Has anyone got anything they'd like us to start with? Yes. I tried to go jogging last night and I actually can't run anymore. Und dann kam mir so eine Erinnerung, dass Roshi irgendwann mal erzählt hat, dass das Sitzen wie ein Werk ist. so the thought that i had this morning was that i jogged up the hill and then i i remembered that you once said that sitting is like a mountain oh okay Okay.

[01:11]

But then we're also in many, for instance, in psychosynthesis, but also in other schools or texts, also Buddhist texts, we talk about peak experiences and the meaning of a peak. And so when I contemplated these images, I thought it would be nice if you could speak a little bit to and about the meaning of the mountain at the peak and so forth in Buddhist practice. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Yes, Jack? Let's see. Yes, Jack? I don't understand what it means to bring attention to attention.

[02:20]

I can bring attention to a thing, but this other step of attention to attention, I don't get it. But you conceptually understand it? No. Oh dear. What can the matter be? Johnny's so long at the fair. Yeah, it's a good question because I think most of us really don't get it, the distinction. Perhaps if I have my eyes closed and I know that the bell is out there somewhere, I'm bringing attention to attention, trying to feel where the bell might be without knocking over the water, as I usually would do.

[03:31]

So that I suppose you wake up in the dark in a hotel room and you feel the room with your attention and hope you know where to go. And that's familiar to all of us to some degree. So... Anyway, you're generating, you know, it's obvious, right? Okay. But the concept and the practice of it is very, is inseparable from yogic Zen practice, all Buddhist practices.

[04:54]

I mean, let's take the basic mindfulness practice. You are noticing that you're angry or whatever. So you notice that you're angry and then you notice that you're angrier And then you notice that you're really angry. And then you notice that you're less angry. Maybe you're less angry. Okay, but what's happening here is you're creating a field of noticing which is not the anger. And the noticing stays the same even though the anger gets stronger or lesser. So now you've created a field of attention which is not the object of attention.

[05:58]

And if you do that enough, at some point you say, hmm, maybe I could shift my sense of location from the anger to the field of attention. And so you both generated the experience of a field instead of a point. And the field opens you to the experience of activity rather than entityness. And the experience of a field which is not caught by the anger

[07:13]

and the more you practice it and actually do it, and observe whatever your emotions are in a field which is not the emotion, und beobachtest, was auch immer deine Emotionen sind, und zwar in einem Feld, das nicht die Emotion ist. This is the Dharma door to the experience of equanimity and the Dharma door to the experience of stillness. Und ist das die Dharma-Tür zu der Erfahrung von Gleichmut und der Erfahrung von Stille. Okay. Thank you. Okie-dokie. Just trying to spy on people.

[08:34]

Yes. I think you've tried to bring this across to us many times, but this time the way you said it was very palpable. Good. I could feel it. Good. Good. Well, after all these years, I should get a little better at honing these explanations. Honing is like sharpening a knife. Oh, okay. Nach all diesen Jahren sollte man meinen, dass ich etwas besser darin werde, diese Erklärungen zu schärfen. Okay. Yes or no? I recently had an experience of equanimity that's a little different from how you just described.

[09:51]

It came as a big surprise to me. So which was that in the middle of a very strong emotion, I could simultaneously feel the field of attention. And there was this feeling of being able to back and forth, to step back and forth. And in that experience, I had the feeling, oh, this is how, this is what equanimity tastes like. And for me, because nothing was excluded from it, both experiences were there, could be there at the same time.

[10:58]

What was a real sense of recognition or insight? I don't think that's different from what I said. It's exactly the same. You're just proving my point. Because once you get the feeling for that, you can move between the anger and the field. And the contrast helps you strengthen the field. Now, again, remember our dictum that everything's an activity. So the anger's an activity. The field is an activity too. And I call it a Dharma door, which means it's opening to the experience of equanimity and stillness, but those themselves are dynamics.

[12:13]

So the field which is observing the anger and this developing attention to attention Und die Entwicklung von Aufmerksamkeit zur Aufmerksamkeit creates a way to study yourself. Das erschafft einen Weg, eine Möglichkeit, wie du dich studieren kannst. In fact, the whole point of Zazen is to create the stillness which allows you to observe yourself. Worum es im Zazen wirklich geht, ist die Stille zu entwickeln, die es dir ermöglicht, dich selbst zu beobachten. It's not the talking cure, it's the stillness cure.

[13:15]

It doesn't mean that talking cures don't work. Because they are helpful. But practice, Zen practice has no psychological dynamic until you develop stillness. No, active psychological dynamics. Proactive psychological dynamics. Okay. So the activity and potentialities and consequences of stillness and also, which is different, equanimity are then able to be explored also. Yes, Horst?

[14:35]

I have practiced, worked with this idea of bringing attention to attention recently and I kept wondering where am I here in the process? Am I in attention or am I in attention to attention? And I felt like I kept switching between the two. ... and why is it now mine? Because I have the feeling that this is a whole process in the course of a therapy. So I have tried through my head to get there, but through how you just explained and said it, I actually feel like I have an experiential opening into what this is about.

[16:00]

Oh, good. And the reason I'm now saying something is because I feel what you just said is an essential component element of the therapeutic process. Yes, I think it ought to be anyway. Yes. and still wish that they are aware of the fear, but not aware of the fact that they are afraid. And this process seems to me to be very important when it comes to perceiving what they are afraid of, and to pay attention to the fact that they are afraid now, that they are allowed to work with this fear, I think it is important to be aware of this, and then to talk about it.

[17:03]

So I feel that when a client experiences fear, for instance, when they are caught, they get into a kind of automatism, an automatic dynamic in which they experience fear. And they may experience attention in the fear. But they don't usually have an experience of being attentive to fear. that they are afraid. And I think that that may be similar, that in this they bring attention, if they can shift to noticing, to feeling their attention and feeling the fear, that this is a way to interrupt this automatic process, the automatism of the process. Now, is angst usually translated as fear and not anxiety? That's a good question. Who knows the answer? Because anxiety is different in English than fear.

[18:18]

Well, we have furcht and angst. So maybe furcht is fear then? Yeah. Yeah, so thanks. Okay. Making my German better. Well, I could hear, I couldn't, I could see your gestures and I could hear angst appearing, but I didn't know anything else what you were saying. But I liked your gestures. It was like in your body coming out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I think if you can make the shift from the feeling fear to noticing or feeling anxiety and noticing you're anxious is actually an important shift in my experience with people.

[19:28]

And then the practitioner... A yogic practitioner would also notice, or the teacher, if there's a teacher involved, would try to suggest that you notice the physical body that's anxious. Mm-hmm. Notice the physical body being anxious. Your body might be sweaty or your mouth might be dry or something like that. And if you notice the bodily sensations that accompany anxiety or fear, then you can notice, more likely notice, the trigger when the fear started.

[20:51]

And one of the important dynamics of yoga practice is to get the skill to notice the triggers that precede headaches, indigestion, anxiety, and so forth. And that's also helped by, Jack, by having developed this field of attention that's there all the time, even when you're sleeping in fact after a while. And that field of attention registers sometimes a day or two ahead. The flu is coming or a headache is coming or something.

[22:02]

So here we're talking about the craft of practice. Yeah, I mean, the teaching is the back door of the house. The front door of the house is practice. Something like that. But the living in the house is the craft of practice. And really, from that point of view, the teaching and the... practice, yes, okay, but the real guts of practice is the craft, which is like noticing what we're talking about. I know some of you have signaled to me that you have something to say, but there is such a thing as spousal privilege, Hildreth.

[23:14]

I know that some of you have raised your hand, but there is also the home game for marriage partners, that's why Petrus first. What you have just told us about the yogic culture, the experience, that's exactly what we do in psychotherapy. And I would say, these I would like to ask you, where do you feel your anxiety in your body? And I would like to thank you that the refinement of this method is achieved through your participation. So I wanted to say that what you just described is exactly what we do in psychotherapy.

[24:36]

You do or everyone does? All of us who are sitting here. All of you who are sitting here. And the way we do it is we would ask the client, where in your body do you feel the fear? And thus we would look also for the trigger of what caused the fear. And I want to thank you because the refinement of this method really became possible through your teaching. Yes. That's nice. I didn't expect it, but it's nice. But let me say something. My memory is not gone yet. The sophistication of some of our Western crafts is, to me, very interesting.

[25:40]

You know my daughter, middle daughter, is an opera singer. I mean, she's really an opera singer. I say that and I think, is that true? Yes, she is. The one who's pregnant again. Die, die jetzt schwanger ist. Okay. So I watched her... I saw her sing professionally for the first time just a few weeks ago when I did Graham Petchy's funeral. So I had to be in California. Ich habe gerade vor kurzem das allererste Mal singen gehört, als ich in Kalifornien war, für die Beerdigungszeremonie für Graham Petchy. Yeah. And... But some years ago I watched her in a lesson from her singing teacher.

[26:42]

And as you know, in operas people are always dying. So she's singing some aria. And what she's singing is she's just noticed a... Somebody has died and they're lying in front of her. And she has to notice it on one word of three syllables. On the first syllable, she... he's dead. She has to sound it. And it's not a word, it's just a syllable. And then she has to look up and say, and accept it and acknowledge it's happened.

[27:48]

Und dann muss sie aufschauen und es akzeptieren und anerkennen, dass das jetzt so ist. With the feeling of, what's this going to mean to me? Mit dem Gefühl und der Frage, was bedeutet das jetzt für mich? And on the third syllable, she has to look up as if to heaven for help. Und auf der dritten Silbe muss sie zum Himmel aufschauen und um Hilfe bitten. So she's doing this and the teacher says, no, no, no, no. Each syllable has to come from a different part of your body. She has to shift the syllable and convey the dead. And that can't just be voice. So we had a seminar right now. I did that New Year's seminar in Crestone and she attended it.

[29:03]

And she started talking about practice, her operatic practice, and we were talking about Zen practice, and it was very overlapped. Yes, Ulrike on the right. Ulrike on the left. Ulrike on the right. Yes. So what we just spoke about, the two of you and you responded to also, was something that I also wanted to go towards with what I said yesterday with a sentence.

[30:28]

And I would say this really is the heart of body therapy. In general or body therapy influenced by what we're doing? In general. In general, okay. I would say in the general body therapy the concept is there the door is there but how specifically to do it I think we as practitioners have worked that out yeah How is that possible? So what happens there is the client comes in with a mental construction, a narrative of what their problem is.

[32:05]

And with our question and how we ask the question of, well, how is that in the body? we immediately shift neurologically, even the parasympathetic nervous system immediately gets active and starts feeling into what's happening. And that's how we're shifting into a field of activity. Okay. So we should have a break. All right. I don't want a break, but we should have a break. You're still on my mental list. But we started this seminar with the title somehow Psyche and Soma. And we talked about soul and anima and spirit and so forth, which all are words related to breath.

[33:13]

And one thing we talked about is that in yogic practice, it's not just, these words are not just symbols for breath. You practice the breath, you develop the breath as soul or spirit or psyche or whatever. Und in der yogischen Praxis sind das nicht nur Worte für Atem, sondern du praktizierst den Atem und du entwickelst den Atem. Excuse me, was hat er gesagt? Weiß nicht, hat jemand zugehört? Keiner? Das war es schon. Okay. Okay. You know, I was asked by... What's the name of that guy in Munich who has the foundation?

[34:19]

Schweißfurcht. Schweißfurcht. Gottwald was the president. I was... asked when I first came to Germany to join a little think tank meeting that he, for him. A think tank, I mean a think tank. And he bought a huge former palace, etc., which was turning into a place to raise animals in a more Humane way. And slaughtered in a humane way. He's a very nice man. He'd sold his family business, which was some big packing company.

[35:23]

We don't know, but she said a company for sausages. Yeah. Pigs and sausages. Conventional sausages. Yeah. Anyway, so familiar, even familiar to me. And he offered me, he said, we've lots of buildings, you want one for a Zen center? But the smell wasn't too good. And I said, in fact, the process of the conversation, I said something like, ashes are ashes. Firewood is firewood and ashes are ashes. Yeah, and he kind of didn't understand what I meant. And I said, you know, firewood has its own past, present and future and ashes have their own past, present and future.

[36:39]

And he still didn't quite get it. This is the famous statement of Nagarjuna and Dogan. Das ist eine berühmte Aussage von Nagarjuna und Dogen und von mir. We just pass it along. Das gibt man einfach weiter und jetzt habe ich die an euch weitergegeben. So he still looked perplexed and I said, pig is not the past of pork. Oh. Und er sah immer noch verwundert aus. Und dann habe ich zu ihm gesagt, also ein... Yeah, because pigs have their own past, present, and future, and the human history of eating meat is inflicted on somewhat unwilling pigs.

[37:58]

Yeah, so I'm asking myself, is soul the past of psyche? Now somehow we changed to maybe to free, I'm just imagining this, maybe to free psychology and make it more of a science and use Latin terms or something and make it less of a Christian or Abrahamic idea. But really, is there a kind of slippage there? And in other words, is soul still hiding in psyche?

[38:59]

We have a history in our culture. Just a minute. Be patient. We have a history of relating to soul in a certain way, and we don't take it seriously anymore, but we take it psyche-seriously. Now, what Ulrike on the right brought up is, is psyche now shifting into the body? Are we kind of letting psyche go by emphasizing the body? Yeah.

[40:33]

So anyway, I'm trying to look at the shift from basic Christian Western Abrahamic views to Western scientific and psychological views, and now yogic views. And what I'm looking at are these shifts from basic Christian and Abrahamic views to Western and scientific views, and now maybe to more yogic views. I have often made the distinction that we're not talking in Buddhism, we're not talking about psychology, we're talking about mindology. Maybe we're even not really talking about mindology because the body and mind is a false distinction. So maybe we are talking about yogology. Oh, golly, yogology. Okay, awesome.

[41:34]

Spacey G? Spacey G. All right. You're getting... All right. So if you're talking about yogology, maybe, I'm just joking, sort of, sort of joking, what are the yogological tools we can use in our lived life and professions? Okay, so if we, as I suggest, and I'm making a little bit of a joke, but just a little bit, if we talk about a yogology, When we talk about a yogology, then the question is, what are the yogological tools that we can use in our yogic or in our therapeutic practice? My question was, if there is no psychotherapy in the ideologies, then there should be no psychotherapy.

[43:04]

But partially you've answered the question already. But still, basically, if soul is now translated into psyche, and if in yogic, bitte, should I think of? Nein, okay. It is actually the process. Okay, so she says that since soul is translated into psyche, and since there is no soul in yogic culture, then there shouldn't be a psychotherapy in yogic culture. That's a possible conclusion. All right. However, Psychology does work for people, helps a lot of people.

[44:14]

As we say, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You say that in Germany too? One of my main points here is that we don't want to reject our tradition, our birth tradition, cultural tradition. We want to understand it well enough so we actually see the differences. I mean, Latinate terms, the binomial system that Carl Linnaeus developed for plants. What terms?

[45:20]

Latinate. Plants in botany, since Carl Linnaeus, all have Latin names. And it And at that time in Europe, because of Catholicism, Latin was a common language for all European countries. Common language for European countries. Okay. Eine übliche Sprache für europäische Länder. But then it became a way to make things sound scientific when there's no real reason. Just give a Latin name and then it sounded like science. Ego, you know. Dann, was daraus entstanden ist, ist, dass auf einmal Dinge einfach lateinische Bezeichnungen bekommen haben, einfach um wissenschaftlicher zu klingen.

[46:30]

Und zum Beispiel ego... I think Freud started out with upper I and lower I or something like that. And so, again, what I'm saying is, psyche is a useful concept, but if we see that psyche has smuggled soul back into our thinking or vice versa, maybe we should be aware of that. And I do think that yoga practice can learn from psychology. Yeah, I mean, when I was young, I was a pretty messed up guy. And I developed, and I also did psychotherapy, but I also developed Zen practices

[47:34]

into psychological practices, which I sometimes think I should have written a book about the psychological use of Zen practice. And Monica, do you want to wait till after the break? Mike, can you... It's time to do it. Would it make sense for you to take another reference, maybe this is just my observation, to this score of 35, Say and Her Soul Are Separated. Oh, yeah. Because it's present for me all the time. And because it's this theme... gate.

[48:50]

So for me, still as present as this koan, say and her soul are separated. Yeah, but it should not be the word soul in the koan. Yeah, that's right. And I wonder if I could somehow refer. Well, we'll see. Okay, one, two, five, seven, eight. And I've multiplied those and it's 14,257. Okay. Thank you very much. Vielen Dank. Vielen Dank.

[49:22]

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