Yes, Peter? You were going to say something earlier. The company? Yeah. Now there is also the possibility, if there is too much attention, then it will be controversial. To bring attention to the spine increases the potential and then there's also the possibility, that was even too much, so again the second part, that increases the potential and what did you say? If you bring too much attention, though, then there can be a feeling that it inverses somehow.

[01:24]

And that's something that I would like to explain. If I think too much, then my mind Okay, so if I think, then my brain, I'm using my brain. And if I think too much, then there's an overload in my brain. Really? I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. and I can even get a headache then. Oh, yeah. . I can distract the attention from the brain, because then I can relax the mind and the thinking becomes much less and much easier.

[02:38]

I can distract the attention by giving the brain, the mind, the breath. So when I have too much attention in my brain and I have a headache and I come home from work like this, then what I need to do is I need to let the attention out somehow, let it out of my brain. Redirect it. And one way I do that is to shift into my belly and thus to deplete my head of all this attention. That sounds like a good idea. And that's one thing I do in Zazen.

[03:48]

I keep my attention in my belly, and then sitting is easier, and there's more lightness somehow. And I'm also more mindful that way. Yeah, thank you. Of course. I've often had too much attention in my brain but never in my spine. Okay. I think because he said you can also have too much attention in your spine, I think this is a kind of a... fine line what is attention and when does attention snap into I'm thinking about my spine and then you kind of use the attention to to mentalize a concept or something like that.

[04:52]

Deutsch, bitte. Attention is not concentration. Attention is not concentration. I think that what has been said is about concentration and focus at a certain point. And of course I can exaggerate that. But mindfulness is actually a non-concentrated perception of what is there. So what has been said, that seems to refer more to concentration, because concentration is to bring it to a point, whereas attention is not that way.

[05:58]

It's not like focusing on a point. Did you say something else? Yeah, okay, I got the point. Well, you know, there's a reason why, you know, again, we're trying to develop, and we are developing, a lay, primarily lay sangha, which has a mature practice. But I'm always confronted with or very often confronted with the difference between a lay practice and a monastic practice. So a monastic practice which is the main way what we're doing has developed, assumes five to ten years in three-month units living in the monastery.

[07:24]

And so what is assumed, for instance, the first two years you don't read, they don't give you light enough to read, you can't, you know, I mean, you see people, when I was in the Rinzai Monastery, in the toilet, on the squat toilet, which is, you know, you have to be careful, because you drop everything down the hole, and then you can't get it, and et cetera. And you've got this text, and you've got a match, and you're trying to read the koan by a match. And it also depends on the fact that you didn't read anything for the first two years, for example. They don't even give you enough light to read. And I met people in a Rinzai monastery who sat on a plumber's toilet. No, it's a squat toilet. And sometimes while you're on it, someone comes to clean it and you look down and you say, oh, hi, how are you? Yeah, okay. So the effort is to keep you from reading for at least two years.

[08:41]

And then after you almost completely established a field of mind and not a thinking of mind, then you can start reading. How do we do that with lay people? Okay, now let me give you an example. When you... create an attentional body. A biological body which is also now through practice an attentional body.

[09:46]

And then that attentional field becomes Every perception becomes every situation, becomes the context. And then every perception... No, sorry, I lost you. The attentional field becomes the context in which you live, and that attentional field includes phenomena. And now, the word phenomena in English means the attentional sensorial field. but it's lost that meaning because that's not how we function anymore. Now, if the way you exist is as an attentional field, everything that happens to you is different.

[11:12]

The dynamic of storage becomes different. How karmic experience is stored and happens to you is different if you are an attentional field and not a thinking field. I mean, thinking functions in relationship. The reference point of thinking is self. The reference point of attention can be the body. And the word simultaneous, by the way, means spontaneously arising.

[12:13]

spontaneous, spontaneously arising. Now, normally what arises in our experience is self-referencing experience. It's what we notice. Okay, but if you're If your existence is an attentional then things are arising not through your karma and your self-referencing thinking, but just through the situation. Of course things arise through your habits and associative thinking and all that. Natürlich steigen die Dinge durch deine Assoziationen und deinen Selbstbezug auf.

[13:28]

But things also arise just spontaneously, simultaneously. Aber die Dinge tauchen auch einfach spontan oder... Simultan. Simultan. Gut, danke. Simultan auf. So, while you're sunbathing, for instance. Zum Beispiel, wenn du sonnbadest. Can you hear some birds or you hear Susanna's children or something? That's not arising from your karma. That just spontaneously arises because some kids are down the beach. And when you're in a situation where both your personal history and the situation are mutually arising in your experience, who you are at the end of ten years is different. your karmic storage gets all clogged up when it's self-referenced, primarily self-referenced storage.

[14:51]

Karma, suffering, anxiety, love affairs, you know, etc., Dein karmischer Speicher wird ganz verstopft, wenn das alles selbstbezogenes Zeug ist. Ängste oder Liebesbeziehungen oder Leid oder so. And generally things are stored chronologically in our usual way of storage. Und normalerweise werden die Dinge chronologisch in unserem normalen Art die Dinge abzuspeichern. But the Alaya Vijnana is an entirely different concept which underlies Consciousness and awareness. Awareness. And you change the dynamic of how you function temporally, duratively, by changing... by being located as an attentional field.

[16:00]

Okay, so in this world, for example, if I hit the bell, We're not just, the bell isn't just a signal, like in schools, bering, bering, class is about to start. The bell is meant to be listened to. In its overtones, in its continuation, And ideally you have a bell and you hit each bell for the three hits of beginning zazen is a little different and you stay present to it. And feel it present with each other.

[17:26]

Okay. Now, this is a lovely cup, which I admired and Catherine gave to me. Das ist eine wunderschöne Tasse, die ich sehr mag und die Katrin mir gibt. It's my going away present. Das ist mein Abschiedsgeschenk von ihr. You know, I hardly deal with the fact that she's moving out, but I love it, her courage to go to Hanover and create a life. And it has these ginkgo leaves on it. Is that what they call it in German, too? And I remember when I first arrived in Japan, I went We got, my wife and I and my daughter, got in a taxi and we were going from the Osaka airport to where we were going to live in Kyoto, Gary Snyder's house.

[18:45]

And in southern Kyoto, there's a beautiful old temple. And there's a huge ginkgo tree. This is just an anecdote. And so I said to, oh, you don't have to leave. It's okay. We can skip lunch. I said to Virginia, my wife, Who Marie-Louise knows extremely well. And Virginia says, I want her to be my friend even if you hadn't married her. Okay, so we went by this ginkgo tree and I said, look at this ginkgo tree. Well, the word ginkgo happens to mean bank in Japanese.

[19:52]

Bank, like a bank. And the word Ginko means bank in Japanese. So he started turning the taxi around across the street to stop at a bank. And then the taxi driver turned the car around to go to a bank. Okay, and it has a poem on it by Ginko, by Goethe. And it has a poem on it by Goethe. which I haven't had translated yet. Anyway, I love the cup. And I have to be careful not to admire too many things around her. But this cup is made by a culture which creates entities. It's here present as an object which he has, the potter, has sent out into the world. Das ist hier als Gegenstand gegenwärtig, den der Töpfermeister, der Hersteller, als ein Objekt in die Welt hinausgeschickt hat.

[21:19]

This is a teapot. Das ist ein te, ein te, ein te... Ascension pot. From a culture which assumes that anybody who's anybody, particularly an artist, potter, establishes an attentional body. And how do I know the difference? Why do I say there's a difference? Because clearly, one example is, when he made it, He put his thumb there and then put the glaze on it. So I can feel his presence, right there his thumb was.

[22:32]

And here, he also then held it here briefly, and glazed it. Yeah, and the handle is meant so you can hold it like this, because it's hot, it doesn't have a handle here. Because it wants you to feel. Almost never they put handles on here, because it isolates you from the cup. So here, you feel the warmth of it, and you've got to hold it in a way, if it's hot, like that. And this cup is meant for, it's actually, I have not just sencha in here, I have the stems of sencha. This is stems. not the leaves, which I particularly like the flavor. Now, it's also assumed that when you use this, like you listen to the bell at the end of the

[23:36]

of the ring, you hold the teapot till all the dripping stops. So your pace becomes the pace of the phenomenal world. We just don't usually want to live that way. And even me who wants to live that way, I can't come on. So I wait, think, drip, drip. Well, you can make a choice, but basically you watch the drips, you feel the drips, you listen to them, and you wait till it really stops. That's a different pace. It's living in the pace of the phenomenal world and not your mentation.

[24:54]

So this is an object from culture which values the intentional body, and this is an object from a culture which values a mental approach. Now, this potter, whoever made this ceramicist, shows his skill. This potter has a feeling I'm giving you this pot and sharing my presence and making it with you.

[25:55]

I'm not just giving you a pot. I'm giving you my presence, like doing things with two hands. So wie ich gebe euch nicht einfach nur eine Kanne, sondern ich gebe euch meine Präsenz. So wie wenn man die Dinge mit zwei Händen tut. And whenever I use this pot, I can see this man's thumbprint. Und jedes Mal, wenn ich dieses Kännchen benutze, dann sehe ich den Daumenabdruck des Mannes. So in this word, Heshirio, Schirio means measured thinking. We could say measured mental formations. And hishirio means non-measured or unmeasured mental formations. So the importance here isn't the mental formations, it's the measuring.

[27:25]

If you measure mental formations, they're stored in you, they affect you, differently than unmeasured mental formations. And because we tend to think in entities, we think mental formations are thinking. But if everything's an activity, then the relationship to mental formations is what's important, not the mental formations.

[28:33]

So if your relationship is to measure the mental formations, then you're in one world. If your relationship to the mental formations is not to measure them, then you're in another world. Simple, isn't it? Okay. I'm sorry. Riff out here. We're going to leave soon. And what time is it? Okay. Okay. Something else we should talk about before we end? When we all talk about attention, attention, intention, it's all like, you know, we are always looking forward to do something in a set direction.

[29:41]

I'm wondering what happened to that part of our life, where things just simply emerge, if we like them or not. They just appear out of nowhere, they explode. That's what I mean by spontaneously or simultaneously appearing. Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. Wir reden die ganze Zeit über Aufmerksamkeit, über Absichten, über die Dinge, auf die wir unsere Konzentration richten sollen, oder Felder. This is allowing things to come forward and cultivating and authenticating the self. And I often say the translation of as interdependent as the key to how things exist is too limited. Interdependent. as a translation of how things exist.

[31:00]

We need also interdependence. And as Roland says, we need inter-emergent. Or inter-mergent, where things spontaneously arise. And here, appearance is inseparable from acceptance. Okay. Now, I think all of you know that Katrin is challenging us by leaving.

[32:05]

It's been seven years you've been here? More than seven years. Seems like yesterday. You were five years at Crestone? Yeah. And then in Frankfurt with that school. And I never get dependent on anyone, but I'm sort of dependent on you. And she lives just downstairs from me. So I'm going to certainly miss you. But I recognize that seven years is a long time to do one thing. And I must say that although I will I will miss seeing you so often.

[33:14]

When you first told me, I was actually excited. It sounds like an adventure. So I mean, I want, you know, we need to make, have some way in which we can help her leave. So we decided and the board decided that for at least six months she'll continue to receive her minuscule stipend. And have health insurance. And I also was thinking we should have some kind of way people could make contributions to her. And then I found out Chiri had already done that. On her own, spontaneously, without waiting for the institution to do anything, she established this website.

[34:27]

What? I wrote an email. You wrote an email, yeah. But I got it in German. I didn't know what the heck you were telling me. She wrote one to YouTube. I know, but I didn't know. So we're going to have a kind of going-away party for her next Sunday, is that right? Saturday. Saturday? Did you know about it? You found out. It was supposed to be a surprise. That's what usually happens with surprise parties. So we were going to present Chiri. I mean, Chiri was going to present... Katrin with what she's collected so far, then, but you won't be here.

[35:45]

So we're going to do it right now. Okay. So, the Sangha has come together. And I would like to ask you to come forward, because I would like to send this generous Sangha a photo so that they can see what has come together. Wow. I can see myself. Thank you very much. Wow! Wow!

[36:56]

What did she say? Let's spend it all together in Hanover. Do you think the Thotmos Bank will accept it? It has to be the Hanover Bank. Oh, the Hanover Bank. What do I do with this? All right, anyway, thanks for the seminar and hanging out together. And thank you for your many acts of loving kindness. Sorry, it takes me a few minutes to gather myself.

[38:21]

It's like watching the tea, you know, drip, drip, drip. Are we allowed to thank also? Thank who? You. Thank away. Well, I didn't throw it away.

[39:36]

It's the word I thought could express attentional continuity. Consequential attentional continuity.

[39:45]

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