So what thread would you like me to pick up on from this morning? Because I feel as if I am only reacting. And this is the source of all feelings. This is to differentiate. I'm interested in the sources and the causes. My experience is that I feel like I'm mostly reacting to things, and I don't feel enough that the source is flowing out through me. Coming through you, yeah. Well, Norbert mentioned

[01:09]

that there are other seminars that occur in this living room. And this one takes more getting used to because it's more different than the other ones or something like that. or more different than usual. And the idea of practice is to make your life more usual. So what's the difference between the more usual life and our usual life? And as I said, one reason I come back here is because I've been practicing with so many of you for so long.

[02:13]

And there's a field of shared knowing that arises through us and through our knowing each other, but also through our separate practice. So I said, and for those of you who weren't here this morning, I said a kind of basic, a beginning practice of adept practice were two or three things that one first conceptually frames and then incubates and then embodies. Okay.

[03:44]

And then again, for those who weren't here this morning, I said, as I typically do, here is a bell and simultaneously the mind that arises. The mind bell and the bell. And the experienced practitioner feels the mind that arises through perception. And the more you have the feel, the embodiment of that, The more it's just the way you know the world, you know the world as a field of mind, you can begin to shift the emphasis in that field. from more emphasis on mind or more emphasis on the object.

[05:09]

And the more you are able to and feel located in emphasizing the shift toward mind, the more everything that arises is an appearance. is an appearance of mind, and that appearance of mind makes the world feel located within your own activity.

[06:20]

Located within your own engagement with the world. And this engagement in the world as mind Let's imagine you are under water and various things appear in the water but they all appear wet wet with mind so to speak and so there's a kind of sameness of everything that appears because it appears with the wetness of mind And that is one of the sometimes thusness or which is also a word for experiencing things as empty is experiencing the sameness of things.

[07:24]

So you experience the world as differentiated and simultaneously same. Because the differentiated world now is always wet with mind. Yeah. And that is one of the steps toward finding everything as emptiness. which is related to noticing everything as interdependent. So I bring that up this morning and now again in a little different way. To see if we can, once a year or so, or as many times, some of you I don't see much more often than that, establish a usual way of being with each other.

[08:52]

a mutually arising field, which may actually be in one way different from our usual way of knowing the world, But a new way that feels the world really is this way, this is the usual world. Because it's no question, it's an absolute fact that the world arises through your sensorium. But it's as invisible to most of us as the camera is invisible in the photograph.

[10:09]

So we're trying to bring the photograph back into the photo. The camera. Or the camera back into the photo. You're a noisy one. No, no, I'm just kidding. No, I have some of them. Okay, what else? Yes? The subtlety of the language. That I can train the spirit through the subtlety of the language. I started learning Portuguese about a year ago and then I came across the word semelhante. and this word somehow came to me, because Semejanshi is not just called fellow human beings, but simply similar.

[11:42]

If I want to say that it is somewhat similar, then I say E Semejanshi, And I thought about it for a very long time. We discussed it for a very long time with my teacher and later also discussed so much about what this word, contains subtleties and what is in other languages, in Italian it is for example il prossimo, the next, in German it is called the fellow man, in English it is called again, I remembered what fellow man means, this subtlety of the language not only in letters, That's a lot to translate in several languages. The thread I'm interested in is the subtlety and the refinement through language, the way we develop mind through the refinement of language.

[13:12]

And I'm learning Portuguese and there's this word, semelhanci, and that means... the other person. The German word is Mitmensch, with being, the other one who's with us. And that word struck me because it has so many different connotations that just differ from the German word and also from the English word for it. And It's a very fine distinction that made me feel like, that made me aware of this refinement through language. And we discussed that a lot also with my Portuguese teacher, the different connotations around the word, that the refinement maybe is not just through the actual words, the letters of the word, but maybe also through what's around the word.

[14:14]

Of course, yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. If you'd write down the word later for me, my daughter lives in Portugal. My grandson is half Portuguese. So I'll test the word out on her. Actually, he's about 80% Portuguese in Portugal. And 90% American in America. In the back, next to you, Rona, what is your name? Christian. Christiane.

[15:17]

Hi. So I want to give two or three examples of the basic beginning practice for adept practice. And I'm thinking of it as responding to your request this morning and now. That how do we know the world more through ourselves immersed in our own generation of the world and not the world as out there. I don't think it's unknown to us in our usual life. But I think it's unknown to us conceptually.

[16:35]

And because of that, it's quite haphazard when it appears. Haphazard now and then. At random. I still don't know how to translate it. Okay, so if it happens occasionally, just in the certain nature of things, then once we have a conception of it, the taste we already have of it allows us to locate ourselves in the possibility of it, in the conception of it.

[17:46]

Okay, so the second one I'd like to speak about then. But before I start, is there somebody who wants to say something so far? Okay. Don't forget it'll be your turn soon. Just speak something. Okay. So let me say something, and again, it's something that I spoke about in Hanover. Because I'm exploring now and in some ways, in a similar way, but not entirely similar way, what we explored in Hannover.

[18:55]

Which is, what is the experience and conception of beingness That we can then look at what the word self might mean in the conception of beingness that's discovered through Buddhist practice. Okay, start over. When there's a certain length of pause, I know. The experience and conception of what it means to be in existence changes and evolves through practice.

[20:10]

Okay. And that fact that practice does change and evolve our sense of beingness Und diese Tatsache, das und das Gefühl auch, dass die Praxis unser Gefühl für Sein verändert, makes it clear that there's no permanent self. Macht deutlich, dass es kein beständiges Selbst gibt. Or at least it's a pretty strong argument for there's no continuous permanent self. But of course the problem of a continuous self, whether the self is continuous or permanent, is not a problem for most of us.

[21:15]

It's kind of irrelevant. But what is a problem is the continuity of self-referential thinking. And self-referential thinking always is calling up the past and karmic associations and so forth. Now you don't want to deny associations and your karma and blah blah blah. But in your normal functioning you don't want to be constantly harassed by it. that it's a constant self-referencing point in all of your thinking.

[22:20]

Okay, so now we can try to look at this more exactly And in various ways what I point out is again, it's the establishment of continuity through self that is the problem. So when we see it's a problem of establishing continuity and not only a problem of self-referential thinking, then we can change how we establish continuity.

[23:30]

And as too many of you know for me to repeat myself, one way is to shift the point of attention from discursive thinking to the breath and to breath-body phenomena. Now, I say very quickly breath-body phenomena. But we can actually spend quite a bit of time on the difference between establishing in the breath, establishing in the body, and establishing phenomena.

[24:45]

But right now I'm emphasizing Establishing it in attention itself. So you establish an attentional point in attention. I'm glad you came back. I was missing you already. Okay.

[25:46]

So, if you're going to establish an attentional point in attention, and not in discursive thinking. Discursive thinking and self-referential comparative thinking, blah, blah, blah. And it is a significant shift to feel yourself in this attentional point instead of the self point. And I think without some conceptual refinement, as we talked about this morning, and if possible, meditation experience, The idea of shifting from a self-point to an attentional point would be like, huh?

[27:06]

But you can do it. So the attentional point can be carried by attention. Yeah, and part of developed practice is to be able to stay with an attentional point. Okay, so now let me speak about time. Okay. There's no such thing as being without time. Es gibt kein Sein ohne Zeit. Being is time. Sein ist Zeit. I mean, this is one thing Heidegger points out.

[28:08]

Das ist eines der Dinge, auf die Heidegger hinweist. Okay, so, because being requires what we call time. Weil Sein das braucht, was wir Zeit nennen. moment after moment experience, again, what we can call the present. But it's better from the point of view of practice now to call it presence than the present. I'm speaking then about the presence of the present. No, I could also say I'm speaking about the presence of mind arising and wetting everything. Ich könnte auch von der Gegenwärtigkeit des Geistes sprechen, der auftaucht und alles mit Nässe bedeckt.

[29:19]

And to stay then with the wetness of things. Und dann bei der Nässe der Dinge zu bleiben. Again, just trying to find images that help us get a conceptual feel for it. And the kind of conceptual field which can bleed into embodiment, into feeling it. Again, whatever we know is appearing in our sensorium. Nochmal, was immer wir kennen und erkennen, taucht in unserem Sinnesapparat auf. In unserem Sinn. And we could call that duration of time.

[30:24]

Und wir können das die Dauer der Zeit nennen. that we feel through our senses. Let's call it durative time. Now, that's not clock time. Clock time is always there. And one thing I want to establish again is this sense that most of us, partly at least, have a sense of the always-there world. And time is always there. Now all of these things, I mean, I'm trying to stick words to my experience. And I'd like to sort of unstick them from my experience and stick them onto some of your experience.

[31:39]

And you know when you go to the doctors and they put band-aids on you and the lady you have to come back and they take them off and it hurts. So after I stick these things on you, when you pull them off, I want it to hurt. And you have a sensation there was something there. Okay. Um... Because I would like these metaphors or conceptions I'm coming up with to lead into your own experience. These are arising from my experience and my attempt to refine myself and my own language by finding some way to speak about it with you.

[33:06]

But it has almost no relevance, meaning, unless it becomes your experience. And it evolves as your experience. So I say something like attentional point. This means that if you want to explore what non-self-self means in Buddhism, You have to find some way to bring attention to self or non-self as it appears in your mind, in your sensory. So it appears sometimes as an observing self. It appears sometimes as a decisional self. So you can notice, you program, literally program yourself to notice when the decisional self or agency is present.

[34:16]

I just made a decision. Yeah. Or did my body make a decision? Anita said, I thought Anita was great yesterday in the seminar. Anita said, she's thinking about, she's been practicing a long time. She says, I'm thinking about going shopping and I decide not to. But then I notice I'm putting on my shoes. So something has decided to go shopping, even though I decided not to. So she notices that putting on her shoes, well, yeah, her body decided she's going shopping. And the body... Well, the decisional process can get more and more subtle.

[35:38]

Did the context make the decision? Did something you remember make the decision? Did a little poignant agony make the decision? Did something you remember make the decision? What does that make you laugh? You didn't pronounce it so nicely. Poignant. Well, I'm quite experienced in poignant. So you're not going to locate self unless you locate its appearance in your activities. Now, all of Buddhism says the first basic practice is looking for the self.

[36:40]

Yeah, no. Why is that important? I don't think it's so obvious immediately why it's important. And maybe it's not important in our society. We have all these highly trained therapists to take care of ourselves, so we don't need to worry about it. I just turn myself over to Norbert and Angela and say, take care of it, please. I'm going to open it for you. I do have better things to do. So I think actually it's getting to be time to take a break.

[37:55]

Which I like because then it can be your turn to talk. Oh, let's take a break.

[37:59]

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