Does anyone have anything you'd like to say following up on what we discussed before lunch? Does this very basic and totally initial Buddhist practice Does this totally basic and profoundly initial Buddhist practice make sense to you? I mean, not intellectual sense, but does it make sense in thinking about your own life and your practice? Does it have a meaning, a meaning, not from intellectual understanding, but from how you live your life?

[01:06]

Yes. Well, I depend on you, don't I? I apologize. I can only think of one thing. About a year ago, I was completely exhausted. About a year ago, when I was totally down. When I was in a kind of crisis. And I found a therapist. And this therapist did various things and magic and together with Marlene supported and strengthened her self-confidence. And it seems to me as if I'm knitting or something similar to knitting.

[02:25]

Okay. Crocheting. Yes, that's it. Crocheting. See how good my German is enough. And on the one hand, my self-esteem or myself, as if I am leaning forward with myself. So it seems to her that she on one hand like with a therapist kind of crochets forward herself and her self-confidence but then in the back it's all

[03:28]

Unraveling it. Or practice is unraveling it. There's fairy tales about that. So somehow the self is walking forward. So you feel that the therapist helped you strengthen yourself And practice helps you unravel the self. And you're hoping that... the self stays one or two needles ahead of the unraveling. Or perhaps you're hoping that, like Atmar said, there's both and, the unraveling and the strengthened self.

[04:36]

Now, what's contradictory here? This is at the level of language and definition. Buddhist practice is clearly about well, it clearly states that there's no substantial, inherent, or permanent self. Okay, so that we can probably recognize intellectually. Whether we can recognize it in our experience is a bigger question.

[05:56]

But at the level of language, what sounds contradictory is you can't practice this freedom from self unless you have a strong self. People with a weak sense of self often like practice, but it really can't do it very well. Okay. Someone else? Anyone else? Yes. I already said this in the winter branches. but through practice my identification with my personal story has changed to such a degree that I'm not particularly interested in it anymore.

[07:30]

And then at the end of the winter period I simply returned to a process or a special point of pain And at the end of the Winter Brunches Week I was at a point where pain, where I touched pain again, which is somewhere in myself. And in contrast to before there is just this pain without special relation to anything in my story. and I'm not particularly interested anymore to find the story behind the pain, so it's easier to stay with the pain and maybe explore it.

[08:37]

At the same time, however, I also have the feeling that I simply have to stay with this pain or examine it, and at the same time I have the feeling that I have to explore the pain in order to be freer of it, eventually. which I simply trust and which I also don't want to have, but where I have the feeling that there are a lot of levels going into each other and it is difficult to sort them out. And I also notice that I'm in a specific mood in all of this. I do not like this mood particularly. And it seems that many things, many levels are interwoven there.

[09:58]

So it's really difficult to separate them out and explore them. But it seems important to stay close to this state of feelings, mind, body. And even though I don't quite know why or how, but that seems important and I try to do it. And earlier, like years ago, I couldn't have done that and I couldn't have noticed that. Okay.

[11:00]

This is the prologue to it. I call it the Prologue Day. And it serves various functions. One of the big things, it gets us started and allows the people who just start tomorrow to start not where we started today, but it does allow the whole seminar to sort of enter the discussion, the internal and external discussion more quickly. And I think one function of the prologue dated today, this seminar, is, you know, we're all immersed in our self-experience.

[12:06]

Most of it, which we don't distinguish even as self-experience, but just experience. And if we can use this day to raise questions out of our own experience or absence of it. And I think that will help make Saturday and Sunday more fruitful. Now I think One of the differences implied in what Tara said is there's a big conceptual difference between traditional psychotherapy and Zen practice.

[13:35]

Psychotherapy is a big field now with many aspects. But overall it is emphasized that your present is created by your past. And that the past continues and becomes the present. And the past continues in the present and becomes the future. And you can modify that or to some extent interrupt it.

[14:50]

But still the emphasis is you're made from the past. And Buddhist practice assumes, Zen practice assumes That you're primarily made in the present. Or that's too much to say. Or you can shift the emphasis primarily to the present. And not so involved with the story, as Tara said, of the past, from the past. But the affect in the present. And this is part of the classic story, I mean the iconic story, is conveyed in the iconic story of the person who's shot by an arrow.

[16:19]

and Buddhism says don't spend too much time wondering who shot it the first step is to get it out and you can worry about who shot it later So that's a different conception. Different emphasis. And it may be important who shot it. If the guy is still behind the bush. Or sitting in Maryland controlling a drone in Iraq. You know that's what they do, right?

[17:31]

They go to work and they're sitting in Maryland. They go home and watch a baseball game and then they go to work and they shoot somebody in Iraq. In the whole Near East, it's wondering who shot the arrow. Still, the point is, it's a shift in emphasis. Now what's also significant in what Tara said or significance is certainly exemplified or implied by her is that there's a power to attention that most of us don't develop?

[18:39]

Or we could say that without instruction or hints you don't realize the power, the powers that attention potentially holds. And discovering the powers of attention is again a definition of adept practice or yogic practice. Now, if we want to talk about the craft of practice during this seminar, which we've already are doing, but continuing, we can ask, what are the different powers of attention?

[19:51]

And how do we cultivate these powers? Okay. Now, staying with what Tara said, she's looking at a pain she feels, emotional, psychological, something or other pain. And it's very layered and stuck together. And she doesn't want to try to separate the layers, sort it out by trying to figure out who shot the arrow. Und sie will diese verschiedenen Ebenen nicht auseinander dividieren dadurch, dass sie sich fragt, wer den Pfeil geschossen hat.

[21:03]

But she wants to just bring attention to it. That's what she implies or what you can do. Strangely enough, one of the things that happens when you bring attention to something is a certain kind of attention. Attention may be like the intention of holding a baby. The intention of holding a baby, you're probably not thinking, the baby will be better in the future if I hold it. It's probably true. But the emphasis is you're just holding the baby. And you enjoy holding the baby.

[22:04]

And the baby might even stop crying. But in any case, if you hold without any intention particularly, let's call it intentionless attention, the better you are at intentionless attention, which I'm just calling it, I could call it other things, the layers start to separate. You start feeling a space between the layers that you didn't know was there. And some layers just disappeared.

[23:27]

They were part of the glue, but once they were separated, the glue wasn't necessary. And this intentionless attention seems to be quite intelligent or intuitive. Because without your making any effort you have no intention, but attention goes to certain layers and not other layers. It's almost as if the attention co-evolved with the layers. Like, quoting Peter Nick's seminar, Perhaps there's a kind of pollination going on, or hummingbirds instead of bees or something like that.

[24:53]

So the attention becomes almost like a kind of process of pollination. or the opposite, letting some things just dry up, blow away. In other words, if our emphasis is not to find out the story behind our present, then we need to develop a kind of attention which opens up our layered experience of the present, our layered experience in the present. Okay Yes

[26:07]

I feel spoken to through what you say. I'm a psychotherapist and when people come to me in my practice There are roughly speaking two variations, categories, how they deal with problems. So do I sometimes. One is that they are always looking for a reason. why or cause why is it that I feel like this or they do not really want to look at the pain but try to do something else

[27:27]

And what you just described, to just give attention, like with a baby, and just be with it, that's very, very difficult. Well, I think this, thank you. Yeah, Gisela. The intentionless attention means I'm completely in the present. Absolutely present. You've held a lot of babies in your life. Then the question comes up, what is the difference to pure awareness? Well, you're asking the question.

[28:59]

So you're asking the question is already the first stages of exploring the question. So continue the exploration. Okay. Yes? I would like to tell a story because yesterday in therapy the following happened with a child. It's an eight year old boy who told me What a horrible film he saw. And I asked him, why did you watch the film?

[30:05]

Were you on your own at home? And he said, no, his parents were at home and he watched the film together with his brother. But for him it was such a strange and bad somehow experience to watch this film. He had to tell Agatha about the men and the weapons and whatever. And then I asked him, how did you sleep afterwards? Did you dream about the film? And then he said, no, I did not dream about the film.

[31:07]

I dreamt about a cat holding a cat in my arms and petting her. You know, we don't, in Crestone we don't really have television. In fact, we don't have television. But there is a, you can watch movies. And I have been interested, you know, Sophia, my 11-year-old daughter, until about two years ago, she just wouldn't watch these movies that most of the kids are attracted to, shooting and jumping around and cars and explosions and...

[32:10]

She just didn't want to see them. Yeah, and violence. And I don't understand why she didn't, because most of the other kids are fascinated by it. And Sophia's taste ran to Fred Astaire. She loved watching Fred Astaire dance with, you know, Ginger Rogers, you know. She really liked to watch Fred Astaire dance with Ginger Rogers. And in that kind of movies there is very little violence. But I didn't really understand why some children are fascinated by violence and other children are not. Okay.

[33:29]

Anyone else want to say something? Yes. I would like to come back to the therapists and the emotions. So this is the prologue day, so I just add something. Yeah, please. No matter the story behind it or now, the problems and the pain is real. And especially in these moments of problem and pain is a very strong feeling of self.

[34:30]

it's the self which does not want the pain and needs to do something about it and the other extreme is the beginning of the heart sutra where it says all that is free of the self And that's the point where I also cannot go forward. You can't? Cannot. Okay, thanks. Let's keep that floating in the space. Lasst uns das im Raum schwebend halten. You know, I mean, generally we support each other a lot in the Sangha. And I think supporting another person is experienced as supporting yourself. Because one of the qualities of the Sangha is a sense of a shared body or something like that.

[36:00]

So you want all parts of the body to feel pretty good. So there's a kind of way to, even if you have to say something critical, you say it in as supportive a way as you can. Yeah, that's all true. But it's also the case when you become more experienced in practice. It should be almost impossible to hurt you or insult you. And you see it in the Ka'an quite a bit. You stupid creep!

[37:18]

Then the guy laughs and says, tell me another one. So, I mean, if somebody tells you you're a creep... How should that translate? A creep. I'd have to look it up, actually. A creep is to crawl along. It's worse. A creep is a person who has mostly bad qualities. Yeah. That's why I like being in Germany. Anyway. Okay. You may not like it, then you want to hear it, but you're not hurt by it. It allows the more mature practitioners to accept feedback.

[38:29]

And to really give feedback to people, there's a real relationship in the Sangha and between the teacher and the practitioner. When feedback is possible, it is possible when the person can no longer be offended. Then the relationship develops much more powerfully. Okay. Now, this image of the baby being held, I think that may be a good way to try to understand closely held tensions. And I'm partly trying to distinguish between what we usually mean by mindfulness and closely held attention.

[39:55]

Because Closely held intention is a real serious, useful practice. It's as if you were holding a baby. And you're really giving it attention because it's here in your... feel the baby max out for bringing your attention max turning your attention Like, um, I change.

[41:08]

Maybe, maybe, it's the kind of absorbent attention. So just observing this [...] attention. Also, stell dir vor, du hast ein Gefühl für den Lesen, den diese Absaugung nimmt. Nahgehaltener aufnehmen. Then you give the baby to the mother. Dann gibst du das Baby der Mutter. Aber es ist A within that clip. Aber es ist A. Aber zu viel. Aber es ist A. Innerhaltig. Innerhaltig. Innerhaltig. Closely. Closely. Closely. Tom it was not fun is these are so beer or the just for half max on record in which you can it's wondering is of Maxon comes in lips and of Maxon come come um and Chris now and I'm I didn't figure in it time to give yourself and it will kind of tell yourself and his sense selbst and his any presence with that

[42:37]

is there some absorbs others includes this closely held attention we could say a compassionately one skill What is compassion skill? Calm. He comes to your passion, but comes with passion to feel with a girl's jacket. You want a girl's jacket. It's kind of fun. [...] so this is one example of how and compassion are and compassion and compassion the direct the direct

[44:01]

Both are equal. That's it. Okay. That's it. [...] here couldn't that be to justify bad deeds yes Particularly the same mechanism. I would say it's not the same mechanism, but it is the same. I mean, the old psychology, that would be someone who had no psychology, would be someone who... Ich glaube, so eine Aktion von Psychopathen war, dass es eine, die kein Gefühl, die keine eigenen Handlungen hat.

[45:20]

So die folgen eigenen Handlungen. But here, you know, the direction is different. Aber die Richtung anders wiegt. I'm talking about the Bodhisattva Ken. Talking about the Bodhisattva Ken. The Bodhisattva Ken. The Bodhisattva Ken. but at the same time doesn't identify with him or herself in a way that are concerned with him or herself or isn't present but I would feel hurt if someone had to feel like them or something they can't feel like them in the way that it's working it doesn't hurt if someone else doesn't feel like them but maybe they're really mindful but they care because that's who just insulted them

[46:51]

And then it's, you know, you know, energy is about energy. and perhaps your energy is so absorbed within your energy and not much is absorbed in your own identity so you just don't feel hurt But I think it's important to explore these dynamics. And, I mean, unless you read the sutras with considerable experience, What we're talking about, you have to discover yourself from my own experience.

[48:09]

Okay, thank you. That was good. All right, I think it's time to have a break. We've been sitting here for an hour. And for some reason, the last few days...

[48:17]

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