And this year. And that we were able to do it again. And I think it looks like there's a number of people who are new to what we're doing. So somehow we have to get on the same page. And you can hear me okay with this display? But... There's no mosquitoes when it rains? She thought so.

[01:02]

Yeah, maybe she's right. I don't know. Yeah, because they'll come in. Really? So they're going to come in out of the rain. Yeah, that's right. They like blood better than water. Blood is thicker than water. Exactly. But even if we... What do you see? Oh. The window is open. Thanks. Hello? Anyway, we should just sit here and listen.

[02:10]

Nick was saying that it was going to be a very slow dance. So I went to the monitor. It's like the beginning of an angelic movie.

[03:31]

I think so too. I was wondering if we could sit some other way so it's not so much like a seminar with us sitting here in the middle. But the room is sort of designed this way. It's kind of hard to change it around. Plus the lighting works this way. But even if we've been here doing this a number of years together, we still have to get on the same page.

[04:36]

And we also have to get somehow on the same body, mind, sense or feeling. Because what I, you know, what probably most useful if we just talk about and what we discuss arises from the practice of meditation. And that's my experience is what I can bring to this discussion. And for those of you who are new, I don't have anything special to bring except the experience of nearly 45 years now of sitting, practicing with people.

[06:11]

And what does that practice consist of? Well, initially in what set my course in this life, was my time practicing with my teacher, Suzuki Roshi. And of course, he taught meditation practice and Buddhism. But he taught in a way that required and that he waited for, which is for us to sit into the teaching.

[07:22]

Yeah. And yeah, so the question is, we're here and not all of us are sitting regularly, I presume. How can we make, what kind of common territory can we find to have a fruitful discussion? Now, the criteria I have for what I'm trying to do, particularly in this gathering, And I've been looking forward all year to being here with you again.

[08:27]

But my criteria, to sort of look at what we can talk about, is is what are the differences between our usual way of looking at things as Westerners And what comes out of Western, and what comes out of yogic Asian Zen practice? What are the differences and what are the similarities?

[09:45]

And what are the gates to the similarities, accessible gates to the similarities and differences? Was sind die für uns zugänglichen Tore zu diesen Unterschieden und den Ähnlichkeiten? Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised by the... I'm not surprised yet, somehow also surprised by the continual fascination with Asia. Ich bin überrascht und doch auch wieder nicht überrascht für das Andauern des Interesses an Asien. I have two movies I thought I might see sometime. Es gibt zwei Filme, die ich mir irgendwann gerne anschauen würde.

[10:49]

One American girl becomes Kill Bill. One American girl becomes Samurai. It's called Kill Bill. Ja, es heißt Kill Bill. It's an American girl becomes a samurai. And the American girl, Uma Thurman, happens to be a daughter of a friend of mine. I went to college with her father. And the other one is this The last samurai, which American boy becomes samurai. No, I don't think we're going to become psycho-samurais. No, samurai therapists. Your clients would be scared to communion.

[12:08]

But still, you know, what... I mean, I think this is just some sort of froth, you know. Froth? Froth is like bubbles or something. Like the froth on a beer. But I don't think what we're doing is froth, at least I hope not. But the froth tells us something, that there's some kind of... Our cultures are trying to explore each other. It's really about two civilizations, which are actually quite different, coming together for the first time. So I think we, you know, it's interesting incumbent on us or it's necessary that some people really find in their own bodies what these similarities and differences are.

[13:20]

And I think it's an extremely fruitful quest And I also think that it's not just that we're looking at Asia. Much of Western philosophy and aesthetics and art have also gone exactly to where we're at, but they didn't have practice to take the next step. So at the center of this is going to be what? what is meant by one of the centers, maybe the center is going to be what is meant by self and Zen practice and what is meant by self for us as Westerners and particularly if we're psychotherapists.

[14:39]

And so last year, we had a definition of self. And that's something I've been kind of refining and working with the whole year. And refining also means not just finding more clarity in how to say it or define it, but more sense of the consequences of the definition. And again, so that we have some kind of common starting point.

[15:46]

Yeah, I'll say that mind, let's take as something like the widest word for sentient knowing, And I define then consciousness as a function of mind. And mind has other functions, but one is consciousness. So if consciousness is consciousness, less than a smaller territory than mind? What is the territory of consciousness? What are the boundaries of consciousness? Yeah, now I think we can look at our own experience. Now I am trying to find a definition for these Western words.

[17:02]

A definition of how I discover them in Zen practice. And a definition of in addition to how I find it, how it compares or seems to work within Buddhist teachings. So I'm going to Try to find some way to define consciousness with you. And I want you to disagree with me. Trying to make sense of it together with me, with all of us.

[18:12]

Ich hätte gerne, dass ihr dem auch widersprecht oder mit mir und mit uns allen versucht, daraus Sinn zu schaffen oder das miteinander zu begreifen. And although we talked about it last year, I've spent the year and not come to the end of it, so I presume we can look at it again these days. And then I defined self as a function of consciousness. Now from the point of view of Buddhist practice we're looking at self as how it hinders practice. Or hinders enlightenment. And self as an agent of karma. Self in relationship to memory.

[19:22]

And self as a portion of our experience. And sometimes a part editor or limiter of our experience. Now, that's the way Zen practice looks itself. We're interested in practice and realization and things like that. How relevant is it to a therapist? Or to you in your life. So I've, for the sake of exploration, limited self to being a creature of consciousness. Limited self to being a creature of consciousness, a product of consciousness.

[20:32]

Self swims in the field, the liquid of consciousness. No, is that the... Do we want to limit self to being a function of consciousness? Now there's some other things I would like us to sort of try to relate to. Let's see if we can have some agreement about it. Can we say there's a difference between an observing self and an observing mind?

[21:36]

It's all senses of observing the world and whatever our mental and physical activity is. Is all senses of an observer, of the world and of our mental and physical activity, is that observer always really, do we take it as a self? Or is it possible that there's also an observer that isn't really self? Yeah. Okay. Then the other things I think we need to define and find some relationship to and among

[22:39]

And the other things that I have the feeling that we should look at and see if we can define them, is in addition to consciousness what I call awareness. So I just list consciousness, awareness, the body, memory, presence. Now is presence something we can really talk about too? Could we imagine that perhaps presence itself is a kind of self.

[23:54]

Do you see what language causes me to do? Let me say, do we think that presence itself, why can't I say presence, it presents? Language forces me to call presence a self in English. Could presence itself be a kind of self? What is a kind of self which isn't a self? These are not, I think, unimportant questions. I told the story the other day of when we first went back to the United States in, I guess, October.

[25:03]

Sophia, my little daughter, who's three now, then was, I don't know, two and a half or something less than that. Anyway, we just got back and she was just beginning to language the world. But my experience is that she conceptualized the world before she languaged the world. And to me, that's an important difference. Because if that's not the case, we can't really imagine practice freeing you from language and language-based thinking. Because the brain itself develops through

[26:26]

the interaction with others, not just genetically driven. So if the brain is created by conceptual interaction with mother, father, and so forth, affective, in a sense of affection and feeling and so forth, interaction. And if language is then built on that, then it's possible to imagine a way of being that's free of language. Okay. Anyway, so Sophia was on the couch. We have this big dog. When she left for Europe last May, a year ago,

[27:47]

April a year ago. This dog was a puppy only a few months old, but it was already like that size. And now it's really big. It's a great Pyrenees mountain dog. His father's name is Horse. And he's pretty much like that. So Sophia is quite teeny and she's trying to deal with me and her mother. Suddenly this giant dog comes running in and leaping at her. And his tail can knock off two or three lamps and sweep.

[29:06]

And she's trying to figure out, I know she's trying to figure out how to deal at that time with me and her mother. And I watched her try to deal with her mother speaking from the kitchen and me standing in front of her and the dog rushing at her. And I watched her literally compose herself and kind of bring some kind of awareness, consciousness up through her body. I would say that what I saw was her not only bringing this awareness or consciousness up through her body, But she was, I would say something like tuning her presence with her body.

[30:19]

Then she started to deal with the dog. Then she tried to deal with or take on what I would call the societal templates that I was expecting of her and her mother was expecting of her, which is different. But she couldn't do that, or didn't do that at least, until she'd found some kind of composure in herself. I find that, you know, I find that quite impressive to see.

[31:27]

So I watch now when she first goes to kindergarten and things like that, she does the same thing, but now she's much more developed. She looks at the whole situation, all these kids in a nursery school, and she kind of like finds herself and then she starts to interact. Now, is that finding ourself and then starting to interact a kind of self? Now is it possible that what practice does is more and more locate our experience within presence within

[32:50]

Yeah, see, I don't have exactly words for what I'm trying to say. Presence is pretty much the best I can do. Anyway, I'd like to try to define more or discuss presence, awareness, consciousness, et cetera. Ich würde jedenfalls gerne weiter definieren, Präsenz und Gewahrsein und Bewusstsein. Self. and see if these definitions, to whatever extent they're useful, are accurate in the context of practice. And to what extent can the context of practice and the way of defining being through practice To what extent can the context of practice and the way of defining being that arises through practice relate to our habitual sense of being

[34:15]

Yeah, can we change how we inhabit the world? Or can we change, or in addition, change the world we inhabit? Or can we change the world we inhabit? I think psychotherapy, I'm quite sure, asks these same questions. And so I think there must be some value in looking at the questions as they come up in Zen practice too. So that's pretty much for now what I would like us to explore in the next days.

[35:53]

And we can go, and a nice thing about doing this with you is in addition that we've been doing it, a number of you, a long time, is that we have a few more days than we usually have in a regular seminar. So we can go much more slowly. Does anybody have something you want to bring up or say? I can wait till tomorrow. Now, we have breakfast at 8 to 10 or something, right?

[37:12]

Now, do you want to sit as part of the seminar or do you want to just start at 9.30 or 10, jabbering away? You'd like to sit? Okay. So if we eat at 8.10, we're finished eating at 9, we're digesting at 9.20. Should we start at 10? 9.30. 9.30. 9.30. It's 9.30. Okay, so we'll start at 9.30 tomorrow. So we'll start at 9.30 tomorrow. Thank you for being here. Thank you for translating, giving up your week of work and your family.

[38:17]

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