Norbert mentioned something at the beginning of the break about mindfulness and turning word practice, etc. Can you gather up what you said? For me it became clear that the turning word practice has to come out of the mindfulness practice. And not from the neurotic structure. And not from the neurotic structure. And not from the neurotic structure. which could cause somebody to not see very clearly things about himself or herself.

[01:09]

And that brings me to another question. Only one is allowed. Go ahead. Where does intuition come from? And intention, where does intention come from? From intention? Well, anyway, I'm just joking. Let's come to that a little later, okay? Okay. I think I can say something about it. Someone else wants to say something about what Norbert said or what we've been talking about. So last night I've talked with a friend and we together wondered what is the difference between turning words or turning word practice and autosuggestions.

[02:18]

Both are techniques, or in both techniques it's important to have something in the background of the mind. And maybe one difference is that the turning words are rooted in wisdom teaching. Maybe you can say a little more about this. Now, you're not speaking just about autosuggestion, that's a casual use of the word, but as a practice or specific technique. So there also exists something like cognitive restructuring, and that's also a technique.

[03:55]

It may be quite parallel to what I'm speaking. Can you give me an example of Otto's suggestion? Something very simple. I'm beautiful and successful. That's right. When you are, it's true. Mr. Review. I mentioned the other day they did an experiment using autosuggestion.

[04:59]

They told two groups of people that they had to take a test at the end of the week. And one group auto-suggested to themselves, I will take the test. And the other group... And the other group was, I'm willing to take the test. And... As you might guess, the ones who said, I'm willing, did much better on the test. Okay, so it's a kind of auto-suggestion, sure. Now, what's the difference? Before I try to see if there's differences or explain more of how it's conceived of in Zen practice, Also, bevor ich diese Unterschiede erforsche oder erkläre, wie das in der Sandpraxis gesehen wird.

[06:22]

Let me hear some more comments from anybody. Yes. Sabine. Ich merke also, dass ich immer höre Wörter. Ich habe Sätze gemacht. So I noticed that I hear words and I've always liked sentences. Like one of yours was for me very important. Pausing for the particular. One sentence is pausing for the particular. And for me it was wide open. and not so localized. And the effect was that I became still and could notice appearances. And for me it was a mindfulness practice.

[07:45]

So it was like to get to mindfulness, to practice mindfulness, too. Yeah. Well, if we use that as an example, Something I have often said to pause for the particular. It's not, of course, I am particularly beautiful. It's just a definition of the world and it refers to the world, not to myself or my personality. And if you practice it within a yogic context, it's in the larger yogic context of noticing the world as appearances. I said yesterday that three of the biggest aspects steps in practice.

[09:00]

Each one being practiced is very different afterwards. The first is the real decision to practice. as important in your life, important in the way breathing is, eating is, and so forth. Dogen calls this clarity of this decision initial enlightenment. And what he means is that when you really explore the conditions that arose from which that decision arose and the conditions from which arose from it. All the ingredients of enlightenment are there.

[10:02]

If you put the ingredients together. The second is when breath, as I said, breath, you establish the continuity of attention in the breath. And the third is, when you experience the world as a flow of appearance. Once you're really experiencing the world as a flow of appearance, You're practicing the basic Buddhist worldview. Yeah, everything changes, everything's interdependent. And I would say that we really have to say not just interdependent, but inter-emergent.

[11:20]

There's no English word, inter-emergent, but inter-emergence we can say. But I often just say inter-emergent. Okay, so to pause for the particular is a way to enter into the world as appearance. Now, if you were going to practice, further develop the practice of pausing for the particular, You might, for example, breathe in the particular and breathe out a field of mind.

[12:25]

Okay. Now, again, that's a basic yogic mental posture. is to primarily notice particulars within a field of mind which fuses, which sees everything all at once. So I suppose this uses the same practice of repetition. But it's repetition in the service of how the world is known. and not in the service of our identity.

[13:49]

Now you can also again develop, you can go from to pause for the particular to to pause for the pause. And to pause for the pause, both does two things at once. It relates to the kind of pulse of appearance. What kind of pause between appearances? Which you can also articulate with the pause at the top of the breath and the bottom of the breath. But it also supports the yogic practice of having everything arise from stillness. so that you feel the stillness in all activity and as a practice you allow activity to return to stillness.

[15:27]

Now you'd have a pretty developed client if he or she could do all this stuff. But you can move in this direction, I think, I hope. Someone else. Yeah. So an idea I had when I was listening is that maybe mindfulness practice could like something that joins different schools of psychotherapy. That would be good. And the idea came to me because the thinking or using mindfulness practice has increased

[16:45]

very much during the last years in psychotherapy. I mean in psychotherapy in general. Yes, it has. I've noticed it. So I asked myself, is it just like in fashion or is it really... a true change? Well, I can't answer that question, of course, but I would guess that it's a real change. If it's the fundamental practice for 2500 years of Buddhism, it probably is more than a fashion. But when I go into a pharmacy or an apotheke and I find Zen perfume, then it's a fact.

[18:06]

But of course if the can only squirted out mindfulness... But if Afriza Lohse or Schubert would just show care, then it would be something else. The question is whether the investment in so much remains a technique or whether it really has something to do with the transformation of the whole person or personality. So I think the question is, does it or will it remain just a technique in the West, as so many things remain a technique, or will it really lead to true transformation of the person or personality? Well, I suppose at the, who knows, again, but I suppose at the level that we're speaking about,

[19:13]

In this case, not a Zen practitioner, a Buddhist practitioner, but a therapist working with a client. I would imagine that... that the therapist, depending on the therapist, could bring some clients out of neurotic behavior or whatever, into much more, you know, into real practice and real transformation of themselves. Then I could imagine that a therapist could get the client out of this neurotic behavior and into real practice and into real transformation. I mean, why I paused there is I was suddenly the various people who I practiced with over the last 40 years or 50 years.

[20:30]

I was visualizing the ones who started out with started out with psychological problems I would say that if I limit myself to seriously incapacitating psychological problems Zen practices had the most success in my experience with depression. And I have some extremely successful students now who, when they started, were so depressed they couldn't do school, they couldn't do, you know, function.

[21:34]

And there are other cases of people who heard voices and couldn't distinguish whether it was coming from them or from the outside and so forth. And they used practice to sort that out. But I can think of a number of people who I don't know how the term schizophrenic is used these days. Who had both feet and most of the rest of their body in schizophrenia and very little in ordinary, Zen practice didn't help them at all. And they ended up institutionalized. But I've also noticed in regard to practice, if the person has a real intention to do something about their psychological condition,

[23:16]

Practice can often be, in my experience, a parallel help to psychotherapy. When they have a kind of wavering intention, etc., they can have very small problems, but practice doesn't help. Yeah, that's all. But anyway, those are some comments. I don't know how relevant it is, but anyway. But I don't know exactly how you imagine mindfulness could bring the different psychological therapeutic schools into relationship. But, I mean, if, for instance, in Buddhist practice, I said yesterday, all teachings of Buddhism are designed to either lead to enlightenment or to be expressions of enlightenment.

[24:44]

And so many, often interesting philosophical questions aren't considered because they're irrelevant in relationship to enlightenment. And all Buddhist teachings are also related to lessening or freeing the practitioner from suffering, mental suffering. And I would say to carry it a step or so further, all Buddhist practices assume and depend on mindfulness. So I can imagine if mindfulness becomes such a useful ingredient in practice,

[26:15]

Various approaches, psychotherapeutic approaches, all made use of mindfulness or assumed use of mindfulness practice as they now assume a self or something like that it would be one more common commonality among the psychotherapeutic schools. I would say in the same regard, another always present assumption within Buddhist teachings is Samadhi. But that's a much more complicated topic, so I'll leave that out right now.

[27:34]

Yeah. Okay, someone else? Yes. So I remembered yesterday that one of my teachers wrote a book which is called A Symptom's Path to Enlightenment. A Symptom's Path to Enlightenment. A Symptom's Path to Enlightenment. Right. Yeah, well that sounds good. The basis is hypnotherapy? And so the idea is, like you described, how we can use a cup of coffee as a cure to be mindful

[28:51]

And to pay attention that every symptom, like fear or whatever, can be taken as a cue to be mindful. I think that's exactly right. That's my own practice and experience. I have a question. Is it more about symptoms as blockages to illuminate the path? Or is it more about access to illuminate the path? So the question is, are symptoms or suffering in general seen as hindering enlightenment, or is it really providing an entry towards enlightenment?

[30:13]

Well, I think if you have a choice, I would consider it an entry. I think of everything as an entry. Let me say a couple of things. One thing, two things. Using a cup of coffee or tea as a cue. Again, I'm imagining being a therapist. If I found out on successive visits that the practice of being mindful of your breath or something was taking hold with cups of coffee and teas, Yes, I might add then, like when you take a walk, use the walk as a cue to be mindful of your breath for a while.

[31:21]

Or use when you go upstairs in a building or something. And that applies to anyone, but it's an easy way to cue mindfulness for a client as well. And then you can go further to see if people can notice the topography of their moods, suffering, etc., But sometimes you feel better than others, and sometimes you feel calmer than other times. So if you notice that topography, And that's mindfulness practice.

[32:52]

And then you can establish the bodily feel of when you feel a little better or nourished or nourished or something. You can begin to widen your definition of yourself to include these moments where you feel good for a while. Und dann kann man in seiner Definition von sich selber solche Momente mit einschließen, wo man sich gut fühlt. And again, putting these turning word phrases into a sequence. Und noch einmal, wenn man diese Wendeworte in eine Reihenfolge bringt. You can go from practicing with yes. Kann man mit ja anfangen. To practicing with welcome.

[33:54]

And once you've really developed that habit, you can add, for example, already connected. And over a period of months, to go from just saying yes to things to feeling already connected, they're interrelated and it's a big, big step. Or you can go from, you know, like using a phrase, as we've talked about, just now arriving, and connect cueing that by actually stepping So you can each step, you can say just now arriving. And once you've got, you're used to tying it to stepping into arriving.

[34:56]

You can feel yourself more than as a location, than a self. Just now arriving in a location. And at each step it's a new location. So you're already a practicing appearance. And you don't have to be walking to feel this practice of arriving. If I look at you who had your hand up a minute ago, And if I look at you with the feeling of just now arriving, I feel it's almost the same as already connected.

[36:18]

In fact, I feel we're arriving in a little kind of mutuality. It's not quite the same as I feel when I arrive with Katrin. Which I've been arriving for many years. Okay. So, just now arriving can be taken another step into just now originating. And just now originating, you're really stepping in to a new world view. A world view in which things are not just interdependent, but inter-emergent. Always unique, always new, never having happened before.

[37:32]

Okay. That was more than two things, wasn't it? So you were going to say something? Yes, I have two things. I have two things. Let's start out with two. One is about the technique to use a cue. So my experience has been that when I had a problem that kept being in my mind, I couldn't solve it, to use exactly this problem as a cue to remind myself of being compassionate or something.

[38:49]

Or to practice. And I have tried to bring this technique closer to my patients. And I also try to help my patients use this technique. And my reasoning was that, as the Dalai Lama said, when you hold a problem very closely to your face, the whole world is the problem, but when you are able to put the problem further away, Yeah, of course. But interestingly none of my clients or patients could use the technique. They kept holding the problem right in front of their eyes.

[39:51]

What obviously is their neurotic problem. So my question is, are there other kinds of steps or crutches that one could use to help the clients? Or how is it different when I do it or try to do it and when my clients try to do it? I had some image when you said they hold it close to their face. I had an image suddenly. You tell them it's a lotion. And they start rubbing it all over their face. And then they continue rubbing it all over their body and face. I don't know if this would work, but it's the image that appeared in my head.

[41:14]

But, you know, it's interesting. It would be interesting to me to use the symptoms and one thing that Zen practice, one of the big differences, conceptual differences between Buddhism and most psychotherapy. It's that Buddhism almost does not work for the past at all, it only works for the present. So you're not really very concerned with the source of the problem. You're only concerned with its presence, presence in the present. Yeah.

[42:14]

And the whole idea is, you know, yesterday we talked about seeds. It's the idea. Now, I'm not saying this is the way it should be, but this is the way it tends to be conceptually in Buddhism. The seed that was planted in the past by your or others actions or the tree that was planted in the soil of your consciousness in the past has produced seeds. And those seeds are constantly, and the word again is vasana, constantly perfuming your consciousness. And these seeds And they produce trees that are rather different sometimes than the tree that was originally planted.

[43:32]

So the conceptual emphasis is not on uprooting the tree from the past, But rather uprooting that tree in the present. Or putting a swing on it and a playground underneath it or whatever. But my own experience is that when you try to work with the concept of past lives, and which I have no particular interest in and I think is a rather burdensome part of Buddhism, And from the Zen point of view, absolutely unnecessary.

[44:38]

Yeah. From the Zen point of view, believing in rebirth is equivalent to believing in God. They both are beliefs. But the practice of going back through your life as if it was past lives is very useful. And you can bring and develop a skill of mindfulness in the past and one aspect of the technique is that say you can visualize your third grade teacher, or your third grade desk or something like that.

[45:51]

And it's like a little bright light in the memory, a window or something. Then during Zazen, You keep going back to that image which sort of has its own light. And you see if you can expand the desk to the other desks in the look of the room. And to the faces of the other students. And then you see if you can go backwards to the day before this image. And forward to going home after school and things like that.

[47:02]

It's surprising you can create quite a big space of several days or longer in which you can feel all the details or many of the details. And this gives us a sense of having a participatory engagement with our past. But somehow it's health giving, I find it. Now, why are you laughing? I don't know, do I look funny?

[48:04]

No? Doing something funny? Okay. I like to be funny. Better than being serious. Okay. So, I'd like to be able to say more about what you brought up, but right now I'm going to leave it for now. Because I'd like to sort of end up this morning with speaking a little bit about how this relates to monastic life. So these practices in Buddhism are not conceived of as being like, I've learned to play the piano. And to my various skills, driving a car and smiling, I've added playing the piano. These practices are all supposed to be

[49:09]

ideally and in various ways transformative. So as transformative, in what way are they transformative? At least talk about the turning words. First you find attentional language. Language which can gather and carry attention. And it's not all words do. I quoted Shakespeare the other day, all the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances. And they play many parts in their ages or something like that.

[50:31]

So Shakespeare has a genius like few others. To say something like, all the world's a stage. And if you read the whole passage, as you like it, I believe, as you like it as you might like it your attention is carried right through the words right to the end of the passage and even reading it two or three times only you almost have it memorized All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. Now, it also not only carries attention, gathers attention and carries attention.

[52:12]

It also sounds absolutely true. It can apply it to anything. All the worlds are stated. That applies to everything. All the worlds are present. And all the men and women merely selves. We can change it around. Okay. So, first of all, turning words are words which gather and carry attention. So they're an attentional language. And they direct attention. Focus attention. And they have a bodily component. All the world's a stage and all the men and women.

[53:30]

You can breathe in the sentence. Now, the bodily component is extremely important. Because here we're practicing Rupadhatu. Rupa Datu is the realm of form. And the realm of form is the first of the four jhanas. And the word jhana, as I said the other day, is the source of the word jhan and zen. So we could say the Rupadhatu is a way of articulating consciousness. So Rupadhatu also is sometimes translated as mental application. But it's mental application in that sense of the body and phenomena.

[54:49]

Yeah. So, if I could only have a dog's dream. Okay, so when you pause for the particular you're pausing for a percept object. You're pausing for the object as a percept. And as I said yesterday, consciousness notices the contents of consciousness. Walls, rooms, objects, persons.

[55:51]

but it doesn't usually notice consciousness itself as a content of consciousness. Nor does consciousness notice its own structure. Okay, so what Zen practice, the form, the rupadhatu practice within Zen? Now we're going beyond what could be used in psychotherapy, but we're really talking about the center of Zen practice now. You're articulating consciousness through the body and through phenomena and through activity.

[57:08]

So again, we can say the background of turning word practices and what shapes the choice of turning words They gather and carry attention. They direct attention. And they refine attention and refine consciousness. And they further create the possibility, the opportunity, to articulate consciousness through the body, through phenomena, through perception, and then through worldviews themselves.

[58:21]

So if you, for instance, if you start articulating consciousness through using the word welcome, you're actually practicing compassion. Okay, so you're refining the worldviews that structure consciousness. This is, as we say in English, no small tomato. This one ain't no small fish. It's not a minnow, it's a whale. Okay, so the reason I'm unfolding my legs is because we're not ready for lunch yet.

[59:35]

But I wanted to show how this illustrate how this turning word practice is related to the body and monastic practice and is related to what I call enactment rituals. Okay, so when you practice doing things with two hands, as I've often mentioned, you pick things up with two hands, you hold them at these chakra points.

[60:39]

Yeah, and as I over... Too many times I've pointed out it's not accidental that Asian cups don't have handles. Because they expect you to use two hands. And they expect you to feel the warmth of the or coldness of the liquid or whatever is in it. You don't want a handle which isolates you from the feel of what's in the container. And in Overall, yoga culture is much more an embodied culture.

[61:55]

You use even simple actions like passing the salt to somebody. As a way to pass yourself to somebody. So it has little to do with getting the salt to the other person. The salt, and you could even design the salt shaker, so it helps you relate to the other person. And this is why Toyota wiped out General Motors. General Motors is the biggest company in the world and Toyota has made it go bankrupt.

[63:04]

Because Japanese cars were much more bodily related. They got you between point A and B and American cars got the car to point A and point B. We thought it was important that the car get between the two points. And the Japanese thought it was important that the passenger get between the two points. No, I don't want to go into the details of design and why that's the case, although I'm sure it's the case. Okay. So, yoga culture wants to have this interleaving or imbrication.

[64:20]

Imbrication means overlapping tiles, like things that overlap or imbricate. They want a body phenomenal mind imbrication, overlapping. So yogic cultures want a body? body, phenomena, and mind overlap. So while doing things with two hands is not a turning word, you're enacting a certain ritual of the relationship of relationships. So again, typically, when you meet somebody in monastic practice, and it's hard to do in lay practice, but if I go straight from Crestone or Johannesoft to

[65:25]

the airport, I tend to bow to the Delta clerk at this point. Yeah. Then they look a little strange and check if I have shoes on. So in general, if you meet somebody in a monastery, I'm not trying to teach anything here, just illustrate. The bow originates from the two feet this distance apart. And from the heels, as you feel your breathing through your heels up to the body.

[66:35]

And you carry, pick up this, you kind of pick up this upward feeling carry it through the chakras. Now what's interesting, if you create the mental formation that you're carrying it through the chakras, and you enact this mental formation through the hands, You actually actuate the chakras. Actuate means you both actualize them and activate them. So you bring it up through the chakras to the heart chakra and then you lift it into the shared space and you bow to the other person.

[67:51]

Now one thing that practice period does that ordinary practice doesn't do Is it brings you just as a habit for three months and three months seems to be an effective length of time? Is it really living in this body which is mutually defined through phenomena and others. So there's many of these enactment rituals. Which is you acknowledge each thing as an appearance.

[68:55]

And you pick rather arbitrarily what to acknowledge. You can't acknowledge everything. Acknowledging, acknowledging, acknowledging. You have to sort of like create some kind of practical way of doing it. So we choose an example. When you meet somebody. Or when you come to your sitting place. So you, again, your feet are that far apart. Because, I mean, the basic idea is if mind and body are going to be united, you ought to at least know where your feet are. So you have to create some rule, mental formation, that is always present in your feet.

[70:08]

And strangely, if you create such a mental formation that you keep your feet always that distance apart, Or that you're breathing through the heels. Your feet will start responding and always be full of attention and warmth. Your feet are always warm, they don't get cold. Okay, so you come to your cushion. And you, oh, hey, look what appeared just now originating. And then you turn around. Wow, were you here all this time?

[71:23]

Just now originating. Look at you. Beautiful things. Really, it's just like this. And then you sit down. So this is all called Rupa Dhatu practice. You're articulating consciousness. through the body and through phenomena, through percept objects. Now, some of this can be brought into lay life. It's not the same as defining everything, as it pretty much does in a three-month practice period. But certainly much of it can be brought in too. And then dropped, as a practice, dropped the 277 or whatever is precepts that one was supposed to follow if you were a male, and 311 if you were a more complex female.

[72:38]

And turned it all into enactment rituals. To actualizing appearance, actualizing dharmas. Now, this is a spectrum from, say, noticing whenever you first think of your spouse. That's more subtle than why am I not getting along with my spouse or whatever.

[73:56]

But to notice among the can't-see-ums and the pixels, when you first think of your spouse, what is the topography of mind then? That's one end of the spectrum. Somewhere toward the other end of the spectrum is articulating consciousness through the dharmas of appearance. Okay. Thanks for being patient. Now it must be getting close to the lunch time. In fact, if my watch is correct, It's eight minutes after lunchtime.

[75:08]

What? Do you have two more minutes? Well, then it's not eight minutes after, and we... It's a good time to have lunch when it's eight minutes after. No, yes, I have two minutes. I just wanted to ask you why you favor the term particular and not, for example, illustrate, actualize, form. Is there a special reason for the term? Okay, why are you using articulate rather than like form or... Illustrate. Illustrate. Actualize. Actualize. Well, I used both articulate and actualize. Articulate is to make things, the form of something more clear. If you want to articulate a problem, at least in English, you'd go into all of the aspects of the problem.

[76:18]

I mean, language articulates consciousness and language in turn articulates language is an articulation of consciousness and it's a feedback loop and language articulates the brain and the body A friend of mine, I can't think of his first name right now, I don't know him really well, Deacon. He's written a brilliant book which shows that the brain of human beings has definitely developed through language use.

[77:24]

A very convincing book, I'm convinced. If you want to look it up, his last name is Deacon, D-E-A-C-O-N. It's a book well worth looking at. Okay. He doesn't have too many books. Something. It's subtitled is something like how language is formed. It's pretty obvious. Okay.

[78:06]

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