It would be nice for me if someone had something to say for us to get started. Yes? I have already accepted that I cannot escape this interdependent, intersexual relationship. I accepted that I cannot escape from interdependency. But I'd still like to try. Please, go ahead. So when I sit and I direct my attention at something, Who or what is deciding that this is what I'm going to direct my attention at and what is this I?

[01:05]

You would have to ask that. Well, let me sort of talk at it. Okay. When we again, let's say, wake up in the morning, let's say that our usual sense of self is not present during the night, And when you get up, there's an agenda that presents itself. So you're making a decision within a context of a particular agenda. Also, triffst du innerhalb eines spezifischen Agendas, im Zusammenhang eines spezifischen Agendas, triffst du eine Entscheidung?

[02:29]

Not exactly the same as a continuous you, the same you that woke up. There's a different agenda and a different relationship to the agenda during Zazen. Okay, the sense of it is that if you change your agenda to, let's say, a mandala of Buddha's activities, a self created in that mandala begins to respond to the agenda. So I think if that's the case, and that's what I find to be the case, Okay, then there's no continuous self here.

[03:40]

Your self is interactive with your situation. That doesn't mean, yes. So the agenda creates the self, and the self creates the agenda. Yeah. And that's interdependency. Yeah. It's very hard. It's very hard. Okay. That we're starting out with. And it's not lost on me that the word agenda and agency are the same. Agency is self. Your self is an agent. I'd like to ask something about suffering and mindfulness in relation to suffering. Throughout the last 10 years, I've worked at the university as a psychoanalysis with pedagogues.

[05:10]

And in order to even communicate, it was very important to develop rich concepts so that there was a dialogue between the pedagogues and the psychologists. The other teachers. The central bridge concept for us, for example also with Heinrich Dauber in the collaboration, was professional self-reflection. And the central bridge concept for us also. If you, as an architect or as a philanthropist, are very busy, whether you also need such bridge concepts and how to orientate yourself at all. This was a long introduction just to ask whether if you're a psychologist or psychoanalysis and you're dealing with or are engaged in Zen practice whether there's also the need for bridge concepts so that you can interact with one another.

[06:44]

Yesterday we talked about evenly suspended attention, whereas the term suffering is more of an abstract term, while negative emotions is a very specific term. Also in psychology there's a very complex theory about negative emotions. In Buddhism, there is truth about suffering. And the question is whether the core or a central core of the practice, of the Buddhist practice and of the psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic practice, is not exactly the point, the attention and the truthfulness to direct the negative emotions? because neurosis is characterized by avoiding negative emotions. And so a question is whether practice and also in psychotherapy, whether it's not a kind of core concept to direct mindfulness to negative emotions, also because neurosis, for example, is an avoidance of negative emotions.

[08:15]

Sorry for this long. Oh, it's okay. There are so many elements to what you said. We'd have to sit down for a day or so. I said yesterday morning, before you were here, that at least in Europe and the Americas, psychology is the primary way people define themselves. I think it's not the case with fundamentalist Christians and some other fundamentalist religions. But I think we can say that overall people describe themselves differently. But what interests me is that this fairly conscious interchange has been going on since the 60s, shall we say.

[09:26]

How little, I think, has come out of it. As little as I think it got around. Buddhism and psychology and psychoanalysis, etc. on Google yesterday morning, just for the heck of it, first time I've ever done it. I thought, I'm in Kassel with psychotherapists, I should Google. On the first at least couple pages, I found nothing that I found insightful or accurate.

[10:34]

There were accurate observations, but they were fairly superficial. I meant to say psychology and Buddhist dialogue, but also Christian-Buddhist dialogue. So I asked myself, why is that the case? And it seems to me, probably it's mostly because there's so many obvious similarities. They're both concerned with healing, suffering, and so forth. And we need those bridge concepts.

[11:38]

And we need these bridge concepts between Buddhist practice and psychotherapeutic practice or psychology. Now, that kind of... Well, what I'd like to speak about today, and I don't feel ready to do it just now, but maybe after the break I could, is the concepts of the alaya-vijñāna and the unconscious. Yes, and sometimes the alaya-vijjana is quite superficially translated as the Buddhist idea of the unconscious. But it's really different.

[13:03]

It overlaps for sure, but it's in. Okay, so I'll come to that later. Okay. Because I think if we understand the differences between the unconscious and the alaya vijnana, then that is in effect a bridge concept, because the differences are clear. Would you agree with that? Okay. Now let me relate to... this evenly suspended attention.

[14:05]

Now, so let me speak about how in practice you would come to something like evenly suspended attention. A kind of floating attention. Now, I think one of the big differences is That's the background of, let's, from my point of view, so we can distinguish it, distinguish between floating attention and evenly suspended attention.

[15:13]

Also, damit wir unterscheiden können zwischen einer, okay, jetzt brauche ich andere Worte, zwischen einer schwebenden Aufmerksamkeit und einer gleichwertig freigesetzten Aufmerksamkeit, können wir es vielleicht auch sagen so, The problem is that the German term for free suspended attention is already floating. So it's now hard to make this distinction. So what am I supposed to say? Floating attention, can I say that? You can still say that, yeah. Okay, and you'll know what to translate. I know what to do, yeah. So one of the differences... or one of the attitudes about, well, let me go back. I don't think anybody really knows where Freud got the idea of free association. Or how he hit upon suspended, I mean, freely suspended, evenly suspended attention.

[16:14]

He was a Buddhist. He had more confidence saying, this is my experience. Because, again, to use the word agenda, we can say maybe Freud came up with that because of his genius. Is that hard to say? I said it not so nicely. Oh, you did good. You don't like Freud? I like Freud, but I don't like what I just said. Okay. Okay. But Freud came, we could say it's his agenda, I mean his genius.

[17:26]

But I would say that it's his genius within a particular agenda. In other words, he started working with patients, clients. In a context that went before him of magnetic and hypnotism and so forth. And I believe Schopenhauer and even... So in the interactions with his clients in the context of his historical moment of the late 19th century. And I'm fond of reading about Vienna in those times and reading Robert Musil and so forth.

[18:28]

And in those days they spoke about the, what did they say, the vampire of war, the plague of greed. Somehow in that situation he came up with the idea of free associating and so forth. Okay. Now, in Buddhism there's an emphasis on training consciousness. I think that the degree to which Buddhism is a craft has been almost completely missed by Western Buddhists. There's still somewhere in us the idea of the natural man and Buddha nature. So if you practice meditation, the natural man will pop out and get enlightened and everything's groovy.

[19:49]

And once the enlightenment has occurred, then you know everything. This is a theological concept and practice is the sense, the degree to which practice is a craft. So what you brought up, I'm responding somewhat directly, but I'm also using it as a chance to get started on what I thought I should talk about. For example? There is a...

[21:04]

Yeah, Jung also had this dark night of the soul that he went into, which is, I think, yeah, how do you find things out otherwise? But much of what I see written about the unconscious assumes it was discovered. Which implies it was always there. I just don't think it was always there.

[22:18]

Or it was always there in such different ways that you can't say it's some sort of unit that's lying underneath all human culture. Or I would say it was always there, but then in so different forms that you can't think of such a unity that is always under the human culture. But at least in my superficial impression, Freud called forth Oedipus and Hamlet and Jung called forth... So it's this interaction through which you learn things. Okay, so part of the training, this yogic training, is to create a situation where you learn things. Okay, so let me give you, since this is our theater of functioning,

[23:18]

Und da dies also unser Theater des Funktionierens ist... ...is that the particular can be... ...definiert, sondern durch die Situation hindurch bemerke ich zum Beispiel das Strahlen da in der Brille und diese wunderschöne Kette. Yeah, it's fun. Okay. As soon as I notice that, I go to the field of the room. And I just feel the room. With no thinking, it's just a kind of bodily sensation. Then I come back to Ralph's blinking eyes. And then up to your blue sweater. And then back to the field, and then back to a particular.

[24:31]

Now, if you get in the habit of doing that, and that's a kind of yogic way to make differently subtle our perceptual habits. Subtle are perceptual habits. Now, if you do this and you take this on... Yep. they change and they get, I would say, more subtle. You feel, you find your attention going to people's hand postures. Whether their turtleneck, like their neck, is in their shoulders or it's extended.

[25:38]

Or you begin to feel the breathing of people. So when you're doing this, that's exactly how I give lectures. And if I didn't do that, I can't give a lecture. Because I don't really prepare. I sort of think through, how could you say this, how can I say that, maybe I should say that, but that's all I do. And I have a feeling of, it would be nice if I could say this, but I usually pick something I don't know how to say, And I don't know how to get to it. And if I think, I can't get to it. Because I pick something I can't get to by thinking.

[26:46]

And I find sometimes I do the best I can to kind of feel something out, and I say I just can't do it, but I bet in the seminar I'll find a way to do it. So there's three things. That was this rhythm of a particular field, particular field, particular field. And then from that kind of suspended attention in the midst of that, I start speaking. I can feel it and I start speaking from it. And I learned this from Suzuki Roshi. I always sat right in the front row And I just aligned my body with his.

[28:20]

And my body felt how he was speaking. And that we is silent. I can speak to you, you can speak to me, but the we is silent. Now, even if I go to the clock store you sent me to yesterday, next to the apotheke, there were three or four people in there. One behind a desk. You know, everyone says, oh, everybody speaks English in Germany, don't they? In general, it's not true. I can tell who will speak English easily. If they're recently out of gymnasium and they're female, they'll probably speak English for a while, a few years.

[29:23]

If it's a young man and he clearly is educated and travels, he probably doesn't want to try. I went in that store and there was a repairman, a guy repairing watches, and there was a person there, and nobody spoke a word of English. And usually in a bookstore, this woman, I said, do you speak any English? And she said, no. And I said, Russian? Maybe, all right. And I said, you don't even speak a word of English? No. Then I saw you on your bicycle, so I could ask you about the book, because I wanted to ask her about the books that I bought for Sophia.

[30:28]

Anyway, so in that store... Oh, I don't think it's necessary. In that store, where I got the clock... A Wii was created right away in non-German. I said, 500 kilometers? What's that? I live at 8,000 feet, but I don't live at... I was trying to figure out, then I realized it's radio controlled and it only works within 500 kilometers. Might work in England, I guess. I don't know. So then when I figured out what she meant, I said, but, you know, I'm going to use it in Germany. Oh. So even in the apotheke or the watch store, clock store a little we is created.

[31:31]

And a we is created here. And that we is not generalized. It's not like We Americans, we Germans, it's the we of this situation. Now there's a second we that reinforces the first we. The second we is how we want the world to be. So there's an intersubjective activity between these two we's. Okay. So even in the clock store you can feel when you feel these four people By the way they look, dress, feel, you can feel what kind of human being they hope exists in the world.

[32:51]

So you join them at that point too. Thinking, what do they want? Or to be more at ease, whatever. Now, from a Buddhist point of view, the Buddhist therapist would take on that same second we. And the crucial point would be not knowing about this second we, But the therapist being able to hold the vision of the second we in the midst of the therapy and not be thinking about something else.

[34:07]

To completely hold that because that holding it in yourself and making it happen in yourself has a tantric dimension in making it happen in the other person. Shall I say it again? Yes, please. The ability to hold that vision of that second we in yourself And not be thinking about something else. Or maybe ideally itself wanted to be more at ease. Or whatever it was. There would be a resonant or in Buddhism we think of it as a form of tantrism. Tantric, symbiotic, mirror neurons or whatever in the other person.

[35:09]

For example, if I married somebody the other day, okay so I've got to completely marry the two people in myself and if I can't feel that in myself I won't perform the wedding so I normally only marry people I've been practicing with Because the ceremony is us, it's not God or the government or something like that.

[36:11]

Yeah, so I have to hold that feeling completely all the way through the preparations and through the ceremony. Also muss ich dieses Gefühl vollständig halten, die ganze Zeit durch die Vorbereitung und die Zeremonie hindurch. Because they're hopefully going to be glued together for a lifetime, or I hope decades anyway. There's the 10-year marriage and there's the 20-year ceremony. Weil die hoffentlich ihr ganzes Leben lang oder zumindest über Jahrzehnte hinweg verheiratet sind. It says, well, do you want the tantric 10 or do you want the tantric 20? Then the magic of a ceremony disappears. In a seminar we can try to develop the spell. So this kind of double we has to occur in the ceremony.

[37:29]

And this is part of the training, specific training within Zen practice. So I would say that the emphasis on training you to do this, and we'd have to look at what is the emphasis in one apprenticeship and what's the emphasis in the other apprenticeship. I'm sorry, that took quite a while to kind of... Thanks. All right, so let's have a break. I hope we can find some more bridge concepts.

[38:31]

Seeing this recorded on an iPod, Makes me think maybe you could start downloading my lectures from iTunes. Or from Looney Tunes. Mary Melissa's. So why don't we start with the receding, disappearing sound of the bell.

[39:43]

Now, why did I say tantric? Well, in this context, it's to action at a distance or something like that. And there's two perhaps important ideas here, Dharani and Kshanti. Und da gibt es zwei vermutlich wichtige Ideen hier, und zwar Dharani and Kshanti. And Dharani, you know, we chant Dharani's... We chant Dharani's in the service at Creston. But Dharani's really mean... The root of the idea is... memory or retention.

[41:14]

Yeah, and kashanti means receptivity. So, today and yesterday. Okay, this assumption is that each of us is an activity. And it's in our activity that... the subtleness or fullness of our behavior comes out. What's the word, homunculus, the little guy inside you? Homunculus. There's not some little homunculus like there is in a radio. inside of you.

[42:27]

Kind of telling you what to do. The whole of your activity is you. Okay, so what's in your mind is part of your activity. Now, part of the training of the four foundations of mindfulness are framed to reference. And by that, then you develop a body which can hold mindfulness. And then in your activity, this mindfulness can be present. Because it's held in the body. And it permeates the states of mind and contents of mind.

[43:30]

And it permeates your emotions, feelings, etc., and what causes you to suffer, and so forth. Particularly since they're images of what a human being is coming from the media, the peer media. So let's see if we can lessen self-referential, a self-referential agenda. Okay, your agenda can be Dharma's. Your agenda can be sight-centered awareness.

[44:36]

S-I-T-E. Sight-centered awareness. So let's start from the idea of a sight moment. At each moment, part of Dharma practice is to stabilize yourself in each moment. What's a moment? Well, it's what you experience as a moment. You're physicalizing the moment. So that it's not just time going by, slipping away, you know, with your... It's each moment has a kind of physical feel to it.

[45:46]

And through that you develop what I would call sight-centering awareness. We can say sight-centered consciousness. Okay, if yogically, now what you're trying to do is get a feeling for the Dharma. Now, we could say yogic Zen practice or Dharma practice is to show you ways, let you feel out ways to experience this moment by moment, the fact of this moment by moment intersubjective and interphenomenal relationship. Okay. Okay, so if you establish this sight moment or sight-centering consciousness, Wenn du einen solchen ortszentrierten, would you say, sight moment?

[47:09]

If you establish a sight moment and a sight-centering consciousness. Wenn du einen solchen ortsmoment oder ein ortszentriertes Bewusstsein etablierst. That replaces, pushes to the side most of self-referential thinking. So now you're functioning within a different agenda. So you're not getting rid of the self so much as some kind of like, some kind of like. You're just replacing the agenda. That kind of yogic awareness, etc. You can think of various agendas. And mindfulness running through the four. So you can just go, you can feel them in yourself. Mindful attention, bodyful attention, that's one. Sort of proprioceptive feeling.

[48:22]

The states or qualities of mind. It's kind of Dharani. Of bodyfulness. non-graspable feeling qualities of mind and the contents of mind now this can merge into one feeling so I can have a body full feeling for Andrea or you And inseparable from that, the kind of non-graspable feeling that's present. And I can notice the quality of my mind, which I assume is part of what you experience in me too.

[49:24]

Sorry, that's a part of what she experiences too. And then the contents of mind, meaning everything I see is a content of mind. So dharani means to create phrases which call forth memory and wisdom. What? They shook their heads. A couple of people shook their heads. So Durrani's become... mantras or magical formulas, but their origin, and they're still kind of magical, is to hold phrases in your activity which call forth your memory and set your... hold mindfulness as a foundation for being.

[51:07]

And satipantana, that means to keep mindfulness as a reason to be. Let's translate the foundation of mindfulness, but it really means the practice of being able to hold mindfulness in a way in the body and mind, etc., that it becomes the foundation for your activities. Okay. Now related to this is also the idea of what I call, I could call it bivalent mind. Yes, but I usually like the word I've made up, simultaneous. Simultaneous continuum.

[52:08]

Somebody might say, oh, you Buddhists are practicing duality. So that when you're with somebody, or in a situation, or with yourself, you're aware of what is consciously, is presented by consciousness, And you're simultaneously aware of what's... I've used aware, but simultaneously aware, knowing of, what's presented outside consciousness. Or at least what's accessible to awareness outside of consciousness. And then you hear the phrase or the sentence. And this would be a craft or a or example of training, alerting yourself to kshanti, to increase your receptivity.

[53:56]

Okay. Now, with Mahayana Buddhism, you get the two truths. Formulated by Nagarjuna. And in Rinzai and Soto and Yogacara, at the center of the different schools, Mahayana schools are different versions of the two truths. Okay, now the two truths simply means that there's conventional reality. That the present itself is only duration.

[55:00]

That because everything's changing, there's no reference point. So where you suspend attention when there's no reference point is a yogic skill. Okay. But in fact, we have to function in the world as it's presented to us through consciousness, and so that is a truth. It's the truth of how we function. And the four foundations of mindfulness are also considered to be a basis for increasing your receptivity to how things actually exist.

[56:00]

If you're primarily establishing the self, functions of self, your identity and consciousness, you'll never have a strong feeling for fundamental truth. dein Gefühl für das Selbst hauptsächlich in konventionellen Vorstellungen herstellst, dann hast du nie ein Gefühl für the fundamental truth. So, again, this is a simultaneous perception of form and emptiness. If you just simply train yourself in seeing everything as an activity and not an entity, to finally automatically feel things as activities, then you're seeing the fundamental truth.

[57:15]

You may find an entrance like that, but you begin to feel it. Okay. Okay. So now, the Alaya Vijnana. Okay. That was a little platform. Okay. Now, as I, as a primitive amateur, understand the unconscious, in Freud's view, it's some kind of layered... layered... But it's net fishing. The trawler is the boat.

[58:17]

So the way you trawl the unconscious, discover what's in the unconscious, is I think that the main three methods I know are dream analysis, Free association. And sometimes hypnotism. Are there others? Transference. Okay. So you project onto others what you're hiding from yourself. Boy, have I been subject to that. You should see the gaping wounds I have. Okay. You're good. Thanks, that's helpful. All right, now, Sometimes people say now, what else is in the unconscious?

[59:36]

That's not reached by these methods. Because of its manifestations. The slips of the tongue. In dreams. Through free association. Hypnotism. But those are the techniques by which we discover the unconscious. So there's a relationship between the techniques used to discover the unconscious and what's in the unconscious. Yeah. Okay. So I... Anyway, that's it. I won't say more. The way to think of the alaya-vijjana is that it's sediment. Sediment. Sediment is like sediment.

[60:48]

And there's two words in English, alluvion, O-N, and alluvium, U-N. You don't have to try to translate it. Alluvion, O-N, means the action of water against the shore of a bank, of a river. So you understand the image? The river is picking up dirt all the time and stuff, right? It's eroding the edge of the stream, yeah. Okay, so that action of the water against something is called alluvium, and alluvia or alluvium is what is deposited. So now if you imagine that all of our activity is like water constantly sedimenting the interactions you've had with the world and other people since you were born.

[62:03]

So do you have that image? So basically the sense is virtually all of your experience that you've ever had is sedimented as the alive Vishnu. Also, grundsätzlich ist da das Gefühl, dass alle Erfahrungen, die du jemals hattest, im Alaya Vijnana segmentiert ist. And, if your awareness... Now, this sedimented Alaya Vijnana is interdependent with and interactive with phenomena. It's not in a container inside you. Yeah. And I think unconscious functions within some idea of a container. Probably. Psychotherapists who probably get far beyond theory in their actual actions don't think of it as a container.

[63:43]

But virtually all translators Buddhist scholars try to translate the Alaya Vijñāna, translate it within the concept of a container. Okay. And it's wrong. They're wrong. Sorry. Because it's interdependent with your environment. All right. Okay. So how do we trawl in Buddhism? We don't use hypnotism.

[64:54]

But some people say Zazen is a sort of semi-hypnotic, self-hypnotic trance state. Maybe in that sense we do use a kind of self-hypnosis. But Buddhism would say that simplifies it and puts it in the service of consciousness. So it's this sense of holding in mind, which is a central part of mindfulness, To hold in mind and let that holding in mind interact with your activity, interact with your environment, and interact with the Alaya Vishnaya. So at all times, you're interacting with the alaya vijnana.

[66:11]

Calling up associations. Neurotic and compulsive patterns of some sort probably are best dealt with through psychotherapy. With sufficient sophistication, And the strength that comes from sitting without moving and knowing you can face anything without moving. A kind of self-psychoanalytic process. I can move it. Like a knot of a tree, knotted up. Not naughty like that. I was wondering, why are you saying that? Oh, it's so naughty. Sorry. See, that's hearing the syllable, the sound.

[67:19]

So several things surfaced in the word naughty. Experience is still. If you connect the dots this way, it's Buddha's experience. Und die Erfahrung des Buddhas ist immer noch so, dass wenn du die Knotenpunkte auf diese Art und Weise miteinander verbindest, dann ist es die Erfahrung eines Buddhas. Also innerhalb der pädagogischen Form der Koans wird davon ausgegangen, dass jede Person diese Erfahrung hatte. Or has the ingredients of this experience.

[68:23]

It's like a well-stocked kitchen. There's so many different meals you can make from a well-stocked kitchen. So we can say sedimented. We can also say more traditionally seeded. Seeded? When you put seeds in the ground and you seed something. S-E-E-D. So the seeds of those experiences. Okay. So the koan, there's a song of Joe Cocker's. All I need is a little help from my friends. And a little help from my friends means psychedelics, and in Jill Cocker's case, alcohol. But it also means friends.

[69:29]

And it also means the audiences to which he sings. And you can see those different meanings in the song. So in a koan, this sentence comes before this sentence. But it's not functioning in consciousness. It's functioning in consciousness, awareness and the Allah. And so the phrase is, if you hold them in mind and just let them be there, in their interdependent causative power, You don't see it, but there's lines running down from this one and lines running down from this one, and they begin to trawl in the alaya vijnana, aspects of experience which you haven't ever even put together for yourself.

[70:46]

They're just seeds. And then sometimes things come up. Whoa! It's like a revelation. And then it's also similar to the way we see dreams in Buddhism. All your dreams are not related to your experience. They become your experience. You try to figure out how it's connected to your experience. From a Buddhist point of view, that's a mistake. You're dreaming one of the many possibilities in the alaya vijnana, which is mostly unrelated to your experience in any connected sense.

[71:59]

It's just lying there, waiting to be connected. I don't know where you're at, because you speak in German. That's true. The last part... Unrelated to... And you may put that together somehow through our conversation, and you may have a dream, and you say, how did I dream about salutations? Now, just a funny story just came up. And I always trust my train of thought. Okay, but it's a good way to end, maybe. I'm on a train in a subway in Tokyo. 30, at least 30 years ago.

[73:09]

In the late 60s. And a young woman says to me, where is Roppongi? She's a rather pretty girl, about, I found out later, 18, I think. But anyway, she said to me, where's Roppongi? She saw me as a foreigner, and she was a foreigner. She was French and Moroccan or something. So I said to her, oh, it's actually the next stop. I'm getting off here myself. And she said to me, I'm reading a book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and your picture is on the back. I said, it is?

[74:10]

I don't look anything like Suzuki Roshi. There's this young girl who's there modeling in Tokyo. She'd only been there a day or two, and somehow she had this book. She saw me for a couple minutes and decided I was literature. The teachings and practices. And not just in Buddhism. The way people function in Japan when they do things assumes the presence of an alaya vijnana. Just the idea of haragai, belly talk. As Japanese businessmen feel that in a meeting their stomachs are communicating and the Westerners don't get the message.

[75:31]

That's the assumption that the hidden parts of The parts of existence that are hidden from us are still in our body and functioning. And it's not conceived of relating to the self or to repression, but relating to the totality of one's seeded and sedimented activity. Thank you for being patient. Thank you for translating. Thank you for teaching. So it's, let's say, one.

[76:42]

Shall we come back at two or three, or shall we end now, or shall we end...

[76:47]

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