So the question was prior to partial explanation of yours, that it's simple and I can't answer it anyways, which is, what is attention? Is it glue or is it location? Because it's free of content, but it's full of energy. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Oh, it's a simple question, but I can't answer it. What is attention? Is it like glue? Is it like a place? But it's somehow content-free. I don't know what it is. What is your nose? Just there, right? You breathe through it and so forth.

[01:04]

It's kind of pretty. I don't see it. And attentions like that is just something that is part of our existence. I mean, the big philosophical question is, why is there anything at all? And what is attention is a footnote. But we can speak about the qualities of attention and so forth. But we can talk about the qualities of attention. And you mentioned one. It certainly has a quality of energy.

[02:11]

And attention can carry cultural patterns. And attention, experienceable attention, can, as I said earlier, have an apartment or a garage or a home base. So attention can teach us, but we can teach attention. And I wouldn't mind if I could, going back to what Julia Kristeva said, I don't really know how to open up what she said yet for our practice.

[03:25]

But she said something like, sense the dynamic strength of our senses does not arise from immediate circumstances. But but comes forward into our life carrying the strength of the culture and the previous experience. Carrying what?

[04:32]

Your culture and your previous experience. So it's not just a kind of blank slate, a tabula rasa or something like that. Your attention is already conditioned by your culture. sondern deine Aufmerksamkeit ist schon von der Kultur vorgeprägt. And that's like where it lives. Does it live in conversive thinking or does it live in your body? And das sind solche Dinge wie die Frage, wo sie sich auffällt. Lebt sie in deinem diskursiven Denken oder lebt sie in deinem Körper? And attention gives us the look and shape of the world. Und die Aufmerksamkeit gibt uns... And that look and shape of the world is already mostly established in attention before attention attends to anything.

[05:34]

So you have to change the frames of mind which affect and effect attention. And much of practice we can understand as changing the home base of attention. until we could say that every activity is every activity spatially and duratively In other words, the dimensions of every activity are spatial and temporal. They're spatial and they have a duration. And although spatiality and duration are inseparable,

[06:53]

We are able to experience the spatial dimension of attention a little differently than the durative dimension of attention. And we can understand subtle practice. How we notice appearance. For the five skandhas, for instance, are just a way to notice appearance. There are five categories in which you can bring attention to experience. Bring attention to appearance. So you're beginning by giving attention different jobs. And getting it to be located in the body. You change the way, you change the cultural conditioning of attention. And then if you change the cultural conditions of attention, and then you take away these new cultural conditions,

[08:44]

We could call that enlightenment. What else do you need to know? Do you want to say something more, Marie-Louise? No, but... I never quite answer anybody's questions, really, especially her. And Mark, how do you... No, it makes it more activity of a vehicle in this kind of sense. It delivers... It delivers the world to you? Yeah, it's a Western delivery service. It delivers self to you. Yeah, it delivers self, yeah. You please self, or something like that, UPS.

[09:56]

Yeah, okay, good, thanks. Who else? Yes. I've been waiting for you. That seems to me that language then in our Western culture may be the greatest obstacle for enlightenment because we speak in a way that we objectify.

[11:02]

And I myself have big trouble with that. Yes, we do. And we say things like, it rains. And no one has ever been able to figure out where it is. I said to my daughter once, I said, what's the weather like? She said, it's raining. And I said to her, well, go out and find that it for me and show it to me. And she said, oh, Dad, don't be so zen. In any case, but here I am using language. So my life has been how to switch language around so you start raining instead of it.

[12:05]

In both senses of raining. One raining is rain rains. So you live your life. You lived life. Do you understand it? What? Can you say it? The other reigning is like a king. No. You reign over your life because you rule your life. I haven't gotten to the second reigning. Oh, okay, I see. So you take possession of your own life. Mm-hmm. The Lankavatara Sutra says a realized Bodhisattva, I shouldn't say this because I'm not a realized Bodhisattva, but that's what the Lankavatara Sutra says,

[13:11]

says here's the syllable body and then here's the name the word the name body and then here's the phrase and sentence body Oh, I'm sorry, I did something wrong. Let me do it again. Hört den Silbenkörper. Hört dann den Namenskörper. Und hört dann den Satzkörper. What this means is, the practitioner... Here's the flow of the sound of a language, first of all, which I'm very good at. And the feelings and energy and emotions that are in the syllable body, the feel of the body, the feel of the language.

[14:31]

Then they hear the name body. In other words, something's pointed out as an entity. But it's not yet a sentence. And then when you hear the phrase and sentence body, you're in a horizontal meaning. When you're just at names, you're in a vertical connecting space. And when you're in the syllable body, you just hear the sounds. And since I'm so bad at language, I have to concentrate on the syllable body. So when I hear raining, I hear quite a number of different rains.

[15:42]

Okay, someone else. Yes. No. I haven't heard from you yet, so please. Earlier today you said that experiences leave an imprint in the body. In the last hour you told us that something is coming out of the body, that the recovery of the artery and the spinal cord, that the bodily processes ultimately see the starting point. And just now you spoke about how inhabitations of the body, the breath and the spine, are starting points for an experience that can be evolved into enlightenment.

[17:03]

And so it kind of sounded like you turned the process around. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. My question is, would there be Buddhist experiences, dharma or something, that also leave an imprint in the body? Of course. Yes, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to accumulate dharmic experiences. And this place is a dharma experience... What? Like a Dharma cooker. Yeah, a Dharma cooker. Yeah, it's sort of like that. But what are these dharmic imprints in the body?

[18:23]

Is there any kind of explanation how to notice that? Okay. It's really very simple. For example, I bow to the cushion. Okay, that's a practice of appearance. So when I come to the cushion, I have developed the dharmic habit of bowing to the cushion. And then when I turn around and look at you, I either bow to you or at least I have a dharma feeling of you all at once. Okay, so when I leave at lunchtime, before lunchtime, one of my habits is, when I'm going to leave the cushion for more than just a coffee break,

[19:24]

I fluff the cushion and return it to this way it was, as much as I can. But if I forget, Because I'm just going along. I might get up the stairs and come all the way back down and fluff it. Or I might think, oh, that's too much. I'm going to go on upstairs. But when I come back after lunch, I'll fluff it extra. So that's a Dharma habit at a very simple level. And that affects everything. Every person I look at, it's almost like I'm Well, they're not a Dharma cushion, but I don't try to sit on them, but it's something like that.

[21:00]

And that's almost like that. Every person I look at, well, they're not a Dharma cushion, because I don't try to sit on them, but that's almost like that. May I sit on you, please? No, please. You're getting fat. When you were younger, yes, but not now. But I can make this Dharma habit slightly more subtle. Okay. When I look out at you, I don't see entities. to not see entities is a dharmic habit. What do I see? Activities. Okay, so if what I see is activities and not entities, what categories can my seeing fall into? Because attention, in a way, requires targets.

[22:11]

Okay, so if I'm going to bring attention to all of you, There's only two main categories. One is whatever particularities I notice. And then alternately the feel of you all at once. And the development of those two categories is much the basis for my giving lectures.

[23:13]

Because I'm always in a, we could say, a pulse between the two and sometimes the simultaneity of the two Yeah, and so the pulse is, I just let attention notice whatever particulars happen to appear, like your glasses. Or that Mahakabi and Geralt's heads were both like this and now they're like this. And if I feel postural patterns, That's the particulars, and then I shift to feeling you all at once. And within that field, I start saying something.

[24:16]

Okay, so those are dharmic habits. And we can go into many more. All of them have dharmic habits basically fall into, let's say, two categories. I didn't hear you. Dharmic habits basically fall into two categories. More and more refined ways in which you notice appearance and deeper and deeper ways you establish continuity. And you can take all of the things we do and see that the dharmic little rituals we do are all based on either establishing attentional continuity or establishing the subtlety of appearance.

[25:29]

All in the service of reconditioning attention. Yeah, and... Yeah, that's enough. Okay? You're welcome. Someone else. I asked if everyone could have something to say after now. So she's everyone. There she is. What I understand is that attention is an active process.

[26:35]

As I experience it, attention going somewhere and... It can be an active process. Practice is to make it active in a certain way. what about awareness which you said about just now noticing at once i don't know is that awareness what where comes awareness in as um something stable or continuous and attention as something that I experience as active directing and also losing it. that I experience such attention as something active, which I can actively direct, but also lose again, and I ask myself what the reality is, whether it is so continuous and comprehensive, and is it this all-in-one perception of everything?

[27:53]

Okay. Next? No, I'm just teasing. Okay. I said I'd give you a quotation from Dogen. And the one I'm giving you is something we can work with in my opinion throughout the lifetime of our practice. And I'll say it simply and I'll give a little bit of attention to it, not too much. But before I go there, I'm trying to understand, realize, understand, practice, express the teachings to myself and to you.

[29:16]

And Otmar said to me the other day, something like, you become a teacher through realizing you have to teach yourself. To really be taught by somebody, you have to re-teach yourself what the teacher is teaching. in order to really practice with a teacher, you have to re-teach yourself what the teacher is teaching. And that process of re-teaching yourself then extends to everything starts teaching you.

[30:36]

And then your practice becomes something you can share with others. Okay. So my life has become trying to find ways both to teach myself and to share this with you. Okay. But... And for me it's a kind of laboratory to be here with you. Yeah, occasionally I give a lecture or talk to a group of people where I just say things I already know. And sometimes that's kind of fun, because I find especially clear ways to say something.

[31:37]

But if I had to do that more than a few times a year, I'd be kind of bored. The only real fun I have is when I try to talk about something I don't know how to talk about. And the longer I teach, the less I like to have any idea before I start teaching. I used to depend on a few things I could talk about if nothing else happens. But mostly I go in the opposite direction now. Okay.

[32:49]

So in this laboratory, I'm trying to find out how certain feelings I have with you can come into words and which you also can feel. And when Tsukiroshi first started teaching, he didn't let us record his teachings. And I supported him in this. He wanted us to develop a certain kind of shared attentional field which drew a lecture out of him. Er wollte, dass wir eine bestimmte Art von Aufmerksamkeitsfeld herstellen, die einen Vortrag aus ihm herausgesaugt hat.

[33:59]

And he would do things like... I wonder whether I should say these things. Because in one way it sounds a little crazy, maybe. In another way it's a kind of secret. In another way it should be apprehended by you without help. But Sukhiroshi would do something commonly like. He would start speaking about something. And you could see he wasn't sure if people were ready to go with him somewhere. So he might decide to read from a text.

[35:04]

Read the Blue Cliff Records or something like that. But then he'd say, oh, I forgot my glasses. Yeah. And he knew he was very forgetful and he was very forgetful. So he would go upstairs in this Kafkaesque tower to get his glasses. And he'd get up in a certain way And he would... My left leg is totally asleep, but anyway.

[36:08]

He'd get up in a certain way. And they suggested he would walk slowly. And he'd go upstairs. And then we'd hear, when he'd come back downstairs, step, step, in a certain pace, all part of the lecture. Then he'd come downstairs and he wouldn't use his glasses. He'd give me the book and say, you read it. And most people would sort of like wait till he came back before they tuned back in. But Sukhiroshi was trying to create a field where he could talk about something.

[37:19]

That's one of the reasons that the most basic tradition, you can't record Zen lectures. How do you record going back upstairs and coming back down? Or sometimes he would turn and speak to the wall in a voice you couldn't understand. And the content of the lecture was, of course, important. But the field of attention was what was most important. And a quote from Dogen about that is in the brochure. Und ein Zitat von Dogen darüber ist auch in dem Programmheft.

[38:39]

Dogen says somewhere, Sometimes I eh-hey. Sagt er manchmal ich eh-hey. And sometimes clearly means among the various times I can choose to act with him. Und dieses manchmal bedeutet ganz eindeutig innerhalb der unterschiedlichen Zeitpunkte aus denen ich wählen kann zu handeln. I, who I'll call myself Ehe now. Ich, den ich jetzt Ehe nenne. As I might say I, Quillenway Johanneshoff now. Sometimes enter an ultimate state. Meaning, sometimes I, in certain kinds of times, will enter an ultimate state of samadhi. and offer profound discussion expecting all of you the assembly to only be

[39:46]

simply intimate with your field of mind. Okay, so Sukhiroshi had exactly this kind of feeling. How can we establish, as Susanna said earlier, that mutual resonance of mind and body? none of us are doing anything discursive we're simply intimate with our field of mind and intimate with our field of mind which is not unrelated to the samadhi that Dogen is in while he's speaking And then what Dogen speaks about is arising from that mutual field. Now, is that too much to tell you?

[41:09]

Because who, you know... Now you're going to expect me, is he in an ultimate state or not? I don't know. Listen to me. But the... Zen is a tradition, as I've often said, of meeting, meeting and speaking. And that tradition of meeting and speaking has had a couple and a half millenniums to develop.

[42:24]

And the particular way I'm speaking within through knowing Suzuki Roshi, living with Suzuki Roshi, is within the Zen tradition about 1200 years old. Yeah. This is all to say, maybe I'm speaking too much. And maybe Ulrich and... Nicole's idea of taping me shut is a good idea. Or maybe what I'm saying or asking is should we restructure, reorganize, reconfigure these seminars? So I'm present for less of the time.

[43:34]

Because when I'm present none of you say anything. Or not too many of you say anything. So if I go away and then you're just sitting here by yourself you'll either do Zazen or you'll start talking. And maybe that would be a more effective way to teach. Because fairly often I have somebody say to me, well, it's great to listen to you, but I tuned out after the first 30 minutes. Yeah, I don't mind. It's okay. But with all of you... No, no, no. So this is a genuine question. Can you really stand another day and a half of this? Because I've been doing this 55 years, so I have a few things I could say.

[44:40]

But maybe I shouldn't say all that. Maybe I should say a few choice things and then get out. Yeah, the winter branches pattern seems to work pretty well, which is I give a talk in the morning and then join one of the two discussions in the afternoon. so that's a real question and I'm willing to do it any way you want but the laboratory aspect of these seminars is good for me but I don't know if it's good for you So back to the statement of Dogi. I just want to add something to what you say. If I watch myself over the course of all these years, what I've done with your teachings,

[45:54]

I can remember many years and particularly the first years when I used to think more, more, more. Oh, now he's less, less, less. And now it's less and less. Now I have the feeling that I often say, stop, and what does that mean at all? One such quote from Dogen, if you really think about it and let it go on your tongue, then you have to say, stop, what does that mean at all? Now I oftentimes find myself stopping or saying, well, stop here. And just looking at that one statement by Dogen, if you really take that in, then one has to stop and think about what does that really mean? That's true. And there are many quotes from the Koran or Yuan Wu.

[47:15]

If you really take this as a starting point, Then you have to stop and say, I have to sort myself out or I have to see somewhere, where do I find a starting point in a simple statement. And that is for me the wish to stop in my practice. And there are many statements like that, be it Yuan Wu or things from Koans. And if we take these statements, like you said this morning, spoke about starting points, then the wish in my practice is to really stop there and to find that starting point and to sort things out at that point. And above all, how do I experience that? And that is always the next question. and mainly to look at how do I experience that, and that always is the next question.

[48:21]

Good. I'm glad you're one of the teachers here. Again, this teaching was developed in a monastic setting. We have primarily lay setting now. Okay. When you're in a monastic setting, you don't have a car parked outside. You don't have a horse. And the snow is deep. And to walk even a few kilometers is an effort. No one's plowing the road. Even if you want to go somewhere, you can't. Selbst wenn du irgendwo hingehen möchtest, kannst du es gar nicht.

[49:28]

So people tended to stay where they were in monasteries. Let's call them residential practice places because you don't have to be a monk. So people stay in residential practice places. For three month units at a time or longer. And if you're making this your life, it's usually five to 15 years. And if you're making this your life, it's usually five to 15 years. How many years did you say? Five to fifteen, sorry.

[50:30]

Okay, say we're here five to fifteen years together. I can give very short lectures. And if you read Dogen's translations like Dan Layton's, many of his lectures are barely five sentences. And they might occur at any hour of the day. For instance, say we're all living here together. There's no electric lights in those days, right? Whale oil didn't exist, and there was very limited... you know candles were expensive and you can't do much by candlelight. It was the first propane. I mean, it's like gas lights transformed London and Paris.

[51:39]

Much of the world we know comes from the nightlife of Paris and London. Before gas lights and so forth, When it gets dark, you go to bed. But who can sleep in the winter 12 hours or something? So you get up. So monks who live together traditionally got up. I talked to a Chinese guy who lived years ago who lived when he was growing up in a farming community somewhere in the middle of China.

[52:48]

He said it was great, especially in the winter. You can't do any farming, so you talk to your friends. Du kannst ja dann die Felder nicht bewirtschaften und dann unterhältst du dich einfach mit deinen Freunden. And families and villages would gather in the middle of the night in rooms and talk and sing and tell stories and stuff. Und Freunde und Familien haben sich einfach mitten in der Nacht in ihren Zimmern getroffen und gesungen und sich unterhalten und so. Well, Dogen suddenly would call a lecture at 2 a.m. So the monks would all gather and he would give a short lecture at 2 a.m. and then he'd go to bed and everybody else would go do something else. Gregor looks very much like pictures of Dogen, so I get a little nervous that maybe Dogen's present here.

[53:51]

I hope Dogen is present. So, it's entirely different. It's like the only thing that's equivalent for me is when sometimes I speak during Zazen. And that's more like Otmar is speaking. I try to say something a little bit, just so you can be absorbed. And when there's a lot of absorbent time, like in Sashins, I only give one lecture a day.

[55:09]

But I found this pattern of weekend seminars, which in Europe and in Germany, people do a lot for psychotherapy and all kinds of things. And so I found this, following this pattern of European weekend seminars, has been a way to develop lay practice. But I'm not sure it should continue. But it's a wonderful way to get 50 of us together sometimes. But I'd like to be able to say one or two things and that's it. But then you decide to go to Bodh Sakyam or I don't know what to talk most. Go in the office and talk to Katrin.

[56:17]

Okay, so the statement of Dogen. That I've given you many times before. I'm supposed to have stopped 20 minutes ago. You see what you did? It's your fault. So I'll give you the statement of Dogen's and then I'll stop. Also, ich gebe euch diese Aussage von Dogen und dann höre ich auf. Dogen sagte, to cultivate and authenticate the self, das Selbst zu kultivieren und ihm Gültigkeit oder Authentizität zu verleihen. And here I'm responding to what you brought up, Gunther. It took a while to get there. To cultivate and authenticate the self, by conveying the self to the ten thousand things,

[57:22]

is delusion. Okay. Now it's very important, I think, to translate it as it is and say 10,000 things. Which is also usually translated as myriad. But in fact, the etymology of the word myriad is 10,000. But myriad tends to mean many. And 10,000 things is not many. And 10,000 Dinge, das ist nicht viele.

[58:49]

There are way more than 10,000 things in this room. Es gibt viel mehr als 10,000 Dinge in diesem Raum. Earrings, fingernails, toenails, strands of hair. So 10,000 things is, yeah, it's everywhere. But to authenticate... and cultivate the self by conveying the self to the 10,000 things. I made that more complicated. To cultivate the 10,000 things. And the Japanese word means both cultivate and authenticate. So by naming things in relationship to the self is to cultivate and authenticate the world as actually existing

[59:54]

as entities. Okay. Then he said, to... To cultivate and authenticate the self. Or to allow the ten thousand things to come forward. To allow the ten thousand things to come forward. and cultivate and authenticate the self is enlightenment.

[61:19]

So one of the big differences between these two statements of course one means self with a small S and one means self with a large S But one is a direction this way. I'm seeing the world is out there and I'm cultivating and authenticating it in how it relates to an out there-ness and myself. Ich sehe die Welt als etwas da draußen gegebenes und ich entwickle die Welt oder gebe ihr ihre Gültigkeit in Beziehung zu einem selbst. Aber diese zweite Aussage, da ist die Richtung auf dich hin, zuzulassen, dass die 10.000 Dinge hervortreten, and cultivate you, and authenticate you, is enlightenment.

[62:28]

Okay, now to Gunda's question. When you experience this directionality toward you, that and that allowing things to come forward to you generates awareness and the other generates consciousness okay so that's enough to say about that Das ist genug, das dazu zu sagen. Until tomorrow. Jedenfalls bis morgen. Unless you decide to cancel so much talking tomorrow.

[63:29]

Es sei denn, ihr entschließt euch, all dieses Gerede morgen abzusagen. Now let me give you a shorter version. Lass mich euch eine kürzere Version geben. I often say to pause for the particular. Ich sage oft für Einzelheiten innehalten. I'm trying to get you to... not establish continuity of attention independent of particulars. So you use this as a turning phrase, turning word, wado. And you pause for the particular. And that's also a way to learn to develop the sensibility of appearance.

[64:30]

And I sometimes turn that a little bit and say, pause for the pause. So you really interrupt the continuity of self. And you pause just for the sake of pausing. As I said to Mahakavi earlier, the pause that's the entirety of your breath. Now, the new aspect I'd like to bring up Der neue Aspekt, den ich ansprechen möchte.

[65:31]

Let's not say to pause for the particular. Lass uns nicht sagen, für die Einzelheit innerhalb. Let's turn this turning phrase into. Lass uns diesen Wendesatz wenden in. To wait for the particular. Auf die Einzelheit zu warten. So you wait for things to speak to you. You wait for things to start walking around. Everything's an activity, so you just wait for things to sing. The stone maiden gives birth to a baby and sings. Die steinerne Frau gebiert einen Vogel und beginnt zu singen. So just this little bit of shift to wait for everything to speak to you, to act in relationship to you.

[66:34]

Einfach diese kleine Verlagerung zu warten, bis alles zu dir spricht, mit dir in Beziehung steht und spricht. Das ist eine Verschiebung, die dafür sorgen kann, dass die 10.000 Dinge hervortreten. Vielen, vielen Dank für eure Geduld. And thank you for translating it. Thank you for teaching it. You're welcome.

[67:14]

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