Are you going to start or am I going to start? Guten Morgen. Yeah, with this seminar, we're going where we say in English, where angels fear to tread. Do you say the same thing in German? No. You don't? Oh, you... Where angels fear to tread. But neuroscientists tromp around there. What? What is the self? What is our experience of the self? Yeah. You know, we're doing this seminar after last week's

[01:01]

rather demanding seminar as well on the koan of the cat and nanchuan. And this seminar is equally demanding and we don't have much time, just today really and some of tomorrow. So we can't do too much. Someone wrote me a note recently who said that I presented enough teachings for him for several lifetimes. But he's still happy to come to the session that's coming up. Yeah. And maybe it's like that. But my feeling is, I have the feeling that

[02:19]

each seminar, each teaching is the most important thing I've ever done in my life. And absolutely essential for every practitioner to know. And then, hi, my goodness, hello. And then, Next week there's another absolutely essential. But I really have that feeling. So I guess where does that come from? I guess that... Each teaching is a surface of all the teachings.

[03:40]

And if you proceed into one, you really begin to connect with all of them. And they appear in our life in the circumstances of our life. Now, as neuroscientists are trying to identify the physical basis of consciousness and self. We in Buddhist practice are trying to identify the experiential basis of consciousness and self.

[04:56]

And as I said yesterday in the pre-day, we have this title, the Zen self and the Western self. But that doesn't make any sense unless you have an experience of... unless you... I can't say have the experience of your own self because everything you have is the experience of your own self. So what can I say? Unless you study and observe the experience of Your experience of self.

[06:09]

There's no way you can make sense of Western views of self. Asian yogic Zen views of self again what's clear just from the title we have categories of self more than one possibility of self-functioning Or there's at least different emphases within self-functioning.

[07:12]

And perhaps there's even, we can look at different ways to organize the experience of self, which actually makes a kind of different self. But since, you know, 2,500 years of Buddhist experience and a couple thousand years of Western experience or more, and trying to say something intelligible about the self and always unsuccessfully, probably this weekend we're not going to do too much. But beginning Buddhist practice One of the beginnings of Buddhist practice is the attempt to locate

[08:22]

And the general sense of the tradition is you don't locate self. There's certainly no entity called the self or experienced as the self. We may project that idea onto various territories of experience. But when examined, it falls apart. So what happens when you do this? Because it's not just being sent on a pointless chase. It's not just being sent on a pointless chase.

[09:38]

Although the inability to locate an entity called self is an important part of the practice, Really, that's important to know. But... I don't know, important, more important, but let's say more important or equally important, is that we get to know how we function in this process of searching for self. By looking for self and not finding it, you do find out how you function.

[10:40]

And the more fully engaged we are in our functioning, the more... the better we function. And the more satisfying is our... Maybe you can close that now. It's been found with not all of them. It's been found with infants. is that they learn how to organize their behavior. You have to learn how to organize your behavior and your experience, organize your experience.

[11:48]

I should have said, we have to learn how to organize our experience in order to have behavior that's comprehensible. But it seems that models of mature behavioral organization make a big difference in how a child develops. So the more mature one's parents are and the people one lives with, these models are perhaps the biggest contribution the parents make to the child.

[12:57]

But since a large number of us are, just that you hear, shows that probably a large number of us are in a lifetime process of reforming ourselves. And we could say even the Sangha is a process of finding models through which we can mutually reform ourselves. And... and again seeing if we can trust in humankind.

[14:18]

Because I think one of the dimensions of our experience, as I pointed out in the last seminar, is that we're born and then We don't know what we are when we're born, of course. What's going on around here? Who are all these faces? And we wanted, so we're born, though we don't know the name as humans, And we want to come into trust for what it means to be a human. Yeah, and many of us grow up in situations and then occupations in which we don't find much trust in what it means to be a human.

[15:43]

So the fragile and extraordinary responsibility of the Sangha And the fragile and extraordinary responsibility of the Sangha is to be a place where we can find both the realistic experience of what it is to be a human. but also to be one of the circumstances in our life where we experience, seek the trust in being a human.

[16:46]

So although So already, whatever we're doing, as I have said, is very contemporary. Contemporary in the light of modern philosophy and psychology and Asian influence and so forth. That self is a complex event. and so that this itself is a complex And we're not just born with one kind of continuous self. And we're taking, because this is a Zen practice place, we're looking at the experience of

[17:53]

self. So we're measuring everything by experience and each of ours experience. So as I said, for me, practicing with you is always a kind of laboratory. I'm always trying to enter situations with without knowledge, but some experience. And then exploring our time together with a topic, maybe, but exploring our time together as experience. And some of you here are new to me.

[19:10]

So, probably new to the way I teach and talk. And it doesn't make sense. I apologize. But I don't know how to do anything else. Okay. So, I started yesterday and I'd like to start again the same way. Because to get us on the same page, so to speak. But also because going through something two or three times We begin to fill in the gaps in the teaching experience that we missed.

[20:11]

So I used the example yesterday of putting my finger, you don't have to do it yourself, but you can if you want, putting my finger on my forehead. I don't know, as I said, my finger? And I have my finger, and I don't know, now I've said my finger, and you don't have to do it, but you could. I have my finger on my forehead. I mean, I know this is not your finger. Obviously. It's my finger. But why do I have to say my? Why don't I just say finger? Because I don't know who else's finger would it be. But really in English at least, I don't know about German, the pronouns my keep reinforcing the sense of an entity called self. So I, at least in my own practice, look for ways to avoid using personal pronouns.

[21:30]

Or I put personal pronouns, as I've said, in little quotation marks. It's very hard in English to avoid personal pronouns. I place my finger on my forehead. Finger, forehead, touch. Then what happens when I do that? I mean, I could put it in my ear, I don't care, but then I look funny, you know. Put it here. And what is the experience? The experience is one of touch. That's this list I have here. A one of touch. And as a touch, there's a feeling of a sensorial bodily location.

[22:48]

I mean, I am a sensorial bodily location, or I guess there is in this location a sensorial bodily location. Also, ich bin, vermute ich, also da ist an diesem Ort eine sensorisch-körperliche Verortung. Ist diese körperlich-sensorische Verortung an selbst? Or is it just a bodily location? Oder ist es einfach eine körperliche Verortung? Is it... Is it the basis of self? Anyway, those are the questions. In addition, I feel a certain interiority. And I can observe the finger touching the forehead. So the act of observing is part of this, an ingredient of this experience.

[24:11]

So it's not just of physical sensorial location. There's an observing of the physical sensorial location. And within that observing, it's almost like a container An interior container. And is that interior container self? Yeah, or is the interior container, well, the interior container, what's in the container? There's prior experiences.

[25:20]

There aren't yet future experiences. I don't think so. Probably not. I haven't noticed any yet. Okay, so even the idea of future experiences is a concept or a view. So in addition to prior experiences that appear, and various views and concepts, I'm quite sure not noticed experiences that are present too in this container.

[26:21]

Okay, so there's observing and then there's an interiority generated by the observing that add conditioning add conditions and conditioning to the experience of observing. And there is also an exteriority of phenomena which, when joined to the interior, creates a sense of the present. If there isn't also a sense of an exterior...

[27:22]

an exteriority, interiority can get lost in nothing but memories and so forth. So now we have the ingredients of interiority and exteriority. And we have the ingredient of a present. There seems to be a present in which this is occurring. Now, the separation between past and future is a knife edge. It's not even a knife edge, it's a dimensionless unit. But we experience a durative present.

[28:37]

We experience some kind of duration because of the interiority of observing. A duration, as we call the present. Because of the interiority of observing. And because of the scanning process of the senses. So that is our present. We've created that present. It doesn't exist. That present is actually empty. But we experience it. If the present, the durative present,

[29:38]

is our experience. And it's supported by the fact that the platform and the floor more or less stay in place. But still, my durative present It might be very wide, it might be narrow. And what's going on in this durative present? And we're all, right now, we're in a mutual present. And this mutually durative present, although it's a mutual durative present, and it's different that none of you are in the room,

[30:58]

And this mutual durative present is what I mean by our laboratory, our shared laboratory. However, even though, again, it's a mutual... mutually generated durative present. It is also an individually generated durative present. And each of our mutually Each of ours, are you still with me?

[32:00]

Each of our individually durative present overlaps the mutual durative present to various degrees or extends beyond it. And we could say the main point of the koan of Nanchuan and the cat is Nanchuan's Durative present. Which he generated by holding up the cat. Was wider, more extensive, more inclusive than the two monks from the two halls, the western and the eastern halls. So, the durative present, what makes it wide or small or narrow or dynamic or passive?

[33:17]

Now, this all, what I'm saying, I went through yesterday and going through it today differently, somewhat differently. And all that I say here, and I did it yesterday and do it today, but differently, are the simple ingredients I find when I put my finger on my forehead. And in addition to the sense of a durative present, the fifth there I find that there's a sense of I I as a person and I feel that sense of I as a responsibility or a kind of possession

[34:22]

but also as responsibility. There's some kind of responsibility for what happens here with this finger, this forehead and so forth. Now, as I have said often, it's very interesting that the right hand can take hold of the left hand, or the left hand can take hold of the right hand. And you can feel some kind of agency of an agency an actor in the left hand or the right hand you can make a shift is it the right hand feeling or the left hand feeling is that part of the self or

[35:47]

Or necessarily at the core of the self? In any case, this sense of a responsible I is the basis of civilization. All laws, all you know, group behavior, tribal behavior is based on some sense of individual responsibility for what happens to these hands, feet, hands, etc. So you know that I discover that through putting my forehead on my finger.

[36:59]

No, did I put my finger on my forehead? I put my forehead on my finger. Yeah. And I would say that, I don't know, Cro-Magnon men, Romanians, French, Germans, Americans, these five belong to all of us. Yeah, from anyway. As the five senses belong to all of us. We human beings, we're very different, but we all have five senses. We are very different, we human beings, but we all have five senses. And one practice of Buddhism To develop an even mind toward each person is to locate your own sense of identity in the five senses.

[38:13]

And the more you do that, the more you develop the field of the five senses, and as a practice of the six paramitas, the Bodhisattva practices, you notice each other person not as personality and personality, cultural background, but just as five senses. My five senses, your five senses. So we have a practice in monastic life of bowing every time you meet somebody. One thing we're doing is saying, hi, five senses. Now the sixth is more complicated.

[39:17]

And I'm not sure, no, I would say that not all Humans from ancient times until now have the sixth. And although practice, if we also are talking about a Zen self, which I've tried to avoid so far, The practice and articulating of our experience of the world in the light of Buddhism and Zen practice includes certainly ways of emphasizing and developing the first five. Die schließt mit Sicherheit ein, zu betonen und zu entwickeln diese ersten fünf.

[40:45]

Or emphasize. Betonen. But the sixth is especially the territory of culture and practice and so forth. Okay. Which is... that there's an, is that we, there is an observing of this finger on my hand. But this observing also in, there are normal circumstances Phenomenal and interpersonal, intersubjective circumstances are normal, phenomenal and intersubjective circumstances. Are normal. What? Phenomenal. What is normal? Are normal, phenomenal and intersubjective circumstances.

[41:49]

Circumstances in English is what surrounds you. Circum stands around you. So I like a word like circumabsorption. What around us is absorbed. One of the ways we do that is with a... narrative observing. We make stories. a story just appeared, which is that it's maybe soon we should have a break. See, observing, narrative observing produced... Yes, let's have a break.

[42:56]

And I haven't allowed much time for discussion. Because I want to review what we developed yesterday. So we have something to discuss. I would like to find a way in which we could do these weekend seminars which are so short and have more discussion. So I'll be open to your ideas. But now let's have some caffeine or non-caffeine or sugar free.

[44:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.49