Good afternoon. I hope you had a edible meal, even good. Yeah. Now I'd like to say something for, I don't know, a little bit. Yeah, because I do want to see, since this is such an important, basic topic, I do want to see if I can bring it to a level at which then you can make use of it in your life. And you can make use of it as a basis for continuing to explore the four foundations of mindfulness.

[01:02]

Now, I think if we can give sufficient hands-on, detailed attention to the mindfulness of the body, That can be the basis, I think, for your looking at the other three, yourself. that doesn't mean I'm going to forget about the other three. Now, as usual on Saturday afternoon, I find it very beneficial for later in the day and for Sunday. If you break up into break up divide up into small groups I'll leave that in the hands of our leader.

[02:34]

Fuhrer? Fuhrer? And the questions I'd like you to consider Of course, you can consider anything you want. That's up to you. But my suggestion is that you consider what aspect of mindfulness has been important to you.

[03:37]

Or how have you understood mindfulness up until now? And in what way have you practiced it? And that's one question. And parallel, I'd like you to... Is there any aspect of mindfulness that's come up during this seminar so far? Which changes, adds to, extends the idea you had of mindfulness up till now. Okay. Now, when I listed the six, I used the word targets because, I don't know, it sounds kind of funny, but what you direct your attention toward, what I left out was, are the four noble postures.

[05:04]

Which I've spoken about in a few ways yesterday. We covered quite a lot yesterday. It seems like about a week. Okay. Was it just yesterday? Anyway... So the six again are your activity. Your breath. The four noble postures. The 32 parts of the body. Now I'm going to forget another one. The four elements. Yes. And death. Or dissolution.

[06:20]

Now, I think the four, let me speak again about the four noble postures. Because they are a good example of what we mean by attention. Weil die ein gutes Beispiel dafür sind, was wir mit Aufmerksamkeit meinen. Okay. Why four postures? Warum vier Haltungen? Now, I try to make a distinction between a posture and a position. Also erstmal versuche ich eine Unterscheidung zwischen einer Haltung und einer Position zu treffen. Yeah. So, the idea of the four postures Walking, standing, reclining and sitting is that in a sense you live your life in those four postures. Or you live your life in a whole bunch of configurations, you know.

[07:25]

I don't know. Okay. Why do we say categorize, generalize, or... all of the different positions we can take as four. Because a different mind goes with each. That's one reason. You know, it's very hard to sleep standing up unless you're a horse. You tend to, if you sleep, you fall down after a while. So if you're reclining, reclining tends to create the mind of dreaming and sleep, and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[08:29]

It's actually quite difficult to meditate in a reclining posture. I try it sometimes. I mean, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night for some reason, you know, the eye of the camel, you know, etc. So I debate whether I should go back to sleep or stay up. So particularly if I'm in a hotel, you know, there's no Zafu and I don't know, it's difficult. So I think, okay, I'll meditate reclining. It somehow doesn't work very well. Yeah, I can sort of do it and hopefully go back to sleep, which I do when I'm sitting, too.

[09:30]

Okay. No, not true. That's called apophasis. You say something and you take it away. It's a standard approach in teaching Buddhism. You say something and then you take away what you said. Because that's already something different. So reclining mostly produces, can produce a certain kind of mind and especially in which you can sleep and dream. And sitting, especially still sitting, with the concept and decision not to move, can generate a mind that's different than sleeping in non-dreaming deep sleep.

[11:00]

Though it overlaps with dreaming sometimes and has qualities like non-dreaming deep sleep, yet it's still its own mind. Now, it's easy to see, but walking and standing also produce their own minds. Okay, so the four postures have the potential of generating four different minds. And when is that generation of four different minds most developed? When you infuse each of the four with attention. Yeah, I mean, reclining posture takes care of itself mostly, but that's another question we won't discuss.

[12:31]

But the example I gave you yesterday was simple. Imagine I'm giving a lecture and sitting here like this. I look drunk, I think. Now, I feel like I'm somewhere else. Hey, where am I? Now, if I bring attention to this posture, immediately something happens. So this is not one of the four noble postures. This is called slouching. So that's extremely interesting what happens when you bring attention.

[13:59]

It's amazing. It's like magic. You bring attention and something happens to the whole body. So once you've discovered that, you know, a discovery of that, a really, yeah, you really get it. Yeah, then you say, hey, maybe this is a tool to bring to everything in my life. Then you've had a recognition or insight perhaps into the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. Which are sometimes, as I told you, called the four awakenings, sometimes called mindful attention instead of mindfulness.

[15:19]

Or the last thing before. Like mindful attention. And a useful translation is the four frames of reference. The four frames of reference you established in order to actualize your life. Okay. Now, someone said to me at lunchtime, two people actually said to me, that what I'm speaking about, the content of the seminar is quite philosophical. I guess it is. I would like to deny it.

[16:21]

But I guess I have to admit it. But it is, from my experience, what I'm talking about is in no way derived from philosophy. Well, that's not quite right. I mean, it's derived from the fact that we actually live a philosophy. Actually are living a philosophy. I mean, we live our culture. Ich meine, wir leben ja unsere Kultur.

[17:24]

We live a particular way of life. Und wir leben einen spezifischen Lebensweg. But actually, when you exhume, exhume? Dig up a corpse. Exhume. When you exhume our habits, you find that it's philosophy. We're living a philosophy called Western culture. Yeah. We don't notice it because it's just the way things are. I don't know. A simple example that comes to mind is we say we're we go into the future. Yeah. So we plan and try to make the future predictable and safe.

[18:28]

We know it's not, but we think of ourselves going toward the future. The Chinese, they say the future comes to them in its unexpectedness. So, yeah, they will plan too, but they'll plan in a different way. Probably they plan for its unexpectedness rather than planning to make it predictable. So just little differences like that, which are rooted in a different way of viewing the world, Support or interfere with practice. Okay. Now let me venture to speak to Gerhard's question. Also, lass mich mal es wagen, auf Gerhard's Frage zu antworten.

[19:45]

You know, it's only recently, you know, I've been doing this for more than 45 years, and it's still only recently that I've given real attention to attention. Obwohl ich schon seit über 40 Jahren praktiziere, habe ich erst vor kurzem angefangen, wirklich der Aufmerksamkeit Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken. Well, I mean, I've been saying for decades that how Buddhism differs, because we always are giving attention to things. You can't drive a car or study a book or do any art without giving attention to it. So as I've said, how is Buddhism different? Buddhism gives attention to attention itself. And it's giving attention to attention itself that develops teachings like the four foundations. So then I've been exploring the experience of resting, not only giving attention to itself, but resting attention on itself.

[21:06]

No, this is an experience I had. But then... How do I talk about it? What's the difference between giving attention to attention and resting attention on itself? I mean, how can I fit words in there somewhere? Okay, so that has led me to characterize a number of aspects of practice in terms of the ball of intention. Yeah, so instead of just having the feeling I'm bringing or their attention is being brought to the breath,

[22:21]

Now, it would be nice if this seminar gave me the opportunity of speaking about when attention is subjective and when it's not. But I don't know if it's going to be possible. Why do I say Well, I say it because, one, we may not have enough time. But also, I can't say certain things unless we are all at a certain point. And I can find I can say them, but I can't say them if there's any resistance or not openness to it. Because my ability to notice something in a way that you can notice it, and to find words for noticing it, is inseparable or closely linked to your ability to notice it.

[24:00]

Because in the subtlest sense, our consciousnesses and awarenesses are linked here. Now, you all experience yourself As separate. Yeah, mostly separate. Yeah, I mean, that's normal. Bad guy, no. It's normal. It's the way it is. Yeah, okay. So you're in the midst of your consciousness, experiencing yourself as listening, and there's a separation between you and the next person, and so forth. But if we could hook you up to a bunch of wires we'd find all of your metabolisms are very minutely in sync.

[25:18]

It's especially prominent or strong when people meditate together. But it's always true in any group. It's when there's a beginning to be a feeling of a we or a group. So the machines can tell us that we are extremely connected, but our consciousness experiences separation. But we don't need machines to know that. We actually know that. So there's an experienced separation and a factual connectedness. Jung says something similar.

[26:42]

Jung says self is experienced separately but in fact is collective. It's fairly similar. Okay. So again, practice and mindfulness, we could say, is also to make us able to feel in a way not limited to the separation of consciousness, To be able to feel in a more articulated, inactable way. our connectedness.

[28:01]

And as I said last night, they've studied and noticed that people who can feel their own heartbeat, breath, etc., and be very in tune with their own heartbeat and breath are also more in tune with other people. It seems obvious. To be more in rapport with your own body allows you to be more in rapport with others. And we can say these six targets of the bodyfulness of the body are ways to use the wisdom of the teaching

[29:04]

to become more deeply, fully and acutely in rapport with this location, which we call a body. Sorry again. Okay. The wisdom of the first foundation of mindfulness is to bring us into a a fuller deeper, more acute resonance or rapport with our own body which the process itself is not just when you bring attention to the body Also der Prozess des Körpers selber ist nicht nur, ja oder nochmal, wenn du Aufmerksamkeit auf den Körper bringst.

[30:30]

You're not just bringing your attention to the body, which is already there doing its thing. Dann bringst du nicht nur Aufmerksamkeit auf den Körper, der ja schon da ist und einfach so eine Sache macht. You change the body. You start creating the body. Sondern dann veränderst du den Körper. Du beginnst den Körper zu erschaffen. And, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not making kind of promises like a quack medicine salesman. But it's almost sure to make you live longer. And as I said, and die better. Yeah, I can say you are a participant then, but who is this you?

[31:34]

We'll leave that till later. Partly a problem of Western thinking itself, but it's also a problem. Okay, so this, I'm using this term, ball of attentions. I will stop soon because your legs are in a bubble. It's great to be a Zen teacher. You always have the limit of the legs. I can only talk when I start seeing lots of knees flopping up. I think I better shut up. So I bring attention brought to the breath.

[32:35]

So I now think of it, I think of it as a little ball of attention brought to the breath. Yeah, and it rolls down, rolls along with the exhale, rolls up with the inhale. And I can expand this ball so the breath is throughout my body, throughout this body, etc. Or more focused. Now, I'm sure if you practice attention to the breath, you have this experience. I'm adding an image to it. When you emphasize Kundalini practice, you add an image of channels which are not biologically present, but you experience them as channels. Parallel channels.

[34:11]

Channels. They're parallel. But the visualization feels true to experience and allows experience. So you have to experiment with if this ball of attention, I don't know what other word to use, is useful to you as an image. And I can send this ball of attention out, as I said, toward Andreas.

[35:12]

Or to Heinrich. Or to any one of you. It's fun. It feels good because something, the ball, Something happens. It's a little different with each person. And when you add the image, you can kind of spread it out and pull it in. And, of course, there's this pulse of inward and outward, basic to Zen practice. Okay, so now I'm trying to explore and I'll make this as short as I can. In relation to intention and attention. Der Unterschied zwischen Intention und Aufmerksamkeit.

[36:21]

And I'll just share with you Gerhard, the outline of my thinking just now. which is, you know, I'm trying to identify my experience and talk about it in these terms of intention and attention. And in some ways they're like Siamese twins that are sometimes separated. Or they're like two particles, entangled particles in Bell's theorem. You know Bell's theorem, anybody? You send out two particles and you give them related spins, you entangle them in some way.

[37:28]

You give them a related spin. For example, you could do other things. Then you send them off. And if something happens to this one, Instantaneously, faster than speed of light, something happens to this one. And they have to either communicate faster than the speed of light, or they have to be somehow encoded to respond the same way somewhere else. Just for your information, when this theory was first propounded by Bell, he's dead now, in the 60s, I believe it was. Most scientists consider it new age science or scientism or something.

[38:44]

But now it's completely accepted by physicists and it's over and over again been experimentally demonstrated. So I'm using these images. And so intention and attention are related even when one is fully attention and intention seems to be subtextual or not there. And this seems to be increased, this relationship, the more there's embodiment. Now, it sounds like vitalism, if you know vitalism as a philosophical idea.

[40:14]

Vitalism. Anyway, that is the idea that there's a, I'm trying to make this short because it's not of interest to everyone, is that there's a ground of being And there's a subjective self. And there's a cause of our aliveness. And this exists often. The idea is then reincarnation. It's passed from life to life. And so there's a ground of being which is sometimes a subjective self and the source of our vitality, our aliveness. What about the self again, sorry? The source of our aliveness.

[41:29]

Yeah, that part I said. It's all right. Okay. Basically, Buddhism denies this. But this ball of attention Which can sometimes be intention. And sometimes can be subjective agency. And can accumulate our personal history. And carry our personal history. So can feel like soul or the source of life. But it also is just a ball of attention. And it's a mistake to then make it into a soul or something like that, in terms of Buddhism at least. Yeah, I'm sorry to trouble you with this. But at least you can see you're in the midst of my process of trying to figure something out in a way that I can talk about it that relates to my experience in practice.

[42:57]

And I want to exercise the translator because she's getting better and better. Yeah. Okay, so let's have a break. Oh, I said I'd ring the bell occasionally. I might do it now. So the dissolution of voice too. A Zen teacher might ask a disciple, perhaps they're meditating or perhaps they're, stop the sound of that village bell. Es mag sein, dass ein Zen-Lehrer einen Schüler einmal fragt, vielleicht im Dokusan oder vielleicht wenn sie meditieren, dass er ihn bittet, den Klang der Glocke im Dorf zu stoppen.

[44:07]

An alert student might say, already stopped. Ein wachsamer Schüler würde dann sagen, ist schon beendet, ist schon verglungen. Okay, thanks. You know, isn't it funny how your legs could be hurting, and then the bell rings, and you can't change yet, but there's already hope. And your legs start feeling better. In some old text it says, if one when one first hears of interdependent origination and its fruit in emptiness,

[46:32]

in emptiness, if when such a person hears this, if their hair stands on end and they weep tears of joy, They have already the seed of Buddhist teachings. Well, that may not have happened to each of us. But the decision to practice mindfulness The decision just comes to us to practice.

[47:37]

Dogen calls initial enlightenment. And practice and cultivation and study is the opening up of this initial enlightenment. And the practice and the cultivation and the development is the opening of this initial enlightenment. This has happened to us. And is happening to us. How grateful we can be that this is the case.

[48:40]

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