So when you have that wide feeling, it continues. It's sort of maybe like an artesian well. The water just keeps coming up. You can stop it for a little while, deflect it, but the water still keeps coming up. And as long as there's existence, As long as this world is here, and we're each here, this existence itself is a kind of joy. It's like Thich Nhat Hanh says, when you have a toothache, You feel terrible. And you think, God, will this toothpick ever be over? And I'll feel great when it's over. And finally it's over. And you feel shitty about something else. You can't remember The joy of no toothache.

[01:14]

But I think you're all enjoying no toothache right now. But because you're in conceptual mind, you need graspable things to feel pleasure. And unfortunately, the larger number of graspable things are unpleasant. It's the non-graspable things that are pleasant. Like the no toothache. But you want to grasp something, you show yourself. I mean, who walks around the street saying, I have no toothache? You understand? So if you can reside more in this non-graspable territory, then the simple fact of existence

[02:22]

fills you. And you can call that by various things. If you want, you can call it thusness or suchness or sameness or bliss or bliss. So let's sit for a few minutes. Do you want to stretch first? Why don't we stretch first? No. is simply the practice of bringing mind to breath.

[03:33]

The more you reside in your breath body, the more you are sealed but not armored And sometimes if you feel a little bit shaky you can emphasize that by pushing down with your breath into your gut. And let your shoulders and body be quite relaxed. To feel loose. At the same time as you push down with your breath into your lower belly, below your navel.

[04:38]

Then you can, doing that, then you can contract your sphincter muscle. And doing that once or twice during the day, Also tends to seal you but not armor you. I'd like you to try practicing the inner smile between now and tomorrow.

[06:56]

And the feeling of the inner smile or the feeling of a smile brought into your inner seeing. And of course, I'd like you to continue to find your seat. Maybe let's try three times again or even five. You can start right now to see if you can find during this short sasen. Find the uniqueness of your seat just now. Maybe running right up through your backbone.

[08:24]

Thank you for the many powerful and good questions you brought up. It helps, benefits all of our practice. Good morning.

[11:12]

Now we, as usual, talked about quite a lot yesterday. And what we did talk about, much of it assumed certain familiarity with Zen practice. So I'd like to start this morning with any feelings you have that What you'd like to know more about or got left out or you didn't quite make sense. Or didn't make any sense at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you speak loudly enough so people can hear?

[12:46]

When you talked about the tennis players yesterday, since then, the question in my mind, can they only do that, I assume, with zoning while they're playing, or does it require some sort of practice? And is it possible to experience something like that in Zazen? Yeah, I went to a concert last night of Georg Ringsvander, who I know a bit. He's a nice guy. But I've never seen him perform. The only peer he seems to have or anybody who's in the same territory is David Byrne of the Talking Heads. Except that Brings Vandell is more of a stand-up comic as well as a singer and musician. And social critic. And the audience was middle-aged people and young people and everybody was totally enjoying themselves. And I didn't understand a word.

[14:26]

Every now and then I'd ask her, what is he saying? She'd say, Bavarian dialect. But I didn't eat. It was fantastic. I really loved it. But we went into his dressing room in a 20 minutes or so before it started. And we talked a little bit. And then the person who sort of takes care of the concert and him looked at Georg and pointed to her watch. And Georg said, it's time to zone. So he's using the word, same kind of. And Ulrike spoke to me about it yesterday.

[15:27]

He thought it was, some people might think it was a specific tennis term. No, but I think that it was first, maybe first started being used as a term by tennis players. But I think it's when you feel a kind of wholeness and completeness usually connected with concentration. Or a complete relaxation, which is also a kind of concentration. And of course that's possible at any moment right now. But you might get more of a feel of it in zazen than in other times. The way tennis players describe it is in the zone they feel very connected, like they see the ball coming very slowly.

[16:36]

They feel like they're part of the ball that's coming toward them, which they're hitting. My question is rather, can tennis players feel that at other times outside playing or other people who do sports, can they feel that? Probably not. That's why they do the sports. So, wahrscheinlich nicht. Vielleicht ist das der Grund, warum sie diesen Sport betreiben. Most people I know who do something at a level of innovation and creativity do it as much for the experience of being able to do it as what they accomplish. But I think that, I mean, the example I use is a friend of mine, a woman, who leads expeditions up glaciers, climbing glaciers.

[18:04]

And you can only do it at night because they're melting during the day. So you have to come down before the sun comes up because as you're coming down, your hand holes are melting. So you're kind of trying to get ahead of the daylight before it comes to get down. She says it creates a wonderful sense of concentration. I'm sure it does. Well, but probably I don't think she can reproduce it other times. Though somebody who's good at those things probably has the capacity and brings the capacity to it. But the point I'm emphasizing in this seminar, particularly for some reason, is the sense of memory.

[19:15]

And I haven't figured out language for it yet. Because I've never emphasized this point so much, so I haven't really found a way to talk about it. But it may be a little too esoteric to say, but this is one way I could call it. A kind of subtle body memory. Or, for instance, I could ask you a question today. Is there some time in your life in which you have just felt good for some reason.

[20:31]

It may have had a cause, but let's say it seemed to have no cause. You just felt at ease and joyful. And let me ask you, the next time we practice zazen here, do zazen, see if you can remember such a time. And see if you can remember it with your body. And get a feel of it again. And a feel of it independent of what caused it. I mean, your body knows these things. But in a sense, like you, if you're... hunting for a word.

[21:42]

You know, you sort of think and you kind of, finally a word or a name comes back. In the same way, you can hunt for this vocabulary of the, shall I say, your subtle body. So I would like you to be able to get familiar with noticing the feelings that accompany particular thoughts, states of mind, early in the morning, late in the afternoon, and so forth. And through that familiarity, draw on a deeper vocabulary of feeling. which is a kind of infrastructure underneath our moods and emotions and attitudes.

[23:13]

Because what I'm trying to do is, and what Buddhism is trying to do, is give you access to a vocabulary That's part of your body. That you don't have to be in a certain experience to have the feeling. Like you can use the word tree without seeing a tree. So sort of like that, I'd like you to have a a vocabulary of feelings that can arise through you, not necessarily through the outside. Okay. Yeah. So what is the meaning of posture in this respect? If you just recreate some memory, Why in a certain posture?

[24:25]

Is the posture help to re-remember after you got it back again? Yeah, you want to say that in German? It's a good question. I said something in German, he didn't say in English, is it like an anchor, so you can, which helps you then to retrieve it. Is your zazen like an anchor? No, the posture. The posture, yeah. Zazen practice is one of the things.

[25:38]

It is a way to become familiar with yourself. In a way that you can't if you're running around doing things. It always reminds me of when I was a kid, I used to have to wash the dishes. That was my job, one of my jobs. And I used to take hours to wash the dishes. And I think my family thought it was because I was resisting doing the dishes. And that... I was really trying to say, get someone else to do it because I stay in there, you know, et cetera.

[26:41]

But actually, I don't know what it was, but I was fascinated with looking at the silverware through the soap suds by looking through a glass. Sometimes I'd have two glasses. And underneath all the soap sets, it'd be all this silverware lying down there, you know. And I don't know, it was like looking into my unconscious or into the deeps of something. Maybe it was my initial meditation starting, because I could sit for 30 or 40 minutes. No one taught me Zazen, so I learned it.

[27:42]

But I think Zazen is a little bit like that. You have to become still to see the old silverware in you. And all the stuff lying on the bottom of you. So the first part of zazen is just a way of becoming familiar with yourself. which you can't do while your mind is being drawn to activity and drawn to exterior objects. Okay. And the second stage is that looking at the old silverware, And that stillness or tranquility or concentration begins to create a different kind of mind.

[28:47]

And you begin, you know how when you also look at things underwater, they bend or they look bigger underwater than when you take them out, like finding a stone in the lake or something. Auch wenn man sich Dinge unter Wasser anschaut, dass die irgendwie verbogen sind oder größer oder ganz anders aussehen. In Zazen you see things differently suddenly. The stones have brighter colors and things. Und so ist es auch in Zazen. Man sieht Dinge anders. Die Steine haben plötzlich kräftigere Farben. And then this mind that's created almost out of the water of the dishwater or your Zazen... Und der Mind, der jetzt hervorgebracht wird, jetzt aus dem Spülwasser her oder aus dem Zazen... begins to see things or open up territories of yourself that you didn't know were there. So a wider sense of self begins to develop, to become familiar. And all the time you're At the same time, following your breath or counting your breath or developing concentration.

[30:03]

Shifting from the person looking at the dishwater, at the silverware, suddenly the dishwater is looking up at this kid staring at it. So suddenly you find yourself, Zazen's looking at you. And you begin to, at this point, develop more concentration and fine-tuning. And this fine tuning begins to allow you the subtlety to notice the gradations or manifestations of the subtle body. And then, of course, you see that that more subtle body is not just present in zazen, it's present all the time.

[31:08]

It's more manifest all the time. But as long as you have to look through the glasses, through the soap suds, it's not present except when you do zazen. But when the dishwater starts looking at the kid, Or the well starts looking at the donkey. Then you begin to feel that subtle body present all the time. Because you can't see it looking through the external world. You have to see it from it toward the external world. So Dogen Zenji says, for example, and I think what I just said will help make clear the statement of Dogen's, and I think I mentioned it the other night in the lecture, experiencing self through the arising of manifold dharmas,

[32:31]

is enlightenment. Experiencing manifold dharmas through the arising of self is delusion. So, manifold dharmas just means the many forms of the world. And experiencing them through the standpoint of the self is delusion. Actually, we say delusion, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't experience things that way. It's delusion, but it's a way of functioning. We're not talking about bad or good here, exactly. Uh-huh. But when manifold dharmas cause the arising of a self, when the dishwater looks at the kid, or the well at the donkey, then self arises, the kid appears, and that's called enlightenment.

[33:49]

Does that answer your question too thoroughly? Or not thoroughly enough? Is there something else you'd like to say? Yes, still, you know, what you say requires some kind of a space to set apart for this kind of exploration. Yes. But it doesn't say the form this space should be filled with, or this... Okay, why don't you say it in German? I don't know quite what you mean. I mean, we'd have to maybe sit down and talk a little bit. You mean the structure of the posture?

[35:26]

Well, the posture is, you can use any posture is okay, but this posture happens to be the one that allows the most concentration and least use of your musculature. See, there's lots of memories in your muscles. If you use your muscles to support you, you tie those memories up in the support. So you want to use a posture where everything can settle. You can be as relaxed as possible. Lying down is quite a good posture. But it tends to make you sleepy. And it also doesn't use your energy in the same way as sitting upright.

[36:36]

So you want to sit in a way, if possible, that the structure of the posture supports you, not your musculature. Man möchte in einer Haltung sitzen wo einfach die Struktur der Haltung einen unterstützt und nicht die Muskelkraft. There's something else I was going to say but I can't remember now. Maybe I'll come back to it. Yes? Yeah, it's all real suffering. I think mental suffering is worse. But in any case, that's not important.

[37:51]

You mean, if you're hungry, how do you deal with being hungry if you can't get any food? Well, I'd probably organize a food-hunting expedition. Yeah. Or I'd start experimenting with leaves, you know, and grasses and things. I wonder how these flowers would taste. Can I add something? Yeah, sure. I stuck with two cents. And the one was joy coming out of no reason. And the other thing was if you feel joy about the present, that is not the true joy of Buddhism.

[38:59]

And I don't feel good all the time with this sentence, and I couldn't really get it. But yesterday evening when I came back, I stayed in the Tristan Street. and the next is Isolde's dream. And so this stories came up from Chester and Isolde and Romeo and Juliet, and suddenly I know exactly what for me feels wrong with this sense. Because the deep reason for me of joy comes in a strange way out of this suffering and knowing about suffering. And it feels so flat for me to say joy for no reason. It feels like

[40:04]

Like Walt Disney, Joey. Or like this song in Japanese, Don't Worry, Be Happy. Don't Worry, Be Happy. Like on a concert with this toothache. I think you only can say this statement when you know about toothache. If you have no idea what is toothache, you can't be happy about not having toothache. And when I go back into my life, all the experience about really deep joy were in some way combined with suffering. So when I saw my child after the heart operation, there was such a deep feeling of joy, and in the same moment there was a deep feeling of suffering and compassion.

[41:16]

So it really goes together for me, and I don't want to experience this. I don't want either to be pushed around by suffering, that it isn't real suffering, but like Tina said, I want to have this this deep feeling in me for these people who haven't enough to eat. Last week, there was a little shrine from Chernobyl in my store, and there I had the same feeling. I gave them a little toy, and the mother was so happy, and there was a deep intensity of enlightenment. That makes me feel really joyful, even if I know probably this child will die.

[42:24]

It sounds so easy for me to say this joy for no reason. It sounds like a plaque could tell me. Okay. When I say this is not what Buddhism means by joy, I don't mean that that's not a kind of joy. For me, joy includes also a feeling of gratitude and joy. If I can suppress it, I feel a good job and gratitude, and I don't know why.

[43:42]

I can't see the reason why that shouldn't be. Let's see, what can I say? Hmm. All these things are in the Abhidharma worked out and analyzed. Let's say there's pleasure that arises, pleasure, gratitude, joy, you know, that arises from a cause. And there's pleasure that arises from an external cause, an internal cause. and an imagined cause. And it's just whole systems of these things, right? And it's actually worth studying.

[44:42]

And gratitude and so forth are likewise analyzed. And then there's two kinds of joy which are likened to the joy that arises from a cause. For example, when you... Let's see, how does it go? When you... I can't remember exactly, but it's like when you know everything's going well and things are settled.

[45:48]

And it's not a specific experience, it's a general feeling that everything's okay. And then those feelings are likened to... Okay, those feelings, that's as close as we can say what these feelings are like when they arise from no cause. And those feelings, when they arise from no cause, you could say the cause is existence itself. Just the fact of being alive or being sick causes joy. And that joy becomes a kind of feeling that you're breathing all the time. And it's no longer caused by anything specific. Okay. Now, I suppose what the Arbidharma would say

[46:51]

is that when you give the gift to the child from Chernobyl, you see the child's joy arise on the reception of the present. And you see the child's joy arise from a person recognizing... Was it a boy or a girl? the person recognizing her. And you see the joy of the mother being present when the gift is given. And then you see the joy that this, what in Buddhism would be called maybe, let's say, fundamental joy, Or we could say existential joy. I don't know what word to use in English for it. Let's say basic joy. So this causal joy also simultaneously causes basic joy to come up.

[48:04]

That makes sense. So when you have joy that arises from, say, a gift, Also, basic joy appears that's there whether you get a gift or not. But doesn't have an excuse to come out. And so when we're talking about a specific topic like this empathetic joy, it's talking about awakening in yourself through practice this basic joy. And then being able to awaken it in others. And that empathetic joy, where there's empathy or a feeling between two people arising through this joy, creates a relationship and a field

[49:28]

for both of another kind of personality or being. So from the point of view of bodhisattva practice, you would give the present to the kid just because you thought of giving it. And if you're practicing the paramita of generosity, is every day you try to give away something. Or have the feeling of just, I don't need things here. It's a kind of using form to practice emptiness. And it's an antidote to the fear we have where we kind of, you know, do that. So you're giving the gift, again, as a bodhisattva practice, you're giving the gift as generosity.

[50:41]

You're also giving it because it happened to be there on the counter and the kid is there and you want to do something so you hand it to him. There's no purpose. But also you do it to find something to awaken this basic joy in the kid. Then you're right. So what I meant to say was that when Buddhism uses the term joy as a technical term, they're referring to this joy that comes up, basic joy, from existence itself. question yeah yeah what you said what you said I may as well say love mm-hmm what's the difference you want to say that in German

[51:52]

Ah, boy Well If Brother David was here, Steindl Rast, and I've talked with him quite a bit about these things, the relationship, the idea of Christian love in comparison to spousal love, in comparison to sexual love, and so forth. Yeah, or loving your children. Buddhism tends to avoid the word love. I think Buddhism thinks that love puts you in a situation of too much should.

[53:37]

You should love, or if you don't love, it's, you know, and it's a little bit involved too much with some love has attachment, so much attachment in it. In my conversations with Brother David, I would say that the love that he expressed as Christian love through monastic practice is very close to what Buddhism means that uses other words. Okay, so let me just tell you my feeling as a Buddhist. This woman, what is your name? Karin?

[54:40]

Karin. Karin is sitting in front of me. I love she's hearing like this, you know. And there are many postures of certain bodhisattvas who sit like this. And they're actually touching certain energy points behind their ear, which is part of concentration practice. So I don't know whether she's trying to hear better. Actually, she's a bodhisattva sitting in her ear. But I feel blessed by her presence all the time. If you all want to sit that way, it's okay. All right. I don't know Karin. Except to the extent of being here since Thursday, right? Yeah. And I don't love her.

[55:47]

I mean, I suppose I could love her. And I might to some extent, certainly over a period of time, come to feel that I love her. But no matter how much I love her, In my experience, it's not as deep as the feeling I have of just accepting her. So my feeling as a Buddhist is, I just accept her and when I look at her, I see myself. And I accept her the way I accept myself. And I have much more complex relationship to myself than love. So drawing on my own experience of how I accept myself, which love is

[56:48]

You know, I guess I love myself now and then. But mostly I just put up with myself. Yes. You're deciding I'm too old to change and things like that. I'm too old to be a better person. She complains at me sometimes. You're not too old to be a better person. Yes, I am. And that acceptance then is also the feeling of again receiving something from Karin.

[58:02]

That acceptance is also the first stage of an even deeper feeling of receiving something from Karin. But it's not in the realm of something possessive or something like that. Sometimes the word for acceptance that's used in Buddhism is a word that's used, I think, in Chinese for the love a parent feels for a child. Meaning the love you have for a child which is able to love the child whether they're good or bad and also love them and let them leave. So that word love has the... feeling in it of you completely love but you let them go.

[59:11]

Okay, yes. This sort of love is directed on a special person or persons. What I actually meant was a sort of feeling of loving which is not directed, which I sometimes can feel and it could be the nature or given in this room or anywhere towards a person. And I thought, could this be similar to that what you mean? Yes, it's quite similar. Yeah, I mean, we have to do some interpretation. In other words, you have certain experiences which are validly your experiences. And then Christianity describes these things one way. Buddhism describes them another way.

[60:17]

But you can assume that much of the experiences are the same. However, the difference is that when you define this experience this way and you define the same experience another way here, you're putting it in a different system. And it works differently in a different system. It's like you take the same computer chip and you do something slightly different with it and you have a Macintosh instead of an IBM. So you have Buddhism instead of Christianity because you wire your experiences slightly differently. I don't think she meant Christianity. I know, I know, but I'm just using Christianity as an example. Do you want to translate what I said? Rika just said to me she doesn't think Monica meant Christianity. But I don't think you... You have to mean Christianity.

[61:44]

I mean, I was brought up a Christian, but it wasn't very much involved in my life. Yeah. But I think that if you use English or German, you're using basically a theologically based Christian language in which these words have meanings developed out of our culture. I want to say, add something to Monika. Yes. Yes. Maybe something like basic trust could be a word in the middle of the two. Like what comes out of this basic trust on the one hand might look like love, on the one hand might look like joy or the results of joy.

[62:50]

Yeah. You want to translate that? Maybe it's something like a fundamental, somehow in the middle between the two worlds that are now described. And what comes out there, on the one hand it looks like love, on the other hand like joy. When you do sāsana, one of the things you're doing is coming to trust yourself. And coming to trust yourself allows many things to happen. And you can't go very far in zazen without trusting yourself.

[63:55]

And getting past being afraid of your thoughts and things like that. Yes, go ahead. Not only trust yourself, but trust in maybe existence or something like that. Yeah. Well, the first is trusting yourself. And then you begin to have the trust of the world. And these practices of establishing your view are ways to establish trust of the world. But again, Buddhism doesn't look at things so much as like there's basic trust. But that everything arises on each moment. So in each moment there are certain ingredients.

[65:11]

It could be basic trust, it could be something else. But the situation always conditions it. But basic trust is a condition which also allows joy to arise. But the way Buddhism looks at things, it probably wouldn't say that basic trust sometimes appears as joy. You'd say that the particular basic trust allows the particular of joy to appear. Yes, then I think we should have a break. Yes, then I think we should have a break.

[66:13]

John Cage, yeah. Was it good? He's quite interested in Buddhism, actually. He said he sat with Suzuki Roshi. Yeah, it's perhaps true.

[67:26]

You sure it wasn't Suzuki Daiset? I think it's Daiset Suzuki. Because he knew Daiset Suzuki in New York, I'm pretty sure. Yes? I have a question coming back to what she said. Christiana or Beata? Yeah, yeah. As you said it, as an example, it's like Romeo and Juliet. What would a Buddhist say? Wouldn't it just, in a Buddhist way of thinking or living, a story like that be possible? That was the same thought I had. In this sense, I would say, oh, how stupid was Romeo. He enjoyed himself and would wait one hour or two hours to be able to would be alive. I mean, don't... You're saying that, not me. No, the question is, don't you feel like there's a way that you have to renounce to, like, adventure, fight, romance, a lot of things that make life a lot of fun, too, if you think that way?

[68:40]

You don't know much about my life. Um... Well, I think this is the great adventure. And maybe you should say what you said in German. There is a great longing for such stories, for adventure, for romance. What? What would have to happen in Buddhism?

[69:45]

And I think, I mean, now having been in Japan with you, is that this Romeo and Juliet are just two typical Western individuals. I don't think so. And it's an Eastern style. I think it's best developed in the East. They don't have this kind of... They have a lot of... More drama and that's not really... That is... And I can... This kind of love, this kind of love is not so, it's not, but in our culture it's just the main point of emotion is maybe in there or not so much. Half of the no place are people dying by love, killing themselves by love, so on. in my dramaturgy of romanticism. Thousands of years ago, and now it's going parallel with Zen, and it's a tradition. Do you want to say that in German? What was the last thing she said? I don't understand.

[70:45]

How? I don't know what she means. You don't understand how what? That the North Theatre is going very parallel to Zen and has a very similar idea as far as I know. And how that can be, how they do it, how they play it, how they wrote those plays and how they can think that way and then write those plays. Why not? Why you think it's... I think she means how it goes with Buddhism. I have the same feeling that Romeo and Juliet doesn't really go together. With what? Oh. That's what Herman's saying.

[71:47]

But I know it. It does. Maybe I should call myself Juliet. Because there is no Juliet. Okay. I'm Romeo. She's Juliet. Okay. Well, you know, I like this discussion, but there's no answer to these things. And I still want to come back to Christiana's question, what she brought up about various, about suffering. But it's a good question, this question of Romeo and Juliet in Buddhism. I think I'll actually discuss it with Antonio in Portugal. Since he's an expert on Shakespeare and probably has the play memorized, I'll ask him what he thinks.

[72:48]

But there are certainly many, I mean, Japan has, I believe, most, I don't know, but a very large percentage, if not the most, of Japan's suicides are love suicides. Can I say something about Mindell? What is it? Some of you may know Arnold Mindell, a Swiss psychotherapist who also does relationship seminars in Japan. He said he had never experienced couples coming to him at the end of a workshop and saying that if the workshop didn't work for them, they would kill each other afterwards. What did you say? The couple is coming up to his workshop and say, this is the last thing we try, this doesn't work, we're going to kill ourselves. Yeah.

[74:17]

Yeah, remember that movie called The Love Story of some years ago about a woman that dies of cancer and an American movie? Any story like that is hugely popular in Japan. And probably the most popular Shakespeare play is Romeo and Juliet. It doesn't mean it's the same, though. And it doesn't mean it's... I mean, Japan is much stranger than you realize. Mishima says he didn't like American novels because they never noticed things like how far into a woman's mouth you could see when she smiled. And I read a story recently about a princess who, it's all involved...

[75:23]

Okay, I just got edited But the question is not whether a culture has stories like Romeo and Juliet but whether a Buddhist monk and nun would get themselves into a situation like Romeo and Juliet and Well, I know a Japanese woman who is pregnant by a Korean nun in a Buddhist monastery. What? Pregnant by... A Korean nun in a monk in a Korean monastery. I think that for a person who practices that practice, unless you're using it in some repressive way,

[77:09]

Doesn't interfere in any way with falling in love or being a race car driver or, you know, a couch potato. who sits watching the light go across the room all day. But whether this person suffers from his life and his love, I think the relationship to the suffering and how you try to deal with it is different in a Buddhist person than a non-Buddhist person. I would say the feelings are exactly the same, maybe more intense if you practice. But how you respond to it, what you make of it, the decisions you make around it are different.

[78:28]

Or might be different. For instance, just living with the suffering, not trying to get rid of it. Mm-hmm. Okay, let's have a break. 20 minutes. And so that's 11.35. Please sit comfortably. The person next door who's teaching martial arts seems to be quite sensitive about being watched and sensitive about having his class disturbed.

[79:30]

And the presence of any of us over there seems to disturb him, or he thinks disturbs the class. And he's asked me a couple of times if everyone's stuff could be out of there and nobody hang out over there. So I don't know what arrangement, Christiana, you made with the... that we can use that table and area, but he seems... In other words... It's this guy. I know, but he's rented it, and we've also rented it. Hmm. Is that a good deal? But he has the swords.

[80:45]

But his sword is bigger than mine. But several of you are trained in the martial arts. Let's go over there. Okay. Okay. Anyway, as a courtesy at lunchtime, I guess maybe I can, I'll talk to him. Let's not be in there too much or take our stuff out or something. But I'll talk to him. Mm-hmm. Now, let me say something about what I'm trying to do. I mean, I suppose in the larger sense, I just am wanting to practice with you and to get to know you better.

[81:49]

And not only getting to know you individually better, but those of you who I only see once in a while because you come to only one seminar or so. I'm still very interested in your... contribution to the seminar and what you feel or experience. And some of the questions that have been coming up, some of them I'd like to probe with you. more, but we'd have to do doksan to do that. And I keep thinking of trying to maybe do doksan during a seminar, but there just isn't time. And doksan is, did you define doksan?

[83:04]

Yeah. And next week in Heidelberg, in the seminar which we're going to study the lineage teachings, I'm going to try to maybe do doksan if we can. And also what I'm trying to do these days is, although I'm talking rather generally to everyone, I'm also commenting on koans in the Ekegan Roku and Shoyuroku. And for those of you who have the Shoyuroku and the Book of Serenity, I will maybe this afternoon tell you which koans I'm commenting on.

[84:15]

So I think what I'll be doing in the future is every seminar I do next year will be a commentary on one or more koans at the same time as if you don't study koans, it's fine. You don't need to know it. Yeah. Now, the general... rush of questions we had there for a little while in discussion. I like because it's actually characteristic of many of, you know, the feelings that come up in each of us doing zazen and as we wonder what the hell are we doing practicing this oriental number.

[85:43]

So I... Did you say something different than I... So I... I think if you're doing this seriously, you keep coming up with reasons why you shouldn't do it. Because if you're doing it seriously, it'll come in conflict with your habits in your life. You'll have to say, okay, anyway. So I'd like to go this way more this afternoon with more discussion.

[86:51]

And I'd also like to try today to sort of bring this together to some extent. And maybe now, since we haven't talked about it, I should introduce this idea and practice of equanimity. Before we go to lunch. Now, did any of you in the... I hope some of you, let me put it that way, in the... during the short zazen rummaged around in your... psyche and consciousness and memory to see if you did have some feeling of joy for no reason that has come up in the past for you. Or joy for a reason is okay. Now, Ken, when we're talking about this thing, it's good to remind yourself that in Buddhism almost any of these things are technical terms.

[88:15]

There are technical terms that sometimes, like Dharma, say, You don't have any associations with Dharma. You don't have the feeling that, well, I remember when I was doing such and such, and this feeling of Dharma came up when I was five. But in the same way, joy is a word like that in Buddhism. Now, it also... resonates with and draws from our use of these words in English and German. It has to resonate with our own sense of these words, but we should also at the same time remember there's a meaning that comes out of Buddhism of these words.

[89:21]

It may be a little different than our association. And of course your experience is much bigger and subtler than words can designate. The topography, the actual topography, is always more subtle than the map. But sometimes you can't find your way around at all without a map. So these words are a little bit like a map. And you have to, again, you bring together your zazen experience that relates to this language. And your personal experience that relates to these words too, independent of meditation or Buddhism.

[90:36]

This is our practice as people who are developing a Western Buddhism and a personal Buddhism. And I like Romeo and Juliet appearing from Munich street names. At least from Tristan and Isolde. Is that right? Yeah. Now, joy in Buddhism, as I said, is a big territory, but one of the specific territories is this, we could say, joy that arises from a sense of well-being. And joy that arises from concentration or the subtle body. Okay, now those distinctions are fairly clear, right?

[91:40]

And the joy that arises from the sense of well-being arises more specifically from a settled and constantly verified worldview. Do you understand that? that the way you see the world and your experience of the world, it's constantly being verified by your experience. You're not fighting with the world all the time. You're saying, hmm, that's the way it is. You may not like it, you may try to change it, but your initial response is, that's the way it is.

[93:00]

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