Sometimes, shortly before a lecture or even quite a bit before a lecture, I feel a tremendous tiredness, like I can't do this. And it's also a feeling of wanting to sleep or going to zazen, because there I can do it. I can sleep and zazen these things. But then, you know, I'm not dumb, and I know that I also express things, at least for some of you, pretty well. And for myself, it helps me to find ways to express things in this attentional space. And the very nature of this attentional space helps me find out what to say.

[01:07]

But still, you know, on the one hand I feel a responsibility to hide the jewel in your clothes or show you where it's hidden. But Yeah, but the responsibility makes me tired. Oh, dear. But at the same time, again, I know we're all in this together. You know, it's not just me. We're doing this together. So we have a mutual responsibility for the Dharma. And that's how I feel. Okay, so let me stay with, for now, attentional space. By the way, one of my favorite poems of Rilke, I don't know what it is in Deutsch, but it's the archaic torso of Apollo.

[02:12]

And the last line is, there is nothing which does not see you. You must change your life. Now, there are many things that come up in our life which, you know, getting to be 18 or 16 or whatever, going to college, getting married, having a crisis, having a disease, many things say you must change your life. That happens over and over again in our life. But to say first, there is nothing which does not see you. And for that reason, you must change your life. This penetrates in a different way. And I think you can practice with this. There is nothing which does not see you.

[03:15]

It makes me think of Wittgenstein saying, again, as I mentioned the other day, that ethics, virtue, ethics, is as much a part of our life as logic. You know, and he's being, you know, a kind of mathematician as well as philosopher, scientist. I mean, in the end, mathematics explains things. Logic explains things. And he says, just as fully as logic is part of this world, So is ethics and virtue. And I think that's present there, too. There is nothing which does not see you. Okay. So I'm speaking, first of all, about... trying to speak about... the density of attention. And I know that in the past, sometimes when I've spoken about that, people have had some problem.

[04:25]

What the heck is density of attention? I mean, the simplest, I think, way to give a feeling for it is if you just climbed this hill the other day as a picnic and Some of you are climbers. And when I was a teenager, I used to do a lot of climbing of buildings and bridges. And if you're hanging onto something and there's not much between you, there's a long distance between you and where you might stop, there's a density of attention when you do things. shinny across something where there's no handholds, to reach a handhold, there's a density of attention. Yeah, another density of attention is, you know, I had a friend who used to lead groups climbing glaciers.

[05:31]

That was her specialty, climbing glaciers. She said, You know, if you come down in the morning when the sun is on the surface and it's starting to melt, there's a density of attention which is ecstatic. Well, this forces a density of attention on you. But there's density of attention which arises through, for example, as I said yesterday, bringing attention to the breath. And bringing attention to the breath and the ability to bring attention to the breath, you will see. I mean, it's a cooking process. You're sort of cooked by bringing attention to the breath and you begin to feel yourself in patterns that are different. Emotions, feelings, sensations are known somewhat differently.

[06:32]

Clarity. Begin to be invisible structures in the space in which you exist. Because you're bringing attention to the breath and that bringing attention to the breath Awakens dimensions of attention which we can call a density of attention Now if we're if we're if our practice and our immersion in Buddhism bring us into new ways of looking at the world, where things are relevant to us in new ways, things are important to us in new ways. And that is, in effect, calls forth the need for new worldviews, new paradigms.

[07:42]

If things are newly important or relevant in new ways, how do you put this together? A worldview can be confining and they can be liberating. And if we do need new worldviews or new ways to acknowledge our relationship to the world, then we need new language. And language with a different or new musculature because language needs to move us into the world and move the world to us. And that is a kind of musculature. So we need language with a new musculature. So I'm always trying to find that. That makes me tired. But I'm always trying to find that too. Yeah. So, I'm speaking about practice as Buddhism itself, Zen practice at least, that part of Buddhism which we call practice, as an attentional medium.

[09:03]

And space is an attentional medium. The more you can bring a density of attention, a fullness of attention to space, space itself is something more articulate, more clear, more likely clear. I mean, your body is always doing health. Sitting, walking around is doing health or undoing health, you know. But the very body, the organs are space. Now I'm carrying this analogy maybe too far for us or you, but I would say that carving a cave in emptiness, Dan mentioned again, Just as the body is space and has the structure of your organs, the processes of your organs, if you do in one of the basic practices, which one should do in the first couple years, is really explore the body and explore all the organs and bring attention to each organ.

[10:25]

And what's interesting, when you bring attention to each organ, until you bring attention to the organs as systemic, as a process, it's hard to bring attention to the heart alone, for instance. It basically pushes into the whole circulatory system. So this actually increases the density of attention because attention becomes spread throughout, absorbed throughout the body and throughout the organs. You can feel the kidney. You can feel the lungs. and the heart and the stomach and the digestive system and so. This is also attention to the, the attentional space of the body and that, so you're, so you're, so in yoga as I'm presenting it for Zen practice,

[11:42]

You're teaching, not the mind now, or to be a school scholar or academic or something, you're teaching attention to know the body, and you're letting the body teach attention. The practice of bringing attention to each part of the body, throughout the body, and practicing now. Heat yoga, which is, you know, to the extent that I know it, the main way to practice, and I've worked with Sukhya Shri, and this is you bring heat between your thumbs, and you find it somewhere in your hand, and you... It's getting warm now. I don't have to teach you this. Maybe we'll have another snowstorm. You find some spot of heat in your hands, and you move it, to the tips of your thumbs. And once you really have it located, you start moving it up your arms and then throughout the body.

[12:51]

This is very similar to the practice of moving attention throughout the body. But you can get that, I mean, as I said to someone the other day, one reason we don't cover our hands and keep this, what we call the window open, is so that the yogi learns, discovers how to keep hands and feet always warm. I mean, unless you have some medical problem, it's something that's commonplace in our practice. So again, this is a, if nothing else, Buddhist practice is a practice of bringing attention to attention itself and developing attention to itself throughout the body and throughout presence, the space of presence.

[13:55]

And I feel it when you're serving and we do what we do. And I would say, I'm trying to find a word that there's... We have the word in English, circumstance, which means, obviously, circum, what surrounds, is a circle around where you stand. So maybe, I don't have a word, but maybe we could create a word, circum posture. that around your posture, your posture generates a phenomenon, posture as phenomenon, or space itself becomes posture. So here we have the maybe root idea of a mental posture, and Zen is a practice of physical postures and mental postures, and that the mind, the yogic mind, is primarily used to establish mental postures. Not for thinking, but mental postures.

[14:59]

And those mental postures then transform how we think, feel, function, and so forth. So already we have a new worldview. The new worldview here is the mind is used to establish mental postures. That's why vows and intentions and intentional space are also important. So you're finding yourself in a world of mental postures, which transforms how you think about the world. And if you are in a world of mental postures, then those mental postures can be wisdom. Or they can be stupidity or delusion. But you now are not just fiddling around in the world of confusion and delusion. You've got the clarity of a mental posture

[16:00]

which can be shifted from self-referential thinking, primarily, to primarily feeling connectedness. Connectedness. I was thinking yesterday how to, how to, how to emphasize, how to emphasize this practice of appearance. I say, you know, and I don't mean to say I sound like a little bit threatening, if you don't experience appearance, you're not really practicing Buddhism. Well, I should give you more help than that. And I think very simple mechanical things help. For instance, Just use the word this. I mean, the book, this book, that, that's all words for thusness.

[17:03]

The the-ness of the book is more fundamentally experiential than the book. And we put the books. How do we get to know the the-ness? There is nothing which does not see you. So it's not a dumb thing to take, well, I often give you the practice of just this, just this. This is called a nyoi. And it's the staff that Sukershi gave me. First one. And... So let's now... Because just this emphasizes nothing else but this. And I know I'm just emphasizing this. So just say, if this kind of practice incurs for you, this, this, this.

[18:09]

And just do it as a habit until this becomes more your experience than this pillar. these tiles, this floor, this tan, this person. Yeah, person and tile and slate and tan, all different, but this remains the same. And one of the advanced, so-called advanced stages of Buddhism is the practice, is the realization of sameness. Well, this is an entry to sameness. This. This. This. And you feel the this-ness, and when you feel the this-ness, you feel the mind this-ing. Or the sandals this-ing. This.

[19:11]

And then it's fairly easy to change this into thus. Thus. And sometimes I think, you know, sometimes I have practiced with this with the exhale. You know, the stepping forward into the world. This, this with the exhale. And then with the inhale I say thus and let it disappear. So I use breath here as the medium of attention. to deepen the density, to increase the density of attention by this, this, this, this. And again, you're just teaching yourself to feel the world as changing.

[20:13]

No, I don't have all the time in the world, so let me... Go to this koan I mentioned the other day, 93, Shoyaroku. It says in it, many people speak about the wish-fulfilling gem, but not many people speak about the mine of thusness. the mind, M-I-N-E, of thusness. So this is actually, it takes a while to absorb this. It's a complex idea, but it's interesting that the wish-fulfilling gem, what's it called in Sanskrit? Chitanmani, I think, something like that. Chitanmani, C-H-I-T-A-N-mani. Mani is Jewel. is so parallel to the Western idea of the philosopher's stone.

[21:21]

And alchemy and Paracelsus, the 16th century, seemed to be the most definitive of all alchemists, Swiss, you know, just like David is an old alchemist here. Paracelsus said the philosopher's stone, is the source of all the elements. Well, and the magnum opus of European alchemy was to find the philosopher's stone. But they really seemed to think of it as a stone. So now let's get this. our Western culture, which, and this whole idea of a philosopher's stone, goes back into early Greek time. It's interesting that these things exist, you know? And it's so conceptually, in some ways, conceptually parallel to the wish-fulfilling gem, which is, in China, the word for the wish-fulfilling gem is the as one wishes.

[22:36]

Hmm. So this koan is much about the wish-fulfilling gem. And it starts out with something like the magpie. You know magpies are those birds who collect all kinds of shiny things. The magpie doesn't know how to use a jewel. Rats don't know how to use gold. But the wish-fulfilling gem is in your clothes. Do you know how to use it? You rat. I mean, you magpie. You know. That's how the koan starts out with a little jab. But it says the wish-fulfilling gem is found in the mind. Am I any of thusness? That's interesting. Because here we don't have an actual stone you find that changes gold and base metals into gold and then some other metals into silver and blah, blah, blah.

[23:45]

And, you know, even in New England, one of the Winthrops, who was the second governor, first governor of Massachusetts, I think Winthrop's son was secretly one of the leading alchemists of certainly the colonies, but also of Europe. But he had to keep it a secret, because if you were an alchemist in Puritan New England... But there's a subtextual... in poetry and paintings and alchemy and science and so forth. It's very much like Buddhism. It kind of resonates with Buddhism. But they're looking for a stone. And in Buddhism, the philosopher's stone is what is empty. Not stone. It's thusness. It's coming and going. Coming and going is the mind of thusness.

[24:51]

And also not coming and going is the mind of thusness in this koan. And the analects of Confucius are commented on in this koan. repeated in this poem, which says something like, the philosopher's stone, jewel, retain it in your mind, receive it in your mind, hold it in your hand, and point to it in your palm. Yeah, like we spoke earlier. or point with it from your palm. Now the jewel, the wish-fulfilling gem, is often in the dragon, the dragon king, blah, blah, blah.

[25:57]

Well, the dragon king, the dragon which goes to the depths of the sea, it brings this jewel back. But the jewel is nothing but thusness. And in the mokugyo, the wooden fish that we hit, what's in the mouth of the wooden fish? The jewel of thusness. And what's the word for the wish-fulfilling gem in Japanese Buddhism? It's nyo-i. and what's this called? The name of this stick is the wish fulfilling stick. Which is sometimes said to be the ancestor from the back scratcher. You know, if you're a 16th century

[27:01]

Japanese or Chinese guy. The Japanese bathe more often, but there's a whole, particularly in Japan, there's a whole thing that Buddhist monks should always have hands and feet that they could touch a baby. They should always have brushed teeth. They should always have pushed back fingernails. They should always have clean underwear on, especially if they're giving a lecture. And things like that. But, in fact, people didn't have water, didn't have baths much, and they stunk, and they had flies all over them, you know, and they had whisks, you know, to get the flies off, and their back itched, scratched their back. But this is also the backbone. That represents the backbone. And as the wish-fulfilling gem, as the... as one wishes...

[28:03]

the mind that appears in the spine, the attentional density that can know thusness, find oneself defined through living through thusness, receiving, uniting, releasing. In Buddhism, this is the wish-fulfilling gem. It's your spine. It's your clothes. It's your life. And also sometimes it's as far away as the bottom of the ocean and we need the tiger's cave, as the koan said, or the dragon's courage to realize the wish-fulfilling gem. They are intended equally.

[29:06]

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