Does anyone have a response to my question about lists? It's a comment. Well, it's a start. In my job, I used to be concerned with competence. What is competence in a particular subject or on methods and so on, and how do you describe those? And the experience of that was that it was very difficult to make an order of it because the one aspect was already implied in the other aspect as well. The experience with it was that obviously the thinking structures of those who worked with it or were confronted with it,

[01:26]

Yes, how do you say that, well, that, well, they made it out of box covers, so they had box covers, yes, so too few cross-connections and that they were entangled in each other, so somehow they could pick it up. And the experience was that those people who worked on it, that their structures of thinking were like little squares, and they were unable to understand the interconnectedness and interpenetration of these various aspects of things. You were in charge of a personnel department. Yes, it was a personal development starting at the point we had very big software projects, up to 500 million, 1 billion and such, to get a structure into this.

[02:40]

Think what they could have done with the software with the Abhidharma. And we introduced methods. So we had software projects, very big ones, and wanted to keep these projects in control. And that's why the attempt was to be structured and methods were offered. Methods and tools. And there we recognized how difficult it is to introduce new methods into the structures of the heads. Just... Yes, with many people it is impossible, with others it is partially possible, but we offer it and only a part is in a position to accept something like that. And by trying to educate these people, we realized how difficult it was to teach people new structures of thinking, and only a small part of them was able to take these new structures in.

[03:48]

I see parallels there. So this is your expression of sympathy for me. And I have no milliards of software. He was head of a bakery in Bad Sekien. They really tried to work on the personnel. But it means that I understand that there's an incredible amount of intelligence that has flown into these lists. That's for sure true.

[04:57]

For something like 500 to 800 years, the smartest people, literally the smartest people in every generation working on this, from about 200 or 300 BCE Von ungefähr 200 bis 300 vor Christus. Do you say Christus? Yeah. We say the common era. Yeah, we say Christ. We used to say Christus, but now we say common era. To about, yeah, 200 or 300 to 500 after the common era. Bis ungefähr 300 bis 500 nach Christus. It's not because Christ is considered a common error. Sorry. This is a long comment, but I like it.

[06:13]

Just a comment he said. It doesn't matter. In any case, I think the list is safe. I haven't really tried it out. A map of how to get into this question. And a question that also brought me to practice is the question, how does the world exist? Because I can't really imagine how this creation, etc. But I understand these lists as one way to access this question. Okay. And what Peter also said went under the skin a bit, that these emptiness,

[07:15]

And also what Peter said that these teachings are not descriptions of being, but that the teaching is... the literature is not a description of the existence, but... pedagogic. But a pedagogy. A pedagogy. A teaching about existence. A teaching which leads you to the experience. Okay, that's good. So prescription, not just a description. Also ein Rezept und nicht nur eine Beschreibung.

[08:22]

Okay. Someone else on this question. Also was mir klar geworden ist, ist, dass eigentlich diese Listen keine Listen sind, wie wir normalerweise Listen verstehen. What I understood is that these lists are not lists in the common sense. Because lists as we know them are something like shopping lists or, yeah. Yeah. No shopping list has ever enlightened anyone. Maybe. It would be much simpler if there was such a list. Yeah, well, that's the Abhidharma. And the Abhidharma, this is something we talked about when you were not there in the group.

[09:32]

The Abhidharma is for us probably not accessible. When did you talk about it? Last year, you mean, or just now? Last year, yes. And on a weekend. Oh, that weekend when I wasn't there. And... But there is secondary literature? And... There's modern second literature like in David. And conventional secondary literature. For example, the Lankavatarasutra. For example, Krista and I worked on the topic of the five dharmas. It's one chapter in the Lankavatara Sutra. And that developed much later, only a thousand years or something after Christ.

[10:36]

And that developed much later, only a thousand years or something after Christ. And there is one of these lists, the teaching of the five dharmas is enclosed or is in the context of the story. The Buddha teaches one of his disciples. And the list consists of five points, namely appearance, name, form, distinction, perfect knowledge and so on. So the form wasn't there.

[11:41]

You said form, that doesn't belong in there. What was in there? The list is the five points. The points are appearance, naming, discrimination, wisdom and suchness. In the Lankavata Sutra it also says form. These four terms are actually helpers or terms to understand in your own experience how our spirit works and to divide it into individual elements. And these lists are actually mnemonic devices to see how our mind functions and how to analyze our experience. And to recognize in our experience particular parts that are being mirrored or are being reflected by the five dharmas. In the last couple years, whenever lists appeared, and I was not in the winter branches, but also other than that,

[13:03]

And I just practiced with those arbitrarily. And they appeared like individual parts. spread throughout the room or the space. And now I wonder when I look at these lists more carefully and practice with them, Maybe then I'm more able to feel my concepts. Maybe I can see that I have concepts that are different from those of the list. Maybe. If I'm not as precise, then I might not see my own concept, but in the friction with these kind of concepts, I maybe come to see my own concepts.

[14:31]

I'm sure you do. I know when I go to the grocery store or the shopping list, I always buy things that aren't on the list. Gets me into the store and, you know. Okay, so we've spoken about the use of the list, but has anybody spoken about the fact of the list itself? What does that imply? We have talked about the use of the lists, but has anyone already talked about the fact of the existence of these lists?

[15:32]

What does this imply? For me, as far as I can confirm this with the practitioners, the completeness of the lists, I felt that somehow, a kind of experience, or how I look at the experience, that they represent it completely. And I find that very reassuring. It has something to do with being tied to a tradition or to a community. So one thing that I find to be very soothing also is that these lists... Soothing. Is that not a word? Yeah, it's a great, that was nice. I'm soothed by the list, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is that... that they seem to describe experience in a complete way, in a comprehensive way.

[16:40]

And, yeah, that's how I felt about them in my experience. That being connected to so many people and knowledge, that's what calms you down. And the actual soothing aspect is the fact that this connects me with so many people and the tradition. Some of these lists also have something scary, because I almost feel them as something forced, because I know that I also have forced pulls. So these lists for me also have a somewhat aversive... Adverse? She rejects them in some sense.

[17:51]

Repelling things. That's much better. Repelling aspect because they have this feeling of compulsive. because they feel compulsive and they are repelling to me because I know that I have my own compulsive aspects, but also I think that they are very important to sustain Buddhism. And maybe Buddhism wouldn't even exist anymore without these lists. Yeah, they are sometimes compulsive, I agree. Peter? After all these experiences that I've made within the last year they are particularly useful as a as a contrast so that I can see my own patterns within them.

[19:11]

And where is the approach so that I can change my patterns? Yeah, okay. David? As far as I understood the question, I can say that the list or the fact of lists that we encountered in the branches and specifically in the Abhidharma tell me that there is some serious looking to experience. Serious looking to experience is You mean there's a depth to experiences? Yeah, in the background there's a depth to look at their own experiences and to have a kind of analysis of it. And for me it is important to have that feeling that people have tried out to really be specific and clear.

[20:21]

as a trial to look at their experiences and to express it in a way, as it was done in sutras of course too, but it's a step further somehow, this kind of concentration. And in one way it's difficult to use this concentration of lists, but on the other hand big support that these lists affect to work on my own experiences. And it's not maybe a comparison, but it's a kind of a tool that gives support to that seriousness of what we experience. Oh, yes. To me, the fact that it's a list means something.

[21:25]

It's never one word. As soon as there's more than one word, it's a relationship. So to me, these lists also express movement and some kind of... which if I enter the list or the list enters me it gets me into a certain kind of movement or my mind into a certain movement and it's to me it also means something particular that it's in language that the expression of this practice or that the The lists are in language and so that the experience which is first of all maybe physical and then also mental has an expression in these lists or a suggested expression.

[22:31]

What is also important for me in the lists is that it is always more than one word. and these words are in relation and thus in a movement so that when I enter these lists or in this movement something happens with my mental process and the fact that this takes place in the language OK, yes? What's also surprising about those lists is they list up things I never thought that I could list. I find so many different points, for example, about perception, about mind, about the question who I am and all this.

[23:41]

And these lists offer me many points that are very helpful, very particular. But for sure, I never thought about... that there could be five points about mind or perception and all this, but then it's very helpful and you somehow can feel that it's not possible to... for one person to develop all these things, how carefully this developed over many years, and how much experience is in these things as they developed. Yes, translator? Oh, you have to, Deutsch. Do you still remember what you said? I find it very surprising what is divided into lists, for example, the spirit or perception, that you can create a list about it, which goes into great detail and says, these are individual stages of perception or these are aspects of the spirit.

[24:48]

Thank you. For me, just the fact of these lists existing is interesting insofar as that when I look with an untrained eye or without thinking about it, I think that my experience is maybe, well, almost arbitrary or... How can I say this? The fact of these lists existing has a feeling of experience as something precise, as something particular and it's replicable also.

[26:08]

And that the building blocks of my experience are the building blocks of everyone's experience and it has for me also a feeling or a question of the nature of my experience in terms of it being unique and at the same time there seems to be something that can be drawn from experience that you can then put into a list and that has meaning throughout time. What surprises me when I think that there are such lists is that it actually means that there are components in the experience that are almost generally valid. And it raises a question for me about the nature of my experience, because if I think about it without thinking about it, what is my experience, then I would have such a blurred feeling of something almost arbitrary, which is somehow unique.

[27:24]

But because there are such lists, it also suggests that there is something replicable, i.e. replicable individual elements in the experience that have meaning over time. Say you were looking at a map of Berlin. And it showed you every little street and alley and the names of every house, etc., You'd say, I don't want this map. This is impossible. And you're looking for what? Kreuzberg is an area? Yeah. Okay, so you're looking for Kreuzberg. And you see all these houses and little streets and you don't see K-R-E-U.

[28:28]

So the Abhidharma lists are sort of like that. There's so many lists and so much detail, you don't see the big picture sometimes. So let's imagine that Buddhism was a revealed religion. Also, lasst uns mal vorstellen, der Buddhismus wäre eine offenbarte Religion. Okay. And so we have a list of one. Und wir haben eine Liste der Einsheit. The Buddha as a God. That would be a list of one. Oh, okay. Ja, also, ja. Der Buddha als Gottheit, und das wäre so eine... And all of the lists that came out of that would belong to the God.

[29:35]

You could accept them, but they sort of belong to the God, not to you. But in the lists in Buddhism, they they're your experience. So the path is in your experience. So the lists are sort of like maps. Now you don't need all the maps. But if you're living in Kreuzberg you need to look at the Kreuzberg part of the map. So as some of you suggested, you start out with, as Otmar said, even three aspects of one list.

[30:40]

You're sort of starting out with your neighborhood. Your neighborhood. I hit the nail on the head. No. So you start in your neighborhood and you extend it somewhat. And if you know it from your own experience, as Otmar does, Kreuzberg, If somebody's trying to find something, you may have to draw a little map for them and say, you know, at this intersection you go over there. So there's an aspect of the Abhidharma which is rather like that. You start out with the Eightfold Path or the Five Skandhas or something.

[31:42]

It takes you quite a while. You start out in your neighborhood, like mindfulness or something. And after a while, you extend it to the rest of the list. Mostly by walking around in it without even knowing the list. But then if someone asks you later, if you've gone through the whole list, you can help them how to enter it. Now, this list, these lists we're talking about, were developed over half a thousand years at least. Yeah, it's more than we're going to explore in this lifetime. But you can explore some of it.

[33:06]

I mean, it is one of the most precious human accomplishments. It's equivalent to and older than Western science. Longer in development. And the effort was not to understand reality out there, but to understand experienced reality. And it attracted the people who did it. I said, you know, it's like nowadays you're attracted to, you know, the law, science and so forth. The kind of professions that engaged people, particularly science-like professions, were all this study of Buddhism and the Abhidharma.

[34:24]

So people who would be philosophers or mathematicians or chemists or physicists all studied Buddhism because that's what they had. And they discovered you couldn't study it with your mind only. You had to study it with your body and with yogic awareness. You may have noticed that Buddhism is nothing but lists. What is the first teaching of the Buddha? The Four Noble Truths.

[35:49]

Sounds like a list to me. The Eightfold Path. A list. Okay. Now the lists are the result of analysis and observation and compassion. Because you're trying to make sense of this for yourself and others. That's compassion. So the observation and the analysis lead to definitions. And the definitions let you, help you practice. Because the definitions then help you notice.

[36:50]

Okay, so overall the sense of the list is that the path is within your own experience. And your experience is not something mysterious given from outside. It can be analyzed. It can be understood. In other words, really, in a sense, it's very practical. There's no Buddha sitting with a bunch of Devas and his mother. He could only handle one mother and 10,000 Devas. His father wasn't reborn as a Deva.

[37:54]

We don't know about that. Okay, so... So the lists represent our maps better call them maps or ingredients of our experience. It's saying here are the ingredients. What does that make you? The cook. And so you are the cook of your own That's a kind of basic concept. That kind of concept is it's your experience and you can understand it and you can do something about it.

[38:58]

Also das grundlegende Konzept dabei ist, dass es deine Erfahrung ist und du kannst damit etwas machen und du kannst die verstehen. If you understand that suffering has a cause, then you can understand that if you change the cause or remove the cause, you can free yourself from suffering. Wenn du verstehst, dass das Leid eine Ursache hat, dann verstehst du auch, dass wenn du diese Ursache veränderst oder sie... So the teaching empowers you in the midst of your own experience. And you don't depend on grace or some kind of... power from elsewhere. So it's very hopeful teaching. Okay. Now, probably, as several of you have suggested, this started out as mnemonic devices, probably. The early teaching from the Buddha himself seems to have been, yes, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path.

[40:23]

The five skandhas, the vijnanas. First, I mean, there were only six vijnanas. The Yogacara school much later added seven and eight. And Nagarjuna turned that everything is changing into the two truths. And Yogacara changed the two truths into the three natures. But it took centuries to do this. Because you have to really realize and embody the teachings that you have and develop them at the same time. Just look at your own lifetime.

[41:36]

Practically speaking, how many of these teachings can you really realize in your lifetime? And I've been doing this now for, I don't know, 45, 46, 47 years. And there's only some teachings, not too many, I've been able to work on thoroughly. But the result of working on a few teachings thoroughly opens many of the other teachings up. That's part of the secret.

[42:38]

Don't try to do a lot of things. Do one or two thoroughly. Really thoroughly. We spent an entire practice week on, I didn't expect to, but in fact we spent the entire practice week on just this. And we didn't begin to exhaust the usefulness of these two words. Okay. So in the sense that the Abhidharma developed from the original lists in Buddha's teaching and it became probably some kind of mnemonic device

[44:00]

To remind you. Yeah, if you're going to practice the six paramitas or the eightfold path, at first you start with one aspect. And that leads to other aspects. And then you begin to try to hold two or three of them all at once in your activity. And part of the way a list has a beginning and end, it's like phone numbers. Phone numbers have a certain length because you can't remember them beyond a certain length. So the lists tend to be limited to the number of things you could practice or hold simultaneously in your practice.

[45:14]

So there's a bodily form to the list that you discover through practicing. Now, concepts are part of our practice. If someone says to you, sit without scratching, without scratching is a concept. If sit for a specific length of time is a concept, So that we sit 30 minutes or 40 minutes or 50 minutes is a concept that a specific length of time is a useful part of practice. is a useful part of practice.

[46:30]

Okay, so now, there are problems also with conceptual thinking. And we want to free ourselves from conceptual thinking. We want to be able to notice the world independent of concepts. Dick Naga, the kind of crucial turning point in Buddhism in India, I would say, brought in a powerful logic into Buddhist practice. He says we do not know the reality of mind unless mind is free of concepts.

[47:30]

But let's not have a basic teaching like that. I mean, we don't think concepts are part of practice. The reality of mind is a concept. To be free of concepts is a concept. So concepts are unavoidable, but when should we avoid them? And how are they unavoidable? Konzepte sind unvermeidbar. Aber wann sollten wir sie vermeiden und inwiefern sind sie unvermeidbar? As I said the other day, if you show an infant in a crib, a child who can't walk yet, a baby who can't walk even.

[48:34]

Wie ich das kürzlich erzählt habe, wenn du einem Kleinkind, einem Baby, das noch in einer Wiege liegt, etwas zeigst, Yeah, if you show them two fingers or three fingers or two balls, they can distinguish the difference between the objects. If you show them 12 balls and 13 balls, they can't distinguish. But between two and five or three and four, they can distinguish. That is conceptual thinking. That's knowing through concepts. So the question here in the Abhidhamma is how do we bring concepts into our practice? Because the five skandhas is a concept of how consciousness is created.

[49:43]

Now, for most people, consciousness is not created. It just is. We're all conscious. When people don't think, hey, Not only is consciousness a construct, but it is a construct, and we can participate in its construction. In fact, we do participate in its construction. And it's being reconstructed every moment.

[50:46]

Those are all concepts. Okay, so, if you think consciousness just exists, it is. You don't think of it as construction. It's a given. It's a given once you're awake in the morning. then you don't really study your consciousness. So you need the concept that it's a construct before you study it. But you may notice that some days you're in a bad mood, some days you're in a good mood. I always remember Nakamura Sensei, this incredibly erai Japanese woman who lived with us for 20 years.

[51:48]

Erai, I don't know. Erai, I know it's a Japanese word which means elevated. You remember Nakamura Sensei? She said to me one day, we are such weak people. We human beings are so weak. A cloud going across the sun can change our mood. And it's true. You have to move your chair. Okay. So if you notice that you have moods, Also, wenn du bemerkst, dass du Stimmungsschwankungen, also unterschiedliche Launen hast, und dass du dich plötzlich merkwürdig fühlst, weil die Wolke, die Sonne, an der Sonne vorbeigezogen ist, dann ist das schon genug Information, um mit dem Studium des Buddhismus zu beginnen.

[53:18]

It tells you that your consciousness is a construct. But most of us wouldn't start studying Buddhism because the cloud went across the sun. But not automatically. What? Not automatically. Yeah. Automatically, you are angry that the sun has gone away. Yeah. Yeah, your emotions get in the way, right, in this case. You put it outside. Yeah. where did you start? we don't usually start the practice of Buddhism because we notice that our mood changed when the cloud went across the sun. But that's enough information. And once you're aware of the Abhidharma and the teaching in Buddhism, it can become enough information.

[54:35]

Okay, so you notice that something reminded you. You saw a letter, and the letter reminded you of a letter that you have to write or something that's really you're avoiding for months. So you can see that the association with the letter that arises from seeing the letter made you feel lousy, depressed. Also siehst du dann, dass die Assoziation, die du mit dem Brief hattest, den du gesehen hast, dafür gesorgt hast, dass du dich schlechter fühlst. That's enough information to study, to create for yourself the five skandhas. Und das ist genug Information, um für dich selbst die fünf skandhas zu schaffen.

[55:42]

Because you can start to say, well, Jesus, associations, we all know it, associations affect my mind. But if I can kind of get the association out of my mind and just look at the green grass and the sun, which is now coming out from under the cloud, behind the cloud, you can see that if you return to a percept-only mind, then the associative mind you're freed from. The five skandhas are right there. Okay, now, even though now you all know about the five skandhas, You're never going to embody the five skandhas and really realize them unless you study them, observe them in your own experience like this.

[56:56]

So the first step in studying the five skandhas is to really notice them in your own experience. Okay, and then you bring them in with some clarity. So now you're using what you noticed, you're turning it into a definition, a list. And then you're using that list that you've just created to watch, to observe your consciousness. And when we discover that consciousness is a construct and we can divide it up into constituents And there might be seven skandhas or eight skandhas or three.

[58:13]

And you yourself confirm, hey, five is the one that we can best embody. You discover this for yourself. Then when, as Atmar says, you're in discussing this with others, if you're debating from your experience, your embodiment of the skandhas, you're not just talking from the list. You can have a fruitful discussion. If someone else can only make sense of a couple of them, you can have a fruitful discussion about that. Now the skandhas is in a very important list. Not only because it's an analysis... an experiential analysis of our own consciousness.

[59:27]

But because it's in the earliest teaching of the Buddha. And some of these things in Buddha's teaching aren't so explicit as the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. They have to kind of be teased out. Teased out? To tease something out, you have to look at it and find out what the parts are. Color or something. So much of what the Abhidharma, Abhidharmists did, was to sort out from the Buddha's sutra teachings which were mostly written after the Buddha anyway still rooted somehow for the most part in the historical Buddha's teaching probably

[60:36]

is to find the lists that were implicit but not explicit in the teaching, bring them into a definition, and then use them as reminders in your own practice. So in a way, the skandhas are a seed of the whole Abhidharma. Because the skandhas precede the Abhidharma. But it shows you, it's the seed of this looking at something as a way to enter into it. Now, I think some of you have discovered.

[61:40]

One, it's a kind of revolution to recognize your consciousness is a construct. And a second revolution that really comes with the Mahayana is a construct that's being reconstructed every moment. That's Dharma teaching. And when you do notice this and accept that it's a construct and have enough experience with noticing your own consciousness that you can apply the tool of the skandhas to your own consciousness that tool which is based on your own consciousness that already exists the more or less the way your nose exists or your

[62:57]

our consciousness exists. But when we look at it very carefully we find it exists as the five skandhas. So through observation we develop the five skandhas. But we don't just discover the consciousness that's there already that led to our noticing the five skandhas. The application of the five skandhas to consciousness once you've discovered them the application of this tool can transform consciousness. It can actually be a major factor in enlightenment or realization.

[64:28]

So the Abhidharma is based on this understanding. It's rooted in observation but the observation can become a teaching which transforms what's observed. Okay. All right, time to quit. Zeit aufzuhören. So let's sit for a moment. Okay. And so that we can eat later, right? Like the Buddha, he's descending from the deva realm here. Is this the entire kitchen crew leaving?

[65:31]

Anybody else?

[65:49]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.23