Tomorrow we'll have a meeting, I hope you can all attend, after our brunch. I'm assuming today's the last day of Sashin, right? Tomorrow is brunch. And... And I want us to have this meeting. It's not just my idea, but partly my idea. Because I think really we have to take some next steps in developing the sangha itself and how it practices together. So tomorrow we want to give each other advice. Okay. And if it's the last day, I guess this has to be the last Teisho.

[01:06]

Yeah, but the horse has landed. Has not? Has landed. Oh, it has. The horse has landed. It happened a little while ago. But it's only halfway down the cliff. It's on a little ledge. This is just too big a topic for one Sashin. So we have to talk about other things too. But at the same time you know, we're, in talking about this, we're entering some kind of sacred grove. Sacred grove, do you understand? I think I do. Is it this... Höhle? Yeah.

[02:07]

It's like a grove of trees. The Plato's Academy was a grove of trees. Yeah. No, then it's different. Heim. Danke. Also, es handelt sich dabei um einen heiligen Heim. Both in all of human history and both in the West and the East, the question what is the self in all forms, there's no other question almost. And our culture is hell-bent. Hell-bent? Yeah. I'm testing her all the time. Yeah, me too. Hell-bent means you're going like hell in some direction, going like heaven. No, yeah. Hell-bent.

[03:10]

Don't worry about it. Yeah, anyway, so... Sorry. Sorry. It's like a cowboy racing into a fight with the Indians and you're going to get killed. It's hell-bent toward, you know... Don't worry about it. Anyway, our culture is hell-bent toward purchasing the self and then selling the self. They buy ourselves and then they want us to buy what they, you know, etc. So the self is under a new kind of attack. Yes, it's hard to separate out what we really want anymore, because advertisers tell us.

[04:19]

But most of us, I think all of us here, have some sense of a self that wants to practice. So I, you know, because the horse is only halfway down the cliff, I can only offer you a few things. But still, I think we're entering this sacred grove. And even if I could say everything I would like to say, discover everything I'd like to say in the next 30 minutes.

[05:22]

Still, it's, yeah, some months or, if you're lucky, not too many years to really absorb and transform oneself through practice. Okay, now the questions I have are, let me just take them to what I've been working with. How do we translate our conventional sense, our everyday sense of self? Or how do we understand our everyday sense of self? In relationship to the teachings of non-self and selflessness and so forth. We can't just get rid of our conventional self.

[06:35]

So how do we retain our conventional self? Yet understand the teaching of non-self and self-gone-ness. And part of my attempt to answer this is to create a term like self-gone-ness. Now my concern for this has initially began back in the 60s, practicing in America with lots of young people.

[07:36]

And on the whole, people had a very superficial understanding of selflessness in Buddhism, etc., But superficial or not, many people didn't mature themselves and their self because of Zen practice. We want to be free of a certain kind of self-identification, but we want to be free of a mature self, not a kind of teenage self. We want to be free from the identification with the self, but we want to be free from a mature self and not from a kind of teenager self.

[08:55]

Nowadays in Europe and because some decades have passed since people started practicing, In Europe and America. Yeah, most of us are, well, certainly more mature than 20-year-olds. Well, not this 20-year-old. Thank you. Credit where credit's due. Um... So we have to, you know, see how does our developed, you know, elderly self, you know, practice selflessness. So that's one question. The second question is, how does, using the example of a person who has brain damage from an accident of some kind, And this has been studied quite a bit.

[10:09]

Who can't give meaning to events that occur. You can completely see everything, hear everything, but he can't give it self-relevance. Er kann alles hören und alles sehen, aber er kann keine Selbstrelevanz herstellen. And I use the word self-relevance. Now I think one of the way to start looking at that is to see a distinction between self-relevance and self-referential. We can't make any sense of the world or any perception unless we have some associations. And the third question I've been working with is how if we if we understand as I said yesterday if self is impermanent and not autonomous how do we

[11:40]

and that it's better to see it as a function, how do we relate that to the practice which frees us from suffering and practice which is based on and leads to enlightenment? Okay. Those are my three questions. Okay. Now, I've given various examples that relate to trying to answer these questions.

[12:54]

And one would be, for example, which I didn't specifically give this example, why are we still chanting in Japanese? We should be just chanting in German or Swahili or something. Why Japanese? Well, one is I'm honoring where this practice came from. Two, and I think it's actually rather useful when you go to other groups or you visit Japan, you could join the chanting. Wow, everybody had it. Hey, listen to that gaijin. And then I also want, particularly here, we can feel it. We chant in German and we chant sometimes in English and we chant in Japanese. What I'm trying to say is that it's all translation.

[14:10]

It's happening in between translation. And the third reason is it interrupts discursive thinking. And that's the main practical reason I do it. Years ago in the 70s I tried for a few months having only chanting in English. And it was harder for me to establish the mode of mind which can hear a lecture. Because the chanting in English just continued the discursive thinking of what was happening before they chanted.

[15:11]

Now, I presented you quite a jumble. Jumble? And one of the implicit topics of this jumble has been that this is a malleable tradition. It's existed now for, I don't know, let's, if you say 25 years is a generation, it's existed for 100 generations. If you said a generation of working life is maybe 40 years, then it's 65 generations. So let's say that somewhere between 60 and 100 generations have felt an implicit at least permission to return the teaching and the tradition to its source.

[16:31]

Its source in experience. And to confirm the teaching by its source in experience. And that's big time what we're trying to do. Of course there's also a more explicit command to return renew a tradition through returning it to its historical source. And the tension between those two has been a lot of the creativity of Buddhism. And this is part of the meaning of Zen is teaching outside the scriptures.

[17:54]

It partly means that Zen is better passed face to face. And orally. Yeah. But it also means that the scriptures aren't the final authority. And the scriptures can't... No written text can really carry the truth of the teaching fully. And it also means this teaching belongs to us. Yeah. It's not a revealed teaching. So the Dalai Lama has said quite publicly that if science in any way shows some aspect of Buddhism is not true, we change Buddhism.

[19:03]

He's kept a couple caveats about reincarnation and things like that, but basically this is the position he's taken. Yeah, but we can't imagine the Pope saying this. If science shows us that Christianity isn't true, well, hell, we'll abandon it. As a result, scientists who are religious Christians And there are a lot. They have to compartmentalize their life. Their work is in one category and their belief is in another category.

[20:07]

So the way I've been speaking about practice assumes a malleability that we're part of. That not only do you have to check up on this teaching in your own experience, you have to give your conventional experience of self you know, the weight of how you live. The significance it has in your living. And perhaps the problems it has. Okay. And, as I've said, the ultimate checkpoint is our own experience.

[21:32]

Or rather, the peer review of the Sangha. Okay. Now I use the word mind stream. And I don't like the word mind stream much. Because it's not a stream. It's more like a flow of memory duration. It's a flow of the memory of duration. It's more like an electric charge than a water flow. Charge passing to a charge passing to a charge.

[22:49]

With an average drift frequency and things like that. It's been a long time since I was in my high school electrical shop. It's not been a long time for me, I can say it. Oh, you can, okay. Please. Now I forgot what you said. I said that drift frequency or there's a drift or resistance at each moment to the flow. And it tends to drift, but there has to be an average drift velocity. So the continual reappearance of each moment is a kind of resistance to the memory of duration. resistance of appearance.

[23:56]

Each moment is new and is in a new appearance which resists the memory of duration. Okay, there's no stream. There's moment after moment going along, right? No. Okay, and what is that moment? It's a memory of duration. It's because there's... The knife edge of the present is... is infinitesimal. The knife edge of the present infinitesimal, infinitely small. You're good. Thank you. But our experience is it had some width. So we establish in our experience a sense of durations.

[24:56]

And I won't try to explain how we do that right now, but we do do it. So that duration is an experienced Dharma. But at each moment, there's a new moment, right? So what is the continuity? It's the short-term memory of the previous duration. Isn't that crystal clear? What else could it be? Yeah, okay. So there's a memory of duration. Okay. It's not permanent. And this memory of duration, each moment confronts a new moment, which is a kind of resistance to the current.

[26:15]

The current, the flow. Okay, so square people are people who are constantly resisting the new situation. Those are squares. My daughter, now 44, used to proudly say in the 60s to everyone, my parents aren't square and they aren't hip. Because the hippies were a little bit too unsquare. I know, too. So... Okay. Okay. So if you get the feeling that this moment is of duration, is created by you, this present is created, it's a construct.

[27:40]

I mean, this room is a construct. It's just rather slow. It's also changing, but it's changing much slower than our moment-by-moment perception of a present. Okay, so this present that we have now is an inflected memory of duration. Inflected means each moment. Okay, so you can see I've never talked about this before this way. So I'm trying to create a way of talking about it, but I'm trying to create it with you.

[28:47]

A few months from now I have all the lingo down and then maybe it will be less interesting. But because you've got to... If you're going to work with this, you've got to try to see if this is confirmed in your own experience. Okay. So... If each of us, the present of each of us, is a, let's call it a field of inflected memory duration, okay, now when I go up to the altar, sometimes I go up and I turn that way and sometimes I turn inward and go back.

[29:58]

Now, what's the difference? You don't really need to know this, but why don't I tell you? Anyway, so when I go up to the altar, I establish, what else could I do, a memory of duration, which includes the Buddha. Now, if it was a statue of Mickey Mouse, it would be rather different. Well, it would be. So the Buddha makes a difference. In Europe, you've never heard of Mickey Mouse, have you?

[31:00]

Of course. It's American. So if I go up the altar, I establish a little field, a memory of duration of spending a little time with the Buddha. And I line my body up with the body, the backbone of the Buddha and so forth like that. You got to do something up there. You go up there hundreds of times a year, you know. And Geralt, as Eno, kept the altar mostly straight all the time. So then I turn around and I actually carry this memory, this moment by moment memory of duration. If I turn inward, then I pull it back to the back of the bowing mat and then I return it to the Buddha.

[32:18]

This is some of the tantric side of our ceremonies, which is not usually taught until transmission, but you know, what the heck, you guys are ready. Even if you're only 25. I was 25 when I started practicing, seriously. Yeah, I don't have a chance. Yeah, okay. So, that's one way. If I turn... Outward toward everybody, I'm kind of spreading that feeling through the room.

[33:42]

And then I go to the altar. No, that may sound a little nuts. But you also are a field of memory duration. And all those fields of each of us overlap. So, Garel says, as soon as he comes here and walks in the door, he feels practice in the place. Because we generate a field here. And we're more open to it or less open to it, depending on who we are in our practice and so forth. Now, also in the context of which I'm speaking, Each moment you're reborn.

[34:47]

Now, don't worry about if that's true or not. It's true enough. Just feel it each moment. If you bring that into your sense of each moment I'm reborn. Okay. Now, the implicit belief in oneness which pervades our culture, which, for example, assumes we're going to find our perfect soulmate somewhere who will be the absolute understanding between us. And I don't know anybody who's I know many people who expect to And I know a few who think they have.

[36:06]

For a few months. Okay, so somebody gave me a good example in Doksan of a bird sitting on his foot. Like a Christian saint, the bird's going up. So the bird's sitting on his foot. And the bird looks up at him. Hey, how are you? And there's a moment of connectedness. There's a moment of acceptance and recognition. But we can't say that the bird and the person are somehow connected. other than other. Yeah, and we feel that with babies, he pointed out. Of course we do. Okay, now, if you have an implicit assumption of oneness,

[37:09]

Wenn du eine implizite Annahme der Einheit hast, dann wird sich deine Erfahrung von Kontinuität immer unangemessen, also immer unvollkommen anfühlen. If your assumption is discontinuity, just assume you don't expect continuity. What you expect is discontinuity. Then you'll be amazed when there's continuity. Continuity will be a wonderful brief... wonderful brief moment, a feeling of continuity with that bird, baby, or lover, or whoever.

[38:33]

Yeah, so one would be that the assumption of Continuity is delusion. From a Buddhist point of view the assumption of discontinuity is wisdom. And it will transform the way you are in the world. Okay. And then you can mature continuity. And maturing continuity is to mature the self.

[39:36]

But the maturation of continuity is not very effective if you assume continuity. It's the discovery and the surprise of continuity which allows you to mature it. Do you understand the difference? These little shifts make a huge difference. It's like we think that we're going in, I've said this before, but we think we're going into the future. So we plan to go into an expected future. But the Chinese, for example, and in yogic culture, The future comes toward you in its unexpectedness.

[40:51]

That's very different. You can't avoid it, you can't plan for it. I mean, you can sort of plan for it, but it's always coming toward you in its unexpectedness. And this is one of the differences one can peer into, peer through, into, look, differences between a shame culture and a guilt culture. We tend to define ourselves through the past. What we've done. And we feel that what we've done has accumulated to make us. Und wir haben das Gefühl, dass das, was wir getan haben, sich angehäuft hat, um uns zu machen.

[41:56]

Lass uns das Karma jetzt mal außen vor lassen in diesem Moment. Das wäre zu kompliziert. Aber die Chinesen in einer yogischen Kultur definieren sich selbst über das, was sie in der Zukunft tun werden. Das ist ganz anders. The past is gone. So I don't think there would be any trials of war criminals 20 years later in China. They'll kill you in the present. Because the idea that a person 20 years later is somehow the same person is nuts to them. Like Pinochet and stuff like that. We'd look at how they're living now. Are they causing any problem? Are they doing all right?

[42:57]

Give them the future. Now, I'm not talking politics here, of course. I'm just trying to give vivid examples of the difference between a world in which you assume the past is gone, I have the potential of the future. That's a very different world. Yeah, I should stop now. Can I go on for a few minutes? I mean, are your legs okay? Anybody who doesn't want me to go on, leave. Yeah, well, I've had enough of that.

[44:00]

Okay. Proust has a beautiful piece in his long essay on reading. He talks about remembering something he was reading. And he goes back to when he was a kid and he's sitting in a chair reading and a maid brings in lunch.

[45:02]

And so he has to interrupt his reading. He's quite irritated that he has to interrupt his reading. Yeah. And I never had a maid bring me lunch while I was reading as a kid, but anyway, Bruce did. So anyway, he remembers being irritated and so forth. But he doesn't remember what he was reading. He remembers the room, the light of the midday, the look of the maid. He doesn't remember what he was reading. And what he really loves now, at the time he was writing, was the memory, not of what he was reading, but of the experience when he was interrupted.

[46:07]

And what he really loved at the time when he wrote this was not the memory of what he had read, but the experience of being disturbed. I'm already in the future, I'm sorry. So when we remember something, We remember the experience of the memory, the experience of the object, not just the object. You understand? We remember the experience of it, not the object. We may remember both. Okay, so it means... I don't know if I have time to really develop this, but I'll go a little bit further.

[47:18]

So we're remembering the experience, we're remembering an experience, not an object. And that experience doesn't have self-referential thinking in it. No, I don't want to... I feel already your legs are in pain, so I'm not feeling comfortable going on. But what I would suggest as a practice, go back In your memory. To some bright spot.

[48:22]

Some clear thing you remember from third grade or something. And then try to remember the whole experience. The desk, the teacher, the room, the time of day. Versuche die ganze Erfahrung zu erinnern, der Lehrer, der Raum, die Tageszeit. And then extend that memory to later in the afternoon. And see if you can go forward maybe to the next day or to when you went home on the bus or whatever you did. Or see if you can extend it to the previous day. Okay, now this is somewhat similar to... There's a car accident.

[49:26]

And the car drove off fast. And no one remembers what the car was or anything, right? But sometimes if you hypnotize a person, they can tell you the license plate. Okay, so what's the difference here? The experiences in our memory includes the license plate, but it's not in our self-memory. So there's a distinction between what we remember from a situation because it confirms the self and what we don't remember because it doesn't confirm the self. Okay, now what I'd like to do is develop the difference between how the self is established And how the construct of an I-consciousness, I-pronoun, is established on the basis of our experience as a kind of average or distillation of each moment.

[50:48]

And we think the I-consciousness then is continuous But if you go back to the third grade or such a memory and you expand it to include the situation then you'll see the discontinuity and not the continuity. And then you begin to understand and see through the assumed continuity of the I-consciousness. You can see this is very clear and easy to understand. But slippery at the same time. And so it takes a while to get hold of it.

[51:48]

But it's fun to do. And it helps our practice. To really see how we actually function and can see through the illusion of self. But can still mature the self. Yeah. Okay, thanks a lot. We'll have to stop.

[52:30]

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