So I started last evening on this again and anew on this topic of self, the world and karma. And it's something that I have thought about and practiced with for my entire practice life. Das ist etwas, worüber ich nachgedacht habe und womit ich praktiziert habe mein gesamtes Praxisleben über.

[01:03]

I get immersed in it and then I wonder how to speak about it. Und dann vertiefe ich mich so sehr in diesen Bereich, dass ich mich frage, wie ich darüber sprechen kann. And sometimes I have some ideas about how to speak about it. But often something... Yeah. Some feeling in myself and feeling with you makes me talk about something else than I planned to. Yeah. And... And I think that's reflective of the question that you asked last evening.

[02:06]

Who's doing what we're doing? Or what is doing what we're doing? I think it's useful actually to particularly in our culture, to change the question to what from who. Yeah. the what-ness of the world usually gives us a wider feeling than the who-ness of the world. So, you know, here we are practicing together. And how do we find... some sort of common way to feel into this practice.

[03:15]

And I'm... I think our sense of being German or American or Austrian or whatever, actually is an important part of our sense of self in the world. Nowadays, most of us, particularly the people who might practice Zen Buddhism, feel themselves to important degrees international or cosmopolitan and don't feel so much connected with a

[04:20]

their birth country. Yeah, and some people feel very connected. And as I said the other day, this whole process of nation forming, which has occurred in the last 100 or 200 years, has tried to create a sense of a national identity, which is also related to everyone votes, we're all citizens and so forth. Yeah. Now, it's hard for me to exactly say why I think that's important. But because for me, it seems to be quite unimportant in the decisions I've made.

[05:54]

And I generally think patriotism and nationalism are on the whole negative things. However, if we ask what do we feel familiar with, where do we feel comfortable? Do you feel more comfortable, say, in Austria than Germany? Or vice versa? Or in France? I know people born in Freiburg who have a lot of connection with France. They don't know whether they belong in Germany or France.

[06:55]

Julio, do you ever feel more connected with Italy than Germany, for example? Okay, so what this kind of subjectivity of where we feel familiar... This is the point somehow I've started with. And if we're going to speak about self and the world and self and the world are often, in many ways, virtually the same experience. And I'm going to try to... Yeah, I'm trying to speak about that. So where do we feel most familiar?

[08:01]

I think that you can notice that and that way in which you feel most familiar is part of what we mean by self. Now, The question, again, you asked last night, I've responded to many, many, many, many times.

[09:21]

Sometimes satisfactorily and sometimes unsatisfactorily. To me. But the fact that When I'm asked again, I myself am, how do I speak about this? Even if I've answered it sometimes satisfactorily, I find it difficult to answer again. And that's because we're embedded, I think, in a, a way of thinking that so thoroughly assumes a who that does it. That it's difficult to

[10:21]

find a way to say anything else. Now, I don't know if it's useful to try to explore this. But I think what, you know, we have to create some basis here for the experience of knowing The experience of knowing as... Buddhism suggests we can know. Because Buddhism is always asking, how do we actually exist? So if you're If you try to satisfy yourself in terms of self, or try to satisfy yourself in the goals of your culture, and sometimes we see quite quickly we can't, sometimes it takes most of a lifetime to realize

[12:07]

I've achieved things, but I'm not satisfied. So at some point you conclude, I mean, there must be... Being alive in a satisfactory way must be possible. Let's hope it's possible. Please. Now, if it's possible... It would be possible through how we actually exist. This question or this idea is at the basis of Buddhism. How do we actually exist? How do you find out that? Buddhism concludes it's through a study of how we know. How we know the world, how our mind and perceptions work.

[13:17]

So again, this is the entry point that Buddhism has chosen. That's why I say Buddhism is a mindology, not a psychology. Buddhism has decided that the entry point isn't your personal history. Der Buddhismus hat die Entscheidung getroffen, der Zugangspunkt ist nicht deine persönliche Geschichte. Your personal history is important. Deine persönliche Geschichte, die ist wichtig. But more important is how the mind itself works. Aber wichtiger ist, wie der mind selbst funktioniert.

[14:17]

Now, I'm not saying that's true. Und ich sage nicht, dass das wahr ist. I'm just saying that's the entry Buddhism has chosen. Now, to enter through the study of mind, and now we're talking about the study of self and the world, how does mind generate a sense of self and the world. Now I said last night that the word for world In Buddhism, the biggest word or cosmos or something is Tathagatagarbha.

[15:17]

Which is naming the world as an activity. Not as a thing. But as an activity we can relate to. because the world is a coming and going and coming and going just means movement but it's also has in it arriving and going away aber es trägt auch in sich ankommen und weggehen. Okay. Now, I am startled. Well, let's see. First, I'm dismayed by what I think is the...

[16:21]

What can I say? How can I say it tactfully? The stupidity, no. The simplicity of most of the scientists who try to study consciousness. I'm trying, I'm trying. I mean, some of them, if I met them, I would sort of say, do you feel anything? Are you alive? Some of them say consciousness doesn't exist because you can't study it, you know. You know, you can't measure it scientifically.

[17:35]

But there's a few who are quite good, and Damasio, a Portuguese-born American, is one of them. And Damasio is surprisingly close in his sense as a neurobiologist to what Dharma practice is. Now, I haven't read his books too carefully, but I'd say they're well worth looking at for their observations Perhaps not their conclusions, but their observations, his observations. All right. So in effect, you come through your personal life Suki Roshi used to say, you try very hard to fulfill your needs, your potential, your etc.

[19:05]

And often there's some gap. And how do you solve that gap? Well, in effect we have two choices. And we have the world that our culture presents to us. And if we can see that the world our culture presents to us may be quite wonderful and beautiful, But it's only a version of the world. And it's a version of the world that puts us into relationships with others that you don't always feel good about.

[20:13]

Okay, so most of us make a non-conscious choice, a non-conscious choice of our own birth culture. But once you can see that maybe there's another possibility, and a mindology means, can you be free of your mind? Basically means, can you be free of your birth culture? Is there a fundamental human nature which isn't Western or German or American or Japanese? And Yeah, it's not maybe a big problem.

[21:26]

But I know in my own life, I wasn't faced certainly with the Second World War like some of you who are closer to my age were. But I was faced with it on the news every day, I mean twice a day at least. My parents listened to the news in the morning and in the late afternoon. And I couldn't believe it. Is this what our human life is like? I simply did not want to be part of a culture that killed each other like this. Yeah, I was a big dilemma.

[22:31]

I mean, I was four, five, six, seven, eight during the war. And it was a constant dilemma for me. And I actually... Talked to my father, but I remember I said, you know, I just don't want to be a human being. Isn't there some other choice? And I became actually through Suzuki Roshi, my teacher, more of a human being. Because I had decided really to be an outsider. Yeah. I refused to have a career, I refused my college degree, etc.

[23:39]

My ideal career was collecting soda bottles and turning them in for, you know, five cents or something. I don't mean to present myself as completely weird, but you know, I had that feeling. And I wasn't discontented with this choice, so I worked in warehouses and things like that. And then I started practicing Zen. And Sukhiroshi said to me very simply, Somehow, he said, you... We have to participate in our society.

[24:54]

And it even came up in a koan that was given to me by Yamada Reiron Roshi. And he was a Roshi from Los Angeles. He was, yeah. So he used to come up sometimes to our Sashins. And he asked the question about Nanchuan and the cat... The two wings of the monastery are arguing about this cat. And when Nanchuan returned to the monastery, he'd been away for the day. He was so shocked that these monks were arguing about this cat. what happens to the cat or who owns the cat or something.

[26:01]

And I'm sure he felt, what the hell, heck, am I, um, propsing these people for if they are in such a kind of arguing about a cat, you can say this is just human nature. Oh, we human beings are like that. We have to forgive it. Well, that's also true. Now there's been a lot of dispute about this koan because they say no real Buddhist would ever kill a cat. But I think he probably did kill the cat.

[27:06]

I think he was so frustrated by this stupidity that he held up the cat and said, can anyone save the cat? Do you know what you're killing by this nonsense? No one could say anything, so he killed the cat. You may think that's terrible, but then stop eating hamburgers, fish, and so forth. One Zen master went to Chicago, who Sukershi knew, and he went to a slaughterhouse. For some reason they gave him a tour of a slaughterhouse. And the guy fainted.

[28:23]

The Roshi fainted. And Tsukiyoshi said, if he's going to faint, he shouldn't have gone. So anyway, Yamada Reirin Roshi presented us this story. And asked, and then we all went to Doksan, to Sanzen afterwards. To present our answer. So... Yamada Reron Roshi was sitting right in front of me, and Suzuki Roshi was over here. I mean, my real teacher was Suzuki Roshi, but my first lineage went through Yamada Reron Roshi. So they asked me the question, how would you save the cat? Und sie stellten mir die Frage, wie würdest du die Katze retten?

[29:40]

And I said, I'd leave, and then he has no one to kill the cat for. Und ich sagte, ich würde weggehen, und dann hätte er niemanden, für den er die Katze töten kann. And Suzuki Roshi said, no, you have to stay in the situation and solve the problem. Und Suzuki Roshi sagte, nein, du musst in der Situation bleiben und das Problem lösen. Blöd. So this has been much of my life, is trying to stay in the situation and solve the problem. Okay, so if we choose to wonder, to ask, is there a true nature... That reflects how we actually exist. Then how do we make that choice?

[30:41]

No, we also have to participate in our culture. So how do we... choose a path that frees us from culture, and that also lets us participate in the culture. Now we have a second question. What cultural forms allow us to be free of culture and to participate in culture? Probably nowadays the culture is such that we can do this fairly freely.

[31:44]

But if we're going to participate in our culture, we don't want the culture to be free. one that is continuously deluding. Yeah. I remember one person I practiced with for years had his first enlightenment experience in a very simple way. He grew up in New Jersey. In New Jersey they have a particular way of talking that's even more than New York. And he went to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And they have a different way of speaking there. And he thought everyone had an accent.

[32:51]

And then at some point you realized he had an accent. And at that moment he really felt everything is relative. There's nothing fixed. We've all had that experience, but for him it's somehow okay. He was in a slightly different world after that. He was headed for being a rabbi, and instead he became a Buddhist. Okay. So if we're asking ourselves, how do we actually exist?

[34:03]

I think I should present to you the as a basis for our discussion, what I presented quite often recently. But it's something we really need to have as a basis for our discussion. But I wonder if I should do it before our break or after. I have this watch which I love because it's a 24-hour watch. But I can never tell what time it is. I actually like the confusion, but it seems to be 10 after 11.

[35:19]

It looks like 10 after 5 or something like that. So let's take a break. And we'll start pretty soon. Okay. Okay. and a chance to arrive late. It's probably impossible to stop it because if you touch it, it will continue.

[36:35]

I'm happy if it doesn't stop. You know, it wasn't just the war that made me not want to be part of the world as it's currently defined.

[38:17]

But it's also that I had various experiences that... showed me that the world as described by my education and so forth wasn't a complete picture. Yeah, I... realized that neither culture nor my experience of self was a large enough container for the world as it actually exists. So I was relieved when I found, I looked around a lot, but when I found Buddhism, I was relieved.

[39:20]

Because it tries to deal with these questions. These texts like Yuan Wu may be a thousand years ago, but they seemed contemporary to me. But, you know, I have a funny feeling this morning. Which for me What I'm talking about is, I'm a little embarrassed to say, but it's rather sacred. The relationship between the shape of the mind and the shape of the world

[40:40]

And our ability to shape the mind and thus shape the world. Because for me, the individual, the singular person, Is it the center of any society? If there's not one person who exists in a society the way the society might be, could be, Wenn es nicht in jeder Gesellschaft eine Person gibt, die so ist, wie eine Person sein könnte in dieser Gesellschaft. Then there's no reason for the society to even know about or consider the problem. of its limitations.

[41:52]

So how does each of us become the person we hope people, somebody could be? And our media-managed world seems to try to turn us all into shoppers. In the most reductive sense. Our choices of what we want are limited to what we can buy. Yeah, I mean, it's okay. I mean, I don't want to go into it. Und ich möchte mich da nicht hinein vertiefen.

[42:59]

In sich selbst ist das täuschend, aber es ist auf eine äußerst reduzierende Weise täuschend. So I'm afraid, you know, I have this feeling of... I'm talking about something that is at the center of the world, center of our culture, center of our being. Yeah, I feel that. Right or wrong, I feel that. And maybe I feel I shouldn't talk about it.

[44:06]

Or I feel I'll mess it up. I won't really... I'll make it... I myself will make it reductive or something you understand too easily. I wish this were only my problem because you just came here to hear something about Buddhism. But if it's my problem, it also, since I'm sitting here talking, it becomes sort of your problem. Yeah. You know, I'm also struck, it's partly the reading I've been doing recently, How so much of our present worldview came out of Vienna at the end of the 19th century?

[45:12]

Really, had a certain kind of effect on the kind of society Vienna was. The kind of society Vienna was. Creativity seems to float around in Paris for some decades and then it's in New York, and then at that time it seems to have been in Vienna. That's not my child. I'm afraid it is. the novelist, wanted to be free of collective identities.

[46:40]

And he didn't think it was possible actually if you removed yourself from collective identities to find any psychic or subjective unity, or to find the interactive relationship with others that are part of creating one's world. So he had a rather hopeless view, I would say, about finding unity a nature that wasn't a collective identity. And since we're social beings, defined from birth through our interactions with mother, father, and the world,

[47:41]

Yeah, an abandoned child is much more damaged than an abused child. Because any interaction seems to be better than none. But can, yeah. So how do we resist this effort of all the information that comes at us through the media trying to turn us into consumers? Because we find our identity through a certain subjective relationship with our friends and we're all in the same boat. So it's hard to resist.

[49:04]

And out of the love for others, you tend to give up resisting after a while. So I would say that Musil may have thought it was hopeless. Another person I've been reading recently who was a contemporary of Musil is Hermann Roch. I think Musil was born in 1880 and Brauch in 1886 or something. And they both died 1942 and 1951. And he's a novelist who turned into a political theorist.

[50:14]

Anyway, an impressive person to study. But he complained about the mutinous nature of civilization, the silence of civilization. And in contrast to the gangsters, as he put it, ideological gangsters who run most nations, And as he put it, put forth fascist or imperialistic or nationalistic ideas. Yeah. So I think their views, along with Freud and Wittgenstein and other Viennese luminaries, are much of our contemporary worldview.

[51:35]

Okay, if civilization is mute in comparisons to nations, And certainly America and Bush recently decided it was perfectly right to ignore the United Nations and the rest of the world. It's only national interests are speaking there and not... Who else will speak? How can they be heard? So I'm speaking about this in this way because I think, to me, practice is at the center of what the human being is and what society is.

[52:40]

And I'm not concerned whether Buddhism is the only practice, it's just the only practice I know. Yeah. Now, you know, when a baby, you're going to have a baby soon. I don't know why. It's very nice. When a baby is born, it touches things. And when we talked, probably last year, I talked about how I could sense consciousness coming down her arm. And at first she just kind of would bump me, but after a while she could actually touch me.

[53:44]

And one of the first distinctions between self and other It seems to be when a baby touches itself, it gets two senses of touch. When it touches an object or a person, it only has one sense of touch. So very early you begin to distinguish between self and other. But they've studied adults, if you present something in a self-relevant way, this is obvious, the adult learns much faster and remembers more if they can relate what they're learning to themselves.

[55:03]

So it means we may be talking about some kind of non-self or freedom from self in the usual sense. But if we're going to practice Buddhism, And you're going to make sense of what I'm talking about and we're experiencing. It has to relate to yourself. I only point that out to emphasize how pervasive self is. So I can't present a teaching that you don't see yet as relevant to self. I can only have an attentive field here If I present this in a way that I can feel is relevant to you.

[56:28]

That only makes sense, but that's the way it is. So I have to speak to your self-interest even about non-self. Impossible. Yeah. And I can't challenge the sense of self too much, or that's even worse than it not being self-relevant. So we're weaving in and out of the sense of self. And the sense of self is what gives meaning, relevance to consciousness. If a person has amnesia, And is perfectly conscious, but has no sense of self, they're lost.

[57:39]

So one aspect of consciousness has to be to support and sustain the sense of self. So what could Buddhism possibly mean by non-self? Or freedom from self, culture, etc. We have to look at the problem in a very... thorough way and a muddling way. What's our word? In a kuddelmuddel. In a kuddelmuddel way.

[58:41]

This is going to be along with winterschlaf... Gesundheit and kudelmudel is going to be my vocabulary. I have a large vocabulary, you can see. It's interesting, Sophia, if you ask her to... tell you a number on her hands. If you say, show me five or five, she, some of the times, does this. And if you say five, she can do this. But she can't do this.

[59:41]

She doesn't have the motor control to do it. Dr. Strangelove. Well, that's interesting because consciousness has been moving throughout her body now for 27 months and yet she still doesn't have certain motoric skills. She can climb a ladder quite easily. Hang on a bar. And we were walking along and I saw on the beach in Ammersee. And there was a half a part of a oil barrel or something. suspended in poles so you could have a fire in it on the beach or something.

[61:11]

And I'd never seen such a thing before, and she had never seen such a thing. But she knew immediately without words that you could go up and push it and move it around. Now, the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'm saying there are a number of tracks or streams of knowing. Und der Grund dafür, warum ich das sage, weil es eine Anzahl von Gleisen oder Spuren des Wissens gibt. Which Damasio calls, and I would agree with him, it's a good way to say it, non-verbal narratives. Und Damasio würde das nennen, und ich stimme ihm dazu, dass das gut ist, das zu nennen, narratives of knowing. Non-verbal narratives. And there's a motoric narrative too, how the world functions.

[62:15]

Ladders, this thing. To be able to look at that bell and know immediately the difference between pushing it one way and making it rotate. I'm pretty sure Sophia would get that right away, that it's a difference between moving it this way and moving it this way. So that is a stream of knowing that we have that's not thinking. Okay. Now, let me go to this, which I put this here. Can everyone more or less see this?

[63:29]

Okay. This I put on yesterday. Trying to give some kind of practical Buddhist definition of these words. We could say mind is the overall dimension of being. Consciousness is a function of mind. Self is a function of consciousness. Ego is a function of self. Okay. Now what's important about this in a Buddhist practice context is ways of knowing that are outside of consciousness are not self. They are not part of self. Self is a function of consciousness. What we know and have the experience of self is within the framework of consciousness.

[65:19]

So let me go over the... which I have found the last year or so is a kind of basic thing you should get if you want to practice seriously. What I call traditionally the four marks, And that's appearance. Duration. Dissolution. And disappearance. And that means that it's a kind of, I think of it as a kind of surgery.

[66:35]

A way of looking into how the perceptual process works. I said the other day it was like taking a glass and looking under the suds of the dishwater to see the silverware lying quietly at rest. I said the other day it was like taking a glass and looking under the suds of the dishwater to see the silverware lying quietly at rest. When I was a kid, I liked that much better than doing the dishes. I spent a great deal of time looking at the dishes. It was a metaphoric anticipation of my Buddhist practice. Okay. So with the four marks, you can kind of look at the silverware of the mind.

[67:44]

The suds of consciousness. Now what's interesting is, Damasio describes consciousness as a pulse. This neurobiologist who I mentioned. As a pulse. That every object, every percept produces a pulse you can measure. Well, if this is how biologically we know the world, this dharma practice is extremely close in the way it functions.

[68:47]

So we might be close in dharma practice We might be close not to theories of how the world is, but scientific descriptions of how the world is. It seems that if we can't... What I just said a moment ago is the past, and what I'm about to say... hasn't occurred yet, then the present is a knife edge. So if it's instantly passed and not yet future, why do we have an experience of duration?

[70:02]

That's a basic problem of trying to think about these things. What the four marks says is things appear. You notice them. Things appear whether you notice them or not, but noticing enhances the process. And I would say noticing is not a simple matter of consciousness. Noticing is much faster than consciousness. But there's a noticing that we feel. And Dimash also, I shouldn't say he agrees with me, I should say I agree with him, I suppose, but I've been emphasizing for years the most fundamental knowing is non-graspable feeling.

[71:14]

As I say, you know, there's a feeling in this room right now while we're talking. And it itself is always slightly changing. But it's this feeling that allows us to have this conversation. And I would say the feeling has more information and knowing in it than consciousness. So, Damasio says as far as he can tell biologically, feeling is the first way in which appearance appears. And that's my experience and feeling, too.

[72:22]

And then there's a sense of duration. And then there's dissolution. Because what appearance is a group of relationships. There's no entity. There's the relationship of my mind and my senses to what is appearing. There's a relationship to my energy. And I would say this stillness is a form that I spoke about last night as a meditative process.

[73:23]

This stillness is energy. I mean, it's a kind of extreme comparison to compare it to an atom, but an atom is nothing but energy, but it's still until you try to break it. But when we really are in this stillness, it's a kind of energy waiting to take form. Sukhira, she used to speak about mind as a kind of readiness. A readiness to respond. So things appear. And that appearance, if we pause for it, we can say it's presence. And I talked last night about awareness and consciousness, and I added presence.

[74:52]

So I'm trying to experiment with how to speak about presence. Because in our experience, the present is a presence. If I say present, it sounds like a thing. The present. But the present, because you know it, in your senses, in your mind, is a presence. And presences dissolve. Okay. So if I, again, just since we're here, if I look at you, Or here or feel Shiri, Carlotta downstairs.

[75:57]

All of that is a bunch of relationships. Which create a presence. But it's always changing. You can hear she's doing things down there. It's changing. And we ourselves are moving around and so forth. But it has still some duration. But it dissolves. And this is unnecessary. Except this makes it practical. Because it's going to dissolve anyway. Yeah. But this means you make it disappear. This is like erasing the black wood.

[76:59]

Yeah. So practice is to, in a sense, dharma practice, In a sense, it is to erase the blackboard after every appearance. So it's not just, you don't just let it dissolve, you erase the blackboard. Now this is... Maybe understandable. Maybe you have this experience. Yeah. But to make it your habit is unusual but not so difficult.

[78:03]

This is in the realm of All of our, I mean, unless you're seriously, you know, a mongoloid or something like that, this is it within the capacity of almost all, any human being that can learn language can learn this. And almost all of us can learn language. So it's a kind of universal quality of any relatively healthy human being. And it's what's happening anyway. Okay, so what does it take First of all, I'm going to assume you think it might be worth trying.

[79:15]

If you have this sense of how do we actually exist, you may want to take on this practice. Okay. That means first you have to get the feeling that it makes sense. If you have that feeling or understanding that it makes sense, that understanding will begin to create the possibilities to experience it. So the first step for me in presenting this is to make it understandable. Okay. And then the second step is for you to intend to bring this, to notice this process of knowing so if your practice was nothing but holding the intention to notice

[80:39]

this dharmic process, you don't need any other practice for the next few years. You don't need to read anything, study anything, know anything about Buddhism. If you do this and you realize it, you'll read Buddhist teachings, it'll all be like, woo, kindergarten. So after the habits of you know, some kind of daily sitting and daily mindfulness practice. I would say the effort to bring your attention to your breathing as continuously as possible you have attention in your posture right now, is the next most important practice.

[82:08]

And that creates a mental stability Changes the way self functions. And allows you the steadiness to see into the world, your experience, how you function. And to accept it. And to make good decisions. The second most important practice, I would say, is this Dharma practice. I mean the third after breathing.

[83:12]

Okay, and the fourth probably would be is this concentration without interruption or breaks on stillness. But so to do this, you need an understanding of it. The intention to realize it. And as I say, intention is a kind of intelligence. And just holding the intention as a presence, will begin to reveal, literally reveal to you ways in which you can practice this. And in addition to intention, you need this mature mindfulness. And the continuity of intention to breath is also an example of mature mindfulness.

[84:30]

This is something you can do in your spare time. Or you can do at any time. So I really want you to understand this is not impossible. And it just takes a little time away from your distractions, away from your problems, to pay attention to something like this. Some willingness, like how hard it is to exercise every day. Eine Bereitschaft, wie schwierig es ist, jeden Tag körperliche Übungen zu machen. But compared to when I was young, a large percentage of the population now exercises every day. Aber verglichen jedenfalls zu der Zeit, als ich jung war, ist es jetzt so, dass ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung körperliche Übungen macht.

[85:52]

When I was a kid, they would say, let's exercise, do your daily exercises. As ich ein Kind war, sagten wir, lasst es uns üben, macht deine täglichen Übungen. And now a lot of people exercise. Und jetzt machen das die Leute einfach. And I think we also have to give probably less time than you exercise. Und ich glaube, ihr müsst ihm eigentlich weniger Zeit widmen als für eure sportlichen Betätigungen oder vergleichbare Zeit. To noticing how we actually exist. And developing the mindfulness to do that. And you can even do that while you exercise. As long as you don't watch television while you exercise. Julia? Could you make a practical example? Yeah, sure.

[86:57]

Well, just now I'm looking at you. You appear to me. And there's a certain duration of your appearing. I can look away and the duration ends. But even if I continue to look at you you're changing all the time. You're not the same person. So Dogen, the way Dogen puts it which is a good gate phrase Complete that which appears. So I look at you. And I have a moment of pause. And during, yeah, maybe we could say to pause for appearance. Yeah.

[88:14]

If I pause for the appearance, that's a kind of presence. I feel your presence. But if I try to hold that, I can't because it's... Yeah. So it dissolves. And if I continue to look at you, actually you're a series of appearances. I suppose a little bit like a movie film is a series of frames. Yeah. And Dhamashya would say, even if I look at you, it's actually a series of pulses. And this biological actuality seems to parallel the Dharma practice, to make this the way you know as well.

[89:22]

So in a way, we could say you're bringing the biological way we know into the mindful way we know. And there's a consonance and resonance with that. I didn't understand the last thing. Disappearance, where you have to clean the blackboard. I'll come to it. Ah, sorry. She's asleep? She was sure shouting a little while ago. I told everybody it wasn't my child. Not one person believed me.

[90:23]

Let's just say this is a kind of letting go and not holding on. I'm willing to participate in the process of dissolution. Okay. Now let me put the five dharmas on. It's appearance, but usually it's called birth. Naming.

[91:30]

Discrimination. Right knowledge. And sessions.

[91:57]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.44