Well, first let me say, excuse me for wearing this fancy raksu, but it was Suzuki Roshi's, and every now and then I feel, geez, I ought to wear it. Zuerst möchte ich sagen, entschuldigt, dass ich dieses fancy, schicke, ausgefärmste Raxo trage. Ich glaube, es hat Suzuki Roshi gehört und hin und wieder habe ich das Gefühl, ich sollte es tragen. And we changed the symmetry. We went against the symmetry of the room. And the architect's implicit configuration But I'm trying to sort of explore, as some of you know, how I can continue or change or not continue this seminar.

[01:04]

Part of my intention is to somehow be in the midst of the experience of the Sangha with you and not so much sitting on a platform, etc., And buildings learn, and so we're teaching the building something. It has a variety of possibilities. Yeah. But still, as I said yesterday, we are sitting around and the translator and myself are sitting here in what is now the new front.

[02:32]

And that I don't quite know how to change. Because if I'm going to speak into an intentional field with you. I have to feel you in my intentional field. Yeah, I mean, half of you could sit behind me, but I don't know if that would work. Although in Zazen sometimes you can lose your sense of front and back. I've often wondered if an emergency happened, would I jump off backwards from the platform or would I jump off frontwards?

[03:40]

Although in Zazen you can lose your sense of front and back. I've often wondered in Zazen, if I'm sitting on this platform and an emergency happens, would I jump forward or backwards? So I'm speaking with you anyway about what I started yesterday and I'm now continuing to speak with you about is how I put a seminar together. Yeah, because As I've said, I inherited this form from German, European, American, and Californian weekend seminars for pedagogical experience for laypeople.

[04:45]

But as I've said, there's no tradition of this kind of teaching time span in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Yeah. Okay. And I want to speak to you about how I put a seminar together. I mean, I don't, you know, I start out with no idea except someone gave me a topic.

[05:48]

Maybe I gave it to myself, but I forget. So I don't prepare anything and I don't even know the topic sometimes until I say to the translator, what are we supposed to be talking about? But that's an intentional intention on my part. Because I don't want to arrive here with the feeling that I know something I'm going to tell you. Can you hear in the back okay? No, I want to sort of find out what we can do while we're here.

[06:50]

And I feel, and now I'm making more explicit, that if I do that, it's more likely to help you find out how to practice for yourself. Because as I've said often, I don't want to teach you about Buddhism. I want to, if I'm going to teach you, I want to teach you how to teach yourself Buddhism. So I'm sharing my own process because I think it can be your process. So the first thing I notice when I arrive here, a few minutes ago, and I, you know, on the prologue day, again, I'm just describing my process, yesterday we had a day with...

[08:23]

what I call a prologue day, which about half of you were here. And I did that so that we could have some time to be in the topic before the topic starts. And on the prologue day, we don't start with meditation. Because I want to see you as you arrive from your lay life. That's kind of a myth because of course many of you are practitioners and you probably did Zazen yesterday morning anyway. But that's my symbolic intention and it has some truth. And I don't on the regular day like today, starting more formally the seminar,

[09:49]

We have a custom of starting meditation in the morning and the afternoon. Except I found out this morning that not only were we changing the space, we were changing the time. And I didn't know about the time. Is that what the announcement said too, 10 or 9.30? No, we don't announce the beginning. Oh, you don't announce. We just make it up. Oh, how did all these people know to come then? We were lucky. You just have to be wandering by and you... Did we announce 10? What? Did we announce 10? Not written, but yesterday, after the facial we did, we changed the time from the usual 9.30 to 10.00.

[11:02]

No. We just felt it. It's always been 9.30. Sunday. Sunday, yes. Saturday, too. I don't think so. Only Prologue Day starts at 10.00. Sunday is 9.30. We ended earlier. Anyway. All right. Well, anyway, that was a different person last year who was here. It wasn't me. Nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you. That is spirit. So the first thing I notice coming in is of course there's already a field of attention happening.

[12:25]

And I have to sit down in the midst of it. So we have this topic, attentive attention. But how does attention study attention? I would say one of the defining characteristics of Buddhism is it assumes you bring attention to attention. And Zen tries as a procedure not to start from teachings, But to start from your immediate experience, which everyone has, was the experience of attention.

[13:37]

And then, after you get yourself as familiar as you can with the experience of attention, you start bringing teachings into that. Okay. So if I'm going to find a way to use this space and time we have until Sunday. We're starting from what's already here. And obviously one thing that's here is me, whatever this me is.

[14:54]

And as I said yesterday, I'm always in the midst of questions about what's going on. And those questions are always in context of what I'm doing. And most of the context of my life is the life I lead within the sanghas in Colorado Johanneshof in Germany. So I assume and trust that whatever I'm puzzling about, working on, Includes the Sangha and works through the Sangha.

[16:00]

And includes through the Sangha, working through the Sangha. Okay, so there, right there, we could bring in the word trust. And I don't know how much I can evolve this word trust during these three days, two days. But in the Buddhist way of looking at the world, Aber in der buddhistischen Weise die Welt anzuschauen, da magst du vielleicht ein Individuum sein.

[17:04]

Individuum bedeutet nicht teilbar. But in fact, from the Buddhist point of view, you are divided up into all the parts of your circumstances. Aber tatsächlich aus der buddhistischen Sichtweise bist du teilbar in alle deine Umstände. You're inseparable from your circumstances. You have an experience of being separated, but even that experience of being separated is in the context of connectedness. No, if that's the case, that can be enhanced and emphasized or resisted or lessened. Okay. So if I trust that what I'm working on, the questions that are coming up in my life, there's a scientist who says, the treasures of a scientist are his riddles.

[18:34]

And I certainly feel that is true. My treasures, to the extent that I have many, are my riddles. And the riddle of this weekend is what is attention. And what is attentive attention? Or attentional attention? That's hard for, I know. Or attended to attention? Attend means to stretch toward. And attend means to take care of. By stretching toward. And that's where the word tender comes from.

[19:36]

You're tender when you take care of someone, stretch toward them. I feel very tender to all of you. And I'm attending with you attending to the topic of attention. So there's me. That's one ingredient.

[20:45]

But I can't entirely separate this ingredient of me from you. From the larger Sangha that I live with and more Sangha And the immediacy of this us right now. Okay, so there's me and then the second ingredient is you. What kind of shared field or connection can we have that we can feel this topic? Yeah, that's what I'm asking myself. And then there's the venue. The venue is from the word fraction, Latin veneer, to arrive, to come. So the venue is where we've come together.

[21:54]

Yeah, and Giorgio has given us this venue now for 20 years or something, 25 years. First it was in the Chinese room in 87? 89? And then we moved here. I practically live here, in fact. When I said maybe we'll discontinue the seminar, people said, no, no, we want to keep coming to Rosenberg. We don't care about you. So we have a particular venue, which I've shifted a little bit here.

[23:01]

This is pretty much when we were at the restaurant, what I meant. Okay, and then we have the time of three days. Now, two days. How do we create a space that we can sustain for the time of two more days? You may think these are kind of irrelevant, but the doing of that is the making of a situation and of your life. How do you make your life with attention? Attention is your most precious treasure. Your whole life is shaped by what you bring attention to.

[24:33]

And what kind of attention you bring to your life and your situation. Okay. So we have The ingredients, me, you, the venue and the time. Also, wir haben die Zutaten, ich, ihr, dieser Ort und die Zeit. And the topic. Und das Thema. The poem of the topic. Das Gedicht des Themas. What do I mean by the poem of the topic? Was meine ich mit dem Gedicht des Themas? Okay, and then sixth would be the somatic field. Now to effectively teach Buddhism, it's assumed that a teacher can establish a somatic field.

[25:46]

Or that we can together generate a somatic field. And a somatic field is a form of attention. If attention or to attend to is to stretch toward, There's a related and profound etymological resonance and dynamic with the word samadhi. which means together towards place, samadhi.

[26:56]

No, I'm looking at these words. Samadhi is not exactly an English word, and I'm looking at these English words and Sanskrit, etc., Because it's part of the poem of the topic. Or it's part of the ingredients. Because we don't want to just look at words as names. If your poem is just names, you're not going to... It's just an address where you don't live. Okay, so... I'm trying to use the words to point to something that is actually unwordable.

[27:58]

But I have to start somewhere. So samadhi means to go towards and bring together and put in place. So it's a kind of attention which holds and maintains a togetherness. Now, when I first started teaching here at Giorgio's venue, I think maybe I was even the first seminar in the building.

[29:04]

Um, um, I don't think I spoke about things like Samadhi. It's taken me 30 or so years to start saying, all right, I'm going to talk about Samadhi and enlightenment and things like that. Now the problems I have with that, which would be your problem, so, is in the usual context of practice, of living together, The style is not to verbalize things, but through physical presence and gestures to discover mutual feels.

[30:22]

I mean, Suzuki Rishi would say something like, somebody had a big enlightenment experience, and Suzuki Rishi would say something, I think somebody somewhere had an enlightenment experience, but he wouldn't have, you know. And there's also the custom that, as I said yesterday, you don't speak about things until people can or have already or likely will experience them. Yeah. So, anyway, I've been basically more or less following these rules for some decades.

[31:36]

But now, as my life is coming to a close or a new, well, I'm going to be around for a while, don't worry. I think maybe I should start talking about these things. And coming to Europe was all, again, sorry to bore you with it, but I found to teach in Europe I had to explain things which I didn't have to in United States because I was only teaching in basically monastic context. So I've been trying to find out how to explain without explaining away. And I'm really impressed with the maturity of the practitioners in the dharmasangha.

[33:12]

Yeah. Let me give you again. Dogen says he enters a ultimate state and offers discussion. Means he enters samadhi in order to teach. Okay, so how with a group of people you don't even know each other, all of you don't even know each other, can we create a somatic field that allows us to study intention as part of the somatic field and keep going until Sunday? Yeah. I mean, these are real questions for me, you know, so I'm sharing with you what for me we're doing. So, the poem of the topic.

[34:53]

You know, there's a poem of Rumi's I've mentioned now and then. Long have I knocked on that ancient door. Now I'm going to assume that this line occurred to Rumi. Or, no, it didn't occur to him in English, but I'm saying, let's let it occur to us in English. So when certain lines occur to a poet, I think, The poet has the trust that an entire poem or more is embedded in the first word or first few words. And words, as you know, have vertical dimensions and horizontal dimensions.

[36:32]

For instance, long have I not long been. in its horizontal dimension in the syntax of the sentence, means for a long time. Yeah, but if you take the word out of the sentence and just have long, then you have right there longing. And then you have, from my longing, long have I knocked on that ancient door.

[37:37]

So long and longing, of course, are stretching toward each other. It doesn't work in German. Doesn't? What's wrong with German? We are not longing, we are seeing. Oh, you are. I should have known all this time. I thought you were longing. It's okay. So there is something. Okay. Good, thanks. What's another word in English when you long for something? Or you reminisce or you wonder how it was, et cetera. Anyway, I can't think of the word. Okay, so long have I knocked on that ancient door.

[38:54]

Well, in English at least, in the word knocked is locked. And the door is locked or it would have opened. So long have I knocked on that locked door. And then you have the implication that my knocking has locked the door. Long have I not locked this door. But doors, what does a door have? It has two sides. So the two sides are clearly going to be part of the poem. So long have I knocked on this ancient door.

[40:01]

And when at long last it opened, I found I was knocking from the other side. Well, that's all implied completely in the poem, in the first lines. Yeah. And so, I want to find a title, now here we have attentive attention, And if we're really going to make these seminars work, you are giving attention to attention for a long time before the seminar starts. So much so that when I first arrive, I say, oh, you're already arrived, I'm going home.

[41:12]

But since that's not the case, let's have a break. Thank you. Thank you for translating. I would like to ask if the seminar will be held at the same time as the first seminar. And that's where you get the money. And that's where you get the money. noch eine, was die Finanzen betrifft. Der Erich sammelt den Seminarbeitrag ein für diese Veranstaltung. Unterkunft und Verpflegung ist aber bei der Lichtung zu zahlen und die Frau Steininger wird im Büro unten in der Meierei ab 14.15 Uhr bis 15 Uhr sein und bittet euch, diejenigen, die noch nicht überwiesen haben, dass ihr da runterkommt und das erledigt.

[42:54]

Vielen Dank. Welcome.

[42:57]

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