and does three bows. So there's a feeling of the one. All of us are sitting, but there's this one person who comes in. And this one person turns his or her attention to the Buddha, to the altar. The altar represents the one. Something essential in each of us. Some way in which you can feel, yes, in each of us is this potentiality of Buddhahood. So you bow three times. You're completely focused on the Buddha. You have some feeling of plunging into the bow. You put your elbows down slightly first.

[01:26]

And you imagine the Buddha standing on your hands and you lift him or her. So this is actually like creating a mind of empathetic joy. As a deed. Now your deed is to really feel you're entering this field with the Buddha. Und nun ist deine Tat wirklich zu fühlen, dass du dieses Feld mit Buddha betrittst. Just plunging in the bow. There's no even Buddha there. You just plunge into the bow. Also du tauchst einfach in diese Verbeugung hinein. So then the Buddha appears and you lift the hammer. Und dann erscheint Buddha und du hebst den Hörer. We can say Hörer instead if you want.

[02:32]

Du kannst auch sie sagen. Ja. And then you get up and there's the Buddha sitting there. And there's the feeling of merging with the Buddha. And the Buddha's body should be slightly higher than yours. So you have a feeling of moving toward it and your chest is slightly below the Buddha's chest. And the whole body of the Buddha should be there. The other day I was walking in the park in Dusseldorf. Marie-Louise was a little ill, so I was taking the baby out in the three-wheeled pram, like a young father.

[03:33]

Yeah, at five or six in the morning. So she could sleep some more. before Dusseldorf got up. I'm going along in the park and there's a, I think it was Schumann, there's a head of Schumann on a piece of stone like this. Poor Schumann, what did they do to him? Schumann's head was there, so slanted. In a yogic tradition, you simply don't make statues, you know, busts. A person is not a head. And it was a real shock. I thought, look. Poor Schumann.

[04:40]

I had a little thing, Schumann. I said, geez, what happened to him? Right here in the parks. I hadn't heard that. So anyway, I went on. So you really feel the body of the Buddha? And actually a feeling of dropping yourself in this. Then you turn, the doshi turns, and there's the many. And so the morning greeting where the doshi walks around basically saying good morning, He's saying, good morning, Buddha. Good morning, Buddha. Good morning, Buddha.

[05:41]

Because you've just come from this sense of the one that is without date or time. And there each person is and you feel that same feeling with each person. Then you make a circle through the Zendo and you come back and you return that to the Buddha. And it's a kind of ritual. And it's a ritual that the doshi internalizes and in a way radiates that mind into the sender. So this is again not about your nature, it's about a path of deeds.

[06:57]

This is This is a deed. And after a while, even, you know, I come to the Zendo sometimes and I might be completely exhausted. And I've only slept two or three hours or something. So I stumble through the mind of Buddha. But I sort of still feel like, you know, yeah, I'm good, but... You don't have to trust me. You know your limits. Okay. So, you know, 25 years ago or something, I went through some bitter experiences.

[08:11]

And I didn't try to heal them or make them better. Maybe I should have, but it wasn't my inclination to do so. I was just patient and observant. And I kept noticing what I felt. Or what the feeling was. I don't know if I felt, but what the feeling was. You know, I think it's useful enough to drop pronouns. You don't have to say my stomach, you can just say stomach.

[09:13]

So you don't have to use the syntax of English and say, I observed my feeling. If you repeatedly use that syntax, it makes you believe in an I. You can use the words, but drop some of the grammar. So there was observation of the feeling. Then I noticed there was noticing of... of... A lack of movement, of resolution, a lack of movement, shall I say.

[10:31]

At some point I saw, and maybe it was at least ten years, I was patient. What is the lack of movement? Where is the lack of movement rooted? Well, I had lots of feelings. Likes and dislikes and the way I wanted things to be. And it, but at the bottom of all that, it's coming to a kind of point. I noticed at the bottom, right at the bottom of This triangle was justice.

[11:41]

It was a kind of revelation to me. I wanted justice. I was brought up in Western culture, you know, an eye for an eye and all that. And I thought I'd given up the idea that the world should be grateful for my existence. But... That wasn't too hard. But I thought somehow the world should offer justice. But it wasn't doing it. So I gave up on it offering me justice. But I thought it somehow instilled the structure of my

[12:43]

my attitudes, my views were structured in expecting justice. Yeah, I was quite surprised to see this. I saw it real clearly. Like just looking into something and seeing invisible lines start to become clear. And I was, you know, surprised to see it. And I thought, well, okay, there it is. Then after a few days I thought, what can I do about it? Because I held this in my vigilant, kind of mindful vigilance.

[14:06]

What can I do about it? But being patient, I thought, well, we'll see what happens. And in a certain clarity that comes through mindfulness, one reason I'm patient is I don't like to bring my personality into it. I try not to bring what I want into the situation. So I try to let some presence bigger than that make decisions. So then one day I suddenly thought, it wasn't too long later, maybe a week later, I thought, I'll just take justice out of there.

[15:27]

That was a good idea, so I found it was movable. And then I thought, you know, I'm fairly stupid, that's why I'm patient too. It takes me a long time to figure these things out, to think of what to do. So I kind of took justice out of there and the thing didn't fall down. And I thought, well, I guess I've got to put something else in there. I thought, what could that be? I don't know what to put in there. I'm just an American boy.

[16:30]

How am I supposed to know what to do? Then I thought, I'm not only an American boy, I'm a Buddhist. Why not try compassion? It took me a few days to think of that, actually. So I stuck compassion in that space where justice was. And I put justice was somewhere up above compassion in this thing. You know, I'm making it sound mechanical. My father was an engineer, but you know... My father was an engineer. My father was an engineer. My brother drives a hack.

[17:31]

My sister takes in washing and the baby balls the jack. Anyway... See, I'm an American boy. So I somehow put compassion... Which meant I didn't need justice. Almost immediately, within the next weeks, I started having dreams of all the people I felt bitter about. They appeared in my dreams. I hadn't dreamt about them in ten years or more. I could be in the same room with them. And within a few years, I could forgive them. In my dreams I forgave them.

[18:45]

I didn't say, well, I'm going to forgive them now. I let my dreams forgive them. And then there was an extraordinary movement over the next years. Until none of that is embedded in me emotionally anymore. So this search for the good, is it justice or is it compassion? Is it the Buddha in each one of us? It actually makes a difference in how our consciousness is structured.

[19:46]

But you have to find out for yourself what, not just what you think you believe, what's actually in you for what's good or what's necessary. So I would like after the break for you to break up into smaller groups and discuss this. What is the good? How many good are there? And what actually are your values? If you're pressed, what are your values?

[21:01]

Not how you want to be seen. Bodhisattva practice, the dynamic of bodhisattva practice, means you're willing to be seen by others. If you're not willing to be seen by others and you just want to show your ideal side, you're not practicing in this realm of wisdom and compassion. Also wenn du nicht wirklich von den anderen gesehen werden willst und nur deine idealen Seiten den anderen zeigst, praktizierst du nicht in diesem Bereich von Mitgefühl und Weisheit. And all of this practice only exists in each of your own structure, habits, attitudes. And in your intentions and visions of the good.

[22:07]

Four o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. So of course I'd like to hear something from the discussion you had yesterday.

[23:16]

But first I'd like to speak about the context a little more. But remember, I want to ask you in a little while what happened to you. Yeah, I want to speak about the context, but it's trying to find a way to speak about the context. There's a book called After Virtue by a man named Alistair McIntyre. After Virtue. Nach der Tugend.

[24:23]

And what is the word virtue, what is it in German? Tugend. Tugend. And he characterizes the modern error as having no consistent values. He says we live in the fragments of the Aristotelian system. Yes, he says that we are in the fragments of... fragments of the Aristotelian Aristotle.

[25:30]

And as far as I can tell, something like that is correct. I'm not a scholar, but it seems like that. And he praises Nietzsche for demolishing the attempt by the Enlightenment to establish some system of values. And he feels Nietzsche was right that at the present time we can't establish a consistent system of values. And this kind of plurality of values is a... part of what it means to be modern.

[26:42]

Now, we can also ask, are our institutions, our capitalist and semi-socialist institutions, accumulating the human and material preconditions, preconditions for a better future. sammeln für eine bessere Zukunft. That's partly a Marxist idea. And it's probably, maybe it's true that our institutions are accumulating preconditions for a better future.

[27:51]

Vielleicht sammeln unsere Institutionen die Vorbedingungen für eine bessere Zukunft. Now, you know, I'm just throwing out some things here really for you to think. Because, you know, again, let me say, McIntyre says that the genius and influence of Nietzsche is his pursuit of moral questions. Not what McIntyre calls the frivolous answers, conclusions Nietzsche came to. If that's the case, I would say it's what I would feel too is our own personal pursuit of what our values are is what's most important.

[29:00]

Now I'm speaking about this because I think we try to come to what our values are. And then we try to transfer those values to society and political life and so forth. And that often doesn't work. And we end up with a rhetoric of values without substance. We might have different values at work than we have at home. And that in itself is a moral problem for us. How do we sort this out? And it's not so easy to accept that it can't be sorted out.

[30:13]

When we try Milosevic in the World Court in Belgium, He thinks the whole court is a sham. And are we applying compassion or justice to him? Do we want retribution or revenge? Perhaps the Albanians or many want revenge. Yeah, I think on the whole, though, we would say that some kind of justice should be done.

[31:15]

Because world order depends on justice, perhaps. And compassion depends, to some extent, at least on world order. And, you know, Aristotle does say that justice... a commonly held idea of justice, and agreed upon sense of justice, is necessary for community. Well, yeah, maybe it is.

[32:28]

Yeah, I think we, whatever justice means, we want to be fair. And the word comes from to stand, I think it means to stand by your word, by what you swear to. But it's also come to mean fair and impartial and so forth. Yeah, I think we would agree with that. But as I said yesterday, I didn't find that in my internal functioning, Justice might be necessary for community, but it wasn't what worked for me. I couldn't go around in each situation expecting justice. So we have some kind of, I think we'd have to say, path compassion.

[33:57]

You know, if we just take the word virtue, which is like saying, what is the good, what is virtue? But even that, if I say somebody's virtuous, it's a difference from saying they have virtue in English. So it's hard to pin down these words we use to define our values. Es ist schwierig, das festzunageln, diesen Begriffen. I heard the other day the talk in the British Parliament by the young king of Jordan. Also ich habe vor einigen Tagen vor dem britischen Parlament die Rede gehört von dem jungen König von Jordanien. Yeah, I was very impressed actually. Und er hat mich sehr beeindruckt.

[35:06]

how such a young man gives such a good speech, and very together. And if I tried to look at what his values are, And he makes clear he's a Muslim. But what I'd have to say is that what I felt from him that his values were rooted in compassion. And what do I mean by that? I mean very simply that he had a feeling for people, whoever they are. He had a feeling for people, whoever they are. And he expressed that in saying, you know, I went to school in England.

[36:24]

And I think his mother was, or his stepmother was, an American of Near Eastern descent, I think. So, you know, he certainly liked people from England. So he has the conditions for feeling, just feeling for other people. Whether they're Muslim or Christian or Jewish or whatever. But many of these, quite a number of these terrorists actually lived in Germany for a long time, lived in the United States, and they don't have any feeling for Americans or Germans particularly, I think.

[37:39]

So from how I'm defining compassion, I would say that whatever their values are, they don't have a feeling for other people. Whoever they are. Who they are makes a difference. So I think one aspect of compassion, one part of the definition of compassion, Is it while you do have, of course, a different feeling for your spouse or your child?

[38:42]

And for your close friends? It's not so different from your feeling for others. And the compassion is to... I would define compassion as you know you are beginning to be in this territory that Buddhism calls compassion. When you have a pretty much, for some reason, hard to explain, the same pretty much feeling for each person. And for old life, animals, whatever. Of course, for your spouse or your friend or your child, you have more responsibility in functional relationships.

[40:05]

And that affects our emotion. Sometimes negatively. But still somehow the basic flow of feeling is The same. It's like this radiating the four Brahma-viharas. You feel this passion as a presence that's just there, just here. I remember I just tell you a little anecdote partly because maybe it helps you remember little anecdotes in your own life.

[41:11]

When I was, I don't know, five years old or so, I think before school, They're about behind this kind of garage barn where we lived in the country. Some birds, little birds, had nested. And with some joy, considerable joy, actually, I watched them for two or three years, I knew. And I knew they'd come back and they'd build their nest. So, I don't know, one day I had a feeling that it was the wrong thing to do, but I decided to see if the inside of the eggs was the same as the eggs we ate for breakfast. So I opened... Maybe I left one out of compassion.

[42:19]

Or maybe I only opened two of them, I don't remember. But then I brought it to my father and I said, look, it's the same as the eggs we have in the morning. And my father was quite upset. I shouldn't do that. I should, you know. All the reasons. And I couldn't understand why we ate eggs in the morning. It really was a problem for me. I couldn't understand why there's one set of values for commercial animals and another set of values for wild animals. And I've gotten used to it, but it still bothers me.

[43:48]

The way the animals are treated around here for getting subsidies from the government if they have an animal, but they never let the animal out. Mm-hmm. But they treat their dog and children nice, well, pretty well. We don't have a consistent set of values. How can we have utilitarian values when it comes to commercial animals? Utilitarian values. If you've ever seen these big chicken farms, you won't want to eat any eggs. And they have these pig farms in the United States that are so huge and smell so badly that they practically move cities away from them.

[45:03]

They have these huge pig farms that are so big and smell so bad that they pull the cities away from the area. But we human beings, we also engage with our fellow human beings, and we all eat pork and factory chickens, eggs, and so it's maybe immoral to be a purist and not eat them. The Bodhisattva spirit is to go along with human beings and what they do. If you meet a thief, Avalokiteshvara becomes a thief.

[46:23]

Okay, so we have competing values that are part of our economic and social system. And I don't think we can... put those values together into a consistent system. And without a consistent framework, the words don't have any meaning. Or the words wander, their meaning wanders. You know, the word virtue is interesting, actually.

[47:49]

In English, its roots are interesting. Because it means both man as in sense of humankind. Or maybe actually it means more mankind. And it's also the root of the word world. And it's also the root of the word veral or male power. It comes from Greek terms when excellence was... Being good at things and having power was a high value. So how can we give the word compassion meaning for ourselves? How can we create a consistent relationship

[48:50]

set of values, a way of being, that gives compassion meaning. And that's where wisdom comes in. Wisdom is the context which gives compassion meaning. Also, Weisheit ist der Zusammenhang, der Mitgefühl Bedeutung gibt. But first of all, compassion, I think, is rooted in the terms of compassion as a path. Mitgefühl als Weg. Not just maybe the King of Jordan's feeling for his mother or his friends in England has some kind of roots of compassion. I don't know much about him at all, so I can't speak further than that.

[50:10]

But what for us would be compassion as a path? So that's the question I want to try to speak to. And first of all, compassion is based on the practice of and realization of equanimity. And first, compassion is based on the practice of serenity. And now I would like to interrupt and hear what your discussion has brought. Yes, Andreas.

[51:19]

The end conclusions of our group were very nice. Not frivolous. Like Nietzsche's. We had the insight that in order to practice the four brahma-giharas we have to be very mindful. So we had one example. One person moved into a house with a lot of people who he didn't like, who she didn't like.

[52:25]

And practicing unlimited friendliness, he started to greet everyone and to open up doors for the other people. And that kind of extended the atmosphere of friendliness in the house. Do you have an extra room there I could move in? And there was another example with people who are junkies or live on the street. and being willing or having the wish to meet them in a friendly way but on the other side to realize that there is a lot of resistance to doing that And so kind of there was the conclusion, okay, I will meet this person knowing it's a human being.

[54:00]

And it helped to kind of approach this idea of friendliness. I once had an example of a friend of mine who got a very good position as my best friend and I actually wanted to be happy and I noticed that it didn't work at all. I became so angry that I got really sick. My own example was that I had a very good friend and he got a promotion. He was very successful and I was so envious.

[55:01]

I wanted to have empathetic joy, but I was so envious that for three weeks I got really ill. I looked at it myself, what is it? I had to study exactly this one ideal, what I want to do, and the other, what is it? What is really the reason? So I had to observe very closely what is the ideal and what's the foundation. So mindfulness and noticing that I'm not on the way helped me to get back on the right. Good, thanks. Okay. Who else? Yes. We looked for the good.

[56:03]

We looked for the good. and found that there is something like what is socially accepted. Success, but now it's just, yeah. So the socially accepted value of accomplishments. But that is something different than what we are looking for, which has more to do with Benevolence, maybe?

[57:18]

And there was also something that the good is a feeling which arises from inside. But also that a criminal has a feeling which is arising from inside, but then a crime results. So there need to be some concepts which we have to stick by. And somebody told how he learned to know you, You held a lecture and there were not enough chairs there.

[58:39]

And you fetched chairs for the people. You didn't just sit down on your pedestal. I hope they weren't too heavy. Okay, thank you. Who else? That happened to me and it motivated me to sit. Really? So I brought you a chair and then I took it away. This deed moved me and impressed me and brought me here. Okay, that's good. Thank you. Anybody need a chair?

[60:17]

Stool? In our group, has everyone counted some values that are important to him or her in life? In our group everybody was telling about their own values in their life. And one of them was to be authentic with oneself. The willingness to become a wise person. The capacity to listen to your own body in terms of the body doesn't lie To become a loving person To be generous not to project and to be able to forgive.

[61:36]

Sounds good! And it was very important for many or all in the group to practice the sasen and to create a balance between the sasen, which was felt more with the inside, and the outside with the world. And for all of us it was important to do zazen and to find a balance to take zazen more on the inside, but then also go out into the world. And I would like to make a small personal remark. I can't start with the word compassion in a practical sense yet. And what helped me a lot was And what helped me a lot was your remark in the very beginning in Creston.

[63:10]

Be like a grandfather or like a grandmother. I already am a grandfather. I don't know if it works yet, but I'm hoping. So that is still in the background when I talk to another person, and it's very important to me. Yeah. And you said something about, or this morning you mentioned something about in your group, you talked about wisdom. And you said some people connected it with getting older? Yeah. Among us older folk, what do we think?

[64:22]

It was more in the direction of wisdom of the old age. I would like to add something. Oh, please. And I want to add to also what you said before. We noticed that there were many, many values which didn't have consistency with one another. There are moral expectations which we kind of got from our parents and are still holding.

[65:45]

And there are the expectations of achievement in our profession. And then a series of political and social goals that all compete with each other. So that we move in a big conflict field and can only assert ourselves by developing something like wisdom, but not only when we are old. that the solution to be in this conflicting territory is wisdom, but not in the old, not before old age. Not just... Wisdom before old age. Before old age. Yeah. We should have a motto over our door.

[66:46]

Wisdom before old age. Wisdom now. No, I understand. No, that's too much. No, thank you. So in this contradictory field of values, we also found that it's important to have understanding of the point of view or the actions of the other, but also of our own. In regard to both what you said and what you just said, what I'd like us to consider is, although we cannot resolve this plurality of values, can we, through seeing compassion or virtue or something as a path,

[68:05]

Can we resolve it within ourselves? Yes. I was also in the group of Andreas and what was exciting to me, more than just the different aspects, Was the dynamic when I practice one of these, for example friendliness or compassion? So what was interesting was this pulse, and I had a picture of somebody measuring land.

[69:18]

They have this measuring stick. Yeah. Surveyor. Surveyor, yeah. So when there is this stick, the practice can be this stick, and I can sort of see where I'm at there, and that can determine the path. Yeah, I think it's exactly like that. In addition to all these different values, we also got to the terms of ego and karma. and that this can also give an orientation, so am I now in this territory where I just want something, so in the area of ​​ego, or am I in connection with

[70:47]

So there can also be an orientation whether I'm in my ego where I just want something or whether I'm connected to something, just connected. And that's closer to how I feel or function because I can use that more than specific terms of values. Does that make sense? I can use every value in the realm of my ego. So this is for me kind of clear, feels like a clear criterion. Okay, good. So that's three groups have spoken, isn't that right?

[71:53]

Are you keeping track, Gerald? A little bit. We had five. So there's two groups at least which haven't spoken, I think. Yeah. In our group it was partly about having values and sometimes getting stuck in a value. And then we got stuck in a room and we thought about how we could leave this room or how we could achieve it. So in our group we noticed that sometimes within our values we get stuck in one room. And the question was how can we also leave this room. And we realized that there needs to be acceptance of the being stuck And then there can come another force which starts moving things.

[73:18]

And my wish was to recognize the spaces with the others, where every human being is, and to accept that this is not my space, but that the human being in that space is opening up and seeing it, There was also the wish to accept where another person's at, in which room he is at, and maybe notice it's not my room, but that's where that person is. Yeah. This is the fifth group? Whoa, hello. No, no, this is the same group. Oh, the same group. I'm waiting for the fifth. Okay, go ahead. how relative it is that sometimes you think that the good is defined in such a way that you're in the bad part, but later on, looking back, it was good.

[74:31]

So within yourself it can change. George Pittman? We also talked about the good and the bad, also about the personal life. Sometimes you have the feeling that it is only bad in the space that she described. And later, when you look back, you see that this bad time, or that which was not good, was something good. But at the moment you could not see it. That's true. The fifth group, they all left last night. There were two aspects also in our group, good and evil. that the good is always very strongly connected with the not-good, with the evil, that the polarity always arises.

[75:44]

So that the good is always very connected with the not-good, that the polarity is always there. And that it may require another term to find something beyond this polarity, that one could call good, but in a different way. And so there needs almost to be a transcendence in another territory, which doesn't depend on the polarity. In the search of our innermost values, Can I orient myself where I feel disappointed? So I can see where am I disappointed and which values are behind that.

[77:04]

Yes. You weren't in any group? I wasn't the first group. Okay. Not the fifth. All right. We're willing to listen. Yes. So when we practice to feel what we are doing and we do the right thing then it will feel good. And practicing mindfulness we will reach the core of our liveliness.

[78:22]

And when we are as mindful to other people we will also notice that in them. And we will notice that there is the same liveliness in them as in us. So when we get there, we can't just help doing anything else but feel empathic joy. I hope so. I think you mean aliveness, not liveliness. Aliveness, yeah. It might be actually sound. I don't know. I'm not quite sure. Anyone else want to say something?

[79:29]

You know, eventually I hope to hear everyone's voice at least five times, but I'll accept I'm a generous fellow, so... Yes. I would like to mention one situation where I felt compassion without having the intention to have it. I wasn't practicing friendliness and opening doors. I was very occupied with myself. I have to talk about something which is a load for me because at the moment I can't talk about anything else. I was in a situation where my husband had to go to the intensive care.

[80:43]

And it was in a huge clinic in Berlin with more than 20 beds in one room. And I actually wasn't allowed to be there. But somehow I succeeded to get in there. I was preoccupied with my fear and panic in respect to my husband and myself. And after a short while I sort of looked also at the other beds and oriented myself within the place.

[82:07]

And then I really got this compassion. immeasurable compassion, which didn't lead to that that I went to the other beds. or to the other people. One woman I could console a little bit, but the others I just saw. And maybe since I adapted to the whole situation I was allowed to stay there the whole day.

[83:12]

And what I took along was a feeling of wholeness, that suffering is part of being human. I think that was the most impressive feeling of compassion that I ever had. I understand. Thank you. Okay, let's sit for a minute and then we'll have a break. You had a question about meditation the other day, yesterday.

[85:46]

Most of it you already answered in your lecture. I have a question regarding the breathing so when I stretch this line how does this go together with the breathing Yeah, it's just like if I stretch my arms, how does it go together with the breathing? You just notice if it affects your breathing.

[86:49]

You can do it along with your breathing if you want. You can do it as you inhale or you can stretch the breath along. But that's your own craft. Okay. Yes? Sure. Sure. What do we do in meditation with our half-closed eyes? Do we let a big thought, program cinema, run over us or lower or push clouds or something like that? Or is the meaning not actually to stop this eternal thinking? We stop that even when we count. So what do we do with our half-closed eyes during meditation?

[88:07]

Do we let a film, a movie go by? Or do we push clouds? Push clouds. Or do we stop our thinking? Shouldn't we stop our thinking? Okay. Yeah, so what I want to speak about now is... you know, get more practical, how does this relate? How does the practice get more practical? And how does the practice of meditation relate to the path of compassion? Okay, so the first... Instruction for Zen way of practicing is what I would call uncorrected mind.

[89:22]

You want to I like, Foucault says something, to find a space out, Foucault, Michel Foucault, says to find something outside the, a space outside of power structures. No, he doesn't mean power structures. He doesn't mean meditation, but I would have liked to have talked to him and tried to convince him. That's what he meant. But it is a description of meditation. So you want to get outside of the usual structures of self and so forth. Habits of self.

[90:29]

As we say it as Ingo, I think, likes, out of the dust and out of the frame. Out of the dust of the world and out of the... constrictive cultural frames. And there's almost no way to do that because our mind is those structures. You know, I'm a person who likes order but not neatness.

[91:41]

But I know people who like neatness and they think it's the same as order. And when things are neat, they simply feel good. And that's the way things should be. But this is a cultural, something you've learned from your culture. But we so identify with it, we think the opposite is chaos or disorder or something. I like order too, but I like it after it's a little messed up. I like confusion. As you may notice during the seminar here. Okay. But it's very, very difficult not to identify with our cultural structures.

[92:47]

Inside and out. So... whatever the instruction means, uncorrected mind, or to profoundly leave your mind alone, you have to find this really out for yourself. How can you apply this instruction? Because we're always kind of correcting ourselves. It means also that you have to come, you'll find out, everyone, not you, but we find out, that it means you have to trust the awareness of the body. More aware energy of the body. Or sometimes I say the intelligence of the body.

[93:57]

Now, one of the first things I think we notice when we practice is we have an internal dialogue going on all the time. And we can see our values in that dialogue. And we can often see very clearly how we want to appear to others. And I think we'll find you start talking to yourself and often actually lying to yourself. Something happened and you want other people to understand your best motives and not your worst motives.

[95:29]

So you're sitting in meditation and you're trying to convince yourself, inside yourself, that your motives were the best.

[95:35]

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