China, Buddhism came into a culture which was developed through Confucianism and Taoism. And in their strong emphasis on, as I said last night, everyday life is the scene of suffering and enlightenment. And their emphasis that there was no other, there was no outside, there was no God, there was no thing out there. They have an idea of gods to some extent. But, for example, there's a place in Japan called the Bridge of the Gods.

[76:38]

Amanohashidate. It's called Amanai. Anyway, and it is... Where you can see where the gods come into the ordinary, into our world. And all you have to do to see this place is you have to stand and look between your legs and then you can see them. You know, because there's this sand and if you look at it from another angle you can see that's actually how the gods enter. Because ocean and sky are reversed. So the gods aren't very far away. You just have to turn your head and you can see. We can't see heaven so easily. So this emphasis meant that Zen practice really disappeared into the culture.

[77:54]

To some extent, this is a problem because many, I think, Buddhist teachers forgot what it was about because Buddhism was so disguised. So historically, Zen is a late Buddhist development parallel to Tantra. And basically, conceptually, virtually the same. But Zen Buddhism is often taught as if it were Theravada and Hinayana, an early form of Buddhism. So I'm trying to avoid the oversimplification of Zen Buddhism. And I'm trying to uncover some of the disguises.

[78:57]

So for us in the West, I think the Chinese and Tibetan forms of Buddhism are extremely helpful. One, we're a quite sophisticated literate culture with a fair amount of leisure. So we can actually practice Buddhism. And we need as lay people, which is going to be the majority of practitioners, to have a practice which is embedded in everyday life. At the same time, Tibetan Buddhism gives us a chance to see it where it's not embedded. That makes sense. Now, what I'm trying to do here is present a general picture of what's happening. Every time I come back to Europe to teach, I try to find a kind of new way to present the teachings.

[80:20]

So for some of you, you may hear some things again or in a little different way. For instance, those of you who are Cortona, a few things I want to say again. I hope you don't mind. And I didn't teach the five skandhas last year in Switzerland. I didn't teach it here, did I? But I taught at several other places, but I can't teach the eight Viṣṇyanas without teaching you the five skandhas. Viṣṇyanas. Okay. But the five skandhas are so important and essential to Zen practice that it's hard to study them indefinitely.

[81:24]

And I'll try to show you how those arise. Okay. No, we sat for 20 minutes. Was that a good length of time or a bit long? And if I could, we might sit 30 minutes sometimes, and if we do, if you want to, you're welcome to sit this way in this kind of posture. The important thing in Zen practice is to stay on your cushion. I don't care what posture you're in. Because we're not going to sit right now. So one of the... And I think we should take a break in a moment.

[82:32]

One of the things that... Again, as I started to say, when you sit is you're concentrating your heat. And your, because heat and consciousness are closely related. And last night of the four elements, I didn't speak about heat as an element, but heat is, and warmth is something you begin to experience. And again, it's not just a simple kind of heat, like temperature. But I can kind of increase in my palm of my hand a sense of heat. And if she were cold, I could actually, without touching her, make her feel a little warmer probably.

[83:44]

Now that kind of heat, which of course is part of healing and stuff like that, is what's also meant by heat and consciousness. Now, another reason we sit in this posture is you're attempting to not only concentrate your heat and consciousness, you're trying to begin to experience the unity of consciousness and be able to concentrate that unity and then move it into movement. So it's thought in Zen practice that it's very important to have the freedom to sit still. But also the freedom to move.

[84:51]

Zen practice is not based on sitting zazen all day and stopping all action. There's certain things you can find out and develop in Zen practice. Sitting practice is very difficult to develop any other way. So it's a shortcut. It's nice you know English so well. Because if I use colloquial expressions, you know them. Somebody who knows German just learned English, wouldn't he? So if you can really develop the sense of a unity of consciousness and a stillness that goes along with movement, then you can find this stillness in movement.

[85:53]

Or it's easier. Now, basic to Buddhism is the world exists simultaneously. One thing doesn't exclude the other. We tend to think in Aristotelian terms and in terms of Western logic of the excluded middle. Just as a habit, it's either this or that. I mean, really, if I say it's good to sit zazen, a lot of people think then it's good to sit zazen all the time. Dann meinen einige Leute dann, dass es heißt, es ist gut, immer so zu sitzen.

[86:54]

Or if I say, it's good to realize a mind that is not based on representational thinking. Sage ich, es ist gut, einen Geist zu realisieren, der nicht basiert auf konzeptionelles Denken. People think, oh, then representational thinking is bad. Then denken Leute, dass diese Art von Denken schlecht ist, dass man es gar nicht anwenden sollte. No, first you, the basic idea of Buddhism is that first you learn, you know representational thinking. You learn non-representational thinking. And then you bring them together so they arise simultaneously. And don't contradict each other. Don't interfere with each other. That's basic Hua Yen teaching. So the model for that is very simple. When you sit, you're sitting informed by the ideal posture of a Buddha. At the same time, without any contradiction, you're accepting the actual posture you have.

[88:19]

And so many people say, oh, I'm not sitting this way. They criticize their posture. That's completely not Buddhism. You don't, I mean, it's just, I mean, people, you normally, everybody does it. But it's very stupid, really, to say, oh, my posture's not good, and blah, blah, blah. Whatever your posture is, is okay, but because by definition, It's okay. What is, is. Don't argue about it. All right. At the same time, you're informed by posture of a Buddha. You're informed. Informed by. You can accept your own posture and feel the presence of the ideal posture. Okay, I think that's enough for now.

[89:33]

Why don't we take a, what, 10, 15 minute break? Okay, then we'll decide what to do next. And when we come back, we're sitting for a while, you begin to hear the birds very clearly. Is that the case? Anyway, this is a common experience. And what you have happening is when you first start sitting, you are in usually eye consciousness and representational thinking. And after the first five or ten minutes of sitting, depending on how experienced you are at sitting, you get what might be called, excuse me, a channel shift, in which you enter the field of hearing out of eye consciousness.

[90:40]

And if you, usually that shift, when you're doing satsang, is not accompanied by so much representational thinking associated with sound. It's not so much associated with representational thinking that is connected with sound. And so you begin to hear the birds very clearly as if they were inside you. And then you start hearing doves or other birds, a tapestry of sounds you begin to penetrate into. Now to become familiar with those channel shifts, those shifts is part of Zen practice. Now we have a phrase in Buddhism, where knowledge doesn't reach.

[91:45]

Now where is the most common place knowledge doesn't reach? Sleeping. Sleeping. So what happens when you enter sleeping is that you go to sleep or you fall into sleep. And in Buddhism that's just understood as a channel shift or shift. And that Shift, for instance, if you laid awake for eight hours, you wouldn't feel rested the next day. But if you went to sleep for even four or five hours, you'd feel rested. So in Zen practice, we actually study that experience of going to sleep. And there's various ways to do that.

[93:02]

And when you first wake up too, you sense the subtle body changing as you go to sleep and as you wake up. Now Buddhism says, this is where we live. In this mystery. And our life is founded in this mystery. You spend a very large percentage of your life asleep. But no one studies it. And you don't study simple things like going to sleep. But because Buddhism says it's all here, they emphasize studying simple things like going to sleep. Now, I feel perfectly happy and would like it, in fact, if occasionally you interrupt me and ask a question or bring up something. Now, the tradition in in Zen is you just ask any old thing that's on the top of your head you ask a question if it comes up physically you can feel it like a little physical force coming up from your stomach that's the kind of question you ask or you ask second and third generation questions in other words you have a question and you sort of let it cook

[94:31]

And then it turns into a second generation question. And it's more inclusive. And involves your body more. or it can be third or fourth. Koans are all based on about 10th generation questions being asked to somebody. So, in other words, you can ask anything you want, but in other words, the sense is to ask a question which, you know, you've worked with a little bit. But I don't want to inhibit you, so anything you want to ask... Now, we're always in a process of reification. Reification means when you reify something, the thing itself reinforces itself. Do you have a German word for reification, reify? Okay.

[95:42]

Anyway, we're always in a process of reification. you want to then practice you want to break through the process of reification in other words representational thinking reinforces representational thinking and one way to do that is to really develop spontaneity So you begin to listen to yourself with some subtlety and follow little spontaneous movements. Another way is to interrupt tendencies to move. In Zen practice you have both. For example, you're sitting and you have an itch.

[96:53]

An itch, yeah. An itch. An itch, ah. An edge, yeah. You also have an edge too, but we'll come to that later. If you scratch that itch, you stop something happening. But you don't suppress the itch either. You just stay in the middle of the itch. Sometimes they can become very intense, like you're burning. Particularly as your practice is more settled. And then it begins to feel like you've got a jumping termite or something. Because if you finally don't scratch it here, It appears here. Then up here. Then here. And what's really happening is you're beginning to experience your meridians from inside.

[98:00]

In fact, the acupuncture points were discovered from inside and real acupuncture teachers know them from inside. You can feel from inside where they are. Now, if you move, you stop that process from happening. Now I'm only using that as an example of how sitting still works to break reification. Now the reason I chose the title The Body of the World is because Buddhism is inherently philosophical. It's interesting. I believe English has far more nouns than German. But German has far more verbs than English. And there the two may meet.

[99:23]

Okay. So, Buddhism is inherently philosophical. But that philosophy is always related to practice. When you study Buddhism as a teaching and you see parts that look philosophical, if you can't actually practice that teaching, it's not Buddhism. Or you don't understand it. If you understand it in a way that you can't do it, then you're not understanding. It's kind of a rule of Buddhism. Okay. Now, one reason, or the main reason, it's inherently philosophical. Because Buddhism says, so as the world goes, so you go.

[100:23]

How the world exists is how you exist. And if you don't know how the world exists, you don't know how you exist. Because it's the same substance, the same process, the same dynamic. So one of the ways of understanding yourself is to see how the world exists. Okay, now Buddhism is not intellectual. I'm bringing this up because some of you are going to think what I'm saying is too intellectual. And I think because we have such active mental lives, we want our religious, spiritual, meditative practice to be simple. That's okay, but that's not Buddhism then. Or you'd have to practice it in a monastic context with a teacher where you're getting it through other channels.

[101:37]

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