Probably we're all here located in somewhat different minds and somewhat different bodies. And there's what I said yesterday, an intersubjective experience. And there's an intra-subjective experience that goes, that's mostly out of our conscious noticing. And I've been saying that let's consider Zen practice a science.

[01:08]

But if it is a science, it's a science which wants to recognize our intrasubjective experience, non-conscious mutual experience as well as our conscious experience. But if it is a science, then it is a science that wants to include our intra-subjective, our unconscious common experience as well as our inter-subjective experience. It's our intrasubjective experience which responds to poetry and painting and movies and all kinds of things.

[02:10]

And if... And... But how can we... approach this, again, if I'm trying to speak of practices A veridical science, a science rooted in the truth, veridical, rooted in the truth of how we exist. Wie können wir uns dem annähern, nochmal Sven, hier über die Praxis, als eine verifizierbare Wissenschaftssprecher, also eine Wissenschaft, die in der Wahrheit wurzelt? Where are we going to start? And how are we going to start? Yeah. Now I said we may be located, and I'm sure we are located, in rather different bodies and minds.

[03:34]

And practice is to we can say practice, one definition of practice is to find ways to mutually develop our minds and bodies so that wisdom can develop among us human beings. And so compassion can develop effectively among us human beings.

[04:35]

Yeah, now, how do we do this? We have to do this without some sort of computers and stuff like that. How are we going to do this just as we're born, as how we exist? Well, really, I don't want to venture into where I'm going to go because you're going to think it's too simple. But it starts really from the earliest teachings of the historical Buddha. With the breath. No, I had a Volvo for about 20 years.

[05:43]

Our car was stolen somewhere. And so now we've had a Volvo for about 20 years. Recently I had to take it to the car graveyard. And the German government knew about it somehow, sent me some money because we get a refund on something. Because the car isn't taxed for the whole year, I don't know. Don't ask me, I couldn't even read it. Of course. But I thought the car drove quite well, actually. All the things I could notice.

[06:46]

But the mechanics said, in two different locations, this car is dangerous to drive. You better stop or come up with 8,000 euro. So since I could have purchased a second-hand version of the car for half that... I said goodbye. This little interlude is just meant to say we oversimplify breath practice by thinking it's about breath. And as you well know, part of my problem in trying to speak about these things And we notice our experience through words.

[08:05]

And experience that we can't give words to, often we kind of brush aside. But then experience it arises from a whole different way of being alive, a quite different way of being alive. We can't find a way to give it mental attention. But then there are the experiences that emerge from a completely different way of being alive, really a completely different way of being. We can't find ways to give it mental attention.

[09:07]

Yeah. Now, as I said yesterday, what I've been finding myself doing is looking at what I would call the depth of the basic practices. In fact, the transformative depth of the basic practices. And the depth of the basic practices which lead into advanced practices. So what I've been emphasizing the last few weeks only, not too long actually, is really that it's not breath practice, it's inhale practice and exhale practice.

[10:10]

By the way, if you want to close these doors, it's okay. It's warm and perfumey in here. Or incense, or I don't know what. Yeah. So the earliest teachings I'm speaking about are characterized and described in the Anapanasmirti or Anapanasati Sutra. And the earliest teachings say this is all you need is this teaching. I think there's other teachings I'd like to think we can open up into, but this is certainly a basis.

[11:31]

No, I can't repeat everything I said yesterday. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could. But The emphasis I'm making is that you bring attention to the exhale. But not as the Satipatthana Sutra says, not, no, the Anapanasati Sutra says, not just the exhale, but the physical movements which accompany the exhale. And the physical movements which accompany the inhale.

[12:51]

So really, basically you have four ingredients here. Your inhale, your exhale, the pace or succession of the exhales, long, short or whatever. And the physicality of the breath. The specific physicality which accompanies the inhale and the specific physicality which accompanies the exhale. die spezifische körperlichkeit, die körperlichen Bewegungen, die das Einatmen begleiten, und die spezifischen körperlichen Bewegungen, die das Ausatmen begleiten.

[14:10]

And there are related things, like Sukershi would say, don't breathe with your chest or your intercostal muscles in between the bones, but breathe with your diaphragm. I believe cyclists, bicyclists, people who ride bicycles, it's best if they breathe with their diaphragm because it stabilizes their physical location on the bike. And diaphragm breathing tends to generally give you an attentional location lower in the body. Now, this is all in a culture where you're not born created.

[15:15]

These are teachings that have arisen in a culture which assume the process of creating your lived life, your lived actuality within immediacy. There's something that's going on throughout your life and that knowing how to do that is called wisdom. So it's understood that lowering the attention in your body is a It's a seemingly important, but actually very important, subtle shift in your whole metabolic life.

[16:47]

And it is understood that the location in your body, moving further down physically, is apparently important, and that it is also a subtly important, an important connection in your metabolic, in your metabolism. So if you just give attention to your breathing, the articulation of the body, which happens through the preciseness of noticing the exhale and the inhale individually, It doesn't happen in the same way.

[17:52]

And you know I feel kind of funny talking to you about this because in the early days of my practice As I've said, most of the translations in the 50s and 60s of Buddhist texts were terrible. And I thought, well, this is early Buddhism. I'm interested in later Buddhism and so forth. And so I didn't give it, I studied it, but I didn't give it too much attention. Now, after 55 years or so of practicing, I go back through physically go back through the evolution of my own practice.

[19:13]

I can see that it might have evolved more surely if I really noticed the difference, the physical, successional, difference within each inhale and exhale. I very early on developed the ability to have a continuous attentional field in which I lived. In Zen practice, we only suggest for beginning practice to count your exhales.

[20:20]

And then, much is assumed to be picked up later about how, I mean, I would ask Sensei Kirishi questions sometimes, and he would just sit there, and it took me a while to recognize this, and he'd shift his breathing as an answer, and that's all. It took me a while, because I was a person who read a lot and did stuff like that. It took me a while to not look for words. And not look for descriptions that can be applied in the future. It took me a while to learn to attune my, my, not really my, to attune this living body with other person's living body.

[22:14]

And I think I've told the anecdote maybe too many times of when I first conceptually noticed that I was hearing this. But I was walking across the University of California, Berkeley campus where I was a organizer of conferences. Adult education. I think you can close it all the way, because I think we have this one open for that. And I don't want Julio to be cold. And I saw there's a big crowd around with flowers and stuff around.

[23:19]

I couldn't get into an auditorium. But since I knew the buildings well, I climbed in a window. And there was this little Indian man talking in the Indian English with a big kind of bunch of flowers like you get in Hawaii around. And I didn't really know, I'd heard about him, but he was the Maharishi. So I got there just right at the end, maybe ten minutes before it ended. So I kind of... Everyone started out the door, and I didn't have to go out the window this time, so I couldn't.

[24:26]

I followed the group out. This was in the 60s, I guess. And I suddenly ended up right sort of beside him, like where you are, Neil. And his sort of, whoever was with him, was getting him in the car and was saying, I guess they were going to Canada. Talking about going to Canada or something. And while they were talking and I was half paying attention and getting ready to go home into San Francisco, it popped into my head, he's pretty good. Why did that pop into my mental frame?

[25:35]

And I realized I'd non-consciously synchronized my breathing with his. It was immediately a clicked in breathing occurred, which he noticed too. So I've been doing this for some time in these early years of practice, but I had never really conceptually noticed I was doing it. I was just doing it. But what thing practice does, it develops an attentional body interrelated with or entrained with actual breathing. So it's interesting that... Yeah.

[26:48]

It's very difficult, particularly in this... early stage of these teachings coming into our Western culture. To really get the full picture. I could say to really get the subtlety. But it's not really subtlety in contrast to grossness.

[27:51]

It's really the full picture, because it's the full picture, like the full picture of my Volvo, which made me decide to have it go away. And the full picture of the thoroughly experienced practice is really caught body to body. Now, as you know, again, I'm trying to establish a teaching practice and an institutional basis for this teaching practice, which can have a successional continuity from generation to generation.

[29:17]

And the first test will be when I perish. Well, probably that will be a little bump and hardly noticed. But what happens in the decades after that is going to be the real test. Does the practice get simplified into something that's like a social service or something like that, or something conceptually graspable in our culture? And can we do this as what is primarily a lay sangha, as I always say?

[30:20]

And even if we call it a science and not a religion, It's not verifiable by externalized experiments. It's verifiable by internalized rituality. Internalized rituality. Now, at the time I met Saw, stood beside, didn't really meet, well, we met in a way, the Maharishi.

[31:26]

I was a lay practitioner. And working full-time at the university. And had a new little tiny baby. And we hadn't founded Tassajara yet. It's a monastic practice center. So I'd already picked up this... attentional synchronization with other bodies. But if I really, I mean, I'm using these words, attentional synchronization, blah, blah, blah, but to really give you a feeling of The actuality of that and how it's realizable would take me more than today and tomorrow.

[32:45]

But we are all sort of incompetent, idiot savants. Idiot savants are people whose brain computes way faster than they can do anything. I mean, it computes just the way brain can do something. Idiot savants. Yeah. Did I say that? We're incompetent idiot savants. But we're not sufficiently autistic or Asperger's or haven't had the necessary bicycle accidents. But our brain is still extraordinarily rapidly working behind the scenes.

[33:57]

and part of Zen practice is to open yourself to this extraordinary activity that goes on outside intentional or attentional intentional or attentional consciousness this extraordinary activity of this brain body phenomena. This going on all the time outside of intentional and attentional conscious activity. die ständig außerhalb der intentionellen und aufmerksamen Aktivität stattfindet. Yeah, and so one aspect of scientific Zen practice is how to open yourself to this in a...

[35:15]

We can't open yourself to your intuitions, but open yourself to the flow of intelligence which, when it surfaces, is called intuition. Now we've strayed far, and he sat and everything, we've strayed far enough from the simplicity of basic practices. Andreas says no, no. So let's have a break. Thank you very much.

[36:00]

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