And it's a different route to getting here. But somehow I was just, just late. in getting ready this morning. But I hope half an hour sitting is better than my talking. And that's probably true, but sometimes the talking is important. Okay. So we have this topic. Somehow I never used to pay attention to topics much, but now I pay much more attention to topics.

[01:01]

I don't know why. But I guess because now topics are so rich in possibilities that I can make use of them in ways I didn't in the past. And so our topic today, as far as I understand it, is breath, body, and phenomena. Is that right? Is it end or without end? Breath-body phenomena. Und. Mit und. Well, we're going to take und out. Okay. Because they're really interwoven, transitional, experiential domains.

[02:10]

weil die wirklich miteinander verwobene und ineinander übergreifende Erfahrungsdomänen sind. And I'm emphasizing this stage in my life, the basic teachings. Basic teachings partly because if we are a lay practice, it's primarily a lay practice, we at least should get the basic teachings And the... As I've been saying recently, just because it's the case, we have created in Europe a contemporary sangha.

[03:41]

And the big question is, will we create a successional sangha? In other words, will your practice, you each of you, practice be ingrained enough to be felt and transferred and transmitted to others? Is ingrained, it's like carved into one's body, something like that? Yeah, ingrained is like the grain of the wood, which it comes from, so it's part of the wood itself.

[04:44]

I suppose the grain of the wood of a particular tree then appears in the grain of the wood of its seedling. And ingrained, of course, is something like we could say embodied. So part of what I would like to discuss is what really is meant or can be meant or can be experienced as embodiment.

[05:49]

And this is not a simple contrast between basic teachings and advanced teachings. Because most of what we call advanced teachings actually are rooted in the basic teachings. But the advanced teachings, so-called advanced teachings, are only rooted in the basic teachings when the basic teachings are really thoroughly embodied. And how do we get there? Now, I think the two main transformative dynamics of Western Buddhism will be, that is going to be for many anyway, primarily a lay practice.

[07:25]

And I think in the main, in the main, It's going to be a kind of science and not a religion. Now, I've always said I didn't want to use science as a Trojan horse to sneak Buddhism into the West. He said, I grew up in a rather scientific family and I was expected to be a scientist and things like that. But, or something odd, an artist maybe, I don't know. I wasn't expected to be normal, so I've lived that out.

[08:31]

So with a natural interest somehow in science. Still from the 60s, from the beginning of the 60s, I resisted the idea of using science to explain Buddhism. And I think if we're going to, and believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever said something just like this. It seems obvious, but this is the first time. I don't think we want to take the views and standards of science as the basis to form or reform or something like that, Buddhism.

[09:52]

But I do think we want to, in ourselves, explore practice as a form of knowledge rooted in how things actually exist. Explore. Knowledge. As rooted in how things actually exist. Now, it's interesting that, you know, obviously, the earliest Buddhist practices are breath practices. But the attention to breath is also not only important in itself, but an excuse to teach an analysis rooted in energy.

[10:59]

So we tend to take, and the Westers tend to take, mindfulness practice as a form of being mindful. But in the Buddhist, historical Buddhist time, it was considered a way to become, a way to notice the world in an analytical way. Now all these words, like analysis, analytical, and so forth, have their own baggage in our contemporary culture. Yeah, but I would like you to kind of use the words within the feeling I'm trying to convey.

[12:32]

And use the words in the way your own body almost, not mine so much, but your body senses the feel of the words. Words have a feel that go way beyond their... dictionary or syntactical definition. So if I'm gonna use words, I have no choice to use English words, but Nicole and you find words in Deutsch, I have to use words that have developed in our cultural history.

[13:54]

But I'm speaking about a practice and a way of being alive and being in the world which almost doesn't exist in our culture. Aber ich spreche dabei über eine Praxis und über eine Art des In-der-Welt-Seins, die in unserer Kultur fast nicht existiert. Or exists in our culture in sort of an intuitive sense. We intimate it, but don't quite know how to articulate it. Articulate. So what I've found in myself and found with the persons I practice with, is that there are intimations that we are not able to live, but we discover, I don't know, in some kind of inner request.

[15:24]

that are literally fleshed out if you start to practice meditation. Do you have an expression like fleshed out in German? I said poured out. Washed out? No, that would be flushed out. We're not trying to flush out, we're trying to flesh out. Fleshed out means literally turned into flesh. But it's used from that to be, if you flesh out a topic, it means you develop the topic in a way that it can be embodied. Okay. Okay, okay.

[16:40]

How do you translate the word? Interesting, I'm talking about the basic teachings but I'm not talking in the basic way. We could speak about, we could have the title, an alternative title or byline title. Is it like a motto? A byline is a parallel, a comment on a title.

[17:43]

It's like an under-title. It's like a subtitle. I read it as a body-breath phenomenon. And I read it as a body-spirit phenomenon. Breath-body phenomena is the title. Yeah, that's what I said, isn't it? Let's get that straight at least. When did we start practicing together? When did we start practicing together? Wann haben wir alle angefangen miteinander zu lernen? 1990. In Berlin? Yes. Good and safe. And you're even... No, I don't want to give you a compliment.

[18:44]

That's a reverse way of giving a compliment. Umgekehrter Art. Umgekehrter Art, doch ein Kompliment zu geben. We could call the subtitle or the byline the depth of the basic practices. Or the depth of the basic teachings. Or the depths, the transformative depths of the basic teaching. Now, and the depth is in the details. Isn't there some expression, the genius is in the details, I think?

[20:01]

In German it's the devil. The devil is in the detail. And it's really complicated. We don't want to go there. No. That's just a misspelling of the word depth. Okay, so the depth is in the detail. I mean, I think Einstein or somebody said that genius is in the details. And he was German? Jewish. Does that mean he had the different expressions? No, it's just very, very smart among other things. Non-Jewish Germans are very, very smart. That's not, you know, stereotypes here. But, and I love the word details. Because for me, I hear in the word details, tailor.

[21:06]

Details, tails is from tailor. And in a funny way, these basic practices are a kind of tailoring. The basic practices as presented by the historical Buddha, and of course at that time, If you look carefully at the teachings, it's really about details. We tend to take basic emphases within the early teachings and generalize them and then practice them in a general way.

[22:13]

But we practice breathing. Or noticing breathing. To notice breathing is a generalization. What are the ingredients of breathing? Two nostrils. And inhales and exhales. And a successional pace of inhales and exhales. Like the early expressions of this teaching are, you know, you go to a secluded place, which can mean zazen.

[23:21]

And you notice whether your exhale is long or short. And you notice whether your inhale is long or short. And that's code for noticing the succession and pace of the breath. And it very specifically says in the Anapanasati or Anapanashmirti in Sanskrit Sutra, the second word is Sanskrit, first is Pali, says you notice not the breathing

[24:38]

You notice each hail, I call it each hail, each inhale, each exhale. And you notice the bodily movements which accompany each hail. And that is really a shift from experiencing the body, and we tend to think of mindfulness as experiencing the mind by being attentive to things. So if we're going to be scientific about this, we should look at the ingredients. And I think we should notice that all the ingredients, we treat all the ingredients with equal importance.

[26:01]

So what are the ingredients we have here? And inhale, inhaling and inhale. And inhale and inhale. And exhale and exhaling. And the succession or pace of the breathing. And the physicalizing, the physicality of the breath. Okay. This is definitely what I've just said. It's basically a definition of mindfulness. And it's rooted in the physicality of the breath. Okay. Okay, now, if you have these before...

[27:01]

These four ingredients. Obviously, you can't have these four ingredients without attention. So implicitly and explicitly, there's a fifth ingredient, which is attention. So it's almost as if the Buddha said, you know, I really want to make people aware of attentionality. But to bring attention to attention is too subtle for most people. So let's give them something to... people I'm talking to, something to attend to.

[28:17]

So maybe they'll learn physicalized attention if they bring attention to their breath. So in any way, whatever the logic of the process, it's to develop physicalized attention for us is best discovered and developed through bringing attention to the breath in its details. Through that you begin to tailor

[29:20]

a practice to fit you. You can see the bias of the fabric. Which way the threads go. You sense the grain of the fabric. And you see where the seams have to be, especially given the patterns in the fabric. Now this inner tailoring of breath practice is also then and understood to be a way to develop an intentional analyst and analytic attention.

[30:59]

Well, you're beginning to observe in an analytical way, which means you see the consequences of the observation of how breath functions bodily. I thought I was teaching the basics. What am I doing here? Maybe we should take a break and we'll come back. Not for me. I'll just translate what he said. Oh, okay. I can't stop. Du entwickelst eine aufmerksame analytische Aufmerksamkeit und in anderen Worten beschrieben, also du entwickelst die Fähigkeit zu beobachten, was passiert, wenn du die Aufmerksamkeit entwickelst, sodass du dann die Konsequenzen

[32:06]

So that means you're noticing things like how your breathing affects your mental states and how your mental states or modes affect your breathing. That's only one thing, but there's a whole range of things that you begin to notice are intertwined. Okay. But since you were sitting half an hour before I came, I think it's a good time to take Thank you very much for taking the time to be here. And thanks for putting this together again so I can see my old friends.

[33:13]

You look so nice in your new rucksack. Makes me new. Yeah, he's kind of ragged sometimes, and his rucksack gets very ragged. So some people made a new Ratsu for you, right? Out of sheer affection and respect. And then they asked me to write on it. I said, I can't write on his Ratsu, but I was taught to do it. Okay.

[33:41]

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