Does anyone have anything you'd like to bring up? So again, I'm thinking about what could be useful to or an extension of psychotherapeutic ways of looking at the world. And I brought up these turning words which in effect are bodily articulating consciousness.

[01:05]

You're bringing consciousness into your attention. Now, this is something I went through a bit in Hannover. If Zen is so much a teaching supposedly outside words and letters, And then why is this use of language I'm bringing up so important? And why is at the center of Zen practice this meeting and speaking?

[02:09]

Now, early Buddhism and some forms of contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, emphasize long retreats, you know, much of the time by yourself, and early Buddhism emphasized practicing in a cave and so forth. But Chinese Buddhism really seemed to have made a shift into practicing together is more effective and powerful. And there's something that happens between people, among people, among persons, when they do something together.

[03:22]

And we all know this. We do things together all the time. Go to parties, ride on the bus, and so forth. But what is it when we just sit together for seven days in Sashin, for example? Even if you're not speaking to the persons on either side of you, from the very beginning, and especially after seven days, you feel some connectedness. And if I'm in a practicing or being here with you in this room, the fact that I've been practicing with you and I've known you for so many years, 10 and 20 and more years,

[04:49]

creates opportunities of understanding that don't exist when I'm just sitting in my room by myself. And we know instances of course where groups of psychologists or philosophers met regularly for a few years Or poets. And those days and weeks or whatever it was, sometimes extended periods, sometimes once or twice a year. often shaped their thinking for the rest of their lives. Okay, but what about when we decide we're going to have some kind of continuous contact for a thousand years?

[06:18]

I mean, why not a thousand years? You know, two. In other words, there's some kind of continuity of meeting and changing membership over millenniums. So I'm engaging with you in a Also habe ich mit euch eine Unterhaltung, ein Gespräch das 2500 Jahre alt ist. So wie das Bewusstsein selbst ein Inhalt des Bewusstseins ist, The conversation itself is a content of the conversation.

[07:31]

I mean, it's like the well-known Zen saying, the jewel hidden in the mountain of form. And some people sort of think it's something like inside. But the jewel hidden in the mountain of form is hidden because it is the mountain of form. So how do you look at the mountain of form so it becomes a jewel? So I mean I don't know exactly what happens here in Kassel but it does seem that Norbert and Angela and quite a number of you meet over the years.

[08:46]

You're not exactly doing each other's psychotherapy, but as you say, you support each other and you pass clients around among each other. So psychotherapy becomes, I think it seems like for you, not just a one-to-one relationship with a client and a therapist, but a relationship about relationship over some time. You said something else, like psychotherapy within psychotherapy or something? I didn't quite get that. Not important. Okay. I suppose you're being a part of the Sogyal Sangha. There's something similar.

[09:57]

I mean, Sogyal is not always there with you, etc. But there's something that happens, right? Among you practicing together. Okay. Now, I'm thinking about this, of course, for my own reasons, which are... like should we buy the property next door to Johanneshof? If we could buy it, I don't know. Because it's clear to me by my experience, not by any plan, that the lay Sangha functions most fully, lay practice functions most fully when there's a monastic component to the Sangha.

[11:04]

No, so far the most definitive Sangha for our Sangha has been Crestone Mountain Zen Sangha. In the United States. Yeah, where, for example, Katrin lived for five years. And she still looks normal, you know. Except for my hair. Well, it's a little short, yeah. And so far, Johanneshoff doesn't seem to have that as definitive a role as Crestone. And since I've heard that I will eventually perish,

[12:11]

I was looking for an exception, but, you know, it's unlikely that the next head of the Dharma Sangha or teacher will be responsible for both places. Okay, so what kind of component can we make Johanneshof and the Hotzenholz property next door function in a way instead of Crestone? And what seems to be happening, what seems to be happening right here and in Austria is there's a kind of branch of the Sangha which are psychotherapists.

[13:29]

I mean, Angu and Norbert are supposedly psychotherapists. But I guess you're also Buddhists. As I go down the stairs, you get a Buddha on every step going down the stairs. And on the other side, there's Freud, Adler, Jung, Arnie Mandel. Well, I haven't noticed that yet. Jung and Adler and Arnie Mandel. You don't have to know those. So we're actually engaged in some kind of conversation.

[14:47]

Now, what constitutes the language of meeting and speaking in Zen? Yeah, and there are famous, as I said the other day, classic and chronicled Zen masters. Like Huang Bo and Matsu. And they seem to have emphasized teisho, or meeting and speaking, more than zazen. More than sitting meditation. So they looked at zazen without meeting and speaking as not an effective practice.

[15:54]

I suppose you can imagine what would your Zazen be like, those of you who have been practicing a long time, if you did not have the meeting and speaking we do flowing from Suzuki-doshi. Okay, so, now the Zen teacher is supposed to develop, ideally develops, let's call it an attentional language. A language you can put attention into. Like in English we can say already connected and the words carry attention.

[17:11]

If I say the watermelon, well, it doesn't carry much attention. And poetry is usually language which carries attention. Which takes hold of your attention and carries it through the poem. If the poem doesn't take hold of your attention, you know, you're thinking of something else in the second line. Wenn das Gedicht eure Aufmerksamkeit nicht ergreift, dann denkt er an etwas anderes schon direkt bei der zweiten Zeile. So let me add, then we should have embodyable language. Dann sollten wir auch Sprache haben, die verkörperbar ist.

[18:13]

Language you can feel. Sprache, die du fühlen kannst. Maybe you can feel all language, but some language lends itself more. And I also said incarnate language, which means language made flesh. Language which becomes embodied through how you say it. So ideally, I'm speaking, ideally as a Zen teacher, I'm speaking in an embodied way. I'm speaking about my experience as I'm experiencing it. Ich spreche über meine Erfahrung, während ich sie erfahre.

[19:15]

Or there's a certain, ideally at least, there's a considerable degree I'm not just speaking about my experience, I'm speaking from within my experience. Also idealerweise gibt es da einen bestimmten Grad, zu dem ich nicht nur über meine Erfahrung spreche, sondern Now Zen, the teaching of practice of meeting and speaking, is a practice of developing a common way of speaking, a shared embodied way of speaking. Now, if we took that point of view from in psychotherapy, then I suppose it must be the case you're in a way teaching showing and teaching the client how to speak about their problems or their situation.

[20:38]

In other words, they're going to speak about in their own language what's happening to them. But over a series of meetings, You must, I presume, develop a way of speaking. Now, I think that could be harmful if you really get, you can only hear what your theories, your psychotherapeutic theories want you to hear. So you saw every client as an example of your theories. And if you're a Jungian, they only have Jungian dreams.

[21:44]

They don't have any other kind of dreams. But anyway, looking at it this way is you're developing a a way of articulating experience. And Zen emphasizes a particular language within language. now I think that's enough to say about that I mean I'm just establishing what we're doing now

[22:47]

and wondering about how what we're doing now, meeting and speaking, relates to the larger context of psychotherapeutic practice. where the relationship between psychotherapists and the relationship between psychotherapists and clients is constantly developing the practice of psychotherapy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if that's the case, which I think it must be at least significantly the case, And if that is the case, and I think that must simply be the case in a significant way, it would be useful to make this more conscious, more explicit.

[24:20]

Will we eventually develop a psychotherapeutic practice that's fused with Buddhist practice? Or at least with Buddhist ways of thinking? For instance, if I was a psychotherapist, and I was... Oh, no. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Oh, no. I don't want the responsibility.

[25:28]

Anyway. I would want to have some way in which the client and I came into some kind of mutuality. And I would try to make it implicit at first, hidden in the situation. But I might make it explicit too. Like, I don't know what you can get away with, you know. And I suppose with, you know, I'm sorry, I'm just not a psychotherapist, so I don't know what you have permission to do with the client. And of course the financial aspect of it affects it too.

[26:31]

Yeah, and so, but I might say, I guess I would, I might bring my attention to my own breath and not suggest they bring their attention to their breath. And I suppose I might also bring between attention to my breath, bring a kind of stopping or stillness into the situation. And if I felt I had their permission because in Zen you only at least ideally only do things that people give you permission to do. As I might say bring attention to the crown of your head.

[28:05]

Bring attention to the soles of your feet. Bring attention to the back of your neck. There are certain attentional points that you can experiment with that change a person's experience of themselves. Mm-hmm. And ideally I would then find myself in the same bodily location with the client.

[29:11]

Anyway, something like that. Now, related to that, I just used the word location. A useful practice in Zen is to experience yourself as a location. I'm speaking a little more than I would like about some of the things I spoke about in Hanover. And I'm embarrassed that Jeanette and Gerald have to hear it again.

[30:17]

Of course it's not exactly the same, but I always feel good when I'm always saying things I've never said before. With a few familiar things to create some structure. What do I mean by experiencing yourself as a location? First, an idea in the background of this is you're made up of parts and the world is made up of parts. And if you experience yourself as a separate entity, then the rest of the world becomes other.

[31:32]

There's you and everything that's other than you. If you experience yourself as a location, then, for example, she's also a location. And this location is part of my location. Now, the most simple way you do that is if you develop, and as I often say, the biggest turning point in Zen practice other than starting practice initially. And this starting practice initially is called by Dogen initial enlightenment.

[32:45]

Now, his calling it initial enlightenment is very characteristic of Zen Buddhist way of thinking. If the jewel is the mountain of form, in other words, enlightenment is not something that's in the future somewhere. It's in the now somewhere. And being in the now somewhere is very different than being in the future somewhere. So what Dogen means by initial enlightenment is that if you really look carefully at what your decision was to start to practice, you'll find out it's a kind of enlightenment.

[34:08]

Or it has all the ingredients of enlightenment that just haven't been put into the enlightenment package. Excuse me for... So you're carrying this package of enlightenment around unopened. That's basically how Zen thinks about you're already enlightened. Okay. So other than this initial enlightenment is when you establish your continuity in your breath and not in your thinking.

[35:30]

Now, the example I give of that often It's very easy to bring your attention to your breath. For five breaths. Or maybe 15 or 16. But pretty soon your attention goes to your thinking. Now is that because your thinking is really interesting and exciting? Usually not. It may be because you're thinking it's horrible and you're anxious.

[36:35]

One of the basic rules is angst is more interesting than breath. And we want it to be interesting. Okay. Now, if you decide a wisdom decision, it might be worth a certain percentage of your lifetime to see if you can develop the skill, the yogic skill of bringing attention continuously within the breath. And what happens when you do this, and it is possible to do it, human beings do do it, etc., etc., is your sense of continuity is in the breath and then the body and phenomena.

[37:44]

If your attention is in breath, body and phenomena, it's not in your thinking. That really changes the name of the game. And it changes what we mean by self. Most of us have a self which is created within and through the medium of consciousness. And we identify the experience of the observer with the narrative self, the accumulated experience, and the anticipated self.

[39:11]

So the observer, the anticipated self, and the accumulated self all get conflated, and you think they're one. And one of the interesting discussions we could have, but I just don't know if we're together long enough on two days, Why do we need the experience of continuity? I mean, there's obvious aspects which is, you know, you feel crazy if I look here and I can't remember that when I look here. So we need some experience of continuity. And what constitutes continuity? And what are the different ways we can establish continuity?

[40:16]

And what's the most effective way to establish continuity? And what kind of continuity, most or discontinuity, most leads to enlightenment? In other words, is your experience of continuity on the path of suffering or is your experience of continuity on the path of enlightenment? Well, this all depends on your realizing you have some choice about how you establish continuity. And whether you're establishing it or you're letting it be established for you. Okay. Once your sense of identity is I'm thinking of trying to find a word.

[42:04]

Once your sense of identity is a sense of continuity, is not attached to all the stuff that comes up through... your narrative self, and through all the linguistic programming you've gone through, a very large percentage of your problems fall away. then you're not being constantly reminded of them. And they're not any longer an intrinsic part of the definition of self.

[43:08]

Okay, so, This is a big step in, we could say simply, becoming more of a experiencing yourself, experiencing beingness as a location. I mean, your accumulated narrative experience is still part of your lived life. Dein akkumuliertes narratives selbst ist immer noch Teil deines Lebens. And your anticipated future is still part of your life. Und die Zukunft, die du antizipierst, ist auch noch Teil deines Lebens. But moment by moment you feel you're a location. Aber Moment für Moment fühlst du deinen Ort. You feel, well, you know it's your particular location. but you don't have you're not comparing yourself to others in the present, past or future you're not thinking about yourself as a self because mostly your attention is not on the self your attention is on the location

[44:38]

If you're walking the street, the buildings, people, the breath, heartbeat, a feeling of aliveness throughout the body. And aliveness is actually more interesting than angst. So when you can begin to replace the angst or whatever one thinks about with just the sheer experience of aliveness, many aspects of many of the more disturbing aspects of self kind of fall by the wayside.

[45:43]

Now, in your inner debate with yourself, you may be saying, well, but self-realization... It's very important that I realize myself. It's very important that I develop myself as much as possible. I agree. This is important. I remember once I saw a study. They talked to successful people. And unsuccessful people. And they tried to inventory how often people thought about themselves.

[46:47]

What kind of, I should do this, etc. And the most successful people thought about themselves way less than the unsuccessful people. But what happens is another kind of thinking appears. A much more integrated kind of thinking. less confined to the narrative self, and more thinking in a field that includes anomalies and divergences and so forth. And I could say, and the mind behind the mind is doing much of the thinking.

[48:01]

No, I think we should take a break pretty soon. Maybe even almost now. Well, it's a couple minutes after four. But let me just throw something out for the heck of it. As is well known, Wittgenstein said, the world is all that is the case. Well, what is this all? What is the boundaries of this all? Can this all be experienced? Are there momentary alls or are there totality alls? That makes us Muslims, doesn't it?

[49:16]

Total Allahs. Okay, that's enough. So let's have a break.

[49:47]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.52