Well, thank you for joining me and us on this Sunday afternoon. And again, last week we met in this funny corner again, like this year, like today. I don't know why I decided to meet here. It's just a nice little area. But again, I guess I said last week I'll change maybe of some other feeling of informality or formality by gathering here. And that this is really just for the residents here and for anybody who happens to be nearby. So I'd also like you each to be prepared with some kind of...

[01:03]

thing to offer to, into a discussion. So yes, last Sunday I spoke about that we have two choices in life. At least from the point of view of Buddhism and the Bodhisattva. Because we can choose the life that we're, you know, basically the life that we're given through our birth culture or our chosen culture. As I said, the non-conscious choice that most of us make. Without much realizing that we have another choice. And I described that other choice as discovering how we actually exist.

[02:49]

And just such simple phrases as this lend themselves to a lot of thought, a lot of speculation. But I do mean something and I thought, let's see if I can say something about what I mean. I mean, of course, we have to have... It's good to have experience and understanding about how to live in our own culture. But again, we have to ask, do we think this is the best way for human beings to live? As you know, I think our civilization is at a fairly primitive level. As we see in the present war going on in Iraq.

[04:22]

But that's, I don't know if it's any more primitive than the endless computer war games that people are addicted to. I just myself don't believe there isn't a continuity from one to the other. From the war to the computer games? For these computer games, the playing of them, the interest in them, isn't much different from this actual war. And I think they both say something about the level of our culture, our civilization.

[05:22]

Yeah, but of course we can live differently within our culture. But still, by going along with it, we have to go along with it, first of all. As I said again last week, that's one of the things I learned from Sukhiroshi, to go along with it. Because I was in that, in my 20s, was refusing to participate in any normal way in our culture. Okay, but now, how can we participate in our culture and also choose how we want to live and imagine it's possible to live? This is the essential bodhisattva choice.

[06:46]

And again, as I said, the central act of compassion. To choose to live how we wish the world could be, how we wish people could live. And it requires a kind of existential leap of faith. That's better than leap. Um... a leap of faith, of trust, to trust the world that we discover or that we receive,

[08:08]

through choosing how we think we should actually exist. And it's sort of like, okay, this is the way I think we should live. I'm going to trust that this will be a way to live. This is strictly speaking the only choice a bodhisattva has. Yeah, it's not a black and white affair though. We can make this choice and still live in our culture. And as I said, our practice may often be secret in that sense. Now I want to come back to what could we mean by how we actually exist.

[09:30]

Now, the last time we, last Sunday, Akash brought up the skandhas. And I seem to have made a choice over the last 10 or 15 years to emphasize the skandhas as an access to... Yeah, emphasize the skandhas. As a way to see... how consciousness is constructed. And then to use that discovery to peer... pure past, to peel away consciousness or pure past consciousness into how we actually could exist.

[11:13]

Now we choose a way The mind, the mind-body is, as I said, immensely fluid. And I suppose we could say a particular culture and more specifically a particular civilization chooses the mind they want to live the world. Yeah. Once that choice is made, it's hard for us to imagine another choice.

[12:17]

And in effect, the mind we choose produces the world we live. So we have this bodhisattva choice again. Is the world that our mind has produced The only world and the world we want people to live in. Is the... No, is the choice.

[13:37]

Is the world our mind produces. The world we want to live in. I mean, I've... I for some reason spend quite a bit of time in the philosophy and literature of the 19th and 20th century. 19th, obviously the 20th, but also the 19th. And for 150 years, people have been complaining at least 150 years, about the commercialization of our culture, etc. Thoughtful people complain about that we're losing what they knew when they were young. And we're far more advanced than that than they were 150 years ago.

[14:57]

And it's not all bad. But it sells war games, television war games, and cigarettes and so forth, because that's what makes money. We complain about wars and weapons, but we're selling weapons all over the bloody world. Okay, so what are some other possibilities? No, I don't think it's particular to our age. I think the bodhisattva has to be particular to his or her age.

[16:02]

But I think in every age or every time, the bodhisattva has a similar choice. Now, what am I saying here? I'm saying that we practice or we don't practice? No, what I'm saying is that it's the bodhisattva choice which forms our practice. It's different to, if you haven't made this choice, your practice, your heart probably will give you, as I say, a sense of well-being, but it won't be transformative.

[17:12]

No, I don't mean that you should challenge yourself now, oh, will I make this choice or can I make this choice? But rather I would say that the best approach is to notice how we actually have already made such a choice. Ich glaube, der bessere Zugang ist zu bemerken oder zu sehen, in welcher Hinsicht wir ohnehin oder bereits diese Entscheidung getroffen haben. And if we notice that we've already made such a choice,

[18:14]

then it's easier actually to see that we can develop the choice we've already made. And it can be the basis for our developing practice. Okay, so let me just take the perception skanda. What is the idea of the perception skanda? No, I'm not going to explain the five skandas. And I would hope that at least half of you could teach me the five skandas by this time. Well, let's just take, in this case, perception. So, going from form to consciousness, perception is a causal agent within the development of consciousness.

[19:28]

But it's not just part of consciousness. Now here we have the idea of Nagarjuna. Firewood is firewood and ash is ash. Now, that's a really pretty simple statement. But it's wonderfully provocative. And Dogen spoke about it at length and so did Suzuki Roshi and so forth. So putting firewood and ash together, obviously it means that we usually think of firewood as the past of ash.

[20:59]

But firewood in what this means, this statement of Nagarjuna, is firewood has its own past, present, and future. And ash has its own past, present, and future. Firewood is not simply the past of ash. Feuerholz ist schlicht und ergreifend nicht nur die Vergangenheit von Asche. The importance of this idea is great in Buddhist practice. Die Wichtigkeit hiervon ist sehr bedeutend in der buddhistischen Praxis.

[22:04]

Now another way to get the feeling for it is the example I use is pig is not the past of pork. Pigs have their own past, present and future. And pork is an example of human history of meat eating. As we see shops in every village that practice this human history of meat eating. So pork is a human history of meat eating inflicted on presumably unwilling pigs. Or these timbers are not the future of a forest.

[23:09]

The biodynamic field, or whatever we would call it, of a forest with its insects and mosses and shades, shadows. That has nothing to do with this. And it's a bit, just this very point is a huge battle in the United States between biologists most of the population and large percentage of the working force and companies that they only see force as the past of this.

[24:10]

And it's become, you know, the Bush and Reagan and so... What did Reagan say once? He said, if you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all. Bush and Reagan and all these people Regan hat einmal gesagt, wenn ihr einen von diesen riesigen Redwood, diese Sedan gesehen habt, dann habt ihr sie alle kapiert oder gesehen. I mean, so for Bush and such folks, it's become a joke to save a forest for a spotted owl. Also für Busch ist es ein reiner Witz, einen Wald zu schützen, weil dort irgendeine gefleckte Eule drin sitzt. Aber diese gefleckte Eule, die repräsentiert die tatsächliche Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft eines Waldes. All das sage ich nur,

[25:11]

The knowing that arises through perception has its own past, present and future. Let's just take memory. Okay. Let's take a simple example. You're talking with your spouse or your child or a friend. And it's maybe, say, an intense discussion. And you remember it later. As angry or friendly or loving or something. But while you're speaking to this person, there's myriad events going on. There's sunlight in the room.

[26:24]

There's birds. Maybe a dog or cat's walking around. And there's the body posture of your friend. All of that is memory, too. Now, if you This is sort of simplistic to say, but when you're in a situation, you have the equanimity of mind, the balance of mind to actually know all of these things equally. And not just to know them, and not just to know the focus of consciousness, the conversation. then you almost always have good memories.

[27:58]

Because every situation, even if you're having a fight, what you remember is the whole situation, and the fight is only a very small part of it. Now, when does memory work this way? Memory works this way when it's not dominated by consciousness. Now, normally when we hear things, see and smell things and so forth, we're really hearing... How can I put it? We're hearing... Hearing our consciousness hearing. We could say it's a consciousness dominated perception. So we think that's the main thing we're hearing.

[29:14]

I mean, we just assume that's normal. But if we can separate consciousness from the hearing, what happens then? In other words, if we can sort of peer past I always have the image of when I say something like that, of when I used to wash dishes all the time as a kid. And for some reason I love to take a glass and peer past the soap suds at the silverware. And I can still remember my parents calling, are you finished with the dishes yet?

[30:15]

No, no, I'm just... I don't know what I found so fascinating, but I... Because the silverware, you know, didn't change much, you know, it just laid down there. But I found something thrilling to be able to peer past the soap suds. And in a way, through the meditation practice, you peer past the soap suds of consciousness. The soap suds which often reflect things in a rather distorted way. What do you see when you can peer past the subsets of consciousness?

[31:18]

Yeah, well, I mean, to practice it, I would suggest you take some phrase like fully hearing. Now, I've suggested various ways to practice the vijnanas. Now, what I'm suggesting today is that in your ordinary situations, stop every now and then and say, whatever you say in German or whatever you like, but fully hearing. So you kind of diminish your noticing, seeing, or smelling, and you just hear.

[32:24]

So, dass ihr euer Sehen oder Riechen etwas zurücknehmt, und dann, dass ihr... And suddenly there'll be a, I think, maybe for you, is for me, suddenly a new texture of the world. Yeah, you notice sounds you just didn't even notice were there. Sort of like looking at an oriental rug and really looking carefully at it, and you begin to see more and more of the weaving of the... What did Tim Leary say once?

[33:26]

He said, be careful when you step on an oriental rug, you're stepping on somebody's psychedelic vision. Tim Leary once said, And certainly, you know, I think if you looked at the culture which produces those rugs, which our culture doesn't, I think you'd find that the pace of the, the perceptual pace of the people somehow is the same as the rugs. You know, just as a little aside, I like Harris Tweed cloth jackets.

[34:38]

And it's a cloth which I always find has the colors of hillsides, particularly of Scottish-like hillsides. And recently, I don't know, four or five years ago, England was going to put on this island where Harris Tweed is woven. I think it's an island. They can't get television. So they wanted to put it in. Well, they can't get it because it won't get past them.

[35:39]

And so they were going to put, England was going to put a television station on a mountain somewhere which would allow them to get television. And these people had the smarts to say, if you put television in, we won't be able to weave this cloth anymore. We won't see the world anymore in a way that we can bring it into the fabrics. Now, Buddhism, you know, it's interesting. It says, okay, you don't have to move to the Near East or you don't have to move to Scotland to change the way you see. You can do it through practice. There's teachings. But you probably wouldn't do it unless you have an intuition of a world that might be more satisfying to you and others.

[37:02]

So if you actually practice with something like fully listen, with openness and sensitivity, and in a way letting your sense of self come out of your consciousness, Because, you know, our self is a... The self we mostly know is dominated by consciousness and language. And if we too much... identify with that self, it doesn't let us fully listen. It only lets us listen within the frame of consciousness.

[38:16]

So part of this practice is to kind of break the lock-in, locked-in language and consciousness. And you can do it with these little teeny practices. Like fully listen. Even if you only do it for one minute or two minutes. Or you stop and you just fully see without thinking, fully look, see without thinking. As soon as you Think you're in the framework of past, present, and future. But each moment has its own, each instant has its own past, present, and future. And that's not the same as how your personal consciousness frames past, present and future.

[39:55]

So what's the independent past, present, and future of each moment? Now, when I speak this way or when you think this way yourself, you're trying to break your habits of mind. dann versucht ihr die Gewohnheiten eures Geistes zu brechen. And the teaching of Buddhism as a Bodhisattva practice is you have to intentionally break the habits of consciousness at night. I mean, if you want to, you don't have to. Okay. So again, what happens? When you... Fully smell, fully hear.

[41:31]

Now poets and athletes and painters and soldiers perhaps sometimes. Soldiers if they want to stay alive. and athletes and painters if they want to move outside of predictable consciousness. Through their training, practice or luck they discover ways to do that. But they do it to stay alive or they do it to perform in a tennis game or they do it to write a poem.

[42:39]

And I think you can take some famous painters, Picasso or Matisse, and you can see which Skanda they're painting from. But the poet usually does it, and the others, to write the poem. But the Bodhisattva does it to transform his or her life. To make his life a poem. Yeah, okay. Now, if you, again, can... Um, yeah, okay, fully, let's just take fully listen.

[44:04]

Because I take that one because it's the most accessible and most accessible to us in meditation. What do you, when you hear as part of consciousness. You're hearing the world that consciousness reveals. Which is dominated by some kind of productivity. To accomplish something. And that's almost always directed toward the future. And so almost always directed away from where you are.

[45:05]

So what about if you can hear free of consciousness? You're not hearing consciousness anymore. What do you hear? You hear mind. You hear the mind hearing. And that changes space right away. because instead of hearing something that's separated from you you hear something that's connected to you because you hear your own mind hearing and there's immediately an experience once that's really clear of bliss And one of the bodies of Buddha consciousness doesn't know.

[46:20]

And it awakens the space of the world. It's almost like past and future flow into the present. It really changes your experience of time, changes the dynamic of time. You feel you're living in a a slowed down or stopped world. So if we can peer past these soapsuds of consciousness,

[47:23]

We not only begin to feel mind itself and not consciousness, and a mind which is the space of the world, But your own body feels different. You feel a kind of, what can I say, the power of being alive itself. I almost sometimes feel to myself, life is almost not worth living unless you feel this power.

[48:42]

Maybe it's the power an athlete feels or a dancer feels or an artist feels or, you know. In the middle of, midst of activity or writing. But the bodhisattva is one who feels this at each moment. And it's one of the ways you know you're on the path is when you begin to feel this power just flows up through you. Within the space of the world you feel the power of being alive. No matter what's happening, good, bad, or different, still a certain power you feel.

[49:52]

I mean, I don't know any word to use. Sometimes I talk about the practice of nourishment and completeness. Yeah, sort of gateways where each thing is completed, each thing is nourishing. But these are gates, in a way, gates, we could say, to this feeling of the simple power of being alive. A power of just breathing. This is actually how we exist.

[51:03]

Well, I didn't get very far in what I wanted to say. Or I thought I might find a way to talk about it. But that's enough for this afternoon And it's exactly one hour So why don't we take a break and then we'll re-gather and we can have some discussions Thank you for translating. Thanks for speaking.

[51:54]

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