Anything relevant or surprising or difficult to make sense of? Ulrike? You described the Bodhisattva that he sometimes collapses in the self-referential. respectively he allows that this happens when he notices that with somebody and opens him or herself up again and by doing that also allows this to happen in this other person.

[01:26]

And when you told us about this example of accompanying somebody in dying, so that the person who is accompanying the dying, person is somehow accommodating to the increasing speed of this person who is dying and the breath getting faster. And then again, when exhaling, slowing down the breath. My question is, how does the self-respect come about?

[02:39]

So is this... Is it necessary to leave one's own state of mind in a certain way to allow for this meeting with this other person and then also to allow that this also changes in the other person? Yeah. But I wouldn't be... I wouldn't only give this an idealistic interpretation. The Bodhisattva on the path understands collapsing into self-referencing. Because the process of freeing yourself from self-referencing is also the experience of knowing when you are self-referencing.

[03:53]

And you know and get familiar with that you usually feel rather better when you're not self-referencing. So it gives that kind of dynamic understanding gives us a more realistic take on what it means in Buddhism to be free of the self.

[04:57]

In other words, there's a spectrum which we all are involved in from more self-referencing to less self-referencing. And to notice and study that spectrum is Zen practice. And when you become... when it's something you understand and a craft of maintaining and a craft of establishing and maintaining beneficial states of mind. then it can become a practice with others.

[06:04]

And although the... the example of accompanying somebody who's dying is extremely simple and easily understandable. But at the same time it's one of those iconic or encapsulated or folded in experiences, that's representative of all of practice. So if you really understand that, you can feel in every circumstance that in a way you're holding another person i mean usually at a distance and uh and your breathing may or may not be uh in some kind of rhythmic relationship to theirs

[07:34]

And I had mentioned before that there was research done in the 70s, I guess, in which somebody took a film like us sitting here. And for some reason they slowed it way down. So it was like, you know, like that, you know. And what they noticed is the entire room Very quickly after a kind of common feeling got established.

[08:38]

The entire room was in some kind of coordinated movement. Eyes blinking. And it was more subtle than just everyone blowing their nose at the same time or coughing. But mindfulness practice is sort of what couldn't see a density of mindfulness practice and a suspension of associative thinking or trying to It's a knowing which occurs outside the field of usual knowing.

[09:53]

You can be intensely in tune with this. And is it Milton Erickson who was the kind of genius at this kind of thing? Yeah, you can... And the Bodhisattva is more somebody who can tune into that field and actually affect the field. Someone else. Yes, Christine. Surprising. Yesterday you said there could be a Martian amongst us.

[11:13]

And you said that we are less similar than we think. Yeah. and that we pretend that we are more similar than we are. And it was maybe less surprising, but more opening for me. surprising would be a Martian if actually a Martian would be present. But when I think about my difficulties to befriend with this understanding of space,

[12:18]

and when I realize how I fuse my experiences in the channels I already know, then it helps me a lot and it feels very good when you say something like you are not as similar as you think. And I think when we talk to each other about our experiences, it's quite good to have a kind of space or freedom or kind of Yeah, freedom in knowing and also in recognizing that we don't have to experience everybody the same.

[13:33]

And it might be good for our sangha to cultivate this feeling that we are not that similar as we commonly think we are. Because this enables us to express the differences, and that's quite interesting. And this was what was surprising about what you said yesterday. Thank you. If you yourself have that, nurture or develop that feeling, Without saying anything, it will be present in the saga in various ways. A new combination of tastes. Surprising, relevant?

[15:11]

So, not understanding, surprising and relevant, they are somehow becoming denser and denser in the movement of a spiral. And when this spiral is turning to movement, it's pointing at lively attention. Okay. Yes, Tara? So I have a question concerning what you responded to, Ulrike. Hitze. So during the practice week in February, you talked about the low and the medium heat or temperature.

[16:40]

Can you say something in German? And that what you responded to is this pointing in the same direction as heat? Yeah. But heat is a metaphor for density of attention. Okay. Yes, what? I think what surprised me most is the depth to which your expression, my goodness, hit me. In German it's difficult to translate because they all go, my God. And it feels like an expletive, and I said this yesterday, it just doesn't go away.

[17:47]

It's like an expletive for... A feeling of something, or you just come from it. It's an all-out style of discursive annoying. I have very difficult words about this. And it opened up the next expletive, my goodness. It opened up the next expletive, my goodness. Okay, yeah. Thank goodness, my goodness. A sense of surprise and a sense of trust. Okay. As long as it's understood, trust in goodness. And focus your attention on me, which I'm not familiar with in groups of people. Okay, thanks. Richard? Oh, translation. Someone. I'm surprised.

[18:50]

My goodness, my God, my God, my goodness, my God. Yeah. I have not understood the trust in God. And with that, I hope to be able to enter into the depth of awareness that I know with people. And it is trust in this God. Mich hat erstaunt, dass der Bodhisattva offensichtlich nichts offensichtliches macht.

[20:05]

Er macht offensichtlich nichts offensichtliches. Er tut nicht explizit etwas gegen Aktion. So what was amazing for me is that the Bodhisattva doesn't act obviously. but that, as I understood it, he first opens the room for himself So as far as I understood, he opens up for himself to arrive from a self-referential thinking to a multi-referential thinking. And then he affects in a certain way by opening these rooms and in this way enables the opening of these rooms also for other people.

[21:18]

By rooms you mean space. Space, sorry. So that's kind of a different way than we would normally assume that somebody is helping other people or providing the provision for helping. Yeah. If you practice and study the first and the source parameter of generosity, you develop an attitude You take the mental posture. Of being willing to give this person anything they need.

[22:21]

And on a practical level that might mean money or food or... encouragement or whatever. It has a practical dimension like just to help somebody that you see is in trouble. But then the other end of the spectrum is is that you're offering your practice. So it has this practical dimension with this other dimension of practice dimension.

[23:25]

And so when you're facing this person, And this isn't some generalized thing or being a politician, president of something. This is just a functioning in the forest forested people. Yeah, the word forest in Japanese is also the word for sandal. But when you take on the a mental posture of offering your practice. Then you immediately have the responsibility of what is your practice.

[24:28]

another way to look at this is all of us have some kind of idea, feeling. We'd like to meet a really wonderful ideal person. A teacher or just a good person. And in some senses we're looking for such a person. In school and so forth. At some point you realize, you know, you have to be that person you're looking for. You can't expect someone else to do it. So in helping another person you have a feeling I'm becoming I'm intending to become the kind of person that I would like to exist and and And the intention is undifferentiated from being present for the other person in ways that they want to exist.

[26:08]

In your practice you have to develop this intention that you will be this person that you would like to be and this intention is independent of whether other people exist who also want this. And the second parameter is discipline, which can mean a meeting of each person. Is the discipline required to just be there to receive? So you're willing to be generous and you're also willing to receive.

[27:18]

So it's not some hierarchy of I'm here to help you. But more a field of I'm completely willing to be helped by you. And then the third is patience. And patience here is the willingness to be in this space and just to let it happen. Suzuki Roshi told me when I was a beginning student.

[28:41]

And I've mentioned this a number of times over the years. Told me to put my mind in my hands. These were his instructions. And I, you know, it's one of those simple things that I had a lot of trouble with. I had no relationship to the word mind which allowed me to put my mind in my hands. You know, I visualized taking my brain or something and sticking it in my hand. I didn't know how to get my mind into my hands. Okay, but now I would say, that what he meant could be best said in English and in a culture where mind is not thought of as an entity but as an activity and what is the most

[30:07]

activity of mind as awareness or attention. So now if I were giving a similar instruction to somebody I would say put attentional put your put attentional mind in your hands. But even that's not very good. So I would say, at least in English, put attentional space in your hand. Or more accurately than that, I would say, turn your hands, thumbs, into attentional space.

[31:43]

So your hand doesn't feel like your hand anymore. But feels like attentional space. And you're moving attentional space around. And once you feel attentional space in the hands, it's clear that your whole body can be attentional space. But your hands are a doorway to the attentional space in the body. So, I mean... There are theories of how human beings developed and blah, blah, blah.

[33:06]

And the most convincing ones I've read stem around the hands that led our development. So our hands are not only the way we bring attention to the world, to a piano or to a computer, to a friend. They are also a doorway into the attentional space of the body. Okay. Clear?

[34:14]

Crystal clear? Crystal clear. Now, we have the question of what is other? Are you other and I'm not other? Are you other than I am? The problem of otherness is something you can only, I don't think it's possible really to, you can philosophically explore it, I don't think you can philosophically define it. But you yourself are in the midst of otherness all the time. And sometimes the others are otherness and you're not otherness. And sometimes you're also others.

[35:22]

And how do you explore, what does it mean to say other? Okay. Okay. Now... These twirling dolphins are others. I am neither a dolphin nor a piece of wood. Yes. But in a way, my hands are also other. When I bring attention to my hands, I'm bringing my attention to my body as a kind of other, other than my mind.

[36:27]

So I can bring attention to this, but it can't receive attention the way my hands can. Yeah. But I can... There's a sculptor who may come to Johanneshof named Craig, who just sent me an email. He's a wonderful sculptor. He may sculpt a Gandharan-type Western Buddha for us. Nun, es gibt einen Menschen, der heißt Craig, der ist ein Bildhauer und der hat mir gerade ein E-Mail geschrieben und der kommt möglicherweise auf den Johanneshof und wird dort einen Gandhara... So for years I've been lucky in finding museum-quality Buddhas for the places I practice.

[37:36]

But in case my luck runs out, maybe I have to start having them made. Okay. So... I've made an act of bringing attention to the otherness of my hand. But the act of bringing attention attentional space to the hands, is to make them in a way not other than the mind. And this action and this action of bringing attention to otherness.

[39:04]

Now that you know how to do it, and now that you've done it, all the other feels like your hands. Everything feels like attentional space. I realize that's a leap. And maybe a leap that would be hard for philosophy to make. But as a practitioner it's my actual experience. So that the a simple act like discovering how to turn the hands into attentional space, recognizing that the hands are other than the mind and now non-other than the mind, that experience

[40:25]

Other becomes none other. Somehow that unfolding of the mind in the hands allows mind to unfold in the field of engaged objects. Again, I feel I'm on the edge of getting a little too far out here. But I know Christa quite well. Thank goodness. But knowing Christa, If I look at Krista, like in the cafe the other day, in the hotel lobby, and while I'm present with you, I put my hand over my face.

[42:06]

I feel this my face is yours somehow I mean I know it's not quite true and I know you haven't felt my hand probably probably but the experience is I'm not different but the experience is I'm not different So we could call that presentation instead of representation. the world is as it's presented and not as it's re-presented.

[43:15]

So there's no concept of otherness. If there's otherness, there's a re-presentation, a representing. Okay, so I guess I've chosen during this seminar to present the Bodhisattva practice and to emphasize Bodhisattva practice as a form of receptivity I think I'm emphasizing that I don't know when I come to a seminar what emphasis I'm going to take.

[44:33]

I don't know what I'm going to say until I see what I say. And doing the seminar becomes a discovery for me of what I'm emphasizing but don't know yet that I'm emphasizing. And I trust practice enough. or the non-otherness I can enter with you to show me what we together can practice.

[45:46]

And maybe you will have the experience sometimes of, well, he's talked about something I wanted to have talked about or thought about. And that happens partly just because any topic is permutations of things that you would think about. But it goes beyond potential permutations to a real micro non-otherness. Okay.

[46:58]

And so, my feeling of the emphasis has been that Bodhisattva practice is and certainly begins with just how we live with others. And that living with others is, of course, inseparable from living with ourselves. And that exploration of how we exist with each other, unless you, like Paul, live in the wilderness, Most of us encounter other people more often than we do Zaza.

[48:15]

And every encounter is a chance to meet a Buddha. Suzuki Hiroshi used to say, each of you is just showing what kind of Buddha you are. Each encounter is a noticing how we feel about others. And an awareness of how we could be with others. And an awareness that we could be a little more like a Buddha. But at the same time an acceptance of how we were.

[49:29]

I could have been worse. So that dynamic is there sometimes. It causes a feeling of shame. That was a pretty dumb thing I just said. But that feeling of shame too is the practice of the Bodhisattva. And when you come into this field of presentation non-otherness as presentation it's a kind of space but also a kind of energy which everything is energizing everything else

[50:31]

And you feel nourished by just the field of interdependence. Okay. Good. Good. I feel so good, healthy in this field of bodhisattvas.

[53:08]

Each of us a bodhisattva and each of us also a bodhisattva and each of us also who we keep finding ourselves to be. Everything presents itself.

[54:54]

There is nothing hidden. what that Rilke poem, at least in English, there is nothing which does not see you. It ends in translation with these two lines. The archaic torso of Apollo. There is nothing which does not see you. You must change your life.

[55:57]

You must change your life and accept your life. That's me. Thanks.

[56:18]

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