Now I'm speaking about dreams obviously because of the important role, significant role, dreaming has had in the development of psychotherapy. I think Freud, didn't he say that dreaming is the royal road to the unconscious? Yeah. So I can't, you know, obviously speak to How this, what I'm speaking about is useful for, relevant to a psychotherapist. I leave that up to you. Yeah, I just don't know enough to speak to it. Ich weiß da einfach nicht genug darüber, um dazu zu sprechen.

[01:09]

But since, I would say, dreaming even plays a revelatory role in psychotherapy. Aber weil das Träumen sogar eine offenbarende Rolle in der Psychotherapie spielt. Yeah, like a window you peer into the psyche through or something like that. But, you know, if I speak about how Buddhism looks at it, you know, again, perhaps the way Buddhism looks at it can inform the way psychotherapy looks at it. Now, I presume it's okay if I go on with trying to complete this view. But does somebody want to say something in regard to what I've said so far?

[02:18]

Yes. small question. There's also lucid dreaming and I know that there are Buddhist schools who suggest lucid dreaming as a practice. You think that's a small question? Okay. Maybe I'll get there. Okay. Okay. So I keep feeling I have to sort of create the general picture, because with the general picture you have a feeling for the particulars, the specifics.

[03:24]

So the general picture is that we have three, as I say, birth minds. And one practice mind. Or I would say, sometimes I say a wisdom mind. Because in Buddhism it evolves through the practice of wisdom. Now, these three minds are domains of being. Let's say the four minds are domains of being. And the four minds are an interrelated dynamic.

[04:36]

Now sometimes these minds are adjacent to each other. Sometimes they're interwoven. Manchmal sind sie miteinander verwoben. And sometimes they're conterminous. Conterminous means they share the same boundary. Und manchmal teilen sie dieselbe Grenze. Okay. Now, again, practice is knowing this... Again, everything's interdependent, everything's related. That's the view. Nothing is static. No entities, activities. So you look at these things through their relationships and their activities, not through any presumed entity-ness. Sorry, I'd love to see you struggle.

[06:04]

No, it's... It's like these words are inside you, kind of... Yeah, it's like that. I have to admit, in the vein, sometimes I throw a few words that I know will cause a struggle into their... It's a mutual education. As is the relationship between the four minds. Okay, now. In general, in the way we usually think, consciousness is privileged over all other forms of modalities of mind.

[07:23]

And of course, in how we function, in a conventional way, and in developing a self that functions in the conventional world. Consciousness is perfect. But from the point of view of how the world actually exists, from the point of view of truth, The wisdom mind is privileged. So an adept practitioner is one who validates his life through the wisdom mind and not through consciousness.

[08:30]

So maybe many psychoanalysts, what they do is to make the conscious mind mind and its functions really work reasonably well. A necessary thing. You have to live and function. Survive. But given that, then practice asks you to validate the world and your experience through the wisdom mind.

[09:32]

But again, there's the conscious mind and functioning and the wisdom mind and dreaming mind. They all are, in a realized person, interwoven. And at the highest order, let's say it that way, of functioning their conterminus. Yes. Okay. Now, the attitude toward dreams in Zen practice is not to understand them from the point of view of consciousness.

[10:50]

I mean, again, I want to say, because I've analyzed dreams of my own and sometimes others, and it's quite interesting. They're kind of revelatory. And that privileges consciousness. It says consciousness benefits by analyzing the dream in terms of the consciousness. But from a Buddhist point of view, that distorts the dream and to some extent decimates the dream. Decimates.

[11:56]

Decimates. Oh, okay. Thank you. I think even James Hillman takes that view about analyzing dreams from the point of view of consciousness. Anyway, I am not saying it isn't useful sometimes or often to analyze dreams from the point of view of consciousness. I'm just saying that also the Buddhist view is To, in effect, educate consciousness by bringing dreams into consciousness, but not through analysis. Okay. That means that if you have a dream... Now, I've already spoken about the yogic practice of being able to hold something, an image or an intention, in the stream of activity.

[13:31]

Sort of the edge of awareness and consciousness, you hold it. In a like manner, you hold an image from the dream or more likely the kind of physical feel of the dream in your daily life. Okay, now, if the dream is held as part of consciousness, sort of in the background of consciousness or in the texture of consciousness, then the minutia of activity begins to inform the dream. then the miniature of activity, your little details of activity, it's like you're holding the dream, and activity flows through it.

[15:09]

Because what we have is interdependent activity at various levels of subtlety. Right now there's various levels of interpenetrating activity here. Okay. So from one point of view, we're looking at it, it's like holding something in the stream of water and things start to collect on your hand or the sieve or something. And then if you take the sieve out of the water you see what's collected in it.

[16:13]

And you say, oh, that not only tells you what's collected in it, it tells you what kind of sieve it was. Und dann zeigt dir das nicht nur, was sich darin gefangen hat, sondern es zeigt dir auch, welche Art von Sieb das eigentlich ist. And you learn the difference between holding an image from the dream or holding the physical feel of the dream, because they're different Siebs. Und dann lernst du auch etwas über den Unterschied dazwischen, wenn du ein Bild aus dem Traum hältst, oder wenn du das körperliche Gefühl des Traumes so hältst, denn das sind unterschiedliche Arten von Sieben. In some senses, and many senses, dreams obviously arise through consciousness. Arise through the activity of yesterday even.

[17:16]

But yesterday your dead grandmother wasn't around, so your dead grandmother might appear in the dream too, along with things from yesterday. So it doesn't just arise from consciousness. Philip Glass has a beautiful song that Linda Ronstadt sings about a person visited by all his previous lovers. So, on the one hand, on the one sieve, you're returning the dream to the consciousness from which it partially arose. And it's informing the activity and embodiment of your life.

[18:44]

Okay. Now, this way of thinking is entirely dependent on seeing everything as activities and not seeing anything as an entity. Now, I could go through my riff on trees as activity, but, you know, I just did it in Hanover, and I don't know why you want me to do that song and dance again. Okay. You want me to go through that song and dance?

[19:56]

Okay. You are my sunshine, you are my sunshine. Anyway. So you're returning the dream to the activity, because nothing exists but activity. So you're returning the dream into the stream of activity from which it rose. That not only lets the... the content and subtlety of the dream function within you without analyzing it.

[21:01]

It's like it appeared in dreaming mind and then you take it and you put it back gently into consciousness and let the activity flow around it. The way I spoke just now is emphasizing the relationship to the dream. It's emphasizing the relationship to the dream. But now let me emphasize the relationship to consciousness. Because folding, like making croissant, you keep folding the dough, folding the dream back into consciousness... You also transform consciousness. You educate consciousness. So the job of consciousness, as I always say, is to make the world predictable.

[22:07]

Cognizable. Chronological. Meaningful in context of your personal history. Okay. But that's great, but it's a little narrow. Yeah. So the idea again isn't that to make that function you would push things into the unconscious. But sometimes pop up in dreams and then you can see the unconscious. This is more like thinking in entities. It's like relating entities to each other. Instead of relating activities to each other. So from the point of view of Buddhism, the four minds are four domains of activity.

[23:27]

And one of the And the easiest way to come into this way of experiencing is again doing zazen. It's like immersing yourself in the stream of the four minds. And the more you establish stillness which means the activity of consciousness is put aside, within stillness not only does non-dreaming deep sleep surface, but the stillness of sitting creates a domain for dreaming mind. Sondern die Stille des Sitzens schafft auch eine Domäne, einen Bereich für den träumenden Geist.

[24:42]

So there's no question that you enter into dreaming mind through zazen. Also besteht da keinen Zweifel daran. Es gibt keine Frage, dass du in den träumenden Geist durch das zazen eintrittst. And the exact way images unfold in dreams. They often unfold in zazen. But the same image might unfold, but it's unfolding in a different medium. Zazen or wisdom mind is a different medium, different liquid than dreaming mind. So you begin to create dreaming mind and zazen mind are one liquid with different depths, different viscosities. And through practice you simply get more and more skillful at creating a concentration or a zazen mind which has a viscosity similar to dreaming mind.

[25:55]

So you can begin to walk around in your dreams. At least walk around, not in consciousness, but in awareness. Okay. Now, when, to speak in a similar way, when you can bring, okay, a little throw away. A little throwaway. A throwaway is something that's unimportant you just throw in. Okay. Einstreuer. Einstreuer. Einstreuer. That'll work. Thanks. That's a good word.

[27:11]

Did I make it up? Yeah, you did. Is it German? Yeah, it's German. All right. It's a real partnership here. I'm the low end of the deal. Okay. The throwaway is, does attention belong to consciousness or not? Is attention only an aspect of consciousness? Is it sort of like consciousness in a hose? And I can squirt it across the room, you know, something like that. It's like you're going to get a shower of attention. So I can have a feeling of awareness of this room, consciousness of this room.

[28:16]

Yet I can shift attention over to Ralph. And let me say that one thing Zazen does is it physicalizes mentation. And physicalized mentation has access to the resources and perspectives of the body. The memories and perspectives and resources of the body. Like if you have a massage, some people find memories come up through the massage, through massaging certain spots that don't come up through thinking.

[29:24]

So the body and locations within the body carry memories. But also physical things in the world carry memories. Call forth memories. So one of the aspects of practice is to begin to physicalize mentation. And I always like to mention, you know, Einstein's a good person to mention, that he said, he got his ideas from his body and if he felt something if he stayed with it it turned into an image

[30:35]

and then something he'd think about, do mathematics about. So part of practice is learning, discovering the physicalization of meditation. which at first is rather slower than our usual thinking but it has to find the pace of the body and finding the pace of the body I'll keep it simple and say it that way begins to have access to the resources of the body.

[31:46]

And that process of the physicalization of mentation becomes then What should I say? The phenomenalization of mentation. The phenomenalization of mentation. In other words, what I would call the somatic mind is not just a mind located in the body, but a mind located in phenomena as well as the body. In other words, what I would say is that the somatic spirit of the body is not so much a spirit that is anchored only in the body, but both in the body and in the phenomena of the world.

[32:56]

It's physicalized mentation which begins to feel your circumstances, your situation as part of you. And the mind before your parents were born is code for knowing each situation as mind. Because that existed before you were born. Yeah, okay. Okay, so what we're talking, am I going too far? A little too dense? Yeah, right. I don't know what the translation is.

[33:58]

I have no word. In English, because English is based on the idea that the world is entities. We have the word entity but we don't have any word that's similar which means the opposite. If English didn't think in entities, it wouldn't have an it that rains.

[35:05]

You know the story. I've told it often. Sally coming in and saying, how's the weather outside? My 46-year-old daughter, when she was four, I said, what's the weather like? She says, it's raining. And I said, would you go outside and find that it, that entity that's raining? She must have been older than four because she said, Dad, don't be so zen. So it's all interdependent, interpenetrating activity. Okay, so now we're back to the throwaway attention. So I can move attention around the room.

[36:16]

But I can also, when I go to sleep, move attention into sleeping. If I observe my sleeping and I know very well when I go to sleep there's usually dreamlike images start to appear. There's a little shift in my breathing. And then there's usually a little tremble in my body. And I know once that tremble occurs, I'm asleep.

[37:37]

Yes, but I can keep attention present through that whole process and then into my dreams as lucid dreaming. So now, but I'm no longer conscious. I'm no longer conscious. But attention is now in my dreaming, in my sleeping. So is attention part of consciousness or not? What is attention? Really? It's one of the mysteries. Next year. Okay.

[38:44]

We're doing all right. Okay. So if I bring attention into my sleeping, And attention brought into sleeping changes into awareness. So this is also a process of educating sleeping mind, waking mind, consciousness, dreaming mind, etc. Okay. Now, I probably said nearly enough. Just for the sake of establishing another way, a Buddhist way of looking at dreaming.

[39:49]

And by bringing lucidity, let's call it that, into dreaming, you're not, again, it's not like a window. You're looking into an entity called dreaming that exists. As they say in contemporary science, observing something changes what you're observing. So if I bring lucidity into dreaming mind, I'm not just observing the dream. I'm changing dreaming. I'm changing the mind that dreams. I'm educating in a way, evolving the mind that dreams. And if you sufficiently... If you get so that you dream virtually always lucidly, you get the ability not only to change dreams and fool around with them and, you know, etc.,

[41:23]

You get the ability to not just use... Rather, the domain of dreaming doesn't just become involuntary. That doesn't remain involuntary. You can begin to examine things in dreaming mind like you can examine things in zazen mind. And then you begin to have like teaching dreams. Dreams that will actually teach you something. Which have a causal effect in your life. Okay.

[42:25]

And finally, let me say that dreaming, in a way, I think I have to introduce the idea of enfolded. Now, I'm not saying that this idea of enfolded is the way the world is. I'm saying that I find it a useful word to try to speak about practice. Since I'm treating the world as activity and not entities, If I'm not thinking in terms of entities, I cannot think of the unconscious, say, as a container. whatever the dynamic of unconscious material or content is, it's an activity and it's not in a container.

[44:07]

And as an activity, it's not just occasionally present, only present. It's always present to some extent. But its presence may be folded in on itself. So you can't see parts of it because it's folded together. But these folded in units are part of our mental and physical activity. But these intertwined, I don't know, units, they are part of our entire part of our mental and physical activity. Okay. So what happens when you educate dreaming mind? And zazen mind too. Is it becomes more open to the unfolding of our experience.

[45:29]

And dreams have a particular power because they don't belong to the future. They don't belong to the present. They don't belong to the past. But they have past, present and future folded in them. So your past, present and future in a way, the potentialities of things unfold in dreaming mind. And through educating consciousness, To give it a better job description. Dreaming the past, present and future, our potentiality, our... the stuff that dreams are made of, Shakespeare, can unfold in this newly educated consciousness with a different job description.

[47:05]

So then you begin to make decisions in relation to decisions, because every moment is a decision, in fact. You begin to make decisions in relationship not only to the resources of the body, but the resources enfolded in dreaming mind. that are to various degrees unfolded in an educated consciousness. Wisdom-educated consciousness or something like that. So you are then in the world with another kind of subtlety. Now, I can't know your consciousness unless I know my own consciousness.

[48:20]

Because I know my own consciousness, I have a pretty good feeling for your consciousness. And if I know my stillness, I can also maybe feel your stillness within your activity. And if I know the unfolding of my dreaming mind in my own experience, I can feel the unfolding of dreaming mind in you, too, to some extent. And the concepts of interdependence and interpenetration is that as we are activities and not entities, we are unfolding together. And we're folded in together.

[49:28]

That's what a culture is. Yeah, what a sangha is. What a friendship is. What a marriage is. And it's not unusual for two married people, for instance, or two people live together to share different aspects of the same dream or even have the same dream. And twins separated at birth have aspects of their separate lives folded in to each other. So what a different shift we have. when we have a shift from entities to activities. Thank you for allowing me to say this. If I was sitting here in an empty room, I wouldn't have said this.

[50:59]

If you write a book, you say. Oh, boy. Thank you. What time is it? Good enough to stop for lunch. So let's sit for a few moments.

[51:22]

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