Good morning. I try to make the job for the translator easy at the beginning. So on the one hand, I know that some of you have driven quite a ways and all, and so are rather tired. So, and since we, what time do we get up in the morning, Gerald? At 5.30 and we start sitting. Sitting at 6. So we get up at 6. Oh. But that's not so bad. I was going to say I'll give a short now. But in any case, I like to start Friday evening because I think having two nights to sleep

[01:02]

on what we're discussing is good. So I want to suggest some things that you'll end up sleeping on, perhaps. So we had this topic of The Buddhist understanding of liberation. Or we could say the Buddhist understanding of freedom. Or emancipation, perhaps. We don't know what word to use. But I think we can stay with the word freedom. Because politically and socially, our contemporary world is... continuously involved in defining what is political and social freedom.

[02:45]

And there's a definite relationship between political and social freedom and our ability to realize Buddhist freedom. Maybe I can, I don't know, spiritual freedom, Buddhist freedom, something like that. Because and I think I'll go into it tomorrow, but this, a little bit at least, the way we define our self-worth

[03:49]

The degree to which we define our self-worth through societal images of self-worth. It has a lot to do with our ability to practice. So I think we have to really come into touch with, let's say, our well-being, what gives us a feeling of well-being. And how connected is that with ideas of self-worth?

[04:56]

Because, you know, it's a little bit of a play with words but we want to go Through well-being we can also know non-being. And by non-being I mean a wide sense of being beyond ordinary boundaries of being. And that certainly would be one vision, understanding of Buddhist freedom. So I'd also like Hegel's phrase, the freedom to be an artist of the self.

[06:02]

So I'd like to explore what being an artist of the self means. And then also I would like to look at freedom from a sense of the mystery of our life. And in many ways, Buddhism is presented in such a rational way that it takes the mystery away. The mystery isn't that something's outside this system, but rather the mystery is right here. And in that we can look at a famous koan of Yanmin.

[07:09]

Someone asked Yanmin, what is the body of reality? And he said, the six don't take it in. And in this, young men both leads and misleads us. Because he means, yes, the six senses don't take in what is reality. But he also means that six or counting or any way to measure reality doesn't take in reality.

[08:18]

So there's a couple of things I want to also, I would like to look at Dogen's, two phrases of Dogen's. One is, He says the true human body is the coming and going of birth and death. Now, you know, this kind of phrase is meant to be, you've all learned to read, but there's another kind of reading where you really have to let the depth of statements sink in. You've got to stop on the bridge of each sentence and Look at the sky and look at what's under the bridge.

[09:41]

So this is quite an extraordinary statement. The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. And he says that the coming and going of birth and death is where ordinary people drift about. But the coming and going of birth and death is also where great sages are liberated. But the coming and going of birth and death is also the point at which we are largely liberated.

[10:46]

Now, just to look at that statement a minute, of course, we have to be clear about what Buddhism means by the word body. As I've often pointed out, if you have a corpse here, if we happen to have one, it would be rather strange, but... This is not what Buddhism means by the word body. That's just stuff, right? The body is what makes that stuff alive. Yeah, I mean, if your hand hurts, for instance. Is it really your hand that hurts? It's your experience of you that hurts. So what makes us alive...

[12:00]

Yeah. It's not clear where the boundaries are. Our parents made us alive. Our friends make us alive. Everything we smell, eat, drink makes us alive. All of this which is the coming and going of birth and death makes us alive. So the coming and going of birth and death is our true human body. All of this is what makes us alive. And most of us drift about in this. But this is also where sages are illuminated, liberated, emancipated, freed. So all these myriad things appear before us.

[13:39]

So now Dogen says, again, the second statement, when all these things are the Buddha Dharma, so then you have to stop right there. when all these things are the Buddha Dharma. This is the first phrase in the Genjō-koan, which is the seminal and definitive for the whole of the Shobo Genzo. So it's a little bit like, quite a bit like in the beginning there was the word.

[14:45]

So he says, when all things are the Buddha Dharma. So you have to ask yourself, All these things are here. What does it mean to say they're all the Buddha Dharma? Now you could go to bed now, if that's enough to sleep on. So anything else I say is dessert. So Dogen says, when all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and enlightenment, delusion and freedom. There is practice and birth and death.

[15:52]

And there are sentient beings and there are Buddhas. Now, do you really think that? I mean, maybe you think all these things might be the Buddha Dharma. Whatever that means. But you might agree with that without some intuitive feeling. But, and you might say, well, of course there's also delusion and birth and death and sentient beings. But would you further conclude that there is also then practice? Yes, you probably would conclude that. But then would you conclude there is enlightenment? And there are Buddhas. You know, Buddhism makes no sense unless you can imagine that there could be a Buddha here.

[17:14]

Here in this society. I mean, we study Buddhism, we think, but Buddha, he was 2,500 years ago. But Dogen says, if when all things are the Buddha Dharma, there then are Buddhas as well as sentient beings. So one of the One of the themes of this seminar, the dessert, is to bring Buddha into the present. Now, you know, I have these beads.

[18:39]

And I like to carry my beads. Partly because they're just physically convenient and fun to play with. And I don't worry as much as I used to. So, And I carry them because, you know, as a Buddhist, I don't always wear my robes, but I usually always carry my beads. So I'm more or less defining these beads for you. And they're called bodaiju in Japanese. Which means something like both Buddha tree seeds and enlightenment seeds.

[19:46]

And there's traditionally 108 of them. Which is a rather complicated number in numerology around the world. But these 108 beads also represent the 108 kleshas, or hindrances to enlightenment. So that means that each klesha, each hindrance, is also the seed of enlightenment. I've got them all on a string, so that's pretty good. And on my wrist. And they also age. They start out completely white. And you, so I know that they're for generations.

[20:47]

So I don't want to lose them, though. But if I put a cotton string in that tends to break really quickly, And if I put a nylon string in, it cuts through into the seeds. So customarily you use silk. This is silk. It doesn't cut into the seeds and it lasts a year or two years before it breaks. So if I take care of them and give them a patina, they get darker and darker. See, I'll show you. It's a magic show.

[22:07]

So these are probably 100 or 200 years old. So these have lots of people's places and enlightenment seeds. And I have a string from Suzuki Roshi. And I will give these to, I mean, either I'll give them to you or you'll take them from my body. But I'm likely to still have them, you know. So what really is these beads is my viewpoints about them.

[23:07]

Each of these beads is also, the name of them means moon and star beads. This particular type of bead has many small dots, which are the stars, and each bead has one larger dot, which is the moon. So these little beads are like each one's the whole cosmos. Yeah. This is a typical Buddhist way of looking at things. Each bead is an obstacle and a seed of enlightenment, and each is the whole cosmos. And the string keeps them together. But really the string is my mind which keeps them together. My intention to keep them together. So I'm just trying to emphasize here a viewpoint.

[24:31]

Because the self is a viewpoint. Enlightenment or liberation is a viewpoint. To look at this myriad things as Buddhadharma is a viewpoint. Now, although contemporary science doesn't support Newton's view of the world anymore. But really, all of us do. I mean, most of us, I'm quite sure, think of this world as a container. Time and space are quite separate.

[25:38]

And go on independent of us. And that objects don't influence this container much. But that's not the view of contemporary science. And that's not the Buddhist view. For instance, one of the words for the universe in Buddhism is loka datu, which means a karma-created world. And what that means is this world didn't have a creator, it is co-created. Now, present, those are just words for us.

[26:39]

But it's a different viewpoint. It's looking at these beads in quite a different way. Yeah. The cosmological view of Buddhism is quite interesting. The idea is that there's some very Indian idea, going back, that this very tiny, there's a word paramanu, And that word means extreme minute, extremely small. And these paramanus are so small, they only have form in combination with other paramanus. And these paramanus, there's a number of measurements and the smallest, the largest measurement, largest combinations of paramanus that we can see

[28:07]

It is said to be, this is a kind of poetic science, a dust mote in a ray of sunlight coming through a chink in the wall. I can remember I was having a conversation once with a fairly well-known quite thoroughly realized Zen teacher in the West. And I was talking with him and we were discussing something. And suddenly there was a dust mote in his fingers. And do you know how sometimes the sunlight will catch your watch face and flash around the room?

[29:32]

The whole time he was speaking to me, kept holding this dust mote and it would i don't know how exactly it was doing it but it would start flashing and it would flash in my eyes and sometimes on the wall it was quite fantastic And he knew exactly that this, about this measurement of dust mode, is the largest visible, first time the universe becomes visible to us. So I was speaking to him at the same time this dust mote was stopping one level of my mind. And sometimes he would speak and sometimes he would just let this dust mold flash.

[30:45]

Now we can ask, what is it or who is it? Or like we can take the observing mind, the observing function of the mind. And in the West we ask, who is it? And the most common question virtually I get in all these years is, well, who's doing this? Who's having these experiences? And the built into our Western way of thinking is the viewpoint that the observing function of mind is a who.

[31:59]

And that this who not only is a who, it also has a story. And it's a story seeking unity. So that's good. That's really what we as Westerners are, is a story seeking unity. Buddhism also asks of this observing mind. What is it as well as who is it? Or how does it become a who? And in what useful way can we make it a who? The pronouns, I don't know, in German, is it okay to say a who?

[33:23]

Does that make sense? I mean, you can say it the same way? I don't know if I got the right word right now. Does it make sense what he's saying? I don't know. Maybe I can stop and you can go on. I'm waiting for the day when the people I practice with, I can go, And then he will speak. It's really like that already, but we pretend. Now these Paramanus combine to make the dust motes, the first visible level.

[34:34]

And further combine to make the four elements. Earth, water. Fire and air. Or solidity, fluidity, heat and movement. Now, what's interesting about this way of looking at things from this Buddhist way of looking at it is that we can't know these four elements until our four elements are present. So these elements don't appear until these elements appear. We think usually the opposite way. But the Buddhist way is quite fantastic, I think. Because it implies that there's innumerable worlds out there, but we only see one of them because that's what our four elements allow us to see.

[36:02]

This is also Yan Men's, the six don't take it in. And then we have this statement we've worked on quite often over the years. Yeah, of... Heaven and earth and I have the same root. Myriad things and I are the same body. So we could say this is a vision of a homologous universe. Now I'm using the word homologous to mean It shares the same source or root and is parallel in development but it's different in function.

[37:23]

So the tree, those trees out there and I, have a parallel development but our functions are different. In other words, this is a vision that all of this is a mutual creation, which I feel quite sure it is. Later Buddhism added space as a fifth element, And to get this idea that it's not a container, to get the feeling for what it means to say this is not a container, perhaps we can imagine two hands in one rubber glove.

[38:28]

And then someone tells you to wash the dishes. So you've got two hands and one rubber glove. And then you pull them apart. That's space. And that's our connectedness. And we all together make this connectedness we call space. And this is the idea like the Big Bang didn't happen in space. I gave him the moocon. Yeah. He came over the other day and... The Big Bang didn't occur in space.

[39:41]

It created space as it expanded. Now this is hard to compute, but that's what young man meant when he said the six don't take it in. We can know this is true, but it's not exactly something we can perceive. But if you begin to let this view, this mutual, this co-created universe come into you, If you accept this viewpoint... The beads, what you see, you'll begin to feel it held together differently. You'll look at the tree and you'll have a feeling, this is me.

[40:47]

Ihr seht den Baum an und habt ein Gefühl, das bin ich. Und damit könnt ihr arbeiten, mit diesem Satz. Bei allem, was ihr anseht, sagt ihr, das bin ich. Das ist nichts anderes als der Satz, Himmel, Erde und ich teilen dieselbe Wurzel. Myriad things and I are the same body or same substance. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because unless you have this viewpoint, enlightenment doesn't make any sense. Enlightenment is that experience which reveals this co-created reality. multiverse to us.

[42:09]

Now, the enlightenment experience is a capacity of human beings. Protestant conversion experiences, as you know, are virtually the same description as Buddhist enlightenment experiences. When I read a poet, a particular poet, almost always find a description in their poetry of their enlightened experience. I only gave it to one of them. And it's pronunciation. But it develops, you know.

[43:40]

So there are many aspects. There's physical enlightenment, emotional enlightenment, mental enlightenment and so forth. Physical and mental. Even though in the word enlightenment in Indian philosophy it means that experience which has no comparison, and that experience which is so incomparable and unique, you have to face it absolutely alone. Still, there is a kind of viewpoint. It opens up into a viewpoint. And my feeling is, for instance, that I can look at a painting of Matisse's

[44:52]

and see what kind of enlightenment he had, and I can look at a painting of Picasso and see what kind of enlightenment experience he had. My view, most committed artists, they're artists because they're working out of some kind of enlightenment experience. So my point is that enlightenment is not a province of Buddhism. But it's a province Buddhism has decided to cultivate. And it's sometimes said that the gift of Indian philosophy to the world is the emphasis on enlightenment. So the question I would like, what I see in this topic for this seminar,

[46:03]

is what is the Buddhist understanding of freedom? Is the question behind that is why does Buddhism emphasize this experience as the most fundamental experience? Not because it's the biggest candy. The biggest bon-bon. It's sort of like going through the sound barrier, bon-bon. But because it's seeing into this dust mold. So now, when you're sitting in your room on a sunny day. And there are numerous dust motes.

[47:23]

You don't have to think, oh, I haven't it cleaned thoroughly. You can stop and contemplate each. Through my elements, I'm choosing to see you as elements. It's in this vision of a co-created that the mystery of Buddhist freedom makes sense to the extent that it does make sense. it's in this viewpoint in this view of the universe the mutually co-created universe that enlightenment makes sense the vision of enlightenment and the experience of enlightenment

[48:31]

So that's enough to sleep on. So let's sit for a couple minutes and then... By the way, thank you all of you for coming. I'm very grateful to see you here. And I think it's a wonderful opportunity for us to practice together. I'm always really grateful for this opportunity. When all things are the Buddha Dharma.

[50:23]

The coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. It's where most people drift about. And it's where sages find their freedom. The easiest step in knowing that all things are you is to really come to fully know your breath is you.

[52:01]

That is to come to the point of really recognizing one's own breath as oneself. be able to rest your sense of identification in your breath. And not only in your thoughts. Or even more naturally than in your thoughts. You know, when I come in, while you're sitting, some of you, when I bow, bow back to me.

[53:51]

Thank you. But if you're meditating, your custom is not to bow. But since some of you may do it because there's an exception to the rule, I should tell you what the exception is. In general, if you come into the zendo and sit down around the beginning of the period, the person to your right and left bow.

[54:54]

That's for everyone, not just the abbot. And so the person on the left and right bows and the person at the far end of the zendo whose back is turned also bows. So only those three people bow, not everyone else. And the idea that the person at the far end bows is they're so deep yet sensitively in meditation they know somebody's bowing. I grew up in Buddhism with that rule. But I think it's a little too much.

[56:06]

Because people are sitting there, wait, thinking half... So if you're... My sense is once meditation has really gotten underway, you don't bow. Even Ruth wouldn't bow, though I'm happy you did. Whatever viewpoint I bring to the discussion of Buddhism, we have to come back to the basic practices of breath, mindfulness, zazen, and usually I say turning words, but I'd like to say focusing words. though you can say whatever works in German, I don't know.

[57:31]

And these four practices are the ways we redirect our attention. Because that's the essence of yogic practice, to redirect your attention. Although I must come back to those basic practices always, we must, I must, we must. Lunch preparations are finished. The viewpoint we bring to practice is extremely important.

[58:35]

So I want to every seminar, Sashin, bring a new viewpoint, a new context to practice. You know, China is now in the process of introducing automobiles and washing machines. The world with how many billion more automobiles it's going to be, I don't know. But they're in a different position than we were as Europeans and Americans. Because we learned to drive and then we drifted about in this world of birth and death, coming and going of birth and death.

[59:45]

But now we know that enough about automobiles. that the introduction of an automobile to a society is not just about teaching individuals to drive. You've got to have roads and parking and deal with the economic effects of trucks versus trains and so forth. Pollution, gasoline consumption, and so forth. So China, ideally, an old, developed culture... can perhaps introduce automobiles from the point of view of wisdom rather than drifting about in ignorance.

[61:02]

So, Buddhism is a teaching developed over many centuries. which allows us to make better decisions or different decisions about our life. We don't necessarily just have to drift about in this world of birth and death. Yeah. Yeah, I guess what I'm doing is, you know, if you now say to the Chinese, when you have to think of all these things before, they say, I just want to drive a car.

[62:10]

Yeah. And sometimes when I'm teaching Buddhism, I feel you people want to say, I just want to practice Zazen, or I just want enlightenment. Why do you tell me all these things? But really, you know, it's, you know, you look at, I was just at this conference in the Kamala Shila Institute in northern Germany, near Bonn. North of here. Yeah. And some of the psychotherapists thought, oh, this is so complicated, Buddhism. But, you know, if you look at all the different schools of psychotherapy and psychology, it's... Oh, my gosh!

[63:33]

It's surprising. They don't think that's complicated, but they think this is. I don't know. And one of the wonderful things about Buddhism is once you understand well any small part, the rest of it pretty much comes into place. Now, there's a lot of different schools in Buddhism and different approaches. Oh, my gosh. Are there some cushions around? Anybody want a cushion back there? I know football. Although there are many different schools within Buddhism, and there are different periods in its development, I see a basic underlying teaching that's the same throughout all the schools.

[65:38]

And all the periods of development. Now there's a... Nescience or ignorance in Buddhism is the main problem. And what are we ignorant of? We are ignorant about awareness. You could say Buddhism is that simple. A baby is born, and it opens its eyes, and there's a pillow or something. What's that? And then there's mom and dad and so forth.

[66:47]

And very soon the baby learns lots of things. But when it first opens its eyes or first feels, this awareness is essential being. But we get directed away from that. And yogic Zen practice is to redirect us to our fundamental awareness. Now, Sukhirashi used to say that back in the 60s that we were a baby Sangha.

[68:33]

We needed to grow up. Now, I don't know if our Dharma Sangha Europe is fully grown up. But I'd say it's a teenage Sangha. In the sense that we're now at the point where we're deciding to go to college or what kind of job we'll have or something like that. Mm-hmm. That initial decision to practice is like the baby opening its eyes and what does it see? What it sees is attention itself.

[69:36]

What it sees is awareness itself. But it doesn't see the awareness. It sees the pillow or mom or dad or something. So you'd say in yogic studies, it doesn't see its inborn splendor. Sounds good. You know, what I gave you the... Excuse me, but... You know, we have this, all things and I share the same... A root? LAUGHTER Sorry, couldn't resist.

[70:42]

And I think that the decision to practice is some It's always some form of recognizing that the desire to return, redirect our attention to awareness itself. And two big adjustments have to be made then. First is you have to, I mean, you recognize the experience and then you have the first big adjustment is how to adjust one's life so that one can practice. And that's a practical matter.

[72:02]

And also how to adjust practice to bring it into your life. So that's the first big adjustment. And once you make that adjustment, the whole context of practice and teaching develops in a new way. And the second big adjustment, which may come some years later, is to adjust your mind to practice. To adjust your fundamental viewpoints to practice. So we have this basic idea that the initial decision is how we understand awareness.

[73:23]

And that decision directs our life. As I've been pointing out recently, I love the hidden wisdom in the word trivia. Trivial. And which means three roads. So it means you're on this road and you have a choice. So every trivial matter, every dust mold, is a choice. And we are constantly making an ignorant choice or a wisdom choice.

[74:27]

And in every moment, since there's nothing outside the system in Buddhism, again, there's no Archimedean point. from which to move things. Here in the system, and it can't be in the past or future because where are they? So it has to be here. Now, you can hear those words, but that doesn't make it here. It takes a real kind of mental adjustment to actually come into feeling it's here. And that's another kind of decision like the decision to practice. And to recognize... but to feel it's here.

[75:43]

It must be here and to feel its presence. And a key to that is to really know that impermanence means uniqueness. And here we're not talking just about physical postures, but mental postures. You can have an idea that everything intellectually understood is impermanent, but you don't have the mental posture of impermanence until you actually experience this moment as absolutely unique. And you feel, as Dogen would call this, the stage of the present moment.

[76:51]

There's no other stage. Yeah, we can adjust our life and et cetera, but really a good part of that time we're not alive in all those adjustments. We're marking time, not living time. Do you have an expression like that in German to say you mark time? No. Mark time means like you don't know what to do next and you're just waiting until you get your job and you're marking time until you get the job.

[77:51]

You're living, your time's going on, but you're not really living it. You're waiting till something happens. To be in the stage of the present moment means all of your vitality, energy is here. It's dangerous because you're on the line then. It's a little scary. I'm sorry. You don't know what will happen. I mean, if this moment is absolutely unique, it means you're in very basic ways not in control. So I brought up the idea of, you know, we're a teenage sangha.

[79:19]

Because I'm trying to bring various viewpoints into our practice. And I want, and I think at this stage particularly, we need your viewpoints in the practice. So this afternoon I'd like us to break up into... Break up? No. Create up into small groups. Maybe five groups of around ten. And I'd like you to consider the question, what is the decision to practice or how do we feel it or how has it happened to us?

[80:21]

And how can we adjust our life to support practice? And how can we adjust practice to bring it into our life? How can we adjust life, adjust practice to support life? Now, I think we could say in Buddhism there's three kinds of suffering or kleshas. The word suffer in English at least means to undergo or to bear. Yeah.

[81:36]

The word kleshas means impediments or obstructions to practice. Obstructions to awareness. So it's a wider and maybe more useful term than using the English word suffering. So we could say there's three kinds of suffering. Or three areas of three realms of three kinds of kleshas. Yeah. One is existential suffering. And the second, we could say, is societal impediments.

[82:39]

And the third is neurotic suffering. Now, neurotic suffering is... I would define neurotic to mean a... a reaction to something that's inappropriate or out of scale. In other words, something happens and you have fear, but there's much more fear than is appropriate. Or something happens which there's no reason to cause fear, and yet you're fearful. Now, Buddhism doesn't actually have much teaching having to do with neurotic suffering.

[83:42]

So probably for neurotic suffering, it's probably good to work it through in your life in various ways or work it through with a therapist. And I think a lot of people go into therapy, I mean become therapists because they're working with their own neurotic suffering. And hopefully they have learned how to free themselves from their own neurotic suffering before they start doing therapy with others. Or they're well along in the process and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And in Buddhism then the next step is to, if you get yourself pretty much free of neurotic suffering, it becomes transparent.

[85:04]

You can then begin to see your the societal impediments, or pleasures, and you can begin to see your existential suffering. For instance, the way self functions, the way our identification with our thoughts causes us suffering is existential suffering, it's not neurotic. Because a basic decision, which in Buddhism would be called ignorance, is that we identify with our thoughts and not with our awareness. So I think you have the picture.

[86:14]

This basic situation of our identity point. Now, if I ask you to bring your attention to your breath, all of you can instantly do it. It's the easiest thing in the world. But you can't do it for long. That's the hardest thing in the world.

[87:17]

Why is something both the easiest and hardest thing in the world? Again, this Buddhism is so simple. The answer is very simple. Because you're identified with your thoughts. And that was a basic decision given to you by your parents and your society. And I probably, I mean, you know, I have two daughters. And I certainly would teach them to have a relationship to their thoughts. But I'd also try to get them to have a relationship to awareness itself. You do need, in our society, probably all human societies, you need a relationship to your thoughts.

[88:23]

But what is that relationship is the decision that's either wisdom or ignorance. And we're all here together trying to understand better our relationship to our thoughts and our relationship to awareness itself. And thus, if we're going to study that, we need to study better what is our relationship to thoughts. And we have to study better awareness itself. Good. Again, practice is really, and I hope you can all keep your practice that simple.

[89:34]

I mean, lots of other things happen, but still it comes back to what is the relationship to thoughts, what is the relationship to awareness. Our society, I mean, doesn't want us to have a relationship to awareness. It doesn't seem to like solitude. I mean, every elevator pumps music at you, almost every elevator. Every airplane seat, armrests are full of music and jokes and things like that.

[90:55]

I guess they're afraid you buy a ticket and you couldn't stand just sitting there for an hour. You have to have the ability to plug in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Of course, as some of you know, I see this as basically a form of political and social control. I mean, I beg to try to say it in a few sentences. Democracies are too complex to be ruled by an elite. They need the energy and participation of everyone. And it has to be real participation. So people have to have choices. At least they have to have the sensation of choice.

[92:09]

Like a hundred television channels. This sometimes is a choice, but often just the sensation of choice. And the most precious commodity in the world is attention. Attention is the seed of mind and the fruit of mind. Society wants your attention. Democracies want your attention. We can't say in a democracy, off with your head. Monarchies don't care about your attention. They say, keep farming and mind your own business and we're having a good time in the palace.

[93:24]

And you can read fairy tales about it. But we And if you get out of line, off with his head. But democracies have to get everyone to agree. So to get our agreement, they want our attention. And they want our attention directed outward. Mm-hmm. and they want it directed toward societal images of self-worth. So you could say that our educational system is to educate us, that very, very few of the people who go to universities and colleges end up to be scholars.

[94:29]

So if you look at what's really being taught, what's really being taught is hooking you into a system that determines your self-worth. This isn't so bad. I mean, all these people are living on this beautiful surface of this planet. We have to find some way to get along together. But again, Buddhism and yogic teaching says, okay, but you have the choice to be reborn into your awareness. And there's a wonderful genius to this. Because this rebirth into your own awareness

[95:36]

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