I'm glad to be back here. Once a year I come here. And some of you are new, I see, or people I don't know at least. Not new to yourselves, but new to me. That's an interesting idea. How could you be new to yourselves? I think if this seminar works, we accomplish anything, you might feel new to yourselves. Yeah, but then also I wonder maybe I should start giving seminars for new people. And we're thinking of doing that at Johanneshof.

[01:11]

Because there certainly will be things I speak about that depend on knowing something about Buddhism or knowing something about Dharma Sangha, or that's what we call ourselves, Dharma Sangha teachings up until this point. So if some of you are new, what I'm talking about doesn't make sense, which I often hear is the case. I fairly often hear someone says to me, the first year I practiced with you, I didn't understand a thing you said.

[02:22]

And then I wonder, why the heck did they continue? They didn't understand for a full year. And I suppose it's because the It's the feel of what we're doing more than the content. But we have to have some content in order to have something to talk about. So how could you become new to yourselves Well, all in all, this seminar should be easy to get started on this, what we call a prologue day, where not everybody's here, but we kind of get warmed up here.

[03:44]

And I feel if some of us get started, it actually helps get started tomorrow too, Saturday. Anyway, the topic I noticed was the continuity, the continuum of the self. Yeah, and I guess that came from last year. You had the idea that we should do that. It's very basic Buddhism, so we got into it. Anyway, it should be easy to get started because we can't talk about alternatives to the self We can't talk about the topography of the self.

[05:09]

We can't talk about the topography of the Alps unless you know the Alps are mountains. So unless each of us knows something about the self, there's nothing to talk about. So I'd like to start today with emphasizing becoming aware of the flow of selfing. Isn't it the current, when you take a picture of yourself with a phone, isn't that called a selfie?

[06:17]

Yes. But railway tracks. Railway tracks? Yeah, it was two girls, but they were just safe because they stood in the railroad with the subway tracks, in fact, and made a selfie when the train came. That's the problem. That's the problem with self-involvement. It's called a selfie when you take a picture of yourself with your phone. Anil told us that there was a case where two girls were just rescued because they took a picture of themselves on the subway tracks. He said, yes, I call that being involved with oneself. You don't see the train of reality coming down the tracks because you're self-involved.

[07:18]

So maybe we could talk about the flow of selfie. We're constantly taking pictures of ourselves. In botany, selfing means... Where are you? You know this. In botany, selfing means self-fertilizing. So maybe we're selfing all the time, too. He's a botanist, though, anyway. So how do we start?

[08:35]

I mean, basically for most of us, the self is invisible. There's no alternative to the self. I remember somebody who lived in New Jersey who moved, who went to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan. much in the middle of the country, the United States. New Jersey's on the East Coast. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Yeah, and he thought everybody in Ann Arbor, Michigan had an accent. And then it took him several months, you know, before he, you know. to realize that he had the accent and they didn't. And that recognition was enough to give him a kind of enlightenment experience.

[09:40]

And he was planning to be a rabbi and he decided to be a Zen Buddhist instead. He's still practicing Zen Buddhism. So we don't notice ourselves, our selfing until we have some contrast. So he didn't notice his accent until he was in a part of the United States which had a different accent. So we need some contrast to notice that we're selfing all the time.

[10:47]

Yeah. No, we're breathing all the time. I mean, I hope, most of us. And I live at 8,600 feet. What's that about? 2,400 meters? I live at 2,400 meters about in Colorado. And there's not enough oxygen in the air. So I notice that I'm not breathing. Yeah, but in any way, most of us, unless you start climbing or running or something, you don't notice you're breathing.

[11:53]

During the night, you don't notice you're breathing. But certainly one of the center of many practices and the center of Zen practice is to notice your breathing. And for those of you who have been practicing for a while, You know that something happens when you notice your breathing that's different from when you don't notice your breathing. In other words, there's a big difference between just breathing and noticing your breathing. And lots follows happens from noticing continuously, a lot happens from noticing your breathing.

[13:05]

And really a lot happens from continuously noticing your breathing. And there's no way the intellect can anticipate what it's like to continuously notice your breathing. There's no categories available to the intellect to notice something that you don't notice. We kind of create a unity against the background of otherness.

[14:22]

And that unity, we experience as a unity in contrast to otherness. is extremely convincing. And it's reinforced by the otherness of the world and the otherness of other people. And we notice the unity or the difference that we call a continuity or a unity. But in fact we don't notice the unity because the unity only notices its own unity-nariness or continuity-nariness. There's no such English word.

[15:40]

It really is a self-reinforcing system. And then you use language all the time. To describe the world. To describe your relationship to others. And to describe your relationship to yourself. And you use pronouns. I, my, me. And you start believing the pronouns. I mean, if you keep describing somebody as a jerk... A jerk?

[16:44]

A jerk is a kind of dumb person. Pretty soon you'll be convinced that person's a jerk. Or you hear other people describing that person and you haven't even met them and you're convinced before you met them they are a jerk. So in addition to the reinforcing the identity-reinforcing use of personal pronouns... Can you say that again, please? In addition to the identity-reinforcing use of personal pronouns... Now, by repeating it, I forgot what I was going to say.

[17:52]

It's perfectly all right. It will appear. But actually, because we're using words to talk about the self, actually the distinctions are quite small that one has to start noticing. Okay, so let me go back to attention to the breath. Okay. Now this is for especially for those of you who are new to how we speak about these things.

[19:09]

But also it's a little refresher course. So basically in order to bring attention to the breath, you have to form an intention to bring attention to the breath. Because if you just If you don't create an intention to bring attention to the breath, you won't notice you're breathing. And it's interesting that we can form intentions

[20:11]

that it's interesting that we can form intentions that have a mental and physical presence that has continuity. So now we I know that's the case and we know that's the case, I think. So let's just accept that it's the case. That you can create an intention that has continuity. Okay. But the self has continuity Or a continuum. And it makes a difference what word we use, at least in English, continuum or continuous or continuity.

[21:32]

Or constancy. Or constancy. No, I leave it up to her to figure that out in Deutsch. I have no idea. I'm not smart enough to learn German, so I'm sorry. Or I don't have an ear that functions well enough. Any case. But let's just say that maybe there's an isomorphism here, in other words, a similar relationship, that if we can use intention to form a continuity, maybe self is a kind of intention. Now I'm using quite a lot of words here.

[22:34]

But we're trying to use words to look at something that's almost invisible. If our breath is mostly invisible to us, unless some religious tradition or yoga tradition or something or other points out the power of noticing the breath, Most of us just breathe our way through life until the last breath and then we hardly notice, we don't even notice that one.

[23:37]

And we have completely ignored an extraordinary power. The power, capability, vitality that happens through noticing the breath. And the word sila in Buddhism, which usually is translated as discipline, actually in Buddhism means the ability to Discover the power of intentional mind. You're forming the mind through intention.

[25:02]

That's the yogic view of the world. You're born with a mind that has certain instincts and so forth, but doesn't really have the kind of intentional capability which allows you to function in a culture. to function within a culture. So a particular culture shapes your mind to function within that culture. And when you teach a child his or her ABCs an infant you're teaching the infant to make distinctions between A and B and C.

[26:12]

And likewise when you teach them to count. There's one or two or there's here and there. And in a dualistic world, if we lived in a dualistic, excuse me, if we lived in a non-dualistic culture, you teach kids a little differently about how you make distinctions. And that would be an interesting study, actually, if somebody wants to really study the difference between Asian yogurt culture and Western... What could we say? Western culture. And yogurt culture. No, Western. I just said Western culture. there's probably a difference in whether separation is emphasized or connectedness is emphasized.

[27:53]

That one, two, three, four are connections, not differences. And if you have the excitement of enjoying or learning mathematics, it further shapes the mind to notice greater subtlety and refinement of connectedness. No, I'm just trying to find ways to talk about noticing what we're doing. To notice the continuity or lack of it, of self. And to do that, I'm talking about the activity of noticing itself.

[29:07]

Because how does the self notice the self? How does the I see the I? Alan Watts, who was a friend of mine, I saw in a dictionary someplace, they quoted Alan Watts. I thought, my friends are quoted. This is very impressive. He said, to try to know the self is like the teeth trying to bite the teeth. It sounds like Alan Watts. I don't know how good an example it is. But how does the eye see the eye? You mean now the I or the I?

[30:12]

The E-Y-E. See, the E-Y-E. And there's more than an accidental but not etymological connection between I and I. Okay, so if we form an intention which we can There's a secret of much Buddhist practice in this. If I just say, bring attention to the breath, I don't think basically no one can do it. Except for a few moments. It's easy to do for a few moments. I just did it. But to do it throughout the day today, this is rather difficult. Why does something that's so easy to do for a few moments, why is it so difficult to do continuously?

[31:40]

Now that's a question really worth pondering. And if you're serious about practicing Buddhism, Zen, you have to ponder these things. You have to get yourself into the actual experience of yourself as some kind of aliveness. Because mostly we don't notice. All of this incredible complexity is going on, breathing, your circulatory system and so forth. We just take it for granted until a doctor tells us there's something wrong. But I can say, if I say not bring attention to the breath, but I say form an intention to bring attention to the breath.

[33:09]

So now you have to develop the skill to create an intention which sustains itself. And it's interesting. There's a kind of feeling when you know, I intend to do this. I intend to stay alive. I intend to be honest. Yes. You may not always be honest. I ate something in the hotel which they brought us to, which Andreas brought me to yesterday.

[34:18]

And I had ate a meal. And they forgot to put on the bill his coffee. So I got the bill and I called the server and said, I think you've forgotten my friend's coffee. So she gave me a second bill. And I did that because I intend to be honest. But if I was in a big hurry and, you know, maybe... Maybe I would have said I was only a coffee. I would have gone.

[35:19]

They're getting enough money from me already and I don't need to worry. There was a double, so I definitely should have paid it. If it hadn't been a single, I might have just... So, but even if I decided I'm in a hurry, I just, if they forgot it, that's their problem. I would have had an experience, still I'm not being quite honest. So my character and my experience of the world is formed by a lot of intentions that I maintain and sometimes maybe not perfectly maintain. Andreas?

[36:22]

Someone's at the door. Yeah. So we can form intentions. And the intentions run in some contrast to other intentions. And the intention to bring attention to the breath Actually is in some little battle with the intention to bring attention to the self.

[37:29]

And self usually wins. Isn't it more interesting to think about yourself instead of thinking about your damn dumb breath? Oh yes, I am so much more interesting than my breath. I like that. So you bring intention to bring attention to the breath. and eventually that starts to happen and you don't criticize yourself for failing to bring attention to your breath because you can blame attention but you can't blame intention

[38:33]

And the secret of Buddhism is about intention, not attention. So you just deepen your intention, that's all. And eventually, like right now, I'm speaking to you, I'm completely aware, quite naturally, that, hello, that my speaking is breathing. And now, while I'm speaking to you, I'm fully aware that my speaking to you is breathing. I couldn't really speak if I didn't hold my breath. So it's like that. You arrived just at the moment we're going to take a break. Okay, I think that's enough for now.

[39:49]

And I'm happy to have any discussion you'd like afterwards. And that would make me happier than having to say more things. But I'm also happy to say more. Thank you very much. Thanks for being happy to translate more things. You're welcome.

[40:21]

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