As I started to say when I was silent, if you have a body, you can meditate. But if we sat from now until evening, for some of you it would be pretty difficult. Even though you'll presumably have your body from now until this evening. Or perhaps not have your body, be your body. So what we'll try to do is, as usual in a seminar, find some balance between how much we have talk and discussion and how much we meditate. And next Saturday evening, I believe, we start a set. Some of us will sit a seven-day sesshin at the Haus de Stille near Hamburg.

[01:01]

So always at the Sashin there are people who feel we're sitting too much. And here some of you will feel we talk too much. So meditation practice is to settle yourself on yourself. And really to find some way in which you can sit comfortably over some time, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. To sit comfortably without moving. And most postures require us to keep moving to maintain them.

[02:50]

So basically you're trying to find a posture where it's easier not to move. And for some thousands of years, the decision has been that the yoga posture, half or full lotus, is the easiest posture not to move in. But for those of you who are not familiar with zazen meditation, the most important part of your posture is your back. So however you sit, the first point is to try to have your back straight. So your legs are secondary to that posture of your back.

[04:16]

But heat, when you're alive, you're cold. And when you're dead, you're cold. And when you're alive, you're warm. And heat is closely connected with consciousness. with both consciousness and awareness. So another factor in what meditation posture is, is to find a posture where your warmth and heat is most consolidated. So your body doesn't have to worry too much about keeping your feet warm, things like that. So you want to sit, again, that's one of the reasons for this posture of the legs, is it allows your body's heat to be concentrated. But, you know, some people have tried to meditate in cold weather, particularly now, the days when we have down jackets and so forth.

[05:39]

And they wear down jackets, big socks, gloves, and so forth. And then you can't meditate. Because your body doesn't have to produce any heat. And if you sit still, you become very chilled if you wear it down. So again, you're not supposed to keep, in meditation you're supposed to, unless you're sitting saza, where your feet are out behind. If you're sitting cross-legged, you sit, you don't put, you don't wear socks and you have your hands and head and neck usually, you're not supposed to wear a turtleneck, I'm sorry.

[06:54]

Because you want to have your body required to produce heat. I think that's actually one of the reasons yogis, some of them like me, shave their heads. Because you lose most of your body heat through your head. So if you have a shaved head, you need to find ways to seal, control your body heat. But for those of you who are beginners today in meditation, you don't have to shave your head this weekend. Anyway, the only point I'm making is that you find some way to sit comfortably. With your back a lifting feeling through your back.

[08:38]

And a lifting feeling through the back of your neck. And it's good when you first start sitting to rock forward and back a little bit. And left and right. Maybe, you know, stretch your head and body a little bit. And then again, lift up through your back. And sit either, sit any way you can that your back can be straight. And sit so you can feel a kind of coziness or intimacy with your body's heat So while you're, on the one hand you have this lifting feeling through your back, you have a relaxing feeling coming down from your head through your shoulders.

[09:54]

And if it makes sense, you want your mind to be as relaxed as possible. Again, as I said last night, you want to have as much as possible an uncorrected state of mind. Okay, so let's start with a little sitting. As I've just described, lift up through your back. And then allow yourself to feel relaxed. And to put your hands together In any posture that's comfortable for you. Generally, if you're right-handed, you put your left hand on top.

[11:19]

And if you're left-handed, you put your right hand on top. And although I said the basic mental posture in zazen is an uncorrected state of mind, it's good to give a little structure to your mind.

[12:57]

By bringing your attention to your breathing. Bringing your attention into your exhales. It's usually best to have your eyes just a little bit open.

[15:27]

Letting, not looking at anything, but letting a little light in. And your mouth is a very sensitive and accessible area of consciousness.

[17:54]

And your teeth should be lightly together And your jaw muscles are relaxed. And your tongue at the roof of your mouth or touching the roof of your mouth. And eure Zunge liegt am Gaumendach an. As you can begin to center your attention on your breath.

[25:20]

Without excluding anything. So you're not concentrating in a way that excludes things. You're just bringing your attention, bringing attention to your breath. And not excluding anything. So the posture, we could say the posture of hearing, the attitude toward hearing, is to not try to exclude sounds, Whatever comes, comes and goes, goes.

[26:42]

So the basic posture of hearing is to hear yourself hearing. or hear hearing. So as you're beginning to be able to bring your attention to your breath, and not exclude anything,

[30:34]

A funny kind of strength arises in your sasa. Not exactly a strength that comes from you. But it feels more like a strength that's already there. And you begin to sit up into it. And it invigorates your body. And as you get more used to sitting it relaxes your mind.

[32:03]

And it makes your mind and body feel very clear. This sasen meditation posture is the easiest way to first get a taste of this kind of strength and clarity. It's not so much a matter of sitting a long time.

[33:13]

As it is being able to sit still. In a relaxed way for even a few moments. Thank you very much.

[35:27]

Please sit any way that's comfortable for you. Sounds like you need a cough drop or a glass of water. I thought I had one, but I don't. I was told that in Berlin it's difficult for people to do anything before 10 o'clock.

[36:35]

I don't know if that's because people in Berlin sleep late or the transportation system doesn't get you here or there's no parking, I don't know. Or maybe you don't go to bed till three, I don't know. I was told we should start at 10 because that's the earliest you can do anything in. So anyway, we're starting at 10 today and I guess tomorrow. And I also was told that what they usually do here at Zeitlos is have a break from 1 to 3.

[37:36]

Again, it is difficult, I know, to find restaurants and so forth and eat and come back. Anyway, two hours seems a little long to me. Hour and a half seems probably possible, but I don't know. We can decide. Are there any officials? I've lost people here. So what you usually find works is 10 to 1 and then 3 to 6, is that right? Up to me, yeah? Okay. So what do you think of that? Is that a good schedule? 10 to 1 and 3 to 6? Or should we... What do you suggest?

[38:37]

Anybody else? Anybody think two hours is necessary? Okay. Okay. And if we start at 10, probably stopping at 12 is too soon, right? So 1 o'clock is probably okay. We can start at what, 6 a.m., you said? Well, then you should come to Sashin. That's all. She forgets what language she's in. I can remember I used to sometimes translate Japanese into English. But then some of the Japanese people I knew could speak English too.

[39:55]

And they would start speaking English and I'd start translating into Japanese. Whatever they said, I translated it, whatever language they used. I often had no idea what I was doing. So you must feel that way sometimes. It's correct. Which language? Okay, so today we'll meet till say about one o'clock. And then come back at 2.30 and continue to, I don't know, around 6. Or 5.30 we'll see what our strength is. And then this afternoon we'll make a decision about tomorrow. Now, I'd like to start this morning with most of you, I think, were... How many of you weren't here last night?

[41:23]

There's two. Weren't here last night. You weren't here, were you, Michael? Okay, most of you were here. So, I kind of dipped deep down last night On the one hand, I spoke about something that takes a while in practice before you can have much of a full sense of. But I think I also spoke about something that if you pay attention to yourself is not so unfamiliar. I think about three people last night came up to me and said they felt like they were coming home. And what I was speaking about was a kind of Actually, that's right, a kind of coming home.

[42:44]

Or you don't feel you need anything. Home is where most of your things are. So if you can feel home just now, then most of your things are here. You don't need much. So I'd like to know, first of all, starting this morning, any comments any of you have about last night or what you might not have understood or what you'd like me to follow up on? And I found out last night that the title of the talk was The Miracle of Consciousness. Is there a different title for the seminar? What was announced? Was wurde angekündigt?

[44:03]

Is it the same? It's the same? Okay. They never told me what was being announced. Es wurde mir nie gesagt. Okay, so please, somebody want to say something? So möchte jemand etwas sagen? Ja, du hast gestern gesagt, es war so ein Prozess auch, das heißt, man im Weltwahrnehmung teilweise als Illusion, Täuschung, and then you ask yourself this question, and that's how it works. And I think about it a little bit in the air, and then I start to deal with things like how to potentially change your consciousness. And that ... I had the feeling, just as he said, I didn't say it at home, that he was telling a story. Or I can imagine that it is very similar here.

[45:03]

That actually touched me a lot and also made me a bit courageous. I'm very touched because somehow you really told my story last night when you pointed out this process of being torn on one hand illusion and delusion and on the other hand of disillusionment. And I'm kind of dangling in the air in the middle of all this. And you then talked about certain practices to mature or widen one's consciousness and kind of this feeling. I know that's often hard to recognize. And in fact, most of us have too much of others. But part of Zen practice is to find out how not to have too much of others.

[46:18]

Which means you find a way to be sealed, S-E-A-L-E-D, but not armored. And you have a sense of the treasures of body, speech and mind. And how we meet, you meet yourself in body, speech and mind. And you meet each other in body, speech and mind. So one of the things we do in speaking is meet each other in our voice.

[47:38]

And in chanting, one reason in the religious side of Buddhist practice, and that you chant without a kind of cognitive process going on, it's just chanting, Is that you're finding a way to meet each other within each other's voice. And usually you're chanting some form of Buddha's words. And so you're meeting each, in a sense chanting is you're meeting each other in your own voices and in Buddha's voice.

[48:44]

You know Buddha is like a mother. And your mother doesn't really care so much about what you say. She just likes to hear your voice. In fact, there's a koan in which one of the capping verse, like I said last night, that's used in koan practice. is the simple phrase, little jade, little jade. And this comes from a poem in China, Chinese poem, in which a woman is pretty sure her lover is hiding in the garden. And she has a servant named Little Jade.

[50:05]

So she calls out her servant's name not because she wants anything from her servant but so that her lover hiding in the garden will get a chance to hear her voice. So in some koans, the response of the student is, little jade, little jade. So I'd like our discussion to have that kind of quality. It's not so much that you say something interesting or intelligent. I'd just like to hear your voice. Whatever you might have to say. And if you say something intelligent too, that's great. But that's secondary.

[51:19]

So somebody else? Yes. Yes. I come from Schleswig-Holstein, that's kind of north of Berlin, kind of from not so much urbanized area as Berlin. And when I came into Berlin I was really struggling with the vibrations of the city. I really perceived it as a barrier almost for the lecture and really hoping that I can cut through this today in the seminar.

[52:28]

Yeah, that's what we felt coming from Weimar. It was so nice to be in 1920. And one thing Ulrike said when we first got to Berlin, we sat in a little guest house and had some sort of food. And there in Weimar, there aren't so many shops. And the city hasn't been repaired in a long time, most of it. But people's faces and bodies are full of life. And here in Berlin, there's lots of cars and shops and everything, but people look kind of intimidated by it.

[53:39]

Although they just, we went into it just before 10 o'clock, Horton's small supermarket, I mean department store. There's a big Hortens in Heidelberg, isn't it? So here's a little Hortens. So I... Everyone was, I mean, the whole town is dark except this little, this shop is open just before 10. Everybody's in there shiny and walking around excited. And we said, how long has this been open? And I think they told us four days.

[54:51]

It just had opened. And everyone was quite excited. People had real Deutschmarks. It's a It must be like if you bring the first Sony Discman to a Polynesian island which is never seen. For one Sony Discman you could probably buy the whole island. Come back with lots of Polynesian statues you could sell for a great deal of money. But I think that there's a quality to our contemporary civilization that it's become too complex for most people.

[55:57]

And I think in America a lot of the homeless problem is not only Reagan and the economic policy of the United States is that for a lot of people this society is just something they can't do anymore. And I think unfortunately a lot of people are going to fall by the wayside in are going to fall by the wayside as our society develops. But I think there are ways in which you can find your own territory in a complex society without losing yourself. And I think that's one of the advantages of Buddhism coming into the West, actually.

[57:16]

Is that Asia has had a very dense, complex population, urbanized population for a very long time. I mean, Kyoto on a quiet Tuesday afternoon is busier than New York Christmas afternoon or Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas shopping. And I'm not hoping that we become like that.

[58:18]

But the point I'm making is that Buddhism developed partly in a civilization where people needed to survive in a great deal of complexity. And in fact, I often describe Zen as a large population urban shamanism. And the sense of going to a cave or going to the mountains in Zen becomes finding out how wherever you are is your mountain and your cave. So right now my sitting here isn't much different than if I was in say, Bandelier in New Mexico, where the Native Americans lived in little caves carved into the sandstone mountain.

[59:41]

They're very cozy. You have a ceiling about this high. And a little smoke hole. And a blanket over the opening. Isn't that where you are right now? Can't you feel it around you? And you can let your friend come in. Lift up the blanket so high. Okay, something, somebody else. Yeah. I'm still dealing what we discussed in Heidelberg at the seminar, the five skandhas, and I don't seem to be able to really transfer that into my everyday life.

[61:02]

And the only thing, or the only skandha I'm managing is the feeling skandha. Good. That's the most important. This is the most important thing. And the form skandha is probably more important and maybe I can deal with the form skandha in this seminar a bit. It's quite a project to introduce the five skandhas to you. And last summer when I was teaching in Europe, Once the five skandhas came up, just what just happened, happened, happened, is somebody from the first seminar that the five skandhas came up came to the next seminar and reintroduced the idea. So almost every seminar became a discussion of the five skandhas all the way to Bali.

[62:20]

Ah. And I suppose I could spend the rest of my life teaching the five skandhas. I suppose people are still discussing id, ego and superego. What is it? Id, ego and superego? Id, ego and superego. Yeah, still discussing that. And so, I would... I would say, just to give you a sort of picture, a larger picture of what we're doing in practicing Buddhism,

[63:35]

I would say that our Western ego, from the point of view of Buddhism, is made up of four points. One is the territory of world view. Our basic assumptions about what the world is like. Which condition the fundamental perceptual process. By the time you've gotten perceptual information, culture has already determined what you see and don't see. Your perceptions aren't natural, they're conditioned.

[64:43]

Okay, so that's world view. A simple example of that again would be whether you perceive space as connecting or separating. That's conditioned by your culture. So if I see myself separated from you right now rather than connected, but when I see you, that's conditioned by, not my eyes, but by my culture. I'm sorry you have to do all this work to say all these things. I just say them. She has to work. Sorry. So one is worldview. Another is unconscious. And a third is primary processes.

[66:09]

And a fourth is secondary processes. Now, I'm not trying to, I'm not describing this in really in anybody else's psychological terms. This is just what I see. And I'm using terms that other people use in similar or different ways. Now, what do I mean by secondary and primary processes? Say that as in America, I don't know whether in Europe they want to, but in America little kids often want to be firemen. And firemen are kind of attractive and they wear uniforms.

[67:10]

And they do good work, they help. Who can complain about anybody who puts out fires? It's a nice job. Not hurting anyone and it's exciting. So the primary process of firemen is to put out fires. But firemen may be firemen because they love fires. In fact, the firemen may sit around the fire station playing cards, being bored until there's a fire. And they may be joking, saying, I hope there's a fire this afternoon. Just as long as it's not my house.

[68:11]

There's a moral problem there, you know, actually, when you hear a fire engine. You always hope it's not your house. Which means you hope it's someone else's house. You can really get yourself upset at hoping it's someone else's house. And then you can feel grateful there's firemen anyway. In any case, the primary process of firemen is to put out fires.

[69:13]

The secondary process may be they like fires. Now, occasionally you have an arson who is disguised as a fireman. Arson? Somebody who sets fires. and this actually happens every now and then they go out and set fires and go back turn in the alarm and rush out to see the fire in this case his primary process is being an arson and his secondary process is being a fireman So I call this primary and secondary processes and not unconscious because the firemen are probably pretty conscious of the fact they like fires. But this love of fires and the excitement of it is controlled by the primary process of putting them out.

[70:27]

Okay, so all of us are in the midst of actually primary and secondary processes. You have a primary process being here in this seminar. And a secondary process of all kinds of things about each other and what I'm doing and you're doing and what your neighbor's doing and so forth. So in every situation, there's primary and secondary process that shift And you may have secondary processes, which are really the main reason you're here. Okay, is that fairly clear as a simple example? Now let me just say something about why you're here.

[72:19]

I think you should honor why you're here. As I said last night, that our life is confounded in mystery. Founded in mystery and founded through mystery. In waking consciousness and sleeping consciousness. And if you know anything about meditation, also in meditation consciousness. And I think your motivation in coming off the streets of Berlin into this room is to various degrees a recognition of the way your own life is founded in mystery.

[73:27]

And you're here to explore that. And if you're smart and practical and realize you're going to die soon, Soon as whenever. You'll make the best use you can of this time. And use each other. Each other mystery that's here. to continue this experiment of what is life.

[74:40]

This life founded in mystery. Now, a few months ago, excuse me for saying this probably, when Lydgaard was speaking, Lutgert's a potter. And while she was speaking, I was thinking, I wish she'd make a good pot for my ashes. A little tiny one. No, no. We're not going to have the fire too hot, so it makes it possible. And I was thinking, what a nice thing for her to do for me if she could make me a nice pot. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in a hurry. Anyway, it just seemed like a comforting idea. Okay. Okay. All right, so we have primary processes and secondary processes.

[76:04]

And we have worldview and unconscious processes. Now, as most of you know, I feel the unconscious, many of you know anyway, I feel the unconscious is a particular creation of Western civilizations. I mean, we in the West tend to think whatever we discover has always been there. We go and dig up a treasure and we think, oh, it's been there since Greek times or something. And probably the treasure was being put there as we were digging. So I feel that the particular kind of ego structure we have in the West and that we've developed particularly in our industrialized civilization, isn't a boat that can contain the whole of our existence.

[77:15]

The ego is much smaller than our existence. So we keep trying through rationality and so forth and trying to give rationality the dimensions of a God to do everything. We keep trying to put our whole existence in this little boat of the ego. And the more the boat gets definite and defined and the more it's different from the water the more falls overboard.

[78:25]

And then you have unconscious material. And this begins to have an existence of its own that runs parallel to the boat. Okay. This is still all about the five skandhas, believe it or not. Okay, so meditation practice particularly works on, affects worldview and unconscious processes. But meditation practice doesn't have much effect on primary and secondary processes. It has a limited or marginal effect on primary and secondary processes. And to really work on the western self and ego, you have to maintain its integrity and redefine it.

[79:32]

Because you need a strong ego in order to practice Zen. But, You need to redefine this ego so its parts are put together differently. And it functions differently at a perceptual level. And that's the work of the five skandhas. And the six paramitas. And the four boundless abidings. So we can talk about all those things. Between now and tomorrow at six o'clock.

[80:38]

We can cover all of Buddhism. Right now I think we need a break. So, my goodness, I'm sorry. It's 11.45 almost. Let's have a break till, what, 5 or 10 after 12? What, is 15 or 20 minutes to go to the toilet and have a cup of tea or something? Okay, so let's say about 20 minutes, which would be between 5 and 10 after. a more relaxed kind of seeing, where instead of seeing things or looking at things, you see a field or a field of things.

[84:08]

So the practice of letting your eyes be still in sasen is also a practice in how to see differently at any time. Is that too long, too short?

[85:44]

And this morning was 20 minutes earlier. Plus whatever you've been sitting before. So we don't have much time between now and when we go to lunch. About 20 minutes. So if anybody's hiding in the garden, I'd like to hear a little jade. So, yes. Yes. Do you want to say that in German?

[87:02]

Well, it's not something that can be explained. It's just true. And it's something you recognize after a while. And become quite easy with. And the easier you are with it, I think the more vitality your life has. The exclusion of death from our life, the presence of death on a momentary basis from our life, kills us. But one basic way to practice with it, the awareness, is to feel like you're dying or disappearing on each exhale.

[88:05]

Fifty percent of your time you can practice. So, You don't care where you go. Goodbye. And usually then comes an inhale. And then, whoa. And then, you get used to it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yes. Yes. I would like to have some advice between illusion and disillusionment.

[89:40]

I would like to find the way to my heart and I would like to find some kind of key to it. That's the advice I would like to have. What do you mean by heart? primordial or original emotions? We mean different things by heart. I think not just you, but in general people mean different things by heart. So in general, the word heart is understood very differently. Often we mean something more like faith. But the word mind in Chinese and Japanese actually is closer to meaning heart.

[90:41]

And being a mind-heart being a word in a yogic culture, actually means the physical location. We don't use the word heart just because of its emotional connotations, but actually also because of its physical location. So heart-mind in Asian cultures means something like. Literally, when you have the feeling of thinking and thinking even.

[92:02]

And that sense of thinking has a kind of physical settledness and location. There's more heart in your thinking. And that thinking is actually a cooperative process between what we mean in the separated sense of mind and heart. Now I think the physicality of heart is again a little hard for us to reach. Because we have such a bias toward spirit and a kind of

[93:04]

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