Good morning again. Now, did what I say prompt any observations of your own? Made any sense what I said about mind training? And what about mind training and psychotherapy? Who will be second? We're neurotic about being first, I understand. But enlightenment comes second. Thank you. What I see as a basis for psychotherapy is to learn to distinguish thinking, feeling and perceiving, to learn how to distinguish that.

[01:22]

And then to see how emotions are generated or feelings are generated because people mostly generate them through their own thinking and to recognize that is a huge step. So if you notice and can distinguish thinking, feeling, and perception, you can then notice better, you can see into your mental, observe your mental processes, and you can see when certain emotions get started and so forth. And also when these emotions become uncomfortable or painful emotions. And then the question is whether to go back into the past.

[02:44]

To understand. Because there may be events that have not been processed. Or when to go forward, move on. And what technique is used to allow people to distinguish between a thought and an emotion? To feel the body. We have this German term, it's self-perception, but it means something like having attention turned inward. Okay. So you try to teach people how to turn attention inward. Okay. Yes, correct.

[03:46]

Yes, of course, in the perception. Yes, of course, in the perception. No, the attention to the inside. Yes, but that is coupled internally with thought. Ah, okay. Ah, well, not among us. No, that's my point, this distinction. Yes. To find a distinction between thinking and perception. Okay. So the question is whether one can say that to turn attention inwards, because Doris thinks that usually is accompanied by thinking, and we think in terms of thinking outwardly or thinking inwardly or something. But what is meant is maybe more something like direct... Yeah, breathing? I'd like to turn attention to your breathing. That's not necessarily inward, it's just bringing attention to the breathing. Yes. Yes. I think that we also have a lot of implicit training in psychotherapy and implicit practices. If a client becomes aware of a conflict or we work with ideas like the inner child Or we work with ideas like the inner child.

[05:21]

Then we bring the person into wondering about where is my inner child right now or whether the conflict is happening in the present situation or something. And then of course there are explicit practices and trainings. As Angela just mentioned, this distinction between thinking and feeling and perceiving. So one homework that we sometimes give people is to say when you go home in the tram or something, or in the subway, you sit there and you watch people and you say, this is what I see, this is what I think, this is what I feel. That's very explicit then.

[06:37]

Yeah, that's interesting, yeah. Now, is that particular to our two hosts as the first? No. Thank you very much. Is that particular to our two hosts' approach to psychotherapy, or is that generally a universal approach or something similar? I think the implicit training just happens. I think the implicit training just happens. I mean it happens through being a psychotherapist you start to... Just through getting conscious about things you have not been conscious before. It's usually different. Just because you become aware of things that you weren't aware of before, that's what makes it happen. You see the world differently. Now, my impression is that in recent decades psychotherapists work much more with bodily affects and also bringing attention to the breathing than in the past.

[07:50]

Maybe Buddhism is an influence there, I don't know. And what was the case prior to Buddhism being commonplace idea, mindfulness, etc. ? My impression is that in the last decades, psychotherapists have been working a lot more to direct the attention to the breath and to pay attention to physical processes. And it may be that Buddhism was an influence factor, I don't know. But the question is, how did it come about before this transformation of psychotherapy into physical processes took place? And did Freud or Adler or Jung or some of the founders of Western therapy, did they say bring attention to the breathing? There is this nice term by Freud which is equally suspended attention. Yeah, this is what he's been teaching me for years.

[09:07]

But it's good, it's very close to Buddhist practice, equally suspended attention. Yeah. I think it's just a necessity of the situation to establish something like presence. And there are historical examples, especially in Germany, about something like physical therapy, which is also a very old thing, where a student herself and also historically in Germany there is some kind of tradition that is not particularly interwoven with Buddhism that has begun to pay attention to bodily processes, like Selva is one of... Charlotte Selva.

[10:17]

Charlotte Selva is one of the people who taught that. And she was a teacher of mine. What is currently being discussed in psychoanalysis or also in the direction of psychotherapy, which is somehow connected to psychoanalysis, is what is interestingly called the theory of mind, a concept of mentalization. What is very much discussed these days in psychoanalysis, but generally in approaches that are in touch with psychotherapy, is what is called theory of mind. What is meant by this is how the human being learns to reflect on his mental content, to develop a consciousness for mentality, which is practically a development step.

[11:26]

For example, severe psychopathology is often associated with So what is meant by that is something like how people learn how to reflect on mental contents and mental processes. the fact that people become conscious of their mental contents and of their mentality, of their consciousness as such, that is what is described by and explored by theory of mind. And also that in psychopathology, psychopathology is often based on the fact that people have no awareness of their mentality and of their consciousness. Am I right? In other words, they simply externalize the world and don't see their processes. That's what they call equivalent models of perceiving.

[12:27]

Okay. So there's an equality for them between what they perceive and think with their mental content. Okay, thanks. I think it is a term that for me one term that comes up for me in both in therapy and in Zen practice it's this and this also refers to what I've just said it's the inner observer But it is educated or maybe shaped or trained differently in Zen practice and in psychotherapeutic practice according to different coordinates or something.

[13:57]

Okay. Yes. I just had another experience and I was touched at one point and I would like to say something about being touched. I lived in Los Angeles and always had the feeling that I had to found a monastery and then I thought that the whole city is a monastery. and this thought of having to do something and that I then say Mu I was touched earlier when you spoke about something and I would like to speak about what touched me and how that was. And it was this part where you spoke about you lived in San Francisco and you wanted to, you would have liked there to be a monastery, but there was none.

[15:18]

So what you did is to turn the whole city into a monastery. And this feeling of there's always something to do, but then introducing the move and saying there's nothing else to do. Can you go on? My feeling is that I'm trying to concentrate my doing things always on wanting to arrive, a wish to arrive. I was doing sort of the opposite. And I did almost the opposite. We would have been good partners. We could have reached out to each other. That is the secret.

[16:32]

I find it not only funny to say, nothing to do, nowhere to go. That seems to be the secret. I don't just find it funny to say, nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. It has catapulted me out of a way of thinking a few years ago, when you said it. It really threw me or catapulted me out of a particular way of thinking when you said that a few years ago. So the trick is you found the monastery, but then still you are not going anywhere. So that would be what's brilliant, if one person does the work and... Yeah, she does the arriving, I do the, you know... But actually you can use a phrase sometimes, which is good, which is just now arriving. Then you can shorten to arriving.

[17:49]

Again, every noticing becomes arriving. And the process of noticing becomes more and more subtle. Yeah, someone else. I have the feeling that what one can learn from Zen practice, from meditation in particular, is the observation that attention has a locus at any time. I find that what one can learn from meditation or Zen practice is that attention at each moment has a kind of locus, like a word or an object or something.

[19:00]

And what I find to be psychologically what causes suffering or what is a hindrance or something, that has to do with how I direct my attention. And if I can shift my mode of functioning then oftentimes the problem is much milder or something or not even there anymore. And that's where I see a big difference between approaches in psychotherapy and in Buddhist practice. Niko is a medical doctor and practicing in Frankfurt. And not many days ago, we decided that he would be ordained.

[20:14]

So he put a robe on top of his head, said a lot of things, made some promises. Lost his hair. For at least a while. Anyway, so I'm bringing it up because you're not a psychotherapist. You're a medical doctor. But I would guess when you see each patient, unfortunately you don't see them for very long. Some therapist gets to see people for at least 40 minutes or an hour, 50. If you saw everyone for 50 minutes, you'd go broke. You understand what go broke means? But in the amount of time that the medical system allows you in a way to see each person Of course you have a choice, but still the medical system affects that choice.

[21:55]

But in the time you have, You must have to make a kind of psychological assessment as well as a somatic medical assessment. You have to make a psychosomatic assessment. And how you're present with each patient, client, patient. must affect the whole relationship. So there's a psychotherapeutic dimension to being a medical doctor, I would guess. And there might even be a practice dimension, Buddhist practice dimension. And maybe even the dimension of the Buddhist practice is included.

[23:14]

Doris? Something occurred to me that maybe is also interesting for you. And this is about the therapeutic attitude or posture. A few years ago I read a publication by an English psychoanalyst. And I was surprised to find something there which I never found in the scientific manuals ever before. His name is Bjorn and he wrote about that we should begin our therapy sessions ideally with a posture of no memory and no desire.

[24:30]

The therapist has that feeling. Should be in a position of having no memory. The therapist at the beginning of the session tries to establish that feeling in themselves. That's it. And I was kind of flabbergasted because... Flabbergasted? What word do you translate it to?

[25:37]

It's something like astonished surprise. All right, flabbergasted. How the hell did you know that word? I don't know. I'm flabbergasted. Okay, you were flabbergasted. Okay. It's an unusual word that she used. I'm going to come up with an unusual word. To see that this guy, without having a Zen or Buddhist background, established the kind of space which seems exactly like what we are speaking about here. We want to heal. And then you shake your head. Of course, we want to influence something and to take ourselves back to a situation like that. Of course, this is the right position, it is clear to me, but to really do it and not to intervene so much and to let something arise between these two people, that is pure art, I think.

[26:41]

And I find that to be a kind of difficult posture because of course in some sense we do want to heal, we do want to have some effect. But it seems to be a... I know that this is the right attitude or posture but it seems to be a very high fine-tuned art or something to establish the posture in which you have no memory, no desire and still... Yes and no. Okay. So let me bring in again an example since I'm going to decide to emphasize this. The practice of negation. Okay. So you don't start out with the idea that I'd like to have this state of no desire and no memory.

[27:50]

You don't start. You don't start. But rather you decide to negate the appearance of desire and memory. I mean, you do have this idea, but basically you emphasize the practice of negation. And you use the appearance of desire to negate it. So in a way you welcome the appearance of desire. Because it allows you to negate. And then the negation creates a kind of space. Now, what did you mean by presence?

[28:52]

Presencing, maybe? Presence in this... I'd say the German word first, maybe. And the German word she used is presence in the sense of the time. You know, past, present. Oh, you establish a present, but not a presence... I'm not so sure about the English words. I can try to say something. For me, it's basically a bodily feeling of being just there and let go as much desire and past. So it's the same space. But more practical, what I do with the patient is... like he's in his thinking and his past and his story to try to bring him to this immediate situation and perceive whatever is here. And the assumption there is that if you... I'm sorry, you didn't translate it.

[30:14]

Mm-hmm. And the assumption there is This makes you more receptive and you're bringing less baggage into the situation. But the assumption also is that you're establishing this modality of mind and body. Like equally suspended attention actually causes a resonant response in the client.

[31:20]

So there's an assumption that if you establish a certain state of mind it will make it more likely that the client will also find themselves in that state of mind. Alright, someone else? Let me say, someone mentioned an inner observer. Now, in Buddhism we would not say an inner observer. We would say observe. We would not basically and strictly understood Buddhism We would not want to give a practice to somebody that makes a distinction between inner and outer.

[32:41]

And we would not want to, we'd say observe, but we wouldn't emphasize so much observer. Because the observer, even if it's an observer infinitely regressed to cosmic observing, It still is some kind of self, even if it's a God self observed. So we'd want to reduce... I mean, there's no such thing really as no self. I mean, you can have experiences sometimes of, say, complete selflessness. But in general, practice is about less self-referential thinking, not no self-referential thinking.

[34:02]

And there's a big difference if there's less self-referential thinking and more. So one thing we try to do is take an inventory, in a sense, of when there's self-referential thinking. And so you notice that very commonly if you're anxious, there's more self-referential thinking than when you're not anxious. And so you notice there's a relationship between anxiety and self-referential thinking that goes both ways. Self-referential thinking produces anxiety, anxiety produces self-referential thinking. And then your inventory begins to notice the states of mind in which you have less self-referential thinking.

[35:10]

Now, as I have mentioned many times, one of the truisms of Yogacara Buddhism is that all mental phenomena have a physical component. all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component. So if you're noticing, for example, that when there's more self-referential thinking, not only do you notice that it accompanies a particular state of mind, you notice that it accompanies a particular physical feeling. And then you can notice more subtly that there's a state of mind in which self-referential thinking increases

[36:29]

and a mode of mind where self-referential thinking tends to lessen. And you can, through the physical feeling of the mind in which there's less self-referential thinking, You can establish the physical feeling in which self-referential thinking starts to reduce. Okay. Now, this depends on, to be able to do this with any distinctness, depends on developing mindfulness practices. And mindfulness practices in all their variety are certainly a form of mental training. One thing that's interesting that I think we could think about and maybe discuss is I can ask people who come to practice to do this or that.

[38:09]

And maybe the psychotherapist can't ask the client to do certain things. It's not the customer. And often people come to the psychotherapist who need help. And they come to the psychotherapist because the psychotherapist is supposed to help them. People come to a Zen teacher because they may need help more than they think, but their idea is they don't need so much help. And the whole mode of the relationship is you have to help yourself.

[39:28]

I'm just here, I'm hanging, I might give a few suggestions, but it's up to you. So that difference in emphasis creates a different dynamic. Creates a different relationship. Yeah. A different dynamic of relationship. Okay. Now, if I said to somebody in various ways, which Mu is a way of saying observe. Basically I'm saying observe. Okay. Now, what I'm trying to do, the implicit mental training there, if we use that term again, I'm trying to help the practitioner establish an imperturbable state of mind that flows underneath all their modalities of mind.

[40:51]

I don't want it to be an inner observer or an implicit self. I want it to be an underlying state of mind that's not self. Anyone else want to say something? Does anyone else want to say something? I think this question of self-reliance is central in psychotherapy and in the sense of how I understand it.

[42:08]

Because one of the dangers of psychotherapy is that the patient remains in his self-reliance or even reinforces it. The idea of self-referentiality or something, anyway, is probably crucial in psychotherapy and in Zen. Yes, equally, yeah. And one of the dangers in psychotherapy is that the client remains in their self-referentiality or maybe even increase it. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I was in high school, I saw an interview with all kinds of people. And they asked people how much they thought about themselves. And it's very clear.

[43:13]

The more successful the person was, the less they thought about themselves. Yes. Did you want to say something? You're just looking... Well, but... Did you want to say, because you've got this mudra up, so I thought... In Buddhism we put a mudra up, we don't put tar. Two remarks and one question that maybe you already answered. It is for me always a different state of mind that is addressed depending on whether I work with a Wado or with a Koan or practice mindfulness. Each of them is a different mind? It touches something different. Each of them touch something different.

[44:24]

And you speak about imperturbable mind underlying the whole thing. And is that, so to speak, the goal, or can I really go and let these different aspects stand evenly and not have to put them together under a great, indescribable spirit? And the question is, can I leave all these aspects in their own state of mind without putting them under the label of unperturbable mind? That is one thing. And the other thing, we used to have this beautiful saying, you are what you are. That's the one thing. And the other is that earlier we had this wonderful saying that meant, you are what you eat.

[45:26]

And can I say this? I am as a spirit being what I perceive and what I imagine. And can I transfer that by saying that as a mental being, I am what I perceive and what I cognize or what I imagine. And that I'm constantly doing. So that means, even if I don't call it training, it's a continuous process of change. So even if I don't call this a training, this is a kind of continuous process of change. And even if I do that in the frame of habitual repetition or do that within habits that have become my own or something, it is still a constant process of change.

[46:43]

And the question that arises with me is, are we aware of it and are we aware of it as psychotherapists? And the question that comes up for me is, A, are we aware of that? Are we conscious of that? And also, are we conscious of that as psychotherapists? Are we aware of what? I'm sorry. That this is a constant process of change. That psychotherapy is a constant process of change. That we... the cognizing and the receiving of information is a constant process of change. And this became clear and conscious to me only when I came into contact with the Buddhist practice. And for me that only really became conscious for me when I came into contact with Buddhist practice.

[47:48]

what I eat and that I also have an influence on who I become through this eating. So, very practically, I often no longer allow thoughts, certain perceptions simply no longer into me, because I know they are not good for me. And put it in another way, I became aware that I have an influence upon what I eat and also how what I eat affects me. And in other words, I won't let particular percepts or thoughts or something, I won't even let them come up because I know they are not good for me. I won't let them not come up, but I won't let them in. Okay. Well, there's a lot of stuff in what you just brought up. First, I don't know what you said in German. But I would never say in English, I am what I eat. Or I am what I cognize and perceive.

[49:09]

Because there's no am that I am. There's no am-ness. If everything's changing, there's no am-ness. So... Dogen, let's just take a statement of Dogen. And the second part I'm speaking about now, but I'll give you both so you can muse about it. There's some basic statements like this that you can, particularly for us as Westerners, that so represent a different world view that just studying one statement carefully can shift your world view or widen your world view.

[50:19]

So, You have to remember the statement. Letting all things advance. What's the first part? Carrying the self forward. Conveying. Oh, yeah. Authenticating and cultivating the self. By conveying the self to things. is delusion. But letting all things come forward, from various things to ten thousand things, and cultivating and authenticating the self is enlightenment.

[51:28]

And in the statement, there's two different selves. They're not the same self. It's the same word, but then they're the same self. And here is a version of what you just said. It's what you do authenticates your world, and cultivates your world. But that authentication and cultivation does not result in amness. So what Dogen would say here is you're constantly cultivating the world through conveying the self to things, which produces a certain kind of person. Sorry, can you say it again? you're cultivating the world through conveying the self to things.

[52:58]

And you're not only cultivating the world, you're authenticating the world as being that way. And then that is further validated Because it calls forth the memories you've stored on that basis. So in all ways you put yourself in a cognitive regime that's a kind of sometimes prison. But if you let all things come forward in their multiple and varied appearances, In their interdependence and layered interdependence, causal interdependence.

[54:12]

und geschichtete wechselseitige Abhängigkeit, then you not only authenticate a different world, dann verleihst du nicht nur oder bestätigst nicht nur einer anderen Weltgültigkeit, you cultivate a self that knows the world that way, sondern du entwickelst ein Selbst, das die Welt auf diese Art und Weise kennt, and then that calls forth memories which are a different layer of memory, Of memories that perhaps the dots have not been connected. But call forth experiences that validate the world as impermanent, changing and momentary. So at this moment, your cognitive perceptual posture, let's call it that, Not only establishes the present.

[55:41]

Establishes how the present comes toward you rather than you going into the present. But that posture also calls forth a different calls forth a layer of memory which validates the world according to that posture. Yeah, sorry, that's a little bit... That's not hard to understand, but you have to get all the parts straight. And the first part of what you said before the I am. What you started out with.

[56:41]

Anyway, if it comes up, let me know. I think we should go to lunch and take a lunch break about 12.30. I think that fits in with the schedule, what we're doing. But let me say something about this concept again of mental training as understood as we can understand by looking at the practice of Mu. Okay, so if I don't, by the way, give Mu as a practice very often, because I don't think it's too useful, But it's a useful example. It's a simple example. So if somebody practices with Mu, they're first of all interrupting their usual train of thought.

[58:08]

Yes, so this already is quite helpful. You're not repressing or trying, you're just interrupting. And a psychological interruption is a lot easier than trying to get rid of something. And then it bounces back. And it's voluntary. You just do it when you think of it. And it's voluntary. And the fact that it's voluntary probably gives it a power which is different than if you kind of forced yourself to do it. Okay.

[59:27]

So you are interrupting your usual train of thought, let's call it that. Okay, you're beginning to notice the world as appearance. So you're not only affecting how you function mentally and physically. You're changing your view of the world. Because you're developing the... the skill of seeing things as appearance. If you don't see things as appearance, you can't let all things come forward and cultivate, etc. And your... You're also, by saying moo, interrupting conceptual thinking.

[60:52]

So if I see this as a bell and I say moo instead, no. I'm interrupting the process of thinking conceptually. Okay. And all of Zen, especially in Buddhism in general, advanced Buddhism, speaks about to know the world non-conceptually. Well, how the hell do you do that? Because conceptual thinking comes up instantly. Okay. So how do you become sensitive enough to notice When a percept turns into a concept, the fine-tuning to do that, to use the concept of non-conceptual to interrupt conceptual, it's probably impossible.

[62:03]

But you can just negate with mu. Oh, no. So it begins to give you experiential verification of... a feel of the world when it's not conceptualized. And it also interrupts comparative thinking. So if you can interrupt both conceptual thinking and comparative thinking, you find yourself in a different kind of space. And you can't think yourself to this place. But you can experience the difference.

[63:16]

And if you experience the difference of knowing the world even momentarily, non-conceptually and non-comparatively, You still can use conceptions when it's useful. Or you can use conceptions and interrupt conceptions simultaneously. And you can feel that you feel bigger and more open when you're locked into a cognitive regime. Okay.

[64:16]

Now, we also do that by repetition. And it's very difficult to repeat because it's so boring. And repetition only works when the world starts to appear in its uniqueness. And then uniqueness is not a repetition. And each thing really becomes kind of vividly new, shines. So then you find out that the repetition turns into incubation. And then the incubation bears fruit in ways again you can't think your way to.

[65:18]

And each of us will incubate differently. Through the feel of non-conceptual and non-comparative mentation. And the fruit of such practices is virtually never understanding. Standing under something and supporting.

[66:20]

It's what happens because you find yourself incubating Cooking, alchemically changing. In this way, in which... that Gerald was implying by using the word eat. You become what you eat. And the process also brings you into perceptual immediacy. And a kind of momentary spatial immediacy.

[67:33]

And time flows out of the clocks into space and disappears. And the spatial sense of the world is much more a right brain experience. And you're beginning to change physiologically the way you know yourself and know the world. But the way a particular practice is used in Buddhism is designed to function within the conception of the mind I'm implying and describing.

[68:42]

So it's an antidote to our usual state of mind. It implies a different state of mind or world view. and in the process generates the new worldview. Okay, so that's enough. In other words, each of these practices is in effect a mental training, but the mental training is kind of hidden in its repetition. Now the question is, can you get, if you wanted to, what clients would be willing to take on practices like this? Practices which are healing, but more than that are transformative.

[70:03]

I'm sorry to give you all of that in one little big blob. But a Berliner. A jelly donut. But it's hard for me to try to say this all at once and make it clear. So I have to stay with it. And I haven't forgotten, you were going to say something. Can we do it after lunch? It referred to the self-referentiality.

[71:06]

Yes. And the discrepancy between ich und was noch? Zwischen ich und? Ich und selbst? Abgrenzung. And where the difference is between I and self also from a sociological perspective. Okay, well let's bring those distinctions up after lunch, okay? Das machen wir nach dem Mittagessen.

[71:46]

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