breath to say some things to you. I got a message that it would be good if I gave a description of the course to be offered here this fall, in November and December. I wanted to discuss with you, since many of you come to these classes regularly, the prospect of this autumn and beyond. I confess to you that earlier this summer I was informed about

[01:04]

the number of people who were registered or signed up to come to this class. I didn't see the people but I saw the names, I mean I saw the number, I just heard the number. And when I heard the number I thought, oh, I guess people are losing interest in these classes. I wonder if I should keep coming over to Berkeley, since there seems to be waning interest. And the previous class also was relatively small, so I'm sensitive to when there seems to be a dip, and particularly when there seems to be a trend towards less interest. In the end, many people signed up after, like in the last week or so, maybe

[02:08]

some of you noticed that you signed up, or you didn't sign up, and then you signed up later. But anyway, this group is fine with me. But two-thirds of this group, and then half of this group, especially if I sense a waning interest, then I think maybe if I offered classes less often people would be more interested. Maybe there's too many classes. So I think about such things, particularly when I'm contemplating my breathing in traffic. I sometimes wonder, what am I doing in this traffic jam? Is it really a good idea to be going over to Berkeley? So that's to say to you that I'm sensitive to your participation,

[03:10]

I'm happy with this group. And then I'm thinking of the fall, and part of me thinks, you know, we can go a lot deeper into the meditation on breathing. There's a lot of subtleties and refinements which we could contemplate on our way to developing a very subtle and refined body and mind. And I'm kind of thinking of going in that direction. And also this fall at Green Gulch I've been asked to lead a practice period and I'm also going to, I think, there emphasize, set the stage of posture and breathing for the meditation

[04:12]

practice during the practice period. But I also am saying this to you, and if you would like to have me offer something else here, if you do not wish to continue studying this meditation on breathing, I welcome your feedback to help me decide what to offer here. Because if you don't want me to, then you probably won't. If you're not interested, you might not come to the class, and if you don't come to the class, then I might think you're not interested. Yes? I also noticed that you're switching to Tuesdays. What's that reason for switching to Tuesdays? The reason for switching to Tuesdays is because the Green Gulch schedule has changed. And they switch things around there for the sake of the guest program. So yeah, it's on Tuesday

[05:21]

but in the spring, in the summer, probably move back to Thursday. But if you tell me that you can't come on Tuesday, that would be good for me to know. I don't know what I can do about it at this point, other than cancel the class if you can't come. So I'm just telling you that I'm using the breath to tell you these things. And so if you want me to keep working on this meditation on breathing, going into more aspects of it beyond next week, let me know. And if you don't want to and rather hear some other kind of teaching, let me know that too, please. I'm glad we have one more class. And in case I forget to say it in the next class, I think

[06:28]

it would be great if we all continued to take care of our two bodies, our postural flesh and blood body and our breathing body. I think it would really be good if we continued to observe how these two bodies work with each other. I will probably talk more about that tonight, but I just want to say it's really important to me that we continue the practice beyond the class. Because after next week there will be a break in the classes. So I hope you're interested enough, I want you to be interested enough and see the value in this meditation enough that you'll take care of it. Thank you for that encouragement.

[07:44]

So we've been talking quite a bit, and I say again that the basic suggestion here is to have this basic frame of attention, which is the appearance of a body and the appearance of breath, and then to observe how the breath conditions or influences the body. To watch how the breath body conditions the postural body. And then, as you see that, you also get to see how the posture conditions the breathing. The breathing kind of makes requests

[08:52]

of the posture, and once the posture receives that request from the breathing, the posture then offers something back to the breathing. The posture facilitates the breathing after the breathing influences the posture. So we've been meditating on that. In Pali, when the Buddha talked about this relationship, the Buddha spoke of, in Pali, kaya smriti upasthana. Kaya means body, smriti is... No, actually, in Pali it's sati. Kaya sati upasthana. In Sanskrit, kaya smriti upasthana. Smriti or sati means mindfulness or memory,

[10:01]

and upasthana means foundation or frame, frame of reference in the practice. The word kaya also means like a collection. It means body, kaya means body, but it also means a collection. It's actually kind of a collection. In other words, it's an idea. So we're actually meditating on our idea of the body and our idea of breathing, and then our idea of how the breathing and the body are interacting in our idea of now and our idea of here. Our idea of here and

[11:03]

now and the body breathing is perhaps our most basic frame of reference. We can also have the idea of the future and other bodies, and the past and other bodies, and other breaths and other ideas. Those are other frames of reference, and we don't in any way disparage them, but they are somewhat derivative, and we can get lost in them. But if we do get lost in them, as we have mentioned from our own experience, many of us have realized when we're lost in thoughts of planning in the future and reflecting on the past, which are part of our life, if we get lost in that stuff, it's good to come back to the basic idea of now, here, body, breathing. Then when we are well settled here in this

[12:08]

breathing body, now, then from that place, thinking about other things will be more auspicious, or the thinking of other things will be more auspicious, auspicious in the sense of conducive to success at enlightenment. Auspicious means conducive to success. So it's not that we don't think of other things besides our body and breathing, but those things, those contemplations, those thoughts, when they come from this presence, are more likely to be what we want them to be, namely beneficial to everybody. Remind me later, not too much later, but remind me a little bit later about making decisions. But not

[13:16]

quite this much later, a little later than this later. Now back to the breathing. I want to emphasize now that we've been talking about meditating on the body breathing, the breath interacting with the body. Now I just want to say that the way that the breath influences or conditions the body, we can look at it in different ways. The conditioning process involves, in a sense, this is in the realm of ideas of body and breath and now. In that realm there's the idea of something conditioning or influencing something else. So there's a conditioner, and the breath is a conditioner of the body. The

[14:17]

breath is a conditioner of the posture. And then there is the condition, which is that which has been conditioned. And the breath can be both conditioner and condition, and also the breath can be conditioning. So there's conditioner, condition, and conditioning. And the breath can be all three of those, and it can be all three of those right now on this exhale. The breath can be all three. And the body can be all three too. When the breath is the conditioner, then the body is often the condition. And the way the body is a condition is a result of the conditioner engaged in the process of conditioning. So

[15:22]

as we exhale, there's conditioning, conditioned. There's conditioner, conditioning, conditioned. The breath and the body are in this conditioner, condition, conditioning thing, and this all happens in every part of every exhale. So part of realizing the totality or the wholeness of trusting an exhale, part of the totally trusting the exhale is to trust the totality of the exhale. And the exhale, the breath, has this influence or influence on the body conditioning quality, and it's conditioning the body, and there's a process of conditioning.

[16:22]

And that's going on in the exhale at the same time. So again, part of being totally with the breathing, for example, the exhale, is in each moment of the exhale appreciating that dynamic relationship of the body and the breathing. Another part of totally trusting an exhale is to trust, to make life simple, the beginning, the middle, and the end of the exhale. That's another part of totally trusting an exhale. If you trust the beginning of an exhale, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I mean, a lot of people don't notice even the beginning of an exhale. It's a good share of the time. Almost everybody occasionally notices an exhale. Like Barry probably just noticed that one.

[17:26]

But not talking about anybody else, let's just talk about me. I may not notice the beginning, middle, and end of an exhale. But like I said, just to make things simple, if you're watching an inhale as it interacts the inhale body, the inhale collects the collection of the inhales. There's quite a few inhales on each inhale, and there's quite a few exhales on each exhale, in a way. It isn't like the exhale isn't happening until it's finished. I would say the exhale is a process. So the beginning of an exhale counts as part of the exhale. Does that make sense? It's not like, oh, I'm not exhaling because I didn't finish yet. I am exhaling, but I'm not done exhaling, and I'm still not done with exhaling, and I'm still not done with exhaling, and I'm still not done with

[18:31]

exhaling, and I'm still not done with exhaling, and now I'm just a... Yeah, that was it. So another part of totally trusting the exhale is to trust the beginning, the middle, and the end. And of course, between the beginning and the middle, there's the pathway between the beginning and the middle. In other words, there's lots of moments on a normal exhale. There's quite a few moments there. And same with inhales. There's quite a few moments in an inhale. And part of being totally trusting some process is to trust the whole process or to learn to trust the whole process. So these are some ways to deepen the meditation

[19:43]

from simply the beginning, where we are actually just watching exhales, and now I'm going to watch an inhale, exhale, and pretty soon I'm going to watch an inhale. There's that, and then there's watching the relationship between the exhale and the body, and the inhale and the body, and then watching how the beginning of the inhale affects the body, the middle of the inhale affects the body, and the end of the inhale affects the body. Watch how the beginning of the exhale influences the body, the middle of the exhale, and the end of the exhale influences the body. And then in addition, I think again to remind

[20:43]

you, observe the way short breaths condition the body, the way short exhales and short inhales condition the body, the way the body conditions short exhales and short inhales, and the way long exhales and long inhales condition the body, and the way the body responds and therefore conditions the breathing. So these are a number of ways to move from watching the basic relationship to making the observation more whole, more total. And sometimes it's translated as breathing with

[21:50]

the whole body. But when the Buddhist says the whole body, it could be understood as the whole postural body. I'm not saying it doesn't mean that, but apparently the first way the Buddha means it when the Buddhist says breathe with the whole body is the Buddha means breathe with the whole body at the breath. Breathe with the beginning, middle, and end of the breath. Breathe with awareness of how the breath is conditioning, conditioner, and how the body is conditioned, or the condition of the breathing. This is the breathing of the whole body kind of breathing. Another way to understand it is sometimes also translated

[22:53]

as contemplating or observing all bodies. So one way to say it is contemplating the total body breathing, the total body at the breath. Another way is to say all bodies in the sense of watch how the different breath bodies and the different postural bodies, watch them all, all the different varieties, the beginning body, the middle body, the end body, the short body, the long body, all those bodies, to pay attention to all of them, is to move the practice, the basic practice, into a more total practice, which is called breathing with the whole body, or breathing with the whole body of the breath, or contemplating

[23:57]

the whole breathing process. And again I would say that this total breathing is contemplating is getting close to totally trusting the breath, but not, there's another step which brings the breath practice to total trust, and at that point we are ready to, the meditation is ready to leap, leap into wisdom. So that's the meditation. Okay, I see Elaine wants to ask a question, yes? How does this meditation affect the nervous system?

[24:58]

How does this meditation affect the nervous system? Well, here's a story, this is a story. The first story is, no story can tell you actually how the meditation on breathing is affecting the nervous system. But still, there can be general stories about the abstraction of the effect, and so a number of things can be said, that is, when you pay attention to your breathing, that type of attention transforms your nervous system. If you don't pay attention

[26:03]

to your breathing, that type of attention transforms your nervous system. Whatever you pay attention to, and whatever you feel about it, or think about it, transforms your nervous system. Our nervous system is constantly being transformed by the way our conscious activity is functioning. So somehow, we're in a room talking about paying attention to breathing, and it's possible that while we're talking about breathing, some of us are actually paying attention to our breathing. And paying attention to your breathing transforms your nervous system, period. Now, if you get skillful at paying attention to your breathing, your nervous

[27:08]

system gets transformed in such a way that your body, and your breathing, and your mind become more and more relaxed, buoyant, joyful, flexible, playful, and ready for wisdom. And this is possible because of the transformation of the nervous system by this conscious activity which the nervous system supports. How this process goes is ninety-five percent of the time unconscious, because ninety-five percent of what's going on with our cognitive activity is unconscious. I'm watching my hand move right now, and I'm hearing myself talk, but I am not actually, I cannot figure out how to make my hand go like this. But I'm aware

[28:14]

that it's happening, and I can even think that I'm making it go this way. But I have received teachings which said, I do not consciously move my hand through the air like this. The amazing thing of moving my hand like this is much more complex than I could ever consciously orchestrate. But yet, it is orchestrated. How I imagine, how I come to be able to imagine a present right now, how I come to imagine a now that seems like a now, I cannot consciously figure out how I do that. But there's a teaching which comes into this now where I'm living, and this now where I'm talking to you, which says focusing, being pretty much regularly

[29:21]

in touch with now transforms the nervous system in such a way that there will be more opportunities to be frequently in touch with the idea of now. And that again will influence the cognitive process, which is 95% unconscious, to support more awareness of now. And in now, the meditation on the breath now is the basic meditation which transforms our cognitive process, our unconscious cognitive process, to support more meditation on breathing body now. And being centered in this breathing body now makes possible the most effective complex activities. Complex means more complex than just a body breathing. For example, breathing

[30:24]

and planning. So I'll do the planning thing now. We plan, and many of us are aware, consciously aware when we're planning. But most people think that they are going to consciously figure out how to make a good plan. Or we, decision making even, sometimes actually people make plans and don't feel too stressed. But to make a plan and then to decide whether you're going to implement it or not, or to have ten plans and decide which one to do, I am the beneficiary of the opportunity to hear many people come and talk to me about making decisions. And they're often very stressed when they're making decisions. And they're partly coming to me because they're stressed and they think maybe I could help them make the decision

[31:25]

and help them with their stress. And I have a story that I can. And the way I help them is by suggesting that they come into the present and, for example, pay attention to their posture and breathing. Most people think that if they have a decision, let's say there's two options or three, that they should think about which one is best. And I don't say, no, you shouldn't. And I don't say, no, you should. I say, what do I say? Huh? Yeah, right. I say trust everything to inhalation and exhalation. You already got three options here. Nobody has to tell you the three. You already think that you'd like to figure out which one's best. Nobody has to tell you that. This is orchestrated by your unconscious, your cognitive unconscious.

[32:27]

It made those three up. And it knows how to support thinking about them. And it's going to. However, the best decision will come, I suggest, from a place where you can have a sense of being grounded in posture and breathing. And most people, when they have three options, and also they have the idea that, maybe a little bit of an idea, that they're in the present thinking of these. But actually, mostly they're not in the present thinking of these. And they're thinking of these in the future. And they're a little bit aware that they're feeling really anxious. They think, I don't have time to be trusting everything to posture and breathing. I have to think about which one of these is best. Of course, we all understand that. But that approach might come up with choosing one of these. But I would say, whichever

[33:34]

one you choose, I'm saying this, whichever one you choose, things will go best if that decision arises from totally trusting inhalation and exhalation. And one of those alternatives can be called the decision while trusting posture and breathing. Can you wait until I'm finished with this nervous system? So there's many stories about what makes the best decisions. I heard that the best decisions are decisions where there's a diversity of opinions about which is the best decision. That could be a diversity of people or within your own mind a diversity of opinions also. And trusting posture and breathing, my experience is trusting posture and breathing does not

[34:45]

try to reduce the number of different views about anything. It just doesn't let the different views disturb the totally trusting posture and breathing, the different views don't disturb the situation. They are conditions for the decision as usual, but in a context of presence with this breathing body and calm and flexibility and so on. Mindfulness of breathing has influence on the body. Mindfulness of breathing simultaneously

[35:49]

transforms the body, which means it transforms the conscious body. You can watch it. It transforms the body which we're not conscious of, which is the nervous system. It transforms parts of the body which are not the nervous system, because the parts of the body that are not the nervous system share the opportunities and misfortunes of the nervous system. So it transforms the nervous system, it transforms the unconscious body and mind, and it transforms the conscious mind. Whatever kind of attention you do, so the question is, which type of attention do you wish to promote? Because whatever kind of attention you use, it's transforming your unconscious body-mind, which transforms your conscious body and mind, and then with

[36:51]

your conscious body-mind is where you apply your attention. We can't really apply our attention to our unconscious mind, but we can apply our attention to our conscious mind-breath-body, or rather body-breath-mind. We can, and that transforms our unconscious, vast unconscious body-mind, which supports more meditation. The more we devote ourselves to meditation, the more our vast unconscious body-mind supports our conscious meditative activity, until the effects on our unconscious mind are sufficient to the point of supporting a radical abandonment of certain types of conscious activity, like clinging, like greed, hate, and delusion,

[37:56]

which are supported, conscious greed, hate, and delusion are supported by unconscious cognitive process, which is the result of past types of attention. So to make a long story short, totally trusting your breathing process, and totally trusting means trusting to the point where you really encounter the fullness, the full subtlety and refinement of breathing-body-mind, that total trusting transforms the unconscious to make a conscious mind that's willing to not have any greed, hate, or delusion anymore, that's willing to actually feel okay about not having any, even though it's really strange. Am I okay? I don't have any greed, hate, or delusion today. Is that alright? And some

[38:58]

people will actually tell you, no, you're not alright. We like the old guy. We liked you when you weren't greedy. You were more fun in the old days. You won't go to bars with us anymore. Or when you come, you interfere with certain programs we have in mind. So that's a story about how this practice transforms the nervous system-the body. And again, the body is not just the nervous system. The fingernails are not exactly the nervous system. The bones are not necessarily the nervous system. There are parts of the body which aren't the nervous system, but the nervous system and the other parts are very close friends, and the cognitive process is not the least bit separate from the non-cognitive

[40:03]

parts of the body. The body is both cognitive and non-cognitive. And most of the cognitive, we don't expect the fingernails to be conscious. We don't expect to know what it's like to be a fingernail. And fingernails actually have trouble telling us what it's like to be a fingernail, because as far as I know, fingernails do not think they possess the different parts of the fingernail. But other parts of our mind do think that they own things, so then there's somebody there. And that part is inseparable from the nervous system. And the nervous system is constantly being transformed. Did you say that our nervous system is genetically directed? Oh, defective. Genetically defective.

[41:21]

Or perhaps inclined toward greed, hate, and delusion. That's a really common one. Most people's genetic endowment is that it facilitates them being greedy, ignorant, and angry. Those are genetically supported. And I don't know if most people think that, but the Buddha taught that, that these greed, hate, and delusion processes are genetically supported. The nervous system runs on genes, runs on chromosomes, runs on DNA, and RNA, and AIDS, and a lot of that wonderful stuff makes greed, hate, and delusion. So the Buddha's teaching that there's a way, and in the realm of greed, hate, and delusion, greed, hate, and delusion

[42:30]

exists in the conscious mind. It doesn't exist in the unconscious mind, as far as I know. But the unconscious mind totally supports it, because the unconscious mind is the result of greed, hate, and delusion. And it supports further greed, hate, and delusion. However, the unconscious mind is also the result of kindness, and patience, and generosity. And it's also the result of totally trusting your inhalation and exhalation, if you happen to be involved in that. The unconscious mind is supporting greed, hate, and delusion, and the unconscious mind is genetically involved. So the Buddha would agree with that, I would say. But the Buddha is also saying, you can transform your genetic situation. The genes can be transformed. The DNA can be transformed. The DNA is transformed by conscious life.

[43:30]

Conscious life affects the nervous system, affects the genetic activity, the genetic functioning. It's now being, I think, proposed by certain research, that if you think certain ways you can disturb the way genetic activity is going on. If you're stressed in your conscious life, that can interfere with the way genes are copied, right? We're finding that out, aren't we? That stress interferes with some normal genetic functioning. And lack of stress promotes the effective copying of stuff that's going on. Stuff's being copied all the time, and the stuff that's being copied is the stuff that runs the nervous system. So if you want

[44:35]

to make good copies, one way you can contribute to that is by meditating on your posture and breathing. Yes? What's your name again? Cecile. Is there a song like that? Cecile! Good, thank you. Yes, Cecile? You're welcome. And what is it? Yeah, that could be your intention.

[45:45]

Pessoa. That's the name of my dermatologist. It's a she, and I don't know if she's Portuguese, but the next time I see her, I'll ask her. And I'll ask her if she knows the poet, what's his name? Pessoa. Fernando Pessoa. Okay, yes, so tell us about Ferdinand. He adopted different names and grew up as different poets. So there were a whole category of poets, and they talked to each other too. So one poet would talk to the other poet, and he was involved with all those poets, and it created this community of poets.

[47:05]

And one poet that came to me and said, I wish that I had a nose in front of my book, not just a turn, because I often wanted to feel that I could breathe. And that finished me and I felt inspired a little bit by Pessoa. So I wanted to share that. Well, did you hear what she said about the nose in the back? So if you watch your breathing, condition your posture, you may discover that you kind of do have a nose in your back. That your spine does kind of inhale and exhale. It's affected by your breathing, particularly when your breathing gets deep, your back starts to, in a sense, be resonating with

[48:13]

the breathing more. I see Sarah's question, but I want to mention something also, if I may. May I, John? That's quite all right. Really? I'm having trouble with this again. Actually, I'm willing to wait a little longer until you feel even better about me talking about whatever this is I'm going to talk about. Could you ask your question, please? I've been holding on to just a very simple thing. You were talking about the totality

[49:14]

of breathing. I think you were talking about, you know, while we're watching the process, the different bodies, and then you talk about leaking, and then you said that when it's almost there, and you're maybe trusting it, you said that then there's one thing about your insight, and then you kind of went into a lot of the subconscious and everything. I just wanted you to kind of tie it. You may have already covered with that. I have not. There's another phase. There's some more phases to this to sort of sketch in totally trusting. What I've done so far is watch the body and breath interact around, and then watch how they do with the inhalation, exhalation, long and short breath, and then I'm also filling in, watch how the whole body, which means the whole body of the breath, watch that, and there's another phase, but I'm going to bring it up next week.

[50:18]

Oh, okay. Because I wanted to leap into leaking, but then I was very excited. You can go ahead and leap anytime. You don't have to fulfill the prerequisites. Just leap. You may be able to get to the total trusting without this next phase that I'm going to talk about. But here's what I was going to say before you asked your question, which you were holding onto but willing to let go of, and that was, I asked at the end of class last time if you would try to contemplate your breathing body as you drove home, and some people did, and one person, and I was one of the people who did, by the way, and then somebody sent me an email telling me about, not driving home so much, but some problems she had with her breathing, when she started noticing her breathing. I want to tell you what I found when I was driving home. I was watching my breathing

[51:20]

and I noticed discomfort in my chest. I wasn't expecting it. I thought, I thought this is going to just be not only fun, but I kind of thought it was going to be comfortable, but it wasn't comfortable. I actually felt discomfort in my chest, unexpectedly, which doesn't sound good. But that's what I found. That's how my breath conditioned my body, and I was paying attention, so I noticed that's how my breath was conditioning my body, and I can tell a story about that, like my breath interacting with my body in the car was kind of like there was some kind of stress there. And I worked with that as I was driving, and I kept watching it, and I wasn't trying to make the discomfort go away. I was actually

[52:25]

enjoying the surprise of this challenge, of this discomfort. And I continued to watch this, and it worked out, and the discomfort went away, and I continued to watch the breath process. That's something I noticed. And then someone wrote me an email talking about irritable breath, and irritable breath could be understood as breath that's irritating, or irritation about the breath, either way. And what do you do about irritable breath? Well, in my case, and I think I've told this before, I've mentioned in other classes,

[53:29]

generosity, ethics, patience, and diligence. And diligence is a big part of this class. I'm trying to generate, I'm trying to inspire diligence for this practice of mindfulness of breathing. I'm trying to inspire the aspiration in all of us to do this practice. I'm trying to inspire joy at the prospect of devoting your attention to your breathing body. But that diligence is based on generosity, ethics, and patience. So as you get into meditating on your breathing, if you run into pain, discomfort, distress, go back to generosity, ethics, and patience. Say thank you. And I actually kind of did say thank you when that came, when

[54:34]

that pain came. I kind of said thank you like, wow, I didn't expect this challenge. This will be interesting to tell them next week. So I'm not going back and saying, well, I followed my breathing, and I had this great time driving home. I was very comfortable. And I thought, oh, this is an interesting twist. So I can tell them that I did not get impatient with that stress. I didn't. I actually did what I'm telling you. I welcomed it. I welcomed it. I a little bit liked it. I didn't have to like it, but I did a little bit like it. And now I welcome that I liked it. But I liked it only because I thought it was interesting and unexpected. But still, then I went back to just dealing with it generously, and I was careful. I didn't hate it. I didn't slander it. I didn't say stupid stress in the chest. I didn't say lousy meditation on breathing. Yes? Did it create worry about the driving?

[55:34]

No. That was part of also, I kind of wanted you to see, did it cause any problem with the driving? And I do not find that following my breathing while I'm driving. I do not find observing my body being breathed. I do not find it distracts my driving. I do not find that. I generally find it enhances my presence because I do this in the present. This makes me more in the present, and I drive the car in the present. And it works out that we've worked this out so that this idea of the present is actually, this idea is a really good place to operate the car. It's not the real present. The real present is what your cognitive unconscious is working with. It's actually watching the road and figuring out how to steer the car. And that puts this idea of a present up there in which our conscious mind is also driving the car. The unconscious mind is not following the breathing. It's figuring out how to actually

[56:41]

breathe. It's actually figuring out how to work the lungs. It's working the diaphragm. It's doing all that stuff very well. It's really good. It's really trustworthy. This conscious mind is not so trustworthy, but it's the place of evolution. The unconscious mind is not causing itself to evolve, as far as I know. If it is, great. I have nothing to do with it. My job is in the conscious mind where there's a conscious idea of presence where I drive the car and I follow my breathing and it works out fine. And that presence transforms the conscious mind which continues to practice there. So I'm basically saying if you're meditating and you notice irritable breath, I'm saying be generous towards it. Be ethical with it. Be careful of it. Be gentle with it. Be gentle with the breath that's irritable. Be gentle with the breath that's not gentle. Be gentle

[57:46]

with the breath that's not refined, that's not subtle. Be gentle and careful and generous and patient with the rough, crude breath that's irritating you. That's what I would say to do with that. That's what I aspire to do if I run into rough, irritable breath. That's how I practice with it. And then if I can practice with it and be patient with it, with the discomfort of it, then I can think about how wonderful it would be if I could be totally trusting this rough, irritable breath. If I got rough, irritable breath, the Buddhist says, I breathe in conscious of a rough, irritable breath with the whole body. Now, if you do that, your breath will not stay rough. It will become refined. But not because

[58:50]

you're trying to get rid of the rough breath and get a refined breath. If you've got a rough breath and you practice this way, it will become refined. If you've got a refined breath, it will become more refined. This is not about trying to make your breath more refined. It's about being generous, ethical, patient, and diligent about observing. And being diligent about observing is enhanced by being generous, ethical, and patient. Now you're diligent and you're going to be kind to your breath no matter what it's like. At least you're not necessarily going to be kind. You aspire to be kind. You aspire to be whole, to be total with whatever breath is given. And you understand the teaching is to be conscious of breathing with your whole body, with the whole body of the breath.

[59:53]

That's the teaching. And then the next part, I'll tell you next week about the next part. You're not forced to come to class next week because Charlie might tape it, but the tape recorder might not work. He's going to be a burning man, so pour some water on him, would you? Okay, yes? Did you have your hand raised? Yes? Did you have your hand raised? No. I'm just going to make a concession that the last week or the week before when you started to talk about this whole breathing practice, it was quite exciting to me that a whole new vista opened up. And then you said, I think you said, so this next week let's pay attention. You were going to pay attention, but you didn't invite us. You

[60:57]

were going to say you were trying to inspire us. And the excitement lasted about a nanosecond and it immediately went into, I'll never remember. And here's now another thing like flossing and I will judge myself for not having done. So it became quite a smack on the heels of the excitement about it. Right now, what we ask is how many times, and I was just trying to myself, how many times I was just aware of my breathing last weekend and I'm judging myself as a failure. So that's my confession. Thank you for the confession. And noticing that the basic thing of the Bodhisattva ethical training, basic thing is receive a precept. So supposedly we're in this class, we're receiving the precept. We're receiving the precept from maybe the Buddhas. Hopefully

[62:03]

we're receiving the precepts correctly. We're trying to receive the precepts about breathing meditation correctly. And then we might aspire to practice them. Now, each time we receive the precept, we have a new understanding and then we aspire to practice that one. So first thing is receive the precept, for example, of breathing. Aspire to practice to your current understanding of it. And then the next thing is, sometimes you fail at the precept which you aspire to practice. And if you fail at the precept that you have received and you aspire to practice, if you fail, you may feel regret, embarrassment, sorrow. Well, you have to feel judgment in order to notice that you failed. So when you

[63:07]

receive a precept and aspire to it, then judgment's involved in seeing whether or not you practiced it. There is judgment. But you sometimes can judge, well, I think I did try it, I think I did practice it. And I'm not sorry. And when I judge that I'm doing the practice which I aspired to, I don't feel sorry. I don't regret that I paid attention to what I just said. I don't. I don't regret that I was just kind to that person, according to my idea anyway. And I do regret that I was inattentive and I didn't pay attention. And, you know, I regret that. And somebody might regret it, even if they didn't aspire to practice it. But if you receive a precept and you aspire to practice it, and then you judge that you forgot to practice it, and if you feel sorrow about it and regret, then what? And what

[64:07]

sometimes happens, the next thing is, you go back and aspire again. You receive it and aspire to it again. And then sometimes you succeed and you're happy. And then you receive it and aspire. You receive it means you remember it. Remember what? Oh yeah, my body breathing here, now, in this dream world. And this meditation, I understand, is going to transform my cognitive unconscious to support more of this meditation and going to lead me directly to nirvana and benefiting all beings. So I'm happy to do this. Oh, now I think, now I forgot. And I forgot for a long time and I'm sorry. But I wish to receive the precept again and practice it. And I'm happy when I do it and I'm stressed or sorrowful when I don't. But the type of

[65:10]

sorrow which makes me want to go back to work is called repentance. The type of sorrow which makes me not want to go back to work is failing at another precept. It's failing at generosity, ethics. It's failing at ethics because part of ethics is repenting successfully. It's an ethical shortcoming to repent in such a way that you want to give up repenting. Like, I repented and I never want to repent again. Well, that's not the right kind of repentance. The kind of repentance that we mean is the kind of repentance where you said, that wasn't fun, but I feel inspired because I'm doing exactly the same thing that all great spiritual beings have done. They have aspired to something, failed, felt sorrow and went back to work. I have that kind of sorrow. I have the kind of go back to work kind of sorrow. Kind of like, I really do want to do this. That kind of sorrow. I really

[66:12]

don't not want to do it. I'm really sorry that I did that half way. That's not the way I want to do it. I don't want to turn the door half there. I want to turn the doorknob completely there. I don't want to listen to somebody a little bit. I want to listen to them all the way. I don't want to breathe out half way. I want to breathe with the whole body of the breath. That's the way I want to breathe. I want to leap into wisdom. That's the way I want to be. And I was not whole hearted there. And I'm sorry. But I want to try again. That's repentance. And that's part of ethics. And that's part of compassion. Repentance is part of compassion. And effective ethics is part of compassion. Ineffective ethics is not, I mean ineffective repentance, ineffective sorrow is not the type of sorrow

[67:16]

we want. I want to tweak it a little bit so it makes us want to practice more. I'd like to come back to Sarah's question. Nuts and bolts, okay? I got a little distracted. Can I just ask you, were you telling the story about chest pain? About the stress of driving and giving you chest pain? No, I thought it was just, here's what I think. This is nuts and bolts again. If I don't pay attention to my breathing body, I may not notice irritable breath. I may actually have discomfort in my chest, but if I don't pay attention to how my body is breathing, I may not even notice the discomfort. When

[68:16]

you start to become aware, you start to notice some discomforts that you don't even notice because you're speeding ahead so far. Anyway, that's a basic thing. Oftentimes when we're going really fast, we don't notice that we're afraid. We don't notice we're sad. We don't notice we have tension in our body. We don't notice that our breath is asking us to adjust our posture to make more space for it. I was actually saying that when I paid attention to my posture and my breathing, I noticed, I think, something a little off about my posture. I gradually worked it out to find a posture that allowed me to stay in the seat, generally in the seat, and accommodate my breathing in such a way that my breathing and my body were feeling okay with it. It wasn't a heart attack. I also notice, quite frequently, that if I don't pay attention to the breath going out of my nose, I almost never notice any irritation

[69:18]

of the breath around my nose. But when I pay attention to the breath around my nose, I often notice, quite often, a little irritation around the nose as I'm breathing. And I think, here's what I think, is that the irritation is there, and I just don't notice it because I'm not paying attention to it. And the further thing is, if my breath would become more subtle and refined, the irritation would be relieved. So when the breath is rough and you're, for example, I don't know what, if you're in a boxing match and your breath is rough, you hardly notice it. You've got other things that are more stressful. But if you could cut out all the information about the boxing match and just watch your breathing, you might

[70:20]

notice this is very stressed breathing. If you didn't pay attention, if you weren't worried anymore about getting hit or being pummeled or pummeling, if you just watched your breathing when you were in a boxing match, you might find it was very rough and irritable. But most people can't notice that when they're boxing. But sometimes you can, and those are like these great moments of enlightenment when somebody's involved in a very rough situation, they notice the roughness and they find a subtleness there, even in a situation where usually the situation is very rough, and they find peace there. But it's pretty hard. Did you follow that at all? Yeah. Yes.

[71:35]

Okay. Uh huh. Okay. Okay. I just heard you describe meditation on the interaction, the interpenetration, the intimacy

[73:25]

of the breath body and the posture body. That's what I heard you just talk about. That's what we're talking about here, is to meditate on that kind of thing. And just observe it. Exactly. Just observe it. Watch that. Watching that. So we say trust everything to the inhalation and exhalation. Another way to say it is study everything while inhaling and exhaling. Learn everything about inhaling and exhaling. Learn everything about how the posture body and the breath body, those two bodies, learn everything about how they dance together. There is, in the complete trust, there is surrender of half-heartedness. There is surrender of greed, hate, and delusion. That's why we're proposing this. In the thoroughness

[74:37]

of this study, greed, hate, and delusion will drop away, and will leap into the treasury of light. And you just gave one example of something to study, which you seem to be up for studying. Thank you very much.

[74:55]

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