The reason I suggested yesterday and some version again today... Yeah, of a topic like how do we resolve our consciousness? Maybe how do you resettle consciousness onto consciousness? How do you? How do you settle consciousness on consciousness? Yeah. How do you make sense of Und wie machst du Sinn in deiner Welt der Erfahrung?

[01:02]

Also ich schlage so ein Thema vor. Weil ich möchte, dass er mit Buddhismus kämpft. After all, we've got a few hundred years of contemporary ideas of self. And a few thousand years, though mostly projected backwards from contemporary times, of ideas about self and Human life and so forth.

[02:04]

And I don't think we should just sort of say, oh, Buddhism says this, and so I reject everything else. I want you to fight for your self-nature. I'll be expelled from Buddhism as a heretic. And, yeah, I like the teenage spirit of... of, um... What? LAUGHTER Of Dongshan. Yeah, you know, he said, as I told you, what do you mean the sutra says no eyes, no ears, no nose?

[03:05]

I have eyes, ears, and nose. Yeah. So anyway, so what do you have to say? Okay, maybe we start. We had a women's group, so yeah. Yeah, I've always wanted to be invited, but I wear my sick dress. Yeah, I know. Because you were talking, now I was laughing because you said, I'd like you to fight with Buddhism. I think we've fought it a lot. Yeah, with every word, because we didn't get the question right. Always, you did, what was the question? Find your sense in consciousness. And then we start consciousness, consciousness, consciousness. Then we start... What was the question again? I knew it was an elusive question.

[04:07]

No, but first we tried to find a connection between sense and the senses. And like when you are in immediate consciousness, You are in your senses, like when you really smell. That's what I didn't mean. Yeah, why not? Now there is a connection. We started also with the sense of the life, the reason for life, and that you can find it when you are in the senses. When you're really in the senses, the immediate consciousness, you don't have the question anymore, makes life a sense. I had this experience in summer, And we had an answer to the question. And then we got totally confused. One was confused and the other said, it's okay to be confused, that's the best state of mind for me.

[05:15]

So we were laughing a lot. He wanted in too. We're having a serious discussion. And then we had the idea, you didn't mean it as a question, it's a koan. It must be a koan. And then we had Daphne there, and she is new to this place, new to Gusen, and she said, it must be koan. Okay, and then we found an answer. And the answer was, oh, you have to send in English. You know, it came from somewhere from the open. It came there. In German it was... You know it too, Robin. With the beep. The second kitten beeps three times a day. So, the catkin is... No.

[06:16]

No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. We were sure we looked it up in the dictionary. Good that I like the experience of not knowing what's going on. The catkin is peeping three times in the morning. The catkin is peeping? Just peeping. Making noise. Oh, making noise. Yeah. Oh. Peep, peep, peep, peep. Yeah. Peep, peep, peep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peep, peep. Yeah. No, but we had those answers. That was the answer to your question. So you turned it into a koan.

[07:17]

Yes. But it was more to him. You know, Sukhira, she used to tell a story that the bird, I think the word for tori is bird. And the torii is also these big gates, Shinto gates. You know this story. He knows this story. Anyway, some rather powerful Zen teacher in his life, Tadei Heiji, I guess, Soji-ji or Heiji. So Suzuki Roshi told her this story about the torii. They are birds, but also these big torii. He said the tori, I guess it is, sat on the tori and broke it. The bird sat on the gate and broke it. And he said it completely seriously and everyone, he said, no one could figure it out. And he said, years later I visited him when he was an old man and I asked him, what did you mean I never have been able to penetrate?

[08:19]

He said, I was just joking. You never know. Okay, so the catkin, that's the kind of bird I take it. No, it's the willow. The willow, oh. The willow. The pussy [...] willow goes meow. No. No? It's much more interesting. Oh. Maybe where there's a willow, there's a way. All right. Can we hear from the serious group? Well, we also had a really good discussion here, being interrupted by this laughing woman and people from other groups coming and asking us, what was the question?

[09:47]

I think in the future I'll let you, Dita and Otmar, choose the questions, the topics. But it was quite fruitful because I had the feeling kind of if you put everything in a big jar and you mixed it up, consciousness and grandness and dvita and these few layers and four minds and all that and kind of went through all that until we figured, well, it's not possible to look at it that way, that we kind of have to sort it out a little bit and just stay with for example, one system and see how we can practice and work with one system like these three layers of consciousness, or, for example, like the four minds or the three minds plus the one additional Zen mind, and just stay with that and see if you get that, that such a system of looking at the whole makes sense and how we can practice with that.

[10:57]

Mm-hmm. But there are also interesting questions. For example, there was this question when we have immediate consciousness, secondary consciousness, and broad consciousness, and we start with a phrase, like already it, or the many phrases you gave us, is this, when we hear a phrase, is this broad consciousness? When we use a phrase for the first time, already it? someone tells us from the outside what already it and we don't experience it and is it when we then start to practice with such a phrase already it and it slowly slowly we get we go into an experience of already it is this a shift from Using broad consciousness to immediate consciousness, to experience a phrase. So a question like... this question came up... They're good questions, yes.

[12:00]

...at this mix-up study point, Joanna. Deutsch, bitte. May I add a question? Yes, sure. But he should say what he said in Deutsch. Yes, so we also had a lively discussion and have a little bit of everything, what the topics of the last days were a little bit thrown apart. and tried to get some clarity in it, but with the result that this is simply not possible at all, but that perhaps with such a system as these three forms of consciousness or the three types, the three mental states plus the one that is mentioned in Zazen, and that you should stay with such a system to see if it makes sense and if you can practice with it and how it enriches the practice, how it helps you in the practice.

[13:00]

But there was also a question that I found very interesting, for example, when we work with these sentences like, this is it, or no gaining idea, or, I don't even know them in English, then it is actually first of all a stored consciousness, that you take information from the outside, No one tells us that and says that in the immediate consciousness, in the moment when we experience it, or we get a taste of experiencing it. So such questions arose from this actually turbulent mixer, where we ended up again and again. I had these questions yesterday and the day before yesterday. It's about sorting, yes, where you can sort these experiences.

[14:02]

So, for example, what we understood is, for example, if you go for a walk here in the landscape and are completely in this landscape without thinking, then you are in reality. If you then say, hey, man, the weather is great today, the sun is shining, the black forest, then we think that was the secondary consciousness. If you then think, man, this beautiful tree here, I think this is an old apple variety, then you are a born. As soon as that was clear. So I had this question already yesterday, and what was clear to me in relationship to these three types of consciousness is, for example, taking a walk outside and just being in the midst of walking without thinking, that's the immediate consciousness.

[15:06]

And then, for example, I see, oh, the sun is shining, it's beautiful weather. That would belong to the secondary consciousness. And if I, for example, see a tree and start thinking, oh, this might be an old kind of an apple tree, then that would be borrowed consciousness. Yes. But where... If you think this is an old kind of apple... No, somebody told me it's an old kind of apple. Oh, yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, that's right. It's all right. but there are also times where you have your life's experiences which you take along while you are taking your walk and you are sort of constructing things models with with them during your walk.

[16:14]

Where does it belong? It's my own experience. It's not borrowed. It's not immediate. Only the happiness I have when I do this is immediate. But the doing is not immediate. The other phenomenon is that you have a topic or an imagination and you immerse yourself in it so much that you experience it with all your physical experience. It is quite contemporary, but it is not in the situation. phenomenon is, for example, if you are so vividly in your imagination and plunge into it that you experience everything very vividly physically.

[17:17]

So what is that? Let's leave that out for a minute. Yes, this is the kind of question one should ask about these things. This is not a classification scheme. These are not containers. They're meant to, as a teaching, It's meant to give you a feeling, give you a way to feel the difference between a consciousness or a knowing rooted in the immediate situation and one not rooted in the immediate situation. And the secondary consciousness is secondary to both borrowed and immediate.

[18:33]

Because if your knowing is rooted in the immediate situation, Then what you think about in this so-called secondary consciousness is also immediate consciousness. The example of... of, well, you see some trees that have been trimmed, and you think about it, is a little too simple. Because it also includes going way up into the world consciousness. That's what the line is. So the immediate situation can also simply be your breath.

[19:44]

So if you're knowing, I'm avoiding using the word consciousness for now, but let's say knowing or consciousness, all right. It's rooted in your breath. Even if you're thinking about designing a house or something, that's also immediate consciousness. Now, so then, as long as you're rooted in your breath, anything you think about as immediate consciousness, no, not quite. Because in this more subtle way of looking at it, There are some things that if you start thinking about it, you won't stay rooted in your breath.

[20:56]

If you get anxious or you begin to think about lying to somebody, probably you can't stay rooted in your breath. No, the example I give for this to confirm the truth of this is the lie detector. My point, as I've said often, lie detectors work a large portion of the time. You can learn how to fool lie detectors, but basically they work quite well. Because it's very difficult for the body to lie.

[21:58]

You can usually get contradicted. The brain waves will say one thing and body information will say something else. So it's very difficult for the body to lie. And noticing that is the secret of the entry to and understanding the process of the Eightfold Path. Because you enter through right speech after having developed mindfulness. And right speech, including thinking to yourself, rooted in the body and the breath, you become a kind of truth body. So this is one entry to that territory.

[23:02]

Of where your state of mind, mode of mind is rooted. And the Eightfold Path makes sense as a practice when you see that right speech, which comes before behavior and conduct in the list, you'd think it would be... right views and then right conduct, but no, it's right views and right speech. Because the truthful speech allows truthful conduct. And truthful speech is developed through practicing mindfulness and meditation.

[24:04]

Not that we are liars, all of us. Only some of us are liars. No. It's not that we're all liars. But just that the mind not rooted in the body, is always trying to make excuses and figure things out and protect the self-image. So the Buddha's polemic move to counteract the Upanishadic substantialist self. It's also a somatic counteract to the substantialist Upanishadic view of the self.

[25:27]

It's also a somatic move To shift the sense of self to the body. And the mindfulness and meditation practices in many ways, as I said this morning, are a shift of the self from consciousness to the body. So the body is the self in Buddhism. There are many ways this comes out.

[26:31]

It's interesting to me, I'll just throw this out for the heck of it, how James Joyce in Ulysses. Parallels Homer's Ulysses. Parallels what? Homer's Odysseus or Ulysses. James Joyce's book Ulysses. Yeah, I know. Parallels Homer's Ulysses. Homer, yeah. Homer, yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry. Homer. When you say that, I think of an Indian speaking to his female horse, Homer. Halt. Halt. Or it's somebody speaking to his French mother.

[27:40]

Sorry. You know, the Lankavatara Sutra, It says the... I'm going to repeat the same word again. This is the way we translate. Maya, Maya. Okay. In that unmentionable sutra, it says the realized person should simultaneously hear the syllable, the word, and the phrase.

[28:56]

So, in other words, you can overdo it and hear the syllables so much you get into saying hello to your French mother. But the sense of that is, you know, this ancient Indian idea in the beginning was the sound, not the word. And the sound carries the body and the more subtle meaning than the word. And they say in a good Zen teacher's teaching is first of all and primarily in the sound of his or her voice, not in the words. And so It's like, again, like you can hear the bodies in a film that's not dubbed much better than when it's dubbed.

[30:14]

You can't hear it at all when it's dubbed. So, anyway, going back to James Joyce. Nochmal zurück zu James Joyce. He parallels each section because each section of the book is based on a part of the body, the stomach or the genitals or something. Ja, weil jeder Teil des Buches korrespondiert zu einem Teil des Körpers, dem Bauch, den Genitalien. Anyway. So, in Joyce, which is interesting to me, he basically, in what is... Again, this is just my own interest, not so much yours. But what's interesting for me about Joyce is independent of Buddhism or influence of yogic blah, blah, blah.

[31:16]

He clearly has written this immense novel which changed English writing, which basically assumes the self is the body. And throughout it, you can feel in his words how he sounded out each sentence. Now, my point here is, I'm asking you to fight with the Buddhist ideas of self. But I'm also saying, one of the ideas of self in Buddhism is the body itself, or its body.

[32:19]

And that idea of self is already in our culture independent of Buddhism. And I think that in many ways we, and I've said this before, that we are choosing to practice Buddhism Not just because Buddhism is so interesting. But because you made a choice among the choices offered to you by your society, which implicitly are Buddhistic. Did I not say that clearly? You did, and I'm trying to find my way into what you said. Just think of the popular songs. Should I translate this?

[33:39]

No. It's only for Alan and Valentin. And all you secret English speakers. Lots of people think I secretly know German and just don't tell anybody. After all these years, I'm just listening and pretending I don't understand. Like Russian waiters used to do, hiding, pretending to be only know Russian or something like that. At tables when you were in Russia. Yeah. Okay, so that's enough about, I think, this is where the mind, to give you an experience of the rootedness of the mind in the breath, body, and phenomena.

[34:49]

And that a mind thus rooted can think about many things, but some things it probably won't think about. because there's an inbuilt conflict or something like that. And as Ottmar pointed out, along with Dogen, who says, what is the purpose of consciousness? The purpose of consciousness is to help you decide to practice. It's not the territory of practice particularly, but it helps you decide to practice.

[36:00]

Somebody gives you a gate phrase and you decide to use it. But using it, it becomes intentional mind and rooted in immediate consciousness. I wonder if this is useful to you this kind of seeing the territory of our own And I didn't respond to the latter question, Lona, that you brought up. because I think it's too difficult for me. But maybe I'll try to come back to it. But first I have to understand it, which I don't yet. Okay, someone else.

[37:02]

Our group, we were kind of confused, too, about your question and... We tried out to, well, we thought also it might be a koan. And then I had a quite strong emotional reaction to the situation because somehow it felt like I... couldn't think anymore and I was very confused and kind of lost track of being able to think anything. I was quite desperate in the moment. But that's a good example of my question. How do we resolve our consciousness? And when we feel desperate, etc., what do we do? So then actually the whole time we kind of, the whole group was kind of just staying with that confusion.

[38:17]

interesting process because kind of each some of us just had to continue to try out to find a way through it and I kind of stayed in my desperateness and it changed a little bit and Peter kind of could just stay with it and not having to react to it. Peter? Peter the dryer? Okay. And Paul was supporting the continuation. This is an English speaking group? Yes. And I don't know, it was just something happening. I couldn't name it. Did you feel good or bad or unpleasant or frustrated?

[39:25]

In the beginning it was kind of hard. But it's interesting to just... Also then that every one of the group was kind of involved in that and something happened with the whole group. Deutsch, bitte. So I tried to do it. At first we thought it was a core, and then we tried to understand it in different ways, and then I was quite desperate, because I no longer knew what was actually happening, and I had the feeling that I could no longer think. It was then recorded by the group and there were different reactions from the individuals.

[40:26]

But Nick and I were together all the time for a while that we didn't know how it would go on and what would happen. Okay, good. Someone else? One of the things we noticed, or Paul noticed, in the group was that at the beginning, when it was maybe a little more intellectual, the discussion, that we were sitting quite a long way away from each other. And we all got confused. We couldn't really make any sense out of the question.

[41:30]

It got to the stage where we had to leave the room. We all went upstairs to Paul's room. It was interesting because it changed the situation completely. And then when it was time for the break, we all left the room and we all ended up again in the same place at the same table. Separated? No, we were completely close, just physically. We were all sitting around the table trying to get as close as possible. You should have come up to my room. Yeah, go ahead. It's something that Paul said.

[42:34]

It's like the question generated something to happen that we didn't find any word for, but we just realized that something happened in the group. Through the question or through the move to Paul's room, or all of it together? Through the question, through the confusion, there is actually quite a dynamic going on. Ah, okay. Maybe my questions aren't so bad. Okay, good, thanks. Deutsch bitte. Gaelic, if you like. No, Deutsch bitte. Yes, I think at the beginning of the discussion we noticed that we were sitting quite far apart from each other. More or less, intellectual is the wrong word. But we thought about what the question means.

[43:37]

And it would then get worse and worse until someone said he couldn't actually continue to participate, he couldn't really move anymore. When we went upstairs, we changed the room to Paul's room. And it was interesting that it was a different situation. Most people suddenly said, this confusion is not a problem at all. So downstairs in the hall where we were, I think it was a problem. And then upstairs in the other room, I think it was a problem. It wasn't a problem any longer. This confusion wasn't a problem any longer when we were in Paul's room. Whereas it was... I've had the same experience going to Paul's room. I sometimes just stand outside his door and feel good.

[44:53]

I think the star has his doors open really well. And then we came down, and then there was actually a break, and the meeting ended, but we all found ourselves again at the table, the whole group, without having planned it, and were much closer to each other. So suddenly the bodies asked, Okay, thanks. Someone else. In our group we had a somehow concentric discussion. We first tried to anchor consciousness in the system of the five skandhas and the six sense consciousness, the five sense consciousness and thinking consciousness.

[46:08]

And that was much too abstract and we couldn't deal with that. So we tried a more concrete approach. by just viewing the experience with making sense, making decisions. And this was still quite difficult. And then someone brought up the question, now if your question is, how do we make sense in consciousness, what would be the alternative? making sense where else. And this brought the group somehow to awareness or mindfulness, states of mindfulness, to make sense through that or in that. And that was kind of relieved because all the people were, I think, in tune that they want to avoid consciousness which they associated with

[47:13]

thinking and concept building and stuff like that. And so we were talking about the difficulties of reading perception of likes and dislikes and concepts. And especially we found that one point in and getting rid of them is to accept them first. If you have any associations which are going along with perceptions, you just state that the association is there, but you don't try to get rid of it immediately. But still, this was a question like how to do that, especially when they are strongly dominating the perception. And the next question was, how do we make sense of... The next turning point in the discussion was that someone brought up the question, how do we make sense now of our discussion here?

[48:29]

That means how do we listen to each other? Is it by following the statements or is it more by letting each statement popping up or appear and just holding it and try to complete it in a way and then take the next statement? Or is it to follow the connections, to look for thread and then how you look for it? In our group, we had a discussion that I would like to call concentric. That is, we tried first of all to attach the question of the system of the five skandhas and the consciousness of the five senses plus the consciousness of thinking, and that was too abstract. And then we tried to make it more concrete by saying, what role does consciousness play in decision-making, which direction?

[49:33]

How do you give your life direction? What do you weigh? And what role does consciousness play? That was still quite abstract. And then the question arose, if Bosch's question is, How do you make your singing conscious? What is the alternative? Where do you make your singing? And that was such a turning point, because then existence as an alternative came up, and awareness as a way to go there. And then many people felt the impulse in the seminar, yes, that is the direction I actually want to go, through awareness away from too much thinking, too much conceptualization, and that is actually my form of sensibility, which I am also looking for and practicing here. And another turning point was also the question of how do I make sense of this discussion that is currently taking place?

[50:34]

That means, do I try to connect all the statements and then find a red thread, or is it more so that the individual Okay. You know, so far, I think it's wonderful what you're talking about. It's good. Yes, it's wonderful what you're talking about. And I want to add something to the group of Otmar and Lona. How do we establish identity by continuity? How do we establish the continuity of our identity?

[51:50]

And if we use consciousness, then we can notice with what we identify, how we identify. So by noticing is step one. And how... Many do not really believe that it's possible to be in immediate consciousness in everyday life outside of this context. For a longer time. For a longer time. Maybe for moments, yes, but you cannot experience to do it maybe for one or two or three or four hours. Yeah, but you can. Okay.

[53:12]

But that was all in both languages, right? Okay. Has anything been left out that somebody wants to bring up? I would like to briefly report from our group that we also had big problems at the beginning with the questioning and we then focused on the question of what value does consciousness get through practice? So in the beginning we also were confused about the question and then we just concentrated on the question What does consciousness mean to us now since we are practicing for quite a long time?

[54:37]

How is consciousness changing through practice? And how does this so-called new consciousness change the practice? And then we will just... talking about examples, how we are dealing with thinking, that we create a certain space where we think and where we try not to think, how much energy thinking actually takes. Lots. Yeah, and it also takes energy when we just randomly think, so it takes away just living energy while we're doing things that could... Called leaking. ...that could use that energy. You can see the grey matter coming out your ears. And all in all we came to the kind of a conclusion that thinking has less space, but when it's needed it's more concentrated and much more effective.

[55:56]

This was some examples. We then came to the point that we told how thinking and consciousness have changed, that, for example, thinking takes up less space, the experience that thinking absorbs a lot of energy, even in situations where we simply think in everyday life, and Roshi called it running out or leaking, where the energy that goes in there as habitual energy actually belongs to what we are doing right now. And overall we came to the conclusion general experience that thinking takes up less space when we practice, but when we think, it is much more effective and is used more as a tool. We weren't so much confused in our group.

[57:03]

We tried to find examples for, let's say, extreme examples of borrowed immediate and secondary consciousness. Later on there came the question, it is also about topography. And if you have this typography, where are the boundaries or where is probably what leading into something else? Is non-thinking consciousness, where does it sort of extend into or change into awareness? This wasn't quite clear in our group, so we kindly ask you to probably explain this a bit more. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes.

[58:28]

I didn't speak about that in my group, I'm sorry, but I want to just tell of my feeling that what sense I make from consciousness, What I am doing as a profession has very much to do with the different stages of... Like this, yeah? Yeah, like this. So our work is to come from the borrowed consciousness, which brings the party tour, the score, or the conductor, whatever. If we work with this material, it will settle down in our immediate consciousness.

[59:30]

And if we are lucky – so it's not every concept which brings out this result – but if we are lucky, we can have a concept which where we musicians don't think anymore because we know everything, we have worked on it and it can flow, it is in our mind, we are in awareness because we hear many many things, not with our brain but we are aware of many many things. Well, and if we're happy, it is a good concept and most of us would have been in immediate consciousness, I would say. Sometimes I think all my efforts to be a Buddhist are just to approach what musicians already know. But since I was given a bad ear, I have to find other ways.

[60:32]

Okay, thank you. Oh, I have a question. My confusion about this question resulted from the notion of sense, because usually you speak about the function of consciousness to create a predictable world and so on. And so with function I can enter in an experience, but sense It was for me an invitation for thinking. I looked for an experience, for sense, and in contrast, the function.

[61:32]

And that was one reason for I couldn't understand what you could have meant. Yeah, okay. Thanks, yeah. Ich war in der Gruppe in Gerhardt. So in our group, in Gerald's group, we found out that develops bodily knowing, which does sort of take weight from... The mental shoulders. Yes. We have some examples, For example, one said that she was somehow stressed and that she really wanted to go to the Kiesertraining in the evening.

[62:47]

And she thought to herself, she has to go to the Kiesertraining, she has to go to the Kiesertraining. And before she really went, she just pulled the pillow and she noticed that the whole body actually wanted to sit and that was the solution. There was one example which was told that somebody wanted to go and do some physical exercises, a specific training, and she wanted to go and wanted to go, but her body sort of led her to the cushion, to the zafu, and there she sort of relaxed. And forgot about exercising. and forgot the exercises. And then something funny happened to me once, that I wanted to get up in the morning and thought all the time, today I don't get up, today I don't get up, it just doesn't work anymore.

[63:52]

And during this thinking, There was this funny incident which happened to me. In one morning I was just awaking and then I said to myself, oh, today I don't want to get up. I'm not going to get up. I'm just staying in bed. And while my mind was doing this, my body got up. Happens to me all the time. OK. Anyone else? Yes. I would like to add, I was also in the group with Gerald and Christa, that through practice certain patterns of action or patterns of thought are always present, so something that is perhaps negative, certain behaviors, habits,

[65:12]

Practice makes clear patterns of thinking or of behaving. They become sort of conscious. And by becoming more conscious, you can break them. Yeah, okay, good. Okay. Excuse me for quoting Einstein. But it's always struck me, interesting, that he writes that his ideas came from his body. He'd pay attention to physical feelings and they would turn into images or ideas. And I think in some ways his genius may have been, because he wasn't that outstanding in school, for example, His genius might have been to recognize that he could think through his body.

[66:51]

Or at least that recognition, which goes against the way we're taught, may have been at least part of his genius. And I think when you have, and it seems to me you all had some, or many of you had some experience of this, when you have an idea or a Yeah, something you can't grasp conceptually with your mind. And you don't just brush it off, but you take it seriously. You can only take it seriously if you can get it into your body. And that's why maybe Valentin and Paul's group started out rather separate, but somehow pretty soon they were physically very close, even though not mentally any closer perhaps to the idea, but physically closer to it.

[68:19]

If that's the case, it also represents the way you work with gate phrases and koans. Particularly in the southern pedagogy, things are formulated in the southern pedagogy. There is a southern school. The teachings are framed so they have a conceptual form but it doesn't compute.

[69:24]

And so you can't think them through. They're not riddles though. That's this kind of dumb western idea that they're riddles. They're not riddles, but they don't compute conceptually. So if you do take them seriously or repeat them in a mantra-like way, as I've said, you have to get them into your body. And a more subtle kind of thinking goes on in the body. Okay. Which I suspect isn't different than the way the body functions when a group of musicians really start playing together. You can hear it on record sometimes. Sometimes it's just unbelievable how together they are in the next band.

[70:33]

They're playing it, but they're not really together. Okay, so now, what was in my mind when I brought this phrase up, which I've actually been bringing up in various forms since I got here a week ago or so? I'm really trying to explore what we mean by self. And I'm trying to find rather muddy questions unresolved questions. Questions that are not open to simple mental solutions.

[71:40]

To see what they excavate. It's a kind of archaeology. And part of my idea is that in fact we all have some experience, I think, of a core self. Gerald or Gerhard or Michelin. We have some idea of Yeah, I was like that as a little kid and I'm that kind of person and so forth.

[72:41]

Yeah, and I'm going to make this decision because that's the kind of person I am. And if we don't even think of it that explicitly, we do have some sense. Is that what Buddhism means, like we shouldn't be like that? Or maybe our sense of self that we've developed, you know, over a thousand years and over the last couple hundred years? And our emphasis on individualism and being, you know, etc. Yeah, rooted in our political thing that each one person, one vote and all that stuff.

[73:47]

Which suggests we can make up our own minds. It's interesting how democracies really try hard to make us think alike. In monarchies, you don't have to think alike. You get too far off with his head. You can think anything you want, but you get too far out. But you can't do that in a democracy. Maybe in Putin's democracy. But anyway, you can't do it, and so you have to get everyone to think together, which is much of what's going on in the media. And all of this advertising everywhere which tries to externalize our desires and so control our behavior.

[74:55]

In fact, if you look carefully at me, there's a pop-up ad right here. No, no. And this was made by... Nikes. Okay. So my idea is, what's the beginning and end of the process of self? That I'm trying to explore with you. And I won't say much about it. But just there's some beginning point or some sense of the core self that comes into each situation.

[76:19]

Or I go out, I look out the window of the back door here, our back front door. And I look to see if the car I use is there. And I look to see if the windshield wipers are up. So how do I go through that process? I first have to locate the car. Is it under the snow or is it now visible? Thanks to Andreas, I can see it. Then I have to remember what I'm looking for. What am I looking for? The insect things. Antennas, so then I see it's okay and I...

[77:22]

But when I first look, I'm actually scanning. Where's the car and what am I looking for? And I'm trying to remember, why was I going to look at the car? But as soon as I noticed the windshield wipers, which weren't up a couple of days ago, I think, oh, that's what I was looking to see if they're up now. And once I see that, I've resolved my consciousness away and I can let it go. Or I look at the clock, my watch, to see if we should stop soon. And sometimes I leave my clock, my watch, on summertime. So it's an hour difference.

[78:43]

What are you laughing about? I even have a watch, as you know, which is a 24-hour watch, and then I really have to figure it out. It's not a 12-hour watch, it's 24, so noon is where 3 o'clock is, you know. So say this watch says 20 after 7, which is summertime. So I look at it, and then I have to sort of think, oh, yeah, that and I have to jump. So I notice the thinking process. And once I figure out what time it is, then I resolve that moment of consciousness, of investigatory consciousness.

[79:49]

Now, is self present in that? Now... But even if it's set on the regular time, as this one is, if I come to it thinking, if I come to it thinking, then my mind is prepared to look at the time. And since it's an analog watch, not digital, I can I feel the 20 minutes. That's why the 24-hour one is so hard. I feel the 20 minutes of this distance. And if it's... I don't even have to look at the hour hand because I know it's at the right time. But the process I go through is just quicker, but it's very similar to if it's set at summertime instead of wintertime.

[81:08]

Okay, now if I come to it from immediate consciousness, I don't come to it thinking. I sort of know I have to find out what time it is. So my hand, you know, my thinking starts to do something, looks for the watch. And then my eyes look at it. And then I say, I have to figure out it's a watch. And what is this black circle?

[82:11]

Oh, that's a watch. So if I come to it from immediate consciousness or non-thinking consciousness, it's a different process than if I come to it from thinking consciousness. Then I go through a process, not just thinking what time it is, but what the heck is this object? Oh, it's round, it's a watch. And why am I looking all of a sudden at what time it is? Okay, so in many ways I'm studying this process of when do I focus consciousness and when do I let go of it? What is the process of finding coherency in consciousness? When things are glued together the way I want them. Now, if I'm some sort of shaman, And I'm trying to feel you and maybe know which one of you is ill in some way.

[83:37]

Then I can't come to it with a thinking mind. Then I have to come to it from non-thinking consciousness. And then I have to let it resolve itself in a different way than, oh, this is a watch and I'm looking at the time. So just using the imaginary example of being a shaman, I say I feel there's three diseases in the room. I don't know what the diseases are, but I feel their presence.

[84:40]

So I begin scanning, and then I said, okay, that person has two diseases, and this person has one disease. Then I have to scan, what are they? Where are they located in the body? So in doing this as a shamanic consciousness, I'm resolving it also. Is that being resolved through myself? Is that being resolved through a process that's part of this situation which has nothing to do with self? Now, if we take away the shamanic example, much of any subtle activity is something like that and not something that consciousness and your self-history is organizing.

[85:53]

So now I'm just engaging you in my own process of wondering of what we call self in the West, what we call self in Buddhism, etc. Okay, how? Yeah, what did you want to say? When you're in a highly non-practicing surrounding, sort of conventional, I should count, surrounding, how do you function then? Me or someone else? You, as giving the example. I always function the same way. Always a function the same way. I find that I get more and more forgetful, but I have to rely on things to pop up, but it's a difficult transition.

[86:54]

But surface consciousness is more activated in ordinary situations, of course. Yes, Mona? have two parts inside one goes with how you describe it and there is another one that believes more and more in configuration and that bodies are extremely sensitive and what you described from the shaman i know in a normal psychological empathetic process and i believe that i built the configuration of the other person inside of me, my body builds it, and I can scan it, make my own body, and then understand.

[88:10]

Your client understands the scanning process you're going through, you mean? Or you understand? I think that my body builds the situation if my... But that's what I'm talking about. Yes, but it's nothing in between. I think it's the body that builds configurations. Because I have an experience with myself, once I tried really to remember really good how I felt when I was four years old, some scenes I could imagine and And I got the feeling that to be inside of me felt, when I was four years old, almost equal like now. And I think the configuration was similar, a lot of configuration. The feeling of the world and of myself and towards the Lord, oh, there is a...

[89:13]

Something equal. And it doesn't fit with Buddhism, I think. It doesn't fit with Buddhism? It seems to me it does. I mean, I think that's... Oh, in German, please. Yes. That's what I wanted to say first. What Roshi described as shamanistic, I think I know it from the therapy. with clients and at the moment there is a part of me that really believes that I am no longer doing anything, or that my body is no longer doing anything but recreating the situation of the other person, with very fine tools, and that I can perceive that and then understand the other person. And I also experienced that I can understand myself, so to speak, by feeling myself in the four-year-old, with certain scenes that I remembered. And when I felt it very deeply, I felt that I called it for myself to be lonish.

[90:18]

It's a mood. So this mood, to be myself, felt quite similar to the mood to be myself in myself today. I think it's worth responding to this even if dinner is a little late. I think my own experience anyway is that to continue with the shamanic metaphor, because it's an easy one to speak about, I think it's possible to see in another person a, let's say, illness.

[91:19]

You can also smell people's state of mind. You can smell crazy people, particularly you can smell people who have cancer and so forth. But let's use seeing in a wide sense of not just visual seeing. I think you can see such a thing in another person, say, without configuring it in yourself. I think you can also configure it in yourself to really study it. And I think there's some danger of even making yourself sick by doing it. Yeah, particularly, but if you're strong and you can understand what's going on, you can become crazy with another person.

[92:40]

And keep it separate from your own identity, but still be crazy. No, what do I mean by separate from your own identity? I think there's also a danger if you misread it or you configure it in yourself, you then also then reconfigure it in the other person and can make them sick. And I think sometimes it's easier to know such things if we still use this metaphor. In a group, then... One to one.

[93:48]

For instance, it's easier to bend a spoon in a group of people than by yourself. If you're into spoon bending. Because the field, a concentrated field, makes the spoon softer. That's enough for today, huh? But thanks, Lorna. May I ring the bell? It just don't, you know, just freeze. You don't have to sit.

[94:49]

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