But I'll start without you, because you know everything already. Thanks. Mid-guess. No. Just ordinary water. He has the tape recorder so he won't miss anything. So why did I mention that to Christa? Was I correcting her? Not really. It's completely arbitrary whether we do these things or not. As I say, there's no Buddhist police watching you.

[01:09]

I'm watching, no. Wait till I'm 80. I just thought it would be a good chance to say something about our practice. You know, as you have seen from the teshos, much of what we're doing is dividing things into parts. And life in a monastic type situation is all these little parts you learn to do.

[02:12]

And their very arbitrariness is their power. Because you're not doing it for any good reason at all. Any usual personal reason at least. And that's the point. You do it just because you do it. Okay. So, it's not about selflessness. That has too much baggage. Let's say it's about non, I don't know if you can translate this, non-selfness.

[03:22]

Sound right? Okay. Non-selfness. In other words, this is the way we do it. We bow to our cushion, then we bow to the front, then we sit down, that's all. So why do it any other way? It has no meaning, just do it. But, you know, sometimes we're in a little bit of a hurry. I'm about to start the lecture. And Krista kindly doesn't want to delay things. Or whatever her reasons. I'm not going to analyze her reasons. We might be in trouble. She does it a little shortcut.

[04:35]

We've got no place to go until a couple of days from now. So, you know, we don't have to respond to pressure or some kind of feeling we should do it this way or that, we just do it the way it's specified. There's really a tremendous freedom in that. You're not doing it because you want to or don't want to or anything, you just do it. Du machst es nicht, weil du das willst oder weil du es nicht willst, sondern du machst es einfach. Yeah, now, I want to wander in and out a bit of our topic, these teishos.

[05:50]

Okay, so I said I wanted to speak about self. Okay. So then I found, and the way these lectures have developed, I found I had to speak about noticing self. Okay, so then I started speaking about the word sashim. Gather the mind. Okay, so now we're noticing mind and noticing body. So, yeah, then I talked about the subtlety, the thread from under, the subtlety of noticing. So I thought I had to speak about some of the skills of noticing.

[06:53]

Yeah, now mindfulness is a teaching. But it's only a teaching if it's practiced. It's not a teaching unless you practice it. And when you practice it, it becomes a teaching. Now, in Buddhism, now mindfulness has lots of, you know, last 20, 30 years it's become a common idea and everybody talks about it. But in Buddhism it's a two-part teaching. It's about how you notice. And what you notice.

[08:06]

And the what you notice is inseparable from the how you notice. It doesn't just mean to be alert and groovy. Okay, so what is it about the how you notice? Well, I'm trying to keep this simple. First is, you accept what you notice. And the second is, you accept it without comparison. Okay. So, mindfulness is to... Notice, accept what you notice and don't compare it. Now, subsequent noticing, you may analyze, you may do all kinds of things, but the initial noticing is just to accept and not compare.

[09:17]

im folgenden Prozess des Bemerkens, da kannst du das analysieren oder du kannst damit alles Mögliche machen. Aber das ursprüngliche Bemerken besteht darin, zu akzeptieren und nicht zu vergleichen. This sounds simple, but it's extremely important. Das hört sich einfach an, aber es ist ganz außergewöhnlich wichtig. Because you develop a habit of accepting and not comparisoning, not comparing, In your initial encounter with everything. It doesn't mean you're not thinking. It means your initial contact isn't based on thinking. That's a kind of training. Now, what happens if you develop the habit of accepting without comparison?

[10:23]

You develop not only initial attention, you develop an initial mind. Because the habit becomes what we can call an initial mind. The initial mind you bring to everything. Okay. So that's a lot, right? I just said there's a lot. Can you hear me way back there, Ingrid? Oh, good. Our all-American Englishman. I'm somewhat German. And Swiss.

[11:28]

So this is, we could call it the practice of noticing. Okay, now, second part of this two-fold practice is what you notice. Now, attention is considered to be the generative dynamic of our life. What you bring your attention to is a very, very large part of what your life becomes. And what it is in each moment.

[12:28]

So what your frames of reference are is really important. Okay, so the second part of mindfulness is you divide the world into targets. Targets for your attention. The five skandhas are targets. They're what you bring your attention to. The eight vijnanas are what you bring your attention to. The four foundations of mindfulness is what you bring your attention to. You can bring your attention to anything you want. But you don't learn much then. You just see what you're in the habit of seeing.

[13:29]

Now This is a gnomic game. Gnomic is a word which means a game in which you can change the rules of the game in playing the game. I think it's a contemporary word somebody thought up. It's a game which has rules, our life has rules, but we can change the rules. Because we're also creating our lives.

[14:34]

We're not living in a life created for us only. Okay. So if you just are alert and notice things, If you're really, really alert, you may discover the five skandhas and the practice of the Vijñānas yourself. But you have to be pretty alert because it took the Buddha and several centuries to get to this point. So all of you who want to be natural men and women, I wish you luck. I've always looked at Buddhism as a hose from the past. You know, I mean, Atmar is very happy if it rains, but if it doesn't rain, he uses a hose.

[15:56]

We use the wisdom water. So if we see that usually we notice according to our habits of noticing, If you see that simple thing, you have the insight that each moment is unique, but you don't see it as unique. You see it as like the same old moment you just had. Yeah, or you notice that consciousness...

[16:57]

will only notice some things, and many things are outside of consciousness. And Milton Erickson built a whole world on noticing what we... outside of consciousness. Okay. Yeah, Freud, etc. So we notice... So once you have that insight, then you think, well, maybe I should look at how I notice, develop how I notice. Insights like that lead many of us to starting to practice. Yeah, we start noticing outside the categories that our culture has shown us, and we start wondering, and then we start practicing.

[18:21]

Okay. Now, I'm trying to... I'm wondering right now what... What I want to get to, let's not worry about that. Let me just start somewhere. Much of what I'm doing and the way I'm speaking is about getting you to start your own process of noticing. And I can see that many of you have already practiced for some time, worried about what is self. And I think we need to continue that process for some time to be ready for the teachings about it.

[19:32]

And we have to see why the experience of self as I've said is so convincing. Now if we go back in ancient history or even more than that let's not go back to the ancient history of India, pre-Buddhist history. Let's imagine some primordial history. And this primordial history may be what I would call your originary history. I should translate originary. What did you say?

[20:46]

I said, if we imagine some primordial history for human beings... Yeah, that far I went. ...it may parallel our own originary history. Originary, yeah. You should translate it. Okay. I'm using it. It's a little not clear what... But I'm using it to mean... that not our original history, what happened before, but what were the causal aspects of our own history. So how did we create our own history? Okay. Now, if we imagine some primordial history, Okay. There's people. And if there's people, they come from babies. And it takes two to tango. Yeah, so you can't have a baby without parents. Yeah, let's not go earlier than that.

[22:01]

So if you get parents and babies, you have families. And if you have families, you have extended families. And if you have extended families, you have tribes. And if you have tribes, you have to have rules about how you bow your cushion. You at least have to have some sense of responsibility. I mean, you know, if you're going to function in a family, in a tribe, etc., you've got to have, there has to be some way you relate to others. Wenn du in einer Familie oder in einem Stamm oder wo auch immer funktionieren willst, dann brauchst du Regeln dafür, wie du mit anderen in Beziehung sein kannst. Also schon von ganz früh an muss es irgendeine Art von Konzept des Selbst geben.

[23:06]

Through time, from the past, and how you are in time at this moment. Okay. So there has to be some idea of self. Okay. Now, next step is, very big next step, is how can there be self-development? If there's a self, then you're responsible for your actions and things like that. Is that behavior and self just defined through the culture? Or can the self develop itself?

[24:19]

That's a very big step. And if some thousands of years of Indian history are about now that we see that there's a self, what happens to this self? Okay, now, what was added very clearly in India was there's a lot of suffering in this life. Some people seem to handle it better than others. Is it possible to be free of suffering? What kinds of suffering is it possible to be free of? And does the self have anything to do with being free of suffering? No. This can also be, I'm sure, to some extent, your own originary history.

[25:22]

Yeah. You're born in a culture, in a particular family. So you have some kind of self you develop. But you actually, as someone said to me in Duxen, I realize I have all these parts I've got from various places, school, family, etc., And I would say these parts, you know, exist sort of in us and they start collecting history. Reflecting experience.

[26:29]

Sometimes it's contradictory experience. I know someone who went to school and grew up in New Jersey. And he went to Wisconsin for college. And everyone in Wisconsin had an accent. But everyone in Wisconsin told him he had the accent. And it was an enlightenment experience that led him to not be a rabbi but to be a Buddhist. Sophia now, you know, we're telling Sophia what life is about. But she's going to school now and she's learning other things. And she has other ideas about it.

[27:34]

It's not the same for her. Okay, so what is this self? Now, what India added was the idea that the self can also be understood as the basis for enlightenment. As the basis for being free of suffering. Okay. Now, that's an added and very obviously important dimension to self. So is self not only how we live in this world and how we're responsible individuals but is it also the basis for liberation?

[28:36]

Now, this is a question you have to ask yourself. Ask your self. Is this self, which I'm asking, the basis for liberation? Hi, Buddha. So, Okay, so then I think we have to examine what ideas do we already have of self. Do you think of self as some kind of substantial entity? I think all of us to some extent have this idea. So is self, is your idea, self is some kind of substantial entity? and can it be matured in a Jungian sense perhaps can it be individuated so it's worth looking at Freud and Jung and Adler and others and say what do they think happens to self in the process of living

[30:29]

Some of us study these things and some of us are just affected by bits and pieces of these ideas that float in our culture. Or do you have, let's say, a vitalist idea of self? That you're just a kind of bunch of stuff. And there's this vitalist, battery-powered unit called the self. What's that little ad where the battery goes running around? What is it, a bat? A battery. Yeah, so is it some vitalist, some sort of soul or something that's already there? that makes you alive.

[31:45]

That might continue to the next life. Okay, do you have this vitalist idea? And I think, you know, these are a little bit slippery ideas, but they're important to distinguish. And Buddhism developed in the midst of these ideas. So let's just kind of review. The first is a substantial self which exists through time. Which you can mature and develop. And the second idea, and we often have a mixture of these ideas, And the second understanding, and often we have a mixture of these ideas, is that there is some kind of unit of self that we can uncover and it's a kind of vital principle that makes us alive.

[32:51]

A vital principle that keeps us alive. The soul basically is a vitalist idea of self. Third, do you think there's some ground of being some oneness that the self disappears into? The self is something that disappears into a ground of being and through that ground of being we're freed from suffering. The people who identify enlightenment with experiences of oneness and things like that really have an idea of a ground of being. Or do you have the idea that the liberation of self is freedom from self?

[34:01]

Of course that's the Buddhist idea. So, let's see if I'm running out of time. Not quite, almost. Now, the four noble truths basically say you can change the rules. There's suffering. There's a cause of suffering. Because there's a cause of suffering, you can change the causal conditions. So the four noble truths basically say that life is a gnomic game.

[35:02]

You can change the rules. So when I say to you, Sashin is to gather the mind, Is a gathered mind different from your birth mind? Yeah. In a gathered mind, does self function differently than in an ungathered mind? Do you have a gathered mind unless you gather it? For all practical purposes, you don't have a gathered mind unless you gather it. So when you gather the mind, you're changing the rules. You're changing the medium in which your life and self functions.

[36:19]

Okay. So the third noble truth is that there's an end of suffering. And the fourth is the path. Okay. Now what we've seen in talking about the eight vijnanas, we all have five physical senses. But when we start thinking about the five physical senses as simultaneously mind, happening through mind and within a field of mind and that we can act within the field of each sense field separately this goes beyond ordinary noticing. This is a noticing which has taken centuries to develop.

[37:42]

And what I tried to show yesterday, and I think you understood, is that the medium of the eight vijnanas changes the activity of self. changes the medium of self. The senses articulated through the Vijñanas transform self. Now the Heart Sutra is Mahayana Buddhism. Is the quintessential Prajnaparamita. And yet, what's its content? Its content is the Abhidharma. And early Buddhism. And it's the menu for transforming the game. The medium in which you experience self and become free of self-referenced activity.

[39:11]

Early Buddhism said it was mostly desire was the problem, clinging, desire, craving. Later Buddhism says the problem is consciousness itself. And today through neurobiology we can add the brain as part of the problem. The emphasis of the brain. And we can change the emphasis. We can change the medium in which our life functions. Okay? Is that enough? May God bless you.

[40:19]

May God bless you.

[40:20]

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