Did any imponderables come up that I should know about? Imponderables? Things you can't think about. Yeah. Yeah. We really succeed to be neither in pleasure nor in displeasure. Where do we take our strength and power to act from? Yes.

[01:01]

I would like to ask a question that came up at the end, whether this neither-nor attitude can be there at the same time, even if one observes feelings or something else. Can this state of neither-nor be present even when we do have feelings and emotions? Yeah, another layer. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Any other imponderables? Yeah. I'm going to hope that before tomorrow afternoon everyone has spoken at least once. If we're practicing generosity, share the sound of your voice with us.

[02:01]

Yes. You share your voice. Never too much. Go ahead. Du teilst deine Stimme nie zu viel aus. Wenn man sich dem Bereich von neither or nor annähert, eine Tendenz dorthin bekommt, Our group came to the conclusion when you approach neither nor or go in that tendency that we can perceive better the emotions, our compulsions, our habits, And that in our culture, that there is a tendency to have to decide to take one position or the other.

[03:43]

This neither nor is not a position or state which is furthered. We also said, for me at least, a bit of grief that we, like Sophia, when she sees the starry sky, she doesn't think of Jupiter, Mars, Milky Way, not at all. She doesn't even think of stars. And I think that's somehow in the back there. So like Sophia, when she looks at the stars, she's not distinguishing Mars and Jupiter and so on. She doesn't even name it a star.

[04:45]

And this kind of getting away from the concept is almost lost for us. Yeah. And we also heard, yeah, there is also some sadness about that, that this quality is lost. Okay, it's retrievable. I know so. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, no, I thought that hand up. I saw your hand up. I wasn't sure whether somebody else already asked what I wanted to ask, so I put it down again. Ask the same thing again.

[05:48]

If you manage to find yourself here in everyday life, not in the skin-sitting, but in situations, in dialogue, for example, and how to react then, or there are situations where you should react, and how you can react. So when you are in your everyday life, not in still sitting, but in your everyday life, in this state of neither nor, and there arises a situation where you need to act or could act, this action, how should you act then? When a situation arises where there's neither nor, how should you act? Is that right? Or how can you act? Well, you are in the neither nor, and then a situation arises which might need action, or maybe not, or that's the question.

[06:57]

That's sort of the same question as yours. No, but it's a little different, you know. It adds a little power to it. By the way, let me say, why do you say neither nor always? I just said neither. In Germany, do you say neither nor always? Yeah, but it's a certain kind of sentence construction. Yes. You can still have the word neither without saying nor. If you want to. You're all saying neither nor. Yeah, term in English. It's neither. We can just say that. Yeah. Yeah. Pleasure.

[08:03]

Pleasure. [...] But it's not always like that. On the other hand, in our group, the envy is actually the whole view of everything. Everything fits. Yes, I would say it fits, but it could also be a third one, where you have something pleasant again, or something unpleasant. So in this group, it was like there were either these three categories, like pleasure, displeasure, and then as a third thing, this niner. And it was compared to when a telephone rings, which is... seemingly neither pleasurable nor displeasurable, but belongs to this neither.

[09:08]

But then also the neither encompasses more or the whole of pleasure and displeasure and more. I love it. In our group, I experienced this conversation about the Nysa as if it were a castration, as if you were no longer allowed to rejoice, as if you were cut off from So in our group I experienced that this neither was treated almost as well as being castrated, being separated from all joy. Well, the displeasure happens anyway, but... If I am in this state of neither, can I still be in love with my girlfriend or am I just indifferent to her?

[10:19]

Well, I hope you can still be in love. Any other imponderables? Yep. So in our group we also had this tendency to go into the direction that neither leads to depression. Now I have to hold something at the end.

[11:28]

So there is one engine in suffering, but there is also one engine in there, and that is what I mean, that there is no state that feels more pleasant. So, somehow, that this is simply a totally good place to be, especially in encounters. now I have to hold something against this, that in our group what appeared, and it was kind of my thing, but it also got resonance from some others, is that it is a bodily feeling, when you are the neither, and it's an absolute pleasure, Somehow it's an absolute pleasurable feeling, or it's the nicest place to be, so just act this against the depression. Especially in contact.

[12:46]

Okay. Yeah? Maybe it's really the German tradition to say , but it creates a nihilistic feeling sometimes. I mean, we solved the problems. It wasn't like the . So bad, as he said. Well, let me try to respond. We don't have much time, obviously. Five minutes to finish the most important question in Buddhism. On the one hand, it's almost, I feel, almost defeated, almost impossible to respond to your questions. And partly the questions themselves are the problem. Okay. Yeah. Let's go back to Sophia or any one of us at birth, there's a basic thirst.

[14:06]

And that gets shaped into something. And in addition to this thirst, there's also a knowing. Let's call it a knowing. It may be not a very shaped knowing, but certainly Sophia knows... Even before she was born, she knew my voice and her mother's voice. So from the very beginning, there's this thirst for things that makes our life function. And there's some kind of knowing.

[15:13]

Okay. And if I hit her, say I was an abusive parent, she wouldn't know whether that was good or bad. But she'd certainly know something happened. There's an awareness or there's an experience. So I think we should have to call it something more than just experience. Because if I hit her three times, she's going to know it's not just three separate experiences. Okay, now in the Western world, and most of our questions are naturally coming from a Western perspective.

[16:14]

Now, because mind can be structured, mind can have an observer. Once you can structure a mind, you can have an observer of that structure, because that's part of the structure. And I think we find in each mind, like Zazen mind or ordinary mind, actually the observer is slightly different. Or quite different. Now, I mean, maybe in the West we try to unite that all in one observer, but in Buddhism we emphasize the difference between the observers.

[17:29]

So if we had an experience like we thought we wanted to do this, we thought we wanted to have this job, and we thought we wanted to have this job, and it went on for some years, and one day it dawns on us we hate this job. You could say that you got down to your true self or what you really want to do. That's one way to interpret it. By the way, if somebody has to leave at six, I'll try not to take more than a minute or two. But in Buddhism, yogic culture, we would tend to say a different kind of observer appeared. So if this observer seemed to make better decisions, we try to encourage that observer.

[19:09]

Because the idea of permanence, even to the sense that there is continuity of self, it's always slightly different. Okay. Okay, so let's try, I'm trying to respond really to, initially to Norbert's question. We have an experience of someone doing something, someone making decisions. Isn't that what you're saying? That's not quite the same as saying there's no permanent self. You have an experience of a doer. Du hast ein Empfinden von einem, der handelt. Okay.

[20:10]

So, on what basis does this doer make decisions? Auf welcher Basis macht der Täter seine Entscheidung? Okay. Now, if I take Sophia again, she's going to develop some kind of self. Also, wenn ich Sophia wiedernehme, wird sie irgendeine Art selbst... And it's going to emphasize past and future. Yes, you can go on to college if you want to. So as a little girl, she thinks, I'm the kind of girl who's going to go to college. And all those ideas weave together to make a sense of a historical self. Now, when we have a sense of doing something, Do we have that sense of doing something in regard to the historical self, primarily?

[21:24]

Probably in the West we do, mostly. And so we concentrate on maturing that self, individuating and so forth. Okay, all right. Okay, now let's say, practically speaking, we have a practical self. A self who... which takes care of the fact that you have some food and housing and so forth. But you can also have a contextual self. And after some party, people say, boy, you weren't yourself.

[22:33]

In that context, you were pretty weird. But we would interpret that as just being off track. We lost the sense of our usual self. Okay. But in yoga culture, you would emphasize that there is also a contextual self. Okay, so I can look at these leaves out here, these falling leaves. And I can look at them with all the times I've seen autumn leaves, 65 autumns I've seen. And I can let that feeling be present.

[23:33]

I've seen some beautiful autumns. They're all pretty good, actually. But I can withdraw that feeling and see the leaves as if I'd never seen autumn leaves before. And that's not just a trick. And that's not just a trick. When you pull yourself away from associations and really look at things as if you've never seen them before, There's still a flavor, of course, of having seen them before.

[24:38]

But what actually happens is you establish a different kind of mind, which has its own self-organizing kind of shape. And once you establish that decontextualized, or rather, let's say, a contextualized self, Say again, excuse the example, I used to use it for years ago, but now I used it long before September 11th. If you're in an airplane that's crashing, your historical self isn't much help. I was planning to go to college. But now you're not defined by that history. Later people will say, oh, that's my friend who died in the airplane crash.

[26:03]

That will become your history. But at that moment, your history is pretty unimportant. You're just that context. Now through Buddhist practice you get much more to that place. That at each moment you're just your context. And you wouldn't feel like I have to individuate or something like that. And you wouldn't think, oh, who's doing this? Because you're letting the situation tell you what to do.

[27:07]

Now we have your question. In that situation, how do you know what to do? You don't know, so you practice generosity, patience, discipline and so forth. I'm joking and being serious at the same time. And what's the case for some reason, the way we're constituted, We have this knowing and we have this hunger. And if the hunger doesn't take us over and And the knowing is predominant.

[28:22]

And that knowing is not in a comparative context. For some reason, when there's less definitions of knowing, that knowing itself is blissful. Some kind of basic bliss is just to be alive. you might feel it some days. You might feel it just before you die. Jesus, if I could stay another life, another few minutes, it would be worth it.

[29:26]

And maybe you feel it just before you die, and you think, oh, if I could only live a few more minutes longer, So you begin to define yourself in a yoga culture more through this bliss than through a doer. Okay, so I'm almost done here. So you have the practical self which takes care of things. You have the contextual self, which pretty much dissolves into the context. And that's very close to what we mean by the absolute or emptiness or something like that. And that's called the first principle or something like that. Das wird auch als erstes Prinzip bezeichnet.

[30:40]

And when Dung Shan says, you know, go to a place where there's no hot nor cold, that's what he means. Und wenn Dung Shan sagt, geh an einen Platz, wo es weder kalt noch heiß ist, dann meint er das. And I can look at these beautiful leaves. Und ich kann diese wunderschönen Blätter anschauen. And I can have pleasure from it. And if I look at them carefully, I can see that some trees are mostly dead and I can have a little displeasure. But I can have also neither pleasure and displeasure. I just see it. It doesn't fall into categories of pleasure and displeasure. I feel, and now it's not the leaves, I just feel a blissful mind seeing these things.

[31:42]

How can I be depressed? Unless I'm really thinking in likes and dislikes and neutral, if you confuse neutral with neither, then you're depressed. I didn't. Don't. Mistake. Mistake. I'm teasing. I saw a self come up there. I'm not the group. It wasn't my group. I saw a self. Thanks for the demonstration. Okay, and then there's the bodhisattva self. There's the contextual self, the practical self, and the bodhisattva self. And you can feel yourself shift among these three.

[32:42]

So let's go back again to the beginning with Sophia. So you have thirst, you have pleasure and displeasure, and you have knowing. And the pleasure and displeasure through living and widening your perspective, turn into knowing what benefits and what doesn't benefit. So instead of acting on what's selfish or not, you're acting on what's wholesome and not wholesome. And you don't define your boundaries here.

[33:54]

My boundaries include you. So when I don't think of it, yes, there's some kind of experience of me doing it. But mostly I'm kind of guided. Not guided by a spirit force or something. But guided by the immediate and the particularity of each context. which I trust and I accept.

[34:54]

So the energy in the question of who's doing this is different. And being alive, you have lots of energy for everything. The energy isn't based on what benefits you or not. The energy is based on what's instead, has to be based on something we can say. It's based on what's wholesome or not wholesome. And that allows you to practice the six paramitas. It's like if you're walking along one of the lakes or ponds here, And you're spaced out in your contextual self.

[36:02]

And you see someone drowning, a little kid. You don't stop and say, Is this going to benefit me or not to save this kid? You might, of course. You might say, oh, there's a newspaper reporter over there. Come on over. But more basically, you just jump in and get the kid. You can. And you dry the kid off and parents come and you say thank you and you go on. You don't need the newspaper. I think we'd all behave that way. But that doesn't come out of self. It comes out of a sense of what's wholesome and not wholesome.

[37:05]

And it's funny, like when this World Trade Center disaster, when there's a disaster that threatens a lot of people, a kind of selflessness comes out. And that's more natural than selfishness. So the Bodhisattva is one who knows we're going to die at an indefinite time. So he or she doesn't have to wait for a disaster. You really see the situation and you see less selfishness is better. And who's doing this?

[38:19]

Well, it's more like a knowing in a context. I don't know if that was helpful, but that was that. And the light has become very beautiful. See how everything is taking care of us. If you can, let's sit for half a minute. This is a territory you mostly have to negotiate for yourself.

[40:10]

But if you get your foot in the door, you begin to walk on the path the path begins to help you know what to do. Then you do things through the world speaking to you, not because they're predicted by your past history. So that you begin to lead a life often that surprises you and certainly surprises your friends. Because the path is taking care of you.

[41:14]

So we can sometimes speak of a path mind. And that's actually what we've been speaking at about trying to approach throughout this seminar. Everything is discovered in a kind of timelessness. Don't worry about whether time has actually stopped. It feels like it, and that's enough. Thank you very much again for today.

[42:43]

Danke für den heutigen Tag. I don't always keep my promises. Ich halte nicht immer meine Versprechen. Hope you slept well. Ich hoffe, ihr habt gut geschlafen. Gut geschlafen. With your extra, with our extra hour. Norbert said they stole it from us earlier in the year. That they gave it back. Whenever I wear this shirt, this black one, I feel a little funny, actually. I mean, it's okay, but I feel a little funny because... Because I went to, in July, I was at a Tresco Magazine Buddhist conference in the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel.

[43:53]

Weil ich im Sommer an einer Konferenz teilgenommen habe im Marriott, im World Trade Center. I needed a shirt and I walked across the street and bought this in a store across the street and it's all gone now. Und ja, ich habe die Straße überquert und in einem Laden dieses Hemd gekauft und das gibt es jetzt alles nicht. I don't know why the shirt makes me think of it. Und dieses Hemd erinnert mich. You know, you're here because you have an interest in practicing Buddhism. I think all of you are practicing. So, like me, I was... You're probably practicing the six paramitas.

[44:55]

Yeah, just part of being a human being and one who's interested in practice. Yeah, but practicing the paramitas as a particular practice, I didn't understand for a long time. I didn't have a sense of how to do it. You know, I understood generosity. I mean, obviously, it's pretty easy to understand what generosity is. Yeah, but why is that linked to mindfulness and and wisdom, or meditation and wisdom. Well, anyway, it took me, I don't know, until a few years ago to really see how the parmitas worked as a single dynamic

[46:10]

Or a single stance or single activity. So... One thing that gave me a funny insight into it was one day Suzuki Roshi was very forgetful. If you've read his book, Crooked Cucumber, you'll see how forgetful he was. And he was always forgetting his glasses. So he even had a string, you know, you can get a string to attach them, but still he'd forget them.

[47:15]

And he lived in this Kafkaesque tower up above our little zendo that we made. And he'd come down to give his talk. Yeah. And he decided to read something or a passage from something. No glasses. So then we hear him going upstairs. Hunting. Oxon, where's my glasses? That's his way. Then we hear him come down. One day he said, these are your glasses. But you know about my tired old eyes. So you let me use your glasses. Yeah, it suddenly made me feel, be aware of simple things like, you know, glasses were, what, an Italian invention in the 14th century or something.

[48:50]

It takes quite a fairly developed society to make glasses. So they are in some sense a gift from our society. But they also really, he really had the sense that, he gave us the sense that, yeah, these glasses, as far as he concerned, belonged to us, but we were letting him use them. It gave me a feeling of the practice of generosity. The feeling that this shirt belongs to Buddha.

[49:53]

I hope he wouldn't let it get so dirty. And You know, when I was in Basel, somebody came up and said, what's that? And I said, Buddhist robe. And he got a strange expression on his face, and he went off, and he came back later and talked to Marie Louise, who was translating for him. And I said, yes, this is Buddha's robe. And then he came later to Marie-Louise and talked to her. And Marie-Louise later said to me, you know, when you said that to him, it was as if a Catholic priest had said, oh, this is God's robe. Or this is Jesus' robe. But we do wear the, you know, I decided to be ordained so I could, you know, more feel like, partly I decided to feel like having a similar life to my teacher.

[51:17]

And that way of thinking, this shirt is, you know, your shirt which you're letting me use. And I have to learn to practice that with Marie-Louise, because everything nice I have, she takes. But you can take it, too, if you want. It's all right. I've got her to loan me this back. So generosity has some sort of feeling like that. And it's also the sense of sharing your practice. What can we give others? Well, from the point of view of Buddhism, the most important thing you can give is your own practice. So when you practice zazen, mindfulness, you're actually practicing generosity.

[52:36]

You know, in Chinese yoga culture, How can I say it? Your humanness is not something that is, but something that you do. Yeah, so when you practice, you know, and considering that, this doing yourself as a human being, I don't know how to put it, doing yourself as a human being,

[53:47]

It really means taking care of yourself. You take care of your body. And Norbert every morning goes running, it seems like, with his dog. He takes care of the dog and the dog takes care of him. And you go jogging. I should go jogging with you. And I think the early Greeks thought that too. That's why the gymnasium is both America's athletic center and in Germany it's the educational center. Originally it meant both at once. Yeah, so... And China has this same sense of you take care of your body and you take care of your mind.

[55:13]

And you do that to take care of other human beings. And there's a whole different energy when you do it. When you do it for yourself, you really don't have the energy to do it so much. So, yeah. And there's another sense that in this kind of yogic culture, Where we're not a... If I were to keep coming back to this, but I think it's a hard thing to shake in us, this sense of natural.

[56:16]

Yeah. That... That... We're an accumulation of what it means to be human. There's no natural human being. A human being is an accumulation of being human, absorbed also from other humans. Also ein menschliches Wesen ist eine Anhäufung von menschlichen Anteilen auch von anderen Wesen. So your job as a kind of responsibility as a human being is to leave a record of what kind of person you were.

[57:22]

Also ist so, was zu hinterlassen, was für eine Art von Mensch du gewesen bist. But what kind of person you were as a particular person. Was für eine Art von Mensch du gewesen bist als ein besonderer Mensch. And what kind of person you are as one who has learned from others. Und auch als ein Mensch, der von anderen gelernt hat. So if I'm teaching here, practicing with you, I'm trying to teach you something about Buddhism that you might not see it from this point of view. And I'm also trying to show you what kind of my own practice or share my own practice.

[58:33]

But I'm also trying to share, I don't know, it sounds weird to say it, whatever kind of funny human being I am. I'm sorry, but I'm an example of a human being. Maybe not everyone thinks so, but... And each of you is an example of a human being. And if you really see that society is an accumulation of these examples, we should each show our example. And that doesn't mean to try to be perfect. That means just to share our example. And Buddhist art and Chinese cultural art is thought of in those terms.

[59:39]

You do calligraphy or you write or paint to show an example of what kind of human being you are. So this practice of generosity is also to just have the feeling, here's this human being. And here you are, that human being, this other human being. And in a non-judgmental space, just a space of accepting and noticing. That in itself is quite a practice, just to be able to do that. It takes some time.

[60:41]

And then the discipline part is to make yourself a certain kind of person. To have made the decision to practice. That's why the precepts, in a sense, have nothing to do with Buddhism. They're just fundamental, basic human sense. Something that all societies more or less come to. Don't harm, don't kill, don't steal or take what is not given.

[61:43]

What makes them Buddhist is that you vow to do it. You vow to do it and you vow to practice it. And that's a little different than following. You receive the precepts. You take the precepts. You hold the precepts. You don't exactly try to follow them. So you hold the feeling of not killing in your moment-by-moment awareness.

[62:43]

So if you say something that you see hurts somebody, you've just broken the precept not to kill. You can feel yourself breaking the precepts all the time. I was in another store once buying socks or something. In this guy didn't have the socks I wanted. And he only had stretch socks. One size fits all. And I said, you know, I'm not all.

[63:49]

I'm just this, you know. He said, oh, they're only available from a catalog. Yeah. And the... And I sort of complained, you know, these stores changed so much, they used to carry them, and I said, okay, fine, I walked off. And this guy was some Croatian guy, didn't know English that well, didn't know about, was trying his best to be a good, and I actually just kind of heard him just walk off. He was trying to learn how to support himself in America. you know, I have a job, and here's this asshole, I mean, this guy. And I looked back at him, and he was standing there going, what did I do wrong?

[64:53]

So from the point of view of the precepts, I clearly broke the precept not to kill. Yes, not to take what is not given is an interesting one to practice. So when you choose the discipline to be the kind of human being that ought to exist, which also means learning from other human beings how to exist,

[66:04]

And the Croatian clerk in this store actually taught me something. And so that's learning or receiving or discipline. Patience also has a very particular kind of Buddhist context. Impatience or patience? Patience. Patience also has a very Buddhist aspect. Patience is a very common Buddhist experience when you're sitting. So patience is to feel yourself in the midst of causes. Feel yourself in the midst of ripening causes.

[67:27]

And that means that, again, each thing has its own time. So you don't just act in some formulaic way. You wait and you know the right time to act or say something, how to stand. Dogen says, fully seeing forms. Dogen sagt, ja, vollständig die Form zu sehen, fully seeing forms and hearing sounds, vollständig die Form zu sehen und den Ton zu hören, fully engaging mind and body, vollständig den Körper und den Mind einzusetzen, this is not seeing things in a mirror,

[68:42]

Again, there's this feeling of fully hearing, seeing, fully engaging mind and body. Present with another person and with others. So you can feel the play of integrative and disintegrative forces in persons and groups of people. Yeah, you can feel them in your stomach or in your body. And you attempt to integrate them yourself. So this is this sense of patience. To be patient and wait for the situation to speak to you.

[69:46]

So it's all kind of one stance. generosity, the discipline, the patience, and the energy which supports it. And the energy which supports it. So mindfulness, I mean, mindfulness of course, but in paramitas it's meditation and wisdom.

[70:46]

Meditation and wisdom are kind of like the motor or support that fuels your ability to practice the first three or four paramitas. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know if this can make sense to you, but the Ajanta paintings, supposedly, are painted... as if you were seeing the figure in your mind. So that it's not like you're painting something that's out there with a background. So you establish a background of which they're against out there.

[72:05]

More like they're painted out there against the foreground, and the foreground is you. So the figures feel like they're coming toward you. Like they're some part of you coming toward you. And when you practice mindfulness, as I've been speaking about, objects, you don't so much see an object out there as you feel like when you look at an object, it's coming towards you. This is also another way of talking about seeing mind on an object.

[73:09]

Then there's a kind of brightness or light or radiance that comes when objects feel like they're coming toward you. So in this practice of the paramitas, as a bodhisattva practice, when you really have this sense of presence with a person, like we probably Most of us would only feel when we're in love. But some feeling like that, through the practice of paramitas, just feel extremely intimate with each person you meet.

[74:19]

And you have to restrain the intimacy a little bit so you don't get arrested. I hardly knew this guy, and his arms were all over me. I mean, just in a friendly way. Particularly here in Germany, Germans like to maintain their space. There's a strong feeling, it took me a while to understand it, but there's a strong feeling in Germany of don't protect each other's space and privacy. Ja, also hier in Deutschland, es braucht eine ganze Weile, bis ich das so verstanden habe, ist das so dieser Schutz der eigenen Sphäre sehr wichtig.

[75:31]

If you stop somebody in the street and ask them directions, say, why did you violate my space? Ja, wenn du jemanden an der Straße ansprichst und nach irgendwelchen Richtungen fragst, ist schon so ein bisschen das Gefühl, wieso verletzt du meinen Raum? Ja, I like it, it makes sense to me. But it's a little different than in Ireland, say. Where people come right into your space all the time. So you have to, in each situation, I have to notice a difference in practicing the paramitas actually in America than here. A little different way in which you're present with yourself and with another person. And this practice is not really about how much, how thoroughly you accomplish it.

[76:48]

Every time you're with somebody, you think, how was I at that time? But it's your intention to do it. If you have an intention to do it, it begins to be a way of being with... of practicing, period. One of the first German words I learned was... Isn't that some kind of word? In Japan, all sounds are sort of words. And all words are first of all sounds. Like if you inhale in a word or exhale, it's a little different. So in that sense it's a word.

[78:03]

I don't say it right, but anyway. Yeah. So I think it's a good time to take a break. So let's sit for a few minutes. Fully hearing sounds.

[81:00]

Fully seeing forms. Fully gauging mind and body. This is also to practice the parameters. Yeah, okay.

[84:19]

I'd really like to know what kind of sense this all makes to you. And I know we lost one or two people, I don't know how many, after the first day. Because it's too complicated or intellectual or something like that. And actually I don't hear that as much as I used to. Maybe I've changed, but I think also so many people have been practicing more, so it makes a difference. You know, the Eightfold Path starts with right views. So this is the first of the Buddha's teachings. That in the end, your practice, everything you do, turns on your views.

[86:11]

And I think you can feel the difference between patience as enduring pain or enduring boredom But in contrast to patience, which is a weight, it is a kind of activity, feeling the ripening of causes. Im Gegensatz zu Geduld, die wartet, dass die Dinge reif werden. Die Bereitschaft und auch das Verständnis für das Reifwerden einer Situation zu warten.

[87:11]

But these things are hard to, when we're speaking about views, and views that are slightly different or a little different focus than we're used to, We have to have a certain kind of state of mind or feeling to get it. And not even as Linji said, Rinzai said. Making up the mind. making up your own ideas from the outer elements of language.

[88:26]

So in the West we do have this work to do of... of studying our views. And finding the means to change those views so that they accord with our understanding through meditation practice. And through insights. I mean, you don't have to do that to practice. But that kind of, if you don't, your practice is not really transformative.

[89:29]

Your practice is more palliative. It makes you feel better. Nothing wrong with feeling better. But to feel better permanently, that requires transformation. So, you know, Buddhism has developed a number of institutions

[90:17]

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