So I think I have established, or we have established, I hope, that self is a construct. And that self is a function. A necessary way of functioning. And that self is a continuum. And that the observer is also a construct and a function of self. And the illusion that self as an observer is always present just that, an illusion or a delusion.

[01:21]

And all the sense of it and our experience of it being always present is because we experience always presentness through the observer. And that gap in which there's no observer is considered the realm of a Buddha. Now, if you can't really accept that, or if you accept it because we've talked about it and it seems like it's established,

[02:25]

Still, deep down, you probably don't accept. Some of you, mostly. So let's trick ourselves. And say, well, we're going to pretend it's so and see if that's the case. Maybe it's the case, we'll try it on. Anyway, that's what I suggest. To believe it or not believe it takes some psychic and intellectual and dharmic work. Psychic, you mean like psychological or different?

[03:43]

Dalmic, psychic, intellectual. Well, all of that. Yeah. And as we can say that, as I pointed out, space connects or space separates. I think we can say that if we live in a world in which space separates, we're going to feel very differently about the world. werden wir die Welt ganz anders empfinden.

[04:56]

We could almost call it there's a world continuum in which space separates. And we could say there's a world continuum in which space connects. And of course we can say that space both separates and connects. But the point I'm making is that it's not just that self, our view of self establishes a particular kind of continuum. The phenomenal world is a continuum. As I often say, for a dragonfly, I like dragonflies because they have double wings, you know. Yeah, and I only have single wings.

[06:14]

At least I'm, but no. Yeah. But for a dragonfly, not a dragon, well, for a dragon, too, there's a different continuum. Yeah. A dragonfly in this room would be in a very different continuum than us. Its reality would be different. Well, it's also the case that our reality is actually significantly different if we have a different view of what reality is.

[07:19]

So we can have a vision of self, and we can also have a vision of reality. Okay, now let's go, before I go there, let's go to the five skandhas. The five skandhas again are useful categories that allow us to notice, in this case, the constituents of the experience of existence. I mean, if we talked about the functions of self, how we act in the world,

[08:21]

geht es darum, wie wir in der Welt handeln. Aber es gibt auch einfach diese Erfahrung, dass wir existieren. Und das Modell der fünf Skandas versucht... Now, the experience of existence, we exist. You know, you're born and you exist and you do the best you can and you die. I just had a grandchild born. Well, not just. She's now almost a year old, I guess. But I've only seen her twice.

[09:38]

The first time I saw her, she was three or four months old. And she's quite big. I mean, she was big when she was born. She was wearing six months old clothes. Because my daughter is as big as Geralt. Well, not quite. Yeah, a little, sure. And my son-in-law is not as big as you, but pretty big. And they had a gigantic baby. And named Paloma, which means peace and dove. Okay. Anyway, she's a nice little girl. Anyway, when she was born, I mean, when I first saw her after about three months, I said, you know, it's wonderful.

[10:47]

She's a beautiful little girl, but now she has to die. And they both, their parents, her parents. If you give birth to someone, You then create... They have to deal with it. Crackers are going to die. All of us do. It's a big problem. More than you should have thought of that before you... We all have to deal with it. It's a really big problem. And maybe our mother should have thought about it earlier. On the back of the horn it says, life and death, big problem. The wooden iron that you hit. Okay. So the five skandhas or five heaps or five aggregates.

[12:02]

Just that you can put them into, that you can create, you can conceptualize them as ingredients or constituents. means that existence itself is a construct. Or it means that existence itself can be experienced as a construct, and hence the construct can be participated in. Unless that's the case, Buddhism makes no sense. Enlightenment makes no sense. Because enlightenment in many ways is simply deeply recognizing that it's all a construct. All a construct and no one's home.

[13:14]

I shouldn't have said that. Well, Buddha's home. He's walking around. She's walking around. Okay, so the first skanda is form. And that is, you know, you have to have a starting point. Seeing a stuff or a signal. Some kind of. Yeah, some kind of. Starting point. And then the second skanda is feeling. Or sensation, but I think feeling and non-graspable feeling is a better way to describe it.

[14:23]

So there's this starting point. But you'd hardly know there was a starting point unless you were alive. Unless you were alive. You couldn't know it was a starting point unless you were alive. How could he not be alive? Well, if it's just form, there's no skandhas. Okay. Ah, okay. There has to be something to see it as the initial point. Okay. So the first, the second skanda is... You feel something. But it's just feeling.

[15:24]

And again, it's one of the useful things about the skandhas is they also are domains of beingness. they're not only the ingredients or constituents of the experience of existence. They're also domains in themselves or Continuums, we could say. Now, the... U-U-U-U-M. Continua, that's plural. Yeah, continua is the plural of continuums. You're correct. He's correct.

[16:49]

Even the dictionary says continue up, but no one says it. They all say continuum. All these intellectuals are always interfering with the flow. Yeah, okay. Thanks. Might you translate? Now the yogic dimension of non-graspable feeling or the yogic skill of non-graspable feeling, is that, for example, right now, there's a... particular feeling in this room.

[17:57]

And I think the technical word is aporia. It's there but you can't describe it. If you describe it, it goes away. And I think the technical term for it is aporia, and that means that it's there. Now, do you know that word? You also knew it? I got this. So, it's aporia, and that means that it's there, but that you can't describe it, because as soon as you describe it, it's no longer there. Aporia is a word which means there's no way through. There's no passage. Okay. Aporia bedeutet, dass es keinen Weg hindurch gibt. Man kann das nicht passieren. So, it can be noticed, sort of, but you can't grasp it or think it or do anything with it. Also, es kann bemerkt werden, aber du kannst es nicht denken. Du kannst nichts damit tun, oder so. I think it's interesting, such a word exists.

[18:59]

Ich finde es interessant, dass so ein Wort überhaupt existiert. It means some people have given some thought to how we exist. Okay, so the yogic skill of non-graspable feeling is something we're always doing but probably not noticing. is right now in this room, for instance, there's a particular kind of feeling. And it's different than this morning. And I didn't quite like the feeling this morning and I wanted to change it, but I didn't know how. The thing is that it the non-graspable feeling that's present in this room and we can't grasp it.

[20:04]

It's primarily where most of the information is. And if I can feel the non-graspable feeling that's present, appearing and disappearing, et cetera, in this room, I can let that... feeling, although I can't grasp it, I can let it call forth what I'm speaking about. So unless I'd studied and practiced the five skandhas now for many, many, many years, I would have functioned within non-graspable feeling, but I never would have been able to isolate and allow non-graspable feeling to educate me.

[21:28]

Educate, draw out. Okay, so non-graspable feeling is the second skanda. And the third skanda is perception. Yeah, to note, to feel that this is cold when I pick it up. And it has a certain shine. It is quite cool. Very nice. And it's smooth, almost soft. But it's not yet a bell. If I say it's a bell, it's already a concept. So right now it's just soft, cool, beautiful, young.

[22:29]

Well, I mean, no. So that's the realm of what we can call, what I call, percept only. And In non-graspable feeling, you are the non-graspable feeling. There's no separation. But in percept only, you're receiving the percept. So the example I often use is in Zazen.

[23:51]

Zazen ideally is if you have a Zazen temple, a practice place, it has a garden, and the garden has birds, and the birds sing at first light. And the tradition is that you get up before the birds. And you're sitting. And you're sitting when the birds start to sing. And then everyone in the zendo starts to sing. It's not true. I couldn't resist laughing about it. I'm sure a zendo full of people chirping like birds, I'm not sure.

[25:00]

But there is a feeling. First light, you hear the birds. You yourself are waking up. Dreaming mind and initial conscious mind are mixing. and as this is in percept only this is not yet a bell it's only the perceptions that could be put together as a bell but it's only the perceptions So when you hear the bird, you actually don't hear the bird.

[26:11]

It's not yet a bird. And the yogic skill is not to identify it as a bird. Now, of course, we've got such a habit of thinking in terms of names. Wir haben natürlich eine so starke Gewohnheit, in Namen zu denken, in Bezeichnungen zu denken. It's a bird. Don't tell me it's not a bird. I know it's a bird. Was ist das? Wren. Are wrens morning birds? I don't know. Don't worry about it. Okay. Jetzt sagt mir nicht, dass es kein Vogel ist. Natürlich ist das ein Vogel. Es ist sogar der und der Vogel. Okay. So if you really, you know, you can practice, well, first let me say, you can practice this by hearing a bird or hearing an airplane say.

[27:16]

And you peel off the name airplane. And you just hear the sound of the spheres. And then you can put the name airplane back on or take it off. So believe it or not, that's an important, significant yogic skill. Peel the names off things. To peel the concepts off things. And then there's just the sound. And the sound is not the sound of the bird. It's the sound of your own hearing. Because, as I often say, you're actually hearing your own hearing.

[28:31]

Weil, so wie ich das oft sage, was du tatsächlich hörst, ist dein eigenes Hören. The other birds are hearing something much more complex than your ears can hear. Die anderen Vögel, die hören etwas sehr viel komplexeres als das, was deine Ohren hören können. Birds are even able to sing two different simultaneous notes. Vögel können sogar gleichzeitig zwei unterschiedliche Töne singen. There's a little Bach cantata that you can't hear. But the part that you hear is your own hearing hearing that part. The part that you hear is your own hearing hearing that part. And for some reason That's a blissful experience.

[29:32]

And that's one of the ways the beginning experience of bliss begins to be part of your zazen experience. Und das ist eine der Anfangserfahrungen, durch die die Erfahrung von Glückseligkeit Teil deiner Sazen-Erfahrung wird. Ich erinnere mich, als ich das erste Mal begonnen habe, Glückseligkeit in meinem Sazen zu bemerken. I said, well, that's kind of nice, but, you know, I've got, you know, Sasson's more important than that. I was looking for important insights and things like that. But this little feeling of bliss kept coming back, and I said, maybe I should pay attention to this little feeling. I don't know, I don't usually feel it. It took only a few periods of a little bit of bliss and suddenly it opened the door. Und es hat wirklich nur ein paar Perioden von diesem kleinen Gefühl von Glückseligkeit gebraucht, bis das schließlich mein Gefühl geöffnet hat.

[30:52]

And I should have noticed. It wasn't noticeable. Und ich hätte das nicht bemerken können. Das war nicht bemerkbar. Until I accepted that bliss is, you know, part of Zazen. Und dass ich akzeptiert hatte, dass diese Glückseligkeit Teil des Zazens ist. You just let it happen. Letting it happen begins to let it happen and starts having its own life, own modus operandi. Mm-hmm. So the third skanda is this percept only. And what's interesting and why I call it also a continuum is you have a an embodied history of percepts

[32:00]

that's not the same as your history of concepts, of experienced concepts. Yeah, now, if you're a fan of Proust, Proust, his novel turns on things, as everybody knows, on the smell of Hawthorne or the taste of a... A madeleine, yeah. But I'm sure it wasn't... Sure. Yeah, go ahead. And... I'm sure it wasn't the Madeline or the Hawthorne, the concept.

[33:31]

It was simply the taste or the smell. And Bruce wasn't quite enough of a Buddhist. To say there was this smell which we could call Hawthorne but let's take the word Hawthorne away and just you couldn't write about it. But I'm sure that He was moved by the bliss of the sensation itself. Now, how wonderful that in these, somebody thinks, well, okay, how do we talk about the experience of existence as a construct?

[34:41]

Wie wunderbar, dass jemand darüber nachdenkt, wie wir über die Erfahrung der Existenz als Konstrukt sprechen können. So let's deconstruct the experience of existence. Let's not make it too complicated. Five categories is enough. So you create five categories. And hidden in the third category, like, you know, treasure chest, it is the experience of bliss. Yeah, okay, so that's the third skandha. And the fourth skandha is associative mind. Which overlaps with what Freud seems, met by free associating. And associative mind is... Percepts now become concepts. And concepts are only concepts because they're constructed from other concepts.

[36:09]

You can't have a chair without the concept of a leg. And you can't have a leg without the concept of a leg. Yeah, and the concept of other tables and chairs and so forth. So as soon as you shift from percept only, there's no concept only. But there can be the tapestry of concepts that appear. And in their appearance, they create a field. There are several things that create a field. Und in deren Auftauchen kreieren die ein Feld.

[37:25]

There are several? Several anything create a field. Weil mehrere davon eben ein Feld kreieren. So the appearance of concepts create a field of associations or a tapestry. Und so erschafft die... You and I create a field. Yes. We can't help it. Okay. Sorry. And now we create a field, right? So as soon as there's concept, there's a field. And as soon as there's a field, the field itself has its own dynamic.

[38:34]

And the field begins to call forth other associations, concepts, that could fit into that field. So you begin to have a field of association. And you begin to be able to feel that field. Okay, now all one of the truisms of yoga Buddhist yoga. I'm sorry to say this so often, but hey, we're doing this together. All mental phenomena have a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component.

[39:39]

No, part of Yogacara Zen is to notice the physical component for every mental component. And the physical component is often more accessible than the mental component. So the physical component is kind of like a dial on the radio or TV or something like that. Or a door handle. So you sit down and get your posture. When you establish the mental posture, don't move. You sort of notice, usually you don't try to establish any particular mental posture beyond don't move. But various mental postures appear and you trust them.

[41:10]

You don't say, I don't like that mental posture. But if there's two or three mental postures, you might make a choice. I have to be part of a seminar later next week or tomorrow or something. And Andreas told me it was the Self continuum. Oh dear, where's that knob? Oh yeah, there it is, right here at this chakra.

[42:13]

It's sort of like that. And then you tune in self and self continuum. Or you go to sleep and you think, just before I go to sleep, I've really got to come up with a lecture by the time I've taken my 10-minute nap. I'm making fun of myself, but it's sort of true. In other words, if I get to know the physical component of particular mental components, mental fields, I can go there more quickly through the physical doorknob or tuning knob, than I can by trying to recreate the emotional, mental experience.

[43:32]

Even to sit down in zazen and cross your legs and lift through your spine is tuning certain physical components to produce the mind of zazen. And the physical tuning takes time. Ten minutes or so usually. Yeah, like that. But we can say the field that's created is something like, to give it a name, primitive consciousness. So the associations that have appeared also create a particular field related to those particular associations. And I think the best word for it is a kind of primitive consciousness.

[45:06]

And primitive in English has come to mean something like cavemen or something like that. But primitive just means first without any seconds. It means first without any further elaborations. So there's a kind of primitive consciousness that arises through the associations but that has not yet been plowed by thinking. As soon as you start thinking, you're plowing that primitive consciousness and it's no longer primitive.

[46:14]

Okay, so that's the fourth skanda. And the fifth skanda is consciousness. The job of consciousness is to create a predictable world. So we can always modify consciousness by the word predictive and not primitive in this case. So there's predictive consciousness. which predictive consciousness eliminates, edits out everything that's not predictive or everything you don't like. The field, the associative field of primitive consciousness or perhaps awareness

[47:15]

flows into what I called earlier the actional domain of consciousness. Actionable, which is a more legal term, are unusual words in English. But it means a situation in which an action can occur, an act can occur. So consciousness becomes a field in which you can act. Stand up, walk around, not bump into things, say hello to people and so forth. Get on the bus and go to work.

[48:40]

Start your car. And that is your experience of existence. Your experience of existence is the actual field of consciousness. But in it are all these hidden ingredients. of the other four skandhas. So isn't that enough for now? All right. I didn't get to where I wanted to go, but we still have tomorrow. So now I think we have a topic if you're going to get together.

[49:40]

Jetzt, glaube ich, haben wir ein Thema, wenn ihr euch gleich trefft. And the topic is, how do you like the five skandhas? Das Thema ist, wie gefallen euch die?

[50:00]

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