Very happy to be back in your living room with all you living beings. And I hear that it's a holiday and so there's more people here today than will be here tomorrow. So it looks like I should try, well usually what I do is I start on Friday with just sort of rambling, confusion. Yeah, I like to start out with problems, you know.

[01:01]

And then see if we can make sense of them by Saturday and Sunday. But if I start out confusing myself and you today and then we don't resolve anything until tomorrow, I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, but it might be something else. Okay. So, yeah, and I... somewhat more or less by chance I started a seminar in Johanneshof a couple of weeks ago in which the theme was the western self and the

[02:15]

Buddhist self. So then I somehow continued that in Hanover, because Hanover had Zen and the Western world topic. And then, since presumably some of you are psychotherapists, psychologists and so forth, I presume there's a moderate interest in self. May I ask how many of you are psychologists or psychotherapists? Well, at least some. Coaches. Coaches. Coaching. And teachers.

[03:33]

No, I'd like to start out by asking you, how do you use the words, I don't know what you use in Deutsch, but self, psyche, soul, do they come up in your psychological and psychotherapeutic thinking? Do you think you're relating to someone's psyche or soul or self or it's just a dance and you don't even think about those things? Anyone have any immediate thoughts or you want to, I mean, if anything comes up later, you can say something. Another question is, if someone came to you and said, I have a strong sense of a continuous self,

[05:19]

But do people actually say things like that? I'm here. I have a strong sense of self. And how do you feel? But there might be some sense that that's the case. And then what about if somebody said, this imaginary client said, I only have a sense of a discontinuous self, non-centralized, no, no, let's not go there. Certainly in the practice of Buddhism, as I said, the beginning practice of Buddhism in a monastic context

[06:33]

Now why do I say in a monastic context? Because to look at some things takes a kind of continuity of time. and one of the things I'm observing now as many of you know is we have a primarily the Dharma Sangha which some of you are formerly part of and some of you are sort of part of, is primarily a lay Sangha. And Buddhist practice in Mahayana Buddhist practice is conceived of as being for lay persons.

[08:10]

And one of the big differences, though it doesn't maybe seem like such a big difference, is that earlier Buddhism emphasized all year round monastic practice. And Chinese Buddhism came to emphasize 90-day, three-month units of practice. So one thing I'm kind of wondering about since I have responsibility for the development of the Dharma Sangha is do we need a monastic component? And if we do, what should be the proportion?

[09:30]

What should the monastic component be? I think most of the practitioners in our Sangha don't feel a need for a monastic component. Although doing a sashin is a monastic component. And then we're wondering, can we bring monastic, I mean, can we bring Zen practice, meditational and mindful Zen practice, into our daily life, into our personal daily life, personal practice, and can we bring it into

[10:31]

our work, our activity, and especially where it overlaps, like with psychotherapy and psychology. So, in that light, we have the simple problem related to self, If we were all going to be here together now for the next three months, Do you have enough food in the kitchen, if I ask? Norbert, would you lock the door? Good. Apples. Then I could say to you, spend the next three months seeing if you can find self, what is self for you.

[12:00]

And it takes an observation of how we function. And to do a practice like this traditionally and satisfactorily, but at least traditionally, you Emphasize this to the exclusion of everything else. And you come to the conclusion at a certain point. Yes, I do function through something we can call self.

[13:05]

But it's not an entity, you know, etc. But a conceptual understanding is just not it. You have to actually feel a freedom from self. And feel when self is strongly functioning or sometimes perhaps less strongly functioning. Now, can one do that when one is much of every day have to function with the usual sense of self because nobody else would, nobody would know how to relate to you. I have no self, I'm sorry, don't talk to me. Is there some way Norbert you can glue up that piece of paper now?

[14:23]

Maybe you could just stand like this. Okay. And of course, I'm glad some of you are sitting on chairs, only because I'm happy you're comfortable. If you're not used to sitting like a pretzel, if we can hang it here, that's better. I mean, just on those wooden cross... There we go.

[15:44]

Can you hang it up on the wooden cross? No. Higher? Yeah. Here? Yeah, like that. Thanks. Sorry. And the blue was the only one, what do you call them, I had that was a little bit wide. Sorry, it's in blue. If you click on it, it goes into the animal. You can't see anything sitting there, you know. I can see you, though. Which isn't so bad. Okay, now, this list just developed because I...

[17:07]

this last seminar and the seminar before, I was just trying to explore experientially what do we mean by self. Also, diese Liste ist entstanden durch das gerade letzte Seminar und das Seminar davor, weil ich versucht habe aus der Erfahrung heraus zu No, these are not examples. I'll go through the list with you, but these are not examples of self. They're more, at least particularly the earlier part of the list. conditions in which we can imagine or experience or assume the presence of self. Because anything My consideration of these things, the other side of it, the catalyst for it, is the Buddhist idea of no-self or non-self.

[19:00]

Non-self is a better way to look at it in English than no-self. I don't know how it works in German, but in English, no self means the absence of self. But non-self implies some sort of functioning through not having a self. An unusual sense of self. I'm a non-coffee drinker. Okay. So, anyway, if I do something, I, this location, does something.

[20:07]

And what I did is I put my finger to my forehead. And what happens then? Well, there's some sensation. So, okay, there's sensation. So it means there's some territory of sensation, so I call that sensory. But the experience of the sensation I'm experiencing the sensation and observing the experiencing the sensation. So inseparable from the sensation is the observation of the sensation.

[21:13]

I would say that's so basic all human beings have it. Even some apes have it. They're seeing themselves in the mirror. There's some, there was a famous female chimpanzee who kind of checked her teeth out and looked behind her ears and the others, the males, just sort of... They thought it was an animal. the males. So it's quite extraordinary that we observe the finger, observe the sensation.

[22:14]

Yeah. Okay, so then we can have the first question. Is our sense of observing inseparable from the sense of self? Or can we have a sense of observing without a sense of self? If this sense of observing is so universal for humans, you know, even a child, a baby, you know, I've had three of them.

[23:18]

And has from right on a sense of observing. Okay, so if this sense of observing is almost pre-cultural, could we call it biological observing? I decided in Hannover just the other day to try out calling it biological. Okay, now if it's biological, is it necessary that there's a sense of personal self, historical self, narrative self in there?

[24:32]

Yes, like that. Those are just sort of problems, questions. Now where does this narrative self come from, which I just mentioned? Okay, so again, here I am with my finger in my forehead. Yeah, and I have a feeling of observing. And this sense of observing is also an experience of interiority. Gerald told me yesterday he drove me here from Hanover.

[25:36]

It's good when I put things, write things down because it makes it easier. So if any other of you have instructions, I'll follow those too. But now, starting out with Doral. So there's an interiority. And what is the content of this interiority? Because it's almost like a container that you can't see, but I can feel. And what is the content of it? It's like a container that... If this container, which you can't see, you can't see, but I can feel. In fact, you're all in that container.

[26:37]

Is that self? Or do we, because observing results observing leads to an experience of interiority, is that experience of interiority inseparable from the experience of self? Buddhism says it's not. So if it's not, how do we separate the sense of self from the experience of interiority? So in that first three months or more of the monastic experience, The adept practitioner discovers how to separate the sense of self from the sense of interiority and when to let the sense of self

[28:03]

take possession of interiority. This is my interiority. And when does the adept practitioner say, get out of here, self? Leave my biological interiority alone. And then who the heck told self not to mess around with biological interiority? Is that self? We already have conundrums here. So... This interiority includes, of course, the experience of touching the forehead in this case.

[29:43]

It might also include an observation like, what am I doing such a dumb thing in front of all you nice people? Yes, scratching my third eye. And it also includes memory. Associations like third eye. So the interiority It also is the territory of memory. But it's also the territory of immediate experiences. And new associations you've never made before. So there's quite a lot going on in this container of interiority.

[31:04]

Are all the contents of the container of interiority self or only some of themself? Now, in addition to interiority, the observing faculty, we have the faculty to be able to observe, Also observes the exterior. Yeah. So, because the sensorium also observes the exterior as well as creates the feeling, the observing creates the feeling of an interiority. Now who negotiates or what is the negotiation between exteriority and interiority?

[32:17]

And who is the mediator between the outer and the inner? I presume the therapist is the referee. I assume the therapist is the referee. Or the catalyst. Or the catalyst. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So... And clearly we need the... anchor of exteriority to keep interiority in check. Because otherwise we could just get lost in our thoughts and our fantasies, etc. And, you know, sometimes washing the dishes straightens things out. And otherwise we could be totally lost in our thoughts and memories and so on.

[33:40]

And then it's time to play the game. Okay, so now we've got these categories of... Oh, I skipped number two. Well, we all are a location, so it can't be skipped. So we have a spatial location. If I go to sleep, I might float above my body and look down at myself from the ceiling, but more or less I'm located here. So everything is from this perspective. And one thing I pointed out the other day, which I find quite amusing and interesting, Everyone knows that Katrin, or me, or you, is a certain kind of person.

[34:54]

But we know we have to be rather careful not to tell Gerald everything that everyone knows about him. Aber wir müssen da doch irgendwie ein bisschen vorsichtig sein, dass wir ihm nicht erzählen, das, was jeder über ihn weiß. Because for a girl to keep... I'm sorry, you, I think it should be you, but I don't know your name. Katrin. Katrin, okay. Katrin. Katrin. Okay. Everyone knows Katrin, I presume if you're like most of us maintains the integrity of her experience by understanding, imagining herself in a certain way. And we all know intuitively you mess with somebody's imagination themselves with some cost involved.

[36:35]

So even though everyone who thinks a certain thing about me for instance Everyone thinks, oh, Baker's like this, you know. And you don't care. You accept me as I am, as you think I am. But you don't tell me some things. Why is that? You all know it, but you don't want me to know it, or you think it might be not so good if you tell me.

[37:37]

Okay, this is interesting. What does this have to do with self? Perhaps the psychotherapy putic referee has permission after four or five sessions to see if they can sneak in a few comments about... What's really going on with this person? And one of the characteristics of Zen practice in the disciple-teacher relationship in der Schüler-Lehrer-Beziehung is the relationship does not exist unless you can give totally frank feedback.

[38:46]

Dann existiert diese Beziehung nicht, sondern nur dann, wenn man total ehrliches Feedback geben kann. And sometimes a teacher tests a student. There's various forms. But one would be, you know, you're just not good enough to practice with me and I can't be your teacher and I hope you leave. And most people, when you say that to them, they leave. Okay. But a few say, I have the experience of myself. You can say what you want. I like you as a teacher.

[39:48]

I'm staying here. You don't think I'm your teacher? To hell with you. I'm your student. And that's the reaction you hoped for. Yeah, because then there's not too much ego there, not too much self there. Okay, so we have this spatial sense. We also have a temporal location in time. And that is actually a much more complex location to try to describe.

[40:49]

So let's leave that for now. Okay, so we've got Sensation. Which gives us a sense of location. Here, yes. And that location is observed. And observing leads to an experience of interiority and exteriority. And the relationship between the two. And there's a sense that you're doing it. I make a decision to put my finger on my forehead. And generally that's the word for that in the literature is agency.

[42:02]

I guess in Germany agents are more spies? So I spy. In English, agent didn't, until the beginning of the 1900s, there was no sense of spy at agency. It was a late addition to the word agent. But in English, probably the etymology is the same. It means to do, to lead, to direct. The A-G means to lead. It's the same root as act to act.

[43:04]

So agency creates a sense of choice. It is choice. I can decide to talk to you or I can decide not to talk to you or sit here or not sit here. But the more I have an embodied sense of self, or an embodied sense of agency, as we know from yogic experience and also from psychological research, that the body often knows what consciousness is going to decide before consciousness decides.

[44:15]

So now do we have the body, is the body the self? Or is the consciousness the self? Who's making the choice? What's the relationship between choice and self? And if in fact consciousness usually edits a choice that the body has already made, which is actually mostly the case, In the minutia of our activity, then that means that if the decision maker is the self, the self is not limited to consciousness. But the narrative self that we experience as our personal history, that mostly concurs in consciousness.

[45:54]

So in the sense that we have a who-ness, a decider-ness, is that self. Or can we experience the process of deciding in a more diffused way than just arising from the narrative sense? So even the obviousness of wholeness is not so obvious. And recently I've often asked practitioners to ask yourself, who is breathing?

[47:14]

And to feel that question, who is breathing? And then to shift and ask yourself, ask yourself, whose self? I don't know. Ask, what is breathing? Okay, so what is breathing? Immediately attention, gives attention to different things. elements of being, then who is breathing? And you have the sensation you can locate what is breathing.

[48:16]

And you can, in a certain way, locate this what is breathing. And I'm not talking about philosophy here, I'm talking about experience. But it's rather hard to locate or imagine, how do you locate who is breathing? You have a feeling of it, but... Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, said, I don't understand anything I can't make. Well, that's one level of, one measure of understanding. So if I say, what is breathing? I have a feeling I can make that.

[49:28]

My lungs, my body, etc. But if I say who is breathing, I can't make who. I made who, but I can't... Yeah, I did make... Who made who? This is getting too long. I'm sorry. So you can have a feeling of you can make the answer to what-ness. You can't have much feeling of how to make a who, even though you've already done it. Okay, okay. I think it's time for a break. I mean, the next one is responsibility.

[50:30]

And so I have a certain responsibility here to call a break. That's my manifesting agency.

[50:36]

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