I'm trying to make it something realistic for us or something we can feel. So why don't we sit a few minutes and then we can have a break. I mean lunch. Bring something up. and the generalization of things.

[01:11]

That's why I was so excited. It was my first report on these events in America. I often didn't feel completely manipulated by the news. That's why I thought it would be more general. And then at some point I switched it off and felt more like, how do I feel about that? How do I feel about such things? And then I had a much more special feeling and I felt much more connected to that experience. referring to the theme of each and every and generalizations when these horrible events in America were reported, I felt myself manipulated by the way the news were presented and then eventually I just shut it off And so what happened to me when I, undisturbed, uninfluenced, related and reacted to these events and found that I had a much better personal connection with that.

[02:13]

Anyone else want to say something about this? Yeah. Some nights ago I was awake at night because I was awake because of a headache. And I don't know if it has to do with this actual body, but I felt like in a space as if I was in the threat center and felt myself between the decision of being burned or to jump. And it was not a dream. It was a very horrible space in which I woke up. You didn't know about the event?

[03:16]

Yes, yes. Oh, you knew about it. It was just two nights ago or so. Yeah. Is this a Dutch camera? Yes, this true body occupies me and I think of a to a field in which I found myself two nights ago when I woke up because I had a headache and then I had such a feeling before this situation to be there, to be there myself during this misfortune and to be in between this decision to rebel or to jump. Anyone else want to say something about it? No? You have the feeling the whole world is burning.

[04:44]

Anyone else? Not yet man? Yes? Yes, it's a question that has been going on for days When I heard that the world is no longer the same And what I always think And that's why in the last few decades I've been fascinated by men. I mean, I used to have a set of ears in different versions. How can one go on with the book, or laugh, or go to the theater, or... How can one go on with the book, or laugh, or go to the theater, or... How can one go on with the book, or laugh, or go to the theater, or... How can one go on with the book, or laugh, [...] or... How can one go on with the book, or

[06:35]

Yes, that the Great Stone had somehow just gone on quite normally. That's what I've always thought about. This, how should I say it? Yes. in the days after this event, recently, I always heard the sentence, the world isn't the same anymore. And what had happened to me in the last past decades was that I always had to do an adapt with Auschwitz. And I always pondered about the feeling that actually our life cannot go on after this has happened. And so that's what I wrestled with, so to say. And, but apparently it just did go on. And that's, yeah, that's what I was wondering about and, and, and arguing about.

[07:39]

Yeah. That way. Yeah. Well, it happened in, New York and in the United States. And certainly it's such a horrible event, everyone feels it. But you living here in Germany, mostly I guess, feel it could happen here, or do you feel it's happened in America, something separate from here? Yeah. I definitely had the feeling it could happen here. And when that happened, I had been in one of those newly built houses, which is smaller than World Trade Center, of course, but where I thought this could really have happened here, too.

[09:07]

Two, three hours later, police stood before the America Memorial Library, where I had to pass to come to my practice, my office. So I had to think of my little daughter. I thought that now in our western world we all feel that we can become victims I had, when I saw these pictures, more or less one at the same time, like two years before, in Northern Ireland, children had to go to school under high recruitment.

[10:36]

and a lot of other atrocities that happened in the world. And when I saw these pictures of the Palestinians being shown on television, these young women, I also felt a very deep compassion for these people, because I thought, how confused these people are. With these young people, yes? How confused people must be when they do something like this in all directions. At the same time, I had the feeling, why am I so disappointed? At the same time, I had a deep feeling of how incredibly precious this life is. How valuable this view of life is. I also thought after these events, Northern Ireland, pupils going to school, being thrown stones at.

[11:44]

I watched the pictures of the Palestinian people, joyous about these things. Then I felt a sort of compassion for this weird sort of delusion, to be glad that something like this happened. And then eventually I had a very deep feeling about the preciousness of our life, how really, what something special and precious is. Yes. Yes. I also want to say something. I also have a great compassion for the people I have. And for me, I actually didn't have any great fears anymore.

[12:50]

So for myself and for my family or how I live now or continue to live, I felt, of course, compassion for these people, but for myself and for my family I didn't feel fear. Because what came back was the feeling that I had had before, which was just freshened up, that how fragile our life is anyway, and how in every second this can be just over. I have a problem with building up client images, so to look at the type. And I also have to strengthen the media, what they do. Yes, it was so to feel from the people that I talked about, that he became aware of the feeling.

[14:05]

I had a problem with enemies because our media certainly created something like that and then it went into that direction. And also when I spoke about it with friends, with other people, that I had the distinct feeling that there's no safety. Nothing is safe. Yes? I also had no idea. I was very shocked and was very strongly influenced by how targeted America or the state were to people. Although I was really quite shaken about it, I didn't feel any fear. But I had this precise feeling of how deep America and the state should have been hit by these people.

[15:23]

How what? Deeply hit, injured. How Americans must feel injured? How it was meant to really hit deep and hard. It was directed to the heart of America and of the American people. And I found that very good. Very unbelievable, incredible. And yet I also had the thought In 1968 I also had a demonstration and we had a big demonstration at the time. And I ask myself, is that now also a response, a reaction? It also shocked me how innocent the American politicians were. First, I felt this utter brutality of this act, and then thinking about further, in 1986, I also had been demonstrating against America, like Amigo Hom,

[16:37]

And now notice that the none of the politicians or the politicians out of where sort of pseudo Innocent so to say none of these of the American politicians had sort of hinted at the way America had gone over the decades and As if this was something sort of unconnected, so to say, with the event. My feelings were also with the perpetrators. And I also asked myself, How desperate people have to be in order to take the path of self-destruction. I was wondering what's going on there and what our responsibility is.

[17:58]

My feelings also were with the people who did it. And I ask myself how desperate people must be who in a series commit suicide like this and where our responsibility is for that too. For the people who did that. Yeah. For me, it's more that you don't understand the Jews. I don't want to punish them, but I want to tell them what it means to us or to the dry people who have done what they have done. But I don't want to punish them, but I want to tell them concretely. I don't want to blame innocent people. For me, it's not about heading back or reacting, but more about trying to get a feeling to these people who did that, what it really means for us, what the impact or the meaning or the effects is, how deep it really hurt or hit us.

[19:30]

bringing this over to those people. That was important for me, not hitting back. Yeah? Or what would you speak? Did you speak? Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. My father died 1942 in the Caucasus. My father died 1942 in the Caucasus in the war. He was 19 years old. Two or three years ago, I didn't know him at all, and I got letters back from him. He died defending his fatherland. My father was Austrian.

[20:32]

Since then I don't ask what the soldiers do when an Austrian defends his fatherland in the Caucasus. And so then I ask myself what people are doing when an Austrian defends his fatherland in the Caucasus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that men, so comedians, some action should have the influence of completely different men, that is, have to wear.

[21:38]

And that is, so to speak, the connection between Auschwitz and the events in America. And I myself noticed that it was so easy to create after the war. And at some point I realized how difficult it was to do it right, how easy it was to do it. And I could also imagine, yes, How does that happen? How should I put it? It's like you see something, but you don't know what to do with it.

[22:39]

Often, the parents do the wrong thing. The first part was about politicians giving orders and about their taking or not taking responsibility for that. And our, after the war and later decades, we had, what's the word? We sort of accused of our parents doing things wrong. Blamed them, yeah, that's right. blamed our parents for what they had done and what they had done wrong. And this connection always bothered me, this with the politicians. Can you say the last thing again, Volker? This is from me.

[23:40]

There were moments when I understood There were moments where I began or did understand how it happens that some wrong is done and you look, you watch and don't do anything. Anybody else want to say something about this? Yeah. . the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews.

[24:52]

We try to control something within the framework of the Ghetto, so that the world does not get into trouble. To find a bridge so that a World Court can punish people who are responsible. that the damaged can be recovered from the world. I think, for example, in America, if you see that the Pentagon is damaged, it is a chance. First, my compassion is for the whole American people. And in Potsdam, at the Bundesgartenschau, this is a real world gardening exhibition. We have a tent where for all, really all the religions,

[25:57]

We want these evildoers be punished. We want a world police. For example, where this Pentagon has been hit and that part which has been destroyed, something like a world house be erected or instead of, you know, to rebuild the world house. So, thank you. Okay. I have to think about it again and again in the last few days. When I am alone with Mrs. Augenheim, How many massacres and how many... or... How many massacres in the last ten years have I experienced in Europe in terms of whether it was in Africa or in the Balkans or wherever where many thousand people were really killed or

[27:12]

The difference in the perception of these different events is that it is not at all bad here. In those days I had to think of what actually had happened in the last ten years, how many people had been slaughtered, how many people starved, and how many atrocities had been done. The difference in my perceiving this, and generally also other people perceiving this, came to my mind very much, how this was perceived. Yes? I would like to ask about the role of violence, the application of violence.

[28:27]

As a Buddhist, as a human being, if you can apply violence, or must apply it, to resist violence. That's what I feel right now, especially in the Buddhist context. Violence can only provoke new violence and has effects that you can't deny. Causes, effects, as always. Man kann nämlich entkommen und trotzdem muss man anscheinend, da muss der Staat, wie auch immer, da sind wir ja nicht alle, muss Gewalt einsetzen. Aber wie gehen wir damit um? Damit nicht. Das war nach wie vor. Ja, auch keine Ahnung. My question is about violence. Of course, as a cause and reaction thing, violence leads to other violence.

[29:29]

As a human being, how do we deal it? And apparently, probably the state, which in a way we all are, of course, has to deal with violence, probably violent. And this is something I urgently want to clear up and be answered if possible. Okay. I don't think I can, respond to all the issues here. I don't know if it's, I mean, I think it's probably useful, maybe valuable to talk about it a little. You know, I think it's, I don't know if it's, I'm not always sure it's easy for Europeans or Germans, Austrians to understand what if I say I don't feel like an American.

[30:59]

Ich weiß nicht, ob es für Europäer, also Deutsche, Österreicher leicht zu verstehen ist, wenn ich sage, ich fühle mich nicht wie ein Amerikaner. Yeah, I mean maybe it's like, does the Turkish grocer down here feel like a German? Yeah, I'm sort of like a Turkish grocer in America. I mean, I don't have any... much cultural identification with America at all. So I live at Creston Mountain Zen Center. I have a kind of geographical identification with America. Not only with the place of it, but also with the sense that it's sort of isolated with these two big moats, these two big oceans between

[32:02]

The rest of the world. And there's a certain isolationist sense in that in America. And all these problems, even Palestine and so forth, are considered to be European problems. I mean, Palestine, Israel exists because of England and Germany mostly. In America, I think people in America often feel somebody's got to be involved. I guess it has to be us, but we don't like it. And I don't think if there wasn't this immediate situation going on between Palestine, the Palestinians and the Israelis, this probably wouldn't have happened.

[33:18]

Yeah, there has to be some background behind an event like this and support. But in the sense that it's, I think it's also aimed at the most obvious industrialized modern country. In that sense, it's aimed at Western Europe, too. Because it's the institutions that are being attacked, I think, not just those two buildings in America.

[34:20]

I have a lot... pretty wary myself of the institutions, globalizations, large corporations and all that stuff. Wary. Wary, yeah. Wary or wary? Wary. Wary. Wary means... Wary. I'm surprised it's caused so much fear in people. A friend of ours called us from Paris and told us to turn on the television.

[35:28]

She was crying. And we turned on the television, I don't know, 10 minutes or so after the first building had been hit. So we watched the second building be hit. And honestly, I couldn't believe it when I saw that second building collapse. At the same time, I had the feeling in the whole that this is, well, it's about time this happened. I always felt it would happen. And even during the 60s, I was rather... close to people who were planning to put LSD in the water system and all kinds of things.

[36:32]

Yeah, and people were trying to figure out how to cut... Golden Gate Bridge cables sufficiently that no one could drive across it as a kind of ransom. And I had contact with some distant contact with the weathermen. Remember who the weathermen were? In other words, I had enough contact if I wanted to talk to one of them, I could have, even though they were in hiding. But instead of Even thinking about acting in any of those ways, I decided to practice Buddhism.

[37:38]

But it was clear, it's been clear to me since then, how easy it is if you want to really disrupt our institutions, how easy it is to do it. So in that sense it didn't surprise me. What I'm hoping now is there won't be any big big new terrorist act. Because I think we're still now in a situation where there's some possibility that people will act responsibly, compassionately.

[38:40]

If some biological, bacteriological terrorist act occurred now, something like that? Or if that fourth airplane had hit the White House. We don't know what would happen then. Then people's fears that America would act irrationally might be true. One thing is true about people, if you hit them hard enough, they fight back.

[39:41]

I mean, I think it's conceivable, I mean, if we want to make it extreme, that you could have 100 nuclear bombs blast most of the Near East out of existence. So I'm grateful in a funny way that it's only this bad. Because it could easily be much worse. But it's pretty bad now. I mean, the two moats are gone. The ocean and the Pacific are gone. The Atlantic and the Pacific are gone for America. Die Gräben.

[40:53]

Yeah, so... And it's about equivalent, you know, what was the building at... 50,000 people worked in the two buildings, is that right? 150,000 visited every day. So you're talking about 200,000 people in that unit. What would be equivalent, probably most of all of downtown tall buildings in Frankfurt? Those are huge buildings. So if that event occurred in another city, you can imagine in London or Frankfurt, I mean, it would be... So this is a pretty huge event. And I was just there in those buildings at a Buddhist conference a few weeks ago. In that Marriott Hotel that sits right between the two buildings, we had a conference there discussing compassion.

[42:13]

And Marie-Louise and Sophia were with me. And if somebody hits me in the face, I'm willing to say, geez, what did I do to cause that? If someone hits Sophia and says, oh, it's because your grandfather, your great-grandfather was a Nazi or something like that, I don't care what they say. They're going to have a little trouble for me. So, I mean, at a certain point, the causes aren't part of it. At a certain point, you have to respond even if you caused it. And I think there's no question to me that much of the problem in Afghanistan is of American origin.

[43:39]

And what happened in Cambodia, too. But this is happening. What do we do? Yeah. I feel pretty much like I think Andreas expressed. This is not the Gulf War. Not the Balkans. Kosovo and so forth. And I think that we want to create space for people, NATO and American leadership and so forth, to think about this.

[44:40]

And if they're gonna have space to think about it, we ought to create space in ourselves to think about it. I mean, this was done partly because America is stereotyped as a certain kind of place. And then I hear a lot of people saying, well, America is now going to do this, but that's also a stereotype. I think this event deserves our kind of pulling back from it and absorbing it. And not worrying too much about what the various political leaders are saying. But try to figure it out for yourself.

[45:49]

Each life is important, and if you don't think so, imagine it might be yours. At the same time, if somebody threatens your life, you know... You have to react somehow. Yeah, so, you know, we don't want to kill anybody and yet somebody is threatening you. What do you do? And I don't think anarchy works. Do you remember Morningstar Ranch? One of the singers, do you remember the singer, what his name was? He sang the Coca-Cola commercial.

[46:50]

I don't remember his name. Anyway... I thought we were waiting for the name. No, we don't. I don't know. Anyway, it was a place in one of the early communes. Boy, did it get pretty far out after a while. One example, people with guns controlled the parking lot. If you wanted to park there, you had to deal with this guy. You wanted stuff from your car and money and drugs and so forth. And every part of it was controlled by a different faction who were, you know, Yeah, anyway, it wasn't a very happy place.

[48:00]

So that and other experiences. One time we had a whole group of people wanting to capture Tassajara. And they figured out how our corporate structure worked. and how they could attend a large meeting and vote us out of existence. So they wanted this great piece of property we had for a Zen monastery. They wanted it for other things. So once I get wind of this possibility, I changed the corporate structure of the Zen Center.

[49:15]

So anyway, at some point during the 60s, I decided there needs to be some kind of law and order. But still, what to do in this situation, I don't know. So far I'm listening as carefully as I can to the rhetoric. I'm listening as carefully as I can to the rhetoric. And if you listen to American leaders, you have to know they always have to speak to something like the lowest common denominator in the society. Especially somebody who's fairly low on the denominator scale like President. But you can also sort of ignore that stuff.

[50:17]

And listen to what they're trying to say underneath that. And so far, it looks better than I expected. I don't expect much, but it looks better than I expected. But it still surprises me how afraid people are. Airplanes are not full. Hotels in New York are half empty. Paul pointed out that one of the big shopping, one of the best shopping centers in the Marin County, San Francisco Bay Area, they closed it for a while. I don't know how long. And people I know were thinking of moving their families out of San Francisco.

[51:45]

So, I don't know. But I would say that the best thing is to think it out for yourself. What would you do? And don't in yourself come too quickly to stereotype. So it's going to be this way or that way or... The more space we give the leadership at this time, the more likely they can make a good decision. So far, calling it a war is a good decision. If it's considered a terrorist act, then they will respond right away. If it's called a war, then they can think in terms of two years or five years or something like that.

[53:04]

I'm just glad those two or three or four or whatever it is or more passengers seem to have taken over the Pennsylvania plane. Since we can see how easy it was to hit the Pentagon, It would have been equally easy to hit the White House or the Capitol. And ironically, the number two man in the Pakistani government was in the Congress, right, at that time, talking to congressmen in the Capitol. So there's several people who seemed to have wrestled the hijackers down and the plane was crashed, might have saved, made a big difference, that those few people made a big difference.

[54:24]

Because if they'd hit the White House or the Capitol, whatever the reaction is now in America, it'd be about twice or ten times worse than it is now. So I think we came very close to a much worse situation than the present situation. Anyway, I'm grateful now there's time to think, which I think we can't just expect of the leaders, we should also think ourselves, what would we do? Remember Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance? The young boy in that was sent by his father to practice with me in San Francisco.

[55:45]

And he was murdered on the street of San Francisco. And my daughter Sally was one of the people who first found him on the street bleeding to death. I'm just telling you this because it was an interesting lesson for me. And I knew he was a nice kid. 18, Chris Persig, 18 or 19, 20, 18. Came and he went into San Francisco State College and studied philosophy and was doing pretty well. And the police said, oh, we'll figure this out. We always solve these crimes. And I didn't believe that.

[56:51]

So I asked two people, one of them you know about, Chris Issan, Tommy Dorsey. And another, Peter Coyote, who you might know because he's been in some movies. And they were both practicing at Zen Center and they knew the drug scene, street scene in San Francisco pretty well. So I asked them to go door to door to see what information they could get. First they wandered the streets of the Tenderloin and then they went door to door in San Francisco, in the neighborhood. It's an area in San Francisco. But there's a lot of runaway kids and drugs.

[57:56]

Well, we found two witnesses who had seen the murder. So we got the two witnesses to help us identify who did it. And we rented an apartment for them and kept them in drugs while they were working. And that came pretty close to identifying the two killers. But actually, I think the same people attacked Yvonne at one point. He seemed to have been responsible for about four murders in our neighborhood over a few months.

[58:57]

But the police didn't want to cooperate. And the police resented our interference. They didn't want any local people messing with their job. So I got to the point, well, we can capture these guys. But then what do I do with them? I couldn't get the police to deal with it. Do I lock them up in the basement of the Zen Center? And feed them for the rest of their life? Do I do something worse with them? I didn't know what to do. So I let them go.

[60:01]

Basically, I mean, I didn't push it to the point where we would have arrested and grabbed them. So I don't know why I told you this story. Except that You know, it was clear to me we should stop these two young kids who were doing this. But it was out of my power to do it. Yeah, but at the same time, I think we have to think these things through. What would we do and how can... Something like that. Anyway, let's sit for a few minutes and take a break. Today and starting last evening, a Buddha field.

[61:19]

What kind of place can a Buddha appear? I just spoke, we just had a one month practice period practice month at Johanneshof. And the last week was a Sashin. And the first three weeks, the first week was the topic sort of was Buddha and the second Dharma and the third Sangha. And some of you were there and I kind of, I don't want to repeat what I said during that week. Because, you know, if I spoke a whole, well, several It could easily be, you know, what we're talking about today.

[62:40]

It could easily be what we're speaking about today. But, you know, I thought of speaking from the point of view of a Buddha field this time. But one basic idea, feeling, we have to come back to. We have to put the idea of a Buddha into a human scale. And to our human scale. And a human scale which doesn't kill us. It's so great or something so extraordinary that we ourselves can't live. Yeah, we're... I don't know whether we're ordinary or extraordinary, but we have a very particular life story.

[64:04]

Yeah, our life story. Well, maybe it has led to being a Buddha. But most of our friends wouldn't think so. They'd think, well, you have a life story that's led you to be so-and-so or so-and-so. And that's true. Our life story led to the kind of person we are. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Borges speaks about the garden of forking paths. Mm-hmm. It's moment, actually, the garden of paths. And I think all of us have taken some of the predictable paths, and sometimes we've made an unpredictable choice.

[65:10]

Some of those choices have required courage. For the conventional ones as well as the unconventional ones. So we don't want our personal story to be crushed by some grand idea of Buddha. How are we going to understand our personal story? And how are we going to mature our personal story? That can't really be separate from whatever we mean by Buddha. Again, if we're going to think of Buddha not in historical terms or mythological terms, or some kind of big societal archetypal terms, maybe a little corner Buddha.

[66:38]

Some kind of, you know, neighborhood Buddha. Probably there are already neighborhood Buddhas. That's good enough to be a neighborhood Buddha. If you're a cook, you can be a good cook for your neighborhood. You don't have to be a cook for the whole Germany. And no one can get in your restaurant anyway. If you're that good a cook, keep it a secret and stay in your neighborhood. So your friends can find a seat in your restaurant. And each of us, if you want to practice Buddhism, we need some idea of a Buddha.

[68:10]

It doesn't work to just treat Buddhism as some kind of science of the mind. Our heart and emotions and feelings are not engaged then. So here we are in this world crisis. What kind of world do you want to exist? So if we're speaking about Buddha, we have to come back to what kind of person do you want to exist? This is a continuous koan for us in our practice. But one very close to our heart.

[69:21]

What kind of person would you like to see existing? What kind of person do you wish existed? Now if you dare to feel that that you haven't given up completely the kind of person you wish somebody was when you were a child perhaps and we become realistic about our parents after a while but we shouldn't give up the feeling of a mother and a father. That's part of the failure of being a mother or a father too.

[70:25]

Our mothers and fathers only fail us in the way in which it's possible to be something closer to an ideal mother and father. And as you know, Suzuki Roshi always said, we're always showing people what kind of Buddha we are. Because in each of you, at each moment, that possibility is always there. I can ask each of you, what kind of Buddha are you? Then you know in what way you're not a Buddha. We have some feeling like this. But to bring it back out of some historical Buddha,

[71:28]

What would be your ideal human being? You know, I dare you to think about it. Yeah. And of course, if you want such a person to exist, it also has to be you. You can't expect someone else to do it for you. So this basic knowing and accepting of responsibility is the root of any thinking about Buddhism. Das ist die Wurzel jedes Denkens, Nachdenkens über den Buddhismus.

[72:48]

The vision, it has to be me. Die Vision, das Ich muss es sein. So we have should be, could be, is. Wir haben sollte, könnte und ist. And if there isn't the ground of is, accepting what is, accepting you as you are, There's no fertile soil for what could be or should be. So this soil of a Buddha, this Buddha field, It has to be. Accepting yourself as you are. And more of the earth element, this practical form, solid stuff. And if you want our society to be better, be part of a society around you that's better.

[74:32]

Don't wait for the government to do it for you. Right now, make some kind of sangha around yourself. No, you can't do that by passing out leaflets on the street. Like these people pass out things in the street. Sign up for my Sangha. Yeah, I don't think it would work. So how do you let the Sangha discover you? How do you let yourself discover the Sangha? So this is also what a Buddha field is about.

[75:33]

Now, before I came to the seminar, Even before I went to Portugal, I had a very clear feeling about practicing the practice of the sense of a Buddhafield. But it's very hard to talk about. It was and is very clear to me. But how do I talk about it? It's just this situation right here. But what is this situation? This situation is how we perceive it. How do you perceive it so it's a Buddhafield? How do you perceive it in the usual way?

[76:56]

Now, I've tried to say that one point is this, the usual way is not the knowing the uniqueness of each moment. Somehow, if you get that, then you can bring yourself into the actual present. And that's usually taught. You can't be on the path as long as you have strong ideas of self and other. Yeah, but I find saying that it's kind of hard to relate to. I'd rather speak about, you know, Yeah, see, it's... I should know what not to speak about.

[78:20]

There's a kind of loneliness in it. The sense of participating but being a little separate from. Yeah, the sense of the privacy of the absolute space you're in?

[79:21]

There's a kind of clarity to it. But in the dimensions of our usual feelings it's a kind of loneliness. Yeah, how do you come to stand there? So I'm in a restaurant and I'm kind of ordering something just going along with what's there. I have to kind of give up myself to do that. Can't really make much difference to me what I eat. Or whether I do something wrong or not.

[80:34]

This is called actually in our lineage the fall of the ascetic. Yeah, you know what's right and wrong. But you actually don't hold to that. You give up that feeling. And there's also the fall of the precious. It's called the three falls of Saushan. It's called the three falls of Saushan. Yeah, but I can't... This, what I'm talking about, is almost invisible. It doesn't make sense. It sounds like a strategy or something. Yeah, but you're... Yeah, you're... Yeah... Yes, the fall of the precious is you know the experience of the absolute or the actual body.

[81:56]

You know the experience of bliss. And it probably comes to us, I think, most clearly through meditation. And this is something different than enlightened experiences. Although they make it more touchable. But you sit and it really just feels good. Yeah, and you can hardly admit it feels so good.

[83:07]

And sometimes you look around for words or categories for how good it feels. But there's realms of satisfaction which there's no words for. But we kind of have to let go of our cultural body to notice it. There are experiences of, I'm calling it satisfaction, but I could say bliss or ecstasy or various things. But let's call it, just to make it simple, kinds of satisfaction or ease that are so extraordinary or unusual that they couldn't arise from your personal story. No matter how good your personal story got,

[84:25]

Everything you ever dreamed of would happen. The most beautiful person in the world married you. They happened to be extremely rich. You could understand all matters of things with ease. And you could beat Bjorn Borg at tennis. I don't know what... Whatever satisfaction you could get out of that kind of... what you might imagine through your story in the world. And I would feel pretty good if I beat Bjorn Borg at tennis. But I hardly know how to hold tennis rackets. But the satisfactions arising from practice.

[85:55]

Genuine satisfaction. There's no negative side. There's no, well that was great, but now what am I going to do? Now I'm president of the company, I've got two houses, So what? You don't feel that after the satisfaction of meditation. It pervades your life. So the fall of the precious The fall of precious is not to be attached to that. And the fall, according to kind,

[86:57]

This is a very obscure teaching. It's considered rather difficult to understand, actually. I suppose it's difficult to understand because it's so actually simple and practical. And it's something we all know. Yeah, but maybe we don't know it in a Buddha field. Okay. So the fall, according to kind, is you no longer are caught by likes and dislikes. And you can fully fall into the world.

[88:16]

That's what it means of the six senses. Without any attachment, to the world presented to you by the six senses. But you can let the six senses shape your world. We could also say this is maybe the fall of the ascetic too. You can do what people do. But you don't have to go in the mountains and eat one grain of rice a day. So this is all ways of talking about bodhisattva practice. But real decisions. What's the territory of the decision? I feel a little, I feel ascetic. I feel a certain... Aesthetic?

[89:32]

Aesthetic. I feel aesthetic. Are you saying aesthetic or ascetic? Aesthetic. Aesthetic. Aesthetic. Yeah. I feel aesthetic too sometimes, but... Not aesthetic, ascetic. Aesthetic? Aesthetic? Like an... Like an... Ascetic. Ascetic. Ascetic. Okay. Ascetic. Okay. So I feel ascetic myself. I don't want to be contaminated by this world. And I just took the form of refusing to be in the military. When I was younger, refusing to have money in a bank, because I didn't know what the bank was going to do with the money. And refusing to have a job which contributed to the overall society.

[90:46]

Kind of, you know, something like that. When I worked in an office, there were certain projects I didn't like and I refused to touch any piece of paper concerned with those projects. And when I was in the office and it was about a project that I missed, I didn't even have a piece of paper that had anything to do with it. And security dispelled all this. Basically he told me, you should vote. Because I never voted. I tried to stay outside our society. Hiroshi said, no, no, you have to participate in society. So that's common sense. But from the point of view of

[91:56]

Practice, it's like moment by moment, how do you participate? How do you let yourself fall into the world? Not holding on to anything. Not holding on to Buddha. Not holding on to some precious experience. Not holding on to your values, your ordinary morality. You understand, it doesn't mean that you're immoral or something like that. But that you're making each decision moment by moment. With one group of people, you might have... With another group of people you might have three glasses of wine.

[93:10]

But probably not five. I don't know quite how to explain the feeling. It's a kind of maybe an aesthetic feeling. And you also know as you let your world be shaped by the senses. Again, the senses are only six pieces of the pie. Six pieces of the pie. This world is many more dimension than fit into our five or six senses.

[94:16]

So there's a lot going on between our seeing and hearing. Yeah, and thinking and... So you feel yourself in a world even completely presented to you.

[94:44]

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