For example, that the Americans have bombed the Sudan and there are only three small lines in the German newspaper or that there is a chemical factory in India that goes into the air because the security measures are not really protected and all these other things, then I can better understand the global context and then I can really have empathy for all parties and then I feel a lot more equated with this knowledge. Okay. Yeah, I mean... If we want to understand the bitterness of the Palestinians, Wenn wir die Verbitterung der Palästinenser verstehen wollen... Imagine if the UN and England and Germany had decided to create Scotland as the home for Jews.

[01:11]

Dann nehmen wir mal an, dass die UNO und die Amerikaner und die EU entschieden hätten, Schottland als... Poor Turks and Jews are Americans. Let's clear Scotland for the Americans. The Scots would be a little irritated. Or we tried to clear Bavaria. Yeah. So if we look back in the past, there's an elaborate causation for the situation we're in. The present causation is probably actually more important, which is the disproportion in which the Western world lives than much of the rest of the world.

[02:16]

And it's not a simple disproportion what's better one place than the other. I think of a... story about a Chinese man who converted to Christianity. I don't know when this happened exactly. Maybe it was 100 years ago or the middle of the last century. And he took the unusual step of deciding to make a pilgrimage from China to Rome.

[03:18]

So he walked from China to Rome. And all along the way, he was taken into people's houses. And all through the Near East. And when he got to Eastern Europe, they began to treat him like a beggar or a poor person. And when he got to Europe itself, he had to stay in the poor house. And this is a point that Ivan Illich makes very strongly, not to criticize the doctors who are here, but hospitals have replaced hospitality.

[04:22]

He feels that when you start to see institutionalized compassion, When we start having hospices for the poor, homes for the old people, hospitals for the sick. I think it's a late 11th century creation. And it's a wonderful thing. If I was sick with something, I'd like to go to the hospital if I needed to. But we have divided, we recognize the status of poor people and sick people, which didn't used to be recognized before.

[05:25]

But instead of taking care of them in our immediate society, we put them into special places. And Illich's point is that from the time we started making hospices and hospitals, In France and Germany in the Middle Ages there were terrible places where they housed people to die who were actually just poor. Some kind of hospitality stops which was when there are witness hospitals in the society.

[06:35]

And I noticed that myself in the Near East. I was much more welcome in every situation than I would be walking down a street in Europe or America. There, there was a feeling, oh, you're here, you're part of us. So I don't think we should get rid of hospitals. But part of the practice of hospitality, part of the practice of compassion is hospitality. So if we want to look for what is the practice of compassion, we can look in words like neighbor. And hospitality.

[07:58]

There's a doctor, the doctor who took care of you at the male doctor? Oh, yes, Flinner. Flinner, Dr. Flinner, yeah. He's a really nice guy, and they have quite a good rural medical system in southern Colorado. And even though she's a foreigner, you know, etc., Everything was for free. Virtually everything. The baby, everything. So we have a free baby, actually. But this Dr. Flinner, he's a great, wonderful baby doctor. And how many babies does he have? Can you tell us? He has like, I mean, in his family about eight or something like that. Because he has his own kids.

[09:20]

But every time they give birth to an unwed mother or something and there's a baby they don't want to do, he takes it into his home. Now there's a limit to what he can do. But he doesn't make a sharp distinction between the hospital and hospitality. I don't think every doctor can turn their house into a... We need some kind of our own space. But the story illustrates this line between the hospital and hospitality. Yeah. So maybe we can have, and we do have, hospitality and hospitals.

[10:38]

But such distinctions help us start thinking about how do we see our relationship to every person you meet? Do you think society has to take care of them, or do you have to take care of them? Just one last little story. I was in Amsterdam once many years ago. And there's lots of drug addicts in Amsterdam. And I was walking the street, and here's this poor woman from Denmark, who was a young woman half dying in a doorstep. And I tried to help her.

[11:41]

And I called friends, and I called friends who were doctors, and so forth. No one actually wanted to help me much. They wanted me to turn her over to an institution. But my feeling was she was hearing her story. She was in a situation where that probably wasn't the best thing for her to do. But there's so many people, you can't do everything, so we have institutions to help. But that shouldn't take away our own basic feeling. Institutions come out of us, so we should be able to feel in ourselves what the institutions do. Something like that. So let's sit for a minute or two and then we'll have a break.

[12:45]

Thank you for translating. You're welcome. If you want to open up your posture from inside, I find it useful if you imagine a line from your sit bone.

[14:09]

to the opposite shoulder. And try to stretch that line. Then imagine a line from the other sit bone to the other shoulder. And then a line from the first sit bone to the opposite ear or side of the head. Try to open up, stretch that line, open up the space in your body. Not left and right and not front and back. Not simply up and down. And then lift from the other side to the other side of your head.

[15:31]

Und dann vom zweiten Sitzknochen zum Ohr, zu der anderen Seite deines Kopfes. And then bring all these lines together and lift from the sit bones up to the pointer there, the crown there. Und dann von den Sitzknochen zur Krone deines Kopfes. Erhebe und dehne diese Linie. And of course at the same time notice the softness of the body. Thank you for the comments, the discussion we had.

[17:22]

You know, sometimes if you don't say anything, I feel like I'm talking to a wall. Yeah, I mean, if I get the same reaction that I get if the room was empty... Yes, I wonder. I can imagine what problems the wall might have. Yes. I can't just be there for other people, because if I am, I don't even have time left to sit. Yeah, we need some balance, it's true. Yes, it needs a balance, that's true. When I'm at my workplace, a lot of patients come to me who report that they're burned out and finished.

[18:33]

Also at work, there are lots of patients who come to me who report that they are burned out. And I always tell them that they should also think of themselves. And now I'm confused. Well, there's an expression in English, charity begins at home. You have that expression in German? Yeah. So maybe compassion begins at home too. Hmm? Yeah, you're sure? No, I think so. I'm not. You're not? No. I think if you don't get rid of yourself, you don't reach anything. Yeah, but maybe getting rid of yourself is compassion.

[19:37]

It's the way. But that might require a little Zazen and things like that. Sure. Deutsch bitte. And I'd like to correct you in one point. Oh, please. I was glad it's only one. And when you were talking about the doctor who takes the babies in, in whatever it is, somewhere in the States. Alamosa. Yeah. One of the great metropolises. You said it's limited. Mm-hmm. And that really made me problems. I don't think it's limited. It's only limited in what we think, and it's limited in institutions, but not in human beings. Because there will always only be one baby. People say, okay, you can't take all the babies. Not all the babies, never. It's only in our head. When you look out the window, there's only one. Could I make my part?

[20:43]

Well... Okay. The Japanese woman who lived with us in Japan... Shall I translate any, or do you want... Well, no. You can translate for him. He seems to have forgotten his German. Okay, I didn't listen that carefully, but I'll try. Or do you want to say it again in German? I'll say it in German. Baker Roshi spoke of a doctor who takes up the babies of the environment somewhere in America. And he mentioned that it was limited. And I argue that energetically. Well, as I started to say, there's this woman who we lived with for 20 years in Japan and the United States. I just had the touching experience of having dinner with him in Dusseldorf with her brother.

[21:56]

With her son, yes. He's 78 with her son. Anyway, she's an extraordinary woman, was a teacher for me, and a kind of mother-grandmother, too. Yeah, kind of Shukralali for me. And she left her husband, who behaved like Chetney's husbands often do, once in a while. And then she and another woman, because in Japan you don't leave your husband, moved to Kyoto to live. Still left considerable bitterness in her son.

[23:12]

Pain. Anyway, the woman who was her friend was Admiral Shimizu's widow. He went down with a fleet off Guam during the Second World War. Admiral Shimizu Shimizu's widow. And she had founded the Japanese Animal Rescue League. They didn't have any such thing in Japan. And she began bringing in more and more dogs. And pretty soon she had to live in a separate temple up in the mountains. And pretty soon she had many dogs. And pretty soon she was on all fours barking with the dogs. And she was taken to a mental hospital.

[24:29]

So I think there is a limit. I try to pick up glass on the street, for instance, and sometimes, you know, I actually have to get somewhere, you know, and pretty soon your hands are full of glass and... So there's a limit. I think, anyway. But no limit in your feeling. Now, see if I can... Continue our discussion a little more here. I'm trying to, I guess what I'm trying to say is that any society is permeated by compassion. Or by something that we give some kind of name to.

[25:42]

What name we give to it, actually... What name we give to it, yeah... And then what meaning arrives in that name. And at different historical periods, the same word or name has different meanings, different directions. And a shift in the meaning of a key, a fundamental word. a key word means, shifts, reflects a change in direction in the society, reflects a change in the society.

[26:54]

But also, if it's a powerful word, it can shift the direction of a society for generations or centuries. So I think compassion, what we translate as compassion into English is not the same as compassion in Christianity. And I don't know if I'm right even. Then I'm trying to suggest we really have to figure these things out for ourselves. And as meditators, we have the ground and the possibility to figure things out for ourselves. The idea of original mind means you can go back to back or forward in yourself

[28:03]

To a place where we're relatively free of our culture. So you can rethink yourself again. Think isn't the right word, to rethink, but re-be, re... I don't know. You know what I mean. Something bigger than think. And we can rethink our society. This is also the concept of a path. A path is not the same as working out your nature. I mean, I don't know, this is a whole area I can't really get into much, but the sense of a path is free of guilt.

[29:35]

Yeah, you may have made some mistakes in your life. But if those mistakes became part of your path, then you bear the responsibility of the mistakes, but they don't contaminate you. Now the word equanimity I do wish I wasn't so stupid and I wish I knew a lot of languages. Because I'd like to peer under the words more. But the word equanimity in its Hindu roots means something like, generally equanimity means you're not disturbed by others.

[30:53]

What other people do, you remain calm and so forth. But the roots of the word in Hinduism Or an earlier, you know, not Buddhist. Die Wurzeln des Wortes vor dem Buddhismus im Hinduismus. Yeah. Peksha, I believe, is the word. Peksha ist das Wort. Is to notice the faults of others. Ja, ist... to notice the mistakes of others, and to imagine what you would do in that situation. And take on the responsibility in yourself for what you would do in a situation like that. And that makes you not critical of the other person, but rather they gave you something you can try to solve in yourself.

[32:04]

And that dynamic generates equanimity. Now, seeing the dynamic inside a word is different than just seeing the word in a dictionary. Now that isn't just an idea, that's a practice. That's not just a word, that's a practice. It brings the word alive. So I'm likewise trying to bring compassion alive. Now in Christianity, if you really feel compassion, and powerfully feel compassion for Christ's suffering, you have stigmata. then you begin to have the sores and wounds of the Christ.

[33:28]

So that in Christianity would mean you actually experience the suffering of others physically in your own body. And maybe I should tell you that story a little better about Asanga and the dog. It's a story that Bob Thurman tells extremely well, but I'll tell a mild version of it. Anyway, Asanga decided that Asanga and Vasubandhu, two brothers, led to the Yogacara school.

[34:31]

And the Yogacara school is a kind of basic practice route of Zen. He saw the suffering in the world. This is the story, anyway. He saw the suffering in the world, and he thought that part of the reason people suffered so much is because the Buddhist teaching was not well understood. So he thought a short appearance by the future Buddha would help. So the future Buddha is called Maitreya Buddha.

[35:32]

And the idea of a Maitreya Buddha is the idea that Buddha isn't in the past. There's the possibility of a Buddha appearing now. Now, you understand, a Buddha is not one who comes to save us because we're in a miserable situation. In Buddhism, the feeling would be, if we're in such a miserable situation, we couldn't even see Buddha. We have to become worthy individually and societally for a Buddha to appear. So he tried to make himself worthy of a Buddha appearing. And so he... went into the mountains and meditated for 12 years on compassion.

[36:56]

And he came, I think he did come out two or three times during that period and failed, and so he went back. Anyway, 12 years altogether. Finally he gave up. And he hadn't eaten well and he was in a miserable shape. And he went into the villages and people shouted at him through stones because he was a beggar and sick. So he couldn't help anyone. And then he saw this dog. And the dog had a wound, sorry, but in its asshole.

[38:01]

Festering and full of pus. And it was full of maggots. And he thought, at least I can try to help this poor dog. But he couldn't kill the maggots. So even though he was initiated from lack of food, he cut a piece of his own bottom off. And one by one tried to get the maggots off and put them on his own flesh so they could live. And the ones that were farther in, he couldn't get with his fingers, so he tried to get them with his teeth.

[39:08]

And the stench was so bad. I mean, it took every bit of meditation power he had. And finally he got the last maggot out and Maitreya Buddha appeared. And he said, where have you been? He said, I've been here all along, but you weren't able to see me. So I only tell you this kind of story and the story of stigmata, which actually has happened to people. To give you a sense of how deeply rooted, feeling for how deeply rooted this idea of what's good, what's beneficial is in our Western and Buddhist societies.

[40:27]

Now, the word guest and hospital all share a root, gosti, G-H-O-S-T-I. And this word, gusti, the root of that is to make things level. The guest is level with yourself. Der Gast ist auf der gleichen Ebene wie du.

[41:28]

The sick person is level with yourself. Die kranke Person ist auf der gleichen Ebene wie du. Now, again, in Buddhism this sense is called equanimity. In Buddhism this sense is called equanimity. So how do we practice this? The challenge in Buddhism is, okay, you can say equanimity is a kind of first stage of compassion.

[42:40]

But how do we practice equanimity with each other? And equanimity also means equilibrium. or balance, or stability. And the main practice of equanimity is meditation. Suzuki Roshi used to say, by the way, you can't really help others until you've helped yourself thoroughly.

[43:42]

And the main gift we give others is our own state of mind. So if you're helping others and losing your own state of mind, Of course, there are some emergencies where that might be the case. But in general, bodhisattva practice means to help without losing your state of mind. Losing your inner stability. So you cause more karma or cause more trouble in a way if you don't have that inner stability.

[44:43]

And the word equanimity is closely connected to serenity. And also divine, to be godlike. And all of them share the sense of to shine. How do you shine? Yeah. And I think Paul Ricoeur thinks that there's a fragility here that we have to take care of. But that fragility is also a part of compassion. You're not armored and isolated. You're always in danger, but you can maintain your equanimity.

[46:00]

Not forced from the outside, it comes from the inside. Pessoa has some little thing he says, the Portuguese poet. Each day, The light of the day. The true day. Restores me. Restores me to my truth. That's a kind of equanimity. Just in the morning. You let the day restore you. Helps if you meditate in the morning too, I find. Going back to this original mind, more clear mind. which we can notice in words.

[47:22]

And to notice that these basic words, and so many basic words come back to shining or light or something like that. are central to the most basic sense of being alive with others. But do these words describe us? Yes. Now the four divine dwelling places are called the Brahma Viharas.

[48:35]

And most of you know them. But to practice them, maybe it's good to make a schedule to practice them. They're the unlimited friendliness. Yeah, or friendliness, kindness. Yeah. And you're meant to, let's say at dawn or sometime, you just take some time to see if you can experience something like unlimited friendliness. Could you be friendly to anyone who appeared? Or kind to anyone who appeared? Kind of like hospitality. Mm-hmm. And again, don't worry so much about the words, but have a feeling for what this is trying to aim at.

[50:01]

We're not friendly toward everyone. But then you can imagine a situation, as I told you about when I got lost in the woods here, It was warm out here and it was winter in there and raining. And if after a while a stranger had appeared, I would have been friendly toward him. I wouldn't have said, oh, I'm not sure I want this guy to rescue me. So you can actually play around with yourself like that.

[51:01]

In such a situation, if I'd been lost for two and a half hours in snowy rain, yes, I would be friendly to the person who appeared there. So then you can imagine trying to have that feeling for any person. And the next is unlimited empathetic joy. So you take joy in what other people do and accomplish. You were at work, you were just refused a raise and your friend got a raise. Also zum Beispiel an der Arbeit hast du gerade keine Gehaltserhöhung gekriegt, aber dein Freund hat eine gekriegt.

[52:13]

And you deserved the raise more than he did. Und du hättest sie mehr verdient als er. But you have empathetic joy in his getting the raise. You have to create situations kind of in your mind where you would be pissed off or irritated. And... And see if you can feel empathetic joy in these situations, real or imaginary. This is a practice and a path. The third is unlimited compassion. And the fourth is equanimity. And we're still talking about compassion, so I won't say anything about that.

[53:19]

And equanimity we've spoken about. So it means that four realms, divine realms in which to dwell. This is not just words. If you want to practice compassion, you've got to, in Buddhist terms, you've got to find a way to get inside the experience these words point to. And it's good actually, like in the morning just before Zazen, or just at the beginning of Zazen, to remind yourself of the four Brahma Viharas, and see if at that point you can feel one of them.

[54:30]

And the next morning, see if you can feel another one. And if you do that, and you do zazen regularly, after a while, each of these does become a kind of room, a kind of mind, a kind of realm. room, realm, place you can feel yourself in. And this practice of doing things with two hands. I think that's... Dieter was speaking about the... physicality of how he feels with another person. So this sense of equanimity and being at the same level as...

[55:35]

You can practice when you give something to someone. And the way the orioke meals are set up, where serving the food is as important as eating the food, is part of this practice of equanimity. And making the server and the cook and the eating all at the same level. And manifested physically. By how you pass the pots, how you serve the food and so forth. So again, it's just as if I give this to Maya, I turn my body, this fragile area of light sometimes.

[56:58]

I just don't say, oh, here's the bell. That's okay to do that, but there's such a different feeling if you hold the bell... and turn your body and give it to her. I learned this from Suzuki Roshi, and when he did something like that, he passed himself to you. Now we have this phrase, you know, love thy neighbor as thyself. Okay, but how do you love thyself? I'm a cool guy. I wouldn't love this other person as a cool guy. Or most of us don't love ourselves.

[58:00]

I don't like me and I don't like you. So the problem is how do you love thyself? This is also mindfulness and compassion. Yeah. Mindfulness is Well, after lunch. Yeah, I stick to the clock here. 12.15, I'm supposed to stop. So let's sit a moment and then we have lunch. Thank you so much for being here. Yes, thank you very much for being here. Ugh.

[59:58]

Ugh. So it's a rare and wonderful opportunity to gather here like this and try to speak about such a delicate and yet immeasurable topics as wisdom and compassion.

[61:01]

And I'm grateful that we have this house in which it's possible. And grateful especially for the people who live here who make our food and clean the rooms and make the beds and et cetera. Being a monk is sort of graduating into the status of housewife. Hopefully hospitable housewife. And this, doing seminars like this has been part of the way I've been trying to develop a lay adept practice in Europe.

[62:20]

But I want you to understand, and I probably should remind you now and then, These teachings are really meant to be absorbed in a monastic kind of practice. But I don't want to leave this wisdom tradition to the monks. By monks I mean men and women. I don't want to say monks and monkettes or something like that. Or monks and nuns. I don't say actors and actresses either. I say actors. So by monks I mean us guys.

[63:21]

And it's a fact that I keep encountering that as Sashin is to daily practice, the way Sashin can really bring home to you the possibilities, the potentialities of practice, So much more so does practice period bring practice home. That little statement that Goguen said, I kind of put together for this card, the Sangha wheel card, It's really true.

[64:40]

Somehow it's in practice period that you form the true structure of practice. Okay. But that doesn't mean I'm saying you all have to come to practice period. Of course I would like it. But I don't expect it. I know it's impossible for most people. So I really want to find a way to bring practice home so that you can bring it home. But it means you have to really do it.

[65:41]

Now, I know in the early days of my practice, the first five years or so, I was living in San Francisco at the time. And I simply imagined that San Francisco was a monastery. It was rather big. It had big grounds, you know, a lot of space. I felt I... quite luxurious living in such a monastery. But I tried to wake up and go to bed and conduct myself during the day with a mental vigilance similar to being in a monastery. I had a wife and a young son. Child at the time, too.

[66:49]

Same age as Sophia. Maybe I should just start practicing all over again that way now. Maybe I'll suddenly become a young monk. Yeah. Somebody in the local... Waldheim, the local pension here. We had lunch there. And it was spring. What are these stoves called? Kachelofen. Kachelofen. Kachelofen. Anyway, so it wasn't heated. So I got up during lunch and changed the baby on there. This was only a few months ago when we first came back from the States.

[67:56]

And the older woman who is kind of the head of the place came in and she saw me doing it. And she announced to the dining room that nowadays all the modern young husbands like to do this. so I go over there every now and then to change the baby don't you remember what you said but you have to find and you have to find in your own way some way to bring the practice home to your own life. And I think it's harder to do as a lay person.

[69:06]

So your attention, intention has to be stronger. And your attention to your mind and your moment-by-moment activity has to be greater. And it's up to you to find a way to do this. So I'm giving you this first practice, basic practice.

[70:10]

This establishing the mind of the four immeasurables. You really do have to try to imagine each one. Kind of like realms, rooms that you are visiting. Maybe they're under construction. And like many construction projects, they take a long time. Unless Andreas is in charge. So if you can put Andreas in charge of your building, your Brahmavihara construction, that would be good. Yeah, but generally you get there and you find the floor isn't in yet.

[71:17]

Yeah. Or the floor's in, but they didn't put anything, there's no board beams under the floor or something. They forgot something basic. But if you keep visiting these rooms like this, with each visit you find they're a little more complete. And your visits seem to help complete them. And strangely enough, work seems to continue on them when you're away. It develops some confidence in practice when you notice that even when you've been away, somehow there's been some progress on the rooms.

[72:32]

It's kind of invisible to do this. It's part of your search for the good. What's good in you and what's good in the world? And so maybe the Brahma-Viharas are not the best way to go. But at least when I started practicing, they were better than anything I'd thought of. So I thought, what the heck, I'll give them a chance. After you begin to feel you can inhabit these rooms, one of them or another of them, I mean, during my practice of the first one, I even had people getting mad at me, don't be so friendly.

[73:50]

But I recovered from that criticism. And then after you've established yourself in one or more of these rooms, Now remember this is a path and a path of deeds. Now you do something. You act on these feelings. So after you've established yourself in one or more of these rooms, You try to radiate the feeling outward. You imagine it. Beginning part of Zazen, you imagine radiating friendliness and unlimited friendliness. And strangely, there's a kind of, after a while, an experience of a certain kind of space in your body and your meditative space.

[75:37]

When you have this feeling of unlimited friendliness. And for some reason, if you're sitting with others, you can almost feel it in others as well as yourself. And then say, if you shift to empathetic joy, It's not just a mental shift. More kind of a change of the words. You feel a physical change in yourself. As if this realm or room is somehow rooted in a little different part of the body. You can feel the physical shift.

[76:40]

And to be able to feel such a subtle nuance, you need to have some... matured mindfulness practice to notice such a thing. And likewise, you try each one and then feeling the thing, the physical presence, the mental, spatial presence, You feel like radiating it throughout space. And maybe, strangely, if you've tried that sense of coming from one sit bone up to your shoulder,

[77:41]

And stretching a line, then stretching a line to the other shoulder. And then to the side of your head, the face, and the other side. And then up to a crown of the head. You make a kind of triangle. When you really begin to feel that, you can actually then begin to turn that triangle upside down. You can feel the rising coming this way. Then you can also feel a circle. Strangely enough, if you develop some, say, vocabulary of meditation,

[79:03]

you can begin to expand the vocabulary. So when you discover this way of opening up the space of meditation, and a certain feeling of clarity goes with that, then you can notice that there's a geometry to it. And then you can begin to play with that geometry. And one of the main problems in meditation is a triangle that goes from the shoulders down this way and from the shoulders up this way. And we're also often very tight in there, and our shoulders are crimped inside this triangle.

[80:28]

So you have a kind of, what I just gave you was a kind of geometric antidote. But you know, you can't say that to normal people. If you go to a doctor, he says, I'm going to give you a geometric antidote. Maybe a homeopathic doctor could do it. Take this minute, invisible antidote. There's a triangle in this drop of water. But I'm trying to show you something about meditation.

[81:29]

And likewise, when you begin to feel these rooms of the four Brahma-viharas, And you begin to feel their physical place and root. It opens up your meditation into it. other territories. Each room is another kind of space. So instead of using a kind of line that you stretch, you're using an attitude And really feeling yourself into that attitude, your mental space changes.

[82:56]

And if you have a... Say somebody is particularly annoying to you. Here in the sangha or at work or in your family. You can actually practice. It would be a custom to do this. It's actually useful to take a specific length of time. For the next week, I'm going to radiate the four Brahmaviharas toward this person. They're not going to know what hit them. No, that's not the right attitude. That's not the right attitude. Now you just see if you have this feeling without saying anything, without doing anything, if you have this feeling, as much as you can bring it forward when you're with the person, see what happens.

[84:38]

And it's going to work best if you have nothing to gain. And it's not your boss and you're trying to win favor with him or her. If your boss is thinking of firing you, it might still be a good strategy. But best is just the joy of practice, to do it from the joy of practice. Yeah. Okay. Now there's a certain... conceptual framework for all this.

[85:46]

And I just now tried to make this to give you some specific practices to make this something you can do. And mostly, you know, you practice with a sangha regularly. There's a kind of inner logic to the practice. And just practicing with a sangha, you begin to pick up things that aren't taught to you, but they're just implied. When you do a little part here and you do another part here, at some point they all start coming together.

[86:49]

Because there is an inner logic. But here again in our adept lay practice, I think it's good to understand a little more about the inner logic of practice or the conceptual framework of practice. One of them is that Buddhist practice isn't particularly Mahayana Buddhist practice. I would say it's non-dual and circular. And We have compassion and wisdom.

[88:02]

That's our topic, right? What are compassion and wisdom? Are they just words? Are they just ideas? How are they in activity? How are they reflected in the world itself? Mm-hmm. So one way to look at it is as an ascent and a descent. A movement out into the world. And a movement toward Buddha or something like that.

[89:09]

But that's a little too much of a conceptual, more of an idea. So let's think of it as a movement outward and a movement inward. And I've often spoken about this pulse, this inward and outward pulse. Literally a feeling like folding the world in. And folding the world out. Mm-hmm. And so if we have a non-dual, circular, and hence polar, you follow that? Non-dual, and hence circular, and polar way of looking at the world.

[90:12]

You have to occupy both ends. So we wouldn't have an idea like the one and the many. You can think of the one and the many as some kind of non-dual thing. But we say not one and not two. Okay. So things are, you know, there are many things. But at the same time there's some kind of unity or unison to the many. But these are like two poles.

[91:14]

And by saying not one, not two, there's a kind of circularity. So if I look at Akash, and I have the feeling Akash, just Akash, nothing else, But I can't say he's just one, though. I can only say not one. Because he's, you know, I met his father once, right? And I know you went to a wedding of a nephew or something. And you have good friends all around you. And I can't say that you're also this, you're also many.

[92:25]

So if I say one, I have to say, no, not one. And if I say many, no, it's not true, it's still just Akash. So you have some practice like that. So, I mean, ideally, this altar would be in a place where I could, when I come in, could offer incense to it. Because when I go in the zendo in the morning, like, there's the ritual of an entrance. Whoever is the doshi, the person leading the zendo and the service, is customarily not there when the zazen starts, first thing in the morning.

[93:29]

There's only two or three of you or something. It's fine. But even if Gerald, for instance, is the Tanto and the Doshi, and he has to be in there to seat people or do something, Traditionally, what he would do is during the third round, he'd actually leave. At the end of the third round, he would enter. Around the end of the third round. Bei der dritten Runde.

[94:38]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.12