To talk about something that's so obvious as the self is not obvious. Because we're all living our experience of the self without noticing other than the living of it. And it's a central issue in Buddhism and Zen practice. But how to make it accessible as a topic, I don't find it very easy to do. Yeah, and we tried most of the day yesterday. I found it fun, but I don't know if it was illuminating. Yeah, and Lena asked a question yesterday.

[01:17]

She said, well, yes, it's a continuity, but so what? Well, that's not exactly what she said. Okay, so it's a continuity. What's the problem with it being a continuity? Thank goodness it is a continuity. I couldn't even wake up in my hotel room and find it the same room. And I'm quite happy that I woke up in the same hotel room. The table was right where I remember it being. I went to sleep and so forth. So of course the table didn't move during the night. But that's not the point.

[02:17]

The point is that I remembered and needed to remember or be familiar with where the table was when I woke up. And if I hadn't remembered, I would think early onset Alzheimer's. Which I'm not too fond of the idea, actually. Did you come by bicycle? Yeah, I can see it on your forehead. But as I said to Lena yesterday, if you are implied, if you take for granted that it's a continuity, and experience it primarily as a continuity,

[03:39]

That will make it less likely that you'll experience its discontinuities. and it's very useful to experience it as a discontinuity, as well as a continuity. Now for most of you this is pretty obvious. But the theme of this seminar is the self-continuum. And so we need to find a way to speak about that. And the word continuum is a noun.

[05:11]

In English. And as a noun, it means it's a thing. Something like a thing. So if it's a thing, we can think of it as a construct. And then we can think of the self as a construct. And if the self is a construct, who's constructing it? Or could you participate in its construction? So all of Buddhism is based on participating in the construction of, well, let's say, the self. And it's a kind of... A little simplistic to say Buddhism is a teaching of non-self.

[06:28]

Yeah, it's a teaching of the impermanence of self. The non-inherency of self. Permanence means it's permanent. Non-inherence means it has no initial identity which continues throughout its life. And as I had to do yesterday and as I need to do again today because there's more of us here, I have to get us more or less on the same page. Dass wir alle das Gleiche wissen.

[07:47]

You don't say that expression? No, we don't have that idiom. We have a different one. Auf dem gleichen Stand. Okay, good. Now we're on the same page. Okay. And we have to have the linguistic resources to talk about this. And you know, I mean, we don't actually don't have the linguistic resources. So I'm trying to establish in the midst of the seminar the linguistic resources. I read the other day that Aristotle didn't have the word will, will as in willpower, available to him. I had no way of knowing. I don't know Greek and I had no way of knowing if this is really true.

[08:52]

But certainly it could be true. And I read that he had to find combinations of other words that function the same way as our word in English, willpower or will, functions. Now, when I first started practicing, You know, I had no idea what, I didn't know what a sashin was. I'd come to a few, two or three lectures of Suzuki Roshi.

[09:52]

And there was a sign-up sheet for a sashin. And then there was such an entry list for a sashin. That was the first sashin. And then I saw that this friend who is an artist, from me, Paul Alexander, he signed up there. So I thought, I don't know what a sashin is, but if he signed up, why don't I sign up too? So I got off from work early and I worked in a warehouse. And I got there and they just kept sitting and sitting and sitting. And I thought, oh my God. What have I gotten myself into? They didn't stop. No. Yeah, and then I realized that the Paul Alexander who signed that was a different Paul Alexander.

[11:05]

So, but I, it seemed like you needed willpower to get through the sashin. And that didn't work for me. I mean, you could kind of force yourself with willpower. But I mean, even the Buddha supposedly thought that the idea of endurance wasn't good for his disciples. Because it was too much in the direction of the ascetic practices that the Buddha stopped and then began to practice the middle way. Yeah, so to suffer through and force yourself through, you know, it didn't feel good.

[12:08]

So I discovered somehow by luck The word willingness. Now I'm trying to give you, trying to make the distinction about linguistic resources. Because words focus our attention. So if I think that it takes willpower to get through one period after another, then I focus my attention in that way.

[13:12]

You're going awfully fast. I don't know how I lit up the word, or lit upon the word willingness. But I did discover I was able, I was willing to sit through the periods. And the willingness to sit through periods means I wasn't forcing myself, I was accepting what was happening. So willingness was a process of repeated acceptance.

[14:13]

And I found that I could accept the willingness new to me pain in my legs, but I didn't want to force myself through it, but I could accept. This caused a different caused me to be present in the sashin in a very different way, in a very patient way instead of a, you know, almost aggressive way. So there's nothing in English, there's no language, there's no linguistic resources in English to speak about self other than as the...

[15:24]

main way we live in this world. Or even the only way to live in this world. But if you see self as a continuum and hence a construct, you can begin to feel it's not permanent, feel it has gradations or topography, as I said. Or to see it as a function as well as a construct. Okay. Now, many times I have, over the years, but I haven't for a long time, spoken about the four functions of self.

[16:44]

But since there's new people here and since all of you old people need a review, And since I need a refresher too, I'll do the four functions of self again. This is not a teaching, traditional teaching in Buddhism in the way I'm presenting it. Sometimes I've had the five functions of self. And most of the years, 50 years I've been practicing, I've emphasized the three functions of self. Yeah, but the four, I think the four is the best list.

[18:12]

Yeah, I had it sometimes the eight functions of self, but that included four bodhisattva functions. And then I decided that bodhisattva functions make it too complicated. Anyway, we're all beginners, so let's worry about bodhisattvas later. Okay. So the four functions of self. The first is separation. And... You know, it's, I mean, the easiest way, I think, to understand separation is by analogy with the immune system. Your immune system has to know what belongs to you and doesn't belong to you. Our doctors here can confirm that.

[19:16]

And if your immune system doesn't know what belongs to you and doesn't belong to you, as some forms of illness blur that line, you're in medical trouble. And maybe we have a psychological immune system which This belongs to me and it doesn't belong to you. But in any case, we have to know that. That's her cushion, this is my cushion. I'll tell you. Whenever I get up to a flip chart, I feel like I'm pretending to be a teacher.

[20:39]

The first is separation. The next function of the self as a function is to establish connection. And as soon as you have these categories and the Buddha himself probably spoke about the teaching of the skandhas or the five heaps.

[21:40]

Skandhas means heaps. More than any other teaching heaps during his lifetime. Or at least it would be very commonly spoken of by the Buddha. The skandhas are related to this, but I will speak about it a little later. The categories of the skandhas allow you to begin to see into how the self is constructed. And these categories allow you to see into the necessary functions of self. If you cannot establish separation And connectedness.

[23:00]

You can't function in this world. So while a permanent self is not necessary, in fact, it's a delusion. An inherent self is a delusion. I mean, from the Buddhist point of view, in my experience. What we can call in English, at least, and probably in German, the functional self is simply necessary. Okay, now, Once you have, in this case, these two categories, you can start noticing when the self is establishing separation and when the self, or you, whatever, is establishing connectedness.

[24:19]

Now if you don't have these categories, you can't notice these functions. I mean, you live these functions, but you don't notice them. And I'm sure therapists will tell you their clients often sometimes only see separation or can't handle connectedness and they feel overwhelmed by other people as well. So if you see the categories, you can begin to notice when you're establishing separation, when you're acting within connectedness. Then you can decide to change the emphasis.

[25:27]

And there's no question that yoga culture and Buddhist culture primarily emphasizes connectedness. And the linguistic resources, I'm just using this phrase, of English clearly emphasize separation. It's much easier to speak about separation in English than connectedness. Okay, so, yeah, there's two more. One is, the next one is? Continuity.

[26:34]

And the fourth one is context. Now, one of the first things I noticed early on in my practice in the 60s is that I thought in categories of separation. But I was beginning to experience through practicing zazen, through practicing meditation, domains, fields of connectedness, which I didn't have the categories to notice.

[28:03]

And so, at some point, I recognized that the idea that Neil and I, or Anscha and I, are separated by space, It's simply not true. We're not separated, are we? No. Never, never. I asked him later, I told him I'd ask him this, and he's supposed to say no. Okay. So I realized that the idea that space separates was a cultural construct.

[29:22]

Because I just as clearly can say space connects. So as a result, I have given Dharma Sangha practitioners over many decades even, The turning word phrase of already connected. Because we have in our mind as Westerners, at least English speaking Westerners, we're already separated. And I'm sitting here and I'm separated from you. And I have to be nice to you so you, you know, you treat me okay. And I have to be polite.

[30:36]

And in Germany, I have to call you by your last name. In America, I can call you Bill, but in Germany, I have to call you Herr Porter. No, really, I've been in stores buying something, and I say, I'll be back later, just see if I'm going to buy that something shirt or something. And I'll say, what is your name? And they say, Herr Porter, or Herr Schmidt. And I say, no, what's your name? Sorry. and they reluctantly tell me their first name. What is your name? Andreas. Oh, no, no. Anyway, there's these kind of differences.

[31:54]

So, but if you take, if you realize that English has given us the mantra, we're already separated. Long ago. The way my mother treated me, my father treated me, school teachers, all assumed separation. So it functioned as a turning word, a mantra, even though I never acknowledged it. Okay. So then I discovered I could make use of the perception that I was separated by creating an antidote. Instead of already separated, already connected.

[33:25]

So I don't have to establish connection with you because we're already connected. Of course, I know that we're Westerners and I have to sort of pretend to be establishing connection, but in actual fact, I feel connected already. And I think you'll find every time you meet a stranger, you feel already connected. As you might if you're lost in the woods in the snowstorm. You didn't know how to get back to where you were staying. And then suddenly there's somebody on the path you'd feel already connected. Hey, where am I?

[34:36]

But you can feel that all the time. And that's much more begins to create the territory of compassion. And freedom from loneliness. I mean, in some ways you might feel lonely, but really you never feel separated. Okay. So that's some example for the first two. And continuity, I already spoke about.

[35:44]

Like knowing that the next morning in the hotel room, it's the same room and it's the same table and so forth. And that sameness isn't dependent on the table being in the same place, it's dependent on my memory being in the same place. So establishing continuity is something that you can call a function of self. Okay, and now I'm sitting here pretending to be a teacher. Now, just that I say pretending to be a teacher means that I don't think of myself as having identity of teacher. So being a teacher is a role I find myself in.

[36:56]

But in this role, I'm in the context with you as the teacher. Aber in dieser Rolle bin ich in diesem Zusammenhang, Kontext, mit euch als Lehrer. And that context is not the same as separation, connectedness or continuity. Und dieser Kontext ist was anderes als die Trennung, die Verbundenheit oder die Kontinuität. So I function in this situation not through continuity, separation or connectedness, but actually through all three. I don't function that way, but in fact I do. But primarily in this thing I'm functioning contextually.

[37:59]

I can perceive context and act within context. And I have to have a sense of role or something, self, role, in order to function in this context. And this is, I spoke about, I've never spoken about it before, but in the recent Winter Branches, I spoke about what's called in Chinese, thinking in cases. And the development of koans as cases, exemplary stories, is an example of what developed in China from about the early Christian era.

[39:34]

An emphasis on thinking through examples rather than through primarily logic. It's like law schools and business schools teach you to think in cases these days. That means that in the flow of events, I can see in the flow of events, it's almost like I could slow them down and see constellated arrangements as happening in the flow. And that is a... We do that, but it's a skill you can also develop.

[40:37]

So I won't say more about that now. That's enough for now. Okay. So I think given that you sat for half an hour, we should take a break. And again, the significance of creating categories is it allows you to bring attention to the categories.

[41:46]

Die Bedeutsamkeit liegt darin, dass es dir möglich macht, Aufmerksamkeit zu diesen Kategorien zu bringen. And if they're categories, again, then you can change the emphases. And again, if they're categories, then you can change the emphasis. It means you can change who you are. How you are. Once you see it, you can begin to change it. But then you can ask, who sees it? Is it the self that sees it? Dear, I shouldn't have mentioned that. That's too hard to answer. Let's have a break. I'm going to pause. Thank you, Professor.

[42:50]

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