The main difficulty I see with our practice in the West is our Western thinking. Of course, there's nothing wrong with our Western thinking exactly. It's that Buddhism is built up through a different way of looking at the world. So if we're going to practice Buddhism, we really have to be able to shift out of lots of Western views. And when we really want to practice Buddhism, then we have to distance ourselves from many Western worldviews.

[01:04]

It's also an opportunity. Because enlightenment is a shift from Enlightenment is the experience of a shift. And that experience of a shift, in any context, it can be a very simple shift. Let me make it very simple, you know, what a Necker cube is. Do you know what the German word is for it? No, no. Neckar? Oh, okay.

[02:09]

Because somebody else said there was a different word that's used for it. But it's when you have these two squares joined by lines, and they shift. You look at it one way, and it shifts downward. You look at it another way, it shifts upward. Also sind die zwei Quadrate, die so etwas versetzt angebracht sind, und es ist ein Vexierbild, sodass man, wenn man auf eine Weise schaut, ist die, sagen wir mal, ist das linke Quadrat, die Vorderseite des Würfels, It's a totally simple thing. You find it in primary school books about puzzles and things. So there's three positions. There's a position down and there's a position up.

[03:09]

And there's a position which is neither. To be able to stay in the shift without it going either up or down. Because if you really get that, you realize neither is real. If there's anything real, it's being in between the shift. So the fact that reality itself can shift can be a recognition of what kind of reality we're in. What kind of non-reality we're in. I don't know how you do it.

[04:13]

How you change the dumb things I say into German. Good, thanks. Okay, so Let me give you a couple examples of the difference. This I think I mentioned in Hannover or someplace. The most famous example in Western literature of memory is Proust's reaction to tasting a madeleine. The little scallop-shaped French cakes.

[05:15]

So for him... He emphasized involuntary memory. When memory pushes through your ordinary circumstances and surprises you. Okay, so one day he suddenly ate some steamy tea and a madeleine.

[06:15]

And he had this sort of unbounded experience of joy. Yeah, and with the second taste of tea, it was still there, but by the third and fourth, it began to disappear. And he connected it with the memory of with his grandmother, I think grandmother, when he had a Madeline and some tea. Und er hat dies verbunden damit, wie er mal vor vielen Jahren mit seiner Großmutter Tee getrunken hat und Madeleines gegessen hat. Now, if Proust had been a yogi... Everyone writes books about Proust these days.

[07:19]

I'm going to write one called If Proust Had Been a Yogi. And by yogi, I don't mean some kind of mystic on the top of a mountain. I mean really people like us who notice the body in a yogic way. Yeah, now, so if Proust had been a yogi, what he would have noticed as the... he wouldn't have emphasized looking for the source of the experience. He would have emphasized what was the nature of the experience itself.

[08:20]

It was triggered by the Madeline, and it was triggered by the memory, he thinks. But the yogi would have said, geez, look at this experience. This experience isn't necessarily tied to the madeleine or to memory. This is a bodily experience I can notice and sustain. The madeleine and the memory gave me the opportunity to notice the experience, but now that I've noticed it, I can recreate it.

[09:23]

The Madeleine cakes and the memories gave me the opportunity to make this experience and to notice it. And now that I have noticed it, can I do what with the experience? Be happy. Recreate it. No, sustain it. So can I be happy and keep it alive? And, you know, the ability to... And go lucky. The ability to sustain an experience within Western and Asian mysticism... seems to be different. There's an emphasis from Meister Eckhart or William James that these experiences are extremely fleeting. But Buddhism emphasizes they can be nourished, sustained, etc.

[10:57]

Okay, so I mean, I think if Proust had been a yogi, he was such a wonderful writer, he would have written, still would have written a different book. Also, wenn Proust ein yogi gewesen wäre, er war ja so ein wunderbarer Schriftsteller, hätte er ein anderes Buch geschrieben. I love the book he's written, but, you know. Ich liebe das Buch, das er geschrieben hat, aber trotzdem. We'll write the book he would have written. Okay, agreed. Okay. Now, let me give you another example. There's a Walter Michel, I guess his name is. Who was born in Vienna in 1930. Emigrated to the United States. And studied painting and so forth, but became a psychologist. And somehow he found himself trying to, at that time, he was at Harvard, trying to study personality traits.

[12:25]

One of the things he discovered was that the general assumption was that personality traits are independent of context. They belong to you. Did he discover that or was that the... He discovered... He... No. Sorry. The current view at the time was that personality traits were aspects of character and person and not of context. Mm-hmm. And he discovered that, you know, that this was all wrong. You could not study personality traits independent of context. And he left Harvard and went to Stanford because Tim Leary drove him out.

[13:27]

I was at Harvard at that time when Tim Leary was there. And it was a funny, I remember a very close friend of mine, he used to be on our Dharma Sangha board, Frank Barron. And he was part of the group with Leary and Metzner and so forth. And he said, when... Leary took the furniture out of his office and put in mattresses.

[14:29]

He knew the end was near. So Frank went to Berkeley. And then to Santa Cruz. Okay. So this Walter Mischel went to Stanford. And he did some simple experiments in the... This is taking too much time, but I want to tell you something. Anyway, he did some simple experiments in the Bing on-campus kindergarten at Stanford. It's called the Bing kindergarten. And so he gave people... kindergarten kids, marshmallows.

[15:42]

He could pick Oreo cookies or marshmallows, whatever you want. So you were, this little kid, four years old, for example, was given, you can have one marshmallow now, but if you can wait till I get back, you can have two marshmallows. And the kids, many of them had a very hard time. They had a camera set up watching the kids. And one kid patted the marshmallow and kicked the table.

[16:47]

One kid went under the table and then would come up and pat the marshmallow and go back under the table. And another kid took the Oreo cookie, opened it up, licked the frosting, put it back together and took it And one kid even broke into the teacher's desk looking for more sweets. But about 20% of the kids were able to wait 15 minutes or so. And they also could ring a bell if they couldn't wait. But about 20% of the kids could wait. And this, Mr. Michel. Yeah, that's right. He was born in Vienna.

[17:47]

Herr Michel, Yeah, he thought it was interesting, but he didn't pay that much attention to it. Also, der hat es zwar ganz interessant gefunden, aber hat dem nicht so viel Beachtung geschenkt. And he tested 653 kids. Und er hat 653 Kinder getestet. Anyway, but every now and then he had three daughters, and every now and then he'd ask his daughters, what's happened to so-and-so? How are so-and-so doing? His daughters are now, I think, in their 30s and 40s. But by the time the kids reached high school, there was a marked difference between the kids' performance. The ones who couldn't wait at all, most of them had pretty serious emotional problems.

[19:03]

And the ones who could delay gratification had all got better grades in school and so forth. And they had on the SAT scores, that's the standard college exams you take. I guess 800 is perfect, I think. The kids who could delay gratification had a 210-point difference between the other kids.

[20:04]

That's a huge difference. Well, he couldn't believe this, and now there's a whole bunch of people studying this all over the United States. But what they see is that the kids who can delay gratification, it's not that they can endure the... endure the pain of not eating the marshmallow. Of course, orioke practice is a practice of delayed gratification. And tomorrow Uli's putting marshmallows in the first bowl. Thank you. And you have to wait to all the bells and chanting and et cetera is done before you come home.

[21:26]

Anyway, they discovered that the kids who delay gratification just have better strategies. They're better at cutting off thoughts and just not thinking about the marshmallow. Or they're better at substituting it for some other thought. Oder sie sind besser darin, einfach den Gedanken durch andere Gedanken zu ersetzen. One spent the 15 minutes singing songs from Sesame Street. Zum Beispiel ein Kind hat 15 Minuten lang Lieder von Sesamstraße gesungen. So I hope none of you break into Sesame Street during a particularly painful Zazen period. Anyway, the categories in which Walter Mischel is looking...

[22:32]

Are cutting off thoughts about what you want or substituting thoughts? That's all normal and natural. So he gives it as examples of patience. But one thing I'm trying to talk about here is patience as a practice in Buddhism. For example, it says in the large sutra of perfect wisdom, and one way to practice with a sutra is to take a line, a phrase, two or three lines out and just bring it into your life.

[24:05]

Make it your own. If it's too far out, you just think, how could this be possible? Or if it makes sense, you see if you can feel it. Now, one example I've given in the last, you know, month or so, is the Bodhisattva says, establishes an even mind with each and every person. Now, we can imagine that's maybe possible. But it's, I think, also maybe easy to imagine it's pretty difficult. Can you really have an even mind with each person?

[25:21]

Now it gives an example of the Bodhisattva who is beaten By all beings. All beings, Jesus. How did they even get close to him? Der von allen Wesen geschlagen wird. Alle Wesen. Wie kommen die ihm überhaupt nah? Is beaten with sticks. Wird mit Stecken geschlagen. Fists. Fäusten. Claws. Claws, like claws of dirt or something. Um... stones swords you can tell that wasn't a modern time when the Bodhisattva was getting beaten even being beaten with fists and claws and swords and sticks etc not one moment of rage does the Bodhisattva feel

[26:29]

And thus he or she introduces patience to other beings. Another reference point is patience. Others, all others, realizing the Dharma is so much more important than how you feel that you don't have any feeling of rage or suffering. And this is reinforced by a fairly typical example in the sutras. If a magician conjured up numerous beings, imaginary beings, who then looked like they were beating him, he wouldn't be angry at all.

[27:57]

The Bodhisattva would feel the same way. Okay, now these are extreme, somewhat extreme examples. But how, you know, and there are folks out there, Buddhist folks too, working in violent parts of America and cities. Es gibt tatsächlich Leute da draußen, auch Buddhisten, die in gewalttätigen Teilen amerikanischer Städte arbeiten, die herausgefunden haben, dass sie auf diese Weise praktizieren können. Now, what are we doing here? We started a little late. Okay.

[28:59]

We still have time, I think. Okay. I'm trying to keep this in a context which is accessible. And the sutra says that the bodhisattva establishes the wholesome roots of the samadhi of patience. Okay. Okay. So this kind of practice assumes. I'm looking for a way to get in here.

[30:04]

I'll try this way. The bodhisattva or the adept or the yogi establishes that objects are mind objects. and establishing that objects are mind objects, establishes that mind objects occur in mind space. Now I'm searching for language here that allows us to locate our experience and attend to our experience. Okay, now if you think about something, generally, if you're awake and conscious, you think about or notice some flowers, say.

[31:22]

And some furniture, maybe. Okay, so generally, the way thinking works, we notice that we're in a room with the flowers and the furniture. But the adept practitioner notices that the flowers are mind objects and the furniture is a mind object. And the furniture and the flowers appear in mind-room space. Now, you experience that more easily or naturally in Zaza. The simple instruction not to invite your thoughts to tea.

[32:35]

You're able to experience that. in Zazen because it's like the thoughts were in a room. You can experience that in Zazen because it's like the thoughts are occurring in a room and you can invite them in or not invite them in. That makes sense? It's like you're in a mental space that's an interior. As I said yesterday.

[33:42]

So you can, you know, let the... And we have the terms, basic practice koan, practice terms, host and guest. So you're the host. Is that a name for self? You're the host. And the thoughts that appear, furniture, flowers, whatever, are guests. Okay. Now, the yogi develops the ability to experience the world as a room space, a mind room space, just as if he or she were in zazen. And that's called a samadhi.

[34:52]

Now, I mean, here we have three days, and I'm just trying to explain the word patience. I'm trying to give you a feel for it. The English word patience has almost nothing to do with what patience means in the sutras. Or delayed gratification or whatever. One thing, if you're from New England, you have to know, okay, it's okay to delay gratification, but you don't suppress gratification. And if you're like a couple Catholics I know, you think gratification is bad. Any kind of pleasure, this is already bad. But delayed gratification is not suppression of gratification.

[36:17]

That's just a footnote. All right, so... So if your experience waking and sleeping and zazen is that you're inhabiting a mind-room space that for practical purposes coincides with the external space except it's much simpler. But it's simple in a way that allows you to function and act. So you know you're in a simplified mind space. Okay, so patience in this context would be you shift your sense of location

[37:21]

From the stick that's beating you. Or the insult or whatever. To the space itself. To the connectedness of the space itself. With the... expression in Buddhism, detached but not separate from? Detached but not separate from. Okay. And that's the yogic experience or yogic body experience of the connectedness of space. Yeah.

[38:46]

So, in a simple example, when Suzuki Roshi grabbed me and started beating me, he'd never done this before. But I knew he accepted me completely. Loved me, maybe. I certainly loved him. But even if he didn't accept me, I decided he was the person who was going to accept me. I needed to be in the world in order to trust our human life so I decided to trust this person no matter what he did But when he did do that, it was like it was happening in a movie, like this magician.

[39:58]

I didn't care at all. I can still see vividly the entire situation. The floor, the rubber mat that was on the floor, the railing, the color, the railing was painted, etc. because I shifted into a spatial samadhi a connectedness a spatial connectedness samadhi So I felt completely connected with Suzuki Roshi and it was interesting that he was doing this.

[41:07]

Yeah, there were about 10 or 15 people standing around looking at what the hell's going on. But at that point I just had been practicing long enough to make this shift into a spatial connectedness samadhi. Which is also the way you develop an even-minded toward each person. There's a spatial samadhi of connectedness and that's joined to conceptually joined to that you're introducing this patience to other beings. Because introducing the Dharma to others is the only way the world is going to survive.

[42:30]

So it's not about endurance. It's not about delayed gratification. It's being in a spatial connectedness samadhi. And then much of the all of the large sutra on perfect wisdom and is how you develop this somatic ability in ordinary circumstances. Okay. Is this too much? Is that too much?

[43:44]

I mean, it's ordinary, serious Buddhism. If you want something else, there's the door. Or a window, at least. Except Otmar put a screen on it. Otmar put a screen on it. God bless you.

[44:09]

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