At that time, if you miss what's being said, take a torch and make a special search deep in the night. How can you attain union? The basis of Zen practice starts and resides in the body. And how to explore your body is an essential and basic part of Zen practice. Again, this is not really gone into much in lay practice, and even in monastic practice, it's sort of taken for granted that everybody does it.

[01:18]

But then it's presented as it opens up in people. So the question I have is how to present the practice of, let's say, one of the first stages is exploring the body. How to present that to you? Maybe it's that we should sit, and while you're sitting, I can make some suggestions. Actually, it's a tradition to give tesho, or a dharma lecture, during sitting. But it's not a tradition to give guided meditations. But for us, in this situation, maybe something in between a lecture and guided meditation is necessary to explore our bodies.

[02:46]

So, let's start out with sitting. To develop a kind of inner eye, an inner way of seeing. And I really don't know how difficult or easy this is for you. But you don't have to worry too much about it because partly the inner eye is awakened through imagining the inner eye.

[04:05]

But don't worry too much about it, because mainly this inner eye is awakened by imagining this inner eye. As I said, the main way we thread mind through the body is with our breath. What are the main ingredients of breath?

[05:31]

Of course, inhalation and exhalation. And you have two nostrils. And a mouth. And a tongue. And you have the pauses at the bottom and top of exhalation and inhalation. And you have the possibility of, as much as possible, leaving the breath alone.

[06:44]

Or you can quicken the breath or slow the breath. Or you can hold the breath. Or you can direct the breath. Thank you. Now in practice, each breath really is your first breath.

[07:56]

And the word used for breath in Sanskrit, prana, means first breath. Or first small unit of energy. So this breath which we naturally enough usually take for granted is really the first small unit of energy which we can which in many ways lies at the source of us. Now I'd first like you to notice now which

[09:00]

nostril you're breathing through. This will shift during the day every can be every now and then, or when you change your state of mind. But usually it's every hour and a half to two hours. By noticing that, you begin to, by noticing it but not interfering with it, you begin to monitor your health and your state of mind actually. The next thing I'd like you to notice is how much of your lungs are being touched by the air of your inhales.

[10:56]

How far up in each lung does it reach into your shoulders? And how much down toward the tips of the lungs near the diaphragm? And how much down toward the tips of the lungs near the diaphragm? Now the sense of this koan is, you know, have you had breakfast yet? It's a practical question, you know, somebody just arrives and you say, have you had a cup of tea or have you had breakfast?

[12:06]

But it's also understood to be a question here by Zhaozhou of what kind of realization do you have, or how well do you understand Buddhism? Or it could be that kind of question. Oder es könnte diese Art von Frage sein. And the way the monk said, yes, I've eaten, it's understood that he meant he's okay. Und so wie der Mönch jetzt antwortet, ja, ich habe schon gegessen, das bedeutet ja, er ist in Ordnung. It's not exactly a proud statement or something. He just says, yes, I've eaten. It's a matter of fact. Das ist jetzt nicht unbedingt ein Ausdruck von Stolz, sondern etwas ganz Praktisches. Ja, ich habe schon gegessen. And then, of course, Zhaozhou says, then you should go wash your bowl.

[13:07]

Now, you can understand that to mean that if you say, yes, I've eaten, there's something, you know, that's a little much and maybe you should go make sure your bowl is clean or empty or something like that. You should get rid of the idea that you've attained something. So the monk might have said, you know, have you had breakfast yet? And the monk might have said, my bowl is empty. But that's a little clever. It's quite okay. Yes, I've eaten. And Zhaozhou says, then go wash your bowl. Now, this shouldn't be too quickly understood only in this way. Because it also has the feeling of the practical thing, of the practical sense of taking care of things.

[14:38]

Of eating and then washing the dishes. and having a feeling of doing everything with completion. And that's very, very, very, very, very basic in Zen practice. But also, there's the sense of the yoga of everyday life. And you can see it in several places in this koan, if you read carefully. In the introduction, when it says, if you miss what's being said, take a torch and make a special search deep in the night. The special torch means the mind's eye, or the ability to see inside the body.

[15:53]

Und eine spezielle Lampe bedeutet hier, das Auge des Geistes zu nehmen oder auf spezielle Weise zu sehen. And make a special search deep in the night means to explore the darkness of Zazen. Und eine besondere Suche mitten in der Nacht, das bedeutet die tiefe, dunkle Suche von Zazen. That's enough for now. The question is, how do you create this torch? So that when you put on your shoes you feel your feet.

[17:05]

This means your mind should be in your feet. And if your mind is in your feet or your breath is in your feet Your feet tend to be soft. And if your breathing is balanced, your hands tend to be soft. So this is the Zen way of talking about these things. They don't spell it out too directly, but they say things like, when you take off your shoes, you feel your feet. And I enjoyed doing it. And especially the second day, we were able to, I think, do some good work. One thing we talked about, as I often talk about, is the feeling, let's just say feeling consciousness.

[18:07]

Now you have different kinds of consciousness. And feeling consciousness or the feeling skanda is the most basic. And it's the substratum or medium of every state of mind. Even of thinking consciousness, the substratum is feeling consciousness. Now usually I just say feeling in contrast or in distinction from emotions. But in this seminar, I'll speak about it as feeling consciousness. Now, feeling consciousness is usually stored or explored in the body, in the heart chakra or this part of your body.

[19:17]

And energy consciousness is explored in this or stored in this part of your body. And both energy consciousness and feeling consciousness are intimately discovered and felt through the breath. In other words, you use breath to thread your grosser mind with your more subtle consciousness. So how to give you a feeling for this exploring your body?

[20:38]

Now in traditional yoga, it's done hatha yoga or yoga using asanas or the postures. It's done through developing at least some and sometimes extraordinary control over the muscles and organs of the body. This may be quite, at least some stages of this may be quite useful in Zen practice. But in Buddhism in general and Zen practice, mostly we do it with this torch, this torch and this special search. This torch of the mind's eye. So you have to find some way to awaken this mind's eye.

[21:55]

And there are several ingredients that help. One is imagination. You just pretend you're doing it. Or you pretend as much as you can. And the second is you become familiar with a kind of inner light. And the most, I think the easiest place to notice that is just before you go to sleep. It's just before you drift off to sleep, you kind of unfocus your attention. And there's a kind of flat sometimes, but flat gray or luminous gray light. And you get to know that light.

[23:21]

You study the transition between waking and sleeping. And you study the changes in your state of mind and the changes in your breath that accompany falling to sleep. Now again, these kind of details I've never, except sometimes I refer a little bit to them, I've never taught in a public situation like this. And I don't know how useful or interesting it is. Because we're not talking about the architecture much at all. We're only talking about carpentry and cabinet making. Maybe we're even talking about the termites. Okay, so this... a sense of a light or kind of, you know, you don't have to have some bright, you know, wonderful thing, just a kind of sense of a background pewter, pewter-colored light.

[24:43]

Now, it may be different with different people, but I would say in general, it's a kind of at first gray background. And as you get more familiar with it and as your interior consciousness becomes more non-referential and becomes lighter and more itself suffused with light Then this gray background has more depth and more luminosity. Or as you get the feeling more when you start meditation of letting mind melt into the sand of your body. And going to sleep that way.

[25:59]

This gray background becomes more, has more light to it. Now the important thing here is Well, two things. One is you're learning to see, just to see an inner light is different than looking at your nose. You're learning to use seeing in a different way than by seeing the trees, for instance. Now, this inner seeing can be applied to outer seeing, but first let's learn it as inner seeing. So just to notice this gray background or a kind of luminosity is already shifting the way you see. And it requires a different pace of being alive. And it requires being outside your ego a bit.

[27:20]

It's too subtle to notice the pressures of daily life. That's why we can notice it more often just before we go to sleep. Because you can't really go to sleep if you are too much caught up in daily life and the mind of the ego. Then you have to have a sleeping pill or something, which is very damaging to your spiritual body. You don't, you have a kind of sick kind of sleep when you use sleeping pills.

[28:23]

So the second thing is that you, the first is you've come to have, to go to notice or to have this kind of inner seeing which requires you to be a bit free of your ego and daily pressures. requires a different pace of life. Now the second thing is, when you notice this feeling, and maybe tonight you can see if you can be present as you're falling asleep and notice this, To notice this and retain a feeling of it requires some skills in developed feeling consciousness. So your non-conceptual interior consciousness has to be somewhat developed in order to remember this kind of light that you may feel just before you go to sleep. So that's the second ingredient.

[29:42]

And the third ingredient is the ability for your breath and mind to stay together for a period of time. And this is developed through the practice of following the breath in zazen. So if you have these tools, the feeling consciousness, and the feeling of this light, And you can have practiced and developed to some extent following your breath with your attention or your mind.

[30:46]

And what was the first thing I mentioned? Yeah, imagination. So if you can develop your intention in a kind of gentle imagination, With these ingredients, you can actually begin to explore your entire body, your lungs, your legs, inside your body, and so forth. It's kind of like having a little light. You can look around. And that's what this koan means. Take a torch and make a special search deep in the night. Now, this is one reason you need a teacher, because, you know, if you read that yourself, you wouldn't know what that meant. That's at least one reason teacher couples are meant to point out. Now, we're going to take a break in a moment.

[31:46]

But the reason I asked you to pay attention to whether your lungs were full or not and how much your breath reached up into your lungs. Because that sensation, if your mind can be in your breath, that sensation of where your breath reaches in your lungs can be a good starting point for following your interior, your body. Anyway, this is sort of basic stuff for awakening the body-mind or the mind-body. So your body is permeated with awareness. And a kind of, it's manifested usually as a kind of softness actually in your body. Okay, so let's take a break for what, about 30 minutes?

[33:21]

Five to 30 minutes? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Great people trying to practice seriously. It's useful to look at what monastic life is like, the usual scene of serious practice. And the main thing all monastic practice is about, and Buddhist monastic practice too, is about ordering your life. We human beings, being so free, are in a way the most free from order. The trees have to, they're rooted, they have certain conditions to live.

[34:45]

And most animals, except maybe rats, have to live in quite defined territories in order to function. And the purpose of the order in a monastery is to make you aware of your own order. And to support you so that you don't have to think too much. You don't have to make many decisions and so forth. Okay, so as a lay person, how are you going to bring order into your life? The kind of order that allows you to realize yourself.

[35:51]

If you can't look to the outside world for this order, then you can look to your body. So the practice of becoming aware of and present in your breath is not just for the sake of awakening the breath body and creating interior space It's also for the sake of creating a sense of order in the exterior dimensions of your life. The first level would be just being able to be present in your inhalations and exhalations. And I think all of you know this is pretty difficult. It's hard enough just to count your breaths in zazen.

[37:17]

But to stay present within your breath all day long is quite difficult. You in fact are present in your breath all day long or you'd be dead. Or very out of breath. But you're not really present in your breath. At least most of us are. So the kind of, but it is possible to do, and it actually, if your intention is to do it, it will happen eventually. And even once you are continuously present or nearly continuously present with your breath, still, there's a long ways to go between you're fully present in your breath

[38:23]

It's like you maybe get in the entryway, but you're not fully living in the house and all its rooms yet. And just this effort can take all your lifetime. But at certain stages, the more developed stages are actually intimately related to your health, how long you live, how long you maintain the qualities of youthfulness. What did she say?

[39:37]

What I said? Funny, huh? But I kind of made a little funny face. Oh, you did? Wondering whether I can save a kind of lifting as a way. Do it. I mean, people don't know you're 50. That's a picture of Gina Lola Brigida today in the newspaper. She looked pretty good at 65. Yeah, she hasn't played. Perhaps. Notice how fast vanity took over this topic.

[40:39]

Okay. But if you're going to be present, for instance, in which nostril you're breathing from, this takes a lot more subtlety than just being present in your exhales and inhales. It's not necessary to become present in which nostril. But it is happening all day long. You're shifting back and forth. And if you want to become more subtle, it's okay to notice it. Actually, a time to practice it is if you're reading or studying for two or three hours.

[41:40]

You can notice at the beginning of your study which nostril you're breathing from and then watch it during the time. It's not so hard to do while you're reading. Es ist nicht so schwer, auch während des Lesen. You can even set your stopwatch. Okay, I'm left nostril on. Man kann selbst seine Stopuhr stillen. Still left nostril on. What? You can't change it? There are techniques for changing it. You can't change it? Yes, there's ways you can put pressure under your arm or so forth. But mostly you can just forcibly do it.

[42:55]

You can do it. But actually a different part of your brain is working when you're left nostril than right nostril. In more conceptual thinking, one nostril is being used and in more creative thinking, another nostril is being used. In zazen you may go quite quickly back and forth. But I forget. And during zazen you often breathe through both. But if you notice there will be an emphasis on one or the other. Okay. So a certain amount, particularly as in the first months or years of practice, a kind of a sense of order in your life is really helpful.

[44:04]

And that sense of order can come from your body rather than from the monastic life toward your body. It can come from your body toward your life. And your body has to be extremely ordered to function. Your lungs and heart and breath all have to work extremely in a very ordered way. And you don't want to create a rigid, disciplined life, particularly. That's not what I mean. I mean, the mind in which you live can have its own sense of order that is present in the yoga of daily life through how your mind senses the order of your breath and the order of your body.

[45:30]

But the subtlety of the order of your body In order for that to be present in your breath, your breath needs to be woven more thoroughly with your body. And for most of us, our breath is not very deeply rooted. It changes in quite a nervous way with our state of mind. If you're nervous or a little anxious, your breathing goes faster and your heart starts to beat and so on. When mind and body are more deeply woven together, it's a kind of deep rhythm in your life, not so jittery in relationship to your state of mind.

[46:47]

So this kind of practice I'm talking about in this seminar is to settle your mind in your body. And to moisten the mind, moisten the body with the mind. Okay, again, going back to the image of the poem.

[48:06]

This poem is the mind woven through the articulations of words with the breath. We could say then this body breath is woven with the articulations of the body. With the parts of the body. Again, you're attempting as a practice while you're sitting to more feel from inside the parts of your body. And feel that each has its own space. And each part of the body has its own quality.

[49:09]

So one thing you will notice, first of all, before you can notice the distinctions of color or feeling of different organs, you'll notice that one side of your body usually feels darker than the other. And if you just sit for a moment right now, you may feel there's more, you feel like you're more present in one side of your body than the other. But you can be present on the left side or the right side easier than the other. And it might be different in your face than in your torso. And if you're going to sign a... color or make a distinction between darkness and light, I think one side will feel a little darker than the other.

[50:39]

On the darker side, you can't penetrate as easily with your attention as you can on the lighter side. Now that's a... Now that's a basic thing to notice in doing zazen. More to notice than to try to do anything about. But again, two things are happening when you do that. One is, again, you're developing the ability to turn seeing inward. And two, you're beginning to develop the language that allows you to read your body.

[51:48]

It's a kind of inner, a kind of non-linguistic language. not a language not based on words, but on feelings or tones or color. And sometimes you can even feel or hear certain sounds within the body. So as I've said many times, if you hear yourself hearing and you begin to create a field of hearing and then you begin to hear these birds right now, for instance, inside of you, what you're doing is you're creating an interior space that hears the birds within.

[53:02]

But hearing things from within is not quite the same as turning your hearing inward. Turning your hearing inward is almost like into the inner silence of the body, which has a quality of sound to it. Now, to get back to a more practical level, You want to when you first, you can when you first sit, practice filling your lungs as much as possible. And the usual way to do that is what's called bamboo breathing.

[54:14]

So if you just breathe, inhale as deeply as you can. Sort of like this. Can't get very far. But if you do it in a series of steps, you can fill your lungs quite a lot. And that series of steps is called bamboo breathing. So one thing you can do at the beginning of some periods or the first time you get ready to sit in the morning. And not enough of you who sit actually do much rocking back and forth and preparing yourself for sitting. In general, you want to move a bit till you feel a certain fluidity in your body. A certain flexibility. And if all parts of your body don't feel open, you do something to make them feel open. Like cross your arms behind your back or stretch your shoulders back.

[55:38]

Or turn your head to the part of the right and then part of the left. And usually rock a little forward and back. And left and right. And then during that you sort of start bringing your attention to your breathing while you're doing that and your breathing then starts making your posture more subtle from inside if while you're making these movements you bring your mind to your breath. Ideally, when you start sitting, you feel the tingle of breath at the top of your head and at the base of your spine. Again, unless you're lucky, it takes a while before that openness of breath in your body, you can feel it.

[56:42]

Am I driving you crazy with all this talk about breath and details? Okay. Well, anyway, so if you inhale several times through this bamboo breathing, you can try it, and then hold it. Until your lungs are quite full. And just hold it, and then sometimes press down on it. without exhaling, and hold it till you feel a kind of melting feeling.

[57:52]

Now you can practice holding a long time and so forth, but in Zen practice we don't do that much unless you have some special interest in it. But every time you do that, and say that every second or third time you did zazen, you tried that, you were becoming more conscious of how open your lungs are. And you sometimes want to do the opposite practice, which is exhale as much as you can. Again, in a series of exhales. Pulling in your stomach muscle. And holding it again. That sometimes can hurt you in the chest a little bit.

[59:15]

But again, this is not to develop fancy or specialized breathing exercises. This is to get familiar with your lungs and try to open up your breathing up here especially more. And sometimes you can even pat yourself up here with your fingertips. Which helps you to feel your breath up there. In general, the basic energy which you live your life through comes from or is always in touch with the energy of breath.

[60:23]

So this daily practice of paying attention to your breathing is also the feeling of having a certain reserve of energy in your breath. Now, I don't exactly mean you have just a lot of stale air in your chest that you haven't breathed out. So no one wants to be in front of you when you exhale. Dragon breath. Lizard mouth. But rather... Because when we do that bamboo exhale, you're trying to expel everything and clean your lungs.

[61:34]

And the more your lungs are opened up, the less of this dead air you have in you. The more it circulates when you're breathing. But by slightly having your inhales slightly more conscious than your exhales, it helps to actually have a feeling of a reserve of energy in your breath. So I think that's enough on breath at this point. Is there something anybody would like to talk about or ask me a question about or bring up for the sake of yourself or others? I mean, it's not just a question, it's your help in shaping this discussion so that it helps others too.

[62:39]

And that's not just a question, but it helps me to form this seminar somehow. I have a question to this breathing exercise or putting my intention to these nostrils. Like normally when I can only breathe through one nostril, like when I'm stuffed up or I have a cold, I feel this quite a limitation. So in order to practice this or develop this ability, would it help to just imagine I'm breathing through one nostril? Yeah. Yes. Also, of course, you can blow your nose and things like that, practical things. But in general, even if you have a cold, you'll notice that the stuffiness will shift to the other nostril after a few, later in the day.

[63:58]

I'm not sure you've understood my question. If I breathe through one nostril, for example, when I have a cold, this is something I feel is very unpleasant. Right. So I don't know how to find a gate to that practice because I experience this being so unpleasant. When it happens through just, for example, a cold, would it help then to just imagine it? Yes, as I said. But also... probably later in the day you'll find out you're stuffed up in the other nostril. Because there's a relationship between mucus and all that stuff and the kind of consciousness you have. If you bring your attention more to your breathing, it actually helps you get rid of a cold. Do you want to say something about that? One practice of helping you get rid of a cold, actually, is to breathe with your tongue out for a while.

[65:21]

Is it a gene or? And breathing with your mouth open and your teeth closed increases the moisture in your breath. But generally you can do these more special kinds of breathing and I do them when I have a cold or something or I can feel something and I feel if I breathe a little differently it modulates it. But you have these different ingredients that are part of breath.

[68:18]

Your mouth, your nostrils, your inhaling exhales, your diaphragm, your stomach muscles. And whether the breath feels like it's circling like this, or circling like this, or circling like this, and so forth. There's quite a repertoire of things you can do that most of us don't notice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. If you are more than a couple hours on one side than another, it's usually a sign that something's out of balance with you.

[69:22]

And if you learn how to make the shift, you can actually take a kind of care of your health through doing it, as Florian says. One way is to put your hand in your armpit and push up hard and down. It will tend to change it. As Florian says, you push on your side, but I don't. I'm trying. Yeah. But in general, if you practice zazen, you can change it intentionally. Yes.

[70:35]

This is the first time I will mention a relationship between zazen practice and the physical . Could you go into this a little more so as to point out whether this is simply a concept of psychosomatic relationship, or is it more than just a kind of mirror or reflection of the mind that breaks out of the body? Like measles breaks out in the body, your mind breaks out in your body, and you start scratching your mind. Something like that. Yeah. Well, we don't like to emphasize in Zen practice the benefits, the goodies.

[71:37]

And generally the attitude in Zen practice is if you're sick, just be sick. And generally the attitude in Zen practice is if you're sick, just be sick. You can intend to get better, but it's all right to be sick. It's like the story of the man who was reborn as a fox for many generations because he gave the wrong answer to the question about can you be free of your karma or not. So he was reborn for many generations as a fox. So when people work with this koan they're trying to get the right answer so you won't get reborn as a fox. But the real answer is, what's wrong with being a fox?

[72:50]

A fox. So it's called a fox. Yeah. I saw a fox. I was like a rabid fox. Yeah, I did see, I saw actually in the men's room of a restaurant in Berlin, I saw a fox out the window. No, going through the garbage, just living in Berlin. Came from East Germany, I think. Now that the wall is down. Well, in America you have raccoons living in the cities, all over the place.

[73:51]

They're very smart and they're great. But in general, yes, Zazen practice helps your health. If your breathing and your energy work better, then you work better. And if you can direct your mind's eye to particular organs or particular problems, you can help speed up your immune system. And if you can be present in the actuality of the moment and not the conscious apprehension of the moment, Then you can notice when things happen to you immediately, as I say headaches start and things, and you can begin to change immediately.

[74:53]

And more basically, as I've said, if you develop a feeling of physical and mental intactness, which helps keep you healthy. But these are, for Zen practice, just byproducts. And in fact, we make almost no effort to learn them. And to make an effort to learn them would be considered, particularly for Mahayana practice, a lower form of practice that interferes with your realization. However, if you became very sick and your life was threatened, lower forms of practice may be quite okay. If your choice is between no practice at all and lower forms of practice.

[76:26]

Okay. Anybody else? Yeah. Thank you. in the heart, with the pot, and in the cage, then you go and wash your bowl. I have a feeling that there is, that's why it would fail, to wash the bowl, because you would move the bowl with the pot. You do what? You would move the situation. By washing the bowl? Yeah. Yeah. And there's no interest in that, you know. You don't look at it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that seems like a contradiction.

[77:26]

I agree. That's part of what makes it a koan. I also like catching a dragon with a straight hook. The next line in the commentary. I mean, can you imagine catching a dragon with a straight hook? Yeah. But that, of course, means uncorrected mind. That's to make no effort because if you drop a straight hook down, you're not going to catch anything. Okay. Wash the bowl also though means he says wash the bowl because he said he had eaten. Okay. Something else. Say that again? Yeah. Yeah.

[78:27]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you stopped sitting and your head went back. That was happening to me too, you know. So what happened? Did it have any relationship to sitting or not sitting? And then your hair grew back. Yeah, me neither. Did it grow back thicker or prettier?

[79:31]

Curlier? Oh, good. Somebody else said something. Yeah. Many things you said about breath reminded me to breath therapy, according to Mittenhoff. So, on my hand, that might be a good preparation for that then. Or you said that would be considered as a lower practice, according to my honor. Which would be? Mittenhoff's practices? I don't know what his are, though. Well, the practice is that... Breath. What? Worthy breath. It depends on your intention in working with breath. The way I'm speaking about it is to notice your breath as a way to become familiar with your body and bringing body and mind together. But there's no purpose beyond that. If you started working with your breath to attain certain goals, then that would be considered fine, but at the same time interfering with deeper practice.

[80:40]

If your practice is, say that you or someone is a breath therapist, Or you use breath as part of a therapy. Then that's part of a therapy. You can continue your practice of therapy. And that therapy may inform and deepen your Zazen practice. But you have to distinguish between the therapy practice and the zazen practice. Like if you do tai chi, say. Tai Chi make, I definitely see it in people.

[81:55]

Tai Chi makes people's bodies more receptive to the teaching than people have had no experience like that. I can really feel people's bodies hearing the teaching. I don't find that so true for martial arts. But it's partly true. But it's quite true for qigong, tai chi, and those more softer practices. But in any case, to say that you do do tai chi, you can't confuse the practice of tai chi with dada. There are two different practices which inform each other.

[82:56]

So I don't think somebody who is doing Tai Chi should stop doing Tai Chi or their breath therapy or whatever. But the large organizing attitudes or motivations are different. And those large motivating attitudes are much more important than the specifics that you do. Really, if you don't have the large organizing attitudes straight, no matter what practice you do, it won't take you very far. And again, that's why the Buddha's teaching starts with right views, not complete views. Now, I think we've talked enough for a while.

[84:01]

Unless somebody else has something they want to bring up. Anyone? Happy to listen to you. I'm not so happy to listen to myself. Yeah. Yeah. In zazen, you're exhaling consciously. I mean, usually the emphasis, that's why we count, as I said, we count our breath. In zazen, we emphasize more the exhalation, so we count our breath. But in daily practice of being present with your breathing, as a steady state of mind, you're a little bit more present with your inhale.

[85:07]

And your inhales are usually a little longer than your exhales. But you can do it anyway. You just do it. Try it both ways. I mean, these things are, again, not hard and fast rules. They're, you know, have to do with us now. But in general, what I said, I think, is correct. But as I said, these are not fixed rules. So just try to experiment with them.

[85:56]

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