In this session, we've come up with the term, phrase, I would call it a term now, interdependent attentional awareness. I think for many of us just using the word attentional is, you know, a little new. And bringing attentional and awareness together, attentional awareness can also be something we develop. Now, if I really made this a technical term and put it in a glossary or something like that, I would call it... Yeah, maybe interdependent.

[01:09]

breath-based attentional awareness. Okay, sounds good. Now, I'm fairly certain this term we're making in our practice here is not, doesn't translate any Sanskrit or Pali term or Chinese or Japanese. Well, together we're working on dragging the English-speaking and German-speaking world into Buddhism. Yeah, and we're making progress. Okay. Yeah, so a phrase like that, which I think... Well, let me say, although it doesn't, I'm pretty sure, translate any phrase I know about in Pali or Sanskrit... It does translate...

[03:05]

I'm sure a practice, a traditional practice. Okay. And so we're using English and German to try and to affect, to use the language to affect to help us reach into the Dharma world. Words are basically, we could define words as attentional units. And they belong in certain recognizable relationships. But we can take them, these attentional units, and shake them all up and pour them out in our mind, and they describe a world we didn't know could be different.

[04:34]

looked at, indicated. So we can explore, of course, our experience through our experience. But we can also explore our experience by taking experienceable attentional units and mixing them up. Okay. I think another thing useful in this session was the recognition that the visual space of Zazen can be developed.

[05:39]

And it is the same visual space of dreaming. Very closely related. So through Zazen you can develop, more fully articulate interior visual space. And the interior attentional body. And it's the interior attentional body which calls forth memories, associations, and ultimately the subtle brocade of the alive jnana. What else does it call for? The subtle brocade of the alaya vijjnana.

[06:55]

Okay. So by... by articulating and reticulating inner and interior space, Finding the connecting patterns. Yeah, opening the connecting patterns. We change the way we're based in our life experience. And we change the access to that life experience through dreaming.

[08:08]

And if you read Rilke Herdlin's And other poets, or Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, they clearly used dreaming to explore ideas. So you end up increasing the way in which that world of sleep where consciousness is really mostly gone, can be open to its source in our basic beingness through a new kind of awareness through a new kind of attention

[09:46]

Okay, so this is a much more complex event than Satori or enlightenment experiences and so forth. Yeah, and it's transformational in a way that... links practice to what's called Buddhahood. Okay. Okay. Well, now, if we accomplished all that in this session, we can, you know, go home now. And that was only the beginning. Okay. So I have been wanting, okay, I hope I can talk about what I've been wanting to talk about every Teisho, but I'll put it to the end again.

[11:19]

It makes me think I used to watch these serials when I was a kid. The Mark of Zorro, which I always liked. Z's. Zen. The Mark of Zen. Zorro made me think of it. I always watched these serials as a child, like Zorro with his Z. And they always ended with like a horse going over a cliff. Tomorrow, you know, episode 32. So when I sit down, I almost fall backwards. But in this case, it's the horse, the Dharma horse going over the cliff. And what's really interesting is what I want to talk about is completely unimportant. It's just something nice. All right, okay. But another thing I've been meaning to mention, but not at the same time, is you've seen myself and Otmar and Nicole and Marie-Louise kind of traipsing through the Zendo in the middle of Sashin.

[12:54]

This is terrible. And traipsing up these stairs and we weren't going to Dokusan as you probably guessed. And I don't know if you could hear us but we went in the other room and we're traipsing around in the roof over the north room. This is the south room. And what we were trying to do, and the fellow who was with us is a structural engineer and architect. And if we're going to eventually, someday, use that room as a zendo... And we have to take out, if possible, that sheer wall...

[14:01]

Then we have to take this... Is it a supporting wall or is it something else called shear? It's the window. The window back there, we would have to take it out, so a supporting wall at least. So a window ensures that a building goes neither to the right nor to the left. The earth and the road and the cars pressing against it, plus wind and so forth. Cars? The cars ride on the road and put pressure on the road, which pushes on the... Wow, yeah, okay. Also dieser nördliche Raum, der muss den Druck von den Autos, die über die Straße fahren, und vom Wind und auch von der Erde und so aushalten. And we don't want to take out the shear wall, which is also a supporting wall, and then have the Zendo one day just go... Und wir wollen jetzt nicht einfach diese Scheibe da rausnehmen, die ja auch eine stützende Wand ist, sodass das Sender dann irgendwann zur Seite sich neigt.

[15:29]

So he proposed a quite elegant good solution. Und er hat eine ganz elegante, gute Lösung vorgeschlagen. It was on the funky old wooden floor up there. It's a pretty big space. Auf diesem alten, funky, wie sagt man... Funky, just say funky. They all should learn funky. We know Dharma, we know Sangha, we should know funky. Yeah, and he said, you know, just put in a new floor over the whole place that's locked into the four walls and it'll keep the building from... going sideways. And I said to this, if we get this floor in there, it's a pretty big space, I said to this engineer architect, we could do have some of our well-known Zen dancing parties up here.

[16:48]

Above the new Zen, if we ever do it. And we both bounced on the floor and felt the trampoline effect. He said, No dance parties up here. Yeah. So anyway, you know, we don't know, we haven't made a decision yet that we are able to or even want to build a Zendu over there. I know I'd like to. But see, this is the 11th Zendo I've designed and built. It must be a record for a Westerner.

[17:55]

Yeah, and I want to reach at least 12, and that would be the 12th. Yeah, okay. But as you know, I really believed, I may have been wrong, but I really believed For Johanneshof to survive, we needed to have this expanded future. As I said, I may have been wrong, but I was completely convinced ought to do this we had to do this so now for me this is enough if we never build in my lifetime if we never build a zendo there it's okay

[19:00]

Wenn wir in meiner Lebenszeit da kein Zendo bauen können, dann ist das in Ordnung. Yeah. But we do have a 100,000 Euro pledge, received pledge, for building a new Zendo. Aber wir haben eine Zusage über 100,000 Euro bekommen, um dort ein Zendo bauen zu können. Actually, it's only 90 because the person wants 10,000 of it to somehow go to the Sangha, the residential Sangha directly. But we can't build a Zendo there unless we finish that room. So at least we have enough funds to prepare that room for a Zendo if we decide to do it.

[20:16]

And this room would become the south room, would become the Buddha Dharma Hall. Okay. And I don't even know yet how much the overall cost would be. I'm working on that now. And if we do have Len Brackett, the Japanese wood joinery carpenter, build the meditation platforms themselves, he does have the time now. this year. But right now you know of course with more buildings and more residents

[21:28]

more facilities, we have more monthly expense. And we have a deficit. So we have to solve that problem before we build new Zendos. I mean, we have to be practical. Or there will be no Zendo here. So anyway, so I just wanted to say, you've seen Otmar and myself and others trying to figure, that's what we're doing, trying to figure out if we can finish that room. And the structural engineer could only come at that time the other day. Okay, so that's, I just wanted to explain why we're walking around in the ceiling of the other room. I've been trying to change the, develop, engage the seminars, winter branches and

[23:16]

Rastenberg and so forth seminars. So that we have more, the participants are more engaged with each other during the seminar and I don't have to talk as much. Where I can participate in the participation of the Sangha more. And I hope by doing that I can have more of an experience of are we really developing a shared understanding? And it's important to me that we can develop more of a shared understanding carried by the Sangha, not just by me.

[24:42]

I'm sorry, I lost you. Not just by what you... We can... we can have a teaching carried by the Sangha and not just by me or a few people teaching. So anyway, I'm trying to do that and it's to me essential we find a way to do that. Also ich versuche das zu tun und für mich ist es wesentlich, dass wir herausfinden, wie wir das tun können. Und ich glaube, wir haben da einiges an Fortschritt gemacht. But what's interesting is, when we do a Sashin, there's no way I can increase how we are with each other. We sit together and we work together.

[26:05]

But we share some kind of space that evolves through our sitting together. that I know many of you find has more depth, density than seminars. And I know when I just walk in the room from the beginning of the show, I feel I can walk into an invisible room that all of you have made.

[27:10]

And when I speak about the kind of inner attentional space or visual space of meditation, the more we can develop that kind of attentional evolution skills, the more we can also develop a mutual bodily mind space. And one of the aspects of that is now I tell you what I want to talk to you about.

[28:13]

Well, of course, I only have two and a half minutes. No, maybe I have five. Okay, and it really was nothing. I want to talk to you about a nice feeling. And I've decided that the best way for me to talk about it is to describe it as a nice feeling. Because just as stillness is hidden hidden within activity or covered by activity, the transformational experiences that evolve through practice, Even the basis for them, I could say, are often hidden in just a nice feeling.

[29:25]

And nice is, as you wonder, nice actually has the same root of nescient, unknowing, ignorant or stupid. And the word nice in English has the same root as the word ignorant or dumb or deformed. Nescient means to not know and nice comes from the same root. To not know or to be ignorant. Nescient means not to know and this word nice has the same root. But it's, you know, here I am, I want to talk about this, so I... best word I can find is a nice feeling. So if I'm going to speak about that, I have to look at why the heck am I stuck with this word nice?

[30:29]

Why can't I say something else like Ecstasy. Well, that's kind of embarrassing. Ecstasy. And also it's a drug. And ecstasy literally means to stand outside your place. Ecstasis. And ekstase bedeutet buchstäblich außerhalb des eigenen Ortes zu stehen. Or I could say, I'm transported, but transported means carried away. Ich weiß nicht, wie ich das übersetzen soll. Transported, bitte. Oder ich könnte sagen, ich bin transported.

[31:29]

Und das bedeutet, davongetragen zu sein. Exalt means to leap. Exaltation means to leap out, to leap away. Rapture, hey, let's have a little rapture today. That means a divine power has pulled you into another space. And rapture, or in German you would probably say wonne, but rapture, that means that a divine force has pulled you out of your own place. Okay, yeah. But nice, we've got nice. It's taken 700 years for nice to go from stupid to agreeable. And it can be used. in almost any circumstance.

[32:55]

Wasn't that a really nice person who took that nice walk after reading that nice book on that nice day? I mean, are they different nices or are they all the same? Yeah, and you're all such nice people. Of course, how you say it makes a nice difference. In that case, nice means precise. A nice distinction. But if someone says, how did you like that play? And you say, it was nice. It wasn't nice. How did you like Nancy?

[33:59]

She was nice. I mean, there's a lot of meanings to nice. But I would like you to notice this nice feeling. Maybe during, you know, you're doing Zazen. And your legs haven't started hurting yet too much. And you know the period's about to end. And you hope it doesn't end right away because you have such a nice feeling. And in various ways we notice through sitting or just standing in a kind of samadhi, there's a nice feeling. And what I'd like us to, and I think I should stop now, but I'd like us to explore and you can start now with this nice feeling

[35:19]

And see if you can identify its bodily location when you feel it. And don't just, oh, that was a nice feeling. But really, it's a way of being alive. So notice it. And I think, you know, perhaps it's a problem with democracy. Democracy wants us all to have feelings we all can share. Maybe the feelings hidden under nice are not shareable except under unusual circumstances. Harold Bloom, the literary commentator, has a term, the selfhood of self-reliance.

[36:59]

Harold Bloom, the literary commentator, has a term, the selfhood of self-reliance. The self that arises from being self-reliant. there's a kind of wildness if you're really self-reliant there's a kind of wildness there you don't have to worry about anything because you can always take care of yourself And our society wants us to be rather dependent and insured up to here. Okay, enough said about that.

[38:19]

So if you notice this nice feeling, see if you can stabilize it as a physical location. See if you can spread it up into your cheeks or into your stomach. Or into your breath. This is quite important to explore. So maybe we can continue tomorrow. Okay? Have a nice day.

[39:03]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.66