Well, I've already spoken to three people who are quite new at what we're talking about. And since I... I was a beginner once, as I said. And it is possible to survive being a beginner. And it's sexy. a kind of excitement to be a beginner. It could be, anyway. So I, anyway, I appreciate the practice or the introduction to practice of, the beginning introduction to practice. And I'm speaking about meditation.

[01:17]

Zazen, which as I said means sitting absorption. That's probably the best English translation. This is a Zafu, and Zafu means cushion, so sitting cushion, Zafu. Zafu means sitting, and Fu means cushion. And these are called, you need to know, but these are called Zabutans. Butan means to spread out. So sitting spread out. Okay. Anyway, I'm speaking about Zazen or sitting meditation. Because it's the source really of Buddhism. But it's not the only practice. Probably the center of practice is mindfulness.

[02:38]

But still even mindfulness as a practice has been developed through understanding sitting practice. So some of you may mostly practice mindfulness, Even, um, um... Some of you who've been sitting a long time may now mostly only practice mindfulness. Or some of you just starting may practice mostly mindfulness. If so, it's good to root your mindfulness in sitting practice sometimes. But if you want to get to the source of the world view that

[03:58]

sitting practice is based on. Then you probably have to do sitting practice yourself. Certainly, if you want to rediscover what Buddhism is as if you were the first, then sitting practice is important. So in a way we could say that most fully practice is rediscovering practice. Trusting your own experience. And then seeing if your own experience has what kind of relationship that has to the teachings of Buddhism. And trusting your own experience and seeing to what extent the teachings of Buddhism help you open up your own experience and trust your own experience.

[05:39]

To trust your own experience is a teaching of Buddhism. It's also common sense. But the depth of trust is deeper than common sense. Yeah, okay. So in any case, I'm trying to speak about mindfulness practice as well as meditation. But I decided today to give some basics about meditation practice. And you can decide for yourself how much sense it makes. The more you define your world through consciousness, the less sense sitting practice will make.

[06:58]

So now I'd like to stop for a bit and see if anybody wants to bring up something or say something. When you said before the break, what's the nature of the surface of the world? Of consciousness or of life, yeah. The question came to my mind, if it's the beginning or the end of the process, that's the surface if that's what is seen first or immediately and you have to go deeper or if what I see as surface is sort of what comes up at the end

[08:16]

that you should deal with the surface of consciousness, or the surface of life, in the sense of Mussolini, the question arose to me whether this is the beginning or the end of the process. Whether what you see as the surface, Well, I would say that seeing that consciousness is only a surface It's one of the things that can lead to Buddhist practice. Yeah.

[09:22]

A necessary, essential surface in our life. But it's clear not the whole of our life is contained in consciousness. Our dreams show us that. But the question is, how much of our life is not contained in consciousness? And how can we become familiar with it? And then the question is, are there other kinds of knowing that are not the knowing of consciousness.

[10:22]

Okay, so I would say that the first step is having some sense that your life is wider than your consciousness. And that often occurs by simply doing zazen. For example, you make one decision in consciousness. And then you sit for 45 minutes or a couple of periods. Say you're in the middle of some type of decision you have to make. And you find you make a different decision in meditation than you do in consciousness.

[11:25]

And the decision you make in meditation seems actually... And that means a different kind of person or self is functioning in meditation than in consciousness. So then immediately you're aware that the self of consciousness is different than the other self of meditation. Okay, so that's a kind of knowledge. And that knowledge informs one's sitting practice. And the sitting practice at that point is...

[12:37]

It's the fullness of your practice, it can be. But at some point, when your practice is developed, it then becomes helpful to know how consciousness is constituted. Because then you can... Practice with more precision. It's a little like, I don't know if this is a good example, but it's a little bit like when you practice you see into your, let's say that you see into your body. Or you feel the world from inside out. But it's not the same as a surgeon who knows exactly where your lungs are and stomach is and kidneys and so forth. And if you're meditation becomes more surgical or precise in the way it goes beneath the surface of consciousness.

[14:12]

At that stage of practice it's good to know something more about how we are constituted. And then the fruit of that practice is The consciousness becomes like a transparent screen you see through. So, why should I say all this? I don't know, because you asked. But also because in the long run it's useful to have a conceptual understanding of practice. As long as the conceptual understanding is an encouragement and not a map.

[15:16]

I don't want to present this as a map. I want you to discover the city of practice by walking around in it and not... Having a map to show you where to go. Okay, someone else. Yes, George. If we understood that there is this consciousness, and on the other side there is the Self and the Self itself, and that through this Self we can gain much deeper knowledge than through the history of consciousness, the important question arises, and this is based on my own experience, how can we clearly distinguish

[16:35]

whether an inner, often when the inner is explained, is a product of the layer of consciousness, and thus I would call it an ego projection, or is it in the self at home? Is there a possibility to differentiate and to see for yourself from which layer comes the information? So you're talking about consciousness and the innate self, and the self is much deeper. So in practicing sometimes, that's my experience, I get information and my problem is the distinction. Does the information come from consciousness?

[17:40]

of the self, is there any possibility to know, just if I have a deep state, is this a projection of consciousness, will, ego, whatever, or is it the self and something else? The Dalai Lama said that there is no higher self in Buddhism. That's not a question, but it is a question. I would have to know the context in which His Holiness said there's no higher self in Buddhism, but in general that's what he says is what I would say too. But if there's no transcendental self or something like that, if I say that, really can only be understood when you have the shift to a different worldview.

[19:06]

Now, Cecily, just at the beginning of the break, said that this is a... not the usual way of thinking of consciousness. How did you put it? Do you remember? To not want to interpret dreams into... It's not important that you shouldn't even get access to the unconscious, because I thought one of the aims in life is to unfold as much of the unconscious part as possible. Into consciousness. Into consciousness, yes. And you kind of contradicted that. And I realize that it really relieves me a lot, but that's just a second feeling that I had when I went out.

[20:11]

Okay. Deutsch, bitte. Do you translate it yourself? I took a break and made a remark that surprises me to hear that It is not about making the unconscious conscious, because I have assumed that this is part of an essential aspect of my life, to give as much of the unconscious as possible to consciousness. And that it is a surprise to hear that this does not happen at all. So what she's saying is that she felt that what I said was actually a different world view than the usual world view we have.

[21:19]

And is a different world view. Sometimes in small things what you're trying to do is see in a small thing like this difference, it's really quite small. that actually it's a different worldview that extends from that. Okay. So what is enlightenment? Enlightenment is to be free of worldviews. Or to have some kind of turning around within your own worldview. But then we can ask questions.

[22:23]

And I think one of the ways to develop your own practice to ask obvious questions. If enlightenment is about a shift in worldviews, what worldview supports the idea of enlightenment? Or what Giorgio said, what world view supports the idea of a transcendent self? So if you ask this holiness, is there such a thing as enlightenment, he would say yes. But if you ask him, is there a transcendent self, he'd say no.

[23:26]

So what's the difference between a transcendent self and enlightenment? Isn't it somehow in the same territory? Or is it a similar territory but rooted in a different landscape? Now, you could say, well, we have an impossible task being Westerners practicing Buddhism. Because it's rooted in a worldview so different than our own. Yeah, and the worldview of Asian yogic cultures has developed in some parallel way, intertwining way, over centuries.

[24:52]

Hmm. Yeah, that's maybe a sort of disadvantage. But as many of you know, because I point it out often, on the whole it's an advantage for us. Because the contrast between our worldview and the Buddhist worldview is much clearer. So it gives us a chance to be more free of world views. And the Buddha's very first teaching is Right views or perfecting views.

[26:06]

And that's not just a casual statement. It clearly means that other worldviews are possible. It means you have a choice of worldviews. How do you make such a choice? What are the alternatives? It also makes the assumption that Views function prior to thinking, consciousness and perception. Views control how you perceive and so forth.

[27:14]

So already, if you look at a teaching like this, you have some big questions. Do you really? Are there other worldviews? What are they? Do we have a choice? How do we discover other alternatives? Well, the main way of discovery in Buddhism is meditation. Meditation. It seems like in ancient times, like 3000 BC, there was a debate whether using psychedelics or some kind of drugs Or meditation was the better way to explore worldviews, to free yourself from worldviews.

[28:24]

You know, we have the word psychosomatic. And psyche and soma. Soma meaning the body. But the soma is the name of a psychedelic mushroom. So it meant that they explored the body with psychedelics. What is this body under the surface of consciousness? And we have that idea right in Buddhism with the idea of thought coverings. Our body is encased in thought coverings.

[29:24]

And you can see it in the children's game of doing this, as I pointed out. If somebody uses thought to point to your finger and you think it, you don't know which finger to move. So you can see the thought coverings are confused by a simple left-right exchange. This finger remains the same finger, but when I put it here, it's mixed up because it's actually known through flood coverings. And when you drop thought coverings, you experience your body differently.

[30:32]

So views, the surface of views, control the experience, shape the experience of our body. So die Oberfläche unserer Ansichten, die Formen auch unserer Erfahrungen vom Körper. And one of the things, if you practice, don't scratch. Und eine der Dinge, die du praktizierst, wenn du nicht kratzen übst. And you find yourself in a stillness beyond any scratches. Und du findest dich selbst wieder in der Ruhe, die jenseits aller kratzen. you find the boundaries of your body aren't so clear, you know. You feel the body more as a presence than as something limited to your physical shape.

[31:37]

Excuse me. Then limited to your physical shape. And this is something you can't even notice if you're in your thought coverings. Oh, it's only a dream. Or it's something, yeah, it's just some kind of strange effect. But if you can think outside your cultural habits. You say, hey, this is also my body. It feels like my body. But it's not limited to my physical shape. Let's call it a bodily presence. In contrast to a physical body.

[32:51]

Oh, so my body, I have a much more subtle sense of body than I had before. What is this body? Yeah, those are again questions that you bring into, without trying to make the shoe fit, the meditation. So what was the first part of what you said, Giorgio? I only responded to the Dalai Lama statement. Oh, self, yes, okay. I remember now.

[33:51]

Where does it come from? I remember. Okay. To respond to that, I would have to speak to our sense of the self as an entity. And I don't want to... And I can say that entitylessness is a way to understand emptiness. But what do I mean by entity in that lesson? We're getting too deep here already. We're all just beginners. This is getting too complicated. We're going to get into a reject any new worldviews state of mind.

[35:02]

If the fundamental teaching of Buddhism is that there are no entities, which is simply to say things are impermanent, But if you say they're impermanent, oh, you intellectually can understand that everything's changing. That doesn't teach you much. You can't practice with impermanence, exactly. But if there are no entities... then self is not an entity.

[36:07]

Then self is a function. And where does it function? It has to have a territory in which to function. What's the territory of self? I'm not trying to describe the conflated sense of self in Western psychology. Where soul and spirit and so forth have all kind of disappeared into some kind of idea of self. I'm speaking about self as we understand it in Buddhist practice. I think I laid out this small definition last year here. But Consciousness is a function of mind.

[37:22]

Self is a function of consciousness. And ego, if we want to be contemporary, is a function of self. So if self is a function of consciousness, In other words, the medium of self, the water of self, is consciousness. Self swims in consciousness. So from the point of view of Buddhism, some kind of self that's not in consciousness is not self. It may have an observing or knowing function, but we wouldn't call it self.

[38:24]

We can call it a deeper self or something like that. But the self that Buddhism is talking about you should get free of is the self of consciousness. You don't want to identify with, as you, the self that's limited to consciousness. So some kind of deeper self That's not a problem. So where does it come from and how do you trust this knowledge? I think that takes another seminar. At least it takes us to have a lunch, a finished lunch. But since we have a couple of minutes, let me just say, because we're going to have lunch in six minutes, let me say something about entitylessness.

[39:37]

The entity of lunch would be quite good. So let's sit for a minute. Where's the entity of the bell? Wo ist die Einheit der Glocke? Is it the metal of the bell? Is it my hitting it?

[41:18]

Is it the capacity of the air to transmit sound that you're hearing? Is it the capacity of your ear or your brain? Is it the capacity of your ear or your brain Or is it the molecules of the copper and tin? Or is it the mind of the craftsman who made the bell? Or is our liking or joy in hearing it? Or is it the mind All of these are part of the bell. Where is the bell itself? Where is your breathing?

[42:50]

Papa, why aren't you with me?

[43:03]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.54