Well, please tell me something about your discussion. Yes. After thinking about it for a while, I thought that maybe it's... Maybe it's confusing to speak about dream mind. For a psychoanalytist. Because the dream has such a great meaning, the dream text, the narrative. because the dream text, the place and the narrative and the time etc., all of that is so relevant in order to peer into the unconscious.

[01:06]

And now after this lecture, I feel like maybe I should forget about that a little. And trust that there can be a wider activity. That maybe happens, occurs in the state of sleeping with dreams. And maybe I can just leave both of these there and not judge or dismiss one because of the other. This is confusing.

[02:14]

Well, let them percolate for a while. Let them percolate for a while. Percolate? Like coffee percolates. Let them percolate for a while. We began by exchanging various personal experiences in the context of what you spoke about. And in the end we were left with a question, which was whether there is a sasen mind outside of the practice, so whether you can actually only speak of mindfulness, or is, so to speak, the way of listening, or the short meditation within a therapy session, could that already be called sasen mind?

[03:29]

And then we stayed with the question which is whether there can be a zazen mind outside of practice or whether then that would have to be called something like mindfulness or something, or whether these small pauses that we have in therapy, whether they can already generate a zazen mind. And then to listen to the dream from that mind, the dream that somebody tells you it may have a different quality. Yeah. No one else was in a discussion? Okay. What I learned from our discussion, what I found interesting was the question or also the change between understanding and what Roshi calls seeding or one participant in the group has always called it room for development.

[04:48]

And I would be interested in such a David would like to know what you said. Yeah, and you would like to know too. No. Yeah, go ahead. What stayed with me from our discussion is that we spoke about making something graspable and making it understandable too, and also in terms of consciousness and of self-functioning, etc. And the concept that you always often mention, the incubating, incubate something. And one participant in our group also spoke about just leaving space for development in a kind of unknowable and unknown territory.

[05:58]

And I'd just like to know, or I'm interested in hearing from a Zen perspective, To what extent understanding things and making them graspable is relevant for development? Or can it all happen in terms of incubation? Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Okay. I also sat with Angela in the group and we talked about this Zen spirit, Zazen spirit, wisdom spirit, this fourth state of mind.

[07:04]

whether you can take it with you into everyday life or whether you only find it on the pillow. And I myself asked myself what that actually is. I know that with me, when I have sat for a very long time, so I have done a retreat or a session, then I go into everyday life with a completely different feeling and it stays with me for a while, sometimes two or three days, sometimes even a little longer. And what is that actually for a spiritual state? So I was also in Angela's group and we spoke about this fourth mind, Zen mind, zazen mind. And we spoke about whether to what extent that is a mind that is generated on the cushion and happens or is present in zazen and to what extent it is a mind that can also be there in everyday activity. And one experience that I have and that I wondered about is that when I did a retreat or I did a session or something, then I noticed that I enter the world with a very different feeling.

[08:17]

And I wonder, what mind is that? The mind of a different feeling. But we could certainly say it's a... zazen mind or sesshin mind or something like that. And when one does one in the early sesshin sometimes you know people shouldn't drive afterwards home in the dark or something because Is that a car? I mean, really, what's that coming toward me? It's a wonderful light. In the old Sashins, we sometimes say that someone shouldn't drive after the Sashin, because they are in a completely different spirit. They drive in the darkness, and then something comes towards them, and then they ask themselves, oh, is that a car coming towards me? Is that a beautiful light or something like that? So it's, anyway.

[09:22]

Yes? I have a question that is concerned with this idea of physicalizing or embodying dream thoughts. When I have a dream thought, what sometimes happens is that I transfer that somehow into my conscious mind and then even write a poem about it or something. I can read a poem and look at it again, even if I read it days, weeks, years later, with completely different eyes.

[10:24]

And then I can develop a new approach every time, because I read it differently, with different eyes. And then this poem I can read again. I can read it months or years even later. But every time I read it, I can read it with different eyes. And this way I can always find a new approach of reading it, looking at it. And then the whole thing just starts over again. And does the dream come back to you when you read it? I would guess the poem also takes on a life of its own, independent of the dream. Okay. Someone else? Just a small remark.

[11:33]

While I listened to you speak about the fourth mind, I tried to listen from this fourth mind. So that I could enact or practice what you described. And it was very interesting what you said is that the basis of this mind is to sit still. But what I found is that, for example, I took notes while you spoke, but without leaving this mind too much.

[12:59]

And in certain phases of what you said, I couldn't really follow and even now I can't completely reconstruct what you said, but I was very interested in what I wrote down. And it was very interesting to see that there was a vague memory of what I wrote, but only when I read it later, it really percolated through into consciousness. And I took it as a, well, I just tried to enact what you spoke about directly with this particular object. Okay, yes. One thread that appeared in our group?

[14:33]

That when we dream, the one dreaming is a different way of how we constitute ourselves, how we put ourselves together. And then it became clear, and that's what therapy is all about, that we often put ourselves together in a very redundant and always the same way, by drawing our biographical story in the same way over and over again. And what then became clear is that, and this is often the topic in therapy, that we tend to put ourselves together in a very redundant way usually by always telling us our biographical narrative in the same way over and over again. and that dreams are a kind of gate in order to even beginning to feel this over and over again and being able to step back and forth between these.

[16:01]

Just like... David, see if the door's open, please. Oh. Herr Professor Dr. Zwiebel. Herr Professor. Thank you. Just like Zazen can be a way of putting ourselves together completely anew and can be a way of perceiving oneself outside of one's biographic story. And what I personally liked very much is how you spoke about how inner dream, past, present and future at once condense and at the same time

[17:19]

dissolve one another or something that's how I understood it anyway and there is a similarity to a therapeutic situation in general if it works anyway I find dreams can extend your biography as well as repeat your biography. Sort of. Something like that. Anyway. So I don't want to talk too much right now. Someone else. Maybe I talked about the wrong thing this morning, because maybe there'd be more discussion if I had a different topic.

[19:03]

Yes. So one thing you spoke about this morning is that you described zazen and you described that Two thousand also be long sitting still. But now it happens to me from time to time that I have a desire or a wish to really just move. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. It's as though it comes out or something.

[20:12]

A kind of dancing movement. You mean during Zazen your arms start to dance or you completely jump up and run around? No, no. You stay sitting. Yeah. Just with arms and my upper body. Sounds beautiful. Let's sit together. Yeah, it wouldn't be called usual Zazen. Nico, you want to say something? Nico? I have the impression that it is not very easy to try to discuss the subject of dreams, because they are part of our therapeutic instrumentality. And then we actually have to know what we are talking about. And we have already used dreams so often to keep valid information about ourselves.

[21:17]

And when we put this to the disposition, we say, friends may, dreams may also exist. other functions have, then it's not quite exciting. I found that speaking about dreams is not a very easy thing to do because they belong so much to our professional and therapeutic instruments and we've used dreams so much as well in order to receive valid information about ourselves so that if we now begin to speak about dreams and say that they may have a very different function additionally but it's not necessarily free of tension to do that. Norbert? What I take with me is that there are two very different territories, dream in psychotherapy and dream in the senses. What I take with me is that dream and psychotherapy and dream and Zen seem to be two very different territories.

[22:26]

And to take as an example what's called the initial dream maybe in English, the first dream you have after your first encounter with a therapist, which is understood as an offer for relationship and also for transference. And this aspect, it seems, is not looked at in Buddhism. It seems to me that the relationship aspect and the transference aspect don't really occur, don't really pop up in Buddhism.

[23:37]

And then in the therapeutic schools there are such big differences, one of them being whether one needs to understand a problem or whether that's not necessary. And then also with what aspects of the dream I would want to work with a physical sensation or an image or a historic story or something, history of the dream or something. And still it is so that the potential that is put into the interpretation of the dream in Buddhism but at the same time the potential of a dream that Buddhism reveals. I would wish that we could use that more fruitfully in therapy.

[24:53]

And that would be one possible teaching of how we can get there. Well, again, I want to keep my comments brief, but certainly somebody might say they're thinking about becoming ordained. It might be, and it has been the case a number of times, often maybe, that a person is clear that they want to be ordained when they dream it. And that's really so explicit. It doesn't need analysis. It's just an explicit kind of message. But the practitioner might also then incubate that or plow that into their daily activity and see how it germinates.

[26:08]

It's common also to have conversations with your teacher in dreams or have even teachings from your teacher. But those dreams are usually not mixed up with your biography. But our biography sometimes sorts itself out through Zazen mind and through incubating dreams. Yes. In contrast to you, Norbert, I have even more insight. This morning, between psychotherapy and, or between theory and Buddhism,

[27:32]

I found quite a few also ways in which dream theory in Buddhism and in psychotherapy also get close to one another. What is being discussed much more in recent years is the distinction between the dream interpretation and the dream function, the dreaming itself. What has been discussed much more recently is to distinguish between the dream function, the dream in itself and the dream content. The dream meaning. The dream meaning. And this dreaming is regarded as a very extensive function in which physical, especially emotional or affectivity, turns into mental transformation.

[28:35]

And dreaming is considered a very broad function in which physical aspects are being transformed into mentation or into emotions. There is an increasing perception that spiritual suffering is actually associated with an inability to dream in this way. There is a work by an American analyst called On Not Being Able to Dream. And there is a more and more popular approach nowadays that psychological suffering corresponds with not being able to dream in this particular way. And there is this one work that you just cited on not being able to dream. The opinion is that the analytical situation or the therapeutic situation is actually a relationship situation. To put it simply, the patient actually learns to dream with the help of the analyst or the therapist.

[29:46]

In other words, to get into a dreaming state. You could say that the therapist dreams the patient's dreamless dreams. Or sometimes vice versa. And the view is that... Everyone's a comedian. I can't understand... Go ahead. The view is that the analytic situation or the therapeutic situation, which of course is a relationship situation as well, that this is supposed to help the client to learn how to dream. And that in one sense it is said that the therapist is meant to dream the not-dreamed dreams of the client and sometimes also the other way around. That's great.

[30:46]

I like that. That's great, I like that. I have a question about another point. I didn't quite understand how you wanted to understand that. We know today that every person dreams two or three or I don't know how many hours in the night anyway. but you don't remember it. You remember at most one or two dreams in the night. So this dream state takes place every night. And I would be interested in how you interpret this in what you said. There is no consciousness and no awareness of this actually unconscious or unconscious dream activity. So one question I have to what you've said this morning is that it's just a fact that everybody dreams for two or three hours every night, but then most of that we can't remember.

[31:50]

We maybe remember two maybe one or two dreams after a night. And then there's this whole bunch of unconscious dream activity. But we did spend this time in the dream state. Now, how do you put that into what you've said this morning? How do you categorize that or something? Okay. Well, first of all, virtually everything you said, to the extent that I understand it, I agree with. I'd like to make a comment about not dreaming, though. But first let me say, in my own sleeping. I would say that... I'm aware of every night about two or three and maybe eight or nine different dream phases.

[33:12]

And they feel, they occur for me like a conversation with myself. Sometimes they really take the shape of an involuntary dream that's being presented and not a conversation with myself. And the two or three phases that occur before I wake up are more vivid. But on the whole, even the involuntary dreams that are presented to me, and sometimes, as I said, but not only a few times a year, do I have to say, a vivid teaching dream.

[34:22]

But What are you dreaming about? Even the dreams that are, I'd say, have an involuntary quality of being presented, still they basically feel like a conversation with myself. No, that doesn't mean... And it's not particularly different than conversations with myself, in effect, I have all the time during the waking mind, too. And they are not actually very different from the conversations that I constantly have with myself in the waking spirit.

[35:38]

What I am saying may be true of everyone, but it may also be different because I have been doing this for 50 years now. What I am saying may be true for everyone, but maybe it is simply because I have been doing this for 50 years now. Yeah, I just don't know. Because there's some things I don't remember what it's like to not be a practitioner. But one thing, you know, sometimes you're standing with someone. You're having a conversation. And you're having a conversation in outer physical space. And suddenly, I mean, I will feel I need to make a shift here. This may sound a little crazy, but the shift is there's an inner... I shift from being in an outer physical space with the person to being in an outfolded inner space.

[36:47]

Then I feel both very connected and very little separation with the person. from the person. Now I would imagine for instance when the therapist dreams the dreams the client could dream or ought to dream or might dream In my language, that would happen when there's an outfolded inner space. Now, what I was going to say about I'm not dreaming.

[38:00]

No, I don't think it's the same as not being able to dream. In the most intense period of my practice, which was about, I would say, seven or eight, less than ten years, something, seven or eight years, I basically, as far as I could tell, didn't dream. I know that at least lots of at least one traditional view, is you just don't know you're actually dreaming, but you just don't know it. I'm pretty convinced I didn't dream. I mean, you can't actually know. Yeah, you don't know, but I'm pretty convinced I didn't dream. I'm very convinced and it was an interesting period it's also a period where I would for days at a time have only two hours sleep a night and generally during that time I would sleep two to four hours maybe

[39:30]

And most of the time I slept up to four hours a night. Also, it's something that happens sometimes in Sashins to people. At night I would be aware of everything going on while I was asleep. I could tell somebody, well, you got up and did this and you did that and you flushed the toilet, you didn't flush the toilet or you opened the window or you... I just knew everything that happened in the room. And if someone came to speak to me, for instance, for some reason, in living in a monastery, sometimes in the middle of the night somebody, there's a problem or something. I could have a complete conversation with him as long as it wasn't too discursive and not wake up.

[40:59]

I could just feel my body stay completely asleep and I could talk with the person. Da konnte ich sogar eine Unterhaltung mit dieser Person führen, jedenfalls solange die nicht zu diskursiv wurde. Ich konnte komplett die Unterhaltung führen und konnte aber spüren, dass mein Körper weiter schlief. I kind of missed dreaming. It's kind of funny. Ich habe das Träumen schon ein bisschen vermisst. Ich habe gedacht, es ist merkwürdig. But it was also, it was so thorough that I thought, well, I guess this is end practice. You never dream again. But another funny aspect during that time, I couldn't go to the movies. I'd go to the movies, and with all these colors on the screen, I just couldn't get involved. People would say, you should really see this movie. So I'd go, and I'd sit there. Well, so I'd get up and leave after 20 minutes or something.

[42:21]

And suddenly it changed. With David I would say it changed when I started having to have a lot of responsibility for the Zen Center. Yeah, and then I started sleeping more. Even those days I couldn't sleep more than six hours, but I slept more and I suddenly could go to movies and I suddenly started dreaming. But it's not unrelated to some Zen practices are to not sleep at all for a long period of time, to stay up, stay all night, even have little chin rests. Once I experimented and I stayed awake for I think two weeks without going to bed, not sleeping.

[43:41]

I took short naps, five or ten minutes sometimes. But I got in a pretty weird state. I decided it wasn't very pleasant. Anyway, so that's enough and all that. Somewhere else? as I said earlier referring to what Ralph said before is I would like to see us for my sake maybe for yours too but certainly for my sake if we could come closer to a kind of interweaving practices and

[45:00]

and more distinctly therapeutic practices. I think, um, uh, almost everything I've said during these two days. And it seems to me we've covered quite a lot. It really comes down to the difference between knowing the world as entities and knowing the world as activities. And the more thoroughly you know the world as activities over a long period of time, it really changes how you see the basic things of life.

[46:08]

The more also changes the basic ingredients of life. You tend to be grounded in a Perceptual immediacy. And I would say a kind of spatial immediacy in which you feel nourished. And there's very little externalization of perception perception and cognition.

[47:21]

Sometimes I think, you know, I don't know any really exactly what Facebook is. It's a kind of big address book of friends or something. I don't know quite what it is. I know a little bit more about YouTube because people send me emails with YouTubes. But it seems to me sometimes that it's like people don't feel they're real unless, don't feel they exist unless they're filmed. But I suppose if you always externalize perceptions and cognition, then you know yourself through this externalization. And this externalization is mostly created by others.

[48:47]

And because it's created by others, you don't feel known unless others know you. So the best way to get people who don't know you to know you is to send them your photograph. But I think that if we shifted to a world where you really didn't externalize, I mean this is nearly impossible, but externalize perceptions and cognitions, Facebook would probably go bankrupt. I don't know what I'm talking about. But practice certainly is about noticing How you externalize, you believe the world is out there.

[50:08]

And after a while you may know the world is actually occurring in your own cognitive and perceptual domain. But realized practice is to experience that it's within your own domain more strongly than you experience it as external. And experiencing it as your own perceptual and cognitive creation, generation, And to perceive it as your own perceptual or perceiving creation or cognitive creation.

[51:10]

To experience it. And then you also experience it in its incomprehensibility, as emptiness. And you experience its momentariness and so forth. this shifting of how you put your ingredients together. Yeah, so I certainly talked enough, but I've enjoyed being with you. And I look forward to seeing you next year. And I hope you're prepared to help me come to something new. So I'm going to ring the bell, not so much that we sit, just so I can hear the bell.

[52:20]

All that about not dreaming for some years and so forth, I've never spoken about semi-publicly before. At least not in a specific way I just did.

[53:22]

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