Guten Morgen. I barely made it this morning, but I'm here. And I don't want to make all of you suffer, so if you want to sit in chairs, it's fine. Yeah, so, you know, I did this last year, and this year now, really I have a two-decade-long friendship with Norbert and Angela. Yeah, I mean, I've known them longer than their son has. And I also do this because I'm really very interested in, unavoidably interested in how psychology and Buddhism relate to each other.

[01:31]

When I started practicing in the 60s, there was something close to zero or minus 10 interest in Buddhism by psychotherapists, psychologists. And there was some antagonism and competition. But now, there's, I mean, anything too much interest in Buddhism by lots of psychotherapists. And one of the choices some Buddhist schools have made is to combine Buddhism and psychology. And I think that's unavoidable. Yeah, probably in some ways useful.

[02:58]

But on the whole, myself, I think it's a mistake. You know, there's someone way back there and I see the brow of their head. We can make space for you up here unless you're just congenitally shy. Okay, good. I like seeing more of you than just this. I mean, my own position has been to avoid using science or psychology as a Trojan horse to sneak Buddhism into the West.

[04:14]

And I think the differences between Buddhism and psychology are more interesting than the similarities. And... I don't think, again, that Buddhism fits in psychology, nor do I think psychology fits within Zen, Buddhism, Zen. Now, One suggestion I had in coming here from several of you was that I review or speak about the seminar I just finished yesterday afternoon in Hannover.

[05:24]

It's the suggestion that I speak a little about the seminar that I just finished yesterday in Hannover. It's titled, How the Buddha Appears. I probably made up the title, but I actually found it rather curious. But in the end I found it a very strange title. And for the sake of our discussion here, to whatever extent that may come up, I think we have more initial access to the idea at least. if we think of it as how the Buddha appears in how our mind can be similar to the Buddha's mind, what we imagine the Buddha's mind to be.

[06:38]

Now, It's a more subtle idea, and I think more unfamiliar to us in the West, that perhaps the Buddha's body also appears, not just his or her mind. Yeah, then we'd have to discuss what, you know, have some ability to talk together until we get an idea of what the body means in Buddhism. Now, I think many of you are psychotherapists or something like that. There's no way I can avoid sitting here in front of you speaking about whatever I speak about in reference to implicitly to psychotherapy or psychology.

[07:55]

But I think what I can offer you is not psychology, of course, but my understanding of experience and understanding of Buddhism in ways that might relate to psychology. But what I can offer you is of course not psychology, but my understanding of it and my experience of how Buddhism may be related to psychology. I actually think that Buddhist practices, exercises, techniques, can be used psychologically or psychotherapeutically. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I should write a book just putting that forward. Because, as most of you know, I mean, those of you who I do know, would know that I consider Buddhism a mindology, not a psychology.

[09:11]

Although psychology often studies the mind, your main emphasis is how the mind functions, how it exists. obwohl die Psychologie auch den Geist studiert, wenn die hauptsächliche Betonung darauf liegt, wie der Geist existiert. You actually end up with a rather different conceptual framework for understanding both the world and human beings. Und dann hat man am Ende ein doch ziemlich andersartiges konzeptuelles Rahmengebäude darüber, wie die Welt existiert. And just In a very simple way, early Buddhism actually is more psychological in its approach than Mahayana or later Buddhism.

[10:33]

Sorry, I got the first part. Early Buddhism is more psychological in its approach than later Buddhism. Later Buddhism shifts from the problem is not so much afflictions and your personal history and things, but your worldviews. So prajna or wisdom becomes the main emphasis. Now the basic view of Mahayana Buddhism is that our worldviews cause most of our problems. Our ignorance of how we actually exist and how the world actually exists.

[11:43]

Now, it's really, when we say something like, how the world actually exists, I think in philosophy you'd call that a black box. And Heidegger talks a lot. What priority do you give to which mind understands how the world exists? The emphasis in Mayan Buddhism is completely on understanding how the world exists. And if we don't understand that, we can't in a thorough way solve our psychological and personal problems. Now, a friend of mine sent me this book, maybe some of you know it or all of you know it, maybe it's in German, called The Present Moment.

[13:03]

Daniel Stern? Yeah. Yes. It's in German. It's the first book I've seen which is very similar in conception of how you're present, how we function to listen. I haven't read the whole thing, but I've read enough to think, well, this is really quite similar to how you conceive of each moment, how you participate and notice each moment. Yeah. You know, there's two advantages to being translated. Well, there's three. I get time to sit around. One is that I really, I have to say things in a In a translatable way, making it conceptually clear so she can get the concept and then translate it.

[14:17]

That's the second. The third is, if I don't really know what to say, I just say something, let her figure it out. It becomes her problem. Now, I think that the most important, if we are going to understand together, how the kind of inner dynamics, some word like that, of understanding, of how Buddhism develops a sense of person in the world.

[15:30]

Okay, so I'm going to launch into this for some minutes here, a little while. But I'm also, you know, completely open to whatever you want me to talk about it, but I can't talk about it at all. And it's really, I enjoy it more and it's more helpful to me. And I think to all of us if we have some discussion too as a big part of what we do in these two days. But first I have to say some things to get us on the same page. And Of course, those of you familiar with my teaching, I have to go through some of the things familiar to you too, again, so that we're on the same page.

[17:01]

Now, I realized somewhere in the sixties, I suppose, in the first years of my practice, In an experiential sense, you realize, anybody who sits probably realizes immediately, that the mind of Zazen is different, the mind of meditation, Zazen, is different than the mind of usual consciousness. So what I want to start with here is, I think we have to, I have to, is the awareness consciousness distinction. And I think, although various people may try to, etc. I think the way I make the distinction is that I'm unique to my way of describing practice. Okay, so once you start to practice Zazen or meditation No, I actually should say Zazen Zazen literally means something like sitting

[18:43]

absorption. ZA Zen means absorption. So it's definitely not any kind of contemplation where there's topics and stages and things like that. Because that brings consciousness into your meditation from the Zen point of view, too soon. You're trying to get consciousness out of your meditation. And that's one of the difficulties for people when they start to practice. It's so boring. You just sit there. You wait for the bus that never comes. Yeah. And... And, you know, you... And until your sense of... personal identity, location, etc., stops hanging on to consciousness.

[20:35]

or defining itself through consciousness, you can't really practice what Zen means by meditation. No, again, I'm not speaking about this so you guys will start doing Zen meditation. I couldn't care less. Oh, that's not true. Be nice to you all. Whatever you want to do. But I think if I'm here as a so-called Zen Buddhist, I would talk about this a little bit. Which, by the way, I do not consider Zen or Buddhism really a religion or a philosophy.

[21:39]

No, it doesn't fit in any category we have in the West, exactly. An inner sport, and sometimes an adventure. In any case, it's a practice. And a philosophy comes out of the practice, but it should be able to be folded back into the practice. Okay. Now, one other footnote is, you know, this last 15 years or so, there's so much of cognitive sciences concerning itself with consciousness. And I've read some of most everyone. And know some of these people quite well personally.

[22:48]

But none of them can agree on the definition of consciousness. But none of them can agree on a definition of consciousness. I won't go into that. But what is clear if you sit and just if one, when you go to sleep, in order to go to sleep you have to let consciousness slip away. If you're stuck in consciousness, you can't really go to sleep. You lie there in the middle. So... So sleeping mind is a different mind than consciousness.

[24:17]

And I think we have to think of it as different, not just a version of consciousness. So I say, think of it as a different liquid with different viscosity. Dreams float in dreaming mind, but dreams sink in consciousness. Now, when you do Zazen, You've got to somehow let consciousness kind of slip away, but not go to sleep. Somehow that same bump you go over into sleep.

[25:20]

The same bump over in the sleeve. You go over the bump, but then you wake up in a new way into your posture, your upright posture. What reason? I mean... Lying flat on their back is a quite good posture for zazen, but you tend to fall asleep. So the energy and the backbone and all of that, you lift up and you wake up in a new way that's not consciousness and now not dreaming sleep. And those of you who practice Zazen will know it's lots of ways it's different.

[26:30]

One way is that you make different decisions in Zazen mind than you do in consciousness. and you make decisions often which have more of the feeling of an intuition of truth but I'm not saying that it's necessarily true one has to be careful because the feeling of truth can be deceptive Oh, it's good if you're in a decision with Zazen to check them out in consciousness. Thank you. Yeah, now... and... Oh dear, we should have a break some, shouldn't we?

[27:45]

You guys have been sitting cross-legged for a while. But let me tell you an anecdote. I was driving some months ago from Crestone, I mean from Denver and Boulder down to where We have a meditation center, semi-monastic meditation center or monastic meditation center in Crestone, Colorado. And that's where Craig has lived much of the last few years. Anyway, I'm driving down and I'm getting tired or sleepy or something. Too sleepy to keep driving.

[29:07]

You're driving and you wonder, is that a road ahead of me? So I pulled over and behind some kind of, you know, I was up at, I don't know, probably 12,000 feet. How high is that in meters and, you know? Pretty high. 4,000. 4,000 meters. Okay, so I'm about 4,000 meters over the, going over the Rockies before we go down to the other side. There's no tree there. There's a bear up there. Hot and cold, depending on whether it's night or day. So I pulled into, tried to get out of the hot sun and pull into a shadow building. Yeah, so I, yeah, it's hard to get a shadow and I ended up beside the door of some kind of bar or restaurant.

[30:28]

Anyway, so I didn't get any chance to sleep because people kept going in and out of the damn door. But I knew from experience that I actually only needed a moment So, you know, I got total maybe ten minutes with seven interruptions. But I woke up completely. What do you call waking up? Completely refreshed. Now, what was my experience? Now, there's some reason I'm telling you this. The image I had is that I couldn't hold the balloons any longer.

[31:30]

Were you there when I told this? Let's see if it's the same, I don't know. It was a question when I came back on this trip. He was in Crestone when I came back from the trip, when I told the story. But I had the feeling, not exactly what... While I was driving, I couldn't hold the various parts together. The road, the steering wheel, where I was on the planet, you know. So you know the experience of holding something for a long time, you want to let your hand go. So some part of me is holding these Bunch of balloons.

[32:52]

One balloon is the road, one balloon is the car, one balloon is where I'm going, etc. One balloon is the car coming from the other direction. And I couldn't hold them together any longer. They were beginning to float off in different kinds of mental space. So I took the seat back, rested for a few minutes, as you know, as I said. And I felt my metabolism all come together and then suddenly come together in a couple of jump rhythm, rhythmic movements. almost like little jumps. It was like I released my hand and let the balloons all float off.

[34:01]

But as soon as I went through this kind of rhythmic, metabolic kind of coming together. This mental hand which holds the world together in a structure parallel to the mind structure, relaxed, And once it was relaxed, when I closed the hand again, all the balloons came back into the hand. Then I was able to drive the next couple of hours to get the rest of it.

[35:06]

So this is interesting. It's not that I was sleepy. It's not that I was tired in any usual sense. I needed a few hours of sleep. Quite separate from that. The way the mind holds the world together needed to relax. Once I had that mental hand relaxed, then I could pull the world back together again. And that took only, I mean, probably a total of a minute, my ten minutes.

[36:11]

Now, this is also what happens during the day. You can relax and pull together your hands. In the middle of consciousness, you can have this, a similar experience. How we hold the world together and how we release the world, maybe sometimes simultaneously. So, I think we have a break. And... Is half an hour too much or too long? Okay. Half an hour is okay? And there's only one toilet in the house. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for translating.

[37:09]

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