Well, good afternoon. And as you probably know, this is the seminar I have to confess I look most forward to each year. Both because I enjoy being with you and also because... We have the most fruitful discussion of any seminar I do. And I suppose I would say that first I'm here to think about these subjects with you. And second, to share my experience of these things from the point of view of meditation and Buddhism.

[01:10]

And third, to work with some theme. And the theme I suggested to you on the phone, if I remember correctly, was transforming the present, transforming the present and perfecting the personality. And partly that, thinking about this, came out of ruminations of mine about Suzuki Roshi saying, emphasizing the perfecting of the personality. And perfecting the personality as the latter part of practice.

[02:14]

So I had to think quite a bit about what does he mean by personality Why is it the latter part of practice and not the beginning of practice? And I feel we're very lucky that that you're here to translate better than I can speak. Na ja.

[03:16]

Ja, wir haben Glück, dass Ulrike da ist. But I'd first of all like to know what you'd like to speak about during these four days. And of course I would like to know from you first what you would like to talk about these four days and discuss. Well, a topic that has been on my mind for a long time and is perhaps related to this topic mentioned, is that when it comes to emotions, that in Buddhism there is a theory about which emotion can transform into which qualities if one perfects the personality. And there are also a few theories about psychotherapy. And this is something that seems very practical to me and that interests me.

[04:24]

What goes round and round in my head is what I'm personally very interested in is, you know, we talk about certain emotions in Buddhism and in psychotherapy, and Buddhism has certain techniques to transform these emotions in sort of higher aspects, and there are various theories also about it in psychology and psychotherapy. So this would be my interest, whether we could dialogue, talk about this. Well, Let me respond a little by saying I would describe Buddhism as a practice. As a coupling of philosophy and, you could say psychology, but I would say, as you know, mindology. I think Buddhism assumes that we have to understand how things exist and what they mean to us, first of all.

[05:35]

And that's the quest for meaning. So philosophy is inseparable from psychology or mindology in Buddhism. And if we call psychology or mindology the effort to understand ourselves, then we could say that this effort to understand ourselves is psychology. And as part of that effort to understand ourselves, there's a lot of teaching in Buddhism about how emotions function.

[06:51]

And so, particularly if we speak about perfecting the personality, we have to talk about that. And so I was particularly thinking about speaking about it. Okay, what else? For me there are two directions that I notice that I go myself or in my work with therapy and that is that I try to simplify everything very much and I realize that I want to be even easier and even easier and even easier And on the other hand, I would like to understand what is going on and to see our complex. And from this time I hope that we look in both directions, but that there are simply new aspects in this balance, where I may notice that I can relocate myself or settle down or experience something new.

[08:05]

I noticed myself that there are two movements. In my own path, for example, and also in my work, there's this one movement towards simplicity and making things simpler all the time. And on the other hand, of course, I have the need to understand and to penetrate the complexity of things. So I'm constantly in this pulse of these two movements, and I try to find a balance of it. And what I'm hoping will happen here, that I get more insight in what this is and how I possibly can integrate this. Okay. Let's hope. Inspired by our meetings here, this field aspect has gained great importance to me in recent years, and above all this exchange between individuals and field.

[09:15]

And I also notice that this quality is becoming more and more clear and primordial, also in therapy, and I would be interested to deepen this further. What happened during our meetings these past few years and also in my own work is that more and more this aspect of field and the connection between the individual and the field becomes more and more pertinent, comes up. Also in my psychotherapeutic work it's constantly becoming more important and I would like to deepen and learn more about the meaning or possible function of the field and the relationship to the individual here too. Also from the aspect, of course, what Buddhism has to offer. We started out with sculpting the first time, right? And that's certainly the functioning of a field. In the first couple of years, there was more of a discussion about psychotherapy and Buddhism together. And in the recent years we've met, we've been talking more about Buddhism, particularly, and I've done most of the talking, I'm sorry.

[10:29]

And I suppose in some ways that's a natural result of the fact that I'm only here once a year. And you have lots of chance to talk among each other other times. But still, I would like to think about how we can spend this time in ways that's productive for everyone, and I'm open to doing it whatever way works best. I am interested in the development of the personality, in the relationship between awareness and awareness, as a possibility of development from the practice, from these two aspects.

[12:01]

or the relationship between these two aspects, whether it is tipping over each other, or losing each other, or keeping it. For example, you can keep it in the middle of consciousness. So the state of meditation, perhaps, as being in the middle of consciousness, or the manhood, or the activity of the mind. What I'm still very much interested in is a subject that goes back quite some years and I'm still following up on it. It's the relationship... Subject in you or subject in our discussions? Subject in our discussions. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's the relationship between awareness and consciousness and like they're weaving into each other and like sometimes consciousness expands into awareness which of course carries the field aspect and sometimes really awareness collapses or whatever transforms itself into consciousness in these manifold mind activities.

[13:12]

So I'm still working with this and I would like to continue with this here. Yeah. Does everyone know you, Peter? No, this is Peter Ercksel. Who is one of the... And lives near Johanneshoff and has helped us get to start Johanneshoff. Yes, this is Peter. He lives near Rüthe and near Johanneshof. He is a therapist and meditates and has helped us a lot to build the Johanneshof. Yes. I'll start again. My topic is what I would call personality, teaching and suffering. I make the experience, and I have been dealing with clients who come to me for some time, that there are holes in their personality, wherever they come from, whether they come from any traumatization or have not received an answer from someone,

[14:36]

And where the question for me is, how do I get this emptiness, this nothingness, this emptiness, together with what I can sit out of? And how can I communicate something with you there? The subject that I brought to this place is the relationship between personality, emptiness and suffering. What I experience in my work a lot is that certain clients come and they have what I would call like holes in the experience of their personality. are suffering a lot through this. And my question is, how does this relate to emptiness and how can I help them through the experience maybe of emptiness and how can they work on their personality so that they can have certain practice experiences but also how to deal with these holes which come, of course, from traumas or certain things that happen to them and so forth.

[15:43]

I still have the topic after the goal of the development of personality and I just experience it again and again now when I see that in a certain phase development also gives the possibility to escape suffering, but in another phase I always experience such an equidistance, that is, there is always something ahead, and that may be development on a higher level, but there is always this equidistance there, and I wonder whether the end of development lies in the emptiness. So when the total emptiness is reached, My question is, what is the end point or the goal of the development of ourselves and our personality?

[16:59]

My experience is, yes, there is suffering and there is development, and through certain steps in our development we create a certain distance to the suffering or overcome the suffering. But eventually my experience is really it's almost like suffering is always in the same distance and maybe the development changes or shifts to another level of consciousness. But really the question I'm dealing is, is there an end to all this development? Maybe is this emptiness? Do we have a permission to have an end to the development? You have permission now, it's over. That's the first step, you have permission. What do you mean that suffering is always the same distance? Not only in suffering, but also in development.

[18:06]

There is always something before where you continue to develop. And when you are there, it is again something like climbing a mountain. With the donkey, with the banana? Yes, or when you reach a close point while climbing a mountain, which was previously a starting point, but then there is a close look and then there is a close destination and there is always a close destination. It's not only suffering, it's just in general, when we reach a certain step, then there's always something ahead of us, whether we climb a mountain or go somewhere and there's a nice view, but there's always something behind it, which I feel is, I mean, whenever you take a step, there's more steps ahead of you. We could lock you into a room. We could lock you into a room. Maybe. Yes. Yes.

[19:09]

Yes. or mostly linked to a desire, and whether this desire does not keep on circling again and again. I have a similar question to Horst's question, like this work we do on our personality is for me connected with an intention. But in the long run, isn't this intention exactly what keeps us on this wheel of always wanting more or wanting something else? Different. Different. To bring it to the point, maybe the question is, what truly is transformation and what is change?

[20:13]

Can I respond to a couple of things here? Can I respond to a couple of things here? So we can stay connected with these three things that you said. I suppose I would say that the goal is to be in the transformative present. The goal is perhaps, I don't know, it's hard to say these things in words.

[21:15]

But the goal is... to not arrive. The goal is to be in the act of transforming without any arriving. And I think this is particularly true of Zen in contrast to other forms of Buddhism. I would say that most forms of Buddhism give you a map. It may be a very sophisticated and useful map, but it's a map that assumes an assumes a goal assumes an understanding of consciousness and hence a sort of static vision of consciousness.

[22:46]

I would say that Zen differs primarily from other forms of Buddhism. And it assumes an evolution of consciousness. an evolution where each of you may develop a consciousness that no one else has experienced before. I would say that Zen assumes that we're at a very, in effect assumes we're at a very early stage in civilization or culture. And what are the possibilities of consciousness, the potentialities of consciousness have only been touched on so far.

[23:51]

So the goal is perhaps to be open to the evolution of consciousness, but not to tell you what is the end point of this evolution. I think organically or biologically, this is also true, that we have an immense potentiality of development which has only been slightly tapped. I think our mind, even physically, is more malleable than is assumed usually. Now, I would say that Buddhism is a wisdom teaching that's been developed over a lot of centuries.

[25:23]

And it sort of exists here among us, among Westerners now, and among Asians. I don't think it's an Asian knowledge. Any more than physics is a Western knowledge. Physics or biology, even though it's been developed primarily in the West, it's a human knowledge. Buddhism is also just human knowledge. And this has been developed again over centuries. And somehow my feeling is that when you begin to practice it, it begins to have a life among a group of people. The palpability of its entirety is present.

[26:26]

But each of us has a different way of entering. I don't know if that makes sense, but I'm trying to describe something I feel. There's a lot of entries to this wisdom teaching. Suffering is one of the entries. But also, it's generally said, if you want to practice, and the first book of the Abhidharma, Pali Abhidharma, starts out with a statement something like this. When a healthy, conscious attitude has been developed. When a healthy, conscious attitude has been developed.

[27:42]

Hmm. Hmm. inseparable from a or connected with a sensuous appreciation of the world and linked or permeated by serenity and linked to knowledge Only then can you really practice. So in a way this makes clear from a Buddhist point of view what the job of the psychologist is, the psychotherapist.

[28:42]

Is to help the many of us develop a healthy conscious attitude. Appreciative of the sanctity that exists in each of us. Sanctity like the sacredness or retreat place, sanctuary. Yes. Because it's assumed that bliss and joy are not an end in themselves, but the necessary dynamic of wisdom.

[29:44]

So that's, I think, a challenge for us. Okay, so what else? Any other suggestions? What I always notice, what touches me so much when we sit here and talk about personality and therapy, that I noticed at Werfern, I thought, the feeling that a piece of water has been cold here, that's great, that I always think about it, I would like to

[31:10]

and somehow become clear about how this potential for destruction comes about. And I know that over the last few years, when we sat together somewhere in Seychelles or wherever it was, that I always thought very deeply about it at that point and thought, what is it actually? Maybe I can move that a little bit here. Yeah, a feeling that pretty quickly sort of touches me when I'm in a group like this, that I'm here with you and also which I kept feeling on the way, on the trip here because arriving here I noticed this is pretty close where we just had a war and it's like this... and we talk, we psychotherapists, we deal with the perfecting of the personality, helping people and at the same time there is this destructive potential in human beings And I can't get rid of the question, really, where this comes from. What is it? Well, Kristin, these are big questions.

[32:31]

I don't know. It's immodest almost to try to respond to them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. So I'll share with you my thoughts about it. And what I've been thinking about much of this year In addition to this development of a healthy conscious attitude, or part of this healthy conscious attitude, is the vow, the altruistic vow of enlightenment.

[33:33]

And the altruistic vow of enlightenment means that you can only that enlightenment as a potentiality only has meaning for you when it has meaning and potentiality for others. and that we can't really achieve, that wisdom can't really be achieved for oneself alone. The really big things you can't do for yourself. You have to do them for others.

[34:54]

Even if you're schizophrenic, perhaps, you're most likely to free yourself if you have a view that if I can free myself, other people with schizophrenia can free themselves. So if such a person is capable of a thought, like I'm almost glad I have this illness, schizophrenia or cancer or whatever it is, Because it gives me a chance to solve this problem, this crisis, for others. And it's thought that in Buddhism, this kind of vision is necessary for realization. And I get annoyed when contemporary scholars, for example write about, say, Dogen and they think their book is only serious when they show us how selfish Dogen was.

[36:10]

But Dogen really, yes, he was a great teacher and blah, blah, blah, but he was really competing with these other teachers, and he moved his temple from this place to that place because he was, you know, et cetera. Yes, of course Dogen was a great teacher, but then you have to point out how competitive he was, how often he moved his temple from one place to another, to be able to prove what a great teacher he was. Yes, of course you can have this attitude and analyze Dogen's life from this point of view. And certainly Dogen must have done some things out of some feeling for other people and how to survive. But I think it's a mistake to think that was his primary motivation. His motivation wasn't to try to be smarter than others or understand Buddhism more than others or something.

[37:40]

Because I think if that was his motivation, the transcendence of his insights would not be there. The kind of insights he had, I think, only arise from somebody who has an altruistic view of realization. And so I think this is a contemporary prejudice. that we tend to think that at root, the most basic instinct or attitude in human beings is selfishness. And I think this is simply not true. That I think parenthood itself disproves this.

[38:40]

Or any love relationship we have disproves this. The fact that, for instance, let's just take a family, that, let's say, relatively healthy parents are concerned with their children. and even to the sacrifice of their own well-being. I think you can see this in the Kosovo refugees coming. They're trying to bring their families, they're trying to bring their tractors, because they can't make a living without their tractor. They're not just escaping and saying, to hell with the rest of it. At least my prejudice is to see it that way. But just because a family may... then try to suppress other families for the sake of their own, does not deny that altruism comes first.

[40:17]

It just means to me that we haven't developed a society yet which is open enough to altruism. Does that make sense? At least, I think my thinking about this is quite primitive, but I said I'd share it with you. So, one of the things I thought about the other day, I mentioned Crestron quite a bit, Before I say that, let me see. It's 4.30. What time is dinner here? But doesn't the kitchen have to cook? But they are quite flexible.

[41:21]

Oh, they are. So we can eat almost any time between... We go down and say we would... Like to eat, I see. Between six and seven, something like that, okay. And in other times we've not met in the evenings, I believe, only during the days. And I can't remember our schedule, but what time did we usually start in the morning? Nine, 10, 930? Anybody remember what we did before? Meditation. So breakfast is probably 8 or something like that? So if we sat at 7.15, then we could have breakfast at 8? and start at 9.30.

[42:23]

Okay. If we start, in my experience, if we start around 10, it actually ends up to be pretty short, the whole thing. If we start at 9.30, it's wonderful. Yeah, okay. Okay. I think it would be good to take them now in general when we want to have lunch. So if we start at 9.30, 10.30, we have a break, 11, 11.30, so we maybe eat at 12.30 or 1? What's good, 12.30 or what? I think maybe we say we end seminar at 12.30 and people have a little break. Okay. Or aim. And then we start again. If we eat around 1 to 2, should we start at 3.30 or 4? 3.30? Okay.

[43:25]

Then we'll go again until 6.30 or something. 6 o'clock or something. Okay. Okay. Between 6 and 7. So today it's 6.30. Okay, we have dinner at 6.30. So now it's 4.30. Okay. So part of my thinking about this was I went and interviewed my mother. Who's 93 or 94? So anyway, I got a tape recorder. I asked her about her cousins and all the women who lived in her household and great aunts and things like that. Who was her first boyfriend? Dickie.

[44:34]

Anyway, it was quite interesting to interview her. And it was clear that her familial memory went back to 1850. In other words, her grandmother and great-aunts and things stretched back to about that. They knew when General so-and-so stayed at the house and stuff like that. Even when General Lafayette, the French general who helped Washington, stayed at some relative's house. They seem to remember more generals than poets, but maybe there were more generals than poets. And I mean some of you, I'm sitting here with you, and some of you will be alive in 2050. She's in the brochure.

[46:00]

She's still teaching sensory awareness and she's in Europe right now, traveling around teaching. She's great. And I said to her, geez, you're an example for us. Inspiration to live to 98. And I said, well, I hope to live at least as long as you do. And she said, no, you don't. Anyway, so I thought, you know, in my family there's a 200-year span of kind of consciousness. From 2050 to 1850.

[47:07]

Because a young person like Eric here, for instance, we know each other well, there's some continuity of the same consciousness. So I thought a 200-year span of consciousness, when culture isn't really that different. I mean, there have been a lot of changes, but the way my mother talked about her great-aunt is not so different than the world I know. So ten of those brings us back to the time of Christ. That's not very long. And not much happens in each of those 200 years in terms of real development of what human potentiality is. And you go back 12 or 14 of those, 12 or 13 of those spans, you're back to Buddha's time.

[48:26]

And a few more, you're back to the beginning of language. So my point is, civilization when you think of it in 200-year spans, it's very new. And so my feeling is that probably language and culture, civilization as we conceive of it, It's clearly, to me, a product of people learning to live together. Because it looks like there's tens of thousands of years of human beings pretty much like us, but they didn't really know how to live together, it looks like.

[49:40]

I like the story of these... I can't remember their name now. A group of Indians who live in the northwest of America around Seattle area. Oh, hi. And they have just in their lore is stories of Indians when their islands were quite large and when the great flood mother appeared. So the story is very clear. And they tell about how big the land was.

[50:52]

So some archaeologists and anthropologists began to see if this was true. And they found that over 20,000 years ago, these islands were much bigger. And then for 1,000 years, the ocean... ice caps melted and the ocean increased about two inches a year. And over a thousand, I guess, years it was, the island got quite small. And this thousand years is their great flood mother. And so they actually did some digging miles off the coast and found villages under the water where these people said they were. So our memory goes back a long ways in many societies.

[51:57]

But language and how to live together is much newer, I think, on a big scale. Okay, so the point I'm making here is I would say that initially civilization was probably something like living what I call together-together. People learned to live it together, but probably in quite a coercive way that everyone had to be pretty much alike. And I think the way we live now, I would describe as together alone. I would say that we live fundamentally together but functionally alone.

[53:16]

And that what I mean by fundamentally together is that our personality, our sense of being, our sense of personal continuity, is basically created through other people and from other people. That if we think of ourselves, our experience, our personal history is tied up constantly with other people. But we go home and most of us live quite separate lives from other people. So I think Sangha is the biggest challenge of Western Buddhism. Because I think the Buddhist conception is that we live fundamentally alone and functionally together.

[54:36]

So that our identity is rooted not in other people but in original mind or emptiness. So our identity, we experience our identity as somehow something intrinsic to us, but not necessarily defined through others. And that allows us to live functionally with other people much easier. But anyway, I think I'm very clumsy in trying to describe this. And mostly I'm sharing some thoughts I don't know how to express too well at present time.

[55:52]

So I think that for me, we're talking not only about the evolution of consciousness, But the evolution of a society which supports awareness and consciousness. And simply knows how to live together better. So I don't really, this is in response to Angelus, what you said partly. Because I don't see that it's our nature to be violent, etc. I think it's simpler that we just don't know how to live together. And I think our basic instinct is to try to live together.

[56:52]

We just don't know how to do it. And then other values come in. When living together fails, then something else starts to function. And I believe we can look forward to a society where people do know how to live together. This may be a too goody-goody view, but I think so. Anyway, that's the vision of Sangha, that it's possible. I could say more about this, but that's enough for now, I think.

[58:06]

May I ask? Sure. In many philosophies or in many religions or schools, for example Freudian school, They have the living tribe and the dying tribe. Yeah. Or we have two basic movements in us, which is going upward and one is going down. We always have this opposite, or in many situations, or many philosophies, we have this opposite position. Like Freud's death instinct or something? Yeah. love and dying or eros and dying. Is there something similar in Buddhism? And could that be that similarly something emptiness form or permanence and impermanence?

[59:09]

And is it when you say Sangha has to live it or cannot live it, is the question of how we live permanence and impermanence? I asked that in many philosophies, in many thoughts, in many constructions, there are always these two poles of Eros and death in some way, from life trick to death trick. And I asked if there would be something like that in Buddhism as well. Or is there any link between these concepts? I have to give it some thought.

[60:36]

And I can, of course, answer the question, but I can try to respond, is there something similar in Buddhism? And the short answer is no. Some comments you have, there's a yin and yang as first division. They say that the first case will last before yin and yang. The first... Well, there's certainly, since there's change, since there's change, there's pulse. And the yin and yang is a kind of pulse. And as you probably know, the yin and yang is a 10th century simplification of some 90 circles the Zen folks used.

[61:56]

And once we create some kind of system, then there's pulses that are within that system. So eros or death instinct and life instinct and stuff may be part of a particular system, but I think Buddhism doesn't think so. It doesn't have to be that way. So let me just say one thing and then maybe take a little break. What I've spoken about often and what I think is, over these years, what I think is the most important dynamic that Buddhism can bring to psychology

[63:09]

is how we generate our continuum. How we have an experience of a continuum from moment to moment And how we generate it and where it's located. And overall, Buddhism says, the major thing is to shift your sense of continuum Into the present and presence of the breath, the body and phenomena. And until one does that, You can't really work on mental problems deeply.

[64:34]

So that I would say that all of practice Buddhism is based on shifting your sense of continuum out of time-based discriminative thinking. Into your breath, body and phenomena. And if I were a psychotherapist, I would try to bring this as a technique. I wouldn't call it Buddhism. To get people to start shifting their experience of continuity. First of all, into their breath. It's a simple fact you can do it.

[65:48]

And it's not so difficult to do. As I say, it's easy. Anyone can do it for about one minute. It's more difficult to do it for 10 minutes or 24 hours. But if anyone can do it for one minute, they can also do it for the entirety of their life. And the main difficulty is not that it's difficult. The main difficulty is we experience our continuity in our thoughts. And as long as you believe that's the location of your continuity You can't bring your experience of continuity with any faith or power into your breath.

[66:56]

We could say that this, although everyone knows everything changes, And you know that things are not permanent. Intellectually you know it. But every time your attention goes back to your thoughts, it means you have a subtle belief in permanence. because you feel more secure in your thoughts as if that was a kind of permanence you could rely on. So if you can shift a person's sense of identity and continuity out of their thoughts, Then discriminative thinking and time-based thinking is perfectly fine.

[68:08]

Nothing wrong at all with discrimination and with thinking. The problem rises when it's the primary way you experience continuity. So it seems to me this is the key point in how Buddhism and psychology can relate to each other. So Buddhism gives us teachings about practices about how to shift your sense of continuity into body, breath and phenomena.

[69:09]

And into the dynamic of the immediate present. And also teachings about how we construct continuity. And all these teachings about this are interesting. But they all follow from developing one's sense of continuity in the body and breath and phenomena. So really most of Buddhism, you don't have to teach much of Buddhism until people have made this shift. And prior to making the shift, the teaching of Buddhism is just to encourage you that it's a good thing to do. And to allay your doubts and increase your faith.

[70:20]

Okay, maybe that's more than enough for starters. And please, If what we talked about so far are directions you'd like to continue, please let me know. So if we're going to go, let's continue to about 6.15. So let's have a break till 5.30 and then maybe go for half an hour, 45 minutes. Is that all right with everyone? I hope you don't know my habit of gassho. Thank you. Do you think about what we talked about so far?

[71:23]

I think it was already very deep, I think, in a very short time. Too deep? No. It's not possible. We want to drown ourselves slowly there. Swimming. That makes me think of what Jung said to Joyce. Do you know that story? Joyce, I think Jung's daughter went crazy. Joyce's daughter, James Joyce's daughter went quite crazy.

[72:59]

And I believe she saw Jung. Could that be right? Anyway, I believe that Joyce said, well, she's just like me. Why is she in so much trouble? And he said, she's drowning in the water in which you swim. Anyway, so what, shall we continue? She wants ten minutes of sitting? I've been trained to follow instructions.

[74:00]

A couple of months ago I was with a group of evolutionary biologists and complexity theorists and so forth. And one thing that struck me is listening and participating in the conversation. is the ones whose thinking seem to be richest and most productive. Looked at very simple things carefully. And I was struck by how similar that is to Buddhist way of thinking. Because we have something very simple, our breath. Attention, intention, and so forth. But it's looked at very carefully.

[75:48]

although the act of practice is very simple, to bring your attention to your breath. If you look at the power and effect of the act, You see that many things are going on. And this simple act is chosen for a complex reason. And understanding the complexity allows you to see the texture of transformative practice. One of the most famous Zen teachers who created Chinese Zen Buddhism

[77:11]

They said that each question should do at least three things. Or each answer should do three things. One is to cut off myriad thoughts. Second, to connect heaven and earth. And third to, I would say, wave follows, following waves, leading waves. Each wave leads the preceding wave that follows the, et cetera. leads one, follows the other. So the sense that each simple thing should do a number of things is part of Buddhist thinking.

[78:26]

So let's look at what, when we bring our attention, how can I say it, We're bringing our sense of identity, our sense of reality, and our sense of continuity. That we are investing thinking with a sense of continuity, identity, and reality. And if we describe the thinking, it's time-embedded thinking.

[79:43]

It's discriminative thinking. And it's a subtle form of permanence. Or hoped for permanence. And you're bringing that away from that kind of thinking. And you're not just bringing it away from that kind of thinking. In that sense of identity, continuity, and reality. But you're also bringing it into the present. And the present, we could say, is not time-embedded, but space-embedded.

[80:45]

And it's the immediate present. And we can think of the immediate present as a kind of washing machine. That if you bring your sense of continuity into the present, it clarifies your functioning. It stabilizes your functioning. And it is kind of a washing machine. It purifies your function. In other words, the immediate present is seen as a... not just a location, it's a location that does something.

[81:58]

Does that make sense? If you just bring your attention into the present, it's not just changing the location, it's changing it to a location that does something. Dignaga, who was, I think he lived from 480 to 540. I think I mentioned him in the Sesshin recently. And he was the teacher of Dharmakirti. And one of the founders of Yogacara thinking. It's not so important to know that, but just to put it in a historical context.

[83:08]

And he described perception, but he said that perception should be free of conceptualization. And that was, you know, his teaching is mainly rooted in freeing perception from conceptualization. When I was picked up this morning after sleeping on the night train from Zurich, And when I was picked up this morning, he took me on a night train from Zurich, he picked me up. And he told me that his parents had started doing Qigong.

[84:09]

And he said his father had gotten kind of old and shaky and had a stroke and other things. And since he and his wife, his mother, have started doing Qigong, their health has gotten much better. And he said every morning they get up around six and they go out for a walk and they do kidney walking or something. I don't know. Which she said they do some kind of walking in the garden where they move their arms and make some noise. And they live outside Vienna in a farm, farming area. And the local farmers think that something quite nutty is going on in the garden.

[85:34]

And the family found out that at the local watering holes, The local watering holes are pubs. They thought some sort of cult was going on down there. And because occasionally visitors in strange cars were there from other villages. And finally someone said, oh, oh, it's just Chinese gymnastics. And then everybody said, oh, it's Chinese gymnastics, then it's okay. So they had a name for it, so everything was all right. This is perception with conceptualization.

[86:41]

I mean, they couldn't conceptualize what they were doing so they made them nervous. But once they conceptualized it, oh, it was okay. It was no longer dangerous. But they didn't really look at what it was. They didn't look carefully enough to see that this was transforming the health of these two people. Certainly when they walked, they didn't see the kidney. So Dignage's point is, how do you perceive without conceptualizing? And part of this is how to come into the immediacy of the present without conceptualizing. So this is basically a practice.

[87:52]

But you need an attitude to open the practice up. So an attitude is like to perceive without conceptualizing. So much of practice is to develop attitudes that affect how you function. Just in this context, let me say I remember when I was in the first years I was studying with Sakyurishi. A number of times I said, what the heck is this guy teaching? And repeatedly I came, he's teaching attitudes. Okay, well why attitudes? So citta is one of the words for mind in Buddhism. And citta is a word for mind.

[89:15]

C-I-T-T-A. But basically what citta means as mind, it describes the functions of mind, of noticing, building, and accumulating. Now again, we're looking at something quite simple, but we're looking at it carefully. And the process of noticing what we notice, how we notice, builds a continuity. and accumulates experience. And this simple act creates our life. How we notice, how we build, and how we accumulate.

[90:20]

So by looking carefully, practice says, okay, let's change how we notice, let's change how we build, and let's change how we accumulate. And the practice says, let's take a closer look at how we do it. Notice something, build something up and collect something. So again, we can come back to this simple practice of shifting our sense of identity out of our thinking into our body, breath and phenomena. And we can practice this. But as you practice it and you begin to see its functioning, you see you're changing your continuum.

[91:25]

And it's not just a simple change from one continuum to another continuum. You're changing how you notice, build, and accumulate. And this must also be the process of psychology, how we notice, how we build a picture of ourselves, and how we accumulate a personal story. So mind, conscious mind, is understood in a geistcraft, geistwerk, geistwerk, as a process of noticing, building and accumulating. So we don't just say, oh, we're conscious of something. Consciousness, just to be conscious, is an act of noticing, building and accumulating.

[92:33]

So, anybody want to say anything? So I feel part of, I don't know if this all makes sense, partly right now I'm just throwing out ingredients. to kind of present the Buddhist soup. And it takes some time before an inventory of ingredients

[93:25]

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