Thank you for coming on this pre-day, this prologue day. And for you to come all the way down from Berlin and try to make clear what I say. I'd like to see if we can together, not just through me, explore memory. What is memory? Because I think memory is... Yeah, intrinsic to understanding self and the minds that we realize in meditation practice.

[01:16]

I must excuse you with me because I'm puzzled about what we have some two different words for memory. That what we remember, remembrance actually is very similar to memory. So I was thinking of how to translate it. Well, usually in English it means what we've stored. Mm-hmm. Gedächtnis. It can be in contents and it can be a function in German, no? Yeah. Gedächtnis. That's good. That's good. Well, let's start out with contents. Yeah. And then we'll shift to function. Mm-hmm. Also dann Erinnerung. Gedächtnis. If it's contents, wenn es Inhalt ist, dann ist es auch Erinnerung. Das, was wir erinnern. Gedächtnis. Der Content ist gespeichert. I've never seen your hair so long. You practically need a, you know, a permanent.

[02:24]

A permanent, do you know what a permanent is? When you have your hair done and it's, a woman has her hair done. You are. Hi. Hi. Okay, so what are we using now for memory? Gedächtnis. Okay. And in English we only have one word, really. You can remember things, but that remembering is a process of retrieving from the memory. Yeah, and one of the central ideas of memory all of Mahayana Buddhism, is the idea of the alaya-vijnana, which is usually translated as the storehouse of experience or just translated as a version of memory.

[03:37]

And really, there's a big difference between early Buddhism and later Buddhism. caught in this or manifested in this word, alaya vijnana. Now, is there any reason for us to understand that? I don't know. You know, mostly for our practice, probably not. But the more thoroughly, regularly you practice, I think it becomes important, particularly if you have to do what I do, to teach.

[04:39]

And if you practice more thoroughly and more regularly, especially when it's like with me, when I teach, it gets a greater importance. But maybe it helps in other ways. Because certainly part of practice is noticing our experience. And we notice our experience partly through the categories that we notice. Yeah, that we're used to or that are pointed out to us. So, you know, Much of practice is about attention, what you bring your attention to. Yeah, you bring your attention to your breath or your body, etc. But actually you're not bringing your attention to your body.

[05:42]

You're bringing attention to the activity of the body or the activity of the breath. And that's very different, actually. So we can say that the whole teaching of the four foundations of mindfulness are what are the most useful, fruitful targets of attention. And the most fruitful is... Attention itself. So if you want your practice to develop beyond just what happens when you sit meditation, if you do, beyond what happens if you happen to

[06:52]

practice various degrees of mindfulness what becomes deepens your practice gets you past the boredom barrier is the fine tuning that happens through knowing what to bring your attention to. And discovering what to bring your attention to. So let me start out with memory for a minute. Some of you, most of you, some of you know Peter Dreyer. Okay. I always have a hard time remembering his name.

[08:11]

And I can't know exactly, but I seem to have a hard time remembering his name, because he's a German person. Sometimes he likes France better, he lives near France, and he speaks French well, but he's still a German person. manchmal gefällt ihm Frankreich besser, er lebt in der Nähe und spricht auch gut, aber eigentlich ist er ein Deutscher. In my mind, he's in the category of a German person. But his name isn't particularly German. At least it could very easily be an American name, Peter Dreyer. Yeah, why not? So when I put on my search engine, yikes. Yeah, fine. He's not in the category of German names.

[09:33]

So I can't find him. But strangely, I can see him very well. His face is no problem. His story, I know a great deal about him. No problem. That's all present. But I can't remember his name. So... Well, first of all, it's clear that there's some kind of structure to memory. Yeah, otherwise, you know, it's because he's not in the category of German names that I have trouble, that's pretty clear. So now, I don't know, I'm interested, I am interested in what your experience is. I'm trying to remember someone's name is.

[10:38]

And I find what I do is then I aim a feeling toward the category names. I mean, I don't know exactly, but as far as I can tell, I don't go through a list of names. I have a feeling and I kind of hunt for it. And what turns up is Terry. Yeah, Terry is a pretty common American name. It's got Y's and R's in it. It has a Y. It doesn't have an epsilon. I'm just kidding. Okay.

[11:40]

So, clearly then, Names are stored under the sounds or look of letters. In me, at least, I don't know about you. So the category American names and Y, somehow I end up with Terry. And then I know it's not Terry, so then I work with not Terry, not Terry, and Dreyer pops up. And then I think, oh, fuck. I know this guy very well. Finally his name appears. But I can also try a different approach.

[12:42]

Because I know a great deal about him. I've known him a long time. I know that his son helped us buy a Volvo. And I can't remember his son's name, but I know cars have axles. Okay, so I think of Axel's name. Axel Dreyer, that's his son. So I can use various approaches to kind of close in on this name. And I know Peter as a former judge and now a clown and a Zen student. It's a natural progression on the path. You give up being judgmental, you become a clown.

[13:45]

Anyway, so then I see the poster, Peter Dreyer at the Kinderfest, the clown. What's his name as a clown? That's another problem. So then I can visualize the poster and see his name. So this is all, you know, a process, some version of this process we all must go through. I think it's a different process when you try to remember a dream. Similar but different. A different process when you know a person's name but you can't put a face to it or you can't put a story to it. Okay. So, again, clearly the mind, at least memory, has some structure, and we have to work with the structure to remember things.

[15:07]

Also ganz klar nochmal, der Geist hat eine Struktur und man muss mit dieser Struktur arbeiten, um Dinge zu erinnern. Now I'm convinced in oral cultures, memory works differently. Und Zen is simultaneously an oral and written tradition. Zen has tried to keep an oral, basically what is an oral tradition alive within a written tradition. And that's what the phrase teaching outside the scriptures means. So in what sense are we engaged right now in an oral tradition? And how does that differ from our usual way of thinking? Yeah, it's important for me to understand things like this.

[16:30]

Because I have a certain responsibility to bring this teaching into our Western culture. Yeah, I have a responsibility to sort of I didn't plan it as a kid, but it happened and my teacher asked me to do it. So I had to think about what am I bringing into, what stream am I bringing into the stream of our Western culture. And are these different boxes, different drawers in a commode? Or is it a spectrum of color and we're somewhere on the spectrum together? Yeah, I think both. And I think both.

[17:39]

And I have to find out which drawer is the western drawer, which drawer is Zen's, and where we are working on the spectrum. No, I think the topic for the seminar is something like, why sitting? Is that right? Oh my gosh. But in fact, it's more or less what I've been thinking about recently. Yeah. Okay. So now let me switch a bit. We're bringing attention to attention.

[18:46]

We would say that's a description of the essence of how we study ourselves. And it's this dynamic of how Buddhism is a psychological and mindological process. And a transformative and often a healing process. Shall we develop a skill through sitting and mindfulness practice? But bringing attention to attention itself. And we can say bringing attention to mind. What is that? What do we mean by that? Well, as you know, it's not simple to translate mind into German.

[20:06]

And in fact, mind, there's no single Sanskrit or Pali or Chinese or Japanese word for mind. The closest equivalent word in Japanese and Chinese means simultaneously heart and mind, and it could be used for either. They don't really distinguish, except by context, heart from mind. There's a word for the physical object of the heart, but that's not usual word for heart. So then somehow what is meant by mind is that, let's call it a feeling territory somewhere between the, a feeling territory which includes the head and the heart. No.

[21:30]

We can't avoid thinking that something called mind is related to the head. Excuse me. We can't avoid thinking that something called mind is related to the head. Because in your experience, if you talk to somebody and their eyes brighten up, you feel their presence or their mind or something like that. Or if we say, at least in English, I can't read his face. It means something like you can't understand him. You don't say, I can't read his shoulder. Of course, if you're a good physiotherapist, you'd say, look at those shoulders, that guy's in trouble.

[22:45]

So there's some kind of, you know, let's not be mystical or magical, there's some kind of territory here that Chinese and Japanese people mean by mind, heart. And I think it's a territory we feel. then it's also a territory we can bring attention to. So what have we got so far? We've got the sense that memory is some sort of structure. And we've got the feeling that attention is

[23:58]

Yeah, the center of practice. The center of studying and transforming oneself. And attention, I think we would agree, is part of the mind. And also attention is, we can bring attention to the activity of the mind. And the activity of the body. Yeah, we're walking, we're bringing attention to the activity of walking. Sitting, you can bring your attention to the non-activity of sitting. And strangely, as you can bring your attention to the activity of sitting, you know, breathing, straightening your posture, and so forth, you can also bring your attention to the non-activity.

[25:23]

You can notice that you're not active. Is that noticing thinking or is that noticing a kind of feeling or just a knowing? So here I'm talking about the ingredients of mind. Now, again, mind is not an English word which has a relationship to various Sanskrit and Chinese and so forth words, Buddhist terms, but it's not an exact translation of any.

[26:26]

But for Buddhism in the West, it turns out to be a very useful word. As in combinations like mindfulness, to be mindful. It's a word that was hardly used at all when I first started practicing. 50 years ago. So now, since then, it's used commonly. People talk about it all the time. Be mindful of what you're doing. And that's the result probably mostly of Buddhism in the background,

[27:37]

in the background. But it's been widely developed by, adopted by all kinds of people and developed. Yeah, so terms like mindfulness are useful. But again, it's an English word. And when we think about mind, do we mean what Zen means by mind? Well, that's actually God. We have feelings. Each of us has feelings. Yeah, we're conscious of things. We have perceptions.

[28:41]

That all must be what Chinese, Japanese and Govetans and Northern Indian Buddhists mean by mind. Yeah, that's... Yeah. So the ingredients of mind I've mentioned, awareness, consciousness, dreaming, etc., feeling, perception, We share that with I don't care whose definition of something called mind. But I don't think we in the West would call them ingredients. We think of them as more intrinsic to us somehow.

[29:44]

We think of consciousness as, yeah, we can see things, and that's consciousness. It's part of being alive, being a human being. Yeah. And we don't think I can do something rather with this consciousness. I mean, unless you take drugs or something. And that was one of the big changes in the 60s, the widespread use of psychedelics made people aware of the mind in a different way. And that was a big change, a change in the West, when in the 60s people started to take psychedelics in a large extent, that they, so to speak, used their mind in a certain way.

[30:44]

the mind became something you can do something with. But it was generally thought even then that you can do it with alcohol or LSD, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, etc. But you didn't think so much about doing it with your posture. But now we talk about, you know, people do a lot of exercise because it makes them feel better, makes their mind better, not just their body better. But until we think of dreaming awareness and so forth as some kind of like an arm. You know, you don't say, oh, my arm's an ingredient.

[31:46]

I'm going to do something with it. I think I'll attach it over here. So mostly we think, don't think of the aspects of mind as ingredients. Already, I would say, that in Asian yogic culture, the aspects of mind, whatever we call them, are considered to be ingredients. And so strongly do they feel that. So clearly do they feel it.

[32:47]

That even if we feel it somewhat, it's still significantly different. And they have less who-ness mixed up with the ingredients. But then the ingredients are more what, whatness than wholeness. And it's a lot easier to think of doing something with what-ness than with who-ness. And what do we do with ingredients? We mix them. Different, yeah, we mix a lot of this and a little bit of this or whatever. So it's very important from the point of view of practice to really get to know the ingredients which make up mind.

[33:52]

Because practice is a way, is about mixing the ingredients in a new way. As I say, I've said probably too often, mostly joking. No, not mostly joking. You either cook your karma or you get cooked by it. And your karma is one of your ingredients. Okay, so maybe that's enough. We need to take a break. Okay, thanks. Organization, the jury said that from now until the order at lunch, we should go at about one o'clock.

[35:10]

We should leave here. At one o'clock? What time are they expecting us, 1.15? Maybe we could make it earlier, but that's, well, it's all set, so. Well, that's a, yeah, I mean, let's see. Okay. Do any of you have anything you could say about memory or whatever we talked about? I wanted to ask you again, I was thinking, I had a question, I was very happy, I was very happy, I had a question for a long time, when I was a child, when I was young, when I was a child, when I was young, when I was a child, [...]

[36:17]

because it's not just about the fingers, but also about the past, the long-term history. Not just because you're on a computer, but because you're working together, or on a computer, or on a computer, but because you have a computer, and [...] you have a computer, That's really interesting to you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I wrote an interview with a guy from a guy from whose name I don't remember but he said about the long term memory his name was Max

[37:27]

No, I'm just kidding. Guy from the Institute. Not nice. It was like the long-term memory wasn't sort of stored like in a computer, but more like a pointillistic painting. And it was probably some contours, and it wasn't something fixed, but you read, one re-does it, but... Also, depending on your moods and feelings and the situation, probably differently. It's not a fixed thing you just get, but something you reconfigurate. Like that. Yeah. I thought you found it very interesting. Okay, so is this this guy's speculation, or has he been doing neurobiological research, or what? Yeah, he researched on that. He did trials. He asked many people on his own and he did a series of trials with people.

[38:33]

Okay. Okay. Yeah, this research has been a fair amount of research done and a lot of speculation done about memory. And it's clear that memories that we... are sure are right are often, you know, something we've repainted the story. And that's an important antidote to these many stories of abuse as a child, which turn out to be, you know, more more psychologically created than actual memories.

[39:49]

Yeah, but I don't think all memory falls into this category this guy is speaking about. I think some memory is pretty exact. You go back to see a building you haven't seen for ten years, exactly the same. I remember exactly the way it was or is. But I've noticed that there's small changes. I've gone back to towns where I lived, and they've built them up, and I can't find anything. All the cues are gone. Okay. Someone else, okay. Say something. Yeah.

[41:05]

The translator is allowed to speak. As long as you translate yourself. I noticed exactly what you pointed out in the beginning that this, and this is sometimes very awkward with patients when you don't know their names, you know the complete history, everything, every pill you gave them, but you don't know the name, so it's really, it's tricky. You know every pill you gave them. Yeah, but not the name. Exactly. But then I noticed there's a sort of, it's like a shift. Actually, nothing gets lost. Nothing is ever lost. So you have to rely on that what you really need to pop up in the right moment. And this is like, you know, from one piece of ice jumping to the other one, you don't know if it works or not. So it's, well, yeah, it's, but it, When it's urgent, it will be ups and downs. So the memory, even with the names that are not there, that works differently with time, that you don't lose anything.

[42:07]

You have to rely on the fact that what is really important appears at the right time, which it usually does, but you still don't believe it. I go see a doctor. He knows every pill he's ever given. It's a . Okay. Yeah, I have a hard time remembering German names. I don't remember English names very well, but a lot better than German names. But I remember people's faces, you know, usually extremely well. Someone else. The same incident happened to me this morning.

[43:15]

I met someone and I didn't remember his name. Formerly, I sort of did it forcefully. I have to relearn, and I sort of pressed myself to do it. Like politicians, they learn that, they're rebelling. Yes, and there was some security that, of course, I know the person's name. Yes, and it was without stress, and if he appears, he appears, and if not, it's not. And that moment, he appeared, popped up. Mm-hmm. Aber ich weiß, dass ich es weiß. And it also happened with other people, which I have forgotten, but I know that I know it.

[44:17]

I remember it. You know you will remember it. Du wirst es erinnern. Du wirst dich daran erinnern. Dann lasst es sich. Dann läuft das irgendwann im Hintergrund. Das kennt ja jeder. Irgendwann kommt es rum. Yeah, and I let it sort of run in the background and somewhere it will appear. When you let it run in the background, you jump from ice floe to ice floe. Are you... Do you have a feeling of some sort of physical state or some kind of feeling of mind that you kind of like hold in the background and hope it appears? Do you have a feeling of some sort of physical state or some kind of mind that you kind of like hold in the background and hope it appears? Do you have a feeling of some sort of physical state or some kind of mind that you kind of like hold in the background and hope it appears? It is a little bit like a machine I switch on and well, you can run in the background. And I can do something else then.

[45:20]

There is sensing, there is feeling, something runs... And in former days it used to be days until it appeared. Since I have some trust, it's much faster. So is it getting better through practicing meditation or just getting better through being older? It happens more because I get older. Age and meditation are in there. Meditation is in there. Okay. Anyone else? Yeah. Yeah. I just would like to add that for me it's quite magical that you can't remember the names very well, because in the first place I think they are abstract, yes, and on the other hand they are not interesting.

[46:34]

Why? There is no story, nothing, only an abstract thought, you know? And it almost, at the moment, it reminds me of what we were saying recently in the Buddha House about the horizon of the legacy, but it's something, a name is something, yes, immediate at the moment. It happens the same at these properties that have lots of patients, and I also remember, very, very stubborn, sugar does everything. You remember the shoulders, yeah. Not the pill, but the shoulders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or it has it to do something with this . Something comes up, the name, and you let go very quickly. Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. Deutsch, bitte. Deutsch? Yes, I think it is very logical that my name is not very well remembered, because first of all, it is not abstract, it is something abstract, almost like in another language, maybe Chinese, first abstract and second uninteresting, and I remember what Rebecca Roche said about the horizon of the medium, I think it is almost like that, a bit like an open name, when you get to know someone,

[48:01]

Thank you. Yeah, I myself, if I don't use a person's name, you know, I'm introduced to somebody and I, at a lecture or seminar, It's virtually impossible to remember that name. But somebody like Peter Dreyer, I've used his name often. I've stayed in his apartment to know his family. So I know the name is somewhere. And I have a particular problem with names in general. This is a different topic. Because I don't think, I guess I think in pictures.

[49:17]

Sort of like an autistic person. So I mean I have three daughters. I call them interchangeably. I know it's a daughter and I go click, [...] which one? And I call my present wife constantly by my ex-wife's name. And I call my ex-wife by my present wife's name. Nope, they don't seem to mind because they realize he meditates too much. Yes, it seems to be the case, but they don't seem to find it so difficult to say, maybe, to lead a militia. I just went to Italy with my former wife and my present wife. My former wife is also the godmother of Sophia. So we had four or five days in Italy. It was quite a lot of fun. And Sophia could figure out which wife I was speaking about, even though I used interchangeable names.

[50:41]

Sophia had figured out, you mean, she was a little irritated sometimes. Sophia, why do you call... Because she thinks, because I have a daughter who's 43 and a daughter who's 27, she thinks my former wife is just another older sister. It's just the big women in her life. But this isn't a problem of age. I've had this since I was born, this problem. But taking Peter Dreyer again, what's interesting to me about it is not that it's hard or difficult to remember names. But the process of finding the name shows me something about how the mind works.

[51:50]

As with Andreas, he can feel into his mind in a sense and let something happen which the name might come up. Okay, if you can feel into your mind and try to let some... process under the surface of the mind occur. A non-conscious process. Are you doing something like thinking non-thinking? This is a famous statement of Yue Shan and Dogen. I mean the story is in steadfast thinking, I mean in steadfast meditation,

[52:51]

Steadfast. Steadfast meditation. Not steadfast meditation. Steadfast. Also in fester, also beständiger Meditation. What do you think? Was denkst du da? And Yue Shan says, none thinking. And Yue Shan sagt, also nicht denken. And then the monk says... well, how do you think non-thinking? And Yue Shan says, beyond thinking. Of course, these are just kind of words about something that doesn't even maybe fall into the category of thinking, but you're trying to say, aim at something. Das sind hier nur Wörter, die etwas beschreiben, was wahrscheinlich gar nicht in die Kategorie des Denkens hineinfällt, aber du zielst auf etwas.

[53:57]

Ja, so in meditation practice, if you have so-called deep meditation, you begin to be in a completely unlanguageable territory. You can have a bodily feel for it. You can have an ability to notice a kind of a energy landscape, or something like that. So, someone else? Yeah. For me, it's like when I'm in lectures or courses, I don't write down what's being said because I think that what is important sort of sticks.

[55:09]

Or is it really so that what is important is left hanging? Or sometimes there is nothing hanging at all, sometimes I don't work at all, because maybe it's just about the mood in the course or whether I liked it there, but for the content I could Sometimes I get insecure and say, well, probably after a year or so, I just sometimes just have a feeling for when I heard it, but not for the content so much. So I start to doubt if really this, what is important, sticks or not. When do I have to be more attentive to the memory, or do I have to put more effort into it, so that it stays more attached, or to find this way in between, between really forcing to keep something in mind, or to trust that it stays there, if it should stay there, that's not difficult.

[56:17]

And I find it difficult and I don't know really what to do. Do I have to sort of put more force into it to really actively remember and hold back what is being said or sort of strengthen my trust that what is important will reappear? So that's important for me. Strengthen your trust. Also, verstärke dein Vertrauen. Because Zen tries to maintain the mind of an oral tradition, there's a pretty strong emphasis on not writing things down. And which results in a rather famous story. So I don't know quite how such a story could work. But we have the records of one famous teacher because supposedly the monk, who's not supposed to write things down, had a paper kimono made for him.

[57:44]

During the lecture, secretly wrote down on his paper kimono what the guy was saying. Now, I just don't see how this would work. He doesn't have a ballpoint pen. They weren't invented then. I can't imagine he had brush and ink. I can't imagine he had brush and ink. I just don't see how it would work. But that's the story. It's probably a memory that's been repainted. It's a string. But anyway, there is this tradition of not writing things down.

[58:50]

And we followed that tradition at the Zen Center for a long time. So the first... Five years or more of Sukhiroshi's lectures, we didn't take them. But finally we got through so much pressure to do it. Finally we did it, and of course it resulted in Zen Mind Beginners Month. This is the paper kimono mp3 player. So if you I'm not writing things down.

[59:53]

Then I'm not speaking to you only in the present, I'm also speaking to your memory. So if I'm skillful as a lecturer, I should speak to your memory and not just to you. And so, in addition, I should know how to say things so they stick to your memory. You said something stick. So I have to have a little internal part of my mind with glue, and it puts glue on certain things, and then it sticks to you. Now what I'm saying just now doesn't have glue on it, but what I'll say in a minute has some glue on it. I'm sort of just joking, but actually in an oral tradition, these things are... What I'm talking about is something that people think about, not exactly in terms of glue, but yes.

[61:13]

And of course, in most oral traditions, it's about a certain... phraseology and often or usually a musical instrument. And they've studied in the 20s, I think, in Turkey and East Asia, I mean Central, what do you call it, Asia Minor? People who still were telling stories in oral tradition, and the instrument, the rhythm of the instrument began to draw up things. They didn't know how they were going to tell the story, but once they start playing, the phraseology, what they want to say, comes up through the instrument

[62:18]

So, but for... In Zen, the instrument is the breath. So I have to... as if I'm going to enter into this in this way, I have to use the breath as my instrument, and you are using your breath as an instrument, which is part of memory then. Okay, now you can well imagine If what I'm saying is connected to the breath, let's hope it is a little bit, then when you're sitting meditation and you bring attention to your breath, you start playing the instrument of this story.

[63:27]

Is there anyone else? There is one more thing. When I come to landscapes or old cities, I often have an indifferent feeling that I remember it, that I know it, even though I don't know it yet. Something came to my mind that when I come into a city or in certain landscapes there is a feeling like, oh, I know that, even if I probably don't know that. It's sort of known to me. That's a bodily feeling of connectedness. I can mentally sort of say, oh, yeah, I've been here or there before. Yeah, well, of course, experiences like that, which are very clear, are one of the most common experiences, which is

[64:54]

seems to verify a past life experience. Yeah, maybe Europe too, probably. Bring an old drum and some other thing and see, oh yeah, that's my drum. And my idea was, I had an idea of the original arch landscape, so to say. Probably the same with us. If it's us when we have such an arch or original mind that some connectedness appears or is felt through that. An arch, landscape arch?

[66:05]

Ur, yeah. Ur? Yeah, you know, ancient, like very ancient. Most ancient. Oh, an ancient landscape. Like an old tree, correct? Yeah. The ocean or anything else. Yeah. Like the ur root you mean? You are? You are. So it's some sort of icon, iconic memory. An icon is a symbol of many things. Yes. For us, an icon is the Russian holy figure. Yeah, but the idea of an icon as an experience in Russia is you look through the icon to God. It doesn't represent God. You look through it to something more fundamental. So here it's about the icon, the icon.

[67:07]

I said that the icon for us is with this icon, but the idea, says Roshi, is that you trust God through the icon. I was just in Bremen. Which is, in much of the town, is pretty nondescript. And I like Bremen, but it's kind of a funky... Funky? Yeah. Funky Hamburg. Put up your dupes. Yeah. But I like the funkiness. Yeah, and it doesn't have... Luckily I said that.

[68:14]

And it doesn't have all these fancy shops like Hamburg. But if you walk into the... The old area where the Rathaus is and so forth. It's extremely beautiful. One of the most beautiful Rathaus I've ever seen. And my feeling is when I look at buildings from the Middle Ages, They gather the mind. The facade, you know, it's a different kind of memory. It's a different mind. articulation kind of gathers the mind, solidifies the mind. So I think if you listen to music, music gathers the mind a certain way.

[69:15]

You go to a movie, a good movie director has to, the different scenes may be gathering the audience's mind in different ways. Gather the mind and the next scene maybe releases it and you gather it again, maybe more strongly with the next scene, something like that. Yeah, and that also is, again, some kind of structure of the mind.

[70:28]

And I think it ends up with a different kind of processes and memory processes. Okay. Does anyone else have something you'd like to say? Yeah. A problem with the term memory. I have two types of memory. What type of memory is sort of directing to truth or real truth? And when I remember, on the other hand, a person's feeling situation, it's sort of that I create or configure memory.

[71:50]

In respect to my social situation, so I get along in the world. So how would you distinguish again simply these two types of memory? Of einfacherweise, wie unterscheidest du diese verschiedenen Arten von Gedächtnis oder Erinnerung? I don't always am able, I'm not always able to distinguish them. This is a big question for me, what this is. Okay. Okay. Let's see what happens if we come to clarify that. Anyone else? Okay.

[73:03]

I'm fascinated by what you're talking about, about the ingredients of my meat. Since the last seminar, I was in tune, especially talking about the who and the what-ness. Who's breathing, what's breathing, meaning like that. I don't know what I'm trying to say. What you said before the break, this thing about karma cooking you or you need cooking your karma. I was just wondering if this whole thing is planting, I don't have to say this, some kind of direction to impersonal, what we would call the or the wholeness seems to be something impersonal to call it collective.

[74:23]

also the idea of karma. So I was just wondering what's actually going on. What I might call karma, some kind of karma, something, and also the experience of it also something impersonal and collective. Okay, yeah, that's good. I don't know... Deutsch, bitte? Someone should say it in Deutsch. Ich war fasziniert vor der Pause... About the ingredients. Ja, ja. Uwe Berussi hat erzählt von den... I wish you wouldn't ask me. To speak at all, you mean, or to speak in German?

[75:55]

No, no, it's just speaking about who is good, because it's also connected to what you said about mapping and structure. Yeah. It's fun, I think. Yeah. Well, I don't think we have to be clear. We don't need to probe into these things. With a lack of clarity is often better than with clarity. Because we kind of have to feel it. Now, let me just ask you another question. My... My sense, and you don't have to answer this, you know, my sense of Ireland is, having been there, you know, not a lot, but a number of times for a while, and of course reading a lot of Irish writers, is Ireland has a kind of almost, certainly a writing and storytelling tradition, a minstrel tradition, something like that.

[77:00]

More than any other European country I know, unless I went farther east. Do you feel something like that? Do you feel anything like that when you're in, say, living in Germany? Do you feel a different relationship to, I don't know what, story, history, back in that time? So a question that you don't necessarily have to answer, but I've read a lot about Ireland and for me it's more than anything else, except for the Asian countries, a reference to writing. Do you feel something different in Ireland than in any other Western European country, as far as these traditions are concerned? Yes and no. Okay. There's something chaotic about Ireland that is very attractive.

[78:05]

It used to be very attractive to me to live in Germany. to be very attractive to live here. Because it was less chaotic than Ireland. More organized and more structured. And now I miss the chaos. Yeah. It's very funny to be in Swiss Italy and then go into Italy. I mean, in Swiss Italy, no one throws anything on the street. You go across the border in Italy, people just... And Switzerland, even the Catholic parts, have an overall Protestant feeling. So I can imagine somebody living on the Swiss side and writing their poetry on the Italian side. Because there's a different kind of relaxed space in Italy than in Switzerland.

[79:25]

Well, I'm enjoying the speculation. I hope you are too. Now, I think I'd like to continue with this oral written tradition, idea. As it relates now to karma. In an oral tradition, Memory is not a text. And it's not a text sewn together by the narrative of self. So people feel less responsible for their actions in the past.

[80:53]

I mean, something happened in the past. They're not so likely to say, I did that. Now karma, strictly speaking, is not in all your experience. Karma is things that you decided to do. And I've often given the example of the two boys in Aspen. You know the story, probably. Two kids in Aspen were up in the mountains somewhere and the Aspen Institute had a music thing going on in the valley and they took their father's guns and they shot him in the air and they killed two women in the, this is terrible, but two old women in the tent, in the music tent.

[82:03]

Since I know those stories, I wonder when I watch in the news in Iraq and places where they start shooting in the air, what happens to all those bullets? And I've read that occasionally they do fall down, come back and kill somebody, but generally they don't. But in this case, this came from shooting and down below, and they killed these two. And the father comes home and they pack the car and they leave. There's no karma for the kids. I didn't intend to kill these two ladies.

[83:09]

Okay, now we have a... That's not what happened, of course. I wouldn't know the story. The police figured out roughly where the bullets had to come from. Went there and found... This family camping there and they arrested the kids because they'd been shooting the gun. But it's still not the same karma as if they'd intended to kill the two ladies. Okay. So in an oral tradition, there's much more the sense that Well, with circumstances, such and such happen. There's not a feeling of, I caused it to happen. So our psychological relationship to our actions And our responsibility for our actions is much more tight than in traditional Buddhist cultures until now.

[84:26]

And I think, I don't think there's any word that's equivalent to guilt. The closest is they have a word for shame. But shame is very different. It's about in the present you do something you're ashamed of doing, and you decide not to do it in the future. And if you decide not to do it in the future, The shame is gone.

[85:28]

But we decide not to do it in the future, but we still feel, oh, I did that, it's terrible. You can be fairly free of shame if you change your behavior. Very difficult to be free of guilt. So I think here we have a difference, really, in the teachings about karma. Do they apply to Western ideas of guilt? I don't think so. Not easily. They don't apply easily. And here it's quite different. This Asian idea of karma, whether it can be applied to our guilt, this guilt, and I think it's actually not that easy. Now there's various directions we can go with this, but maybe it's a good time to sit for a minute and stop.

[86:43]

You want to phone them and tell them we'll be 15 minutes earlier or something? Does it not make any difference? Okay. Your face tells me a lot. Do you want to do this? No, okay, okay, okay, I'm sorry. Let's imagine for a moment that something is floating here.

[88:19]

Maybe mind or awareness is floating. perhaps it's floating in our posture stuck to our posture perhaps it's floating in our breath Perhaps it's floating in the sound of the leaves in the wind. Or floating in the many children's voices.

[89:23]

And then, you're not, maybe, perhaps you're not thinking about the children's voices. But the children's voices and the leaves in the wind are each, you know, in turn, floating in, well, memory or remembrance of leaves in the wind and children's voices so often from the past. Vielleicht treiben aber die Blätter und den Wind und die Stimmen der Kinder auch durch deine Erinnerungen, die vielen Blätter und Kinderstimmen deines Gedächtnisses. In this floating, what is mind? What is karma?

[90:39]

What is self? Mm-hmm.

[91:12]

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