as when we were first born. So the first born moments are non-referential space moments to be technical. So this non-referential space which is not some experience way in the future. It's right here in the daily moment-to-moment details of how we actually exist, carving a cave in emptiness. Do you hear that now more?

[01:05]

Making a cave in emptiness. And strangely, when we have that non-reference point, as part of our way we know things, It draws, produces in us gratitude and compassion. Yes. And this is the intimacy of compassion and wisdom at the center of Buddhist practice. Yeah, we need some maturity, some developed mindfulness to feel it. But you can be sure it's not far away. It's the definition of nearness, of intimacy. Ja, es ist die Definition von Nähe, von Intimität.

[02:28]

Yeah. Okay, so we should take a break, right? Wir sollten eine Pause machen. Why? Ja. No? And afterwards, as usual on Saturday, I'd like you to meet in small groups. What are you going to speak about? Nothing, I mean emptiness. I told the story in the prologue day, I guess, about my little daughter Sophia wanting me to open some vitamin pill bottles. I really didn't want to open them because it's a nuisance to open them. They protect them from, you know, with so much plastic, you need a hatchet to get into them. In America, at least. And I showed her some open... vitamin pill bottles, but no, no, she wanted to open these three.

[03:33]

And I said, there's nothing in them, meaning but these pills like all the others. And I said, there's nothing in them. And she quite insistently said, then show me nothing. And I said, well, you have the right father to ask this question. So... Okay, show me nothing. Okay. Well, we don't eat for 45 or 50 minutes.

[04:34]

But we still probably need a break before evening meal. But maybe we have time for one or two groups to say something. So who's going to be first? Who's going to be first? Okay. Andreas thinks it's a role he has to fulfill. No, well, I'd love it if you do feel it. I depend on you. Okay. We talked a lot about this reference point or reference space. No reference point space. Yeah. But also to notice when one does have a reference point and how one could let go of it.

[05:47]

For example, when I sit down and try to get my reference point into the body and get it away from my thoughts, And how this changes the view of the world completely. And it was very difficult to talk about the term of emptiness. But no reference point space is emptiness. So it sounds like he did very well talking about it. So it sounds like he did very well talking about it. So it sounds like he did very well talking about it.

[06:52]

So it sounds like he did very well talking about it. And we try to approach the form scanner by your saying that form is permeating emptiness and emptiness is permeating form. Yeah, permeating exactly form and exactly emptiness. Genau. Genau. Form. Okay. Is that all? I wasn't the only one in the group. Well, actually, what you said was the quintessence of Mahayana teaching.

[07:58]

So what else? Anyone else? Was it quite hard? I was appointed to. Oh, you were appointed? Yeah, I couldn't. Oh, I see. Yeah, we had, first we had some examples of experiences of emptiness, like, for example, one person was going on a night walk without seeing very much or nothing, and then there was the experience, suddenly there was a shift, it was just walking, there was no fear, sort of free feeling, and... Although going rather fast, no exhaustion. Example how that's shifted. I'll say it in German. One person talked about a night when she didn't see anything and it was a bit scary in the beginning, where suddenly such a change took place and there was only pure walking.

[09:00]

And no more fear, safety, and despite the fast pace, no exhaustion. It was a complete change, actually. And where she was actually part of the whole thing, there was no more victory or going, it was pure going. Let me say that the other day I didn't have a flashlight coming down from the cabin that Zendo is, and it was utterly velvety black dark. So I'm walking along pretty much like your anecdote. Trying to feel where the rocks were and where the path was. And I got two-thirds of the way down, and quite calmly. A little bit slower than usual.

[10:02]

And suddenly I was in a herd of about 30 deer. They were all around me. We were kind of... Vaguely, I could figure out they were deer. I felt, I'm an animal too. Or this somewhat disturbing experience like driving a car where the head wasn't quite there. Yeah, that happened apparently. And also emptiness... What part of the head? Okay, go ahead. And... When, as an example of... I've seen little old ladies drive like that.

[11:05]

I've seen little old ladies drive like that. The feeling of simply having a small head in the car can be disturbing, although you can see it in the mirror, but of course the feeling that it is not there. So also such a feeling from Lerat. Emptiness is when in a real conflict, in a deep sorrow, for example, when the conflict is not solvable, you can't do anything about it. Then one person, he tries to make this sort of ritz of its contents, makes it as empty as possible. So that's just... let's say, a letter, which can't be dealt with, then this just reduces to the pure words, not rid of the content. So this is an approach. to emptiness and then, when the person had achieved that, then there came up a feeling of love and compassion.

[12:14]

This feeling that when you can't solve a conflict scene and it's very painful, for example, when you get a very painful letter, that you try to empty it, so to speak, to take everything out, that only the pure words remain under meaning, Only then can a feeling arise of compassion and love. And one person said, I cannot approach love and compassion, but I can approach emptiness. So I can't approach love or compassion willingly, but I can approach emptiness. Two persons reported, but on the other hand, that when they did a certain metta practice, they rather got angry. It sort of made them rather... They did... Metta. Metta. Theravadan metta practice. Theravadan metta practice, yeah. M-E-T-T-A, not M-E-T-A.

[13:15]

M-E-T-T-A. Yeah. But one person also reported when reading a book from a Vietnamese nun who had apparently spent all her life helping other people, so they made... such an impression on him that he really had to cry. This also helped open Minghazad very much, although he practiced it already. A feeling of love one person reported when Especially then when being aware of the preciousness and the frailty, the fragility of each moment.

[14:32]

And then also at the same time feeling connected to even a stranger who was just near. Especially the feeling that we are all going to die. This feeling, as one person reported, that we all have to die, but every moment is infinitely precious, and this leads to a connection to another person, Did you translate any of that into English for me? I don't know. Sounded good, you know. I'm sorry. All right.

[15:35]

Maybe you did. I didn't hear anything. Okay, good. All right. Okay. Someone else? Yes. Yes. We talked about what emptiness is and that we experience something like emptiness when we sit and the thoughts subside. But also at other occasions, for example in movement or with their own children.

[16:42]

And this emptiness, being free of concepts, kind of allows us to get close to other people with love. One other person reported about how emptiness occurs in his everyday life when he takes breaks just by themselves, by itself. And one other person told that she or he experiences emptiness because a lot of outer concepts and structures broke away in his life.

[18:06]

And one other subject we also dealt with, it was also how fear can arise when the structures fall apart. For sure. Yeah, you sit on a limb and while you're sitting on a limb you're cutting it off. And you can only have confidence when you realize there's no ground to fall on. Okay, so that's three of the five groups, right? And some people might want to add things. Six? Five? I think five groups.

[19:27]

If there were six, it was hiding. I didn't find it. Two, four, five. And so tomorrow morning we can start with the groups that haven't said anything and anybody who wants to say something, I would enjoy it. I think we want to... Well, let me put it this way. My first tactile experience of emptiness was very simple. I was walking. I always remember where these experiences occurred. The physical location is always very vivid in my memory.

[20:28]

And I'm walking down Pacific Avenue toward Washington Street, I think it was, in San Francisco, toward... Golf. And I was in sort of top of the hill, which is called Pacific Heights. And there was a cloud there. And it was a nice day and sunny and so forth. I had the feeling I'm under this cloud. And then I had the feeling, well, the cloud's actually over that building. And then I thought, oh, no, it's over to the side of this building.

[21:32]

And suddenly I felt I had no location except in reference to other things. Yeah, I can't explain it better than that. Well, it's interesting to me as a practitioner and as having to teach. Because I had many, many times in my life up to that point, I was about 25 years old, I'd walked under clouds. And why did walking under this, what was the difference? Why did I suddenly... have this very tactile experience of emptiness, in fact. As I was nowhere at all except in relationship to various things, and those things were always changing.

[22:39]

Well, it's very clear that it's only because I was practicing. If I had not been practicing, I might have noticed that or thought that, but it wouldn't have affected my body. If I hadn't practiced, I might have noticed, but it wouldn't have had any effect on my body. Because my location changed. Does that make sense? I was in the same place, but my location changed. And one of the measures of the genuineness of such experiences is I never went back to the location I had before that experience.

[23:48]

And why did I never go back? Again, because I continued to practice even through the boredom barrier. Where nothing seems to happen. Now, what aspects of practice led me to that new location, which was no location? Which aspects of the practice have led me to this new place of non-locality? Well, it's like you said, experiences of openness or spaciousness in the mind while your thoughts disappear and the mind while you're practicing.

[24:55]

So, experiences like the ones from afar while you're practicing and letting go of your thoughts? Such experiences preclude or prepare one for this change in location. And yeah, so openness and spaciousness aren't in themselves necessarily experiences of emptiness. They're very similar, or they prepare yourself for what you'd call a real experience of emptiness. But when thoughts come back in, that feeling goes away. When it doesn't go away, you probably had an experience of emptiness.

[26:09]

But the many times we feel quite, in some sort of samadhi space, quite free of thoughts and so forth, that way it makes us Yeah, hundreds of such experiences makes us able to suddenly feel comfortable when you're pushed, in a way, over an edge. Now we could say, I mean, if you'd like me to continue this vein, although it's a little technical, but if, when thoughts disappear... If you had the experience of the absence of thoughts. Not just there were no thoughts, but you had a tangible experience of the absence of thoughts. And all your thoughts after that appeared, appeared surprisingly in this absence of thought.

[27:27]

Then we could say it was an experience of emptiness. No, why am I making such sort of distinctions? I want to encourage you in your practice. Because we have these experiences, and these experiences, you know, Sometimes you get a little discouraged. Well, yes, I have certain samadhis in my... But, you know, my life hasn't changed much. Surprisingly, the sudden practice, the dynamics of sudden practice is to always know it's here. Even though thoughts close back in, you now have the kind of, you know in your body that it's possible to be free of thoughts.

[29:02]

And that knowledge, which is much like an intention, Combined with the understanding that enlightenment, emptiness, form, they're not somewhere else, they're not in the future. If they're anywhere, they're right now. So that's the potent and even explosive, potentially, mix. of attitudes and practice that go together in sudden practice. Now, what are some of the differences if you have this experience of form is simultaneously emptiness, is simultaneously without reference point?

[30:15]

The form is exactly emptiness, or to put it in a more accessible way to speak, form which seems to be nothing but frame is simultaneously free of any frame. What happens is you never, once you've really had that experience, you never, it always is there with you. And surprisingly, it's a refuge. Because you're still a person with a certain karma and habits and all that. But simultaneously you're relieved of your karma.

[31:20]

Your karma hasn't gone away and yet somehow it's gone. It doesn't affect you. It's a tremendous freedom of Life starts at just this moment. Tremendous feeling of freedom. And it also creates a space where things begin to happen and mature outside of consciousness. And love and compassion become just a way of being. And even smiling flowers more easily. Okay, now I want to change the frame. Again, going back to Tolstoy, at the end of his life, he was so overcome by the

[32:25]

suffering he saw with poor people and the serfs and so forth. I actually don't know too much about Tolstoy's life, but he changed his life to do something about it. On the other hand, Ivan Illich was asked, what would you do, what do you care about the people... the starving children and adults of the Sahel. The Sahel is the area between, you know, the area between southern Sahara and the arid area there. He said, I don't care. He said, I can't care.

[33:46]

It would be dishonest of me to care. If I cared, it would be... It would mean I don't... It would prevent me from loving. If I cared, it would mean I... could not love the unmet friend. You know, in our culture, this is quite startling, I think, to say this. But he said, if I'm honest, if I'm sincere, sitting here at my desk, I'm not going to leave these file cards.

[34:56]

I'm not going to leave my writing desk. I'm not going to leave, you know, my books. And he said, this little Mexican sculpture I bought for a dollar in Mexico, which is now worth $500 or more in Bremen or New York, if I'm honest, I'm not about to sell it and buy a ticket and go to Sahel. So, in fact, I don't care. He said, but not caring doesn't mean I don't... He said, if I cared, rather, let's put it that way, he said, if I cared, I would not feel the horror of the situation. The horror of those children and adults with their legs about this big and protruding stomachs.

[36:05]

My horror and helplessness. I want to feel my horror and helplessness. He said, if I cared, once I know the story of the Good Samaritan, Or the man who saves this Jew from robbers. And brings him to an inn, which in those days, Yvonne said, was a... And brings him to an inn, which in those days was a brothel. And says, please take care of him. And I'll be back with more money soon. He said, Ivan said, this is what caring means to me. I actually have to do something.

[37:14]

And if I don't do something, I'm not caring. And Tsukiyoshi felt quite the same way. In a story told in various ways, when he knocked a person off a chair, he wanted to end the Vietnam War. Yeah, they were sitting in the lecture and he went, pooh, and knocked him right off his chair. Luckily, you guys sit a little far from me. He could get away with it because he was such a little guy.

[38:15]

You might punch me if I did it. So, but Sukershi said, if you're going to stop the war, stop the war. Do something that stops the war. Don't care about it. So this is a particular definition of caring. For Ivan Illich, caring meant he had to do something. He had to go and... pick up that child in his arms and do something. And doctors do that. Some doctors do that. But he said, if I just care about it and don't do anything, I probably am not going to go chain myself to the door of the corporation who contributes to it.

[39:26]

So for him, Caring has become some sort of institutionalized thing and it's part of the way he criticizes the church and so forth. But I think part of our discussion is how do we care? How do we express care? How do we live and survive in the horror of much of what goes on in the world and our helplessness? I'm sorry to leave you on such a somber note. But perhaps the kitchen will improve our mood.

[40:46]

If not our helplessness. Thank you very much. What is the frame of our heart and love and suffering? Was ist der Rahmen von unserem Herz und unserem Leiden? Und Liebe. Heart, love and suffering. Und Liebe. Thank you for translating. It doesn't have to be you, Andreas. So who is next? Okay, thanks.

[42:10]

Thanks for sacrificing yourself. Our group decided that we don't have one speaker, but every one of us can say whatever. Okay, we'll get the whole morning then. Can we spend the whole morning with that? What worked within me is the relationship between trust and emptiness. First I thought one needs a lot of trust to encounter emptiness and to meet it. Trust in your breath, trust in your body like an anchor.

[43:33]

And then I realized there are also moments where I trust emptiness or the trust comes out of the emptiness. And it also has to do with the story that when you do a step and hopefully the ground will be there. It feels like that. I don't know such moments in my work where I don't know anything at all. And then I felt that emptiness is like a filling, like a filled emptiness that then becomes active.

[44:37]

Such moments I also know from my work. And then I feel that the emptiness is very full and very rich. And when I think of emptiness in normal everyday life, then emptiness is rather cold and a bit sad and confused. In my ordinary everyday life, there is a taste to emptiness which is more like cold and lonely. But in my work, it's always full, fulfilling. And then there's another moment when I start to believe in emptiness. So, for example, yesterday evening at the end of sitting, when everyone was really standing like that. And there's actually no agreement when to bend over.

[45:42]

And suddenly everyone bends over at the end. That's always a moment for me when so much emptiness passes by and then everyone is back in shape again. And there is another moment of emptiness, like at the end of the sitting periods when we all stand up and nobody quite knows when we will bow and we don't have any appointments afterwards. And there is this... For the bowing, yeah. When to bow, yes. Yeah. It's good we have, I think, courage to notice these small things as, like, What do we all do now?

[46:46]

Are we going to bow as moments of our experiences of emptiness? Yeah, okay. Because one of the problems in practice is we often don't notice the fruits of practice because they're outside our usual way of noticing things. And so sometimes it takes years before we start noticing, well, actually I'm enjoying the fruits of practice. Häufig entdecken wir die Früchte unserer Praxis nicht, für lange Zeit nicht, weil sie irgendwie untergehen in Someone else from that group?

[47:53]

Yes. We'll start from the end of the discussion. We ended up in a way that we looked at... Can you hear Doug? They can't hear too well, yeah. We ended up with the discussion with the three words compassion, love and emptiness. And in a way we had a short answer to that. And the answer, first of all, was, yeah, it's all the same. And nevertheless, Another question then arose, why do we have three words for the same thing?

[48:57]

And we figured out that there must be some differentiation or dependency between these three words. Aus dieser Antwort kam dann die eigentliche Frage nochmal hoch, warum gibt es dann drei Begriffe für dasselbe? Da muss also doch eine Differenzierung möglich sein, beziehungsweise vielleicht eine Abhängigkeit unter diesen drei Begriffen. That was one interesting element out of the discussion. This was an interesting element of the discussion. Concerning emptiness, we discussed quite a bit about expectations too, so that some people told us anecdotes about experiences of emptiness. Another aspect that we talked about about emptiness was the expectation. Some people have One experience I remember somebody told us was an experience in the subway when she was going to a usual place.

[50:17]

She knew where she has to go in the towns of the subway. And at some point she had to, for instance, to go left or right, and suddenly there was no tunnel, continuing tunnel, there was a wall. and the person had told how she had to turn in the underground railway once for example to the left or to the right as usual and suddenly this tunnel was no longer there but there was a band and the interesting part was then that an initial thought came up and a question is this for and As far as I understood, it wasn't together with fear or anxiety, it was some kind of trust in the situation, astonishment, but also a clear feeling that

[51:23]

there is some kind of a disappointment of expectation that there is a tunnel continuing as usual. So it was interesting that the experience, as far as I understood it, was not connected with fear or fear about this change, but actually with a feeling of trust and a certain disappointment, an expectation that this tunnel should actually be here. And then we discussed about the connection, how far expectations and disappointment or absence of expectations or disappearing of expectations has a connection to the feeling of emptiness, the moment of emptiness. And we then discussed a bit about other anecdotes as to how far the expectation and the disappointment of an expectation or the disappearance of an expectation Okay, thank you Yes We then also found that it is good to distinguish between the feeling of closeness that we experience in meditation,

[53:12]

And we also found that there is a differentiation between what we experience as emptiness in practice and what we take out of it into our everyday life and save into our everyday life. Yes, and I just noticed something in the last few days, that apparently, that I didn't know at all that it was about emptiness, namely in everyday life, that is, in my work, which I normally do.

[54:22]

And through a conversation with Nin, it has turned out that it is apparently a kind of emptiness, because we have come to the conclusion that we do something quite similar in our work with clients and we have come to the conclusion that this is being covered. And it seems to be that we are working with people from a kind of emptiness, so to speak. So I wasn't conscious of it before, but the last couple of days I realized that in my work, as I also was talking with Neil and our experiences kind of matched, I am obviously working out of a place of emptiness when I work with clients.

[55:25]

It's a feeling of being empty of thoughts and free of thoughts and sort of like being a little dumb. It's almost like being an animal, but very relaxed, completely relaxed and without expectations. And then something happens which lets you plunge into the depth of it and from there something really fulfilling arises.

[56:32]

I understand. The question came up, that with emptiness there can be nothing. I have been also in the same group and the question or the aspect came into this that by emptiness it is not the absence of something. It must be something different because there is always something. So, therefore, the question of emptiness is not where one is basically not present or not open, where one is open but has no expectations and therefore is not somewhere between reality and what is happening at the moment.

[57:40]

And therefore there is a question if emptiness is not something that there is no I or no expectation, that we are directly open to what is happening in the moment and that there is nothing standing in between this experience which is this moment of reality. And... Yeah. Turn it off. Okay. Yes? Yesterday said someone in the group, we construct everything, but how can you say then the real nature of reality and things how they really are? Yesterday someone in the group said, we construct everything. But how can you then say the real nature of things or the things as they really are?

[58:47]

Are you asking me a question? Yes. You're asking me if everything is a made thing, a construct. I think in English, I'm told that in German, construct has the idea of planning to make something, or something like that. Not necessarily. Sometimes. In English, a construct is just something that's made. You know, somebody else does the planning. So you're asking, if everything is a construct, then how can we speak of the way things really are? They are constructed. They are. Why not? Yeah, the way things, if we say something in Buddhism, like to know things as they really are, usually means, first of all, to know, it means that we know things, that things are an act of knowing.

[59:55]

Things for us exist as an act of knowing. Because we're always talking about our experience, not reality. The whole emphasis is on our experience of reality, not the existence of reality. Also, how things actually exist is through our knowing of their existence. It is our knowing their existence. But also, all things are constructs. But also, all things are constructs. All things are constructs of the universe, of molecules, and they all change in relation to each other, and their relationship to each other determines how they exist.

[61:15]

All things are constructs of the universe, of molecules, and they all change in relation to each other, and they all change in relation to each other. Okay, good enough for now. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm saying is clearly true, but does its truth make any difference? Does its truth, if it is true, make our life any different? Well, I think it does, but it takes time to actually absorb it. and get our kind of, as we say, mind around it or body around it. Yes. You've been strangely silent most of the seminar.

[62:24]

You've been strangely silent most of the seminar. Yeah, usually you, you know. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. We had this discussion of not expecting and not remembering and then this moment of emptiness in between. And there is a parallel to also something which I experienced is the question when it is not past and it is not future, what is it then? And I experience the relationship with another person within this empty space as love.

[63:42]

And it is like putting the shoes down into this space. Yes, I understand. Oh! It's only the beginning. Okay. Yes. In our group, it was reported about difficulties to bring together the concept of emptiness with the heart. In our group, we reported about difficulties bringing together emptiness and heart. Above all, there were also difficulties with the last lecture before the small group of Roshi. And especially the difficulties were concerning a lecture of yours, of the four day, Amphota?

[65:07]

A lecture before we split in the little groups, which were concerned with emptiness. And we reported about experience where the reference point isn't there anymore. And that there is also a sadness that one cannot give enough love. And also the sadness that one isn't there at the moment completely. This concept of closeness was important, came up as an important moment for the experience of teaching. And the term of closeness came up as an important term in connection with emptiness.

[66:25]

Closeness. Intimacy, feeling close. Intimacy. Okay. Thanks, Kim. Can I say something? I wasn't that good. Oh, yeah, of course you can say something. I felt it was a bit like many of those experiences now recorded, because at the beginning we were quite at a loss. Everybody said, oh, maybe I got some idea, but I haven't got the feeling I can grasp anything of what was said before. And then we just started telling each other about our feelings and then something arised. It was a very warm circle then. It was very beautiful. Okay.

[67:41]

I wish I'd been there. Okay. Yes. Last night I was studying the love I feel for my daughter and I found out that often it's some kind of superficial mixed with being proud or something like this but when it's really this feeling of pure deep and unlimited love it's strange you say it's

[68:49]

and it feels so, it's fulfilling, but at the same time there is some kind of emptiness there. There is a feeling of being total and also something, some consciousness or knowing of impermanence. But I don't know whether this feeling of Emptiness comes before the love or at the same time? Do you say that in German? I was busy yesterday night with the feeling of love for my daughter. And I found out that she is often mixed with pride and other feelings. And then it came to the fact that when there is really this very deep pure, unlimited feeling of love, then at the same time, and this is the crazy thing, you say, oh, it feels fulfilling, but at the same time there is also this emptiness, also the feeling of being whole, and also the feeling or the knowledge of transience, and

[70:16]

Okay. Yes? This whole discussion is getting really heavy. And I'm somewhat feeling that we're all losing our innocence by building all these constructs to understand the constructs. And I'm wondering if emptiness is as simple as you all feel it, how can we bring that back into our real life? And actually I'm looking, or getting back my innocence and looking at it in a very simple way. Please do it yourself. When I was standing in front of Zen, I made a certain mistake and thought, my God, this is a view where everything is very simple, and now we are sitting here and building these incredible constructions.

[71:35]

Okay. Maybe we can open a door if we can't open a window. Our windows are steaming up. Well, these are difficult things to speak about. But I think from my experience in a way in the Dharma Sangha, this is certainly one of the best discussions or best approaches we've made to the experience of emptiness.

[72:59]

That emptiness is an experience, not a philosophy or idea. And you're equating innocence in a way with emptiness? To some extent, it sounds like. I think there's a quality like Sukershi's beginner's mind that's innocence or openness or a non-judgmental, spacious feeling. which are attitudes we can cultivate or have a feel for, which can anticipate and also be expressions of emptiness. Yeah, now, of course the word sunyata actually means, as you know, something more like without boundaries, a fullness without boundaries.

[74:33]

It doesn't actually mean emptiness. As you know, sunyata means a fullness without boundaries. But at an experiential level, we have a sense of form without substantiality or without location or impermanent. Without belief. And I think we have to kind of, I see what we're doing as a kind of work in progress. For me, it's a work in progress.

[75:34]

How do I... How do I continue this... discussion and... examination of this in myself with you over some time and as it goes along. And I hope it's in each of you a work in progress and that you'll sort of like cook this a bit, stir it up a bit in yourself. And the more it cooks in you, the more fruitful our discussions will be in the future.

[76:39]

And that's also, we couldn't have had this discussion in a Dharma Sangha's European seminar even a few years ago, I don't think. I think one of the fundamental aspects of this discussion or a background of this discussion is what is the role of the body, the territory of the body, in knowing and in realization. So, it's partly... We have a pretty simple... When we speak about the body, unless we speak about it as an object of medical attention or something like that, and Barbara Duden, who's a historian of women's bodies,

[78:31]

It's really outraged at the way women's bodies have become medical objects now and not their own way of being, their own living being. So that, for example, one of the simple examples is that the experience of quickening, which was traditionally understood as the indication that a woman was pregnant, The quickening is the pregnancy? No, quickening is an experience you have, which is sometimes like goldfish in your tummy or some kind of little something.

[79:54]

Most of us don't even know the word quickening anymore in English. Also die meisten von uns kennen dieses Wort Quickening. Ich glaube auf Deutsch gibt es sowas gar nicht. A few hundred years ago, a couple hundred years ago, everyone knew the word Quickening just like they know the word pregnancy or something like that. Und vor ein paar hundert Jahren kannten alle dieses Wort Quickening, wie man das Wort Schwangerschaft kannte. If a child was born to, you know, local duke or something, when the, or rather, when the woman would announce, I feel quickening, it was spread throughout the land that there was going to be a baby born. And now if you go to a doctor and say, I feel this, he says, well, it's too early for you to actually feel this.

[80:55]

Now, except for the body is something we walk around in. I mean, I remember, I think it was Teller who invented the hydrogen bomb. One of the key people who invented it. He said, you know, he had this big fat pot. He said, I don't need this. I could just be a brain in a Petri dish and I'd be just fine. Yeah, and we got the bomb instead, right? So... If he'd only known how much his body was part of his thinking, he might not have done it.

[82:00]

Now, it might have been Herman Kahn and not Teller who said that about his brain, but anyway, in any case, either could have said it, I think. Okay. So I think generally we speak about, you know, hearts and minds. And the heart is the organ, but also the feeling, and the mind means really brain, too, and reason, rationality, etc., So we have a fairly simple culture, I think, cultural framework in which we conceive of rationality and emotion as two different realms in some kind of conflict with each other.

[83:04]

In the English-speaking world, we had C.P. Snow, who really made this a kind of big topic between scientists who were brains and literary people and so forth who were hearts. In Greek times, they had a much more complex, I don't know, how real it was, but a much more complex sense of how the body was the seat of knowing and consciousness and so forth.

[84:25]

And I think that they did have more of a sense, like a yogic culture does, that the world proceeds from here. It's not outside of here. But they also, they had deities and gods, but the gods could fall in love with human beings and they were, you could... The deities could be affected by human beings and were not so different from humans. And in yoga culture, a deity is partly defined as someone who has ecstatic breath. In the sense that someone who has consistently blissful breath will affect other people almost as if they're some kind of...

[85:36]

spiritual being or ubermensch or something like that. Is that the right word? So this is all... All of these things we call deities and gods in yoga culture and Greek and Roman culture were kind of right here among us. Now, the conception of a monotheistic culture It's elegant, simple, hard to argue with.

[86:55]

But it simplifies us as human beings. Because we have hearts and minds and there's grace someplace we wait for. I don't mean that you can't have a sophisticated and deeply articulated felt experience of Christianity or Judaism. And again, my friend and teacher, Ivan Illich, who is half Jewish, and one of the leaders of the Catholic Church at one time, was certainly one of the most heartfelt, loving persons I've ever met. But he also had, for some strange reason, a completely yogic sensibility.

[87:58]

And he had a very yogic sensitivity. Like he'd say, when I dance the waltz, I have a different body. I am a different body than when I dance the tango, which, by the way, I don't know how to dance. Now that sense that we have in different contexts, we actually have a different body, which he felt. is really almost heresy in our Christian world. He also discovered that this untreated cancer that hung off his face, which constantly pained him so much he fell on the ground sometimes with pain, He could control the pain or absorb the pain by concentrating on a certain point on his shin.

[89:23]

This is a yogic sensibility, not the usual way of thinking about things. In my experience, he was the person I knew best who consummately realized the potentialities of our culture. But for most of us, you know, heart, mind and the real power is outside us somehow. It's a big shift when you bring the power of this world into yourself. I think we have to stop in a moment and have a break. But let me say And I say this not knowing how to say it.

[90:59]

Usually we think something like, I think we usually think something like, that this person is affecting my mind. You feel the person in your thinking. But I think it's more accurate that, excuse me for saying so, I'm in all your bodies and all your bodies are in my body. Aber ich glaube, es tut mir leid, wenn ich das so sage, aber ich bin mehr in eurem Körper und ihr seid in meinem Körper. It's not our minds which are mixed up together, it's our bodies which are mixed up together. Es sind nicht unser Mein, unser Geist, der vermischt ist miteinander, es sind unsere Körper. What world is this when we actually admit it to ourselves?

[92:07]

Was ist das für eine Welt, wenn wir das tatsächlich uns eingestehen? there's actually an almost uncontrolled intimacy that develops through yogic practice that our culture doesn't know yet how to accept or assimilate. Now let's have an uncontrolled, intimate coffee break. Thank you very much. I'm sorry we have to end so early, you know, but travel, snowstorms... I'm sorry that we have to stop so early. Travel and snowstorms.

[92:59]

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