You know this body of mine? Well, I don't know if it's mine or not, but I feel located here. And, yeah, is it the self? I guess it belongs sort of to my body. Does it belong to me? Or does it only partly belong to me? These days it's only partly belonging to me. Yeah, I mean, since my operation some years ago, my bodily functions have a mind of their own.

[01:10]

Anyway, they have, yeah, sort of, they have a mind of their own. And not always under control. my command. Yeah. Yeah, so it makes it hard to fit into the schedule sometimes. And then even worse, the radiation, since the radiation. It's very difficult to sit Seiza, that's sitting, you know, your legs underneath you. And I can't sit left half lotus anymore, only right half lotus. And it took me a year and a half or more to get back to be able to sit right half lotus.

[02:21]

And if I get less than somewhere around eight hours of sleep, and I used to be the opposite kind of person, If I get less than eight, you know, I'm so tired, I can hardly walk upstairs to the second floor. So I'm trying to figure out how to do sashins with this body, which doesn't entirely belong to me. I thought, well, maybe I won't do the hot drink statement. Also habe ich mir gedacht, dass ich diesen Vers nach dem Hotdrink nicht mehr mache.

[03:45]

None of you can hear it anyway, so what difference does it make? Ihr könnt es in den Ecken ja sowieso nicht hören, also was für einen Unterschied macht es denn? But Otmar said he would do it for me. Or do it for you, or something like that. So we'll see. Thank you for perhaps being patient with my whatever, yeah. Now when I say to you, as I did yesterday, here are some practices I suggest. And I'm suggesting them to you. Well, who is this you I'm suggesting them to?

[04:46]

Yeah. And when Buddhism has all kinds of teachings which say you do this or do that, who the heck is this you? Yeah, and especially in the context of Buddhist teaching, which is about, so often, about not-self, no substantial self, own being, and so forth. Okay, so, yeah. If we want to practice Buddhism fully, to take advantage of all of its... Certainly such a basic teaching as non-self or not-self or no substantial self should be dealt with.

[06:11]

Yeah. I mean, partly just out of You know, if you're doing this, you might have a little bit of faith in Buddhism. I guess I'm doing Buddhism, and Buddhism teaches this, so I ought to deal with it. But maybe you think, you know, I'm quite happy being a self. I don't need all this stuff. After all, myself decided to come here.

[07:11]

Now you're telling me I don't have one. Who made the decision? If I didn't have a self, I wouldn't be here. Well, maybe. Maybe. Okay, but what are some practical reasons for exploring self? Well, certainly whatever confusion we have in our life and struggle in our life has something to do with self. And whatever mental suffering we have, it has something to do with self. As I mentioned, and it's quite obvious, but anyway, I mentioned it in Hanover. Es ist ziemlich offensichtlich und ich habe es in Hannover bemerkt.

[08:32]

Is the word in English suicide? Ist das englische Wort suicide, also Selbstmord? Sui is self and side is to kill. Okay, das klappt in Deutsch auch so, also Selbstmord. So suicide means to kill the self. Also bedeutet Selbstmord, das Selbst zu töten. But usually the body is quite happy to stay alive. I mean, not always, but usually quite happy to stay alive. Why kill the happy body in order to kill the self? Why not kill the self instead? Oh, now you're sounding like a Buddhist. It's not so easy to kill the self. It's easier to kill the body. It's a direct, you know, quicker result. Okay.

[09:42]

Well, maybe we can transform the self or change it or calm it down. So how do we transform the self or calm it down or whatever? That's the practice of Buddhism. And as I said yesterday, I intended to say, if I didn't, that the first year or two of monastic practice is about locating the experience of self. And transforming and articulating the self. Now, one of the advantages, of course, you have a lot of time in meditation to do it, which really helps.

[11:07]

But you also have the advantage of a mostly non-social context. Where it becomes clear, unless you kind of sneak through practice period, it becomes clear when self continues to function, you know, maybe a little more carefully, but continues to function. Because as soon as you're in your, as a layperson in your everyday life, you have to function in the most usual way through self. And no one's there to check up on you.

[12:09]

And it's very hard to check up on yourself. Yeah. Anyway. And there's nobody there to occasionally insult you to see if you can still be insulted. That's what the 30 blows are all about. That's what it's all about with these 30 hits. What if I said to Peter here, Peter, you're such a ninny, you get 30 blows, you know, in front of everybody. I won't do it, I promise you. What if I said, Peter, you're such a... And I would never hit a founder.

[13:19]

He was one of our founders. But Suki Roshi, I know, grabbed me once. I think I've told this story occasionally. Threw me onto the hall floor. Literally. And he's a little guy. I always thought he was a big guy, but I saw him in photographs. He was a little guy. I mean, you know, I know what I was doing. But anyway, he appeared out of his office. I was supposed to be standing in line in the Zendo to go through the office and greet him as we ended Zazen. And instead I went out the side door, talked to somebody about something and then we were going to go back in the Zendo and wait in line.

[14:24]

So I thought he was in his office. And I came out the side door. And he leapt out of his office, whipped me on the head, and started hitting me. You should understand under my anger. In the early days of my practice, I tried that with students a little bit, and they had ego wounds for years. But in any case, in the context of mostly non-social monastic space, Over the usual five, usually ten years.

[15:46]

Which we just can't do in our lay life. Yeah. You could have lots of opportunities over ten years to soften the edges. and soften the strong self-identity. So, since this kind of monastic situation is not possible, how can we do it in our late life? All I know what to do is to start, actually, in Sashin, for example, in seminars, but Sashin particularly.

[16:47]

And examine self in a way that I hope you can continue in your own situations. Through a mixture of insight and intention. Yeah. Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher who committed suicide, who I like a lot. He says that experimentation on oneself is the only form of identity. Der sagte, dass das Experimentieren mit sich selber die einzige Form der Identität sei.

[17:58]

Experimentation on oneself is the only form of identity. Das Experimentieren mit sich selber ist die einzige Form von Identität. And what he means is there's no being. Was er damit meint, ist, dass es kein Wesen gibt. There's only, not just becoming, there's only becomeings. Da ist nur werden, beziehungsweise viele werden. And those becomeings are becomeings when you experiment with yourself, on yourself. So somehow you live your life as it comes up while at the same time you're experimenting with your life. I might say in a somewhat similar way Experimenting with self is the only way to realize self or true self.

[19:12]

So how can we start this experimentation? Wie können wir also mit diesem Experimentieren beginnen? This search for self. Well, let's start with your deciding to come to Sashin. Lass uns damit anfangen, dass ihr entschieden habt, zum Sashin zu kommen. What were the ingredients of your deciding to come? Well, one of the ingredients is that there was a Sashin scheduled. Eine Zutat war natürlich, dass ein Sashin im Programm steht. That doesn't have much to do with it.

[20:13]

It's a non-self ingredient. Das ist eine Zutat des Nicht-Selbst. But that the Sashin is here in October, for me, is a partially self-ingredient. Because I couldn't imagine going back to the United States as I will on next Friday. Without doing a sashin with you before I leave. I would have felt terrible or incomplete or something. So the date for me is a self-ingredient, but not for you. But maybe you needed to, you felt the need of a purge. Um... I don't really know vaguely what it is.

[21:29]

Do you have another word? To clear out oneself, to clean out oneself. Like when you have a fast, you're purging yourself. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. It can have lots of meanings. Okay. So maybe you decided you needed to sort of go through what happens in a sesshin. Did yourself want to go through this, really? I'm sure lots of people aren't here who self told them, no, my knees, those knees belong to me, you know. So maybe you just take crazy wisdom, like, you know, I like that. So what part of the self wanted to come and what part of the self wanted to be purged? Maybe you had a need to get free of self, a little bit free of self, in order to come to have the self, etc.

[22:53]

You know how the Vasudhimagga starts. Everything's in a confusion. Who's going to untangle this tangle? What starts? The Vasudhimagga. The Vasudhimagga starts. I forgot how it started. I didn't really say it very clearly. The whole world's in a tangle, each of us is in a tangle, something like that. Who's going to untangle this tangle? Only the practitioner, you know, etc. Okay, so how can we untangle this tangle? So I think it's useful to list the reasons, conditions, etc.

[24:09]

that brought you to Sashin. And notice which ones are non-self ingredients and which ones are self ingredients. And which ones are somewhere in between. Now, it is very, actually, this simple kind of ingredient list is very useful to do. You begin to... I mean, if you really get used to making a kind of... It just happens once you get used to the practice. A feel for the ingredients.

[25:11]

The non-self ingredients and the self ingredients. And then the cook. Who cooked these ingredients? Or combined them so that a decision appeared? Or was it something like, you know, Herigel, the German philosopher who wrote the book Zen and the Art of Archery? He says he didn't shoot the arrow, the arrow shot itself. So, how much was this a decision that I had no choice, the decision made itself?

[26:15]

And then, if you start, you know, in this kind of study... See the non-self ingredients, like it's scheduled, you heard about it. You see the self ingredients. And you then see what ingredients combined a certain way make the decision for you. Now this has nothing to do with monk or layperson. But it does have to do with Zen practice. How to bring mindful attention to decision making. In the context of self and non-self.

[27:29]

So there's self, there's non-self, and there's... Non-self ingredients which make the decision for you. Two kinds of non-self. Okay, so that's just, again, practical that we all share. We're here. Somehow a decision was made. And it's characteristic of Buddhism and Zen, Zen Buddhism, to bring a kind of analytic, mindful attention to things.

[28:30]

So your practice can penetrate a situation. Yeah, so you kind of break it up into parts which allow attention to penetrate. So attention kind of breaks the situation into parts and then flows into the parts. So now let's look at one other aspect of attention. aspect of self or a condition for self. Okay, where did this analytic mindful attention occur?

[29:51]

It occurred in an interior space. Some kind of interior space you can feel inside your mind and body. Now let's call it that interiority. Is that interiority self? Do you feel like it belongs to you? Or is it just a biological territory? Yeah, I mean horses are quite hierarchical. And it's wonderful to look in their eyes. But like at Crestown and the stables nearby, you have, I don't know, 30-some horses, and they, boy, they have a hierarchy, who can be in which pasture with whom and so forth.

[31:32]

Now, is that self or...? Or is it some sort of biology or something like that? Yeah. And if we do have the ability to observe, to notice and observe, and that observing creates an interiority, Is that interiority just a biological phenomenon of being a human being? My brother-in-law. My brother-in-outlaw, actually. He's brother-in-law from my first wife. He is a great person.

[32:43]

And he's the wood joinery carpenter who built the interior of the Zendo at Crestone and so forth. But he's also a falconeer. He's one of the two falconers in North America anyway who does not keep the falcons captive. And they just come sometimes and knock on his window and then he comes out. And then they'll play with a pine cone or something.

[33:44]

He'll throw it and the falcon will get it and bring it back. Like a dog. And my two daughters, the middle and the youngest, just went up there to see the goshawk in California. And I said to Sophia, the 10th, what did you like about the goshawk? She said, everything. There's this primeval world, you're looking into something completely different, and yet there's a connection. And Lenny will help, he's kind of a vegetarian, but he helps the goshawk hunt. They hunt together.

[34:55]

Yeah, and sometimes he and the goshawk just sit and watch a sunset for 20 minutes. Anyway... what is self? What is the territory of self? How much is the interiority the container? It's like a container. How much is that interiority a condition for self but not self? And if self, if this interiority, this, let's call it a room, this space, this room, is somehow where one of the places self lives, It's probably good to get to know what kind of room self lives in.

[36:20]

So it's very useful to study interiority. Also ist es sehr nützlich, diese Innenhaftigkeit zu untersuchen. Sort of hold interiority still and move mindful attention or move the observer around in it. Also, dass man diese Innenhaftigkeit, diesen inneren Raum still hält und dann diese achtsame Aufmerksamkeit darin herum bewegt. Now, is the observer you're moving around in the room of The interiority, self, or only sometimes self? Is the observer a function of the interiority or a function of self? This is a very important question.

[37:28]

And can you pull your sense of identifying with the observer away, or is it stuck together, or is it inseparable? If the observer is not identical with self, then the most common question I get in Buddhism for 50 years is who made the decision. is a ridiculous decision, ridiculous question. if the observer is not the self if the observer is not always the self or not identical to self then the question I get all the time who did this who made the decision is a ridiculous question the question has to be a much more subtle question

[38:39]

I think of Wittgenstein's response to, does anything exist at all? He said, you can't ask that question. Because you can only ask that question if something exists. Because the ingredients of the question are made from existence. So you can only be in, I would say, in awe that anything exists, but you can't ask a question about it. Okay, so we're exploring, ending the lecture in a minute. And we're also exploring, is the observer the self, identical with the self? Or can we say the observer is a biological function of interiority, which is sometimes the self?

[40:11]

And in the container of interiority, what are the walls made of? Well, actually, if you begin to move the observer around this room, you'll find that the walls are other rooms. The walls are made from rooms. And this skill, developing this skill to examine interiority is very helpful in lucid dreaming. Okay. We got somewhere from nowhere.

[41:12]

Thank you very much.

[41:25]

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