How many of you weren't here last night? Okay. So for those of you who were here last night, I have to, I should weave some of what I spoke about last night into today and tomorrow. And you can hear okay in the back there? Okay. And how many of you have very little experience with meditation? Some, okay. Last night I made a distinction.

[01:08]

This topic, I believe, remains the same for the weekend as last night. And I made a distinction between a profession and vocation and vocation as to hear your own voice or to hear a calling. And I tried to bring my experience in Zen practice to this distinction. With the help of my friend and fellow practitioner, medical doctor Neil McLean,

[02:10]

Neil McLean. I always travel with a doctor just in case somebody faints during Zazen or something. Well, anyway, it's a good idea. I like the idea of all of us fainting during meditation. Which one? It's a bit low. Thank you for telling. Thank you. Is that better? I prefer actually not to use a microphone and just to speak loudly enough. Yours isn't working. Oh, okay. See you soon. So I said I think the key is attention.

[03:50]

Learning to direct your attention into the present. and so that we can develop new ears and so that we can then better hear ourself and hear the world. So direct our attention into the present, and into our body, and into the phenomenal world, and into our relationship with other people. And the best way to do that, we can ask then, what is the present situation?

[05:17]

What is the present and the present body? And the best way to do that is to learn to sit meditation. Now, I'm not presenting Buddhism here as a religious teaching. But we could certainly talk about that if you'd like. But I'm presenting Buddhism as a science of human understanding, a kind of basic wisdom. And that basic wisdom is to recognize the power of attention.

[06:34]

What happens to you and what happens interactively when you give attention? And again, the best way to learn that is to... is to sit still. And so you can say that sitting still is just a way of lessening the distractions of activity and thinking. Thinking and? I suppose when we wake up in the night because there's noises, it's not the noises that wake us up. It's our thinking about the noises that wakes us up. Yeah. I'm in a hotel room for the hundredth time this year or so.

[07:58]

And around five o'clock, somebody in the next room got up. And I didn't quite have the visual picture of the room in my head yet. So it sounded like somebody was opening the door. And I thought, could it be the maid already? I usually have a sign out because I never need my room cleaned. I like dirty rooms. Or I don't get them dirty, perhaps. Anyway, one towel is enough, you know. So, I usually have a sign out, so I said, why could the maid be... Then I visualized the room and, oh yeah, that's where the bathroom is, so it's the next bathroom. And then I went back to sleep.

[09:12]

But anyway, I noticed at that time how if I thought about what was going on, it woke me up. But if I didn't think about it, it was just... air moving. So silent practice has something to do with discovering how to not engage yourself in mental activity. And the first step, yeah, and the first step is to for a while lessen activity and lessen through that your engagement in identification with thinking.

[10:25]

Because you have to stop thinking in order to hear something. I mean, if a bird is singing, if you're thinking, you don't notice it much, but if you stop thinking and listen, You hear it. And you're not going to be able to hear yourself if you're hearing your thinking. Hearing your voice is not hearing your thinking. And we try to hear our vocation or our longing through our thinking, and it usually, I think, doesn't work. So how can we make the space to hear our own voice? And in Zen that's called meditation.

[11:29]

So let me see how I can give you some zazen instructions in a way that's accurate and useful in this context. You're in this room. Or this room is in you. Anyway, we're here in this situation. And we want to bring it together. We want some kind of unison. And not so much as I... mentioned recently, unity but unison.

[13:06]

Unison, at least in English, means to bring things together in dialogue or harmony or to sing together. It doesn't mean the elimination of difference. And if you have the idea of unity in your mind, you may try to eliminate difference. And if you have this kind of idea of unity and eliminating difference in your mind, you'll always find your zazen a failure, your meditation a failure. So it's better to have some perhaps feeling of resting in two-ness. So how do we bring these various things together?

[14:20]

Well, it's surprising to do nothing With the right idea, right attitude is the best way. All right. So we have this room. And you have two hands. And... The hara, this place where you can focus your energy in Zen practice, the martial arts and so forth, is where your hands meet. So you can sit in various ways if you like, but in Zen we tend to have a feeling of bringing maybe our aura, but bringing the room, the situation together in our hands and putting it together.

[15:31]

And then you bring your thumbs together, which is bringing your mind and attention together. And your thumbs then become a kind of little barometer. Whether you're thinking or not. Because if you start thinking, usually your thumbs get pushed together and go up like this. I mean, mind and body are related. And if you are... Do you think people can't hear? Oh, you're taping it.

[16:34]

Well, if you don't amplify, I can put the microphone here. No, we want to hear him because he's the one anyone's going to understand. Okay. You don't like this thing floating in space? I thought it was a spaceship. Well, now it's being amplified. Yeah, we don't need it amplified just for the recording. Switch it off, yes. Switch off the amplification. You're right about these objects.

[18:04]

Actually, in Buddhism you're not supposed to speak unless your whole body is present. So in general you try to avoid speaking behind a podium. Which turns you into a talking head. But not David Byrne. So you again are bringing a sense of bringing together with your hand. And generally, if your thumbs are too pushed together, it means you're thinking.

[19:07]

And if your thumbs are floating somewhere in vast space, probably your attention is not focused. You might even be asleep. Yeah. It's funny, you know, when you're sitting, how your thumbs can be, you know, just a tiny bit of difference away, but it feels like miles. Where the heck are they? So there's this feeling of bringing yourself together with your hands and bringing the situation together in your hand.

[20:11]

Okay, and then there's a feeling of lifting up through the backbone. Like... a column, as it is a column. And as your practice gets more settled, a very essential column. And this column extends up through the back of your neck and through the back of your head. And in some funny sense, has a feeling of connecting heaven and earth. Now, most people have a problem getting their legs folded together. And let me say that it's okay to sit in a chair or with your legs back behind you, like, you know what I mean?

[21:39]

You can sit this way, of course. Or you can... take a pillow and sit this way. Maybe I'll switch to this. It's quite comfortable. And the problem with this is that this is a fine posture, first of all. And Chinese culture until, I don't know, when exactly they introduced chairs, but in Japanese culture until recently, was based on this yogic posture. Because this is a meditation posture. Now, can you... for a minute sense how deeply yogic culture penetrated Asia.

[22:59]

And please understand that Buddhism and this yogic culture has always been a foreign religion wherever it is. In India it was in conflict with Hinduism. And in China, Japan, Korea it came in late after there were other religions developed. So it's just the same here in the West. It's, you know, coming in here as a foreign teaching. But it ended up this larger yogic understanding, and in particular Buddhism, so... permeating particularly Japanese culture, is that they designed their culture around a posture and not around an ideal.

[24:13]

Again, until recently, the houses were designed so you had to sit in that posture. You can't really put very easily chairs on grass floors. And until recently, 30, 40 years ago, until the war, all houses were thick grass floors. And all the clothes were designed to make it very difficult to sit in chairs. So that these clothes worked when you sat this way or sat this other posture, which is called seiza. So the houses and the clothes and the social customs were all designed around this posture. Social customs, for example, to greet someone who came to your house standing was very rude.

[25:48]

Now the problem with that posture, the César posture, is it's much harder to keep your body warm. Your feet are sticking out there behind you. And it is quite a bit less stable than sitting this way. But it's still quite a good posture, and I would say in the West now, probably a third of the people will meditate in that posture. But if you want to really learn to sit still, it's probably better to try to learn to sit this way. So is this lifting feeling through your back?

[27:00]

And through the back of your neck. And your chin is, again, a barometer like your thumbs. If your chin is like this, you're probably thinking. Yeah, but it doesn't mean you have to sit like this. Sort of, if this lifting feeling continues up your backbone, through your head, your chin will usually be pulled in a little, but not too much. And you can check your back posture, background posture, by putting your hands down to your side and pushing yourself up, lifting yourself up off your cushion, and then back down, and that's probably a good posture for your back.

[28:34]

And the central posture in this meditation is your backbone. So that's the reason we use a pillow to make sure your backbone can be easily straight. You don't have to force it. And as we put our hands together, we also lift our tongue to the roof of our mouth. I won't explain the reasons for anything. But just as a particular acupuncture point can affect the whole body, so just where your tongue is can affect your whole state of mind and body.

[29:45]

But usually we're not sensitive enough to notice a difference in our mind and body where our tongue is. So let's for a few minutes, because I think we should start with some meditation, sit. It won't be too long, but don't worry about how long it will be. and then we'll have a break after and I'll start with three bells and end with one bell and I'll give you a little bit more instruction while we're sitting Don't worry about everything yet.

[30:57]

You can keep them open if you'd like. And I'll signal you. Okay. On the mark. Auf die Plätze. Get set. Though to some extent you folded your

[32:48]

warmth together in sitting. And your warmth is very closely related to your aliveness, your consciousness. And the more your whole body is conscious, the more it will also be warm from tip of your fingers to tip of your toes. And we increase that to warmth or concentration by bringing our attention to our breath.

[33:53]

And usually we breathe through our nose, it must stop there. And it seems to work best to just count your exhales. to ten and then start it one again. And your eyes, you know, A little open, but the feeling of neither sleeping eyes nor waking eyes is what you want. Then you just let yourself disappear.

[35:32]

Like water sinking into the sand of the body. And that vast sand in this space something will take care of you And if you just stay present to your breath, follow your breath, that's fine too.

[36:44]

Now you're listening without trying to hear anything. It's the sound of one body listening. If you don't have a pillow, it's good to roll up something to raise yourself.

[40:51]

I'll do one from behind. Now, it's about 11 o'clock. And what time are we supposed to have the dithering? What time are we supposed to have lunch? What time does the schedule say? Three? No. And how long does it take to get lunch around here in restaurants and things? Slow? Close. So is two hours enough for lunch and a little walk? One and a half? One and a half. OK. Let's say we aim at having a lunch break around 12.15.

[41:54]

And coming back at, say, 1.30, 1.45. 1.45 would be two hours, so 1.30 would be an hour and 45 minutes, right? Well, one. Oh, so 1.30. Oh, okay, so 1.45. Oh, yeah, that's right. I need my doctor. So 1.45. Someone started already. Yeah.

[42:55]

Anyway, we'll do that. So let's have a break now for about 20 minutes or so, something like that. Again, I think it's a function not of lunch, but a function of the number of twists. Yeah, I understand. Me too. Was it? Was for a long time, though. It's okay So I would like to have some discussion with you, any questions or anything you'd like to talk about.

[44:21]

I'd like to hear your voice. Yeah. What is... What is the most important thing about sitting, or my fear of sitting, that I lie down because of the pain of the hip joint? And what I do now to relieve the pain? I have a disease of the hip, so I can't sit normally and meditate while lying. And I'm afraid... While sitting, you mean? Yeah. No, I do meditate while lying.

[45:21]

And I'm afraid that when I sit, that the pain will sort of block me and I'm really done now. And I think other people are feeling the same way too. What can I do? What has been done there? Well, it's another traditional meditation posture in addition to sitting sesa, the one I mentioned, is to lie on your back. And if you have a fairly firm surface, it makes your backbone posture very good. So it's basically physically a good posture. The problem is, usually, or commonly, it's an easy posture to fall asleep in. So it takes some skill to use that posture without falling asleep.

[46:36]

Or getting in a dreamy state of mind. Now I don't know exactly what your hip feels like but I would try both. Sometimes try sitting up and sometimes try lying down. And you know, yoga, Zen is basically a practice within the larger field of yoga. Yoga basically means a posture, physical or mental, which brings you from one situation to a more developed or refined or clear situation. So it's a posture, mental or physical, that's a kind of bridge from one moment to the next or from one state of mind to another.

[47:54]

Now, you don't have to just practice yoga in yoga classes or on a yoga mat. You can walk upstairs and practice yoga. If you have this sense of posture of your mental and physical posture at that moment as you're walking up the stairs as a bridge. So now the next thing is if you're whatever mental and physical postures you choose.

[49:16]

And characteristic again of this yogic culture is that you don't have to be controlled by your thoughts. You can choose what mental or physical posture you had. I mean, I can choose to put my hands together like this. And in this place. But I can also choose where my mind rests. Also, just as naturally, it's not artificial. We think it's natural to be able to put our hands together like this, but we think it's artificial if we put our mind together.

[50:20]

So we have some idea of naturalness which interferes with our really taking hold of our life. From really taking hold of our life. Okay. So what you're doing when you meditate again is another way of describing it. is you're creating a field and you're creating that field by your mental and physical postures. And one reason you're creating that field is so that you can concentrate that field. So, in your case, or in many of our cases, where we're trying to work with some particular problem, and it's often very useful to have a problem, as I

[51:35]

thought of and mentioned this last weekend at Johanneshof I asked my teacher how do you practice heat yoga how do you realize the practice of heat yoga he said it has to be very cold it helps to have a problem It's very hard in the tropics to bother about generating heat yoga. Even though it might give you the skill of cooling yourself. And again, the yogic sense of medicine is that a doctor may be helpful, but the doctor helps you. you heal yourself. So this is carried to an extreme sometimes because they never treat the problem or the illness.

[52:57]

They strengthen everything else so you can solve the problem. So, I mean, I think you can go too far in this direction, but the idea is they give you tons of different little tiny medicines that make your general immune system stronger. or your various things, and then you can concentrate on solving the problem. But the image is a good one for our practice. Is that if you have a particular problem, a stomach, indigestion, asthma, what's it called?

[54:15]

Anyway, yeah. Ulcer, you know, something like that. Is you locate it in your body and you create a little field of light around it or a tension around it And then you develop the ability to keep your attention on that all the time. While you're walking, while you're sleeping, even while you're sleeping. And in effect you ask your immune system to work on this. And even if you don't get better, you learn a lot. But sometimes it's amazing how much it can amend something. I work with myself that way all the time.

[55:17]

Yet I'm still a crippled old man. But, you know, at 85 I'm not too bad. I'm not 85. Yes. Yes. I would like to hear something when fears, being afraid, comes up. For example, is there cancer? Oh, yeah. I mean, like being hypochondriac or something like that. Or do you mean really having cancer? Quite concrete. Oh. Yeah. Well, I think one goes through a period of almost involuntary fear if you have the likelihood of having some disease that can threaten your life.

[56:55]

But again, this isn't my specialty, how to be a healer. But my own feeling is that after you get past the initial fear and you let that happen, Now, when I say that, I mean you let the sensation of fear, you just notice the sensation of fear and you let it be. You don't try to get rid of it, but you don't panic. And I suppose this itself is a skill. And one way you learn this is sitting in meditation. It's common to have your legs hurt. And if you can just see the hurt as a sensation which you can react to or not and then try to just locate where it is

[58:26]

You find, say, it's your knee, the actual point that hurts is very small. So there's a value, I think, in just being able to let something happen, but not let it spread, let it panic in relationships. So I think the first step is accepting fear. And the second step is accepting your condition, which may be ill. And then going the next step to begin to explore your body and situation so that you can feel into what's ill. And even if it's an illness then that still requires medical treatment, I think the medical treatment will be far more effective if your consciousness is involved in the treatment.

[60:20]

But even if it is a disease that requires real medical help, then the medical help will be much more successful if consciousness is involved in the healing process. I have a question that I quote on calling and calling, and that is because I have a question related to devotion and vocation. To hear that vocation is one thing, but to follow it in daily life seems to me very difficult. Yes, I think you have to not only hear what you want to do, and that may not, and we sometimes are not, what we, we want to improve our hearing of what we want to do.

[61:36]

But this ability to hear is also the ability to accomplish it. So there's the hearing of it and there's the accomplishing of it. And I spoke about this last night in more detail. So let me keep in mind what you've said and I'll come back to it. Okay. As far as meditation is concerned, I would be interested in leaving the tongue on the thumb. That's how I understood it. It's also the question of whether it doesn't, so I feel it's a bit of a cramped posture.

[62:38]

I would like to know why and whether it goes in the same direction, whether there are any blockages. The question was about the tongue, the back top of the roof. For me, it would be sort of easier or more likely to let it just rest as it is. It seems a little bit sort of cramped for me to put it upside down. And also I want to know if there could be some blockages of any kind doing this. And what's the reason for doing it? Yeah. I would like to suggest you do it without knowing the reasons. My question is, is it the tip of the tongue which goes to the back of the palate or is it the whole tongue? Usually it's just that you just put your tongue gently against the top of your mouth.

[64:00]

There are more complex yogic practices with the tongue, but that's just for meditation practice. And Probably there will be in the long run less blockages if you get the habit of doing that. But all these things are up to you. It's your mouth and your tongue. And there's no tiny Buddhist spies in there looking to see what you're doing. The Buddhist tongue police checking up on your posture. It's just because in other relaxation practices it's just taught the other way and I just sort of relearn to do this.

[65:05]

Yeah, I understand. I've never in 35 years of talking about Buddhism had so much conversation about the tongue. I wonder if this is characteristic of Berlin. But the mouth as one of our sense organs and its wetness, etc., is very connected with our state of mind. And it's one of the reasons we smoke or have little cough drops and things like that.

[66:10]

Cough drops? Candy or something like that. A fisherman's friend. Okay. We should have a Buddhist friend. Yes. Yeah. Yes, the own stuporous potential. My question regarding profession and vocation was also in what way is it connected to our creativity and our physical sense pleasure, so to say?

[67:23]

In what way is this connected? How can we get access to that? Well, I think I would like to try to respond to that in the afternoon. Yeah, because this morning we're concentrating on just getting familiar with posture and how to direct our attention to our present situation. So if you don't feel I've come back to it in the afternoon, please ask me again. Yes. My experience is when my tongue is to the roof, less saliva is produced and I have less to swallow and I'm less distracted.

[68:27]

That's one of the reasons you do it. I would like to talk about another problem with meditation. I have been trying to meditate for a little more than a year and every time I come to a point where I am afraid to lose myself. Another problem with meditation, I practice meditation since about a year and I come to a point where I am afraid of losing myself. And you just said and joked about we all sort of fainting. That's exactly the point which sort of struck me, which I met there in meditation.

[69:29]

You have to be willing to lose yourself. This is a particular problem for the West. We have a very talked about this before but it's a kind of a subtlety of meditation instruction. We have a threshold built into us culturally beyond which we're taught not to go. And if you go beyond this point, you might be crazy. And usually the measure is to, when you begin to have an experience you can't share, Or you think perhaps no one else has had before or nobody you know has.

[70:57]

You get very uneasy. So this keeps a lot of therapists employed. As you... want someone to tell this experience to, which you can't, don't think you can tell anyone else. And also the Catholic Church has emphasized, generated this, I believe since, I don't know when confession started, but it's not so old as a practice. And the whole idea that perhaps our unusual thoughts are the devil. So we have lots of layers in us that say, don't go beyond this.

[72:05]

It might be craziness, it might be the devil, it might be something outside us, inside us. And it struck me. I mean, I remember when I first started meditating back in the early 60s. People would come to me and say, you know, And particularly for some strange reason, the unions And they'd say, you're too young to be practicing meditation. You have to be 35 or 40 or something. You have to be mature.

[73:07]

Well, I had to agree. I wasn't mature. But I couldn't see why this posture was so dangerous. And in those days, people would say, why you should be out helping society, not concentrating on your navel? First of all, I didn't concentrate on my navel, anyway. But I didn't understand, I was only sitting 40 minutes a day. If I went and had a beer for two hours a day, no one said, you know, you should be out helping people. But if I meditated 30 minutes, they said, uh-uh, you should be out helping people. I realize something's going on.

[74:13]

So you have to, in our culture, when you're meditating, face this threshold and be willing to go into emotional, territory, spiritual territory that's unfamiliar to you. And you're not sure it's experiences other people have. And part of that is the fear of losing oneself for something.

[75:16]

And I would say, practically speaking, turn toward the fear, turn toward the problem, but not so much it overwhelms you. And develop a very clear sense of physically entering zazen. And develop a very clear sense of physically entering zazen. and physically coming back out of zazen. So that's one of the reasons actually we rock back and forth, forward and back and left and right. Because when you sit down, as I said, bring your hands together. Lift up through your back and back of your head. And then we usually rock forward and back and left and right a little.

[76:29]

Till it's a little smaller. Till it gets smaller and smaller. And then when it gets quite small, you just bring your breath right down into your body. And when your zazen is more subtle, then up your back. And then, hopefully, you're in that process developing a deep trust. that this is okay. You have to have some faith in the practice. Everything requires faith. You have this faith in the practice but you also know that when you start rocking Again, you'll come back up, out.

[77:31]

So, whenever you get too fearful or the period ends, you allow yourself then to rock a little bit and in that sense come back into ordinary consciousness. It's much more conscious, it's more powerful and safer than dreaming. Dreaming, most of us have very little control over what we dream. And you can't get out of a dream easily if you're in it. But in meditation you can always simply start rocking and you will change your state of mind. I think these questions are good because A lot of meditation reaches a certain floor or plateau and doesn't go further, mainly for psychological reasons or cultural reasons.

[78:56]

Okay. Okay, for now, yeah. I have a question concerning the inner voice how do I discern this inner voice how differentiate between the voice of my intellect and this inner voice I don't know yet how to discern it I'm going to have to respond to that in the afternoon. I don't have the sense.

[80:09]

What stops you? How far is one from that? the question is when I very intensely want something to my profession to reach something to accomplish something to sit so and so how much this in itself is a hindrance to reaching that what I want They're very wanting intensely. Practically speaking, I think if that desire is formulated, shall we say, within the ego,

[81:15]

And its fruit is mostly to benefit you. You in a narrow sense. you may accomplish your goal, but you're also likely to sabotage yourself. Or if you accomplish your goal without sabotaging yourself, it may make you sick in some way. Because we are also other people. So when you do something just for yourself, it's not that you hurt the other people out there, you hurt the other people in here. But when your goal is really for all the people you are inside and out,

[82:35]

then the more powerful that intention is, the more likely you're going to accomplish your goal. That's what I would say. And this is related also to, if we want we can come back to it, this developing of a field consciousness. Yes. I don't know if it fits in right here but my question is how to deal with aggressions what to do about them yeah okay for this afternoon and yes

[83:48]

My question is, is it a practice to sit without sitting? Because I have been a mother of twins for nine months, that means I am here, it is a luxury for me to be alone. I actually have a baby hug permanently, or I hear one, or I am with my presence. by the baby, and I also have a third child, and I have tried to maintain a daily practice, but it actually only works without using it, because when I sit in the evening, I'm too tired, in the morning I'm already awake at 5 o'clock, that means I sit with the baby in the evening, or I try to do a practice that consists of three types of insulin, or My question is, is there a practice of sitting without sitting?

[85:10]

My situation is, I have twins, very small twins, and a third child, and it's quite a luxury to be here alone. Yes, I should be. And I get up at five in the morning, and I get very late to bed, and I don't find this... I can sometimes do a practice of three breaths and holding the baby and so That's what I want to know is this how can I practice with in my special situation like this This afternoon Yes How important is it to keep your eyes half closed? And is it very important not to close your eyes, because you may even start to dream about it. I had my eyes closed during meditation. And then there is a question, is there a recommendation at a certain time, at least daily, for so long? My question is very practical, down to earth, about closing.

[86:21]

How important is it having the eyes half closed? Because I've been practicing before with eyes fully closed. What difference is there and how important is this? And the second question is, is there an importance in what time daily to sit, to meditate? Is this any... Yeah. Well, again, as I said, the feeling of neither waking eyes nor sleeping eyes And the posture of your eyelids tends to trigger either waking consciousness or sleeping. So you want to find the posture of your eyelids which allows you to neither be ordinary waking conscious nor asleep. And so do you have to or would you like to find out the keeping of your eyelids?

[87:35]

So my feeling is like if my eyes are closed and I'm sitting, I still have the feeling of light in my eyes and of seeing even though my eyes are closed, a kind of seeing. But traditionally you look very, your eyes are open a little bit and they look down in a relaxed way of rather your height. But again, all of these rules are suggestions, suggestions based on many years of practice by over centuries, but There are still suggestions you should do what you want. Buddhism as a teaching is not a revealed religion.

[88:41]

It doesn't come from outside this system. Now, what that means is ultimately you have to decide what's wholesome or unwholesome for yourself. You have to decide whether water is wet or cold or warm or whatever. This is really very basic. It means you have to have that confidence to decide for yourself what's wholesome and not wholesome. Buddhism is rooted in this ultimate individuality that it's your And no one else's choice. So all these things are suggestions. How your eyes are. Now what's useful I think is to sit at the same time as much as possible every day or

[90:00]

five days a week or whatever you sit. Yeah. It's like if you only write poetry when you're inspired, you probably won't write poetry too well. It's helpful, or it's great to have inspiration, but basically you put aside time every day to write or to feel your way into the poem of this moment.

[90:49]

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