Mystery, Liberation & Everyday Dharma With Stephen Fulder

In the premiere episode of this Anapanasati (Mindfulness of Breathing) series I welcome renowned Dharma teacher Stephen Fulder. Drawing from 50 years of practice, Stephen shares his journey discovering Dharma in India during the 1970s, founding Israel's Insight Society, and teaching amid conflict.

He offers a heartfelt, unstructured approach to Anapanasati, emphasizing breath as a simple, direct gateway to body, feelings, mind, and Dharma—mapping it lightly to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness without rigid steps. Key insights include celebrating impermanence as liberation, balancing effort with trust (saddha), and awakening feminine qualities like allowing (yoniso manasikara).

Stephen highlights breath's role in thriving through hard times, fostering kindness, and connecting to life's web.

Transcript

Wholeness. Welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence. And today I have Stephen Pulder with me today. Stephen, How's it going today? Fine. Really okay. I feel blessed day by day, Even though times are really hard. But I don't take it too personally. And life is still a blessing. Well, Cool. And that's the way I feel most times when I have a lot of stuff cleared out of the way. The reason I reached out to Stephen today, If that's okay, I can call you that even though you're a doctor, Right? It's true. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I want to do a series on Anapanasati since it's been my primary practice for the past couple years. And I just wanted to reach out to different teachers, Lay monastic, Just to get other perspectives and maybe tips and techniques, Foundations, Anything that anybody wants to share about it. I want to give a space and learn from that. But I want to keep with my standard format here to start off. Who is Stephen and what kind of work does he do? Thank you. I have to say Stephen is an utter mystery. After being in this body for nearly 79 years, Stephen is actually, It's just a label. I don't feel full of the Stephen-ness. I'm Jewish. So I remember asking my father one day, Is this finger Jewish one? How do I know? And it's a bit like that with the Stephen. Is this finger Stephen or not? So after basically 50 years of practice in the Dharma, Which I met in India as an academic, Actually, I was teaching in Indian universities in 75, 76. And I met the Dharma then and I've been very engaged with the Dharma, Came actually to Israel by more or less by accident. Karma sort of dumped me in Israel. And I found myself in the beginning of the 80s as the only Buddhist in Israel, Except I heard that the Prime Minister Ben-Gurion also had been in Burma and said, I know how to do Vipassana. But anyway, Then I started the Israel Insights Society, Which has become basically the biggest organization in Israel for practice of, I would say, Practical Dharma, Mindfulness, Awareness, Meditation, And the real deep practice of Dharma. So I've been practicing and teaching for the last 30 years, Writing books, Et cetera. And Stephen, As I say, Is this mystery of, I'll tell you why it's mysterious, Because labels don't really do the job. They're just another mind. They're just another concept. And I'm celebrating the concept, I can celebrate the concept of Stephen, But I don't believe it. When I look out of the world, I don't look out with eyes of Stephen, I look out with the eyes of life that looks at life. It isn't Stephen looking at life, It's life looking at life. So I have to say that as a kind of a caution in relation to that word. That's beautiful. And I always kind of say, Well, Labels are helpful at times, We pick them up. But we know when to put them down and to know that they're just labels, Right? So yeah, You beautifully illustrated this, And I'm glad you did the way you did there. I am curious, How you discovered Dharma in India, And I'm a little bit embarrassed that when I was looking for suggestions on who to interview, I asked the AI now, That's a whole nother thing. And your name came and I didn't immediately know it. If I think back, It might have heard something on Dharmaseed years ago. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, Though, If you're on there or not. But either way, I'm curious. I'm usually curious. When I stay in monasteries, I've been in like Amravati and Chithurst in England. And I asked people and practitioners and Gaia House too, I saw in your bio, You're somehow involved with Gaia House too. How did you come to the Dharma? And I'm interested in India, How you got drawn there and what you encountered there really briefly as a reference. And then I think maybe your background, I saw that as I looked in briefly as a scientist, Right? And how that might all play into this before we jump into Anupana. Okay, So India, In a way, Before India, I was one of the kind of British early psychedelic hippies in the 60s. And so I've been at Enchantage and really attracted to the writings of Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts before that, The Beatles, It's My Generation. And I went to India because I loved the idea of India from all of that. And I was totally captivated by I was living, I was teaching at Benares Hindu University, But actually living right on the Ganga. And every day I would jump in the Ganga and swim there and hang out with all the crazy sadhus and so on. So I was enchanted by Indian spiritual life as the intensity of it in daily life as not something which is kind of esoteric and beyond. But then just before I left India, I realized I actually need a practice. I'm not a Hindu. It's hard for me to get into the Hinduistic practice. It was at that time. So I found Goenka, My first teacher, And I did courses in India with Goenka. And after that, Many, Many Goenka style retreats with Mother Sayama and others in the UK. So it was really the love of something that's very, Very real. And it does connect with your question about Anapanasati. Very real, Very grounded, Doesn't need a whole kind of cultural Bible around it of, I would say, Historical, Cultural teachings that obscure the ground, That the basis has to be really, Really simple. And I found in the Dharma something that was kind of very, Very attractive, Very simple, Very direct, Very deep, And endless. But a doorway that you could go in, You don't have to have beliefs and gurus and all of that before you can open the door. The door is always there. So it didn't have much to do with my science. My science, I've been actually practicing. 40 years I was working with science, But in a different way. I work with science as a way of remembering lost knowledge. So I would, Especially in therapy, In herbs, I was very much connected to the herbal movement. You might not have seen me in Dharma Seed because I teach intensively in Israel and in the Middle East, Not only Israelis, Also Palestinians. So I teach eight or nine retreats in the year, Endless courses all the time online, Endless talks, Meetings, One-day events. I'm still teaching very, Very intensively, But it's mostly here in Israel where I am. It's a full-time job in a way. So I haven't been teaching much abroad. I have been, Of course, I've been at tours of the States. I've been teaching at Spirit Rock and all over, But I'm just so busy here that I've not really kind of been teaching intensively abroad. So that's why probably AI doesn't see me as a sort of Spirit Rock teacher. That's all. Well, I'm glad it came up though, Because I'm familiar with a lot of those teachers that teach there are in the insight community too. And there's so many wonderful ones. And I was named Gil Fronsdale for one that I've learned so much from and really impressed with his teaching. I haven't met him in real life, But spoke to him at an event. But anyway, So yeah, This is beautiful, What you say about the Dharma and how you came to it. And even though I haven't done a Goenka retreat myself, I meet a lot of practitioners who have, Or a number of them anyway, And who speak very highly of it too. Now there's this notion of, Yeah, The plant medicine. And I, You know, Interestingly enough, When I came to, I don't know, Things beyond like the base program, Everyday world, I listened to this psychedelic salon podcast years ago before I even got into meditation. And it's interesting things, But I saw your work on a book about like ginger and ginseng. You know, These are wonderful things. I mean, Anyone who's been to England, I mean, Usually you see, Or the retreat centers, There's always like lemon and ginger, Not always, But a lot of times available. And ginseng, When I was in South Korea, This was something that was brought out when there was kind of just different needs for it too. But anyway, I don't want to digress here a little bit, But these things, I guess, Are connected and interplay, But I don't know if we want to talk so much about that. But Anapana now, Let's get into that. I'm still like, There's what, 16, I don't know, Steps or stages. And I'm saying I'm staying pretty much because I'm in the Pak system, Teacher is in Sayadaw lineage. And that's where I'm at now. So they usually start a lot of practitioners in the Samatha phase. And it's basically the first four stages of Anapana that will play into the Samatha practice as far as I know there. But I'm a little bit familiar with some of these steps, But as far as how deep one goes into each one. So I guess I'll just throw it over to to start wherever you want with Anapana and what you want to say about it, Like from anywhere from how you teach it, How you understand it, Maybe common misconceptions you see, Some of your teachers and how they vary. It could be anything. Yeah. So I'll just let you turn it over to you. Sure, Sure. So I hang out with some of the really great teachers you mentioned, Jill, I just Jill Fronsdale was talking to him last week. And I've always known about the Anapanasati Sutta, The actual text on the 16 stages, But a little bit avoiding the sense of the structure of it, Because my approach has been to allow the primary and fundamental nature of mindfulness of breathing, Anapanasati, Without going into 16 stages, Although many of them are going to be there spontaneously and naturally. So when I teach it, I kind of don't go through step by step, Which I think is in a way a little bit male, If you don't mind the expression, It's a little bit male, Like kind of the Buddha is a doctor and here's the stages and you go through one, Two, Three, Four, Like going back to school, A little bit like that. Huge, Huge resource, Undeniable, But I don't stick to the structure. However, The structure does have something very important to say, Which is, Supposing you take mindfulness of breathing as your ground, Should we say, And your ground of practice, Then you will go through the four stages or the four steps of the Satipatthana Sutta. You will go through the four ground stages, Because in a way, That's the kind of ballpark we're talking about. We're talking about body first and body is not that you leave it behind when you go to the other stages, But body is an entrance gate and the entrance gate has to be simple and direct and there's nothing more simple and direct than this breath. You can't breathe in the past, You can't breathe in the future. More than that, It's natural, More than that, It's connected to the world, Which is not directly connected in the Satipatthana, In the Anapanasati Sutta itself, But it celebrates your being in the world, You're breathing in the breath of the trees as you breathe in, So it has many dimensions and invitations for realization in a way right at the beginning. In the Anapanasati Sutta, It's rather traditional. That means if you go through all the stages, Realizations happen a bit later on when you're working with mind and you're working with dharma, The fourth foundation of mindfulness. But in my view, We have to start, We can't wait. And in my teaching, I kind of try and invite insights right at the beginning. So mindfulness of breathing has many, Many, I would say, There's a gate, Which is your breath, But then there's a garden when you go through the gate and the garden, It starts right at the beginning. I'm breathing in, How is this breath? Where is it? What's it doing? How, The delicate places of it, The subtlety of it, The openings that come, And then slowly you go to the next stage, Which is a very liberating stage itself, In a way, Feelings. It's not just, I feel happy, I feel sad. It's letting the release and the kind of ease that is possible when you connect the breath to the feelings. It's the quietness, It's the oceanic aspect of breathing. You're breathing as an ocean. I'm thinking of Rumi's quote, Which is lovely. When you breathe in, He says, Well, I forget actually the quote, But I have it here somewhere, But he says, When you breathe in, Don't need to kind of concentrate on breath, Concentrate on the oceanic aspect of the breath, The sense that there's nobody breathing, And then the springtime will kind of arise into the energy of spring. So, Intuitively, Breathing in, Breathing out as your ground will lead you to a different way of going into the garden. You'll be calmer, You'll be more awake, You'll be quieter, You'll be more subtle. You'll see the small flowers in the garden that you didn't notice before. You will not be disturbed so much by the thorns, But they will be there in the garden. So, You see life, In a way, Through the entrance gate, You begin to see life in a much more subtle and delicate way. I have to say that you, As a power practitioner, Will be more engaged with Samadhi than is generally possible in the mindfulness community and the insight meditation community. And, I mean, I know Shaila very well, And she's been years with PAOK, And I've stayed with her in California while I was doing my tours, But I do feel that Samadhi is beautiful and jhanas are possible, But not for everybody. And for the most practitioners that I teach, They're quite, I would say, Ready and interested in the existential reality of this moment and how they can experience now a more liberated view of reality. And so, I don't think they can wait for deep practice of Samadhi. Those that can, And I know many that can, And I've been involved in it myself, I'm just delighted and I offer my guidance where I can. So, I think that that's the issue. Now, I won't go into all the stages, But it does move on from there in the Anapanasati Sutta, Is going into mind states, Going into breathing, And then knowing. And that is part of what I teach. It's not out, But it doesn't have that structured sense. So, I might say, As you breathe in, For example, Can you sense who's in charge of this breath, Or who's breathing, Or what is, Is the breath a thing, Or is it a mystery, Or what is the whole, What's the celebration, The joy in the being as we breathe, And the sense of appreciation of life. It even has that aspect of trust and kindness in it, Because if we're connected to the breath, Then there's a kindness and a trust in that moment of connection. It happens by itself, So it leads you to states of the heart as well. So, All of that is right there, But as I say, I don't teach it so much in a structured way. Well, This is beautiful. I love your inspiration and kind of heartfelt sense and celebration, Illustration in the imagery, Because when I think the breath, I'm usually bored of it. I take it too literally, And I'm not really inspired by it. And so, This adds a lot of color and inspiration, The way you paint it, And the way that what's possible conceptually, Tuning in to it in different ways. So, I really appreciate that. Yeah. And I'll just say, One of the reasons I switched to this system, Pahak, Is because I practice in the Thai Force tradition. I'm going to be forever grateful for everything in the kind of down-to-earth practicality of the wisdom and heart that is kind of more my personality and how I operate, Because I don't, You know, The Pahak stuff is really technical, And my mind doesn't normally operate like that when I'm in a meditative state. So, It's a challenge for me to do this, But mainly everything else in the Dhamma, I feel, Is conceptual, And there's nothing wrong with that. It can be very helpful. But the reason I switched to this system is because, As far as I know, It's the only way to step-by-step systematically get to ultimate materiality, Ultimate mentality. The rest is just conception. Even the breath, Though, Is a conception at that stage. And it's, Yeah. So, The levels, I have to be patient for these levels of samadhi to do that, But I also appreciate the helps and aids you give that's going to breathe more life into my breath practice, I feel. Now, The other thing you said, And I've heard people map Anapana to four foundations of mindfulness. Can you say a little bit more on how they map up, Because there's kind of four subsets in Anapana, And there's, You know, Four levels to the four foundations of mindfulness. So, Is it just basically, It just maps, You know, The first four of Anapana maps with the body, And the second four map with Vedana, And the third set of four map to, You know, Chitta, And then the last set to Dhammas. Is that how it works? I think so. Yeah, I think so. But I don't think it's, I think it does, The integration is helpful. It shows that the Dharma is fundamentally, There's many, Many different suttas and directions, But fundamentally, It's a huge, Vast structure of teaching, But it does have kind of a logic to it, Which is in a way what you express about yourself, Josh. But there's lots and lots of surprises, And unknowns in all of this. For example, Going to the Dharma, The fourth foundation of mindfulness, The Anapanasati Sutta talks about, I will breathe in observing impermanence, Anicca, And breathe out observing Anicca. That's very, Very basic. And yet, It's basic, And not difficult. And yet, If you go the further and the further and the further you go into it, That understanding of Anicca, Which is that every experience is, As the Buddha said, Like a line drawn on water, And you can really feel it with the subtlety of the breathing. And then to my mind, Just stay with that. It's a radical, Life changing experience that you get, Both at the beginning of the practice, And goes deeper and deeper further in. And then the other stages in Anapanasati Sutta of, I will breathe in observing letting go, Observing dispassion, Or disenchantment with attachments, And with holding on, And with contracted places. I will breathe in observing how things stop, How things cease, How things quieten. And there's a quietness in the nature of existence, Which is about existence. It's not about technique. It's not about practice. It shows you, And that's the fourth foundation. So, To me, It maps quite well, But it shouldn't be taken too far. Let it map lightly. And I also want to say that there's many, Many places that are not there in a way in either Sutta. For example, I'm very interested in the five powers, And the power of trust. Where is the power of trust in this sadha? So, You know, There's movements there. Where is the yoniso manasikara, The feminine side? I think that the feminine side, Buddha once said, I used I in some ownership way. My awakening needed yoniso manasikara, A more feminine accepting, Allowing the fact that awakening isn't something we have to get, But it's something that's already existing. It's just that we forgot it, Or we cover it over. And yoniso is about allowing what's there to emerge with love, And embracing our awakened Buddha nature, If you like. So, There's aspects there that I think are really needed, And I teach them. And for me, The dharma is a vast teaching, And we need to bring in what we can from this vast teaching that fits our culture, That fits who we are, That fits us right now. And so a less structured teaching with more love, I think does fit what we need right now, Especially in the materialistic world. This is a good segue. I want to pick up on some things you said before that, Though. I know, Because we talked in the beginning about how, I don't know, Maybe this is a little bit, The hour we're in, How it might be a little bit self-indulgent, Or not timely to talk about anapanasati. But then we'll get to that here. It's like, I wanted to pick up some of these other aspects. And, You know, Yeah, It's beautiful in the beginning, Beautiful in the middle, Beautiful in the end. I love all the different kind of styles and teachings that are out there now, And accessible. So no matter what one's level of practice, No matter kind of what one's disposition and natural tendencies and inclinations are, There's usually a style of practice, And a teaching system, And teachers, And friends that are there to support that, And to be onward leading. So I think that's something worth celebrating there too. And how we can learn from all these different flavors, And techniques, And traditions as well. The impermanence, Yeah, So like on the night of the Buddha's awakening, It said, You know, After going through previous lives, And seeing like basically transmigration, Then he changed to the rising and falling nature. And we forget how profound this is. I just, This translation of impermanence, You know, Doesn't quite do it all the justice in the world, I don't think, Because yeah, Mentally, We understand that. But how deep and profound this actually goes, How many different variations of reality there are to know impermanence, You know, How quickly things really arise, And cease, It's just unfathomable. And I'm far away from that level of knowing, Like on the level of the Abhidhamma, How we can find grain in such granular detail, And such comprehensive detail of all the different possibilities of consciousness, And the constituents thereof. But it doesn't need to be that complex and complicated either, Like you say, It can be very heart driven. And, You know, Yeah, How it how it feels, And how we interact in our everyday lives, And what we're moved, And what we experience the benefits, You know, Immediately, And progressively, Too. So it's such a beautiful thing. And just the other thing to say about impermanence, Too, Is that one of the ways I thought I heard people or thought I heard one teacher say that it's like this false notion we have that we're going to get everything exactly the way we want it, Arrange all the external conditions the way we want them, And that's how we're going to find happiness. But it's not a success in the long term, Because as we know, Something's going to come along, And we won't be able to arrange all the external conditions we want. But then when we're under the false understanding, We can do that, Then we get disappointed that we can't maintain things the way we want. So yes, I know, I think it's really important. One of my talks, I talk about the fact that we can't get happiness, We can just not disturb it. And because there's, There's something, We have to be careful that we don't sense that our liberation depends on being driven, And that liberation has to be got, And liberation has to be grasped. And it's, It's not wrong. But there's something there that is, We need to, It's also related to our culture. We're taught that from the moment we, You know, Go to school, You've got a gold star in your book, Or you didn't in my school in England. And I think we need to kind of come into another place, Which is the natural bigness of conscious awareness, Which is connected to everything, Which is allowing everything, Our big heart mind cheetahs, You know, Heart mind, And really sense that yes, There's something to be done. But be very tender about that be very tender. We are sati is the original translation of sati is remembering, It's not mindfulness. In other words, If I've got enough mind, I will liberate. But it's remembering that we're made of the same stuff as the Buddha. We're not made of anything different. So I like the, I might, I use the word, The awakened awareness. And, And remembering, I think they're both very good words to describe mindfulness, Sati, And also upamada. That's another way of describing this kind of attention, Which is attention in life, Which is knowing. Sometimes people come and say, Well, I'm very, Very mindful, But they actually don't realize that they're walking on the new vegetables I just planted in my garden. And they don't notice that there's vegetables I just planted. And they say, What a beautiful garden you have. It's so lovely. I see it. I'm being so mindful. And then they don't know where their feet are. Sati sampajanya, Right? Clear comprehension is when that's needed, Too. Yeah. So yeah, This is really beautiful and a good reminder. Even though the Buddha was driven, I would say it was not satisfied with just standard forms of pleasure and small amounts of happiness. It's balancing and right effort that this is a realization, Not how much we can strive and drive ourselves to do that right effort has to come into it here. Totally. So why don't you wrap up incorporating more kind of in the few minutes we have left here. So we're just out of time here. And I would love to talk more about Yoni Somanasakara and how that's not really laid out a lot. And maybe the commentaries, But we don't have time for that now. So how you feel anapana relates more to our everyday life. And then take us out on a final message. Yeah, Sure. Firstly, I have to say that mindfulness of our basic life is crucial in this time when everything's going to pieces. I'm giving this meeting with you in the middle of a war zone with incredible tragedy and suffering all around. And how are we going to relate to that? And I think all of us need to say what tools I need in order to meet the challenges that are all over the place and especially where I am, But not everywhere in America or in wherever you like, The challenges are growing. And so one place where mindfulness of body, Mindfulness of breath, Mindfulness and awareness of this life gives us, The Buddha said, Be an island to yourself. He used the word apamada. But nevertheless, The truth of this life, When the rockets were falling around me here, I live a few kilometers from Lebanon, But what I was able to do was get up every morning, Feeding the animals, Looking after chickens, Looking at the vegetable garden, Feeding the animals of people that have went abroad because of the war. So the sense of connectedness to life, Deep connectedness and deep flow with existence is our ground from which we can then go out in the world and help others with a big heart, Mind and bring some, Wherever we can, Peace because of that. So we need that connection deeply. I breathe and so do others breathe and I'm with them. We're one web of life and I'm, It doesn't matter whether you're Israeli or Palestinian or American, We breathe together and from there we go out and make peace. It's really, I have Palestinian friends that are doing the same thing. Well, Thank you, Stephen. It's been a pleasure and a joy and a helpful one and may all beings out there breathe their most optimal breath for themselves, For others and for all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free.