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Mindful Integration: Beyond Thinking

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The talk centers on the practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, addressing the relationship between suffering and practice, the integration of mind, body, and spirit, and the application of mindfulness in various contexts and activities. It critiques the notion of uncovering an original mind, suggesting instead the generation of a fundamental nature through practice. The discussion moves into the differences between conscious thinking and more innate processes of mental and bodily awareness, linking these concepts to seminal Buddhist teachings like the Eightfold Path and Yogacara Buddhism, as well as phenomenological perspectives on consciousness and awareness.

Referenced Works and Authors:

  • Elizabeth Bishop: An anecdote is shared about the poet's youthful enlightening experience at a dentist, illustrating how mindfulness can transform routine situations into moments of profound realization.
  • "What is Thinking?" by Martin Heidegger: This book is mentioned in the context of the roots of the word "thinking," tying the concepts of thinking and thanking together. It reflects on acknowledging experiences with gratitude.
  • Dogen’s "Think Non-Thinking": The talk refers to the idea of a process that yields thinking-like results without conventional thinking, emphasizing a deeper, non-graspable awareness.
  • The Eightfold Path and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Traditional Buddhist Texts): The speaker emphasizes the role of intentionality in joining mind and body, exploring these teachings as integral to developing fundamental mindfulness practices.
  • Yogacara Buddhism: Mentioned in the context of the inseparability of mental and physical phenomena, reinforcing non-graspable feeling as a basis for deeper understanding and integration of practice.

Mentioned Concepts and Practices:

  • Koans: Discussed as a means of personal exploration and realization, fostering a sense of connectedness beyond intellectual mindsets.
  • Breath-Mind Awareness: Proposed as a fundamental practice to integrate physical postures and body awareness, establishing a non-thinking, intuitive mindfulness.
  • Intention in Practice: The primary focus is the importance of intention in practice, its role in shaping views, and its precedence in effective application of mindfulness exercises.
  • Mind-Body Integration: Using examples from personal and broader experiences, the talk stresses the weaving of mind and body as a central tenet of meaningful practice.

AI Suggested Title: Mindful Integration: Beyond Thinking

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One or two or three. Yes. I was only partly part of the group because I had to leave early. So please add to what I say when there's something missing. We also started to suffer. Most beginners are driven by the practice of suffering from the beginning. We also started out with looking at the fact that most beginners come to practice because of suffering or a particular cause, a particular suffering. But that in practice there are various fields.

[01:05]

The first most obvious area is that after having practiced for some time, a feeling of well-being comes up. But this is of course also another area of practice, and I would like to conclude with Judita, is this part that one But then there's another area, and with this I want to continue what Judith has said, that there is a longing to understand existence and your own mind better. So that in this area you also create difficulties for the participants, or at least get them, which you didn't have before you practiced.

[02:46]

And so one participant mentioned that within this realm you create difficulties that you haven't had before you started with practice. Another aspect we talked about was And another aspect we talked about was the question, what are the right or good conditions for practice? And it was mentioned that practice actually is possible everywhere and always. But at the same time that this looked at realistically is a high ideal.

[03:59]

And that everyone finds fields where it's easier to practice than in others. One person mentioned that it's easier for them in nature. As soon as they are in touch with nature, it's easier. This is a special exercise to practice field and detail change. to particularly practice this practice of going back and forth between detail and field.

[05:20]

For others, driving a car is a good condition to practice. For me, it is a good way to practice to install pieces of memory in certain places. For me, a good way to practice is to install reminders in certain places. Little notes.

[06:22]

In the street that I often walk through towards my work, I have infused certain places with different practices. Oh, sounds good. So I have a tree where I always practice field and detail. So there is a tree where I always practiced this detail and feel thing. And in one door, there was a heart made from ivy. And at this point I think about which people I have problems with right now and which people I get along with well.

[07:37]

And so on. You can imagine how this works. Yeah. Thank you. Did you want to say something? Not really. I just mentioned in my group that I very often practice and I have to go to the dentist because I'm very much afraid of it. And then I try to get back to my breathing. Usually it works. So my fear disappears and I don't feel the pain so much.

[08:41]

Yeah. An American poet named Elizabeth Bishop. When she was quite young, went to the dentist with her aunt, or I guess her aunt. Though she doesn't call it this, basically, she had an enlightenment experience as a dentist. So, if I can find the poem, I'll give it to you so you can be encouraged next time. Yeah. So that's maybe the five groups. Is there somebody else who wants to say something?

[09:42]

Or is that all a report from the first group? No, please go ahead. For me, in the discussion, one question remained unanswered that I would like to ask you. When I meditated, I assumed that the spirit was within me and that I had to deconstruct the wall of the mental world. In my meditation so far, I assume that the mind is within myself.

[10:59]

What are you doing with the wall of thought? or that I have to deconstruct the wall of thought, or that I have to stop the space of thought. And here I heard that the mind, or Buddha nature, that I let this into my body and mind.

[12:05]

You heard that here? Let it enter. Has somebody in the hall said this? Yeah, okay. I understood it this way. It was paradoxical for me. Okay. Now, you're You had the feeling you had to stop thinking in some way? Is that what you mean? I had the feeling that when thinking stops, when I'm in that space, that you said that then the mind can enter.

[13:14]

into the body. And so far I thought that the mind is already within and that then I can perceive it. Okay. So you... So you feel that the mind is already there and through practice you notice it. Yeah, I thought so, so far. Okay. It's a good way to practice.

[14:39]

I don't think it's... I think it's actually better, though, to think that... to understand not that we're uncovering a mind that's already there, But we uncover a potential that's there. And the uncovering itself actuates, makes happen, creates the potential. But often Zen is taught as an uncovering your original nature. But I think actually you're generating this nature. But it's a fundamental nature.

[15:55]

It's like you have a house and you can assume there's a foundation there. But you look closely and there isn't much of a foundation there. So you sort of try to lift up the house and build a good foundation underneath it. So then I would call it a fundamental mind more than I'd call it original mind. So there's a slight, I know this is a little technical question, but there's a somewhat different approach to practice to which view you take.

[17:01]

It's a different approach to practice. Not so different, but somewhat different. Yeah. And I think again about stopping thinking or whatever. The main thing is to not identify with your thinking. Thinking itself is something we do, but if you identify with the thinking, you have a problem. Okay. Maybe. May I ask a question to this thinking process? Sure. If I take this khandha, then conscious thinking is quite clear thinking in words.

[18:09]

And what about these other khandhas? Is this also a type of thinking? For example, in my job I took Because I wished I would have a better memory, I discovered I can take the word as memory because it points to things I had to remind. Remember, yeah. For remembering. So I think this is this associated level of thinking. Yeah. If I make a heavy decision, I feel it over. You feel it over, instead of thinking it over. Yes. You massage it. I think this is thinking on a feeling level, so the aspects of getting it together, or is this not thinking?

[19:12]

And my last question would be, at happiness level. Is this what doping meant with thinking of thinking or where is this? What? The question of thinking has just been brought up here, and that one can identify or not identify with thinking. The question of thinking has been raised very clearly in the seminars, which is actually unclear to me. and the thinking of the conscious level, this kind of thinking of the overest, this is relatively clear and takes one in water. I mean, you can see that in your own words, I think, and that's clear. But what about the levels below that?

[20:14]

I think that plays a role. Is that also a form of thinking? According to my experience, I have named two levels, namely this level of association, when I see my environment in a certain way as a memory, that I can see and then I know, oh yes, I have to do it right now or the next lesson. So I connect, at least I already have a form of thinking, and the other is decision-making, so the important thing is, then I do it more on the emotional level, and that is also a form of thinking for my concepts. And now I ask myself, if the vocabulary of thinking is used here, You want it all at once or little by little?

[21:20]

If it's perhaps a little bit like this, then there is only mind and thinking. Okay. Let's first of all limit thinking to conscious thinking. Actually, the root of the word is thanking. And Heidegger has a quite interesting book called What is Thinking, which is one of his two or three best books, I think, which he also points out that the root of thinking and thanking is the same.

[22:22]

So perhaps in the root of thinking, there's the sense of acknowledging with gratitude. Like if we go back to Sophia's behavior. When she sees a bird, it's this noise. And it seems to me that she needs to recognize the bird. It's almost like honoring the bird through herself. She can't let it pass. We could have an answer to the, why does the Bodhisattva have...

[23:23]

so many hands and arms, you could just bow, suggesting two hands is enough. And when she swings her arms at the bell, again, I think it's a kind of, we could almost say gratitude or acknowledgement, just simple acknowledgement. Okay, so let's say that that's the root of thinking. Still, what we mostly know is that acknowledgement turns into a whole thinking process joined to language. And so we say something like, I'm going to think that through.

[24:41]

We can also say, I'm going to feel that through. I would say that that's not thinking. But since the result is something like thinking, you could say it's a kind of thinking through feeling. But then you're taking the word really out of the context of consciousness. And it may be better not to think about this process with the word thinking because the word thinking brings in confusion. But it is certainly something that Dogen meant when he said, think non-thinking. A process that produces results like thinking, but isn't a thinking process in the usual way.

[25:55]

That's something like reaching for your pillow at night. We could have another answer. Even the pillow has eyes. So what I'm doing here is I'm just suggesting one way to work with koans is to take either part of that koan and try to find answers yourself. If you were formally bringing me the koan, I would ask you to come up with your own answers. You could have fun with it. Why does the bodhisattva have so many hands and eyes? You could say even eleven pillows aren't enough. or not even monks sleep alone anyway so meaning there's a feeling of connectedness you don't feel alone if your practice is realized

[27:41]

Okay, so what, you know, basically, you're working through, you're working with the skandhas. That's good. Yeah, and I would say it's good to look at each skandha as a way of knowing. Kind of nuance and not knowledge. But I would be careful with applying the word thinking to the process. Okay. Okay enough? Okay enough. A hundred percent. A hundred percent is an attitude in contrast to doing it perfectly.

[28:53]

To try to do something correctly, you will fail, or you might fail. But to try 100%, there's no failure. You've tried 100%, that's all. Yeah. And I'm sorry, you know, each seminar you add up each 100%. You've got a large number after a while. And I can see you feel overwhelmed, you know. But, of course, I'm speaking about an attitude. Whatever practice you do take, you try to do it fully. And that's about where I see our practice is in this new millennium in the West. Is that... The concept of practice is pretty much understood now in our society.

[30:37]

That actually, I would say, since I started practicing in the beginning of the 60s, that's the biggest change. All through the 60s and 70s, even in the 80s, you had to establish the idea of practice. And now, the next step, I think, was that people actually find various ways to practice and are practicing. And more people are practicing and with understanding and than I thought I'd see in my lifetime.

[31:48]

But where we haven't gotten to yet is doing some practices really thoroughly. Most of us don't do that. That's understandable. But the importance of doing it thoroughly isn't quite got yet. And what are the reasons? I think probably the pervasive reason is that we still have a worldview which is rooted in an idea of natural.

[32:49]

And I think there's other views that are behind our problem, not just that we don't want to make the effort. Well, I'm not going to go into that, more than that. But we're getting closer. So I'm emphasizing that. To take some one practice and do it thoroughly. And we should take a break, but I would like to say one thing about this idea of people coming to practice through suffering.

[34:07]

It's interesting for me to hear you say that, but my experience over the last 40 years or so has been that's not the case. Almost everyone comes to practice through wisdom. Lots of people suffer, but only the ones with some taste of wisdom decide to practice to work with their suffering. Suffering may cause you to look, but where you look means if you look to wisdom, you already have that. That's there prior to the suffering, usually. But certainly suffering can be a strong motivation to develop your practice. And seeing the mess the world's in can be a motivation to practice.

[35:45]

Somebody should do it. But people come to practice for all kinds of reasons, like a friend brought them to a seminar. Anyway... Okay, so let's take a break and we'll continue after that. Thank you for translating. When do we continue? Clearly this teaching of the four foundations of mindfulness assumes the value, the necessity of weaving mind and body together.

[37:02]

weaving together body and mind. The Eightfold Path makes such an assumption that if we don't think of the teaching or the truth coming from outside us somehow, if we don't think of the teaching as coming from outside us, then, and it always says, don't look outside, but how do we look inside? Well, Buddhism is rooted in the idea that Mind generates mind. And mind observing mind is more fundamental than self or soul or some other entity.

[38:15]

And through Bringing attention and bringing mindful attention to our activities, we discover a truth body. which really opens life as wisdom to us.

[39:17]

Now, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is a practice to further develop this joining of mind and body. You're literally finding ways to... in a way it's sort of like you're... because you start with attention... Man fängt mit Aufmerksamkeit an. You're pouring attention into your body. Ihr gießt Aufmerksamkeit in euren Körper. Or pouring mind into your body. Oder Geist in den Körper gießen. Maybe the pitcher is the breath.

[40:27]

Vielleicht ist die Karaffe der Atem. Or breath, mind, spirit become the whole of it. Now, there's some anomalies I just want to bring up because they... Yeah, it's something that I sort of struggle with somewhere in my... Thinking and feeling. Because these basic teachings of the Eightfold Path and the Four Foundations assume mind, brain, body, it's all one thing. awareness, knowing, intelligence.

[41:36]

that the mind, the brain, the mind, the mind, the brain, the mind, the brain, the mind, the mind, the brain, the mind, [...] the But is this true? Is it important that it's true? Well, it's true enough, anyway. Now, what are the anomalies I'm referring to? Well, say that you have bypass surgery and you have an artificial pump for a heart. Are you somehow less conscious or less intelligent because you now have a plastic heart? Say if you're quadriplegic and you have plastic arms and legs. You're what?

[43:07]

Quadriplegic. Quadriplegic. It means all four limbs are... What? Are you somehow stupider than people who have arms and legs? And how far can we carry this amputation? Could we have a brain in a bottle on a table? At what point is it Obviously, a brain on the bottle, on the table, isn't going to learn much, if nothing else. And they say that babies that don't crawl don't develop mathematical ability.

[44:17]

Because I guess there's some relationship between the spatial sense you develop through calling and this ability to think spatially in mathematical terms. Whether this is exactly true, I don't know, but as Erhard brought up, the body knows before the thinking knows. Which has been pointed out since actually the sixties or sometime I think first. So we've got Both sides, I mean, how much is body, intelligence, awareness, how much is what we call awareness and consciousness inseparable from the body?

[45:35]

And then, as some of you may know, I meet, I'm supposed to meet once a year, but my schedule has only permitted me to meet twice in four years. With a group of people who are discussing survival after bodily death. And we have nice guys. We have a good time discussing it for a week, once a year. These are among pretty much the group of the best researchers in the world. In the English-speaking world, at least.

[46:39]

Yeah, and what's interesting is there's a lot of evidence, but a lot of evidence for consciousness not being limited to the body. But there's a lot of cases, like one dramatic one I heard about recently. Or a woman had an aneurysm, somewhere at the side of her brain. I know, yes. It's the blood. And they couldn't operate on it because if they did, it would kill her. So they could only operate it by deflating it. So they took all the blood out of her body and cooled her down and all that stuff.

[47:46]

And of course in an operation like this it was lots of doctors, there was a timetable for everything, exactly when things happened. And at some point she was legally dead. I don't remember the details, but something like seven minutes with all her blood was out of her body. After seven minutes. For seven minutes, something like that. And then they fixed the aneurysm and put the blood back in her body and Okay. But what was interesting was that she had a clear, very, very clear image of everything that happened during the operation during each minute while she was had no blood in her body.

[49:25]

At some point she said, why did you use that toothbrush on my head? And they actually used a saw, which looks exactly like a toothbrush, to cut her skull open. And she reported what people said and what the doctor did and things like that. Okay. So, clearly... I know enough examples of this kind that in some way we have some kind of knowing that isn't limited to the body.

[50:32]

Now Buddhism generally assigns such things in general to the intermediate world. Meaning, basically, things that happen, anomalies that happen, that you don't make theories about. But these some things happen, you start making theories about it, it's... you get yourself in trouble, but just some things happen. What's interesting now, there's enough research going on in the world that these things are becoming observed enough that people want to make theories. Even, I haven't seen the cases, but there's even, you know, the commonplace thing, and I've had the experience myself of observing from up above somewhere,

[52:09]

of observing an operation or something like that from above. These are usually, but not always, near-death experiences. But what's interesting is, supposedly, I haven't seen any cases, but blind people in such situations actually also see what's going on. It seems to be described less clearly, but they don't have a visual vocabulary after all. Okay, so I don't know, I just bring that up in the service of trying to share with you my own thinking about these things.

[53:48]

So this is something I keep present in myself. But it doesn't change my feeling, my... understanding of Buddhism. That even if there is some kind of knowing separate from the body, Still, the most important thing to do is weaving mind and body together and how you do it. The Buddha is called... Buddha means the one who is awake. And his teaching has developed into a teaching of how to bring awakeness or awareness or light into the whole of the body and one's activity.

[55:07]

or light into the body, into the whole of your existence. Now if I look at examples, this person I've mentioned a few times recently, Hong Ji, There's an extraordinary presence of realization in his teaching. But would it survive outside the monastery? I don't think so, actually. Mm-hmm. So what I'm asking of myself and of practice and our practice, how can we come into a practical realization

[56:33]

which allows us to have a life inseparable from the ordinary conditions of the world. And we could say it's the difference between a Buddha position and a Bodhisattva position. Because you can get to a point where you've almost taken all the ordinary experience of life as if it was dirty dishwater. And simply opened a spout and drained it out of you. And filled it with clear, pure, shiny mind.

[57:57]

And I would call that the Buddha position. And you can live that way. And everything is great. But don't ask the guy to hold a job. Anyway, I'm exaggerating a little bit in all this, but I'm trying to create a picture of practice. But whatever the answer to all these questions, it's still very fruitful and wonderful to bring mind into the body. Mm-hmm. So let's start at the beginning of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness again.

[59:27]

We're bringing attention to the breath and joining breath and mind together and we And we develop a 100% intention to do this. And the power is to hold this intention. Far more important than how much you practice or how hard you practice, but is how completely you hold the intention.

[60:35]

The intention is one of the secrets of practice. Could you turn this to the Eightfold Path? In the Eightfold Path, intention is prior to everything but views. So if you hold an intention, speech, conduct, life and everything begins to bring that intention alive. So you hold the intention to join mind and breath. And that is actually a view.

[62:04]

It becomes a view held in some opposition to other views we have. Views which say, oh, I should do this, or I should think about this, or whatever it is. So the process of holding an intention to join mind and breast also begins to change our views. But actually the process and effort that reaches throughout us It doesn't mean that in Zazen all of you have to sit and look at each inhale and exhale.

[63:12]

Still practice uncorrected mind. Just try to be there with as much presence as possible. But if you often kind of rest your mind in the precise inhale, the precise exhale. Anyway, this will have this will be good to do. And then you try to bring that feeling. Now, what I'm suggesting is you bring this breath-mind awareness.

[64:14]

This sort of breath-mind awareness is what you use throughout the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. This is also, again, mind observing the mind. Mind observing the mind is sometimes self and ego. But you keep trying to return the experience of ego to its roots in mind observing mind. So I'm using the word breath mind to mean also mind observing mind. So you bring this breath mind awareness into the four postures, as I said yesterday. And you feel mind in your posture.

[65:33]

Kin Hin is sort of a measure or a version of this. Here we're actually walking with stepping forward on the exhale, inhaling on the lifting the heel of the back foot. So again, we're trying to get away from generalizations like walking, breathing, etc. Hear your breath. that just the movement of the feet and the inhale and exhale are articulated through each other.

[66:47]

And if you want to use mind images to further articulate your practice, if you want to use mind images to further articulate your practice, As I said, when you lift this way, you're actually using an image of a line, so you're using your mind to lift your body. When our Inno, Dieter Sama, tries to get us to walk fast, which is hard to do, When you're going slow, you can have this feeling of a lifting from your heel all the way up through your backbone.

[68:04]

By coordinating the breath and the motions in this image, you're turning walking into a yogic posture. Most studies of walking say that you're interfering with falling. You start to fall and you step forward and stop the fall. But there's lots of ways of walking. The Japanese design these funny shoes with little straps and they're shorter than the length of your foot.

[69:06]

Those kinds of shoes are designed to get you to walk with your stomach level to the ground. Slot after slot, you can't walk like this. I remember I was at a conference in Bremen a few years ago and a Chinese woman was in my seminar and she said, I left China when I was 19, but you've reminded me I was taught postures to walk in and sleep in and things like that. And that's I think a good sign of the difference between a yoga culture and a culture which thinks things are natural. So if you had this feeling of this kind of circle lifting from your heel up and going down into your exhale,

[70:26]

When Dieter starts to getting us go fast, you can almost feel you're in a circle, in a hoop that's rolling. So if you get bored during Kin Hin, you can start imagining you're in this big circle, rolling, you know. But it seems maybe, you know, I'm fooling around, but also there's a quality of mind to doing this which is different than just feeling your body. So you're bringing this breath-mind awareness into your qin yin and also into now all four postures, living postures.

[71:40]

And then the next stage is, in sequence, is bringing it into the parts of the body. So you're developing this breath mind and then bringing it into your postures. And then you're bringing it into your interior body. And generally they say the 32 parts of the body. But 32 parts just means parts of the body. And I usually suggest you work with the hand and the palm of the hand and so forth and up the arm.

[72:58]

And then from the shoulder you bring your attention, like a little flashlight, down into your lungs and so forth. For some reason, you know, sometimes I start with the right hand, sometimes the left hand, Usually somehow when I teach it I usually say the left hand, I don't know why. And for some reason I think since we can feel our lungs, the lung is the first interior organ to bring your attention to. But you can try other roots. For instance, in your mudra, which is generally overlapping fingers and an oval with the thumbs very, very lightly touching.

[74:00]

And not pushing up and not pushing down. The difference between us and dolphins is we have hands. Dolphins would have a hard time on land. But our hands are very, very closely related to our mental articulation. As I said the other day, I've watched Sophia developing hand and mental articulation simultaneously. So your hands really have a quality of mind in them. Must be the reason why healers feel it most clearly in their hands.

[75:21]

Well, you can get so you can feel the presence of mind in your hands during zazen. So here I'm suggesting another route into the so-called 32 parts of the body. For example, you feel a sort of intensity in your hands. A warmth in the palms and perhaps a coolness on the back of the hands. And when you feel that, you're already feeling something that's not thinking mind, but we could call body mind. There's a variety of

[76:45]

awareness in the hands, it's not in the physical table or this platform. So what do we call that? That's, you know, not a computer duplicating brain function. This is something we can, in Buddhism, is included in the definition of mind. So you begin to become aware through this practice, particularly through the 32 parts, Or of a field of mind. Of an intensity of mind. Some hot spots or something like that.

[78:10]

So say that you feel it in your hands. Then you kind of ask, where else will it appear? And you just wait. Maybe it appears in your cheekbones and skull or something around your eyes. Then you just let that happen and then it appears somewhere inside your body, your diaphragm or something. Sometimes it will appear where the chakras are supposedly located. The chakras are not something that's there. It's a potential that you can develop. You can begin to see where this intensity develops.

[79:29]

Okay, so this is just another route into following mind, in this case, into the body. Das ist a following mind. Into the body. If we're following the body-mind into the body. Das ist also eine andere Bahn, um dem Geist, dem Körpergeist in den Körper hinein zu folgen. Now there are certain concepts that are useful here in this practice. Now it's loosely translated, mindfulness of the body. But this way of saying it in language implies that this has to be done through an observing function of the mind.

[80:40]

And if you... practice it that way, you actually reify, reinforce a self separate from the body, an observer separate from the body. More accurately, it would be to not know the body, not to be mindful of the body, but to be something like bodyful of the body. Because actually what the Four Foundations means is you know the body through the body.

[81:52]

The body knows itself. It's not a mind observing the body. So this step of moving from developing breath mind to bringing into your postures, these two steps, are are indispensable as they are in themselves, but they're also a prelude to knowing the body through the body, primarily through knowing the parts of the body.

[82:53]

And if you do this as an exercise now and then, you actually get so that inside of your body feels as familiar as your toes or shoulder or something like that. You feel like one piece through and through without a feeling of inside or outside. And you do begin now to get this sense of a body mind, not just a thinking mind. Yeah. A body mind, not just... A thinking mind. Somehow it develops most, I think, through this practice of bringing this breath mind into the parts of the body.

[84:12]

And then you, next stage is you bring it into the four elements. So here you've brought breath and mind together. You've brought it into your postures, your living postures. Postures in which you live. Then you brought it into the parts of the body. Then the tradition is you bring it into the way the parts are organized under the categories of a feeling of liquidness, a feeling of solidity. And a feeling of movement and heat. Upward movement. The liquid is a kind of downward movement.

[85:29]

and a feeling of space. And it turns out that practicing that becomes a very fruitful way of relating to the world. Now, I left one step out, which is the cemetery meditation. Cemetery. This is really, you come into seeing, practicing with the alive or dead. It's the best way to break the habit of permanence. But also you come into feeling that, you know, I have solidity and this has solidity.

[86:51]

So you begin to feel that we're all the same stuff. And you can begin to relate to other people actually through their elements, not through their self. You feel another person's solidity. Sometimes, you know, I give some of you guys a hug, and some of you work out, and it's so solid, I think. Whoa! Like a table. And then I straighten your back, and it's like air. It's so soft. It's great. Some people are just solid, some people are solid and soft.

[88:09]

And there's a big difference, you know. I can tell where a person's practice is at, partly how their back feels. So here again, there's some fruitfulness to bringing breath mind into the body. And I'm suggesting you use this approach of breath mind. Okay, now the second foundation of mindfulness. We'll get there. We just went into second gear. Okay. The second foundation of mindfulness is generally called feeling.

[89:32]

But it also overlaps into emotions. And although emotions really belong in the Third foundation of mindfulness. Because what you're exploring with this breath-mind awareness... is first of all just the quality of feeling. Now, this is feeling before emotion and thinking. Now, one of the things that... a couple truisms of Buddhism, in particular of Yogacara Buddhism, is that

[90:44]

All mental phenomena are accompanied by feeling. And all bodily phenomena are accompanied by feeling. And all mental phenomena has a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. And so the territory of that is this what I call non-graspable feeling. And my main example always is there's a feeling in this room right now. And it wasn't here before we started the seminar.

[91:56]

And it's generated by all of us. And the more we're part of this feeling, which we can't grasp, we couldn't say what it is, The more we're part of this feeling, the more this teaching is becoming part of us. So our job, as altogether creating the seminar, is developing this non-grabable feeling that we share. And the meals are part of that. With a group of you who sat up late last night as part of it. The time not in this part of the seminar is part of it.

[93:34]

So for me, the whole configuration of the seminar is about developing this non-graspable feeling. Because the more we develop it and share it, the more the teaching will make sense. Because it's non-greifable feeling, not thinking, which is the main vehicle of understanding and the teaching.

[94:12]

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