Well, I wanted this afternoon, well, for now anyway, these Sunday afternoon talks to be more of a discussion than they have been. But I found, you know, too, I've not been speaking with you much recently. So I found to kind of play something out took a while. Play something out to work, feel something out. And tomorrow's Monday, I do my last radiation treatment.

[01:05]

So I'm having all these strange so-called side effects, but they're straight-ahead effects. They're not at the side at all. They're straight ahead. But after tomorrow, when they stop frying me, I'll be able to assume they're going to get better. They say it takes something up to six months to actually recover from the radiation. But it's not so bad. It's strangely painful sometimes. Yeah, so we could, from tomorrow, since I'll start being here regularly until early September, We could have some other schedule, if you like, other than these Sunday afternoons.

[02:29]

Yeah, I leave that up to your suggestion. Or I'm happy to continue with these Sunday afternoons. So let me ask, let's start out with asking. This morning I spoke about finding your seat. Can one or two or three of you tell me what you think I meant by that?

[03:32]

Or what you understood. It's not bad to be the first. You characterized finding the seed by nothing to do, nowhere to go. And I understood finding your seed is something like dropping the concerns and concepts and drives we normally react to and stepping out of that

[04:44]

net of social and other kinds of identifications and just settle in the moment, settle in the posture. Yeah, okay. So, Deutsch, bitte. Yeah. Oshii has in the moment being as going somewhere and having nothing to do characterise it and for me it means going out of the ordinary concepts I didn't hear nowhere to go, nothing to do. I heard there is beginning and there is end.

[05:45]

here, in this sitting. For me, that moment was not a strike. It was still reading again. Yes, in German, please. I didn't hear him going anywhere or doing anything, There is a beginning and there is an end, now, in this sitting. And for me it was, at that moment, a hint not to build with stories, or to feel the beginning and the end of what is happening right now. Something else? No. For me, sitting is something like For me, sitting is like a kind of mirror of my own life or for my whole being.

[07:15]

Everything that arises there, the difficulties and the heavy things, the kind of freeing experiences, I can assume that they all also exist in my whole life. So the difficulties which I cannot overcome in sitting, I suppose I cannot conquer also in the non-sitting life, outside of sitting life. So finding my place on a cushion could mean something like... Finding my place in life.

[08:26]

So Boris spoke not to what I said this morning, but rather to what the point of finding your seat is. So that was going to be my next question, which is, what's the point of finding your seat? And I think Boris spoke well enough to that. Does anybody else want to add something or say something? I don't know if this is going to be what you meant this morning, but I want to say something.

[09:34]

Yesterday I came by foot to Yanisov. So when I looked or observed nature, it came to my mind this phrase that every thing and every being has its own past, present and future. And when I looked at things with this kind of view, they all seemed completely perfect. also situations which I previously would have not neglected, disregarded or which I would have not liked.

[10:45]

And then I had this feeling accompanying it because everything was so complete that I actually do not want to involve in any of these things or kind of meddle with it. Interfere is the correct word. Thanks. Metal is okay, no? Yeah. Metal would interfere with it. Yeah. Okay. Someone else? Yeah. But you weren't here this morning. But the question is, it's well known. Oh, it is. Okay. All right. For me, it's always a challenge. to feel different, more direct qualities of the presence. Okay, so for me this is always a request to kind of feel the presence or the things present and the degrees of this kind of presence.

[11:57]

And just to keep this request sort of awake of is already a kind of presence. Mm-hmm. Okay. Somebody else want to say something? I felt it. from the seat in sitting for me when I like you said find my seat it's a kind of basic the most basic form of being and from that from that rawness almost And only from that rawness I feel that I can then start to act in response to the world in an appropriate way.

[13:27]

For me that's kind of the point. Rawness is rawness? Rawness. Like a raw carrot. Rawness. This sitting is the most basic kind of being. It is almost a kind of indescribability or rawness. Yes, not raw from coarse, but from new. from that, rawness, appropriate activity In the raw, by the way, also means to be naked. So the raw also has a quality of nakedness or actually

[14:41]

also kind of vulnerability or what you call it. Because raw in German in that sense would sound like Of course, something kind of nasty. Not so mean, raw, but in the way he used it, it's more like primordial mind or something like that, because we speak of original mind, we also speak of primordial mind. Yeah. He made an interesting experience with this uprightness.

[16:05]

Okay, so I somehow unhooked my shoulder and that was while I was lying down and I figured that I cannot put it back into place unless I would have an upright posture. I found that very interesting and it seems to be right in many other respects too. Well, I feel you all understand what I'm speaking about quite well.

[17:13]

And you understand our, I think you understand our practice quite well. Yeah, this makes me happy. Yeah. So practice, we can understand practice in such a simple way that it is a practice of finding our seat. Where there's no coming and going, as I said, but from where coming and going begin. Yeah. But, you know, we want to listen to the world, but we also want to speak to the world.

[18:20]

And if we really listen to the world, it becomes a way of speaking to the world. Well, that's one way to look at it. But we have to ask what do we mean by the world? Listening and speaking are easy to understand, but what we're listening and speaking to is not so easy to understand. We say the world and we mean something like everything that's... We mean something like the most inclusive sense of everything.

[19:48]

But do we see that everything is separate from us or not separate from us? Or do we see that everything in a historical consecution? Or do we see it as possibly an all-at-onceness? These are big questions. And the development of our cultures and civilizations have turned on these questions. But let's go back to the practice of finding our seat.

[21:21]

Now, if we describe it in the fullest sense, it would be Dogen's dropping body and mind. We're not storying, as Iris said. Or we don't have the distractions, as Dieter said, wanting to do something or go somewhere. Just the idea of wanting to do something or wanting to go somewhere is actually a cultural idea. Especially the idea of going somewhere.

[22:28]

Okay. Now... But, you know, as a... sincere practitioner, You may say, yeah, this sounds good, but I'm never going to drop body and mind. I just sit there and think away in zazen. I don't know anything about dropping body and mind. So practice may be simple, but it's too simple for me.

[23:31]

I've been sitting for so many years, and I haven't dropped body and mind. I haven't really found my seat. Then I think I should say something about the dynamic of practice. Because it's really not about either or, it's about directionality. Maybe I could see if I could indicate it with this flip chart, what I mean. Optical course here. So it's not a matter of some kind of thing that like this would be finding your seat and this would be distraction.

[24:58]

And our life goes along like this and we just don't get there. And so we think this is fruitless. But when you start to practice, you're actually doing something like this. And you end up with various things like this. Yeah, you might even get, you know, like this. But when you change the directionality in your life, you find yourself sitting and you feel the sense of finding your seat. And you don't really completely find it.

[26:03]

And it's not quite possible to do so, but some people practice in a way they don't get there. But they get there more than they realize. Because what happens when you change the direction? This starts going like this. then over here it tends to be different. So when you change the direction, even if you don't realize this, the change of direction changes the flow of your life.

[27:05]

And this change of direction is helped also by, if it works for you, this Zen practice of using phrases. Und diese Richtungsänderung wird auch unterstützt oder geholfen durch die Zen-Praxis mit Sätzen. Because if you use a phrase that reflects the experience of finding your seat, wenn ihr also einen Satz verwendet, it also changes the flow of your life.

[28:10]

As Petra found using the phrase, each thing has its own past, present, and future. And these phrases, you know, they're almost like, you know, deep-sea diving. Nagarjuna or others go into the mind, the being where body and mind are dropped. When they come back with these phrases that... alter the flow of our thinking and seeing.

[29:20]

The way finding your seat alters the flow of your thinking and feeling. Seeing, feeling. Okay. So we all are... In some process of taking the phrase today, this phrase of finding your seat. And we can find our seat in a sense in any situation.

[30:25]

Now, I presented finding your seat as Some kind of direct experience of being alive. Of being just, yeah, how do I say it?

[31:49]

Of being just as we are. Just as we is. And it's very difficult to have this experience of just as we are. Except through sitting. I mean, you can have it in many ways, but it's through sitting that you really permeate your body and mind.

[32:51]

So we really get to know it. And again, we don't have some kind of, our directionality in a sense has stopped. And it's not future-oriented anymore, for a while. And if we know that experience, I think any of us who know that experience, It puts everything else into perspective. If that's the case, that's remarkable. And how can we explore this or understand this? I would suggest we can... Today I'd suggest let's think of it as a finding of order.

[34:20]

Yeah, and order, you know, in English means... Sure, in German, too, means their etymology is that it's the... threads in a loom that are ordered. So if you want to find your seat in the whole of your life, One way to explore that is to ask yourself, where do I find order? Now, when you ask yourself that question, Wenn ihr euch diese Frage stellt... You actually will be exploring what you mean by being an individual or individualism.

[35:39]

It's just something order is... When you ask that... Order is basically the same synonym as tidiness in German. Oh, well, then... So can I say arrangement something? Yeah, so everything, and it's a real place. We have this also as a meaning, but the other one always is kind of at the same timing. Well, in Japan, beautiful is the same word as being tidy and clean. In Japanese, it's called beautiful, synonymous with everything clean and... Clean und ordentlich. The word beautiful means clean as well as beautiful. Also schön bedeutet ordentlich und sauber. So it's interesting, in German it means tidiness as well as order. Und es ist interessant, dass es auf Deutsch ordentlichkeit mit reinlichkeit und so weiter zusammenhängt.

[36:43]

So see, I have no idea. Arrangement feels too... In English it's like arranging the blocks on the table. Ja, anordnung, das hat irgendwie zu viel mit so einem... How would you say the fundamental order of the atom or something like that? Yeah, it's also order. Well, I guess we'll just have to use it. No, if Bob has a bigger feeling for order, that's good. Okay, so... Where do we find order? Do we find it in the kind of rural village life of face-to-face intimacy? Or do we find it in probably the product of

[37:48]

urban life in ourselves. Because we don't have much face-to-face intimacy. And if we find it in ourselves, then where do we find it? Do we find it in our history? And if we find it in our history, then almost unavoidably you're going to look for it in the future. because it's like a novel or a story. It's not over till it's over.

[39:02]

And our culture, our psychology is very involved with ourselves as a story. And that means, you know, we won't be able to tell your story until after you can no longer tell it. You're dead, we can say, oh, he was like that, and I was. The earth shakes. The ashes blow in the wind. Oh, my goodness, stop.

[40:06]

No, I think it's unavoidable for us, for everyone, but especially us Westerners, to not be involved in our life as a story. Very hard to get out of that. It can become actually, though, quite unimportant. But the first step in looking at it is to look, or one of the first steps perhaps could be to look at it, is this where I find my order? Is this what? Is in my personal history? And we direct our education, everything, toward finding our order through accomplishing something in the future, a career or whatever. Being a scientist or artist or something.

[41:29]

But the more we just say, do science or do art, maybe we're freeing ourselves... to a significant degree from the story of what we might be. To define ourselves like that. And these emphases make a huge difference.

[42:31]

If your emphasis is just to not even do things, you are doing things. You are the doing of things. And this emphasis is in this I do things even in the May I... I'm asking you if I can use you as an example, but you don't know what I'm going to use you as an example for yet. But you can. It's no problem, so don't worry. This morning during... At Doksan, Dieter translated for someone. And when he finished, because he didn't want to take a lot of time, when we finished, and his sagu, the bowing cloth,

[43:41]

didn't get folded up properly. Normally it goes under your koromo sleeve and under your okesa. Yeah, and this happens to me sometimes during service. Well, there are situations where you might just want to stuff the darn thing in your sleeve. But the important thing here, why it's like that, why it's made difficult. Because the physical things of the world are time. Das ist aber deshalb, weil die physischen, körperlichen Dinge der Welt einfach Zeit sind.

[45:03]

Das Sagu hat seine eigene Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. So sometimes we, out of compromise and compassion, fold our Sagu together. and leave it, I mean, fold it in a way that's not straight, and we leave it that way. But our practice is, whenever possible, is to give each thing its time. I say, uh, I remind, I say, don't sacrifice your state of mind. I could also say, don't sacrifice the time of each thing. So that all these things, the Yoyoki balls and all these things are made So that... Each has its... It's not... Nothing is done... Little is done in a way that's convenient.

[46:30]

You could have a squirt on Zagu can. You just... And then you bow on it. You could have a... Yeah. But no, it's... The rules about it are that you fold it, and if it doesn't get folded, you keep folding it until you get it right. And in Dokusan, I'm in no hurry. We can stay there all while you fold it. And then you put it under your... koromo sleeve and kimono, your okesa on top of the sleeve.

[47:34]

So the wearing of robes, for instance, or the eating with the orioke bowls gets us in the habit As feeling time is the unfolding and folding of the physical world. Just as our heartbeat and our breathing are the time of our life. And we extend that time to the world we live. We extend the time of our heart and breath to our lived world. It seems to me one way people find order is in a cosmological, mythical beginning of a culture.

[49:10]

Most cultures have some kind of cosmology of how it was founded. And it seems like Israel and Judaism and Christianity took this cosmological order to a relationship with a personal God. And that was a big step toward what we know as individualism. We find our own individual order through this cosmological order personified as a god.

[50:13]

that we find our individual or personal order in this personification of a cosmological order. But some societies find their order through other people. I'm skipping around in history a little bit too rapidly here. But I think right now in the Near East we have this clash of how people find order. It looks like the Shiites find order with each other in relationship to God. And this is very different from the way the West finds their order.

[51:59]

So it's, you know, we think as Westerners, we can come in and just say, okay, we're going to reorder your society. That's obviously better for you to live this way. But we can say that, but you're dealing with something extremely fundamental, how somebody finds their basic order. This is not going to change by the temptation of Starbucks or TV or something. I'm not trying to talk about history here, really. What I'm trying to speak about is if you find your order through finding your own seat,

[53:03]

You're doing something very fundamental that will influence all aspects of your life. It's not just a good feeling in Zazen. Mm-hmm. No, I've been reading a book of Chinese travel diaries recently. And of course, because Buddhism was so much a part of Chinese culture, Buddhism and Taoism, You find their way of finding order resonates a lot with our own as Buddhist practitioners.

[54:43]

So this book is full of these travel stories. It's great. I mean, they're not traveling somewhere to alter their identity. The West had lots of interest in traveling to foreign countries to find a new, extend their sense of self. The Chinese traveler just wanted to travel just where, sort of where he was, didn't want to go anywhere much. It'd be a little bit like Brie Louise and I went with Sieglinde this morning to look at the various pieces of land she owns. And she has some beautiful pieces of land.

[56:14]

Some of them are a little bit far from here, but they're still... doesn't stop them from being beautiful. And my instinct would be very much like these Chinese travelers. We go to these places and allow ourselves to find our order there. And the order we find there, we then begin to shape the place to that order. Now, this is a little dangerous idea to go there and make it look the way we want.

[57:34]

But Goertz had this sense when he lived here of making this place feel and look a certain way. And Otmar has that sense, building the walls and he's planting things now. Now, if a Chinese person would go someplace you might find a particularly nice little stream and hillock. And I'm quoting from one of them. He said, I laid down in this place and the sound of the water sought out my ears.

[58:39]

And the forms of the trees and the land sought out my eyes. Yeah, and the... Vast spaces sought out my spirit. And the capacious silence sought out my mind. Wide. Full. And he for about 10 hours had a certain kind of experience.

[59:55]

Then he inscribed that experience and wrote it and put it up on the... So other travelers came and they read the experience and then they somehow let that perhaps something similar come to them. Okay, so this is, you know, right now mostly I'm just telling you an anecdote. But it is related to, it's closely related to what I spoke about last week. Two weeks last week, yeah. of finding the bliss of the senses beneath consciousness. To find the bliss the world, the connectedness of the world within one's own senses.

[61:30]

In such a way that the order of the world and the order of yourself seem to be the same, feel the same. Now that's actually a different, that's not an ordinary sense of individualism. Nor is it only finding the intimacy of order through other persons. But it's rather through practice. Through, let me say again, finding your seat. Finding your seat in each situation. so that the intimacy of the world and of each other person becomes your own order in quite a different way than people's personality and the usual way of looking at the world.

[63:09]

You could say this glibly as, oh, you're looking inside yourself for order. Globally, superficially. Yeah. And you could say it rather, somebody could say, well, what I spoke about today was to find order within yourself. You could say it so superficially, what I said today is, you find order within yourself. But I wouldn't like that description. We're through practice finding the order of our own way of knowing. And then the order of the world and of others begins to instruct us.

[64:29]

And that's also reaching into the experience of finding our own seeking. Finding that experience in our activity and relationships with others. And often we can reflect that through A phrase that touches us. That reaches into us and into the world. Okay, that's more than enough for today.

[65:32]

So usually we've had a break and come back, but I think we can just stop now. So let's sit a minute. The birds speak to us.

[66:38]

How do we speak to the bird? How do we find our own order and the order of the world?

[67:49]

Thank you very much for spending the afternoon with me. Spending? Spending is spending. Dieter was just, came back from Crestown a couple days ago. To here. And he was the head monk at Crestone. And part of that job is you have to give a bunch of talks. And so now that he's done that, I would like him to occasionally give some talks here, if he's willing. So we should think about that in the schedule, too. And I'd like Otmar to also give talks occasionally.

[70:41]

Okay. I'm not trying to get out of my job, just... But we should all share this more. Because we can all do it.

[70:51]

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