So I'm wondering how to, when I'm here and there's no seminar, how to have some kind of teaching practice going on. And I'm also happy to, in addition to sometimes doing a discussion, I'm happy to do Doksana if people want, if the Doksana room is available. In San Francisco I did doksan on a regular basis, but there were so many lay persons who were, you know, in those days there were 400 lay persons who could have doksan. Now there's only one or two. So it should be a simple job. It wasn't so simple then. Braucht ihr eine Übersetzung? I just asked for translation. And also I'm happy to do more discussion.

[01:20]

I don't know how many times we can do it between now and November, but I'm happy to do more discussion or more lectures or half and half or whatever you think works best and what works best for the people who are most committed to practicing here. So let's start out with... any whatever question about practice or question your life, you have a moment that might be useful to discuss in the light of practice. And questioning is the explicit or implicit kind of fuel of practice. And it probably helps to make it more explicit.

[02:22]

By implicit, I mean, you know, if you decide to do zazen, you're deciding not to do something else. So there's a question right there. Why did you decide to do zazen and not something else? So there's always a question there, even if you don't notice it. So making the questions more explicit helps to drive fuel practice. So why don't we start with you? Okay. I have a kind of funny question, and I don't know if it really fits here, but you just got me by surprise. By surprise? You helped schedule this event. Yeah, that's true, but I didn't have any time to think about a question. But I just read something half an hour ago. I thought that's kind of interesting.

[03:27]

And also practice context. I read this in this book from Bernard Perkson, and he interviewed... Heinz von Foerster. It's a... How do you say this in English? Constructivist? It's a philosophical form. Constructionism, maybe. Constructionism. And he... He asked him, so everything is a construct. And he also said that in practice period explicitly, we have to get clear that our mind is a construct so that we can participate in the deconstruction. And then he asked Mr. Foster, what is realm beyond construction?

[04:29]

And, no, Mr. Förster was asked that in the Congress, or that was even his topic he has to talk about. So he took it into his dream. And in his dream, his grandma appeared, and he said to his grandma, Grandma, please say to me, what is the realm beyond construction? And the grandma's answer was... Knitting. Knitting. Knitting. Heinz, don't tell it to anybody there is another construction or there is still construction. But that was his serious answer because he says, in order to think about that there is a realm beyond construction,

[05:39]

you need construction to create this realm. Otherwise, this realm wouldn't appear. And I said, yeah, that's true. So that was my first reaction to that. But then I thought, no, this is not true from the point of Buddhism. But then I got mixed up. Why do you think it wasn't true from the point of view of Buddhism? Because I think there... or I know there is a realm beyond construction. How do you know? Because of experience I had, which didn't feel constructed. Deutsch, bitte. I'm just reading a book by Heinz von Förster, and he had to talk about a topic at a congress, the space beyond constructivism.

[06:45]

And he didn't really know how to deal with this topic. Then he dreamed of his grandmother at night. And then he asked his grandmother this question. Grandmother, what is the space beyond constructivism? And the grandmother answered, Heinz, don't tell anyone else. Constructivism. And then it was also a serious answer from him, because he said, you can create space beyond constructivism only through constructivism, that is, by constructing everything. And in the first moment it was such an answer, through distinction, you only are able through distinction to create a realm. So also the realm beyond construct is made of distinction.

[07:52]

So that was his argument. So through distinction you can only create this realm. And that made total sense to me. I thought, yes, that's right. But then my second reaction was, that's not right. Is this really a constructed space? What was your experience? Is it possible to relate? I mean, it's not a special experience. It's more of a general feeling. What? Hmm. I would even put this where you start hearing your own hearing already.

[09:22]

It's not a construct. Well, you are, but there is the hearing of your hearing and there is sound. That's all construction. Yeah. Yeah. When Mario cries beside me and I jump to him and try to help him, I can't find any construction. That's a spontaneous act of actions. Are you not? Okay, German. Yeah, that's also in this Xen article, which comes out of the same book from Varela.

[10:24]

Varela puts it basically the same way. He said, we all have this experience. You look up a skyscraper and there's a little baby in the 10th floor on the window. Your immediate reaction is to save the baby. You don't think about it at all. Someone's here. Who is it? And anybody else have comments on this? What Beatrice brought up? Yeah. I think there is no either or. is there only the realm behind constructions or it's not. But if I think in categories as there's constructivism and there are other realms and so they must be constructed.

[11:32]

But it's one way to hang with our consciousness, with our mind. Another way is to be there. And there is no question, if there is constructivism or not constructivism, there is being there. And these worlds exist in one world. I can't express it better. So I think it's a difference, that it's not just the question of constructivism and non-constructivist areas. If I ask like that, then I make a series of constructed worlds and back worlds and back worlds and back worlds. But I think there is at the same time a world that is always there, in the moment when I live in the present, just as spontaneously as in the example of a child, then the question does not arise and then there is no constructivism.

[12:35]

Yes, but the constructivism says that there is no world that is always there. That is the basic statement of constructivism, that everything is just your imagination. That's what the constructivist says. Yes, yes. Yes, I mean, that's the question, whether that's true, of course. Yes, yes. I'm not sure I quite understood it, but the only way I can understand what you said is through what's known, I think, as Indra's net. I mean, this idea that in one atom there's everything, the whole world, the whole cosmos, the whole universe, but in the next atom there's also the whole and everything is thus reflected. I don't know if it's to infinity, but pretty far. So if you see the world as constructivism or constructed or as perceived, then you're going to see every part of that item as perceived.

[13:44]

But if you see it as Goethe sees it, you're going to see every part of that item also as... what you call spontaneous. So beyond, of course, you see it as constructivist. Beyond that, there's also constructivism, and there's also constructivism, and there's also constructivism. But it's... So, yeah, I mean, at least it helps me to think in this way in order to make sense. Without all that making sense, to make sense of what you said, because otherwise I don't get it. I just wanted to share that. Why does it help for you to think this way at all? Because that's what came up when she said that. Yes, but I mean, in your life and in your practice, what's the use of the idea of Indra's net? However you understand it. Why bother? It's a nice poetic idea, but what real use is it in practice? Well, in this case, if I'm right in reasoning the way I'm reasoning, I can see a little where both are coming from.

[14:55]

I mean, you know, there are two points of views here, one just so-called spontaneous, the other one is constructed. And it just helps me to say, oh, that's just a particular approach. Okay. Anyone else want to speak to this? When I try to relate it to the yesterday lecture, then I would say that there's always construction going on and that the consciousness is a kind of construction service or something like this. But there is something more. And in the moment I try to talk about that, there's construction going on. I had the experience when I yesterday tried to explain, to tell Tanya what you talked about, and I talked about this enfoldedness, and after some sentences it was clear that she didn't catch a word.

[16:00]

I mean, this is also I mean, this is also a question, I don't know how much it belongs to the artist's topic, but for me, when I come from Johanneshof or from Atesha, when I come from practice and meet Tanya or meet people outside, how... How do I deal with them? How do I make myself, how do I connect? And connect and, yeah, connect and be respectful or try to bring something from practice. Then I always have this construction problem because when I try to tell or try to expose myself, then I start to construct. I ask myself what is awareness when I cross the room and I don't think something I go and cross the room and

[17:19]

Is awareness only apart from the consciousness or is awareness between consciousness and my doing go through the room? But I know then it's construction, but I'm not sure which part from my... for my whole being is awareness. When I'm not aware, then I'm in a different realm. And when I'm conscious, I'm in a different realm. And what are these different realms? Well, the point of...

[18:26]

Do you want to say something? Not necessary. Because we haven't even got to you yet. We're so far. Only this far. The point of being philosophical in Zen practice, in Buddhist practice, is to sort out I would say the world view so that we have a clear conception of what realm in which we're practicing. If you, for instance, take Sudden Enlightenment, if you practice the pedagogy of Zen, which much of it is around the potential of sudden enlightenment, then you need to have a worldview that supports that.

[19:37]

If you really don't have a worldview that supports that, you can't practice with the idea, with the feeling, that whatever enlightenment is, it's present right now. You don't have to go anywhere or wait anywhere. for enlightenment is not somewhere else. Okay. Now that's actually rooted in a particular worldview. Okay. And that worldview supports a practice which might support, which would support, it does support realization. Okay. Okay. Now, Heinz Van Forster was a friend of mine, actually, and I didn't see him very often, but we felt quite good with each other, and he used to try to get me to go visit him in Carmel, where he lived, but I had never found the time to do it, unfortunately, and now he's dead. Anyway, yeah, I suppose if Heinz were here, he was a really sweet man, by the way,

[20:42]

If Heinz were here, I would try to... I would discuss his view to see what he really means. What is interesting about what he said is that, I mean, from the point of view of practice, is he went to his grandmother, or he went to his dreamies, and... And so we can ask, what is this process of going to your dreaming or finding a way to get outside yourself so that you can answer for yourself through your zikurashi or through your grandmother or something like that? I don't know why he bothered to do that.

[21:48]

I wonder why he decided to... Because he's an extremely smart person and one of the pioneers in the thinking that led to computers. I don't know why he would find it interesting to tell the story or to go about it that way, because he could certainly have gone about it another way. Now is there really any point in trying to sort this out? Well, maybe it's useful because it comes, I think if you study Buddhism or study

[22:48]

since we study Buddhism, since we study koans, it's helpful to have some clarity about these things because many of the statements the Zen teacher makes or the teachings make through the koans has something to do with what we're talking about. Now, so let me start with what you said, Gertz. What you said I can say, if something's wrong with the baby and you rush to help, you may not be thinking, but there's still construction from the point of view of what we're talking. There's the perception that there's a crib. There's the action you're taking. You're functioning. You're not functioning through thinking, but the idea of whether there's a construction or not goes deeper than whether there's thinking or not. So all you're doing is not thinking.

[23:51]

You're acting spontaneously. If that was the point of Francisco Urella, that's not relevant really to this discussion that you see a baby because it's just spontaneous. Now, of course it is when we have the experience of acting without thinking. The experience is something like acting through emptiness. So in a way you're touching a realm where there's no construction. But I don't think philosophically there's lots of construction going on when you... Yeah. Okay. So... I think that this can't be resolved purely philosophically because the idea of emptiness only is an idea in contrast to the idea of something. You can't have an idea of emptiness unless there's an idea of something. So it's an idea in contrast to something.

[24:54]

Okay. So as an idea in contrast to something, well, then emptiness itself is a construct which depends on the absence of constructs. That doesn't make it a construct. That's only as an idea it depends on. construct. So if emptiness is the absence of construct, you could also say, instead of saying the idea of emptiness is dependent on the idea of a construct, you could say the idea of a construct is dependent on the idea of emptiness. Then you have a different directionality in the thinking. You're emphasizing emptiness Constructs depend on emptiness. Buddhism takes that view. He's taking the view that there's a construct. So I don't think that probably Heinz von Forster's thinking, because what he was good at, smart about, is how mathematics, how thinking itself works, etc.

[26:02]

But that's all about constructs. He was not a Zen practitioner. And so he had no, probably no experience... of emptiness which was a part of his thinking. Probably he had experiences of emptiness, but not an experience of emptiness which was part of the way he thought about the world. So I think all we need to say is that if there's a construct, then there can also be an absence of construction. Now, if you want to give one primacy over the other, I mean, if you're coming from the point of view of thinking, you have to give construct primacy over emptiness. But in Buddhism we would give emptiness primacy over... But, in fact, we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

[27:04]

But we don't say... Emptiness is conditioned by form. Emptiness is only possible because there's form. We say form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. So, from that point of view, the Buddhism has taken the view, which is very, again, related to the sudden pedagogy, which is that form is exactly emptiness. You can't say there's one as one or the other. Both are simultaneously. So you wouldn't say, you would never deal with the question, is there a realm beyond emptiness? I mean, is there a realm beyond construction? That's just not the way Buddhism thinks. Buddhism would say emptiness is within emptiness. construct, not beyond, if you had to say. But then you'd have to say, well, beyond is a mistake and within is a mistake too, but within is a better mistake than beyond. And so you just say, in the end, you have to come... that form is exactly neither beyond nor within.

[28:11]

I don't know if that satisfies your curiosity. Yeah, so... Two things. First, to your last statement, in the opening chant, the morning, beginning of the ascent, there's a line which says, there's a realm beyond form and emptiness. What's with that? You mean, now we open up a realm beyond form and emptiness. Yeah, but that's not a philosophical statement. Indeed. I think so. It's very helpful for me, very fine. It's very good to me. And second, Monika told me something about this enfoldedness.

[29:11]

It's a very fine picture for me. It's a picture which first leads me to think about the world, the so-called things of the world as enfolded. But the more I... follow these mental actions, I feel that it's more the way I think, this enfoldedness, and the more I see that this enfoldedness is the way I handle with my mind or with my consciousness, the more I see that the question comes up, what's enfolded? I nearly can't see any fold in this feeling, this view of unfoldedness. At least if I take a sheet of paper and fold it from a two-dimensional piece that suddenly gets a three-dimensional,

[30:22]

But if I look at this folded piece of paper exactly, I see only first two-dimensional parts. If I look exactly, I see one-dimensional and at least I can't find any dimension. I think it's a way of handling with my mind and with my... I don't... take now exactly. So for me, I see a shift in this concept of enfoldedness. and to give a connection to the concept of emptiness. And that's for me an experience of emptiness. There are concepts, there are pictures, there are metaphors, and the more exactly I handle with them, the more they...

[31:34]

They fall apart and at least there rests a feeling of existence, not more. Monica cut her hair. She cut her hair. My hair? No. No. Long ago. No, your wife. Your wife. Yeah. Oh, I think half a year. Oh, really? I haven't seen her then for a long time. She has rather long hair now. Yeah. Oh, it looks quite short together. Because I guess I haven't seen her since I was in, almost not seen her since I was here last year. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I didn't speak about unfoldedness enough to, I think, for Frank, for example, you'd be able to say something to Tanya about it.

[32:45]

If the word unfoldedness, as I used it last night, any content, the content was the way I used it, the way you could feel I felt about it. but I don't think it's really possible at this point to speak about it, although it's pretty hard to speak about it anyway, but I can try to make it a little clearer. What I'm using in folders is in the sense of mathematics, where rather than having three or four dimensions, mathematics says we have 10 or 12 or something, and they're folded out of sight. They're folded out of our... We can't even imagine them. Mathematics says they're there, but we can't even imagine what they are. Our imagination can't imagine such enfoldedness. And I'm also using it in the sense of the Alaya-Vijñāna and also in the sense of the Tathagatagarbha.

[33:51]

The Tathagatagarbha, as you know, means Coming, going, embryo, womb. It means all four at once. Coming, going, thus coming, thus going, plus they're simultaneously womb and embryo. And that in Buddhism is a word for the world. as a causal realm. Instead of saying universe or world or something, you say Tathagatagarbha. And Tathagataya is also, as you know, a name for the Buddha. But the idea of Tathagatagarbha has in it the idea of... of enfoldedness, as does the Alaya Vijnana. And... Poor thing. Get her a crutch. You should bring the phone here.

[34:54]

She will not put on the answering machine. Oh. And I'm using enfoldedness in contrast to the unconscious, because the unconscious has the sense of these are material that... there's quite a whole history of what the unconscious is, but in general the unconscious has the sense that these are materials that have been conscious and they've been repressed, or could be conscious at least. But enfoldedness doesn't have the idea that it could be conscious or not conscious or anything. It's quite unrelated to the idea of consciousness. But consciousness is then only a small surface. So if we think that we're somehow acting in the world and there's parts of us that are unknown, and those are the unconscious parts of us,

[36:12]

That's a rather narrow idea, I think. And so there are parts, many parts of us, most of us is unknown to us, so we can say it's enfolded. There's no such word in English. There's enfolded, but enfolded means embraced. You've enfolded your child. But enfolded, there's no such word, just so you can make it up to fold something in. So I made it up. But the practice of origami is, I think, probably originally, and whether it originally is, it is often a Buddhist practice. And origami is, for instance, Uchiyama Roshi is one of the most famous origami practitioners in Japan. And his father was a famous origami practitioner.

[37:16]

And a really good origami practitioner, you can say, oh, could you do me origami of that Buddha there? And I take a piece of origami and then, and there's that Buddha. So they don't do just swans or something. They can do Bertrand or a flower, you know, a particular flower or something. And they create new, and some are famous for creating new origamis that then become in books and things like that. But the way the transmission papers are folded, or your ketchi miyaku is folded, it's basically origami. The way the robe is folded is based in the end, and the way we take our... are okay so off where you don't just fold it up conceptually you fold it up with your whole body is basically an origami idea and the ideas that are in the origami are that it's very difficult to conceptually grasp how it's put together but you can let your body do it you can feel your way into the folds i know when i was young one of the main parts of

[38:31]

of non-written IQ tests was how many pieces of... They'd show you a piece of paper and they'd say, how many times is it folded? And if you can say 18 and it's right, you're considered to be very smart. You can only say, three, seven, I know. So there's two aspects of origami. One is that it's done with the body. And two, that it usually takes another person to show you. And that's much like our rock suit. In a way, we shouldn't make the instructions so explicit that someone can figure it out. Because it's supposed to be that you have to go to another person to do it with. It's okay if we have clear instructions because everybody's doing them and they get mixed up. The basic idea is generally you need to go to somebody and have them show you how to do it because it requires an interaction to do it.

[39:37]

And the way certain papers in Buddhism are folded, if you unfold them you're really hard-pressed to put them back together. And so you have to do it, and the teacher shows you how to do it, and then you learn how to do it, and then you can show somebody else. But if you don't know how to do it, and you unfold it, it's very hard to get it back together correctly. So anyway, this idea of enfoldment, enfoldment, is actually part of the material stream or physical stream of Buddhism. So I'm using it in that sense. I have a question to this craft of questioning. And it comes out of my experience that I have difficulties to always have a question in the spontaneous sense, maybe in the sense that I'm running around and Roshi is coming around the corner and asking me, giving me a question, I have this question.

[40:46]

So I often have the experience in situations of giving a question that I'm at least excited, not very clear what my question is. But it also belongs to the question of the somehow freshness of practice. So in a building or in a center like Johanneshof, I mean, we are together here for days and weeks and months, and how can we keep our questioning with each other fresh somehow? Also with Tamia. I mean, I've lived with her for 18 years now together, and to keep questioning in this relationship is also important. How to keep it fresh. Well, there's a section in the Blue Cliff Records you may know called 18 questions. Eighteen types of questions. No, you can have one for each year, the year you've been with Tanya.

[41:51]

At the other moment, maybe I want to... It's an experience of this morning, first Zazen, when I came to Yiannisov, and I first met Judita at the Han, and then met Beate in the Zendo, and then... When you first arrived at Yiannisov, not came to Iran. When I first arrived this morning... Do you understand the difference between came and arrived? First came is years ago? Yes. Unless you say, when I first came this morning. You have to specify it. But first when you arrived this morning, yeah. So in the end we started the first zazen period with Judita and Beate and Max and me. And I had a zazen experience of feeling a little lost in this situation. And there was a big questioning also going on, how and who and whenever and will be and something like this. What do you mean? How can we ever do this center here?

[43:00]

Keep it alive, keep it fresh, keep it going. Who will do this? And so on. Good question. Yeah, but I mean, it really made a mess inside of me, this 15 minutes, and I was lost afterwards. But then when I came in, the second period, I don't remember what was this, and then service, and then Charlie jumped in, and then we went out of the Zendo. And somehow, then when I came out of the Zendo there, I entered in the answer. I mean, I came here in the house and everything was clear. Not that I can't say what was clear, but everything was here and there. And this is also a moment of freshness and answering, or the craft, or the, I mean, or the, not pedagogy, but the mechanism maybe of questioning that I experience. But I have difficulties to not somehow, you know, rest in this, to say, okay, I have my questions, there'll be questions and they will be answered somehow by everything.

[44:11]

How to rest in the example of what happened this morning, or what do you mean how to rest? You can say, okay, with Tanya, 18 years, there are no more questions now, and I will rest in this and look what will happen next moment, next moment, next moment, and somehow become a little dozy or so on. Oh, yeah, yeah. In this. Lethargic. Yeah. Yes, that's right. German, please. Some of it, at least. In German. Yes, I'm asking myself, I'm concerned about this craft of asking. And also about the question of how practice remains fresh with the help of this craft of asking. For example, in a situation like ours, which is very everyday, where there are few people and we are still everyday, where questions arise, how is this supposed to be, how can this be and how will it be, how can you keep a fresh, a living question in it, or bring it in, or cultivate it as a way of dealing with each other?

[45:32]

And this applies not only in practice, but also in my life in this wider world, with my neighbours, with Tanja, with whoever. Because for me the craft of questioning, of questioning, plays an important role. How do I stay fresh and don't fall into something dissonant, or something indifferent, or something resigning? Well, I think that your example of letting a question come up kind of unanswerable question, but let's say an existential question.

[46:39]

How does this exist? Fundamental question. And not try to answer, but just try to be present to it, not turn away from it. And often, I think, and I think it happens more often if a person is practicing, it suddenly is resolved in some kind of shift in how we feel and how we see things and just noticing how things are. So I think often that in the more skillful you get at questioning and you're able to ask unanswerable questions, Sometimes you just find after a while they feel answered. That's all. They're no longer questions. And for a question to become no longer a question is also a kind of answer. So... Now, the sense of questioning in practice is, I would say, that if you look at your practice, it's not always the same.

[48:00]

And in your practice, in the background, for me it's like every two or three weeks, there's a somewhat different question in the background of what I'm doing. And often there are many. One of the questions, because I have to teach. If I didn't have to teach, I probably wouldn't have so many. Because teaching, the process of teaching, or trying to speak about practice, brings up questions. And those questions then are the root of the next lecture. For instance, this idea of enfoldment is something I've been questioning myself about for now in a few years. few weeks. I mean, it's not entirely new to me, I've spoken about it before, but the degree to which I... the way in which I see it as a... at the potential... potentially a key to speaking about many things in English, because you have to find... in English I have to find words...

[49:11]

which carry meaning, not dictionary meaning, but carry meaning, practice meaning, and that we can feel and that you don't run out of the meaning of the word. For instance, I would say the word now. I mean, one of my bugaboos, bugaboos, that means that one of the things that... What can I say? The simplicity annoys me somewhat. It's like, be here now. Because be here now doesn't tell you anything, really. You can't do anything with the words. You can't practice with it particularly. And the word now doesn't go anywhere. But sometimes I use here present. Here present gives a spatial dimension. You can feel here present. You can't feel now. Even though now, in the roots of now, if you look at the

[50:15]

etymology or verticality of the word, I say, and the way it sticks out of sense, now means something like what's left over to an observer. Well, that's... But that's kind of hard if I say, what are you doing what's left over to an observer? But I can say here present. Here present has a sense of spatial sense. It's here and it's present. So I'm always trying to find... of words that stop us, that make us feel into the words, what the words absorb. And see if I can get the words not to just disappear into the sentence. When you say, now, let's do this now, it just disappears into the sentence. If I say, let's do this here present, it doesn't disappear into the sentence. It absorbs the situation, not just if you understand what I mean. So I'm always trying to find... something. And now I'm up, pondering all the time, you know, in folding it and how to use it and in what context I'd use it.

[51:25]

For example, I said instead of unconsciousness, or the unconscious, or instead of the laya-vijnana. So if now what I would do, what I'm doing in the background, is in, let's say, a hundred different ways. I might use alaya-vijnana or Tathagatagarbha or universe or unconscious or memory, dreaming. I substitute or I bring into it the idea of enfoldment. How do I enfold myself in my dreams? How do I dream into my dreaming and bring... let go of a consciousness and go into my dreaming with awareness, bringing a question or an intention into my dreaming. So I'm working with the idea of enfoldment all the time. Before that, I was working with the idea of gathering and indwelling. And how do things gather? How does dharma mean that things gather? So for me, I'm always working with something.

[52:28]

So... But still, if someone asked me right now, what question you're working on right now, I'd have to stop and I don't have to instantaneously have to stop and give a feeling for it. And sometimes I don't make the question explicit. I can feel the question that's driving my practice is changed, but I don't try to make it explicit. I leave it implicit. Sometimes I try to make it explicit. And then I ask myself, you know, what's the value of making explicit instead of implicit? Like that. But if someone stops me in Zen, in the sense that you're always supposed to have a question, if you stop me in the middle of something I'm doing, I don't know, I can always say, who's asking? Who's asking? But if I'm going to play that game, I've got to be able to respond if you come up with something like, I don't know what, who dat?

[53:34]

You say who dat when I say who dat? That's an old joke. Somebody runs into somebody in an alley and you can't see. You say, who dat? And the person says, who dat? And you say, who dat? I say who dat when I say who dat? Okay. Yeah? I have two questions, Roshi. But before, I wanted to make a remark about the word now. As you were talking, you said to me, I'm sure you know there was a movement called Concrete Poetry. In fact, some of the greatest exponents were Viennese in the 60s. And the way they would write now... would be to either type out in big letters now or write it, then erase the top part and erase the bottom part. So that really gave some strength to the word now, which I agree with you doesn't resonate. And it was a way out through poetry too.

[54:34]

My friend Gerd Stern, who was here a while ago, his bumper stickers would say, Know How Now. Now is made up of no and ow. And ow? O-W is ow. Okay. So he said no, ow, now. Things like that. And ow means hurt. Ow. Yeah, you get burned. Ow. Yes, go ahead. I wanted to ask two questions about yesterday's talk, and I'm not quite sure I got it, but I'm going to try and sort of go through it. It was a bit dense, I agree. No, it was fascinating. Yeah, it was very dense. That's why I didn't give it, because it really provoked some thinking. And the general idea for me was, as far as I could see, is that the advantage of practice... is that it leads you to plug in some kind of form which then carries you.

[55:47]

And this form is not necessarily your consciousness. It could be the unconscious or it could be what you call the unfoldedness. And that is really the advantage of practice, it raises you to another level, it puts you in another dimension. And then something clicked when you said that this idea of, you know, putting out your hand to choose your clothes or your shirt. And there I have some problems and I'll tell you why. Because I feel, and you've said that in other talks, I think, that different forms create different spaces. And so... To turn this into a joke, but I'm not sure it sounds a literal metaphor, but like, if I'm practicing in a Zen center, like here, if I extended my hand to get a shirt, this...

[56:49]

space which is created around me, given this practice, will lead to another kind of result than if I'm, say, in a Hindu ashram or, you know, somewhere else. And that's why I've become almost suspicious of form, because I don't want to just find form, I want to find myself. I mean, I want to find something which goes beyond that form. But at the same time, I have nothing else to hang on to but to practice and to accept the form that comes with it. So that's the first question, this difficulty that different forms create different spaces. And if I practice here as a Zen student, and probably if I practiced better, the form would probably eliminate the form that I create as a writer of the space which is created as a result of my writing form as it turns out here they go together because I'm not going maybe I'm keeping I'm trying to keep the two to find a harmony between the two um

[58:08]

Before I ask the final question, I think there's a Frenchman, either Tocqueville or Talleyrand in the 19th century, one of those two, who said, beware of the first gesture. The Tocqueville? Yeah, either Tocqueville or Talleyrand, one of the two. Beware of the first gesture. It's generally the right one. And that goes along with, I think, what you were saying, the idea that... I don't usually trust my first gesture. I wait. I mean, this is my practice. I go with it, but I wait. You know, there's a mechanism which can stop it. Just because I don't want to be taken into form, I want it to be as true a gesture as possible. I mean, the sincerity of my motivation is more important than...

[59:19]

the actual flow of the form. And, of course, sometimes I do one, sometimes I do the other, but I have a problem there. I mean... But what is it? You said two things. You said you want to find yourself. Yeah. And the other thing you said is you want to make a true gesture. Yes. What is to find yourself? To make a true gesture is... What is a true gesture? What if... What's the source of truth? How do you decide what's true? What's the source of... What is a true gesture? Every gesture is true, isn't it? Why do you feel good about it? Do you feel whole? Well, that's different. So you want to feel good about your gestures. Not necessarily good, whole. I want to navigate that good gesture. Well, whole, by that you mean complete. Mm-hmm. No afterthought now. I mean, you know, now. I mean, nothing before now, nothing after now. And when you say you want to find yourself, you mean you want to feel complete.

[60:23]

Yeah, I want to find myself and forget myself in that gesture because the gesture is so... It's fine. I mean, like, you know, there's nothing to do to correct and... And so... And I'm not sure that going about it this way... I don't even say it's better, but I don't think it's the same thing as going about it by being into a form and trusting that form. So you mean, if you were in a Hindu ashram, the Hindu ashram would condition your choices? To some extent. And if you're in a Zen ashram, the Zen ashram conditions your choices. The choices that I'm presented with might be different. Yeah, okay, that's true. Not so much just the conditioning, the choices I'm presented with. Of course, there's a context. Yeah. There's a context. Yeah. But does that imply that you think there's any gestures or choices which are unconditioned?

[61:24]

My reaction is probably not. I can't believe that there are any gestures which aren't conditioned. But there are some gestures where I feel, well, that's Bertrand speaking. He's neither Hindu nor Zen. and other gestures where I feel, well, I'm accepting a conditioning because I think it's safer to do it this way, and therefore I'm not so sure. Well, it sounds like you have the feeling that the oak trees and the acorn I'm not sure what the... That everything that an oak tree becomes is implied in the acorn. Or like James Hillman said in his most recent book, I guess, is that... that there's a fate we're working out, that there is a kind of me that works itself out through our life.

[62:48]

Do you have some feeling like that? Yes, I have some feeling like that. Well, it's very, as Buddhists practice, it's very good to notice you have a feeling like that. It's also, to have a feeling like that is not Buddhism. I understand that. But to have a feeling like that doesn't mean that we don't live that way. It just means that we are attached, from a Buddhist point of view, we are attached to our narrative self, and we're attached to a certain psychological pattern, and we're attached to knowing ourself through consciousness. And we don't want to, or we don't think it's possible, to actually know ourselves outside of consciousness or certain psychological habits we have.

[63:55]

Now, from the point of strictly speaking, I would say from the point of view of Buddhism, you're always in a context, you're never not in a context. Now, each of us in a context is going to make different choices than the other. But I can only make the choices in the context in which I am in. It's Hindu, I make these... I mean, and you make a very limited number of choices. yellow, blue, etc. The way you dress is very distinctly you. Very distinct characteristic of you, right? So you've limited your choices to choices that make you feel a certain way. I mean, if I had all yellow, if I was in a place, if I went to an Osho place, right, where everybody had to wear red, I remember when one of the Osho guys a friend of mine knew a Harvard professor who became a disciple of Rajneesh.

[65:02]

And every year he came to visit him, he had more red things on. And the first year it was red socks. A little unusual for a Harvard professor to have red socks on, but red socks. And the next year it was like a red sweater under his suit, you know. Next year it was something else. And the final year he saw him, I don't know what happened after that, he had red underwear on. And my friend said, you know, really, you've gone over the edge. But if I was in that concert, I'd choose red. Here I'd choose some other colors. If I'm in Marie-Louise's family, I have to make different choices. None of them are me. I don't feel identified with any of them. I don't care about any of them. It's just simply a role. There's no me. It's all role. That's my feeling. But I dress very specifically, when I'm at Salem, Marie-Louise's place, I dress very specifically in a way different than her brothers.

[66:04]

But still, I'm in the context of those choices. I don't feel it makes my experience of whatever I experience moment by moment any different. There's some difference, of course, if you're wearing one kind of clothes and another kind of clothes. But in a fundamental sense, I don't have any difference. So I'm just not giving myself as an example as something that's right or wrong, but just that it's possible to not have any feeling about... I mean, you have a context of choices, that's true. There's no possibility. Otherwise you'd have to have all the entire wardrobe of the world at your beck and call. I knew somebody who had a closet that was circular. And they could go in, one sat here, and they could pick which... Section. Which section they'd go into.

[67:06]

And... Yes, I think you once said something that really struck me, if I got it right. You said, if the Buddha came here, he would do what everyone else does. And so basically, if you went to Salem, you would try and fit into the context of what God said. And to that extent, I think... He's Buddhist. I mean, he's not trying to... He's simply fitting into the context. Well, it's not exactly... Yeah, fitting in, but I would say that... In Ceylon, he's establishing a context, a mutual... He's doing what's possible to establish a mutual context where both disappear. Here he'd want to disappear with Judita. I hope not, you know, to Mexico.

[68:13]

But I'm just joking. When we say disappear, it also means, you know, like you run off with somebody. Yes, but when you say broke, disappeared, you didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. But if he goes to, you know, Ceylon and he meets a... A monk, contemporary monk, he tries to allow the differences to also disappear. And the disappearance, if there's any reality, it's in the disappearance. Yeah, that is... Yeah, and at that moment, I'm not trying to catch up with the me, the narrative me, I mean, mine, too, I think. Yeah. Then I become flat-mouthed critics. Yeah. But you're right, there is this other story, and I think it has to do also being a writer, but I'm trying to keep up the narrative me until it, I would like to think, runs itself out.

[69:20]

I mean, that is also the... Well, Sukhir, she would say that When a person gets older, an old teacher, what you really see is their personality. It's the last thing to go. In other words, the personality becomes clearer and clearer. But the personality isn't self. It's just the way the person, the habits, the accumulated habits and the way they act, etc. So, one doesn't lose one's uniqueness or particularity, because everything is particular. And you don't not have a specific story, and you don't not have a narrative self. You can't not have a narrative self, but you cannot identify with the narrative.

[70:22]

And if you identify with the narrative self, basically your practice hits a ceiling. Which one? The bottom of the ceiling? No, it's a pretty low ceiling. But since you brought up this narrative self, you also once said something which I like very much because you said, I think, you probably didn't say the idea, but I say the idea is to complete one's story in this life. I mean, the task, the point. To mature one's story. To mature one's story. And so I think one can do that without identifying one's story. Yes, you can. And I think that the... The problem in the context which I stated that, as I said, for Westerners, because we are particularly related to our story. That's right. Yeah, and because our culture is rooted in the concept of Christianity, basically, and Judaism, and it's the story of Christ.

[71:26]

And there's a beginning and end of time. The whole idea that there's a beginning and end of time is a Western idea. There's no idea of a beginning and end of time in Christianity. yoga cultures, it just goes on. But the sense of history as, you know, a kind of progress is very Western. I mean, in yoga culture you'd think, well, there might be progress in this, but so in other cultures it's going this, and simultaneously in the same culture it's going downhill and uphill at the same time. There's not a simple line toward progress, getting better. that history goes in all directions at once. There would be more that kind of way of looking at it. And you can check on yourself, you know. As long as you have emotions to get hold of you, you're involved with your narrative self. Because it's the narrative self which feels hurt or doesn't feel hurt.

[72:28]

It doesn't mean you aren't outraged or don't... There's some things you like or don't like. But if there's emotions involved, you know you're involved in your narrative. Emotions. Yeah. There's feeling involved, but that's different than emotions. So you have a basic feeling with people. That basic feeling is not disturbed by what they do. And... And when you can be hurt, when your feelings can be hurt, your feelings being hurt, that's your narrative self. It doesn't mean you can't be offended or think something, but if there's emotional content in it, that's the narrative self. So you can always check up on yourself to the degree to which you are emotional about things rather than feeling things, if that makes sense, that distinction.

[73:29]

It doesn't mean you become a robot or an automaton. You care, but the caring for the world and others takes precedence over the caring for yourself. When you care for yourself more than others, then you get offended and so forth. Yes, Judith. Yes, my... My background question is when I breathe in, I don't dwell in my body and in the mind. All realms of body and mind. Yes. And in which kind of realm then... in which kind of realm am I then?

[74:35]

I don't know. And I often...

[74:43]

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