I've done that, you know, you are aware that I give a lot of lectures. So you might think that it's just like, oh, I'm going to give another lecture. But for me it's, can I give another lecture? I mean, I never know quite what's going to happen. That's what makes it interesting and a little scary. You know, Sophia's 13th birthday is today. And I've missed... Usually I'm not around.

[01:10]

I'm usually in Europe and she's in America when she has her birthday. Yeah, and I think 13, that's when you become officially a teenager, right? Oh my goodness. So if I can, if I think I can do it, I will. But I'll write with all of you. Go and They're going to have a birthday party for her at her grandparents today. Jetlag hits me most strongly about the time I'd go to bed in Colorado and about the time I'd get up in Colorado. Why, I don't know. In between, I'm okay. So if I feel I can drive through the jet lag this afternoon I can I might go Right now I feel probably I will go to join her 13th birthday party.

[02:40]

She doesn't expect me because she knows practice always comes before her. Poor thing. But... Atmar has said he'd be willing to do both sessions this afternoon. So I have his permission. Okay. Now I suppose usually I try to speak about the feel of a practice. And, you know, the door, entry to a practice. And I haven't emphasized, as I said yesterday, and for you two who weren't here, now I'm emphasizing, I guess, more what happens after you go through the door.

[03:53]

Now one of the things we spoke about yesterday was how the long studied and arrived at over centuries posture of Zazen It's not just any old sitting posture. If you can do it, it's finely tuned to shape your energies. Even the tongue on the roof of the mouth which serves to inhibit saliva when it tends to flood the mouth at certain stages of practice.

[05:00]

That's interesting in itself that that kind of physiological precipitation is caused. But more than that, it's to complete a channel, an energy channel in the body. So this upright posture takes a little time for each individual to develop. And it's accompanied by, as I said just today, the mental posture of don't move. And the mental posture of don't move... creates a bodily stillness and then a mental stillness which creates what we could call as I did yesterday an attentional sphere

[07:04]

So what you do is, here what I'm trying to do is put you into the first doors after you hear the word Shikantaza. So, I mean, Shikantaza is translated as just sitting. But there's a heck of a lot that goes into that word just sitting. And one thing is, don't move. And that leads into this attentional sphere. And we can say bodily attentional sphere. And there's a particular bodily feel to the attentional sphere.

[08:27]

And the experienced practitioner sits down onto his or her zafu, but sits down into the feel of the attentional sphere. Now, as I said, the attentional sphere is a kind of magnet It tends to... Usually our thinking is about past, present, future and so forth.

[09:29]

And about what other people think and about what... They think of us and we think of them. Because our identity is primarily formed through what we think of others and what others think of us. And you need an identity. But you don't need it as much as you think. So this attentional sphere... Can I ask a question about the sphere? Yes. Sphere, would you like to emphasize the fact that it's a field or the fact that it's a geometrical sphere?

[10:35]

Well, I would say attentional field if I meant a field, and I'm saying sphere because I mean spatial. You mean the geometrical, yeah. Spatial. Okay, yeah. We can say an attentional, spatial field. I don't care. Okay. Also, ich sag jetzt mal Aufmerksamkeitskugel. Kugel. Kugel, Raum. Raum. Yeah, but you'd say space if you meant attentional space, right? Raum is just space. Well, in German, Raum is, room is a space. And in English, space is not a room. So maybe you can just say space because it's a room and German. Okay. That means... Yeah. In English, space is a kind of territory and doesn't have a shape. Space, yeah. Doesn't have a shape in English. In German, neither. It doesn't necessarily have a space. It has a shape. You don't feel it has a shape?

[11:38]

It could be, but it's also possible without a shape. Without a shape, I see. Isn't this fun? Okay. I just talk away and you have the problems. I'm sorry. Okay, so this attentional spatial field room has a magnetic quality. And it tends to absorb and the word Zen means to absorb. It tends to absorb this self-thinking, self-referential thinking and so forth. And begins to free us from a comparative identity through others to a experiential identity.

[12:41]

Can you say the last part again? To an experiential identity instead of a comparative identity. So the experience of our mind and bodily space. Where's Miriam? She's sick. Oh, that's too bad. Okay. tend to absorb this comparative thinking and you get a thinking that's more free of subject-object distinction.

[14:09]

so dass du ein Denken bekommst, das freier von dem Subjekt-Objekt-Denken ist. Und von einer Subjekt-Objekt-Unterscheidung frei zu sein, ist nicht weit davon entfernt, was wir mit einem Buddha-Körper bezeichnen. Now, if I just say, practice Shikantaza just sitting, my experience is most people don't have an investigative enough intention to locate these territories. So maybe if I say intentional sphere, and that there's a bodily feel to it,

[15:21]

And that you can sit down into this attentional sphere. Maybe that makes Shikantaza more accessible to you. And this attentional sphere, now if you sit down and practice the five skandhas, there's a way to step by step enter zazen. No, I won't go into the five skandhas unless it comes up as a question this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon. But the five skandhas become a way to articulate the attentional sphere. Now there's a, yeah.

[17:07]

Now maybe I should, let me say, I think there's six kinds of mind we should become familiar with. Or awareness that there are six kinds of minds. And it's the practice of wisdom to become familiar with these six kinds of minds. And one is certainly consciousness. And that's obvious. And the second I would mention is awareness. Now that's not so obvious. Most of us don't really notice and experience awareness in any tangible way unless we practice our sense. Die meisten von uns bemerken und erfahren das Gewahrsein nicht auf eine wirklich greifbare Art und Weise, außer wir praktizieren Sasa.

[18:27]

And the next would be, yeah, dreaming, sleeping, dreaming. Das nächste wäre der Schlaf oder Traum, das Träumen. And the third would be non-dreaming deep sleep. Now, non-dreaming deep sleep is something that we know sort of as a fact, but we don't experience it. Or we experience it, but we don't have the experience of experiencing it. Because you're alive, you experience it. Okay. But if you do zazen, you have the experience of experiencing it. Because one thing that happens in zazen for a number of reasons, which I won't go into right now, non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces in our meditation.

[19:28]

Now the fifth form of mind, I would say, is attention. And the sixth is samadhi. Now I think when we look at this, we can see there's a real... difference between the minds through which we know the world in our Western way of defining experience And a yogic world's way of defining experience. Because in the yogic world, the opening up territory of experience implied through the culture

[20:36]

Awareness and attention and samadhi are considered the most inclusive and the most healing. Now, but let's just look at attention. We tend not to notice that attention is its own kind of mind because we think of attention as a tool of consciousness. We bring attention to a book or an arithmetic problem, a math problem. Or studying a painting or something like that.

[22:06]

As a way to bring consciousness to that object. And certainly in that sense attention is a tool of consciousness. But right now, for instance, you're giving perfect attention to what I'm saying. Or some attention anyway. Okay. But I hope that attention you're giving to what I'm saying is not consciousness. Because consciousness... Attends to subsume, which means to take in from below, subsume.

[23:20]

Sorry, which is different than absorb, that's why I'm using subsume. I like to give you a little something to do, to bring attention to it. Because the consciousness... I just wanted to say absorb, but now he said it's different from absorbing. I don't know what's better. It absorbs like... If anyone has an idea... So, it absorbs... Anyway, so subsumes or sufferings. I'll try anything. what is giving attention to.

[24:24]

And consciousness immediately tries to integrate it, sort it, categorize it, etc. So if you're listening to me with consciousness, you're missing a lot. So because you start thinking about what I'm saying. And then you miss what I say next time. So don't think, just listen. Okay, so what attention does is... Attention doesn't try to think about, it just notices.

[25:26]

And consciousness tries to understand, get underneath and make sense of. But attention, the dynamic of attention without consciousness is to incubate. So if you just attend to something, No, again, etymology, you know, I like to make us aware of, as I said yesterday, the field of experience is way bigger than the words. So in practice we want to use words to point to, but not to describe.

[26:44]

And attend, the a part means toward. And the tend part means to stretch, like tendinus. So, attention and attend and intention, all are words which stretch toward. Okay. So... Attention, again, what I'm emphasizing, is its own kind of mind and it's not limited to consciousness.

[27:45]

It's not just an aspect of consciousness. And one of the main marks of yogic practice is you bring attention to attention itself. Well, attention to attention. Now, if you bring attention to attention, you begin to develop attention. Okay, now let's just, again, let's assume you are giving attention to what I'm saying. You can simultaneously, you have a consciousness of the room and your situation and your body and so forth.

[28:52]

And you can have a fairly stable, let's say stable, sense of consciousness. But you can move attention around. Independent of consciousness, you can move attention to me or to the person next to you or to the lights above us. So like a flashlight, you can point it around. And it's a flashlight, a kind of flashlight that works independent of consciousness. For the example I often give, you can use attention to watch yourself go to sleep and leave consciousness.

[29:54]

And you can use attention then to go over that bump into sleeping and then into lucid dreaming. So the attention in lucid dreaming, which is not usually thinking about the dream, but noticing the dream, is not really consciousness. It's a kind of experiential error to call it consciousness. A form of consciousness. Okay, so So attention is its own kind of mind and can be developed.

[31:04]

And one mistake we make is we think consciousness does the work of knowing. So you bring attention to something, then you bring it into consciousness, if you think of it as separate, and then consciousness does the work of knowing. But attention doesn't know through sorting and comparing. Attention knows through noticing. Sometimes I spell it with a K. And allow a process of incubation to happen. develop the knowing.

[32:23]

And two of the four wisdoms, one is observing wisdom or profound observing wisdom, Das eine ist beobachtende Weisheit oder zutiefst beobachtende Weisheit. And the other is great mirror wisdom. Und das andere ist die große Spiegelweisheit. And both assume there's a way of knowing through just observing but not thinking about. Now, once you explore that, investigate that, it can change how you study, how you practice, etc. Okay.

[33:37]

Was that crystal clear? Was that clear enough? Or do we need more exposure to it? A few of you old-timers have had too much exposure to it. But I never am able to repeat myself, though, or not very much. So because it was not new to me, I can't say it. I start getting bored in the middle of my sentences. So I hope for you old timers, it's new enough. Oldies but goodies. That's what they say in English for old songs. Do you say that in German too?

[34:40]

Oldies but goldies. Goldies but goldies. Goldies. Goldilocks? I don't know. I've never heard that. But goodies, it's like some song that Frank Sinatra sang in 1940. Okay. Does anybody have the time? I didn't bring a watch. I'm glad none of you have a watch, because you're not supposed to have a watch. What? 10 to 11. 10 to 11? Oh, this is terrible. Oh, dear. Well, I mean, I think if you've got a feel for the attentional sphere that's established through still sitting, which turns thinking into bodily thinking bodily thinking which as I said again is more powerful and more accurate than mentation thinking But what I promised, I mean sort of promised, or said I might at least, I never promised, because I never know, but I said I might speak about a craft of transforming entities into activities

[36:11]

And the way that unfolds in several directions. But unless you all have new legs, I'll stop and we can start again tomorrow morning. I'm suddenly very sad because I can't finish my work tomorrow. Thank you for watching.

[37:29]

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