I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. But I got stuck and it took me longer than I expected to get here. Then I forgot my scarf. So I just borrowed somebody, I don't know, maybe Gregor's nice bluish plaid scarf. Yeah. Neck and neck. It was quite cozy. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah. So we have, three is always an interesting number. In music and in philosophy.

[01:07]

Because one and two are just either or. Yeah, but one and one is two and one and two is three. Aber eins plus eins sind zwei, und eins plus zwei sind drei. And two and three are five? Zwei plus drei sind fünf. Yeah, and three minus one and two is minus one. Drei minus, that's not even true. Well, anyway. She was good at math in school. Yeah, because it's not just alternatives, but it's many. Anyway, etc. So we have way, mind, and world. So the way, mind, world. Weg, Geist, Welt.

[02:16]

Yeah. And so right now I'm emphasizing way. Und jetzt betone ich Weg. Yeah. And so it's kind of like a Rorschach. I don't know where, I forget where these three words came from, but, you know, why not? So what happens when I take these three words and shake them around? Something happens. And then you, yesterday we had this discussion of concentration and attention. About concentration and attention. And of course, as I said yesterday, these things always make me wonder, why do I not use such and such a word? Yeah, I kind of don't like the word concentration.

[03:24]

Maybe because I'm not good at it, I'm too distracted. But also, concentration is focused attention. Aber Konzentration ist auch fokussierte Aufmerksamkeit. And as you know, I like etymology, so focus means fire or hearth or convergence. Und wie ihr wisst, mag ich Etymologie. Und das Wort focus, das bedeutet Feuer oder Feuerstätte oder Herd. Yeah. And so... You know, and I think maybe there is a quality of hearth. Hearth? Where you're home. But hearth means home. It means where the fire is. Feuerstätte, I think then, yeah.

[04:26]

And das andere, conversion, ist auch... Convergence. Convergence. Oh, okay. Also Zusammenkunft. Und vielleicht gibt es da so etwas wie eine Feuerstätte. So I think many people feel sort of, I don't know, they're just making this up, but feel sort of at home in concentration. In some restaurants, waitresses and waiters are taught to watch the whole restaurant. In some restaurants, the waiters and waiters, the servers, focus. And you cannot get their attention unless you overturn the table. They walk, you wave your arm, they walk right by you. So, in Zen practice, attention is mostly released

[05:29]

Not focused. As I practice anyway. Released into the field. And then you notice where it goes, but you just release it. You give it its own kind of space. Yeah. Give your cow a big space. Yeah. The other day I had an appointment to have my eyes looked at. And I rode past... I came past a restaurant I like about the time I was... a little before I was supposed to be at the appointment.

[06:54]

So I went into the... restaurant just before they finished serving lunch and just sat there. And they brought me their inexpensive businessman's special. I don't know what you call it in German. Anyway, so I just sat there. And nobody's paying attention to me, so I can a little bit practice posture. Or practice the attentional field. And I had no book to read, so I just enjoyed, excuse me, enjoyed the intentional field. I was sort of in the back, toward the back in the corner, so I could not embarrass people by sitting straight.

[08:09]

Yeah, and it made me think of this concentration or attention and so forth. And that made me think about the way as establishing what I haven't talked about in a long time, but body points. When Tara spoke the other day about walking back and forth between Janosov and Hudson House and having attention in and on her feet, You know, the body is a complex interactive... complex of interactive processes.

[09:15]

It's not solid. And you know different moods, your heart beats differently, your stomach feels differently, and so forth. So part of practice is establishing the way, the path, in the body. And part of practice is establishing the way or the path in the body. Yeah, we could speak about the inner attentional body. But we can also speak maybe about the inner attentional path. And most of us, I don't know, maybe infants have a natural body order.

[10:40]

But our body processes get kind of mixed up as we get older. And part of the tradition and the path is to enter into those body processes. This is another example of where know thyself and take care of thyself come together. So you want to articulate your inner attentional body. Whenever you notice something, and you notice the articulation or spaces between things,

[11:56]

You change the way or you create the possibility they relate differently, newly. So by articulating... the inner attentional space, you develop the inner attentional space and potentially reorganize it, reorder it. So the zazen instructions are to establish the, maybe we could say, the bodhi body. the Bodhi body.

[13:26]

So let's say the Bodhi body. One of the reasons we do Zazen, of course, before a Teisho or a Lakshya, is to establish the body which can enact the Dharma. So the path is also establishing the body which can enact the Dharma in daily life. Now, from the very beginning of my practicing with people, some people have a psychological problem with it and some people have a practice problem with it. is that zazen and practice often opens them up in ways that make them feel vulnerable.

[14:52]

And it was so common, I had to really try to find ways to speak about it. And what I came up with was to say, don't armor your body or mind, but seal your body or mind. So sealing... What I'm speaking about with these body points is a kind of sealing. Here I wouldn't talk about concentration, but for me I feel something like density. Attention can have a density and depth. And you can intensify the presence, for instance, of the spine.

[16:12]

And to intensify the presence of the spine in the body would be a kind of sealing of yourself. Okay. So, again, when you're sitting zazen, you can explore the zazen body from within and through the categories, the space of the five skandhas. So don't just rest in your usual experience of the body. Also lasse dich nicht nur in deiner gewöhnlichen Erfahrung vom Körper nieder.

[17:19]

Or your usual experience. Oder deiner gewöhnlichen Erfahrung. But ask questions of the body. Sondern stell dem Körper Fragen. So you're sitting. Also du sitzt. The first is to establish a physical posture which allows Zazen to happen. And as you know, I've been speaking about what I call the four habitations. To inhabit, awaken and inhabit the spine. The breath and the mind. And the space being generates. And the space being generates.

[18:22]

Okay. Okay. But so you've established some kind of zazen posture. Then you can ask What does this feel like? What does it feel like in the lower part of my body? Where is there any difference between the middle of my body and the upper part of my body, etc.? And if I just free attention, where does it go to? And then, once attention is located, or you look, you discover it's gone somewhere, what do you do with it? Or can you move it around? What color is the body? Is it different colors in different areas?

[19:24]

What color is the space around the body? Is there a different density to the space around the body? What does the body sound like? So listen to the body with maybe the inner ear. The body is a kind of a compounding of sounds. Subtle sounds. In Hinduism it's not in the beginning was the word, but in the beginning there was the sound. In Christianity or in Hinduism? In Hinduism, it's not the beginning of the word.

[20:37]

In Hinduism, it's not the beginning of the word, but the sound. And then you can... I wonder what kind of visual sense a person born blind has. Ich frage mich, welche Art von visuellem Sinn oder Gefühl ein Mensch, der blind geboren wurde, hat. Because for me there's a definite visual sense that has nothing to do with outer seeing. Weil es für mich ganz sicher einen visuellen Sinn gibt, der mit dem äußeren Sehen nichts zu tun hat. And I have a kind of visual experience of the body. I don't know what other word to use to call it. So you kind of explore the body with each percept, each of the five senses. And you explore it with the... feel of the spine as the spine settles into and begins to stabilize the whole body over a period of 5 or 10 or 15 minutes.

[22:05]

And you're stabilizing the body when you do this. This complex... of processes, you're beginning to stabilize and reorder. And exploring with an intentional moving breath. And at the same time you're moving more and more toward the immovable body. And this moving toward a more stabilizing, sealed body.

[23:31]

And remember, in the big picture, the teaching is, everything changes. Change changes. And in the midst of that, Dharma means what holds. So you're exploring what holds in the midst of changing. So, for instance, you intensify the presence of the spine. And that begins to articulate the inner attentional space. And influences the development and reordering of the space. Okay.

[24:48]

Now, what are the points I find most useful to bring, hold, intensify the presence of? As I started out, with the feet. Yeah. And then the spine. And that's part of Zazen instruction. And we fold our feet so you don't know. You put the left on the right and you're right on your left and you don't know which is which. And then you feel the torso. And it's always good to kind of feel where the hands are.

[25:49]

Locate the presence of the hands. And then there's the neck. Just sort of notice the neck and how your head sits on the spine. And then the tongue, the presence of the tongue. Of course, in Zazen instruction, you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. And that reduces the flow of saliva in certain meditative states. And completes certain circuits at the same time, energy circuits. And then you feel the presence of the head. Yeah, the forehead, the cheekbones, the crown.

[26:52]

In other words, the body is this kind of a compound, a complex of processes. Which is, what I'm describing is the assumption that you make the body into a Bodhi body, A vehicle for the Dharma. And a vehicle for enlightenment. So although you establish the feel of these body points in zazen, in the practice of the way and entering the path through the inner attentional body and then

[28:05]

from the inner attentional body, you enter into the outer attentional path. And although you're no longer sitting zazen, you keep attention on some of these points. Hältst du die Aufmerksamkeit bei einigen dieser Punkte? Sitting in a restaurant? In einem Restaurant sitzend? Walking between the buildings? Oder zwischen den Gebäuden hin und her gehend? It's the spine going between the buildings. Das ist die Wirbelsäule, die zwischen den Gebäuden geht. It's the head resting on the top of the spine, held by the spine, going between the buildings. The tradition is the more continuously you can stay with some of these body points during your meditation practice.

[29:36]

during your daily life, you reorder the interactive processes of the body, which makes it more likely you realize the truth of how we exist. You realize the Bodhi body. Okay, so that's the way. All right. Gives you something to do. Thanks a lot. Oh, oh, [...]

[31:37]

I'm going to read a message. I'm going to read it. The Buddha statues are establishing the same body points. For its own sake and to remind us. These robes are also designed.

[34:07]

You said yesterday how the robe made you sit differently. Robes are designed on the occasional to make you attend to these same body points in order to wear the robes comfortably and beautifully. The robes and the sokesa are made so that you have to pay attention to these same body points to wear the robes comfortably and beautifully or straight.

[34:49]

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