make clear that we shouldn't conflate tension with consciousness. In other words, attention can be a tool of or dynamic of consciousness. But I can be conscious of this room. And while I'm conscious of this room, I can move attention around in the room. So it becomes a way of focusing consciousness. More than consciousness travels with attention. More than consciousness travels with attention. Consciousness sort of excludes the unconscious.

[01:21]

There's some phrase in a koan, the dark... The shadows of trees in the dark of night. So this is kind of like, even in the dark, shadows are present. Yes. Actually, our topic is attentional awareness. I wanted to... Oh, you changed it.

[02:23]

No, we didn't change it. No, but what you told me was attentive... I wrote it down when you told me on the phone. So whatever it is, we're talking about it. I just wanted to bring it in because... I have it in an email from you. Yeah, because I think if we're talking about attention in consciousness and then we have attention also working within awareness. So that's different, an interesting difference. Yeah, that's true. Thanks for, that's what I'm talking about. I'm getting there, but you were up there. Sorry. You better apologize. You're stealing my thunder. Do you have that expression in German?

[03:31]

Oh dear. Also, I can't relate to attentional attention. I actually don't know what... Sorry. I can relate to attentional awareness. Okay. We can break, there's a tendency for people to think of attention as a primarily or only an aspect of consciousness. But attention, but consciousness is a particular mode of mind which makes the world, assumes the world is predictable.

[04:32]

Yeah. Even if you know it's not predictable, at the same time the structures of consciousness assume predictability. I'm not trying to make perfect definitions here. But I'm trying to make useful definitions that help us notice our experience. We make distinctions in order to make it possible to notice things.

[05:35]

Because we tend to only notice difference. It's hard to notice the dark shadows of trees on the night water. So attention carries with it associative mind in a way that consciousness doesn't always include. So for the sake of trying to approximate definitions, I can say that attention carries with it magical overtones.

[06:54]

Or a kind of alchemy of associations. So you can almost use attention as a stirring rod to stir consciousness. Or a magic wand. But attention also, as I often said, is a dynamic of lucid dreaming and sleeping. Now, if you assume that all you've got is your own experience, And your own experience, as it includes others in the so-called world.

[08:31]

There's nothing outside, there's no outside working. So if there's no outside and it's all inside, I don't know if that helps you to say it that way, but it allows us to notice in a new way. Yeah, if it's all inside, then all you've got is this insideness. And Buddhism says it behooves you to study this insideness. Behooves means it benefits you. It behooves us to benefit and also to, it's almost like a command.

[09:41]

Okay. So it's useful to study the difference between the attention that stirs consciousness. And the kind of or feel of the attention that explores a dream and lets the dream go on uninterfered. Or when agency joins the attention and changes the lucid dream. It says in the koan, this kind of practice is the food and drink of the ordinary monk.

[10:48]

So what I'm trying to do is I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time. Obviously when I look at you I know I'm not wasting my time. But I wonder how can I really make this effective for you? Can I say in English, affective, so it's effective. And it's assumed... that insight is necessary, but insight which results in unique repetition, repetitional uniqueness.

[12:08]

aber einzig, die eine sich wiederholende Einzigartigkeit als Ergebnis hat. If you're as a practitioner, then our topic is attentive attention or attentional awareness. Und unser Thema ist aufmerksame Aufmerksamkeit oder aufmerksames Gewahrsein. then you were noticing the bodily feel of attention while you were here in the seminar. And then you would notice that as you go out the door for the break. And you'd notice when someone came into your field of attention and how it changed. Yeah, and that would be an ongoing, for the practitioner, that's an ongoing process of the field, almost like it was an elastic, viscous field.

[13:45]

Yeah, an elastic, viscous field. What? It didn't taste like that. That's all right. I can. English is simple enough. Okay. Okay. So what kind of attention do we have? We have ordinary focused attention. We have ordinary unfocused attention. We need some kind of baseline that we can start from. And then we have attention to attention. And we don't usually bring attention to attention, at least intentionally.

[14:49]

But when you bring attention to attention intentionally, you begin an alchemy of transforming attention. You begin to have a a twinned attention. And there's attention affects attention and so forth. And if we can then use the distinction between attention and attention to attention, that's a distinction, right? Now we're basically talking about evolved mindfulness practices. Well, what is mindfulness?

[16:13]

What is mindfulness? An intentional process. Practicing. Attentional practice. And really we should use the word bodyfulness more than mindfulness. Because in yogic culture, mind is considered a kind of subtle form of body. When we say mind, we think of something that's kind of different, body and mind. I think if you start thinking, feeling, if you bring attention to your attentional processes, as as a practice of bodyfulness, and you feel your bodyfulness in each situation, you'll be practicing more what is really meant by mindfulness.

[17:51]

Okay, now here, I'm making all these distinctions. I'm dividing up what really can't be divided up. But we can look at it with different emphases in the spectrum. And there's a kind of alchemy here of lead into gold. Yeah, you're bringing attention to lead and it starts turning into gold. So you're bringing attention to attention and transforming attention. So there's a kind of paired, not the fruit, paired attention.

[18:52]

Peaches and cream. Okay. Okay. So you also then have attention once you see that there's a dynamic and alchemy to paired or twinned attention. You can start seeing what other kinds of alchemy you can generate with attention. Now, what happens when you bring attention to attention? Basically, you have to find that out for yourself.

[20:13]

You have to do it over considerable lengths of time, repeatedly. Like the experimentalist of an alchemist who can keep trying it. It's not gold yet, it's not gold yet. But then... But he doesn't look at himself because he's now glowing with gold. He's turned himself into gold. You think I'm not? No, it's not. This is some kind of truth. Lao Tzu says, the world is a sacred vessel. Lao Tzu lived 40 years between 571 and 531. That sounds like a long time ago.

[21:25]

But if we have 250 year units, if I think of my family and my grandparents and who they knew and knowing you, 250 units, 200 year units are not very long. I think each of us can imagine your life in a 200-year unit. Your great-great-grandparents and your... Well, 10,000, 10 of those bring you back to Christ. 12 and a half of them bring you back to Buddha. So 571 to 531, yeah, a few yesterdays ago, yesterday. But still, he said, the world is a sacred vessel.

[22:38]

A vessel is something you drink from, something you float in. Yeah, and so the world is a sacred vessel, is a kind of form that we can explore. But if you're practicing the alchemy of attention, and bringing attention from objects where it just happens to go, Although I've said we need to start trusting where it goes. And if you start trusting where it goes, the trusting affects where it goes. So if you start again bringing attention to attention, you can start taking the objects away.

[24:03]

And the object of attention is now attention. So you can be in a field of attention without objects. But you couldn't get there until you start bringing attention to attention. Simple little example I've been mentioning for 50 some years. You can bring attention to that. And of course there are basic skills about bringing attention to that. You know that in Zazen. Your body, you're bringing attention to your body, you're thinking about this, thinking about that.

[25:06]

You can count your breath only to about three or maybe 0.5. Or you're counting to one over and over again. One, two. That's not bad, no? But you do have the experience of at some point you start bringing your root to... just be present in the breath indefinitely. So it's a kind of fitness gym of attention. Which is the basic yogic skill. So you bring attention and it goes away. Attention goes away. Then it stays for a little while. Then it goes away. And you kind of bring it back.

[26:07]

And then there's a third phase where It goes away but it comes back by itself. Now you've made some progress. You bring attention to it, then it wavers, has a pulse, then it comes back by itself. And then the basic skill of one-pointedness, which is one of the points at which a new kind of practice starts, You can simply rest the tension somewhere and it stays. And that's assumed as a practice in koans and so forth. You can decide, you can intend to bring attention to a particular phrase and then for days you can

[27:21]

part of your attention rests on that phrase. Okay, so let's assume now your attention is able to just rest on this. Okay, so your attention is resting on this. Then you take it away. Okay. And now your attention stays. What is the object of attention now? Attention itself. Now you've developed a new kind of attention rooted in attention itself. Now you can bring this back into the field. And it's no longer generating the field of attention but you can use the established field of attention which you can call a samadhi to study the object or change the object.

[28:47]

It's a kind of science. Okay? Yes. What is helpful for me in that is also the practice to see seeing. You also take away the object in that way. The same process applies to all the senses. Now I have a little something here I think I brought. Usually I don't read anything, but I thought I would.

[30:00]

In this little text, It speaks about the twelve sense organs. Whoever heard of twelve sense organs? There's only five. Why does Buddhism say there's twelve? Because there are no entities. Everything is an activity. So, The internal sense fields are your organs of attention, seeing, hearing, etc. The internal sense organs are the five senses, or six, including mind. Now mind also senses ideas and so forth, not exactly senses, but in Buddhist culture it's considered also a sense.

[31:14]

Mind is an attendant to each sense. Without mind being part of hearing, you can't hear anything. All right. So the 12 sense organs are the external object. and the internal organ. So the basis, there's an internal base and an external base for the experience of a sense. Okay, so there's a shared... shared or twinned, let's say, again, basis for each sense.

[32:24]

So Buddhism says, hey, notice that There are twelve sense organs, in a sense, and not just six. And you can also think of, when you add mind, as six source organs. They're sources of input. So these distinctions arise from the teaching And they arise from a kind of common sense. In both senses of the meaning, common sense.

[33:27]

Nowadays, common sense in English means for what everybody knows. But it used to mean common to all the senses simultaneously. So it was a kind of the senses joined together. becoming a new sense. Okay. So again, making these distinctions, the teaching makes these distinctions. But they really mean nothing as information.

[34:42]

If you don't decide to... I'm not saying you should. I mean, sure, your life is beautiful, I'm quite sure, and it's great, and you don't have to do any of this junk stuff. And I feel embarrassed to be here and telling you about this stuff. I should not be interfering with your life. But I got tricked into it. So here I am, interfering with your life and I apologize. Okay. But really it has no meaning unless you begin to bring... attention to these distinctions. And then what you can notice is the world we inhabit, live in, is almost completely defined by these twelve sense organs.

[35:45]

And what is the teaching there? This world isn't limited to 12 pieces of pie. There's an immensity here that you can't even say is a mystery. It's an immensity. And we live and call reality our little twelve sense bases. Every, may I say as a fact, every dragonfly disagrees with us. The dragonfly's sense bases have nothing to do with dragons. So what I'm trying to do is give you a picture of practice, if you really want to practice.

[37:04]

And I don't care whether you practice or not. May I say I love you, and I will continue loving you, but even if you don't practice. But I'll have more opportunity to love you if you practice. Thanks for the opportunity. I mean, it's so totally up to you I can't care. But I want to give you a traditional expression of practice. I like the way they give the Buddha different names. In the last thing I read you yesterday, I guess it was, the Buddha was called the Blessed One.

[38:38]

Here the Buddha is called the teacher at the foot of the great wisdom tree. That's also a way of saying any of us can be at the foot of the great wisdom tree. So it says here, the teacher at the foot of the great wisdom tree intuited the five aggregates, the five skandhas fully. But intuited, whatever it translates, it means something like incubated, hibernated, permitted.

[39:40]

So intuitive means he brought attention to each of the five skandhas. Until it was his natural way of functioning. Now, it puts in a timeframe here. In this particular text, it keeps referring, early text, it keeps referring to three months. It means that time is a durative space. Pick a durative space in which you say there's a beginning and end. It could be three months or three days or three seconds.

[40:57]

Or better, the rest of your life. That means you have to develop modalities of attention which can be present when you're actually doing other things. I had an extraordinary experience with a very old friend of mine recently. And I mentioned it to some people a few days ago, some other contacts. But I didn't mention it here in Lower Austria, Upper Austria, where we're going.

[42:02]

Lower Austria. Okay, okay. He's somebody I was in the merchant marine with, working on ships in the 50s. And he's given me, he gave me my first Buddha, purchased in Beirut, Lebanon. Well, ivory was legal, sadly. It's good it's not now. But it was a little ivory. So anyway, we've been friends all those years. And people really like him. He has friends everywhere.

[43:06]

It's unbelievable how many friends he's got. And the number of God children he had wouldn't fit in this room. My oldest daughter is one of his godchildren. But he's got some funny capacity that people feel connected with him right away. So I feel lucky to be his friend. So anyway, a little while ago he fell, tripped on a rug and fell into his kitchen. He just made dinner for some people and hit his head on the kitchen counter and cracked this bone and cracked this bone and had a blood clot. Our medical doctor here is... And he kind of got right up and refused to go to the doctors, etc.

[44:11]

But they finally the next day got him to the hospital. So two or three days later I arrived because my daughter Sophia, I'm just telling you an anecdote, but there's some point to it. Yeah, and she's 14. And she's seen my friend several times when she was little. But 14 is sometimes almost 18. Somehow 13 was more like 11, but 14, I don't know what happened.

[45:20]

Yeah, so I wanted her to meet my friend, see my friend more as an adult, because he's getting old, he needs three or four. And through this event, everyone thought he was going to die. But I called him yesterday and I said, how are you? And he said, I'm still here. I said, you didn't die. He said, no, not yet. He said, I don't care. I don't care. Anyway, so I met with him, with Louise and Sophia and I. And then we left because it was late.

[46:26]

But I left my bag there, so I had an excuse to go back. So I called him from the taxi and said, I left my bag there, I know, he said. And I said, so I'm going to come back and get it. And he said, I hope so. So I dropped off Marie-Louise and Sophia and took the same taxi back. And he lives right across from Carnegie Hall. So when I talked to him on the phone, I said, I'm coming back to get the bag and see you. And he said, I'll be at the Irish bar.

[47:29]

And there's right around the corner, there's an Irish bar he always goes to, and they all know him, of course. So I went in, and the three people with him moved so I could sit beside him. And we talked about not much but enough to be in the same field. and then suddenly he pushed me forward and he pointed to the wood of the bar and said listen to the wood and what came that's the kind we say in Zen establish your senses prior to form And prior to form allows everything to appear as if from nowhere.

[48:53]

So we both leaned forward and suddenly the whole subliminal noise of the bar was just like a kind of strange music going on under everything. And I looked at him and he looked at me and we both had the feeling this is where we've always lived. I mean, I knew this, but it was a kind of revelation at the same time, how much in every circumstance, often when everything's falling apart, he's the one person with a sense of the field that's operating. Did I say that too fast? I didn't. You didn't follow me? Okay. I realized that in many, I mean, he's the founder of Rolling Stone Records, for instance.

[49:55]

This is a different world than I live in. Yeah, so... In the world he lives in, often things are always falling apart, but he's the one person who kind of holds the space, holds the field. It's such a vivid representation and gift to me and us when he did that. So in that, let's call it subliminal field, a sub-attentional field, When you establish your practice for a particular duration, like three months.

[50:59]

So it says here, The teacher at the foot of the great wisdom tree for three months he lived only by way of the aggregate of feeling. So he took the five skandhas and took feeling as the non-graspable feeling is the second skandha. And he decided to make that his emphasis for three months. Then he similarly took the 12 sense organs and 12 causes because it causes the world for three months. He practiced the four noble truths similarly.

[52:06]

He started with for three months living only by feeling the truth of suffering. Now, there's one thing to know that suffering pervades our world. Obvious suffering and subtle suffering. And there's one thing to know it. And it's one thing, another thing to experience it, have a real insight into it and feel it.

[53:06]

But the transformational alchemy begins when you do something like a discipline of three months of noticing the ill, the suffering of the world. So it says, he intuited or lived within the four applications of mindfulness fully. For three months, she lived only by way of feeling, to which mindfulness was intensely applied. For three months he lived only by way of feeling with touch as its cause.

[54:24]

So you use, I just put my hand on my leg. So for three months you bring your attention to what happens whenever you touch anything. But touch is also each step you take in the world. Touch is also stretching attention up through the spine. Touch is also the Feel the world in cheeks. Yeah, so that gives you a sense of what is meant in Buddhism by practice.

[55:28]

Okay. That's enough, right? Ha! I'll see you all in three months. And then we can see if we can go on with the next day of the seminar. But since time has ephemeral existence, let's Let's have a lunch that lasts for three months. Let's call it three months. And we come back here at 3, 3.30? Yesterday was too quick. Thank you very much.

[56:24]

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