matures the situation. Do you understand? So it's a little bit like, I mean, it's not a little bit, it's very much like dreams are a way that we mature situations. In other words, I used this example the other day, what I call current status dreams. Current status, the present status. So that... In other words, for example, if I have a dream about an old friend, in my conscious mind I tend to remember him as the last time I saw him a year and a half ago or so.

[01:10]

But having a dream about him recently, a year and a half had passed. So he's in Los Angeles. So I called him up the other day. So I said, I had a dream about you and, you know, you've changed. He said, well, you must be having nightmares if you're having dreams about my current situation. So I said, well, when we talked for a while, when we ended the conversation, I said, Well, I'll try to have a nightmare about you. And he said, well, okay, but if you can redirect my life a little in your dreams, please do. And something like that happens. In other words, if I actually, in addition to my conscious feelings about him, I also, included in my conscious, are the dream development of him,

[02:51]

My relationship to him will have more depth. So while I'm sitting here talking with you, and also absorbing the situation with this friend of mine today, because if I just think about it, it's not sufficient. I have to allow a lot of stuff to feel about it to know what should happen next. And being more conscious about how to allow such a thing to happen,

[04:05]

and to participate in it happening to feel it like you are literally digesting something like something in your stomach but this case in your skandhas this is a part of the teaching of the skandhas and karma So this evening I'm just introducing a lot of ideas. And tomorrow we'll slow down and unpack some of them. So right now I would like to hear something from you if you have some question or idea or would like me to And now I would like to hear something from you, if you have any questions, or if I should explain something more, what I have mentioned.

[05:23]

If it is the case that the consciousness of two people who do something with each other is strengthened, then it must also be the case that, for example, if you recognize each other between old and new, Did you hear him in the back? Yeah, okay. You said that the consciousness of two people or two consciousnesses enhance each other. And my question is now, maybe this is the reason why parents have conflicts with their children, because when the children grow older and become more independent and move away, actually this enhancing of consciousness is not there anymore, and the parents struggle with it because they're put into the same situation than before they had children.

[06:48]

Is that the case? You're worried about what's going to happen with Dina? You don't know that. Well, that covers all. So the question you just asked covers volumes of psychology. Of course parents go through their own ages through the ages of their child. And if they enjoyed their own growing independence from their parents, They'll enjoy and support their own child's growing independence.

[07:52]

There's a big difference between two consciousnesses or many enhancing each other and being attached or trying to shape or control each other. Some people have a quite developed consciousness, but it's very thin and insecure. And it doesn't reach throughout the five skandhas. It tends to be limited into the thinking perception territory. And if that's the case, then you want the people around you to have the same consciousness you do, so you try to control their consciousness.

[08:55]

And you take the enhancement into a kind of mold. The parents often do something like that with their children. And then it's very hard for the child to get free. Because children usually have far... Most children have a much more open... pliable, pliant consciousness. But adults have a much more structured consciousness. And the child is almost helpless in front of those structures. Because our whole society is created through such structures.

[10:11]

Democracies particularly need it. Democracies need to structure the consciousness of the citizens so that they control them. through fairly benign means. And if you can't easily force people to do what you want, And you depend on them agreeing with you. Then you have to create a highly structured consciousness in each citizen so that they'll agree with the government. Does that make sense? So that's why I think that it's modern industrial societies which psychology and the unconscious and all has come up.

[11:28]

Because the kind of society and conscious structure we have of consciousness produces tremendous unconscious materials. These are the questions. Your professional life, is there a separation between your normal consciousness and your meditative consciousness? For me or for everyone? I don't have a professional wife.

[12:45]

This is my professional life. I like this so much I do it full time. So ask it from your point of view. Yes, there are of course areas in me, or there are also life segments, or daily segments, in which I do not have a particularly clear consciousness. However, I am a musician, so there are also areas when I am a musician where I don't want to use only the conscious or what I understand as consciousness, maybe my limitedness. So that I want to use many, many forces to get on track with this music.

[14:01]

And now the question is, can I go through everything with this meditative consciousness, or is there only one support in this diverse and complex field? I'm a musician, and my question is, there are certain parts in my daily life and in my work I don't want to kind of only access with this meditative consciousness. I'd like to bring in all other forces and energies and whatever. And my question is now, shall I try to do everything from this kind of consciousness? How would you describe meditative consciousness? So what do you mean by meditative consciousness? Are you surmising this or is this your experience? Surmising means you Do you put it on or is it your experience?

[15:15]

No, of course I am one of the few who have little experience and for me, I have an idea of what meditative consciousness looks like and that means for me a total control a consciousness about my physical state and about my mental state. But there is inspiration. That is outside of this consciousness for me. I feel additive consciousness means I have control over my body and my thoughts and inspiration is outside of this territory. Oh.

[16:19]

Maybe by the end of the seminar we'll have made an approach to your question. Mm-hmm. Maybe we have come closer to your question when the seminar is over. Where is the dog barking? Is there something like a limit of pain in consciousness? My personal feeling is that it somehow hurts when you don't push the concentration Is there a pain limit in consciousness? My experience is I start suffering a lot when I push myself into this consciousness. Into the posture or into the consciousness?

[17:26]

Into trying to be conscious and not to dream of the... Not to dream means not to get caught up in your thoughts. Yes, that's a mistake. Dream. Dream. Get caught up in your thoughts. It's my new zazen instruction Yeah It's a big difference Well, it's a big difference between what? Yeah But I'll explain this tomorrow, but dreams arise in the feeling skanda.

[18:37]

Thoughts arise in the perception skanda. But from another point of view, dreams are a kind of formed mental activity. And share that with thoughts. But thoughts usually are translatable into language. And thoughts are close to language. But dreams are close to images and not easy to translate into language.

[19:38]

So dreams represent another, are another kind of consciousness. And you can only apply language to with some distortion. Okay, let's make this really as simple as possible. You are familiar with being awake. We are familiar with being awake. And we are also familiar with being asleep to some extent. We are certainly familiar with almost, I think, everyone, virtually everyone has occasionally had a dream that they are aware of.

[20:49]

So you are aware already of two kinds of consciousness. Or, let's say, two different states of mind. Now, Buddhism takes this very seriously. Buddhism would say, these are territories of your life. And Buddhism wouldn't assume that what you need is going to be given to you. For example, to use a statement of Suzuki Roshi again, he said, sometimes you look at a tree and you see a tree.

[21:51]

Sometimes you look at a tree and it makes a poem. What's the difference? Buddhism wouldn't say, oh well, inspiration, I was inspired or something. That's a rather passive way of looking at it. You have to wait for inspiration, like Gogol, I guess he was, he used to bang his head and then write and bang his head and then write. And artists have various techniques for creating a situation that inspiration comes more often. So you have your waking consciousness and you have your waking state of mind and your sleeping state of mind.

[22:58]

Okay, so we can have the question, how do you exist in both? Who exists in both? Is there any continuity between the two? That's good. Sometimes it seems like a different person dreams than is waking. All right, so there's these two states of being, waking and sleeping. Now, if for some reason you start to do zaza, You start to meditate.

[24:12]

And if you do it with any, if you have a feel for it, and you do it with any effectiveness, you begin to notice that it's a different state of mind. the more you do it, the more you see it's as different from ordinary mind as sleeping is from waking mind. So in a sense now you have a third question. Who am I during the waiting time, who am I during sleeping time, and who am I during zazen. Now zazen is understood, or meditation is understood, as a space in your life which integrates waking and sleeping.

[25:41]

So it's a time in which it's a territory in which you can integrate these two territories. It's a territory in which you can integrate waking and sleeping minds. But it's not just a space of integration, it's also a third kind of mind. Now, this evening I'm using the word mind and thoughts and consciousness and so forth rather loosely. And we'll try to become more specific or clearer during the weekend. What I'd like you to do between now and tomorrow morning is to look at how you use these words, mind, consciousness, thought, emotion, feeling.

[26:49]

What are you describing in your own experience when you use these words? And you should know, of course, that the topography of being is more complex and more subtle than language. So all of the possibilities of being that all the languages in the world have words for are still only a small number of the full possibilities. So if you imagined that East Germany, West Germany, France, United States and Russia all occupied the same territory simultaneously. Also stellt euch vor, dass Ost-West-Deutschland, Frankreich, die Vereinigten Staaten, Russland, dass die alle das gleiche Gebiet besetzen.

[28:05]

And if when you looked with the French map, you saw Paris was right beside Berlin. Und wenn ihr jetzt also mit dieser französischen Karte euch das betrachtet, dann seht ihr, dass Paris gleich neben Berlin ist. And when you looked with the American map, you saw that San Francisco was right between Heidelberg and Freiburg. But when you look with a German map, you only see Heidelberg and Freiburg. So all the landscapes of all the beings in the world are right here in you. But you notice the landscape that your German language and German culture and European Western culture point out. And so when you start meditation, you start out wandering around in Freiburg. And you're sure you're on the way to Heidelberg because you're on Highway 5.

[29:14]

But, you know, 20 minutes into Zazen, there's San Francisco. You think this is completely confusing. So you think you must have made a mistake, so there's another Highway 5, but of course it's the Highway 5 in California, you should go to L.A. And you think you've turned toward Heidelberg, and you've turned toward L.A. And then you run into Brussels. So you're now completely confused. You go into the forest in Brussels. And pretty soon you're in a territory that no language or culture has noticed before.

[30:17]

And you're scared. And you think, I'm going to get out of here. So you find your way back as fast as possible to Highway 5 on the way to Heidelberg. It's enough meditation experience for now. But as you get your courage up and you feel more kind of relaxed just where you are, and you know you can't really get lost because you're just sitting here in the cushion, and even you've learned how not to scratch. So when little itches appear in your cheek, You can let them turn into San Francisco.

[31:32]

Or maybe some forest appears over here. And you can go into it and you feel quite comfortable. In other words, through paying attention to how we exist, you begin to see that the topography of your being and living is greater than the information you have. that the maps only show part of it. Or we could put it another way, that your existence is bigger than yourself. And when you try to fit all of your existence in this boat of yourself,

[32:34]

The self-boat is simply not big enough. You can make it bigger, turn it into a barge, but still, if you fill it with your whole existence, it will sink. And stuff keeps falling off the sides and becomes the unconscious. And then all the stuff that falls off the self-boat sticks to the bottom and it's really hard to sail. So Zazen, developed meditation practice, allows you to be anywhere in the water. And see and feel the stuff falling overboard. And make the, you know, let the boat be used for what it's good at.

[34:09]

And as you pointed out, the self and certain kinds of minds or ways of being are very useful for certain things we do. But we shouldn't get stuck in any one boat. But we should make the boats we have very seaworthy. So Zen practice is really self-strengthening. So you're not getting rid of yourself, you're making yourself a very sturdy boat. Not a boat that pretends the ocean isn't there. Not a boat that pretends the ocean isn't there. Okay, some other question? Shall I give a short answer to the next one?

[35:41]

As a corrective to this ability or saying a way of this, as a corrective to all of this, there's a tradition in Zen of giving one word or one phrase answers to questions, which maybe I should do. But that really depends on our developing a real familiarity with each other. And being able to communicate and connect with each other through imaginal consciousness rather than perceptual consciousness. I think we're going to stop in a few minutes.

[36:45]

I have a question. I had an interesting discussion the other day about the difference between self and me. In Germany, it's ich und selbst. Could you Self and me? Well, what is the difference in German? You should say that in German, probably. Well, what is the difference in German? How is it used differently? Is it used the same way as in English?

[37:51]

Okay, let me say something about First of all, I think that we need to recognize that these questions can't actually be answered. I certainly can't speak for how it's used in German. And I could probably spend much of the rest of my life sensing out the difference between me, I, and self, and so forth, in English.

[39:00]

So I'll only say a couple of things. Which is that, in English at least, he, she, I, me, and so forth, are all pronouns. And in language, linguistically, they're all in the same category. But when I say he or she, I have a pretty particular idea of what I mean. But when I say me, I really don't know what I mean. So linguistically they're in the same category, but in fact they're in very different categories.

[40:06]

It's the difference between trying to, the example I've used, it's the difference between trying to see what a mountain looks like from a distance when you're standing on the mountain. You're walking around in a mountain of who you are. And other people don't know the little streams and stuff that you know. But it's virtually impossible for you to know what the mountain looks like from a distance. As a he or she. This is a major problem for all of us. Or it's not a problem at all. But when you start thinking about it, it's a big problem.

[41:14]

But you can actually have some encounter with this through practice. Again, we'll try to come back to that, because tonight's just a hello. And I will come back to that, because tonight it is really just a greeting, a mutual one. I always have a pretty unique feeling when I want to explain with words, for example, how it happens with consciousness. And actually it's not about words, it's about being. What does he feel about it? But I always feel pretty strange when I try to explain concepts. Concepts with concepts. Concepts with concepts? Yes. When I try to describe certain concepts with other concepts, whereas actually we try to deal with being.

[42:23]

How do you deal with that strange feeling? Do you have it too? I live in the midst of it all. I'm getting very used to it, though, I kind of like it. So, again, something we can do between now and tomorrow is without thinking too much. Just have a feeling of the descriptions of yourself. Like, I'm going home. Or to wherever you're staying. What is going home? As you're walking, the road is going home. What in fact happens is the road goes home with you.

[43:27]

That's another way of looking at it. When you're going to bed, you think, I'm going to bed, what's going to bed, who's going to bed, etc. ? And then as you go to sleep, see if you can maintain a continuity of who you are who's going to sleep. Or will it be interrupted? It's possible to maintain a continuity of who you are through your sleep. But not the sense of who you are that you usually have. What's the sense in the Bible? Only a So what is the meaning of the phrase in the Bible, only a camel can go through the needle?

[44:32]

Not even a camel can go through the needle. Okay. It's easier that a camel gets through an eye of a needle than a rich person gets to heaven. Okay. then when you go to sleep, if you want a continuity of self to appear through... go through the sleep and come out in the morning, you have to become a camel. Me? Me probably doesn't get through the eye of the needle. So what sense of self-identity gets through that eye?

[45:43]

This kind of purifies your sense of self or alters your sense of self or makes a different kind of or more subtle or subtle in a different way self. So the self that has continuity through waking and sleeping is different than our usual self. Because our usual self is like the rich person who can't get through the eye. But it's very good to be rich when you're awake. So it's not very helpful to be rich when you sleep. It's true. We all become equal in sleep, don't we?

[46:44]

Anyway, pay attention or... Notice what you do without too much thinking between now and tomorrow. What consciousness or what person makes the transition between tonight and tomorrow? And as you're walking downstairs and in the street, feel like you're stepping into your own consciousness. As if your consciousness was a kind of bubble of light around you.

[47:32]

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