Yeah, I'm always a little, maybe it's obvious, maybe it's not. I'm always a little shy to start speaking into your consciousness. Speaking into your mind about what the mind perhaps might or is. Yes, but at the same time I at least like disturbing myself. Now, I'm not promising to disturb you or anything. But if we have this topic again, Zen and the Western world, we're obviously asking basic questions about Zen.

[01:04]

what kind of situation we're in, practicing Zen in the West. Or considering practicing Zen in the West. Okay. Now yesterday, about half of us were here. And the day before the weekend seminar starts, I just tried to review the possibilities. And if we're going to speak about Zen and our Western world,

[02:27]

Yeah, particularly for just these two or three days. We have to find some focus that brings it together, some problem, some tension. And what we spoke about yesterday was that focus ought to be our experience of self. And I'm emphasizing our experience of self because I'm emphasizing our experience of self. Because, you know, it has something to do with us. And also, it's, as I've said, the history of Buddhism is sort of trying to deal with self and

[03:48]

less self or no self, etc. And the current concern of neurobiology is what is consciousness and more subtly even what is self within consciousness. Or is self within consciousness? Maybe consciousness is in self. I mean, again, I'm using words. using words to bring some kind of shared attention to aspects of our life.

[05:06]

And the words are, of course, not our life. But we have to have some way together to kind of look at our lived experience of self. And since the tradition in Buddhism is that for beginners you search for self. If you were in a traditional monastic kind of And you were the first class entering a monastery. And you were going to be here for a few years. We seal off Shaddil and you can't leave. The first stipulation, the request, would be, please find self.

[06:23]

And you'd spend the first couple of years practicing trying to locate self. You'd be doing other things, of course, but that's in the foreground and background of your practice. So I can introduce today... a search for self. And again, I'm emphasizing the experience of self. Because If we don't start with the experience of self, whatever Buddhism says or neurobiology says won't make any sense to us.

[07:33]

Buddhism is to to know how things actually exist. Whatever that means, the main kind of overarching definition of Buddhism is to live according to how things actually exist. Yeah. So I'm also starting in the Johanneshof seminar a couple of weeks ago. There it was. Myself again exploring how we think about self.

[08:54]

I've often spoken about self as emphasizing its functioning, its function, its functions. But now I'm kind of putting that aside and trying to look at this again with you. Yeah. And I really mean with you. Because I'm not a self alone. Here's another one. He admits he's another one. In a purple shirt yet. Yeah. The only people who wear purple wear other shades of purple as well.

[09:56]

Let's see, your socks, I don't think. No, it's all right. So if I put my finger to my forehead... Yeah, sort of like... What is self? What's here? What are the ingredients that are here? Okay, there's my finger. Where's our flip chart? No, probably not now. I have my forehead. I don't need a flip chart. So what happens when I do this? Well, there's a finger. And I have the sensation of this finger touching This forehead.

[11:11]

But I know it's not just this finger, it's also my finger. I know it's not Neil's. Oh, they're both here. It's mine. So, one of the characteristics of self is that we have a physical location. We also have a temporal location, a location in time. But first of all we have a physical location and the perspective of a physical location. I might, if I have an operation, see the operation from the ceiling. I might, when I go to sleep, feel myself above my body.

[12:14]

But usually not too far above my body. So this physical location that we will live and die. That we know from infancy is not someone else's location. You have to be pretty crazy to think it's someone else's location. You can feel it's inseparable from your mother perhaps. Even your father. Your mother. But still you know it's your location. So really what is this? We all have my location, your location, my location. If Buddhism teaches to be free of self.

[13:44]

Yeah. Whatever that means. And we can try to look into that. But what can freedom from self mean if there's that we absolutely have a sense of this location belonging to us. What happens here happens to me, or something we call me. Even if I wanted to commit suicide. And the word suicide means, in English at least, sui to self-killing, side is to kill.

[14:48]

So you may want to kill the self, but to kill the self you kill the body. Because we know that if we kill the body, the self goes along with it. In most cases, most suicides, the body is happy to stay alive. But the self has other ideas. That's far out. The self has other ideas. Your body is quite happy. Quit messing with me, self. So if we can ask the self to quit messing with us, what the heck kind of self is this? Could we say that Buddhism is a teaching to just become a happy body?

[15:48]

To hell with self, I'm a happy body. There might be some truth. And yesterday I spoke about the practice of no other location mind. Again, as I say in every seminar, you're using words to direct attention And if you really direct attention repeatedly to no other location in mind, and Neil and Antje asked me if maybe I could speak more about this no other location mind.

[17:17]

What can I say though except it has no other location? Okay. But if you do practice with excuse the term iron clad intentions Until you actually achieve something close to or momentarily achieve something close to no other location mind. No memories. Or memories. the minimal needed to get through the door. In other words, if you don't know what a door is, you might try to walk through the wall, so there's a certain amount of memory functioning.

[18:22]

But if you really get so that the whole field of the mind is this location, Most of what we know as self falls away. So as I implied yesterday, if you do this and there are other practices similar to this in Buddhism, Where our usual sense of self falls away, it can be terrifying. What other What can we substitute self?

[19:28]

What can give us some sort of sense of location? What aspects of self remain so that we can at least feel that we have a sense of existence? Well, that's a good question to try to bring to Buddhism. Does the sense of my body continue? Does the happy body rescue us? Anyway, let's go back to touching the forehead. And so there's the one ingredient here is this sense of Eine Zutat hier ist dieses Gefühl von Meinheit oder Ichheit.

[20:45]

Und es gibt auch Beobachten. Und dieses Gefühl von Meinheit ist untrennbar von dem Gefühl von Beobachten. my forefinger on my forehead. But I observe the feeling of this finger, my finger on this forehead. Yeah. And there's an interiority of observing. This observing is an inward observing. There is an observing of an external act, but it's an inward observing. And that inward observing is a kind of container.

[22:04]

As soon as there's inward observing, There are other things in the container. How I feel. When am I doing this stupid thing in front of all you people? Standing with my finger in my forehead. That idea just appeared in my inward observing container. And there's other things. There's kind of memories, ideas. There's an inner image of all of you sitting there. And of course there's the immediate images and there's And there's all kinds of memories and things waiting to appear in the container.

[23:14]

No, is that container the western self or the... yogic self or is it self? What does that contain, this inward interiority? And there's a sense too of the agency of self. In other words, not only can I observe the finger on my forehead, but I feel I have a choice. I can take my finger away or put it back. Now, is that Agency, I'm an agent, I can make things happen.

[24:30]

Is that agency itself? I mean, I think that we have an experience of vocation. Is that so? Could that be what Buddhism wants to get rid of? What Buddhism wants to get rid of? And I have a sense of observing. And that observe is the act of observing the reification of the experience of self, when a baby is in its crib, before it can walk, it's observing. And it tries to elicit things from how it observes and how it acts within that observing.

[25:50]

Smiles or cries or screams. So there's observing, which is virtually inseparable from location. And there's a sense of possessing the location and possessing the observing. And the possessing of the observing also is that we... can make choices within that observing. And is the one who makes the choices, self. Is it self which decided to put the finger to the forehead?

[26:59]

Is it or is it you made me decide to put my finger in my forehead? I mean, if you all weren't in the room, I probably wouldn't be sitting here doing this. So there's some relationship to what we're doing here together that my finger is on my forehead. But certainly... The most common question I have gotten in the last 50 years of practicing reduced to who is practicing. And some days I can respond, and some days I can't respond to these questions.

[28:03]

Who is doing this? Oh, we can also ask, as we did yesterday, what is doing this? What is breathing, or who is breathing? So there's a sense of of observing and interiority. And there's a sense of agency. And there's a sense of responsibility. I think it's There's no way around that this sense of observing and agency is inseparable also from a sense of responsibility.

[29:12]

Ich glaube, man kommt daran nicht vorbei, an diesem, dass dieses Gefühl von beobachten, of observing and... Right here we have morality. If you don't have a sense of responsibility and the agency of observing... Your parents or your society will force it on you. So, I mean, even in the most primitive tribal situations you've been met, or even two cats playing together, If I'm a kitty cat, and you're a big old tomcat, and I go, I'm going to run!

[30:17]

Because I have a sense of responsibility. I did that. I'm sorry. You're allowed to do that. I'm allowed to do that? Oh! So on a basic instinctual level, there's a sense of responsibility that goes with agents. Now, in addition, we human beings, probably more than any other a sentient critter or a creature. Have a sense of, an elaborate sense of narrative coherence. Who we are at any moment.

[31:24]

As I said yesterday, the imagining of ourselves. We imagine ourselves. Okay. And this imagination of ourselves is part and parcel. Do you have that expression? Yeah, but I don't know exactly what it means. Part and parcel means it's all together. Oh, um, I forgot what I was saying. Part and parcel disappeared. The parcel went over there and the part went over there. This imagination of ours. Yeah. Is both tied to and...

[32:28]

independent of our narrative self. We imagine within our narrative and can change our narrative If we can change our narrative, then the imagination which allows us to imagine a different life, Is that imagination, self? Or is self some kind of complexity of all these things? Is the imagined self? The narrative self.

[33:46]

The self as agency. The self as interiority and memory. There's the anchor of exteriority as well as interiority. If I don't have the anchor of circumstance and exteriority, I can get entirely lost in my thoughts and delusions like some people do. So the process of checking up the interior interiority with exteriority is that self. And there's the temporal self, the self which locates our experience in time. I mean, not just narratively, but biologically.

[35:11]

There's a biological location as present, and there's a narrative location as present. No, these are all ingredients we all have, right? Are you saying anything that's new? Maybe you haven't added them all up every morning. I'm waking up to my physical self and my narrative self. Here comes my narrative self along. But maybe you ought to try that every morning. Where's the temporal self? Well, the alarm clock rang. Temporal self, where are you now? Now that I need you. Considering the temporal self, let's have a break. Thanks a lot.

[36:16]

Cheers.

[36:17]

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