I see that Bernd has a few Sabotons and Zafus in the entryway. And I always like to support him. Because he's been making cushions for us for so many years. Let's support us. not always in samadhi, but support us. And I always find it, my sitting changes all the time and I need a little higher, a little lower. So I buy a couple of pillows, but we have some at Janus, at Krest Janusov, don't we? So I don't have to carry them if I buy them at Janusov. You just lost a sale, I'm sorry. But you'll get one, I'm sorry. Yeah, so I would like to, if any of you would like to, I would like to continue your discussion of yesterday afternoon.

[01:22]

Yeah, but first let me say, what's going on here? So, partly I'm here just for the sheer pleasure of being with you. Is that a confession? Yeah, I mean, it's nice to... Some of you I see once a year only, and some of you I see many times a year. And this is the only city I go to which doesn't have an active sitting group.

[02:28]

And I stopped going to any city years ago when we started Yamasoft that didn't have an active sitting group. And years ago, when we founded the Johanneshof, I actually stopped going to cities that didn't have an active sitting group. Or an agreeable sitting group. There were two sitting groups in Brussels, but they were fighting with each other, so I said, okay, you fight, I'm not coming anymore. Or sitting groups that at least get along with each other. For example, in Brussels, there were even two sitting groups, but they always argued with each other, and then I said, well, I'm not going to you anymore. But this, for me, is now an institution of North Central Germany. And I think of myself as a farmer baker. Dharma Farmer Baker. And I have a friendship with the Dharma Farmer Roarman.

[03:29]

So I'm at least trying to bring some seeds and cookies, both the electronic kinds and the coffee bread kind. Into our kind of agricultural festival here. And agri, I don't know in German, but agri means field and to cultivate a field. So agri means field, and culture means to order, to develop the field. So it's the North German Dharma Festival that you organize every year.

[04:34]

And she's a farmer's daughter, so you know. And she's also the daughter of a farmer, so it fits that she translates it. Suki Roshi was a farmer's son. A farmer's grandson. Yeah. So first, it's just a pure pleasure being with you. And then... And then the first day and part of yesterday. Because we experience ourselves as selves of some kind.

[05:35]

I tried to just present various ways of looking at the self as a continuum, et cetera, et cetera, to let these things, to just bring some things up that would maybe gestate in you, gestate in the womb of the bodily mind, Yeah, okay. And be warmed in the incubation of your Zafu sitting. Incubate is to sit on an egg. Because experiential Zen practice does not happen really through understanding.

[06:41]

There's certain things it's helpful to understand, but they really only... happen to you through sitting. And then yesterday I particularly in the afternoon I tried to give you some a refresher of one of the most basic teachings. But you can find some hooks or connections with, and let them structure your practice in some ways.

[07:43]

I mean, the five skandhas are so basic, you can hardly call yourself a Buddhist if you don't practice the five skandhas. Yeah. But I don't care whether you call yourself a Buddhist. Yeah. I accept you anyway. I don't know why, but... Because of the pure pleasure of being with you. Okay, so that was, you know, a little announcement. And now, does anyone want to continue yesterday's discussion? You're continuing?

[09:05]

I feel like we're two Indians in a movie. Ow. American movie. Yes. I asked myself this morning, we talked about the experience of the self and the experience of existence yesterday. And about the five skandhas as individual continuums in these worlds of experience. And now, actually, I'm just... I'm not quite sure about the relationship between these two. Whether... We spoke yesterday about the experience of self and the experience of existence. And we spoke about the skandhas as dimensions in those experiences.

[10:15]

And what's not quite clear to me is whether, I mean, could you say that the fourth and the fifth skandha is where the world, where the experience becomes self-experience and where the first, second and third skandha, the experience is experience of existence. Yeah, that's a thoughtful notation. And certainly the self comes into its full definition within consciousness. In that sense, self is a construct of consciousness. And as soon as you are in associative mind, like again Freud noticed, people start knowing things about themselves or knowing things that happened to them in the past or that they think about, which they don't know consciously.

[11:44]

So the self's grip on your identity Or the self as an identity. Begins to, is loosened up in the fourth skanda. Yeah. But... Okay, more of that later. Someone else? Yes? Dorothea. My question goes into the same direction. Really? What confused me yesterday was this term that the self is a construct.

[12:48]

Oh, I'm sorry. It should disturb you. If it doesn't disturb you, you're in trouble. Anyway, I'm kidding, but go ahead. Because there's also experiencing and being. And... I don't know. In any case, So the way I see it is there is a body breath formation. And in this body breath formation, clouds appear. Thinking cloud or associative cloud. Or several clouds all at once.

[14:09]

Sounds like my computer. And there is something about calling it a construct. Where is experiencing? Well, you can have a construction within which you have experience. In fact, it would be difficult to experience the world without a construct. I mean, culture and the development of the mind creates a construct which allows us to notice things and experience things.

[15:13]

So experiencing shouldn't be interfered with. How can I put it? experience happens through the construct of the self, etc. But it happens in a particular way. And Buddhism is a way to change the construct of the self and the bodily mind, so that enlightenment is more likely and mental suffering is eliminated, reduced or eliminated.

[16:21]

Buddhism is a way of changing the construct of the mind in such a way that enlightenment becomes more likely and mental suffering is less likely or even completely eliminated. Okay, now practice tries to get you to the point where a self is not a construct or something close to not being a construct. Okay. So otherwise enlightenment and wisdom make no sense. Because if you had an inherent nature, you couldn't reconstruct it. Because it is a construct, then you can use wisdom to reconstruct it. So what you're bringing up is that kind of conceptual understanding is important that you're bringing up, because without that conceptual understanding, you don't know how to make practice work for you.

[17:45]

So it's important that you address this kind of conceptual understanding, because without this kind of conceptual understanding, you can't really make the practice work for you. In my opinion, it's like experiencing what's inherent. So then in my thinking, then it would be as if experiencing is something inherent. No. If I don't see it as construct. It's impossible that it's not a construct. It's constructed from your senses. And you have only five senses, five physical senses. And those senses decide what you're going to notice. As I often say, there's movies going on in here and television programs and all kinds of stuff going on in here, radio programs, a really good song I hear.

[19:01]

And you don't have the senses to receive it. So your five physical senses plus your mental sense, which is also a source, And so are your five bodily senses plus the sense of the mind, which is also a source. They are programmed by your culture. And we're trying to reprogram them. If you see space as separating, you've got a program which says, hey, space separates. And that's only partly true. Okay.

[20:02]

And the way I talk, it sounds like I'm giving consciousness a bad name. But consciousness is your good friend. There's Conrad Consciousness and Connie Consciousness. There's Conrad Consciousness and Connie Consciousness. So Conrad and Connie are your feminine nature and your masculine nature, hanging out with you. And Connie says, be a little nicer, and Conrad says, be a little more aggressive. And Conrad says, be a little more aggressive. Those are political no-no's to characterize men and women that way. But anyway, Konrad and Connie are always giving you advice.

[21:14]

You better think about this and you better figure out what time the bus is and blah, blah, blah. But you don't identify with they're not you they're just good friends helping you and happily they sleep in another room when you go to bed they have their own room okay Yes. Yes. Okay.

[22:30]

So if practice always happens within a concept, as a concept, then is the sequence of the skandhas, is that particularly important? I mean, I can see that sometimes the feeling is more at the foreground, I relate more to that, or sometimes the perception is more in the foreground. But do I, as a practitioner, should I always check on the sequence? No, no, not at all. Yeah, is that... Okay, but also in studying it. Should I study it as a sequence? It is a sequence. It's a sequence, a logical sequence when you go from one to five. If it's a philosophical, logical sequence when you go from one to five. And it's an instructional, experiential sequence when you go from five to one. And if we have time, I'll run through that later.

[23:35]

In addition to your question, may I also say, when you're sitting, your chin is a little up. You're sort of sky gazing. I mean, not that excited. So not really that you pull your chin in, but you feel your spine coming up through the back of your head. And in Zen, our posture is really more important than the teachings almost. Okay. Someone else? Yes. I would like to report from group 2 and think that it has become clear to us or to me that the five standards are not something that one leaves behind, as I have understood so far.

[24:51]

So I would like to give a report from the group with Gisela yesterday. And I'm grateful to have learned that the skandhas are not something to be left behind. And that's the way that I used to understand the Heart Sutra. Oh, okay. But that they are a practice to understand the construction of the self. Yeah. Can I make your language more precise? Their construction to show us the absence of the self in the experience of existence. None of the five skandhas are called self. They're absent from the self. So it's an ape. construction and deconstruction of the experience of existence, of existing.

[26:15]

And, like the Heart Sutra says, they're simultaneously empty. It's not that they're put away, they're just simultaneously empty. But that should be not say, oh, everything in Buddhism ends up being empty. It's so damn boring. I think I'm going to go to Aldi. So But emptiness makes sense when you discover how it is actually your immediate and can be your immediate experience. Otherwise, it's just some kind of philosophical nonsense.

[27:17]

Okay. So, next? Das nächste. I would like to ask one more question, which has been raised, that is the question again, how does the Gangna better understand? Because we know the translation as impulses, but yesterday you told us that it is a associative field. How can you connect these two things? And then I have a question about better understanding the fourth skanda, because we have the translation of the fourth skanda as impulses, but yesterday you presented it as an associative field. How do those two go together? I'm right, they're wrong. Ich habe recht und die anderen haben unrecht.

[28:20]

No. No. I'm trying to describe the Skandas in the context and the paradigms of Western culture. And D.T. Suzuki uses the word confections. How is that translated? How does that work? Confections? A patisserie. A pastry is a confection. Something put together. What are pastry shops called in Germany? Yeah, what else are they called? Yeah. Okay, in America sometimes they're called confectionaries. Yeah. That sounds like the word skanda is a coffee break. So there's this problem that I'm speaking about, the linguistic resources. So when you examine your practice of the fourth skandha, the experience of the fourth skandha, it's useful to look at the various ways it's translated.

[29:46]

Confection emphasizes that the fourth skanda starts putting things together. Outside of consciousness. And impulses suggest that They arise independently of thinking. But then you have to ask, where do they arise from? Is it instinct or something? So impulses I don't think is such a good translation. And I think with Freud's emphasis on the process of free association, creates an entry for the translation of associative mind.

[31:18]

So these things that appear arise through their associations in the mind, but not necessarily in consciousness. And not through instinctual impulses of some sort. Yeah. But in zazen you can feel if you have some kind of impulse, things appear in the mind. But the translation as associative mind also works much better with the understanding of the Alaya Vijnana. All right. Okay. Yes.

[32:30]

I would like to add to this. In German, yes. Yes. I came to the conclusion that one thing does not apply, namely when I react to something very quickly from my behavior patterns. Sometimes I have very quick reactions, much faster than I can think, and in the meantime I can I always see clearly that it comes from how I was raised and how I functioned. And that is not an ethical thing, but an impulse. Yeah, that's good.

[33:35]

And unfortunately the impulses are faster than your conditioning. I think my impulse, I mean, in this case I described that the impulse comes from the conditioning. I know, but also you have conditioning to not say certain things or not do certain things, and it happens before you can stop it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I find, I mean, if I am, like, inert enough, to at least why it happens to observe it. That is the first step to slow this down and eventually hold my mouth. Yeah, so I found in that instance I mean, I found in my experience something where the word impulse fits, I mean, the way I understand the fourth skandha. Yeah, that reminds me of something I haven't talked about in a long time, because, but the... This reminds me of something I haven't talked about in a long time.

[35:14]

Part of what happens through the development of zazen, for instance, if there's a certain amount of pain with sitting sometimes, you develop an ability to just let it happen without reacting to it. It happens in a big space and you don't have to react. And when you develop the skill of not reacting, you also are freeing yourself from... self in some ways.

[36:20]

And you kind of create a space. And things happen in this space and then you can decide which ones to act on. Yeah, and I used to image it. My image of it when I was younger was like a pipe in a heating system, often has a round basketball-like shape, which goes through, which allows pressure to release, and then it goes continuing. Both are okay. That's not fine. Yeah, so that... So you're not involved with either expressing or suppressing.

[37:47]

You don't have to express or suppress. You can allow yourself to feel something completely, but not act on it. And that's a very important psychological dimension of practice. Is that you allow yourself to feel things completely and sometimes pretty radically extreme. But because you have absolute confidence that you won't act on them, and once you really have the absolute confidence you don't have to act on things it becomes a kind of psychoanalytic process which you can allow yourself to feel more and more things

[38:50]

It's like associative mind, but in a space in which you don't have to act. And that changes the way you function. It's funny. I used to speak about that in the 60s and 70s, but Maybe I'm going back in time. It's funny, I've talked about it in the 60s and 70s. Maybe it's a kind of time machine. I'm going back in time, the Hannover Farm Time Machine Festival. What you just said, in connection with the third scale, what you just said is relatively... So for me this is in relationship to the third skandha, and what you just said is still a little foreign to me.

[40:24]

I can understand it, but I don't have a direct access to it. Well, I understand that in the third scandal, or maybe I can go into that a little bit. So one thing I can enter to some extent is in the third skanda, pure perception, where that is to me like an access, like an entry into non-duality. Yeah, that's true. And my feeling is that what you just said about not having to react, that somehow very strongly belongs into that territory.

[41:31]

Okay. Because it's a very subtle step from ordinary consciousness and the subject-object distinction that suddenly everything dissolves as object. and this little extra question from yesterday maybe you could say something about this later on about the Japanese mother and the yes and no and this empty space in between I have some kind of intimation that that also has to do with non-duality, but I'm not quite sure.

[42:52]

Well, I'll just respond with an example right now. After I'd been practicing with Sukhira Shia And it was clear he said I would be his successor. I asked him, did you ever have any feeling that I would do this and I'd be your student in the way I am? And he completely shut me down. I mean, he wouldn't, because I was trying to identify myself, and he would not in any way react to that. Yeah, I remember trying to confirm my understanding with him about something.

[44:20]

And again, he just turned and walked away. Because he wanted me to show I understood in some way other than verbally. Weil er wollte, dass ich zeige, dass ich das verstehe, auf irgendeine Art und Weise, die nicht verbal ist. Er war froh, wenn ich mein Verständnis gezeigt habe, aber nicht übers Sprechen. Ich glaube, es ist Zeit, eine Pause zu machen. Es sei denn, eure Beine sind jetzt nicht mehr gebrochen. And what you said, Volker, I've now taken away what I was going to speak about after the break. So I'll try to say some of what you said in a different way.

[45:22]

Thank you, friends.

[45:22]

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