and so you'd say, let's say doing the
upward facing dog
so okay, we're on the upward facing dog, now what?
nothing, here we are upward facing dog
this is
curriculum already being, just be here
how do you stay here? well, the arms are involved
so we can be aware that
we got a breath, we can be re-
spin, we're learning how to inhabit being
in elementary school and
all of a sudden, it wakes something up, finish that, you do something else, do
sequence of yoga, and then
you know, you can ask either, why you're doing it or afterward
when you say lying in, what's called the corpse pose, I don't necessaly have to
use that word, but
I love it, how do you feel?
and people usually feel like, more
I feel fantastic, what did you do?
nothing, really you did a little of this, and a little this
this, this, the lesson is
drop right in, so then you realize, well, there's more to this apparatus that
I call me then
meets the eye, and if imagine if I would actually nurture it
in these kinds of ways, if I would actually use these muscles
to cultivate awareness, to cultivate embodied
attending, to cultivate emotional intelligence
to cultivate, another word that was used quite a bit
self-regulation, so self recognition, so you recognize say
impulses of a anger when they arise, and you don't say
necessaly say I'm angry, just say, oh it's angering
it's like the, it's like raining
it's like we don't have to make it into personal thing, so then
it's like the anger, let's watch the anger that because the most
interesting object to the tension
says in being, just watch the anger come and go
and guess what? it comes and goes, if you're willing to be patient
as like Louis Pasteur looking at crystals under a microscope, he's like
complete discovery, anger, I don't have to buy into it
and then shoot somebody,
hate myself, you know what I'm talking about
it's like choice, but in order to be able to make the choice
you have to be brought to a point where you're
in the laboratory, you're engaged, this is all about practices in our philosophy
not like some Asian Buddhist, you know, Dharma philosophy, this is like
this is a practice and we don't have that much in our society, we don't just
don't have that kind of
deep cultural sense of
practice
when we think a practice, we think of rehearsing for a performance
we're talking about it, no, there's no separation between practice and
performance, this is it
OK, so what practice means exactly embodying
awareness now, and it turns out, this is
not a little thumbnail, that, you know, the breath gets mentioned that little, yes, let's
just teach them the breath
well, let's teach'em the yoga pose or this or that
but the fact of the matter is
it's not about the objects of attention, like we can pay attention to the breath
we can pay attention to our thoughts
we can pay attention to our emotions
but it's about the attending itself, be attending
itself, now it turns out
that when you study people who
have taken MBSR, for example, there's a very
beautiful study by young guy named Norman Farb works with
Zindel Segal at the University Toronto
took people trained in MBSR, not trained in MBSR, put them
in fMRI scanner, show them various additives
you know that they might or might not, self-identify with as their
and wrote an amazing paper
called
about self-referential mode
of knowing, OK
and what they found was that, when you put someone in fMRI scanner
and we said, just like you do nothing, it turns out
we don't just do nothing, we don't just kind of flat line
no silly Bob
we start thinking, we start in on
narrating the story of me
I could be as simple as like it's kinda squeezed in this tube
you know, to daydreaming, to fantasizing, to this and that, the problem
solving to
like the mind disguised gallops of, you know, and it's always
got some of it in mind
and that's, when you look at the brains, it turns out that
what lights up is a region in the midline
of the cerebral cortex, that is called the
sort of a narrative network, okay
it's like or it's often called the default mode, it's like
when you're not doing anything, that's what lights up, in just uses up enormous
amounts of energy
enormous amounts of many energy, lying there doing nothing
only you're not doing nothing, you get
you're thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking
thinking, same kinda thinking that doesn't let you go to sleep
and it's always the same old song, same
same picture playing on the marquee, the story of me
in the key of me, or the key of E
or the key of C, but it's always me
and my relationship to this, and my relationship to that, it's like surfing
surfing, surfing, surfing
okay, when you take people who are trained in MBSR
and compare them with the control group that was not trained MBSR
you put them in before, you put them in after in the scanner, so the
very interesting thing happens, in the MBSR group, that medial
default network, tends to attenuate
and another network comes on which is a kind the lateral network
that involves the insulin various other specialized regions of the
cerebral cortex, and it is seems to be about
when you ask people, and they'd get this through the additives that they have
subscribed to
like a no story, just this
sensory unfolding of breath
body, now
just being here, and it's okay, just the way we did at the beginning
you know, just here, well, how long is this gonna go on?
no, this is going to be now, just for now
for now
next three thousand minutes of now
so you got this other network which is basically called
the experiential network, it's just experiencing
life unfolding in the moment
so this is now neuroscience saying, OK, when we integrate
who we are, we've got the narrative going all the time, and that's partly true, but
a lot of time
let's be honest, I mean, a narratives
are not exactly 100 percent accurate
and then we've got the experiential piece that almost never gets any airtime
unless you've been trained
in this muscle of mindfulness, and then
this some kinda integration possible it's not that there's anything wrong
with the narrative
but fact is most narratives are too small, and
really too boring, and really much too repetitive
and much too negative
never mind prosocial behavior, we're antisocial to ourselves
so if that's the diagnosis and the Buddha diagnose that is
dukkha, suffering, ignorance
dis-ease and unsatisfactory in this because you know that
if you got something it's not going to last, and if you have something you don't
want its gonna last forever, so you're
your cooked, your goose is cooked either way, and this is all delusional thinking
it's like more that mid-line narrative
and the narratives like a lot of time is wrong, and then you get that depressive
rumination narratives
and pretty soon, you're down in the pits, and you can blame everybody including your
history, including trauma but the fact that matters
you're not bringing online all these other capacities
that are lying sitting inside your skull
that could be brought online, how?
repetition, not mindless but mindful repetition
breath comes in, breath goes out
just to choose an object to attend to comes in, goes out
comes in, goes out
how long is it gonna take before it? especially teenagers says
and we said on mano slide is boring
this is boring
so then the mind will go off and they will fantasize about something less
boring
all meditators know that, that's what the mind does
but you see, Boredoms just another mind state. just like anger
frustration, sadness
this is not a mind state, when you hold in an awareness, ain't it boring
boredom is not boring, very interesting
and it could be demonstrated very easily, a yogic maneuver many
of you know this one
you know, there's something called nadi sodhana and
pranayama, where you can do alternate nostril breathing and you use your
finger with both
so anyway you can all do this if you find the breath boring right now
for instance, you can do this yogic, sort of exercise where you take
one thumb and you push it over one nostril, you put the
index finger on the bridge of your nose, you squeeze the other finger
against the other nostril
purse their lips together, and you see just how long it takes for the
next in breath will becoming
only thing in the world is interesting to you, and it will not be very long
it will not be very long, so boring the breath
until you can't take one
so boring to have feet tend to walk, until you can't
so boring to have liver that just works, and never asked for anything
yeah until you, you know, drink so much alcohol that it goes offline
for good, so boring to have a body that works
back that doesn't cause pain, so boring
until you have a little smidge of pain in your lower back and you realize, holy
cow, for whole life
hinges on, fourth lumber vertebrae, and how the interface with the pelvis
we take everything for granted
until we wake up, rude awakening, usually its no fun
what if we were actually trained in
in this whole developmental arc which is as becoming ourselves
the formation of a human being
in school, in early childhood, so we're actually
find out what the whole of this thing does, yeah, thinking is great
but what about awareness thing
what about, what if they got equal their time and training
and then we could actually, hold our motions
so far the ways would be transformative
Verbatim :Onishi Keisuke 英文聽打：大西啟介