So is there anything anyone, everyone, each one would like to say about what we spoke about before lunch? Does it make sense to you, etc.? Am I on the right track? Am I on your track? Yes. You spoke about inhabiting the spine. Yes. And for me, it's more like inhabiting the back.

[01:03]

It moves from the spine to the right and to the left. Oh, good. And sometimes it goes down and sometimes it goes over. It's not this centering in the middle. It starts right there, but... And sometimes moves that way, sometimes that way. But it's not this central line. It starts there, but then it radiates out and it doesn't necessarily come back to a central line. Just teasing. Yeah. Yes.

[02:09]

The back opens up in a variety of ways over a period of time. And again, another example I think most people who have ever been massaged share Is that often when you're massaged, certain points, some kind of memory or feelings or images come up? So the body is somehow a compressed GPS. And every place you've been in your life is somehow compressed.

[03:33]

There you are. Dortea. Compressed into the musculature primarily, but the whole of your body. Yeah, and you press somewhere, if you're an American, and Wyoming appears. Wyoming? I don't know. When you press a German and Hamburg appears. Swiss, Geneva. And something like that. And in other words, your experience, everything's happened to you. The concept of the alive is jnana.

[04:35]

A very useful and unprovable but factual concept. Unprovable as far as I'm concerned, though. Is that everything that's ever happened to you has happened to you? Or a very large percentage of what's happened to you, mostly outside of consciousness, has physically happened to you? And somehow it has a bodily location. I often say that in a yoga culture, All mental phenomena have a physical component.

[06:04]

And all sentient, human sentient, physical experience component have a mental component. Now, this is one of the statements that I find... This is a lot more than just was your question, but... But I find there are certain statements within practice, maybe 10 or 50 or 100, I don't know, or maybe 8 or 9, that we in our lifetime probably can use only 10 or 20 of them as reference points. Okay, now one of the reference points I'm suggesting is all mental phenomena have a physical component and all, etc.

[07:19]

And Zen practice is based on loosening up and uncovering the physical components. and in fact generating new physical components to change the mental landscape. Okay. So in that context, as you begin to sit, And as you sit regularly, and as you sit regularly, not just when you feel like it, but in some basis where it happens in all contexts of your mental and physical life,

[08:42]

And if you only sit when you feel like it or it seems to be a good idea, you've just said, okay, ego, you're in charge. And if you only sit when you're in the mood for it, or when you think it's a good thing or idea, then you've just said, okay, ego, you're the boss here. Okay, so you want to create a schedule where you sit regularly, if possible daily. So you should make a kind of schedule where you sit regularly and if possible daily. So that you don't sit just when you want to or it feels good or something. And it's the regular sitting and your commitment to sitting that makes practice the alchemy of practice, alchemy of practice come alive.

[09:50]

Yeah, if you practice within your likes and dislikes, you only achieve well-being. You don't go beyond the being of your particular culture and psychological habits. So one of the things that happens through zazen itself independent of bringing attention to the spine as your back begins to soften up And one of the things that I do if I go around the Zendo and touch people's shoulders and so forth.

[10:58]

Some people's shoulders, particularly newer people's, their shoulders often feel like these brick columns. More mature or longer term practitioners often, their shoulders just kind of float in space and are touchable and movable. Und bei erfahreneren Praktizierenden, da schweben die Schultern so wie einfach im Raum und sind berührbar und flexibel. So the back begins to open up. Der Rücken öffnet sich. And in my experience, excuse me, oh dear, sorry, Yuan Wu for instance. In meiner Erfahrung zum Beispiel, tut mir leid, Yuan Wu, For short, he's the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records.

[12:12]

And he's one of the best reference points we have. Okay. His teachings. Okay. He says, well, if you do this simple practice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you'll get results. You'll get results if you do this for 20 to 30 years without any interruption in your attention. We don't tell that to new people. You've got some decades. But it is this 10,000 hour phenomenon. But it makes a difference if you do it regularly. dass es einen Unterschied macht, wenn du es regelmäßig machst.

[13:17]

Yeah. And of course he says 20 or 30 years because he means to say don't do it in any time frame. It might be, if you look at his study, his life, his time frame for being quite an extraordinary Zen teacher was maybe 15 years. But for more mature practitioners, we encourage them by saying 20 to 30 years. And if you don't have 20 or 30 years left, you assume, well, I've already accomplished a lot. Yeah, these things, I can move them around. Okay. All right, so my experience is, my own, and I'm talking about and teaching my experience of Buddhism.

[14:39]

Since it's not really mine, I'm sharing it. As it took me, I would say, it happened over a period of... four to five years that my back took to open up. And there was certain changes that occurred and itches and blockages and so forth. And I at some point noticed, after two or three years of practice, that I could only bring my attention up to a little above my waist. And I couldn't, like you, bring it left and right and so forth.

[15:41]

I wasn't as advanced as you. And it was stopped, and after a while I noticed the stop point, and then a few months later it would be up an inch. And I was never in a hurry. Because I really knew I was a hopeless case. And so any little progress made me happy. So another next year, oh, an inch higher, that's good. Yeah, it took quite a while, but eventually it came to my shoulders and so forth. And that for me at least was an experience of the way in which the general practice system, GPS, had opened up the stored stuff in my back.

[17:21]

Yeah, then it became easier to bring attention just to my spine. And in general, the Zen approach to Kundalini experience As you open up your back incrementally and slowly, and you open up your energy system throughout your shoulders and arms and so forth, And it opens up throughout the body and not so fast up the spine. So sometimes the slow incremental bodily shifts work better in the overall context of practice. Okay, so thank you for giving me a chance to speak about another aspect of the practice in relationship to the back as well as the spine.

[18:42]

Someone else want to say something? Möchte noch jemand etwas sagen? You assume I still have something to say. Geht davon aus, dass ich immer noch was zu sagen habe. Where's the duct tape? Wo ist jetzt das Paketklebeband? One day I might not have anything more to say. Then you have to do it. Vielleicht gibt es einen Tag, wenn ich nichts mehr zu sagen habe. Und dann müsst ihr das machen. It's going to happen. Das wird passieren. So cheer up. You don't have to listen to me forever. Cheer up means be happy, right?

[19:44]

Yeah, be in a good mood. Freut euch. Freut euch. Ihr müsst mir nicht immer zuhören. She said this morning, she's never spoken to a group with so many translators in it. Yeah, Gunda, Neil, Marie-Louise, Katrin, Gerald, yeah. Tara, no. But she has a finger up. Yes, Tara. Yes. You also used to speak about an attentional point. And the spine, for me, is not an attentional point because it has so much, the experience of it is so related to activity and dynamic and so forth.

[21:13]

But I wonder if the spine for you also is an attentional point. Well, I wouldn't say it's a point, but it's an area, an entry to attention. But you wouldn't use it in the same way as you're using attentional point? I don't know. I use it in any way that I... I use everything every way I can. And I do exactly what I said earlier before lunch. You do exactly what you said before lunch?

[22:16]

Yeah. Is I bring attention to the spine Usually to the base of the spine first. And then I bring attention to the image of lifting. And then I, in various ways, let that feeling appear in my eyebrows and the top of my head and so forth. And then I bring that to my breath, the breath. And I breathe with a feeling of lifting through the spine and the breath coming up in the body and out this way.

[23:41]

and one of the useful images as I again often mentioned is to have an image of the breath as an oval or a circle but an oval let's say because in general in Zen practice you don't want to breathe with your your chest. You want to breathe with your whole torso through the diaphragm. The trouble with breathing with the chest is that it's very easy when you concentrate, like a watchmaker might, to stop your breath. I'm sorry, I lost you. Can you say again? The trouble with breathing with your chest

[24:58]

It's like a watchmaker concentrating usually stops his or her breath to do something very carefully. And if you change, if you stop your breathing when you're more concentrated, you change the oxygen in the brain and, you know, you get some... So you want to be able to slow down your metabolism without stopping your breath. So you want your breath, even if you're only two or three times a minute maybe, still going on. And one way to achieve that is you image your breath as an oval.

[26:07]

So as you're breathing out, it feels like it's going out of the body as it is. And then as you inhale, because of the way the diaphragm works, it feels like it's coming up from below. Now that's a very stable form of breathing. Okay. And in addition, the oval image. Okay.

[27:11]

As the spine is not the spine in your head, there's no vertebrae in the middle of your brain, I hope. So what you have is the feel of the spine. And this oval experience gives you the feel of the breath. And this feeling of the breath we also can call the subtle breath. The feel of the breath going up the spine isn't really the actual air. It's the feel of the breath now coming up the spine all the way across the top of your head and down your front.

[28:18]

And when you've opened up the physical body enough, and this really just happens naturally, you feel yourself as a very stable location. Okay. So now what we've done is we've gone from trying to notice the spine not as a point of attention but as a location of inhabitation. location of inhabitation. You are the feeling. You're not bringing attention to the spine.

[29:19]

You are the feeling of the spine. And you feel that as a home. Then you extend that feeling as I'm speaking, presenting this as a way of practice now. You extend that feeling of inhabiting the spine to the breath. And you are no longer simply bringing attention to the breath.

[30:21]

You are the breathing. In fact, you are the breathing. And then you don't just bring attention to the breath, but you are the breath. In fact, you are the breath. And as you bring attention to the breath, as you allow attention to, you discover attention occupying the breath, this more and more becomes a kind of mental and physical space. Okay. So let me take a detour.

[31:21]

Shall I stop and you get something to say? I would like to ask you a question. Oh yeah, go ahead. So I'm just wondering, when he talks about how this ego dissolves and you become the breath and you become the spine, if he can say something about it. I always find it difficult when you have blockages in the body and somehow have pain or something like that. What kind of mental attitude do you bring to it? Because you want to open it on the one hand and on the other hand, as soon as you do something with it, it closes even more. I didn't understand a word. Neil, you should tell me what she said. No, no.

[32:22]

When you just spoke about how the eye, the agent dissolves to become the breathing and the spine, I didn't exactly say that, but that's one way to look at it. Okay. I always find it difficult when, in doing such breathing practices, when there is a block, some sort of block or a painful something, then how to, how can I say that? how to feel towards that almost. It's because I want to open it, of course, but then the wanting to open it immediately kind of makes it, I am not that feeling, but there is... And you start with the block, you start blogging. Yes, like that, yes. Okay. If you can say something about that mental posture to take when there's blocks or difficulties in the body.

[33:29]

Well, in general. Ganz allgemein. There isn't any in general. It's always in particular, but still in general. Es gibt nicht so etwas wie allgemein, sondern es ist immer die besonderen Einzelheiten, aber sagen wir mal, im Allgemeinen. You just say, oh, hey, look at that. There's a block. He doesn't have a chance against my intention. But, you know, I'll check in on you next year. Yeah, I have that kind of attitude. Yes. Mahakali? This breathing process is a standing and a walking again. When the breath is exhaled, a break is created. So this breathing process is arising and vanishing.

[34:46]

And when the breathing process is complete, then there is a pause. You mean, at what point are you pausing in your breath? After exhaling. You pause. How long? I think as one part of developing your breath practice is to feel attention as part of the molecules or so of the exhale. ist die Aufmerksamkeit als Teil der Moleküle des Ausatmens zu spüren. And then at the end of the thing there's a pause and you articulate the pause. And then you let the inhale come up

[35:47]

And then you articulate the pause at the top. And in general, you just get really used to doing that. And in some funny way, at least my experience is, the pause after a while begins to accompany the whole circle of the breath. I don't feel I've really responded to what you've said, what you wanted to say, but I did respond to the words. So I'll keep in mind that I didn't respond too well. Okay, now, again, let's kind of start over here. Attention is not consciousness and attention is not awareness.

[37:22]

A simple example is to kind of make it real for you. You can have attention, follow ist, dass du der Aufmerksamkeit in deinen Schlaf hinein folgen kannst. Es ist gut, mit deinem Aufwachen und Einschlafen zu praktizieren, genauso wie mit dem Sasan. You have a chance at least twice a day for most of us. So you go to sleep when consciousness kind of stops. And consciousness is thinking about the day and who you are and who you were and who you will be and you know, etc.

[38:27]

And consciousness, even consciousness knows it needs a break sometimes. So as you're getting ready to go to sleep in the first 5 to 20 minutes, suddenly we have an expression to give up the ghost. Do you have it in German too? Yes. Okay. So at some point consciousness gives up the ghost. The ghost of mind, the ghost of identity. Goodbye ghost. And consciousness releases the body. And there's a kind of And then you fall asleep.

[39:38]

Now, it's a useful practice to keep attention go over that bump into sleeping. Es ist eine nützliche Praxis, der Aufmerksamkeit zu folgen, wie sie über diesen Huckel hinweg gleitet und in den Schlaf hineingeht. And if you can sustain attendant attention, You can then basically be involved with, be in the midst of lucid dreaming. Now, you're not conscious, but the attention is still there. And then when you get more used to this, that attention can, in a non-conscious way, can think things through. dann kann diese Aufmerksamkeit auf eine nichtbewusste Art und Weise die Dinge durchdenken.

[41:08]

It's not uncommon for scientists, mathematicians and so forth, to solve problems while they're sleeping. And they suddenly realize they've been working on that, but with an attention that's not within consciousness. Okay, so what I'm asking you to accept for right now that attention is not the same as consciousness or awareness and I haven't, the newer people here, I haven't talked about awareness yet. But let's least establish for us, for the sake of right now, The attention is different from consciousness and awareness, whatever awareness is.

[42:12]

Okay. Okay. So, what What are you doing when you bring attention to the spine in the sense that you inhabit the spine? And when you're inhabiting breath, as an attentional field and now you're inhabiting mind also the third habitation mind also as an attentional field and the fourth habitation which I will probably need to come back to space

[43:25]

Und die vierte Bewohnbarkeit, zu der ich wahrscheinlich nochmal zurückkommen muss, nämlich Raum. You're inhabiting it as your own space, your own space that you've generated. Du bewohnst das als deinen eigenen Raum, als Raum, den du hervorgebracht hast. Okay. If you really mature this practice, wenn du diese Praxis wirklich zur Reife bringst, You're changing the address of attention. You're changing the home address of attention. Okay. Let's imagine some tribe living in some jungle of our own imagination. And there's lots of insects.

[44:40]

There's tigers. And there's your enemy tribe living two or three miles away, two or three kilometers away. Life, you don't have time to have attention involved with discursive thinking. If you're thinking about who you are, who you might be, who you will be, you're going to get killed. In this world I'm imagining, And I have read a lot of anthropology, which does say things like this. Anthropologists I've known, too, Gregory Bateson and others. I would say that for this person, which is somewhat imaginary, the home base of attention is the body.

[45:45]

Attention does not go away from the body unless it really has to. And one of the experiences people have in sashin, practitioners have in sashin, that I've definitely had, and quite a few other people have spoken to me. I don't know how common it actually is, because people don't have continuous duksan in Sashin. As you go to sleep and you're asleep but there's a field of awareness that fills the room. It's not a field of consciousness, but a field of awareness.

[47:16]

And your body is asleep in the middle of it, but your feeling of presence is most of the space around you. And if somebody comes in the room while you're in this state, you can have a conversation with the person without waking up. I mean, as long as the person doesn't ask you some kind of discursive thing about what about this and how do you add 7 and 15. 7 and 15 you could probably handle. But basically, if it's just statements and not discursive thinking, you can stay asleep and have quite a long conversation.

[48:27]

This means, I would say, Das bedeutet, würde ich sagen, in diesem vorgestellten, in dieser vorgestellten Szene, dass für einen solchen Menschen, die der Ausgangspunkt oder die So when you are bringing attention to the spine as a habitation, you're in effect saying to the spine, I mean saying to attention, Don't ask me who is saying to attention, please.

[49:36]

Don't ask me who is saying to attention, come home. Yeah, that's a different seminar. Okay, so you're in effect saying, hey, I've got this new apartment for you. Move in. Come home. Yeah, and we've just enlarged it some and it includes the breath too now. And we'll give you a little mind space as well. So what will happen or ideally happens is zazen practice and the wisdom of the teachings work together in a way that attention

[50:51]

moves its home base from discursive thinking to the body. When that happens, you almost don't have discursive thinking anymore. You may irritate your friends. Because it looks like you have Alzheimer's. Or you don't think about things. And so there's some problem there. But it's a much nicer place to be. There's no anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. One second before my wife contradicts me. For some reason, our culture, our Western culture, has decided a cultural decision. What do I mean by a cultural decision?

[52:21]

In Japan at some point they made a cultural decision that the body ought to be whenever possible in a meditation posture. so they never put traditionally furniture in their houses the Chinese put furniture in their houses and most Chinese furniture is based on a large percentage of it is the most classic is based on Buddhist ceremonial chairs Which aren't exactly comfortable. And they require you, you're sitting on a wooden platform called a chair, to sit up straight. It requires you to have some posture in order to sit in it.

[53:25]

So the Japanese made a cultural decision to live on the floor. Because Seiza, which is like sitting with your legs underneath you like that, It's an ancient Chinese-Japanese posture going back thousands of years. So no one person said, hey, let's all sit in the meditation posture, you know. The culture made the decision. And they made it in other ways too.

[54:41]

They made it you sit in clothes which don't allow you to do much other than sit on the floor. You sit in a chair and you get all tangled up. Even in a simple kimono, I don't want to sit in a chair all day. And of course in the court where they didn't want people fighting. They made pant legs about half a meter longer than your legs. They really did this.

[55:41]

So you have to kind of flip your pant leg forward because it trips you otherwise. You have to flip it forward and then step and then flip it forward and step. And then you have long sleeves that you can't find your sword. And European and Japanese aristocrats, like European, likes to hunt and fight and, you know, swords on the wall and stuff. And these long complicated sleeves and pant legs really reduced the fighting in court. So if you... You're going to go make our tea treat?

[57:03]

Evening meal. What? Evening meal already? Is it evening time? It's barely... Evening meal? Let's skip it. Okay. Okay. So I'll try to stop in a minute so we can take a break. And she's got the roll of duct tape right there, I saw. Okay. For some reason, our culture made a cultural decision that attention belongs to consciousness. Really part of consciousness. And his job is tracking discursive comparative thinking and the well-being of the self. And it's hard to change that. You practice, you concentrate in your breath, and you can do it easily for two or three breaths maybe.

[58:11]

With more experience in zazen, you can do it longer. But when you're distracted or you stop paying attention, attention goes directly to thinking. And you kind of try to pull it off, pull it back into the body and pull it back and pull it on and it goes whoop. And that's very simply because it thinks home base is discursive thinking. So it's a huge shift through your meditation and Buddhist practice.

[59:29]

You can make the body attractive enough, developed enough habitation for the breath, For the attention. The attention says, well, you've developed your body enough and so forth. Okay, I'll move it. So dass die Aufmerksamkeit sagt, na, du hast deinen Körper genug entwickelt, sodass ich jetzt dort einziehe. But I'm only going to move in the third or fourth day of Sashin. Aber ich ziehe erst am dritten oder vierten Tag des Sashins ein.

[60:30]

And after a while, maybe breath will move in for longer. Und nach einer Weile zieht der Atem vielleicht auch für länger. And one key to, let's say, advanced Zen practice is attention is always living in through it as the body. Now, to make that a little clearer, we can come to a statement of Dogen's. That should always be a reference point in our practice. But I will mention it after the break. We don't want to lose you during the commercial. I mean, no, no. We don't want to lose you during the commercial. We don't want to lose you during the commercial. Please, during the break, have something you might say afterwards.

[62:17]

You're first.

[62:19]

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