Thank you for inviting me again to come to Berlin. And the city seems to be changing rapidly. It's just on the streets and it feels different than just last year. So we have a topic, something like the bodhisattva in today or in everyday life or something like that, don't we? What's the topic? What would we like the topic to be? What is the topic? Come on.

[01:02]

Herman, you're one of the organizers. What's the topic? What does it say on the poster? Today. Today, okay. That's what I thought it said. Today is there because the Buddha has a timeless... quality, emphasis on timelessness. And the practice of the bodhisattva doesn't make any sense. Unless it's about Realization. Freedom from suffering.

[02:06]

The transformation of suffering. In the particular conditions of our particular time. Okay. Now I asked, as I almost always do, several people, what should I talk about tonight, tomorrow? And they said various things. But commonly, yeah, talk about compassion. Oh dear. Yes, talk about the bodhisattva in everyday life.

[03:09]

Yes, talk about compassion and love in everyday life. How the heck am I going to do that? Well, we could end right now. Compassion, love, and everyday life, and let's meet tomorrow. That would be compassionate. You could go home. But somehow, if we're going to speak about this, if we're going to think about it together, Yeah, we have to somehow, I think, find some entry to these words. Words are useful. The words are part of what brought you here.

[04:24]

And so what do we mean by these words? What do we mean by, well, first of all, everyday life? Because I would say that we have to think about bodhisattva practice. As a practice that reaches into each person. And that reaches in in a way that there's no one excluded from this practice. But I would like to look at this, you know, let's imagine we're not Buddhists. And I'm sure many of you are interested in Buddhism but really don't think of yourself as Buddhist.

[05:38]

But so let's pretend we know nothing about Buddhism. What is it? Why do people say, please talk about compassion or love everyday life and so forth. I think we have to assume that this means something to us. It means something like I would like to feel more compassion in my ordinary circumstances. I think all of us, if we're the least bit intelligent and... alert and sensitive, would like to, for our own benefit, feel more compassion toward others.

[06:48]

And maybe we also mean we'd like others to feel more compassionate toward us. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. But what would we mean if we would like people to feel more compassionate toward each of us, toward you, toward me and you? I think if we asked ourselves that question, honestly, simply, we'd have to say, we probably mean we'd like people to accept us more. We'd like people to accept us as we are. Yes, and we have, again, this idea of everyday life.

[08:19]

Going to have a topic, we ought to look at it as if it were our own topic. So we say everyday life, what do we mean? Do we mean some life in contrast to monastic life? Or do we mean some special kind of life? In contrast to some special kind of life. I think what we mean is we mean our own particular life. Whatever that is might be pretty weird.

[09:23]

Might be pretty commonplace. But I think what we mean is what we find to be our particular everyday life. So what is our particular everyday life? Now what I'm doing here is a little exercise. That's actually part of practice. Practice isn't just doing zazen or practicing mindfulness. It's also looking very, very, pretty carefully, very carefully But what do we mean? If we don't know what we mean, it's pretty hard to practice. But what do we mean by practice?

[10:26]

Well, if we have these questions and we recognize these questions are a question of our own then we have to find the territory of the question. We need some kind of target. But a target for what? For practice. Because it doesn't make sense to say everyday life and just everyday it everyday. I turned the word everyday into a verb. To everyday, like to live everyday. To everyday it, I meant to live the everydayness of it. So can practice just mean to live the everydayness of it? Yeah, but maybe so. What would that be?

[11:45]

Yeah, it could be this. And this. Just this. That's not how we usually live. We usually paint a sky of meaning and values over our life. And we don't have just this, we have a lot of self-referencing in this. Do I like this, this? What does this, this mean to me?

[13:07]

And so forth. So that's more than this. That's this plus self-referencing. Okay, but this is our everyday life. But how do we live this everydayness? Perhaps if we could really see this, this, without self-referencing, we might see this more clearly. And we might see self-referencing more clearly. So then our particular everyday life would be to see this, this, each this, and to see our self-referencing.

[14:35]

But how can we do that? Remember, we're not Buddhists. We don't know anything about Buddhism. But we've come this far. We have a feeling of our particular everyday life. And we'd like that it be accepted more. And we'd like to accept it more ourselves. We'd like to compare it less to others, and we'd like others to compare it less, perhaps. Yeah, so we're trying, we have some sense now of, yeah, there's this quality to life. And there's a self-referencing and societal referencing to each this as well.

[15:51]

And we notice that when we do loosen self-referencing a bit from this. We feel different. We might even feel better. And I think you will find if you can, when you do feel this, this, without much self-referencing, it's like taking a little vacation in the middle of Berlin. It's like taking a little vacation just now, right here together.

[17:00]

And if we let ourselves feel it, and to come into letting ourselves feel it, what's going on when that happens? Well, actually, this, this, and this, this, I'm trying to make it easy for him to translate. Like some of these love songs, you know. You, you, you.

[18:02]

No one else but you, you, you. We all know what that means. This, this, this. We feel a certain pace or pulse to this. Yeah, I spoke about this somewhat in the session we just did at Johannesburg. And the root of the word pulse means something like to draw near. To draw toward. And usually we rush past that which is nearest. So now we can kind of probe this question which we're asking ourselves, why do I want to feel more compassion?

[19:22]

And if I do want to feel more compassion or intimacy, How do I do that? Well, perhaps again, if you notice that, yeah, notice when you feel just this and when you feel more self-referencing. When there's less self-referencing, we feel drawn into that which is nearest. So now we can probe our original question with we're feeling with what is nearest?

[20:41]

Now again, when you have I mean, the pulse of music draws you into the music and the pulse of the world draws you into the world so now we Maybe we want to draw nearer to our everyday life. Our particular everyday life. And we've recognized that we'd also like perhaps more compassion, Empathy toward us.

[21:45]

Yeah, we'd like to feel just naturally accepted by others. And recognized for the wonderful person we are. Yeah, sometimes we feel that way. Well, maybe if we feel that way, it might be the case that it would be, is it possible to feel that way for others? So if we would like to feel more accepted, let's take that as a shorthand formula, Yeah, we'd like, maybe we could see the degree to which we can accept others.

[22:47]

Yeah. So it's useful to take somebody who's particularly not your type. And look at them. Can I accept this guy? Well, I... I suppose I could like Coco the talking gorilla. There's a famous gorilla in California that... talks and makes signs and so forth. It's called Coco. Yeah, yeah, he knows, he's got a big vocabulary. They're not trying to mate him with another gorilla who can, whoa, hello, who can sign. They're not trying to mate.

[24:16]

Couple. So far they've been unsuccessful. Come on, gorilla, get with it. But they want to see if the baby gorilla would learn to sign faster than the adult. But if we can so easily love this gorilla, which he's quite lovable. I think she's a she, actually. Well, then we can like this gorilla we see across the restaurant. Or as you know, I often say, just notice how you can feel for a baby and you feel, can you accept each person you meet?

[25:19]

So we have some territory here. Just by looking at this question, and taking it as our own recognition, we can see that there's things we can do. The question expects something of us. So again, what is practice? How do we bring attention attention to or notice the degree to which we accept others?

[26:30]

How do we find this territory? Well, you pay attention to it. So you may not know anything about Buddhism, but you're discovering Buddhism just by noticing you have to pay attention. Now, what is this attention? Well, It takes time to sort out what this attention is. Because you may notice that when you give attention or attention arises from this, this, There's not much thinking involved.

[27:44]

And when you think about this, this, immediately there's a lot of self-referencing. How do you sort out the kind of attention which arises from this, this? And the kind of attention which happens when there's a lot of self-referencing? That tension, almost always you will find if you experiment, takes the form of thinking.

[28:47]

So can we give attention to what we call our particular everyday life in some way that is not thinking attention? Yeah, I came up here in the train. And I like riding a train. Gerald and I came together. Yeah, and... Things are going by, of course, out the window. And if I think, oh, now I'm seeing a farmhouse. Near a hill or a forest. I don't know. I don't see much. But to sort of like take any naming off the scenery.

[30:15]

And first just have it kind of rub by you as the train moves. If you do something like that, You're practicing with what kind of attention you give to this so-called everyday life. And if you let the pulse of the train and the pulse of your own looking, I think you'll find you're drawn into some other, some new nearness When I was on the train, I had quite a bit of luggage.

[31:30]

Because that's an aspect of my particular everyday life. But also I'm going to be on the train for a month. Because I go from here to Bremen and then to Garmisch and then to Venice and then to Budapest and then to Hanover and then back. So I'm just going to be on a train for a month. And since I don't like to travel, I like to stay home. I bring my teapots and all kinds of stuff. So I can travel as if I were staying home. Luckily, Gerald was with me. I don't know what I'm going to do without you the rest of the trip.

[32:52]

But people were very nice when I got on the train. And people had lots of suggestions of where the luggage could be put and stuff like that. Everyone was quite friendly. They laughed at my speaking English. And then we all got up, of course, at the end of both train rides, we got up and waited for the train doors to open. And somewhere in me, there's a kind of hidden social anthropologist. So I'm like watching all these folks who were just very nice to me an hour or so ago helping me think about where I could put the luggage.

[34:13]

And they're all standing there, very much in their own space, with their own luggage piled around them. And I kind of, where are they at? You know, in Germany you have, what, three gradations of knowing. People you don't know. People you know. And people you say, what, do with. So that's, you know, three categories, right?

[35:17]

And these folks, now they're in the train waiting for the door to open. They're very much in what's a natural behavior with people you don't know. And from the kind of acknowledged connectedness that was when I first got in the train, Now there's a kind of, I would describe it as withheld connectedness. And kind of even actively not acknowledged connectedness. Now I would say in America in a similar situation, there'd be an acknowledged connectedness that wouldn't be acted on.

[36:31]

I would say that if I was in Ireland, there'd be acknowledged connection which would be actively acknowledged. Even a kind of spiritual flirting. Like I know where you're at. In Japan, I can only talk about the places I've spent a lot of time. In Japan, I can only talk about places where I've been longer. In Japan there'd be a completely acknowledged physical connectedness. And no acknowledged emotional connectedness. So people are standing there like in a body. A body of bodies. But they're all acting like nothing's going on at all.

[38:07]

Well, I find this really interesting. This is a kind of territory of our particular society. And so I enjoyed, I started talking about it in English to see if anybody would pick up on my English. And I'm trying to feel, if I do this and that, how can I draw out the connectedness? Well, that's much like the bodhisattva practice. How do you draw out the connectedness in your particular society? Now, if you happen... Again, we don't know anything about Buddhism.

[39:11]

But somebody got you to sit down once. And if it works for you, if it worked for you, strangely, a new kind of connectedness may come to us. We may feel more, I mean I'm sure we feel more intimate with ourself. And we can notice the degree to which we don't feel intimate with ourselves. This is a great gift. Because if you can start seeing the territory of your everyday life, your particular everyday life, yeah, that we think about ourselves And our world is shaped by our self-referencing.

[40:41]

But we often don't feel actually intimate with ourself. Yeah, we don't... We don't feel relaxed. Here you're sitting in zazen and you're not sitting a very long period, so it doesn't hurt that much. And yet you can see that you're not relaxed in any deep way. You're on some sort of surface somewhere. It's better, but still there's a kind of surface you can't get past. And we can see that when we're relaxed, We feel more intimate with ourselves.

[42:02]

And intimate with the phenomenal world too. We are much more likely to feel ourselves in the pace pulse of the phenomenal world. This pace pulse in which we're drawn so near to that which is nearest, This pace-pulse which draws us so near to that which is nearest, we don't have much experience of subjective objectives. we feel drawn out of the pace of self-referencing into the pace of something close to the world as it is.

[43:11]

feel a new nearness with others. People you hardly know. Instead of waiting by the train door, you're waiting by the enlightenment door. which takes a lot longer to open than the train door. But you feel very intimate with this person and you don't know any more than the person next to you on the train. You feel this intimacy. They might be Coco the gorilla. But you don't notice it. There's just some kind of nearness. And that nearness is the base now.

[44:55]

You begin to feel it as the base. On top of that is how you wait for a train door in Germany. Or in Ireland or Japan or the United States. But now you feel that nearness as the base from which you begin. And since someone got you to sit down you've been lucky enough to have this experience directly yourself. You can't act on it most of the time. You can't But you now know it's possible.

[46:02]

I mean, it's really interesting if you practice meditation. So many things you know with your head, but they're just there, you know? You know somehow in the nearness of your life, And when you know things that way, you never forget them. So you know a certain nearness with everyone. That's the basis of bodhisattva practice. And the maturing of bodhisattva practice is how to develop this nearness. And I think in the beginning you have to hide it.

[47:07]

You know it, but you hide it. I think we all do that. But you find ways to begin to not just let this nearness out. And you see what habits of mind and personality make that difficult. But you also find ways to start to act on it. And you find that by acknowledging it as a territory

[48:08]

of your particular everyday life, you start drawing it out of others. Yeah, so again, I started to define practice. And I would call it, to say something short, attentional awareness. Not thinking awareness. Yes, maybe tomorrow we can talk about what is this attentional awareness. How do we discover ourselves in this attentional awareness? and let the world start talking to us.

[49:30]

So we got here to wherever we're at, wherever that is. We got here without really any need for Buddhism. We got here by just looking at the question which drew us here. In my particular everyday life, I would like to feel more compassion or connectedness with others. and be able to open up some deeper feeling that we hardly dare to name. I don't think love and compassion such words are equal to it.

[51:14]

That we can in some way our deepest wish To acknowledge this feeling in ourselves and with others. And perhaps have a tremor of a flicker, a tremor of awareness. of recognition from others of the same feeling. This is the world of the bodhisattva. I think that's enough for now. And it's about an hour or so.

[52:25]

I'm sorry I talk so long. So now we have a little break and we have some discussion afterwards or let's just stop and we start tomorrow. Let's have a decision. This is enough for now. Let's stop and we'll just be together for a while and see what happens. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. Is there some water or anything there? Yes. I have a question.

[53:35]

It is said that the Bodhisattva waits to reach Nirvana until all beings have reached it. What if the number of beings is infinite? Then the Bodhisattva will never reach Nirvana. George, please. The Bodhisattva isn't counting. That's all. That's a lot actually. When you learn not to count and you don't care whether you count or not that's an English pun. I don't know if it works in German. To count is to be important.

[54:35]

if you say he really counts that means he's important or something the definition of that's a kind of kind of one kind of popular or academic definition of the bodhisattva. But you wouldn't want to vow to save only five sentient beings, would you? Then your friend is saying, I'm going to save six. So then you say, I'm going to save all. And that's a much more interesting vow. You always fail. Yeah, what else? What else? You came here to listen to someone else ask a question?

[56:10]

You didn't translate that. Oh, Julio, you're dependable. I can understand the concept for the people you're in touch with. by accident or in work. At this moment in life, I find that you still have to start choosing. For example, you choose a circle of friends. And sometimes people offer their friendship that you don't really want to be friends with. So what would be the practice of that? I choose somebody I don't want to be friends with. I don't have the time for somebody I might want to be friends with. Deutsch, bitte. I can start with the concept of having a random contact with the people you work with, but there are situations where you don't decide for a friendship with this person and not with the other one.

[57:22]

All relationships are different. You can't be married to everyone. Yeah, and you can't you can only have so many sons and daughters. So there's always this kind of particularity. And you can only have so many close friends. And those friendships depend on, you know, let's say circumstances. But also metabolic, genetic circumstances. We're drawn to some people more than others. Yeah, but that's not what's meant by the bodhisattva practice. This experience of... Yeah, I'm just trying to find out how to... What kind of... Yeah.

[59:59]

Yeah, how to say something. He's trying to find out how to say something. Yeah, it might take until Sunday afternoon to find out how to say it. Because it's this kind of practical friendship and deeper friendship Yeah, we don't really, it's not, you can't, it's not really in words to say something about it. But anyway, that's enough for now. Something else?

[61:10]

Yes. In the last few days, I have had situations where I have tried, or where I have experienced something without naming it, without giving it up. I practiced in the last weeks that I saw things or worked with things without giving them any name. Through that practice, the feeling of being separated was replaced by the feeling of being connected. So this feeling of being not connected disappeared.

[62:24]

But this feeling of being not connected, disconnected, disappeared. Does this relate to Bodhisattva practice? I didn't realize it as such. No, it definitely relates to Bodhisattva. Yeah, it's, you know, all these things are, if I say, yes, bodhisattva practice is one gate of bodhisattva practice. If I say, one gate of bodhisattva practice is to peel the names off things. Yeah, I can say that. And you may think the words make sense.

[63:32]

Or you may think they don't make sense. But in either case, to really have a feeling for what it means to peel the names off things, we have to get into the feeling of it together. And if most of us can get the feeling of it, it suddenly becomes something For all of us. It's not possible to think your way to. wo es nicht möglich ist, sich denkend dorthin zu bewegen. Aus dem Westen habe ich ziemlich lange praktiziert. Mehr als 40 Jahre. And it's taken me a long time to come up with a simple phrase, which I've been using the last few months a lot, to notice without thinking.

[64:55]

I mean, I've been practicing noticing without thinking for many years. Yeah, and I don't know, but I talked about it as, say, perceiving, or I thought of it as a kind of perceiving, but not thinking about what you perceive. to perceive something without thinking about what you perceive. But I couldn't find, only recently, really in the last few months, did I find this very simple phrase, which lets you practice with the phrase in a mantra-like way.

[66:05]

And to notice without thinking, one aspect of that would be to not name when you think. And to notice without thinking, one aspect of that would be to not name when you think. And as a practice, this is a part of what's called the five dharmas. I don't know, we'll talk about it tomorrow. I've talked about it off and on the last couple of years. But there are certain basic teachings that we have to keep going over. Until we really get them as a habit that becomes the structure behind our perceiving and thinking. So let's just come back to this phrase, noticing without thinking.

[67:36]

Yeah, it took me a long time to really appreciate the word noticing. It took me a long time to really appreciate the word noticing. I have no idea how, of course, it works in German. But in English you have to get past a lot of things, like notice what you're doing. Und im Englischen sagt man oft, bemerke, was du tust. There's lots of habitual uses of the word notice which hide the power of the word from you. Es gibt viele gewohnheitsmäßige Arten, das Wort bemerken zu benutzen, die die Kraft dieses Wortes eigentlich versteckt.

[68:40]

And in English the word notice has knowing in it, knowing without knowledge. It includes a knowing which isn't accumulated knowledge. And so you can practice noticing, which is also this, this, this. And let the noticing be the fullness of your knowing, without thinking. Yeah, we might also come up with one like feel first, think second.

[69:45]

Yeah. Yeah. So that if you, whatever you do, like typically you can practice stepping into a room. You step into the room as if it were the place you'd never been before. And you're taking the cloak off the unique. You're taking the disguise. Uniqueness is disguised as commonplace. So you step in and you just feel. Whatever it is, the room, whatever you feel.

[71:05]

And you let your basic pace be in this feeling. And then you think about it. And then your pace, underlying pace or pulse, is in feeling, not in thinking. And that changes your thinking. So what I'm trying to... point out here, that there's a territory of everyday life.

[72:11]

Now probably most of the people waiting for the train door, they know they're withholding connectedness, And they know the feeling of that. But they take it for the most part as a natural way to be with people you don't know. But it's not natural. It's structured learned behavior. And if you can see your structured learned behavior, then you can understand the structured behavior we call bodhisattva practice.

[73:25]

to simultaneously feel the structure and at the same time feel around and through the structure. It's almost a feeling of being naked in a world of naked objects. And this feeling of being able to, this knowing or feeling of being able to be simultaneously in a particular structure and free of the structure, is the territory of practice. And I think you'll find, if you know this territory, the nearness of this freedom from structure

[74:43]

then you'll see sometimes being good friends with somebody prevents this from happening. The structures of friendship prevent this nearness. So often if you practice, you have to make a decision. Are you going to practice with a person or be friends with a person? And almost always, they don't go together. Almost in my experience over these decades is that you think you can do it, but in actual fact you can't. The habits of friendship become societal habits.

[76:11]

even if it's somebody you'd steal horses with. Isn't that a German expression? Still, and the structures of friendship almost always have some kind of comparison in them and so forth. And that's good. That's okay. That's often quite good. But to be able to know this freedom from the nearness of this freedom from structure, which is the practice of the bodhisattva.

[77:34]

But to know that and also be in an ordinary sense friends or close friends with someone. Yeah, you can do it up to a point. But the development of the freedom from structure usually is difficult to do. And psychological factors start coming in. And love starts happening instead of a kind of pure intimacy. And when you can bring both together, I would call that the search for ultimate friendship.

[78:39]

And that's what we're all doing anyway, isn't it? Okay, thank you very much. I hope I see most of you tomorrow, because my freedom from structure does not mean I'm free from attachment. So what time do we usually start? Ten o'clock, don't we? 9.30, 10 o'clock? Big city, 10 o'clock. All right, I'll see you at 10 o'clock tomorrow. Thank you.

[79:43]

Is there a possibility that people come in? Oh, of course, if somebody unlocks the door. We started at 9, so the doors are open from 9 o'clock. Okay, who's going to open? Hermann, I guess. Hermann? Hermann? Are you here at 9? Or someone else? Yes. But who's there? Who's there? Or is it you? I'm here. Oh, very close. We can leave that here.

[80:25]

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