We have to remove the pillars right away. We removed the walls, so we might as well remove the pillars. I like to see everybody though. Okay. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for being here to translate. How many of you have not been here before? Yeah, okay. Oh, no?

[01:03]

Really? And how many of you have not been to a practice week before? Oh, quite a few. So what we're trying to do is find a way to have... serious or adept lay practice to make it serious or adept lay practice possible. And my feeling about that is that we have to have some For an adept lay practice to work, there should be some contact with monastic type of practice.

[02:04]

I think actually that even knowing a practice place exists where you can go, even if you don't go very often, is helpful. So as most of you know, we try to keep two practice places, one in Colorado and this one here. And the practice week is not something that's done traditionally in Asia, as far as I know, though probably something similar is done.

[03:05]

Nor is anything like the two-and-a-half-day weekend seminars we do at all common in Asia. But Sashin practice, which we do two, three Sashins a year in Europe, is a common practice, primarily for monks, but it often is done in a way that can include lay people. But since so many of you have the commitment to practice, often a life that leaves you some time to practice each day, We're trying to find ways in which you can practice here that introduce you to practice, introduce you to the teaching,

[04:23]

and introduce you to this way of practice which you might be able to carry the feeling into your daily life. And also you may, you're able and you do carry your feeling into this place and develop it. So, as some of you know, we just a day or two finished taking a wall out that was here. It's something some of us thought of in the first days we moved into Johanneshof. But we didn't have the time and ability to do it, and Andreas came and others, and suddenly we did it, just the last couple of weeks.

[06:06]

And we had a lot of discussion whether we should modify the building. Maybe the two small rooms were better. We decided to take a chance and optimistically think it would work. As far as we can tell, the rooms upstairs are not going to fall down. And I think all of us have been surprised by how natural it seems. It sort of looks like it was always here almost. Well, usually we have seminars in the room we're eating in now. That gets pretty tight with this many people.

[07:19]

And we thought we'd experiment this week with how this room works. So even this room, if we can make this room a practice place, is an experiment. And for those of you who know the schedule from the past, we've modified the schedule slightly this time. So I hope in the course of the week, We can discuss how the schedule works and how this room feels and so forth. Because it's very important that the place and the teaching and each of us work together. to create some common feeling and common body because it's a truth of Buddhism that realization and wisdom most powerfully proceed through shared practice

[08:33]

Shared practice. I think in the Bible even it says when any two or three people are together, Jesus is present, something like that. There's a feeling like that in Buddhism. When two or three people or more come together to practice, something happens that's more powerful than any single individual. But Dogen speaks about the practitioner of the Heart Sutra as something like translated as the independent seer. So what I've decided, what we've decided to do this week is to look carefully at the Heart Sutra as a practice.

[10:02]

No, we chant the Heart Sutra. It's the most chanted teaching in all of Buddhism. It's chanted on almost every occasion. by most of the schools of Buddhism. But it's actually quite a complex text. And I don't know how much we can do, but I thought, hey, we have the title, something like The Heart of Wisdom, don't we? Something like that. And we chant it all the time, so let's try to have some understanding of it. I think if we discuss it, we can create the conditions for understanding. Again, Dogen uses, he says we have to receive, the practice is receiving. Holding.

[11:26]

Repeating. And reflecting. Quite simple. But it means a teaching that we we really do have to receive and hold and repeat and reflect on. We can almost think of the Heart Sutra as a menu, a wisdom menu. Yeah, like a menu in a restaurant, yeah. Here's the menu. Go down and say, oh, this looks good. The appetizer is the five skandhas. But it has to not only be a menu. This has to be a meal. And this used to be our dining room, so you know it. Now, it's the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, Haridaya Sutra.

[12:49]

And Maha means great or all-encompassing. Universal, something for all circumstances. And Prajnaparamita means wisdom. But it means wisdom that's gone beyond wisdom. Already, of course, we have some kind of... There's wisdom, okay. Most of us hardly know what wisdom is. It's supposed to happen when you get old and your earlobes get long. Mm-hmm. but wisdom that goes beyond wisdom. How can we... What is going beyond? And it starts out with... Does the Heart Sutra here anywhere?

[13:59]

Does anybody have a copy? It's okay. Well, you've got one good. It starts out with Avalokiteshvara when practicing deeply the prajnaparamita. And maybe we could say, maybe it should start with when, when, at the time of. Avallokiteshvara deeply immersed in. At the time that Avallokiteshvara was deeply immersed in. wisdom beyond wisdom, the fruit of this is he clearly saw, or he or she, Abla Kitteshvara clearly saw, that the skandhas are empty.

[15:08]

And that frees us from suffering. Mm-hmm. That sounds like the good news, right? That if you can see the skandhas clearly and that they are empty, that you will be free from suffering. If that's true, you know, we've got like some It's quite good this week. Things will be different after this week. Because maybe we can see clearly the skandhas and see them as empty and see why that freezes from suffering.

[16:10]

So maybe that's all we can do this week. But maybe we can do some more. And maybe your freedom from suffering will come yesterday or sometime in the future. But to know that freedom from suffering is possible already frees you from suffering. It changes your relationship to suffering. This starts, of course, with accepting suffering. And some of you who are new to sitting are going to find that tomorrow morning during the first two periods, sitting still is a kind of suffering.

[17:29]

It's very peculiar that sitting still is a kind of suffering. You can be still for much of the night and you don't suffer. Why is it that when you're conscious and still, you suffer? Yeah, you have this pretzel position and that may cause some problem. Ja, du hast diese Brezelhaltung und die mag vielleicht Schwierigkeiten verursachen. But if you just put your arm in one place for five hours, say, your arm's going to hurt. Aber wenn du deinen Arm an einem bestimmten Platz hältst und fünf Stunden lang, das wird auch wehtun. You can put it as comfortably as you want, no pretzel, just comfortably. About five hours later you're saying, yeah. So that somehow consciousness itself is a kind of suffering.

[18:43]

And we have to keep distracting ourselves so our consciousness doesn't become suffering. This is quite interesting. Hmm. But tomorrow, if you're quite uncomfortable, please feel free to move or lift up your legs or whatever you have to do. Or sit in a chair. Stuhl. But it's good to see to what extent you can sit still without moving and scratching and so forth. Because sitting is a wisdom posture. We're born with waking, sleeping, walking, running, standing. Wir werden geboren mit wachen, schlafen, sitzen, stehen, laufen.

[19:52]

But the power of sitting still consciously, somewhat consciously, was discovered. It doesn't come naturally. Aber die Macht, die darin liegt, ganz bewusst still zu sitzen, die ist nicht natürlich zu uns gekommen, die wurde entdeckt. The poet Gary Schneider thinks that it came maybe discovered by hunters who had to sit still in the woods, you know, waiting for an animal. Maybe they didn't really want to hunt. They wanted to go sit still and bliss out and pretend to hunt. Okay, but this is a kind of philosophy. A teaching, a kind of philosophy.

[20:53]

All Buddhism you can look at as having three characteristics. It's a philosophy in the sense that it's about how we actually exist. Philosophy of reality, something like that. And it's also a medicine. It has a therapeutic aspect. And third, it's an enlightenment or realization teaching. So a teaching like this is about reality. It's meant to be a medicine and it's meant to be realisational. The third one? Realization. But it's not presented simply as a kind of philosophical text. It's presented as a story. Avalokiteshvara is sitting. Well, who dat? Who dat?

[22:20]

Who's that? Who dat? And then he's talking to Shariputra, or he's answering Shariputra's implied questions. So we can talk about Avlokiteshvara and Shariputra tomorrow. The main point, this is a story presented as a story so you can put yourself in the story. Okay, so it's really asking you to put yourself in the story sort of like Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of wisdom, of compassion. So again, tomorrow I'll try to speak a little bit about letting yourself come into this teaching In some way, as wisdom goes beyond wisdom, perhaps a way of being that goes beyond self.

[23:43]

When I look at people, one of the things I see often is They have a lot of views. Views about the way other people should behave, the way the world should be, etc. It's quite normal. And also I see that people relate to each other emotionally. And that's often in some contrast to our views. Our views kind of establish a context over time. And our emotions establish a context. an immediacy, an immediate context.

[25:03]

But we're not limited to a person shaped by views, nor our emotional immediacy. And zazen practice is to kind of let these views go. And to let our reactions this way and that way go. And see if we can taste, at least for a moment, some freedom from views and And if you can find some taste of a freedom from preferences, a freedom from views, not as a continuity, just as a moment, just when, one moment, when means just for a moment.

[26:16]

Then we, as this sutra would say, for that moment Avalokiteshvara is practicing. So this is in a way a little kind of theater piece. A story that when you go into the meditation room, you let yourself become this character, this protagonist. It's a little vacation you can take. A freedom from your views and preferences. And that's how we initially enter this teaching as a practice. Okay.

[27:18]

I think that's more than enough for a little introduction. So I'll see you tomorrow morning at sasen. Thank you for translating. Satsang with Mooji wa yo koto katashi

[28:19]

Ma-re-ru-ma-ke-to-ji-ju-ji-su-ru-ko-to-he-ta-ri-ne-ga-o-pa-dok-wa-no-nyo-ra-i-do-shen-ju-tsu-ri-yo-ye-shi-ta-te-ma-tsu-ran Eidmühle übertropfen, berühmten, geraten, vollkommener Darm, fehlt mir sicher auch im Grundeitraus, die Blühung entkalkbar zu besetzen. Und da ich den Segen und Reim über den Erdklingen unterliegen kann, bewirke ich die Wahrheit des Katalettans, wie Frau. Guten Morgen.

[29:52]

Good morning. So this is part of our experiment too. To see if we can do Teisho in this room and not just in the Zendo. Customarily, if I'm speaking about Buddhist teaching very directly, the custom is to wear Buddhist robe. And this afternoon, we'll have a seminar, more of a seminar discussion. then maybe I will wear something different. My jogging suit. Does it make any difference? And I know a number of you are new to this practice.

[30:55]

So I'm quite happy to be in the discussion in the afternoon, answer any kind of questions, or try to answer any kind of questions you have. Whenever there are new people, I try to feel what it's like from your point of view or from when I first started. I remember what I liked best was you could be barefoot in Zendo, I remember. I liked that. I like going to church barefoot. Now, I don't know if this is barefoot exactly, but something like that.

[32:15]

Sorry? I don't know if this is being barefoot. Yeah. So anyway, I imagine it must look pretty strange to some of you. Or perhaps too Catholic. I remember being in college, the different ways my professors started lectures. Some would come in and they'd be there before the students arrived. And so as you came in, you could see them standing down at their, if they had an assistant, down at their desk.

[33:23]

Usually it was like that. I don't know, preparing something. So when you came into the room, there was a kind of feeling of entering their presence, not just the room. And other professors, they would wait until everybody was settled, and then they would come in. And then they would... have some ritual usually of arranging their papers and stuff for a little while, and then they'd start. And I noticed that these rituals actually made a difference. The professor always arrived kind of scattered and late and sometimes early.

[34:25]

He didn't establish a presence in the room. So in many of these professors there was an intuitive understanding, at least, of ritual. Now, if you went to a physics class and the professor at the beginning of the class, instead of shuffling his papers, did nine bows. This would be quite interesting. You might not like it, but it would be interesting. Here's the professor. There'd be some different mood from doing nine bows before you started speaking.

[35:27]

Particularly if he bowed to Newton, Max Planck and Einstein. Yeah, we do something like that actually. We do in the morning. And compared to a lot of Buddhism, Zen tends to be quite practical. For the most part, we're bowing in the morning when we chant the names of ancestors. We're chanting the names of actual people or something close to actual people. Most of us, when we practice, we just do it.

[37:02]

Maybe you do it because it gives you, I hope, some kind of good feeling. But I think most of us don't really think about what we're doing too much. And we don't think about really what this Heart Sutra is all about. But during this week we will look more carefully at what the Heart Sutra is about. But during this week we will take a closer look at what is going on in this Heart Sutra. No, I... I'm trying to find some entrance here.

[38:28]

By the way, are the acoustics okay in this room? Can you hear? Can you hear back there? Oh, thanks. Okay. So who's Avalokiteshvara? Yeah. I don't know. Somebody made him up, or her up. Why would we do that? And is there some reality to this made-up being? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, I think you can understand that the fullness of your life and the fullness of life is not limited to your views and preferences. But still it's uncomfortable for us if we don't have something to do.

[39:34]

I remember I gave a number of times asked to give lectures years ago in the 60s. Yeah, often to churches who were curious why so many people practiced Zen, young people especially, and not so many young people were coming to their churches. They wanted to know the secret. Which is, of course, in that time was practice. Mm-hmm. So I would start the lecture sometimes as I'd come in and sit down and there'd be a group of people. And I wouldn't say anything for a while.

[40:52]

And they didn't know anything about meditation, but five, six, eight, ten minutes I just sat there. I didn't tell people to do anything. And some people looked around. And one of the main rules in Zen is you don't look around. Because you're supposed to feel, but not look around. If you look, you're already thinking. So if you're in charge of the zendo or the meal or whatever, it's better to do it wrong than look around and find out what to do. Also, wenn man eben verantwortlich ist für den Sender oder für die Mahlzeit, es ist besser, es falsch zu tun, als herumzuschauen und so herauszufinden, was falsch ist.

[41:58]

I mean, occasionally it's okay, but basically you just take your chances on feeling what's happening. Gelegentlich zu schauen ist in Ordnung, aber eigentlich ist es so, dass man versucht herauszufühlen. Anyway, I would just sit there without explanation. And people would look around or they'd fidget and, you know, et cetera. And then after five or ten minutes, I'd say, what you just experienced was pretty much what Zazen's about. Yeah. Really, Zazen is about not knowing what to do with the next five minutes. And if you need something to do in Zazen, you're still in your preferences and views. So any Buddhist Zen teaching where they tell you what to do is not Zen teaching. There are forms of Buddhism which tell you what to do.

[43:08]

And there are good practices, there are good maps. But Zen says it's much better to find out the truth for yourself. than to be shown the truth. It's much more your own power if you find it out for yourself. But it's quite difficult. You can accept, yes, maybe it's possible to be free from views and preferences. But the first instruction then is to be free from having something to do. That's quite difficult. Dogen describes a...

[44:08]

practicing the Heart Sutra as turning into a wind bell. He says it's like you are hanging from a rope by your mouth. I'm just letting the wind blow you this way and that way. Yeah, I know. That's how you practice this heart sutra, Dogen says. The first step is discovering this mind or feeling of not needing to do anything.

[45:31]

And this is a wisdom sutra, and that feeling is a gate to wisdom. Wisdom that goes beyond wisdom. Wisdom that goes beyond wisdom. There's no map to what goes beyond. But this is still then is very practical, but it's subtle. Okay, this is a wisdom sutra. Why is the practitioner of it the bodhisattva of compassion? And what does it mean to be the bodhisattva of compassion?

[46:43]

Well, Zen and Buddhism in general tends to look at things not as entities, but functions. As functions, not as functions. You can't do much about the self as an entity, but you can do something about the self as functions. So one of the basics I point out always is to see the self as the functions of establishing separateness, Connectedness and continuity. And if you can study how you yourself establish separation, connectedness, and continuity.

[47:52]

This is up to you. It's up to you to study it or not. You don't have to. If you want to practice Buddhism as a layperson, And you don't want to depend on teachers and monastic life and regimented eating and things like that? Then you have to find a way yourself to start studying. And one of the most basic is to begin to observe how you yourself establish separation, connectedness and continuity. If you begin to get a feeling for that, especially if you get to see it clearly, And then you're a long ways into the practice of Buddhism.

[48:58]

And into understanding or creating the basis for understanding the five skandhas. Which this sutra begins by saying Avalokiteshvara precisely saw how the five skandhas can free us from suffering. Okay. Okay, so Avalokiteshvara is a function. He, she, the feminine form of Avalokiteshvara is called Kuan Yin or Kanon.

[50:04]

And one of the wonderful things about Creston is we have this big Kuan Yin statue. And I especially like it because one of the things that disturbed me from the time I was conscious, somewhat conscious Is that we human beings build nuclear weapons? I even gave my high school graduation speech about nuclear weapons. In 1954, I think. With some despair about why I should even continue to live if we are so stupid to make such things.

[51:06]

Then one of the things I studied in college was the history of science and technology in order to understand better why we would do such things. Yeah, and so forth. But this... The statue we have was a commission of the Japanese government for the Peace Museum, Rotunda, in Hiroshima. And by chance, I guess the tradition, you sculpt two statues, I mean you cast two statues in bronze, usually and see which one comes out the best, and then you melt down the other one.

[52:34]

And... They both turned out, I guess, close to perfect, so that they shipped one of them secretly, or I don't know what, to the United States, thinking they'd never see it again. One of them ended up at the priest rotunda, and one of them somehow ended up at the center, Kristen. Sorry, this is quite important to me that this statue is at Creston. And there's not a third, but I would like to have some, eventually, some Kuan Yin statue here, too.

[53:36]

Yeah, because I also feel that feminine presence in the practice of women in Western Buddhism is essential. Okay. So Avalokiteshvara is, the name is variously translated. The one who oversees, who looks over everything. Or sometimes the one who hears the cries of the world. Or the one who hears the sounds of the world. Or the one who or the one who is the sound which illuminates the world.

[54:47]

Dieter here is the tenso. Are you the tenso, Dieter? So Dieter's the tenso. Now, it would be quite hard to be Dieter. I might like to be Dieter, but Dieter is very much himself. But Dieter is the tenso, which means he's the cook, the head cook. Well, I don't know if I can cook, but I could try to cook. And Dieter also is, when Gisela was away, was the Inno. So he can be head of practice in the Zendo. And Dieter, you also read Chinese? Okay, so these are, I mean, I don't read Chinese, but I could probably be head of practice in the Zendo.

[56:03]

And I remember I started studying Chinese for a while as a freshman, but the tones drove me out right away. But still, it might be possible. So if we named Dieter by his functions, we could call him... the one who, the practice-leading Chinese-reading cook. And then we could all kind of say, ah, the practice-leading Chinese-reading cook sat down and deeply meditating, blah, blah, blah.

[57:14]

So it becomes more possible to imagine being the practice-leading Chinese-reading cook. So Avalokiteshvara's name is like that. So you hear the sounds of the world. It's not just Avalokiteshvara. You also hear the sounds of the world. So again, this practice is about you. So if Avalokiteshvara hears the sounds of the world, But you also, it's not such a big deal, you also hear the sounds of the world. But Avalokiteshvara hears the sounds of the world coursing, the actual word is something like coursing in meditation.

[58:20]

Coursing in the wisdom which goes beyond wisdom. but you can notice if you practice if you do zazen one of the main things we notice when we turn off the looking around thinking mind When we turn off the looking, thinking mind, not only in sitting, but also during the service and things, basically you're trying to find a posture of the eyes which doesn't lead to sleep or thinking. And I think many of you noticed that during meditation sometimes sounds start to penetrate us.

[59:34]

It's one of the signs you've entered zazen mind, which is neither waking mind nor sleeping mind. The sounds begin to penetrate us almost with a kind of ecstasy. And strangely, you know, I remember when I was a kid, certain sounds, particularly at night, like train whistles and so forth, And my grandmother's house had two train tracks near it, and I used to hear them as a child. And as I got older, I would wonder, why do these sounds, before I started meditating, I would wonder, why do these sounds penetrate me?

[60:46]

Suddenly moving me to another kind of mind. The sound would cue it. And in San Francisco it would be the many tugboat and ship whistles from the bay. And the fog horns. And I tried to identify the feeling that accompanied the sounds because it was such a shift. And I identified it as the kind of sound I would like to hear the moment I died. So then when I started to meditate, I found myself that all sounds began to feel like this. It just wasn't that occasional sound in the middle of the night which cuts through your thinking.

[62:07]

But thinking was kind of put aside a little bit and then all sounds began to be, ah yes, I could die. To die now is a comforting feeling. But already there's a freedom from suffering in this. There was a freedom from the fear of death. So this is also Avalokiteshvara hearing the sounds and cries of the world. So when you're sitting and the sounds, you begin as technically what happens. is you're hearing your own hearing.

[63:13]

You're hearing the sound, but you more hear the mind hearing the sound than the external sound. And for some reason when we begin to hear our own mind, See our own mind in seeing. For example, when I see any one of you, the seeing points to you. But the seeing also points to my mind which sees. And through practice I come into residing more in the mind that sees and hears than in the objects seen and heard. And when that occurs there's a kind of really bliss that arises with each perception.

[64:23]

And this is what again is meant by Avalokiteshvara coursing in wisdom beyond wisdom. This is one of the kind of feeling I want to give you about Avalokiteshvara. I mean, this is a... I think often we want Buddhism to be a religion in the Western sense. But Buddhism is much more a science. in the Western sense than a religion. It's a subtle science, but it's a science. Perhaps a subtle inner science, which is also very practical and practicable. What is compassion?

[65:52]

It's not in Buddhism just a feeling of caring. But it's a feeling of connectedness and caring which permeates your body. and permeates without effort all your actions. It becomes the way you act, not the way you have to or should act. And it permeates your views. Your views and habits, preferences, no longer contradict compassion. So how do you get to this point? This is also the practice of Buddhism. Now, again, in the Bible it says something, doesn't it, like when two or three people, persons are gathered in my name, I am present.

[67:12]

Buddhism would look at this as a kind of science. How, when we are gathered in Avalokiteshvara's name, when we chant the Heart Sutra this is in effect being gathered in Avalokiteshvara's name. And some practices well, let me yeah, yeah, yeah. So Mr. Avalokiteshvara, Herr Avalokiteshvara, has many attributes. One is he's the manifestation of Amitabha Buddha.

[68:15]

And Amitabha Buddha is the Buddha of, well, something like boundless light. We could also have a Buddha of utter darkness. Vairochana is more the Buddha of utter darkness. But Amitabha is the Buddha where there's already light pervading space. So there's something there. Vairocana is more emptiness. There's... Anyway. I don't want to say there's nothing there, so I won't say that. Okay, so Amitabha is the sense that everything all at once as light is also Buddha.

[69:20]

The light is already a sense of compassion. And the And Avalokiteshvara is the manifestation of Amitabha as compassion. Now, Avalokiteshvara is sometimes, I think there's about 32 or 33 forms of Avalokiteshvara. And sometimes Avalokiteshvara is shown with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes.

[70:23]

And if there weren't human beings, sentient beings, there wouldn't be a single eye, arm or finger. Then we'd have something more like Vajrachana. But because there are sentient beings, Avalokiteshvara has thousand arms and eyes. Yunyan, one of my favorite Zen teachers and one of our ancestors, Asked his elder brother, who was also his Dharma brother. This is practical. He says to his brother, what does Avalokiteshvara do with all those hands and eyes? Why does he have so many hands and eyes?

[71:46]

And Dao says, it's like looking for your pillow at night. You know, when you're sleeping and working. Okay. So sometimes you need a thousand arms to find your pillow. You don't know where it is. So that's why Avalokiteshvara has a thousand arms to find pillows for all of us. But everything's dark, so you don't know quite where they are. And so then Yunyan says, oh, I understand. And so Da Wu says, what do you understand? And he says, the whole body is covered with hands and eyes. Da Wu says, that's okay, but that's only 80%. Of course, 80% is right.

[72:47]

Because a thousand hands and arms means innumerable hands and arms, so 80% is right. But Yunyan still answers again and says, throughout Avalokite's body are hands and arms. This kind of Zen kind of practicality is characteristic. So, okay.

[74:05]

You know when, some of you probably have had the experience of feeling somebody behind you come into the room or looking at you and you can't see them. Or you can perhaps have the experience of being in a car and you feel something and you turn and someone is staring at you from another car. Now, while this is a fairly common experience, scientists, many scientists, try to explain it away. I think it's more interesting just to say it happens. I don't know. You don't need to explain it. And you can try it out for yourself sitting in a car.

[75:25]

You can take two or three different people in a car and you can stare at one of them but not the other one. And a large percentage of the time you can make the one you're staring at turn around and the others don't. So if you can imagine that state of mind which feels someone behind you, and this feeling can be quite precise, You can feel whether it's a known person or an unknown person. Or whether it's a male or a female. Or young or old. It's quite interesting. It can be precise, quite fairly precise. So if you could know that state of mind, and through yogic practice you become more able to stay present to such subtle states of mind, this would also be

[76:49]

a way to look at why when three people gather in Avalokiteshvara's name, there might be a feeling of a presence there that is intangible, but all three people or two people can feel it. So I'm starting with the Heart Sutra here. I'm trying to give you a feeling of what Avalokiteshvara means or is. It's a sense of a presence of connectedness we generate together. And to not just know each of you individually, but to feel the presence that arises in this room and has arisen in this room already, And to know, to act in that feeling is compassion.

[78:13]

This would be a way we could say what realized compassion means in Buddhism. Mm-hmm. this realized feeling of connectedness, and this feeling of knowing through the knowing of one's own mind and senses. This sense establishes the teaching of the rest of the sutra.

[79:15]

Okay. So I put the flip chart here because I thought, although I wouldn't usually do it in a tesho, maybe I would discuss with you more specifically the five skandhas. But I'll do that this afternoon. So here we have something quite subtle, the sense of the function, the embodied function of compassion as Avalokiteshvara. Embodied like the presence of Jesus or Avalokiteshvara can be here with us. If we find some way to gather together in a common practice, especially with a kind of subtlety which is not unfamiliar to us, a feeling the presence of each other, even the presence of someone we can't see, which is a true feeling of connectedness.

[80:41]

And connectedness is what compassion is. Knowing we are hands and eyes, covered with hands and eyes means interdependence. And hands and eyes throughout the body means interpenetration. all things are not just interdependent but all things penetrate each other this is also the sense of compassion and avalokiteshvara in buddhism I've said too much or quite enough anyway. But I've been adequately translated, I think.

[81:58]

Thank you very much, Christine. Thank you. Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen... ...jeden Ort durchdringen... ...mit dem wahlen Verdienst des Puderbiegers... ...Jo-Jo-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho... Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Die Füllen Wesen sind sorglos. Ich gelobe, sie zu retten.

[82:59]

Die Begehren sind unauslöschlich. Ich gelobe, ihnen ein Ende zu bereiten. Die Damen sind grenzenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Bruders ist unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. PENJEN NI MYO NO WA YAKU SEN MA GOGONI YO HAYO KOTO KATASHI

[84:23]

Vare Hainanam Jiju Jisuru Kottayattari Neda wakwa nyorai gwo shinjitsu yo keshiki kate wa tsuran. Aipu drakha tuna dvistrenge daon fa kama na dhaka. It is also found in hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas, only rarely, and since I can see and hear and remember and accept it, it is enough to find out the truth with the Kalpatara. So I'm trying to introduce you to the solidity of this practice.

[86:09]

Not really so much the understanding or something interesting about it, but it's, let's say, solidity. Again, somewhere outside our preferences and views. So the schedule should not be something exactly that you like. It shouldn't be your preferences necessarily. And I suppose if we said no schedule today, all of you would do different things. And maybe some of you decide, oh, let's just continue the same way.

[87:12]

Yeah. So to make this... this experiment of practice week work, where the schedule is a lot looser than the schedule of Sashin. I think it's even more important, or at least as important, to see if you can just follow the schedule. to find what state of mind the schedule produces. The waiting, the eating, the sitting on your cushion. And if you want to come into this solidity in the midst of your life, it also helps to be able to sit with solidity.

[88:35]

For some reason, the physical taste of solidity It helps give us mental stability. So it's actually not so easy to sit this way. Particularly if you have inflexible joints and legs like I do. I always thought the more I do it, it'll get easier. But I forgot that the more I do it, the older I get. And that throws a monkey wrench into it. So now I find I have to do more yoga or stretching exercises separate from practice than I did when I was young.

[89:38]

But I appreciate the wonderfulness and power of this posture, so I'm willing to do what I can to keep doing it. For me, it's as important part of my life as sleeping. If I had to choose between the two, I suppose I would choose sleep. But I'd have to think about it for a moment. Maybe I would choose sitting. It would be a better choice, but a harder choice.

[91:05]

Now, it's not really very clear, I mean, or easy to... It's somewhat mysterious, shall we say. Why this sutra is so widely chanted? So I would like to actually just simply read it once. And maybe someone could give Christina a copy. Thank you. Now, if you were all monks, I would have no problem with doing this.

[92:28]

Because monks have to be alive somewhere. Because monks have to be alive somewhere. So it doesn't make much difference whether they're listening to a lecture or working in the garden. So with monks, I don't have to worry if my lecture is interesting enough. So with you guys, I have to try to at least be interesting. I'm not interested, you might not come. And then I'm letting down Avalokiteshvara, who wants to speak to you. But actually, of course, in a sutra like this, you are Avalokiteshvara. Mm-hmm. It's put as a story so you can enter the story, as I said.

[93:45]

Somebody wrote this, you know. About the time in the centuries somewhere probably a little bit after Christ. And we keep saying it. Why? There's no necessity. Some other sutra could have been chosen. Why this one? So Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita when coursing in wisdom beyond wisdom saw that all five skandhas are empty are empty of own being and It doesn't make sense that Abba Joshua was saved from suffering, so proceed that all flesh, gandhas, and their own being are empty.

[95:16]

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