We have this topic, as you know. Love, no, compassion, and wisdom. And we're talking about something here extraordinary. And mysterious. And even dangerous. Dangerous if you accept the consequences of compassion. If you're not willing to accept the consequences of compassion, you can't understand compassion. Hi, Maya.

[01:20]

Hi. Thank you for coming all this way to translate. You're welcome. I don't mean to try to start out with some kind of heavy statement. But some things are heavy or consequential. That should be apparent in the world we're living in today. So we really have... At least three topics here. One topic is compassion. And the second is wisdom. And the third is and. What happens when you put these two together?

[02:23]

There's a song I remember, unfortunately, from the 50s. Love and marriage. Love and marriage. Go together like a horse and carriage. You can't have one without, I can't sing, the other. Well, we know that's not entirely true, but maybe it is true. They say if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But you stuck me here next to the stove, so... So obviously the love of love and marriage is different than from teenage love?

[04:01]

Or the love for your child? Yeah, or mother's love? Yeah. So what I'm trying to do is find... something that can some way to speak about this that gives you that can give us a real sense of why 2500 years of one of the most extraordinary teachings is built on these two words.

[05:02]

Can we come into this feeling? If we can't, we might as well look up the words in the dictionary and go home. Because you know the word compassion and love, too, become... We feel something, we call it love, or we feel something and call it compassion.

[06:03]

That's, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, of course. But compassion is about something closer to integrating the entirety of your life through something. Let's say it's something that can't be named. Because if I say it's compassion, then you say, well, I don't want to integrate my life through compassion. This sounds ridiculous. Well, this sounds entirely too much. I've got other things to do. Mm-hmm. But let's tiptoe into this deep human territory.

[07:27]

I don't know how we're going to do it. And I can't do it without your help. So I'm going to hope or expect that you give yourself a lot to this seminar. Yeah, I'd like you to do as much work as I'm doing. In fact, I'd actually like to do more. You might as well have a good seminar. Let's take the word neighbor. Neighbor. People say things like, our neighbors in Africa.

[08:49]

China or something. You don't have neighbors in China. A neighbor is someone who lives near you. I mean, it's You can't criticize somebody for being so nice as saying, we must think of our neighbors in South America. We understand he means something real. He means something. He means something good. But... But by using the word that way, you know he doesn't know what it means.

[09:54]

Such a person doesn't have the experience of of what neighbor did mean at one time. I think in Matthew, in the Bible, it says something like, you know, a famous phrase, love one's neighbor as oneself. What's behind that? Even that phrase becomes often as thin as the word neighbor.

[10:54]

Neighbor means something, you know, I only know a little bit, but it means something like, of course, near dweller. Somebody who lives near you. And the other sense of misuse of the word neighbor is that we have neighbors who are not our neighbors. And another abuse of this word is that we have neighbors who are not our neighbors. They live nearby, they live next door, but we don't really have much to do with them. We're happy if they keep to themselves. Yeah, and if somebody wants to keep to themselves, it's okay, let them. But if the possibility of being a neighbor is your experience, you're ready to be moved by that neighbor.

[12:22]

I think Luther says something like, a neighbor is created through deep compassion. Mm-hmm. So something happens that makes a person a neighbor. So being a neighbor is a practice. And if we speak about to love thy neighbor as thyself, This is very close to at least one way of understanding the word compassion.

[13:42]

So maybe in the word neighbor is hidden more the practice of compassion. than in the word love. Now, I was, when I was younger, A lot younger, maybe, I don't know how old, 19 or 20. I left college for a while and went on a walkabout or a sailabout. And I... I ended up working on not going back to college for a year, and I worked on ships for about a year.

[15:10]

Or two years, actually. I missed... Anyway, I was about two years working on ships, and we went to the Near East. That was my first... place the ship went. I got the ship because no one else wanted the ship. But it was because it was going to the Persian Gulf in midsummer and the temperatures were above 120 most of the time Fahrenheit. What would that be? Centigrade? When I was in Massawa, Ethiopia, on the way it was 146, which was the... third highest temperature in populated areas in the world in several years.

[16:28]

So all the Union seamen who had any status didn't want a ship like this. So I was able to get on it. And there was a bunch of rummies. Rummies are people who drink too much. And while I was in the Persian Gulf, I stopped, we were in, you know, the ships were loaded by hand and they didn't have much machinery, so it took forever for them to load the ship. So we'd be two weeks or more in a port. And I liked the Near East a lot. It's funny because we're in this horrible war tragedy right now.

[17:51]

And it feels weird. I probably would not be safe going there now. But when I went there the first time I ever left the United States, I felt extraordinarily at home and completely accepted. And I liked it. I think I still like it better than Europe or America. I don't know. I like the feel of it. I like it better. But anyway, I'm stuck with being a Euro-American, so I do my duty here. Anyway, but it does make me feel better. Of course, something for what's going on right now.

[19:07]

And as I've told you, many of you, at least I was in the World Trade Center just a few weeks before, at a Buddhist conference a few weeks before September 11th. Okay, so anyway, when I was in a little town on the Euphrates River called Bandar Shapur, I met this man by chance called Shukral Ali. And I've occasionally told you some stories about him. But, you know, my friend and I would walk into the kind of dusty little mud village every day.

[20:28]

And often we'd go back to the ship virtually in our underwear. Because people were so poor, we would take our shirts off and things like that. We can buy more of the shit, so it's all right. But anyway, there was this, and people sat because it was so dusty, you know, and no roads or anything. People sat on little wooden benches in front of it. Sort of like this, actually. About this size, you know. And little legs about that long. And this guy had a young son who was 15.

[21:35]

I don't know how old he was, 32 or 33 or something. He might have been older. He didn't look very old. And he always had two or three friends with him. And when we'd walk through this little village and walk around and come back. Maybe the second day he invited us to sit down with him. And the enticement was, wouldn't you like a Pepsi-Cola? So... So we'd stop, but there was right from the beginning something extraordinary. I can't tell you exactly what it was like. Because here was this person who was a man who was extremely accommodating.

[22:57]

He went out of his way to invite each day we came by these... two young American men to sit down on his little platform. And we didn't do anything. We just sat there with him and had a Pepsi Cola, you know. And it felt odd for him to be buying a Pepsi-Cola for us because we clearly had more money than he did. We were paid. some hundreds of dollars a month more, and we had nothing to spend it on, so we certainly could have afforded Pepsi-Colas.

[24:01]

And we found he was saving money to send to his family up in the hills somewhere. So he would work on the ships. But anyway, he was extremely accommodating. Went out of his way to invite us to sit on the bench. And a bench this size, you know, about this size there might be four, five or six people. And they made space for us. And then we had, I can't remember, some sort of conversation. And this happened every day for ten days or so. And he was extremely accommodating.

[25:11]

Went out of his way. But he's not so distant in some way. Yes. Er erwartete etwas von dir. Er war sehr freundlich, aber gleichzeitig fühltest du dich unwohl. So wie wenn du nicht ganz gut genug wärst. So war es in dem Stil. But I found after a couple of days, three days, if I... There seemed to be areas of him which were open and areas which were closed.

[26:15]

So I was in some sort of territory. With him I was in some sort of territory. And so I found after, it seems to me, why I would remember this, but it seems to me around the third day, I was perplexed for the first two days. I found if I stayed present to the closed areas, And there was a... And I... Does this make sense? I held the open areas in him at the same distance as the closed areas. And I felt somehow extremely alert.

[27:25]

This funny man I just met by chance on a platform made me feel alert. I felt accepted by him completely. Accepted by him, but in that there was also expectation. And I didn't know how to fulfill that expectation. But by feeling around in the territory, I found if I, as I said, stayed present to the closed areas in it and didn't move into the open areas, they would merge into a kind of extraordinary feeling of connectedness and intimacy.

[28:35]

And I never felt that before, that I can remember. And it also made me, this kind of alertness made me notice tiny little details. And right now, an image of John Muir on the face of a mountain in California has appeared in my mind. John Muir is the, you would mostly know who that is, but he's a naturalist in the 19th century in America. He turned most of the western United States into a national park.

[29:49]

Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, just the night before he ceased being president, designed all kinds of land. They drew big villages and towns were inside, but it was too late to change it because he was no longer president the next day, and he signed it. He was a great guy. And he would say in his diary, he'd say things like, I knew a storm was coming, so I went out and hiked an hour into the forest and climbed to the top of the highest redwood tree and rode the storm out. Anyway, so he tells one day he was climbing and he got stuck on the face of a mountain and he couldn't move. He couldn't find any handholds.

[30:56]

He didn't know how to go up or down. And one day he was stuck on such a slope on the mountain, could not find any approach, any hole. So if I remember correctly, his body froze for about half an hour. He didn't dare move a finger. And then suddenly he saw the stone had subtle shapes that he could shift his weight on, and he got off. Well, whatever that experience was for him, suddenly, right now, it reminds me of watching Shukra Ali, tiny little details of how he was considerate to the people around him.

[32:04]

And yes, whatever it had to do with it, but it reminds me now of Shuka Ali, how I observed these very small details. Finally the ship set sail. We said goodbye one day. And he'd made me feel that I didn't want to leave. So there was an edge in the relationship. There was this edge of acceptance and expectation. Yeah, on an edge of friendliness and distance. And this sudden extraordinary intimacy

[33:21]

And the feeling I was with the goodest person I'd ever met. So, of course, when I left, I didn't want to leave. So I had that edge in me of not wanting to leave. So in some way I was looking. He made me start to look. Look for him. Or look for this edge. It allowed me to see Suzuki Roshi when I met him. Yeah, I mean, Sukiroshi made an impression on a lot of people.

[35:03]

But for most people who met him, until Zen Center was quite developed, he was just a nice Japanese man. The priest, one of these missionary priests at the local Japanese community centers. They're not really missionaries, but they were called missions because they took the English word mission for the Japanese population living in San Francisco. And so when I met Suzuki Roshi, I was able to see him right away, actually, in a way, like John Muir on the edge. I saw something. So I found him not through meeting him, but as part of a search.

[36:12]

Okay, so what are the roots of compassion? Well, we'd have to say one root is a mother's love. And if you didn't have a mother's love, imagine it. Some people don't have such good mothers, or they think they didn't have such good mothers. So then imagine what mother's love might be like. Who father's love? It's not the same, but we can imagine it for you.

[37:13]

So there's some root in your experience. If we're going to talk about compassion, you've got to find some root in your own experience. That's one root. Another root of compassion is the search for what is good in. man or in humankind. What I'm calling the second root of compassion is in you a genuine search.

[38:34]

The courage of a search. And the courage of the consequences of a search. In yourself, let's not say you're searching for compassion. That you're searching for whatever you can find that's good in humankind. Yeah, something wholesome, good. I don't know what words you want to use. But our societies, our civilized world, has developed from such searches. The answers are not always the same. Die Antworten sind nicht immer die gleichen.

[39:45]

But the search of many people for what is good in humankind... Aber die Suche nach dem, was gut ist im Menschsein... And what through that quality most matures us as a human being... Und das, was am meisten reift als... In Buddhism, it was decided or found or understood to be compassion. Mm-hmm. It's, I think the, there's some word, I don't remember the word, but it means to be touched in the bowels.

[40:53]

A Western word, a European word. Yeah, to be touched in the bowels by another person. And that, we could also say that's compassion. That's part of the capacity for compassion, to be so touched. And somehow this Shukralali touched me in that way.

[41:54]

Somehow inviting me onto this platform. Insisting on buying us a Pepsi-Cola. And it wasn't until about the fourth day that we finally got him to let us buy the Pepsi Cola. And the feeling of nothing happening but somebody extraordinarily accommodating. And where there's still this edge of being accepted, but something being expected. And that touched me enough that I'm here today.

[43:04]

So through being touched in that way, I saw something's possible. That such a human being can exist. And by feeling in a way closed out by his expectation. His expectation made me feel like a kind of failure, a dump cough around him. Yeah, I mean, you know, I felt I wasn't sensitive enough, smart enough, subtle enough. I was just kind of... The proverbial American. A klutz. But because he expected something of a klutz, it also sort of planted a seed that

[44:07]

Or maybe I could fulfill his expectation. Why else would he have expectations? And it did. This edge, this... Being touched by his compassion led me to be open to Suzuki Roshi's compassion. So when we speak about compassion, we're speaking about something that's at the most intimate roots of ourselves, not just about how we relate to others, but the capacity to be touched by others.

[45:32]

And the inability to ignore that being touched. And the courage to shape one's life through that being touched. Somebody said that Christian meditation said there's no Christian meditation unless you feel yourself under the gaze. In gaze, he said, literally means under the face and nose. Of the one whose name... So that's also... You know, in...

[46:49]

I would say that's something like compassion. I can't say that Christianity and Buddhism are the same. But the feeling of being in the presence of... of the one whose name cannot be pronounced. Gives me the feeling at least of openness and mystery. Or distance and intimacy.

[48:14]

Yeah, I think you know what I mean. So, to sort of end our little introduction this evening, I think if you really want to make this seminar real, find in yourself something like mother's love. Or what you imagine mother's love could be. Yeah, some essence. And also imagine yourself, find yourself on your own search.

[49:17]

Not in a dictionary. Not in the categories of your culture. Find what for you is good in human beings. Good in you. Good in others. Good in society. In a way, that's what this crisis, I think, is all about right now. We're in a kind of purgatory. I think it's a much more serious situation than... Probably we realize.

[50:27]

Yeah, I mean, we may be better off than in the Cold War. Because in the Cold War, there was a good chance, I think, we could have destroyed the world. I'm convinced myself that we came eight or ten times very close within 20 minutes or so of blowing up the world. Probably we're not in that dangerous a situation now. But we're in another kind of, I think, real danger. And solution is not within how the world is presently thought of. I think there will only be a solution in a different world.

[51:45]

A world in which we can live in proportion with others and in equanimity with others. Certainly not going to solve it by talking about good and evil. Or defending freedom. But sometimes horrible situations like this have to have horrible parts to it. So I'd like also for part of the duration of our seminar for you to hold in mind or hold in your presence

[52:45]

All those people, some 4,000 or 5,000 that died instantaneously. Most of them never find even a part of their body. And hold in mind all those people in Afghanistan who are being bombed at these days. And hold in mind and heart or presence those who are planning pretty clearly, probably for sure, planning new acts of terrorism.

[54:08]

This is our world. Let's at least hold it in mind. As part of our search for what's good, what could be good in ourselves and others. And I would feel this search for what you cannot, for something, for what can't be named. And also this search for what cannot be named. We'll decide later whether it can be named compassion or wisdom.

[55:10]

Let's now just think of it as a search for what can't be named or pronounced. but something that is also the most intimate to us. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. As I said last evening, I wanted help from you this seminar.

[56:33]

Because I don't think we can make really sense of the practice of compassion in Buddhism. Unless we discover its territory in ourselves. Mm-hmm. and how this possibly could work, as Buddhism assumes it can, to be the whole way you locate yourself within yourself and within the world.

[57:48]

So did anything I say last evening strike a chord or make sense or do you have anything you'd like to say about it? Yes. Your story in the Persian Gulf and then at the port. whether you didn't speak Arabian and your neighbor didn't speak or your friend didn't speak English. So maybe the absence of the verbal communication I gave you both a different perception of reality.

[59:27]

Yeah, you can actually speak more loudly because she doesn't know. I'm sorry. Okay. You can hear me? Even that? Yeah. Okay. But still you can say it. Of course. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah, maybe that's why I haven't learned German. Ja, das mag sein, dass ich deswegen nicht Deutsch gelernt habe. Ja, it's all stupid. Ja, there's an element of that. But I don't really think that's the fundamental. First of all, most of them spoke some English or they couldn't work on the ships. But it was more a feeling of...

[60:29]

I've remarked that when I've met particularly good or mature Buddhist teachers from Asia, from Tibet or Vietnam or Korea or Japan, these persons are more like each other than they're like their own countrymen. And this person had that feeling. He was able to make himself feel like me rather than the other people who felt like people from other cultures, another culture. It's something mysterious.

[61:45]

And because it's something mysterious, we need to move toward this together. I don't feel words can speak about this topic. But maybe if we have some kind of conversation within the group and in ourselves, we can find something in the quality of the conversation. Very good. I'm feeling that sometimes I'm communicating with people and they discover

[62:58]

or may live something or embody something I don't embody but then there are people sometimes I'm in contact with them may embody something and that the feeling is also in me or somewhere but I haven't And so they are not only communicating themselves, but something more than themselves, which also includes an untouched part of me. I don't know how to express it better, or a comedy round. When I heard the story, it reminded me of meeting such people.

[64:12]

Deutschpeter. There are people I meet who do that too, but beyond that, they embody something or express something to me. I have no idea, or I feel that it is something that is about them and also about me, and that it may be a kind of common basis, or something like that. But these are the areas where I am not yet, and yet they are touched by this contact. And I don't know, I think I understand what you mean, what you're feeling.

[65:18]

And I would say the noticing of But noticing what you described without making anything of it. But really fully noticing, but just that. would be practicing compassion in Buddhism.

[66:21]

Now, there may be more to it than that, but that at least, that has to be kind of base, I think. You don't bring kind of, oh, what does this mean, ideas to it or something. If I understood you correctly, you are talking about compassion, in the sense that we should first feel ourselves. When you speak about compassion, I understand that you are also talking that we need to feel ourselves first. Yes. And how do I come to the point that I am willing to perceive myself and to feel in a wider sense?

[67:26]

How do I get to the point where I'm willing to feel myself? And when you describe that you, for example, have perceived in this encounter the open and the closed sides of these people, then this is a very special ability to perceive it at all. And when you described how you noticed the open and the closed aspects of this person, that already is a capacity which is developed. So the question is, how do I get to the point that I am the will and what do I have to do for it? So how do I get to the point to become willing and what can I do also against my resistance becoming willing?

[68:30]

What are you resisting? No, I'm saying that on the one hand I might have the willingness to learn these skills, but I feel a lot of inner resistance. And so just the willingness to be open is not enough. So it needs a very strong intention, I think. Yes. Well, there's the willingness. And I think all of us have the willingness.

[69:58]

To come to this seminar means you have the willingness. To sit down in zazen means you have the willingness. Even the necessity. But bringing that willingness into an intention, this is, we could say, a next step. And how to develop that intention is... Yeah, a big part of practice. And I want to say in here that this is not about your nature.

[71:03]

Mm-hmm. I mean, when I say that, I can make arguments for why it is, in some sense, part of your nature. But if we think it is our nature, compassionate or something, we can't practice very well. You may recognize that something like compassion is good, We could call that recognition your kind of coming from your nature or something. But intention means you make it your nature.

[72:06]

Who's you? You make it your nature. And that you that makes it is not a you you're born with, but a you you're continually discovering in activity with people and the world. Then we have the practice of the willingness, we have the practice of the intention, And we have the practice of the capacity. And of course when I said that the parts of him that were closed, They weren't closed in him, they were closed to me.

[73:24]

Yeah, okay. Yes. I was touched by what you said about September 10th. I was moved and touched by what you said about September 11th. About the people who were killed there and the bombs which are still falling. And I ask myself, what does compassion mean in that sense, in that context? And what consequences would there be for myself?

[74:26]

Well, our first inclination is to think if we can do something. And if we can do something, it's good, let's do it. But mostly we can't do much. We live in this world. which as Marie-Louise said to me the other day, is showing us its ugly face. And this isn't just a... It's not just this situation, this is a situation of... It's more visible, but there's some kind of misery, hatred, confusion in the world, even if it's not so visible.

[76:13]

So this is a reminder. We tend to forget. And one of the things that has been noticed both, you know, don't read the news in Germany, but in the United States, what people have noticed all over the United States, but especially in New York, is how unimportant things have dropped away for people. And people are often kinder and more open to each other. A certain institutionalized separation is broken down.

[77:15]

But as I said, I think that... One, I think we can... I think in each of us there's some grief about the world. Part of that grief is a sense of futility. We can't do much about it. And the futility, the sense that we can't do much about it, is our excuse for pushing it pretty far below the surface.

[78:47]

But things bring it up, something you read or a movie or something like that. A poem. Or zazen. Zazen sometimes does so. As are categories. lessen, the categories in which we separate ourselves from the world lessen somewhat. And an event like this does so too. But I think... The main thing to do, even if you can do something, is to rethink the world in yourself.

[80:15]

And I actually don't think we can expect our leaders, whoever they are, to do the right thing if we can't figure out in ourselves what to do. And not just sort of knee-jerk solutions. Do you have the expression, knee-jerk solutions? You know, when you hit your... Yeah, sort of stereotype, oh, we shouldn't bomb or Arabs are bad or whatever, you know. Yeah. So... So I think we can do something in that sense.

[81:22]

Try to create inside yourself the world you want there to be. And try to live that world with others. Actually, I think that's the only thing really we can do. And the only thing in the long run that might carry our world further along if it's evolving. I don't know if that makes sense, what I said. I mean, I don't know if I said it clearly, but... So I really think it's the job of each of us to decide what world we want to live in. And as I said last evening, in that sense, compassion is a very personal quest.

[82:31]

And as I said last evening, in this sense compassion is a very personal search. Yes, okay. Someone else? Yes? Now the question came to me, if I can do something, then I can feel it there with my thoughts, if I create the world in me, as I imagine it, and I send these thoughts out into the world, then for me that has a great effect. I wasn't here last night, but when I create the world within me, this creation and these thoughts are very powerful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[83:43]

And as I form them within me, and they kind of go into the world, I hope that they have some power. Yeah, I think you can have confidence they do. And because they do, it's very important for you to think it through carefully or live it carefully. Yes. To me, there is a discrepancy between wanting to believe how I would want to have this world, and then the reality shows different. If I think of my neighbor and there's something within me, I don't trust him.

[84:51]

There's something, and I'm very overt, but now I could... face him and think, I trust you, I trust you because that's the world I would like it to be, but it's not true, I don't know. So, when I have the world in me where I want to trust people and and then meet the reality that is actually different, like a neighbor on my street, when I meet him, I simply do not trust him, and even if I meet him with good intentions and trust him, then immediately this mistrust comes from these people, I think there's an expression in the Near East to trust your neighbor but tie up your camel.

[85:57]

Yeah, there's always that problem. So we can't have innocent trust. So we're trying to, let's say that you can find an attitude where you're willing to trust. And that's good for you. And if you're constantly betrayed or disillusioned, that's part of the grief of the world. But we shouldn't give up because of that.

[87:05]

Yes. It's only a story from somebody, a short one. A couple of years ago, a woman came to our place. She was an alcoholic. pretty destroyed. And after a while, when she cleared up a little, she told a story about she was with her husband or whoever it was, and they were going to a place to swim. And my husband used to beat her up once in a while, at least three times a week or something. That's more than once in a while. That's more than once in a while. Well, okay, it depends on where you are. Every second day may be better than every day. So just to the situation she lived in, she had kids and everything.

[88:08]

And they went swimming somewhere and then he took her clothes away when she was in the water and he said, I'm going to kill you. I won't allow you to get out of the water anymore. Take your clothes away and if you come close to the shore, I beat you back. And she was in the water swimming, fearing for her life and at the same time, that's what she told me and I didn't understand at that time, was thinking about this poor guy outside. And I think... It's true. Pardon? It's true. Yeah. We talked about it following your speech. And Elena remembered me. That's compassion. She was able to separate herself completely and see the other one. Is it true? Yeah, I think it's true. Deutsch bitter. This is a story of a woman who came to us, an alcoholic.

[89:16]

We have always lived with people and she was pretty broken and her husband or partner, who she had, took care of her more often. So that was the situation in which she lived. And she told that when she was sober again, that they were swimming, the two of them, and the man had taken off his clothes and said, I'm going to drown you now. And when you get to the shore, I'll beat you back into the water. You have to drink now. And she was in the water and swam and was afraid of her life. And that's what she said. And then she thought of this man on the shore and he did her sorry. Said the poor guy. And I asked if that was compassion. Begausch said yes. Thank you for translating my answer. When this happened on the 11th of September,

[90:19]

I mean, I was in big shock, as many other people, and then the media were constantly talking, and then I thought in myself, what do I do with this situation? Because the world changed within a moment, and I thought, I mean, everybody was talking about America and the attack on America, and I thought, what is happening to these terrorists, so-called, and why did this happen? And I thought, what do I do with my compassion? I cannot only be on one side. see the whole story, and it's so complex. I found myself, I have to widen not only my thoughts to that moment, I have to look more careful to some years before how this situation built up.

[91:41]

And I felt quite confronted with compassion. German, please. When it happened on September 11th, I was, like many others, totally shocked. The world had changed in one stroke. And the media reported in a very specific way. And I had the feeling, what am I doing now? I have to look at the whole thing. I can only see America. I also know... the so-called terrorist groups. Why did this happen? What led to this? And I just realized that it's not enough just to look at this act, but there is a very long story to it and it is very complex. And somehow I always wondered what I was doing with my compassion.

[92:42]

I can't just stand on one side. They also have their history, the Arabs, and that will have a reason, even if at the moment it is not possible to grasp what is happening there. And there I felt very confronted with the thought of compassion, to practice it in a way, not just to stand on one side at the moment. Yeah, I think we have to do just that and stay in that place. Yes. There is a word which says, the more I know, the more I realize the little I know. And so I've been very glad about what he said, because I think, especially if we're talking about the political aspect now, compassion has for me, and I don't know whether it's right or not, has to do with knowledge.

[93:51]

So as long as I don't know anything, I can be on one side. The more I know about the situation, about the bombing in Sudan, about the chemical factory in India from the Americans, all these other parts, I can understand more of the whole situation, and then I can be compassionate with Let's see, not the world, but with all parts. But actually, to the word I said before, knowing and then not knowing, I would really like to have an example for compassion from you. I don't know whether that's possible. Thank you for what you said earlier, because you spoke from the heart a little bit. I always think that this compassion, I don't know if there is a better word or another word for compassion in connection, is important that I know ...

[94:56]

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