Good evening. Guten Abend. Guten Abend. This is a new room for us in Berlin, and I don't know how well I can be heard. Okay back there? A little hard. So why don't we... Why don't we move up and get a little closer to each other and come up along the side a little bit. I'd prefer to be near to you. You can come forward a little bit. That's good enough. And there's quite a number of new people this time.

[01:29]

Does anybody not know much about Zen meditation and I should give you some basic idea about it? Okay, quite a few, yeah. Me too. And the topic is keeping your posture in mind. I think works very well. So with a topic like that I have to give Zazen instruction, I think. And the title could also be Keeping Your Mind in Posture.

[02:43]

And we really have quite a different sense of the body, both in Zen and also in the cultures in which Zen arose. And these differences can be quite instructive. But we can talk more about that later. Right now I should give you some simple idea of meditation. Because I also like to start sessions with sitting. And we'll try to find some balance between sitting and talking and discussing.

[04:00]

Okay. First of all, you do not have a body. You are a body. You can say that in German. I'm a little confused. I used to say the polite form of WU, the equivalent of WU, in the peace conference. Normally in seminars we do the more familiar WU. But some of these people are WU and some are WU. Yeah. And I don't usually wear robes in seminars because I present, I feel like in Europe I'm a contemporary person doing something very contemporary that happens to be called Buddhism.

[05:01]

Although at our center in Colorado and the United States, I usually wear robes. I don't know if this is robes or the martial arts, but it's actually a kind of simple Buddhist robe that's used for everyday life. And I just was in Japan and China for six weeks with Thich Nhat Hanh, and of course there I wore a robe regularly. And now I was just in, came and the Freedom Universitat asked me to wear robes.

[06:16]

So being a compliant Buddhist, I said, okay. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama was there and I know him a bit and I know he likes me to wear robes so maybe I'll get back into wearing robes. So you don't have a body, you are a body. Dogen used to say, you don't have Buddha nature, you are Buddha nature. And even that idea, if you say you are Buddha nature, it's very immediate.

[07:32]

Because there's no, in Buddhism there's no unit that has the rest of you. So your body in this kind of culture, Chinese yogic culture, your body is what appears. And I see each of your bodies appearing right now. And it's also your body is also appearing to you. And it appears to you as various feelings, sensations. Movement, activity. So within those various appearances, we discover our posture.

[08:54]

And one of the aspects of the body that appears is your backbone. And one of the functions of Zen practice, one of the fruits of Zen practice is your backbone. Becomes very alive. Can you hear me okay in the back now? Okay. If you can't, I'd say something. So the first thing is that your backbone, the simplest way to describe it, the basic posture in Zen is your backbone. And there's many reasons for that.

[10:00]

But there's not, on the one hand, over some time you discover the reasons and also we can give you some explanation. Someone told me the secret of losing weight recently. And I said, oh, great, what is it? Eat less and exercise more. I said, I thought of that actually. But really there's a big difference between knowing that and actually knowing how that works so that you actually lose weight. For example, one of the secrets I discovered is it's actually more pleasurable to be slightly hungry than to be slightly full.

[11:15]

So I think You know, much of Zen instruction is like that. It's obvious, you hear it over and over again, but exactly what makes it work isn't clear at first. People say, just sit, but what that just means is not so obvious. So I will say the main posture of Zazen is your backbone and your backbone is a kind of mind. And in Zen, the way it developed in China in relationship to Indian Buddhism and so forth, is it tried to bring, it tried not to simplify the teachings.

[12:25]

But it tried to make them less philosophical than the highly intellectual philosophical Indian culture. So it didn't want to simplify the practices, it wanted to make them more direct. And one way to make them more direct was to bring many of the teachings into the body, into the posture. So again, your backbone is the main aspect of Zen posture, and there's a lifting feeling through your backbone. And a lifting feeling through the back of the neck.

[14:01]

And it usually helps to have some cushion underneath you to lift up your bottom a bit. And since the backbone is the main posture, you can sit on a chair if you want. But if you're sitting cross-legged, it's... It concentrates your heat more and it allows you to have a more stable posture. And we usually put our hands together in Zen practice at least.

[15:04]

And really you can put them together any way you'd like. And with this lifting feeling, you simultaneously have a feeling of relaxation coming down through your body. So I think that's enough to allow us to sit for some little I don't know, 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you see. When you're just starting, 5 or 10 minutes can seem like a long time. So I'll ring the bell three times at the beginning and and wants to finish.

[16:21]

We also keep our mind on the space of our breathing, on the feeling of our breathing. More specifically, we can say you bring your attention to your breath to your exhales and inhales. So it's customary for beginners and for anyone to practice for at least part of a period of zazen by counting your exhales to ten and starting over again.

[18:46]

And your attention is a vital force and you're bringing and developing this vital force of attention by bringing it to your breath and counting your exhales. Aufmerksamkeit ist eine vitale Kraft. Diese vitale Kraft entwickeln wir, wenn wir die Aufmerksamkeit zu unserem Atem hinführen. And you're also simply connecting mind with the space and feeling of the breath. And breath and feeling the space of breath is being mixed with mind. And ideally you discover some relaxation or ease there in this.

[20:13]

And your tongue is usually at the roof of your mouth. And your teeth gently together. Your eyes lightly closed or slightly open. Your upper arms parallel, more or less parallel with your torso and a little away from a little space between your arms and your torso, your body. Die Oberarme hängen sanft an der Seite des Körpers und sie sind parallel zum Oberkörper und idealerweise ist da ein bisschen Luft dazwischen.

[21:48]

And your breath is both a kind of gentle caress and a kind of light in your body. If it is or isn't important, it's just there's some feeling like this. And whether it really is like that or not is completely unimportant. It is much more important to have a feeling for it. Does anyone have anything you'd like to ask at this point or discuss?

[23:08]

Yes. I liked your statement when you said, from my body it feels better always to be a little bit hungry and not so full. But how does that fit together with just now it's enough? Well, we're getting into a very advanced question early on in the seminar here. I liked the statement from Beko Roshi, she said, my body feels better when I am a little hungry than a little over-satisfied. And I immediately had the feeling, yes, that's true, that's true for me too, and not only for the body, but also as a spiritual attitude. But at the same time I noticed that Zen Buddhism tends to say that it is enough, especially now it is enough.

[24:21]

And that seemed a bit contradictory to me, because always being a little hungry means always wanting a little more, or being greedy. That sounds longer than what you said in English. Well, it's an interesting idea. I'd never thought of the connection before, that there might be a connection. But feeling slightly hungry and feeling slightly full are both on the same level. I have never thought about it before and I have never noticed that there is actually a connection. But to be slightly hungry and slightly over-saturated is on the same level. And just now is enough is a different level than just now is not enough.

[25:22]

But perhaps it's the case that the entry way to the feeling or entering into the feeling of just now is enough, maybe you have to be a little hungry. Or willing to be a little hungry. And since Beate brought this up, I think I have to say that just now is enough is one of these practice phrases. That are useful to bring you into this present moment. Without having the idea that there's something in addition to this or somewhere else that's better or worse. So it's very helpful to practice with a phrase like this, repeating it to yourself, just now is enough.

[26:42]

But why I said it's two different levels is of course because on one hand just now is not enough. We do need various things and probably some of you already might even be thinking about a cup of coffee or a beer or something in half an hour or an hour. But also you can shift from that mind, which is to finding exactly what you need here, with just now is enough. And then you might feel quite full in a very nice way.

[27:55]

Someone, something else? Yes. I had problems with my breathing during the meditation. I have the feeling that I am only coming this far. And I tried very hard to get behind it. And I came to a certain level of stress. I had problems breathing during our meditation. I felt that the breath only came until here. Then I tried to push it further down and it created a kind of stress for me. Good. Should I try to push it down further or should I just let it flow?

[29:00]

Well, I said good because it's good that you can notice such a thing. Because there's, as you start sitting, one of the things you discover is there are many ways in which parts of your body are more alive or less alive than other parts. And with half-closed eyes, it gets a bit deeper. And in this case, it's better to open up the eyes and therefore be awakened, more awake or not. OK, let me finish here, and then I'm done. OK. And it's better not to force anything.

[30:08]

And just noticing that is quite a lot, actually. So what I would suggest is you just notice that. That's first. And second, if it feels problematical or a little something, you know, like it'd feel better if it went further, Then just notice that feeling that it would feel better if it went further. And then sometimes maybe you can ask, Won't you go further, please, one of these days? So it's like you just meet somebody and you say, you'd like them to maybe have tea with you, but, you know, they say they're busy, and you don't say, grab them by the wrist and pull them into your apartment, you say...

[31:21]

Well, I hope someday we can have tea together or something like that. And you let them decide when they come to tea. So it's good if you let your breath decide when it wants to go deeper. This is a very important point. But I can say in breath practice, I can give you more instruction on that that helps you, but maybe I'll come back to that later if someone asks me again. I'm not ready to be dragged into tea yet either. Amir, watch your eyes.

[32:23]

Yes. I understand. I get a little sleepy and I've practiced with other practitioners before. Some say you should have your eyes completely open, some completely closed. And I like it when they're kind of wide open. It's up to you. They're your eyes. You can do what you want. And they can really do what they want.

[33:27]

In Zen, the custom is that your eyes are, you see, your eyes are a kind of trigger. And they signal you to being awake, though sometimes early in the morning their signaling is quite weak. And they signal you to be asleep. But in meditation, you're trying to discover a mind that's neither waking, exactly awake, nor asleep. So Zen says don't keep your eyes too wide open and don't close them. So usually a little bit open so you can kind of see what's in front of you about the distance of your height. And some gentle, unfocused feeling, again, maybe like I've said, with the feeling of consciousness at the back of your eyes rather than the front of your eyes.

[34:44]

But if you have an awake, clear feeling, then your eyes can be also slightly closed. It's not possible for me to start seeing images right away. As I said, as you wish. Someone, something else? Yeah. And I feel that sitting is getting better, but after a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, one leg is simply not bleeding anymore. And I don't have any pain in my knee, but then I get pain and I think, that can't be good, that's not physiological.

[35:59]

Does that change or how can I support that, that it gets better, so that the bleeding just stays. I don't practice very long, but I sit and usually sit 15 minutes or so. And then I don't exactly have pain in my knees, but my leg falls asleep. And then after a while it really starts becoming painful, uncomfortable. My feeling is that it's not good. So will that improve with practice? Yeah. It's just blood circulation. I know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've gone to sleep up to my waist. Then when you open your legs, they feel like... Somebody has attached the local electric company to them. It must be something wrong. So maybe I can use your question as an opportunity to speak about sitting on the floor.

[37:21]

Partly why we do these seminars without furniture is I want us to get used to sitting on the floor. And the more experienced we are, we can have more sitting and less talking. But when we're talking like this, you're free to sit as you wish or move or put your knees up or lean against the post or get a chair. What would you like? Lean against the wall. But I'd prefer you not lie down. That would make me fall asleep. How can I talk about It means I have to talk about a different sense of the body.

[38:48]

We see the body in our language as the container. In unserer Sprache sehen wir den Körper als einen Behälter. And it's supposedly, etymologically, though perhaps rather imaginatively, related to a German beer vat. Ja, und von der Wort-Etymologie her, und vielleicht ist es also fast ein bisschen weit hergeholt, heißt aber, dass der Körper etwas mit dem, ein Bierfass gemeinsam hat. Where you brew beer. Ein Fass, in dem man Bier braut. But you can see the... the thingness of our sense of the word body is because even when you're dead, we still call that thing a body. And in yoga cultures, the dead body is not considered a body.

[39:51]

Because the body is a process, and when the process is gone, it's no longer a body. And one of the words in Chinese for body is a share of the whole. Now, Rikke said it's hard to translate the difference between part and share, but in English, a part of the whole is like a part of the car, like the mirror or the back seat, while a share of the car means you own a portion of the whole of the car. Yeah, like when you own a share of a company in stock, you don't own the door or you own part of the whole of the company. So your body and my body is part of something we share.

[41:24]

Social life for us too is really about the body. You appear here and I appear here. And if you go to a party, you appear. And when I'm talking to you, my lips are flapping. Someone pointed out at the Peace University, quoting Bob Thurman, a friend, that you're talking, but your lips are moving, and it's a kind of telepathy, actually, but the lips are part of this telepathy.

[42:25]

Now, I have to talk about Chinese and Japanese culture a bit, and I want you to understand I'm not idealizing Japanese and Chinese culture. And I hope it's the best layers of Western culture which are influencing Asia now and not the worst layers, but I'm not so sure. So I'm trying to think about how to give you this different feeling.

[43:34]

We just walk into our houses. We walk out from the street and we walk straight into our houses, usually with our shoes on and so forth. So the body is thought of as a convenience you take care of. You make it warm enough and you make it comfortable enough, but it's basically a convenience. And the body is not thought of as different when it's inside a house or outside a house. So we just walk in the house and walk around with our shoes on as if we like a lot of space. We practically jog in some people's living rooms. At least in the living rooms of rich Texans. But in Japan, for example, the house is a piece of furniture.

[44:59]

And it's like sitting in the house is like sitting on the table. So the body is thought of as a... a share of the whole, and including nature, social life, spiritual life, and so forth. So your body is also, which I'll emphasize now, your body is also your spiritual life. Your spiritual life is with you all the time because it's also your body. So, for example, in Japan, and I'm just using this as an example, until very recently, the Japanese designed their houses so that your body is required to meditate.

[46:17]

So when you come into a Japanese house, you step up onto a different surface and then you sit down usually in this posture. Man tritt in ein japanisches Haus und normalerweise tritt man also eine Stufe höher und setzt sich dann in dieser Haltung hin. And the Japanese are actually losing the ability to sit in this posture, especially the men. Und es ist leider so, dass die Japaner die Fähigkeit verlieren in dieser Haltung zu sitzen, besonders die Männer. A lot of Japanese men refuse to go to a restaurant. A lot of Japanese men refuse to go to a restaurant where they have to sit on the floor or they want holes under the table. It's not considered manly almost anymore to sit like this.

[47:36]

This is what women do in the tea ceremony. But in traditional culture, this was definitely a male posture. It was the samurai posture and so forth, as you can see from the movies. So this kind of posture helps you build energy. But it takes skill to do it. So I suppose what we're doing here in a seminar like this is by sitting on the floor, we're implicitly trying to build a certain amount of skill in finding out how to sit on the floor and not treat our body as a convenience. Because if you actually learn to sit, I found this out when I moved into Japan I had a house with no heat and in the winter in Kyoto it can be pretty cold.

[48:41]

And the bitter cold? Did you say bitter cold? No. Did you say very cold? Yeah, pretty cold. It's not bitter cold. Crestone sometimes is bitter cold. So, I'm sorry, you asked one little question. It'll be midnight before I finish here. But I thought about this a lot because I wonder why the heck am I asking so many people to sit in these odd postures. But what I discovered living in this house in Kyoto, a traditional house with only tatami floors and no furniture, is that, you know, and I arrived in Kyoto, I think I arrived in October or November, and so 69, 68.

[50:10]

And so you could see your breath on the air inside. And you have a little hibachi. You can warm your fingers. You know, a little heat from charcoal. So you can warm your fingers. At least you can hold a pen or something. Really, your fingers get so stiff in the cold, you have to warm them up a bit, melt them, and then you put them back, you know. But after a few weeks, I hardly noticed the cold. And I thought I was getting used to the cold.

[51:11]

It's not true. I was getting used to the posture. And the posture allowed me to heat my body without worrying about the temperature of the house. And I found after a while I could adjust my body temperature according to whether it was warm or cold. And these kind of clothes are designed this way too, particularly the robes. So you're in these clothes more like being inside a sleeping bag than being into something that's tied off at the waist.

[52:13]

Because you're producing heat so I can, in the summer, in the winter, you don't wear much to it. And also these clothes are cut in such a way that you are now almost like in a kind of sleeping bag, where it is much easier for you to regulate the body temperature. This is not so easy in clothes where you are now knitted into the waistcoat. The body temperature cannot flow well there. Now, again, I'm not telling you... I am telling you something about Japanese culture, but really I'm telling you something about human knowledge, human experience. And my guess is that if you go back in European culture to, say, 12th century or before, and you studied the clothing... I bet you might see that the clothing is designed for a person who can manifest their own and control their own body temperature.

[53:20]

And when you go, and so you're not just looking at fashion, you're looking at a very different concept of the body which is being clothed. Ivan Illich feels that there's a big change in the 12th century when Christ goes from an icon with bright eyes and a live figure to a corpse on a cross. So there's a big shift, and there's a big shift in Chinese culture when they started using chairs. And that shift is going on in Japanese countries right now, Japanese houses right now, and it's going to change how they heat their houses, it's going to change how they dress, and it's going to change how they think.

[54:58]

And believe it or not, it's going to change how they do business. One of the Japanese business terms is harage. And it's a word which means belly talk. And I've told this story to some of you, but if a group of Japanese, German, and American businessmen are sitting around a table, the Japanese fix everything up and put yellow paper and a glass of water for everybody. The symbols of a Western business meeting. But the Japanese feel they're communicating under the table with each other with their stomachs.

[56:02]

You know, we have these little Newton communicators, like little portable communicators, and they have a little beam, laser beam, that communicates to your assistant across the way. You can communicate information across the table with this little laser beam. The Japanese feel they don't need that. They just do it with their stomachs. What do you mean, Newton? A Newton is a kind of computer made by Apple, Macintosh. It's that little portable one. I have one. With laser beams? Yes. With laser beams? Yes. I've been doing this secret communication. But the Japanese businessman who is going to lose that sense of communicating and feeling connected if they stop sitting this way.

[57:32]

The Japanese are connected to each other with their bellies under the table, but they will lose this ability if they stop sitting in this way. Boy, that was a long answer to why your leg may lose some circulation. Anyway, sitting in this posture is a skill. It takes some getting used to. And it's a skill as I'm getting a little older. I find I have to do a little yoga myself to keep myself able to do it. And if you're serious about learning the posture, it's helpful to have your desk or something where you work in your house, sometimes on the floor. And also there's a sense, and it's very much a part of Qigong teaching and yoga teaching too, is that, how can I say this?

[58:43]

But the floor and the physical solidity is a source of energy. So in any case, it takes a little while to get used to it, but I wouldn't worry about it. As long as your leg doesn't stay numb or something for days, it's probably okay. If it atrophies and falls off or something you know that something was wrong. But really it just takes getting used to and if you sit after a while you can sit 30 or 40 minutes and it's not necessary to sit longer.

[60:07]

Okay, some other questions. Yes. Yes. When I start counting, I sort of fall into, I mean, doing mantra practice, and it's really hard to count. Is it better to try and count? If you want to do mantras, do mantras. So when you want to recite mantras, do your mantras.

[61:09]

I mean, you just have to see what works best, but it's also good. I mean, ideally you don't want to get in any particular habit that takes over, even counting your breaths you don't want. You mostly want to use whatever technique you use to bring attention to your mind and to your breath, is you want to use it in such a way that it disappears easily and you can just be open without any technique necessary. And one of the main aspects of Postures is I mean as I said in the Peace University is if you did nothing as direct practice not as it and I made a distinction between adept practice and direct practice Partly I'm teaching you adept practice and partly I'm teaching you direct practice

[62:27]

Adept practice would be like studying the skandhas, the ayatanas, the vijnanas, the five powers, and so forth. But direct practice would be like using a phrase, just now is enough. Or this very body is mind. This very mind is body. Just bringing that to your attention. So direct practices also would be just to discover ease in your sitting.

[63:34]

If you did nothing in your sitting but keep sensing your tension or how your tension tense or how your energy only flows to certain points in your body, And gently ask that there be more ease or to discover feelings of ease here and there in your body and spreading them throughout your body. And if after one or two years, if it took that long, after one or two years, when you sat down, you felt completely at ease and open in every part of your body. If you came to this open and transparent and deeply relaxed feeling,

[64:47]

And it did nothing but work on this, feeling out this ease. All the teachings of Buddhism would fall into place. So that's direct practice. You don't study the skandhas and things. Of course, a depth practice makes realization and this ease perhaps more accessible. And the emphasis of Zen is direct practice. And adept practice is more to help you.

[66:14]

And what I'm doing when I'm talking here with you is working with the first of the eightfold path, which is right views or perfected views. So we're working with your actualizing state of mind or your initial state of mind that conditions everything you see. And one of the things I want to point out is we generally think of the mind as maybe, or the body as maybe like a flower pot. And it's kind of dead dirt.

[67:17]

And it recorded... I mean, schmutz sounds much more like dirt than dirt. If I said I felt schmutz, I really would want to take a bath. So anyway, we tend to think of the body as a kind of schmutzpot. And we pour water in it and things like that and it comes to life and things like that. So we think of our body as this kind of stuff and we put water in it, mind in it, and we're alive. But this is treating the body as a passive object. And we treat the body pretty much as a passive object and now we treat it as a commercial object.

[68:28]

We have the jogging body which needs special clothes. And we have the body that drinks Coca-Cola. And so forth. We have a sense of the body as this passive agent of our social and economic and political processes. That we do things too. We feed it, we exercise it and so forth. But we don't think of the body as initiating action on its own without the mind. We think of the mind as initiating things or self-initiating things, but we don't think of the body as having not only intelligence, but its own ability to initiate action.

[70:04]

So as long as you think of the body as this passive thing or dead thing that requires something else to make it alive, you're not really working with mind and body. You're not working with mind and body as equals or really related and equally alive. And really when you pour water in that flower pot, the water is just, you know, I mean it's a great substance, just the idea of H2O of two gases making a liquid that gives so much life is a wonderful thing.

[71:17]

But when you put it in the dirt, I mean a million things might grow. The dirt itself is initiating action. You put water in this pot and you put water in that pot and the different dirts initiate different little things. So when you do zazen, your body is going to start initiating things. And this is one of the meanings of just to just sit, is to trust the body's wisdom to start to teach you. And this is one of the images of mind in yoga cultures which is the mind is like a fountain not from outside but that wells up from the body like an artesian spring.

[72:27]

And one of the images of the mind is as condensed body. The consciousness and body are not just interrelated, like two different things that say hello to each other. And consciousness is actually an aspect of the body generated by the body, which according to how you treat the body, more or less or different kinds of consciousness can be generated. So what I'm going to emphasize in this weekend is not the mind as agent which does zazen, but the body as agent

[73:48]

as initiator, which does you. Which does your mind at a more deeper and the level of wisdom. I think that's enough for this evening. Maybe it's enough for the rest of the year. So let's sit for a few minutes and then you can have spaghetti. I mean, what are you? It's very nice to be here with you. It feels good. I'm sorry my pillow is not a little thicker so I could see all of you better.

[76:26]

So we were just silent for half an hour. And we can say that silence is an opportunity for the silent intelligence of the body. And the silent intelligence of the phenomenal world. Now I want to see if we can among us come to a feeling for the body and the phenomenal world and the mind in some way that's relevant to your life and to practice.

[77:49]

And so let's work with the phrase that Beata offered us yesterday, just now is enough. So what do we have here? Just now, what do we have? Well, we have a rainy Berlin morning and we have each of us There's so much beauty around. What am I going to do here? And we have this phrase, keep your body and mind.

[80:08]

And what I'm really doing here, I'd like to do is a little exercise for this morning of really limiting ourselves to what we have. Now, if I said to you, oh, isn't it wonderful to have this rainy Berlin morning? You might say, what kind of schmaltzy guy is this? You know, I wish it were sunny. But if we practice with just now is enough, then really that's what we got this rainy Berlin morning. And I must confess when I woke up this morning it was so lovely to hear the rain on the roof windows.

[81:43]

Now there's what's called, what I'm trying to do here too is relate direct practice to adept practice. And let me give you four phrases called the four abandonments. I hope this doesn't sound too moralistic to you. Abandon unwholesome thoughts and actions already generated.

[83:14]

And the second would be abandon or non-generation of thoughts and actions. not yet generated. Now this is really very basic Buddhism. And you can imagine what the next two are but I'll tell them to you in a minute.

[84:37]

And we have a problem I think with such things partly because of our sense of psychology that we want to express or work through unwholesome thoughts. We don't want to abandon them or not generate them. But just to say, I wish this was a sunny Berlin morning. is a very natural thing to feel. But if you think that way too much, it's a rather unwholesome thought. So we're not really talking about morality here, that too, but we're talking about the way we think.

[85:50]

And how we open ourselves to the silent intelligence of the body and of the phenomenal world. And the silent intelligence of you at this moment in this rainy Berlin morning. And again, I'm sorry to make it so simple, but if you spend too much time wishing it were sunny, you undercut yourself. This is a kind of grandmotherly advice, make the best of what you got. And Buddhism isn't much more profound than make the best of what you got. But really, to look at this deeply, does change things.

[87:08]

So the practice of just now is enough as a direct practice is rooted in maybe a slightly hungry feeling of willing to be hungry for the sunny day which may come tomorrow. Now, it means you also notice your thoughts and actions that feel unwholesome, and literally that means unnourishing or nourishing. And you can use what word you want, but recently I've been speaking quite a bit about using the word nourishment as a way to find out to discover a continuity of mind in which your own body, your own actions and your situation nourishes you.

[88:51]

So I think if you're practicing, you have to take on the courage, because I think we're actually quite attached to our unwholesome thoughts. Or we're afraid some of the things that we like, others or you might on some level think are unwholesome. Oder wir fürchten, we are afraid we may like. We are afraid that some of the things we like, we will think are unwholesome or someone else will think are unwholesome. Und wir fürchten uns, dass also manche der Dinge, die wir mögen, dass die ungut sind oder dass zumindest andere das denken. And then we protect ourselves a little bit in that way by thinking in psychological terms that you have to work things through and so forth. And we may take away our creativity and so forth. We take away our, you know, try to be too good. Now the word keep in this phrase Keep your body and mind.

[90:40]

I don't know what it means exactly or what you have equivalent in German, but keep means something like to have possession of something through taking care of it. Ja, und behalten, ich weiß nicht genau, was das wirklich auf Deutsch bedeutet, zumindest im Englischen, bedeutet so etwas von etwas Besitz ergreifen, dadurch, dass man sich darum kümmert. Okay, again, what I'm trying to do here is enter the, what Beate gave us, this phrase, just now is enough, is to slow us down for this day, Saturday and Sunday, so that really, This rainy Berlin morning is enough. And this phrase is enough.

[91:41]

And even the words of the phrase are enough. Because this is what we have. We're sitting here and we have this phrase that we decided to all meet around this week. So keep is, and we also have the, so we have this treasure of the morning and the phrase and we have the treasure of Ulrike translating these words into German for us. So keep is like where do you keep your eggs? Or I keep chickens. Or I earn my keep. So it has this sense of owning something through the taking care of it.

[93:03]

So how do we own our actions, our body through taking care of it? And that simple effort to keep ourselves healthy, to keep ourselves mentally clear and open is this practice of giving up unwholesome thoughts and actions that you are stuck in. And now to stay healthy, to really only follow thoughts that make us mentally clear and stable, that's what it's about in this practice, to give up bad thoughts and deeds.

[94:04]

Now, does someone have something, any questions or anything you'd like to bring up? Yeah. This distinction is a little difficult for me between wholesome and unwholesome. Well, it's the way it's usually translated in English.

[94:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.66