Yes. Question to the relationship, a question to the relationship between self and non-self. You spoke earlier about the continuous self, Question about the relationship between self and non-self. And you spoke about the continuum of self. And the question is whether the continuum of self includes non-self. Yeah, I think so. I mean, these are just words. And they're words which let us notice things. And non-self lets us notice things too. Okay. Someone else. Yes. I like it that you say something, but I don't like it that it's always the same person.

[01:13]

I like it that you say something, but I don't like it that it's always the same person. It's an honor. I would like to go back to this performative time. this commitment to what is happening there and body, spirit and phenomenon basically merge into such a unity, I always ask myself, how can I hold it? And why do I let an obstacle appear? I have a question about performative time, the surrendering to body, mind, and phenomena, and the unity of those.

[02:24]

And my question is whether, why do I allow for hindrances to come into the picture there? And how can I hold that? Hold this using and surrendering and not hindering? Is that what you mean? What is an example of the hindering? Telephone rings. That's a hindrance. That's a convivial instrument trying to bring a friend to you.

[03:30]

Well, I wouldn't let it hinder you. It's just you can either ignore it or pick it up in the... In the freely using. Yes, what? And, of course, I myself am a kind of hindrance. No. Well, Dogen uses the word hindrance in a very interesting way. A phrase I like is arrival hinders arrival. But let's look at that as the performative time of walking. When you're walking in this sense of performative time,

[04:43]

In the midst of the flow of aliveness. Which is as basic as the flow of blood in your circulatory system. And here we have the flowing of time in your circulatory system. And time appears as footing. Is that clear? Time appears as footing. But we can also say you experience footing when footing hinders footing. But we can also say that you learn the activity of the foot when the time... Sorry, when footing appears as... Footing hinders footing.

[05:52]

Then you have to say the sentence again, I'm sorry. Okay. Time appears when footing... hinders footing. The foot appears when you walk. The floor appears when you walk. And the floor hinders walking. But the floor makes walking possible. Now I'm just really speaking of how Dogen presents this. And I think it's a useful kind of way of looking at things that can just rest in you. So he would say that when He doesn't say this word footing, but basically he says, when footing hinders footing... Er benutzt jetzt nicht dieses Wort fußen, aber im Grunde genommen sagt er, dass wenn das fußen... wenn fußen... fußen behindert.

[07:16]

I'm just fußen around. Sorry, I stopped you. So when fußen hinders fußen... Now you speak in German already. Hinder sounded like an English word. Wenn Füßen das Füßen behindert... Füßen becomes transparent. Dann wird das Füßen durchsichtig. You directly experience the foot through the hindrance of the foot. Du erfährst den Fuß unmittelbar... So Dogen's way of thinking is, hindrance is at the center of experience. So he would say emancipation or enlightenment. When emancipation hinders emancipation, there is enlightenment. This isn't just a kind of mathematical formula.

[08:33]

Because if, as I said yesterday, you fully feel that enlightenment is anywhere, it's everywhere. And everywhere is each here. And if enlightenment is also each here, When enlightenment hinders enlightenment, it becomes transparent, he would say. Here, the hindrance, we could also say, is something like to notice. Okay, so when the phone rings, you notice the state of mind you're in. Then you can make use of that noticing. That's how Dogen would think about it.

[09:34]

So it's a very inclusive, open, unbounded way of being in the world. So we could also use, and Dogen uses, receptivity. And Sukhiroshi used readiness. So if you can locate yourself in the mind before content, which is something you've been bringing up, that locating the mind prior to content, locating the attentional point in mind prior to content, We can say that's an experience of receptivity and readiness.

[10:43]

If the world is interdependent and in a moment everything can change like it as for Dorothea Stauch. Yeah, whose life partner had this terrible accident. At each moment, life can change. So to live, that's what he also means by the nirvana of life and death. And to be present in each moment in that way, Dogen would call presence. The presence, the fully alive person.

[11:44]

Yeah, okay. I'm saying more than you are. Ich sage schon wieder mehr als ihr. This is not fair. Das ist nicht gerecht. And it's the same person again. No. Oh, it's a different... Oh, he's got me there. Performative time. Korrespondiert hast du, wie du es benutzt, mit dem Begriff von flow aus dem Bereich des Sportes. this performative time, the way you're using it, does that correspond to the experience of flow from athletics and sports?

[12:47]

Yeah, maybe so. Yeah, maybe being in the zone. Yeah, right, that's what I mean. I mean, the phrase, in the zone, I think was created by Michael Murphy. Yeah, that's what you told. And he... It's used as an athletic phrase, but it comes from his meditative experience. Okay. I don't exactly know how to phrase this question. It's been about 50 years since I really studied Heidegger thoroughly. But I don't know Dogen, but something seems to be missing for me, or maybe I'm seeing two different sides. .

[14:10]

um so as you quoted to settle oneself on oneself and um And the continuous dealing with one's own existence in Heidegger's being and time. What comes up for me is the dimension of encounter as it was important for Buber and Perls, for example, in the humanistic tradition. So that means, in this practice, the exoneration of the past as a relation to the other, to the other, to the other human being, to the other individual. And then receptivity and the presence of the same place are equally important as a relationship to resonance, the dialogical concept.

[15:36]

In that tradition, it seems like the being is understood through relational being, through encounter with others. And then maybe what seems more important than readiness and receptivity would be relationship and resonance. Resonance, right. And when he says that this performative time, freeing everything that appears and giving yourself completely at the same time, I find this dialect very clearly a dialogic dialect. It is not, as I understand it, self-explanation, but it means, from the beginning, really living means standing in dialogue. So in this dialectic that you brought up about freely using and then fully... Surrendering.

[16:39]

Surrendering. Yeah, surrendering. And that dialectic, that is perfectly clear to me. That seems to be a dialogical dialectic. Okay. And that does not emphasize self-realization in the same way. Did you say anything else besides that? Lifeliness would be living in relation. Well, okay. Well, I'm sure that there's something in what you've said that I haven't related to. But certainly in most of the surfaces of what I've said, I've included everything you've said. That was my emphasis on we're simultaneously being and beings. if anything the major bodhisattva practice the major practice among all the practices for the development

[17:55]

for the realization of a Bodhisattva. Yeah, and a Bodhisattva means both a pre-Buddha, a Buddha before becoming Buddha. And the love of being Buddha And the love of being with others in such a way that you don't even want to be a Buddha. And that practice is called the six paramitas. In this exercise one speaks of the six parameters. And in these six parameters it is about the encounter with others. And each of these parameters is a possibility for the common being that arises in the encounter.

[19:20]

And what you see here on the anticipated flip chart are the four junctures, junctures or functions of separation. Connectedness. Continuity. And relevancy. Now those can also be, and should be, practices with each person you meet. So, I mean, I've known Gerald a long time. since 1913, no, since 83. But still, there's an experience of separation. And I feel that And the transparency of that.

[20:42]

And there's also a feeling of connectedness. And there's also a feeling of connectedness, I mean of continuity. And there's also a feeling of how relevant our relationship is for both of our lives. Yeah, so Buddhism is nothing but encounter and the receptivity or resonance of encounter, but not just with people, but also with phenomena in its immediacy. It's why Buddhism is called Buddhism and not Dharmism. Because if it was primarily phenomenology, it would be called Dharmism. Okay.

[21:50]

I hope I responded to some of your concerns. You know, I asked you before the seminar started and knowing you were going to stay here to ask Angela and Norbert for their use of the word self in their own thinking and in their relationship to clients. And they both gave us some sort of comment on self yesterday. But I assumed you'd recognize that I was also giving the same question to you.

[22:59]

How obvious do I have to be? I don't think you're just a transportation vehicle. You're a transformer, not just a transporter. You're a trained psychologist, from the university at least, and you've been practicing Buddhism since you were 16 or 14 or 18 or... Yeah, I know, I know. I'm just kidding. So how do you feel, how do you use the word self in psychological context and in a practice context for yourself?

[24:08]

You know, one of the things why I think people like competition, because they're in a situation they can't leave. And if your musician is performing, he can't leave, he can't get up suddenly and say, I'm kind of bored with this piece, and he walks out of the concert room. So we have no other location, mind. And we have the can't leave mind. So here you are. I didn't mean to put you on a spot, but there you are. Yeah. In the meantime, I use the word for myself in the functional sense.

[25:44]

as a city, I had to think about it, both to describe the area in which I notice my own experience, as well as to describe the area in which I notice how I react to the world, how the world in me, so to speak. And that what is individual, I can remember. So I can see that my reaction to an encounter with another person or to a situation, that this encounter has a lot to do with what I bring with me in the situation. And that's what I can remember. I can remember what I would call myself. And apart from that, from the practical point of view, what I call myself is also the area for which I take responsibility and the area in which I anchor transformation, so to speak.

[27:09]

So when I think about it, what can I If I take the cause of Buddhism, the cause of Buddhism for the freedom of suffering and for the practice of enlightenment, then I have to look at where I can apply it. Where can I establish freedom of suffering and where can I establish enlightenment? And the area in which I can establish this is also the self for me. And, yeah, maybe I should translate myself. You can do it later if you want, or now, if it's... Well, I say, otherwise you're not going to know what I said. Well, that's true. Yeah. So the territory that I call self in my own use of language is the territory in which that I notice as this encounter with the world, how the world registers, our situation registers for me in particular, which I know is unique, which I know has a lot to do with what I'm bringing into a situation.

[28:30]

So the way I would react to a situation or a person, for example, I know has a lot to do with what I'm bringing, and that for me is self, and I can notice it through the particular encounter. And then self is an area that I take responsibility for. And that's important too, to understand that I'm responsible for my own experience. So I'm calling that self as well. And maybe a third aspect is that if I locate myself through the intent of Buddhist practice freedom from suffering and the practice of enlightenment Then I also have to ask where can I apply? those intents What's the territory for their practice and that I where I can work with those intents?

[29:35]

That's also my use of the word self so It's where I feel I can apply transformation. It's what I feel I can transform. Okay. I'll give you your grade later. I don't want a grade. That's why I left university. I'm just teasing you. Okay, someone else? Marimo. You haven't said anything yet. You said yesterday that faith doesn't exist. and that I used to think until a few years ago that our path is already determined for the future and that we just have to find it.

[31:04]

And now I also think that that's not true. Good. Okay. Lona? We are so busy with absorbing, as we always are. There are more conversations, but I don't know how to formulate them. I'm so filled with absorbing everything that's being said, and there are dialogues in me, but I can't really express them right now, because I'm just completely full with absorbing lots of things. Well, I hope they're good, useful inner dialogues. I can't quite grasp it, but there's a lot of spiral movement going on. Well, I mean, I'm bringing up, as you know, I've been doing this a long time,

[32:11]

And these basic things come up over and over again in new inflections. So when I when I exert myself in this way, the experience of decades is in what I'm saying. And of course your experience is different. But I'm hoping that I'm able to speak about this stuff so it joins in various ways your experience.

[33:26]

And what's interesting about encounter And the six parameters being called perfections. The encounter is not just readiness or receptivity or resonance. is that the encounter is not only willingness or receptivity, readiness, and resonance. We're sticking with R's. Yeah, in English. In English, yeah. It's also refinement. Because it's the process of engagement with others is a process of refining yourself and refining others.

[34:31]

So I feel I'm joining with you in refining what it means to be alive and to be alive together. And I have this tradition I'm part of which helps me explore it. What about you? Wenn etwas kommt, was ich sagen will, dann werde ich es sagen. Okay, I will continue to wait. Dann warte ich noch ein bisschen.

[35:34]

I started waiting yesterday morning. Ich habe gestern Morgen schon angefangen zu warten. Ich fand deine... I thought your description of what a hindrance is was very interesting. And I referred the question you asked Nicole about self also to myself. And I'm noticing self as something that wants to... Coagulate, something that wants to... perform a structure that becomes solid, and this solidity and this structure I realize as a hindrance.

[36:42]

And practice is the continuous effort to dissolve that solidity into something permeable. And it's a continuous play between opening and closing and rigidity and flow. And the process itself is the becoming and the recognition of that process. So thanks.

[37:54]

I liked the way you were muttering. And Siegfried, do you have any reflections you can share with us? What Gerhard just said I could summarize for myself with the phrase that practice is the recognition that there is no hindrance. Or that everything is a hindrance. That would be more what Dogen would say. And because everything is a hindrance, there's no hindrance. Okay. When she decides to respond, she responds. I feel enthusiasm for this topic because we all are so involved alive in the topic and I feel the same way.

[39:11]

Yes, and there were a few comments here in the room that inspired me again, namely that Lona said she has a lot of, how do you say, in herself right now. And during the morning meditation I also came to the limit of thinking about whether the dog's loud breathing is disturbing or not. So is this an integrable phenomenon in the space that one leaves like that or do I feel responsible that it would be too loud? And I was touched by what Luna said about feeling so filled with absorption and I noticed myself that I came to a kind of boundary for myself this morning during meditation when the dog was here and breathing quite loudly. I was wondering whether that's something that I should just... leave the way it is or should I feel responsible for it and because it was getting too loud.

[40:25]

that has a number or something, that you let everything be there first, so to be open to it, so to practice this absolute openness. But when do I start, and this is again in the direction of Heinrich's remark, when do I start to set other priorities or focus or something, or as we would say in the form of the Foreground-Background principle, so when do I start, so is there anything else to say, so when do I make a distinction? And that related to saying yesterday to practice radical openness. But the question then becomes, at what point should I start setting other priorities? At what point should I start making a different kind of distinction? And that's like in Gestalt we would talk about background and foreground shifts. What to focus on, is there anything else to say about that?

[41:37]

Well, how to use these practices and teachings. They're not used in the abstract. They're used in the midst of your own life. And they're initially, of course, used in ways that don't quite fit. And the craft is you have to see to what extent you can make them fit or you can use them Even separately or whatever. So the craft of it is the next step here. Yes. changes in the course of life, and these health conditions, which I will talk about in a moment, presuppose that I, for the first time in my life, have taken up conditioning in a certain way, and this conditioning will also disappear later.

[43:09]

Would you say that this attitude that we're talking about, does that change throughout one's lifespan? That's a central question for me coming from pedagogics. Does that imply that there's a certain accumulation of experiences given, and that then... Maybe it's a concept of ourself, which can be combined with conditions, or conditioning, and all that kind of stuff that you can get rid of later. It's a process. It's a process, absolutely. There's no alternative to it being a process.

[44:12]

But you can decide on what kind of process it's going to be. And what tools you use to make this a process of refining yourself and refining your life and refining your way of being with others. You can decide which tools you use to shape this process by being with yourself and by being with others. This is one of the things that often accompanies me. It's a pity, because I can't do it without it. I open it, I decide, I am free, I choose, and then I define what my story is. But I want it to end well. So someone wrote about look at your conditioning and then let it go and be free, decide and then choose what kind of what kind of what kind of narrative you're going to create but make it come to a good end.

[45:29]

Dogen uses the Lona, were you going to say something? Yes. I was just looking around to see what kind of word process there actually is. And I can compare that a little bit. I recently spoke to a translator, or a translator told me and a group how rich the translation process is. That in every language, with the words, completely different contexts are connected. And he, so to speak, If one has to deconstruct and find a translation, then a similar dynamic can almost be found in another language. I have the feeling that this is exactly what is happening. When I talk about this problem and I try to tap it off and understand it, then it somehow goes into me. I do it analytically myself. Then it somehow goes into me. Then I tap off my own experiences. I was just looking what that process is that I feel happening in me while listening.

[46:40]

And I recently talked to a translator who told me about what a rich process translating is, where that person felt like he had to deconstruct what he heard in one language and reinvent it for himself in their own language. And I feel like that's something like what's happening for me, that I'm hearing all these things and I'm... kind of touching them, seeing what of that I can, what gets absorbed and then reinvented through my own language. And I think as one goes, continues in the midst of this process, the reinvention continues. Then it gets closer to the original and then it comes closer to oneself and then it develops a whole new flower.

[48:03]

Now some people, when they translate, it just flows through their head, don't even know what they said. And then sometimes they go listen to the lecture on tape to see what happened. Is this you, or do you feel you're participating in translating? I shift back and forth. Sometimes I need a break, and then I just let it pass. Let it pass through. Yeah, I just let it pass through. But then I miss parts of it, and that I can only do very rarely, because I know I translate worse when I do that. But usually what I do is I take it here, And then I do exactly what you said. I try to feel it and see how would I say it. Yeah, and then it's my own thing, when I don't even care what you say.

[49:19]

Do you remember when I used to talk at the Frankfurt Ring? Yeah, I remember. I just thought about this crazy guy. And what was his name? Completely different speaker. He would just give his own lecture. I would talk and then he'd give a lecture. Pretending to translate what I was saying. Wolfgang. Wolfgang. And he was a philosopher. I mean, he trained as a philosopher. He just gave a lecture. No, it's, if I may add one thing, sometimes when you say something and it's important for me, then I want to do something with it and then I work on that with one part of me and the other part, you can continue to talk and I just let that flow through, but I stay with the thing, that's okay. This is good. You know, professional translators, like at the UN and things, they're usually on 30-minute schedule.

[50:33]

They do it for 30 minutes and then they're real. Because it takes more energy to do what she's doing than for me to speak. And Gerard has often translated for me, and you know this too. Okay. Yes, Hans. I'd like to add to something that other people have said before. A picture of something that has stayed with me yesterday and today. And this image was composed of this pair activity and entity.

[51:38]

And this image is something as though there were two continents. And these continents are in me. And these continents are in me. And sometimes I'm more on the one side, one continent, and I feel comfortable there. And then there are times when I'm in a different part. And then it's as though there's a kind of line running through me and I can feel bodily these different territories within myself.

[52:39]

And what I often do, and sometimes I am more and more aware of this, these different areas in me and I move in the edge areas of these two continents and in what happens in the contact of these continents. And I feel like I'm moving in the edges of those continents and what happens when these continents encounter one another. And what I often do in the morning, in meditation, is that I simply attention in this area of contact of this continent without intervening, without consciously intervening, without intervening mentally,

[54:03]

And one thing I do during morning satsang, for example, is that I just will leave my attention in those meeting places. And it's like just leaving a kind of free floating attention in those inner spaces. And in terms of my bodily experience, if I was to put that into words... It's not translated into words. It's almost as if I, whatever this I is, Ich mich diesem dann entstehenden Prozess überlasse.

[55:04]

It's almost as though I'm turning myself over to the process that's occurring through this. Yeah, some kind of I give up to whatever... You're surrendering yourself to... Yeah, and it's also... It's very interesting. It's... How to say that? It's almost as if I can feel in me as if something is changing and I can senses this interaction between these two different areas and as I can feel this change happens. It's this physical reaction and really let go to whatever happens. And I thought of what's really happening. It's no intellectual, cognitive process.

[56:08]

Are you translating this too? I thought I was understanding German awfully well. It's almost as though there is some kind of control, directing mechanism. managing, as if something is not just what's happening is not arbitrary in that case.

[57:19]

There's a kind of truth that arises from engagement. And through a certain kind of engagement things find their place. Dogen uses the image of a boat to describe, to illustrate performative time He says, when you're in a boat, you can row or steer the boat. But you're completely dependent on the boat. And the sky and the water and so forth. So he says the water is totally exerting.

[58:39]

The boat is totally exerting itself. And you're totally exerting yourself. And the boat depends on you, but you depend on the boat. And this time is different than the time of somebody who's on the shore. And Dogen implies we're always, in a sense, in a boat, in our own time, exerting ourselves fully in our circumstances. Okay, so let's have a break. Or lunch.

[59:17]

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