Gerald, who is going to translate. I first heard Richard Baker-Rosche a few years ago at the University of Peace in Berlin. And somehow I notice the way he speaks about Buddhism, Zen, mindfulness, meditation in a way that is so complex and similar to what we want to focus on or are looking for. I always thought that it would be something if he came to us and we could participate a little bit in this deep and wide inner world of experience, from which he speaks out, as far as I know, so far. And I always have the feeling that it's just incredibly good for me to listen and at the same time I also get wonderful insights about what we do ourselves, what we focus on, with ourselves and with others. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you for letting me set up this platform like this because it's easier for me to sit this way.

[01:23]

Easier for us to sit this way. And I apologize for not speaking German, but you're lucky. Because I could never speak German well enough to talk about what I want to talk about. I can't even speak English well enough to talk about what I want to talk about. And I'm grateful to have this opportunity to be here. Someone said to me last night, you're here to speak to us and you know nothing about focusing?

[02:34]

If I was younger, that could have given me an anxiety attack. But You know, Johannes, I guess you heard me speak in Berlin, right? And he thought there was something similar. So we all trust Johannes, so... And last night I got a brief course in focusing, very brief. And it sounds awfully familiar. Now I happen to believe that I and Gerald and others who are practicing Zen Buddhism are not doing this just because they're interested in Asian Buddhist lineages.

[03:56]

It's also because there's Western lineages which led to what we're doing. And probably the lineage that you are interested in focusing on actually is a larger part of the reason so many people in the West are interested in Buddhism. If I look at my own experience, there are certainly things in Western Buddhism pragmatism, transcendentalism, Western European philosophy, and a lot in poetry and painting, which also led me to become interested in meditation. Now I will try to speak about some things that seem to me to fit in with, to the extent that I understand, your focusing practice.

[05:43]

But I would be wasting your time, I think, if I didn't also give you some perspective on Zen Buddhist practice. Because what's interesting about bringing a, what should I call myself, a wild card into this Congress... A joker? So what? A wild card is not a joker in English, but it's okay. In this case, maybe it's the same. A wild card means in English a card which you didn't expect to be in the deck. Or a card which can represent any other card. You call it a joker? Oh, we don't call it a joker. It's not somebody who makes jokes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. A joker.

[07:14]

But I have to have a different outfit, you know. is that I can speak about Zen practice and Buddhism in ways that may suggest extensions of what you're doing. Now, my... There's aspects of Buddhism which are unlike focusing and there's aspects of Buddhism which are like focusing. But my guess is that in the aspects which are most similar between Buddhism and focusing, there are differences in the views in what,

[08:30]

you think you're doing or how you think the world is. So we'll understand this with more intelligence if we see the differences within the similarities. The tendency when Buddhism first started coming into the West was to see how different it was. Now the tendency is to see how similar it is. Both are not right, I think. What's interesting is the differences. And yet the similarities in ourselves that give us access.

[09:34]

I don't really know what to talk about. I've been doing this a long time, so I can surely think of something to talk about. And I'll say some introductory or basic things. But when we have, after the break or at some point, we'll have some discussion. And I hope you help me in this, because what you bring up will help me be more useful in what I say. And I hope you will help me, because your questions will help me to talk about what I can bring to you. Zen is primarily two practices.

[10:58]

Mindfulness and meditation. A better word would be absorbent still sitting. The overall practice is mindfulness. And I think that the focusing practice you are interested in must be a kind of mindfulness practice. And overall, Buddhism is a mindfulness practice. But there's some things you can't understand, at least from a Buddhist point of view, just through mindfulness practice.

[11:59]

Buddhism is a kind of inner science. It's a way of studying yourself. And I presume that you are interested in focusing because you have that gift of wanting to and having the courage to study yourself. If I want to observe this, it's a lot easier to observe if I hold it still.

[13:09]

So if I can hold that still, it's a lot easier to observe. And if I'm also moving, and this is moving, it's really hard to observe it, right? So it's better if one can hold both still. That's basically the idea of meditation. The mind is quite slippery. And we have more access to the body. So the biggest thing that differentiates a yogic teaching from most Western teachings is the experience or belief that it's easier to access the mind through the body than through the mind directly.

[14:19]

And that also then assumes that there is no mental phenomena which doesn't have a physical component. And there's no sentient physical phenomena that doesn't have a mental component. So that means the body is to some degree mind. And the mind is to some degree body. Strictly speaking, you can't make a distinction between mind and body. Yeah. But we experience them as different.

[15:29]

Now, when I first started practicing Buddhism, the common idea, blamed on poor Descartes, or that mind and body were two, And if you have that view, it's very hard to... That view interferes with understanding. Now it's very common in the West to think mind and body are one. But that also, in my opinion, an experience is a delusory view. And if you try to practice with the sense or study yourself with the idea that mind and body are one, it won't be productive.

[16:35]

The useful way to understand mind and body is that it's a relationship. Eine gute Art und Weise damit umzugehen, wäre zu sagen, Körper und Geist sind eine Beziehung. Eine Beziehung, die kultiviert und entwickelt werden kann. Es gibt eine Menge Arten, diese Beziehung zu kultivieren. If you have an intention to bring your attention to your breath, the breath then becomes the plough that cultivates the body and mind. Okay, now let's just stay with this a moment.

[17:44]

It is very easy for you to bring your attention to your breath. And if I ask you now, bring your attention to your breath, all of you can do it. If I say, do it for the next hour, probably none of you can do it. This is quite interesting. Why is something that's so easy to do so hard to do? And if I ask you to do it for the 24, but Zen practice, strictly speaking, is to be mindful throughout the 24. and to deal with that something so easy is so difficult.

[18:56]

Okay. Now I'm looking at this in some detail, because it in fact only exists in details, and so can only really be accurately understood through details. I like the wisdom in a word like trivia. Because it means three roads. Trivia. So it means every small thing is a choice. But usually our consciousness is not finely tuned enough to see the choice in the details.

[20:02]

So that's one reason we practice mindfulness. And the essence of mindfulness is bringing attention to attention itself. And when you bring attention to attention itself, you in fact exercise the muscle of attention. In other words, attention itself evolves. Yeah. Attention isn't just something that's there waiting for you to do it. When you do it, it itself evolves. So one of the fruits of practicing mindfulness is to open yourself into the details of how we exist.

[21:08]

So it's very easy to bring our attention to our breath. And let me say again, one reason I'm going into this in this detail is that I think from what I've heard about your focusing practice, it's just this kind of detail which will make focusing most likely to work. Now, I'm speaking about this today in the context that this can be a personal practice for each of you. It can be part of a therapeutic practice, of course, psychotherapeutic practice of some sort. But it can also just be a personal practice of how you study yourself. Now, I am not one who thinks there's any such thing as Buddhist psychology.

[22:58]

And I think it's a misdirection to... a mistake to call it a Buddhist psychology. I think Buddhism is a mindology, not a psychology. Because there's no real emphasis on psyche, on your story in Buddhism. And this is one of the danger points, actually, in bringing such a powerful practice as meditation into Western culture. Is it can be used to interrupt or or prevent the maturing of your personal story.

[24:04]

So certainly we want to look and study ourselves psychologically. And if we see that Buddhism offers us a mindology, a study of how the mind exists, functions, generates a world, we can come into intimacy with our immediate experience and our story, which I think is remarkable. Because the quality of a mindology is to come into intimacy with the mind. The reason to study the mind is not so much to understand it, but to become intimate with how we exist.

[25:24]

Am I making sense so far? Good enough? Okay. So you bring your attention to your breath. Now intention, I would call intention a word which generates a mental posture. If I say attention, I would say that's a word which generates a physical posture. In other words, yoga is a... The emphasis in Buddhism of yoga is that it's physical postures joined to mental postures.

[26:27]

For example, what is your name? Barbara. It's common for us to think, or for me to think, that Barbara is separated from me by space. We hardly think of that as a mental posture. We take it for granted. But Barbara is also connected to me by space. And I to her. The world actually doesn't make any sense unless space connects. But our culture gives us the idea that space separates and we all say, oh yeah, space separates.

[27:50]

But we all know our reproductive rhythms are connected with the moon. And I haven't seen any large cables or strings attached to the moon. Obviously, we're connected. But we're connected outside of the world our senses present to us. You can't hear and see the connection. So this already means you exist in a world far more subtle than what is presented to you three-dimensionally by your senses. And language is always giving us, reaffirming for us, a three-dimensional reality.

[29:00]

primarily visual world. So practice is also to kind of shake off this visual world we're stuck in. And feel our way into, let ourselves into this greater subtlety that we have no language for. And that sounds to me also what you're trying to do with focusing. Okay, so if I say to you, intention. Intention. I don't know what you think, but if I say to you, Achtung, your body goes, oh.

[30:13]

So you can feel the physicality in a word like attention. There's a physical posture in the word attention or Achtung. So when you have an intention to bring attention to your breath, it sounds real simple. But you're doing something extremely complex. You're bringing a mental posture to a physical posture. So you're bringing your attention mind through an intention to attention, which is also mind and body. And you're locating it in your breath. You're moving your mind into this chakra. You're taking your mind out of the... You're taking your breath out of the dominion of mind.

[31:23]

Yes. See why I don't speak German. And bringing it into the domain of the heart. And weaving. cultivating mind and body, weaving mind and body together. When you bring your attention to your breath, you're bringing a sense of location to your breath. So you feel a sense of location now in your breath.

[32:26]

But after a little while, it snaps back into thinking. Why is that? Because you've brought a sense of location, but you have not brought a sense of identification. But you haven't brought your sense of identification. So already you can begin to notice that you experience yourself both as a sense of location and a sense of identification. And these can be separated. And this is partly how you, this is one way to understand the ten oxherding pictures in Zen. The sense of location is trying to get the sense of identification to come with it.

[33:42]

Because the problem is, it's easy to bring your sense of location to your breath. It's very difficult to bring your sense of identification to your breath. Because we're identified with our story. And our story is primarily carried in language. So, As soon as the ego and your story get a chance, it says, come back, and it pulls it away from your breath. As long as that happens, you're not in... From the point of view of Zen, as long as that happens, you're not in your body. You may think you're more in your body.

[34:59]

You may take good care of it and exercise it and stuff. But if your sense of identification keeps popping back to your thoughts, that's where you think you actually live. Now, some of you might say, oh, this is hopeless. I'm never going to be able to stay here. consistently with my breath. But there's hope. Because this is a homeopathic-like practice. It works in small doses. So if you try this, if you keep bringing your location to your breath, And your intention is deep enough to keep doing that.

[36:03]

Eventually, the ego says, well, maybe this is the best of all possible worlds. I'll try taking over the breath now that I control the mind. So you give the ego a good guest room in your breath. And breathe with her or him. And eventually they start living in the breath. When you start finding your sense of identification, your sense of identity in your breath, then you can start moving that sense of identity into your body and into the phenomenal world and into the immediacy of each situation. Yeah. So just to understand that, which I think you all do, makes a big difference.

[37:20]

And to hold that understanding before you makes a big difference. how much more freedom there is. Doesn't mean, you know, when people teach Zen and say you should stop thinking. First of all, this is virtually impossible. Second, it's not right. What you want to do is stop identifying with your thinking. Or only identify with your thinking some of the time. And also identify with your breath, your body phenomena. And what Dogen calls our true human body. Now what I'd like to do this morning and one thing I'd like to give you the three minds of daily consciousness, a way of understanding

[39:08]

which I think is the simplest way to get a feeling for different minds. Yeah. And I'd also like to, maybe it would be useful to you, to give you the teaching of the five skandhas, which means the five functions, the five ways consciousness is generated. But maybe I have Some of it, if I don't get to it, we could do in the seminar in the afternoon. But probably I would like to, at least this morning, give you enough so that you can get a feeling for how Zen practice works.

[40:37]

And you can bring that into your own, it can be useful to you. Now, I could come back to, before we have a break and a little while, I guess, what Dogen means by the true human body. Now, this comes from a phrase, a sentence, where he says, Dogen, by the way, was a 13th century Zen master in Japan.

[41:42]

Dogen lived in the 13th century in Japan as a Zen teacher. The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. The coming and going of birth and death is where ordinary people drift about. And it is also where great sages are liberated. So you don't have to translate it, but I'll say it again. The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. The coming and going and birth of death is where most people drift about.

[42:45]

And it is also where great sages are liberated. Now, there's several, again, ideas or views in this. One is, what is the body? Well, in Buddhism, body is almost synonymous with mind. If you had a corpse here, excuse me for... I'm sorry, but it does happen. That corpse is not a body. It's stuff. In Buddhism, what makes that alive, if it were to come to life, is what a body is.

[43:48]

Now, what would make that corpse come to life, that stuff come to life? Includes many things. The parents, the family, food, farmers, air. So there's no boundaries to this body which makes this alive. And it is so true that you can't even say where the boundaries are. The boundaries are the coming and going of birth and death. So Dogen says, This coming and going of birth and death is actually our human body. But most of us drift about in it without any idea that this is our true human body.

[44:53]

It doesn't mean you have to be good and nice all the time. Even to yourself. It just means you have to recognize this is us, this is me. It doesn't mean you have to like it. It's just a fact. Now when Dogen says this coming and going of birth and death is where most people drift about, he means that each moment is a choice. And if you drift about and don't see the choice, you're actually always going through the samsara gate.

[46:09]

And samsara literally means those who drift about and don't know what's going on. So each moment is a samsara gate and a dharma gate. Each moment is either leading you to enlightenment or leading you to accumulating suffering. And awareness, mindfulness practice, is to make you aware. What I do now is not go into any more detail. But maybe I could give you a little idea of what Zen meditation is. And then maybe we could sit for a couple of minutes. And then we'll have a break. You can sit on a chair.

[47:37]

It's okay. So the basic posture in Zen meditation is your backbone. In a certain way you can think that Zen meditation is to turn your body and backbone into an antenna. An antenna that begins to know the world. So basically there's a lifting feeling through your back. A lifting feeling up through your back and through the back of your neck. And it almost feels like you're being lifted from here, from the back of your head up. And at the same time you have this lifting feeling.

[48:43]

There's a relaxing feeling melting down through you. So these two things, the lifting feeling and the melting, relaxing feeling. And if you want to check your posture, Put your fingers, your knuckles or something down, directly down at your sides and push up. Lift yourself off to your cushion or whatever you're sitting on and then back down. That's usually the posture of the back. Okay. Now you can also sit this way. And China, for a long time, and then Japan up until recently, based their culture on this posture.

[49:52]

You can also do it and you can put a cushion here. This is cool. The easy chair of Zen. I like this. Maybe I'll start sitting this way. The idea is it makes it easy to keep your back straight. Now the problem with this posture is it requires more musculature to keep yourself straight. It's like being in a chair. There's a tendency. You have to keep straightening yourself. And your feet tend to get cold. And that's different because when you sit cross-legged, like Gerald is sitting, you have folded your heat together.

[50:56]

If it's easier to keep the body warm, it's easier to come into stillness. Now, I'm not trying to convert all of you into cross-legged sitting meditators. It's not so hard to do, but we should each do our own life. But I think I should at least tell you what it's something about, what it's about. So you're folding your legs together, your feet together. And generally we put our hands together, left hand on top of our right hand, the more feminine or

[52:03]

different kind of mind on top of this more active mind. This is considered more subtle or more feeling side and this is more active side. And then we generally put our tongue to the roof of our mouth. And that tends to reduce saliva flow when your mind, when your thinking gets less. And many of these things actually connects a kind of channel when you do that. Energy channel. And then we pull our lift through the back and you pull your chin in just a little bit.

[53:24]

And then the posture, whether you're sitting in a chair or down on the floor, is actually a dialogue between the ideal posture and your posture. In which you're always accepting your posture. That's always first. You accept what is. But you're informed by the Buddhist posture. And then we bring our attention, as I've said, to our breath. And you can count the exhales to ten and back to one. Or you can just follow the breath. Or you can just Bring your, as we say, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[54:44]

Let them come and go, but don't give them a cup of tea. So, I'll... Generally I hit the bell three times to start. And once to finish. And it won't be long. And if it is, just abandon yourself. Thank you.

[56:20]

The eyes are usually open slightly. Just to let a little light in. But if they're closed with a feeling of light, without dreaminess, it's okay. But zazen is neither waking mind nor is it sleeping mind. So we have to teach our body to discover this mind which is neither waking nor sleeping. Thank you very much for joining us, joining me and sitting.

[60:50]

And what, half an hour? Let's just listen to the bell a moment. Now do you have some questions or something you'd like to bring up? Yes? There was something you said about there not being a Zen or Buddhist psychology.

[62:11]

and about the dangers of bringing such a powerful practice to the West. Would you say something more about that? Deutsch? We human beings are not all alike. And I would say we have a consensual anatomy. In other words, in a way, from the moment of birth on, our body is being shaped by our culture and our society.

[63:14]

So different cultures have different body-minds, really. At least that's my opinion. I have not lived in all ages and cultures, so I'm convinced that, for instance, Europe in the Middle Ages did not have a self like we do. For example, I would not say that Freud discovered the unconscious which was always there. I think he discovered or noticed an unconsciousness as a process which was beginning to develop at that time in our culture. So, you know, Asia... for the most part from India through Japan, Korea, etc., is I would call a yogic culture.

[64:42]

And of course they have a personal history and a story and so forth. But they emphasize the world known through their senses and other ways and body more than we do. Plus they have a lot of implicit cultural support for this Buddhist teaching. Which is a disadvantage as well as an advantage. Because it's so different to us, Buddhism will have a new life in the West that it's kind of hard to see it in Europe, in Asia, because it's just, well, that's just the way, that's culture. Yeah. So when they hear things like no self and non-self, it means something quite different to them than to us.

[65:55]

And when they talk about stopping thinking, they don't identify with their thinking as much, so it's not as dramatic a difference. Since this is such an important question, Maybe I'd like to have some more questions or comments first. But I think I should present something which I'd call the three functions of self. Which I think would make what you brought up clear.

[66:56]

But let me have some other questions first. Anybody who scratches their face gets called on. You mean I didn't say enough earlier this morning to stimulate any thought? Yes. So you go into meditation and then you just abandon all the nice parts of the world, all the enjoyment. Is that not a great loss? If that's what meditation is, I would not be doing it.

[68:20]

You sit for hours and hours and hours. No, I don't. I do other things, too. There is some advantage to sometimes, a few times in your life, sitting long periods of time. Because you really begin to be able to observe how you exist. But that knowledge and experience is a very nice feeling. So maybe I come back to your question too.

[69:28]

Something else? You didn't say that. I don't know very much about Zen Buddhism. I just get in contact with it. And I'm fascinated by your statement that you have to identify with your present. And I would like to hear more how you can handle that. I don't know much about Zen Buddhism, I just came into contact with it, and I was fascinated by the statement that the goal is to identify with its kind. And I would like to know more about how this can be achieved. Now, if you were all experienced meditators, I could give you short Zen-like answers here.

[70:31]

But that would even be more confusing if I did that now. So, I've got to give you some background so these things make sense to you. Okay. So one more and then I'll do some background. Yeah. I can't speak in English. Well, fine. I can't speak in German. So we're very similar. I feel very identified with my story. When that created a kind of tension then to identify with my breath.

[71:36]

Yes, of course. It feels like... Yes. If you feel that, there's some hope. Because if you don't feel the difference, you can't practice. A friend of mine once said, actually it was Gregory Bateson, he said, it's hard to teach in America. He said, whatever you tell people, they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they don't realize they don't understand.

[72:44]

They agree too easily. You've got to see sometimes an experience that, hey, this doesn't make sense or it would be hard to do. Okay. Yeah. I would like to continue there. Isn't it my story where I have to go through? I have to go through my story to become free of it. Well, I don't know if one wants to become free of it, I would say, but one wants to mature it. But if you also want to be free of it, it would be hard to be free of it if you're entangled in it.

[73:50]

Yeah, okay. Okay. Something else? I use the expression, don't invite your thoughts to tea. To not invite your thoughts to tea means there's a mind bigger than thoughts. If you cannot invite your thoughts to tea, it means you don't have to identify with your thoughts.

[74:50]

Okay? This means there is a, we could say two things. One is there's a mind bigger than thoughts. And we usually are only conscious of a mind identified with thoughts. Although in fact we function all the time through a mind larger than thoughts. Now, most people think Zen practice is zazen and so forth, and as I said, mindfulness. But actually more basically it's a working with your views and attitudes.

[75:56]

And the first teaching of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, starts with right views. In other words, the views you hold before you start to think completely shape your thinking. So from that point of view, meditation practice is a way to get behind your views and see what they are. But you've got to see your views first. if you're going to develop an accurately assuming consciousness.

[77:01]

So let's try to understand how consciousness and psyche and a mindology, or the way the mind functions, can work together. If there's a mind bigger than thoughts, we can also say, I think, in the same vein, that there's a big self bigger than your usual self. And the reason there's an unconscious is because the whole of your existence won't fit into the boat of self. And what doesn't fit into the boat of self falls overboard.

[78:08]

And then you get a whole sort of muddy, swampy thing you're trying to move this boat in and you're stuck in the mud. So we could also understand this as making yourself wider or your story wider so more of your life fits in. Okay. Now, we are given three minds at birth. And I'm responding to your question now. The baby wakes up and it's very clear the baby has some sort of conscious mind, waking mind.

[79:18]

And when it sleeps, you can see already there's some kind of dreaming activity. But when we sleep, we don't always dream. There's also non-dreaming deep sleep. Now this is a basic observation of Indian culture that goes back way before Buddhism. Now it was understood by these ancient Indian philosophers that the mind of non-dreaming deep sleep was an was an extraordinary bliss.

[80:20]

And that bliss was forgotten in waking more thoroughly than we forget our dreams. So you can ask how the heck did they know it if they forget it? They also felt that if we don't have that we need this bliss to function even though we forget it. And that's probably one of the problems with sleeping pills. Is sleeping pills give us the sensation of being non-conscious, but they don't allow us to have this blissful sleep.

[81:26]

But when you create within a certain kind of consciousness a state of being similar to non-dreaming deep sleep, when you create a conscious non-dreaming deep sleep. Sorry. No, no, I really feel for you. I couldn't do it. We could say meditation is to create a non-dreaming deep sleep.

[82:27]

Okay, so you learn to hold the mind still. You learn to hold the body still. And then you can start to observe the mind. And you can actually study the mind in its movements. And how I'm looking at you now and you're all appearing in my mind. I know you exist out there, but in fact you're appearing in my mind. Like if I hear a bird, I'm not hearing that bird the way some other bird hears it. Wenn ich zum Beispiel draußen einen Vogel höre, höre ich den Vogel nicht so, wie andere Vögel den Vogel hören. Ich höre den Vogel nur so, wie mein Hören es mir erlaubt.

[83:30]

So I'm hearing the bird, but actually I'm hearing my own hearing hear the bird. Ich höre den Vogel, aber ich höre mein eigenes Hören, wie ich höre. Practice is to always remember that. That I'm seeing you, but I'm really seeing myself see you. When I can feel myself seeing you, I can hear and know you with a greater intimacy than when I think you're out there. So when I begin to observe the mind and I really see that the beads and my mind are one event and the stillness of the body then begins to draw out the stillness of the mind

[84:45]

And this slows down. And when there's a mutual stillness, the bliss of non-dreaming deep sleep rises like an artesian well. And it's so nice it could almost be addictive. Yeah. In fact we have to encourage people not to sit too much because you've got to mature yourself and do other things. So life is basically from a Buddhist point of view a pulse of an outgoing movement and an ingoing movement. And when the stillness of the body draws out the stillness of the mind, the stillness of the mind

[85:55]

opens into a succession of minds. There are minds hidden in the body which don't come out until there's this mutual stillness. Now let me say, what I'm saying is quite simple. Ich möchte euch sagen, dass das, was ich sage, eigentlich sehr einfach ist. But in some ways it's a little different way of thinking than we're used to. Aber auf einigen Ebenen ist es ein etwas anderes Denken als das, was wir gewöhnt sind. Yeah, so it may seem like what I'm saying is complicated. Es mag vielleicht so ausschauen, dass das, was ich sage, kompliziert ist. But it is quite simple. It just takes a while to get a feel for it. Es ist eigentlich sehr einfach. Es braucht eine Zeit, um da ein Gefühl für zu bekommen. So I'm trying to introduce some things here since I have this wonderful opportunity to be with you.

[87:07]

Which, if you're anything like me, it won't all make sense at first. But maybe it will mature in you and make some sense, I hope. Okay, before I go to my flip chart, is there something else anybody would like to bring up? Yeah. I don't know where my thoughts come from. I don't have the feeling that I'm provoking them myself, but that they come from outside. And if I were to provoke them myself, then I could stop them. I'm not sure where my thoughts come from. It seems as if they come from outside. And if I think of thoughts that I'm producing them, I could stop them.

[88:12]

Yeah, that's true. Das stimmt. When you see that you're producing them, you can stop nourishing them. Also, wenn du siehst, dass du sie produzierst, dann kannst du aufhören, sie zu nähren. Each moment is a flashing. It has no duration. It's hard for us to... We can't think this world we're in. We know it... Where's the past and where's the future start? I mean, that's past, that's... But we have an experience of duration. And that experience of duration is, we could call, present memory. Because everything on either side of this is a kind of memory.

[89:14]

So we have a kind of expandable presence which is arising from our senses and our memory. We can say each moment is a kind of infolding which then unfolds in our memory and associated thinking, and then outfalls into expression. But again, usually our consciousness is not attentive enough to notice that. And the mindfulness practice is to bring us into this infolding, unfolding and outfolding. Okay. Now, I find it's helpful to write some of these simple things down.

[90:46]

There are three basic, since we're talking about self, there's three, I would say, instead of looking at the self as an entity, let's look at the self as functions. One function of self has to be separation. In other words, you've got to know this is my voice and not his voice. And not something you're hearing in your head. And the immune system is a kind of self. The immune system says what belongs here and what doesn't belong here.

[91:46]

So the second function of self is connectedness. Self has to function in any culture You have to be able to distinguish separation and connectedness. Now, I have to have some way of noticing the feeling that we're connected. Yeah. And then the third function of self is continuity. We have to have some way of establishing moment-by-moment continuity.

[92:47]

Some people, if they take something like LSD and suddenly find there's no continuity but continual with present moments, it's terrifying. You're walking down the street and you decide to turn this direction. And you turn this direction and you can't remember where you were. No, there's only this direction. So we have to have some kind of mental continuity. The question is, how do we supply that continuity? Like, when we Westerners are having a hard time, we say, I can get through this. What does that mean? It means, I'm the kind of person who can do this because I've survived such things in the past.

[93:52]

That's our story. We're going to our story for continuity. But sometimes we go wash dishes or work in the garden. You feel so depressed. Your partner's left you and everything's falling apart. And you get fired from your job. I'm joking, but it happens. And what do you do? I'm going to go wash the dishes.

[94:37]

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