I would try to do it as you go along and be nourished as you're doing it. And when it ceases to nourish you, stop. And you make a really rigorous rule. And so then you have to reach way inside or into the situation and find what can I do that nourishes me and others. I think in the end it brings out creativity and, you know, cliffhanging. that in the end I would make your seminars work even better. Because if it doesn't nourish you, they pay a price too.

[01:03]

That's my experience. But sometimes you have to be quite tough with yourself. If I feel I'm not nourishing and something's off, just stop. And if a couple of seminars fail, that's the way it is. You make yourself learn. Because you see the problem. Now you have to put yourself in a situation where you find the resources to solve. I've sometimes had to give a lecture. I particularly do not like giving public lectures. I prefer the more the people have some experience of practice, the better. Just a large group of strangers.

[02:14]

It's not my favorite thing to do. But I've been in a couple of times in a situation I'm supposed to give an hour lecture. And there might be 800 people or 1,000 people at once. You know, there's some problem. And after five minutes, I just don't feel good. So I spend another five minutes or so winding up, and I say, that's all I have to say, and I leave. And they think it's very zen. I almost went through myself in the East River in New York one night.

[03:14]

I almost, I felt like going and throwing myself in the East River. I felt so lousy after doing that. I swam to sugar. What else? Well, you have to do the same thing, but it's guided. Well, I don't know. If I was teaching in a school system, for example, I would keep experimenting with how to do it in a way that was nourishing. And when it wasn't, I suppose I would say, read your book, I'm going to sit at my desk or something. What do you do, Marie, teaching mathematics?

[04:14]

That's why I want you to all break into discussion groups so I can learn. Okay. Anything else? Then I'll say a few things and then we can end. But if you want to make it go longer, you have to say something. Oh.

[05:23]

But it's short enough. OK. Since yesterday afternoon, my person was reinforced very much. Reinforced? Yeah. OK. Reinforced you. Reinforced? Yeah. That you should practice. It's perfect to meet our vision. So far, it's very beautiful. But I think it also would be a different way because, well, I can also decide to try to get really big or try to be a big manager. Whatever. And I think from a pure intellectual point of view, those is OK, and those who . And then we wrote down this six-fold way, and I think it was psychological disposition.

[06:30]

A healthy disposition. A healthy? Yeah. Well, I think maybe if everything is possible, you can decide everything, and it depends on your Yes, in German please. und ich habe mich schon überlegt, dass man sich entscheiden kann, oder eben auch für andere Sachen entscheiden kann, wie zum Beispiel versuchen, live zu werden, oder ein großer Manager zu werden, um hier wieder hinzukommen. Und ich habe mir gedacht, man kann sich für alle entscheiden, man kann sich einfach dafür oder dafür entscheiden, und woher man sich entscheidet, denkt man vielleicht bloß davon aus, zu einer Großdiskussion, obwohl es mehr ist als möglich. I think my feeling is practice should be an adult choice.

[07:34]

I don't emphasize Buddhist kindergartens or something like that. Though I think it's good that your children are exposed to your feeling of Buddhist practice. I was reminded of an example of it recently when I was in Portugal. The first letter my daughter, who is now 36 or so, wrote to Santa Claus. when she could first write. So it was before school, but she could kind of write before school. And she made capital letters and small letters, a mixture of letters.

[08:36]

I still have the letter somewhere. It said, Dear Santa, please give me a wishing wand. Bitte gib mir einen Zauberstab. A Zauberstab, yeah. Please give me one to learn German. Please give me a wishing wand. Bitte gib mir einen Zauberstab. And a machine that tells me what I don't need. Und eine Maschine, die mir sagt, was ich nicht brauche. And then there's a little PS. And when I'm rude. And when I'm impolite. That was a Buddhist influence. She wants a wishing wand, but a machine that tells her what she doesn't need. I told her, if you have such a machine, you don't need a wishing wand.

[09:36]

I'm Santa Claus. What do you think of my red shirt on? Okay. Yeah, I think it should be a choice. And do you want to be a big manager that's poor or rich? I don't know, whatever, fine. I considered it myself. I was offered to be head of Fidelity Mutual Fund in Japan at one time. Fidelity Unit will fund or one of the head of it.

[10:55]

And I would have been paid enough to support a lot of Buddhist centers. My teacher was quite skeptical. But in the end, I wanted to take care of him, so they paid me a salary for several months, and I sent it back to them and quit. But Sukhiyoshi used to say you could do something very thoroughly, like whatever your job or life is, And often there's some gap. You're not fully satisfied. And that's where practice comes in. And we want to find some way of life, whatever it is, that uses all of us. And that we feel all of our powers and potentialities are used.

[12:18]

And even more than that is asked of us. So that's why the main reason I practice Buddhism, because it's endless, I can never accomplish it, so it changes me. I won't come to the end. Okay. Mm-hmm. It could be possibility. I have studied this sort of gap. Oh, no? And I think I have an idea of my gap, which I felt you could go with the question why, for example, in Christian. So what do you think? Why ? Many of us are connected with those Christianities.

[13:37]

Well, I think the part of being modern, and if I give a sort of sociological answer. Part of being modern is to reject modernity. Well, that's not what I meant. But to reject cities, civilization, too much complexity, and so forth. But part of that movement you find in art and philosophy and so forth, for instance, Picasso going to look at African masks. Ezra Pond trying to get out of language and come to the image, the ideogram, etc., Trying to get to some deeper basis.

[15:03]

And one of the roles actually Asia has played for centuries in the West is some sort of idea that it's a deeper basis or more wisdom. And I think also Asian, particularly Japanese, have promoted the idea they have more wisdom because for very nationalistic reasons. So I think there's a lot of reasons Buddhism has come into the West. I think in the end why it probably is having such a far-reaching effect is the emphasis on the body as a yogic practice, and why so many now, at least in America, classical churches are bringing really the Zen kind of meditation into the monastic monasteries.

[16:28]

No, I think our culture cut us off from the body. But a friend of mine, some of you know, Kaz Tanahashi, says in Japan, the best thing to be is a Christian. But you can really see your own culture practicing Christianity. And he thinks in the West the best thing to do is be a Buddhist. Okay, so then what about the question of Christianity and Buddhism? Well, I don't know much about Christianity, actually, I'm afraid to say. And because I was brought up in an atheist family. And that's one of the reasons, of course,

[17:29]

also appeals to people because it doesn't depend on a theological vision of the world or creator god. So it appeals to academics and scientists who have had Christianity educated out of the But also because of its non-theological emphasis, it's able to be combined with other religions. And in some ways, Buddhism fits together very well with Christianity and Sufism and some other teachings. I think at the point at which you really deal with that there's no outside this system, this is not something created. It's a container. It's not a container. It's a self-organizing, unpredictable event, ungoverned except by our momentary action.

[19:04]

Ungoverned by anything but our momentary action. When you practice at this level, it's very hard to be also a Christian. But you might be a Christian in the feelings and the emotional development and world view that's Christian. But it might be hard to be a believing Christian. But because Buddhism isn't a believing teaching. So I think that one has to make a choice whether one practices in a way that works within your own personal life and culture or you chose to practice in a way that challenges your own personal views and culture.

[20:10]

It's just a human teaching. Just like you wouldn't say physics is a Western science. Yes, it's been developed in the West, but it applies all over the place. so Buddhism in that sense is not Asian it's just a human teaching but it's not really clear why so many people are interested in Buddhism I don't know much of the current interest is pretty superficial There's a lot of celebrity breathing around. Which has a good side, but... Okay. So let me... Anything else before I say a few things? Nobody dares move a finger. Oh, yes.

[21:38]

Oh, that's two fingers. Yes, please. Reality, yeah. Sure. Please. But thinking it over, I don't like it too much. Because it means that that's me, and I'm in the center, and I am such a view of the world.

[22:42]

And I have to do it like that, I don't know. Yeah. points around all the things sitting and people and all connected in some way like that. Yes. That's what I meant. Thank you. Thank you. Every point is a center. I'm a part of the world, of the universe. And at the same time, I'm at the center, because it depends on the perspective. And I think you need courage to see yourself at the same time small and big.

[24:01]

For me, it's a very good example to stand beside a tree. Then, for me, the tree is in the center because it's so huge. Yeah. But maybe the tree sees it that I am a center because she's small and she can do other things. So the center shifts all the time, but the consciousness that I'm also the center... Sorry, the chat detail. I don't understand why there has to be a center. Why do you have to be saying that you see that in that? And that is not the algorithm, not the other one. And there's no one who's in the back of what you said more or less.

[25:15]

Wait, over? Wait. Maybe the other one. And I always decide that it works with dealing, because that way, it's not a concept. You're quite right. Thank you. Now, a little of this occurred in Deutsch, so. So I Thank you. As I go home, and this home is a center where I find refuge, at the same time I can go out of the house and then, yeah, there are other centers.

[26:48]

I have a good picture of the Jewish place. There is a, the way I say it in German, a Jewish mountain. . There's a story in the Jewish tradition which illustrates it. You have a jacket with two pockets, and in every pocket there is a message. The one message says, you're only a grain of dust. And the other says, just you, I... I entrusted you the universe.

[27:49]

So in this tension you have to live today. Well, if I can speak about the way Buddhism sees this, that yes, there's a net like that. And sometimes it's called Indra's net, when it's worked out in the Huayen teaching. And it's also in this koan of the pure body of reality. A young man is asked, what is the pure body of reality? And he says, a flowering hedge. And this monk or layperson with no dummy who asked this question, he asked a very astute follow-up question.

[28:56]

What is it to go on like this? So a monk asks already quite a question, what is the pure body of reality? And Yan Men says a flowering hedge. We could say the conifer, forest. And then this fellow says, what is it to go on like this? And he then says, a golden-haired lion. And the golden-haired lion is both this sense of courage to be present in each moment.

[29:57]

But it also means it's one of the Huayen images of on every hair of the lion there's another lion on every hair of that etc. So this sense of not interdependent but interpenetration means that that each point is also a center. All points are centers in the sense of interpenetration because everything is present in it, and all points are part of an interdependent network too. That's the Buddhist understanding of it. Yeah.

[31:11]

Now, if you can come into an actual experience of the interdependent, this is quite wonderful. And you may also find, if you continue And knowing this experience, you come into this other experience of interpenetration. Yeah, I think that's Stuart Kaufman, who I mentioned the other day, he's a complexity theorist. And his image of the earliest form of life is when a, do you remember how he put it? When an autonomous agent is swimming upstream in a glucose gradient,

[32:16]

When an autonomous agent of cell or any kind of cell is swimming in a glucose gradient, in other words, something of sugar food, and it's feeding itself, and it completes a work cycle, this is the first thing you can really say is, bye. Okay. And the idea is this thing is independent. It's autonomous and it completes work. Which has this idea that each of you has to do work. to hold your place. You just don't have your place. You hold your place. So Stu says you can't even have a definition of light unless you have that. And this idea of everything's a center means there's no center. Mm-hmm. Now, there's a couple of things I'd like to just throw out, because Tsukiyoshi said, for example, .

[33:45]

He said, the oneness of duality. And I think that one of the things we don't forget Which I'm trying to emphasize. And as I said, I believe the other day, there's no generalization of emptiness. There's the particular emptiness I might experience with Leonard. Knowing Leonard well, And if I see that there's no Leonard, there's no self there to find, he may object to my saying that because he may feel opposite.

[34:54]

But anyway, if I look in myself, there's nothing I can, no matter how closely I examine, there's nothing I can finally say is self. So the experience of emptiness is when you look for something and find it's not there. Like Alessandro had to leave. So I might come in and I look everywhere for Alessandro. And I don't find him. So that's the emptiness of Alessandro. The emptiness of the absence of Alessandro. So that each moment, it's not a generalization of emptiness, it's this particular emptiness.

[36:03]

Maybe the activity of not finding substantiality. Or the activity of not being able to grasp the uniqueness of this moment. So the oneness of duality is that is that in the act of seeing or dissolving dualities is the oneness of duality. In the act of dissolving duality, there's the oneness of duality. But it's also in the phrase like, not one, not two, we say in Buddhism. If you say it's one, that's not good. If you say it's two or many, it's not right. And not oneness is not the same, or not two-ness is not oneness.

[37:03]

It's a kind of movement. Not two, not one. Not dual, dual. And we create that in the relationship. It's not existing here. It's in the relationship. Sukhiroshi says we renew our perception this way all the time. So he says, he described it as negating everything as usual is to know things as they are. Everything as it is is the negation of everything as it is usually. It's like they pull everything away, and it's just kind of a nakedness.

[38:08]

But it only exists for a moment, and then the next moment. So, again, in earlier Buddhism, they had a more negative view of things. The monk couldn't handle money. Which meant the monk had to have a servant. He had to pay for something. In later Buddhism, there's the emphasis on that we don't have to protect ourselves from attachment. Or protect ourselves from a contaminating world. But the world is perfect as it is. And we almost take it for granted now, the world is perfect as it is.

[39:15]

It's some idea like that present. But really, is the world perfect as it is? How do you know it's perfect as it is? I mean, in every way you look at it, it's full of a lot of problems. So what act of knowing opens us to the world in its perfection? So that's what the pure body reality means. Yeah. So Yuen-Len says a flowering hedge. How do we know a flowering hedge? so that we have this experience of the pure body of reality, or an experience of suchness. And let me end with this, trying to say, describing, defining suchness as that which can be only known through itself. And when you find occasionally, I like this statement, when a healthy conscious attitude arises,

[40:35]

And a healthy conscious attitude. And then it gets permeated by serenity. Anyway, there's some other phrases. Do you remember exactly the phrase? Yeah, did you read it? Yeah, please. Okay. Okay. What's interesting is the first word, when, and arises. Because the when means it's not all the time. It happened this moment or that moment. And it arises even for a moment. You think you have to practice in such a way that it happens all the time.

[41:59]

No, you only have to practice in such a way that it comes occasionally. Because the nature of time is occasionally. So if it comes occasionally, it only takes that long to die. And it only takes that long to change your life. It only takes that long to change your direction. So when this healthy conscious attitude arises, which is the same as the Bodhisattva vow, Only when that deep altruistic attitude has arisen, can you really practice and open yourself to this suchness which can be known only through itself. This suchness which can be known only through itself. Did you find it? OK. Yeah.

[43:10]

Right, yeah. Connected with sensual... Oh, yeah, sensual interrelatedness. Of the world. Penetrated through serenity. Penetrated by serenity, yeah. connected with wisdom, Then you can pray out. And that's the first statement in the Pali Abhidharma, which is an intricate analysis of how the mind works. But it says you can't understand this. You can't understand it or practice it until you have a healthy conscious attitude. linked to the interrelated sensual embodied world, accompanied by and permeated with serenity, inseparable from wisdom,

[44:24]

So this we can say is the bodhisattva vow, and we can also say it's the bliss consciousness of the Sambhogakaya. And at the cheerfulness Sambhogakaya. And the cheerfulness of the saved. But it doesn't mean you have to have that all the time. It means you just have momentary experiences of this cheerfulness. And when those momentary occasions arise, it can open you to understanding and open you to practice. That's quite enough, I think. Shall we sit for a few minutes? Oh, Dieter James, sweetheart, this lovely day has...

[45:37]

Well, it's contagious. You're singing it contagious like that.

[46:02]

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