I think Eric is carrying bodily transformation entirely too far. But it does look familiar somehow to see you sitting there. So for old time's sake. Ulrike will translate this next time we have together. Bringing attention to the breath. is also bringing attention to the edge of life. And again, you know that the body is not, in Buddhism, as I've said, is not the corpse, the stuff of the body, but body means what makes the body alive.

[01:11]

And our heartbeat, if our heartbeat stops, if our breathing stops, we die. So it's a kind of barometer or a sensitivity to our general... well-being, mental and physical, to have attention resting in the breath, at the edge of life. Now I want to tell you a funny story. Most of my funny stories are about my daughter. She's very interested and seemingly quite relaxed about death. At first she wanted to die at the same time as her mother.

[02:15]

We convinced her that this would not be the best idea. And certainly not to die at the same time I do. But I do think I've got another ten years or so of practicing with you. In reasonably full capacities. So now Sophia says, well, if I can't die with you, can I be buried next to you so our ashes can mix? So she asked about, she wanted to know what Easter is, because you know about Easter. So Marie-Louise explained about Christmas and Good Friday and Easter and so forth.

[03:29]

And she said that Easter is when Jesus rose from the dead. And Sophia said, he must be the only man to have done that. And Marie-Louise said, well, that's the story anyway. And she wants, Sophia, despite her growing up thinking the whole world is a Buddhist sangha, And she wants her to have a real good Christian education, which I don't have. But anyway, Marie-Louise said, well, that's the story. And Sophia said, well, when they come to nail me to the wall, I'm going to Egypt.

[04:48]

And then she said, which way is Egypt? She really wanted to know the escape route. And Marie-Louise said, well, I have to go over the mountains and then across the... Okay, I'm glad. So we anyway, most of us know we're going to die. I mean, some of us think there will be an exception made in our case, but most of us know. The other side is, how do we really fully understand stay alive, arise from, maybe arise from the dead. The practice of bringing attention into all aspects of our bodily and mental life,

[05:52]

is at least a breath in the right direction. Now, when you do practice bringing attention to your body, your physical activity, You're not only implicitly removing yourself from the, getting some distance from the body as, the self as a permanent entity. Because you're bringing your sense of continuity into the body.

[07:06]

And if you can maintain this for the length of time you maintain a sense of continuity the sense of continuity through the body. You actually are getting a taste of what the Buddha meant by the self as the body. Now, one of the moves, the contemporary way of speaking, one of the moves the Buddha made was to emphasize, in contrast to Hinduism, We said this idea of Atman of a semi-permanent or permanent transcendent self.

[08:27]

To make some contrast to that, he emphasized the body is the self. Not the stuff of the body, but the intelligence, the awareness of the body. The continuity of the body. And even from a sense of building an image, the bodily image, our bodily image, the bodily image we retain develop in our entire metabolic system, is much more stable than our image of the self. And it takes a lot less energy to maintain. And it more truly reflects that everything's changing.

[09:44]

Now, you know, contemporary thought is, I think, somewhat poisoned by the idea that everything in the bottom line is self-interested. And it's blamed on or attributed to Freud. But it's a self-serving blame. If you read scholarship nowadays, in the end they have to say, well, this was really done for political or polemical reasons. And in the end, everything is seen as rooted in self-interest.

[10:49]

It's a... in self-interest. It's a poisonous, corrosive view, I think. Just look at your own actions. They're not always about self-interest. So anyway, of course it's not just for political reasons the Buddha chose this. It's because in a yogic culture, the body is so emphasized. But still, even in Buddha's time, you had to make an effort to move toward the fullness of the body as self. Even though you're even practicing sasen.

[11:58]

Our mind is always defining itself in terms of an imagined future and so forth. And You know, as I said the other day, we try to teach Sophia not to throw food in restaurants, you know, by saying, we don't do that. So that's creating a mental image of herself. She's not as bad as I'm making out, but she's... She has a certain wildness that she likes to manifest. It's great, but, you know, I'm trying to put it into place.

[12:58]

Mm-hmm. Okay, so in the simple practice of bringing attention, mindful attention to the activities of the body, during the time you do that, walking in the forest, walking to work, Walking up and down the stairs. Whenever you have a chance to, you know, driving a car is true. When you have a chance to really bring attention fully to bodily activity.

[14:01]

And you're getting a taste of body as self, a bodily self. Now I don't think I can go forward with this point unless I say something about self. Now just as a quick a quick matter The basic function of consciousness is to give us a predictable world. And to simplify the world so we can understand it, act in it more easily. And consciousness is a creature of the self. I mean, self is a creature of consciousness. Self swims in consciousness.

[15:10]

And on the beach of reality it struggles for air. But That's if you think of self as a mental conscious activity or as an entity of some kind. Now, what we have to do to make these practices work, we really have to understand that self is a function that we need, a necessary function.

[16:12]

And this is a lot easier for yoga culture to kind of imagine. Because in the range between nature and nurture, As I said yesterday, yoga culture is much more on the side of nurture. The self is a structure that can be changed, transformed. There's no instinctual residue that means we have to be aggressive or something. Now, I'm not saying that this Buddhist position, this yogic position is true. Because, you know, as I went into it some length yesterday afternoon,

[17:15]

I can see a lot of merit in the view that, well, not exactly nature, but certainly genetic, you know, etc. But this position of yoga culture gives it much more freedom to think of the self as function and not as... And so I think I should give you not only now the three functions of self, but the four functions of self. And these three or four functions are territories of practice. So understanding this is so rooted in the way I'm teaching and the way I... and these teachings that I think I have to show it to you again.

[18:54]

So let me do that. Whoa. Ulrike P, a much more trained and professional teacher than I am, used to tell me, if you're going to put something on the flip chart, please write clearly. So I think if I write it down, it's a little easier to keep it in mind. Anyway, very simply, the first is separation.

[20:29]

The second is connectedness. The third is continuity. And the fourth is context. And over the last year or so, I've been convinced both to make the functions intelligible and to... make understandable certain shifts in practice, choices in practice. I have to add context.

[21:30]

I'm not sure if I read it clearly, but... Context, I mean meaning and relevance. And continually, I mean from moment to moment. Yeah, now... I really want to emphasize this, but quickly. Separation is that you know this is my voice and not Ulrike's voice or someone else's voice, or the voice in your own head.

[22:36]

And the immune system is a good example of self, in a sense. It knows what belongs to this system and what doesn't. Now, we tend to overemphasize separation, individuation, and so forth. Perhaps wet rice Asian culture developed in the size of the group or connectedness too much. But the assumed connectedness of Asian culture is not the same as the Buddhist yogic sense of connectedness. No. Again, just a little reminder that views are the first in the list of the Eightfold Path.

[24:07]

Because views are in fact prior to perception and action. If you have a view that everything is separated, your perceptions will reify that. If you have a view that everything is connected, your senses will begin to show that that's true. So we have an assumed view that we're all, as I put it, already separated. I come in this room and I think of myself as separated from you. This body location is separate from your body location.

[25:12]

And I act in relationship to you, acknowledging this separation. Particularly in northern European culture, respecting your separate space. But if you take a gate phrase, a wisdom phrase, like already connected, and you repeat it, repeat it, An intentional mind, hold it in an intentional mind. And particularly if you can make it an initial mind. Initial mind, the mind you put in each momentary appearance. You weave it into the fabric of your views.

[26:23]

And so if you say to yourself, repeat to yourself, hold with an intentional mind. And in this way of thinking, an intention is not a thought. It's a mental formation, but not a thought. We don't have enough words in English to describe these descriptions. But a thought is what contributes to as part of discursive thought. And discursive thought creates a certain kind of mind. An intention has an existence independent of discursive thinking. You might come to the intention through discursive thinking.

[27:29]

But the intention brings forth a different mind that can underlie your other minds that's not discursive thinking. So Zen particularly uses this fact of how the mind works to introduce basic teachings in koans through these wada or gate phrases or wisdom phrases by taking a thread and putting it into the loom of your views and by continuously weaving it in through a maintained intention The fabric, the cloth of your life starts to change.

[28:41]

So in this sense, if you use a phrase like, as I repeat often, already connected, Because you already have a built-in, unacknowledged cultural view of already separate. You just assume it's a fact. We Westerners assume it's a fact we're already separate. The only time we wonder about it is when we fall in love. Then suddenly we feel with someone we just met, almost sometimes already connected. Everything starts looking great.

[29:42]

We're already connected to everything. Burns are singing for us. Excuse me, I don't want to get carried away. But enlightenment is actually very close to what being in love is. It just depends on the Buddha instead of another person. I used to call, in my early days, I called, do you know what a pin-up is? Buddha is the pin-up that doesn't let you down. Now, I don't really mean depends on the Buddha. I mean depends on or doesn't depend on Buddha. is realized through your connectedness with everything, not just one person.

[30:57]

So this seeing the functions of self in this way becomes also an opening to how to practice. So a phrase like already connected can really open us to all aspects of practice. So if I come into the room, I look at you, I feel already connected with all and each of you. Yeah, and it means I don't have to go through a lot of white things. I mean, white is kind of custom. But I feel this connection. Because my... I recognize that already separated is actually a cultural position and not a fact of existence.

[32:13]

It's been a fruitful position. Individuation, individualism, these are all good things, for the most part. But it's also a limited position. So in practice, particularly in the West, we have to emphasize the connectedness of the self. Yeah, we can do it. Okay. Continuity. In order to go from moment to moment, we have to have some sense of continuity in the world. And we mostly supply that by mental continuity. If you suddenly don't have a mental continuity of past, present, future, etc., you may feel you're going crazy or something.

[33:32]

And as you know, most of you know, it's the main reason it's so difficult to continue to bring tension continuously Again, as you know, it's very easy to do it for a short time. A few minutes, five minutes, you know, it's easy to bring attention to the breath. Oh no, quite difficult to do it for eight hours or continuously. So the question then is, why is something that's so easy to do for a short time so difficult to do for a long time?

[34:37]

It's because we supply our sense of continuity in our thinking. Not because our thinking is so interesting and exciting. We'd rather have anxious thoughts or boring thoughts that keep our mind on our breath. So you're making, if you can do it, you're making an incredible shift in how you exist and how the self functions. You're always breathing. I mean, no. Yeah, as long as you're alive.

[35:42]

Why can't attention rest in the breath? Does it mean you don't think when thinking is necessary? In fact, when thinking does rest in, when attention, not thinking, when attention does rest in the breath, You're thinking somewhat free from psychological and self-referential matters becomes much more clear and productive. And I would guess that people who really do think clearly and productively in fact have a sense of moment by moment continuity in the body. Okay, so thinking becomes more of a tool than your identity.

[36:44]

So, you know, if you keep having the, again, the intention to pay attention to the breath, you do it for a short time and then you go back to your thinking. And back to giving autobiographical sense its territory. It's anxiety and hopes and so on. But if you keep trying, when you can't, as I say, in homeopathic doses, You bring your attention back to the breath. After a while, it tends to stay longer. And then after a while, it does go back to the thinking sometimes, but comes back to the breath by itself.

[38:15]

At some point, it kind of in an elastic way separates from thinking. It just rests. Und irgendwann einmal, wie so ein elastisches Band, trennt die Aufmerksamkeit, löst sie sich vom Denken und gut in sich setzt. Und darum geht es genau in diesem yogischen Begriff der Einspitzigkeit. Die Aufmerksamkeit bleibt einfach da, wo man sie hinrichtet. doesn't jump around to thinking. Okay, so this is a time to practice and bringing, the main practice is to bring attention to the breath.

[39:19]

Until finally attention rests in the breath. And thus rests in the body. And then it's easily extended into the phenomenal world. Then we have a sense of being spatially located. We have a feeling of everything is in its place. Things are just as they is or are. Okay. Now context. Now context I've actually never in way I want to speak about it I've never spoken about before. But the recognition that if there isn't a person with brain damage or a coma or some kind of limited ability to have a sense of self,

[40:47]

If they can't give relevance and meaning to what they're doing, they can't even maintain their body. So there has to be for us, for self to function, self supplies a context. There has to be a context for function. So I'm trying to Think of a way to talk about this. And it's coming up to the extent that I feel I need to find such a way is because I am wanting to speak about bodily self. And I feel right now because I have to talk about context in the sense of a body itself.

[41:58]

Yes. Maybe if I sit down, I'll figure out what to say. Because sitting is of the four postures, the one that lends itself to meditation, And even if you know how to bring the posture, a sense of posture into your daily activities, there can be a meditative quality in your daily life. But it is the posture that lends itself most to formal, practical meditation. Lying down, you tend to fall asleep.

[43:13]

Sitting up, you can... Yeah, that... Letting the body become still. And also... rather stills the mind too. And you can begin to see the processes of mentation, of thinking and so on. So what we want to do is in this sense of context, Change the context in which consciousness arises. So again, I think, you know, we'll probably be a little clumsy in the words to try to say this. But you want to change your sense of context from a mentally imagined future.

[44:36]

From a time extended future. To a spatially, something like that, spatially extended future. No, why do I use the word future? I decided I can't just speak about the present. First of all, you all know that the present has no dimensions. It's captured in a little thing by asking my father a lot more than 50 years ago. Yeah, I said, how come there's no 12 o'clock? He asked what I meant.

[45:36]

I wasn't trying to get out of doing something at 12 o'clock. I just said, you know, it's a minute before 12, half a second before 12, and then a millionth of a second after 12. Twelve has no length. Yeah, but my father said, well, you can say that something that's approached and then passed has some kind of momentary existence. That was a good enough conceptual response for me at that time. But it wasn't an experiential response.

[47:04]

And it was not until I'd been practicing meditation for quite a while before I really understood how we create the sense of duration. The territory of the present. So now I use the word future as part of this territory of the present. Because part of the experience of duration and the idea of emptiness Buddhism is inseparable from this experience of duration. So is that this experience bodily mental experience of duration implies an extension into the future.

[48:14]

So I want to say the context, you want to change the context from a temporally time-extended future To a spatially extended future. Now, these are my kind of, mostly my kind of clumsy terms. But the ideas aren't entirely, are not all mine. Because these ideas exist in Chinese yoga culture. That of course we want to think and sometimes make plans for a time-extended future. But you want to see those time-extended future plans something like scenarios, but not you.

[49:18]

And I would guess that a successful businessman sees the future as scenarios, And if he's going to be successful and free in his actions, probably he doesn't want to identify personally with these scenarios. So this Chinese yogic idea is to create a context of meaning but in a kind of the immediacy of of the body.

[50:32]

And the immediacy of what happens next as an extension of space, not an extension of time. Now again, this doesn't mean you don't think in terms of a time-extended future. Nun, das bedeutet nicht, dass man jetzt überhaupt nicht mehr die Zukunft als etwas ansieht, was die Zeit, die Ausländerung von Zeit als Grundlage ist. But you feel yourself. Sondern man fühlt einfach selbst. And locate yourself. And identify yourself. Through an especially extended present and future. And this is part of what would be meant in Buddhism, at least, of a lit body. No, I probably won't go into the dimensions, possibilities, potentialities of the lived body, of a bodily self.

[51:58]

No, I don't say body self, usually, because it becomes more of an entity then. It's a self which has bodily qualities, an adverbial body, bodily self. But this first practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness by bringing attention to the to our activities, the continuity of our activities, is the first entrance into the bodily self. Taste of the bodily self. Buddhism, all this stuff about no self, non-self, assumes, in fact, a bodily self is what we live. That's the most I can say right now.

[53:13]

Then we have another 10 minutes. Yes, we can sit for a few moments. What's it? I hit the bell and it has spatially extended future.

[54:30]

Jogin says to cultivate and authenticate the ten thousand things by conveying the self to them is delusion. And the kanji, the character he uses for delusion, actually means getting lost. So if we cultivate and authenticate 10,000 things, now 10,000 things is often translated as Myriad or many.

[56:01]

But those are generalizations. 10,000 things is a metaphor. A reachable, doable metaphor. You might have 10,000 books So to cultivate and authenticate the 10,000 things, by conveying the self to them, is to get lost in the 10,000 things. And then he says, But to let the 10,000 things come forward and cultivate and authenticate the self, this is enlightenment.

[57:09]

This is not getting lost. This is knowing the 10,000 things as they are. And to let the 10,000 things come forward means to make the context of your knowing and of your identity, let's put it that way, of yourself, this spatially extended duration, time, and future. You can choose the context in which self and consciousness arise without losing the usefulness of other context.

[58:11]

without losing or giving in to the usefulness of other contexts.

[58:32]

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