Nicole, you look... I'm too kind. It's Neil and Nicole. Was two hours and ten minutes enough time for lunch? Okay. Just. That's what I thought. Yeah. May I say that you've been in quite a lot of pain in recent years sitting because of a knee and hip problem, right? And so you had an operation and now you feel better. Yes, he had an operation and is doing better now. That's right, yes. One leg is now a little shorter than the other after the operation. I thought she should have been removed. The legs. Do any of you have any after lunch thoughts about the archetype of being of the good person?

[01:30]

Yes. I was thinking about the idea that many novels, but also these hero stories, the comics, that this is a need of the writers, to see that there is a lot of bad or distorted and destructive happening in the world, and that they try to bring an archideal into the story, to present good and balanced things. And this is partly focused on the hero, but can also play different characters. It seems to be a need or a wish of the writing people in novels, but also in the comics, seeing that there's so much bad things, evil things in the world, to produce something which is good.

[02:44]

Right? Yes. Basically. There were of course only certain... And to bring into these stories ways to act upon this, seeing this evil and bad things. As an ideal. And it's often about saving people from all the bad, evil things. My feeling is that it's mainly about another feeling not being in balance. What exactly, what is an imbalance?

[03:45]

In the people living in this world together. Yeah. It seems to me that I have never played a computer game. But it seems to me from what I've read about them, in the name of some ephemeral good, my two translators are so good that I feel I can use any word I sometimes try to plunk a very difficult word. Like alterity. Collagenate, you know, but we'll come to that later. Means to grow together.

[04:47]

But keep your separateness. Yes. But sometimes it seems like the computer games, in the name of some ephemeral good, particularly indulge the player in a lot of killing. So that's using the in the name of good to indulge yourself in what isn't good. Now Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion but the wrathful Form, but there's a wrathful form of Avalokiteshvara, Mahakala.

[06:09]

Now what is a wrathful form of compassion? So this is certainly part of Buddhism, so something we should look at probably. We're going to understand this practice we're interested in. One of the things that Ivan Illich says, and you know I like to talk about him because he certainly was a mentor of mine, I forget what I was going to say about him.

[07:16]

I'll have to come back to it. Anyone else? One thought came this afternoon after having partaken in a family therapy. It seems to me that many children seem to be good from the beginning because they often accept things from their parents. They often take responsibility in an age for parents where they are not yet mature enough. about having partaking also in this systemic positioning.

[08:17]

It seems to me that children... Systemic? Constellation. Oh, constellation, yeah. Constellation, thank you. Systemic family therapy, yeah. Yeah. They take responsibility, children being, to me, principally good, and take responsibility for their parents. Mm-hmm. I think that's the case, yeah. They don't know how to do it, but it's in there. They do this, but the situation doesn't turn positive for them. The question is, why is it in a person? Is he good from himself? And is it only in the system, how he deals with it, or how the world reacts to what he does, that the picture changes?

[09:25]

I don't quite understand that. The question is, is children or people principally good? And how does the world react to what he or she does? Yes, because the child sometimes takes over responsibility for a parent's part and cannot develop himself. Sometimes a child takes a responsibility for one of the parents and can't develop itself then. The parents don't discover this, that the child is taking responsibility. And there's not a path to develop for this child, but it's sort of bound.

[10:33]

Yeah, I understand the idea and I know about the experience. But I wonder if if the parent fulfilled the responsibility that the child expects of them, if the child would feel bound. I mean, I don't know if it's parallel, but I mean, if probably the people around Obama are taking responsibility for him being good. And if he fails them, and they hide that failing of Obama from themselves, then they would definitely be bound. If you would hide this failure from yourself, then you would have won for sure.

[11:55]

Yes. The question came... If the child doesn't have to develop a certain wisdom or certain knowledge or certain consciousness about what it does when it takes responsibility for a parent, for example. Well, I watch Sophia, and I think she takes responsibility for Marie-Louise and I. At the same time, Sophia doesn't sometimes take responsibility for herself.

[13:08]

She takes responsibility for me. So I feel a I feel myself wondering how to fulfill her responsibility that she's taken from me. One of the things, what I started to say about Ivan Ilyich is one of the things that that seemed to have been, that was important to him, is what happens to the person who

[14:15]

learns another culture. And it may be somewhat similar than Tarzan or Robin Hood being outside of their culture. And it may be similar to Actually, Obama being a black African Kenyan father. And a mother who, very critical of the United States and so forth, did public service work in various parts of the world. So he had to come into American culture. I can't say that without remembering that when I first came to Europe, people told me about this joke.

[15:35]

What's the difference between yogurt and America? One has a living culture. A lot of yogurt doesn't have a living culture. But America has a pretty active culture in the world, fortunately and unfortunately. And anyway, this young half black, half white boy had to find his way into American culture. Und jedenfalls musste dieser halb schwarz, halb weiße Junge seinen Weg in die amerikanische Kultur hineinfinden. So, Ivan Ilsch's point is you have to reform yourself to come into another culture.

[16:39]

Und worum es Ivan Ilsch ging, war, dass man sich selber neu oder umbilden muss, um diese Kultur hineinzureden. To learn a culture and learn a language, you have to give up your own ideas to do it. To learn a culture and a new language, you have to give up your own ideas to do that. So I think if we're going to try to study, practice this Buddhist culture, and really do it, not just add the parts that work for us, we have to come into really in a very basic way, what does Buddhism mean by a human being?

[17:40]

And what is the imagined, understood or imagined space between two people or... And the idea of bodhisattva and compassion are at the center of that. Tara? For me, there are no good, objective people, because they are influenced by culture or education or by what society wants from them. We're talking the good person is for me is difficult because I see that person is influenced and formed by education, by the culture, by society.

[19:02]

So good is in a context. And you don't know We don't know which action leads to which other action. Recently I saw the movie, The Mongolian, which is about the first 30 years of Genghis Khan. Yes, in this film he is portrayed as having suffered so much injustice and suffering in his childhood. He always wanted a peaceful life with his family, but it did not go out of the cultural context in Morocco at all. He always had to act. It was presented as having wanted to lead a sort of peaceful life, but he always had to act, having experienced injustice and other things.

[20:17]

He said to his wife that he didn't know the Mongols and that they also killed children and women. He said that the Mongols needed laws, many simple laws. It was about simple laws and he wanted to bring these laws to the Mongolians even if half of the population had to die. And this. He had a great intention and a very good intention to act because in the film you never had the feeling that he wanted to save himself or that revenge or redemption was the motive, but he really wanted to do something better.

[21:24]

But there was an incredible amount of suffering and death. And the other aspect was that this selfishness that he suffered in his childhood also made him what he became and let him act like that. One aspect was that his own, what he had suffered from, had made him what he was. And on the other hand, his intentions were quite good. So this was quite touching for me, but I couldn't quite... Can you say that again briefly? Yes, the principally original good intentions that he had, had led to much suffering.

[22:26]

And the suffering, what he himself had suffered, had led to him being and acting in that way. Dealing with the so-called good, I see mainly relations and is it possible to put something and say, this is good. Outside of relations. Outside of culture. And relations. Relations, yeah. Well, I don't know if this is true about Genghis Khan. It's just a movie, right? But the point it makes is true. And I recently read a review of, I think, two different books about more or less the same thing.

[23:50]

The one I remember specifically was about an idealistic Russian man who was a writer, I think, a painter or a writer, an artist anyway. A writer. And he so believed in the ideals of communism of communism, that he went along with Stalin up till near the end of Stalin's life, even to the point of justifying his own relatives and friends being killed. So he thought it was the sacrifice you had to make So, I mean, in various ways, small ways and big ways, a lot of us are involved in this kind of compromise.

[24:59]

For the sake of our company, we'll... make the accounting look different. But Buddhism tries to start with something like, most human beings, most animals, not all insects, have mother love. Now, is that mother's love and sometimes father's love? Is that, how far does that extend? Does it extend to the family or to the tribe? As for the nation, in our world it seems to extend to tribal and national groups.

[26:13]

Often not much beyond that. And the Bodhisattva ideal is, can that extend? to everyone and everything. So then that becomes a practice. Yes. I prefer Deutsch first. Okay. a good person. Because I thought that Buddhism is more of a non-Buddhist question. Look at it.

[27:27]

There's a good person who's a bad person. [...] And I actually thought that you can't speak of good people, you can't talk about a good person, but only of good deeds, only of good actions. There is no such thing as enlightened people. It's a similar way that there is no enlightened person, but only enlightened experts. Oh, you did it both in English, Jim.

[28:29]

All right, OK. I was wondering why I was understanding. LAUGHTER I thought I was really getting good at German. You wove it together so well. Yeah. Well, if I go out to the car and somebody hits me over the head to take my wallet, Yeah, I don't know if that's dualistic. I certainly don't like it. I don't know if it's dualistic. Dualistic, but I certainly don't like it.

[29:30]

Well, this car, it's rather nice. The Ford's rather nice. Your friend loaned me. I don't like American cars, but it seems to get me from... Yeah. And I hope nobody hits in America. You might have the window broken to get one euro out of the I mean in big cities, no. Not Crestone. So I'm talking about it so much because I think we have to implicit in Buddhist practice. Whatever the continuum is of our experience, and what we would call being a person who doesn't harm or hurt others or something like that,

[30:30]

is that we come to the point that we decide to vow to do that. And all Buddhist practice really depends ultimately on that vow. And it's not easy to come to that point. So I think for me we have to And we have to renew that vow. We don't have to, but in practice we do. So to make that vow and then to accept the consequences that in one's life, one's family's job, etc., is not easy to do. But the point you make about it being dualistic and things,

[31:50]

Yeah, I'd like to speak about that, but that's like a kind of different way of looking at this. Okay. That's all I'd like to say about that. Does someone else? Yes? When I think about the archetype of a bodhisattva, then there's one which I marvel at. The ability to forgive. For me, it belongs to this archetype, but when I have difficulties with it, this is sort of the premise.

[33:29]

Yeah, premise. I promise whenever compassion is difficult for me, usually it's because I haven't forgiven. Last week in the sheen I noticed that there is a bodily riddle for me. The feeling that someone really hurt me. And at the same time a feeling of acceptance or a feeling that it's okay and I can still like the person.

[34:35]

And at the same time the feeling that this person hurt me, to keep the bias together. To hold together somebody who really has heard me and a feeling of acceptance or I like that person still. To really hold these things together in the same space somehow. One thing else I hope to hear from you in the seminar is To learn how to hold both of this without rationalizing, without putting aside, without any other method, just holding this together, this space. To hold together wanting to forgive and not wanting to forgive?

[35:51]

To hold together on the one hand really acknowledging this was painful and this was done to me by another person. Who was it? And not when imagining such a person and that particular person, not to having to somehow, you know, looking at that person but not seeing that that person hurt me. Seeing all that was painful. And not at the same time to see the person who did it to me and not to see what she did to me. To see the person but not to see what she did to me. Not isolating the pain from seeing that person, but still not having my relationship with that person be entirely dominated just by that feeling.

[37:05]

So holding the acceptance of that person and holding a compassionate feeling for that person while also knowing that it's painful. Well, you've got the right idea. Now you have to develop and improve your skills at doing that. Yeah, because your basic view assumes that you should do this. And I think most of us have a problem with justice and forgiveness kind of which takes precedence. Yeah, and is it an eye for an eye or to slap to turn the other cheek? Clearly, I'm sorry to keep using Obama as an example, but clearly the Democratic Party does not want Obama to turn the other cheek.

[38:28]

If he takes that view, he won't be elected. So he really has to do something like an eye for an eye. And that's what people liked so much about his speech last night. Because he really put it to put it to put it to McCain. When do you stand up for yourself or what you believe in? So, I mean, he said, for instance, McCain keeps attacking me that I'm too inexperienced to be commander-in-chief.

[39:32]

Of course people are giving examples of McCain's experience leading to stupid decisions and and Obama's judgment leading to good decisions. But McCain, Last night Obama said, if that's what you think, McCain, I'm willing to debate you in public any time. It was real fierce the way he said it. Now is this wrathful Mahakala? Is there a fierce side to compassion? I'm just trying to raise ideas or problems here. Someone else?

[40:46]

Three, yes. I want to tell another story which really struck me. At a seminar with Rosenblum-Roschi, he said, I... Yeah, I'm using my own words now, but he said, everything is good as it is and you don't have to add anything. I'll try this. It's a different success. And being myself astonished that I didn't add anything and was quite big. It went from, why don't you say anything, to my own brother who said to me, I will empty my blood.

[41:49]

It went up to my own brother saying, I'm bloodless. You said to your brother? No, he said to... Oh, your... Because she didn't say anything. Oh, yeah. Because I had no opinion or no idea. I didn't utter any idea. But by experience and not adding anything was that I was better able to take up and experience the other person better. It was a good and new experience. Enriching. Yeah. Well, when we first start to practice, often we change our...

[43:16]

Emotional vocabulary. I remember when I was in the first years of practicing, I never got angry. Things happened in the space where it didn't cause anger. And I remember a friend came to me and said, we have a hard time relating to you because you don't respond with normal anger. So... After a while, though, you get so that you can respond emotionally in a way that's in the categories of the culture, but yet somehow not be caught up in them.

[44:21]

This would... also be compassion. In those days I used to think of compassion as being combed out passion, evened out feeling. Okay, Valentin? All the time we're talking about Robin Hood and Batman and all these people. I remember the teaching you gave at Winterzweig. It was Dobin who talked about not getting involved in myriad circumstances.

[45:26]

And it seems to go very wrong when you get involved in myriad circumstances. Yes. German. It's about Dogen, what he said about not getting caught in the billions or the 10,000 circumstances. Okay? Yes. Incredible Hulk. I know less about him. Thinking about the archetypes, thinking about the Incredible Hulk. As a scientist he had contact with some liquid and then he was disfigured.

[46:43]

And what's common to these archetypes is that they think the world is not alright or in order as it is and it's got to be changed. I get slightly angry when I feel that you talking about Obama, that sort of heroic picture is sort of drawn. For me, what comes up is the other side. I think good is just a little bad. Bad and evil are a little good. They live together. And I think what's coming up is that good is a little bad and bad is a little good.

[48:01]

This is what's coming up. That's your feeling, yeah? Bush, when I see him, he's sort of, what's his name again? He's sort of, I'm touched by him somewhat. Thank you. The neocons. Yeah, in the background. Yeah. Yeah. And the real bad guys and then the background, the neocons and Obama is smooth, is too slick, is too, this is the surface. Yeah, too perfect. It might be true.

[49:03]

It could be true. For me, the question is, they all want to do something. They want to change something. Osho wanted to change something in the good. He had a certain good intention, as well as, possibly, Genghis Khan. But by doing it, Everyone of these politicians, also Bush, wanted to change something, probably something good, like Genghis Khan, but in doing this, it's getting worse. They make it worse. How can you act without acting? That's my question. Well, How to act without acting was the subject of the last Sashin. And that's... But that's still... But even though the Buddhist adept most fundamentally acts without acting...

[50:21]

or act spontaneously, we still have to act in rational, practical senses too. We have to pay our rent and so forth. Yeah, and so... Very clearly, I would say, Obama is taking a lot more responsibility for paying the rent than Bush is. And he does look awfully good, and it may be his weakness. But we also have suspicion always about a person. If they're good, we think they look good, only look good.

[51:25]

It's too good to be true, we say. Well, that's the danger. And, you know, I think that's One of the things we come into in coming into a yogic Buddhist culture, we come into a much stronger emphasis on mentorship than is common in the West. that we have a much stronger emphasis der Mentorschaft hinein uns begeben und gelangen, als im Westen üblich und gewöhnlich ist. The two most powerful relationships, definitive relationships in the West are parental and spousal.

[52:30]

Die entschiedensten oder die deutlichsten oder gewichtigsten Beziehungen eigentlich im Westen sind also die elterlichen und die Touch and affect every aspect of our lives. Yogic culture and Asian culture in general would say, if you don't have a mentorship relationship as powerful as parental or spousal, you're probably not fully human. And I think that's a... a difficult aspect of Buddhist culture to accept.

[53:40]

And also it puts the mentor and the into a very delicate relationship because partly because because it's a surprising it's a relationship of surprising depth it can be it's like water flowing on a flat surface. And it needs a river bed. So what happens is the water goes into the parental or the spousal groove. Which can be, in our society, realistically worked with and developed.

[54:47]

And I think the mentorship relationship is neither parental nor spousal. And we have to think about how to discover, how to develop this relationship so it has depth, but a depth that's distinct from parental and spousal. And the concepts of bodhisattva You as a Bodhisattva. Your teacher as a Bodhisattva. And the ideal Bodhisattva, Manjushri or Avalokiteshvara, not a real person.

[56:08]

The archetype of a Bodhisattva. And how to work with yourself Perfect and imperfect. The teacher, perfect and imperfect in different ways. And the ideal and how those three can be worked together and inform each other is part of the path of the Bodhisattva. Yes, Roland? When I saw the topic of the senior compassion, I was surprised to see that just one single aspect Which may be just the result of the four functions of the self.

[57:20]

Which was maybe just the result of the four functions of the self. So we talked about separateness, connectedness, context and continuity. So for me compassion was just within the triangle of the relationship between our separateness, our connectedness and context. So I'm a bit lost about either talking about Obama or talking about the good guys. So the one aspect you mean is the one aspect I've been talking about of goodness.

[58:27]

Or is there something in the brochure, the announcement? No, it's just compassion. It's very little to do for me with the discussion about Obama and the good guys and the bad guys and so forth. I thought it's just in the traditional culture of putting it into the whole context of functions of self. as a result, so that compassion is a result of these three functions of the self. Okay. about the spiritual unlearned. So I'm just wondering where all that is actually leading, because I was just saying, well, compassion is about me and the others, the others and me, something like that.

[59:40]

Yeah, okay. Let's see if we get there. Good. Yes. Yes. No, you're the translator. Okay, I'm dealing with this where the different localizations are felt. In the body, yeah. So we talked about the gut. Gut, heart and so on. And you mentioned the image of the arms of Avelokiteshvara. And this picture where the arms are all in one plane.

[60:46]

And they don't reach out in front where they reach for the other, or where it goes over into action. Yes, and there, for me, there is a little bit of this... this fiddling and not acting out of it. And for me comes this question, how you can act and not act at the same time. Okay. Good.

[61:28]

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