I find it very strange somehow to be here again. I mean, strange, if it makes sense, in that I feel I never left. I walk up the same hill, making the same pilgrimage to the lithium. I take the same path, I make the same journey to enlightenment. Eric says there are some people here who are new enough to need Zazen instruction. Can that be true? Is that true? Really? Oh, okay. Yeah, good. I just met a few days ago with a fairly large group, actually, of Austrian psychotherapists and psychologists.

[01:25]

I met a few days ago with a fairly large group of Hungarian psychotherapists And they were a little suspicious. Their attitudes were something like attitudes of psychologists and psychotherapists about 40 years ago in the United States. And They were quite suspicious. And one of them defined, somebody was one of the head Jungians in Hungary, defined meditation as narcissistic.

[02:26]

I was quite enjoying these questions or comments. Partly because I haven't heard them in 40 years. And Ravi Welch, who will Join the next seminar, not this one. Who's trying to, who is trying to integrate Zen practice and therapeutic psychological practice. Anyway, I tried to speak all day with them in some way that didn't depend on meditation, on zazen. And Mikhail and Nicole were there and maybe I didn't succeed.

[03:51]

Did I succeed? Yes. Oh, okay. And Michael and Nicole, they were both there and maybe I wasn't quite successful, but Michael said yes, he was successful. Anyway, the first zazen instruction is you can sit on a chair if you want. And there are chairs here. There could be more maybe. It is an interesting question why this practice is so related to this particular sitting posture.

[04:55]

And the simplest answer is that reclining is connected with sleep and standing is connected with waking up. And usual sitting is a kind of place to read or relax or eat. And this is a particular posture which calls forth a particular... mind as fundamental as sleeping and waking. And the... Hi! Do you have a long drive?

[06:07]

And she knows how to sit already. So the main posture of zazen is your spine, your backbone. And you want to have a lifting feeling through your spine. And you can have that feeling sitting in a chair as well. There's two differences with sitting in a chair. In some version of this posture, the kind of architecture you're body itself supports you.

[07:21]

And so you don't have to use your musculature and energy so much to support yourself. And in this posture you're also folding your heat together. Which actually lets you use less energy because you can kind of stay warm easily. But heat and consciousness and awareness are closely related. If you're real cold, you're probably dead.

[08:22]

And if you're too warm, you're probably feverish and you could die too. So you actually learn and practice to moderate your... temperature. So I think that's enough to say. And it takes a while to learn to sit. And if you decide this we can whenever That, yes, you'd like to do this practice. Then it's worthwhile trying to learn the posture. And it takes... A few months took a couple years.

[09:39]

I'm especially inflexible. Some people learn to sit full lotus in a few months. It's taken me 45 years to learn to sit half lotus. So I need another lifetime or two. And also the way Giorgio is sitting and you're sitting, this is also a pretty good way to sit. It's how I sat this morning. the Chinese room. If I didn't have a zafu or anything, so I managed with this posture.

[10:44]

To give you an idea of how important this kind of posture is though. For, I don't know, more than a thousand years, the Japanese have based their architecture and clothing and furniture on this posture. That's a pretty big statement. It's interesting, all of the books about Japan, discussing its architecture, and its clothes, about the clothes.

[11:47]

No one has ever, that I know, has pointed out that it's based on a posture. Or rather they basically say, I don't know what they think. I don't know. The Japanese don't like chairs, maybe. Or they think it's just a peculiarity of Japan. But if they really thought about it and said all these clothes and all these buildings for millions of people are based on developing your energy here.

[13:01]

And if you looked at the architecture and the clothes, God said, geez. How do you say that in German? Jesus. Jesus? I wouldn't say Jesus. This is sacrilege. Jesus is probably a version of Jesus. Let's look at the what this posture means throughout the culture, not just in the obvious aspects of the architecture and the furniture and the lack of furniture and the clothes. And they might have understood earlier why Toyota defeated General Motors. I'm not just talking nonsense It's probably true So again, if you understand that

[14:34]

When you understand something about how to carry, develop the feeling of meditation, that arises through sitting practice, into your daily life and activity. So since it takes a while to learn the posture, please feel free to sit in a chair or to sit what's called Seiza with your legs back. Or Try sitting this way sometimes.

[16:01]

When I first started, I could only, Sukhyoshi walked around the Zendo every morning after about 20 minutes or so. And I tried to make it a rule I would stay cross-legged until he came. Sometimes he was compassionate and he would come early, ten minutes after the sit-in, then I could put my legs up. And after a few months of seeing me after he walked around and sitting the rest of the period like this He leaned down and whispered in my ear, Why don't you just sit at home?

[17:13]

Yeah. But you see there's hope. Okay. So we had I called up Michael, a couple of days ago, yesterday or today, before I don't know when, said, what is the title of this seminar? And he said, The Minds of Sazen. So I didn't remember quite what it said. So I decided it should be the Minds of Zazen and the Minds of Zen. So that's going to be the topic.

[18:44]

So I sort of began in the back of my mind, began thinking on his own about this topic. Yeah, it's so basic that I had to really get basic in thinking about what we're doing here. So first of all, as soon as there's an S on the word mind, Or even if we just said Zen mind.

[19:51]

The... Two words zen mind imply there's at least an ordinary mind or something. But zen mind implies some kind of bigger mind or something. Zen minds implies then that there's maybe more than one mind that's different than ordinary mind. Anyway, I think it's, you know, in all of these things it's useful to look at the implications in the simplest way you can, at least initially.

[21:06]

So we have a mind and we obviously have a body that we can experience in some ways separately from the mind. Now this is so basic. We take it for granted. And it's so basic. I'm surprised that we don't explore it more. Nowadays we let neurobiologists explore the relationship of mind and body. And we try to let philosophers over the centuries explore it.

[22:30]

But I don't know how much the average person doesn't, I think, explore it much. It would be great if kids went to first grade and the teacher said, now we're going to explore the relationship of mind and body. That would probably be a great basis on which to start, after a while, learning mathematics or adding and so forth. And I think that would really be a great basis to build on in order to then learn mathematics and art after that. I mentioned to some of you I just had a cataract operation on this left eye.

[24:18]

And it seems to... I've discovered after I did it that actually there's some problems which can occur. I discovered it after I did it. But so far, the problems that are occurring seem to be okay. And it's a whole... preparation and the operation is a miracle of modern medical technology. And as many of you, most of you know, I have a daughter who's eight and one who's 46 and one who's 31. And as many of you know, I have a daughter who is eight years old, and then I have another daughter who is 34 and one is 46.

[25:43]

Anyway, my eight-year-old daughter now, whose name is Sophia, she said after my operation, She said, I don't want my eye cut. How does she do that? That's a real basic question. Cut your eye open, suck out your lens and stick a new one in it. Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez. Then she said more philosophically. My body knows how to see. This is very frustrating, she said. My body knows how to see, but I don't. I don't know how I see, but my body knows how I see.

[27:05]

Well, that's really... For second grade, that's okay. But we all ask these questions. And she's clearly making a distinction between Our body not being her. Who she is, is one who knows how. Yeah. So, I mean, she speaks German and English fluently, for an eight-year-old at least. So clearly, In her language, her languages, there seems to be an implied distinction between the body and you.

[28:06]

And she thinks her body knows things she doesn't know. Of course, if she has a baby, she might. Her body will teach her baby how to see, in effect. But she's Her question wonders about this distinction between the body who she thinks she is. Now I would guess, though I've never talked with her about these things, because she's growing up in a household that's part of a Zen monastery, Maybe something's seeping in from the sides.

[29:23]

So this question may not be typical, but it could be typical of all of us. And yogic cultures, which is most of India and East Asia, assume more that the body is also them. And their sense of knowing through consciousness is part of knowing through the body, which we assume too. But we don't act on that and develop that assumption as much as a yogic culture.

[30:48]

I mean, yogic culture... much of what a yoga culture is, is to develop the relationship mind and body. And to assume that there's various ways to develop the relationship with mind and body. And that you have a choice in how you develop the relationship with mind and body. And the choices you make have a great deal to do with your health. And your intelligence and your longevity.

[31:51]

And not just in the sense of being fit. But almost in the sense of how mind and body at a cellular level and spiritual level penetrate each other. Okay. So if we're going to try to approach these in these next three days the this question of Zen minds, the minds of Zazen, we basically will be taking a

[32:59]

an experiential approach to existence. In contrast to an epistemological approach to existence. Well, at least, first of all, we'll be looking at existence from an experiential point of view. And we're going to assume that everything that we are, do, live, etc. is based on our experience of existence. I say we are going to assume. And I say we are going to assume because I can't begin a narrative without some assumptions.

[34:16]

But I say they're assumptions, so you question the assumptions. Maybe you will feel that it's really epistemological. In other words, it's how we know existence is more important or... differently important in relationship to how we experience existence. And can we even separate how we experience existence from how we know existence? And can we even find this distinction, that it makes a difference, that there is a difference in how we know things and how we experience things?

[35:33]

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