Yeah, I have a good excuse to meet with you. And that good excuse is to, yeah, talk about Buddhism. But I'm really here just because I want to spend some time with you. and see if we can know a certain kind of, dare I say it, intimacy together. for me is the essential characteristic of being alive.

[01:09]

Being alive at this time, now, right now in Berlin, It makes me homesick for New York. It's the only city in Europe that I know, except perhaps Moscow. Which feels like New York. Or perhaps Paris or London if you want a better comparison. And with you, in particular, each of you. And I want to talk about Buddhism as not just as something that you can experience, but you can bring into your experience.

[02:44]

And certainly a lot of Buddhism is something you can bring into your experience. But I also want to speak about it as something you discovered through your own experience. Yeah. You don't need much knowledge about Buddhism. At certain points, it helps. But on the whole, I'd like us to just discover what we mean by practice through our own experience.

[03:59]

No, we need a certain way to get this going. You know, certain practices Qualities are necessary. Like caring about things. And what should I say? Caring and honesty with yourself. And not being satisfied with, easily satisfied with easy answers. And a certain sensuality in your engagement with the world.

[05:16]

Sensuality. No. No. You can emphasize that if you want. But I mean, you know, when a person speaks German, say that you are, most of you are, bilingual to a considerable extent. I'll bet that you When you speak English, your body is different than when you speak German. I bet your facial expressions are different.

[06:17]

How you use your hands is different. That means you have a different sensual or sensuous engagement with language itself. So quite a number of you say to me, When I think about Buddhism, I think about it in English. Because you're always hearing me. But there's some advantage to that. Yeah. Because the words aren't... occupied by your culture so much.

[07:42]

Someone said to me, German words are all leased, rented to Christianity. And it's very hard to think in German without all that content coming in. Yeah, well, let's bring... It's okay. Maybe we want that content. But let's bring it in when we want. But it's not just... It's not just... but English becomes a language for us Germans on the way. That is more free of cultural associations.

[08:46]

But also we come into the intimacy of practice through English sometimes. Because there's a sensual or sensuous engagement with language that opens us through that sensuousness into experience. And we use words to, in Buddhist practice, we use words to... point to experience.

[09:59]

Not so much to point to meaning. Now, I don't know why I'm doing this, but somehow from last night, I decided or I find myself trying to speak about practice in ways that let us notice it in our own experience. It came partly out of Julio's question. Which was basically what's the difference between bodhisattva friendship and personal friendship.

[11:07]

How do we get to that question? and other questions. Because during the evening, we went into practice with a certain particularity. So practice doesn't just become Bodhisattva practice doesn't become how do we practice compassion. Be more compassionate. But rather is compassion in Buddhism a different territory than our ordinary activity.

[12:18]

If we just take this phrase I used last night, Noticing without thinking. For a long time I tried observing without thinking. Now I have problems with observing without thinking. Is that a possibility for the translator? If you translate observing without thinking and noticing without thinking the same way in German,

[13:26]

I can't make the distinction I want to make. Yeah. And it took me a long time to feel the problem with observing without thinking. Even though it's an obvious problem. Even though it's an obvious problem. Yeah. Okay. We're just trying to find the right word. Yeah, all right. I understand. Maybe you didn't come here to study language.

[14:27]

So why am I wasting your time? Because we notice our experience through language. We notice our experience too much. It's funny, I use quite simple words when I speak English, but it's not so easy to translate because I'm making rather fine distinctions. I mean, at the level of thinking, they're about the same. These words.

[15:30]

But at the level of experience, they're not the same. So, we notice our experience through language, through words. And we also deaden, often deaden, imprison our experience through words. It's commonplace to notice that. Anybody saying anything like I'm talking about will say that. But how do we get out of that prison? And how do we know it's not always a prison? Sometimes it's a prison. So I'm walking over here And I've, you know, as I said last night, for a Westerner, I've been practicing a pretty long time.

[16:56]

Even for an Asian, I've been practicing a pretty long time. Partly because most is because I'm old. Most of these guys died at 45, 51, so forth. And by 45, you know, I'd have to live to be 145 to get to where they're at. So anyway, I've been practicing long enough not to identify with my thinking. Yeah, it's just my habit now not to identify with my thinking. Yeah, but it's still, you know, it's like a car.

[18:01]

I may not be driving the car. But the engine's humming underneath, you know, even though I'm not in gear. So how do I turn the engine off? Well, you know, luckily I have the habit of practicing too. So I bring my attention Somehow I turn off the engine. And then a bird becomes magical. We all know birds are magical, but it's too much trouble to notice that. There's hundreds of birds out there. You can't go around thinking they're all magical.

[19:02]

You'd never get anything done. Magical the way my little daughter at 18 months now really knows birds are magical. She's virtually overwhelmed or Aghast. Aghast. Aghast means... at this world she's been born into. And it's completely exciting to her to name these things. Yes, so that makes us think about language. Is the naming necessary? Ist das benennen nötig?

[20:32]

Really is interested that a tiger is different than a Löwe. Is that right? Ja, es ist interessant. Ein Tiger ist etwas anders als ein Löwe. So does that mean, yeah, names are great. Yeah, they are really exciting to her. Bedeutet es, dass Namen großartig sind? Ja, sie sind sehr aufregend für sie. The name allows her to introduce the particularity into her own consciousness. To notice the particularity. And really to notice the particularity in a way she can share it with Marie Louise and myself. So I think the excitement for her is the sharing, not the naming. It's to come into particularity which you can share.

[21:35]

Okay, now she's not at the point yet where words structure her world. That happened to us a long time ago. So how do we hold back this structured world that arises out of thinking world, that arises out of naming? This is an essential point. An essential point in practice. Which I think we have to keep coming back to. So as a Buddhist parent, I have to find, if I can get Sophia to sense this point.

[23:07]

To understand this point. To always find words opening into experience, instead of opening into experience and sharing, or the possibility of sharing, or feel like you're shared by the world, Rilke says something like a sound not for the ear, he says. He means a sound not for the ear. A sound not for the ear. What's he doing?

[24:19]

Well, he's trying to take language. And that's part of what I'm talking about, the Bodhisattva today. We have to use our language, our own experience. In effect, we have to find a conceptual basis for practice. that fits into our own culture and our own language. Then we can use that conceptual basis That's within our own experience. To transform our conceptual concept of the world. And to free ourselves from our conceptual world. So Rilke also says, how often, even for one day, does space lie before us?

[25:39]

Does space lie before us? So that we endlessly open into it. I see Sophia's mind blooming in her arm. And I see her arm Blooming into structures of the mind. And I see her mind not only blooming into her arm, but blooming into the world. And the world blooming in her. So Rilke says, not for the ear, but a sound that, not for the ear, but a sound for an ear.

[27:02]

A deeper ear, a sound for a deeper ear. A deeper ear that hears us. Who disappears in this hearing. and through which inner worlds open into the whole of the world. Now that's a kind of paraphrase. What was it? And I'm not trying to give you his poem particularly.

[28:23]

But to say that Rilke was at least as a poet and in his poetry trying to speak about what we're talking about. Trying to share using words in an odd way. Knowing he can't just say tiger, tigger, and we don't share it anymore. A friend of mine, I think I've told you this story once, Thought he needed a break from ordinary life. So he got himself flown into Canada in a very remote place.

[29:26]

And he had a tent he lived in for three months. And at the end of the near the end of the three months sometime in the last week he started out of the tent and he found a bear a grizzly bear starting into the tent. And grizzly bears aren't like the bears we have at Creston. We have black bears. Remember that one that pissed on you? A little smaller.

[30:31]

He threatened a small male, but a big male standing up bigger than us. But a small male, fairly small, up into a tree and then they sat in the tree and pissed on Geralt. So I met this bear and I scared him and he climbed into a tree and then poked me out of fear. But the grown bears are about as big as me. We say, if you're afraid, we say you pissed your pants. Well, you don't get a grizzly to piss his pants. You don't just shout about your hands and he goes away. So he looked at this grizzly and the grizzly was looking at him. And you don't sort of say, he had a feeling I cannot break my gaze and for half an hour they held each other's gaze and he knew

[31:37]

Holding his gaze was holding his life. And at the end of something more than half an hour, the bear kind of shook his head and went off. My friend shook his head and went off. Well, this isn't just the word bear or tiger. Or bird. Yeah. Sukhiroshi used to say, everything is its own magic.

[32:51]

And he also said, a phrase I keep giving you, we, we're always showing what kind of Buddha we are. That's a phrase that you won't get to the end of for a long time. Okay, maybe we should take a break. I got a new 24-hour and old. I got an old watch, which is a 24-hour watch. So it looks like it says 10 after 5. And I like the watch because I never know what time it is.

[33:58]

It's like not speaking German. I never know what's going on. But it seems to me that must be 10 after 11 maybe. Is that right? So it's a good time to take a break. So let's have about 30 minutes. It's not just my eyesight, Joe. So I don't do all the talking. And also because I like to hear you as well. Please give me something. Or tell me something. Ask something. The kids are looking through the window in the cutest way.

[35:28]

Yes? Well, first of all, thank you. When you're talking about the field of bodhisattva practice, I really like that. It's really linked to my experience of finding this connectedness every day of my life. I find it's the most difficult thing for me living in the city compared to my street. It's like there are so many things happening all the time which make me so angry. So in a way it's emotions. I'm always drawn to emotions, rage. And I would really, like some advice or some hint how to work with those emotions, because they kind of come out of this connectedness.

[36:33]

Because you're connected, you care, and because of that, you finally end up being angry. You haven't heard that if you're connected. George? Yes, first of all, thank you very much for this description of the field of Siddhi and this Sattva practice. I can start with something that is connected to the way I experience this connection or find it in my experience. But what is the greatest difficulty for me is Can you hear him in the back? Okay. Yeah. Good, go ahead. Yeah. What would be an example of something that makes you angry?

[37:47]

Yesterday evening I was coming out of here with this kind of warm feeling of like, not picky feeling, but connectedness. And I was in the subway, and there was a short message on TV screen there, that there was an institution, youth institution, which is the biggest in Europe, it's called Fates, There's about hundreds of courses for young people, and it's a wonderful thing. I've been there very often. And the Senate here in Berlin, the government, they are cutting money all the time.

[38:52]

They have deep problems. They just destroy that. The message was they cut 1.1 billion euro, which means nearly they have to close. The first things they did in general was... to cut money for all institutions that have to do with children or handicapped people. It was the first thing they did, and they keep doing that, destroying that work. They are working on these things. Yeah, and it made me helpless, and feel like, yeah, so this intimacy is, I have the personal contact, can bring it into working with certain people, with my clients and my family, my friends and so on. But it's so little compared to the forces which do things like that. Which I suppose.

[39:55]

Yeah, . and intimacy, and practice, and so on. I was in the U-Bahn-Musee, i.e. the Fels-Ferien-Erholungszentrum for children, which here in Berlin is a very large institution, the largest in Europe even, in this kind, for children and young people, with over a hundred different possibilities for children in the city, which otherwise does not offer so much. A great thing is that the Senate destroys it. All the money is cut. And it happens all the time. Our children's homes are cut. The money is taken away from disabled children. These are the first things that happen. And it makes me so angry and so angry that all these interviews are just thrown away.

[40:59]

I say, yes, I can feel it. And it happens to me all the time that I get angry and then I just lose this eternity. Another example. Yes, I also think I can, this connection with individuals, with my clients, with my practice, with my family, friends, with the people I have worked with, is only very little compared to these forces, the sacrificial things. Well, my short answer is there are always things like that. Things that should, I think, outrage us.

[42:00]

But there's no handicapped children being hurt right in front of you. There's not a handicapped child, say, being hurt right in front of you. So you can imagine that it will happen. But you don't have to engage that imagination as if it's happening in front of you. And we have to be careful we don't imagine evil people somewhere. As Sukhriyashi used to say, another one of his little sayings. I mean, I don't think Sukhriyashi said things any better than any other teacher.

[43:02]

Yeah, I'm not presenting it that way. I'm presenting it because of my engagement with him. And one of the things he used to say, every thief is stealing for his mother. It's not. Well, maybe it's true. And he knew, of course, that that's a little bit, you know, we would say in English, goody two-shoes. I don't know what that expression comes from.

[44:08]

But it means you see, you assume, and this is a hard one. Even the thief or... the corrupt politician, is in some ways showing what kind of bodhisattva he is. in some ways trying to do something that somehow they think is good. If you don't credit them with that intention, And you only assume they have negative or bad intentions.

[45:14]

You end up with simplistic understanding of the world. And you end up with some feeling of being disempowered by these people. Such a person might be your brother or your cousin. In fact, is your brother or your cousin. And if it was your brother or cousin, you'd engage with him or her, or you'd say, Jesus, hopeless with this guy, I can't talk to him. Emotions, there's a territory for emotions.

[46:16]

And the territory for emotions is where you can act on the emotions. If you allow emotions to flow into your thinking world where you can't act on it. You end up frustrated, anxious, angry all the time. I don't mean you do. But we tend to go in that direction. And then we're always kind of like churned up inside. It's terrible. Somehow it's good if you can bring yourself back to Just this, this.

[47:26]

Not to protect yourself from... Yes, maybe to protect yourself from the thinking world. But the motive isn't really primarily defensive. But the motive is to discover where we are continuously reborn again. Okay, something else? We have been invited two weeks ago for lunch or dinner with some people. And the person who invited us gave us a story about something.

[49:03]

And he is German and his wife is from Italy. And he also speaks Italian. And he also speaks Italian. and the two of them all by themselves spend holidays in Italy and they have three kids but they didn't come with them and they want to go to a restaurant and on the way they see a group of homeless people The parents or the children saw the homeless? The parents didn't. The parents were all by themselves. The kids were at home. And the parents saw the homeless. I see. So the homeless people tried to make contact with him. They were just a little drunk and they wanted to have money. And he was imagining that he wants to spend a lovely evening with his wife, just the two of them in this restaurant.

[50:16]

It was a wonderful day with sunshine and at the beach. And they found a place in the restaurant not right at the window front but further in the back. and they order and they eat and suddenly the same or another group of homeless people do come into the restaurant. And I forgot to say that when they met the first group, the man yelled at them and said, leave me alone and don't come back, and things like that.

[51:38]

Who said, leave me alone and don't come back? The man. The husband. The husband, yeah. He said that to the homeless people? Yes, in the first place, before they went to the restaurant. Oh, yeah. To the first group. Hmm? So he used a certain word. It's a bad Italian word. A bad Italian word. Are there bad Italian words? No, says Giulio. ... So one of the homeless people takes a plate from a stack and throws the plate through the restaurant towards this man and hits his ear and splits the ear with the plate.

[52:40]

It was the same homeless people on the street? Yeah. Oh yeah, okay. You can understand why they're homeless. They had a landlord once, didn't they? So he told the story that evening where we were invited. So he judged these people and it started a thinking process when I heard the story. It was a very moving story for me.

[53:41]

So I see a connection in this story between this man and his acting. I think that there is a connection and I don't want to go into specifics but there is a connection and I think that we basically have the possibility to decide How I act in the world. How I act towards people. This is what I want to say about it.

[54:49]

You have a responsibility or possibility to, or you can take responsibility for how you act toward people. Is that what you said? Yeah. I could say, for example, how are you, the sun is shining, I would like to have a nice dinner and I see the obdachlose and I say, here you have the money, you could also have a nice dinner. So I could also say, okay, I want to spend a nice evening and it's a beautiful day and I give money to the homeless people and tell them, oh, have a nice evening as well. That's a possibility. That might be better. Yeah. Well, civilization is a complex system to keep everyone in place.

[56:15]

And you can see when Things break down, there's fire or riots. A lot of people loot and break windows and take things, you know. And you see in many people an immense suppressed anger about everyone who has more than they do. And we're lucky civilization is in place in a way. This sniper in... Washington area proves how easy it is to step out of the system.

[57:22]

And only a very few people stepping out of the system can almost destroy it. On the other hand, I would say civilization is what we call civilization. Is an early step, I think a fairly early step in getting to Yeah, and finding out how to live together. Yeah, and we're, you know, at an early stage of it in relationship to gender and other races and so forth.

[58:33]

And I don't agree with Freud that there's some kind of inherent aggressive nature in us. Aggressiveness and selfishness is the product I think, the product of a certain kind of self-structure. Aggressivität und Selbstbezogenheit ist ein Produkt of a certain kind of self-structure. I think if we have a different self-structure, we're not aggressive. Ich denke, wenn wir eine andere Selbststruktur, eine andere Struktur des Selbst hätten, wären wir nicht aggressiv. And it's very difficult to create that self-structure all by yourself.

[59:43]

Big self-structure shall we say. The Sangha is an attempt to get the help of others in creating this big self structure. By big self I mean not just a self that covers you and your immediate family. Or a self that extends to include your friends. But a self structure that extends to include everything. Every person. Suzuki Roshi again used to say, the true self covers everything.

[60:55]

Yeah. There's a... Funny story about Da Wu and Yun Yan. One of them says to the other, what's that? He says, it's a hat. And he says, what's that for? He says, oh, it covers me in the midst of a storm. Can it really cover you in the midst of the storm? Yeah, he said, well, well, but what about the cover that covers the hat? And he says, oh, that never leaks.

[62:03]

And that's just a little conversation about this sense of a self for us. that covers everything or reaches everything. So one of the mistakes our contemporary civilization makes I think anyway. Is the institutionalization of compassion. Oh, the government will take care of those people. Yeah, or they're homeless because, you know, there's plenty of jobs around. It's their own fault because they're homeless.

[63:21]

If you think that way, in a way you deserve to have a plate thrown at you. I'm not sure you deserve to be shot at a gas station. But they're closely related emotions. Each person in front of you, even this person on their way to a Happy, sunshiny lunch or dinner. Is a Buddha. Bodhisattva practice is to feel that. You feel it with babies. Why don't you feel it with adults? How would you feel if there were five homeless babies on the street?

[64:24]

It's your own fault you don't have parents. Hey, by the way, what time are we supposed to be speaking about lunch? What time are we supposed to have lunch? It's quarter after twelve now, I believe. It won't be quarter after twelve tomorrow by this watch. At this time. Because we're changing the clocks, right? You're trying to confuse me, you Berliners.

[65:35]

Oh, it's all over Germany though, isn't it? Okay. So, I don't know, maybe at 12.30 we have lunch. Let's see. Yeah? Yeah. I personally find that where I am at the moment, that's not really efficient. I think it's much more important to be authentic. And that might include aggression or confrontation. And in the end, it's still the best thing in that situation. And I realized that the way I understood what the Sabbath breaks, I always think that a lot of times I used it to cover up and not being authentic.

[66:40]

But it's much easier to always be trying to be nice and not go into confrontation and just not be actually present with this situation. Yeah, that's true. I'm sorry, I just thought of a funny story. Can you say this in German, please? Yeah, Deutsch bitte. Yeah, of course you're right. I mean, we're starting... You always have to start from acceptance. And we could say acceptance is something like active authenticity.

[67:54]

If you're angry, you're angry. Yeah, and I think a kid whose mother gets angry with him or her is a lot healthier than a kid whose mother suppresses anger. It may not be nice to see a mother saying, you little, I can kill you. I mean, you don't like that, but it's probably better than the opposite. Okay, so let's give, let's accept that. Bodhisattva practice is rooted in acceptance and authenticity.

[69:03]

And then what happens when you're angry or need to have a confrontation? So then that's another stage of practice. Yeah. Maybe we come back to that. But the story I thought of that's funny, it's not really funny. I had a friend once that I liked a lot. And I cared a lot about him and what would happen to him and the development of our friendship and some mutual development of him together with the world in which we might share.

[70:09]

And he for a while, I haven't seen him in some long time. He for a while was taking a lot of drugs. Ketamine, I think. Ketamine? Yeah. Yeah. And he behaved really badly. Yeah, I mean, really badly. And I kept trying to, when I'd see him, do something to save the possibility of friendship. And at some point I gave up. But I didn't want to give up. So I got seriously angry with him. And as angry as I could get to communicate the depth of my caring for him really.

[71:45]

Yeah, but I saw it didn't work. So then I was cool and friendly with him after that. And then I heard a while ago, he told somebody, that baker, he can't really be a Buddhist. He really got angry with me once. I'm simplifying the story somewhat, but something like that. Yeah. So something else? That's what I think too. I can't be a real Buddhist because I become very angry.

[72:49]

Well, I don't think that. I'm capable of becoming very angry. But I can also just... I don't have to act on the anger. I can decide to act on it or not to act. Depending on what's best for the person. At least mostly that's the case. Sometimes I may slip. Yes. Maybe I want to come back to what was said earlier about self. And depending on what kind of name I give to the things. Which that then shows my way of thinking in certain categories or showing what kind of concept of the world I have.

[74:11]

And although I don't want to treat everything the same, I like to give names to things that include myself. So I wouldn't just say these are tigers or lions. I would rather say they are living beings so that I feel a connection with them. And maybe that also makes it easier to peel the name off later. Yeah, that's good. We want to find, the more you can find entry into the territory of your actual experience, the more you can feel

[75:24]

Your actual experience. Almost like looking at it from a distance. Like you can go into the landscape and become it. Or you can become a big space around the landscape. Yeah, we all have this ability to some extent. Yogic practice is to develop this ability acutely. And then to dip into the wisdom of this wisdom tradition. To understand how we can enter back into that landscape. Or transform that landscape.

[76:36]

Or to find ourselves both one with the landscape and independent of it. But all that depends on identifying first of all the territory of our experience. Which is primarily the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. So I'd like to go into that more this afternoon.

[77:42]

The Bodhisattva today. The Bodhisattva as you A particular person. Yeah, how can you really feel at ease and one with the particular person you are? And simultaneously with the Buddha you are. And simultaneously with the Buddha you are. Yeah, that's what I would call bodhisattva practice. And it's right in front of us. It's right in the ingredients of our own life. And it's right in the ability to bring our deepest wishes and it's

[78:50]

To bring our deepest wishes into the ingredients of our own life. So let's sit for a minute or two and then we'll go have lunch. To disappear on each moment.

[80:56]

To actually feel that. And reappear. Perhaps when you hear the bell. Let yourself disappear into the bell. A sound not meant for the ear. But for the deeper ear. The deeper ear which hears us. Who has disappeared into a self covering everything.

[82:01]

Who has disappeared, us, who has disappeared into a self covering everything. This point Roke says, a reversal of spaces. Our interior opens into the world before us. And we are reborn from our own experience. This possibility isn't ahead of us. Or in a book somewhere. Right now in your actual experience of course.

[83:21]

The bodhisattva of not tomorrow but today. Yeah.

[83:57]

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