You know, one of my problems in trying to present the teaching is in what pace and what pace to present it. By the way, this woman, wonderful woman here, is Giorgio's mother. Thank you for joining us. You know because I mean on the one hand it's taken me 45 years or so to try to be clear about Buddhism.

[01:02]

somehow the obvious becomes more and more obvious. But it sure didn't seem obvious to me for ten years or twenty years or something like that. So then, I'm presenting to you one moment, one thing after another. That took me, I don't know, ten years between each thing. But I don't think you have time to wait for me to present it at that pace. And And at the same time, I know that among you are people of different levels of experience.

[02:17]

And then there's things that... like this morning which I presented before with some things I've never said before. And the things I've said before I further more Those of you who have been with a long time, I only need to hint at. And I'm always a little bit concerned I might bore you. And then... But then for newer people, I better not hint at it, I better say it more fully. Yes, this creates some sort of continents bumping together.

[03:20]

Yeah. So for me it's like some mixture of slow and fast and sometimes the slow makes the fast more interesting. I don't know. You don't have to translate. Okay, so I always like to start the afternoon with discussion or comments or whatever. Yes. During lunch, I ask myself, if you ask yourself whether there are several minds,

[04:39]

At the same time, concluding from that, it is also justified, at least as justified, to ask whether there are several bodies. Yes. That's what I said this morning. Yes, that's what I said this morning, isn't it? I didn't understand that. What did you say you said? Okay. Well, I'm glad to have an affirmation arising spontaneously. Yeah. But again, what that means, that's something else again. It takes time to soak in and then to say, at what level do we know... For me the translation is not quite clear, the translation between spirit and mind.

[06:08]

That's true. What can we do about it? You can say whatever you'd like. I just asked Ulf where his difficulties are because it means it's more a translational problem how we understand things Okay, so is mind connected to ratio, to rationality, reason? or spirit in a different meaning.

[07:20]

Or ghost. Not ghost. Okay. Spirit, also in a transcendent meaning. Do you mean that? Yes. The soul, or something. Yes, so spirit in a spiritual way, also in the understanding of soul. Okay, I think... Okay, yes. So he, I only said mind. just to avoid this difficulty. You said mind. I think, I don't know. The translator somehow has the common understanding not to translate mind into German because then you get into these difficulties with spirit and reason.

[08:22]

So you don't say geistfulness? No, not at all. Do you have any comments, Christian? I'd like to use the word Geist in German as a translator. Because I don't think that words are defined by a context in which they appear. And if we avoid to use this German word Geist Then we are just stuck with a word that is not in our language and we have to somehow translate it in our own individual way. But when we actually accept that the context of the teaching as presented defines the word, then the meaning is not available in a particular word, but it's a shared meaning that arises in the belief that it's enough in understanding.

[09:50]

You let it kind of redefine the word. Nicole, do you have something to say? These are the two, three people and four who translate for me the most. You agree with what? Yeah, but the same can be said about mind. If you don't translate it, then it creates a... I mean, this is okay, but the other way it's also okay. Okay. I want to add that one difficulty in translating in German with guys is that it's very hard to find a plural word.

[10:57]

For example, this title. This title is a hard one to translate. One of the difficulties with translating with the spirit is that it is quite difficult to find a more or less form of the spirit in German. And that is also the difficulty with the seminar title, to find a translation that fits. To my feeling, some construction like mental activity would be more appropriate, because the guest is very occupied by many... Rented least and occupied.

[12:05]

Yes, but not for sale. But not for sale, yes. What else is mind and mental activity? Okay, it's not what I mean, but yes, I agree. Okay, Nicole, you want to say something? Yes, I thought about the title. I just said that since it is so hard to find a plural for mind and states of mind doesn't really i find captured and dynamic and lights but um then i usually when i encounter that difficulty i usually choose uh the german word that's composed of mind and posture so something like postures of mom you can see okay

[13:21]

I mean, not being a philosopher, I don't carry with me the... Sociologists are not philosophers? Yeah, but not in the sense of a philosopher. So I don't carry with me this whole history of Geist, it has in German philosophy, I assume. And, but if I, in my everyday understanding, Geist is completely separated from body. As if you could, I mean, it's like... In German. In German. So, as in this horror movies of Frankenstein, you know, you could put a Geist somehow in a bottle and then it would stand there. It's completely detached from any body. A disembodied. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and then we also have in the tradition, yeah, that's also something like, I mean, it's completely detached, it's left somewhere in the church, in the living light.

[14:28]

We have also the Holy Spirit in the Catholic religion, so it's really something which is completely disembodied. And for me, mind is always connected with body. And that's the reason why, and also having heard this mind and mindology for 20 years, I used the term mind because it doesn't have this embodied feeling for me. Okay. And mind for me is also... experiential. It's not, I can see your mind, but I'm reading the mind. No, but the mind is what's experienced. Okay. Mind has the main meaning that it's an experience, whatever it is. That's the experience. You can see you asked a very fundamental question.

[15:35]

Sometimes we would call it a can of worms. Okay. Well, mind in the way I use it is not and the way it's used in contemporary English Buddhism. Now, mind, how I use it and how it works in contemporary English... is a very expanded meaning. And I think you really, when you try to define mind as it's used in Buddhism, in Buddhist English, you end up with a definition which really means aliveness.

[16:40]

The whole of your aliveness. Including consciousness and spirit and so forth. Awareness. And you can say it also, you can say it's what makes a corpse not a corpse. The stuff of a body alive. So let's the biggest way it's used. And then it's also used in a condensed meaning. In contrast to the specific experience of mind as separate from body.

[17:47]

You know, I started out practicing in the 60s, the very beginning of the 60s. And I would say that for at least 20 years or more I didn't use the word meditation. Because in English it really meant to meditate on something. And I just so didn't want to say that, I didn't use the word. But now the word has expanded in English to mean commonly as well Buddhist meditation and so I feel strange now not using the word meditation. And if you go into the etymology of words like soul, spirit, psyche, etc.,

[19:09]

They usually originally mean some form of breath. So in English all these words which somehow mean breath become soul, psyche, spirit, etc. So really to explore your own experience, you can use words to direct your attention in the exploration. But you can't use words really to define your experience. If you use words to define your experience, you fall into the usual categories of the agreed-upon world. So we have attention.

[20:39]

And you can take parts of attention and direct it through words at something, your breath for instance. But the experience of what happens when you direct attention to your breath. You can't look at the experience Look at or describe the experience or limit the experience to words. So you have to really start discovering for yourself how you use these words. So müsst ihr also wirklich selbst anfangen zu entdecken für euch, wie ihr diese Worte benutzt.

[22:05]

I mean our culture in a very particular way has for a long time through an interrelated world view has come to certain ways to describe experience. And if you want to most creatively explore your life, and explore potential other world views, then you sort of have to create your own So if we just take something that I said this morning and point out very often, is to not think in entities, but to think in activity, think of everything as an activity.

[23:20]

You have to find ways to change your words. And the most common example I give you is to describe a tree as treeing. Nobody else has got to get a chance to ask a question after this one you asked. So let me say something about what happens. I mean, this is too good an opportunity to waste. So let me go back to something that I've been saying for some four decades or more.

[24:31]

What was that? let me go to something I've been saying for decades the distinction between a tree and treeing and when we incubate that the result of incubating that okay So you create the habit, you bring the concept, and I'm saying this also to introduce the idea that to your experience you add a concept. I started Buddhism with the idea of being a natural human being in a natural world, living a natural life with no shoes on.

[25:36]

I even participated in the memorial service at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for Fritz Schumacher when he died. And there was the Protestant sort of bishop sort of person. It's a It's the main church in San Francisco, but it's Anglican. And everybody was there in their ornate shoes, and I was barefoot on the stone floor. Okay. So anyway... But we are too complex, we human beings are too complex for a natural being in a natural world, etc.

[27:13]

And we are unavoidably always bringing mental activity to our So the question is not whether you do it, it's how you do it. Okay, so if I bring the concept of treeing to tree, That's an antidote to the concept of tree. Some kind of static entity. Okay. Now, I may know it's not a static entity.

[28:17]

But if I bring my knowing it's not a static entity through the mirror or magnifying glass or whatever, or the reverse end of a telescope. And I use the word tree to focus my attention, which knows it's not a static entity. tend to treat it, in fact, as a static entity. So I make what we can call a wisdom decision to add the concept of treeing instead of tree to my noticing a tree.

[29:22]

And so for the next Decades of your life, see if you can do something like treeing. Now what happens if you're incubating the noticing? As treeing. Okay, so I'm calling basically the repetition of knowing, repeated knowings, in fact a process of hatching or incubation. It's like watering a plant. You try to stop it from growing, but if you water it, it grows between your fingers.

[30:26]

So you're noticing a tree as an activity. Okay. So what do you notice? The leaves are moving. And there's insects on the bark. And the branches move. Okay. you're noticing activity. But when you really notice the activity, you find you're also noticing stillness. Because if you look closely at activity, you can't help but notice stillness. It's not simply that the leaf is moving within the alternative of being still.

[31:36]

The leaf is also moving because it's still. The leaf is also moving in a certain way because it's attached to a twig. The twig to a branch and the branch to the trunk and the trunk to the roots. So when the leaf moves, you're also feeling the stillness of the trunk. And a more obvious example I can give you is when you look at the shape of a wave, the shape is entirely a calculation based on the water trying to return to stillness.

[32:42]

And another example that I can give is, if you look at a wave, then the wave is precisely calculated with the function with which the water tries to Okay, so otherwise the water would just fly off somewhere, as it does to some extent, and become clouds. But most of the water seems to love stillness more than clouds. So most of the water goes back and tries to be still again. So no matter how rough the ocean is, unless you're drowning, you can see stillness in the waves. So now by bringing attention to the the tree as an activity through the

[33:59]

telescope in the normal way of looking at it you're seeing now the activity of the tree and you're feeling in that activity the dynamic of stillness. That's the second thing. The third thing, you're now feeling the space of the tree. Because when you really pay attention to the activity of a tree, It's occurring in a space. And the space is in fact part of the tree. It's not just the territory of the tree, it is part of the tree.

[35:17]

A friend of mine is the chairman of the department of botany in Karlsruhe University, and he's trying to study how plants know these things within the space that they create. and how they know what's happening with other plants. Okay, so now through focusing on the tree through the word, treeing as an activity. Now, you may think I'm being over-articulating the obvious. But it took me years to incubate to this point.

[36:24]

Okay, so you're focusing through the word treeing on the activity of the tree. And incubating that enough, you begin to see the tree as an activity. You don't see it as an entity anymore. And you really come into a kind of awareness of basic ecology and forestry and things. That the insects and the bugs, the insects and the birds and things are also somehow part of the tree. And you begin to only be able to really understand See the tree.

[37:45]

the activity of the tree in the space the tree makes. And then you don't want to just see the tree, you know, kind of think about it, you want to feel the tree. And to feel the tree you have to kind of like as I said this morning, sort of pause, have a spatial pause. And in that spatial pause, you actually have a kind of different feel of mind. Like if I, again, want to feel you as a whole, because you're making a unit as well as your separate parts.

[38:51]

I have to kind of step back inside and just feel you and not think you. Now, through the... incubation of the feel of the space of the tree. And the simultaneous feel of the activity rooted in stillness. I can only do that if I have that kind of feel of mind in myself. Myself, whatever this is, I hesitate to call it a self always, but let's call it a self for the sake of English.

[40:05]

Because it's neither mine, Or exactly self. It's not exactly mine because whatever it is, it also belongs to you. But if I have a feel of this stillness and activity of the tree, I can only feel that if I also feel myself as a field of mind and activity. Now, if I've developed that habit, I inhabit. Okay.

[41:11]

Then when I meet a person, I feel the space of the person, not their personality and psychology particularly. First of all, I feel their space. And I feel the activity. It's like energy or electricity or something. I feel the aliveness and in that aliveness I feel the stillness and the movement towards stillness. Okay, so this is a simple shift in worldview. Of taking one thing as your experiment.

[42:11]

tree as activity. And if you incubate that over and over again, it flowers into another kind of worldview. You know, and they cut open my eye. They stuck a little tiny plastic lens in. It opened up. It unfolded and then it's kind of getting glued in there or something. So I'm trying to do the same thing to your third eye. I'm trying to stick a little Buddhist lens in your third eye and open up. And if you repeatedly see with your third eye as well as your two western eyes, we come to encompass worldviews that are just limited to one culture.

[43:37]

Regina? Please don't ask the same kind of question. Ask anything you want. Yes. I would like to contribute something to this question about body and mind. I don't have any problem with the German word Geist. But I really asked myself very hard what it means, what is the meaning of Geist. Not long ago a young woman came to me and asked me for help.

[44:40]

She was pregnant and she was in her 37th week. Okay, and the baby was in a male position. In the male position? In the male position. Oh, it was upside down. That's what male position means. So, Steve, you thought I... Breach, I think we say in English. It comes bottom first. That's a breach birth. And she was thinking that I might help her and I might support her and maybe I could help her to turn the baby around.

[46:03]

I had no idea, not the slightest idea what I could do and what I should do and what could be done. So I waited and there were still several days left for the date of birth. Ah, okay. Not the date of birth, but the date when she had this, when we made this appointment and we should meet. So I looked things up in the internet. Oh, Google? What do I do in this situation? Google, help! And I found some kind of study or survey they made in Chicago where they had 100 women with children with breech birth and they had hypnotherapy and in 80% of the cases the child turned.

[47:38]

And so I thought, well, okay, maybe it works. And then the woman came to me and first it was necessary that the woman accepted the fears she had. I know a little bit about psychotherapy and she told me what I was going to do. I asked her to lie down and I walked with her step by step through the whole body.

[48:40]

So I know a little bit about psychotherapy and what I did is I asked her and I told her what I would like to do with her and I asked her to lay down and step by step we went through her body. and all the organs and uterus here, and in the uterus and around the uterus. First around and then in. That's important, yeah. And several days ago I also heard the records of the last practice week at Johanneshof.

[49:53]

I was just listening to this example of, I think, connectedness that Rochelle mentioned, that this is like a fish that passes by water plants and the plants move And I listened to these tapes and there was this piece on connectedness where you mentioned that it's like the fish and the seaweed and the seaweed moves in a certain way and this connectedness. And then I said things like, well, the walls of the uterus, they are not really a hindrance and boundaries. And the baby can move around and turn around as easily as a fish in the water.

[51:10]

And then the baby started to move quite heavily, quite intensely. Wow. And then it was kind of funny because the woman went into an elbow-knee position to make it easier for the child to move. So as soon as she took this position, the baby stopped to move. So that was the end of this meeting and she went home.

[52:16]

And I didn't know what happened, but one week later she called. And she just told me that in the night, when she woke up so early, she only got one hour of sleep, because the baby had moved so much. And the next day she had a doctor to help her and the baby was completely fine. And she told me that she couldn't sleep, she could only one hour sleep in this night because the baby moved so heavily. And when she saw her doctor the next day, he told her that the baby turned completely. It turned completely. Yes, I think this is a very Yes, this story motivates me very much.

[53:20]

I ask myself, of course, why is this happening? What is the body, what is the spirit, why did the picture turn? So how does it come together, how does it work? And I have the situation like this. So for me this whole story was obviously quite motivating, but I also asked myself a question, what is body, what is mind, how is it interrelated, why did it move? What I find interesting in this seminar is that I have two bodies And what is interesting in the context of this seminar is that I saw two different relations between body and mind in this woman.

[54:28]

One where she was somehow caught or somehow confined and stuck in this situation. But also the other, the somehow bigger form, which somehow knew that movement is possible. And there are no boundaries. And somehow this raises a lot of questions for me and I'm also very grateful that I was able to accompany this woman in this situation. Well, let's come back to the questions after the break.

[55:47]

That's great that you told us the story. No, I think I'll never forget it. You know, in Alamosa, which is our shopping town a hundred miles 100 kilometers south of the center. They have a hospital and that's where Sophia was born. And women come in with an expected breech birth. And they have a list of, because it's a very Hispanic community, they have a list of several Spanish grandmothers. And they call them up and if one of them is available, they come in and they do something and they turn the baby.

[57:01]

And I'll have to tell them, Dr. Steinberg, for instance, if they can't find a The Spanish grandmother is not busy. They should listen to practice week number such and such at Johanneshof and if necessary call you. And visualize seaweed. It works. I'll accept it.

[57:37]

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