So I think we have a pretty good idea, at least the best I can establish, if I can establish at all, a feel for the field of mind. And it... this emphasis on the field as... particularly for us, as... because we've got to get used to the emphasis more than the contents. Or as one of the contents. Yeah. Yeah, it's... It's parallel to the same assumption that to practice attention you first give attention to attention.

[01:20]

So I'm not just giving attention to this glass, I'm giving attention to the attention, the attention to the glass. And I feel the attention as part of the ingredients of the appearance of the glass. And as attention is obviously a dimension of mind, And let me point out that attention is not the same as consciousness. It's a dynamic of consciousness.

[02:21]

It's what you can bring consciousness alive with. But attention is its own dimension of mind as consciousness is also a dimension of mind. So as I can bring attention to the attention to the glass, I can be aware that in all circumstances mind is one of the ingredients. So if I look at any one of you, it's clear that it's within the experience of mind that I'm looking at you.

[03:31]

And then I know that I'm not looking at you, I'm looking at my mind looking, perceiving, sensing you. And so I know that I can't see the whole of you. So I can only see what my mind sees. allows me to see of you. So immediately I become aware of a component of mystery in my knowing, sensing you. So I can feel complete in my giving you attention, but I know that even if I feel complete in the giving of attention, there is still a quality of mystery

[04:42]

or unfathomableness that is part of everything. And that's just simply looking carefully, phenomenological experience. Okay. Now, although I started out earlier this morning saying I don't think this sense of non-dual really relates to psychotherapy and psychology. Now I'm heading down that street or road or something. So you can tell me later if you think it does have some relationship or you can Or we can try to discover what that relationship is.

[06:20]

It might be. Yeah. Okay. So now I want to... look at two statements from Buddhism. What I seem to be emphasizing these days is to look carefully at some Buddhist statements And don't just pass them over as, oh, that's interesting, Zen types of statements. But really, what's meant here? For example, in the recent koan we did in Winter Branches,

[07:21]

The image occurs and it occurs in other koans as well. The bottomless shoe of the present. Okay, so since that's been kept in these stories, in various of Kohan's stories, for a thousand years or more. Is this still something a homeless person might say? The bottomless shoe of the present? Why is this statement being made?

[08:33]

What's it trying to convey? Okay, so now let me go back to what Chandra Kirti, who lived from 600 to 650 and was a disciple of Nagarjuna, said. Yeah. He said, take a mindful observation of the body as the departure point. Okay. Now, the idea of a departure point is part of a yogic world in which every appearance is a beginning and a departure.

[09:35]

You're going to have to travel the both of you with me. I need you both. It gets more complicated all the time. It's interesting. Because if each moment is unique, each moment is also a departure point. And if there's no ground of being, connecting God-world or God-space or something like that, Und wenn es keinen Grund des Seins gibt, keinen Grund, der alles verbindet, keinen Gottesraum oder so. How do you have something to anchor yourself? Wie kannst du denn etwas haben, worin du dich verankern kannst? How do you feel you're grounded?

[10:48]

Wie fühlst du dich verwurzelt? Well, here you see in this statement, take... the mindful observation of the body as the point of departure. It means you've developed mindfulness practice. You're always in the presence of mindful feeling, observation of the body. And you find that a useful anchor, a useful departure point. Depressed or lost or unhappy or whatever. There's the departure point.

[11:50]

There's the location point. You forgot to start. No, no, no, I did not, but it says right time out. Well, we got another one. Yes. Is that timing out too? No, this is fine. This was only recording her and this one's recording me. Der hier nimmt nur sie auf und das nimmt ihn auf. Well, your time is up. If you listen to the tapes, it'll only be her from now on. We're actually comparing the two to see if they're equally effective. But this is plugged in, right? Yes. Okay, fine. Who cares? Yeah, I think. What? Well, I think it, for some reason, doesn't have enough space on it.

[12:53]

Oh, it's filled up. I've talked way too much. Probably got all winter branches on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, good. I'm glad we have a front up, I mean a back up. Yes. Okay. Okay, now there's another statement from Buddhism, which I want to contrast with Chandrakirti's teaching. The Bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body. Yeah, so much for you, Chandrakirti. You got it all wrong. Okay, so the Bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body. The bodhisattva contemplates the physical body in relationship to the inner attentional body.

[14:14]

Now that throws a complication into the situation. Okay, let's say it again. The bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body, simply contemplate the physical body. He may, like Chandrakirti, recommend take it as a departure point. But if he is, he or she is contemplating the physical body, he or she does it in relationship to the inner attentional body. In relationship to the inner attentional body.

[15:21]

What the heck is the inner attentional body? Now, here we're really in the realm of, you know, this is really makes experiential sense only for meditators. Okay, all right. So, I'm doing Zazen. Right now, in a way, I am, and when I'm doing Zazen. And Zazen, as you know, is sitting absorption. So I'm in the midst of sitting absorption and I can hear Nicole's voice and Ulrike putting her glasses down and I can see the bamboo and feel the nice day that it's come to be And I can feel your individual and mutual physical presence.

[16:45]

And that's all qualities or qualities Contents related to my sensorium. The sensorial field established by my five physical senses. And the sixth mental source sense. which also accompanies all five physical senses. Okay. Now, while I'm doing zazen, my eyes may be closed or my eyes may be open.

[17:50]

But I have a feeling of an inner attentional space. I can bring a feeling of attention to that, I'm calling it inner space. If I look into it with my mental eyes, it may feel kind of gray. Or it may feel neutral. Or it may have some feel bright in various ways or dim in various ways. And it is it's rather independent from the outer attentional space of my sensorium.

[19:26]

And my inner attentional space doesn't have to have content. And in contrast again to the outer attentional space, which the content is determined by how my five physical senses relate to the phenomenal world. But my inner attentional body, inner attentional space, has both voluntary and involuntary contents. I wouldn't say that the outer attentional space is involuntary.

[20:43]

It's related to what's actually here, the day, the person sitting near me and so forth. Now, the inner attentional space has involuntary contents like dreaming mind does. That we spoke in Hannover the last couple of weeks. So this is obvious, we all dream and we know that a sign of dreaming is when we start having involuntary contents appearing in the mind. They can be interesting, surprising, whatever. So there's an inner attentional space or field of inner attentional field of mind In which contents appear.

[22:10]

And it's in that space, in a sense, that you gestate or incubate a turning word phrase, wado or something. Or when you think in cases as the development of koans in the primarily Sun dynasty, Was part of a wider historical development in China to think in cases, legal cases, medical cases, and so forth. war Teil einer größeren kulturellen Entwicklung in China, nämlich der in Fällen zu denken, juristischen, also legalen Fällen, legal cases, medizinische Fälle und so weiter.

[23:23]

Yeah, and that's why a koan actually means a court case, a legal case koan, taken from this case study practice of Chinese judicial system. She says it will be called the precedence case. What? A precedence case, a kind of legal situation that was never there before. Yeah. That's where it comes from. Yeah. In China? Yeah. Oh, okay. She goes to China. Okay. A precedence case, yeah, okay. And that's what the Harvard Law School now and business school use cases in similar ways. The business school and the law school, they do it differently.

[24:35]

The law school and the law school. Okay, so the idea of thinking in cases is, as Ulrike says, precedent examples. It's thought that cases have more information in them than just rules. And cases require active interpretation. Okay, so part of the development of koan cases is that they appear in this inner attentional space as little representative stories.

[25:56]

So you may feel when somebody does something with their umbrella, you suddenly feel Yangshan placing his hoe in the ground in the garden. And it's partly that the concept is there's a flow of events going on all the time. And that flow of events is actually... whether you see it or not, a flow of cases. A flow of constellated circumstances. And it's thought that this inner attentional space can in a way slow down the flow of events like a slow motion movie or something.

[27:10]

And you feel the constellated, you feel the situations have a certain constellated integrity or relationship. Now that makes my explanation here a little complicated. But the background is they began to develop the main teaching vehicle for Zen is these koans. And like you incubate or gestate a turning word phrase in this inner attentional space. incubate or gestate.

[28:26]

You also can, without thinking about it, just hold in mind these cases as little episodic events. And if you do that, these koans begin to reveal themselves. Okay. So, the Bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body, The bodhisattva contemplates the physical body in relationship to or simultaneously with this inner attentional space. Okay, now, we're all located in the same place here? We're all together, on the mark, it's set, go.

[29:35]

Okay, the next step. If, as I said earlier, Dogen said, um, simply steadily what's the phrase? Be steadily intimate with the field of mind. Okay. That field of mind can also be external. In other words, I can develop a feeling for the outer sensorial space. I can develop a feeling for the inner attentional space.

[30:40]

which is described by the first four skandhas. So it's an inner attentional space which is characterized by not thinking about. And insofern ist das ein innerer Aufmerksamkeitsraum, der von einem Gefühl, nicht drüber nachzudenken, charakterisiert wird. One of the gates is to learn how to not think about. Eines der Zugänge ist, zu lernen, wie man nicht drüber nachdenkt. As I said yesterday, I can notice this there, nicht drüber nachdenken. Dass man es zu lernen, dass man nicht drüber nachdenkt. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I can hold this object. Also, ich kann diesen Gegenstand halten.

[32:05]

I can notice the object. Ich kann diesen Gegenstand bemerken. But I don't have to think about it. Aber ich muss nicht darüber nachdenken. I can feel it. It's cool. Is it a bell? What the hell? I don't know if it's a bell or not. It feels like it might be. Ist das eine Glocke? Keine Ahnung. Darüber denke ich nicht nach. Fühlt sich an wie eine Glocke. Könnte eine sein, aber... So it's a yogic skill to allow things to happen, to accept things in a field without thinking about them. Not thinking, as we say. Okay, so you can establish this inner attentional space as an outer attentional space if you don't think about it. then you can be in a field of an inner attentional space that's in a sense externalized.

[33:16]

And that's something like when Dogen says, I can enter a profound, an ultimate state, So there are various, from each of us, there's to various degrees an externalized inner attentional space. And people who practice together and practice together regularly in the Zendo, for example, can establish an externalized inner attentional space. Now, I say externalized, but, you know, that's not quite right. There's an act in a way of externalizing it.

[34:35]

But it's just one of the potential ways to notice the space we live in by letting it happen without thinking about it. It's a way to be present to an attentional space or to notice by the skill of not thinking about it. And I think probably, you know, when they talk about tennis players in the zone, etc., they're not thinking about its space. And nobody in the 50s talked about in the zone.

[35:39]

The whole concept of in the zone came from a meditator who I happen to know. And he, once he introduced the concept, various athletes began to say, well, yes, that does, and it became something that athletes started to notice. But it's interesting that although it happens through physical activity of a sport, a high-end sport, it's different when you start noticing it and you start developing it. Okay, now the last thing I should speak about in this millennia is this concept of Ma. Because now I think I can present it in a way that's more relevant. Now, the simplest translation of ma, which is specifically a Japanese idea, I don't think it exists in the same way in China, is the simplest translation is interval or proportions.

[37:30]

Die einfachste Übersetzung dafür ist Intervall oder Proportion. I like the concept of proportion because it was so important to Ivan Illich. He spent several years of his life thinking about proportion when it existed more predominantly in the West and so forth. Okay, so say that I have, you know, we're going back to space doesn't, space separates, but it also connects. And space isn't just a kind of medium of connectedness like we're all in the same water. It's like it's something that's partly air, partly water, partly various kinds of viscosity.

[38:48]

And on some parts of it you can breathe and some parts of it you can't really breathe so well. And in some parts you can feel a brightness to the whole body. So if you tend to think about it as just a container, Which is a cultural idea. And you shake yourself loose from that. And you start feeling space as an ingredient. With viscosity, with textures, with expansion and contraction. contraction and expansion.

[39:57]

Then you can begin to participate in the feel, quality, kind even of space. So let's just take the word proportion. Again, I'm sorry you're sitting here in front of me. I have to keep using you as an example. So there's a certain proportion, a certain distance, which we can also call a proportion, between Ulrike and myself. And another one between myself and Norbert. Now, probably, if there was a kind of psychic grid here, we're all sitting down in certain kind of locations in proportion to each other.

[41:00]

and our bodies are establishing a spinal space and our bodies are also establishing a space of whether there's kind of curves connecting us or sharp feelings connecting us So if I feel it as proportion then I can change the proportions. I can begin to maybe Norbert moves forward a little and there's a kind of feeling that happens and we change the proportion. Or I can feel it in a temporal sense and then we use the word interval.

[42:16]

There's an interval here. And there's some things are happening one thing after another. Now, to teach that in Chinese Zen, for example, you don't Cross in front of the Buddha, in the Zen Do, or the Buddha Hall. But farther back, you can go and do Kin Hin, walking meditation, and pass in front of the Buddha. But if you're on the Buddha's left side, if for some reason you have to go to the right side, you go all the way around and come back.

[43:28]

Because there's an invisible territory in the middle that you kind of respect. And the eating boards in a zendo, which we now have sort of eating boards in the zendo, temporary zendo at Johanshoff, The previous sendo was great, but it was a little pressed and narrow and didn't have a musical quality. And there wasn't room for eating boards. And in the new temporary Zendo, there's room for eating boards. And we could call the eating board a ma board.

[44:53]

Because you don't step on it, you step over it. And the sense of it is that when you step over it, you're in a Buddha space. And then you step over it when you enter the space where you have service and things like that. And the whole idea there is to kind of demonstrate a different topography of space. And one of the concepts from earlier in Japan is that a Ma space could be a space where a Shinto deity would appear, you know, something like that. And do you remember Amanohashidate, where they have that?

[45:58]

That's the same idea. Amanohashidate. Amanohashidate, which is the bridge of the gods. And it's strangely, you turn upside down. I mean, you lean and look at this bridge through your legs. You have to spread your legs a little farther apart than one fist. Then it looks like this thin line of beech and pine trees. stretches into the sky. So it becomes a way in which gods can come down.

[47:02]

But it's like in Japan, it's not up in heaven, it's just everywhere. If you happen to turn your body and look between your legs, hey, there's the gods. So you step over the ma board and you step into a Buddha space. Okay. That's it. And so now, when your client comes in to see you, as they step in the room, you change your body and make them feel they've stepped into a Buddha space. Okay. Things like that. Why not? Nearer than, more than near?

[48:18]

Should I wait till tomorrow? Generally, no. Generally, no. She's locating herself in an easy. All right, I've been trying to find a way to talk about, and I'll do this as briefly as I can because I think we should end. I've been trying to think about how to talk about the experience of non-duality. Also, so, if I'm looking as I am looking at all of you, the observing eye has no distance in it. There's no separation from the observing and the eye. Es gibt keine Trennung zwischen dem Beobachten und dem Ich.

[49:40]

Oh, sorry, I'm now, yeah. Not the pronoun, the physical eye. There's a relationship, but not etymologically. Okay, so there's the observing physical eye. is nearer than near to the act of observing. You can't even use the word near because the word near in English actually means next. Okay, so it's as near as anything can be. And the only way I can say it to myself is the only words I can find in English is more than near. I tried various combinations of words. Beyond and near doesn't work because it sounds like it's beyond.

[50:43]

Not near, no, that doesn't work. So all I can say in English, and I don't have, literally, there aren't the linguistic resources in English to say this. And I think that in a culture which emphasizes or recognizes non-duality, There are probably ways in which non-duality is assumed and taught to children, to infants.

[51:48]

But our culture is so at least in English, that it's all about entities and not about activities and relationships. there are no activities, it's all entities. Okay, so if I try to stay with this feeling of the observing orb of the eye, in which there's no separation between the eye and the observing, then maybe we can say that the eyelids are pretty close too.

[52:52]

It's more than near. So if I keep the feeling of the observing orb of the eye and the absolute nearness of the eyelids, Did you say orb? Orb means something round. Orb. Orb. The earth is an orb. You mean the eye-kugel? Yeah, the eye-kugel. Eye-kugel. It's an apple. Oh, really? You're the apple of my eye. You only say that to Eve, though, right? Okay, so the apple of my eye, the peach of my eye. The pear, a pear, a peach.

[54:05]

No, anyway, the fruit of this conversation is there's the absolute more than near layer of the eyelid. So maybe we can think of space as layered. And when I look at you, there's a layer here which is just like my eyelids. And I don't feel any separation. Any thinking about which creates separation is gone. And I just feel so much in the same context, it's more than near. So when you feel something like or feel that, that's like what's meant by the experience of non-duality.

[55:24]

And one of the entries or approaches to this is to develop the skill of noticing without thinking about. So in these koans we looked at recently, all three of them start, it's 12, 15 and 32 in the Book of Serenity. All of them start with a question, something like, where are you from? And we can ask, why is this, why do three koans? Oh, it's such a dumb question. Where are you from? I'm from Germany. Can't you tell my accent?

[56:24]

Them Buddhas and that table. So in this case, by, you know, this Zen master, Dijon or Guishan, asking where are you from, the question really is, Have you left behind where you're from? It's a kind of trick. Do you still think you're from somewhere? And you can tell me where you're from. If you were alert and somebody like Guishan says, where are you from? You might answer, there are not even Buddhas here.

[57:26]

Because you're clearly then there and not from anywhere. And that's what the shoeless Buddha the bottomless shoe of the present is supposed to convey to you. It's a little bit like, as I said the other day, when a Buddhist is cremated and you put their ashes in the grave, There's no bottom to the grave, it's just dirt. So the ashes disappear. So you couldn't go back a year later for forensic analysis because they're not there anymore.

[58:48]

But that's similar to the feeling of the bottomless shoe of the present. Okay. So when some client comes to see you, Norbert, you say, put on your bottomless shoes, please. They're right at the door. And I always remember you having people walk several steps in the dark. All right. Thank you very much. Maybe since we have a minute, let's sit for a minute. But just as you are, you don't have to assume anything. The bodhisattva does not contemplate the physical body.

[60:57]

The bodhisattva contemplates the physical body in relationship to the inner tensional body. A mutually resonant inner attentional body.

[61:52]

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