With metaphors, I'm kind of, my intuition is that I'm not even trying this because I don't think it's working for me. It's probably, I think the reason is that... It gets very quickly, or it has the potential to get very personal, or what Dieter was saying. So, concepts, I think I can work with that, but then there's, again, where the confusion starts, or continues first. Let's say a concept like consciousness. You're saying something, someone's saying something, and I'm trying to hold it into consciousness.

[01:06]

But then again, my native language, we don't have a word for consciousness. It's like, it's a Roman language, like French. What is your native language? Romanian. Yeah. So it's... Did you know there's a Romanian right there? Really? So, do you agree we don't have a word for consciousness? We have a word for consciousness, we don't have... Another word which is not conscious. Conscienza. Yeah, but that's like the French conscience, like having a conscience, like having conscience, like I have a bad conscience. Yeah. It's not conscious. That's right. It's all dumped together in Romanian, huh? And just very difficult to work with. Uh-huh. Yeah, I mean, like, people haven't bothered to find the word, and I was trying to... We don't have an experience for it, so therefore it's... Sorry?

[02:15]

My feeling for the word is that we don't have an experience, but therefore why bother to have a word for something that doesn't actually exist experientially? Maybe you two should explore these things together. You know, we take the word fact for example. for granted. But the word fact almost meant nothing until Columbus discovered America. Because up until actual discoveries of new lands, everyone assumed that all knowledge was, as Aristotle said,

[03:30]

So when Tycho Brahe and Galileo and others found facts about the moons around Jupiter and things like that, They weren't considered facts. They were considered some kind of something that didn't work with Aristotle, but still Aristotle was true, etc., That facts had a power to make Aristotle wrong was only in about the 1700s. So consciousness and mind, their meaning is being created now.

[04:51]

Also, Bewusstsein und Geist sind Worte, deren Bedeutung jetzt entsteht. Yeah, and generally for neuroscientists and all, consciousness means the felt experience of something. Also, für Neurologen, Hirnforscher bedeutet... And the so-called hard problem is how does this stuff, which we are made of, also allow consciousness to exist? And what's interesting is, yeah, Buddhism looks at the whole thing entirely differently. But we really, what

[06:11]

And that's one reason I went to this conference on consciousness in Interlaken recently. And Gerald went with me and Nicole and Ravi Welch. is because there's modalities of knowing which don't fit into the contemporary definitions of consciousness. So what we're doing is explorative and on the frontiers of the very existence of those words. The frontiers of the very existence of those words.

[07:20]

I kind of want to apologize for how I'm speaking today. Ich möchte mich teilweise dafür entschuldigen, wie ich heute spreche. But, you know, I've had two challenges and two big challenges in my life. Ich hatte zwei große Herausforderungen in meinem Leben. Let's call it intellectual challenges. I've had some other challenges, too. Like, why do I have two feet, you know? And one is my father exactly parallels, born in 1906, the development of contemporary physics. Which is 1905 and 1910, I guess, relatively and etc.

[08:36]

And I didn't really realize that this was happening also in my lifetime. Somehow I'm a built-in skeptic. So I never wanted to study what anybody else knew. Because my experience growing up was all the teachers ruined what I already felt was the case. I mean, if I'd been a musician, then I couldn't have said that.

[09:46]

So my one challenge was Why do physicists, which I knew enough about and later knew a lot of physicists, Why don't physicists live in somehow in terms of quantum physics or indeterminacy, etc. Warum leben Physiker nicht nach der Quantenphysik? Yeah, and most physicists, particularly in my younger years, would say, oh, this is computational, but it's not about how we actually live. I live one way, and I do the computations in the laboratory, or the mathematics, etc.

[10:53]

What is computation? What is it? Rechnen. Yeah, okay. Then they would have probably answered, yes, that is computing, but we live in another world. So I do this computing in the laboratory. So the other challenge in my life was meeting Suzuki Roshi. Well, meeting Buddhism first through various sources and then Suzuki Roshi. And so then I had to say, I can see that this person is a different kind of human being, and already I didn't like the term human being because it excludes non-human, a different kind of mutual being than I am. He lived in a way that he clearly was more integrated than I was and

[11:58]

and lived in ways I knew nothing about. So I made a lifetime vow. Geez, I met this guy. I was lucky to meet this guy. I will spend the rest of my life figuring out how to live the way he is willing to show me. I want to find out how and where this person lives. So my practice of Buddhism has always been simultaneously looking at the teachings and also looking at the culture for which those teachings were designed.

[13:34]

Also, meine Praxis des Buddhismus war, mich auf die Lehren zu schauen und auch auf die Kultur, für die diese Lehren gedacht wurden. So, it would occur in little things, like Sukershi was asked, you all know this story, Sukershi was asked in the very early 60s, what do you notice about... America in contrast to Japan. Yeah, and I guess we expected him to say something well. In Japan, the pine cones are about this big. In California, the pine cones are this big. Which is true.

[14:38]

But instead he said that you do things with one hand. So I thought to myself, if that's the most remarkable thing he notices about being the West, I better understand what that is. So out of the corner of my three eyes, I mean two eyes, I watched him. And he didn't just pick up a cup and hand it to Beate. Before he picked up the cup, his attention went to the cup.

[15:40]

And attention sort of surrounded the cup. And then he reached into that attention and brought the cup up and didn't give it to Beata yet. He moved it clearly into the field of his spine and body. I never did that, and I thought, why does his body want that to happen? Ich habe das nie gemacht und fragte mich, warum möchte sein Körper, dass das geschieht? So I began to experiment with the difference, picking something up, holding it here, holding it here.

[16:44]

Then I began to notice in Japanese restaurants that first and second generations of Japanese held their cups here and here and here. And when they didn't drink, they held it here. What's that? The chakras. That's how I experimented with it, how it is when I take the cup like this and hold it like this. And then I found out in Japanese restaurants that Japanese of the first and second generation hold their cups either here, here or here. And if they don't drink, then at neck height. And what is that? Those are the chakras. And the first Japanese restaurants in America were primarily in Japantown in San Francisco and Japantown in Los Angeles. So then I would go to Japanese restaurants and notice what people did with their cups and things like that.

[17:45]

One of the first things you notice, they don't have handles. But they're a backward culture and have never thought of handles. And then I realized actually, and I looked at how they're made in the cup with a little edge, they're made so that you feel the warmth of the liquid. And after he would bring it into the field of his chakras, he would hand it to Beate. But he didn't just hand the cup.

[18:58]

He turned his whole body toward Beate. If you'd known him, you would have thought you'd know, right? And they hold it out with two hands. And I could see he was passing himself to her as well as the cup. The cup was just an excuse to pass himself to her. What world does that assume? It assumes a world without fate. It assumes a world which is mostly reconstructed through your living of it, not how you're born into it with certain views.

[20:00]

No, that's not separate from space as a viscous distributive medium. Und das ist nicht getrennt vom Raum als ein etwas mit Viskosität und Verteilen. Because if it is a viscous distributive medium... Sondern wenn es ein viskoses und verteilendes Medium ist... Just like an orchestra leader, your hands are... making this happen. So, again, as I said, I think yesterday or this morning, I don't know, the hands of Buddhist statues are often outsized because they're part of...

[21:11]

of tuning, attentional tuning of the space you're in. So in simple form I had these two questions. Why is Suzuki Roshi the way he is, and why am I not like that? Why is it pretty clear that quantum mechanics is a valid description, not an explanation? It's a description of the world, not an explanation of it. And most scientists, and I grew up, my father's a scientist and engineer, I grew up in a world of scientists and engineers, and none of them live that way.

[22:20]

Live that view. Yeah, okay. So I had these two questions. what's happening with physics and what's happening with yogic Zen Buddhism. And as I practiced, I found out there's quite a big overlap. Yoga Zen practice does not think we live in universal time or container space. So what I'm apologizing for now, which I started a few minutes ago saying I was apologizing, since I see practice

[23:33]

I don't see Zen as a religion at all. I see practice as an experiential wisdom. But since I recognize that there's a partnership between how your mind views the world and how your practice shows you experience. My way of looking at these things is simultaneously quite philosophical in a wide sense of that word. and phenomenologically experiential.

[25:01]

But sometimes I try not to reveal that to everyone, because I sound like some kind of intellectual, and the problem with intellectuals is they believe in their thinking, which I don't. So I feel like I could easily become more and more incomprehensible and you guys would say, where's that trap towards Zen? And I think I could become more and more incomprehensible and then you would think, well, where is this file-type thing? Okay. Stopped. Stopped. We have to go through the windows to find other ways. Yeah, if we go through the windows, we have to find new ways, other ways.

[26:12]

There might be a ladder on the other side of the window. Or somebody to hold your hand as you climb through. Okay. I have a question. Deutsch, bitte. Okay, first I'll do it in English. Object-oriented ontology is valuable because it dethrones humans as the crown of creation. That's right. Also, objektorientierte ontologie ist deswegen wertvoll, weil es But it's confusing for me because there are no objects, there's only activity.

[27:16]

So when I came across that term, I thought, okay, well, how are we going to work this out now? But there are stones in peaches. There are stones in peaches. And in cherries. Yes. And they are rather hard on the teeth, you know. So there are objects. But the cherry seed and the peach stone are... Potential cherry trees. Yeah, that's right. And, well, and peach. Are... activities too.

[28:22]

So Timothy Morton and the other guy who's the main person, I can't remember his name right now, M-A-U something, whose proponents of object-oriented ontology have made a choice that to emphasize the objectness of everything, including activity, is wiser and a better way to break the hold on us of the difference between sentience and non-sentience. So it's a decision, a kind of practical decision, but let's say a metaphoric decision. Timothy Morton and the other, whose name I cannot remember now, who both propagate object-oriented ontology, have made the decision

[29:30]

I think they would say something like Kantor's set theory. Cantor, C-A-N-T-O-R, set theory. Well, he was a brilliant mathematician, and he would point out something simple, like there's an infinite number of positive numbers. Two, five, four, six, seven. And there's also an infinite number of natural numbers.

[30:33]

Because you can always add one more, right? But they're infinities of different sizes. The infinity of even numbers is different than the infinity of natural numbers. And if that hadn't been worked out, you wouldn't have a cell phone. Stubble maker! Because things tend to accumulate in large... which function like objects. So, climate change is a kind of object functioning through the physical world, yeah.

[31:42]

Clouds of Of associations. Yeah, in großen Absammlungen oder wie Wolken von Assoziationen. Yeah, and, well, it's clear that objects always have a temporal aspect, and that's especially... A temporal aspect? Temporal. Temporal, yes. That's especially true of the hyperobjects. Yes, that's right. Which... goes back farther than... In all directions, yeah. Well, I'm not a mathematician, you know, so I'm not very good at explaining these things, but I do the best I can.

[32:44]

My academic training was the history of science and technology. Yes, so it's something I think about a bit. I practice with the idea that I am within consciousness. I can feel myself. Sometimes it feels like I'm in a womb of consciousness and that something's going to happen, and sometimes it feels like it's more, yeah, more infinite. I practice now with this idea that I float in consciousness.

[33:46]

It is not something that jumps out of my head, but I float in it. And sometimes it feels like a birth mother. It's a very pleasant feeling. Well, I would say you're a committed practitioner because you're capable of noticing that kind of experience. If you're a siddhasan and you can only notice the nuances of experience in terms of linguistic terms, you will not be a committed practitioner. Because of little nuances of experience that don't fit any category, that are really what practice is about, and eventually you kind of let them take you over and then they take you somewhere.

[35:07]

It involves sensations. Yeah. I mean, there's no word for floating in consciousness. But you have that experience. Yeah. And then you see somebody else who they don't even know they're floating in consciousness and they're floating in consciousness and you feel, let's float together. But sometimes the person who doesn't know he or she is floating in consciousness isn't up to the task and you both sink. Okay, something else. Ich würde gerne zu dem, was Ellen gesagt hat, noch hinzufügen, dass ich das so auch wundersam finde.

[36:13]

Ich habe das gerade mit Gerhard, den Gerhard versucht zu beschreiben. I would like to add to what Alan said, that I find that really remarkable, and I just tried to explain it to Gerald. That's something that I do so many times, and that's so simple and so exciting. I discover more and more, even though I don't do anything. You feel alive, don't you? That's the feeling I get when I sit and when I do yoga. My yoga is kind of special. but I feel very much alive.

[37:18]

And it's not that I stopped thinking, but I know that's just thinking, and I don't have to take that seriously, and that will come and it will go. Yes, I try to describe it like this. You become aware of your thinking without being carried away by it. It's sort of like you are thinking. Great! Somebody else? I would like to have something to do with living. So I would like to add something to the term aliveness.

[38:25]

You said that when we are attentive, we experience the world in something like a vibration. And when you said that, I thought, that's right. But it presupposes that I realize myself as a vibrating world. Yes, I hope so. So that means to perceive the world as vibrating is too far away. It's me vibrating. Then I can get in contact with other vibrations. Yeah.

[39:26]

Sometimes we have to experience things, taste things ourselves, embody things ourselves before we can notice it's happening everywhere. So manchmal müssen wir Dinge selbst einen Geschmack von bekommen oder sie erfahren, bevor wir bemerken können, dass sie eigentlich überall geschehen. Well, our evening repast is in five or ten minutes. In five minutes. Yeah, but I always like to be big. Okay. Mm-hmm. I never say it. I say, oh, it's five or ten minutes. Yeah, yeah.

[40:47]

It might be 15. It might be in fact, but the fact doesn't... It might be 15. Yeah, it might be 15. We don't know yet. But isn't the transition from not remembering to remembering... Is not the shift from not noticing to noticing that what defines or makes a practitioner? It's a shift from... From not noticing to noticing. And noticing is a big... It is a basic... Yeah, exactly.

[41:51]

A world-changing shift. Yes. We notice on some level our body notices and reacts as it should, but we're so busy with something else that it just doesn't get through to... That's right. Yeah. The noticing is there, just waiting for you to notice. Yes, the noticing is there, it is just waiting for us to notice it. I'm a little embarrassed to have two watches on. Because we're not supposed to have any watch on in practice. Except if I'm doing the seminar, I kind of have to know what time it is. What the clock time is. But in my embarrassment, I mentioned to Susanne yesterday that this is my death watch.

[42:58]

Yeah, it's watching over my death. Or potential, I mean, you know, potential. And a friend of mine recommended I get it. And it's a, you know, iWatch or whatever they're called. And I have no idea what's going on with it. It says, in fact, it just gave me a message. You can sit still on it. See, there it is. What's it say again? You can still do it. You can still close all three rings today. Go for it, Dickie. A brisk 21 minute...

[44:00]

walk and be sure to get started and move A bit each hour. Thank you. This is what I need, right? Is that tailor-made for you? Well, it's an iWatch, right? And you can buy the more expensive version that gets your emails and you can make phone calls and stuff like that. This one, though, I find it amusing. I was driving with GPS, right? And the GPS would tell me, oh, I was driving in Switzerland, said, you should at the next roundabout take the second exit, right? Or something equivalent. But a second or two before the... the GPS would tell me the time.

[45:21]

This would vibrate on my arm. So that's like what you just said. You feel the signal before you're able to think it. So I was thinking, ah, yes, that's the Alaya watch, not just me. I've got it because somebody recommended it, but also because it would have saved two friends of mine lives. Because when you fall down or something, or if there's an emergency, you can push this little thing and Max set it up so it calls the emergency services in Germany.

[46:29]

And yesterday I was trying to straighten out a garbage pail, and I was kind of shaking it like this, and my watch suddenly said, did you fall down? LAUGHTER And I thought, oh my gosh, I better be careful because Johanna will be surrounded by ambulances. So my watch said, are you okay? And I thought, I should get my reading glasses just in case.

[47:31]

And I said, oh, I'm okay. And then it said, fine. Maybe you should stand up and take a walk. So that's why I have two watches. I feel like, you know, a cowboy. Okay. Thanks.

[47:49]

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