It is said that a monk should have a mind well established in the four foundations of mindfulness. Yeah, this is a statement from early Buddhism. A monk, an adept practitioner, should have a mind well established in the four foundations of mindfulness. That I think I can best just leave that for you, primarily leave that for you as a koan. Well, we know by now that the mind is not simply located in the brain. We know that there's no functioning brain without a body, etc. And we know that mind and body, yeah, practice many and many workshops and yoga and rolfing and yeah, are all based on weaving the mind and body together.

[01:36]

Yeah, again, this first koan in the Shoyoroku starts with weaving the ancient brocade. Nochmal, dieses erste Choren im Shōyūroku, das beginnt mit dem Satz, den uralten Brokat webelnd. Incorporating the forms of spring. Die Formen des Frühlings einschließend. Endlessly, continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle. Die Schöpfung lässt ihren Webstuhl und ihr Schiffchen fortwährend laufen. Now these are basic ideas which actually need unpacking to get the import of. So mind and body we can experience separately. And we can experience together.

[02:51]

And there's various ways in which we can develop this relationship of mind and body. Buddhism is one way. And within Buddhism Zen is a particular way. But now, we're not just talking about somehow evenly merging mind and body. Listen to this statement. An adept practitioner should have a mind well established in the four foundations. Well, of course, this stretches our definition of mind. Yeah. But a mind that's, well, at least it means anchored in the four foundations.

[03:52]

So imagine your mind, your sense of awareness, your sense of emotional stability, etc., anchored in these four foundations. This includes weaving mind and body together, but it goes beyond just weaving mind and body together. Das schließt Körper und Geist miteinander zu verweben zwar ein, aber es geht auch über dieses Verweben von Körper und Geist noch hinaus. You are very specifically within Buddhism anchoring the experience that we call mind in these four foundations. In Buddhism... Sorry, can you say that again? Yeah. In Buddhism... In Buddhism... That's easy.

[05:10]

Yeah. We're going beyond simply weaving mind and body together, not simply, but weaving mind and body together. Beyond that, we're extending what we call mind, the experience of mind, anchoring it in these four foundations. Now, it means more than anchoring. It means the experience of mind, thinking, presence, etc., always includes these four foundations. Das bedeutet, dass die Erfahrung des Geistes, des Denkens, des Erfahrens diese vier Pfeiler immer mit einschließt. It concludes the whole of the body. Es schließt den ganzen Körper mit ein. But the whole of the body is best engaged and developed through these four foundations.

[06:14]

Aber der gesamte Körper wird durch die vier Pfeiler am besten entwickelt. And it's not just that somehow mind is... anchored in and manifest through these four foundations. It's also that mind partakes of these four foundations. Yeah, we are. Well, that's the best. I've tried to say it in several ways. That's enough for now. And I think we had at least enough of a presentation of the discussion. To have a feel for the discussion.

[07:19]

I have no problem coming back to it if we have time, but we have to think about the time. Now, Andreas said that some people will have to reach trains and leave at 3.30. Yeah. You know, it says in the early text, it says, you know, when you talk about what disturbs you, This assumes that this adept practitioner or monkette or monk is long beyond the disturbance of marital strife and loss of income, life, etc.

[08:21]

Marital strife is that... Fighting with your wife or husband... But yet what still might bother him, but now he's free from. is when somebody doesn't pay attention to the teaching he's offering. He's beyond the pain of that. But in any case, I feel the presence of each of you, and so when one or two of you leave, it really feels like there's a wound in the group.

[09:30]

Yeah, so let's try to end around 3.30. So then we have to see how long I go on now. which I don't have some control over. And then we, I suppose, have to eat. Yeah, then we have to come back. And then we have to leave. Okay, so we'll have to figure out what happens. Okay. So I thought I should run through, run through, go through the, first of all, the bringing attention to the body.

[10:38]

And I spoke about the four noble postures and I spoke about death enough, I think. So let's just speak about activity to start. You simply bring your attention to your activity. And let's take walking. You bring it to your attention when you're walking. And you, as you know, can use doorways to remind you steps, up and down steps. You get the habit of bringing attention to Your activity.

[11:40]

Washing dishes. If you want to test yourself choose the longest line at the grocery store. And see if you can just enjoy standing in the longest line. Now, you can say something like, you can bring a phrase to, you can conceptualize the practice. Yeah, by, say, on each step you have a phrase like, just now arriving. Because the walking is walking itself. It's not walking to get somewhere. Getting somewhere is one level.

[12:42]

But walking is independent of getting somewhere. Now, many of you know, but I'll still repeat, that I practiced for a long time in the first year or two of my practice with the phrase, no place to go and nothing to do. This is a version of just now arriving. Okay. And as, again, as I tell a story, it took me a year and a quarter And when I tell this story, it took me a quarter of a year before I arrived where I wanted to go. It was Kin Hin from San Francisco to New York.

[14:15]

No, it took me a year and a quarter before the phrase was continuously present. But there was a period there about after three quarters of a year where for a couple of months I forgot to... feel, repeat this phrase under my breath. And here in this practice like this, you're in a sense using a mantra-like practice, a mantra to enter the mandala of Buddha's activity. So what's also happening in a practice like this? I'm walking, right? Going somewhere. I had to go. I had a busy life. I had a new young daughter and a job and all kinds of things going on. I was a graduate student too. I wasn't sleeping much, but I had the freedom of no place to go and nothing to do.

[15:32]

Every time the thought arose that I had something to do, I still did it. So basically it took a year and a quarter until this phrase was continuously present, at least as a presence. A kind of relaxation in every situation. Yeah. But the phrase is also a manifestation of the attention to the walking. Or activity.

[16:52]

So we can say this was actually a practice which was teaching me one version, one aspect of so-called one-pointedness. In other words, I was able to... what could I call it, a non-personal attention. Now, sometimes I try to, I call this attentional attention. Sorry. It is. By attentional attention I mean, it's my way of saying, intentional attention.

[17:55]

Now, Julio has asked me a question along these lines a couple of times during the seminar. So when we study or drive, as Neil said too, you ride a bicycle, there's attention involved, or you're going to fall off your bicycle or whatever. OK. So what you're adding is to the usual sense of attention. You're adding, I'm adding, we're adding what I'd call intentional attention.

[19:05]

Well, I just now said intentional. But I find it easier to say it being the same thing as attentional attention. Okay, and sometimes I call it, excuse me for having, but I try to explore these things and find language that helps me locate it. Sometimes I call it situational attention. I'm sorry to say this in so many ways, but I try to explore it. That's why I try to find words for it. Sometimes I also... A tension that's formed through the situation you're in, or part of the situation you're in.

[20:11]

So you can also call this non-personal tension. Because what you've done is you... Because a tension usually goes with the six animals. Or it's always running some kind of radio of self-referential programming. Channel me. Channel me. W-M-E-E. So you're separating, by this practice of bringing attention to your activity, you're simultaneously separating attention from the senses and the meanness to just being sight-formed.

[21:34]

She has a much harder job than I do. I just sort of like Let these things appear. I don't have any idea what I'm saying almost. And then she has to remember it and find out how to translate it. So I'm always bowing to you. Okay. Okay. So what the difference is, one of the differences between ordinary study or sitting at your computer or riding a bicycle.

[22:43]

You're bringing this attentional attention, joining it to ordinary attention. and in some ways replacing ordinary attention. And certainly the effort to keep present a phrase Which is an aspect of mindfulness practice. The phrase starts to occupy the space that's usually occupied by channel me. Okay. All right. So that's enough said about activities.

[24:01]

Okay. Just bringing attention and sometimes attention to whatever your activity is. I mean, just bring attention and sometimes an attentional phrase to whatever activity you're doing. Now, bringing attention to the four postures, as I did speak about, but I'll say something about it again. No, the four elements I want to say something about. Okay. And I'm trying to say enough that it gives you a feel for it, a sense for it, that you can extend into your own activities. So let's say solidity.

[25:19]

You're walking on a wood floor, usually, or sidewalk. And you feel the solidity of the floor. And when your heel hits it, you feel a little even electric something that goes up through the body through, you know, when you jog, you feel it too. And you feel also when you walk, I'm using walking again as the example. You feel a kind of fluidity too when you walk.

[26:31]

And a responsive fluidity. Yeah, responsive to the shape of the room. Of the people you're with. And you can also feel when you're walking an upward movement. Sometimes we call it rising mind. An upward movement like sap in a tree. What does sap mean? Or it's like a presence or a flame or there could be a flame if it was concentrated. And it can even make your scalp crawl. That's an expression. You know, like when you're afraid and your scalp sort of goes, no.

[27:48]

But you feel it. You got it. Okay. So there's a feeling of a kind of like something. You feel presence rising in you. You feel it right at the top of your head. And so this would be and then the air. You feel your lungs and you feel the the The external and internal air. And the transference is going on.

[28:50]

And the space of the body. And the space under the arms and so forth. And a lot of the yogic postures which are part of the rituals of Zen are actually to get you to physicalize a Dharma. So like they say, have a feeling under your arm as if an egg was between your arm and your chest. Know where your body is. Know how far apart your ankles are. And when you, like when you do a ceremony, each movement you do should feel like to you and to others like you're going to stop there.

[29:56]

Then it occurs, oh, maybe I should go to the altar. Then you get to the altar and you say, what the heck am I supposed to do up here? Offer incense. So you can tell when somebody understands the ceremonies are really a dharmic practice. When you come to the door, you don't just sort of sweep through the door, but it might look like that. You get to the door and then says, oh, well, I'll open it. It makes me think of a friend of mine, a poet who wrote a very short poem, which is, he looked in the mirror in the morning, he said, I don't know who you are, but I'll shave you.

[31:33]

It reminds me of a friend of mine who wrote a very short poem. It goes like this. He got up in the morning, looked in the mirror, and the poem goes like this. I don't know who you are, but I'll shave you now. Yes. The story goes on. He comes... Sie kommt in den Wandraum, guckt in den Spiegel und sagt, ich weiß nicht, wen ich sehe, aber er hat dich verdient. The story goes on by saying that he says she comes into the washing the bathroom and looks into the mirror and says, I am not sure who I'm seeing, but you deserve you deserve me.

[32:41]

Yeah. Oh. That's good. I like that. She arrives there very drunk. Oh. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Okay. So what you're doing when you do this practice, one of the things you're doing, is you're physicalizing attention. Mm-hmm. You're giving attention physical dimension. Mm-hmm. Okay, now the so-called 32 parts of the body. And 32 parts usually means, I don't know, fingers, hands, upper arm, lower arm, etc.

[33:52]

But it means those things you can first of all notice. Now there's a background to this analysis in the parts. We take it as fairly obvious kind of way to analyze something. But as I've read, if you study the Vedas, which were written over, what, from between 1200 to 800 BCE, You can see a development in the analysis of things into parts. In very early days in India, they had some idea that there was a cosmic body or body which was divided into parts, which then made the physical world or something like that.

[35:13]

And then the analysis got to be breaking things into parts to look for an essence. Some essence that holds things together. something that goes beyond the parts so one of the ideas was well it's the breath because the breath holds the body together and once you stop breathing the body begins to fall apart So the breath was considered maybe the glue. And that was extended to perhaps the wind holds the world together. And these ideas were dropped after a while. But there's still some resonance.

[36:32]

Again, going back to this first koan of Shoyeroku, it speaks about the unique breeze of reality. And this is a resonant and probably fairly explicit comment on early Indian ideas. Well, yes, there's the breeze of reality, but it's unique at each moment. So there was an analysis into parts looking for... some permanent essence. Did you say universal? Yeah, that's all right. Permanent or universal. Yeah. Or looking for some twin exterior mode of causation.

[37:35]

Two parallel causation schemes. In Hinduism in those early days you'd say believing in God creates a twin causation scheme. God creates and then there's the creation of going on in ordinary activity. Now Buddhism specifically denies this. and it's denied by the teaching of interdependence because you divide things into parts but the parts are the creative force not something outside the parts

[39:03]

And that informs the whole concept of the four foundations of mindfulness. All right. Now, I have a piece of paper here. I just thought this was such a good statement and I could remember it, but I thought I'd prefer to read it. Santarakshita, Santarakshita, I guess that's how you pronounce it, who lived, are you leaving us? Oh, I'm wounded. I'll survive. He was an 8th century Indian pandit scholar. And it may take a moment to get it, but he says, movement, there's movement.

[40:08]

There's interdependence, there's movement. But it's devoid of any prime matter. It's devoid of any divine creator. It's devoid of their conjunction, a creator or prime matter. It's devoid of a self. It's devoid of any similar constructions. He's really saying it thoroughly. He says it's unmixed.

[41:27]

It doesn't even have a mote of extraneous nature. Mote. Mote is a very tiny amount. But that's not the mote you talked about before, right? You said mote a couple of times before. when there's a tiny unit of time. There's not even a mote of extraneous nature. Outside the parts. All we have are the parts. So where does the causation come from? The movement. From interdependence, from the parts. Now, what follows from that?

[42:41]

The parts, if the parts are what is the source of movement, causation, etc. It's very important what the parts are. So it's very important what parts you divide the body up into to create the world. Okay. So if you think of the parts, I don't know what, being brain, head and shoulders or something, you've got one causation, one form of causation maybe. So like when you're practicing with anger, as within the... Foundation, which is the states and modes of mind.

[43:46]

One of the foundations is the states of mind. So within that, for example, the classic practice is like, for example, with anger. And you notice anger. You're not so much trying to get rid of the anger. You're creating, by just noticing the anger, you actually create another part. Indem du die Wut einfach bemerkst, erschaffst du tatsächlich einen weiteren Teil. You're creating the part that notices the anger. Nämlich den Teil, der die Wut bemerkt. Isn't that obvious? Ist es nicht offensichtlich? You're noticing the anger, and you just, oh, now I'm more angry? No, boy, am I really, I'm even wrathful. Also da ist dieser Teil, der die Wut einfach bemerkt, und dann kannst du sehen, ich bin wütend, ich werde sogar noch wütender, jetzt bin ich sogar richtig zornig. I'd have to look up wrath, but I think it's not a good translation for anger.

[44:50]

It came up earlier. Yeah, but he said swan. He didn't say anger. Yeah, but wrathful means something like outrage. It's a justified anger. Like the wrathful deities. Yeah. So, now you're really angry. Now you're less angry. There's a kind of topography of anger you begin to notice. And there's an implicit assumption that just noticing the parts changes the anger. Or of course self and intention have something to do with it. But self and intention are just some of the parts. So it's assumed that if you analyze the body in your experience through mindfulness into these parts, it is a seed or a cause of becoming Buddha.

[46:15]

Don't you think it's interesting how such a simple thing of analyzing into parts but not looking for an essence leads to a very different way of thinking about the world. And reductionist thinking is on the surface trying to simplify, but it's trying to look for a simplification that's in essence. Okay. Okay. Now, we didn't get the feeling. And... Are you coming back? Oh.

[47:35]

Thanks for being here. He has to leave every Sunday. Last year I remember he had to leave. Okay. So I would like to speak about feeling, but I think we have a feeling it's time for lunch. So if we come back at 3 o'clock, we only have half an hour. So should we have a coffee break and come back, or should we go have lunch? A short lunch? Coffee break. So it's 20 to 1 now. So should we come back at 2? All right. 1.30 is too tight, I think. So let's come back at 2, but we'll have a shorter Zazen then.

[48:43]

Unless you insist I not ring the bell. OK, thanks. So we meet at two and have a shorter sasenfest.

[48:52]

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