I'm still trying to, I'm exploring how to do this seminar in a way that, well, I don't feel I'm teaching Buddhism, so how to do it so it's useful to you in relationship to Buddhism and psychology. I'm still trying to find out how I want to hold this seminar here and I don't have the feeling I said psychology, not psychotherapy, but that's okay. Did I say psychotherapy? Yes. Sorry. I always wonder which one to use. So Roshi said psychology and I said psychotherapy. And I know that it's quite amazing you were able to take two days off from whatever you're supposed to do.

[01:12]

I think probably we need three days. So I may be here all by myself tomorrow. Why three days? Well, I think we need one day to sort of get to know each other. And then one day to establish some common ground. And then if we did have another day, what I would like to do is see if I can present what's been my experience over the years. The way Zen practice can be used in a psychotherapeutic session for clients who don't practice, for clients who practice, and so forth.

[02:29]

But let's put that aside for now, and if there's something you'd like to bring up, I'd like to start with discussion again. I would like to put that aside and now I would like to start with the discussion and that you ask questions or comments. Yes. Yesterday I came once again to the question, you quoted Suzuki, life is not Predictable. Could you say it in English or should I translate it? You do it in English. I say it? I'll do it in English right away. Not sequential, not perceptible, but it is still an essential illusion. What does this mean for therapy and also for education?

[03:32]

Is this the process of identifying myself, necessarily, in order to orient myself, and then I disidentify myself again? Maybe you could say something about that. I know from myself that I have done a long process of disidentification, and then I realized that in the end So you were questioning, quoting, you were quoting Suzuki yesterday that life is, that we need life to be predictable and sequential. I was predicting, I was quoting myself actually. I read it in an article about you yesterday. Okay, that's fine. And then you said there is a necessary illusion.

[04:40]

My question is, what does this mean for therapy and maybe even education? Is this the process of identification and disidentification again? So that we necessarily get identified and then we have to be disidentified again? And the last comment was certainly saying that I went through a long period of dis-identification. You did. And I was disillusionized and not very connected to anybody. Yeah, you did. And then it got better at some point? You look okay. But I need all this connection then. But if it's an illusion, it's a dis-identification. Well, there's a lot of stuff in what you just said. I guess, would you say that, in other words, a child has to learn to identify itself through the culture and through ordinary consciousness and so forth,

[05:57]

And maybe at some point they can disidentify themselves in that way and find a deeper or more fundamental identity. Is that what you mean? Yeah. That's one thing. I think that's pretty common that it happens that way. Or it ideally happens at least that way. But I think the process can also start from birth of finding oneself in both I was in... I don't know where. some city in northern Germany some years ago.

[07:22]

And I saw a woman pushing a baby in a stroller and a slightly older child, a year older, so was walking. And they were both crying and sort of shouting. And the mother was saying, was comforting the infant. But telling the little boy who was older, shut up, don't cry, you're a boy, you're not supposed to behave this way, etc. So she was trying to control his behavior from some idea of self, shame, etc.

[08:30]

But she was comforting the baby, I would say, from the infant, from awareness and using consciousness with the other person. That's the kind of distinction I would make. And, you know, it struck me that, you know, at a certain point you don't comfort your child in the same way anymore. You tell them what to do. I think this must be culturally learned at what point you make the shift to relate to the person in that way, to the child in that way. And I think you don't have to make such a sharp shift. So that's part of the response to what you said.

[09:52]

Okay, let me see if I come back to it. Do you want to remind me of what I didn't respond to? Yes. So please remind me. Now or later? Now, yeah, now. I find it sometimes like a spaghetti. A spaghetti? A spectrum? A stretch, okay, a stretch. A spaghetti, a spaghetti. Yeah.

[10:55]

Yeah, I wouldn't... Yeah, go ahead. You finished? Yeah, go ahead. Sure. Whatever you want. You mentioned Pearls yesterday. From Pearls there is this sentence, if I remember correctly, it does not speak of Greece in action. So if I'm reminding correctly, Pearls might say, don't talk about it, bring it into action. That means to make it not an essence but a process. Is this the same subject, identification, disidentification, process instead of essence. Is this your term, disidentification, or is that mine? Meins oder dein Wort? Meins. I know it from therapy.

[11:56]

Okay. That's an idea in therapy. Other people have it. Das ist eine grundsätzliche Idee in Therapie. And what does it mean exactly? Und was bedeutet es genau? What does it mean to disidentify with what? Realizing that your own concept is your own concept and has no essence. So the concept you have of yourself and of the world are just concepts. My feelings are my feelings but I'm not. Yeah, I'm not familiar with it as a term. Ich bin mit diesem Wort nicht vertraut.

[13:01]

I'd have to think about it a little bit. Mit diesem Ausdruck. I would define it a little bit differently. Watching your experience from the position of a witness. To witness your experience as if you were outside yourself. So, for example, someone is sitting there crying. So, and then a sentence comes up, I will never be able to do it. So it's like going back to the source, but it's not outside somehow, because he asked, is it outside?

[14:08]

It's not outside. So the feeling is that the feeling doesn't overwhelm you, completely fills you. Then it's me and the feeling, and someone who is saying the sentence, someone who is watching it, observing it, to go into that direction. I want to add that it's not only pathological or bad, it's also to identify something useful.

[15:10]

So I think it's useful to identify as a mother or as a therapist, or whatever the function is. So it's useful that a mother identifies herself with or as a mother, as a mother and a psychotherapist, as a psychotherapist, so it's a useful quality to identify. Exactly, and the opposite of the disidentification, of course, Because if I don't go to therapy, I don't want to be a good mother anymore. Identification is a good quality, too, because if I go into a therapy room, I don't want to be the good mother anymore. Oh. If you ever were. But not the same mother as I am with my child. Yeah, yeah, I understand. From that point of view, it's good to deal with it and have some awareness and consciousness of that.

[16:37]

Okay. You know, for me, the craft of psychotherapy, to the extent that I understand it, And certainly the craft of Zen practice, as I understand it a little bit better, is really in the details, as they say. And so I'm trying to understand the details between... Now, I would say, I often say, to not identify with your thoughts. But I wouldn't say to disidentify. Because what you're doing is you're taking a vacation from your identity in a way by not identifying, but still there's an identity.

[17:45]

Okay, now, is this something like the basic practice of mindfulness, say, classic example? You notice you're angry. You notice you're getting more angry. You're very angry. But you don't try to interfere with the anger. You just notice the anger. In effect, you... are witnessing the anger and in a sense you're not you're disidentifying with the anger.

[18:52]

Would this be a similar process? Okay, so if that's a similar concept and dynamic, the main, the real point of How can I say real? Anyway, something like that, the real point of mindfulness practice is that while you're just noticing anger, you're actually generating, creating a space separate from the anger. And the more you have this practice and the more you accept the anger, but simultaneously create a space separate from the anger at the same time, then you can shift your sense of identification from the anger

[19:59]

from the content of mind to the field of mind. So I wouldn't call that a... I myself would not probably use disidentify, but shifting your identity. But it's a similar kind of territory, certainly, we're looking at. Yeah. Why do you say shift of identity and not shift of identification? Okay, maybe more precisely I might say a shift of the sense of location. I might use that word. Well, you know, this is the problem.

[21:15]

Once you take something like this, there's a lot of stuff on either side of it. Okay. So we have the sense of location. And then you have the sense of a location, where do you start from each moment? But then if I say that, then I'm at the, what is each moment, how do you have an initial mind from which each moment begins? the initial mind from which each moment begins.

[22:31]

And that's really what Dharma practice means. Okay, so then if you have an initial mind, it's a little like, as I say, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 3. Or again, it's better 0, 1, one, zero, one, zero, one, zero, and some of the ones are threes or fives. Okay. All right. That's another way to conceptualize it. So you begin to find a location where the self isn't functioning. We could call it non-thinking consciousness. Or I would call it awareness.

[23:32]

And the self functions in awareness like a car underwater. It's gas tanks full of water, it doesn't function very well. Okay. Now, why do I say identity? Because this space of awareness, which doesn't have the autobiographical self-functioning in it, then can be the Buddha nature. It can be where the identity we call Buddha appears. Can you see this space again? It's too loud. I don't want to teach Buddhism. So the territory of initial mind or awareness where the autobiographical or biographical self doesn't function. It becomes the basis for a new identity appearing, which we call Buddha-nature.

[24:51]

Something else? One example of a difference in detail or nomenclature. So if we have... Okay, so Freud noticed that in associative mind, I call it associative mind, there was... there were things that people became aware of that they weren't aware of in consciousness.

[25:55]

No, I think that's simply a fact. And anybody who meditates notices that after you kind of slip out of consciousness into the kind of mind that perhaps and often does go to sleep, but because you're sitting upright and so forth, you ideally don't go to sleep. And you find this first layer of Zazen mind is a mind of free association or associative. Right. So, you do see things that you're not aware of.

[27:11]

that you hadn't thought of before. And the more you're present to that mind, the more thinking is a more continuous or even continuous flow of what we usually call intuition or insight. So it becomes a mind which in effect sort of opens up or uncovers But it also becomes a mind that thinks differently. Or notices differently. And then there's a creative relationship between this more insightful mind and the recovery of memory. Or associations you haven't noticed before. So the practice of zazen, the sort of beginning stages of it, of each session of sitting as well as when you're a beginner.

[28:21]

And the sitting in zazen, both can be a kind of associative mind or free associating mind. It can also be a way to think through things in a wider context of associations. And to let mind, in a sense, do its own thinking, as writing writes writing, thinking does thinking, you don't have to think it.

[29:22]

Okay, now I would say that's all experiential fact. Okay, so now what do we call it? What metaphor do we use for this? Freud chose the unconscious. And Freud used the unconscious. And Jung followed suit and made it even bigger. What did he call it? Jung made it even bigger. He made it really big. At that point it becomes religion. That's God. The idea that all different cultures have a collective unconscious. Even Rupert Sheldrake wouldn't agree with that. Okay. So he chose a metaphor, Freud did, which is essentially a container.

[30:38]

Yeah, a container with a certain dynamic. Okay. What I would choose, and what the Alaya Vijnana is more metaphorically related to, Here's what I would call enfoldment. Which I spoke in some detail about a couple of years ago. Enfoldment. Enfold. Yeah. And she thought you said outfolding. So that things are folded out of sight. But they're not in a container. And a container which you can bring things into the light of consciousness. Some things are permanently folded out of sight.

[31:41]

Like the ten or twelve dimensions of string theory. You can mathematically talk about it, but you can't visualize it. So, if you have a metaphor of enfoldment, Then you think about how can you open up these folds? What different folds are there? This is a more, I think, complex and useful metaphor than a container. But they're not descriptions, they're They're metaphors.

[32:54]

They don't describe anything real. They just allow you to function in a useful way. So I think if I was a therapist and I had the idea of this person in front of me is enfolded Then I would work with them differently. Then I would suggest daily practices that the client does. So I would want to give Again, I'm just imagining. You guys are pros. I'm just, you know, not even an amateur. But I do see in a one-to-one, face-to-face relationship lots of people. And I try to make that not a psychotherapeutic And I'm not trying to give you a psychotherapeutic

[34:12]

You guys are warriors of transference and I'm only a victim. So I would, for instance, but imagining myself as a therapist, I would think of it in several ways as what happens during the session and what happens or what practice they could do extending the session or transformative practice they could do during the week or And I would suggest to people simple things. And I would never call it Buddhism. I would suggest to people simple things.

[35:25]

And I would call it common sense or something. Because I would suggest that people, for instance, take one minute or ten minutes. I'd frame it that way. When they brought their attention to their physical activity. I would suggest do that during this week when you happen to think of it. Or I'd say take one to ten minutes and sit in what I would call the horizon of immediacy. Which I mean by that, just take a minute or two at your desk or whenever, and just sit and bring the mind only to percepts, percept-only mind.

[36:37]

The look and feel of the wall. Und schau und fühl die Wand. Or a flower or the sounds from the traffic. Oder eine Blume oder den Verkehrslärm. So I just suggest one or two minutes, one to ten minutes. Do that during the day. Und tu das ein, zwei oder zehn Minuten während des Tages. Or see if you can spend one to ten minutes on... just bringing attention to the breath. I would call those transformative practices, not psychotherapeutic practices. But that they would be useful in psychotherapeutic work, I think. Now, we should stop in a couple of minutes.

[37:45]

But I would say, for example, I'll give one last example. If the client happened to be a meditator, I would I would suggest they do somewhat, yeah, I would suggest they notice in their meditation any sort of personal recollection, That had a light around it, a brightness around it. Or had anxiety around it, or something you wanted to avoid.

[38:49]

Or something that kept repeating itself. I would say, take that and... It's kind of like a spontaneous, you just trust what comes up and has these qualities, anxiety, brightness or repetition. And stay with it. And just stay with it in your meditation. It's sort of the way you might hold a baby. Rather gently and let the baby do what it wants. But supportive. And see what other recollections, what other associations occur. Yeah, anyway, that's enough.

[39:50]

and how to extend that into daily practice. Maybe I should speak about that afterwards. So, a moment of sitting.

[40:20]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.32