So let's have some discussion. And does any of this make sense? You almost started, so... What do you mean by meditation, the word meditation? What I'm doing, it doesn't necessarily require this kind of posture. But the English word meditation means to think on something. And for many years I didn't use the word meditation because it had other meanings in English. The word in Japanese for Zen meditation is zazen, and za means to sit, and zen means really absorption.

[01:05]

It doesn't mean to contemplate or think about, it means absorption. And it means absorption in the sense that consciousness kind of goes to rest, rests, relaxes. And the body and mind are kind of absorbed together. And then you And meditation is the accumulation of the fruits of that. Okay. He was, you were next, yeah.

[02:09]

that the relationship culture of this part of meditation seems to me that it is not properly worked out, but it is like a spirit that continues, as we mentioned in birth. That was a lot. It seems that for him that this meditation is a personal thing, by psychotherapy, intrapersonal... Intrapersonal. No, no, intrapersonal. This is an intrapersonal. And while psychotherapy is an interpersonal method or practice. And it seems that this interpersonal... aspect of this meditation thing is not so developed or... Okay. It's different.

[03:37]

It's true, it's different. But... There's so many things I could say, but I'll limit myself. Basically, meditation practice, serious meditation practice, is what I call an autodidactic apprenticeship. What's an apprentice in Hungarian? Okay. All right. This is fun to work it out. Okay. We didn't translate your question, did we? Sorry. Did he translate your question?

[04:48]

It's not important. And the role of the teacher in a way is to let him or herself be understood. And maybe sometimes interfere with that understanding. Because the basic idea is you can understand yourself better if you understand someone else thoroughly. But clearly, for instance, I'm here not because I want to present something to you. I'm here because what I'm doing is interpersonal. And that's my whole life. I wake up in the morning with a whole bunch of people and I go to bed at night with a whole bunch of people.

[05:50]

And my wife says, can't you sometimes just be alone in our house together? But my whole life is interpersonal. And it includes the clerk at the pharmacy. In other words, if I meet anybody in any circumstance, the question always is what kind of connectedness or presence is there. That's as much as I'll say now. Yes. In my personal development I got to this point that what I couldn't get as a child, I can get it now. And the psychologist says that it's all my fault, everything is with me.

[07:03]

Your fault? No. Thanks. You're welcome. How can I get to this point by these two practices, two ways of practices to have a better life, a better way of living? So let me reframe your question. You're asking how can psychotherapy and perhaps the addition of the practices of Zen enhance your life? Well, that's a big task, responsibility you've given me. Of course. I would like to see at the end of the day, today, if there is anything you think you could bring into your life from what we're talking about, it could be useful.

[08:28]

I can give you one funny little example. It's helpful if you feel nourished by what you do. So you actually take that as an intent. So whenever you do anything, you see if the activity of doing it can nourish you at the same time. Or does it deplete you? Deplete is to... And so, and you have to, I mean, Buddhist practice is basically a craft, an art. So you find a way you can enact nourishment. Enact it. act out, act through, actualize.

[09:45]

So say that we will have lunch at some point. When you're walking to lunch or wherever you go. You don't walk to get somewhere. You walk to feel nourished as you're walking. And you hope you get to lunch in time. But your priority is nourishment in the immediate situation and not the nourishment of lunch. So you find a way to walk in which you feel nourished as you walk. And if you study that, you'll see, probably, that when you're feeling nourished by how you're walking, your walking and your breath are in some kind of coherent relationship.

[10:49]

And probably you even feel more nourished if your mind is in some relationship to your breath and walking. Now in obvious circumstances like just walking along the street or taking a walk in the forest. I must say you have beautiful forests here in Hungary. In such circumstances you can begin to study, observe the experience of when you feel nourished. And so you get a feel for that. And then you can take that feel of nourishment into more complex circumstances. And what I say is Never sacrifice your state of mind.

[12:11]

I mean, sometimes we have to. But if you can, you see if you can keep that nourished state of mind in each circumstance. Yeah, I try to stay in that feeling of nourishment while I'm speaking to you. Okay? That's one little example. Yes? Two questions. They come more from the analytic perspective, psychotherapy. Yes, one of them is related to consciousness. It is clear that all psychotherapies require consciousness. That is important.

[13:11]

As I see, both in Buddhism and psychotherapy, consciousness is important. Yeah. But in the analytic therapy, there is a point that we call making it conscious. Yeah. Yeah. As I feel consciousness is a process and making it conscious is an act. And I wonder if this or something like this similar exists in Buddhist practice. And the second is about this my day is complete in the state of dreaming. That we carry these states.

[14:17]

This analytic therapy deals with the unconscious. And we say that dreams are kind of presentation of this unconscious... These dreams present your unconsciousness to you. And if I live my day with these unconscious experiences, Can it disturb my daily life, my normal life? We say that these things are in the unconscious because we cannot deal with them in the conscious state during the day.

[15:24]

Well, first let me say this making conscious. We would say That your maturity as a practitioner requires the ability to express your understanding. But that expression can be conscious and it can be... a shout or, you know, a raising of the eyebrows. So it's similar, but it's in the... The emphasis is not on consciousness, but on expression. And often it's, you should express your... understanding in some other medium than the teaching itself.

[16:48]

Yeah, so you might use a talking head song or a poem of Goethe. Okay, so that's the first. The second question is in the context of developed a meditation practice, I can speak about it. In the context of someone who doesn't meditate, it's more complicated. And I think, you know, the person, if I you know, say I have a cousin who isn't going to meditate but ask me some questions.

[17:54]

Would I say if they had terrible nightmares, would I say just stay with the feeling of the nightmares all day? I might not say that. And I'd have to think about what I would say. I mean, I would try to speak from my experience as a practitioner as well as, you know, common sense. By the way, you know, the word common sense in English now means sort of ordinary... Something everybody knows. But it used to mean a sense common to all the senses. So a few hundred years ago in English it meant something like a sixth sense. But that's been lost in English in the simplification of our

[19:00]

If a person meditates, I should answer in this context, too. One of the things that happens is that... consciousness somewhat subsides. And maybe it's something like sunbathing. You're sunbathing and you hear things down the beach and children and... Seagulls. But you're not reacting to any of it. You're just feeling, and as I say sometimes in that, you get sunburned, seriously, because you've lost track of the time. So there's a kind of, well, you hear things, but you're not... Thinking about them.

[20:17]

So we could say a mind like that's the first stage of meditation. And the second stage is associative mind. And it's a mind very much like the free association of Freud's. It's inhibiting and the definitive aspect of consciousness sort of is less. Then you begin to have all kinds of associations appear. Technically that's called the second skanda. And then the associations cease. But the associative mind is also a mind of fragments of dreams and all kinds of things.

[21:18]

And the next state is everything has a preciseness and clarity, but there's no associations. Now, if you get used to doing this every day, it becomes very familiar. After a while, what was only unconscious or non-conscious begins to be present in the field of mind during the ordinary activity of the day. So, in that context, the dream that you stay with the feeling of is in a kind of layers of mind not and it's not so disturbing it's more complex

[22:28]

Now, Nicole, you said something like this to me yesterday. Could you say something about what your experience is the difference between looking at something in ordinary mind at your desk and in what you told me? Okay. Can you translate for her, too? Sure. You can just stay there. What I was referring to was this feeling of first of all the question of how to deal with everyday circumstances or situations in two different nights. How do I experience my everyday life in Zazen?

[23:40]

What kind of person do I become in Zazen? And how is that different from the person that usually acts the person that I know as myself? And what I find is that when I sit zazen, there's a feeling of an emotion, for example, appearing in a kind of vast space. And I can see the emotion as a kind of force that travels through my entire body-mind system. And as this kind of energy that has a direction, it also is an information that can tell me something about my parents.

[24:59]

And then what happens is that this information can become an insight. Kind of insight into how I function. And what I practice in that is to stay still in the midst of that. And then I can see more forces that are related to this one emotion. There are more forces that are acting within me. And in zazen I just cultivate this mind that is entirely still in the midst of that.

[26:12]

And then they become an information or informations that are known not through Intellectual knowing or through words. But they are just a felt sense, just an instant of knowing. And it's very complex, but the entirety of an information can be contained just with an instant of a physical feeling. Nicole has been practicing since she was about 18, 10 years or so.

[27:19]

And she also just finished her degree in psychology, master's degree or something like that at the University of Oldenburg. So she's been very involved with the relationship between psychology and practice. Someone else. Yes. In the psychotherapy process, theory and practice as well, one of the important components is the therapist himself. Yeah, of course. Basically in order to avoid that the unconscious things come up in a detrimental way. Do you need the same kind of help or a person who helps you in this process of meditation?

[28:37]

So let me... For what? For what can... help the meditator not to get lost in this, in his mind, or in this. Okay, so what you're saying, see if I can understand. What you're saying is the role of the psychotherapist is to help the client, open him or herself, to unconscious and disturbing materials, experiences, and somehow be an anchor or a stabilizing presence within that coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, I have sometimes practiced with... somebody comes to practice with me, which I know I can't do that.

[29:59]

That's not my craft. That's not my training. And if I can't do that, I then suggest they see a psychotherapist. Okay. But to some extent, all of us are in that experience, have that kind of experience, whether it requires psychotherapeutic intervention or not. Okay. Now, to the extent that this is a problem for everyone... The emphasis in Zen practice is to learn to, as she replied and said, To be in the midst of things without acting on them.

[31:09]

So you don't have the choice of expressing or repressing. You have the choice of just letting it happen, but not acting on it. I think Dostoyevsky somewhere says the thought of killing the father is the same as killing the father. This better not be true for a Zen practitioner. Because every possible thought that human beings have can be part of your practice. It feels like sometimes whatever human beings do can happen to you. So you develop and the simple instruction in meditation not to scratch is really the essence of that. You learn to sit, and no matter what it feels like, you just stay still.

[32:21]

And when you develop the ability to do that, all the sometimes horrid things in often people's families begin to appear and float around you. And what's interesting, though it's a little esoteric for me to say this, you begin to find out that your extended space, bodily space, is populated by your family and others. So you can sort of sit there and you can say, where's my mother? And it's very clear your mother's here. Hi, Mom. And then you say, where's my father? Oh, he's here. And it's interesting that you can try to switch them.

[33:30]

Okay, pop, get over there, and mom, get over there. It's hard to do. They have a location in your bodily space. And you can then actually do what is in effect a psychological process within Zen practice. You can begin to kind of activate that space and I feel who populates the space around you. And through practice, you can eventually clear the space around you. That's a little esoteric. We don't even usually teach that. But I know, I thought, you guys are all smart. Still has the question that you need a leader or can you do it without a leader because it's... If you can really develop this stillness, you can do much of it yourself. But depending on your psychological circumstances and how mature you are...

[34:32]

your energy and all kinds of things. You may need to do or ought to do psychotherapy too. And I've done psychotherapy and it's been very helpful to me. Let me give you a simple example of a basic technique in Buddhism. Mindfulness covers a whole range of practices. Sitting, we could call sitting, sitting mindfulness. But the most basic teaching of mindfulness is let's imagine you're angry. So the practice of mindfulness of anger or any emotion Notice that you're angry.

[35:50]

And try to stop the anger. I mean, unless you're going to get out of control, you'd better be practical and stop it. But you watch the anger, notice the anger, and you describe it to yourself. Boy, am I angry now. I'm really getting angry now. Now I'm less angry. And you notice how your heart is beating and you're breathing and the taste in your mouth and how dry it is and things like that. So you're mindful of the emotion. But you don't interfere with the emotion, you just watch it.

[36:50]

So what happens when you do that? You get used to You get used to it after a while. And you're beginning to create a mental space which is bigger than the anger. And at some point you can shift your identification from the anger to the mental space. And then you find out, you know, Sangha people, often Sangha means those who practice together. The simplest meaning. And we'll say, instead of somebody getting angry at you, somebody will come up to you and say, you make me feel very angry. That's very different than being angry at somebody. But it's still dealing with the fact that you were angry.

[37:52]

I mean, I can't answer any of these questions fully, but I'll do my best. If we work with rougher terms, we use these. At the same time, listening to my colleague and the presenter, the essence of Buddhism is inner happiness. Listening to the questions and answers, it seems to me that this difference between the Western and Eastern culture, in the science, the Western science, we have this very rigid, strict definitions, while in Buddhism it's much more relaxed, this kind of mind which doesn't work with these very rigid definitions.

[39:10]

If it's like this or... Well, Buddhism has a lot of definitions too. But the worldview is different. Okay, so let me... I would like to, again, we only have pretty limited time this morning and this afternoon. So let me give you an example of a worldview difference. The basic teaching of Buddhism is interpenetration and interdependence. If everything is interdependent, whatever you are is partly dependent on her. And whatever you are is dependent on your parents and your associations and your job and... your language and so forth.

[40:21]

And so if we emphasize interdependence rather than entities, then what I'm seeing when I look at you is an activity. Okay. So if I view everything as an activity and not as an entity, that's a very different world, actually, when you mature it or incubate. Now, related to the idea that there are no entities, there are only there's only activity. And by the way, one of the understandings of the Buddhist idea of emptiness, it can be entered through entitylessness. is when you stop experiencing things as entities, you're really experiencing them as empty of any fixed identity.

[41:50]

Okay. Okay. Now, one other aspect of the, of the, another essential aspect I'll mention, is that, is that, you, as the eye doesn't see the eye, you need to remind yourself that every act of perception is an act of perception, is an act of knowing. is an active mind. So that means that if I see you I also see my mind seeing you.

[42:50]

So if I see my mind seeing you I know from experience and repetition and repetition of this concept. I add this concept of the mind seeing Let me say it again. Every perception points at the mind perceiving. That's a concept. But it's also a fact. It's not the way we normally perceive. So you have to use this concept to remind yourself of what you're actually doing. If I use this concept to remind myself that every percept points to the mind perceiving as well as the object perceived, Then I actually start feeling my mind and sensorial realm in the act of perceiving.

[44:05]

So I don't just see you. I feel my mind seeing you. Then I also know that my mind is only knows what it can know. You're more complex than my mind can perceive. So I know I'm aware of the mystery of you, the splendor and poetry of you. So my awareness, my mind is perceiving... gives you, or any object of perception, an added dimension of mystery that's outside the realm of senses.

[45:21]

In fact, the famous Indian teacher of Chinese Buddhism, Bodhidharma, defined mind in that context. Someone asked him what is mind and he said where the senses don't reach. Or to feel beyond the senses is mind. So that's one definition we could have of mind. Okay. Now... Okay. So you see activities and you don't see entities. Okay.

[46:24]

So this room is an activity, it's not an entity. Now you may say, are you crazy that this is a room? But... You know, this is a bell. But in Buddhism it's not a bell unless you use it as a bell. Could also be a funny hat. Or a teacup. Tastes terrible, I've tried it. So, and this is a different room. than if it were empty. And it's a different room than when there's a lot of children in here. And it's a different room when you enter from that door instead of entering from this door. That's the emphasis on, now an architect, a good architect, will have to sort of say, okay, this room, how is it going to be experienced from this direction or that direction, et cetera, because the room is an experience or an activity.

[47:39]

So parallel to the recognition that there are no entities, there's only activity, you also recognize that this is not a container. The world isn't a container with an out there and an in here. Now, one can intellectually and philosophically understand these things. And you can say, well, this is an interesting view. It is interesting. But even if you think it's interesting and understand it thoroughly, still our habits of seeing the world as entities in a container is very hard to shake. Built into the logic of our language. My daughter came in to see me once and she said, I said, what's it like outside?

[48:56]

I knew what it was like outside. And she said, it's raining. I said, it's, this is English of course. I said, it's raining. Would you please go outside and find the it that's raining? And she said, Dad, don't be so Zen. But... It's not rain raining. English requires somebody who does these things. The it basically puts you in a theological world where there has to be a creator God. English presupposes God. Yeah. So that's the difference in a world view.

[50:00]

If you do begin to experience the world as one single interdependent continuum, it puts you in a different frame and space of mind. Thanks. So maybe one more and then we'll try something else. There's no maybe one more? You decide if somebody should go to see a psychotherapist or to meditate. How do I decide? Yes, on one basis. Okay. I also decide sometimes a person should have a different teacher than me.

[51:02]

Because I can see the affinities aren't there, connections not there. when clearly the problems are, let me say, psychological and not more existential or philosophical. If the kind of energy charge of compulsive thinking is so great they can't deal with thinking as just content, then, you know, they'd better see a psychotherapist. That was too much, I'm sorry. But you're so good, I just go zooming ahead. Sorry. energy content of say compulsive thinking is so strong that they can't just see it as a content of mind then they ought to see a psychotherapist who can engage in a transference and a relationship with them and

[52:06]

Yes. As meditation works with great and big energies, and where there are great energies, there is a big danger as well. Is there a danger in meditation or pathological possibility? Because we can see it as a very narcissistic story. I'm just observing my navel. If meditation is narcissistic, it doesn't work.

[53:21]

You really have to let loose of self-referential thinking in order to meditate. Yes, there are some, I've known people who, they're thrown into such a state in meditation that I tell them you better not meditate. But generally, it's actually difficult to learn to sit. And if you sit for long periods of time, like we sit, and I'm not recommending this, we sit for seven days from 3.30 or 4 in the morning till 9 at night. And we sit the same way for eating. But we do get up every 40 or 50 minutes and walk around. I mean, it's, you know, human beings can do it. But it's a kind of purge and it's quite difficult.

[54:26]

A purge. And usually, and that's when things, like the third or fourth day of seven days, things really start coming up, particularly for the beginner, lots of psychological stuff. Erotic, too. And you have to find a way to sit in the midst of it. And the pain and the difficulty keeps one in balance actually. If a person sits too naturally easily, I worry.

[55:27]

Because the development of stillness and the openness is related to the development of your being able to handle the sitting itself. For most people there's a relationship. But again, there are some people that I think shouldn't meditate. And the most typical, the most common example I would have of people who I don't want to meditate. And I don't know contemporary psychological terms, but what I call a borderline personality. And borderline personalities often have a very fragile sense of identity, of ego.

[56:32]

And you need a strong anchored sense of self to practice. And what's interesting is that borderline people love to meditate. They think it's great. And they want to sit five times a day, ten times a day. And I say, no, no, no, please. Sit once a day. And sit with others and not by yourself. So let me give you another little example. And then we can have lunch somewhere. If I ask you to focus on this. And you develop an ability to keep your mind on this stick.

[57:41]

This is for the bell. Okay, so it's not so easy to keep your mind on the stick. You put your attention to it, and your attention goes somewhere else. The stick is, after all, pretty boring. This one's kind of interesting. So you put your mind to it, and it goes away. And you bring it back. And then it goes away. And then you bring it back. This is also the four or five stages of developing one-pointedness. A basic yogic skill. So after a while, you keep bringing it back. And this isn't just sitting around with a stick while you're trying to have dinner. This is something that happens in effect in every period of meditation.

[58:53]

So eventually, if you keep bringing it back, after a while you're kind of literally training the mind. Eventually the mind stays a little bit longer. And then it goes away, but then it comes back by itself. And pretty soon it comes back by itself and finally it just rests. And a yogic skill is your mind can stay wherever you put it. Okay. So let's imagine that you... I've developed the ability to just put your mind on something, attention, let's say attention, your attention on something and it stays. Now you've developed a certain kind of concentration we can call samadhi. And it's, let's call it, you've developed a stick mind. A mind Focused on this object.

[60:10]

Okay. Now, say I take the stick away. And you still stay concentrated. Now what are you concentrated? You're concentrated on mind itself. Now the object of mind is mind itself. Not the stick. Okay. So now I can bring the stick back into the field of mind which is concentrated. And I can observe the stick in the field of concentrated mind. And that's sometimes called the mind of insight. Because it's a mind closely related to intuition. And things appear like they appear in intuition. So now let me give you another craft-like example of the result

[61:19]

of incubating a different worldview. It always sounds so good. I don't know, but it sounds good. And I like the sound of Hungarian. It's got a kind of rolling sound. I'm linguistically incompetent, but I like the sound. Okay, everyone knows that, right? Everybody thinks I understand German, but I don't. I've been living in Germany for 20 years, half the year. I don't know. All right. Okay. Say you view things as an activity. Let's imagine you're trying on the practice of viewing things as an activity.

[62:32]

Then you're trying to feel the difference when you sense something as an entity and when you sense something as an activity. And the mental posture of seeing things as an entity has a different physical feel than the mental posture of seeing things as an activity. It's a different kind of engagement with situations when you feel things as an activity than when you feel things as an entity. You feel a strong separation when you feel things as entities. And you feel more connected and participatory when you feel things as activities. Okay. So let's practice with a tree.

[63:44]

I like trees in general and I like it that the word tree and truth have the same root. Because trees usually stay in the same place day after day. So they're kind of true. Okay. So let's say you practice seeing the tree as an activity. And when you look at a tree, in English I say, don't say tree, say tree-ing. In German they say baum-ing, right? Baum-ing. Baum-ing. So, you're observing the tree as treeing. And, you know, words have a tremendous power... Okay.

[64:46]

Words have a tremendous power to direct attention. And if you use the word tree as the lens of attention, you're going to... If you use the word lens... you're going to see the world, the tree, as an entity. If you use the word treeing as the lens of observation, you're going to more likely see it as an activity. All right, so let's say you get in the habit of saying treeing, and you do have to do this as a kind of craft, like learning the violin or something. So you develop the habit of seeing tree.

[65:48]

You see the tree as an activity. But if you see the tree as an activity, you also begin to see the stillness of the tree. Because activity and stillness are closely related. And when you feel the stillness of the tree, you're kind of feeling the root and trunk of the tree. You know, if you look at an ocean wave, what you're seeing in the ocean wave is the ocean wave trying to return to stillness. The shape of the wave, the geometry of the wave is, I want to be still. It didn't want to return to stillness, it'd be flying off somewhere.

[67:03]

So the water returns to stillness, all the shapes return to stillness. And if it's not disturbed much, it'll be very still and clear. Actually, our experience is the mind also wants to return to stillness. Hidden in all of our activity is often, I would like to be more still. But in a similar way, when you look at a tree, the leaves are moving, but they're moving in relationship to the twig and the branch and the trunk and the roots. So in the movement of the leaves, you see the stillness of the tree. So when you start noticing the activity, you notice the stillness.

[68:03]

And when you start noticing the stillness, you start feeling the space of the tree. Because this activity and the stillness are occurring in a space. And when you feel the space of the tree, the activity of the leaves create a space in which the activity is occurring. And so the... The space of the tree in which the activity and the stillness occurs begins after a while. What do you feel? You feel the space of the tree, the dynamic and the space of the tree. And it calls forth a resonant mind, the space of mind.

[69:10]

As the stick called, I can take the stick away and you begin to have a space of mind. In which contents appear. Likewise, the tree is sort of appearing within the space of the tree and the space of mind. and developing and incubating this world view you begin to feel that everything that happens the mental formations that happen You may be terribly hurt by them, pained by them, but they're still mental formations, contents of mind within a larger field of mind. And you begin to feel you're the field of mind and not the contents of mind.

[70:17]

Or you're more fundamentally the field of mind, but also the contents of mind. And then you can work with the contents of mind in a different context than usual. Now probably I should say something about a distinction between consciousness and awareness. And how I would define self and consciousness from the point of view of Buddhism. And I really believe if you can look at, if you can adopt, as well as our usual worldview, this other worldview. You will find subtle ways to be open to others, friends and clients and everybody. Now, I'd like to ask... Ravi, who is a, been practicing quite a long time and is also a psychotherapist.

[71:42]

Psychologist. Can you say something about your experience of why you have brought and how you bring meditation experience and practice into your work with clients. Whatever you want to say. Maybe you could stand up so we can see you. I completely agree with you on what you said about their clients doing meditation is not possible. Because my experience is that they use the meditation or they want to use the meditation to reach something. And if they like it too much, that's often that we are nourishing some psychological need that they have. And that in fact limits the possibilities of their being able to sit in zazen.

[72:44]

It's like they have used the meditation mind and built it into their psychological personality. A little bit about my background. I studied psychology in the University of California, Berkeley. I started my work working with schizophrenics, possibly where we worked without medication. Medication, no drugs, medication. And I spent the first eight years of my psychological training living with 12 schizophrenics who were not getting medication. And it was a very intensive part of my life. I would say. And that was one of the reasons that I originally went to Green Gulch Farm when I was 18 for the first time.

[74:01]

And Green Gulch Farm was one of the three centers of the San Francisco Zen Center. Which is where Baker Roshi was teaching and leading the work. So one of the reasons that I went to Italy was somebody told me you should go there. It was a cheap way to have a summer vacation. Now the last 30 years have taught me that it's a very expensive way to have a summer vacation. It's been very much a part of my life. Among the different aspects of my training, I learned body therapy. Some of you might be familiar with the work of Wilhelm Breisch. And more recently, Alexander Lohm. I learned hypnosis with Milton Erickson.

[75:04]

And I learned transaction analysis with some of the top transaction analysts in the States. And I use meditation with many of my clients. Because they come, as they begin to deal with their psychological problems, they become interested in existential and philosophical problems. One of the things that I learned inside the therapy was that we look at the biography. That some of the ways that we relate to the world have to do with how we learned to relate to the world as children. And that was very much influenced by how our environment and our parents taught us to do that. I'll give you a small example. I grew up in India, and in India the right hand is considered clean and the left hand is considered dirty. The right hand is king.

[76:36]

And the left hand is dirty. Now I went shopping with a friend of mine. And the states they have big paper bags. And I'm holding the paper bag in my right hand, because it's a clean hand. And I needed to pay the sales girl. And I started reaching around, trying to figure out how I can hold this bag and get to my wallet, which was in my pocket. My friend said, what are you doing? He said, why don't you put the bag in the other hand? Well, the left hand is dirty, so I wouldn't carry my food in my left hand. Now, I had accepted this as a given truth. Because in the culture that I grew up in, that's the way things are. And what I find that meditation practice does is it gives me a space to question such beliefs.

[77:47]

Now, we mentioned earlier that dreams are, perhaps in psychoanalytic view, a way to symbolically deal with things that we have trouble dealing with consciously. And that's again based on a belief that we can't deal with them when they occur. Now what I find when people, when my clients meditate, is that they gain a different access to the dreams. Because the blocks that they developed as defenses against dealing with them become less significant in the mind space that they discover when they meditate.

[78:52]

So in fact they begin to dream more or they begin to report their dreams more. And they begin to see that they can also deal with what's underneath the dreams within that wider mind space. So I have some clients that come in and they will sometimes meditate for 20 minutes before we have a session. And I can tell you practically that makes my work a lot easier. Because they're open in another mind space that we can meet in. And my own meditation practice helps me to be open to the mind space that my client is in when I come in. So we in fact meet within therapeutic relationship at a much wider level than if we'd not both been meditating.

[80:07]

And that changes my engagement with the client. So in a very practical level, I think of a poem that I once read in Germany, somebody sent to me on a card. They said that in a relationship there is what I see, there is what you see, and there is what we both don't see. And that mystery I find fascinating, that's what we get into. Thank you.

[80:58]

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