in discussing it with you, partly because I'm thinking in terms of the current consciousness studies, which tries to study any manifestations in the brain, nervous system, etc., of the presence of self, reflection, and so forth. So sort of in the context of that kind of thinking, we're having this conversation. And the other context for this, what we're discussing, would be the pedagogy of Zen. In other words, how, once you are familiar with much of practice, do you establish a way of teaching?

[01:05]

How can you establish a way of teaching? that doesn't tell the student where to go, but gives the student the possibility of going there. Some people, their practice is quite realized, but they have no idea how to teach. When they try to teach, they get things all boggled up. But, I mean, they can teach by example, but if somebody asks them a question, they just don't have the ability to articulate. They've never noticed it clearly enough to... There's no reason to notice it. Much of what I do here has developed in Europe.

[02:20]

Because I found myself in a situation where there are quite a lot of people who wanted to practice seriously. But they're not going to come to Crestone. And before I went to Crestone, we had a center where in the mountains, very isolated in the middle of 350,000 acres of wilderness, Before Christo? I was in California. Okay. Yeah, Sukhiroshi and I started a monastery which was in the middle of 350,000 acres of wilderness.

[03:27]

And during the years I was the teacher, I had to be practicing with somebody continuously for five years before I'd let them come there. And they had to make a commitment to stay there at least two years without leaving or I wouldn't accept them. And that was the main place I practiced. Everything, all the other centers fed into this one center. So when I came to Europe, I didn't have that context. So I found I had to start teaching in non-traditional ways.

[04:30]

I had to point out a lot more. Because I found that people just weren't getting it unless I gave them hints. And there was a constant miss either finding koans meaningless and there was either finding koans meaningless or a constant misreading and misuse of the Zen teachings. Most people assuming that Zen was to try to realize oneness or something. Yeah, which, you know, there are well-known Zen teachers in the lineage who say oneness, but I'm sure their practice wasn't oneness.

[05:46]

It's just verbally they said it because they didn't articulate their verbal teaching well enough, in my opinion. There are traditional Zen teachers, not present, I mean in the lineage from the Song Dynasty. In the tradition of the Song Dynasty. who you can see in transcriptions of their teachings, they talk about the realization of oneness. My guess, if they were good Zen teachers, that wasn't the case in their actual practice. It may have been they just were clumsy in their expression of a teaching. Or it's a medicine teaching.

[06:50]

In other words, you say it that way because people can understand it, like using the image of a mirror is a medicine teaching, but not an accurate teaching. I don't know. It's all right that I'm talking about this. Yeah. So anyway, I found the combination of people trying to notice their own practice and combined with people trying to make sense of the written teaching, my trying to be more explicit and my emphasizing the craft of Zen practice, not just the suddenness of Zen practice, has actually helped to, I think, improve

[07:59]

develop a considerable maturity within the Dhamma Sangha in practice. At least from my point of view and my experience. Okay. Yeah, just let me think. But sometimes I am concerned about it because if I'm too explicit, then people, it begins to be, people turn it into a road map. Or a comparison. Oh, I haven't realized this, so I'm not good enough or something.

[09:15]

Because the strict tradition is you never talk to anyone about what they haven't experienced yet. But I can't do that unless I'm actually practicing it individually. So I'm, you know, my doing it this way is an experiment. So far I'm willing to continue. Although I'm subject to a fair amount of criticism that it's too theoretical, it's too intellectual, it's too much talking and, you know, I can't stand it, you know.

[10:35]

But if we feel it, it's not too much, I think. But there's always some people who leave. By the way, did he go to the concert or something? Shall we let him come back tomorrow? Yeah, but he didn't ask me. If he did that in a traditional context, like, he would never come back. But we're not that kind of context. Okay. Yeah, I know, I'm still... Okay, yes.

[11:44]

You were next? Yeah. Anyway, I noticed you, so... I refer to the question how the non-self supplies meaning and to Christa's experience. And suddenly I had the idea that instead of meaning you could say continents. Continence in English means to not have sex. Coherence? Coherence?

[12:47]

Which is okay, it's a monastic practice sometimes too. Coherence? Coherence? Well, they have more meanings, yeah. Okay, coherence. I want to speak about my experience. I have strong experience of meaning when in a constellation work I'm acting as another person or I'm playing another person on the stage.

[13:50]

You have a feeling of meaning related to the person you're playing, not yourself. Du hast ein Gefühl von Sinn in Beziehung zu der Person, die du spielst, nicht von dir selbst. Und zwar ein vollkommen leeres, ohne eigene... There is no own interest and no being conditioned in any way. Only at this moment in the context of this system. As a part I feel as a part of the whole and completely meaningful.

[15:10]

I understand. And I could imagine similar feelings of, at the same time, empty of content. And yet, like, feeling at home in a context, or sheltered in a certain context. Okay, good, yeah, I understand. So I suggested two reasons for this conversation. One is imagining a Dharma wheel-like context.

[16:16]

And another imagining a context of a scientist trying to study consciousness. But a third context, which I think is our context, is that I think there's a topography of Mainz woven together. Actually, for most of us, there's a mixture of, let's say, non-self topographies and self topographies. And I would say that you felt us One kind of topography in one situation and separately another topography.

[17:27]

And probably I would guess that your having practiced a long time helped you notice them and separate them. But for most of us, they're rather mixed together and we just experience them without seeing them as two different landscapes within a single landscape. But I think that the practice psychotherapy, that a practice, any practice, psychotherapy, and the interaction with the client, and meditative practice, and the And the openness to all this in our culture right now is making us more subtle in what we notice in our experience.

[18:55]

We begin to see it in ourselves, we see it in the interaction with clients and things like that, and we begin to look for a way to make it clear. And so probably, you know, for those reasons, this is also our context and maybe this conversation is useful. Yeah, Sabine? Since yesterday, I'm trying to go back to or return to a state which I'm very much used to. And this is that I'm able to have questions. And my feeling is it's difficult to distinguish between inside and outside because every time a question comes up, it's posed already and it's answered.

[20:21]

By maintaining or by the situation. Not only by you, but also, for example, when I go out during the break and I ask somebody, somebody asks, how are you? And they tell me exactly the same I was feeling just before. And I feel so very much connected. I didn't experience that ever before. I think that in the future it is important to ask the question of meaning and nuance. For example, it is not necessary to ask a question of meaning and nuance, but it remains to make a value out of it, to make it as meaningful as possible. And concerning this question of giving meaning and non-self, my question somehow feels meaningless, but not without value.

[21:33]

Okay. That was a very elegant non-question. Okay. Yeah, and there's a way of understanding Sangha as a field of being, which together creates a Bodhisattva-like presence in a society. Yeah, okay, someone else? Yes? Yes? I'd like to share also my experience of meaning in the state of my self. I'm now learning to paint for the last two years very intensely.

[22:43]

And especially when reading the colors, I have the experience of of a state where there's a book called Flint, but nevertheless, I just take the brush and I have all the color in front of me. I cannot tell you, and I cannot tell that to anybody, of young heteros. There must be something that my young self, I don't know what it is, shows me the way to the color. I mix them, and then something comes up to the paper. You're channeling. It's like channeling. Do you know what channeling is?

[23:48]

Yeah, but I think it's something like that. Artists often, something takes over and paints the painting. Yeah, I understand. And I think that on the reaction of the others, that everybody understands this painting. It touches something, and even the others too. And I cannot plan this. Yeah, I understand. Deutsch, bitte. Ah, sorry. I see from my experiences in learning the Wahn, that there are moments when I don't do it consciously, when I'm not in the usual consciousness, but then it happens just as suddenly as in the introduction to meditation, that then something happens to me,

[24:55]

I'm often amused by critics who analyze paintings and novels. They take them apart and they say, well, this is this and this is this. And often it's quite interesting and correct. I would say correct, kind of correct. But you know the artist, the painter, the writer did not have those ideas in mind. The sense of meaning from which he or she worked was entirely or very different from the meaning the observer brings to it and the satisfying meaning the observer finds.

[26:28]

And the description from outside is very often mutated Yeah, yeah, I understand. So, Deutsch, bitte. Yeah. Yes, I understand.

[27:30]

It's like that. I think so. I mean, I've spent most of my life actually in the art world, writing and painting world. So this is very familiar to me. Someone else? I have a question to restore and repair. And I think there are similarities between psychoanalysis and what's going on.

[28:31]

For example, the exclusion, if the patient doesn't show up, it's said that it's resistance. And there are also phenomena of transference regarding the, I don't know. Therapist. Therapist, thank you, and the teacher. That's too much. Please again. And for me, this stage in meditation, when all this comes up, and also this stage of transference toward the teacher, I understood that this is the stage of restore.

[29:33]

And then, as I understood it, there is also a stage of repair where this transference is dissolved. So that the perception beyond illusion is possible. I hope so. But I don't know. But my question is, does Zen go beyond in psychoanalysis? This transference is worked through or worked out? Yeah, I don't know.

[30:51]

I don't know. And the question of transference with a Zen teacher is, I think, different than in a psychotherapeutic relationship. And you really want to prevent, I think, transference from happening. Yeah. But that's a whole different discussion and maybe an important discussion that I think right now. Okay. Yeah, and you brought his leaving up. It's not so much... Well, the main thing from my feeling is that we do have a field here.

[31:52]

And I feel her still sitting there. And I feel Horst not being here. But Horst took responsibility and said, and he didn't have a choice about it really, so that's fine. So somehow taking responsibility preserves the field. But you have to be aware of the field to take responsibility for the field. So it's, you know, it's not, I'm not, my commenting he's gone without knowing it is just that, did he really realize that he's part of this field? Okay, so maybe I can say something in relation to what we're talking about, if I can manage it. In a way, again, in practice, I mean, it's so clear that meaning is generated or there's not a problem with a loss of meaning in this functioning through non-self, as I put it.

[33:34]

There's no reason in a way to talk about it. But we're still trying to understand in the West and in Western language how to develop a way of speaking about and practicing and teaching Zen. I offered you the koan earlier, what body does not fall into any category. And Dungschan, I'm always close to this. And the other koan, I'm going on a pilgrimage. Where are you going?

[34:42]

I don't know. And the teacher says, not knowing is nearest. So again, these are gate phrases you can practice with. I'm always close to this and not knowing is nearest. And I think they enter you into the field that Krista spoke about and you spoke about and you spoke about as a painter. And I think of the studies done on the, you know, I guess our neurons fire in milliseconds, two or three or four milliseconds. And conscious experience is in hundreds of milliseconds or thousands of milliseconds.

[35:47]

And in studies they've shown that your arm plans to move before the conscious experience or decision to move it. So your consciousness of your experience is tardy. So that itself is an interesting problem. We need the observing self or observing mind to be aware of what we're doing. What we're doing, to know what we're doing. But we're already doing it before we know what we're doing. So what knows in that sense? Okay, so I think of the difference in chanting and reading. Yeah, say that you're in one of these services where you do the same thing every morning.

[36:56]

And you nearly know the chant, but you don't know it perfectly. So sometimes you read the chant. You're reading it. But then you think, well, I know it well enough to chant it, I'm going to stop reading. So you stop reading and you lose your place entirely. Because the reading mind doesn't know the chant. And you have to wait for a minute and shift, and then your body starts offering you the chant. So what mind knows the chant? If you observe the chant, you can't know it.

[38:01]

You just have to chant. And the chanting knows it. Like Foucault would say, painting paints painting, writing writes writing. The act of painting paints. Yeah, and when painting paints painting, that's non-self, I think we can say. Okay. So we could say we have comparative self and contextual self.

[39:06]

And contextual self is closer to non-self. The one who chants is contextual self. And I gave you the example, I think this last weekend, something I every now and then bring up. Because it's one of the pre-practice experiences that led me to practice. I had to, those of you who know the story bear with me, but I had to sort a big stack of mimeographed papers. A big stack of? Mimeographed papers.

[40:06]

Mimeographed. Mimeo, well, Xerox. Xerox didn't exist then. Chester Carlson was a young man. Yeah. Mimeographed because you know you have to... Yeah. Hectographed. A hectograph. Okay. It had a strong smell. It had a strong smell. It was blue. I was good at it, though. I had these blue things and I could draw on them and different colored inks coming. Anyway, I had this stack of things and they were 65, 66, 67 and 68 pages. And I had a big pile and I had to sort them into whether they were 65, 66 or 67 pages. And luckily the pages that were the extra pages had graphs on them so I could flip and see the graphs. So I was doing it about the seventh or eighth or ninth one.

[41:16]

I suddenly realized I know how many pages are there as soon as I touch it. Now, I don't remember whether I actually, my thumb lifted up the paper slightly, and I could sense the weight, if we want to give a materialist explanation. But there are examples which you can't explain materialistically if similar things being able to read through a stack. Anyway, so once I could feel it, I decided to trust the feeling. When I trusted the feeling, I could put them right in the right pile without hesitation. As soon as I tried to bring the observing consciousness in, which is this, I couldn't, didn't know.

[42:38]

I simply didn't know. My knowing occurred much quicker than consciousness. But I knew. Yeah, so this was a... So I suddenly realized... that point with this pile of papers in this warehouse I was working. That there's a knowing that works with greater clarity and refinement than consciousness. And the implicit question came up, how do I get there? And I didn't discover it until I met Suzuki Roshi. Okay. Now I've often emphasized the second skanda as non-graspable feeling. Now non-graspable feeling, you can't grasp.

[43:53]

If you try to notice it, you can't say what's there. But there's such a feeling in this room. We establish it together. If you try to make it conscious, it's gone. And it's momentary. But I would say it's the most information-rich medium that's the thing that's happening here. Okay, so self-observing consciousness can't function in non-graspable feeling. Self-observing consciousness can't function in non-graspable feeling. But the observing mind, which is more subtle and refined can function in non-grasp.

[45:05]

Yeah, or anyway, something like that. So again, Zen practice, a lot of Zen practice is learning to function through the second skandha And not the fifth skanda of consciousness. And so, in that sense, there's already meaning in the context or in the field of non-graspable feeling. And that meaning arises through context rather than observer. And as you learn to turn yourself over to the chanting and just let the chant appear, to turn yourself over to the chanting out of thinking mind, and trust the next syllable is going to appear,

[46:10]

which is an experience we all have, that turning yourself over is, we can say, turning yourself over to non-self. So I think that's enough probably for today. And we made some exploration of this sense of, in our own experience, of the function of non-self. All right. Yeah, Raphael.

[46:56]

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