I want a sun hat. I don't think it would fit. Oh. Guten Morgen. Guten Morgen. Okay. Okay. So we only have this morning, I believe, we end at lunch, and lunch is at 12, 1.30, 1? 1. And so I would like to start with this. If it's okay with you, of course.

[01:07]

Sangha session. And after the break, so we have two sessions with a break, too. Yeah, and then lunch. Yeah, so those are our ingredients. Yeah. And I will see if I can find something to say after the break. And some people asked me, do you wish people spoke about the practice more? No, I don't know. Whatever you speak about is okay with me. But I think also coming to terms with practice in our lives, Establishing this sensorial sensitivity in our activity, investigative activity,

[02:28]

is actually a sort of contrapuntal practice for us. In other words, it brings up all kinds of aspects of our life which seem unrelated but actually are often coming up because of the contrast with practice. Okay, so now I'll slow down the lower part of my face. And concentrate on my ears. So it seems to me that we have established that this kind of practice, teaching and communal space works.

[05:13]

And And it seems to work that I also stay present during the sangha sessions. Over the years, my experience has been that my presence inhibits the situation, but that seems to be not the case here or it's changing. And what is still open, of course, is what should be the proportion between teaching space and sangha space. Of course, in some ways, it's all teaching space.

[06:24]

Yeah. And when I look at... recent years, if I look and wonder, what did I talk about last Rostenberg seminar last year, etc. Or when I, as Susan asked, when I started speaking about the interiority Attentional body.

[07:26]

Attentional body. I find that in various degrees of explicitness, I've been speaking about it for two or three years now. And my experience, although Andreas Hagen may contradict me, he has been listening to cassettes from the earlier years in Europe. And I think there's 172,000.

[08:37]

Anyway, it's in the area of innumerable. And he says what he enjoys as he listens to me say something in Dortmund, which I then said again in some other place. But my experience anyway is that in the earlier days I introduced new topics more often. And now it's almost I feel like I'm teaching basket weaving. In the sense of here's where you collect the reeds or whatever you're going to make the basket from.

[09:39]

And here's how you soften them and weave them together. And here's how you make a rim so they don't fall apart. And there should be a certain amount of space so you can see through the basket, through the weaving. Yeah, so I really feel we're weaving some sort of basket, but actually to make a good basket takes quite a while. The teachings are actually called in Buddhism the three baskets. Yeah, so what I'm saying is that I'm trying to go into more detail than depth.

[10:58]

For example, the difference between bringing attention to the breath and bringing attention to the bodily breath. And bringing attention to the sensations that arise in the body through bringing attention to the breath. Now, to give you a sense of the The sensitivity to detail, which is considered essential in practice, I would like to just tell you what the 16 factors are in the Anapasati Sutra.

[12:40]

I mean, when you bring attention to the breath, it's a little bit like you were... tuning in a radio or something. But once you've got the radio tuned in, the breath radio tuned in, you can begin to tune in different stations in the radio. And the real point is not to bring attention to the radio, but to bring enough attention to the radio that it tunes in stations.

[13:54]

So bringing attention to the breath can be transformative. There's no question about that. But that's like listening to the music of the Dharma in zazen and in mindfulness practice. But that's not the same as learning to play the instruments and then write the music. Aber es ist nicht dasselbe wie zu lernen, die Instrumente zu spielen und dann die Musik selber zu schreiben. Okay, so here's the 16 recommendations of the Anapanasatisuk.

[15:05]

Hier sind die 16 Empfehlungen aus dem Anapanasatisuk. And it's divided into four units of four. And the first is noticing, is contemplation of the body. And so the first is noticing or discerning, feeling in and out. And you generally don't go further until you've really done that for a while. The more complete you make each practice, thorough you make each practice, the more other practices open up. So first of all, of course, there's the inhale. And the exhale.

[16:23]

And the turn around at the bottom of the exhale. And the turn around at the top of the inhale. And beginning to feel those four... Actuations of breath. And then you notice that in walking, sitting, standing, reclining, and so forth. And you notice that when you go over that little bump into sleeping, how your breathing changes. Okay, like that. Super. And then you begin to notice the long and short breaths.

[17:44]

And as I suggested, this means to be aware of the continuous uniting of the breath. And then the third is to open up your experience of the whole body through this kind of breathing. And then you notice, when you open up the whole body, that the body actually exists in various kind of formations, movements, territories. And then you see that they have built in anxieties or movements that have their own expression.

[18:47]

And then you try to calm wild deformations. I mean I don't speak about this at all to people who are fairly new to practice because they simply don't have the attentional skills to distinguish these various sensitivities Weil sie normalerweise einfach nicht die Aufmerksamkeitsfähigkeiten haben, diese unterschiedlichen Unterscheidungen zu spüren. Okay. And then in the second tetrade for universe of four, you bring attention to feelings.

[20:10]

Now you've become, first of all, sensitive to reaction. Then you might say, geez, I had a yoga class this morning and I feel pretty good this afternoon. But investigative practice would mean could we call this rapture? And did it arise from the yoga class? Or is it partly that I'm doing zazen every morning too? Or is it the spring day? Or where is this located in the body?

[21:21]

And can I sustain it or nourish it independent of the yoga class, etc. ? Because even if a yoga class produces rapture, the rapture now has its own place, not necessarily only causally related to the yoga class. Okay, and then the second is being sensitive to pleasure. And which is more bodily and which is more mental? And then the third is to be sensitive to the feeling of mental fabrication.

[22:34]

And the third is sensitive to the feeling of mental fabrication. mental value, really. . Okay. And maybe like Peter said earlier today, he feels sometimes comfortable in concepts. And Let me say, you think you can be free of concepts.

[23:47]

And it's true, you can. But to be free of concepts is a concept. So you have to find out how to use concepts in order to be free of them. Okay, so... To notice the feeling of mental of concepts. And different concepts feel differently. And how to be able to move your sense of location around in different concepts. Und wie du dein Gefühl von Verortung in unterschiedlichen Konzepten herumbewegen kannst. What concepts make you feel most free of concept? What concepts imprison you?

[24:48]

And you feel yourself being destroyed from inside. Anyway, it's kind of like that. And it is like that. And then the fourth is you discover how to calm mental fabrications. But you can't calm mental fabrications until you really explore mental fabrications enough to calm them. And the third group of four. is bringing attention to the mind. First being simply sensitive to whatever you think you mean by mind. Then the second is satisfying the mind.

[25:56]

Like I've often said, when you're walking down a street, for example, pick some generic event. You make the feeling of the mind your highest priority. not where you're going or what you have to do or anything. And probably, in fact, wherever you're going and what you have to do will happen in a better way if you are attentive to the quality of mind. And so I said, when you're generically walking down the street somewhere, Walk in a way that you feel the walking nourishes you.

[27:18]

That would be called satisfying the mind. And you realize that's like maybe the most important thing in your life. Not what you do, what people think of you. At this moment, satisfying the mind. In the deepest sense, everything else is inconsequential. No. So you notice when you're walking and your sense of the environment and so forth feels nourishing.

[28:30]

At each moment you feel restored somehow. I sometimes call it each moment yoga. Each moment is how your body is, mind is, can be a practice of yoga. Okay, and then whatever you do, do. you do it completely with a feeling of completeness and that would be the third of this tetrad steadying the mind so when you come to a curb in this generic sidewalk You maybe have a kind of somewhere conception curve.

[29:37]

Yeah, and curve, of course, means in English to stop. So you curb for the particular. Pause for the particular. And when you come to the curb, you step down with a completeness. And when you bring the second foot down off the curb, You feel now I'm not flunking, I'm standing for a moment. I'm exaggerating it, of course, a bit.

[30:39]

But it's good to go through this in as fine a detail as you can, slowly, occasionally. That's what's expressed by those beautiful Theravadan walking Buddhas. You go through the motions in fine detail, and then later they're just, you know, like a tennis player might go through the motions in fine detail of each word. But when you're playing, it happens. And these small acts of completeness Leave the mind feeling complete.

[31:58]

And you begin to have a mind that really is steady. It can't be disturbed. Very difficult to disturb. And then the fourth is, every time any experience of mind appears, you release it. Any feeling of mind appears, you release. So the first three are... Developing, establishing, constructing the experience of mind. And the fourth is the deconstruction of the mind.

[33:00]

After constructing the mind, studying it, satisfying it, really being able to bodily feel it, then you keep releasing it. And the fourth tetra, It should be, thank you for your patience and letting me go through all this. But I do want you to be aware of the kind of detail expected when you really learn the instrumentality of practice. Aber ich möchte schon, dass ihr wirklich ein Gewahrsein für das Ausmaß, die Art von Detailgetreuheit habt, die erwartet wird, wenn man die Instrumente der Praxis zu spielen hat. And so the fourth is bringing attention to mental objects or percepts.

[34:28]

Und das vierte ist die Aufmerksamkeit zu... So the first is, they use the word dwelling, you inhabit the feeling of each object as impermanent. And I've said, I've given a, you know, half seminars on just things like, notice this is sitting on a cushion. Notice it's impermanence. Notice I can move it around. notice that someone made it and it won't exist forever.

[35:29]

Yeah. So you just, if it's a stone, you notice the geology built into the stone. Yeah. So you just tilt till you So you can't look at an object without feeling it as interrelationship. And you kind of mechanically, and for me this mechanically is joyfully, explore impermanence in this way. And then the next is you dwell on or inhabit dispassion. Like the opposite of passion? Dispassion means to feel without a bias. Another phrase used in Buddhism sometimes is detached, but not separate from.

[36:46]

Or we could say to feel dispassionately, feeling passionately, but just a kind of passionate presence. And these are sort of like the four marks. Anyway, the third is to inhabit... Knowing everything ends. And have a willingness to know everything ends. And to inhabit the feeling that everything is rising from emptiness and disappearing from emptiness.

[38:03]

And then the fourth is inhabiting relinquishment. And this is not only will things end, but you are intentionally letting them go. So I'm not easily letting go of the pleasure of practicing with you each year. And you've convinced me this week that I'm not making a mistake in my attachment. But part of me also is completely willing to let this go. And I'm afraid never to see any of you again.

[39:42]

Which will biologically be a fact at some point. But right now, from that freedom, I'm really grateful to see you all reappear here. Okay, so these are all simply tuning in the stations of bringing attention to the breath. You're developing attention. You're then adding attention to the breath. And then you're using breath which reaches throughout the body to explore the body.

[40:48]

Now Yuan Wu, Yuan Wu is the compiler of the blueprint records. said, go directly to your personal existence. This is like everything is a So if everything is an appearance, everything is a point of departure. So you can make a decision, an initial application. So you can make a decision, an initial application. I know I had this, for me this was a kind of revelation of when I practiced, I told you before, no place to go and nothing to do.

[42:01]

And it was a time when I had a little baby and a job at the university and as a full-time graduate student. Yeah, and I only earned about $200 a month after taxes. I could go out to a motel restaurant once a month to have breakfast. It was fun. It was great. I discovered that if I used any thought of going or any thought of doing Any thought of doing or going appeared.

[43:10]

I programmed myself to say no place to go or nothing to do. I would say I got for... Nine or ten months I got so like never, I don't think I ever missed saying no place to go, nothing to do. And then I forgot about it for three months. I mean, I just completely forgot about it. So I'm the one who did it. And then one day I remembered it.

[44:11]

And I started again. And what I noticed is I had no regret that I'd forgotten it for three months. So I realized practice was working. Because there was no time, oh, I didn't know what I'm saying. There was no vanity like that. Just, you know, stop, now I start. Starting is starting. So where was I just before that? Oh, go directly.

[45:32]

Go directly to your personal existence. In the domains of the five skandhas. Okay. So you just start. You just do it right now. If anything I should or shouldn't, you just go directly to your personal existence. As it appears in the score or keyboard or whatever of the five skandhas. In the strings maybe of the five skandhas. Yes. And then cut off all mental formations.

[46:41]

That's the second step. Yeah. This is Hishiryo. Noticing without thinking. Cut off all mental formations. Then he says the third worldly phenomena and the Buddha Dharma will fuse. This is the two truths coming together. Worldly phenomena and the Buddha Dharma will fuse into one suchness. Okay, these are the kind of menu instructions. There's an appetizer, I mean, of course. And then he says,

[47:42]

do this continuously for 20 or 30 years. This is a lifetime practice, you know. And then he says, if you think there's any time involved in this, like, I can't take 20 years, I've only got 10 left or something. If you think that way, there's no chance of you realizing this practice. So it's free of any time frame. And 20 or 30 years means free of any time frame. But at my age, I can say 20 or 30 years is probably an underestimation. Okay. Now, early on in the seminar. All right, all right. Christina asked me about kin.

[49:29]

Okay. So let me say something about kin. You know, one of the things I've been bringing up a lot recently is the spine mind, the spine breath, and so forth. I think in an adult, there's 42 vertebrae or something like that. And although this spine doesn't go through the skull, it comes to the base of the skull. And I think there's 22 bones in the skull. I can't count them from inside but I know that from reading but I definitely can experience them from inside I know the little blip that occurs when I might get a headache

[50:46]

And I don't ever get it. I can catch the blip and change the dial. And I can feel the processes neurological and brain, et cetera, processes that go on while I'm thinking or speaking. Maybe you all can. But I do know that for me, it took some years of bringing breath attention into the body with dispassion. And I can feel when I can stretch the bones of the skull, etc. And what happens when I bring energy up the spine into the skull?

[52:17]

And into the brain or cavity, et cetera. So I feel like I'm a participant in this body. Yeah, this happens to be my habitation. Yeah, and there's other bones in the skull and stuff. And the mouth can be an entry into attentional bone space. I mean, you can feel, obviously, your mandle, is that what it's called, your jaw. You can feel it, and then you can feel the cheekbones. And for me, the cheekbones have always been kind of little aerials, little receptors.

[53:37]

The brows too, but for me somehow less than the cheekbones. Yeah, anyway, I can feel the jaws and I can use this accessible feeling of the bone structure to lead the feeling into the joining of the skull and spine. And then to use that as a way to explore down the spine, feeling each of the different areas. Now if you don't feel this, or you haven't developed the attentional sensitivity to feel this,

[54:48]

You can just imagine. And imagination, it creates space. And the imagination begins to be filled with experience. For instance, if you go, it's very useful to use lengths of halls you have to travel or stairways you have to travel. All right, so you're at the first step, these stairs. Okay. So you bring a concept.

[56:01]

There's always a beginning. Each moment is a beginning. There's no time really, just beginnings, middles. There's bumper stickers in America, probably here too. This is the first day of your life. Yeah, I never know whether I quite like these bumper stickers. And they also have ones often in America, Honk for Jesus, and I always honk. Why not honk for Jesus? People think I'm a Republican. Okay. So you're at the first moment of your life at the stairs.

[57:02]

And you think, you imagine, you form the concept. I'm going to let... my space walk up these stairs. Or you can take my out and say, spatial space is walking upstairs. And this is an immediate antidote or contradiction to our usual bodily habit of walking upstairs. This is a form of calming bodily and mental formations. By trying to find antidotes to usual bodily and mental formations. And space is going to walk upstairs.

[58:14]

And of course, space goes upstairs with you. And space is kind of big. And you can begin, I begin to feel my sort of parasympathetic nervous system, my central nervous system, my peripheral nerve, all those words we have. And because of Jack, I know my fascia system is going to crash too. I keep lubricating it because I know it's full of water. I keep lubricating it because I know it's full of water. But even though this is an act of imagination, or anecdotal or contrapuntal conceptual formation, the imagination is

[59:24]

of space going up the stairs. Actually, my experience is actually allows the nervous system in its various formations to function more freely. I begin to feel some definition within this spatial body. And then I have another opportunity coming down the stairs. Stand at the top of the stairs for a moment as if everything is gone. Except going down the stairs. Well, that kind of feeling is part of kini. So, time runneth over. There's no such expression.

[60:44]

Um, Run it some. Makes it sound like an old expression. Oh, I didn't translate that. Okay. So to speak about, for Susan, I don't know if we've gone anywhere near where you are. Yes, I can follow. Yeah, good. For Susanne, I don't know if we've come near what you asked us. Okay, so you need to discover some contrastive experience between an interior space and an exterior space. And you use the contrast as a pivot.

[61:45]

Because it's a difference between interior sensorial space and exterior sensorial space. There's a difference between interior sensorial space and exterior sensorial space. My most common example probably is when you hear a bird and you hear the bird is out there, And du hörst, dass der Vogel da draußen ist. That's exterior sensorial space. Das ist äußerer sensorischer Raum. When you hear your own hearing responding to the bird within the categories our human hearing is able to hear the bird. Und wenn du aber dein Hören hörst und auf das Hören reagierst

[63:08]

Then you're in an interior oral space, A-U-R-A-L. And what's interesting is interior oral, interior sensorial space is often accompanied by bliss. You just feel blissful. Thanks, Bert. I'm glad you're in here as well as out there. Okay. So before you wake up in the morning... No, not before you wake up in the morning. When you wake up in the morning. Before it's okay, but that's a more subtle practice.

[64:11]

When you wake up in the morning, you have a feeling of what kind of space exists in me in dreaming or whatever feeling. What kind of space is here now? And then you open your eyes, your mind. And you feel the difference, the contrast. One calls forth doing and the other calls forth interiority. Or in zazen, you are doing zaza. And maybe, like me, you don't know which zazendo you're in. He sort of knew when he sat down. But by now, I'm in Creston, Johannesburg.

[65:12]

Where the heck am I? I don't know. Which Zendo is it? Oh, this is Rostenberg. I thought I was in Creston. No. I mean, you can also imagine, does a blind person have a sense of visual space, what we would call visual space? Do they have a sense of space like that, which they see, which is not rooted in the experience of exterior seeing? So you explore the interior visual space. in contrast to the exterior visual space and you get used to the interior visual space and what comes through the doors of interior visual space and what's waiting in the distance in the interior visual space which you can pull forward if you want to

[66:52]

And what under the floor of the interior. Okay, so you get very used to this. Sitting Zazen all the time, you got to do something. So... Then you're gonna do kin hin. Okay. So what you're trying to do is bring your interior visual space that has been developed in 30 or 40 or 50 minutes of zazen. Inner interior space. I said visual probably, but I mean interior space. And you're trying to bring it into standing in a way that you don't lose that interior space.

[67:57]

visual and oral and proprioceptive and so space. Okay. So then you have to have Three or four attendants come over to pull you up. My legs are strong, but my knees aren't strong. If I'm not careful, my knees will... When I go into Zion, then I put them out of joy. But I'm happy. I'm happy enough anyway. Okay. Dispassionately happy.

[69:07]

Okay. So, the custom is we stand with our ankles the size of your fist apart. And I can't help it, when anybody comes to Tokusan, I'm sitting, the first thing I notice is the space between the ankles. Standing like this, I know they're not really very conscious. It's not their state. Standing like this, I know they really don't know what's going on. So anyway, you get in the habit of that.

[70:18]

And then you're going to do that sometimes too. Okay, so I have to complete the weaving of the cushion because I complete each action. So normally if I'm going to do a kin in here, I first want to manage to get up. I would bow to my cushion saying goodbye and respecting what it's done for me in the last 20 or 40 minutes. This is my turn. I say, hello, Zendu. There's a variety of postures where you can feel what's appropriate.

[71:27]

And then we turn to walk. And you have the feeling you're turning the space of the body. And in the space of the body you feel the sun lifting the city. And by doing something so simple as having your ankles a particular intentional space apart, So many Western inventors who are sometimes pretty good, I think, excuse me, I don't like to be critical, but often they're pretty good. What they find out later, they said, I'm tired of all the rules of Zen.

[72:34]

And they don't wear good as robin anymore. Well, I understand that. But they weren't very well. They practiced it very deeply. Because this is nothing. It's like knowing 2 plus 2 usually equals 4. So here, when I feel this intentional space between the ankles, I've experienced a space that's been part of the experience of the book today. And the experience of this distance is then the part of the experience of the body.

[73:41]

Then I can take this experience of space between the ankles and bring it up through the body. So now I'm starting here. And I feel this as a space occupied by the contents of the body. So gently then we put our thumb in our left hand. And then the right hand over the left hand. In general, you want to establish connections of the body with the body, the tongue with the mouth. Because always the tongue kind of I mean, you probably know this in Buddhist statues.

[75:01]

The hands and feet are vertical and give a lot of tension. Sometimes the body is not very big and the hand would be about this big. Or a foot with the toes typically curved reaching out toward the lotus. That all part of the body in this field of enlightenment. All that is part of the body in the field of enlightenment. Now some people who like more futuristic, they can... Sleepy Rupi used to say, this is too relaxed.

[76:13]

You bring attention into the body by turning it out asleep. And if you bring it too much, it's kind of... And you make your arms parallel to the floor. So this is parallel to the floor. You feel the space between your legs and the space under your arms. You say, so there could be a day there. And then you step forward on your head. The first way, the way we decided on, is half a foot.

[77:13]

Half a foot forward. And there are all sorts of things, but what we have decided is that you will be half a foot long in front of us. Yes, of course. you know, lying with people, whether they're tiny, you've got tiny feet, you have to adjust to people with this and that. And you're breathing in some kind of parallel with everyone else. Not intentionally, but it happens like... Yeah, I guess now I keep feeling like, it's almost like I need water, and I'm drinking space, just by looking at my hands.

[78:23]

So I maintain this interior attentional state with the spine and with the space of the body. And then, as I say, it's a problem, I say, And I lift my heel with my inhale. And this is called heel breathing. You're feeling the subtle breath that is falling in body, which is not breath, but ear breath. And the feeling of the breath, which is not breath, begins to open up channels in the body. So you're using qin hin to bring, not to break, you're using qin hin to bring the subtlety of mind and body in zazen into movement.

[80:12]

So you feel you're breathing up through the heel in a vertical way. In the spine, up over the top of the head and down. And as it goes down, you exhale. And bring the foot forward. And then you do the same with the In the face left, heel, reach through the left heel, up, up, down, and step. No, because mostly in the kin, we just do it. But you develop your kin by looking at these articulations. Aber du entwickelst dein Kind hin, indem du dir diese Artikulationen anschaust.

[81:27]

Bis diese Artikulationen einfach dein autonomer somatischer Körper werden. ... OK. Yeah. Oh. I feel a little nuts when I go into such detail. But it's the way I do things. And I find that detail really helps. And then the detail disappears. It disappears as anything you're conscious of. But it informs the body in all circumstances.

[82:28]

And eventually, you really establish and steady this interior attentional space. And you've gotten in the habit of contemplating objects as impermanent. impermanent and interdependent as activities as potentialities and if you do develop that then interior attentional space can become exteriorized And then allow objects to have their real existence as activities. Because by developing interior attentional space, you turn the experience of space into the Dharma.

[83:53]

And then because you have the feeling and full knowledge or something like that of interior attentional space, Your exterior attention space maybe wanes and waxes like the moon. And sometimes it's more waxing, sometimes it's more waning. but it allows you to know the world as suchness, as dharma. So in a way you prepare, inner attentional space is a preparation for knowing the world in its fundamental as it isness.

[85:13]

So, Christina, thank you for bringing the question up. When you brought it up, I thought, oh dear, how am I going to respond to that? But I kept it, it has been working in me. And I thought I'll let it come out at the end of the seminar. So maybe it would be a good idea to sit for a minute. Even though I'm, well, ten minutes early in the last seminar and five minutes late in this one. Oh.

[86:09]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.28