Hi. Hello. So what are some of the basics for you? What is a basic for you that you feel represents your practice or represents your way of reminding yourself to practice or something like that? Yes. Yes. So in order to find a peaceful entry into the mind, it is important for me to sit with the intention of no gaining idea or not to want to attain anything. And from an external point of view, of course, when I sit down, I do it in such a way that I eat moderately and drink.

[01:31]

I think it's better not to sit in front of the mirror. And if I look at a sashimi or at the self-practice in general, for that there is also a place for yuki-essen. So it's actually one thing that goes away and the other goes away. And looking at it from just practically or externally, when I know I'm going to sit zazen, I eat moderately. It's better to not sit with a full stomach. And if I think of sesshin practice, oriyoki practice also helps doing that. So it's like one wisdom leads into the next step or wisdom. Yes? For me, and admittedly this is a difficult point, but the point that you mention a lot is to not move, to really just hold still.

[02:38]

Okay, good, thanks. If we really speak about basics, then of course breathing is basic. Breath, which for me is the bridge between body and mind. And maybe just the way you just mentioned the shift from the self-narrative stream into immediate sensorial location. To put all awareness in the body-mind structure and get it out of thinking.

[03:56]

Good, I see that I don't have to continue talking. But it helps maybe if we notice that we're doing this together in some kind of fundamental way. Yes? For me the attitude of accepting is very important and I keep practicing to get myself into an accepting state. Yes. Finally, also the stream of immediacy is very important. And then for me that also means to go back to a sense of my true nature or what I really am with a sense of core back to the roots.

[05:19]

And to whatever that is, that sense to enjoy it. Well, since you do Qigong, this is a great way to enjoy it. Anyone else? Yes, Harold. I dare to say that the first thing is that I concentrate on my breathing. And then I say a prayer, a prayer which I learned as a child, which I was examined by a priest, and which I had my deepest experience with a therapist, when I trusted, had the greatest trust to anybody

[06:36]

in my life. And then this is kind of opening the door to trust. And then I let loose. And in German, please. Yes, so that I can direct my attention to the breath. And then I remember the religious prayer that I learned as a child and as a teenager with Kulbuk Dutnit Massor and had a bad experience with it, how it continues now. Okay. It's interesting how certain things, in your example, for example, remain with us as turning point memories.

[08:09]

And I just met you for the first time a few moments ago. But as you started out, you dare to say, I dare to say, those experiences that you just mentioned with the priest and the therapist, are probably we could call incremental enlightenment experiences. And those experiences exist for us whether you're part of the Zen tribe or not.

[09:15]

And I would say you remember them because they function, they were in some ways timeless experiences so they're still present. And that looking at something like that carefully can show us that we actually exist in a conscious stream of memory related primarily to our narrative stream. And then we have experiences that are more spatial and more non-temporal or more have a feeling of timelessness.

[10:21]

And while they were turning points of enough vividness that we remember them in many contexts, They also existed in a kind of other stream of timeless experiences, if this makes any sense. And so we could say that the Buddhists over the many centuries, 25 or so, have been kind of like our scientists. And they studied our living existence.

[11:49]

And I would say they drew a conclusion from experiences like yours is how can we enter this more timeless terrain, territory of experience, in which we find ourselves, feel ourselves in this timeless sphere more often. But the problem is, of course, we Everything in our more temporal stream of mind leads us into those kind of temporal activities.

[13:18]

And nothing, if we imagine this as the temporal stream or self-referencing stream, Nothing in it makes you realize, notice there's another stream parallel, paratactically parallel. And the decision to do zazen, for instance, suddenly makes that stream divert into the other one. Or a crisis in your life or something.

[14:24]

Or wisdom, which some of you have said already. Something reminds you, okay, that other stream is there. I'm going to enter it. And it's always there, but it's not... The narrative stream engages our whole attention... And so it doesn't allow us to notice that actually this other stream is always there and is the basis of, in fact, the narrative stream. And it is always there.

[15:24]

But it is so that the stream of the narrative absorbs our entire attention, so that we are usually not able to notice that this other stream is always there and is actually the basis for the self-historical, self-narrative stream. A simple example I can give you. is I'm looking at all of you. I can look at all of you but not think about you. And if I look at all of you and don't think about you, I feel you in a very different way, a non-comparative way than if I think about you. And we could call that a yogic skill. To be able to notice without thinking about. Okay, but a more basic example I'm seeing all of you, feeling your presence.

[16:47]

I'm seeing actually the allness of you and the eachness of you simultaneously. Ich spüre tatsächlich die Gesamtheit von euch, die Allheit von euch und die Einzigartigkeit von euch gleichzeitig. Und einige der Einzigartigkeiten von jedem Einzelnen von euch ist nicht dasselbe wie die Gesamtheit. Okay, but I'm looking at you and feeling your presence, etc. But what am I really looking at? I'm looking at my mind looking at you. So the first reality for a yogic practitioner is that I know my mind is what I'm seeing.

[17:57]

I feel and experience my mind. knowing you, feeling you. I think Wittgenstein once said when he was giving a lecture, there's nothing in the information I'm receiving by looking at you that tells me my mind is looking at you. And that's exactly correct. True. That you have to have wisdom or something that reminds you that it's mind that's minding you. So I'm not just experiencing the eachness and the allness, I'm also experiencing my knowing this eachness and allness.

[19:10]

And the knowledge of that is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom as a realization, not wisdom as thinking. So we could say it's the door to wisdom. But it's the every moment or often and then finally every moment experience that you're actually seeing, feeling your own mind and sensorium in this experience. And it's the repeated, repeated, repeated neurology of that which is actually transformative.

[20:30]

Thank you, Harold. Someone else. I haven't seen you for a long time. Why? What have you been doing all these years? She thinks it's funny, I think it's sad. I've always thought of you. So is it Tara sending you a little notice that brought you into practicing here now as it is today? No, I signed up for the newsletter, Johanneshof newsletter, and thus heard that you will be here today.

[21:49]

She told me we should have a web page and everything. For a long time, I wouldn't let us have a web page. Now we have a web page, and thank you. Anyone else want to say something? What about you? What's your reminder or what would you say? I have to translate. It's a decision I'm making in phases of practice what I use as a reminder. And currently, what I'm using primarily is the body points, which you've been teaching for a couple of seminars.

[23:10]

And my experience with that is that body points are just very specific points in the body. body points, just specific points in the body which I bring my attention to. And my experience is that when I do that, then a shift happens. I see. And Ruth used to use translation sometimes. You translated for me for a lot, many times. Yeah. And Ruth has translated for me for many years. Now I'm sure it's other reminders. You know what? So I was wondering, coming here by train yesterday, Of course, what do I find to be basic basics?

[24:23]

And I can think of, of course, there's many teachings, etc., etc., yeah. Yeah, breath practice, you mentioned, and anapanasati, you know, mindfulness teachings. And by the way, from all the Buddhist schools and other teachings, too, almost all of them... talk about how to bring attention to the breath are useful variations on the practice. And Harald came up to speak to me while I was having a cup of tea over there.

[25:44]

And he's, excuse me for using you, I just met you and I'm using you as an example. He said he's teaching refugees. And he wants to ask them what's the most important thing to them, something like that. [...] He's semi-retired but working and teaching refugees in Hannover. So he tested me out. He said, what would you find the most important activity? And I was enjoying my tea and my oatmeal cookie or whatever it was.

[27:00]

And I might have said oatmeal cookies. But I had an uncontrolled response. And I said, breathe. And I can pick, he said, someone else, a medical doctor, he said, eating and so forth. And as we all know, it's rather important to have enough to eat. But while eating can be a spiritual practice, breathing directly is a spiritual practice. And we know that the etymology of the word breath in most western languages is Spirit is inspire, expire, etc.

[28:12]

And so all of the... Of all of the activities that we can notice as necessary for staying alive, the one that is most easy to notice, to shift attention from the consciousness stream to the, maybe we could say, awareness stream.

[29:16]

is the body, bodily fullness, breathness, breath stream. I'm really not just testing her. I'm also trying to find words that don't exist in our usual experience. But testing is kind of fun, too, actually. Because breath is a continuity.

[30:26]

And it's so interesting, the difference between breath being a non-conscious activity and breath being an attentional activity. And this difference is so interesting, this difference between breathing as an unconscious activity and breathing as an activity filled with attention. You know, I was reading a book the other day, it's somebody, a philosopher, a French philosopher, I can't even remember the name, it's something recently I got, and he talks about Deleuze and Heidegger and so forth, but really he's talking about how humankind produces gods. And what he says is something rather radical, I thought, was that what human societies do everywhere is create gods. And you know, my adult life has been embedded in yogic culture, so I don't know if I would agree with that, but you know, it's interesting.

[31:48]

But he does say that creating gods is something like looking for or trying to create the sacred. And in English, the root of sacred, etymological root of sacred, is dedicated to a single purpose. And I would say that that single purpose is this experience of what endures in the world in which everything changes. So I would say that single purpose is timelessness. Something like... Now I'm just using words to sort of... not for the descriptive value, but for their ability to point us into something that can't really be entirely captured by words.

[33:30]

So here we are living along, being alive because we got stuck with it years ago. Heidegger says we're thrown into it. Thrown into it. We're stuck with it. And stuck with it. We're thrown into the world. Yeah, and especially you're stuck with it in a good way if you've made the fundamental vow to stay alive no matter what.

[34:48]

So many of us stay alive, really stay fully alive, only if we're successful or lots of ifs and buts. We feel if we don't have the life we really want, we're willing to be half a lot. And being half alive is sort of safer than being fully alive. Being fully alive, you're always on the edge. To be half alive is the way you can decide to vote for Trump.

[36:04]

It's very interesting. The polls were so wrong because at least half of the electorate who voted for Trump were ashamed to admit they would vote for Trump. So I'm actually very positively interested in what's going to happen. What is going to happen to have a country in which half the electorate who elected it are ashamed of who they voted for? This is interesting. Let's hope he doesn't do too much damage in the next four years.

[37:06]

Okay, so here we are, fully alive, or moving toward being fully alive. Yes. But both of us are just breathing along without noticing we're breathing. Both of us? Most of us. She was ready to get mad at me. What do you mean both of us? Speak for yourself. Yeah, anyway, most of us just breathe along and hardly notice we're breathing.

[38:14]

And again, to function and to stay alive, one of the things you need is an experience of continuity. It's wisdom to know that. And then it's also wisdom to notice how do I establish continuity. And you're breathing the answer every moment. Each breath is saying, hey, I'm the alternative to that conscious self-straining.

[39:20]

I've been here for years. I keep reminding you with each breath. You don't notice. But then you notice sometimes. because that sacredness you want is right beside you all the time in your breath. The entry to the stream of, I dare I say it as the words make any sense, that stream of timelessness, And the word dharma means what holds. The basic teaching of Buddhism is that everything's changing.

[40:24]

And Buddhism could be called dharmism even more accurately than Buddhism perhaps. Because the wisdom of Buddhism is to notice that everything's changing and that change changes changing. And that you're participating in that changing. And that very experience of participating in that changing is an experience of what holds stays still in the midst of change. So another basic of practice

[41:26]

And insofern ist eine weitere Grundlage der Praxis, is to discover and live within what holds still in the midst of change. ist zu entdecken und zu lernen, wie man inmitten dessen leben kann, inmitten dessen, was still hält, in der Veränderung. And that is right here woven into our daily, inseparable from our daily life. So now we can ask another simple question. And simple questions that are so simple we don't notice them. are often doors of wisdom, Dharma doors, Dharma gates.

[42:57]

So here, any one of you, anybody who's never practiced or any person anywhere, can bring attention to their breath briefly. So as I always say, why is something so easy to do for a few breaths so difficult to do continuously? You could also say almost all the teachings, maybe all the teachings, I haven't really kind of inventoried it, arise from trying to answer that question. Why is something that's so easy to do for a few breaths Warum ist etwas, was man so leicht für ein paar Atemzüge lang tun kann, so difficult to do the rest of the day?

[44:16]

What prevents the mind or attention from resting in the breath? Was hält den Geist oder die Aufmerksamkeit davon ab, im Atem zu ruhen? Yeah, I mean this Zen practice is rooted in your own study of this kind of question, this kind of stream interruption. And you discover the teachings of the ages simply through trying to answer that question for yourself. So basically we could say, if you really want to answer that question, you might just say, I can't answer this question.

[45:29]

I'm too busy. I've got too many things to do. I've got to take care of the kids and I've got to go to work and blah, blah, blah. And I've got to watch the next episode of House of Cards. She told me it's quite interesting. I don't know anything about it. It's true to life, I hear. But maybe when you realize all those things take over your attention and take your attention away from breath, And you say, you know, I really can't do this while I'm watching TV or making dinner so easily. Oh, it is possible.

[46:29]

Yeah, so you think, Maybe I'd just better sit down and see if I can answer the question. And there you have the beginning of Zazen. You sit down and say, geez, well, I counted to three. or I got to one repeatedly but I don't usually get to zero because you count from one to zero and zero reminds you that it's all empty and then you go back to one that's the custom and

[47:42]

So maybe you notice, well I can't, my attention won't stay on with my breath. Vielleicht bemerkst du, meine Aufmerksamkeit bleibt nicht beim Atem. But I can form an intention to stay with my breath. So you discover one of the usefulnesses of consciousness, which is to form a rational intention. wisdom intention, wisdom-based intention. An intention to bring attention to the breath.

[48:53]

And the breath just continues. But the attention located in the breath doesn't continue. But the intention can continue. So you really, you can make an intention, I will stay alive, or I will bring attention to the breath. And one of the secret basics is the ability to make a firm intention. And maybe that's where ethics and gods and stuff come in, the ability to make a firm intention.

[50:01]

And if you have such a firm intention, eventually, you will find attention and breath always woven together. But it happens, and while it's happening, it does some good work in changing your psychological patterns and your neurological patterns. And it really helps if you have the actual experience of it being woven together sometimes. And that's one of the reasons we practice sasa, or sitting absorption, is what it means.

[51:07]

So you start out in consciousness, deciding to sit, So you sit down and you fold yourself together the best you can, or sit in a chair if you can, with your back straight if possible. Your spinal posture is the most important part of your posture. When you're sitting there you've got nothing to do or you've decided not to have anything to do. And so if you don't have anything to do you can start experimenting with having nothing to do.

[52:09]

You can experiment with seeing how much you can weave attention into the breath and vice versa. And can I realize the stillness of zero at the end of counting? Because counting is already still a kind of thinking. If you can release the thinking stream, You find yourself in a field of associations much wider than what you can think your way to.

[53:29]

Freud discovered this among other things. And finally there's a big space where there's only percepts and not even associations. You might hear an airplane or a car or something. And it's interesting when you hear the car or the airplane and you peel the label off, peel the name off. It's not a car, it's not a tractor going by on an airplane. You peel the name off and suddenly the sound starts being like music. There's no longer a tractor or a car in the morning, an airplane.

[54:57]

It's a big sphere, a big empty sphere. And the more you know that, The more you bodily internalize that experience, and the more you repeat that experience, it's the repetition and the embodiment of the experience which changes your neurology and psychology. And then when you stop meditating, every time you've had that experience of breath and attention being woven together, It's almost like a shamanic rope is dropped down to you in the midst of this big space.

[56:07]

And when the bell rings, you end exasperated. You take hold of that rope woven of breath and attention. And you pull yourself back up into consciousness. And now you're emphasizing more the attentional side of consciousness, but the breath side of consciousness is still woven into the details of your life. Okay, so that's something about the practice of basics.

[57:07]

Basics. I was told I'm supposed to stop at 12.30, someone told me. And I'm known for being tardy. But I'm very proud to announce it's exactly 12 o'clock. At least according to this one. It's not radio controlled. So we're going to end, someone told me, at 4.30, is that right? What? Four? Ja, wir hören um vier Uhr auf.

[58:10]

Ja, vier, vier Uhr dreißig. Is that right? Four? But I never want to leave now that I'm here. Ja, okay. All right, four. But if we start again at four, we should start again at two? Sagen wir, um zwei uns wieder treffen. Or two-thirty? Three? So you have to find some place to eat, right? So what time shall we say? Two? All right, we'll be back at two. More than two of you. And more than the two of us. Thank you.

[58:51]

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