So how was your discussion? Good, okay. So tell me something. Yes? I can try to start. So first we... First we tried to understand continuity and connectedness and somehow identified continuity in the same category, to identify continuity. And then later we understood the connection, as well as this cat form, as an unconnected connection, or as some illuminated moments or proximity,

[01:07]

and which is not the same as hostility. Connection does not mean friendship or something like that. And then there was another concept of spatial connection and then we had different examples of that. And then it came again that you could feel this connection more and it could become a kind of continuity again. And then it was a different continuity than before, a continuity that has to do with identification. So it was first, I think we tried to understand continuity and connectedness.

[02:17]

And at first we put identification and continuity sort of in one realm, area. And then we had the connectedness is that feeling the cat form as a kind of undirected connectedness being, a being of connectedness. Or we would call it sem... Enlightened moments we had, they feel like this. And then we said it's more like a kind of closeness, but it's not something like . So it's a closeness from kind of proximity feeling, but it's not from, it needs to be friendship, you have to love something.

[03:21]

It's not that, it's this kind of closeness or something. And then we have in the same realm but a different experience is a spatial connectedness. We have various examples. I didn't mention examples in German, but it's like driving a car or feeling movements, being part of a movement, feeling a situation, walking through a forest at night, things like that. Dance experiences, we had several, where you have your usual movement patterns and then you kind of get out of it, you get in a flow and you do movements you've never done before. This all was in this... category of connectedness and then it came to if you can hold this connectedness that could be continuity or you could have this as your continuity. And then it was a different continuity versus the first definition of continuity that continuity is something I hate.

[04:27]

So that's it for the third part. Because she tells me, you know, your lectures are too complicated, and you don't, you know, and here, look at what you're doing. Did I ask you really a question? Would that be okay? Well, of course, I hope you could. It's your understanding, not me. It's just that connectedness with love is not necessarily the same. I asked because you said being connectedness of love would It's not necessarily... Then I asked her what love is, then, in that conversation.

[05:29]

It was interesting, wasn't it? Friendship. She said friendship, I thought. Friendship. You heard love. LAUGHTER We try to define this kind of connectedness because at first you might think you can only be connected to something you like. And then we said, it's not that. It's not about that you have to love the thing you can be connected to. The reason why we said that the connection doesn't necessarily have to do with kindness or love, because at the beginning we said, maybe you can only be connected to something that you love. And then we said, that can't be. That's part of it, but that's not the... Love without life.

[06:33]

That sounds like marriage. Maybe you talk more about it. Thank you. Are you going to go on or you're next? In our group we had difficulties to find the difference between connectivity and continuity. In our book, we had difficulties in finding a difference between continuity and connectedness. The starting point is probably that both are possibilities of cognition, which, if you have no other choice, lead to Dukkha.

[07:41]

The starting point is that both are possibilities of cognition and both of them lead to dukkha if you don't have other options. Okay. Insofern haben wir den Eindruck, dass das zwei verschiedene Schubladen sind, die zu that lead to ego. Two different structures. In that sense we had the impression that these are two different structures that lead to ego. They both lead to ego. They come from ego and they go back to ego, but that's not how different you can understand the way it's said. I brought the auditorium. That's good. You must have had a lively discussion.

[09:06]

Continuity as an expression of the continuity of the self. If you refer to that way of cognizing. Okay. In this context, I would be interested in how I come to experience discontinuity. So, in that context, I would be interested in how do I get to experiencing discontinuity. You have shown today how this can happen via the field of perception. And today you presented the way of how that works through the sense fields. And my attempt to get there so far has been through breath.

[10:10]

And to use the exhalation to establish a discontinuity. Is there a context? Okay. It sounds like I should give a little attention to connection and continuity tomorrow. Okay. Someone else? Yes. In our group, the English... I have to do it in German now. I wrote it down all in English. I wish I had these problems. Continuity.

[11:18]

Continuity. In our group we do that. She's translating brainstorming literally. We use the English term brainstorming. We translated it to German. It's brainstorming. So they did a brainstorming on the term continuity. Yeah. And for example, the idea came up 20 years ago, when we think of the time before Zen practice. Is there a problem?

[12:25]

No. For our sake. Yes, for our sake, exactly. One from our group said, So 20 years ago, before we began to practice Zen, one person in our group said that we would not have had the question of continuity. Then we asked ourselves, yes, there was the idea that continuity was a sight, And then there was also the idea that continuity is a view, a view on the world, an idea, a concept about reality.

[13:34]

And then we asked ourselves, how do we experience continuity? And what came up is that the kinds of continuity differ. And that there's also one sense of continuity if you have a sense of the background mind, that mindfulness also can give you a sense of continuity. And then we had, thank God, Paul in our group.

[14:40]

And fortunately, Paul was in our group. And he gave us a good understanding of the two terms, of the difference, because we, for example, I thought, the difference is not that big between continuity and connectedness. And he gave us some clarity on the difference between continuity and connectedness because, for example, I thought that there's not such a big difference between those two. He said that continuity happens in time and connectedness in space. that we came to the connection, so when do we feel connected, that we see it as a physical experience.

[15:51]

And that led us to experiencing or to having a sense of the question when do we feel connected as a kind of physical experience. And also that we have a preference for that kind of experience that takes a better hold of us or something. May I ask In Deutsch, are the two words have a spatial and temporal feel to them? The German word for connectedness does not necessarily have a spatial feel for it. Verbundenheit, no, I would say not necessarily. It has a solid quality. It's more like tying together than it is giving. And an emotional quality, yeah? Yeah, continuity clearly has a temporal space feeling to it, but connectedness is just a word that I wouldn't put in either category.

[17:09]

Oh, you mean the word in English, connectedness, you wouldn't fit into either? The word, the German word. Connectedness, okay. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. But the experience I would. Okay. Not the word. We also spoke about continuity possibly being a repetition. in the sense of appearance and disappearance or arising and another word for disappearance. And then also the question arose whether there is continuity in breath.

[18:10]

To summarize, continuity is both a concept and an experience. And maybe to summarize, one can say that continuity on the one hand is a concept, but on the other hand, it's also an experience. And as an experience, it also has something to do with connectedness. And the experience of connectedness was also described in that way. That there are several different stages. And that it may begin in some specific way of connecting. And then... And maybe it comes with the cat.

[19:43]

I didn't hear that, but I imagine that I am in the cat. Or I am the cat. And then the inside-outside boundaries dissolve. And I haven't heard this example of the cat, but I imagine that when these boundaries dissolve, that then I can have a feeling of also being in the cat or being a cat or something. You weren't there this morning? Oh, maybe I was here. Interpenetrated. Yeah, this is very true. You didn't create that term. Ah, okay. I wasn't there. So she thought I just created this term and I tried it. Oh. Somebody created before.

[20:54]

Reinvented. It was very fresh in this moment. Well, it's nice when every word is very fresh in this moment. And the end of our discussion implies... You can give me a report any time. We went a little bit to the senses, to the seeing, and the conclusion of this discussion was then that the seeing, I have to look again, That seeing as a dominant sense strengthens this feeling of continuity. If I have said something wrong or have to add something, then please add it.

[21:55]

In the end of our discussion we also looked at the sense fields and the one we looked at in a particular way was seeing and the feeling was that seeing as a sense also enhances the sense of continuity. Okay. That's what I remembered. Good. Okay. That was fun. Thanks. Yeah. My feeling is that maybe I completely misunderstand continuity. Let's stay with the cat. My cat was pregnant as you all involuntarily had to witness her.

[23:11]

We did? She sent an email. Oh, I didn't see it. And I was on the phone with my sister. And she hates cats. And I told her, unfortunately you have to be happy. And then I told her how I felt the baby inside the cat and everything. And then my sister took a deep breath and she said, well, you are pregnant with a cat. I felt it in such an intense way together with this animal. And that to me is connectedness. But if I see the development and how that progresses from day to day, then in some sense that's to me not continuity, but every day something new, completely new.

[24:32]

And continuity for me also has some kind of feeling of expecting. And if I expect something, I don't receive other information. And then I can't be connected anymore. Either I misunderstood that or I don't know what. Help. Yeah, I have to think. I'd like to understand better, maybe not in this discussion, but how the words... Connectedness and continuity, if the distinction is actually able to be made in Deutsch.

[25:59]

I would like to understand better, maybe not in this round, but whether in terms of words, the distinction between what I now translate as continuity and connectedness, whether the distinction can be made in this way. But since these words are used, although these words may have in English specific distinctions, they're used in ways in which just to describe people's experience, which conflates their meaning. For we can say, well, there was continuous change. We could say in English, there was continuous change. But in continuous change, there's no continuity. So we have that kind of problem with the words.

[27:19]

That's why really we have to, for a lot of these words, we have to establish them as practice terms and use them in specific ways. Otherwise their meaning floats all over the place. That's why we have to, for many of these terms, we have to establish them as practical words and use them in this specific way, because otherwise they fly around everywhere and have a very scattered meaning. Evelyn? We also come to such a point. May I ask if it might be helpful to look at it as if you could zoom in? If I zoom away, then I see continuity, and if I zoom in, then I see every moment, the change, the change, and what appears. We came to a similar point, and my question is whether it might be helpful to think of zooming in and out, to say that when you're zooming out, you see continuity, and if you're zooming in, you see something like a particular moment.

[28:24]

Yeah? Yeah, if you have a good camera. A microscope to a telescope, yeah. Yeah, I understand, yeah. Yes, Meluise? We had a second part to our first part. And I'm making a connection which we haven't done now when I started out. Thanks to Dieter's knowledge we had a very precise description of of suffering because suffering sort of has so much connotation for us it's like and it doesn't mean anything we can deal with but he had it kind of technically worked out a buddhist definition of suffering yeah so basically it's it says dukkha is longing um discontent, not sufficiency, in contrast to complete presence, to be on your peak of awareness, to be, to 100% live your potential.

[29:49]

Okay. You don't act out of lack. You're not in a place of lack. And he contrasts this also to look at it that there's no appearance has to do with I or my. That's the place of non-suffering. Nothing is continuous and then everything has dukkha, nothing has dukkha in it. Everything is impermanent. Yeah. Everything is made of compounds. For me, now making that conclusion, or that's not group consensus, is the moment of connectedness is possible if you're not in a place of lack.

[30:55]

when you are in your 100% capacity of your capacities or awareness. So that, I find, it's a more technical description of non-suffering and how that might connect with the other terms we had before. Good. Now, do it. In our group we had a second part, and thank God we had Dieter, who explains how suffering can be seen from a Buddhist point of view and is not overwhelmed by the German term suffering. He says that suffering means longing for something, dissatisfaction, 100%

[32:00]

of my potential and that it does not come from a place of lack. He says that non-suffering is that no appearance is related to me or to me. Nothing has existence. Everything is made up of parts. And now I have a If you are at the place where you are 100% aware of your potential, you can say that you are at the place this connection is best felt. This moment that you experience completely with all potential, in which you are also connected.

[33:08]

So that's my connection between these words. I'm happy someone talked about suffering. I thought it was all going to be connection and continuity. Okay, someone else? Yeah? I understand that continuity and connectedness are two different ways of establishing identity. And for me connectedness, I don't understand connectedness as emotional connectedness necessarily?

[34:17]

To be honest, when I feel connected as I understand it at the moment, then I feel what I feel connected with, but not necessarily so close. Frankly speaking, feeling connected now as I experience and understand it, somehow I feel connected and don't necessarily feel close to him or her. It's just like I have a feeling... It's more a feeling as if I'm looking at myself through everything. Everything. It's similar probably what you said but differently expressed, like as if I would look at myself through you.

[35:21]

If I'm in such a feeling, that's not compatible to any way of continuity. I can't possibly think about what I'm going to do at let's say 6 o'clock. I can't think about what I will be doing probably at 6 o'clock. Within the experience of connectedness you can't You're not thinking about the future? Yes. You don't think about the future when you're in a state of connection. Or about the past. And I don't define myself by that. And I don't define myself through the future or past. I think you can think about the future, but you don't define yourself so much through the future.

[36:25]

That's what I would say. That's what I just said. Okay, good. In the same group, it was also about the connection through the being So she was in the same group and we also talked about that connectedness is in relationship or has to do with awareness and also the spatial feeling that Paul also, the Paul group also talked about. The conditioning is disturbed precisely by the associative and discursive thinking. And we then also thought about whether it has to be so, that it is not compatible, or whether that is exactly what we have to learn and develop, that we keep both in balance, so to speak.

[37:31]

And we also talked about whether the discursive thinking that we connected more with continuity, whether that really is not compatible, as I said, or whether that's also what we need to learn to have both of them simultaneously. Most of what simultaneously? The feeling of defining oneself through continuity or being in a field of connectedness. Okay, yourself in a field, okay. What I just want to say briefly, I mean, when I say incompatible, I don't mean that both can be there at the same time. I mean, it can't be the same thing. When I'm saying that I think it's not compatible, I'm not saying that it can't both be there simultaneously even, but I'm just saying that it can't be the same thing. In the group, we also had a little chat about the second question, but we were not able to carry it out as far as we could.

[38:54]

And it was also said that when we were sitting, we also had a feeling, so a lot was also said in our group about what has already been said here. Stop. Stop. In the name of love. That's going to break my tongue. That's going to break my brain, yeah. Sorry. So we also made a little excursion into the second question, although we didn't have much time to speak about that as well. But a lot of the things we spoke about were already mentioned. And one of the things was that we experience suffering

[39:58]

dukkha as this being aware of lacking something that what we've also spoken about already that you constantly try to grasp for something that's not there yet. And that suffering happens through attaching to what's known or to the familiar. And the reason why one tends to like to really indulge in suffering is because giving up the attachment also means having to dive into unpredictability. And that predictability is one of the basic needs of a human being. And then I briefly spoke about the word, what's the word for original trust, the first trust you have in your mother?

[41:30]

Yeah, basically. Basically, there's some psychological term. And that this may be primordial trust or something, that that happens in awareness. And that you have the courage to just drop into that. Yes, okay. Yes. Can I interrupt you a minute? Say something? You know, I sometimes think, you know, for you to hear things you've already said in the groups, although the groups are different, so it's not quite the same. It must kind of be a little boring. But at the same time, if we listen carefully, actually what I experience us doing and find us doing over the years,

[42:38]

is developing a shared terminology. Talking it through in the small groups and then talking it through again, probably rather differently in the large group. We begin to feel how we can use these words and what they refer to experientially. And that is actually one of the implicit topics of the koan. And I can speak about that maybe tomorrow a bit. But it says, for instance, this is already to draw a likeness.

[43:43]

To draw a likeness. And he talks about new Segru. I forgot how we translate that. And so the koan is partly about creating ways to think about and talk about practice that influences. And certainly the terms, the main terms we use in Buddhism are, it's taken centuries to develop them. And just look at the word dukkha. In Buddhism it's not what we mean in English by suffering.

[44:46]

Excuse me. Yeah, go ahead. Christian. I just wanted to add something to the term continuity. Because that's what we live with every day and that's like the basis of our ordinary lives and our work and family life. And that continuity gets a different dimension if we don't reference it to ourselves all the time, if it's not a dimension that we use in order to take care of ourselves, to feed ourselves.

[45:56]

And then this continuity is like a pearl string And then continuity is like a string with pearls on it and each pearl is like a sphere of connectedness. Yeah, okay. Yes? Just to add to that group, we also spoke about the development of continuity that also needs to be developed in stages in order to build the ego or the self.

[47:16]

And that if that's not built up in the first place, then it can't be let go of. in a slow way either. And this trust that Dagmar just mentioned, that you're able or willing to just drop yourself into an experience of trusting, For that it's necessary to already have developed a kind of net that will then catch you. Because it's hard to just let go and drop yourself into nothingness. You need to build a different structure or a net first that will then catch you.

[48:23]

And we also took the koan as showing different stages that are in there already, aspects of the koan where you still need the Four Noble Truths and then at a different stage you don't need it anymore. Okay. We only briefly touched on this, but I would like to mention that the whole thing stands and falls with the question of who is it that experiences this, or who and what is it that experiences this, separated, connected, close, and so on, and continuity, and I would like to say that. We only talked about this very briefly, but I do want to mention that anyway, that the whole thing stands or falls with the question who or what experiences these things, who or what experiences connectedness or separation or continuity or what else, other things, anything.

[49:48]

So you would say who is more connected with continuity and what is more connected with connectedness? And would you now say who is more connected to continuity and what is more connected to connection? I don't think, I haven't thought about it specifically. It's more like the, the sometimes, so limitless, incongruous feeling that it's actually the experience that is made, but you don't always find an experienced one who learns it. That can sometimes be a bit groundless. I did not think about it in these specific terms, but the kind of borderline experience is when... I'm feeling a little borderline. Yes, sorry. That's when you make such an experience but you can't find anybody who experiences it. There's no experience and that can be a little scary at times. Yeah, uncanny, bottomless. Yeah, that's true.

[50:49]

It's one of the good things about the Sangha that we share a vision and experience with others. But part of the courage of practice and a courage that's necessary to experience things you're not sure anyone's ever experienced before. You have to be willing to go into practice where particularly in the first few years, where it seems so strange, you feel, am I crazy, or could I go crazy, or what is this, has anybody else ever had this experience?

[51:51]

And if you don't have an anchor in some kind of... basic satisfaction, you can't do that. Yeah, you know, when I look at Dagmar, when did we start practicing together, Dagmar? When did we start practicing together? 89 in Berlin. And when I see Dagmar, I see all of the people in Berlin that we used to practice with. There were lots of people who aren't here now.

[52:52]

So each of you, to me, represents also all the people who've disappeared. For various reasons, they don't. They practice for a while, some for some years, and then stop, or change, or do something else, or find a better teacher, I don't know. And then, so among this, among us, there's you know, lots of years, a thousand years or hundreds of years of shared practice. But at the same time, it's been a complex selection process that's got us, this group, together. So there's a keynote question.

[53:55]

How many, I mean, you know, some sociologists would be interested. How many people do you have to practice with over 20 or 30 years in order to create a particular kind of group of 50? It depends on the teacher. It depends on a lot of factors, the historical period and all kinds of things. But it is a complex selection process. We end up sitting here together. Yeah. Mark, do you want to say anything? Yes, for me it is essentially a question, if I imagine what I will do in ten minutes, five minutes later, when the seminar is over, that I have a certain idea of where I am going and what I am doing, but also to realize that it is all just thinking.

[55:29]

For me essentially this is a question of... Which is the question? Continuity. Oh, yeah, okay. Okay. If I think about what I'm going to do in ten minutes or in five minutes or whenever the seminar is over, what I'm going to do then to recognize that all of that is just thinking. Somehow there's a lot of information. It's stored somewhere. I don't know how or where but somehow I have access to that information. But if I then really step back from thinking and become aware that I'm not... I don't smell it, I don't hear it, I don't see what's going on outside. And the question is to what extent does that really disappear and to what extent does that really just get me into what's here now?

[56:50]

And the question to what extent is everything else really gone? And to what extent is also the continuity gone that I establish through thinking? And to play with that and to explore the boundaries of that, that is what this question triggered in me and also what I'm dealing with and practicing. And also what I was dealing with throughout these last years and practicing with is the statement by Yuan Wu.

[58:05]

go to a mind where there is no before and no after. What is taken away there? What kind of continuity is there if there is no before and no after? If I really leave it, what kind of continuity is there? Then I sit here and talk and breathe and have a body posture and I feel you and I feel that the breath gets worse what kind of mind is that when when there's no before and after what kind of continuity is there still then um then what's left if i just sit here and perceive these things perceive that the air gets sticky and perceive all of you um that's also kind of continuity but it's a different one different kind It's a kind of connectedness.

[59:09]

It's a connectedness. Connectedness is left. Or maybe it's... And there can also be connectedness in a different way when I don't think about it from the mind that arises through continuity. So? Okay. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. Hi. Hi. I'd like to say something about connectedness. I've learned through practicing with you and with Roshi to trust the sense of being connected.

[60:11]

When I was a child in the 50s, my parents did not have a telephone. But I always used to wake up in the mornings and I knew that if this particular aunt of mine would show up during the day, although she hadn't called or anything, And I was ridiculed for that and I wasn't taken seriously and I've learned to hide that. [...] And I used to play this secret game when I was on the way to town with my mother.

[61:21]

I used to think to myself, who's standing at the bus stop right now? Who exactly is that standing there? And I was right most of the time. And when I grew up more I often had the experience that I'd step into a room and I'd see a particular person and I felt very connected without knowing that person. But because I wasn't anchored in a practice or in a sangha or with a teacher, I really often thought I must be crazy because also people laughed about these experiences. And after all these years of practicing, I find it to be a tremendous present to be allowed to live with that connectedness and to feel that connectedness and to share it.

[62:37]

It's for me a very, makes my life richer. It's enriching, yeah. Well, you're lucky you had the courage or inner sense of trust of yourself that you were able to notice the experiences and trust them and not completely suppress them. Most kids, when they do have such experiences, suppress them. The culture gets you to suppress them. By the way, in relationship to what

[63:38]

Marie-Louise said, what Dieter said about being present 100% or something like that, is an example of when you're free from dukkha. Yeah, that word I used earlier, kill guy, A good example of it was when I was a long time ago on the last big peace march in New York City Thich Nhat Hanh and I decided to walk together And what was clear is he walked as if the bombs were actually going to go off even that day. And most of the other people were there.

[64:56]

It was kind of a carnival or fun to be on a peace march. And so in Japanese Buddhism, you'd say his kill guy was very strong. Because in each moment you're able to fully act within the potential of the moment. Now, I think we should stop soon. But I suggested the other day in Rostenberg and mentioned it a little bit here, that the basic attitudinal dynamic, attitudinal, I try, go ahead, that the basic dynamic of the attitude, yes, not an attitude dynamic, but a dynamic of the attitude,

[66:03]

is to be present within three attitudes. One is to accept and the other is to question and the third is to cause no harm. The question is, in each situation, your first sense is appearance and acceptance. In this case, I'm taking them as one thing, appearance, acceptance. And again, all of these things that we're talking about, as Atmar brought up, Guan Wu was saying, generate a mind in which there's neither before nor after.

[67:19]

And I often add to that statement of Yuan Wu's. And no here and there. Okay. When you hear such a statement, And for some reason it makes sense to you or something like that. You have to imagine it's possible. And that's first. And then really you have to decide, I'm going to realize this. Und dann musst du dich wirklich dazu entscheiden, ich werde das verwirklichen.

[68:34]

And you have to have it with a finality, I'm going to realize this. Und das hast du mit einer Letztgültigkeit, ich werde das verwirklichen. No ifs, ands and buts about it. Do you have an expression like that? Keine bens und abas. Da gibt es keine bens und abas dazu. I'm going to realize that. Das werde ich verwirklichen. And it's not about whether it takes 10 years or 20 years or whatever. The intention to realize it is very close to realizing it, if the intention has no ifs, ands, and buts. And that intention to realize it is what makes practice really function, makes an adept practitioner. So I say something like this attitudinal dynamic of in the first appearance acceptance where the first appearance is acceptance But it's actually a considerable yogic skill to develop the mind of appearance.

[70:01]

Well, where things just appear and appear without associations. If you can get there, you're already 80, 90% there. But still, whether you're there or not, you can still have this attitudinal dynamic of acceptance. What is it? And intention to do no harm. Now, I ask you, Once you see to what degree you can practice that between now and tomorrow. If only for a moment or two. With whatever encounters you have with persons, objects, etc. Now the question is, does that serve the same purpose as practicing the Four Noble Truths?

[71:27]

In other words, one of the questions implicit, or virtually explicit, in this column... And in other words, one of the questions that may be silent, but on the other hand is also very explicit in the koan, if Xingyuan is not going to practice the Four Noble Truths, and yet this koan is about suffering, how are we going to practice or realize the freedom from suffering? what practice will we use other than the Four Noble Truths? If the Four Noble Truths are a dynamic to deal with dukkha, but he's not going to practice them, is he really practicing them in some other way? And if that's the case, what is the other way?

[72:44]

And is that other way suggested in the koan? Okay. Win a few, lose a few. Okay. Thanks for translating. Thanks for all your discussion, comments and so forth.

[73:49]

You're teaching me a lot about Buddhism. And without you I'd never go into this depth of this koan.

[73:53]

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