in this bringing attention to your activity, you know, it's nice to be more alert and so forth, more aware in general, et cetera. But the most important thing, I think, is this sense of a pause, is each thing is very particular. Teacup. And you, in a sense, honor, I don't know how to put it, I don't want to sound schmaltzy, but you kind of honor the particularity of each thing, and you allow yourself to be in the particularity of each thing. Just developing the habit of that. It's not just being more aware, more alert, but to have a sense of of not just noticing the particularity, but actually the body rests for a moment in the particularity.

[01:09]

And so I suppose it develops a kind of respect, or it develops a kind of honoring of each thing. And this sense is This developing sense of the particularity of each thing, which is noticed by... There's a kind of particularity, a pause of attention, and a feeling of rest or stillness in the body for a moment. Those are what make possible, actually, the practice of the fourth foundation of mind. And then if you do develop the sense of a pause, you can bring wisdom phrases or signs, I don't know what to say, words, to this pause.

[02:21]

Like, you can feel that each particularity is timeless. I mean, I don't think, at first, it may not be understandable why you say timeless. It's very difficult to know what to say. Stop, timeless, something. But I think using the word timeless, even though it's not philosophically accurate, perhaps, scientifically accurate, but it's useful. Pause is not just the cup. The object of attention is a hand giving attention, the holding of it, the feeling of the cup. The cup is suspended in air here, and the whole body is involved with holding the cup. All of that, any of that, is an object of attention. And you can bring, again, as I said, a sense of, oh, it's timeless.

[03:37]

There's a kind of stopped quality to it. And you can work with bringing something. The more you develop the sense of a pause, the more you can bring some wisdom to the pause. And one is to feel it's timeless. Another is to sense it as time, but time as I've been speaking often, ripening time, time as a favorable opportunity. So on each thing you have a feeling, is this a favorable opportunity? So time as opportunity, not time as clock time or something. Because actually each moment is an opportunity. So you're trying to kind of get into time as its particularity, its actuality.

[04:42]

It's not some kind of generalization of time. And one of the things I've been emphasizing the last most of a year now is the recognition because this sense of a ripening time, and when you read the sutras and read Dogen and so forth, you have to be aware that they're talking about, you know, it's kind of necessary to make sense of it, to be aware that they're talking about not averaged out time, generalized time, but they're talking about ripening time, time as opportunity. And, you know, the philosophical implications of that, as I pointed out, are dramatic, actually, because it means that each of you is in his or her own time. We're not in one time here. We're in each, like the baby, again, you see it in the baby, the baby is, Sophia is in her own time. She's not in our time.

[05:42]

And we're trying to coordinate, develop a common time. And as I can so often say, when you think about childhood and how long it was, it was long. It's actually a different kind of time. It's not the, oh, yeah, we experience it differently. The experience is time. And one of the things that meditation practice does and mindfulness practice does is actually give you a different lifespan. gives you a different occasion in time. And the sense of each moment as opportunity or as ripening or as something you're patient within, that you wait within time. I mean, you can see it in this successful movie recently. What's it called? Crouching Tiger. Crouching Tiger means time.

[06:45]

It means ripening time. The sense of, you know, Asia loves frogs so much. Frogs are ripening time. They don't do anything anymore. And the pause allows you to bring so many teachings to so many wisdom observations. Without the pause, you can't do it. You just, oh, it's philosophy or something. The pause allows you to bring wisdom into your life. So, another thing you can bring, timelessness, opportunity, time as ripening and opportunity, and mind itself. Whatever your object of attention is, is in effect mind.

[07:51]

You only know it within your sense fields, you only know it within your mind, so what you know of it is mind. Now we can talk more, and I think we will, if we are able to develop these four foundations of mindfulness as a dynamic, you'll see that there's important differences in what we mean by mind. And what we experience by mind. And you can also bring to this moment, this ascertained moment, this allowed-for moment, you can bring the recognition that this is your actual life, not somewhere else. This is your actual life. If you're going to die, you're going to die at this point. If you're going to get sick, you're going to get sick at this point. If you're going to be happy, you're going to get happy at this point.

[08:55]

It's not somewhere else. So you bring this sense of the pause of particularity of mindfulness in each moment. This is my actual life. I'm in the midst. This is the in-betweenness of my actual life. And then also, since you're not separate from the Sangha and from your society, you also, and this is part of how I describe with all of this seminar, this is also our actual society. You are not independent from your society. It's true that practice requires a renunciation so you can step outside your society. At the same time, you are your actual society.

[09:57]

So this is your society. And you're transforming or confirming your society in each moment. Because you're not separate and that not separateness is present every time you're with another person or every time you do anything. So this, to bring attention to our activity, not with just a sense of alertness or awareness, but with a sense of coming into a momentary pause, a momentary stillness with each particular. And what is a particular, what is an object of attention becomes more and more subtle. First it's just a cup, and at another point it's the proprioceptive balance of the body holding the cup. Or it's not just the tree or the flower, it's the space of the flower.

[11:02]

So what is an object of attention with the pause begins to transform itself. The pause allows the fullness of the object of attention to flower. The pause is also the root of what we mean by dharma. So here you can see that, you can feel perhaps what I mean, that just thoroughly practicing and feeling the thoroughness of bringing attention to your activity, to the activity, to activity. When you say, I'm going to... When you have a sense of thoroughness in doing it, you develop the pause, even without my mentioning it. The pause is the fruit of being thorough.

[12:08]

Just developing this pause will transform your life. It's so simple, this practice, but it requires... bring thoroughness to it, and from that thoroughness, the teaching, the practice, the world as practice, the world as you and your actual life and society opens up. I wish I had something fancy to teach you. I don't. I have real simple stuff. Now if through bringing attention, pouring attention, allowing attention, in the particularity of the object of attention, the pause of attention, this then really lets you get very quickly into the next target, your breath.

[13:26]

And you can really begin to feel the pause of each breath. The stillness of each breath. Because now, if you know the stillness of each particularity, you find a stillness in each breath. If you find a stillness in each breath, you'll find a stillness in your mind. Breath and mind are brave. You know, if you're nervous, you breathe faster and so forth. So if you begin to penetrate each breath with a pause, now the activity of your breath is the object of attention. So again, you, as a path, you make this thorough. Now, you know, I have to apologize for speaking about something I've spoken about a lot, but I can't not bring it in.

[14:42]

Yeah, particularly with something you're not familiar with, my teaching, my way of teaching, or the examples I give. which is one of the important shifts, if you're going to practice, is to shift from seeing self as an entity to seeing self as function. One of the functions of self is the way we experience continuity. The reason mostly it is so difficult to bring attention continuously to the breath is because of the continuousness. Anyone can bring attention for a few moments to their breath or a few minutes, but to bring it continuously is difficult because continuity is the realm of self. Continuity is where self functions, establishing who we are from moment to moment.

[15:46]

When you bring your, we normally, all you have to do is notice what you do. You normally establish our continuity in our thinking. When you bring your continuity, until you can establish your continuity in your breath, you can't bring your attention to your breath rate. So you're bringing attention to the pause of each breath. And that pause is, and you can, you know, there's traditional and very old pre-Zen ways of doing it to name each breath. This is a short breath, this is a long breath, or whatever. And the naming is to make you pause. And as it becomes, again, the object, the pause of the tension of the breath is more than just, of course, the inhale or the exhale, or it's long or short, but it's also the bottom of the breath and the top of the breath.

[17:00]

And the pause at the top of the breath and the pause at the bottom. So the mind begins to be articulated in the breath because when you bring attention to it, and this is the first foundation in mindfulness, by bringing attention to your breath, by pouring attention, cuddling attention, like when you pat a baby or something, or a genie, or whatever, you're kind of patting yourself with your breath when you bring attention. And your attention, your mind, your mind is a kind of territory. What's the territory of the mind? The territory of the mind, you know, again, little Sophia is trying to bring what she experiences, some kind of knowing and some kind of awareness, and she's trying to bring that into her arms so she can do things.

[18:02]

Looks like she might be left-handed because she seems to be able to do things more clearly with her left hand than her right hand. So the mind desires to take form, in a sense. It desires to take the form of the arm, the form of activity. And that the fulfillment of that desire, articulation of that desire, is realized through attention. If she doesn't, Sophia doesn't bring attention to what she's trying to take hold of, And sometimes she grabs, used to now not so much, grabs things by accident. She's reaching and she grabs something on the changing table, starts throwing it around. She's totally surprised, you know, what happened. Or she grabs a plant near her and she starts shaking the plant.

[19:06]

All kinds of things are jiggling around, you know. You know, babies learn, they've discovered that babies learn to sign before they learn to speak. And that babies will, with deaf parents... will actually speak with the deaf parents before they can before speaking babies with speaking parents learn to speak to the parents and uh... one of the ways this a woman noticed this is her little baby would see a fish every time she saw a fish the baby noticed like in an aquarium they'd be taking her to the doctor and there'd be an aquarium and there'd be fish and the baby would go She thought that was strange. That was kind of alert to the mother to notice that. Then they ate fish, and the baby looked at the fish. Then she suddenly realized they had a fish mobile above the crib. And they moved around, and the parents were always going, making the fish move. So the baby learned the sign for fish is fish.

[20:09]

So she's bringing, the baby's bringing attention before she can speak. The words, the language is much more complicated than signs. She's bringing attention into these signs. So I make a point of trying to teach her certain signs and then see if she anticipates the action that follows, and she does. So when you... begin to bring attention to the breath, the topography of the breath, the inhale, the exhale, the sense of stopped time even, timelessness on, especially on the pause at the top of the breath. You let something dissolve. a pause at the bottom, you stop, let something dissolve.

[21:18]

You're actually taking consciousness or mind or attention, awareness, and shaping it, in a sense. Like a carpenter or a potter or something. The wheel now is the particularity of the breath, begins to shape. Now, Again, Sophia's attention begins to take the shape of her arm. When you bring attention to your breath, attention, which is your mind, you're using attention to pull your mind into your breath, and the mind is beginning to take the shape of the breath. When it takes the shape of the breath and the particularity of the breath, that particularity starts to spread into the body. then you're actually weaving mind and body together. Now, again, I always use this little example.

[22:20]

If you do this with your finger, this one, it becomes difficult to say which finger is there. Why is that? Because you're not in your body, you're in your mind. You're perceiving your body from outside, so you say, which is left, which is right, how do I move that? So, This is a very simple example that we actually create a mental body, not a physical body. We relate to our body mentally and we think our feet are down there and things like that. If you practice the core foundation of mindfulness and you concentrate on the first foundation, you don't anymore have any real feeling that your feet are down there. And it's the mental body, this foreign insulation of our culture, of any culture, this mental body often is what makes us tense or sick, etc.

[23:26]

Because the mental body becomes the conveyance for all your moods, all your feelings, all your thoughts. So whatever thoughts you have, your bad mood, it's transmitted directly to your mental body And that transmits it to your physical body. So what we're trying to do, I mean, Marie-Louise, Sophia is in the midst of creating a mental body. Practice, we're trying to get underneath, undo that mental body and create a physical body, but a conscious physical body that only will happen through wisdom. It won't happen naturally. happens through intention. Now maybe some athletes or artists realize this to some extent. But as a wisdom, consciously developed wisdom teaching, this will happen only through wisdom, not through luck or something like that. Okay.

[24:37]

You're bringing attention, bringing mind, awareness, the knowing before memory. You're bringing all that through the container, vehicle, or something or other of attention to the body. And body and mind, again, are not one and they're not two. and they're a field of cultivation, but they can be cultivated in various ways. Sports cultivated one way, different sports cultivated differently than other sports, different cultures cultivated differently, and so forth. You know, you're making a choice to cultivate the relationship between mind and body in a particular way when you practice Buddhism. I can't compare the ways. There might be better ways. This is the only way I know. This is the only one I could talk about with you.

[25:43]

But it seems good enough. I mean, it's good enough for me. I know it's good enough for you. It's good enough for me. So through the careful... practice, a thorough practice of bringing attention to your activity, letting the subtlety of activity blossom, bloom, in the pause of particularity, the pause of awareness, then allows opens up the real ability to bring attention to your breath. And then you begin to really have the possibility to change your sense of continuity from thinking to your body, to the breath and body.

[26:46]

And now, if you do that, as I say, I'll point it out, you really change the way self functions. Now, the four elements, I don't know if it's worth teaching the four elements. It's kind of traditionally done, and it's kind of interesting. And maybe because it's interesting, I'll tell you. And again, it's the effort to bring targets to the body. The four elements are, you know, water, earth, fire, and air. Because, you know, there's some kind of similar teaching, but quite different actually, similar nomenclature in medieval European science.

[27:56]

But if we're going to emphasize the whatness, what does the whatness divide up into? The whatness divides up if you look around the world. Now, what's one of the big differences between what and who? What has a continuity with the world? Who does not? You can talk about the whatness of the tree and the whatness of you, and you share the similar whatness. You can't talk about the who of the tree. in a way, shares a wholeness with you. So you feel much more part of the world when you emphasize and discover your whiteness rather than only your wholeness. I'm not saying wholeness is not important. Important. But for practice, wholeness is more important. Wholeness is secondary compared to wholeness. And so in this context of whatness, then you want to look at the targets of whatness that everything shares.

[29:10]

Well, the whatness of the world, I mean anybody, I mean you come up with the idea of earth and air and water and fire, heat, movement. How do you translate those four elements into what you make of those four elements in terms of our practice makes this teaching relevant to Buddhism or not? Now, Water, talk about water. Water finds its own level.

[30:17]

Water is very pliable. So, for example, if you do something like that, that's the water element. Now, if I try to do it with this hand, It's a little more difficult. It takes me a moment to get the thumb, the finger loose. Because I'm more conscious in my right hand because I'm right-handed. And my consciousness inhibits the water element. Am I making sense? I'm getting like kindergarten. But my left hand is, it's much easier to do that, and it's fluid. So that water element is very close to what's meant by pliancy in Buddhism. And they say one of the signs of realization is your body becomes very pliant. That means that the water element is predominant in you. So, if you, let's use an example, the swimmer.

[31:21]

You know, when people swim, they swim like this, you know? But a good swimmer takes his arm out, his whole arm is loose and relaxed, and you don't, until it hits the water a certain point is when you make it firm. The firmness would be the earth element, but this would be the water element. The firmness is in the water, the water element is in the air, but when your arm is just loose and you just let it flop, that's the water element. It's seeking its own by gravity force. So, part of practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is to notice the water element. notice the solidity element and so forth. So I thought it might be useful to suggest this in qing hin. So if you're doing qing hin and you want to practice these things, qing hin is this slow walking you do.

[32:31]

And the reason what you're doing when you're doing a slow walking is you're trying to learn, discover, how to have activity in the midst of zazen mind without going out of zazen mind. And it's wonderful to walk outside on the deck, etc. But that's a little different mind that brings you out of zazen mind. It brings you into a kind of energy, which is good. So, when you're doing Iman, what we do, most of you know, we step forward, we put our hands here, and you tip your hands up slightly because it's more awake posture. And it's all a yoga thing, you know, so it could be anywhere, but we decide, and you bring your attention to that decision, have this parallel to the floor.

[33:38]

So you're trying to step gently in zazen mind without disturbing it. You're trying to bring zazen mind at the same time as bringing zazen mind into your physical activities. Now, if you get a hang of it and keep it, you can then, in any kind of activity, you can feel zazen mind pressing. So it's a chance to get the feeling for zazen mind in activity, not just when you sit it in stillness. So you step forward, you step forward. As I mentioned, Sukhya Rishis started out with three or four different ways of feeling . Some people remember some of the earlier ways might get better. Just eat slower. One, two, three. Anyway, what we finally settled on was half a step forward, lifting the heel with an inhale, and stepping forward with an exhale, half a step.

[34:44]

And with your feet about this distance apart. So, just to do this, the precision of this means you have to bring mind into the body. Now, if you teach this more as a yogic practice, then you're bringing attention, you know, up the back of your leg, up your spine, this way, and this way. So you're bringing aware energy, I call it awareness and energy combined. You're bringing aware energy as well as breath. And this mixture, we call it sometimes heel breathing. You're joining breathing to energy. And joining breathing, energy, and awareness. So when you're speaking, you don't obviously breathe through your heel, but if you have a sense of breathing through your heel, that sense, languaging it that way, begins to bring the feeling of energy and breath together.

[35:52]

So you're now doing such a simple thing, you're kind of... What do you call when you make a rope? You're kind of braiding, shall we say. You're braiding energy and breath together. So you bring the sense of energy and breath, inhale, energy up the back, across here, down, and then you step out. And I don't say you do that with intent, I say you kind of do it somehow. Okay. Now, when you bring your foot up like that, that's the water element. I mean, just like your hand is like this, you have a feeling of your foot just falling. It's just there, completely loosely aligned. So, that's the water element.

[36:52]

So, you bring attention to the water. I don't think I sound crazy, but you bring attention to the water element, and then as you step down, you're bringing attention to the solidity of the earth element. You feel the solidness of the earth. You let the floor speak to you up through your bones. And this sense of energy would be the heat element coming out. And the sense that you're creating a kind of field as you do it, you're generating a field and moving in the field, would be the space or air element. So, again, if I speak with you, and I'm aware of that, and I've been used to bringing attention to the air or space element, then when I see you, I can bring attention to the feeling of space here, or the feeling of solidity, or the feeling of energy. So you begin to have a kind of language, the bodyfulness of the body, not the mindfulness of the body.

[38:01]

You begin to have a language rooted in the particular energy. rooted in the flatness of the world, and rooted in the body itself. What you're doing is you're beginning to feel a real solidity in the body. You really feel the solidness of it. Some people have great, big, strong bodies. Maybe it comes more naturally. I know when I first spoke about this in Germany, trying to get a feeling for it, Marie Louise was translating for me.

[39:01]

She was sitting here. And she said afterwards, she she could translate the feeling of my words, and I was speaking about a visceral continuity, a physical, visceral gut continuity in the world, because she suddenly, as she was speaking, translating my words, she remembered the experience of riding a horse uphill in the mud. because she had this experience of, you know, you're really, the horse is going uphill fighting the mud, and the whole feeling, physicality of the horse comes up through your body. She said that's what it felt like. So she translated that experience of riding a horse uphill in the mud. But it is something like that. It's a real sense of physical presence. I remember Sukhir, she once was giving a lecture, and suddenly he stopped and he said, I'm a little frail man, but you can't knock me over. And there was a feeling like he was really there.

[40:06]

You probably, all of us at once, we probably could have knocked him. But there was a feeling of, we would have hit something. Because he wouldn't have reacted mentally, he would have reacted physically. You're not trying to be athletic here or kind of be some kind of body nut. You're actually trying to find your own continuity of self and awareness and moment-by-moment existence in the physicality of the world. And that has to be established first in your own physicality. Okay. Now the fourth object of... By the way, what time are we supposed to have lunch?

[41:10]

Okay, so the physicality... Lunch is at 1. Lunch is at 1. So we can stop around 12.30 because we do have to set up... I'll put... Okay, the next target is the parts of the body. And again, just if you want to know yourself, the Socratic sense of know thyself, in Buddhism would be really to know and be present within your actual organs, your body, your body parts. and not to know in some intellectual or philosophical way, but to know, perhaps as I said to Sophia, in a way that's outside memory, or outside the usual way we know.

[42:27]

It's an intimacy or familiarity that is just more subtle than, more wide than memory. it would take the entire ability for you to, your entire capacity, if you could remember everything that happens at one moment, it would take the entire capacity of your memory. So memory is useful for certain kinds of continuity and actions and so forth. To move outside memory-forming consciousness, within and beyond memory-forming consciousness. Now, it's traditionally said there's 32 parts of the body, etc. That's good, but we're really experimenting.

[43:32]

You can have any parts of the body. This is just... These things are not fixed. They're suggestions. So you want to bring attention... to your body. And you have to find out for yourself how you do it. And if you've worked with and realized, established yourself in attention to your activity, breath and the elements, Or you could bring the elements together with this practice of parts of the body, too. Somewhat similar. See, for me, I find that the most useful place to start is your hands. Your hands are actually where we have the most attentive and sane. So let's take the hands, for example.

[44:41]

And if you bring attention to your hands, you can do it anywhere, but it's actually quite useful to do it when you're sitting. And I suggest you bring attention to whatever you notice. But you can, if you want to program, and what I do sometimes is start with my tip of my forefinger, and I go to the middle, and I go to this part, and I do each finger, and I do each thumb, and I do this. I'm up beyond 30 real quickly. And then to the knuckles. I mean, you know what I can, excuse me for being so paternal, talking about Sophia, I'm sorry. I look at it, and I think, whoa. How did I organize all those blood vessels in your brain? I didn't know where to attach all those blood vessels and nerves, and good gosh, if it goes wrong, I talked to the doctor here, and he says, you know, it's real complicated to reattach all those blood vessels if there's an injury or something.

[45:51]

It's like, I mean, it's incomprehensible how all those things get attached and So, I mean, just the fact that your knuckles work, it's kind of interesting. The first thing they do with babies when they're born, it seems, is, is it a boy or girl? And does it have five fingers and toes? If it has five fingers and toes, probably everything's all right. I don't know. We'll let's hope. So let's come back to our five fingers in each hand. You might have six in one and four in the other, and ten wouldn't. Okay. So let's bring attention to those things that your parents looked at so carefully to make sure you had five and five, five and five. And the knuckles, I find the knuckles very important.

[46:55]

So you begin to bring attention to your hand. I mean, I think that's what I've discovered most useful. And then you can bring attention up the arm. Now, if you really bring attention to your hand, let's say this, the parts of your hand, bring attention there, bring attention there, And then you bring attention here. What is it? It's not... There's something more than... It's not like bringing attention to this cup. The cup isn't alive. Or it's not alive in a way similar to our aliveness. And you begin to experience, which if you look at the wholeness of you, you probably don't notice, but if you look at the whatness of you, you begin to notice that there's what plus or stuff plus.

[48:06]

You can't just say it's stuff. And in fact, the knuckles feel differently than the palm of the hand. And the palm of the hand, I mean, you can kind of, if you do this, I mean, you can feel a spongy stuff between your hand. You can expand it pretty far, actually, if you're good at it. That spongy stuff, is that stuff, is it buttness? What is it? It's something we can't carry. We can't say what it is. And when people who do healing feel some kind of warmth or feel here or sensitivity there, you know, I think all of us can feel that to some extent. So by practicing with the what-ness, you come up to what, the stuff of you is stuff plus. What is it? Mind or presence or something. a kind of presence that the body has, and the body has in more distinctly in some areas than others.

[49:14]

Is it mind? Is it body? It's this subtlety which is what the chakras are about. Because when you begin to explore the what-ness of your body, you find there's some areas that have a big plus and some areas have a small plus. Stuff plus or stuff really plus. Stuff plus presence. So when you bring attention to the body, to the parts of the body, it's usually... when you open up to the presence of the body, the subtle topography of presence, not just of ordinary physicality. So again, to give you some kind of program, you can do whatever you want, but I think if you

[50:22]

Bring attention to each part of your hand, whatever you happen to notice. It could be different. By the way, my own sense is this. Back in the 60s, I did this quite thoroughly, quite often. And then after that, I did it sometimes not very often, but my custom is to do it fairly thoroughly two or three times a year, four times a year. in meditation practice to go through the whole body. And then the rest of the time just to be, I can't say generally aware, particularly aware. But not necessarily go through it. But maybe a little bit I do it now and then, quite often. And I think it's extremely good for your health. It's a kind of longevity practice to have your attention quite equally in all parts of the body.

[51:28]

And you tend to know what's going on with your organs and so forth. You can feel when things are out of harmony or out of kilter much more quickly. You can feel I noticed I could feel the Back in the 60s, I suddenly realized I could tell the moment a headache would start, but not the moment I'd feel a headache. And I might not have a headache until two hours later, but I began to be aware of what physical event or a thought-triggered physical event led to a headache, and I could change it at that moment. But that just became possible because I had this practice of bringing attention to my breath. And also you can tell when a cold or a flu is coming way ahead, when it has symptoms in the body.

[52:37]

Because there's some kind of slight disharmony or triggers that you can feel. No, I don't think it's anything special. I think it comes out of really establishing yourself in the first foundation of mindfulness. And I think the practice of the four elements also helps you get outside the mental body. so that you feel the, if you can feel the body through the four elements, the mental body can't contain the four elements. You begin to feel yourself almost loosened from the kind of stickiness or rigidity or plastic casing of the mental body. And in Buddhism we speak about the body sheath, not the sheath of a knife.

[53:42]

It's the sense of the mental body. Or thought coverings. Thought coverings are another way to refer to the mental body. So practice is to kind of loosen thought coverings. This is all language. When you first read Buddhism, you think, oh, thought coverings, what the heck's that about? But if you practice in one of the real entries is the realization, the fullness of practicing the fourth foundation of mindfulness opens you up and you can suddenly understand what thought coverings are. Okay, so you start with your hands. Once you get Once you can bring your attention into your body, into your fingers or your hands, you can then move that feeling up through your arm, parts of your arm, blood vessels, muscles.

[54:45]

You get better and better at bringing the objects of attention becoming more subtle parts of the body. Up in the arm, there you go. And I find it useful to start with the left lung. Because I find, for some reason, that the shoulders are a gate to the interior of the body. It's kind of hard for me to get into the interior of the body until I discovered I could do it through the shoulders. But through the shoulders I can move into the lungs. Then I'm in the interior of the body. I'm in the organs. And you can really begin to explore the organ of the lung. And I, again, find it useful to start with the left lung. And you can get a real feeling for the left lung. You can almost feel the way the air moves. You can feel the way the air moves into the lung, whether it's really down at the bottom and up at the tip of the lung. You can begin to open up the tips of the lung in the shoulder.

[55:49]

This is you. This is your body, you know? And it makes a difference if the tension is inside your organs, inside your body, not just your organs. So knowing yourself, knowing oneself, knowing one's what-ness would be a commonplace of goodness and what-ness. So you really can get a feel for the lung, and if you pay attention to how each breath affects the lung, you can begin to feel the boundaries, contours, etc. And you can feel the difference in your state of mind when the lung feels kind of fully refreshed, fully exhaled, fully inhaled, and so forth. And once you have a real sense of the lung, and it can even appear as a visual image in your something or other, in your mind, switch to the left lung.

[56:57]

And when you switch to the left lung, you can immediately feel, because you know the feeling of the right lung, you can feel the left lung. But there's a difference, and the difference is your heart is right there. So if you start with, I find, if I start with my left lung, I get my heart and lung mixed up. If I start with my right lung and really get a feeling for that, when I move to the left lung, it allows me to then explore what the heart feels like. And the heart is stuffed plus with a big plus. If the palm of the hand feels something, here you really feel a kind of presence. And the presence of the heart extends throughout. in quite a strong area around the heart and actually through the body, and you can begin to feel the presence of the heart in your own presence, or its diminution or expanse. So you're not only exploring by looking at the what-ness, you're also looking at the presence that's there, which we can't call a who.

[58:04]

And people who do develop the first foundation of mindfulness often then have a strong presence. You can feel them come into a room, feel them. And if you're not noticing, oh, someone's like behind me. You can even identify who it is properly. So in this way, you begin to explore the body. And I think the process I've suggested is good, a useful one. And from there, you can do as you wish. Your stomach, your liver, your legs, your circulatory system. And from the heart, you can go to the circulatory system because the heart isn't just the heart. It's also the circulatory system, which is another kind of image and feeling. So the first foundation of mindfulness should be practiced as an emphasis in contrast to the other three, should be emphasized in contrast to the other three until you really feel you're really solidly located through and through evenly throughout your body.

[59:34]

And you have a real sense of the presence of the body and the presence of the different parts of your body. Your hands have a different presence from your heart. And in this practice, done thoroughly, the chakras begin to open up. You really feel the presence here. You feel it. Funny, when you start to meditate, you start feeling, after a while, itchy or tingly here or something like that. This is a different area. And of course, you know, somebody asked me the other day, the Gandharan Buddhist statues are so similar to the Greek statues, but the Greek statues are realistic And the Buddhist statues look exactly like Greek statues, same curly hair and toga, robes, and so forth. But the Buddhist statues, the guy's got a bump on top of his head, and like somebody hit him with a hammer. But it's another kind of realism, because the Buddhist statue is showing the Samogitaya body, is showing the subtle body.

[60:45]

So this bump is a representation of of the presence of this chakra, which you begin to feel. So the Buddhist statue, I mean this one too, it's disguised as a headdress or hairpiece, you know. So the Buddhist statue wants to show the subtle body or the presence body as well as the physical body. And the Greeks did sports, but they didn't do yoga. And so they're beautiful physical bodies, but they didn't decide, think about, showing simultaneously the signs of the, we can say subtle body, but let's say presence body. Body as not just stuff, but as stuff that is also presence. So one of the things you discover through the whatness of the body and the first foundation of the body, first foundation of mindfulness, is the stuff of the body and the presence of the body.

[61:56]

And what I would say you're discovering is what I'd call body-mind. Discovering what we could somehow say is the mind of the body or a mind-like quality that arises or is inseparable from the stuff of the body itself which isn't the same as ordinary meditation or consciousness. So you've made, I think, if you do this, a very important, if when you experience it, you've made a very important discovery And that discovery arises and can only arise as an experience, almost only arise clearly through the practice of the first foundation of mind. And you can see that her jewelry also indicates the subtle body and the shape of the world. And you also know that The lotus is used as a symbol for this because she's got the lotus in her hand, and the bud is there, and the curled up leaf is the kind of lotus embryo, but where's the blossom?

[63:10]

The blossom is us. The blossom isn't shown because it's the subtle body. When you look at her and you know the presence that she represents, that presence is the bloom, but the bloom is everywhere. And it blooms in you. So it doesn't bloom in the iconography, it blooms in you. So this statue is meant to show, by its iconography, and by the absence of a blossom, is meant to show you, indicate the subtle body or presence body. Now the awareness of the presence body

[64:17]

which arises from the practice of the first foundation of mindfulness, is the prior condition for understanding and practicing the second foundation of mindfulness. So I think maybe that's a good place to stop. Why don't we sit for a few moments, a few minutes. Yeah.

[69:59]

There is a custom of, if you're in the zendo and someone comes in, and even if they're behind you and your back is turned, they bow. And if you can't see them, you feel them bow. But I prefer to think that you're so deep in meditation, when I come in, you don't really want to disturb yourself. So I prefer it when I come in, you don't bow. But while you're sitting, I don't mind you having some vague feeling that someone's entered. OK. One of the things that happens, and I mentioned these things not to, not that you look for them or try to produce them or something like that, but rather that, there's a couple people, Olaf, did you speak to them?

[71:19]

Two people outside. No, not yet. Maybe you could go say hello to them. In the garden? Yeah, in the garden. I think you can go right through that door and check. Thank you. But rather that you notice that you open yourself to noticing things, which is, you know, I think for most of us, we notice things through our eyes, and our eyes are very related to our consciousness. If you're practicing the four foundations of mindfulness more, particularly the first foundation, you begin to feel the world like with your cheekbones or your shoulders or, of course, your hara.

[72:26]

So, I mean, I think we do anyway, but we tend not to notice we do. At least I didn't notice I did until I started practicing. And... And shoulders, cheekbones, other parts of your body, you kind of, you feel the world not through thinking, but you actually feel it through your body. You have a sense of almost like the world is brushing against you all the time. Something like that. So now the second foundation of mindfulness is a real simple one. The first one is pretty elaborate, you know. One thing I didn't mention is one of the targets are the four postures of walking, standing, sitting, and reclining.

[73:38]

And it's interesting, we were born with these postures and We don't even think of them as postures. We sleep. It's easier to sleep lying down, reclining, so we sleep that way. Standing up, it's easier to stand up. Consciousness is associated with standing up. If you're driving and you start going like this, you know consciousness is letting go of the body. But if you practice, if you have a yogic practice, you begin to be aware how closely related posture and mind is. And zazen posture, this wisdom posture that we're not born with, actually begins to awaken our other postures that we're born with, walking, standing, sitting, and reclining.

[74:44]

And you become more aware that these are not positions, but postures. Posture you find from inside. And so again, traditionally the core foundation of mindfulness includes being aware of the mind that arises when you're walking, the mind that arises when you're sitting, and so forth. I spoke about this in New York. There was a Chinese woman there who was about 70-something, a bit older than I am. She had lived in China until she was 18. came to the United States, and she almost died recently this year, earlier this year, of some disease, but she looked very healthy.

[75:55]

Well, somehow in the seminar, and somehow her nearly dying brought her back to her 18 years being brought up as a Chinese young child. And when I was speaking about posture, because that's one of the things they asked me to speak about, she suddenly said, it's all come back to me. I was taught everything was a posture. Sleeping was a posture. I was taught to sleep in certain postures, and I was taught to, that girls slept one way and boys slept another way. But that, anyway, all this came up for her, of the way posture was emphasized, and that walking, standing, sitting, and lying were just part of the culture, and you were taught how to walk, how to stand, how to sit, and how to recline, how to sleep. And we don't pay much attention to that, but it's interesting. It's kind of just part, it's not Buddhism, it's just part of the culture there.

[77:01]

So now again, let me go back forward to the second foundation of mindfulness, which is simply, usually translated, what's pleasant and unpleasant. And that, for many commentators, becomes like and dislike. But there's a very big difference between like and dislike, and pleasant and unpleasant. But for us, they get quite mixed up. And we get caught in a pendulum of, I like this or I don't like that. I like this person and I don't like this, or I kind of like this person, et cetera. And it's a detrimental state of mind. It's a common state of mind, but a detrimental state of mind. Pleasure or displeasure or pleasant or unpleasant is not the same as like or dislike.

[78:10]

And, you know, if... You know, and when you see something like in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, if you're looking at this as a teaching, and you see that the first one has... It's fairly elaborate by comparison. You have four postures, four elements... the parts of the body, activity, breath, and so forth. And this one's just what? Pleasant and unpleasant. And then mind and phenomena are quite complex again. You can get a sense that this is the hinge of the practice, or the bridge. It's the way in which, if you understand it, all the other three turns. And the distinction, I think the best way to present it, it's a distinction between like and dislike and pleasant and unpleasant. And so I tried to think of some way to, some examples.

[79:15]

If I scratch Sophia's face, if I... touch Sophia's face like this, she likes it. If I scratched it, which she does to herself a lot, I could cut her fingernails, you know, constantly. She makes, actually scratches herself. She doesn't like it. Or it's unpleasant. We could say she doesn't like it, but I think we have to really be careful with words here. It's useful to be careful with words here. because we also have the distinction here between feeling and emotion. Like and dislike is more on the side of emotion. Pleasant and unpleasant is more on the side of feeling. And in particular, as I emphasize, being aware of non-graspable feeling. Like there's a feeling in the room now, but you can't grasp it. But we're all part of

[80:16]

I couldn't say exactly what it is. There's no words for it. It's too subtle and too fluctuating. Okay. If I say we have a little garbage pail that we use on the counter for compost and stuff like that, and if I took Sophia's head, picked her up by the feet, maybe, stuck her head down in the garbage pail. I've never done this, but... She'd go, ugh. She wouldn't like, I mean, she wouldn't, it would be unpleasant, the smell of the garbage. If Marie Louise comes in, and I open the garbage pail, and she, ugh, you know, she doesn't like it either. I mean, she doesn't, it's unpleasant to her. It's hard for me to keep it straight. But if I knocked the garbage pail onto the floor, and there was garbage all over the kitchen floor, I could bring Sophia in.

[81:24]

She'd go, oh, but she wouldn't care. She wouldn't dislike it. It's just unpleasant. But if Marie Louise came in, she would dislike it as well as it would be unpleasant. Do you see the difference? For Sophia, it's the same as smelling a garbage pail. It's a simple like, unpleasant or unpleasant. It's not in the category of like and dislike. But when you like and dislike, it brings up all kinds of other things, all kinds of associations. Why did you do that? Or why are you so clumsy, you know, as usual, blah, blah, blah. And then other associations. You're always clumsy or something like that, you know. Aren't you supposed to be mindful? But that has nothing to do with pleasant and unpleasant. That has to do with likes and dislikes. And the likes and dislikes open you to mental association.

[82:26]

I'll take it. Now, Sophia's interest in things, which shapes her attention, and shapes her consciousness, and so forth, that interest is affected by pleasant and unpleasant. If it's unpleasant, she is less interested. If it's pleasant, she's interested. And that's that interest is, we could say, rooted actually in appreciative knowing. I'm trying to, again, find some words. Appreciative knowing So she wants to know about something and she picks this up and, you know, it's okay, it's a little cold.

[83:30]

Let's say that she picks up something that's hot, it's unpleasant or it's quite hot, but still it's rooted in interest, in curiosity. What I'm making here is that If you practice the fourth foundation of mindfulness, part of it is really beginning to be aware of pleasant and unpleasant and aware of when they become like and dislike. And when they begin to be... bring in all kinds of other associations. So if I were to try to draw it, perhaps... Maybe we have something like phenomena.

[84:44]

And... mind. We have body. Now, if you could find yourself free of Likes and dislikes. If you can really... You see, there's three things usually. Pleasant, unpleasant, and... Sometimes they say neutral. It's better to say neither. It's neither pleasant nor it's unpleasant. Now it's more difficult to like and dislike. I neither like it or dislike it. It's very hard to get out of likes and dislikes. There's no kind of neither like nor dislike once you're in that state of mind.

[85:48]

So this practice requires you. This isn't enlightenment. This is a craft. This practice may be rooted in enlightenment. You wouldn't be aware of it unless you have an intuition of enlightenment. aspiration of enlightenment. But it's a craft, and you don't get it unless you simply develop the ability, and this is part of what mindfulness is about, develop the ability to notice when something's pleasant and something's unpleasant, and when something pleasant becomes like, when something unpleasant becomes dislike. It's just something, you know, the mind that accompanies, the liquid that accompanies pleasant is different than the liquid which accompanies like and dislike. The liquid of mind. And that is something, if you begin to find the difference, it's a huge difference again.

[86:56]

These small differences make a big difference. So if I were going to draw this, I would draw something like this. So it would be something like this if I did it over here. If you have... If it's like and dislike, then mind comes down. This would be like and dislike. And if it's if it's pleasant and unpleasant, then it's like this. And if I were to draw it another way, do you understand what I'm doing here?

[87:59]

Okay. If this foundation of mindfulness is really about likes and dislikes, then all of Mental things come right down into the body, and take over the body, basically. Unless you make the distinction between pleasant and unpleasant, and like and dislike, that's what happens. If you can remain in pleasant and unpleasant, then the body, this, so, okay. This morning I spoke about when the body has presence as well as stuff. What, okay? You're with me there. We can call this presence something like essence of mind. Or as I said, body mind. So essence of mind is something connected with the body itself.

[89:10]

It's not thinking. Okay? So, if I were to try to make another poem, if I can get free of likes and dislikes, of course we have likes and dislikes. But we don't always have to be involved in this pendulum of like and dislike. Maybe the first way, or a good way to notice it, is to just take an inventory of how often your perception is involved with like and dislike. You see something, and it's your first reaction. I like that. I don't like that. Or can you move to neutral? You neither like nor dislike. It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

[90:14]

So, I would say, if I drew it... So if this is mind, mind will influence phenomena, and will influence the body. So this is phenomena, and this is the body. If mind is dominant, it takes over the body, and it takes over phenomena. That's a good idea. Okay. If we have... phenomena, mind, body.

[91:25]

This is phenomena, mind, body, okay? Where is the second foundation of mindfulness then? It's here. essence of mind begins to be part of all three. And the key to that is this neither liking or disliking, or being free of the pendulum of liking and disliking. So something happens. Sure. I keep hearing, you know, sort of reverberating that the teisho of the actual body is the harboring that we are.

[92:29]

Is this... The teisho? The teisho of the actual body. Well, anyway, the actual body, yeah. Teisho. Taste of the actual bodies, the heart of them, and the ear. I don't know the phrase. We recite it when we recite precepts, and I think it was, I always get confused. I think it's Dogen, or it's Bodhidharma. Okay. Or it's you? No, no, no. Anyway, right now it's me. Right now it's you. The teisho of the actual body, the teaching of the actual body, is that what they mean? Have you heard this, Miriam? Oh, you're shaking your head. Affirmatively, yes. The teaching of the actual body is? Is the harbour and the weir.

[93:28]

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