Good morning. Guten Morgen. Now, of course, I would like to hear something about your discussion. And a number of people asked me questions at various points, which I said, please ask them They were good questions, so I thought it would be good to be asked for everyone. But let's start out with some discussion of yesterday. But let's start with yesterday's discussion. Okay, and Niko?

[01:01]

So, we talked about mindfulness. We talked about mindfulness and the way in which our understanding of mindfulness has changed throughout the seminar. For one person mindfulness so far has been associated with either a very tight concentration or narrow concentration or a very wide field of the mind. and that the four foundations of mindfulness brought this person into a different territory in order to enact mindfulness.

[02:15]

For someone else, mindfulness so far has been associated as a kind of tenderness or not wanting to hurt another person. And for this person it was a new information that one can apply mindfulness to oneself. Another person says practicing mindfulness can be scary. because you start to see more clearly, and that may lead you to seeing things that you can't quite cope with. And we talked about the fact that there's a difference between mindfulness, attention, and .

[03:20]

and consciousness and we noticed that mindfulness alters our normal personality interaction and therefore the way in which we react psychologically to situations. We talked about the need for intention in order to practice mindfulness. And that in very dangerous situations, mindfulness generates itself.

[04:27]

Whereas in neutral situations, you have to make an effort. and in general that mindfulness changes the quality of activity and also diminishes resistances in activities or to do a certain activity. Okay, that's pretty thorough. I know a woman once who used to lead expeditions up glaciers. And they come down in the morning before and as the sun was melting the surface. And she said it really increases mindfulness. Yes.

[05:41]

Yes. I was not going to refer to what we talked about yesterday, but I wanted to ask a question. I could also ask it later. Then why don't you wait a few minutes? Okay. Yes? What's the reaction? Joe, sorry. That's all right. Yes, the reaction is that it's not something I can do. To be careful. We have already spoken about how often it can happen that we lose our vigilance. Situations like conflict or conflicts, when there is a situation like that, where it happens more often.

[06:55]

then most of the time it just happens that the sacrilege comes afterwards, and perhaps there is an intention to change something there. We talked about that, first of all, how difficult it is to be mindful and how easily mindfulness can be lost, like in situations, for example, when you are in a fight, how easily you get out of a mindful interaction. I have understood the conclusion now. What do you have to say about that? That it is clear after the reflection. that then afterwards usually you reflect on your behavior and then there may be an intention of acting differently the next time and that most of the time that referred to emotions situations situations

[08:02]

Or simply stressful situations where you were overwhelmed with what was happening. And then we talked about the meaning of the term mindfulness. When I look at what I learned about the term mindfulness through my culture, it was more connected with being careful, and it's more a kind of superficial understanding or meaning of the word. and what is added as an intention.

[09:11]

Then I have said a lot, but the question is, is mindfulness neutral? And then an interesting question that came up is whether mindfulness is without judgment? Without value? Yeah, without. Okay. Yeah. And then we talked for a long time about what mindfulness carries along with it.

[10:22]

It will carry a few values, but where are these values coming from? This is a kind of survival training. Inward bound. Well, survival training is often called outward bound. Near, outward bound. I have some question about outward bound. Achso. Achso, OK. Created by Kurt Hahn. I tell it to one. Yeah. OK. Good. Now, does the word for mindfulness in German exist as a normal word that's been used for centuries? Yeah. Yeah. Because mindfulness as a word in English clearly has come only from Buddhism.

[11:37]

It's a very recent word. I mean, there was mindful perhaps, but nobody used mindfulness until the 60s or so. It's like the idea of right livelihood, which was a big thing in the Vietnam War, but people lost any idea that it was part of the Eightfold Path or part of the Buddhist practice. Who's next? Yes, Isabella? Oh, you're choosing your husband to speak for you. I thought you were telling him to talk.

[12:49]

Yes. I'd like to talk about something that I'm really concerned with, and I hope that I stay with the topic, but there's a book titled by Sarah Kuttner, and the name is the... The unbearable lightness of being? The unbearable what? The unbearable chronic presence of the presence.

[13:49]

Okay. I understand that. Das verstehe ich. Es spricht ein Gefühl in mir an, dass die Gegenwart immer achtsam ist. Und ich erlebe es als etwas draußen. Gegenwart ist das, was mich umgibt, und das ist immer da, und das ist immer achtsam damit. That talks to a feeling within me that relates to mindfulness being connected to this ever-present presence. and as if it was a kind of decision to awaken into this mindfulness of the ever-present Presence which is there already. .

[15:00]

And then there's another feeling that is being talked to, that's expressed through another weird term, the darkness one. The dark one? The darkness. The darkness, the way too old. So, das ist so ein Bild, das ich schon lange Jahre kämpfe eigentlich. about vigilance and presence, because that is also being alive. I am present there, I am physically present, but... And that's a kind of fight that I've been leading throughout the years where I'm fighting in order to be mindful because that also means to be alive in the present moment. But then there's also a part within me that says, no, I don't want to.

[16:16]

I just don't want to. Yeah. I'd like to, I'd prefer to sleep. You're struggling to be mindful. And you'd prefer to sleep. I understand that too. It's as if I prefer not to be seen by life. But that doesn't work. That's what I'm doing and maybe it's just a dumb habit. That's what I thought while we were talking about these things. This is what you discussed in your group? Yes, it is a little bit like this, if you are there to talk to me about the topic, then it is a great chance to win back some courage for me to say, it is possible, it is like drinking and sitting in a straw.

[17:36]

When you are here, you personally, and we talk about these things in the group, then that's a kind of possibility for me to regain my courage to continue mindfulness practice. It's as if I was drowning and meditation was a kind of straw that I can hold on to. So, let's just put it that way, there is hope. Just looking at you, your life doesn't seem to be that bad. Right now, I'm talking of this 99% and more here. Yeah, is this true? I'm asking your daughter. It is actually a serious topic for me. It's really sad that I sleep 99% of my life and am not mindful.

[18:42]

That must be an exaggeration. This must be an exaggeration. Ninety-nine percent. That's, you know... You've used up your allotment during this seminar for the next six months. You've used up your allotment during this seminar for the next six months. You've used up your allotment during this seminar for the next six months. Okay, so you come here to wake up. Well, I'm glad you can describe your misery with such humor.

[19:50]

You know, the first line of the first koan of the Book of Serenity is to close the door and sleep is the way to greet those of highest potential. To receive. Yes, so I don't know if that's a good address. Encouraging or not. Well, if you see the situation, I wouldn't fight or struggle with mindfulness, but if you see the situation, you can have the intention to bring more presence into the chronically ill, chronological presence.

[20:56]

um um It's nice to take a vacation sometimes by just bringing, fully bringing attention into the breath. The world in the present just disappears and there's only the sensation of breathing. It tends to refresh the present.

[22:01]

Okay, someone else. Oh, you. It also just like to summarize the group that I was in. First of all, we discussed our understanding of mindfulness, and I'll just throw in a few keywords that still stuck with me. One is that it has to do with openness and with life intensity. We first of all just talked about what mindfulness means to us. And just a few words that stuck with me, that different people brought up with, that it was about being open, about being embodied, or that it's also about presence in the body, just various things that you also mentioned, that we repeated basically, or also our own, we described basically situations

[23:24]

that we associate with being mindful. and then we discussed a couple of questions that were of interest to us and most of them were about differentiating terms so one was to get a clear feeling of the difference between mindfulness and attention and is there a difference first of all So we also talked about intention and attention and the link between the two of them. And what we mainly came up with as for the first question in terms of the differences was that mindfulness seemed to be a wider field of the mind, whereas attention has more of a clear, focused boundary to it.

[24:43]

And also mindfulness has an experiential quality of tenderness in it and softness. In German. Yeah, I don't know. I think our understanding of mindfulness. In English it means to be, it has the feeling of being careful, but not tender or something like that. Yeah, careful actually is maybe a better word for the German term. Yeah. Yes, and the last thing we talked about was the difference between if you want to act as something subjective and want to direct the attention or the attention, or if you just let things be.

[25:50]

and then we talked about directing attention and also putting a will into mindfulness so wanting something from the connection to the object maybe that you're attending to and the difference between just letting things appear and letting them bloom in their own presence. Bloom? Yeah, bloom is maybe a bad word. Letting them shine in their own presence. Oh, yeah. All right. Gloom in your own presence. That sounds very depressing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Yes. We also talked a lot about what has been talked about already, but two new things that are coming up is that we talked about Roth. You never understand when I say that, Roth.

[27:01]

My anger, but wrath. Wrath and how difficult it is to stay mindful when you're wrathful. So like in conflict situations when people notice they haven't been mindful in these situations and then later on they may notice that if I had been mindful in that situation I might have been able to change the situation. But also we found that even if you still feel like you should have been more mindful, just being engaged in the practice of mindfulness is helpful because who knows what you would have done if you didn't have the practice of mindfulness at all.

[28:29]

And the other thing was, I think, another topic, how difficult it is, or this remark of being careful is gone, or being careful also has contradictions, these contradictions can be noticed. And then we also talked about noticing when mindfulness disappears, and also that mindfulness has resistances sometimes, and that it can also be very helpful to notice the resistance against mindfulness. And also to notice the difference, that we often, or many of us, often have mental concepts of mindfulness, but they are based on experience. And then we also noticed that each one of us has their mental concepts about mindfulness, but that it's very important to always reconnect these mental concepts with the bodily, physical experience.

[29:36]

Okay. Who is present? What is present? And as for the new aspects that came up through the seminar, first of all, there were these different phrases that we are to practice with truth, breathing, once breathing. And for me personally, particularly here, it's breathing. and also the practice of the four noble postures. That's the point. Okay. Yes? Just to add to what has been talked about in our group, we also talked about the differences, the way to distinguish things.

[30:47]

The white view usually is that there's a term consciousness and then also we talked about awareness. In contrast to that, in the narrower view, concentration. In the narrower view, it has more to do with static thinking, with awareness, with something dynamic. Awareness has to do with action. There you also have the comparison of Buddha as a small object. And then, in contrast to this wide view, there's a more narrow perspective, which we usually associate with concentration. And then the wide field of mindfulness also has something to do with dynamic, whereas the more concentrated or narrow part is more static and also

[31:55]

Mindfulness, you talked about how the Buddha relates to activity, the Buddha of activity. Yes. So, the seminar for me. It's nice to see how you approach mindfulness. You can start with the body. It's a simple conclusion. And in the seminar it was very nice to see for me personally how to enact mindfulness or how to approach the practice of mindfulness. And it's very simple to just start in the body. That's a good starting point. And the question we closed with was, intention directs attention. But how does that relate to... Intention directs attention.

[33:03]

Not having an intention, what's the word for that? If you don't have an intention, you're... Spontaneous. Rudderless. Aimless. How does that relate to aim? Aimlessness. Okay, I hear the question. I'm not sure there's only relative aimlessness, but anyway. I want to listen more now than speak. Let's see how much time I have to listen now. You started, we need a break soon. Yes, Neil? Yeah, non-doing? Okay. Yeah, okay. Yes? I would like to tell our group a little bit about what we have asked.

[34:43]

So what does everyone actually do so far? What is the practice? What is it? What kind of, yes, what could it have to do with my friend? And that was, we just did a shot there. I assume it will just be cooked, eaten, received. smell, prepare, cook, all in all a very clear, plastic process, which is already clear in itself in the story, because there is also a lot of attention to it, which actually exists. Should I translate? Yes, please. Okay. First of all, we just took an inventory of how everybody was practicing mindfulness in their everyday lives. And there were very simple things that were already connected with mindfulness, like cooking and cleaning and these kind of things. Driving the car, riding the bike, practical things.

[35:54]

Wherever there's the possibility to just body withdraw from distractions. Physical contact. With physical contact with patients, which can draw you into this field of mindfulness. Yeah. Okay. or different jobs or tasks where wherever you can just take the sensory input take it in and then bring it into a kind of flow Yeah, right.

[37:11]

Yeah. For example, there is also a difference between before and after, so to speak, a person has started to meditate, for example, how, for example, music was made, or how differently, so to speak, before and after music was made, or who was brought to meditate. And then we also talked about the difference between the time in the life before you started meditation and then after you started practicing meditation, like one person, some musician, and he or she described how the music was done before he or she was engaged with meditation after. Practicing and expressing. BZ and AZ. And then there was also the desire for clarification for the term feeling, what is feeling.

[38:21]

the break, then we can come back to some things we want, and there's some things I'd like to come back to. But let me say, probably, because it came up, I never thought about it until just now, a better term for this practice would be attentionfulness and mindfulness. But let me say one more thing. It's probably like this. And I've never noticed it until now, except that a better term, instead of the term mindfulness, is the term I know. I know. But that makes it interesting too. Because you know it's in between the German words and the English words.

[39:40]

Yeah, and the more you have a physical presence of the meaning, physical feel of the meaning, then the words you can kind of like try to... Well, I think we've gotten ourselves to a good point. So I'm looking forward to exploring this further. But there's always the problem of Sunday. No problem. Sunday, Sunday. But we always plan to end early, right? Four o'clock? One o'clock? Four o'clock. Four o'clock. That's the plan.

[41:00]

Okay. All right. So we'll go ahead from now on.

[41:04]

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