Well, I don't know really why it's always such a special pleasure for me to see you each year. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's partly that I know most of you for so long. Yeah, and also, of course, I somehow like you all so much. Excuse me for being schmaltzy, but, you know... But it does make a difference. And also this is, as I mention I think every year, this is always an important time for me to be with you. And for some reason, again not quite why, but I have a habit of reviewing what I speak about during the year. reviewing in my mind as if I were going to talk to you about it.

[01:10]

And for me, anyway, I come up with new teachings or new ways of feeling my way into teachings every few months. But it doesn't happen for sure, my sitting in a room all by myself. Primarily it happens through my practice and primarily through my practice with others. I feel led by the people I practice with.

[02:38]

Yeah, so I'm in my mind somewhere sort of reviewing what I'm speaking about. In regards to you and this meeting we have been doing once a year. How is what I'm noticing or thinking about? contrast with Western thinking and with Western psychology? Yeah, and how is it parallel to? And overlap. And to what degree is it incorporable? And of course, to what extent does psychology...

[03:45]

developments in psychology and in neurobiology, etc., affect how I think about practice. I say, you know, conventionally, how I think about practice, but really it's It's always what I experience. Of course I talk about what I think about practice, but in reality it's always about what I experience. Now, it seems to me often, especially in recent years, I seem to be talking about nearly the same thing. But... For me it's actually quite different.

[05:06]

Yeah, if I look at it, sometimes it looks the same, but for me it's always a kind of refinement. And if you look at the history of Buddhism, you know, over some... nearly 3,000 years, you can understand it entirely almost as a refinement of some very basic, simple ideas. And somehow it takes several generations and usually fifty to a hundred years or so they actually kind of process a new idea.

[06:13]

And we have the advantage, of course, of being able to see this process, or if you study Buddhism, see this process, you know. in one lifetime of what took centuries. And if I And if I never read anything about Buddhism and just continued to practice from when I started in the beginning of the 60s... Yeah, that practice itself would, even if I started... nothing more than I started with, it's still by now, 45 years later, or whatever it is, would be a process of refinement.

[07:36]

Yeah, so... I seem to, as I'm starting here, using the word refinement quite a lot. And it's assumed developed Buddhism, adapted Buddhism, that, and I mentioned it in the last seminar a few days ago, that really studying Buddhism is considered to be something like, I don't know, maybe equivalent to being a physicist or something. I mean, in the sense that some one of the people who created the Buddhism we're talking about, like Dharmakirti, for example, he would say that

[08:52]

Unless you have monastic experience or the equivalency, the equivalent of a monastic experience, you can't understand Buddhist practice. Now, if that were true in the bare way I just said it, I should just go home now. Back to Preston. Yeah, but I believe in my, you know, formed my life around the belief and experience that there are, that if our intention is to refine our experience in a certain way, that can be done as a lay practitioner.

[10:13]

as well as courses, the life that's defined through monastic practice. And it can particularly be done through a kind of long association like excuse me, but we have. And by the, I use the image of physicist, because you know you're not born a physicist, no matter how smart you are, whatever, you have to study mathematics and physics and so forth. Food Dymacurity would say you have to study your experience in a certain kind of detail if you're really going to notice how we exist. And that assumes a certain kind of refinement.

[11:38]

You don't have to translate that. You're welcome. I don't mind that. Okay. Maybe it's cold for you. Yeah. Well, great noses, no, no, minds, etc. And it's not so easy to get a snort in doing translation. Yeah, I know. It was a good opportunity, yeah. Yeah.

[12:39]

So, and also, just for those of you who were at the last seminar, if there's things from the last seminar that you think should be brought into this seminar, please let me know. Okay. Now, I always like to start in as basic a way as possible. Partly, though it seems like, I just saw you yesterday, it was actually quite a while ago. So starting with basics is a way of... Getting on the same page, as we say in English.

[13:40]

So in this first evening talk together, I think of it as a how do we get started talk. So of course a basic question in Buddhism is Well, a basic description of our patterns is we have these recurrent behavioral patterns that are often afflictive and, you know, and

[14:43]

not helpful. So the question always is how do we why do we have these recurrent patterns and how do we notice them, get free of them, etc. And the word samsara means something like recurrent patterns. So... And the Buddhist view about it is somewhat more philosophical and existential than psychological. Yeah, and if I were going to define what we're talking about in contrast to psychology, I would say something like an existential mindology of some kind.

[16:14]

And I think it's useful to make a distinction because it helps see how psychology and mindology can have a relationship. Okay, so we have these patterns and what causes them? Well, the basic idea is that really very simply again, is that everything is impermanent and momentary and unique. And we tend to see it as permanent. Even if we know it's not permanent, the way we notice the world and notice objects,

[17:27]

we notice them as implicitly permanent. And we give them a symbolic value in our lives. And in the process, I'm going to use the word symbolic, we create a kind of symbolic self which relates to these symbolic values. way of perceiving the world. what I'm calling tonight, trying to feel it out. I've never spoken this way before. The symbolic self is a content of unconsciousness.

[18:48]

Or the structure of unconsciousness. So it's not just that unconscious, the unconscious contains past experiences that we that we haven't noticed or that we don't want to notice, etc. But the self itself seems to be embedded in the unconscious. Now, You know, it took a long time, but, you know, some 500 years or so after the birth of Christ in our so-called common era.

[19:54]

Nun, es dauerte eine lange Zeit in der sogenannten Christentum. They became aware of unawareness in India. In other words, they began to deal with something like we would call the unconscious. They were they became aware that we were unaware of much of how we function. In other words, they had this idea, which I've spoken about before, of what I call the three birth minds. of waking mind, dreaming mind and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[21:06]

And much earlier than this time they kind of wondered how these three minds don't overlap much. And then, you know, it sort of was discovered, decided, discovered, a combination of both, that if you could still the body almost as if you were asleep but remain awake, you could generate a mind that was overlapped more with waking and dreaming.

[22:08]

And that in some sense reconstituted or brought into the body the mind of non-dreaming deep sleep. So meditation was thought of as a kind of non-dreaming deep sleep of which you were but not exactly conscious. As if, again, I don't know how to say the words, but as if you could bring non-dreaming deep sleep without bring its presence without being asleep into the body and mind.

[23:24]

And this surfacing is sometimes called samadhi. But then certain yogic skills were required to sustain this non-dreaming deep sleep, without letting consciousness interrupt it or take it away. Again, we need some kind of metaphor to help us think about this. And traditionally, in my own experience, metaphors of liquid are the most useful. Perhaps liquids of different colors or viscosities. So as soon as the viscosity of consciousness or the color of consciousness touches non-dreaming deep sleep, it becomes...

[24:48]

conscious and non-dreaming deep sleep disappears. So you need some skill, like I say, non-interfering, observing awareness. Now, much of the centuries before the 5th century in our era, was spent refining and developing what I'm talking about. But consciousness itself functions differently.

[26:08]

unconsciously or non-consciously. And the roots of this un- or non-conscious functioning were not found in dreaming or deep sleep. Okay, so then they tried to figure out What is this un or non-consciousness? And can we become aware of it? Or can we allow it to be a part of our functioning even if it's sort of allowing it to be in the dark? So lots of strands from a thousand years of refining this stuff came together in the concept and experience of the so-called Alaya Vishnana.

[27:38]

Now we spoke about this fairly specifically some years ago. But I would like to, in this seminar, these days together, examine this and or non-conscious functioning. from the point of view of our own experience and from the point of view of the development of this idea of the Alaya Vishniana which was primarily developed by the Yogacara school, which is the basis of Zen practice.

[28:51]

In other words, how does what we're not aware of, in other words, Yes. Function within us. And how can we let what we're not aware of function through us? How do we even talk about it? What are we going to do? No, I know. I never... Michael is such a simple word, but I can never pronounce it right in German.

[29:55]

Michael. Michael. Michael. You say it right, right? Yes, but I can say Michael. Yeah, you can say Michael. Michael. Michael. He corresponded with me a couple of times about this theory of view. Because of you, when the book was published, I got sent one. Now, I don't know how, if others of you are interested in this book and this guy's ideas. But for those of you who are, what I would suggest is, when I When we get to things or I speak about things that seem to be related or could be related, let's bring it up and see how it relates.

[31:14]

And I do have in mind that some of the things I, I don't know what I'm going to speak about, but some of the things I might, I have some kind of vague idea, will parallel what he talks about, maybe not. Because what I'd like to do is find out together with you, and I start out actively not knowing anything. To see if we can start with not knowing, And end up with knowing what not knowing is all about.

[32:37]

Or something like that. Okay.

[32:40]

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