How was your discussion? Anybody has something to say about it? Yes. Well, we talked about it, whether the word, the term, reality or actuality and true nature, well, that's the same. Then we had the idea that maybe in the sentence it describes a similar territory. And then, yes, we have different difficulties with this sentence. And each one of us had different difficulties with this sentence.

[01:03]

And for me I realized I have to be careful not to take sentences like that to absolute. I make them to kind of concrete in that way. I make them like to, what's the last word? Solid. Solid. You yourself, personally. Yeah. Like they become objective. Yeah. Yeah. And breath practice without the connection to the body is simply impossible, at least for me that's not possible, to separate the two.

[02:07]

And the more I can weave the two together, the more gravity evolves and I can stay a little bit longer in that situation, in that experience. The more you can weave what two together? Atom, breath and body. Okay, and then you have more gravity. Yeah. You have a lot of gravity. No. No. You know, I think if you... In this talk, in this epilogue, if you imagine that Suzuki Roshi is speaking from experience, let's imagine that experience is some kind of big round shape.

[03:47]

And he has an imaginative but somewhat limited English repertoire. And he's He kind of like looks at the, feels at the surface of the experience. And then he tries to pull a word off the surface of the experience. And he puts it in a sentence. And then he reaches down and tries to pull another word out of the surface of the experience. And this time he tries to grab one which has roots down to the middle of the experience.

[04:54]

And he pulls that up and he sticks it in the satsang. Then he sort of finishes the sentence with ordinary English. Then he reaches down for another kind of word that might represent his experience. But all the time this experience is turning like Saturn or something. So he reaches down for another word and the surface is moving, so he grabs this one. And then he sticks that in the sentence. So you end up with this thing that sometimes he says true nature, sometimes he says big mind and something else.

[05:58]

Oh, that's a good one. I like that. So it doesn't make logical sense. What did I say in the seminar, the car park of logic? But you can feel his mind, perhaps, from this way. But you may feel your spirit in this way. Someone else? Yes. I was also in Andreas' group and would like to add something to it. We were not quite sure when it came to reality and true nature. Well, when we looked at the two terms, reality and true nature, we weren't quite sure whether this was just an internal way of dealing with it, an approach, or whether it also had some relationship to the external world.

[07:00]

Or we could discover it also in something external. He clearly is identifying reality with true nature. But in other words, in this case, he's saying reality is what we want to find. Or we may think we want to find reality, but what we really want to find is true nature. So they're the same, and they are both what we want to find, but finding reality is not possible, but finding true nature is possible.

[08:21]

So their equivalency is that they both represent what we want to find. Okay. Yeah, someone else. We had a good discussion. And we all had been there for the seminar as well. And if you want feedback, since you asked for it, we would like to let you know that the practice week is a lot better than the seminar. Already. Because you can practice much better.

[09:43]

So it's not just that what I'm saying is better, it's that the form is both. Maybe that's too early. It's not just that what I say is better, it's the form in which you practice is better. A very important point is that we feel supported by the structure of the day. And this is why it's also very good to have the seminar first and then followed by practice week. Also in order to understand how you will feel when after the practice week you come home. And the reason why I say we had a good discussion is that the way discussions are led in the small groups improves all the time.

[10:59]

Also, wir können uns zuhören. We can listen to each other. Und das ist nicht normal. And that's not the normal situation. In the world, at least. Also, wir können uns zuhören und wir können aufeinander eingehen. We can listen to each other and we can deal with each other. And in the middle of the discussion we can experience that we support each other. Because speaking and thinking is certainly a problematic area of practice. So we could also find a way of friendship in the midst of discussions and speaking. That was the most impressive moment today in our group. I wonder if I should consider doing weekend seminars, which of course more people can attend because it's shorter.

[12:22]

With a schedule more like in the practice week. Three days of this kind of schedule. One of the problems is that there's more new people in a practice, in a seminar, and they're less able to do this kind of sitting and stuff. But let me say, I think it must be true, it feels like it's true, that we're getting better at doing small groups, even though we resist them as a kind of kindergarten. It always makes me laugh when we count off. One, two, three. Anyway, but the basic thing you said is why I'm teaching in German-speaking Europe. Because when I first started coming to Europe in the early 80s, 83 and so forth, I was in Poland and Russia and France and Belgium and so forth.

[13:38]

And I was really, I'm just telling you, this is, I don't know, to say how nice you are. When I taught in German-speaking Europe, There was a tendency for people to wait for each other until everyone felt they were participating. And by Sunday afternoon, there was a feeling of... Everyone was sort of together and supporting the ones who were more silent and didn't speak so much. But when I spoke in other countries, let's leave them unnamed. The smart ones would... take over the discussion right away.

[15:18]

And by Sunday afternoon, there were about three people speaking, everybody else was sitting there feeling stupid. So I felt there was some basic friendliness in German-speaking groups that I said, okay, I'll teach in German-speaking Europe. And you say we're even getting better at it, Frank. I mean, I also had a resistance at the beginning. Oh, yeah, I know. We're not perfect. Okay. Someone else? Yes. Yes. When I read the article for the first time, I immediately had thinking patterns in my head. When I first heard the sentence, I immediately fell into some kind of categories and I was thinking, well, of course, reality is kind of constructed and constructivism sort of determines our thinking, stuff like that.

[16:40]

And only through acting in the moment I can grasp reality. And yet I wasn't content with that. I mean, just in reading this text you felt all that or just in your life? In your interpretation, yes. Yes, and then I felt these words are dead. And this is why I appreciated the small groups because it was filled up with experience. And the experiences are different and that helps me not looking at my own experience as something absolute. Okay, thanks. Yes.

[17:57]

In our group we turned this little section into three pieces and went through the sentences one by one. In the reaction to the first sentence that reality cannot be caught by the thinking or feeling mind, In this point it was clear that a distinction was made between a real reality and an unreal reality. And the questions, what is a feeling mind and a thinking mind and what is reality, sort of populated the border of this and we just left them there.

[19:15]

But there was a lot of practice experience that documented the failure in the catching reality. And then the jump to the next sentence, like to observe your breath and your posture, that this is your true nature? Moment by moment. This is in between the boundary from catching or grasping to observing. In this area the posture changes. the attitude. And then also the change from a feeling mind or a thinking mind which is more like an entity to jump to moment by moment.

[20:22]

neither watching or observing nor for a moment fix anything or define anything. This is a very open attitude, whereas the other is defined by thinking, it's defined by feeling and it's grasping these big differences. It's like an instruction for practice to what attitude to take and first to see from which attitude one starts and then to change to a more open attitude. So the last sentence closes the back door to the grasping mind because it's So if you see

[21:41]

observing your breath, your body, moment to moment, as a means to read the secret, to get to true nature, then it doesn't work. So the last sentence takes this back thought, maybe, of the grasping mind away. Well... There's no secret behind that, it says. Beyond this point. Beyond this point, yeah. Yeah, you read that sentence, I read the sentence, as there's no Buddhism, all of Buddhism is in this kind of practice, and there's no thing in further development of Buddhism or in Mahamaka teachings, etc., that goes beyond this.

[23:10]

That's how I read the sentence. And now you're reading the sentence... I understood the sentence in such a way that all Buddhism is in it and nothing is hidden or wrapped up in any further teachings. I read the sentence, in other words, there's no secret in addition to this point. You read the sentence that there's no secret beyond, that follows from watching your breathing and true nature. And you understood the sentence in such a way that there are no secrets that still follow when one observes one's breath? There's some kind of sequence in the three sentences. The first sentence is, there is another reality beyond your thinking mind and your feeling mind.

[24:15]

Or other than your thinking mind. Other than your mind, yeah. The second sentence says, observe your breath and your body moment by moment. And then it says... in over-translation, but don't use that only as a means so you get to the secret, but see it as a practice complete in itself. And then the secret will reveal itself. So there's nothing to... There's nothing that you... It's not that you can use your practice as a means to get at the real reality. Okay. What you're saying is true, but it... It can be misunderstood.

[25:36]

And I don't think, even though what you're saying is true, I don't think that's what he meant by the sentence. But he could have meant it. Because what you're saying is true. Okay. Someone else. Yes. Immediately to this. I think maybe it has to do with the choice of words in the German translation. In our group we also talked about it and decided, I mean, I had the English version also, and in our group we decided we want to use a different German word because this one didn't feel like the right translation from what is here in English. In German it's translated, behind that there is no secret. We found that this behind is not the correct translation of English.

[26:48]

And maybe this slightly different interpretation comes from this behind. What does it say in English? In English it says beyond. Beyond this point, it is called in English. And that is not the same as behind. There's, you know, it's the point here, even though we're looking at three sentences. And I said it requires close reading. He wrote it or he spoke it. These are lectures. Expecting close attention or the words to stay with you and you kind of let them work in you, incubate.

[28:04]

In the sense of reading a philosophical text closely, like Derrida or Foucault or something, this isn't written to be read that way. One is he's just speaking. And two, when you write, you can pay more attention to all the possible meanings. But even if he wanted to do that, he wouldn't write that way. But it does require close attention. And there are jumps between the sentences.

[29:21]

This sentence is not at the same level as the other sentence. It goes on a different level. But that's because he's, you know, speaking from a feeling about practice. and an imagined debate with you. So he says this, and he can feel you would be debating with that, and so he says this to answer your debate, but it's several steps removed from the sentence. It takes a while to get to that point that you debate it. So I don't want you to get involved in too textual an analysis. But try to feel the person who's speaking these sentences.

[30:37]

Okay. Someone else. So write them with the, or read them, if you're going to use this in the study, read them for the feeling and see if you can feel your own life and practice that way. Yes? Yeah. Do it here. It helped me very much that on the weekend you said that I should concentrate on the spinal column, on the breath, and that I now find this in the text, the attitude towards the breath. And I find that when I do this, And when I do that, it draws me out of my thoughts and out of this kind of thought-based reality and I start feeling in a different way.

[32:02]

Okay, yes. What comes to mind is when I come from the prajna perimeter. beyond thought, beyond description, but it can be experienced with our wisdom mind. So for me it says, if you think and if you feel, you cannot get it. But if you be aware of the thinking and the feeling, in the same way it says, the awareness of nowness is the real Buddha. The awareness of? Of nowness. Nowness, suchness, that leads to Tathagata. For me it says, think, don't feel, but be aware of thinking and thinking and feeling.

[33:08]

And that is the way of observing and observing the attitude. That means it's not the feeling and the thinking, it's the awareness, the being aware of feeling and thinking, then you're in the Western mind, in the picture of Prachaparamita. Okay. What it says to me. Good, thank you. I should say he's not saying, just to speak about his use of the word mind, not saying exactly that reality cannot be known by thinking and feeling. But rather he's saying thinking in feet or feeling mind. And what he means by that, because most of you understand, but still, and I think one of the advantages of doing what we're doing

[34:12]

And the advantage of what we do here together is that we describe the world to ourselves. And we actually live and practice through our descriptions of the world. And again, if we say there's no description of the world, that's a description of the world. In the sense that if we say there's no description, then we're relating to the world through no description, which is a description. So we want our descriptions to be quite good. And if our descriptions are off, they will make our experience skewed. So as our practice becomes more subtle,

[35:34]

In the beginning of practice we need kind of some basic descriptions. And our practice is led by practice itself. Zazen, mindfulness and so forth. But if lodged in our habitual way of looking at things our ways of looking at the world and viewing our experience, which remain in place even though we're doing zazen and practicing mindfulness. And as our practice develops and becomes more mature, then we need more subtle descriptions that more accurately direct attention and less interfere with attention. So much of more advanced Buddhism is about refining your descriptions.

[37:08]

Because you cannot entirely free experience from the descriptions that are part of experience. So, at this point, we could say we're trying to refine our descriptions of experience. Okay, now, when he says, let's say, feeling mind, Because certainly, if you're knowing the world through breathing and attention to breathing and attention resting in your breath,

[38:12]

That's still feeling. As long as you're alive, there's some kind of feeling. But it's feeling in the service of breathing. Let's put it simply like that. It's not feeling in the service of feeling mind. Okay, what does he mean by feeling mind? When I go over this text, I realize that if I were editing this book, copy editing this as I did years ago, And if I look at the text now and imagine that I would edit it again today, together with someone else? And in the instructions it says that Trudy edited this book, but basically we did it together. And dying of cancer.

[39:40]

And she died at 29 after finishing this book. So to kind of honor her, I just said, edited and put my own name on the book. And she was. She really did a wonderful job of working on the book. Yeah, but I mean, I'm speaking about what I did, but basically the text and the working with security was what I did. So to explain why I'm saying what I'm just about to say, if I were doing this now, I would edit it more carefully. I would probably not say feeling mind. What would I say?

[40:47]

I would probably change it to something like I try to get emotionally framed mind. Because I know he's using the word feeling not in the sense of the basic aliveness, which is a kind of feeling. He's using the sense that we have many states of mind. You can have a state of mind generated through anger. And then whatever appears in that mind, you relate to through the anger. You can have a calm mind, which would mean a field of calmness.

[41:50]

And then everything that appears in that mind is understood at a kind of pace which is calmness. And the most obvious example of such differences is if you fall in love The same object which looked terrible before suddenly looked nice. Because these same objects are suddenly interpreted in that mind. So he doesn't mean reality known through feeling and thinking. He means... Reality known through a mind establishes by discursive thinking or a mind established through emotions.

[42:58]

And such framed minds are too interpretive to know reality. Okay, in the back. While I'm stuck with the sentence to just observe moment to moment the breath. The main question is how does it connect? Continuity and discontinuity moment by moment. The main question is how does this go together?

[44:01]

Continuity and discontinuity from moment to moment. If I pay attention to my breathing then this breathing rhythm also creates a continuity. and I pay attention to my breath, then this creates a continuity. And this is the desired effect to replace continuity based in thoughts, so continuity based in the breath. And I am addressing this because these days I am more trying to get the experience of discontinuity. And it feels to me sometimes as if I would add something artificial.

[45:22]

So you experience your breath, even though it's inhales and exhales, as continuity. Well, the craziest thing or strange thing is it's both. It's momentary and it's continuous. Yeah, what you're saying is also a problem. What I said is you're replacing the continuity established in thinking with continuity established in breath, body and phenomena. I probably shouldn't say it that way. I shouldn't imply that. Maybe we could say it's replaced by successive breaths.

[46:51]

But what I mean is, actually, is that the experience... of continuity, of mental continuity, of a predictable stream or something you can keep coming back to, that mental continuity in thoughts which gives you an experience of personal continuity, and I think you could say even allows you an experience of bodily continuity, is replaced by not by a new kind of continuity, but is replaced by a feeling of location, a location which is not necessarily continuous, a location which is experienced moment after moment,

[48:16]

And you feel located moment after moment. But you don't feel located in a continuity. Okay. Yeah. I am very drawn to that question and the discussion and would like to add something which is don't we inherently have this kind of confidence, this trust into the continuity of our breath? You mean naturally? Right, yeah. Maybe. I mean, we all know it stops.

[49:31]

Someday. Someday. Yeah. It is astonishing that we still have this trust in the flow of the breath. Of course we know that it will stop at some point, but I would also say that we all have a kind of trust that the breath is there and is with us. Have I said it in German? No. I translated it into English and then back into German. That's amazing. This is the height of translation. Just translate it yourself. Thank you. To hell with who you're translating for. Autonomous translation.

[50:34]

Please, I'm helpless. Well, don't we have this trust into our continuous breath, just sort of inherently or naturally the stream of breath? Yeah, of course. But I think it's more on the basis that we hope breath continues. It's more, I think, because if you hold your breath, or something stops you, but you get anxious right away. Yeah, or something stops you, but you get anxious right away. But in any case, anyway, what you say is true. But, so... Someone else. Yes. I think that this text is also a very nice example of how, on the one hand, philosophy and, on the other hand, picturesque language come together.

[51:53]

I like it very much in the text how like a philosophical or like imaginative descriptive language come together. Yeah, and it also shows you when you go into it in a philosophical way, into a more thinking way, that you come to a barrier right away. Like the sentence that reality can't be caught through the thinking mind. Yeah, when the sentence is right, at the same time it's wrong. And it's a great relief to read Bodhidharma sentences like, if you want to see fish, then you have to look at the water. It's not a thinking sentence. Or the sentence that beyond that there is no secret.

[53:10]

That's almost a little disappointing, a little dry. And even the first sentence, that's so beautiful. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. And even under the snow, we see the first spring flowers and we see growth. It's an image. We don't have to think about it. Didn't you like the last sentence? In Japan, in the spring, we eat cucumber. It's nice, but not true. They don't eat cucumber. Sure they do. As I know. They eat cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers. Yes, of course, they eat Japanese cucumbers.

[54:26]

Yes, also the name, the course name, the nickname was of course also cucumber for Suzuki Roshi. Cucumber cucumber. I don't know quite where, but this is two lectures combined, and this last paragraph from about the middle of page 137 and this last is from another lecture which I tacked on to finish the book. I understood the text as a permission to stop grasping. Because if I focus on observing, then I'm not holding onto anything.

[55:47]

And then who knows what might happen. And it leads, for me in my practice, initially to disorientation. And some difficulty in holding it because of the disorientation. And then just going back to observing helped me give up trying to be oriented all the time. Trying to be oriental or oriental? Oriental. Half oriental. I'm disoriented oriental. He's half Indian, so you know. Yeah, so I found there's a lot of permission to take that position and to trust that it will turn out okay.

[56:52]

Yeah. Okay. Now, what time are we supposed to have dinner? Hmm? Six? Six-thirty. Okay. So let me say a little something and then we can stop. But if somebody gets something they'd like to say. Okay. They got me new pillows recently. They haven't been squashed down yet and I keep sliding off them. Okay. Anybody want to say something? So I spoke about an intention to bring attention to the breath.

[58:04]

And in response to Peter's question, I tried to bring it... What I mean by it comes to breath, body and phenomena. The attention now is not so much in some sort of tube of continuity, but is the moment field of experience. And it's interesting how clearly Suzuki Roshi points to bringing attention to the posture. And what he means by that, the center of the experience of bringing attention to the posture As I will go over in a somewhat different way what we spoke about in the seminar.

[59:20]

It's at the center of bringing attention to the posture is to bring attention to the spine. And the spine in the sense of the feel of the spine from the base of the spine to the top of the head. Okay. Now somebody, who was it, talked about Nagarjuna talking about putting a snake in bamboo? Is that Neil or Manuela?

[60:24]

And Evelyn. Where are you now that I need you? Okay. Nagarjuna, it may precede Nagarjuna as an image, but in any case it may go back in Indian culture a long ways, I don't know. But Nagarjuna talks about practice as trying to get a snake in bamboo. I remember once at Natasahara Creek, I knew that water snakes were not poisonous. And then there were these big, sometimes really big water snakes. And I don't know, one time I was sitting in the stream, so the hot springs overflows in the stream, so you could sit in this ice-cold stream, sort of half in the warm and half in the cold.

[61:32]

And then, instead of picking up the snake, which is common sense, near the head, As we occasionally had to do several times a year, five or six times a year, get rattlesnakes out, then you definitely pick them up close to the head. I just picked this guy, this water snake, up by the tail. And I lifted him out of the water and he was able to be horizontal. But he was horizontal like a whip. He was going and then he went right down my leg, my arm, and left little pieces of teeth.

[62:42]

I had always about 30 infections, you know, where these teeth were underneath the skin. Yeah, I said goodbye. Let him go into the water. Him, her, I don't know. Probably was a girl. Never a bamboo where you need it. Well, can you imagine? I'm just joking to tease you. Anyway... If I'd had a bamboo, it would have been hard as hell to get that stone. The bamboo would have had to be about this big to shrink it quick. Okay, well, Nagarjuna, that's what he means. It's very hard to get the mind in the backbone. So this is his image of getting the mind in the backbone.

[63:43]

And this, again, as I pointed out, the word prajna, which means wisdom, Also is the pre-Buddhist Indian word for non-dreaming deep sleep. So there's a powerful Buddhist conception of wisdom being recreating a mind similar to non-dreaming deep sleep. And non-dreaming deep sleep is understood to be, somewhat perhaps inaccurately, but understood conceptually to be A mind in which all mental activity has ceased.

[64:59]

And a mind which is characterized by blissful knowing. Perhaps a mind which because of its lack of thinking activity, supposedly, knows how things actually exist. Knows or is our true nature. I don't like terms too much like true nature, but I'll use it. Okay. So the conceptual idea is... If you can get mind into the spine... Mm-hmm.

[66:01]

It means to get mind into its stillness, or mind into where mental activity ceases. And even though this is the conception, it also happens to be, as Ravi has pointed out, if you bring attention away from your thinking, I mean, if you bring attention to your spine and your breath, you're bringing attention away from your thinking. So it's not so much that you're stopping thinking, but rather that you're bringing attention out of your thinking. And that bringing attention out of your thinking, when you do it, first of all repetitiously and then continuously.

[67:31]

Thinking ceases to be the medium through which you identify yourself. And as I said this morning, thinking becomes a tool which is more creative and clear when it's not how you identify yourself. Okay. So the backbone is understood with this wiggly snake. A way of calming the mind. Or finding the stillness of the mind. And also the backbone, the spine, is thought to be a channel.

[68:34]

Not only is it a channel of our kind of energy, But it's also understood to be a channel through, in a sense, as I've said, which non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces into our activity and into our zazen. And you can see that the descriptions of zazen mind in the deepest or purest sense describe zazen mind As if it were a kind of prajna without mental activity.

[69:34]

As if it were a kind of non-dreaming deep sleep. But non-dreaming deep sleep now in the context of knowing. And in the context of a waking mind which is not So here the idea is that you need to establish stillness in your physical and mental activity. And the way to establish stillness in your mental and physical activity. One of the steps is to develop the habit which you inhabit of having attention resting in the spine. Now, not attention as someone brought up in the seminar.

[70:57]

But attention, not attention as a photo. Can you please say that again? But not attention, as someone brought up in the seminar. Attention is a kind of image or photo of the spine. Now, as I said, it can be very powerful to direct attention through an image or a... But this is more like concentrating feeling in the spine. So maybe I could say you have an intention to concentrate feeling or bring feeling to the spine. And then I said, and bring breath to the spine, too.

[71:59]

And I said, it feels like maybe little soft hands holding the spine. Now, if you get in the habit of letting attention or feeling feeling resting in the spine. Then through that you bring attention to the whole of your posture. Now, the The understanding of this is on the one hand that it's the way to bring stillness to the mind,

[73:01]

To both discover and sustain the stillness of mind. But it's also to discover, nourish and manifest vitality. as a way to support your view and experience of the world. Now again, in the seminar, which I seem to be continuing more than I expected, It's very difficult to find any English equivalent or group of English words for what is meant by energy, vitality, spirit, all kinds of words like that in Buddhism.

[74:24]

But a kind of vital, integrative energy is needed to live in this world. And to sustain adaptive wisdom. Okay. And I think you can experience it yourself if you practice, as I have suggested, you practice bringing this feeling attention to the spine.

[75:32]

I think when you do it, you'll feel slightly more healthy. Or slightly more awake. And that becomes more true as you get more in the... the more you inhabit this. And it almost becomes a kind of thermometer, barometer or something like that. which can tell you things like should I eat this food or not you can look to your spine for a kind of information is it good for me to eat this or not Now, I'm always looking for language.

[76:44]

Terms I can adopt to use. And one of the things that I've been interested in over the years is the way complexity and chaos, physics, I'll call it that, is very close, it's virtually the same as a Buddhist worldview. And for years I have been particularly interested in the complexity and chaos theory. And the language that is used there is almost identical to the language in Buddhism. Suzuki Roshi says, in knowing mind everything flows.

[77:53]

Nothing exists or everything exists only momentarily in its momentary form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Okay, so let's say that's a fact. How do you survive in that fact? Well, you want to survive at the critical point of disorder and order. I've always been very disturbed by the second law of thermodynamics. I hope you've all been disturbed by it too. Because it says the world is just increasing disorder to a kind of undefined equilibrium or something like that.

[79:07]

Entropy is increasing. But if entropy is increasing, why do I exist? Because I'm a highly complex, as each of you are, Form of order. So what seems to be the case, as disorder increases, in that there's chaos and order, a new complex order evolves out of that. So an example of this... point where disorder and order are. An example often used. Most common examples are hurricanes and a piece of ice melting in the water. And the ice cube will eventually become room temperature and the water will be room temperature.

[80:18]

But how do you maintain ice and water at that thaw-freeze point? That's the secret of evolution or our existence. Consciousness is always trying to, let's call it the edge of disorder. Consciousness is always trying to get on the other side of the edge of disorder. It's telling you, baby, don't go there. And we want order. We like it. But order kills us. We don't live in a world where a program was set and then all the rules just keep going on.

[81:18]

The world develops through disorders. And I like my friend Stuart Kaufman's term. I think he coined fitness landscape, or at least he's one of the persons who uses it. You know Stuart. So we live in a fitness landscape that's either fit or not fit. As Stuart says, if the hills are too high, nothing happens. If the hills are too flat, there's no challenge and nothing develops.

[82:19]

Complexity doesn't develop. So how do you hold yourself to that thaw-freeze point? Consciousness can't do it. Thinking and feeling mind, as Sukershi says, can't do it. But he is saying, if mind rests in the spine and in posture... And mind rests in the pulse of the breath. The locus of breath and spine in the language of complexity, etc., etc., is an attractor. And in An attractor.

[83:30]

Not a farming tractor. Attractor. A tractor. Is ein Traktor. Yeah. A strange attractor or a tractor. Something that attracts. Okay, not a tractor. Not a tractor. Was anziehendes. Yeah. I like tractors, though. Yeah, but I'm not speaking about that. Ja, dann ist es eben etwas anziehendes. Okay. Okay. I was just distracted by this karma-biting mind. Oh, yeah, that was a long time ago. You know, we had this little accident. That wasn't you translating, though. No, but still. Were you there? No, you've heard the story. No, no, I was there, actually. You were there? Yeah. Who was translating? A man, I think it was a man. Yeah. No, that was in Berlin. Friedrich was not with me in Berlin. Michael Podkosz, you mean? No, no. It was one of the... It could not have been Neil.

[84:34]

No, it couldn't have been Neil. It was one of the Freedom University's people. Uwe Morawitz, maybe? No, it might have been... My first thought, it was the... Wolfgang. Wolfgang Dahlberg, but I don't think it was him. It was somebody else. who translated for me sometimes anyway since we're talking you should know the story I talked I was speaking about calm abiding mind And the more I spoke, the stranger the audience looked. And there was a pretty big audience, like 200 people. And finally I said, What are you translating?

[85:39]

What are you saying? He said, karma biting mind. And that was the days of Pac-Man. The first computer game. And so... So calm abiding mind is a kind of karma abiding mind. Okay. My point is here is that if you have attention resting in the locus of spine and breath, in the stillness of mind through the spine you can feel and in the pulse of the breath it is not a plan for the future but it's a attractor It's out of the fitness landscape of the moment by moment details of existence.

[87:06]

It puts together the information that lets you know things, how they exactly exist. The world is flowing and you are flowing. And consciousness can't deal with that. But a mind rooted in, located in, breath and the spine can know how things actually exist. and can function in the coherence of everything changing. So that's the basic idea behind much of what he's putting on, putting in this text. It's a kind of, I don't like the word self-organizing, it's a kind of own organizing locus.

[88:12]

What can keep you at this edge of chaos or edge of disorder? A disorder which is always seeking, allowing coherence. And again, it's interesting that the Wise man in yogic culture, wise person, as I said the other day, is a person who has adaptive wisdom, who finds the coherence in the flow of things, and is nourished by that and renewed by it.

[89:33]

That's the definition of a mature, wise person in yoga culture. Not that you enter with wisdom or you accumulate wisdom, but you have an adaptive wisdom which renews you in each situation. I think that's an extraordinary idea and vision of human life. So let's sit for a moment. You can feel in this posture itself.

[91:41]

How the spine and the breath are the main definers of the posture. And how together they transform the mind.

[91:57]

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