To give you an example, my daughter who lives in Lisbon, in Lisboa, recently taking a taxi somewhere, all dressed up in Lisbon, Lisboa, stepped out of the taxi and the metal grate that covers the drainage in the corner of the gutter of the street. For some reason wasn't there. So she opened the taxi door, stepped out, went into this sludge up to about her thighs. Now, An example of sinking mind as she sunk into this thing would be, Oh, this is typical. It always happens to me. This is, you know... This is the kind of person I am.

[01:02]

Why do these things happen to me? That's sinking mind. That rising mind would be, you know, you step in this hole and you have to about here and you burst out laughing. This is totally ridiculous. Look at me, all dressed up, mud up the ear. I wish someone had a camera. Now this isn't just, again, sort of like a positive state of mind. It's considered to be a difference in temperament or biology that you can have some participation in.

[02:21]

So a rising state of mind is thought of as a rising state of energy, not just a way of thinking. So one of the things we're trying to teach in meditation and in the posture of meditation is that you feel this rising state of mind in the way you sit. So the main... aspect of the posture, for those of you who aren't familiar with meditation, is to sit with a lifting feeling through your back.

[03:30]

And the posture of your back is the most important part of your posture. If you can sit cross-legged, that's great. But first you make your back straight and then you worry about your legs. So if necessary you sit on two or three or four pillows. As many as you need to keep your back straight without falling off and hurting yourself. So you cultivate in your sitting this lifting feeling through your back. And this lifting feeling also through the back of your neck.

[04:38]

And that is thought to make your body and mind more... the energy move more in what we call rising mind. Now I'm emphasizing this physical quality and energy quality of practice because Buddhism is a yogic teaching and Usually, Asian teachers, when they come to the West, to the United States and Europe, don't realize how little we know about the yogic way of looking at things. After all, we're a culture that only 20 years ago thought that acupuncture was nonsense. And in Asia it's just taken for granted, this way of looking at the body as an energy.

[06:00]

So this rising mind is not a state of mind, it's a state of body. Or if I call it a state of mind, you should know it means a state of body and mind which you can't separate the two. I talk away and he has to work. I'm sorry to make you work so hard. Thank you. So this little riff I just went through, Do you have that term in English, I mean in German, riff?

[07:07]

I know this riff in the sea, or guitar riff or so. Like guitar, it's like in music, a riff is this little... The jazz term. Okay, is to say that wisdom maybe you can get a feeling for what's meant by wisdom by thinking of it like I described the immune system As the immune system is in a sense a rising biological mind that when you're depressed, when it's down you lose your definition and you become sick, mentally and physically. And when it's rising and keeping your definition clear, you both, you are, anyway, obviously what I mean is you're healthier and clearer,

[08:08]

So wisdom is understood as a state like your immune system that is rising on each moment and rising in the occasion of your activity. It's not independent from your activity. So the immune system isn't just something you have to kind your body and mind. It's also part of the phenomenal world. It's responding to germs and so forth. And responding to whether it's chilly or warm. And so forth. How much pollution is in the air and how clear the air is. Okay, so this definition, you can't say where the immune system begins and ends because the definition includes the phenomenal world.

[09:33]

You can't describe the immune system separate from cold germs and air and... hot and cold and drafts and so forth. So what I'm trying to do here with you is not so much to teach you Buddhism per se, because many of you have no way to continue the practice of Buddhism after I leave. Some of you do, but many of you don't. And I also don't want to teach you in such a way that I'm expecting you to continue practicing Buddhism.

[10:44]

All I'm expecting is you to continue being alive for the next few weeks. And I hope for some indeterminate number of years. So I want to talk about Buddhist practice in a way that's the practice of your life more than the practice of Buddhism. Does that make sense? So I'm talking really about your life practice, not Buddhist practice. So to talk about your life practice, I have to be more fundamental in the way I'm teaching than if I'm talking about Buddhist practice.

[11:46]

Because if I talk about, for instance, at my monastery in Colorado, there's a few students there, And I can say, it would be good to do such and such. And they just do it. Because their whole situation of practice in daily life supports them just doing it. But if I say to you, oh, just do this, And you don't really understand it. And your life doesn't support it. You won't even remember what I said in a couple of weeks or tomorrow.

[12:50]

So I'm trying to characterize practice so that you can see, so you can explore your own life the way Buddhism has arrived at the teaching of Buddhism. I want to characterize the practice in such a way that you explore your own life in a way in which Buddhism was created as Buddhism was created. Is there anybody here who wasn't here last night?

[14:12]

You weren't and you worked. Okay. Well, some things I wish you'd heard, but since many people were here last night, didn't hear them either. It's okay. And it's difficult to hear things which are new. If I tell you new things, If I told you 100% new things this seminar, you'd get almost none of them. Or you would just translate them all into things that were familiar to you and you wouldn't understand at all that it was different. So I have to express things in at least 80% familiar terms.

[15:31]

So that's partly why I've taken the time to give you a sense of wisdom and your body and your state of mind as in a rising state. that you're participating in. For example, the term satipatthana or mindfulness practice is usually understood, usually translated and quite brilliantly as mindfulness. And it's the most essential practice in Buddhism. is becoming mindful.

[16:46]

And I think that in the... So first of all, mindful means to pay attention to, be present with, Do you use economic terms in German for, like, to pay attention? Do you say the same thing? To give attention or to send attention to someone. We say to give attention, to pay attention, to spend time as if it were money. But the language in English at least implies that it's possible not to pay attention. But in a Buddhist culture where everything is seen as changing, there's no alternative to practice.

[18:01]

There's no alternative to paying attention. And if you don't pay attention, it's not a neutral state, it's a negative paying attention state. So the practice of mindfulness is to bring your attention to things, And not but not to change what you're paying attention to. For example, if you're angry, you're just paying attention to the anger, not trying to get rid of the anger. Okay, so that's the simplest instruction on... on mindfulness, to try to pay attention to things as they are, not as you'd like them to be or as a way of changing them.

[19:34]

In fact, paying attention to changes things, but you're not trying to change things by paying attention to. But a more... a more... a more accurate and methodological translation of mindfulness or satipatthā is the establishment of the immediate present. The word Upanishads for the Indian, famous Indian scripture or teaching, means to sit down near to.

[20:47]

So it's the magic or power of what happens when we sit down near to each other. And when you look at, we take for granted that we live in Munster or nearby and we are often sitting down near to people. But we lose the power through its obviousness of sitting down near to somebody. Again, we don't pay much attention to it unless you're falling in love with somebody, then it's important to sit down near to them. And you feel the power of sitting down near to. But that power is always there. And that sitting down near to is also the sense of mindfulness.

[22:16]

What's presented to you just now And you're establishing what's presented to you just now. So your state of mind or ability to Be present in the quality of your perception. Establish the immediate present. And again, the best example I've thought of this is like this baby that was here last night. We teach the baby, we tend to teach the baby they were born into a world that was here before they were born. and obviously that's true the world was here before they were born but if you're the married couple or the couple who have the baby and the baby appears in your life it reestablishes your life

[23:31]

the more you're sensitive to the baby's presence, the more the baby changes your life. Changes you into parents. And if the baby should die, that world it established dies with it. So you could also say the baby established the world it was born into. Do you see the validity of looking at it that way? Well, Buddhist and Asian culture has emphasized that side of it rather than... has emphasized that side of it rather than the side that the baby was born into a world that already existed. So in every situation you come into actually, you're like this baby.

[25:10]

And you're establishing your immediate presence. And the understanding and knowledge of this establishment of the immediate present, like your immune system establishing your identity, or you can't separate the immune system from the phenomenal world, The immune system is an outside-inside activity definition. And wisdom and your state of mind is understood in this way. It's an outside-inside constantly happening definition. So wisdom would be a practice of finding yourself in the midst of this all the time.

[26:31]

I hope that makes some sense to you. Anyway, that gives you a sense of this sense of prajna or wisdom. And paramita can be translated as perfection. And so it's and you can see if this wisdom is this changing inside-outside state of mind, it's open to your participation and your perfection. It's open to be perfected.

[27:39]

And this maha-prajnaparamita can also be translated as wisdom that's gone beyond wisdom. And gone beyond wisdom because you can't say it's, oh, this is wisdom. It's always going beyond wisdom. So it's a way to make it not a thing. It's not a thing, wisdom. It's a thing always going beyond thingness. Or it's like we name something, but we know the name is tentative. So in Buddhism we could say a name that goes beyond name. So if I can use my favorite example over here, Martin.

[28:55]

His name is Martin. And I know him well enough to know that he's not limited by this name Martin. So I tentatively call him Martin. But he's always surprising me. And I don't know, this Martin doesn't contain what Martin is. So it's Martin going beyond Martin. And sometimes Martin going under Martin. So we each have the responsibility of sometimes I'm Richard and sometimes I'm Richard going beyond Richard and sometimes I'm Dickie Bird. And sometimes I can't discover my name. I can't even discover the pronoun my.

[29:56]

Okay, so that's enough on prajnaparamita. And the next word, Hridaya, means heart. And that's what I commented on last night, was heart. And sutra is to sow. And sutra is to sow. Teaching is a kind of sewing or weaving. Weaving this heart wisdom teaching. into your life.

[31:03]

Weaving this wisdom that goes beyond wisdom into your life. And the main way to do that weaving The shortcut to do that weaving is this yogic meditation. So I would like us to take a break now. And there's only those two toilets downstairs. That means that the break has to be 20 minutes or so. And your stomach is part of your emotions.

[32:07]

Your emotions and your stomach are very connected. As you know, the way your stomach can get upset, if you're emotionally upset, So one of the most important things in meditation posture, as well as this lifting feeling through your back, is to feel your stomach in this middle area of yours completely free. So you want to have your belt quite loose. And if your meditation is good, after a while even no matter how loose you make it, it'll still feel too tight.

[33:13]

And again, what we... Well, I don't think it's accidental that the beatnik hippie movement in the States, and I think Europe too, one of the symbols of it was everybody wore sandals. Because again, if you are part of a body culture, you don't want to cramp your feet up. Unless you're going to a bank and asking for money. And banks don't want to give money to people who walk in in sandals. And they're right. It means you're walking in a different world than they are.

[34:15]

And the more that's true, the more you have a different sense of relationships and so forth. And as you all probably know, all the parts of the body are found in acupuncture points on the feet. So to overheat your feet in socks is considered to overheat your whole body, to constrain your whole body. So part of the instruction again in meditation is if possible, don't have socks on your feet. If you feel more comfortable with socks, I don't care.

[35:36]

But in general, unless it's freezing cold, you would not wear anything on your feet. And you keep your hands bare. And you keep your neck and Neck and face bear. Probably not so good to wear turtlenecks. Though I do sometimes. Anyway, the sense is your body, you want your stomach free. This lifting feeling through your back. And back of the neck. And you want your feet and hands and neck area to be, because these are energy points, to be quite open. And then you want a relaxing feeling like maybe butter melting down through you.

[36:40]

So there's this lifting feeling through your back. And your stomach feels completely relaxed. And there's this melting feeling down through your body. And you put your tongue at the roof of your mouth. And your eyes look out. Your eyes are open slightly, but not looking at anything. And your feet, if possible, are folded together. Your legs are folded together. And if not, then you sit like this woman is sitting. That's also a good meditation posture. For sitting for many years, every day, it's not so good. But for sitting sometimes it's a good posture.

[38:04]

Because it allows you to keep your back straight. But you don't have this folding of your energy together. And you have to use more muscles to support your back. But still a good posture. And if you can sit with your legs up, I don't care how you sit. But I'd like you to try to sit still. And if you move Make a little bow and then move. So you're not wiggling. Just stay settled as much as possible. I watched a beautiful dove in... Beate's garden this morning.

[39:07]

And first it looked like a clay pigeon, you know, something that doesn't move, like a garden ornament. And it was sitting in a bush. Quite a big bird, actually. And then suddenly it ate a few berries. And you could see it chewing. And then suddenly it was completely still again for a long period of time, many, you know, five minutes or longer. I didn't watch it forever. But it sat so still you couldn't tell whether it was alive or some fake bird. artificial bird. So anyway, this dove had the ability to just... to just stop and just... for no reason. I thought maybe it was waiting for someone to join it for breakfast. Very patiently.

[40:33]

So when you sit, again, you have this lifting feeling through your back. Your stomach is quite free. And the lifting feeling through the back of your neck. And a kind of melting feeling down through you. And then like the dove, you just are still. And if you have to move, you move precisely and then be still again. And don't look around under your eyelids. Your eyes, as much as possible, should be the stillest part of your body. Okay, so let's start sitting. And I'll ring the bell three times. One is parental and one is spousal. And so all your life, whether your parents are alive or dead, your parents touch your life.

[41:59]

And if you're really married, your spouse touches your life, even if they're no longer alive. And the teacher-disciple relationship is a third relationship like that. And it's one we're a little afraid of. It's different than an ordinary friendship. So in Buddhism, it's a kind of friendship, a kind of profound friendship. In Buddhism, it's a kind of deep friendship. And also we don't have any tradition of how to understand and maintain such a relationship. and psychologically there's a tendency in the West for it to become a parental or spousal relationship or a dependency relationship now we know when a spouse starts treating us like a parent or we treat a spouse like a parent

[43:21]

In other words, we know when the relationships get confused. But we don't have any tradition with the teacher-disciple relationship, so we don't know when it gets confused. Now, I've said all this many times to people, but it's a relationship that we need to explore. if you're going to practice Buddhism. And it's a relationship that I think we need to explore anyway, because there's a tremendous need in large numbers of people for such a relationship.

[44:43]

As you can see with the success of the Bhagavan in Germany, part of that is he answers people's need for a certain kind of relationship. But the way that relationship is with bhagavan is not a Buddhist-style teacher-disciple relationship So after after lunch. I'd like you to all, when you come in, to sit in a straight line along the walls. Maybe about a meter from the wall. And to sit in a straight line so all your backs are lined up.

[45:45]

And if there's not enough room along the walls, Make one or two lines down the middle. Left side of the middle facing the wall and the right side of the middle facing the right wall. And I'll correct your posture. Now, when I straighten your posture, I don't expect... Okay. Sir, this is taking some time to answer his question, sir.

[47:08]

Yes? I could not really tell you what you told about Osho Rajneesh formerly called Bhagavan. I, myself, am a Bhagavan. I, myself, see him as a genuine master. I knew that. That's what you were thinking. He said he didn't quite understand this point about Bhagavan, because he himself is a Bhagavan student and he sees him as his master. And he said he knew he was doing it. Good. He may be. And I'm told he talks about Zen a lot. I doubt if any Zen teacher would think it's Zen. But that's not the point. It may be Zen. The point is that different is different. And different Zen teachers teach a slightly different kind of Zen.

[48:23]

So if I teach one way, the kind of Zen I'm teaching is different than if I teach another way. And if you talk to disciples of my teacher, and ask them to describe what they studied with Suzuki Roshi, it's like they knew a completely different person from me. Their experience and what they say is just, I wouldn't dream of teaching the way they think Suzuki Roshi taught them. But my own disciples find different teachings from me. So there's different teachings from me There's different teachings from different people.

[49:32]

And the style makes a difference. And there is a different style between Hindu teaching and Buddhist and Bhagavan and Buddhist and Hinduism. For one example, for instance, In Buddhism, any teacher who has more than a few disciples is considered not a serious teacher. Now, I don't say that's right or wrong. I just say that's the style in Buddhism. And it may be... Sometimes it looks like a person has a lot of students, like the Dalai Lama, But he doesn't think when he does large public ceremonies that those are students.

[50:33]

He would expect them in a practical sense to be students of other teachers because it takes as much out of the teacher as it does out of the student. It's as demanding for the teacher as the student. So it's a kind of apprentice system, which to have a serious student-disciple relationship, maybe it's possible in one lifetime to have five or six. Or in any ten or twenty year period, five or six. If you live a long time, you might have a second family of students. So Zen isn't taught as if there's something called Zen. You'll each have your own Zen.

[51:51]

And you'll each, I hope, have your own enlightenment. And there's no one enlightenment you're all going to have. One of the teachings, for instance, in the koans, Koans is one of the ways China made Buddhism itself. It's when different teachers appear in a story. They don't just represent different teachers. They represent different understandings. And whenever they appear in a story, it represents this understanding in contrast to this other way of understanding.

[52:52]

And when a If somebody in this lineage appears, he or she usually represents that same understanding. In contrast, so you could take this teacher and take them out and put somebody in the same lineage in, and it would tend to represent in the story the same kind of understanding. Then what you have in the koan is a gentle or strong dialogue among these understandings, which gives you freedom and permission to have your own understanding. Because practice always has to begin with you.

[53:57]

It doesn't begin with me. It begins with you or my suggesting to you that you first of all take an inventory of yourself. Inventory of your own Uh... states of mind, own being. And if I have any power or authority, my responsibility is to keep transferring it to you. To empower you, not for you to give me your power. So I want you to be quite free to be yourself.

[54:58]

You look like you're doing quite well actually. And I can only make some suggestions from Buddha's teaching that might be useful to you. Now this style of koan having this kind of understanding and this kind of understanding and this kind of understanding and within that some kind of resolution which demonstrates the various understandings as part of the resolution, is characteristic of this kind of unresolved quality, unresolved and yet resolved quality is characteristic of the Zen and Buddhist style of thinking. of the world. For example, again, what's sometimes translated as oneness in English and German,

[56:01]

In Buddhism, it should be translated as an experience of oneness, not a fact of oneness. So you can have an experience of oneness, but it doesn't mean philosophically there's some oneness. That would be looseness instead of... That's just a pun on English. One is to win. So the translation of oneness actually is not one, not two. So it's not one, not two. It's not the same world as saying oneness. Well, you can see it in music. We compose music. And we, any piece of music, even if it's very difficult, is meant to be able to be played by some musician. Liszt at least could play his own compositions, I believe.

[57:47]

I don't know much about music, so... But in any case, we tend to make a piece of music that someone can play. In Asia, they don't. They make pieces of music that no one can play. And that's what makes it interesting. Because you never, you're always... You're always in dialogue with it, but you can't do it. And it's a different way of looking at things. For instance, when you do a Buddhist ceremony, I'll have one lineage teaching about how to do a ceremony. And if he's a Buddhist priest or monk, he'll have another lineage of how to do the ceremony. And maybe Martin and Helga and you all are Buddhist priests and we have to do this big ceremony together.

[59:00]

But we also all have different teachings about how to do it. And the priests never get down together in the beginning and figure it out. Let's do it this way. It doesn't occur to them. I mean, they make some sort of plan, of course. But what they like is getting in there and seeing the different ways of doing it start to come together. You're offering incense, you're not exactly sure what the other guy is going to do. And so he's supposed to say something. But you've done something which requires him to stop where he was. So instead of saying something that he was going to say, he has to say something spontaneous.

[60:04]

And it's more like that. So that sense of creating a situation where you don't exactly know what's going on but you establish it. Sukhiroshi Some of you have this book, which is in the back. And he says he's a section here called... Control. Okay. Now, this is somewhat different than our idea of control. The way to control your sheep or cow... is to give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow.

[61:25]

That's a rather different way of thinking than we think of control. So he says, whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it's out of balance. Now we tend to think of beauty as harmony and symmetrical and so forth. I watched some drummers who learned drumming, I think from Japanese drummers or Korean drummers, here in the West. I mean, they learned in Korea or something, but they are Germans, I believe. And they... They were pretty good, but they did several things that were completely Western and weren't

[62:48]

the way a Japanese or Korean would do it. And it's perfectly okay for them to do it however they want. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm just pointing out the difference. The first thing they did is the male drummer and the female drummer exactly coordinated themselves. They were hitting exactly at the same time in synchronicity. The Japanese wouldn't do that. They'd want the woman to do it one way and the man to do it one way. And it to be more or less similar. But it's more like jazz, where the musicians are communicating with each other back and forth. You don't know what they're going to do next. And it's not accidental that this way of looking at things in music came up from black people.

[63:53]

So anyway, there's this dialogue of, well, she just did it that way, I've got to do it this way. And they tended to hit the drums with their minds. So they used the sticks this way. With their wrists. And the Japanese used their whole body. Their whole body goes into it. And they used their body, but still the feeling was different. It was more a kind of wrist action. And the posture of the back of their leg was not related to how they hit the drum. So they had the drums very close, so like this you couldn't get your whole body going.

[65:20]

Okay, so he says, Whatever we see is changing. Losing its balance. Do you know Laurie Anderson? She has a song in Big Science. And she's also a Buddhist. And she says walking is you keep falling out of balance You fall forward and then catch yourself. So you're always falling she says and walking. But that way of looking at it comes out of Buddhism.

[66:28]

And you can look at it various ways, but the way you look at it has tremendous power. Okay, so whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha-nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So, When I was looking at the garden of Beate's this morning I saw the flowers not as sort of harmony or something, harmony with nature.

[67:35]

I saw the flowers kind of making an effort to stand up there. And making an effort to have its petals out there, you know. And sort of out of balance. And eventually the petals fall. And it loses its balance the other way. And the dove was the same. He was establishing his presence in the bush. and the beauty was his losing his balance. So this sense of dialogue is almost not a dialogue, it's just the way things are.

[69:03]

Always this kind of balance and losing balance. So the thought, the most fundamental question we can ask, is the various forms of what is existence. And built into the question what is existence is also the implication of what is perfected existence. So in the question, what is existence, you have the question, what is Buddha? The same thing I presented last night, the acceptance of existence and the perfection of existence.

[70:13]

So this, what is existence, this question, is thought also to be the thought of enlightenment. And the thought of enlightenment is called bodhicitta. Bodhi is enlightenment, citta is thought. And this bodhicitta is thought of as sperm or egg or something that fertilizes you. So if your life can be a dialogue with this thought of existence and thought of enlightenment, then you have way-seeking mind. Okay, so in this Buddha and ordinary person dialogue, the teacher in Buddhism is someone who lets you have that dialogue with him.

[71:25]

The teacher is clearly an ordinary person. and wants to be an ordinary person, but also allows themselves to be available to try to be understood in various ways. To be an archetype and not an archetype. So as you develop... Alright, so the sense of a... Okay. So one feeling we have is, you know, when you're looking for the perfect mate. Part of it is an anima projection on the male or female of the perfect mate.

[72:29]

And as probably most of you have discovered, there's no perfect mate out there. But the dialogue between the perfect mate and your mate is what being in love is. So your own inner dialogue with your anima or your perfect mate is like the dialogue for some people with what kind of human being would I really like to have on the planet. I mean, if you could just sort of for a moment stop. And say, I wish there was that kind of person on the planet.

[73:41]

How much better it would be for me if that kind of person existed. It would encourage me. And how wonderful it would be for other people. And so that sense of the, if you have the courage to imagine the person you'd really like to be on the planet, is it possible that such a person could exist? That person is your inner teacher. And it takes a kind of existential courage and craziness to imagine such a person and to have the futile idealism to imagine such a person.

[74:43]

But if you really can see that such a person could be, and how wonderful it would be, why shouldn't that person be you? Why expect someone else to do it? This is your responsibility. Whose responsibility else could it be? So you treasure this possibility in yourself. And at the same time you're aware of your own... I mean... Yeah, no, I... Good translation. So, you... The Sangha... in one sense the Sangha or the people who are practicing are people who've taken on the responsibility of this inner Buddha or this inner teacher.

[76:34]

And what happens when you do that And what happens then is you create the likelihood that a Buddha will appear. So when you meet your teacher, or someone you feel some connection with of this kind, On the one hand you may say, for me, he or she is a Buddha. Even if they don't know it. Or I'm going to make use of them as a Buddha. Because I need this. And not too bad for him or her. I remember my teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said to me once, I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do to you.

[77:37]

Yeah, you should know. I was being critical of him right now. And the other side is you say, I'm going to help this teacher be a Buddha. So on the one hand you say, I will see him or her as a Buddha. On the other hand you say, I will help make this person a Buddha. by treating them like Buddha. But you don't lose the perspective that you are also an ordinary person and they're an ordinary person.

[78:38]

So a teacher in Buddhism is this kind of dialogue. And it's rather fun. and very difficult and discouraging and sometimes wonderful. It's a special kind of friendship, which doesn't occur within the rules of politeness and ordinary society. Okay. One more question that I'll try to answer briefly.

[79:41]

Is there any singing connected to the Heart Sutra? And if yes, are we going to practice it? If everyone would like to, yes. Last year we tried it in the Heidelberg seminar. And a tape was made of it. And poor Beate put it, was playing it in her house. And her nine-year-old daughter came in. And I guess in carnivals here you have big fake apes like King Kong. And she said, what's that, King Kong? So... She wasn't sure what she wanted us to.

[80:54]

Sounds like a group of carnival gorillas. But I think today or tomorrow, if we want to, we can try it. Okay now, how long does it take for lunch around here? Martin has organized a lot of fights. So what's the relationship? When do you... start entering your process of your meditation, and where just what you are, and without telling yourself, or I should do that, or this would be better if you do that.

[81:56]

Okay. Well, in one sense of your question, I hope to talk about the Heart Sutra in that light. But just from another sense of your question, you just find practical ways to activate it. One is you try to drop words like should from your vocabulary. Just start, you kind of notice, kind of make yourself aware of how often you use the word should. I said that just because you used the word should.

[83:05]

In other words, you work with your language with which you describe yourself. And that means also to have an antidote in language to your... what you want to do, you create that as an antidote to what you do. So if you want to not compare yourself all the time to stop comparative thinking of all kinds. You form this desire as a kind of feeling and you stay with that feeling and let it affect the way you speak and do things. And in effect you have to just keep reminding yourself, just now is enough.

[84:30]

Or just as I am is okay. And you have to try to take little mantras like that and work with them. Because naturally on one hand we, so to speak, seek enlightenment. But you can't ever reach enlightenment by seeking it. So you have a more fundamental or basic state of mind. Or you don't care about enlightenment and enlightenment. As I said last night, if you're depressed, on one hand you may not want to be depressed, and on the other hand you're just finding the energy and how your own existence in that depression is.

[85:43]

And if you develop that habit of thinking that way, it'll make it easier and easier to actually sit that way. So if I say, I don't know if I'll ever ring the bell, you actually don't care. Pretty soon there's moss growing on your face. Also, I remember this summer here in Europe. When I was first starting practicing, And practice in some sense is a kind of rebirth ceremony on a large scale. Or a rebirthing ceremony spread out over a long time. You're re-parenting yourself.

[86:50]

You begin to have authority because you're your own author. But I found all my friends weren't sure they liked me practicing enough. They all wanted me to be this kind of person or that kind of person. The kind of person they wanted me to be. And they certainly didn't want me to change too much. So I could feel all these little sort of tentacles trying to get me to... So I developed the habit of saying, don't bug me, man. To everyone, no matter what they said to me. I'd see somebody come down the street and say, hi, dick. I'd say, don't bug me.

[88:11]

Because even with hi, dick, I could feel something in him. So I always said, don't bug me, man. So for a while, a year or so, I was called Don't Bug Me Man Baker. Don't Bug Me Man Baker. But it worked. I was quite free. So in various ways you have to find out how to get free of all this stuff from inside and outside. Some other question or comment? He wants to know something about the relationship between enlightenment and grace and whether you can do enlightenment on your own or whether you need grace.

[89:22]

What do you mean by grace? It's a Christian idea. Mercy. Mercy? Where would this mercy or grace come from? Well, if you're a Christian, you probably need grace. If you're a Christian, you probably need grace. If you're a Buddhist, you need chutzpah. But I don't know if that's true. Maybe something like what Christians call grace. Maybe something like that you mean. I think you have to show yourself a certain mercy. And you need a certain kind of trust or faith and acceptance that you give yourself

[90:57]

and that you feel from just situations. I think the basic feelings that are present in religion are pretty common to all religions. and not just religions, to mature life. But the structure behind and application The structure behind and the application of those feelings is different. And the space and freedom given those feelings is different. So I'm trying to acquaint you with the Buddhist way of looking at it, at these things.

[92:10]

Then you can make use of it in your own life as you wish. And if you're Christian, you know, use it that way. All of us are Christian, pretty much, or Jewish Christian. No matter what we try, it's in our thinking. The example I often use is that For an example of that is, in English we say, it rains. It's very obscure what this it is that rains. But there's an assumption in our language, at least in English, that something's doing the raining.

[93:29]

And in Buddhism you tend to say, rain rains. Because rain itself is raining, it's not something outside the rain which is doing the rain. And we tend to say, my stomach hurts. It may be better to practice and just say stomach hurts.

[94:09]

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