I think if we know what's going on, know what's going on conceptually, it helps the development of practice. Particularly for us because we start from different assumptions. All Buddhist teachings, at least those that have arisen in Asia and East Asia, assume that our experienced location is our body and not our mind. So it's assumed that if you want to study the mind, if that was your aim, it begins, it opens through studying the body, seemingly studying what we call the body.

[01:09]

So, Nicole, maybe you could say the experience you had of not being so open to practicing or exposing the body that arises through the five skandhas because how you located yourself what you called in a bubble of experience. Nicole, vielleicht kannst du darüber sprechen, wie es für dich schwierig war oder du das Gefühl hattest, nicht so offen zu sein, dich für das Studium der fünf Skandos zu öffnen, weil du dich in etwas verortet hast, was du eine Kopfblase genannt hast.

[02:28]

I speak in German. Yes, that's all right. I think it's probably easier for you. And then I'd have to translate. This would not be so good. Yes, I have... The research of the five skandhas... They want to know what the five skandhas are. Oh, no.

[03:39]

Yeah, but it's been around so long, I talk about it too much. But I'll come back to it at some point today. Too basic. I don't need the five standards to talk about what I can talk about. I noticed that all access to what he just said is a starting point from which we can start applying the teachings. This is a physical experience, a physical experience of physical phenomena, physical immeasurability and to relate to it.

[04:47]

And what I noticed is simply that for a very, very long time I have studied both my experience in such a head bubble as well as I have tried to apply the Buddhist teachings in this head bubble. And I call it head bubble because it is now clear to me that this is a mental representation of the physical world. Of course there is the physical world. But what I actually noticed is the mental representation of the physical world, the mental representation of me, the mental representation of Drew, or of the pillar, or of the room. And I found that to be a relatively subtle story. And when you try it out, I started to ask myself, where did this question come from? So I had a feeling that it couldn't be everything.

[05:49]

The experience itself, It just didn't feel real enough for me. And I find that quite interesting, that there is such a feeling of inner wisdom, I would say, that already knew more than I actually knew. That could tell me, what you study as your experience, that is not the whole of the experience yet. To complete this shift from what I call a headwind, from a mental representation of the physical world into a real mediocrity of the physical world. And that is physically noticeable, and it is only physically noticeable. It cannot be achieved through thinking. I cannot invent myself in that. And what comes out of that, I can only try, I think, with words to point out how it feels to me, at least.

[06:59]

um without the feeling that there is something in between. For me, at least, an access is resonance, to pay attention to resonance phenomena. Or I do small exercises, for example, Let's say, what is special here? I can take the pillar. To see that everything that appears, every phenomenon, has a certain quality of feeling.

[08:12]

And I call it like this, when I look at the pillar, what is the pillar-ness of the pillar? So what is the feeling of the pillar? And then you can get the feeling. I can also do this with people. What is that? What does Niel do to Niel? What does Antje do to Antje? And then I have the feeling that with such questions I can enter into a kind of resonance, which I also see as unpredictable. and that can always potentially surprise. And that's maybe exactly the difference, that the feeling is not so much, I already know what's coming next, it's this, from the attention, this gesture, I know what to expect now, but it's this gesture, wow, or wow, and always this potential surprise. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so, Kopfblase, Kopfblase platzen lassen und einfach und irgendwie physische Unmittelung.

[09:12]

Could you give me a couple sentences of what you said? Yes. You have to... What do you... You have to... Let the bubble burst. Oh, yeah. Let your head bubble burst. Yeah, okay. And enter the unmediated immediacy. Oh, sounds good. Of a... Continuously surprising, potentially surprising physical actuality. Continuously surprising physical actuality. Potentially, continuously surprising actuality. I would have liked to have said that. Yes, Junior? I have a question, but this was very powerful thinking. My theme is turning off the brain, or not turning off, but getting out of that head bottle or the brain.

[10:23]

And I find intention is the only, to me, the only remedy. Can you start in German? My theme is... This machine, which is the brain, to come out of it, is what fascinates me. There I feel a resonance to the headblast. So she made an example of looking at the column and not just looking at it and the brain's going on and all that, but really saying, what is the calmness?

[11:25]

You know, having that intention. And I just realized I have no concept of intention, because intention can be in the brain. You have no concept of intention? I know what intention is, but I... Yeah, you got here to the seminar somehow. I mean, I don't know what happened. I don't know either. Maybe somebody dragged you onto the train. No, the question is, where is intention located? Ah, okay. Okay. So we'll look at that. What's interesting to me is Nicole has been practicing with the sangha and with me for 17 years, 18 years? Yes. She's only 16.

[12:29]

I mean, no. So what's interesting to me is that, and so she's been, as translator especially, been exposed to or present within what I've been trying to find a way to teach for many years. And although I would say her practice is guided by, driven by, moved by the similar intentions, The obstacles in her path have been different than the obstacles in my path. So she ends up having problems in developing a practice which I never noticed before. So I always learn a lot from each of you, and especially from someone I spend so much time with, about the topography of our path, of our Dharma path.

[13:57]

So let me say something first. Yesterday it came up. If we think of... Buddhism as a practice, is it just everything or does it have some boundaries? Now we're born with a certain intention to stay alive. Thinking partly to what you brought up. And if a baby is about to fall off a table, the baby itself tries to prevent that if possible. So it's the built-in intention to stay alive.

[15:30]

And as I say, our life starts with an inhale and ends with an exhale. And there's a whole lot of inhales and exhales in between. And your relationship to those inhales and exhales makes a difference between whether you're a Buddha or not. In other words, the potentiality for developing compassion and wisdom is how you experience those inhales Inhales and exhales. Now, what do I mean when I glibly say the difference between being a Buddha or not? Do you know the word glibly?

[16:39]

It means too easily said or too superficially said. This is interesting to me. Somewhere I know in 17 years of relating to this person while she was in college and I know I've never said the word glibly in front of her. But I've never been to it before. That's interesting. That's something like how, at a super level, idiot savants function. I've been studying, reading about one recently just to sort of see how he experiences his mental functions.

[17:54]

How he mentally functions. And I would say it's, again, going back to, it's something we're all within, but consciousness limits our access to these powers. I'm not saying we're all the same. Of course, we're all different and we have different capabilities and so forth. But the way in which our capabilities are shaped by and limited by the structures and strictures of consciousness is part of what practice is about. So again, what did I mean by the glibly, a Buddha or not?

[19:15]

So, and we talked about Buddhism yesterday as... What does it mean to say it's a science instead of a religion? Or perhaps to say it's an empirical bodily mind craft. Well, but then where are the boundaries? Well, anything is a Buddhist teaching which meets these four criteria. All Buddhist teachings are meant to create the potentiality of transformation which we call awakening or Buddha.

[20:16]

So this criteria is that it's assumed that we're capable of transformation. We're not born with a fate that we're going to follow. We're born with a transformative capacity. And the second criteria would be it is actually possible to be free of mental and emotional suffering. Now, when I say that, what that means, if you don't believe or intuit or somehow feel that it is possible to be free of mental, emotional suffering, The practices of Buddhist teaching won't reach into you in any depth.

[21:45]

The practices take hold through this imaginal space, let's call it an imaginal space, in which, yes, somehow it's probably possible And what do I mean by an imaginable space? Well, I mean, if you live in a so-called democracy, which few of us live in a real democracy, You expect there to be certain freedoms. potentialities to behave in certain ways.

[22:55]

And when those freedoms are limited or not taken away, we say, hey, this doesn't feel right. And when these freedoms are limited or taken away, we say, hey, this doesn't feel right. It means that the idea of a liberal democracy or something is an imaginal space in which you function within and have certain expectations within that imaginal space. So Buddhism assumes and is rooted in an imaginal space in which enlightenment is possible. And it's rooted in an imaginal space in which it's possible, assumed to be possible, and it is possible, to be free of mental and emotional suffering.

[24:12]

But not physical suffering. If you hit the Buddha, with a hammer, he won't like it too much. Quit hitting me with a hammer. But it does change your relationship to physical suffering too. I think Norbert Janssen just died a few days ago and I was with him right after he died in Kassel. His year-long relationship to the news that he was certainly going to die within months.

[25:38]

His 30 or so years of Zen practice had a lot to do with how he related emotionally and mentally to this news. And it did have, and I think his wife and others would say, and she was just there, had a relationship to how he handled the last days of not dying so easily. And the third criteria is that it's that it's possible to live in a way that's beneficent to you and to others, and nowadays we have to add, to the planet.

[26:57]

And the fourth criteria is it's possible to live close to or in tune with how we actually exist. And as I said yesterday, to live close to how we actually exist. A simple example of how we actually exist. of living close to how we actually exist. We actually exist in relationship to gravity. And our body knows that. And it knows that if I pour this water into this bell... Oh dear. What did I do that for? It... Well, my body knew gravity would be one of the helpers here.

[28:24]

It looked like a cup. Yeah. And I pointed out yesterday, built into Japanese language is an indeterminacy. And one example of that indeterminacy is pauses and breathing is part of the language. So if you inhale before a word or exhale or vocalize a pause, it's part of the language. But it can be really vague, and it kind of has a built-in vagueness to allow for possibilities.

[29:36]

So indeterminacy is to live with the feeling indeterminacy and not everything is predictable. would be to live closer to how we actually exist. Now, if your attentional identity is the body, It's obvious that we live within impermanence. If your attentional identity is behind the brain skin, embedded in consciousness,

[30:49]

And the job of consciousness is to make the world predictable. That it has to do. That's its job. And we have to function with a certain degree of predictability. And if we continually locate our identity in consciousness, you get in the habit of thinking most things. You habitually live within the habit. Most things are likely to be predicted. And practically speaking, it's true. But factually speaking, it's not true. And we say we're going into the future. The Chinese don't say that.

[32:11]

They say the future is coming to me. Those little things are a big difference. It means you don't know what's going to happen. The future is coming to you and all its unpredictability. I'm going to go live in the West. It's more predictable there than it probably is. So these four seals are four criteria or four conditions for a Buddhist teaching. It's part of how we can think of Buddhism as an empirical craft. Because it means any teaching didn't have to come from the Buddha.

[33:17]

The Buddha didn't have to have heard about it. Any teaching that meets these four criteria is Buddhism. And to make the teachings work, one of the first steps in practice is to really accept that some transformation, some awakening, some series of insights are actually possible. Transformative insights. It's not a view of fate, it's a view of evolution in your own life. It doesn't mean we're not fated in certain ways.

[34:20]

Doesn't mean we don't have a genetic disposition. But the dice of that genetic disposition are really open to what happens during your lifetime. And especially open when you bring wisdom and compassion into the equation. Yeah, what is it? Life equals DMC squared. Life equals Dharma and compassion squared. Thank you. So if we take this evolutionary view of our own individual life,

[35:39]

It has to be a life of investigatory analysis. And that's part of breath practice. In other words, if we're going to study body, mind, and phenomena, that's the title of this seminar, body, mind, phenomena. Breath, body, phenomena. Wenn wir Atem-Körper-Phänomene studieren, und das ist ja der Titel dieses Seminars, Atem-Körper-Phänomene. Wenn wir diese drei studieren, und der Übergang von einem ins andere. then we have to have some technology, some craft.

[37:04]

And it starts with the nostrils and attention. You know, really it's that simple. But it has to be iterated and iterated and reiterated It's like Mandelbrot, you know, keep repeating the same equation over and over again and it gets infinitely infinite. Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot. So, because something happens through iteration, which is not the same as repetition. Oops. Will you say the difference?

[38:11]

That it's not the same as repetition and then I can translate. I love being helpless. Repetition makes sense in a world one assumes is basically permanent. And iteration means you repeat it in circumstances which are changed by the very iteration. That things don't just change. Change changes change. But we tend to think it's... Even though we know the world's not really permanent, we think in terms of it as permanent and as entities and not as activities.

[39:26]

Obwohl wir wissen, dass die Welt nicht wirklich beständig ist, neigen wir dazu, sie trotzdem hinsichtlich der Beständigkeit und der Dinghaftigkeit, der Dinge sind, sie so zu begreifen und so in ihr zu handeln. So if we're going to have an evolutionary view of our own life, how do we kickstart that evolutionary process? Well, if I'm using cliches, it's as plain as the nose on your face. Do you have that expression in German? When something's really obvious in English, you say, it's plain as the nose on your face. Particularly mine. In Viennese. It is in Viennese. Okay. So, again, if we're going to take an evolutionary... approach to assumption.

[40:44]

We're going to live in the imaginal space of an evolution of our own evolution throughout our life. And we have to assume that the Buddha is not built into us. It's like one of the conclusions of evolution. And we have to just uncover this potentiality. No, we have to create this potential. There are many and many and many potentialities, some of them terrible. Wisdom has evolved, we could say, through the fact that attention makes a difference.

[41:45]

And because attention makes a difference, we can say that maybe the most fully developed potential, or one of the most fully developed potentials of our human life, is... is fully developed attention. So how do you develop this attention? As I've said, the breath is a doorway into the autonomic nervous system. Most of our functioning is autonomic. Consciousness happens to be, we've discovered, a doorway into the autonomic nervous system.

[43:10]

So breathing can be conscious, and when it's not conscious or attentional, it just goes on anyway until you perish. Now, part of meditation practice is to learn to have attentional breathing, which does not interfere with the autotonic. autonomic process. But although that's not written in breathing instructions, in fact, if you practice with a teacher and with a sangha, you discover through the shared bodily space how to not have conscious breathing interfere with autonomic breathing.

[44:35]

And through developing attentional breathing, So because bringing attention to the breath not only awakens the breath, it awakens and develops attention itself. And then that attention itself sneaks into the body through the breath. And then can reset the autonomic nervous system. Maybe it's too strong a word, reset, but it's something like that. It actually begins to... synchronize the autonomic nervous system.

[45:51]

It's why scientific studies at the Max Planck Institutes and University of Chicago and Berkeley and all keep finding out that meditation somehow enhances the immune system and all kinds of things. I feel like a car salesman here. There's this beautiful old Porsche. Or a Dodge from America. And if you really want to get somewhere, you ought to buy this. But I've been doing this so long, and I'm so convinced about it, I don't want to sell it to you, but I want you to know that it's possible to do it.

[46:55]

So it's not only a doorway into the autonomic nervous system. It's also a window into the mind. Because as you develop the attentional skill of each nostril and each inhale and exhale, Through birth, you already possess these ingredients. And in homeopathic doses, if not, if you can't live in a practice center or spend time in a practice center for any length of time, at least in homeopathic doses, bringing these ingredients together makes a difference. Everything will be okay.

[48:07]

Okay. So right now you can feel that actually your breathing is an inhale and an exhale. And part of breath practice, which leads to meditation practice, it's not that meditation leads to breath practice so much as when you want to do breath practice, you discover you need to meditate. Because right now if you want to bring attention to each inhale and each exhale,

[49:10]

And to the bodily movements of chest and diaphragm and organs and lungs, it requires a certain settled state of mind. And then if you want to notice through this window of breathing into the mind, if you want to notice how Look at that. Those inhales affected my state of mind. And the emotional baggage with those next two or three inhales affected my mind more.

[50:28]

And now I've noticed if I add the word releasing to my exhale, releasing, releasing, I minimize the effect of that emotional baggage that came in with the inhales. Studying those nuances. Analytically observing those nuances. Now, the word analysis in English at least means to loosen the parts so you can observe things in their parts. That's what analysis means.

[51:36]

So breathing practice assumes developing inner analytic skills to see things in their parts as they come together and separate. And you might also notice, even though on certain inhales or exhales even, there's a certain baggage of anxiety, say, that comes along with a particular breath or a particular association. There are in-between breaths with the curve at the top of an inhale and the curve at the bottom of an inhale. And exhale.

[52:38]

There might be moments of bliss or ease or kind of relaxation. So your inner inner topography. It's mapped by and developed by attentional breath. And you get used to with these periods of examining analytically breath in this way.

[53:48]

By analytic I don't mean so much thinking about but noticing about. Very important part of Zen practice in Buddhism is to notice without thinking about. Thinking about turns it into consciousness and then it turns into all kinds of things. But just to notice is... already a knowing process. I call it a connoticing process. It's a noticing which is already a kind of knowing, a knowledge which doesn't have to be brought into the consciousness to become known.

[54:52]

So this simple breathing practice allows you to have a door into the autonomic nervous system and developing the feel of the pace of breathing enters into the pace and homeostasis of the body It's, you know, it's strange that all these things are true, but, you know, I'm... And they're so available to all of us and not used, not noticed really, not effectively noticed.

[55:54]

Okay, one last thing for this morning that I should mention is developing a non-subjective observing mind. Now, our identity is very layered. And one layer is a non-subjective of the mind. And we can't, we can't, for us especially, difficult to notice it because it gets conflated with ego subjectivity. We all experience non-subjective observing mind, but we still believe, oh, that's me.

[57:12]

We all experience a non-subjective observing mind, but we still believe, oh, that's me. I put my cell phone here. It's pretty, several, few generations ago. And I barely know how to turn it on, but I guess I push that. And then, oh, I have to put it in some sort of code. I'm pretending to be stupid, but I really am stupid. And then I can turn on the camera, right? And the camera is going to show you all kinds of things. Isn't it showing you the room and the wall and her and stuff like that? Oh, me? I don't want any selfies here.

[58:12]

This is a non-selfie practice. Okay. There's no observer of that. It's just going on, right? And if I don't paint, it's kind of, oh, look. I can turn it into a photo. And that's what consciousness does. But non-subjective observing mind is just going on. It's just a capacity of us human beings. In some ways our inner awareness is always turned on. And only a portion of it is accessible to consciousness. It's just going on. Now I suppose you could write algorithms which retained all of this information in the phone. And maybe Zen, the Elia Vigyan, has a kind of algorithm to retain everything that happens.

[59:17]

I see my foot. How strange. Take a picture of that. Hey, take a movie of it. Anyway, so a microscope, you can focus a microscope at 500 magnification or 1,000 magnification, etc., That's just a capacity of the microscope. One of our capacities is to have a non-observing, non-subjective observing mind. And it has a location, but not an identity. This bodily experience is the location of a non-subjective observing mind. Yeah.

[60:48]

And one of the first ways you learn that And really learn it is often in Sashim. But you learn it in Zazen. No matter how you feel, you sit 40 minutes or 30 minutes. And no matter how your legs feel, you sit the 40 minutes. And there's a non-subjective observing mind noticing, oh, God, my leg's kind of hurting. In fact, both legs have gone to sleep. And when I get up, I'm going to fall right in Neil's and your arms. This has almost happened.

[61:55]

I've gotten up a few times and my both legs are asleep and crash. Okay, so you begin to distinguish and suss out, suss out. Sort, yeah? Like sort out, yes. Yeah, suss out. Suss out from the layers of identity and awareness and so forth the non-observing, non-subjective observing mind. And once you get the feel of that, you develop it as a place you can locate, experience. And it's very easy for us to conflate it with identity, ego, subjectivity, my history, etc. And part of meditation practice is to free non-subjective observing mind from the conflation of ego subjectivity or ego agents.

[63:12]

And when you do a basic practice like noticing, now I'm angry. Yeah, now I'm really more angry. Now I'm really angry. Okay, oh, now anger is less. What are you doing? You're noticing your anger, yes, but you're also developing a non-subjective observing mind. And your identity is in the anger. But in the observing of the anger is a non-subjective observing activity which can be where you locate your experience but not where you locate your identity.

[64:40]

Okay. Now this all becomes part of pulling the brain skin the brain skin of consciousness peeling the brain skin of consciousness off the body and getting the your identity out of the household of the mind into the apartment of the mind into the house of the body. You want to move out of this apartment into the house of the body. And that exposure is the practice of the five skandhas. And this exposition, this... How do I say it?

[65:50]

This exposition, how do I say it? This exposition. And for Ralph's sake, I'll give a very obscure exploration. To punish him for not already knowing. Oh dear. Let's have lunch. Mittagessen. Mittagessen. Yes. Yeah, I'm learning a few words here. Mittagessen. Okay. Finding a restaurant or whatever, however you're going to eat, I suppose, and now I'm in a, what do you call it?

[66:54]

Airbnb. Airbnb. Gun. An air BB gun. And so, 3 o'clock? 2.30? 2.45? 3? 12.25. Okay, let's see.

[67:05]

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