philosopher called the present the specious present. Specious means it looks real, but it's not. The American philosopher, William James, called the present the specious present. It looks plausible, it looks real, but it's not. Specious present. Mm-hmm. The specious present. Present. Yes. He calls it just the specious present, which means a false present. Ah, er nennt das die Scheinbare. No, I thought he was called like that. No, no. Okay. He could have. No, he wouldn't have been. He's too good. I wonder how that was. Okay. Er nennt das die scheinbare Gegenwart. Okay. Because the present... You know, the rate at which memory and etc.

[01:02]

can bring it lasts maybe from a few hundred millionths of a second to seconds. And that's the interaction of memory and perception. So the interaction between memory and perception and... So you have to get a kind of phrase or a way of looking at it that can get in that little hole. The length of the present. Now teachings have to Teachings are meant to be held in intentional awareness.

[02:03]

So the form of the teaching is often not designed to understand but to survive in intentional awareness. Now, one well-known contemporary Buddhist teacher is very concerned with the precepts and has turned each of the Buddhist precepts into a long explanation. And it's morally instructive but it doesn't function in intentional awareness.

[03:08]

The precepts have to be something simple, like don't kill. Don't take what is not given. etc. Because they have to slip through this opening of the present and swim in intentional awareness. So they're always present, guarding us even, Through awareness. So the precept should be so placed and so described. I take refuge in the Buddha.

[04:09]

Now I've completely taken refuge in the Buddha. And this kind of repetition of I take refuge in the Sangha, etc., is meant to enter into intentional awareness. Now, for instance, with the five skandhas, the teaching of the five skandhas, which we've talked about a lot, It's specifically instructed that the teaching of the five skandhas is to hold the five skandhas before you. To hold them in awareness. Mm-hmm. And then they're present and forming us all the time when anything resembling a skandhas appears.

[05:31]

So it's the link of awareness with the phenomenal world and with ourselves and others. is the territory that opens up a teaching and turns it into a teaching. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of stuff, you know. Okay, sorry. It's the... When a teaching is held in awareness, it's the intentional awareness which is in an... interrelationship with phenomena, other people and yourself, that makes the teaching reveal itself as a teaching, which goes way beyond understanding. Sometimes you take a phrase, question, some kind of practice.

[06:51]

Must take a simple one, already connected. You may not... You may not come up with any answer or experience right away. But one day you just notice, oh, the dolphin surfaces. Most of the time I feel connected these days. So intentional awareness kind of can look over us watchfully. So if you plug self-interest into intentional awareness, you've got delusion functioning to delude you.

[08:04]

Self referential thinking is problematic enough in consciousness. Let's clear the space of attentional and intentional awareness. So it's there for practice. Someone sent me an email, so modern, the other day and said he finally got the practice of listening to tree trunks. Someone recently sent me an e-mail as modern and said he finally understood the exercise to listen to tree voices.

[09:19]

Something I talked about at Creston. Then you'd go out and see people. People would have their ears up to the tree trunks. This is not listening to the wind in the trees. It's rather opening up the soundless sound of this mid chakra, mid tanden. Because the absence of sound is also a sound. And beginning to feel and hear the absence Consciousness only knows excitement and form. Awareness also knows the absence.

[10:23]

So to hear the soundless sound is to open up the mid-heart area. Non-self-referential compassion. Now when Sophia says, after she realized I wasn't out the other door, when she says, Papa's in the trees and clouds, I don't think she's just being I think she's actually describing what she sees or feels. For 99% of her life, I've been always present.

[11:27]

So I'm clearly part of her intentional awareness. And her awareness includes the clouds and the trees. And we also can be in each other's intentional awareness as well as in our consciousness. I think when you said you can feel people here you didn't talk to, That's something like attentional awareness. So to know other people is to... and not only know them consciously, but also in an attentional awareness and in shared breathing.

[12:48]

And this is also the texture of the practice of the paramitas. So I think that if you understand intentional awareness, attentional and intentional awareness, and how transmutive and transformative it is, And we can feel it in the hara, in the body, more tangibly than the mind. It's extremely important what you put there. And that's different from wishes and...

[13:52]

Likes and dislikes which arise from the self. And New Year's resolutions. If you really want to practice you have to consider what you put into intentional awareness. Because intentional awareness is how we transform ourselves. How we turn teachings into teachings. You know, there's a woman in Crestone who I know, she and her husband, and they just built a house and moved into it, decided for various reasons they had to sell it. And they've moved a number of times in their life.

[15:06]

And they've never been too lucky at selling houses quickly. So she decided to try out intending it to happen. And so she did with some force. And within a month the house was sold. Not only was it sold, but they bought the house of the person they sold it to near Boulder. And not only did they buy each other's houses, the man from the Boulder area happened to own a trucking company. And he moved both houses.

[16:22]

She said, I'm scared of intention. Look what it did. Now, do I really believe that, you know, its intention pulled the trucking company into the deal? No, actually, I don't. But an intentional awareness... makes you notice things and act on things in a way you wouldn't otherwise. Occasionally when I'm desperate, I try to find parking places that way. Does it work?

[17:27]

Well, sometimes it doesn't. But it definitely works better than having no intention. Okay. So we have personal intentions that are very important to us. Like to be a singer, perhaps. You can really now make use of this understanding, I think, of intentional mind. And then there's fundamental intention. To know the world as it actually exists.

[18:28]

To see the features of the world. Impermanence. interdependence, particular free of the uniformity of concepts, interpenetration, thusness. This is the working practice of intentional awareness. And you have your personal life, too, where it's important.

[19:34]

Personal life where it's important. Particularly your inner request. To live in the way that's deepest for you and for others. The features of the world are permanent. The hundred flowers of spring are red. Doves cry in the willows. Let's sit for a moment. So the tension and dynamic between the tendencies toward permanence of the consciousness and the tendency toward uniformity of perceptions

[23:47]

To see thought objects. It's constantly being called into freedom by intentional, attentional awareness. Praxis bedeutet uns so zu befreuen. And yet still, of course, live all our minds. Und dennoch weiter alle unsere Geiste zu leben. And live our breathing with each other.

[24:54]

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