I'm always a little embarrassed at the beginning of a seminar when there's new people. And the first thing you're asked to do is sit for half an hour. And I feel a little rude. asking you to do that. And I don't know, did someone at the beginning kind of explain you're going to sit for half an hour or do we give them a time? No. You just ring a bell and everybody says, what am I supposed to do? Yeah. Okay. I see something in the intro there. You do? Okay. Thank you. It wasn't there. Oh. You know, and it's a little funny too because to be embarrassed to ask you to sit when in fact my life is based on this posture.

[01:21]

Now don't you think that's a funny thing to say? That happened recently? Yeah. Oh, really? Terrible. Okay, the one cast clapping. But I think it's a funny thing to say that my life is based on this posture. My life is also based on standing up posture, waking posture. And it's in the case in German that you say in the morning you stand up, you don't wake up, right?

[02:23]

You can say both. You can say both, yeah. But we only say wake up in English. And if we said stand up, I think it would be interesting. Because it emphasizes that waking mind is a standing up mind. Where waking mind is associated with a posture. That's not so clear in English. Now, we have this, what I call a pre-day, this prologue day on Friday, where we have a chance to kind of wander around the topic and not focus on the topic.

[03:57]

Yeah, it's a kind of freedom. But it's also tomorrow when more people arrive, we can... It's also maybe a freedom to be able to focus too. But I'd like, we need to wander around to get ourselves on the same page, as we say. Yeah. So we have to start somewhere, and we usually start with a topic. And the topic for this weekend is Zen Mind. So we have to ask, what is Zen Mind? But then we have to ask, what is Zen?

[05:09]

Then we have to ask, what is mind? That's ambitious, if we can do that this weekend. The entire neurobiological community research community can't figure out what mind is. So let's do it this weekend. And no one's ever been able to answer what is Zen. And in the Tang Dynasty you were in danger of getting hit with a stick if you even asked the question. Okay. Yeah. I also spend, in addition to standing up, posture, standing up mind, I also lie down for five or six or seven hours a day.

[06:30]

So I suppose that my life is based on Standing up is also based on lying down. But now, in addition, my life is based on the sitting posture. So... Even though I'm embarrassed to ask you, just feel a little rude asking you to sit I think we need to have, we're going to look at the question, what is Zen mind? We have to have some experience in sitting. And I can't speak to you about it, unless you have some taste or feeling for sitting practice.

[07:58]

I'm sure that there are neurobiologists who don't sit, who I could not speak to about mind from the point of view of yogic culture and be understood. Ich bin sicher, dass es Neurobiologen gibt, die nicht sitzen, zu denen ich vom Standpunkt der yogischen Kultur sprechen könnte, aber wo ich sicher bin, dass sie mich nicht verstehen würden. So let me just say something about sitting, just the act of sitting, rather separate from Zen or Buddhism and so forth. There's a kind of challenge to sitting, which is really, can you discover real physical stillness? Yeah, you might say, well, I do during while I'm sleeping.

[09:08]

But many of us don't actually toss and turn. So the challenge is, can I find a physical stillness when I'm sort of conscious. Because it's almost an unavoidable fact. that you cannot find a stillness of mind unless you find a physical stillness. Okay, so we've got Zen mind. Is it a still mind? Maybe so. And then is Zen mind somehow different than non-Zen mind?

[10:19]

Well, it would be no point to have the phrase Zen mind unless it was something different than discursive mind or usual mind. So then is still mind... a different kind of mind, a different thing than discursive mind. Well, I always say different is different. That we're not talking about universals or generalities. So I think at least for this seminar, let's really assume that different is different.

[11:20]

So still mind is something different from busy mind, active mind, discursive mind. And what we ought to explore, if we can, is how is still mind different. How is still mind different? If I look at another person with a still mind, do I see something different? Does the person being looked at feel something different? Is the way I step into the world through a still mind different than when I step into the world through a discursive mind?

[12:35]

I'll maintain that it's not only different, but significantly different. maybe as different as dreaming mind is from waking mind. The difference is hidden, it's not so obvious. But it may be a greater difference even than between dreaming mind and waking mind. So that's a kind of introduction. Yeah, some various ways of putting things.

[13:41]

Which don't quite fit together. And don't quite fit together with our usual way of thinking. But if I can say these things and create a little dissonance, Yeah, in contrast to coherence, dissonance. But if I can create some dissonance, dissonance creates an edge, and on that edge sometimes there's understanding. So if I create this dissonance, then it creates an edge, a corner, and at this corner there is sometimes an understanding. You always look like you want to ask a question.

[14:49]

So I'm ready to respond. Now, I think, again, to get us on the same page, I'd like us to notice the difference between the thinking of things as activity and thinking of things as entities. Okay. Now, activity. As what? Activity. activity instead of as entities. Yes, also nochmal, dass die Dinge als Aktivitäten statt als Entitäten.

[15:55]

What did you say? Something else. Things. Yes, something else. Great, we have two lectures going on here. And that's good, it creates a certain dissonance. Certainly. Das schafft auch eine gewisse Dissonanz. Yeah, so understanding is ripening. But I can't do this without you, so please. Now, I'm sure some of you, even though you're well aware, sort of scientifically or something, that everything's an activity. But even if we understand that, think that way, no. Even if we understand that, we don't think that way. Selbst wenn wir das verstehen, denken wir nicht auf diese Art und Weise.

[16:59]

Does that work in English, in German, that distinction? Yeah. I'm not sure if it has the same significance, but it's... She's your co-translator over there. I can see you're working every word with it. This is his daughter. Okay. Because even if we understand, we don't develop the habit of not thinking in entities. And I'm sure that some of you, although you understand everything's an activity, you came here hoping to get an entity answer to what is Zen mind. But there's no such thing as Zen mind. Well, I mean, I've been practicing for a lot of years now. Would I say I have a Zen mind?

[18:01]

I don't think so. I don't think about it that way. But I suppose I could say I have an activity of mind which has been shaped by the practice of Zen. Okay. To have an activity of mind that's shaped by the practice of Zen is something different. Yeah, so maybe the title should have been The Activity of Mind... Mind shaped by Zen practice. Something like that. Maybe half of you wouldn't have come if I got the title. So we have to sneak an entity in there and then take the entity apart. Now, just to continue the obvious, I have a little stone that's on my desk a lot.

[19:45]

And this stone is an activity. Can't you see it moving around? Yeah, yeah. It's an activity. And it's not on the beach. It actually lives on my desk. And it's not on the beach and washing around in the tide. Somehow it's a nice rounded oval shape that way through activity. And the various materials that... compressed to make this stone. That's all activity. I mean, the stone may feel captured.

[20:48]

Please return me to the sea. Put on my desk, he gets fed regularly and things like that. Anyway, there's no way to talk about it. If you say that's a stone, that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't tell you anything about it, at least. If I want to say something about it, I have to say what its activity is. I have to say something about the activity that created it. Or about the activity that makes it live on my desk. So With Zen mind, I can't say anything about Zen mind except unless I describe its activity.

[21:56]

Because Zen mind is an activity. What kind of activity? Well, we can't understand... Zen or mind, or any word, unless we look both at it as an activity and as at the context in which activity occurs. Yeah, context and activity are virtually the same word. So, if I'm going to talk about the Zen mind, I have to talk about the context of these two words.

[23:14]

So the word Zen has no meaning outside of Asian yogic culture. It's beginning to have meaning in our experience. Yeah, but the word and the associations and the teachings that arrive with it Aber die Wörter, die Assoziationen und auch die Lehren, die mit ihm herbei oder ankommen, sind alles Beispiele dieses Zusammenhangs, dieses Kontextes asiatisch-yogischer Kultur. Warum solltet ihr denn ausgerechnet interessiert sein, asiatisch-yogische Kultur zu studieren? Yeah, there's no reason.

[24:32]

Let's quit. But it is an edge. And we learn something from edges. Now, there's also all kinds of edges around. There's some 6,000 or 7,000 languages in the world, all different edges. You too can be a Yubangi. Why not be a Yubangi instead of an Asian yogic something or other? Well, there's lots of historical reasons. Global, civilizational reason. But there's also some other kind of reason. There's something about... ...Sung Dynasty China which is in some way strangely... similar to our modern urban culture.

[25:48]

Now I'm saying that Buddhism is, of course, a yogic culture that goes back 2,500 years. But But the form of it that we're looking at, the created Zen, is mostly the creation of the Song Dynasty in China. In any case, there's some usefulness in seeing one's own culture in contrast to another culture.

[26:58]

And this other culture... that for lots of reasons is working within our culture, is Asian Yogic culture. And from the practice of meditation, Asian Yogic culture developed. So it's sometimes easier for us to get a feeling for Asian yoga culture in order to approach Zen. Rather than try to approach Zen to understand Asian yogic culture. But actually we need to have a dynamic both ways. Now, when I start talking to you about the difference between viewing things as activities instead of entities, I could be speaking to you about science, contemporary Western science.

[28:30]

But no, because that would be the view of Western science. But I wouldn't say it's the culture of Western science. No, what I say it's the culture of the majority of scientists. There's a very big difference between understanding something and living something. I mean, you can be a physicist and understand things through quantum mechanics, very difficult to live through quantum mechanics, except inadvertently. You can be a physicist and understand everything about quantum physics, but it's very difficult to live quantum physics.

[29:37]

So, we're trying to find how to live in the world that we... and the effects of living in the world knowing everything is an activity. We try to live that way. Yeah, we're trying to find a way to live in the world where everything's an activity. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is predictable. Everything is unique. Yeah. How do you start finding yourself in that kind of world. When your psychology wants to make things permanent, predictable, I'm a certain kind of person, etc. To really To go over that line is a big jump.

[30:41]

But even to go back and forth across that line is transformative. Since now you know it's transformative, let's have a break. I think it's time to stretch your legs. Thanks a lot. Thank you. You're welcome.

[31:05]

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