Anything on anyone's mind? Okay. I want to point out three aspects which are related to what you said yesterday. The first is about freedom. I feel very good with what you told us about freedom. The first book which comes from the East to the West for me was written by Evans Vance in Germany. Evanescence. Evans Wentz. Oh, Evans Wentz. Okay, yeah, I know Evans Wentz. The title was Ghost of the Fire, the big liberation somehow. It was just another book for enlightenment. So when you talk about freedom and love, this is about the Avalokiteshvara aspect of Buddhism, of enlightenment. I feel very good with this.

[01:01]

I'm not feel so good with the use of the word fit, to be fit in. In my point of view it is, I'm always fit in, even if I don't like it. And I cannot be fitter in it. So I am perfectly fit in, And to have in mind to be able to be more fit in, this is a construction of a context which pushes me to a better state of mind. And I suspect a little bit. this conceptualization. I don't believe in Munchausen, Baron of Munchausen, who draws.

[02:04]

You know this story? So my mind is not fulfilled. I suspect . I know there's a truth in the poet you gave to us yesterday, at the same A moment I said, yes, I can hope that it will bring me to this kind of relief, but it is not sufficiently and it's not necessarily that I go this way. I cannot look for God at the same place. I'm doing this. And there is a third one. The third one is about the relation between sattva and Buddhism. You gave us the example of the acorn.

[03:10]

And I think sattva also would say in most of the things, the essence is already there. And then it spread out and came into existence and fulfilled the Gestalt. And in human nature, it is the other way around. There is no essence at all at the beginning. It's just existence. And then a human being just develop in its own way, and he is responsible for this. There's no, really, destination. Do you think similar to Sartre, that there's not, in the beginning, there's nothing for him? George, please. I agree. The first time, I thought it was very beautiful.

[04:16]

There was no expression of enlightenment yesterday, but instead there was freedom and love. And also this set free, that moved me very much. And I thought, yes, that is so easy to understand. It moved me very much. The second thing was to adapt to life. And the idea, when we sit still, Then we will see at some point that the leaves grow on their own and everything happens on its own. So this idea of the mind, there is a possible method to get there. I have often experienced and thought, oh, now it's nice to sit outside, the sun will touch me.

[05:25]

And then I went out and it was just an imagination. The sun didn't touch me as much as it touched me. So I said, ah, I'll do it. But no, that was it. And the third thing is from Sartre, that I ask, how is Sartre and Buddhism connected? And so I said, that in all objects that we have, the essence is already there. We think about it, when we make a jacket, then we have it in the head, and the essence of the jacket is there, in the creator, that is me, or someone, and then it escapes. And with man it is the other way around. He exists, but there is no real soul. He has to create it himself. Well, there is a problem with with the word fit.

[06:42]

But, you know, first of all, I don't want you to take what I'm saying too... I'm trying to create a feeling or impressions, not be rigorously accurate. Also, ich möchte nicht, dass ihr mich so sehr beim Wort nehmt. Also, ich versuche mehr... You know, the word fit usually, at least in English, I don't know what it feels like in German, but in English, you know, if a kid doesn't fit into high school, it means he doesn't adjust socially or something. But fit has a wider meaning, just do your hands fit together? How do things in a general way fit? And so I'm really speaking about, I don't know what, I couldn't find another word, but in this poem, this little poem implies a world in which there is compatibility or a fit.

[08:23]

Partly I'm just using the poem as an example of that we can have a feeling of fitting even if we actually don't fit in the world. And my own experience is, you know, I don't... Maybe I've never felt like I fit in this world. Yes, but then at the same time, in other ways, I do accept to feel some fit with the world. Yeah, and so I'm using this word with its problems, you know, to just get us to think about how we are existing.

[09:53]

Yeah, and I haven't read Sartre, as I told you, for 50 years. So I couldn't say, I don't know whether he talks about essences or what. More obvious concerns with identity and freedom. So let's continue and see if some of the things that concern you we can respond to. Anyone else want to say something? Yeah. touched when you talked about Sophia and her experience about the story, because in my own biography, or as well because in my biography, it was just about the treatment of freedom.

[11:34]

religion, and when I was about four years old, then Sophia Dao, I went to the child's goddess beads. You went to where? To a service, to a church service. Oh, to a church service, yeah. And this kind of being touched by I continue with John, of the suffering of Christ and then seeing freedom in Egypt, I perceived it as a really constructive approach by Sofrida with this history of suffering. So she was touched in this service by the suffering of Christ and also by the constructive solution that Sophia found.

[12:37]

To escape to Egypt? To escape to Egypt. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else want to say something? Okay. That means I have to say something. Yeah. I don't want to, at this point, present you with some kind of solution to, Buddhist solution to freedom.

[13:38]

Right now, at least in this part of the morning, I want to, you know, kind of... wander about in the problems of what is suffering. And I brought up last night, you know, this etymology of the word free means we could understand this, can love set us free? And I think it can give us the sensation of freedom, but it also often binds us and separates us from others and so forth. And it's often exclusive and possessive.

[14:51]

Now, the word for inclusive love in Buddhism is compassion. Yeah, we have some, to find that way to love which doesn't exclude and isn't possessive. And there's a Chinese word for watch, to love, which means to watch. And I think that's a useful definition.

[16:01]

And it's often used to mean how a parent watches their child accepting them, good or bad, and letting them go eventually. So this watching has a kind of connected distance. And what is this watching? Say that I have a feeling of watching each of you. And watching is the same root as awareness, so there's an awareness And watching has a sense of an awareness and attentiveness to each person.

[17:14]

So then I would say that I'm using this word to suggest a practice of awareness and attentiveness. And another definition of detachment in Japanese means detached yet not separate from. bedeutet losgelöst sein, aber nicht getrennt. Okay, so here we have another very similar idea, to be not separate from, yet detached. Und da ist eine sehr ähnliche Idee, also nicht getrennt zu sein, aber losgelöst.

[18:19]

Now, I'm not... As you know, for a Westerner, I've been doing this Buddhist practice stuff for a pretty long time. And yet I am continually amazed at... The difference in the world that's assumed. How the world is the same world we all see with our senses, but it's assumed to be somewhat different than we assume. Immer wieder bin ich überrascht, dass diese Welt anders ist als das, was wir annehmen. And one of the first things that struck me is that we assume not only that somehow human beings are different from dirt and trees and animals,

[19:45]

There's some essential difference between animals and humans. That thinking is, excuse me for bringing in politics, that thinking is behind Bush's shrubs constituency. Und dieses Denken, und tut mir leid, wenn ich da jetzt Politik mit reinbringe, ist hinter dieser Kleinbuschigkeit von Bush. LAUGHTER Sounds good.

[21:05]

Yeah, these are people who don't in any way want to accept, for example, evolution. Yeah, so, you know, these are, you know, big differences in the world. The politics of America based on this constituency is a disaster. Okay, so not only is there an assumed qualitative difference between humans and other sentient life and beings, non-sentient life. But more than that, our worldview tends to think of everything as separate. While the yogic worldview and worldview in much of Asia is to assume that actually everything is connected.

[22:20]

Okay. Yeah. And that's the teaching of Buddhism, interdependence, interpenetration. So to practice, you know, we really want to enter, to make the specific crafts of practice work. We want to enter into the field, the view of the world in which the practice works. And one of the basic suggestions, teachings I give you is work with the feeling of already connected.

[23:44]

As a contrast to the assumption we have that everything is already separated. Yeah, now, we could also say that, you know, there's this idea in the West of process thinking, you know, we could say that everything is process in this way, in this yogic way of thinking. Now, the difference this makes, you know, I can give you hints and suggestions about the difference this makes. But you have to realize, we need to, to practice, realize these differences in ourself. So I would suggest that you, if you want to practice, is that you take something like already connected,

[24:56]

And you repeat this to yourself and you hold this in your mind. In your activity. Until you find that this is your view and this view has supplanted or replaced the view of everything is separated, already separated. So you don't want to just know about this. It wants to become your view before you even perceive things. Okay. There's a pencil, see?

[26:28]

I'm just teasing. Thank you, thank you. Um... Um... Because when it becomes your view, you feel the connectedness. It really changes how you're in this world. You don't feel lonely in the same way. You don't feel separate from things. And this isn't any enlightenment. Well, it could be, but it's just... shift in view.

[27:37]

And as you know the Buddhist first teaching the first teaching of the first teaching is perfecting your views on the Eightfold Path. So I think in the West we have to continuously work with our views in order to make practice work. Once you've established as your fundamental view that everything is connected, You can.

[28:40]

It's not just in your head. It's something you just feel on each moment. Then you can be open to the teaching of interdependence and interpenetration. Yeah, and it's not just an environmental view. Yes, everything's interrelated. It's just your experience. I think of the gardener with the green thumb. Ja, ich denke an den Gärtner mit dem grünen Daumen. Some gardeners just have a feeling for how plants grow with things, and that's a kind of feeling for the connectedness of... Ja.

[29:42]

Ja, und manche Gärtner haben dieses Gefühl für, wie die Pflanzen miteinander verbunden sind. Okay. Okay, so that's just an example. Das ist einfach ein Beispiel. Okay. But I'm talking about how suffering accumulates, how suffering accumulates mentally and physically. And I think in each of us there's places Where we're sobbing. Sobbing? Sobbing inside. A sobbing we don't... You know, that's hidden even from us. But sometimes we find that place in our mental, physical kind of territory where there's sobbing going.

[30:50]

Now I'm thinking there's a practice called in Zen, one of the Zen schools, emphasizes gazing at purity. Now, I don't know of any idea like this in my birth culture. Well, there probably is, but I don't know about it. But it's very interesting. It's not to be pure. It's to gaze at purity. To gaze at purity as a practice in Zen is to imagine

[31:51]

a dynamic of being which is different than I grew up with anyway. It assumes an interpenetration of being of body, mind and phenomena Yeah, that... religion I didn't grow up with. I mean, it's similar to, you know, maybe... homeopathic medicine or something like that. Where small doses of something start interacting with your whole system.

[33:20]

And it's interesting, you know, I mean, the same kind of difference in Japan, if you go to the doctor, traditional doctor, They don't treat the disease. They treat the health. So they say, oh, here's where you're most healthy. We'll make all those parts even healthier and they will make the sick part well. Now I'm sure that there are doctors in Japan that practice Western medicine. But when I would go to a doctor, just a local doctor who went to a Japanese medical school, Ja, und ich bin dann jeweils zu dem einfach lokalen Arzt gegangen, der einfach in die japanische Schule gegangen ist.

[34:32]

Ja, you'd come back with 16 different little pills. Und dann kam ich zurück mit 16 verschiedenen Pillen. None of them were for the problem, they were all for different things to strengthen you. Und keine davon ging das Problem an, sondern stärkte dich. I wasn't convinced it worked. I would have been happy to have something for the problem. So what I'm pointing out is a different conception of how you interrelate with a person's sickness or suffering. So what does it mean to gaze at purity? This is actually quite a subtle and complex idea. Yeah, when I'm looking at you, am I gazing at purity?

[35:47]

Well, maybe. When I look at these flowers, am I gazing at purity? Well, hello. What does it mean to gaze at purity? So let me go back to something I noticed when I first started practicing. What I call background mind and how background mind begins to be a presence in us and a way of functioning in us. But I think it's time for a break. You know, I went to a lot of serials, movies that are, you know, a little episode every week.

[37:16]

And there was always, it would end after 20 minutes or 15 minutes, with a horse going over a cliff. And then it would stop and say, time for refreshments. And then you had to come back next week to see that the horse actually landed on a ledge that you couldn't see. So maybe we'll land on a ledge. Maybe we won't after the break.

[37:48]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.87