So as a result, my feeling is, and again I'm an outsider to your particular culture, my feeling is Germans are more willing to look at the possibilities of another way of living than to imitate their grandparents. Or parents. But, you know, like in England, I don't feel that. In England, people, yeah, I want to live like my grandparents lived. So the willingness to look at other ways of living is more open in Germany than it is in England, for example.

[01:01]

Which for that reason is somewhat more culture-bound than Germany, I would say. Of course, Ireland has never been culture bound. Yeah. Well, all good things have a corruptible side. So a partially realized good thing can also be used for... Let's say evil. And I think patriotism, for example, is often a kind of evil.

[02:02]

In other words, sometimes... When something that's bad masquerades as good, I call that evil. And that's when it's most difficult to deal with. When something takes the form of something that's basically good, it can be the worst thing. Buddhism taught the Japanese people acceptance. Yes, but then the government turned that into acceptance of the emperor, acceptance of the war, etc.

[03:04]

So that's a misuse of acceptance. Yeah, so I think we often, even in ourselves, have to be careful about the good sides of us when they can be used in the service of self or exploitation. Well, the question of accepting suffering I think is part of a larger... Yeah, what can I say? A rather ordinary practice of patience.

[04:28]

And patience is the third perfection in the paramitas, the perfections of a bodhisattva. And there isn't much subtlety in our way of being without patience. And patience also means something like I was saying, when you come into the pulse or when things begin to speak to you. That's a kind of patience. Pick up a beach stone and you wait for it to speak to you. So in each situation you let it speak to you.

[05:38]

If you have that kind of feeling in each situation, Then I think various kinds of emotional, psychological and even physical suffering suddenly kind of open up. I mean, there will always be physical pain. If somebody hits the Buddha on the head with a hammer, the Buddha is not going to appreciate it. But, you know, how you react to that with anger or irritation or, you know, what kind of sensation it is, is different through practice, I think. Most things that, I mean, I find through practice, most things, oh, something happened.

[07:03]

Look, there's a hole in my arm. It got torn open, you know. You feel it, but it's a sensation here. It doesn't flood your body. Like something like that. But even to pain, it changes your... If you... Yeah, I don't know. Sorry, I'm not making any promises here. I've got some medicine here. It cures everything for me. I sold it to the Indians first, and now I'm going to sell it to you. Okay. Yeah, someone else, yes. in the world of beauty or of presence.

[08:13]

I went home yesterday and was busy with all the words that sounded to me. Feel it, it is the truth. Feel it, it is the truth. And I was trying to say, that's what my feeling is. Sometimes I have the feeling of That's why it has more quality than my words. When I was cycling home yesterday, I was occupied with this beauty and presence and also with your words about feel it. And I was wondering why my feeling of it or feelings

[09:16]

do have more, are more facts than my thinking. More simple. More the truth, yeah. Oh, yeah, okay. One step. Before I could not see these vases in the restaurant, I think the presence triggers and I can, I think when I am standing on the balcony, then it is quite impossible not to feel something like the presence of these mountains. But what does it do? It is not what I create here either. It is not with this pillar that wrestling is. That can not be present for me either. Why is it not? I think there is something in me that has to do with it. Things have no meaning. Okay.

[10:20]

Well, just before I saw this vase in the restaurant and I felt, you know, the presence of this object. And, for example, when I stand at the Grand Canyon, it's almost impossible not to feel the presence of these mountains. I hope. If you travel that far, you know. But then again, I'm asking myself, isn't that something which is created? I mean, why, for example, this pole, which I don't find very attractive, can I create it to have presence? Isn't presence something which I create? Yeah, with the help of the object. Mit der Hilfe des Objektes. This arised in my mind. It looked pretty good to me. Yes, but your mind isn't independent of the world.

[11:23]

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. I'm interested in if one person is very deeply engaged in practicing over years, does that change the character of the person? Oh, yes. I think so. Yeah. And I'm interested if, for example, such a person who has been involved so deeply in it, if he stops and returns back to the old ways, can that also have negative effects and be misused?

[13:21]

Can the power developed through practice be misused if you stop practicing? Yeah, you must have this question because it's something personal to you or somebody you know. Your brother, yeah, okay. Is he here? Is he here? Oh, that's already... Evil, evil. That's already a problem. Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know. It could be. Yeah, it could be. I mean, we can misuse anything. Yeah, sometimes we practice, and generally if you practice it,

[14:25]

is because of character that you practice. It may strengthen or develop your character. But it depends on the practice. Some practices are quite narrow actually, they're just physical or something. Or some practices you might have a creep as a teacher, I don't know. And even enlightened people can have very creepy sides. Because you can be physically enlightened for instance and not emotionally enlightened. Or you can be intellectually enlightened and not physically or emotionally enlightened.

[15:35]

But that's the topic of the seminar in 2005. I mean, I have to, the Andreas gang, I have to, you know, kind of... Well, emotions also, you've mentioned the... My experience and the understanding in Buddhism is that being alive is first of all feeling. Not emotions, feelings. Like if, say, somebody's had a bicycle accident and they look serious, but there's feeling.

[16:40]

You know, they might be unconscious, but if they're feeling, at least they're alive. And the teaching is, in my experience, that feeling accompanies all mental and physical activities. And we call it, in English, non-graspable feeling. And that non-graspable feeling is the basis of emotions. And emotions are the basis of thinking. But thinking can be kind of cut loose from emotion. And then you find your thinking and your emotions at odds. And in practice, you're simply trying to bring those back together.

[17:55]

But as I said, it's harder for the body to lie than the mind. Remember I said that earlier? At least in the pre-day I said that. Okay. So it's also harder for emotions to lie. And it doesn't make sense. If we feel angry... Anger is not... We just feel anger, that's all. Or we feel whatever we feel is love or anger or sadness. Yeah, it's a real feeling. Egal welches Gefühl, ob Liebe oder Ärger oder Traurigkeit, es ist ein reales Gefühl. I knew a woman who was a black woman in San Francisco who was a very gifted actress. Also ich kenne eine Schwarze in San Francisco, die eine sehr begnadete Schauspielerin ist.

[19:01]

And she really was gifted. She just acted in little plays in the black community. She got invited to New York because... to act on the stage in New York because she didn't even try. She was so gifted at it that people invited her to come to New York. And she was able to produce any emotion on call. And she felt like a liar. She was scared of it because she could manipulate people so completely because she could produce any emotion and make it feel totally real. She was much more deeply disturbed by her ability to lie than anyone I've ever known who can lie just mentally. But for most of us, our emotions don't lie.

[20:12]

If a person is angry but they're smiling, you can usually tell they're angry. Yes. My questions are dealing with my understanding, or maybe wrong understanding, of this connectivity. From my point of view, I have a feeling I'm quite often able to feel this connectivity, and in some cases I have the feeling I'm still in connectivity to one thing and I don't have the time to finish this connectivity because another thing is coming up and puts me to this direction. And my question is, should we always follow the strongest connectivity in the moment? Say it in German yourself.

[21:28]

Okay, I have to say it in German myself. Yes, you have to say it in German. I am also interested in the term of connection. From my personal experience, it is so that I can put myself into it well and I also often feel connected to human beings. And I often have the feeling that I am connected to everything. and would like to stay connected, and then something else comes, another person, and also expresses something strongly, and that I then sort of think, do I have to finish it for myself now, or do I jump, or do I go to the strongest connection, do I stay where I am? Why don't we just all move in somewhere together and just live?

[22:31]

We can work out these things over time. Well, Of course a flavor, at least a flavor of whatever situation we are in, continues into the next situation. And I think that the easiest thing for me to do, and I, you know, I have a resistance to teaching.

[23:36]

I tried it every, I can't do it, of course, but I try every seminar to have it different than the previous seminars. But there's some classic teachings or classic approaches that are useful to know for everyone. And so I think at this point I should present, even though many of you have heard it before, the four marks. And it's fairly simple. Things have birth. Or appearance. And duration. And... and dissolution and disappear.

[24:58]

These are the four marks of a Dharma. if it's in some extent what I was saying Will might say at some point is that reality or whatever we call it is discontinuous it's momentary Es ist augenblicklich. You can't, even one second ago, you can't get a flower petal that just fell back onto the flower.

[26:02]

Also, ja, du kannst kein Blütenblatt, was von der Blume gefallen ist, wieder zurück. All right. So an actual fact, everything is appearing all the time. Also, alles erscheint die ganze Zeit. So you want to get to practice the Dharma, which is to practice Buddhism, You want to get in the habit of seeing appearance. That's in contrast to seeing permanent. As I said, you try with something like to see a tree instead of a tree. If you see tree, you notice the tree is a little different all the time. And you notice, like I said earlier, breathing, inhaling and exhaling with what you see.

[27:05]

I remember I used to do a little practice I called direct perfection with the flowers on my breakfast table every morning when I was younger. And I began to notice, it was fun to notice, that a fixed flower arrangement moments later would be different. Slightly different. A petal would curve a little bit different. There's no kind of intimacy in that. You suddenly feel alive with this flower arrangement that's actually dying. Then things have duration. Duration is you give it duration in your sensorium and in your mental mentation. Also du gibst in deinem Sinneswahrnehmung und in deinen mentalen Prozessen dem ganzen Dauer.

[28:44]

But even if you hold it, it will dissolve. Aber wenn du es hältst, wird es sich auflösen. So the first three describe what actually happens. Also die ersten drei beschreiben, was wirklich passiert. And this describes... You intentionally wipe the slate clean. Now if you get in the habit of this, of feeling appearance, and letting it have a certain duration, then wiping it clear. And then letting the next appearance fully appear in this open space. You have less problem with it sticking with you.

[29:50]

I like the way he translates my posture, too. We can hold this together, you know. So you know this kind of famous example? And how it jumps back and forth. First it looks one way, and after a while it looks another way. I think, my experience anyway is, but I can't remember when I was younger so much, that if you've been practicing meditation and mindfulness law back, it jumps less often.

[31:06]

But after a while, no matter how experienced you are, it will tend to shift. Whether you intend it to or not. And that tells you something about how perception works. Perception itself is pulsing. Okay. Going toward, centering on. And the biggest word for Buddha is Tathagata. And Tathagata literally means

[32:08]

the one who or that which comes and goes, appears and disappears. Even in the word of or this drawing, there's a coming and going. And practice, again, everything, absolutely everything is changing. Practice is the response to that. You had, for a while, had a question, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. Still around somewhere? Yeah. Yeah. I was very fascinated by the phrase to course in ease.

[33:24]

Course in ease, yeah. My question is actually, this happiness, does it only remind you of a feeling, like being in love, or the feeling that I had when I was successful, or does it also have room, for example, for darker processes, for conflicts? Can this happiness still encompass all of this? Okay, so I encounter happiness and bliss and is this sort of confined to feelings, to like being in love or other happy feelings or does this encompass also sorrows and suffering and pain?

[34:32]

Is within this bliss Is there also the territory of sufferings and so forth, you mean? Yeah. I mean, the short answer is yes. Yeah, that's enough to say about it. Das genügt dazu. You know, I have a... This is just an anecdote, and then we should take a break. Also, da gibt es eine Anekdote, und dann machen wir kurz Pause. I have this sort of daughter.

[35:36]

Da habe ich so eine Art von Tochter. I kind of adopted her. My family kind of adopted her when she was 13 or 14. And because we're on tape and things like that, I won't describe her. Yeah, if you turn the tape recorder off, I can say something about her. I don't like it. Probably at this point, we shouldn't talk about too much. We lost somebody. But we have her sweater. Yeah. The path of mind. What do I mean by that? I mean something like mind in a wider sense than consciousness.

[37:05]

And maybe like we spoke earlier, we want to go back to feeling, feeling that's prior to thinking. So I mentioned this practice of noticing without thinking. You could use that as a little phrase to remind you, just for a while try, notice without thinking. And so again, as I said, like you can use a doorway, and you come into a doorway, you step into the room, you feel the room without thinking about the room.

[38:10]

And usually we have so many ideas, self and other. And gain and loss. Likes and dislikes. Yeah, these habits of mind just go on all the time. They're not bad. Yeah. Heinrich built this beautiful place through such ideas of gain and loss and can he afford it and so forth. And I think much of it was in the service of others as well as trying to make it work for yourself.

[39:12]

So it's normal, you know, these ideas of self and other and like and dislike and so forth. But to be constantly in that kind of thinking is the problem. So to practice notice without feeling, without feeling, without noticing, without thinking. The practice of noticing without thinking. Just let yourself feel before thinking arises. When you meet somebody, you just feel them for a moment before you think about them. Such a little practice makes a big difference.

[40:28]

And the basis of practice like this is enhanced by this path of the breath, as I said. And this practice, too, of noticing without thinking, allows us to more directly feel things appearing. Because you notice without thinking and then a person appears or the room appears. Maybe like and dislike appear. What you can feel, they're just something that appears and could disappear.

[41:37]

Yeah, and we can even, for somebody you really have a hard time with, you can also have a basic liking of them. You know, I know this to be true. So what I'm talking about is what I'm calling a path of mind. And this kind of thing is a craft or it's something you create? need to discover for yourself. In your particular everyday life. We could make a distinction between maybe we could say attentive awareness and non-attentive awareness. Maybe I could use the image of a fluorescent light.

[42:48]

You know, if you do your fingers like this in front of a fluorescent light, fingers skip. You know what I mean, don't you? Kids do it. Because the fluorescent light is on and off, on and off, on and off. But it's off half the time. But the mind sees it as continuous light. That also tells you something about the mind. The mind is making a picture here even though half the time it's in the dark. But you know, in fluorescent light, like big cafeterias and things like that, it's something harsh. I'm rather harsh and cold feeling, don't you agree?

[43:59]

I'm trying to give you a sense of the difference when you have more... attentive, continuously attentive awareness. Because our mind actually only sees part of what's appearing. Plus we're editing and choosing what we decide to look at. One of the experiences people who took psychedelics in the 60s reported a lot. You know, I organized the first LSD and only LSD conference in the United States at the University of California in 1966 or something.

[45:08]

So I was, got lots of reports. And one of the most common reports was, the wall looked flat, but boy, later it was, I could see these shapes and everything else. But actually the wall, if you look carefully, isn't really flat. And it's not just one color. But our mind tends to turn things into permanent feeling, predictable objects. So what I'm speaking about here is, you know, this breath path develops a more attentive awareness. And the world, how can I describe it?

[46:27]

It feels softer and warmer. And familiar. Like when you have a room you're familiar with. So there's some shift like where things, even new things, feel familiar. I can't explain that. And this path of noticing mind, so when we have a statement like, it's not apart from wherever you are, And it's profoundly clear and still. And it's not, but if you seek for it, you don't find it.

[47:29]

We often take such a statement as descriptive. Also, wir nehmen so eine Aussage häufig als beschreibend an. But it's actually prescriptive. Aber es ist vorschreibend. In other words, it describes if your mind is clear and calm. Also, es beschreibt, falls dein Mind klar und still ist. Then it's nowhere else but here. How does our mind, what we've been talking about is, how do we discover such a mind?

[48:31]

I think the best entrance, again, is this path of the breath, as I mentioned. And then if we can add, you know, just the practice of like the four marks, things noticing, things appearing and lasting and dissolving. We simply begin to notice, notice more, feel more. And it's not like we have an observing mind that observes the observing mind.

[49:33]

It's like we have a feeling which observes rather than some kind of mind. And we settle in the coherence of each situation. This duration also is a kind of coherence. Now let me shift from a fluorescent light to a flashlight. Lass mich mal von dem fluoreszierenden Licht zu einer Taschenlampe wechseln. Also in Creston muss ich häufig eine Taschenlampe nutzen, um ins Sendung zu kommen. Um halb vier gehe ich etwa so auf den Weg. Und es ist meist sehr dunkel. And often there are bears around.

[50:47]

You know, I know that you can scare them off usually, but still it'd be nice to see it. Yeah, and they're not too, supposedly they don't smell very well, but they hear, so you want to hum or something. Yeah, I saw last night a polar bear, a white bear you call it or something? Ice bear. Ice bear, yeah. It was on television. And Sophia got totally excited and went over and started kissing the ice bear on the television. So, on television there was a report about polar bears yesterday evening, and Sofia was totally bewildered and started kissing the screen. The polar bear came directly towards her and kissed the screen.

[51:51]

They said that on there, Marie-Louise translated for me, that an ice bear can smell a seal at 30 kilometers away. Against the wind. That's what it said. I don't know. How does the guy know who's telling us this? I don't know. He was standing beside this bear and it would measure him, you know. But supposedly the black bears where we live don't smell too well. But I think these brown bears... Black. Black bears... They don't smell that good. They don't smell that good. Well, Sophia is teaching me colors. Sometimes my flashlight has weak batteries.

[52:57]

And I can, you know, sometimes the bushes are pretty clear and then they're not very clear. And the path is very rocky and I have to kind of feel my way. But when I do that, I'm seeing the flashlight, not just the bushes. Aber wenn ich das tue, dann sehe ich auch das Taschenlampenlicht und nicht nur die Büsche. Ja, und der Pfad des Minds ist, dass du anfängst, den Mind zu sehen, und die Dinge werden klarer. I'm trying to think of examples.

[54:03]

Another example may be if, like, you know, the moon in the water, seeing the reflection of the moon in the water. And that's sometimes used as an image for that when I'm seeing you, it's like seeing the moon, seeing you in my mind is like seeing the moon in water. But that's not just a conceptual image. Because the experience is something like seeing things shimmer in water. As you see the moon, but you also see the water shimmering. So you begin to see, I mean, if you have to, sometimes things are just specific objects, but if you have no reason for looking at things, you start seeing the mind itself shimmering.

[55:09]

Now that kind of mind, when it becomes more a habit, and I've been trying to think of a word to describe it, and my favorite right now is coincident perception. Coincidentally or simultaneously? You see the mind simultaneously as you see the object. What's the result of that? There's lots of things, of course. Again, you just feel more like you belong in the world. Makes the world feel part of you. But you also approach perceiving simultaneously as well.

[56:29]

the momentariness of the world, and simultaneously the extendedness of the world. Now you can practice that a little bit by, again, I've given some people this exercise, you look at a particular thing, Also, das kannst du auch üben. Manchen habe ich diese Übung aufgetragen. Du kannst eine bestimmte Sache anschauen, zum Beispiel dich. But I might just see her glasses. Aber vielleicht sehe ich einfach nur ihre Brille. Or, you know, her sweater or her cheeks or something. So not so much looking at you, just some particular thing. And then I shift to just looking at all of you, or rather feeling all of you, because I can feel you more than I can look at you.

[57:52]

And then I shift back to the particular thing. That's another example of when you do that, you have less self-referential thoughts. Somehow it inhibits thoughts returning to ideas of self. Well, when I When I look at feeling you all at once, or a tree is feeling a tree all at once.

[58:59]

What's important is this all at once. And all at once-ness is also momentariness. Everything comes together for a moment, disperses. So this, when you begin to have this experience of simultaneously seeing mind and the object of perception, That makes it more possible, or it's not exactly different from seeing momentariness and the extension of the world. Okay, so that's enough for me to say, Prabhupada.

[60:01]

So if I start with our topic again, the path of wisdom, from a Buddhist point of view, it's not about knowledge. It's about transforming how you know. So that you know things that we would say as they actually exist. in their momentariness and in their extension and you know it is part of your own body and situation. We started out actually also talking about our larger society.

[61:23]

And the vision of Buddhism would be something like understanding, wisdom, vision of Buddhism. that it's possible to transform our way of knowing so that we still know and understand things in the way of our particular culture but we also come to know the world in a more fundamental way Maybe not the way the world exists in some kind of cosmic sense. But the way it is through our own, the way we are, the way we function. So that... Creativity isn't something like you wait for the intuition or the muses to, you know, visit you.

[62:56]

My friend Philip Whalen wrote a poem which says, I was going to write a poem, but the muses were out to lunch. It's more like you feel the muses are always having lunch with you. Yeah, and you won't. Anyway, I don't want to belabor the point. Okay, so the vision of Buddhism of then would be that it is possible for each person to transform their way of knowing. And to know how things and we actually exist. That's one point.

[64:00]

The second point is that the transformation of how we know and how we mature our mind and body actually happens most powerfully through others. That's why we say Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. That we actually, and that's what a teacher and fellow practitioners are, I mean, you wouldn't think the way you do without the help of your parents and your culture. Their language.

[65:02]

They've all created your own mind together with other minds. And to transform your mind in a fundamental way, this also most deeply happens through simultaneously through through the mutuality of others. So the So the ideal for a Buddhist society would be that we create some kind of society which allows people to practice.

[66:23]

We have such a society, actually, all in all. Yeah, and then there's political action and things like that. But the deeper sense is that society will change from some people realizing themselves in the middle of the society. Yeah, it's not going to happen through institutionalization. Yeah, there may be institutions or rules, laws that make it easier or less easy to practice. But it's really through our relationship with others and how we mature ourselves through others that that can open like a flower in the middle of a society.

[67:25]

And the more such flowers open in the middle of a society, it, I think, can transform the whole of a society. And more than you can imagine. But that's 2006. Oh, we've got that one figured out over here. Over the screen? Yeah. We are slow. So maybe we can sit for a few minutes and then... If you can realize your true nature, others can.

[69:42]

If you don't or you can't, it makes it more difficult for others. Fundamental way we exist together. This mutual realization is The possibility of mutual realization is true because it touches all of us in the way we most deeply exist. Each of you is, I feel, one flower in our society.

[72:05]

Together we're a bouquet, or maybe better, a garden. I have this actual feeling.

[72:29]

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