Okay, so now I hope we can have some discussion. And I don't know if Ravi needs to, but can sort of moderate it, but we can just talk. But would you like me to start with where we left off about... Mm-hmm. Because I think it's quite a good example of the different concept of the body in a yoga culture. I remember Sukhiroshi, one of my favorite observations was, someone said to Sukhiroshi, my teacher, what is it about Americans that you notice most? What do you notice being in America? And he said, let you do things with one hand.

[01:04]

And I went, huh? And then I began to watch. And if somebody asks you at, you know, a meal, would you pass me the salt? And just hand the salt over. And I watched Zuchirushi. Someone said, could you give me the salt? He would pick up the salt. If he couldn't reach it with two hands, his second hand would be involved. And he would pick it up. bring it into his body into this line and then he would turn and pass and I watched this and it was like a revelation and it's really the difference too between the Japanese car and the American car because you're passing the person to the next place so the idea is is that The salt or the bell is an excuse to pass yourself because the salt is just an entity.

[02:11]

It's actually, but you can make it an activity. So you bring it in. It's almost like you empower it in this field. And then you turn this, almost like there's a light here. You turn this. And that really, also in yoga culture, you don't really turn your head, you turn your body. And I don't know how much this conforms with your experience and Indian experience, but it's okay to just turn your head, of course, but... It feels rude or mental only. It could turn your body as it feels much more polite. So that basic idea is in this sense of your hands come together. And usually you can tell I would say third generation Japanese no longer hold their teacup here and here. But if their parents are from Japan or even grandparents in Japan, usually if I see them in a restaurant and they're like, I know that they're probably second generation Japanese or probably not yet third.

[03:23]

Because this is very deeply ingrained, the sense of the body. It's almost like there's a little shelf here. That's a little slower than I went before. Yeah, very good. Thank you. I was going to comment on one difference that I know one of the questions I get is that with the bowing, there's often a connection in the West with humiliation. Really? bowing before someone else is to put yourself on level before and I think that goes away from the way the yogic thinking about things yeah well of course most of our supposedly who knows for sure is to put the right hand out to show there's no weapon in it things like that to show you're a safe guy you know and um But it's actually, I know this isn't to humble yourself before another person.

[04:33]

It's to join another person. But it is good if mentally you can put yourself lower than the person you're with. Because we generally put ourselves slightly higher than the person we're with. So it's a good practice to see if you can feel yourself lower than the person you're with. And to counteract our tendency to kind of like have the edge. Okay, what else? You said you had lots of questions. Yes, I do. You're being polite. Yes, of course I am. to get into, first of all, when you talk about the meditative state, the fourth state of mind, there are other practices of going into a state of relaxation. Part of what some of us, you know, working with us to lower your

[05:43]

stress in your body and go down to an alternative state of mind. You can do it like sort of your self-hypnosis. You can do that mentally or you can do it more with the muscularity methods. What would you say is the similarities and what might be the differences between those states and the negative state of mind? Well, the way I'd look at it in Buddhism is that the practice of mindfulness, which is in the simplest sense just to bring attention to what you're doing.

[06:47]

More fundamentally, it's to bring attention to attention itself. But when you bring attention to what you're doing, part of that is to notice whether your jaw is tight, whether your body is tight, or whether you relax. And noticing that, just noticing it, we usually relax a little. So the sense of finding an ease, as I said earlier, a sense of relaxation, would be definitely part of mindfulness practice. Sort of inadvertently even, not even intentional. But in meditation practice, one of the many things we might talk about is creating an initial state of mind, what I would mean by initial state of mind. What is the starting point? When is every moment a starting point? So what would be an initial state of mind? one of the aspects of meditation practice is to, first of all, accept, always accept whatever it is.

[08:01]

So, for instance, when you meditate, if you're going to meditate and you're in a shitty state of mind, that's your meditation. You don't say, I'm going to meditate until I stop having a shitty state of mind. It's unavoidable to want to do that. But your attitude is, this is what I am right now, not exactly who. I feel shitty. So you just sit there and feel shitty, you know. But what you're doing is you're bringing awareness to that feeling shitty, which is different than being consciously shitty. This idea of an ideal posture and what you're accepting your posture. It's the same idea as you... notice that you're not relaxed, and then you have a feeling, I could be more relaxed.

[09:10]

And you let that intention or feeling do its work. And ultimately, zazen is about feeling thoroughly relaxed inside, thoroughly complete inside and outside. And again, one practice I think is useful to do, basic practice, is to notice when you feel nourished. Now let me bring in another yogic truism. All states of mind have a physical component. all sentient physical states of the body have a mental component. So that means that any state of mind you have has a physical component.

[10:13]

So once you learn the physical component that goes with a state of mind, you can literally tune in that state of mind as if you had a dial. So you can create physical feeling and generate a state of mind. That's also part of mindfulness practice, but that takes some time before your mindfulness is sensitive enough to notice these things. So that is a background. A good practice is to notice when you feel nourished. So say you're taking a walk. I saw you beat by this morning on your run. And from the point of view of a yoga jogger, you would jog at the speed you feel nourished. So you wouldn't push yourself to go fast. You wouldn't push yourself by a stopwatch necessarily. I mean, you can if you want to, even if you're training or something. But generally, each day you'd find, like some days you feel like you can drive faster.

[11:18]

Some days you don't feel comfortable driving above the speed limit. So you find out, it's quite helpful to do it when you're taking a walk or something. You take a walk and you, There's a tree and a group of trees and maybe a shop or something. And you just walk so that you feel nourished. And you try that on a regular basis until you really know what nourishment feels. Then you can begin to do things much faster in other ways and still maintain that sense of nourishment. So that's in a way related to the idea of being relaxed, but this is how I would approach it. And... And there has to be a certain rigor, in other words. You decide feeling nourished is more important than not.

[12:22]

So you tend to limit your activity to what nourishes you. And you may sacrifice that feeling if you really have to, whether it's an emergency or something. But in general, you try to feel tuned to that, which is a kind of, you'll find out, it's a kind of pace that's in connectedness with your circumstances. When you're out of tune with your circumstances, you don't feel nourished. The wind, and with each group of people, or each situation, that place where you feel nourished is a little different. Well, that's a rather long response to what you said, but it's the territory. Yeah. Anyone else? Would you please talk a little bit more about breathing? Okay.

[13:30]

What interests you about breathing, other than it seems to be necessary? Well, the connectedness to life, you know. purpose and the meaning of it for you in your practice. Well, breathing is the semi-autonomic bodily process that we can participate in more easily than our heartbeat and things like that. And the most important dynamic in relationship to breathing and being alive, from the point of view of yoga culture, is to have an intention to bring attention to the breath.

[14:50]

Now, an intention is a non-dis... is a... I don't know about Swedish, but in English and German, there simply are not words for the gradation of... for the gradations, the territories of one's connected experience. So we have to make up terms, you know, Heideggerian sense with hyphenated words and so forth. But because an intention is a thought. It's a mental formation. But in Buddhist terms, it's not a thought. Thoughts mean discursive thinking, sequential thinking.

[15:54]

So if you have a mental formation that's like, I will bring attention to the breath, that actually, we wouldn't call that a thought. We'd call it a mental formation. Now another example of the difference, if I say to myself, if I develop the habit of naming things, so I say, is that an MP3 or something like that? MP17? I don't know. A recorder bell. floor what is your name? Leonard actually those are mental formations or naming but they're not thinking they're not they're names but not words because words are part of sentences so if I just every time I look at something I name it I'm actually cutting off thinking If I just name you, you, war, and I get in the habit of doing that, you actually cut off discursive thinking.

[17:06]

So an intention, for instance, let's approach the definition of awareness. When you go to sleep at night, It's quite common for people to be able to, without an alarm clock, to decide when they're going to wake up. So you decide to wake up at, say, 6.02 a.m. And surprisingly, people can wake up exactly 6.02 a.m. They open their eyes and there's the clock and it says 6.02. How do you do that? You're not conscious during the night, not normal consciousness. but you can have an intention. So the intention travels through some mental medium or bodily, body-mind medium and wakes you up at a specific time, but you're not thinking. So what is that? Well, okay, if we imagine that states of mind, dreaming mind and awake mind, are different liquids, to use that metaphor, then we can imagine the liquids have different viscosities.

[18:18]

Okay, so when you wake up in the morning, as conceptual consciousness begins to form itself, dreams sink out of sight. They won't float, so to speak, in conceptual consciousness. Now, if you have a dream that you particularly would like to go back to and there's no pressure to get up, If you can remember a shard, shard, it's a piece of pottery you find, you know. You can remember a shard of the dream, a remnant of the dream. By the way, if there's some word I use, if you don't know, just ask me, because I'm very interested in words. So I'm very happy to stop and think about it a minute. So if you can find a shard or piece of the dream, it can often bring you back into the dream. But if you can also know the physical feeling of dreaming mind, you can pull the mind away from the concepts of consciousness and generate dreaming mind, which then sometimes will re-enter you into the dream, which has been going on underneath, and you enter at a later point in the dream.

[19:29]

So you begin to have, and one of the things a yogi does is not just do sasen. very important practice is to be aware, particularly of the process of going to sleep and waking up. And to get, so that you can be awake through the little jump that occurs when you go into sleep. We all do this, but to make it a yogic practice is assumed in yogic culture that you do this. But most of us don't assume, we just go to sleep if we can. Okay. So, discursive thinking doesn't carry forward very well in dreaming mind or non-dreaming deep sleep. But an intention, which is not discursive thinking, intention generates a different kind of mind. So, if you have an intention...

[20:33]

It generates a non-discursive mind. Does that make sense? Okay. Discursive thinking generates ordinary conceptual mind. Okay. Let me check. You all know what discursive thinking is? Is that a concept? You're having a discussion with yourself in your mind. This leads to this, this, I think about this. That's where we need to start. This is a nice room, etc. So that's discursive thinking. comparative thinking, conceptual thinking. One of the big recognitions in Buddhism is that consciousness is conceptually constructed. Consciousness is a conceptual construct. It's a tapestry of concepts. The importance of it, I can say it now, but the importance of that wasn't recognized for hundreds of years in Buddhism, and it took a few hundred years for the fact of it to be absorbed.

[21:36]

So I can say it like it's obvious. But in fact, these things are hard to notice and to recognize. Oh yeah, consciousness is a conceptual construct, a web of interlocking concepts with nested memory behind, pyramided behind each each item of the, each concept. Like a puzzle, like a picture puzzle. Based on memory. It's rooted in memory. So, what I'm doing when I'm trying to talk to you, is I'm trying to feel the conceptual construct of your consciousness, and then I occasionally try to remove a piece from it. And see how you readjust the puzzle. Okay. So, Now, what I just said is a technique. But it can be a technique of how you relate and communicate and so forth to others. Now, again, I don't think that in the practical life most of us have, these are so important, but if you begin to be aware of them,

[22:49]

accept their likelihood, let me say, instead of accept their truth, but accept their likelihood, you begin to notice the world in this way. It's like you hear a new word, you find a new word, and then you start hearing it used. You hadn't noticed it for 20 years, and then suddenly you see it here and there in paragraphs. But that is an intentional state of mind. When you notice a new word, Basically, it enters what I call intentional mind, and it stays there present while you're thinking, you're reading a cereal box, or you're reading some essay or movie review, oh, and the word pops out. It pops out because you have an intention behind discursive mind that's aware. Okay, so intention generates a different mind than discursive thinking. Okay, all right. And an intentional mind can be present during dreaming mind. So you have an intention to wake up at 6.02, and you wake up pretty close to 6.02, maybe exactly.

[24:04]

And you can wake up, according to the real time, and you can wake up toward an incorrectly set clock. Anyway, okay, so you have an intention, which is a particular state of mind. to bring attention, which is more physically engaged words. In other words, words are like little locuses. A locus? What's a locus? A center. Where things are located. A locus. They're like a little location which gathers energy. So you can direct things, particularly if you have a bodily relationship to words. Each word will gather energy. I mean, if I say to you, who is breathing?

[25:15]

Can you ask yourself that question? Swedish, English, who is breathing? Then ask yourself, what is breathing? Really a different question. And it's just, what's the difference between W-H-O and W-H-A-T? It's just W with a hat after it and W with a hoe after it. And so W with a hoe after it gathers energy in us in a different way. Who gathers energy in a different way than what? So attention, if you say in German... Whoa, you'll jump you know if I say attention if there's a physic if I say intention Nobody jumps But I say attention people you jump so there's a physicality in the word attention So at least in English, so you bring intention You have an intention you develop an intention and

[26:24]

to bring attention to your breath. And you make that a fact of your life. So you have an... Now that's most important. The intention is more important than doing it. It's the intention that will do the work. So you have an intention to bring attention to your breath. Okay. Okay. So... Now, then the question is, you can all bring attention to your breath for a few moments very easily. Every one of you can do it. Anyone can do it. Not just exceptional folks like you. But most people cannot do it continuously. Why is something that's so easy to do for a short period of time so difficult to do continuously?

[27:31]

That's one of the most important questions in my life. Why is something so easy to do for a short period of time? Okay, should I really just go on with this? It's okay with you. It's okay with me. Yes, please. Somebody might ask you another question, and we'll get another point to go on with. Because, you see, you know, I've been doing this for, you know, not very long, but more than four decades. And so I have asked myself all these questions and tried to puzzle them out, right? And... and uh so mostly i'm speaking to people like when i do a seminar like i know her i don't know something 80 or 90 people almost everyone in the room i'd practice with 10 15 20 years there's hundreds of years of experience of hearing me say these things i try to never say it in the same way because i get bored or i don't even know how to say it in the same way but um

[28:35]

So to say these things to people who are not familiar with my going on about nothing, that's a Zen. Going on about nothing. No thing. Sorry to be long-sighted. If we said, And one of the most important ideas in Buddhism is the idea of the non-self or no-self or freedom from self or something. Most of this is just badly understood, badly taught, etc. You have to have a functioning self to live in this world. In fact, you need a strong self in order to practice. But

[29:38]

The difference is, Buddhism, you see the self as a function and a construct and not as an entity. So if somebody asks me, are you Richard Baker? I can't help but, I mean, I don't like to because it sounds cute or clever, but I can't help but answer sometimes. Because I don't know, are you Richard Baker? That's a societal, social definition I have, and I sometimes live out whatever that is. But you really, after a while, it's everything an activity. This is an activity, which is sometimes Richard Baker, and sometimes Zen Tatsu. My book's name is Zen Tatsu, and a friend of mine calls me Hotsy Totsy. So sometimes I'm Hotsy Totsy. Once you start looking at self as a function and not an entity, And the importance of the difference between an entity and a function again takes time to absorb.

[30:46]

Because these are like the conceptual puzzle by which we identify the world. These are different pieces, different emphases. The first function of self is separation. So that, I mean your immune system is a kind of thing that decides what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you. And your body couldn't function unless it could get rid of what doesn't belong to you, disease, and so forth. You have to know this is my voice and not a voice in your head, or not Ravi's voice, or your voice. What's your name again? Katya. Katya. Katya. Like Russian? Katya? Yeah, like Russian Katya. I gotcha. If you don't know, you know you're a basket case. That means you should be in a mental hospital.

[31:47]

So we have to establish separation. We also have to establish connection. So, now, in the way I grew up, Connectedness was... I mean, what was assumed was separation. Connectedness was not assumed that you were supposed to be polite, you were supposed to be nice to people, but that was kind of like... Politeness was connected. But to directly experience connectedness with others, this was not a category that was emphasized. But in yogic culture, connectedness is what then is there. Separation is tolerated. But connecting... Okay. In many ways, we'll come back to connectedness.

[32:52]

The third function of self is continuity. You have to be able to establish continuity from moment to moment. If I'm looking at you here, and I turn over here, that's a drug experience. Look at the beer. I'm in trouble. I don't know where I am. I can't walk down the street because I don't know where I am. I turn here and that's gone. So you have to establish mental continuity from moment to moment. Or continuity from moment to moment. And the second, I think, I don't really have an ideal word for it, but let's call it context. Yeah. And so this would be the poor function of self. And context, you know, if a person has drained in, for example, and they can see this room completely clearly, they understand everything, but they can't fit it into a narrative context.

[34:05]

They don't know what to do. It has no meaning. Context is what supplies meaning. So, these four functions of self. Now, if we accept that, then you can look at how this is the Buddhist idea of self. Not necessarily Christian or Jungian. No, this is the Buddhist idea of self. Once you accept this kind of definition, then you can begin to understand what Buddhism means by freedom of self. But if you have a vague idea of self and self-realization and so forth, it doesn't make any sense. You really need to practice effectively. You have to have a clear definition of what's meant by self-consciousness. Otherwise you're going to be vaguely practicing well-being. But you're kind of... It's not... Okay.

[35:13]

Now, continuity here. That's why I put this on clip chart. Now, I can't... I can just step over here and sit down, right? But this is a front. You have a front. I have a front. I have a peripersonal and extra-personal space. Auditorily, I'm more sensitive to my back than the front. There's a real kind of space here. I recognize that space in my activity. If I just go like this and sit down, I'm not recognizing front, back, left, right, etc. Now, it may seem weird, but for me, there's an invisible structure here. that I'm moving within. And I mean, if it was water, you could see it. You could see the fish down there. But we don't see the medium, so you kind of have to imagine it.

[36:15]

But here I'm with you. I'm generating with you. We're generating together a shared, connected space. And the more I define in my actions that shared space, the more connected we'll all feel. And connected underneath conceptual consciousness. So, when I'm here, what I do, customarily, I don't want to say too Buddhist, so I'll give a little quick bow. I give a little bow because I'm recognizing this space. So, in other words, I don't think that I live in a container. If you live in container space, that's non-yoga space. This room, if I come in this door, it's a different room than if I come in that door. So this room is already a different room than it was this morning because of our activity.

[37:17]

That's why I wasn't there. Someone has to do the change. I don't want to make this too complicated. So not only am I generating space, I'm folding out space and folding in space. In other words, say when you're jogging, take that as an example, you don't want somebody to stop and ask you directions because there's a kind of space you're in and it's folded in. We call that wisdom. Compassion when folded out. And sometimes it's real fun, and you can... So when I bow here, I'm folding in. Because this is where I'm going to sit, where I do zazen. And then I turn, and I'm folding out.

[38:21]

So I am articulating a space here that's simultaneously folded in and folded out. Old enough that I find it very funny. A friend of mine was older than I am, was bending down to get something. He said, now I'm down here. Is there anything you'd like? Yeah. See, that's another space. A geriatric space. Okay. All right. Now, the reason it's difficult to have attention on your breath continuously is because for us, particularly as Westerners,

[39:37]

My guess is, being a student of Ivan Illich, that probably wasn't so true in the Middle Ages before 1200. Is that we establish self-continuity in our thinking. So what happens is you bring attention to the breath and It's fairly easy to do. But very quickly, you go to thinking. Now, do you go to thinking because you're thinking so interesting? Well, it's often not very interesting at all. But it's how you're establishing mental continuity. And if we don't establish that mental continuity, if it's any way seriously interrupted, we feel crazy. We feel lost, you know. So, when you bring attention, you have intention to bring attention to the breath.

[40:46]

If you do it, if you have this intention, and you do it sometimes, you do it sometimes, you do it sometimes, maybe it takes a few years actually. It's not a waste of time during those few years, you know. Suddenly the rubber band attaching the continuity of identity to thinking snaps. And suddenly continuity is established by your physical location. You establish continuity from moment to moment in your breath and in your body and in your situation. That is actually what's meant by now in Buddhism. So we can also take the statement of Dogen. He says, the continuous practice, Dogen was a 13th century Zen teacher in my lineage and now a little bit in your lineage.

[41:51]

He said, the continuous practice which actualizes itself is your practice just now. The continuous practice, which actualizes itself, is your practice just now. Then he recursively defines this further. The now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. Now that's one of the most dramatic statements I think in Buddhism or in philosophical culture or world view culture or something. The now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. In other words, the present moment that we experience

[42:52]

is not some kind of natural container moment that's the same for all of us. We actually, the now we exist in, is generated by us. And it can be generated through self-referential thinking, or it can be generated through non-self-referential noticing, thinking, etc. So, it's a major shift when you shift from Establishing continuity in thinking, where am I doing this, what am I going to do next, etc., which is always past, future referenced, to establishing continuity in your breath and in your body and in phenomena. Once that shift happens, which is, again, probably the single most important shift in realizable or realized Buddhist practice.

[43:59]

Once you do that, what people say, what people's going on, I mean, it's all somewhat important, but your sense of location and identity are interrelated. So at all times you feel just where you are. I call this situated immediacy. Situated is like to sit or to sight or to situation. Situated immediacy. In immediacy, you're situated. You're defined through your immediate situation. Other things are part of it too, but your basic reference point is situated immediacy. You can call it now. But the situated immediacy is not defined through self-referential thinking. That would be one thing that Buddhism means by not being free of the usual idea of self.

[45:12]

Now, you can understand at this point why the samurai like this. Because if you're in a sword fight with someone, if you don't want to be thinking about, you know, geez, am I going to do this right? Am I going to win or lose? You know, you're at lose if you're thinking that way. And if you've ever watched samurai folks practice or something, they attack on the exhale. That's when you're strong. And so when two people are fighting, like David Beck knows all of this stuff, David has one of his practices. He sits in a room with his partner. He works with his partner all the time. I guess you're going to meet David next year. You're going to come next year too. Okay. Have they met David yet? No. So David and they sit in an utterly dark room. David is a karate teacher. karate is it karate yeah um anyway they sit in a completely dark room and then they see if who will attack first and if you can defend yourself so they both sit there for a while and then they move and the other person can't see anything you can only feel so if you're good you can always counter the other person's attack in utter darkness and um

[46:38]

So if you're thinking about when's he going to attack her, you know, you just better be there. So from that point of view, situated immediacy, I mean, you're born and you die in situated immediacy. Your baby will be born in situated immediacy. That's undefining stuff. If it's not born and situated immediately, I mean, you better have a doctor who's right there, you're right there, everything's right there, and the baby... But, ideally, from the point of view of Zen, your entire life is situated immediately, not just when you're born and die. But usually we wander off in between, and you know... So... So what happens when you bring, when breath rests in your, when attention rests, the resting point, the home base of attention is breath, body, phenomena.

[47:45]

You're in a different world. Simply the way psychology works, the way anxiety works, the way loneliness works, the way grief works, everything is different. Just by this. And anyone can do it. It helps to do zazen, but basically it's a practice of mindfulness rooted in such a simple thing as to have an intention to bring attention to your breath. To the breath. Not really your breath. Like we're sharing each other's lung and air right now. Now, one last thing. You may say, well, this is impossible. I can't do it. People do say this. Of course, that's looking at it as an employee. If you're the owner of a company, if there's a problem in the company, it's your problem. If you're an employee, it's the company's problem. So if you say, I can't do this, you're defining yourself from the outside like you're an employee of yourself.

[48:51]

But if you're the owner of this company, if I can't do it, this is my problem. There must be a way. It must be solvable. I have to solve it because this is me. This is whatever this is. Okay. Now, an actual fact, we all in one way know how to do this already because all of us have a continuous, you know, people imagine it. People imagine it like, now I'm paying attention to my breath. Now I'm paying attention to my breath. Now I'm paying attention to my breath. That's too mechanical. Actually, right now, all of you have attention to your posture. It's one of the things we teach children. Bring attention to their posture. And we do it effortlessly. Often we even know where we're sleeping at night. On the side, right, back, etc. So we bring attention to our posture most of the 24 hours.

[49:57]

We know how we're sitting. And so we can do it. But we don't establish the continuity of self through our posture. A yogi does. But most of us don't. So it's learnable. We learn it as a child and me. I mean, to various degrees, we all bring attention to our posture. If we can do it to our posture, we can do it to our breath. I say that to give you hope. Because it really, it's probably the main difference between an adept practitioner and a, you know, fellow traveler. Adept. Adept. Adept. Okay, that was a long rip on the breath. Thank you for watching. I learned meditation with sound. So what's the difference between meditation with sound or with the breath?

[51:02]

This is more Hindu-style meditation. TM. TM, yeah. Well, you know, I've been around since TM has been around, so I'm somewhat familiar with it, and certainly have people who practice with me who've started with TM. So since I don't know it from the inside, I can't really comment on it. But basically the Hindu idea is, Indian idea is that in the beginning was the sound and not the words, and there's a sound of vibrational quality to everything. And this is to some extent emphasized in Buddhism, but not so much. And although the largest schools of Buddhism in China and Japan are the pure land schools, and their main practice is saying a mantra

[52:15]

And he said, uses such phrases but generally do we use a phrase that has pure land used the phrase as a way of cutting off discursive thought and a way of concentrating and a way of changing what kind of space you live in. You can tell us how it's affected you. In Zen, we would tend to give some kind of conceptual content to the phrase. Like you might start with the phrase, just now is enough. Or let's take already connected. There's an assumption that we're separate. There's an assumption that space separates.

[53:18]

But space is actually whatever space is. There's no such thing as empty space. It's connecting. I mean... We all have, male and female, but more obviously females, have a monthly connection to the moon. There's no strings going to the moon. Somehow we're connected to the moon, the tides, the oceans, and as I say, men too. But we think space separates us. That's a concept. That's a cultural concept, to space separate. The yoga concept is space connects them. So you can counteract the conceptual, the cultural concept of space separating by creating an intention to have in the background of your thinking

[54:21]

already connected. So if I look at you, I feel already connected. If I feel already connected, I don't feel I have to do something special or in some way get to know you. I'm already connected. I start out connected. And then that is defined in terms of conceptual consciousness, etc. But that's a very different view if you start out connected. So from that point of view, Zen would use basically the idea of repeating a phrase, but they would give it a role in the conceptual puzzle. Okay. But it's But Zen Buddhism is a particular way to shape the mind, body, and relationship to activity. The Maharishi's teaching is a somewhat different way.

[55:27]

The Hindu approach is a different way. Many of the contemporary practices that have come into the West, which are variously influenced by Asia, are somewhat different ways. You're making a choice. They're not all pointing to the same truth. They're all paths leading into the same forest, into the same mystery. There's no idea in Buddhism that there's one truth, that basically God or theology. It's the idea that it's a mystery and we have paths that go into the mystery. I can tell you an anecdote about meeting the Maharishi. I met him once. It was early in my practice. I didn't know who he was. And I was at the University of California in Berkeley. I was one of the heads of adult education in the humanities and sciences and engineering, just as a job.

[56:35]

I was 25 years old. So I had a job. I'd never wanted to be part of our culture, because I grew up in the Second World War. And every day my parents listened to H.V. Carlton Bourne and Edward R. Murrow and so forth. Do you know who these guys are? Murrow you might know because there was a movie about him recently. Every day I listened to what was going on in Germany and France and so forth. And I just decided I don't want to be a human being. This is what we human beings do to each other. Later I accepted this is what it is to be a human being. But in those days, so I decided I didn't want to be part of our culture. I didn't want to put money in a bank. I didn't know what the banks invested in. And I went to Harvard, but I walked out of Harvard just before I got my degree because I didn't want a Harvard degree because it's all about status and all that stuff, you know.

[57:41]

Starting at the top, I wanted to start at the bottom. So I was going to live by collecting soda bottles and turning them in. I was not going to participate in a career in the society. And... But then, practicalities, I had a, I got married, I had a baby on the way, and we had to eat, so I had to get a job. So, I had a conversion experience. So, I had to get a job, so I ended up, I knew somebody by chance, and they got me this job where I, organized programs for adults in the university. And so I got to know, I did the Berkeley Poetry Conference, I did the LSD Conference, the first big conference in the United States on LSD.

[58:43]

I never took LSD, but I did the big conference, because I decided to put all my eggs in the basket of Zen. Do you have that expression, to put all your eggs in the same basket? Yeah. They don't seem to have it in Germany. I always knew Swedes were more like Americans. Swedes are like the Midwesterners. Yeah, certainly. I mean, my first wife's family is from Minneapolis, and Minneapolis is half Swedish and Norwegian, and the other half is sort of Anglos, or I don't know what you'd call them. And it's a nice city, partly because of it. Really, Minneapolis is a really decent city. Most of the companies are family-owned and so forth, and they're much more socially responsible when they're family-owned than when they're stock-owned. So anyway, so I organized various things, you know, for engineers and scientists and other people.

[59:53]

So I knew the campus well, all to say. I knew the campus well. I knew the various venues where you could have lectures and things like that. So I'm walking along rather late, sort of close to nine o'clock, I think, from something I had to do. I'm going across the campus and there was a big crowd around this one building. And it was about, you know, eight deep at the door. Eight people deep. I didn't know what it was. But I didn't have to get home right away, so I knew the building well, so I went around the side and climbed in the window. Yeah. And, you know, it was not so high, and I climbed in. Big windowsill. There were already some people sitting on it. And I sat down there, and here was this nice little guy with about five Hawaiian... loops of flowers, whatever they're called, around his neck. And he was sitting there speaking in Indian English, you know, with his beard.

[60:56]

I don't know who he was. Anyway, it was kind of nice and it was just ending. So I was there for about 10 minutes while he was being happy. And so he finished and got up and he started out and people streamed after him and I found myself carried along in the stream. And suddenly I was standing right beside him because he was getting in a car and they were talking about how to get him to Canada. I don't know how he was going to get to Canada. I can't imagine he was driving. Anyway, they were getting him in the car and talking about he was going to Canada next. I think it was his first visit to the United States, maybe. This was about 1962, 1963, somewhere there. And I'd been practicing only about a year or something like that. So I'm standing beside this nice-looking little Indian man, and people were around him, and I suddenly had the thought, he's pretty good.

[61:56]

And then I thought, why did I think he's pretty good? Because like an intuition came, like it was true. He's pretty good. And then I realized I'd coordinated my breathing with his without knowing I was doing it, but I'd learned it from my teacher to do it, that you kind of really, you adjust your breathing to each person you're with, or your breathing adjusts, you don't do it. And so I just, without even knowing I did it at that point, found myself breathing with him, and then the thought appeared, he's pretty good. And then he got in the car and went off, and I left, and I've always had a feeling, oh, Maharishi, he's pretty good. So you see the role breathing plays outside of thinking in connectedness. Okay. Yeah.

[62:58]

And what time are we going to eat? Twelve? So we should stop pretty soon. That's a lot of talking this morning. A lot of different stuff. Very interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Woven together. And... I think if you understand what yoga culture is about, with or without practice it begins to affect your way of viewing the world. Practice tends to anchor it in your daily life. How would you generally say that it would affect in viewing the world? Well, I quote Yuan Wu, who was one of the best authorities in Chinese then, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records, one of the main texts for then.

[64:00]

He said, if where you stand is rooted in reality, your actions have power. So the more you see things as they actually exist, the more your actions, your thoughts, your presence will have power. Effective. That's just a short answer. And one thing that we could talk about this afternoon are what's called the two truths. And the two truths are the conventional truth and the fundamental truth. And why that's important, what that distinction is, I think can be at the center of our discussion. But maybe we can... Do you have something you'd like to say?

[65:05]

Or are you just swimming? I'm just swimming. You want to say something? I was going to say one aspect that I became aware of, that you mentioned earlier that space connects. And I realized, we talk about space in Western culture all the time, the connection, we just don't realize it. You ask how far Gothenburg is from us here, and you measure the space in between, and that's a connection. We're just not used to thinking about it in that way when you become aware. We always measure space and connection. We always measure space between us. And that in itself, the connection. So there's these kind of subtle changes that begin to... I realized this. I didn't think about it. It just happened. Subtle changes that begin to take place where my experience is that we get another sense of awareness of what we are. Observing through all our senses. I give it up to you because we are not limited to the context of the cultural background that we have.

[66:10]

We're open to see it, nothing to wait. Well, related or confirming what Ravi says, we have the four directions. or eight, you know, north, south, east, west, north, east, etc. And we tend to think of them as north is that way. But what's called the ten directions in China, Japan, and so forth, the ten directions are the eight cardinal directions and up and down. And they're all thought of as coming towards you. So this is coming towards you. This is coming up towards you. This is coming towards you. If you feel it that way, it's different. And we count, in Germany, this is one. In America, this is recently okay. But this is definitely not one in America.

[67:11]

This is one. And we go, one, two, three, four, five. And the Japanese? One, two, three, four, five. That's actually quite different. You're pulling things into yourself. So why don't we sit for a moment and then they'll have lunch. I ate so many swedishes. I'm not sure I'm ready for lunch. Such a pleasure to be here. So if you know the ideal posture of cross-legged sitting, and for some reason it's better to sit on a chair, the ideal posture can inform how you sit on a chair.

[69:32]

It's harder to sit on a chair, actually. But if for some reason I had to do it, I would probably put something over my feet so I didn't have to worry about keeping them warm and I'd sit maybe shorter periods because it's harder to sit straight but I would sit not leaning back against the back or just very lightly touching the back mainly lifting through the back supporting my supporting the torso through the body, supporting the body through the torso, relaxing the shoulders. What I would usually do is suggest, and right now I'm not saying I should do it, but I usually would suggest that you have some conversation during each day or at least

[72:36]

once during our three days, maybe each day, in which you speak in Swedish with each other about what I'm talking about. So you kind of see if you agree on, how do you say, what did he mean in English? How would I say it in Swedish? Because making it your own in your own language is, I can't do it, but you can do it. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. You have two? Whatever we decided, I guess 2. Well, 12 to 2, and then we'll go from 2 to 5. Okay. The question is that we're leaving at 6. Okay. Do you want me to postpone it? No, no, no. No, it's not okay for you to postpone it. Fine, sure, sure. If you think it's too short a nap, then we can have a short lunch break. No, no, the idea was... Do we have to dress for dinner? No. Very informed. Never in Sweden. We go by boat, so it's good to have warm clothes. It's a ferry, so we can be inside.

[73:42]

Okay. That's very good. I love fairies. Boats. It's a boat. It's a fairy boat. Yeah. It's okay. Attention on attention. Attention. I like that. Attention. You need to answer the name attention on attention. Study your attention. Know your attention. You know, I was surprised someone broke into my suitcase. Coming here from Hamburg. I was coming here from Zurich. The lock had been broken off. Nothing was taken off. It was clear when they went through. So I'm trying to think, would it happen in Zurich? I can't imagine it happened here in Göttingen. It wasn't long ago. It wasn't long ago.

[74:57]

But they're quick, you know, at least in America. They have little tool wheels. They run their hand through for a camera or something. But I've never had that in Europe. But nothing's missing. It just surprised me. It's a short flight. Yeah. It's quite unusual. Yeah.

[75:15]

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