I love seeing all of you here, each of you here. And since there's quite a few people I don't know, many I know, but quite a few people I don't know. Maybe I should start, you know, in some basic way about what we're doing. And I should say that what we call the prologue day means a day we can talk about anything. We don't have to speak about the topic. Tonight we're supposed to start speaking about the topic. But now we can speak about anything we like. And if anybody, oh, you've got a good system.

[01:26]

Anybody needs a chair, that's fine too. Well, you know, we're not doing religious Buddhism here. Wir machen hier keinen religiösen Buddhismus. We're doing praxis or practice Buddhism. Wir machen hier praxis oder praxis Buddhismus. But we don't entirely ignore the religious side of Buddhism. Wir tun nicht diese religiöse Seite des Buddhismus völlig ausgrenzen oder ignorieren. Because we want to be part of the larger world of Buddhism. Weil wir auch Teil dieser größeren buddhistischen Welt sein möchten. But I've spent the last more than 40 years trying to sort out what parts of the more religious side of Buddhism are, you know, beneficial parts of practiced Buddhism.

[02:35]

I don't know the answer, but we're always negotiating some line. In the seminars I just did in Berlin and in Rastenberg in Germany, in Austria, there's very little of religious Buddhism. And here there's somewhat more. But still, it's... And I'm happy to speak during the seminar anytime with any of you about, you know, where we draw the line. Yes. But still, for me, the more chanting and the altar and offering incense and all, my wearing the tiny Buddhist robe,

[04:03]

are all, for me, the more religious parts of practice which make sense as practice. But for the most part, I would like you to think of this as not, what we're doing here is not even Buddhism. We're learning from the teaching of Buddhism. But we're learning, yeah, I hope, things that help us study ourselves or know ourselves. And I'm always struck by how young our civilization is and naive our civilization is.

[05:29]

And how long it takes us to learn simple things. You know, although there's efforts to show that meditation has been part of Western culture, and various Catholic saints are kind of used as examples, but For the most part, I would say that meditation as a practice has not been explored in the West. Some unusual individuals came to similar views of mind and body. But, yeah, that's more by chance and genius than by a developed, widely understood practice.

[06:46]

Although... Thomas Merton, who was the leading Catholic monastic in the United States for some decades... said that he found that Catholic monasticism and Zen meditation produced a similar kind of person.

[07:47]

I find this, yeah, probably somewhat rather true. Well, the same kind of person, but not exploring oneself in, you know, really anywhere near the same kind of way. Now, I'm not... I'm not saying this to make a comparison. I'm just saying this, that to do this is actually something new and unusual in our culture.

[08:50]

Even among, although Buddhism is rooted in the fruits of meditation, Even among Buddhist schools, Zen emphasizes meditation far more than any other. The emphasis is, let's not just let a few meditate and produce a teaching for us. The emphasis is more, let's all meditate and discover the teaching ourselves. Okay. You know, I mean, again, I'm surprised by how long it takes generations, centuries, for us to notice something or make it, you know, a general societal or cultural understanding.

[10:20]

Socrates, of course, said something like, know thyself. But still, many centuries later, recently, Freud could take a whole new approach to knowing oneself. A way of personal interacting. Creating a similar state of mind. Using a somewhat meditative posture, in his case half reclining. And a mind that's not quite conscious, that we call free association.

[11:25]

And he found the healing effect, the power of bringing things into consciousness. Now, it's interesting that for Buddhism, feeling consciousness is a big part of the problem. Bringing things into consciousness, yeah, that does have a power. And I like Sophia, our four-year-old daughter. A few months ago in Crestone, she said something about that she wanted to come to get in bed with us.

[12:48]

And we said... I don't remember you were speaking to her, but we said something about she could, but she was scared because you asked about was she scared of her dreams or something like that. Yes, and she said that sometimes your dreams scare her. But when she opens her eyes, they're just air ghosts. So, yeah, making things conscious does make a difference. Opening your eyes. But the job of consciousness is to make the world predictable. And implicitly makes us look for permanence. And to see things implicitly or explicitly as permanent

[13:50]

or hopefully permanent, is technically in Buddhism delusion. So Buddhism wants to find a way to negotiate around or through consciousness. In this process of knowing ourselves. What Buddhism has decided to do is to emphasize attention and to develop attention.

[15:12]

And to understand that attention is separate from consciousness. Und dass man verstehen kann, dass Aufmerksamkeit etwas vom Bewusstsein getrenntes ist. For instance, when you're going to sleep. Zum Beispiel, wenn man einschläft. If you get up in the night and you can't go back to sleep. Wenn man nachts aufwacht und dann nicht mehr einschlafen kann. Or even at the beginning of the night you can't go to sleep because you're thinking about things. Oder sogar am Anfang von der Nacht, dass man nicht einschlafen kann, weil man über Dinge nachdenkt. And your mind engaged in consciousness is the problem. But the problem is also more in more detail is that you're giving attention to consciousness.

[16:17]

For example, if you can pull your attention away from consciousness and bring your attention to, let's say, a dream you were just having and then let your attention flow into the dream, you'll probably go to sleep. No, I spoke at Berlin and Rastenberg about the four so-called four noble postures.

[17:42]

It came up there because in the first seminar I did in Rastenberg, we were speaking about the four foundations of mindfulness. And the way I emphasized the importance of the four foundations, the four noble postures, the emphasis I gave to the four noble postures. It's something I've said before, but actually it struck me. It's something I have to make clear. And so I brought it up again in Berlin, and now I'm bringing it up here. Why are there four noble postures?

[18:45]

This sounds kind of silly. Yeah. What's behind making such a enumeration? Why is one posture more noble than another? It's a distinction actually between, I don't know what words to use, and I don't know if it works in German very well, but in English it works with creating two separate terms, position and posture. I don't know if it works that way in German. There is a difference between what we have introduced in English as terms. Position and posture. Something like that.

[19:45]

Position and posture. Okay. And I was struck by watching a Noh play or a Kabuki play in Japan. And one of the first things I felt, I've gone quite often, one of the first things I felt was why is it that you could take a picture at any point of the actors and it's an extraordinary picture? And the first thing that really struck me was why you could take a photo of these actors at any time. And that's always a perfect or beautiful picture. Yes, and... You know, it's very hard to capture a dramatic picture, but any picture you took, just snap me your camera.

[20:49]

A thousand times you'd get a dramatic picture. And I realized that they are moving not from position to position, but from posture to posture. And what does that mean? It means what I'm calling a posture now is a position of the body that you can fill with energy. You know, for example, if I sit this way, it's pretty hard for me to fill this with energy. You look terrible. And if I try to fill this position with energy, with a bicycle pump, you know, I'm in a different shape.

[21:50]

And you can see it in the martial arts, which come from yogic cultures. They are teaching more and more refined postures that you can fill with energy. And the basic feeling is in this yogic culture that if you find yourself, I don't know how to say it, but filled with energy all the time, You're going to be healthier and feel stronger.

[23:05]

So the four noble postures are those for reclining, standing, walking and sitting. I remember Charlotte Selver, who was one of the, in the United States, the pioneer of the teaching sensory awareness. I've had several women teachers and she was the first and one of the strongest. Ich hatte einige Frauen als Lehrerinnen und sie war eine der ersten und auch eine der beeindruckendsten oder kräftigsten. And she was strong. She lived to 102, I think. Almost, maybe.

[24:06]

I think 102. Also sie war wirklich stark, weil sie hat bis, ich glaube, 102, also 101 auf jeden Fall gelebt. I was sitting with her, with Sophia, meaning a 102-year-old woman. Oh, no, at this point she was about 90. No, 101. 101 when you were there? 99, this other thing happened. So when she was 99, I was sitting with her and we were talking, she was like a 14-year-old girl, very thin and completely alert. Yeah, that was when she was 101. I need her, you know. As she was 101, I sat next to her and she was like a 14-year-old girl and Sophia was also there. I said to her, you know, Charlotte, I had several small enlightenment experiences with you. And she pulled herself up to her full height and said, what do you mean small? And then she puffed up to her full size and said, ''What do you mean with small?''

[25:20]

But one experience, and to show you how small or life-changing an enlightenment experience can be, small and life-changing, I've been used to being in meetings and all kinds of things. People say, okay, now in school, let's stand up. And I always can't resist saying, I find out that everybody in Germany stands up in the morning in bed. We get up, but in Germany you stand up. Okay. But anyway, she said, this first time I was with her, And her presence was a big part of what she said.

[26:38]

And how the words came one after another. The words in themselves a physical sequence, not a mental sequence. She said, come up to standing. And suddenly, when I stood up, I went through a series of postures to get to standing. It was as if a physical territory was suddenly opened to me. When before I'd just gone from two physical positions with nothing in between. And suddenly a whole territory of existence, living, between sitting and standing, was revealed to me.

[27:57]

So this was a good example of bringing attention through language. And you can think of language as wiring to carry attention. So she was able to, in a sense, physicalize her words. That the map, the topography of coming up to standing was already in her words.

[29:18]

So there was a physical attention carried in her words. I would say there was a spine in her words. that carried me up along and through my spine to standing. And I'd recently started practicing with Suzuki Roshi. A month, so it was all about the same time. So I'd had enough baby mindfulness or... beginning mindfulness, developed, that I could actually feel this topography of coming up to standing.

[30:35]

To find the posture of standing. And it was clear it wasn't a position of standing. It was a posture of standing I found from inside. And a posture I was always negotiating. And a posture I was always negotiating. So these four noble postures are rooted in an assumption that we can live in this world always in some reclining, walking, standing or sitting And that each of these four can be knowable and noble.

[32:03]

Actually, knowable and noble are the same root. And we can find in each of these four ways, four postures in which we live, four positions, territories in which we live. we can find within these territories the posture which we can fill with aliveness. So the point in this feeling It's not, for example, that you walk down the hall to get from point A to point B, but that you walk down the hall in a way that you feel the point.

[33:22]

the posture of standing and walking. And another teaching that's in such a little thing, when we look at another culture in such a common phrase, when we look at such a common phrase, We can see really the difference, the cultural difference, the background. Is it a different mind goes with each of these four postures? It's very clear, it's very difficult to go to sleep if you're standing. Unless you're a horse. Or unless you're driving. So reclining lends itself to sleeping.

[34:55]

And sitting lends itself to meditation. And this was so thoroughly understood in the culture that the Japanese never brought chairs into their houses until very recently. Because you should support yourself in your sitting. So even when people got old, and couldn't sit very well, they still had little props, little chairs, but basically chairs that helped them find their own posture. As I've said, when the Chinese introduced chairs quite a lot of centuries ago, And you've all seen Chinese chairs, these flat bottoms and curved arms.

[36:14]

They're exact copies of Buddhist ceremonial chairs. meant to be sat in, cross-legged, or in an upright posture. And this yogic sense of the posture as energy of liveness and healing even of awareness, healing, whatever, was so taken for granted That chairs were always used, almost always, for people to sit cross-legged in.

[37:40]

Now, I'm not saying you should all throw your chairs away or get flat, uncomfortable chairs or something like that. But I'm just trying to give you some background. on how the exploration of the possibilities of mind and of knowing oneself was rooted in a wider cultural understanding as posture as having an intelligence and awareness in it For example, again, just in calligraphy. If you want to use a brush full of ink. And make a kanji that looks like anything. It's a series of gestures. And if your posture isn't good, the kanji won't be good.

[39:01]

And they talk about the spine in a kanji. And you have the brush You have your spine, and your posture is in the character. And if you're sensitive, you can feel the posture of the... calligrapher in his calligraphy or her calligraphy. So in this yoga culture, which has been developed by Buddhism and which Buddhism has developed in, One of the tools of knowing oneself is the posture which allows you to know yourself.

[40:09]

The posture which allows you to study yourself. And widens and opens the territories of existence. Waking and sleeping and meditating. And so forth. But now it's time to open to, I think, a break. So let's have a break. Thank you for translating. And we'll continue in sitting posture with some obscure advice about how to sit.

[41:10]

If you care to try.

[41:28]

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