This is a rather nice room. And we may have to open some windows, I think, though, at least at some point. And usually Ulrike, as a translator, also starts meditation around 10 o'clock But the ride she was expecting to get here didn't show up. So no one rang the bell, is that right? And maybe because it was rather busy, you didn't have a chance to sit, or did we sit for a while? Okay, so this is the bell ending meditation. Okay. And usually when we finish meditation, we walk back and forth on the bed.

[01:29]

Feel ourselves coming back into this world with a new center. Now it's funny when I talk with you like last evening. One, I of course don't know all of you. And I'm not sure I'm going to be able to There's plenty of space here, here and there.

[02:30]

I'm not sure I'm going to see, and I'm not sure I'll be seeing you for a longer period of time. And maybe just because it's evening. Yeah, I feel I have to go rather faster. Give you quite a few aspects of practice. But maybe it's just because it's morning instead of evening. I feel I can go much slower. Maybe only take one aspect of practice and stay with it. And I know that I'll see you the rest of the day.

[03:54]

But then it's also... I have some feeling, some sense of something I'd like to say to you. And also I'd like to say to myself. And I need some space to, time to feel it out with you. And I want you to feel free to ask questions. And we'll have some time where we just have some discussion. And what shape the seminar takes. will depend a lot on our discussion and the implicit or silent discussion I feel with you.

[05:15]

Now, how many of you weren't here last night? Oh dear. Because now I have to start over. I started last night. Oh, shucks. Well, it's fun to start over. All of you who were here last night, there's a room there you can go and chat. Or maybe I can weave in some of last night as we go along.

[06:17]

Because we do have a topic here. A sentient world. How many of you have little experience with meditation? All the, oh no, the pros are on both sides and the amateurs on both sides. So I'm happy to also answer questions, basic questions about sitting practice and so forth. Mm-hmm. sitting practice and mindfulness practices, which are the basis of this reimagining ourselves.

[07:39]

Or regenerating ourselves. Where should I begin? I think the most important thing is to emphasize that this sitting practice and mindfulness practice exists within a view of the world. You have some idea and conditioned experience About what kind of world you sit down in.

[08:50]

Or what kind of world you bring attention to. But when we practice mindfulness and zazen or sitting meditation. We challenge or we loosen the view of the world in which we live. You even have a view of the body in which you live. Now, to give you an example, a sort of accessible example of that,

[09:52]

And it's hard for me to find accessible examples. So when I find them, sometimes I can't find second or third. There are others, but they depend on perhaps on more meditation experience. But an accessible example of that we live within a view of the body is if your arm, say, goes to sleep. Or if you sit in meditation for very long, it's quite common for your legs to go to sleep. Sometimes virtually up to the waist. When I first started meditation, I kind of wanted an injection, which would just make my lower part of my legs and all disappear. So anyway, your legs sometimes, shall we say, go to sleep.

[11:27]

Or your arm. And you wonder where it is. You can't find it. But if you find one finger, The whole arm reappears. Or you touch your arm, suddenly your whole arm reappears. But your arm is still asleep, so what reappears? The view of the arm reappears. So you know where your arm is because you know where your finger is. And we actually inhabit a view of the world, a view of the body. And we inhabit a view of the world. This is nothing special.

[12:42]

It's common sort of knowledge nowadays. Yes, and no matter how you live, you're going to have some kind of view of the world. Yes, so how... But what are you going to do about it? Because if we inhabit a view of the world it means you have a choice about what view of the world you inhabit. How do you make the choice? And how do you make a choice when you don't know what the other possible views are? Or could we find a place from which many views appear? Yeah. Like a flower, perhaps, before it blooms. Has a feeling of what kind of flower it's going to be.

[14:00]

Yeah. And on a flowering bush, there may be different kinds of blossoms. And we're not just a single-stemmed flower. We're a kind of flowering, sentient world. And we know, I mean, just like last night, we flower one way, and this morning, some other kind of flower. Bloom is coming into presence. So what I'm... The small point... The small point I'm making here is the way we see visually, see the world.

[15:27]

And how we can make a shift to, the words are so inadequate, but feel the world. Yeah, now you know how many meanings the word seeing has. See is to understand and to observe and so forth. And feeling has many such meanings that aren't in the dictionary that open up when you practice. Now, a sentient world is a world that's felt, not a world

[16:29]

that's only seen. Or we could say that the primary definition of the world is its felt. Now, mostly the world, the known world is the world we see. And we don't know it till we see it. But in a felt world, we feel also what's not yet known or seen. Now, last night I used the example of washing your feet. With your eyes closed. So, you're... You find your feet with your hands.

[18:06]

You can experiment. I mean, everybody can. You can either turn the light off or close your eyes and wash your feet. And you'll find that your hands find your feet. But it isn't also the case that your feet find your hands. And when you wash your feet in this way, or is it your feet washing your hands? I mean, you know, we think in ways like one thing does something to another thing, so it immediately puts us in a world where things are distant and near and so forth. And I think this is something blind people often know. Blind people, if you seem particularly human often, if you know some blind people, they...

[19:06]

They seem to live in a surprised relationship to an always revealing world. If you're blind, the world keeps revealing itself. Does that make any sense? Because what is this, you know? So, whoa, and it reveals itself. There's even a little pause while what it is surprises you. And I was actually surprised at that moment. Because, you know, I had a glass a moment ago, so I for a moment thought this was a glass.

[20:34]

And it felt like a glass, but it was a little... And I'd forgotten that was a bell. So there was a kind of surprise as this revealed itself to me. This is a different world than when you know in advance, before I touch it, that's a bell. And then it fulfills my expectations of being a bell as I touch it. Now, partly what I'm doing here is just trying to give you suggestions about how the ingredients of our world can be slightly shifted.

[21:41]

And as again, as I said last night, often we, as in a sighted world, see our feet as down there. But down there in relationship to what? To feeling yourself located up here. That means, and we take for granted, that we identify with our thinking as us. And in a sentient world, Buddhism assumes a sentient world, sentient beings. Yeah, we're... It's a... we don't identify with thinking as us.

[23:05]

We identify with feeling as us. And from that, and that is a, as I said last night, and the point I'm trying to remake this morning, is a shift in view So to describe a person as a sentient being is not just one way to think about a person, but rather a shift to the definitive way of looking at a person. Mm-hmm. And it's also a shift in location.

[24:13]

Now, these are small differences, but make a big difference. Like I see outside, and there's kind of an inside here. To see no outside inside, if we could see no outside inside, that's a small shift, but a magnificent shift. I recently had to speak to a number of people about something I talked about some years ago, realisational space. And in architectural terms as well as experiential terms. And one example, I told an anecdote of somebody named Steve Beck, who is a person I know moderately well, who is in charge of the grounds at Esalen Institute in California.

[25:39]

And I've been there a few times through friends connected with Esalen since its founding. And occasionally I've been visiting a visiting teacher there. And that means you're available for the staff to come. It's not just a seminar. So in the process of one of these meetings, Steve told me this story. He was sitting at his house, which is nearby on the California Big Sur coast.

[26:49]

And over to the left of his house, there's a sizable pond about 15 meters away. And it's full of frogs. And he's sitting there in the evening, you know. Just enjoying the evening. And the frogs are going... And the frogs are going... And he, hearing these wonderful noises, would turn to the left. And as he turned, instantly there's silence. Scores of frogs. Scores, do you know that? Twenties. Many twenties of frogs. knew the score and instantly stopped croaking.

[28:12]

And they didn't stop croaking, you know, one at a time. Hey, croak, he's looking this way, croak. You don't have to translate that, do you? But you could translate it so well. Okay. So he experimented. This was quite mysterious that they all stopped instantly. And it's pitch dark. It's night. There wasn't even a moon, he said. And anyway, the frogs, I don't think their eyesight is that great from 15 meters. They say, oh... There's one watchman frog with antlers. But no, it was instantaneous. They all stopped like that. When he sat looking forward, they croaked away. If he looked to the right... It's the same word in German.

[29:32]

My vocabulary is increasing. Okay. Okay. But then he looked to the left and silence. What kind of space is this? How do the frogs know? How do the frogs know he's brought attention to them? And they all stopped. And they all seem to know instantly, not one at a time. From a Buddhist point of view, I'd have to say this is a sentient world. The frogs don't see what Steve was doing.

[30:41]

They feel his attention. And because we have no scientific explanation of this fact, She's a scientist, so she may have trouble saying that. But because we have no scientific explanation, we deny our own experience of such things. But we don't notice it. Or we treat it as an anomaly, oh, it's something peculiar, but we don't say, we live in a sentient world. So it's not just information or a new description, a sentient world.

[31:42]

It's a shift in view. And I would like in this seminar if to some extent we could wake up in a sentient world. Feel the shift to a sentient world. Now I think that's enough to get started now. You all became silent. So it's 11 o'clock, and how many toilets are there? Between 4 and 6.

[32:52]

Oh, we can have a short break. The length of the break is determined by the number of toilets per person. But also to talk. So maybe 11, so around 11.30, a little before we come back. Do we have a drink or anything? Oh, good. All right, thank you very much. When we sit, we let these ordinary ways of seeing and perceiving the world, we let them step into the background a little bit. It's a kind of relaxation. Physical relaxation.

[33:54]

And mental relaxation. Rather let it make sense that the structures of the mind of habits also disappear. As physical relaxation we let the way we hold our body loosen up a bit. And as a physical relaxation we also let go of the way we hold our body. Now what has made sense to you so far, or what hasn't made sense to you so far?

[37:45]

I didn't understand how to or what it is to let the structures of the mind subside. Yeah. Yeah, naturally. Yeah, natürlich. I think sunbathing. Ja, ich empfehle in der Sonne liegen. You know when you go sunbathing? You're on the beach somewhere. And the great sun god, O Tanmi, is making continuous offerings. Pretty soon you don't know whether you've been there 10 minutes or 20 minutes. And perhaps you hear birds or children or something.

[39:13]

Yeah, they're somewhere, but they're neither near nor far. That experience is having the structures of the mind dissolve or less present. So you can think of zazen meditation as a way, a kind of sunbathing. In Buddha's light. In Buddha's light. I already made these experiences, but I don't know how to do it. Well, at first you have to let it happen. I like these kind of questions, which are both astute and basic at the same time.

[40:21]

Because there's so many small things that go into making practice work. Often things we know but don't take seriously. Often things we know but don't take seriously. But one of the givens of yogic practice and why we can call this a yogic practice is because all mental phenomena have a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component. It means you can feel states of mind. And although with your mind it's hard to take the structure to the mind and dissolve the structure to the mind, That's like how does the eye see the eye?

[41:40]

But if you can feel the structures of the mind, and you know the feeling of their dissolving, then you can shift to that feeling and it happens. Like you could imagine, I'm sunbathing now. No worries in the world. I don't have to go back to work for days. I lost my return ticket. Yeah. Something like that. Okay, something else. Yeah. Okay, so...

[42:40]

Ordinary mind is beef stock. Zazen mind is chicken stock. So when you're in zazen mind, many associations come up. Freud basically used the fourth skanda as a meditative technique. The fourth skanda is associative mind. And Freud, basically, in that traditional psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, uses free association as a technique. So you can think of free association as putting stuff in the soup stock. Now, when you meditate, as I said last night, you're generating a fourth mode of mind, not one you're born with.

[44:08]

And we could call it chicken stock. Chicken's good. Isn't chicken soup good for you when you're sick and things like that? Yeah, okay. So you're generating, really Zazen mind is emptiness stock, not chicken stock. But at first it's not emptiness stock, it's some different than beef stock. So when you start to meditate, which is not sleeping and not waking mind, Not only does your karma appear in your mind, all your associations and so forth, but associations you don't know about appear.

[45:19]

What ordinary waking mind does, it only accepts associations that belong to waking mind. And dreaming mind is a kind of place where other things happen that can't happen in consciousness. And zazen mind begins to overlap dreaming mind and waking mind. So our karma in zazen mind is actually cooked differently. And it's more inclusive, so many more things come into the soup than in waking mind. Consciousness is very selective. I could talk endlessly about this, so that's enough. So when you do zazen, one of the basic things for the first couple of years

[46:48]

is to allow a recapitulation of your life. To allow the many things, associations, just float up, don't interfere with it, just let it happen. And you literally reformulate yourself. And we can even say you reparent yourself. Because you take possession of your personal history. Okay, that's enough said. That is enough. Yes. Yes. Question. Yesterday you said that we identify with our thoughts and we place ourselves here. Is there a place, if we are in this sentient world, where we identify ourselves?

[48:14]

In our what? In our above. A Deutsch, bitte. He was a naturalist who explored much of the western United States. And through his writings and observation has much to do with the creation of the immense national park system in the United States. But he got stuck once on a slope, a cliff, where he couldn't get off. And at some point, after about half an hour of not knowing what to do, His perception shifted and he could suddenly see a kind of movement in the shape to the rock face, which he could use to shift his way on and he got down.

[49:29]

He also used to climb, and if a big storm was coming, he'd say, oh, a big storm is coming. He'd go up, climb to the top of a redwood tree and ride it out. So instead of sunbathing, you can imagine that in Zazen. If you're going to do this meditation stuff, you might as well have fun. Thank you. But blind people often, I understand that blind people feel the presence, if there's a wall there, I read this description where they feel the presence of the wall as a disequilibrium, which they have to come into relationship to, to begin to feel complete again.

[50:42]

So I'm not blind, but I imagine that if a blind person was in this room, they can't just ignore, oh, it's space somewhere, it's okay. They have to have some physical sense of the room before they can proceed. Anyway, there's lots. I can give other examples like that, but that's enough. Okay. What else? Yes.

[51:44]

Yesterday you talked about changing the structure of the ego and that there's no such thing as a self and I feel did I misunderstand this or did I just didn't get it? No, I didn't mean to say that if that's what I said. Well, there's definitely such a thing as self. There's definitely such a thing as self. If you understand self as a way of functioning, there's no entity, permanent inherent entity, called self.

[53:03]

At least, Buddhism wholly assumes there's no permanent entity called self. But as a way of functioning, we have to have a self. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sorry to, for those of you, some of you are I think you come to seminars and you think, oh dear, I want some advanced teachings. But what I try to do is speak in such a way that for new people there are teachings you can make sense of. And for other people who have been practicing a long time, There are more advanced or developed teachings hidden in, or at least present in, what I'm speaking about.

[54:11]

Or at least as advanced as I'm capable of. But let me just quickly, without going into it, ask you to go into it. You can't see the world, but what I find useful, thank you, is the function of the self. No, ma'am. Yes. And one is simply create separation. Create connectedness. And the third is to create continuity.

[55:15]

And if you really get... What's so funny? I'm not trying to be funny. Okay. We assume we know the self. It's a basic assumption that's built in our language, Henry. You know, when we say it rains, there's an assumption of a doer, somebody who's doing the rain. I've never located, I've never gone out today, where are you, it? It might be better to say, rain, rain. But if you recognize that you assume you have a self, and you notice that when you are anxious or somebody's insulted you or something,

[56:44]

you're threatened by self, lost itself, or damaged itself. As a kid, I don't know, do you have, in America we have a little rhyme which is, sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you. Well, this was a useful thing to say that the bully was beating on you. But it was patently false. You know, I knew as a little kid even that six and seven didn't hurt too much, but name really hurt. And this is true for most of us all our life. So you've noticed that you are invested in a particular kind of self.

[58:05]

And when it's threatened, there's a lot of anxiety. But if you're practicing, it threatens the self. So there's going to be some anxiety. Okay, so it's useful then to look at what do we use self for? What do we use the self for? And we use it primarily to establish separation, connectedness and continuity. So the first step, if you're serious about practicing, is to take a day or two and really notice how you establish separation.

[59:29]

And you have to do this. You have to know that this is my voice, not her voice. And it's not your father or mother speaking to you from inside your head. Ghost. And it's mental illnesses where people can't distinguish whether it's an inside voice or outside voice. And the immune system, The job of the immune system is a kind of self that identifies what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you. But we also have to establish connectedness. And we do it in the way we dress, talk, and design buildings and so forth. And we also have to establish moment to moment continuity.

[60:50]

So the first step in practice would be to identify the function itself. Think of it as a way of functioning rather than an entity. Okay, now that you've assumed its functions, you can work with my three, but you can also see if you can think of some other functions of self. You won't find this in Buddhist texts. I just made this up. You can make something like this. And I made this up because I kept being faced with the self confronted by practice was in trouble. Once you've decided it's clear that you can look at, without being so anxious, the functioning of self, and it's clear that in any society you have to be able to establish these three things.

[62:09]

A Buddha still has to know the question is from over there, that part of the room, and not that part of the room. And this is really basic when you teach a child to count. One, two, three, four, five. Or say the alphabet. You're basically teaching the child to structure the mind. The mind doesn't have these structures of there and over there until we teach the child. So those structures have to be there. Once you see their structures, then you know you can change the structure. Okay.

[63:29]

So once you, again, now emphasize the functions of self, and say that for the sake of convenience, you choose these three that I've chosen, Try them out. And notice each one. Take separation for a few days and notice how you are establishing separation. As soon as you see somebody, you notice the differences. And you categorize somebody according to whether you take them seriously or not. But imagine a Martian appeared. Four or five arms, no eyes everywhere.

[64:41]

Do I take this seriously or not? Well, that's more like a blind person. What is this in front of me? So then how also do we establish connectedness usually after we've decided whether we take the person seriously or not? Now the big point for the seminar is If Buddhism makes connectedness the primary definition, not separation. And so we first establish connectedness and similarity before we know this difference. And that you can take right there as a teaching that reaches into all of Buddhism.

[65:48]

When you just take as a little practice the next week or two. I'm going to notice similarities before I notice differences. And if I can't find similarities I'll seek them out. I'll still notice differences, but I'll notice them after I establish similarities and connectedness. And that's what leads people in practice to notice the Buddha nature of each person first, and not their personality first.

[66:50]

So once you see the functioning, you can begin to shift without giving up the functioning itself. You can shift the way the priority of the function. And the... And going back to earlier comments, we can shift how we establish continuity. And the main practice in Buddhism for shifting continuity is to bring attention to the breath. and through the breath to the body and phenomena.

[67:56]

And you develop after a while by this simple effort of bringing attention to the breath, you develop a sense of continuity that's established in the present moment and through the present moment. And then you're nourished in the present. If we want to give this flower water, we have to do it in the present. It doesn't help for the flower to remember when it was watered out in the greenhouse. Nor does the flower help much to say, maybe someone's going to come home and water me.

[68:57]

We just found we had to water all the plants in our hotel. There was an orchid in the room, but the orchid was... So we soaked it and then took it out of the water. But we keep trying to get our nourishment from who we were in the past and who we'll be in the future. And that's not very nourishing. So we distract ourselves. When you begin to find your continuity in the immediate present and not in your thoughts, Although you can think.

[70:07]

But your sense of identity and continuity is in the present, in the breath, body and phenomena. You suddenly start finding the world is nourishing you all the time. It's a kind of secret of longevity. You're nourished by the world itself. So anyway, to look at something carefully and then see the possibilities of working with it is practice. Sorry this is taking so long. I'm giving such long answers to short questions. But you know, we have to build a basic common vocabulary. Yeah, like knowing every mode of mind has a physical component.

[71:17]

We should know that or we can't really have a discussion. Okay. Now it's 12.15. What time are we supposed to have lunch, boss? Force. When best is when we're getting hungry. Tomorrow. And we're going to go, we're not meeting in the evening, right? But we're going to meet till 4 or 5, 5.30? We'll play it by ear? We'll have a break, I would suggest, for two hours.

[72:21]

Yeah. Okay, so say that we stop at 12.30. And then we come back at 2.30? Yeah. And are there restaurants in the area which are open? Okay. And we can come back at 2.30 or 3, or if we come back at 2.30, then we go to 5 or something, at least 5.30, I suppose. That's okay with everyone? If it's not, I'm sure you... Okay. Okay. Yes? Yes?

[73:24]

You once, I remember, told a story that you had an experience of practice where you felt all of a sudden a wall that was around you was gone. Does that have anything to do with this shift, you know, in the world that's more felt? I've been thinking of this recently. Yes, okay, so... Roger once said that in his practice there was a point where he suddenly realized that the wall that is always between him and the other and him and his experience, that through the practice it was suddenly gone. And I have thought about it more often lately and my question is now, is it perhaps an effect of when you really make this change from a seen to a felt world? It's so exciting to talk about these things.

[74:26]

Yeah. To try to find a way at least. Okay. What she's referring to fits in with what we can talk about When I first started practicing, I kept wondering what this non-duality stuff is. And there's, again, something like non-duality is something that is a word that covers all of Buddhism. But at first I understood it as simply a subject-object distinction. And the more I brought myself into wondering and noticing, yes, I make a subject-object distinction. I suddenly noticed that I actually felt there was a kind of glass wall between me and the world, between me and other people.

[75:48]

And I could talk to people, communicate, but I didn't really feel connected. And you know, what do you do? You can use language to give yourself basic and simple instructions. I don't feel connected. I would like to feel connected. Yes, I would like to feel more connected. And then you form that as an intention. And the power of certain intentions is that mind has a directionality.

[76:51]

And you join a simple intention with the directionality of the mind. And it begins to... The world itself is presenting virtually an infinity of things every moment. And the views that shape the mind are always drawing out only certain things from that multitude. But when you put an intention into the directionality of the mind, Luckily for us that intentionality doesn't have to be the same as our basic views. In other words, to use the vocabulary we've started to establish, the basic view of your mind may be already separated.

[78:20]

But you can still put an intention in that mind. I'd like to feel more connected. And you have to bring your heart and feeling into that attention. That's a little bit like you have to put gas into the tank of the karma, of the intention. And the headlights begin to notice many things that you hadn't seen before. So I began to notice that it wasn't just that I was making a subject-object distinction. I actually felt there was a kind of glass wall. And at some point, it dissolved. And it dissolved at a point where I began to notice I was more walking with my stomach. Does that make sense?

[79:25]

Instead of walking up here, my body left behind somewhere. I felt I was sort of leading with my stomach. And when I met a new person, my stomach said, Hi, stomach. And when I met a new person, my stomach said, Hey, stomach. And then later, oh yes, et cetera. Okay. Now, when that one aspect of, one part of the pedagogy of Zen practice, emphasized more than in any other form of Buddhism is to develop wisdom views that are in direct contrast to our ingrained views and in a mantra-like way repeating that wisdom view

[80:47]

Which can be as simple as, I'd like to feel more connected. But you don't just say that as an idle wish. You say that in Zen practice, knowing that the constructions that make you feel separated can be dissolved by the intention to feel connected. And you almost can't do it just for yourself. You can't feel connected just for yourself because you want to be important because then that's feeling separate. And you have to put the energy of feeling connected because it would be nice if others felt connected or you could feel connected with others. So when you can put that energy into it, That heartfelt caring, there can be a view shift.

[82:30]

And when the view shift, suddenly the shift happens throughout mind and body. And that's called a Kensho experience. There's a view shift. You haven't completely turned around, but there's a view shift. And there are many such view shifts. And you've had many of them already. And they float around you in little leather bubbles. Because you didn't notice you had them. And so these bubbles don't break. The more you practice... These bubbles begin to collect. And these little shifts in view begin to occur more and more often.

[83:34]

And many of them you'd prepared for for years. But you'd sealed it off the way a oyster seals off a pearl. He thought it was a grain of sand, but it was a pearl. But what that also shows you is there's a pause, a stop, in which this view shift occurs. So what you learn from a Kensho experience is not only that there's been a shift in view, but a certain kind of pause created that shift. So you learn the shift, and if you're attentive, you learn the pause.

[84:41]

The pause from which the shift arose. And Dharma is the teaching of the pause. So we can speak about that after lunch. So now we'll have the pause that refreshes. Maybe we sit for one minute or so. Sunbathing.

[87:02]

Sunbathing. Thank you again for translating. Thank you for coming back after lunch.

[88:07]

Maybe we could open the far window too. If you would. If it gets too cold, you can... I'm not presenting you a revealed teaching.

[89:17]

I'm not speaking from some Buddhist book of the truth. I'm presenting you with a teaching you have to reveal to yourself. And hopefully I'm presenting you with a way to experience yourself in the world. That in your own experience feels like the truth. thoroughly feels like, yes, this is true. This is true within me.

[90:20]

So in a sense I have to debate with you. And you have to debate with yourself. Does this make sense? Can I practice this? What effect does it have on myself? So I have to present you with a number of things. So you have a choice. what happens, what you happen to have access to. And I have to present you with, present it with enough complexity that it begins to answer the questions you debate within yourself about it.

[91:30]

So it's very important that we have some sort of discussion with each other and together as well as just my talking. I'm not using this weekend as a chance for all of us to meditate so much together. But perhaps to have a feeling of meditation. While we have this inner debate with this wisdom teaching. And what I'm saying is not just because you guys are beginners or we're all beginners.

[92:56]

But because Sangha, which is those who practice the truth together, is an intrinsic part of understanding. There's no isolated Buddha. Or even an isolated Buddha enlightened by chance. Called a Pratyeka Buddha. Can't teach. It doesn't really have the groundedness in our larger sentient world. Of an understanding realized through each other. That allows one to teach. And in that sense, here I suppose I'm teaching. And I take responsibility for that I am teaching.

[94:22]

But I'm also, this is my way of practicing. And what I'm speaking with you about, I'm evolving as we're speaking. So my practice is this practice with you. And this debate within myself, what is this? So it's important for me to... And it's important to me that you understand, would understand at least one thing thoroughly.

[95:36]

Maybe we have to speak about a number of things to come to one thing thoroughly. It's okay if we all understand, have a sense of a number of things. But even those number of things will only come together in understanding when we understand one thing thoroughly, at least one thing. So I like the questions and discussion we had earlier. And which brings us back to basic things which we can keep understanding more thoroughly. How to, for example, how to practice with the functions of self.

[96:43]

And to transform the functioning of self. Okay.

[96:45]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.61