Yeah, we just finished, as some of you know, and some of you participated in, a seminar we call the discovery of the heart. Can you hear okay? Well, okay. And one of the things or part of what we discovered is this is not just the area of the heart but obviously also of the lungs. And is called sometimes the wind basis of consciousness and feelings. And perceptions.

[01:02]

Yeah, so here's this sense of perceptions and feelings and consciousness being here and not up here. And we're not going to start there this morning, but I just wanted to... Maybe we will end up there or get there during this practice week. Why this title, The Path of the Breath? We could also say, Taking the Path of the Breath. But you're already breathing. I think you are. So, if you're already breathing, isn't it redundant to say the path of the breath?

[02:20]

What turns something we're already doing into a path? Well, the answer is simple. Our attention turns breathing, our breathing into a path. And as I said, our attention is our most precious possession. Und wie ich schon erwähnt habe, die Aufmerksamkeit ist unsere kostbarste. Now the idea of a path in and through the breath ist schon sehr radikal.

[03:21]

What does it mean? It really means we don't need scriptures. We don't need any sort of sense of revealed teaching or outside ourselves teaching. The actual circumstances of our living Facts of our living can be the path. And what makes it a path? Again, attention. Yeah, Prajñātāra is considered to be Bodhidharma's teacher in India. And the third case in the Shoyaroka, the Book of Serenity.

[04:34]

Book of Serenity. And... The title shouldn't cause you any anxiety. Yeah, ich sollte mich nicht bedroht fühlen durch die heitere Gelassenheit. Yeah, and in the book of Serenity, the early cases establish the fundaments, the basis of Zen practice as Buddhist practice. So supposedly the Raja, an Indian Raja, invited... prajnatara, to a feast.

[05:53]

To a feast, a big meal. An Indian raja. Yeah, you know, like a king or something. Now, I don't know if he waited until there was appetizers served or they were halfway through the meal, but he popped a question. Yeah, he suddenly asked him, why don't you read the scriptures? And Rajnatara said, when breathing in, this old wayfarer Wayfarer, somebody who goes along a path. A wayfarer. This old wayfarer doesn't dwell in the realms of mind and body when breathing in.

[06:58]

This old wayfarer, this old person. Yeah, wanderer. This old wanderer. And doesn't dwell in the realms of mind and body. Nor in myriad circumstances when breathing out. Yeah, this is the scripture. I reiterate, say over and over again, this is the scripture I say over and over again, hundreds, thousands, millions of scrolls. So right in the beginning of this, a kind of Bible, Of Zen teaching.

[08:03]

It says, I don't read these Bibles, I don't read these scriptures. The scriptures I read are Breathing in, I don't dwell in mind and body, the realms of mind and body. Breathing out, I'm not involved in myriad circumstances. This is also the path of the breath. I mean, not only is it a description of the path of the breath, And a prescription for the path of the breath.

[09:07]

When you study what could he mean by dwell, doesn't dwell in the realms of mind. And doesn't dwell on or is not involved in myriad circumstances, breathing out. And what mind is different breathing in than breathing out? Because he does specify breathing in, breathing out. So we cannot study this prescription of what is this path of the breath. And then he puts it in a very big scale. Big scale, big.

[10:19]

In relationship to the whole of Buddhism, he puts it in a big place. Yeah. It's another version of Bodhidharma meets the emperor. So this is the main teaching story within Zen Buddhism. The emperor who's actually had transcribed and translated huge projects of transcribing from the oral teachings and translating the sutras. To bring Indian Buddhism to China. It started about the beginning of the beginning of the Christian era, so-called common era or Christian era, around zero.

[11:42]

And by the sixth century, in the southern and middle ages, China, which the emperor was emperor of Liang, which was southern and middle China. There were thousands of temples and tens of thousands of practitioners, monks. Yeah, this is certainly a big and important part of our practice. There aren't 10,000 or thousands of Johanneshofs. No, we want thousands, but there's at least this one. Yeah, and this is an important part of our practice.

[12:45]

To have a place to just meet with each other. And discover our practice together. And how is, as I've said, Sangha one of the three equal treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So here we are, because we have this wonderful place, able to gather and practice together. And yet at the center of this, both Prajna Tara and Bodhidharma says, is there merit in, Bodhidharma, you know, is asked, is there merit in building temples and translating, transcribing sutras?

[13:56]

Yeah, and you know Bodhidharma's famous answer, emptiness, no holiness, not holiness. And then what's the next story? About Bodhidharma's teacher. Prajna Tara. And what does he say? He doesn't say emptiness, no holiness. He says, I don't read the scriptures. I just breathe in and out. What kind of breathing in and out is this? That it's more at the center of our practice and the teaching than sutras and buildings and etc.

[15:02]

All this is meant to say, to point to what kind of attention you bring to your breath. Can you bring this kind of attention? Can you imagine this kind of attention? Yeah. It just means our ordinary attention. But our attention isn't thinking. In Buddhism, you know, we all have attention. But when you bring attention to attention, you have Buddhism.

[16:03]

And you don't, again, it's not thinking about, it's non-thinking awareness. Mm-hmm. So we have to discover first of all, you know, in our life, our living, and mindfulness practice and in zazen. Mindfulness. Yeah, I mean, and the easiest place to do it is usually zazen practice. To really get a feeling for bringing attention to attention. And how do we ripen this attention? Perhaps like turning milk into cheese.

[17:05]

But you don't want a cheesy breath. But there is a sense of you ripen your attention in your breath. So we can say one of the reasons we develop still sitting is to ripen our attention in our breath. And through our breath to begin to notice more our attention. And we want to be able to settle our attention settle into our attention. And fully settled attention is called one-pointedness.

[18:34]

And you can't really have one-pointedness until your breath and your attention and your attention are woven, are settled or woven together. Yeah, now I'm going to, I think tomorrow we'll give you a German translation of this third case that I'm talking about now. And there's a lot of stuff in it. Most of it is really good, quite good stuff. But don't worry about much of it. Just kind of read it and look it over. I don't know how much we can speak about, you know, and I don't want to turn this practice week into the study of a koan.

[20:00]

But I think we can use the koan to kind of get a feeling for this path of the breath. So, again, going back to finding a way to settle into our breath and settle our breath. I would like you to, you know, maybe if you've, all of you swim, I assume, if you've been swimming in the ocean or a lake, say, and you're treading water. Treading water? Just in one place, you know? Thanks. Sometimes I don't remember the joke.

[21:02]

I don't remember either. I never remember. Or you're just swimming gently and the swell of the water is lifting you and settling you. You're kind of lifted with the water and you fall with the water. I'd like you to see if you can feel as if you're in a sea of breath or air. Which is lifting you and... and settling you, something like that.

[22:24]

So breathing is more basic than something you do. It's just being done. Breathing is breathing itself. Mm-hmm. As if, again, we're in a big sea of breath and rising and falling in it. Anyway, just some feeling like that I'd like you to try to catch. Mm-hmm. So settling into your breath. Now again, you know, technically one-pointedness means that you can use the stick.

[23:30]

You can just look at this. You can bring your attention to this stick and it stays there. And you all would know if you've practiced one-pointedness that you have to keep bringing your attention back to whatever You're attentive of. And your attention goes away and you bring it back. And after a while it gets easier to bring back. And it gets easier to bring back the more breath and attention are joined.

[24:32]

And finally, you can just really rest your attention on some object. And it stays there. And if it goes away, it comes back by itself. These are considered the stages of developing mindfulness, one-pointedness. But they're not stages you try to follow. They're just what happens as you develop mindfulness. One-pointedness. As you ripen attention in the breath. You can just bring your attention to something and it just stays there. And what you've done then is you not only have woven attention into the breath, you're actually also weaving attention into the physical world.

[25:58]

So the path of the breath also means to weave mind and body together and to weave mind and body and phenomena together. And I think this is quite extraordinary. You know, and I can talk about it. But originally, you know, you first start practicing, you just try to count your breaths and size them or something like that. And you don't really have much sense about how this can unfold. Open up and unfold. Unfold. You're just bringing attention to your breath.

[27:42]

But you're weaving mind and body together in a particular way. And you're ripening, developing attention itself. When you bring attention to something, you change what you bring attention to. I mean, something's happening, alchemicals happening through attention. Yeah, and when you bring attention to attention itself, You're ripening and developing attention. And that's enhanced by bringing attention to itself through the breath. And breath embodies and ripens. You have a breath body, a kind of different body.

[29:01]

in which attention permeates the body in a way it didn't before. And consciousness and thinking consciousness begins to feel kind of thin. And still interesting and exciting to us and a useful for sure tool. But it seems a narrow place to put our life. The body and the breath and The way the world is opened up through the attentiveness of breath. Yeah, really, you do feel like you're on a path.

[30:08]

A wide path, that's your body itself. Ein weiter Weg, dein Körper selbst. And phenomena itself as the ripened attention settles into the physical world. and stays in place in the world in the immediacy of your situation. It doesn't jump away much. It doesn't jump into thoughts. Of course, sometimes it does, but after a while, less and less it does.

[31:09]

So somehow the immediacy of the world ripens as well. The non-duality of our world begins to be more present. So it's this ripened attention, let's call it that, this ripened attention, That we bring to the four bases of mindfulness, foundations of mindfulness. Maybe that's enough for today. If during our week here you can just catch the feeling of living in your breath.

[32:37]

Living in your breath which is bigger than your thinking and consciousness. Bigger even than the sense of self. And if we can get a feeling for that, and almost all together we're kind of floating, I can't resist saying, conspiracy, which means to breathe together. Conspire. We're in some kind of Dharma conspiracy. A floating, bobbing, when you say bobbing, like bobbing on a water, bobbing together on the sea of the breath.

[33:39]

I don't know how to translate bobbing. Bobbing? When something floats, like a cork sits on water? Yeah, shrimps. Okay. To get into this kind of feeling, you have to sometimes take an exaggerated, but maybe not so exaggerated, different sense of our existence with a different perspective. image of our existence, we can sometimes notice things that we don't usually in our usual habits. Okay, thank you. I believe that we are tireless to give them up.

[35:42]

die damadge oben sind unermesslich, ich gelobe sie zu durchschreiten, der Weg des Rodericks wird stattlich, ich gelobe ihn zu verweilen. So maybe let's start with anything you'd like to say or some aspect of what you've discussed already. Tara, you first? She asked me while I was in her group.

[37:02]

I could tell it, but I honestly don't remember what she means now. That was clever. As I said earlier, what I noticed today with this picture that Hoshi used, of this cork dancing on the wave, is that such a picture conveys a feeling of breathing, and through this feeling I come much more easily into this stream of breath, Okay, she liked the picture you used in the teisho of the sort of cork bobbing on the wave, because with this picture she has a much easier access to the flow of the breath.

[38:14]

Well, that sounds good. Yes, and on the contrary, when I approach it with a concept, I try to observe the species or to count the species, And since this gives the sensation and the feeling for her, it's much easier for her to connect with the breath in contrast to using like observing breath or counting the breath. Yeah. Yeah. Images are sometimes Really helpful. Okay, someone else? You're back. Yes. All the way to Austria, you're back in one day.

[39:17]

Or two days. I needed two days. Did you walk? I mean... I stole my car. Yeah, I know. Paul no laughing allowed you get called upon kein lachen erlaubt wenn ihr dran seid one of the kind of under current theme of the discussion so das darunter liegende Thema der Diskussion was a sense of inside and outside as it relates to breath. And another undercurrent was making an effort and not making an effort in breathing.

[40:19]

I feel in my own experience of breathing some correlation between not making an effort and not feeling a boundary of breath. And then anchoring my practice in an effort and a boundary of breath, which then moves out again. I've been feeling this particularly since Thursday, the prequel day of your teaching. Okay, thanks. Another image that I often mention is to have a feeling of no outside and no inside, as if we're living in an inside-edness.

[41:52]

When I first began to have this kind of feeling, I used to say, feel like you're in a big stomach, but maybe that's not such a good example. You might start having labor pains or gas pains or something. Um... But a feeling of this is all inside somehow. The outside-inside distinction is actually one that harms us in our practice. It's useful, of course, when we think about moving the furniture.

[42:55]

But as a sense of how, as a description of the world we live in, it's, you know, feeling of the world we live in, it's not so useful. Another thing is... It's helpful, and I've suggested that you see if you can feel during this week, as Tara mentioned. As if we're in a shared, and of course separate also, kind of sea of breath. And try on this image. Another attitude that's helpful is to feel. Let's try it on for this week also.

[44:10]

That this is the most important place you could be. In your whole life, right now, this is the most important place you can be. Ja, in deinem ganzen Leben ist das hier, wo du jetzt bist, der wichtigste Platz. You know, excuse me for sounding overly serious, but you're going to die in such a place. Or you're going to have an accident in such a place. Also es tut mir leid, wenn das so ernst klingt, aber an so einem Platz werdet ihr sterben oder einen Unfall haben. And wherever that accident occurs or... let's hope not your death, it's going to be suddenly a very important place. And I would guess that if you know this is the most important place or a site of life and death, You're going to be much more alert if you have this kind of feeling.

[45:46]

I don't know. Anyway, some kind of, you know, you try on some kind of feeling like that so you really hear. Your life is made up of exactly these kinds of hears. Yeah, and not only the important ones you imagine in the future. Yeah, of course, some moments in our life are different than others, but underneath the underlying current, as Paul says, current of breath, The immediacy of each situation is equally important. Yes, someone else. Okay.

[47:10]

The one that I saw up there? Oh, yeah, okay. I snuck down and tried to see. Yeah, sort of two faces going in and out. I thought this is too esoteric for me. But for me it's a result of this discussion, this feeling we are all connected. I breathe out, you breathe in, I'm out breathing. Your talk is breathing. Body and breath together. It's... Somehow I also find it frightening, so much closeness. I can't... I also feel scared by so much intimacy because it's almost like compulsory. Compulsory, okay.

[48:12]

And on the other hand, I'm not alone and I don't need to feel lonely. Yes, yogic practice does introduce us to a kind of... an amazing kind of intimacy with other people, but also with the world itself. Also die yogische Praxis, die führt uns ein in eine erstaunliche Intimität mit anderen, aber auch mit der Welt. And part of the reason it's necessary for our practice to develop is so that we can handle this intimacy. Und ein Teil dessen, weshalb es so wichtig ist, zu praktizieren ist, damit wir mit dieser Intimität umgehen können. Yes, Judita. My question is, what importance do the pauses, the in-between breaths, the time in-between breaths have?

[49:28]

What do they contain? Well, you can find out. You can't make them last too long or you won't find out anything. But it's an ancient practice to have a feeling of in the pause of melting. It's a kind of disappearing and integrating both. And it... Yeah, it's somehow... some kind of inclusive point in the exhale and inhale.

[50:50]

I think, I mean, this is maybe over-emphasizing it a little bit, but there's a... in the Noh theater and more explicitly in the Kabuki theater in Japan... In Kabuki, it's quite stylized. And they have a... This is the stage. They have a... runway that goes off to the right that an actor can go the entire length of the stage with the audience here out to some kind of back door. And as I've also mentioned before, the stage is invisibly divided between a timeless realm toward the back and a time-based realm in the front.

[52:02]

So when he steps back on the stage, the audience knows he might meet his dead grandmother. And when he's more forward on the stage, he's in the time and space of the audience. But a key moment in the play where there's an exit, One of the main actors or the main actor might take a run off this platform. With his hara, of course. A hara run. And then they stop in this odd posture. And suddenly he freezes in a position.

[53:13]

And in this moment he captures the whole feeling of the whole play. And the spectators cry or weep. Just remembering it, my whole scalp is crawling. If I had hair, you'd see it, you know. Yeah, I'd look like you're rich or something like that. But this kind of pause, if you really kind of pause and let go of ordinary sense of time and space, it's some kind of something else there.

[54:16]

Now, this, of course, isn't something you do in the middle of a phone conversation. It's times when you really bring attention really fully to your body, breath, mind, etc. And you get a taste of this ripening attention. Also, wenn du einen Geschmack kriegst für diese reifende Aufmerksamkeit. And what happens when the attention is on the exhale or on the inhale? Or what happens when the attention is really on nothing, a pause? Und was passiert, wenn die Aufmerksamkeit auf dem Ein- oder Ausatmen ist oder auf diesem Dazwischen? Ja.

[55:19]

Another step in my practice in practicing the press and being aware of the press, when I succeed to establish a continuity in the press and be aware of the press, how I can use my press to somehow backpack For example, a question that we work on questions... Unpack, you mean? Backpack, as we have a question on... On your back. Somehow on your back, but on my press, like what I am or who I am, or a phrase from the Quran, and to use the press and be anchored in the press and use that anchoring to anchor another question together, with the breath and how the difference is when I use this question like what I am if I anchor it with the inhale or the exhale or use the pause to anchor that question between the inhale or the exhale.

[56:31]

Yeah, thank you. Deutsch bitte. If I succeed in being attentive while breathing and also to maintain such continuity, then it is also a possibility to use this transformation in the breath such a question as we looked at each other at the last weekend, like what am I or who am I, practically so huckaback with the breath, also to anchor and then such a question with the breath practically into the body to let in, with the inhalation, what am I, or with the exhalation to let the question go again, and then above all I also find it very interesting, this question, because if you can keep this break a little longer without forcing it, also simply into this break,

[57:34]

You know, this kind of thing, I mean, it's what Atmar is speaking about. You can't read about, you can't study in some Buddhist text. You find it, you unpack this backpack, you unpack this practice, this teaching, simply by doing it. And if you do it with mindful attention, you find out things and things unfold and surprise you. I like Atmar's image of a backpack. I like Atmar's image of a backpack.

[58:39]

He's got a real, you know, kind of resources there. So, I mean, really, you could say something like breath is the... I mean, if we really kind of play with images, breath is the suitcase of the mind. The more, and this morning I used the word ripen, to ripen your breath and ripen your attention. And I've never used the word ripen quite so specifically before, or at least so clearly in this context. And I think it's fruitful to try on this idea of ripening.

[60:06]

Because breath and mind, breath and awareness or breath and mind, really become aspects of each other, the tangibility of each other. And it's the tangibility of breath that substitutes for thinking, the tangibility of thinking. Anyway, some kind of territory we're working in here to make this really our experience. Yes. Okay, if I take a breathing and observe it... A breath.

[61:18]

A breath, yes. Then it becomes like a fact. I have found two other ways where this is different, if I take it as a quality, namely it is about the feeling, when I say I feel my breath, But her muscles relax when she takes more the breath as a feeling? The other possibility is when I bring her into contact with something. I told you earlier that this morning the perception of I will now do it from the outside and from the inside, the perception from the outside together with the breath.

[62:22]

And then I switch to the perception of the inner space or the inner aura together with the breath. Then I have a rhythm that goes from the outside to the inside all the time and between the breath and the other sensations. Another approach which is helpful to her is that she takes the breath and moves it sort of to the periphery or more to the outside and then also takes it in. The feeling of being outside or at the periphery of your body? No, the sensations outside. Yeah, yeah. I collect them and feel the breath with them and the relationship, and then I turn the inner body and the feelings inside together with the breath, and then become a rhythm. Yeah, yeah, I understand. Oh, okay.

[63:23]

For a healing, please. Yeah, that's very good. And I guess you don't have to translate that, right? I guess so, too. If it were in German, you'd have to translate it for me. Sehr gut. No, I can understand that. This morning I pointed out one of what I would call two of the you know, main skills, simply skills, not practices. I mean, yeah, practices, but more skills. And the one I mentioned this morning was one-pointedness. Yeah, and, you know, Getting closer and closer to being able to simply, wherever you put your attention, it stays.

[64:41]

And the other skill is what I call non-interfering observing consciousness. That when you bring your attention, for example, to your breath, as you point out, it doesn't interfere with your breathing. And when it does interfere, just as you did, you notice how to subtly work with it so it doesn't interfere. But then I said this morning that attention itself transforms what it attends. But non-interfering attention is what's transformative.

[65:56]

But non-interfering attention is what is transformed. I get out of that. But non-interfering attention is what changes. Yes, that's enough said. Okay, something else? Yes. I wanted to say to Judith about this pause. What I wanted to say to you, Dieter, and what is my experience, especially in the out-breath with such a pause, She had the experience that this pause was so compelling to her that she would have liked to stay in it.

[67:07]

and then the field of consciousness changed, of mind. And then I try get out of this stillness, of this pause, the next in-breath which has a completely different quality than the out-breath I took. Mm-hmm. But I'm failing because maybe I succeed once. It's not called failing. It's called succeeding once.

[68:31]

But she has pain when it's over. Yeah, that's unfortunately, we carry, as we get older, more and more pain. When we're young, it's the pain of what I could be, and when you're older, it's the pain of what I wasn't. And other pain. The population you grew up with starts disappearing. Now, as you know, when, most of you know, one of the main teachings of how to be with a person when they're dying

[69:36]

As you, you know, say the person's here and they're sick or unwell, obviously, and you put your hand on their arm or shoulder and a hand momentarily around their chest. I find I do this actually when Sophia gets in bed with us in the early morning or middle of the night. And I'm not expecting that she's perishing. It's just a reassuring way to touch somebody. Then you feel your breath with the person. You let it happen rather naturally. But you find the pauses are quite significant. The anxiety in a person and so forth usually happens in the pauses.

[71:00]

So mostly you kind of coast along with the person, but sometimes you actually extend the pause or shorten the pause, which then changes the rhythm of their breath. As a practice of being with someone, this is somewhat self-conscious, breath-conscious. And it's, you know, most circumstances and shouldn't be self-conscious or breath-conscious. It should not be in most circumstances. I mean, I'm not coordinating my breath with you, and I'm switching the coordinator.

[72:10]

There are people who do that. I know one Zen teacher who used to do things like that, and Suzuki Roshi just thought, uh-uh. Okay. But if we practice, we tend to start doing that without really, you know, it just happens. It's neither conscious nor not conscious. And the first time I realized this, noticed this, it was a funny anecdote, so I'll tell you the anecdote. I was walking across the University of California, Berkeley campus, one evening about 7 o'clock. I worked for the university. And I was a graduate student as well. And because I worked for the university organizing adult education programs for scientists and lay people and so forth.

[73:32]

I knew all the buildings very well because I'd schedule things in the buildings. Ja, kannte ich diese Gebäude sehr gut, weil ich da in verschiedenen Gebäuden auch diese Vorlesungen hatte. And the Berkeley Poetry Conference, one I got in a lot of trouble for, the LSD Conference. Ich organisierte Konferenzen da, die LSD Konferenz. Anyway, so I knew this building very well. So kannte ich das Gebäude sehr gut. And I walked by it and they were like... 100 people outside the building, and the building was full of people. And I didn't know what was going on, but I knew the building well, so I went around the back, went along a ledge, climbed in the window. And here was this guy sitting there, a little Indian guy, a little beard and a big wreath of flowers around him.

[74:36]

And he was very nice and present and saying nice things. So when he finished, it was the Maharishi, but I didn't know who he was. It was his first visit to the United States. So when he went out, All the people sort of went out and like that and I was on the side by this window and somehow I got swept out along with everyone. And I found myself right beside him. Beside his car, and they had the doors open, and they were discussing their driving to Canada or something, I don't know.

[75:41]

So I was just standing there, and here was this sweet little guy with his beard, you know. And suddenly I felt, I said to myself, this guy's pretty good. And I thought, where did that thought come from? Why did I make this determination? And I realized I'd perfectly synced my breathing with his, unconsciously or non-consciously. I was breathing with him and I could feel the suitcase of his mind. I could feel his mind. Yeah. I enjoyed the feeling, and then I... I've always felt quite intimate with Maharishi as a result. Hi, Maha.

[76:44]

And Rishi knows the same word as Roshi. It was neither Roshi nor Rishi, but anyway. It was a nice feeling, and I left, and he drove off somewhere. I don't know when this was, 16. Three or something like that. Okay, someone else? Yes. I'm still preoccupied with the question of the weekend. Yeah. Yeah. The relatedness and connection between heart and love and breath. And your question was, what is the frame in which all of this functions?

[78:02]

And the other question was, how does the breath feel when I imagine that I am either a social person or a sociable person, or my brother breathes, or my best imaginable being breathes directly. And also the other question was, how does the breath differ whether the personal self, the social, the societal or Buddha is breathing? And I noticed that my breath thinking of the social and the suicidal self, when I thought of that, my breath really narrowed and got very narrow.

[79:15]

The image of the biggest potential of what there is in life that made it very spacious and warm. How is it when Buddha breathes a very clear, but also emotionless stream? And when I picture Buddha breathing or sensed Buddha breathing, it was very free. Free, clear, but also without emotions streaming. And now I am trying to ask him, how does this connection, this heart connection that we know between people, come about?

[80:35]

How does this work? And now I'm exploring how does the intimacy, the heart relationship between people happen? What is the frame of death? I feel that it is in the territory of the chest and the heart chakra. When I really let myself go into that, then all the energy and the concentration goes into the lower back.

[81:47]

And then I lose my self-thinking and it's over. And I would be happy if you could say something more about it, how it could go on. Well, when you feel it go into your lower back, the first thing I try is use it as a kind of signal to immediately move the feeling up your back and through your head and down. Somehow you're stopping it at this main crossroads. That's an obvious thing to try, but why don't you try it and see what happens? I mean, small things in practice, when you really pay attention, give attention, pay attention to them, are such big things.

[83:21]

For instance, just partly, Christoph said, noticing, and someone else said the other day, noticing the difference between when you have a feeling of who's breathing and you have a feeling of what's breathing. Just changing the word in which you shape the attention to the breath. can make such a difference. Oh, I got that wrong. The difference in which the way you use a word to shape your attention to the breath... The way you use a word and your attention to it.

[84:31]

that you change the word and you change your experience, I mean, dramatically. You can change your experience dramatically. Yeah, now I think if you try this in Zazen, you'll see the difference. I mean, partly it depends on becoming more sensitive to our mind, body and breath, but I think if you try it in Zazen, you'll see it makes a difference. So, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, this isn't about dictionaries. If you look up who in the dictionary, you look up what in the dictionary, it doesn't tell you much. But somehow, just the word who has accumulated Decades of something that it shapes our body and breath and mind.

[85:49]

And we say, what? And we feel freer, bigger. And what seems to be a word for objects, you know? What is it, you know? But it seems to also be a word for Buddha. Yeah, so... And what-ness, thus-ness, tathagata are actually all etymologically closely related. No, it's funny. It's a kind of mystery. It's a kind of mystery, what is language.

[86:51]

Garel, were you going to say something earlier? I was thinking about it. Oh, well, I noticed. I heard too what you said in the beginning of the weekend seminar that one of the secrets is where we put our attention. And when the attention is there, so to speak, I am. That's where the location is. And so I was very attentive towards where my attention is during the last days. Interesting enough, we also talked about the observer in the weekend. And by just being aware of where my attention is, the location of the observer is changed somehow, that I'm observing a change without interfering from one end

[88:05]

It's hard to say, but it's like I see that there is an observer, but he is somehow integrated into the situation. He? He or she. It's not outside the situation, so it's like seeing something from within. Yes, I understand. Yes, we talked about it at the weekend, how important it is to be aware of your attention. And I have dealt with it a bit in the last few days. Thank you. Peter? I might come back, yes?

[89:21]

I want to say something in relationship to the observer. When I observe the observer, it also changes. And I'm starting to be very caring and loving with my observer. Sometimes it occurs to me that when I talk to them, So when I talk to him, it seems... Him? Or her? Yeah, she said him. Yes, yes. And I talk to her. Yeah, it's like sometimes as if you would be answering. But it's like as you would be answering when she talks to him.

[90:32]

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. When you talk to him, it's over? It's like you were answering. I was answering. Yeah, it was you. Yeah, a little tiny, yeah, like in the brochures. Just some words of you. Okay, well, I'm glad that I'm there and with you. Aren't we supposed to stop about now, quarter to six? The schedule says 6 o'clock. It does also. It's only a piece of paper. I can't resist your example to tell a rather, not such a good joke, but a joke.

[91:44]

And Brother David, or Steindl Rost, is an old friend of mine. was told this joke by his father. He never knew quite why his father told him the joke, but it was when he was with his father near the end of his father's life. So the joke is, this guy's walking along and He starts to step in the street and a voice says, watch out. And he jumps back and a big bus comes by and he's splashed with snow and water and stuff. Ja, und er macht einen Schritt zurück und da fährt ein Bus vorbei und er wird vollgespritzt mit Dreck.

[92:59]

So he thinks it's quite strange. He looks around and who said what? Nobody's around. You know, he goes on and happy not to have been hit by the bus. Ja, und er wundert sich, guckt rum und sieht niemanden, ist aber froh, dass er nicht vom Bus überfahren wurde. So... Later in the day, similar things happen. Mid-afternoon, he almost steps in.

[93:25]

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