I'm told we have a topic this year. That's not so usual, is it? But she's organizing the... Now as the director and the web page, the website, yeah. So she calls me up and says, we need a title for it. I say, we do? Well, I want to put it on the web. So I say something. So somehow I said, I don't know what was on my mind, I said, weaving your personal narrative. And none of you know that that was supposed to be the title, is that correct?

[01:14]

Some do. Because earlier I said to her, really? Oh my gosh. What was on my mind when you said I'd talk about that? Yeah. But anyway, we certainly are, each of us have a personal life which works its way out. But it doesn't. I have a granddaughter named Paloma. Ich habe eine Enkelin, die heißt Paloma. Das habe ich wahrscheinlich zuvor schon erwähnt. Anyway, they had a surprise... Well, it wasn't really a surprise.

[02:17]

It was supposed to be a surprise early 80th birthday party for me in January, a couple of months ago. Und die haben eine Überraschungs... Also es war nicht wirklich überraschend, aber eine Überraschungs... Because it was possible for me to be in California where I have old friends and family, a lot of family. So it happened in January. And then this birthday party took place in January. And my nephew has a Japanese restaurant and they have Japanese and he catered the meal for us, about twelve people or something.

[03:17]

His father is the Japanese wood journey carpenter who built the Zendo at Crestone and will build the Zendo at the art school. He's in the process of doing it. So he and his son constructed the interior of this restaurant where there had been a restaurant that burned. So he sweetly said, cater the meal for us. Well, anyway, I have this granddaughter. And she uncannily speaks in complete, she's 20, at that time was 26 months old.

[04:36]

Uncannily? You don't know what uncannily means? She looks to her stereo translator over here. Uncanny means hard to believe. Like it was uncanny. There were three ghosts in the room at once. Uncannily means surprising or hard to believe or something. Anyway, she speaks in complete sentences. So, the next morning after the birthday party, You know, I was sleeping in the guest room, which they call the father-in-law's apartment, in case I want to retire. And my former wife does live in a mother-in-law's apartment in the house already, so...

[05:38]

So, something this little girl says Please come in here for a moment. So I go in and she's standing with both her hands on the railing of the crib. So anyway, really she says, I have an idea. I want to get out of here. Some kids would just cry.

[06:58]

So I said, okay, and she said, I want to go downstairs and see all my friends at the party. I said, well, most of them have left, but I want to see them and let's celebrate. Okay. So I picked her up and took her down. But we can assume, I mean I assume that she's different than my three daughters, but I can assume that whatever this is going on with this little girl is going to be part of her personality and part of her life. But she has been born into a family that has been involved with Buddhism for 50 or 60 years. So the conceptions of the views of Buddhism are going to be part of her life.

[08:38]

And how is that going to affect her? I think deciding to practice and all is an adult decision, so I've never said anything about Buddhism to my daughters, three daughters, if they've been growing up. But still it remains an unbelievable part of their life for them. Sophia, 15, grew up in Yonassar, primarily. And Crestone, but primarily Yonassar. Okay. So deciding to practice Buddhism is called home leaving.

[10:05]

Now that doesn't mean only that you might become a monk. But it means something like you're free or you see your birth culture as a relative expression in the world and not a final expression in the world. So whatever these ideas are to see her culture, she's growing up in relative terms, which means she feels she has a choice, even about her own birth culture. It's hard to exercise the choice, but you recognize that it's possible.

[11:08]

And to convey the understanding that the culture is something relative, to even convey her birth culture, that she can recognize this possibility of choice, even if it is difficult to implement this decision, it is still important to recognize the decision. Okay, so I pondered today, but weaving our personal narrative within a Buddhist culture. And what difference would that make? No, I'm not trying to convince any of you of Buddhism. But it is interesting for me to talk with you about Buddhism, because that's all I know anyway, in the context of your presence and intelligence experience.

[12:14]

And I, of course, also, as I'm semi-retiring, and actually am retiring quite a bit from teaching, Don't mean here and now, but with old friends. Yeah, I still have a lot to do as we're trying to... find out how these institutions which are locations for practice can continue.

[13:18]

But I still have a different kind of time. Yeah, and then I think about what I should speak about differently. And instead of just going from topic to topic that arises through circumstances, And I think maybe I should review some of the basics of practice and Buddhism nowadays for myself and with you.

[14:22]

And with you too, because you know, there's so much interest now. I mean, somebody just sent me a pile of papers about Buddhism and psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. And it's largely a positive interest. It wasn't in the 60s, it wasn't a positive interest. But when I read these papers, some of them are quite interesting and intelligent. They still rather loosely generalize about Buddhism in a way that isn't accurate.

[15:24]

For example, the Four Noble Truths. are usually translated as, everyone knows them, suffering. The first one. Second, there's a cause of suffering. And third, because there's a cause of suffering, there can be an end of suffering. And fourth, there's a path that can free you from suffering. Well, the translation suffering isn't actually quite right. Basically, the first is something

[16:39]

There's conditioned existence, that's all. There's the insecurity of conditioned existence. Yes. So even if you were completely happy in your adult life, you made things work for you, etc., and you don't feel suffering much, still there's an insecurity in conditioned existence. Excuse me, I'm not quite sure that that is correct. Off-conditioned life is not the same as, or isn't the same as the conditions of life.

[17:58]

No, conditioned means it's affected by. The conditions of life are its unconditioned. Okay, and another problem with the way the Four Noble Truths are presented is that they are presented as kind of philosophy. And that's not really what it's about. It's the content of this person called the awakened ones' enlightenment experience. So it's not philosophical statements as recognitions that come upon you. Yeah, and also that the translations up to now with suffering and causes and suffering, emphasizing cause, is that it's been translated within a world, Western world, permeated by the concept of a creator, that things are created.

[19:57]

And this translation, where suffering and the cause and so on, where it is translated like that, in it you can also see that it was translated into a culture, a Western culture, in which the acceptance of a creator and a created world takes place. It's maybe not so easy to notice slight differences in views. But they're extremely important. Extremely effective. But they're extremely important and make a big difference. Just before I flew to Europe, I was in a science of consciousness conference, I mentioned it in the previous seminar, in Tucson, Arizona.

[21:08]

Yeah, and I stopped doing conferences, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago, because I really just prefer to talk to people I know and not to strangers. But I realized I lost some touch with the current lingo. Yeah. Is that what I said? Well, sorry if it was complicated what I did. Okay.

[22:09]

So anyway, part of the reason I accepted was that it was in the next state to Colorado. And generally, if I'm on a continent, I prefer to drive a train. And in America, there's no trains that go anywhere you want to go unless you're a commuter. I have no idea how I'd get to Tucson by train. I'd probably have to go to Los Angeles. So I decided to drive. which was sort of stupid in a way. You can see how I lived in America, presumably in America, but I forgot that here's Colorado and here's Arizona.

[23:18]

So driving from... From Crestone to Tucson is three full days of driving. It's like going to Oslo or something from here. It's next to Mexico. And I even had to go through American border patrol inside America. I don't know. I couldn't understand it better. Ich musste sogar durch amerikanische Grenzkontrollen fahren, mitten in Amerika. Warum, habe ich nicht verstanden, aber habe ich gemacht. So I had three days of driving to get there and three days of driving to get back to get to the Denver airport and fly here a week or so ago.

[24:25]

Also dann musste ich drei Tage lang runterfahren und dann drei Tage lang wieder zurück nach Denver fahren und dann von dort aus in den Flieger zu steigen und hierher zu fahren. So I don't know what's wrong, but anyway, I had... Let me explain why you see me limping. I had six days of my heel resting on the floor in front of the gas pedal. Also ich bin gerade dabei zu erklären, warum ich humple. Das hat dazu geführt, dass ich sechs Tage lang meinen Haken so auf dem Boden hatte und damit aufs Gaspedal gedrückt habe. Sie haben wirklich immer Wunder und immer Wunder. Und dann habe ich irgendwann angefangen, meinen linken Fuß zu nehmen zum Fahren. Das ist ziemlich verbindlich. But anyway, it got so sore, it's still sore. I even got a cane so I can be like Paul Rosenblum. Hi. Hey, hi. So I think I look very distinguished.

[25:27]

I hope so, anyway. That looks very special, I hope, with my stick. And Aoife and I agree that it's a shift in tectonic plates that makes it steeper over here. And she said it's a brilliant analysis, I agree. And I also went because quite a lot of my friends were in the conference.

[26:33]

But the conference is entirely proven. People there are, I don't know, innumerable neuroscientists. And I gave a couple small and short talks as the wild card. Yeah, maybe like that. But all of these people, well, first of all, there's 1,200 people there, 500 people in the conference hotel as well. All walking around with what probably we can call consciousnesses With no idea in the whole group, virtually none, I was one of the few, my person, that there is a way to study, to objectively study consciousness subjectively.

[27:35]

Yeah, so most of them think you have to study it objectively. That's one assumption everyone has. by someone else other than yourself. And the idea which informed almost everybody's thinking was how do you explain how matter turned into mind?

[28:49]

And there's a lot of theories. All molecules have some component of consciousness in them, etc. All of it. But anyway, they're interested in where it came from, what was the cause and the source. Buddhism and in the culture of the Buddha, this is not a question people ask. What they asked is, here's all these things, what do we do with them? The question of where did they come from was too metaphysical for them, I think. It's... It's like if you go in the kitchen and you're a cook, you don't say, I'm not going to cook until who told me where to buy this and who at the farmer group was.

[30:18]

I mean, there's good reason to do that. And she, when she was the tenzo, did do that. But still, that was more about the ingredients than their source. So the cook says, here's all these ingredients, what am I going to do with them? So the Buddha, I'm assuming, I'm channeling the Buddha right now. don't believe a word of it, said something to himself like, well, there's all these ingredients, this unsatisfying, insecure, conditioned world.

[31:25]

So the second so-called noble truth, which is also a kind of mistranslation, But the second so-called noble truth is there's a cause. But that's not what actually the words say. It just says these ingredients combine. these ingredients gather, cluster. Yeah, so then the third so-called noble truth is that he said, well, if they're just gathering, I can change the gathering.

[32:35]

I can cook these things differently. Well, that's really, do you get it? A different world. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, these things are here, right? Let's do it differently. And how to do it differently. So now also, it's not just a sort of like he said, there's one and there's two and there's three. No, no. He decided, you know, first he tried to set his mind. And from my point of view, I'm not talking about Buddhism here. I'm talking about what can be ingredients in our life. Because if there were ingredients in his life, there can be ingredients in our life. So first he tried asceticism.

[34:18]

Mortifying the body, so doing the equivalent of a hair shirt and sitting in the desert or something. A hair shirt is a shirt with fur inside so you feel itchy and uncomfortable all the time. And he, after the story is, and I think there's some truth to the story, After a considerable period of mortifying, making your flesh die, mortifying the flesh, He decided to hack with this. This is just making me feel sick and weak. And supposedly on his way down from the mountain, he met a farmer girl.

[35:49]

And she gave him some rice. pudding with milk or something. He goes, well, this is the way. Anyway, he decided on meditation practice, but what is so-called the middle way, not physical as it is, But he did decide there was this ingredient in his life of meditation. aber er hat beschlossen, dass es diese Zutaten in seinem Leben gab, nämlich die Meditation.

[37:00]

Or jhana, which is actually, as all of you know, I think is the source of the word zen. Oder eben jhana, wie ich glaube, wie ihr alle wisst, das ist die Quelle des Wortes zen. Which means basically absorption. Und dieses Wort bedeutet im Grunde genommen absorption. And so he sat down. I mean, if you're running for a bus, it's hard to solve a calculus problem. So there's some common sense to just stay still and see if I can decide what I should do. So now I'm speaking about the ingredients that were in his life that may or may not be in Palunga's life. The historical Buddha decided to sit under the so-called, or actually called, I guess, people tree, P-I-P-A-L.

[38:13]

P-A-M. No, P-I-P-A-L. It sounds like people. I don't know. I have to look up how it's pronounced. The Bodhi tree. Okay. He also, from the story we know, he saw the power of the bow. He somehow had some intuition, I don't know who, I know, but some intuition that if you vow and you stay with it, that intention can have an effect over time.

[39:19]

Er hatte irgendeine Art von Intuition, die ihm sagte, dass wenn man ein Gelöbnis ablegt und bei diesem Gelöbnis bleibt, dass diese Intention dann eine Wirkung über die Zeit hinweg hat. And something happens when you hold something, not just think it now, but think it over and over again, moment after moment. It's not to instill or install a belief, but to instill and install a feeling of openness. What's the difference between instill and install? instill as to, you don't have to really translate it, just say one and the other. To, if you repeat something,

[40:22]

a view. You put it in you in circumstances which you're gathering, clustering, changing. You're not in a fixed world. So the fixed world and your intention are interacting. And here's one of these differences. A vow is not a rule you follow. A vow is something you bring into your moment by moment existence. And then you see what happens. And that's what I call, trying to find an English word, incubating a mental posture. So he somehow, one ingredient he brought into his life was absorption, sinning absorption.

[41:48]

And another is an intention that you expect circumstances to help you respond to. That you expect circumstances to participate in helping you understand something. It's the scientific method. You try things and you get results or you don't. Okay. So the vow he made, though, was pretty serious. He said, I'm not going to stop meditating until I discover how to rearrange my life so it works better. And the promise that he made was a pretty serious promise.

[43:26]

He said to himself, I will not stop meditating until I find out So he supposedly sat for 49 days. And it's a custom now even for a Zen teacher who people are, you know, related to, they do a 49-day sashin after the teacher dies. But you're not going to look forward to my death if you think 49 minutes will be okay. You're not supposed to look forward to my death, I know it.

[44:33]

Okay, so we hope, we don't know what happened during the 49 days, I don't know, except he was enlightened near the end of the time. We hope that farm girl kept bringing him rice pudding. That's not part of the story. So he brought into his life the concept of an incubated vow. He brought this into his life through this sitting absorption. And so again, this is the content of his enlightenment.

[45:36]

So at some point he had the recognition that the overall dynamic of our life was its basic insecurity. And he also recognized that it's the mind that's the problem, not so much the body. Yeah, now you can think, oh well, he probably thought of all kinds of things. But when you get desperate, you know, on the 44th day, willing to reduce things to simple solutions.

[46:53]

And the overriding thing, we can suggest, we can feel, as he said, it's simply unsatisfactory, this insecure, unconditioned world is not satisfactory. And he did not think he was a created person, a caused person from the past. He could see that this unsatisfactoriness was all being arranged by his mind. So basically at some point he said, hey, these things belong to me

[47:55]

They're not outside me. They belong to me. I can rearrange them. Now, lest you think this is too obvious an observation by the Buddha... How many of you or how many of the people you know really say, these ingredients are all mine, I can rearrange them, I'm limited to sight, I can do it? So his enlightenment was these, which took some time, 49 days at least, these ingredients can be rearranged. There's no dimension of fate or self built into me which is so

[49:23]

strong that it doesn't let me rearrange these ingredients. And then he developed the Eightfold Path, which is about how you rearrange the ingredients of your mind. And we've been studying and developing the rearrangements and arrangements for 2,500 years. So Paloma, And by the way, my three daughters, so far none of them are becoming committed practices of meditation.

[50:48]

So we can draw several conclusions from that. One I'm not very convinced of. Or two, I'm not trying to convince anyone. And it may sound like I'm trying to convince you. I hope not. But I am speaking about what the situation is that Buddhism is rooted in. So will Paloma decide to add to her life sitting absorption? Will she really recognize that she can observe the ingredients of her life and make a decision to rearrange them.

[52:12]

Okay, so although we weave our personal narrative, We can add ingredients to our personal narrative. We can add a vow or an intention. We can add sitting meditation. We can add the wisdom of the teachings. And the wisdom is just that it can be rearranged. And then how do I have the power to rearrange them when I am the subjective dimension doing the rearranging? And those of you who've done Sashin, Seven Days of Sitting, which I'll be doing one next week,

[53:18]

Or done the 90-day practice period. I think those of you who have done sashins or practice periods know that things happen in the practice period that you can't imagine happening outside of doing these practices. Although this question originally dawned on me as a kind of joke, I think it's a real question. Which would Socrates and Plato and Aristotle have asked the question, know thyself or know yourself, in a different way if they had a sashin or 90-day practice period to explore themselves with?

[54:40]

Since you're all, or many of you are experts, experienced experts on weaving helping others weave their personal narratives. Or how to free people sometimes from their personal narrative. I hope we can have a fruitful discussion. And I hope that we can have a fruitful discussion, a fruitful conversation about it.

[55:42]

Thank you for making me happy by showing up. And thank you for translating.

[55:48]

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