Does anyone have anything you'd like to say to the rewriting of Proust? Or anything else? Yeah. I would like to have a translation of other items in the list in German so he knows better what it is, which point you're talking about. Well, you're asking the right person. You're asking the right person. We just write them up there? I'll just say them. I'll just say them, sure.

[01:02]

Also, eins, die Sinne. Zwei. place, namely spatial and temporal, or location, three, observe, notice, four, inner, inner sensitivity, five, the outer or external sensitivity, six, um, Agency, also agent, has just too many different connotations in German, so I tried not to use it. The instance that acts. Or where acting comes from. Or election, slash election. Seven, we weren't there yet. Responsibility. Eight. Narrative or storytelling.

[02:09]

9. Knowledge or wisdom. 10. Is there mastery or mystery? It's mastery. I mean, it's also mystery, but I didn't want to put that down there, because it's mystery. Thank you. Thanks for asking. Anyone else? Someone else? During the lunch break she was in the park called Bergpark and she watched children play.

[03:14]

Climbing a tree. There is a German word which I cannot literally translate into English. It is forgetting the self. So they were in that state. Her association in relationship to this list. And they seem to be very happy. Yeah. Children do play that way often. I believe that the self, the identity, is only formed when exactly this self-forgotten is suppressed. Jabet says he thinks that their self, the identity,

[04:38]

is made exactly then when forgetting the self is hindered or broken up by something. When you've forgotten the self and that's interrupted, self appears. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Built by interruption. And mostly in a negative way, like if it stopped or criticized or something. Yeah. Awareness of what I'm doing. Yeah. And the flow stops. The flow stops and then identity comes in. Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. Yeah. When a child plays like this and is in the flow of reality, it does not need an identity. As soon as it is stopped, mostly through criticism or through the parents, for example, then it becomes frightening.

[05:43]

And then instead of this flow of reality, suddenly identity rises and you have done something wrong. Then identity is formed. Otherwise we would not need an identity. So you're identifying self with a sense of danger or protecting yourself or feeling safe or something like that. So you would say that if you could be completely open and unafraid, There would be very little self present.

[06:44]

So I think that if I'm trying to work with this, I'd put that into the category or basket or something of an experience of being free of self. has these characteristics, your openness, etc. And the psychomechanics have another example here. When there is awareness, is that kind of equal to number one, the sensorium?

[07:45]

Well, I mean, as most of you know, Because of meditation experiences, I began to realize that consciousness didn't suffice as an explanation for the territory of knowing. As many of you know, through this meditation experience I came to the conclusion that the term consciousness is not really sufficient to describe this area of knowledge and knowing, or that it fits my experience. Almost as if awareness, something other than consciousness, we call it awareness, had a different viscosity than consciousness.

[08:49]

So you're saying, using the words that way, you're saying, is the sensorium an example of pure awareness or something like that? Well, I think we can add, I think we can look at that. Let me say, although I like the distinction between consciousness and awareness because consciousness has scissors in it. In other words, the SCI in the middle of consciousness, the etymology of that is scissors as or, yeah. Like in decision to cut or Schneider. Yes, so you could say that consciousness is tailored awareness.

[10:25]

But awareness is good because it has a wide sense, but it also has wariness or worry or danger in it. So the way I use awareness, the etymology of awareness doesn't work as well as consciousness. All right, so let's go back to the sensorial. What Angela said, yes and no. If we go back to our Proustian example, Not an example Proust made, but I made about Proust, possibly.

[11:48]

I love Proust, by the way. I have read him so carefully, it's almost as if his experience is also my experience. Just call me Marcel every now and then. And you'll see a doppelganger appear with a musselfish. All right, so if we had divided the sensorium into, and I don't know what words to use, but I'll try. To percept object. Or percept only. Or a perception liberated from objects. then the percept only or the liberated perception or maybe we could call it non-dual perception would be perception free from self.

[13:16]

But when the perception is like Well, let's take, there's an airplane, right? I named it an airplane. And naming it an airplane ties it to consciousness. So it's not awareness now. But if I hear the airplane, And I, you know, if you're going to interrupt, if Prajnaparamita practice is a practice of interruption and substitution, you have to have something to interrupt.

[14:17]

It doesn't happen in a vacuum. You need something to interrupt. Okay, so, I could go off now for an hour or two on this, but you'd all get bored. And then you'd say, he doesn't know how boring he is, but read out there, tell him. You're playing musical chairs back there. Um, Okay. Where was I? Now it's a musical couch.

[15:27]

If the practice is to interrupt and substitute... So, if I hear it's an airplane... ...and I think of it as airplane... I can interrupt the concept airplane. And this is the practice of the five marks and the four marks in the five dharmas. Okay, so I interrupt the concept airplane. I, in a sense, peel the name airplane off the sky. And now I just hear the sound. I think if you do this, you'll see that the sound expands. It's not caught in the name airplane anymore. I think we notice this kind of thing in Zazen fairly often.

[16:49]

In Crestone, it's about as remote as you can get if you didn't go to Siberia. And it's a lot warmer than Siberia. But there's almost no sounds. Except the New York-Los Angeles flights. If you draw a straight line from Los Angeles to New York, it goes straight over our mountain. But when they're on the way to New York or Los Angeles, they are pretty high up, you know. They're not going to mess around with those little mountains down there. But you hear the morning flights and the late afternoon flights.

[17:53]

And they hum the music of the spheres. Almost embarrassed you to say that. You must try to find the right word. So what you've done with this little practice is you've just by this little thing, you can do it anytime, to free a percept from a concept. Scept means, by the way, to grasp. So you've sort of taken the sound out of the grasp of the con and give it into the grasp of the per-cept.

[19:09]

Yes, so... Except... Oh, no exception. Yeah, so that would be a shift from self, the narrative self, consciousness, a constructed memory, we know what an airplane is, it's going to Los Angeles, etc., Would you like some orange juice with ice? That's what they're saying in the airplane. If you Drop the concept.

[20:33]

Peel off the concept. And have really a concept-free experience. This isn't limited to airplanes during Zazen. I can look at Katrin and peel Katrin off. What do I have? Bright blue eyes and nothing else. And embarrassment. I told you it was dangerous to sit here. Anyway, yeah, so this is a good example of freedom from self. Okay, someone else. Yeah, Marcus. You made a differentiation between self and non-self.

[21:37]

Mm-hmm. So I understand this list as a list of conditions under which or through which we experience self, so is it also a list of conditions that we can experience non-self? Yes. It's a territory where what we call self appears. So for the practitioner, they can begin to experiment with each of these territories to see if self can be more present or less present, or when it's more present, etc.

[22:51]

So it's a space for the practitioner to play around and to research when and how more self or less self is present. If I understand correctly, the question of self and non-self is not like black and white, but more like maybe background and foreground? Or emphasis and de-emphasis. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't like to use the word process because there's nothing that's not process. everything is a process there are no entities there's only activity a stone is an activity it's a very slow activity but you can see its history in it if you're a geologist you can also pick it up and put it in your pocket unless it's too big

[24:16]

And that's also a very essential concept to make your experience, to make inseparable from your experience. Which concept? That everything's an activity and not an entity. Yeah. So, Yeah. So I experience Katrin as an activity, not an entity.

[25:17]

And as an activity, there's always hope. And as an activity, there is always hope. You can't say, Angela is that kind of person. No, she's an activity. So there's always hope. You can't say, Angela is this kind of person. No, she's an activity. There is always hope. Okay. Yeah. So if I were... going to practice these and they were new to me, what I'd probably do, and we haven't gotten beyond six yet, what I'd probably do is take, I don't know, well, two things. First, I would get the list as a whole as much as possible in my mind.

[26:26]

And we could call that the knowledge of all modes. In other words, that's the Bodhisattva sometimes, somebody described as practicing with the knowledge of all modes. Which means that you know the practices well enough that they're always present, as Marcus said, perhaps, in your background mind and you let them come up to the foreground as they happen to come up to the foreground. So that's one approach. And simultaneously, the more specific approach, which deepens also the all-mode approach,

[27:29]

You take one at a time. Decide in the morning, for instance, today I'm going to emphasize the sensorium. And you just feel how the world is sensation, visual sensation or aural sensation. Und ihr fühlt und erfahrt einfach, wie die Welt als Sinneserfahrung ist, also visuelle Erfahrung, auditive Erfahrung. Yeah, this is basic Vijnana practice. Das ist fundamentale Vijnana practice. If you want to break it down into greater specificity, you take one sense and emphasize it all day, and then you take another sense the next day.

[28:51]

This is what you do in monastic practice. But I think you can see what I'm doing here. I'm trying to take what's usually confined to monastic practice. I'm finding ways to articulate it in parts that you can practice as lay people. Yeah, like peeling the name off something and putting it back on and feeling that. It's like a necker cue. For example, the name Abschellen and putting it on again, Abschellen, that's like this cube.

[29:54]

I don't know if it's called Neckar cube in German. You have two squares which look like a cube. but it switches. There is a picture of an old woman and a young woman, and you can also switch back and forth.

[30:59]

But that's again an example of having something to interrupt. One cube is interrupted by the other cube. Other square. You know, if you put a light on the retina, you can only see it for about 40 seconds. And then it disappears. So if we didn't scan all the time, the world would disappear. It's the scanning which allows us to see things. And the fact that we know the world through scanning Oh, saccadic scanning. That means you're actually putting the world together in your brain.

[32:10]

And so the world is clearly an illusion. But it's an illusion which corresponds with externality. But knowing that it's an illusion means you can participate in it. Because we could understand mindfulness practice as the practice of delivering phenomena to the senses. And normally most people think of mindfulness practice as you're going out, paying attention, paying attention, paying attention.

[33:10]

And that's beginning practice. But more mature mindfulness practice is developing a way of being present within the sensorium So phenomena is delivered to the senses. The world is delivered to you. Die Welt wird dir geliefert. And again, if we play with the etymology, sometimes I can hardly restrain myself. Und wenn wir wieder mit der Etymologie spielen... Deliver is to liberate.

[34:11]

You can hear liberty in liver. In dem englischen deliver, also liefern, kann man das free, das frei hören. To set free means to deliver. You deliver a baby. So the phenomena is delivered into the maternity ward of the sensorial. It is something like that. I mean, I'm playing around, of course, but it's rooted in my experience that the more mindfulness is developed,

[35:17]

And the more subtle and sensitive mindfulness practice is, and the sensorium is, you really feel the world's being delivered to you to maybe the womb of the mind, and you're almost in a dance with phenomena. I mean, even sometimes, excuse me, it's ecstatic, even a kind of orgasmic dance with phenomena. Yeah, and self is not present in the usual way in this dance.

[36:20]

And, I mean, there's a sense of flow, of nourishment. Just through being alive. The surprise of appearance. Okay. Before I get carried away here. Okay. Is that enough for this section? Is das genug für diese Abteilung? Okay. Okay. Number seven. Sieben.

[37:21]

You don't have to translate. Okay. Sieben. When I put my finger to my forehead. Wenn ich meinen Finger auf die Stirn lege. I there is this, again, this observing and this sense of location and the sense of the I doing it, the agency, I did this. And I think there's an unavoidable sense of responsibility. I have a sense of responsibility. I did this. And as I said, I think this is a very instinctual animal. As I said in Hanover when I talked about this, Neil was translating for me.

[38:33]

And he's bigger than me and bigger than you. So I pretended I was a kitten. And he was a big tomcat. And I went up as a kitten. I went... Because even a kitten knows if it hits a tomcat, it's responsible and it better get out of there quick. So this sense of agency is also a sense of responsibility. And we need that self in this world. We don't need selfishness, but we need that self in the world.

[39:33]

And of course, Western individualism is based on that. The concept and practice of democracy is based on that. And John Searle, the American philosopher, has a whole book on all of civilization. and culture is based on that contract between two people. It's all based on a network of agreements. So here is where the political self appears, the societal self, and so forth.

[40:53]

So next, number eight is narrative. And indirectly, at least, we've talked about that. that this interiority also includes memory and memory is tied together as a story. And when you lose the ability to have a story Or your story is seriously challenged. If you can't find a way to cope with that, what's called in English a nervous breakdown. So maintaining your story, we do, we have to do.

[42:04]

Or you have to have some other way to... you have to have a more open-ended story which can't be, you know, which has coherence through its open-endedness and not in its, you know, etc. Okay, now... Eight and nine, I mean nine and ten, I sort of put in there for fun. But it's kind of serious fun. Because at this point with knowledge instead of wisdom, knowledge, Plato makes the point that

[43:09]

Only people who know the self well enough to have mastery of the self, to control the self. So the rulers have to be an elite. Because if you have a self, And you control the self, you have to have a super-self or a meta-self that controls the other self. And this is part of the distinction between soul and self. In English I find it interesting, you can be selfish, but you can't be soul-fish. So I have to claim, I mean I have to admit, I don't know what soul means.

[44:29]

After all, I'm an atheistic Buddhist. But I do know you can't be selfish. Okay, so if it requires knowledge to control the self, so you have to have a kind of meta-self, In social and political terms, that implies education and an elite which rules the masses. And it's also The concept, as far as I can tell, I don't have Ivan Illich here to check up on these things, is that monastic practice is considered the way you learn to control the self.

[45:54]

Because it's the elite who have monastic practice who keep the Catholic Church together, which Ivana told me, said that to me. The Catholic Church without the monastics will fall apart. It's part of our very first conversation, actually. Okay, so this is interesting, because Buddhism has somewhat the same view, but it's not about mastery, it's about transformation. Those who know, let's say, just so we can keep it simple, sort of the non-dual sensorium, transformed through that, who are most likely to develop our primitive society.

[47:29]

I think I need that in two parts. Two or three parts and maybe a hundred. That civilization is going to develop through people who are developed. Zivilisation entwickelt sich durch Menschen, die entwickelt sind. And the people who are most developed are the people who are most free of self or as an entity at least. Und die Menschen, die am meisten entwickelt sind, sind am freiesten von einem selbst. And traditionally that's been thought of as to be monastic practice. But according to some social historians, this is partly the seed of the Protestant Reformation. Because the Protestant Reformation was against monasticism.

[48:46]

That everyone can have the conversion experience. It's not limited to monks. All people can be God's children, or I don't know what the language is. I don't know about in Europe, but in New England, the Protestant Reformation was carried another step which was that it wasn't anti-monastic only, it was anti-priest as well. And so the main Protestant church in New England was Congregationalism, because it's the congregation which leads the practice, not the priest.

[50:00]

And my parents were married in a Congregational church. And my mother was a Congregationalist and my father was a Unitarian. Just say Unitarian. And they gave birth to a Zerotarian. Zerotarians are pretty close to Zen. So with this ridiculous comment, I think it's time for a break.

[51:08]

Thank you very much, and thanks for translating. And I hope afterwards you'll tell me what to talk about. All right, it might get even more ridiculous.

[51:26]

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