Given the number of cars out there, I thought there'd be almost no one here. But there's quite a few people. Thank you for being here. You know, I think everything I do is completely scientific. Yeah, and that might be one of the themes of this seminar. Even when I put on this little version of Buddha's robe, when I did this, this is for me a kind of science. And maybe I can try to make clear what I mean at some point. And we have a topic, as usual, I think it's attentive attention. And I would say also attentional attention.

[01:13]

Can you translate that differently? No. How are you doing? I'm good. You're living in Austria now or something for a while? Yes. Nice to see you. He did a practice period. It's the first one, right? Yes. At the Janushof. And with you. Yeah. That's why he's living in Vienna. Wow. Okay. Okay. So those of you who are on the emailing list know that I'm wondering how to continue this regular Rastenberg seminar.

[02:16]

Or if I should. And that's, you know, partly I like things to be predictable, but I also like things to be unpredictable. So now I'm maybe in an unpredictability phase. And it's partly of course because my life is unpredictable, getting old. But in this case it's more that this form of the weekend seminar I inherited or noticed, observed it in Germany primarily in the 80s when I first came to Europe.

[03:35]

First came to continental Europe. And it's clearly a form of educational form based on the seven-day week of lay life. It didn't exist in traditional Chinese, Japanese Buddhism. Don't go so fast, please. Okay. Sorry. You can hear it way back there. It's kind of nice to sit like that. It feels different. And I'm also exploring implicitly how and why we should make a new zendo at Johanneshof.

[05:11]

Because the configuration of the meditation room is as carefully thought out as a concert hall for musicians. We missed you last year. And you had to be a Strauss last year. Okay. Yeah, because this practice developed in the context of people living together. Yeah. So I thought... Well, let me say it further. I... My... being in an unpredictable phase these days, is related to a growing over five or 10 years even dissatisfaction with this three day or two day weekend format.

[06:28]

Because I'm here to practice with you. And I'm here to... My feeling is not to teach you Buddhism. But to teach you to teach yourself Buddhism. Because really there's no Buddhism that exists except what you teach yourself. But I can play a role in suggesting a framework or focuses in teaching yourself. But if I'm here, I mean, I don't find words, English has a lot of words, but I can't find the words I want often for what I want to say.

[07:51]

So I make up words or phrases pretty often. And one of the worst I've made up recently is instead of philosophy, the love of wisdom, I feel I'm teaching experiosophy. experienceable wisdom. Not so bad. Not so bad? Sounds pretty terrible in English. You wouldn't put it in a poem. Looking into the woods and feeling experienceable. No. But if I'm trying to practice, I feel I'm practicing with you and demonstrating practice.

[09:34]

By the time Sunday afternoon arrives, I sometimes feel the demonstration is a little thin. But we've gotten to a place where it's too much and not relevant anymore for most of us. Yeah, because I really only want to I mean, this only makes sense to me to do if it's relevant to you. So I'm trying to explore the relevance and so the announcement that I thinking about how to continue this regular seminar, is to engage your assistants in deciding how it can be relevant.

[10:48]

Yeah, and I'm not looking for people, oh, yes, it's really relevant, I think it's great. I want it to be more something I can work with. All right, so I thought maybe what I should do is... give you, share with you, give you a sense of how I, what I do when I start, when I do a seminar. Because I don't, you know, I don't, you know, exactly, or actually prepare anything.

[12:29]

I notice the ingredients. And hopefully we have a practicable title. I mean, for instance, the components of iron ore would not be a practicable topic. But the components of attention would be a practicable topic. So I have to start out with a practicable topic. Okay. So I start out, right? And what are the ingredients that I start out with? Hi!

[13:41]

I'm all the way from Northern Europe. Or some parts of Northern Europe. Hi! Well, one of the ingredients, of course, is meat. And me means what I am working on presently. Because my own practice is to, it just happens, I don't do it, it just happens, to always be engaged with the questions. And all the details of my activity are explicit or implicit engagement with whatever the question or questions I'm working with. So the context is always part of what I'm working with.

[15:01]

And because of the kind of life I have, the context is always the Sangha, as well as other things. So the one ingredient is me, and another ingredient is the Sangha. And another ingredient is the Sangha at this present moment. And the Sangha at this present moment has to be naturally each of you And if the Sangha as the context of what I'm engaged with, is each of you, then I have to be able to have a mode of mind that's responsive to each of you.

[16:42]

Okay, so as soon as I say I have to have a modality of mind which is attentive to or open to or actualizing experience of each of you, And then immediately we're into the topic. What kind of attention allows that to happen? Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I can use Dogen's phrase, which I have been brought up often in the last couple of years or so.

[17:50]

So the phrase, and I will say it again, is sometimes I, Ehe, Ehe is the name of where his, the temple, the practice center, the latter part of his life was, Sometimes I, Ehe, enter an ultimate state and offer profound discussion. simply wishing all of you to be intimate with your field of mind.

[18:59]

Now, from my point of view, this is an extraordinary statement. Yeah, and I think now if I did seminars at a speed which I'd like and I thought you could sustain, a slowness which you could sustain, I would look at every inflection aspect of this statement. in order that all of us can see the aspects of it. And can feel a responsibility to realize each of the aspects.

[20:01]

Okay. Okay, so first of all we have the, well, a first of first, first of all. I think it's necessary for us to put, and some of this I spoke about in the recent winter branches at Johanneshof. And part of what I'd like to do is redo some aspects of that winter branches seminar And not to bore Susanna and Peter and everyone and others of you who were there.

[21:09]

But just to see if we can take the ingredients and juggle them around a bit. So going back to this phrase, we know from studying Dogen, that when Dogen says sometimes, he means among possible times we could choose to actualize, I'm choosing one of them. Okay. All right. Already this is, I mean, here we are in this particular situation that we think of as time.

[22:23]

And what, when we, well, let's say again, you need to look at a statement like this as if has anyone ever said this to you before? When you were in university, did a teacher ever say to you, sometimes I enter an ultimate state? Probably not. I wish I had a professor who said, sometimes I enter an ultimate state, I would say, really? What the hell is that? Are you some kind of new age professor? But the assumption here is in a yogic culture, strictly speaking, there are no universals.

[24:04]

Clock time is a construct of our planetary motions. Sorry, I missed something. Clock time is a construction of our... based on our planetary motions. And universal clock time is fairly recent in Western history. And in contemporary quantum physics, nobody can really figure out what clock time is. So anyway, from the point of view of Buddhism, there is no universal time. There's your bodily time and your relationships with the world, and that is your experience of time. So in Dogen's single word, sometimes, there's the assumption that you are located in bodily time,

[25:30]

And your experience of time is a continuous monitoring of bodily time. A continuous monitoring of bodily time. metabolism, breath, heartbeat. And how that bodily time changes in different days, different amount of sleep, in the night, and so forth. From the point of Buddhism, unless you're find yourself continuously located in that bodily time, you're only half alive.

[26:44]

Yeah, I mean, we could have an argument what does half alive mean, and maybe that's an outrageous thing to say, but Buddhism would say something. Or at least you're less alive than you could be. Now, clock time or our shared time is something we need to turn on now and then, but we don't have to live in it. And to try to bring this home to yourself, when you feel like I'm out of time or I have no time, You can develop a habit of countering that.

[27:55]

Because I can't be out of time or have no time because I am time. So even if you are missing an airplane or whatever, if you are time, you're quite comfortable. You're just missing an airplane. There's no anxiety or anything. What the hell? Airplanes are another one, probably. So a realized person just doesn't get anxious about such things. Yes, so then you can notice, is my practice really having fruits or not? So all that is in the word sometimes. And then when he says I, and that defines himself as A-A, He's saying, among the various people I could be, the person who goes to work, the person who's with his spouse or her spouse, I choose to be

[29:32]

Johanneshof. Or I could choose to be the Crestone person. Or I could choose to be, and it is a little different than the Johanneshof person, I could choose to be the Rastenberg person. So arriving here last evening, My intention has been clearly to be sensitive to the Rastenberg person appearing. Yeah. Then there's entering an ultimate state And he doesn't say samadhi.

[30:50]

Of course, he means in the larger context, samadhi. And it means samadhi is like a poet would know, an artist would know, a painter would know. so wie ein Künstler, ein Maler wissen würde, dass sie eher in der Lage sind, ein Gedicht zu dichten oder ein Bild zu malen in einer bestimmten Modalität des Minds. And when I look at a painter or a poet, and as I've said before, if I look at Matisse or Cezanne or Picasso, I think each of them got, we could almost say, addicted to a particular state of mind that they want to relive through painting.

[32:02]

And when I look at the painter, jeez, it's not my watch. Could be anything these days. I saw somebody, you know, in Germany you say a handy, right? And in America we say blankies. Really? No, not a hand. A blankie is when you have your blanket in your mouth. So some people walk around with their handies like they were blankies. They have the wire in their mouth. No, no, don't demonstrate it too much.

[33:04]

My daughter is almost like that. Her thumb is not in her mouth. I can't make my thumb do that. Yeah. So when I look at a painter, I find, Matisse says at some point that, yeah, when I look at a painter and then Matisse says at some point, That he paints in order to discover the world outside of his languished identity. Something like that he says. He paints, he uses the paint to get out of his language identity.

[34:16]

So when I look at a Matisse painting, I see if I can feel what his non-language identity is. And when I hit that with various painters, when I reach that with various painters, all their paintings start opening up to me. So, So there's that kind of background to his not saying Samadhi, but an ultimate state. So he doesn't mean a generalization Samadhi, but rather an ultimate state at that particular moment, which leads to a profound discussion.

[35:25]

So my starting a seminar is to see if I can explore the ingredients in this way. The ingredients being that we have three days together. Most of us. And one of the ingredients, it won't be all of us, it'll be most of us. And there'll be more of us too. So more, most, and some of us are part of the ingredients. And each of us, and myself, and my real voice, and the configuration of the room, for me, these are all the ingredients of the seminar.

[36:33]

und die Konfiguration des Raums, das alles sind für mich Zutaten des Seminars. Weil für mich nichts existiert außer dieser Zutaten. Außer dass es gut wäre, es wäre gut eine Pause zu haben und das wäre auch eine Zutat. Thanks for your patience. I may test your patience. Go on. Go on. Go on in testing your patience. Oh dear, thanks a lot. And please, now that we're on the same level, thank goodness, you don't have to wait till I get up. I mean, you don't have to go anyway, but you do for some reason. Except you may have to wait for me to get up as an old man. Or if I can't.

[37:36]

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