I said to Ulrike before she came down, on this first evening, what shall I talk about? And she said, why don't you admit that Johannes' life is a dream come true? And I said, I can't admit that. That's a little schmaltzy. Are you better? I heard you were sick, Julia. Yeah. You're feeling better? Yeah. Oh, good. Um... And I have to admit, Johanneshof is, for me, such a dream come true. And what's the subject for this weekend, this non-attachment? Yeah, perhaps I'm rather attached here. Mm-hmm. But I want to say why I'm so deeply grateful that Johanneshof exists.

[01:37]

One is simply the pleasure of practicing with you. And the satisfaction of helping to create a place where you can find practice and know that practice is going on even when you're not here. And I want to express my thanks to all of you who helped make this happen. And especially to Gerald and Gisela. And also Eric and Christina and Julius, we can't forget. And Sabina who lived here during this first year.

[02:52]

It's pretty demanding to live in a place when it's just getting started and doesn't have form yet. And it probably didn't help that I wasn't here so much. But I wanted to not be here too much the first year. Because I wanted to see what we really want to do with this place. And I didn't want to come in immediately with a lot of Buddhist forms or something like that. I just wanted to see how we would do here. But I feel strangely so at home here that I'm grateful I've been able to make a schedule for this year, which is much simpler, and I can be here a lot. And I also... It's not... I mean, it is, as I said, the simple pleasure of sharing practice with you.

[04:11]

Because for me at least, practice is the best form of friendship. Most satisfying and deeply evolving friendship. And I like the Greek idea of friendship. Which is, friendship is that affection which evolves through a shared vision. And I hope that, and I feel confident that we will, and Sangha is about coming to a shared vision in which our friendship evolves. And also the... My dream is to have a place where together we can look at the basic questions of how we exist.

[06:06]

And not only the basic questions of how each of us individually exists, But how our society exists. And someone suggested to me that I start off this weekend more or less where we left off in the midweek practice days we've done just now. Yeah. So anyway, that's what I'm doing. I'm starting off more or less where we just left off. And I feel, and I mean, I'll put it this way, Buddhism has taken hold in countries, especially when it's been coming into a culture as the culture is in its early stages of development.

[07:24]

And it's taken hold because individuals in the society ask themselves basic questions again. How do we exist? Why do we cause each other so much suffering? And why is our life so often blighted and benighted by ignorance and false attachments? Now you can't ask those questions with relevance unless you believe something else is possible. Unless you have some hope in the development or maturation or transformation of human nature.

[08:49]

Now one of the differences between early Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism is early Buddhism had the vision of realization but not of Buddhahood. Buddhism was something far above human possibility, only some extraordinary, I don't know what, genius or something like Buddha himself could be realized the way he was. But Mahayana was primarily a lay movement, lay person movement. And maybe lay people have more chutzpah than monks.

[10:02]

So they thought, hey, we can be like the Buddha. We don't have to just be our hearts, let's be Buddhas. It made them study human nature differently. made them look at what are the characteristics of realization of enlightenment of Buddhahood. And it changed the practice. And also, early Buddhism thought you could be enlightened through your own efforts and for yourself. Now, there wasn't... I mean, when we speak about it, we can make the differences between early Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism too great, probably. But there was a shift in emphasis for sure.

[11:31]

And as a shift in emphasis, it was more on we are so interwoven with others, we carry a field of others with us, and implicitly we include all other people. So the Mahayana concluded we can't really be enlightened unless we work through and with others.

[12:38]

You somehow have to conceive of the whole of sentient life as part of your practice. So this big vision was a very powerful ingredient in a developing culture. And I think we're in a similar position now. Not only is our contemporary culture forming and quite new, but we're right on the edge of a planetary culture of which I think Buddhism will play a significant role in globalization.

[13:48]

But still, this always comes back to individuals asking themselves questions. How do we solve our personal problems? How do we live in a way that is satisfying? And how do we live in a way that respects and expresses our care for others? Now, if you look at the people who were crucial in developing practice in China and Japan and other countries.

[15:12]

One of them who I've been kind of paying attention to recently was a man named Paramatha. I think his name means ultimate truth. And he lived in India. And I think when he was in his late 40s, nearly 50, he came to China. And he not only knew Sanskrit and Indian languages, but he knew Chinese well. And he lived from 499 to 5, I think, 69. Anyway, he came to China, and every place he went, there were wars. And he had support for a while for his translation projects, but then he would lose the support.

[16:17]

So he decided to go back to India. But he was a teacher as well as a translator. And his disciples kept trying to prevent him from going back to India. So finally he stayed. And most of his work on translating primarily Yogacara sutras including the Diamond Sutra which we just studied became the focus of his teaching and translations became the focus of Chinese thinking about what human beings were like for 300 years and that's 300 years long And the question that if we ask ourselves basic questions and as Paramartha did they're asking them knowing through themselves and seeing others that enlightenment is possible.

[18:03]

So if enlightenment is possible, and you know this, then you really have to ask yourself, why don't we realize this more commonly? What prevents us? As it says in the first koan in the Bluetooth records, when you see horns on the other side of the fence, you know an ox is there. Well, if you know that enlightenment is possible, why don't you know it's possible for yourself? So, I mean, I want to honor not only Graf Giesler and Sabine and Eric and Christina, but also Paramatha and people like that, But because these folks did a tremendous amount of work that we can benefit from.

[19:20]

So we can start to some extent from where they started and also from where they left off. And the sutras arise from people asking themselves questions like this. I mean, most of the sutras were written, the Mahayana sutras especially, were written long after the Buddha died. And they're the fruit of people like us actually trying to answer these questions.

[20:21]

And committing their life to trying to see how we can study ourselves, what's possible for human beings. With the feeling that human society is lost unless some people do this. So their thinking went something like this. Obviously, the trouble comes from our mental and physical activity. Offensichtlich kommen all unsere Probleme von unseren körperlichen und mentalen Beschäftigungen. And our mental activity seems to be governed a good bit of time by ignorance and even attachment. And so if our mental and physical activity is the problem,

[21:29]

What can we do to understand our mental and physical activity better? So they set out to study how we think and act. And you could say that all Buddhism is a study of how we think and act and is about changing our relationship to our thinking. So, we're all here in this room, and what we do a great deal of time is think. And most of us meditate pretty often.

[22:40]

And what happens when we meditate? Most of us think. So what characterizes thinking? One, there's a lot of it. That's first. There's a big quantity of it. If there was a small quantity of it, we'd have different problems. Nothing's a big quantity of it. And second, we identify with it. We're quite attached to it. It's a very powerful tool. And it has solved many of our personal problems.

[23:53]

And maybe it can continue. But it becomes clear that the degree to which we identify with our thinking is a degree to which we... are very likely to be deluded in how we do things. And I would say it also depletes our vital energy. And third, we notice there's a lot of thinking, we're attached to our thinking, and we happen to notice our thinking a great deal. And what I mean by that is the way we think, even if you're not attached to your thinking, it still is what we notice. There are more subtle things going on in us and going on in our relationship with others and with the world.

[25:10]

But it's quite hard to notice them if mostly we only notice thinking. So, again, given the predominance and attachment to thinking, Paramātra and us, we are trying to understand the way our mind functions and what our relationship to our thinking is. So, first of all, in practice, the main posture, as most of you know, of meditation, of zazen, is uncorrected mind.

[26:30]

So the first emphasis in Zen Buddhism is to leave your thinking alone. And that's quite difficult to do, actually. But there's a lot of it. It's hard not to notice it. And we actually think we are our thoughts. So to just leave it alone This is quite difficult to do. But if you try to stop it, then you're involved with it. So you're trying to develop a state of mind which can observe your thinking but not get caught in it.

[27:32]

And This may take years to realize this simple thing. But if you have a clear idea of it, of what this practice is, and you can have faith in it, that feeling of it, that image of it, and the face in it, will begin to let you feel your way toward this mind. This non-interfering observing mind. dieser sich nicht einmischende, beobachtende Geist.

[28:39]

And it helps to have some taste of it. Und das hilft, wenn man einen Geschmack davon hat. At Creston recently, Deborah Madison has done this big cookbook, kind of the joy of vegetarian cooking. Und zurzeit ist Deborah Madison in Creston, sie ist die Autorin dieses vegetarischen Kochbuchs, Die Freude am Kochen. And she also did the Greens cookbook Which we may. I don't know if we have a copy here or not, but we might. But someone, some of you know, Katrin Birkel is there at Crestone, too. And she's lived in China and Japan. And I mentioned this example the other day in the in the midweek practice time we had.

[29:41]

But it's such a good example, I want to repeat it. And we noticed that when Katrin cooked Japanese food, it tasted right. And usually when Westerners cook Japanese food from the recipes, it always ends up tasting quite funny. And Deborah agreed you can't cook from a recipe if you don't know what it's supposed to taste like. You have to use the recipe to cook toward the taste. And Buddhism is like that. You can read the sutras and you can read the koans, but if you don't know what Buddhism tastes like, it doesn't help you much.

[30:50]

So Mahayana Buddhism means we have to be each other's midwife. The vow to save all sentient beings means more or less I'll be your midwife if you'll be mine. And we are trying in the Zendo and here in this place to share the taste of practice. Because when you're in your regular life, away from daily others who are practicing, It will help a lot if you know the taste of practice. So the two main things we do in meditation is we leave our thinking alone, And we observe our thinking.

[32:07]

And they're interrelated. And observing our thinking, we begin to see the structures of thinking and our habits. And if you get more skillful, you can follow thoughts and moods and things to their source. And you can begin to see the triggers of thinking and feeling and states of mind. And then in meditation and in mindfulness practice, we intercede in our thinking. And we intercede primarily with enlightenment. You put something in that interferes. I thought inter hyphen seed.

[33:26]

Well, that's good, too. So in between things, inter things, you put seeds. She's right, of course. And we put seeds of enlightenment views... and wisdom views, views that are accurate about how things exist. So part of practice is to intercede with our views that transform the way our thinking functions. A second way we practice, both in mindfulness and meditation, is to withdraw our identification from our thinking. And primarily to move our sense of continuity into our breath and into our body.

[34:29]

So very simply, I mean, if you understand it clearly, when you're doing your daily life, you keep trying to, when it comes up, when you can remind yourself to find your continuity in your immediate situation. in your physicality and in your breath. And you'll see that it jumps back to stuck in thought. And that is a more important attachment than attachment to cookies or cute people. Or to BMWs, I don't know. I mean... This attachment to our stream of thought is much more damaging, much more deluding than, I don't know, having a new car.

[36:01]

So, in your practice, one of these basic ways we're trying to change our relationship to our thinking is we're trying to withdraw our personal identification with our thinking. And, of course, Of course, thinking is very useful. Please don't anyone get the idea I'm saying you shouldn't think. And even if I say so, it doesn't mean anything because you won't stop. But you can stop identifying what you're thinking. Now, it's pretty hard to stop identifying with your thinking.

[37:11]

And it becomes easier if you can choose something more benign to identify with. So you shift your identification to another object of continuity, which is primarily your breath or your body. Or your immediate situation. And that's basically what the practice of mindfulness is. Essentially mindfulness means to withdraw your identification from your thinking and put it in your body, your situation or your breath. And that's four practices I've given you, and the fifth is you change the nature of thinking itself. That's a little more difficult to describe, so I won't try to do it this evening. So perhaps this is enough for this evening to give you an introduction to the five ways we change our relationship to our thinking.

[38:29]

and thinking being our main attachment and this is the first step in really asking ourselves these basic questions how do we exist in this world What is the relationship of our ordinary life to enlightenment? So, thank you very much. Thank you for translating a week. What I'd like to do this weekend is go over some things, maybe even quite simple things, carefully.

[40:43]

We could say that what makes Buddhist practice practice is the thoroughness. In other words, as I've been pointing out, we could understand Buddhist practice as simply rooted in natural curiosity. And we're curious about things. Is this apple edible or not? Is this person trustworthy or not? So we naturally look at things But usually as soon as we name it or it fits into our self-story, we no longer pay attention.

[41:55]

So we could call that natural curiosity or unlearned curiosity. In other words, there's a kind of reverse teaching in that we are taught not to pursue our curiosity. As you may know, many English and American cats have been killed by curiosity. Are German cats killed by curiosity? Do you have that expression? No. Curiosity killed the cat? No. Oh. Well, anyway, in America and England, they die regularly from curiosity.

[42:57]

Hmm. But Buddhist practice says, extend that attention. And not only extend that attention thoroughly, but give attention to attention itself. Because attention itself is both the seed and the fruit of mind. And as I've been saying, there's many blossoms in between. Now, every seminar is an opportunity for us to study ourselves and how we exist. And how everything exists.

[43:59]

And to study it together. Because one of the brilliant insights of Mahayana Buddhism is how powerfully our practice develops when we practice for others as well as ourselves. And we have this opportunity. I was able to leave the 90-day, three-month practice period at Crestone to come here. And Ulrike was able to come here to translate. And there's beds here and food and people taking care of the building. And the birds are singing outside.

[45:19]

So we have perfect conditions for the practice. And now our practice is not just to develop our personal practice individually and with others. but to develop this practice place. Now, the great challenge of, as I said, maybe I said last night, of Mahayana Buddhism, is how to preserve the teachings. Because, you know, when these translators like Paramartha to bring back the teachings to China they found that for the most part there weren't written texts.

[46:25]

All these sutras were in the memory of the monks. Their practice was memorization and recitation. So we have, like this last midweek, we've been looking at the Diamond Sutra. And we just, somebody hands it to us and we buy it at the store. But initially, these folks had to go to India and have some monk recite it while they wrote it down. And it was the Mahayana emphasis on lay practice which resulted in sutras being written down. Because lay people don't have time to memorize all these sutras. So the great compendium of written sutras is significantly the result of a lay practice which needs them written down.

[47:53]

So that's one challenge of Mahayana Buddhism, as a lay practice. The second is how individually to practice in your daily life. Not always in a place like this which supports practice more explicitly. And third, Practice is a multi-generational teaching. It's like language. You couldn't create your own language in your lifetime, no matter how clever you were. Language is passed from generation to generation and developed.

[48:54]

And this wisdom teaching is something that's been developed and passed over generations. So also, how do lay people do that? How do we spend enough time practicing together, not just reading the written-down sutras? So the taste in our body is so clear that when teachings, even that we've not heard, are presented to us in the future, they open up. And fourth is in a lay practice, how do you train successors? Because a person whose main life is bringing up a family and working and so forth does not have time to really train successors or even be a successor. Yeah.

[50:19]

And I don't think all the people who continue the lineage should be monks, male or female monks. For instance, I appreciate Randy at Crestone who has decided so far to remain a lay person. And while Gerald and Gisela have decided to be ordained, still even they're a couple, it's a kind of lay practice disguised as monks. And if you know Randy, you can see he's a monk disguised as a layperson.

[51:22]

So I want us to look at a few things thoroughly. And I'd like to have more question and response than we usually have in seminars. Most of the sutras like the Diamond Sutra are basically a dialogue back and forth. What does this mean? What means that? Etc. So the Dharma Sangha in Europe now having this Johanneshof is now trying to create ways together that we can answer these basic questions that Mahayana lay practice raises.

[52:54]

How do we preserve and continue the teachings and develop successors in what is essentially a lay practice? Now, what is our usual life? family, work and society and we these obviously are interrelated we have to go take care of our family we go to work and work is part of our society and so forth And this is this circle of work, family and society.

[54:20]

And the individual defined through work, family and society is primarily a consensual reality. I would even say we have primarily consensual anatomy. Does that sound funny in German? Consensual anatomy? Anyway, we have some kind of shared body. I would say in recent generations the overall image of the body was the soldier. And I think this huge interest in sports is a shift from the soldier to the athlete. And the shift from the athlete to the yogi is easier than from the soldier to the yogi.

[55:32]

Now, with Yogacara Buddhism, which is basically the practice school of Zen, says that our thinking is primarily intention-based or consensually based. It's not even very tied to the physical objects of the world. I mean, we do try not to bump into things, but mostly, you know. I was struck recently reading that we have 1,000 about olfactory neurons.

[56:33]

And we have a thousand genes, at least, that correspond to those olfactory neurons. And each of these is designated primarily to one odor molecule. And since we smell combinations, that gives us something like 10 to the 23rd power possible smells. Our scientist translator here. But this would probably be a larger capacity than the brain could deal with. So we can smell about 10,000 distinct smells. How many of you live in such a reality? That's the possibility of this equipment we're given.

[57:46]

But, you know, we smell a flower and we kind of concentrate on it. But this textured space of smells is... I think we're more embedded in it than we are consciously aware. But for the most part, we're not too aware of this textured space. And this is partly what Yogacara Buddhism means by we live in an intentional or consensual reality. It's not so important for most of us what a tree is. beyond what we agree a tree is.

[59:17]

And ecology, environmental science, has an uphill battle to make us see a tree in a more subtle way. And wisdom has an uphill battle to make us see ourselves in a more subtle way. Now the three requirements for spiritual liberation in Buddhism from earliest times have been discipline, meditation, and wisdom. Now I know discipline has a kind of negative connotation for it. But it just means in Buddhism to do it.

[60:33]

And how to do it. So, I mean, you can have, hopefully, quite a bit of wisdom. But unless you interject that wisdom into your thinking, it doesn't have much meaning. And meditation is fun to do, sometimes. But unless you do it in some regular way, it doesn't have much effect. So, and to understand this discipline, meditation and wisdom triad, You have to put it in contrast to work, family and society.

[61:35]

In other words, in the midst of your work and your family, identity and society, You have to somehow bring wisdom thinking and meditation into that circle of work, family and society. And discipline means to do it. And how to do it. So that's what we're talking about. Yeah, I'd like some water too, if it's possible.

[62:35]

So maybe this is a point to stop and see if you have something, somebody wants to bring up something. Yes. What is Yogacara Buddhism? It's a school of Buddhism. Zen is based on several schools of Buddhism. Madhyamaka and Yogacara and Huayen and Tathagatagarbha teachings. And it's pretty hard for me to explain those things. But if you want to go deeper into practice, it's useful to look at what these teachings are.

[63:37]

But to give you... And Yogacara is also called Chittamatra and has other names. But I would say, let's see, the basic... There's a powerful relationship between Majamaka teachings, which are emptiness teachings. What we chant in the morning is that Heart Sutra is supposedly an emptiness teaching. It's called the Mahaprajna Paramita, meaning Wisdom Gone Beyond Wisdom Sutra. But it's probably actually a Spanish, a Chinese, well, it was an exploratory country, anyway.

[64:51]

It was a Chinese, originally Yogacara teaching disguised as Prajnaparamita. And what makes it different is that Yogacara emphasizes that emptiness is not a philosophical concept as much as an experience. And one of the keys to Yogacara practice that Beate brought up during the mid-practice week, mid-week practice, was that The way Yogacara understands the mind-body relationship is that all mental phenomena have a physical component.

[66:01]

And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. Which means that you can have a bodily memory of states of mind. So particular states of mind, as they become clear to you, have a particular physical sensation that becomes part of your inventory of how you exist. Does that make sort of sense? Yeah. So that's in an essential sense the emphasis of Yogacara teaching. Something else? Yeah. For me the question is about the title of the 700-Lady Go. Yeah. I thought about it in my experience.

[67:23]

When I'm really attached, I can have an intention of letting go, but I still have to exhaust the attachment. And then suddenly, at a certain point, I realize, oh, I've let that go. But I don't have any... I can't make it into an active world. I don't see the point where I can actively do it when I'm in this situation. George? I would be interested in letting go, which is also the title of the seminar. Because in my experience, if I am really obsessed with something, then I can have the intention to let it go. But I still have to put all the energy of the fast in there and at some point I suddenly notice, oh, I've let it go now. I would be interested in whether there is a reality active at the moment, I don't know whether we should say that we feel sorry for you, or we congratulate you on exhausting your attachments.

[68:24]

Yeah, so the theme of this weekend is, in German, letting go. And we have to find some entry, so let's use this as an entry to practice. Now, am I correct that this phrase in German tends to mean non-attachment? No. What does it mean? Beate says yes, Stina says no, Christiana says no. What does it mean to you? It's an active work of doing something.

[69:33]

Let go. And non-attachment means a state of not being attached. Right. But that's very active. Yeah. But what are you letting go of? Attachments? Well, letting go in English tends to be used in the circumstances like I'm so worried about my job and so forth like that. And then someone says, oh, just let go of that. It's usually just where there's a situation you're under some pressure or tension, you let go of your concern about it.

[70:34]

And that doesn't have much relationship to practice. It does it like if you're about to die and people say, let go, that's good. So in that case it's practice, but that doesn't happen too often. So I'm taking it to mean things like to leave alone. Like to leave your thinking alone. In that sense to let go of your attachment to thinking. But anyway, we can define it as we wish. Well, you see your attachments.

[72:11]

You see some of them. And when you see them, it does occur to you it would be better to be less attached. We could call that wisdom. To exhaust your attachments is one form of wisdom practice. But sometimes it can be very time consuming. get you in trouble, and be a fairly clever excuse. Well, I can't give this attachment up till I exhaust it. This could go on for decades. So it also is wisdom to to look at the question of attachments in a more fundamental way.

[73:18]

And perhaps to develop more skills than just exhaustion to deal with attachments. You can also attempt to transform your attachments By seeing them, accepting them and seeing them at other levels and satisfy them in other ways. No, I'm just speaking about this in a general way for all of us, but we face things like this. All of us face things like this. And what I suggested last night is our major attachment is to our identification with our thinking.

[74:23]

From the Buddhist point of view, that's our major attachment. And to see ourselves in that way is a wisdom view. And if you don't really see yourself in this way and see that as our major attachment, then your practice doesn't have the vigor of an accurate intention behind it. And then our practice simply does not have the strength of such an active intention behind it. Something else? Something else? Yeah, this morning I was sitting beside you and opposite the altar.

[75:25]

I was kind of facing some thoughts of a feeling I got, and I tried to make sense of it. And all of a sudden I said, hey, you are in a seminar of non-detachment. So a sentence immediately got in my mind, and I was very happy about that. It was just the sentence, the mind is Buddha. And I kind of tried to repeat that, and I let go of those thoughts. But what happened then was I got totally attached to that sentence, not in my thoughts, in my feelings. So what is that? A better attachment. Very wise choice. I was thinking that too. But congratulating yourself too much on your wisdom, this isn't such a wise choice.

[76:30]

I don't think I've said wisdom. I'm just teasing. When I sat in the Atar this morning, I was first tormented by the feeling that I had to articulate something and to feel a bit of dialogue. And suddenly I realized that I was actually not where I was in the broadcast. I actually wanted to go somewhere else. And then the sentence came to me in the singing, my spirit is Buddha. And I started his mantra with me, that I repeated this sentence, but then also noticed that I was very touched. Okay, I will comment on this from the point of view of Buddhist practice. I gave you five ways yesterday, last night, to relate to your thinking.

[77:48]

And one of them was to intercede in your thinking. And to intercede on the behalf of wisdom. Does anybody come up with a German definition of intercede? Like if a lawyer intercedes on your behalf in a case. Intervene is similar, but intervene isn't necessarily positive. He intervened in the situation. I didn't like it. To intercede would be like to enter in a dogfight and try to... So a basic practice, particularly of Zen, is to intercede or interject wisdom and enlightenment views into your thinking.

[79:01]

So this is exactly what our young adept did. She's sitting there and she's got something going on. Then she observes your thinking. Oh, this is a thinking person. I'm thinking. Something is thinking here. What do I do about this thinking? Because thinking produces thinking mind. And thinking mind will continue thinking because that's what thinking minds do. And a thinking mind will continue thinking because that's what thinking minds do. Like sleeping mind continues sleeping. The weight of... Depends on the person. But when you wake up in the morning and you don't want to get up, that's sleeping mind trying to continue sleeping.

[80:09]

Now if you want to interject something into sleeping mind, you think, if I don't get up, my boss will fire me. And thinking mind immediately takes over. Anxious thinking mind. And two cups of hot coffee. Yeah, okay. So thinking mind continues to think. So you're not only interrupting your you're not only interjecting something into your thinking by saying this very mind is Buddha or something like that but you repeat it. And repetition moves you out of thinking mind into another kind of mind.

[81:25]

That's why people supposedly, at least in cartoons, count sheep when they go to sleep. One, you know, because they eat two and... You're repeating it. Yeah. So you did two things. You chose something you could repeat and you chose something that, in a way, contradicted the thinking you were in. It was an antidote to your thinking. And I would say that in this case it wasn't a wisdom view, but an enlightenment view. In other words, this very mind as Buddha is an expression of enlightenment. so you interjected into your thinking an enlightenment view which changed the kind of mind the mode of your mind and you chose something which is our shared topic that joined you with our practice together

[82:56]

So basically you did three things. And while I was sitting there, I noticed my zazen started to improve. So thank you very much. So Gisela gave us a good example of what one of these ways of relating to your thinking is, is to interject something into your thinking. But there's a difference between when I do it on purpose and there's a sentence in the seminar I try to work with, then it just comes up. What's the difference?

[83:59]

What I felt is there were words, first, by doing it on purpose, and the other one was the difference between the words and the feelings. And the feeling I can never put in words. It was a sentence which... A feeling came up with a sentence. That was the difference that I ever experienced before. I mean, I ever... And a feeling new to you? Yes, that it could happen that way. Okay. So, Deutsch? I think the difference is that before there were only words that I carried with me and it was not such a feeling of the teaching that Roshi gives us.

[85:05]

The difference was more that the one was words that you try to bring in intellectually, physically, and the other was a feeling that was supported by words. Okay. So I feel like I can comment on that. Let me, as an aside, say that strangely I've been asked this last few months to do three things, which are similar. The Lindisfarne Institute fellows have asked me to speak on their August meeting something like the sacralization of planetary culture. Planetary culture has a common economic and scientific base, but it doesn't have a common base in a sacred view of the world.

[86:24]

Nun, diese planetare Kultur hat eine gemeinsame Grundlage jetzt im wirtschaftlichen oder im naturwissenschaftlichen, aber eben keine jetzt in irgendeiner heiligen Sichtweise. And Stuart Kaufman, who's one of the leading chaotic theorists, suggested this topic. So I'm going to speak on evolution, globalization and Buddhism. Nothing but the big topics, you know. And the State of the World Forum has asked me to speak and actually to convene a whole section of the conference, but I don't think I had the time to do it. Toynbee's statement,

[87:54]

that the coming of Buddhism to the West is probably the most significant event of the 20th century. And even though I have studied Toynbee and have been acquainted with this purported statement for decades, I'm rather suspicious of it. it seems to me quite suspicious. I don't trust it. Once it is somehow so easy to understand. And so I asked Miriam Bobkoff, she is now really a very old member of Dharma Sangha and a scientific librarian in Santa Fe. to research it for me and find the statement.

[89:05]

She said, it wasn't possible, I couldn't find it. And she said, but my beau in Canada, who's a computer networker, He says there's a... This is a person who's moving to Creston soon, in fact. He said there's a whole discussion on the net about whether Toynbee said this or not. LAUGHTER So she sent me pages of stuff. And no one can find it. So let's say it's an apocryphal statement. Apocryphal. You know, there's oranges and apricots and... This is an apricot statement.

[90:27]

We're talking about... It must be time for a break, but anyway... But it's even more interesting that people have been saying it for 30 years and it doesn't seem to be anything he said. Is that so many people want to say this is true and they attribute it to one of the most famous historians of the century. And then the third thing is Esalen Institute wants me to co-convene a series of conferences annually on the coming of Buddhism to the West. Now, so what this has made me think about is the degree to which

[91:32]

Western lineages lead us to this teaching, as well as Asian lineages. And this has been a main insight of Michael Murphy, a friend of mine. In all of his research, and he wrote this huge book, The Future of the Body, He has done a lot of research and has written this huge book, unfortunately translated into German as Quantenmensch, called The Future of the Body. He has repeatedly come across in western philosophy and literature, poetry, Things that anticipate Buddhism but have been broken, haven't been carried.

[92:59]

And part of the interruption or breaking of the lineages has been political divisions and particularly these two world wars. There was of course political split-up and especially the two world wars.

[93:24]

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