Does anyone have any reflections on your discussion and my comments so far? Oh, okay. Just a question. Can you start in German? Yes. How do I avoid using my practice as a metaphor for liberation and not... and not the meditation as part of my personal history, but rather as a casual approach. How do I avoid using my practice as a metaphor for freedom, meaning that how do I make it so that I see meditation as part of my personal narrative rather than as a vacation from my personal narrative?

[01:19]

Do you want to see it as part of your personal narrative? Do you want to see meditation as part of your personal story? In what way is meditation part of your personal story? Well, I meditate, I try to be a good person, I try to be nice, I try to be everything, I try to do better than, you know. This is a kind of boring meditator. Yeah, go ahead. Well, but, you know, it's okay to have some overlap between being nice in your personal narrative and being a nice bodhisattva too. But I think it is important to experientially feel that you're entering another world, a kind of different world, when you meditate.

[02:31]

And that's symbolized in the traditional Zendo by having a board, which is also the eating board, but it's also the ma board. It represents another space you're going through to where you're going to meditate. And how to really develop the momentum of a different space as a layperson is difficult. And how to really develop the momentum of a different space as a layperson is difficult. But I'm surprised and touched and gratified by how many of you do it so well. Someone else. Yeah. Wenn wir unsere persönliche Geschichte ändern und anders investieren.

[04:13]

When we change our personal narrative and invest differently. Ändert das die Fähigkeit, auch über diese Schwelle zu gehen? Also ermöglichen Änderungen im Leben eine Erleichterung, über die Schwelle zu gehen? Does that change how easy or difficult it is to go across the map or what you call the kind of threshold? Do changes in one's life or in one's narrative make it easier to go across that threshold? Well, of course. It makes it more difficult or easier. Everything is different. If you have a life-threatening illness, it might be easier to start meditating.

[05:16]

Or some other crisis. If you see meditation as some way to transform or benefit the situation, Oder irgendeine Art anderer Krise. Also dann, wenn du Meditation als einen Weg siehst, die Situation zu verbessern. But sometimes a crisis just makes us invest in our story more because we blame our story. So now we're going to correct it through our story. And meditation doesn't produce instant results. Yeah, as Ralph points out, nor does psychotherapy. But, so you really have to believe it will make a difference, if it's going to make a difference.

[06:52]

Because there's a kind of, all I can say, magic or alchemy to commitment. Without almost a kind of absolute commitment that you're going to practice no matter what, no matter what circumstances, that makes practice 99% work. If you don't have that commitment, practice works about 40%, creates a kind of well-being, but not transformations. You need an absolute connectivity, that you practice or meditate, no matter what the circumstances are. Come what may, you meditate or you practice. And that's what makes the practice work, without this commitment, this connectivity.

[07:55]

What was it again? It's a kind of well-being practice and then you lose 40% in the practice. Now, I sort of wouldn't have believed that if I hadn't been practicing 55 years. I am embarrassed to tell you I've been practicing 55 years and I'm still a mess, but that's all right. Das hätte ich mir nie vorstellen können. Das hätte ich nicht geglaubt, wenn ich jetzt nicht schon seit 55 Jahren praktizieren würde. Es ist mir ein bisschen peinlich zu sagen, dass ich schon 55 Jahre praktiziere, weil ich ja immer noch so ein Yeah, but I'm a much more satisfying to myself mess. But I couldn't have been, because I would have thought that practicing does it for me.

[08:58]

Ich hätte mir nicht vorstellen können, dass die Praxis es für mich tut. And it turns out, and I've seen it over and over again with all the people I've practiced with, that practice only makes it work when you really believe it will make it work. As soon as you doubt that, serious practice is over. Or even within the doubt, you still believe. And it's not like believing in God, that you're believing in an experience which requires patience and a sensitivity to notice very small incremental changes.

[10:26]

And that's not the same as believing in God, but here you believe in an experience that requires patience and that needs sensitivity, to notice small, gradual changes. It's natural, I'm sitting here in this little platform and all, that you direct your comments to me, but I hope we can also direct our comments to the group, if anybody else wants to say something, to any of these reflections. And by the way, somehow from the situation it seems natural that you direct your comments to me when I'm sitting here in the front. with the podium and so on. But I hope that you can also direct your comments to each other. And if anyone else has anything else to say about what was said. Yes. Part of the personal story, because we mostly think of the past, of the biographies.

[11:37]

and also part of the personal history, our visions of the future, hopes, directions and also the intentions we have. I would be interested whether when we think about the personal narrative, we first of all think of the past as a narrative, and I'd be interested in hearing whether the future, our anticipations, our hopes, our directionalities, whether they are also considered part of the personal narrative. No, of course. They're what generate the narrative in the present. We can't ask if this idea that Sukirashi used to emphasize in her most request is part of your personal narrative or in some way a reaching into a potentiality of being which is more compassionately grounded in others than our personal narratives.

[12:52]

We can ask ourselves whether this idea that Suzuki Roshi emphasized, namely the feeling of a deepest inner concern, whether that is part of our personal history and whether we feel a potential in it to immerse ourselves in the connections with others or to root there. But I think the image is, how do I get myself, or my experience, in the midst of the weaving? Aber ich glaube, das Bild, das wir da verwenden, ist, wie bekomme ich, how do I get myself? Ja, or your focus, your observing focus. in the midst of the weaving? Until you find your observing capacity in the midst of the weaving, you can't do much. So I would say maybe the first few years of practice are getting yourself in the midst of the weaving.

[14:25]

Yourself, let's put self in about 30 or so quotation marks. of getting yourself in the midst of the weaving and then finding out with wisdom what to do. Anyone else? Yes, Ralph. Could you maybe say a little bit about the function of memory in connection with Buddhism? I briefly talked about this with Nico earlier. There is also a lot of current research that shows how strongly the memory is constantly deceived.

[15:33]

Could you say something about the function of memory from a Buddhist perspective? And I just spoke with Nico about how there are now so many studies showing how often our memory is actually off or is inaccurate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've read some of the studies, but I haven't you know, enough to be familiar with the fact that that's a current view of memory.

[16:40]

I would have to give it some thought and some observation over a period of time to feel I had permission to say much about it to others. But a few comments I can make. What I see is that, well, first of all, is that one's personal narrative bends the memory. Okay. And also, just as we have a process of explaining to ourselves what we did, to put it in the best light, that habit gets deeply ingrained and transformed memories.

[18:09]

And that's almost, in my experience, an instinctive process. Because we need to keep our self-image together in order to function. And our self-image is to a huge... Well, to... You know, you can't... to a very, very great degree, shaped by other people.

[19:14]

And the very fact that it's been shaped through your childhood and life by other people means that what other people think of your self-image becomes extremely crucial and important. And because our self-image is so much shaped or shaped by other people, that's why what other people think about us, about our self-image, suddenly becomes enormously important. Let's call it an instinctive effort to preserve the self-image because it's a kind of honesty, but honesty to keeping yourself intact, even if it's factually untrue. It's a kind of honesty. And that's what makes it difficult. And so there is a kind of instinctive process to keep this self-image intact.

[20:16]

And there is even a kind of honesty or sincerity in it. Only that the honesty consists of keeping the self-image intact, even if the factual does not coincide with it. And it's interesting, and maybe the meditator notices it more than most people, but it is interesting how people reinforce your image, but they talk about you to other people in a way that takes away your self-image. And what is interesting, and this is maybe something that meditators notice more than others, is that how often other people strengthen their own self-image in contact with themselves, but speak to other people in such a way that it actually takes away their own self-image. What other people say about who you are is very different from what they say to your face who you are, etc.

[21:20]

So it's quite a complex dynamic going on. And you can try to work within meditation if you do enough hours of it. with intentionally how to get closer to how other people actually see you. And one way to do that, one starting point, is to stop explaining to yourself what you've done. And watching you, what do they call it in politics, spin, watching you spin the story so it looks better. And while watching you, what they say in German, spin, no, right?

[22:30]

The story of spinning together is said to be even more negative than in English. Well, then when you see yourself in that process, you consciously try to stop it and undo the spin and look at it in the worst way possible from other people's point of view. I mean, that's what I've done. And I would say that another, I only mentioned two more aspects. One is that any one moment, if you're a person like me at least, there's about five different things you could say.

[23:48]

And they all have, they're all sort of true. They're just different perspectives on the same situation. So I might say I will do this. While I'm thinking, yeah, maybe I won't do this. And both are true. I will do it, but I'm almost not sure. And I, yeah, I could have not done it. I'll remember both. And what I meant was, I will do it, but I don't want to. Then I will remember that I didn't want to and not so much that I said I will. So I'm rather suspicious of narrative, let me call it narrative memory, memory that's in some ways woven into our narrative with others.

[25:02]

So I use for myself, and this is the last thing I'll mention, A visual memory as a reference point. So every day I actually, for some reason, want to experiment with that. I put things down in different places in the room. And maybe something turned this way one day and turned that way another day that's sitting on a desk, a stone or something. And then I'll consciously go back the next day, see if I remember exactly where everything was.

[26:16]

And it can be hundreds of objects. You know, I travel with about a thousand It was an exaggeration, but hundreds anyway. And I'm making... Being here, I'm making a visual analysis of this space, and I've been doing it since I first arrived. I never know when I say these things if I'm just sounding peculiar or crazy or everyone's like me. This I haven't figured out yet if everyone's like me. Or to what degree. But when you get to be my age, which is no longer approaching 80, you're supposed to start worrying about your memory.

[27:24]

So I'm checking up on it all the time. So what I would do if we meet here again next year, I'll come in, but before I come, I'll review in my mind this entire room, its space, how many steps were there, what's there, the decoration on the side of it, the inlay, etc. And then see when I walk in the room if it's exactly the same. And so far in my experience, I could draw it. It's so close to similar. And when I come back next year, then I would, before I enter the room, I would look into my mind, the room again in retrospect, and look very closely at how many steps were there, that the closet was there and that a wall was drawn here and all kinds of different aspects. And so far my experience has been that when I do that, then my memory

[28:46]

The first thing I said to Nicole and Gerald when they brought me to the hotel last night. They put me in the same room every year. Just so I can check up on my family. And I noticed immediately the floor has been redone and the boards are in a photograph of wood and not real wood. And I noticed where the repetitions occur throughout the room. Didn't I point that out? The first thing that happens is that I come in and then I immediately notice, okay, this was new in the bathroom and then there were new bars and that the floor was also new in the main room and that there were photographic samples of wood patterns and I could see where the patterns were repeating. So in my experience, my self-serving narrative memory is somehow refreshed or kept in check by my fairly accurately established visual memory.

[30:02]

But how he would check up and develop practice related to my narrative memory, I'd have to give that some more. Aber wie ich eine Praxis entwickeln könnte, um meine Geschichte, die Erinnerung meiner Geschichte genau zu überprüfen, da müsste ich genauer drüber nachdenken. Thanks for bringing it up. I've never spoken about that before. May I ask you briefly? You have described to me that the practice of mindfulness, a form of practice of mindfulness, may be an antidote to this frequent deception of the mind. That from moment to moment This comes from the practice of Sassen in the meditation.

[31:12]

haven't you described, check, follow-up question, that the practice of mindfulness, that that is some kind of antidote to the relatively frequent delusion of one's own memory. Practice of mindfulness coming from the practice of meditation. I mean, what I was speaking about in... Hanover is our attentional stream, our uninterrupted attentional stream, if possible. Worüber ich in Hannover gesprochen habe, ist unser möglichst ununterbrochener Aufmerksamkeitsstrom. And I'll just say in response to what Ralph brought up. Nur in Reaktion als Antwort auf das, was Ralph anspricht.

[32:19]

I won't redo the whole seminar. Even though I didn't wish you all had been there, we would have had fun. But the concept in practice is, when in Zen they say, he never lost sight of the fundamentals, the common saying. And to never lose sight of the fundamental means you stay within an uninterrupted attentional stream. Und das Fundamentale, nie aus den Augen zu verlieren, bedeutet, in einem ununterbrochenen Aufmerksamkeitsstrom zu sein.

[33:21]

Even if your practice is mature enough, pretty much at night too. Und wenn deine Praxis reif genug ist, dann sogar auch nachts. Of course, an uninterrupted attentional stream is impossible. Natürlich ist ein ununterbrochener Aufmerksamkeitsstrom unmöglich, also auf jeden Fall zu Beginn. It needs to become a biological fact, not something, a mental fact. Das muss eine biologische Tatsache werden und nicht eine geistige Tatsache. But you can have an uninterrupted intentional, intentional strength. And that you can maintain and keep renewing. And there's the chemistry or alchemy that I mentioned earlier.

[34:21]

And as you approach through the intention uninterrupted intention uninterruptible intention, you approach the uninterrupted or less interrupted attentional stream. Then we can talk about three streams that are noticed and experienced. Then we can talk about three streams that are experienced and noticed. One is, let's say, a minded stream, I call it a minded stream, which is like the intention to realize an uninterrupted stream. That intention is a minded stream. Like we would say in English at least, I don't have to go out to shop, would you mind the baby?

[35:32]

It means you stay with the baby no matter what. So that's the minded stream. Then there's the psychological or self-referencing stream, where mostly our personal narrative is located. So then you observe, you develop the ability to keep observing the psychological or self-referencing stream, but not feeling you're only identified through it.

[36:38]

You're sort of watching it like a movie, and sometimes you have to enter the plot. And the third is a biological, physiological attentional stream. Which you develop initially through the chemistry of bringing attention to the breath as a biological, energetic presence in the body. And that biological or physiological attentional stream is not languaged. And it's expressed in a phrase like in Koan 20, to hold to the moment before thought arises.

[37:57]

There's a world in that one little statement. It was my original experience for those of you who follow Psycho up, you know, blah, blah, blah, is what Benjamin Levitt came up with in the 70s. This is an experience from me, from those of you who, well, it doesn't matter. Benjamin Levitt discovered this in the 70s. that the body has, in many instances, or most, decided or knows what it's going to do before consciousness gives permission. Nämlich, dass der Körper in vielen Beispielen, in vielen Fällen, schon etwas entschieden hat, noch bevor das Bewusstsein weiß, dass eine Entscheidung getroffen wurde.

[38:58]

And I realize now, only recently, that the psychological community often thought that meant we have no free will. The body is deciding ahead of the mind, and the mind thinks it's making the decisions, but it's just an illusion. But Buddhism makes a different assumption. That knowing functions within the body more fully and accurately than knowing functions within consciousness. Nämlich, dass Wissen und Erkennen im Körper vollständiger und... more fully and... I don't know.

[40:03]

Okay. Vollständiger und präziser wirkt, funktioniert, als im Bewusstsein. Yeah. And the point of practice is to shift your sense of... experiential continuity to the body out of consciousness, although there's a necessary affective and effective relationship between consciousness and the knowing of the body. Is that too much to translate? No, I'll try. And the last thing I didn't catch. I said about the shift from consciousness into the body, and you said because there's a less effective and something else in that identity.

[41:06]

OK. OK. All right. I need my translating team here. Yeah, so the shift into a bodily mind stream, attentional stream, means we are participating in situations and participating with other people in a different way than when our intentional stream is in consciousness. So, as Ralph is implying, I think,

[42:10]

bodily mind attentional stream remembers things differently than the conscious attentional stream because the bodily mind attentional stream is experiencing a different reality or actuality. Okay, that's enough on that one. Yes, go ahead. The question that immediately comes to mind is whether or not when I localize myself in this bodily knowing and from there, whatever, I meet life, that there is less demand for this whole spendings, all these falsifications, than when I am in consciousness, because there is the availability or the proximity to do it in such a way that I stand well and so on.

[43:41]

Yeah. So what I'm wondering from what you're saying is whether when I make this shift to a bodily knowing, bodily stream, then whether that is less seduced by the delusion. that happens in consciousness more easily, where I'm more inclined to make the shoe fit, to make everything appear in a certain light. It's definitely less seduced. And practice is to increase the degree to which it's not seduced. Praxis bedeutet, den Grad, zu dem es sich nicht verführen lässt, zu erhöhen. And we can explore that, I think, directly and indirectly in our continuing conversation here. And I'm very happy that we're having a conversation. I get bored talking all the time.

[44:45]

So, but what time are we going to break for lunch? Three o'clock? No. What time are you thinking of? We started at 9.30, right? And usually we stop around 12.30 then. Is that okay? Should we stop now or should we go on another 15, 20 minutes? What would you like? Someone has to express an opinion. I think in Germany, 12.30 is a very good time to take a break. What about in Austria? I have a question. I know if we're in Portugal, it'd be a good time to take a break at 9.30 tonight. Okay, since we're in Germany and not Portugal, where my daughter has lived, let's take a break. And can we find out when we meet again?

[46:15]

Yes, that's a good idea. If anyone can remember. Are we all mostly staying here or are we going to restaurants? No, I made this soup because there are no restaurants really close and many restaurants are closed today because we have this holiday. Okay, so we don't have to go away. No. So we can start again in a couple hours or hour and a half or something. Yeah, maybe two weeks. What? We're going to be here. We can start at 2 or 2.30? What do you want? 2.30 is good, yeah. 2.30, all right. People can make a little walk. All right. Thanks. Thanks for translating.

[46:55]

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