Oh, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, those of you who didn't see yesterday. I wish all of you who were here yesterday could tell the ones who weren't here yesterday everything we said. Bernd, you can start. At least if it does come up that something particular stuck in your mind from yesterday, you might bring it up because... there's no harm in looking at things again, and then it gives me an idea what is useful from what I said yesterday and perhaps for those of you who weren't here yesterday.

[01:13]

And if you, yes I had a horrible night, a lot of nightmares, but nevertheless... It's all my fault, I know. I feel a big relief. I fix it to what you said yesterday about what is said by you. For me, in the beginning, it's very difficult because to say, to describe what I what a parisata would be would also describe a distinction.

[02:22]

And a distinction is nevertheless something in the relative world. So how can I bring it through the kind of relative thinking? And what I want to check out, if I understand you well, Bodhisattva is not acting from the point of view of an unjust world, which drives him to do this or that. He is sitting on the ground, sitting not even on the ground, but sitting in the sitting, sitting in the happiness of sitting. And this reminds me to what Buddha said, there's no way to happiness, happiness is the way. But this is really a mystery.

[03:27]

You're getting us off to a good start here. Du sorgst dafür, dass wir einen guten Anfang finden. Übersetzt du dich bitte selber ins Deutsche? Also ich hatte schreckliche Alpträume gestern, aber heute aufwachen fühlte ich mich recht wohl. Und ich habe das bezogen auf das, was Roshi gestern gesagt hat, über den Weg des Bodhisattva. Und wir haben gestern über... all these Spidermen and so on, the metaphor for heroes, and the question arises, are these also Bodhisattvas? Is this also the way of the Bodhisattva? And it has become clear to me that for me it is not about feeling an unjust world and from it, from this perception of the unjust world, to act in the right way.

[04:29]

to do, to do, because it is a kind of, yes, this attitude is drawn, but to sit. It's about sitting, and not only about sitting, but about sitting in sitting itself, and also the happiness of sitting, as if you could sit in all eternity, without beginning, without end. And then, afterwards, Yeah, I feel that at this point there's no acting anymore. It just happens. Things happen. Yeah, injustice. Otherwise shit happens. Yes, that's a bumper sticker. Yeah, that's a bumper sticker. I'll keep that in mind, yes.

[05:35]

Before they continue, may I say something about how to best work with translation? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can feel something if you speak in German first. But whatever is okay, really. But thanks. Yes, Giulio? I had a conversation with Neil this morning. He said something that touched me. I've been with him for a long time. I'm sitting here, but it's not like I'm as happy sitting here as I am eating spaghetti. I was sitting next to a beautiful woman who said, you have to understand that beautiful women don't like to write, but they have written very well.

[06:45]

They like the state that they have written. And then I noticed that it was too much for sitting. Maybe I'm sitting and I really like it, but I like it when I have it on. And then Jim said, yes, can I tell you something? Yes, of course. After 20-30 years of practice, I started to like to sit down. Now you're going to tell us this in English or Italian? I had this talk with Neil coming over that we talked about how we talked about last night and that

[08:10]

I realize that I sit, but it's not that I enjoy it immensely. It's just something I do. And some writer wrote, writers don't like to write, they like to have written. And I found that to me describes my sitting. And I talked to Neil about it, and he mentioned that, I don't know if he quoted you correctly, that there seems to be like a And I understood that after 20 or 25 years of sitting, you start to actually really enjoy it. And it was a leap for me, because I... Because you've already got five or six years in, or ten. Go ahead. That's all? Okay. It seemed like you said much more. Okay. Somebody else want to say something? Yes. I would like to start out with the image of the Bodhisattva who is located in the field of fearing.

[09:18]

and who exists from that aliveness. And you talked about the Quran yesterday. I don't know if it was Nanjwan who said that you should always bow to the host. Yeah. You should always deal with the host, which might be bowing and might be something else. You should always deal with the host, and that could be a bias, but it could also be something else. In practice, it would always be a movement to a certain extent. and practice that for me would be always a movement towards a nearness or closeness, yeah. And I also have another picture that I haven't put together yet, namely the practice as the development of a non-interfering observing mind.

[10:45]

And there's another image that I have that I can't quite put together with this yet, but it's practiced as a non-interfering observing mind. And in some other schools, there's the saying that you should identify with the screen of the movie, but not with its contents. That must be a fairly contemporary school of Buddhism. Since the 1920s at least. These two images for practice feel very different. Being closer to the field of vitality feels more energetic and more alive to me.

[11:56]

That's the question. And this idea of always being close to this field of aliveness feels more energetic and more vital to me. And that would be my question. Would you contrast the two images again, just as simply as possible? As an observer, as a witness, the other would be for practice just, there is probably no observer, no distance, it's just this aliveness which in a kind unfolds. And they feel quite different for me. So I'm a little bit puzzled. Okay. Would you like to briefly translate the excerpt? So the two starting points for the praxis would be, first, that I am an observer or a so-called witness, who looks at things from a certain distance behind them.

[13:03]

And the other is that such a vitality unfolds, where there is actually not such a separation between observer and object. The Bodhisattva yesterday understood the Bodhisattva more that he or she unfurls from this field from this kind of detached observing. Thank you. What you said makes me think of a Rumi poem. At least the translation of it. You Are the wished for song. Du bist das gewünschte Lied. Go to the center where hearing is.

[14:07]

Gehe in den Mittelpunkt dort wo das Hören ist. Where the sky is. Wo der Himmel ist. Where the winds are. Wo die Winde wehen. Cover the seeds. When you do your work, they will sprout. Anyway, go to the ear where the center is. Where the sky and the winds are. Cover the seeds. When you do your work, they will sprout. Okay, I'm trying to keep all of this in mind, or somewhere at least. Anybody else got something to say? Yes? Yes? This question came to mind to me this morning that I noticed was a little surprise.

[15:31]

Are we all one body? Yeah, it's a good idea. When you have such a feeling, don't take it as fact. Take it as an insight or an experience. Trust those things that come up. But don't try to make them either facts or not facts or something like that. Because you can't take words and stick them on such an experience because words immediately separate. But you can feel something through the experience. Someone else. Hi, how are you?

[16:43]

Good to see you. I wasn't here yesterday and I have a question. If you, Roshi, could talk a little about seeing and concentration while sitting. Concentration while sitting, but seeing, seeing what? The gaze while sitting. The gaze, I mean where your eyes are resting. Not just where they rest, but also where internally the concentration is while seeing and in seeing. That's both a simple and extremely complex question.

[17:52]

Let me, you know, put it somewhere. Okay. Yes, Tara? Yes. For me this topic of compassion and connectedness brought me to a particular point this morning. For me, I found out that the more I feel connected, the more I also feel a very deep pain or this connectedness brings me to a very deep pain.

[18:54]

Just like I feel very connected with nature and then I suffer from the fact that it's being destroyed. And one thing I noticed that also comes from compassion is this wish to protect. And this is not the path to go into that kind of action. And the other option would be to go into the pain but just accept it without making a choice for compassion.

[20:12]

And I find that to be really difficult because I really hit the borders, the boundaries of what I can deal with, what I can handle. What did you mean when you said, if the translation was what I heard, that this is not the path for that kind of action or caring? What did you mean when you said that the translation is not a way for such an action? If I try to protect nature, then I see the aspect that I want to protect. At the same time, there is the opposite, that it destroys. I come to a dualism. When I try to protect nature, then I see the aspect that I want to protect, and then there's something that attacks that which I want to protect, and then I get into some kind of dualism where I have to fight against something.

[21:52]

And my sense is that I can really only act when I come from that acceptance, acceptance from this other side. Yeah, sounds okay. Freedom from suffering does not mean to avoid suffering. And the more you can actually be free from suffering, you actually are also more open to feeling suffering. And we have to be open to this, you know, at the borders of what might overwhelm us, but not let ourselves be overwhelmed. But your love of nature, identification with nature?

[23:15]

Yeah. Say you look at a leaf. The leaf is perfect. It's not being destroyed. It's destroying itself. I mean, in a sense it will fall in the autumn and so forth. But that leaf is doing quite well. It might have like the leaves on the tree behind our house in Freiburg with this chestnut disease and it gets kind of sick midsummer. Yeah, of course. So we should be able to enjoy the leaf while we know that also environmental disaster, pollution, etc.

[24:31]

As I say, as long as you're alive, you're alive. Might as well enjoy it. But If you start thinking about your lifespan and everything, oh, then it... But we have to act too. And one meaning of compassion is certainly to take care. Okay, so anyone else want to say something? I don't think you have to wait 25 or 30 years before you enjoy sitting.

[25:54]

I think, you know, there's no reason you shouldn't enjoy sitting. I mean, unless you bring something into it like, I have to do this or something like that. I'm speaking to everyone, not just... And sitting is such a harmless activity. I mean, what can be wrong with crossing your legs and hoping to die? That's a bad joke based on little kids when they say something and they want to make sure it's true. They say, I cross my heart and hope to die.

[26:54]

Yeah, and then I realized when I first started sitting that my promise of truthfulness was to cross my legs and hope to die. But at least for a while, the posture isn't painful, or you can sit César or something. And... Whatever happens when you're sitting is you, so you might as well notice it. Yeah. But in that sitting, often there's some small area of feeling okay. Or when you're about to stop, about to stop sitting.

[28:24]

Sometimes you kind of don't want to stop. You'd like to sit another few minutes. You let that feeling guide you. So next time you sit, you have that feeling that you had when you wanted to sit another few minutes. And you try to drop everything but that feeling. And after a while, sitting is something like being, I don't know, in a warm bath or sunbathing or I don't know what, something that you feel at ease in. And that opens us to, as I said yesterday, this direct experience of aliveness itself. Aliveness with no meaning added.

[29:54]

I mean, people, you know, and really it's true, when you find the satisfaction of aliveness itself, which a baby does or maybe someone does just before they die, Do you have to be given a death sentence before you realize how much you enjoy aliveness? Yeah. And when you can Take all that stuff you're supposed to do away and just enjoy aliveness itself.

[30:57]

Surprisingly, it generates a non-conceptual field of awareness. It generates awareness. presence. When somebody says, that person has a lot of presence, it usually means to some degree they're rooted in their own aliveness. And that field of awareness is not so different than probably what somebody says a mind that observes.

[32:05]

What we're speaking about here was being located in aliveness. Or a field of awareness. Is establishing a continuum. Yes. establishing a continuum which replaces continuity based in discursive thinking, or continuity based in self-referential thinking, or continuity based in an implicit fear of the future. If you do an inventory of your actions, I think you'll see that very many of your actions, your mental actions and physical actions, are rooted in a fear of the future.

[33:27]

of preparing yourself to do better or something like that. God, it's okay to prepare yourself, but we want a more fundamental mind that needs no preparation. It needs no more practice. There's nothing more to do. But it takes practice to get to the mind where there's nothing more to do. I'm sorry. And it's a practice to practice. sustain as a continuity the mind in which there's nothing else to do. So I think that we can recognize practice as Yeah, I don't know what words to use.

[35:11]

A variety of continuities. Or a unfolding of continuities or emergent continuities. oder ein Entfalten von Kontinuitäten, oder emergierende, oder eben aus sich heraus stülpende Kontinuitäten. Yuan Wu, den ich ja gerne erwähne, der sagt, konzentriere dich ununterbrochen und ohne Lücken. Yeah, until the embryo of sagehood matures and develops. Okay. To concentrate uninterruptedly without gaps means to establish a continuity.

[36:17]

But a continuity in Buddhism, since everything, moment after moment, is just obviously... not so obviously, but conceptually obvious, is unique. So you have a continuity of uniqueness. And the field of awareness can notice this continuity of uniqueness. If your continuity is established in consciousness consciousness simply cannot notice uniqueness. Consciousness' job is to notice predictability. So when you can notice uniqueness, you're not conscious.

[37:38]

This is a problem of language. You're in the field of awareness of which you may be conscious. One teacher said, Simple, open. Ein Lehrer hat gesagt, sei schlicht, einfach, offen. And master of yourself. Then he says, borrow a light to see by. Borrow a road to go out on.

[38:51]

This is interesting, to borrow a light. Borrow your master yourself, but everything you do is borrowed. It doesn't belong to you. It's borrowed. I've never forgotten Suzuki Roshi taking his glasses and saying, where are my glasses? He's quite forgetful. Where are my glasses? Then he said, oh, they're on a string around his neck. He wore his glasses on a string around his neck, as some people do. It's always hard to give such people hugs. But he would, oh, there they are.

[39:59]

And he'd say, oh, I found my glasses. Oh, these aren't my glasses. These are your glasses. But you know about my tired old eyes, so you let me use them. This shirt is borrowed from someplace or other. And I'm glad you let me use it. Yeah, okay. I hope the lecture last night was okay for you. But as maybe you know, I don't really like giving lectures like that.

[41:01]

I don't even know what I said. I feel like a cookie cutter exuding stars or half moons or Bunny rabbits. You know, a cookie machine has a little shape and then the dough comes squirting out, you know, little shapes. And I hope some of these Dharma cookies were, you know, Yeah, useful to you. And I hope some of them are now working in the background of your computer.

[42:03]

As cookies, not as viruses. But, you know, I would rather bake a cake. I mean, that's my name. I'd rather bake a cake. If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake. You know that one? Baked a cake. Does anybody ever hear that song? Really? He must be as old as I am. Um... You know, I think of, you know, I've read Proust a lot and reread him quite often. And he often... expressed a certain melancholy.

[43:19]

Melancholy, do you know the word? In English, at least, it means to be put into bile. B-I-L-E. Bile is like the taste when you vomit, you know? Got it. So he would feel a certain melancholy about he couldn't really be a writer and he, you know, wasn't taken seriously and so forth. And then he would hear something. A bell, church bell. And he would stop in his tracks literally and be unable to do anything but be in the sound of that bell. Yeah, or the shine of light on his desk or something like that.

[44:27]

The melancholy would be gone. It's like the leaf, you just see the leaf. So this other mind would appear. A friend says that he was taking a walk with Marcel, with Proust once. And Proust was walking along and they passed some flowers of some sort. I think they were roses. And a familiar flower. And he walked a few paces past it and then he said to his friend, do you mind if I just a minute?

[45:30]

He went back and he stood in front of the flowers. So his friend waited for him. And after, I don't know, five or ten minutes, he decided to continue walking. And he went. They were in a sort of countryside village, and he went around the big block four times. But Proust, for nearly half an hour, was motionless in front of his flower. And the fourth time he came by, Proust apologised and, you know... Mm-hm. It's wonderful to have time for this no time.

[47:03]

And it's clear that Proust's novel and writing came out of this kind of mind. So, you know, for me, and it was okay to give a lecture last night, which, you know, I forgot was coming, and Andreas kindly reminded me, so he didn't have to give the lecture. It's a shift out of the continuity of the seminar. Yeah, but it's okay.

[48:06]

But at the same time I would rather somehow just be with you. Really as if for 40 or 50 minutes or an hour. We're just here in the way Proust was looking at those roses. And I would just say something every now and then so you didn't leave. Anyway, this is what, for me, what I, that feeling is, for me, then I feel, well, maybe this is practicing or teaching. And then I don't have to give a lecture because you're guiding me all the time.

[49:07]

I'm borrowing the lecture from you all the time.

[49:10]

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