Play chess perfectly. But in this state where she's not in the time, she is able to say very wise things. when she's in the state where she's not in contact with her memory in the usual sense, she's able to sound quite wise. So I try to do that too. But she uses biographical content to give certain messages or make something clear.

[01:05]

And if you try to take the biographical content analytically, they seem to be confused. You mean the time sequence and so forth is confused, it's conflated. But their relations to each other, they make sense. So you might see that internal workings of her memory, separate from her externalization of her memory into a... The normative order. Yes. I cannot translate. Yeah, don't worry about it. In other words, what I said is that it may be that you see the kind of intimacy of

[02:16]

as we know it in dreams, of biography as it functions to integrate us at a different level than in the exterior. Oh, I'm sorry. Give me a third of the time. That memory functions when we don't have to put it into the shared... symbolic order. The dynamic of memory is different than when we have to organize it in terms of a shared view. So it sounds like she's losing the shared view. Sometimes. But it's also fascinating for me to step into her world. Yeah, I bet. How old is she? Is she fairly happy? Oh, that's good. That's great.

[03:34]

That's great. Yeah, I think the person who is senile or has Alzheimer's, I think it's different than the person who has amnesia. Yeah. But it's interesting to look at both because you can see, by seeing when it doesn't work, you can see something about why it works. My friend and my disciple and successor in the lineage, Philip Whelan, the poet, died this last July, I think, almost a year ago. I went back and did his funeral in August, last August.

[04:35]

And I saw him a month or so before he died. This had nothing to do with your mother, except that at that point his memory had gotten really mixed up. And in his case, other things were going on too. In his case, when he could no longer keep them straight, he enjoyed having everything all conflated. He also gave up living. They seemed to be connected. Because the doctors had predicted he'd die about two years earlier.

[05:40]

I mean, they'd almost not come to see him because they'd say, you're supposed to be dead, Philip. What are you doing there? But he enjoyed his life and thinking so much and his content. People came every day and sat with him and talked with him and he'd tell stories, etc. He was a guy who knew one of these people who knows quite a lot. He knows one of these people who seems to know quite a lot. You can't figure out how they know so many things. I got him to come to Germany once. And he was supposed to help me with a sashin, but he was not much help.

[06:44]

But we went down the Rhine. I didn't know anything about Germany much. But he started pointing out castles and towns and telling me stories about, and I said, you know all this stuff about this castle over there and that town over there. So that seemed to have kept him alive. When he no longer could tell a story or keep things straight, his friends, no one could relate to him within a while he died. Yamada Mumon Roshi, who is my Zen teacher in Japan, he lived to be nearly 100.

[07:52]

In Japan, nobody will say these things, but he seems to have had Alzheimer's. But he never panicked. Some Alzheimer's people I know, they panic. They can't figure out things. He never panicked. The last time I saw him, we were feeding him. And I remember one boy, he wanted to do it himself, so he got the spoon, like Sophia, you know, you want to feed her if you want to feed yourself. And he got the spoon in, he got it up, He got up to here and he looked at it.

[08:52]

He didn't know what to do with it. He had to kind of like push it. But he never worried. He just was looking at it. What the heck is that? But he was on a... a BBC television series called The Long Search by Ron Eyre. And I'd arranged for him to... Ron was a friend of mine, and I didn't want to be in the series, but Ron wanted a Japanese teacher, so I arranged for Momonoshi to be on the series. And Ron says in this series, which was done, I don't know, in the 70s, 20 years before Munmun Roshi died, and Ron is... having an interview and it's being filmed and they talked and at the end of the conversation Mohan Roshi had let his hair grow so it was kind of

[10:20]

He's bald, but he had kind of long white hair, longish white hair here, and a little wispy beard. Occasionally, when I was in Japan, I'd let my hair, I wouldn't shave my head, and he'd say, you're too young. So maybe at some point in the future, if we meet, I'll have a little wispy beard or something. Yeah, and I'll be drooling down my front, yeah. So, but Christina will help me. Anyway, so Ron said, as part of the interview, But he got up and he turned around and walked away.

[11:27]

And I felt that for him, we'd all disappeared as soon as he turned around. So he already had that feeling when he was a younger person. As he'd look at you and be totally present, but he looked away. It was like it hadn't existed. So I've often thought that that sense of non-self perhaps is why he survived Alzheimer's so well. Ron also did an interview with a Hasidic rabbi who talked very intensely. And at the end of the interview, Ron said to this man, What you've said is so articulate and intelligent, it's really interesting.

[12:45]

But is silence part of your tradition? And he said, oh, of course, but we don't talk about that. And Ron ended the interview right there. Okay, someone else? Yesterday when you gave us the question, what would you give to a person you meet, my feeling was, it was the feeling of touching something with my hand or the feeling of touching the floor with my feet.

[14:00]

It was what came up. So yesterday to this question from Roshi, what would you give to a person whom you meet or any person? For me, there came this feeling when the contact of the hand, when you touch something or the contact of the foot with the floor, And for me this non-self-referential self, there's much more surface, much more surface in the world somehow. Than the self-referential self. Yes. Yeah. And it also reminded me about what you told that you felt there is a glass wall separating you. When I first started practicing.

[15:07]

At the beginning of practice. And I think we all know, at least I also know that experience in some way of feeling separation and there is no contact. So for me these are territories of experience, the experience of this separation and also the experience of incredible surfaces. And so, for me, these are areas of experience. Once this being separated and then a really unique surface in the experience. Yes. Well, we might be able to if we all think of, say this is a group who have been alive quite a long time and practicing quite a long time too, in various ways.

[16:17]

We may say, yes, we have experiences that reflect what we're talking about. But they manifest what we're talking about. But we can't make theories about it. And we might say, maybe we shouldn't make theories about it. Maybe we should just have examples of this experience. Yeah, and Zen is full of such a way of looking at it. Among the three bodies of the Buddha, the Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya, Dharmakaya Buddhas, which I've indirectly referred to a couple of times,

[17:27]

A monk asked, which one, asked Dungsan, which one does not fall into any category? Among the various, not just human bodies, but Buddha bodies, which one does not fall into any category? And Dung Shan said, I'm always close to this. Now that is not a descriptive answer. Das ist keine beschreibende Antwort. Es ist eine anleitende Antwort. Wenn du diesen Satz nimmst und ihn in deine Erfahrung hineinbringst und wiederholst, ich bin immer nahe daran, The phrase can be the experience of not falling into any category.

[18:45]

Yeah, that glass wall, I remember when I... I could see that my really noticing it was a fruit of practice. And I felt a little better feeling the separation than just feeling separated. Does that make sense? But since I couldn't see the glass wall, And I didn't know how it got there. I didn't know what to do about it. But for some months I remember feeling this kind of invisible glass wall. As if I was only seeing myself through an outside observer and the world through an outside observer.

[20:04]

But I remember feeling I intend, if it's possible for this to go away in human experience, I'd like it to go away. And then one day it just was gone. And the subject-object separation feeling just disappeared. But that's an example of Zen practice is you intend something and then you wait to see if it happens. And of course this difference in surface of, say, self and non-self, is both are always present.

[21:11]

And you can intentionally or... Functionally, let one or the other be dominant. Mostly not intentionally, but can be intentionally. And in the first... teaching of the paramitas. Which I, we also, maybe last year, talked about it a year before.

[22:14]

And the paramitas, the first one is generosity. And generosity is the, to, have the feeling in each situation, you'll give to the situation or the person whatever they need. So the bodhisattva practice is, in answer to the question, what would you give a person, if you could, to each person? You don't give them something. You offer something. But you offer... the feeling that I will give you anything you need if I could, if I can. Sorry, could you say it again?

[23:16]

You don't offer something, but rather you offer the feeling that I will if I can. Yes, or the situation. There's beggars in the street in Vienna. I always try to give something to them. Yes. I'll give you whatever you need. They've already told you what they need. Yeah, okay, something else? Could you, this topic of self and non-self and the self-referential self, could you draw this?

[24:38]

Draw it on the flip chart? Yeah. Do you think it's possible to make it? I haven't thought about how to do it. Yeah. If it occurs to me how to do it... I have to wait for an image to appear in my mind. Okay, maybe we should take a break unless someone wants to say something right now. While the sun is out. I was astonished at the question that you put forward about how the non-self gives meaning, that it was very important to me before we had a break. This question arose from two states which I could bring up from my memory.

[26:04]

This question arose for you independently of my bringing it up. Okay. Yeah. And one state was a state in which I felt full of, filled with meaning, full of meaning. And simply when I describe it, it was being a person taking care in a children's camp. And I remember this state quite clearly.

[27:21]

I am waking up in the morning. And I wake up and I know exactly what I have to do and I'm filled with joy. Maybe it's not the right word, but with meaning. Mm-hmm. And the second state is, the situation is I'm with my children and we are in the Prater. In the where? It's landscaping in Vienna. Oh, okay. Aha, okay. In the fun park. Actually, it was the fun park. Oh. In Vienna. You mean the one that occurs in The Third Man? Yeah. Whoa. Okay. Yeah.

[28:22]

And for one afternoon I experienced the world as a piling up of singular events. Yeah, I understand. So it was in a certain way quite sinewes, but it also made me feel a little bit more at ease. So it is now also a little bit more spurt. And it was very particular on the one hand, and at the same time, it was also empty. And this seems like a contradiction, but what it feels like.

[29:36]

Emptiness in a negative sense? In a negative sense, yes. It was in between somehow. There was not a sense of giving meaning at all there. The feeling of that afternoon seems not that I'd like to repeat that, or I don't wish to repeat that. And I ask myself, what is the motivation in this path of Zen to approach, to walk this path if it's accompanied by feelings like that?

[31:06]

And then I asked myself, what was this meaningful experience, the first state, what was it that made my experience of this being meaningful? And I found some answers, but they didn't really satisfy me. And now I come forward with a hypothesis. Hypothesis, yeah. Does it seem to be in this group? I think. Oh, no. That giving meaning, which I found in the normative phenomena of this children's camp. .

[32:21]

Giving meaning arises from the world of non-self. You're asking that or you're proposing that? That's the hypothesis. Okay, well, we'll try to test it. Okay. Someone else? Yes. When I look at my actual practice, Yeah. I mean, I recognize, I've done a lot of what you talk about, but it seems to be secondary to the actual experience I had in Africa, which I was most into in Mexico.

[33:44]

I lived most of the time, yeah? And just to come closer, that's the contradiction of states of thinking, of states of mind, that you're not thinking, which is very subtle. Let me see if I understand what you said. Well, you want to say that in Deutsch? Description of mind and its functions of the mind? He describes states?

[34:56]

And this helps people to understand states of the mind? I do, or he does? No, what you're talking about helps people to understand the states of their mind. But when I'm really practicing, this is secondary. It's there and I can recognize things, but it's not the closest. What I feel closest is here. is the effort. This effort can be very, I like, an experience I like, in the subtle activity, and it has something to do with refinement.

[36:04]

And my feeling is this is another direction than describing the functions of mind. And maybe it also would need another language. I'm not sure about it. It's just something I guess. OK. So you find that your experience is your effort and your refinement of that effort. More than the refinement of your particular states of mind or something like that.

[37:13]

And the refinement of your effort is... You don't have a language for it. Maybe there could be a language for it, but it would have to be a different language. So something like that you're saying? Let's say that we were successfully practicing together. You are somebody, you know. Okay, the language of our practicing together would be the experience of a mutual understanding. And, or rather a mutual...

[38:29]

The expression of our practicing together, let me say it again, would be the experience of a connection that was outside social forms and so forth. It would be immediate and always present. Something close to that. But although the connection would be always present, the understanding of a particular situation would be different on my side than your side or the disciple's side.

[39:48]

So that the understanding or the way of the dynamic of being or something like that could be commented on through this open feeling, trusted feeling of being connected. And usually nothing needs to be said. And I would say that if I understand what you said, that would be a refinement, a process of refining and developing

[40:56]

an effort or stance or presence in the world. Yeah, but I'm not practicing with you or any of you that way. Momentarily, perhaps, but not. For the most part, not. And so that that kind of practice can happen, sangha and monastic situations exist. You can practice that way yourself, but it's different when you feel that intimacy of your practice is open or shared by another person. And, you know, I have had the experience of having quite a good connection with someone here in Europe, coming to seminars and coming to Johanneshof for extended periods.

[42:22]

And then they come to Crestone for five, six months or something. And they can't handle it. Because there's no support for all the familiar ways in which they communicate. And my job in such a situation, if I take them seriously, is to ignore them. Or to say no to everything they, every movement toward familiar, you just reject or don't recognize.

[43:38]

Until this other feeling of communication occurs. And some people feel rejected or hurt. Yeah. So this is, I mean, I'm, you know, I have a group of people I meet with twice a year. Or ideally, I would meet them twice a year. We call it the Dharma wheel. And they're the people I've been practicing with quite a long time, who already have or are likely to have teaching responsibilities. So I try to meet with them 10 days or two weeks, twice a year.

[44:42]

That's my idea. Yeah. One problem with it is the rest of Sangha feels excluded. As soon as I get feelings of why am I not included, I just want to cancel the meeting because the sangha just isn't mature enough to handle it. Okay, now the kind of discussion we're having here is the kind of discussion we might have in a Dharma Wheel meeting. And I've never quite had a discussion like we're having here this morning and today in a seminar.

[45:48]

And I don't know why we're having it here, but that's your fault, not my fault. And because normally the conversation presumes that you have no other life but this practice. And that's not true of you. You have a different life than just practice. Or just this kind of practice. Okay. So in such a group, I would say that this feeling of connection and so forth would be assumed. But the kind of thing we're describing, I'm trying to, this question of how does non-self supply meaning,

[46:52]

For practicers, it's a question rather beside the point. Because you know it, but you just don't have to describe it. So why am I trying to describe it? I don't know, you caught me in the moment of asking myself the question. I'm discussing it with you. Partly because I'm thinking in terms of, you know, the current consciousness studies. Which tries to study in... any manifestations in the brain and nervous system, etc., of the presence of self, reflection, and so forth.

[48:09]

So, sort of in the context of that kind of thinking, we're having this conversation. And the other context for this, what we're discussing, would be the pedagogy of Zen. In other words, how, once you're familiar with much of practice, do you... do you establish a way of teaching that doesn't tell the student where to go, but gives the student the possibility of going there?

[49:11]

Some people, their practice is quite realized, but they have no idea how to teach. When they try to teach, they get things all boggled up. But they can teach by example, but if somebody asks them a question, they just don't have the... the ability to articulate. I've never noticed it clearly enough. There's no reason to notice it. Much of what I do here has developed in Europe. Because I found myself in a situation where there were quite a lot of people who wanted to practice seriously.

[50:24]

But they're not going to come to Crestone. And before I went to Crestone, We had a center where in the mountains, very isolated in the middle of 350,000 acres of wilderness. I was in California. Yeah, and Sukhiroshi and I started a monastery which was in the middle of 350,000 acres of wilderness. And during the years I was the teacher, I had to be practicing with somebody continuously for five years before I'd let them come there.

[51:31]

And they had to make a commitment to stay there at least two years without leaving, or I wouldn't accept them. And that was the main place I practiced. Everything All other centers fed into this one center. Yeah. So when I came to Europe, I didn't have that context. So I found I had to start teaching in non-traditional ways. I had to point out a lot more. Because I found that people just weren't getting it unless I gave them hints. And there was a constant mis-either finding koans meaningless There was either a finding koans meaningless or a constant misreading and misuse of the Zen teachings.

[53:04]

Most people assuming that Zen was to try to realize oneness or something. Yeah, which, you know, there are well-known Zen teachers in the lineage who say oneness, but I'm sure their practice wasn't oneness. It's just verbally they said it because they didn't articulate their verbal teaching well enough, in my opinion. There's traditional Zen teachers, not present, I mean not, I mean in the lineage from, you know, Sung Dynasty, or afterwards. who you could see in their transcriptions, their teachings, they talk about the realization of oneness.

[54:04]

My guess, if they were good Zen teachers, that wasn't the case in their actual practice. It may have been they just were clumsy in their expression of a teaching. Or it's a medicine teaching. In other words, you say it that way because people can understand it, like using the image of a mirror as a medicine teaching, but not an accurate teaching. I don't know. It's all right that I'm talking about this. So anyway, I found the combination of people trying to notice their own practice and combined with people trying to make sense of the written teaching

[55:14]

my trying to be more explicit, and my emphasizing the craft of Zen practice, not just the suddenness of Zen practice. That's actually helped to, I think, develop a considerable maturity within the Dhamma Sangha in practice. At least from my point of view and my experience. Okay. Yeah, just let me think.

[56:35]

But sometimes I am concerned about it because if I'm too explicit, then people, it begins to be, people turn it into a road map. Or a comparison. Oh, I haven't realized this, so I'm not good enough or something. Because the strict tradition is you never talk to anyone about what they haven't experienced yet. But I can't do that unless I'm actually practicing with you individually. So I'm, you know, my doing it this way is an experiment, I don't know. So far I'm willing to continue. Although I'm subject to a fair amount of criticism that it's too theoretical, it's too intellectual, it's too much talking, you know, can't stand it, you know.

[58:23]

But if we feel it, it's not too much, I think. But there's always some people who leave. By the way, did he go to the concert or something? Yeah. Shall we let him come back tomorrow? Yes, it would be good. Yeah, but he didn't ask me. If he did that in a traditional context, he would never come back. But we're not that kind of context. Okay. Okay. question.

[59:24]

Yeah, I know, I'm still working. Okay, yes. You were next? Yeah. Anyway, I noticed you've sung. Okay. I refer to the question how the non-self supplies meaning and to Krista's experience. And suddenly I had the idea that instead of meaning you could say continents. Continence in English means to not have sex.

[60:28]

Coherence. Coherence. Coherence. Which is okay. It's a monastic practice sometimes too. Coherence. Coherence. Well, it may have more meanings, yeah. Okay, coherence. I want to speak about my experience. I have strong experience of meaning when in a constellation work I'm acting as another person or I'm playing another person on the stage.

[61:40]

You have a feeling of meaning related to the person you're playing, not yourself. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There is no own interest and no being conditioned in any way. Only at this moment in the context of this system. I feel as a part of the whole and completely meaningful.

[63:00]

I understand. And I could, I could imagine similar feelings of at the same time, empty of content, contents and and yet, like, Like feeling at home in a context or sheltered in a certain context. Okay, good. Yeah, I understand. So I suggested two reasons for this conversation. One is imagining a Dharma wheel-like context. Another imagining a context of a scientist trying to study consciousness.

[64:20]

But a third context, which I think is our context, is that I think there's a topography of minds woven together. Actually, for most of us, there's a mixture of, let's say, non-self topographies and self topographies. And I would say that you felt one kind of topography in one situation and separately another topography. And probably I would guess that your having practiced a long time helped you notice them and separate them.

[65:26]

But for most of us they're rather mixed together and we just experience them without seeing them as two different landscapes within a single landscape. But I think that the practice, that a practice, any practice, psychotherapy, and the interaction with the client, and meditative practice, And the openness to all this in our culture right now is making us more subtle in what we notice in our experience.

[66:50]

We begin to see it in ourselves, we see it in the interactions with clients and things like that, and we begin to look for a way to make it clear. And so probably, you know, for those reasons, this is also our context and maybe this conversation is useful. Yeah, Sabine? Since yesterday, I'm trying to go back to or return to a state which I'm very much used to. And this is that I'm able to have questions. And my feeling is it's difficult to distinguish between inside and outside because every time a question comes up, it's posed already and it's answered.

[68:14]

By me or by the situation? You're not Not only by you, but also, for example, when I go out during the break and I ask somebody, somebody asks, how are you? And they tell me exactly the same I was feeling just before. And I feel so very much connected. I didn't experience that ever before. There is a question of meaning and non-sense. I try to get rid of the meaninglessness of my own questions, but I try to make them worth it. Meaninglessness is worth it. And concerning this question of giving meaning and non-self, my questions somehow do feel meaningless, but not without value.

[69:25]

Okay. That was a very elegant non-question. Yeah, and there's a way of understanding Sangha as a field of being, which together creates a bodhisattva-like presence in a society. Yeah, okay, someone else? Yes? I'd like to share also my experience of meaning in the state of my self. I'm now worried to paint.

[70:33]

Mm-hmm. [...] Brush? Brush? Yeah. And I have all the colors in front of me, and I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you to ignore it, but then there's something that I, you know, I don't know what it is, shows me the way to the colors, I mix them, and then something, uh, comes onto the paper. You're channeling.

[71:34]

It's like channeling. Do you know what channeling is? Yeah, but I think it's something like that. Artists often, something takes over and paints the painting. Yeah, I understand. And to see the reaction of the other, that everybody understands this, maybe. It touches something, and the other too. And I cannot plan this. Yeah, I understand. Deutsch, bitte. Ah, of course. I know, yeah. What I learned from my experiences was that there are people that I am aware of.

[72:40]

I am really aware of them. But then it happened again suddenly in the end of the meditation. That was something that I felt like I was going to die. I put my hand down. Yes. Yeah, I'm often amused by critics who analyze paintings and novels. They take them apart and they say, well, this is this and this is this. And often it's quite interesting and correct.

[73:43]

I would say correct, kind of correct. But you know the artist, the painter, the writer did not have those ideas in mind. The sense of meaning from which he or she worked was entirely or very different from the meaning the observer brings to it and the satisfying meaning the observer finds. And the description from outside is very often would take it void or and I have a video to film it.

[75:03]

Very powerful. Yeah, yeah, I understand. Yeah, so, in German, please. Ah. Yeah. Yes, I understand, yeah. It's like that. I think so. I mean, I've spent most of my life actually in the art world, writing and painting world. So this is very familiar to me. Someone else? I have a question to restore and repair. And I think there are similarities between psychoanalysis and what's going on.

[76:29]

For example, the exclusion, if a patient doesn't show up, it's said that it's resistance. And there are also phenomena of transference regarding the therapist, thank you, and the teacher. That's too much. Again, please. And for me, this stage in the meditation, when all this comes up, and also this stage of transference toward the teacher, I understood that this is the stage of restore.

[77:43]

And then, as I understood it, there is also a stage of repair where this transference is dissolved. So that the perception beyond delusion is possible. I hope so. But one more question. But my question is, does Zen go beyond? In psychoanalysis, this transference is worked through or worked out?

[78:45]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And the question of transference with a Zen teacher is, I think, different than in a psychotherapeutic relationship. And you really want to prevent, I think, transference from happening. Yeah. But that's a whole different discussion and maybe an important discussion, but I think right now... Okay. Yeah, and you brought his leaving up. It's not so much... Well, the main thing from my feeling is that we do have a field here.

[79:52]

And I feel her still sitting there. And I feel Horst not being here. But Horst took responsibility and he didn't have a choice about it really, so that's fine. Somehow taking responsibility preserves the field. But you have to be aware of the field to take responsibility for the field. So it's, you know, it's not, I'm not, my commenting he's gone without knowing it is just that, did he really realize that he's part of this field? Okay, so maybe I can say something in relation to what we're talking about, if I can manage it.

[80:56]

In a way, again, in practice, I mean, it's so clear that meaning is generated or there's not a problem with a loss of meaning in this functioning through non-self, as I put it. There's no reason in a way to talk about it. But we're still trying to understand in the West and in Western language how to develop a way of speaking about and practicing and teaching Zen. I offered you the koan earlier, what body does not fall into any category.

[82:24]

And the, I'm always close to this. And the other koan of going on, I'm going on a pilgrimage. Where are you going? I don't know. And the teacher says, not knowing is nearest. So again, these are gate phrases you can practice with. I'm always close to this or not knowing is nearest. And I think they enter you into the field that Krista spoke about and you spoke about and you spoke about as a painter. And I think of the studies done on the, I guess our neurons fire in milliseconds, two or three or four milliseconds.

[83:25]

And conscious experience is in hundreds of milliseconds or thousands of milliseconds. And in studies they've shown that your arm plans to move before the conscious experience or decision to move it. So your consciousness of your experience is tardy. Late. And that itself is an interesting problem. We need the observing self or observing mind to be aware of what we're doing. What we're doing, to know what we're doing. But we're already doing it before we know what we're doing. So what knows in that sense? Okay, so I think of the difference in chanting and reading.

[84:40]

Yeah, say that you're in one of these services where you do the same thing every morning. And you nearly know the chant, but you don't know it perfectly. So sometimes you read the chant. You're reading it. But then you think, well, I know it well enough to chant it, I'm going to stop reading. So you stop reading and you lose your place entirely. Because the reading mind doesn't know the chant. And you have to wait for a minute and shift, and then your body starts offering you the chant. So what mind knows the chant?

[86:03]

If you observe the chant, you can't know it. You just have to chant. And the chanting knows it. Like Foucault would say, painting paints painting, writing writes writing. The act of painting paints. Yeah, and when painting paints painting, that's non-self, I think we can say. Okay. So we could say we have comparative self and contextual self. And contextual self is closer to non-self.

[87:15]

The one who chants is contextual self. And I gave you the example some, I think this last weekend, something I every now and then bring up. Because it's one of the pre-practice experiences that led me to practice. Those of you who know the story bear with me, but I had to sort a big stack of mimeographed papers. Mimeographed papers. Mimeographed. Mimeo, well, Xerox.

[88:15]

Xerox didn't exist then. Chester Carlson was a young man. Yeah. Mimeographed, because you know you had to... Yeah. Hectographed. A hectograph. Okay. It had a strong smell. It had a strong smell. It was blue. I was good at it, though. I had these blue things and I could draw on them and different colored inks coming. Anyway, I had this stack of things and they were 65, 66, 67 and 68 pages. And I had a big pile and I had to sort them into whether they were 65, 66 or 67 pages. So, and they had the, luckily the pages that were the extra pages had graphs on them so I could flip and see the graphs. So I was doing it, and about the seventh or eighth or ninth one, I suddenly realized I know how many pages are there as soon as I touch it.

[89:25]

Now, I don't remember whether I actually, my thumb lifted up the paper slightly, and I could sense the weight, if we want to give a materialist explanation. But there are examples which you can't explain materialistically if similar things, being able to read through a stack, you know. Anyway, so once I could feel it, I decided to trust the feeling. When I trusted the feeling, I could put them right in the right piles without hesitation. As soon as I tried to bring the observing consciousness in, Which is this, I couldn't, didn't know. I simply didn't know.

[90:46]

My knowing occurred much quicker than consciousness. But I knew. Yeah, so this was a... So I suddenly realized at that point with this pile of papers in this warehouse I was working... that there's a knowing that works with greater clarity and refinement than consciousness. And the implicit question came up, how do I get there? And I didn't discover it until I met Suzuki Roshi.

[91:48]

Okay. Now, I've often emphasized the second skanda as non-graspable feeling. Now non-graspable feeling, you can't grasp. If you try to notice it, you can't say what's there. But there's such a feeling in this room. We establish it together. If you try to make it conscious, it's gone. And it's momentary. But I would say it's the most information-rich medium that's the thing that's happening here. Okay, so self-observing consciousness can't function in non-graspable feeling.

[92:50]

Self-observing consciousness can't function in non-graspable feeling. But the observing mind, which is more subtle and refined can function in non-grasp. Yeah, or anyway, something like that. So again, Zen practice, a lot of Zen practice is learning to function through the second skandha And not the fifth skanda of consciousness. And so in that sense, there's already meaning in the context or in the field of non-graspable feeling. And that meaning arises through context rather than observer. And as you learn to turn yourself over to the chanting and just let the chant appear, to turn yourself over to the chanting out of thinking mind, and trust the next syllable is going to appear,

[94:19]

which is an experience we all have, that turning yourself over is, we can say, turning yourself over to non-self. So I think that's enough, probably for today. And we made some exploration of this sense of, in our own experience, of the function of non-self. Raphael.

[95:05]

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