and so again here's the territory of the self the familiar and the unique so I'm just trying to kind of ease ourselves into this what I'm calling the territory of the self and I think it's about time to take a break It's also the territory, the self. Ah, Los Angeles, coffee. So I'm in the, let's confuse ourselves stage. Let's make distinctions and then see if we can sort them out.

[01:04]

Because the distinctions I'm trying to make are somewhere between our familiar distinctions and our Buddhist distinctions. And even in our own language, few of us really sort these things out as we discussed. Yeah, looking at words like self, psyche, I, you know. soul, spirit, identity. Okay, so now I'm trying to speak about the territory of self. So let's use two examples we've made already. One example is Giorgio's take. So Sophia's banging on the table.

[02:24]

But she recognizes it's Giorgio's table and not Sophia's table. Now that's already some kind of improvement. She's made a distinction, but she doesn't necessarily relate it to herself. However, I tried to get her to extend that distinction. So she sees the table as made by a carpenter and other people use it and so forth. So we could say that's the extended self, we're extending the self. And that again is what we mean when we say self covers everything. If we say that, we've obviously enlarged the territory of self.

[03:44]

If she thinks it's Sophia's table and not Georgia's table, she's narrowed the territory of self. Okay, so let's call that, when we become familiar with things, and as we discussed, the job of consciousness is to make things predictable and cognizable, We could call that something like normative phenomena. Try to sound philosophical. In other words, it's the phenomenal world that's predictable. Okay. Now, the word phenomena already works for us.

[04:58]

We can use it to mean almost a synonym for world, phenomena, the world. But phenomena means very specifically in English the world that is perceptible and cognizable. Perceptible. So it means already the world that is the mind. Das bedeutet bereits die Welt, wie sie Geist ist. It's the world we can perceive and know. Das ist die Welt, die wir kennen und wissen können. Okay. Phenomenon, of course, is the plural of phenomenon.

[05:59]

Und Phenomenon... Das eine ist die Einzahl von Phenomenon. But it might be important. Phenomenon... Phenomenon ist der Plural von Phenomenon. Yeah, okay. Now, Sophia the other day climbed the ladder of the dining room. She doesn't need language to do that. Her environment is part of her knowing. Yeah, and if she grows up in a farming community, she herself will be in phenomena in a different way than if she grows up in, you know, Vienna. So the way phenomena... Phenomena carry the self, is part of the self.

[07:16]

Just one of them, yes. The way phenomena carry the self is part of the self. Yeah. The other day we drove past a building that was painted rather like where Marie-Louise's parents lived. She says, like Amama's house, Amama being grandmother. And then she says, I like Amama's house. Okay, so... This isn't about her language, she just is familiar, it carries herself, what she feels familiar with, comfortable with.

[08:23]

So what I'm trying to say is the self is, we're dealing with phenomena, body and mind. The self is carried in the body and in phenomena and the mind. Riding a bicycle, which you cannot do for years and start quite quickly again. It's a kind of procedural memory. It's a part of the self. So, you know, the famous example of Proust and the smell of Hawthorne is part of ourself. And it calls back all kinds of memories.

[09:26]

Okay, so what I'm saying is phenomena itself is, phenomena is also self. Okay. And it's a process by which we identify ourselves. Okay. All right. Now, if we take the example of the airplane again, You hear the airplane. And you don't think about it. You hardly think about it as an airplane.

[10:31]

You hardly notice it's an airplane. It's the music of the spheres. You hear the air vibrating. You feel the air and your own mind and so forth hearing it. And so we can say that's phenomena. Okay. And it's a territory of the self then. Is it a territory of the self? Well, it's a kind of different territory. It's the perception of interdependence. Or it's the perception of impermanence. And impermanence is not really the territory of the self. The territory of the self is predictable, cognizable, and so forth.

[11:42]

I'm defining it. You may define it differently. So we could say that the extended self When self covers everything, or when you are already familiar with each person you meet, when there's very little self-referencing, that's another kind of self. And that's the territory of what I'm calling non-self or non-referential self. Yeah, or the observing mind instead of the observing self. Because when you feel the airplane, you're feeling observing mind. And the bliss of feeling mind.

[12:53]

Maybe we could say the self feels satisfaction And the non-self feels bliss. Now, of course, you can say, I got a great birthday present and things, and I felt blissful. I mean, I don't know. I'm just trying to suggest some distinctions. So we can feel a territory of experience. And a territory of experience in which we can see... It also is a territory of practice, of transformative practice.

[14:10]

Okay, now we can call the extended self compassion. Self covers everything, there's compassion. Now, one of the capacities of mind Mind can be structured and so forth. One of the capacities of mind, it can have direction. It can extend outward or it can be pulled inward. Unlike host and guest, these are two very basic distinctions within Zen. They're similar to host and guest, but a little different.

[15:11]

Sie sind ähnlich wie Gast und Gastgeber, aber doch etwas anders. And they're sometimes called, again in the koans and particularly the blue cliff records, the gathering way and the granting way. Und sie werden manchmal, besonders in den koans, im blue cliff record, der versammelnde Der versammelnde Weg und der gewährende Weg. And you can see that in the koans, different koans emphasize either the gathering way or the granting way or both. Und ihr könnt in den koans sehen, dass in manchen koan der gewährende Weg betont wird und in einem anderen der versammelnde Weg oder beide. Now, what is the granting way? Was ist der gewährende Weg? You're a Buddha. Du bist Buddha. You're Buddha, you're Buddha. Das ist Buddha. Das ist Buddha.

[16:17]

That's this movement outward with equanimity or with equalness. Das ist diese Bewegung hinaus mit Gleichmut und gleicher Weise. Which everything has its own value, not its own reality, but its own value. Now I'm following Suzuki Roshi and using value instead of real because real again suggests something's real, something's prior, something's out there in some kind of way having nothing to do with us. But each thing has its own value. That's also the experience of sameness, which is important in Dzogchen and Zen. You see the differentiation of each thing and each thing has its own value.

[17:25]

That's also compassion. So Avalokiteshvara represents compassion. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of wisdom, but in Zen, Avalokiteshvara is emphasized as compassion. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of wisdom, but in Zen, Avalokiteshvara is emphasized as compassion. And the feminine side of Avalokiteshvara. And that was this outward movement, the granting way. You're each Buddha. And Manjushri, the one holding a sword, which traditionally in the Zendo, there's no no Buddha or no Avalokiteshvara.

[18:47]

Yeah, in our Zendos there's a Buddha and so forth because they're also Buddha halls. And also because we don't have a Manjushri statue. Yeah. In Zendos, traditionally there's Manjushri. Because Manjushri is the movement inward. Okay. So that's called the gathering in way. And that's expressed with, you're not Buddha. You're not Buddha. Doesn't mean you're a bad guy. Sorry, you're not Buddha. but rather that we're not making these distinctions, we're absorbing into this concentration on the fullness of mind.

[19:59]

Okay. So Giorgio's table is an example of the granting way. There's the carpenter, there's the tree, the forest, the clouds, the people who use the table. If I hear the airplane, And I don't name it. And all the airplane, it moves into the bliss of mind itself. I don't even know what's going on. I just feel this mind vibrating. Something like that. That represents Manjushri or wisdom. or emptiness.

[20:59]

So the perception of interdependence of connectedness is one territory of the self. And that perception of interdependence can be turned into compassion. When all those distinctions disappear, that it's an airplane, that it's air, that it's mind, that's wisdom. or emptiness. One is form and the other is emptiness. One is giving distinctions and one is taking away distinctions.

[22:02]

And you can feel it, again, physically like the simplest way is the sense of looking at the world with your eyes or making your eyes soft or moving your eyes back into your head and you more feel a field than distinctions. So these are different minds. They're a mind that is gathering in. That's what meditation is. The mind is gathered in and concentrated on itself. A mind concentrated on itself is samadhi. When you know the stillness of the tree, either moving or still, this is samadhi or emptiness. Because you're perceiving the field of the mind of the emptiness of the tree. It's interesting, the word moment means movement and momentum.

[23:23]

So the moment has a kind of stillness, but it also is ready to move. Okay. Now, when we do practice, dharmic practice, when we emphasize the particularity of each moment, again taking this phrase, to complete that which appears, Your mindfulness has deepened to the extent that you can actually physically, mentally feel each moment. It has its own kind of

[24:24]

possibility and then potentiality of completeness and you complete it. And you release it. This is the territory of the five dharmas and the four marks. Well, there's no self-referential self in the five dharmas, the four marks. But you still function in this completing which appears. Okay, so we could say that normative phenomena... Phenomena which fit certain norms, linguistic and experiential, is the territory of self.

[25:37]

But singular phenomena or unique phenomena where each moment is singular and not comparable to anything else is the territory of non-self. But it's not where there's an absence, because you're still functioning. You may have moments where self completely dissolves or disappears or melts. Yes. But that would be an instance of this inward movement or Manjushri practice. But Buddhas and Bodhisattvas also function in the world. So when your bodhisattva body is present,

[26:49]

That would be when you're functioning not through self-referential activity but non-self-referential activity. But it's a strange thing to explain. I mean, I think that Regina Falter had a kind of funny good example the other day. Which she seemed to have come up with all by herself. Although it's kind of been the, it's not. what she described is not unfamiliar to our dharmasangha practice, but, you know, it seemed to be really just her experience from her own practice. She went, she goes to the grocery store. Supermart? You call it a supermart? We don't have anything else than supermarkets.

[28:11]

Oh, you only have supermarkets. What about mini-marts? Sie geht in die Kreislerei. In America, a supermarket has to be big. Also in America muss ein Supermarkt groß sein. Like three Edekas put together or something like that. Wie drei Edekas oder Adeks zusammen. Yeah. Baumarkt or something. Isn't that a German thing, Baumarkt? Anyway, okay. So she went to the supermarket. I don't know. Yeah, well, anyway, a grocery store. And she, you know, with children and all that stuff, you typically forget your grocery list. And she's not sure she can remember what's on the list. I teased her saying, I'm glad nobody put her in a hospital afterwards or didn't arrest her.

[29:13]

Because she intuitively developed the kind of habit of walking down the aisles with eyes half closed and then reaching out and taking what she needs. And she found out she reproduced the grocery list usually without thinking. Let her body get to it. She must know the grocery store well. But again, using the koans as a reference point, common term is great functioning. And that means functioning without comparative thinking. To function through the body-mind. To trust the body-mind. Okay. Now this isn't the usual territory of self. Walking down the aisle, we would not say that's herself doing it.

[30:38]

She's letting something happen, but she's activating that letting. Yeah. Now, again, I think it must be fairly clear that I'm sort of muddling around in the idea that self has a territory. And we're using the relationship phenomena to try to make clear the territory of self. And which I think is called normative similarity. that things follow norms and are similar. Normative similarity is a philosophical term for what we're talking about.

[31:49]

But let's just call it normative phenomena. I think you all understand what I mean by normative phenomena. Normal phenomena that our self knows. But dharma practice is to know phenomena in its singularity, its non-comparableness. Its uniqueness. Every moment you're in the spring of Los Angeles. Yeah. Okay. So if we have a territory in the way we know phenomena, which is not self-referential or self-referential in a special way, because when you complete that which appears, just what you know in your physical, emotional experience is part of how you complete that which appears.

[33:07]

So I'm saying that normative phenomena is the territory of self, And singular phenomena or dharmic phenomena as a territory of non-self. So it became necessary for Buddhism to create an idea like non-self, freedom from self. Because the practice of meditation and the transformative practice where you have the perception of interdependence and the perception of emptiness creates a territory which is not the territory itself.

[34:14]

So that's enough to say right now. What do you want to say? Do you have any thoughts about what I've been speaking about? That's why I meet with you every year because you have so many good thoughts about what I... Yeah. Is this self that you described now the field that also is described in Herakles art of archery?

[35:14]

Yeah. Yeah, no one drops, no one shoots the arrow, that kind of feeling. It's very funny to see a Zen archery contest. I'll tell you. A Zen archery contest. I first saw it in horseback riding. They have these fantastic horses. And they dress up like they were, you know, 14th century Japanese aristocrats. And they get on these horses, and the horse is leaping about, and the rider is singing, and they're supposed to go to a finish line, right?

[36:24]

And they're going like this. Three cross the finish line and two go this way. But the one that goes this way wins. Because he was the one that was most united with his horse. Well, okay, it takes a while to get, you know... But it's not, you know, it's like... I've given this example many times. My little... She's 40. When she was a little going to Japanese kindergarten... I went to a sports day. So they have six kids lined up here. About where you are. And they have six kids lined up where Siegfried is. And then another six and another six and another six. And then they say, get on the mark, get set, pop! All of them start running at once.

[37:40]

And they're running like mad. And the faster ones in this group swoop and pass the slower ones in the front group, and then they all cross the finish line. You have no idea who won. And you can't figure it out. The one who won is the one who kind of put their most energy into the running, not the one who was the fastest. And they have similar games where they all play and compete like mad and the red hats against the white hats. You still can't figure out who won. And then the red hats and white hats are going to have this thing of throwing balls again. And the red hats all take their hats off, push them inside out, and they're white hats. White hats all become red hats.

[38:44]

So from infancy on, the culture teaches 100% effort, not winning. So you have these archery contests, these guys come out and they stand and they take their bow and they look at the target once and then they lift it in a way that it's, then they go like this, and then the arrow falls off. It just falls to the ground. And then they hang around, and then they pick up the arrow, and then... But it's very beautiful. It's a kind of dance. And it's the one who's most... You can win even if your arrow falls off and doesn't even go toward the target, let alone miss the target. You could criticize it, an emphasis of style over productivity or performance. Yeah, but it worked when the Japanese started competing with us for their cars.

[39:46]

They didn't make a car to get from point A to point B. They made a car you'd enjoy being in from point A to point B. And wouldn't break down. So, So it's like art and the art of archery. Zen and the art of archery. It's quite a good book, actually. Someone else? Yes. So from this, the question came up in me, what is the difference between will and intention? Okay. Okay. I think will is willingness.

[41:12]

I mean, excuse me, intention is willingness. You're willing to understand, but you're not going to will yourself to understand. I mean, will is used, but will is more like persistence, to do it over and over again. So an intention is you try to bring a willingness to understand something. Intention is, du bringst eine Bereitschaft mit, etwas zu verstehen. Yeah. And is this intention, from the time perspective, one momentary action and will? Is that a distinction you can make? Yeah, I suppose will tries to go over. Willingness keeps being open.

[42:13]

I don't know if that makes... You mentioned the sentence, you are not Buddha within the granting way. No, gathering inward. And it startled me because I understood this sentence as discriminating. But then maybe I thought maybe it's the difference between discriminating and negating.

[43:21]

Yeah, it's like that. It's like you're not Siegfried. Sometimes you're Siegfried, sometimes you're not Siegfried. Not Siegfried, not Felix. And they represent the two different directions. And you represent the two different directions of the mind. Yes. Yes. He's thinking about paradoxon. He's thinking about paradoxon. Yes. He's thinking about paradoxon. I distinguish between the self-referential self and the non-self-referential self. But this is not true, because if I distinguish, it's not the self anymore.

[44:28]

If you distinguish what? Make what distinction? If I just say this is the self, then I have a distinction to all that which is not the self. What happened to this Kleenex? There must have been an animal in there. Excuse me, I'm having a problem with myself. I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. Maybe I answered it though inadvertently with my body, mind. All right, but let's come back to it if we should.

[45:40]

All right, someone else? Yeah. You said Buddhism introduces the idea of the non-self-referential self, and I didn't quite get it, to what end it's introduced. Because there's a territory of experience in Dharma practice where self doesn't apply. But a territory of knowing phenomena and experience, in which you function, but you function through what we're calling non-self rather than self-referential self.

[46:49]

But you can call them both self, but then it's harder to practice, to understand the pedagogy of practice. Now, one thing we have to kind of widen here is if the three functions of self are separation, connectedness, and... And for you, if you've heard this the first time, your immune system, for instance, is an example of self. It knows what belongs to you. last 100, 150 years. And we have valuable ideas and experiences like individuation. Yeah, and our blindsided, plank-carrying U.S. government Plank carrying means you walk with a big plank and you can't see to the side.

[48:21]

You want to rearrange the Near East in terms of individuation so that there can be democracy. wants to rearrange the political realities of the Near East. So they could bring in what they call democracy, which means bringing in individuation in a way those cultures don't individuate. Yeah, no. I don't mean to say of course that Zen practice doesn't individuate. In fact, Zen practice grew up in group cultures and is an emphasis on individualism. It's in a group culture. You're a sociologist. In a group culture, but it emphasizes individuation.

[49:23]

Or better, it emphasizes autonomy. Okay. But if you're an individual in a group culture, it's different than being an individual in a non-group culture. Because it's come up to my memory. Well, it was always like that. It's coming from there. Yeah, there are thousands of moth wings. Thousands of moth wings.

[50:26]

The, you know, this anecdote I've told again sometimes of my, again, my daughter Sally. We told her once she wouldn't, when she was tiny. We said, you have to do what we say. And she wouldn't listen to her mother. So I came in. I said, Sally, you have to listen. Virginia and I made you. You belong to us. And she said, it's too late now, I belong to me. I like that. Well, that's autonomy. I belong to me. And you know, I've been reading and studying the work of Alan Shore and John Bowlby recently.

[51:47]

John Bowlby. Yeah. And in this study of the relationship of the mother and infant, and studying the relationship left-right brain imaging of both simultaneously. Alan Schor would say biologically they are a single neuronal unit or something like that. the brains of mother and infant are lighting up in such similar ways, it's like it's more connection between the two right brains than there are between the left and right brain of one person.

[52:50]

Why was I speaking about that? Autonomy, yeah. What's important in this relationship, according to Alan Shor, Is there extreme connectedness? And then separation. So there's three modes the mother has to relate to. One is the connectedness. The autonomy. The autonomy.

[53:55]

Yeah. And then the repair, because the mother isn't perfect. So then you have to repair the interference with the autonomy. And then the repair, because the mother is not perfect. What has to be repaired? If the mother interferes when the baby infant pulls back and is self-regulating, auto-regulating, it is damaging to the baby. So there seems to be three modes in milliseconds, you know, it's going on, of connectedness, separation and repairing the relationships. And one of the things he says is that if you look at adults later, if there's been abuse, of course it's damaging.

[55:00]

But abused kids are much better off than abandoned or neglected kids. Because even negative interaction is better than no interaction. So I think I'm mentioning this only for two reasons. One reason is I think these things that we're talking about in practice are very fundamentally and biologically rooted in our behavior. Ich erwähne das aus zwei Gründen. Zum einen, weil ich glaube, dass diese Dinge sehr grundlegend und biologisch in uns verwurzelt sind. The connectedness with the mother and the autonomy. It's really a version of Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri.

[56:02]

The outward movement and the movement so there's nothing but you. I alone, this world is ready made for me. There's no one else in the world but me. Because I practice, there's a Buddha. and most of these teachers like Nichiren Dogen they felt this teaching was done just for me not in some megalomaniacal way or lack of humility but such a profound sense of connectedness And a feeling of responsibility.

[57:07]

This world is made for me, so I have a responsibility in this world. No one can take my position. No one can take your position. It's fully your position. This is a kind of autonomy. The whole world is drawn in. And these are elements of practice. When you look at social terms, that doesn't sound very modest or humble. It's not about something more fundamental than social ideas of humbleness or something. Okay, so there's two reasons. One reason is to speak about this really basic thing of connectedness and autonomy. And once you see the three functions of self, as I started to say, you can notice when you're already connected or when you're already separated.

[58:12]

Now practice is clearly to emphasize connectedness over separation. And practice is also to transform how you establish continuity from moment to moment. But there's a fourth function of self that we should include, which is meaning. The self has to supply meaning. If you have amnesia, You don't know who you are, you're wandering around, you're doing things, you have body familiarity, you don't walk into cars, but you end up in some strange place, you don't know how you got there.

[59:23]

That would be an absence of self, autobiographical self. Okay, now we have a problem. How does non-self supply meaning? How does non-self-referential self supply meaning? And more than meaning is caring. And caring, I would say, is really the vow to be alive, rooted in the vow to be alive. So meaning, caring, compassion are human and bodhisattva elements of the function of self. And as I've said, I've been struck by the people I knew in college.

[60:39]

It's not the smartest ones who succeeded. It's the ones who cared the most. There were some real mathematical wizards, for instance, when I was in college, but the ones who cared about how the science affected the world, they're the ones who are well-known scientists now. So there's caring and meaning, which is part of the function of self. Okay, now I'm also... mentioned this business of Bowlby and Alan Shore.

[61:59]

And again, what interests me, because you're a psychotherapist and I can speak a little bit about something which I don't know much about. Freud tried to root everything in some things that happened when you were young or an infant. And I believe that Freud's main two successors in the psychoanalytic society, or whatever it was, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, tried to root adult behavior in either fantasy or edible conflict or stuff like that. In fantasy or my baby's milk is poisoned or edible conflict.

[63:00]

Udipal, I'm sorry. I should have known. Okay. What's interesting to me is the conceptual framework of all three of these people and Bowlby. B-O-W-L-B-Y. He's died when? Fairly recently, 1990-something. Yes. Okay, so all four of these people have the model that there's a beginning, there's a seed, and the seed determines the future. Of course, that's partly true. But in a Buddhist framework, there's no beginning and no end.

[64:02]

So we would emphasize, and you can see it in practice, always working with symptoms, not the source of the symptoms, is one way to put it. Or to transform the knowing mind rather than the mind known through memory or something like that. Now, both emphases, I think, are important. And what's boldly emphasized, and being more of a scientist than, I guess, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud were, and trying to look to research more than theory, he seemed to emphasize the secure emotional attachment. And there's no question in my mind that this fundamental trust, this secure emotional attachment is essential.

[65:33]

And what he says is, this is primarily established in the first 18 to 24 months. When there's this amazing growth spurt of the brain, you all know this by heart, from 400 grams to 1,000 grams, and part of that growth occurs in the last trimester, the end of pregnancy, But most of it is postnatal, after the baby is born. So it's not just genetically determined, probably, but determined by the environment.

[66:40]

The environment. And the environment being primarily the mother. The father doesn't stumble onto the scene until about 18 months. I tried to stumble on earlier. Okay. So, according to Alan Shore, as long as the right brain is dominant, and the linguistic, the language side of the brain is not dominant, all this brain growth happens. The limbic system, everything, you know, going very big. Okay.

[67:47]

And when the right, left brain becomes dominant, the language, so-called language side, this development of the right brain slows down. Okay. But he says that you can see that the mother's brain also changes during this process, not just the infant's brain. So there's plasticity in the mother's brain, even as an adult, not just the infant's brain. Okay, so I would say that from a biological point of view, what Buddhism is trying to do, meditation, is to extent that this right brain, left brain stuff makes sense. By suspending language or suspending thinking.

[69:01]

Or looking past thinking or identifying with the field of mind. We're giving more balance to this right brain, left brain dominance. We could say this inward movement of Manjushri is to give left brain dominance. So maybe Regina is walking down the aisle with her right brain and not her left brain. So practice, I think, is affecting you biologically. Also ich glaube, Praxis hat eine biologische Auswirkung auf euch.

[70:13]

And it's some understanding that if you suspend thinking, comparative activity, es kann ein Verständnis geben, dass wenn ihr dieses Denken aussetzen lassen könnt, oder das vergleichende Denken, actually change the way you get biological emphasis and change the biological development even as an adult. So you can't any longer establish a secure relationship with your mother. you might be able to improve it a little with Hoffman's quadrinity process.

[71:13]

But it's too late to establish a secure relationship with your mother. She's a different person, etc., But you can establish a secure relationship with yourself. And that's what I mean by finding your seat, finding your ease. And that secure relationship with yourself is at the center of the practice. And from that you can extend to secure trusting relationships with others. Oh dear, how did I get into all that? I'm sorry. Yes. In one way, nowadays more... who contact with art and artists.

[72:18]

And I notice that those people very often have a strong emphasis on that vital side of the prayer. Seems like it, yeah. And those who also meditate, especially those who meditate on one side and also on the other, I think so, that they are still more in the right side. Than the left side? Yes. I know artists who have never driven a car. And they just get in a car and... No, no, no, thank you. Yes, yeah, like that.

[73:19]

They did, a friend of mine did tests with these sensory deprivation tanks. You know, you put somebody down in a salt water kind of blah, blah, blah in the 60s, right? Yeah. And airline pilot types, they panicked in these things. But artist types said, sink me down again. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll have lunch. I don't think that I don't plan for us to break up into small groups this afternoon. I don't plan unless you thought it would be a good thing to do particularly but I would like to continue our

[74:23]

general discussion and not just me talking. But let me make a few comments to start with. When I spoke about this the development of the brain increasing in brain mass so quickly. I noticed Felix looked quizzical at something I said and then he spoke to me afterwards. Because it did sound like I said that after birth it's environmentally driven, not genetically driven. I didn't mean to say that.

[75:43]

But since my own feeling is that the potentialities given the genetic base, are almost infinite. Are infinite, in fact, even though it has a limited base. Yeah. Soon, Sophia won't be able to learn Chinese and other languages very easily. And I always think of this example I must have told you of the Australian Aboriginal girl and the little white girl.

[76:44]

Do you remember that? Any of you? I just saw it on television, some anthropological film. They had a log, I mean a stump, tree stump. Baumstump, and it was, I like the energy in German. Baumstump. piled with all kinds of things, rocks and feathers and sticks tangled together, etc. And they brought this two little girls, a little white girl, blonde, and a little aboriginal black girl. And they just brought them up to it and then knocked everything off the stump. And they asked the white girl to put it back on the stump, and she put a few things back on the stump.

[77:56]

And the little aboriginal girl, just boom, [...] putting them back on, just like she had a Polaroid picture, like a spy, to put everything back. I remember I was astonished seeing it. I mean, that's a really different mind. Without even attention, she just brought up more. She just saw it and could do it. Of course the little white girl can do other things, but I'm not saying one's better, obviously. It's just they're different, very different. It's the difference between somebody who grows up in the country or the...

[79:01]

mountains compared to a city kid. Carried to a very big difference. I mean, I knew this young man when I was in college. And he'd grown up in Arizona. And now I know more of what he felt. I went to school in the Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts area. And he had grown up in Arizona. I hadn't. Arizona, Arizona. And you know where our center is in Crestone? The valley in front of us is the size of the entire state of Connecticut.

[80:19]

I mean, there can be many Bostons in Connecticut. And there can be many Bostons. And there could be. Yeah. And he just couldn't stand being in Boston. He says, these spaces, I can't handle it. You know, he couldn't stand spaces. He was used to everything's hundreds of miles apart. And he left college. He dropped out after a year. Went to college in Arizona or someplace. Yeah. And he probably grew up in those days without tellers. I think kids nowadays wouldn't have that feeling from Arizona.

[81:21]

Wouldn't feel that way today. They all have a new kind of game space they share. Yeah. It's another kind of space for sure. My friend Bill Thompson has, you know, I don't know if any of you know him, but he's written, I don't know, 14 books or so. His son is... Smart person and a writer too, won't read anything that's not on the screen. He simply won't read a book. He reads all his books on the screen. I find that weird. Electronic space anyway. So I would say, I mean, that yes, the development occurs on a genetic base.

[82:46]

But when the potentials are nearly, nearly infinite, you can say it's nearly driven by the environment and not genetics. And if the child is abandoned at this point, genetics don't help it much. So I say that only to say that I feel in meditating the possibility of innumerable worlds. It feels like to me. And I used to have a problem in the early years of meditation of what's going to be the reference point? What if I lose a reference point?

[83:48]

Now some of you might, who aren't familiar with, you know, doing seminars here like we're doing or with me, why I don't join you for the meditation for the first, this half hour like just now. Well, there's two reasons mainly. One is I don't want to get too engaged in sitting. If I do, I can't speak to you. I need a point of view separate from from you and from meditation.

[85:10]

Yeah. So, in Sashin it's the same. If I had to balance, if I did the entire Sashin, I couldn't give a lecture. So I sit most of the Sashin, but I miss a period in the morning, or I miss the period before a lecture, and things like that. So I have to feel I have to feel the people in the sesshin separate from a mediated point of view. Mediated, a point of view which is mediated through me. Yeah, and I also find that if I join the meditation, From the beginning.

[86:36]

Although, because we do, we start to share a mutual mind. Or at least aspects do. And you know, they've done studies which show that, you know, Sashin type thing, I think they've only done studies of 12 people, but that's enough. They've only done studies with subjects up to 12, at least the last I heard. And everyone starts, their metabolism, all of them, and brain patterns all start being similar within fairly quick... Like pendulum clocks start swinging together in the same household. Yeah. So any one pendulum affects it, affects the whole group.

[87:40]

So I don't want to influence your meditation. So I want to come in and feel your meditation, usually for a few minutes, and not feel my own input into the meditative mind. Because I need the difference in order to find what to say. Now what I'm trying to get at by talking about this is how does non-self supply meaning? Now I've actually never asked myself this question until today. So to respond, I don't know if I'm going to be able to respond to the question.

[88:56]

I never know, you know. And I have to approach it with the confidence of not knowing. For a confidence of, I may not be able to tell, I may not be able to figure this one out. But I have to, so what I have to do is feel my way into my own experience, Bring up in myself the experience or sit enough to have the experience of non-self rather than self. And notice how I function. How do I manage?

[89:57]

And that usually takes a few days, actually. I have to keep bringing the question into my experience. Okay, so... But my sense at the present time is... is that to know a feeling, an emotional state or whatever, we know that feeling through a second feeling, the feeling of self. So if the usual feeling of self isn't there, how do you know anything? So normally we have to separate an I, a pronoun I, an I-subject experience to then be conscious of our experience.

[91:11]

But what happens when this I-subject virtually disappears. Or is absorbed into the subjectivity of mind itself. I feel it almost like a Like if this is the surface of the mind, it's like this, and then it flattens into the mind. Sometimes it pokes up, and then you have an observing self. Sometimes it flattens back into it. You know, this may not be of any use to you or interest to you, but I... Since in the process of today I asked myself this question, I have to find a way to answer it if I can.

[92:29]

I think in the long run it's important to, of our discussion, it's important to answer it. And I think it's some years ago that I spoke with you about, in a way, moving the alaya-vijnana out in front of the manas, which means the mediating editing function of mind called manas. All your perceptions go through mind. But in practice they become more direct and they don't go through the mind. editing function in mind.

[93:38]

What I would say now is that amnesia is a problem of memory. You still know what chairs are and streets and roads, you just don't know who you are. The autobiographical self in most of these things is lost. So there's no autobiographical self giving meaning. So you have lost that point of view. But you still don't walk in front of streetcars. So you know what a streetcar is. Okay, so... I would say that you, much like Regina shopping in the grocery store, I would say that the streetcar itself carries a reference point of subjectivity, of meaning.

[94:56]

Yeah, now maybe that's just too much for us to talk about, and I'm not expecting us to talk about it. It's just I'm just sharing with you my kind of trying to feel my way into the problem I created for myself. Vielleicht ist das zu viel hier, um darüber zu sprechen. Und ich versuche einfach, für mich den Weg hineinzufühlen in das Problem, das ich für mich geschaffen habe. Ich habe mich jetzt sehr erinnert an einen Zustand, den ich an meiner Demenz, This reminded me of a state I watch in my mother who is...

[95:51]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.65