No, I said quite a few things yesterday that were pretty obvious. At least obvious if you think about them. But I also said some things that at least I've never thought of before until yesterday or very recently. So I presume if I've never thought of them before, maybe at least some of them you'd never thought of before. So it might be a way to get started and also review for the people who weren't here yesterday. If there is something that you hadn't thought of before or that you found useful, obvious or not, I'd like to hear it.

[01:07]

that there was something that you had not thought of before or that you find helpful, whether it was obvious or not? Yes, the difference between thinking about something and experiencing it I was occupied yesterday with the difference between thinking about something and experiencing it. And in the evening? Your evening or our late afternoon? After the seminar he went for a walk. You went for a drive first. Yeah, because I saw you drive by me.

[02:23]

So he drove to the walk. I see. Yeah. So he tried out naming. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So first I experienced it that things kind of flew towards me very fast. And then I approached cows. There were cows in the meadow. And they had different colors. They had different colors. And then I first said, cow, and then black cow, striped cow, and so on. And so I said cow, and then black cow, black cow, or whatever.

[03:27]

And suddenly I had... And then I suddenly had an experience, that I experienced myself as a child. the same things. And there it was not so differentiated, but it was just cow, tree. But it was the difference that I suddenly stood in this experience that I had in these years. So suddenly, while he was naming cows, there was a switch, and he was in his experience when he was a child, naming not so differentiatedly, but saying cow and tree and so forth, so he was back in that experience. And I suddenly understood, you said as a second switch,

[04:28]

And then you said as a second step, one peels off the name or the label again, and I suddenly understood. And so I felt how this goes kind of further back. Wonderful. Yeah. The profundity of kinder Zen. I mean, it's so simple, just naming, but yet it's incredible. Now the secret is to To not be satisfied with what happens the first time you do it. Because usually we're too easily satisfied.

[05:33]

And especially the problem with smart people. And it takes an especially smart person to do it, to try the practice. And then to continue it and not immediately think you understand. It's very hard to get smart people out of the rut of their brains. The rut, do you understand? Like where cars go?

[06:35]

I mean, I was just thinking about this yesterday because it's so difficult to... actually have the wisdom to continue the practice and see what happens over a period of months or years. Yes? Oh, she has to say that. She doesn't have to, but she's willing, I think. I think I almost forgot. To say it, to be willing to do it over the years, weeks or months or years. And it begins to be not necessarily a specific practice but built into what you do and how you see it. But if you do it, then it starts to be not only a specific practice, but almost built into everything you do. I also found this exercise a very nice suggestion, and I also know them.

[07:41]

So I've known this practice and I really like it and there is a variation of that insofar as one uses like kind of the wrong label for something. So you say car to the tree. Or a cup to a person or something. And then mostly everybody started to laugh. But I also wanted to ask myself something, because I often try to describe what I am doing right now. Or where I am. I experience that as a kind of inner security or to get some basic trust.

[08:53]

And often people are asked in therapy, how can you get to trust? And yesterday I have this list that we went through and in the end we also got a guide for trust, so that you could use all these points for it. And then therapy, it's very often about how to have trust. How it's possible to have trust where before it doesn't. For the therapist and the client. So yesterday I thought about this list. from the perspective of that question, how to get or how to have trust. And very helpful to go through the points. Oh, really? Today I want to add a little, a few things to it. Okay. Someone else? Yes. Your... I have a question concerning the three doors of deliverance, because it was very fast and short yesterday.

[10:15]

But if I concentrated on one of them, say emptiness, and experienced that, would that be a door of deliverance, and would it be enough to... concentrate on just this one, or do I need to concentrate on all three? Any one is fine, but what's wrong with the other two? Also, jedes der drei ist gut, aber wenn man eins auswählt, was ist dann falsch an den anderen beiden? So my personal inclination would be emptiness. Okay, that's fine. But there is some reason in the history of Buddhism and history of Buddhist practice

[11:36]

that there's the three, the very classic of those three. And so on one of them you develop a stability of attentional awareness. And you notice then when there's any wishes present or any interruptions related to desire or wish or something. So wishlessness is a way to work with the non-conceptuality psychologically. And signlessness is a way to work with the objects of the world.

[12:50]

But both are expressions of emptiness. Someone else? Yes. Yes, yesterday we were thinking about the example of Proust. Henrietta and I have been dealing with it for many years, I would say, more theoretically, how a social constructivist knowledge theory is explained, namely something that... Oops, Marlowe is open. I didn't see that coming. Henrietta and I We talked about Proust and years ago, for a long time, we worked with Proust on the perspective of social constructivism. And so, put very simply, the basic idea of social constructivism is that the world

[14:15]

becomes or is generated through language between people. And the example of Proust made us ask, what is the cultural self? So our idea was that it is partly something that concerns ourselves like as individuals but also something that comes into being between two people, not between people. But how can we, that which happens between people or between us,

[15:31]

How can we experience that or feel that and also explain it? You didn't really ask me that question, did you? What am I going to do with that? Okay, we'll have a special seminar for you. Well, of course, everything you said was true. And we do construct an identity between ourselves, among ourselves. And I think we implied it yesterday to some extent, the mutuality or the mutual self.

[16:50]

And I myself practiced it as much as I can. because I have some question or something I think we ought to practice or look at. But I don't want to know too much about it before the seminar. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to have, as much as possible, I want to be unprepared at the beginning of a seminar. So sehr das geht, möchte ich unvorbereitet in ein Seminar gehen. What did you say? Good excuse. Good excuse for not preparing.

[17:53]

Most people I know who teach need to prepare first, otherwise they're insecure. In your case, I know, you're beyond insecurity. Or you like living within it. Yeah, so then to discover what happens as we can, then it requires a mutual self to appear. And that's one reason I like it that we have all these oldies with goodies here. In other words, you've been practicing with a long time. And some youngies but goodies too.

[19:06]

So I'll keep in mind what you said. We'll see. Someone else? Yes. That's a youngie but goodie. I thought about naming Yeah. Why don't I start? So the first answer was simple but also true. It gets me out of my comfort zone. The second answer was Ich habe Angst. And the second answer is I'm afraid.

[20:07]

Und zwar brauche ich Vertrauen. I need trust. Und Vertrauen darin, dass es die richtige Übung ist. Trust that it is the right practice. Vertrauen in denjenigen, der mir die Übung gegeben hat. Trust in the person who gave me the practice. But more than anything, trust in myself. And if I did the practice for some time, I'm afraid to lose myself. And then I need a renewal of trust.

[21:10]

Someone who leads me through that. Without giving me the answer. You don't expect much, do you? And then And then I asked the question. What is the difference between Baker Roshi and a head mechanic? Not much. The goal seems to be the same, but we start in a different place. Soul mechanics or psychic mechanics, they start with a problem.

[22:29]

The starting point is a problem. A problem usually helps. But at the break we can hold hands and walk through the park and... And we can name things together. Okay. Well, you're right. I mean, you have to trust yourself first. And whether you have trust in me or some other person that may develop. But I appreciate the way you can look at your own experience. And I appreciate your recognition that there can be fear in such a simple thing as naming something.

[23:46]

Because it means that you can sense that you're susceptible to or or vulnerable within, processes that interrupt the way the mind functions habitually. I knew John Cage, the New York American composer of electronic music. Ich habe John Cage gekannt, den New Yorker Komponisten elektronischer Musik.

[24:50]

Yeah, he made the plumbing and the radiators banging sound good. Und er hat es geschafft, dass die Geräusche von Heizung und Abschlussrohren gut klingen. If you know what I mean. Bing, bong, bing. Oh, it's just a pipe. It sounds like John Cage. But anyway, he was a nice man. I mean, I didn't know him very well, but a nice man and... Very interested in Zen, but he was scared of smoking marijuana. And he might have been right. But I mean, in those days, everyone at least tried once to smoke marijuana except Clinton.

[25:57]

But he had a lifetime fear of anything that might change his safety zone. But naming is a good way to edge out of it. You're doing it all the time, just making it more conscious. And funnily, making it more conscious, it becomes transformative. Someone else. It's not a question, but a present that I received yesterday. The distinction, as you said, is that words do not only have a horizontal dimension,

[27:17]

And it was the differentiation you made and said that words do not only have a horizontal dimension within a text, as I understood, but also a vertical dimension. a new aspect with words, with languages. And that gives me a new aspect how to use words or how to work with words. I understand that through the vertical dimension I conclude I come into contact with something.

[28:22]

In the horizontal dimension I often understand language as something that closes itself off. Okay, so as I understand it, it's like through the verticality of language, of words, I get in touch with something. Whereas in the horizontal dimension, it's something that is closed. Yeah, it was giving touches. Something that defines. Yeah. That's my mantra for today. Well, just to say again, the horizontal dimension of the word makes the sentence work. George Steiner, who's a very interesting writer, philosopher to read, George Steiner is a very interesting philosopher and writer.

[29:36]

He pointed out, and I read it recently, about Shakespeare. The most, I think, telling reason why Shakespeare is by far and away the greatest writer in English, maybe in any language. because he was so profoundly aware of the vertical dimensions of words. So a tonal quality in a word or a... etymology became the theme two or three acts later in the play. Sometimes it's the next sentence, but sometimes it doesn't resonate until it starts shaping the play later on.

[30:42]

Virtually every word has vertical residences and shit. Yes, someone else. Yes? Okay, I took the tram home and while riding the tram, I tried out naming. So for the First 20 minutes, I felt flooded because there was so much I had to name one thing after the other.

[31:53]

So I was almost... The streetcar was just full of names. Waiting to be named. So I was really exhausted through that. Oh, I'm sorry. But so then I limited this and said, okay, I only name sounds. So one of the first experiences was that it produces fear because it's so different. It's just wonderful that it's so different. Yeah. What is your name? Caroline. Caroline. What is your name?

[32:55]

Guido. [...] G-U-I-D-O. Guido. Okay. Carolina? No, Caroline. Caroline. Okay. Guido. Guido. So I'm naming it. I think the title is here. Okay. Yeah, someone else and then I will try to say something. Yeah. I noticed yesterday how often experience is stressed. And I'm wondering if it's possible that we can make an experience or if we can make an experience So I'm occupied with the question, can we have an experience for which we do not have words?

[34:06]

Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Lots. Most. All. When you start taking the names off, the experience which to some extent is pointed at by the word, begins to flow around the word and past the word. The words come after experience, but we can use words to notice experience and then get to the point where you're back at the prior to the word experience.

[35:08]

And not only is experience, as you noticed yesterday, emphasized, but Zen practice basically is only interested in experience. Yeah. So that even the word blue, you feel it as a physical sensation. And you begin to move, discover that possibility through practice. She would like to have further questions.

[36:10]

Oh, sure. Three further questions are allowed. So I can understand well how the word blue and the experience of blue are two different things. But maybe for example in a different language there might be a word or there is a word for a specific feeling which does not exist in my language. Can I feel this feeling?

[37:12]

Well, of course. But not when you first encounter the word in a guidebook or something like that. Well, I'll just say one thing here. something I brought up the other day, as part of the context of what we're talking about. There's a Japanese word, hara, which doesn't mean anything to most English-speaking or Deutsch-speaking persons. Unless you're practicing martial arts or something. Okay. But the word Hara, for most Westerners, even those who practice martial arts, for example, They don't really know what it means.

[38:35]

Because hara means, first of all, it's a physical location in the body. You know, a couple of fingers usually below the navel, but anyway, the gut, the lower gut. And you discover, you begin to discover what the word means. I mean, you know it means this area below the gut. So you may know the word hara kiri, which kiri means to cut, means to cut the hara. But the hara as a name for the stomach doesn't mean anything.

[39:38]

It's just another name for part of the body. But if you begin to practice with hara, so your attention is more and more of the time here. It actually begins to make you walk differently. And one of the saddest things I see, I mean, really, occasionally I get sad, who's somebody who's been practicing 20, 30 years. And in Kinhin, in the Zendo, they walk. It means they know nothing about horror.

[40:46]

Because if you begin to experience horror, you always keep it level and you slide along the floor. You don't walk. Und wenn du die Erfahrung von Hara gemacht hast und machst, dann hält man das immer gleichmäßig stabil und dann gleitet man so über den Boden, aber geht nicht. Yeah, and when you go up to the refrigerator, you open it with Hara. Und wenn du zum Kühlschrank gehst, dann öffnest du ihn mit Hara. I'm joking now. Okay. But, okay, so even if you begin to put your attention here below your navel, in your gut, still, it's really not an understanding of hara until you break up the triangle here.

[41:57]

If you think your feet are down there, it means you think you're in this triangle. When your feet are where your ears are, then you know you've broken up the triangle. And you can practice these kind of things simply. I don't know why I'm getting carried away here. Because it's your first question, so I have to, you know, get carried away. You can practice these things like, for instance, taking a bath completely in the dark or just keeping your eyes closed while you take a bath. Then wash your feet. And your feet feel right here.

[43:16]

You're kind of washing them. They feel like they're near your ears. Because that's in the dark, you're more functioning through awareness. And most Westerners are all located up here. And this is a very hard triangle to break down unless you open up the chakras. But that still isn't an understanding of hara. Because parallel to hara is the concept or the feeling that there's no other location mind. In other words, your mind is energetically in whatever location you are and not thinking about this or that. When you understand that You understand the so-called stoicism of the Japanese in the face of tsunami, earthquake, and four or five radioactive... What do you call them?

[44:54]

What? No, no. Like Fukushima 1, 2, 3? Yeah, well... Reactors. Yeah, reactors. It's not just simply stoicism. I could go through this. It's the feeling of... of... of... You don't have a why-me psychology. We tend to have a why-me psychology.

[46:03]

Why did God do this to me? Why did I get cancer? Why didn't somebody else get cancer instead of me? Yeah, I mean, it's just, it happened, that's all. So a hara mind is a mind which things just happen and you don't say, well, why did it happen? It just happened, that's all. And so if you said to a Japanese in Sendai, isn't it terrible this happened? They actually don't, of course it is, but it's more like, What happened? That's all.

[47:03]

But even a complex word like hara, which has a bodily and mental dimension, can be understood by us. kann von uns verstanden werden. And I took a complicated example. Und ich habe ein kompliziertes Beispiel gewählt. Because probably all the words in another language are complicated in somewhat the same way. Weil alle Wörter einer Fremdsprache ein bisschen auf diese Art und Weise kompliziert sind. Guido, you were going to say something before. Ja, ich wollte nachhaken, Hans. He wanted to add a question to something you said before.

[48:06]

So that was number one. Is Guido Italian? Originally the name, yes. Du erklärst gestern ein Beispiel von Gerhard. Wenn du ihm den Namen gibst, du nimmst den Namen weg, dann beginnt ein wenig mehr um ihn herum zu sein. Okay, so you used the example of Gerhard to explain when you take the name off, then something more happens or begins to happen around him. Yes. And after the cows yesterday, I did an experiment with the moon. And last night, after the cows, I did another experiment with the moon. So I saw the moon. I saw the moon, but named it Moon. And I took off the name. And to my surprise, it changed form.

[49:09]

It was not as sharply Defined, as before. So I noticed that before, but I had never named that. And then I put back the name to the shape. And it was very funny, because at the moment when I gave him the name again, he immediately got this sharp shape again and I noticed, I'll do it to the end, it's okay, I was surprised that he got the sharp shape and I noticed when I continued this game that as soon as he got the name he got this sharp shape that he didn't have at all. Okay, so when I put back the name, it... The moon relaxed.

[50:20]

I can hear myself. So it was sharply defined again. Yeah. And I realized that when I continued that game, that really, through the name, the moon gets his sharp definition that he, or it, she, does not really have. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that. So you're also getting, you're not only experimenting with naming and cutting off associative mind. You're getting familiar with the shift. We spoke about the necker cube shift. So the yogi more stays with the necker cube in between the shifts. So there's three locations, actually.

[51:52]

There's the shift upwards, there's the shift downwards, and there's in between, before, after, before shifting. Before it takes either definition. And then you're experimenting with conception-free mind. or non-duality. I didn't do that because I get dizzy. The moon makes a lot of people dizzy. Okay, I think it's time for a break.

[52:56]

A long, long past, in fact. Okay, thank you very much. And we're going to go into some more things afterwards.

[53:08]

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