protested in the beginning and they wouldn't take us. Rouvain was his name. Rouvain got himself in somehow. And they said that at the army base that everyone had religious freedom. So you're supposed to be a Christian or a Jew or something, and he said he was a Buddhist. But they didn't offer Buddhist services. So he said... When other people go to church, he said, can I meditate? What could they say? They said, yes. So then he asked, does... Anyone who doesn't want to go to church, who would like to meditate with me?

[01:10]

Well, there was a large number of people. It makes me think of Marie-Louise went to Catholic, my wife went to Catholic boarding school. And she told me the other day that there was On Sunday, the nuns would say, you don't have to come to church, but it's your choice. She said, but if you didn't make the choice, they came looking for you and finding who was hiding under the bed and saying, why aren't you making the choice to go to church? So it was like that. So Ruvain got this quite large group of people sitting under a tree. And every Sunday they did this. And he'd ring a bell and tell no one to move until he rang the bell.

[02:13]

So on the third or fourth Sunday some officer came by and wanted to know what everybody was doing. And no one would move. And he got quite upset, and he was shouting, I'm the lieutenant or whatever, and no one... And finally, Ruvane rang the bell. And they all moved. He said, I told them not to move until we rang the bell and we had religious freedom. And they threw him out of the army. So I'm very impressed that you wouldn't move. Okay, so is there something you'd like to bring up in what we've been discussing?

[03:32]

Oh, we switched machines, huh? Yes. I'm told what was on there had to be erased. Did we do that? I spoke with Gerald, and he said it's probably everything prepared. I was told it had to be erased, but that's all right, too. Anyway, it's not important. Yeah. I just came up with an association, I don't know how to express it, what Buddha statues trigger in me, let me wake up for pictures. Buddha statues? Yes, or also Buddha images, like in your book, the sitting Buddha images with the colors, what, what, what.

[04:37]

It's the association that what Buddha statues or Buddha pictures of Buddha sort of have an effect in me. And I would like to bring into condition with this term, Buddha nature. Yeah, somehow the icon of the Buddha is very satisfying for people. I'm amazed when you walk through a city how often you see in a shop window among the watches A Buddha. Yeah, and the Buddha is saying, I'm free from time, but if you need a watch... Yes, you wanted to say something?

[05:40]

I just remembered I read a koan, but of course I couldn't so big. It was the question whether a dog had a Buddha nature or not. And I think the koan master replied, mo, which could mean loving, but which does not mean anything to me. I'm sorry. Yeah. Jeez, we're getting in deep here. Yeah, that's usually the first koan. Oh, you should say it in German. Yeah. Yeah, the word mu means emptiness or it means no.

[06:48]

But the koan isn't the actualization of the koan. Of course, it's not in the word no. It's in the activity of bringing no to all your activity. So in every appearance, as Eric says, You greet that appearance with moo. You could use almost any word. You could use watermelon. Every time I see Eric, I think, I don't know if it would work.

[07:54]

I might start laughing. Axel, is your name? Axel, I say. Watermelon. Watermelon. Does this mean you exclude every phenomenon from the absolute term of Buddha nature? Exclude every phenomenon? You better say that in Deutsch. Give me a chance. No. What I mean is if you take any word or any attitude And in each situation, you bring that feeling to it. It could be no, it could be yes, it could be watermelon. Watermelon is not so good, actually. It doesn't mean anything.

[09:15]

You can't turn it into meaning, like let go or don't let go. It's an activity. And something happens when you repeat the activity that can't be said to be a meaning. So there's another version of the koan where Zhaozhou when asked, does a dog have a Buddha nature? He says, yes. Which is the standard answer. So then you'd repeat yes in all circumstances. Yes. Yes. That'd be good. Everything you say, yes. This would be a practice of acceptance. Yeah, well, you can try both.

[10:24]

It's quite interesting to say no to everything, too. There's a kind of freedom. When I was younger, which was quite a while ago, yesterday, in my 20s, I was trying to kind of get untangled from all the expectations people have of you when you're young. You're supposed to go to college, you're supposed to have a career, etc. You're supposed to be nice. So I began saying, excuse me, the slang, don't bug me, man. Don't bother me. Don't bother me. Don't bug me. When people come up and say, hi, Dick, I say, don't bug me. What are you doing today?

[11:35]

Don't bug me. And then my friends began to call me, Don't Bug Me Man Baker. My first title. And it was great. I mean, people didn't know what to do after I said, Don't Bug Me. Then we'd have normal conversations. It's something like starting out with no. But the activity, the point here is that Buddha nature is probably an activity. It's a way of acting in the world. Now we have to make a choice. What way are we going to act in the world? And what mind appears when we act one way rather than another way? So anyway, again, we're just bringing up things here.

[12:49]

This is an activity which we're doing here, stirring the pot. Someone else want to say something? So we have a, what I'm saying here is, we have a choice about what mind we want to live the world in or through. Yeah, I think this has to be clear.

[13:53]

It's not just an idea. We really have to have a clear feeling of this. There's not, as I think I even spoke about last year here in Munich, There's not one basic mind. Already in our conversation we've more or less established or accepted that there's There's the mind of our culture. And there's the mind of, yeah, maybe Buddha nature or true nature.

[14:54]

And one of the koans... gate phrases connected with the koan, is this very mind is Buddha. And there's a famous story about a teacher, a practitioner who was realized, enlightened through the phrase, this very mind is Buddha. And he was living on some mountain. Near Garmisch, I think. Well, anyway, so some years later a monk came to see him. And said, you know, our teacher, now he no longer says this very mind is Buddha.

[16:06]

He says this very mind is not Buddha. And this man said, I don't care what he says, this very mind is Buddha. So this is not about the content exactly, but the experience that happens when you work with such a phrase. So what we have here is, you know, I think something that's new to us in our... is that when you repeat a phrase, something happens. And when it's an intention that you cannot, that you... you can hold.

[17:20]

We could say that advertisers know this, they repeat certain phrases over and over again, and then you buy their product because the phrase is back there somewhere. So advertisers basically are using a hit upon, a technique that Buddhism also uses. Just like form is emptiness, emptiness is form, many people know that expression, even if they're not Buddhist or practitioners. So, you know, maybe you could say that somebody did some good advertising work for Buddhism. Because these phrases stay with us and then influence us. But, you know, the Buddhist phrase is you can't go out and buy Buddha nature.

[18:23]

Yeah. I mean, you could sell some soap by making toothpaste, perhaps. Such and such a toothpaste refreshes your mouth. But you can't... And you could go buy the toothpaste and see if it... It's true. But you can't say this very mind is Buddha and go out and buy the mind that, you know, etc. So when we use what I call gate phrases in practice... They have to be something you can't grasp the meaning of easily or at all. And if in some ways they do reveal themselves, they reveal themselves through what happens when you repeat them.

[19:50]

When you hold them in mind. And this idea of holding in mind is a very essential part, conceptual part, practice part of Zen. So in the teaching in which asserts and emphasizes fully that everything changes. That something you hold in mind in the midst of change.

[20:58]

It works very powerfully in us because it works at the very level at which we're put together. Because to be alive is to be alive in the midst of change, of impermanence. And at the same time... Being alive is the experience of continuity in the midst of change. So then, what kind of continuity do we establish in the midst of change? You could say that's a definition of Zen tries to answer the question, what kind of continuity do we want to establish in the midst of change?

[22:15]

So now we're back to what kind of mind do we want to live the world through? Do we have a choice about what kind of mind we want to live the world through? How many choices do we have? Um... Hi, Yosef. Thanks for coming. So again, let's really recognize this, that we have a choice of what mind

[23:29]

What kind of mind do we want to live the world through? So the next question is, do you really believe that? Do you really what? Do you really believe that? It sounds like a nice idea, but practically speaking, you're not going to change the mind you live the world through. But that means you don't really believe it. If you really believe it, you say, wow. Is it possible to, hey, that's like wow, hey, wow. Could I live my life through a mind free of suffering?

[24:32]

Would I want to, you know? I've learned a lot from suffering in my life. Oh, so maybe I'd like to live my life through a world, I'd like to live the world through a mind that always suffers. This is a choice a lot of people make. I know... No, I won't say who. A person whose mother is very Catholic. And she says, my mother thinks that it isn't real unless you suffer. I certainly know Catholics who don't feel that way, but this person's mother feels that way.

[25:35]

If it's easy or you're just happy, it's not real. So then we have to ask, what the heck's wrong with being happy? Or, you know, better, as I spoke last night, feeling at ease. Okay, so let's say that we accept that we have a choice about what mind we live the world through. And we have to have that kind of acceptance or the idea of Buddha nature really doesn't make sense.

[26:35]

Because Because if Buddha nature isn't basically a kind of belief of some... It's kind of like believing in God or something like that. Is or isn't? If it... If it isn't something like believing in God, that you have some hidden nature that's your true nature or Buddha nature, it's already there. But this is something we'll have to explore more.

[27:37]

What does it mean to say it's already there? But if it's not, in the way I mean now by already there, then it must be an activity. So your mind is an activity. A mood. We know our mind. We are moody. The day is cloudy. It's rainy. Our mind gets cloudy and rainy. It's a bright sunny day, our mood changes. These are not just small changes. We actually feel quite a bit different. Things look better on a sunny day often. Why is that? What is the nature of mind that it's so... fluid and changeable, malleable.

[28:57]

If the mind is so fluid, how can we use that fluidity? Well, the answer in Buddhism is that intention and intention works within and makes use of the fluidity of the mind. in and works through. Now, if you do have this view of the fluidity of mind, that you have a choice about what mind you live in and live through, then you would have no idea of an inherent nature.

[30:07]

This would make a big cultural difference. For example, in Asia and for the most part in Japan, I know more particularly the idea that a that the person or the self or the soul begins at conception It's unthinkable. They just couldn't even imagine such an idea. Because from their point of view, if you have a choice about what mind you live in, then you can't be born with a mind that you're stuck with all your life. then you can't be born with a spirit and put your whole life into it.

[31:13]

And So this is, are you still, are we together on this, sort of, more or less? Because I think it's worth looking at, when you change the emphasis, you really can change your whole culture. Right. It's not really a matter that one is completely true and the other is completely false. Because there's truth to both points of view. But which do you decide to emphasize?

[32:14]

Only, which of the two do you decide to emphasize or strengthen? And the emphasis is what changes the culture. Because, of course, we're born with some genetic predispositions. I mean, this is kind of an odd example, but I used to be quite friendly with many of the Black Panthers. And because of one of the many bad sides of the U.S. government, they really harassed the Panthers, the government did. And actually instigated wars between different black groups.

[33:31]

Like fake letters and things like that. So quite a lot of the members were killed, not by... police or the government, but by other black groups fighting, but the government put them up to it. So quite a lot of children, and this is why I'm telling an example, quite a lot of children were born who never knew their fathers. But everyone was struck by how little boys or little girls who never knew their father would do such similar things. They'd find the same kind of jokes funny. They'd laugh the same way. They had certain physical expressions, facial expressions, which were just like their father, their father they never met.

[34:34]

So there's certainly a powerful genetic imprint in our personality. But that doesn't mean we have necessarily a kind of inner nature, fate that we live out. A genetic imprint from a Buddhist point of view is not fate. Just like you have a genetic imprint, but if you were brought up in a Swahili family, you'd speak Swahili. And you'd think the Swahili worldview was just the way it was.

[35:46]

There is. So let's say, what worldview do you want to... do you want to live in? And we could say that to say what worldview is quite similar to saying what mind. What mind or worldview shapes are perceptions or cognition. Yeah, so when I was living in Japan, it always surprised me at the tremendous freedom children are given. Up until five or six years old, They're just left to do what they want, pretty much.

[37:05]

I mean, there's certain discipline, of course, but... But by the time you're 17 or 18, you do what the culture says. And you don't have much freedom of choice at all. So like a young girl who was a friend of our family in Japan wanted to come to America and do some things and travel. When the village basically said to her, if you don't become the local gymnasium teacher, sports teacher in the high school, the villages around here will ostracize you. We won't even. No one will speak to you. From our point of view, that's a very negative side.

[38:09]

We say, okay, you discipline the kid, but when they're 18 they have freedom, they can make their choice. They have the feeling you allow the child mental freedom, particularly when it's young, and then slowly you tell them what it's like. An example of this that I mention every now and then is Basho, the famous poet who really developed haiku poetry. Starting out on his journeys around Japan and writing a poem every day, I think. He came across an abandoned baby. And he said, he wrote a little poem, this you sweet little thing, you don't have a mother and father and no one will take care of you.

[39:26]

And he put the baby back and went on his walk. That's unthinkable to us. But for them, it was more I mean, he wasn't being ashamed of what he did. He wrote a poem about it. Because from his point of view, a child without two parents and a village and people who wants to help it can never develop into a whole human being. And there's some truth to that, too. So as a result, in villages in Japan, you find the village takes care of orphans and crazy people, etc.

[40:35]

The whole village's job is to take care of... But if the village won't take care of it, no one can take care of it. And often Buddhist temples are places where people who really can't hold a job, who can't get it together, they just live in the temple and get fed. and they chop wood or something. That's why they keep me around. So there's disadvantages to any point of view. But it's amazing that the emphasis, one emphasis, really shifts a whole culture in a different direction and how you view education.

[41:37]

So we're exploring here, what does Buddha nature mean to us and what does it mean in Asian yogic culture? And if we do have a choice about what mind we live the world through, what are the possible alternatives? What are the alternatives we can experience so we can make a real choice. So that's where we're at right now. So maybe we should get ready to go have lunch, isn't that right? Actually, I said we go at one o'clock.

[42:37]

Is it okay? Yeah, it's okay. Yeah. Does that mean I have to talk till one o'clock? No, no, I'm just kidding. But last time we went, it took forever to walk over there. Yeah, no, but this time I told them to prepare it and that we'd come there and everything's ready. Yeah, because last time it also took forever to get served. I know. So probably we go quarter to... Yes, because it takes ten minutes or so to walk over there, right? But I think I've said enough for this for now.

[43:48]

And we can take a little... You don't have to listen to me to enjoy the world. So we have ten minutes to enjoy the world. But you can watch me dress if you want. I can watch you dress.

[44:42]

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