Yes, the first occasion for these Buddhist days is a birthday. The Deutsche Buddhistische Union, the Dachverband der Buddhisten in Deutschland, wird 40 Jahre alt. Und wir haben uns gedacht, das kann man feiern, wenn auch 40 Jahre sehr wenig sind angesichts der zweieinhalb Jahrtausende, die die buddhistischen Lehren schon weitergegeben werden. Please, Richard and Ulrike, sit down. We are very happy to have you here, Richard. Thank you so much. Yes, when the topic of this summer university in Berlin became known, inner, outer peace, and the organizers approached the German Buddhist Union, whether we want to take part, we thought, that is certainly quite reasonable, since the Buddhists can say one or the other about the topic of peace.

[01:58]

Buddhism in Germany, Buddhism in the West, looks very different for different people. For the Westerners, very different from for the Buddhists from Asia, which we also noticed during the preparation. For us Germans, the question is very much about the inner development. We want to hear teachings, we want exercises and meditations. And our Asian friends bring us the Buddhas, they equip us with the rooms, they take care of the culinary delicacies and they refer more to their Buddhist groups as a piece of home in the foreign. Das macht es unterschiedlich, was wir hier suchen, die ausländischen Buddhisten in Berlin und die Deutschen, aber wir finden immer mehr zueinander und haben jetzt auch bei der Vorbereitung dieser Tage gemerkt, dass wir doch viel miteinander zu tun haben, wenn auch unsere Interessen unterschiedlicher sind. We asked Baker Roshi to hold this first lecture here and put it under the title, Is the West still to be saved?

[03:16]

We all know it's five past twelve. Some say it's already five after twelve. And there is the question of the Buddhist tradition. What can a teacher, who was born in the West, grew up in the West and has been a student of Suzuki Roshi for many years and co-founder of several centers, from a great Western Sangha, what can he tell us about what we might be able to do, think, feel, do, Thank you. Dankeschön. It's nice to see all of you here.

[04:37]

And I almost didn't come to this conference, although I'm quite a strong supporter of the Freedom University, the Peace University. But when the German Buddhist Union asked me to come, I said, well, I have to come. So I'm quite honored to be speaking here under the auspices of sponsorship of the German Buddhist Union. And also the Peace University and Uwe Morawitz's work, which I think is amazing what he's doing. Now, since I... I don't know.

[05:53]

Well, maybe I need amplification, but can you turn it down a little? Down a little. Can you hear me okay? Well, no. Well, I'll try to speak. Maybe you can rate. You just have to experiment, okay? Use the loudspeaker? Okay. Since I'm a Zen teacher, which means a Zen practitioner, it means I'm a meditation practitioner, I'd like to start out with a few minutes of meditation. Why weren't you sitting that way in the first place? So that I should say, because probably some of you aren't familiar with Zen meditation, the main posture is your back.

[07:17]

So even if you're sitting in a chair, there are, by the way, a few seats over there if somebody wants them. So even if you are sitting in a chair, still the main posture is your backbone. And you want to get used to opening your backbone up, having a lifting feeling through your backbone. And that lifting feeling through the back of your neck, up through the back of your head. And a relaxed feeling, simultaneously a relaxed feeling coming down through you.

[08:37]

And I'll hit the bell three times to begin and one time to end, and it won't be too long. Bye. The title of this talk is, I believe, Can the West be Saved?

[10:04]

I'm sure I didn't choose this topic. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. It's okay with me if the people in the other room bring chairs here. You can all move forward. I just heard from Sylvia that for safety reasons the middle aisle has to be a little bit free.

[11:10]

Thank you. Is that better? OK. Anyway, the topic is, can the West be saved? And this is one of those questions that can't be answered. I mean, how do we know whether the West can be saved?

[12:40]

Yet at the same time, I think for those of us who start practicing Buddhism, this is actually a question that works in us somewhere. First of all, it's rather difficult to, in one's Western culture or with a friends, family, schooling, and so forth. To choose a practice of Asian wisdom just to make the choice is pretty difficult. And sometimes the decision is made because we can't find what we need in our own culture. At the same time, your practice will only be effective if you practice with love of your own culture and your own way of being.

[14:09]

And the West has been turning to Asia for a very long time for some sense of wisdom, the wisdom of the East, the mystery of the East, and so forth. Philip Whelan, a friend of mine and somebody I practice with, one of his poems is something like, I praise those ancient Chinamen. I'm shortening the poem, of course, but anyway, I praise those ancient Chinamen. Also ich kürze das Gedicht ab und preise diese alten Chinesen.

[15:39]

Who left us a few words scrawled on a piece of paper held together by not much more than ink. Die uns ein paar Worte hinterlassen haben, hingekretzelt auf ein Stück Papier, das durch nicht viel mehr zusammengehalten wird als die Tinte. Their world, he says, their world and many others since gone to hell in a handbasket. And yet they were happy to have saved us all. I don't know if they're happy to save us all, but still we have that feeling maybe if we practice something like Zen, it may save us and save others. I'm not sure if they were really happy to have saved us all, but maybe Zen practice is something that can save us and others.

[16:44]

I was just in China for a number of weeks, and China has been through such severe social, political, and psychological dislocations in the last hundred years. that I would say in many ways they're as far from the Tang Dynasty and Sun Dynasty teachings as we are, maybe farther. In any case, if we're going to practice Buddhism, we have to make the practice our own. And not think of it as either Western or Asian. And if we're going to ask ourselves a question like this, can the West or the world be saved?

[17:57]

We have to ask, I think, first of all, what is there to be saved? And why save it? And in any case, all we actually have is the present. And so we can ask, can the present be saved? Well, perhaps our present can be saved. Because whatever the present is, it's something that arises from us, that we're a participant in. So if I have to work with, or you're working with a question like this, for me I always want to start with what is basic, how can I practice with this, or how can I discover, what teachings can I bring to it?

[19:35]

And when I work with such a question, and maybe you want to try it too, I always ask myself first of all the question, in what way can this sentence or this question work in me? And how can I bring the teachings to this sentence? Yes. If you're going to take practice as a craft, you have to go rather slowly and at your own pace of recognition. I would like you to look at the phrase, our present. What is our present? Deshalb würde ich Sie bitten, sich einmal die Frage zu stellen, was ist denn Ihre Gegenwart? Was ist unsere Gegenwart?

[20:36]

And of course our present or your present is something arising in your sense fields. Und natürlich ist unsere oder Ihre Gegenwart etwas, was in den Sinnesfeldern entsteht. Something arising in your consciousness. Etwas, das in Ihrem Bewusstsein entsteht. And this, you know, going slowly in practice, this is something you want to try to discover. How the present arises in your consciousness arises in your sense fields. Now of course, this is actually not so difficult to study, but it does take commitment and patience. And there are specific teachings for how to study the arising of consciousness.

[21:38]

And this is not, if you look at this, it's It's Buddhism, but it's a kind of inner science. It's a teaching certainly not limited to Buddhism. So if you want to do adept practice, you can study how your consciousness arises. Through the skandhas, we call the constituents of consciousness. And you can study how each of your sense feels, seeing, hearing, feeling, touching and so forth. How they exist separately and together.

[23:04]

And you can study how the four or five elements of you, the solidity of you, the liquidity of you, resonates with the solidity, liquidity, and so forth of the world. And if any of you want to do this, it's really not so difficult. It just takes some teaching and commitment and some patience. And I guarantee you, if you do it in months or not more than a couple of years, you will really find yourself deeply a participant in your own being. And you'll find that you've developed an interior consciousness, not just an exterior consciousness.

[24:20]

But Zen practice is not just adept practice, it's also, we can call, a direct practice. Now, in a way, Zen has developed direct practice because it's direct, but also because it allows you to teach Buddhism without simplifying it. So I would like to give you one or two direct practices. One is simply to find your ease. Now, to quiet your mind or to empty your mind of thoughts, it's rather a

[25:31]

An unapproachable idea for most of us. But to find your ease, we all know what it means to feel at ease sometimes, or to feel the tension taken off. And the word, at least in English, the root of the word ease is to put something down, like to put a suitcase down. So I would say if you practice meditation a few times a week for once a day or a few times a week for 15 or 20 minutes or 30 or 40 minutes, If you do nothing but try to find your ease, to see if you can be at ease, all of Buddhism will flow from this.

[26:59]

And this will be a gate that will reach deeply into your life. So when you sit down, you just notice if you feel at ease. And just to notice that you don't feel at ease is really valuable. I mean, we need to feel at ease. It makes sense, doesn't it? We need to feel at ease with our basic aliveness. Can you feel at ease just being alive?

[28:02]

Without doing anything, without distracting yourself, just with your own aliveness. Now, if you want to bring practices, traditional practices into this, like counting your breaths, your exhales, this is fine. Or in centering your posture until you can sit without any feeling of effort. Or having some image like consciousness articulated, comparative consciousness, kind of draining out of you like water through sand.

[29:17]

So you can take an image like that, or practices like with your breath, And see if it influences or helps you come to a deeper ease. As I often say, if you're not going to enjoy your life, who is? And if you can't enjoy your life, what's the value of saving anything? So the first practice of Zen is to find your ease, to find your own joy in your aliveness. So we sit down just to discover our ease or lack of ease.

[30:30]

So this is what I call a direct practice. You don't need any special teachings. All you need to do is recognize your own dis-ease and see if you can discover ease in all situations, but it's most directly visible in your meditation. And learning to sit still helps that a lot. Und dieses Wohlsein, das ist einem am einfachsten zugänglich in der Meditation und dabei hilft es, still zu sitzen. Und es hilft dann, wenn man sich nicht kratzt oder kratzen muss und einfach alles wieder dieser Stille übergibt.

[31:53]

But even when you find that you can sit quite still for, say, a quarter of an hour or half an hour or so, still inside, often you find some disturbance. Now the next step is just to accept the disturbance. Because when you just accept the disturbance, you begin to create a space around the disturbance, which in itself is ease. So I encourage you to practice this, finding your own ease.

[33:10]

This is a gift also for your family, your children, your friends, and so on. We are so resonantly connected that if you find your ease, you are intuitively showing other people how to find their ease. On our breath, on our voice, on our just way of standing, this ease is present. Now the other direct practice I would like to offer you is that you consider the present your only treasure.

[34:15]

Now, you know intellectually, if you give much thought to it, that the past is gone and the future isn't here yet. And even when the future comes, it's called the present. So even if you escape into the future, it will then be the present. So you've got to discover some way to make the present your treasure. Now, I would suggest that you practice with the feeling that the present is paradise. Now, you all know that the present is not paradise.

[35:37]

There's a heck of a lot of things wrong. But again, if there's a paradise, where else could it be? But here, there's nowhere else. We can say it's not here, but it must also be here. So can you discover the state of mind or way of being that discovers that paradise, or the pure land in Buddhist terms, is also here? The other day in the conference I talked for a few minutes, 15 or 20 minutes on the panel, and I mentioned the idea of accurately assuming consciousness. So that your initial, and we can say in English, initializing state of mind recognizes that everything is impermanent.

[37:00]

And that everything's changing. And that everything's interconnected. But there's also another basic recognition I didn't mention because it's very particularly Buddhist, but I'll mention it now. But there's no background reality to this reality. There's no reality out there which is separate from or different from this reality. In Buddhism, this is it, and this is all we've got. Sorry to tell you. So in Buddhism, there's no seeking for oneness.

[38:14]

Because oneness implies there's something, that there's this two-ness or variety of things and somehow there's oneness. In Buddhism, we say not one, not two. If you say everything is one, that's not right. It's also two, or three, or four. And if you say everything is two, that's not... Everything's divided, that's not right either. Und wenn Sie sagen, alles ist zwei oder geteilt, das ist auch nicht richtig. So we say not one, not two. Und so sagen wir nicht eins, nicht zwei. That's the closest language can come to it.

[39:36]

Das ist also die größtmögliche Annäherung der Sprache. So, and not two-ness is not oneness. Und nicht zweiheit ist nicht einheit. Ha, ha. So how do you practice? I would suggest you can take a phrase like maybe not oneness, but here-ness. Because if this is all we've got, you've got to figure out how to arrive in the present. And our teaching, our culture, our parents, everyone has taught us to behave and relate to ourselves through the past and future. And if you study and observe your own thoughts, you will discover, I think, that 99.9% of them reference either past or future.

[41:02]

And this takes us out of our body and puts us in a mental comparative framework which basically makes us sick. This doesn't mean it's not a useful way of thinking but it means it shouldn't be where you live. Now, since the past and future are only thoughts, while they're thoughts that may control our life, they're only thoughts. So the antidote to thoughts is thoughts.

[42:21]

And this is what is unique to Zen practice, is the use of phrases or thoughts in a mantra-like way. For example, again, you can use not oneness, here-ness. Or just here-ness. Or on each step, you have the feeling, I'm stepping into paradise. Why not? Could you get something better to do? So really, it's a wonderful challenge. You're stepping into the pure land. And you'll see that it's not exactly believable. But still, when you practice, like when you practice with noticing that you're not at ease, you've actually changed the direction of your life toward ease.

[43:54]

And when you notice that you don't feel you live in paradise, but you step forward with that gentleness, as if you were stepping into paradise, you're turning your direction toward paradise. There are two levels of reality, at least, not somewhere else, right here, enfolded within each other. One we can describe by a phrase like, just now is not enough. You need lunch, your dinner, your back is uncomfortable, so forth.

[45:09]

But there's another level of reality, which you'll certainly discover, I hope, excuse me for saying so, when you're dying, that just now is enough. So you can move into that deep patience. where just now is enough by actually repeating this phrase, just now is enough. With the feeling I don't need anything else. And if there's no background reality, also then...

[46:11]

This immediate situation is the source of all of science, of all of Buddhism, of all the sutras and so forth. The sutras were written in an everyday situation just like this. The sutras, the scriptures were written from reading our everyday immediate situation. So if you want to practice Zen, you need this deep confidence and faith that this immediate situation has all our suffering and all our joy in it right now, not in the past or future. And you learn to read the present or you learn to let the present read you.

[47:30]

Now again, this is another example of what I would call a direct practice. You just practice with a phrase like this, saying it over and over again, letting it seep into you in homeopathic doses. Just now is enough. You're walking somewhere, going toward a bus or something, but you feel just now is enough. And when your body and mind suddenly let you feel that, a deep ease will come into you. This isn't really Buddhism. This is just a kind of common sense. So I suggest again these two practices of in your meditation trying finding out, seeing if you can come to a deep ease.

[49:09]

And recognizing when you're not at ease and learning how to accept and be in the midst of being not at ease without distracting yourself. This is a direct practice. You don't need to know anything about Buddhism. And I promise you amazing results. And I will receive testimonials next year when I come back. And if all of you try to walk in Berlin as if it was paradise, A year from now I will see a large glow over the city.

[50:41]

Actually that glow is already there. Because we're all trying to do that at some level even if we don't know it. Denn wir alle versuchen das irgendwo bereits zu tun, auch wenn wir es uns nicht klar machen. Why else are you in Berlin or anywhere if somewhere you don't think maybe it might be paradise? Und warum sind Sie in Berlin oder sonst irgendwo, wenn Sie nicht auf irgendeiner Ebene dabei denken, ja, vielleicht ist das das Paradies? So what about the courage to... notice this and not get always so discouraged. In English, the word courage, courage means heart.

[51:43]

So it means discouraged means disheartened and encouraged means inheartened. Now, there are three... I'm often discouraged. I mean, I look at this world, I read the newspapers, I see what people do, and I think, oh, gosh, you know, we're human beings. Ich schaue mir an, was in dieser Welt los ist. Also ich lese die Zeitung. Ich sehe, zu was Menschen in der Lage sind. Und ich sage mir dann wirklich, oh Gott, diese Menschen. Oh Buddha. Entschuldigung, oh Buddha. And I'm ashamed sometimes to be a human being.

[53:00]

At the same time, I feel there are three histories always present. One history is what's been reported and what's reportable. And in the university I studied history, so I know quite a bit about what's reported and what's reportable. And then there's also this discouraging history, shall we say, of what people will do when they can get away with it. And we see a lot of that in the world. We see it in politics and in business and in war and so forth.

[54:02]

And this history of what people will do when they can get away with it, is often not reported, and people try to hide this history from us in our school books and so forth. Und diese Geschichte, was Menschen anstellen, wenn sie damit durchkommen können, das wird oft nicht in den Geschichtsbüchern berichtet, die Menschen versuchen das eher zu verstecken. And everyone pretends it doesn't exist. And in a way, maybe they should, because we'd all get awfully discouraged, you know, if we really saw, when we really see this history of what people do when they can get away with it.

[55:08]

And as you get older, you see more of this and it is discouraging. But there's a third history too, is what people would do If they had the capacity. If they were Buddhas or if they really could do what really deeply nourishes them or is deeply to their heart's content. And this history is also not reported.

[56:12]

But I believe, I feel, that all three of these histories are always present. Because in every moment, There's not just what happened, what was reported, but the possibility of doing something you can get away with and the possibility of doing something unknown to others, perhaps, that deeply nourishes yourself and others. And civilization and culture develops through this compassion, really, of people in the end. mostly doing, feeling in the direction of what we would do if we had the capacity.

[57:29]

We're all doing this as much as we can and then we feel lousy when we don't and so forth. So I would advise you instead of feeling lousy when you don't, rather commit yourself to that history or those actions which are what you would do if you really could do what you really wanted to do in the best sense. And this is the history that answers the reported history and the history of what people sometimes do when we see wars and corruption and so forth. And if you live in this way, you really will be living in your own joy and own ease.

[58:46]

And you really will find yourself for a moment on some steps and sometimes many steps walking in paradise. The world seems stopped. The trees, the birds, the air, the buildings, everything feels like it's just as it should be. Just as it is. Now, These are, I'll stop in a moment, but I wanted to bring some examples of teaching to bear on this question.

[60:20]

And what I've just described could be called in a Buddhist sense the gates, the three gates of Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara and Samantabhadra. Now, the gate of Manjushri or the gate of wisdom means that you turn yourself inward and find everything you need. This is the movement toward discovering yourself through yourself and discovering yourself through emptiness. Or through the freedom from self.

[61:39]

We call that the gate of Manjushri, the gate of wisdom. And the gate of Avalokiteshvara is called the gate of compassion. And here we're not turning ourselves inward, we're turning ourselves outward. We're making ourselves available to people, open, patient, generous, and so forth. And this is understood not as morality so much, or something you do all the time, but a movement outward you do sometimes as practice. To just be present in the world and to listen to the world.

[62:44]

And to accept the world in its own terms. Now you can do this if you also have this inward turning direction in your meditation or in your experience where the world is entirely centered here. And that nourishment allows you to discover the nourishment of just opening yourself turning yourself over to listening to the world on its own terms.

[63:48]

And the gate of Samantabhadra is the gate you enter without taking a step. And that you're practicing when you say, just now is enough. And there's neither an outward turning or inward turning. Everything is stopped. And the whole world is deeply at ease. Now these are your own powers and capacities and are not so hard to come by. Commitment to this realization And faith in its possibility is really all you need, and a little patience.

[65:11]

And I think if each of us do come to at least approach this inward turning, outward turning and this stopped world in its own perfection, we can save ourselves and can save the West and maybe even the world. Yes, and if we succeed, on the one hand, to get to know this movement from the inside, from the outside, and in doing so to experience the attached world, where everything is in its place, I believe, if we succeed in getting a feeling for it, then we can perhaps save ourselves, perhaps the West, perhaps even the world. Now, I've tried to make this as accessible as possible without simplifying it.

[66:25]

And I believe it's directly in our own power. And if everything I said doesn't make sense, I hope it sticks somewhere in you and begins to work. And I appreciate this chance to talk with you and share this, what's important to me with you. Sylvia, what am I supposed to do next? Well, first I would like to thank you, first in English, very much.

[67:29]

You taught us some very nice tricks how to... Tricks? Yeah, tricks of the trade. Tricks of the trade, yeah. Wonderful Buddhist tricks of the trade which help us to discover the present as a treasure. And once the present is a treasure, I guess we find the joy in the presence and we understand that it's worth saving something, and once we understand there's worth saving something, maybe we find capacity, develop the ability to save us and everybody else. Richard Baker Roshi taught us a few wonderful tricks from the business, the Buddhist business, how we can make the present into a treasure or recognize the treasure of our present. And when we discover this treasure, dann merken wir, dass es etwas gibt, was sich zu retten lohnt. Und wenn wir das erkennen, dass es etwas gibt, was sich zu retten lohnt, denke ich, finden wir auch die Fähigkeit, entwickeln wir die Fähigkeit und das Geschick und die Kreativität, uns und alle anderen zu retten.

[68:44]

Richard, would you be willing to answer maybe some questions? Yeah, should we take a 10 or 15-minute break and then 10-minute break and then... What do you think? Anyone who's still here after 10 minutes... Pause, pause. The tendency, Baker Roshi, seems to be ask the questions immediately and rather have a longer break in between. Okay. Okay. Okay. We may wait a moment until they want to go out.

[69:47]

Those who are going out now, I would like to say that in the break, a quarter past seven, our Vietnamese friends will comfort us with food, with sutra recitations and with dances of Vietnamese children. Yes. It will also be outside the hall. We want to put up a bowl for those who would like to. You can also make a donation for the teachers here. Every step is a step into paradise. I go to the car and get in. And what comes next? I take steps and each step is a step into paradise and then I arrive at my car and get into my car.

[71:10]

What's next? Accelerate into paradise. Yeah. Your hands are on the wheel of the car. Find your ease in driving, in whatever you do. I mean, the basic feeling, for instance, say that you're in a car and you're driving and you say, I wish I'd meditated this morning. I think two kinds of trust are necessary when you have that thought. One is that you don't have to, you know, stop your car and go meditate, you can find what you need right then in driving.

[72:36]

It's not over there in meditation. It's here. That kind of trust is necessary. And second, because the thought occurred, I wish I'd meditated this morning. Some slight movement of your own mind and body produced this thought. And I think you can learn to trust this thought is a gate into what you need. Anyway, it's a kind of thinking or attitude that makes practice work. Okay. Okay. Could you describe the male and female nature of mind and how we can overcome the separation?

[74:12]

Male and female. Well, I think I have a female mind, but no one else thinks so. But I can say that in general, women intuitively understand practice sooner than men. And my experience is women don't commit themselves to it as much as men do, but women actually get it sooner. That's why I've always thought if I were only a woman, my practice would be perfect.

[75:19]

But I'm stuck with, I guess, being a male mostly. You can pray for a female reaper. But for me, mind, there's loaded consciousness, which is consciousness which has all the accumulations of, all the associations of your past, present and future in it. And the structure of that consciousness, which is created from childhood, consciousness has a structure. And that structure will have in it, I'm sure, maleness or femaleness.

[76:35]

But the unloaded consciousness, which I call awareness, which has neither... structure nor associations and is the we say the mind a blissful uh non-referential joy That mind of gratefulness and joy which arises for no reason. It's not Christmas, no one's doing anything nice, and yet you just feel gratefulness welling up in you. This mind is neither male nor female. At least I think. And it's the mind in which I find myself connected with you all.

[77:41]

Und in diesem Geisteszustand spüre ich mich mit Ihnen allen verbunden. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Che Guevara once said, let's be realistic and try the impossible. And what you just said, Che Guevara, and what you said reminded me a little bit of it. Yeah, reminds... I agree. His goals may have been more political than mine, but, you know, that spirit of trusting in vision is necessary.

[79:10]

What you're living, what most of us living, is an old, moss-covered vision. It's musty, dirty. And you're not happy living in it. So I ask you all, freshen up your vision. It's not so easy to even discover your vision, but I guarantee you, all creative, healthy thinking is rooted in vision. which also accepts things as they are.

[80:27]

This is not a vision of denial, but a vision rooted in how we exist. Excuse me for getting impassioned. I have to calm myself down. Maybe you should try meditation. It's okay, I can hear. I say it in German. It was said before that the past is only in thoughts. I think now, when I walk this path, then I can actually only notice at the moment that I am getting better and better and then compare or have comparisons with earlier experiences.

[81:32]

That means, for my part, I feel that there is something else there at the moment that results from earlier experiences? So, for example, a joy where I notice that it has deepened or I know it somewhere. You said that there's no really past and future in the sense that only exists in our mind, past and future. But when I have certain experiences, and of course I notice that I feel better over time, but still there's some residues, there's something from the past which kind of sneaks into my mind where I sort of compare and I guess the question is how do I integrate this on one level trying to be in the present and yet dealing with of course comparing the way I feel with the past another another

[82:47]

Her point is, when I notice development, there is a sense of past, of course. I compare, I have had that before, experienced that before. So there is, in some way, a past existing. At least not an intellectual, on a very intuitive, experiential level. Isan Dorsey, who was a student of mine, was asked, why do we try to save all sentient beings? He said, we save them for later. I would like to respond to your question by telling you a little anecdote about His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

[84:07]

Since I have to go be on a panel shortly, I will make this fairly brief. And this is also a teaching which I'll try to give you in a brief form. Some years ago I was in Munich and I did a seminar and the folks said, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in town. Wouldn't you like to go to see him? And I've known him a little bit since about 1979, when he, on his, I think, first visit to America, stayed at my temple for about a week and a half.

[85:18]

But since then, we had a whole week to sort of talk. Since then, he's become so famous and such a world figure that I thought, well, sure, I'd love to go to be in the audience. I won't make any effort to see him. And so I went and it was a huge success. former site of the Olympic Stadium or something like that. And you know, his holiness is not only, he's a monk, but there's also a quality of sort of a chip monk about him too. Ja, und seine Heiligkeit ist also nicht nur ein Mönch, sondern er hat auch eine Eigenschaft von so einem Streifenhörnchen.

[86:46]

Here he is, all of these people, there's a huge audience, he's sitting up there looking around. Er ist also unwahrscheinlich berühmt und diese riesigen Menschenmassen, die alle ihn sehen wollen, und er sitzt da ganz entspannt und guckt rum und kratzt sich und... And he's totally at ease. This is one thing he's realized. That deep ease. And at some point, he spotted my shaved head. And in the middle of everything, he waved. And in the middle of all this, he waved to me. So I watched him give his talk and he mostly talked about that we want to be happy. And he conveyed that happiness to everyone. And the other speaker who gave a quite brilliant talk was a politician and his talk was was very intelligent, but didn't convey this feeling of happiness that his holiness conveyed.

[88:07]

And after we left, We went out into the Munich subways and everybody was happy. I mean, people were singing in the subways, you know. A song would start one car and pass from car to car. I've only seen that after a big peace march. A train would come the other direction and they were singing too. So I thought about it. And I thought about a teaching I've heard him give. Which is we have three minds of daily consciousness.

[89:18]

One mind of daily consciousness is what we could call immediate consciousness. So immediate consciousness is like I look at you I don't think about you. I have no thoughts. I just feel your presence in this immediate consciousness, in this immediacy. And the second consciousness is, for example, I actually look at you and I say, you're younger than I am.

[90:21]

And that information is derived from the immediate situation of my looking at you and feeling you. But then, I don't know what your birth date is, but if I were to know your birth date, I cannot know that from this immediate situation. That is something you have to tell me. And it's also something, in fact, you had to be told by your parents or your birth certificate or something. Now, I call that borrowed consciousness. But we borrowed it from someone else.

[91:24]

And the middle one I call secondary consciousness. And secondary consciousness can be based on borrowed consciousness or it can be based on immediate consciousness. Now, borrowed consciousness is almost our entire education. It's the mind in which we measure ourselves by how much we remembered the past. date that something started or when, you know, etc. Now you can, what I'd suggest you do as a practice is get a feel for these three consciousness and feel when you go over the bump from one into another. And you can just do it anytime, or you can actually practice it, for example, you're taking a walk with a friend.

[92:33]

And you're just walking along, say, in one of the beautiful parks or lake areas in Berlin. And you feel the path and the presence of the trees, single trees and groups of trees. And you're not talking about anything. And then you notice some trash on the path, say, or something or other, and you pick it up, or you and your friend decide to say, geez, there's too much trash here, and you pick it up and put it in the basket or something. And then suddenly there's so much garbage on the way, and you decide to pick it up and put it in a garbage bin, or you and your friend suddenly say, yes, there's so much garbage on the way again.

[93:49]

Now, when you're talking about the trash or the person swimming in the lake, say, you've entered secondary consciousness. But if you keep walking, it returns quite quickly to immediate consciousness and you feel the path and your friend and so forth. Then one of you looks at their watch and says, I have to be back in the office. And the other person says, yes, I have to make three phone calls. And my spouse is expecting me, and so forth. And at that moment, you're in borrowed consciousness. And it's quite difficult to go back into the walk.

[94:50]

Now, all three of these consciousnesses are necessary. And in borrowed consciousness, the past comes in and so forth. Now, what The difference between these two speakers in Munich was, the difference was, that his holiness was resting in immediate consciousness the whole time. And the other person in his brilliant talk was resting in borrowed consciousness and sometimes into secondary consciousness. And his holiness was speaking in secondary consciousness and even sometimes in borrowed consciousness, but then he'd return to immediate consciousness.

[96:00]

And it was almost as if he were fishing. He was throwing a line out of secondary consciousness, throwing a line out of borrowed consciousness. And you'd hook into it, we'd hook into it. And then he'd reel you in. And then he'd punch you. So everyone started feeling good. Now here's one person

[96:42]

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