particularly the last 100, 150 years. And we have valuable ideas and experiences like individuation. Yeah, and our blindsided, plank-carrying U.S. government Plank carrying means you walk with a big plank and you can't see to the side. Yeah. You know, it wants to rearrange the Near East in terms of individuation so that there can be democracy. wants to rearrange the political realities of the Near East.

[01:05]

So they can bring in what they call democracy, which means bringing in individuation in a way those cultures don't individuate. Yeah, no. I don't mean to say, of course, that Zen practice doesn't individuate. In fact, Zen practice grew up in group cultures and is an emphasis on individualism. It's in a group culture. You're a sociologist in a group culture, but it emphasizes individuation. Or better, it emphasizes autonomy. Oder besser, es betont die Autonomie.

[02:10]

Okay. But if you're an individual in a group culture, it's different than being an individual in a non-group culture. Because it's come into my memory once. It's coming from there. Yeah, there are thousands of moth wings. Thousands of moth wings. The, you know, this anecdote I've told again sometimes of my, again, my daughter Sally. And the story I've told often, again from my daughter Sally. We told her when she was tiny, we said, you have to do what we say. And she wouldn't listen to her mother. So I came in. I said, Sally, you have to listen.

[03:12]

Virginia and I made you. You belong to us. And she said, it's too late now. I belong to me. I like that. Well, that's autonomy. I belong to me. And you know, I've been reading and studying the work of Alan Shore and John Bowlby recently. John Bowlby. Yeah. And in this study of the relationship of the mother and infant and studying the relationship

[04:20]

left-right brain imaging of both simultaneously. Alan Schor would say biologically they are a single neuronal unit or something like that. the brains of mother and infant are lighting up in such similar ways, it's like it's more connection between the two right brains than there are between the left and right brain of one person. Why was I speaking about it? Autonomy, yeah. What's important in this relationship, according to Alan Shore, is there's extreme connectedness and then separation.

[05:38]

So there's three modes the mother has to relate to. One is the connectedness. The autonomy. And then the repair, because the mother isn't perfect. So then you have to repair the interference with the autonomy. What has to be repaired? If the mother interferes when the baby infant pulls back and is self-regulating, auto-regulating, it's damaging to the baby. So there seems to be three modes in milliseconds, you know, it's going on, of connectedness, separation, and repairing the relationships. And one of the things he says is that if you look at adults later, if there's been abuse, of course it's damaging.

[06:59]

But abused kids are much better off than abandoned or neglected kids. Because even negative interaction is better than no interaction. So I think I'm mentioning this only for, well, two reasons. One reason is I think these things that we're talking about in practice are very fundamentally and biologically rooted in our behavior. Ich erwähne das aus zwei Gründen. Zum einen, weil ich glaube, dass diese Dinge sehr grundlegend und biologisch in uns verwurzelt sind. The connectedness with the mother and the autonomy. It's really a version of Avlokiteshvara and Manjushri.

[08:14]

The outward movement and the movement so there's nothing but you. I alone, this world is ready made for me. There's no one else in the world but me. Because I practice, there's a Buddha. And most of these teachers, like Nichiren Dogen, they felt this teaching was done just for me. Not in some megalomaniacal way or lack of humility but such a profound sense of connectedness. And to feeling of responsibility.

[09:18]

This world is made for me, so I have a responsibility in this world. No one can take my position. No one can take your position. It's only your position. This is a kind of autonomy. The whole world is drawn in. And these are elements of practice. When you look at social terms, that doesn't sound very modest or humble. It's not about something more fundamental than social ideas of humbleness or something. Okay, so there's two reasons. One reason is to speak about this really basic thing of connectedness and autonomy. And once you see the three functions of self, as I started to say, you can notice when you're already connected or when you're already separated.

[10:21]

Now, practice is clearly to emphasize connectedness over separation. And practice is also to transform how you establish continuity from moment to moment. But there's a fourth function of self that we should include, which is meaning. The self has to supply meaning. If you have amnesia, you don't know who you are, you're wandering around, you're doing things, you have body familiarity, you don't walk into cars, but you end up in some strange place, you don't know how you got there.

[11:31]

That would be an absence of self. Autobiographical self. Now we have a problem. How does non-self supply meaning? How does non-self-preferential self supply meaning? And more than meaning is caring. And caring, I would say, is the really the vow to be alive, rooted in the vow to be alive. So meaning, care, and compassion are human and bodhisattva elements of the function of self.

[12:32]

Okay. And as I've said, I've been struck by the people I knew in college. It's not the smartest ones who succeeded. It's the ones who cared the most. There were some real mathematical wizards, you know, for instance, when I was in college, but the ones who cared about how the science affected the world and people, they're the ones who are well-known scientists now. So there's caring and meaning, which is part of the function of self. Okay, now I'm also...

[13:35]

mentioned this business of Bowlby and Alan Shore. And what, again, what interests me if we, because you're a psychotherapist and I can speak a little bit about something which I don't know much about. Freud tried to root everything in some Things that happened when you were young or an infant? And I believe that Freud's main two successors in the psychoanalytic society, or whatever it was, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, tried to root adult behavior in either fantasy or edible conflict or stuff like that. In fantasy, or my baby's milk is poisoned, or Oedipal conflict.

[15:14]

Oedipal, I'm sorry. I should have known. In Oedipal conflict. Okay. What's interesting to me is that the conceptual framework of all three of these people, and Bowlby... What interests me is the conceptual framework of all three of these people and of Bobby. He died recently. Okay, so all four of these people have the model that there's a beginning, there's a seed. The seed determines the future. Of course, that's partly true. But in a Buddhist framework, there's no beginning and no end. So we would emphasize, and you can see it in practice, always working with symptoms, not the source of the symptoms, is one way to put it.

[16:25]

Or to transform the knowing mind rather than the mind known through memory or something like that. Now, both emphases, I think, are important. And what's boldly emphasized, and being more of a scientist than, I guess, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud were, and trying to look to research more than theory, he seemed to emphasize the secure emotional attachment. And there's no question in my mind that this fundamental trust, this secure emotional attachment is essential.

[17:32]

And what he says is, this is primarily established in the first 18 to 24 months. When there's this amazing growth spurt of the brain from 400 grams to 1,000 grams, and part of that growth occurs in the last trimester, the end of pregnancy, But most of it is postnatal, after the baby is born. So it's not just genetically determined, probably, but determined by the environment.

[18:38]

The environment. And the environment being primarily the mother. The father doesn't stumble onto the scene until about 18 months. I tried to stumble on earlier. Okay. So, according to Alan Shore, as long as the right brain is dominant, and the linguistic, the language side of the brain is not dominant, all this brain growth happens. The limbic system, everything, you know, going forward. Okay. And when the right, left brain becomes dominant, the language, so-called language side, this development of the right brain slows down.

[20:00]

Okay. But he says that you can see that the mother's brain also changes during this process, not just the infant's brain. So there's plasticity in the mother's brain, even as an adult, not just the infant's brain. So I would say that from a biological point of view, what Buddhism is trying to do, meditation, is to extent that this right brain, left brain stuff makes sense. By suspending language or suspending thinking. Or looking past thinking or identifying with the field of mind. We're giving more balance to this right brain, left brain dominance.

[21:24]

We could say this inward movement of Manjushri is to give left brain dominance. So maybe Regina is walking down the aisle with her right brain and not her left brain. So practice, I think, is affecting you biologically. And it's some understanding that if you suspend thinking, comparative activity, actually change the way you biological emphasis and change the biological development even as an adult.

[22:35]

So you can't any longer establish a secure relationship with your mother. You might be able to improve it a little with Hoffman's quadrinity process. But it's too late to establish a secure relationship with your mother. She's a different person. But you can establish a secure relationship with yourself. And that's what I mean by finding your seat, finding your ease. And that secure relationship with yourself is at the center. And from that you can extend to secure trusting relationships with others. Oh dear, how did I get into all that?

[23:49]

I'm sorry. Yes. I'm wondering how a more contact with art and art is. I know... those people very often have a strong emphasis on that right for silent prayer. Seems like it, yeah. And those who also meditate, especially those who meditate on one side and also on the other, I think so, that they are still more on the right side. Stand on the left side. Yes. I know artists who have never driven a car. And they just get in a car and, oh, no, no, thank you.

[24:56]

Yes, yeah, like that. They did, a friend of mine did tests with these sensory deprivation tanks. Or you put somebody down in a salt water kind of blah, blah, blah in the 60s, right? And airline pilot types, we used to, you know, they panicked in these things. But artist types said, sink me down again. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll have lunch. I don't think that I don't plan for us to break up into small groups this afternoon.

[25:58]

Don't plan. Unless you thought it would be a good thing to do, particularly. But I would like to continue our general discussion and not just me talking. But I'd like to make a few comments directly. When I spoke about this in the development of the brain, increasing in brain mass so quickly. I noticed Felix looked quizzical at something I said, and then he spoke to me afterwards.

[27:07]

Because it did sound like I said that after birth it's environmentally driven, not genetically driven. I didn't mean to say that. But since my own feeling is that the potentialities, given the genetic base, are almost infinite, are infinite facts, even though it has a limited base. Yeah. Soon, Sophia won't be able to learn Chinese and other languages very easily. And I always think of the This example I must have told you of the Australian Aboriginal girl and the little white girl.

[28:27]

Do you remember that? I just saw it on television, some anthropological film. They had a log, I mean a stump, a tree stump, Sie hatten so einen Baumstumpf. Baumstumpf. I like the energy in German. Baumstumpf. Piled with all kinds of things, rocks and feathers and sticks tangled together, etc. Und da war alles mögliche Zeug draufgepackt, Steine und Federn und Äste irgendwie so durcheinander. And they brought this two little girls, little white girl, blonde, little aboriginal black girl. And they just brought them up to it and then knocked everything off the stump.

[29:29]

And they asked the white girl to put it back on the stump and she put a few things back on the stump. And the little Aboriginal girl just put them back on, just like she had a Polaroid picture, you know, like a spy, to put everything back. I remember I was astonished to see it. I mean, that's a really different mind. Without even attention, she just brought up more. She just saw it and could do it. Of course, the little white girl can do other things, but I'm not saying one's better, obviously. It's just they're different, very different. It's the difference between somebody who grows up in the country or...

[30:30]

Far mountains compared to a city kid. Carried to a very big difference. I remember I knew this young man when I was in college. And he'd grown up in Arizona. And now I know a little more of what he felt. I went to school in the Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts area. And he had grown up in Arizona. And, you know, where our center is in Crestone, the valley in front of us is the size of the entire state of Connecticut.

[31:59]

I mean, there can be many Bostons in Connecticut. And there can be many Bostons. And there could be. Yeah. And he just couldn't stand being in Boston. He says, These spaces, I can't handle it. You know, he couldn't stand spaces. He was used to everything's hundreds of miles apart. And he left college. He dropped out after a year. Went to college in Arizona someplace. Yeah. And he probably grew up in those days without tellers. And the kids nowadays wouldn't have that feeling from Arizona. They wouldn't feel that way today. They all have a new kind of game space they share. It's another kind of space, for sure.

[33:12]

My friend Bill Thompson has, you know, I don't know if you know him, but he's written, I don't know, 14 books or so. His son is... A smart person, a writer too, won't read anything that's not on a screen. He simply won't read a book. He reads all his books on a screen. A electronic space, anyway. So I would say, I mean, that yes, the development occurs on a genetic base.

[34:19]

But when the potentials are nearly infinite, you can say it's nearly driven by the environment and not genetics. And if the child is abandoned at this point, genetics don't help it much. So I say that only to say that I feel in meditating the possibility of innumerable worlds that feels like to me. And I used to have a problem in the early years of meditation of what's going to be the reference point? What if I lose a reference point? Now, some of you might, who aren't familiar with, you know, doing seminars here, like we're doing, or with me.

[35:43]

Why I don't join you for the meditation for the first, this half hour, like just now. Well, there's two reasons mainly. One is I don't want to get too engaged in sitting. If I do, I can't speak to you. I need a point of view separate from from you and from meditation. Yeah. So, in Sashin it's the same. If I had to balance, if I did the entire Sashin, I couldn't give a lecture.

[36:48]

So I sit in most of the Sashin, but I miss one period in the morning, I miss the period before a lecture, things like that. So I have to feel the people in the Sashin separate from a mediated point of view. A point of view which is mediated through me. Yeah, and I also find that if I join the meditation, From the beginning.

[38:02]

Although, because we do, we start to share a mutual mind. Or at least aspects do. And you know, they've done studies which show that in a Sashin type thing, I think they've only done studies of 12 people, but that's enough. They've only done studies with subjects up to 12, at least the last I heard. And everyone starts, their metabolism, all of them, and brain patterns all start being similar within fairly quick... Like pendulum clocks start swinging together in the same household. Yeah. So any one pendulum affects the whole group. So I don't want to influence your meditation. So I want to come in and feel your meditation, usually for a few minutes, and not feel my own input into the meditative mind.

[39:25]

Because I need the difference in order to find what to say. Now, what I'm trying to get at by talking about this is how does non-self supply meaning? Now, I've actually never asked myself this question until today. So to answer, to respond, I don't know if I'm going to be able to respond to the question. I never know, you know. And I have to approach it with a confidence of not knowing. Or a confidence of I may not be able to tell.

[40:41]

I may not be able to figure this one out. But I have to... So what I have to do is feel my way into my own experience. Bring up in myself the experience or... sit enough to have the experience of non-self rather than self. And notice how I function. How do I manage? And that usually takes a few days, actually. I have to keep bringing the question into my experience. Okay, so what my sense at the present time is, is that to know a feeling, an emotional state or whatever,

[41:49]

We have to know, we know that feeling through a second feeling, the feeling of self. So if the usual feeling of self isn't there, how do you know anything? So normally we have to separate an I pronoun I and I-subject experience to then be conscious of our experience. But what happens when this I-subject virtually disappears? or is absorbed into subjectivity, mind itself. I feel it almost like if this is the surface of the mind, it's like this, and then it flattens into the mind.

[43:18]

Sometimes it pokes up, and then you have an observing self. Sometimes it flattens back into it. You know, this may not be of any use to you or interest to you, but since in the process of today I asked myself this question, I have to find a way to answer it if I can. I think in the long run it's important to, of our discussion, it's important to answer it. And I think it's some years ago that I spoke with you about, in a way, moving the alaya-vijnana out in front of the manas, which means the mediating, editing function of mind called manas.

[44:26]

All your perceptions go through mind. But in practice, they become more direct and they don't go through the editing function in mind. What I would say now is that amnesia is a problem of memory. You still know what chairs are and streets and roads. You just don't know who you are. The autobiographical self in relation to these things is lost. So there's no autobiographical self giving meaning. So you have lost that point of view.

[45:37]

But you still don't walk in front of street cars. So you know what a streetcar is. Okay. So I would say that you, much like Regina shopping in the grocery store, I would say that the streetcar itself carries a reference point of subjectivity, of meaning. Yeah, now maybe that's just too much for us to talk about, and I'm not expecting to talk about it. It's just, I'm just sharing with you my kind of, trying to feel my way into the problem I created for myself.

[46:41]

Vielleicht ist das zu viel hier, um darüber zu sprechen. Ich versuche einfach, für mich den Weg hineinzuführen in das Problem, das ich für mich geschaffen habe.

[46:52]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.9