I think it's connected like a tool, like Lego or like a Fischer box. I take a thought and then I build it together and then another thought comes and then I look at it and then I think differently and that is very much connected to me, also the way I write, because I write a lot and work with texts. So I write a text and then I look at it and then I see that it doesn't fit and so on and so forth. No, no, I don't mind. That's why I haven't learned it, so I have big, long rests. How do you think? You pointed out the way to talk to each other, and of course you need words, but in the inner psychic process, first there are no words, and it happens afterwards that you skip words and things.

[01:38]

I don't know if that's true for everyone, but I think, let's say it's true for you. Okay, also, übersetzt du das? Ich... I had an idea that Richard, as a reason for the use of words in thinking, that one uses words. But I now had an inner psychological process in front of me, how I can distinguish between thinking and these other qualities. That's it. And that was something I also described in Rastenberg. I read a book about dyslexia and the talent of dyslexia.

[02:50]

So they found out, or they say that these children with dyslexia remained in an emotional space, or thinking more emotionally. I'm not in a three-dimensional space, I'm just consecutive. So it remained in a three-dimensional space. Yeah, I understand. And therefore it's hard for these children to follow our two-dimensional way of thinking and also this dimension of time where things happen after one another. And then, and thanks heaven, they changed their mind.

[04:14]

It's no longer seen as a damage or as an error or mistake, but it's somehow an attempt. A capacity. A capacity. Yeah. Yeah. And to support this idea also by saying that Einstein might have had dyslexia and therefore he was able to feel these revolutionary theories. Well, yeah. He also... the person of this stature who I know who is remarked on, that his ideas often came from physical feelings. And he'd follow up on a physical feeling and it would turn into an idea. If anyone else has something also to say about how they think or something think, that would be interesting.

[05:29]

You know, in this thing about the Buddhas having eyes in their hands, Zen people have circles. Felix? I really have problems to think in chains, thought chains. And I was 28, 39, when during my psychotherapy, my therapist just said, you don't know that your main talent is kinesthetic.

[06:32]

And I was struck. Because to that time, I always tried to compete with words. And this changed. I couldn't. Yeah, I understand. Okay. Deutsch? Yes? Yes. Ich bin fast unfähig, in solchen Gedanken zu denken. Aber nicht alles. I am almost incapable of thinking. I can't do it at all. I have great difficulties with writing. But I was 28 in the evening in a psychotherapy, where I was almost in a coma. The doctor said to me, what does it mean for me that you have to go to the kinesiologist? It was really an explosion.

[07:37]

I said, I'm totally beaten because of all this pain. So, Horst Thiel? Yes? Horst Thiel? Yes. And I often notice that this thinking in words gives me difficulties when I have more complex thoughts. And I use it then, because I have seen it myself, where I then use it in more dimensions. I can show and present things and I am bound to this sequence.

[08:40]

Should I translate that? Yes. I almost understood though. I mean, you were so animated. So kinesthetic. Yeah. Okay. Normally I think in words, but if I am coming to more complex things I have to think about, I get in trouble. So what I therefore use is this mind mapping. Where you have, you know, you build little trees of where your thoughts are and you mark this and you somehow, you see how it's connected. So it's not a hierarchical thing. It's more on a sheet and it comes together and in the center you have this, the main topic, you know. So it's not a hierarchical, you have more a feeling of what do I want to say about this whole issue you want to talk about. The hierarchies are then a result of the picture.

[09:43]

And when I think in words, the hierarchy comes from the sequentiality, and normally that's not right. The sequentiality is the right picture. Yeah, I understand. Who's next? for me thinking is connected very much with making in the symbols to symbolize what we call here naming. And it's always connected with the abstraction of an experience.

[10:44]

And therefore this distinction between thinking, perceiving and feeling is very clear. Because when I think I am some kind of abstraction and when I am in the perception I am in experiencing. And I experience this teaching as a schooling in experiencing. A school of experience. And when I am in this experience, And when I'm in this experiencing, I'm much closer to this continuum than I am in this thinking.

[11:56]

And that which is also very interesting for me is to switch from the one state to the other. To switch from one state into another. Yeah, I understand. Good. I have the impression that I somehow, when I think, I'm feeling and looking into structures like on a spectrum. I think that when I'm thinking that I see spaces and structures, and only when I saw that, then words come. Words are added. I have the feeling that something is still going on.

[13:15]

My structure is already a bit wild. It already has an intention. I have the feeling that something is still going on. A non-willing thinking. The self. I was trying to express the non-dualistic thinking that is controlled by us. I understand what you are saying. I have the feeling that there is something before the structure, because I think structure already has an intention in it, and I think there is something before that, somehow unintentional, somehow not steered by ourselves, something, what's the name?

[14:16]

Envoyment. What David Loyne calls non-dualistic thinking. Okay? Anyone else want to add something? I deal with this ground before a thought arises, which many people have pointed to. I also feel that there is a kind of ability to unglue the process of thinking from the content of thinking. So for me, thinking has an importance in a kind of constellation of ways of bringing form to a world.

[15:27]

Because the content of thinking isn't submerged with the process of So it's like this great tool that I can use in certain situations. But it doesn't limit me experiencing the fullness of my life. Okay, maybe we need a break. I would like to say something to thinking. Okay. Yeah. I think we have to discriminate. I mean, there are several kinds of thinking. One, what I said with this tool kind of thinking, that's rather important for me, and it's like construct.

[16:34]

I already said that, constructing. But on the other hand, I think this kind of thinking is somehow connected to a source or so, to a feeling. And for instance, if I have to do some, the initial thought, there's some initial thought underneath that. So it's somehow something that comes later. I have an initial thought, for instance, if I write a study on anything and I have made some interviews and I'm sitting in a train and just writing down, what do I think about that? What kind of feeling was conveyed? What do I think about the situation? What was it like? And then I write it down. And then... this feeling stays somehow, but I have to think in another way now. I try to be more, that's not such a, it's not such a fluffy feeling, it's more precise. Then I write that down and I read it again and does it make sense to me and does it make sense to someone else?

[17:37]

And an interesting thing is when you're translating, for instance. So in translating, I don't think at all. My feeling is more, I listen, and I don't think what you're saying, and therefore in the beginning I did not remember what you, if somebody asked me, what did he say in the lecture, I said, I don't know, no idea. Thank you. So, but the interesting thing is, you say something, and I am somehow translating it. I don't know how, but the feeling is... I hope you know how he translated it. Yeah, but how, I'm in the process, not the result. If none of us know, we're in trouble. And the feeling is, was it, sometimes it comes to an end, and I have the feeling, okay, that was complete. There is nothing left.

[18:39]

It's clear. It's complete. But it's not about thinking. It's just a feeling of there is nothing. There is nothing there. It's complete. Okay. Okay. So I think we have to be really careful with what do we, which aspect of thinking are we talking about? Yeah. Should you translate that or do you all know what he's saying? Okay. Well, I'm not being careful, though. Because, I mean, if we, I think all of us Everyone thinks a little differently, some people, quite differently in fact. If this is a study of knowing ourselves, then you want to observe how you think and get familiar with how you think. And I think if you notice how you think, and you notice actually there's other ways, like he says he does fluffy thinking and non-fluffy thinking and stuff.

[19:57]

Yeah, you could start emphasizing the fluffy part maybe, or you could change the emphases. So I think observation always becomes an opportunity for change. Right now, I'm using thinking in the way Buddhism often uses thinking as a kind of semiotic term. a sign which represents a whole lot of things. So the word thinking generally means, in some contexts it means something very precise, but generally it means the whole activity of mentation in the consciousness.

[21:01]

It's conscious activity. Okay, so let's have a break. Quarter to... And thank you for this first part of the morning. Mentally dribbling. Mentally dribbling, yeah. Soon I may be more than mentally driven. Now, how are we doing here?

[22:07]

I'm, you know, not asking for praise or support or something, just realistically, how is this... Is this... reaching some place that's useful? What place that's useful is it reaching? Yeah. I'm just thinking how what we did until now find the place in my everyday practice. Not on the sattvo, but in the everyday. like thinking about slowing, try to slow down, in any case, my thinking or my inner process.

[23:27]

What's merely, you know, impossible. Just to aim it, my inner process, so that I can slow it down, which is impossible from now on. I think so far what we've, I think, might be the most clear in the seminar so far. As the possibilities in this one word appearance. Okay. And I think, again, having some phrase like pausing for appearance is probably good.

[24:29]

Part of this is to wait for the experience. And in the beginning, it takes a little waiting. Not just wait for the appearance of the flowers to be a physical experience. But get in the habit of waiting for the physical experience of another person. So as much as possible, in each situation, you wait for an experience of that person. Not thinking or idea, an actual kind of sensation of that person.

[25:41]

It's interesting, some people don't want to let you do it. They feel a little bit like when Sophia is downloading. They feel something's going on here that I don't want to have happen. Excuse me, what do you understand by downloading? Like in a computer, you download something. Do you mean it's a process of, if I'm downloading anything, it's just getting information down? Yeah. But it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm reading it or that I'm understanding it. So does it imply understanding? I'm just trying to... No, be precise and perfect.

[26:45]

But for me... There's almost no separation between downloading, absorbing, and understanding. Okay. So I'm downloading more on my computer than you do. Yeah, that might be. Well, I should use some other word than absorbing. Yeah. If you think of Sophia as the computer itself, then downloading is fine. If you think of her as observing the computer, then there's a problem. But, for instance, some people, you can pause for the experience of the person. They don't mind at all. They'd rather... doing it themselves.

[27:51]

Now if any of us are really interested, you know what most interesting to me is, you know, when I meet with people who have been practicing a long time, Because we can go over very simple things very thoroughly. But I feel with you, I can go over pretty simple things fairly thoroughly. I don't want to overdo it, but anyway, we're going fairly slowly up, it's okay. So, just in this list of three functions of self, once I really saw it, Yeah, and the importance of shifting from self as an entity, self as a function.

[29:08]

And then the obviousness that we have to have a functioning self, if not an entity self. So to be free of self can't mean to be free of the functions of self. But like many things, when you make it clear, I practiced in this way for decades. But when I wrote it down, because I had to teach, and had to answer people's questions repeatedly about what's no self and so forth,

[30:10]

I saw when I wrote it down, it became a window. I could see further than just the way I was practicing. And one thing I noticed to my astonishment, really astonishment, that I could have fought it, but I didn't anyway, is the degree to which our sense of self is almost entirely separation and continuity. And we pay sort of polite lip service to connectedness. Except for our kids, perhaps.

[31:17]

But in yoga culture... The emphasis is almost entirely on connectedness. And there's a kind of lip service to separation. So it made it clear to me that if I'm going to teach Buddhism, I have to teach a lot of connectedness in the West. So the list gave me a chance to see how I could shift an emphasis. And then it showed me that continuity is an area of transformation. So understanding these three functions of self is a basis for almost everything I teach.

[32:21]

I want to point out this just for the heck of it. I've had coffee a number of times in these cups. And it has this little pattern on it. And it's so completely European, it amuses me. How is it not Japanese or Chinese? Well, first of all, it's divided up and down. Divided vertically and horizontally. And it repeats itself exactly. You must never see that in a Japanese design unless it's influenced by the West. First of all, even if it was sort of divided, it would be asymmetrical.

[33:46]

Symmetricality is too predictive, too mental. And it's, if it was more Japanese or Chinese, it would just kind of be like you look through a window at some branches. It just would be sort of there. And in the older dishes, which were copied for our china, European dishes. I guess we call it China because they discovered glazes that you can clean and not get poisoned from and are non-lead glazes.

[34:55]

So I saw a show once of all these German Meissenware and English dishes and so forth. And they showed the stages. And in the first copies of the Chinese designs, first of all, the first thing they did is they made the So haben Sie zunächst einmal angefangen, dass das Design auf den Teller gepasst hat. In the sense that there was nothing omitted, in the sense that everything was fit on the plate. Also so, dass alles drauf war, nicht dass bestimmte Teile fehlen oder dass...

[36:15]

The Japanese and Chinese originals were more like you held a circle up to nature and whatever went across the circle was on the plate. Peter, come in. And then in the next dishes... Next stage, it begins to fit the rim and fit the middle and so forth. So the plate becomes an entity. And the original, the plate is more, as I said, part of the whole, a share of the whole. Look at this also. All of it comes from one source. So it all comes out of one source. So the Asian design would not be symmetrical and not come from one source.

[37:20]

So anyway, that's all. It's just interesting for me to see this. You said it's European, but would it be different American? Is there a difference? Oh, it's American too. To American too. America is just a bunch of Europeans who live in the new world. I know nobody you want to don't want to take responsibility for American culture. Or lack of it. Okay. Yeah. Is there a difference for you between repetition and continuity? Repetition tends to break continuity.

[38:39]

Continuity seeks sequence. If you repeat something, you tend to break continuity and end up more with a spatial... So the background mind is developed through repeating. And again, I can come back to this koan. And I'd like Paul, at some point, maybe you could take this koan and speak about it a little bit with people. So, just to run through it a little bit again, it says, Union asks, why does the Bodhisattva compassion have so many hands and eyes? And Dao Wu says, it's like looking for your pillow at night.

[39:52]

Which actually also picks up some of the image. of the bodhisattva with so many, a halo of arms. But it's a very subtle and experiential answer of Daoism. So then he says, do you understand? And Yunyan says, I understand. So Dawu, now the shift, the koans in two parts, the first is initiated by Yunyan and the second is initiated by Dawu.

[40:52]

And it's sort of a second koan. And anyway, this one's initiated by Dao Wu. He says, what do you understand? He says, the whole body is covered by hands and eyes. Actually, it's a stupid answer. Because he's saying nothing more than the image of the Buddha that everyone knows. Stupid isn't too strong a word because Yunyan, after all, is in our lineage, so we have to be nice to him. But in these stories, he always plays the slightly dumber one. So maybe we're practicing the dumb dharma. Anyway, so Da Wu says, what do you understand?

[42:13]

And he gives a very predictive answer. The whole body is covered with hands and eyes. And Yun Yan says, Da Wu says, oh, that's not bad, but that's only 80%. Yunyan says, well, what would you say, brother? He says, the whole body is hands and eyes. Well, that's only 81%. Basically, there's almost no difference between the two statements. And the slight difference is to get you to try to think about what the difference is. What's important is it's a repetition.

[43:16]

And the repetition is different. So he's basically saying the same thing, but by repeating it, he's saying, you just said the obvious thing, you better practice it. So basically the koan is saying to you, don't go too quickly to your thinking. Repetition means don't go too quickly to your thinking. Can I ask a question? Sure. I'm not sure whether I understand correctly, because also a continuity is constant repetition.

[44:25]

To give an example, when I go into my car and I'm turning the ignition, and then I suddenly find myself trying to turn on the radio. It's an impulse, which comes just, it's a habit. So a habit is also based on repetition. but it's a repetition which is not wholesome. It's more leading in distraction. So maybe we have to find there are wholesome and unwholesome repetitions or something like that. Also, ich habe ein Problem mit dem Wiederholen, weil es gibt verschiedene Arten von Wiederholungen und ich denke, es gibt Wiederholungen, die mehr in die Richtung von einer Kontinuität und Wiederholungen, die mehr in Richtung Kontinuum führen. So repetitions, which are leading into continuity or leading into continuum. So, and the example that I brought, when I get into the car, I turn on the ignition key and I'm somehow a little tired, I turn on the radio, I notice, I turn on the radio to distract myself and then I turn it off again and just drive without the radio.

[45:34]

But we have a certain direction here in the teaching. And if we define the words in every possible way, we can't go anywhere. If you don't have some background, no sentence makes sense. And the background we're bringing to this is there's a difference between repetition and habit. If you want to break a habit, you use repetition. The antidote to habit is conscious repetition. Now again, this koan, it says, crystal clear on all sides.

[46:42]

In all directions, no obstructions. The introduction is saying, look at this koan as a view of the world and a view of the world in which we can act in a certain way to construct that view of the world. I was struck, you know, I spoke at Rostenberg quite a bit about the way in which I'm struck about the similarities between the time in Vienna in the late 19th century and now. And the way this intellectual historian, Karl Schorsky, Both Schoenberg and Robert Musil are trying to

[48:03]

come to the difference between a world view and a true view of the world. So we're trying to come to a true view view of the world here. And in such a true view of the world, how would you act? To manifest that view or generate that view. And this koan is in a way about that. And it's about emptiness, the part that says a hole or emptiness. It talks about emptiness. Okay. Now I just want to say while we're here, going back to appearance and naming.

[49:28]

Naming, when it's not a word, Yeah, it's a basic Zen Buddhist practice. Like when you are, the most classic thing is when you're practicing zazen. Instead of counting your breaths in the beginning. You name your breaths. This is a small breath. This is a long breath. If you just do that, you actually stop thinking. Naming stops thinking. And you can practice naming In this way.

[50:32]

So instead of thinking about the microphone, I just say microphone. I look over at you two, I say feet. Necklace. Sweater. So if I just name whatever appears, it tends to stop thinking. So naming is pivotal here. Now, I'm going into this... in this kind of detail just to illustrate the kind of detail you can go into. When you really see, oh, that's naming, then naming is a practice that returns you to appearance. Wenn das Benennen zu Worten wird, dann endet ihr bei Unterscheidungen.

[51:46]

Und sobald ihr dieses Denken habt, diese Unterscheidung habt, seid ihr im ganzen Apparat unseres Denkens drinnen. Okay, so when you bring in right knowledge, wenn ihr also richtiges Wissen hineinbringt, I would say, let's just say that the most basic thing to bring in is that everything points to mind. If with every discrimination you say, oh, that also points at mind, now you're interrupting the ordinary thinking process. So this is a kind of surgery. It surgically interrupts our thinking. And with only a list of a short five, with suchness returns us to emptiness.

[53:00]

And in a way we could call this uncovering emptiness. So these are practices which assume the experience of emptiness. Yes? Do you mean when you say feet, for example, you use the name feet more like a metaphor for something that appears not less like something that you want to investigate or something like that? Well, you can start. Yeah, go ahead. Deutsch. Deutsch. Deutsch. as something that has more meaning and value.

[54:21]

Okay. Yeah, we could say things like that about it. But really this is a practice. It's just really about doing it. Not defining what it is to do it, just doing it. Say I'm sitting here. And maybe my mind wants to think about something. If I just sit here and I say to myself, when thoughts appear, I say, oh, a thought. Just to call a thought a thought stops you thinking. What if I sit here and I say, Bell. My mind wants to think, so I say glass.

[55:26]

You know, something like that. It's a practice, yeah. I feel like this is the moon and we're the men in the moon. Could you please describe a little more completely, I get the relationship between appearance, naming, discrimination, and by interceding with right knowledge, how we can create some daylight, some opening. I'm not sure about... What's the problem? I'd like you to explain more about the relationship between right knowledge and suchness. The point is, when you interfere with thinking, When we say things are empty, what are they empty of?

[56:43]

They're empty of permanence, they're empty of entity-ness. And what happens when you take or permanence away, it's replaced by emptiness. It's like if you take the waves away, it's replaced by water. Something like that. So here water, excuse me, emptiness is seen in the Mahayana, is found in the Mahayana to be a positive experience. So bliss, joy, non-referential joy are all manifestations or experiences of emptiness.

[57:49]

When joy arises for no reason, it's an expression of emptiness. So suchness is a manifestation of emptiness. Okay, so I have this, and I have this, and I have this, and they're different. But they have a sameness. What is their sameness? What is the same about those? This guy is clearly in the lineage of Junya.

[59:01]

He said they're round. This guy doesn't beat around the bush. He gets right to the point. What is the same about these three? Well, that's true. They have a relationship. But the relationship doesn't work sometimes. So what is the same about those three things? I can keep going. Go ahead. I know them through my mind and seeing. Yeah, they're all characterized by mind. If I experience mind on seeingness, there's no doubt. That's a more powerful experience than the difference.

[60:11]

So I'm always pointing, right? Yes. I don't know what is meant by they are characterized by mind. Okay. What if I said as a kind of, you know, stop, look and listen? Every object, every perception points at the object and points at mind. Okay. If I have the habit of pointing at the object, what I see is differentiation. When I genuinely... have switched my habit.

[61:18]

So it points to mind first and the object second. Then there's no question that instantly what I see is mind. And then for the sake of ringing the bell or you, I say, oh yeah, there's three objects. For the sake. These objects don't exist on the moon. They exist in our human realm. They were made by a human being.

[62:24]

I'm using them here in a human way. They have no reality except in my use. And everything about them is first of all characterized by mind. Okay, so if when I look at that, I feel my mind looking at it, and I look at this, and I feel its use and everything, but I feel my mind Seeing it, knowing it. And I feel my body present in the bell, or et cetera. Then there's a sameness. So within looking at each of you, I feel a sameness because it's not a Martian looking at you. It's this person looking at you, and I feel myself looking at you, and that's what I see first, not the differentiation.

[63:47]

What happens if I have that habit? I see the differentiation unfolding within my mind. And then what do I, which is only the way, it's the only place it's going to unfold. And I see, then I'm open to feeling your mind noticing me. So one of the ways you notice, you know, how does a Zen teacher know who's the good student and who's the bad student and so forth.

[64:53]

The first thing you notice with somebody who knows practice is they're experiencing sameness when they see you. And you feel the differentiation unfolding mutually in each other's mind. And then you feel a joining of the minds, connectedness. And now maybe the phrase mind-to-mind transmission means something more to you. Some practitioners From almost the beginning, feel it.

[66:01]

Some are like Daowu and some are like Yunyan. They take a long time to feel it. But once they pass it, the lineage is full of flower. Okay, now another way to talk about this is suchness. And usually the words are used interchangeably in English. As a Buddhist term. But I actually find in my experience that I use them slightly differently. It may be one of these 80 or 81 percent distinctions. But When I say suchness, I mean I feel the mind knowing each object.

[67:15]

When I say thusness, I have a feeling more of each one appears from a field of emptiness. But in any case, the word in As a Buddhist term, it means both things appearing on their own terms and you're noticing them in your own mind. Aber als buddhistischer Terminus bedeuten sie beides, das Aufsteigen aus der Leerheit und das Aufsteigen aus dem eigenen Geist. Now, do you see this is, I mean, this is a kind of philosophy. But it almost has no meaning unless it's practiced. Unless you've changed your habits so that you, everything points to mind. First of all, it just, your habit is to say, oh, what's the difference between those three things? You're turning to mind.

[68:20]

Thinking, not turning to mind. I'm sorry. Until it's really not philosophy, but a habit. And you've shifted the direction from pointing at the object to first of all pointing at the mind. When that happens, everything that unfolds from this practice begins to instruct you. And that's all about returning to appearance. Yes. And when you do that, you experience emptiness. So this is called the short list to emptiness.

[69:24]

I'm just joking. Well, five things. Hey, do these five things and you're in emptiness. Hey, that's pretty good, you know. I've got this bottle of stuff here. Emptiness spelled backwards. Okay. Now, you wanted to say something. Do you want to say it now or later? After lunch, yes. So if somebody wants to say something, okay. That's what Japanese people do. They say, me? Yeah. It seems as if the experience of this being is based on the fact that one defines it through one's own spirit.

[70:27]

It seems that the experience of trustness is connected that you experience things through your own mind. But I have the impression... So I have the impression that they are mutually conditioning each other, so I don't know what my mind should be without an object. All right. This means... What comes prior to these four is the platform of the vijnanas. So I think we should review the vijnanas. And we have to review the vijnanas anyway if we're going to speak about non-knowing.

[71:32]

Okay, but again, to do this little exercise, if I hold the stick up and you look at it, We could say you have the striker or stick, striker arising mind. Okay, in other words, if I bring this up and you look at it, a particular kind of mind appears, And this morning I was sitting in the car for a little bit, waiting for Marie-Louise and the baby to come back to the car. And there was a truck beside me. Seems to be some sort of electric or air conditioning truck with a chocolate-like name, Linda.

[72:58]

Written in the same... So the truck was a Linda truck and beside me was flowers. So I had nothing better to do while I was waiting. So I was experimenting with the shift from truck-arising mind to flower-arising mind. You do, you've got nothing to do. All right. And it was interesting, I found that the truck arising mind... So I don't say, I see a truck. Even in my own language, I don't say, oh, there's a truck there. I say, in myself, I say, a truck arising mind has noticed a truck.

[74:04]

So I looked at the truck arising mind and I tried to let that settle. And I wondered things like, why do little boys like trucks and tractors and things so much? Little girls too sometimes. I think they like the flowers, but they don't like the trucks. They particularly like all the knobs and the switches. But I'm keeping associations to a minimum. And I'm just sort of letting the truck or rising mind feel it physically. And then I shifted to all the sort of wild little flowers on the hillside. And it was wonderful.

[75:19]

It produced a much more complex topography of mind, tomography of mind. But it was interesting, there was almost no carryover from the truck arising mind. I was trying to see how much mind is generalized. In other words, do I have a general mind which is 80% generalized? the same, no matter which I look at. And not really.

[76:19]

It almost went back to zero. And the flower rising mind was quite independent of whether there was a truck there or... Could have been anything there, just flower rising mud. Okay, so this is first of all, confirming what Christus said, that minds arise on particular objects. And if we go into more detail in this, this is the teaching within the Vijnanas of the Ayatanas. And that is, if we go into more detail, that

[77:21]

We have six senses, but twelve sense fields. We have twelve sense fields because the object is part of the sense field. All right. So in general, minds arise through an object of mind. And now we have the stick arising mind. Okay, so you establish a concentration on this. And the truck arising mind is gone, the flower arising mind is gone. There's only the fluffy stick arising mind. Fluffy. It's like my eyebrows sometimes.

[78:45]

Okay. What happens if I take it away? And you stay concentrated. Now what is the object... Of mind. Okay, so now we have a definition of samadhi. Samadhi is mind concentrated on itself. Now you're going to understand why samadhi can think. Because if you can keep mind concentrated on self, then you can begin to observe things. So suchness is a kind of samadhi. Where mind is concentrated on itself, but also knows things. Okay. Simple things can take us a long ways.

[79:54]

It's one of my favorite German words. This was a surprise. This was a surprise? Yeah. Okay. So, was somebody going to say something? So when you say there is nothing that is given, everything is constructive, you talk about mind. You talk there is nothing given. That's only true if there's emptiness. Yes. That's right. But the object is given. You know what Sukhya, she said. Somebody asked him, if a tree falls in a forest... And there's no one...

[81:00]

And there's no one there to hear it. Is there a sound, someone asked the Jewish. And he said, it doesn't matter. So much for a good chunk of Western philosophy. It doesn't matter. So from the point of view of Buddhism, we're talking about experience. So the bell in our experience is not given. Now once you really get that world view into your stop, look and listen, into your habits, then you begin to extend that feeling of the world and actually objects appear in a new way.

[82:21]

But you can't get there by thinking, you can only get there by practice. I'm happy about it because the other day we were talking also about this philosophical discussion in phenomenological terms. This answer is a very good answer, that quarrel does not matter. He wants to say something. Go ahead. I can't fight with the translator. He's the boss, you know. This is true, what you said about objectivity.

[83:28]

It doesn't matter what it is objectively. But I have the practical problem that I have a research project on sustainability. And the problem with sustainability is that you have to somehow to think in future. So you see the object at the moment, but you somehow have to safeguard that there are future possibilities, that the object may arise in future in different terms. I know. So how to deal with that, you know? Okay, later. Okay. Have you ever seen in America the RCA Victor symbol? It has an old phonograph. And a dog. This is his master's voice. That's how I feel sometimes. We're sitting here. Except... I feel like I'm the dog and he's the phonograph.

[84:42]

I feel like I'm sitting here and this is... I feel like I'm sitting here and this is... I feel like I'm sitting here and this is... So to be quite honest, this is rather strange for me. And I always tried to, nevertheless, I always tried to have this idea of a directed mind as an experience.

[85:49]

And when I go into what I experienced in my life before, I had the following experience. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I have what is called a bad mood, a distemper. And I have enough strength by now that I realize and I have strength in a discipline that I can realize, oh, I'm in a bad mood. And I realize that beautiful yellow flowers And I can see that a picture which has yellow flowers on it and today it looks to me purple and ugly somehow, not very beautiful.

[87:13]

And these differences in the state of mind, and you mean that there is one day you see it as a yellow picture and the other day you see it as a purple picture, is this the kind of mind we are talking about? Sure. Sure. I mean, that's one thing we're talking about at least. That's a state of mind or a mode of mind. Yeah. One of the ways you can distinguish a mode of mind, or I would say it's a mode of mind, is when it has... It tends to continue. What's the word for that? The word I can never remember.

[88:32]

Anyway, it tends to continue and it tends to be self-organizing. Und es versucht, So once you're in a certain mode of mind, it tends to continue itself and it tends to define everything in those terms. Okay. But that's the same mind which tells you in a different mode of mind that this picture are beautiful yellow flowers. No, it's a different mode of mind when it sees the flowers as purple than when it sees them as yellow. Yeah.

[89:34]

It's the same thing. Transport texture. Transport texture. Oh, this is good. Yeah, but you just said that there is no such a thing as a generalized mind. No, it's different. It's different. It has some similarities, but it's different. Yes. Yes. In the context of a public lecture, I learned to know a certain practice, and the lecturer did this practice with the entire auditorium. Wir mussten eine Gegenstand, die wir bei uns hatten, zunächst mal genau anschauen. So we had to take a certain object, we carried with us, and the first thing that we had... Everyone had the same object? No, everybody had a personal object. Personal object, yeah. And they had to look at the object very carefully. And then we had to hold...

[90:35]

But then we had to hold this object in our mind and at the same time closing the eyes. In the very details and over a long duration of time. And this was very, very tiresome. And it took it hard to do. It always got lost. And the effect, at least for me, was that after this practice I had a very clear state of mind. So I would be interested what can be said about that?

[91:41]

How can you give an explanation? How can you explain that? Ich habe es dann irgendwie verglichen mit dieser Übung, wo man die Hand an eine Mauer hält, so lange, also sehr lange dran hält und man geht dann weg von dieser Mauer, die die Hand stellt, von selbst auf. So I somehow compared it to this practice when you hold your hand against the wall for a long time and then you go away from the wall and the hand lifts up. After this kind of practice, it was much easier for me to hold the person in my mind when I was talking to him. It was much easier than before this practice or normally. It was as if I had trained a certain muscle.

[92:52]

Yeah, yeah, I understand. I mean, I get the picture. It doesn't surprise me at all. I would just accept it as the case. Yeah, but if I try to explain it, I'd have to give it a little thought. Excuse me for using the word. Yeah. Can I just tell you a funny story? It's not, it's only, I don't know if it's true, but Brian DeCamp is a very intelligent young man, sort of young man in Colorado. He has his own software business he created. that he wrote and stuff.

[93:56]

Anyway, so he said, he read about a study where they had this, see if I can remember it, they had this, they had two films. In one film, everyone was dressed in black. And in the other film, everyone was dressed in white. And they had white face on and black face on. And they just did things, they were talking, walking around and doing things. And in the middle of the white movie, this gorilla, an actual gorilla comes in.

[94:35]

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