When you do that, you shift, step forward, find the earth, and then shift your weight onto that. And when you step out, you're not sure there's anything going to be there. Or you can take a macho attitude. I'm going to make the earth. And some Zen people walk that way. Frankenstein. But I actually practiced for two or three years feeling of maybe the earth won't be there. And, you know, again, going back to Sophia, this lamp which bounced, and she was so terrified by it. If she could capture that feeling in a positive sense, like when she touches the lamp, it might not be there.

[01:12]

I'm told that people who work on high tension wires develop a somewhat similar sensitivity. They have to hang up in space and they... Okay. Now... When I do that, what am I doing? When I take some word like, I mean, I say, let's take unpredictability. Is unpredictability, yeah, it's some kind of quality gate of emptiness. But is it emptiness? Not necessarily, just unpredictability.

[02:28]

But we're talking about something here, emptiness, which... by definition, doesn't have dimensions. What? As long as we're alive, it has to have some experiential quality. Well, you could have some importance... Emptiness simply as an intellectual category. But in either case, we're talking about something that, yeah, if we can say something about it, it's not emptiness. So it's a little bit like, you know, this mathematics of, you know, string theory and so forth.

[03:32]

Of higher dimensions. You try to put together special relativity and general relativity. And they don't fit together in a four-dimensional world. You have to mathematically imagine 26 dimensions or 11 dimensions and so forth. And if you imagine sufficient dimensions, you can begin to relate them. And mathematically, these dimensions seem to have some reality and they have a predictive quality. Okay, so... So mathematics will reach into this area, but our thinking, we can't imagine it, we can't visualize it.

[04:54]

But our human tool of mathematics can pose such dimensions. Okay, but I'm making an analogy here that emptiness is something that's out of the reach of our thinking and imagination. But, So we have to make some target. Or something we have to do. Well, the easiest thing is words. Yeah, we can also have, if we practice together intimately enough and have sashin and so forth. We can actually begin to have experiences together where the experience results from withdrawing something, not saying something.

[05:58]

But that requires a lot of resonance between the two people or three people. Okay, now in this koan about the Hands and arms. Hands and eyes. And you know, both Dao Wu and Yun Yan would be very well aware of the images of the Bodhisattva of compassion. Sometimes with a thousand arms. Amen.

[07:14]

That's only one. Think what a thousand would be. Whoa. Anyway, so, and on each palm... There's an eye. And there's 11 heads. So you've got 66 eyes on one bodhisattva. 11 heads, 22, and on each hand, eyes and feet. So we've got a lot of eyes. Mm-hmm. Now this, in the Koan, they call this the screen image. It's not an image of what's being talked about, but it's like a mathematical dimension. It's a screen image that can give you a feeling. Yeah, and if we just said, oh, this is a worldview of everything being connected,

[08:17]

And we don't have the opportunity to say it's like reaching for your pillow at night. So it's an image created as a screen that allows us to act into a world view or an understanding. Am I making a little bit of sense here? No, yes, okay. So when I use a word like unpredictability, it just happens to be an idea we share. So I can say unpredictable. And you can practice with unpredictable.

[09:23]

And we're not talking really about unpredictability. But the result of practicing with the feeling of unpredictability can turn into the positive experience of emptiness. So it's a kind of device. So if you sort of like intellectually say, well, unpredictability, that's not emptiness. No, that's true, but in practice, It's touching it. Okay. Now I like the idea that I'm speaking about with a friend of mine recently. And I brought it up at Rastenberg.

[10:42]

And I think it's a word, an idea that Einstein used. Einstein is everyone's favorite genius. Yeah. And he had the wonderful qualities of genius. Beyond talent or brilliance. And he supposedly, I guess, used the word . Yeah, so from what I, Marie-Louise said, it's a kind of religious, used in a religious context to mean looking with a sense of prayer.

[11:54]

And Michael Murphy said that in Russia, they speak about an icon as a window to God. It's not just an image of the Buddha, it's a window. That's a different feeling than an image. Okay. So I guess Einstein used it, or was used describing Einstein for his ability to like feel into an elevator and come up with the idea of Space is warped. He could feel into the experience of being in an elevator and feeling in the elevator that he's not at motion, like two trains passing or something.

[12:58]

And through such experiences, but kind of doing it as a mental experiment, He could feel into what later turned into mathematics. Okay. So... So we're, in talking about emptiness, we're trying to do something like that. We're trying to feel into some images. With a little bit of prayer. Okay. Okay. So the first of the four marks is appearance.

[14:04]

Or rather, it's the word birth. Now, if we say birth, this really emphasizes this as a teaching. that you take the first appearance as a birth, as something really new, a birth. This is not a science of the physical world. This is a science perhaps of how we think. So this is asking us to take on this as a thought experience. Let's take each appearance as a birth. And let's really, with some rigor, drop the continuity of generalizations. So the world starts to feel rather fluid.

[15:24]

And it's appearing. Okay, now, so let's go to the next mark. I think we did pretty well with appearance. May I ask? Yes. So if we take the appearance as birth, and then it's over the fourth mark, So there is duration and then it's over. Then comes something new. So that's what happens. Yeah. But you, like Michael, are rushing ahead. Yeah.

[16:24]

Also, wenn das, was erscheint, eine Geburt ist, dann dauert es an und dann verschwindet es. So let's take it as it's presented. Okay, so there's duration. But is there duration? I mean, I have my example of 12 o'clock. It's a minute to 12. Is eine Minute zwölf? Half a minute to twelve? Eine halbe Minute bis zwölf? It's a half a second to twelve? Eine halbe Sekunde bis zwölf? It's a millionth of a second before twelve? Eine millionstel Sekunde vor zwölf? It's a millionth of a second after twelve? Und eine millionstel Sekunde nach zwölf? Where is twelve? Aber wo ist zwölf? Twelve has no dimension. Zwölf hat keine Dimension. So how long is the present?

[17:30]

I mean, this is kind of mind-boggling stuff. I mean, just ordinary everyday stuff. How long does the present last? It's kind of disappearing off into the past. I mean, what's going on? It's sort of unthinkable. But we know we can't, I can't grasp a moment ago, I can't grasp half a moment ago. And yet we have some experience of duration. What is this experience of duration? Yeah. We participate, we're making the experience of duration by some sense of repetition. Now, if we have a generalized, if we have a view of the world, an experience of a... view of the world, rooted in memory, rooted in generalizations, and thought forms, the world seems to be fairly permanent.

[18:46]

It's a delusion. Mm-hmm. And when we live in that, even if we have the intellectual idea that everything changes, that intellectual idea means almost nothing. It might help you vote for the environment. But it doesn't have much reality in your actual experience. So basically, most of us live in a a world of implicit permanence.

[19:57]

Intellectually, you may know it's not, but in fact, the way you act is implied permanence. Yeah, and again, watching Sophia. She has to come to this view. No matter how often we change seminar locations, hotel rooms, etc., still, she still wants her mother to be there when she wakes up. And she wants the bed to be a reachable distance from the floor. She has to create a predictable world or she can't function. So how do we as Buddhist parents Accept and participate necessarily in her developing a predictable world.

[21:13]

With her also potential feeling for an impermanent world. Okay. Now, if you practice appearance... Now, if you... If you take something like the four marks and you look at it and say, oh, birth, duration, delusion, I see how that fits together. That's interesting. I've got that. You haven't gotten anything. You have no idea how to practice Buddhism. You're practicing mentally. Then you understand it and so forth, but you don't.

[22:30]

Okay, so you have to spend, I would say, spend, give, receive. Hmm. Some weeks or months, just on the first one. Till you really see that you've got the habit of seeing appearance. Because the experience of duration is not understood until you've got the experience of appearance down. These are in an experiential order, not just a logical order. The I wish they were in a less logical sequence.

[23:36]

Because then you wouldn't rush ahead and think you understood it. Okay. So what you really want to do, this is a practice as experience. What you really want to do is take on the practice of noticing things appearing. And noticing when you instead have a generalized feeling of implicit permanence. Now sound is always a good territory for practice. Because, you know, when we look at the world, it gives us a sense of permanence. And the dimensions of near and far and up and down are present in the visual world.

[24:39]

But in the sound world, the aural world, near and far aren't so clear. It's just at night, it's all in your ear. It's not clear whether this bird is nearer and that bird is a little farther. And you don't know whether what's up or down, it's just... A field, you really experience a field. Closeness. And the sounds are impermanent. You just take for granted that a bird's sound is impermanent.

[25:46]

In fact, we're so used to impermanent sounds, it's quite annoying when something continues, like a car siren or something. Yeah. When you hear bird sounds, let's just take birds, it's a wonderful example. You can experience it appearing. It appears, you don't have to do anything. But you can try to bring yourself to the appearance. Almost feeling it from the bird's side. And again, one of these kind of like 26 dimensions of emptiness is to feel things, one of the gates is to feel things from the other side.

[26:55]

is to, when I see Michael appear, I have a feeling in my body to feel Michael from his side, not from my side looking at you. That's another one of these enactment practices. It's hard to translate, I know. Just use English, enact. Enact. Yeah. So you try to enact or feel the bird sound from the bird's side. And then it's gonna go away pretty quickly, of course.

[28:17]

We don't know how the bird hears it exactly, but for us it goes away quickly. You know, some contemporary musicians work with sounds that continue after the sound is gone. Because the ear continues it. The ear actually continues to hear it, but if you measured it with a machine, the sound is gone. Just the way that the air works is something that continues. Okay. So you try to feel the duration of the bird sound. This is just one of these little experiments. Now, if I keep, if I get in the habit of noticing appearance, Und wenn ich die Gewohnheit entwickle, das Erscheinen zu bemerken, und die Gewohnheit entwickle, Verallgemeinerungen anzuhalten, zu blockieren, dann ist Dauer nicht etwas, das selbstverständlich gegeben ist.

[29:37]

Die Dauer ist dann viel kürzer. You can't participate in duration when it's a generalization. You can't participate in memory. You see memory the way it is. But when you get in the habit of seeing appearance, you begin to feel duration. And you feel your own decision making in continuing duration. So you can practice with bird sounds and see if you can extend the duration.

[30:50]

You start feeling in between bird sounds or You can anticipate the bird sound. So anyway, in a like manner, if I'm looking at Paul or Christa, Yes, I'll have to write it down. Every year I can't figure out how to say it. Okay. I'm sorry I'm so stupid. Okay. I can notice how Krista appears. And how there's a certain duration there.

[31:52]

And that duration is not quite the same as appearance or birth. Yeah, how long is my present? Exactly. You know, there's the Planck length, which is 1 to the minus 23rd or something like that. The what? The Planck length, which is the smallest spatial dimension they can measure. Well, they actually in the early days tried to measure the length of time of a dharma. How briefly you can perceive something. And even have done IQ tests, which one of the measures of IQ is how quickly you can perceive short distances. So anyway... I'm just sort of talking about this experience of duration.

[33:05]

And the feeling of letting it happen. And the feeling of a certain intentionality being in that duration. So it's not just given to you, it's not automatic. Okay. Doesn't make any sense when you're perceiving generalization, but when you're perceiving appearances, duration makes some sense. And then it dissolves. Okay, again, it doesn't dissolve if it's memory or generalizations, but dissolves if it's appearance. Kind of practice on the bird sounds. One of the things I found useful to do is in Hotuan, which is the little Japanese building I have for Dokusan in my office in Crestone,

[34:18]

In the little sort of room with a sink and a toilet. It's one of these sanded windows for bathrooms, you know. And outside there's a pine tree. And the pine tree is often windy. And the shadow of the pine tree is on the window. But as the pine tree moves, it gets darker and less dark and pine needles appear and disappear and so forth. So sometimes I practice, I stand there and see if I can experience the duration. of the pine needles and so forth appearing.

[35:33]

And to really do it, I have to relax. I have to do it physically. I can't do it mentally. And I find I have to be quite relaxed. If I'm thinking, it's not subtle. It's always disappearing and... If I really relax and it's kind of a wide feeling, it begins to have an interesting rhythm. Okay, so then once I capture that in my body, I apply it to more permanent things. I look with that feeling at the tree trunk, which isn't moving. Or I look with that feeling at my friend Paul.

[36:37]

And if I have that feeling, actually Paul's forehead and eyes, there's some kind of feeling that's outside of thinking. but there's movement or some kind of presence. So this is an intentional practice. It's not just that things appear and hang around and then disappear. It's that you're intentionally participating in it. And the teaching makes that clear because it doesn't stop with dissolution. If you have dissolution, what do you need disappearance for? Because disappearance is the intentional act. Disappearance is where emptiness comes in. Okay, so things appear. all of you together appear, each of you individually appears, and the feeling, you know, it's quite interesting, if I bring my attention to any one of you, there's a certain kind of

[38:10]

movement, like the pine needles coming into more focus and less. But it's, yeah, it's the way it is. But if I try to feel all of you at once, that's actually more like wind on the water. And that's both changing in a big slow rhythm and changing in a very quick movement. And if I try to enter this feeling of when all of us at once appear, It's actually a different kind of tuning than trying to feel a person from their side.

[39:25]

Now, I may be talking about something mystic or mysterious or something like that. But it's really just like much of Buddhism, not grounded in mysticism, grounded in practical experience. What I'm talking about is the fruit, which would be the same for any of you, pretty much the same, if you just get in the habit of seeing appearances. Because although I can look at any one of you with my mind, my thinking mind, my thinking mind establishes generalizations. So if I intentionally use my thinking mind to enter the realm of appearances, that's much more proprioceptive.

[40:42]

Okay. Okay, so then things have a duration and then they dissolve. And the disappearance is, yes, they dissolve, but you actually clean the slate. So the teaching of the four marks, if we go back to Walter again. There's appearance, there's a certain duration. And there's change we can call dissolution. But I actually make an effort to clear the slate. Particularly if I look away. If I look away.

[42:03]

And then, when I look back, there's really more of a birth instead of a different continuation of appearance. So, the teaching of the four marks with the addition of disappearance, tries to make clear that this is an intentional practice, not just an observational practice. You're bringing intentional attention You're developing the habit of noticing the four marks. Okay, somehow I think that's enough to do. I think you're getting tired. Yeah.

[43:10]

What you were talking about, about the spirit, it reminds me of a moment sometimes in films. Usually they compose or they choreograph a film, they have cuts everywhere, but you have the impression that it's going on, on and on and on, you are in the film. Sometimes you have this moment where it's really dark, They make a bigger break or something like that, I don't know. And then you have the question that the film is really starting again and you really like to enter it again. It's also like a new birth of the film. And sometimes it's like thunder when they do it. Deutsch, bitte. Deutsch? Sometimes when we are in the cinema, there are films where there are different characters.

[44:11]

And then you have the moment when you put it together and it's just dark. And you come, the film goes on, but it's like a new part of the film. And like a completely new film. Although it continues. Dharma practice is more like you could see the frames instead of the continuity in the movie. than seeing the continuity. Remember those old books, we used to flip the pages and things. Yeah, so the mental practice is to flip them fast enough that they move. Dharma practices flip them slow enough so you each one see it separately. Now tomorrow, I mean maybe you've had enough of the four marks. But It's amazing, don't you think?

[45:36]

I mean, I'm amazed at the world that's in a practice like this, just four little things. Three little words, I love you. How much trouble and beauty is in that? That's a song, three little words. So these are four little words. This is Dharma love. To actually enter into loving the world in this way. So tomorrow maybe we could start out with or at least look at the five dharmas now that we've looked at the four marks. So sometimes I call these five dharmas and four marks dharma surgery. Because it's a way of cutting into seamless seeming reality.

[46:48]

And to see that it's not a reality, it's an actuality. So why don't we sit a few minutes and then Thank you very much for your intentional attention. Yesterday I made this, emphasized this practicing with this sense of experience of appearance. And I can't emphasize it strongly enough. But on the other hand, I think maybe I emphasized it a little too strongly.

[48:05]

In the sense that I said, you know, you have to do this and you have to spend a certain amount of time on it. Yeah, it's true. But to be realistic, it's a kind of process. Where you first, yeah, sort of, Hey, think about it. Maybe this makes sense. And you try it out. Or it becomes your intention. It may take actually quite a while before you actually suddenly get the feel of it. Yeah, and I think if you can entertain the view... Yeah?

[49:12]

I was thinking about entertaining the view. Yeah. That the mind and mind in existence construct each other. If you have some Ja, you're just convinced by long habit of being a westerner. Wenn ihr überzeugt seid, durch diese langen Gewohnheiten ein westlicher Mensch zu sein.

[50:16]

That you're born with some inner nature that's pretty much fixed. Dass du mit einer inneren Natur geboren bist, die sehr fest und stabil ist. And all you can do is understand it and adjust it. Und alles was du tun kannst, ist, dass du sie verstehst und dass du sie anfasst. senses the world of the senses the process of the senses so much weight but if you do feel that mind and existence construct each other or you feel that's a big part of the process of of developing our life. Then you can see that the senses are the... the initial platform of how we know the world.

[51:35]

So the Heart Sutra, you know, the most commonly chanted Buddhist teachings. Yeah, the most kind of essential version distillation of the most profound of all of the wisdom teachings. It's not about deities or something special. It's just about the senses. It's about the visionaries, the skandhas, and so forth. Because this is the territory

[52:41]

in which we live and construct ourselves. Yeah, maybe I'd be labor at this point. Be labor over work. But I really do think this... practice which is really so simple. Could you put the four marks back up first? Thank you. It's so simple. It won't really be practiced unless you can entertain the view. Und obwohl diese Praxis so einfach ist, kann sie nicht praktiziert werden, bis du nicht diesen Blickwinkel unterhältst, oder diese Bedeutung der Sinne in unserem Leben akzeptierst.

[53:43]

Now, I do think actually yesterday we had a pretty good mutual understanding of this importance of appearance. And, you know, I can say various things about it. But really you have to Just fool around with it. Try it out in your leisure moments. See if you can give priority to appearance over thinking. No. That's really the teaching of the five dharmas. So I think I should give you that list. No. I'm trying to think of... It's a list, but it's a list like a weightlifter, you know.

[55:20]

First you lift 500 pounds. Then you lift 1,000 pounds. That doesn't really come second. There's a lot that goes in between 500 pounds and 1,000 pounds. So there's a list, but it's a list you really have to... It's so simple, you just have to use it as a mode of practice. And... if possible, use it as a way to notice.

[56:20]

Yeah. I mean, I've told this anecdote before, but I was in Japan once driving in this old man's taxi. And he was playing an audio tape in his taxi of frogs and cicadas in his family's home place, Ricefields. And it was quite beautiful, you know, usually often the younger ones are playing loud rock and roll or something. And so for many years I had a house up in the rice paddies in North Western Japan.

[57:32]

And you've been there. So it's nice to hear those sounds. They're beautiful. Cicadas, I don't know what's the word in German. Oh, really, cicaden. Rubbing their legs together in a mating dance. And so when... In Japan, they practically don't have a word for back up or retreat. Everything is forward. It's so strong that if you're behind a bus or something in a hotel driveway or something, they won't back up. To go around the bus, they'll wait till the car in front of them moves.

[58:42]

Because backing up is something defeating. And Germans push the beginning and Japanese push the end. It depends on which end you were on. For example, Germans will not go through a orange light, a light that turns orange.

[59:48]

They'll stop quite early. Yeah. But at the beginning of the light, it's barely orange and everybody's off, right? So it's okay to go through a... Orange light at the beginning, but not okay at the end. Yeah, and the Japanese are just the opposite. The light turns green and they sort of get around to starting. Then it turns orange and red and they say, well, I don't know, we just keep going. And then it turns orange and red and they just keep going. It's distinctly different. So then they get out in the middle.

[60:52]

So of course, sometimes they have to stop because the light's not only on, it's now red and they're stuck out in the middle of the intersection. Of course no one will back up. And if there's three lanes, there's four or five cars in it. The lanes don't mean much, that's some European idea. Das macht aber nichts, weil die Idee einer Spur ist irgendwie so eine europäische Idee. If you can squeeze four or five cars in the first line, why the heck should you be behind another car? Also wenn da in der ersten Reihe stehen könnten vier oder fünf Autos, warum sollst du dann hinten stehen? I understand this very well. I like driving in Japan. Also ich kann das gut verstehen. Mir gefällt es, im Japan Auto zu fahren.

[61:54]

Yeah, it's one of my minor skills. And being on the wrong side of the road all the time, too. Okay, so here I'm listening to all of these cicadas and frogs. And this guy gets to the intersection. And he looks. And then he proceeds. I couldn't believe it. I've never seen a Japanese do that. They just push out. They feel their way out. They just push out. And I said to this old guy, you just stopped, looked, and listened. And that's what you're taught in English in America. When you come to an intersection, you teach a child, stop, look. And listen.

[63:02]

I said, did you learn to drive in America? He said, yes, my father was a professor at the University of California at Berkeley from the time I was 8 to 18. And he said, yes, my father was a professor at the University of Berkeley, and I was in the time of 18 in America. He was at this time, must have been 70 or something, but he remembered, stop, look and listen. Yeah, so we need some kind of habit like that in the visionas, to stop, look and listen for appearance. And you really have to kind of build a habit like that, at first at small times, stopping and waiting for appearance.

[64:08]

Now maybe we could have a phrase, like in English, pause for appearance. You have to kind of somehow infiltrate It's wisdom teaching. Yeah. Like a soap commercial. Except here you're trying to wash your karma. When we have kindergarten... Also Marie-Louise hat da hinten einen Kindergarten abgehalten. Hm? She had a kindergarten.

[65:26]

So etwas für das Veranstalten. So. This is... So, this is the five dharmas. And this is a version of what we talked about yesterday. And here again, the first of the appearance. And you will notice that many of these lists are versions of each other. Like the parameters in the eight-fold path.

[66:29]

Both have at the end various versions of wisdom, meditation, concentration, effort. And they're different words, but really they're the engine of the list. So it's appearance, meaning, discrimination. Right now, something like that. Wisdom ever being recognized? Should wisdom be written in brackets?

[67:43]

And so be it. Okay. So the other one started with birth, it starts with appearance, but you know, it's pretty much the same. Okay. So what does this describe? It describes the ordinary way in which we function. Things appear. And we name them.

[68:44]

Yeah, it's virtually automatic. It's not automatic for Sophia yet, but it soon will be. And naming in general. You see, naming goes both ways. It goes toward appearance. And it goes toward discrimination. So, because they don't say words, they say naming. Because as I pointed out the other day, a name is not a word. Mm-hmm. Sophia has quite a lot of names for things, but they're not words. She can't put them into sentences. Once it's a word, it immediately initiates discrimination. And once it initiates discrimination, you have thinking associations, etc.

[70:04]

Okay, so what's the teaching of this list? Is that you can interrupt this process of appearance, naming, and discrimination with right knowledge. So we can see that Like knowledge, if you bring in right knowledge, you can bring in at this point, in between, here and here. Okay. So what's right knowledge then?

[71:19]

Well, it's, you know, it's for one thing, it's the four marks. Because if you, I'm sorry, I'm wandering around here like this. Because as soon as there's appearance, if you bring in manifestation or duration, what are you doing? You're interrupting discrimination. So, you know, all of this stuff, you know, they say don't think and all this stuff, it's not very useful to tell people that.

[72:21]

But you can see that this is a process where actually this is the kind of non-thinking. So I always want to add that, there's no reason to, but obviously thinking's important, we wanna think, et cetera, but you don't want to establish the reality of the world and your identity through thinking. I suppose that since we function through thinking, we have to at our work and... ordinary circumstances.

[73:31]

Psychotherapy is a good way best way maybe to clarify our thinking. And be clear about how we do establish our identity in thinking. But you can again begin to establish simultaneously through practice. You're like a jack-in-the-box. You're in some things to establish the needs of self in another way than through thinking. And this is partly maybe for you, Michael.

[74:41]

Everybody else has heard it so many times. Which is the three functions of self. I'm just trying to, maybe something that's useful to remind ourselves of. Separation. Connectedness. Now, this is not a traditional Buddhist teaching.

[75:44]

It's something I made up. But I made it up based on, you know, I think something real. Okay, so... Because Buddhist teaching assumes something like this. In other words, the idea here is that self is not an entity but it's a function. And everyone has to function through these three things. If you can't establish separateness, if I don't know that's his voice and not mine, I'm in deep trouble.

[76:58]

I'm going to go to you for help. And I also have to have some way to establish connectedness. And I have to establish some way to... I have to know some way to establish continuity from moment to moment. von Moment zu Moment schaffen und erhalten kann. And what we're speaking about here is the shift from continuity to continuum. Und worüber wir jetzt sprechen, ist dieser Sprung von einer Kontinuität zu einem Kontinuum. So I could put continuum there. So könnte ich also das Wort Kontinuum dort mit schreiben. Eine Art von Hinzufügung, die ich zu den drei Funktionen im Feld hinzufüge.

[77:59]

Okay. I think it's helpful. I mean, maybe it's just boring to you at this point, but I think it's helpful for you to get these three lists in mind. Like, stop, look, and listen. Yes, Felix. What is the difference between continuity and continuum in how you use it now? Okay, that's the subject of this seminar. Okay. Wo liegt der Unterschied zwischen Kontinuität und Kontinuum? Wie du es jetzt verwendest, und Osi meint, das ist das Thema dieses... Constant seminars. Because as far as I understood, these three functions of the self until now, the continuity is an activity and function.

[79:25]

From my understanding, continual feels more like an outside entity. A continuity. I think you could say that ... I'm not trained enough in the definition of words that I can express it. Me neither. Some of the Yeah, well, I'm using the two words to mean... If I said mental continuity... I think I would mean something... I would think of something like...

[80:30]

The continuity of one thought after another or something like that. If I said like a train. If I said the mental continuum, it would be something like the track. Or the field or quality of mind. Which gives us some of the needed support, reality of continuity. Because many teachings say things like, enter this into your mental continuum. They don't say, enter this into your mental continuity. So what this teaching is trying to do is the other five dharmas and the three marks, is to interrupt our mental continuity.

[81:52]

And we could say perhaps replace it by a mental continuum. And that mental continuum in the most Fundamental sense is emptiness. So I can say that, but I don't think we've gotten there in how to feel it. Hilltrude. Okay. Like Trudy with a hill in front of her. Hilltrude. Okay. And could it be that the background means a form of cooking? Could it be that background mind is a form of continuum?

[83:05]

Yes, that's why I brought it up first. Background mind is the most accessible to all of us feeling. As soon as you start talking about the field of mind or something like that, then you're into yogic. Yoga power, yoga skill. And so that's not accessible to everyone. I mean, it's accessible, but you have to practice yoga. Yes. Some years ago you had another list of three more. I know, yeah. Could it be a form of how to describe the continuum?

[84:13]

Yeah, you could say that. I dropped teaching the other three. Could you repeat that first? Yes. I dropped it because for several years I taught it that way, but I dropped it because Also, ich habe es einige Jahre auf diese Art und Weise gelehrt, aber ich habe es fallen gelassen und dafür gibt es mehrere Gründe. This is so clear to me and essential. Das ist für mich derartig klar und so wesentlich, diese Trennung, Verbundenheit, Kontinuität. And easy to remember. The additional three are more interpretive and less clear. People didn't remember them, so I just dropped them. I try to only teach what you can remember.

[85:15]

And I can remember. But now I try to teach it some other way. I have troubles to make a clear distinction between thinking and the other function of the self. Of the mind? Which one of the three? Functions of the self. When you talk about the background mind, you say there are certain methods to install the background mind.

[86:22]

So it's a kind of thing, isn't it? Deutsch, bitte. There are certain skills, as Arusha mentioned, that can be established in thinking. But it is also a kind of thinking. And I find it difficult to see the border between the thinking that we should have and this other function of self or mind. Did you say the same thing as in English? Yes, yes. It was a little bit longer, but OK. Yeah. Yeah. German is generally longer than English. I know, yeah. Germans are taller, too, in this way. Other observations.

[87:25]

Another irrelevant observation. Yeah, well, you use thinking. We use, I mean, I have to talk, so I'm using thinking. Background mind is a word. It's a word that points to an experience. And we can use the words to point to the experience in ourselves. And once we sufficiently use the words to point to our experience, the experience can take over and no longer be limited to the words. Okay. So maybe one point in the difference between the misunderstanding I might have is that I, that I'm thinking, that I do not connect necessarily thinking with words.

[89:01]

Okay. Yeah, nor do I. But unless I got up very close to you, banged my head against your head or something... Or shouted and when you were startled I hit you with a stick when you weren't expecting it. And such methods are not accepted in the West. That I decided to mostly use words. There's more subtle ways of knowing that we can use, but, you know, we have to live together or, you know, practice situations.

[90:08]

I don't understand that. You don't understand which? I don't understand you. Because thinking is, for me, thinking is with words. Not for me. I don't think in words at all. Yeah, but if you, I mean, what's the difference? Thinking and having images, imaginary associations, I mean, what else is there? Images, yeah. Well, if you call it, if you call images thinking, and not, if you call images words, then you could say... Because with thinking there's, I mean, I'm just trying, what do you mean? Thinking is also very much connected with intentions, and I can work with thinking, you know? And I can intentionally, you know, I can, it's like Lego or so, like children's toys, you know?

[91:15]

You take... Lego, you know Lego? Yeah, I know Lego, yeah. Very well. Fito and Armo. You have a thought, and then you put another thought, and then you look at it, and okay, you put in a different thought. So it's more a construction. But if you think in images, it's completely different. I cannot construct images like that. Images are more like going in there, feeling out, okay, it's not so much connected with will, So I think for me, therefore, that's the way I think about thinking. Thinking for me is like with tools. I'm sorry. Deutsch bitte. So it seems that we have quite different concepts. Yeah, this guy's a thinker.

[92:04]

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