Does anyone want to say something else? One thing that we only briefly touched in this short time but did not really go into is, well, compassion is one aspect of the Bodhisattva, but how does the Bodhisattva actually help? I mean, in the example of somebody is sad or suffering or whatever, and how does the Bodhisattva actually help? Yeah, okay. Okay, yes.

[01:02]

Yes. I'm sorry. Referring to that, this question also came up in our group, and we talked about the many arms of the bodhisattva. And we had the question if it's not maybe a little exhausting to have that many arms, because then there are so many actions and acts. In relation with that, we were wondering if maybe not doing is one aspect of the bodhisattva and not doing in the sense of just...

[02:12]

to be with somebody. I've known from being with psychic, people with psychic problems, who could just be there, not acting actively, just floating in space. You demonstrated a lot of social conventions right now. Positively demonstrated. Because we were all happy to see you come back. Well, it is exhausting to have a thousand arms. But it's not so bad if you have eleven heads.

[03:17]

But you notice the thousand arms are just really a presence more than doing things. And of course, in the most, probably in basic sense, suffering means just to go through with, not to do anything. And suffering means just to go through with, not to do anything. I also said I still am stuck with or still am concerned with the term aliveness and that this is a very new way for me to look at it. And I ask myself, what do you actually mean with aliveness from this Buddhist perspective, as you've talked about it?

[04:36]

Well, I mean aliveness outside of any categories. Just aliveness. Though we could describe a bodhisattva as domesticated wildness. You know, one nice thing about living at Crestone is you live right next to wildness. You know, many mornings we come out of the Zendo and we're surrounded by very alive deer. Yeah, and of course, most of you know, there's bears and fairly often we see them. So it gives you a different feeling when you walk through the woods knowing there's bears than when you walk through the woods in a park.

[06:22]

Yeah. And... wild animals have an extraordinary aliveness. Every sense. Even a mouse, you know. Yeah. And yet, our domesticated cats and dogs aren't wild. And there's a certain implicit fear in society of a person whose all their senses are alive like a wild person. So I would say the ideal of the Bodhisattva is he or she is alive almost like a wild person, but they're domesticated. So they can function within and outside the categories of society.

[07:35]

I know all of us here are in some ways practicing the Bodhisattva vows. And all of us are to some extent obviously or secretly wild. And you probably wouldn't be here. Now, there's an American evolutionary biologist who's quite well known named Stephen Jay Gould. Evolutionary biologist. Who died just a few years ago. He was younger than me. I don't know. I can't, he had some disease.

[08:37]

Anyway, he said somewhere, what are we missing when we parse, parse means to sort out, sort out the grammatical parts of a sentence. What are we missing when we parse the behavior of Okay, so what are we missing when we parse the behavior of chimpanzees? Into the conventional categories based on our human experience. That's clear, isn't it, the idea?

[09:48]

No, it isn't. In other words, we look at chimpanzees and say, oh, they're feeling this or they're feeling that by putting it into our categories. It's exciting how close they often are to us. But we have to be careful to also give them the dignity of their separateness. Now, what are we missing? When we parse the behavior of a bodhisattva into the conventional categories of us domesticated human beings, are usually domesticated selves.

[11:07]

What are we missing when we parse the behavior of the yogi into conventional categories? Now, if they don't fit into conventional categories completely, How are we going to talk about it? How are we going to practice Buddhism? And as I said earlier, our word categories help us notice things and affect what we notice. Okay. So we have word categories in English that compassion and And are they the same as the word categories in German, in Deutsch?

[12:28]

And whether they are or not, how are we going to stretch the categories in English and Deutsch or add new categories that allow us to describe a practice developed within the sphere of Buddhism over 2,500 years. And a practice rooted not in any language categories almost, rooted in the experience of meditation outside of categories.

[13:33]

Please. Please. When you speak like this, Roshi, I remember that I was really happy when a professor from the Oldenburg University published something. I'm a psychology professor for transpersonal psychology. You are. No, this person was.

[14:34]

This person published something. Yeah, yeah. Who is also a Zen student with Williges Jäger. Williges Jäger. And he introduced in describing how people in a medical and also in a psychological way develop, he introduced this new term which is called felt consciousness. Feeling consciousness. Is this like a felt sense of Eugene Gendron? It's different, a little different, but it's really related. All right, go ahead. It's really a new term. Okay. and he introduced that in the field of mindfulness practice also in the frame of mindfulness practice and he wants professionals who are going to guide people in a therapeutic setting in this field he wants them to be educated in this feeling consciousness or sensing consciousness which also means to be perturbable

[16:11]

No, not to be perturbable. On the path. And I was wondering if that might be a manifestation or maybe just a tiny... Just a whisper. A wisp in the wind? Yeah. Or maybe just a wisp of what you're talking about. Might be more substantial than that. More than a wisp or a whisper. Okay. Yeah. Well, I just... Nicole helped me by translating, taught the second week of the Eugene Gendlin Focusing Summer School.

[17:17]

I did it a couple years in a row five years ago. Ten years. Ten years ago. And he has made a psychological term a felt sense. And I try to avoid using terms rooted in other systems than Buddhism. But they invite me to teach the summer school because Buddhism is, how we work with phrases, how we work with consciousness is very, very similar.

[18:20]

So I would say very simply that the effort to have a felt consciousness or a felt sense is part of a larger... effort going on in Europe and the United States to understand better the relationship between the mind and body. And somehow root consciousness in experience and in the body. Okay. Okay. So I'm trying to do something similar.

[19:40]

I'm trying to find categories or stretch word categories. So one part of the word category might be our own experience. And the other part of the word category, not yet filled in, might be where bodhisattva experience or the Buddhist idea of compassion comes in. Now I can easily see how you might say, that guy's interested in words, but what the heck does that have to do with our practice of compassion? And you might be right. But I think that to examine our own experience, we need to think of the words we use. Because primarily we notice our experience through words.

[21:00]

It's very hard to notice an experience which you don't have a word for. And I think it takes some years of meditation practice before you start to allow experiences that there's no word for. Because the attention which calls forth experience tends to move toward word categories. So really, when you practice meditation in the most committed sense, The Zen meditation at least.

[22:07]

You are literally reforming yourself. Reforming. You may end up to be nearly the same, but you now... have created the way you're nearly the same. You have reformed the way. Sorry. And you may have Reformed the way you're, but at least you have now are responsible for, or reformed, formed anew the way you were before. Something like parenting yourself. Or maybe that's the first step.

[23:15]

The second step is buddho-ing yourself. No, bodhisattva-ing yourself. Okay. Because, well, that's one reason. You don't know what it's the reason for. You've lost hundreds of reasons for it. But that's one reason I'm giving you, asking you to look precisely at how you use words. And allow your experience to not always be contained in words.

[24:16]

And the second reason I'm mentioning it is if we're going to take experience, emotional experience particularly, as a practice, we have to be very clear of what the word means to link the practice to it. I don't know if that makes sense right now, but I will continue with the assumption that it makes sense. And I will try to implicitly or explicitly give examples. Okay. Now, how does Buddhism define love? Well, there's selfish love.

[25:29]

Possessive love. And there's unselfish love. Buddhism is interested in unselfish love. Selfish love is your problem. So how does Buddhism define unselfish love? Unselfish love is the desire for another person to be happy. Now you may want to define unselfish love some other way. Please, I have no control over what you do. And I don't want control. But to build the possibility of a practice The focus of a practice, we have to have some clear definitions.

[26:53]

Once, in other words, we're taking love. Love. This great big thing which you can pronounce lots of ways. Love. And we're taking it down to a definition. Now, once we take that definition and we build a practice and link a practice to it, that might go in another direction, even wider and more clearly. Now. Okay. This is such fun, but it's so difficult. At least for me.

[27:55]

Okay. All right. So the definition that I'm giving you in Buddhism of unselfish love or altruistic love, no, let's say unselfish love, is the desire for another person or all people to be happy. And this is the most common thing that Dalai Lama says in public talks is we all want to be happy. And that's his way of expressing love. That's where his statements come from. It's rooted in a practice and a view. It's not just, I'm happy, you're happy, we're all okay. Okay.

[29:00]

So now let's look at compassion. Well, I don't think we can say what is selfish compassion. It doesn't really work somehow. I have a lot of selfish compassion. So then it doesn't make sense to say unselfish compassion. Because just to feel another person or to feel with another person is an expression of connectedness, which isn't selfish or unselfish necessarily. But I suppose a skeptic or a politician could say, my compassion is very selfish because I know it leads to enlightenment.

[30:04]

That just sounds kind of wordly but it's not really our experience. Okay. So what I'm trying to do is distinguish between love as wanting everyone to be happy And compassion, wanting everyone to be free of suffering. And compassion doesn't just mean to suffer with suffering. Mitgefühl bedeutet nicht nur mit jemandem zu leiden.

[31:24]

It means to be able to suffer with and wish, want, desire the person to be free of suffering. Sondern es bedeutet in der Lage zu sein, die Fähigkeit zu haben mitzuleiden und sich für die Person zu wünschen, dass er oder sie glücklich ist. Now, I think probably we all know people who actually sort of like to suffer. They feel most alive when they're suffering. Even some religions kind of hope you suffer so you're alive. And some people only feel alive themselves when they're with other people who are suffering. This is not what Buddhism means by going suffering with. Bodhisattva is most alive when the person's happy, not when the person's suffering. Der Bodhisattva fühlt sich am lebendigsten, wenn der andere Mensch glücklich ist und nicht wenn der andere Mensch leidet.

[32:37]

But they're able to go along with, go through the suffering. Aber sie sind in der Lage, mit dem Leid einherzugehen und mit durch das Leid durchzugehen. Now, compassion then, as a is a practice because it's an expression of connectedness. To feel with another person. not to feel for another person, but to feel with another person, is an expression of connectedness. So compassion is the entry to an experience of interdependence. And the central idea of Buddhism is interdependence.

[33:45]

All of Buddhism is an expression of the view that everything is changing, interdependent, and so forth. So how do you experience interdependence? Well, it's as important as experiencing compassion. And discovering and opening up altruistic compassion. Compassion felt equally for every person and each person. So compassion as a practice is to discover compassion is to develop the feeling of compassion for all sentient beings.

[35:07]

And of course, much of that practice is to notice that you don't. And to notice that you don't and to say, well, it probably is possible to So the experience of compassion is extended to altruistic compassion. Okay. Now, Compassionate also emphasizes, as I've said, because it's a way, it's an entry, a dharma gate, an entry into experiencing interdependence.

[36:14]

To feeling interdependence. And the understanding there is if you can feel interdependence, then you can more fully feel compassion. And when you really get the idea of interdependence, and you can feel interdependence, And right now, for example, I can ideally at least try to work independently within all our minds simultaneously. If I can... Heidegger, who certainly wasn't a bodhisattva in at least a large part of his life, he said something like, to be in accord with being,

[37:36]

in a way that discloses the whole of being. Yeah, discloses, opens. And so, you know, I would say, just to speak about what a bodhisattva is, that in some ways, despite his rather despicable past as not just as a formal Nazi, Much of his work is something close to the work of a bodhisattva. So we can't simply say he or she is or is not a bodhisattva. So can I, can each of us find a way to be in accord with being that accords with or discloses or opens us into the whole of being?

[39:07]

Now this would be a version of the Bodhisattva vow. Yeah. Are we ever going to have lunch again? I think I should continue a little bit while I cut this ball in the air here. So to restart somewhere, compassion is understood as a gate to the experience of interdependence.

[40:43]

And interdependence is not simply philosophical understanding of the physical world. It can be an experience that connects you with the world that makes compassion unavoidable and inevitable. Because you don't feel separate from everything all at once. And not just as an idea, but you act in the human space, the field of everything all at once. Now, you can't do that like everything all over the planet, but everything all at once can be this room just now.

[41:50]

And the everything all at onceness of each situation you're in. The Buddha's advice to his disciples was to go forth for the welfare of all beings. Now, if you can actually say to yourself without self-deception, fundamentally and at least most of my actions are going forth for the welfare of all beings. If you can say that, and honestly say that, or want to say that, or move towards saying that, or commit yourself to being that,

[43:03]

Then you are on the Bodhisattva path. Now I should speak about the four bodhisattva vows. The four brahmaviharas. The six paramitas. The 37 wings of enlightenment. I think we'll skip the 37 wings of enlightenment. I'll leave that up to your own practice. But the first three lists are at the center of the practice of interdependent compassion.

[44:10]

Aber die ersten drei Listen, die sind im Mittelpunkt der Praxis des interdependenten Mitgefühls. And I think now you can see why compassion is emphasized so much in Buddhism. Because compassion becomes the experience of the very worldview of Buddhism. And the practice of trying to make everyone happy, Buddhism hasn't developed so much. It hasn't developed that so much? No. It hasn't, okay. I want you to be happy, but I don't have a practice. I can just try to be happy with you, you know. Yeah, and I do want you to be happy.

[45:12]

And, uh, But to feel with you, to feel you, on that I can develop a practice. So it's that kind of difference. Obviously, love is a dimension of compassion. And compassion can be love and vice versa. But if we define love as the desire for another person to be happy, and we define compassion as the desire for another person to be free of suffering, We can develop a worldview that's more likely to make you be free of suffering.

[46:17]

And we can develop a worldview that makes it more likely you'll realize enlightenment. But it's harder to develop a worldview that's going to make you happy. So love and happiness are your own responsibility. But as Buddhists, we can begin to take responsibility for activating the worldview that frees us from suffering, lessens suffering, and increases the likelihood of enlightenment. And I said, love and happiness.

[47:21]

I immediately heard the song in my head. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. I'm not sure it's true. Okay, so we'll leave the practices to after lunch. Now we're going to try to end at three o'clock. So the Berliners don't get home too late. I like that statement. Berlin doesn't have any mountains, but if it did, it would be the biggest. See, I know a lot about Germany. So maybe we should take a somewhat shorter lunch.

[48:24]

Because otherwise we'd be back at three o'clock. Or we could continue now and then stop at two. Yeah, I know, a break, but shall we have a break and then come back and then worry about lunch later sometime? You all want to get out of here soon, you know. Okay. Okay, so let's have, I don't know, if we're going to end early, I mean, if we're going to start, I think we can have our usual break of 20 minutes, 25 minutes.

[49:29]

You know, one of the questions is, you two translating, is, Each of you, by translating in different seminars, develop ways to translate particular terms I'm trying to develop. And then you have different ways of expressing the terms. Maybe sometimes we need all the translators to get together and decide. But maybe it's nice there's a difference. Well, I know we can talk about that later. And in any case, probably we have to continue with you after this break. Okay. Since we're on a...

[50:15]

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