It seems obvious to me to make such a list. And it seems to me obvious that what's in the list is obvious to all of us. And so why bother to make the list if it's obvious? And, you know, I think I'm just doing it as a person. But I suppose I have to admit I'm doing it as a Buddhist person. Yeah, because I've been doing this a long time, so, you know, I can't shake loose from it. And I realize that making lists like this is very typically Buddhist.

[01:01]

And why to do it? Well, I mean, actually making a list is a process of refinement. What's in any particular list? If you have ever worked in an office and tried to make a form for people to fill out, to make a good form for people to fill out is really difficult. So the process of making a list requires leaving a lot of things out. And then the list, at least the Buddhist list, only hangs together. Not only if it hangs together in the sequence in which it's presented.

[02:28]

But you can shuffle the parts around into different order and it still hangs together. Now, does somebody have anything you want to say about what we've done so far? Is it amusing you or interesting? Yes, give me some feedback. What do you think about what we have done so far? Is it amusing to you? Do you find it interesting? Should we continue or to hell with it? Let's stop at six. Should we continue or we just stop at point six? Yes. For me it is very helpful, because I have already learned this in Hannover.

[03:31]

I find it very helpful. I've already heard this in Hanover. Three Doors of Deliverance, this is . So hearing it a second time deepens it, and also it seems the list has been expanded, so I'm also looking forward to learning more. Okay. He also said about the Three Doors of Deliverance. Especially, yeah, he mentioned that, and then I said he needs to stop because I need to translate. Yeah, I know, but this isn't part of the list. Oh, okay. But maybe we can make it part of the list.

[04:36]

But I put it there because, again, Gural told me, you know, it wouldn't have been a good idea if I put in Hanover these up. And since the house doesn't have a flip chart and only had one piece of paper, I stuck it all in one of his things. I mean, you know, go with the circumstances. But these three doors of deliverance... But these three doors of enlightenment are not so obvious why they are there. I mean, I think this list more or less seems obvious. This is not so obvious. I thought that might make it be interesting.

[05:45]

But we're not going to get to the three doors of deliverance until tomorrow afternoon. So, and then the day after that is the secret teaching. Okay, anybody want to say something about this? Yes. This makes a lot of sense to me as a person who feels has a kind of self or functions with the self and practices. So this is very helpful for me and I sometimes try to figure out whether I understood it by summarizing this to myself.

[06:59]

And so I felt that point six, the agency or choice, I haven't fully figured out where to attach this. Is it a function of self, or is it more a result of the observing process? Thanks. Anyone else? I want to have some sensation that there's somebody listening. So if you all just sit there, I can think, well, this samadhi is great, but what am I talking for?

[08:07]

Let's just go into samadhi. Yes, girl. I'll jump to point eight. I'll jump to point eight. I'll jump to point eight. So I ask myself, which of the first six you've talked about so far is talking or telling a story to oneself? So it seems to me that this process of telling oneself one's own story or telling oneself the inner world, the outer world, is going on

[09:14]

in all of these points. So I ask myself, why is that in point eight and not, say, point number one? Eight? It's narrative. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, when I start here, I don't have much sense of narrative. I only have sensation. But of course, as you say, you can apply any one of these to all of them. And as you're pointing out, we have not only self-narrative, We have self narrative maintenance. That's usually when we're dialoguing to ourselves.

[10:51]

I really didn't say that and I didn't mean it that way. You're lying to yourself as if everyone's listening. And when the self-narrative maintenance gets too much for you, you drive to the shop run by Norbert and Angev and come in and ask for some self-narrative maintenance. You saw this sign over the door, didn't you? Psychomechanics. I have a different question, not to the list, but to the beginning.

[11:52]

When you mentioned the teacher-student relationship and when you said the teacher says to the student he cannot practice with the student, the student should leave and when the student leaves then The argument is that the student, when he goes away, pays attention to the feelings of the teacher and not to his own wishes. Well, he doesn't, in the situation I created, I mentioned, he's not actually reading the teacher's feelings correctly.

[13:28]

But the teacher is reading the practitioner's feelings correctly, that he'll be hurt, and he's a little bit still vulnerable, you know, aber der Lehrer interpretiert die Gefühle des Schülers insofern korrekt, dass ihm klar ist, dass der leicht verletzt wird. I hope none of you are hesitating to speak because you don't think it might be intelligent enough or it might be, you know... or you're self-conscious. No, none of you are self-conscious. So just let anything appear. It's fine. Yes, good. We're starting out. I would like to ask something from my own practice of meditating.

[14:42]

So many periods of meditation have a similar structure. But in some meditation periods it was different. There was a kind of switch and I felt as if I was very close to my essence. An essence that's always present but not always visible. Not conditioned through or by anything, totally independent.

[15:45]

And the feeling of happiness or bliss. But next time it wasn't that. But next meditation period it didn't happen. I heard that happens. Maybe this core is myself, is the self? Okay, let's say, and I understand, you have this experience. And it's better not, it's fine to sort of identify it. But it's better not to name it. As soon as you start naming it, it's essence. Or it's my core self or core something. You begin to inhibit the flow of experiences that can happen through meditation.

[17:23]

And as you said, it wasn't in sight before but then it appeared. And usually when one has any vivid experience, yeah, vivid experience, it doesn't go away. It just disappears. Okay. It doesn't go away, it disappears. And so when you start naming it or fishing for it, it gets deeper. With that, I'm going down.

[18:30]

So it's better just to allow it to assume it's there and don't be surprised that it's not there the next period. It sounds strange, but we do have good experiences in meditation, that's for sure. But to be attached to them is a problem. I was interested that at least what you translated was structure, and did you actually say pattern or form? Or structure. You said there's a structure to meditation. Yeah. That was not the exact word. Okay. He said it's always the same pattern. Okay.

[19:30]

Because pattern is different than structure. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I have two things. Okay. So one is the question, what is breathing? And for me, since I'm writing poetry, for me the question is, what is writing? Mm-hmm. And the second thing is that I lived in Italy for five months this year and there is the beautiful saying in the beginning of the poem MI-KI-YA-MA And the second thing is that I lived in Italy for five months this year, and there is a saying, like an initial saying, which is Mikiyama.

[20:32]

Mikiyama. Mikiyama. Sounds Japanese. Yeah. And translated... Man nennt mich. One... names me and in German we say yeah we can't do that in English in English you have to say my name is but in German you say I say, I'm called, or I call myself, and I am. So if I say my name, I can either say, I am Katrin, or I say, Katrin, I am. I'm not a writer, but there is a verb, ich heiße, and that doesn't exist in English. Okay. And this man-names-me has become much more beautiful this morning, because in this man-names-me, when I let go of the L, I can transfer the man-names-me to everything else, and then I find myself in everything.

[21:56]

So Ellen says that this Italian expression, one calls me, she likes it very much because one can leave out her name Ellen and then apply it to all other things. So writing calls you to writing. And Foucault says, Michel Foucault says, writing writes writing. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thanks. Yes. In the introduction, you asked the question, do we need a monastic component in practice? When was not in the question. You mean, when do you need a monastic component?

[23:27]

One. Me, anyone. At what time? Today. Which part of your life, what time in your life, in the lifespan of your... Right now, it looks good for you. I think an interesting question, not only to ask, do we need time, but when is the right time? Also nicht nur zu fragen, wann, also nicht nur, ob man sie braucht, sondern wann man sie braucht. Well, I mean, to answer on a practical level, one answer is you do it when it's possible, when it's practical. And another is you do it when the time is right, or if you experience time as ripening. And third, is when something like that comes up on you, you immediately explore the assumption

[24:39]

Is it maybe my consciousness has changed this into when should it be and is it for others or is it for me? When actually my body or my inner self has decided I should be doing it now. Because what consciousness does is often turn a decision that you really feel inside into something practical, like I can't do it now, but I could do it, or someone else should do it or something. But if you take all of that stuff away, it's I should do it. So the yogi looks at the conscious form of something

[26:04]

But explores the roots of that conscious form. And sometimes the roots are shallow and sometimes they're deep. Okay. Can we maybe shorten this whole list and say for experiencing we don't need a self, only when we try to describe it. We don't need self in order to experience, but we need self only when we describe the experience. In general, I would say that's a good starting point.

[27:45]

But we do have to explore what we mean by self. As I've been referring to the large sutra of perfect wisdom recently. And it says, for instance, the Bodhisattva substitutes vigor for the desire to do. Now this is a sutra, this is a translation of Herr Dr. Konze. And I, you know, I knew Dr. Konze very well. And he was a great scholar and linguist. But I don't always trust his choice of words.

[29:06]

So I'm trying to sort out from an experiential point of view what he must be saying. The bodhisattva substitutes vigor for the desire to do. So, in a statement like that, the bodhisattva represents self. In einer solchen Aussage repräsentiert der Bodhisattva das Selbst. Or you, if you're practicing, should do this. Oder du, wenn du praktizierst, solltest das tun. So that's Buddhism's rife with rife.

[30:13]

Everywhere makes statements like that. Und im Buddhismus gibt es voll von solchen Sorten Aussagen. Okay, so, but going back to the statement itself, it's rather interesting how, if you notice you have a desire to do something, nothing wrong with that. What happens if you take away the desire to do anything and just substitute vigor and energy? What happens then? So this is just something I'm trying to sort out and practice with right now to figure out exactly how to word it or language it. Somebody else wants to say something and it would make me happy.

[31:22]

Yes, okay. I've wondered about this question of self for a long time. And I've noticed or come to the conclusion for myself that I do not really want to put it into words. So I observe it and I look at it and I have feelings about it. And I find that it would be extremely difficult to put it into words because it changes all the time.

[32:34]

Not negatively. So I find that it changes kind of back and forth and somehow in a certain way it also is the same all the time. So I already find this very difficult to put into words. I have such feelings right now and would now call it a step back, which is not really true. So I try not to evaluate it at all, but really just to observe, to feel and I actually have it in me, so without words. And so if I say I have these feelings and then say it's a step back, that's already a judgment.

[33:55]

So I don't want to make this judgment. I just want to feel what it is and kind of let it be. I would say that for a practitioner, when something like this comes up, First of all, you're noticing it already as the word self or something like that. What you notice that certain kind of thinking about it and trying to think about it or name it further, it interferes. You can just let it go. Or you can create a state of mind. We could call a non-interfering observing awareness. And the observing doesn't interfere with what's being observed.

[35:05]

And this is a basic yogic skill, to have a non-interfering observing awareness. And it sounds like that's what you're doing, actually. And you let the whole thing happen within this non-interfering awareness without thinking about it. But sometimes it comes a point where you then want to give it a little more form or fine-tune it. Look at me. She at least has hair.

[36:16]

Obviously for decades I've been turning this stuff over. But the other day, in Johanneshof, I decided to make a list. So I did exactly that. I put my finger in my forehead and I produced this list. But like Jörg said, since then I've found the list very useful. And every time I go through it, it's kind of useful. So there's my exploration of the topic before the list, pre-list, and there's my exploration of the topic post-list.

[37:20]

And the post-list exploration is kind of fruitful. Now, I suspect we're supposed to go to lunch soon. I don't know. At least eventually. But let me throw some monkey wrenches in first. Do you have monkey wrenches in Germany? Yeah. I don't know where it comes from. I have to look it up. but I know that in

[38:40]

it may be related to the early strikes against the Ford Motor Company, you know, production line. You throw a monkey wrench in. I don't know where this English or American expression comes from, so with this monkey wrench, maybe back when the first strikes were at the Ford Motor Company. Okay, so pre-monkey wrench, I'll say this, something else. The post-monkey rentals. Anyway. It's interesting if we're talking about agency. And it is interesting to me that... How can I say... If you study the societal history of the West, I think there's an exact historical parallel to the cognitive science interest in consciousness and the introduction of Buddhism to the West.

[39:53]

interest of cognitive science in studying consciousness Identifying the synaptic reality of conscious states or something of quality. And I am in no way saying that I think Buddhism and neuroscientists each other. I think there's different historical reasons why both are present simultaneously. Though there is some influence from each other. It's an interesting coincidence that historically they're parallel. Okay.

[41:14]

But what I'm doing here is I am trying to, with you, talk about the experience of self. The experienceable aspects of self. And I don't care if there's a synaptic reality to it or not. Whatever that is, it's not what I'm trying to do. Yeah. But, okay, so now, it's interesting to me that I can take my right hand and put it on my left hand.

[42:19]

And I can have a feeling that it's my right hand doing it. And my left hand is receiving it. But I can shift it. And my left hand can feel it's doing it. And it's easy when you grip one or the other. You just put them together. You can feel... you can move the sense of agency from one hand to the other. Your intention or your will or something like that can move from the right hand to the left hand. Now can we find or discover a synactical reality to that?

[43:20]

But this relates to the fellow who is at a seminar who works with trying to figure out how to make people's... He makes hands and limbs and things. You can say something about it if you want. If it comes up, you can. Okay. So the monkey wrench is, at least I see it as a monkey wrench. The most famous example in Western literature, contemporary Western literature that I know of. The most famous example of the... The heat is on. Yeah. Total heiß. Can we turn it off? Ja, wie heute ist.

[44:43]

Is a most famous example of memory in contemporary literature. Also das berühmteste Beispiel des Gedächtnisses, der Erinnerung in der westlichen Literatur. Is Proust's reaction to the Madeline. To what? To the Madeline. So he ate a madeleine with some hot tea and suddenly a shudder went through him and the tea and the crumbs from the madeleine as he said Combined to give him a sense of joy and freedom from contingency. He describes it almost as unsurpassable.

[45:49]

Okay. And it just appeared, as he says, it appeared from nowhere. So it appeared, but he recognized it had to come from myself. So being sort of a student of Bergson and a contemporary of Freud and so forth, he thought there must be psychological roots. So he retrieved a memory about his grandmother or his aunt or somebody, I can't remember, of having a madeleine in a specific, in Baalbek or someplace.

[47:02]

And then he managed to get a memory from the grandmother who had eaten such a madeleine. In the town of Pombray or Baalbek, you know. In a certain location. Anyway. Well, yeah, this is a classic story. Das ist eine klassische Geschichte. And much referred to by others. Auf die sich viele andere beziehen. But how, if he was, if Proust was writing in and participating in an Asian yogurt culture, how would he interpret it? Well, he certainly might have noticed as a, what could we call him? I don't know. I'll think of a good name, Chinese name for him. Yeah. Proust Chang. Proust-Chung.

[48:23]

So what would Proust-Chung think? Was würde Proust-Chung denken? Well, he might remember when he was in Hangzhou that his aunt gave him a, you know, a... ...ice cake. rice cake. You know, I'm not Karen. Katrin, I mean. But I'm Katrining. If Katrining can be a verb. Two Katrins here. Um... So that the Proust-Chung, eating the rice cake, might have a memory of his aunt or whatever, but he would not probably look for the source in the memory of the experience.

[49:40]

he would look for the source of the experience in the sensation, as in zazen, for example. When you experience your own senses, For example, you hear a bird but you hear your own hearing of the bird. You're having an object-free experience of hearing. It's object-initiated. But the experience is independent of the source.

[50:49]

And you're not hearing, as I say, the bird the way another bird hears it. You're hearing it within the capacity of your own hearing. The more one finds oneself located fully in one's own sensorium. There's a pretty continuous sense of bliss. could we imagine this more or less continuous sense of bliss? creates a unity of experience or consciousness that is different from or a substitute for the unity that can be created by self. In other words, the general view is that not only does consciousness have a continuity,

[52:08]

But consciousness has an experience of unity, which gives us a sense of being in the world in a unified way. And if it's the case that we need an experience of unity, if not oneness, but unity, In order to function in a healthy way, healthy means wholeness, is self the only way this experience of unity, the unity of consciousness, is created. Would also a kind of the bliss arising from the sensorium be equivalent to self? Or some combination.

[53:38]

So I'm just throwing out monkey wrenches, which are problems. Things to think about. Okay. things to think about. The large sutra of perfect wisdom says something like substitute discursive thinking or thinking about with explorative acceptance. So what if instead of thinking about, you had a modality of mind of explorative acceptance and just allowing things to come in and an exploration to occur that's not discursive.

[54:48]

This alchemy, as Westerners, we're Westerners, I am, this alchemy of experience may not be easily available to us. But I'm sure it's available, but maybe not easily available. So if Proust, in his experience of the madeleine and the warm tea, Is it somehow triggered a pure experience of tasting and smelling?

[55:52]

And while it's true that the brain is wired so smelling and taste are more directly connected to memory, I've read. I don't know. Still, it may have been the pure experience that was the source of the joy and not the memory. And if that's the case, he would have written a different novel. Because if it was the pure experience, For instance, he said, well, with the second cup of tea, second taste of tea, I still felt pretty good.

[57:20]

And with the third and fourth cup, you know, not much was happening. But that's because he was trying to recover the memory. And you can only recover a memory so often. The smell of leaves on the grandmother's summer. Is that what do you call it in German? The summer of, like Indian summer? The Indian summer? The old people's summer? No, no, no, no. I don't believe that was meant. I have to educate you folks. I don't know who meant that.

[58:22]

Okay. I think I've learned some German idioms. The only one I know is, so gross me toot. Okay, so then, if he was a yogi, He would say, oh, the memory is part of the trigger here. But the experience was the direct experience of sensation. And that I can stay with. I can stay with it without looking for it in the second and third cups of tea.

[59:28]

And the key to his novel is the importance he gives to involuntary memory. Memory that just pops up for no reason. And his novel's about trying to look for the sources of the popping up memories. But the yogi would look for the popped up sensations. Well, I'm just using this monkey wrench to show although Self may be in its basic experience universal, and Sankapa says so too.

[60:52]

Still, in a yoga culture, the experience of self and how you create a self-narrative would probably be very different. And now we are in such an extraordinary cultural transition. Within the West itself and within Asia itself and within the relationship. That we might as well play with all these possibilities. Particularly if we are practitioners.

[61:56]

When I started practicing 50 years ago, the word mindfulness was basically unknown. And now there is no therapist who doesn't at least occasionally use the word mindfulness. So let's have lunch. So, 12.30. Hey, I'm right on time more or less. 12.30. I'm never on time, so I'm really impressed by my time. Should we come back at 2.30? Two hours is enough? Okay.

[62:56]

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