And then you notice your thumb got left out. Somebody stole one of the joints. Somebody got two joints and not three like the fingers. And bringing attention to your hand, it's a little bit like I can take my right hand and bring attention to my left hand. And then I feel my right hand is holding my left hand or touching my left hand. Then I can switch and feel my left hand is touching my right hand. That's very mysterious. There's two hands there, but we can make one the touching hand and one the receiving hand. So we bring attention, something like that, into each joint of the finger. And then into the thumb and back of the hand.

[01:11]

The heel of the hand. We call that the heel of the hand. And the palm of the hand. Then you can move that up your arm. So already we have more than 30 parts or so. You can come up your arm and inside, outside and begin to feel the musculature. I find it useful then to go up into my shoulder. And at first you can only penetrate the sort of outside of your shoulder or the parts you can visualize. And then you get so you can sort of feel the solidity and fluidity of the shoulder.

[02:15]

So you can start moving this mind, attention, into the inside of the shoulder. And then you can go across your shoulders, so forth. You can feel what slightly different postures of the shoulders affect the mind. Socrates said, know thyself. Well, we don't know exactly what he meant. But when the Buddha said, know thyself, he meant something like this.

[03:28]

I mean, we kind of forget about our shoulders, you know. As areas of mind. But you can see in Sophia, she's trying to get her consciousness to penetrate her body. And it's a big job. It's taking most of a year. And she's unbelievably intent on doing it. You see, I mean, unrelenting intent. You know, the other night, you know, about a month ago or so, I brushed her forehead lightly. And the day or two before, she just begun to learn how to crawl.

[04:36]

So I brushed her very lightly, just brushed her forehead by accident as I got back into bed. And that little touch, and she was up in the bed crawling. Her shift to consciousness was crawl. So we need some intent like that in this practice. The task of this year is establishing consciousness in your body. And soon task will be establishing languages. The huge task was take all your intention. And through zazen and mindfulness practice, we're trying to recapture some of that intent.

[05:56]

Okay, so let's go over to the right shoulder. You can feel mind into your shoulder. See if you can penetrate your shoulder. And if you keep doing this after a few years, you can actually really feel mind penetrating into the body. At first it feels like you can't get very far. I find a good way to start entering the inside of the body. is to enter from the shoulders to the lungs.

[07:00]

And let's take the right lung. Because, you know, you can kind of visualize it and you can feel it because you can breathe and change its shape. So for a while you just bring attention to the lung itself. And see if you can reach down to the bottom of the lung. And then from front to back at various places. And sideways. And see if you can reach way up into the tip of the lung in the shoulder.

[08:06]

In this way you go through your whole body and try to locate your organs or locate the different feeling in each area. And sometimes it may feel like a color Some people even have a feeling of different sounds in different parts of the body. Sometimes you don't just feel the kidney, for instance, but you feel the whole system of the kidney throughout the body. You feel the functioning of the kidney.

[09:12]

You'll feel the kidney not as an object, but as a function. This is the body you live in. Why not get to know it? But it takes a little effort. And it generally will make you healthier. You can participate in the cold or the flu or a disease much more clearly. And even if you have mechanical problems like a problem in your knee or something like that, you can often Find your way into your knee and make it better. So every time you do this practice, you find more areas you can explore. Or you find areas that resisted you before or just were dark, suddenly have more light in them.

[10:39]

So now you're quite familiar, let's go back to the lungs, you're quite familiar with the right lung. Okay, let's go over to the left lung. Now you know the right lung's feeling, but the left lung feels different. What's the difference? Well, there's some kind of funny area right here in the middle of it on the left that's kind of different feeling than the lung. What's that funny area? We know what it is. It's the heart. But now we're feeling. What does it feel like almost from inside the heart? It's very scary. It might stop. Sometimes its beating is irregular.

[11:42]

And that's something also by mindfulness you can to some extent correct or change. You can feel the influences on the heart which make it go rapidly or slowly. Now, it's strange. Now, the lungs felt a certain way. But the area of the heart has a kind of wider feeling. Kind of a little ache or something. And then, you know, if you go back to the palm of the hand, if you have your mind there, and notice the palm of the hand is center of the palm of the hand especially.

[12:50]

is different than the back of the hand. And different from the heel of the hand. And if you as you get more sensitive you can actually feel a kind of wind or wind kind of some kind of mind wind coming out of your palm. Or going in. And if you get to know that feeling, sometimes you can go over your partner's back, say, and you can feel in different parts of the back there's a feeling of the wind going in and other places it feels like the wind comes out.

[13:55]

Wenn du das spürst, kannst du vielleicht mit der Hand den Rücken deines Partners berühren und dann an bestimmten Stellen merken, wie der Wind reingeht und an anderen wieder rausgeht. If you don't have a partner, you can just stop somebody in the street. Und wenn du keinen Partner hast, dann kannst du einfach jemanden auf der Straße anhauchen. Just a minute, let me feel your back. Nur einen Moment, ich will mal den Rücken runterstreichen. And sometimes the person will feel heat in their body, etc. And these patterns in your back change as your energy starts moving up your backbone and your chakras begin to be active. So we're talking about something very simple here. But as soon as you get into it, you find you're in the complexity of what a human being is.

[14:59]

Okay, so this area at the center of the palm, it's not just stuff of the body. What is it? It's more than just skin. It's not the same skin as over here. It's the same skin, but the feeling is different. Well, I think what you can say is this is the body's mind. This is not the mind of mentation. It's a kind of field of the body that is more present at your heart, hands of your palm, and some other places.

[16:10]

And until you really discover that, you can't fully go to the second foundation of mindfulness. So the four foundations of mindfulness are very clearly expected to be practiced in sequence. Now I've introduced to you the first foundation of mindfulness. I don't know if I'll teach you the other three. So I present all four, you think, oh, well, I've got the whole thing. I get it, I understand it. But you really, I would say it takes a year to get really somewhat into the first foundation of mindfulness.

[17:26]

And several years before you feel there's no inside, outside. Until you feel your body is all of one field. But I'll probably speak about the second foundation of mindfulness. But anyway, I might speak only about the first and second. And I really want you to see that this first foundation of mindfulness, making use of these targets, which allow the penetration of mind and the accumulation of effects of mindfulness. The transformative effects of mindfulness.

[18:49]

It takes a year or so. So I've introduced it to you. If you're serious about practice, you've got nothing better to do. Do this. And still, you can still go through your life. Yeah, and you get chances at the dentist's office. On buses. In zazen. Before you go to bed, before you wake up. No, after you wake up. Like that. So let's sit for a minute and then we'll talk. So what I've tried to do here gives you a feeling for the quality of mindfulness.

[21:02]

The craft of mindfulness practice. Giving each thing its own time and space. Then beginning to use the amazing penetrative power of mindfulness. To thoroughly and intentionally weave mind and body together. And through that, to notice the subtle mind of the body itself. The subtle presence mind of the body. That isn't thinking.

[22:22]

Thank you so much for spending the afternoon and the morning with me. And with each other. Because we're all spending time with each other. And thank you for translating. Guten Morgen.

[24:50]

Guten Morgen. Since the floor is so smooth, even perhaps slippery, it would be nice if you all moved forward a little bit. Your cushions slide quite easily. I like it better when you're nearer. Even if you have a cold. Because I have one too. I see, yeah. Thank you.

[26:13]

Well, I tried to give you a feeling for the penetrating quality of mind and of attention. You know, and that this practice is not just about being more attentive or more careful. But through attention you're changing your body. And I hope you get the picture that it's really just a practice. Once you understand it, you just keep trying to apply it.

[27:22]

So the most important thing we can do here is understand it and have some confidence, confidence in confidence that mind and attention is penetrating. And so then you just find various ways to bring attention to your activity. Yeah, and your breath. And as I said, the four postures. Yeah. Yeah.

[28:53]

Just with the four postures, because we're always in one of them, you begin to feel a kind of stream of awareness developing. that moves into each posture that you are in. You're not in a posture, you are the posture. And it's just a kind of intentional habit. A kind of gentle habit. But if you continue this habit, you can begin to kind of feel the world with your body, with your shoulders, etc. Then you can be more subtle and bring attention to the elements.

[30:08]

And you can begin to feel the elements of other people at the same time. And then again, bringing attention to the parts of the body. Which, as I said, is good to do. Yeah, now and then, in the beginning, fairly often, And develop a certain thoroughness in doing it. When your zazen is kind of boring, you can do that. Explore the parts of the body.

[31:28]

See if you can bring a kind of light and consciousness, awareness, into the parts of the body. Sometimes it's useful to, when you first sit down, In meditation. Just to say, okay, knees, you're going to do your own zazen. Thighs, you'll do your zazen. Then you can release your stomach to do its zazen. So you don't feel there's a you who's doing zazen. All these independent, somewhat independent parts can do their own zazen. This would be another way to practice this, bringing mind to the parts of the body.

[32:38]

Now there's a koan I thought I would mention today. It seems, yeah, it's quite a simple koan. So simple you wonder why it's a famous koan. A monk asks, you know there's always a monk, right? A monk asks, dung shan. Also ein Mönch, es gibt immer einen Mönch, der fragt Dung Shan. Who's the person most, where you're practicing here, Dung Shan's lineage? Und wir praktizieren hier die Linie von Dung Shan.

[33:40]

Yeah, so a monk asked him, what about when it's hot and what about when it's cold? Und dieser Mönch fragte ihn ja, was wenn es heiß ist und was wenn es kalt ist? How can we avoid them? Avoid what? Avoid hot and cold. And Dung Shan said, why don't you go where there's no hot and cold? Then the monk said, fat chance. You have such an expression. He didn't say that. He said, where is this place where there's no hot and no cold? And he said, when it's hot, the heat kills you. When it's cold, the cold kills you.

[34:50]

Yeah, when I first heard this, I didn't know what the heck to make of it. And I remember Suki Roshi and... The Americans were always trying to adjust the heat, turn the heat up or open the windows or something. And I was sitting in the front row about where you were sitting. And I heard him mumble once, why don't you adjust your body heat? So, you know, that was just kind of information that something he felt.

[36:00]

Maybe I thought it's about learning to adjust your body heat or something. But it stays in the back of your mind. It doesn't make sense that you can't avoid hot and cold. Unless you live in San Francisco. I don't know where you could pick in Europe. But anyway, it stays in the back of your mind. And if you want to practice it, you really just keep in mind, this is typical, as I said, the basics of Zen practice, include entering into this awareness you develop, entering certain views or insights or phrases into it.

[37:16]

That's a skill you just get better at of keeping something present in your mind. And finding it appears on every perception. This is the basic technique of Zen. Seems like nothing much, but it is actually a very powerful technique. Of course it's pretty difficult to bring something to each moment unless you have developed a considerable mindfulness. You can have the intent, but just establishing the intent is considerable.

[38:17]

I'm not saying you should take this koan. Yeah, I mean, you really have to take a koan that fits into, or a phrase that fits into your particular life. You know, a particular, I mean, at a particular time, too. So I can't say that I'm, you know, giving you this koan to work on. I'm presenting it just so that you can get a feeling for how koans work. Say that you've been practicing a pretty long time. And you have this sort of funny, simple koan.

[39:31]

You know it's around. And it still kind of bothers you because you know there's no place where there's no hot nor no cold. And somehow it still occupies you, because you know there is no place where there is neither cold nor heat? If we are practicing here in this lineage, Dung Shan must know something about what he is talking about. So why would he say something so silly? What you might find in a travel bureau brochure. Go to a place where there's no hot nor cold. Bargain flights. Last minute flights. And then you find out that... Hakuin Zenji commenting on this.

[40:46]

Hakuin. Hakuin. Hakuin Zenji das kommentiert. H-A-K-U-I-N. Hakuin. Hakuin. Zenji is a title, like Roshi. Hakuin Zenji said, with this koan, Hakuen Zenji sagte mit diesem Korn, Dongshan transcends all the teachers of the five schools. Transcendiert Dongshan alle Lehrer der fünf Schulen. Whoa. No, he does? Really? I think I'll study something else. I want something mysterious and mystic and transcendent. So then you look at the introduction of this koan. The statement that settles the universe. Upheld by all the sages. Now you're really nervous.

[42:06]

How could this statement settle the universe? This is really building us up into a big deal. Like in a circus, you know. Come on in here and see the, you know. Yeah. So, and then it says the ability to capture rhinos and tigers is even beyond the sages. Well, this is just Zen talk, you know. Zen says, the commentary goes on, the total potential appears in all directions and is free of all obstructions.

[43:12]

Then it says, if you want to understand this, you need the... Forge and bellows of transcendence. Forge where you make a horseshoe and the bellows as you know what you... You need to forge and bellows of transcendence and the hammer and tongs of the adept. Has there ever been a family tradition like this? So that's the introduction. Why don't you go to a place where there's no hot and no cold? So the commentary is part of the text.

[44:38]

In Chinese literature, there's not an original text. All original texts are comments on other texts. Even simple poems are allusions to other poems. So it's more like if I'm using these words, I mean, I may put them together in a new way, but still I'm using words. And these words have been used by others. There's not the feeling in the Chinese literature of an original text. And that comes into a koan like this.

[45:42]

All the commentary is part of the text. But the commentary also then not only amplifies the so-called original case, But it tries to also give you a feeling of the context in which Dongshan would have said this. So Dongshan was speaking about practice. And so what's he trying to say to this monk? If you come back to this phrase, no place, a place where there's neither hot nor cold,

[46:52]

At least, if nothing else, it makes you notice you're always thinking about, oh, this is too hot or it's too cold or I don't like this, I don't like that, etc. So it begins, you know, if you really kind of just pay attention to it, it begins to make you notice all your preferences. Okay, so that's pretty good practice of bringing your attention to each object. And as I said, giving each thing its own space and time. As I said, you know, all the wind will blow and you see a bunch of leaves fall down.

[48:10]

So you feel, you might feel, each is falling in its own time. Each will have its own history now. So, now just instead of simply bringing attention to things, now on each thing we're noticing our preferences. You like something, you don't like something. And if you look at this carefully enough, you can then start wondering, you're feeling when you don't have so many preferences.

[49:16]

What's the dynamic of not having so many preferences? The Third Patriarch starts his main teaching with the way is not difficult, only don't pick and choose. How do you get there? Wie kommst du an den? How much of your daily life is involved with picking and choosing? Wie viel von deinem Alltag wird bestimmt durch wählen, aussuchen? How much are you involved all the time in preferences? Wie stark bist du ständig mit Vorlieben beschäftigt? I mean, the way commerce has... and media have wedded themselves together, the way commerce and media, television and commerce.

[50:26]

The whole world is involved in preferences. What kind of clothes you have, what kind of... Teenagers are completely susceptible. Someone was saying yesterday people hardly know what they really want anymore. So this whole thing of preferences is the way society takes hold of us. And our parents take hold of us. It's interesting that Sophia, oh, sorry, here we go again. Sophia already knows nine. She knows nine better than no. We don't quite understand how she learned it, because we don't tell her not to do things.

[51:44]

But Marie-Louise, she'll see her doing something, and she'll suddenly, just not speaking to her, but say, nine, nine, nine. So somehow she's got the idea of nine. Yes, so I was in an office the other day with Marie-Louise and the baby. And she was crawling around on the floor. And then she would, when she'd come up to the plants, You look over at me, you know. I hadn't said anything. But she's waiting for nine. So that's quite interesting that she, you know, how did she learn that?

[52:47]

She learns something. So I said nine. So she took this ornamental plant out of her mouth. Then I saw her go around to the other side of the plant. So I pretended not to notice and she went by. So if we go back to the Buddhist view of nature, our original nature. Our original nature is really something we create. But the potential to create it is there. But as for what's really there, they would say, as I mentioned before, a baby wants has a thirst and hunger, the word is tana, for not less than everything.

[54:01]

And so the Buddhist view is we're born with this thirst for not less than everything, and that has to be shaped. And some of us even as adults haven't really got it under control. So now maybe you can see why Dungsan said you need the hammer and tongs of the adept. Or the forging bellows of transcendence. And what can, in this practice, right here in this seminar, what can we call the forging bellows of the of transcendence.

[55:19]

Guess what? The first foundation of mindfulness. Because if you're not really accomplished, realize this first foundation of mindfulness. The rest of your practices will be mostly mental. Okay. Okay. Now, so there's a, so, Sophia is getting a feeling for no and yes.

[56:42]

and so this kind of thirst for everything is sort of shaping itself because she has at the same time a really deep thirst to please us she really in a touchingly vulnerable way wants our support, approval, and so forth. But she also wants her own kind of space and independence. Both are going on at the same time. I think I said to her, My daughter Sally once, when she was about... We were in Japan, so she was about four.

[57:55]

And I said, yeah. I said to her, you know, I asked her to do something. And she wouldn't do it. And so her mother asked her to do it. She wouldn't do it. So I lost my patience. I said, listen, little girl. You were made by Virginia and I. We manufactured you. You belong to us. She said, it's too late now. I belong to me. So I thought, whoa, okay, okay. Well, Sophia's already got this a little bit.

[58:58]

I belong to me, so she wants space sometimes. Yeah, so Sophia has this already. I belong to me, and so she wants space. And she sort of has preferences of pleasure and displeasure. Sie hat auch schon so eine Art Vorlieben für, was ihr gefällt oder was ihr missfällt. Yeah, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by things as much as adults are. Aber sie scheint dadurch nicht so stark eingenommen zu sein wie Erwachsene. She stands, she had from one night about five mosquito bites on her face. She never scratched them, never bothered them. She can try to stand up. She falls straight back on her head and boom.

[60:01]

If you distract her at the right moment, she then gets up and smiles and... I would be out, you know, I wouldn't be at the seminar here. I'm just going on about preferences that we see very basically. She has pleasure and displeasure. When I spoke about this in, I don't know, a couple of sessions ago, I said, if you pat her, she likes it. If I pat her and I haven't shaved for a couple of days, she doesn't like it. So she knows pleasure and displeasure.

[61:07]

But she doesn't know like and dislike. This is a distinction I think I want to make. And for example, if the example I used was if I took her, took the baby and put her head down in the garbage pail, she might find it kind of unpleasant. But if I spilled the garbage all over the floor she would find she wouldn't care. But if Marie Louise came up She wouldn't like it that the garbage was all over the floor.

[62:08]

So there's a difference between pleasure and displeasure and like and dislike. And that's a crucial shift. And that's a crucial shift. Did we say that right? Well, I barely know how to say it in English. Anyway, there's a shift between like and dislike and pleasure and displeasure. And like and dislike open you to a lot of karma. Past likes and dislikes and all kinds of things. And that's a little bit of an emotional difference between like and dislike.

[63:30]

So, if you see this, this kind of distinction, then we can go back to the second foundation of mindfulness. The second foundation, the first foundation is the bodyfulness of the body. It's better to say I think the A better translation, a more accurate description is not mindfulness of the body, but bodyfulness of the body. And that can be a phrase you can use, bodyfulness of the body. Okay, so the second foundation is feelingfulness of the feelings.

[64:34]

Don't try to translate. We can say mindfulness of feelings. Now, not emotions, but mindfulness of feeling. And these are divided into usually pleasant and unpleasant and neutral feelings. Or unpleasant and neither. Okay, so I think that's enough for now. Let's sit about a moment. On the camera.

[66:12]

Now this teaching only can really be relevant if you can really feel how we human beings, societally and individually, are involved in this thirst and hunger for not less than everything. And how much our moment-by-moment mind is affected by preferences. What is the medicine? What is the medicine?

[67:47]

I'm presenting these teachings as medicine. And there's nothing more boring than reading books about medicine unless you have the disease. And suddenly it becomes very interesting, if you have the disease, what these books say about possible cures. So this kind of teaching really doesn't make that much sense. It may sound nice or perhaps... Unless you know the disease. Of thirst, of preferences, etc. And the suffering that arises from a state of mind involved in preferences.

[70:10]

Not only the suffering, but the blocking of a spiritual life that occurs through preferences. In the Satipatthana Sutra, it says that the Buddha said, if you want to end suffering, end suffering, enter the right path, and realize enlightenment, to be fully accomplished in the four foundations of mindfulness is the way.

[71:12]

And that's what Hakun is saying when he extols Dungsan for this simple koan. And Hakuin also said about Dongshan that his mind is like a palace of shining jewels. This is like Angela and I spoke yesterday about using images as a way of thinking. Also Angela und ich haben gestern über Bilder als eine Art gesprochen, zu denken. You're not supposed to kind of then have a thirst for a palace of shining jewels. Also ja, es wird nicht vorausgesetzt, dass du dann einen Durst nach diesem Palast von glänzenden Juwelen hast.

[72:19]

But you're just supposed to feel that kind of image. Also du fühlst dieses Bild. Okay. Okay, what? You know? Yeah. Okay. This is also another phrase. I said bodyfulness of the body. Another phrase is to know the body in the body. Now, So this first foundation of mindfulness, let me just say a little more about it. When you actively, now this is again something you're doing. Well, let me go back a minute, mosaic back a bit. I spoke about that in yogic thinking there's no idea of natural.

[73:40]

Natural is a place of origin. natural as the way things are. But that doesn't mean there isn't a sensitivity to nature. When we say the way things are, To know things as they are. And Sukhya used to say, to know things as they is. This doesn't mean natural. It includes natural and unnatural, just what is there at this moment.

[74:46]

Yeah. And the more you can have a mind of what is just here at this moment, That mind can be sensitive to people and to nature. And from that point of view, nature is considered an indispensable part of maturing as an individual. Yeah, so you can see that if you have that view, you design a garden differently. Not a garden just to walk around in and have a tryst behind some bushes. Which was the romantic basis of a lot of palace gardens.

[76:03]

But a way to notice each thing. Okay, so this intentional bringing attention, not thinking about, oh, is this natural or not, But with the sense that we are always making this world. Making our posture, making our breath, making our mind. So the more with your body you bring attention to each situation, the more the duality of subject and object kind of lessen.

[77:33]

So the first foundation of mindfulness is also the first foundation of non-dual knowing. And I've often spoken to you about the immediate consciousness, secondary consciousness, and borrowed consciousness. And the practice of staying, tending to stay in immediate consciousness, immediate consciousness is also the basis of that is also the first foundation of mindfulness.

[79:00]

So a lot flows from the actualization of the first foundation of mindfulness. And if you practice these different ways to bring mindfulness to your body and your activity and so forth, you will find it's more and more easy to just stay in immediate consciousness. then you'll find it's more easy to feel connected in the world in the way this characteristic of non-duality or less subject-object distinction. You will also find that it is easier to be connected in the non-duality and this objectlessness.

[80:14]

Exactly. suggested you practice with the subject-object distinction in the past. So that you notice if I look at Angela. If I, when I look at Angela, I immediately start making distinctions. Not even preferences. Yeah, she's over there and I'm here. Yeah, she has a brown shirt on. She's a she and I'm supposedly a he. If I make those distinctions, those distinctions erode any non-dual possibilities. So by noticing when you make a distinction, this distinction can help you.

[81:31]

Because the noticing of the distinction can be the moment where you take energy away from the distinction. Or lessen the distinction. Now, I think real practice is involved in these very almost invisible things. Yeah, it's entirely up to you. There's no bottle of medicine or anything you can take. Just the immense effort that went into creating the four foundations of mindfulness. Making it clear how we can use the mind to know and see the mind. And how that works in sequence is an extraordinary gift. And from that point it's up to you to use the gift.

[82:53]

And to use it as thoroughly as possible. The thoroughness is the key. I'm trying to find the right word for thoroughness. Because, you know, in a way, 80% thoroughness is only about 10%. You need close to 98, 99 before it counts as thoroughness.

[83:54]

Because you leave a little opening, even a 10% opening. Your culture, your personnel, everything flows through that. You have to seal yourself in a practice. until the practice does you. This is understood in koan practice as a shift from when you are the koan. In other words, you keep practicing with a koan. And it's you coming to the koan. And then using the koan to come to the world. And if you're thorough enough, at some point, your point of view becomes the koan's point of view.

[84:55]

So that kind of shift is to seal yourself in a practice is thoroughness. Like again, Sophia is fully sealed in the practice to try to walk. She never has listened to those anthropologists who say all our back problems are because we're really meant to walk on all fours like monkeys. She fully intends to get her back vertical. And etc. Okay. Now, so the first foundation... of mindfulness is the basis of non-dual knowing.

[86:10]

The support for immediate consciousness. And it's also for clarity of mind. The Buddha says the one who practices the four foundations of mindfulness is ardent and clear. You really care. Clear, has a clear mind. And comprehending, really sees the point of it. That kind of thoroughness has a chance to turn yourself through the

[87:14]

Four foundations of mindfulness. Okay, now let's come back to this clarity of mind. Okay, the second foundation of mindfulness is the mindfulness of feelings. And we have to notice the feelings. And to notice the feelings that, first of all, it's pleasurable and not pleasurable. Well, this is all simple stuff. But it's our concern. They gave me a very nice bed to sleep in. It's very pleasurable. It's soft. Two pillows, that was sweet of you. And with the windows open, it's very pleasurable to sleep.

[88:19]

And it's pleasurable right now to sit here with you. And I love sitting in this posture. And I love the way each breath feels, really quite wonderful. So my life is about pleasure, I'm sorry. Okay. So maybe if I put something on the bulletin board here, a little chart. I love complications.

[89:50]

See, I stack things up on my desk so everything's about to tip over and it flattens. That was not a problem. I still probably walk it over. I don't know why I walk it over. So, the second foundation of mindfulness is involved with noticing feelings, of course, pleasure, displeasure, and need. Is that too small for you to see? What?

[90:58]

Small, but I want it right over here. Anyway, that's pleasure. That's displeasure and that's neither. And so that very quickly can change into I'll make it just this way. And neutral. And this neutral is kind of boring. That's small again, sorry. You don't care, not caring. And that can easily change into greed, hate. Now, what the first foundation of mindfulness is doing, sorry I got this like this, pleasure, displeasure, neither, okay, is trying to see if you can stay here.

[92:32]

So the second foundation of mindfulness is about this. But this area is very difficult to undo. And so it's really up to you to see when there's pleasure and displeasure and neither, and like and dislike and greed and hate. And you can see, you can begin to... Through mindfulness and through the first foundation of mindfulness, that's the whole idea, you can begin to notice the difference.

[93:48]

So, I mean, I can put this on the chart like this, but it takes some years to actually sort this out in your life. That's what you spend a lot of time with therapists doing. So I can't practice doing this. And this neither. It's also non-duality. So neither is very different from neutral or boring.

[94:50]

Now it's often translated, you know, pleasure, displeasure, neutral. That's simply, you can't practice that. Neutral belongs to like and dislike. If you practice, it doesn't work. But when you see there's a whole territory which is neither like nor dislike. That's the secret.

[95:07]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_77.84