Well, there's lots of practical things one can do. But mostly you have to discover those yourself. It's part of the craft of practice. I think the main direction in the restorative phase of practice is always a mind, an initial mind of acceptance. And this is a... as a psychological process of acceptance in Zen practice, it doesn't occur through mindfulness. can really only occur through sitting.

[01:13]

And it is, first of all, a process of becoming, not trying to change anything, just becoming really familiar with yourself. So the first step is accept. You have to practice acceptance in every kind of way. And one way to practice acceptance is have an initial mind that always says yes. Or an initial mind that always says welcome. And as I say, you can change your mind on the second. So let's go have dinner together and then take the first airplane out of being to wherever it goes.

[02:18]

Yes. But actually, I can't do that. I'm sorry. But you say yes. Or you have a feeling when you see somebody or see anything, it's always welcomed. You can be practical on the secondary. Secondary is the... Imperative mind. So you really need to develop that kind of habit in your just ordinary thinking. And if you don't, the acceptance you practice in zazen will be undone by your habits and ordinary circumstances.

[03:34]

And I would say, as I think I said earlier last week, the first two or three years of daily meditation or something close to daily meditation. And when I say daily meditation, I don't mean the quantity of meditation. I mean that you meditate on a regular schedule, whether you like to or not. As a psychological process, it has to be whether you like to or not. If you sit when you like to or when you feel like it, it's not a psychological process.

[04:45]

We could call it a well-being process, but not a non-being process. Because your likes and dislikes then basically control your practice. And you need to get past your likes and dislikes if you're going to really practice acceptance. Okay. So the first step is acceptance. And supporting that in your daily... mental activity. And I'd say the second is, excuse me for going on so long, but the second is to really be willing to look at yourself.

[05:50]

And to develop the strength to sit through anything. So the pain of Sashin is actually extremely important. Because once you know you can sit through physical pain that's not damaging you, you can sit through a lot of psychological pain. I said earlier to someone, it's even good during this stage of acceptance to exaggerate things so that you can really bring them out. And since we are many selves, not just one, It's hard for one self to accept the other self.

[07:07]

So I think the phrase, this is also me, helps. Because sometimes you say, and you really feel, this is not me, I'm not a murderer or a violent person or a... You know, a person who would harm oneself or others or something. To take a negative thing. And you need to say it's not me. But if you say this is also me, sometimes you can approach it. And such kind of like to say it's also me instead of saying it's me is a kind of craft, a kind of strategy. And when you get thoroughly familiar with yourself in the way Images, memories, moods come up.

[08:31]

Darkness comes up. I remember I suddenly decided once I have to face... I couldn't say what I could... I have to face anything that's dark or... Anything I could possibly be frightened. Unfortunately, I decided, you know, I thought I was doing it before. But I was always holding back a little. And that's also, I would say, you turn toward what threatens you or frightens you or makes you feel crazy.

[09:34]

I think the rule should be you never turn away But in a possible you turn toward, but you don't turn so far toward you're overwhelmed. But I've been practicing some years at this point. And I used to So I decided, and what's strange is I decided just entering a freeway, an autobahn, on the curve of the autobahn coming up out of the city. I can remember very clearly. But I decided at that point, I've been practicing long enough, I'm not going to just turn toward it anymore, I'm going to go all the way toward it. And a kind of actually momentary darkness came over me.

[10:43]

And I felt a kind of shift in myself, like in my body. And I... Then it passed. It didn't last long, thank goodness. And I drove on home from work. But anyway, you have to keep moving yourself and being willing to face things. I used to practice also with going to sleep at night with the feeling that the most terrible thing could happen to me during the night.

[11:51]

But I'm still going to go to sleep. So I would think, okay, I'm going to wake up raving mad, schizophrenic or something, and I would go to sleep. Okay, if I'm going to wake up that way, fine, but right now I'm going to sleep. So anyway, you have to have some kind of way to move into this territory of accepting yourself. Accepting what you're most scared of. And then, in the middle of this familiarity you develop, And it's a familiarity, it's not an understanding.

[12:58]

In Zen practice, you're not trying to understand, you're just trying to get familiar, familiar, familiar. As things appear. And then you bring intention into that familiarity. So you start intending, I would like to be free of fear of darkness. By darkness I mean psychological, psychic darkness. I want to be free of worrying about what other people think of me or something. So you bring these intentions into a new familiarity and acceptance of yourself, as you are, whatever it is. Exactly. You bring this intention into this field of just being familiar with yourself and accepting yourself.

[14:08]

And the intention itself works. Okay, I guess that's... I'm sorry I went on so long, but... Okay. Anyone else? Sorry. Yeah, yeah. And so, yes, it's a very good thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the abyss for thousands of years.

[15:12]

Because sometimes it can be very difficult. Where there is always a demand, there is always a need, [...] I think confidence is a dangerous word. Because you can't really have confidence. You don't know. I think to really make practice work, you have to put all your eggs in one basket. Do you have that expression in German? You don't put some eggs in this one and some eggs in this one in case you drop that. You put all your... You're going to... And you don't determine, you don't say, oh, is this really the best practice?

[16:17]

I think I'll try a little Tai Chi as well. And I'll keep some of my birth religion beliefs. And if something better comes along, I'll look at that too. You can learn from a practice with that attitude, but you can't realize a practice with that attitude. You basically have to say to yourself, this may not be the best practice. This may not be the best teacher. There may never be results. I believe don't care whether I'm enlightened or not, or if there are any results.

[17:29]

I'm just going to do this. This is where I'm at, this is the life I have right now. I'm going to receive, I'm going to accept this life I've received. In fact, what I'm doing is practicing Yes, let's say Buddhism or whatever it is, in this circumstance, at this time. Of course, there is a period of time where you decide, you know, which teacher, which practice, which etc. But at some point, you have to Shit or get off the pot. It's an old expression.

[18:39]

At some point, you can't look around forever. You just have to decide, this is what I'm going to do. It may not be the best, but it's what I'm going to do. I decided not to say that, but it just came out. And making that decision is the existential kind of dynamic or something like that, the catalyst that really makes practice good. It's like Yuan Wu saying, you must realize Buddhism right where we stand. The whole essential being is right here before us.

[19:45]

It's not so important if it's the right school or the right teacher, etc. And strangely enough, to really not care about enlightenment is quite close to enlightenment. To not care whether there's success or not is quite close to being free of success. To not care about success is very close to being free of success. But you can't fake it. You can't fake not caring about success. I'm not going to be... I know that's faking.

[20:56]

Not caring is... No, that doesn't work. No, they understood. We understood. Yeah, that's not confidence. It's a kind of faith, we could say. Or existential faith or something like that. And it's the catalyst. It's what makes it work. You might be wrong, but it can't be helped. We don't live in a predictable world. And if you want a predictable future, you better not be practicing Zen. And then the next step is maybe one of the most difficult. Is to accept the life that practice gives you. You may want to fit practice into your life.

[22:10]

And that's perfectly fine. Bodhisattva practice is to accept, is to bring your life into practice. And accept the life that practice gives us. And it may not be what we planned. Or what our friends and family planned for us. Hmm. Okay, something else? There are questions that have half come up and floating around.

[23:21]

And it helps everyone, I think, if sometimes they're articulated. But we've talked a lot. If you want to stop, we can stop. Wenn ihr aufhören möchtet, können wir aufhören. You know, I'm a sociologist by what I studied. Also du weißt, dass ich Soziologin bin von meiner Ausbildung her. And I think that is a kind of view which sociology in itself, it's a kind of view of... at the world and at society. And it's very much connected to find, I think the root of sociology is to try to find the right all of society, a possibility to I think the root of sociology is the desire to control society or to find the right organization.

[24:52]

So I find in myself there is this way of looking at what's going on. And in a way, this view is a burden. Can you state it more specifically? What view is a burden? I mean, we know a lot about what's going on in our world. We know what's going wrong, or we believe that we know what's going wrong.

[26:08]

I like that better. And at the same time, it's very clear what the limits of our actions are. So that's how I see this view of view the way of seeing our world as a burden. Because we believe that we know what's going on, but we cannot do much about it. So you feel helpless. In myself I found that I cannot really accept what I see.

[27:20]

and not being able to accept what I see, this somehow limits me. Why does not being able to accept what you see limit you? Because I'm always fighting I don't want it to be true. I don't want that it's really like that. Also, ich möchte nicht, dass es wahr ist. Ich möchte nicht, dass es wirklich so ist. During the past weeks, a sentence came up in me, and it was only part of a sentence, and it said, it said, when the world is really like that,

[29:03]

and then it was open. But it helped me, somehow it was nourishing to feel that half sentence. Can you say the half sentence again? When the world is really like that. Meaning, since the world is really like that. If the world is really like that. Then what? Yeah, then it's really like that.

[30:05]

Yeah. Yeah. My feeling again, coming back to this bodhisattva decision, if the world is really like that and it is really like this, What can I do? When you really feel this. And I think when you can't accept it is when you're also very close to really feeling it. You can only find either some way to help, and some way to help makes a difference in yourself as well as the world perhaps. Or you come to the conclusion there's nothing to do but to practice.

[31:16]

So let's sit for a moment. Krista, who is it that comes today? Elise? Isle. Isle. Isle, yeah. Remember the bird that we saw there standing still? Were you here? Last weekend, yeah. Somebody found the bird sitting dead under the deck. Oh. We had a bird just stood there for, I don't know how long, maybe a couple of hours.

[32:59]

It just stood in the window. The door was open, it's just standing. I had the fantasy it came because it might hear the Dharma. But we guessed probably it would die. It was in the process of dying. And it had diarrhea and, but just stood there for hardly, I mean, occasionally moved its head flatly or opened its beak about a millimeter. Well, you were here too. Then suddenly it flew away, and then it died under the deck here. So I would like to, starting with that optimistic note, I would like to... have a report on what you spoke about.

[34:18]

After these groups, I always feel so left out, you know. So please someone start. Felix, Felix, Felix. Is that what you did? Oh, my goodness. Maybe you better start tomorrow. Okay. I hardly waited. Okay. I hardly waited. And I try to give structure to the fullness of... And there were, for the question one, there were a lot of

[35:27]

very bodily, physically occasions where we felt very... Alive. Alive. Like running, being in the... during sailing, or horseback riding, or singing, or dancing. Mm-hmm. So... So it's just like... It was interesting. It's very interesting. The experience of the birth of our own children. And in this situation there was the confidence that you can handle the situation from your own resources or something.

[37:01]

also during sasen and also in like intense kind of discussion where it started flowing so this is leading to the second question when did you feel alive with others Being together with children or grandchildren. Dancing with a good partner. Where you feel familiarity and it's just going along well. Laughing together. The experience of being present during the last hours of life of one's partner.

[38:15]

To the third question of something we would like to give to somebody. To give laughter. The fire, you know, the cold, the hot fire of your own intensity. Wow, okay. Staunen und Faszination. Fascination and being startled or astonished or something. Achtung! An honest kind of respect regarding the other one.

[39:34]

And after somehow finding all these examples and talking about them, Interestingly, what came up was the experience of boundarylessness. in context with violence or imagined violence? Feeling without boundaries in connection with violence. When you're looking at the violent scene in a movie or also when you're fantasizing or when you're doing it, then sometimes also you have a feeling of being very vital.

[40:42]

That's what also people who were in this situation also reported. Okay? All right, thank you. Great. Someone else. Someone else. Well, we can stop now. In our group it wasn't so different from what we just heard. There were situations where we felt very alive, connected with being very much in the body.

[42:09]

Sometimes it were unexpected situations, kind of extreme situations. Like a challenge you had to come up with. You had to meet, yeah. You had to meet. Yeah. And also situations where you felt very much accepted and filled with gratefulness. And when we started talking about the second question, somehow we asked ourselves, it arose, what does it mean to be alive or to feel alive? And the situations were...

[43:48]

Being alive with others were situations where you shared something with others. For example, in groups where a shared space somehow like a frequency you share. Meeting challenges together. Being silent together. Were you in the same group?

[45:14]

Okay. To the third question, what could we give to somebody? The first thing that came up was a smile. Smile together. Mm-hmm. And several people said the physical presence of the other to recognize it and to accept it. And sharing this common space.

[46:19]

Yeah, okay, thanks. In the beginning, each one of us told in which situation they felt most alive. And for most people, or for all people, it turned out that this being most alive was connected with some kind of ecstatic experience, or I don't know, .

[47:22]

Ecstasy, but sometimes connected with drugs or with only an example. Ecstatic situation. This feeling of being alive felt kind of an ecstasy. Yes. ...with death or situations of dying. And then the question is whether he feels the other way around, and even the answer to the question is whether he feels in a group, in a position,

[48:24]

And experiencing aliveness with others is when you completely give consent to the place or role you have in the group. And part of it is feeling certain resonance with at least one person in the group. And to the third question, at first there came things like if you would be a magician, not things you could really give, but if it would be possible.

[49:38]

and then this discussion developed whether it's possible to give something to somebody and whether the other person can take it or whether and whether you three were in the same group yeah yeah okay That's good. It somehow reminded me of, we asked my little daughter Sally, who's now 40, when she was four, she wrote a note. How did she write a note when she was four? When we first got to Japan, She must have been six. But we left Japan when she was seven, so I don't know. Anyway, so probably six.

[51:19]

She wrote a note to Santa Claus. She said, please, dear Santa, please give me a wishing wand. Lieber Santa, bitte gib mir ein Wishing Wand. Is it like magic? You can get what you want. Also seinen Wünschstab oder Zauberstab. And a machine that tells me what I don't need. Und eine Maschine, die mir sagt, was ich nicht brauche. If you have such a machine, you don't need a wishing wand. So something else? And we found a common ground in saying that we wouldn't like to give something, but we would like to offer something.

[52:23]

And then things came up like offering two hands. Or a glance. Or a gesture which says, I'm here, you're here. What society seems to have decided is to say hello or good morning or how are you. What society seems to have decided is to say some Kruzgot, you know. It's a nice day. Buddhism has decided to, the main things are a bow or a smile. And you see it in Thailand, places where they really emphasize the smile.

[53:48]

Okay, someone else? That's three. That was it, huh? Oh, okay. But is there anything else anybody would like to say or bring up for our discussion? She wants to add that there is ecstasy but also instasy.

[54:54]

Oh. Which can be blissful or something. How would you define instacy? Like experiencing the meaning of... No, ecstasy would be in English, out of your state, out of... She means experiencing of fullness and seeing. Okay. Meaning. Okay. Reason, reason, it moved.

[56:07]

Okay. Yes? Yes. We looked at the questions, and we saw that it's a succession which leads from the I to the you. And the first one is when you yourself felt most alive, it seemed to happen, just happen. And then there comes intention.

[57:17]

Like when the question is to give something to somebody, there's intention put into the picture. that the people who had to begin with had exposed the dark sides, and that we had felt joy, a sense of competence, and that no one knew us, no one knew us. And we also noticed that the examples that came up first were like joy and competence, the positive side, and there were no shadow examples. And we excluded like anger or aggression or something like that.

[58:21]

Okay. Maybe to add to that, we talked about how important it is to have a framework and to be able to live this energy or chain or to be able to live it out and to feel involved in it. And in addition to that, we then talked about how important it is to have like a frame where you can also experience that kind of things and let them be alive. What do you mean by a frame? A structure. Like in the martial arts. Okay. Or like in a discourse where also you have the feeling of a fight or something, or a game.

[59:26]

Yeah, okay. Well, I noticed for me that the feeling of being alive with myself or with others is connected to a certain kind of self that is not present. And it has a liquid kind of quality, a little bit like swimming in the world somehow. Es hat so eine flüssige Qualität, so wie wenn man in der Welt schwimmen würde. And I'm fascinated how different I can experience myself.

[60:35]

Differently, yeah. Okay. Anything else? Anyone else? I'm surprised no one mentioned, or maybe you did mention, insights or some turning point where you feel clarity in your life and you make a decision or something like that. And what about being in love? Doesn't that make you feel alive? At least for a brief period of time. Or making love.

[61:36]

Or making aliveness. Yeah, I think for me it would be, there's lots of times when one extreme is like two weeks fighting a forest fire without sleeping. The other end would be just feeling at ease. And the other end would be to just feel relaxed. Well, I think we've had a long enough day and I would, let's sit for a little bit and then we can start.

[63:20]

I think I'm looking for words to express what I notice. But I'm actually, I would say, looking for the, I'm looking for the distinctions that allow us to notice something. And sometimes in looking for the distinctions, I actually have to Because I'm looking for the distinctions, I think I don't get stuck in words. Because the distinction is clearer to me than the words. So that's fine for me, but if I'm talking with you, I have to find some words that point to the distinction.

[64:34]

And we, you know, distinctions, once they're made, become almost a kind of vow. I've told the story a number of times of Sophia liking to build towers. I think maybe she's a tomboy. A tomboy is a girl who acts like a boy. A sissy is a boy that acts like a girl. Anyway, so, because at least I've read, I don't know if it's just one of these ideas someone has, that boys build towers and knock them down and girls make spaces and protect them.

[65:35]

It sounds too obvious to me. Anyway, she loves to build towers with me and maybe she thinks she's satisfying my boy side. But she knocks them down faster and I can build them almost. So she hands me a wooden animal, you know, a sheep to put on top of a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus in three blocks. Oh, you know all these words, that's good. But you built them in German.

[66:38]

So similar. Yeah, it's similar. So she, I hand her, she hands me the sheep and I say, that's a lamb. She says, that's not a lamb. I said, it's a lamb. It's English, it's a lamb. No, she said, not a lamb. And she points over to a goose and she says, that's a lamb. I say, no, that's not a lamb, that's a goose. And then I look again and the goose is a nightlight, it's a lamp. Yeah, so I say, oh, suddenly it dawns on me, you know. And I say, yes, you're right, that's a lamp, and this is a lamb with a silent B. And once she's got it clear, she feels fine.

[67:41]

She says, you know, she says, Papa, lamb. She hands me the sheep. Okay. Okay. It's very important for her that the distinctions are precise. Yeah. So we make distinctions to point something out. We have to be careful with the distinctions that we don't give them too much attention. Entity meaning. We make just simple sāsan instructions. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. This actually points to the fourth skandha.

[68:43]

When thoughts are just floating up and you cannot invite them to tea. And it allows within the fourth skanda the shift to the field of mind. Because if you don't invite the thoughts to tea, you can sort of notice the room they're walking around in. And you're also implicitly making the basic Zen distinction that occurs in all the koans of guest and host. The thoughts are guests and somehow the room or the field of mind is the host. And guest and host are also ways of saying relative and absolute form and emptiness.

[70:11]

So in a simple instruction like don't invite your foster tea, you're actually right in the middle of Buddhism, right straight through from the beginning to end. And you're in the middle of what's Zen and characteristic, Dzogchen teaching, which is not to suppress thoughts, but to look past them or suspend them. Another basic instruction is don't scratch. And that's really after a while it becomes unimportant, but in the beginning it can be pretty important. And what do you do when you have an ant in one ear and a mosquito in the other?

[71:28]

You can use both hands. Convenient. This is an enlightened person right there. Use both hands. I could come up behind you and use both hands. But it is annoying to have a fly in your nose or something like that when you're trying to sit. But often these itches are actually acupuncture points. You scratch them one place and they appear another place. And you think it's a very fast ant. But don't move is to... I mean, don't scratch is to... still the body-mind, because the body-mind itself tends toward distraction and need excitement, just like the mental mind, the conscious mind does.

[72:44]

It can be distracted too, just like like your consciousness can be, your mind. Mentation can be. And don't look around is the way the body initiates consciousness. So don't look around means to really not, instead of what's going on over there, what's going on over there, And it's also, don't look around also means to keep your eyelids in a position, either slightly open or lightly closed.

[73:48]

So if when you're meditating you tend to look around or, you know, then you're really not meditating, you're just sitting there. Because meditation is the same, similar kind of shift, but even a bigger shift. similar kind of shift from waking to sleep. There's a bump you go over into meditation. And you're physically in a different place, just like you can tell when somebody's faking sleeping.

[74:54]

You walk in a room and your kid is pretending to sleep. Yeah, you know it's pretending to sleep. Because you can feel the presence of consciousness, of voluntary consciousness. There's not an involuntary feeling in the breathing. And when I come in a room like this, I can feel a couple areas of consciousness and several areas of non-consciousness. So if the distinctions are well tuned, And you just follow them, you know. They are usually several levels of teaching.

[75:56]

So... Now, yesterday we... spoke about restorative practice and transformative practice. Yeah, and I chose those words because they're similar and they actually do make clear two different ways of practicing. And maybe I think that Some of us, I mean probably most of us are doing restorative practice.

[77:01]

Perhaps we want to do transformative practice. But transformative practice is really based on restorative practice. Or they of course work together. And this process of becoming thoroughly familiar with yourself is restorative practice. But when we spoke about putting all your eggs in one basket, the existential demands of the decision to practice That's transformative practice. Okay. So I'm asking myself the question for today. Why does Buddhism make a distinction of non-self?

[78:27]

I think it's my language and my distinction, but it's distinction that's fundamental in Buddhist practice. But here I'm trying to work with what English offers me. Yeah, I would guess that although within the Dharma Sangha the Buddhist language is English, many times I've been told that the German words are, for Germans, already leased out to other views, rented by various cultural... And English words seem easier. But I would guess if Christina, for instance, starts teaching Buddhism in German, she would eventually or pretty quickly begin to find German words which weren't a translation of my words.

[79:51]

Okay. So we have non-self. Now what really do I mean by non-self? I mean actually something like non-self-referential self. Because we're really talking about two kinds of selves. I think non-self is a self. Otherwise I'd say no self. Or the absence of self. The absence of self or no self is something else than what we're talking about. So we have then, if we try to be clear, we'd have to say self-referential self and non-self-referential self.

[81:24]

Maybe we could call ego... Exclusively self, referential self. Ego exclusively? The ego we could define as only self-referential or something like that. Okay. Now, these are clumsy terms, non-self, referential self and so forth. Sounds like Heidegger and so forth. Yeah. But, I mean, we're talking about something that English doesn't have distinctions, doesn't have words for. If it had words for, we'd be able to make the distinctions, and we wouldn't even think they were complicated terms.

[82:28]

Yeah, I mean, I was struck by the rapport, to have rapport. It's difficult rapport. I feel a rapport with you. That's not difficult at all. You must feel rapport down there, all of you. But rapport means port is like seaport or porter, something that's carried. And rapport means again, so it's to carry together or to carry again. But refer means to carry again too, re-ferried.

[83:40]

Ferried is to carry. But you have these two words, to refer and to rapport. You can see that they're similar, but we don't see their similarity anymore. So there's complex ideas in simple words, but you just use them, you know. So we're at the stage, unless we use Sanskrit terms or something like that, which don't have any coinage in our culture, You understand what I mean by coinage. You can't spin the word. It just sits there. It has no fuzziness. Mm-hmm. Okay, so if we're going to use English words and German words, then we have to make these... At this stage, we have to kind of like try to find a group of words that make the distinction.

[84:59]

Okay. So let's just say we have two selves then that I'm speaking about. One called non, for short, non-self. Which means it functions as a self, but it's not self-referencing. and self which by self I mean self-referential self what happens you make your personal history and so forth and refers to your future and so forth it's time sequenced Now, why does Buddhism want to imagine non-self?

[86:21]

To answer that question, I think we have to look at what is the territory of self. Because if we also look at self as a function, then we have to look at self as in what territory does it function? Okay. Now, you all know that I, most of you do, that I was on the flip chart from this seminar, but somebody removed it or changed the flip chart. But most of you are familiar with my emphasizing self as a function and not as an entity. And the main function of self is to create separation, connectedness, and continuity.

[87:33]

And Once you make that distinction, those distinctions, you can also practice in relationship to those distinctions. You can notice when you establish separation, when you see somebody or see something. And I ask you to work with the phrase, already separated and already connected. So you can ask yourself, when you first meet someone, do you feel already separated?

[88:42]

Before anything happens, do you feel separated? You have to get to know this person. Or do you feel already connected? Well... Most of the time, most of us feel separated when we meet somebody, first meet somebody. But there's some cases where we don't. Like when often we feel connected with babies, infants, children. Or as I say, if you're lost in the woods out here for five hours and it's hailing in there and summer outside and you run into, suddenly see a person, you feel already connected.

[89:42]

A human being. So what's the difference when you feel separated? What mind is connecting and what mind is separated? What do you see when the person in the forest, you happen after five hours of seeing no one, somebody appears, What do you feel? What aspects of that person do you connect with? These are simple things. I mean, we all have these experiences. The bodhisattva is one, though, who, with everyone he or she meets, feels connected. So what part of the person or what way do they feel connected?

[90:45]

It's not just that they're super nice guys. That would be an effort to be a super nice guy all the time. No, they just function. A bodhisattva functions differently. And that's transformative practice. But they're transformations that are accessible to us. They're emphases we can emphasize. They're like the taste of sweetness or bliss on a sound at night.

[91:57]

And to realize later that that's the surfacing of the Sambhogakaya mind. But without teaching or practice, you wouldn't either notice that surfacing in a way that was transformative, was transformative. And without practice there wouldn't be the medium of transformation. Okay. And restorative practice establishes the medium of transformation. To restore you to the fullness and of your life.

[93:03]

To your aliveness. To an almost continual feeling of aliveness. Yeah. Now sometimes, you know, sometimes we feel most alive when we come home, back in familiar circumstances. It's nice to be home. Relaxed and alive. Come home. It's just a nice thing to come home. Mm-hmm. There's a poem by Paul Goodman, which is the sociologist Paul Goodman. He gets into a taxi coming from the airport. And he sees the lordly Hudson, the Hudson River, which is a huge river.

[94:11]

The Lordly Hudson hardly flowing under its green-grown cliffs. And he cried to the taxi driver, and the taxi driver didn't know what he meant. Home, home, he said to the taxi driver. Oh. But that's a great line, don't you think? The lordly Hudson Hartley flowing under its green-grown cliffs. Yeah. If you don't know it, it's a big river like the Rhine or something, the big dark cliffs on the New Jersey side. And it moves very slowly toward the Atlantic.

[95:18]

Mm-hmm. Or sometimes I've taken a plane, you know, in the middle of winter to Los Angeles. And you get out and it's like spring. I'm very happy not to be home. It's differing and fresh feeling and, oh my God, possibilities.

[95:42]

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