is essential to humanity. This attention becomes the central practice of all of Buddhism. Okay. So that's giving some attention to attention. As today we're giving attention to trust and love. And this is not just like you've heard this before or something like that. We're not interested in conceptual understanding. We're interested in the repetition of understanding in a way that opens us to each moment a unique experience of this world.

[01:01]

The subtle substance of this world this world that comes to us and comes to us more fully when we give it attention as spring is coming to us Yeah, as the birds are coming to us. As even the mooing of the cows is coming to us. Yeah, so the world... So the world comes to us in these little things.

[02:09]

It can't come to us too forcefully in its all-at-onceness. So it signals us. Yeah, the cow moves. That's a little signal. Or that we hear the birds. Or each leaf. I like, there's a little poem of Rumi's. He says, God only knows what keeps me laughing. The stem of a flower moves when the air moves. That's all.

[03:10]

The stem of a flower moves when the air moves. Something is signaling us. The subtle substance of the world is signaling us. And we can open ourselves to its wholeness And it's all at onceness. Through opening ourselves to its wholeness, to opening ourselves to wholeness. As perhaps we could say, opening ourselves to Buddha's wholeness, we experience Buddha's wholeness. There's some mutual dynamic like this. Trusting in love produced trust in love. So we need targets for attention.

[04:56]

As the cow signals us. So we need something to bring attention to. We can bring attention to attention. And that develops the muscle of attention. I've got a more powerful attention than you have. Yeah, my attention is weightlifting all the time. Anyway, maybe that's good, a little competition. Okay. Okay. And you can bring attention then to the four classic targets of attention.

[06:00]

The body, the mind, the emotions, feelings, and the world as it appears through our acts. And these also are ways not only to open up what we bring attention to, but further refine and develop attention. Attention develops by being refined through the body. And attention develops by being refined through the emotions and feelings. And so forth. And attention finally can

[07:01]

be present to the subtle processes of mind and the subtle substance of the world. So I think that's enough for right now. What I've tried to do is add, you know, create some ingredients here. Now, we started out with the two ingredients of trust and love.

[08:24]

And we then looked at the ingredient of how to practice with, how to add a practice to trust. Like noticing that we both trust and don't trust even ourselves. But we notice that through attention. And now we notice that attention and love are closely related. We give attention to primarily things we care about. And the more widely we care, the more widely our attention can be given and can nourish us in return. So I'm trying to describe here the world as it's imagined in Buddhist practice.

[09:54]

and how trust and love function in this world. So I think that's enough ingredients for the first part of this morning. Now our practice is, each of us, is to sort of, you know, okay, we all came here, so maybe to some extent you want to notice these ingredients of trust and love. Mm-hmm. And I've added a few more ingredients, trying to bring this into a Buddhist world of practice.

[11:12]

And now each of us has to see what kind of soup in us these ingredients make. Some of these ingredients are techniques for noticing the ingredients. But the techniques themselves are ingredients. Because attention itself is a technique, but it's also perhaps the most powerful ingredient. Because, shall I do it again? Yes. Okay.

[12:13]

Attention is a technique, but it also is an ingredient. and perhaps the most powerful ingredient we can bring into our life to bring attention into just how we exist and just how we are in the world and are with others. So, do you have something you'd like to bring up? Well, that was fast. We're holding your arm down. Do you have something you'd like to bring up? Do you have something you'd like to bring up? You said something yesterday which I think about a lot now So that deep trust means to trust things the way they are

[13:29]

What does that mean in regard to things which really don't feel good for me, like if I'm in a situation which feels kind of not good for me? What does that mean in regard to things which really don't feel good for me, like if I'm in a situation which feels kind of not good for me? So just imagine that you're in war and your family is dying. What is it that you bring trust in in that situation? And you also say that you bring attention to the cows and to the wind. But you also have so many things from the world which come towards you which really don't feel good.

[14:45]

And what does trust and love mean in these points? I understand. I understand. Yeah, it's kind of hard to make words come into such a complex situation as you presented it. And of course there are some situations which are so devastating that people can hardly function in them or can't function in them. Yeah. But surprisingly, when people are in bad situations, often they function quite well.

[16:14]

How people manage, when we look at from our rather convenient life to some of the things that are going on in other parts of Europe, we wonder how could we survive such a thing. And often to our relatives in some cases. But I'm not trying to present a philosophy of everything's all right. And I don't want to respond to your question to make everything all right. Because... Even in my life, which has been on the whole not so bad, there are things I feel just shouldn't have happened the way they did.

[17:41]

But when I say something like just now is enough, Or we have to accept things as they are. That's just a fact. In a fact of functioning. I mean, if you fall over a cliff hiking... And you find yourself in one of these Zen stories. Holding onto a branch. With one of Crestone's mountain lions below. You can say, I wish I wasn't in this situation. That's immediately one of the things you have to accept, is that you wish you weren't in this situation.

[19:00]

But simply, the only way you can function is to accept things as they are. You're not going to figure a way out of it if you don't. Okay, so now where does trust come in? All right. So here you are hanging by the branch of the mountain lion below. You have to trust that there's a solution. You're not going to find a solution if you don't have some trust. Trust is not a position, it's a dynamic. I think of... John Muir, who is a naturalist in the United States, who is mostly responsible for the big national park system in the United States.

[20:13]

And I thought I was reminded of this for some reason the other day in Dusseldorf. He got himself out on a mountain cliff where he froze and couldn't get off. He couldn't go back the way he came and there were no hand holes to go forward. And he more and more just trusted, accepted that he was there. And he became calmer and calmer. Because he had nothing outside the situation to help him. And finally he came into a kind of clarity of mind and body where he could see a kind of shape to the nearly flat surface he was on

[21:36]

that allowed him to shift his weight along it and finally get out. So this is not about whether situations are good or bad. It's about even in the worst situations, you have to have some trust in the way things are to actually have any hope of transforming the situation. This is the teaching of karma, too. It's your own karma which got you there. Or even if it wasn't your own karma, it is now your own karma.

[22:58]

And here, you have to stop and say, okay, at this moment, this is me. Okay, yes. Yesterday evening I thought a lot about trust and I had a kind of review of my practice and finally I found that all of my basic practice is to develop trust, to widen up. the trusting in myself. And I think you said attention is the key for trust. but for me it felt like a pulse.

[24:02]

A pulse. A pulse. Trust is also a key for attention. So when I think about the first years of my practice I started with my body, to trust my body and to give attention to my body. and that developed trust. And then there was a very important second ingredient and that was you, my teacher. Because attention alone to your body will not in the end make the practice work. Maybe if you are a genius or a Buddha, but normally not. But what comes in addition to it is that there's the teacher who said yes to your experience and give support to that.

[25:13]

And I would say that there's an inside trust and an outgoing trust after that. it has to do something with to create an interior space where also the teacher is living in so that it feels that there is no question anymore of trust or mistrust to the teacher because it's like you don't mistrust your left arm so it's the question disappears. And then I felt it's so basic that it's a kind of seed in it that if this is possible, it at least has the vision in it that it's possible with each person on this planet.

[26:19]

and yeah, I was quite touched by this. Deutsch, bitte. Gestern Abend hat mich das sehr beschäftigt, einfach der Begriff vertraut, war sehr aufgewühlt dadurch und habe so meine Praxis reduzieren müssen und stellte fest, dass also ich zwei Dinge The first thing I had to learn was to trust my body, and the second thing, which came about years later, was almost as important, because it felt like a pulse, was my teacher in his teaching, completely trust, because only then it became possible for me to completely trust my body and my experience.

[27:24]

And I wondered, because the first years of my practice were certainly not marked by complete trust, when it came about. And it came about has opened up an inner space in which this teacher lives, and in this space the question of trust or mistrust disappears, because it almost feels as if you are not asking whether you trust your left arm, but rather it is such an integrated component of one's own person, that the question of trust is resolved. And if this is possible for one person, then it contains, at least it is the vision, that it is possible with every human being.

[28:28]

And there is somehow hope. I also think that one problem in the West is maybe that we are not educated to trust our body, and we are not educated in having a kind of mentorship or to trust a teacher. For me at least, for my practice, that has been the main problem. German, please. I think that here in the West, or at least in my practice, the main problem was that I did not learn to trust my body from childhood and also not to have this trust in mentorship or in becoming a teacher. Now it's my responsibility to be worthy of your trust.

[29:42]

So you make me a better teacher if I can be worthy of your trust. Going back to these basic words in Greek culture, the word for friendship is philia. And that's different from eros and agape. And I think when the dynamic of friendship is functioning, It's when you know somebody, when you have a friend, who you know well enough, that their voice becomes part of your inner voice.

[31:03]

That you find yourself thinking, what would my friend think? And you can't have a discussion with yourself without including the voice of your friend. Do you know that experience? Some of your friends you actually are having internal discussions with. And that in Buddhism becomes what's called the inner friend. And Zen emphasizes the teacher as an inner friend. So, strangely enough, then that inner friend has a life of its own. Even if your teacher dies, the inner friend teacher continues.

[32:19]

And even develops and matures. And also as Beate, I think, accurately pointed out, that this inner friend then becomes the capacity to recognize others as an inner friend. Opens up the voice of others within you. Certainly, if I hadn't come to be able to hear Suzuki Roshi's voice within me, I would not be able to hear your voices. Mm-hmm. And the greater my capacity to hear his voice, the greater my capacity to hear your voices.

[33:39]

And when each of you help me to hear you, and I feel heard by you, this is what Sangha is. And Sangha then is one of the three treasures and one of the teachers of Buddhism. Sangha is one of the three treasures. Sangha is a teacher too. So my childhood congregationalism matured into Sangha. Okay.

[34:40]

What time, by the way, are we supposed to have lunch? And it's now twelve o'clock, right? Okay. Someone else? Yes. What kind of guy is hope in the house of trust? Hope, trust and love, yes. I'm glad you... I didn't mean to leave hope out. Thank you.

[35:44]

And when you... The more you bring attention to and trust, and as Beate said, trust is the dynamic of attention and attention is the dynamic of trust. You can't really bring attention to anything unless your calmness, your state of mind is rooted in trust. It's rooted in trust. And in that we begin to feel this a sense of completeness and nourishment, in which hope, trust and love, and I myself was thinking of that this morning, all three, become ways we speak to the world.

[37:11]

It's a kind of speaking with the world that's not in words. You can tell when someone's ready to trust you or when they're not. Et cetera. Can you do something else? You said to develop trust you need attention Okay, and I would call that like a developing an active trusting. Isn't there also something that is passive trusting that is, so to speak, just right there? Just the biology of my body.

[38:25]

If I walk and I'm not sure if the next step carries me, that's one way to look at it. The other way is that there is one foot already on this planet. Oh! So I can look forward and develop something, but I can also just say, OK, I'm already there, I'm trusting already. It's like this saying, be here now, is like, where else can you be then, here and now? So to develop trust means You are trusting already. You have to, otherwise you are just somewhere in the air. Okay. Deutsch, bitte. Yes, so I thought about this trust and I thought there is this active, this active developing trust, but when I take this step forward and I don't know if the earth is carrying me, there is a foot that is already on the ground.

[39:42]

That means I go from something that is already lived, lived trust as a basis. And the second question or remark I would like to add is, this morning you talked about comparing Christianity with Buddhism in terms of connectedness. And you said in Buddhism we're trying to to open the boundaries, to not feel disconnected towards the world and widen these boundaries. And I don't know exactly would Christianity say this is something we don't have to develop because we're always connected with this God.

[40:48]

So is that the reason why there is no practice of getting really in touch with the universe? And what does it mean, actually, if I'm really in trouble? And that connects to what Annetta said. If I'm really in trouble in Christianity, I could say, I go back to God. That's something that carries me and that might actually help. But in Buddhism there is nothing I can return to. In terms of something given I can return to. The second point I wanted to address was that has spoken about separation and that we have to actively lift up separation in view of the world and that we enlarge and expand our borders.

[41:53]

And it seems to me, although I don't know much about Christianity in this way, that this must not be developed from the Christian point of view, because we can always turn to God. We are always carried. And what does this situation mean when we are really in great trouble? From a Christian point of view, we can then say, okay, I turn to God as the turning point and that takes me away from this difficult situation. What can we do when we practice Buddhism? Well, as I've said, I'm not a theologian.

[42:54]

And I'm sure that no matter what I say or what anybody says, you can find, a theologian can find some way, oh, this is really the same or it's etc., The best I can do is present what I think is the Buddhist view. And you can in yourself compare it to your own feelings and views. Although the words are often the same, the experience is different, and sometimes the experience is the same and the words are different. then sometimes the experiences are different or the experiences are the same but then the terms are different.

[44:05]

And there's differences in the way we are coming to Buddhism as Westerners. And these are worth observing. We're not here to try to make an ecumenical agreement. In fact, I drove across the United States once from New York with a Benedictine monk friend of mine. And we stayed at Catholic monasteries and convents all along the way. And what surprised me in every monastery and convent we visited except for one recently un-cloistered nunnery.

[45:29]

I mean, open. It used to have no visitors at all. Now it's open. Except for that place. All of them had people practicing Zen meditation. I had to look in people's cells and there'd be a Zafu. Not in all of the cells, but many of the cells. And some of them even had Suzuki Roshi's picture up from the back of Zen Mind Beginner's Monk. So we had an intense conversation from New York to San Francisco. About the same things you brought up.

[46:30]

That was six or seven days of driving. All day. I got quite frustrated in a Colorado canyon. Near where later Crestone appeared. When I finally said, because in all the arguments he kept expanding the vision of Christianity or the description of Christianity and Godhead. I finally said, but Christianity has to be different. You can't keep making it like Buddhism. I said, I'm a Zenedictine, you're a Benedictine.

[47:36]

So I think each of us has to say, in ourselves, is there some difference? And I think we have to be careful. How do you translate? We say self-trust. Zuversicht. Zuversicht. What do we have to be careful to? In English, confidence... Generally, sometimes in Buddhism you translate what really means trust with the word confidence. Yeah, also manchmal bedeutet es im Buddhismus, wenn wir vertrauen, meinen eigentlich auch Zuversicht. And... Confidence can be a kind of... But confidence, like, is it that you're kind of trusting what's going on, or you like this kind of feeling of trust in yourself, confidence?

[48:44]

Like you kind of... Self-confidence. Yeah, you're confident everything will work out just because everything works out. Okay, there's a kind of recollection forward as well as recollection backwards. There's a memory backwards and there's a memory forwards. Okay, so if I'm standing and one foot's on the earth, if I think the next foot is going to also be on the earth, and I have just confidence in that and not trust as I'm defining trust, in a way you're projecting memory forwards. and making the world predictable.

[49:48]

Now, I think psychologists would say, or many psychologists do say, that healthy children learn basic trust as infants. If you can't trust your parents or somebody who took care of you, if you don't really believe in the possibility of trust, You can't really trust anyone, your spouse or anybody. You're in a very psychologically difficult situation. Zen practice is very good to help develop trust. But in any case, we don't want to... I don't think practice means you have such basic trust that the world becomes predictable.

[51:13]

So although we know our back foot is on the earth, And it's part of our trust in stepping forward. Well, I think we still want an openness to what's there. Yeah, okay. So that's more than enough. And I'm half a minute late for lunch. I'm sorry. I hope you trust I didn't mean to deprive you. Thank you very much.

[52:35]

Good afternoon. So I started out the first two sessions with speaking directly. Just speaking immediately. So this time I'd like to start with any... continue and start with any... discussion, anything you'd like to bring up. I think we have the beginnings of understanding of how to practice with, well, in this case, hope and trust, How to practice with any quality from quality expected of us or aspect of ourselves.

[54:07]

Or some hope we have to improve ourselves. And that's simply to bring attention to it. This isn't even Buddhist. It's a kind of common sense practice. What makes it Buddhist, I suppose, is that you really decide to not so much try to understand... But simply to give repeated attention to the subject. Okay, so is there anything you'd like to bring up?

[55:28]

Yes. To what extent is this developing of trust, I could even say, developing of Buddhist practice an act of will? To what extent is developing trust an act of will? All right. I don't think the cow knows what he's saying. It's a decision, but it's not an act of will. Anything with any subtlety you have to enter into, you have to negotiate.

[56:31]

Alles, das so subtil ist, ist etwas, was man aushandeln muss. So maybe we could say, as I would usually, it's an act, perhaps, of willingness. Also, das ist eher eine Art von Bereitschaft. You're willing to accept what is revealed by the process of attention. Ihr seid bereit, das anzunehmen, was sich anzieht. So you make a decision, but your decision is to bring attention to this subject, whatever it is. And your attitude is to accept whatever is revealed. And to accept where it leads. That often requires courage.

[57:51]

So we could say it requires willingness and courage, but not will. Even sitting still for long periods of time, while it does require some willpower. In the end, willpower crumbles. Then you just have to weaken and accept. I'm no good at this. I can't do this. I might as well just sit here. So, since you failed, you might as well just continue sitting. Some such feeling.

[58:55]

Okay, what else? Yeah. Because I thought about the pain. I think in Western culture it's often the feeling by trust that it's given. Trust is given. Trust is given. It's not really something you can create. In a sense, by birth maybe it's 100% and when it's going down, it's not really in your willpower. But I think in Buddhist terms or Buddhist practice, you can claim trust, actually. And that's quite a different concept. Deutsch, bitte.

[59:57]

I also thought about exactly the second point that you just brought up. I think we have a very strong idea that trust is something outside of our field of will. It is something that you either have or you don't have and you don't know exactly where it comes from. Or maybe we have it from birth with 100 percent and then through disappointing experiences it takes more and more away. But I think the Buddhist view is there, and also partly my experience, we can really create it, so develop it in us. It is a conscious decision to build and expand trust in us. And there is much more freedom. Well, could you define what this trust is that's given?

[61:01]

I mean, I understand that grace is given. And I hear this extraordinary and wonderful concept of Christianity that God's love is given whether we ask for it or not. And it's given unconditionally. You don't have to even believe in God. And this makes me feel very good.

[62:06]

Does that mean I believe in God? Not so kind, Jesus. Not so bad. Not so bad. Okay, could you define this trust that's given? I don't mean from a God. It's more like a character. You are born with In this sense it's not... At least my view was that it's not... In a certain situation you have trust, you have it, but it's different in the sense I decide to trust this situation.

[63:18]

It's a little bit of the realm of decision. It's more than a decision you mean? No, it's outside, you have to... We have this expression... So we have this expression I'm loving it. We have an expression that there's a kind of Prior trust, it's like your great-grandfather, this kind of word, it's like something which is there before you existed, basically. And then some are lucky they have that, and some other ones they don't. And then they kind of, or not as much.

[64:20]

Before you exist, you get it in the first two years. So in the first two years, you kind of get it, or you have it as a baby, I think, and then if you get it or not. But in the first two years, it's kind of defined. And she says if the parents are attentive to their child, then they get it. Then it creates. Mm-hmm. But it's something which it sounds like you're not capable of being responsible of having it or not. Are we talking about the same thing here? Okay. There's another. Yeah. Because the energies change very quickly in life.

[65:28]

I try to find out what it is in life. But then it takes courage to live through a male energy. In my school, it is the heart that moves us. And then it is the next step, the holiness. It takes a little courage. So for me trust is this kind of high quality of God and I have to make a real effort that I can do it. It's almost a little bit scary. But in life things always change and the energy is very different and you have to really make almost a male energetic effort to go. you have to make a male energetic effort to accomplish this trust. Because it's such a thin road to this place, I think.

[66:32]

That's interesting that you would say male. Because in Buddhism, the body of the world is considered to be feminine. And a good teacher develops a feminine nature, not a masculine nature. And a good teacher, a good practitioner, even becomes, not just keeping the one, pregnant with the one. So maybe this is a difference. In the West, we make a good male effort. In Buddhism, we make a good female effort. Yeah. Okay. So you equate trust and make trust something like agape too, something that really is something that God is capable of and man has to practice or make an effort to become equal to.

[68:03]

She asked where does it come from? Is that a decision by God that it's like that? I don't know. It sounded like that's what you were saying. That's right, but she wants this answer now, you know. You want me to answer whether God made it that way or not? Yes.

[69:13]

This is outside my capability. I don't know whether he made it or she made it or not. But, of course, in practice we... Anyway, let me try to respond in general to things. Andreas? I want to tell about an experience of mine which is about, has there been trust before or not? When I say that my life was not so well-equipped in my childhood that I still had a lot of original trust.

[70:20]

And while sitting for a longer time in the Sazen practice or through the Sazen practice, But due to or cause to Zen practice or Zazen practice there is something showed that some trust was there or opened. So that was a feeling like, actually I know that feeling but before he didn't really see it as that so it was like a coming home experience. So then it wasn't so important if it was there or came that moment but from his feeling it was like it has always been there.

[71:29]

So in other words you didn't feel equipped with trust. You felt the lack of trust in the way you functioned. But for some reason somebody got you to sit down and sitting down you discovered uncovered a feeling of trust. Or perhaps in sitting down you discovered that sitting down itself was based on trust. And that once you tapped the vein Vein, do you understand? Vein here? No, a vein of awe. Once you tap the vein of trust, you are able to bring it into your life more normally. More normally.

[72:42]

Okay, yes? Okay, in school what my background is? The fact that you incarnate as a human being and that you're breathing. That means that you have trust. And then there are circumstances in life that you are pushed in the sense that you forget about that. You try to forget about it. You're not really forget, but you try to forget about it. Oh, no. And then later you go a path where you rediscover or re-find what you always have had.

[73:45]

By sitting or praying or whatever. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've asked myself this question, is everything impermanent and changing in the world? And it's finite, a kind of ending, yes? Where do I take the trust from? For me, trust is always something to do with an expectation or something you can prognosticize or something. Is it then not better to speak about acceptance?

[74:53]

Okay. I accept both of you yes I have an additional question to the five targets on which the attention should be directed. In the target world, you have brought an addition, as we see it, The fifth target of attention, how the world... The world how it appears through our deeds somehow.

[76:01]

So I'd like to know why do you put this addition that the world kind of... and our deeds, or the pine bar, our deeds and what you said there, why isn't it just the world? You're making a distinction between the world and the world that we generate? No, you said in his fifth target, where he put the attention, he said... The fourth, yeah. The fourth. The world of our acts, I said, instead of just the world. Oh. Oh. And I got it wrong in the translation. I didn't get it, what you said. Oh. Yeah, I said the... The four foundations of mindfulness are mindfulness of mind, and then mindfulness of the body, which might be better to say bodyfulness of the body,

[77:24]

and feelingfulness of the feelings. So the world, we have to say, the world as we act it out, as we embody it, Yes. [...] So I think... So I think this was the thing with the trust is that we actually already lived through all this.

[78:51]

We've experienced all that. It's always the same, always the same. It's just that the situation is changing. So I know that I've made decisions already. So basically this is already the same. It's just that each time the circumstances change a little bit. Okay. Well, I'm trying to... Is it along the same lines? The question to trust, is trust always 100%? Yes. Yes. But tie up your camel. Trust is 100% and trust is not 100%.

[79:52]

We can't make generalizations. If we look at technical things, we give the things some probability to work or not to work. This is an engineer. Yes. Yes. Yes. So in that sense, he's just asking that with these probabilities, if he should aim for these 100%. If there's a probability of 100% for 100% trust. Well, if you're making a bridge, you better, you know. 1,5% at least for bridge.

[81:13]

On the Golden Gate Bridge, you know what that is in San Francisco? They had the... I don't know. When did they build the darn thing? They maybe had the 100th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge or something like that. And they'd made pretty good estimations of the... automobile traffic on it and that it was safe within certain limits. But on one day they closed the bridge on this day and had a celebration and they allowed people to walk on the bridge. And then they noticed that the bridge became packed. It was solid people. And one engineer said, oh my God, I hope they don't jump.

[82:30]

Because he made some quick calculations and there was much more weight on the bridge than cars. Did you translate what he said? And they decided not to announce the problem. They didn't want anybody to start running. So they just hoped that everybody would quietly walk off in a variety of rhythms. Okay. It seems to me whether we look at trust as given, or we look at trust as something that is the result of having good parenting,

[84:06]

Perhaps the problem we're having here, those of you who brought this up, is how fluid the human being is considered in Buddhism. And how much we are a construct which we can reconstruct. Buddhism assumes as posited on the idea that our human life can be reconceived and transformed. Yeah, based on. The Buddhist practice and Buddhist thinking assumes and more than assumes is based on, posited on, that the human being can reconceive themselves.

[85:38]

And through reconceiving themselves can transform themselves. Can you use a different word for reconceiving? can reimagine themselves. Okay. We're going to reimagine from now on. We're not going to reconceive. There's so many ways to speak about this, I don't know where to begin exactly. I can talk even about contemporary science, seeing the brain itself as surprisingly plastic. But without going into, which I think is important, the evolution of the human being.

[86:53]

And the self-evolution of the individual. So it's very interesting that the individual is an individual in Buddhism. Because through paying attention to who you are in your separateness, And I should say perhaps also not just who, what you are in your separateness. You can also discover your connectedness and through discovering your connectedness, you can also transform that connectedness and separateness.

[88:19]

Okay. So, I mean, that's just ideas, but that idea is assumed in Buddhist practice. Let me speak about it from the conception of the world. We tend to assume that what was in the past will be in the future. I mean, even though we believe in progress, we still think that the human being is some sort of given. And I think this is a Perhaps what I see is actually in our culture we have various ideas, some such that everything can change and some that things are given.

[89:49]

But I think in the way we think about ourselves, we tend to think in terms of we're a certain kind of person and that's who we are. And we don't have much actual experience of being able to do much more than make small adjustments. Okay. Now, Buddhism does not assume a world in which everything goes back to a single cause. Even though the Big Bang Theory seems to support this idea. Buddhism assumes multiple causes. And interdependence means multiple causes.

[91:04]

So Buddhism assumes that at this moment each particular is a convergence of causes. So instead of thinking of there's something behind you pushing you forward, one cause after another pushing you forward, there's all these strings present right here. At each moment you take hold of those strings and make them yourself. And make them yourself. So at each moment there's a convergence of causes which you turn into a unity. Or which you turn into a particular present.

[92:35]

So each moment is a choice. Now, can you be present to that choice? So, I mean, you're present to the choice when you're driving a car. You better stop and so forth. Now, I just want to give you a little anecdote about driving in Japan. And how powerfully ideas influence us. I'm driving with some taxi driver. An old man who's listening to cicadas on his tape recorder on the taxi. So he's recorded these at his family's home in the rice fields.

[93:52]

So it's, you know, because there are also a lot of frogs in the rice fields. So I thought, this is pure Japanese, you know, driving along with the rice fields, talking to them. And we got to the intersection. And he stopped the car, you know, at the intersection. Looked both ways. And drove out into the traffic. Into the intersection. And at that moment I knew he was somehow an American. Because Japanese don't do that. They don't stop, look and listen. That's what we taught as little kids. Were you taught that as kids too?

[94:57]

Yeah, look left and right and then go. We say stop, look and listen and then you go, right? Japanese, they go right out into the intersection and kind of let the situation tell them what to do. Yeah, and there may be like three lanes in the road drawn, because Westerners do that, so they do that. But there may be four, five or six cars in those three lanes. And Japanese never back up. They never... Japanese always go forward.

[95:43]

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