I'm pleased to see so many of you again this year. And those who joined us last evening. And also Myoken Roshi from Budapest joined us. And his disciple. Name I forget. Well, thanks. Can you hear that? Yeah. Got it. OK. And I hear, I heard, I hear that some of you can't hear. in the back and there's more people now so I have to speak more loudly. Can you still hear? If you're in the same place you were during the afternoon. You're in the same seat you were during the afternoon.

[01:09]

But if someone can't hear, please do something. Or if you prefer not to hear, that's all right. Okay. Now usually when I speak about something, I worry that is what I'm saying useful to those who have been practicing a long time. And at the same time I worry that people new to practice make sense of what I'm speaking about.

[02:12]

And then I also have to consider those who Yeah, probably we'll never do formal Zen practice. Yeah, Ken, is what I'm saying useful to those persons as well. But with this teaching, I don't have any of those worries. Because it's so basic and so wide in its extensions and on the whole quite conceptually clear that even a person who doesn't do formal Buddhist practice holds this in some way

[03:19]

conceptually, in their understanding, it will inform, yeah, it can easily inform us in our thinking and our behavior. But again, the holding, I think there's another word. Hold means in English to hold in front of you or to hold in your hands, but doesn't hold also in German, the direct translation, mean to stop? Yes. So there's another word that could be used maybe. I don't know what word you're using. We discussed it the other day. Holding in the sense of holding in front of you, not in the sense of stopping. Okay. In English the word halten has two meanings, just like in German, namely to hold something from one side and on the other side to stop, to stop, to stand.

[04:38]

And Hosche asked me how to translate it and I always translate it with halten in the sense of to hold on to oneself. So what is the fruit of what I said last night? Well, the main thing is... to bring attention to not the body, but the activities of the body. Now, part of this mindfulness of the body or bodyfulness of the body, is to explore the body internally.

[05:46]

So tension and awareness penetrates the body from the inside out as well as from the outside in. And the more this Simultaneously, inner and outer territory. It changes a lot how we feel. It changes how we participate in being sick, actually, too. and how we participate in getting well and how we accept and work with suffering but this teaching I think has you know again I'm not worried about

[06:56]

making sense to anyone, I do. Because although while in its articulation and in its sequence, It's very definitely a Buddhist practice. At the same time, it's not a Buddhist practice at all. It's just about being alive. Now I also think that we have a wonderful opportunity here these two days now to look at this Teaching of the four foundations of mindfulness.

[08:24]

In, yeah, with some completeness, thoroughness. Because it's really not very often, even in one lifetime, that we have a chance to look at teaching like this and to look at it with such a group of people. Because our bodies are not isolated phenomena. But there's a resonant somatic body where there's a a mutuality of recognitions and understanding.

[09:28]

And for me too, it's very rich to go back to this practice. And to go back to it again thoroughly. Because I always find it's like, well, I say if you imagine your life as a painting. That's a rather fluid painting. You look at one part, it's there. Then you look at another part of the painting. But when you go back to the part you looked at before, It's changed.

[10:29]

It's not waiting for you. Let's still, let's say, looking at one's life as a painting. And the painting of my life is much painted through the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. But when I look at it again, I find... Finer brushes. Or I find areas that were just details. Tiny details. Now whole new potential areas are... areas of the painting.

[11:32]

So I don't mind going back to this teaching again for myself and with you. Now I should mention the four postures. Nun sollte ich also die vier Haltungen erwähnen. The four postures means all postures. Die vier Haltungen bedeuten alle Haltungen. It means any bodily form is in fact or can be a posture. Es bedeutet, dass jede körperliche Form eine Haltung sehen kann und auch eine Haltung ist. It's not As practice it's not just a position, it's a posture.

[12:34]

And you will find there are some positions of the body which you can't bring attention to. And I always think of, when I speak about something like this, I think of watching a NOH play in Japan. And one of the things that struck me when I first started going now and then to no place, a wonderful, wonderful experience for me, You could not, if you imagine taking a photograph,

[13:41]

You could not imagine a bad photograph or an uncomposed photograph. Because the actors... The actors were never in a position. They were always in a posture. A posture that allowed their body And they're, what shall I say, somatic space. Could be filled with attention. And by somatic space, I mean if somebody does this, there's a point at which it, that was good for a graph. I don't know.

[15:05]

There's a point at which your body reacts. I have to explain what you're doing. So somatic space is... Somewhere around your body. That's my term. I don't know. Works for me. Having the feel of your car when you drive The feel of the space of your car is what I would also call somatic space. And I believe they've done studies with monkeys which show that, you know, if the monkey's holding a branch in its arm, the brain registers a big body space in comparison to... if he doesn't have a tool in his hand.

[16:11]

So I think the emphasis on this four-bottle bodily postures. Because they're the most obvious ones we can fill with attention. And they are the postures which, and not positions, which, in which the somatic space can also feel, can be a presence, can be, you know, filled with attention.

[17:16]

You know, our languages, the English, you know, European languages, are rooted or often have gestures in them. If I say but. If I say to Eric, but. It's a gesture, something like that. But. But if I say however and from the dictionary it's more or less synonyms but if I say however it's more like however. And I think you can I think you can let yourself feel the gestures that are in each word.

[18:43]

And this is also part of it. mindfulness practice. To bring our breath and hence our body our body through our breath into our speaking. So it's not mentally speaking so much as bodily speaking. Am I saying you should do this all the time? In some ways, yes. I recommend it. Given our life and our habits, is it likely?

[19:43]

For many of us, probably not. But if you take some time for this practice, bodily continuity from moment to moment, it'll feel like A vacation. It'll feel like perhaps a walk in the forest in the middle of a busy day in a city. It's a kind of secret. But if you get the taste of it and you can actually have enough to notice the difference it makes.

[20:49]

Yeah, you might find some way to weave it into the fabric of your daily life. Now the kanji, the characters of Chinese and Japanese and so forth, are much more obviously Yeah, now our letters, numbers and letters could be made with two-by-fours. Two-by-fours? Boards. Nailed it. But kanji, parts of them, they float in space.

[22:05]

So we could say they're gesturally held together or somatically held together. They're held together. together by a space which is understood to connect and not a space which is understood or assumed to separate. Now if you constantly have this experience in everything you write, it does make you more open to space as connecting. And they speak of a kanji, a character having a spine. Because a beautiful character

[23:20]

The posture of the body has to be good. I organized something years ago. How many years ago? Forty-five. Forty-five. Something called the Pablo Casals Masterclass. And he was the great cellist of the time and a Cuban. And really an extraordinary man. And there was a cellist there, a young cellist in this class. who'd just come in second or something in some contest in Russia.

[24:37]

And Casals said to him, no, you're hitting that note, it's okay. You're reaching that note. That's okay. But your hand position is not beautiful. If your hand is beautiful, the note will be beautiful. more beautiful. Now that's assumed in the writing of Chinese calligraphy that if the body posture is beautiful, is good, the character will be more beautiful. And you can feel the spine of the body in the spine of the character. And the characters are gestural in heaven, where you start and what you do second and third and So this teaching of the first of the four foundations of mindfulness, awakenings of mindfulness,

[25:59]

assumes that you will find more satisfying, fruitful postures, positions of the body which can be postures. And thus postures, meaning postures, which can be full of energy, of attention. Attention carries our energy, carries our awareness. So if you... Again, that in... In our activity.

[27:29]

If your activity is shaped by where attention brings it, you will move from posture to posture and not just from one position to another. So this way of thinking Being and thinking. So diese Art von Sein und Denken is behind the choice of these four postures. Ist hinter dieser Wahl der vier Haltungen. They are reclining. Sich hinlegen. Standing. Stehen. And I've always been so pleased that in Germany, in Germany you stand up in the morning. Yeah, in America we just get up and then we stand up. And when I think of it, I see, you know, 6.30 in the morning, all of our German people leaping up into their beds.

[28:47]

The covers thrown left and right. And I think, what a vigorous people. But then sometimes we get up on the wrong side of the bed. Do you have that expression? Yes, we do. wrong leg. And then of course your whole day, it means your whole day may not go well. So standing up is full of awakeness. And most of us Don't sleep while we're standing up unless you're exhausted or a horse. And walking is another kind of posture. Another kind of energy.

[30:09]

And I'm always amused to see English people walk in the forest differently than German people walk in the forest. But I would suggest that you walk one of my kind of like basics of Dharma Sangha practice. You walk in a way that you feel yourself nourished by the walking. And then there's sitting. And now sitting... really is the posture which also lends itself to meditation.

[31:14]

Now I've always been interested in the process of the introduction of chairs into China. Because until very recently, the Japanese being a yogic culture, a body culture, have simply not had chairs. Which means, when you're sitting around, you have to either be reclining or sitting in a posture. You can't really slouch. If you slouch, you collapse. So there was an implicit decision in culture as a whole to emphasize

[32:15]

architecture and furniture or lack of furniture in ways that let people be in postures, not positions. Now, I'm not trying to say that Japanese culture is wonderful and ours is terrible. Any position you take that works for a lot of people can be fruitful. So what I'm speaking about is the elements of a yoga culture, a bodily culture, We are now beginning to explore as Westerners.

[33:34]

Whatever the roots of your culture are. And if you look at the etymology of culture, English words, European language words. The roots suggest the culture actually rather differently than we... different directions and we take it. And no matter how good the basis of the culture, simple greed, hate and delusion can overwhelm it. So overall, Asian and Western cultures have pretty much the same problems.

[34:48]

They have different shapes and so on. But now I'm looking at the yogurt aspects of culture. So, we should take a break soon so I can talk about chair. In anticipation. in anticipation of a more comfortable seat. So Japan really never until very recently had chairs. And the clothes and all were designed with the Freedom of the body inside the clothes.

[36:00]

So you controlled your own temperature more like in a sleeping bag. And clothes which, if you've learned to wear robes, for instance, your body posture keeps the robes together. If your body posture is too funny, the whole thing gets... So the... the clothes are designed to be expressive only through a certain body posture. It's the opposite of spandex.

[37:12]

This elastic sports clothes. It's the opposite of a spandex. But since we do athletics sometimes in spandex, it... Anyway, so... So... Now, what China brought in, so I wonder, why did China bring in chairs? Well, actually, almost all Chinese chairs are chairs based on Buddhist ceremonial furniture.

[38:13]

So, I mean, chairs that, if you have an old priest, monks do get old. And sometimes the older they get, the more ceremonies they have to do. They're, you know, at the apex. And so they can barely stand after a while. And they're wearing layers of clothes. So they back up gently to a chair. Someone lifts their robes and they stand up. Now, these chairs are not comfortable. And when the Chinese adopted these style of chairs, you know the curve. They forced you to sit upright.

[39:23]

And usually most Chinese sat cross-legged in. So our kind of Dutch comfort chairs just didn't exist. Even when the Chinese adopted chairs, they kept chairs that required a certain posture. No, I didn't get very far, I'm sorry. But it was fun. Thank you very much. Let's have a break.

[40:07]

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