I hear most of you who are not residents here for the practice month are leaving in a couple of days. You know, I don't give these lectures because I have something to say. I give these lectures because I want to talk with you. Yeah, and then when you leave, it's not so easy, actually. I like to fly. to wherever you're going and continue our conversation. When I first had to start teaching, it was actually quite difficult. I was in the middle of so many interrupted conversations, I was kind of, in a way, emotionally lost inside sometimes.

[01:13]

But after a while I learned. I had to learn to just hold some conversations in me till there's a chance to continue. And I'm always asking myself what I'm doing. I suppose in some ways I'm a kind of anthropologist. Yeah, I mean, I grew up dissatisfied with my culture. So I said... I just want to learn from any culture that would teach me something.

[02:22]

As, you know, Zhaozhou said, I'll study with anyone who can teach me something. But, you know, if you're German, you have different reasons than Americans do to be dissatisfied or satisfied with your culture. And if you're British, you have, again, quite different reasons to be dissatisfied and satisfied. And these reasons are actually in the background of why we practice. But basically, what motivates me is the feeling that Anything that's available to human beings can be available to us.

[03:38]

So I'm not really interested in Japan and yogic culture and so forth. I'm interested in human culture and what is possible for us. And to me that's the adventure of the last century and this century. What are the possibilities of being human? What are the possibilities to be human or to be human?

[04:45]

Anne Waldman is a poet I know a little bit. She was a friend of Philip Whelan. You might have met her when she came to visit Philip. I think once. She and her publisher just sent me her new book. Sie und ihr Verleger haben mir ihr neues Buch geschickt und mich gebeten, etwas hinten drauf zu schreiben, also für den Druck. And unfortunately it went through Crestone, etc., and got here too late probably for me to write anything. But the title of her book is The Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble. Und der Titel des Buches heißt Die Struktur der Welt verglichen mit einer Blase.

[06:04]

We know in the West that flowers fall. Wir wissen im Westen, dass die Blumen irgendwann umfallen. Dass wir sterben. Dass sich der Garten im Verlauf der Jahreszeiten ändert. Also wir wissen, dass Dinge vergänglich sind. Was ist der Unterschied? We would never, until Anne Waldman, who is a poet very influenced by Buddhism, Anne Waldman is a poet who is a Buddhist. And I don't think there's been a book written in the West called The Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble. Also ich glaube, es wurde im Westen noch nie ein Buch geschrieben, das heißt die Struktur der Welt verglichen mit einer Blase.

[07:09]

The structure of the world? Yeah. Okay, fine. How do we get from knowing things are impermanent to the world compared to a bubble? Wie kommen wir dahin von dem Wissen, dass die Dinge vergänglich sind, und zu die Welt ist wie eine Blase? No, I'm... Yeah, I'm going to speak about that, indirectly at least. It's too big a topic to just have in a 40-minute talk. And, Judita, you this morning or yesterday said to me that in the seminar yesterday, The question came up of the distinction between attention, mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness and awareness.

[08:10]

Yeah, it should be easy to talk about. Also, das scheint ja wohl leicht zu sein, darüber zu sprechen. Is it really easy to talk about? Aber ist es denn wirklich leicht, darüber zu sprechen? These are just words. Das sind ja bloß Worte. But they're not just words. Aber sie sind auch nicht bloß nur Worte. If I say in English, attention, wenn ich in Englisch, Achtung, sage, there's immediately a physical quality to it. Da kommt sofort eine körperliche Eigenschaft mit dem Wort. And I think if you say in German, Achtung, There's a physical quality to the word. But at least in English, intention wouldn't have the same effect. If I walked into a high school classroom, And I said, attention, I'd get a different reaction than if I said, intention.

[09:28]

So there's a physicality, there's a gesture even in virtually every word. You could ask Kai, for instance, we could ask him, impro, to make the physical gesture for any word, and probably the different physical gesture which would come up. So these words already are in our body a certain kind of experience. And in German, I think these similar words, translations, have a different gesture, a different probably physicality.

[10:37]

So how do we sort this out? I mean, we have to use the words with how they've accumulated experience in us. And we have to use them in a way others understand them to some extent. And now we're trying to use them to articulate Buddhist practice. And we have to find, first of all, we have to find the experience in ourselves. And we also have to understand the conceptual differences. Und dann müssen wir diese konzeptionellen Unterschiede auch herausfinden.

[11:53]

Okay. So at least in English, intention is virtually... I mean, attention and intention are very closely connected. Also zumindest im Englischen sind attention und intention Aufmerksamkeit und... Absicht. Absicht sind sehr nah miteinander verbunden. If you say to a kid, you know, when I want you, if I say to Sophia, when you go out into the street, I want you to pay attention. Wenn ich zu einem Kind sage wie Sophia, wenn du auf die Straße gehst, musst du aufpassen. And if I say, but when I say that I mean I want you to have the intention to have the attention to what's going on in the street. And etymologically the words mean almost exactly the same thing. Attention to attend is to bring, is to stretch toward. Tend is to stretch. Attention, etymologically, means to stretch.

[13:10]

To stretch toward. A is toward and ten is stretch. And in, in this case, in tension, in is to or toward or... And in heißt jetzt zu oder in Richtung. So it's stretch in or stretch into or stretch toward. Also ist es ziehen nach in oder ziehen Richtung. So you can see even in a word there's a physicality, to stretch, to reach. Also selbst in diesem Wort ist eine Art Körperlichkeit zu dehnen und zu reichen. Now mindfulness... You know, it's a kind of word that almost has come to mean in English primarily the practice of awareness and alertness.

[14:12]

Again, if you ask a child to be mindful when they walk to school, yeah, it's nearly the same as what we've been talking about. Wenn man ein Kind fragt, dass es achtsam sein soll auf dem Schulweg, dann ist es ungefähr das gleiche, wie wir vorher schon besprochen haben. Das heißt, vorsichtig aufmerksam oder umsichtig zu sein. Wenn du dieses Geschirr anfasst und abwäschst, dann sei vorsichtig dabei. Gewahrsein. Also, ich verwende das jetzt auf eine besondere Art und Weise. Also, wie besonders das ist, da sprechen wir jetzt mal ein bisschen drüber. Das ist etwas, das in die Richtung geht wie...

[15:15]

So the words, those three words mean, yeah, more or less the same thing. But we have a conceptual difference. And I think to articulate them in our experience differently, we have to understand the conceptual difference. So intention, we mean a kind of thought, a kind of attitude of mind that we hold within us. And in fact, through practice, we realize it's actually a different mind than the thoughts of discursive thinking. So your intention is different than your discursive thinking.

[16:40]

Probably why most people don't keep their New Year's intentions. Is that the New Year's intentions in Germany? And politicians don't keep their promises. Because they're made in discursive thinking. They're not really intentions. Embodied and always present, no matter what your discursive thinking is. So our practice is rooted in intention. What is your intention in your life? What's your intention in relationship to other people and so forth? And that intention will... Also, Intention nehmen wir vielleicht auf Deutsch.

[17:56]

...will change your discursive thinking. Also, deine Intentionen... I think the Latin word Intention fits better than the German translation. Because Absicht in German is something directed towards, and from the Middle Ages this was like pointing a gun towards. It's like very goal-oriented. Also, ich benutze jetzt... So we talked about this a little bit before the... Because you talked to me about it before. Because there was trouble. So... Why don't you share a little bit what you looked into the words? I can just say this one now because we're using this one.

[18:56]

And maybe later when you use another one, you can help me. Okay. So we use, when we're talking about in practice attention, Of course, we just mean bringing, being noticing, being alert, being aware. So now I can say the German word. Sure. It comes in the German from marking, to notice and to mark something. That's attention. I don't consider what we're doing here some kind of intellectual talk or philology. Also ich denke, dass das, was wir hier tun, kein intellektuelles Gespräch ist oder Vortrag oder Philologie.

[19:58]

If we're seriously going to use words, wenn wir aber ernsthaft Worte verwenden möchten, that affect our way we live in the world, die Art, wie wir in der Welt leben, beeinflussen, I want you to notice that these words are real in us. They're actually in your bodies. Dann möchte ich, dass ihr spürt, dass diese Wörter So I'm not trying to be intellectual, I'm just trying to get us to notice. How our experience fits or doesn't fit. How we describe our world to ourselves. Okay, in a more Buddhist sense, we're using attention to mean the expression of intention. In a more Buddhist understanding, we use attention as an expression of intention.

[21:06]

Okay, and mindfulness is the teachings that allow us to use attention as an expression of intention. Mindfulness, yeah. Sorry, attention. Mindfulness is the Buddhist teaching that allows us to use attention as an expression of intention. We have in English the aha experience. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing. Aha, whoa. And anthropologists, when I was in college, say that religion comes from a feeling of awe, of aha.

[22:09]

Truly. I mean, just look at all this wonderful stuff. Ah, wow. Aha. Okay. Okay. All right, but what have we got here conceptually? If attention is the expression of intention, then it's something that's going on underneath, let's call it underneath, discursive thinking. And that's of course true. You experience it all the time when you drive. In most circumstances, except, you know, very difficult driving situations. You can pay quite full attention to your driving in the road while you talk to somebody or listen to music or something.

[23:22]

Because your attention is working in a separate location from your discursive thinking. Okay, now attention and intention are something we do. And mindfulness is also an expression of this. Now, mindfulness is also a teaching about what it's important to bring attention to and so forth. I guess in the seminar you just entered into that a little bit. And what happens when you bring attention to the body or to what you're doing.

[24:34]

They often use in cancer patients and so forth images because images bring intention into the body, not discursive thinking. I discovered when I was a kid that I could make warts go away. I think I read about it first in Tom Sawyer or something. Huck Finn. I'll learn from whoever can teach me. Huck Finn. But I discovered that you couldn't think about the wart.

[25:47]

You had to intend and hold that intention. And if you held it strongly enough, the next day they'd be gone. So I learned there's different kinds of minds. Okay. Now, Again, attention and intention are something we do. And awareness is more like something we let happen. If attention exists as practice under our discursive thinking, we can say that attention is awakening awareness.

[27:05]

Because awareness in us is already there. Now, Arnie Mindell, an American psychologist and theorist... Shall we put the German things on awareness out first? Go ahead. I'd love to have a prepared translator. You go as slowly as you're speaking, don't you? I'm never reading mine. Okay. you feel how to be attentive or cautious or observe and notice. And there is another word in it, it used to be true and true, these are all words from before the 8th century, is to pay attention to

[28:22]

That's it. So Arnie Mendel. Yeah, and you know, as I'm trying to adjust English to the yogic experience in practice, to understand these words, to understand the words, these words, attention, etc., the words we know. You have to adjust your German and your bodies to English and the German words.

[29:33]

Maybe the German word for attention doesn't have the same feeling of being underneath, like when you drive a car, discursive thinking. No, again, Arnie Mandel, who worked in Switzerland for many years. One of the insights, breakthroughs, his psychology and theories are based on. Is he found that people in comas could be communicated with even though they were not conscious in any normal sense, usual sense? without any common sense. In a usual sense, they weren't conscious. But you could talk with them and they could respond physically. Clearly they understood. Yes. And as a result of working with this idea of what's underneath ordinary consciousness, then he developed theories which are actually quite compatible with Buddhist ideas.

[31:05]

Okay. We use awareness One of the ways we use awareness in contrast to consciousness is to train a child not to wet their bed at night. We want you to go to sleep, have a good night's sleep, but somehow some part of you remembers not to wet the bed. We're having direct experience of this these days. How does Sophia train her awareness so she doesn't wet the bed, but she sleeps? Okay, now what's the difference between a yogic culture and western culture?

[32:21]

Yogic culture says awareness is the primary consciousness. The primary way of knowing, not consciousness. They say that being true is mainly or primarily... It's the primary consciousness? Yeah, it's the most fundamental consciousness. And we've come to know that through sports. We can find out that athletes are actually functioning in awareness, not consciousness. And the martial arts are... I mean, they're different than our martial arts. These martial arts are different from our traditional idea of a warrior.

[33:31]

They are different in the degree to which they emphasize awareness and not consciousness. Okay, again, you know, you all have heard me say this, most of you have heard me say this many times, I have to give a simple definition of awareness if we're going to speak about this. Awareness is what wakes you up at 6.02 in the morning without an alarm clock. It's not consciousness. You're asleep. When you slip on the ice and fall and you catch yourself and don't break anything, the packages you are carrying, that all happened faster. then consciousness can function, and yet you, something, saved you.

[34:37]

That's awareness. Yoga culture and zazen emphasize awareness. No. This awareness also means non-dreaming blissful, non-dreaming deep sleep that surfaces in your daily life. Now the rigor of Buddhist thinking is that everything has to come from here. There's no over there for things to come from. Maybe I just have to stop shortly.

[35:47]

Maybe I throw out a few examples if I can. Now, the structure of the world compared to a bubble. In Japan, the most important building in Japan In Japan, the most important building in Japan is the Ise Shrine. The Ise Shrine is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. Okay, not only torn down, it's also built so it can be torn down. It's basically built so it's tied and fitted together. It's built in a way that reflects its temporariness.

[36:57]

So this is a culture which takes impermanence in a different way, a more serious way than we do. Or they don't build to resist impermanence, they build to reflect impermanence. They're not trying to express that somehow the world is actually deep down permanent. They're trying to express that deep down it's impermanent. Okay. Now, I'm also trying to speak here about, as I've been speaking the last couple of days, last week or so, relational objects.

[38:04]

Relational objects. I've shown you this before. This is a relational object. I carry it when I give a talk. Although it's sometimes a different one. It influences me. Different sticks influence me differently. How is this a relational object? Here's the lotus embryo. And lotus, again, is a symbol for Buddhism because its roots are in the muddy water, but its flower is above the water. So here's the embryo of the lotus.

[39:06]

Here's the lotus bud. Here's the lotus seed pod. Seeds is after it has bloomed. Where is the bloom? Where is the flower? You're looking at it as the flower. My speaking is the flower. That is part of the iconography of this. The absence of the most obvious part makes it a relational object. Okay. Now in Kyoto, the main shrine is the Kamigamo Jinja.

[40:12]

Jinja means shrine. Kamigamo Jinja. Okay. If anybody want to change your legs, it's already me. If your knees are in your ears, it's better to change your legs. Because I should finish a little bit here. And this is the last talk I'll be giving to most of you. When I change my legs, you'll know we're in trouble. It's another hour or two. Okay. The Kami Gama Jinja is... The kami is a deity. A shrine is not a temple.

[41:15]

It's a Shinto temple, sort of. Yeah. But there's actually nothing there. It's only a stage. But there's actually nothing in it. It's just a stage. It's a stage like the bloom isn't there. So what is the Kamigamo Jinja? It's a beautiful place, by the way. I lived in Kyoto many years. It feels good to be there. What is the kami? It's a deity. But it's also the watershed. So in some way, in this kind of Japanese thinking, Shinto thinking, the Watershed is the watershed, but also a deity.

[42:20]

Or when we feel the presence of the watershed, It's like feeling a god of some kind. You feel a watershed is the edge where it goes this way, that way? No, no, no. A watershed is all of that area where water collects to come into a river. Okay. Okay, what is this watershed? It's also the city of Kyoto. They chose that watershed because it was the watershed which would allow a city like Kyoto to develop. They chose this location for Kyoto because of the watershed.

[43:36]

So the watershed... becomes a city, can magically become a city. So this Kamigama Jinja is sort of at the source of the opening of the watershed and the source of the city. Also ist dieser Kamigami Jinja irgendwie an der Quelle, am Ursprung von diesem Gewässer oder Einzugsbereich des Gewässers und im Ursprung oder Mitte von der Stadt. Okay, now I'm not trying to teach you something about Japanese culture. I'm not trying to say this is Buddhism. I'm trying to give us a sense of a different culture, a different context.

[44:37]

Now, an example I've used now and then. The Chinese word for the body is a share of the whole. A share of a whole means a piece of the whole thing. A part of the whole. Das bedeutet ein Teil des Ganzen. But a part, which is also a share. It shares in the whole. Aber ein Teil bedeutet auch etwas, das das Ganze teilt, also auch mit einschließt. Ein Anteil. Ein Anteil. Okay. And the etymology, at least the word body in English... ...is a brewing vat, like for beer.

[45:42]

Now if you think of the body as a brewing vat, that's a very different feeling than a share of the whole. Mm-hmm. I mean, they both have their points. But they're different. Okay, so if the body is a share of the whole, how do you design a house? You lay a person down on the floor. You draw a rectangle around him. And you call that a tatami. And then you build the house based on a tatami. So every building is an extension of the body.

[46:56]

That's a very different feeling than when you start out with a room. A room has to be an extension of the body. People ask me how did I design the Zendo and Crestone. It's very simple. I took one body shape if a person slept in a zendo or sat in a zendo. And I said I'd like 36 seats. or 48 seats rather, and 12 on each side. And on one side I had to have a door on each end. So six and [...] twelve and twelve and put a roof over it.

[48:13]

That was all there was to it. I didn't do anything else. A few other things. You have a different feeling when you're thinking of the world as an extension of the body. When does a deity change into a city? What's that little shift? What's the shift between ordinary thinking and enlightened? When we chant in the morning. I'm always a little embarrassed to get you all guys to chant in Japanese and Chinese.

[49:24]

And we have quite a good yoga teacher in Crestone. She wants us to start the yoga class chanting Sanskrit. And I find myself resisting it. Why do I need to chant a little Sanskrit before I'm doing the yoga class? And then I think to myself, what am I getting an awful lot of people to do every morning? Well, we could all chant in German. Yeah, we do some. We do some. I once had the... I'm sorry, I'm going on, but I haven't changed my legs yet. We once had... I once had people for some months all chant in English.

[50:28]

No Japanese in the beginning of the lecture. I found I couldn't give lectures as well. Because people went from discursive thinking to discursive thinking during the English chanting to my lecture, and I couldn't lecture. Listening to Wagner, I'm told, in my own experience in listening to Wagner. He uses long orchestral interludes. to allow feelings to come out that wouldn't otherwise.

[51:34]

So we chant in the morning. We don't sing. Singing is a kind of thinking. Singen ist eine Art denken. Also es muss es nicht sein, aber da gibt es Noten und drauf und runter und so weiter. Was ist rezitation? Chanting is just to join your voices together. Rezitation heißt nur eure Stimmen zusammenführen. And you can cough in the middle. That's all right. So we join our voices together. Wir führen unsere Stimmen zusammen. Wir schließen sie zusammen. Because our voices are also our sound body.

[52:35]

Denn unsere Stimmen sind auch unser Klangkörper. And I think as your son knows, the skull, the bone here is not just the ear. Is that right? Dein Sohn weiß, dass der Schädel auch hört. Es ist nicht nur das Ohr. And Ivan Illich, when his cancer had really affected his hearing, he learned to let his bones hear. So the body here is not a brewing vat, but a share of the whole. It's also in our breath and in our sound body. And we're joining our sound body with each other. Once or twice a day.

[53:37]

And then we join our sound body to the names of all the Buddha ancestors. Which is to say, the Buddha is not different from us. Or we can also be like the Buddha. Their names represent the lives they led and the realization they shared. So we join our sound body with each of these persons' names. So when does the watershed become a deity? Or the city of Kyoto? Or when does our chanting of the names allow us to feel we are also this extended body?

[55:01]

Can you say it again? When does our chanting of the names allow us to feel we are also this extended body? allow us to feel this extended body, that reaches back through time and forward into time, Yeah, at least once or twice a day I make matcha, whipped powdered tea, instant tea. And this Japanese woman, Nakamura Sensei, who lived with us for about 20 years, was a tea teacher. She taught me the tea ceremony. And when I'm whisking the tea, suddenly she's present. I'm one of those who continue. Somehow she knew I would be one of those who continue.

[56:26]

We are each one of those who continue. When I whisk the tea from powder into something I'd like to drink, When do I shift from some kind of me to being somehow Nakamura Sensei? Or when I'm giving a lecture and holding a stick as Tsukiroshi did, when do I shift somehow from being this historical person to somehow also being Tsukiroshi? When I am here and give a lecture and hold this staff, when does this change come from me as this historical person to me as Suzuki Roshi?

[57:36]

Or his teacher, Butsumon. And so forth. What is that shift? On the no stage, the small front part of the stage, is the present. With the audience. With the audience. With the audience. You're in the time of the audience. When you step back into the bigger part of the stage, when the actor steps back, you're in some kind of timeless place where your grandmother can appear. Maybe it's like Wagner's long orchestral interludes. When suddenly a deity can be a watershed. This is awareness. This territory is what is meant by awareness in Buddhist practice.

[59:05]

It's time as timing. Oh, God, yeah. Not timing. Oh, Buddha. Oh, God. All right. Zeit ist schnell, oder? Zeit ist schnell. Zeitigen. Aber das hat nichts mit zeitig zu tun. Okay. It's time as ripening time. It's time as an edge and a bridge. It's time as space between things. There's a word for this in Japanese, ma. And it also means those silences which allow the other person's thinking to happen and come back to you.

[60:05]

Yeah, that's all what's meant by awareness in this practice. So we could understand it very simply as consciousness, the SCI is scissors, We can also understand it very easily and consciously. And in English the word conch, as it is always described, is written in Latin as the scissors. And awareness is what connects. Consciousness is what separates. Awareness is what connects. So in a deeper sense, mindfulness is the study of what connects. and the awareness or space that allows things, what connects, and the awareness and space that allows things to happen.

[61:40]

So awareness is also that mind which allows things to happen. And if this talk was too long, you have to blame Judith. Because she gave me too difficult a task. Thank you very much.

[62:15]

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