Okay, so now I hope we can have some discussion, and I don't know if Ravi needs to, but can sort of moderate it, but we can just talk. But would you like me to start with where we left off about... Because I think it's quite a good example of the different concept of the body in a yoga culture. I remember Tsukiroshi, one of my favorite observations was, someone said to Tsukiroshi, my teacher, what is it about Americans that you notice most? What do you notice being in America? And he said,

[01:02]

But you do things with one hand. And everybody, huh? And then I began to watch. And if somebody asks you at, you know, a meal, would you pass me the salt? They just hand the salt over. And I watched Zuku Roshi. Someone said, could you give me the salt? He would pick up the salt. If he couldn't reach it with two hands, his second hand would be involved. And he would pick it up. bring it into his body. Into this line. And then he would turn and pass. And I watched this and it was like a revelation. And it's really the difference too between the Japanese car and the American car. Because you're passing the person to the next place. So the idea is is that The salt, or the bell, is an excuse to pass yourself.

[02:05]

Because the salt is just an entity. It's actually, but you can make it an activity. So you bring it in, it's almost like you empower it in this field. And then you turn this, almost like there's a light here. You turn this. And that really, also in a yoga culture, you don't really turn your head, you turn your body. And I don't know how much this conforms with your experience and Indian experience, but it's okay to just turn your head, of course, but it feels rude or mental only. To turn your body, it feels much more polite. So that basic idea is in this sense of Your hands come together. And usually you can tell, I would say third generation Japanese no longer hold their teacup here and here.

[03:09]

But if their parents are from Japan or even grandparents from Japan, usually if I see them in a restaurant and they're like, I know that they're probably second generation Japanese or probably not yet third. Because this is very deeply ingrained, the sense of the body. It's almost like there's a little shelf here you put there. That's a little slower than I went before. Yeah, very, very. Thank you. I was going to comment on one difference that I know one of the questions I get is that with the bowing. Yeah. there's often a connection in the West with humiliation. Really? Yeah. With bowing before someone else is to put yourself on level before. And I think that goes away from the way the yogic thinking about it. Yeah. Well, of course, most of our supposedly, who knows for sure, is to put the right hand out as to show there's no weapon in it.

[04:16]

Things like that. To show you're a safe guy. And... but it's actually I know this isn't to humble yourself before another person it's to join another person but it is good if mentally you can put yourself lower than the person you're with because we generally put ourselves slightly higher than the person we're with so it's a good practice to see if you can feel yourself lower than the person you're with and to counteract our tendency to kind of like have the edge. Okay, what else? You said you had lots of questions. Yes, I do. You're being polite. Yes, of course I am. To get into, first of all, when you talk about the negative state, the fourth state of mind,

[05:25]

There are other practices of going into a state of relaxation. Part of what some of us working with is to lower your stress in your body and go down to an alternative state of mind. You can do it like sort of self-hypnosis. You can do that mentally or you can do it more with the muscularity, you know, methods. What would you say is the similarities and what might be the differences between those states and the meditative state of mind? Well, the way I'd look at it in Buddhism is that the practice of mindfulness, which is in the simplest sense just to bring attention to what you're doing.

[06:47]

More fundamentally, it's to bring attention to attention itself. when you bring attention to what you're doing, part of that is to notice whether your jaw is tight or whether your body is tight or whether you relax. And noticing that, just noticing it, we usually relax a little. So the sense of finding an ease, as I said earlier, a sense of relaxation, would be definitely part of mindfulness practice. Sort of inadvertently even, not even intentionally. But in meditation practice, one of the many things we might talk about is creating an initial state of mind. What I would mean by initial state of mind. What is the starting point? When is every moment a starting point? So what would be an initial state of mind? But one of the aspects of meditation practice

[07:53]

is to, first of all, accept, always accept whatever it is. So, for instance, when you meditate, if you're going to meditate and you're in a shitty state of mind, that's your meditation. You don't say, I'm going to meditate before I stop having a shitty state of mind. It's unavoidable to want to do that. But your attitude is, this is something what I am right now, not exactly who, I feel shitty. So you just sit there and feel shitty, you know. But what you're doing is you're bringing awareness to that feeling shitty, which is different than being consciously shitty. So... this idea of an ideal posture and what you're accepting your posture.

[08:58]

The same idea is you notice that you're not relaxed, and then you have a feeling, I could be more relaxed. And you let that intention or feeling do its work. And ultimately, zazen is about feeling And again, one practice I think is useful to do, basic practice, is to notice when you feel nourished. Now let me bring in another yogic truism. states of mind have a physical component.

[10:00]

All sentient physical states of the body have a mental component. So that means that any state of mind you have has a physical component. So you can, once you learn the physical component that goes with a state of mind, you can literally tune in that state of mind as if you had a dial. You can create physical feeling and generate a state of mind. That's also part of mindfulness practice, but that takes some time before your mindfulness is sensitive enough to notice these things. That is a background. A good practice is to notice when you feel nourished. Say you're taking a walk. I saw you beat by this morning on your run. And from the point of view of a yoga jogger, you would jog it at the speed you feel nourished.

[11:05]

So you wouldn't push yourself to go fast. You wouldn't push yourself by a stopwatch necessarily. You can if you want to, even if you're training or something. But generally, each day you'd find, like some days you feel like you can drive faster. Some days you don't feel comfortable driving above the speed limit. But So you find out, it's quite helpful to do it when you're taking a walk or something. You take a walk and there's a tree and a group of trees and maybe a shop or something. And you just walk so that you feel nourished. And you try that on a regular basis until you really know what nourishment feels. Then you can begin to do things much faster or other things. in other ways and still maintain that sense of nourishment. So that's in a way related to the idea of being relaxed, but this is how I would approach it. And there has to be a certain rigor, in other words.

[12:16]

You decide feeling nourished is more important than not. So you tend to limit your activity to what nourishes you. And you may sacrifice that feeling, if you really have to, whether there's an emergency or something. But in general, you try to feel tuned to that, which is a kind of, you'll find out, it's a kind of pace that's in connectedness with your circumstances. when you're out of tune with your circumstances, you don't feel nourished. And with each group of people, or each situation, that place where you feel nourished is a little different. That's a rather long response to what you said, but it's the territory. Anyone else?

[13:18]

Would you please? talk a little bit more about breathing. Like about two and a half days maybe. Okay. What interests you about breathing? Other than it seems to be necessary. Well, the connectedness to life, you know, and the purpose and the meaning of it for you in your practice well breathing is the semi-autonomic bodily process that we can participate in more easily than our heartbeat and things like that and um

[14:20]

And in the most important dynamic in relationship to breathing and being alive, from the point of view of yoga culture, is to have an intention to bring attention to the breath. intention is a I don't know about Swedish but in English and German there simply are not words for the gradation of for the gradations the territories of one's

[15:22]

connected experience. So we have to make up terms in the Heideggerian sense with hyphenated words and so forth. But because an intention is a thought. It's a mental formation. But in Buddhist terms, it's not a thought. Thoughts mean discursive thinking, sequential thinking. So if you have a mental formation that's like, I will bring attention to the breath. That actually, we wouldn't call that a thought, we'd call it a mental formation. Now another example of the difference, if I say to myself, if I develop the habit of naming things, so I say that an MP3 or something like that, MP17, I don't know, a recorder What is your name?

[16:29]

Leonard. Leonard. Actually, those are mental formations or naming, but they're not thinking. They're names but not words. Because words are part of sentences. So if I just, every time I look at something, I name it, I'm actually cutting off thinking. You know? If I just name you, you, or, and I get in the habit of doing that, you actually cut off discursive thinking. So an intention, for instance, let's approach the definition of awareness. When you go to sleep at night, it's quite common for people to be able to, without an alarm clock, to decide when they're going to wake up. So you decide to wake up at, say, 6.02 a.m.

[17:30]

And surprisingly, people can wake up exactly 6.02 a.m. They look open their eyes and there's the clock and it says 6.02. How do you do that? You're not conscious during the night. Not normal consciousness. But you can have an intention. So the intention... travels through some mental medium or bodily body-mind medium and wakes you up at a specific time, but you're not thinking. So what is that? Well, okay, if we imagine that states of mind, dreaming mind, awake mind are different liquids, to use that metaphor, then we can imagine the liquids have different viscosities. Okay, so when you wake up in the morning, as conceptual consciousness begins to form itself, dreams sink out of sight. They won't float, so to speak, in conceptual consciousness.

[18:37]

Now, if you have a dream that you particularly would like to go back to and there's no pressure to get up, if you can remember a shard, shard? It's a piece of pottery you find, you know. You can remember a shard of the dream, a remnant of the dream. By the way, if there's some word I use that you don't know, just ask me. I'm very interested in words, so I'm very happy to stop and think about it a minute. So if you can find a shard or piece of the dream, it can often bring you back into the dream. But if you can also know the physical feeling of dreaming mind, you can... pull the mind away from the concepts of consciousness and generate dreaming mind, which then sometimes will re-enter you into the dream, which has been going on underneath, and you enter at a later point in the dream. So you begin to have, and one of the things a yogi does is not just do sasa. A very important practice is to be aware, particularly of the process of going to sleep and waking up.

[19:44]

and to get, so that you can be awake through the little jump that occurs when you go into sleep. We all do this, but to make it a yogic practice is assumed in yogic culture that you do this. But most of us don't assume, we just go to sleep if we can. Okay. So, discursive thinking doesn't carry forward very well in dreaming mind or non-dreaming deep sleep. But in intention, which is not discursive thinking, intention generates a different kind of mind. So if you have an intention, it generates a non-discursive mind. Does that make sense? Okay. Discursive thinking generates ordinary conceptual mind. Okay.

[20:48]

Let me check. You'll know what discursive thinking is. Is that a concept? You're having a discussion with yourself in mind. This leads to this, this, I think about this. That's where we need to start. This is a nice room, etc. So that's discursive thinking. Comparative thinking, conceptual thinking. One of the big recognitions in Buddhism is that consciousness is conceptual. constructed. Consciousness is a conceptual construct. It's a tapestry of concepts. The importance of it, I can say it now, but the importance of that wasn't recognized for hundreds of years in Buddhism and it took a few hundred years for the fact of it to be absorbed. So I can say it like it's obvious. But in fact these things are hard to notice and to recognize. Oh yeah, that's Consciousness is a conceptual construct, a web of interlocking concepts with nested memory pyramided behind each item of each concept, like a puzzle, like a picture puzzle.

[22:00]

Based on memory. It's rooted in memory. So, what I'm doing when I'm trying to talk to you is I'm trying to feel the conceptual construct of your consciousness, and then I occasionally try to remove a piece from it and see how you readjust the puzzle. Okay. So, now, what I just said is a technique. It's also the way it is, but it can be a technique of how you relate and communicate and so forth to others. Now, Again, I don't think that in the practical life, most of us have, these are so important, but if you begin to be aware of them, accept their likelihood, let me say, instead of accept their truth, but accept their likelihood, you begin to notice the world in this way.

[23:06]

It's like you hear a new word, you find a new word, and then you start hearing it used. You hadn't noticed it for 20 years, and then suddenly you see it here and there in paragraphs. But that is an intentional state of mind. When you notice a new word, basically it enters what I call intentional mind, and it stays there present while you're thinking, you're reading a cereal box, or you're reading some essay or movie review, Oh, and the word pops out. It pops out because you have an intention behind discursive mind. So intention generates a different mind than discursive thinking. And an intentional mind can be present during dreaming mind. So you have an intention to wake up at 6.02, and you wake up pretty close to 6.02. It made the exact version. And you can wake up, according to the real time, and I found, and you can wake up toward an incorrectly set clock.

[24:11]

Anyway, okay. So you have an intention, which is a particular state of mind, to bring attention, which is more physically engaged words. In other words, words are like... little locuses. A locus? Locus. A center. A little locus. Where things are located. A locus. They're like a little location which gathers energy. So you can direct things, particularly if you have a bodily relationship to words, each word will gather energy. I mean, if I say to you... who is breathing? And you ask yourself that question.

[25:19]

Swedish, English, who is breathing? Then ask yourself, what is breathing? That's a really different question. And it's just, what's the difference between WHO and WHAT? Just W with a hat after it, and W with a hoe after it. And so W with a hoe after it, gathers energy in us in a different way. Who gathers energy in a different way than what? So attention, if you say in German, whoa, people jump, you know. If I say attention, if there's a physic, if I say intention, nobody jumps. But I say attention, people get jumped. So there's a physicality in the word attention. At least in English. So you bring intention. You have an intention.

[26:22]

You develop an intention to bring attention to your breath. And you make that a fact of your life. So you have an intention. Now that's most important. The intention is more important than doing it. It's the intention that will do the work. So you have an intention to bring attention to your breath. Okay. Okay, so. Now, then the question is, you can all bring attention to your breath for a few moments very easily. Every one of you can do it. Anyone can do it. not just exceptional folks like you. But most people cannot do it continuously. Why is something that's so easy to do for a short period of time so difficult to do continuously?

[27:33]

That's one of the most important questions in my life. Why is something so easy to do for a short period of time? Okay. Should I really just go on with this? It's okay with you. It's okay with me. Yes, please. Please. I have another question, and we'll get another point to go on with. Because, you see, I've been doing this for not very long, but more than four decades. And so I have asked myself all these questions and tried to puzzle them out, right? And... And so mostly I'm speaking to people. Like when I do a seminar in Hanover, I don't know, there were something like 80 or 90 people. Almost everyone in the room I'd practice with 10, 15, 20 years. There's hundreds of years of experience of hearing me say these things. I try to never say them the same way because I get bored or I don't even know how to say them the same way.

[28:34]

But so to say these things to people who are not familiar with, you know, my going on about nothing. That's as in going on about nothing. No things. Sorry to be wrong-sided. If we said one of the most important ideas in Buddhism is the idea that non-self or no-self or freedom from self or something. Most of this is just badly understood, badly taught, etc. You have to have a functioning self to live in this world. In fact, you need a strong self in order to practice.

[29:36]

But the difference is Buddhism, you see the self as a function and a construct and not as an entity. So if somebody asked me, are you Richard Baker? I can't help but, I mean, I don't like to because it sounds cute or clever, but I can't help but answer sometime. Because, I don't know, Richard Baker, that's a societal, social definition I have, and I sometimes live out whatever that is. But you really, after a while, just, it's everything an activity. This is an activity, which is sometimes Richard Baker and sometimes Zentaxi. I think it's not even Zentaxi. A friend of mine calls me Hotsi Totsi. So sometimes I'm Hotsi Totsi. Okay. So the function, so then once you start looking at self as a function and not an entity,

[30:38]

And the importance of the difference between an entity and a function again takes time to absorb. Because these are like the puzzle, conceptual puzzle by which we identify the world. These are different pieces, different emphases. The first function of self is separation. So that, I mean, your immune system is a kind of thing. It decides what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you. And your body couldn't function unless it could get rid of what doesn't belong to you, disease, so. You have to know this is my voice and not a voice in your head. Or not Ravi's voice or your, what, what did you name it? Katya. Katya, like Russian, Katya? Yeah, like Russian, Katya. Ah, I gotcha. If you don't know, you know you're a basket case.

[31:44]

That means you should be in a mental hospital. So we have to establish separation. We also have to establish connected. So... Now, in the way I grew up, Connectedness was, I mean, what was assumed was separation. Connectedness was not assumed that you were supposed to be polite, you're supposed to be nice to people, but that was kind of like, politeness was connected. But to directly experience connectedness with others, this was not a category that was emphasized. But in yoga culture, connectedness is what then is that. Separation is tolerated. But connecting, okay.

[32:46]

In many ways, we'll come back to connectedness. The third function of the cell is continuity. You have to be able to establish continuity from moment to moment. If I'm looking at you here, and I turn over here, as in some drug experience, look at the kids of Peter. I'm in trouble. I don't know where I am. I can't walk down the street because I don't know where I am. So you have to establish mental continuity from moment to moment. Or continuity from moment to moment. And the second, I think, I don't really have an ideal word for it, but let's call it context. And so this would be the poor option of self. And context, if a person has drained in, for example, and they can see this room completely clearly, they understand everything, but they can't fit it into a narrative context.

[34:05]

They don't know what to do. It has no meaning. Context is what's applied to meaning. four functions of self. Now, if we accept that, then you can look at how this is the Buddhist idea of self. Not necessarily Christian or Jungian. No, this is the Buddhist idea of self. Once you accept this kind of definition, then you can begin to understand what Buddhism means by freedom of self. But if you have a vague idea of self and self, self, realization and so forth. It doesn't make any sense. You really need to practice effectively. You have to have a clear definition of what's meant by self-consciousness. Otherwise you're going to vaguely practicing well-being. But you're kind of... It's not... Okay.

[35:13]

Now, continuity here. That's why I put this on the clip chart. I can just step over here and sit down. But this has a front. You have a front. I have a front. I have a peripersonal and extrapersonal space. Auditorially, I'm more sensitive to my back than the front. There's a real kind of space here. I recognize that space in my activity. If I just go like this and sit down, I'm not recognizing front, back, left, right, etc. Now, it may seem weird, but for me, there's an invisible structure here that I'm moving within. And, I mean, if it was water, you could see it. You could see the fish down there and the thing there. But we don't see the medium, so you kind of have to imagine it.

[36:15]

But here I'm with you, I'm generating, with you, we're generating together a shared, connected space. And the more I define in my actions that shared space, the more connected we will feel. And connected underneath conceptual consciousness. So, when I'm here, what I do, customarily, I'll give a little bow because I'm recognizing this space. In other words, I don't think that I live in a container. If you live in a container space, that's non-yogic space. This room, if I come in this door, it's a different room than if I come in that door. This room is already a different room than it was this morning because of our activity.

[37:18]

That's why I wasn't somewhat hesitant to change. So, in... I don't want to make this too complicated. Go ahead. So not only am I generating space, I'm folding out space and folding in space. In other words, say when you're jogging. Take that as an example. You don't want somebody to stop and ask you directions, because there's a kind of space you're in, and it's not, it's folded in. We call that wisdom. Compassion when it's folded out. And sometimes it's real, and you can, so when I bow here, I'm folding in. Because this is where I'm going to sit, where I do that in, sit in. And then I turn, and I'm folding out.

[38:21]

So I am articulating a space here that's simultaneously folded in and folded out. Old enough that I find it very funny, a friend of mine was older than I am, was bending down to get something. He said, now I'm down here, is there anything you'd like? See, that's another space. A geriatric space near the... Okay. All right. Now, the reason it's difficult to have attention on your breath continuously is because for us, particularly as Westerners, my guess is, being a student of Ivan Illich,

[39:42]

probably wasn't so true in the Middle Ages before 1200, is that we establish self-continuity in our thinking. So what happens is you bring attention to the breath and it's fairly easy to do. very quickly, you go to thinking. Now, do you go to thinking because you're thinking so interesting? Well, it's very often not very interesting at all. But it's how you're establishing mental continuity. And if we don't establish that mental continuity, if it's any way seriously interrupted, we feel crazy, or we feel lost, you know. So when you bring attention You have the intention to bring attention to the breath.

[40:46]

If you do it, if you have this intention, and you do it sometime, and you do it sometime, and you do it sometime, maybe it takes a few years, actually. It's not a waste of time during those few years, you know. Suddenly, the rubber band attaching the continuity of identity to thinking snaps. And suddenly, continuity is established by your physical location. You establish continuity from moment to moment in your breath and in your body and in your situation. That is actually what's meant by now in Buddhism. So we can also take the statement of Dogen's. He says the continuous Dogen was a 13th century Zen teacher in my lineage and now a little bit in your lineage.

[41:51]

He said, the continuous practice which actualizes itself is your practice just now. The continuous practice, it's a recursive sentence, this phrase, the continuous practice which actualizes itself, is your practice just now. Then he recursively defines this further. The now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. Now that's one of the most dramatic statements I think in Buddhism or in philosophical culture or worldview culture or something. the now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. In other words, the present moment that we experience is not some kind of natural container moment that's the same for all of us.

[42:59]

We actually, the now we exist in is generated by us. And it can be generated through self-referential thinking or it can be generated through non-self-referential thinking. noticing, thinking, etc. So, it's a major shift when you shift from establishing continuity in thinking, which is always past-future referenced, to establishing continuity in your breath and in your body and in phenomena. Once that shift happens, which is, again, probably the most made, probably the single most important shift in realizable or realized Buddhist practice.

[44:00]

Once you do that, what people say, what people's going on, I mean, it's all somewhat important, but your sense of location and identity are interrelated. So at all times you feel just where you are. I call this situated immediacy. Situated is like to sit or to sight or to situation. Situated immediacy. In immediacy you're situated. You're defined through your immediate situation. Other things are part of it too. But you're basic reference point is situated immediacy. You can call it now. But the situated immediacy is not defined through self-referential thinking. That would be one thing Buddhism means by not being you know, being free of the usual idea of self.

[45:12]

Now, you can understand at this point why the samurai like this. Because if you're in a sword fight with someone, if you don't want to be thinking about, you know, geez, am I going to do this right? Am I going to win or lose? You know, you're going to lose if you're thinking that way. And if you've ever watched samurai folks practice or something, they attack on the exhale. That's when you're strong. And so when two people are fighting, like David Beck knows all of this stuff, David has one of his practices. He sits in a room with his partner. He works with a partner all the time. I guess you're going to meet David next year. You're going to come next year too. Okay. Have they met David yet? No. So David and they sit in an utterly dark room. David is a karate teacher. Karate is it? Anyway, they sit in a completely dark room and then they see who will attack first and if you can defend yourself.

[46:25]

So they both sit there for a while and then they move. And the other person can't see anything. You can only feel. So if you're good, you can always counter the other person's attack in utter darkness. So if you're thinking about when's you going to attack her, you just better be there. So from that point of view, situated immediately, I mean, you're born and you die in situated immediately. Your baby will be born in situated immediately. That's on defining. If it's not born in situated immediately, I mean, you better have a doctor who's right there, you're right there, Everything's right there. But ideally, from the point of view of Zen, your entire life is situated in me, you see, not just when you're born and die. But usually we wander off in between and, you know. So what happens when you bring breath rests in your, when attention rests, the resting point

[47:41]

The home base of attention is breath, body, and phenomena. You're in a different world. Simply the way psychology works, the way anxiety works, the way loneliness works, the way grief works, everything is different. Just by this. And anyone can do it. It helps to do zaza, but basically it's a practice of of mindfulness rooted in such a simple thing as to have an intention to bring attention to your breath. To the breath, not really your breath. Like we're sharing each other's lung and air right now. Now, one last thing. You may say, well, this is impossible. I can't do it. People do say this. Of course, that's looking at it as an employee. If you're the owner of a company, if there's a problem in the company, it's your problem.

[48:42]

If you're an employee, it's the company's problem. So if you say, I can't do this, you're defining yourself from the outside like you're an employee of yourself. But if you're the owner of this company, if I can't do it, this is my problem. There must be a way, it must be solvable. I have to solve it because this is me. This is whatever this is. Okay. Now, in actual fact, we all in one way know how to do this already. Because all of us have a continuous... You know, people imagine it. People imagine it like, now I'm paying attention to my breath. Now I'm paying attention to my breath. That's too mechanical. Actually, right now, all of you have attention. to your posture. It's one of the things we teach children. Bring attention to their posture.

[49:44]

And we do it effortlessly. Often we even know where we're sleeping at night. On the side, right, at the back, etc. So we bring attention to our posture most of the 24 hours. We know how we're sitting, whether we're sitting, how can we do it. And so we can do it. But we don't establish the continuity of self through our posture. A yogi does, but most of us don't. So it's learnable. We learn it as a child in me. I mean, to various degrees, we all bring attention to our posture. If we can do it to our posture, we can do it to our breath. I say that to give you hope. Because it really, it's probably the main difference between an adept practitioner and a fellow traveler. Adept. Adept. Okay, that was a long rip on the breath. Thank you for what you said.

[50:47]

Something else? I learned meditation with a sound. So what's the difference to meditate with the sound or the breath? This is more Hindu style meditation. TM. TM, yeah. Well, you know, I've been around since TM has been around. So I'm somewhat familiar with it and certainly have people who practice with me who've started with TM. Um... Um... So since I don't know it from the inside, I can't really comment on it. But basically the Hindu idea is, Indian idea, is that in the beginning was the sound and not the word. And there's a sound of vibrational quality to everything.

[51:52]

And this is to some extent emphasized in Buddhism, but not so much. And... although the largest schools of Buddhism in China and Japan are the pure land schools, and their main practice is saying a mantra. And the Zen uses such phrases, but generally... Do we use a phrase that has... Pure Land used the phrase as a way of cutting off discursive thought and a way of concentrating and a way of changing what kind of space you live in? You can tell us how it's affected you.

[52:59]

In Zen, we would tend to give some kind of conceptual content to the phrase, but you might start with the phrase, just now is enough. Or let's take already connected. There's an assumption that we're separate. There's an assumption that space separates. But space is actually whatever space is. There's no such thing as empty space. It's connecting. I mean, we all have male and female, but more obviously females, have a monthly connection to the moon. There's no strings going to the moon. Somehow we're connected to the moon, the tides, the oceans, and as I say, men too. But we think space separates. That's a concept. That's a cultural concept of space separate. A yogic concept is space connects them.

[54:02]

So you can counteract the cultural concept of space separating by creating an intention to have in the background of your thinking already connected. So if I look at you, I feel already connected. if I feel already connected. I don't feel I have to do something special or in some way get to know you. I'm already connected. I start out connected. And then that is defined in terms of conceptual consciousness, etc. But that's a very different view if you start out connected. So from that point of view, Zen would use basically the idea of repeating a phrase, but they would give it a a role in the conceptual puzzle.

[55:11]

But Zen Buddhism is a particular way to shape the mind, body, and relationship to activity. The Maharishi's teaching is a somewhat different way. The Hindu approach is a different way. Many of the contemporary practices that have come into the West, which are variously influenced by Asia, are somewhat different ways. You're making a choice. They're not all pointing to the same truth. They're all paths leading into the same forest, into the same mystery. There's no idea in Buddhism that there's one truth that basically God or theology. It's the idea that it's a mystery and we have paths that go into the mystery. I can tell you an anecdote about meeting the Maharishi. I met him once.

[56:13]

It was early in my practice. I didn't know who he was. And I was at the University of California in Berkeley. I was one of the heads of adult education in the humanities and sciences and engineering, just as a job. I was 25 years old, so I had to have a job. I never wanted to be part of our culture because I grew up in the Second World War, and every day my parents listened to H. V. Carlton Bourne and Edward R. Murrow and so forth. know who these guys are. Murrow you might know because there was a movie about him recently. Every day I listened to what was going on in Germany and France and so forth and I just decided I don't want to be a human being.

[57:15]

This is what we human beings do to each other. Later I accepted this is what it is to be a human being but in those days so I decided I didn't want to be part of our culture. I didn't want to put money in a bank because I didn't know what the banks invested in. I went to Harvard, but I walked out of Harvard just before I got my degree because I didn't want a Harvard degree because it's all about status and all that stuff. Starting at the top, I wanted to start at the bottom. So I was going to live by collecting pop soda bottles and turning them in. I was not going to participate in a career in the society. But then practicalities, I got married, and I had a baby on the way, and we had to eat, so I had to get a job. So I had a conversion experience.

[58:20]

So I had to get a job, so I ended up, I knew somebody by chance, and they got me this job. organized programs for adults in the university. And so I got to know, I did the Berkeley Poetry Conference. I did the LSD Conference, the first big conference in the United States on LSD. I never took LSD, but I did the big conference because I decided to put all my eggs in the basket of Zen. Do you have that expression, to put all your eggs in the same basket? Yeah. They don't seem to have it in Germany. I always knew Swedes were more like Americans. Swedes are like the Midwesterners. Yeah, certainly. I mean, my first wife's family is from Minneapolis, and Minneapolis is half Swedish and Norwegian, and the other half is sort of Anglo.

[59:21]

I don't know what you'd call them. And it's a nice city. Partly because of it. Really, Minneapolis is a really decent city. Most of the companies are family-owned and so forth, and they're much more socially responsible when they're family-owned than when they're stock-owned. So anyway, I organized various things for engineers and scientists and other people. So I knew the campus well. all to say. I knew the campus well. I knew the various venues where you could have lectures and things like that. So I'm walking along rather late, sort of close to nine o'clock, I think, from something I had to do. I'm going across the campus and there was a big crowd around this one building. And it was about, you know, eight deep at the door. Eight people deep.

[60:25]

I didn't know what Well, I thought I didn't have to get home right away, so I knew the building well, so I went around the side and climbed in the window. And, you know, it was not so high, and I climbed in a big windowsill. There were already some people sitting on it. And I sat down there, and here was this nice little guy with about five Hawaiian loops of flowers, whatever they're called, around his neck. And he was sitting there speaking in Indian English, you know, with his beard. I don't know who he was. Anyway, he was kind of nice, and he was just ending. So I was there for about ten minutes while he was being happy. And so he finished, he got up, and he started out, and people streamed after him, and I found myself carried along in the stream. And suddenly I was standing right beside him. because he was getting in a car, and they were talking about how to get him to Canada. I don't know how he was going to get to Canada.

[61:26]

I can't imagine he was driving. Anyway, they were getting him in the car and talking about he was going to Canada next. I think it was his first visit to the United States, maybe. This was about 1962, three, somewhere there. And I'd been practicing only about a year or something like that. So I'm standing beside this nice-looking little Indian man. And people were around him. And I suddenly had the thought, he's pretty good. And then I thought, why did I think he's pretty good? Because like an intuition came. Like it was true. He's pretty good. And then I realized I'd coordinated my breathing with his without knowing I was doing it. But I'd learned it from my teacher to do it. That you kind of really... you adjust your breathing to each person you're with, or your breathing adjusts, you don't do it. And so I just, without even knowing, knowing I did it at that point, found myself breathing with him, and then the thought appeared, he's pretty good.

[62:34]

And then he got in the car and went off, and I left, and I've always had a feeling, oh, my Rishi, he's pretty good. So you see, the role breathing plays, outside of thinking in connectedness. Okay. Yeah. And what time are we going to eat? Twelve? So we should stop pretty soon. That's a lot of talking this morning. A lot of different stuff. Very interesting. Woven together. And I think if you understand what yoga culture is about it with or without practice it begins to affect your way of viewing the world practice tends to anchor it in your daily life how would you generally say that it would affect in viewing the world well

[63:49]

I can quote Yuan Wu, who was one of the best authorities in Chinese Zen, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records, one of the main texts for Zen. He said, if where you stand is rooted in reality, your actions have power. So the more you see things as they actually exist, the more your actions, your thoughts, your presence will have power effectively. That's just a short answer. And one thing that we could talk about this afternoon are what's called the two truths. And the two truths are the conventional truth and the fundamental truth. And why that's important What that distinction is, I think, you know, can be at the center of our discussion.

[65:00]

But maybe we can... Do you have something you'd like to say? Or are you just swimming? I'm just swimming. You want to say something. I was going to say, one aspect that I think you're aware of, that kind of thing, that you mentioned earlier, that space connects. And I realized... We talk about space in Western culture all the time, the connection. We just don't realize it. You ask how far Gothenburg is from us here, and you measure the space in between, and that's a connection. We're just not used to thinking about it in that way when you become aware. We always measure space in connection. We always measure space between us, and that ends up the connection. So there's these kind of subtle changes that we get to I didn't think about it, it just happened. Subtle changes that begin to take place where, in my experience with that, we get another sense of awareness of what we are observing through all our senses.

[66:02]

I give them a view because we are not limited to the context of the cultural background that we have, and we're open to see it in a way. related or confirming what Ravi says, we have the four directions, or eight, north, south, east, west, northeast, etc., and we tend to think of them as north is that way. But what's called the ten directions in China, Japan, and so forth, the ten directions are the eight cardinal directions and up and down. And they're all thought of as coming towards you. So this is coming towards you. This is coming up towards you. This is coming towards you. If you feel it that way, it's different. And we count, in Germany, this is one.

[67:04]

In America, this is recently okay. But this is definitely not one in America. This is one. And we go... We go one, two, three, four, five. With the Japanese, one, two, three, four, five. That's actually quite different. You're pulling things into yourself. So why don't we sit for a moment and then go have lunch. I ate so many Swedishes. I'm not sure I'm ready for lunch. It's such a pleasure to be here. the ideal posture of cross-legged sitting and for some reason it's better to sit on a chair the ideal posture can inform how you sit on a chair it's harder to sit on a chair actually but if for some reason I had to do it

[69:41]

probably put something over my feet so I didn't have to worry about keeping them warm. And I'd sit maybe shorter periods because it's harder to sit straight, but I would sit not leaning back against the back or just very lightly touching the back, mainly lifting through the back, supporting the torso through the body. suggest and right now I'm not saying I should do it I usually would suggest that you have some conversation during each day or at least once during our three days in which you speak in Swedish with each other about what I'm talking about so you kind of see if you agree on

[72:49]

How do you say, what did he mean in English? How would I say it in Swedish? Because making it your own in your own languages. I can't do it, but you can do it. Okay, thanks a lot. Whatever we decided, I guess two. Two up to two and then we'll go from two to five. Okay. Because then we're leaving at six. Okay. Do you want me to postpone it? Do you want me to...? No, no, no. I'll give you two hours. Fine, sure. Sure. If you think it's too short an afternoon, we can have a short lunch break. No, no, the idea was we had thought about going from 3 till 6, going back forward because we're going for dinner at 6. That's why we do it to 5. Do we have to dress for dinner? No. Very informal. Never in Sweden. We go by boat, so it's good to have warm.

[73:51]

OK. Even though we are in ... It's a ferry, so we can be inside. OK. Good. I love ferries. Boats. It's a boat. It's a ferry boat. Yeah. Attention on attention. Attention on attention. Study your attention. Know your attention. You know, I was surprised someone broke into my suitcase. Coming here from Hamburg. I'm coming here from Zurich. The wash had been broken off. Nothing was taken off. It was clear when they went through. So I'm trying to think of, would it happen in Zurich? I can't imagine it happened here in Gertrude.

[74:55]

It wasn't long enough. Yeah, it wasn't long enough. But they're quick, you know, at least in America. They have Motulio. They run their hand through for a camera or something. But I've never had that happen in Europe. That happened in America. But nothing's missing. It just surprised me. It was a short flight. Yeah. A clock, I've had like it. We haven't experienced it. We're all going to be there. It's quite unusual.

[75:23]

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