Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. As, of course, those of you who are at the weekend seminar know, I had the swine flu forever. Und wie diejenigen, die auch beim Wochenendseminar waren, wissen, hatte ich schon für immer und ewig die Schweinegrippe. I felt I was living in a pig pen. Ich hatte das Gefühl, ich lebte in einer Schweinepfanne. Yeah. Is it all well? A lever of pruned apples. Oh, really, apples. To tempt us. And, um, The schweinhund has been wagging its tail for a month now. But actually, yesterday was the first day I felt pretty much mentally and physically normal.

[01:05]

Well, it's kind of, I mean, I still... I'm not perfect, but I feel pretty much normal. And as all of you know, I do this quite a lot. Sit down, give a lecture, try to, etc. But each time I really don't Maybe it's something like being a pilot. Yeah, you can't decide, well, I've flown from Zurich to many times, I can hardly pay attention today. You have to somehow get this big plane off the ground, etc. And I feel that way too. I mean, I have this feeling I want to practice with you by talking with you about practice. But can we get this plane off the ground?

[02:28]

Especially since each of you is the pilot. Yeah. But we have a new runway here. Maybe we can get the We're all the wings, too. So I want to start by speaking about a book review I read this morning. But first we have this topic, of course, now, yogic body, I believe. And I think that... One of the things that we're doing when we practice zazen and mindfulness, we begin a process of actualizing the yogic body.

[03:37]

Now, one thing that was clear, I held clear in the last seminar on what And I think that one thing that became clear in the seminar, What is the World?, is that for the practitioner, for the meditator, the world is a is the world we know through ordinary perception. But it's also the world we know through a heightened and extended awareness that arises through meditation and mindfulness practice. But today, in these days we have coming,

[04:45]

I'm told by all my medical friends I'm not contagious, so don't worry. I wouldn't have flown here if I was... Told I was contagious. You don't want to leave a plane full of pigs. But in the light of today's and this week's topic, We could say more specifically it's not just that through meditation and mindfulness one has a heightened and extended awareness. But we could also say that we bring a yogic body into the knowing of the world.

[06:11]

And I think we could go so far as to say we know the yogic body of the world. Okay, so very simply now, I'm introducing the concept, which is familiar to most of you, of a yogic body. Now, if you practice meditation and mindfulness, And you study Buddhism? You're not going to study any sort of topic in a sutra called the yogic body. While it's assumed... in the sutras and the koans, it's not pointed out particularly because it's, for the most part, taken for granted.

[07:21]

If you're alert, you can see that it's pointed out through implication at least. But I think one of the perhaps advantages of us Westerners is that we have the contrast of the contrast of our Western worldviews contrasted with Buddhist worldviews and And yogic worldviews. Zen and Buddhism is a yogic practice.

[08:24]

The emphasis in Buddhism is on mental postures. Primarily. But initially the emphasis is on yogic physical postures. The mind is slipperier than the body. It's easier to establish mental postures through which we can observe the mind. then it is to establish mental postures to observe the mind. It's easier to establish physical postures through which to observe the mind.

[09:28]

It's easier to establish mental postures through which to observe the mind. But what the heck was his name? Joule, J-O-U-L-E, I think a French ophthalmologist. Joule, I think, he was a French ophthalmologist. You know, it's very often Emile Joule, I think. Anyway, it's very often that it's used in Zen, how does the eye see the eye? Yeah, how does the eye see the eye?

[10:28]

Well, this French ophthalmologist sort of took a mirror and he put it on the right-hand side of the book And then he read on the left-hand side. And he watched his eye on the right-hand side. And he saw that the eye doesn't just go along the lines, it's scanning all over the page all the time. And the saccadic scanning, which is... I think essential for us to understand, was discovered simply by putting a mirror on the page and watching his own eye. So in a way, the yogic posture of Zazen It's sort of like the handle of the magnifying glass.

[11:49]

And with this handle you can begin to observe the activity of the mind. And as you still the body you can more easily see the activity of the mind. And of course, the body is also the mind. The handle of the magnifying glass is also the mind. And stilling the body also begins to still the mind. So the stilled body stills the mind and also distills the mind. Oh, good. You know, like you pour water in the ground, dirty water, and it pops out over here in our quellenweg, clean.

[13:11]

So wie man dreckiges Wasser auf den Boden gießt und es dann, wie hier bei unserem quellenweg, also klar wieder herauskommt. And this stilled body begins to, as I say, distill or purify the mind. Clarify at least. Okay, so these are all basic concepts of a yoga culture. That you are making, body and mind are related, obviously. And one of the truisms of yogic culture is that all mental phenomena have a physical component.

[14:16]

And all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component. So you can just take this for granted. Now, it means... It's a little, excuse me, tiny spider. Oh, really? You won't want to harm it. Oh, please don't. It's medical training. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Are there any more? I want to save one. So the importance of this, it means that when you're doing zazen,

[15:22]

And you have a particular modality, let's say, of mind, a particular state of mind, you can Discover after a while, maybe not in the beginning of your practice, you can discover the bodily component the physical feel of that state of mind. And when you do this, you're beginning to activate and actualize the Because the chakras are bodily locations of modalities of mind. But you don't want to get too involved, and Zen tries not to get too involved in the chakras as a system,

[16:26]

Because a particular state of mind might be, the physical feel of it might be in your elbow, not in a particular well-known chakra. And I think that what you find through yogic practice is that the acupuncture system is actually maybe more referential than the chakra system. And the spots at which you feel while you're sitting, particularly when you're getting used to sitting in the beginning... Mysterious itches that appear.

[17:53]

Clearly made by invisible insects. Where you can never quite get a hold of. And when you think you've got it, it jumps to another spot. And when you study those spots, they're often acupuncture points. You're activating, through Zazen, the whole... bodily alertness, which is the system we call acupuncture. Okay. So I'm just starting out here with sharing my experience of the yogic body, and speaking about the yogic body,

[19:16]

making assumptions about the yogic body which are inseparable from our practice. So as I said, you're not going to read about this explicitly in a sutra or a koan. Actually, it's often fairly, almost explicit in koans. Yeah. But mostly, you have to discover it for yourself. Yeah. And... So by practicing zazen you are beginning to actualize, activate at least, and then actualize the yogic body.

[20:25]

And you just, you know, you can notice that there's some difference in the way you do things. And when you go to Zazen, you're bringing the yogic body to Zazen. And in fact, when we do the tesho drum, or whatever kind of drum we did today. A drum for tesho, but not done in the traditional way, perhaps. I couldn't hear it from upstairs, but Anyway, we do a drum and then a bell. And this drum and bell. begin after a while to enter you into the yogic body and ideally it's almost not you sitting it's the yogic body sitting no when you hear the when you know the schedule and then you hear the

[21:53]

drum and then the bell. Are you using the agency of self, of willpower, of volition to go to Zazen? Yes, you are. But you're also using what I could call today the what-ness of the world to go to Zazen. Yeah, you... the bell begins to activate the yogic body. And you're already two-thirds into zazen as you come in the zendo. This is nothing special. However, what time is it? Anybody know? I didn't bring my watch.

[23:12]

See nothing. See nothing. Ten minutes after 11 o'clock. Ten minutes after 11 o'clock. So I have a little more time. Bisschen Zeit habe ich noch. Another hour, no. Okay, now this book questions... It's Oxford University Press. I haven't read the book, so I'm only commenting on the review. But I think I have to read the book, but it's $50. Yeah, it's the price of my study. Anyway, It's called waiting, wanting, willing, waiting, wanting or something like that.

[24:22]

Willen, wollen, warten, wünschen, so ungefähr ist es. And he mostly wants to criticize the research or what people derived from the research of Benjamin Libet. And you know, I mean, when I read the comments in the review, it makes me think the guy's just dumb. But, or he's thinking in the 40s and 50s. Um, But at least it shows the persistence of viewing the body as stuff. The body-mind as its own body or body-mind as its own body.

[25:28]

Intelligence just seems to be ignored by this guy. And there's so much been done since the 50s and 60s, like In the Zone and Michael Murphy's work of showing how athletes... Stop thinking and enter a zone where their athleticism comes out. Did I really say all that? Okay. Um... Yeah. Um... And because Leavitt's work has been used to suggest that there's no volition, we don't have any self-agency, conscious self-agency.

[27:10]

Because our our brain is deciding things before consciousness. Right. Our body-brain? Our body, our brain, Let's say body. Our body is making decisions before we're conscious of the decisions. Well, it's simply true. That's what's happening much of the time. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that we don't have self-agency. Okay, this has been useful to me to read it because it made me rethink some things that I thought were obvious, but they're not.

[28:19]

I think I'll have to take some time this afternoon to go into it more. But basically, Leavitt showed that the decision, for example, to move your arm occurs 300 to 500 milliseconds before there's any consciousness that you intend to move the arm. Okay, so let's just accept that this is the case. In fact, Leavitt's right. And I had no problem, except his work was done in the 70s and published in the early 80s. In San Francisco?

[29:36]

And it was a huge effect on neurological studies. But I, because I'm practicing Zen as a kind of guy practicing Zen, I noticed it clearly in the 60s. Because in the 60s is when I started practicing Zen, in 61, 60. And I noticed very clearly, I first noticed it at parties. I'm not too fond of parties. But sometimes you're supposed to go, so I go. But I would notice that at some point, I would think, oh, I've got to, I'm going to, I think pretty soon I should leave.

[30:48]

But the pretty soon I would leave was wrong. Because my body had already made the decision to leave some 500 milliseconds, I guess, earlier. Simple thing. For example, I made sure I had my wallet. And not that I thought anybody at the party was going to steal it. But you just, you know, you have what you need to leave. Or my glasses here and stuff. So I just noticed very simple things. Like I'd made, my body had checked out all the things that are necessary to do before you leave. But I wasn't conscious that I was doing that.

[31:50]

And then I would have the idea, well, maybe I should leave in the next half hour. And I thought that was very funny. Why did I say I'm going to leave in the next half hour because my consciousness is behaving like a social, you know, etc. ? My body had decided to leave now and my consciousness, self-agency, had decided it would leave in half an hour. And I noticed this kind of thing so often. And I had other experiences earlier that were similar, more powerful actually, that I began to be aware that my body was assimilating information

[33:02]

peripherally through the senses, and tangentially by implication. And it decided it was, in this case, time to leave. Okay. Now, why does meditation make a difference? Because you begin to have, as I said, the stillness of the body stills the mind. The stillness of the body, which you begin to carry with you even when you're not begins to locate you in the immediacy of situations. Let's say the conditions, details, and connectedness of situations.

[34:15]

And you know, I've tried to be careful with my choice of words. And in English, condition means to talk together, con and diction. Im Englischen heißt Condition, also etwas zusammen, to talk together. So in a way, the conditions are, I'm talking with, in a sense, talking with the situation. And in English, details is from tailor. So details means completely cut up. And connection means joined together.

[35:35]

So the aspects of the situation that you're interrelating with and all the parts, the cut up parts and all the connectedness which is happening outside of consciousness are noticed by the yogic body embedded in the midst of consciousness. the details, conditions, and connectedness of a situation. So the details... I could have other words, but let's just use these now.

[36:45]

Details, connectedness and connections of immediacy. And the yogic body actualized through stillness It's functioning with an intelligence that's different than the intelligence of the self-agency of consciousness. So through the yogic body, you're engaged in the world differently. The intelligence of the body that establishes a continuity in the world. A continuity of the what-ness of the world. And not the who-ness of the world. We're not talking about owls. Anyway.

[38:03]

Werewolves. Oh, werewolves. In Greece, don't we have owls? No werewolves. Oh, there, yeah. Okay. The thing is that self-agency... is that clear what I mean by self-agency you are making a decision so I should stop but I'll tell you one more little example when your body is your partner Because we can experience body and mind separately. And Zen is a particular way, there are other ways, of weaving body and mind together. But Zen is also a particular way to make use of the experienceable differences between body and mind.

[39:15]

Okay. So I was visiting somebody in Italy and it was the fall and they had a swimming pool. And it wasn't heated. And it was like October. And they had a high board, you know, two or three high, right? A diving board. And my daughter, Sophia, this was some years ago, said, Papa, will you go off that board? How could I refuse? So I climbed up the two ladders and I'm standing up there.

[40:17]

I know the water is so cold you can practically walk on the surface. So I'm standing there and my body is, the intelligence of my yogic body is saying, no. There are no signals coming from my body, it's time to jump. But here's this five year old or four year old girl looking at me. So I used all the self-agency I could, willpower. Okay, you're going to jump, you fool. And I did. So that's self-agency. When you decide to do something from consciousness, I'm this kind of person, I make this kind of decision, etc.

[41:27]

Now the problem with self-agency Und das Problem mit dieser Selbstagentur ist, dass das Selbst sehr fordernd ist. It wants to be in continuous control. So it emphasizes the continuity of self is your experience of your identity. One of the things that happens when we stop discursive thinking is we just stop the discursive thinking of self-agency. And we allow the intelligence of the yogic body to enter into immediacy. That's enough for today. For this morning. Thank you very much. May we enter into every being and every place at the same time.

[42:56]

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