Explain to you but also to myself why this posture of zazen can make, does make, such an extraordinary difference in people's lives. Sometimes it's a fairly immediate difference fairly soon after starting to practice difference. But primarily the differences accumulate over your lifetime.

[01:05]

No, I can't say that any of the things I say will be true for you. But it does look like overall it definitely increases your longevity. Well, why? I mean, it's not really clear why. At least it's not clear to me. And it's almost nowadays a fashion, a big change from when I started practicing. almost a fashion to recommend meditation to people.

[02:17]

And for the neuroscientists to find it the main topic of interest, The study of meditation. Or to study consciousness. And then, as part of that, they often end up also studying meditation. Because meditation is a way to study consciousness. It's a different way than neuroscience. It's hard to have a non-goal-oriented neuroscience.

[03:37]

And maybe it's impossible, but some awareness of why Zazen is most profoundly affective and effective when it's goal-less. What was the beginning? And for neuroscientists, some understanding of why zazen is most profoundly affective and effective, if you can make that distinction, when it's without a goal. It is interesting for neurologists to see that meditation is the most effective and the most changeable when it is done without purpose, not without a goal, but without following a goal.

[05:04]

Change, of course, is happening all the time. Selbstverständlich findet Veränderung die ganze Zeit statt. There's no alternative to change. Everything is changing. Es gibt ja auch gar keine Alternative zur Veränderung. Alles ändert sich ununterbrochen. But change also is very slow. Aber Veränderung ist auch sehr langsam. And as I often say, we're in a very primitive stage of... ...citification and civilization. Well, the word civilization means citification. And... In other words, what happens when a lot of people spend a lot of time together?

[06:19]

We call civilization. But to put things into perspective, a kind of perspective at least, I am relatively familiar with a 200-year unit of time. When I used to spend summers with my grandparents, they spoke about things that went back to 1850, and their great aunt who lived with the Houghtons said, And I think many of you will be alive in 2050. It goes without saying that I probably won't.

[07:37]

But that's 200 years. And some of the dishes that I have from grandparents, it's not real different from, you know, no computers, but it ain't really so different. Well, 10 of those units bring you back, or 200 of your units, bring you back to Christ. Twelve and a half 200-year units bring you back to Buddha. Not very long. And I live now more than myself, more than three quarters of 100 years.

[08:55]

And it's taken me a long time to change. The other example I use often when I talk about this It took, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years for anybody to think of padding a dashboard of a car. How many thousands of people lost their lives in cars without safety belts and padded dashboards? Well, it's only 50,000 people now. We can wait another 50 or 100 before we pad a dashboard. So my point is, we right now are in the midst of developing what Buddhism is.

[10:14]

And for Zen, in particular, Buddha is not the goal, Buddha is the starting point. We don't know what is possible for human beings. The Buddhist tradition shows us a great deal of what's possible for human beings. We only know some. Okay. We only know some of the Buddhist or some of all of the possibilities. So we are experimenting. This is a kind of adventure.

[11:18]

And what's possible is for us living together, let's hope that we can stop killing each other one of these days, and so forth. But we're still in a pretty primitive state. Now, people have always, you know, know thyself and all that. You know, people have always wanted to study themselves. But, you know, even a question like know thyself is already Well, the I makes it kind of romantic or furious. And then self, what the hell is self?

[12:46]

You can feel the difference in just the ways in which words direct our attention. You can feel the difference in just the ways in which words direct our attention. You can feel the difference if you ask yourself, who am I? And feel yourself into that. And then pause for a moment or two. And then ask yourself, what am I? What am I changes the landscape of the question immediately from who am I. So it's, you know, the...

[13:53]

Simple words, two words starting with W. What and who? It can make such a difference. Okay. So the process by which we study, what do we study? Buddhism doesn't really say, study the self. In fact, it says, forget the self, you'll be better off. And I remember when I left home for a while and lived in the YMCA.

[15:15]

Young Men's Christian Association. I was also a member of the YMHA, the Young Men Hebrew Association. I wasn't Jewish, but they had a better YMCA than the YMCA. And while I was there, I was a lifeguard in Sunbu. City swimming pool. I remember a survey I read. I don't mind telling you this. They asked people how much they think of themselves. And how much they studied themselves.

[16:36]

And the more accomplished the person in the world, the less they studied themselves. The more neurotic you were, you studied the self a lot. Okay. So I thought, gee, I thought I was supposed to study the self. Anyway, so in Buddhism we might say, know thy mind. But thy would be a problem, because that means your, our. So no, we might say no, the mind, but certainly Buddhism emphasizes studying the mind, not the self. And what do they mean by mind? Wait, don't mean consciousness.

[17:52]

If you study consciousness, you're studying it in the context of and in contrast to mind. If you study consciousness, you're studying it Im Gegensatz oder im Zusammenhang von Geist. Wie studieren wir also den Geist im Gegensatz zu Bewusstsein? Und weshalb schauen wir uns das im Gegensatz zu den Geist, im Gegensatz zu Bewusstsein an? These are really, in the context of Buddhism, very basic questions. And the more thoroughly they're clear to you, probably the more precise and effectual your zazen will be, your meditation will be.

[19:07]

And the more Okay, so let's go back again to this simple contrast between the vertical posture and the horizontal posture. As we spoke about just before lunch. Yeah, I mean again, we don't think posture can't make that much difference. But as I said, you look at the architecture of the Western world and it's about rooms you're vertical in or rooms you're horizontal in.

[20:09]

And the furniture, et cetera. And again, I pointed out that the... Japanese want you to sleep in the same room. They want you to be vertical, horizontal in the same room in which you're vertical. So it's not just that they don't have much space and so they try to be efficient and use the room both ways. It really represents a different concept of the body. Or of our mind-body-life. Now what do I mean by a different concept? Let me give you a simple example, again related in this case, related also to Japan.

[21:24]

When I moved to Japan in 67 or 68, Most people still live in a traditional Japanese house. They don't heat their houses. They don't heat their houses. How is it this cold in here? I can see my breath on the air. And when you speak Japanese, while you speak, hot and cold air and say, why don't you heat the air? A well-formed human being would be a human being.

[22:27]

The house isn't cold. They heat the body, not the . Lessons learned. So tables with . And then crutches which heat your hands. And if you keep your arms warm and your hands warm, then you have your hands warm. If you keep your arms warm, then you have your hands warm. And if it's really hot, the heaters that are like the cigarette lighters go down into your clothes.

[23:44]

Or sometimes I put fire, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I don't. Pieces are like trees. Pieces are like, [...] I was in a recent stint recently at the River Nights here in New England. And the way they cook and the way they talk quite cold in New England then, and in practical, not as cold, but in practical. Simple house jobs, four huge house jobs, four. Into a practice room.

[24:51]

In the middle of the four-heel pack. And the walls were four-heels. Fireplace. And the fireplace. And the deep is from. No control. in and they would turn it on this new thing you know they would and things would cook at different speed um I said, uh, uh, when places would move. When closer places would. They just had piles of ovens that hang something over the people. Okay, then you left. And I noticed that I was in this house, which was particularly poor person's house. There's only one poor person. And it is the poor person's house. Yeah, and it was huge like me.

[26:01]

And for the colonial period, the first childbirth, Oh, great. If you get to the back of the stove. When all these fancy clothes and all these fire things come together, this... I tell you a secret. I can't tell you a secret. I'll show you a secret. A [...] secret. That's all I have to do.

[27:10]

And if we're trying to keep the Zendo in it, so we're going to end by this upcoming episode. If we're going to come up with a new actor, we're going to end up with a new actor. We're not quite done yet, as long as the practice period starts on September 10th. That's all. [...] And part of the 1000 year old tradition of transmission. And part of the generation of broadcasts that are already 6000 years old. That you sleep where you also sleep. I don't think we need to recall. I don't think we need to sleep. I feel strongly that that opportunity should be there. And if you don't take the opportunity, it's okay.

[28:23]

But the fact that the opportunity is there, even if you don't take it, makes a difference. But the fact that the possibility exists makes a big difference. So the idea in a practice period, we're going to try the first one that we've done at least for 90 days in Europe starting this September 15th. Is the feeling of you have about two meters long and one meter wide space where you basically locate your life for three months. It's not so easy to do. Particularly if you're owning a smartphone.

[29:41]

Or you happen to have family, brothers, sisters, cousins, children. Or obligations. So anyway, it's actually quite not so easy to do. But the idea is But you try to create an outer situation which makes you turn inward for all your needs. As long as you inhabit consciousness, you can't turn inward for all your needs. Okay, so let's look again at vertical and horizontal.

[30:55]

And then we'll have a break. Okay, what's going on when you're vertical? You don't want to fall over. You have to stay upright. You have to keep walking around or doing something, you know. If you're vertical and you don't want to fall over, you have to be aware of your surroundings. And awareness of your surroundings requires consciousness. It's that simple. It's obvious, but we don't usually think in such obvious terms. Okay, so what happens when you're horizontal? Well, your organs can all reset themselves.

[32:19]

Unless you're a nervous person and everything is keep running while you're trying to not run. Like you just made your phone work by taking the chip out and putting it back in, right? Well, that's resetting the organs. So the horizontal is a kind of reset button. I once promised myself I would never use computer metaphors in talking, but you know, stupid. Yeah, now when I see somebody sleep, I say, there he is defaulting. Okay, there's no... The computer language is English.

[33:39]

In English? Well, this helps me. Okay. So, also your musculature can relax. Auch deine Muskulatur kann entspannen. You can withdraw consciousness from your musculature. Du kannst das Bewusstsein von der Muskulatur abziehen. It changes blood flow and blah, blah, blah. Okay, so at some point, took many centuries, somebody noticed, somebody decided, let's try to see if we can find a combination of the vertical posture and the horizontal posture. Dass jemand entschieden hat, herauszufinden, ob man eine Kombination von der vertikalen und der horizontalen Position schaffen kann.

[34:45]

Denn es ist unvermeidlich, dass die Leute herausgefunden haben, dass es einen Unterschied zwischen horizontalen und vertikalen Haltung gab. And people couldn't sleep all the dark hours of a northern hemisphere world. So you're in various levels of sleep during a long night before there's dawn. So you know our early ancestors are clearly observing, unavoidably observing what it's like to sleep at various stages of sleep. The poet Gary Snyder, a Zen practitioner and one of the pioneer Zen practitioners in America, and famous now poet, he thinks that his theory, nobody knows, but his theory is maybe hunters discovered Zazen.

[36:09]

Because the Jäger, it's a nice word, the Jäger has to be very still and wait for the animals to come by. And the more successfully still you are, probably the more successful hunter you are. And they probably also noticed that they began to have a rapport with the animals and could kind of predict the animal's behavior through their own stillness. From that they might have concluded that maybe there's some quality of stillness that animals and we share.

[37:31]

And this would enter into all the shamanic study and practice of the relationship with animals. And probably why shamans often wore, particularly in cold Russia, bare skins and wore animal teeth to practice shamanism. And that is certainly the reason why shamans in cold Russia often have bear fangs and So, since now you're aware, as of this moment, that you're practicing a kind of citified shamanism, we can stop and have a citified, civilized break.

[39:00]

Okay, thank you very much.

[39:10]

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