I'm putting a negative cast on it. But probably getting the person to talk about it actually helps. Why? According to this theory, the simple act of bringing it into the fresh air transforms it. And from this theory's point of view, it's not about talking about it. It's about rubbing it against the present. You can think of the present as a kind of washboard for your karma. Does anybody have washboards anymore? I used to use one in monasteries. Yeah. because even the washing act and even the composting needs fresh air to function so you can think of the present as fresh air so so you want by bringing your

[01:34]

Sense of continuity into the present. By, as the Genjo Cohen thing, completing just what arises. Is essentially a deeply healthy process. Because you're taking all your old dirty mental laundry out. It's thin, it's warm, there's holes in it, but it's clean. Okay. Does this make sense? So from a Buddhist point of view, if you're really going to transform your karma or free yourself from your karma, it's absolutely essential to have your living going on in the immediacy of the present. If you... I have a friend who's a... A person entirely involved in his thinking, a very super intelligent person.

[03:11]

And he had some, I mean he really knows how to think. And he had some really bad experiences as a child. And he finally thought he could work on it. He went to a psychoanalyst and all this stuff came up. And now for five or six years he's in constant suffering all day long because he can't get this back unconscious or out of his life. Perhaps he needs a better analyst, but his problem is it's too complicated for him to think it through.

[04:11]

He's got to do something else than just constantly think it through. And as smart as he is, he's not capable of thinking it through. So he's come to me and he says he sits there in agony and then he switches into a little boy's voice and he starts talking in this little boy's voice. And I'm trying to get him to shift into the present in some way rather than put it aside and do his science. Okay, do you get the picture here? So, how do you shift yourself into the present?

[05:23]

So, I've given you some examples. The attitude, now, what we can use thinking consciousness for Basically, we can use it to create dharmic or karmic attitudes. So we need thinking, but we need thinking in Buddhist practice to develop dharmic attitudes that transform how we perceive. So you're using the power of the capacity of the mind to construct. To construct wisdom and freedom rather than more suffering and confusion.

[06:30]

But those wisdom constructs have to be applied at the very initial moment of perception. So a psychotherapy might traditionally work with what your constructs have been and are. And again, a dharma therapy with how you initially perceive Not trying to work so much necessarily, though in some cases you would, with the perceiving that causes the problem. But would it be good to do that too? But with the larger vision that simply starting the habit of perceiving in the present transforms all your karma, not just your problems.

[07:37]

It brings fresh air into this whole process of the accumulation of personal history. You can also understand this as adding new reality data all the time to your storehouse because you're in the present. If you're not in the present, you're only dealing with old stuff. Could you try to give an example? I'm just patting you. I imagine what the one process could be and what the other process could be.

[09:01]

So, for example... She's wondering herself about Xen. Yes. For example, I have someone in paratherapy, let's say, because it's all about us. And a certain way in which Siegfried looks at me, or a certain tone, in general, automatically leads me to some kind of reaction. For example, I mean, let's talk about couple therapy, or even better, just about them as a couple. For example, Siegfried says something, he has a certain mode of voice, which causes a certain reaction in Christine. No. Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. I've heard these things happen. Even among the best of people. Even among the best.

[10:08]

Now maybe someone who would work with us, or we together, because we are so smart, would maybe help me to find out which what it is in the first place, what is causing me. Maybe he would ask me questions like this. I have to look at Siegfried so that I feel invited to feel happy or to get a kiss. So a couple therapist or some friend working with them would try to find out now how Siegfried should look or speak so she would be invited to be happy or burst out in anger. That gives me a chance to really think through what kind of constructs I put over this initial perception This would be working with the storehouse What the therapist is saying.

[11:24]

Yes. And what a Dharma therapist would say is disable the latent perceptions. So you can just hear his voice without the associations with it. And you can actually train yourself to do that. So you just hear the voice and then if you want to, you let the latent impressions seep in if you decide it might be useful to get angry. And then, of course, you can also decide freely whether to let this association come in and whether it is then perhaps reasonable and meaningful to get angry in this context. That means, for example, if someone wants to work on it with me, it is about simply staying in the moment, only staying with the perception, and whatever happens then,

[12:34]

And if somebody worked with me in this way, I would learn that I have a lot more options. Yeah, and this is Dharma work, but it looks like it could be very useful in therapy, with exercises I do for some months. Yeah, now the trick for you guys is to find out how to do this in a shortcut way. Because this way of functioning, to the extent that I have realized it, is based over years of doing Zen practice. And sometimes I find shortcut ways, but there are many shortcut ways to use this in a sense of acupuncture, where there's a very precise way you can help somebody.

[13:40]

So Dharma... Dharma acupuncture. Dharma acupuncture. But that really requires a different understanding of therapy from me. Because what he said about the analyst, yes, that is a way of working where you, so to speak, invite the client to simply jump into the lake. And you stand on the roof and watch how he somehow finds out how you might be able to move like that. I have to say that over and over again. It really requires a different understanding of psychotherapy and very different from what this analyst did with your friend. It's like jump in the lake and just uncover all this muddy stuff and try and find out a way to swim. Yes, like in the other way described just recently, I mean just now, it's like the two adults, like in the example with your friend, the two adults work together how they can help the little boy to swim.

[15:10]

Yeah, and one sense is important. It has to be refreshing. Isn't that a little bit what Verhaltenstherapy does? Behavioral therapy works a little bit this way. Like if you're afraid of spiders, you just work on the perception. I don't know. I don't know enough. I don't know enough about behavioral therapy. I think it's about basic attitudes that don't evaluate certain phenomena. And that's actually in all therapeutic attitudes. So this non-evaluating acceptance of the client with all his stories. And it's about the client taking on a non-evaluating attitude. And that would be exactly this perception for me, Hiltrud is saying that this comes down to a non-judgmental attitude and that's something that's actually promoted in all kinds of therapy.

[16:30]

And this non-judgmental attitude toward what happened to you and the last consequence really toward yourself is really... Big value and importance in all different schools. Yes. I remember an exercise that we did with Wolf Bündig, where we just sat across from each other, where we described the physical circumstances. And the second course of this exercise, so a long time, about half an hour, I think, I can't remember physically, And in this second passage the physical perception is the same as that of the construct. I see your narrow lips and think to myself that you have something in return. I see your short neck. At that time there was a process of going from one to the other, to the piano, [...] to the piano. Well, it reminds her of an exercise she did with Wolf Bütting.

[17:33]

You know him. And Siegfried says that's actually Virginia Satir. So it's an exercise. You sit opposite each other, and then you only describe physical phenomena like you have a big nose or thin lips or... Excuse me. Where'd you get that idea? She only says you have a big nose. She doesn't say it's a big nose like your aunt and she's a dirty woman. Oh yeah, okay, thanks. You improve things a lot. So after a while you run out of things and then you start a new session and then you say, I see your blonde hair and that makes me think you're dumb. Very tactful, everybody. Ich glaube, dass der Hauptunterschied in den beiden, zwei Haltungen sind, das eine ist der Versuch, der therapeutische Versuch, die Konstruktionen zu denken, zu analysieren.

[18:45]

Und das andere ist, the help, through the thinking we analyze, to drop the constructions. And the other is simply to go into the present. And that is, so to speak, the abbreviation. And thus to enable an alternative, a fresh alternative. So which part is the abbreviation now? Only the naming of the physical phenomena? No, I'm not talking about that now. I'm talking about the therapeutic attitude that he described. In our schools it is often about the construction So, the second, third step, to connect the constructions analytically, to switch them off, through analysis.

[19:57]

More of the same thing, I think. Through analysis, through the question, as Christine said, what brings you to... And the alternative to that would be to bring it into the thing that we do in literature and say, look at it and let it flow as long as you are really through. Well, in therapy also, the way you described here, it's about really helping the person to reconstruct their thinking processes and their associative processes. But the way it's done in most therapies is through analytical process.

[20:59]

Like in the example here, the therapist would say to Christina, I mean, what is it in you that makes you perceive Siegfried in that way? Whereas as we understood you, in Buddhism, it's really this refreshing and this deconstructing of these mental habits and thinking habits is through going into the presence and apply it to the therapy session. That would mean really look at Siegfried. What do you see? And look at him and be in the present, perceive him in the present, until you're through with this process. Yeah. Luckily, in the initial phase of practice, small changes have powerful reverberations. So often people think that, geez, all the stuff that really has happened to me happened in the first six months or year of practice, and since then it's been pretty boring.

[22:07]

Yes, and this is partly just the effect of something new. And all these teachings are tied together so one comes in and it kind of shakes up everything although you only may understand that one. So if you can just get somebody, say, to refrain for a moment from the latent associations, that's a big step. But for a developed practitioner, There are so many ways that support this that the average person wouldn't get unless they practiced a long time.

[23:20]

First of all, space and time has slowed down a lot. So you hear the voice and there's no reaction to the voice. It's just a voice, just sound. At first it's not even a voice, it's just sound. And then there's a kind of, oh, that's Siegfried's voice. But you don't even, that's a naming process which you're withholding from. But it's not just Siegfried's voice, it's happening in your own mind, so it's actually in this box.

[24:22]

So it's very clear you're hearing this in your own mind, and so you have something to say about whether you let the associations come in or not. So you develop the habit over years, like if I look at you, I see you not out there, I see you in my own mind. And that allows me to feel more directly the field of you than the separateness of you. So then I have a territory to feel the currents that flow in the darkness. And then you also develop the habit of not perceiving substance. I'm just suggesting these as practices that bypass the manas.

[25:38]

The more you perceive these things as happening in your own mind, you're actually beginning to develop the skill to bypass manas. And the habit of not perceiving substance or permanence. So if you just have a habit of everything is impermanent, you just know that. What just happened is impermanent. It's not graspable. Your whole reaction to things, same kind of triggers don't happen. So maybe after the break we can talk a little bit about the practices that help you bypass manas. And I'll try to start with the transformation of the personality. So it's 11.05, should we come back at 11.35?

[26:43]

Okay, thank you very much. By the way, I have a simple question. The third one, this is Chitta. Right. Yeah, but don't worry about Chitta. Your citta heart. Citta. Yeah. Because it would be quite an effort. I'd have to spend quite a while to define citta now. So it's better just to leave it out. Just think of it as receiving mind and constructing mind. I only ask to get the comparison between the... Yeah, but if you write it down, then you're going to be saying this is citta and... or something, and it's hard to explain what citta is.

[27:56]

Similar to yesterday, the flower in the pot. But it's better to apply that to thinking consciousness rather than citta specifically. It's better to compare the flower pot with the consciousness of thinking or to classify it as with citta. I understand. So we have a contrast here between working with the memory-based past and working with the non-memory based present.

[29:01]

And the therapeutic value of being involved, being embedded in the non-memory based present. And the tendency of our mind, let's call it our differentiating mind, which has to differentiate very basic things, like near and far, whether it's sound or sight. We understand that as the basic job of manas.

[30:09]

But manas begins to take on, because there's this capacity there, begins to take on responsibilities that don't belong to it. It begins to function as an ego. It doesn't just differentiate, it identifies, it tells you what that is, not that it's just there. Is that the job of manas that we orientate ourselves in time and space? Yes. That's necessary.

[31:12]

Yeah, and if it does other things, that's over-stretching his job description. Yeah, right, his job description, that's right. Like a son who tries to be the... Tries to throw out the father a little bit. Now, Daniel Citroen says, the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind... It's everywhere equally present. These are interesting statements. I had a little confusion here. Am I teaching Buddhism or am I teaching Dharma therapy?

[32:14]

What should I do at this point? Because we're at the point here where I'm talking about things that you really have to be involved with Buddhism to do. Let's just take this. The highest, most fulfilled awakened mind is everywhere equally present. And now all these statements are practice statements. It's not a statement of fact. It's a therapeutic dharma realisational statement.

[33:26]

So it means, can you find, can you exist so that you find everything equally present? That's why Manas is also called the seat of suchness. In contrast to also being the seat of ego. If you take ego away, then it's just this, just this, just this. It doesn't mean, again, that you're not at the next stage of mental functioning, constructing. But at the initial stage, it's just this, just this.

[34:29]

So this is like, again, bringing your energy equally to each side. And again, Ulrike asked, what is it to bring your energy equally to each thing? And that's hard to explain, but we know what our energy is. You know what it feels like to feel present. And to feel kind of half-present. Now, I think maybe the phrase to work with is the feelingness, the feeling that you're ready to act. And that in Buddhism is a kind of technical idea that

[35:33]

awareness includes the readiness to act. I'm not just passively present. I look at the glass. I don't just look at the glass. I'm ready to act in relationship to the glass. Does that make sense? So that's partly what it means. That's a phrase you might use to understand, to bring your energy to each moment. So to come into the present is to complete or perfect, I'm trying to look for phrases, just what is given to you.

[36:45]

So at this initial moment of perception, you're not discriminating what's given to you. This is also the mind everywhere equally present. So what this introduction to this koan about Shui Do, which I mentioned before, says, when there's the slightest idea of good or bad, your true mind or essence of mind is lost in disorder. Okay, so now we have an idea of true mind or essence of mind, which at first you're trying to take care of.

[37:49]

So if at the initial moment of perception there's, oh, this is good or bad, the essence of mind doesn't have a chance to appear. And the Diamond Sutra over and over again says, in versions of this highest, most fulfilled... To know through non-self. non-personhood, non-lifespan. This is to take the discrimination out of the immediate moment. So if I look at Siegfried, I don't have an idea of Siegfried having a lifespan. At this moment, I have no lifespan. It's only in constructed thinking that there's a lifespan.

[39:03]

So the more I drop constructed thinking conceptualization accompanying cognition there's a feeling of timelessness. There's a feeling of expanding into the present moment Comparative thinking immediately shrinks you. I'm only dicky and I'm getting old. Something like that. So right now I have some power. There's no comparison. So this is kind of elementary actually. But you... make it into your habit, into your wisdom habit.

[40:03]

It's interesting, no lifespan, no person, no self. This is also to bring, to bring, to free yourself from the distinction between self and other. Yeah, and remember I spoke about that in the beginning. So this is to not perceive dualities. Buddha mind means you don't perceive dualities. So this mind of differentiating near and far, etc., Which we have to do if we're going to walk through a door. Still gets in the habit of perceiving dualities. Then you're immediately in the bifurcated mind. So what we're trying to do, why this is a wisdom teaching,

[41:05]

You could say it's to counteract quite natural habits of mind. Which divide mind up automatically. So now we're talking about attention. You're bringing attention into what are normally automatic functions of the mind. This dividing the world up just happens automatically. You don't even notice it. So we're not just here extending attention to the object. We're extending attention to the processes of perception. Now if I bring this up and I have a lot of ideas about it, it may be involuntary, but it's a tension. I mean, if I don't, if I'm looking for something, you know, on my desk and I can't find it, I haven't brought attention, I mean, it's there, I don't see it, but it's somewhere in the papers.

[42:39]

But if I notice it, there's attention to it, even if the attention is immediately involuntary in the sense you divide it into this, that, or mine, or I like it or I don't like it. So the more adept practice of attention in Buddhism... To bring conscious attention into what's normally involuntary and non-conscious attention, if that makes sense. So these practices which bypass bypass initial ego formation are to not perceive dualities.

[43:49]

To not perceive outside To perceive everything as inside. To be able to hold off the distinction between self and other in the initial perception. And when you do that everything starts to shine. And if you look at the early words for perception, a lot of them have to do with shining. As long as you can hold off this, the more you perceive non-duality, everything starts to shine. Each person lights you up.

[44:56]

And this kind of non-dual perception is understood to be rooted in the heart. Not in thinking. Because it's rooted in caring and appreciation. Because aversion, by definition, can't perceive non-duality. Aversion is discriminating from the word go. I don't like this, so I do. So there has to be a basic care that perception is in fact rooted in caring. You only perceive what you care about. What you don't care about you try to push out of your perception.

[46:03]

But left to ourselves we tend to perceive what we care about or we can care about what we perceive. This is all related to why the sage is understood as cheerful. I give the example of the Dalai Lama being awakened in the middle of the night by a motorcycle going by. At 3 a.m. somebody is gunning their motorcycle. And the Dalai Lama turns over in his bed and says, ah, sentient being. And I'm quite sure he probably would. Like you might on your deathbed. Oh, yes. And this is from the habit of not discriminating initial perceptions.

[47:24]

Again, I have to say, remind ourselves, this is not about not discriminating. It's about not discriminating initial perceptions. The more the initial perception is one of sentience, of brightness. It's much easier then to look at the patterns and deal with the patterns without reacting. That's why couples therapists, when they don't know how to proceed, always ask the couple, what was it like when you fell in love? Oh, it's probably true.

[48:25]

It makes sense. Because falling in love is when you least perceive dualities. So again, I could say Zen practice is an attempt to stay in a constant state of falling in love. Yes. To everyone. Well, you have to behave yourself. To everyone. I know, this is tough, you know. Yes? As far as I understand it, in the initial warning, there is a lot of wisdom.

[49:37]

My question is whether Roshi can make a point here, because what I know from the old Buddhism is that the sense perceptions are the links that the practitioner has to escape, because the sense perceptions are conditional. Sanskrit and Nirvana are all Sanskrit in the sense that it is unconditional. That is, the truth is not beyond the sense perception. And I have now understood exactly that I am in the sense of being. And this is what I relate to what I felt in the past or in the past. As far as I understand, Roshi, there's a lot of wisdom in the initial act of perception that comes from the senses and that is for me a little confusing studying early Buddhism where the dealing with the sense information is considered as the basic chain we have to get rid of and free ourselves on. So what I'm lacking is a bridge from this initial wisdom that is available for us in each perception

[50:52]

to this other concept in early Buddhism, to get rid of sense perceptions. This is thinking of sense perceptions as the costumed dancer. Remember I said the monkey, the stick, the horse, the fourth was the costume dancer. He distracts you with wealth or Eros or something. So the senses are usually connected with attachments. But in general, Mahayana Buddhism makes a shift from trying to control senses to at the moment perception, not perceiving them as attractive or unattractive, but perceiving them in a non-dual way.

[52:08]

And it's not exactly that there's wisdom in the senses. It's just that the fuller you're engaged, the fuller The fuller, which also means the greater the non-dual engagement with the world, the more the world, whatever this is, nourishes you and fulfills you. So to complete just that which is given to you on each moment. Anyway, that's the central thrust of Yogacara and Zen practice. Now maybe I would like to say a little something about emptiness.

[53:17]

I think an entry is to tell the story of my being in New York and experiencing the absence of my aunt. I happened to be in New York a while ago and I was on a... taxi, I guess, passing 13th Street, where she lived in the village for many years. And suddenly I felt her absence. I could see that the church, there's quite a nice church near where she lived, that she would walk by on snowy New York evenings and so forth, where she shopped and She was clearly not there.

[54:20]

What I was experiencing was the absence or emptiness of my aunt. Okay, so when you experience the, I mean, if I experience the impermanence of this glass or my aunt, There's a knowing, there's a seeking for my aunt and then experiencing that she's not there. Because the grocery store and the church and the street where she lives all draw me into a seeking for her. But what I perceive is the emptiness or absence of her. Okay, so if I seek for the permanence of this glass... Because all my senses are involved in, oh, it's solid, it's here, I can put it down, and a moment later I pick it up, it's still in the same place.

[55:44]

And wherever I put it, it's going to still be there. In hotel rooms, I instantly can, after being there for a little while, find in the middle of the night, in the dark, the bathroom and the toilet. Because our senses have immediately put everything in place and you can find it again. So there's a tendency to turn this into a sense of feeling of permanence. So wisdom practice is to find the unfindability of something. It sounds kind of artificial and unnatural. And yes, it is sort of unnatural. But the If we call natural the habits, our involuntary habits of mind, those involuntary habits of mind can lead us into delusion.

[57:08]

So emptiness is the emptiness of each form. It's not the emptiness of everything in general. Emptiness is not a generalization. Everything is empty. That doesn't mean much. Each thing is empty. So it means something if I look at you and I experience the emptiness or the absence of permanence in you. My senses have the tendency to establish a permanence of you. Oh, you're like this, you're always like this. You're that kind of person. I do you a big disservice by perceiving you that way. I force you into your own habits.

[58:20]

So if I train myself to perceive you each moment to find your unfindability, to be open to your patterns not being there, to be open to the absolute uniqueness of this moment. And one of the perceptual modes that bypasses ego formation is to feel, actually feel into the absolute uniqueness of each moment. As I can always say in every seminar, I can say over and over again, this actual moment is completely unique. It's not the same as this morning, it's not the same as... And I know if I can put myself into the feeling of the...

[59:23]

non-repeatability of this moment. The more I'm in a place where I feel the uniqueness and transitoriness of this moment, the more I can bring my energy into this mind that's everywhere equally present in each particular where the energy of being ready to act, to be present to this uniqueness, the more I'm likely to find out what to say. And I think the more you're likely to feel, oh, he answered the question that I didn't know, that I hadn't asked.

[60:47]

So the more I move out of the predictability of each moment into the uniqueness of each moment, the more there's an actual experience of connectedness. So the practice of emptiness is not to know some kind of general emptiness, like, oh, everything's empty, this is nonsense. It's to enter into the uniqueness and insubstantiality of each moment. Which is a practice. Which is you form an attitude that reminds you of the insubstantialness and uniqueness of each moment. So the more, for instance, if I use you sitting in front of me, Christine, as an example, I perceive your predictability.

[61:57]

It's like a map that closes in over the landscape. And the landscape can't get through the map. The more I perceive the uniqueness and the non-repeatability that the map tends to dissolve into the landscape and the landscape is just far more complex than the map. And the landscape is here in this storehouse thinking consciousness construction. I mean the map is in there.

[62:59]

But the actual landscape where the flower is rooted is here in our initial perception of non-duality. So then I'm liable to see many things growing in the cracks of the map. Then I begin to see to be able to move into a relationship with a person which is different than their patterns. So we could say that the knowing of emptiness is simply to know free of patterns. Does that make sense? And I'm afraid most of us usually perceive each other's patterns repeatedly and reify those patterns rather than relate to the person knowing their patterns are there but in a way that our interactions don't reify those patterns.

[64:28]

I don't know if this is very clear or useful, but You have to tell me if this made sense or not. I don't know. Or where I could improve the feeling or description or something. But I think it's very interesting to really get it that we're talking about this emptiness of this form as an act of perception.

[65:41]

It's not forms are emptiness, it's form is emptiness. Emptiness is form, and the two are inseparable. Form is the illusion of emptiness and an illusion that doesn't exist that way. Form is the non-existence of form. And... I don't know. It's hard to say these things. One very important... One of the hooks for me really to this and something I can take home with is that I really got it that this emptiness is more like an activity in perceiving.

[67:01]

Yes, that's right. Because there's nothing that exists which isn't activity. There's no sort of general background world. It's all these moments happening in relationship to each other. Now, if we talk about personality from a Buddhist point of view, which would be different than personhood or person as the layer of mythology, habit, etc.,

[68:14]

You could think of personality as identical to the field of the present. So when you begin to have the skills that your personality is arising from the present rather than from the storehouse consciousness, that's what Sukhya Rishi meant when he talked about the perfection of the personality. Now there are certainly layers of the mythology of a person, the habits of you, or how you're constructed in your society. Your genetic predispositions.

[69:29]

And if you happen to believe in reincarnation, if there's seeds of other people in you, etc. But this does not come into what Sukhi meant by personality. Personality is, from his point of view, how do I respond to you entirely at this moment in terms of the present? And then we can see our habits come in like arrogance or excluding this, excluding that And you can try to, one of the efforts is again to come back to these basic practices that work in so many areas.

[70:40]

Bringing your attention equally to whatever appears. to the trusting of whatever is given to you by the planet at this moment. And the more there's an equalness in how you relate to each thing, which is also this sense of suchness, To just feel the suchness of things. And here we're much more now again in a bodily space. Now, when I'm in this latter phase and everything I see relates to memory, As I said earlier, this is basically a memory-based space.

[71:44]

It's not the space of physics. It's the space of what I know about black sweaters and black shirts and so forth. All that memory has to be there for me to make distinctions. Now the more you move out of that mental memory-based space into this more elastic space responsive, connected physical space, you're really in a different kind of world. And it's far more nourishing. Because each situation tends to nourish you. And then on this field of the present, you can really clearly see your habits of being, you know, excluding somebody or... And it's much easier to work on them, on those things.

[73:20]

You just work on them in the present. And I notice how you let it make you feel. And sometimes your work, if you tend to talk to people this way, make yourself stronger, protect yourself. The antidote to that is to try, and it's difficult, to always speak up to people or to speak from a lower position. It's hard to do and you don't want to overdo it. It seems kind of weird. But it's to try to treat everyone as Buddha. The initial perception.

[74:22]

And it's kind of hard sometimes if a person is particularly ugly or unwashed or something like that. or stupid looking, but they're really not very different from us. And so somehow you just see sentience, like you can see babies. You can see babies, you don't say, babies come right through. Then one could say that these differences that we made yesterday or yesterday, or these two aspects, Could we say relating to these two aspects of being, yes, of being fundamentally alone and functionally together, that these two aspects really lead toward this uniqueness?

[75:26]

Now the more you define yourself through the momentary present, which does not deny the way you're defined in other ways, the more your active consciousness is defining yourself in terms of the immediate present. And that's the root of all mindfulness practice. Now I'm a walking person. Now I'm a sitting here person. Now I'm a talking to you person. The more my active consciousness gives priority to that as a definition of how I feel, Then I'm more in the uniqueness and accessible to the uniqueness of this moment.

[76:37]

I deeply wish I could make this more understandable. Okay. I find this very exciting. That when I work with people with such a weak structure, that I use exactly this exercise to describe myself or the third person, or to describe everything exactly what you see, although on the other hand it is actually something like taking away the ego and the self, that it is exactly on the other hand, but strengthens the healthy structure. Sometimes when people who don't have many structures or healthy structures, I often let them talk about themselves in the third person.

[77:41]

And although that on some level strengthens the ego, on the other hand it's kind of healing or helping. It's not the ego, but the structure. The natural feeling of strength. That sounds like a good thing to do. Yes. What you said about the personality, it seems to me that the picture is as if personality or person were something that is born at any moment from what happens. and dies again in every moment.

[78:43]

And in the moment when I don't focus on anything, or when I don't focus on anything other than a person, then I miss this moment of being nourished. The picture that comes to me that personality is really something that emerges on each moment and re-emerges into this kind of background or ground again. And the more I hold on to this and try to limit this experience, I mean, then I don't get nourished. But if I let this freely emerge and disappear again, then I have the feeling of nourishment. And your personality becomes more varied. It's different at night, it's different from one moment to the next. So again, it's interesting.

[79:44]

I would say that this sum up makes one kind of general summary. Initially, this is only as a practice about changing the emphasis in how you perceive. And for the most part, you just continue everything else the same. Is that good news? But you're But if you have the faith and wisdom and determination or intention, To continue this emphasis, this new emphasis. And to develop the attitudes which support this new emphasis.

[80:51]

And necessarily the yogic skills of observing and etc., Then it begins to have an effect on the rest of you. It begins to refresh the laya vijnana. It begins to change where you put your dependence. Mm-hmm. And it begins to shrivel up the constricting, limiting habits of initial perception.

[81:57]

And strangely enough, the more you have the ability to bring your attention to each thing equally, it's almost like smoothing the surface of water. And suddenly you have the feeling of looking deeply into the water. Well, when you're perceiving things unequally, it's a very complicated picture. Do you want to sit for a couple of minutes? of the extraordinary openness of this mind which is everywhere equally present.

[85:18]

This mind is a non-perception of duality. And this is matured, called Buddha mind. And it's a mind that matures the seeds of karma. so that our personal life also comes into accord with this Buddha mind.

[86:32]

The Buddha mind again is this mind that is everywhere equally present through the non-perceiving of duality. Translated?

[89:09]

You're welcome. It's refreshing. Oh. So refreshing there's nothing to say. So refreshing there's nothing to say. One idea from the point of view of psychotherapy would be to open the window in Mara's house, if it was a house, [...] to open the window

[90:41]

und dass das nur möglich ist, wenn man vorher seine Kontinuität in die Kabel verlagert hat? And if you don't do that, so if you, so to speak, break away from Manas at the same time, the continuity, which I said above, in the connection between Manas and Cheddar, that is then, if you break away from it without being engaged in the body, that it can lead to something like a psychotic disintegration or a real disintegration, because it is precisely the connection between self and non-self, inside and outside, and the time structure is also a problem. And we as psychotherapists don't do that. In our group we distributed various questions we had but then worked a lot on what really is manas and how would a psychotherapist describe it and how would a psychotherapist work with it. And we looked at it a little bit, the image again as a house, and the therapist moves the furniture around and opens the windows, lets fresh air in and so forth.

[91:51]

Whereas in Dharma therapy, manas... Can you say that again? In the Dharma practice, you try to circumvent manas, But to do it without danger, you have to shift beforehand your continuity in your body. We found out and stabilized it there. We found out if you don't do it, there is a danger of psychotic disintegration, ego disintegration. If you just push away mana from this connection between manas and citta, which gives you a sense of identity in the thought space, and if you just crack it down, you crack down your self-other distinctions, your inner-outer and your time structure. This means a psychopathological term that you have a psychotic ego disintegration. So it was a kind of question. Yeah, well, I understand what you're saying.

[92:55]

And I can imagine that that's a possibility. But the way you bypass manas is by establishing continuity in body, breath, and phenomena. So all in all, unless you forced it somehow, It only happens when continuities embody breath and phenomena. We have the idea that you could force it through a question, where am I, where am I, that this cracks manas. I think there's even a book about... person describes.

[93:57]

The woman who got stuck in emptiness for years? Yeah. I haven't read it, but you've read it. It's supposed to be good, I hear. Stuck in emptiness. Quite a few people independently have told me it's quite good. It's an American woman, right? It's in German, though, too. But the book was first published in German, I think, for some strange reason, and then got translated, or the original text was published in American. Okay, so what else? Asno. Partly I'd just like to know the process that you are going through in having this kind of discussion and kind of trying to make sense of this rather familiar and radical at the same time way of looking at things.

[95:04]

Yes, in part I would like to know the process through which you have gone, so to speak, to unite what we are discussing here.

[95:11]

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