Well, I'm hoping tomorrow morning for two outstanding reports. Also ich hoffe, dass es morgen früh zwei außerordentliche Berichte geben wird. From the two groups. Von den zwei Gruppen. But since we don't have... It's probably pretty close to when we should stop. Und jetzt ist es ja eher Zeit, so bald abzuschließen für heute. I'll just tell you a couple anecdotes. I'm not telling stories about my daughter because I love her or anything like that. It's just that she's a good source of study for me. When we first went back to the States in last October about... Yes, Sophia was about two and a half. And she hadn't been in the States for six months.

[01:24]

Six months. A year. Yeah, a year, because I had all these medical stuff happening. So when we left, we have this dog, this great Pyrenees mountain dog. When we left, it was, I don't know, two or three months old. And it was this size as a puppy. And its father's name is Horse. And when we get back, the eagle is huge. Just his head is twice as big as my head. Makes me think of the story of the little boy going fishing with his father. And it says to his mother, Mama, I caught a fish this big.

[02:41]

Didn't we, Papa? Anyway, but Igor really is this big. Igor. That's a friend of Frankenstein, I think. So, yeah, Marie-Louise woke up. I woke up in the middle of the night when Marie-Louise was saying, Igor. And I said, well, what's that? And I said, what's that? And she said, that's what we're going to name the dog. And I said, oh, okay. So Sophia's trying to, clearly trying to relate to what we wanted, what I wanted to do, and what Marie-Louise wants to do.

[03:42]

Yeah, so she's sitting on the... Standing, sitting, standing maybe on the couch. And I'm asking her to do something. And Marie-Louise from the kitchen is asking her to do something. And at that moment Igor comes running in and his tail came. take two lamps off tables in like one sweep. And they love each other. She has her bottle curled up in his fur. But he comes charging at her. And I watched her, she was trying to deal with this huge dog and with me, a little dog, and with her mother.

[04:54]

And I watched her pull her composure, composure? upper spine. Yeah, I've been watching very carefully as she's developed consciousness and so forth. And this is my work to see these things. So I can really see this kind of composure come up through her body and until she found that she didn't respond and once she sort of had her composure then she responded to the dog And was trying on the social templates, templates, pattern, the social templates that she's getting from her mother and me.

[06:05]

And trying to figure out how to act. But this act, this prior to acting, finding her physical body-mind composure, I think to me it's very clearly prior to culture. No, does this mean that we're just like prior to culture, is that our animal nature? Yes, I think a body-mind composure of a dog or cat or a gorilla is different from the body-mind composure of a human being.

[07:21]

And I think this sense of body-mind composure, which gets, as the social templates take over, And we identify ourselves through these social templates and through discursive thinking. we actually lose our composure. We lose our ease. In a way, practice is not to go back to being a baby, but going to go back partly to this basic composure. Which is also to find ourselves in tune, maybe tune with the world. Or in tune with each situation. And breath is the tuning agent.

[09:02]

You know, there's a tea ceremony, there's of course the famous Japanese tea ceremony, which is based on instant tea. Yeah, it's just powdered leaves. Where you're actually drinking the plant. But then there's also a tea ceremony less well known based on the best quality leaf tea, which is an infusion. And then there is also the tea ceremony that is less known, which works with brewed tea leaves. The Sencha tea ceremony. You have little cups and little pot.

[10:06]

And you drink actually what's called a sparrow's tear. Those Japanese. But really, you have a kind of little drip of tea. So it has to be made just right at just the right temperature, otherwise it's bitter and so forth. And when you make the tea, of course you pour it into the cup. And you line several cups up and you just pour like that, yeah. And one of the most annoying parts of the ceremony is how long it takes for all the drips to come out.

[11:14]

You know, sort of drip, drip, drip, drip. You know, I could drink the tea now, no? Drip. Drip. but this is also the center of the ceremony because if you're impatient you're never going to taste the sparrow's tear the ceremony is to bring you into the pace of the world as it actually exists So actually the matcha, the powdered tea ceremony, establishes a different pace in which you drink the tea. And formal occasions, in the West too, formal occasions are actually about establishing a pace.

[12:32]

and as we lose that and everything is in the pace of a spandex sports suit everything becomes the same so you really if you just without any You're not impatient, you just wait till the drops are finished. But that image is useful because in each situation there's a certain pace that your body, mind can find. And when you find the pace of how you are at this moment and how your actual situation is, You begin to feel, you do feel nourished and completed by each situation.

[14:15]

So much of practice is to use the breath actually to tune yourself to the pace of each situation. And the breath attached to awareness and not consciousness. And maybe we can speak about that, what I just said, the latter thing tomorrow. Now one more anecdote. So, you know these little plastic lemons? They have them in America, if not here. With lemon juice in them. We borrowed one from the main kitchen at Creston.

[15:15]

And Sophia went into my office And if any of you have ever been in my office, you know it's about as unzen a place as possible. And if any of you have ever been to my office, it's such an insane place, as you can imagine. There's books and paper and everything on a big pile, everywhere. I mostly don't let any serious students in. Anyway, so I used to have a fairly big room upstairs, but Marie-Louise convinced me Sophia should have that room. And she was right. So I moved into a room about as big as two of these platforms with a filing system on the floor.

[16:20]

So I noticed that Sophia went into that room with this lemon and closed the door behind her. So I thought I'd go in and check to see what she was doing. And she was squirting the lemon all over the floor just like she was peeing. Yeah, pinkle, yeah. And I said, I came and I said, Sophia, what are you doing? Making a mess. do you like to make messes? yes So I went and got a roll of paper towels and I'm down on my hands and knees and I'm trying to mop up all this stuff.

[17:47]

So I said, Sophia, see what you've made your father do. He's on his hands and knees cleaning up your mess. She said, I'm sorry, Papa. Next time I'll do it on your desk and then you can stand up. Next time I'll do it on your desk and then you can stand up. Thanks. I think she's going to grow up to be a lawyer. But she's trying on these social templates, but she hasn't got it quite organized yet. Or she's got better organized than I have.

[18:48]

So let's sit for a moment.

[18:50]

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