So what I'm suggesting here is that when you begin to know this territory, when you begin through the processes of therapy or meditation or however you begin to, this line becomes thinner or more permeable, Then this can lead more to a direct perception of form, which then can allow you to start this process. But to begin to experience unconscious material directly, you need to anchor yourself in a strong ego, and you need to anchor yourself in the posture. But this experience of going across this line is not so different from the experience of going across this line.

[01:21]

Another way to describe this would be to call this the divided world and this is the undivided world. Now, we could put here also, if I had a little more room, but if we continue this line down there, we can put ordinary mind and underlying mind daily how do you spell daily d-a-y well Daily mind and non-daily mind.

[03:03]

So here we have ordinary mind and underlying mind, daily mind and non-daily mind. Okay. Sorry, I have a question. Yeah. Why do you have to anchor yourself in a strong ego? Because you can go crazy. You mean if you go down unconscious without this hold, you get crazy? It's possible to lose bearings on how you put yourself together. And you have to have a, you almost create a kind of rubber band. What are you saying? That can let yourself down in, but you always know you can haul yourself back, or you'll spring back.

[04:13]

This is one reason. Some meditation teachers give the impression that if a little meditation is good, a lot of meditation is better. As a calming practice, that might be true, though it kind of isolates you when you start doing 10 hours of meditation. But in general, if you're doing serious meditation, more is not better. Unless you're meditating with a teacher or in a structured situation like the Sashin where we sit from 4 or 5 in the morning till 10 or 12 at night for seven days, but that's in a very structured, thought-through way of practice.

[05:26]

So if you meditate every, say that you meditate every day for 30 or 40 minutes or even twice a day for 30 or 40 minutes, And hopefully if you have at least some contact with other meditators or with a teacher a few times a year at least, there's almost no problem in practicing meditation. And you learn something.

[06:30]

When they talk about practice here as a jewel, it means that this fourth state of mind or luminous state of mind can be handed to another person through the tone of a voice. Or in a way of walking, standing, or in straightening your posture. If a teacher straightens your posture a certain way, you may feel how your posture is supposed to be, independent of how you're straightened. So, sometimes this fourth state of mind, what should we call it? See, whatever I call it is a different gate. If I call it an underlying state of mind, that's a certain way of approaching it and practicing.

[07:44]

If I call it host and guest, that's another way of... Now a koan I'm always quoting because it's a very accessible story. Yun Yan and Da Wu, Yun Yan is sweeping. And Da Wu comes up to him and says, too busy. Dao comes and says to Yunyan, too busy. And Yunyan, who's sweeping, stops and says, you should know there is one who is not busy.

[08:45]

And so Dao says, aha, double moon. This means a more platonic idea, like there's ideal forms behind reality or there's two realities or something like that. And Jungian says, instantly joining them, he holds up the broom and says, is this a double moon? Okay, so you can see this is a constant in all these Zen stories, this one and this one I just told you, is a constant discussion about these two truths, relative and absolute. And in each story, it presents a little different way of practicing, a little different kind of gate.

[09:49]

And there's some advantage to, like if we take, what is your name? Yeah, yeah. Ben, we take Barrett's question about this fourth state of mind, how does it relate to the other three and so forth. If we take that as a koan so it's present in our mind if you just take it so it's present in your mind you're already tending to create such a mind. Because it's, the example I usually use, it's like a woman who is pregnant.

[10:50]

She's doing her daily life, but at the same time aware there's a baby inside her. So if you're practicing and you have a question like this, is there some underlying state of mind? Is there some background mind behind my foreground mind? Is there a mind which doesn't see the world as divided? If you had that present in you, you begin to create a background mind because it's always present while you're doing other things. So if you're asking yourself that question all the time in a kind of subtle, present way,

[11:53]

you're creating the answer to your question. So it begins to pop out. Somebody says, you're awfully busy. And you might say, well, I've got a lot to do. But if you're you have this kind of question, koan question in the back of your mind. Someone says to you, you're awful busy. You might just pop up with, you should know there's one who is not busy. Because I just talked to an architect I know named Santiago Calatrava on the phone. He was very busy and flying from city to city and I think he has the commission or the won the prize to rebuild the Reichstag.

[13:09]

So when I called him up and he was, I could hear phones going and everybody came in here. And I said, boy, you sound busy. And he said, instantly, without hesitation, no, I'm quiet. And you could feel it in his voice that he was in the midst of this, was quiet. So it's a kind of practice, a craft, a state of mind, an attitude. And you have to find yourself what entry, what gate is best for you. But first you need the faith that there's an underlying state of mind.

[14:18]

Now, in Western psychology and sort of, for example, Neumann's history of consciousness... I believe the unity of consciousness is presented as an earlier stage before the differentiation into patriarchal consciousness. And matriarchal consciousness, which he says has nothing to do with women, is more undifferentiated. But in Buddhism, a unified, undivided state of consciousness is not a prior stage in a development. It's an ever-present reality.

[15:24]

And it manifests in you and in the world in various ways. Since it's undivided, its reality name is emptiness. Since it is present and functioning in you, I sometimes call it awareness in contrast to consciousness. And I'm sorry to bore my older students, but the... The example I use is when you go to sleep at night and set your mind to wake up at 6.02.

[16:25]

And you don't set your alarm. And you go to sleep. And you wake up at 6.02 exactly. Consciousness did not do that. We can say awareness did it. It's a simple proof that's present in most people's lives that there's an underlying consciousness that functions even when you're asleep and keeps track of the time. So we didn't put that here, did we? No. So we could have also here consciousness and awareness. Now, the root of, in English at least, the root of consciousness here, SCI, means to cut, to separate.

[17:48]

And the root of awareness means to watch. And something that watches. And consciousness also means that consciousness which can be shared. That's also in the etymology. And strangely enough, awareness is that consciousness. I have no words for it, so I have to call awareness a consciousness, consciousness an awareness. And why do I have no words for it? Because Western languages don't allow us to go into this territory. I mean, Parika has trouble translating mind. So I'm making use of two English words, awareness and consciousness, when there are possibly more subtle distinctions than that, but I don't have the language for it.

[19:02]

I can't tell you because it's hard to even show you. And as Bodhidharma tried to show the emperor, And no matter what he tried, the emperor didn't get it. So awareness is a kind of consciousness which is always present. For example, if I trip on the corner of this and fall down, I will catch myself with my hands almost surely much quicker than I could think in a separated conscious fashion. So awareness is always present. How do you study it? one way to study it is getting used to going across this line you can try for instance going to sleep letting your body go to sleep and staying awake in your mind

[20:30]

People call it insomnia. And he did. So meditation practice is a kind of bathysphere. That's that thing that Cousteau lets down in the ocean. Is that what it's called? No, it's not. Yeah, it's a kind of bathysphere that you can let yourself down into awareness, let yourself down into undivided mind, let yourself down into the unconscious. Now, to complicate it a little bit, I should say, we not only have unconsciousness here, we have non-consciousness. Because unconsciousness, as I define it, is material related to your identity.

[21:35]

There's lots of material that you're not aware of that's not related to your identity, to your story, but it's just stuff that's been your experience that you've never connected the dots. Okay, so since it's apparent that we have a state of mind or state of being, we can call awareness in contrast to consciousness, The question is simply, do you want to explore this ever-present dimension of being? That you can see instances of in your life, but you don't have much access to. Now, Zen is not a psychological process.

[22:42]

Well, that's not right. It's not explicitly a psychological practice. And my contention is that in Asia they do not organize their identity around story the same way we do. Let me just give you an example, a kind of subtle difference, the difference between karma and fate. Fate is an idea that arises from your story. Schicksal ist eine Idee, die jetzt von unserer Geschichte her entsteht.

[23:46]

That your story will have a conclusion. Dass eure Geschichte sozusagen zu einer Schlussfolgerung führt. That something happened to you because it's going to be part of your story. Dass euch etwas zugestoßen ist, weil es Teil eurer Geschichte sein wird. So fate is an idea like there's the ending of your stories in the future and drawing you toward it. And karma has no sense of being something in the future that draws you toward it. Karma is only the idea that the present is conditioned by the past. The future is completely open. But Zen practice is, in effect, a psychological process. And the basic process of it is that, first of all, you realize this underlying mind And from this underlying mind that is not a stage but always present and is the root of our spiritual life, it's from this underlying mind that you work on your story and you work on your other states of mind.

[25:11]

That's the basic idea. And the idea that's implied in this koan, which without knowing this basic dialogue, it's very hard to realize what they're talking about in the koan. Now, I just put all this up here to give you a sense of these equivalencies and the different territories in which you can practice going across this line. And I'd be interested in, during today and tomorrow, any ideas you have about this structure or this picture. Okay, now I'd like to sit for a little bit Is there anything you want to bring up?

[26:37]

Yes. I struggle very much with the word delusion of consciousness. Did I say that or is it your own struggle? It's my own struggle. Do you mean consciousness itself is delusory or you have consciousness and delusion? Well, I mean consciousness or parts of consciousness or conscious processes which I declare as delusion.

[27:40]

You feel like delusion. I kind of have the sensation that it's a delusion. You can try to sort this out. And practically speaking, one has to sort it out to some degree to function in the world. But the deeper solution is to come to a state of mind that you can completely trust. And that's again what the practice of Zen is trying to do.

[28:53]

It's one of the signs of shifting from consciousness to awareness, which is you begin to feel a trust in everything you think and feel. And that's expressed in Zen in very simple phrases which have this meaning of a mind that you can trust by saying something as simple as, water tastes wet. And you can practice it in little things like trying to give yourself a period of time in which you reduce your life to very simple things like washing your face, brushing your teeth, eating something.

[30:06]

I think that's why people, when they're feeling anxious, wash the dishes and do things like that. It's a kind of negotiation with yourself. But over a period of time, if you deeply have this feeling, I say put it in your Schatzkister, if you deeply have this feeling of wanting to know a mind that you can completely trust, it will begin to happen in tiny things. At least that's my experience. And it helps also to try the practice of doing each thing completely.

[31:30]

And I mean in little things, like if I pick up this bell, my motion to pick it up, when I put my hand on it, I stop for a moment and feel complete. And then I lift it up. And I don't rush through things. I do each thing with a feeling of completeness. And you can practice that when you sit down to do meditation. You stand in front of your cushion a minute and stop. You let that be complete. Then you bring your backbone down on the cushion and stop. Then you put your legs together and stop. Then your hands. Then you bring your mind to your breath. You just get in the habit of doing everything in these little complete units.

[32:52]

Doesn't mean you're walking in jerky robot movements. It's actually what I just described is what essentially Dharma practice means. The present is a dharma. There's no dimension to the present. There's past and there's future. There's no dimension to the present. The present is only an experience held in your senses for a moment. And you hold that in your senses for a moment so you can take some action. So in a world in which everything's changing and there's pulsing always between chaos and dischaos, Or order and disorder.

[34:08]

Depending on your point of view. The word dharma means to hold for a moment. And dharma is another word for Buddhism, dharmism or Buddhism. So you could say Buddhism is the study of how we hold the world for a moment. And in that moment we know our story and our friends and the sound of the birds and the softness of the spring, summer air You hold it for a moment and let it go. And it appears again and you let it go.

[35:12]

This is also the practice of emptiness. Form, emptiness. Form, emptiness. And you practice that on your breathing. You breathe in, form, emptiness. You breathe out and you are actually willing for it to be your last breath. You breathe out completely letting go, a kind of dying. And then usually, at least for quite a while, an exhale, an inhale comes in. There will be a point at which you probably won't remember in which it doesn't come in. But let's hope that's at least a hundred years hence for all of you. So you can quite freely let it go and it comes back, color, form, smell.

[36:27]

Comes into each of your senses. Forms consciousness. And go. Quite nice. Really don't need to know much else. Yeah. No. Enter into it. I don't think you should make yourself suffer. But at a certain point in meditation, first of all, you get skillful enough, familiar enough, that you know when your body is being damaged and when you're not being damaged.

[37:46]

And once you're really clear that your body's not being damaged, you can see that most of the pain, the physical pain, is actually transferred ego anxiety, ego pain. And you actually also can get, since the pain is just a signal going up your nerves and back, As you can see in the little delay when you burn your finger, it takes a moment for the information to get back to your finger and pull it away. You can actually rest your mind in that little delay so the signal doesn't transfer into pain. And that's a kind of yogic skill.

[38:54]

It's not so hard to do, but it requires you to go through quite a lot of pain before you get to that point. I know from personal experience. Why do you think Bodhidharma's face is like that? His eyes are rolled back. They say the tea plant came from his tearing his eyelids off and throwing them down, and they performed a tea plant, which keeps you awake. So anyway, the sense of pain is a problem. But, you know, we have no puberty rights in our culture. There's no preparation for children to know the pain of living.

[40:17]

And I know that the experience of going through a session where it's quite painful to do, a week of sitting in one place, I know from many examples it makes it much easier to go through the pain of discovering you're seriously ill or to be with a friend and actually be willing to change places with them so they feel comfortable with a friend who's sick. So they don't feel like you're saying, jeez, I wish I'm glad that's not me. You actually feel like it could be you. One problem I have with leading Sashins is I make a lot of people suffer. And it makes me quite unhappy. But, so my advice is, don't, there's no need to sit and suffer. At the same time, it's good to extend the length of time you sit a little bit, um, is developing the ability to sit still.

[41:41]

But there is definitely some advantage in finding out how to sit through pain, which is entirely self-created and not damaging you, to be able to be present in it, not avoid it, enter in the middle of it, and suddenly find there's a big space there, and it's not a problem. But I'm not suggesting you do it. I'm just saying it's not all bad. And on that painful moment, it's now one o'clock. So thank you for spending the morning together.

[42:45]

Yes. I have a question for the afternoon. Yeah. Please speak about the ego. The ego. Okay. It just is a big thing about it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I'll say what I can from my ego. Somebody else have a suggestion for this afternoon? Yes. Brigitte should define what she considers ego and you define yours. Then we can dance. Maybe it's easy to connect with this topic. I wonder where you would put intuition into this schedule and whether there is a Buddhist equivalent to this.

[43:49]

OK. OK, anything else? Yes? Where will your mind be if you're not alive? That's for tomorrow afternoon. Okay, have a good lunch and I'll see you at three o'clock. Okay. Well, what I feel we've done since last night and through this morning is we've begun to swim around in the structures of self. I'm using such a strange language as swim around in the structures of self because I, one, I don't know any other way to say it.

[45:12]

And also I'm moving into the language through into private language. There's a shared surface of speech that we all know about. But there are surfaces or refractions of speech that that are like poems that reach into us but we can't easily share. And this language is actually also closely related to dream thinking. Now, to my experience, dreaming is a way of thinking.

[46:38]

It's a kind of mind. It's not limited to what happens when you're asleep and something surfaces. Dreaming that comes up at night is the... I would say that dream thinking is a suppressed form of thinking. And it only surfaces when our self-guard is down, when we're sleeping. When Suzuki Roshi says, a favorite thing I like that he said, very simple, when he says, we most of the time When we look at a tree, we see a tree.

[47:44]

But sometimes when we look at a tree, we see a poem. And what's the difference? Why is it present sometimes and not other times? And I think the kind of thinking which sees a poem when it sees a tree is a kind of part of the same liquid, the same thinking that is dream thinking. And we tend to think that dreams are always... We have a tendency to think, some people at least, that dreams... I covered myself pretty good there. That dreams are... always comments on our self or our problems or something like that but I would say that dreaming is a way of perceiving and sometimes dreams dream themselves they're not about you

[49:02]

Except that you're doing the dreaming. I mean, when I look at a tree, the tree isn't really about me. I'm just seeing the tree. When I see the tree through dreaming mind, I'm also just seeing the tree. It's not a comment on me suddenly. It may be I may be wrong. This is my experience. So let me tell you what I'm doing here. Basically, I'm a practicer. And I talk about what I've practiced, what I've experienced. I'm not much for studying unless the studying helps me explain something or reflect on something.

[50:28]

I spent the first 10, 12 years of my practice, from 25 to 37, about really not studying Buddhism at all. I just practiced. And I knew, I mean, I vaguely knew what the Madhyamaka was and Yogacara, but really quite vaguely. Now I'm not really well informed, but I'm moderately well informed about Buddhism. But so when I talk about self or ego or Buddha nature or whatever, I'm talking about the way these words have become useful to me through practicing. Sometimes I've used the word self.

[51:49]

And Martin goes, I see it. And then afterwards he goes, but Jung says self is such and such. Because Martin knows a lot more than I do. So I've tried to kind of shape up and learn something about these things. But seriously, I've tried, because I realized with Martin and Ulrike and other friends of mine, they kind of make me see I've got to teach or present this with more effectiveness. But still, the root of my working with these things is always my own experience within my interior and exterior consciousness.

[53:07]

So again, I say we've come to somehow, I don't know how we did it, but we did loosen our moorings a bit. Moorings? Moorings is where you tie a ship up. So I don't know how we did it, but somehow we loosened our rope a little. But we could translate so well, I always think she knows everything. It's called mooring in German. Please? It's called mooring. Is it called mooring too? Ah, yes. Same word? These posts on which the ropes are? Yes, yes. So somehow, I don't know how we did it exactly, but somehow I feel we've loosened our moorings a bit. And I never know really what she's saying. And we're together with this kind of support of each other and probably the shared, for most of you, the shared Quaternity experience.

[54:33]

I feel a certain safety that you all feel with each other. which has again allowed you to loosen the moorings a little bit and float out into the structures of self, examining self. So I think it might be good, as some of the questions before lunch suggested, That we look at these structures of self and that we be very clear about how to refasten the moorings. Okay. So does somebody have any questions or anything you'd like to bring up?

[55:44]

I wonder whether something is off with my rubber belt, because it's not a new experience. one which is coming every time when I start to meditate again and it feels like after I've been meditating I feel so content with myself or kind of drunken with this sounds good yeah yeah good but what happened then that i feel like um i'm getting so kind of unpersonal and out of um social socializing social contact and everything to get into it feels like an effort like i don't really want to do it you know but i have to because i'm whatever is human being, and something is wrong with me because I don't feel this natural pull of connecting or communicating or whatever kind of gone somewhere.

[56:54]

And I wonder, I wonder. You do very well at it, though. Do you want to say all that in the mother tongue? What I notice in me is something that comes up again and again when I start to meditate or when I just sit and the experience comes faster and faster, that I notice after I have sat for a while I do not feel so full with myself, that I notice that I have no need at all to approach you or to talk to people. Yes, there's an antidote. Monastic wife. We have a sign-up sheet here.

[58:02]

Um... As I said, meditation is pretty strong medicine. And at certain points, the reality of this underlying mind, shall we call it, can be more the connective in your life than the foreground mind. And you can keep being drawn back into it. It's more satisfying. You feel more integrated. And without being social, you can feel more connected with other people.

[59:16]

It's actually a very real problem. Again, if you're using meditation to develop a sense of well-being, to calm yourself as a kind of therapy, there's probably not much, this probably isn't going to happen. If you keep practice goal-oriented, the goal usually keeps it limited. As soon as you use meditation or rather practice meditation to explore how you exist and how the world exists, one, you don't know where it's going to take you exactly.

[60:18]

Usually it's okay. You usually end up back where you started. Sometimes you end up like me. With late middle age and no place to go and nothing to do. But I got a nice birthday present this morning. Martin gave me a birthday present flying me by balloon all over the place. Thank you very much. Did you tell him your name? What's your name? Raphon Duke something, I don't know. I had to kneel down on an old rug in a muddy field.

[61:56]

And they're supposed to, I don't know, some old German custom, and they had to burn my hair and pour champagne paint on it and put it out. So obviously that's a problem. So we found one strand of hair here which they burned and then poured half a bottle of champagne on it. I smell like a homeless drunk. But when you... The reason... You know, I said this is a real problem. It's because I'm trying to teach adept practice to lay people.

[63:24]

And although Zen practice is fundamentally a monastic practice, there are many of the teachings can be presented to lay people as I'm doing. And what I'm doing is definitely not traditional. And I'm trying to find a way to do it with your help. But even the teachings that can be kind of removed or taken out of monastic life still they have been developed so that you're supported by the structure of monastic life. Okay. So there's a period of time when you've practiced where you often just want to practice.

[64:28]

And you emotionally and psychically really need that time. Now, that might be three months, four months, two months, two years, I don't know. And also, to really go into practice, the structure of monastic life helps a lot. Because there's a schedule. You wake up early in the morning and you meditate and your meals are taken care of and you don't have to think about things. And it's very helpful to have a few months where you don't have to think about anything. You can bump into trees if you want, you still get lunch. So what we have to do if we're going to do adept lay practice

[65:43]

We have to find a way to compensate for the lack of a monastic practice. Or you might come to a monastery for a while. You might do a sashin once or twice a year. All those things help. Or you have to carefully craft your life in such a way for a period of time that you can practice with concentration and still do your daily life. So you could say that practice is in three stages. The entry, the realization, and the incorporation. And the ten oxen pictures, for instance, end with returning to the marketplace, etc.

[67:00]

And the whole process emphasis in Zen practice is to move easily between these states of mind and have both states of mind present all the time so you don't need to return to one. But that takes a long time. Am I being relatively clear here in what I'm saying? Does it make sense?

[68:01]

So maybe we should talk about, because time goes rapidly flying away in this timeless realm, Maybe we should look at some of the things people brought up earlier, ego and self and stuff. Is that okay with you? Oh, I forgot. My singular popular demand. It's embarrassing. Let's just list the words.

[69:24]

Notice you have self, ego, psyche. Personality. Intuition. Personality. Character. He's always after me. I. I. I. Unbewusstes. That's a lot of words.

[70:27]

We use them all the time. And I bet most of us don't know really what they mean. All right, left out. We can put in Buddha nature, so we get a little Buddhism in here. I forgot the Buddha nature, so that we can season the whole thing with Buddhism. We can put the dumb no of this corn. Yes, and the white no of the corn is added. Now... I would like to make a motion.

[71:53]

I wouldn't. I want to put it somewhere else, okay? Which is, I'd like to make here a basic distinction on what I'm speaking about. Now, What we're talking about here, at least in my experience, is, for the most part, an inner topography of experience that we use all the time, but we, as I said, we have a pretty primitive idea about it, really. If you're a trained therapist, you probably have a better idea about these things. But even for therapists, I mean, even somebody like Hillman, he's still working and trying to work out what soul is, what spirit is, and so forth.

[73:05]

Mm-hmm. Now, I would describe each of these as, for lack of a better generalization, bumps. . Bumps. Knubbel. Knubbel? Like heat, but bumps. Knubbels are those things in soups. But you may be in the soup here. Ego is, I believe, animotically related to I. Now, I would like to tell you how I experience these things, and then you can tell me if you, how you experience them, or if you agree or disagree, can amplify it, and so forth.

[74:23]

All right. Yeah, maybe identity. OK. Now. What are you doing? What? Projection. Projection? Well, we can't cover everything today. Function. Projection, transference. I have a lot of problem with that. One of the things that these are, that characterizes some of these things, particularly this one, [...] they're all not seeable.

[75:29]

And even these ones that are invisible. Well, you do experience intuition. It's much harder to say you experience soul. And also, even these things which are part of our daily mind, self, ego, intuition, personality, character, eyeness, consciousness, mind, identity, They're part of our daily life, but they're actually pretty hard to get a hold of. Please show me your ego. They're pretty apparent, I guess. So what's interesting to me is that so much of what's fundamental to our identity is unseen.

[77:06]

So how do we make the unseen seen? Okay, well, let me give you some of the... Let me say here, I've got feeling and motion. I'd also like to put the immediate consciousness. And secondary consciousness. and borrow consciousness.

[78:09]

Now, what I'm suggesting here, first of all, The most basic distinction to make probably to begin to explore this is you've got to be able to make some distinctions in consciousness. You've got to educate your consciousness. Okay. Now, one thing I always point out is basic to all the teaching I do is to be able to make a distinction between feeling and emotion. But we often use them, at least in English, interchangeably. I'm angry. Being angry is a feeling. Also, ich bin ärgerlich, und ärgerlich zu sein ist eine Empfindung.

[79:26]

But you can say, I feel anger. You can't say, I anger feel. Man kann also sagen, ich fühle Ärger, aber ich kann nicht sagen, I, ich, was immer. Yeah, or you can say, I feel an emotion. You can't say, I emotion feel. So the language tells you something different is going on. But we could say that feeling is like water and emotions are like waves. So then we have to distinguish between feeling emotion and non-graspable feeling. Between feeling and emotion I could write an incomprehensible feeling.

[80:56]

Where is the word feeling assigned to? You could rather say feeling is in the direction of feeling. But I avoid the word feeling because it reminds me too much of the English word feeling. The word emotion, when you use it, it comes to me quite externally. I don't say anything. Okay, by making these distinctions, I'm not trying to exhaust the possibility, but to give you some tool to explore your own consciousness topography. Excuse me, can I just add something? Yeah. Yes, we are again at the same problem.

[82:06]

You would have to say, everything that is not tangible, I would have to describe as feeling. And everything that goes in the direction of emotion, which is more tangible than feeling. Or feeling. Okay. Now, these distinctions, emotion, feeling, et cetera, are most succinctly expressed in... in the five skandhas. And Ulrike is very skillful at teaching these five skandhas. And I don't know if it's worth going through it, but if some of you wanted to, Ulrike might take one of the sessions and present them to you.

[83:30]

And she can do it at least as well as I can, and some of the ways I teach it has been developed through together. But I think what I'd like to do is just look at this, then we'll take a break and we'll look at this. Back on the waterbed. I've got a much softer cushion than you guys. Almost too soft. So when we say Let me just try to make the simplest distinction I can make between feeling and emotion.

[84:51]

If you have an emotion, it has a beginning and an end. And you can use the word feel to describe that, like I feel angry now and I don't feel angry anymore. But feeling as used in Buddhism is more like there's a feeling in this room that we've generated, but it's quite hard to say what it is exactly. And if you look at it too closely or try to grasp it, it disappears. So what we can say is feeling does not support conceptual thought.

[85:56]

Or it tends to disappear if you try to grasp it or scrutinize it. And yet feeling accompanies all thought. And it accompanies all emotion. And as long as you're alive, there's some feeling. And feeling is closely related to a sensation base or to the senses. It's a kind of quality of being, of being alive, that arises through the senses. And again, one of the things I'm trying to point out here is that you can shift your identity stream within your body and within your consciousness.

[87:11]

From where to where? Within our body and within our consciousness. We can shift it within our consciousness and we can shift it within our body. So for most of us, our identity stream is glued to our thoughts. And you think what you think is who you are, what you are. And when you have bad thoughts, you think you're bad perceived. And it's hard for some people to say, oh, those are just bad thoughts, but that's not me. So when you're practicing

[88:25]

Counting your breath, what you're doing in a structural sense is you're developing the ability to shift identity out of thoughts into your breath. But the adhesiveness is in your thoughts, so you pay attention to your breath and then your sense of where you're located snaps back into your thoughts. If your practice is mature, the opposite happens. Your sense of a location, your sense of identity location snaps into your breath as soon as you're not thinking or as soon as there's no reason to think. Now that difference and the skills of it and the practices of it are the subject of various koans, various teaching stories.

[89:43]

So, one of the things you're doing is if you can begin to notice non-graspable feeling but not interfere with it by grasping it, You can begin to have your identity stream in non-graspable feeling which accompanies everything and only in your thoughts sometimes. The result of that is you feel very whole all the time. And you feel very connected all the time. because feeling is present all the time.

[91:03]

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