feeling located in your breath, body, and phenomenon, and so forth. Which allows you to release without fear. And it helps to break the habit of permanence. Yeah, and create a new habit. Again, as I mentioned earlier, like releasing yourself into your exhale. As if you're going to die on your exhale. And then the inhale appears. And if you get used to that after a while, the feeling of disappearing isn't scary. And you're not likely to have a loss of self-meaning or self-relevance.

[01:04]

Anything else? Anyone else? Yes? Yes. But I say that consciousness is the kind of activity which creates an appearance. Through appearance, claiming and discrimination, the objects and the self.

[02:20]

Yes, exactly. Generate or create, sure. It's such a habit and we're so identified with it We don't feel it as creation. We feel it as perhaps reification. But in actual fact, it's a creation. Yes, go ahead. I would like shaping or modeling my preferred relationship. Do you like that better? No. But I think that is like a basic decision whether there is something out there or it's just our own creating.

[03:36]

No, that's going too far. So let's hold back a moment. But if you can shape, it means it's creation. You can shape because it's not permanent. So practically speaking, you're shaping. Enlightenment is to have the experience of its creation, not shaping. It remains shaping because the ingredients are there. You don't end up with entirely new ingredients.

[04:38]

So you can shape because of emptiness. And if you shape, you can also then experience emptiness. And the experience of emptiness means it's creation. Or I would say you generate emptiness. Okay. But you can stick to modeling if you like. I'm not handsome enough. What? To be a model. Stick to modeling. But Eric, no, excuse me.

[05:50]

A terrible anniversary. That sounds depressing. I can tell you. I thought he was angry at me. Yeah, that's... And then we have also Jones. That's what spouses are for. And she said, the topic of her presentation was something, is sociology and mathematics science or is it a discrete object? And she tried to be objective, but it's hard to get there. And since we need the author, we get there. And I... And it's hard to explain what I mean, but... I think I understand it, because normative is equivalent to modeling.

[06:59]

Yeah. One of the big discoveries of this last century, intellectual discoveries let's say, is Heisenberg and Einstein and others pointing out that observation changes what you observe. And this penetrated the intellectual and cultural world very rapidly. Because at least people thought machines could be objective. But this meant that even with machines, you're looking at something and the molecules or light atoms change it.

[08:17]

So it means there's no such thing as objectivity. However, we do certainly have the experience of being objective. Yeah, and it means in the dictionary, you're objective when you don't bring personal prejudices and likes and dislikes to the object being observed. I think in medical terms, an objective diagnosis is one not done by the patient. The patient says, I have this, and that's a subjective diagnosis. It's not an objective diagnosis. And James Joyce, he seems to have taken this to heart. And in Ulysses, he tries to present his character simultaneously, objectively and subjectively.

[09:46]

I mean, I can't remember exactly, but like he says, something like, his hands were Patrick's hands were in his lap. And he felt the pain, but he still felt the pain going up his arms. And Michael's, Michael in Ireland, face twitched. It must have been mirroring his own twitch. So you'd have a sentence which just didn't say who was feeling these things, but you suddenly realize this is from inside the person, this is a nearby person, this is seen from the outside.

[10:48]

It's all one thing. So he tried to join so-called subjectivity and objectivity in one description, simultaneous description. Which in a way is a practice of non-duality. Yeah. But maybe we should talk more about subjectivity and objectivity, probably will, but yeah. Because I think the activity of subjectivity also is a kind of I or self. Okay, anyone else? Yes, Ulrike. If you practice this... Is that what you talked about yesterday as the separating of the observing self from the observing mind?

[12:17]

Yeah, this would be a practice of the observing mind, not of the observing self. Now, I think one of the major confusions in trying to talk about self and selflessness and non-self and so forth... is the implicit identification we make with the observer as a self. A self. So we ask who when we should ask what. Because the observing mind isn't necessarily a who, it's only a what. The observing mind is not necessarily a who. We could call it a what. Now, I think that needs a little more explication. But it took me many years to see that.

[13:34]

It's just a simple... Once I say it, once I notice it, it's simple. But it took me a long time to see the confusion. People ask, who's doing this, or who's observing this? If I held a mirror up, you wouldn't say, who's mirroring? So... The observing mind is just the capacity of the mind to observe itself. It's not a person, a who. But one of the functions of is observation.

[14:39]

And it uses the capacity of the mind to observe itself to become an observing self and a who which accumulates personal history. Anyway, that's how I understand it. So there's no who which sees this appearance. But a who can appear. Krista? Yes, earlier... I have to put effort or work in imagining impermanence.

[15:45]

And I think if you talk about impermanence, you mean impermanence in every moment. I don't know how to do it. And I would be interested how one can do it. But I try to do it the other way around. I look at the flower, the rose, and I look at it as like what a miracle it is that it appears every moment.

[16:58]

Yeah, it is. I don't know where it comes from, but my feeling is like every moment it had to collapse and totally disappear. No. No. And out of that, it's like a miracle that it's there again and again. It's touching how it says again and again, here I am. Yes, it is. Yeah, that is so. I understand it that way, too, or feel that way.

[18:05]

But to enter into the practice of impermanence, it's true everything's changing. Stones are worn down from mountains. But if you look at a stone, you don't see much impermanence. So you can think of the stone as impermanent, but you don't experience it as impermanent. And much of the world is that way. And the stone is out there, it's not just mine. Whatever we mean by out there. Okay, but so the best way to enter the experience of impermanence is to see your relationship to the stone as impermanent.

[19:11]

Because all you know is your perception of it. And that perception, that noticing, is always changing. Okay. So once you get really into the habit of that, that begins to open up impermanence in a wider sense. Of course, these flowers, if you look carefully at them, they are actually moving slightly. And petals will fall off, of course. I have a question.

[20:21]

If I'm walking in Vipassana meditation and I'm walking very, very slowly, And I also name my steps. It seems to be an illusion to be able to name the beginning of the step and the end of the step. Yeah, it's arbitrary. But it's a naming as a practice which stops thinking. So if I name everything, my stepping, et cetera, this is another way to look at this second step. If the naming doesn't lead to discrimination, then the naming leads back to appearance or thus and so.

[21:27]

If I just name, you know, sitting, breathe, it dissolves into a kind of space. And there's no beginning or ending to the naming. Yes? But then also self and identity is a what and not a who. Yeah, if you're pretty detached. But I think who is useful. You do have a personal history that we call who. I think it's psychology to ask, who am I?

[22:28]

It's more Buddhist to ask, what am I? But both are okay. Who is a little more entangling than what. If I say, who am I? I don't know, actually. What am I? I have some experience. Can you speak a little more slowly, please? Even in English I have trouble. So they see the physical mirror and not their face. Exactly. And it seems to me that those who have quite optimistic view when they use, for example, this metaphor of mirror, you know, that something cannot be formed or worked.

[24:13]

And my question is also in the same place. I mean, who's kind of mirror, but concave and really destructive? And I mean, if you have this more sense of our self-observation, then that also affects the mind also. And when I talk about this with the people, with the self-proclaimed critics, then it can be very pathological. Because in the industry, when you talk about it, or when you talk about it, you have the feeling that the exact person is being persecuted. to look in the mirror and not look at it, but to look at it from a different perspective. These are all pretensions or pathologies. And the Protestant has very often said that the spirit plays a role, that things are as they seem.

[25:18]

And that seems very optimistic to me. Because he says that it is not the process And my question is, how did Melancholy grow in itself and how did it evolve? Whether it evolved with the observation of the mind, or with the observation of the body, or from the body. Yes. Yeah, I believe that some anorexic, rail-thin anorexic people look in the mirror and they see themselves as fat. What? Not only. Normal Western people. Oh, I know, I know, yeah, ordinary people. Some people look in the mirror and they see themselves as ugly and others as beautiful and you know, et cetera.

[26:22]

Yeah, so I, at least in Zen, Zen issues, issues, refuses to use the image of a mirror. Sometimes it's used, but really, if you look at the whole story of the sixth patriarch, there's no mirror, there's no wiping the mirror, and so forth. Though sometimes the mirror is a useful analogy, but not as a metaphor of realization. So, I used just now, like holding up a mirror, just to say there's a difference between an observing mind and an observing self. But if the observing mind is so distorted, it's an observing self.

[27:33]

So then we can ask, is it possible to have an undistorted observing mind? Strictly speaking, no. There's always some distortion. Yes, but in the range of practice between an observing self, which is really only in terms of self, is very different from an observing mind. And how do we get there? So that we can try to talk about it. Try to talk about it. Not right now, but... It's about... There's somebody. Oh, yes, okay. So this confusion of the observing self with the observing mind, could this be an explanation in psychotherapy of schizophrenia?

[29:17]

I don't know. The people I know who have been are schizophrenic. It seems almost genetic more than Simply psychological. Whatever I mean by that. I don't mean it's not... You can't do anything about it. And I think... But to work with a serious mental illness through practice, you have to have a strong will and intention. Just in my experience, if you don't, there's not much hope. My experience is you can be a little sick without will and you can't get better.

[30:50]

But you can be quite mentally ill and have willpower and you might be able to get better if you practice or if you do some kind of something. Mm-hmm. But certainly Zen practice, Buddhist practice, is not a cure-all. It takes intelligence and effort and actually a strong sense of self in order to practice. Okay, anything else? So let's sit a few moments and then have our meal.

[32:05]

Right here before you. And nowhere else. It is ready made for you. Now, Yuan Wu is one of the major creators of Zen Buddhism. He's the compiler, as I suggested, of the Blue Cliff Records. Shuedo collected the stories, but Yuan Wu, through a series of lectures and annotations, made it into what it is now, compiled it as these hundred cases, colons. And in his great act of compassion and brilliance.

[33:11]

And one of the most creating, putting together one of the most extraordinary documents in world literature and religious literature. So if there's any Zen Buddhist we can trust, I think he's certainly one we can trust. So let's take seriously what he says. Whole, essential being. Yeah, you'd have to spend some time with yourself on what is whole, essential being. And what does he mean?

[34:28]

Is right here before you. And nowhere else. That shifts the level. And there's no comparison then. And it is ready made for you. You can think of this ready made for you. Catch the feeling of it. If you think of a baby emerging into a human baby or any baby emerging into this world from the mother.

[35:28]

Everything that we know, everything that exists, makes this baby possible. Change the temperature of the planet slightly and there would be no babies. So the whole world is ready-made for this baby. At least the whole world has made this baby. Calling This all at once-ness, the world, is a little funny, but we don't have another word. So in a way, you could say the path, the way, the path, is the whole world makes the baby possible.

[36:34]

And The path is to discover that the whole world is ready made for you. Doesn't mean there isn't danger and things like that. And betrayal and all kinds of things. But these are unpleasant footnotes. Fundamentally, the whole world is made, or ready-made for us.

[37:42]

Eleven square feet of dirt, I believe, if you plant it carefully, can support a person all year round. We can't necessarily say that our society is completely ready-made for us. It's perhaps ready-made for itself. And it might be seriously outdated. So then we have the idea that Siegfried put forth earlier by implication, is there something else like a true nature? This is not... exactly Buddhism let's say it's a surface of Buddhism but you can't penetrate the surface until you have some yeah you've

[39:04]

felt for yourself the possibility of a true nature, separate from our societal or cultural nature. If you don't have sensed this possibility, practice doesn't make much sense in the long run. The practice which is transformed and comes alive through your views and intentions. So this whole essential being appears before you, right here before you, and nowhere else.

[40:25]

And the whole world is ready-made for you. Okay, that's the first statement of Yuan Wu I want to introduce. Okay, the second statement. Realize Buddhism right where you stand. Come into a mind where there is no before and after. And no here or there. Okay. So this is a prescriptive statement. Because It's asking you to realize a mind where there's no before and after.

[41:44]

No here and there. No, that means to step out of the structure of mind that we certainly need. Das bedeutet, aus der Struktur des Geistes herauszusteigen, die wir ganz bestimmt brauchen. Die hier und dort und vorher und nachher hervorbringt. So I offer you from Yuan Wu those two statements. Also bitte ich euch von Yuan Wu diese zwei Aussagen an. Now, I want to say that I think the two most important things we've discussed in this seminar, I mean, I don't know what's most important, but they're probably the least examined so far by us. And somehow, sometimes the least examined brought into our attention, held in our...

[42:58]

I have a power the already examined doesn't have. So I would like to say one of them is the sense that my understanding that there's a difference between the observing self and the observing mind. Now let me... say, deferring to Daru here, that we can say it's a reflecting mind, but if we say that, we have to then say a reflecting and observing mind.

[44:14]

While it's not an observing self, while it's not an observing self, it has the dynamic of observing. So it's an observing self. I mean an observing mind. So what I mean by observing is there's a kind of, there's definitely an intelligence and a kind of discrimination going on. A kind of thinking, non-thinking, as Dogen says, which is not the karmic self. So I think to proceed, we have to absorb these two things this one thing and to and the second not so examined thing by us is

[45:36]

the nature in serious practice of examination itself. Okay, so that I, you could call the, you know, it's hard to bring words really into life. The dynamic of stillness. The word dynamic helps a little. It means it's a relationship, a transformative relationship. It means it's a relationship, a transformative relationship. Buddhism is restorative and transformative. It restores us and it transforms. And we can think of practice as divided into a restorative phase and a transformative phase.

[47:01]

Restore like I gave you yesterday. Unbroken concentration without gaps is the womb of the sage. Now, that's just a way to say concentrate on stillness. Without interruption. But if I said Zen practice is about concentrating on stillness, virtually no one would understand. They would think, yeah, sounds pretty thin and probably boring. But if we start trying to find, you know, Yeah, we say the world.

[48:30]

The world is just a word, but look at what the world is. It's because there's no words for such a thing as the world that we have a simple world like the world. The simplicity is because there's no word for its complexity. So we can say in this case stillness is something like that. So I called it also fullness. A bridge. A bridge of fundamental identity. Identification.

[49:34]

And I compared it to, I tried to give you a feeling like the silence of the, excuse me, the stillness, rather, of the ocean wave. When you feel that its true nature is to return to stillness. Or the stillness of the tree in moving and in its stillness. And the stillness of the tree is rooted in its trunk and roots. And stillness of the oceans, of the waves, is rooted in the immensity of the water.

[50:49]

You don't see so much stillness in the splashing of a pond. Yeah, and as we talked the other day, to use a term like the ground of being is problematical. Because, I mean, it's actually wrong. Because... It assumes a priority, something that exists before things appear. And you know the basic conception in Buddhism is not only that everything's changing, but there's no beginning and end.

[51:55]

And among the two choices, do things have a beginning, which we're used to? Babies are born, plants spring up. But in the larger context, it's pretty hard to imagine what's before if all this is created. So Buddhism chose the other choice. As I said the other day. Well, here it is. Let's assume it was always here. It's too hard to deal with what was before. We can see that it's here.

[52:58]

Let's just assume in some form it's in some interpenetrating way always here. So there's no ground of being. There's no prior ground. Es gibt keinen Grund des Seins, der davor liegt. This is a really essential idea if you're going to get where Buddhism is coming from. Das ist eine wesentliche Vorstellung, wenn ihr verstehen wollt, woher der Buddhismus wirklich kommt. Okay. So instead of ground of being, let's try to find another way to root the stillness.

[54:07]

Also, anstatt einem Grund des Seins, lasst uns eine andere Weise suchen, diese Unbewegtheit zu verwurzeln. So, if I stick with the metaphor of the tree, Okay, instead of talking about the tree in the ground, let's just talk about the roots in the trunk. Und statt vom Baum und dem Boden zu sprechen, bleiben wir bei den Wurzeln und dem Stamm. There's a koan, heaven and earth and I, heaven and earth and I, and you, share the same root. Myriad things and I share the same body. Now, these statements in Zen, the pedagogy of Zen is to not have you study the sutras, but to penetrate these statements. So as I said, we can think of the root as the spine itself.

[55:10]

The spine is the backbone, the center bone. The center bones. As a kind of mind. You know, the other day when I was talking to... Sophia, about Giorgio's table. The wood, the woodworker and so forth. I said to her, you're seeing this table with your eyes. Treat the table as if it were your own eyesight. This is a statement in Buddhism, but also Dogen especially points it out.

[56:30]

To treat things as your own eyesight. We're very gentle with our eyes. We have to be gentle with what we see. So, as we might treat things with our own eyes, as if what we see was our eyesight or eyes, In a more actually tangible way, treat your backbone, your spine, as a kind of mind or intelligence. And in a way, we can say you can experience your own stillness as rooted in and through your spine, this wide spine, not limited to the bones.

[57:35]

Okay. Now I want to change the topic. Slightly. Although it will seem like I'm going far afield. And I actually might be. You know, I've been here in Germany now and Austria for nearly a year. Certainly for most part of the year I went back to the States only for a month.

[58:48]

It's the longest I've been out of the States except the years, four years almost I lived in Japan. As you know, I'm usually six months and six months. It's been nice for Sophia because she's really gotten a chance to settle into the German language with other kids. It might be good that she had a year of exposure to one language, where she's exposed to English through kids. Und es ist gut, dass sie vielleicht dieses Jahr hatte, wo sie mit dem Deutschen vertraut werden konnte, bevor sie mit anderen Kindern im Englischen vertraut wird.

[59:52]

Aber ich sage, das ist einfach nur eine Art zu sagen, dass ich nicht wirklich weiß, was in Amerika vor sich geht. But I feel that the public discourse has to have been seriously corrupted. Primarily by... agent being this current President Bush. And although you impressions are probably created mostly from the press, I would say that at least every

[61:00]

I don't know anyone and I don't know anyone who knows anyone almost who supports Bush. So, I mean, you have to recognize, I think, that America is many countries within one country. And the America I live in really does not support Bush. And I don't think any, virtually any educated people support Bush. There are some exceptions. And But just to try to make some sense to you what I'm talking about.

[62:25]

I was going to say the educated people who, you know, 50% of Americans, according to a survey, say they've never read a book. Say they've never read a book if they're asked. Bush has all those. Plus 10% more or something like that. And... The educated people who have supported Bush are mostly the politicians. And the flawed democratic system of America means you can't be elected if there's any significant constituency opposed to you. To be elected, you have to have several constituencies completely for you.

[63:39]

And you have to have the rest of the constituencies partly for you. Like labor or... No, constituency means... What? A party? No, with... Within a party, there would be women as a constituency, labor as a constituency, Jews are a constituency, Catholics are a constituency. So if you have any one of these constituencies opposed to you, you can't really get elected. It throws the vote. Because otherwise, votes are mostly 50-50, 40, 8, 55. .

[64:40]

So the Democrats are deeply opposed to Bush, but none of them can be elected if they make it public they're opposed to Bush, to be re-elected. So they seem to have decided to play a waiting game of, well, we'll wait to try to stay in power so that when the time is right, we can do something. And I think it's wrong, a wrong decision because the whole process has corrupted the public dialogue. Now I'm just sharing what I've been thinking about recently and I'm not very well informed about these things. Okay. What I mean by the public discourse is Democracy assumes that all the cards are on the table.

[66:09]

Or at least the cards that are put on the table are not a marked deck. So I've been reading quite a bit about the First World War. And the quotation I've given you several times in the last month or so, some of you, is a statement of Virginia Woolf, which I didn't mention the first night, did I? Because in England, and also Ford Maddox Ford. I spoke about that in the last seminar. Yeah. His name is Ford Hofer, but he took the name Ford Maddox Ford.

[67:14]

He's the son of a German music critic who moved to London. And he became one of the main figures in the time of Ezra Pound and the writers around the First World War. So Their writing and own consciousness was, and the reason they wrote, what seems to be also the case of many of the writers coming out of Vienna. was this corruption of what I'm calling the public discourse.

[68:20]

When things weren't what they seemed. And before the First World War, England was presenting here a liberal kind of dialogue about whether to go into the war or not. But actually there was a secret conservative agenda of already made treaties with Russia and France and other countries, which nobody knew about. So it was already figured out that they were going to go to war and who was going to fight whom, but they pretended that it was still in the process of a public decision.

[69:24]

So Virginia Woolf characterized it by saying, in a social situation, What would people say after the war compared to what they said before the war? And she said, well, she found out they said the same things after the war as they said before the war. But she said before the war there was a difference. Under the conversation, there was a hum of excitement and anticipation.

[70:29]

A hum of some kind of joy under the words. After the war, that hum was gone. Okay. So I'm saying all this to say that from the point of view of Buddhism, order, societal order, stems from each of us. Ultimately, society and our human world is rooted in us. This is the basic bodhisattva choice, position, view.

[71:34]

I mean, societies, I think Eric Vögelen, do any of you know his work? Vögelen, V-O-E-G-E-L-I-N. He was a Viennese philosopher, historian. And who's the person who wrote the Austrian Constitution? Hans Kelsen. He was Hans Kelsen's assistant and student and helped him write the Constitution. Anyway, he's a brilliant thinker, though I don't agree with him at all in most things. He has a basically Christian view and not that's okay, but a view that human nature doesn't change.

[72:46]

It's always the same, God-given. I just think that's completely not true. All right. But if it's not true, how do we have a true nature? Okay, so we have that kind of problem. How do we sort that out? But Erich Wögelin writes about the search for order in history in a brilliant way. For order. Order. How do you order a society? And he says, traditions in a society? Search in cosmological speculations, myth, philosophy. But basically something outside ourself.

[73:49]

So what Buddhism says, you can't look. This is all inside, there's no outside. So from that point of view, the Bodhisattva decision to implement the Bodhisattva decision The Bodhisattva's decision is to become the world you want the world to be. To become the person you wish existed somewhere. as I say we'd really like to meet a really wonderful person that's natural let's be awake to such persons but if you want such a person to exist You have to be that person.

[75:23]

There's no other way to make it real. So we say only a Buddha can recognize a Buddha. If you're going to recognize such a person, you have to be in the process of becoming such a person. So how do we find the source of order in ourselves? Or our true nature? This is also one of the fundaments of Buddhist and Zen practice. And I think it's time to take a break. And this can be part of our own maturation. But the most fundamental thing we can do is also become the person we want the world to be. Or to head ourselves in that, body ourselves in that direction.

[76:42]

But I wanted to make clear that at least I consider this practice a political act. And the concept of the Buddha is some kind of timeless presence, realization, etc. But the concept of the Bodhisattva is a historical concept. The Bodhisattva is realized in his or her society. And for his or her society. Yes. And the realization of the bodhisattva is the potential of the society.

[78:05]

And if that potential isn't there, isn't felt or experienced, now we're not talking about ignorance or realization. That would be to think of them as entities. We're speaking about a movement toward realization or a movement toward ignorance. And the movement toward realization realizes In other words, the world is always passing through us. If it passes through our moving in the direction of realization, it transforms what passes through us.

[79:13]

You can imagine it as a kind of prism. Prism. prism that reflects light, separates light. If the direction is a prism, and as the world passes through you, it is affected by the direction of your life. And the world passing through you then reinforces the direction your life is taking. So it makes no sense to think, oh, I'm stupid or I'm not realized or something like that. That's to think in entities.

[80:15]

But if you think in relationships, processes, then the process or direction, the intention to realize how we actually exist, shows the world shows us the world as it actually exists. How do we find this order in ourselves? It's actually simple, simple, basically simple. It's the experience of being alive. When you in some circumstance really feel this is what it must mean to be alive.

[81:27]

And I call that finding your seat. It can perhaps most directly occur through sitting meditation. At some point, you're not distracted. You're not feeling you've got to go somewhere, do something. You're just deeply at ease. And something comes over you. This is what it must mean to be alive. You feel the power of simply being alive.

[82:36]

I think of Smokey Robinson, the singer. Do you know Smokey Robinson? He says, this may not be the love everyone talks about, but this must be love. So it's some feeling like that. And once you've had this feeling and come into this feeling, you don't search anywhere else for what it means to be alive. This is your own power, your own capacity. And it becomes the measure of the source of order. Your sense of what makes sense. Yeah, I think that's enough for just these right now.

[83:56]

So I'd like to see what any of you have to say or what you could talk about together. I would like to see what you would like to say and what we can talk about. Don't all speak at once. Yes. In our rooms there is a little printed page from this Lichtung, from the organization. And there is a quote of Robert Musi on it. Actually, I'm somebody else or I'm different, but I hardly ever get to that way or hardly ever can be that way.

[85:10]

Sounds a little bit like my friend Lou Welsh looking in the mirror. And saying, I don't know who you are, but I'll shave you. But yeah, I find Musil's book is translated as the man without qualities. And I think it really means... from reading the book, the man without collective identities. I think he was one of the first people to really see we have to escape from identities, such collective identities.

[86:15]

Well, that's very nice. It's in the rooms. I started a restaurant once. And there was a little former bathroom in the warehouse. We turned a warehouse into a restaurant. And this restaurant, I mean, this little room was quite a nice little room. I think I made it into a curved door, arched door. And I had printed very carefully on it, Wittgenstein's fly bottle. No reference to it formally being a toilet.

[87:18]

But it was there. I liked it there in the restaurant. No one understood it, but it's all right. And after I left, they painted it over. Yeah. Yes. In meditation you repeated that it was the most basic thing for a human being to become the person you wanted to be in the world. Well, I didn't say in meditation, but I just said...

[88:21]

Practice is to become the person you want the world to be. And I found it somehow like the categorical imperative of Zen. And what touches me very deeply is this enormous challenge and possibility this gives us. And my feeling is the biggest challenge is not to make it real, but to

[89:23]

To recognize how this person should be. Yes. And I thought this has to be like a process without end. Yes. It would be boring if it had an end. Yes. And you could fail if it had an end. But if it has no end, you can't fail. You know, as many of you know, Ivan Illich was a close friend and teacher for me. And in his book, Celebration of Awareness, he starts out with some equivalent statement about we have to become the world we want the world to be.

[90:55]

And he says, we can't think our way to this world. We also agreed that Buddhism and Christianity are searches for ultimate friendship. And as I told some of you, I was lucky enough to spend three days with him just before he died. A few months ago. Yeah, and he was full of energy and vigor at that time.

[91:57]

And we walked all the way downtown Bremen and took a streetcar back. And the last thing he said to me just before I left The conversation we had just before. He said, let's write a paper together on why Christianity and Buddhism are not religions. I said, well, yeah, let's do it. We both knew there probably wouldn't be time because he'd almost died last summer. And two weeks later, I guess it was Silja, the person of his protégés who was closest to him. They talked about him. They were going to meet in about half an hour.

[93:10]

And she came in about half an hour and he was sitting on the couch there. So, excuse me, something else I'd like to speak about. in this process of transformation, where I try to develop in a certain direction. And this is important in psychotherapy, also then in your personal life. . All the time I'm confronted with my own greed and delusion and what strategies are there to deal with it.

[94:37]

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