So again, here's the territory of the self, the familiar and the unique. So I'm just trying to kind of ease ourselves into what I'm calling the territory of the self. And I think it's about time to take a break. It's also the territory, the self. Ah, Los Angeles, coffee. So I'm in the, let's confuse ourselves stage. Let's make distinctions and then see if we can sort them out.

[01:09]

Because the distinctions the distinctions I'm trying to make are somewhere between our familiar distinctions and our Buddhist distinctions. And even in our own language, few of us really sort these things out, as we discussed. Yeah, looking at words like self, psyche, I, you know, Soul, spirit, identity. Okay, so now I'm trying to speak about the territory of self. So let's use two examples we've made already. One example is Giorgio's tape. Yeah. So Sophia is banging on the table.

[02:24]

But she recognizes it's Giorgio's table and not Sophia's table. Now that's already some kind of improvement. She's made a distinction, but she doesn't actually relate it to herself. However, I tried to get her to extend that distinction. So she sees the table as... You know, made by a carpenter and other people use it and so forth. So we could say that's the extended self. We're extending the self. And that again is what we mean when we say self covers everything. If we say that, we've obviously enlarged the territory of self.

[03:42]

If she thinks it's Sophia's table and not Georgia's table, she's narrowed the territory of self. Okay, so let's call that, when we become familiar with things, And as we discussed, the job of consciousness is to make things predictable and cognizable. We could call that something like normative phenomena. Try to sound philosophical. In other words, the phenomenal world that's predictable. Okay. Now, the word phenomena already works for us.

[04:48]

We can use it to mean almost a synonym for world. Phenomena, the world. But phenomena means very specifically in English... The world that is perceptible and cognizable. Perceptible. So it means the world that's, it means already the world that is the mind. Das bedeutet bereits die Welt, wie sie Geist ist. It's the world we can perceive and know.

[05:49]

Das ist die Welt, die wir kennen und wissen können. Okay. Phenomenon, of course, is the plural of phenomenon. Und Phenomenon... Das eine ist eben die Einzahl von Phenomenon. But it might be important, right? Phenomenon... Phenomenon ist der Plural von Phenomenon. Yeah, okay. Now, Sophia the other day climbed the ladder of the dining room. She doesn't need language to do that. Her environment is part of her knowing. Yeah, and if she grows up in a farming community, she herself will be in phenomena in a different way than if she grows up in Vienna.

[06:53]

So the way phenomena... Phenomena carry the self, it's part of the self. Just one of them, yes. The way phenomena carry the self is part of the self. The other day we drove past a building that was painted rather like where Marie-Louise's parents lived She says, like Amama's house. Amama being grandmother. And then she says, I like Amama's house. Okay, so... This isn't about her language, she just is familiar, it carries herself, what she feels familiar with, comfortable with.

[08:11]

So what I'm trying to say is the self is, we're dealing with phenomena, body and mind. The self is carried in the body and in phenomena and the mind. Riding a bicycle, which you cannot do for years and start quite quickly again. It's a kind of procedural memory. It's a part of the self. So, you know, the famous example of Proust and the smell of hawthorns is part of ourself. And it calls back all kinds of memories.

[09:21]

Okay, so what I'm saying is phenomena itself is phenomena is also self. Okay. And it's a process by which we identify ourselves. Okay. Now, if we take the example of the airplane again, You hear the airplane. And you don't think about it. You hardly think about it as an airplane.

[10:24]

You hardly notice it's an airplane. It's the music of the spheres. You hear the air vibrating. You feel the air and the your own mind and so forth, hearing it. And so we can say that's phenomena. Okay. And it's a territory of the self. Then is it a territory of the self? Well, it's a kind of different territory. It's the perception of interdependence. Or it's the perception of impermanence. And impermanence is not really the territory of the self. The territory of the self is what's predictable, cognizable and so forth. As I'm defining it.

[11:35]

You may define it differently. So we could say that the extended self when self covers everything or when you are already familiar with each person you meet. When there's very little self-referencing, that's another kind of self. And that's the territory of what I'm calling non-self or non-referential self. Yeah, or the observing mind instead of the observing self. Because when you feel the airplane, you're feeling observing mind. And the bliss of feeling mind.

[12:45]

Maybe we could say that the self feels satisfaction And the non-self feels bliss. Now, of course, you can say, I got a great birthday present and things, and I felt blissful. I mean, I don't know. I'm just trying to suggest some distinctions. So we can feel a territory of experience and a territory of experience in which we can see It also is a territory of practice, of transformative practice.

[14:01]

Okay, now we can call the extended self compassion. When self covers everything, there's compassion. Now, one of the capacities of mind You know, mind can be structured and so forth. One of the capacities of mind, it can have direction. It can extend outward or it can be pulled inward. Unlike host and guest, these are two very basic distinctions within Zen. They're similar to host and guest, but a little different. And they're sometimes called, again in the koans and particularly the Blue Cliff Records, the gathering way and the granting way.

[15:23]

And you can see that in the koans, different koans emphasize either the gathering way or the granting way, or both. Now, what is the granting way? You're Buddha. You're Buddha. This is Buddha. That's this movement outward with equanimity or with equalness. Which everything has its own value, not its own reality, but its own value. Now I'm following Suzuki Roshi and using value instead of real because real again suggests something's real, something's prior, something's out there in some kind of way having nothing to do with us.

[16:44]

But each thing has its own value. That's also the experience of sameness, which is important in Dzogchen and Zen. You see the differentiation of each thing and each thing has its own value. That's also compassion. So Avalokiteshvara represents compassion. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of wisdom, but in Zen, Avalokiteshvara is emphasized as compassion.

[17:48]

The kanon or kuan yin side of Avalokiteshvara is emphasized in Zen. And the feminine side of Avalokiteshvara. And that was this outward movement, the granting way. You're each Buddha. And Manjushri, the one holding a sword, Which traditionally in the Zendo, there's no Buddha or no Avalokiteshvara. Yeah, in our Zendos, there's a Buddha and so forth because they're also Buddha halls. And also because we don't have a Manjushri statue. Yeah. In Zendos traditionally there's Manjushri.

[19:07]

Because Manjushri is the movement inward. Okay. So that's called the gathering in way. And that's expressed with you're not Buddha. You're not Buddha. Doesn't mean you're a bad guy. So you're not Buddha. But rather that we're not making these distinctions, we're absorbing into this concentration on the fullness of mind. Okay. So Giorgio's table is an example of the granting way. There's the carpenter, there's the tree, the forest, the clouds, the people who will use the table.

[20:07]

If I hear the airplane and I don't name it and all the airplane, it moves into the bliss of mind itself. I don't even know what's going on. I just feel this mind vibrating. Something like that. That represents Manjushri or wisdom. Or emptiness. So the perception of interdependence of connectedness is one territory of the self. And that perception of interdependence can be turned into compassion.

[21:12]

When all those distinctions disappear, That it's an airplane, that it's air, that it's mind. Yeah, that's wisdom. or emptiness. One is form and the other is emptiness. One is giving distinctions and one is taking away distinctions. And you can feel it again physically like the simplest way is the sense of looking at the world with your eyes or making your eyes soft or moving your eyes back into your head and you more feel a field than distinctions. So these are different minds. They're a mind that is gathering in. That's what meditation is. The mind is gathered in and concentrated on itself. A mind concentrated on itself is samadhi.

[22:14]

When you know the stillness of the tree, either moving or still. This is samadhi or emptiness. Because you're perceiving the field of the mind of the tree. emptiness of the tree. It's interesting, the word moment means movement and momentum. So the moment has a kind of stillness, but it also is ready to move. Okay. Now, when we do dharmic practice, when we emphasize the particularity of each moment, again taking this phrase, to complete that which appears,

[23:41]

When you your mindfulness has deepened to the extent that you can actually physically mentally feel each moment. It has its own kind of possibility and then potentiality of completeness and you complete it. You release it. This is the territory for five dharmas and the four marks. Well, there's no self-referential self in the five dharmas, the four marks.

[24:50]

But you still function in this completing which appears. Okay, so we could say that normative phenomena Phenomena which fit certain norms, linguistic and experiential, is the territory of self. But singular phenomena or unique phenomena where each moment is singular and not comparable to anything else is the territory of non-self. But it's not where there's an absence because you're still functioning. You may have moments where self completely dissolves or disappears or melts.

[26:01]

Yes. But that would be an instance of this inward movement or Manjushri practice. But Buddhas and Bodhisattvas also function in the world. So when your Bodhisattva body is present, that would be when you're functioning not through self-referential activity, but non-divine. self-referential activity. But it's a strange thing to explain. I think that Regina Falter I had a kind of funny good example the other day in the seminar.

[27:03]

She seemed to have come up with all by herself. Although it's kind of been the... It's not what she described. It's not unfamiliar to our Dharma Sangha practice, but, you know, it seemed to... Really just her experience from her own practice. She goes to the grocery store. Supermart? You call it a supermart? We don't have anything else than supermarts. Oh, you only have supermarts. What about mini-marts? Sie geht in die Kreislerei. In America, a supermarket has to be big.

[28:06]

Also in America muss ein Supermarkt groß sein. Like three Edekas put together or something like that. Wie drei Edekas oder Abex zusammen. Baumarkt or something like that. Isn't that a German thing? Baumarkt, yeah. Anyway, okay. So she went to the I don't know. Yeah, well, anyway, a grocery store. And she, you know, with children and all that stuff, you typically forget your grocery list. And she's not sure she can remember what's on the list. I teased her saying, I'm glad nobody put her in a hospital afterwards or didn't arrest her. Because she intuitively developed the kind of habit of walking down the aisles with eyes half closed and then reaching out and taking what she needs.

[29:08]

And she found out she reproduced the grocery list usually, without thinking. She let her body get to it. She must know the grocery store well. But again, using the koans as a reference point, the common term is great functioning. And that means functioning without comparative thinking. To function through the body-mind. And trust the body-mind. Okay. Now this isn't the usual territory of self. Walking down the aisle, we would not say that's herself doing it. She's letting something happen, but she's activating that letting. Yeah.

[30:23]

Okay, now, again, I think it must be fairly clear that I'm sort of muddling around in the idea that self has a territory. And we're using the relationship phenomena to try to make clear the territory of self. And which I think is called normative similarity. that things follow norms and are similar. Normative similarity is a philosophical term for what we're talking about. But let's just call it normative phenomena. I think you all understand what I mean by normative phenomena.

[31:37]

Normal phenomena that our self knows. But dharma practice is to know phenomena in its singularity, non-comparableness. Its uniqueness. Every moment you're in the spring of Los Angeles. Okay. Okay. So if we have a territory in the way we know phenomena, which is not self-referential or self-referential in a special way, because when you complete that which appears, Just what you know in your physical and emotional experience is part of how you complete that which appears.

[32:46]

So I'm saying that normative phenomena is the territory of self, And singular phenomena or dharmic phenomena is the territory of non-self. So it became necessary for Buddhism to create an idea like non-self, freedom from self, because the practice of meditation and the transformative practice where you have the perception of interdependence and the perception of emptiness creates a territory which is not the territory itself.

[33:52]

Okay, so that's enough to say right now. Das ist genug für jetzt zu sagen. Also was möchtet ihr sagen? Hast du irgendwelche Gedanken über das, was ich gesprochen habe? Das ist, warum ich mich jedes Jahr so gerne mit euch treffe, weil ihr so gute Gedanken darüber habt, was ich sage. Yeah. Is this self that you described now the field that also is described in Herakles art of archery? Yeah.

[34:53]

Yeah, no one drops, no one shoots the arrow, that kind of feeling. It's very funny to see a Zen archery contest. A Zen archery contest. I first saw it in horseback riding. They have these fantastic horses. And they dress up like they were, you know, 14th century Japanese aristocrats. Samurai. And they get on these horses and the horse is leaping about and the rider is singing and they're supposed to go to a finish line, right?

[36:01]

And they're going like this one. Three cross the finish line and two go this way. But the one that goes this way, it wins. Because he was the one that was most united with his horse. Oh, okay. It takes a while to get, you know... But it's not, you know, it's like, I've given this example many times, my little, she's 40, when she was a little going to Japanese kindergarten, I went to a sports day. So they have six kids lined up here. About where you are. And they have six kids lined up where Siegfried is. And then another six and another six and another six. And then they say, get on the mark, get set, pop! all of them start running at once and they're running like mad and the faster ones in this group swoop and pass the slower ones in the front group and then they all cross the finish line you have no idea who won and you can't figure it out the one who won is the one who kind of put their most energy into the running not the one who was the fastest

[37:38]

And they have similar games where they all play and compete like mad and the red hats against the white hats. You still can't figure out who won. And then the red hats and white hats are going to have this thing of throwing balls again. And the red hats all take their hats off, push them inside out and they're white hats. White hats all become red hats. So from infancy on, the culture teaches 100% effort, not winning. So you have these archery contests. These guys come out, and they stand, and they take their bow, and they look at the target once, and then they lift it in a way that it's... Then they go like this, and then the arrow falls off.

[38:53]

It just falls to the ground. And then they... and then they pick up the arrow and then you know but it's very beautiful it's a kind of dance and it's the one most you can win even if your arrow falls off and doesn't even go toward the target let alone miss the target You could criticize the emphasis of style over productivity or performance. Yeah, but it worked when the Japanese started competing with us for their cars. They didn't make a car to get from point A to point B. They made a car you'd enjoy being in from point A to point B. And it wouldn't break down. So, So it's like art in the art of archery, Zen in the art of archery.

[40:16]

It's quite a good book actually. Someone else? Yes. So from this the question came up in me, what is the difference between will and intention? Okay. I think will is willingness. I mean, excuse me, intention is willingness. You're willing to understand, but you're not going to will yourself to understand. I mean, will is used, but will is... more like persistence, to do it over and over again. So an intention is you try to bring a willingness to understand something.

[41:17]

And is this intention that from the time perspective One momentary action and will persisted on. Is that a distinction you can make? Yeah, I suppose will tries to go over. Willingness keeps being open. I don't know if that makes sense. Seeking? Seeking? You mentioned the sentence, you are not Buddha within the granting way?

[42:21]

No, gathering in way. It surprised me, because I understood it as distinguishing. And it startled me because I understood this sentence as discriminating. And then I thought maybe there is a difference between discriminating and negating. But then maybe I thought maybe it's the difference between discriminating and negating. Yeah, it's like that. It's like you're not Siegfried. Sometimes you're Siegfried, sometimes you're not Siegfried. Not Siegfried, not Felix. And they represent the two different directions. And you represent the two different directions of the mind. Yes. Yes. He is thinking about paradoxon.

[43:28]

Yes. Yes. I distinguish between the self-referential self and the non-self-referential self. But this is not true, because if I distinguish, it's not the self anymore. If you distinguish what? Make what distinction? If I just say this is the self, then I have a distinction to all that which is not the self.

[44:34]

What happened to this green axe? There must have been an animal in there. Excuse me, I'm having a problem with myself. I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. Maybe I answered it though inadvertently with my body, mind. All right, but let's come back to it if we should. Someone else? Yeah? You said Buddhism introduces the idea of the non-self-referential self, and I didn't quite get it, to what end it's introduced.

[45:51]

Because there's a territory of experience in Dharma practice where self doesn't apply. But a territory of knowing phenomena and experience, in which you function, but you function through what we're calling non-self rather than self-referential self. But you can call them both self, but then it's harder to practice, to understand the pedagogy of practice. Now, one thing we have to kind of widen here is if the three functions of self are separation, connectedness, and... And for you, if you've heard this the first time, your immune system, for instance, is an example of self.

[46:58]

It knows what belongs to you.

[47:00]

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