You begin to develop, let's call it a breath body. You're a truth body. Now you start practicing bringing mindful attention to conduct. And you started out just bringing attention to speech. But through that, you developed mindful attention. Aber dadurch, dass ihr das getan habt, habt ihr die achtsame Aufmerksamkeit entwickelt, entstehen lassen. Bodyful attention. Oder die körperhaltige Aufmerksamkeit.

[01:08]

Now you're bringing mindful attention to your conduct. Und jetzt bringt ihr die aufmerksame Aufmerksamkeit So now you're reaching mindful attention into the activity of the body. Into your behavior, which is a kind of speech. And the precepts are a kind of speech. Like speaking in a language is a way of communicating with others and connecting with others. conduct through the precepts, conduct through the precepts,

[02:13]

is a way of connecting with others and speaking to others. And creating the potentiality of non-dualistic activity or non-dualistic knowing. Knowing. Or activity. Okay. Now, say that I have a thought. I can have a thought I'm older than Akash. Okay, that's okay. If I have a thought, I want Akash to think I'm intelligent. If I have that thought, basically I've broken the precept.

[03:35]

Do not lie. If I want to create a better impression of myself than I maybe am, that's a form of lying. How often do we lie in that way? If you have that kind of lying, it's a kind of lying, There's no non-dualism. Because if I want Akash to not see me as I am, then there's already separation. So the precepts come in at conduct because it's a way of opening the possibility of non-duality, non-dual activity.

[04:53]

That's an antidote to non-dualism. It's an antidote to dualism. The precepts create the conditions. Okay, so we're bringing mindful attention into our conduct. We bring mindful attention into our conduct. That mindful attention is also, we can say, has the quality of a truth body or breath body. Und diese achtsame Aufmerksamkeit hat schon die Eigenschaften von diesem Wahrheitskörper oder wahren Natur.

[06:19]

So as I'm now speaking with a feeling of my breath in my speaking. Während ich nun spreche mit meinem... The fourth of the Eightfold Path is to speak, is to conduct as a kind of speaking, to act, behave, conduct, to act or behave in a way that both breath and mind are in my behavior. In the sense, we could call that now simply right conduct or integrating conduct.

[07:32]

Now we're bringing our conduct, our conduct of mind and body into our livelihood. As our speech was a means of moving into our thinking. With the breath. Right, livelihood here is our way of moving into the world. Now, what livelihood can the breath body and truth body do?

[08:54]

Sorry, what livelihood? What? Yeah, I mean, you go in for a job interview. Do you want a job? Well, my breath body wants a job. You have to hire my truth body. I'm not sure we want any truth bodies working around here. Certainly not at Philip Morris or Enron. No truth bodies can be employed here. Okay, so... You can see how now, because we're not talking about hiring you, we're talking about hiring a Buddha.

[10:07]

I'm sorry to get you in such a mess so early in the seminar. But, you know, we're not trying to get you a good job, we're trying to turn you into a Buddha. What kind of job does a Buddha want? Well, I'm not sure we should take ourselves that seriously. Amateur Buddhists who can't make it elsewhere apply here. Amateur Buddhists who can't make it elsewhere apply here. Then your effort becomes something.

[11:18]

Now bringing speech, conduct, livelihood and effort into mindfulness, now we have what mindfulness is. So we start out with attention and then mindful attention, and then through this process we create mindfulness. And the four foundations of mindfulness are sort of footnotes, mind notes, body notes to help you do this. The four foundations of mindfulness are a footnote for Mindfulness as such, for the seventh of the Eightfold Path.

[12:49]

Now I'm sorry to teach the four foundations of mindfulness. Because you all know them so well. And I've taught them so often. And now is our chance to change the topic. But since it's in the brochure, we could put ourselves in this box. And maybe we can find some fresh path into the teaching. So let's sit for a few minutes. Yeah. Now perhaps it will be clearer why Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of the wisdom of compassion, doesn't see the suffering of the world.

[16:37]

doesn't understand the suffering of the world, but hears the suffering of the world. Like that poor cow next to her. And through hearing the world, as we've just had an entry into through the third of the Eightfold Path, the Bodhisattva is inseparable from the suffering of the world. Everything speaks to us and through us.

[18:41]

In this wide sense, the activity of speaking hearing the truth of things. A knowing that thinking is only a part of. A knowing that thinking is only a part of.

[19:44]

Thank you again for this afternoon. Thank you for translating. You're welcome. Good evening. Good night. Supposedly there are six new people, is that right? Five. One is not coming or is hiding? Mistake? So you're one.

[21:49]

You're one. That's two. You're one. That's three. Oh, four. Five. Okay. Well, we're not going to redo this. I thought we had fun today. Looking at the roots of mindfulness in the Eightfold Path. In the earliest way we can come to a contextual definition of mindfulness. Because we can understand something like the Eightfold Path.

[22:53]

Well, lots of ways, of course. but not in any old way. It has a very particular teaching. And as I said, the root of, I think you can understand, is the root of all Buddhist teaching. So one way we can look at the Eightfold Path is a context for defining views, for example.

[23:54]

Views has a particular meaning in the Eightfold Path. So through the practice of the Eightfold Path you discover the definition of views. Yeah, and how it can become part of your practice. And likewise, the Eightfold Path is a way to define mindfulness. Okay, so we have a definition of mindfulness that we came to today through looking at the Eightfold Path.

[24:58]

Now the four foundations of mindfulness is an extension of that definition. Now I'm I'm not going to say too much this evening. I just want to get us started on this teaching and practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. Recently I've been speaking about the difference between mental continuity and a mind continuum.

[26:10]

Mental continuity or continuum. I'm making a distinction between mental continuity or consciousness, well, mental continuity, and a continuum, a mental continuum, let's say. So they're both mental? Yes, why not? And a mental continuum. Continuity, now this is, you know, I'm just trying to, I think the definition I'm using is in the words. But I'm certainly emphasizing a difference between the two.

[27:21]

Continuity is a lot like a bunch of railroad trains, the railroad cars, one after another. And a continuum is more like the tracks. Yeah, I'm sort of trying, I want us to be more in the road itself, and it doesn't matter whether there's a railroad car on it or an automobile or not. Yeah, so what I want to do this evening... is introduced to your mental continuum just some aspects of the four foundations of mindfulness that can float around in your mental continuum.

[28:28]

Because whatever's in the mind, now I'll say mind stream, I'm sorry, whatever's in the mind stream affects what kind of water, what kind of, what the stream is. Maybe we can think of it as a broth. So we're trying to get some soup stock ready tonight. Yes, so tomorrow we can really start cooking. Okay. The four foundations of mindfulness are in the simplest way, body, feelings, mind,

[29:41]

And sometimes dharmas, but mental objects. Body, feeling, mind, mental objects. Now you can see there's actually a movement in that, just the order of those four. It's body, feeling, mind, mental objects. It's some kind of movement like getting up. And it is in a particular order. And it does start with the body. Now, in the Eightfold Path, mindfulness starts with speech.

[31:00]

And that's a particular dynamic. But this is more of an exploration. The four foundations. Yeah. But we're again starting with the body. In this case. And what's the first way we start with mindfulness of the body? Is through the breath. So through the Eightfold Path we discovered that breath is the vehicle of mindfulness. If you want to bring attention to something, and you want really mind to accompany that attention,

[32:12]

You join that attention to your breath. Okay, so we have two roots of the practice of the four foundations. And this is also called the four awakenings. You weren't too satisfied with that translation? No, but I think it's understandable. Okay. The four standing up in the morning. Yes. Die vier Aufsteher. Yeah.

[33:25]

The four awakenings. Okay. And it's said that these four awakenings are sufficient to lead to nirvana. So it's another way to say, it's another... example of a teaching which is meant to cover the whole of teaching. Hans, could you turn that page for me? As I said earlier, any teaching you engage with active understanding.

[34:36]

And then you engage it with practice. And then you have an experience of realizing the teacher. Now, the reason I made it three things like this is because I really wanted to emphasize that a big part of it is this active understanding. To really bring your attention to, what is this teaching about? And you ask questions about it. Like, why are the four foundations of mindfulness in this order? Why isn't there just one, mindfulness of the breath, say?

[36:07]

Because you could make a case for that. Okay, so, but why are there four? Why not five or six? That kind of questioning what this is about is part of this active understanding. One of the things we notice by practicing is that these things are actually in an intentional order. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness also makes it clear that this practice is rooted in zazen. But it's not limited to sasin.

[37:17]

It's constantly developed, matured, applied in everyday activity. But you'll see, and we're looking at the four foundations, that there are essential aspects that you just can't get if you're in the midst of activity. But in each of the four, if you get the practice started in zazen, you can continue it in your activity. So now we have three roots of the four foundations. One is it starts with the body.

[38:40]

It starts with the breath. And it starts with sitting posture. Now, for this practice, it doesn't mean you have to become a kind of long-time, four-sashin-a-year sitter. Yes, but probably some regular practice of sitting is required. Yeah, I would say a minimum of three or four times a week is probably a minimum to make sitting work.

[39:51]

When you're sitting, you're generating the mind of sitting. You're generating a mind that you're not born with. And if you don't sit fairly regularly, you lose that mind. Disappears back into the three minds that you're born with. Well, we also generate those minds, but we generate them through our most ordinary living. Because the fourth mind is generated through yogic sitting. And sometimes, every now and then recently, I've been emphasizing that as an initial experience of that, as a background mind.

[41:26]

The turning point of the second stage of practice is this development of initially a background mind. And that is what allows you to really bring a teaching into your life. Now, if it would be useful for you for me to speak about the background mind, I can speak about it tomorrow.

[42:40]

It's very basic. But I sometimes... I don't know what basics sometimes we need to go back over to get up to speed. Yeah. No. You asked a question earlier today about sitting. Could you bring it up again? Sometimes I feel happy when I'm sitting. I hope so. My head goes back like this and I don't know if I should kind of just let it happen, permit it, or if I should stop it.

[43:46]

I don't want to interfere with your happiness. Man, if you're happy! What would I do, though, if I felt that? I'm convinced we're more settled and stable if our body is settled and stable. So I suppose what I would do if I felt particularly good with my head back, Yeah, I would sort of study that, observe that. Mm-hmm.

[45:08]

And I would see if I could kind of bring my head forward and continue the feeling. Mm-hmm. I wouldn't simply correct myself saying, oh, that's the wrong posture. I try to see what's happening. And what's happening to my energy? Or aware energy. And there is a stage in meditation where sometimes we find internal or external movements.

[46:22]

Es gibt ein Stadium in der Meditation, wo wir innere oder äußere Bewegungen finden. Wo es einen wirklich rumschleudern kann, Arme und Kopf und alles Mögliche. Und dich hat es vielleicht in einer von diesen äußeren Bewegungen eingefroren. No, I have to... Instead of straightening you, I come by and go... But, yeah, I'd more explore it. And... I think I've told most of you, but what I find one way to straighten your posture, which I find useful, is to lift from, let's say, the right buttock up to the left ear.

[47:33]

Actually, up to the left shoulder first. And then from the opposite buttock up to the right shoulder. And then lift up to each ear. And then lift up to the center. When you do that, you're sort of confounding, confusing or interrupting. The usual way we conceptualize the body. If you lift up to the opposite and the opposite side and then lift up right like a triangle up to the middle. And you can, even from your knees, you can lift up.

[49:12]

Yeah, so, and those lines, you can even continue a feeling of those lines up through the top, outside, up through the top of the head. And surprisingly, to visualize like that straightens your body usually more subtly than trying to use your muscles or something to do it. So I would say that first you want to find some way to integrate your posture. And on the whole you want a lifting up feeling through the center of the body?

[50:24]

It's kind of a mental lifting and a physical relaxing. It's like you lift with your mind, that's why an image is helpful. And relax your muscles. And relax your breath. And now, in this practice of the first foundation of mindfulness, you're bringing to your breath.

[51:51]

And in this case, you're bringing your attention individually to each inhale and each exhale. In the practice of mindfulness, you're not so much counting your breaths. We count our breaths to use the numbers to bring our attention away from the letters of our thinking. Well, again. Okay. When you count your breaths, you're basically doing a kind of thinking. Counting sheep to go to sleep. Yeah. Anyway, so you... I was wondering, I said, nothing.

[53:09]

So, but now you're counting with numbers instead of thinking language letters, that's what I meant. But thinking what? Thinking breathing or thinking... When you count your breath, you're bringing attention out of your thinking to the numbers, but you're using numbers, which is a kind of thinking. It's very similar, as Dieter pointed out to you today, to naming. Naming is a way of cutting through thinking. If you name everything, so you're taking a walk, you name grass. Tree or flower.

[54:30]

You're bringing your attention to your immediate situation. But since the immediate situation tends to make you think You interrupt that tendency with a name instead of letting it go into words and sentences. It's just a resource. It's a toolbox, one of the tools in your toolbox. If you practice naming, the mind that arises through naming is not the same as the mind that arises through words, through thinking.

[55:35]

Thinking, the whole field of the mind gets absorbed into thinking. When you just name, When you give names and you name things in your immediate situation, the immediate situation and background mind are closely related. the immediate situation and the field of mind are almost one field.

[56:51]

So if you interrupt thinking with naming, The field of mind which is rolled up in the tube of thinking begins to sort of unroll. So your first foundation of mindfulness, your sitting, you find some stability in your sitting.

[58:01]

Your mind feels good actually. Something bright and fresh about it when it really feels like it's lifting your posture. And your body feels good when it's just relaxed. You sort of hung your body up on the mind hangar. In the Dharma closet. The closet gets bigger and bigger, of course. Then you bring your attention to your breath. But not just in general, you bring your attention to your inhales and your exhales.

[59:11]

And you'll discover if you really are patient about it, if you can actually join your attention to your breath, that the mind of the inhale is different than the mind of the exhale. So first of all, the fourth practice of the four foundations of mindfulness is rooted in the mind of the inhale and the mind of the exhale. And you begin to feel a kind of rhythm of the inhale and the exhale. And again, sometimes that's reinforced by naming the inhale and exhale.

[60:32]

And you want to make some distinction, so usually the distinction is between long and short. some additional distinction. So you're bringing, if you just, you know, name exhale, inhale, you're not bringing as much attention if you notice, oh, this is a long inhale, a long exhale. Precise or... Not so, I don't know, clear?

[61:43]

No, but you hit on one of the secrets of this practice. You're developing a clarity of mind. dass ihr eine Klarheit des Geistes entwickelt. Ihr seid euch nicht so klar über das Objekt der Wahrnehmung, sondern ihr seid euch sehr klar über die And clarity of mind arises out of preciseness.

[62:47]

The fuzziness of the mind arises out of generalizations. So right at the beginning of this practice, it's not just a generalization of the word breathing. like trees, it's a generalization. Now, the other day I gave an exercise to some folks and they found it useful. You Bring your attention to, say, a tree. Ihr bringt zum Beispiel eure Aufmerksamkeit zum Beispiel auf einen Baum.

[64:03]

And you bring your attention to the field of the tree. Und dabei richtet ihr die Aufmerksamkeit auf das Feld des Baumes. And then a detail of the tree. Und dann auf ein Detail des Baumes. And then you go back to the field of the tree. Then you go back to a detail with the tree. It's a kind of little exercise. And you do it. I would suggest you try it out. And it's interesting, the mind that can No, the tree is more like a feeling. You catch a physical feeling. Then you go back to a detail, a branch, a twig, a leaf.

[65:05]

And then back to the whole of the tree, the space the tree occupies. All the leaves all at once. For instance, I might look at one of you. Very precisely. Might be your glasses, it might be your shirt. And then I go back to all of you all at once. Yeah, and that's actually so much my habit now, I do it all the time. Now I find if I do that, now only am I interrupting associative thinking. Interrupting thinking. But I'm generating two kinds of minds, one that really sees the details, and one that feels the field of this realm, for example.

[66:48]

And I find if I do that, I'm much more likely to feel like I'm speaking to what you're thinking about. Now, if you want to continue it as a little exercise, you join it to inhales and exhales. You inhale the whole field of the tree. And then you exhale into a detail. And then you inhale the whole field of the trini.

[68:07]

Or it could be a person. It's hard to do it with adult people, but you could do it with Sophia. Or Zoe. But if I tried to... To Beate, she might start objecting, what the hell are you doing? And her husband would get jealous, he might punch me or something like that. What are you doing? Well, I can do it as much as I want to. Zoe, I think she might... Zoom in on Zoe. Okay. So you do that four or five times with an inhale-exhale relationship. And then you hold your breath at either the bottom or the top, but I'd say usually the top.

[69:12]

Yeah, I mean, just stop your breath for a moment at the top of the inhale-exhale. The top of the inhale. And then melt into the tree. You know, we're just trying to get to know the way we work. The poor foundation of mindfulness is just the main tool to see into how you work, how the mind feelings are constructed, put together. Yeah, how we're constructed. Okay, and how we're constructing all the time.

[70:29]

So again, let's go back again. We're sitting with some stillness. The body feels very relaxed. Lifted up by the mind. Yeah, we bring our attention to our exhale. We bring attention to our inhale. And we begin to feel that inhaling is different than exhaling. Yeah, and you're going to die on an exhale, not an inhale.

[71:52]

That's how different they are. If you inhale again, you're probably still living. Oh, there he is. Okay. So you kind of really then make it a more conscious act. Or intentional or practice act. And you feel you're disappearing on the exhale. And you really let go. And it would be, if you really let go, it would be okay if you happened to die on that exhale. So sayonara.

[73:08]

Actually, that's not possible because auf Wiedersehen means see you again. See you again. See you again. On another plane, another time. That's Santana. Another plane, another time. Do you know that song? Anyway, Trudy Dixon, who edited Send My Beginner's Mind With Me, died on that song, partly. She sent me a tape with that song on it, and while I was listening to it, a telegram arrived saying she'd died. So we really bring attention to our exhales and our inhales.

[74:26]

And then we get used to actually feeling the difference at the top and the bottom of the breath cycle. And as you do this, as you well know from how we've talked about it before, If you can really continue this, you begin to take your need for continuity out of thinking and bring it in to the body and the breath. To do this is one of the biggest changes you can possibly make in your life.

[75:49]

And if you do this, it is one of the greatest changes you can make in your life. If you really practice the four foundations of mindfulness, Now, when I say it this way, I sound like I'm threatening you. You'd better do it this way or you're going to not realize it. And when I say it this way, it really sounds like a threat. If you don't do it this way, you'll miss the enlightenment. But I want you to realize, look, we're talking about Buddhahood here. It's not as hard as learning to be a doctor. Or a lawyer or a scientist or something. If you put the kind of energy you put into your education, say, Yeah, Buddhism is a snap.

[77:13]

If I, you know, Look at how much you know in your job, and yet if I say, what are the four this or that, you say, huh? What were the four noble proofs? Also, schau doch mal, wie viel ihr in eurem eigenen Beruf wisst, und wenn ich euch nur frage, was sind die vier edlen Wahrheiten, sagt ihr, was ist das? I mean, you know hundreds of phone numbers, but you can't remember the eightfold path. So I'm trying to emphasize you've really got to really actively understand and engage this practice.

[78:20]

Now I'm going to present the Eightfold Path this Saturday and Sunday. I mean the Four Foundations. So that you can enter at any point. according to your feeling. But that's only your kind of visiting, your visitor in the practice. It's okay to visit. I like to have visitors sometimes. But if you want to live in the house of the practice, Wenn ihr aber in dem Gebäude der Praxis wohnen wollt, dann müsst ihr euch wirklich das Haus selber bauen und dabei mit dem Fundament beginnen. Also ihr könnt natürlich diese Lehre oft besuchen.

[79:41]

But if you really want to Realize the teaching. Don't let the visiting interfere with your building the house. So you really don't go much further along in the four foundations Until you can really rest in your breathing pretty much all the time. So breathing becomes the posture of your mind.

[80:42]

So thinking ceases to be the posture of your mind. Unless you want to think about something. But you don't sort of go along thinking mostly about who you are all the time. We all know who you are, so you can forget about it. Give yourself a rest. Now we'll come back, maybe if you remind me, we'll come back to why this is not just a psychological problem, but a mindological problem. So I think this is enough of a start for this evening, don't you think? I didn't get very far, I only got to breath.

[82:11]

Yeah, so let's sit for a few minutes. So what you're really doing in this first of the first practice of the first foundation of mindfulness is you're developing mental clarity.

[84:17]

Hmm. Thank you very much for being here this evening.

[85:50]

Thank you for translating. And Christian will be back tomorrow, probably? What? Tonight, okay. We have an expression in English which is exemplified the last couple of days here is, make hay while the sun shines. But it's come to mean more like have a good time, not work as hard as these guys are working.

[86:58]

It means usually just to have a good time, not to work like these guys. Okay. Now, does somebody have something from last night or just in general you'd like to bring up? I have a question concerning this point concentration. In the Eightfold Path, you mean? For example, when I have tried to place mindfulness on the breath while speaking,

[88:10]

So then I notice it's very hard to do. I always forget to do that. Not to forget that, is that meant by concentration? That's good, yeah. That's part of what we're talking about here in this first of the four foundations of mindfulness. Concentration definitely does not mean you're concentrated on something. It means more like an overall presence or you might say that person is very concentrated in something. Concentration means definitely not to be concentrated on something, but a kind of presence. One could say, for example, a person is very concentrated.

[89:36]

Yes. I would like to know something about the difference between attention and awareness. I would like to know more about the difference between mindfulness and attention. Yeah, you were here during the pre-day, right? Yesterday, during the day, yeah. So, yeah. Okay, I'll try to speak to that during the day, today and tomorrow. Concerning the... I have a question concerning the practice to focus on a detail and then... Widen that, yeah.

[90:55]

Looking at the whole. Can I do that during meditation or only when I directly look at the object? Oh, you can do it in meditation. In fact, it develops a skill of being able to really focus on a detail. Like in a dream, like if you had an image like a dream or some image in your mind, You can pick a tiny image within the... You can pick a tiny detail within the image and enlarge it like a camera and then go inside it. Yeah, that's nuts.

[92:07]

These kind of things are just, I don't know, they just come, these things, I don't know, not very important, but it's one of the flavors of mind when the mind is when you feel fully part of your mind. And then when I breathe in, I find it easier to go into detail, because then I draw it into me, and when I exhale, I can see the whole thing, or do I have to do it the other way around?

[93:17]

And then during breathing in, I found it easier to go into the detail because I was able to kind of pull it. Inhale instead of exhale. Inhale. You can do it as you wish. There should be a lot of playfulness here. You can do it the way you want. It should be very playful. Okay, anyone else? So, first of all, by the way, it is a custom to bow to each other. It comes from monastic practice.

[94:20]

But if you're deep in meditation, you don't have to bow. So when I come in and you've been sitting for a while and I bow, all those who aren't deep in meditation bow. I am just teasing. Generally, if you're sitting, you don't bow. Only at the beginning you bow. But it reminds me when I was a kid in second grade or something like that. We were all supposed to be taking a nap on our desk. And I was sitting up trying to learn how to whistle.

[95:34]

And the teacher had her head down too, right? And suddenly I was successful. And I went... And everyone else went... And then they all laughed at me. I was deep in sleep. So, I'd like to put a fairly simple little chart on that flip chart.

[96:42]

It's okay. It's okay. We have something like, maybe we could say, just general territory. We have something like a general territory, a specific territory, and a teaching territory.

[97:52]

Now, from that, from that, in this sense, In this sense, everything you do in practice is part of the four foundations of mindfulness. If we discuss or have some understanding or familiarity of the four foundations of mindfulness, then we could say there's specific teaching, like you might work with parts of the body. you might look at parts of the body, you might look at breath, you might look at...

[99:05]

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