Into a drawing above the door, remember? And you came inside and you said, hey, this was only for you. I had to take it down. But I brought something into a concept, a feeling you gave just to me, and I could change it on myself and probably everybody else would do it too. After a while, looking at my feet again. But this little anecdote kind of, I remember when you asked about hearing during session. Even during seminar I would now say it the same, because the body is taking it differently than the mind is doing. During seminar as well, yes. Even during seminar. And coming back to the question, is there a difference, is it the difference between a feeling with the body and bringing it into a concept?

[01:05]

Or how does a feeling bring it into the body? Or, you know, this kind of thing. I understand. That's a difficult question to answer, but maybe you better say it in Deutsch. Habt ihr alle verstanden? Nice of you to ask. I asked if feelings are concepts. I went from the question that Roshi asked Andreas and Gerald yesterday, how they hear in the session, what they hear, how they understand it, or how they... in the seminar. And for me, my hearing never happened through the mind during a session, but it always came through the body. And Roshi spoke about the feelings and aroused in me a different understanding in the body, but not the understanding that I now call concept in the mind during a session, during these seven days.

[02:15]

The question is now, oh, the anecdote that I brought was that during a Sesshin, when I was Ino, the one who leads the Setsu, he stepped behind me and said, I still have the furs together when I go, like a duck. And I shouldn't even look around, the others would do the same. And if I don't do that, then it's actually what we do in Sesshin, the furs a little apart, with a little... And then I went there, because I felt responsible, and I brought it on paper. I made a sketch, and I put it on paper. It was really out of space. I was completely somewhere, and I put it over the door, to make it clear to the others. Ich wurde natürlich bitter bestraft, das sage ich nicht von Ihnen. I was in a physical understanding and it was natural for me to show the other person my physical self.

[03:36]

The question for me is basically, starting from the initial question, is a feeling a concept, or are there differences between a feeling that you have physically, a feeling that you have mentally, what is a concept, what is not a concept, where is the big difference, or is there a difference at all? Why don't you answer this one? Well, the measure of a concept is not its form, but the kind of mind it produces. So if I tease you and suggest that you don't walk like this, what I'm suggesting is that you change your posture, okay?

[05:03]

And the posture does affect your mind and your body. But it doesn't produce the kind of mind as a concept does. If we go back to the distinction between host mind and guest mind. We can have certain thoughts or certain mental postures, attitudes. An attitude is a mental posture. Which actually support host mind. But concepts, as I was speaking about them this morning, like discursive thinking, conceptual thinking produces our usual kind of consciousness.

[06:30]

So maybe I could use this as a way to speak about part of what I think I had to speak about this afternoon. Which is, yeah, I think I should speak about the four foundations of mindfulness. Because they're also called the four awakenings. Because they... awaken us to our and the reality. And they ask what we are more than asking who we are. And in general, Buddhism is asking about the what-ness of the world, as being more fundamental than the wholeness of the world.

[07:47]

So if we want to know what reality is, what do we look at? What are the targets of our attention? Because attention itself, as I said, is like a magic wand, and what you bring it to is changed through the attention. So Buddhism has spent, you know, in effect, Buddhism has spent centuries deciding what its most important effective to bring attention to. But this process of what you bring attention to isn't just in the history of Buddhism, it can be in the history and context of your own practice.

[08:56]

What do you find useful to bring attention to in your own life, in your own zazen and so forth activity? Do you bring attention to the top of your head or do you bring attention to your kikai, to your hara? So the four foundations of mindfulness are what we bring our attention to. In order to open ourselves into what is reality, our reality, and reality in general. And the first thing you bring your attention to in this practice of satipaṇāna is And the first thing you pay attention to in this practice is the body.

[10:25]

Okay, now part of that is exemplified by Gisela's story, anecdote. We tend to stand in the zendo. Well, first of all, in Buddhism, in yoga culture, there's no such thing as a natural posture. Whatever shape your body in is a posture. Maybe a good yogic posture, maybe a lousy yogic posture, but it's some kind of posture. A good yogic posture affects your state of mind and energy with a new vitality.

[11:35]

It earned increased flexibility. It moved you from one state to another. But to slouch, you know, this moves you from one state to another, too. So there's no idea of natural in yoga culture at all. This has been natural hair down. Ha! My little daughter, some of you know this, insisted that she have her hair head shaved.

[12:36]

Before we left for Europe a couple months before, she said, Papa, when we get to... No, she said she wanted to shave her head. And I said, and Marie-Louise and I said, no. Maybe, since she kept asking, finally we said, well, maybe in Crestone. So we got to Crestone, and two months later, on the second day, she said, Papa, you promised. And her hair was curly, light, sort of blonde. I never expected to have a blonde child. I never expected to marry a German either. Curly, light hair that hadn't been cut since birth. So finally, okay, all right, since she kept asking, okay, we'll do it. So first we used clippers and cut it so it was about this long, you know. And she... Papa, it's still there.

[14:01]

Shame it on you. Thanks to me. So the next day I lathered her up, you know, and lathered. She thinks it's great. But she looks around Johanneshof in Crestone and she thinks it's the natural hairstyle. The only problem is when she pulls on a sweater, she says, Papa, it's Velcro. Because it sticks on her head. Anyway, she likes it. But unfortunately, it looks black now. It's no longer blonde. I knew it would be like that. It's like your head. But whatever way you let your hair, all your different ways, none of them are natural.

[15:13]

They're all a posture, a style. Even if you let it grow and never cut it and it was matted with oil, that would be a style. So what posture you take is very much a part of not only your life, but your life with others. As I said when I spoke about the paramitas, the shape of the space between us is also a posture. So we ask that people stand, we suggest that people stand with their feet more or less straight ahead.

[16:26]

And this distance apart. That thickness apart. And when we hold our hands up like this, there's a whole process that comes. You put your hands together, it comes through the chakras to here, and then it's lifted to here, and it's that distance. The other day in Sushin, you know, there was a fairly new person, and he had his hands like this, you know. So I came and I straightened his hand like this, and I put my hand like this, and he went... So, excuse me. Calm. You'd have to be in a helmet, Zendo, for that.

[17:44]

Now part of the reason we suggest a posture like that, because if you can give the sense of the overall location of your body, it's good. Just notice a simple thing. Do your feet feel like they're down there? And as I get older, they do seem to get farther away. But through practice, you get to the feeling that your feet and your forehead and your hand all feel like the same piece.

[19:02]

It all seems one piece, one woven thing. So if you're going to practice mindfulness, your mindfulness at least ought to extend to where your feet are. So we make some suggestion like that, and you can tell when people Most people, a lot of people just forget it. I say it to them, and their body doesn't remember it. Now, another aspect is that we, in Sashin, we are stepping out of our usual kind of cultural, social mind.

[20:05]

And so we try to do everything in a very different way than usual, in a very precise way. So what happens is we develop a common bodily field. So it would be very different than if you did a sashin all by yourself in a room. To do all these things would feel kind of a little strange. But they don't feel so strange in Sashim because you feel supported by this common bodily feeling. Okay. Now, the first aspect... By the way, I'm a little worried about our time.

[21:11]

We're going to stop at four, right? about now you're changing the story okay yeah fine but we also I think eat a pea and tea break at some point yeah so I'll say just a little more and then we'll take it PT break and they sang them this to me on the mom on a courtship house yeah I'm So the first foundation of mindfulness is attention to the body. So it's usually translated as mindfulness of the body.

[22:15]

But it's not really about mindfulness of the body. It's about something more like bodyfulness of the body. How do you bring yourself into a full embodiment of yourself? Into the embodiment, the lived body, the embodiment of... Yeah. Well, the first thing you bring attention to, as you could guess, is the breath. Because the breath is the main way we weave mind and body together. Mind and body are, of course, together, but we experience them to various degrees separately. And we can decide how we're going to weave this separate feeling together.

[23:38]

And in many traditions, not just Buddhism, the main way is through the breath. Und in vielen Traditionen, also keineswegs nur im Buddhismus, ist der Weg über den Atem. And you get so that your mind and your breath stay together. Und ja, du gehst dahin, dass dein Geist und dein Körper zusammenbleiben. So this not only weaves mind and body together, but eventually it always, eventually, as many of you already know, It brings you out of your sense of self-continuity through thinking into establishing, discovering your sense of continuity in the breath, in the body and in phenomena.

[24:41]

And that's a radical change in how the self functions. You have a kind of confidence and fearlessness when you feel this is, and your thinking can't be attacked. People can't affect you mentally so easily. What do you say as a kid, sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you? Names can never hurt you. So one kid calls another kid, you blah, blah, blah, and you say, sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you. Do you understand? Oh, yeah. So, I mean, it's a silly thing to say, but it's actually quite profound.

[25:59]

I mean, you can break your bones, but names can't hurt you. But they do, of course. But I guarantee you, for those of you who are, you know, concerned with, you know, in psychotherapy, et cetera, when a person really is, finds their continuity in breath-body phenomena, They almost have no mental anxiety. So that's a big change. There's a big step in right there in freedom from suffering. Now the third thing it does is it generates a truth body.

[27:00]

That sounds good too. Now I should explain. And this generation of a truth body is the center of the eightfold path. When your breath and thinking are conjoined, if when I'm speaking now, it never strays from my breath, both the pace of my breath and the feel of my breath. And even if I'm just thinking and not speaking, if it's in the pace of my body with a physical feeling of what I'm thinking,

[28:07]

A physical feeling in what I'm thinking. Your thoughts have a kind of muscle. It's very difficult to lie to yourself. lie detectors work a large part of the time because it's very difficult to get the body to lie. So you find you're not, excuse the word, bullshitting yourself as much as we generally do. You know, we're thinking, well, I said that, and that was kind of embarrassing, and I think if I say that, and the next time it'll feel a little bit.

[29:17]

Pretty soon, you're telling yourself and believing some kind of fabrication, which has nothing to do with the truth, but you start believing it. It's called rationalization. Rumi says he admires anyone who tries to remove lying from their thinking. Well, I mean, one can try to do this by being moral and kind of, et cetera. But it happens fairly, whoops, naturally. When you find your breath and thinking are joined. So that's the beginning of the first foundation of mindfulness.

[30:31]

We have 3.75 to go. So if I only get to the second foundation of mindfulness, we will start next year. We'll give a rain check. Also, wenn wir nur bis zum zweiten kommen, dann kriegt ihr einen Gutschein fürs nächste Jahr. Do you have a rain check? Something similar. You go to a baseball game and it rained out, they give you a little special ticket, you can come next time. Yeah, yeah. One year. Yeah, one year later you come and say, I got this mindfulness check. Gutschein für Achtsamkeit. No, we'll see what happens. So what do you say, a 10-minute, 15-minute break? 10-minute break. Okay. Of course, between now and 4 o'clock, we can't... Really, I mean before foundation of mindfulness can be a whole session or a whole year.

[31:52]

But the body is the basis and I think if we can get a feeling for that and then some feeling for the other three. Yeah, that might. That would be enough for you to practice it on your own. And many of you are already practicing these four foundations of mindfulness. And in some senses, it's a practice you do all the time as you get the habit of it. But it's more a practice that you emphasize for some months or a year or two of your life, and then you go on to other practices. And it's the assumed basis of other practices.

[33:08]

Yeah. There are many practices which are meant to be, you know, brought into your each moment. This practice is meant to be concentrated on for a while. But of course, it changes what your each moment is. OK. So the main emphasis of the traditional teaching of the bodyfulness, to know the body through the body, is breath and posture and the parts of the body.

[34:15]

So breath I've spoken about. And posture is just, you know, very simply. You are aware of your walking when you're walking and sitting when you're sitting and so forth. And the main secret to that awareness is, I think, the two words... nourishment and completeness. When you're walking, say, if you feel nourished in how you're walking, this is probably then bringing mindfulness as an expression that you've brought mindfulness to the body. Or if you feel completeness in each separate action of your body.

[35:33]

This is also a way to bring mindfulness into the body. And you find the chakras again appear. It's just like the teacup with no handles. You tend to hold it at the chakras. And another entry into the bodyfulness of the body is to do things with two hands. And Maya and I have several times practiced passing things with two hands. And passing yourself at the same time.

[36:49]

So that's also knowing the body through the body, the two hands. Yeah. Okay. So you can do that all when you're walking, whatever you do. You can feel attention and the body are one. Okay. Now the parts of the body, it's usually said 32, but it means really just to bring your attention into the body. So normally we kind of relate to our body through as if it were a visual phenomena. And you're really trying to kind of feel into your body. And I, you know, I think the best entry is, you know, through the hands again.

[37:57]

You feel, you can sort of see if you can feel an awareness inside your hands. And if you can, once you get that feeling, move that feeling up your arm, arm or arms. Yeah. And if you can work your way all the way up here, then you can sometimes go down inside your lungs or around your lungs. You can begin to feel your lungs as they're breathing. Almost as if you had a little flashlight or some sensor. You could go around the inside surface of your lungs and down to your stomach. And I think to do that well takes, you know, try it in Zazen now and then.

[39:22]

And after some, it takes a few months. After a while, you can really feel inside your body. You know, why not get to know your body from inside and out? It's where you live. Yeah, and then your body starts feeling kind of transparent. I mean, it feels like it's, again, one piece through and through. Now, when I was trans, I used the term visceral continuity. Yeah, and I was trying to say that and Marie Louise, my wife, was translating for me.

[40:35]

And she... It's hard for her to translate something unless she has a feeling for what it means. And suddenly she... had the feeling of when she's been riding a horse and she's close to the horse and the horse is going up a hill with great movement, she could feel a kind of visceral continuity of she and the horse. And I thought, yeah, that's just right. Sounds like it's just right. Because through the practice of mindfulness or bodyfulness of the body, we feel a kind of visceral, bodily, visceral continuity with the world and with other people.

[41:40]

Yeah, anyways, like that. So when you're standing with somebody, you're not just standing in front of their talking head. You feel in your own body the whole presence of their body coming up into their speaking, breathing, and so forth. At first it could be a kind of confusing intimacy with others, and you have to kind of get used to this sense of visceral continuity. And you have to get used to this sense of visceral continuity. In this room, I can feel a kind of visceral continuity. I mean, there's a sense of physicality among us, not just mentation or mentality.

[42:53]

And I think it's the realm when you feel somebody looking at you and around, and they are. Also something the current paradigm of science doesn't accept. Now, when you practice this parts of the body, You can begin to feel there's some difference here. There's a different feeling of the body here. And you begin to feel what I think we can call a mind body or a body mind. And then you begin to feel what I think we can call a mind body or a body mind.

[43:55]

Which is different than the thinking mind. So this sense of a body-mind is brought into the second foundation of mindfulness. Which means feeling, which is feel. But feeling here is, first of all, the feeling of the body-mind. Joined with, initially, the feeling of pleasant and unpleasant. And pleasant and unpleasant, yes, but what's more important is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So in this foundation of mindfulness, you begin to develop the wider feeling, which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

[45:23]

Und in dieser zweiten Grundlage entwickelst du etwas weiteres, was weder angenehm noch unangenehm ist. Now that narrows down through mentation to like, dislike and neutral. Also ja, im mentalen wird das eingeengt durch mentalität. And like and dislike becomes more narrow and becomes greed, hate, and delusion. But going back to the wider sense of it, it's pleasant, unpleasant, and neither. And neither is the opening to equanimity. Now, feeling at this level is that which accompanies all mental and physical activity, phenomena. I mean, if you poke a person who's been in an accident, you want there to be some feeling.

[46:50]

You know, the person has to move or feel something. They might be unconscious or in a coma or whatever, but if there's feeling there, we know they're alive. So some kind of feeling is present more basic than specific thinking, but it's underneath our thinking and underneath our emotions. Yes, but this form of feeling is more basic than thinking, and it is also... So you're not only getting to know your reality, you're actually beginning to clarify it and reconstruct it. And this is again just by the thorough bringing of attention to the body and then to feelings. Und das ist dadurch, dass du deine Achtsamkeit auf den Körper bringst und auf die Gefühle.

[48:13]

Und die dritte Erweckung der Achtsamkeit ist Achtsamkeit des Geistes. The contents of mind. Mindfulness of the various shapes mind takes. Anger, moods, and so forth. Yeah. And this is the classic example of mindfulness, to be mindful that you're getting angry. Now I'm angry. Now I'm more angry. Now I'm really angry. Now I'm less angry. But there's a kind of discipline in this, a teaching in this.

[49:34]

You're just noticing the anger. You're not trying to get rid of the anger. Of course, if you're about to break this flowerpot over someone's head, maybe you'd better control your anger. Yeah, because, I don't know, it's a pretty nice vase. But in most cases, you're just observing that you're angry or sad or whatever. And what? I won't be angry that you're leaving. Bye-bye. We will stop in a few minutes or so. So, what you're doing when you do that, you're actually generating a state of mind that's not caught up in the anger.

[51:01]

It's like, again, the host mind which can observe the guest mind. So you're generating by just developing the ability to notice without acting on. You're creating a new psychological space which is not suppression or expression, but you can feel things completely without acting on it. And that's also learned through zazen, sitting specific lengths of time, and just sitting there until the bell rings. You're actually constructing or generating another state of mind that isn't caught up in expression or suppression.

[52:13]

It can just feel and observe. Okay. Now, so what happens now is you actually, you have your anger and you have the state of mind which observes it. You can shift your sense of identification now to the observing mind away from the contents of mind. away from the contents of my life. It's like you go from the waves to the water. The waves are still water, though, but now you're in the stillness of the water, not in the shape of the wave.

[53:28]

So this is another one of those big shifts in practice, when you identify with, feel yourself in the field of mind, not in the contents of mind. Das ist wiederum ein ganz großer Schritt und Wechsel wenn du dich identifizierst in dem Feld vom Geist aber nicht mehr mit dem Inhalt. Ja. And the field of mind turns into the contents of mind but then melts back into the field of mind. And now you're ready for the fourth foundation of mind. And these are each really, much more strictly than most Buddhist teachings, these are really meant to be in this order, body, feeling, mind, and dharmas.

[54:40]

dharmas means how the world and mind are a mutual expression. The world are a mutual expression. Now that you can find yourself First of all, know the field of mind and not just the contents of mind. But feel yourself located in the field of mind. Now we're back where we started with the host mind. You're ready to practice the dharmas. Which is the most central of all practices in Buddhism.

[56:02]

Buddha, Dharma, Sandra. Yeah, so Dharma means to see each thing as it arises, appears, and disappears. In its uniqueness. Because each moment is actually called a kashana. The shortest perceptible moment is a kashana. Yeah, it's sometimes said to be that long. So long. Yeah, I like that. Good translation. I like the definition for Kshana. If a healthy man with vigorous, or woman, with vigor and vitality... Yeah.

[57:04]

Sweeps their eyes across a starlit sky. Starlit. Starlit. Star filled. The length of time it takes you to notice one star is a kashana. Is that great? Whoa. I get Kishana every night. But you do feel a difference. If it's really full of stars, you feel a difference than when it's not so full of stars. Kashanas are much shorter in Crestone than they are in Germany. Because the sky is a desert sky, pitch black, and the stars are like So Akashana means the world actually exists in this momentary and the way it's anything else than that comes from us.

[58:35]

The duration comes from us. So the fourth foundation of mindfulness is to enter into that dharmic relationship to the world. Now you could say from a Buddhist point of view you know reality and the truth of reality as things as they are. Somebody put a Rumi book on my chair upstairs. I don't know who to return it to. It's good here in the house. Belongs to the house. Oh, okay.

[59:37]

You take two, and now you say half a thousand. He first wanted to put it in the library, but then he put it on your chair. Oh. I said it was at home. Yeah, thank you. But Rumi said once, oh, how long I knocked on that ancient door. Knocked and knocked for years. And when it finally opened, I found I was already on the other side. Hey! So let's sit for a few minutes.

[60:32]

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