Thank you, each of you, for being here. And I guess you got started last evening. And I think there's a text everyone got, this Han David piece, right? Did anyone not have time to look at it? Did anyone have time to watch it? I was just in Bologna for a week actually. with some old friends and a couple of people who became quite good new friends.

[01:04]

I had a especially good time with a man named Michel Bitbol, who's a French philosopher. He's French-Italian, but he's a Western philosopher, lives in Paris. Sorry, I always get that wrong. Michel Bitbull. Bitbull. B-O-L, yeah. He's a very nice fellow. And he's taken on trying to understand Western philosophy in relationship to Buddhist teaching. And he quite often meets with the Dalai Lama to discuss these things. And the other person who I particularly had a good time with was a man named Thubten Jinpa. Jinpa. He said at some point, I have a terrible time remembering Western names.

[02:31]

I said, I understand. He said, but he's married to a French-Canadian woman and they live in Montreal. And he said he refuses to name either his two children Tenzin because there's too many thousand Tenzins around. Yeah. Anyway, he's the main translator for his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. And he seems to be, as far as I understand, the person who puts together almost all of the Dalai Lama's books.

[03:33]

And he's head of the Tibetan Western Language Translation Project. And he... was especially appreciative of my emphasis on the Abhidharma. Because from his point of view, all practicing Buddhists are rooted in the Abhidharma. So it gives us a way to understand each other. Now we're in the wonderful position that instead of my speaking to you, often referring to texts which are English, But now we're in a position where you're speaking to me in text, referred in German, text in German.

[05:00]

But you're going to have to explain everything to me. Now this is a good situation actually. Because how we explain this to ourselves and to each other, our own explanation is the practice of territory that we develop. In other words, it's not so important what Hande Witt, Witt, I guess you say, Witt, it says. He's a man I know. I mean, I've been in a number of conferences with him.

[06:01]

And we've discussed these things. But as far as I know, this text you've read doesn't exist in English. Does it exist in Dutch? So it's translated, well, not of course, you might have written... So you and I should have spent a week together first. Okay. You're very technical. So what I'd like you to do, to start out, is each of you to tell me some one, two, or not more than three things that struck you or made sense to you or didn't make sense to you.

[07:22]

And I would like also volunteers not for today but for maybe tomorrow or sometime during the week or this afternoon three volunteers, one to present the Vijnanas to us all. And one to present the Skandhas. And one to present the four marks and five dharmas.

[08:28]

And if I have no volunteers, I'll just pick someone. Because again, if we're going to do this seriously, we have to see how we really make use of this or understand it ourselves. When Jinpe Jinpa was a monk for eleven years, They practiced very little meditation. But they spent four or five hours a day, 365 days a year, debating. And refining their ideas through this process. and have refined their ideas through this process.

[09:42]

So there are four or five people, or the whole court is full of people, and suddenly something happens in the process of understanding through this process of debating. He said they only had a problem with this doing it four or five hours a day, every day. They only had a problem doing this four or five hours a day, every day. When the Super Bowl was on. The Tibetans are very involved with this ball, and they could not get them all together for the debating while the Super Bowl was on. And one very strict... A new abbot, who was very strict, came in and he insisted that no one could go to the Super Bowl.

[11:00]

Watch it. Because he said the previous abbot kind of overlooked the problem. But that day when there was very few people in the courtyard, He sent people out, scouts to find people, and he found most of the teachers were watching the game too. I'm not bringing this up for any particular reason. Okay. So, where should we start? Somebody start with one or two or three things that struck you in this text.

[12:04]

We just start here with you. Yes, I found it interesting that he said that all experienceable phenomena, that we have created them in our spirit and that we can also see our spirit ourselves. That impressed me very much. I'm quite impressed that he said that every phenomena we experience is something we've created in our own mind and that we're able to see our own mind. That impressed me very much. Did that surprise you? I was surprised to find it in this text, because before that I've only heard you saying this.

[13:05]

And you just thought I made this up? I wonder what that means. Well, in one sense I I didn't make it up because it comes, it's extremely basic to Buddhist practice. And I also didn't make it up because it's exactly my own experience. Yes, so, Mikael? Well, one thing that's in the text and which accompanies me over time also is noticing.

[14:26]

When comes noticing in without, you know, noticing without interrupting, interfering? Yeah. And so that's always a question. We had this discussion yesterday also, if it's possible to notice without interfering. So this is... Deutsch, bitte. Nein, ein Ding, das mir... oder ein Begriff, der mir eben auch wieder rausgestochen ist, weil ich mich auch schon länger beschäftigt, ist das Bemerken. Und wann dieses Bemerken einsetzt. Also in der... So what are the different positions on noticing without interference? As I understood last night, it was also the question that we really notice only things that are, say, in our worldview and things that are totally outside of what we could imagine, we don't notice.

[15:45]

So that already the noticing is colored by Our worldview, I mean, it's hard to describe. Yeah. So, in German, please. I understood that last night, too, what Christoph said, that we can only notice what... the other position was that it is possible to notice in a very subtle way which is before it becomes any kind of consciousness I think it's two different questions actually. It's a question what noticing is.

[16:50]

What noticing is and what can we notice? How can we notice and what can we notice? Okay. German please. I think there are two different things. What Michael said was more I remember another aspect that was very important when we started the discussion. I remember another part from which we started our discussion. That mindfulness gives us a possibility to not be taken or influenced by our own Experiences.

[18:04]

Yeah, he doesn't say patterns, but it is patterns, sort of. Previous experiences. So we discussed long if it's possible to just notice without being influenced by the experience we have from the noticing. In the sense that it has to happen that you have preferences and dislikes from it. Because I think that not being... Caught. Caught? But it's like he means that by not being biased by your own experiences or something. Well, there has to be, of course... You know, you generally put gasoline in the car and not in yourself.

[19:25]

And that's based on previous experience. That example comes up because I remember in one of these cheap San Francisco hotels a guy who was very drunk and drank gasoline and didn't realize what he was drinking. And then he decided to smoke a cigarette. And he rather exploded and they had to take him to the hospital. He lived, but anyway. So sometimes previous experience is necessary. Someone else want to speak to this point? Yeah. So I want to just add to what Gerhard says that I know that you can be unbiased.

[20:57]

You can just be there completely unbiased, completely free and just look. Can you give us some kind of feeling or example of that? The feeling at that point... I noticed all these things one after the other. And at one point... I can say I looked at it. It's not really I looked at it. It was... Maybe it was something like panoramic view, maybe it is not right term. It was simply, I just knew. And I had the kind of causal link chain.

[22:07]

I knew just what causes what. Okay. And somehow in between that. All right, well, good. Between that, there's just nothing, sort of. Okay. Somebody else had their hand up, though. Does anyone else have their hand up? Yes. So I think in this not being caught, that is also part of the next sentence, that it has a lot to do with not identifying. And in the next sentence he says that this being not biased has a lot to do with not identifying. And I think this identifying is the basis of the clinging or the kind of rejection. Let me say something about our... the ingredients of our discussion.

[23:17]

First of all, please don't look at Handewitt's description or any description of the mind. as if you were looking at the inside of a car engine. This is the carburetor and this is the valve and so forth. Yeah. It's not a fixed thing like that. It's not necessarily like his description, first of all. And even if his description is extremely effective, and functionally accurate, it doesn't mean it's necessarily accurate like that.

[24:22]

It's... In other words, I mean, who can describe in this room exactly what a nose is like? Well, I think each of your noses is quite distinct. Well, all parts of us, including our mind, brain, body, has its own you know, way of its own forms. But we can, if we describe the nose, we can describe the function of the nose.

[25:23]

It's pretty much the same for all of us. We have a left and right nostril and it works a certain way and so forth. So, to the extent that any is, as far as I can tell, describing function, then we can say, yes, okay, yeah, maybe it's very close to the way we function. But is it close? But then you have to ask, really, is it close to the way we function? Okay. Now, you also have to, you know, think about this. From our point of view, this is not hardware, but I don't want to say software.

[26:27]

It's not hardware anyway. Now we have to resist the temptation to describe this from the outside. Now, since there are a number of... One of the big elements in my discussion this last week with neurobiologists and geneticists and Bologna... one of the big aspects of my discussion with these biologists and geneticologists and so on, last week in Bologna, how can you find the neuronal correlates for the experience of the color red?

[27:38]

Is there hardware that you can point to that expresses our experience of the color red and then our sensation of redness to, you know? how red can be sensory detected? Yeah, first it's just you have an impression of red, and then you have the feeling that red gives you. Okay, so it's quite interesting what neurobiology, et cetera, is doing. It's quite interesting, and it may advance Buddhism. But we are describing our practice is to describe consciousness from the inside, not from the outside. So we're doing something quite different. And the more developed our experience of consciousness or awareness, etc., is that this is important for the sophisticated people

[29:20]

And is that important for the neurobiologists? Because if they're going to make any real sense in the long run, their attempt to give a physical description of consciousness... They need to know how complex or subtle consciousness can actually be. I mean, it's fairly easy to explain that there's a light flash or you see an activity and certain parts of the brain light up. That's easy. But as soon as it gets more complex than that, no one knows what to do. Okay. So, this description... So, first let me say... Even though we are exploring, investigating consciousness from inside consciousness,

[30:56]

And we're using consciousness to investigate consciousness because there's no other choice. So it's in that sense a first-person science. And at present, Western science is not ready to accept a first-person science. And the only person who I mean, the person who's made the most emphasis on a first-person science was Francisco Varela. And he was an old friend of mine. And this event in Bologna was partly to honor him and his work. And his widow was there because Francisco died about four years ago, I guess.

[32:21]

Yeah, he was... He was part of Lindisfarne Association, which were what used to be Crestone. He was a very brilliant scientist. Even when he was 20, people were saying, this kid's going to get the Nobel Prize. I didn't, but he created a field which I think people call now neurophenomenology. Neurophenomenology. In other words, which they take to mean... You have to study the consciousness through the person studying consciousness.

[33:44]

can study or can only study through the study of the consciousness of a person in itself. Yes, and it has some parallel to the, you know, in quantum mechanics, quantum physics, you have to study the instruments that are studying the phenomena. So it has a parallel to quantum physics, where it means you have to study the instruments You have to study the instruments that are observing the phenomena. The microscope affects what you're looking at. So, although that's all outside you and objectified, it still is parallel to us trying to observe our own consciousness. So, first of all, what I'm saying here is that we're engaged in the West and we're in the forefront of that engagement. We're engaged in the West.

[35:14]

Studying the mind through the mind. It's been done in Asia for a couple thousand years or more. And the Abhidharma is the most articulated example of it. And it's been very little done in the West, if at all, until now. Now, but we have to discover it in our own consciousness, not imagining we're somehow Chinese or Indian. Now, we... I would say most of Buddhism and we Zen practitioners, at least the main stream as I understand Zen practice,

[36:44]

Take all of consciousness as a mental and physical construct. And in a way, we are also exploring consciousness physically because our body is part of the exploration. Now, I'm using consciousness just for all the noticing, knowing, consciousness, awareness, because I don't want to say them all all the time. Okay. Now, this is actually, in one respect, sharply different than the Tibetan view.

[38:07]

Okay. Yeah, I bring this up because I think it's extremely important in the long run and even in the short run of this seminar. And since I just was involved in a week's discussion about it, Maybe I can give you, there's two things we could do. I could give you the sixth chapter of a book, unfortunately it's in English, that my friend Luigi Luisi has written.

[39:11]

Ich kann euch vielleicht das sechste Kapitel eines Buches geben. Das ist leider in Englisch, aber das hat mein Freund Luigi Luisi geschrieben. Er ist Italiener, aber er hatte einen Lehrstuhl für viele Jahre in Italien. Zurich. I think I'm making that up myself. Zurich? In Zurich, yeah. In which he makes this point clear. Which is that the Tibetans, most of them, believe that there's a pure consciousness that's independent of the body. It's not conceptually clear, actually, what is meant. So if you say it's separate from the body, they'll say it merges with the body.

[40:16]

So, but basically they say consciousness in its purest form can only arise from a previous moment of consciousness. Excuse me? Consciousness in the essential sense can only arise from a previous moment of consciousness. As they would say, matter only arises from a previous moment of matter. Now, if you conceptually make this consistent, then consciousness existed before the Big Bang. Now, this is important not only because practices within Tibetan Buddhism

[41:34]

are designed to identify this subtle consciousness or pure consciousness. are designed to practice in a way that you can identify and experience this pure or essential consciousness. That's one reason. Another reason Without that, it's not possible for the Tibetans to explain reincarnation. Now, the Dalai Lama himself is in a difficult position here. The Dalai Lama is in a difficult position at this point.

[42:55]

I wouldn't discuss these things publicly because this is his business, but it's now going to be in a book, so I can discuss it. Because he himself says, and it's quoted in his book, and he's also told me, he has no experience of reincarnation. but he he says we know of monks who have experienced the past lives he knows of one four-year-old girl he's also told me about but it's also in the book who had a A four-year-old Indian girl who had very seemingly vivid descriptions of previous lives.

[44:06]

And as holiness says, so we have to take this into consideration. Yes, and being the Pope of Tibetan Buddhism, he kind of is in a difficult position. Now, Jinpa himself, says, for him, he can't really believe in this subtle consciousness, even though he's the person who's the source of most of Dalai Lama's books. Source in the sense they work together to put together a text and decide what should be in it and so forth.

[45:13]

But he says, you know, after all, I'm a Tibetan. I'm an Asian person, he says. And I can see the good effects of a belief in reincarnation. And the way it makes people happy. So he says emotionally I accept it, but intellectually I don't. No, Zen is taking a different position, traditionally, I would say. The kind of lip service is paid to reincarnation.

[46:23]

And it may also be partly because the conflict between the Chinese ancestor system and the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, which really came from India, don't quite mesh. So the basic position is that I would say is that there may be reincarnation but it's not necessarily part of our practice and we don't practice in a way to verify it. We don't practice to prove that. Okay.

[47:32]

Now, why is this important? Weshalb ist das wichtig? Again, it's important. Are we trying to satisfy some doctoral conditions or some outside... What's a doctoral? Doctrinal... Okay, yes. ...positions? Are we trying to establish some outside view in our exploration of consciousness? Are we purely exploring our own consciousness, our own mind? Can you say it again? Are we purely exploring our own mind or are we exploring it in order to prove some outside doctrine? So I took a strong position that Our practice is rooted in experience and not in doctrine. Because I feel here in the West we don't have to pay some kind of... We don't have to say, well, that's been like this for thousands of years, we should...

[48:42]

take that view, we can start anew and decide whether we get to that place or not. Okay. We might get there. But I don't think we should start there. Okay. Now, what is it like to explore, investigate consciousness and awareness from the inside? So imagine you go swimming. And while you're swimming, you find there's a whole underground world that you can swim into.

[49:59]

If you swim down here, there's an opening and you go and then you open them to some other area of water. In some areas of water you can swim and swim and there seems to be no end. In some areas of water it's very small. In other areas it's very murky. And in some areas it's very clear and in others it's kind of blueish or green, etc. And you get better and better swimming in these various areas.

[51:02]

And you know exactly how to turn down and get in this little opening You enter into a cave and then into another area. So you're very skillful at swimming in all these areas. You don't know there may be even more, but you're skillful at swimming in the areas you've discovered. Okay, have you got this picture? How do you know what it looks like from the outside? Wie wisst ihr denn, wie das von außen gesehen her aussieht? You have no way of knowing how it looks like from the outside. Du hast überhaupt kein Mittel zu wissen, wie sich das von außen anschaut, denn du bist ja mittendrin.

[52:11]

So as soon as you see a description from the outside, be suspicious. Und sobald du eine Beschreibung von außerhalb hast, sei misstrauisch. Because it has to be made up. Okay, now, so I, so as you know, I've been trying to define these things, consciousness and self, for a long time. So more or less, my descriptions of these things were accepted by the group. And they became the kind of general way we decided to describe these things. So, Luigi decided to sum up we had small groups and in our small group he decided to sum up basically what I said

[53:26]

Also wir hatten auch kleine Gruppengespräche und der Luigi Luisi hat dann entschlossen, dass er eine kleine Zusammenfassung macht von dem, was ich gesagt habe. And the small group was meant to sum up what the whole week of discussion had been, because we had about 40 people all together involved in the discussion. Also die Aufgabe dieser kleinen Gruppe war, sozusagen eine Zusammenfassung von dieser gesamten Woche zu machen, denn wir hatten ungefähr 40 Leute, die da mitgemacht haben. And so he said, well, Baker Roshi says there's this big territory of mind. And I'm sitting there. And he says, and next there's this bigger, smaller field, maybe like a blanket, called awareness. And within that, there's this smaller field we're going to call consciousness. Okay, so I hear this and I think, oh, gosh. I said, gosh.

[54:46]

We don't have. Gosh. It's in God. It's just. Yeah, it's a euphemism, yeah. Okay. Because that's a description from the outside. So I said, well, we may have to conceptualize it in that way in order to begin to try to notice our own experience. But if we're going to... conceptualize it from the outside. I said, please now fold it all up. Fold it all up over and over again and then scrunch it all up.

[55:46]

Then you have something a little more like what it's like. Well, you can't tell which finger is which, which piece of cloth is which, and it's all tangled up. Now, first you may swim in awareness and consciousness, but after a while you find it's quite much more complex than that. Okay. Now, I'm supposed to stop at quarter to eleven, is that right? Okay, so let me say one more thing. That's what the schedule says. Okay, so now let me say one more thing. I said about the engine.

[56:52]

We're not describing an engine. We don't know really where the carburetor is, etc. It's more like we're describing a horse than an engine. Now, horses that you can ride... Pferde, die man reiten kann, die wurden trainiert. I'm not a writer, but you notice what happens when you press with your left knee or your right knee or you lean forward or you say certain words. You can come in, Sophie, if you want. So, and we're almost through, Sophie. So, the horse's behavior... left, right, etc., trot or gallop, is shaped by the training procedure.

[58:07]

Now, if you used those same commands and shifts of the body on a horse in China might not work. The horse's behavior has been shaped by certain cultural patterns, habits, activities. Now, if we don't imagine some ideal consciousness, subtle consciousness, separate from the body, then we have to, which, you know, a kind of theology, if you imagine that, then you have to say that all of our mental activity is shaped somehow by our behavior and our experience, mental and physical.

[59:36]

And as you know, I'm convinced that The main period that the brain is shaped, brain-body relationship is shaped, is during the last trimester and first 18 months of life. The brain-consciousness-mind-body relationship. And I described watching Sophia's consciousness develop and move down her arms and so forth, and being able to touch and receive. And Nicholas Humphrey, this British, he's written a number of books on consciousness,

[60:44]

Some of you may know I have some of them. He said he watched this in his own child too. So this is emergent consciousness. If we accept that consciousness is not some absolute outside us that we're participating in, but is something that emerges through our own mental, physical and phenomenal experience, Then we have to accept it develops through our personal experience.

[62:09]

With a genetic base, of course. Okay, so if it develops through our experience, it develops through our habits of noticing. develops through our habits of noticing. And what shapes our habits of noticing? At the center is words. We notice the world in certain categories, primarily through our language. So my decision to teach and practice through English, and now to some extent through German words, Yeah, it's not really because we don't know the Sanskrit and Pali and Tibetan words.

[63:39]

But because our experience has evolved through those words. Okay. So what we're looking at are the Abhidharma words. He defines Manas and Klesha, Vijnana and so forth in ways particular to Buddhism. They may not actually be particular to us. And then as Jim points out, manas, vijnana, citta, a number of other words, are all used interchangeably to describe the same thing depending on the context.

[64:52]

And are not only used interchangeably depending on the context, but are used differently in different schools. So my point is this morning is we really have to decide on how this all functions through our own experience. So we can use these texts and this tradition, and we use our intellect to refine our thinking, to refine our noticing.

[66:24]

But then we have to see what is our own habits of noticing. Dann müssen wir aber sehen, was sind denn unsere eigenen Gewohnheiten im Bemerken. And eventually we have to mind, no matter how we refine our mind intellectually and philosophically. Und dann, egal wie wir den Geist intellektuell und philosophisch definieren. The mind itself is more refined than the definitions. Ist, dass der Geist viel So we can use definitions to refine our mind, but ultimately mind refines those definitions. So Kirsi said something like, the mind that develops Buddhism has to be free of concepts. Suzuki Roshi had said, the spirit that creates Buddhism must be free from concepts.

[67:34]

Okay, so that's a little introduction. Of what we're engaged with. Which needs to be rooted in our own experience and own noticing. But let's use the tradition of Buddhism to help us.

[67:50]

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