Good evening. Good evening. So this evening, Lee Ping and myself, we're going to talk about working with the breath in the Buddhist tradition, in one aspect of the Buddhist tradition, which I'll mention a little bit in a moment, and working with the breath in the context of They're saying Buddhism. by a famous Buddhist scholar practitioner, Nagarajina.

[01:00]

He says, what language expresses is undone when the object of mind is undone. Unborn and unceased, like nirvana. This is the suchness of all we. What language expresses is undone. when all the stories, all the judgments, all the conclusions, all the opinions we make up around what's arising in the moment, cease. And what prompts all those stories ceases when what happens in the mind is just a lot of the following. And this reveals the essential nature of what is often called in Zen school, original money.

[02:04]

It's just me and the moment directly in unadorned fashion. Now usually it's wonderfully adorned. What arises in the moment is wonderfully adorned through our habits, emotional habits, our mental habits, or we miss it through the distractiveness, the agitation of the mind and attention. And the heritage of Buddhism in the cultivation of awareness that realizes this original mind, the breath is counterproductive. In the Buddhism, there's a short text called , which means mindfulness of reading. And then in later Buddhism, in the school, there was significant discourse in detail on how it works a lot.

[03:15]

And then in the Zen school, particularly in the school, there was a double bond. Even modern scholarship, which has more access, but still limited. There's so many Chinese texts that simply have not been translated and made accessible in English, but you're not completely sure what the heritage is from the Chinese ends of the Chinese school. If you look at Dominguez Engie's writing, you know, he'd take a deep hand, narrow, and exhale, rock the body, lap, right, lap, and steady into the movable city. You know, he is the crux of his description of reading. In the Rinzai School, the heritage there has more prescription, more details in terms of developing the rap.

[04:17]

There's a particular technique that's quite common now, and I think has been common for centuries in the Rinzai school, which may also be common in the so-called school. It comes up developing what's called the heart. One way to think of the heart is the way we think of heart in English. There's a physical heart. But then we often talk about cold-heartedness. It's a sentiment, a sensibility that goes beyond the physicality. So, you know, we can have a locality in our abdomen, which is called, in Japanese, , and then related to that, we can talk about something called the heart. you could almost say it's similar to wholeheartedness, but it's in your abdomen rather than in your chest.

[05:24]

It's similar, not exactly a physical entity, but associated with a physical locality. In early Buddhism, Anapanasati describes a process of engagement with breath. And the process starts off quite simply. It says, know the breath. You know it in its different forms. Just start to become aware of the variation of breathing through the course of your activity. Like when the mind is active, what's the breath like? When the mind is sad, what's the breath like? When there is strong emotion, what's the breath like?

[06:25]

When there is tranquility, what's the breath like? And this comes in a very cryptic form. It says, it just says, know the long breath when there is a long breath, know the short breath when there is short breath. The only extension of that is note the breath with the whole body. You know, more than a translation would be something, right? Breathing in, becoming aware of the whole body. Breathing in a lot of breaths. awareness of the body and awareness of the brain are intertwined as the mind settles as the physiology of our being settles the process of believing there can be an awareness of the process of believing

[07:44]

in which the mind and attention step aside. It's like we breathe as we would when we're asleep, except we're not asleep, we're fully awake. I would like to describe it as saying, the body breathes the breath. Often we hear the instruction, follow the breath, rather than breathe the breathing with intention. So let the breath happen and let awareness and attention follow the activity. And the extension of that is let the body breathe itself and let awareness be linked to that activity. It's like the breath breathes the body, but it's done from its birth. And the awareness bears witness, close attention to it.

[08:50]

It's something called the breast body. The body is no longer a collection of notions in the mind, but a sensorial, a field of sensed experience. that's linked to the breath. And then, as this is established, then this becomes an ally in working what arises in the realm of mind and emotion. That the breath can leave us in contemplation of attention. Often, the preliminary practices are clanking the breath. bring sustained attention on the breath. Don't wander off twice. And as that's cultivated, then experience the breath.

[09:59]

And then as that's refined, the body breathes the breath. So get out of the way and let this natural process happen. And then that becomes the ally that helps us take on another quality that the wrath can have. When you can think that the mental activity, the mental emotional activity that we add to the suchness of the moment is an attempt to suffer less and be happier more. We're mitigating our experience with that in-depth to suffer less and be happy more. Letting the body breathe the breath, letting go on more subtle way of that deeply ingrained impulse to do something to the moment.

[11:14]

Dogen Zeti talks about forgetting, you know, forgetting the wrongdoing. Sometimes, and it is so close to home, we talk about just non-doing, you know. And then another attribute is undoing. So in the Anapanasanti, the next step is in the realm of undoing. And it's resort to Romites, these distractions and other processes that we're going through, what starts to become evident to us is core anxiety adaptation that's stirred up by this constant effort to take what's arising and craft it in a way that's more to our liking, more to our proudness, or expresses more of what we fear, you know, and what we're going to avoid. The core anxiety and education.

[12:22]

And the breath becomes an ally in the release, in the undoing of this core being. In the sutta, it says, breathing the breath body, calming the whole body. is this visceral process of attaching, of connecting in core way, and letting it soften, and letting it release. So those are the first four, and there's 16 steps to it, but I'm gonna stop there, because what we'd like to do is we'd like to talk for 15 minutes each, and I have two minutes And they just write the Zen book. And I would talk briefly about it. It's like we usually raise on Zen called Sosokan.

[13:29]

Sosokan, in contrast to that, you could call that an unnerving, an unnerving of the breath. apply its effort to the breath. When you apply the effort to the breath, it's so easy using the technique that's the foundation of Soska. And you bring the effort down below the tundra with it above the abdomen and the ending of an exhale happen in a deliberate way. And this deliberate intention helps create the capacity to pay attention. You're engaging in a certain way and it takes attention to do that. As that attention is applied, the physiology of the body and the breath is stimulated as there is a growing attention in the lower abdomen which creates a stability

[14:43]

It brings awareness into the body and out of the head. Also, the process creates an energy, physiological and mental energy, which sustains the physical component of authority. And it's often said to them before. of the teachings of Bodhidharma, that this was one of his contributions to the meditators in China, that he taught them how to breathe in a certain way, so he gave them the energy to prolong their sitting. Also, this energy helps stimulate a clarity of mind. So it's an intentional engagement to help sustain settling physical energy, and mental alertness.

[15:46]

And my cancer. So when I was thinking about giving the talk about breathing, I was pulling out all my teacher's teaching that is related to Breathing, you look, it's really a big stack of it. So I have 15 minutes, so we'll see what we can talk about here. I think Paul just talked about the importance of breathing, why breathing is so important, and breath control is important in our practice. In Qigong kind of perspective, all this practice is more for health, for longevity, especially Taoist approach. And then when to reach to a more higher level, it's more for spirituality. So the enlightenment or the Taoist immortality. So the deep and calm breathing, that's usually, we are saying, the good qualities of breathing.

[16:58]

Those kind of breathing is... what kind of relaxes you. So when you are really nervous, anxious, you know, usually somebody will say, take a deep breath, right? So the deep breath, that's what relaxes you and also keeps your mind clear, fills your lungs, bring the oxygen to your brain. So in the Qigong kind of way, we're talking about the qualities of breathing. And regulating your breathing is some efforts you're doing when you, especially for certain kind of exercises, you actually try to work towards that qualities. Like your breathing is supposed to be long, deep, slow, thin, even, soft, calm, continuous. So those eight qualities, so when you're breathing, you try to see, am I breathing deep enough, long enough, soft. If you hear somebody breathing very loud, we actually have a, we call it a wheezing kind of breathing, and it's not considered a really healthy kind of breathing.

[18:06]

Those are the simple, we'll just put a simple way, the qualities of breathing. And then the six stages of regulating breathing, I think Paul just mentioned. When you do this specific, techniques to regulate your breathing, and there's some basic methods, and some is more, it comes to a more advanced stage of regulating breath. So the first kind is the shu xi, which is the count the breath. So you count from one to ten, ten to one, or count only inhale or exhale, so there are many different versions of it. That's the basic one. And then the second stage, you would go to Follow the breathing. So the mind is able to follow the breathing, and the mind and the breathing start to unite. And the third kind is called the stop. There's a stop breathing. But this stop breathing means, means you stop thinking about your breathing.

[19:11]

So when you reach to this stage, you have basically obtained the real key to meditation. So you... through this regulation, come to a place that you stop thinking about your breathing. And the fourth regulating stage is the look, the breathing. And in Chinese, it's called guangxi. It's like you look at the breathing. Or it's called tingxi, means listening to the breathing. Basically, this is not really saying your eyes, your ears. looking or listening to, but it's more like you feel and sense the breathing more internally, as if you are listening, as if you are feeling the breathing. So the fifth stage is the fanxi, the return of the breathing. And this return breathing is returning your breathing to its natural way. So that's the process of returning yourself to your origin. So when we think of the origin, some people say, I'm already breathing naturally.

[20:16]

I don't need to try. I'm breathing naturally. So there's a way to look at what is our natural breathing. And here we talk about the origin, the origin of the breathing. Actually, when you were in the mother's womb, you were breathing. You come to that kind of place, that kind of original place. And we call it prenatal breathing. And it's so Basically the most advanced stage of breathing is called embryonic breathing. And the sixth one is called the clean breathing, jinxi. So when you reach to this stage, your body and mind, your breath become one and becomes clean and your spirit becomes pure. So that's the idea of the different stages. And then in terms of the techniques, And the methods, I was looking at a couple books, like one book is called A Complete Guide to Qigong, and written by an American Qigong practitioner.

[21:20]

He listed seven kinds of breathing. Maybe I gave you the idea, so some of you might be like, oh, I've been doing that. Bellow breathing, natural abdominal breathing, reverse abdominal breathing, qi compression breathing, means you're breathing, breathing out, make it deliberate longer, alternate luster breathing, vibratory breathing, that is more the sound, the mantra, is through that kind of specific syllables, through that kind of breathing, and then energy gate breathing. Sometimes I translate it as acupuncture point breathing, so basically through the energy points breathing. And Dr. Young is a Qigong master and is pretty popular in United States, and he wrote a book, and it's called The Root of Chinese Qigong. So in his book, definitely you can see that the listing is different and also shows the more advanced breathing is listed, which is the natural breathing the same, the chest breathing,

[22:26]

abnormal abdominal breathing, reverse abdominal breathing, holding the breath breathing. So every time when you breathe in, you hold, and then breathing out, or you hold toward the end of breathing out, that is all in that category. And full inhale, exhale breathing, the body breathing. So some of my students here in the Heavenly Essence Qigong that I teach, that is a body breathing. So you breathe in through all your pores. And some people call that a skin breathing. And the eighth kind is talking about hands and feet breathing. So it's similar to Daniel's energy gates, the energy points breathing. So basically through your laugong points on your palm, or through your kidney one point on your soles, on your feet. So those points you can use for breathing. You can actually breathe in from the baihui, some other points you can use the breathing methods so they're all in the same category it's called energy gate breathing and threading the breathing basically you're guiding your chi through your meridians so that's a threading breathing and the tense one he mentioned the habernation breathing so habernation breathing it's a pretty advanced breathing method so i say if you are habernating

[23:48]

So the breathing becomes so soft, so slow, so deep, and you're not consuming that much energy. So it's pretty similar to embryonic breathing. And then the Shen breathing, the spirit breathing, the real breathing, and the last one he listed is embryonic breathing, which kind of pretty much matches my teacher's category in breathing method, which he... He more used the big category, the external breathing. Anything if you're breathing through the nose and the mouth, doesn't matter what a specific technique. You know, your nose breathing, mouth breathing out, or your nose breathing, nose breathing out. So all this is like 12 different kinds. So anything that is through the air exchange from your nose, your mouth, that is considered external breathing. And the second category, my teacher says, is the internal breathing.

[24:48]

And the internal breathing is your breathing not through your nose, not through your mouth. It's actually something naturally existing inside your body and can maintain your life. And that breathing is actually trained through the first kind of breathing, external breathing. And it's the advanced stage in Qigong practice. The breathing methods that I just mentioned, the embryonic breathing and the hapination breathing, is in this category. And the third category he put is the hold the breath. The hold the breath is in yoga, in Taoist practice, in Tibetan practice, and this is the combination of the internal and external breathing. Because when you take deep breath and then you hold, The whole part, you're actually not breathing in, not breathing out. So you can see it's the internal-external combination is in this breathing method.

[25:50]

And the fourth kind is also the internal-external combination, which is the energy gates breathing method that both of Dr. Yang and Daniel mentioned. You can breathe in through. the top of your head, your hands, your belly button, the bottom feet, or even through the anus, through the perillium, and also including through the pores. And so the last kind of category is the cessation of breath. The cessation of breath, maybe some of you actually have talked to some people, they say, I have seen people, I've been... seen people, know people who actually do that. And in this category, basically, you don't need to using the natural air, and the life seems to already stop. Your even heart starts beating like a dead body, but the body's function still there. You're not really, you're not dead.

[26:52]

So people in very high Janna state, which says the fourth Janna, fourth country, concentration stage, and those people, they usually can achieve that cessation of breath. And they are basically obtain the energies through the universe. They don't need the air, oxygen, or anything. So that's the highest stage, the highest category of breathing. My time is up. So I think maybe it's time for questions. So any questions? Was one of the breathings you mentioned called embryonic breathing? Embryonic breathing, yes. Did you describe that one? I didn't. I thought I was going to run out of time. But embryonic breathing simply refers to the breathing just like you're returning to the mother's womb, like a baby.

[28:00]

not through your nose, your mouth, that much anymore. But your nose and your mouth still is breathing, so that breathing actually can exist, like a separate system can exist while your mouth and your nose are doing breathing. So that's what makes that different from the cessation breathing, which your nose and your mouth actually stop breathing. Just go ahead. When you go into deeper breathing, when you inhale, does your stomach go out or does it go in? Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to answer that? You can answer it first. We'll both answer. I'm curious. When you get into deeper breathing and breathe in, does your stomach go in or does it go out? As I just mentioned,

[29:02]

One is the abdominal breathing. So when you breathe in, the regular abdominal breathing is when you breathe in, your belly come out. But if you're using reverse abdominal breathing, actually when you breathe in, your belly actually takes in. And then there's also other breathing techniques where a certain amount of tension is maintained in the abdominal region, and it doesn't move so much. I was just curious about the sort of interplay between breath and movement, particularly in Qigong. But in Zaza, where you're not moving anything, and just, I don't know. I think we're talking about Tai Chi.

[30:04]

My Tai Chi teacher actually had a teaching, one of the articles he wrote, talking about how the different animals, the very active, the breathing fast, the animals usually have short life span. And talk about dogs and cats are very active. And then you look at the snake and tortoise that lives for thousands of years, 10,000 years. So the emphasis of the Tai Chi movement, or Qigong movement, especially Tai Chi movement, actually emphasizing you move very slow, just like a tortoise, and even snow continues smooth. And when you do movement like that, you're naturally, you're not thinking of your breathing, your breathing actually naturally starts to follow that movement. So that's one of that purpose. This strong emphasis in Zen is in harmony, to be in harmony, the breath and the body come into harmony, and the movement reflects and is in accord with that harmony of beat.

[31:20]

And that harmony of beat is not just physical, there's a way in which you can think of interconnected beat, where this is just all one singularity in its interconnectedness, and then you can also think, well, then there's individuality. And then each individual experience in its exploration of full being is discovering, is realizing, what is this harmony of interplay between being an integral, intrinsic part of the One and also the individual. So there's also a kind of harmonious movement between those two states of consciousness. You know, and this is what's mentioned in the chant we do, the San Doka, the harmony of difference in unity.

[32:23]

My understanding that in Zen practice the awareness is to be in the abdomen or belly area, and how does this connect to the breath? I think you mentioned it once, that the awareness has become from the top and into the center of the body. I think it's more accurate to say, within the Zen tradition, that's a very common technique. sort of shifted a little bit from saying some nuance that says, this is it. It's a technique in the service of realizing the suchness of the moment that's not the product of intentional effort.

[33:27]

And that's a significant distinction because in the process of making our effort, we're discovering and realizing how to refine our effort. And yes, you're right, this is very traditionally held technique for engaging the breath in the body. And then within that, There are some variations on how that's done. And the method I was describing, so succumbed, there's a sustaining of a certain amount of tension in the abdominal region, in the lower abdominal region, particularly during the axil.

[34:29]

And then during the inhale, there's still some tension in there, but there's more a sense of allowing the inhale. There's a deliberate measuring of the exhale. The exhale is extended, then there's a pause, allow the inhale, and then there's a pause. So in some ways, if you want to overlay it with Qigong breathing, it seems like it's a combination of two or three of the methodologies of Qigong. And as I was mentioning earlier, somewhere in the lower, because we're not even sure at this point that Bodhidharma was existing, or there is a mythical figure that was put together out of several prominent practitioners. But as I said, the lower is that this was part of Bodhidharma's contribution to medication practice in China.

[35:32]

More realistically, it makes sense that it was part of the Taoist influence on Buddhist practice in China. I thought Bodhidharma always existed. Did you say that there was a video where you, not only do you hold your breath then after the inhale, but after you exhale, you hold your breath? And then do you have a specific number of breaths that you should practice? You're asking me? You mean like how many times you should do it? How many times and then do you also hold your breath after the exhale? You count how many times? Is that what you're saying? Well, it's two questions.

[36:35]

I thought, did you say that there's a type of breathing where you also hold your breath after exhaling? Yes. So you can either breathe in, you hold your breath. You can't hold anymore, any breathing out. And you can just do that as one. Or you can do breathe in... And breathing out, at the end of the breathing out, you hold your breath, and then breathe in, yeah. And then is there a specific number? No. But it does, in Qigong practice, because those breathing can be very powerful, it can create a lot of heat. So if that heat is too strong, it's like you're cooking rice. So you kind of, somebody never told you how to cook rice, you just think you just keep the fire burning and it could get burned. So there is some different things, the little adjustment to how you turn the fire down by your mind, calm down, or not stay there as strong, or not doing it too long.

[37:45]

So there's more details. In Qigong, we do Qigong walk. I try not to do too much in the Zendo because I think Paul is going to not be happy about it. No. So you actually do the walk with your breath. So we're using body breathing. When you're breathing, your whole body is breathing the true Qigong. And when you're breathing out, you're thinking of the sick chi, turbid chi, fatigue energy shooting out at the edge of the universe. So it's just like different qigong schools, depends the master, the teacher, they might have specific techniques.

[38:51]

So I'm just following what my teacher's school's teaching is. I'm sure in different schools, there are different ways of doing it. How about the qing yin, do it to breath? I thought just natural breathing. I would say in kidney that the knees are not locked and that they're not locking the knees and another physical detail is that if you walk kidney the weight, the full weight is taken on one foot and then the other foot floats through the air and comes to rest on the ground When that's observed and the knees are back, the full body is engaged. And when the full body is engaged, that attribute of full body breath can also be engaged, so that the whole body breath can be engaged in the process of keeping.

[39:57]

In Qigong, actually, we're using the heel touch first, specifically for the walking practice. Yes. One over time, a choir can use one's body in an individual way that might not be best served. And I found that I've been breathing many at the top of my box. And I discovered that if I was in a trooper or after a long period of sitting, becoming tired, to expand my love in the past, or the frequency of the blood, to play with that a bit, to increase the oxygen in the blood, was somewhat helpful. And I thought, is there historically finding a comfortable relationship, but not to force it, but rather just increasing the oxygen in the blood flow to create a more oxygen-rich environment for the head?

[41:11]

There's no lawyers out there in Qigong. There are a variety of techniques, and certainly the techniques that extend the... in Zen, the technique is extend the exhale and then extending the exhale that will fully empty the lungs, that will fully invite a foot in. That's a traditional way in Zen. It's very interesting because in yoga There are very similar breathing techniques, and in many of the emphasis is on extending the income.

[42:16]

But as far as I can get from what I've learned, there is a distinction there that in the Zen practice it's more than... So this will be the last question. If I recall correctly, you had mentioned with Dogetsubukan Zazangi that there was a previous text, and Dogen took away some details from it, where it was simplified, and that was significant. And my question is how breath, the stability that using breath, how that works with Shikantaza as a seamless meditation on the emphasis, Mike, that we're talking about the breath and how that works with the seamless meditation practice of Shikantaza.

[43:23]

Well, I remember someone once mentioned, well, what about the breath? And he said, don't. I think we can think there are a variety of techniques in the service of simple, full presence, engagement in what is, in the sections of the world. And if you think back earlier, I was saying, so on one end, we have non-duelly. And then we have unduelly. And then we have applied attention. It's also common. And more common use practice and written practice is something about applied attention. Comfortably, they energy in the body and clearly in the mind.

[44:25]

And then the only technique I was describing was more involved undoing this settling and calming. And then Shikhan tells us, it is in this realm of undoing, you know, this radical body of beauty will gain. But if you think about it, as this non-doing enables, facilitates assessment, this natural activity of physical life will become evident. So you could think of it in those terms, it's more that the natural ability is revealed rather than manufactured. If we simply allow presence and awareness of the body to come into being, the breath body will come into being too. So the nuance would be

[45:31]

Over here, go through diligent, directed effort. Through here, you go through the scope of undoing. Or here, do you facilitate through the process of undoing? Does that make sense? Closing words? I don't have any. So, obviously, he just scrubs the circus. And tomorrow night's class, we'll scratch it so far. Thank you very much.

[46:13]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.22