I also should speak about the four functions of self, which I've spoken about many times, but not in ten years. But it's... Maybe I'll do that later. I should maybe also speak about the four functions of self, which I've already spoken about to you, but maybe I'll do that a little later. Okay. We're only supposed to translate, isn't it? Well, we have three weeks here. Oh, okay. So the first mistake... And what I want to do is... list what I think, and I would like you to add to the list what we think persuades us of the reality of self and of the fact.

[01:10]

And I want to contrast that with the starting out with the five aspects of the Bodhisattva, the five aspects that Bodhisattva, the five aspects the five conceptions that the Bodhisattva does not have. Yeah, and one is we'll see that the words they use for self, person, et cetera, mean something rather different than what you mean by saying We will then see that the words you use mean something else, that is, the words you use for yourself, person and so on, mean something else than we understand.

[02:19]

Unity. Continuity. Continuity. Cumulative self. Cumulative self. What does it mean? What cumulates. Location. Verortung. And I think, out of ourselves, it would be expectation of others. Expectations from others? From others. But you expect me to behave in a certain way and expect me to have a job.

[03:43]

And agency, if I talk about it today, is like the sense that you own your actions. So ownership, initiating. Unity is the experience of . the unity and simultaneity of consciousness. In other words, right now,

[04:45]

She is speaking, and I see the green forest, and those are joined seamlessly in consciousness. They might not be. That would be one category that would be at conflict with her. No, it's a unity of consciousness. And unity and simultaneity gives us a sense of self. And it's at the edge of others, in contrast to others. Continuity.

[06:03]

From past to now. I'm not expecting you to read my handwriting. Maybe you can. Because you know, European handwriting is different. And even when Marie-Louise writes very clearly, her European handwriting is always readable to me. And presence, I think, we couldn't have presence and location as one. I think for the for the in the context of Zen practice presence is more than location and it's almost maybe the essential aspect of another person And presence is when you feel someone coming into the room behind you.

[07:53]

And we generate presence. And cumulates itself. Our self-story. Our accumulated experience and so forth. And location I mean A spatial sense.

[09:00]

Experiential. Experiential. Spatial sense. Like above and below. And left and right. The fact is to me, I feel you're on my right and you're on my left. That's above me, etc. It gives us a sense that something exists here. Also die Tatsache, dass wir rechts und links und oben und unten haben, das gibt uns einen Sinn, dass hier in der Mitte etwas ist. So, presence I'm calling the feel of aliveness.

[10:17]

The feel of its feelingness. Is there anything I should add? Lina, yes. Yes, I thought about maybe expectations we could add feedback, because I personally, I was thinking when you brought it up, that my field of self I have accumulated also because during my education and growing up I got so much feedback. Yes, it was irreluctant. She has a sense of humor. Yeah, I mean, it's clear that, you know, I'm bringing up a daughter, Sophia.

[11:20]

And, you know, first of all, a trover, we have to give her a sense of self. And if she can develop herself She needs feedback. And she just got a very good written report from her school. And we're all very pleased. So, you know, what does that mean? The expectations of others then obviously include feedback. Do you use the word feedback in German? Yeah. We also have a German word.

[12:20]

You do? We use a lot. We use English words. Okay, anyone else? Yeah. There are faculty of observation and of self-observation. Well, yeah, I mean, from my point of view, I think that should be separate. But agency is the sense of self because you observe yourself initiating that. And if the unity inside of me, if my consciousness is convincing to you, it's because you observe it.

[13:24]

So that... It's convincing because of the observing. So I think you're right. I think observing is implied at all. Yes. I see that there is a difference if you take up the expectations of the others and maybe you exaggerate them even.

[14:24]

Would this also fall into the last category? You take over the expectations, make them their own, and then you go along with them. There's kind of feedback loop. Yeah. Well, yeah, expectations are influenced. The expectations are influenced. Yeah. Also your own expectations. Your expectations of others, including ourselves. Well, I don't think expectations of our self necessarily presume a self.

[15:42]

I have expectations that I might be a better bodhisattva. I mean, there's one practice which is called I can't remember what it's called. Something intentional, goodness or something. And I've mentioned it before. Anyway, it's like you do something And you're a little bit rude to somebody. And you think a bodhisattva would have been that rude. But I could have been worse.

[16:43]

I could have been rigidly rude. So you congratulate yourself on not being as rude as you might have been. But you say, a Bodhisattva would have been even less rude. That kind of expectation doesn't necessarily result in self, it's just in relationship to. Your relationship could be better. What happens when we see everything as an activity of interdependence?

[17:48]

And you really experience yourself, see what English does, you really experience your activity through interdependence. Is that experience of activity an experience of self? Buddhism would say it's not. It doesn't cause the problems that the sense of self does. It doesn't cause the problems that the sense of self does. Could you say that any sense of self, in the moment where you compare, the sense of self arises? Well, I just gave the example of comparing. I could have been less rude. That couldn't be a sense of self. I shouldn't be like that.

[18:50]

I'm not a good person, exactly. But for example, ideally, if a teacher can insult his student, And the student is offended, then the student is fairly primitive. But if the student is not offended but says, Well, yeah, maybe I can learn from this, or maybe it's not true, or whatever. It's just information that you decide to relate to, but not relate to from the offended self. So there wouldn't be a comparison, but it's not a comparison that you're comparing it in terms of

[19:55]

self does that make sense if all these are activities in order to enable us to construct the self then it is actually I can accept that it's not necessary to have a constructor to construct it. Okay. There is not necessarily a subject. Only activity. Yeah, that would be a Buddhist concept.

[21:08]

This would imply that I am liberated to different activities. for different kinds of activities. I have the choice from the mental posture to construct whatever I want. Yes. Let me say, Christine and you both want... Let me say first, going back to what you said about mental postures. I think Heidegger uses the word intentionalities at least in English to mean something very similar to mental postures.

[22:11]

His intentionalities are free of the usual complications of thinking. So But I don't find the intention, and it's amazing to me that words make such a difference, in my experience. And I've always said that Zen is a yogic practice, but primarily a yogic practice which especially emphasizes mental postures as well as physical postures. Okay, but it's the degree to which mental postures are at the center of practice

[23:14]

has dawned on me slowly. Do you say that, dawned on you? And more importantly, more decisively, when I realized that for a yogic practice, the primary form, the primary and fundamental form of meditation is parliamentary postures. The primary and fundamental Form of meditation, mental activity, are mental postures.

[24:31]

And I think, for instance, Heidegger is not a meditator. He's a contemplator. If he had the experience of what a physical posture does, it might change the whole way he looks at a lot of things. And including, if he saw intentionalities as mental postures, It might have made some difference too. But for me, when I thought of these things as intentional, If I thought of it that way, I never would have realized that it's the primary and fundamental mental activity for you.

[25:33]

Yeah, because it would have been just one other form of mental activity. So, how you can describe these things to yourself really affects how you practice them, how you make use of them. So I'm here trying to you know, play around with how we describe the experience of self to ourselves. If we could come up with some sort of list that seems to hang together, Then we can ask, does the Buddhism saying there's no self, if they do say that, does that illuminate me at least? Or does this change the way we understand these things?

[27:09]

In ways, for example, that Siegfried pointed out? Christine? My question refers to what Siegfried says in my novel. Thanks. When people come to us because they have fears or show other symptoms that And when talking about it, it is revealed that somehow they reject themselves or the world.

[28:12]

Because, for example, they have expectations of others which those cannot fulfil. Or they expect things from themselves they cannot come up with. Sometimes it seems that through this kind of suffering, a kind of selflessness is damaged. When we work with them, we try to do something similar to what Siegfried just said. We try to find out together with them what kind of activities they are performing and what kind of

[29:44]

What kind of meanings they establish so that these kinds of appearances arise. So what we are doing is we are liquifying this hard stuff, what seems to be . So that they start thinking thoughts that they are kind of way less. Yeah. So my question is whether expectations we have to yourself also can contribute to creating the self.

[30:59]

Yes. Okay, maybe we have to create an eighth category. Maybe like self-pain, self-suffering. Because when you do suffer, because someone says something or does something or whatever, You feel you're no good or whatever. That creates a sense of self. And I'm so grateful we've been doing this for so long. Because we didn't talk about it. Even if we don't quite understand each other.

[32:01]

It's pretty good, though. Eric and I have experienced in Adze, or someplace, that this very nice man from South Africa who was a priest and a monk and was born in Durban and speaks English as his native tongue could not translate me Yeah, and Eric had to start helping and pretty soon was doing the translation. But what was interesting was that except for a few words he didn't know, Like chakra.

[33:02]

Every word I said he knew, but he still couldn't translate. It was a familiar word, as I've said, an unfamiliar conjunction. How would you describe it? Yeah. Yeah. And here we've created a context where we know what we're talking about. And it's interesting, this study actually, that if you don't know generally what is said in the Bible before you read it, when you read it, it doesn't make any sense.

[34:15]

If you don't know what a sentence is about, more or less, before you read it, when you read it, you don't know what it means. There's assumptions behind what you read. First of all, what about love? I love something, I don't love something. I don't love something. And the second is, why do I have to deconstruct the self? Why do I have to say it doesn't exist? Because, as you yesterday said, because mind and body are separate, there is a space arises and something can happen.

[35:35]

If I dissolve the self, my wish is more in the direction of There is something like But I am connected, I am open, I am dependent and I am expanding in a bigger space. And I stay in a space that feels. I say, maybe I'm not as separated as the concept says, but there is something I can love there. Watch out!

[36:43]

Only for example, sorry. It's a German word, spürbewusstsein, was durch die Differenzierung entstehen kann. By differentiation something arises and he proposed spürbewusstsein, feeling of consciousness. Okay. Well, of course, there's no reason we have to dissolve the self or think there's no self. Unless for some reason you see that the self is a source of problems. And if the self is the source of your suffering, for instance, maybe you want to think about what is suffering.

[37:46]

But we're also looking at it, because I happen to be a Buddhist practitioner, And for example, one commentator says the belief in itself is the delusion that leads to all other delusions. No, I'm curious to see if that's true. So if we have this ancient teaching, whether you want to be a Buddhist or not, that's another question. You have this ancient teaching. continuous teaching, oldest continuously passed teaching in the world.

[38:55]

It says this, so what does it mean to us? Yes, so we have two additions maybe. One is psychic pain or something like that. And one is lost love. But you know, if you fall in love with someone, You hope they give up themselves and join yourself. You give up yourself and join them. Yes. I just try to think in a way now. I try to make a statement. How would it be if the self isn't only creating the problems,

[40:12]

But it would also be the other way around. As you already said, that child that was bitten... or experienced another environment in which there was just too much pain. Maybe the idea of a self with kind of borders. Maybe this is a very creative way of a solution of this problem. There is a kind of, there's this kind of space in which I can feel protected and this I call me.

[41:23]

So, I mean, we're supposed to have a break by the middle. Maybe we should wait until after the break. But it's Just using this as an example of all kinds of possible negativity and so forth. A child who's beaten, right? And some children seem to be able to recover from that, and some children need psychotherapy, and even with psychotherapy they don't recover. When I think of a dog, I've been beaten. You know, I don't know if the dog has a self, but sort of... A dog himself. I don't... himself, a dog self. Anyway... You can see in an adopted dog that they were mistreated when they were young.

[42:36]

And it seems built into their physiology. Maybe you have a dog whisperer. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating, Mr. Globo. [...] I think it's instructive to look at what your passion says.

[43:43]

It says, anyhow. Who creates a perception? A bodhisattva? Who creates a perception of a self? A being? a life span, a soul, or a person, is not a bodhisattva.

[44:51]

Don't laugh, I'm serious. Okay. Well... Now, sometimes there's only these four, sometimes souls left out in person, you see. And what I just said, there's at least one. Okay. No, but it doesn't say there's no self. The Bodhisattva doesn't create the perception of the self. Okay. Now, what is the Bodhisattva with self? I mean, what is the Bodhisattva with self?

[46:16]

An inner reality. in contrast to another reality. So, you can... Is my handwriting at least useful? Okay. And... and also the concept is agency of controlling and focusing

[47:23]

The five centers. Agency which controls and focuses the five centers. Okay, now, many of you know, and we've gone through the five centers, Some of you have forgotten what the five skandhas are. I'm going to take a spiral for pushing. It's easier to hear it and to remember it. [...]

[48:31]

It's easier to hear it and to remember it. [...] As an outer reality. the sense of the bystanders as an entity. Okay.

[49:33]

So self is Inner reality. In contrast to outer reality, that's how they understand it. And sometimes it's understood also as what controls and focuses our perceptions. Being is... understood to be an outer reality and by outer reality here they would mean that maybe I should put here The self is at the juncture of death.

[50:42]

And that's what it is, it's power and angst. So Seraphim is not just about a contrast to death, it's about being at the juncture of death, where it can happen at any time, and that's what makes us anxious or gives it power. So being at the outer reality of the sense of the entity, but also at the juncture of otherness, And the being is a crossing point with the other side.

[52:00]

Yes. A temporal reality. that we think that temporarily in the present, which is understood through that there was a past and there will be a future,

[53:17]

And I think we can say this is the culture of emptiness. Okay. Soul? Oh. Soul in their way of thinking. And they use soul, something like soul, even though they don't have the Christian idea of soul. But a soul is the location of the deity in you. As some people feel. Location of a deity. It's also an opening to God.

[54:28]

To rebirth. To other worlds. Okay. So I think that's quite interesting. Because it is a fact whether you... Many people feel, I mean, if you're going to have an idea of rebirth, this soul is the presumption of the future. It's a future life or a future... Does that make sense? If you believe in rebirth, it has to exist somewhere in you. If you believe in rebirth, then it must exist somewhere in you.

[56:09]

Personal and individual. One among many. And this is at the Yom Kippur. of being and beings. In the point of intersection of one being with multiple beings, with that being. Being with beings. With beings. Or can you say, one being with beings. So deviated from the other being, actually. No, at the juncture where being and beings meet.

[57:16]

In other words, it's you as a person, divine beings, as a divine being, and you're at the juncture of that, and how do you experience that juncture, which is how much of you are other people, how much of you are yourself, an individual, etc. ? And so, is that the culture of immediacy? I think it gives us something to think about. we may have different interpretations of self being less than souls.

[58:26]

But now we know one of the primary ways in which Buddhism says there's no self. What they actually say is there's no perception of self. What? It creates. If he or she creates a perception of the self, then there's an illusion of the problem. So we can say that Bodhisattva sits, if we use the four noble postures, A bodhisattva sits without any perception of the inner reality. So then we, and if you do decide, and if you do Zazen,

[59:34]

We can experiment in the difference between thinking, oh, I'm now in the midst of inner reality. Or this, I wouldn't even call this reality, it's just experience. Then we say, of course, that don't work. without any sense of an outer reality. Oh, excuse me, a bodhisattva stands without a sense of an outer reality. And a bodhisattva walks with more temperament. without a sense of a life span. Not me walking and I'm so old or so young. And so we could use reclining as the fourth noble posture. And the bodhisattva reclines, sleeps, lies down, without any sense of other worlds or other possibilities than the unmittelbarkeit selbst.

[61:16]

And finally, if we take person, we run out of four questions. So here Bodhisattva relates to others without any perception of the person. These become lusim. practices to explore your sense of self, your sense of other realities, inner guidance, and so forth. Can we say that it may be the... Can we say that the posture, the physical posture corresponds to?

[62:27]

You don't have any conception of the person. I mean, I've gone through the bow a lot, but you have the experience of the chakras. But not a person. And then you bring your hands to the heart chakra. and then you bring them up into a shared space and then you disappear into that shared space with no sense of person. So I guess in our discussion of these things and looking at the similarities and differences between them and the ones I put before but before, we have to bring in exploring the differences probably requires us to practice.

[64:06]

Because here we can see that Self, being, etc., are mental postures which the Bodhisattva doesn't create. But that doesn't mean they're not ways of functioning. Yeah, this was an experiment to explore this with you. At this moment I understand that this dissolves the preconceptions.

[65:07]

That the person should wash, should be clean. And if I'm already with him, he's stupid. So this takes away all these preconceptions. And then it opens up a space that can be astonishing. Yes, that's right. Astonishing. What you're saying about washing your face reminds me of some years ago. I decided to eliminate everything. And have no plans to do anything, be anything, etc.

[66:18]

Well, then you have to go to the toilet. And you have to eat something. So that was clear. And sometimes you have to sleep. I also discovered that after four or five days of not washing your face, you want to wash your face. So then I added washing the face to my list. And I slowly increased my list until it included you. Anyone else want to say something? Maybe we can just leave this, these two units of the persuasiveness of self and the Diamond Sutras.

[67:29]

practices of none, of the absence of self. And give ourselves some time to see if they get absorbed in any way that's useful. Guni, you and Walter didn't come last year. I haven't seen that you're here yet, at least I haven't heard your voice. I'm just teasing you. So I'll bring up another subject in a little bit, if no one has something to say.

[68:49]

I just remember, I don't know whether it was last year or the year before last year, Did I let myself into this thought of fully dissolving myself? And in that I was really strongly confronted with my fear of death. It was very comforting that you promised me a quite soft death. I did?

[69:52]

Yes, you did. I'll do my best to keep the promise. I just wanted to say that I went through a process Which creates a kind of serenity within me. Since I noticed that I can oscillate between these two poles. To create myself and enjoy it.

[70:55]

And also in other situations to enjoy not that there is no self. But you proved my point in the first one. That self, power and angst of self, is at the juncture of death. So as a practice, you can practice with the sense as a mental posture. You're always at the juncture of death and self. You can see how much fear of death establishes self, how much you can release, etc. So it gives you a territory to practice. And each of these junctures can be used to...

[71:57]

Und jeder dieser Kreuzungspunkte kann auf diese Weise genutzt werden. Das ist eigentlich auch so ähnlich, was ich sagen wollte, weil wir nutzen ja so einen Begriff Teilpersönlichkeiten. This is similar to what I wanted to say, because we use a term like part... And that seems to be the opposite, namely the non-fixation of certain properties, such an inner orientation that one can also find, which is not neurotic, which feels healthy and wide. The description allows an inner orientation which isn't fixed on certain patterns of personality.

[73:30]

Maybe this is what makes possible this kind of inner freedom, what Tiltut also was talking about. And the reason why I would add, the reason why I'm here is that I'm oriented, although in therapy you're always confronted with suffering and with problems, I'm here because my orientation is concerning expansion and... Yes, about this. Okay. An idea like the five skandhas are quite understandable.

[74:44]

And if I'm asked three times, I will teach them again. But not three times all at once. But... You can think about the five skandhas. And then think, is a sixth skandha necessary that focuses, controls the skandhas? Or can you understand the functioning of the five skandhas as part of the Without adding the agency. So it's that kind of exploration we have to do. Yes. The fifth is consciousness.

[76:09]

No, consciousness is one of the skandhas. But the fourth skandha is associated mind, which is not consciousness. So there's no consciousness in associated mind. Consciousness keeps consciousness together but doesn't keep associated mind together. That's what Freud described. But he was talking about six possible. No, I said... I feel no, it's not necessary because we have another five consciousness. Okay. I have found that the sixth skandha is very fluid, because the fifth is consciousness. It has this overall function. You have to put the skandha together. The fifth is this.

[77:10]

That everything flows and awakens. Okay, anyone else? Yes? In the West it's called belief and belief is a as a bad replacement for practice.

[78:16]

If you believe in this, you don't have to practice. Yes, I think it would be good if I... If I write this, I would say, who creates, and I put it in principle, a belief, or creates a belief of self. That would make it more clear. And actually, the thing I quoted before, the commentary, where he says... Belief in self. He says a belief in self is the source of all other beliefs. Before I misquoted it. No, no. You said belief. You said belief. Well, I think I said, I think there's a source of delusion.

[79:30]

I think I said, the source of all other beliefs. Okay, yes. During the time where I was so sick, of course, fear of death was very in the foreground. And I met a woman friend of mine who is practicing Tibetan Buddhism. And there is a practice that is called? Pura. Pura practice. Yes, I know. Is there any practice like that in Zen?

[80:33]

Or could you say something about that? I mean, I know the term Pura, but you have to remind me what the practice is. I don't know much about it. Is it an intensive practice with the aim to get a feeling? How it could be to leave your body through the top of your head? No, there's no specific practice like that. There's a specific practice of using this feeling to top the head.

[81:40]

But also, in Tibetan Buddhism, when they emphasize rebirth, they emphasize that's one part of the process of releasing your... Zen doesn't have that idea Okay, anyone else? Yes. Concern and consciousness skandha, you said that it is a whole for itself. It is... It's separate. Separate for itself. And... And I wonder about this, because in the Deep Winter Practice we worked with the five skandhas.

[82:48]

In exchange with other people we found out, our experience was, that the scandals enter into each other in your experience. You cannot separate them like that. Well, I wasn't teaching the winter practice. So it's really understood that each skandha is separate. Yes. That's the whole point. Okay. Okay. So as we are talking about the five skandhas, the sentence from the Heart Sutra comes up for me.

[84:07]

Could you tell us something about practicing the prajnaparamita, or was this actually me? Where shall we start? Well, let's just say that Prajnaparamita Sutra says there's no appearance. Okay, I think that is the key to understanding. But dharmas are appearance. So there is no alternative to appearance, but we can also say there is no appearance. And likewise, it doesn't mean there's no skandhas.

[85:59]

It doesn't mean there's no world. It just means that there's a deeper understanding in which you take away the conception of appearance, or conception of the four skandhas. I mean you have to first of all in general you should trust your common sense When you say no nose, no eyes, no ears, do you have no nose? So then you start asking, well, what does it mean, no nose? Well, you're not even using common sense, because you have a nose. You're not using common sense if you take the sutra literally, because there's no knowns.

[87:01]

So let's start with common sense. As I pointed out a number of times, it doesn't originally mean a sense common to all senses, and hence a sixth sense. But presumably people lost that sensitivity and common sense became sense common to others and not common to the senses. Okay. Well, let me just introduce the topic. And we'll let this incubate.

[88:07]

That's the word we're making . In general, when we use words in practice, Words are syntactical. It's defined by other words. And it's defined by its use in sentences. So in practice we turn words into names.

[89:18]

I mean, when you turn a word into a name, you don't entirely lose its syntactical contextual meanings. But you emphasize it as a name. And so let me just say a little bit about what I mean there. We have, as some of you know, a dog named Igor. And we have a cat named Minka. And she's Minka, you might be amused by, is our fourth or fifth cat. And we've lost four cats or so, two coyotes and mountain lions and owls and so forth.

[90:26]

But Igor is a great Pyrenees mountain dog. And it's rather big. It was bred in Spain, France, I guess, to protect sheep from bears. Usually bears don't know what to make of it, but they can certainly wipe him out. This is just a memory. But he has come back wounded a few times from encounters with bears. But this cat we decided not to let out.

[91:28]

And usually she comes in. And the reason we accepted this cat Because after losing four cats in two or three years, it seemed like probably we should have... But this cat was dropped by a hawk because it was too heavy. I mean, this cat's mother was dropped by a hawk and fell to earth at someone's feet. And then she had a baby and we thought, well, we should accept the baby. So that's Minka. Very pretty. So if I go out and call Minka,

[92:30]

And it's getting darker. Minka, Minka. Hey, she'd come in if she heard it. Actually, it's Sophia who can get it. I have to come in. I'm not too good at it. If the cat knows, we'll feed it and sleep. But the word minka has no meaning. You can't define it by other words. The only person who knows its meaning is minka. And if we continue to call minka and minka didn't come in for several nights, the word minka would kind of disappear.

[93:45]

So the function of a name is not to be defined by other words, but to call forth the world. So we use minka to call forth minka. So the way we use wados or turning words is to try to subtract from them. It's a process of subtraction of subtracting their syntactical meaning. their meaning known through other words and just use them to call forth the world. And this is an assumption that the world is listening.

[94:47]

Some senses listen. And from the 10,000 things you can call forth the world. So that's enough for now. So let's Just listen to the bell for a moment. So say that you use the words, the juncture, life and death.

[96:51]

You don't use the words as a description. You use the words to call forth the juncture, life and death. So to call forth in the sense that it's real. But the 10,000 things are listening. Yeah, so the description here is somewhat separate from just describing it. You have to call forth what it was a spell, a magic spell.

[97:54]

So that you really feel you're at the juncture of life and death. And one way to lessen the fear of death is to get used to being at the juncture of life. To get used to the juncture by calling forth the juncture of life. So this is the practice of using words as names to call forth, rather than using them as descriptions. Description is defined, words defined by other words.

[99:14]

The juncture of life and death called forth can't be described. If it's real, it's indescribable. You can say it's a presentation of life and death. A presentation of the juncture which we always are. It's not a present representation, it's a presentation.

[99:48]

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