So who wants to help us from yesterday? Wer möchte uns von gestern her helfen? Yes, Fritz. Wir haben gestern darüber gesprochen, dass Dinge keine Entität, sondern Aktivität sind. Yesterday we talked about that things are not entities but activities. And I didn't understand much of this. Roger. Roger had a stone yesterday. Yesterday he had this stone. When you say it's a stone, it means nothing. And we say that is a stone that has no meaning. And when I say I found this on the beach and it is right for me, then it is something else.

[01:05]

And when I pass the stone on to someone, I would take with both hands and turn myself towards the other person and hand it over. Yeah, it's quite simple what I'd say. Say something more? Oh, please. Can I have a little taste of tea while you're doing it? I'm not so well with my spine.

[02:06]

My upper spine, my cervical spine has bent in two years and my head turns upwards and starts trembling. See then? And it's very difficult for me. The third? As I said yesterday, the development is so slow. Why do we practice if we die anyway before? And then later on it came to my mind, when you would think this way, we couldn't be practicing. Yeah, that's good. That was an answer for me. Thank you. Yeah. I'm 73 and counting. Okay.

[03:26]

You know, you can bring attention to a bent spine. Still works. Okay. Yes. I will try to keep in mind what you said, Fritz. Yes. All right. You talked about this morning again to the intention of bringing attention to the spine. And what fascinated me and is more powerful is to keep the intention up than bringing attention to... Yeah, as then bringing the attention to the spine.

[04:28]

As if the intention offered me a wider field where things could appear, for example the spine. And the attention is actually more restricted. And attention sort of narrows it more. That's my experience with it. Good. Thank you. It was a small group yesterday. There are only two people here. It was a small group. Christian, you, though you're completely new, I think, you're welcome to say something whenever you want. Somebody was... Yes. It was a tremendous help, these little soft hands touching this palm.

[05:43]

And holding my one and a half year old daughter, what you said was one to one directly experienceable and practicable what you said. Touching up and down with the spine, so it was directly worked. Oh, good. And I could concentrate on that, yes. I was able to concentrate. I could hold it. It's a very simple thing, you know. If you bring attention to the spine... Or to watermelons, I don't care. Yeah. You're bringing attention away from thinking. Yeah. As soon as attention leaves breath or posture... it goes to our thinking.

[07:24]

Because that's the location where we establish moment by moment continuity. And as soon as attention goes to thinking, thinking is mostly glued together by self-referencing. so immediately it goes to thinking and then to self-referencing which is the glue of thinking the narrative of thinking and then once it's gone to self-referencing it goes to who you were and who you're going to be And then you're in an unquiet mind. Busy mind or worried mind or anxious. Moods come flowing in from all directions. And you're hardly present. Not you, but some people. So it's a tremendously simple and powerful act to bring attention to the spine or to the posture and the breath.

[08:54]

And then bring attention to your thinking when you need to. Okay. Yes. The moment when your attention goes to your everyday mind thinking, when you realize that this is happening, And that Zen mind is again and again realizing, making clear that this is happening, that your attention goes to everyday mind thinking and so on.

[09:57]

Yeah. We can, part of the definition, if we have a definition of Zen mind, can be the mind which notices attention has gone to thinking. If it's, we could call it Zen mind, if it also can shift the emphasis away from thinking. Say back to the spine or the breath. So just to notice that we're thinking discursively. I wouldn't call Zen mind, but the ability to notice and then change your emphasis, we could call Zen mind. Thank you. Yes. For me it was new that there is a mind which observes the observing mind.

[11:34]

Okay. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, that's that when something strikes you as new, it's good to hold it in mind and come back to it and let it kind of mature as an observation. Because, you know, not to go into it too much, but I mean, each of us will find different things that are new or, you know, stick with us.

[12:38]

And usually, although what sticks with you might be different than what sticks with him, The fact that you notice it or it sticks with you usually means there's a whole lot of stuff stuck to it. And when you stay with it, it's like a little tip of an iceberg. Not necessarily gold, but other things are connected. That's a way of pulling up connections. A way of studying ourselves. Someone else. Yes. Yesterday I heard for the first time the instruction to pay attention to the spine and also the intention to pay attention to the breath.

[13:59]

That was separated from each other, as I heard it. Yes, I heard for the first time the teaching to hold attention on the... Just holding the attention towards the spine. Yes. And... And the end, the significance is the end the intention to hold attention to the breath. Tomorrow I heard you say this can become one.

[15:02]

This morning. I'm sorry. She's psychic, I know. This morning I heard you say that this can become one. One? Yeah, this can merge. That is not practiced separately so much? That can merge or become one. Now I have tried to experience this on my pillow since yesterday separately. And that led me to the conclusion that if I only send my attention to my spine, then it has a lot to do with being aware of my spine. When I practice this on my cushion, it's separately practicing it.

[16:13]

It meant that this is much I'm conscious of my spine. There's much consciousness of my spine in it. I can go from vertebra to vertebra and know where there are tensions. Yeah, good. Yeah, but that's kind of unsatisfying. Tom, can you just sit still? Tom, maybe you have to stay in one position. You have three people all the time. No, just sit still. Excuse me. Since I didn't want or could practice this separately, what is important to me is to preserve my spine with my breath, Because I couldn't and didn't want to practice this separately, but wanted to be aware of my breath and the spine.

[17:23]

I reformed the sentence and said to hold the intention. And my breath being aware towards the spine. And this feels most satisfying as most dilliness comes into the body and the spine and into the thoughts. And it really confused me, or maybe I misunderstood it, to separate it. And yes, the question remained, should I practice it separately, or can I let it flow together?

[18:31]

I was a little worried about this. Did I understand this right to practice this separately? Or could I... You can do anything you want. I think it's good to try it separately. And then the more familiar you get with it separately, the more... It can happen simultaneously or together. Because you're articulating your body. You're articulating your body through attention. Mm-hmm. Let me say something, a little something at this point. And it was a kind of medicine.

[19:45]

You know, the brain, the parts of the body are represented in the brain. It's just neurobiology. But the body is not represented in the same way. topographical proportion to the physical body. In other words, a large part of the brain, for instance, is given over to the mouth and the fingertips and the hands. And a small part of the body of the brain is given over to the large area of skin of the back. So the topography of the body and the brain is quite different than our physical body. Okay. So maybe we see the world as a glove we can keep putting our fingers into.

[21:04]

In any case, when you begin to articulate the body through attention, you also develop a different bodily feeling, a different kind of balance, of the body than just the simple physical body. And you'll feel it most particularly in meditation, the body you feel when the kind of boundaries of the body disappear. What's the word? The... Shift? The... Tactile, the somatic, I don't know, the somatic mind body is not the same as the physical body.

[22:13]

Peter? Peter? I would like to join to that what Uli said. My experience is that when I bring attention to attention and lately this being in connection with the spine, The breath follows and goes there on its own, so to say. Yes. There is a close connection. Yes, that's right. Yes. Yes. What I can do is I can direct my attention towards the spine.

[23:30]

But it's more a visual image or picture of my spine. Just when it's hurting, which is not so often the case, then I can differentiate certain spots or areas. I do it like that and I ask myself if that's all right. And one experience this morning in the first period. I felt a little uncomfortable with my legs.

[24:37]

And went towards the spine and tried to stay there. And then in the second period I sat very comfortable and without problems. And then I had another idea or image of my spine and my whole body. Yeah. Often we have to start with pictures. And we bring attention to the picture. And then we can begin through the picture to begin to feel the territory and bring attention into the territory. But pictures themselves are very powerful. The picture themselves is something that you're generating and has a very powerful interaction with our actual, so-called actual physical body.

[25:56]

Okay, yes, way in the back. We're talking of spine. In German, back and spine sometimes both used. And is there, and would there be a sense in it to differentiate the... No spinal cord. Spinal cord, especially? To differentiate the spinal cord within the spine, would that be useful, helpful? We're talking about the head and we're talking about the brain.

[27:02]

So we differentiate there. Well, I think, as Uli implied too, if you explore your body with attention, And you can explore, say, your heart, the physical heart. And the circulatory system. And you can explore your lungs and so forth. And I think you could explore each separate vertebrae. With various degrees of attention, you can feel each vertebrae.

[28:06]

And I think, for me anyway, with a picture of the vertebrae, I can then start to find attention. And it's useful to do this kind of exploration. Your feeling of inside and outside of the body kind of disappears. Yeah. and you feel much more part of your body. Or you feel you are your body, not part of your body. But that's rather different than the emphasis on creating a kind of spinal attention. Basically, when you do that, it's part of the development of the chakra system.

[29:19]

And the physical breath becomes a more subtle breath that's not really breath that you can feel energetically throughout the spine and top of the head. But that development starts very simply by just bringing attention to your spine. In English, I don't use the word backbone often because I don't want it to be back. I want it to be forward. And I'm not so much emphasizing the bones as I'm emphasizing the territory. Yes. Mahakali. I would like to come back to pictures and images and intention.

[30:31]

When I started sitting I had seen pictures of people who had been sitting And my own image was, I would like to sit that way. And that is... And that, this calmness and stillness being in these pictures brought me to continue with sitting, not so much the special exercises, but these pictures always drew me to further sitting. Of course, when, for example, being in the zazhin, I worked on an attention plane, let's say, Then the background was always this feeling of this image to sit like that.

[31:44]

And on the long run this developed my posture. Yeah, I understand. A Buddha's a good Buddha image. And ideally, they're supposed to be approved by a realized person. And the whole idea, you know, in the original, I'm just sort of rapping. Unrapping and rapping. you know originally there were no images of the Buddha there were footprints of the Buddha and the relics of the Buddha little molecules supposedly of

[32:52]

the ashes after the Buddha was cremated. But the relics are, in a way, all Buddha statues are still supposed to be sort of relics. that when you look at a Buddha you become a Buddha so ideally a Buddha inspires you makes you feel that and in a Buddha often the robes and in a Bodhisattva often the jewelry articulates the chakra system And often Buddhas, the only ones I've seen regularly, the small ones, have the ashes of previous owners in them. I have a lot of Buddhas here in America and so forth. When I die, everybody's going to have to go around stuffing ashes in the Buddhas.

[34:28]

There won't be anything left for a grave. What a job. What a terrible job you're going to have. I'd better give away Buddhas before I die. Yeah. Yeah, okay, someone else. Thank you. Let me say something about pictures, which, I don't know, just an anecdote again. I had, for a while, from sitting on wood floors and things, and I had a very large I don't know what you call it medically, around the tendon here. It was quite big. It was like that big.

[35:29]

And so I just, you know, it was there. I didn't care much. It was like a little pillow. And so... I at some point asked doctors what you're supposed to do about it. Because other people would see it and they'd say, what is that terrible thing on your file? So I was told that the usual remedy or the old remedy, traditional remedy, was the family Bible. I said, what the heck does that mean? Well, in the old days, it was the biggest book people had. So you just smash it with the family Bible.

[36:36]

Because if you cut it, it would just heal back up again. But if you smashed it, it would tend not to heal back. So I tried it with a few sutras. And it just healed back up again. So after about, well over a year, I don't remember, I went to two different doctors on the same day. And I mean, I'm just saying this about the power of pictures. And I got the two doctors, two different doctors, What kind of doctor do this? I forget the name. Professional. And I said, draw me a picture of what's going on. So they both drew me pictures. And they're both pretty good pictures.

[37:36]

And then I went home. And I meditated on those pictures. And the next day it was gone. Absolutely, the next morning it was gone. So if you can, you know, it's like getting rid of warts or something like that. So a picture can be a very powerful way of directing attention. And it stayed away, all these, this was back in the And it stayed away all this time, except it's come back slightly over the last 10 years or so. But it just protects that area. It's not a problem. Now, didn't you promise me, Frank, you were going to say something?

[38:37]

You forgot! Oh, okay. And miles to go before I sleep. What was left from yesterday was the word activity. Get my mind in my awareness to direct not so much to entities but to activities. Activity, how to say this, is like happening in German.

[39:37]

The dimension which is there and which has in Buddhist practice is larger or broader than here with us. And at the moment of course it was in my head that I had to say something. And all the time something tried to prepare me for that. Something's trying to prepare you to say something? Well, I'm glad I helped with the preparation. And there's this trying it within me, and entity is a really difficult word. the difficulty being finding things which are prepared already within me which I can say all the time something is at the same time all the time something is happening you say something you say something

[40:56]

And within me at the same time with this spine which is activity all the time and the breath which makes it alive and the opportunity to experience how I go to and fro the preparation to what I'm going to say and feeling myself how I am with this or how I feel with this and to enter into this process at the moment now when I'm talking now at this moment where I'm really talking from out of my spine and from out of my breast otherwise it wouldn't be possible Where right now I am activity, active and activity, I can't make this.

[42:19]

And at the same time a question for me, who does it, what doing is this, what activity? And how do I get into it, or how does it happen? How do I enter into this? How do I happen? Because what I experience, this actually happening is really good. It's different from what I would present, what I had thought of before, prepared before. So what you actively did is more rich or full than what you prepared to do. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think for practitioners anyway, the...

[43:19]

Preparation, tension and so forth is part of it. But to let an overall mind-body systemic process occur. Which the sense of a self and the sense of an observer and so forth are part of the process but not the director of the process. Okay. Now, Fritz, when you brought up entities and activity, did you have a similar problem to his or the word entity? I can't say it in the simple way that an entity is something solid and unchanging. And don't have another excess that I don't have.

[44:53]

Well, the example... Anyway, the example I usually use for years now is to see a tree as a tree, as an entity. And to see a tree as... Treeing is activity. No. I don't know how these words, activity and entity, work in German. They're words I've settled on and over a number of years because I don't have other alternatives that I find satisfactory in English. So the terms I come to in English, even though you translate them, they shouldn't necessarily be the terms you use to define practice.

[46:00]

I mean... I mean, German and English are closely enough related that it works pretty well often. But there's some differences between English and German. Not only that it has 50% of its vocabulary is French. but also it has a it has i don't remember german has 400 000 words or something and english has 600 000 something like that a lot more yeah a lot But German has more verbs than English does.

[47:16]

So when you start saying things, any word you use is in the context of the other possibilities. So in German, the context of the other possibilities is quite different than in English. So the basic wisdom of Buddhism is that everything's changing. And from that observation, you can extrapolate the whole of Buddhism. Nothing's permanent, nothing's inherent, and so forth. Now, what time are we supposed to have lunch? One o'clock. So my word activity means activity. our participation in the fact that everything's changing.

[48:20]

So I say everything is activity. Nothing is a noun. Nothing is an entity. I'd like to turn all nouns into verbs. Okay, something like that. Okay. So unless someone has something they want to say, yeah, please. I think it works very well also in the German language with unity and activity. I think it is working quite well in Germany with entities and activities. Because the activity of a tree, I am involved in this, in it, because it needs me to sense the activity of a tree.

[49:47]

There is also a knowledge that I am not entering into activity with a million things. I am standing before the tree. What about the 100,000 trees in the Black Forest which just stand there as entities but are also there? Are they not there? Are they not there? What do I do with this knowledge? Do I put it away? Are they not there when I'm just having activity with this one tree? Well, of course that one tree is in an active relationship with all the trees around.

[50:55]

That's just knowing. Well, if you look closely enough, if there's diseased trees over there, there's probably going to be diseased trees here, etc., But I understand your point. Go ahead. It's knowing, but I wouldn't say it's just knowing. In other words, if my knowing makes me if my knowing makes me view a tree as an entity, that's different than if my knowing makes me view a tree and interact with the tree as an activity.

[52:06]

And once I have that knowing, every tree I visit will be an activity. And I'll relate to the whole field of knowing, which includes there's no clear boundaries, as an activity. And also implied, I think, in what you said is an idea I'd like to bring up of no other location. And I will try to make clearer what I mean by that. It's the phrase I use, no other location. Okay, so I'll try to say, first I'll try between now and a few minutes from now, draw a cartoon.

[53:34]

A cartoon in the old sense of the word, the sketch for a painting. Okay. So we have the concept from early Buddhism of non-dreaming deep sleep as being the as being a non-conscious experiential part of us which is identified with ceasing of mental activity and the presence of bliss. Okay. And so you have this idea of non-dreaming being this ceasing of mental activity.

[54:41]

You also have the idea that it's already part of us. But to know it, we have to create a new... kind of mind that knows non-dreaming deep sleep but can't know it consciously so you need to have some other kind of knowing than consciousness. Was that clear? In other words, if you can't penetrate non-dreaming deep sleep with consciousness, what kind of knowing can you penetrate it with? So this is just a cartoon, and I'll try to paint in the shapes later.

[55:52]

Okay, so in addition to developing a mind that can reach into or overlap these three birth minds, I call it, Let's create a mind that's similar to non-dreaming deep sleep. And there's two ideas here. One is that you create a mind similar to non-dreaming deep sleep. Which you could call Zen mind. But you also can create a mind which... and which non-dreaming deep sleep flows into. In other words, meditation, one of the concepts of meditation,

[56:52]

Is your spine as straight the way you are when you sleep on your back? Do you let consciousness kind of subside? And this discursive, conceptual, comparative consciousness subsides. Non-dreaming deep sleep rises into meditation. And that's often a blissful experience. And that's where the idea comes that non-dreaming deep sleep is a period of bliss we need every night. And if you miss, If you meditate regularly enough and manage to continue through the boredom barrier, more and more you find in the middle of this boring thing there's a kind of bliss.

[58:20]

And once you recognize that kind of bliss, then... And accept it and don't say in my old New England puritanical way, bliss, I don't want any of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'm here to be serious, not to be blissful. But it actually took me quite a few years to kind of accept, hey, this feels really good. I won't tell you how many years. Some things are private. Then also the concept that the spine is somehow the conduit or the tube for this rising of non-dreaming deep sleep.

[59:32]

The conduit? The lighter. The lighter, yes. I know what you mean, but the word is missing. The conduit is in English what you put water through, or electricity. Yes, the conduit. I don't know what you're saying but I think it's funny okay Now, as we discussed, when you bring attention to the spine, and particularly the spine and the breath, attention is not then so easily caught in our body.

[60:44]

self-referential narrative. But that also requires a certain kind of vitality. And attention to the spine becomes the kind of vitality that supports and sustains the wisdom mind, non-conceptual wisdom mind in our activity. in the non-conceptual, sustains the non-conceptual wisdom mind in our activity. Now that's just a cartoon. How to paint it in, how to paint in, how you practice it. Take the next few years, or at least until tomorrow. So there's this really profound connection

[62:06]

between non-dreaming deep sleep, non-conceptual mind, and vitality. Between non-dreaming deep sleep, the profound connection between non-dreaming deep sleep, non-conceptual mind, and vitality. Now, here's an anecdote about a goshawk. Here is an anecdote about a falcon. My brother-in-law, a gossip. My brother-in-law, former brother-in-law, my brother-in-outlaw, is a falconer. And he likes to... have a falcon of some sort.

[63:26]

He's also one of the two most accomplished wood joinery, Japanese wood joinery carpenters in the United States. And I think it's an interesting resonance and two and a half degrees of separation, or six. That Mr. Graubner... What's his first name? Grabner? Wolfram. Wolfram Grabner. Wolfram Grabner lives across the street or did. His mother is a Zen teacher and he wrote the book on Japanese wood joinery in German.

[64:28]

He actually built the attic apartment I live in. Anyway, and Lenny, my brother-in-law... He built the interior of the Zendo at Crestone and the little Japanese wood joinery house that I built. used for Doksana as an office. So Lenny has periodically a different falcon of some kind. He captures them, trains them, and then releases them. So, a while ago, I don't know, six, eight, ten months ago, He realized there was a goshawk nest at the top of a tall tree where he lives.

[65:50]

He lives in the mountains, Sierra Mountains. And not all the babies survive. In fact, even as adults, only about 40% of the falcons get through the first year or two. I guess the hunting skills have to be so finely tuned to get through a winter that most of the falcons don't learn to hunt well enough. Anyway, so he decided to climb this tree to get this goshawk. Which I guess is the main hawk used for falconry in Europe. So he's scared of heights.

[66:51]

But he got these little spikes you tie to your shoe. And he got a mask on. And full of terror, he climbed up the tree. While the mother goshawk is attacking him. He's trying to climb. he finally got to the top of the tree and he reached in and took one of the babies climbed down anyway he trained it And he was told by somebody that if you release the goshawk at the right time, it becomes completely wild but is still bonded with you. And supposedly, according to some Canadian expert on falconry, there's only two people in the United States who have done this, Lenny and one other person.

[68:21]

Okay, so he... released the goshawk. And it comes back to see him almost every day. And the other day I was talking to him on the phone for about 45 minutes and he suddenly said, oh, here, he calls her Iris. Oh, he found out it's a boy, but when he first had it, he thought it was a girl, so he called it Iris. While we're talking on the phone, he said, oh, Iris has come to see me. And then he told me that the... The goshawk likes to play with it.

[69:24]

And when he wants to play with him, he turns his head left and right. And he'll actually pick up stones and then throw them. Like a dog. Or a stick. So he'll go get it and throw it back. And although Lenny's a vegetarian, he helps the hawk hunt. The hawk will get a rabbit and then Lenny will go help dispatch the rabbit. Dispatch means dispatch. And he says, it's amazing. This bird is a forest bird. And its wingspan is more than four feet. And it comes at him at 40 or 50 miles an hour between the trees. He says, it's unbelievable.

[70:26]

And he said to me, the other day we played for about 45 minutes throwing stones and stuff. It was late in the afternoon. And I got tired, he said. So I went and sat on a, leaned back against a tree with my knee up. And Iris came over and propped herself on, himself on my knee. And we sat there together for 20 minutes watching the sun go down. And he says it's a kind of ecstasy. It's like seeing God or something. I mean, to be present, as he described it, with a wild, completely wild feeling. being like this both of them watching the sun set and finally Eleni had to go in and cook dinner

[71:39]

So he put up his arm, and Iris landed on his wrist, and then he lifted his arm higher, and she flew off. Yeah, I thought you'd enjoy the story. But I have a small point. which I think one of the qualities that makes a wild animal wild and living in Crestone you have lots of encounters with deer sometimes bears and coyotes mountain lions and so forth is that wildness is no other location. If you are walking up the mountain behind the center and you encounter a bear,

[72:53]

I'll tell you, there's no other location. You might wish there was another location. But you better stay in no other location because the bear is in no other location. And that kind of wildness is part of practice. And really arises through a feeling of no other location. But it's time for locating ourselves at lunch, right? Thank you very much.

[73:37]

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