Does anyone have anything you'd like to say from this morning or from yesterday? Yes, Felix? I have the feeling that you said that we you we create this the present yeah who else I have a different feeling of the feeling I sit in a box and I'm looking outside and outside there is the present Occasionally I open the window and put out a hand.

[01:03]

That's why you're sitting in that chair, so you get a better view. So you've made me on the outside. Well, of course, there is a context we're in. I mean, you're not in the 17th century, you're in the 21st century. And so there's an established context. Externally and internally. But given the context... We create the durative present. The world is flowing, phenomenal world, whatever its ingredients are, are flowing through your senses and mind. And you give that its particular weave.

[02:23]

That's a scientific fact. But do we experience it or not? And certainly the... the developed tradition within the Mahayana is how to use the conceptual awareness that that's a fact and to use that conceptual awareness in a reminding sense and literally re-minding to notice your the experience and your experience in relationship to the concept or conceptual fact

[03:30]

And you basically educate your experience. And your experience can educate the concept. And I find that some concepts from Mahayana Buddhism stand up to my experience. But I'm practicing this particular way of weaving mind and body together. We could say that Zen practice is a way to make use of the experienceable difference between mind and body and phenomena which you've pointed out and also a practice of how to weave together

[05:03]

this experienceable difference between mind, body and phenomena. And I'm practicing this teaching because I find it relates most fully to my experience. So if you conclude, I mean what you pointed out, the fact that you can point that out is already 80%. The last 20%, you know. 20 years. He said 20 years, is it taking you that long? No longer. Thanks. Someone else? Yes, Tara? Let's start from the back.

[06:21]

One method was to practice even-mindedness through the five senses. Excuse me? I start from the self as a construct and it's been built up from history, experience, surroundings and so on. but doesn't the self with this background also influence my sensory perception? I never will hear the same sound of the bell like you or Neil. I'm hoping you will. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Well for me it's still start from where that the let's say for example the color of the grass there's a different nuance than for everyone else.

[07:42]

But when I start with this even-minded through the senses and this even-minded mind, but isn't that mind then also not informed by the self? I can't put this half, take this half and just sort of put it aside because it's interwoven with everything else. That's my question. Okay, well certainly your experience is interwoven with everything else. The self is also... Not quite as thoroughly interwoven as experience, but it's there too.

[09:14]

And certainly there are cultural and historical periods where things are sensed differently. I believe in Homer's time, for instance, they didn't distinguish blue and green and so forth. So the wine-dark sea, you know, And as Judy pointed out, China had something similar. An inflation of colors. But given all that, how much can you put aside and how far away can you put it?

[10:18]

Is there anything we could call pure experience possible? Okay, we have to speak about that. Someone else, yeah. It's nice to see you. I haven't seen you for quite a while. The topic about the I-agency responsibility. For me, the question is whether this would develop if one did not want to go into a different cultural context.

[11:19]

The question is, would that also develop that way if I wouldn't live in that cultural context? In any, not in a special, but if I would be a human being, would this agency of responsibility be part of my human potential? Yeah. I think so. I mean, you could... Anthropologists may have some ideas to the contrary. But the little I know is that even in a tribal culture that we would consider quite primitive by contemporary standards, still people are responsible. And if they behave a way that doesn't work, they're walked into the woods and they don't come back with the others. I would guess even animals have some sense of responsibility for their actions in relation to other animals.

[12:28]

But whether it's anthropologically correct is not my point. My point is that The first five are extremely basic. And I can't imagine any possibility of agreements between people if there isn't this I-agency responsibility. But the sixth is the one I would like to explore a little more. But I had questions too about that when I concluded I feel an experience of I-agency. I did think about it the same way you have. You want to say something else?

[13:56]

Culturally, it's not developed here with us. A high responsibility? Yes. Because otherwise, the world wouldn't be in the situation it is in the moment. Well, it wouldn't be in the situation it is in the moment without this either. I mean, my feeling is, I've said many times, is we're in a very primitive state of civilization. It was only a few decades ago that we thought women might be equal to men. Or even... No. And... As I've said, I can see my life in a 250-year span.

[15:23]

If I look at my grandparents and stories they told me about their parents and grandparents, and I think of you, who are going to be very long-lived, There's easily 250 years there. In which people aren't so different. Ten of those units bring you back to Buddha. Can somewhat less bring you back to the time of Christ. And it takes us a long time to learn things. Yeah, the question is, will we learn fast enough before we destroy the planet? It's a mutual race to construction and destruction.

[16:31]

Just follow the teachings here of the inner weavings of sensorial and historical. In more modern phraseology, it seems as though that's deeply studying the projection. May I translate that to German? Yeah. And what do you mean by the projection? using different definitions of self, of the I AM Presence, the Buddha nature, that entire manifested reality, and it can be studied forever in its details.

[17:48]

And this seems to be emphasis on those details. Okay. Deutsch? I'm sorry, he speaks English, so... Tänzt du sehr beim Deutsch? No. Hmm... Er wird los. I'm sorry. Well, maybe I'll just say something then. I think it's useful to try to sort these things out to some extent, as Tara brought up earlier, because it allows us to focus more effectively in practice on what's essential. And it allows us to quiet some of our inner debate with ourselves.

[19:00]

Anyway, that's been my experience over the years, teaching in the West and teaching primarily laypersons. In the earlier days, in St. Francisville, I was primarily teaching within a monastically defined context. And I followed the more traditional way, don't explain, just show. And when you live with people for months and years at a time, you can do that.

[20:12]

And what I found, especially when coming to Europe, when I see most of the Sangha only a few times a year, that didn't work. So now I try other things. Yeah. I have to keep him happy. He keeps coming back. So I have to keep giving him teachings that he can't complete. And then he has to keep coming back. Thank you. Okay, someone else? Yes, document. Regarding this responsibility, is there any universal criteria for this responsibility or is this responsibility just a product of the experiences?

[21:20]

Well, the way in the sense that I'm pointing it out as the germ of seed of a lot else, is that I am not responsible for what his hand does. In a purely physical sense, I recognize that these hands are not his. And that incurs a certain responsibility. And if I'm completely crazy, you know, and behave in ways, you know, people will show me that I better be responsible for what I do with my hands.

[22:31]

I mentioned yesterday who have the left and right hemispheres severed. Corpus callosum? Severed. We call it the... What's that Biden? Corpus callosum. He's a doctor. Yesterday we had... Some people, this was even used as a medical treatment not too long ago. America. America? Well, we're very experimental. No, not to me. Yeah, okay.

[23:34]

Enough of your comments. He learned it from Germans most probably. Oh, now he's trying to be tactful. You see some eye responsibility there. Anyway, this severed left and right brain. Some people developed really different personalities. And one guy would love reading a book with his left right eye and left brain. While his right brain was telling his left hand to throw the book away, it was boring. And another guy would dress himself with one hand and undress himself with the other at the same time. So these... There's not much I-responsibility there.

[24:41]

But the job of the sixth is this narrative weaving of the need to establish coherence. It's not just societal or social. We have to... establish our own coherence, which is quite amazing. We have something like a hundred billion neurons, and thousands to even a hundred hundreds of thousands of synaptical possibilities for each neuron.

[25:45]

And yet we establish some kind of experiential coherence. How does it happen? And what role do the senses and mind and self have to do in establishing this coherence. And I think it begins with studying how we ourselves individually established coherence. And what aspects of self we're not willing to give up? Or, you know, if it really gets bad, then really people decide on the basis of self-interest.

[26:59]

And where does self-preservation and self-interest overlap? and where self-assertion or self-assertion and self... There is a slight difference in meaning in German and English. I've noticed that over the years, yes. Okay, thank you. Someone else, yes? When I look at this list, I find it very helpful to regard this as ingredients.

[28:01]

And it's especially helpful when we regard the actual moment as an activity, and which of the ingredients do we put into this moment? Our ingredients also has a connotation of which spice do I take from the shelf and do I put a bit of this and that in. And this is an aspect of practice, consciousness of breath as an ingredient, or even this as an ingredient. But if you deal with Buddhist foundations and very basic teachings, And when you look at the fundamental or very basic Buddhist practices,

[29:25]

Then you find or you meet utterances, something said, where the feeling is that it's not an ingredient, it's a fundamental way of being. This is what Tara said and also what Fritz said. Fritz said, for example, this fundamental statement in Buddhism, with you you will not be born into a world, but with you a world will be born. And relating now what Tara said and what Fritz said, is the fact that you're not born into a world, but the world is born with you. A world is born. A world, yeah. Und da stößt man doch immer wieder drauf. Oder jetzt kommen wir das Wochenende, wenn wir die Ordination hier haben, Ordinationswochenende.

[30:41]

And this is what is met again and again and coming weekend when we have the ordination ceremony. And then what you are teaching us is that compassion is not an ingredient, but the only real basic way to be. Still an ingredient. Dennoch eine Zutat. Yes, but... Yes, but... But also when we look at the sort of primitive tribes which might be living, the rest of them might be living in Amazonas data and niche there.

[31:43]

then I think and I don't look at it as primitive. For example, those people, this is not an ingredient, but it's the only possible way to be. They just can't be only that way. That's why we're in between. Yeah, it's just they don't know it's an ingredient. In the Western world, it's only very recently that we realized everything's an ingredient.

[33:05]

We thought there was some fundamental ground of being. Yeah, but it's all parts. And there's no whole It brings all those parts together. Yeah. Sorry. It makes it interesting now. Yes, Julie? So I'm going on to this narrative observing. It seems the function of naming is to Make an iconic pattern. A pattern? A pattern. It seems that the process of naming is a kind of icon pattern, or is?

[34:14]

As some way to simplify the processing. To process, to simplify. So we call a bell both these things here. Because we don't want to spend the time looking at all the differences. And so that seems necessary. If I think about the way I I need to just walk out the door so I need to distinguish where the doorway is. But it also means I don't actually look at the doorway. It's a devil's bargain or something. So it feels like That is, for me, the real issue of what is accurate naming and what is inaccurate naming.

[35:42]

And maybe it's the functioning or the intention. Well, accurate and inaccurate naming, or we could say intelligent and unintelligent naming. Unnaming is a way we point out And then those names can become words and structures of syntactical parts of sentences. And we can interrupt that process of names becoming words becoming sentences. And we can use naming as a Buddhist practice to undo naming.

[36:55]

But I would say that intelligent naming would be if names could always point out that they were provisional. So now, we meet in the afternoon. And of course I want us to have small group meetings in the afternoon. But I don't think we yet have quite enough shared material for small group meetings.

[38:02]

So we're supposed to stop at 12.30. Which is in one minute. I've been known to squeeze a lot into one minute. But I think that's too much. Or we can, if I start on what I'd like to start on, it will probably make lunch late. And if there is a ground of being, it's eating. So... But let me just say what the topic is.

[39:06]

If we have to put together a left-brain and right-brain or right-brain bodied and left-brain bodied epistemic process, The Sphinx. Put a pyramid behind it. Epistemic body. That's all you heard, huh? No, that's what I stumbled upon. Epistemic is a process of acquiring knowledge. And I'm using it because Most of our living is an epistemic process.

[40:14]

The activity and process of knowing is not just conscious knowing. Okay. So, whatever I said, now I have to... Um... If the process of knowing is wider than consciousness, then the process by which we form the world through a self-narrative.

[41:20]

Give one more divided brain example. They showed a guy with this divided brain problem. A chicken leg in a snow-filled driveway. They flashed them, you know. And then they said to him, here's some pictures, pick some pictures that remind you of what you just saw flashed. And he picked a chicken and a snow shovel. And then they said to him, what do you need a snow shovel for?

[42:33]

And then he immediately tried to create narrative coherence. And he said, to shovel out the chicken coop. So we're always doing a narrative coherence. We're always trying to establish narrative coherence. You can see it yourself during zazen. You did something stupid. Or you offended somebody. And you're sitting doing zazen. A little distant from samadhi. At some discontent. And you're thinking, well, I didn't really do that or I didn't mean that.

[43:41]

Let's look at it this way. I really was trying... You're just bullshitting yourself. You're preparing what you're going to tell the world so you look better, but you're trying to fool yourself too because no one's listening but you. So it's narrative coherence at any cost. And that explains perhaps why I-responsibility agency doesn't make the world any better. And I think it explains perhaps why we can be so easily insulted.

[44:42]

Because I find it quite mysterious how easy it is to insult people. And I think it's really, probably, if you challenge their story, Their narrative coherence, the whole stuff starts to fall apart. Someone asked Virginia Woolf, what is the self? And she says it's butterfly wings bolted together with steel. And it's this fragility that we tie together. Okay, so that's based on a narrative coherence within consciousness.

[45:58]

Now, if we expand the field of potential coherence Beyond consciousness. What happens then? To be continued. Well, I told you I can only do two minutes. Well, I think I should probably talk a little bit before... Yeah, I think so. I'd be happy not to, but I think so.

[46:46]

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