Now, what I would like you to come away with from what we talked about this morning, is how a simple shift from the kind of un... the not so engageable phrase mindfulness, not so actionable, to a phrase like attentional attunement.

[01:03]

Yeah, and you can experiment yourself with what language you like. You can say attentional engagement, or you can try out various phrases that help you feel you're actively engaging experientially locating yourself, locating your experience in this phrase. So you can experiment with yourself whether you want attention, commitment or something else that helps you And Dogen's phrase, hi shiryo, which again Dogen says is probably the most important single word in Zen practice. And that's, as far as I know, always translated in the West, in English anyway, into non-thinking.

[02:28]

But again, that's a completely a generalized, unpracticeable really term. The etymology and the fact of the term he, Shiryu, actually is, as I so often pointed out, notice without thinking about. The etymology of the word and the fact of how it is practiced is, as I have often pointed out, to notice without thinking.

[03:29]

So those of you who are engaged in realisational practice will know that if Dogen says this, or even such a phrase exists, one really needs to make it your own. So when Dogen so etwas sagt, oder dass so ein Satz überhaupt existiert, dann muss man so einen Satz zu seinem eigenen nehmen. And so you really practice noticing without thinking about it. Also dann praktiziert ihr bemerken ohne nachzudenken. And as you know, I sometimes call that connoticing. Because you're really not going to do it if you still think that knowledge and memory are functions of the experience of reflective consciousness.

[04:47]

As long as you think that you won't actually activate the process of noticing without thinking about it. So what happens when you notice, just notice, notice, notice, is another kind of knowing happens. You're not excluded from knowing. A new kind of knowing happens. And that noticing doesn't have to be in words or concepts or a verifiable experience. I was conscious of that.

[05:49]

Anyway, yeah. So you limit your knowledge to what consciousness can confirm, which is a very limited frame or perspective for knowing. So again, what I'd like you to take away from what I said this morning and saying now As you just experiment with trying to notice without thinking about and see what happens.

[07:19]

So you fully intend it but you don't force it. So you substitute the whole concept of mindfulness with attentional attunement. So as you're walking up the path toward yourself, for example, You're not just bringing attention to your steps, you're bringing a feeling of being engaged with the actual stepping and engaged with the actual sandstone stepping stones.

[08:22]

And if you notice in our practice and in the teachings, everything is designed to increase your intentional skills. So just the metaphor or image, don't move, increases your attentional skills because you're constantly feeling, now I'm moving, now I'm not moving, now it's okay, who cares? And you're developing an attentional power which is at the center of Buddhist practice and particularly Zen practice. I lost the last part.

[09:25]

Yeah, I don't know what the last part is either. There's all those koans. He didn't know the last word. Anyway, you develop the skill. Attention is a yogic skill. which everything is about developing that yogic skill. Way more alchemically dynamic than knowing, ordinary knowing.

[10:32]

Okay. So I've just stopped. And so what do you think? I mean, what do you notice? Yes. You already mentioned the cello and the playing of an instrument. And what I notice... What I notice, because I don't play as much as I used to, What I notice is I don't play as much as before, but I also don't succeed in stopping playing altogether.

[11:35]

So I have to try to keep some basic level. And I notice that I'm in a period of maybe 30 or 40 minutes without demanding my old fitness or skill. To come into connection with the sound and also a hearing, some kind of hearing control.

[12:35]

And through that I reach to a point that when I get up afterwards, I feel more innerly ordered. It's difficult to describe with words, but it's a kind of clarity that manifests. I think I understand. Thank you. Thank you. I noticed when you were talking about these things that this space opens immediately. Goodie.

[13:52]

Good. I have a question still lingering on from this morning. Okay. By the way, this doesn't have to be directed toward me. Anybody can speak. So you talked about an equivocal acceptance. Yeah, unequivocal. Oh, sorry, unequivocal acceptance. And my question is, how far, to what extent, or where is the criterion to decide whether something is really a fact, or to what extent it is my perspective, my selection of something that, so to speak, defines what is fact.

[15:23]

So my question is, what are the criteria to decide whether something is really a fact or an outcome of my view of my selection of, or my conditioned, being conditioned to see something as a fact? That's the problem. Anything else? Can you give us an example? Well, there is a theoretical example. When Max Planck studied physics, he was told that it is not worth it to study physics, because all the laws are known, and there is only one unknown one, why will iron, if you heat it immediately from red to white, So it was taught to Max Planck, don't study physics, it's all solved, there's only one little problem, and that is when you heat iron, the change of color is not continually, but it jumps from red to white, and that was the key to all the quantum physics and stuff like that.

[16:50]

Yeah, and for most of it he still is. Yeah, and then it shifted. And to give practical examples like how i um when i enter a room and i feel into the room um then the ungraspable feeling I get, or sometimes it's grasped feeling, sometimes it's less grasped, and that is totally dependent on my state of mind. And if it's possible to bring that kind of stillness in that you talked about, and if this is a ground of perception, then there are less filters, but I'm not always

[17:58]

aware of what filters are at work. So when I enter a room and perceive this feeling of the room, then what I perceive depends on my state of consciousness or my state of being. If I can bring in the silence that Roshi spoke of this morning, Okay. Well, nobody knows. But we feel something, and you have to begin to have a cut, like when the painter knows, has a feeling the painting's done. And just right now, I would say that the more you're in an informational field that isn't graphed linguistically primarily, you can more likely trust

[19:14]

a kind of bodily sense that something computes or makes sense. I can sense quite a few of you are going to Japan soon. I can use at least partially an anecdote about trying to get a taxi in Kyoto. Then I can give you an anecdote. I would say that the two main things which have come out of the 20th century contemporary physics, the fact that we don't live in Newtonian container space and we don't live in and universal time is as clock time it's a convenience as universal time it's delusion.

[20:35]

Now this is something we should make clear among ourselves that what it means to not live in container space and to not assume there's universal time. Now, we can't approach space as a medium except metaphorically. We can't approach.

[21:37]

Yeah, okay. So the metaphors I use are something like a distributive medium. For space. We know that space is shaped by the objects that are made possible through it. There would be no objects without space.

[22:42]

But we also know or experience sometimes that not only does space allow objects, but it also is a communicative medium. And for a long time I've used that space has a certain valence or viscosity. Okay, texture, okay. Consistence. Texture is fine, but it does bring up, haptic might be better, because texture brings up the dynamic of text, which you can read.

[23:49]

Okay, also vielleicht ist greifbar, fühlbar besser, denn Textur, das Wort, bringt die Assoziation von Text auf, dass man lesen kann. Okay. And Timothy Morton uses, I think, the concept of the metaphor of viscosity for space. Okay. Well, the taxi example. And I think I mention this occasionally. Well, I lived in New York a long time, a pretty long time. And you signal for a taxi. So I got to Kyoto in 1968. And I would signal for a taxi. And they just drive right by me. And, uh... clear that I was not Japanese.

[25:07]

So I assumed, you know, I'm a foreigner. In those days, there weren't many Japanese, particularly, weren't many non-Japanese in Kyoto in the winter. And I'm sympathetic with the taxi drivers because they know foreigners don't know where they're going. Like my house in Kyoto, which Gary Snyder passed on to me. Was 31 Nishino Yamacho Shichiku Ichikichiku No, not Ichikichiku So that's 31.

[26:13]

The 31st house built historically in the western Nishinoyama, the western mountain district. Yeah, and then the Shichiku is the same type of distinction. But the house next to me was 3,742, or 56, no, more like 2 or 300 was its number. Nowadays, with GPS, I don't know how they do it, but And when I lived in Japan, the department stores couldn't deliver packages to houses in Japan. Who the heck knows that this was the 31st house built historically in 1840?

[27:20]

So, yeah, so I accepted the taxis aren't going to stop. And they'd drive by often, they would go, as they drove by, they'd go. Okay. But after about two and a half months, they started stopping. And I said, why are they stopping? What's different? I still look like a foreigner. But they seemed to know that I was a foreigner who knew Japan and would know how to get the taxi to where I wanted to go. So here's some information, right?

[28:38]

The taxis are stopping. Yeah, so that's a fact. The taxis are now stopping. Das ist eine Tatsache. And what were my views? Well, my views in New York are I'm in container space. And what I just intuitively started doing is functioning in gestural viscous space. And so my view was, I'm in container space, and what the heck are those taxis rushing by me in container space?

[29:52]

But somehow I had got the feeling by being in Japan for two or three months that space was somehow just true. So I began to study what I was doing. And I observed that when I just put up my hand like this, they wouldn't stop. Let's say the taxi was over where you are, Andreas. And I think of this as a liquid or some kind of medium which connects to the taxi driver. then I'd put up my hand sort of like I had liquid on it and was sending it toward you.

[31:09]

And if that taxi passed, there was another taxi, I made a different gesture for a taxi near or passing, and the taxi started stopping instantly. Because they knew I knew Japan well enough to probably know where I was going. So in Japan, you're in a gestural space. not a container space. And my view was overwhelmed by the fact of stopped taxis. Okay. Next. When I was last time in Hanover, I told this story, a good friend of mine.

[32:27]

About taxis? Yeah, about your story. Did I tell that at the Hanover? She grew up in China. She grew up in China. She understood immediately what I meant. That's interesting, yeah. Is it time for a break or does somebody want to say something? Ist es Zeit für eine Pause oder möchte noch jemand was sagen? Ja, ich würde gerne was sagen. What? Ich würde gerne was fragen. I would like to ask something. Oh, please. Ja, weil es beschäftigt mich immer noch. Du hast ja ganz am Anfang gesagt, dass du nicht so gerne das Wort Liebe benutzt. Yes, so I'm still coping with, you said you do not like that much to use the word love, but I'm equivocal. unequivocal, unequivocated, maybe better, unequivocated acceptance.

[33:45]

I still feel what the difference is, and for me the difference is that I experience acceptance as something passive, So when I try to feel what the difference is, and when I feel along that lines, for me acceptance is something more passive, something which I... Yeah? As if something came towards me. Yeah, I understand. And with love I associate more, and I don't like that word love, not so much as well, but for me it has the feeling of to approach something or to give something.

[34:56]

And in the end you said, it doesn't help you at all, you have to accept it as it comes. And in the end you said, oh well, you have no choice, you have to accept it as it comes. And that for me also means I don't have to love it. Okay, then don't. I'm just teasing you. I'm just aiming at you. I can't love it. We talked about what's going on in this world and that sex is the way of dying and I think I have to accept it. I can't love it. So we talked about the sixth extinction or cessation and stuff like that. Yeah, well, this is good.

[36:15]

We need to explore how words shape our noticing. Yeah, das ist gut. Wir müssen untersuchen, wie Worte unsere Bemerkung formen. And as Dieter pointed out, Dieter Sensei pointed out, it's very difficult to know what is your view and what is more factual, actual for you. And as this book, which I've mentioned quite often in the last few months, by Lisa Feldman Barrett, which is called How Emotions Are Made. It's the most brilliant neurological book I've read.

[37:23]

I mean, it's clear in Zen practice that turning word phrases, metaphoric use of views as intentions, change our behavior. But what has also been always clear to me, at least from very early on in my practice, it's also rewiring your brain. And she completely demolishes the idea that Worldwide there are common emotions, universal emotions, anger, fear, etc.

[38:36]

Yeah, but even if you know mountain climbers, often... It's not fear, it's excitement. You'd measure it the same way, but one feels fear and the other feels excitement. So then you have to, if you're going to look into this carefully, you have to look at, when I say, as you obviously were doing, Look at, when I say love, what? What? What territory does that occupy?

[39:43]

And when I say unequivocated acceptance, Yeah. Then you kind of explore that. Dann untersucht man das. But you explore it with the feeling that there's lots going on between those words, those categories which we're brainwired for. Aber man untersucht das mit dem Gefühl, dass da eine Menge passiert zwischen den Kategorien, den Worten, auf die unser Gehirn geschaltet ist. So you can also start playing with words because what you're trying to do is you're using your attentional skills to put words on an experiential spectrum and not conceptual categories.

[40:52]

So you can just look at the, ask yourself, just fooling around. You can ask yourself in English, I'm sorry I can't do it in German, who am I? And there's a certain feeling with that. Then you can ask yourself, what am I? These are just two words starting with W. Double you. And it's actually a different feeling. What am I? Aber es ist wirklich ein anderes Gefühl. Was bin ich? You know, if you go to Japan, those of you going to Japan, if you ask Japanese people the equivalent of who are you, they point to their nose.

[42:03]

Wenn man nach Japan geht und die Japaner so etwas oder die Entsprechung zu der Frage stellt, wer bist du, dann zeigen sie auf ihre Nase. And if you ask questioners who are you, they tend to point to your nose. And it's the difference between what and who. For the Japanese person, who are you is really what kind of thing are you? What kind of object are you? Yeah, and who, I'm coming, it's not the what-ness, it's who am I. So then you can ask yourself, What is who-space?

[43:06]

What kind of stuff is who-space? Where is that? Who-ness space. Maybe your pet has who-ness space. You can ask... What in this space? Yeah. So, anyway, these... You have to experiment for yourself as you're doing, like it feels it's coming toward you or not coming toward you, etc. But certainly one major aspect related to stillness also is Zen practice is imperturbability. And Zen uses pain as the shortcut to imperturbability.

[44:14]

I have so many friends who have been practicing Buddhism and many of them practice Tibetan Buddhism because Zen is just too damn painful. But there's various ways to realize imperturbability. You can realize it through your intelligence and through getting your hands stuck between two rocks. And it takes you two or three days to realize, I have to cut off my wrist. which you know that actually happened to somebody. They made a movie about it.

[45:16]

So in Bitterbill, I think Evelyn was a good example of she was destroyed. by Peter's death, but in it she was imperturbable. And if you have to sit, and it is, Rinzai sits 30 minutes, Soto sits 40 minutes. And the teachings are fine-tuned to whether you're 30-minute periods or 40-minute periods.

[46:21]

And after a while, you get used to sitting and nobody's ringing the darn bell and so forth. You finally just, I don't care whether it hurts or not. It means nothing to me. So after a while you get, no matter what happened, an explosion could occur right there, and you could just sit, unless you need to help somebody. And the kind of crises we have to face, personal, psychological, emotional, familial crises we have to face, it's great if you can accept and be imperturbable. It doesn't mean you don't feel grief. You can be overwhelmed by grief, but still be under, not overwhelmed at all.

[47:24]

So what I said this morning was rooted in my feeling that Whatever's going on, I feel best if I simply feel love for the complexity that this is, even if it's destroying me. Also von dem, was ich heute Morgen gesagt habe, ich fühle mich am besten, wenn ich akzeptiere, dass ich die Komplexität liebe, selbst wenn sie mich zerstört. It's the societal wake-up call we need. Es ist der gesellschaftliche Weckruf, den wir brauchen.

[48:29]

And even if there's no one left to hear it, I'm happy there's this wake-up call. Und sogar wenn niemand übrig bleibt, um es zu hören, dann bin ich glücklich über diesen Weckruf. Because the alternative to this wake-up call is worse. Weil die Alternative zu diesem Weckruf noch schlechter ist. And we'll see what happens. Und wir sehen, was passiert. Yeah. All right, sorry. You should never ask me anything. Entschuldigung, ihr solltet mich nie etwas fragen. All right, thanks. Dankeschön. I've spent my life trying to answer these questions and debating them. And you give me a chance to say something about what I spent 68 years planning.

[49:31]

And with the help of Dieter and Gunde, I am able to And with Dieter's and Gunther's help, there is nothing more to say.

[50:00]

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