Now, as most of you know, I like hearing your voices as part of the seminar. Not only because I don't want to do all the talking. And I also want... If I'm going to do so much talking, I want some response. I want some experience that I might be being heard. But at the same time, there's also various voices being part of the seminar. There's a kind of... We have no words for it, but maybe yoga of mental postures that flows in the room.

[01:07]

All that is to say, but still I... I feel I ought to say a little more before we have too much discussion. But I'm happy to hear something if someone wants to say something now or interrupt or sing. Yes, go ahead. Last year in Hannover, Roshi used this sentence with no other location mind. And at the beginning it was also because I took this clarity with me, this clarity or openness, but when I was in Berlin I lost it more and more, all these thoughts and feelings and everything.

[02:13]

Last year in the Halofa seminar, you brought up this phrase, no other location mind. And I tried to practice with it. And at first, it worked quite well. And that's probably also because I took some of the clarity of the seminar with me. But then over time, when I returned to Berlin and over time, the feeling for that practice got weaker and weaker. And now I'm kind of going back and forth between practicing with it. And then I had a problem with this no. So this starts with no. And that was a thing that with me is resistance. You can't get resistance from that. Okay, and then I realized that I started having resistance against this word no in the phrase because it's like comparative, you know.

[03:32]

So I started having difficulties with it. So you did speak about that quality of the imperative no. You talked about an iron something. But still, maybe I am not mature enough to practice with it, because I do have this resistance against that quality of the phrase. OK.

[04:36]

I haven't forgotten. What did you want to say? I would like to refer to what you said about crossing the street to avoid someone. A song by Tina Diko came to my mind. which was on my mind quite a bit recently. And the name of the song is The Other Side. And in that song she sings about a nightmare. She wanted to reach the other side. And when the door opened and she was able to move freely on the other side, she realized that there were no kings or queens and also no diamonds.

[05:54]

And she realized that she's happy to stay on this side because it's the better side. Yeah, it reminds me of a Rumi poem. You know, the very simple one. I knocked and knocked on the door. Knocked and wouldn't open. And finally it opened and I found I was already on the other side. Okay, about your practice. No other location mind. I don't think it has anything to do with such psychological views as I'm not mature enough and things like that.

[06:56]

On the one hand, I think a good practice you can't use up. But you often have to refresh the practice. So I think the practice of no other location mind is a practice you can't use up. But at any stage in your life you can only use it for so long and it's changed the context enough that it gets dead. I would say it did its work for a while. And it's true it may work more powerfully when it's still fresh from another person. But usually practices like that, you're lucky if they work for a while.

[08:21]

And I would say it's your maturity that made it work for a while. But perhaps it was your immaturity to think that it should work forever. So bring it, just wait and it will come back on its own sometime. And open up a deeper layer of no other location. Anyway, that's my experience. Anyone else? Okay. Okay.

[09:25]

Whenever I sit in front of you to get a lecture, I experience it by the past. In the past, there's a little tale about Munchausen. Baron Munchausen? How to get out of normal experience contextualizing Buddha. But there's every, and everywhere there's a context. So what can be came from a context to a non-context? Well, first of all, it's better to just get to a different context. First of all, it's better to just get to a different context. And maybe you should say what you said in Deutsch. Also, immer wenn ich Jede und Herrn Röschi eine Lektion bekomme, dann denke ich immer an die alte Geschichte von Münchhausen, der sich aus dem Schlamm selbst herauszieht.

[10:35]

Und das hat mich in meiner Jugend sehr überrascht, wie das möglich ist. And the question behind it is actually that we, as Roshi also says, we always come with a past, with an experienced past. And we can't deny that. But how do we get into a bad state now? That is the question. I have, from the last year or previous year, making all incubating this is really wonderful just to intend something intend and then to incubate yeah I think it's wonderful too yeah it's really it is really well like an adventure that's why I'm doing this it's an adventure

[11:38]

Okay, so, when I walked around the room, there were various self-reflections, self-experience, expressions that arose from our self-experience. And they were different for different people. And they were different from the reasons that I did it. But Let's make a distinction between the idea of self and the experience of self. The idea of self is primarily, in my opinion, what establishes the continuity of self.

[12:42]

Because this experience of self is discontinuous. But the idea of self tends to be continuous. So as I said before the break, I would like us to come to a definition or idea of self. Ich würde gerne, dass wir zu einer Definition oder zu einem Konzept vom Selbst kommen. Oder ein Konzept vom Prozess des Selbst und Nicht-Selbst. Die unser Konzept vom Selbst als etwas Kontinuierliches ersetzen kann. Because I think it's the idea of self which causes most of the problem.

[14:04]

Because it's the idea of self, I think, which creates the illusion of continuity. It's maybe like time-lapse photography. How do you say it in German? Time-lapse photography. Time-lapse photography, that's what it's called in German. What would you say in the Oregon biology when you take a picture of a plant and then a picture of a plant and you show it over a period of time? Zeitraffer. Zeitraffer, thank you. Okay, Zeitrafferfotografie. Okay. But time-lapse photography, you're actually seeing units. And you're not seeing in between the units. So you see what looks like a continuous flower can...

[15:06]

But you don't see the little devils in between who are propping the flower up. So there may be little devils in between our time-lapsed self-photography. That aren't in the photograph. That aren't noticed by the idea of self. Because self only notices through itself. Weil es selbst nur durch sich selbst bemerkt. So it doesn't tend to notice what's not itself. Also neigt es dazu, nicht zu bemerken, was es nicht ist.

[16:22]

So now if we accept that as a possible way of talking about self. Self is an editing function. And it edits your experience in a way that creates the illusion of continuity. And in the eight vijnanas, that's basically the role of Manas as the editor of your experience. So that's a traditional view of self in Buddhism. And right here now I'm just throwing ideas out. Now we don't have the time, days and days together, to really explore these. So you're going to have to explore them in Berlin.

[17:32]

You're going to have to explore them as seeds which may flower at other times in your activity. Okay. So when I walked around the room again, again, various thoughts came up, which I think we could call the experience of self. Based on your previous experience. Because the word self has no meaning unless it's related to your accumulated experience.

[18:36]

So you saw, you're hearing now about it, that your accumulated experience didn't tell you what was going on. So even though your accumulated experience was both inaccurate and discontinuous, inaccurate in what it presupposed, Your idea of self was probably continuous. This is me sitting here watching this guy. Okay, now that's one thing you can explore. The relationship between the experience of self and the idea of self. And what's interesting is the idea of self is more powerful than the experience.

[19:39]

Even if your experience shows you a self is discontinuous, the idea of the self dominates. And certainly a lot of psychological problems could be understood this way. that the idea of self that you have doesn't coincide with your experience of self. It may not correspond negatively or it might not correspond hyper-positively. Yeah, okay. So this would be useful to observe. Your experience of self and the idea of a continuous self.

[20:58]

Your idea of an experience of a continuous self. My team. Okay. All right. But maybe we need continuity. In fact, we do need continuity. Maybe we could shift the need for continuity away from the self. So instead of practicing trying to discover non-self, we shift the functions of self away from the idea of self.

[22:22]

No, I don't expect you to really probably remember all these distinctions. I mean, I don't remember them. And it takes, it's a rather huge effort on my part to really notice the difference between the idea of self and continuity and continuity which is not, etc. But my job as a Buddhist teacher is to make this as clear as possible and as accurate as possible. And we are immensely complicated people.

[23:42]

There's something like a hundred million neurons or something which just control your gut. And there's no way to probe into those, what's going on down there. But actually, we have this kind of subtle feeling for what we should eat and shouldn't eat. And I read the other day that in one cubic centimeter of the brain, there's more connections than there are in the entire Milky Way galaxy. But that's comparing apples and oranges. Because if you said how many connections there are in the galaxy, that would exceed the cubic centimeter.

[24:44]

What do you mean? In other words, the The number of stars in the galaxy are units, not connections. In the brain, it's connections. So in 1, 2, 3, there's a lot of connections, more than three. The point only is that these big numbers Something extremely complex is going on here.

[25:48]

And the way we look at it allows us to participate or not participate in it. So maybe what we mean in Buddhism when we talk about understanding something, what we mean is the ability to participate in it. Okay, so how to participate in it? So, again, I'm walking around the room. And the experience of self is discontinuous. Let's not argue with that. Just take that as probably the case. Okay. But what was continuous?

[26:56]

Well, probably the most continuous thing was your attention to my walking around the room. So attention, an attentional point, is something we can establish as continuity. So I want to work with this attentional point. Yeah, the point at a cross. The point that turns. So I'm using, I think I'm using in the seminar, I never know what's going to happen exactly, I didn't think of the term intentional point until about the middle of yesterday. So I would say the yoga of us being together created this refinement of a term, attentional point.

[28:09]

So I want to explore with us probably these two days now, attentional point. And much of Zen Buddhism and much of Yogacara meditation craft Well, craft is handwerk. I know, but handwerk is... Yeah, Handwerk is too technical, so Kunst is the best I can get at this. We have the joining of Kunsthandwerk. Kunsthandwerk. Between pure art and pure simple craft. Okay, because we have Kunstwerk. That's a word, but that's a sculpture.

[29:29]

Oh, a sculpture. The result of an artist. I call it practice. I see. I'm glad I know nothing about German. I could never survive. I barely survive in English. There's a poem where this dancing figure in India has a belt of oceans. Whoa. What a great idea. She probably gets wet all the time. But in any case, in any case, the ocean of English is enough for me. I can swim in. Okay. Now, one of the basics of, again, Yogacara, blah, blah, blah, is the development of attention.

[30:33]

There's zazen. There's discovering of stillness in zazen. There's the physical posture of Zazen. There's the mental posture of don't move. And the mental posture of don't move helps you not to move. But the physical posture helps you develop the imperturbable one that doesn't move. So through the mental posture of not moving, in other words, the mental posture of not moving isn't just to help you develop your zazen. The physical posture of zazen helps you develop the one who doesn't move.

[31:48]

For instance, someone asked a no actor, a no NOH, a no Japanese theater actor. And he said, the primary skill is to know the one who does not move in all movements. And this is in Buddhism called the imperturbable iron being. And in Buddhism this is called the imperturbable iron being. We're covering a lot of ground today, aren't we?

[32:50]

Ground, space, covering a lot of space to play with. Okay, so the basic skills. Zazen and developing the one that doesn't move. Another skill is always noticing the arising of mind. Which also means to notice the world as a flow of appearances. These are all basic realizations and practices. And if you can't, for instance, know the world as a flow of appearance, you create the knowledge that it has to be a flow of appearance.

[33:53]

What else could it be? and then you hold that knowledge as a closely held teaching in the activity of the 10,000 things and the experience of the flow of appearances will appear Now appearance is not phenomena. But appearance is based on phenomena. So really when appearance appears, what first announces itself is mind. So mind is announced by the phenomena which appears.

[35:11]

But phenomena is much more complex than what appears. Yeah. Now those kinds of distinctions are very important in Buddhism but it takes a while to get the refinement, the attentional refinement that allows you to notice them. But since Reinhardt Not Reinhardt. Reinhardt pointed out that this is an adventure. So let's continue this adventure of refining ourselves.

[36:12]

Okay, so now I'm suggesting that we shift from the idea of self-continuity to the experience of attentional continuity, which, once you want to make that shift, you discover you have to develop that attentional continuity dann entdeckst du, dass du diese Aufmerksamkeitskontinuität entwickeln musst. And if your intentional, no, if your attentional continuity, und wenn deine Aufmerksamkeitskontinuität endowsed by thought thinking, wenn die im Denken sich ergießt und darauf geht, you won't be in any better shape or worse shape.

[37:19]

So you have to shift your experience of attentional continuity away from thinking. And just doing that, which I've just said in the two or three sentences in the midst of, you know, sitting here. If you do that, it'll transform your life. Because attention is the greatest power you have. And again, don't confuse attention with consciousness. Attention is a dynamic of a consciousness but attention is not consciousness. I can be conscious of all of you sitting here. And in the midst of that awareness or consciousness of all of you sitting here, I can move attention to you.

[38:32]

And still be conscious of everyone. Or I can move attention to you, oh shy one. Yeah. Or I can take attention away from consciousness itself and bring it into sleeping, into lucid dreaming. So attention is a dynamic that you can strengthen and develop. And your attention can be, your attentional point can be a point of continuity. Okay, so now I'll give you some objects of attention. Oh dear.

[39:46]

I will do it even though it's entirely too much. But it's not too much if we just separate it out over a couple of weeks. Or you remember it from other seminars. Okay, so it's good to bring attention to attention itself. That's one of the basic moves. Okay. It's also good to bring attention to, if you want to explore self, to your experienced, noticed experience of continuity. it's also good to bring attention to self as an observer. And it's also good to bring attention to the decisional self, the self as agency. Und es ist auch gut, die Aufmerksamkeit auf das Entscheidungstreffende Selbst, das Selbst als Handelndes zu bringen.

[41:08]

Wenn du das Selbst suchen willst, dann musst du es dort suchen, wo es arbeitet. Und du musst es dort suchen, wo es sich versteckt. And often, you know, as we discussed yesterday, using symbolically Benjamin Leavitt, the body is often making decisions ahead of the consciousness knowing the decision has been made already. So, in that sense, self, if self is the decisional self, the decisional self is hiding in the neurons of the body, or the bodily intelligence, Yeah, and so we also have to begin to notice when self appears through something else in which it's hiding.

[42:15]

Okay, so you're trying to observe the observing self? the decisional self and the experience of continuity and the experience of attention. If you do give closely held attention to these four you'll go a long ways toward finding or not finding self in a way that you're clear about.

[43:17]

Okay, now because I've talked about it before, I'm going to give you four other things to bring attention to. somewhat overlapping. And you can make use of any one of these as you wish. Because part of what we're doing here is developing the kind of attention which can give attention. So if you do develop an attentional subtlety, that attentional subtlety will uncover things that up until now have been unannounced. dann wird diese Subtilität in der Aufmerksamkeit Dinge entdecken, die bisher ganz unentdeckt waren.

[44:36]

Okay. So, what I've taught for many years since back at the Sufi camp, weren't you ever there at the Sufi camp? Was ich schon seit vielen Jahren jetzt gelehrt habe, und das mache ich schon seit damals an den Tagen, als ich im Sufi camp... That was 15 years ago or so, wasn't it? And none of the three of us are Sufis. Or a little bit, maybe. Is I had the four functions of self. Actually, originally it was the three functions of the usual self and the three functions of the Bodhisattva self. And then I dropped the bodhisattva self. And then I added a fourth function. Okay, the first function is establishing separation. Like you all know, the immune system establishes what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you.

[45:48]

The second function is establishing connectedness. Whether you establish this through the idea of self or some other way of practicing with continuity, these four functions have to be established to live. Separation and connectedness. And continuity is the third. And relevance, context or meaning is the fourth. And if you can't establish the relevance of something, you again can't function.

[46:51]

Okay, so we don't have to think of these four things as four functions as simply functions. There are also, as I pointed out the other day in the Quellenweg-Johanneshof-Seminar, these are four junctures. Because what is the self but the way we meet the world? It's the way we contact the world, plug into the world. And it's the way the world plugs into us. So they're junctures of you and others in the world. So you can bring attention to the juncture of separation.

[48:00]

And since Neil stuck himself right here in front of me, he has to be a purple example. I meet Neil and there's immediately a juncture of separation. We haven't seen each other. He's changed a little bit since the last time I saw him. And there's also a juncture of connectedness. So I can immediately feel this kind of separation-connectedness dynamic going on. And also, since I haven't seen him for a few weeks, there's an interrupted continuity. So I can re-establish continuity? Yeah. Or I can notice, we're not exactly on the same wavelength now.

[49:17]

What's happening? Well, he got married. He doesn't need me anymore. Or he got married and that improved, his wavelength widened. Yeah. And there's a relevance now. His relevance to practice and the coming practice period and all is changing partly through his marriage. So I can use the four functions of self as four junctures to bring attention to and practice with the junctures. Okay.

[50:23]

So, what I tried to do this morning is to give you a feeling for the importance of looking for the self and some of the Buddhist techniques for looking for self. So maybe we can come into an experience of the process of self and non-self. So I've just finished the additional things I want to say. I mean, there's a few others, but we have tomorrow and this afternoon. So now does anybody want to say anything? God, no, let's get out of here. Yes.

[51:35]

Yes? I'm teaching Tai Chi and some of the things that you said reminded me a lot of some of the aspects of teaching. And that's the continuity of movement. Because in Tai Chi what we do is in contrast to the other martial arts. Time lapse photography. We are moving in slow motion. And what I always notice with the trainees is that some of them don't manage to get from one movement to the next in slow motion.

[52:44]

So they divide the movements into end points. And one thing I keep noticing in that slow motion practice is that some of the practitioners are unable of getting from one movement to the next, but instead they're separating the movements into endpoints. Yes, I understand. Ich erlebe das als eine Art von mangelnder Konzentration. And I experience that as a lack of concentration. Die wissen einfach, sie müssen jetzt zu der Bewegung kommen. They know that they are supposed to get from this movement to that other movement. And apparently they have so much disquietness inside themselves that it's hard for them to do that in slow motion. And that's what makes that teaching very interesting. I get quite upset with them.

[54:04]

But I'm also trying to demonstrate it as something that's pleasurable. As though you're stroking, harassing the world. Well, it may be also because they tend to think in units. Which means they can only do what they can conceptualize. So they can conceptualize what you say, then they have to stop, introduce the new conception, and then do that. Part of the flow of all the little rituals in Zen practice is to create a flow through appearances. Someone else. Yes.

[55:19]

So I'm a karate teacher and I am also practicing Tai Chi and practice the guitar. Yeah. Yeah. And I've noticed that I need a lot of time to get a concept for what people would like me to learn. I need a lot of time for that. So I'm a really slow learner, but once I do get the concept done, then it's a great experience for me. And due to the bodily practices that I've been doing for a long time, I have a good feeling for my body.

[56:51]

And I would say it's a good intuition that I have, because I make the right decisions about my body, about the value of my body. Because of that, I feel like I am quite sensitive to my body and I am pretty good intuition. I notice that because I seem to make good decisions about my body. And since I managed to avoid many situations that could have harmed me, I think that my body and my guardian angel, let me just call it that, are working together well. Good. Helping you play the guitar, too. At least I haven't broken my fingers yet. Someone else, yes. Well, no, wait a minute. You've had more attention than you deserve.

[58:00]

Volker? No, just a minute. I'll come back. Volker? It was like a hammer hitting me. I'm sorry. There is continuity, there are so to speak the IP-works, so the appearance of what goes around. But I haven't actually grasped the whole phenomenon. Nevertheless, I haven't grasped what is happening now.

[59:03]

So I did have this experience of you walking around yesterday, and it was like a discontinuous experience, but I wasn't able to grasp the entirety of what happened there. I didn't grasp the entirety of the phenomenon. And my feeling was, okay, I have no idea what's going on. I'm glad. Okay, yes. I would like to probe into what attention really is. What is it in me? Where is it? And so forth.

[60:08]

Okay, do so. It's your attention. I mean, in your experience. So really all of this, everything I've said, only makes sense if you explore these things yourself. So from some kind of bodily intelligence, You've just given yourself a clue. Start with exploring attention itself, its source or its something. Yeah, it's wonderful to have such a clue. Okay. I would like to I would like to add something that now later on brought into the picture.

[61:27]

In the moment of appearance. There's again this difficulty of not conveying the self to things, of bringing nothing of the self to things, but instead of being identified by things. And the problem for me is to find out how to listen towards things like that. How do you do that?

[62:31]

Okay, you've got the problem. Just solve it. Someone over here? I'm wondering why continuity is so important and why you say that we couldn't live without it. Well, just say that I look at this. And then I turn here and I can't remember that. That can happen with drugs or with mental illnesses and things like that.

[63:35]

I have instantly no way to function. I couldn't get home, I couldn't take a bus, I couldn't do anything. You couldn't listen to my lecture, it would all be... parts that didn't relate to each other. And this afternoon we can explore this sense of not only continuity but coherence. But thanks for bringing that up. Because these are simple things, continuity, coherence, etc., But there's a difference between continuity and coherence. And to practice we have to question very basic things. Like what is continuity?

[64:36]

What is your name? Christian. Christian? So you have the continuity of the name Christian. Even though you're in a Buddhist seminar. Yeah, thank you for telling me your name. Yes, who else? Oh, Reinhard. I don't remember, I don't know if I understood you correctly. I remember that you once said and I'm not sure that I understood correctly but the only thing one needs to know about doors is that you can go through them and I had to fly twice and I fly very often, so I haven't flown for a long time because I have a reason that I don't let in.

[65:56]

And I had great difficulties on the flight to Paris because I missed my flight in Amsterdam. So I traveled recently and I had to fly back and forth and I haven't been doing that for a long time and I had great difficulties. I missed my plane in Amsterdam and I missed it because I was thinking of all the things I was supposed to do and still needed to do. And then traveling back from Paris to Hannover, I was afraid a little bit because I was worrying about all the things I might be doing wrong. And there are two different airports, Charles de Gaulle 1 and 2, and I didn't have a ticket because I ordered online.

[67:08]

The only thing I thought of was that I would like to be back in Hannover by the evening. So I had to ask people a lot and I just tried to be present in the moment and I had to ask my way around and it worked out quite well. The people around me, they serve me really. It was just at the moment when the train arrived Chaldea Group 1, a man tell me, oh, you have to go Chaldea Group 2.

[68:33]

This is your, the KLM is starting in Chaldea Group 2. So it was really, after this, I was really frightened. I think we'd better start traveling together. You can help me, I'll help you. I think what I said about doors was rather, I think I said the only thing you should know about walls is doors are a better choice. Yes. Yes. You spoke about different forms of self. Functions of self. And I understood that by observing the functions of self, the functions of self themselves are being modified.

[69:37]

Yes. They become areas to practice. Yes, they become areas of the practice. You also said that there is the decisive self that is hidden. These are two different things. The decisive self and the self that is hidden are not the same, because the decisive self is not hidden. But I can translate and maybe I misunderstood. And you also spoke about the decision-making self that's hidden. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Und da es versteckt ist, kann es ja nicht beobachtet werden.

[70:38]

And since it's hidden, it can't be observed. Wir können nur das Ergebnis beobachten, seine Funktion. Wir können nur das Ergebnis, seine Funktion beobachten. we can only observe the results of its function. Is it still possible to modify that function, although it's only possible to observe the results of its functioning? Yeah. Well, as you said yesterday, Yes. She notices that she's wondering something like maybe she should go shopping but maybe I won't go shopping.

[71:39]

But then she notices she's put on her shoes. So she realizes she's going shopping. But the bodily decisional process was hidden. But it showed itself by her putting on her shoes. So appearance has several meanings. So one meaning is, Neil appears. Another meaning is, it appears that since Neil is here, his hip must be better. So sometimes the hidden decisional process appears in a kind of disguised form.

[72:46]

And you learn to read the signs. Like my fingertips, whenever my fingertips get cold, because usually my hands are warm, my fingertips get cold, I know that within a couple of days I could get the flu or a cold. I've been exposed to something and this tells me and then I do things to say, just pass through the station, you don't have to stop here. So what's interesting is one, that we can't know all the decisional processes and other functions of self.

[73:51]

But it's surprising with developed sensitivity how much we can know. Now does that respond to your comment, your question? Not entirely. Maybe you'll come back to it. Okay. Anyone else who hasn't spoken? I think you all want to go to lunch. It's 12.30. So you do it now or wait till after lunch? You want to say something? Go ahead. Okay. I can also say it later. All right. . Ever since I am placing more attention on self and non-self, I feel like my life has become more complicated.

[75:35]

It's a little bit like the war of cultures. meine Wohnung nochmal kurz angucke und denke, vielleicht komme ich ja gar nicht zurück. For example, when I leave my apartment either for a trip, like going to Hannover or just going for a short shopping trip or something, I turn around in my apartment and look at my space and I feel like, well, maybe I won't ever return. Und dann denke ich mir, oh Gott, eigentlich müsste ich jetzt schnell noch aufholen. And then sometimes I think, oh, gosh, actually, I should be cleaning my apartment in case somebody comes into my apartment when I'm dead.

[76:35]

I feel exactly the same way. And after the trouble, I had an hour and a half to get back to my hotel yesterday. It might have happened. It's a five-minute trip. It took me an hour and a half. Okay, so it's twelve and a half or a little more. Should we come back at 2.30 or 3? You're voting for 2.30 again today? No. Which is consistent. Is 2.30 soon enough with restaurants or things, or are three safer? Depends how long you need to find a hotel. I will find a hotel. All right. We come back at 2.30. See, today, you know, I agree.

[77:38]

Thank you very much. Each of one. Everyone. Thank you, all of you.

[77:48]

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