most fruitful if we have some discussion, so I want to encourage us to have discussion in most sessions. I think that our short meetings here, which take only two days, are the most fruitful if we can have a discussion or a conversation. That's why I want to encourage us in most meetings to have a discussion. Partly because it's helpful to me and interesting to me to have us unpack some of the things I've been saying. And one of the things I'm trying to do is speak in categories that include both psychotherapy and Buddhist practice. And if the categories are the same, and yet the contents of the categories are different, that I think can lead to some good, give us ideas.

[01:01]

then I think that this can give us ideas. Who wants to say something? It's your job as the host. It's your job as the host. I found it very interesting this morning, where it became clear that the observer, who gets the inner and outer processes, that there is also such a range, so apparently many ways of seeing it. I found it very interesting to hear this morning that this observer who takes note of the inner and exterior processes, that there is obviously a kind of variety of how to view that. And I regret that Ralf is not there this afternoon, because I would have liked to ask again if he also meant that in some way, so whether there was also a position of observation in what is now going on in the analysis.

[02:32]

And it's too bad that Ralf is not here this afternoon because I would have liked to hear what he's speaking about and what's currently up in psychoanalysis. That is not maybe the same. Will he be back? Yeah, tomorrow morning. And I wanted to ask again, because Roshi always said this morning that there is no such thing as the self in this form, as if it were an idealization, that there is always a bit of self observed. And I found that very exciting, and I would like to... And what you said this morning, that there is no no-self, that to some extent there's always a little bit of self, a little bit of self-referencing, that I thought was very interesting and exciting, as though the no-self was a kind of idealization or something. And I would like to know if there's more that you can say about that.

[03:36]

Okay, I may be able to. I know, it's the first time I've realized, wasn't Ralph sitting right there? Because the first time I've realized this, even psychoanalysts have a Buddha nature. And so visible. I remember, Gerald, what you said you started with. You said these different practices, using a wisdom phrase or working on the koan or something, all have a different texture, flavor, reach into us differently. And they're not all subsumed or something like that under or referencing necessarily an imperturbable state of mind.

[04:57]

Of course, it's true that different is different. And that is a worldview. If you tend to think all religions are different paths leading to the same goal, or any such ideas, you basically have a theological worldview of oneness or something like that. And in Buddhism, different is different.

[06:06]

If you practice Christianity this way or you practice Christianity that way, you end up with a different Christianity, a different experience, and so forth. There's no one truth. To practice Zen, you don't have to have a worldview so different from the usual Western worldview. non-scientific worldview. So different practices are different. And affect us differently, of course. What they may but they still may go in similar directions.

[07:18]

And what I suggested this morning, because of you bringing up this idea of mind training, it's a terrible thing to have done to me. Yeah, is that, let's take again a simple practice like Mu. And it does, one thing it does, is it interrupts the mind train, the thought train or something. Eine Sache, die es tut, ist, dass es den Gedankenverlauf oder den Gedankenzug unterbricht. It makes us notice perceptual and cognitive processes. Es sorgt dafür, dass wir kognitive und wahrnehmungsprozesse wahrnehmen. We can't keep repeating mu on every appearance without noticing cognition and perception.

[08:28]

And third, it makes us see the world as appearance. And if you continue and incubate the process of the experience of seeing the world as appearance, you really begin to experience the momentariness of the world. You feel the momentariness of the world. You feel momentariness when somebody, say, blinks. Or the clock ticks or something like that. Yeah.

[09:31]

Now, we're not all ticking in the same way. Tick, tock, tick, tock. But we're tick, [...] tock, tock, tick, tick. And it creates a fabric, but it's all little separate appearances. A fabric of appearances. So you begin to have an experiential knowing of the world as momentary, it's not just an idea. You begin to know the world as experientially as momentary. It's not just an idea. May I say that you're not feeling too well?

[10:33]

You may say that, yeah. All right, thank you. I hope it makes it harder for you to translate. It does, yeah. Makes it harder for me to speak, too. Oh, really? Sorry. Well, I like it to be easy for you. All right. So that's three. Three aspects. Of mind training. Implicit mind training. Explicit mind training. So if I go in shorter units, is that easier? Not necessarily. Just continue. It's okay. Fourth, it makes us see the world. It releases us from conceptual thinking. And I could say it releases us from conceptual and comparative thinking. But I would like to separate them because they are different.

[11:39]

So fourth and fifth, it releases us from conceptual thinking and it releases us from knowing the world through making comparisons. And if you know the world not through making comparisons, then the way associations come up all the time is different. And you also, the wood sets, wood sets, four, five, right? Five, okay. Six, it introduces us to perceptual and spatial immediacy.

[12:53]

Which is basically a left brain, right brain shift. And... And the seventh, it initiates imperturbable mind. It initiates an underlying mind. And eighth, it initiates Repetition turns into incubation. And all these are interrelated. Repetition turns into incubation when we begin to experience the momentariness as uniqueness.

[14:01]

It's one thing to see each tick of the clock separately. It's another thing to see each tick of the clock as different from the preceding tick of the clock. Now, I've never distinguished these things, these eight things, before. It's the new eightfold path. Eightfold path of mind training. But I would say that any Buddhist practice is implicitly or explicitly designed to relate to or emphasize one or, if possible, all of these eight things.

[15:32]

In other words, a Buddhist practice is really a Buddhist practice if practicing it results in these eight things. Now, the word dharma means to hold. Okay, so basically Buddhism, basic view of Buddhism is everything is changing as change is changing. But what holds? What stays and put? What stays put in some way so we have some basis? So Buddhism tries to find various ways discover what gives us a sense of presence and duration.

[16:55]

Now, when I look at Ursula, I see Ursula. She's quite unique, wonderful. I like your gray, straight hair. You haven't dyed it or anything. You look great. Anyway, okay, so I see you. But I also see my mind seeing you. And I see Daniel. But I also see my mind seeing you. And I see you and you look quite different than the other two. But I also see my mind seeing you. So if always when I see anything, I see my mind seeing it, that's a kind of sameness.

[17:59]

So it's not a ground of being. But it's a kind of basis of becoming or something like that. It functions like a ground of being might as a world view. Although I can't grasp the mind that appears on each of you. If I experientially locate myself, experience myself in the mind that appears, that's a kind of something that holds. And that mind, which is also noticed through repetition which becomes uniqueness,

[19:07]

And the uniqueness is different at each moment, and yet there's the mind that notices the uniqueness. Is this somewhat the same? And that, what I just said, applies to all the practices. And at first that's a kind of rudimentary state of mind. But eventually these practices initiate imperturbable mind. And the more you enter that on each cognition and perception, And the more your personal location is shifted out of comparative and conceptual thinking, and perceptual thinking,

[20:48]

and perceptual and imperative thinking. And the more you don't find yourself being led toward desires, future, comparisons with others and so forth, doesn't mean you don't have desires. But you don't lose your location in this underlying field of mind. And when you really don't lose your location, your field for this underlying field of mind, then we call it imperturbable. So that's a response to you. That's the answer to you.

[22:15]

Yes. Hans, yes. The last thing you said reminds me of what Ralf, I don't know if it's the concept of mentalization, but it reminds me a bit of that there. The last thing you said reminds me of what Ralf said. I'm not sure if this is exactly the concept of mentalization, but it reminds me of that. I feel as though I was introducing or building a new level in my inner construction or something. Through what Ralph said. No, what you say. Oh, okay. And not just in a purely intellectual and cognitive realm, but also in an embodied way.

[23:29]

In a way to just be. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think what Ralph said was very close to what I said. Conceptually, it's similar. I think probably, though, we'd have to have Ralph here to discuss it. But probably, although it's If there's a difference, the difference is what he's calling a development within Western psychological thinking. Something, an equality of mind or an equalness of mind, something like that he said.

[24:29]

In that sense it's conceptually similar. But from a Buddhist point of view it's not that you notice that only. But rather that you first notice it and then you incubate it and you see what happens what transformative things happen from knowing that over and over again and then in addition to noticing it and incubating it you start to live in it That's kind of your location.

[25:41]

So that location is not self anymore, it's this underlying field of mind. And you not just live in it, you make it, it becomes extremely stable. So a lot of advanced Buddhist practices are about how to make that shift to an underlying state of mind that becomes imperturbable. And I would guess again, if I was a therapist for instance, as you said, there's clearly a resonance with the client.

[26:44]

The more you yourself could speak from that developing or developed, evolving, underlying state of mind, Sort of alchemically, the client would start picking it up. And if the experience has validity, the experience begins to work in you as a kind of teacher. You begin to learn from the experience like it's a little seed that's germinating in you. Hans, you wanted to go on? Now this is going back again to the psychotherapeutic concept of mentalization and the Buddhist approach as you described it.

[28:09]

I find it difficult to take this as a concept, because it means something solid, entity-like. I don't know enough about the psychotherapeutic concept, but this Buddhist view, it is hard for me to take that as a concept, because that then seems to be so entity-like or so fixed, something. If it is important for me to keep a kind of, in this consistency, a kind of, nevertheless a kind of fluidity in this basic understanding. as though it was important to keep a kind of fluidity within the firmness of it. Is it clear what I said?

[29:34]

Are you saying that you have a philosophical, Buddhist philosophical objection to an imperturbable state of mind because it sounds too much like an entity? I find for me it sounds somehow concept I easily switch come from the psychotherapeutic way of the concept and some ideas so and that's not what my experience is or what I would connect with the point of view something different like concept but just to find a way of communicating about it the concept but still a kind of something fluid and a and still have a kind of basis, some kind of solidity. Well, probably one doesn't... So maybe we're in this discussion moving into a category that's more completely Buddhist and less also psychotherapeutic.

[30:44]

But yes, when I refer to an imperturbable state of mind, it's a concept. But if I refer to a mind free of concepts, that's also a concept. So I have to use concepts. The practitioner's job is not to get identified with the concepts. Comparative. Do I have an imperturbable center or do I not? And someone else does. And of course one probably never achieves absolute imperturbability But during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese monk who burned himself was pretty imperturbable.

[32:33]

So to various degrees, we begin to feel that. In popular culture in America it's called unflappable. Unflappable. To get into a flap means to get angry or something like that. Oh, okay. He had a flap about that, you know, unflappable. Cool Luke. Lucky Luke. Lucky Luke, okay. But I think you can think of it as more like the ocean. The ocean is certainly fluid.

[33:42]

The deeper you get down to the ocean, the more you come to really still water. Probably not true. There's currents and all kinds of things. But anyway. But still, the idea is you can identify with the waves or you can shift your identification to the stillness. And it's the same medium, but you've shifted where you identify. But nevertheless, the idea is that you can be identified with the waves or you can identify yourself with the silence in deeper layers. And that is the same medium. You have only stored where you identify yourself. Okay. Yes. I often experience this emptiness as an empty stage.

[34:46]

What do you think of that? The thoughts are the... No, really not. Figures on stage who make their drama and comedy and tragedy and everything, yes, and the figures, drama, scene, all that comes and goes on stage and the stage stays. So I often have a feeling of simply empty freedom. Is that Buddhist now? Is that okay? No, no, no. It's the only time I wish I knew German when I don't get a joke or something that's humorous. Yes, go ahead. But they enjoyed what you said. I often imagine this emptiness like a kind of empty stage.

[35:49]

And I find the thoughts to be figures and actors on this empty stage. They have their dramas and their comedies and their tragedies and they play it all out. But what I do have is the sense of an empty stage, mainly. Now, is that Buddhist? Does that make Buddhist sense? I can't really translate the joke either, actually. Is that a proper way? Thank you. Is that a proper way to experience? Well, basically, the idea of emptiness just evolves from the idea of impermanence. And interdependence.

[36:50]

So nothing arises from itself. Each of us arose from parents. From eating food and so forth. And just now each of you arise through the interactions and the feeling in the room. So you can't say that Ursula is only Ursula. She's also right now affected by everybody in the room. Also kann man nicht sagen, dass Ursula nur Ursula ist, sondern sie wird auch durch alles, was im Raum ist, beeinflusst. So we can say she's empty of Ursuliness.

[37:54]

There's Ursula, but it's not just Ursula. There's some intrinsic being So Ursula is fully Ursula and also Ursula is at the same time empty. So it's not that there's form and emptiness, form is emptiness. So Ursula is Ursula and Ursula is also empty. Okay, so that's the basic idea that interdependence And emptiness are two related ideas and experiences. Emptiness. So the more you experience interrelatedness, You more and more have an experience there's nothing there to grasp.

[39:20]

Maybe that's as much as much at this point is useful to say about emptiness just so we can all have some common territory. So from what you said, each of the actors, comedic, tragic, and so forth, are empty, but also the stage is empty. It's not just an empty stage. The stage itself is empty. So emptiness is not like something inside here. This is emptiness. So eventually one has direct experience of emptiness, but we try on things like you said, which are quite good, which help us move toward the experience.

[40:38]

You want to say something else? Yes, I am a physical therapist and ask myself what meaning does the body have to experience emptiness. I notice with clients, when they talk and talk and talk and it annoys me, I'm a body worker, and I wonder what meaning the body plays in experiencing emptiness. So when I work with clients, they speak and speak and speak, and sometimes I get annoyed. Why are you working on them? or their body is speaking.

[41:41]

And I think it's my job to interrupt because they cannot do it themselves. I have to interrupt because they don't have the experience. Now I have to take a break. Then I do this for them and say, stop, hold in, breathe, how do you feel, and so on. I direct from thinking to the body. So what I do then is I direct attention from thinking into the body, I let them, I have them pause and say, and ask how you feel now, or just take a breath or something. Okay, yes. Then I make the experience with myself and with clients, when I turn on something in the body, let's say, And now what I experience is if I activate something in the body like breath or feeling or something that then the thinking mind

[42:42]

begins to become empty and is kind of switched out. So how is that thought of in Buddhism, to use the body so that the mind is more empty? Well, I mean, here we have to be, we're using terminology. So if we use terminology, we have to be really specific. So to say the body, the mind is empty, isn't the same as saying emptiness. Same word in English, but... So to say that the mind, by bringing attention to the body, the mind thinks less or becomes free of thinking. Free of thinking is not emptiness.

[44:03]

So when you do something that makes the mind free of thinking, it's free of thinking, but let's not call it emptiness. It's difficult to understand. It's hard to understand. Emptiness is a technical term. So it means... It doesn't mean absence, it means presence. Okay. I mean, I don't know if I can... Let me try a moment more.

[45:03]

So, if the person, when you bring attention to their body, and they're more fully located in their body because you've freed the mind from thinking. And when they bring their attention to their body, sometimes it's to their breath, sometimes it's to their heartbeat, sometimes it's to energetic things. And they see there's nothing there to take hold of. All of these things, the energetic, are all not graspable. They are momentary. When they recognize that in this experience there's nothing to be grasped, then we'd call it emptiness. That's just what the technical term emptiness means.

[46:20]

I still remember the word body, from joy. So this connection, I find it so exciting, this I of joy, that is the poor thing, the I. It is engulfed by so many forces, and I experience it like the free space of thinking. What comes to mind then is the term that Freud uses, I don't know what it's in English, but the physical eye or body eye or something. He says about the eye that it's such a poor thing being acted upon by so many forces and being so tight or something. And can you say the last part again? Yes, for me, the ego, as Freud calls it, is like a gap, like a space.

[47:44]

Oh, okay. Yes, opposite the outer ego, the ego and the outer world. Now I have this gap, this emptiness, in quotation marks, not the Buddhist one, but another one. That's it. Lass mich mal bitte bestanden über das... And this I then is a kind of gap or a kind of space which where I feel like this is a place where you can breathe in for a little moment or something. A gap that's free from the... A gap. A gap, yeah, like a free space. That's free from the S or the... I don't know how to pronounce it in English. I understand. Super ego. Super ego and so on, yeah. That's wonderful. Do you have time to work on me? What does that mean?

[48:45]

No, I mean, since you work with the body, it sounds like you're good and I would like you to work with me if I had time. And I can afford you. And if you keep that, if you create that gap which one can breathe into, this is wonderful. It's wonderful, that gap, but it's not what we mean by emptiness. I got it. You have to separate this. I mean, I could use some kind of Sanskrit word, sunyata, But I think we'd have more problems understanding sunyata than we have understanding emptiness.

[50:08]

Because we can't do anything with sunyata. But with emptiness we can see what we mean in English Or German, I hope. And those meanings can be modified so you can begin to understand emptiness in English or German better than you can understand it if I use Sanskrit terms. And that's the basis of my decision to not use, as far as possible, any technical Sanskrit terms, except Dharma and Buddha and so forth. And you were going to say something.

[51:18]

I would like to come back to this theory of mind that Ralf mentioned. If you speak in Deutsch first, I think that's helpful. When you first speak German, is that helpful? For me, it's a real overlap between therapy and Buddhist practice, but it also makes a very different expression, which I found quite clear. for me that is an important overlap between psychotherapy and practice but it also points to a crucial difference that which and that just became clear to me now If somebody comes to me because that person is suffering, because he has a very fixed or stuck view of himself, then one thing I try to do is to disturb that view of himself.

[52:46]

and to get him to be aware that he himself creates this stuck view of himself, this awareness of himself, through working with the breath and awareness exercises and body work and so on. And I think to some extent my job as a psychotherapist is done once that person has come to have a wider view or conception of himself. That's when my job starts. For me it is also very important to know where my limit as a therapist is, because I experience this going on, to interrupt these constructions again and again, And that is for me also a question about my job as a psychotherapist.

[54:04]

And the boundary of what my job as a psychotherapist is, because to constantly interrupt concepts and constructs, I find to be also from my experience of the path of meditation is something that's very scary or something. What did you say? Fear-influencing? Yes, fear-influencing. Because exactly this point of always being in a place where I can't hold onto anything anymore, it can be extremely liberating, but it can also be very disorienting. That's true. That's one reason we try to teach these things or instigate these things in ourselves with others when the person has a very firm foundation in meditation, mindfulness, and so forth.

[55:29]

Because otherwise it can be really scary. It can cause a nervous breakdown. Yes. And you were going to say something? You say emptiness, or being empty. You spoke about being empty or emptiness. Being free from intention, perceiving what is happening around us, is what you described earlier, that Ursula in perceiving all of us, that the absence of intention or past, future, For me also this has a lot to do with with freedom from intention and just kind of openly perceiving the surroundings like you pointed out how perceiving Ursula and this field of where all of us perceive that

[57:06]

And for me this just relates strongly to a freedom from intention and also from past and future. Yeah. Yeah. We can talk, we can, yeah. No, that's good. I appreciate it. And maybe I can talk later about somatic mind, I would call it. What is your name? Katrin, and what is your name? Rahimo. You told me already, Rahimo. This is a hard one to remember. Rahimo. Okay, I will maybe, if I can, in these two days, speak about somatic mind from a Buddhist point of view. And what is your name? Angelica. Hi, Angelica. We have Angela and Angelica.

[58:08]

There's a lot of angels in Germany. In Germany there are a lot of angels. You brought up something earlier I'd like to understand better and maybe we could speak about it too. But now I think it's time to have a break.

[58:23]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.84