Well, I'm very grateful to see all of you and I'm grateful she's here to translate for me. Because I used to teach the house to Stilla regularly, three weeks or so a year. I often came to Hamburg where if I have any favorite students some of them live here. Yeah. And I was coming here to see an old friend of mine who, he's not so old, but he's an old friend, who I like to spend at least some time each year with.

[01:05]

So he was going to be here So I decided maybe I could visit him. And I thought, I haven't given a talk in Concord for many years. I don't know how many years, a lot. So anyway, so I thought, even it's short notice, I'd like to see, be here with you and talk about practice. Yes, isn't the title something like the one and one times one of Buddhism or something like that?

[02:14]

She said, you have to have a title. I said, oh. How about the ABCs of Zen? She said, that doesn't make any sense in German. So what is the title? One Times One? It's One Times One, yes. So I somehow thought today, this evening, I would speak about the methodology of Zen practice. The methodology of Zen practice, Zen is inseparable from its methodology. And I think that's particularly important for Western Buddhism because Western Buddhism is primarily a lay practice.

[03:57]

And if And the lineage of centuries now has been passed by monastics. But Western Zen is not going to be primarily a monastic practice. Aber im Westen wird der Zen eben nicht in erster Linie die Form einer Klosterpraxis annehmen. So if we understand, get a feel for the methodology of Zen,

[05:01]

That methodology, although developed in monastic life, can be brought into your lay life. And Zen, as a particular school of Buddhism, Zen is, let's say, a path of discovery. As a specific school of Buddhism, we can say that Zen is something like a path of discovery or a path of research. But of course all Buddhist teachings or schools are a path of discovery. But Zen particularly emphasizes, like, if you do this, something might happen. But we're not going to predict what happens. And if you do this, then various possibilities will appear.

[06:36]

And then you can choose among those possibilities. So, you know, the method of playing a musical instrument is the playing of the musical instrument. Many years ago, more than 50 years ago, I helped, by a bit of luck, organize the Pablo Casals master class. And I think It seems some of you don't know who he is.

[07:43]

But when I was young, he was almost as famous as Marilyn Monroe. He was the cello player. And a person of great character and social responsibility. And also a great person, great character, and a lot of social responsibility. So anyway, I was in my mid-twenties, and with a bit of luck, I said, I had a chance to help organize this class. And one of the musicians, one of the students, was at just one second prize in some musical competition in Moscow.

[08:48]

And while he was playing, Pablo Casals leaned over and said, your hand is reaching the note, but your hand isn't beautiful. And he said, if your hand is beautiful, the note will be more beautiful. That's, I would say, an example of the methodology of playing the cello. Yeah, playing tennis is the methodology of playing tennis.

[09:52]

So the methodology of Zen practice is Zen practice. The method of Zen practice is the Zen practice. So you experiment with, explore basic practices as well as you can. And there's no promises, but you see where it leads. Yes, Niki Roshi used to say, we will each have our own enlightenment. There's not one goal we reach. So Zen, Buddha is not the goal, Buddha is the starting point. And you will find out what the fruit of that practice is.

[10:53]

And you will find out what the fruit of this practice is. Okay, so the most basic, of course, and shortcut practice is bodily mind shortcut practice is sitting zazen. And Zazen actually accurately translates as sitting, still sitting or sitting absorption. Yeah, so I'm sitting in that posture. I'm not too good at it, but I've been doing it a long time. I'm sitting in that posture now. And I feel the body as attention itself.

[12:14]

And I feel that attention taking the form of the spine. And I feel that this spine almost like an antenna in some relationship to your spine. The usual way the purpose of Zazen is described But I would say that... Yeah.

[13:26]

The... I would say basically the main purpose of Zazen is to get you out of the structures of consciousness. That can sound a little scary. What am I going to do with my life? Well, you're going to have a less boring life, for one. That's one thing. And one great thing about practicing Zen in the West, it allows us to play with a certain security at the borders of our worldview.

[14:38]

And now with courage, you're on the borders of the younger world view too. And you can feel yourself, the shift in yourself between these two worldviews. My old friend Petra hinted to her. She uses Qigong practice, Anza, to look into this other culture and back into our own culture. I mean, Qigong is also obviously a more gestural practice than Zazen.

[15:56]

But this posture is also a gesture. And my feeling of my spine being in a shared field with you is also a gesture. Okay. So I said that perhaps the initial and main purpose of zazen is to get you located a little free of the structures of consciousness. And consciousness is structured to make the world predictable. It's not always predictable. Relatively predictable.

[17:43]

And we take a lot of security in that, but we're surprised when it's not relatively predictable. I'm getting old enough to recognize more and more that it's unpredictable. And the structures of consciousness also want to show, make, get give us a world that's doable. And motivate our intentionality. So we can make sense of things or have a feeling of meaning. But the world isn't always doable.

[18:45]

It might be livable, but not always doable. I rarely stump her. This is an impressive moment. Sometimes we don't want it to be doable. Oh, we use the English word. Are you trying to say doable isn't doable? Yeah, it's interesting, you know, German and English, I mean, English is a kind of German dialect, right?

[20:05]

50% of its vocabulary from France. But still, each language is a distinct universe. In its lexicon and grammar. And when a language disappears, as they're disappearing every year, a whole world disappears. So one of the actually fun things for me in doing this, in practicing this way Yes, I get, when I'm teaching and practicing in Germany at least, to feel these interrelated languages of German-English, suddenly there's words you can't translate.

[21:23]

Mind, for instance. Pretty basic. And then we have the yogic worldview language. and practices, which are even more difficult to translate into either English or German. So that actually is a kind of help, too, to feel ourselves floating in a kind of security which doesn't need structures of our German, English or even yogic consciousness.

[22:33]

Float and... I said that wrong. Could you say it again? No. Could you say something similar? I probably will. But to float with the stability of breath, spine and stillness, In this world which is forming in German, forming in English, forming in yogic terms, To really allow yourself to be there and feel comfortable is an experience of emptiness. So the first as I said is to find ourselves free of the structures of consciousness.

[24:17]

And there are certain doors to that process, within that process. For example, associative mind, Freud's mind of free association, is a door outside the structures of consciousness. And the third skanda of percept only mind. No, you can actually experience associative mind. We do it all the time.

[25:18]

When you first sit down in satsang, usually after a moment you're in associative mind and you can't stop it. But if you don't go after the associations and just allow the associations to appear and disappear, there's a kind of stability there. Which becomes, now I'm getting a little past beginner zazen, I'm sorry. But this practice of the, what is the, fourth skandha, if you know the five skandhas.

[26:34]

And sitting zazen in the midst of the flowing from the fifth to the first skandha is one way to practice zazen. And let's just take the fourth skanda again, associative mind. And as you all know, Freud noticed that when When people free associate, they know things their consciousness doesn't know. So he called that the unconscious. And there's a lot of debate over the years has been as Freud came into America and so forth. how subconscious and unconscious are used as terms.

[27:44]

This experience, this exploration of terminology, I think is extremely important. Because we begin to explore that the mind is wide and acausal. But we can only relate to it through it taking certain forms. So when you practice and take the form of associative mind, we would call this a mental posture.

[28:49]

So I'm in a physical posture, but my physical posture is also a mental posture. If I take this physical posture and I join it to a mental posture, don't move, und sie mit einer geistigen Haltung, der Haltung, bewege dich nicht, verbinde, dann ist das eine Definition für Satsang. To just sit without the mental posture, don't move, yeah, that wouldn't be Satsang. Einfach nur zu sitzen ohne diese geistige Haltung, bewege dich nicht, das wäre eigentlich kein Satsang. Okay, so I don't know how I got here, but here we are. So, you know, here I am trying to explore all this with you, in front of you. Thanks.

[30:02]

So... we can have access to a mental posture we call associative mind and release structured consciousness. And you can then discover in associative mind that discursive thoughts, associative thoughts are not the same as intentional postures, intentional mental postures. And what are you doing when you're doing this? You're exploring the way your own mind and body is put together. Not just how you play the piano, but how the mind you bring to each touch of the key is also part of playing the piano.

[31:22]

So again, we have associative mind. And within that we can discover the field of mind that's not caught up in the associations. Now you've developed your attentional skills enough and this takes a little time. You've developed your attentional attention is the Schatzkiste. Aufmerksamkeit ist die Schatzkiste, im Sinn.

[32:42]

Yeah, the treasure. My friend over there said, what's he talking about, Schatzkiste? I didn't know any German. Yeah, I didn't fool him. So you developed your attentional skills By just sitting every day regularly, if possible every day, for 30, 40 minutes. You develop a new kind of interiority in which you have access to, but not conscious access to. It's an interiority in which you are aware and there's knowing, but not grasping and comparing. but it is a kind of innerness in which there is a kind of knowledge or of observation, but not the kind of knowledge and observation that always have to be compared, but a kind of non-grabbing knowledge and observation.

[34:12]

Again, your attentional skills have gotten to the point where you can distinguish between discursive mental formations called thoughts. And mental formations that are not discursive thoughts, but we can call intentions. Oh, sorry. Sometimes I just let her give the lesson. I'm at her mercy, you know, I don't know what she's saying. This I can say again. You're developing the attentional skills to distinguish between mental formations called discursive thoughts.

[35:19]

and mental formations we can call intentional mental formation. And again, your attentional skills are now such you can distinguish not only between discursive thoughts and intentions, Jetzt sind eure Aufmerksamkeitsfähigkeiten, ihr könnt nicht nur diese Unterscheidung treffen zwischen diskursiven geistigen Gedanken und Absichten. But now you can notice the field in which the intentions and discursive thoughts occur. Sondern jetzt könnt ihr auch das Feld bemerken, in dem diese geistigen Absichten und die diskursiven Gedanken auftauchen. And your yogic bodily skills are such... is that you can physically feel these three things.

[36:42]

And you can physically feel the field in which discursive thoughts and intentions occur. And now you also have the skills to notice what you identify with. So you can withdraw identification from discursive thoughts And then feel fairly safe and intentions will tend to stay. then you can release yourself into the field itself.

[37:51]

That also can be called an experience of emptiness. Okay, now, we're in a neurological wonder. But our mental and physical postures are part of this neurological wonder. And probably, now I've only explored this conceptually a little bit, probably when you take the mental posture of associative mind and are located in the field of associative mind.

[38:54]

This is also simultaneously in our own language, our language of images and so forth. a door into the layers of our neurological processes called mind. And because mind and thoughts from, you know, information, and then the information is connected with objects of perception, and then becomes, oh, that's very neurologically complex. Sorry. Okay. Okay, there's a lot of people here.

[40:05]

And you're all different. We're multi-generational beings instantiated as individuals. You think you're an individual, but actually you're a multi-generational being. And that multi-generational being takes the form of each of you. Yeah, so... Here we are, taking form all the time. That's the most basic truth, view of Buddhism, that everything's changed. We're taking form all the time. But I'm running out of time, but we'll see what happens here. Okay. Because I was going to mention four things and I'll only get to one.

[41:18]

And then there were a whole bunch of other possibilities, but I don't know, you look so nice that I ended up talking about this. Which I've never spoken about, that's why she's having a problem. Okay. The point I'm trying to make is that practice evolves through a new kind of language we download in effect, a wisdom software. And that software which has been created generationally.

[42:38]

I mean, some of these things I'm speaking about took several hundred years for anybody to actually say, okay, let's say it this way. That somehow the field of associative mind or the field of the third skandha, percept-only mind, Und dass irgendwie dieses Feld des assoziativen Geistes oder das Feld des dritten Skandas, des reinen Wahrnehmungsgeistes, enters you deeply into the neurology and biology of how you exist. Und dass euch das zutiefst in die Neurologie und die Biologie der Art und Weise, wie ihr existiert, einführt. It affects and affects your brain, your body, your health, etc.

[43:41]

So I guess the point I'm making here is that Zazen is a process of freeing yourself from the structures of consciousness. And then to keep it simple, the next step is you find yourself within the, in the midst of the experience of consciousness being constructed. And feeling yourself in the midst of consciousness being constructed is also to feel yourself in the midst of the deconstruction of consciousness.

[45:04]

And then Stillness becomes the swinging door between four people. Oh, that's mine. Let's forget about it. I told her, please turn this machine off. You're younger than me. You know how to do it. I didn't know it has a buzzer. Well, let's ignore that. Oh, I'm sorry, sorry. I agree with that. Before I came, I said, you turn this off. You're younger than I am. I should learn how to turn it off, but I got so tired of keeping up with the upgrades. Okay. So, these four aspects of Zazen, to free yourself from the structural consciousness, To discover yourself in the midst of the construction and deconstruction of consciousness.

[46:28]

And in that to find a field of stillness. which I call the hinge of the swinging door of form and emptiness. Okay. Two more things, very briefly. One is, we need to trick ourselves or develop modes of mind which carry us.

[47:34]

And one of the doors to stillness is simply to tell yourself in the midst of circumstances where you think it might be better to be still or calm. Where you feel it's better to be still or calm. Just use the word wait. You ask yourself to wait. That immediately changes the psychology of how you feel and mood and you wanted to accomplish something, etc. You just say, hey.

[48:38]

And then you say, allow. Now these are, again, just mental postures. I'm suggesting you make use of them. You say, wait, allow. Open this. Accept. And then you physicalize that feeling. And by physicalize, I mean you can feel weight, you can feel the openness of allow, you can feel the welcoming of acceptance.

[49:41]

And then you bring that feeling together in your spine or in your breath. And you find yourself in a moment of timelessness. A non-causal or a causal modality of being. And the more you get used to this, it's so helpful in so many situations to just be present in this deep, acausal stillness.

[50:49]

Now, I just will say, I said I'd say two things. The second one is... The common assumption we have is that everything is, we're all separated. And connectedness or a feeling of connectedness or compassion is something we'd like to achieve. I hope so anyway. But if we shift that concept, and we take as a norm, we're already connected.

[51:56]

We're the instantiation of a multi-generational being. And that's the case genetically. But we're also through friendship and parental love and so forth. We're profoundly connected in ways we can't think through distinctions. So if the norm is connectivity, connectedness, then the mystery is separation. The extraordinary separation that we live all the time in the midst of connectedness That I feel actually immersed in the mystery with you.

[53:13]

And with her. And with my friends. And practitioners. Thank you very much. So do we end now or should we have some discussion? I'd like you to have the freedom to leave. So I'll take a break for five or ten minutes, and if I come back and look in the room, is anyone here? I'll come back in. I should have only talked 40 minutes. You've got 10 or 20 minutes too long, so you're already loaded, so I don't mind if you... Thank you for translating.

[54:37]

Yes. Yes. Oh, thanks. Okay. Very simple. I and Zen. What kind of relationship is Zen? I am Zen. I and. Oh, I and Zen. The pronoun is often a problem. Yeah. Yeah. there is some experience of an observer who practices.

[56:32]

But you want to lessen the dynamic of that observer as much as is possible. And you can always come back to it, fortunately and unfortunately. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. In Germany, something very interesting is happening at the moment. There is a huge wave of aid work against the refugees. I was in the exhibition halls today, where you can see thousands of Hamburgers coming together.

[57:38]

to donate and to organize aid and to bring it to the refugees. something very interesting is happening in Germany these days, which is that many, many people come together to help support the refugees. And I came to, I went to the , thank you, today, and there's this really big gathering where so many people come together. And we talked about connection and I think I felt that there was a very strong connection to feel. And yes, I might have the question now, whether what they described, also this kind of connection, whether you can see or feel the connection, whether it has anything to do with it.

[58:42]

And I just went there today and my experience was one of extremely profound connectedness. And I wonder if that kind of connectedness that appears with such an event, if that's the kind of connectedness that you were talking about. Yes. But we unfortunately only notice it when 9-11 occurred in New York or when there's a hurricane or tornado or some exceptional event like this. And I would say that Buddhist compassion is to develop an attentional field where you sense that all the time.

[60:01]

Now, let me say something. A truism of yoga culture is all mental phenomena have a physical component. and all sentient physical phenomena as a mental component. Means you can feel your mind. You can physically feel, have a physical feeling of everything.

[61:04]

And one example, in Zazen, you come to a certain kind of state, let's call it, and you can internalize that feeling and then just go to that feeling, just like you turn a dial, because you know that feeling. So the Bodhisattva, if we think of ourselves as Bodhisattvas, Bodhisattva means a being in touch with enlightenment. When you had an experience like you just had, It's a gift, right?

[62:17]

You see if you can bodily feel it and internalize it. And just on other occasions where, say, anger comes up, you bring that feeling back up because it's located in your body. That's what an experienced practitioner would do. So you have a gift today. Recognize that. Also hast du heute ein Geschenk bekommen und erkenne das. Okay. Yes.

[63:20]

Hi. It's nice to see you now twice. I just saw a hand over. I was missing you. She didn't believe it, but I told her. Ich habe es ihr gesagt. I'm a bad horse. You're a bit horse. You know, for horses. Oh, okay. Me too. So, I'm very unhappy with my... I'm quite unhappy with my no progress in practice. And I keep noticing that when driving. Because I get upset so quickly. Yeah. And I curse and so forth.

[64:31]

So much. And of course I do try to also breathe. Well, I hope, you know. But the feeling is so fast and so... So I just don't have that feeling of we're together and this feeling you're describing. And I am very grateful for the three words that you said before. So again, wait, allow and then accept. That's for me like, so when I wait, I have this, so really let go of the breath deeply. Allow is, yes, it is relaxation.

[65:33]

Allow and also fall is a feeling of falling. Very grateful for these three words you gave us, waiting, allowing, and accepting. And for me, waiting, there's this feeling of releasing the breath and allowing a feeling of... Of falling, yeah, and letting go. And accepting is like a circle that envelopes or surrounds all of that. Oh yeah, maybe like a steering wheel. Okay. Sometimes I think you kind of like problems.

[66:37]

And you feel comfortable in problems. And you discuss them in a very exciting way that we all like. But the only answer which is counterintuitive The only answer, which also happens to be counter-intuitive, is acceptance. If the comparative mind, I don't like this, my practice isn't good, this just makes it worse. The comparative spirit, like, I don't like this, or my practice is not good, or something like that, that makes everything worse. Really? I see myself sitting with my hair like a rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin?

[67:39]

And it's right, I compare it. Of course I compare it to sitting relaxed and thinking, what am I actually doing? But I don't know if that's a problem. It's not a problem. I experience it as a distance. Well, go to a therapist. There's one right there. The Buddhist alternative is acceptance. In other words, you feel completely shit. You say, I'm a shitty person. I accept that I'm a shitty person. Or I accept I'm Ms. Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin also should be enlightened. Or you say to yourself, well, I said that, but... You know, I accept the fact that I got angry and I cursed.

[68:58]

But it could have been worse. I really could have cursed even more. So I... So I... So I accept what I did, but what would a Buddha do? And that's called the practice of maximal greatness. You accept whatever you are. Schizoid, feeling lousy, going to die soon, whatever. And you may not be satisfied with your acceptance. But you say, what would a Buddha do? Well, he'd accept a little more. He or she would accept more. There's a kind of dynamic of working with acceptance that eventually brings a kind of confidence.

[70:24]

Es gibt eine Art Dynamik in der Arbeit mit der Akzeptanz, die letztendlich eine Art Ruhe oder Stille hervorbringt. Not compare and accept. Nicht vergleichen und akzeptieren. And you can even take that as a mental posture. On every appearance you say, no comparing, accepting. And then you're working with the actual weaving of your immediacy. Okay. Yes, Dorcas. But may I just ask, someone accused me once when I was trying to talk about what you did, what you talked about, your acceptance and not comparing and acceptance.

[71:32]

And they accused me in German of gleichgültigkeit. With carelessness, I guess. No, there's a better word. Indifference. And all of a sudden, and I've never forgotten that, because it's a very delicate line, I think. Would you talk a little bit about that? Because after a while, if you decide, oh, I'm there. Nothing hurts. Nothing reaches you. This line between... Should I translate you? Yes, a little bit. So I talked about what you just said, and I was asked for equality, because it's a very fine distinction between when you always accept everything, or as if nothing reaches you anymore, or nothing touches you anymore. Then you are quickly asked for equality.

[72:33]

Yes, I understand. But I actually don't think practice works that way. I think what people are saying to you is subtle ways, using language, to get you to conform with the norms. So you could joke with them and they say, isn't this a kind of indifference? You could say, well, it's more of a non-difference, a big space of non-difference. Because I think the way practice works is not in the categories of cultural conformity.

[73:43]

But it is true for most practitioners, they go through a period where their friends subtly resist their practicing. Because they can feel you changing and they feel you changing away from them. So I think that, let's see if I can find... the language I think when you really practice acceptance it isn't carelessness or indifference but it's a

[75:03]

a non-comparing and a non-comparing and non-differentiating which in your actual experience creates a a big space where you can actually feel things more deeply than ever before. So it may look like you're careless or not caring. Actually, you're not... You're non-comparative accepting allows you to feel things fully and know they're not going to destroy you.

[76:42]

That we have a fear of feeling things fully because You go to see somebody in the hospital and they have cancer and they're going to die soon and you don't really want to feel it too fully. But if you can really feel, I'd be willing to change places with you. If only for a moment. Or you can feel, maybe I will be changing places with you at some point. The courage of this is, this could also be me, allows you to feel the world much more powerfully.

[77:53]

Anyway, that's my experience from practicing. I think that's enough. I'm very thankful you.

[78:13]

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