So first of all, I need to know something as usual about how much you know about sitting. Does anybody have virtually no experience in Zazen meditation? Three, four, five, six. Okay. Do you have any experience with any kind of meditation? Not much, yeah. Okay. Well, I think it's actually, if I introduce meditation, it's not, it's, even though you've heard various ways of, various ways of Doing meditation before it doesn't do any harm to go through it again. So when you want to find some way to sit, the main thing is that your back can be straight.

[01:04]

And you don't, it's not necessary while we're talking to sit in any, you can sit any way that you want, it's comfortable. But basically you want to find a way to be settled in your posture. And sitting cross-legged, that's one way, or sitting with one foot up or two feet up is the main kinds of posture. And sitting this way is also quite okay. Or with a pillow underneath your lap. That's pretty good. Maybe I'll start sitting that way. It's very easy to keep your back straight this way. It's very easy to keep your back straight this way.

[02:35]

And that's about all there is to it. And you try not to invite your thoughts to tea. Now what else? Is there anything else anybody needs to know? If you were giving meditation instruction, what would you say to people? What's it useful to know? Anybody? Oh yeah, okay. Usually we put our hands together. And that is... I mean, you can sit this way.

[03:38]

But you really want your arms to come down by the side of your body. So you're not pulling your shoulders forward. And you're kind of bringing your energy and heat together when you sit. One of the reasons for this posture is you're concentrating your heat. And heat and consciousness and aliveness are connected. I'd like to start out with us meditating for a little while.

[04:49]

Are you in some posture? I would like to start by meditating for a while. Please sit down. Please sit down comfortably. How'd you do? It helps actually to have a cushion like this. Sometimes I'm a little... Friday evening when I start a seminar, sometimes I'm a little embarrassed.

[05:50]

Because to talk about joy and suffering and so forth suddenly with some people who wandered in here Friday evening, even though it's basic within the teaching of Buddhism, how to find a territory among us where we can begin to think about this and practice together is, you know, I have to find out how to do that. And one thing we have to do is we have to develop... Okay.

[07:55]

And one thing we have to do is develop some common vocabulary. Because we can't go very deep into the subject unless we know what we're talking about together. So the problem I have there is some of you know almost all my vocabulary and some of you know none. And I don't like to repeat myself. And also I feel I have more fun when I can start finding things that I've never noticed before about practice. How do we combine some of you who know nothing about practice with some of you who know a great deal, and for me who wants to talk about something I don't know yet,

[08:57]

And also this is the last general seminar I'll be teaching in Europe this year. Except in Portugal in two weeks, but I don't think any of you are coming to Portugal. So I would like also, if there's something we've, those of you who've come to several seminars or to the Sashins, would like me to talk about more before I leave this year, I'd like to do that. Is there any particular thing that I brought up either last night at the lecture that some of you were at or in the session or seminars that you'd like me to talk about more? Is there anything from yesterday's lecture or something that I have mentioned about the Shins that I should talk about more?

[10:30]

I'd like to ask you something. When I was thinking about the title of this seminar this morning, two questions came into my mind, kind of equanimity referring to what, like in a sense liberation of mental and emotional extreme states? Or empathetic joy, does that mean what is it the empathetic directed at? And then when I was thinking about it, the other question came up, actually when I started my spiritual practice, I wanted to get away from all these things, equanimity, I mean, like compassion for others or thinking of others like in the Christian sense, you know, love your neighbor more than you love yourself or as much as yourself.

[11:40]

And I wanted to really go inward. Now I've been to lots of seminars and sessions and I understand a lot of Buddhism, so I know equanimity and empathetic joy are the qualities of bodhisattva. And that leaves me a little bit outside, because I'm still so much struggling with my own emotions and my inability to be compassionate. So how can we find a territory in this seminar? And that's my personal question, to actually look at the Buddhist practice in these things. And on the other hand, how can I develop myself actually more in my inability to feel and express these things. You better say that in German. I don't even know if I can repeat all of this in German. These two questions have basically thrown me back to the beginnings of my own practice or why I started practicing.

[12:43]

I wanted to get away from this Christian sense of love for your neighbor and be there for the others, but I wanted to deal with myself. I grew up on a personal path of healing and I didn't want to care about others anymore. I have learned so much about Buddhism that compassion and compassion are the characteristics of the Bodhisattva and that there is a goal in Buddhism to develop the characteristics of the Bodhisattva. But somehow I am standing out there again. because there is a gap in between. I am still very busy with myself and certain things I haven't solved yet. And I often have the feeling, especially this year when there were seminars, that this is just one step too far away from my personal development. And so I would be interested in exploring in this seminar which possibilities there are to develop these Buddhist qualities and how I can also develop my personal development as a Vesla and as a human being, certain emotional, neurotic and other problems, how I can somehow combine them.

[14:06]

May I add something to this question? I feel very often as soon as somebody wants me to be or as soon as I want myself to be something like compassionate the opposite happens so I once read you try to be a holy man you become a devil and Sometimes I personally really don't try because I can't. It's always the same thing. As soon as I try, it doesn't work. So I hope I'm compassionate when something comes up. So there seems to be a kind of paradoxical opposition between trying to practice, practicing actively, and that you want to achieve something which can't be achieved.

[15:14]

I just want to add to the question that it is quite difficult for me to develop such qualities as being empathetic or something else, i.e. positive qualities, because as soon as I actively try to do something, I discover after a certain time that I actually achieve the opposite. Does anybody else have something they'd like to bring up along these lines? I think you could understand the title of this seminar as a paradox in itself, right?

[16:35]

So, what I'm interested in, how we go along with this, here too. result, which we maybe cannot, but just to try to go in this direction where you can combine these apparently controversial things like iniquity and compassionate joy. Empathetic joy. Compassionate joy is okay too, isn't it? Anyone else? Well, the Four Noble Truths are, you know, that there's suffering.

[18:04]

And that there's a cause of suffering. And that there's an end to suffering. And that there's a path to the end of suffering. Now, those are presented in one sense sequentially. It is that we have suffering, naturally. And when you see that it's caused by something, and you investigate those causes, you change how suffering arises and your relationship to it and so forth. And that it's possible to be free of suffering or dramatically alter your relationship to suffering.

[19:12]

And that there's a path to do that, which is the teaching of Buddhism. But these are also like four windows that you look at out simultaneously. In other words, you say that any one of you looks at someone. And if you look in one way, you can see their suffering. And you look in another way and you can see the many causes that arise in that person. Then you look in another way and you can see that at that moment there's also no suffering. Just now everything is quite okay. There are no big problems right now any of you have unless you want to make them up.

[20:19]

Maybe you haven't had dinner yet and you might be a little hungry, but that's okay. Vielleicht hat man noch kein Abendessen gehabt und man hat jetzt Hunger, aber das ist in Ordnung. And you can also see the possibilities of practice. So these are also not sequential, but different ways of looking at the same situation simultaneously. So ist das jetzt nicht einfach eine Abfolge, sondern einfach gleichzeitige Möglichkeiten, wie wir Dinge betrachten können. Now the assumption in Buddhism is that joy and suffering can be simultaneously present. One doesn't exclude the other. In fact, living in this world, in some ways you're never going to be free of suffering. But that doesn't mean you have to always be suffering because of that.

[21:31]

Now, again, right now I'm trying to establish some common vocabulary for us. Okay. I would say that in our Western culture, do you feel you're a member of Western culture or Korean and Asian culture? You have to be part of one or the other, or both. But in Western culture, we have this very powerful idea of humankind. But from the point of view of meditation practice, often there's a coercive element to it.

[22:35]

And I first began to notice it when people would say to me after trying meditation, That while they're meditating, they think they're wasting their time, or they should be out helping people, or they're not doing something productive. And at least when I first started meditating, people would say, well, what are you contemplating your navel for? I actually never contemplated my navel, yes. So, but when you're out at a restaurant or a bar, no one says to you, why aren't you out helping people?

[23:53]

Somehow this question that you should be out helping people comes up when you meditate, but not when you're out having a beer. And what does that mean? It means that our understanding, our definition of individuality is always connected to a larger social definition. Now, the genius of Western society is its emphasis on the individual. But that's developed in such a way that the individual is defined through the larger social identity. and when you meditate you are removing yourself from the larger social identity and this may actually be a little scary in practice sometimes because we're also taught in our culture to be afraid of our thoughts

[25:20]

You might go crazy. Or if you're a traditional Christian, your thoughts might be the work of the devil. In any case, we're quite suspicious of our thoughts often. And in a way, our individuality has developed so it's based partially on a fear of our own insides. Fear of our own consciousness. And in fact, we try to fill our consciousness at all times. With stuff we're not afraid of. Television programs, radio programs, conversations. Well, when you are sitting like we did for a few minutes there, you are not doing anything.

[26:52]

And even in Zen meditation practice, we don't give you something specific to do. Because you're trying to find out if you can just be without doing anything. And again, the basic definition of meditation practice or Zen practice is the uncorrected mind or uncorrected state of mind. And that's not so easy to do. It's a kind of negotiation that you have to begin to find a kind of subtlety for. So in Buddhist practice, and especially Zen practice, whatever your relationship to the world is,

[28:01]

arises out of your relationship to yourself. So you can't be compassionate with the world or with another person unless you're compassionate with yourself. And compassion, you know, we don't deal in Buddhism in generalities really like compassion. We usually are always related to something you can touch, feel, that's tangible. Now, we could say spiritual life is not tangible. There's a koan that says the Dharma body of the true body of the Buddha is like space.

[29:15]

And it manifests in response to beings. Like the moon in water. What is the principle of response? Now you can translate this. And so here's a question which comes up. What is the Dharma body of the Buddha is like space? So what is the answer given? It's like a donkey looking in a well. So it's immediately made something tangible. So the teacher says, well, that's good, but that's only 80%. And so he says, well, what would you say, teacher? And the teacher says, it's well looking at a donkey.

[30:19]

Now, this is the kind of special language that Zen has developed to try to talk about this territory that we share, but it's rather intangible. For instance, joy in Buddhism arises for no reason. If somebody gives you a present, what comes up is not joy. What we mean by joy in Buddhism arises when you have no reason to feel anything except being alive. But we usually feel that we're most here when we're suffering or something's wrong or there's a problem.

[31:49]

And we don't feel comfortable if we just feel good. Something must be wrong. We're not doing something. And we're always mortgaging the present to the future. Now For Buddhism, there's no sense of humankind as a larger social identity. And the vow to save all sentient beings is probably not such a good translation. Because it comes across in English at least as all sentient beings as a larger identity that we're obligated to.

[32:57]

And the word save has a salvational quality to it. Of course. So it might be simpler to say the vow to meet each person you meet. That's actually possible. And you meet lots of people. So all sentient beings is each person you meet. When you start thinking beyond that I mean you're into some kind of generality or idea. So all sentient beings is each person in this room. And each person you're going to meet as you go home.

[34:20]

And the general, I mean, one of the senses of Western mysticism is that the drop, the individual drop disappears into the ocean. And the Buddhist sense is much more, the ocean appears in the individual drop. And that's quite different. It means each of you is all sentient beings. And first of all, you. Okay, now let's look at making it tangible again. The way you can develop a relationship to yourself is most easily through your breath. And so, as I said last night, when you bring your intention, when you use an intention to bring attention to your breath, you are...

[35:43]

that process of using one kind of mind and intention to bring attention, another kind of mind, to your breath lets another subtle kind of mind arise to the breath So when you do a simple thing like count your breath, you are beginning the process of seeing the topography of the realms in which you exist. of seeing that your existence is bigger than yourself. Okay. Now, we have a... deeply ingrained cultural tendency to think in generalities.

[37:24]

And the whole teaching of Buddhism is to think in particularities. The word Dharma really means to think in particularities. To think and see into the details of each thing. And again, that's helped by being able to exist in the presence of each breath. So each person that you meet is your practice. And the first person you're meeting is yourself. And can you be at ease with yourself? It's not so easy.

[38:43]

Okay, now I think one thing I should bring up again in the sense of shared vocabulary. Is this sense of, which I've been talking about, of interior space? Now, I've talked about it the last couple of months a number of times. But again, I think we have to establish what I mean by that among all of us. And it's a very difficult thing to remind yourself of and know, so I'd like to talk about it again. Now, Let's just start out with this room.

[39:58]

We have come here from various parts of Germany and Austria. Anywhere else? Switzerland, America, Switzerland, okay. And somehow we found our way into this room. And I guess we're going to be in another room tomorrow, Christiana. Is that right? And in the sense of practicing, you're not just in any room. The more you have a sense of practice, the more you walked into this room with a feeling of uniqueness.

[41:02]

When we were walking this afternoon in the city, we saw a nun go by on a bicycle. And I would say she was 60 riding her bicycle along in a little bit of rain. And being sort of a nun myself, I smiled at her. And she immediately smiled back at me. And both of us wondered why, if we smiled at any other German woman around 60, she wouldn't have smiled back. Why did this German woman, just because she's a nun, feel okay about smiling back? And you might have your own ideas. We were wondering about it.

[42:04]

And let me say at this point, you know, I've been doing Buddhist practice for a pretty long time. 30 years or so. And I guarantee you, I don't know all the answers. And when I'm trying to think about Buddhist practice in terms of Western culture, and also how to develop a viable lay practice I definitely don't have all the answers because western culture and Buddhism is a whole new ball game as we'd say in the United States and there is no real tradition of developed lay practice in Zen Buddhism. So I'm trying with you to find a work, to together come to a way we can practice Zen in our lay lives.

[43:31]

So I actually think of all of you as my helpers in this. Anyway, so I think about things like, why is this nun smiling and nobody else will smile at me in it? In fact, in the pension I was staying in a couple of weeks ago, I walked into this dining room, and I heard, and I just walked in, right? And I guess I must have smiled. Because I heard the people at the table saying, hillbilly Kentucky English. I said, German people aren't unfriendly at all. They just have a sense of their space. And they feel everyone's quite well taken care of.

[44:54]

And don't break into my space with a smile. I don't know who you are. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the reasons are. Maybe you have some reason why. And it's noticeable. You go to Ireland and everybody, you know, smiles at you and so forth. So here there's none smiles, right? And my own feeling is it's because there's a... I don't think you can practice a religion or a spiritual practice without some fundamental trust. And that sense of trust can also begin with trust in other people, but trust in yourself. And we might say that zazen, or meditation practice, is a coming to trust yourself.

[46:08]

And you can't go very far in zazen practice unless you do trust yourself. Because eventually you'll start having experiences you cannot find out if anybody's ever had before. You can come to me quite often and say, geez, I had this experience. Has anybody else ever had this experience? Am I going crazy? And I can say, oh yeah, that's pretty common. And I can even, in the course of these three days, I can give you some hints about what you can expect. But basically, all I can say is, you're going to have to trust yourself.

[47:28]

Trust yourself. It's later than you think. Isn't there a song like that? I heard the song the other day on the radio of the... What's that English group that's... that John Cleaves is part of? Oh, Monty Python. Monty Python, singing... What's the song? Something about happiness. It'll come to me, what it is. I always look on the bright side. I thought it was... Yeah, I don't know the film, but I thought it was a great song. Always look at the bright side. They're singing away, you know. But we can't, unfortunately, always look on the bright side.

[48:32]

Yeah, it's a fine scene. They hang on the closet and sing. Oh, yeah. Okay, so here we have this room. And each of you walk in. And each of you are sitting down in some particular place. And as I said before, each one of you is sitting in a place no one else on the planet is sitting. So without too much effort, you've managed to be absolutely unique. You know, I mean, this is dumb and obvious. But it's very important. You're not in a generalized space. You're in an absolutely unique place. And if you think you're in a generalized place, you've taken your power away.

[49:34]

You're in an absolutely unique place and the whole universe is here. As I said last night, the sun doesn't come up You don't get up in the morning because the sun comes up. You get up in the morning because you get up. The sun gets up in the morning because it gets up. And in fact, we might have a koan in Zen. The teacher could ask the monk, Or the lay adept. Why does the sun get up when you do? Then you can have a lot of commentary on it. But each of us is, I mean, again, if you go, if you want to go back and you say, yes, the sun was born before you were.

[50:42]

But as soon as you start looking at causes, you get into an infinite regression. The fact is, this all exists simultaneously. The sun's coming up, the earth is spinning, you're getting up, you know. So you're each... Absolutely unique. And that's the first thing you have to know. Now, it's also true you're intimately related to this situation. But this whole situation has an absolute uniqueness, too. Now, whatever we do between now and Friday will come out of this group of people here. What did you say? You said between now and Sunday.

[51:52]

You said between now and Friday. Between now and Sunday. Well, I expect you to correct these things. I'm making it very unique, between now and Friday. Okay. So there each of us is sitting at the center of the universe. And in that sense, each of you is the Buddha of your own little world. So in that sense, each of you has taken the seat of Buddha. And the first koan of the Shoryoku that we just studied with a group of us in Japan is the Buddha gets up on a seat. And then Manjushri says, behold the king of dharma. He probably actually said, behold the queen of dharma. The dharma of the queen of dharma is thus.

[52:52]

Then the Buddha gets down from the seat. He didn't stay there. So in this sense, right now, I could look at any one of you and say that the Dharma is thus. But can you feel that? And do you feel... Now, the Buddha, when he was born, supposedly, walked seven steps and said, I am the world-honored one.

[53:54]

Now, you wouldn't say that in a Christian country because it's too immodest. You're supposed to define yourself as small. But I'd like each of you to be able to say, each of you on your own, I am the world 101. I don't know how to say it in German, so let's say it in English altogether, all right? I am the world 101. Do you believe it? Some cultures treat their babies that way. Whose baby appears and you say, woo, this is the world-honored one. Woo. Okay.

[54:55]

So, and that doesn't mean that's not the only reality. If there's only one reality, that doesn't work. But there are many realities. If there's only one reality, then we're in a very tight situation. This room right now is a unique reality. And by reality, I don't mean real and testable by science and indefinitely repeatable. We do live in a repeatable world. But we also live in a non-repeatable world. Every moment is absolutely unique. What's happening right now cannot be repeated. It's important to feel your cells in this unrepeatable world.

[56:10]

If you can't find yourself in this non-repeatable world, you can't feel joy. You can't actually feel joy. You'll always feel something conditioned, measured, careful, etc. Okay, so, each of you is finding your seat. The seat in which I could look at each of you and say, the Dharma is this, reality is thus. And even if you're feeling very shitty right now, still I can look at you and say, reality is thus. Now, this sense of finding your seat, as it's meant in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism, is not limited to when you're meditating.

[57:34]

And it's not limited to any particular posture. In any situation you are in, find your seat. Okay, that's one thing I'd like us to share, that possibility. And I would like you to, between now and tomorrow morning, and shall we start at 10, Christiane? Yeah.

[58:35]

I was thinking about offering a period of meditation tomorrow, so I'd like to read it. Some of you are sleeping. Oh, there are people sleeping here? Yeah. Okay, well... I think the people who are sleeping here can just get together and decide if they'd like to meditate in the morning and pick a time and do it. And did you say about the people who are sleeping here? Yeah, okay. Between now and tomorrow morning, I'd like you to at least three times, whenever it occurs to you, whatever posture you're in, even if you're jogging, three times between now

[59:36]

Now tomorrow morning, see if you can, tomorrow morning at 10, see if you can find your seat. So you feel at ease in your body. Now part of the practice is to be able to remember this feeling. Everything's changing all the time, of course, but there's also a kind of way in which our body remembers joy. Or our body remembers a feeling of ease. And in a way, what we're talking about here is, again, what I brought up last night, is we're used to, in terms of eating, I mean, excuse me, in terms of our physical body, having the importance of a balanced diet.

[60:47]

And what we need is a balanced diet. spiritual and mental diet maybe. But then we have again, as I said, the problem of we feel we're doing something to our mind and we're not supposed to because it belongs to God or belongs to being natural. But part of a balanced mental and spiritual diet is to begin to develop a vocabulary or grammar even of being. Yeah, just as we have a vocabulary of being. the world in terms of names.

[62:01]

We need a kind of vocabulary in our body of the various ways that we can be. So three times, if it occurs, you notice, do I have a sense of finding my seat? Do I feel at ease right here at the center of the universe? And allow yourself that joy or a little bit of pride of being at the center of the universe. Okay, that's one thing. I think we have time for... Are you all okay? It's 8.30.

[63:05]

And I think we should stop by 9, if not sooner. What? Oh, you did? Oh. Can we all fit at this table? Help, help, help, help. You just made a social boo-boo. Well, we can all go there and take over the restaurant. I don't know anybody. Or we can call the restaurant. Okay, but I think your legs are getting tired, too. Maybe we can... Should we take a break, or should we just stop and start tomorrow? I'd like to know the time schedule. Yeah, okay.

[64:07]

We'll go from 10 o'clock to probably about 12.30. And then we'll have lunch for a couple hours. And I think it, because I think it takes that long usually to find a restaurant and sit down and order and get the food and come back. We can talk about that a little tomorrow. And we'll probably start again at 2.30 or 3.00. And go till 5.30 or something, a quarter to six or something like that. I don't have a specific thing, but usually I stay pretty much within a shape like that. Is that all right? Anything else anybody wants to bring up? The same, about the same.

[65:13]

Maybe we can leave, yeah. Maybe we can end a little earlier on Sunday if you want. People have train problems here. Thanks. Airplane problems. Now, I would like to know if anybody has something you'd like us to talk about tomorrow. Yes, for example, I would like to take that into account again yesterday. If the whole thing is actually the inner and the outer reality does not exist or at least does not have meaning, how can I then distinguish whether it is not projection? I would like you to come back to what you said yesterday in the lecture when you said everything is kind of interior and the outer isn't really a reality in that sense and everything is my interior perception.

[66:20]

And how do I find out whether I have a projection or not? Okay, that's good. How do you know it's a projection? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I want... I mean, I think it's so... Has this been said in German, too? Yes, she said it in German, yeah. And I have this sense of interiorized space we need to develop if we're going to practice. And we have to understand the possibilities of this. And we're just beginning to look at this in the practice here in Europe. So as I said, I wanted to do that this evening, but I think it's getting a little too late, so we'll do it tomorrow. And I also want to talk about thinking with your feelings and not thinking with your thoughts.

[67:28]

Because all of this is sort of stuff you need to know if you're going to understand this idea of empathetic practice, of empathetic joy and equanimity. And I want you to know that these are, you know, human possibilities. They're not just religious ideals. And there are possibilities, very real possibilities for each of you. And there are possibilities I'm working with all the time. With a sense of the practice involved. With various degrees of success. Which I don't care about. Okay, so let's stop now, huh?

[68:42]

And then you can have your evening. And I think we've done enough. If we take a break, come back, it'll get too late. So I think let's just stop now. And if somebody else has something to bring up, though, that you'd like me to talk about, If someone wants to say something about what I should talk about, then... Yes. I have something to say. What you spoke about earlier with the individuality, the comparison of Eastern culture or Eastern way of thinking with Western way of thinking, that was a bit unclear, I have to say. It seemed a bit... It's not so easy to say that the West, it came to me as if it were this masked Western way of thinking, which is only seen in larger relationships. But I have the opposite impression that our individuality, or rather our will to be individual, so to speak, is so strongly expressed that it is actually more of a compulsion to be individual,

[69:56]

I want to refer to what you said about individuality in terms of Western and Eastern societies, and I think you made certain points very clear. represented our Western society as this kind of mass society that always refers to bigger identity. But I experience the will in our Western culture for this individuality as some sort of burdening. And so maybe you can say... Okay, yeah, the whole... You know, there's so much that we take for granted. You know, we take existence really for granted.

[70:59]

Or rather, we don't take existence for granted, we take how we exist for granted. And how we exist is actually an open question if you practice. And the individuality of... I think that we have to practice in a way that protects and supports the individuality we know through Western culture. But practice is also how to know your individuality outside your story of individuality. Maybe your absolute individuality that's larger than your personality. So you brought up a Pandora's question. And I'll try to speak to it tomorrow.

[72:15]

Anything else? And tomorrow we have a chance, too. Okay, thank you very much. Why don't you take a little stretch, and I would like it a lot if you could all come up closer and around. Yes. Good morning.

[73:37]

Good morning. Do you all find your seat at least three times? I found mine last night at dinner twice. Because I mean, if I'm going to suggest these things, I have to try it myself. And then this morning, waiting for the taxi that never came, there's a delicious feeling of the autumn air. It's come to Munich. And Ulrike had a rather hard morning. Everything seemed to go wrong. She wandered around bumping into the walls. And finally she made herself a cup of coffee and started drinking it. And the handle broke off. And coffee went everywhere.

[74:59]

Christiana, there's coffee on your walls. There's coffee everywhere. And she thought to herself, as she was sitting with coffee dripping all over her, I found my seat. And she thought to herself, as she was sitting with coffee dripping all over her, I found my seat. And last night, you know, I mentioned this movie, I think it's called The Life of Brian. So last night I went and turned on the television set and there was The Life of Brian on the TV. It was all in German, but that was okay. And for those of you who don't know the last scene, there's this small forest of people being crucified. And pretty soon one of them starts singing,

[76:01]

Always look on the bright side of life. And pretty soon they're all tapping their toes and singing. It's sort of like life, isn't it? And there's one scene where this guy's walking, all these guys are walking with their crosses, which are quite heavy. And some guy comes out of the crowd to help. Because they look so heavy. So he says, oh, this looks so heavy. Can I help you? So he starts helping. And the guy who's supposed to be crucified runs off, of course. So the guy tries to put the cross down and the Roman soldier says, hey.

[77:20]

So the guy says, this is not my cross to bear. And Eureka said, that's just like you. You try to help like that. So anyway, we have this question of empathetic joy. And I think there's several barriers to recognizing the possibility of joy in our life and compassion. And let me use the word compassion as a kind of word that represents all these good things. I think one of the barriers that we feel, and I think that Ulrike brought up in her question, and I think we must all feel to some extent,

[78:37]

is this barrier of should. We should be good. And probably we really want to be, but somehow the should makes it pretty difficult. And then there's also the problem of our actual experience. Is that we find our own nature is not always good. And then also that's sort of confirmed by often much of our creativity and the excitement in life comes out of this not being good. So it's pretty hard to be good. And to always look on the bright side of life. That's a very serious bunch of stuff this early in the morning. But we have to start somewhere.

[80:16]

Now, in Zen Buddhism and Buddhism in general, Compassion is not something you should be. Or let's say, let's define compassion simply. It means recognizing that you're intimately related to the world and to each other. So it's not something you should do. It's something that actually reflects the way the world is. In fact, you are intimately related to everything.

[81:20]

So compassion is an expression of this recognition. And compassion is a condition of realizing this relationship. So compassion is both the condition that makes us realize this, and it's also the expression of it. Now there's a well-known practice in Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, of exchanging yourself for others, meaning to put yourself in other people's shoes.

[82:23]

or sometimes it's expressed as recognizing that everyone was at some time your mother given our relationship to mothers in the west it's probably not a good practice But anyway, the idea is that each person is some version of us. But what's not noticed so often is that the accompanying practice of this exchanging yourself for others is recognizing yourself as equal to others. If you can't recognize yourself as equal to others, there's nothing to exchange.

[83:44]

Now, of course, in the divided world, you're not equal to others. We're all different, and in comparisons of age and jobs and skills, we're quite different. Wir sind alle verschieden, vor allen Dingen was Alter, Fähigkeiten, Fertigkeiten, Berufe und so weiter betrifft. From this sense of equality, which is, well, let me start again. In the divided world, we are not equal. In the undivided world, we are equal. And this is a very basic spiritual perception. When this perception of wholeness or equalness And the perception of equalness and is very related to the perception of wholeness is externalized and we try to make it into the way the divided world works.

[85:17]

You have something like the horrible failure of Soviet communism, which is a desire to recognize the equality of everyone, but it can't really be recognized or forced on the divided world. If you do, you have to eliminate a lot of people. But the basic sense of the morality, perhaps, and the fact of wholeness and... is real, but it just can't be put into the external world.

[86:26]

Of wholeness and equalness. So maybe for us, the first practice is recognizing equalness. Now you can't recognize equalness unless you recognize the undivided world. Okay, now here I'm trying to again establish some vocabulary. And I'd like to be able to say to... some of the older Dharma Sangha adepts here, will you please take the responsibility now of establishing the undivided reality for everyone?

[87:27]

And I can say, Beate, will you do that, please? or Ruth or Stefan or somebody. So maybe I'm warning you that I may start asking you to do that. Anyway, I'm using undivided as a way of saying emptiness. And undivided is a, you know, whenever I use language, I'm speaking from the divided world. Because language separates things.

[88:27]

So I'm using words that separate things to point at the undivided world. So if I say beginner's mind, like Sukhirashi uses, Or if I say big mind, or original mind, these are all words that point at the undivided world. But each word so used becomes a gate to the undivided world. So, Let's say that big mind, original mind, and undivided mind describe the same thing. First of all, that's not quite correct. But let's assume it's correct.

[89:39]

Still it's different. Because each is a gate, a different gate to this understanding. So a big mind represents a certain experience and way of behaving. Original mind represents another way to direct your practice. and beginners another, etc. So, if I use undivided world or undivided perception to describe emptiness, to point out emptiness, I'm pointing out that if you can find a way to perceive in an undivided way, you come closer to recognizing this.

[90:51]

Does that make sense?

[90:53]

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