And in like manner, if you only sit, meditate when you feel like it, your ego will control your meditation. Your existence is bigger than yourself. And if your meditation is going to be part of your existence and not part of yourself, then you have to sit very helpfully on a schedule. So you sit whether you want to or not. At least 20 minutes or 30 minutes or something. And it's helpful also to sit in a place where you also don't read magazines or something like that. Okay, I think that's enough pretty much talking for this morning, today even.

[01:15]

I want to say that there's, we say there's the mystery of body, speech and mind. When we bring body and mind together, we have what we call speech. But we also, anything that, in the sense of the mystery of body, speech and mind, anything, anytime body and mind are brought together, you have a kind of speech. And we're talking here about bringing body and mind and the world together. And we have the mystery of a voice appearing. Of a deep knowing of a validity of what to do. And we're not talking here so much about what has meaning, but what has value.

[02:25]

And I'll talk about that maybe, I probably will, this afternoon. Okay, so let's sit for one minute or two minutes. In any old posture is fine. That bell arises from metal and the striker and from my hand. But it's your sound not the bells.

[03:49]

So why don't we come back at two o'clock? Because I'd like you to have a leisurely lunch. And a chance to take a little walk. Talk with your friends. And stop fighting during, you know, this aggression. Off with it. Yes. I would like to start with meditation. I think I should try to say in a different way or a new way what I talked about last night.

[07:02]

So that together we share the elements of this offering or this practice. Offering. Offering, yeah. Like you make an offering to the Buddha? Yeah. I still lack the word. Angebot. Angebot. Angebot, yeah. What do you say when you are in a church and you make an offering? Yeah. I'm proud of you.

[08:03]

But let me say again, just about sitting posture. First priority is your back. And you can't really have your back straight if your knees are in the air. It's quite difficult, you know, because you have to use effort to straighten your back. And I'm a very stiff person. It took me about a year and a half to learn to sit. I've been sort of cross-legged. And I would get my legs in posture.

[09:12]

After about six months, I could do it. And then after somewhere between five and ten minutes they would spring loose and I'd pop up in the air. Yeah. So. so if you sit without a cushion you know and you're sitting like this it's quite difficult to sit with your back straight you can for a little while but very quickly it's you know like this which actually isn't too good for your stomach and your organs and things you want to give everything in your body space so the way to get

[10:24]

If you get up high, whatever the height is, if you're high enough, your knees will touch. And when I first started sitting, I had three pillows like this. I was in danger of a serious fall. A fourth pillow, I probably would have So, if you build up... The thing to do to experiment with sitting is to build up enough height under you till your knees touch. Yeah. And like in your case... I would try to do it like this first, not cross them.

[11:35]

Your feet just in front of you. Yeah. And then I'd lean forward. No, lean forward like this. And lift up until your knees touch. Yeah. You need that kind of height under you. Yeah. Germans are very helpful people. Yeah, the Germans are sehr hilfsbereit. Yeah, it looks good. Thank you very much. So you want to experiment with that until you get solid enough cushions, until you find that height. And then you sit that way 20 minutes or so. And then slowly you lower the pillows over a period of weeks or months. And slowly you creep your feet up your leg.

[12:48]

And it helps if you're over 40 or so to perhaps do a little yoga or stretching once a day. If you're under 40 it's alright too, but As you get older, you need to loosen up this joint. Okay. You want to check who is supporting you from behind? Okay. Okay. So... We're talking about vocation and profession.

[13:50]

And I'm trying to speak again from my own experience in Zen practice. But I'm not so much concerned with Zen. I'm trying to speak from what I would call basic human wisdom. Now you're asking very practical questions. Either out loud or in your own mind. But I think the answers aren't what we would normally call practical. I think we're trying to discover the poetry of our life. And as the poet Paul Valerie said again, poetry is not an orderly

[14:55]

It's like the poet's muse. It just means to think, but it means to let something think for you or think through you. So I think the answer to this longing we feel is A sense of mystery. A sense of timelessness. Aren't we in the timeless center or something like that? Lost sight. And faith. And again I think the secret is attention.

[16:41]

What do I mean by attention? Maybe the whole world is an altar. Now when you If you have an altar in your house or you go into a church, there's something special about an altar. But it's just one time there was a tree there or something else. Now there's a church or an altar. In this world I'm speaking about, we can call it a de-centered world. There's no center. You're always making the center. We're not searching for a fixed point.

[17:59]

We're reading an open text. Because I'm not just speaking about that thing which you'd like to do. or accomplishing even that thing which you'd like to do. But I'm speaking about finding your beyond vocation and profession, your sense of a true existence. And this has to be a question for me too. I mean, I suppose my vocation and profession are identical. But still, Within this, am I really finding my own voice?

[19:14]

Or am I still speaking with a voice partially enclosed by tradition? Or am I still... speaking with a voice that I hope will agree with others. There's a risk in finding your own voice in the theater of reality. In the theater. theater of existence. So for me, if I'm speaking about this, this also has to be my own practice with you in what I'm talking about.

[20:28]

And if I don't sound too corny, do you have that expression, corny? Schmaltzy? Yeah, it's about the same. In America it's corn, in Germany it's schmaltz. For me, you're this weekend my altar. And I feel I'm making some little burned out stick of incense here on the altar. And you guys are the Buddha. I mean there could be one Buddha but why not all these Buddhas?

[21:34]

And it's not just some kind of generalization because for example I can feel Neil's presence here. And I know Neil well so it's Fairly easy for me to feel his presence. In fact, I know Neil well enough that his presence is with me most of the time. Now I'm going to embarrass him. And I can feel Hermann's presence. Wasn't Hermann some famous German hero who defeated the Roman Empire or something like that back? He believed in the Roman Empire, but he defeated it too. Glad to have you here, Herman.

[22:47]

I'm slowly becoming German, you can see. And that's different than being an American. Americans can't say, I'm German and not French. Because American is French and German and Italian and so on. So it's rather different to be an American than to be a European. But it's not all bad. I know you may think so, but it's not. And of course I can, because I know Herman well, I can feel Herman's presence. But I don't know you. Marina. And she's, her last name is Teen.

[23:52]

It's a big family here. Yeah, the team family. Sounds like an American name, actually. So, and Marina, I don't know, but now I know her to some extent. And I can feel Marina's presence. And perhaps Marina can feel my presence. And I can also feel the presence of Herman and Neil and Marina together, which is something different than the three separately. And likewise, this may seem kind of all silly to you, but it's actually my practice. And likewise, I can begin to feel each of you individually and together.

[25:28]

And it's very particular. In other words, if there were a different group of people here, the shared presence would be different. And we can understand this shared presence as the Buddha of this moment. Because that essence or fragrance that is our presence is not you as an individual person only, but some quality that can join us together. To join us together. And this is mysterious. And quite commonplace, though.

[26:52]

All Berlin creates a certain presence. And it's different than Hamburg. And it's not just about the buildings. Everyone recognizes there's a presence to cities, but I don't think we know how to really live that presence, except we do it without thinking. Okay, so I like coming to Berlin because I like the presence of Berlin. And some cities lose their presence. There's some cities I used to like that have gotten too big and

[27:53]

They've lost their presence. I think Berlin is interesting because it hasn't lost it, it's discovering it. Okay, so, but I'm not now at this moment in Only in Berlin. I'm not now at this moment only in Berlin. I'm sitting here with you. And for me this is a very particular thing. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't so. I don't have anything special to say to you. Not much. And if I did, I could just print it and give it to you on a piece of paper.

[29:13]

I've come here because I had an intuition of the presence you would offer me. So I, to some extent now, held aside the presence of Berlin. And I am swimming in or immersing myself in the presence that we have here. And then I'm listening to this presence in order to discover partially, to discover what we should talk about. Now, just as We have a piece of metal here.

[30:27]

A little pillow. And a stick. And along my arm. And my heart. And my feeling for you. And all those go together. And that sound, as I said earlier, doesn't belong to the bell. If you hit the bell, it will sound different. And there's a word, timber. And music. Volume, pitch, timber.

[31:27]

So there's a particular to this sound that arises from us and me. And that will be unique if any one of you hit this bell. So this sound that arises doesn't belong to the bell. It belongs to us. It arises from us and it is you that hears it. Now again, this 12th century Christian theologian, mystic, Hugo of St.

[33:00]

Victor, says everything in nature is full of sense. There's nothing in the this multiverse, universe, which is sterile. Yeah. Well, I don't know the Latin, but I think it means feeling. Yeah. Now, what I'm trying to get at here, and I don't know if I can do it with much effectiveness, is we need some experience of embeddedness or absorption, I think probably every day.

[34:12]

And practice is the conscious intention to create the conditions for this On a regular basis. But it's not dependent on, nor will it necessarily occur, just because you sit in meditation. Now, if the world is an open text, how do we learn how to read it? How do we discover the gossamer of meaning?

[35:25]

Gossamer? Like that cloth or very thin? Yeah. How do we discover the depth that's on the surface? I think much of our problem and much of our sense of frustration and longing is that we only feel the surface We don't feel the depth of the surface. We've been fooled by the effectiveness and success of our culture. Fooled into thinking that's the only vocabulary there is in which to think and feel. Now when I say that Everything is, with Hugo of St.

[36:40]

Victor, everything is full of sense and nothing is sterile. I mean, to bring, I mean, the lunch you just had. Each bite of your food. Your walk to the restaurant and your walk back. You need to set aside some time, out of time, for timelessness. That's I suppose why we go to church sometimes. But the church is everywhere. The altar is here. You can bring the attention that you

[37:42]

the kind of attention you might bring to the church which helps you focus that attention, get to know that attention. Without the help of the church then, recreate that same kind of attention. This is the practice of mindfulness. To bring your attention to the open text of the world. Dogen Zenji has a poem, a simple poem. In the spring, cherry blossoms.

[39:06]

In the summer, the cuckoo bird. In fall, the moon. In autumn, the moon. And in the winter, the snow, clear and cold. Now, that doesn't sound like much of a poem by our standards. It's just a list. But what is Dogen trying to suggest? First of all, a certain pace. In the spring, cherry blossoms. In the fall, in the autumn, the moon. And don't we have nearly a full moon now? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, now have you ever had the experience of the moon accompanying you?

[40:29]

As a companion. You know, you walk down the street and you go around a corner and there's the moon. And then it's gone and then you go down another street and there's the moon again. Then you go upstairs to where you live maybe and you haven't turned on the light yet. The room is basking in moonlight. And the moon feels like your companion. Wherever you go, the moon at that time seems to be accompanying you. Hmm. Now I think once you've felt that, and there's another Buddhist poet named Myoe who says, something like, now that I've known the moon as companion,

[41:43]

The moon in the light of my heart is always with me. In other words, once you've really discovered something as companion, it doesn't leave you. In the sliver of the moon, you can feel the full moon. In the sliver of the moon, you can feel the full moon. In the Clouds, you can feel the moon. Like that. And so Dogen is saying, yes, everything has its particularity.

[42:46]

In the spring the cherry blossoms. But when you really have brought attention to the cherry blossoms even once in your life and really felt spring coming forth in those blossoms. You've taken time for, or been forced to take time for the magic of this existence, that spring has come forth in these blossoms, and the entirety of everything that is has cooperated and has to have had cooperated to bring this blossom forth.

[43:52]

You can't take anything away, really. Paul is cooperating in each particularity. In this sense, we put a flower on an altar. And I would like you to know the world as altar. You know, I don't want you to force it on yourself or to be, you know, some kind of nut. But that is also present now. Mm-hmm. So Dogen is saying, each season has some characteristic.

[45:01]

Like this particular, being together with you has a characteristic which is not Berlin, but is us, whoever we are, whatever we are. And this, for me, being with you is as specific as seeing Berlin. a cherry blossom in the spring. And Dogen's saying, in this specificity, really discovering the specificity of spring as cherry blossoms, not as generalizations, So we don't have the generalization of, you know, just a place out there you went to have lunch. the curb of the sidewalk is a particular piece of stone from a quarry somewhere and a leaf has come from one of the trees in the street

[46:20]

Now again, I don't want to belabor this. It's not something you force yourself. But in a homeopathic way, as I say, allow yourself small doses of timelessness. It may be extremely dilute, but it can affect everything. So once you know spring not as a generality, but as a particularity, the stone curb or with a leaf on it for autumn. This companion now accompanies you in all seasons.

[47:35]

And you can begin to discover the text of the world and you can begin to hear the world speaking to you and much of this is practicing at listening and letting the world also tell you how to accomplish What do you want to accomplish? Again, nothing is sterile. Nothing is sterile. As I said last night, I think, quoting David White, the poet, the world is not a Velcro curtain with everything stuck on it. It's not just a backdrop.

[48:58]

Backdrop? Like in a movie, there's a set, and the backdrop is what... Yeah. In reality, there's no background or foreground. Yeah. There is no inside and outside. These are distinctions to protect yourself from timelessness. Again, last night I gave you this wonderful statement of Rilke's. Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Treat questions like locked rooms.

[50:04]

Like books written in a foreign tongue. Don't seek answers, but live the questions now. Now, Rilke knew that with this kind of mind, poems appear. And both poetry as philosophy and philosophy as poetry is a kind of faith. Faith that there's some realm of trust in us. And faith that it's possible to discover our own voice. And without this faith, there won't be trust or your own voice. I remember Sukhiroshi saying something that these things stick in you.

[51:27]

Most of the time when we see a tree, we see a tree. When we see a curb, we see a curb. But sometimes when we see a tree, we see a palm. What's the difference? So Rilke, in this little statement, is trying to show you the posture of mind which allows you to see a poem. And which can allow you to discover your sense of your own true existence. Your own calling, your own vocation. In the deepest sense.

[52:34]

Just now, not in the future. Just now. The more you know the taste of it just now, the more that taste will lead you to your life. In each successive moment. So that when you die, you can welcome dying. So you feel completely complete. Yes. Yeah, I'm getting awfully serious, so we should stop and have a break. So maybe 20 to 30 minutes, 25 minutes, something like that. Okay. Thank you. Don't be aggressive.

[53:54]

I think some of your aggression is just having fun. Well, you would see it that way. I'm just playing around. That was every one of us. Some questions.

[54:56]

Oh, yeah. Which ones do you feel weren't answered yet? For example, the one of the young man, how to deal with aggression. Let's see. For instance. You mean this might be of interest to you, too? Maybe. You're very coy. Coy? Not the same as coy. No. No, coy means coquette. A little bit like that, yes. Coy means to hint but not say or something like that.

[56:03]

Yeah. I haven't forgotten. Larry. Larry. Okay, something else. This morning I had already asked the difference between the inner voice and the voice of the intellect was one thing and the other. Afterwards I felt that when I meditate my hands began to tingle, I should say. What is it?

[57:05]

What can I do about it? It's the inner voice. Laughter I don't know why you think it's funny. I'm serious. No, it's not too easy. It's what it is. You lived in England a while. We talked at the break. And she... may do some translation.

[58:06]

And she notices, of course, that there's seldom Perhaps never a real exact overlap between two words in two different languages. And she also notices that when she's speaking English, in English, she's a different person. somewhat different person than when she's in German. And there's another woman here who has an Irish accent. And being Irish is not the same as being English, we know.

[59:12]

So what does that tell us? That all languages are an accent. Or... Who are you free of language? In other words, if you're one person in German and another person in English, to some extent, who are you when you hear your own voice? Who are you when you discover your own inner language?

[60:16]

First you have to We could say the purpose of practice is to discover who you are in your own inner language. And we could say that everything I've been talking about points to that. Now first we have to need to have the faith that we have this true existence. That's neither German nor English nor Japanese or Irish. And we call this original mind.

[61:19]

True nature. And because there is such a thing as original mind, it's possible for Buddhism to be in Japan or here or America or Korea. So first we need the faith that we already are this true existence, but we may not have actualized it yet or really noticed it yet. And then we have to notice this language, let's call it an inner language. A different vocabulary. A different grammar.

[62:49]

Different syntax. Because the world is not written in German. As much as some people might like to think it is. Or in English. The world is written in the language of your true existence. And the world is always asking you to hear it. And sometimes the world tries so hard We think angels are present. The world tries very hard to get us to listen. To its language. which is our own language, our own voice.

[64:04]

And when you practice meditation, you have to open yourself to things that happen But it's good not to worry about the meaning. The question, as you asked, what is the meaning, stops us. If it has meaning, it pushes it into our ordinary language. What you do doesn't have any meaning in a deep sense. It has value, but not meaning. It has meaning in the ordinary sense.

[65:13]

In the deep sense it has value but not meaning. What is the meaning of a beach stone? I don't know, not much. But it might have tremendous value to you. A particular beach stone you picked up somewhere. What meaning does the autumn moon have? It has value. And the world exists also, excuse me for saying so, often in a kind of instantaneousness. Also, unmittelbarkeit.

[66:17]

I hope it's right. Instantaneous? Good. She says it's good, yeah. Well, as you came up with that translation, your face filled with light. You looked like a Buddha. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And when you drop the need for meaning, meaning is the way we anchor the ego. And the meaning is how we anchor the present. tie the present down to the past and the future. But spring is not the future of winter.

[67:20]

Spring is not the future of winter or the past of summer. Spring has its own freedom. The present is not tied to past and future. It has its own freedom. And you need to know that if you're going to have a freedom in the present that's not, you yourself are going to have a freedom in the present that's not attached to the past and future. There's a Zen saying, when you come to a fork, Not at lunch, you know. Yes, I know. Thank you.

[68:41]

When you come to a fork, take it. Yeah. What kind of state of mind, what state of mind is this? This is a state of mind that's not involved in meaning and choice in the ordinary sense. When you come to a fork, take it. You can't think about this, but actually often this is what you do. A choice appears that you have no idea was there. So again, there's an instantaneousness that when you try to give it meaning, you don't, it's gone.

[70:11]

Because to give it meaning is to try to give it syntax. And to give it syntax means it's predictable. And the trouble with contemporary science is that it can only study the predictable. You can't repeat the experiment. It's not true. No. This is a quite valid way of studying the world. But if you only have that view, it's not a very good way to discover the poetry of your life. You can't write a poem as an experiment to be studied.

[71:30]

A group of scientists say, well, we'd like to study you, Rilke, while you're writing a poem, and we're going to wire you up, and okay, when you write a poem, we want to see if this state of mind can be reproduced with each poem. And if you were Rilke, the scientists would have taken Rilke and said, Rilke, we want to investigate how you, in what state of mind you, in what state of mind you write poems. And we would have connected him and made deductions and wanted to see if this state of mind, in this state of mind, these poems are always repeatable. I have to slow you down. Okay. We can't know when a tree is a tree and when a tree is a poem. So, when things have syntax, they're no longer instantaneous.

[72:32]

So, again, let's go back. Things have value, but not meaning. As a Deutschmark has no meaning particularly, but it has value. And the autumn moon has value, but not meaning. Color has value, we say, don't you? There's a certain value to orange, we say in English, So I'm just trying to use language to this kind of speaking to suggest, to emphasize how important the attitudes you have through which you view the world.

[73:44]

So value is something in itself. The word value in English comes from strong. Valor, valid. It has value in itself and in how it's spent. or how it relates to everything. So one of the things that happens when you practice is things start to tingle. One of the most common things is your top of your head starts to itch or tingle.

[74:53]

And I can point out some of the things so you won't think you're going crazy once you start to tingle. And there's certain qualities that appear that reflect certain states of mind. Rather than teach them or tell you about them or make the shoe fit, Just have the, we'd like you to have in practice the confidence to feel the value of something but not be concerned with its meaning. And such a small shift between meaning and value can open you up to an instantaneousness of the present.

[75:57]

For example, let me go a field a bit. Say that you have a certain vocation you'd like to do or something you're longing to do that you haven't accomplished yet. What are those values you'd like to accomplish? Or what are those qualities you'd like to accomplish? So you can imagine, if I could realize this vocation, These are the qualities that would be the fruit of that realization. Okay. So, it's good then to assume that those qualities are present right now.

[77:13]

Those qualities are present while you're sitting at lunch. Or as you're sitting right now. And they may not be as fulfilled or as interesting or whatever as if you really had actualized this vocation. But let's actualize the qualities right now. They're likely to lead to like reading something they're likely to lead to realizing these qualities and the vocation if that's the way you should realize them. So they are suitable to lead you to realize them and to have or to achieve them.

[78:28]

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