Does anyone want to say something about our discussion so far? Yes. On the one hand, the question of how to make the right decisions There are two topics that are in my head and one is the question how do you come to a good decision, to the right decision actually. And the other question has to do with the faces or the heads of Avalokiteshvara. I think I have to explain that a little bit.

[01:06]

There is a case that happened to me in my job and I'm working for an environmental organization. That means that my colleagues and I are trying to do something that's good for the environment and good for human beings. Thank you. Danke. But generally, there are always people who don't like and oppose what we are doing, and there are some people who like what we are doing and support that. And... And then one thing that happened is that there are also always people that you haven't even thought about, that you haven't considered, but who are affected by the work.

[02:30]

Ich würde gerne versuchen, Entscheidungen so zu treffen, dass ich zumindest mir besser darüber klar werde, wer ist denn eigentlich betroffen von dieser Arbeit, die wir tun. And I would like to make decisions in a way that I'm more aware of who is really going to be affected by the project or by the work that we are doing, to have a more inclusive sense of that. And one of the benefits of our work is that we have forgotten an important group and it then came to a very difficult conflict. And one of the effects that happened this year through the work that we did was that we forget about one very important group and that through that it came to a very heavy conflict.

[03:30]

Political conflict or moral conflict? Politischer oder moralischer Konflikt? Es war ein politischer Konflikt und es gab Todesfrohungen. It was a political conflict and there were even death threatenings. To you guys? An euch. Okay. In that case I have to say I didn't have the intention and I also didn't have all of the control but I did have a big part of the responsibility for this work. After we were there, we thought, what are we going to do?

[04:33]

And the decision that was made was not a decision that we really made. It was a decision that happened. And when these death threats came in then we had to think about what we were going to do and the decision that we made was not really a decision that we you know actively made but more one that happened somehow. That is, we drove into the region and were there for more than a week. We met again and again. I don't want to expand the story too long, but that was something for me that brought me back today. I had an arm of Avalokiteshvara and also a little face. I think showing our faces there was incredibly important for resolving the conflict. And what we did, and I don't want to really go into the details of the conflict at length, but what we did was we showed our faces.

[05:46]

We went into the region that was affected by our work and were there for a week and it seems that Our being there was incredibly important for the dissolution of the conflict and that also brought me to not only the arms of Avalokiteshvara but also to the faces and how important it can be to show the face. I would like to try to avoid this conflict in the future. I would like to help our practice to make conscious decisions. And I would like to make decisions in a more inclusive way in the future. And my question is, how can our practice help to make decisions maybe with more consciousness or more awareness? I think that a bodhisattva can probably give a different answer than the kind of answer that I can give to that for myself right now.

[07:09]

Well, that's a useful example of a complex life situation. And You know, for Buddhism there isn't any, either any other overall control of the cosmos. Nor does the idea of interrelatedness and interdependence mean it's always tending toward unity or wholeness. So that means that because at each moment there's uniqueness, There's no way to predict outcomes.

[08:21]

At the edge of what's happening is always possibilities of the new. So you can't predict. You can't make perfect decisions. But this is a Buddhist view and my view. But you can try to make the best decisions you can. And to ask yourself what would a Bodhisattva do is a traditional practice. It's called the practice of maximal greatness. In other words, at each moment you say, this is what I did. Yeah, I did the best I could.

[09:25]

But a Bodhisattva or a Buddha would have done it better. So you take some pride in what you've done, even if it's a mistake. It could have been worse. But you always feel simultaneously, well, it could have been better. And that's a dynamic, a very important dynamic in kind of working with our accepting and developing our life. Now, if you had it to do over again, would you have made the same decision? No. The first decision was a decision that was made.

[10:34]

That is, the decision to go ahead with this opponent. The first decision which was to confront this opponent we had That was a decision that was made. And the second decision, which was that we went there for a week, that just happened and it was somehow just clear to me. Well, I mean, I think the initial decision that led to the problem, you could have three points of view. Three possibilities. Even if you know more, you still would have made the same decision. Second possibility. Even if you knew more, you would have made the same decision, but you would have made it with a greater awareness of the consequences.

[11:49]

And third, if you knew more, you would have made a different decision. And there's always those possibilities in every situation. So, in general, how do you make a decision? Well, I would say, first of all, obviously the best way to make a decision is on the basis of as much understanding, knowledge, information as you can. Now, the Buddhist view is that most of our knowing is subliminal. Okay, then the question is, how do you How do you activate this subliminal knowing?

[13:05]

The knowing that's accumulated through your life experience and your intuitive sense of the situation. Which is just too much to fit into consciousness. So the idea, the way a practitioner would approach it, is to see what decision you've made as consciously as you can, and then see how you feel about the decision while you're meditating. And that might be over a process, over a period of 15 minutes, or it might be 15 months.

[14:10]

At some point, it becomes clear, this is what I'm going to do. And then you have the consequences. That's just the way. But I think that the more fully you make decision, the better you feel about it, even if it turns out to be wrong. I don't know if that's useful to you, what I said. But let me just... continue a little bit by saying, if we look at the story of Daowu and Yunyan and the thousand-armed Bodhisattva, or Daowu and Yunyan and the... What's that hat for? What's the use of that hat? Okay, now this story of Da Wu and Yun Yan and the Bodhisattva won't make any sense unless we imagine that Da Wu and Yun Yan are practicing compassion.

[15:28]

Then we can ask, what kind of compassion is Da Wu practicing? practicing by bugging his brother that way. Because Da Wu and Yun Yan, it's generally accepted that they were not just Dharma brothers, they were also genetic brothers. Now, so that's, I'm just presenting that as an aspect you ought to consider when you look at the koan. But you can also look at it and say, you know, how long? Look, it's lasted more than a thousand years. Yeah, so what are the horizons of particularity?

[16:33]

In other words, what is the context of this? What are the horizons, the borders of this situation? And I'm getting to the eleven faces of the Bodhisattva. One of the things assumed in these stories is that you're, I'm just using these words because it sounds nice to me, within the horizons of particularity. One of the things one tries to do in one's life as a practitioner is to limit as much as possible one's actions and decisions within a framework in which you can estimate the karmic results.

[18:07]

On the one hand you can't, on the other hand to some extent you can't. And I think one of the teachings of the eleven heads is it works best if it's always face to face. So you're intuitive or however the decision was made to face the situation by bringing your face into the situation is what Buddhism would say is, yeah, one should do if one can. But that has, like in my life, a lot of ramifications. Yeah, I think of, in this example, I always think of Ivan Illich saying he did not want to give any lectures that required amplification.

[19:26]

That's a little bit like saying face-to-face. As soon as you have so many people you need amplification, well, you can see the people, but there isn't much relationship. And that has a lot to do with this face-to-face relationship. Because as soon as you have so many people in a room that your voice has to be reinforced, then you actually have no face-to-face relationship anymore. With considerable apprehension, I have though sometimes given lectures which require amplification. Though I must say I'm shocked. Maybe I'm easily shocked. I'm shocked when I go to a Catholic cathedral, which I do now and then. Surprise, surprise. And the priest uses amplification.

[20:38]

The cathedral is designed so you don't need amplification. It's designed so that there's a certain point where the priest can stand and his voice can be heard. And that also means you have to become the kind of person who can make use of that point. It's part of the practice. There's a practice of teaching tied into the architecture Das ist eine Praxis der Lehre, die in die Architektur hineingewoben ist, die die Entwicklung der Person voraussetzt.

[21:44]

If I was the Pope, not something I've ever considered till this moment, I would make a rule that no priest could use amplification. And if a cathedral sat empty because no priest could make his voice heard, let it sit empty. Now, if I was the Pope, that's how I'd feel. Whether I could really do that, that's another question. But that is how I try to develop the Dharma Sangha. When I hear that some lecture I've given or something is on the internet or somebody... I'm always, as you may have noticed, rather shocked. Some people say, well, I've come to your seminar because I saw you on the Internet.

[23:08]

Saw me or heard me, I don't know what, you know. And I think that's nice, I guess. But actually I don't like it. Now, does that mean we shouldn't make movies or we shouldn't have art or something like that? Does that mean I shouldn't publish a book? Well, these are questions I ask myself. And I've decided that books fit into a certain category, a developed category in our society, which I'm willing to have a book published, but just to have innumerable lectures floating around the Internet, I can't take responsibility for them, how they're going to be understood.

[24:13]

Now, that's why I don't let anybody publish a book that are transcriptions of my lectures. Because if I am ever able to finish this book I'm working on, I'm writing it so I can take responsibility for readers I don't know who they are. And I do that because when I write this book, if I ever finish it, then I can take responsibility for the readers from whom I don't know who they are.

[25:15]

So anyway, it's difficult to know what to do in our complex society, yes. I think I learned the opposite from the case that happened to me, which is that you may not have the control, but you do have the responsibility. I agree, you do. That's why you'd like to keep it within the realm of responsibility that you can actually know the consequences. Okay. Did I interrupt you? Do you want to say something more? I think from the way I'm working, I think it's probably not possible to predict the consequences.

[26:38]

Because we want to influence politics. We want to influence players and enterprises. We want to influence people who are working far away. Yeah. But the reactions come back. And only in this moment you can take the responsibility and receive. This is a mirror. Yeah. So position making. I mean, I think that I imagine there's no way to avoid thinking through some of the consequences. Let's say 80%, but 20% you have to let happen. You have to leave the 20% up to whatever happens.

[27:55]

since I was around in the 60s and was and organized the LSD conference in the United States. I was in the middle of the responsibility of Do you tell people about LSD or not? My organization of the LSD conference, I never took LSD, but my organization of the LSD conference was to try to bring some responsibility into the situation. And with all the principal players, there was a constant debate. Do you take responsibility when you... What's your responsibility when you give LSD to a person who doesn't know they're getting it? Like my doctor, my pediatrician, my children's pediatrician was given LSD by the... What was the group called?

[29:41]

I forget. Anyway, and he was crazy for the next two or three years. He didn't know what he was getting. And some people promoted it as the cure-all religious enlightenment, etc. And I know, I should consider it a rather funny story. That Baba Ramdas, Dick Alpert, when he was living in California, that's his name, He was living in a little cabin by himself, a little house in California.

[30:50]

And at four in the morning, he got a phone call. And this person said, I'm having a terrible, you know, I took LSD on your advice and, you know, I'm going crazy, etc. What can I do, you know, etc. And Dick supposedly said, he told me, If you can find my unlisted phone number in the middle of the night and call me, you're going to be all right. And Dick had allegedly said that if you can find my unlisted phone number in the middle of the night and call me, then you're probably... We're not even getting started on the practices yet, and it's getting an hour from when we're supposed to leave, and soon we'll need another break.

[32:07]

So shall we... I'll see you all tomorrow at 10? Yes. Okay, so just do whatever you'd like with your legs. And let's look at the four vows. Yeah, I mean, I think we could end the seminar right now because we've had enough. It's you Berlin folks who are making them. It's the name of the Frankfurt too is in this, huh? Oh, yeah, I'm outnumbered. Okay, the four vows.

[33:09]

Sentient beings are innumerable. I vow to enlighten them. The sentient beings are innumerable. I vow to enlighten them. Desires are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are innumerable. I vow to enter them. The Buddha's way is endless. I vow to follow it. A bodhisattva means you can say that.

[34:23]

But as a practice, what it's asking you to do is sentient beings, including animals and sentience itself, living life, is that all these dimensions are countless, innumerable. And what is your relationship to them? That's basically what this vow is asking. Before you vow, what is your relationship to sentient beings? And in your work, you're trying to answer this. Okay, so that's, you know, and I think What Buddhism asks and asks the Bodhisattva, what makes a Bodhisattva is the one who asks the question, what is my relationship to all sentient beings?

[35:55]

And again, then... The second is desires are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. So now you have to start thinking about desires. And desire here means all the things we do because we want to do them. All the choices we make. And desires includes vow. Vow is a desire to enlighten all sentient beings. So the word desires here asks you, what are my intentions? What are my views?

[37:08]

Etc. So the bodhisattva becomes a bodhisattva. By exploring what are my views, what are my desires. My views affect what I do, what I desire, want, etc. So it's the study of oneself. Psychologically, ontologically... philosophically, etc. And then Dharma gates are endless. So now this is a list. And it's a list in a certain order. And this is already, the four things independently are powerful, but they're more powerful as a list of four.

[38:30]

And the list has the power of the relationship between the parts and the power of what it excludes. So a list like this has been carried for, again, two and a half millennium. Yeah. Okay, so what's the relationship between sentient beings and enlightening them and desires? Desires, vows, intentions, views. Intentions, views, yeah. Okay, and what's that, the relationship of that to Dharma gates? Dharma gates are endless.

[39:39]

It means each moment is the possibility to enlighten someone. Each moment is an opportunity to notice your desire, notice your intentions. So for the Bodhisattva, each moment is a Dharma gate. The phenomenal world is Dharma, and as a Dharma is also a gate. And the Buddha's way is endless. Okay, now if you understand these first three, and the relationship between the first three, you then understand a lot about Buddhism.

[40:43]

So this is Buddha's way. And you don't even know if you're going to accomplish 80%, 20%, or 1%. But endless as it is, you decide to follow it. And the power of it is that it is endless. Okay. So you See if you can attune yourself. Find your tuning in relationship to these four things. Each and every and all sentient beings. Now, I read the other day... an article by a scientist which says we have 44 years before the tipping point of global warming goes out of control.

[42:07]

I don't know if this is true. I'm not likely to be around in 44 years. With your help, maybe I'll make it. But my daughter will and my grandson. That's not very long, 44 years. I've almost had two 44 years in my life. I'm getting there. Now, of course, it's... based on computer modeling. And two friends of mine who I will honor, I hope, because I think I should mention them, Dennis and Danella Meadows, both dead now, did the modeling for the Club of Rome back in the 1980s.

[43:25]

They were great people and could be models for environmental bodhisattvas. But most of their, a lot of their predictions basically were wrong. But still, they set the, I think we're one of the people, main people that set the pattern for this computer modeling of the future. So, this 44 years may be wrong, but I'm giving this article to a number of scientist friends of mine to see what they think. But if anything close to this 44 years is true, we better start thinking about our relationship to all sentience.

[44:52]

I don't have much hope, though. I'm very happy to be with you, but I don't have much hope. I've been observing the fishing industry destroying itself ignoring the laws of overfishing, governments not enforcing it, but self-interest makes them destroy the basis of their livelihood. So the laws of government do very little, in this case at least. And we don't begin to have the laws in place that can avoid something as near as 44 years.

[46:05]

I'm afraid we're a little bit like Walt Disney's lemmings. Do you know what that's all? You know it's not true. It was faked by Walt Disney. Lemmings don't really do that. They don't really go all over the cliff. Anyway, so how does the Bodhisattva face hopelessness with hope? Okay, or you and I. Okay, so we really need this vow. Yeah, maybe too late, but we still need the vow. And what is our relationship to our views, our intentions, our desires? So someone might ask, what can I do to help others?

[47:25]

And you might, the teacher might say, yes, what can you do to help others? I remember during the Vietnam War, we were meeting with Suzuki Roshi. In a group about this size or less. And a friend of mine was in the front row. And he asked, what can we do to stop the Vietnam War? And Suzuki Roshi said, Let's see if I can capture it. Don't ask what you can do to stop the Vietnam War until you're ready to stop it.

[48:33]

And he hit the chair, knocked the person on the floor. And Suzuki Roshi said, let me see if I can catch up. He asked, don't ask what you can do to end the Vietnam War until you're ready to stop it. And then he took a stick and turned the chair over. So if we want to do something about the environmental crisis we're in, we can't just talk about it. It makes us feel better. But, on the other hand, excuse me for being a preacher here, you know, when Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, came out in 62 or 63 or something, I actually wrote a review of it. And it started the whole idea of environmental independence.

[49:37]

And after that, everyone at least pays lip service to the idea. Lip service? Okay, yeah. And lip service is better than nothing. But lip service often hides the opposite. The main advertisements of our major polluters, ExxonMobil, are all about how they're taking care of the environment. It's better than nothing. But it's going to take time. Okay. So what are our views that might affect others and affect what we do, etc. ?

[51:01]

And as I said, what can we do? Are we making ourselves capable to do something? Are we making ourselves capable to notice Dharma gates? If someone says to me, I want to enlighten all sentient beings, but I'm not interested in Dharma gates. Well, you came in through the door, but there's the window. When someone says to me, I want to enlighten every feeling being, but I'm actually not interested in the Dhamma, then I say, yes, you came in through the door, but there's the window. That's what Shikarishi said to me once. He said, you came into the door, but the window is open.

[52:04]

Okay. And are we willing to enter this path, this endless path? Yeah. Now I'd like to go on with the four Brahmaviharas and the six paramitas, which are the essence and essential to the Bodhisattva practice of compassion. and the actualizing of compassionate interdependence. But I think if we have got a feeling now, hopefully a feeling now, and a way to enter these four basic bodhisattva vows,

[53:13]

Then we've done a lot these three days. So I think now is a good time to stop. Okay. So let's sit for some moments. Thank you for translating. sentient beings are innumerable.

[55:11]

I vow to enlighten them. desires are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are endless. I vow to enter them. The Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to follow it. I think we love another person best when we also have compassion for them, with them.

[57:17]

Go through the ear to the center. Where the sky is. Where the winds are. Where there is silent knowing. Cover the seeds. In your work they will sprout.

[59:20]

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