So do you have any thoughts about what we've been speaking about? Yeah. I was thinking about what brings us to looking or seeking a way like meditation practice. I think we are all in different points of our life. We have had the experience that there is more than the I experience, ego experience. The I or ego consciousness which deals with the societal situations.

[01:03]

There are more experiences, experience of something wider and wider space, spatial feeling. And where thoughts function in a different way are not so much I or history related. And where thoughts can be more free and associative. And can debate or discuss things in a way which wasn't perceived before? These thoughts are difficult to hold because it was not supported by terms, not term-supported thoughts.

[02:36]

I understand, yes. So, can we bring our experiences of zazen into our terms supported thoughts? Okay, someone else. Yeah. When Roshi came out here, and now I can breathe very beautifully, I am in my research spirit, I am in, yes, to check it out, to check my own thinking, It does me good when you're here first.

[03:45]

Well, that's nice. I found it so straight and good, this who and what questions. And I'm asking myself, am I in the exploring or explorer mind? Yes. Yeah, and asking myself, is that right, what I'm thinking? Could I expand it, could I develop it, and stay with this exploring mind? Should this... You're like a seamstress. You're sewing yourself up or I'm sewing yourself up. Yeah. Yeah. And I must always publicly thank you for creating this beautiful place.

[05:06]

Even door-to-door service from the train station to the... Someone else? Who is breathing, what is breathing, who am I, what am I? One aspect is questions, who is breathing, what is breathing, who am I, what am I? Das machst du. In my everyday life, this shifting to what is breathing, what is doing this, I'm doing this continuously. While you're working, during the day, you have this shift.

[06:08]

One aspect is that I am more and more the feeling that I have to do things, these things I do, in an incorporated way. When I'm stuck in the discursive thinking. of minute everyday things which I can't solve and which are just pure stress for me and automatically if I switch to this what question what is angry and what's doing this breath goes down here It's a different result because into the body it's a different result. What's changing is the involvedness. And I also think there's not necessarily answers. It's a vivid, it's a live process.

[07:33]

That's good. Good translation. Did you say involvement also meaning engagement? I'm always... Beteiligt means part of. Mm-hmm. So it could be translated involvement or engagement or incorporate you use too.

[08:39]

And incorporate you mean like in English it means to also to embody, incorporate. Now I'm mentioning the words because I can't do it in Deutsch of course but if we're going to bring if we're going to use language, because even if we're practicing and spend hours some part of every day in various samadhis, our day is shaped by our consciousness. And our consciousness is primarily structured through language. So we need to kind of bring this somatic intelligence into our language structured consciousness and loosen it up.

[09:50]

And this kind of distinction between what and who is a bit like a necker cube. A necker cube. where you have two squares, and they shift. So it looks like it's going down, then it looks like it's going up. Mr. Necker discovered it. It wasn't teenagers. Okay. No, there are different things. Yes, but they have another name. No, it's like when you say, the thing looks at you, out, and it looks in the back. It depends on how you look at it.

[10:51]

The picture doesn't change, but you can see the stairs going up or down. Yes, but there is a certain term. You don't call it a Necker cube. No. We have a certain term that's very specific for this. If you can change it, it looks positive or negative. Well, it's just two squares. And it looks like it's coming down or it looks like it's going up, depending on... Well, whatever it's called. Yeah. It's in children's books. But what's interesting about it is the more yogic view of it is to be able to stay in the space where it's neither. And I'm mentioning this because much of Buddhism plays not on either or, but on either both.

[11:57]

So not what or who. But what happens when you have the what-who shift makes a bigger space than either what or who. Someone else. Yes. and the elements that create this construct Self is construct. When I experience the space around it, I'm not quite sure how it is constructed. Is it thoughts which construct it? That's the question. I'm not telling.

[13:22]

I'm not telling. Yeah. No, I don't know. I think we have to, maybe Sunday afternoon we can get there. That's a big question. I mean, obviously, thoughts are part of it. Peter Nick has spoken to me about you a number of times. His visit to Hamburg to see you. He enjoyed it very much. Peter Nick is my neighbor who is also a botanist and lives next door. Okay, somebody else. My question is a bit similar. You talked about how can the eye see the eye. From where out do we explore the self?

[14:32]

And with which or what self functions do we explore the self? This question came up and sort of incited me. Can you just state the question itself? The topic you suggested was to explore the self. And then the question came up, from where do I explore, from what point do I explore the self?

[15:40]

And with which self function do I do this? Yeah. And I try to put the question to myself, how do I explore myself? Perhaps a concept which I myself have comes into it possibly. Self-interest is. Self in? In presence. Yeah, you already said it. Self in presence. Yeah. Self as presence. In presence. With lines in between. Self in presence. Okay. That's what it's called. Well, I think so far, especially what you've said, but what we've been saying is that one of the things I'm bringing up

[16:48]

Can we use language in this exploration? And of course if we have experiences outside of language, as Christoph said, can those experiences be brought back into language? What does language have to be in order to use language as an explorative tool? Anyway, so let me leave it at that. And Gerard, were you just twirling your hand around or were you about to say something?

[17:56]

I always find it interesting to come to seminars like this and to see or find out which self is being addressed. I come in here and I experience not the sesshin self, not the seminar self, but a kind of practiced self with an explorative aspect or part. That's one thing. The other is, I find it very interesting to experiment with the production of the respective situation, my respective situation.

[19:20]

And the other thing is that I find it interesting to experiment with the manifestation or shall I say construction of my specific situation. And it starts with a feeling or a thought And then I observe how this unfolds or how I do or make the situation. And then quite early on I try to stop which wants to cascade. And then I see what comes, what develops out of this and that's the way I'm practicing at the moment with that.

[20:29]

What's astonishing is I can get into and enter that situation quite early. ... For example, put in my breath and that brings before a different reality. That's the fields I'm experimenting with at the moment. Good. I look at you and I've been practicing with you since 1983. That's a pretty long time. And we're almost one person. Except you're thinner than I am. And he was born on a bicycle and I wasn't. But we're still different people. But somehow we created a shared self too.

[21:49]

And what kind of community, what kind of Sangha Is there also a shared self that we have here? Is a Sangha a kind of cosmic necker cube? Vexia Bild. That's a vexia picture. Okay. Vexation picture. That's the term. That's the term. Okay. It appeared out of your associative multitudinous. Yeah. Okay. Something else. Never mind. Oh, okay, how? How? The closest I can come to... I say it in English, please.

[22:50]

The closest I can come to what you both said, from which reference point the self is observed is... Of course I can't grasp it, but it's feeling that from everywhere around there's no specific point. It's a field from which all around is... perceived, noticed, whatever. That's my experience at least. The next thing I come to when I ask what you two have mentioned, from where do I look at it, is actually from around everything, so to speak, at the same time, so more from a field. I can't see a specific point of reference. As if the whole room looks. Okay. Someone else. I could just sort that out of my experience. Can you tell me the first part again? Yes. Yes. There's not a fixed point from where out it goes. .

[24:08]

It's hard to describe for me. One aspect is in the middle from where I look. But it's also empty. It's also not I. I can't really say. Actually there isn't anymore an I. Okay. Yes, then the question arises, what is it now? For example, at home, when I go to the toilet, I think, how does that suffer? I want to have a cat in this situation. For example, I think, I can't go yet. What is this? Is experienced in a difficult situation, especially in a bodily difficult situation, when, for example, I can't do this, I'm too weak, then it's easier to experience?

[25:44]

And then there is a larger wideness, a more spaciousness, and then the question comes, what is breathing, what is movement, what is this? Then the point comes where I lose myself and then the old situation is back. I would like to be in this area where I don't know anything and where I play these two pieces in bass, to keep them a little longer. I think that's the area where we said in the choir with the fox, to want to swim in it.

[27:01]

Would you like that? I would like to stay more in this not knowing situation and then what we have with the corn but the fox in the swimming in situation that's I really would like to explore more and stay in it more and this yeah and this balance okay this more yeah yeah thank you Someone else, yeah. What is your name? Hartmut. Hartmut. Hartmut. Yeah. Not Helmut, but Hartmut. Okay. What does the language do with the perception? What does the language do with the perception? It glides. We say, what is breathing? It is linked to something else, which affects me physically and mentally. I find it interesting how language structures perception.

[28:14]

When I ask what, the what question is sort of, it has a bodily component, a bodily relatedness, a körperlichkeit. Genau. Das, wenn wir zum Beispiel davon ausgehen, dass unser Herz schlägt und fragen würden, was schlägt, For example, if heart is beating and we ask what is beating, this would be relatively easy to say our heart is beating. But it's also part of us and it belongs to us in a certain way. In Japanese, you don't say my heart. You just say stomach or heart. Who the heck else is you're talking about? Hiro, she always thought it was funny when people say my stomach hurts. You don't know whether my stomach hurts, so why are you... Because we add my and our and stuff here. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Breathing, we have the choice of breathing consciously, but also, of course, it's possible that we breathe automatically.

[29:45]

Yeah. Yeah. And when the question came up, what is breathing, it came to my mind that it can be sort of an unpleasant aspect to it, sort of being pushed by something else or something strange or, you know, from outside, so to say. Okay. And at the end, it's possibly about not either or, but at the same time, but noticing the at-onceness The consciousness that we are consciousness and body and what we think and notice about that at the same time.

[30:54]

Okay. It has a lot to do with acceptance. from ourselves and that the heart beats, that the breathing is like that. And if we can accept that and not find it uncomfortable, then we also have a bridge to the self, even if we can't understand it at all. But we are it. And you notice in many situations that it is good to accept it at the same time. Just like the consciousness with roles That means we are at the same time consciousness and body.

[31:56]

And as important as the acceptance of both. And for me this leads more to a self. And perhaps I am who and what at the same time. And the who is more the I in little points, dots, which is more formed through roles, socialization, and so on. This all together is something which I can't understand, which what makes me is more than I can understand, but then this is what makes me. Okay.

[33:24]

Okay. Yeah, that's the territory. What interests me in this is, I mean, I find it, you know, first of all, we have the framework. Zen is a teaching outside of words and letters. That's one of the slogans. Yeah, but be careful. I mean, what does that mean? Let's accept that perhaps it's true. But let's not... forget that our life is also in words and letters.

[34:42]

So how can we use words and letters if that slogan is true? So that We use words and letters so perhaps that we know our living outside of words and letters. In any case, I find it completely amazing that the difference between what and who It directs attention differently. In other words, basically you're using what or using who to direct attention. It's like a little... tube or magnifying glass or something.

[35:59]

So attention is a form of mind. So mind as attention flows through the letters W-H-A-T differently than it flows through the letters W-H-O. But it's not just flowing through the letters pronounced as a sound. But it's flowing through the embodied meaning we have, associations we have with what and who. So words are not simply a way to direct attention.

[37:02]

But they are a... They have content in experiential content. And within that experiential content, is there also wisdom? Hi. It's the old gang is assembling. Not an emphasis on old. Yeah, so is there in this accumulated experience that is carried in words, what can we distill from that accumulated experience?

[38:18]

Heinrich, was that shape intended in that lamp? Yes. But you didn't do it in all the lamps? No, only the one. Only the one? Yes. It didn't just break, it's a design. Yes, it's the heart of Shadya. Oh, it is? The heart of Shadya is just in the lamp. The open heart and the sun. How great. Could you have it right above me, shining? Yes. I can sit over there. We have these words like self, soul, psyche. Spirit.

[39:32]

Identity. I've been pondering these words for 75 years. I don't know what they mean. I can't really separate them. But sometimes self feels like a high rise. High rise is a tall building. And soul feels like a cabin by a lake. Or you can be selfish, but you can't be soulfish. Now, why is that? Why can you be selfish, but not soulfish? He's a very selfish guy. So there's some teaching in there that even though it's hard to define what we mean in English by all these different senses of some inner being.

[40:44]

Okay, someone else. Yes, Charlene, is that right? Charlene. Yes. It came to my mind just before that these two, this question what and who is probably dependent on the language what a person experiences saying that in which language. Yeah. That may be different. Now from German to English. In German we have articles that indicate that something is masculine, feminine, sexual. In English it's all the same.

[41:48]

So when you say something in German, you go from a sexual answer and then you ask again from a masculine, feminine answer. And that might be experienced quite differently if you say it in English. We have these specifications of male, female and neutral in German, where in English it's not the case. And when we ask who... In German, it implies a male-female distinction, whereas what is a neutral distinction, which is not the same in English. So this experience may be different. You mean the what of German is different in its neutrality is different from the what of English? The what in German is insofar different as... I understand the O is different. Yeah, but it is in itself neutral.

[42:52]

It's not gender specific. That's not gender specific. So you have a freedom from gender when you say what, and you don't have a freedom from gender when you say who. Exactly. And since we, I would say maybe all of us feel ourselves either male or female, we get free of that as soon as we use the question of what. I see, yeah, I understand. I'm not sure, but I think that maybe we try in English, we don't have the feeling of being male or female. With the who, yeah, we don't. Could you do it again in German? Yes, I think that if you try the whole thing in English, that you are free from this feeling of being male or female, because in English the question of being male or female That's interesting. It's interesting. With who?

[44:24]

It's not connected for me with male or female. That's because you're older. And maybe different with each person, she says. I'm asking myself if it's different for me because I'm definitely younger than most of the people here. Yeah, perceiving may probably be age or generation related. Could be, yeah. Well, my main point, though, is that you can use words to direct attention at yourself. To direct attention, period.

[45:36]

And of course it's going to be different in different languages. But it does put another nuance there that who has a gender in Deutsch. I keep asking myself, who am I, thinking I'm a girl, but so far it hasn't worked. No one takes it seriously. All right. Go ahead. Yes. Please say it yourself. Well, the same thing I want to say has nothing to do with my first thought, but it's my first reaction to you, I don't know what you call maybe a speech in the beginning, was that I came here not sure what to expect and what was going to happen to me.

[47:07]

Yeah, I was feeling good with it. The first reaction was that I was very happy to be here and that I thought it was the right decision for me. Oh, this is good. I mean, I think it's good. Thank you. Okay. So I brought up, and you brought up the eye, seeing the eye.

[48:11]

Or that. basic concept. And of course the eye can't see the eye from here, even if you cross-eyed. but you can experience the functioning of the eye. And since the eye is an activity primarily, more accurately defined as an activity than as an entity, so when the eye experiences the activity of eyeing or seeing, we could say this is the eye experiencing the eye.

[49:22]

But we do have mirrors. And I find it completely startling that this whole process of saccadic scanning, you all know what saccadic scanning is, it's at a very rapid rate. eye movements when you look at something you actually are looking at it all over the place in fractions of a second and your brain is putting that together as a picture So this is such a useful idea for Buddhism because it gives you a neurological sort of or biological idea.

[50:33]

Exclamation for the durative presence. In other words, the present isn't even a knife edge. It's already past and not yet future. Or already past, already future. So the present has no duration. But we experience a duration. And the word Dharma is useful in this too because it means to hold. So the teaching of Buddhism is that everything changes. That's the basic teaching. Absolutely everything changes. change changes.

[51:51]

So why do we experience the present? Well, biologically we experience the present because we're in a scanning process. And that scanning process gives us, gathers information and the brain makes that into a picture. So we're functioning in an illusion But an illusion which is co-extensive with the physical world. So we could say it's an illusion that is the physical world. I find this very interesting. Okay. So the man who discovered saccadic scanning, something like a French guy in the 1800s, and he simply, for the first time of anybody who paid attention to what he did,

[53:04]

He put a mirror up and watched himself looking at things. They've had mirrors for centuries and nobody else thought of doing this. Or at least thought of paying attention to doing it. So he put a mirror up and then he watched himself, his eye seeing his eye. He watched himself looking at something. And to his surprise, his eye was moving all over the place. So he calculated the process. And he came up with what's now called saccadic scanning. Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

[54:31]

All you have to do is do that and you change the world. The way the world thinks about things. And notice what's happening. And there are endless theories about how the eye works and a beam comes out and all kinds of things. But, you know, all you have to do is put a mirror up and get a more accurate picture. Now, how important is it to have an accurate picture? That's one of the themes that I'm speaking within. Why bother with an accurate picture? And what is the... dynamic of accuracy or truth in our understanding of our self.

[55:41]

The dynamic of truth or accuracy in the functioning of the self, in the functioning of our life. Now, perhaps the Sangha or all of us right now are that mirror. In other words, although the self can't see the self, maybe the self sees the self in the mirror of others. And you see, here I'm using words. And I'm using words to play with how we look at things. Now we all are well aware that people don't see themselves as others see them.

[56:47]

You can talk to somebody and they'll say, everyone knows that guy or that person. man or woman, has got this or that quality or habit. But everyone knows you don't tell the person that. Because they might kill you, or they won't like you, or they'll be hurt. So now that is one of the most interesting facts of our life. Is that we are mostly, our ego structure is unable to hear really what others think about us.

[57:52]

Even though everybody knows what they think of you, But except you. And everyone knows and it's no problem for them. But it'd be a big problem for you. Now what's that about? Can we use the Sangha as a mirror to actually know how others also know us? Probably not. But can we move in that direction? Okay. Now, I don't know if I should watch anything else.

[59:08]

It's about time for us to, again, maybe have lunch.

[59:12]

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