I have a question of trying to understand what you said about time. Good. Especially the continuous time, when being is time, and sometimes you have the feeling that time passes very slowly and does something unpleasant. Sometimes in sitting you have the feeling that the 40 minutes pass very quickly, so you have the feeling that time does not exist at all. So in particular about what you said about durative time, we have sometimes this experience that time goes by very slowly when you do something you don't like. But then sometimes I'm saying, for example, it seems like the 40 minutes just disappeared as though time didn't even exist. And if I understood that correctly, that's all part of durative time? Yeah. I mean, time has a sense... I'm just trying to find out how to speak about it, right?

[01:06]

But I would say that time has a sensorial topography. Or a topography... Formed by one's concentration, one's emotional calmness and so forth. And sometimes the immensely intense time of childhood is available to us. I would say in terms of the topography of time, by the time you're 50, maybe half of your time was childhood. And maybe at my advanced age, a third of my time was childhood.

[02:16]

So I want to go on about this experienceable time, but let me hear from someone else first. I would like to continue talking about this experience, but let me first hear something from you others. Yes. You said this morning that in Zazen a certain field of the spirit arises when people prophesy with each other. Yes. And I'm wondering whether you think that that's a specific field or whether there are similar fields or whether that field might be similar to what we experienced during psychotherapy.

[03:27]

Well, I don't think it makes sense to try to say things are the same. But in the sense that you experience your relationship as a feel, But I think, so it's similar in that it's a field. But the field isn't separate from its circumstances. So the field and the circumstance, one of the powers of a field is that you know the circumstances through the field. So I would guess that if you're a psychotherapist and you're with a client, there's a field that's generated, that's created by the two persons, if it's two. I would guess it's also, I mean my experience of similar things, it's also in some funny way independent of the two persons.

[05:12]

And I think sometimes that field can extend into the past and potential future. So I'd like, you know, that's something I'd like to try to come closer to in our discussion today and tomorrow. But certainly I think if I came through a secret door and sat down or knocked in the while you and a client are talking, it would change the field. I'd say, don't mind me, I'm just sitting here. And I might be able to improve the field and I might be able to most likely disturb the field. That's respond more or less to what you... Okay.

[06:30]

Christina wants to take the two of us back home and keep asking us questions. One of the most interesting compliments. Yes. point of attention in the attention. And this time factor also plays a role. Some time ago I took a photo. Photographer takes a photo. And I love to do macro shots. That means to zoom in as close as possible and this detail And then a picture was created that I sent to a friend. And this friend then wrote to me that for a short moment he would have seen the secret of life in the flower of this photo.

[07:52]

That means, he has perceived my point of attention, which I have placed in this moment within the point of attention, over a long time later. And I find that somehow exciting and not tangible. Can one pass on the point of attention? So this is about the point of attention in attention and also the question about time. I took a picture at some point and I really like to do macro pictures and photograph a flower or something really close by, show all the details. And I did that and I sent that picture to a friend of mine.

[09:04]

And much later, the friend responded by saying that he felt like he saw for a moment the secret of life in my picture of that flower. Can I see the picture a little later? I want to know too. Go ahead. And my question is, My question is, now over that period of time, it seems like he picked up on the attentional point that I placed there. And so is it possible to pass on one's attentional point? Of course. Of course. I mean, I used an example I enjoyed using the other day of Van Gogh. Van Gogh. Van Gogh.

[10:05]

Van Gogh. [...] Van Gog When I find myself up close to his paintings and looking carefully at his paintings, the first thing he does is make it clear that the painting is paint. The paint isn't, first of all, the illusion he's painting. the landscape he's painting, or whatever. The first experience is, this is made of paint.

[11:09]

And then in the paint you can see his vertical strokes, and the strokes are the same no matter what he's painting. So he doesn't change the strokes for a small thing and bigger strokes for big things. And then in the painting itself you can see his vertical lines and they are always the same, completely independent of what he represents. They are the same for a larger thing that he paints and the same for a smaller thing. So first of all you feel the reality, the realness of the paint. And then you feel the realness of his presence in the brushstrokes. And that gives you a feeling of realness, reality or actuality. And then you feel, or I feel anyway, that the scene he's painting then is actual, because I've gone from the actualness of the paint and the actualness of his present to the scene he's painting.

[12:24]

And he usually doesn't create pictorial space. Because pictorial space represents consciousness. So if there's pictorial space in the picture, you put yourself in that pictorial space, but he doesn't let you do that. Instead, there's like a mass of objects, a mass of leaves and wheat and stuff right there, and you have to make sense of it. And then your activity of making sense of it, it becomes your experience.

[13:32]

Yeah, anyway. So in that sense, he's passing his attentional point in a very complex way. The painters I've studied most carefully this way are Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, and now Van Gogh in recent years. Yeah, and many others, and contemporary paintings, contemporary in my life paintings, too.

[14:36]

But each one of them that can observe this kind, that each one of this can, which can, and which you can bring this close attention to, Is communicating a different attentional point? At least as my experience. So, I mean, to... All right, so if you as a... in your presence as a person your presence as a person and let me say not as a self in your presence as a person if there's a feeling of mind in your presence that presence will be felt by others

[15:42]

then this presence will be taken away from others. Okay, someone else? I think that fits the question that just came to me. Also this attention to different qualities or qualities, for example connected with my heart energy or with my mind. That fits in with a question that's arising for me, which is whether this attentional point can have different qualities or colors almost, depending on where it's located, like if it was emphasizing the heart energy versus being more in my head or something. Oh, of course. Absolutely. As she said earlier... Andrea.

[16:57]

Andrea is left, Andrea left, and I was left with no names. And Andrea said that she shifts her attentional point implicitly, it sounds like, in relationship to her chakras, and that changes the dynamic of the encounter with your client. Now, for example, when I'm talking, I establish an attentional point somewhere. And then I watch where you move it. And then I speak differently according to that.

[18:04]

And sometimes I try to place the attentional point so you're forced to move it. Sometimes I place the point of attention in such a way that you are forced to accept it. Because that is also interesting. I would also like to add something to the point of attention. You said that our self-centered thinking on the breath, on the body, I would also like to ask about that attentional point you said that we can direct our attention to the body, the breath and the phenomena. And the attention itself. Oh yeah, sorry. Okay, yeah. Sounds easy. my experience is that it's sometimes hard to not when i take the body as an example to not place my attention in the image of my image mental image of the body but the actual body so and then is this hilfreich zum beispiel

[19:35]

And then it's helpful to make use of the movement of the breath as an attentional point for the body. And Prajnatara describes that when he breathes in, he does not dwell in the inner world and when he breathes out, he does not dwell in the outer world. Where does he dwell then with his point of attention? And Prajñātara describes how in inhaling he does not dwell in the inner world and in exhaling he does not dwell in the outer world. So where does he dwell with his attentional point? That koan I would have to... Just from what you said, there's not enough information for everyone to make use of that statement.

[20:46]

So let me come back to it. But, and again, this... weaving this experiencing the separableness of mind, body, and phenomena also takes some time to create the weight of possibility you're talking about. But I would like to do that if the opportunity comes up, probably tomorrow. Okay. Anyone else want to say something? Um... Okay, let me give three names to time.

[22:16]

Or four names. Yeah. Durative time. Yeah. Um... sensorial phenomenal time sensorische phenomenologische Zeit yeah and can I ask a question in between in English is there a distinction between phenomenal and phenomenological yeah phenomenal Phenomenological, phenomenology, yeah. Phenomenological means a study of phenomena. Yeah. Phenomenal is just an adjective based on phenomena, plural phenomena.

[23:24]

Yeah. Okay. But phenomenal also means wow. Yeah. Yeah. It is phenomenal. Wow. It's phenomenal. So I'm using phenomenal as an adjective with also the little bit of fun of phenomenal in there. Well, in my sense, at least, you can disagree if you do disagree. If I was to say phénoménal outside, that sounds more like just the wow effect. Because in German, I don't think we say phénoménal outside of meaning, oh, this is great. So I chose phénoménological because that's closer to the experiential side of what you mean. Phénoménological time. Well, okay, I don't mind if you do it. It's your job to translate. I thought you might be solving one of the problems for me. Yeah, well, I thought I was solving lots of problems.

[24:25]

You're creating lots of problems, too. Oh, now you've got me. Oh, well. Failed again. No, I thought it was your job. You want to continue this job. That's fine, you know. So I think, and also always there time. And also the time that is always there, the given time. Okay, now I'm using these names, durative time. Ich benutze jetzt diesen Namen, die Dauerzeit.

[25:27]

I mean that the present, time present doesn't exist. Als dass die Zeitgegenwart nicht existiert. I'm sorry to say the obvious, but this moment is already past and already future. In clock time, there's no... there's no time. It's always moving to the next minute. As Ivan Illich loved that poem that he wanted clocks which had lost their hours. Okay, so time is and I'm using durative time to mean time that you generate.

[26:38]

Now, again, you all know this, but one has to keep embodying. So it's the scanning process of the senses. And the organizing processes of the brain which create a present for us in which we function. This glass is moving through the past to a moment and And it's something like the present I drank it. That present is what I'm calling durative time. Okay. Then let's take another name for time.

[27:40]

Then let's take another name for time. Sensorial Phenomenological Time. And maybe that name for time has the most access to what I'm trying to talk about. So with this name for time, I'm emphasizing that time arises within phenomena. It's arising in this use of the glass, in his writing, in my breathing, in my heart beating, and so forth. So I'm emphasizing here time appearing through one's relationship to phenomena. Okay. And the other name I give time is sometimes attentional time.

[29:16]

And so that is what I mean by experienceable time. Okay. Now see if I can make this bodily... Conceptually accessible. This experienceable time. Attentional time. Or time manifest as phenomena. or time manifest as your sensorial topography, that can be felt in the body. Now, let's say it's something like a Zazen experience. You get up from zazen and that feeling disappears, melts into our usual way of looking at the world.

[30:45]

But if you can If you catch a bodily feeling for it, you can hold that feeling. I keep thinking about the various names, words you brought up in Portuguese and other languages, Eva. What I think is interesting, of course, is if you look at a German word or a Greek word or Italian or Portuguese. They all point to something a little different. So what they're pointing to is sometimes different, sometimes similar, but it's anyway not in the words. The words can catch or suggest, but it's not the words.

[31:53]

But much of what's being pointed at can be felt in the body. One sense of what you feel in the body might be the Portuguese pointing, might be the German pointing, etc. And what you can feel in the intelligence And what you can feel in the intelligence of the body goes beyond those words and words in future languages that might point to it.

[32:55]

But then can you hold that? Now you can experiment with this. Say that you do Zaza. And you have a particularly relaxed, open feeling. In fact, you're sorry they rang the bell. You'd just like to stay there a while longer. But maybe if you can Catch the feeling. You know the feeling. You're in the midst of the feeling because zazen and breathing and the externalized consciousness has become an attentional point which has disappeared in the body.

[33:58]

Going back to the experience of going to sleep, you tend to lie there awake for the first few minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, sometimes people all night. I'm sorry. And your consciousness is generated in an externalized world. Or you have an externalized consciousness that's the same as daily consciousness. Now, if you can find, if you can generate or find an attentional point in that externalized consciousness, you can pull it into the body. Which is almost like poking a needle in a balloon.

[35:20]

An externalized consciousness just collapses. And this attentional point then you just place in the body and let it disappear. And if you get good at that, you can go to sleep instantly, virtually instantly. And you can get to know the signs, the physical signs, when you can take hold of that attentional point and pull it into the body. Now, let's perhaps then also, there's an attentional point in this good feeling at the end of the period of satsang. Which is not in any other category you know.

[36:23]

It's not in the category of cookies with whipped cream. It's not in the category of being really nicely kissed. It's not in the category of just hearing you won the Nobel Prize. It's in a category of a kind of satisfaction particular to what you're doing. It's a depth of satisfaction, let's call it that. Now, that depth of satisfaction, you can also have an attentional point, a bodily attentional point, that's at the center of that feeling and then your experience is the experiment I mean the experiment is can you get up from zazen

[37:55]

And continue that attentional point of satisfaction. Could you continue it for a while? For instance, when I do Zazen, this apartment I use sometimes in Freiburg. Yeah, I'm all by myself usually. And I see if I can carry it into the kitchen where I make myself a cup of tea and then go to where I work as a writer. And then I see when I lose it. I see sometimes I want to be distracted and I don't want to stay with this attentional point. But if I can stay with it, begins to draw this feeling of satisfaction from the world, from my activity.

[39:23]

And it pervades what I'm writing. So in this case, for instance, I would say one of the things, one thing that's happening in serious practice is I would say you're rather... completely revising what it means to be a human being. Or at least the western human being I am and used to be more forcefully. Is that instead of of being in the midst of discursive thinking as a big part of my life.

[40:35]

I've replaced discursive thinking with mental postures. And mental postures occupy me energetically and more satisfyingly than discursive thinking. And when I study yogic adepts in Zen historically over the thousand years or so that I'm studying, I am sure they did primarily thinking we could call thinking through mental postures and not thinking through discursive thoughts. Now, what is the quality of thinking through, like there's a famous poem which says, I think non-thinking.

[41:41]

And thinking non-thinking means to think through, to allow something we can call thinking to happen through mental postures. And thinking non-thinking means to allow something we can call thinking When you do that, thinking is a flow of insights and not causal discursiveness. In other words, like in Zazen, for example, you're not doing discursive thinking But things just pop up.

[42:58]

Kind of knowings just pop up. Disconnected observation pop up. Yeah, they may be related to something. They may be related to something you thought of a week ago. And they're often completely new, something you've never thought of before. So it's a kind of, it would be better described as not discursive thinking, but a flow of insights. that arise within the context of phenomena and body. Okay. What? Yeah, please. Okay. Can one dream the kind of thing you just described?

[44:14]

Yes. And the more you generate his kind of mind-body presence, the more your dreams change into something like a kind of thinking. I would say a third of my lectures appear in dreams. Another third appear in zazen. Don't tell anybody! And another third appear in the field that you generate.

[45:20]

So I never know exactly what's going to happen or what I'm going to say, but it's fun. Yes. Next to those, what I would call maybe the technical aspects of what you said? to take an external point and hold it, pull it into you, hold it or to continue the feeling of sitting I'm wondering about what for me would be the essence of what you just said

[46:27]

Well, first of all, I just want to interrupt you for one moment. I wouldn't say you take an external point. But rather in consciousness, which has externalized the world, you find in that an internal point that really belongs internally, and that you used to pull it in. That's what I meant. Okay, well, good. I'm glad you say it much nicer. Sorry. But if you look for an external point, you won't find it. But you can look for an internal point in an externalized consciousness. Okay. If I remember my own process, then for me it was a very strong change to understand and experience the difference between entity and activity.

[48:14]

If I look at my own process, I would say that a very important point for me was to feel and experience the difference between entity and activity. Very briefly summarized. And that has completely changed my worldview, my way of being in the world. And that changed my way of being in the world thoroughly. And now back to what you said and to make it understandable on a therapeutic level for me. It sounds to me like what you said has a lot to do with the area of activity, plasticity, such a basic understanding of So what you said has a lot to do with...

[49:21]

I try to somehow to summarize for me what's the sense of what you say so and okay coming from entity and activity and what you say it's in the realm of activity and sounds like seeing experience myself as being able to I don't know how to say it to manage myself and to be flexible and from inside changing myself in a kind of continuous process. Does that need to be said in Deutsch? Need a solution. He said that already. Is there some kind of summarizing besides this more technical… Well, the technical, I mean, sometimes I worry that I'm too technical.

[51:03]

It's sometimes a way to be, I find it a way to be precise that allows you maybe to get a feel for it. Because the more conceptually clear I am, the more technical it sounds. Okay, so I'm thinking, I'm trying to think about the context always of lay individual practice and shared practice. And shared practice, like monastic practice, you try to create a situation which does most of the work.

[52:14]

and in individual lay practice, then I feel I have to create a conceptual notation. Notation? Notation is to... Take a note, but it's more like, used in English, more like a commentary, a notation that informs you what to do. I try to create a conceptual notation or commentary. that you can bring with you, carry with you in your individual lives. and primarily carry with you as mental postures.

[53:41]

Now, one of the differences that they asked me to point out when we overlap with what we talked about in Hanover, is the difference between an intention and a mental posture. Intentions, at least in English, imply that you are going to do the work to fulfill the intention. Die Intention impliziert, dass du die Arbeit verrichten wirst, um die Intention auszuführen. But in the in a mental posture the assumption is the dynamic activity of the 10,000 things is going to do the work.

[54:49]

In dieser geistigen Haltung da ist die Vorannahme, dass die Aktivität der 10,000 So you hold the mental posture in the flow of the stream as you might hold a rock or a flower in a stream. And the flow affects the stream and the rock differently. And that tells you something, that you experience something through that. Okay, now the flow of your blood is a condition of aliveness. If your blood didn't flow in your circulatory system, you'd die.

[55:57]

Okay, so it's a condition of existence. We can also say that time, the flow of time, is a condition of existence. And as the flow of blood in your circulatory system is inseparable from aliveness, at the same time you can influence the flow of blood. And one thing that happens in meditation, the flow of blood and heartbeat and so forth can be influenced. And what I'm saying here is the flow of time in your circulatory system can also be influenced. Now, clock time, or the time, the always-there time of the world, which newspapers and the media, etc., are always establishing that it's an always-there time,

[57:14]

No, I'm not saying permanent time. That sounds kooky. But the sense that time is always there is a kind of implicit permanence. So an always-there time, it's always the clock, and things happen in Afghanistan and the United States, and it's all happening in this always-there time. But our lived time, our experienceable time, is not always their time. The time of this seminar this afternoon is surely in some ways different from the time of your yesterday afternoon.

[58:44]

And the intensity of possibilities in the time as you experience it, the flow of phenomenological time, the depth of experienceable time is different from moment to moment. And you have the capacity to open yourself to a very articulated feel of time. And it changes your feeling of being alive. You live in a flow of satisfaction primarily, not of dissatisfaction.

[59:48]

Du lebst dann in erster Linie in einem Fluss der Zufriedenheit und nicht in einem Fluss der Unzufriedenheit. And another name for time is performative time. Und ein anderer Name für die Zeit ist die Ausführungszeit. And I used performative time yesterday in in contrast to preformative, which you can't say in German easily. Now, in English, preform means to form before. Perform means to form in the midst of it fully. So when you hear a piece of music performed, it's performed completely in the midst.

[61:14]

It is itself. So the adept practitioner feels like they're performing durative time. In fact, you are performing durative time, otherwise you'd be dead. But the experience that you're performing durative time makes a difference. And time that arises from phenomena as well as from yourself, from your sensorium.

[62:25]

So you see why I tried to give different names to time. There's always their time. And then there's performative time. And durative time. And sensorial phenomenological time. And... The topography of lived time in that sense as presence is very different than our usual sense of time. And this sense of experienceable time is what turns the present into a presence. and you feel the presence of a person and we can feel our shared presence and we can tune our shared presence but now just to throw away

[63:52]

Even though so much of Buddhist history has been about showing that there's no permanent self, and no continuous consistent self, that doesn't seem so relevant to us because we all know the self evolves and changes and refines and so forth. But when the idea of self... Now here we have the experience of self, like I think of this as associated with that and so forth. Hier haben wir die Erfahrung vom Selbst, wie zum Beispiel, ich denke an das und das ist mit dem und dem assoziiert.

[65:07]

And when associations come up with something, what is that self? Und wenn Assoziationen zu etwas aufsteigen, was ist das da? Das ist auch das Selbst. That's the experienceable self and there's the experienced self and that has a varied topography. But the idea of the self is we have an idea of ourselves as consistent and the same over time and blah, blah, blah. And there's often a disconnect between our experienced self and our idea of ourselves. And when our experienced self doesn't conform to or is dissonant with our idea of self, we often suffer. And then suffering, the self becomes a vehicle for suffering.

[66:22]

All right. So what I'm trying to say here is although we're not so interested in whether the self is permanent or not, when we psychologically identify with the idea of a consistent self supported, confirmed, reified defined through defined through an always present world that's out there. And the always there, out there time. We suffer. And that dynamic of time related to the always there, out there-ness

[67:25]

And the idea of self is virtually the same as believing you have a permanent self. So, now you can try to remedy that by removing the continuity of aliveness out of discursive thinking. And out of the idea of self. And out of the always sensible and always their time and always their world. and identify not just with an experienceable self, the topography of an experienceable self, but the self that clearly belongs to you.

[68:50]

And it's incomparable, it's not comparable to other selves and etc. Or to the extent that it's comparable is just an idea and it pales beside the actual experience of your moment by moment self as time. Okay. Thank you for giving me that riff. Okay. And what Hans brought up, The emphasis on seeing things, everything, as activity and not entities.

[70:11]

I would say that's one of the three basic realizations that's the preparatory practice for advanced practice. One is, as I've said, the sense of immersed in a field of mind. The world appears in a field of mind. That's the first thing you have to really get and embody. And the second we could say is knowing everything is an activity and there are no entities. And the second is to know everything as an activity, a movement.

[71:16]

And there are no units, no entities. You can treat something as an entity as you wish. But you know you're in the midst of the interdependence of everything. And the third is to... Live the present as presence. Is that time becomes beingness, aliveness itself. And it's performed time, not clock time. and these three things are all doable they're all within our capacity and they happen through a rearrangement of your attention

[72:17]

and a rearrangement of your world views. Okay? Okay. Yeah, I'm glad. Nervous. Well, that seems to me it's time... Maybe we have a moment to sit. Maybe we'll sit for a moment. These distinctions are useful when they create opportunities for practice.

[74:34]

In between them and around them you can see fields of practice. Yeah, and I hope they become useful to you that way. For this exploration only has meaning when you do it yourself.

[74:52]

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