Good morning. And I don't have to apologize for not speaking Hungarian because not many people do, right? Unless you're Hungarian. But he speaks Hungarian so well. I've been looking forward to meeting with you. Although at the same time I wonder could I possibly have anything to say that would interest you. And yet at the same time I've been involved with the relationship between Buddhism and psychology. And the relationship between Buddhism and the practice of Buddhism and the practice of psychotherapy.

[01:07]

For a long time. Since the 60s. And when I first started to practice in the sixties in California, there was very little interest in the psychotherapeutic and psychological communities and Buddhism. The feeling was that there are quite separate. And I also feel they're quite separate. But I also feel they're quite related. But, you know, over the years, the slowly, well, the main example in the West, the United States is the word mindfulness was adopted by psychotherapists.

[02:16]

And how do you translate mindfulness in Hungarian? It can be translated as figyelem or tudatosság. Is it a traditional Hungarian word? Because mindfulness is really a new English word. We can try all the different translations. Or we can use the word mindfulness. I'm so often translated in German and Geist doesn't quite work for mind either, so sometimes we use mind, sometimes we use, what, geist?

[03:18]

Geist. But mind, although there's no real translation in Sanskrit or Pali for the word mind, it turns out to be very useful in talking about Buddhism in English. So mindfulness was widely adopted by psychotherapists in the States. But mostly people didn't, the therapist didn't, it was just a convenient word for paying attention to things. And it wasn't understood that the word comes from and represents a very specific and developed Buddhist practice.

[04:26]

And in a somewhat similar way during the Vietnam War in the United States many scientists and others didn't want to help the war effort. And they justified that by what they called right livelihood. But again there was no no awareness that right livelihood was a very specific and very early Buddhist teaching. So right livelihood and mindfulness took on their own meanings in English and in people's usage and then later developed the background of the practices they represent. Can you hear us in the back? More important, can you hear him? You don't have to hear me.

[05:33]

Okay. Okay. But nowadays, at least in the United States, and I think to a considerable extent in Germany... There is a great deal of study of the relationship between Buddhist practice and psychotherapy. And my feeling has been over the years that the therapists engaged in practice with clients actually extend or go beyond the theories of psychology.

[06:49]

And in the practice of craft or practice of psychotherapy, there seems to be often quite a lot of perhaps inadvertent unintended, inadvertent overlap with Buddhist practices. And just because, I don't know why exactly, but because I'm one of the earlier kind of formal practitioners in the United States. I've been asked to speak at conferences in California and Vienna and Amsterdam New York, all over the place, about the relationship between Buddhism and psychology.

[07:55]

But it's always still an experiment for me on what is the relationship. And so, I mean, I've been looking forward to meeting with you, not only because, yeah, I wonder what to do. What can I present that is useful? But in addition to feeling I have some job responsibility here to present something about Buddhist practice in relationship to psychotherapy. But at the same time I'm interested in exploring with you your own observations or criticisms or doubts or interests. And I always look at doing something like this as a kind of laboratory or experiment to see what happens.

[09:12]

So there was a time when a certain arrogance in new young Buddhists Buddhism does everything psychotherapy does and probably better. And this is just wrong. It's a good thing. And this is just wrong. Okay. There was a time when the as I said, the arrogance of young Buddhists, new Buddhists. To think that Buddhism did was a better, good substitute for psychotherapy.

[10:17]

And it just is not. I send students to psychotherapists very often. It's just, you know, it's different. And I learned, you know, I have to see people in a face-to-face relationship, something like psychotherapy. It took me quite a long time to make sure those meetings didn't fall into the archetype of a psychotherapeutic meeting. Yeah, and I mean, if I just listened to people's problems and made a comment, I suddenly was in a therapeutic relationship with them. So now I don't know how I do it differently now, and my... individual meetings with people are concentrated on practice and not on psychotherapeutic or psychological issues.

[11:32]

So what's interesting to me is the relationship and the differences as well as the similarities. And now, again, in the United States from the East Coast to the West Coast, there's an intense involvement in the relationship between and study of the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism. And particularly at universities, Harvard is very... and Stanford are also very involved on both coasts in the study. And contemporary neurobiology is very much trying to study the relationship between what happens in meditation practice and what happens in psychotherapy and how does it affect the brain.

[12:51]

So in order for me to keep the... to emphasize the distinction between the two, I call Buddhism a mindology and not a psychology. Because there's no real emphasis, I mean, if psyche means something like mind, spirit, breath, etc., the emphasis on that as what inhabits our body It's just rather different in Buddhism. And in general, even though Buddhism is about the study of the mind, it approaches the study through the body.

[14:14]

And while the neurobiologists are trying to study the brain and the nervous system and the relationship between body and mind, The practitioner, the Buddhist practitioner, is trying to understand the mind from the experience of the mind. And this is... is a different approach and has different difficulties in the approach. Yeah, I have an eight-year-old daughter. And I also have a 46-year-old daughter. And a 20, 31-year-old daughter. I like girls. I mean, I like daughters. Anyway, I had a cataract operation the other day, a week or two ago, on this eye.

[15:33]

And my daughter was quite disturbed by it. She first said, I don't want my eye cut. I don't know how they do that. And she said she wanted to understand it. And then more philosophically, she added, she said, my body knows how to see, but I don't understand how I see. And it's very frustrating, she said. Well, it's interesting. She made a distinction between her body knowing So in English at least, and she's, her mother's German and she's equally fluent in German and has endless German stories read to her as well as English.

[16:37]

So everything she knows of the world so far in two languages tells her the body knowing is not her knowing. So she's making a basic distinction that not all cultures would make. Some cultures would say the body is you. And I think that's worth thinking about. That the body knowing is not her knowing. And it's like she would like to be able to tell herself and tell others how she sees. And Of course if she has a child, a baby in the future, her body, if all goes well, will teach the baby how to see.

[17:44]

Her body will know how to teach the baby how to see. So Buddhism would ask itself, what's the difference between these two kinds of knowing? And can we explore these two kinds of knowing? And the problem is simply, I'm looking at you but I don't see my eye. I see you, but I don't see my eye, and I actually don't know how it works either. Okay. Now, Buddhism is part of what I would call a yogic culture.

[18:53]

And India and the Far East are yogic cultures. Although in Japan and China they think India is the beginning. He's half Indian and half Irish. Half German and half American. Anyway, in Asia, East Asia, they think India is the beginning of the West. And I think in Europe we think of India as the beginning of the East. But in any case, in a simple sense, yogic cultures emphasize So a truism of a yogic culture would be all mental phenomena have a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component.

[19:55]

Which means that every state of mind or a mood or emotion you have has a physical component, a bodily part. You can feel that mind. You can feel your mind when it's... Your body feels anxious when your mind is anxious. That kind of distinction, but more and more subtle if you practice and study it. Okay. So if I am going to find something useful to say today, I think I should try to say something about the mind as it's understood in Buddhism and Buddhist practice.

[21:21]

Now, I'm sitting in this peculiar pretzel-like posture. And it's been actually quite difficult for me to learn. I have very stiff joints. And I sat... I called my posture when I first started the half lily because it nearly killed me. Lily? Lilium? Lilium? I don't know. Lilies are used in funeral ceremonies in America. So I couldn't do the half lotus, I could do the half lily. But the basic idea is that to study for the eye to see the eye for the self to see the self for the body which knows the mind and is interrelated with the mind we can experience mind and body separately although they're obviously

[22:33]

profoundly related and inseparable. But because we can experience them separately, we can experience develop the relationship between body and mind, between the separate experiences. And we could say Buddhism is the development of a particular kind of relationship of body and mind. Now, if I want to solve a calculus problem, it's probably in my head, it's probably difficult to do it while I'm running for a bus. It makes a difference if I'm sitting somewhat calmly, if I'm going to try to figure out a mathematical problem in my mind.

[23:59]

So the basic idea is if you can find a way to sit still, you're more likely to be able to study the body and the mind. Now, I'm not trying to convince any of you to learn to sit this way. And, you know, I used to think if I keep doing this, it'll get easier and easier. And it does for a while. Until you start getting older and older. And then you start getting stiffer, and it's... It's not so easy to sit when you get older. And I'm 73, so I'm, you know, finding it... Sometimes I have to work at getting my leg up there. Oh! But it does allow you to... Now, again, I'm not encouraging anyone to do it.

[25:13]

But I would like to explain why we do it in Buddhist practice. One thing you're doing is you're creating a very stable posture which you don't have to use consciousness to maintain. Okay. And the structure of the posture tends to support the body and you don't have to use so much musculature to support the body. So you can kind of forget about the body and just let the posture keep you sitting. And you're also folding your warmth together. Warmth and consciousness and feeling.

[26:14]

You're folding your warmth. Your warmness, your heat, your body heat. I like it when you ask me. And consciousness and awareness has a lot to do with your body, vitality, heat. So it's quite easy to keep warm in this posture, too. If someone gave me these recently in Japan, actually the son of my teacher. So if I try to observe this, it's very difficult if it's moving. And if I'm moving too, I can't study anything else.

[27:17]

So if I get so I can sit still pretty soon I can see this moving quite easily. And what happens is if the body gets more and more still it actually stills the mind. And you can begin to observe the mind. Now One of the reasons I've been meeting with a group of psychotherapists in Austria for How many years? Twenty years. It's impressive. It's mostly the same group of a core of about 20 people. Next week it's going to be 35 people, I think, but usually it's a core of about 20 people. And they got... interested in meeting with me and talking about Buddhism.

[28:30]

Because they began to notice that their clients who happen to meditate We're able to understand the psychotherapeutic process more quickly and make use of it than people who didn't meditate. So because their clients who happen to meditate made use of psychotherapy quicker than the average patient. They started getting interested themselves. And most of them actually don't meditate, except occasionally, I think, maybe. But they're finding ways to bring the view and views and thinking into

[29:31]

their practice. Because Buddhism is not just about physical posture, basically Buddhism is about mental postures. Okay, all right. Now this goes, all goes back to a basic interest in India. To long before Buddhism. To the recognition that we're born with three minds. Waking mind. Dreaming mind.

[30:45]

And non-dreaming deep sleep. So then they wondered, If we have these three minds sort of through being born, why are they separate? Or why are they quite separate? Why do we only know... dreaming mind a little bit, some partially through dreams, but mostly we're not too aware of dreaming mind. And non-dreaming deep sleep seems to be completely So once you have a culture concentrating on this over several generations, someone asks the obvious question, can there be a mind that overlaps these three?

[31:52]

And Somehow they decided that this mind that arises through sitting, sitting posture, to some extent overlaps the three, what I call, birth minds. Okay. And there was a basic recognition also that posture is very closely related to your mind. In other words, sleeping is connected with reclining. Reclining is lying down. So it's very hard to sleep standing up unless you're driving.

[33:05]

Or unless you're a horse. So waking mind, I think in German, all the Germans stand up in the morning in bed, right? Don't you stand up in the morning? In English we get up, but Germans stand up. I see them all over Germany standing up in the morning. But in French also you stand up in the morning? Do you stand up in Hungary too? No, we get up. Well, you get up. Anyway, posture... is subtly related to your states of mind. So once you've asked the question, once you've asked the question, could there be a mind that overlaps the three birth minds,

[34:14]

You're already asking a very unusual question. You're not in a culture which assumes we're complete at birth. You're not in a culture which somehow nature or genetics controls everything. If we can create a mind we weren't born with, we come into possession of our life in a new way. And once you've asked yourself the question, is there this fourth mind, a fourth mind, that overlaps the other three? It's only a generation or two later that people start saying, wow, maybe there's a fifth and sixth mind, or seventh, or eighth.

[35:25]

And Buddhism develops in this way. Okay. Now, one of the things that is assumed, though you can't prove it, because non-dreaming deep sleep is inaccessible to consciousness. As in my daughter Sophia, non-dreaming deep sleep is part of her functioning, but she doesn't know what happens in non-dreaming deep sleep. But somehow we could say certainly her body and her life, her lived life knows what happens in non-dreaming deep sleep. So then the idea that consciousness is somewhat limited in what it can know.

[36:26]

Let me give you an example in relationship to dreaming. Now it's customary and very useful and interesting in western psychotherapy, psychology, to interpret your dreams. And, you know, I've practiced that Jungian approach and Freudian approach and so forth myself to some extent. And it's very interesting and useful. But you're also assuming that the dreaming is in the service of somehow consciousness. That consciousness is the real you. And you're also translating the dream into consciousness. Which you're describing in another language. It's a translation. Mm-hmm. So the approach of Buddhism would be, okay, it's fine to interpret dreams.

[37:58]

It might be better to develop the skill of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming. And there's a technique in practice of developing lucid dreaming. And then the lucid dreams remain more intact and become part of your lived life in another way. But the general approach in Zen practice is that say you have a Let's take an obvious example. You have a very strong dream of someone or a situation. And you don't so much try to think about it, but you try to see what it feels like. And then you keep that feeling during the day. And you allow that feeling during the day, that powerful feeling, if it was powerful, during the day that you felt when you woke up.

[39:23]

You hold that bodily feeling as a kind of knowing. This is the body knowing something, not the consciousness knowing something. And you hold that bodily knowing or feeling of the dream through the day, and you let the activity of the day, the many things that happen, happen in the feeling of the dream. And if you develop this skill or this craft, it's very useful. And I often use the word incubate rather than understand. Because you're not trying to understand the dream, you're trying to incubate it in your activity, in your life.

[40:32]

And let it hatch as it hatches. So these are approaches to the mind through the body or assuming a particular kind of relationship of body and mind that is characteristic of Buddhist practice. Okay. And I think we should take a break now or in a few minutes. And I'd like, if we take a break, it to be a kind of, you can talk with each other and stuff. In Hungarian. But let me say that the feeling of this non-dreaming deep sleep and the feeling that consciousness that our life is bigger than consciousness.

[41:52]

And consciousness is a very powerful and effective way to know the world. But it's not the only way to know the world. So the feeling is, one thing that happens in this posture is when you really get so that you can Be still. And stillness means that consciousness is kind of relaxed. You're not identifying with consciousness. The non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces in your meditation. We could also talk about how dreaming mind surfaces too, but we'd need tomorrow to do that.

[42:52]

And what happens if you meditate regularly is non-dreaming deep sleep begins to be present in the background of all your mental activity during the day as well. Now, once you understand this, It's not, I mean, it's helpful to learn some of these things through meditation practice. But once you've got the conceptual picture of the situation, you can, in other ways than meditation, find out how to let this, let's call it awareness, which is not consciousness, Be present in your life.

[44:02]

It is present in your life, but how can you make yourself more aware of its presence? Well, that's some sort of a beginning. And I'm also really interested and would welcome anything you'd like to say, questions or interruptions or comments. Can you wait until after the break? Oh, please. So let's have a break for, I don't know, around 30 minutes, or if there's coffee or tea or anything. Thank you very much.

[44:45]

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