For me, that was a very good example to see what this change of form in non-form actually means. Yes. And then it was also important that if you can separate the concept, the naming, the separation, if you can let go of that, that something happens there that probably has to do with emptiness. And if you can do that, then a feeling can come in of contentment or of it is right. Another idea was letting go of naming things would bring some sort of a satisfaction or the way of feeling, I am right here, there is nothing to change. And the idea that children might have this way of looking or receiving things, the world, and we lose it as a child after some time, and we have to go back, but we have to bring our consciousness and our another...

[01:19]

another way of perceiving this connectiveness in the world and not being as naive as the little child. Ah, and the idea was then that the children, the baby, still has this kind of perception, namely this connected perception, because it cannot name it yet and does not apply terms to things, and thus actually still feels this connection, we lose ourselves through naming, through the language, and we actually have to get there again, but we go back with consciousness, Do I get a taste of that in English? Yes, just before I... Oh, you tell it before, okay. Okay, I understand. Go ahead. And then the experience of being, that we also said, what are these experiences of closeness and the creation of experience of being, of mystical experiences?

[02:36]

and at the same time the question of why we can't experience this more often. And then the idea came in, yes, of course, there is a danger associated with it. Many of us, if we are not very confident in ourselves, do not have a good ego, when they get to such a point, it can happen that they, for example, end up in their own house, because they do not bear the power of this perception, for example, when they lose something. And the last point would be that a mystical experience or Seinserfahrung also might bring a lot of anxiety up, because if somebody is not very grounded in him or herself, they might go to a hospital, going crazy. Yes, of course. Everyone spoke of his trials of experience of form and emptiness.

[04:02]

I saw it as trials to experience it. Attempts, sorry. from all these reports what emerged from it was space of wakeness maybe the space of awakeness the space of may-be-ness I don't think it would sell as a book title. And in contrast to that, is that form and emptiness a logical contradiction?

[05:42]

Thank you, everybody. Opposites. In these two areas, between this maybe land and this dilemma, Between Maybelline and the logical dilemma. I arrived at the question, why don't I as a student, you, why don't you as a student of Suzuki Roshi never raise the topic form as form and emptiness as emptiness? Okay. I accept the challenge. That's all.

[06:44]

So maybe we need a musical comedy, sort of Zen in Maybe Land. That's all, folks. Okay. Okay, what else? In our group, when we tried to work with that phrase, we also started first to define emptiness and to define form. From my feeling, from my experience, that work, thinking about that phrase and that phrase, it invites to go in a duality, to speak about emptiness and to speak about form, but not speaking about form and emptiness. The next step was that we had the experience that to speak about that phrase, it's a question of speaking about our experiences.

[07:54]

And so we tried... to give examples, metaphors, examples, experiences of that phrase. Yeah. Why don't you say that much in German and go back and forth? Why don't you say what you've just said, speak a little in German, a little in English, because then it's... I think everyone participates better. We also first tried, when we worked with this sentence, form is teaching, to first try to define teaching and form. In my opinion, this invites us to go into a duality, to talk about teaching and about form, but not about form is teaching. And we went on in the group, made the experience examples or metaphors where, for example, one person said, I planned a seminar and nobody came to take part in the seminar.

[08:58]

that someone says, I have planned a seminar, as a form, and there is no participation. This as an example of form is teaching. The experience of being very sure of a special state point, but some moments after that, that point is lost and I just mean the opposite or have a massive meaning of it. So, for example, this feeling, Or the example of drawing a circle. And the person who does it can have something of formless emptiness.

[10:27]

And maybe in looking on the picture of a circle, sometimes you can experience there is something special. There's something came together. Okay, could you say what you said about a circle again? What about a circle? By doing the circle... Making a circle. Making a circle, there could be the experience, I could just say, of something different, of entering another space, another feeling, another space of experience. And if you look afterwards on that picture of that circle, you also can experience that there is something different.

[11:36]

And that would be different, say, than making a square. No, no, no. Going in non-duality. Going in the experience of forms and things. Okay, I think I understand what you mean. More than just the picture of the circle. Yeah, I think I understand. Okay. Yeah. In our group, group 5, we talked about values most of the time. And we were trying to find what does it mean, form is emptiness. And some person in our group said, well, emptiness actually is the refraining of giving values to any object at all. So if one is able to refrain from giving values either over language or morality values, one could start experiencing emptiness.

[12:44]

Then we talked about Sorry, can I have something to eat? Yes, we have talked mainly about values and evaluations, because we tried to come to the conclusion, what does it mean now, form is emptiness, and an important aspect was always what the conversation was about, because as soon as we start evaluating certain things, a bulb, there are always other values, We came to discuss about the five skandhas. The question was that we should only talk about the first skandha, form is emptiness. And we asked ourselves, is it actually possible to experience form without using the other four skandhas?

[13:53]

Or is it only a part of the other five skandhas? So if that is true, then there would be only the interdependency of the five skandhas, which should explain what emptiness is. That was the other side of our philosophical discussion. Then we talked afterwards about, the question was actually what, form is emptiness, that is the first scale there, and is it possible to talk about form at all, about objects, Okay. Yes.

[15:06]

In that context, we had also the question if there are two notions of form, one in this five skandhas, list, and when a form of emptiness is like including everything, so there's little form and big form, I mean, form which includes form, meaning, so on, and then form as a basic, as a basic system. Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. Is there anyone else? Well, yeah, somehow Group 7 is missing.

[16:08]

We didn't even get to the point of finding out who would present, and there are just sunglasses from the corner. You were sitting too close to the large Buddha. Okay. I think that most of the issues came up already. The emotion I sensed during this discussion was that we cannot really talk about it because we don't really think that we made any experience of this phrase, formless emptiness, and therefore

[17:12]

It is mood to talk about it. It was such a helpless atmosphere that it does not help much to discuss this phrase intellectually as long as we have not made any experience with it. So, in a way we refuse to be too intellectual and try to analyze in depth, even though we acknowledge that this is a way to do it. Okay. Yeah, and that basically is probably the most important feeling that we generated. Okay, thank you. Did you say everything in Deutsch? Okay. Anyone else? Well, actually, I feel wonderful to be here with so many of you discussing so intelligently emptiness.

[18:32]

Ich fühle mich wirklich wundervoll, hier mit euch, mit so vielen zu sein und wirklich auf intelligente Weise Leerheit diskutieren zu können. It's a quite elusive topic. Es ist wirklich ein sehr flüchtiges Thema. And I'm surprised at how much you're discussing it in a realistic way. Und ich bin überrascht darüber, wie sehr ihr es wirklich auf realistische Weise besprechen könnt. I don't know if I can add anything to this, but I should try, so I will. And I think that everything everyone expresses And many of the kind of confusions that we could express but didn't so much today are all parts of all of our experience.

[19:37]

Explicitly or implicitly we're saying these things to ourselves when we wonder about this idea of emptiness. I have a friend in the United States who's a politician. And he's a close friend and he practices sashins and stuff like that sometimes. And I've been associated with a kind of strange advisor for some years, a lot of years. And a lot of my friends have been his advisors.

[20:38]

And... The thing that strikes me as most interesting in watching him function is sometimes he has very good people analyzing things for him. And he analyzes, and they all analyze the situation. Well, it's like this and like this and like that. So we have to do this. It looks difficult and impossible and it looks like everyone's right. But he looks at all this and then he changes the situation that they analyzed into something that's solvable. It's a strange kind of talent.

[21:44]

All these people analyze it for him, and it's unsolvable. So he sort of says to himself, well, it's unsolvable, then we need a new situation that's solvable. So he has that gift which some public figures or politicians have to somehow catalytically or alchemically change the situation into one that is solvable. And that's part of what Buddhism is doing here. We have an unsolvable situation, so let's change it into a situation that's solvable. What to do with the self, this is unsolvable. So let's change it into the five skandhas and then we can solve the problem.

[22:53]

Yeah, it's something like that. Now the idea... This is a trick. It's a trick, yeah, it's magic, everything's magic. Um... Now, the idea of emptiness is rooted in the idea of interdependence. No. We can all understand that everything is interdependent. That's ecology, that's the way we think these days. Unfortunately, it's not the way we act enough, but it is the way we think. But it's not deeply the way we think. But if you begin to really see things as interdependent, we're all here as separate entities, and we emphasize by habit our independence.

[24:14]

But if we started emphasizing our interdependence you begin to experience things as flowing into one another. You begin to see things not so much in their continuity but in their moment-by-moment presence. Because interdependence emphasizes simultaneity, not so much how you relate to yourself in the future. So sometimes emptiness is defined as the experience of interdependence. And I think the more that your own thinking is fused with the factuality of interdependence, emptiness becomes more and more kind of palpable idea.

[25:33]

Okay. So then, let's say that's sort of the understanding of emptiness. Or the initial level of understanding of emptiness. Okay. Then we have the experience of emptiness. Or the experience of form is emptiness. And we have various experiences that we may or may not identify as an experience of emptiness, but as your practice matures, you see that that's what it was is. And the more you feel free of past, present and future, And actually able to rest in the present, this is often an experience of emptiness.

[27:02]

You often feel kind of cleaned out, cleaned out, purified, something. Anyway, I spoke a little about that kind of experience this morning. Okay, so we have the understanding of emptiness, perhaps the experience of emptiness, various kinds of experience. And we have the practice of emptiness. Now what I'm emphasizing today in this Heart Sutra actually emphasizes if you want to really go into its teaching is the practice of emptiness.

[28:11]

Probably the most common problem with understanding emptiness is the sense in especially for us Westerners is the implicit sense of theological ideas that's in all of our thinking. As if emptiness... As if emptiness was some kind of spiritual sphere existing alongside this... Theological. Theological. Theological. Yeah. As if emptiness was some kind of sphere existing alongside this one. Or emptiness was some kind of big oneness. And if you want, from a Buddhist point of view, if you like the delusion of oneness,

[29:50]

this might be a better delusion than some. But it kind of makes you feel two-ness is not very good. Sorry? That two-ness is not very, or many-ness is not very good. But many-ness is emptiness. And each many is empty. Okay. The other idea is that I think we implicitly get involved in is somehow science describes reality. So we start talking about emptiness and we start talking about atoms and molecules and things like that. And, you know, that can be interesting. And I think that emptiness is an idea that makes sense in terms of contemporary physics. And we can use the ideas of science to kind of reinforce our practice when we're talking to our aunt.

[31:31]

But from the point of view of the practice of emptiness, it's not very important that this space is as physics describes it. What's more important is recognizing that this is a memory space. Some of these things I've spoken about recently, but I think we have to make these things clear for ourselves. Now, if I look at all of you, I'm seeing memory. None of you make sense as men or women or... red or white or green shirted, unless I have memory. If I had no experience, I couldn't tell anything about what's here in front of me.

[32:49]

So I'm not actually seeing the space of physics, I'm seeing the space of my own memory. And that's what we're negating. So maybe I'll leave aside the five skandhas right now.

[33:54]

And I'll stay with this idea of this afternoon of emptiness. One practice of emptiness is to act within the habit of perceiving dualities and to dissolve that habit. No, one I've mentioned is generally when you talk to somebody, you have an experience of self and others. This is me, and that's you. And when we talk, when we do things like anything, there is that implied in the language, in our thinking, this is me and this is you.

[34:59]

No. A practice of emptiness is as soon as you notice that happening, you try to eliminate the feeling of self and other. Now that's not an understanding of emptiness, but a practice of emptiness. So in the moment of speaking as somebody, you try to take away the sense, the distinction of self and other. And it's not different from my, in the midst of wanting to go somewhere, I say there's no place to go. That's the practice of emptiness. So what the Heart Sutra is saying here,

[36:13]

He's saying with everything here, you enter into the practice of emptiness. So there's no smell, no taste, no touch, etc. Okay, again, what is... What can I say? Okay. Okay. Maybe we could take it as no grasping and no clinging. you taste something you don't grasp at the taste and you don't cling to the taste you just taste it if that's possible so you kind of separate yourself from the habit of moving towards something and trying to keep it in place

[37:28]

Very simply, you start practicing letting go. But letting go or releasing each moment. And you'd be surprised that simple things like being angry is quite different when you release each moment. You hardly ever get angry. And if you do get angry, it's more in the realm of communicating. Because moment by moment, you neither grasp at the moment nor cling to it. All right, so I gave you a kind of homemade mantra last night. Already connected. Okay, now, already separated is a kind of, you can't do much with already separated.

[38:40]

So let's shift it to a more accurate perceptual basis. Now, the way our mind functions, that views are prior to perception, is that our views condition perception. Mm-hmm. So we first have to work with our views. And to work with already connected is to shift from one kind of view to another kind of view. Now I'm trying to build a picture here with phrases or teachings that we already, most of us, understand. So you're shifting from already separated as a prior view

[39:49]

A view prior to perception and conception. And the genius of human beings is that we can do this. And this couldn't have been realized by one person. One person could have experienced this. But as a development of a teaching for all of us, this has been created by many people. So it's the wisdom of a language, for instance. I mean, just let me say again, I mean, language, which is the most complex creation of human beings, Die Sprache, die die komplexeste Schöpfung der menschlichen Wesen ist.

[41:04]

Mit einer unermesslichen Komplexität, wenn ihr euch einfach die Etymologie der Wörter anschaut. Aber es kann von jedem Baby gelernt werden, sogar von dummen Babys. Das ist etwas ganz Außergewöhnliches. that we human beings can do this. So Buddhism is a kind of language as well, a language of how we function in reality and within reality. How we function in reality, in fact, and how we function within, or transforming reality. Okay. Okay, so already connected is a better, a more accurate view than already separated.

[42:10]

Because already connected allows us to acknowledge interdependence and interpenetration. So if you just work with already connected for the next year or two, you are really creating a basis for practice. Okay. But this teaching says already connected is good, but even already connected has to be released. Already connected is also something that needs to be emptied. So even when you feel connected, you release that. Now, the beauty of this is that you can go on living your life as you wish.

[43:51]

And this can work within how you already exist and the habits you already have. Sorry. This can work within how you already exist and within the habits you already have to transform both and to sustain with more vitality both. Okay. So now in a little phrase like already connected the emphasis on it as a teaching a tremendous amount of observation of how we exist in reality and how the mind works and how a repeated phrase can work There's centuries of teaching and practice goes into this.

[45:07]

But the fruit is, you have a simple phrase you can apply to your life. So now we need a simple phrase for emptiness. One is, of course, the koan muh. Which I find Westerners quite a lot of difficulty working with. I think no place to go and nothing to do works better. Or maybe we could work with no grasping, no clinging. You can notice when you have the habit of grasping. And to notice when you have the habit of clinging. And just say no when you see grasping or clinging. You still stay alive. Everything is fine. And as the mantra says, things get bright and shiny and etc., Now this is rooted

[46:28]

in an analysis of phenomena, of reality, which we can look at the analysis. So again we'll look at the I'm trying to build an experiential practice for you. A territory of practice that you can enter into.

[48:00]

And one of these is... They're very simple, but it's very good to get the regular habit of noticing them. Separateness, connectedness, and continuity. Now we have to do this to live. Your body has to be connected to the world, but your immune system has to separate you from the world. And in time, moment by moment, you have to find some kind of continuity. Now, this teaching doesn't make any relevant sense. Unless you take a real inventory in yourself of how you experience these three.

[49:11]

To really notice how you establish separateness, connectedness, and continuity. Notice when you're talking with someone how you are basically establishing separateness. And maybe take that little activity away. And notice how you establish connectedness. And maybe connectedness is we think better, but also take that away. Now, take away just means to notice. Notice and sort of release it or free yourself from it. Or feel a bigger space.

[50:24]

Because when we establish separateness, we can feel something like that. And establishing connectedness, maybe we feel something like that. Established connectedness, we feel something like that. Good. And so, as soon as you release yourself from both, you feel something... something wider, your actual muscles will change, your stomach will, your shoulders will drop. And we're always establishing continuity, which is something like this. Yeah, you just take your hand and you go like this.

[51:31]

That's good, yeah. And some of this continuity goes this way, but for some of this... Okay. You're getting better, yeah. Da-da-da-dum. Now we have a movie score here. Okay. I used to tell stories as a kid, and I'd seen movies, so I'd illustrate points with da-da-da-da. Yeah. Now, the wisdom emphasis in Buddhism is on timelessness, not on duration.

[52:45]

or duration that arises from the experience of timelessness. both because reality is best understood through a kind of timelessness, and also because the deep habit of human life is to know ourselves through time. Now, the teaching of form and emptiness is also to teach yourself the habit of timelessness and duration.

[53:58]

So how much time do I have here? There's some place to go. I think I should finish a little bit of this. Because we're sitting in this room, I keep coming back to the, as an example, almost every seminar recently, to the experience that what is happening in this room we generated. It's different than this morning.

[54:59]

It's different than five minutes ago. And it's absolutely unique. So it's unique. Non-repeatable. And that's one way we can use words to kind of... move ourselves into this territory which is called dustness. To feel your way into the uniqueness of this moment. Which, if you grasp it, it's gone. So it's non-graspable. Or not substantial.

[56:05]

So if it's not substantial, it's empty. This is one of the meanings of emptiness. If it's not repeatable, it's empty. And it feels timeless. I don't know what we can say. Timeless in terms of... Physics, I don't know what it means, but in our experience it feels timely. Now I'm just again looking for words that give us an entry into this territory.

[57:07]

So it's timeless or it's non-sequential. Yes, Yes, this moment has arisen from the previous moment. But there's no surety that the next moment exactly arises from this moment. It's much more useful to see this moment as just appearing and to not not try to make it continue to the next moment. If it's going to continue, the best way is to release it. This is conveyed in little poems like the Zen poem, Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing. Grass grows.

[58:23]

Spring comes by itself. Feeling quietly, do nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows by itself. So some deep place You don't have to do anything but keep releasing. Assuming you're staying present. And in the midst of this is also the practice of bringing your attention equally as I've been emphasizing bringing your attention equally to each moment your attention and your energy and what maybe I mean by bringing your energy equally to each moment is that you always feel ready to act

[59:24]

Dass ihr euch immer bereit fühlt zu handeln. Ihr müsst nicht handeln, aber ihr fühlt euch bereit zu handeln. Und dieser Geisteszustand, den ihr durch die Praxis entwickeln könnt, ein geistes- und körperlicher Zustand, der sehr gesund ist, of being present in this moment, ready to act, equally without discriminating. This is the mind-body that allows you to be in this uniqueness. So the practice is to kind of shift yourself more and more into the most substantial or that the realest thing is this uniqueness.

[60:41]

This teaching is mostly going to occur in this uniqueness. And we can also say then it's perhaps another word is momentary. Non-causal. So I'm trying to put into words as little targets some way to release yourself into this immediacy. to in what I have spoken about as not memory or mental space, but somatic space. in embodied space, which is the practice of bringing your attention to your breath, body and phenomena.

[61:52]

An embodied space is a different realm in which to live than mental space. Okay, so there's two aspects of two important, there's two kinds of perception that are emphasized in this. And that's perception with duration and perception without duration. Okay. Now, why is this important?

[63:07]

An example I've used now two or three times in the last few months is the green flash you can sometimes see when the sun sets. And it's extremely quick and may not always appear. How do you know? Because most people don't see it, and most people who have seen it only see it a few times in their life. So you can't explain it to anybody. You can say, well, it's a green flash, but, you know, oh, yeah. Anyway, it's extremely momentary. But so that we can talk about perception without duration, it's a perception known only through itself.

[64:10]

Okay. Okay. Okay, now let's take this again, the example of us all sitting here. At this particular moment, we're all here in this room, this new room, Andreas and others made. And... And yet what's really going on here is a moment by moment attention we're all generating. There's no way we can exactly describe that to anyone. and we can only be in the midst of it if you think about it you're not present to it so you have to kind of let it happen to you W.H.

[65:27]

Auden I read this morning or yesterday who's a quite well known poet says he was just with a group of friends at some point I think two women two or three women and another man and he said there was nothing very they weren't intimate friends And they weren't erotically involved or anything. They just happened to be together talking about something. And he said, suddenly some power came into me that I couldn't resist, but that I also consented to. And I had the distinct feeling, he said, that everyone had the same experience.

[66:37]

And suddenly I really understood what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself, he said. He found himself in the experience of caring about each other person equally with himself. And he found himself rejoicing in this experience. And later he actually found one of the other persons said, yes, I had the same experience. None of these people knew how it appeared. or where it went but it changed their life and it's known only to that situation they can't carry it to another situation but in fact everything is this way Every moment is known only to itself.

[67:58]

And it's wisdom to be in that place. And that's the teaching of the Heart Sutra. And the word Tathagata, as a word for Buddha, means the one who has gone into thusness. And thusness is a word which means the experience of everything as known only to itself or through itself. So this is not like everything is empty. Emptiness is something we generate each moment. It's a potentiality of each moment. So you can say everything is thus but from the point of view of practice that doesn't mean much.

[69:02]

From the point of view of practice thusness is To find yourself in each moment. Unique. Non-repeatable. Non-graspable. Not substantial. A feeling of timelessness. As if it arose from nowhere. And that's dustness. And that's possible in each moment. But it's not a generalization of thusness. It requires the situation of each moment for thusness to arise. And it requires the form of each moment to allow emptiness to arise. So there are as many emptinesses as there are moments. So if I experience thusness or emptiness between Petra and myself, there's a form created and present here.

[70:24]

And simultaneously it's only possible through emptiness. And it's based on emptiness. And the emptiness is often discovered through the data connectedness. And then it's gone. So emptiness is also empty. When I looked at then I have a different emptiness. It's a different connectedness which is empty. So each form is each emptiness. This is not some idea like, oh, there's space and there's emptiness. Emptiness is a practice and a realization And then we can also say form is form, emptiness is emptiness.

[71:37]

Okay, well that's, I've over, went too long, but you know, now you can fill yourself with food. And the food's been very good so far. Yes. I have one request. Yes, sure. I bought a mat. A mat? A mat, yeah. A Zabutan? Yeah. Yeah. And I would like you to sit on it. Yeah. And to eat it once. Yeah. And that would be a nice giveaway for me on the way of that. It's not going to help your practice. But you can certainly switch it with my cushion and I will be happy to sit on it.

[72:38]

It will probably help me a lot. And I'll even sign it. Come, come, come. but I'll sign your name. Okay, why don't we sit for a moment? And no one knows how long a moment is. Where does this bell exist? In the metal? In the striker? In my hand? In your ears? Bell, striker, hand, intention to strike the bell.

[74:05]

The sound you're hearing, your ears, all are empty. There are many realities. Buddhism understands this one, understanding everything is empty, as closest to how we and everything actually exist. and the most healthy way for us to come into our existence moment after moment.

[75:21]

Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. What did you make of the five skandhas? So, what did you make of the five scandals? Yes. We made questions out of the five scandals. Okay. Not all of them. There are two main questions out of our group. What were the historic reasons for the development and development

[77:24]

of this specific layering of the five skandhas, this specific way of dividing them. What is meant by the word impulses? In what context is it meant? And in which and how is consciousness as Skanda meant? In the context of my... In our discussion we found that we have a feeling and we separate the feeling. There is also consciousness needed to do this. And also in the other skandhas.

[78:57]

Discriminating consciousness is necessary. Is that what you mean? To make the discrimination... But the skandha consciousness, what kind of consciousness is this? Okay. The historical development of these things, I don't know. Probably there was some Maybe partly it was developed, I don't know. But it's pretty hard to tell how certain psychological ideas developed in the last thirty years.

[80:06]

This is 2000 and 2500 years ago. It's pretty hard to tell how it developed. But my sense of it, it developed experientially. And I also feel that it's best to understand it experientially. I think that, in fact, the way I understand it is sometimes different than it's understood in some of the books you read. But in the books, often they're simply trying to make it part of an overall philosophical system, so these various words map onto the use of other words and other lists.

[81:22]

Do you understand what I mean? And when you try to practice it, it doesn't hold together. So if we're practitioners, we have to make these teachings hold together through our own practice. Your practice is the final say, authority. Your practice is the final authority on these teachings, not what was written sometime ago. If that's not the case, the practice doesn't exist in the present. Consciousness is defined here as what happens when you put all these together. The example I've used most often in talking about this is you're sitting somewhere and something hits your eardrum and you don't know what it is.

[82:45]

But a kind of feeling arises. An undefined feeling. And then there's a perception, oh, it's music. And then some kid walks by the outside after a while with what we call in America a ghetto blast. What do you call them in Germany? But you don't have ghettos in Germany.

[83:48]

We have blasters. And you recognize, oh, that's a particular song. As soon as you recognize it's a particular song, you're in the fourth skanda there, or the second skanda, the associative mind. Okay. And that becomes part of your consciousness. But your consciousness is already established by millions of events during the day. that all arose somewhat the same way. And consciousness then is that, also that liquid, as I call it, that supports conceptual thinking. That doesn't support dreaming and sleep.

[85:05]

Again, as I always say, you wake up in the morning and at a certain point you're awake and you cannot go back into sleep easily or dreaming. That's consciousness. So you hear this and the process of hearing the sound, identifying it, and then remembering its name and when you first heard it, is all possible because it's being drawn into consciousness. Now if you were dreaming, And you heard somebody walk by here, this party next door the other night. You've fallen asleep and then suddenly a song cuts through. That might be drawn into your dreaming sleep in a way that it wouldn't cause consciousness.

[86:08]

It might produce a... Dream of going off, of swimming up the rainfall. To the tune of, you know, Old Man River or something like that. Old Man River... And it might not go through the same process of associative thinking or will, because associative mind is also will, willingness, impulse. This is an experiential map. And it's made according to general rules of map-making in Buddhism.

[87:21]

In that, for example, as I've mentioned, it should be therapeutic. It should reflect how we actually function. And it should produce the conditions for enlightenment. And there are other rules, for instance. Each aspect should fold into the other aspect. And one of the conditions of the five skandhas The most important condition of the five skandhas, which allows it to be a substitute for self, is that it contains everything.

[88:22]

There's nothing a human being can know or experience that doesn't fall into one of these five categories. So the categories have to be a little bit flexible, because you have to be able to put everything in the world in them. Okay, so what is not in these categories? Self. So it's a substitute for self because self is not included in any of these categories. But if the self is a concept, I mean, it's also... Yeah, in that sense, self is then understood as a concept or something like that, yeah. Pardon me? Now I understand.

[89:23]

Okay, good, yeah. But what about self as experience? If you ask me questions that are so inclusive, I'll only answer one question in the next four hours. My question was, what is about self as experience? Well, in this you'd analyze that experience into a feeling or a perception. You have to analyze it, that experience? When you look at the experience, what really is that experience, you'd say, oh, it's a mixture of feelings, memory, memory, etc. So you would analyze this experience and find that it is a mixture of feelings, associations, etc. ?

[90:26]

My question is just, you said it already, I noticed, if it is really an experience, it has to fall in one of these categories, otherwise it's a concept or something. Well, a concept falls into these categories because that falls into perceptions. Sept part in English means what you can grasp, a concept, a percept. So those things you can grasp fall into this. A percept is a perception. Okay, now did I respond to most of your questions? What did I leave out? Maybe. Yeah, we can come back.

[91:29]

There'll be other questions, yes. Okay. So what else? Yes? In German. Please. Yeah, that's best, I think. Yeah. What exactly is the difference between feelings and emotions? We didn't get clear the difference between feelings and emotions, the exact difference. And we tried to find a place for the emotions, but it was not clear where can we situate the emotions in this false kind of maybe it's a repulse.

[92:35]

I mean, this was the first question. The second important question relates to what you just said, namely what is the meaning of the scandal form if it which meaning, which sense has the form, this kind of form, when it's outside of any possibility of perception or feeling, physical or mental. We're not concerned with that. This is human experience.

[93:41]

This is about how the mind works or how we know something. And the first you said where emotions fit in. I think the distinction between feeling and emotion for the sake of practice is pretty clear. I think the distinction between feeling and emotion for practice is pretty clear. I think there is a problem. We have Gefühle and we have Fühlen. And we have Emotionen. And it's not easy to understand where all these three are.

[94:46]

I don't know the differences in German, so I can't help you. Yeah, but feeling is somehow the non-graspable feeling. I think feeling is like No. Emotion is something different. We translate feeling often as Gefühl. But Gefühl means in German often emotion. No. But what I understand, emotion is something strong. Hey, I like it. Well, as I understand it, emotion is something strong. You are angry, you love somebody, you hate somebody. Feeling is like, I feel good, I feel bad. And there is non-graspable feeling. Just a feeling that arises on everything. In Buddhism, feeling... Okay, I can only speak about my own experience.

[95:50]

Yeah. And so let me try to say again, I think the distinction between feeling and whatever word we use, emotion, is actually pretty clear. The problem with it is the words we use commonly are pretty confused. Das Problem ist, die Worte, die wir normalerweise benutzen, die sind recht durcheinander. So you have to sort of separate the distinction from the words. Du musst also die Unterscheidung von den Worten trennen. There's a word Saindhava in Buddhism, in Zen, which you can find in the first koan in the Shoyaroku and other koans, which means salt and horse and...

[96:47]

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