Do you have any questions about where we're at right now, what we've been saying? Yeah. I didn't quite understand what you said about Thoreau, that life is a text. He didn't say life is a text, he said the world is a text. The world is like you open a book and there's whatever's on that page. So you look at me right now and there's whatever's on this page. And you don't, oh, for each time you open the book, it's something surprising. And that this text then reads you. Yeah. I have a question, self-referential thinking.

[01:19]

How can you study yourself without self-referential thinking? Okay. Can you study someone else's self without self-referential thinking? You're a therapist, right? I hope that your clients are somewhat free of your self-referential thinking. That's where I can do it the most likely that I can do it. Well, if you can... I probably only have a glimpse or something of how it works.

[02:20]

With yourself, you mean? Or with others? I'm not so involved. I'm not so important when it's about other people. Well, if you can observe other people, then you can observe yourself. And you can also simply observe your activity. Okay. Is that then not self-referencing? Self-referencing. Do you partly mean that the act of observing itself is the self-observing? It's directed towards me, so maybe I'm saying something.

[03:49]

Is something that's related to me or pointing towards me something different or the same than self-referential? Well, I just hear this kid running up there. What do I hear? I hear boom, [...] right? If I think, is that my kid? And should I do something about it? And is she disturbing all of you? That's self-referential thinking. Yeah. But if I just hear boom, boom, boom, that's not self-referencing. Unless I think, oh, I don't like that. the more I'm concerned with likes and dislikes, that's self-referential.

[04:54]

Or if I think, oh, you won't be able to hear me because of the boom, boom, boom, then you won't, and that's it. But if I'm just swimming here in the midst of boom, boom, boom, it's okay. Okay? But I think you may be touching on a problem which is one we should elucidate. Is that we commonly think that all observation, the observer, is the Self. When we observe anything, you can ask, who's observing? We think it's a who that's observing. But it might be a what that's observing.

[05:59]

So, if you think that all observing is a self-observing... then you're really stuck in your own story and self-referential thinking. But observing mind is different from observing self. If I just observe this sound, Without any reference, just hearing the sound, we can say that's observing mind and not observing self. When does the act of observing turn into a self? That's part of the craft of practice. Okay. Someone else want to bring something?

[07:01]

Yes. What does the path of breathing or breath has to do with the senses, as you have described it before? Well, the path of breathing or bringing our attention to our breath is another way to free ourselves from identifying with our thinking. We free ourselves from thinking?

[08:06]

We free ourselves from identifying with our thinking. So as I've said often, if you If you can't do something so well, it's very simple to bring your attention to your breath. So I'm going through this again because this is one of, I think, the logics of practice. A logic that allows us to see into how we function. and creates a territory of practice. So, it's very easy to bring your attention to your breath for a short period of time.

[09:11]

It's very difficult to bring your attention to your breath continuously. And then we can ask, why is something so easy to do, so difficult to do, for a long period of time? Yeah, there may be a number of answers, but the main answer I would give is that we establish our continuity in the world through our thinking. So if you keep going back to your thinking because that's how you make sure the world is in order and you're in order and so forth. So developing the capacity to rest mind, speaking and everything in the breath is a parallel and interrelated practice to resting in your senses.

[10:25]

And one supports the other. And both are interrelated with the world as text. Which is also a way of saying to know the world as dharmas. Now, Thoreau didn't go that far, but if I'd been able to talk with him, he would have. I don't mean that I am in any way comparable to Thoreau. I just mean one can know very simple things. And when you hear them you say, geez, you know. That's right.

[11:39]

Man kann ganz einfache Dinge wissen und wenn man diese hört, dann kann man sagen, ach Gott, das stimmt. Ja, das stimmt. That's what you say when you pay the bill. Das stimmt, ja. Yes, Nico, did you want to say something? If we say that part of the job of a Buddha is to emancipate yourself from yourself, then I find it very easy to not be bothered by myself when I'm just by myself. But the reappearance of a self in social interaction is so strong. So I want to ask, is there something antidotal, technical, to improve my understanding of what happens when you re-enter social interaction and why the self reappears so strong? When we say that a part of the task of a Buddhist is to emancipate oneself from oneself, I find it very easy when you are alone with yourself, for example in nature.

[12:55]

But it is very difficult when you come back into social contact. Then the self also needs a lot, and I ask myself, of course, why this is so. Well, I think the instrumental answer is a response is similar to what I said yesterday in regard to Gerald's and Judith's questions. We can speak about it. Does self appear as a role or does self appear as an identity? If self appears as a role, yeah, then we're not so... We're not so invested in our role.

[14:11]

But we're very invested in our identity. So I think that in practice, you have something like the feeling you describe more when you're by yourself. And then when you're in situations where self is a role, And then when you're in situations where self is an identity. And usually, and what is that self most likely appears as an identity, the closer our relationships are, like in the family and so forth. Or with people we are deeply involved with, our boss or something like that. But again, I think the basic idea, the Yogacara idea, which is the background of Zen,

[15:12]

As you establish your continuity, your sense of continuity, in your breath and your body primarily, primarily and initially, And tertiarily or secondarily in your thinking. And that's simply part of the craft of practice. Yeah, like you get a feeling for whatever you feel when you're by yourself. And you see if you can stay with that feeling in the midst of various circumstances.

[16:34]

And that feeling is supported the more you're in a sensorial and breath-continued world than in a mentally-continued world. So the thinking of a realized person is not continuous, it's continuously disappearing. It's like your thinking, if it's like your gears, keeps going into neutral. So it's mostly in neutral unless you have to think about something. You're on a beautiful hill on your bicycle coasting.

[17:44]

Even uphill you coast. Okay. Someone else? Yes, you do too. So I'm asking from which space does our intuition come? I suppose it is free from thinking, the intuition. Okay, is it our kind of charged up feelings where the intuition comes out or from which space does intuition stem? What do you mean by intuition? I mean, I don't like the word intuition because it belongs to women.

[18:48]

You never talk about men's intuition. It's always women's intuition. Maybe men say that because they think women can't think. Well, there's a lot of cultural assumptions in a little phrase like that. But I'm half women. Yes? Yes? It's a spontaneous observation without thinking. It gets complicated. It's not even necessarily a feeling. Yes, it is definitely something spontaneous, spontaneous, in the women's language, in the womb.

[19:57]

And in women's language it comes out of the stomach. Or guts, actually. Well, you have a gut feeling. We certainly speak about that. So, like when you know something, you know what to do without thinking. Well, I think that knowing what to do without thinking is basic thinking. And because what we experience consciously is self-referential thinking. Or, yeah, I could say lots about this, but let's just keep it simple. If what we are conscious of is primarily self-referential thinking, then our deeper thinking or more fundamental thinking

[21:05]

has to pop through that surface. But when you don't identify with your thinking or have a primarily self-referential thinking, then all your thinking is something close to a continuous flow of intuition. Or a continuous flow of insights. I think when I make an explanation like that, it's too simple, but we have to start somewhere. Because what I would like you as fellow practitioners to do is if you hear what I said just now and it makes sense to you, then you test it yourself.

[22:15]

Try it out. Because it has much more subtlety and nuance than what I'm saying. And what we can say can be subtle but not really subtle. Because my words are based on repetitious acts, consistent meaning. Yeah, each word represents a kind of generalization about things. So if I say something about anything unique, I basically generalize it, slightly generalize it.

[23:16]

The actual fabric is never generalized. The actual text, actual fabric, actual immersed set of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes? Through the talk, particularly this part of the talk and discussion this morning, I keep returning to the... That's okay. The physical feeling you described yesterday of unhooking the breath from the emotion.

[24:16]

And I believe you also said when each breath is nearly the same, it's called an unperturbable mind. And I've been feeling in the discussion this morning in the thread and what Fritz brought in about breath, the feeling of breath as a pivot between this... self-observing and observing self and observing mind. Pivot is a turning point to something? Such a thing. The breath is like a turning point or something like that, a joint between the self-observing mind and

[25:27]

No, observing self and observing mind. Yeah, it is just that. And, of course, you can say those words and I think, of course, you're being an experienced practitioner, you say the words and the words are descriptions of your experience. But it takes a fairly mature mindfulness practice for those words to actually describe our experience. So you're in the midst of your activity... feeling your activity as it happens.

[26:30]

Now, you know, appreciating Joseph's comment yesterday, Maybe I would say instead of only unhooking emotion from the breath, but rather I might say unhooking it from emotion, but perhaps filling it with feeling. Because the connection between compassion and wisdom which are two sides of the same coin in Buddhism any consequential thinking is inseparable from caring.

[27:34]

Any consequential thinking, any thinking that has consequences, is inseparable from caring. Okay. Now, they did it way back in the 60s sometimes. They hooked a... Hindu adepts and Buddhist adepts, Zen adepts, up to, you know, EEG-type wires, you know. I've got all these doctors to help. It's wonderful. Yeah. And it's interesting because the meditative techniques produce different results. And they did something very simple.

[28:59]

These guys were hooked up and they were supposedly in somewhat developed meditative states. And then they gave some stimulation. I don't remember whether they rang a bell or poked him with a needle. And the Hindu meditators blocked the... very quickly blocked the sensorial input. So the needle went, you know, like this. So when it... The first thing, it went like this, and the second one, it went like this, and the third one, it went like this, and the fourth, it was gone.

[30:08]

It's just a flat line. And with the Zen person, it didn't go like this. It just went up, down, and came back to the line. And the hundredth time it still just went up, down and came back to the line. There was no blocking of the input but no reaction to the input. There was no need to react to it. They just heard it or just felt it. And I would say that I would say it's something like, you know, when you see the ocean, if you've been out in a boat or something like that, often the ocean is a big kind of thing like this, you know, it just goes like this.

[31:09]

Yeah, and when the mind and the breath are joined, it's sort of like that in situations. It's affected by and absorbs the situations, but it absorbs it into a kind of big, smooth rhythm. And even if it changes using the same image as yesterday, if it changes and becomes quite rough, something's happened. There's a building burning down across the street as once happened in San Francisco. Actually, they were lucky, the people across the street in this big apartment building, because the Zen people woke up immediately. They were used to waking up quickly. And many people were in the building waking people up, and I think four people died or something.

[32:26]

Anyway, even then, There's a lot of activity, of course. There still is the feeling of maybe the water, which is still not even in waves. that the water is still there or the water... Yeah, even the depth of the ocean, there's a stillness in it. This image of water is quite accurate to... The experience of mind as I'm trying to speak about it. And the other image I've often used is the shape of the wave is determined by the stillness of the water.

[33:28]

Do you understand what I mean? That the wave is returning to stillness. That's what forms the shape of the wave. Otherwise it would... Otherwise the water would just fly off into the air. But it wants to return to being still. If you leave it alone, it will become still. So when you feel your mind, the mind, separate from thinking it feels a lot like that. With no effort, your mind wants to return to stillness.

[34:39]

And it keeps returning to stillness. And then your life, you could say you begin to shape your life if you value that. How you walk, stand, etc. To allow the mind to continually return to stillness. And that also happens in how you look at things, how you hear things. You hear things in a way that allows hearing and the mind to return to stillness. Okay. Someone, something else? How about someone who hasn't said anything yet? Like you.

[35:54]

Oh, you've been saying lots of things. Yes. That the seeing sense is more connected with thinking than the hearing and the feeling. It is tactile. It doesn't have to be, but it is. It is. We're always establishing our continuity with our eyes and our thinking. And we feel somewhat lost if you are in the dark. And you can practice with being in the dark or closing your eyes and being in the dark and finding out how your senses work. Or just do a simple thing. When you're in the bathtub. Wash your feet with your eyes closed. Your feet become rather different.

[36:55]

And they become much closer. They're not way down there. Do we create or discover the observing mind? Well, the philosophical aspect of your question, let me put aside for a moment. Just practically, I think we discover that much of... I think we discover observing mind in a number of ways.

[38:03]

We discover or notice that, yeah, actually this is more like observing mind than observing self. Now that you know about that, you can make this distinction. I very often use the example of sunbathing. You're sunbathing and you hear things, you know, and so forth. That's more like observing mind than observing self. So that's a kind of discovery to notice that actually much of what I do is really observing mind and not observing self. Okay, but the more philosophical aspect is, are we generating mind or discovering mind?

[39:15]

Discovering or generating? In other words, we speak about original mind. Again, the face before we were born. Is original mind something that's there from the beginning that we uncover or discover? Or is it something we generate?

[40:20]

I think the answer has to be, in the context of Buddhism, has to be something that we generate. That's my experience as well. But in fact, lots of Zen teachers, and you can find classic Zen commentaries from writings from China and Song Dynasty, they talk about it's a process of discovery, of uncovering. And I think, strictly speaking, they're wrong. But from the point of view of practice, they may not be wrong.

[41:24]

It works all right. But the problem with it is, if you think that original mind is there from the beginning, Then you basically have the theological problem of God, what's there from the beginning, oneness, mind connects everything and so forth. And that basically is a belief. Okay. All right, but certainly mind is something that we have a genetic capacity for. The embryo is formed and becomes a baby and all that stuff. And the baby has certain capacities. But those capacities are generated. And by the time you are conscious enough to notice your own mind

[42:26]

Much of your own mind is already there. But then, as Schrodinger and many people pointed out, you know... in the way science converges in many ways with Buddhism. It's the very noticing this discovery changes the discovery. And that means it's generated. Because in fact you're generating. And that's a very basic view when we think about, okay, what is mind, what is reality? If we're uncovering God or uncovering original mind or something, that's a rather different way to practice.

[43:47]

But our experience often is one of uncovering. Something we already knew. But let's not be fooled by the experience of already knowing. Because that's already a generative experience. This is rooted in that everything changes. impermanence. Emptiness is really just a way to speak about impermanence.

[44:56]

So if we're really going to look at what is reality from a point of view of Buddhism, we say Yes, everything's impermanent. What does that mean? Since I spoke about science just now, very nicely, for me, an old friend of mine came to visit yesterday And some of you may know him. His name is Hans-Peter Dürr. And for many years he was the head of the Max Planck Institute in Munich. And he was Schrödinger's protégé. And it turns out his daughter lives a couple of villages away from here.

[46:01]

So we were speaking, Esther. We've had some wonderful conversations and influenced each other in our thinking. Yeah, in the past. And he recounted some of that yesterday. But he said, you know, he's finding that he can't talk with people about atoms because it's too abstract. And we were talking about this distinction, which he and I have thought about quite often, of actuality or, now he says, actionality and reality. Can I use the German words?

[47:04]

Please, whatever you like. That's what he said. Yeah, she was there hearing it. So he says, a factuality doesn't like because that's a word from science and they only believe in facts and that's the least real or something like that. But he also spoke about it in English. He said that because he can't, he doesn't like to speak about atoms, but he likes to speak about our experience. He speaks about haps. Haps from happening. He says moment after moment there's haps.

[48:05]

And I said, that's more than perhaps. So I thought that was pretty good. And the root of haps is K-O-B, Cobb, in German and English. The root of haps. What is a haps? The short for happening. Okay, so Cobb? Cobb, yeah. Okay, etymology. Yeah, and that means something like an event, a positive event or something like that. Yeah. So, you know, his idea of speaking about haps is very close to what we mean by Dharma. Mm-hmm. This is enough for today.

[49:26]

Oh, our engineer. I want to add my question right there. I'm asking you, it's exactly this distinction. If I perceive something with my senses, then it's just an image from something. Okay. Then in German we call this functioning because it functions on us, like a medicine functions, works on us. It's like wirken and work is somewhat the same. It works on us. We call it work. Reality is something, is like workity or something. But that is not the same than that where this comes from.

[50:30]

It's not the same as the original. And this we call in German from the Latin root res, think, realität. So the difference between my perceived reality and the reality. So there's a difference between my perceived reality and the reality where this comes from, which is not processed by my perception. In Buddhism do you have this distinction? Which two terms would you use in English? Okay.

[51:48]

Yeah, go ahead. What I found very helpful was when I tried out those things is you have so many senses and they don't overlap. There's no reason why a sound of a horse should look like a horse. So you can practice with the gaps of what you don't get information. You get just five or six informations of things. We put them together as one picture. Yes, I found it helpful when I tried to see it. There are so many senses and you only get so much information from the world. You hear a noise and know that it is a horse. But why should a horse look like this if it belongs to the noise? There is some information missing. So that you practice with these gaps between the senses. Yeah, what she just said is one of the main points of the koan number 20 in the Shoyaroku. Yeah, I mean, it's like if you only heard the world, you could not imagine what things looked like.

[52:48]

These are five different territories and there's no reason to assume that they in any way describe the entirety of the world. There's no reason why these five or six different pieces of the pie are the whole of the pie. Like right now, there's lots of television programs and handy phone calls in this room. And you just don't have the senses for them.

[54:08]

So there's a whole world outside your senses. Buddhism assumes there's a whole world outside your senses and you only know five or six slices of the pie. If I try to understand what you said, Werner, it's like if you hear a bell. Your hearing of the bell, the aural image of the bell, is not the bell. So there's your sensorial representation and then there's the bell. This is also encapsulated in one of the koans I present to you most often. It's just these guys in our lineage, Yun Yan and Da Wu.

[55:16]

Yun Yan and Da Wu. Yeah, that's right. Da Wu. Okay. So... Yunyan is sweeping. He's really in our lineage and he's the dumber one. And his brother, brother monk and real brother, was a bit smarter. But Yunyan, he was okay. So anyway, he's sweeping and Dawu says, You know the story. He says, too busy. Actually, Thich Nhat Hanh told me once this story was very important for him and caused a big change in his life.

[56:27]

Thich Nhat Hanh said... You should know there's one who's not busy, Dawu. So that's part of the koan. Do you know the one who's not busy? That might also be when your emotions and your breath have some independence. You feel... Anyway, that's enough. Then the second part of the koan is then Daowu says, aha, then there's a double moon. There's the real moon and a representation of the moon.

[57:31]

And he holds up his broom and says, is this a double moon? Okay. Now, through practice, what you experience, listening to the bell, is you hear or feel or experience your own hearing of the bell. That's not an image of the bell. That's the reality of the bell. Okay. It's not the metal of the bell. Yes, your reality, but that's the only reality. Okay. So... Is this a bell? Is das eine Glocke?

[58:37]

No, it's a teacup. And it makes the tea taste terrible. So because it makes the tea taste terrible, I don't use it as a teacup. So what is the reality of this object? It's, you know, something fairly cool. And I could use it as a cup. It's too small for a hat. Yeah. So what is it? Well, it's molecules and atoms and stuff like that. And then there's a lot of space between the molecules and the atoms. But it has taken this shape because someone made it into this shape. And he made it into this shape so I could ring it and you could hear it. So it's nothing but all kinds of images, the image of a bell, the memory of bells, etc.

[59:40]

So the only reality of it, from a Buddhist point of view, is its use. And it's not a bell until I ring it. If I sat in my desk with paper clips in it, I once, I don't know, we're running out of time here. I'm supposed to stop at 12.30, right? 12.15, oh. Once I was in someone's house, you know. The kind of people, you know, sort of wealthy people who have their piano covered with a brocade of caissons. After the war, lots of okesas were taken by American soldiers and sold as claws.

[60:54]

And then you find them as table claws, you find them as covering pianos and things like that. I've occasionally been tempted to put it on and sneak out the door. Anyway, one of these houses they had, this is in Minnesota where my former wife lived. I noticed the firewood was in a wonderful metal container. And I knew exactly what it was. It was a better bell than we have on the Zender here. And I knew exactly what it was. It was a better bell than the one we have here on the radio. And you know that I don't like to be so socially active. And then everyone was in the kitchen and I went into the living room and took out all the firewood. And everybody came in out of the kitchen.

[62:10]

And I said, did you know this was a bell? You have a really extraordinary bell here. I don't know quite why, but they were rather angry. And they insisted that all the firewood go back in the bell. So that's not a bell. That's a firewood container. So if the bell is my hitting of it, and your and my, all of our hearing of it, then that's the reality of the bell. Now, that is experientially true when you hear your own hearing.

[63:17]

And that is an experience that for most of us will arise primarily through meditation. Like that's right now when I feel my mind knowing you, seeing you. So I know you are you. But what I know is my experience of knowing you. But there really isn't anything else because what you know is your experience of knowing yourself. Okay, that's enough for today. That's enough. Thanks a lot.

[64:21]

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