We say sometimes it's not something that is not produced, enlightenment and nirvana is not produced, so it can't be created. Okay. But at the same time, although what you say is conceptually correct, something is past. Um... Okay. Anybody else want to say something?

[01:03]

As long as you don't grasp it. I would hope that these six domains of self will help you practice the Delphic dictum, Socratic dictum, to know thyself. But we have a problem. I mean, that's the beginning of the idea in our culture that there's a self that can be known and there's someone to know. And Buddhism accepts all that. But then says, what is this knowing? And what is the self that is known? So I think these categories hopefully could be useful to you. To not seek for yourself, but to look for the functions of self.

[02:35]

And to, as I said, and it's just something you can do a little bit each time you meditate or have in the back of your mind during mindfulness or daily awareness. Notice how you establish and need separateness. Now we're talking here mostly about noticing, not thinking about. Nun, wir reden hier hauptsächlich einfach über beobachten und nicht über nachdenken. And when you're sitting by yourself or with others deep in meditation, notice how separate you are in meditation. Und wenn ihr alleine sitzt oder auch mit anderen, beobachtet einfach mal, wie getrennt ihr seid in eurer Meditation.

[03:41]

You really enter into your own interior space. Und ihr betretet dann wirklich euren eigenen inneren Raum. And that's a kind of separation from your usual self. So that kind of noticing is the practice of separateness. And noticing that there's this space here between us. And that soon you'll be going away. And yet there's some connection too. And we met in Oldenburg and now we're here and there's some connection and yet there's separation. And then deep in the space of your own meditation you also often feel completely connected. So what is that connectedness?

[04:53]

You're just kind of building up an inventory. You're noticing things and noticing when you feel connected, when you feel separate, when you feel both simultaneously and so forth. And if you practice with the experience of continuity and one experience of continuity is just to for me to open my eyes and you're there and I close my eyes I open my eyes and you're still there That's an experience of continuity. I know Rika once was sitting and, may I tell a story about the spider? Sure. Rika was sitting and she could see in her mind's eye, and her eyes were closed, a spider.

[05:57]

And she could really see it, but she didn't open her eyes. And finally she said, I really see this spider. And after about 10 minutes she opened her eyes, and there it was, right there on the wall. In meditation, Ulrike clearly saw a spider crawling along the wall, but she closed her eyes. And she then observed this spider, and at some point she opened her eyes, and a spider sat exactly at the source where she sat in her mind. So here's an experience in meditation but also in ordinary waking measurable consciousness of separation and connectedness and what, you know. Okay. Now, if you begin to see what continuity you need, And see that continuity is a kind of potency.

[06:59]

Because it's your sense of continuity that literally allows you to continue. Now, what sense of continuity do you need to achieve power or strength or stability? Because the more you see how you establish continuity, the more you can be free of the ordinary continuity of an inherent predictable self. If you explore how you establish continuity in your regular self, your ordinary self

[07:59]

You're freer to go deeply into meditation where your usual sense of continuity disappears. Where time and space have different dimensions. And you begin, you know how when you see a movie, sometimes it seems more real than life? Or you see a photograph or a movie of the beach and the beach really hits you with a power that sometimes isn't there when you see the beach yourself. It's, of course, a lot of the work of seeing is already done for you by the camera. But as I tried to say in the last seminar rather unclearly, there's a kind of place in us that's underneath that vividly experiences things.

[09:31]

And sometimes we can only experience that when for some reason our usual discursive mind is turned off by being in the movies or something. Or by reading a novel. So there's a territory of vividness that is wanting to get out. If you can stop and let things be. And then seeing really begins. And you really do feel you're really seeing things.

[10:33]

Mostly you just see things, but sometimes you feel you're really seeing things. Yes, that's one factor, yes. He said in a movie you know you can't interact. Yes, it forces you to stop. But it's interacting with you. And when you have that feeling and you actually are in the world in which you can interact, then you interact more directly and powerfully.

[11:37]

So you see, you stop, you let things be, and you let them disappear. And then they reappear. And they reappear with a fluidity. And that fluidity is not established by substantiation, but by the field of being itself and here's cohesion. And there's a tremendous potency, as I've said, a power. I don't know what word to use, but power in this. And when you begin to perceive in these two ways, the ordinary self and the subtle self or the Buddha nature,

[12:46]

Each act is not just mediating a social consciousness. Normally what we do, our acts, mediate or generate a social reality. But when you begin to experience each of these domains of self, practicing them as I've said, and see each one as a separate domain and then interacting domains, Each act also mediates inner awareness and an inner intimacy.

[13:51]

And you begin to feel completely at ease and intimate with yourself, intimate with everything. And this intimacy of the Sangha. It's not the usual social intimacy. And the intimacy of a lineage. This is past. So that's what teaching of this blind donkey is about. And this intimacy of Linji and the blind donkey we also have inherited.

[14:54]

We may interfere with it or not know what to do when we notice it, but I think we feel this same intimacy. So I hope you can continue to practice. And I hope you can practice so that practice doesn't itself interfere with this intimacy.

[15:41]

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