For me the question arises, in what mind do I observe all these things? And do you a lot of times talk about the yogic culture? Yes. And that's something like my body, mind, breathing. So body, mind and breathing, when I notice these three things, Then it is easier for me to deal with such problems and questions and it has different results.

[01:09]

Or a kind of pressure to find a result that solves because I don't need to find a result anymore. And then I noticed when you said this morning to pause for the particular, that helps me to go into the direction of such a mind. OK. Yes? When I look at my own desire or yearning, then it's not something that I want to discover, truth or something. It's more something that I want.

[02:14]

I don't want that here is me and here is my life. More something that this is. I don't know how to say, immediacy, something. I don't think my life, it's just life. Okay. Then I don't want something like, here is my life, and what was the other one again? Here is my life, and here is my life. And there I am. And there I am, but I want something immediate. I don't want to think my life, but live it. And what I like to do a lot is to experiment, to play with different states of mind. And doing this, what I find is there is not there is not oneness, it's more like this, that things who seem to be completely contrary are the same type, they are something like sharp as a sword and smooth as...

[03:41]

And what I find out is not something like unity, but that things that actually contradict each other exist at the same time, like, for example, sharp like a sword and soft like silk. And what I also find is that the feeling of myself I have seems to become less sharp. Sometimes reminds me of these old photos who become a little bit pale by the time. You feel all brown. And what is very interesting for me is what you said about this theme of the smuggling.

[04:47]

I think I already brought this up in a seminar before because I have this feeling very often that Maybe I'm busy, I'm doing something, but there is something in the background which is not busy, which is always there, which never changes, something like this, and then I wondered, oh, what I do in there, everything changes. Why do I have this feeling of something solid? So do I again grasp for something? And now we came to the point that That it feels this way doesn't mean necessarily that it is this way.

[05:59]

So maybe this is all just different experiences and one is not more true or false than the other. Maybe just some are more familiar than the others. I think I agreed with everything you said up to the last bit. there is an experience of always there-ness. That's an important experience.

[07:01]

Hinduism is also rooted in this experience. But Hinduism understands that always there-ness as a kind of mind-ground, Brahmanic mind-ground or something. Buddhism understands the always there-ness as a contrast to what is more clearly changing. So when you say, but this is your experience, I think that's right. And that's like saying, I had an experience of oneness. I don't doubt that in a bit.

[08:12]

But it's your experience. If you extrapolate it to everything, then this is not true, from my point of view. And that kind of distinction, to not extrapolate it, is a distinction in thinking, kind of philosophy. But when you say, then all experiences are equally valid, this I don't agree with. The experience that things are permanent is not as valid as the experience that things are impermanent. So everything isn't relative. Okay. Okay. Someone else? Yeah? I wasn't here this morning, but I had a discussion with Nicole.

[09:33]

And you presented the teaching before about the difference between guilt culture and shame culture. And then I haven't heard you add further distinction, but I think you added this morning between justice guilt and compassion shame. I can very clearly see how Western culture is a justice culture. And there are some very positive developments that have come out of that and some quite negative also.

[10:38]

And I was wondering if you could talk more about the compassion part of the compassion-shame culture. Well, not between now and five. But what's important about these ideas like justice and compassion Is that they're really very basic views. And they tend to control all the rest of our views. If you can imagine a cone shape. If the point of that cone is ultimately you expect a world where there's justice, that cone will cover all your views and everything you see and do.

[11:49]

And such a view assumes that things fit together somehow. And if you can make them fit together, the world would be a better place. And you can't say that's not true. So whatever view, whatever root view we have, it will have benefits as well as problems. Now, if your root view is compassion, justice is still there, but justice isn't at the focal point. then you won't expect the world to fit together.

[13:05]

You'll expect some things just have to be forgiven. Some things will be contradictory. These various things will be looser. Einstein is seeking for a unified field theory. is more the belief, a kind of belief in Einstein, that it's possible is more in a justice world. And if If he'd been in this other view, he might have thought, well, maybe there's no unified field.

[14:25]

Maybe it's always going to be new, different, a little unexplainable. A world when you try to get everything under control. is a justice world. A world in which you're willing to let things sort of do what they want. That's more a compassion world. And it also parallels what I've said in the past. Whether you see yourself going into the future as we tend to in the West, or whether we see the future coming toward us.

[15:28]

Yeah, I mean, if you look in, you know, I don't read Chinese and things, but I'm quite sure if you look in ordinary Chinese culture things, farmers say to each other, the aphorisms, the sayings, will imply that the unexpectedness of the future is the truth. And we certainly know that future is unexpected. But we sort of expect it to be mostly expected. We put a huge amount of energy into planning our future.

[16:31]

Which is quite smart when you're old. But you can plan for the future and still have this other view. Then you plan more for the unexpected. So if your view is the future is always coming toward you in its unexpectedness, this is a different experience than thinking, I'm going into a future I can figure out. So these are these trivial things which actually make a big difference. Well, somehow I spoke about it more than I expected to. Someone else.

[17:39]

Yes. That's her job. We assigned it to her according to her ability. Yeah. I would like to follow up on that. I know that it is no longer the time to say much, but I would be much more interested in what is meant by this shame culture. I asked myself in the lunch break how something like this can arise. Where does it come from? I'd like to add to that, but I'm more interested in the shame aspect. I've tried to figure out how does shame develop, how does that arise? And so far I've held the view that particularly in our Western culture we carry a lot of shame and shed shame onto others.

[18:58]

So that has a rather negative connotation for me, and I'd like to understand how shame can have a more positive aspect. Okay. To have a discussion about this, we have to treat shame and guilt as technical terms. Okay. They're used in common speech, common parlance. They're used rather overlapping, rather almost as synonyms. I'm ashamed I did that. I feel guilty about doing that. Yeah, but if we use the words that way, we can't make a distinction. The simple difference between shame and guilt is guilt... is if you commit an act which has bad results, you're responsible for that act and that act continues with you.

[20:35]

Now, I know there's teachings of how you're absolved of guilt and so forth. But still, the sense is there's a person who did it and the person who did it is contaminated by what they did. But in a shame culture, if you decide not to do it again, It's gone. What is the shame? Well, I'm ashamed of hollering at Sophia. That's our daughter.

[22:06]

But if I decide I will not holler at her again, and I don't, then it's gone. If I feel guilty about it, then I'm the kind of person who hollers at... I mean, it's a difference in emphasis, but it's a big difference in emphasis. And they say, in Buddhism it's said that if you can't feel shame, you can't practice Buddhism. And in Buddhism it is said that if you can't feel shame, you can't practice Buddhism. Does shame mean feeling remorse? I would say remorse is a good translation. It's more like regret because shame is like, for us in German at least, you always said feel shame for what you just said.

[23:12]

Yeah, well, I can only speak to it in English. So just feel shame, I mean, just looking at that example, if I kill somebody, it's easy to feel shame because I won't do it twice, right? But shame for nasty little things you do all the time is much worse. Well, regret might be a better word then. You regret it and you're not going to do it again. Why do you say it's easy to feel shame? I don't think it's easy to feel shame at all. She never feels shame. No. No. German, please. Yeah, but now I hear somebody. Feeling shame is the small way to deal with karma. When the result of your acts is to deal with the karma is small. It's easier to feel shame than to feel guilty. I don't know about easier. It's the way to do it. Let's say it's the way to do it. Yes. Yeah. The question is, what does this have to do with karma?

[24:23]

And to feel guilty, is that a way to deal with karma? Or is it more to be ashamed to deal with karma and to come to terms with it? And isn't it a kind of making a decision to change a very fundamental decision, that you really stop something that you did before? That's an incredible shift. And that comes to my mind as a difference. And then you dissolve. In my opinion, in the sense of the discussion, shame is obviously a very deep-rooted conclusion. It is connected to an action that I have done before, to really stop and give up for good, for ever, so to speak. And that is really something different than if I am guilty of it.

[25:25]

It changes the whole thing. Yes. I can only speak German. I also know the difference between shame and guilt, and I have always understood them in such a way that every society needs a behavior corrective to connect them. And the guilt corrective is something that, as I understand it, can also be related to the past. The question with me is something that I have done before. Shame, on the other hand, is rather opposite. It's the last time I saw my face when I was acting right. And that's why I can only act right in the moment when I'm acting right. What I did before doesn't matter. That's why the feeling of shame is an opposite corrective. The feeling of guilt, on the other hand, is a corrective of the past. That's how I see it. I know the distinction between shame and guilt, but from how I have gotten to know it, both of them are correctives.

[26:33]

The guilt concept is a corrective for actions referring to the past. Yeah, you try to correct what has happened in the past, whereas shame refers to the present. Can you say that again with shame? Thank you. There is an Asian saying, don't lose your face. That means, if I do something wrong, I lose my face at any moment. That's why I want to act now, if I act, I act well. But it's my now. What I did before doesn't matter, what I do in the future doesn't matter. Only now can I feel the shame, otherwise I'm ashamed if I don't. Where is the corrective? So in Asian culture, there's the idea of losing your face. And the feeling of shame arises as a corrective, is that the word? Corrective for a present action.

[27:37]

It is to correct what you're doing now. It doesn't refer to the future or to the past. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But in a culture, I don't think we should get into this too much, but in a culture which emphasizes shame, the past almost doesn't exist. I mean, if you killed somebody in the past, let's say by accident... Of course, there no longer being present in the present is a real change. But it's a fact of the present. So, from that point of view, everything is really about the present. Yes.

[28:47]

I actually think it's a good example to examine, as you said, in thinking and how actually our feeling for words fits where we feel like the words I'm using aren't interfering with the concept. I had the feeling it's an awesome example of inside-outside, where if I feel like I can trick somebody out of punishing me, then nobody actually notices it's not shame, it's referring to an outside, whereas shame feels more like it's all inside because it's all connected.

[30:00]

We'll start again tonight at eight, is that right? Let me just leave us with where we're at. Because we really don't know how we know. Or how we know what's valid. Maybe we can come closer to what's true The way what Buddhism came to after some centuries is there's only two measures of truth. Perception, experience. Wahrnehmung und Erfahrung.

[31:11]

That perception and experience. And inferential reasoning. Und die schlussfolgende Vernunft. Reasoning from evidence. Also zu schlussfolgern aus Tatsachen. Now what's important about that being the only two conditions for truth? Scripture means nothing. What the Buddha said means nothing. That's big. That's very different from Christianity. And this also developed partly because the argumentation between schools. One school would say, well, the Buddha said this, and the other school would say, well, the Buddha said that, and no one could come to any conclusion.

[32:16]

So scripture is important for... Teaching and practice. But you decide what's true by your experience and by inferential, by reasoning from evidence. Okay, so now... To what degree can we trust experience and reasoning from evidence? Who knows what evidence is? You can say, I have white hair because I'm aging. That would be reasoning from evidence.

[33:36]

But some people have white hair when they're 25. Well, so let's sit for a minute. And then we'll have our meal. having shed illusion and enlightenment?

[35:58]

Are we there yet? What could such a shedding be? Even that distinction, gone. cutting off ordinary and holy. How are we going to know what to do if we don't have preferences? What about the world that does not fall into any categories?

[37:26]

Can we sometimes taste such a world? If it's not present now, when would it be?

[37:58]

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