Guten Morgen. Guten Morgen. Now together, today and tomorrow, we're going to share this topic of why sitting. And I think of it as a discussion with you. And since many of you have been sitting a lot or a long time, I hope that at least at various points in the seminar you can also say what your experience of why sit is. Okay. Now usually I try to speak about practice in a way that doesn't depend on on sitting practice.

[01:23]

Most of the Buddhists of the world, including, yeah, we could say practicing Buddhists, don't sit. And in fact, I don't know, there's 25,000 Zen temples in Japan and I'd be surprised if 200 of the priests sit regularly. Now, it doesn't mean that... How's the baby? Now we're getting big, yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's fast. Um... And yeah, but they did, most of them did some sitting for a few years, some kind of college-like training time of their life.

[02:28]

So we can think of sitting in several ways. One is, I would say, definitely the source of the teaching. There would be no teaching if one didn't know the mind and world of sitting practice. But given that there is teaching, you can get a feeling for the worldview, getting a feeling for the practices, mental postures that are the fruit of sitting practice. So that's sitting as the source of the teaching and can be known to some extent through the teaching.

[03:31]

And then there's the sitting practice that you do for... a while in your life, you know, for many people it's, yeah, four, five, six, seven years, and then they pretty much just lead their life and they sit occasionally, might sit occasionally. Yeah, that's great. Okay. And then there's sitting practice, which is a continuous presence activity in your life, throughout your life. For some reason, yeah, maybe it's obvious, not so many people do that. I would say that...

[04:50]

At present, there's probably more people in the West sitting regularly than there is in Asia. As a daily life practice. Maybe that's not true, but something like that could be true. I read the other day that, I don't remember exactly, but there were only, I don't know, I really don't remember, 60 or, no, it was more like 250 priests were ordained in Catholicism in Europe last year. Something like that. Ich habe kürzlich gelesen, dass im vergangenen Jahr etwa 250 katholische Priester ordiniert wurden. And I would guess there could well be more people ordained as Buddhist priests, or a significant number were ordained as Buddhist priests.

[06:08]

I don't mean in any way that Buddhism is comparable in Europe to Catholicism. But it is a presence and it's a non-institutional presence. Yeah. I mean, well, we have Johannesorf and there are various centers, the Ayakima Center here in Munich and so forth. But really we are discovering this practice within ourselves with the support of institutions. In Asia mostly we Institutions go on and some people practice.

[07:14]

But here we're in the process of forming practice in ourselves and exploring what societal and institutional forms it will take. And for this kind of, for the development of practice, in Europe and the United States, in the West. Yeah, it's going to be rooted in and shaped in, I think, primarily by those who really practice regularly, especially in Zen, of course, those who sit. Yeah, and what makes, I don't know how to say it exactly, what existential aspect of our living makes sitting an important part of, a necessary part of the process?

[08:49]

Yeah, I won't try to answer that question. But I feel the presence of it, even if I don't try to answer it. Now, it's amazing, I think amazing anyway, that Yeah. This weird posture. Well, not so weird. It's kind of pretty. Could be, as I said last night, an axial point, as Carl Jasper's term, in our civilizations. Well, as I said last night and I've said often, Sleeping is in a horizontal posture.

[10:11]

Waking is in a vertical posture. We don't know exactly what whales and dolphins do. They seem to have a kind of sleep, but they seem to just synchronize themselves with each other in some kind of floating position. It may be that they never really sleep. And it's true actually of really adept practitioners in some way they live a life which isn't divided into sleeping and waking. Okay. Yeah, so, well, if anything's going, if it's such a big division in our human life,

[11:13]

between waking and sleeping. Which is manifest in two postures. Perhaps the third posture through which we live our life understand or discover our life. It makes sense that it's an axial on which, yeah, culture can turn. Now, next year, talking about axial points, next year I'm going to semi-retire. I'm in my 70th year, right? And who knows when I'll start drooling down my front. I don't think you want to come to lectures because I'm kind of mopping myself. So in 10 years I'll be in my 80th year.

[12:30]

I figured this is a good time, if I can figure out how to do it, to at least change my life. So as has been the plan and has been, I think, published, that I will only do two seminars a year in Europe outside of Johanneshof. One in sort of northern Europe in Hannover and one in Austria. One in Austria and one in Northern Europe, Hannover. And in Johanneshof I'll concentrate on people who, practicing with people who are really practicing regularly. Because I have this responsibility partly to see if the institutions of Johanneshof and Crestone in Colorado can continue after I perish. Mm-hmm. So it feels maybe appropriate to do this one of my last seminars about sitting.

[14:18]

Yeah, okay. Now, I'm not going to try to do this systematically or only in terms of the tradition. Yeah, I want to think of it that way, of course, to some extent. And of course it will be personal, it will be my experience of sitting. But I hope it will also include the experience I understand through practicing with others for 45 years.

[15:20]

So first let me speak in terms of Sitting itself, just the act of sitting. Without teaching. Or with only enough teaching to know how to sit. And some practical, personal aspects of sitting. Okay. So first it takes a little time to learn how to sit. Yeah, and to find some kind of solidity and ease in your sitting.

[16:23]

And again, you know, you can sit in a chair or you can sit seiza, just this way, or you can sit cross-legged. It was particularly difficult for me to learn to sit cross-legged because I have very stiff legs. And I used to sit in what I called the half-lily posture. And I chose lilies because they're usually the flower in America at funerals. I felt I was at my funeral. But I learned to sit somehow or other, you know. I forced my legs down, you know.

[17:24]

And I crossed my fingers and hope they didn't pop up. She walked around every morning with a stick after about, usually, well, we had 40-minute periods. She'd come around after about 25 minutes. And Suzuki Roshi walked around with the stick every morning. So we had 40-minute sitting periods and after about 25 minutes he came with the stick. And after he passed, I bowed and put my legs up and sat with my arms around my legs. And after he passed, I bowed and put my legs [...] around my legs. And after he passed, I bowed and put my And sometimes if Sikri was kind, he didn't wait for 25 minutes, he came after 15 minutes. And one time he came by and whispered to me, why don't you just stay home? But I decided...

[18:24]

that if I was going to do this all my life, I'd better learn how to do it. So I've gotten relatively used to it. Now that In order to sit regularly, and it's extremely important to sit regularly, you don't want to sit when you want to. Yes, all right, but basically if you sit only when you feel like sitting, You'll be sitting within the kind of permission of your ego. So you want to sit whether you want to sit or not. So you want to sit five times a week or seven times a week or something you pick and you just do it.

[19:47]

I'd say at least three times a week. Ideally, seven times a week. But you don't want to sit three or four periods a day, I don't think. That's not so good. Yeah, because you're introducing this into your life. You're not turning your life into sitting practice. Yeah, and it's strong medicine. It's not so good to take it unless you're in a sashin or a practice situation with others. But once or twice a day is fine. And I would say you want to sit on some regular schedule in the week at a regular time. And if you can't sit, you want to sit Five minutes at least.

[21:12]

You can always... You can't be that busy. So you have an intention to sit on a regular schedule at a specific time during the week. Now that has two effects. One is it gives power to your meditation practice. And the other is that it makes you rearrange your life so you can practice. And if you're going to say sit every morning before breakfast At home or at a center? You really have to go to bed earlier.

[22:14]

You have to kind of work out your life. And that beginning to readjust and look at your whole life so that you can sit once a day actually is one of the fruits of sitting. Okay. So the way in which sitting makes you reorganize all the parts of your life, regular sitting makes you reorganize all the parts of your life, are actually an important part of taking possession of your life. Okay, now the second thing I would say is that it begins to stabilize the relationship of

[23:18]

waking mind, dreaming mind, and non-dreaming deep sleep. If you start to sit regularly, somehow a greater balance is developed in the relationship between these three minds we're born with. And there's a stability that comes from that. Okay. Now, The third thing is that sitting allows you to start observing your mind and body.

[24:46]

If you're running for a bus, you can't solve a calculus problem properly. The mind is moving, the body is moving, you can't see either. If the body starts being still, then I can start noticing this at least, but if I'm moving and this is moving, I can't see anything. So you get more and more still and then you can actually begin to kind of clarify this. And the stilling of the body tends to still the mind. And you begin to feel and discover a difference between the mind of usual thinking and activity and the mind of still sitting.

[26:01]

And you begin to notice that you In a sense, think things through differently in the mind of zazen than in the mind of daily activity. You notice that the decision you make through sitting the decision about some problem in your life. Shall I change my job? Shall I move to a new apartment? Shall I, you know, whatever. Practical decision. You often come to a different decision if you sit through with the decision than if you think through the decision.

[27:03]

And the decision feels more satisfying. And this decision feels more right. So you begin to notice that there is a difference between sitting mind and daily mind. And you begin to notice the difference. That's a really important thing to notice. And you begin to process an analysis of your moods, your mind, your thoughts, etc. An analysis, at least in its roots, is quite a good word.

[28:14]

It's two parts. The latter part means to loosen up, to Take things apart, loosen them up so you can see them. And the ana part means to hold it up so you can see it and also to look backward to what it was. And it fits very well with the idea of vipassana. Vipassana means the mind of still sitting which results in a clear seeing of things Again, a loosening up of the parts.

[29:38]

An intuitive recognition of things. And vipassana is said to be the process by which you see the three marks of existence. Yeah, impermanence, suffering, and selflessness. Or non-self, that's better. And also, that leads to And by recognizing in yourself and in the world impermanence, non-self, and suffering, The recognition of these so-called three marks of existence prevents new delusions and fantasies about existence.

[30:41]

So this is kind of just sitting. Now I'm talking about sitting without teaching except just enough teaching to know how to sit. Just introducing sitting into your life on a regular basis makes you come to the basic teaching of these three marks fundamental aspects of existence. Now, a really deep understanding of the implications of impermanence actually takes some teaching, I think. It's not going to happen just by sitting. And likewise for non-self and suffering. And in fact, sitting may initially increase your suffering.

[32:24]

Because you're not so distracted. Rather, you are sitting in your mess. This is the life I live. We have an expression, I don't know if you have it in German, you made this bed, sleep in it. Meaning you made this life, now you have to sleep in this. So you have sometimes the feeling, is this the life I've made, I've now got to sit in it. And it may not be a mess, it just may not be anything that you intended. It may not be what you thought you wanted. So sitting becomes a The process of facing this, Yeah, but strangely, a process in which the facing of it is balanced by an ability to absorb it.

[33:39]

And this often runs parallel with the difficulty in learning to sit. Particularly for me. It took me forever to learn to sit reasonably well. So I had lots of time. And when you sit better, more of your mess becomes apparent. And so, because it took me so long to sit well, I cut my mess in small doses. But somehow your skill in sitting increases your skill at just absorbing and accepting.

[34:42]

You know, in the word zazen, literally zah means to sit. And the best translation for zen is not meditation, but absorption. So it's sitting absorption, sitting absorbing your life. Maybe that's enough before the break. Okay, let's take a break. Thanks.

[35:26]

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