You know, I sometimes say that our life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. And this is kind of obvious. But what isn't so obvious is that Buddhism is a teaching that All of the inhales and exhales in between that first and second are the difference between wisdom and enlightenment, a life rooted in wisdom and enlightenment. And could the teaching and science of Buddhism be that simple? So in regard to what I said in the first part of the morning, do any of you or each of you have something you'd like to comment on

[01:27]

And particularly, you weren't here for the first part. So maybe if you bring up something, it might benefit him. I don't know, me. Did anything make obvious sense or unusual sense? Or no sense at all. Yes. Free your So free your breath from the conditioning of thinking and the feeling of everything.

[02:48]

So just free your breath from it again and again. You said a long, long time ago in the Haus der Stille, in Büchen, a practice phrase that influenced me deeply, which is that free your breath from all kinds of conditioning, from thinking and feeling and so forth. Just free your breathing. And that has become a very strong anchor for me. Again and again, no matter what trouble or what I get, when I notice it, And that became a strong anchor for me that when I get into trouble or... You get into trouble every time. Every time. The second name is trouble. Anytime. Here he comes, he's trouble.

[03:50]

But when I get into trouble, then I leave it, leave the trouble just the way it is, leave the feeling just the way it is, but bring attention to breathing with a feeling of free breathing, and then the free breathing frees the trouble. This is pretty good actually. And that practice for me has become almost unconscious or maybe automatic. But when what you just said is, that made me feel it connects to. Okay, good. When anybody says to me, what you said in the 80s or 90s or 70s or something like that, I think, I get a moment of anxiety. What will this be? Did I really say that? Do I still agree? But so far, so good. I usually could say it better now, but not maybe differently.

[04:57]

Aren't you? Can you speak to everyone and not just her? I'm teasing her because I know she's a little shy. Okay, so the question, and it turns out other people had the question. You said attention is the fifth ingredient, but what were the other four?

[06:18]

Oh, the inhale, the exhale, the succession of breathing, or pace of breathing, and the physical breathing. movements that accompany breathing. Those are the four standard, which is the science of breathing. Die vier Standardzutaten ist das Einatmen, das Ausatmen, die Abfolge der Atemzüge, also auch das rhythmische Tempo des Einatmens und Ausatmens, und das vierte, die Körperlichkeit des Atems. So typical of a Buddhist practice teaching is the ingredients are located. I mean, there's an infinite number of ingredients, you know. But the ingredients that are useful to notice are pointed out. and then once the ingredients which are useful to notice are pointed out then the field or the domain of the teaching is further developed but by adding

[07:47]

What is necessary to notice these four ingredients? Well, what is necessary is attention. Okay, so now we put in a fifth ingredient. It's a kind of chemical solution. And And once we put in attention, what are the consequences of putting attention, adding attention to the four ingredients? What are the consequences, etc.? And in that way, a basic teaching develops advances and becomes an advanced teaching. And then again, what follows from that? And in this way, a basic teaching develops into a advanced teaching.

[09:03]

It's clear that generalizations are not conducive when speaking about one's own practice or practice in general. But if you really look at your own practice more and more closely, with the instruments you have, then, as I have discovered, you always need a large part of, I don't know how to say it, not courage, the power of conviction that what one discovers there, the uniqueness, the unmistakable uniqueness of one's own practice and discovery, in order to, so to speak, in front of everything that is said about Fager Meinung, all the cultural and social stuff about it, sorry, to make it still valid and to keep it.

[10:30]

so that's okay don't apologize it's just like yeah it's just here um it's just don't do it again By the way, it's harder when someone says a lot, and then there's a joke in between. I understand. Anyways, it takes a certain amount of courage when one looks at the details of one's own practice more and more carefully. to then, when that's contrasted with all the general stuff that one is told by culture and so forth, to have the courage that the uniqueness, there's this particular, there's a uniqueness to the details of one's own experience that still remains valid in the light of all the general truth or general

[11:40]

I mean, the teaching in its specificity, which is not culturally related to your basic experience, basic culture, can continue to have validity, veracity, in the midst of all the stuff you've learned elsewhere. Is that right? Something like that. But it's the subtlety and the uniqueness of the own experience, which is tender, sort of, and against this bulk of, . Yeah. The addition was tenderness, I think, to what you said, the tenderness of one's own experience. And maybe I can translate how you rephrase that. Also, du meinst in anderen Worten, dass die Spezifität in ihren Details der Lehre und der eigenen Erfahrung, dass das eine Validität, eine Gültigkeit und das Gefühl von einem Wahrheitsgehalt behält, im Kontrast zu den ganzen kulturellen Verallgemeinungen.

[13:00]

There's a brilliant scientist and poet named Von Dane, F-O-N-D-A-N-E, I believe. I think his first name is Benjamin. Benjamin Von Dane. And he compares his struggle in Europe in the early 30s and 40s Which is survival of dancing turtles in the midst of a herd of elephants. Like this. But what chance do they have in a herd of elephants? So the little seal was made for me of dancing turtles, and I put it on your arm, okay?

[14:16]

So wurde für mich so ein Stempel gemacht. Make some dance already. Tanzenden Schildkröten gemacht, und das habe ich auf deinem Raxo gestempelt. Okay. Yes, it's a skill one has to develop. Yes, this is a skill that you have to develop. Someone else? Yes, I also have a question. I am a medic. I realized that I am not breathing in such a state. I enjoy it very much and breathing actually disturbs me. And I just wanted to ask if anyone else has this experience. And sometimes I somehow can't keep up with my meditation and stay at this point. And I would like to get some tips on how I could get there.

[15:20]

You speak German as if you speak English fluently. Do you want to translate yourself? I can do it, yeah. But I can speak English, but I've lived here so long, sometimes I forget some words and stuff. But my question was, when I meditate, sometimes I get to a point where I... I enjoy the stillness and every time I breathe in and I breathe out, it annoys me because it's... Don't be annoyed and stop. And I just wanted to know if anyone else experiences this and how to get over this because I find it comes up quite a bit actually. You develop a stillness in sitting, but then you find the act of breathing interferes with your stillness. This is a very sensitive problem.

[16:25]

Has anyone else had this sensitive problem? And not as a problem. It is a help for me because I experience when I'm sitting that my breath becomes slower and slower. And sometimes when I'm doing the duan, for instance, I have the clock in front of my face, I can see how often I'm breathing in a minute or something like that. And for me it is like with the breathing out. You can use this breathing out as the vehicle to come to the stillness. And you must not have fear about it because your body will take you back with it.

[17:30]

be next in here. It comes just by itself. But you can let go and let go and let go. That's wonderful. Sometimes I also have it that the breath is very deep and it's not so deep that I can't even breathe. um um i also have this experience that sometimes my breathing gets so deep, that I get to a point where I feel like, OK, well, now I don't even have to breathe anymore. But it's not a problem for me either. It's actually something that I rather enjoy. I have the imagination that as if I was journeying, racing through the cosmos,

[18:33]

No limit. Breath-powered. I know it too. I discovered this point when I... When I breathe with the different... As if the body itself consists of different rhythms. And I can breathe very superficially. And then you feel as if you're really breathing air. But when I get to a point where I don't even breathe, it's almost as if the cells are breathing matter. It's almost as if all matter is the same. These are very long breaths. And I said, I have this experience also. And for me, the way I work with it. That experience he has. Yeah. Or something. Similar, yeah. Yeah. And for me, what I work with is a feeling of different rhythms of the body.

[19:55]

There's a way of breathing where I feel like it's a kind of coarse breathing, where there's a feeling as if my body is breathing air. and then it feels like there's air outside and my body's breathing with them. Is it my body or just a body? No, that's where I'm getting at. Oh, okay. Sorry. So at that point it's a coarse breathing and it feels like the coarse muscles of the body are engaged in the breathing. But when I shift into the rhythm underneath that rhythm and the rhythm underneath that rhythm, the rhythm underneath that rhythm, then... It's turtles all the way down. It's an expression of some physicists. Yeah, that's right. Then it feels as if air turns into materiality. It doesn't feel anymore as if there's air breathing and there's just one sense of materiality. What is your name? Drew. Drew. D-R-E-W. Yes.

[20:55]

Hi, Drew. Nice to meet you. I would guess that what is annoying you is the noticing of the breath, not the breath itself. That makes sense, yeah. So if you can take away the noticing, I think that breathing will just be a way you enter into this metabolic succession of how we exist. I think some people, when they start to practice, because we Westerners I speak of Westerns in contrast to East Asian yogic practitioners.

[22:03]

And there is a difference between the integrating points of view. But I don't feel I'm comparing in some positive, negative way or something like that. Somehow Western culture, at least in Western Europe, produced a way of life that everyone in the world wants to immigrate to, emigrate to. But in the strength now of our successful, quite successful at creating a way of life, Western culture, We're exploring and probably integrating this East Asian yogic way of life.

[23:19]

And maybe we have the confidence and power to do it. But because we Westerners usually identify the world as a mental phenomenon, And this needs to be investigated by each of us beyond my target words. In other words, I can say some words, but they're not descriptive. They're just targets for exploration. Okay.

[24:28]

So again, we tend to see experience as a mental phenomena And then as fundamentally predictable, because mental phenomena can be predictable. But physical phenomenality is clearly not predictable. So if our identity, your identity, my identity, is rooted in the body, defined and articulated through the breath, then it's clear everything is changing and impermanent and so forth.

[25:44]

Because your breathing itself is impermanent and unpredictable. Even in its repetition. So I think some people, when they first start practicing meditation, they notice their heartbeat. It can be, for some people, rather scary to notice your heartbeat. Hey, it's repeating. What if it didn't repeat? And I've heard somewhere that at some point it will stop repeating. So you think, I'm going to meditate on my breathing, not on my heart. This is too scary. But you can't avoid the heart's there.

[27:01]

And then you notice the anxiety you had at noticing the heart made the heart beat faster. Oh, Jesus, this is even worse. The way I feel affects my heart. Oh, gosh. No one told me that. And it's sensitive right away to anxiety or... nervousness or settledness. So this kind of analysis is also assumed as part of breath practice. And I think, and I found myself, it took some months, if not a year or more, to really get comfortable with having attention fully present with and in and as the body.

[28:40]

Anyone else? Someone else? Yeah? What I like about Buddhism, and that's also something I like about science, is that one... He's a botanist, among other things. Yes, I'm a botanist, among other things, is that analytic thinking helps to proceed. It's a kind of science of mind. It's a kind of science of mind.

[29:44]

And there are these nice parallels between modern physics and Buddhism, for example, the concept of emptiness. And so with normal thinking, one can follow these ideas. So as in other religions, as mysterious, it shines through or is exposed, in Buddhism it is also possible to get there analytically. I think that's great. And why in other religions? Not other religions. Other teachings that are called religions. So that in other teachings that are called religion, it's called a mystery. It's sort of kept behind the boundary of this is mysterious, that in Buddhism you can reach into that through analysis, through analytical thinking.

[31:01]

That I really like. Yes, me too. I think, who was right here, someone? Yes, you. I've always learned to pay particular attention, concentrate especially on exhalation. But from a particular point on, I had the feeling that I also have to concentrate on inhalation in order to include everything that happens during inhalation, including the way the body expands.

[32:02]

At the same time I always have the feeling that inhalation is also more connected to emotional art. It brings up emotional states more including fear and so forth but that's also one of the reasons that i felt i have to pay attention to inhaling um also so that that that is all part i have to change the way that i am Now there is more movement in it. But what happened through that also is that the movements became much more part of meditation.

[33:23]

Maybe that also relates to what Drew said before, that before I did that, I felt more I was concentrating on the unmovability of meditation, the spine and exhalation. And now the movements are part of meditation. Yeah, that's right. And... Okay, so you're bringing attention to the exhale and to the inhale. And you're noticing that the inhale and the exhale are not simply pure air coming out of a tube or something. The the breath, the inhale and exhale already carry with them or are inseparable from, nearly inseparable from, emotions and memories and so forth.

[34:35]

So we could say the inhale and the exhale already have emotional and mental baggage attached. So, attentional baggage. So, we can now give it, in addition, attentional baggage, in a wise way, a scientific way. Very simply, to your inhale, you can add the word receiving. So with every inhale, you feel receiving.

[35:51]

And then to every exhale, you can add the word releasing. Now, you're not adding these words to totally pure stream of oxygen. Of course, it's not oxygen going out. You're actually changing oxygen into nitrogen? What is it? Carbococo2. So you're changing oxygen into carbon dioxide, oxygen. So when you add something to breathing, you're not doing something extraneous, you're doing something that's already happening, and you're trying to organize it's happening.

[36:59]

You're not adding something to something that's neutral. You're adding something that's already conditioned. Okay. In a sense, recondition your breath, at least in English, with the words receiving and releasing. And then, of course, through this analytic approach, you can begin to see that sometimes the exhale is a form of receiving, inhale is a form of releasing. But it's this kind of examination that makes Buddhism a science. Good morning. I have a broken relationship to science.

[38:30]

Yes, but you're a mathematician or something like that, right? to say, science is just another story tale. So it's actually about this narrative, the story. How can I influence something with science that is still science? So I started out as a scientist, but I actually ended up with science is just another story. And so the question is, how can I, . How can I, through science, reach into something or trigger something?

[39:39]

Trigger something. Trigger something that's beyond the dualistic scientific approach. Es ist so, dass ich... Du benutzt das Wort des polyamischen Fernes. Und ich, für mich ist es eher der Lügenbaum von Wilhelmsen. You are using the idea of the Trojan horse, but for me it's more the lying Baron Munchausen. Oh, Munchausen, yeah. Oh, yeah, that guy. He was problematic. It's a standing term for us. Eine Geschichte, die auch glaubhaft sein kann und dadurch eine Kraft hat. A story that can also be convincing and through its convincingness has a power.

[40:41]

Und eigentlich will ich nicht bei der Wissenschaft bleiben. Ich will ganz kurz erzählen, dass mir jemand zu verstehen gab, that I am on the wooden path with the way I live, the way I think. And I don't want to stay with science, but would like to tell briefly how someone made clear to me that I'm on the wrong path in how I think. There was a Jewish American, and he said to me, you Germans are very strange. When you came to him, you saw a sign there, a sign. So it was a Jewish American. He said, you Germans are really weird. When you go into heaven, then you get to a point where you see a sign and the sign says on the right hand side you can go to paradise, on the left hand side you can go to a lecture about paradise and then you go to the lecture about paradise.

[42:02]

Yeah, okay. The light's red, you wait. And when the light is red, you wait. What I notice is, when you follow the instructions about breathing, then it's about, first of all, being active. So the attention should be brought there as an activity. And in the end, I don't have the feeling that I am doing something, but rather that it is breathing. But when I follow the instructions about breathing, then I have a feeling that I'm bringing attention as a kind of activity. And I no longer, and I end up with a feeling that it breathes me. Yeah, good. So one more question, I think, question for you, Roshi, is... Rafa Durkheim or Durkheim, the sociologist?

[43:12]

Einatmen mit Zulassen. Connect exhaling with accepting. Ausatmen mit was? Exhalation with releasing, letting go. Inhalation with accepting. Am Ende des Ausatmens sagt er, And the small moment at the end of exhaling, connect that with letting it be. Neither inhaling nor exhaling. Yes, that's right. Sounds scientific to me.

[44:25]

Even if you have a broken relationship with science, maybe Buddhism will mend it. Because we have to look at it. Is Buddhism only a story like any story, or is it rooted differently in actuality? I don't think it's a simple question at all of how Buddhism is a science. And this is really, I can't believe it or not, the first time in a seminar I've ever said Buddhism is a science. I've often said it's like a science or it's a kind of science. And I've stated it in this qualified way.

[45:37]

Because I don't want to have the feeling that somebody should come along and make Buddhism scientific. A couple of years ago, I was invited to give a couple of talks in Tucson, Arizona, at the International Conference on Consciousness. Is that what it was called? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I was kind of the odd man out, the wild card, the black sheep. Because I was the only person really, it seems, exploring and studying consciousness from the inside.

[47:21]

And really exploring it non-metaphysically and non-dogmatically from some kind of teaching perspective. And although a number of close friends of mine who were physicists were there, who mostly agree with my views about consciousness, They also think, well, but it can't be verified. It can't be experimentally verified. So they like it, they agree with it, but they can't officially acknowledge it. And there's another conference coming up, which I could go to, but I don't think I will.

[48:34]

It's every two years. Because I feel, you know, it's... It's not the way to present Buddhism as a science. Now, I'm announcing to you that I'm saying Buddhism is a science. Really, because I'm trying it out as an idea. In other words, if I say Buddhism has many aspects that are much like a science, In anderen Worten, wenn ich sage, dass der Buddhismus viele Aspekte hat, die mit der Wissenschaft einiges gemein haben.

[49:42]

But it still remains also a religion. Aber dass es immer noch auch eine Religion bleibt. And relating to us emotionally in ways religions do. Und dass es für uns emotional quasi, dass wir emotional eine Beziehung zum Buddhismus als Religion haben. Norbert... Janssen, who some of you would know, who's a psychologist, was a psychologist, in Kassel. And every year for many years after this seminar, I've gone and done a two-day seminar with psychologists in Kassel, his house. And Last year, and the conference I've been doing for 28 years, I believe, with psychologists in Austria.

[50:55]

Yeah. Which Norbert and his wife usually attend. Last year he was wonderfully present and active, but he felt some kind of inner tiredness. And he had some kind of bone cancer that was already metastasizing. And it spread everywhere eventually, and it was a death sentence from the beginning. So I came up a couple days early to Castle to see him, and he was kind of waiting to see him before he died. But he died the morning that I was planning to leave for Kassel.

[52:13]

So I got there and there he was lying in bed. Extremely still. Looking completely beautiful and translucent, something somehow. But ice cold. I mean, if he'd been alive, I would have put my hand on his forehead and held him certain ways that are traditional when you spend bodily time with somebody who's dying. Yeah, but he was clearly gone.

[53:14]

It's like a vent horizon of a black hole. There he was just shortly before, alive, feeling sick, but with us in some sort of shared world. And there he was, gone across an event horizon where there are no more events for him except cremation in a couple days. But that's not for him. He has a son named Eno.

[54:19]

who's much like him, really, really much like him, and tall. He's, you know, like this tall. And it's funny, they never decided to take Ahu Norbert never decided to take Buddhist names, though I've been practicing with him for 30 years. But they gave their son a Buddhist name. Why not? So last year, they sort of celebrated my 80th or 81st or something birthday. And in Rostenberg, I was told not to turn around at the mealtime. So I knew that something was up, but I followed instructions. And then I was told to turn around.

[55:52]

And he really is big man. I mean, when I give him a hug, I feel like a girl. And I turned around with totally behind me was this large man with six arms. Really six arms, all doing things. But he had two people hiding behind him, all with their arms out. And he had some kind of headdress on, and he really looked like Avalokiteshvara. And he was smiling this huge smile. Yeah, now all of that's... For Buddhism, the mystery isn't that we go to heaven or something, but this very gone-ness is the mystery.

[57:10]

We could say we arise from gone-ness and we leap into gone-ness. And gone-ness actually permeates our lived life, the potentiality of it and its implicit presence. The last part, please. It's implicit presence. So I arrived and the cremation folks were going to come with a wooden coffin to put it in when I was there.

[58:18]

And the person who brought the coffin was very sensitive. youngest man, who said, I don't have to do it now. I have plenty of time. I'll just wait. So here all these people were there. Were there 20 people or so? And they didn't, no one told them a Buddhist scientist had arrived. They said a Buddhist priest has arrived. So I was expected to do something that wasn't scientific.

[59:35]

And there were quite a few people, maybe there were more than 20, but there were quite a few middle-aged ladies with blue hair. They didn't have blue hair, but almost. With tailored clothes and so forth. And they clearly weren't ready for no God. Yeah. There were also some middle-aged women there, they didn't have blue hair, but they were wearing very self-styled clothes and they were clearly not ready for a statement that there is no God. So I did a pretend ceremony instead of a real ceremony, which is a very different ceremony. So I said, if I was doing a ceremony, this is what I'd say. So the rehearsal... turned into sort of a real ceremony.

[60:52]

But I used it to create some distance so that I could say, He's gone. What is this goneness? And how do we enter into this goneness which is implicit in our very life? Now, a Buddhist scientist can offer something there, which a usual scientist probably cannot. I mean, you could, but... Okay. So anyway, I decided that somehow yesterday or something, maybe that The chemistry is to now just say Buddhism to science and see how that plays out.

[62:03]

And not to say it's like a science. But to say it is a science. And as a science it has to include the emotional part. and subtle dimensions that religions have. Sorry for that little riff. I don't know where it came from. But I am now, from today, exploring in an inclusive way what it means to say Buddhism is a science. And I know Tibetan Buddhists and Zen Buddhists, many of them, have a problem with how to remain a religion but also yet think scientifically.

[63:13]

I remember I had a conversation with the Dalai Lama's main translator and probably the main creator of his books. Forget his name, something Jake May. Very nice guy, I liked him. And if you were in not Rome, another Rome, but another Italian city, in a meeting of scientists. And he said, you know, I can't really believe in reincarnation.

[64:27]

He says, but I like believing in it. So I don't believe in it, but I'm continuing to like believing in it. So now I believe it might be time for lunch. We have beliefs, you know. Sometimes they're related to actual biological events. So when you're the boss, when do we regather? 1245.

[65:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.65