It reminds me of a story. I know somebody who was drafted in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. I think it was a guy named Ruvein who always wore tea tree oil. You know what that is? We have the same. Yes. Smells like, you know, lilies. Some kind of hippie type 60s thing. Anyway, he was drafted in the U.S. Army. This is just an anecdote. Yeah, anecdote. And, uh, You know, on, I don't know, Sundays or something, you could go to the church of your choice or have a religious gathering.

[01:05]

You know, he didn't want to go to church, so. With tea tree oil on it would let him in, probably. Yes. So he asked, all of you who don't want to go to church, join me and we'll meditate. So they were out the first or second day they did this. All sitting, I don't know, 20 or so people sitting in a circle under a tree. And he'd rung the bell and told them not to move until they heard the bell. So some officer came up and said, what are you guys doing here? And no one would say anything, and no one would move.

[02:23]

And this officer got quite mad, and he was jumping up and down. If you hear an order from me, you're supposed to move. So when the guy was really blue in the face, Ruvain finally rang the bell. And he said, I told them not to move. We're practicing our religion. In a few months, the army had pushed him out. He was discharged. It's the smoothest way to get out of fighting the Vietnam War, I know. Hmm. Now I'm speaking within the context now of already connected.

[03:37]

Already connected as an experience which arises from Seeing everything as activity and feeling everything as activity is inseparable from the idea of interdependence. Years ago, I often started lectures with the idea that we have the cultural assumption that space separates. But space also connects. Somehow we're... would use various examples of the moon and tides and our bodies and so forth.

[04:58]

But that we don't notice we're connected. What we notice is our separation. We might have some knowledge or assumption that maybe we're connected, or obviously we are somehow. And you may feel it with a very close friend, or a son or daughter, a child, or a spouse, or a dog. Yeah, but mostly we don't notice it. And I've used that as an example of how views precede sensorial perception.

[06:12]

If we have a view, our senses confirm that view. So our senses confirm that we're separated. But it's not just that they confirm we're separated. They are unable or don't notice that we're also connected. So I've often suggested the phrase to introduce into your mind Habit mind. Already connected. Okay. Now, one of the... Zen is a particular way, a particular modality of embodiment.

[07:13]

And I think I should come back to that. But in what way are we connected? How do we have some sort of mutual body? Mutual means to change together. The etymology. To exchange. So it's again not just... fact of mutuality, it's an exchange, it's a pulse or a dynamic. Okay, so it's an open question to what extent Are we connected?

[08:48]

Clearly consciousness, which is our main source of information, and the main determinative of our views of the world, Consciousness by its nature, by its structure, can't notice connectedness. It can notice difference, but not connectedness. Now, again, let me say again, it's an open question how we're connected. How are we going to explore this? Okay. Now, my suggestion as a way that we can each explore this, is, as I often say, have the intention to bring attention to your breath.

[10:04]

And as I always say, it's very easy to do for a few moments or minutes, but it's not easy to do continuously. The trick is to lock in the intention but not the performance. The actualizing, actually bringing your attention to your breath, that's the performance. You can't always perform the intention but you can hold the intention. So much of the secret of practice is to develop the intentions, but don't worry about whether you succeed or not.

[11:34]

In our culture, we tend to want to succeed. And if we don't succeed, we give up the intention. Not always, not maybe important things, you know, life, career or something. But the trick in practice is to is to hold the intention and strengthen the intention and then depend on the 10,000 hours. Or another way to put it, because everything is changing, Intention is more subtle than the attention.

[12:43]

Because the intention notices possibilities and then takes them. Intention is like... kind of... water held behind a dam. There's a crack in the dam. the attention goes into the crack. If there's an opportunity, it notices the opportunity. But if you concentrate on forcing the attention to always be on your breath, for example, your willpower is not in performing is not subtle. Okay.

[13:46]

So what I'm suggesting, anyway, so you lock in the intention. And you keep nourishing the intention, but you don't worry much about whether You can perform the intention. But you try when it's possible. Okay, so now I'm suggesting you have an intention to bring attention to your spine. And I suggest, why not try it these two days, coming up days. Now, two and a half days. So you form an intention to bring

[14:52]

attention to your spine. It's actually easier than bringing attention to your breath. Yeah, there's reasons why, but I'll just leave it for now. So you bring your attention to your spine Do it right now. And I think you can feel your spine receiving the attention. And it even returns the attention. You bring attention to your spine, and your spine then strengthens attention.

[16:04]

It kind of nourishes attention. And you can feel it receiving. This is interesting that your spine can express. experience the spine receiving attention. And if you have enough mental stillness, you can feel attention, the spine returning attention. Transforming attention bodily or at least consolidating attention. It's almost like you can feel little warm hands holding your spine.

[17:05]

Now this is of course easier if you are used to having attention and mind rest in the body. This is all yoga craft I'm speaking about. Sometimes I wish in German it wasn't handwork. But maybe these soft little hands on your spine, that's handwork. Kunstfertigkeit. Artability. Artability. Okay, artability. Okay. Now, if in addition to bringing attention to the spine, having intention to bring attention to the spine, you also bring breath to the spine.

[18:27]

Now, I don't know if a person who doesn't meditate at all can do this. I've forgotten. It's been so long since I didn't meditate. But at least if you've had some experience in meditating, you can feel the breath not just Breathing in the lungs, but breathing in the spine. Something like that. Now, if you bring attention to the spine, now don't bring breath attention, bring attention to the spine and breath to the spine. it feels like you're breathing through your spine.

[19:47]

Or something very close to it. And if you do it, you start feeling some kind of sensation at the top of the head. And it can immediately make you aware of why the Buddha is usually presented with a bump on top of the head. Canoodling. Canoodling with the Buddha. It's wonderful not to know anything. You guys are stuck in the meaning.

[20:47]

I'm not stuck in the meaning at all. Yeah, but I'm just jealous because you can speak German. Anyway, in the Bodhisattvas shown with piled up hair. And this is clearly... represented this way because a Buddha has this feeling of breath and awareness in the spine and you have this sensation which is invisible unless it's put on a Buddha statue. Now you can almost think of the spine then, not only as a mind, but as a kind of antenna. This sort of tunes you into space.

[21:48]

It sort of takes the noticed territory of mind away from the contents of mind, to the field of mind itself. So it's a kind of way to locate yourself in a kind of spatiality. Now, I often, not so much in recent years, but over the years, one of the most common questions I've got and disturbance people have had that they have psychologically but also partially exacerbated through practice.

[23:13]

Exacerbated, yes. We have the same in medical German. Oh, it's a medical German. Well, English is just a dialect. with French words added. That they have boundary problems. They feel other people's moods and feelings get mixed up with theirs. And they don't feel safe or they have to stay away from certain people. Because they feel their own boundaries violated. They're too open.

[24:30]

So I used to say, it doesn't happen maybe because we're more experienced at practice. But I used to say, don't armor yourself, but seal yourself. Okay, so this is a good example of sealing yourself. Is in while bringing attention to the spine. And bringing breath to the spine. makes you feel very open, transparent, at the same time it seals you. And you're not disturbed by where your boundaries are or not. Now, notice that I say bring attention to your breath or bring attention to my spine or your spine.

[26:06]

Now, English requires this. But is it really the English grammar which is requiring it? Or is it just that we really need a sense of this is my breath and not your breath? Do we always need to emphasize our own location. I think we do. In Latin, I believe there's a case called locative. And for me, the word, it's where... It's the location for something that happens or the time when something happens.

[27:12]

And we have some sort of locative case where we we want to make clear that this breath belongs to here. And then it makes it feel unnatural to say The breath. Though I can imagine a doctor, at least in English, saying, well, what's happening with the breath to a patient? For the doctor, it's more the breath. It's not your breath. He's a doctor. Yeah, I don't know. Would that be true for a doctor? Yeah, probably, yes. It's clear.

[28:13]

It's so clear that you don't... What's happening with the lungs? I don't know. What's going on with the lungs? Our lungs. Yeah, well, there's a distortion. Excuse me. There's a sort of... It's a bad habit... Sometimes we'll say, how are we today? Yeah, the royals and doctors. It's the royal and medical we. It's not so plural as my status now. How are we today? That's really talking down, isn't it? In Japan, in Japanese, they don't say my stomach. They just say stomach hurts. Because who else's stomach?

[29:19]

So they don't have to add who owns the stomach. Sukiyoshi used to be amused at that. Oh, really? Is it really your stomach? Yeah, it's my stomach. Well, sometimes I think maybe we should say, instead of my breath, a home breath. Yeah, because the locative case also means what's home. How's the home spine doing? Anyway, I'm just playing with language to sort of get ourselves out of, it's too much emphasis, too much, it's my breath. Yeah, now, if you bring, you bring, if attention, if wisdom brings attention to the spine, and if intention and intention, wisdom and intention brings

[30:45]

breath to the spine, I think you'll feel it in your posture. And when you can feel attention and breath in, within, within the spine, I think you'll notice there's less discursive thinking. Less self-referential thinking. And what Dieter brought up earlier, How do you understand this, but your mind keeps going here and there, etc.?

[31:58]

Well, through understanding or trying to apply... understanding, it's rather difficult, as you pointed out. But if you have the habit of attention and breath resting, sort of resting, living in the spine, But if you have the habit of breathing and the intention to rest in the back wheel, then it becomes much easier to practice the things you were... and maintain the practice in the way you suggested you'd like to do. So this is one suggestion on how you can use the antenna of the spine to find some experiential territory of connectedness.

[33:15]

And if you do it now and then, if you do it during the rest of the seminar, when it occurs to you to do it, you develop a, you're laying the foundation for a habit for it to come up that you can inhabit, you know, now and then. And you'll begin to feel you have a different presence. You can feel a different presence. And I think you will notice your presence will pick up on the presence of another person whose attention and breath is in the spine. Yes. how to practice this sense that we, again, this sense of connectedness.

[34:54]

One thing Suzuki Roshi used to speak about was that if Dogen took water from a stream, To wash his clothes or something. If there was water left over, he brought it back to the stream. Didn't just dump it out. With the sense of practice being, it's going to go back to the stream anyway through the dirt or whatever, but the practice of returning running water to running water. And another thing that's accustomed to do at a heiji, for example, if you have a bucket of water that you have to throw out, You pour it toward yourself.

[36:11]

Well, you're very careful with a bucket of water if you pour it toward... Well, little things like this help you relate to activity as kind of belonging to you. You can't just... So, traditionally, when we have the water we collect after an orioke meal, you would bring it out and pour it this way onto the ground. Again, these are just little reminders that even Dogen needed. Attention not only awakens, it also transforms.

[38:22]

One way to discover the strength or power dynamic of attention. Is to have an attention to bring attention to the spine. You know the word in English, conspiracy, you have the same word in German, means to breathe together. And it's a negative word in German, as in English. You're a conspirator. But in yoga culture, it's a positive word. To breathe together.

[39:35]

And the teaching when you are with somebody who is dying, is you breathe with them. When you breathe with someone during the days or hours before they die, I think you will really feel feelings and mind close. And there's a wonderful mutuality that occurs through breathing together.

[40:52]

If a person get scared or panicky as happens often before a person dies. You can actually calm their mind through your breathing with them. Of course, all of us are dying. So we don't have to wait until the deathbed. I don't mean you should consciously breathe with others. But if your breath and attention is in your spine, There will be a breathing together involuntarily.

[42:09]

And there will be to various degrees a kind of mutual breath body. And again, it must happen through music, a score, when you play music together. So I'm giving you a dharma score. Instead of a music score, a dharma score. A dharma score?

[43:10]

Thank you.

[43:13]

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