That's too heavy. It's something more light than that. Yeah, you notice the rose and you feel at the same time mind. The fact is, mind is present. But we're trained not to notice. The philosopher of Wittgenstein says, in this scene, there's nothing that tells us it's being seen by mind. That you have to have some noticing or wisdom to notice.

[01:08]

It's the main fact of my noticing, and the main fact is not noticed. It's a hidden... It's literally hidden underneath our nose. Hidden in our senses. Yeah, and if I throw this out at you, you better not think it's only in your mind. And your body, your mind, makes a very quick calculation of the arc and you reach up and catch it. So it's essential to our ordinary well-being that we see things as external.

[02:14]

But it's essential to our yogic spiritual life that we see things as internal. Now, to get into the habit of that is called wisdom or the practice of wisdom. Now, I will try to poke some things at this as we go along for a little while more. But mostly you have to kind of create a kind of new view or wisdom habit, if this is going to unfold. Okay. I mean, this is all easy. You just have to do it.

[03:14]

Yes. I have a confusion and me there is some confusion about compassion. When I pass people, like you said, or I work with them in therapy, then sometimes I notice pleasant things when the body is open and free. It's not in pain or pleasant feelings. But often, since I'm working with patients who have cancer,

[04:16]

very much in pain and I feel that pain in myself and it's difficult to feel then that what in this in this christianity would would call confession there sometimes I feel like just get out of me and so I do not know really how to call that confession I used to call it I used to call it being identified with what is around me. But it doesn't mean, or very often it doesn't mean that I'm not it. Sometimes I feel like to get it out of me. The last part is in German. Who wants to do it? You can do it yourself. It's like this, when I work with cancer patients and they have great pain, or they have negative feelings and a lot of other things, that it's very uncomfortable for me to feel their pain in both bodies. That means, it hurts in the stomach. And now it also starts to hurt in the stomach.

[05:24]

And then I feel OK. I think I heard you. Pay no attention to that. . I damaged my knee recently from an accident I had in college.

[06:29]

Well, compassion is actually probably an unfortunate word as a translation for Karuna. And the meaning in Hinduism or the pre-Buddhist meaning is not to feel the suffering of others, but to lessen the suffering of others. Mm-hmm. So I think we need to, yeah, we have to have some kind of English or German label for these practices.

[07:33]

And some people feel it's actually easier to study Buddhism and these practices in English. Because many German words are permanently leased to Christianity. Or to European culture. And you keep paying the rent. And in English it's a little freer to... to not have associations but bring, give associations but not be stuck with associations. But I've made a decision not to use virtually any Sanskrit or Pali words.

[08:33]

Because I find it easier to work with some associations than to have no associations at all. It's just kind of some kind of Sanskrit. Karuna, what do you do with that? Okay. Okay, I defined compassion as the act of bowing, an inner bow or an outer bow. And I defined... compassion also as creating a common basis.

[09:57]

Now my good friend and mentor, Ivan Illich, who I just spent two or three days with, feels very strongly that compassion in the West has been institutionalized. And to social services, health programs, and so forth. And he emphasizes that the good Samaritan is the individual who happens, out of his own voluntary choice, to help another person.

[10:58]

And that compassion, as he would he wouldn't use the word compassion, would be this individual personal act. Which sometimes you choose to make and sometimes you don't choose to make. And sometimes you decide to make it. What she would say is that there isn't always this common basis. This common basis is established on each occasion. So it's no generalized common basis. It's each moment Bruno and I have a common basis. Common basis.

[12:15]

And with hydrogen, I have a common basis. And with our half-time arrival, I have a common basis. OK. Each one is different. And in fact, you can't generalize about it. You can't say this is all compassion, it's just a common basis. A particular common basis. And within that common basis, something happens. And you might feel the suffering of the other person. And again, in Buddhism, we wouldn't say compassion means to suffer with.

[13:16]

I would say Buddhism means something more like to be willing to change places with the other person. That's very different. So you go to the hospital and you see a friend who's dying. And you don't necessarily have to feel or you might not feel their particular gallbladder cancer or whatever. But you also don't feel, boy, am I glad I don't have cancer. Your heart goes out to this person.

[14:17]

And you feel without artifice or cancer. policy. I would change places with you if I could, if it would help. Now, that's very similar, but it's different. Yeah, and all that assumes that you're willing to die. And a friend of mine just pointed out, a friend of mine who recently died, a close friend of mine. We had a long discussion. He's a research psychologist.

[15:19]

And he did most of the early work in the United States on creativity, psychology of creativity and twins. This is just an anecdote. But anyway, I just made a way of honoring him a little bit. Anyway, we had a long conversation one day, and then I drove up the California coast towards San Francisco. And I stopped in a place called Half Moon Bay. And I called him from a phone booth.

[16:24]

In those days, we didn't have these cell phones and things like that. Maybe one day we'll see a phone booth in a museum. A phone booth? A phone booth. Well, they are already... Already in museums, huh? The British words. Anyway, I called him from a phone booth. Like, sort of to continue our conversation. And he said, remember, Buddhism and Christianity are linked, especially in the sense that both Buddha and Christ are men who could die. And in Buddhism, the practice of compassion is intimately or inseparable from the willingness to die.

[17:32]

For me, in Christianity, compassion has a lot to do with love and opening up towards another person. I don't know how that is in Buddhism. The emphasis on love in Christianity is different than in Buddhism. Buddhism would emphasize openness, an openness rooted in love, but an openness rather than an expression of love. Or a love that is so deep you can't show it, but you transform your life for it. Anyway, it's not really different, I mean, for us in our feelings, but the way it's

[18:55]

The problem is, in trying to talk about it, it's so similar that it's hard to find a way to express the quality of the difference. So I need to find words that are in between other words. Okay. You had something to say here in the front? Okay. For me it helps to make a difference. We have two words in German. Compassion can be suffering with and also feeling.

[20:11]

just feeling with. So the suffering with is more like pity, as somebody says, or you say. So for me it's helpful to have that distinction and it seems to point into the direction of what you say. Mm-hmm. Well, Illich also pointed out to me the other day that, and he knows something like 12 languages, The English and German have the least words for love of any other language. The many aspects of love are all kind of trying to fit into one word. Yeah, to adore and things like that. I think Japanese is 80 or something like that. And one of the Chinese words for love is to watch. Like to watch your child, but let your child be independent. And that's considered in Chinese culture a deeper love than more active love.

[21:49]

Okay, since I put this here, I should say something about it. But also I can take a couple more questions. I have a general question. And how far are these intellectual or more cognitive processes about which we are talking right now? also a hindrance to uh reaching this uh point where uh zen master as i read in many books and masters point out just sit down and uh and meditate and don't think and don't yeah what they can

[23:03]

Well, sit down and meditate is right. Don't think it's wrong. I think that's very bad advice. What's better to say is don't identify with your thinking. Because the activity of trying to stop thinking isn't very useful. Particularly for us in the West. Yes. this fluid, the atmosphere, the atmosphere becomes like the tongue. It's so strange. As when I, the first one, 20 years ago or 30 years ago, I choose to say to the group, they say, but this is mad. Dead people, because they must not see it.

[24:06]

But the whole craft came in there as well. Okay. And I think when we read about Japanese or Chinese Zen masters, we have to put them in a historical context. They're almost entirely speaking, well, first of all, they're entirely speaking within their own culture. And they're speaking to monks. And they're speaking to people who commonly would spend 10 years together. Now, if you and I and two or three of us spent the next 10, and no cars. Once you got there, you stayed there. That was your roof and your food. So let's just say this group of us right here spent the next 10 years daily together up here in the little house in the mountains.

[25:14]

And then somebody reports our conversations after eight years. Those conversations would be almost not understandable to outsiders because everything would be understood already by us. You know, I studied in Japan for four years. And went back to Japan regularly for 20 years. And I decided, you know... Particularly after starting teaching in Europe in 83, 84. That I had to find ways, new ways to give people a feel for what's going on. Yeah. So I put words out with one hand and I try to take them back with the other.

[26:50]

And I try to have an experience what I'm saying as I'm saying. So you might feel what I mean even if... Yeah, if... if what I say is not clear. And here, I mean, normally, even now, I usually only talk to initiated audiences. A typical seminar I would do of this size would have maybe three new people. And even those people still usually go back home somewhere.

[27:55]

So the kind of teaching I'm trying to do, I'm trying not to dilute the teaching, requires me to keep trying to find I don't know. Every time I talk, I try something different. You want to say something? People in the West suffer from guilt, from bad conscience. Is there anything in Buddhism that is close to that, content-wise? Well, of course we human beings overlap.

[29:10]

But the conceptual territory of guilt is not really there. I mean, academics say it's a shame culture, not a guilt culture. And that's a little bit of a cliché. But there's some truth to it. In yoga culture, the past doesn't stick to you as much as in a Western culture. If you do something and made a mistake, And you decide to do something different and not do it again and you really decide it. The act is gone. And you're always free on each moment. And the whole way we understand karma in the West is in a framework of guilt and karma is not like that. And the whole framework in which we

[30:27]

But here we are in our last afternoon. In the last ten minutes. And enough is coming up for the next month or two. That's good. It's nice to have a practice we'll never reach the end of. I am one of the three new people in your seminar Three? There's more than three here And I'm inclined to Buddhism. I have three children and I have a very fundamental question. When I tell my children, there's a saying in German, the smarter person gives in.

[31:37]

When I tell... You know, you have a conflict and then you say this. I see. The wiser person maybe gives what I say. My oldest child is 33. Right. So even when they were young, my children responded, yeah, but if I really do this, you know, giving in and being the wiser person, then the world will be governed by the Dhamma. And how can I... That was a pretty smart comment.

[32:40]

Das ist ein ziemlich kluger Kommentar. But how do I get this together with Buddhism and this always being good and nice? Bitte. Ich stehe dann immer da und sage, ja, das ist mein Glauben. Ich will den Menschen Gutes tun. Und wenn ich zu den anderen gut bin, dann geht es mir auch gut. Wenn ihr das auch so tut, nehmt das bitte hin. Aber das glauben sie mir nicht. Okay, so I say, this is my belief, you know, I'm trying to be good, and when I'm good, then people will treat me good. And I tell my children, but they don't believe. They don't believe in that. And I have, I don't quite know how to explain that. Well, it seems to me, my feeling is, you're a good person. But you're welcome. Thank you. But that doesn't necessarily mean you know how to teach your kids how to be good.

[33:44]

Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes what works for us doesn't work for your child. I don't think I would tell my child that it's always wiser to give in. I would say if you think you're right and you're not just being selfish, you should stand your ground. And Buddhism really doesn't have so much to do with trying to be nice or good or something like that. It has to do with trying to be authentic. And authentic means to start each situation with accepting what it is.

[34:57]

And that's going to sometimes mean recognizing you're a creep or I'm a creep. A creep is someone who makes your skin creep. A lousy person is a people. All right, anyway. So, can you give me another five or ten minutes or so? We're down to the hardcore people who really want to... Okay, I'll say something about the four marks.

[36:10]

For your sake and... Buddhism is also Dharnaism. What is a Dharna? Dharna means to know. Dharna means one thing. It means the truth. Okay. And what is the truth? Let's define it as how things actually exist. Well, how do things actually exist? How do we enter into how things actually exist? Without generalizations. Yeah. So like if you see a tree, you don't see a tree, you see tree.

[37:24]

You see an activity, which we call a tree, but it's actually an activity, it's not an entity. And everything's changing. Okay. How long ago was the past? It's happening unbelievably fast. If I... take this rose and scatter the petals, there's no way for me to go back and put them back again. The instant it's happened, it's past. I once said to my father, one of my first early insights,

[38:25]

I said, it's never 12 o'clock. And he said, I've told this story quite often. And he said, what do you mean, it's never 12 o'clock? I said, well, it's a minute to 12, and then half a minute to 12. And then it's a millionth of a second to 12. And there's a millionth of a second after 12. There was no 12. And my father was a scientist, sort of. And he said, well, we say when something is approached and passed, we can call it existing. OK. That was a good answer, my father said. We do experience duration.

[39:37]

But in any scientific sense, or if you think about it, there's no duration. But we experience duration. If we film a mountain, you know, the camera makes the mountain look closer or farther away or something. Well, at this moment, within my sensorium, And my conceptual cognitive processes. There's enough repeated patterns that I can feel that as having a duration. Okay. So the four marks are the four marks of the Dharma.

[40:56]

It means that Actually, everything is just appearing. Again, if I turn away and I look back, you appear. If I close my eyes and open them, you appear. And each time I open my eyes, it's slightly different. But even if I don't close my eyes, it's a period of time. So to enter into how things actually exist, you want to get your senses to quit generalizing. Okay, so birth means the things are born or appear.

[42:07]

And the word birth is used because they don't just passively appear, they are participating in their appearance. So they're born, they have a certain duration. And you can make that duration brighter or whatever. And then if you look closely, it's all that changes. So you could just have this much. Why is disappearance there? Because it's also you make it disappear. Because you clear the slate. You clean the blackboard. It actually is appearing and dissolving, but you actually let it go.

[43:27]

That's a good habit to get into. so when someone's stomach someone's cancer gets in your stomach you let it be there and you throw it away You just, and if you get into the habit of always throwing everything away, that's the practice of emptiness. Well, you just, if you, all I can say is if you really develop the habit that when you look at me right now, you're throwing me away. Eventually you let anything in and let it go. Okay. Now, we should stop. But there's something I'd like to try to say if you want to give me a couple, a little bit more time, or should we just stop?

[44:31]

Or some can leave and I can try to... We got more time. What goes with a sense of reality is a sense of possibility. But there's some tension between reality and possibilities. Or some stress, maybe. Okay. Another way to kind of like look at this Eine andere Art, das zu betrachten, ist, I'm trying to find words, ist maybe between the probable and the possible.

[45:40]

Vielleicht zwischen dem erscheinlichen und dem möglichen. When I look at that building, now again I'm not trying to sound nutty or anything, I feel if I look away and look back, I feel it's likely the building will still be there. And there's a certain element, actual, of surprise that is still there. They're telling us we should stop. Hello Buddha. Hello?

[46:43]

Sounds like my daughter. So when I walked, When one walks, you can walk with the feeling that the floor is probably going to be there, but might not be. And when you walk that way, you walk with the kind of aliveness of a mountain climber. Your foot finds the floor. That's a different kind of aliveness. I mean, Charlotte Silver, this Charlotte Silver, Charlotte Wittgenstein, She was now 101 and teaching and still teaching.

[47:47]

She changed my life when she said to me, come up to standing. She didn't say, stand up, like between this point and this point. She said, come up to standing. I suddenly found there were a hundred positions between getting up and finally standing. And then I found standing was actually many little positions. And then I found standing was actually many little positions. When you get in the habit of seeing everything as probable, a likelihood, it's likely to be repeated.

[48:57]

Now, if you looked at... I watched... Excuse me for bringing up this terrible event. But I watched on television the... as many people did from almost the beginning, the two buildings fall in New York last September, September a year ago. Yeah. I'd just been at a Buddhist meeting there a couple months before and I'd eaten at the restaurant there and so forth. They were fairly permanent looking objects. But they were gone in a matter of half an hour or an hour. So things do happen like that. It's happening in Italy right now.

[50:13]

So I'm just suggesting, I'm not trying to say that the building's going to disappear tomorrow or now. But it's closer to a fact to say it's likely that it's there than it is there. You know the word is in English? is called a copula. And it's defined mostly now in grammar as an equal sign. Somebody calls you on the phone. They say, who is it? Is this Richard? And I say, it is I. Because they have to be in the same case, it and I. And it's not important.

[51:24]

But... Copula is not an equal sign. A copula is copulation. The is means every sentence makes love. It's a linking, a joining, not an equalness. So we kind of lost, we've turned is into some kind of mathematical model of equalness. If I say that building is there in the

[52:25]

ancient sense of the word is, or the deeper sense of the word is, it means that it is there also through my action of seeing it. And that's also its fact. It is there because somebody wanted a building there and an architect or somebody built it. So really That it's there through my act of seeing it is truer than just saying it's there. Okay, now when you come into a world where it's of the probable and the possible, Those words are not perfect, but it's the best I can find right now.

[53:50]

You're in a world which... is more transparent. You see past the forms of the world or through the forms of the world. And the activity of existing in the world becomes a fuller expression of what the world is. You begin to feel Oh, wow.

[54:59]

The form of the world, the experience of the world, is identical to the fullest expression that's possible of the world. because you always feel I don't know if I can say because but what other word can I use it happens that you feel that the world is appearing in you, in its probability and its possibility. And you don't feel so much tension or stress between reality and the possible. Yeah, I'll try out one more thing.

[56:07]

The whiteness of this rose can technically be called a qualia. We can talk about the whiteness of the rose independent of the rose. We can talk about the quality of whiteness of your hair. Would you mind if I didn't shave at all? Or to carry it a little further. Yeah, the whiteness of a painted fence. And a baby's dress. When the sun comes out for a minute from behind a cloud, that whiteness can never be grasped.

[57:23]

It's not a whiteness that belongs to the object. It's a whiteness that's purely a mental and sensorial phenomena. It's a whiteness that's purely, it's not a whiteness of the object or the fence or the dress in the sun. It's a whiteness It's purely a mental or sensorial phenomena. So when I notice the probability that that building will be there, It's like noticing the whiteness of the building or the vividness of the building.

[58:37]

So you actually are noticing... That's another way to talk about noticing mind itself. If I look at you and I see you, but I also see a kind of vividness, when I look at you. Or you, or you. Yeah. And that leads to actually also seeing a kind of shine or brightness to the mind. And I'm beginning to feel or see mind itself. And when that happens, you begin to gather the world into your mind. And that gathering in is called wisdom.

[59:49]

And the expressing of it, like in a bow, is compassion. So a Dharma practice is to see the world as a gathering in, and a extending out. Yeah, I didn't. I don't know if I reached what I'd want to say, but that's enough. And maybe you can carry it the next step. We can also say Buddhism is still that innocent feeling to want, a wonderful human being to exist on the planet.

[61:01]

But could we recognize such a wonderful person if we saw him or her? Could we recognize a Buddha if we saw one? So compassion is also to look at each person with the feeling you might be the Buddha. You might be the Buddha. Okay, let's sit for a minute or so and then we'll stop. The word intimacy actually means to stand inside.

[63:20]

To inhabit the inside. And through this practice of wisdom and compassion, After a while, we just notice the intimacy of each situation. Possibility, probability even, intimacy in each situation. And we notice separation as something that happens inside the intimacy, but not containing the intimacy.

[64:22]

Separation is a momentary aspect of this intimacy. And when you feel the... The first thing you notice is the intimacy of a situation. The intimacy of each other person as a mutual being.

[65:47]

And in that intimacy it's easier to feel, yes, I can see the qualities of the deepest human qualities in a person. It's something that arises from this kind of practice. And when the taste of it begins to appear, Yeah, the world makes sense, makes deep, deep sense. I appreciate your spending the afternoon with me.

[68:14]

And I enjoyed deeply spending the afternoon with you. And with some of you, two or three afternoons. It's been very good for me to get to know you. Thank you.

[68:43]

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