What I would like you to do is probably break up into two groups of seven each. Perhaps with our hosts one in each. And what I would suggest I'd like you to do is discuss among yourselves what we've talked about. If it makes sense. And particularly in regard to what kind of person is assumed by the Elaya Vijnana. And what kind of person is assumed by the unconscious?

[01:01]

I mean, the whole of it, not just the unconscious, but the way we conceive of self and... social identity and so forth. And how in Buddhism the individual is conceived of through the senses and mind and then integrated in the world through the laya-vijjana. What differences does such a different conception, what differences result from such a different conception? I don't think this is easy to answer.

[02:23]

On the other hand, we have experience with practice and with these ideas. Fine. One group is in the swimming pool. I don't feel like I'm in a Christmas foundation. Should we wait for... I don't know. Really? How can you lose such a big guy?

[03:27]

Okay, so what questions did you come up with? What conclusions did you conclude? I can start. I note all questions down. Really? Okay. Okay. I'll ask them all in German first, okay? Okay. I know, just one by one. So the first question was... Was it all that?

[05:16]

All of that was the first question. That's the longest one. Okay. On the basis of these two different concepts that we had, the question is, how would my behavior in relation to a client differ? Like, you know, in a concrete case, the person who suggested that question described a woman who would be diagnosed as being such change for a person from a Buddhist perspective possible. And then the third question is about the role of fear. The question is about the background, that from a psychoanalytic point of view, fear is a very central, personality-pronging factor.

[06:22]

Which role does fear play in Buddhism? And connected to that, why obviously not such a big role as in psychology? And the third question is about the role of fear. Because in Western psychology, fear is a very personality-shaping, determining factor. And there's even a typology on fear that's very well known in Western psychology. And then the question would be, what role does fear play in Buddhism, and why does it seemingly not play such a big role as it was in Western psychology? Okay. And we had one question that was about whether there is... I find it nice that you think that I can answer these things.

[07:27]

Okay. What about the other group? Okay. Yes, we also tried to keep it short and asked ourselves, on the one hand, how the possibilities are that a person can recognize himself, that is, to try to illuminate this, so to speak, both in the space of the untrustworthy term analysis and the Anahiyat Mishniana, but in any case, is it even possible that a person can recognize himself? The first question is what are the possibilities for a person to know or recognize, it's not such a good word, to know themselves, I guess. To know themselves. The question is because in meditation usually an inner dialogue starts to happen and the question is whether this vow is also being internalized and then the dynamic happens within the person themselves.

[08:52]

Can you add something or did you leave something out? Maybe to the first line, how you can recognize yourself, that is also based on deep psychological theory, you have to practice your fears and you are just shining in your own self-reflection. It's a bit, but that's not enough, and then you actually need a relationship with the other person in order to be able to get into a different space. For the context of the two questions, where they are coming from, the idea is that in coming from psychoanalysis, there's always a certain limitation as to how far you can know yourself. And at a certain point, you need to be in interaction with another person. And then the question for Buddhism is, how does that idea coming from psychology fit into the idea of Buddhism maybe that the mind can know itself in meditation?

[10:11]

Now, to really do something about these questions, We'd have to have some sort of ongoing study group, sort of like the winter branches, but psychic branches. So we could develop the our observations to the point where you can begin to see them clearly enough that you can answer them and respond to them. Especially for the practitioner, for the population, the country, some people may be looked on as some sort of guru.

[11:24]

But in Zen, I'll speak to that, but I think it's basically true with Buddhism. the teacher is a friend who's willing to be understood. Who's willing to participate in this process of friendship. And, for example, refusing to be known socially, but willing to be known in other ways. And sometimes making it difficult to be known, and sometimes making it easy to be known. And that can only occur in a context of trust, of mutual trust between the teacher and the practitioner.

[12:36]

And that trust is needed to also understand yourself. So, you know, Buddhism would not say you know yourself through zazen alone or meditation alone or something. Yes, up to a certain point. But to fully know yourself, you have to know the other because you are also other. And at each moment you're other. You yourself are slightly other on the next moment. Yeah, I mean Kant I think would say that a person doesn't develop unless they can

[13:37]

imagine themselves as a fully moral person somehow. There's a coincidence between the self and morality or something like that. So there's an assumption that To be a developed human being, to fully be a human being requires development. And this goes back in very, as far as I know, in very early societies, early Greek, Western societies, early Hindu societies, Indian societies. In any tribal culture or any moral culture, there's the question of who is to be held responsible.

[14:58]

There's a lot of consideration about the body. The body gets older. Yeah, we've noticed. Some of us have noticed, began to notice. But there's an experience of the self remaining rather the same. So I think one of the early ideas in the Greek ideas is that the psyche is the one that doesn't change. Perhaps that basic idea is still at the foundation of psychology. Relative to the body, the psyche changes least. I find this pursuit of Nazi criminals sort of ridiculous sometimes.

[16:25]

If for 50 years a person had been living a responsible life in another culture, leave them alone. But in a societal sense, you have to make an example of such a person as we're doing with people from Croatia and Serbia and so forth now, in Belgium. For the sake of society, if not for anything else, we try these people and punish them for what their body did a long time ago. Okay. So we have, you know, filters that the psyche is one sense of what continues while the body changes.

[17:39]

But we hold the body responsible. That's the opposite in our culture. But they just assumed the drunk body is a different body than the body who's being... So the drunk body is excused. This is a more Alaya Vijnana idea. Yeah, and so I said, you're one body, you know, you don't want to drive a car right after Sashin, you know, you might... He just had sashimi. And in an accident in Japan, these things are changing, but in an accident in Japan, if you run a red light, Run a red light, you understand?

[18:48]

An old man rides his bicycle out into a red intersection. The driver hits him. Even if you're the right-of-way, you should be alert because old people sometimes do this. so I'm talking about this because you know these ideas of what part of us is responsible what part of us can we develop and how do we develop the part of us that can be developed are always in a larger context of who, what is the person, how is the person defined in the society.

[19:58]

And in India, they clearly decided that the self doesn't change, And the body changes. And so you can't take pleasure in the body, but you can take pleasure in the self, which doesn't change. So we're lost. So I'd say the logic in Buddhism is something like, to simplify it, The mind you discover in Zazen is to significant degrees free of the infirmities of our usual kind of anxieties and so forth. Okay.

[21:14]

So, as you get to know this mind that's free from infirmities, I'm using the word infirmities. I'm trying to find a better word for it. Pain, difficulty, and nuisance of sashin has actually a basis in the teachings. and you can see how the difficulties... Sorry, can you repeat it? You've been translating an awful lot. Three days in Hanover and now, I'm amazed you're still sitting upright. Yeah, that's not the problem. I'm the problem, of course. Of course, I'll take it on myself. the difficulty of sitting Sashin, it's designed to be difficult. And if a person has no problem sitting, because occasionally I've met somebody who just

[22:17]

Full lotus, sit there all day. I don't care. Then you have to do something else. You have to get a thumb screw and start screwing the whole thing. And, you know, if you learn to sit through a few sashins, It definitely changes your relationship to illnesses and all the sick or suffering. And you really feel you'd be willing to change places. Because you're not afraid of the suffering they're going through. Mm-hmm. I mean, people could, a parent might feel it for their daughter or son who's been in an accident or something, but it becomes something you can feel more generally.

[23:36]

Well, let's keep it simple. you experience a mind relatively free from the ailments of ordinary life and so on. That attention, which not only is now embodied, it's now entered into without... running away from without avoiding the most difficult emotions. And then it brings that attention to the contents of mind, the world. And then that mind brought to the contents of the world can generate and make use of the alaya vijnana.

[24:53]

Now that assumes a kind of development which somebody who's seeing paranoid little green men probably can't do. Yeah. But, I think, I don't know exactly how Freud, but in Jungian psychology, the process of individuation requires some kind of similar development. Now, how does a practice, a teaching, a vision of human life Which requires development. Intention, will, etc. No, it may not require a special intelligence or talent, but it requires at least intention and will.

[25:57]

Now, how does someone who doesn't have this intention and will, how can you help? Okay. Now, that's a... I think to some extent you can, but it's a very special question I think all therapists must face, isn't it? Don't you? We just mildly depressed or skitzy, they can't do anything about it. Or less likely. And my experience is that, again, this is just me, I've seen an awful lot of people, but I don't see so many people who are schizophrenic. But I see a sub-percentage. Myself?

[27:13]

No. In my experience, when they have the intention and they care about other people, those two things together make a positive chance for them to develop. If they're incapable of caring and some degree of trust, then it's difficult. She simply took on beginning to learn to hear, to notice the difference between the voices she heard, her own thinking, etc.

[28:14]

And she paid attention to the different. But again, my experience is not like a therapist. What? There's a metaphor that you have to feed the demons. So even in a schizophrenic person, for example, you have to feed the burning buildings down, cutting up children, molesting, you know, etc. Arsons. What? Arsons. Arsons. Somebody burns buildings down in Tennessee.

[29:34]

Yeah, so one person attacks Suzuki Roshi with a knife. But I've never found somebody I couldn't go crazy with. I can sit with them and just feel completely, as far as I can tell, into what they're doing. We're sort of crazy together. But I can pull myself back out. And I think just because of practice, not because of any other reason. But I found that doing that tends to help people. They feel supported and, you know. Well, I guess what we've come to in the time, we've had enough time, I think, what we've come to, at least what I've come to, is that If we're going to look at what, one way of looking at what kind of, from those differences.

[30:49]

And I think one approach is to imagine what kind of person develops, what is the, what's the ideal person that we can, who has these characteristics. And then... Yeah, that's enough, I think. Because if we see that, then we see a lot. When we started, I thought, oh, jeez, I don't think we're going to talk about that, but I think we did.

[31:54]

Because certainly... In the way we've discussed the four foundations of mindfulness, it is definitely a territory of self and realization. And the way Western Buddhism is developing, at least the way I'm trying to develop Western Buddhism, is particular to our Western situation. Yeah, and I think another useful question, which I've just been thinking about recently, is to look what kind of person is held responsible. What aspect of the person do we hold responsible for bad behavior?

[33:05]

Because, like in Buddhism, a certain kind of spontaneity to the freedom of a healthy person. But that freedom only comes with development. For instance, this is just the last thing to end with. There was a Japanese, no, a Korean calligraphy master and Zen master. And I even have his book. I met him in San Francisco, hung out with him a couple of days. And he claimed and wrote about that he'd had sex with over a thousand animals and men and women. We have a little bit of that in the West with artists.

[34:19]

Artists are certainly held to a different standard than Catholic priests. And there's an Austrian artist I've met who slaughters animals. What's his name? I know him. Hermann Nietzsche, yeah. I've met him. I spent a day or two with him in Taos. He invited me to come see his Schloss in Taos. sloshing around in blood. I don't know. But I liked him rather, but I'm not sure I'm interested in his art. But if he wasn't an artist, he would probably have some trouble with his village neighbors. Okay.

[35:30]

I'm sorry, that was a funny tone to end on, but anyway. But we're trying to look at what kind of people do we want to be. And how much spontaneity. Spontaneity. is the center of practice. But when can you trust spontaneity? When you don't need anything.

[36:10]

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