Does someone know how many people are coming this evening or for tomorrow? Altogether it's 32 applications. So about six, seven are missing who are coming tonight. Okay. So the pre-day is becoming this first day. Okay. These seminars look pretty simple. You know that we start Friday or now we start Friday morning sometimes. And we finish on Friday. Because people have to travel, we finish with lunch on Sunday.

[01:01]

This is the first time Marie-Louise has translated for me, almost since the baby was born. She's wondering if she still has a brain. And so we're seeing if it works today because Christian, who would translate for me, is at his grandmother's funeral. Yeah, so we start out Friday at some point and end Sunday.

[02:04]

During that time, I hope that we can have some introduction to teaching and to practice. and find some way by Sunday that we have a feel for it, if possible, in our body. Yeah, and there's always too much talking during these weekend seminars. And that's entirely my fault. Because I talk too much. But I really don't know how else to introduce teachings. You know, because I found, as many of you know now, that years of practicing with people, that really only

[03:32]

only practice period and sometimes the shins work. Work to really enter someone into the practice. Yeah, at least what I mean by practice. Of course we can sit on our own and practice mindfulness. But the... the... the drama, the...

[04:56]

dramatic, the radical presence of mindfulness is not usually understood. So I thought today I'd try to use the pre-day – that's the first day – to give us a sense of depth of mindfulness practice. So I think we have to understand the burden that's placed on mindfulness in practice. So I thought, in a way, where we left off here was last February.

[06:39]

I did a seminar, I believe, on the Eightfold Path. Isn't that right? Somehow we might continue where we stopped last time. I think in February it was about the eightfold path. When I asked that question, you all should have said, duh. Then I really would have felt encouraged, you know. So, and we just talked about the Eightfold Path at Rostenberg, but I think only Andreas was there, is that right? So I thought I'd start from where I left off in a way in Rostenberg and where I left off last February with the Eightfold Path.

[07:46]

Because mindfulness is the first place that... The Eightfold Path is the first place that mindfulness, the earliest place mindfulness appears in the Buddhist teaching. It says connect down here. Good advice. And generally the adjective is right. I think Lama Govinda uses perfect.

[09:03]

I use sometimes perfecting. I think Lama Govinda has called it perfect or completely and I prefer to call it completely. But all together I prefer integrating. So the first is views. Second is intention. This is a kind of review. In the sense that we should really have these held before us in our living if you're practicing Buddhism.

[10:09]

In the sense that we should keep it in front of us while we practice Buddhism. And they just connect. Yes, please.

[11:38]

So the first is vision, the second is intention, the third is language, but language is not from the spoken word, the fourth is behavior, and the fifth is, how do you call it, life and leadership, no, entertainment. Sixth is effort. Seventh is attention and eighth is concentration. Yes, behavior is better for life. Now the 17... No, I'm just kidding.

[12:39]

Practice divides up, I would say, into something like this. Active. Understanding. Engage practice. Realization. Yeah, active understanding, gaze, realization. What I'm trying to do now is practice something like with you, active understanding. One of the characteristics of Buddhist practice in general, and often Zen in particular, is to try to incorporate the whole of the teaching in a single teaching.

[14:05]

This goes too far sometimes. Like one minute of Zazen is one minute of Buddha. If you want to limit somebody to knowing somebody for one minute, then maybe it's good. But the rest of the minutes they probably won't be much of a Buddha. Although we could look at it the way Sukershi did, is that each of us is always showing what kind of Buddha we are. Okay, so let's try to practice what I'm calling something like active understanding. First of all, what's not in there?

[15:15]

Psychotherapy isn't in there. Well, that's obvious because psychotherapy wasn't around at that time. But just because that's obvious doesn't mean it's not significant that it's not there. It's significant that it's not there, even if there's historical reasons why it's not there. The fact is, there's no idea of psyche or anything close to psychology in there. Does that mean, I think, that Buddhism eliminates the need for psychotherapy? I don't think so.

[16:29]

I think a lot of us have benefited from psychotherapy. I'm not speaking about understanding, looking at the Eightfold Path, as, how can I put it, oh, here's the Eightfold Path and in addition we have psychotherapy and in addition we have this and that. If we're going to approach an understanding and practice of the Eightfold Path, We have to approach it from the way they approached it. Or at least the way they conceptualized it. They conceptualized this as an inclusive path.

[17:30]

Everything is there. Well, first of all, you know, we have to imagine, do we believe that? Maybe we can't believe it. To actively understand this, we're going to have to put whether we believe it or not aside. Now, the way you engage Buddhism as a practice the way you engage Buddhism, as a practice, means not as a belief. But we need some kind of engagement of belief. We need the engagement of belief, the interaction with.

[19:10]

I mean, your most full engagement in something is when you believe it. Yeah, but Buddhism doesn't present itself as something to be believed. Yeah, it's something to be trusted, I think. But you have to discover that you trust it. And that you can have faith in it. And then you get faith.

[20:12]

And then you can have faith. But we really have to engage it in some way. And the first is what I'm calling active understanding. So I think, again, if you say that you're opening a book on Buddhism and you come to this list, you say, well, that's a nice-looking list. I spend a lot of time speaking. I have conduct. I have a job, a livelihood.

[21:18]

This is my kind of list. I've already got three of them accomplished. Yeah, and it's yours. I have a lot of intentions. But you can't look at it that way. If it's just a list, it's just piled on top of each other here or under each other. So what is the relationship among these? Why is views first? That's a little harder to know what our views are.

[22:19]

And why is concentration last? And if Buddhism as a whole arises from the understanding of the world that comes through meditation, Why isn't meditation in there? Why does it end with concentration? What kind of concentration? What kind of mindfulness? What kind of effort? Even what kind of job, what kind of livelihood? Maybe just the speech we have isn't what they mean. Now, unless the term mindfulness was in there, this could be a list from any self-help group, so to say.

[23:35]

So it looks like there's a lot expected of mindfulness. It's the only place Buddhism is clearly present in that list. Unless you have some teaching about which particular views are right, perfect and integrated. Except you have a special idea or list of which views are correct or perfect or integrating or perfect.

[24:38]

Yes. Okay, since we all have speech conduct and livelihood. Yeah, that seems like a likely place to start. To start in the middle of the list is a little funny, but that's the part we already recognize. But how is that the eightfold path? How is our speech integrating or perfecting?

[25:42]

Why the heck is speech in there anyway? It's not, you know, it seems like part of our conduct. Das scheint ja eigentlich eher zu unserem Verhalten oder unserer Lebensführung zu gehören. So if we had took out, we could have a sevenfold path and just have, you know, intentions, conduct, livelihood, etc. Wir könnten ja somit dann ganz einfach einen siebenfachen Pfad haben, dann sind es die Absichten und das Verhalten und so weiter. Why not leave speech out? There's many, many aspects to our life. Why pick speech?

[26:45]

And why give speech as much weight as conduct? Anyway, again, I'm just trying to give you an example of if a teaching appears to you somewhere on your own, or if you hear someone giving a teaching, you should be asking these kind of questions of the teaching. And usually the places where one's most skeptical about it are the actual most potent places or crucial places.

[27:51]

And I think the strangest ones always for me have been views, speech and concentration. Mindfulness, you know, it's easy to get the point of mindfulness. Mindfulness has jumped out of the list and become a common word, at least in psychotherapeutic practice in the United States. I don't know what word is used in Germany, but something similar probably. Yeah, and also, as I think I said in February, right, livelihood has jumped out of the list and become an important idea, particularly during the Vietnam War when people used it to stop making armaments and things like that.

[29:26]

It means what money one earns. No, armaments means... No, no, no, livelihood means... Your job. Yeah, the money, how you get to the money which makes you live. Well, how you get food and a roof and... became a very strong idea that it wasn't to support the war, you couldn't have any job which supported the war. It's a common idea. I mean, DuPont, I think it's DuPont, got in big trouble during the First World Wars, and so did The Nobel selling armaments to both sides of the wars.

[30:51]

Really? That's where the Nobel Prize comes from. He made his money in selling gunpowder and stuff to everybody. This idea comes from the fact that Dupont and Nobel got into trouble So it's not such an unusual idea. But now we have to take those ideas of livelihood and mindfulness and pull them back into the Eightfold Path. Everything our society means by mindfulness is not necessarily mindfulness as a teaching. Just like the common idea of karma is not exactly a Buddhist idea of karma, usually not a Buddhist idea of karma.

[32:00]

Now actually what I'm doing here already is paralleling the eightfold path. What's paralleling in that sense? To run parallel to. Because I'm speaking to you about views. Or their first cousin attitudes. So we have the Eightfold Path starts with views, so that's what we're talking about. Okay. Well, we're going to meet from 10 to 12. 12 about? Lunches at 12.30, is that right?

[33:19]

12.15. 12.15. So we meet from 10 to 12 about? And 2 to 4. And by that point, we're all primed to go into the seminar. Which is just us. So we're primed to be more of us. Okay. So my doing this pre-day thing is to see if How can we bring a teaching home into our life in such a short time? And I need your help to do it. So tonight I expect you guys, the six people who arrive, you guys just take them and shape them up.

[34:42]

They may all run out the door. Okay. Okay. So I also would like to just be open today to questions you might have to just get yourself started here and so forth. Yeah, so at this point, do you have anything you'd like to bring up yourself that you'd like to find out about this seminar or during the seminar or you'd like to wonder what the heck's going on now? One thing I'd like to talk about here in the seminar, maybe not now, is alternating or relationship between so-called bare awareness and learning, at least in literature and also sometimes when I work with mindfulness, there is a lot of the practice is connected with yin-yang, things we're noticing.

[36:25]

And then, On the other hand, if you are maybe not mindful, concentrated enough, you don't need to name. Then naming is something which pulls you back somehow into the first kind of perception and to the side of more conceptualization. And it's better just to keep... to keep that bare attention and just notice things without relating to things you already know, not recognition but just perception. And the small path is leaving all that friendship. Deutsch, bitte. Yes, I would like to talk about this seminar, about the change or the relationship between being single and naming.

[37:35]

In the literature on mindfulness, it is often found that the term is related to naming. The sentence, the disadvantage, is that on the side of conceptualization, of recognition, we draw this point of perception a little bit. While this pure being is actually something that we perceive without having a concept, without having something already known. Okay. Sounds like you pretty much answered your question, but... It sounds as if you've already answered your own question. Yeah, it's the level that Dieter is speaking about.

[38:53]

I'd say something like looking at the brushstrokes of a painting. Right now we're trying to look at the painting. But to really practice, you have to start looking at the brush strokes with which you make your painting. Or how you erase the brush strokes. Okay. Someone else? Don't you think that for each of these points, that you put right in front of each other? I think that's important.

[39:54]

Yes, I think so. No. I mean, that's why I put it up at the top. I can say right views, right intentions. Right has not such a good feeling in English, though. So we are asking what is integrating speech or right speech or what is integrating mindfulness. So let's ask ourselves, what are the integrating intentions, or what are the right intentions, or integrating speaking and right speaking, that's what we ask ourselves.

[40:55]

Thank you very much. Are these steps that you work through, or can you start with concentration or do you start with the views? Are these steps, or can you just choose which one you want to start, like you start with concentration, or do you have to start with views? Yeah, you can't start... You can really only start with speech, conduct and livelihood. And you start with those three by applying mindfulness to them. Okay. So you begin to find out... I've been saying mind constructs mind.

[42:12]

Existence constructs existence. Mind and existence construct each other. Okay. What else is not in this list? There's no self. There's no soul. There's no ego. This is a hell of a path. And, yeah, he's leaving us. No ego in there. Andreas is out. Okay. There's no ego in there. There's nothing for Andreas. And what's the eighth path? The eighth path is the fourth of the four noble truths.

[43:14]

And what is the fourth of the four noble truths? The path to the freedom from suffering. This is the path to the freedom from suffering. I wish I'd known that earlier. I wish I'd known that earlier. But can you believe that? Is it really possible? That's what it says. This stuff's been around 2,500 and more years. Yeah. How can you have a path of freedom from suffering which doesn't speak about ego or self?

[44:34]

Maybe that's why it's a freedom from suffering. So when we practice this, the practice of trying to bring attention or mindfulness to our speech conduct and so forth, shows us what kind of mindfulness is part of this path. And when you bring mindfulness to your speech, it shows you what kind of speech is right speech. And then that in turn shows you what kind of effort and concentration is in the path. And then that shows you the concentration and shows you what kind of views are in the path.

[45:47]

You can't start with views, that's the hardest part. You have to start with what you got and we already recognize we've got speech, conduct and livelihood. Okay, someone else? Yeah. With the thought or the feeling that the views have different, really different levels. Conscious levels and not conscious levels. So when I practice with this to really know actually what to understand right speech, then I have to actually know what is right for me.

[47:03]

And what's the source of this. then I actually notice that I'm usually always only on the very surface of stuff, things, that most of it's all culturally formed. We have to notice that. The reason Zen teachers of the past speak so clearly to us Because they related to their true nature, not their cultural nature.

[48:05]

Having just been in Austria, I was struck by how much our contemporary culture is rooted in the resistance to the Ringstrasse. Luis pointed out to me that they The Ringstrasse replaces the old city wall. And the danger used to be from without. But they replaced the wall because the danger was now from within. And they made straight streets like they did in Paris.

[49:21]

You could shoot people, crowds that were disturbing the peace. Anyway, there was a ferment which led to much of modern psychology and philosophy fermentation. Not as spoiled as fermentation. Philosophy, science, most of the world as we know it came out of that stew pot. Out of which stoopside? Vienna. Oh, this is him. And I was struck, that was all an introduction to say, I was struck by both Arnold Schoenberg and Robert Musil. Both wanting to find not a world view but a true view of the world.

[50:35]

How do we find a true view of the world, not just our cultural worldview? We could also say this is a path in order to discover a true view of the world. And as Andreas has said and Dieter has said, at some point we are shifting now from an active understanding to an engaged practice. Yes, so let's have one more question, you had a question, and then we'll take a break.

[52:09]

I've got a question to sitting, not to the subject. Sometimes it's nice and in my head goes a little bit backwards. Shall I leave it like that or kind of go into it or say, no, that's not how you do it and go straight again? What shall I do? Well, if you're having a good time, you can leave your head the way you want. Some people look pretty blissed out. I hate to move them because they're sitting there... He says in reality they just have a cramp somewhere.

[53:24]

Yeah. Okay, we can talk about that today, this week. And anyway, if not... So let's take a break. Usually the break is half an hour, but if we take half an hour, then we only have half an hour. So let's take 25 minutes. That's the kitchen. If you understand that that's the kitchen, you understand something about emptiness. I'm not kidding. The presence of an absence. Now, is there any... Somebody else wants to ask something.

[54:46]

We eliminated a number of questions by sending the kitchen out. Yeah. Maybe at some point it would be interesting to ask the question, how do we practice these Once in the Eightfold Path in our psychological world, how do we practice with the effect we cause by practicing with the Eightfold Path? Maybe it would be interesting to talk about a certain point of the seminar, for example, how we practice the Eightfold Path or Buddhist practice in our psychologically structured world and how we also practice with the effects that we trigger in the psychological world by, for example, Of course, it's something we have to do.

[55:53]

There's no, all in all, there's no tradition about it. So we have to kind of like feel it out for ourselves. Also müssen wir uns da erstmal das für uns selber erspüren. If I say there's no tradition for it, that doesn't mean they never practiced in a way that was similar to what we would be doing. Wenn ich sage, dafür gibt es keine Tradition, bedeutet das nicht, dass die damals nicht in einer ähnlichen Weise wie wir praktiziert hätten. But their experience occurred to them in different ways than our experience, I think.

[56:56]

We have to look at the way our experience is experienced. Okay. Someone else before I start again? Yes. Yeah. I have a question. What is the difference between consciousness and mindfulness? Body consciousness, in a sense, and mindfulness, what's the difference? We use this word, being conscious of the body. You mean being as a I understand, but you mean as a Buddhist practice we talk about being aware of the body or conscious of the body?

[58:01]

Well, just in general in our society. No, when I practice and I sit and I'm aware of or mindful of my breathing, or for the sounds, or the different energy that I can feel. Then I always have the feeling that I am conscious. Yeah, okay. That sounds good. That's the center of the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness.

[59:12]

So we'll start that this evening. Or tomorrow, or Sunday, or... We'll start sometime soon. And then we can see if it covers what you're... if it relates to what you're saying. Beate? For me it's interesting to look at this right or perfect part of views and intentions and I have a feeling for that that there's also, yeah well there exist views which are mistake also intention or a bad speech, but what is this concentration? So I don't have a feeling for a right or perfect concentration or not perfect concentration.

[60:22]

Or integrating concentration. Or integrating concentration. Well, that's one of the hard parts, is what kind of concentration do they mean? Deutschput. For me it makes sense that there is always the right in front of the eightfold way, i.e. right views, right language or speech, in contrast to where views are simply errors or wrong. Yes, I started to say the key to the Eightfold Path, in a way, is understanding what kind of concentration this is.

[61:38]

And understanding that is helped by recognizing why meditation is not in there. But of course the story that goes with this teaching, and the story often is part of the teaching, Is this teaching was realized while the historical Buddha was sitting in meditation? So it's a kind of given, like that he was alive was given and that he was sitting in meditation is given.

[62:48]

Like a prerequisite. And I wouldn't be surprised if it just popped into his mind like this. And if that's the case, then we'd have to ask what kind of thinking goes on underneath thinking. Okay. Okay, someone else, and I'll say something more, yeah? It's the same question, to write or perfecting.

[63:58]

Is it practical to say, write you at all these points, We are conforming to the teaching as a first approach. And then if there is experience arising from this approach, then you shift to the experience. German, please. For me, it's also the question of this right or perfect. How do you approach this right? And that was the thought. So it would be practical to first You practice a kind of conduct according to what the teaching asks you, and after that you get experiences. Then you shift from looking into the teaching into that what the experience of the teachings bring.

[65:25]

Yeah. That's a very good question. I'm glad you brought it up. And there's two ways of looking at it. One would be To find out what the right teaching is, what the right views are, and then practice them. Then you can just start at the beginning. Yeah, and to some extent we do do that. But all in all, that approach is the opposite of Buddhism. Because that approach assumes a revealed teaching. assumes a Bible or something or other where you can go find out what the right teaching is.

[66:44]

Where is the right teaching? It's in your experience. This is the generator of right teaching. So it's through this you discover what right teaching is. That's why the word right isn't so good. Well, we thought you were in the kitchen. I would have liked to, but I didn't dare. Are you that hungry? So that's why perfecting a gerund is better than even perfect, I think.

[67:49]

Anzig, yes. Did that point get across? Could you try again? Okay. For him, I know. It's for your buddy. It's for your buddy. It's so compassionate of you to bring him in. Okay. Dogen says, don't let the sutras turn you. You turn the sutras.

[68:58]

You, through practicing, decide whether the sutras are true or not. I can give you an exaggerated version of that. I traveled with Brother David Steiner-Rost across the United States once some years ago. I travelled across the USA with my brother Steindl Rast. He's a Zenediktiner, but he's actually a Benediktiner. We travelled from monastery to monastery, where we met people. And even though in every monastery we stopped in, except a cloistered nunnery, And there were, in every one, there were people practicing Zen meditation.

[70:13]

Not all of them, but some monks were. And even in some cells, they had pictures of Sukhyoshi up from the back of the book. Even in some cells they had pictures of Suzuki Roshi, which is on the back of the Zen Mind Beginners Mind. But every morning we joined the service. And they would chant regularly, and God smote his enemies, and then he did this and that, you know. And, you know, some of them were pretty tough, tough statements, and I said... And I said to the monks, do you like chanting all this smoting your enemies stuff? And the ones I talked to said, no, we hate it. And I said, well, change it.

[71:14]

Why not change it? Change something else. Well, we can't do that. It's in the Bible. But in Buddhism you just change it. You say, I don't like this, we're going to chant something different. So although they were meditating in their cells, the view of Buddhism wasn't permeating what they were doing. Okay, so this... These eight relate to each other, so through these eight you discover what right intentions are, for example.

[72:20]

You find out what the right practice is, what the right intentions are. It's an engine, it's a generator, it's a dynamo. And it means if you're in my list over there of active understanding, An engaged practice. Through those two. And when your practice is sufficiently engaged in these eightfold, and there's a realization, then you can say you understand the eightfold path. So if you're really involved, then what happens? You have a realization.

[73:20]

That's the punchline in all Buddhist stories. Sorry. Yeah. Is that better, Nico? Okay. Yeah, you can't really... Thank you, Earhart. You can't really practice the Eightfold Path unless you practice it knowing everything you need is in the path. Now, if you decide, oh yes, I know one of the most fundamental views of Buddhism is impermanence,

[74:22]

Yeah, that's like, yeah, a little help. It's like somebody telling you how to solve the rubric cube. It's more fun to keep doing it yourself until you figure it out. Your hand is figured out. And it's more, you really... Your practice of the Eightfold Path is realized... When you don't need the view of impermanence brought in, that you discover impermanence through this. And recognizing this is the earliest teaching,

[75:44]

I'm saying that this teaching is not the original, but the originary. What's an originary? I'm testing you. Original means it's first, but originary means it's the source. Okay. So the rest of the teaching that you bring to this actually came from this. Okay, so that's one reason I started with this, which is to say that the fourth foundation of mindfulness grew out of this seventh of the eighthfold path. Okay, so that's one of the main points I wanted to bring up in this morning.

[77:19]

Okay, now I'd like to take the last ten minutes or so And talk about why speech is there. Okay. So, what would be integrating speech? Well, how do I know? Well, maybe I can feel it, but I'm talking. What's integrating speech? Now, the Eightfold Path assumes you're going to bring attention to your speech. Now, remember, there's no ego in this thing or self. Also erinnert euch daran, es gibt kein Ego und kein Selbst in diesem Zusammenhang.

[78:40]

Also wo ist dieses Selbst versteckt in diesem achtfachen Wort? Was ist das Selbst? Also das Selbst ist, weil wir uns selber beobachten. Maybe I can't do what I would like to do before lunch, but we'll continue what I'm doing. I didn't translate that self thing. You didn't? No. Why not? Let's just do it again. The two of you are working together. What is the self? It's a word for that we observe things. Now, I would like to give you something you don't have to translate.

[79:44]

You can tell your story of the Basel chimp. Thank you. I saw a documentary about monkeys. The question is, can a monkey recognize itself? And there they put a television in the zoo where the monkey can see itself in the mirror, so to speak, in the moment what it does, as if you pass by the video store and see yourself there. And the apes looked in there. I'm not particularly interested, maybe I made a strange face, what kind of other monkey it is. But one eppin, she looked at it exactly and then did such strange things. And then the monkey does that and so on, some things. And at some point she thought, that's a bit too strange, how this monkey imitates her there.

[80:49]

And her last proof was that she put her hands on her and then waved with her feet. You don't really have to show us anything. That's it. Now you know because it's not translating. And the ears. I did that too. The other chimps either weren't as neurotic or they weren't women. Because somehow the other chimps didn't care about a self, a conscious self. For some reason, this chimp was more alert than the others.

[81:50]

If it had been the Basel chimp in America, we would have thought it was because it was Swiss. But they're all the chimps from Baselian... Is that what you'd say? Baselian? Basel. Okay. So I'm watching Sophia also develop, construct her mind. Und ich beobachte ja auch die Sophia, wie sie ihren Geist entwickelt oder strukturiert. Und wie sie ihre Grenzen konstruiert.

[82:51]

Und sie hat bereits eine Menge Humor. Und Humor kann man gar nicht haben, wenn man nicht über sich selber oder über etwas lachen kann. And she from very early recognized herself in the mirror. She recognized that it was not another child in the mirror. Okay, so what do we have here? Basically we have the mind observing the mind. The mind observing the mind is more fundamental than the self. The fact is, because our mental mentation, our mind can have structure, means it can be divided into parts one part can experience the other part like my right hand can take hold of my left hand they're both just extensions of my heart

[84:18]

I mean, this is really just one thing, and it takes the shape of a right and left arm. But not only can my right hand, I can actually make my right hand feel like it's holding my left hand. Also, ich kann ja wirklich eigentlich meine rechte Hand dazu bringen, dass sie sich fühlt, als ob sie die linke Hand hält. And I can shift so that it feels like my left hand is touching my right hand. Ich kann aber einen Wechsel machen, so dass ich das Gefühl habe, meine linke Hand spürt meine rechte Hand. That's very far out. Das ist etwas sehr... We take it for granted. It's an intimate example of mind over matter. This is mind over matter. I'm not lifting the microphone, but I'm lifting my arm. Or mind is matter.

[85:55]

Okay, so what I'm trying to get at here is this Eightfold Path assumes that mind observing mind is more fundamental than self, soul or ego. Okay, so if you're practicing the Eightfold Path, and you really want to practice as the way it's presented, You can't assume we start with a self or soul. We start with a some kind of genetic event. But almost immediately mind is generating or constructing mind.

[87:18]

Genetic? Did you say genetic before? Yeah. And then almost immediately mind begins to construct mind. Also, wir gehen von einer genetischen Basis aus, aber dann gleich unmittelbar geht es los, dass der Geist den Geist hervorbringt. And existence constructs existence. Und dass die Existenz die Existenz hervorbringt. So, from moment one, we're beginning to construct a particular kind of existence out of many possible existences. No, I would say that we could ask a question, Mike. The existence that's constructed through the Eightfold Path, Does it suffer? Maybe not. Is our suffering based on the existence we've created? So is this a remedy for suffering or is it a fundamental transformation of existence so that we don't suffer?

[88:57]

Or is it a... The latter one, please repeat. The eightfold path is a Fundamental new base. Yeah, is the Eightfold Path, well, is it medicine or magic? In a way it's magic, not medicine. It's not meant to make us feel better or cure us. It's meant to transform us. It doesn't mean we don't still need medicine.

[90:02]

But if we want to look at this seriously, we have to look at it as a transformative practice at a very fundamental level. I'm sorry, I thought of the baby. You thought of the baby? Your brain is changing. It's very bad. I'm glad you think of the baby. It allows me to... All right. It's a transformative practice at a very fundamental level. Okay. So the first teaching of the Eightfold Path is that mind can observe mind. And that is the practice of mindfulness.

[91:19]

And mind not only can observe mind, it can observe all kinds of other things. And mind can observe mind in such a way that we create a self-conscious self. And the spirit can look at the spirit in a way that we can create a self-conscious self. So that means not self-conscious, but...

[91:56]

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