Now, as you might have noticed... Now, as you might have noticed... Did I just get up and walk around? And, yeah, I mean, I presume he didn't expect me to get up and walk around the room. But certainly something got up and walked around the room. At least this body got up and walked around the room. Now, was it myself that decided to get up and walk around the room? Or did I decide you all are Buddhas? Or potential manifest Buddhas, potentially manifest? When you see a Buddha, you circumambulate the Buddha.

[01:25]

Maybe I just circumambulated you because you're all potentially manifest Buddhas. Yeah, maybe I just didn't know what I was doing. Maybe I'm getting Alzheimer's. So what was consistent about, what was consistent in my walking around the room? I guess you can say my body was consistent. And I guess your body was consistent walking around the room.

[02:45]

But was yourself consistent when I walked around the room? Or was your idea of self consistent? Or is our sense of bodily location one of the ways we determine that we're a self. And No, it may seem irrelevant to you that I'm asking these questions.

[04:11]

Asking these questions about what do you experience as consistently. And someone told me, I guess I must have made the decision, but anyway, I just recently found out that the topic was self-consistency and inconsistency. Now, such questions may have no practical relationship to your life in the next few days.

[05:14]

Asking whether the self is consistent or inconsistent. But I'm asking this question to start us feeling into this acupuncture point of self. No, I'm asking for a couple of reasons. Other than that it's the topic. I'm asking because this is the I mean all serious Buddhist practice starts with looking for the self. And deciding whether you and deciding and noticing what your experience of self is is at the center of beginning practice.

[06:21]

And it's assumed, unless you can really enter into your own experience of self, you can't develop meditation practices and the related teachings. And the practice of looking for self doesn't mean you add the idea of non-self or something like that from Buddhism. The first step is to enter into self as you actually experience.

[07:41]

No. Nicole and I spoke last evening when she first arrived and I first arrived. Is what role will psychology, psychotherapy have in Western Buddhism? Now my general feeling is so far, over the first part of my practice during the last 50 years, is that it's best to keep these two approaches separate.

[08:56]

Psychology as a practice and a way to observe has its own fruits. and mindology or dharmaology has its own power and way of observing. and you do damage to both I think when you conflate and to use science and psychology as Trojan horses to sneak Buddhism into the West

[09:57]

And dilutes Buddhism. And takes Buddhism out of its yogic worldviews. And fits them into Western worldviews. Maybe like we try to fit dreams into Western worldviews. Maybe like we try to fit dreams into Western worldviews. or into Jungian views or Freudian views.

[11:10]

But in many other cultures, in Australian Aboriginal cultures, for instance, dreams fit into a very different cultural framework. Okay, so, again, let me say that the first step is not to add the idea of non-self. It's, first of all, to really notice, see if you can notice your own experience of self. Now, is there a difference between the idea of self and the experience of self?

[12:13]

Well, of course, if you had no experience of self, the idea of self would be, you'd be in trouble. You may be in trouble either way, actually. But I would say that for most of us, we so take for granted the fact of self But if you examine that fact of self, it's actually an idea of self. Now, if I say, give attention to attention itself.

[13:21]

Give attention to attention itself. This is English. I don't know what it's like in German, but Deutsch. But English is always implying that the essence of everything is self. So if I'm giving attention to attention itself, the implication in English is that attention is a kind of self. Or the core of attention is itself. No, we hardly notice this. And there's no way to avoid it in English. zumindest im Englischen, keine Art und Weise, das zu vermeiden.

[14:43]

In science we have self-organizing processes. In der Wissenschaft haben wir die sich selbst organisierenden Prozesse. But there's no self doing the organizing. Aber es gibt kein Selbst, das das Organisieren übernimmt. But there's no other way to say it. I say own organizing sometimes. Man kann das überhaupt nicht anders sagen. Ich sage manchmal... So I might say, notice the sky itself today. But we know there's no self in the sky unless you're really theological. My daughter announced in her Catholic kindergarten in Großherrischwand, here in the Black Forest, where there's a cross above every bed. She announced to the other kindergarten kids that she'd been up in airplanes and she saw there was no God there.

[16:00]

And this caused some disturbance in the kindergarten. Yeah, it is. She also said, when she saw the crush, she said, when does that happen? Marie-Louise told her, at Christmas. At Easter. She said, I'm going to Egypt. Because she thought she could be saved. And then she said to Marie, which way is Egypt? Okay, so... We ignore this idea that we have to say the sky itself, the tree itself.

[17:08]

But in English there's an implication there's no alternative to there not being a self. No alternative to the being of self. So I think the idea of self, we have to notice the extent to how we function through the idea of self. Und ich glaube, mit diesem Konzept vom Selbst, was wir da bemerken müssen, ist das Ausmaß, zu dem wir durch unser Konzept vom Selbst funktionieren. Und nochmal getrennt davon, müssen wir die Erfahrung vom Selbst auch bemerken.

[18:09]

Now I said that one of the reasons I am speaking about this because it's considered to be the basic preparatory practice for all Buddhist teachings. And koan 11 of the Shoyuroku, the book of Sunenki. That we discussed in the last winter branches. It says that even though you really root out the idea of self, still for most people, something subtle remains there of self.

[19:31]

For instance, if you talk about the future, And you talk about the future as if it's really going to happen. This is a kind of delusion of self. Because we don't know if it's really going to happen. So as practitioners, when we talk about the future, It's good to get in the habit of always speaking about the future as a maybe, a provisional.

[20:33]

And we got into that recently in writing a letter to the Sangha in America. Speaking about what we will do this next year. And we didn't sufficiently initially in writing the letter. give the feeling that we will do this if circumstances allow, that it won't be a plan for the future, it will be a decisional process for the future. Now, if you can really convey that in the letter, it becomes the letter just in talking about the future becomes a teaching for those reading it.

[21:45]

becomes a teaching for those reading it. Oh, you said that. Okay. Now I'm also speaking about this in addition because it's Buddhist custom as the beginning preparatory, beginning practice It's because if we talk about self, you can say, how does this have relevancy to you? Dann kannst du fragen, inwiefern ist das für dich, für mich bedeutsam? But the experience of you is an experience of self. Aber diese Erfahrung von dir, das ist eine Erfahrung von selbst. What is the experience of you an experience of self? Was ist diese Erfahrung von... You did this.

[23:03]

Sorry, can you say that again? Is the experience of you an experience of self? So if I say to Neil, you did this, does Neil feel, I did not, and why are you attacking my... I put him in a state of self-shock. And I think most of us live in a mild state of self-shock all the time. Particularly in intersubjective space. When we're thinking about our job or how we relate to people, we're in a mild state of self-shock. A certain anxiety. How are we going to get through the How are we going to get through the jungles and swamps and all the wild animals in the forest of self-shock?

[24:26]

We might do something wrong. Something might not like it. We might do it well enough. That's all self-shock. Vielleicht machen wir was falsch, oder die anderen mögen das nicht, oder wir machen das nicht gut genug, oder so. Das ist alles eine Form von Selbstschock. So, again, the second or the other reason I'm speaking about this is that self is what I could call the main acupuncture point in the whole of your life. And if you can put the finger of attention on self, you're touching the main acupuncture point of your life.

[25:32]

Or maybe it's a little bit like dropping a stone in a pond. And the ripples go out in all directions. But if the pond is covered with ice, the ripples don't do very well. Or if the pond is clogged with mud, it doesn't do very well. So just by bringing the finger of attention to this acupuncture point of self, It's one of the most transformative things you can possibly do.

[26:34]

Now, what is this finger of attention? Let's have a break. Let's go home.

[27:00]

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