there are aspects of the experience of self which are detrimental. And one is certainly the constant process we have of self-referencing. Yeah, and so we can say the self-referencing self and the self-comparing self. Okay, so how can we do something about that? because it does interfere with our deeper functioning and our functioning in a way that's freer of our karma and our psychological

[01:07]

patterns. So I'm saying a few things right now to bring us back to where we were before lunch. But I'm still completely open to your comments, whatever you want to add or say. Because part of... Well, not only is that useful in our discussion, because part of our... establishing a non-self-referencing self, is establishing ourselves, establishing ourselves, establishing our continuity, in what I have called a durative time,

[02:34]

But we could also call it performative time. Time we can perform. Now, just as I said, if I start self-referencing while I'm speaking, I can't perform my speaking. So performative time squeezes out, reduces or eliminates self-referencing. It doesn't mean that sometimes you don't self-reference. But it would mean that you don't establish your moment-to-moment continuity, as I say, as the self. Because self-referencing is a way of establishing continuity.

[04:07]

A mistaken way of establishing continuity. And a delusional way of establishing continuity. Because the continuity of the world is not yourself. Okay, so let's go back to this, try to work with this attentional point. Now we come to, in a way, what is the unrecognized, until now, topic of self as continuous and discontinued. Okay, so we're not talking about an always discontinuous, we're not talking about experientially an always discontinuous self in contrast to an always continuous self.

[05:17]

But we're speaking about those two categories in a more inflected or subtle way. So now I want to be open to your whatever you might want to say because as I said it's a part of our mutual discussion and I hope our mutual immersion in durative time because if being in existence has any meaning a deep meaning or a satisfying meaning

[06:30]

It's being immersed in durative time. That's what music is about. And reading a good book is about, a poem is about. or of close feeling. Love is a shared, a mutual immersion in durative time. Okay, so let's say that the attentional point is experienced in durative time. If you try and, and again, I'm just using this one aspect now to try to enter into this field of experience.

[08:11]

If you shift your sense of continuity your practical need for continuity, to an attentional point. But right now, we identify same-same ourselves with an attentional point, with attention to attention. So who you are right now is your attention. Your attention just now.

[09:19]

Your attention to just now. Not your attention to what you were in the past or might be in the future. Am I saying no more than be here now? Or now be here and nothing else? on a way but with a lot more doors and entry to the experience. Okay. So let's say that your continuity is established through an attentional point. Attention to attention. Now, attention to attention we can also understand as a readiness for whatever happens.

[10:37]

We're not attending to the content of attention. We're attending to attention before content. Now, if we're attending to attention before content, we could say a readiness of attention. Something Sukhiroshi used to emphasize, a readiness of attention. Now that readiness of attention can become a sense of continuity. So now we have a readiness of attention as our experience of continuity.

[11:41]

A readiness of attention is now supplying the function of self called continuity. And the more you have a taste of this and you don't establish continuity through thinking about your past and future but rather to this attentional point I don't think we can call that a self. It's a mistake to call it a self. Now, when you do establish this attentional point you can feel when you stay with it It's like in zazen.

[13:03]

You can feel when you're immersed in zazen. And you lose it and start thinking about something. But when you don't lose it and start thinking of something, But things appear in the mind of zazen, but you don't lose yourself into the content. Okay. Now, one of the things that happens with this continuity established through an intentional point is the point can disappear. So you can release the point in order to sleep. Ah. You can release the point in order to do zazen. And when you release the point to... in sleeping.

[14:14]

And you release the point in zazen. As Jörg again said, many things flow in that we don't need to call self. Now this is a very different view than Freud and Jung. Freud and Jung both interpret dreams as forms of self. Or archetypes, cultural kind of supra-conscious archetypes that form us. Okay, so rather than thinking of it that way, It's just the world appearing in our sleep.

[15:28]

Now, as the world appearing in our sleep, it may be that much of it, or often, it is about ourselves. And when you do zazen, many things appear. But they're not really causally appearing from your past experience. The field of zazen, ideally and factically, as a fact, appears quite independent of your past and future. Even closes the doors to past and future. And things appear which are unrelated to self. Okay, so, for example, last night, I dreamed much of what I'm saying today.

[17:00]

Yeah, and I, you know, I had this funny dream tonight. But it's stuff, what I've been saying today is stuff I've never thought, I've never... said before. And how I've said it and the emphases I've made. The relationship, for example, between a permanent self and an always-there world. I've never said before or never thought of before. Certainly not with this degree of emphasis. And although I know it's also implied in various things Suzuki Roshi said. Still it arose primarily through our discussion.

[18:08]

It arose primarily through the problems I saw in our discussion. So that's arising from the immediacy of the present really not from my past. There's no way you could take some mathematical model, all the things in my past and come up with an algorithm that predicted what I'd say today. It can only arise and only did arise through my experience with you. So I was engaged yesterday and the day before with a performative time with you.

[19:18]

And I could feel my attentional point staying in the engagement. And as a result, it led somewhere. It fulfilled its performance. If I just thought about it in my mind, I couldn't have done it. I would have been frustrated. But staying with this durative time of our mutual field Yeah, I was... I was led to, not didn't come from me, but I was led to this way of trying to complete the performance of this topic.

[20:52]

So performative time is a radical openness. And that radical openness also allows zazen and sleep to be really open to whatever is. So there's a readiness in this context which is what I'm speaking from. But if I go into zazen or sleep there's a wider readiness openness to the world. But not the always there world.

[22:00]

But the durative time of interdependence, interdependent time the interdependent time of the world. So let me just say something about time. Okay. There's no aliveness without time.

[23:05]

There's no beingness without time. Beingness is time. So beingness doesn't happen in time. Beingness is time. So there's all these different times happening. Also gibt es all diese unterschiedlichen Zeiten, die geschehen. There's Neil's time and there's Nicole's time. Es gibt Neil's Zeit und es gibt Nicole's Zeit. Anche's Zeit. Anche's Zeit. Yeah, and so forth. Und so weiter. And there's even Andreas' time. Und es gibt sogar Andreas' Zeit. I mean, he's not excluded. Der ist auch nicht ausgeschlossen. A beautiful man. Ja, ein schöner Mann. His ex-wife told me to tell him. Most ex-wives don't do this.

[24:07]

So in that sense, we are time. And there's a topography of our own time. It's a time established by our in and as our own sensorium. And a time established as our own engagement with the interdependent world. Unser eigenes Eingebundensein in die wechselseitig bedingte Welt errichtet ist. This is not always their time. Und das ist etwas anderes als die immer da seiende Zeit. This time only exists through your performance.

[25:10]

Diese Zeit existiert nur durch deine Ausführung von ihr. And the always their time, clock time, And the always there world is what scientism is always presenting. Do you have a word, scientism? Well, I try to make one up. There's real science and there's scientism that looks like science. Yeah, I think I did the right thing then. And we have a real scientist here, so we have to be careful what we say. Because a real scientist, particularly nowadays botanists and biologists, It's clear that always there time doesn't exist. The time of each plant, the time of each organism is constantly establishing time.

[26:14]

Now we can generalize it as to talk to other people. We can generalize it as always their time. Yeah, but the time of the dragonfly and the butterfly and the orchid Have a certain visual isomorphism. I'm just trying to make it more complicated. Now, isomorphic is an interesting word. because it means things that look the same but have a different source at least I think in biology certain characteristics of animals wings or something may look the same but their source is different but I think for example Jörg, I can ask you

[27:59]

and what I think is that the self continuum the stream of self is isomorphic is things keep appearing in it that look like self but actually have different sources So the continuum of self arises from many sources but once it's in the continuum it looks like self. Also steigt das Kontinuum des Selbstes tatsächlich aus ganz unterschiedlichen Quellen hervor auf, aber wenn etwas erstmal in dem Kontinuum ist, dann sieht es immer aus wie das gleiche Selbst. Now, scientism and the media, TV, newspapers, they may not last much longer, but newspapers.

[29:08]

Es kann sein, dass das nicht mehr lange gibt, aber die Zeitung establish an already there world. Looks to me like every teenager wants to be a celebrity in the already there world established by the media. And the only way to be a celebrity in the already there world is to take drugs. I mean, I'm sort of joking. It does give you at least an experience of being alive, drugs, which the already there world doesn't. What kind of experience do drugs give you? and experience of being alive, Sukhirashi used to say, you are here all because you want Zazen to give you experience of LSD.

[30:28]

That was in the 60s. All right, before I put you all to sleep, Before you all fall asleep, what else would you like to talk about? That was not a download. That's a bad word in my... But that was a summary. It's a bad word for me. It was more of a summary. Yes, Ulrike? The example you chose before, you gave us the questions for the small groups. What I noticed in that Was that the movie one watches is always the same?

[31:43]

And that seemingly the self that watches it is different? You mean the real movie or the inner movie? Like in a theater or something? The one that you talked about. Mr. Hulot's holiday. Because that's stored somewhere, and that's always the same. But the relationship to that movie may change. Yeah, that's right. But also even if Mr. Hulot or Jacques Tati, the actor, saw the movie, he's dead now, but if he was alive and saw the movie, he'd probably see a different movie than he thought he was performing. Jacques Tati. My idea of bringing one of my disciples up into being informed about the world

[32:50]

is to get her informed about what happened in the 50s. I never heard of that. I wasn't born. Now, if I was a real Zen teacher, in the middle of this conversation, I'd get up and walk out. Then you wouldn't know what to do, and I wouldn't come back, and then we'd stop. But since I'm not a real Zen master, I'll write something up there. And I'm writing it because Anshu didn't want me to do it. And I'm writing this now because Antje didn't want me to write it. She told me no more four points. I can't always do what people want.

[34:01]

Now I just think this is so important that you ought to keep it in mind as one of the basics of what I'm teaching. Separation. Connectedness. Continuity. Relative. And we can also call it four-world junction. Because the self is how you join the world.

[35:40]

The experience of self in a positive sense. It's to say how I meet Neil. And again, there's a juncture that occurs as I went through yesterday of the fact of separation. The fact of connectedness. And the fact of continuity. And the fact of relevance or meaning.

[36:42]

Okay. And when they study people with brain damage, if they lose any of these, they don't function. Take my example. I don't think you're an example. So if you're going to bring an attentional point to your activity, you can develop the habit, develop the feel for noticing separation, And as you know, I often say, we assume, culturally we assume, we're already separated. That's not a fact. The fact is, we're also connected. But our culture says you're separated.

[37:55]

So to counteract that cultural worldview I often suggest you repeat to yourself on each moment already connected. So when I see you for the first time, I feel... I don't even have to establish a connection because it's so apparent. We're walking in this connection. Isn't it true? But if I think already separate, I think, oh, I haven't seen him for a while, he probably doesn't like me. But all that self-referencing is wiped away just by saying, already connected. Already connected is one of those teachings closely placed attention.

[39:13]

Which we never use up. Or we can continuously refresh. So we can bring this attentional point to separation, to connectedness. to the sense of continuity in the world, not being continually fearful. And it has some relevance, some meaning. If you don't have the experience of relevance, all of you won't know what to do when the seminar ends. You'd forget where home is, where your car is, which trolley to take, etc. But if you're a relatively nice guy, you probably should be able to go home. I don't mean to say the whole seminar is something like making your good words. and cut around that Buddha so you can see him.

[40:37]

So that's it. Do you really want to say something? Yes, I need to. I'm so glad that I heard all this now because I've had so many experiences recently and in the past and all of them are finding their place now.

[41:42]

Good. I'm really astonished. Yeah, well, when I came into the seminar, I said, okay, this seminar is for Anita. Okay. And it was for Christian, too. Okay.

[42:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.84