Okay, so, how was your discussion today? Was there a topic? Yes. The body space. Oh, okay. Here we are. Sitting in our body space. Now, Janice? Yes. You're first. Okay. It's not going to be very smart, but... Oh, well, we're disappointed. Well, um... I speak for myself rather than for the group. Um... The little I understand so far about LiftBody is that you speak to us from your experience of LiftBody and you try to conceptualize by sort of making up concepts of words in order to help us practice, let's say.

[01:33]

And in... But sometimes in other seminars, for example, the gate phrases you often use, some of those phrases I would say I have at least some vague access. Vague. Vague access. Yeah. So I can practice... I understand the whole thing in a way I don't understand much about this living body. I try to understand it by saying, okay, Roshi speaks from his own experience and tries to conceptualize it by inventing terms that should help us, or at least that's how I understand it, that should help me to practice.

[02:40]

And with some phrases that he calls gate phrases, I can practice quite well, at least for me, I feel that I have at least a vague access to them. Like, for example, phrase I like most is already connected because I can make use of it in my psychotherapeutic work, especially with patients I do not like so much, where I feel dislike or antipathy and it vanishes. Interesting that very quickly if I work with that phrase breathing and I'm already connected and it's gone. That helps me a lot and I would say I have good access to that phrase.

[03:46]

Well, that makes me happy. Okay, and now I... I'm glad for your clients who you don't like. Now I try to find at least... Some access to lift body. That's where I am right now and where I was in the group discussion. Also, ich habe gerade gesagt, dass ich gerne mit dieser Phrase arbeite, immer schon verbunden oder bereits verbunden. Now I try to summarize or to to memorize what the phrase, the words, the concepts you use.

[04:58]

You talked about, first of all, there's the word body space, which is sort of, as far as I know, sort of made up word or a combination, which is meant to help me. Hopefully. Isn't it? Yeah, why not? Okay, body space. Then you said there's inner body space and outer body space. Internal and external. No, inner. I said internal. Internal. And external. Okay. Internal body space and external body space. You also talked about somatic space. In the group we had the word breath body. You drew the distinction between abyssal and non-abyssal body, body, skin.

[06:09]

I don't want to repeat all these words. These words are habitual and non-habitual. Body space, internal and external. Body space, these words. Of course, when I say internal body space, I have a certain feeling I cannot describe, I can say it moves me, but there's something to it. If I say it for myself, out loud... If you say internal body space. Yeah, or body space.

[07:14]

It feels something. Yeah, I feel something. But I'm not quite sure if that has anything to do with what you are talking about. There's not this... I don't get the feeling that I have the sort of access I have to already connected, for example. I think what I'm trying to say is it's rather a request than a contribution. Maybe you can You can say something more about that or give me a hint or how I can practice with this. How I can lift body. So I'm just noticing that it's actually more of a request or a request whether I should I added something now in German.

[08:23]

I don't really get how the concepts you use, internal and external body space, let's say breath body, how they relate to one another. Okay, so you'd like a gate phrase that allows you to practice with... So what about already connected body space? So you can work with that when you're, you know, with your clients, you can feel already connected body space.

[09:26]

Yeah. You know, the word body and mind in Buddhism are almost interchangeable. Yeah. And in fact... Usually body is the preferred word for mind. Because when we say the three bodies of Buddha, what does it mean? Something like, or the body as bliss or as the fruit of practice.

[10:36]

This is really a word for mind. But it emphasizes an experiential and causal fruit aspect of mind. So a body simply does not mean, if you have, unfortunately, let's say we have a corpse here in front of us. Ein Leichnam. That's not a body. Das ist kein Körper. That's just stuff. Das ist Zeug. A body is what makes that stuff alive. Ein Körper ist das, was dieses Zeug lebendig macht.

[11:41]

So if you realize, when we speak about body in Buddhism, we always mean that which makes... stuff alive. Or that which makes everything alive. So when I experience your body, I'm experiencing what makes you alive. It's not the stuff of you only. It's what makes the stuff of you alive. And there's no aliveness of you separate from the stuff of you. And this aliveness is not limited to the boundaries of the body.

[12:49]

So I'm trying to convey that by using the term body space. And again, in In Asian Buddhist thinking, space is the noticed dimension, not time so much. And time doesn't have a clock quality. As I said, we all live in time. each of us live in our own time as well as our own body space.

[13:50]

And again, just to review, We know that Sophia is in a different time than we are. The four years she's lived so far are very long for her and for me, not very long at all. Now, you could say that's just an illusion, but from the point of view of Buddhism, clock time is the illusion. And I think when most of us look back, our childhood's at least half of our life, a big part of our life. Each... Not only is Sophia in a different time.

[15:03]

Each of us is in a different ripening time. Time ripens. There are moments when we take action, moments when we don't take action. Or when action takes us. So here I'm speaking about time as acting. As manifesting. This is a lot like space. When do you feel time ripening as the space in which you can take action? These are concepts or views, experience? Yeah, that arise from practice.

[16:14]

Much of the philosophy, virtually all the philosophy of Asia arises not from trying to explain thinking or explain how the world exists. But the philosophy of practice arises from trying to explain the world that we know through practice. The clock world is not one we know through practice. That's just... A clock. Ivan Illich's favorite poem or... A poem that he often used is he wants a world which has lost its clocks.

[17:17]

Just feel what he meant. Can we each be here in a world which has lost its clocks? And how connected are our minds and our thinking with clocks, clock time? So we've lost our clocks. Lock the door. We're never going home. All right, someone else? We talked about the term somatic space, and we tried to find a personal experience or case to relate to that.

[18:27]

Good. And I recently talked to a doctor in Zurich. He told me about somatic intelligence with children. And he said... children in the kindergarten were going to eat small pieces of schlag. Schlag? Schlag. Schlag. Schlag. Well, in Switzerland it might be schlag. Kreide. Kreide. Schlag, okay. They are... they have often a lack of magnesium. Calcium. Calcium, right, rather than they are confused or something like that. And this is what we... So we think the body tells us, of the children, what is missing and what is right in order to stay healthy. And in my view, that is a small aspect of living in the body or that kind of experience.

[19:32]

Yeah. German, please. We talked about somatic space, about somatic intelligence, and we tried to find a case where we can determine this with a personal example. And a doctor in Zurich told me recently that he found something like somatic intelligence in children in kindergarten. who start eating chalk and it has been found that the children are not disturbed, but that calcium is usually missing. And that is a sign that the body actually tells us what is missing, what we need to stay healthy. And this impulse, this body impulse, we have, that was our interpretation, Yeah, and these things are presented to us, you know, by people in newspapers as anomalies.

[20:36]

Something unusual. But we should hear them and say, hey, this isn't unusual, this is the way it is. Mm-hmm. an experience I had which shows very clear how connected body and mind is and that is the same. It has been in the Feldenkrais workshop a long time ago and the teacher asked us to move half of the body and to start with the arm and doing all kinds of Felgenkrais movement and then stand up and feel the difference between the body being just moved and the other half and you clearly can feel the body space on this half of the body you just move. It's a very different feeling. And then we had to lay down and just doing the same exercise, but just mentally for the same time.

[21:47]

And that changed the body. The other half, we just did the exercises mentally in the same way like the body. But you just visualized it. Just visualizing it, yeah. So that shows really how body and mind are, how connected it is and that we cannot separate that. Yeah. Can you translate that? Perhaps so, yes. I had a long time ago a very good experience in a circle workshop. It was about small movements and the teacher guided us. It took about 20 minutes, half an hour. exercises that were completely separate, on one half of the body, move the arm, so small movements and up and down and different things like the circle method works. And then we had to get up and it was really extraordinary to feel how that changed half of the body in the direction of body feeling.

[22:54]

That was a completely different feeling in the half of the body that we moved. And then we laid down and the teacher guided us. But we had to imagine it without moving the body, the same movements, only in the imagination with the other half. And that has completely balanced it again. That means you also felt this body feeling in the visualized half. Judith? Yes, in our group we started to feel where our body stops outside our bubble. And an experience that was made is that you can feel people when they enter the outer space further away, that you can then feel the people. In our group we try to experience where does the body end outside this skin box, and one experience is how do we feel when people come closer to our body, for example when we don't see them, when they're coming from behind.

[24:20]

And Frank brought an interesting story that every human being has a different space around him that he considers to be his own free space. And Frank brought up how different the people and people have their space around their body and see that as their body space and how that differs from... And he said an African and an Englishman had met and the African always tried to enter the room of the Englishman The guy from Africa and one from England, they met and the African guy, he tried to move into the body space of the English guy. And the English guy, he always went step by step back and the African guy always followed until he reached the edge of the balcony.

[25:30]

So it's also the question of the culture, the space we need or what. And to the internal space, the inner space we came to by the breath body and that there was a break after the breathing in and that we cannot name that. And it was good to feel that space without naming it. what is a breath body and a relation body.

[27:03]

And we had our cups standing on the table without a relation. And then we tried to focus our relation to the cups and that also changed the relation of the cups. And Gerhard had a good example with this, can you tell me, with the families or with the positions that you have? I'll say it in German. The parallel is also with family establishments or further developments, no matter what they are called now, in the work with family systems.

[28:04]

Establishment of persons in the room as representatives for people. And another point that came up is this systemic work of, what's he called, Hellinger, and it's a work to find the relation of the different people without naming that relation, but somehow find the body, use the body and to find their relation in the special group of different people. Then we figured out that we have a group body and we kind of grow into that group body. And that this group body has something finer, subtler than the group body of a football team.

[29:16]

Oh, come on. Our group body is more subtle than, for example, the group body in the soccer game, of the people watching the soccer game. Maybe. And a question we have, what is a Buddha body? Later. You expect me to say something? Someone else? I didn't mention this example in the group, but just today I went to buy gas and I passed this man who sells the gas.

[30:23]

He has this shepherd dog. And they are behind the fence about that house. Gasoline or? No, gasolification. Oh, yeah. And so they easily could jump. That's the guy with those dangerous dogs? Yeah. And of course they play their role when you come into the court and they bark. But you can see they're just interested in who is coming. Okay. into contact. So if they really wanted, they could just take the fence, but it's their education that lets them feel their space ends with the fence. And it reminded me of Butoh. I saw when I felt that most of the movements made were not familiar.

[31:31]

And I saw the movements and registered very clearly when they were familiar and when they were not. And then I found later in that time Well, it's just that waiting for the familiar spots. It's just crazy to just go with the flow. And after I came out, I could move the body in a totally another way just from looking and performing. You could move your own body. Yeah. So the intuition or the... the feeling for what movement is possible was there. And that all the formal movements were just a pattern which came out of a kind of education. And that brought me to the thought that, well, the body is also formed partly by the use of make-up.

[32:34]

Sure. And so there's a big chance in enhancing possibilities of movement and with the movement also of perception in trying things out and not get stuck in patterns. Tell us what Bhutto is. Oh, yes. It's not easy to tell. Maybe you can explain it back, because it's short. Yes. Buddha is a form of... I would say body expression where people are trained to develop and explore body awareness and perform that sometimes also together with or in nature.

[33:37]

And it's a kind of awareness which is beyond conceptualization. Also, the performances are... There are rehearsals, but it's not a fixed thing. It's... I think it's influenced a bit by norms, so to bring out the... more the results, maybe, and not so much the technique of . Well, I said it in the group, I just came up with it, it was the gas cart and the gas cart salesman has bred sheep around here and they are in such a small shed, three of them, and the fence is maybe so high, that is, if they wanted to, they could just jump over it without any pressure.

[34:41]

And you come into this profession and you play the role of the watchman. That is, you choose a little bit and jump with your forelegs on the fence. But because you don't jump with your forelegs, you can quickly realize that they mean it seriously. Because they are simply interested and want to make contact. And yet, through education, they are deprived of it. define the space they exploit as limited by this fence. This reminded me of a performance by Boutot, as I have seen. Boutot is a form body expression in Japan, where you develop your body's essence and explore it yourself, and then bring it to expression beyond technology. And in this performance I observed the people and found that at first I was totally drawn to when these people made normal and when unusual movements for me.

[35:48]

Actually, I was always waiting for them to return to the usual way. After a while, I just let it go and left. And I came out and my body could move in many different ways. And then I saw that the vision of this fence, of this dog, that I had this pattern in this arm, I was inspired by the movement of the body, so that the feeling of the body becomes what it is through the use of the body, and that with a test of the new body, a new way of being arises. Anyone else?

[36:59]

Yes? A story I couldn't think of when we have been in our group Well, she said she couldn't tell this tall thing. And now the question arises for a long time.

[38:20]

And it's like this. For me it's a very strange past. I left home. And I had two books with me. When I started at home, I had two books. One book I'm reading already for a long time, and another book I just pick up to carry here. And it kind of feels strange about that story, my feeling here, my being here. And somehow I took this smaller book and thought, oh, that would be nice. And how did it go? Because the train is also for distraction and so on.

[39:23]

And then you can look out a little bit and have a nice time. Because the journey is always very long. And suddenly... And I started reading on the smaller book and I thought that's a nice book to read because there's also much distraction and you can look out of the window and it's a long train ride all the way down and suddenly I was really focused and fixed on that book. And this is... That somehow didn't go away. The whole time. I'm a little sorry and so. But I actually stood until today.

[40:23]

I was possessed by this book. And that didn't change till now and I feel a little bit sorry about that. Till now I'm kind of obsessed on that book or by that book. This book came to me in a strange way and united me. The book came to me and it took over myself. It's about a Buddhist nun and she has been living in a Buddhist monastery near Kathmandu. Yes, and somehow it touched me so much and united me that I actually wasn't even here, but in this book.

[41:30]

I'm here. I've been through everything, but somehow it wasn't even me who did it, but always just this book. I was in the field. And I'm so moved and touched by that book, and still by that book, that it's somehow not myself doing all these things here at Johanneshof, it's more the book, or I'm still living in, sort of in that book, through that book. So whenever we have a break, namely a break, I went to my room and I went on reading that book. And I'm eating orioke and I listen to your teshos, but it's somehow not myself doing that, it's more the book doing that.

[42:47]

The woman in the book doing that. And the book itself, the atmosphere of this book. The atmosphere in the book. It's more the book itself. And I thought, when I come home and René asks me, how was it in Johanneshof? Then I say, I wasn't there at all. I think there was only this book there. I don't know. And when I come home and René asks me, how was it? I have to tell him, well, I haven't been there. I have more, the book was more there. The book body space. The book body space. So, yes. Yes, and then something happened today, today after the sitting. I had to cry a lot. This morning. And then it was as if I had cried it all out.

[43:51]

And now it's all... And then it happened after the sitting this morning, I started crying and I had to cry out the book. And now the book is gone. It is as if it's burned here. I'm here now. I'm here now again. Welcome. Adeen? In the group we also spoke about chanting. and how at least several of us tend to forget the words when we are by ourselves in the group.

[44:56]

That just happens automatically because you don't think about it. Like your body part, the body, the group body part. I wonder maybe even the Zendo body, empty Zendo body knows It fascinates me how long would you have to leave the room empty before it loses the quality of life. Yes, it's just my body and mind, but it's not just it, it's something else. Well, there's something else I thought of. What would I call this lived body?

[46:04]

I would translate it in Dutch, and in Dutch we have the words… doorleven, doorscheleven, like usually you would say it about someone's face, an old person's face, he has a, you can sort of see in the lines whether they had a rough life or a sad life. I kind of like the word because it gives more a physical quality than lived sort of like it's been in the past. Yeah. I don't get it all, but the last part, in the Dutch we have this word, which you could translate as through life, and it also refers to how you can see the lived life in the face of a person, and in a quality that also brings forth the physical, through-lived life.

[47:10]

I don't know if it exists in German. Does a similar word exist in the Uri? Yes, yes. . Verlebtes Gesüchte. It has more... It has not so positive... Verlebt is more... Well, you can see how this guy lived. Yeah, something like that. It's more kind of... He drank too much. Yeah. You can see the beer and all that stuff here. Verlebt, yeah. Okay, but I don't get that. Can you repeat that again?

[48:17]

She's asking if she wants to hear more about this body, the Zendo body, when we chant. In my opinion, you can't say it in German. No, you can say it in English. In English. In German, you say... Frank is leaving again to establish the orioke body. But it's true, I think, that we have to cook differently for a table meal than an oriole meal.

[49:27]

It's not that the oriole meal... Only that the oriole meal can be simpler. But for the table meal to be tasty, it has to have more flavor and seasoning than the orioke meal, because somehow the orioke body enjoys the food, even if it's on the simple side or unflavored side. Or the flavors are clearer or something. Okay, someone else? Yes. I have been in Alexander's group too and our main topic has been how do we find access to the lift body and breath body.

[50:45]

And one way, a good way, is to find access through questioning. One way I can work with is to take it into my breath and with a phrase like, now alive, And when breathing out, body. Mm-hmm. And I repeat that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, sounds good. Anyone else have something you'd like to say about body space or your own experience or your sense of it?

[52:07]

Anything else about body space, your own experience and how you see and understand it? Body space has also a lot to do with posture. Not only meaning flaccid posture, but posture has also kind of attitude or initial way to bring your body to position to start an action. That means to be bodily prepared to start it and to make really the most Effective, maybe not a good word, but I don't know another word for it.

[53:14]

The most effective use of the body in the sense of body awareness. So for most of the actions, Especially if you're not, if they're doing the half conscious, there are other, there are muscle tensions in them and also tensions of the posture which are not necessary to do. and which influence the awareness. So perhaps while speaking there's a slight feeling of embarrassment or fear and it influences the voice and then the voice isn't just coming out but the muscle tensing and stuff like that. I think if you are more aware of, if you have the practice of pause, it's not only to close the situation which you ended, but also to be prepared to start a new situation and take a kind of pause.

[54:30]

position or an attitude which brings the body in shape to do that action more aware and more single-mindedly than if it just floats through the day and carries all the tensions and habits with it without not seeing. I think that the body also has a lot to do with position, with holding. And I don't mean just this posture, but the holding that you have to take in, an attack without... from the body towards the West, which we need. This means that we take a break, not only to close an old connection, but also to bring the body into shape in order to enter into the other as much as possible.

[55:33]

And normally you don't do that. actually too much effort and too much tension. For example, when speaking, the feeling of anxiety arises in the voice. The speech does not come out of the stomach. And that's what makes it happen. And I think if you practice this outside, it will then protect you from the body through space, through the body, and you can do it any day without having to Yeah, so we're not talking about yesterday. In our group we had many difficulties and I don't want to end this discussion without bringing these difficulties into our discussion now.

[57:06]

Yeah, the difficulty is to find access to the text and what kind of text and access in general, how to find the text. The text of the Genjo Koan? Yeah. And then there was silence and also, as I felt it, tension in our group. And then statements came up like, not connected or being said, or don't find an access to the topic. group and nexus for the group.

[58:24]

Wir haben dann noch damit aufgehört, also nicht... Etwas, was ich eigentlich noch selten erlebt habe hier in den Diskussionen, And we had to end, and I never experienced that, or not often here in these discussion groups, we ended with not much being connected, with more not being connected. I couldn't feel the sangha. And then, in our break, Günter mentioned, that's one of the ten thousand things.

[59:26]

This is one of the... Not being connected is one of the ten thousand things. And immediately I have been connected with myself. Anybody else from that group want to say something? I haven't been in a group, but I have a question. a Sesshin, I go through something like a small boat. So through everything that happens in the Sesshin, what I experience and through the intensity of the energy that is built up there. Each time when I sit in a sashin, I'm going through what I call a little, a small death, through my experience in a sashin, through what we kind of build up in a sashin.

[60:52]

When it's finished, I would like to know, is it the somatic space in which it takes place, or is it external? I want to know, does that happen in what you call the somatic space or is that external? All of it. In Chinese, the word for body, as I've often pointed out, is a share of the whole. Now, that in itself can be a gate phrase, a share of the whole. That's not an image that has anything to do with...

[61:54]

boundaries. And Dogen says something like the body the body undivided by self and others, is the whole world in ten directions, or of ten directions. And of course you know that ten directions includes up and down. North. northeast, east, etc.

[63:10]

Four, eight directions and up and down. And in the sense of the ten directions is they're coming toward you. They're not out there to the north. It's the north coming toward you. And in the sense or the main sense is these ten directions are coming toward you. It's And this was so kind of common to feel the directions in the room. Some koans were answered by... He got up, shook out his sleeves and walked to the west side of the Zendo. And so people had a feeling of the side where the sun came up, the side where the sun went down, etc. There's a different kind of energy there. of the directions present here.

[64:22]

And of course, that's not just a conceptual difference. It's also, just like in Europe, when people walked places, they didn't drive places. to go even a short distance from here to, you know, Gorville was a day's walk. So you'd know these things anywhere, you'd just be more familiar with them. So, Jürgen says the body undivided by self and others. Now this is already, can you imagine? What mind in which we don't feel the division, separation of self and others?

[65:28]

Yeah, I think Ingrid's pointing out that in Sashin you have this more undivided sense of And today she made me feel much closer to Hakuin Zenji. Because there's severe... This severe, famous Japanese Rinzai Roshi put down every other teacher. It is said, inordinately, do you know that word? No. way beyond the ordinary, inordinately, fond of sweets, candy, cakes.

[66:55]

So eating the cake we had today, I suddenly understood Hakuenzenji. He also seemed to have liked his pipe, which he smoked secretly, so his main disciple didn't know he smoked. But it must have been a tobacco smell. Anyway, what we mean by body space is also, yes, simply what we mean by a person's presence. Some people walk in the room and you feel their presence right away. And that's what we mean also by charisma. You could say a very developed body, articulated body space.

[68:06]

Maybe not just a gate phrase, but we could have an image. If you had an image that when you breathe out, there's a big circle occurred. And when you breathe in, the circle returned to you. When you breathe in, then the circle comes back to you. Almost as if the earth comes up through you. That's also related to a practice called heel breathing, as if you're breathing through the heels. It's also part of the same worldview of ten directions.

[69:10]

The earth comes up through you in these ten directions, or down through you. So, and this rhythm of like this and like this is, you know, a kind of pulse related to... You don't have a relationship to the world of some kind of permanent mindset, but there's a pulse in your relationship to the world. You could think of it, if you want to use words, you could think of it as receiving, releasing.

[70:24]

Receiving, releasing. So this image, or this receiving-releasing, or Andreas' suggestion, or the various things I've suggested during the seminar can bring you more into this lived moment-by-moment We can say living body, but living body has other meanings in English that take over the feeling. Okay. Thank you for giving us so much in this seminar today. And tomorrow afternoon, I believe we have off.

[71:26]

Is that right? There's some new plan to... Eat cake tomorrow afternoon, I hear. And eat cake the whole afternoon or something like that? No, I don't know. That's what the Buddha said, and he let them eat cake. That's a bad joke.

[72:04]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_79.71