So I think it's important that we take turns. And I just had my turn talking. Now it's your turn. And fair is fair. And anything you'd like me to speak about, I'm happy to do so. I mean, if I'm able at least. Okay. Yes. I would like to add to the topic of self, since that's something I'm thinking about a lot. Yes, and I keep thinking of this term, selflessness, which is the opposite to how we usually use the word self.

[01:15]

Exactly, and I find that so confusing and exciting, now that Roshi is dealing with it, because we also have the whole spectrum, let's say, from selfless to a meaningful self, the great self, so to speak, the whole spectrum. And how you're using the word, I think that's interesting because we also have this entire spectrum starting with selfless, all the way up to the big self, the meaningful self. Okay, okay. So is selflessness and the big self related? Yes, I would say that it is not the egoistic self, not what is called the self or the personal, both are somehow transpersonal. I would say they are related by neither one of them being the egotistic I. Both of them are a transpersonal dimension.

[02:34]

Okay. So there's, to change the topic slightly, there's selfishness and there's big selfishness, which is like a shark. Good luck. A big self, fish, which is a shark. Okay, someone else? Once I noticed in the preparation of this seminar that it takes a completely different direction to prepare this seminar.

[03:45]

It is much more work, much more intention, much further away from everyday life And in preparing for this seminar, I noticed that comparing it to other seminars that we do here in this living room as well, I noticed that preparing for this seminar is quite different because it takes a lot more intention and it's a lot more work. I'm sorry. I like to work. And it seems like it's a lot further removed from our everyday life. I'm sorry. It's interesting because it makes it clear how we construct our reality. And it's interesting because what that shows is how we construct our reality. And that brings me to the other point with the self. I think when consciousness is created in a child, for example, in development, then it has the feeling that the self is already there.

[04:53]

and that leads me to another point about the self when a child develops then at some point it starts having the feeling that the self is there and it seems like the ability to recognize the self and the self itself they appear at the same time And that's why it's so inextinguishably convincing. How do you know that the self appears when you have the ability to recognize the self? I mean, of course, on one level it has to be true. The self might be there unrecognized. do you know that it really comes together, the ability to recognize oneself and the self itself?

[06:00]

Or can it be that the self is already there before, but is not recognized? Yes, I can say that. That's possible, yes. One could say that, yes. And that also arises through attribution, for example, through culture or something like that. But it's also developed through attribution through the culture. I have a daughter who's 11. And one that's 50 and one that's 32. And my 11-year-old daughter is named Sophia. And the wisdom of Sophia listening to her parents seems to be disappearing. So somehow at 11 and puberty on the way she seems to want an independent self and now and immediately then she wants to know what that independent self will be in the future so she's planning her future already and of course nowadays she's planning her future through Google

[07:29]

She thinks up some possibility and then she goes on Google and sees if that's possible. Not right now. She wants to be a historian of prehistorical cultural artifacts. So she's studying on Google prehistorical cultural artifacts. I don't know what she finds. Atlantis. Okay. Someone else. Yep. I would like to refer to this spirit, that I actually recognize an object as my spirit before. to recognize this spirit that is basically already there, this spirit that is already there and which then brings the object to this appearance that I then perceive,

[09:06]

I am interested in how the spirit does this. What I'm interested in is, I'd like to go back to the mind that appears before the object, the mind that you recognize as mind before the object. And I'm interested in finding out how does that mind that's there already, how does that mind make the object appear as the object? Well, first of all, we know it does happen. The explanation of how it happens may not be so important.

[10:20]

But we can think about that, and of course that's what a lot of neurobiologists are thinking about these days. But your point is well taken, as we say. Because if there's the object and if there's the mind object, And we can experience and shift our emphasis between more objective, more mind. And what about the mind before content appears? Okay, now I call that prior mind. Mind prior to content. Ich nenne das den vorangehenden Geist, der Geist der Vorobjekten.

[11:21]

Now then, can the adept practitioner through zazen and through conceptual incremental development locate him or herself in the mind prior to content. Yes, it's possible. Maybe I should say, can the the person locate him or her non-self before him or her, you know, etc. I don't know, I'm just joking. But there is the problem we always use the word self in English, which keeps reifying the concept that essentially everything is self.

[12:23]

And then you can also ask the question, I'm partly joking now, but whether you can also locate yourself before the self or non-self appears. And that makes it complicated now, it's partly a joke, but it is already the case that we, at least in German, always use this word itself, which then hardens the concept of the self. So, I mean, I'm glad you brought that up, though, because it allows me to speak about, gives me permission to speak about locating an attentional point prior to the content of the mind. I'm sorry, it's prior to... the content arising in mind. Yes, okay. Someone else? Yes. Two things that somehow also connect. Two things that come up for me when I hear this discussion about the self one is the one you just mentioned about place and location and locating oneself and the other is movement

[14:14]

When I listened to Angela as she described what seemed like points, Then immediately what came up for me is a kind of circle, maybe because I'm sitting right in front of one of Karl's circles on the wall. And I can feel that today in the listening also in a few places, my salvation, if I say it pathetically, is keep moving. And one thing that has come up for me, it's like my rescue, if I may say that as dramatically as that or something, is keep moving.

[15:18]

Like to shape, for example, to transform myself into a sense of location and then to change it. For example, to transform my sense of self into a sense of location and then to change that. And that's something that I work a lot with in my work. With clients? Yes, as well. To change your sense of being located in a self-point to something shifting it to a location point. Yes. Is that what you mean? Yes. Something like that. And then sometimes even to work with the... to change the location where I locate myself more. In your body? In my body, yes. So in other words, you're establishing... Translate.

[16:22]

In other words, what you describe is something like your feeling The chakra elevator? Kind of. I mean, that's what appears. So sometimes in a session I can listen from here, and then I drop down to listening from here, for example. And then oftentimes something very different happens.

[17:22]

When you make that shift, happens in yourself or happens in the client, in the relationship? It happens in the client. You're tricky. But I'll do it. Someone else? Don't be shy. It's too obviously related to self. Don't be shy. Shyness is obviously too self-reliant. I'm still interested in what Ellen brought up about about the point prior and it's almost like I can't fully grasp it but I do perceive it with in some form and

[18:36]

and whether there is a kind of decision of whether something comes into appearance and how that comes into appearance and so forth that point to me is never entirely clear or graspable. Maybe it's also because that's such a minuscule time span. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it may be good for me to respond to some of what you're saying and not just listen, as I usually prefer to do. Because I can feel we are engaged with this topic and with this practice. I can say, let's just take anything.

[20:03]

I can say, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And we can feel that's a question. But we can feel that it's a question that can't be answered in language or in experience. The answer is the chicken that forgot to cross the road. Die Antwort ist, dass Hühnchen das vergessen hat, über die Straße zu laufen. That was just being dumb. Because we also have an expression about you. Anyway, so... But we can say a mind prior to content. As you imply. Okay, so we can say a mind prior to content. And I think we can also feel that that's a possibility.

[21:15]

Like we can't feel the chicken and the egg, see? Except as a question. So my point is, because you can feel the possibility even though it's a statement I can make in words. It's not a statement that only can be made in words. I think we can feel it as maybe a real possibility. Now, the craft of practice is partly to sense when you discover in a teaching or in yourself. A statement that has the feeling of being possible.

[22:26]

It probably is possible. So then how to enact that possibility? And the basic approach is for you or for anyone is feeling that possibility You incubate that feeling. Incubate, in this case meaning you keep bringing it up in each moment's unique circumstances. And the subtle part of it that's feeling and not just language. begins to enlarge the feeling through exposure to what we would say is the 10,000 things.

[23:50]

And although you can't reach it through the language, you can reach it through incubating the concept, incubating the language. Until the Entschuldigt die Metaphern, aber das ist so, als wenn der Samenkorn für dieses Gefühl inmitten der 10.000 Dinge sich öffnet. This isn't just a metaphor I'm making up. The word for everything all at once or the word for the world or the cosmos or something like that is the Tathagatagarbha which means the coming and going of the womb embryo.

[25:15]

And that means the coming and going of the mother's womb and embryo. The world, and that is not just the world out there, but the world in which we is a world we conceive of, feel of, feel as, a coming and going, a movement that simultaneously womb and embryo. And maybe that's your sense of movement. Okay, boy, we're getting deep into this fast, aren't we? Not even lunchtime yet. It's your fault. I didn't, you know, I started out fairly simply. Okay.

[26:39]

Someone else. Yes. I'm kind of stuck with this word, self, and maybe that's a question of defining. In that entire territory, there's a bunch of different terms that are related. I think that for me this word itself is something different, how it is used in the long run. And as I understand the long-term understanding of myself, I rather assign it to the ego, to the I. And I've noticed that I've come to use the word self for myself differently from how it's commonly used.

[27:51]

And how it's commonly used, I would group with what's usually meant also by I or ego or something. So a set of personality traits and qualities and so forth as ego. And the word self, the way I understand it I'm using it more in a functional sense. as a kind of ability to organize something. and to make that a little clearer in a therapy session for example when the client is still there

[29:09]

Das kann ich nicht immer, aber manchmal, immer häufig wird das möglich. Dann ist zusätzlich eine Qualität im Raum, die für mich fast so eine nebelhafte Qualität ist. And I'm listening to what the client is saying and so forth, and then sometimes I can't always do that, but more and more so I can. There is a quality that appears that's almost like a fog kind of quality. Something that's there and yet not quite there. Sometimes it's like that, there are things in the room and I can sometimes somehow, as in the direct conversation, where it was not even mentioned, that I experience topics, things in the room, see, feel somehow, as if I can sometimes take them out of a room and can also work with them.

[30:32]

And then it's as though there are topics or things to say that are present in the space that have not come up in the direct conversation before. That's like I can pick them from the space and bring them up in the conversation. From this vague foggy space? Von diesem Niederhaften. it's even i would say it's even a space behind foggy space okay so on that but yeah and uh this is It is almost as if I go back where the formation of everything begins. And it's almost like I'm not going back. I have a hard time finding words for this going back.

[31:36]

It's not exactly the direction but going back to where the formation of everything begins. As if the very first beginnings come from something and how it starts to form and so on. So in some sense of as though I'm beginning to notice them for initial formative steps of something that is beginning to appear and in that sense I'm also using the word self as a kind of functioning of something. Yeah, okay. Now, the sense that you have of an initial formative sense that's not fully present, it hasn't fully announced itself, but partially announced itself.

[32:36]

Can you sense that you can hear what's being, the hidden which is being announced? Do you think that arises primarily from your years of experience as a therapist or also arises because you practice meditation? Do you think that this is mainly because you have all these years of experience as a therapist? Or do you think that this is also because of your meditation practice? As I grew up as a therapist, it is not out of this corner. The way I've grown up as a therapist, it's clearly not coming from that direction. In some sense, I'm not interested in where it comes from anymore, where it comes from, but I'm noticing that I'm perceiving something.

[34:07]

Well, I'm interested only in the sense that I'm doing this with... I'm practicing Buddhism. I don't know a great deal about psychology. But I'm doing this because there may be, or there seems to be, some kind of interplay between meditation and Buddhist practice and psychotherapy. And I think for many people psychotherapy is a very good preparatory practice for meditation. But psychotherapy may also influence how Buddhism evolves in the West.

[35:10]

And of course Buddhism may affect how psychotherapy develops. I don't want to assume this is going to happen. I just want to notice if it is happening. So let me put what we're doing here in a larger context. It's interesting that for literally hundreds of years, generations, many generations debated what is self, etc., in the Buddhist tradition. No.

[36:12]

Why did they do this? Why did they want to come to as much as possible precise definitions of self? And distinguish between self and persons and so forth. Well, the basic reason is that it is assumed in yogic culture, that language, while language can't describe fundamental reality, it not only can point to it, But language can be used as a way to direct attention.

[37:21]

And the simple example I use is if you ask, who am I? And then you ask, what am I? You have a different feeling. They're just words. Words starting with W. So if you ask, what am I? The words direct attention to your experience in a way that's different than, who am I? Dann richten diese Worte die Aufmerksamkeit auf deine Erfahrung auf eine Art und Weise, die anders ist, wenn du fragst, was bin ich? Behind this, the whole concept of Weltanschauung and Umwelt and so forth.

[38:25]

Weltanschauung? How do you say it? Worldview? Weltsichtung. Weltsichtung. Well, what is the word Weltanschauung? Oh, Weltanschauung. That's an English word. Weltschauung is also popular. Okay. I don't know. It's an old one. Well, I'm an old... I knew German in the past. I can't... I used to be able to speak German. That's a long time ago. So, it's based on the words Weltanschauung and Umwelt. Yeah, so... In the sense that the concepts you have of what you're doing influence what you're doing. So the more refined your concepts are, the more subtle is your activity, mental and physical activity. What else could there be? Yeah, right. Mental and emotional, mental and botanical.

[39:30]

Yeah. That's why I'm so easy to translate. One thing follows another in an obvious sense. That's right. Okay, so implicit in that, that we're influenced by the refinement of our conceptual frames. And not so much discursive language, but what I call mental postures.

[40:33]

And mental postures are, for example, things you take for granted, though you don't even know you're taking them for granted. Or a mental posture is, again, an obvious example. is when you're doing zazen or meditation. You have a physical posture. Then you have a mental posture, don't move. Now, that mental posture helps you not move. Helps your physical posture. But your physical posture helps develop the mental posture of that which doesn't move.

[41:48]

So one of the effects of learning to sit without moving is you develop an unmoving center. And one of the effects of learning to sit without moving is that you develop an immobile center. As a no actor, N-O-H, Japanese theater actor. Says the secret of being a no actor is to know how to not move in the middle of movement. Your attentional point is still. dein Aufmerksamkeitspunkt ist inmitten der Handlung still.

[43:01]

And that's the kind of conception of a person that exists in yoga cultures. Okay, so... So to continue this larger picture of what we're doing. So hundreds of years and hundreds of generations explored this topic in a commentarial tradition. Of what is self. Because the fine tuning of the definition they thought made a difference. Okay, now there's an interrelated evolvement here. As I pointed out in Hannover, the word Sanskrit, the word for the language Sanskrit, Sanskrit means that which refines.

[44:25]

So it means your language refines you. Your language isn't simply that it helps you communicate. But discovering how to communicate doesn't just mean you're communicating better. It refines you as a mental, physical being. So as I said the other day, language is this extraordinary thing that infants can learn, which they learn with crawling and walking. You seem to learn and develop mathematical ability through crawling and walking.

[45:41]

And at the same time, the most accomplished adults in the world can still evolve themselves through language. So I'm not just trying to, for example, find clearer ways of speaking about Buddhism. I'm also doing that because it's a way of developing and refining my own mind and body. And through exploring language with you, I'm also trying to share refinement, the refinement possible in our mutual presence. So the development of Buddhism in the West as an individual practice many of you are doing but simultaneously we're doing a societal practice

[46:57]

aber gleichzeitig sind wir auch dabei eine gesellschaftliche Praxis, eine kulturelle Praxis, of evolving English and Deutsch in this case, so that it can notice much more refined things than the language of a child or the language we usually use. Das Englisch und auch das Deutsch in diesem Fall I don't remember the details, but something like 50% of Chinese arose through Buddhist think tanks. And I don't know the details now, but it was about 50% of the Chinese language in these Buddhist thoughts, where they met and thought a lot, was created. Thought factory. Thought factory. So, Max Planck sattva institutes, which existed, these Buddhist think tanks in China, existed for generations.

[48:30]

And sometimes had as many as 25,000 monks working in them. The whole process of taking Indian words, Sanskrit and Pali words, and finding Chinese equivalents. And first they used a lot of Taoist language. And using Taoist language developed Taoism. And then the next generation thought Taoist language was distorted Buddhism, so they tried to eliminate the Taoist language. And then they had to find new Chinese words

[49:32]

What's the word for a new word? When you coin a new word. Anyway, they found new words to express that didn't exist in Chinese before. Neologism? Neologism. And then they had to find Chinese words that didn't exist in Chinese before. They had to shape new Chinese words. Then it was all neologism to describe the concepts. I think something like 30 or 40 percent of the Chinese vocabulary is related to these Buddhist think tanks. And I think much of the Chinese tonal system developed through these Buddhist think tanks. And one of the great translators who were head of these things They had the final say on the translation.

[50:55]

And their main point was, it has to be beautiful. That was accurate. Okay, so we're doing something similar. Just sitting here trying to talk about what the heck does self mean. And we have all the stuff that's accumulated around the word in its popular use in German and English. And now we have the various schools of psychology, Haber, Jung, Freud, etc., who with their idea of self And then we have your experience as a therapist, if you're a therapist.

[51:57]

It's what is a useful use of the word self in relationship with a client. And what is effective and what can be understood influences what you say. I mean, I'm not teaching pure Buddhism. I'm teaching the Buddhism which I can get you to understand. with which I think you can understand it. I have to do that or you'd all leave before lunch. So it influences what I say because otherwise I can't teach anything unless I can teach something.

[53:06]

So that's my riff on the refinement of language. The refining process of language. And as part of the reason why for so many generations there was this commentarial tradition of exploring the meaning of self. But We will not be the end of the discussion in this seminar. But we're somewhere in the early middle. Okay. Yes. Can you help us to make the here and now palpable so that we feel it? I'm doing my best.

[54:23]

A question that arose by listening. The reason why a refinement of language is important. The reason why a refinement of language is important. You said that language has an influence on where my attention goes. . And one question that arises for me is, does that mean that attention is not a part of consciousness the way that you define consciousness?

[55:56]

Yes. A different question is one thing that I understand well is the way you say that attention has an influence on where I direct my attention. What is the difference or what happens when I direct my attention somewhere? What is the meaning of it? What is the function of attention? What happens? Then what is the function of attention? What happens when I do direct my attention somewhere? And what comes to mind for me is that just observing something changes the setting.

[57:07]

my personal experience and also therapeutic experience simply remain in an area without much intention, but simply leave my attention in a certain place changes something and somehow leads to a solution. the function of directed attention as a kind of transformative force. And my experience both personally and as a therapist is that just leaving my attention in a particular area can lead to a kind of resolution. Just intending to change something, but leaving it there.

[58:17]

Attention is the most powerful tool, instrument, dynamic of a life. And attention is not simply consciousness. Okay, so let me go say one more thing. It's easy to take for granted that a language refines us. But our Western culture has been slow to acknowledge that. The degree to which learning to play the piano, say, being a musician affects your ability to do mathematics.

[59:23]

Or that language refines you as a person to use refined language. I mean, the... The degree to which, in general, we in the West have not recognized that. It's probably because we think we're born as a unit with a fate. Like this whole idea of at birth you're already a soul and you can't have an abortion and blah, blah, blah. Diese ganze Vorstellung davon, dass man mit der Geburt schon eine Seele hat und dass man deshalb auch nicht abtreiben kann und so. The example I use is MacArthur trying to simplify the Japanese language.

[60:28]

And the example I use is MacArthur trying to simplify the Japanese language. I mean, MacArthur basically said, what's wrong with you stupid Japanese that you have six or eight thousand characters to read the newspaper and twenty or thirty thousand to be a scholar. We only have twenty-six. That's smarter. Twenty-six letters. So the movement in the West tends to be to simplify language, to simplify English, to have a more standardized vocabulary and so forth. Because in China and Japan, the emphasis is make the language as complicated as possible because it makes more complex people.

[61:30]

So when MacArthur wanted to really simplify... Actually, I think he wanted to get them to have an alphabet. And the smart Japanese, most people didn't know one way or the other, the smart Japanese said, You're trying to simplify our brains. Yoga cultures assume from the beginning that the brain is plastic. There is a plasticity to mind and body. So the complex language produces a complex mind and body. So the movement towards simplicity is basically Dumbs us down.

[63:02]

So when you really recognize that language is a process of refinement even more than communication then you can see the complexity of what I'm talking about is part of that has arisen in a culture which says Complexity is good. What could be more complex than one cubic centimeter of brain matter having as many connections as there are in the Milky Way stars? At least culturally we need a mental, emotional and physical complexity that begins to be subtle enough to acknowledge the subtleness that we are. that the assumption is let's have a language and culture which has a complexity

[64:23]

that is responsive to, that resonates with, the actual complexity of how things are. So the more you study Buddhism, the more subtle complexity there is there. Okay. Now we need a simple decision, like lunch.

[64:53]

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