You were all so silent down here, I thought no one was here. That's your advanced Zen training, I know. Thank you for being here to translate. You're welcome. So I'm always looking forward to this seminar. Yeah, one of the reasons is I simply like you so much. It's nice to see you. And another reason, of course, we've been together quite a long time. We're going to have an anniversary soon, I think. But also, I try, since I only see you once a year, try to bring up things that have happened since I was here and in Christchurch.

[01:29]

And somehow, I don't know, I guess it's satisfying to me or interesting to me that most of you or many of you are psychologists or whatever. So that makes me try to think about how what I'm speaking about makes sense from the point of view of therapists and psychology and how we exist again. And I think what I'd like to speak about during these days, of course I don't really know what we're going to speak about because always something happens, But at least I know one thing I'd like to speak about is time as a medium and time as an activity.

[02:58]

And as an activity. And usually I'm speaking about and within the implications of what I'm speaking is a concept of space. But I decided earlier this year to emphasize in a parallel way time as an activity and a medium. So I'm going to start with a comment of Dogen's. The dimensions of the 12 hours can never be measured. Die Dimensionen der zwölf Stunden können niemals gemessen werden.

[04:09]

Die Dimensionen der zwölf Stunden können nicht gemessen werden. And yet we call them the twelve hours. So much of what I think we can explore is in this little phrase. The dimensions of the twelve hours cannot be measured. Yet we call them the twelve hours. And it's been about a year since I've seen you, approximately. But the dimensions of this year for each of you are quite different from each other. The Japanese have a word, ikigai.

[05:30]

And it was made, people talked to me about it a number of times because it was a film made about it. People who live long, particularly in Okinawa, and anybody, have you seen the film? Well, I haven't seen it either, so... Together. And what... You know, some of you... new to me and this situation. And it's always good if you give me an excuse to repeat myself. Because you think, well, all of these people have been here 10 years or 20 years or something.

[06:37]

I'm just a lowly beginner. And everyone else knows everything. But actually everyone else has forgotten everything. Because we have a year to forget, you know, in between our meetings. So if I have some excuse to be reminded about something, then I can bring it back into the discussion. For example, there's one thing I can bring up to get us on the same page. Is the way the degree to which yogic culture is a body culture.

[07:47]

Now, I always get the impression, I'm talking about Japan and Asia, And some people bring that up, as someone did last weekend. She was here last week, so she doesn't have to be here. But I'm glad you're here nevertheless. So what I said last week about this, Which is I don't feel like I'm speaking about Japan particularly or Asia.

[09:05]

I feel I'm speaking about a way of being that hasn't been emphasized in our culture. that can be emphasized in our culture. And for the last probably 150 years or so is finding its way into our culture partly because of the way our culture is developing and partly because of our contact with Asian yugiko. You say all that as if it were real. I'm just translating, sir. No problem. Okay. And one of the interesting things about what we're doing here and what I'm trying to do in general is that we're on both sides of contrasting world views.

[10:22]

And as I've often said, we can make use of the contrast. In fact, we have the advantage of having this contrast. Now, I can say the words body culture, mind culture, But the degree to which yogic culture is a body culture takes a little getting used to. As some of you noticed, I just put on this postage stamp version of Buddha's robe.

[11:50]

I never thought of it as a postage stamp before. Maybe you could paste it on my corner and send me to Buddha. But we don't know how much the poster would be. UBS, the United Buddhist Service. Okay, well, if you may have noticed that I... Well, first of all, this is a, I don't know, I wasn't going to say this either. See, I told you I didn't know what I was going to talk about. This is called the pine needle stitch. And in Soto Shu, the school that I primarily practice, When this is made, when you make it, you finish it with this pine needle stitch.

[13:06]

We call it the pine needle stitch, but it's actually a kind of star plan having something to do with astrology. Like the big dipper, little dippers. And then you put this on this upper top of your spine. And there's this feeling of connecting heaven and earth. now I've just broken one of the rules or one of the customs because you just say it's a pine needle stitch you don't tell people that it's got this other dimension so I just put this on a few minutes ago

[14:08]

And you may have noticed I touched it to my forehead and touched it to the crown of my head. This kind of bringing the the physicality of the world into conscious attention is part of a body culture this kind of Buddhist body culture I mean if I put on this shirt I'm of course putting on something that's a physical part of the world on this physical body.

[15:19]

But in this kind of yoga culture, particularly if you wear robes, it's more explicit when you're... Ordained in the sense ordained means like to be put on the loom of reality. Ord means the web and woof of the loom. So it's more attention paid to the fact that you're interacting with the physical world. So if I step up on this platform, well, of course, I can't get up on this platform without stepping on the floor and stepping on the platform and so forth.

[16:28]

How is doing this any different in the yogic body culture than our Western culture emphasizing mentation more? One of the differences is you articulate each physical act So you don't just do the physical act, you have a conceptual feel for doing the physical act. So as I step up on the platform, And I can see this in fellow practitioners.

[17:53]

They either get it or they don't get it. They either do it or they don't do it. So I'm standing there. And I let the standing, the floor, come up into my foot. Which is just a concept. I mean, there's just a floor in my foot, but I have a concept of the floor coming up into my foot. And my experience is, if you join your physical acts with this kind of concept, It's almost like energy is coming through the floor, through the earth, into your foot. And my experience anyway feels nourishing. You feel nourished by the environment in which you live.

[19:24]

So you allow the floor to come, you have a concept of letting the floor support your foot or come up into your foot. The floor is also meeting the foot. And you bring attention to the foot and let something come up through the foot. So that's just stepping up on this platform. But it's really not much different from my doing this. Except these are obviously specifically chakras.

[20:25]

So when you do it specifically to a chakra, you're awakening the Sambhogakaya or subtle body. Or you're acknowledging in your ordinary activity this subtle body. Now all that was an introduction so that I could say something about the word Ikigai. And Okay, so the word ikigai can be translated in various ways. Iki means spirit or breath or reason for being. And it's loosely translated also as the reason you get up in the morning. To live a life in which you have a real reason that you want to get up each morning.

[21:46]

So, Now Ikigai, I don't really know exactly what Tsukiroshi was translating when he kept using the phrase innermost request. It's at least partially the concept of Ikigai. Which is the... As a concept, ikigai is discovering what you really want to live for. And it's a kind of command or encouragement.

[22:49]

In the word is the implication that if you really want to have a life worth living, you better find what your inmost request is. And you better live. Obviously you ought to live your inmost request. And it takes... it takes your lifetime to discover your inmost request. Or your lifetime is a process of coming closer always to your inmost request. And so one of the things that people discover when they talk to people who live a long time, who are long lived, is they commonly have, they're living a life they really want to live.

[24:16]

I just read in the newspaper that men and women who are depressed are statistically more likely to get cancer. I'm always skeptical about statistics, but it sounds right. Okay. So it does make sort of common sense. Common sense, common to all the senses, as I pointed out, is what it used to mean. So it makes ordinary sense and sense common to all the senses. But if you give you want to live a life that you enjoy and feel satisfied in living.

[25:25]

Now, that makes sense in both of our cultures, Western and yogic. But a yogic culture carries it another step. Okay. So say that you are, here we are together for these few days. Let's say that during this time you emphasize seeing if you can feel a sense of intactness. You can feel intact or integrated. Now this would be part of the discovery process to find your inmost request.

[26:41]

What makes you feel better? What makes you feel good? What has made you feel integrated in the past? What has occasionally made you feel like everything drops away and there's just beauty? Now, in this yogic approach to this, you would try to notice such feelings. And then you try to physicalize that feeling. And then you try to establish it as a physical location. And then you try to establish it as an attentional point.

[27:47]

A point you can bring attention to. And establish attention at this point. And you'd basically be establishing a continuum then. A continuum that is related to and is part of the exploration, the investigation to find your inmost request. I never would have thought of it that way.

[28:51]

I would never have thought of physicalizing it if I was in college or high school thinking, geez, I want to find out what I really want to do with my life. I wouldn't think, geez, I want to find the physical sensation of what I really want to do with my life. And then I will establish that as an attentional continuum and see where that leads me. And now that continuum will flow into other streams or widen, etc., Now I don't know how you feel, but when I discover something that's that different from the way I thought of the world before I started practicing,

[30:08]

It astonishes me for days, I'm sort of like in awe, wow, another possibility of being alive. Now, the concept of Ikigai also is, there's a sense that we each have an allotted lifetime. 70 years or some unit of time probably that is our genetic allotment. So one idea the Japanese have, if you live, when you are living a life and you're in the midst of really

[31:16]

It feels completely satisfying, what you're doing, how you're doing it. It's interesting, they say subtracted, you could say added. They say that's subtracted from your allotted lifetime, so you live that much longer. So people who discover their Ikigai live longer than other people. That's the common idea of this work. So this is a matter of life, not life or death, life or a long life. So what I thought it would be nice to do this evening is to establish together some sense of this bodily continuum.

[32:53]

And the concept, I want to introduce the concept of an attentional point. Okay. An attentional point is, well, like the middle of your forehead. Or the soles of your feet. And if you've seen... statues of the Buddha, often there's a kind of circle or spiral on the soles of his or her feet. And I consider having it tattooed on my feet, but then it tickled too much. or it can be your hara or it could be your elbows and one thing you can explore parallel to discovering your innermost request is can you establish

[34:14]

an attentional point. An attentional continuum. Now the idea is that you, instead of bringing attention Or letting your attention be captured by discursive thinking. I mean, it's not that you don't want to do discursive thinking sometimes. Or allow discursive thinking. Or just allow karmic formations to come up. But you don't only want to have that as a kind of prison for your attention. So the idea is that you start exploring.

[35:38]

When your attention starts being captured by discursive thinking, which you don't have any real interest in, But discursive thinking is so bossy. And it's so used to just taking charge of your attention. But usually we have no choice at all. But you can explore an attentional point, explore shifting attention from discursive thinking Which is you're sort of exercising the muscle of non-conceptual mind.

[36:49]

So... So you have some kind of thinking going on which is maybe upsetting you, maybe it's angst, maybe it's disturbing, compulsive. Or maybe it's just nothing. In some cases you might want this. not repress that thinking, just bring your attention away from that thinking. So you can experiment with seeing if you can bring attention away from, just generalize and say discursive thinking, Thinking about a person or thinking about a problem or something.

[38:03]

You can see if you have more vital power than the thoughts. Because if you're anxious about something or care about something too much, that often has more power than our basic vitality. So can your basic power, your basic power of vitality, can it pull attention away from these thoughts and put it in your elbows? Well, maybe flying Or your forehead or your hair, etc.

[39:28]

Or your cheekbones. I always find the cheekbones work very well with me. I transfer attention, front thinking, to the cheekbones. I feel I start to glow. Scare children and things like that. I have no idea. I'm just... So this is the kind of experiment that's part of the practice of discovering your innermost request in a yoga culture. So the degree to which body is part of intention, of mentation, etc., is to me an extraordinary degree.

[40:30]

And then how the body is developed, what can I say, the attentional body is developed To have the capacity to receive attention. It's almost like you're deepening the harbor in which bigger and bigger boats with deeper keels can come to rest. Now, in the midst of everything I'm saying, as I said in the last seminar, the most basic practice, which all this depends on, is you're bringing attention to attention itself. So you just stop every now and then during the day.

[41:46]

It's kind of refreshing. and experiment bringing attention to attention. So the attention that might go to things in the world goes to attention itself. And you can use breath as a bridge to get there. You can bring attention to the breath and then basically shift that into attention to attention itself. And that's the most basic way to develop the deep harbor of non-conceptual mind.

[42:50]

Okay, I think that's enough for first evening. Maybe too much. And again, I really would like your help in suggesting to me what we might focus on during this lucky that we have four days together. And again, I would like your help by bringing to me what we should focus on in these happy four days that we have.

[43:53]

Okay. All right? She's been willing to stay here and translate until Sunday. So, we're all equipped for this. This is my equipment. You know, I always see that RCA dog and the little machine and his master's voice, and I don't know whether I'm the dog or I'm the little machine. You don't have to explain. You don't even know the image. I can't. You're too young. Ah, dear. Thank you. And tomorrow we can start with some questions about what I just said, if you want. Und morgen können wir beginnen mit einigen Fragen, vielleicht zu dem, was ich gerade gesagt habe.

[44:57]

Außer ihr habt alles bis morgen schon wieder vergessen.

[44:59]

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