Okay, so we spoke this morning. We haven't really looked at specifically at this why sitting question. But we, you know, had some discussions, speculation about memory. And I pointed out very often that mind has form and structure. And I emphasized today that that form and structure is thought of in yogurt culture as ingredients. We can mix, mix and do something with, cook even.

[01:02]

So many of the Asian arts are ways of mixing ingredients. And then I would say that some particular practices, qigong perhaps, and zen, and sometimes yoga, are really about cooking the ingredients, not just mixing them. Okay. So, you know, then the question comes up, you know, what are the ingredients, how do we notice them, what do we do with them? Yeah. And so I said, I'm not really reviewing just for Josef and you, it's just I want to

[02:07]

get together where we were, where we're at. But I mean, I'd be happy to do it just for you too, Joseph. And you, I don't know your name. Madeline? Hi, Madeline. Oh, yes. You're famous in America for going to the Plaza Hotel. I don't just want to summarize what we did for Joseph and for you, but also to see where we actually stand with what we did this afternoon. So in addition, yeah, so I said that the word mind is an English word. And in some ways we mean the same thing. same ingredients by mind as they would in yogic culture or Zen practice?

[03:22]

But thinking of mind as ingredients, though, actually is not so typical of our culture. Now also, there's another difference, which is that we tend to think of our minds as given and inviolable. Given, inviolable means they can't be violated. We also tend to think of ourselves in some intrinsic way as different, fundamental ways, different from animals and mountains and trees. Yeah, and until Darwin came along, which wasn't very long ago.

[04:50]

Lewis Agassiz... was a contemporary of Darwin and kind of brilliant and famous professor at Harvard. And he was known also for an unusual gift, which maybe many people have, but I only know Picasso had it. He could draw a single object with two hands simultaneously. So if he's drawing a person he could start here and go like this and a person comes or an animal or whatever. I can't do it even if I'm tracing Can you imagine if I just follow it, if I follow it?

[05:55]

Yes, okay. So anyway, Agassiz was convinced, and he was the great opponent at the time of Darwin, one of the great opponents, that everything was individually created. Horses, dogs, stones, and people all were examples of separate creation. God was busy. Let's create that one. Okay. So... That wasn't long ago. Yeah, in some ways those ideas are still in our thinking. But in the yoga culture of Buddhism,

[06:57]

It's like one big protoplasmic field. Yeah, and we're different definitions within it. It's almost like dogs surface in this part of the field and we surface in this part. But we all share the same field. That's why we can eat each other. plants, dogs, and things. We're all part of the same protoplasmic field. So the feeling is more like we're in a world that we are part of I mean, do you love your finger? Or your arm? Well, you don't say, oh, I love my arm so much. You don't, it's just part of you.

[08:08]

Yeah, you don't have to bother to love it, because it's already, you know, attached. Yeah. So you feel that way about everything. You feel it's all part of us. Somehow it's part of us. It is us. Well, I mean, you can If you really feel this, if it's sort of like, yeah, like how you feel, how you, yeah, feel. I think that you feel yourself more in a kind of collateral parallel relationship coexistent and co-extensive.

[09:19]

And so you Yeah, so maybe we can hear Dogen's statement that without the color of mountains and the sounds of the valley the Buddha could not have lifted up the flower. Nor could Maha Kashyapa have smiled. Who does not realize without ripened causes? Now, what are ripened causes? Now we're back to memory.

[10:30]

How do we absorb our experience? What is our experience? How does our experience come into the present? Yeah. The other day I was sitting in the living room we have in, actually it's a living room, kitchen, dining room. all at once. Anyway, I was sitting in the living room corner of the room. And on the window sill opposite, I have three vases given to me by Marlena Kliefert. Yes, I'm sitting there looking at them.

[11:38]

Or not exactly looking at me, but aware they were there. And I mentioned this, I don't know, maybe in Johanneshof a few weeks ago, because it really struck me. I wasn't thinking about them. I was just feeling them. I was not thinking about them. So you could say I was practicing non-thinking. But yet I knew that Marlene had made them. I knew Marlene had given them to us. And I knew that... There's memory.

[12:56]

I can only picture two of them now. I can't picture the third. I'm sorry. But one of them is a kind of ordinary old vase. One of them, I think, is influenced by Greek ideas of vases. And the third is clearly influenced by a vase that's at Crestone, where she was for a while last year, which is interfolded lotus leaves to make a vase. So not only did I see the three vases, but I knew the source of the three vases, aesthetically. But I'm not thinking about them. So what is thinking?

[13:57]

You know? I mean, is my knowing something about each of the three vases and that they were given to us by Marlene, is that thinking? Well, There's information about each of the three. It's an unavoidable part of my state of mind. And yet I'm not thinking about them, I'm just looking at them. But yet I've got a kind of conclusion. I have a feeling for the three vases. Yeah. So I ask this again. I'm trying to explore. What? Yue Shan and Dogen means when they say think non-thinking.

[15:07]

And I'm also trying to point out in a fairly primitive way is if you want to penetrate these statements of Dogen or Cohen First you just have to observe your own, the way your body and mind and perception exist, function. So, does somebody would like to say something? I would like some input from anyone, if you have any thoughts about this. Yes. For me it's difficult to say, think not thinking. I try to stay with one thought or grasp one thought.

[16:30]

And then I want to feel or sense it, this thought. So then I approach something that I don't make the thinking but through the feeling of that something changes or feel the activity then So, but you don't want to call that non-thinking? I don't know. You don't know. Yeah. So it's not discursive thinking. So you hold a thought. Then what do you do with the holding of it? Then I try to feel it.

[17:35]

Not to think it, then I try to feel the thinking. You say, oh, you feel nice. What do you mean? Okay, you try to feel the thought or the attitude in your body. And then what? You just feel it? You say, hey, it feels good. Yeah, then I feel it. And then it's a different sensing of the process of thinking. So do you come to a kind of conclusion you come to through thinking? Or do you come to any kind of conclusion at all by feeling? and keeping present, I guess, a thought or an idea. Through making the change in a feeling without rather, that is something which breaks the chain of thinking, of this class of thinking.

[18:50]

Making a change You mean changing it from thinking about it to feeling it is the difference? Or what's the change? I don't understand. The change is that when I try to feel the thinking, The change is when I try to feel the thinking. Then the quality of thinking has changed. I'm sorry to go into such detail about this.

[19:51]

I'm just sort of, okay. And I, you know, he's saying it in German and you're translating it and I'm trying to, okay. And I don't know what, but I'm interested in these two. Okay. So there's thinking going along and you say, hey, there's some thinking. And then you say, oh, what does that feel like? Try to feel the thinking. Yeah, well, sense. Feel, sense, yeah. Then you stop thinking and you just continue the feeling instead. You stop thinking and you just continue the feeling instead. And then what do you do? My feeling is that this goes into the direction of non-thinking. And then what happens? You just say, hey, that felt good. But does it lead anywhere?

[20:51]

Does it produce anything? It helps me with the attention, for example, more in the It helps me keeping my mindfulness more in the body. Helps you keep your mind? Fullness in the body. Yeah, but you work for this hotel business, right? You have a job where he runs hotels all over the planet for children. Do they pay you for this kind of thinking? So you have to, you think, gee, shall we open that hotel in Strasbourg and you feel it and then you, what happens? Are you decided to quit your job? I mean, what processes are used here? I don't know. I do this during meditation.

[22:09]

The Buddhist police are watching. In this way I can deal with things different, different endings come out. So you think, in other words, there seems to be a process of thinking through a problem or whatever, but you don't think it through discursively, You change the thinking into feeling and you let the feeling feel it through and it comes out as if you thought it through. Do you all do this? Does anyone else do something similar? Yeah?

[23:19]

Yeah, please. It's normal. That we go somewhere, it's always mind is always present. Mind is always present. I think about panting. When I'm lucky enough to join this with my feeling, First it's a feeling and my mind isn't switched off, and then? Something changes and something looks different then. It's not like either or.

[24:32]

Okay, does it have any relationship to meditation practice or is it just the way you happen to do things with or without meditation? I know that at the moment it was in quiet calmness. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, good. Thanks. Yes. I noticed that when there's... It's a topographical affair for me. It's when... Thinking can be sort of when it's... It's like when you're on a sea, and it's... On the surface, it's sort of... It's more...

[25:36]

exclusive thinking and the deeper you get into the water the more space is around the thoughts and the thinking and the more thinking like Andrea said is being felt and not only not just participated in so I always have it's like deep sea thing a little bit so that's my experience With what? With the thought. For me it's so that I'm more connected with it and not just one thought. So in other words, when you have a feeling within or for your thinking, it increases your sense of connectedness with your thinking.

[26:44]

Now just the greater connection, you feel more in it. And when you feel more in it, you feel more trust to the result. Mickey? That's a good explanation to trust it. It's the same with my work. When I make programs, then I just explore it with my feeling, the programs, and that way I can explore the complexity of the many parts of the program So I feel through the code and then I can work much better. I can't work in another way. It's the only way how I can go into some complex statement.

[27:46]

Okay, so you're writing a software program. Yes. Okay. So you have various elements. Many elements and very complex and I can't work in a different way. I have to go into and to explore with my feeling and then I can see how things are connected. May I come to the details? Because thinking alone is not possible to see that complexity. Okay, but first you have to be trained, you have to have some training in what you're doing, right? So now you've got some training, and you look at this stuff, and first you think of it, this is this type of thing, this is this type of thing. But first you have to have some thing. Yeah, of course.

[28:47]

When does thinking stop and feeling start? I think it starts quite early, the feeling. It's a more mixture. Well, you know that there's a problem that the software is supposed to go to. Yes. And then I bring that into my feeling and I explore more with my feeling. When I look for a bug or for a mistake in the program, then I have to use my feeling. Otherwise, I have no chance to find the problem. And that makes fun. I see. So if there's a bug in the system, you've got to feel your way toward it. Something feels wrong. Okay. But the same is with the rest of my life.

[29:53]

I always go with this kind of feeling and exploring and not expecting. Yeah, okay. That is... And that's how you choose your shirts, too. You don't really have to buy me points. No, I'm just jealous. Okay, you were going to say something? I'm constructed in that way. I have to feel into something. I'm not such a visual type who sees it at once. And children, like when they learn, yeah, when they learn something, natural science, for example, it starts always with feeling.

[31:08]

We have to start feeling something. That's no contradiction for me. And learning starts that way, starts feeling. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. Sometimes in meditation, very rarely, something happens when I stop trying. A kind of a state comes, which I would call knowing, but I don't know what I'm knowing. And In this state, sometimes it's a second or five seconds. At one stage, thinking will stop. I used to work with impermanence, so I'd stop thinking that this is impermanent.

[32:13]

I lost this state. And I wouldn't call it feeling. I wouldn't call it thinking. It's also something I couldn't feel into or think into. Feeling into it or thinking into it, I miss it. In other words, for you, you just have to let it happen. Yeah. But is it preceded by thinking toward it or feeling toward it? I'm trying to be true. It never happens. Okay. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. Madeline. Frau Fowler. Yeah. Yeah, Madeline, yeah, go ahead. Let's call it intuition for now, yeah?

[33:33]

Yes, this is an isma intuizione. When I catch my last two years, when I catch them, when my intuition opens, that gives me Something like internalization. Yes. To preserve myself as I was, to be. Okay. This is why we are all breathing. To live a good living. I have to treat myself. I have to talk to the ex. I had the feeling to be and to be held in balance, but that was my own doing. Okay.

[35:00]

Okay. So someone else. Nothing, mate. That's your feeling now? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[36:05]

First, there is this difference between thinking or probably being thought. And then I want to use an example Kafka. who I think I thought is also in has had meditative states and writing in the castle now And then we call him there. I call the chaplain. And he doesn't want to talk to me at first. Later on Peter calls him and you only hear the noise behind him. That's a wonderful voice. And then I immediately think, as if he were talking to me in a higher level. And that raises a lot of thoughts as well.

[37:27]

And if the listener can't hear, I can remind them, then I'll send them a message. In the novel, in the plot, in the novel. There's this scenario where he tries to call the castle and does hardly not succeed. And if he succeeds, there is a rustling of many, many, many voices. And only when it's still sort of the real news get across. And there's, for me, a relation of the stillness behind all that thinking. Okay. Someone like, I don't remember, Hugh of Saint Victor or someone, in the very early, I don't know what century, Middle Ages, when they began to separate words into visual units. Before that, they were just lots of letters in a row, and you had to sound it to know where the word was.

[38:31]

But then they began separating it into visual units. And in those days they didn't have... and tables of contents, so you didn't know where you were in the text. You didn't tell anybody how to find your way in the text. And eventually they had chapters and verses and things like that for the Bible. And they sometimes used key words. A paragraph would have the key word of the paragraph out on the side in the margin. But anyway, Hugh of St.

[39:32]

Victor said... I think it was Hugh. I'll check it later. He said... this way of separating words out and looking at them is a very good way to develop your thinking. And then he said, and this is only surpassed by contemplation. So at that time, there was a It seems to be there was a common understanding that contemplation was a way of thinking which was deeper than thinking with language and discursively. But I don't think most of us, I mean, When you were in school, did the teachers tell you contemplation is a better way to think?

[40:54]

But when you were in school, did the teacher tell you that contemplation is a better way to think? I don't think so. Yes. Can you also find any meaning in a row of letters that are not separated? That are not what? That are not separated. Can the eye get a sense or make a sense of letters which are not separated? The eye can't. You have to sound it. How can you read something? What? How can you then read something? They read it out loud. But still then they have to do this kind of process anyhow. Yeah, that's right. But they had to learn the skill of reading out loud. And in general, for most people, they heard texts where manuscripts were so rare that someone read them aloud to other people because you couldn't Not everyone had it, you know.

[41:54]

There weren't books yet. But isn't it that many people read in a way as if they are saying it loud? Yes, some people read out loud. But silently. And that's not a very efficient way to read. But it might be something similar. Yeah, from the time of the handwritten book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ganz, ganz früher. And if you start, my impression is, I don't know, but if you start, Mahakali, if you start reading that way, you get into the sound of it, but you can't capture the spaces just by looking easily. I've always been surprised at the difference between, which some of you who come to service must have noticed yourself, when you're chanting, kanji, zaibo, satsubyo, jensei, and you want to read it, if you start reading it, you have to go into a kind of different mind to read it, and then if you decide to go back to chanting it without reading it, you have to have a little jump, and then let the

[43:23]

another kind of memory come out. So I suspect the chanter of a text, which is not divided into words, has some experience like that. But I've never done it, so I don't know. I've read a lot about it. But it is a fact anyway that early texts weren't divided into words. You also do computer programming. Do you have a similar way of thinking about it as Eric does? Do you feel or do you think like Erich?

[44:27]

I often see things, and to make sure that the things are correct, I also cross-check the structure. By feeling? It must be something which must be, it must be something like a count, or some harmony in mixing. And then I know that the thing is good. Yeah. I remember when I was in college there was most of my, a lot of the people I knew were in sciences or in mathematics. And one of them was a Chinese student. And he had the gift for, as something like you mentioned, knowing where the bugs are. And he was one of my roommates.

[45:40]

Anyway, I had several roommates. And people would call him up and say, I'm in the midst of this problem, I'm trying to figure it out, and he'd say, tell me the equation. So he'd just listen and say, oh, try this. And usually his guess, which was done by feeling, would let them solve the problem. But they were trying to think it through, and they weren't getting very far, and he could feel it. No.

[46:40]

Okay. Okay, so we're discussing this here. Have you all discussed this with other people, this similar thing? Is it unusual to discuss this? Ungewöhnlich. Ungewöhnlich. Unusual. Ja, normal working life. You don't talk to people about how you think in your office. Ich denke so und so, das ist mal was anderes. When I say, I think in that way, but it's something different then. I don't speak about the process of thinking. Okay, now, being a programmer, you know other programmers. Do you talk with each other, say, how do you go about it? Sometimes make it different. I think the better programmers involve more feelings. Okay. Also die bessere Programmierer, die beziehen mehr Fühlen mit ein.

[47:50]

For myself, I realized that I was once married with a Japanese. That's where you got your last name, right? Yes, and when I separated, I lost this kind of intuition because she was a very intuitive person and I wanted to cut this away because I wanted to separate, so I had to cut out that part that was her. And so I realized I couldn't really study anymore. My feeling was lost. And I think I got it back by meditation. And so I can see now that it is very important this kind usually you just you are not aware of this kind of separation with thinking with intuition and without intuition with feeling and without feeling but if you experience this kind of missing something what you had before and then you redevelop it then you see more how necessary this is Mark, are you

[49:04]

I think for simple problems, you can think about the problem visually and reduce the complexity somewhere. for simple processes, you can... I can explain it in English. For all processes, it is possible to structure the thoughts, to represent them visually with visual tools, to reduce complexity. But if the problems... But if the problem is something new, which is more complex, that you can't access this alone, then you have to add something to this. And I think if the problem is more complex, if it's something unknown, if it's not there, if it's not a repetition point, then something else has to be added. A second or third dimension has to be added to this problem. Whether processes are more complex or unknown, the second or third dimension has to come to it or be added to it.

[50:15]

Okay. Yeah, I think, well, for my part at least, I think I don't talk so much with other people about these inner dimension processes and topographies because it's so just to clear the ground and what you're talking about, what you mean, and what other people are just to clear this is so talking about it wouldn't even start, you know, before having cleared the terms. So this is, I think, one thing. Andrews. when you talk about something how you came to a conclusion or solution and you say I got that by feeling it or I just felt it it's not taken so serious and I have a question too You relied on the feeling and it sort of was gone.

[51:28]

Is that something that can be strengthened through meditation? Is it something that you get by meditation that what you feel is more sort of appropriate or more accurate or more you can rely on it more? Is it that where you get it through meditation? Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah. I wouldn't. say that's a complete answer, but I mean, I think what you said is true, but I'd want to add a few things to it.

[52:31]

Yeah, but we're supposed to end soon, so I don't know what to launch into. So we could take a little short break now and come back and then end. Oh, yeah, go ahead. I had a rather disastrous experience in my job. I sat down with two business advisors who asked me and they had a catalogue with 180 questions about my decision processes. They had to answer these 180 questions. I was confronted with two consultants.

[53:32]

They asked me my decision-making processes and I had to answer 180 questions. Oh my goodness. These were business consultants who were brought in or something to the company? Yes. And there was a lot of aggression in the end, because you couldn't answer these 180 questions that you decide. In this context, these many individual aspects, you can bring it together through the feeling, something different. There are 180 aspects, there are 180 parts, and these people were of the opinion that if I put these 180 parts in a big program, then it won't work. And there was a accusation that I was withholding a knowledge, that I was not saying a knowledge, that I would write the 181st word. These people, these consultants, their impression was that if you answer these 180 questions and process them in a computer or something, then it comes out.

[54:46]

But there was an aggressive sentiment accompanying the whole situation. And they clearly had the notion that I was withholding something. So I didn't answer the 181st question. Because for me it's so complex that just it's 180 parts, but not the whole thing, and it is brought together by feeling. Actually then it's completed by feeling. So you left one question unanswered? Yeah, the 180 first. But I thought there were only 180 questions. They have the feeling he did not, he didn't everything, he withheld something. I see. But that wasn't asked for. That wasn't asked for. Does anyone here not think sometimes in the way we've been talking about? Does anyone here not think in the way we've been talking about?

[55:49]

You hate to admit it. I only think discursively. I think that discursive thinking... I think discursive thinking is necessary, and when all aspects are being thought of, then another dimension is added, is necessary and added. In my normal life, I deal with problems, of course, through discursive thinking, and, of course, also with work, on the level of analyzing the problem and describing its different aspects. But there are problems that can be solved easily.

[56:58]

They always remain unsolved. And then comes the aspect that Eric was talking about. And then the problems are not solved by this part, and then the aspect that Erich mentioned is added. Now, did you teach yourself to do this added part, or did someone else teach you, or you learned it in school? But school wasn't taught that how you go at problems systematically was also not taught in school. It wasn't even taught how to go at problems systematically. So you've educated yourselves. Sometimes I have to think about things I don't want to feel, so I have to think about and discuss it.

[58:15]

Well, we could, you know, as must be obvious, Zen koans are, in many of the statements, are presented in ways that require you to, to some extent, think discursively, but also to, primarily, to abandon discursive thinking. And it is also quite obvious that the Zen koans are designed in such a way that one can become a part of it through discursive thinking, but even then one simply has to give up this discursive thinking. And then there's various teachings or ideas about how you think in a variety of contexts. Contexts. Or ways in which you could... let the context do the thinking for you.

[59:38]

Yeah, maybe that's enough for today. But anyway, it's interesting to me. And so the two of you feel this has been connected with meditation and having a Japanese life. And you feel it's connected with meditation, but I don't think it's necessarily connected with meditation, but maybe people who feel this are more likely to be ones who meditate. I know I'm always trying to speak about things which I don't know how to speak about.

[60:43]

And I think for you sometimes it feels like I'm talking about the same thing, but for me I often started from a different point. And I don't know how to get there. And if I can think about it, of course, whatever it is, I just think about it. But if I can't think my way to it, sometimes I write my way to it. Yeah. In other words, I'll have a feeling it's very clear, but I won't know how to unfold it. And I can unfold it in a number of ways. One is to sleep on it. And since I tend to be quite a visual person, for instance, if I have an architectural problem, I look at the site, I look at the place, I look at...

[61:56]

you know, what I want the building to be used for. And then I'll go to sleep, or I'll be meditating, or something, and the whole structure appears in my mind, how it looks, what the rooms are like, etc. So sometimes it works something like that, but often I actually just start with any words I can think of that are part of the feeling. And then I start writing it, either by hand or on the computer. And it works differently by hand and by computer. And it starts to come out through the process of trying to put it into words. So that's sort of not like discursive thinking, but it's like using language, certainly, to unwrap something.

[63:22]

Okay, so let's sit for a minute.

[63:24]

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