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Zen Gaps: Bridging Cultures and Minds

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Seminar

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The talk delves into Zen practice, particularly the concept of 'gaps' in practice and communication, including how these are recognized and responded to differently in Western and Eastern cultures. It underscores the necessity for depth in understanding and trust to cultivate effective Zen practice and interaction. The discussion extends into philosophical concepts such as Tathagatagarbha and Dharmakaya, suggesting that each moment serves as a potential seed for enlightenment. The speaker further explores the integration of Zen principles in the practice of psychotherapy and personal development, culminating in the intertwining of Zen and personal introspection to construct mental states and processes. Lastly, the connection between Zen practice and the development of technological innovations, like the Apple computer, is highlighted.

Referenced Works:

  • Tathagatagarbha and Dharmakaya: Examined as interconnected concepts that embody potentiality for enlightenment within the context of Zen teachings.

  • Abhidharma: Described as a foundational Buddhist text offering a systematic explanation of the mind and mental processes, referenced for its role in complementing personal psychological exploration and development.

  • Herbert Günther and Lama Govinda: Cited for their extensive work on the Abhidharma, providing insights into Buddhist philosophy with a creative approach in the English language.

Other Mentions:

  • Suzuki Roshi: Referenced for anecdotes and teachings that illuminate the relationship between Zen practice and personal or collective potential for enlightenment.

  • Kobun Chino Roshi: Mentioned for influencing the design philosophy of Apple, integrating Zen ideas with technological development.

  • Apple and Technological Development: Discussed in relation to the Zen influence on the development of user-friendly technology, emphasizing mindfulness and attention to detail.

AI Suggested Title: Zen Gaps: Bridging Cultures and Minds

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Transcript: 

And I know that in that situation, in sitting, it was then. And for me, it's just a link between . You experience a feeling of similarity, yeah. Yeah. And that question just is, what is happening there? A lot of faith in me, if you think I can answer that. Ah, there's the gap. Can you give me an example of a gap? I don't have a concrete example. Could there be a concrete example of a gut?

[01:05]

Well, in Zen practice, a teacher watches for guts. Da wartet der Lehrer auf solche Momente. When there's a hesitation. Wenn es ein Flügelwerk gibt. Or a pause. Oder eine Pause. Or speechlessness. Oder Sprachlosigkeit. Or a shhh. From, say, live words to dead words. Oder ein Wechsel von lebendigen Worten zu toten Worten. Now, traditionally in Zen, at that point you'd slap the person very hard across the face. Or you do something to start with. Or you just might walk away. I mean, in the West we have to be gentle with.

[02:09]

But it's not really exactly gentler, because in a body culture, it's more powerful to make body statement. And in a body culture, you don't see this as abusive. And it's like men in sports situations always kind of banging each other behind them. You know, like in games you watch them, they're happy, so they all bang at each other. But that kind of physical stuff I found you can't do in the West. Except in sports.

[03:25]

And people, I found years later, even big strong men hold it against you. So in the West we have to be less obvious. We change the subject. What kind of dramatic change of subject or something? Walk away or move your body into another space or something. Change of breathing. So that's how Zen works with gaps of various kinds. But it's a feeling of the gap as a potential upward movement. And to bring this upward movement into yourself and see if it catches the other person.

[04:31]

But this also suggests an intimacy and permission between the two people to do this. Yeah, so if there's intimacy and permission, you can, you know, pound somebody, but you have to be careful again. It takes the permission away sometimes in the way. Yeah. But I've told the story before, but I know Suzuki Roshi. An example is that Suzuki Roshi once saw a gap appear in a number of people. And a gap appear in myself. They were different gaps. But he knew he had permission with me to do anything. You know, and he was a little guy.

[05:43]

I mean, to me, he was big, but in photographs, I can see that he was quite much smaller than me. And he walked into this group of people, I don't know. Ten, twelve people. And he just grabbed me here and just put me... And then he began kidding me like mad and shouting, you should understand under my anger, you should understand under my anger. And I was just... And he wasn't the least bit angry. But it's not showbiz. It's a way to communicate. I had those brief experiences like that I had with him. But I trusted him so completely, I was just down there thinking, well, this is quite interesting.

[06:45]

The problem with some people is that they don't have any trust. When there's an interruption in contact, it's a helpless situation to find out what can bring a new contact or a new... to create a new possibility to come together. For me, it's something like a creative act. Find out what's possible. Yes, in German. I find myself, and I don't know if it's comparable at all to a psychotherapist's experience, that this real, this thorough trust is only developed by living and practicing together.

[08:23]

There have to be lots of instances in which this trust is reinforced. I find that there are people, for instance, who start out with a great deal of trust in me and myself in them. That's just there in a bodily sense. And it's confirmed through a depth of common practice recognitions. But unless that's followed up with a lot of time together, it starts to erode.

[09:26]

And then that trust, which was so strong, like love can be, starts being critical of very small things. Like somebody maybe is in love with somebody, but you're separated a long time, and then you're kind of more critical than you'd be normally at people. And that's one of the problems with late practice is developing a sufficient context of trust. Anyway, I don't know if that was useful, but it's something that's important for me to have recognized. It was useful for me to understand in a better way the quality of the background I'm going to get.

[10:47]

And I'm sitting there with the person, and what can I do now? And nothing of my usual, where do I start from? It has to be something that is different from everything. Well, I think, Deutsch, bitte. What I always ask of myself, In establishing a basis, it's necessary to use the repertoire of what one knows.

[11:50]

But in advancing the situation, You have to put yourself in a position where repertoire doesn't work and you have to find something new. Some creativity that comes out in the interaction that surprises you perhaps more than whoever you're with. Because they think it's repertoire and you think, whoa, where did that come from? I mean, I don't ever enjoy a seminar unless I get over my head. Then I have to figure out, how am I going to swim? Yeah. I was wondering if it was the same as what we had in the group, that it is actually good when it comes to this point where both no longer know how it will go on, that exactly from this process it can happen again and that it is important to run away and to stay.

[13:19]

I wonder whether this is related to what we discussed in our group to actually approach this area, this point, this gap, where both people don't know where to turn and where to move, and not to be afraid at that point, but to just hold. That is interesting and difficult. Yeah, okay. What else? And I wonder whether we or other people have similar experience as we try to explain our guide to you. But if I know that the people have a similar experience in their early childhood, and they don't have the consciousness about that, but their body knows nothing about that, I thought that the rooms that they have to look for something in their related life was a kind of practice, that practice or spiritual practice or mindful practice.

[14:40]

He said, and I asked myself, should I talk to him about it? If not, what is it? People who were in their childhood, who had women, who had a body, Here's a direction I could go with a little more detail. There's a relationship between seeing all of this that is, which we call the world or the universe or something, as pointing toward us as a unifying center And as a unifying center, it can be called Tophagatagarbha or Dharmakaya.

[15:59]

And there's a relationship between these two concepts. And dharmakaya is more like, I won't try to go into it, but this space that connects is mind. And tathagatagarbha is to look at all that happens as seed of karma or dharma. And that each thing that happens is simultaneously the seed of karma and dharma, or dharma. And the whole situation is simultaneously the womb of the seed. So at each moment, whatever happens is the seed of dharma or karma.

[17:14]

And at each moment, the context, which is inseparable, is the womb of that. Okay, now if we concede of this all that there is that way, now you'd call that a wisdom view. In other words, we in fact look at all this that is some way. Mostly we see it as a container that we walk around in. A neutral container. This would be a deluded view or an anti-therapeutic view and certainly anti-sociological view. So as a practice, you take on the view of all this as Tathagatagarbha.

[18:36]

Okay, so now if you take this all on as Tathagatagarbha, you can recognize these gaps as embryonic enlightenment. And then you can look back and you can see, oh yes, the life I led, and this would be a kind of psychological perception, but also a dharma perception. The kind of life I lived. The context I grew up in. The way in which my parents were the victim of their ancestors aborted my embryonic enlightenment. And there's a difference between an aborted embryonic enlightenment and a miscarried embryonic enlightenment.

[19:46]

And miscarried embryonic enlightenments have a greater chance to come alive. Because there can be later contexts which carry the enlightenment. But when they're been aborted, we don't believe they're dead. Yeah, and some of them are just in a very slow womb capsule. Where the term is not nine months. This discussion is entirely for the two of you with a new child. Where the term may be nine years or 44 years. So the Tathagatagarbha, you can imagine, you all see the movie 2001. At the end of it, there's this sort of baby floating in a kind of clear plastic case.

[21:07]

You can think of the Tathagatagarbha. You can think of this space, which is also memory, Plum full of little embryonic enlightenment still floating there waiting to pop. Waiting for the right context for you to recognize. Because enlightenment, if it's anywhere, is here. How could it be somewhere else? So this is full of Enlightenment, right now. So that's the idea of Tathagatagarbha.

[22:08]

It's quite a nice vision, isn't it? But it also looks back at one's history. If you see that your parents or your life context aborted these things, Dharma practice is to stop aborting things. Overall, the most powerful single thing is the altruistic vow to become enlightened for others. That vow can free us from the most destructive thoughts and destructive even suicidal habits. Without connecting with this event, it makes sense.

[23:33]

Anything else? Yes. Christina is saying that maybe when we meet again next time, we already have tried out or thought of some Dharma therapeutic practices, and maybe we even now can think of some that we can just try out with each other.

[24:50]

So I said at the beginning of this meeting that I would talk about the... perfecting the personality at the end of this meeting so you'd stay here. And Christina's trying to make sure we have a meeting next year. Okay. Yeah, so I'd look forward to next year or now. Disgusting. Dharma therapy, yes? Oh, I see, yeah. Good, that's good. Oh, I see, yeah. So let me say something that's occurred to me several times.

[26:03]

The Apple computer was developed in a garage by two guys, Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Yeah. I don't know how you pronounce it. W-O-Z-N-I-A-K. Do you know I can't spell? How did I know you can't spell? You can't spell in English. But you can create a spell. No. I've known this for many years, too. Anyway, they practiced Zen with Stephen, with Shino, Kobun Shino Roshi.

[27:08]

He's also a teacher of mine, a friend of mine. And They picked up the idea of a mouse and the mouse and other things from actually Xerox company developed the first way of interacting with the screen. And before Apple was invented, I was brought down to Xerox, and I saw this secret research project on interacting with a computer screen, with a television screen, really, in those days. But they think so, that the Apple computer is very connected with Buddhism. In simple things, like making the packaging as developed as the computer.

[28:27]

In the early days, if you've got electronic equipment, remember Yeltsin was horribly packaged. Apple was always packaged very nicely, easy to get out, the instructions were clear and stuff. They paid attention to all the details equally. And they tried to make it physically interactive. And one of their ideas, I feel quite sure, was this idea of using two hands so you had the mouth. But as the company has gone away from the founders, you began to have this one-handed little pad in the middle where you do the keyboard and the thing with the same hand, if you want. And that's a shift into a kind of mental space.

[29:36]

Where you see, oh, well, it's more convenient and efficient to use one hand to do both. Without the sense of what's happening when you approach something with both hands involved. Even a computer. I only bring this up as a kind of funny little example of where you can see physical space in Buddhism and where you can see more mental space to try to make it efficient in another way. Yes. Now, I think I should speak about, and I'm going to have to sense for myself with you, when I'm going into too much detail.

[31:05]

But like Eric brought up at lunch today, the relationship between view, intention, concept, etc., Now again, I don't know the distinctions available, the words available in German to make these distinctions. On a certain point of refinement and distinctions, the language differences make a big difference. Okay. But I think I should try to say something about that. And I think I should try to say something about the different kinds of perception.

[32:09]

And there's sensuous perception and non-sensuous perception. And there's perception and apperception. Apperception is... Aperception. Now, apperception is used in English to mean perception with a full knowledge of this perception. No. I mean, apperception can be used in two senses. One, to mean perception with full awareness, with active awareness. And it can also mean perception in a more psychological sense, where you're fully aware of how this perception arose in your personal history.

[33:32]

That you are frightened of this gunshot because your father was a hunter and because whatever. But in Buddhism, we can't just use the English use of it. So I should distinguish, if you want me to, between unconscious and unnoticed perception. Active perception and active perception, memory-based active perception. non-memory-based active perception, and perception with awareness and heightened awareness.

[34:42]

Buddhism makes all these kinds of distinctions, and this is a greater level of distinction than we usually go into. But when you enter into distinctions between mental space and physical, embodied space, you're in a territory where this makes a difference. And if you're going to understand what's meant by both enlightenment and emptiness, you have to make these distinctions. And how Buddhism then as a craft of practice is simultaneously therapeutic and soteriological. Now, the individual practitioner doesn't have to know these things. But the practitioner who is a teacher or is becoming a teacher needs to know these things.

[35:57]

Because the teacher has a responsibility to see that going this way or this way, there's a big difference. But the practitioner only has to go that way. They have to know why they didn't go this way. I think we should stop in a moment, but I just want to add, I brought up two or three things here that I think we can follow up on tomorrow, and I think it might be good if they're there for us to muse on this evening. I don't know if I can be very clear about it, but it's come up in me several times during our conversation now, so maybe I should make it more explicit.

[37:06]

So let's talk about memory-based perception for a moment. But first let me say that Oh, I won't. If I look at any of you, what I see is completely based on memory. I can't have any sense of the color, two colors or the cloth or anything if I don't have some memory. So all my perceptions are not in a vacuum.

[38:24]

They're in an already constructed context, a context constructed from memory. So if we could try to list the kinds of space here, And I can list, if you'd like, 20 or more. I've listed some of them at the Kimse Seminar. But our purpose here is that the fact of this space And for us, it's memory. This is not the space of physics or, you know, probes, you know, spaceships or something. It's the space, anything I look at, I'm seeing through the veils of memory.

[39:45]

The associations of men. Primarily then, space as memory is mental space. And as mental space, we see the associations, but there's a kind of disconnectedness. Now, one of the reasons I use so often my old saw... I don't know exactly where old saw comes from, but it means... Sword or saw? It means when you've said something so often, it no longer has much meaning. An old saw is like a cliché too often seen.

[40:47]

Or a cliche which no longer is dull, like a dull saw. But anyway, my old saw of seeing space connects or space separates. And how the concept of space separating blocks the experience of space connecting. And the more you're in a memory-based space, the more you don't feel space connected. Because in a memory-based space, you see all the associations. Which are primarily arising from you, not from the immediate situation. Okay. So right now, I

[42:47]

I can't give you sufficient examples of bodily space, though I've been talking about it quite a bit. But, for instance, when people are eating with the Zen bowls... which are entirely functioning in bodily space. You can see when a person goes against the bodily space enacted by the bowls, When they put something down that's here, like that, that's a mental thing. That's the straightest line between two points. That's mental. If you hand something to a kid, they take it into their body. To look at it, to feel it, to know it, to care for it.

[44:12]

So if you watch somebody who's naturally or whatever reason in the bodily space, even if they pick something up and put it back down, they tend to pull it into their body and put it back down. Because bodily space is something elastic. Something gummy. And so when you pick something up, you feel a kind of physical elasticity, and you pick it up and it's pulled towards you. You don't just put it down a straight line, you push it through the connectivity. So when you enter, when you have practices, and many of the practices in Zen are to interrupt mental space and try to push you into a bodily space.

[45:12]

And you can't explain that to most people. And I can go to Zen groups and look around and say, it's all mental space. They're doing all the stuff, but they're doing it all in mental space. There's a different kind of feeling or satisfaction when you're in a place where there's a bodily space. And the more you're in bodily space, you open yourself to a non-mental territory, a non-memory territory. To open yourself to the immediacy, immediacy. The no media, immediacy. To stretch so you can all stroke. Hello. I need a stretcher.

[46:41]

Okay, good morning again. Thank you. Siegfried asked me about this man I mentioned, Vasubandhu. Siegfried hat mich gestern noch etwas gefragt über Vasubandhu, den ich erwähnt habe. I think any of you interested in this kind of the description of the mind and its function from a Buddhist point of view, you can find any book that you like on the Abhidharma. I think the most creative and One of the most intelligent authors is Herbert Günther.

[48:09]

And he's a German who lives in Canada and writes primarily about Tibetan Buddhism, but also Buddhism in general. And he's very creative, even over-creative, in finding English terms for complex, in Sanskrit, technical terms. And like... Heidegger, he creates some ungainly hyphenated words. And he's done a book in English on an introduction to the Abhidhamma. And Lama Govinda has also done a book on the Abhidhamma. I think his best book is the... What's it called?

[49:22]

The Crypt of the Tibetan... Can't think of it right now. But the book on the Abhidhamma is quite good. I think Günther has a better intellectual understanding. But I'm pretty sure that Govinda's books exist in German, and probably Günther's books exist in German, but he writes in English, I believe. But his English, when you talk with him, is still half German. Now, is there anything you'd like to bring up or read? Okay, but I thought as I would start out... I think I'm headed for a description of manas, citta, and the vijnanas.

[51:05]

But I think first I maybe will say a couple of personal things. Now, the first is just maybe a little bit amusing. Which is that, you know, I have this recurrent dream in which I have a house somewhere. Yeah. And this house is either in a kind of forest that has a secret path to it. Or it's on the beach. Sometimes a lake, but usually the ocean. And there's always a long pathway to it. And I have this dream on a fairly regular basis every year, several times a year.

[52:11]

And what's funny is that although the house is somewhat different in each dream, and it's sometimes in the forest and sometimes in the ocean, I have the absolute sense that I know the house thoroughly. Even though it changes, I know it thoroughly. So I remember clearly using the bathroom, the toilet. And often in the dream I'm showing somebody else the house. And I show them exactly where the toilet is and where the sink is and where the kitchen is and so on. And how these trees here I planted, now they're a bit taller.

[53:20]

I mean, it's real detail. And often, you know, like the forest one, I might have six or eight dreams in a year about it, in which I find the path, and I can perhaps lose it, and then I have to find the path again to it. So I like this house. It's a really nice place. And when I'm there, I really feel like I'm living in it. Although sometimes the overall message of the dream is how seldom I visit it. Or how I'm not maintaining it, or how the path gets overgrown, things like that.

[54:30]

But what I've noticed when I visit this house, I can also, in zazen, it usually follows from or leads to an experience in zazen in which I feel very tall and I feel I'm lifting up into a kind of sky mind. Like I lift up into the sky mind and I can feel it almost brushing my head. It's almost like a kind of heaven. And it lowers to be close to my head as well as my lifting into it.

[55:33]

And when I lift into this and can feel this, let's call it sky mind, I have exactly the same satisfaction that I were living in that house. So then if I have this feeling in meditation, I can usually pull that down into my daily life and for the several days experience myself living in that house as if it were here in this room. Or it's almost like to try to make this sky mind satisfaction real, When I hear it translated, this sounds kind of nuts. Anyway, it's almost the satisfaction I feel in this sky mind.

[56:50]

I've pulled it, to try to make it real, I've pulled it down and formed it into a house where I could live. And when I'm too busy, it kind of pops back up there and disappears into heaven. But what's nice is I know I can, if I intend to, I can lift myself into it and pull it back down and build it around me. If I really want it, then I can pull it back to me and manifest it around me and live in it. Now, I don't know if you guys are professional dream jokes.

[57:53]

So maybe you hear things like this all the time. But the only thing I would say that is influenced by my Buddhist practice, Is the ability to notice very precise layers of mind. Enter them, sustain them, and physicalize. And to be able to compare the feeling in the dream, say, to the feeling of a particular slice of mind in Vasa. I think that ability probably comes from practice. Now continuing on a personal vein, I thought that approaching these distinctions like manas, cittas, vijnanas, and so forth, it might be useful for me to describe

[59:42]

my own process of constructing my mind. And I experience it as a kind of constructing. Now, from having studied in high school and college Freud a bit, I knew this ego, superego, unconscious sort of division. And I actually, although I didn't accept those divisions as real necessarily for me, for some reason I'm a person who I don't ever accept anything unless I experience it myself. And that tendency in myself has been reinforced by Zen practice.

[61:24]

But what I did accept out of Freud's theories was that there was some kind of dynamic system of the mind of interrelated parts. So I definitely received that sense that the mind could be some sort of interrelated system that could be tuned from Freud. And that was a kind of faith or hope. And when I encountered Buddhism, my faith and hope was much increased because Buddhism definitely says the mind can be developed or transformed or attuned. So I had it in the early year or two before I started practicing and the first couple of years of practicing.

[62:33]

I had a pretty a fairly serious kind of crisis of mental suffering that was partly, at least, precipitated in an explicit form by my sister's nervous breakdown. Okay, so I tried to see what was going on in my mind. Maybe I can just, again, it's easier to keep these things in mind if I write them down. Although this is extremely simple, but no.

[63:34]

But let's see, I had some feeling of a spot of attention. And I also had some feeling of a general field mind. I don't think it's worth writing down, but for you, I mean, for me, it's worth writing down. And I also had the feeling of a kind of reservoir, non-conscious reservoir, I'd call it. Now, I didn't think of it as unconscious. I thought it was just non-conscious.

[65:05]

And then there were personality factors. And they were like arrogance, fear, confidence. But what I noticed was that my spot of attention was always OK. Particularly this time. Okay. So if I brought my attention to something, if my mind was in that attention, there was not much problem.

[66:13]

But I noticed that my general field of mind was generally unstable. It was subject to... Now, let me take it. Let me say something else for a moment. The reason I'm putting it this way partly is to say that I think what Buddhism gives us is the tool to work with the mind we find we have. So I think someone else might have some other different experience of mind. But in any case, I think we start out with our own inventory. So to make that clear, I'm giving you a feeling of what my inventory was.

[67:35]

So I noticed, and this was really before I started to practice, that my general field of mind was subject to moods, sometimes depression, Compulsive thinking. The first thing, which I didn't like too much. But sometimes it felt like the general field of mind could envelop my spot of attention. Okay, so what I did is I began to develop the ability to sort of stay in the spot of attention. And I also discovered that if I was tired, that was easier.

[68:52]

I found if I was exhausted, didn't have, was really tired, then I just had to stay with that to function. But if I was real rested, then I had all this other energy for all, so I had to keep myself tired. And I noticed that everyone liked me better when I was exhausted. That would cause less problems. So I decided not to worry about the personality factors either. Well, they're extremely persistent. I figured they could be... That's just a craft, personality. I saw personality as a craft that I could develop. But I couldn't develop my personality as long as my general field of mind was so shaped.

[70:04]

And sometimes I would lock my spot of attention into a book. If I locked it into the book and then the general field of mind wasn't a disturbance. So from the time of taking my sister to this mental hospital and a lot of other things that happened, I just began to work with this spot of attention. And I suppose that took some kind of willpower and so forth, but still, this was okay. It was like a little flashlight. What was in the flashlight was out of it. Now, when I started to practice, I noticed that I had a, I would say, a background movement.

[71:15]

And then that made me know that it was sort of functioning in a foreground. And I began into the background mind. I put the non-conscious reservoir. And what I discovered was the non-conscious reservoir which was also things that come out of it. And there was a kind of pressure from it, I could feel. But still, my own feeling was this was less of a problem, whatever came from this, if this state of mind was more stable.

[72:35]

So I could say this was the personal work I did before I started practicing Zen. So practicing Zen made me more and more see this background mind. And I discovered that the spot of attention could be both in the background mind and the foreground mind. So I could move, in zazen, this spot of attention into my background mind. And in the background mind, there was a much more permeable membrane between non-conscious material and my conscious mind. So I found that my foreground mind, my energetic mind, daily activity, blocked this reservoir from flowing into my mind.

[73:53]

So I saw the background mind which I could generate in zazen. And I saw almost the entirety of zazen mind as a kind of background mind. So I saw in the background line also assumptions I had about the world. Like space connect, space separate. It then conditioned my perception. I didn't see that clearly for a while, so I had an experience of that, but that's an example.

[75:11]

But I saw, for instance, a very simple one, that I had a presumption that I was a big eater. And as a child, it was completely true. They'd order eight quarts of milk for me a day. And I never gained weight. So, in fact, I was a big eater, but... I also had the idea of being a big eater, which I saw influenced how I ate. The idea influenced me as well as my appetite. So I began to see how things functioned. I began to see my background mind gave me access to basic views.

[76:14]

I'm not sure where the word view comes from. Basic views that conditioned what I did. Okay, so this observation made me think, okay, then I can put into the background mind other views, contradictory views. So I thought, well, if my background mind has these ideas like I'm a big eater, I thought, well, I could put in an idea like think thin. But that never turned into like about 50, because... Because until I was in my 40s, I weighed 20, 15, 20 kilos less than I do now. So I could compete with Siegfried on the scales.

[77:24]

I'm taller, so it would be a genuine competition. OK, so then I began to work with koans and phrases, mantra-like phrases. And I saw that repetition was a way to put things in the background line, which then influenced the foregrab. And this was a process of noticing during my first year or two of practice. And I also saw the background mind as the flood of reparenting.

[78:50]

In other words, I noticed that the more I could make this a permeable boundary between non-conscious, the reservoir... And involuntary and partially voluntary recapitulation of my life. And in that process, I reparented myself. I made my life to turn it into my own. From Suzuki Roshi, I also added the idea of innermost request. So, because Suzuki Roshi spoke about that a lot. That we can get to a point where we know what we really want to do.

[80:03]

And it's not a decision, it's already there. And it's something made up from your personal history, but it's also your deepest wishes for how the world would be, how you could be. And then I also add it in an active way, which is still in its The innermost request sort of went into my background mind. And then I added various wisdom teaching. And they were closely related to the innermost request. I mean, the dynamic was quite similar.

[81:18]

What I saw as wisdom, it was almost like they talked to each other. And then I began to notice the operation of something I would call big mind. And then I suddenly saw something like the deep mind, the great mind, or this wisdom mind, how it works. So I noticed that intention started here at the foreground. So I could have an intention to open myself to my innermost request.

[82:19]

But the background mind, I must say, had to leave alone, but I could drop these fishing lines of intention down into it. And I found that Um, And, for instance, if I had some wisdom phrase I wanted to put in my background mind, I really thought of it as putting it in something. I would pick the thing by intention and an intention to... to repeat it, I would sort of lodge it in my background. And I would also have an intention to be open to the contents of background mind flowing into my foreground mind.

[83:26]

And then I found sometimes that what I would call big mind gain, something took over. The more I developed the skill to be open to background mind in my daily activity, I don't know how much detail I should go into, but I noticed that the spotlight of attention I felt I could hold that place which gave me a feeling of well-being, while at the same time I had the confidence to open myself to whatever would come from my background. And I developed an attitude of welcome and trust.

[84:54]

Now, I didn't know at this time that I was practicing Buddhism, really. I just was trying to survive. But my decision to develop welcome trust was different from when a healthy conscious attitude. I decided I was going to stay alive. So I was going to trust whatever it meant to be alive. And if it destroyed me, it would be better to be destroyed than to not have trust and make that kind of decision.

[86:02]

Sometimes I'd go to bed and think, well, I'm going to wake up in the morning, start raving crazy. But because of this attitude, I thought, I'll worry about that in the morning. Right now, it's more important to go to sleep. So I developed the ability to push the fear off into when it happened, but not to anticipate it. But what was interesting, which I didn't expect, is again, as the more I opened myself to background mind coming into the foreground mind, The more I opened myself to big mind and basically enlightenment type experience. So, this is it. I was actually doing psychotherapy at the time to deal with my anxiety that came from, I'm sure it came from my sister's breakdown and from myself.

[87:40]

And he was a very nice guy. And he had confidence in me, which gave me confidence. But one of the most important things he said to me. He said that at one point I said, this is getting better, I said, do you think I'll get free of it entirely? And he said to me, no, I think you'll probably have recurrent episodes of this every year or every couple of years. And I heard him and I said, oh, no, I'm not. So I decided to try something else.

[89:00]

So that's why I decided I had to figure out how my mind worked so I could change the problem. Yeah. And it... I don't know. Kind of mechanical. But it helped me. And after a while I made it a little less mechanical. But I also used this. Then what the next step was, I really studied the Abhidharma and Buddhist teachings in much more detail. And I saw how Buddhism deals with the same thing and how it's much more refined in Buddhism. But still, the foundation was this. And then the Buddhist house was built on top of that. And that's how the Buddhist house was built.

[90:15]

Now I would like to start on the Buddhist house. But I need a kind of break before I do that. I don't know if we should take a break or we should have... Okay. So it's ten to eleven almost. Let's come back about twenty after, twenty-five after ten. We'll meet again in 20 minutes.

[91:19]

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