So if you want to bring something up, please feel quite free to do so. I think the big issue for us in practicing with an idea such as Buddha-nature

[01:13]

We have to believe in it. Or have faith in it. Or to feel that somehow it makes sense. Yeah, I think so. We have to find some way that it responds to what we already know. You know, it's... She just doesn't know how to behave in public.

[02:31]

It's something we learn. So I'd like to have some teaching to give you. That would be the most useful thing I could do. But right now I can't see what particular teaching would be useful for you in coming to turn for the idea of buddhism. Or the activity of a bodhisattva.

[03:40]

I mean, even the idea of what a Buddha is, is difficult to... have a real sense of in our personal lives. I think one way you approach it is to think about what kind of person do you wish exists on the planet? And I think many of us, particularly when we're young, are looking for that kind of person.

[04:41]

Some kind of person we hope exists on this planet. And such a... Maybe such a person exists. But if you want such a person to exist, you have to become that person. It doesn't make sense to just want someone else to be. That sense of responsibility, nub of responsibility, is the It's the essence of the bodhisattva vow.

[05:57]

So let's not think about it in terms of Buddha. Let's add those names later, see if they fit. Let's just start with the feeling of What kind of person would we like, do we wish existed in this world? We'd like somebody honest. Somebody we can trust. Yeah. So we have to start with being honest ourselves. And being someone others can trust. And being someone that, a feeling of trusting ourselves.

[07:03]

And that also means to be at ease with yourself. And this is always a way to kind of go to friends of your practice. Always a way to get a sense of your practice. To discover if you're at ease with yourself. Then you just sit down. And feel at ease. Or do you feel you have to jump around, move around. You have things you have to do. Well, in our society asks us to do many things. And many of them are really valid. Marie Louise would like to come to the seminar more. And she'd like to come.

[08:17]

She'd like to be translating us, sharing the translation as well, too. She likes to do it. But, you know, this little Sophia is pretty demanding. Yeah, so there's many things, and that's quite obviously important. But even mothers who are in love with their babies, which I hope most mothers are, as I say, a woman makes a baby, a baby makes a mother. A woman makes a baby. And the baby turns the woman into a mother. And a man into a daddy. A papa. So... That's what I mean partly by generating a mind.

[09:31]

Is a woman born with a mothering mind? Yeah, probably, to some extent. But it's not the same as having a baby. generates, helps you generate the mind of a mother. You can't abstract things into some philosophical or generalized position. We're in actual particular circumstances. We are in actual, particular circumstances. And practice is to come into particularity.

[10:33]

A real particularity you participate in. as you participate in your own mind. As I always have to remind you, every object points to mind as well as points to the object. We are always seeing our own mind, sensory fields, take the form of whatever we're looking at, our feelings. We're always seeing our own mind and sensory fields taking the form of what we're perceiving and thinking about. So you're always seeing your own mind.

[11:37]

But as Wittgenstein says, There's nothing in what you see that reminds you it's your own mind. But when you do remember it's your own mind, or you remind yourself, you're beginning to transform yourself. Because where your attention is, shapes your world. And the world we live in, it's a pretty sophisticated, interesting world. It's a hard word to translate positively in German. How would you say Berlin is a more sophisticated city than Munich?

[12:42]

More international. That's the word. That's what it means in English. I think about it, yes. I mean, but there's a kind of collusion. You know the word collusion? A agreement, a collusion. Two people agree to deceit. There's a kind of collusion. There's a kind of collusion in our society to direct our attention outward. We're continuously, I mean, the advertisers grab our attention. And tell us to define ourselves through all this outward stuff.

[13:58]

And a lot of it's important. And a lot of it is compassionate, really, to take care of our babies, our family, our parents. But even loving mothers, as I started to say, lose start losing something because their attention is always going to the baby. They find themselves out of touch with themselves. And when you're busy all the time, you get out of touch with yourself. They're drained because your attention is always going outwards. You can't have any spiritual life if your attention is always going out.

[15:05]

And one of the forms, we could say, of contemporary renunciation is to reclaim your attention. And there are many ways to do it. Meditating, practicing mindfulness. To just be able to remember on each perception that you're also seeing mind. is to reclaim your attention. To look to look in this world for a great person or great teacher or something like that is quite natural and deep instinct to do.

[16:07]

But it's still, our attention is still directed outward. Aufmerksamkeit ist immer noch nach außen gerichtet. That doesn't work unless we can feel we also can be that person. Das funktioniert nicht, solange wir nicht bemerken, dass auch wir diese Person sein können. And that's hard to think. Und das ist schwer, das zu denken. We're too modest. We're taught to be not egocentric. We're taught to be egocentric and pretend not to be egocentric. If you're not egocentric enough, your friends and family get irritated with you.

[17:15]

You should be more ambitious. Man sollte doch ehrgeiziger sein. Aber dieser Ehrgeiz steht im Vergleich mit anderen. If you're ambitious to just be truly at ease, your parents won't like that. They would consider that quite lazy. But just imagine, you can just be at ease. And part of being at ease is simple things like Buddhism technically is called one-pointedness.

[18:17]

Which means you can just let your attention rest wherever it rests. It doesn't jump around. It's not yanked by the strings of thought. So how in some kind of modesty, Do we come to able to feel if we want a certain kind of person to exist on this planet?

[19:21]

If we want a certain kind of person to exist on this planet, that we have to be able to be that person. And we have to be able to imagine that person in very heroic terms. In heroic. And one translation of the word Bodhisattva means something like a hero of... inner life or a hero of enlightenment. It also means something like one whose life stream is inseparable from the life stream of others. Yeah. And the way you get around it is compassion.

[20:41]

The antidote, a kind of antidote to... The arrogance of, oh, I want to be a great person. I know, I said to some friends once some years ago, practitioner text. I want to be the best Zen teacher I possibly can be. They were rather offended by that. It was some kind of egotistical statement. But to be as good a Zen teacher as I can be, if I'm going to do this, as good as I should be, I first of all have to be as good a Zen practitioner as I can be.

[21:47]

And I know I'm not very good. As I always say, One of the good things about me is I need all your help. I very early on recognized I wasn't so good. So I've designed a life where people will help me everywhere. I arrive in Mexico and people meet me at the airport and say, okay, we're here to practice with you. Wenn ich also in Mexico zum Beispiel ankomme, dann sind die Leute am Flughafen und sagen, wir sind hier, um mit dir zu... So, if I had any other ideas about going to Mexico, where would I go?

[22:51]

Wenn ich irgendeine andere Idee oder wenn mich ein anderer Grund nach Mexiko führen würde, dann wären sie alle nicht da. Dann bräuchte ich jemand anderes, der mich am Flughafen trifft. And I know I started too late. And I wasted an awful lot of time doing other things. But still, I have to have this intention to explore this practice as fully as possible. If I'm not doing it, why should you? So you come to a point where You see that it's actually good for others if each of us tries to be, obviously, the best kind of person we can be. But maybe best isn't the right word.

[23:51]

Because that also already has a comparative sense. The truest person. If we want to be the truest, that means we have to accept ourselves as we are. Be honest with ourselves. And notice when we're deceiving ourselves. And that's not so easy to do. And one way to measure the degree to which we can't be honest with ourselves is the degree to which we're at ease

[24:59]

ourselves which actually we can just be wherever we are. And it's okay wherever we are. And so if you want such a person to exist on the planet, You have to also feel somewhere in yourself, I could be this person. This is called the vow of enlightenment. The aspiration for enlightenment. That aspiration, at least to, the word aspiration means to be willing to try.

[26:35]

Bestrebung heißt, willens sein, es zu versuchen. Willens zu sein, zu versuchen, diese Person zu sein, die ihr am meisten sein wollt. Und von der ihr möchtet. And if you look for a teacher, you look for a teacher with the feeling of this possibility already within yourself. You look for a teacher, or a person who, the kind of person you wish existed on the planet. You look for a teacher, you look for the person, the ideal person, the kind of person you really wish existed.

[27:42]

You can only look for such a person. With the hope of finding such a person. If you already know, feel that you could be such a person. And when you feel that in yourself, the teacher is going to recognize you. If you don't have the confidence to feel that in yourself, the confidence of this kind of compassion, this compassion, because someone should do this. The teacher won't recognize. But if you have this seed in yourself, Okay, now let me say something about the history of Buddha nature.

[28:52]

I was at a conference in Basel a while ago. Yeah, I was a psychotherapist mostly, 1400 of them. Yeah, and I had to give lectures to some of them. And at the end of one of the lectures, somebody came up to me and said, what's that? And without thinking I said, oh, it's a small version of Buddha's robe. And this person felt it was quite peculiar. I realized something was funny in my answer for him.

[29:53]

So Marie-Louise talked to him by chance a few minutes later. And she explained to me afterwards what he felt. It would be like he'd gone up to a Catholic priest And said, what is this funny collar you're wearing? And the priest said, oh, this is God's collar. Or this is Jesus' robe. You just wouldn't say that in Christianity, would you? Man würde das im Christentum einfach nicht sagen. No, but in Buddhism we say it. Aber im Buddhismus sagen wir es.

[31:04]

Because we have a different idea of what Buddha is. Weil wir eine andere Vorstellung von dem haben, was Buddha ist. Because Buddha dressed a certain way, so what the heck, he was a good guy, we dressed like him. Some sense of learning from this other person. Some sense of learning from this person. Like you might have a favorite sweater or something that someone gave you or something. You feel good when you put it on. This belonged to my good friend or my spouse. Because the Buddha doesn't exist. Existiert nicht.

[32:10]

Because the Buddha doesn't exist, you can be a Buddha. Weil der Buddha nicht existiert, könnt ihr ein Buddha sein. Because the Buddha is not a person. Weil der Buddha keine Person ist. The first Buddha is qualities or aspects, some possibilities of being human. So you can have those possibilities too. You can have those characteristics. So the idea of a Buddha developed over the centuries from the or qualities of a Buddha. To the person who exhibits those qualities. And that's a Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva is considered to be the cause of a Buddha.

[33:13]

And the cause of a Buddha in other people. And the causes that make one a Buddha. And that idea developed into, well, then a Bodhisattva must have a Buddha nature. So then we have this idea, well, somehow... the qualities of a Buddha must be present here. And there was a shift from emphasizing India and looking toward the historical Buddha Looking toward India and the historical Buddha. And the life of the Buddha.

[34:16]

And the path of the Buddha. And the known path of the Buddha. So the early practitioners are called Shravakas. Which means the listeners are the disciples. The ones who listen to the Buddha. Listen to the Buddha's teaching. And try to follow the Buddha's teaching. And the Buddha knew the path, showed us the path. And that view is sort of called early Buddhism. And such a person gave attention to his own life stream.

[35:23]

And the obstacles within his own life stream, which hindered realization. And the Pratyekabuddha, which I mentioned last night, or this morning, is one who also is concerned with his own or her own life stream. Sometimes they're called private Buddhas. And one of the limitations of a private Buddha who is enlightened by accident or through their own practice is that they usually can't teach others. And you actually see it in contemporary world.

[36:24]

You see some very big figures in Western spiritual life. who I'd have to say are clearly enlightened. But they're not enlightened usually often in a lineage. They're enlightened through their own efforts. And they don't know how to teach. In my opinion, they get an awful lot of people in big trouble. So now, what is a bodhisattva? If a pratyekabuddha and a shravaka, or arhat, or disciple, are concerned with their own life streams.

[37:42]

The Buddha can't separate his or her life stream from the life stream of others. There is concern with their own life stream as others' life stream. Sie sind befasst mit ihrem eigenen Lebensstrom als den Lebensstromen anderer. We could say simply, a Bodhisattva is someone who wants to be a Buddha with you. Wir können vielleicht vereinfacht sagen, der Bodhisattva ist jemand, der ein Buddha mit euch sein möchte. Actually, one who knows he or she can't be a Buddha without you. Jemand, der weiß, Er oder sie kann kein Buddha ohne euch sein. Because our life streams are so connected, I can't be enlightened really separate from you.

[38:51]

Unsere Lebensströme sind so miteinander verbunden, dass ich ohne euch nicht erleuchtet sein kann. So I have to be enlightened with you. Not only with and through you. My practice is in the stream of all of us together. And this is very much like this aspiration I mentioned earlier. If you look for a teaching or you look for a teacher, which expresses how you think it's possible to be human. It reaches your own intuition and goes way beyond it. But yet you still know it's your own possibility as well. That's the same as understanding that only

[39:52]

be a Buddha with you. It's nuts. You can't separate. That means almost you don't have to look. You just have to keep looking in your own particular situation. Your own actual experience. Where else? and your actual experience with others. And that is something like what we mean by Buddha-nature. How can you bring that kind of attention to your life stream? You know, one of the great creations of the last couple hundred years, I suppose the enlightenment of the 18th century,

[41:35]

The European enlightenment of the 18th century was the idea of humanity, of humankind, that somehow sits at the root of the possibility of democracy. Yeah, but somehow we all have some equal weight on this planet. And the more there's an idea of humanity and humankind, It changes the idea of governments and responsibility. I suppose it has to do with why Milosevic is arrested and betrayed in Belgium.

[42:40]

Because there's some assumption that all government leaders should act according to some vision of a human kind. Regierungsführer nach dieser Vorstellung von Menschlichkeit oder Menschheit handeln. But practically speaking, although it's a powerful political idea, it still comes down to mostly everyone should have food and shelter and medical care and so forth. And if people have that, then they are sort of on their own.

[43:50]

But the Bodhisattva ideal is not It's not so limited as that. It would include that practically, you want people to have what they need to survive. But it's the feeling that whether they do or don't, our life streams are mixed. It doesn't mean you read the newspaper and see terrible problems in Nigeria, so you try to mix your life stream with Nigerians. If you go there as a volunteer or as a doctor or something, that's certainly a bodhisattva practice.

[45:05]

But it means more practically outside the newspaper. That in your immediate situation with people you know, and strangers you see, you feel a mixture of life streams flowing together. And how do you do that? What kind of mind, what kind of attitudes allow you to feel a coming together of life streams? This is the Bodhisattva practice. This is to come in touch with our Buddha nature.

[46:22]

Yeah, I think it's how we actually exist. But it's not how we notice how we exist. Now there's another big difference. Those who look to India and the historical Buddha had the feeling it was a known path. A known path that the Buddha showed us. Yes, but for the Bodhisattva it's an unknown path. It's a path that appears, but among us. Let me start by asking if anybody has something they'd like to bring up. Let me start by asking if anybody has something they'd like to bring up.

[47:34]

Sometimes all those words are equated. Big mind, original mind, Buddha mind, Buddha nature, etc. Yeah, I don't like doing that. It implies that there's something there with many names. But the names are activities. If I say original mind, or I say Buddha nature, I'm talking about a different way of looking at it or approaching it.

[48:45]

So a different approach makes it different. To a gardener, it's a tree, and to me it's a tree, but it's not the same. To a gardener, it's less to me. Or, this room is an activity. It's not a thing. And it's different becoming that door than this door. So we've established becoming this door. So likewise, if we say original mind, we mean something different than big mind. Big light.

[50:12]

Okay. Yeah. You talked about a seed that can open up. What is the nature of the seed? Yeah. Well, let's find a term now for the feeling that we would like someone To exist like we really hope someone exists.

[51:28]

Let's call that an aspiration, okay? Maybe we should call them a mutual aspiration. Because if I have this aspiration, I hope it for someone else and I hope it for myself. So for the sake of our discussion here, let's create a kind of term that we'll call this mutual aspiration. So, now you're asking, how can this neutral aspiration be a seed? Is that correct? Sort of what you mean? It was the possibility that I am able to develop.

[52:49]

Yeah, the question is, Can you develop it? Or how do you develop it? Okay, that's what I'll start to say, see if I can say something about it. And Beate, when you said, you said something about your experience in Zazen, but it's noticing if your state of mind is familiar or not, not necessarily. Oh. And to, as Beate, you have said this, and it was with your wife in Zazen, our disaster system.

[53:52]

Yes, we had a short discussion this morning, and... Ah, that was about what Roshan said, about this state of mind that we create or create. And I mentioned that it is not the question that I often develop in meditation, but I would call it feeling or feeling, where everything is familiar to me, which is always there. This feeling is And that's something in contrast to when you create something, you often have a new feeling.

[54:54]

It can't be as tangible as it has always been. And that's what I'm trying to figure out, how that can be combined. Yeah, and I think it was because of Allah, you mentioned that this state of mind is created. Yes, generated. Generated. And I kind of feel in my meditation place often, That feels totally familiar. That, I would say, like always being there. That's a little bit, it feels a little bit like a culture change.

[55:56]

Okay. I think that's one of the reassuring things about practice. They said we're changed. And we give things up somehow. Or we're somehow transformed in various ways. And yet, somehow it often feels like we're more like we were. Or we notice, as Beate says, some experience in meditating or just in living. And it can feel that it's

[56:57]

Something we've rediscovered or something familiar. And it's reassuring to feel that way. But just because we feel that way doesn't mean that's the way it is. Yeah. So... Yeah, I don't know quite how to answer your question. Say what I'd like to say. Ich weiß nicht recht, wie ich deine Frage beantworten soll oder wie ich sagen soll, was ich sagen will. Everything is quite particular. Alles ist ziemlich besonders. In fact, unique. Tatsächlich... And so it's, okay, you know the other day on the airplane, flying actually from San Francisco to Mexico.

[58:19]

Yeah, there was a person sitting, they put me on a, emergency exit row. And there was a man sitting One seat removed. There were three seats in the entire... Yeah, and he seemed like a nice man. I couldn't tell. Maybe five or six years older than myself. And... He was all dressed in brown. A brown suit, or a brown jacket, a black-brown shirt, and so forth.

[59:20]

There was something quite reserved about him. I thought, well, maybe he's somebody I've seen in the movies or something. Because he looked so familiar to me. Or maybe somebody I knew years ago, but I don't recognize anymore. Because he's 30 years old or something. But if it was, he'd probably recognize me, because, you know, with this head, I look about not so different from him. So I decided it wasn't somebody I, you know. And that was kind of clumsy on the other side. I tried to get up at one point and knocked over a whole glass of water.

[60:32]

And it luckily missed him. I said, I'm very sorry it missed you. And he said, it did. He just said, it did. Er hat einfach nur gesagt, ja, das. He didn't say, what's more to be in the whole plane than that. Er hat nicht mehr als das gesagt die ganze Zeit auf dem Flug. Yeah. But there's something, you know, as I said, I didn't say he wasn't a movie star or something because he was not in first class. He was back with the herds with me. So anyway, then afterwards he was met by some people in Mexico City.

[61:32]

And I had some very good feeling about the person. Yeah, like maybe what we're talking about. Somebody who's the kind of person I wish existed on the planet. He was somehow very reserved. And yet he was very present at the same time, didn't miss anything. And this fellow who met him, whoever it was. The fellow, the person who met him, he was very responsive to the person.

[62:56]

But he was only responded to the best part of the other person. He gave the feeling that you had to say something real to him or he wouldn't respond too much. Yeah, so I had a feeling of recognizing something. It was like, no, I don't think it could have been my teacher. It was that kind of category. It was, you know, I had a feeling that I wouldn't mind feeling, having that kind of feeling I recognized in myself. If next time I see you I'm all dressed to be brown, you'll realize what an influence you have on me.

[64:33]

And so I had the feeling, you know, there's something unique about this person. Something that I like. Something very good feeling about this person. And I wish there were more people like that. No. In the past, I would have thought... I don't know if I'm getting any sensitive questions. I'm going along. In the past, I would have thought, oh, well, if I get to know him, it's just probably... It's just some, you know, banker or public relations person or something like that. Or you have to be in a bad mood.

[65:47]

So he looks reserved, but he's actually just in a bad mood. But I don't have that kind of feeling anymore. What I recognize is a deep feeling of familiarity. There's something about this person I admire. Which I can actually feel inspired by. So I actually don't, it doesn't make any difference to me if I talk to him, I would lose that feeling. In that moment, he's called forth that feeling in me. And it's deeply familiar. In fact, it reminds me when I was in the Merchant Marine working on ships.

[67:17]

You know, it's just a job, working on ships while I was in college. As you know, many of you know, I took off a couple of years from college and worked on ships and went to Near East and Africa. And when I was in Iran, at the upper end of the sea, I guess, yeah, Euphrates River. The mouth of the Euphrates River. And I was in a little town called Banda Shapur. I was in a small town.

[68:30]

How do you say that? There was just a few old buildings with kids with flies in their eyes. And I met this man named Shukrila Ali. Shukrila Ali. Shukrila Ali. Yeah, Shukrila. And he touched me so that I still can hardly look at his photograph. I still have old photographs. And he was somebody I wasn't quite so ready to recognize. As I was this man on the airplane, in fact. It took me several days to recognize this guy.

[69:34]

I think we were in the... I think the ship, because they loaded by hand, the ship was in the port for two weeks. And after the first day or two, I saw part of every afternoon Looking back on it, I think he might have been a Sufi or something like that. But I had, after about the third day, I had the feeling I'm in the presence of someone who's the way I hope a human being can be. The experience was something for me. Maybe I wanted my mother and father to be like that. It was familiar to me, but I'd never experienced it that way before.

[70:45]

This man generated it. And I never saw it again until I met my teacher, Sikyues. But by the time I met Sikyues, he sort of like five years later, Because of that earlier experience, I was able to know how rare it was. And I was able to turn myself over to Suzuki Roshi as a teacher. And I spent nearly 10 years or more restoring that feeling each time I saw him. Now I have that feeling now and then with someone.

[72:08]

Or I even have that feeling a little bit with every person I meet. And I don't question it. It's a precious feeling. Like I didn't say, oh, it's probably not really true, this man, blah, blah, blah, the airplane. I accept it as reality, what I felt. But, you know, maybe I couldn't see this man ten years like I could see you, you see. But for me, each moment with Suzuki Roshi was a particular experience.

[73:15]

I had that particular experience, something similar, for a brief moment with this guy in the airport. To me it's just as real. And I would say that mostly on the airplane it doesn't happen. But this time it did. But he generated it, I generated it. And my experience with Shukrila Ali and Sukhoshi helped me generally. But when I look at the experience carefully, it's something very familiar to me. But at that moment, on that day, going to Mexico was very particular to me at this age, in this context, going to Mexico.

[74:39]

And Rocio Hernandez Pozo Hernandez Pozo, who's my disciple. And she's founded a Dharma Sangha in Mexico. Yeah, and she's amazing. She's a dynamo. Yeah. So she said, anyway, so I carried this feeling with me in teaching four days in Mexico. Yeah, and the feeling I have with my disciple isn't different than the feeling I had with this man or with Jesus. And knowing that feeling, Knowing this familiar feeling, so familiar that I know how to let it happen, which is kind of generating it like so.

[76:03]

It's familiar, but I now know how to let it flower. And when I let it flower, it takes a particular shape according to the soil it's in, to a situation it's in. And then I replanted it in the lectures and seminar I had to give in Mexico City. I tried to replant it so these people in Mexico would look to my disciple, not to me. Because I'm an interesting outsider, so they want me to come back.

[77:08]

If they understand lineage, I don't have to come back. She's there. But it's harder for them to see her. They see her as a, you know, professor, Mexican lady. Unusual, but still, you know, a middle-class Mexican lady. Ungewöhnlich, aber eben doch eine mexikanische Frau aus der... What class? Middle class. Oh, aus der Mittelklasse. Yeah, but how do you... But they know something's different about her.

[78:09]

Sie wissen, irgendetwas an ihr ist anders. How do they let that difference flower? It's easy to see something different about me because I'm different, you know, weird and American. I'm only there a few days, you know. After a week, then I'm, you know, this boring American. But it's hard to see her, someone you're familiar with. So I tried to let that somehow plant a seed that they could see her. representing the practice in the past?

[79:14]

So, you know, like today, I'm not trying to... I'm not giving you some official definition of Buddha-nature. Yeah, and there's whole books on, you know, the development of the idea of Buddha-nature. But you have to develop that In yourself. You have to find something familiar as a seed. So I'm talking with you about in yourself noticing something that you know like I wish some kind of person like this existed on the planet. And if you can touch that as a feeling, and if you can recognize

[80:40]

Hey, I shouldn't just brush that over. That shouldn't just be hidden in the scheme of words. Scheme, like a weaving. Scheme is what the cloth is on. It's all right. Whatever you said is fine. What? I like a little mis... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Whatever you said. Somehow you have to let an experience like that spring out of the weaving of words. You know, the job of, I've been thinking about whether I should speak more about language.

[82:04]

The job of words is to bind the world together. It's not so much to describe the world, but to bind the world together. And every word, every name, has to have certain characteristics to fit into language. If it doesn't have certain characteristics, it won't fit into a sentence. Wenn es nicht bestimmte Eigenschaften hat, dann passt es nicht in einen Satz hinein. But it doesn't have to have more characteristics than allow it to be used in language. Aber es muss nicht mehr Eigenschaften haben, als dass es in der Sprache benutzt werden kann.

[83:05]

So soon, Sophia and Zoe are going to be learning language. Bald werden Sophia und Zoe die Sprache lernen. And partly their use of language is going to come out of this tanha, this thirst. For not less than everything. But it will also come out of a desire to join their parent. Then Sofia spends a lot of time cooing. Like it does. At least for a couple of months it was cooing, and now it's cooing and screaming. It's a big deal. So, you know, and she loves to get me or Louise to kind of make sounds back and forth

[84:14]

And as she's improved her skills, she more and more buries the sounds. And they can be kind of, or they can be a little high-screened and all kinds of things. It can be. So they're like that. And that's to join us Not really to get something so much And it's also to establish a relationship Es ist auch dazu da, eine Beziehung einzugehen. To make a connection. Eine Verbindung aufzunehmen. Now, of course, once she can say things, wenn sie erst mal Dinge sagen kann, then she's frustrated that she dropped something.

[85:39]

She can demand that we get it for her. And then she can begin to shape a world to get what she wants through language. Or we can try to emphasize the joining the world more. The feeling of joining the world through language. Or, I don't know if I can make this point, but not just joining, like some people always try to adjust themselves to the world. But to recognize it as a connection. In any case, all the words begin to only have sense within language.

[86:44]

And that language puts together a world. And I think if we are present, and we will be, when she begins to shape the world through language, Und wenn wir dann gegenwärtig sind, so wie ich denke, dass wir es sein werden, wenn sie anfängt, die Welt durch die Sprache zu gestalten, dann können wir eine how she binds the world together if pleasant and unpleasant become like and dislike and this basic thirst becomes good and bad and so forth and she gets caught in this pendulum of things are good or they're bad or I like or I don't like

[88:00]

And like and dislike turn into greed and hate. And delusion. And delusion would mean that she believes the way she sees the world is real. that it's permanent and possessible. And the way language binds the world together leads to that delusion that real things are named and those real things are possessible. I think Aryadeva says it's a false statement to say a cucumber is large.

[89:07]

Aryadeva says it's a false statement to say a cucumber is large. It's a true statement, a sort of true statement, to say a fig is small and a cucumber is large. Because the comparison Makes sense. One is smaller and one is larger. But just to say something is big. There is no such thing as big. The Bodhisattva is one who uses language outside the binding of language. The Bodhisattva is one who uses language outside the binding of language. It's like, you know, I mean, I don't like myself that I do it too.

[90:11]

It's kind of dumb. I don't like myself that I do this, which I'm about to say. Because people ask me, oh, are you Richard Baker? And I can't prevent myself from saying sometimes. Because it sounds too dumb and Zen-y, you know. But in fact, I know that only sometimes I would... But somehow, or rather, the Bodhisattva is wanting doesn't get caught up in the way language binds us to a particular reality. And once you see that, you can understand koans much more clearly. Yeah, and I'm trying now to use language in a slightly unusual way.

[91:29]

That puts us in the relationship to experiences we share. But let something else come forth. Yeah, now say that I... looked at that man on the airplane. And I can't, I don't know any words, there's no names for the feeling I felt with this funny man dressed in brown on the airplane. But it's a clear feeling I had. Like when I met Shukula Ali. But there was no expectation in the way I was brought up and the way language is used that I would meet someone like that.

[92:33]

Yeah, who somebody almost 50 years later I would be speaking about. Yeah. So somehow you let that shine forth out of language. Yeah, so maybe with any one of you. You have certain characteristics. And you use your body posture and clothes to establish those characteristics in which you want me to think of. Maybe I see something in you which doesn't fit those characteristics.

[93:36]

Maybe it's something negative that you're hiding. But maybe something positive you don't even notice in yourself. I have to, if I'm practicing as a bodhisattva, I have to be able to let that shine forth to me, out of the characteristics which you've established so that I think about you a certain way. And that also, Andreas, is a way of doing something with the seed of this aspiration.

[94:52]

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