I've left what might be the practice of Zen in relationship to our Western views, in particular our Western views of the self. I've left until today. But of course I would like to, before we proceed, I'd like to hear something of your discussion and thoughts yesterday. And I promised Anja we'd start with her. At least a few statements.

[01:11]

Now that you've discovered how easy it is. Thank you. I think about the thoughts about the abilities of yesterday and today and a little bit about the direction of the movement. I think everyone even observed that. listening to what others said in the group, for example, and going a bit through this list, we sort of stuck with the sensorium, the noticing of self,

[02:24]

and sort of getting stuck with the observing and the observing self and looking what effect this has onto our practice. the different forms of self. Yeah, which every one of us notices up to the agent, yeah. Yeah, thanks. Agency, by the way, the etymology is to act or do or drive or lead. It has the same etymology as the word act.

[03:32]

May I say something? René came and we talked about the translation of the word agent or agency into German. Because what I said was agent, agentur is a bit, I don't know, it's not smooth, it's not elegant. So agents, that's your job. My job is to make the difficulty, your job is to solve it. Yeah, I just wanted to explain. Yeah, I'm good, thanks. Working on it. Thanks.

[04:33]

And Charlene told me yesterday she had a million questions. So let's start with the first few hundred thousand. I started out with it when we tried to make Connections to the question to reduce them a bit. Yeah, well, good, thanks. The question that was the strongest one, maybe, was we've been talking a lot about selves, different forms of self, how it comes to self, and what self is. Since the Western world is very much focused on personality, one of my questions is, how can self and personality fit together?

[05:39]

Deutsch, bitte. Yes, so I tried to put my questions together a bit, to sort them, as always, and the question that was perhaps the strongest was that we talked a lot about self and the form of self and how it comes about and what self actually is. And the Western world is very focused on personality and on individual personality. The question of how By the way, in this list, I tried to leave out personality, excuse me, leave out self from the list. At least certainly in the beginning part of my feeling was just to

[06:49]

list the experience we have that we turn into self. In other words, we had the experience of observing. Should we call the experience of observing self? Are we deluding ourselves when we think that just because we observe things, there's an observer who observes things? So, okay, so now, Shalini is complicating things by adding personality. Um... I don't know if I would say that the West emphasizes personality.

[08:18]

I would say maybe the West emphasizes personhood or a person. And I don't think necessarily what we mean in English, just because they use the same word, is what we mean by personality is necessarily related to personhood. Now, the reason I go into some detail about this like trying to distinguish personality from person. And I'm sorry I can't do it in Deutsch as well, but then I wouldn't have this deep friendship with Neil.

[09:20]

It's a partnership. And you're all partners. Okay. I do it because, again... Words as experience. Ich mache das noch einmal bei Worte als Erfahrung. I keep saying this, but I'm afraid I have to repeat myself. Words direct our attention. And they also limit our attention and widen our attention. I didn't do that. You're adding something, don't you?

[10:41]

I swear I didn't. Why didn't I do that, all that stuff? I can't help it. Okay, so... Monkey see, monkey do, huh? I can't translate that. Well, you're not a monk yet, are you? Half a monk is better than none. Because if words do experientially direct attention, then generalizations don't do anything. So, if we can use a word as a magnifying glass or something like that, or a telescope, we can't use it if it covers two or three different areas of space.

[11:57]

So if I can find the attentional focus of a word, then we can use that attentional focus as part of our experiential practice. Because, you know, when I was growing up, I was lost in the world of ideas and generalizations, and I had no idea how to live. I just didn't feel grounded in thoughts. I didn't, no. I enjoy thoughts, but I didn't feel grounded in thoughts. I think I might have gone crazy if I identified with thoughts. I had to really tie thoughts to actual experience.

[13:03]

I had to tie thoughts to actual experience. And luckily I found Zen that taught me how to do that. Sukhirashi said now and then, a few times, that something like personality is the latter part of our practice. Perfecting personality is the comes at the end of practice. And he would also say things like related, I think related things. is when you're all sitting in the zendo and I can only see your backs I can see your individuality.

[14:32]

Because by seeing everybody in the same posture then you see the differences. Yeah. So I think how self develops through a lifetime into personality. And there's something mysterious about personality too. By all of this riffing here, I'm showing you, Charlene, that I don't know how to answer your question. I was quite close friends with the Black Panthers in the 70s. In the 70s, I was close friends with the Black Panthers.

[15:37]

Huey Newton. main founder of the Black Panthers was a very close friend. It's something most of you probably never heard of the Black Panthers. You heard of the Pink Panther, but not the Black Panthers. No, we're not so uneducated. You have to be old. It's not about education. Yeah, you're old enough. So anyway, knowing the Panthers, it was the context in which I knew people whose parents were dead. And what was interesting is the children of the parents who were dead Who never, for example, basically never knew their father.

[16:42]

Their father was killed when they were two or one or something. Everyone observed that the kids had personality ticks, habits, movements like the parent they never knew. And they'd smile the same way or laugh at the same kind of things. Or they'd say, He did that just like his father would have done it. It was a topic of discussion among the members of the Panthers. The other of them were actually Panthers. Okay. So I would say that self and personality are quite different.

[18:02]

Personality is... even more subtle, I would say, and obvious than character. One of the things that happens in practice, hopefully, is you develop your character, you mature your character. But the particular personality, the longer you practice, becomes more vivid. Okay. That's for the first 100,000. Someone else? Just as you mentioned the word individuality, where is the difference to personality? person, personality, individuality?

[19:31]

Well, in English, again, in English, one of the manifestations of individuality is a different personality. But they're not related in any other way, except one is an aspect of a manifestation of the other. In English. Neil has his own individuality. No matter what his personality is. Yeah, yeah. His personality needs a little maturing. No, I'm just kidding. Mine too. I don't know. Am I the straight man or is he the straight man? Do you have that expression in German? Like in Abbott and Costello.

[20:33]

One's the straight man. He plays it straight and the other plays it funny. Okay, someone else? Wolfgang? What I keep in mind yesterday from our round is the aspect of time. Time. Andreas started to say that he's come into a meditative state when he gets slow, when he slows down. And for me the question came up, has slowing down, necessarily to be material, bodily slowing down, or other kind of, for example, when I move fast, still sort of inwardly slowing down.

[22:10]

Even when I move fast, From my experience this is possible. When I'm sitting my feeling of time changes. And there was a remark from Klaus doing karate that his teacher had said, when you want to be a good karate fighter, you have to be able to slow down the time. My question I have is, can you decide for a slowing down of time? Okay. I'm always amused that you think I can answer these questions.

[23:20]

But now I'll see if I can. I think that it's not a factor of slowing down, it's a factor of zoning. I don't think we have a special German word for zoning. You don't. We know what it's meaning. Wie heißt das? Zeitlupe. Zeitlupe. We have a time-magnifying glass. This term, time-magnifying glass, Zeitlupe. Zeitlupe. Zeitlupe. Yeah. That is when a movie goes into slow motion. Slow motion, yeah. I see. Okay. Well, zoning is a sports term. Das ist also zoning, ist ein Ausdruck aus dem Sport. Correct. attributed to Michael Murphy and he doesn't know if it really was attributed to him. He should accept the attribution.

[24:21]

But he wrote a book, The Psychic Side of Sports, which became a book called In the Zone. And when two tennis players are in the zone, or one, they're, of course, moving very fast, but everything is experienced slowly. The ball kind of moves very fast, but everything is experienced very slowly. Okay, so what that is in practice, and what I try to give you entries to by suggesting practicing nourishment, Again, an entry to practice is to notice when you're, for example, taking a walk,

[25:25]

And to notice, for example, when you go for a walk, when you feel nourished. And there's a certain pace at which you feel nourished. If you walk too fast, you don't feel nourished anymore. But once you've established the pace at which you feel nourished, you can find in other situations like you're helping somebody in a house that's burning down which we did once I've done two or three times and you are certainly rushing around but you find a pace that's Like a dancing partner. You and your partner are dancing at the same pace. So you and phenomena are moving at the same pace.

[26:41]

Even the pace of phenomena is quick. Yeah. So... then you'd also call that a meditative or somatic state of mind. Was that an approach to what you wanted? I'm just asking my question that comes up now, what is the pace if I'm sitting still? It's your heartbeat, your breath, the mental formations that are part of sitting, because sitting is a posture plus the a mental formation, don't move.

[27:51]

And bringing the posture together with the mental formation, don't move, is what turns a posture into zazen. These are questions I've been asking myself for years or so. Yes, you do it. Question came up yesterday and now, right now. Who is it who notices that I'm nourished? Is this the self to notice I'm nourished or not? Was it a part of it? Is it a bodily side? Who or what notices it?

[28:54]

What you know for sure is there's noticing. The self is an added concept. I think just practitioners Whenever you find yourself asking yourself the question, who did it? Who's doing it? It is suspicious. When delusion begins with this question, it would be better to frame it with the topic itself. Would you term this self, is this self, is this self existing at all? As an entity, no. As an act, as a process or an activity, yes.

[29:59]

Okay. You are, well I'm glad you're fine. If you have the question like, who is being nourished? I think it's better to frame the question to yourself in maybe more than one way. Why do I ask myself that question? What need is being satisfied by asking the question? Or what anxiety is framing that question? Yeah, if you're a New England puritanical type or, you know, a good Protestant... I even know some Austrian Catholics who think this way too.

[31:18]

I don't deserve to be nourished. I feel nourished, but There's no reason nothing happened, you know, or something. So many of us don't let ourselves be happy because we just don't deserve to be happy or we think it's wrong. So what kind of self snuck into your experience of nourishment? And you can frame the questions more positively. If I bring my attention to self rather than nourishment, what does this adding experience of self

[32:39]

bring positive benefit to the experience. So there's a lot of things here that have come up which I'd like to speak about after the break. Let me smile. You're just ready for a break. You did come back. Yes. Anything else before we take a break? You've got at least 100,000 if not a million questions I know. Yeah. I got stuck in our group discussion also in this point, no other location.

[33:55]

Yeah, I don't find an entry at the moment. The only thing I remember is practicing is practicing with two hands. Mm-hmm. Both hands. Yeah, well, that's pretty good. It's good enough. Particularly given your occupation. He's a surgeon. It's very important to have two hands. You tie one hand on your back just to show off. You're not going to do open heart surgery on me with one hand. Okay. Well, all of these practices, Like this very mind is Buddha.

[35:27]

Or this very mind is not Buddha. Or just this. Okay. Are all in the same category of practice. But what happens when you do them is different. So if I practice with just this I use the phrase is just this, and just in English also means only this. And these practices again, are repeated in the sense that they're incubated. The repetition is a repetition which is not a repetition, but an evolution.

[36:31]

In a world of uniqueness, there's no repetition. So the repetition of just this, just this, just this, becomes through its repetition a transformative incubation. Okay, so, but in any case, I'm developing the ability to to join associative mind. I'm developing the ability to locate associative mind in perception.

[37:45]

And that's a good practice to do. It's very refreshing. And it can be, you really get the tune, pace and hang of it. It becomes a kind of blissful clarity. Okay, but if you use the same dynamic in a sense of no other location mind, Okay. What cues you could say, no other location mind? What cues you, what gives you the cue, the trigger? Okay, so... you begin, if you take on the practice of know the location mind,

[39:20]

you first have to find a way to remind yourself to do it. And most of our daily life You know, let me step out of what I'm saying a minute. I don't know if all of this Proustian detail is useful to you. Or is it kind of like, geez, huh? I don't have to know every stitch, you know. But my feeling is that you really have to be a Schneider, a tailor.

[40:21]

You have to be in there sewing your experiences together. Okay, so... If you... What is happening in an active life... Now we're talking, this is a practice for lay practice in an active life. Let's say you're both walking around and also you're thinking around. I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I'm not sure this is a good idea, etc. I'd like to go have a cup of coffee. Etc.

[41:22]

So you can take your physical activity as the trigger or cue. For instance, using going through a door. Which, as you well know in English, we call an entrance. So you use the act of going through the door to kind of feel the room that you're entering, and say no other location, in this case, than this room. Or if you find yourself saying, geez, I'd like to go out for a walk or have a cup of coffee. If it's really just a way of distracting yourself, And not really a good idea at that point to go take a walk.

[42:30]

Then you use that as a trigger to say, no other location in mind. Not walks, not coffee. not my anxieties, just this. So the result, as I said the other day, talking about no other location line, was that Friday afternoon? Is you turn the mind into kind of like a still pond. Which through the pond you can see the... Fish in the bottom and so forth. Which is a little different, although it's the same type of practice.

[43:31]

The experiential result is not the same as just this. you experience a shift of your energy from going into who you might be and what you might do and What you're worried about. Because that energy still exists. But it doesn't flow into future possibilities. It flows into the immediacy of the clear pond. And the depth and subtlety of the clear pond begins to absorb your life and your energy.

[44:35]

But as I said the other day, it's also a way to... Snip off. Snip off. A teller, yes. I'm stuck in a metaphor. Snip off. Root out gardening. Yeah, our... reassuring viewpoints. And this is suddenly not a clear pond anymore. It's a scary, stagnant, dead pond with monsters underneath the water. Would you have to run from or drown?

[45:43]

And now that's a different result than practicing just this. But categorically, it's the same type of bringing attention. Okay. One break. Is it one break or a break?

[46:43]

We can't say a. I heard you say it. A pause? No, I heard you say a. You said I can't say a. It has its meaning with a. In dialect, a pause. A pause. Yeah, we would say it in that connection, but... Because in English, if you say we'll have one pause, But we're going to have 20 pauses, you know. Let's have one pause. Well, I've already paused. Now can I go upstairs? Can I have a second pause to go upstairs? It sounds funny in English. You're going to have one pause.

[47:46]

I've got four pause.

[47:47]

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