This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you all for coming. Coming back to City Center is always a great joy for me. but I've never had such a formal occasion of giving this talk. I thought today I would talk to a very little group, sort of informally, but I'm very happy to do it for all of you. And I thought, since I've just come back from Tassahara, and Paul Hall and I were leading this Buddhist-Christian retreat there for a week.

[01:00]

I'd give you the gist of that. We built our retreat. It's always on practice. That is the essence. It's Buddhist-Christian practice. But we built it on six questions. We had six full days, and so we built it on six questions. actually six question words, because we wanted to focus on orientation in our practice. There is, among many people today, there is a kind of confusion and disorientation. A little confusion is good, it's a little better. than having everything so nicely ordered in its place, but only a little. And so it is better to have also a map for orientation, a kind of map.

[02:07]

And that was our idea. We would try to build up a kind of inner map. And we started with who, because we start always with ourselves. go to a state park or something, by the parking lot you will see a map, and it says, you are here. So we started with this, you are here. Who am I? Who is asking these questions? Who was the first question? Then came a set of three questions, why, what, and how. How is, of course, the practice question. On these three questions, confront us in different ways with that great mystery with which we are as human beings confronted. We are the animals that reflect on life, on life as a mystery that we will never be able fully to fathom.

[03:15]

And these three questions, why, what, and how, lead us, their doorways into this interaction with the great mystery of life. And then we added two more questions. When and where? So I, when and where, dealing with these other three questions. So I'll go through each of these questions and I can give you only very, very briefly what we had a whole day to develop. But we also used poems. Both Paul and I like poetry very much, so we always used poems. And I brought you one poem for each of these questions, so the poems will say a lot more than what I can say in a short time. So let's start with who.

[04:16]

That's you. So we start with you. Who am I? I said, I. You could also say, I myself. You can also say, who, me? So we have a variety of words to answer the question, who are you? Who is it? Me, I, I myself. very important that we have these different words because they point to very different things. Normally we say I, but when we want to really emphasize it, we say I myself. It's already a starting point. Are there two? Is there one? How is the self related to the I? And there we started with a little

[05:21]

experiment or exercise that you yourself can also make right here and now to find the difference between the I and the self. It's very simple. You just watch yourself. We can all watch ourselves. Strange that you can do that, you know. We can watch ourselves. I watch myself. Who is watching whom, you know? So you go further and further back and keep watching until no one is watching the watcher. When you have reached the point where nobody is watching the watcher and you are the watcher, that's the self. Very simple. It's not easy to always connect with it, but we know at least where it is. And then there is this I. You can ask, how are they related to one another?

[06:34]

One of the ways that I find helpful is to think of my I as expressing that self. Because there's something very interesting about the self, it is only one. It cannot be divided. When you reach the watcher whom nobody can watch, you are not in time, you are not in place, there is nothing that can be divided. So you even experience, at least you get a glimpse, of the fact that this self is one for all of us. There's just one self. And in the Christian tradition, we call it the cosmic Christ. And St. Paul says, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me.

[07:39]

And in the Buddhist tradition, we call it the Buddha nature. It's not two different things. Two different names for the same reality. And that... is so inexhaustible that it wants to express itself over and over again in all these many different eyes. And we are a different eye because we are a different body. I'm somebody, and you are somebody, and so many bodies, and they all express that one's self. So through our bodily existence, we are... distinguished from one another, but through ourself we are together. And now comes the moment where we forget the self, and there's only the I left. And the moment this I forgets that we are really only one, and I'm just an expression of that communality, that I get scared.

[08:43]

Fear comes in. And fear is the starting point for everything that can go wrong. Because when you fear, the next thing is you get aggressive. Fear is the root for aggression. You want to defend yourself. After all these others, you get fearful about to defend yourself. Then you think, I have to get ahead of them, so competition comes in. Before they step on me, I'd rather step on them. And so you try to get up on the ladder. And then you think, oh, there are so many of us, there isn't enough. So you get greedy. I want more, I want more. I don't have enough. And that is the me. We need a word for it, so we call it the me, because it says me, me, me. Or you can call it ego, that's a little more elegant. But... So it's very important when you ask who that you ask this question who many times in the course of the day.

[09:54]

Who is speaking here? Who is eating here? Who is this? Who am I? Am I now the me or am I the I myself? Am I remembering this self? So this who question can be... Very important. And for this whole question, we have a poem which I'm sure many of you know, but it is helpful to refresh our memory. It's by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it's called, Call Me By My True Names. Call me by my true names. Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow, because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second. To be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone,

[11:06]

I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. Of all that are alive. Why? Because I speak here as the self. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly, metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to catch the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

[12:12]

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet. capable of seeing and loving. I'm a member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands, and I'm the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are one.

[13:17]

says it more beautifully than my words can say it. And this I, this I myself, because we hold the two together, I myself, is now confronted with this mystery of life. We are alive. And there is this mystery of life. And in our retreat, we prefer to speak about it as life, that great, unfathomable mystery with which human beings are confronted. But those who use the word God correctly can also call it God. It's difficult. We try to avoid the word God because for most people, it suggests somebody, which is already wrong, Thomas Merton said, God isn't somebody else.

[14:25]

That's the starting point. And it suggests that there's a gap between us and all the rest. But when you speak about life, all the things that are true also about God are obvious. We are immersed in it. It is in us. It moves us. We can't even say, do I have life or does life have me? Each one has a lot to recommend. Both is true, in a way. Life lives us. You can't even stop breathing. It will breathe. No matter what you do, you can hang yourself, but breathing goes spontaneously. Digest, you know. Couldn't do it. The first thing, how to digest your breakfast. Life does it for you. We are totally immersed in something which we do not understand, and not only not yet understand, but which is really a mystery because even science, with all that it can say about life, cannot say what life is and why there is life.

[15:38]

So this why lets us down this question, why is there anything rather than nothing? Why can I ask why? And this why leads you down, down, down deep into the silence. There's a silence that no echo will ever come back. And you ask why deeply enough, you get into that silence that you want when you sit on your cushion. That's the why silence. And yet, this why is not impersonal. It's not a person.

[16:39]

That would be completely wrong. But it's not impersonal. We are related to it. The moment I say I, I'm presupposing a thou. I doesn't make any sense if there isn't a you. And this you is not the sum total of all the other yous that I meet in my life. And again, we can check that out. You can check that out because you will find that your life is not just a succession of little events, unconnected events, but you experience your life as a story. And if it is a story, you're telling it to someone. The story is told. So you're telling it. Are you telling it to yourself?

[17:41]

One doesn't tell a story to oneself. One tells a story to someone else. You tell this story to life. You live by experiencing your life story and telling it to life. And you try to tell this story to people you meet, especially if you really love somebody, you want to tell them your whole story, and you never can. You never can. And the more you love one... The more you experience how painful that is that you can't tell them that story. But it's a story that you tell life. And that is why we say that life, you are personally related to life. You can explore that area. And of course, that is an area that... The Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition, the Muslim tradition, they have explored that much more. Also, the Hindu tradition, the lover, they call this, the lover, the great lover.

[18:45]

But in the Buddhist tradition, that is not so much explored. But we mentioned it, and it's an important aspect. And it's where our deepest... passion comes in, in this relationship to the Tao. And so we read a poem by Rilke, which is very interesting. He first wrote it as a love poem, and then he wrote a book of prayers, the book of hours, it's called book of hours, book of the hours of prayer, and he put this poem as a prayer into it. And it goes like that. Extinguish both my eyes, I see you still. Slam shut my ears, I can still hear you talking. Without my mouth I can implore your will, and without feet towards you I keep on walking.

[19:52]

Break off my arms, I shall still hold you tight. My heart will yet embrace you all the same. So press my heart, my brain knows no deterrent. And if at last you set my brain aflame, I carry you on my bloodstream's current. He's passionate. And it's both a love poem and a prayer for him. Because we can have, we can cultivate that personal relationship to... to the mystery of life, and that is where the question why leads us. And then what gets a completely different aspect of life into view. It gets all the living things into view. Why is there an elephant? Why is there a flea?

[20:55]

Why is there... all the things that we create, the toothbrush and the car and the computer. Why, why, why? It all springs out of this abyss of nothing, which we tap and we ask why. The what springs out. Every what springs out of this why. And that is the original jump, the origin. It jumps out and is there. So what... We ask for each thing. What is it? What is it? We want to understand what it is. And one way of making sense of what everything is, is that it is a word. A word in the widest sense, because it's not a word that you can look up in a dictionary.

[21:56]

but that it speaks to me. Because when something becomes really deeply meaningful to us, we say, that speaks to me, that has a message for me. A tree can have this message, a landscape, a person, of course. It speaks to me. And when it speaks to me, I can call it a word. And so we can understand everything there is as a word that life addresses to me. So out of the silence comes the word, and now we want to understand it. And understanding comes always through doing something with what is given to you. Or a doing would already be the responding to the word, the response to the word. You hear the word, and you respond. For this what, we had a little poem by Kabir.

[22:59]

Kabir was a mystic poet in India, and he was very interreligious. He was a Buddhist. He was a Hindu. He was a Muslim. He was everything. It was very early on. I think it was in the... 15th century, I see. So he wrote, Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing. Swing. All earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees and it never winds down. Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon. Ages go by and it goes on. Everything is swinging. Heaven, earth, water, fire, and the secret one slowly growing a body.

[24:07]

The secret one slowly growing a body. That's what what is. That's one way in which we can look at what. What is it? And then comes the how. I must make this short because the how poem is a little longer than the others and I do want to read it to you because the basic answer to how was easy does it. That was our answer. Easy does it. And if you find that easy... not forced, not having your own idea how you answer to that word, that situation, whatever you're confronted with. And there is a poem by a Taoist master. And the example for how to do it in this story is a meat cutter.

[25:18]

the most despised person, a meat cutter, for heaven's sake. And it says, Prince Wenhui's cook was cutting up an ox. Out went the hand, down went the shoulder. He planted the foot, he pressed with a knee, the ox fell apart with a whisper. The bright cleaver murmured like a gentle wind, rhythm, timing, like a sacred dance, like ancient harmonies. Good work, the prince exclaimed. Your method is faultless. Method, said the cook, laying aside the cleaver, what I follow is thou. beyond all method.

[26:19]

When I first began to cut up an oxen, I would see before me the whole ox in one mass. After three years, I no longer saw this mass, I saw the distinctions. But now I see nothing with my eyes. My whole being apprehends. My senses are idle. The spirit, free to work without plan, follows its own instinct, guided by natural lines, by the secret openings, the hidden spaces. My cleaver finds its own way. It cuts through no joint, chops no bone. A good cook needs a new chopper every year. He cuts. A poor cook needs a new one every month, he hacks. I have had this cleaver 19 years. It has cut up a thousand oxen.

[27:23]

Its edge is as keen as if newly sharpened. There are spaces in the joints. The blade is thin and keen. Where this thinness finds that space, there's all the room it needs. It goes like a breeze. Hence, I have this cleaver 19 years as if newly sharpened. True, there are sometimes tough joints. I feel them coming. I slow down. I watch closely. Hold back, barely move the blade. And whomp! The part falls away, landing like a cloud of earth. Then I withdraw the blade, stand still... and let the joy of the work sink in. I cleaned the blade and put it away. Prince Wan Hui said, this is it. My cook has shown me how I ought to live my own life.

[28:27]

The translation is by Thomas Merton, and I think it's a very good translation. scholars of Chinese also say that even though he's Chinese, he wasn't a Chinese scholar, but he understood what it was all about, and that's why he could translate these poems so well. So this is the how. If we let it, it does itself. We have to let it. That's the main thing. And then... So these three questions were our encounter with that great mystery of life. And then we came, the how is already practiced, but we came more specifically with regard to the practice. When and where, those are the two concrete here and now we have to do the practice. Now, you have to do it now, because when else do you want to do it?

[29:41]

If not now, when? That doesn't mean you're waiting, because if you're waiting, when the time comes, it will also be now. There's never anything but now. And T.S. Eliot says, all is always now. All is always now. Think that over. That is an important statement. if it isn't now, it is not. It was or will be, it isn't, it was, it is. And when you remember the past, you remember it as now. When you think of the future, think of it as now. And when it comes, it will be now. So all is always now. And everything depends on getting into this now and meeting the opportunity that this now is offering you. So the question, when, is an important one to ask ourselves. About this, all is always now, that is a passage from T.S.

[30:49]

Eliot from his poem, The Four Quartets. And I'll read you a tiny little piece of that poem that leads up to that statement. He says, words move, music moves. only in time. But that which is only living can only die. There's something that's more than just living. Words after speech reach into silence. That silence is the more and ever more. Only by the form, the pattern, can words or music reach the stillness as a Chinese jar still moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin while the note lasts, not that only, but the coexistence or say that the end precedes the beginning and the end and the beginning ends.

[32:01]

We're always there before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. And in this now, it's all in there. All is always now. And so everything depends on us finding this, finding our way into this now. Finding our way. And that is where the where comes in, our last question, where. Where am I? Here and now, where am I? And very often, when we are lost, we don't know where we are. And there we read this poem by David Wagoner, which is also a very well-known poem, Lost. It's called Lost. And it's very much inspired by the Native American attitude towards life.

[33:05]

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here. Wherever you are is called here. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. must ask permission to know it and be known. That's the action. You must treat the ear as a powerful stranger. You must ask permission to know it and to know and to be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers. I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying, here. No two trees are the same to raven.

[34:08]

No two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or a branch does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. This is where we find the here. We let the here find us. It's very similar to that easy does it. It finds us. Let it find you. You don't have it. It'll find you. And you interact. And this interaction, that is really what it all leads up to. Interaction. interaction, being here now and interacting with whatever is. And for that, every spiritual practice leads you to that.

[35:10]

Every spiritual practice, what makes it a spiritual practice is that it leads you to the present moment. That's almost the definition of a spiritual practice. And one spiritual practice with which I would like to round this out and conclude is grateful living. You mentioned the website, gratefulness.org. For more than a decade now, we have helped people find a spiritual practice who don't have a spiritual practice, Grateful living is something that anybody can do. You don't have to sit on the cushion. You don't have to even set aside for it. You do it wherever you are. Grateful living. And it also leads you into the now. The first thing is that you have to know what you mean by gratefulness.

[36:17]

We all know what we mean, but we have to bring that home to us. Gratefulness arises spontaneously in every human being, child, a child already, everybody, anywhere in the world, when something precious is given to you. It must be precious to you. It doesn't have to have a monetary value, but a flower, a pebble, a flower. a soap or something that is precious to you, and it's a free gift. These two things must come together. You really treasure it, it's really precious, and it's a free gift. If you have to work for it, you're not grateful. You want your paycheck or something, but when it's a free gift, then gratefulness arises. That's the first step. So we know what gratefulness means. Now you go the next step and you say, every moment, this here and now that we're just talking about, is the most precious gift that anybody can give you.

[37:28]

Because if you don't have here and now, anything else that you would want, you can't have. You have to be here and now to get whatever you want. And it's freely given to you by life. You can't even buy it. If you want an extra moment when your last moment comes, no amount of money will give it to you. And yet every moment is given to us, every moment, this moment and the next moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. And if we miss this opportunity, life is so generous, gives us the next moment another opportunity. overwhelming, unbelievable. And if we realize that, I'm glad you are laughing because that makes us alive, that makes us come alive. And to live with this consciousness that every moment is a gift and all I need to do is respond to this opportunity.

[38:34]

much more joyful. If you started now, you know, this is one advantage of great living over zazen. I don't want to... You sit on your cushion for a very long time before you get any results. But if you start... remembering that every moment is a gift, this evening you will already have the results that you are much more joyful. So the good news is that you can combine it with Zazen and you can combine it with everything you are doing. So I'm not saying anything against NASA, especially not here in the Buddha Hall, but add this. It gives you zest in life. It wakes you up. It gives you joy, which is, I always say, the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens.

[39:39]

Normally we think, well, if something nice happens, we are happy, and if something bad happens, we are not happy. But gratefulness... is the joy that you can have even if very bad things happen. And bad things do happen. Why? Can you be grateful for them? No, you can't. I can tell you half a dozen or a dozen things, and you can think of two dozen things right away that you cannot be grateful for. Oppression, exploitation, violence, what's happening in many parts of the world right now. on a personal level, unfaithfulness and lying and many, many things for which nobody can be grateful. But when you come into a situation in which you are confronted with these things that are against the grain of life, it's an opportunity for you. And the real gift within every gift is opportunity.

[40:42]

And so when... something really bad happens to you, most of the time something good happens. That's also important. You don't realize it until you start paying attention and being grateful for it. But when you are grateful, you find more and more and more things for which you can be grateful. And always reason to enjoy. Enjoy that you can walk. Enjoy every step. Enjoy that you can breathe. Enjoy that you can sleep. Enjoy that you have eyes to open in the morning, even if it's not exactly the time when you want to open them. You will open them more joyfully. You're grateful that you have eyes. Not everybody has eyes. We can take it for granted. So, most of the time, it's the opportunity to enjoy. But when something untowards happens to you, it is an opportunity for something else. For instance, to learn something.

[41:46]

This can be very difficult to learn. To grow by it can cause growing pains. To protest against it. Forget that. Very important. Stand up and be counted. So whatever happens, it is an opportunity to do something, to respond. And now we only need And for this opportunity, we can be grateful. And now we need only a very simple method for this grateful living. And it's really simple. It's just stop, look, go. That's all. We have to build into our daily life stop moments. Tiny. They don't have to be longer than a second. Tiny little stop. And often... When you begin, the beginning of something is often a very important time to stop.

[42:51]

For instance, I recommend when you open your computer, put your hand on it for one second and communicate with all the people that are using these computers and be grateful for the fact that you have a computer and all that you can do with it. Or when you put the key in the ignition, before you turn it, hold one moment of stillness. That's the stop. And then you look, because unless you stop, you're just rushing by and you can't look. Well, look for the opportunity. What is now this moment offering me as an opportunity? And when you stop, you will see it. It's there. Mostly, as I say, to enjoy. The next thing is go, enjoy it. Don't just stop and look and then stop and look again. Stop and look and enjoy what is offered to you or respond in some way.

[43:56]

And if you just keep these three words in your mind, you will have all the how, really, because as we saw, the how is simply a responding to what the present moment offers to you. So that's what I wanted to share with you. And fortunately, we do still have about half an hour for questions. If you are interested, do you need to get up and stretch your legs? That would probably be very helpful. And then stretch them, and then we sit down again. Let me introduce to you Anthony Chavez, my travel assistant, and he will help my ears by repeating the question, maybe summarizing it if necessary.

[46:12]

But you can also help by speaking quite loudly if you can. meditation and Christian contemplation, which you'd summarize by saying the differences in the Eastern tradition, you want to realize that you're God and come into union with everything that is also God. And in the Christian tradition, you want to place yourself in the presence of God because you have been created and we're actually a separate clinic, not our God. Could you speak about that a little bit? Yeah. Yeah? Okay. Many Christians, unfortunately, will tell you that they are not part of God, and that God is over there, and we are over here.

[47:23]

But I can't It's not true Christian teaching. Maybe I had a dialogue once with a Buddhist teacher, and after a while he said, you know, I'm really at an advantage here. Buddhism popularizes so much better than Christianity. And it's true. This is simply... A wrong notion. But I can tell you where it comes from. It comes from the fact, I pointed this out when we were speaking about the why and about our relationship to life that can and ought to be a personal relationship. That is then pushed to the point where God becomes somebody else. It's too far.

[48:25]

Or it doesn't allow for this mystery, which is a mystery in itself, that although we are part of life, we can have this relationship to life. We can speak to life. A personal relationship, not only can have it, we have it by saying I. We have a relationship to Tao. Martin Buber has developed that very far. But it's true for all human beings. So what one would have to say is first understand the Christian tradition correctly and then you will see that it is also an expression of a basic human relationship to life. just as Buddhism is and Hinduism is and all other traditions are different expressions, very different, very different from one another. It's important that they are different.

[49:26]

They help us by being different. But they are all expressions. When you go deep enough, you come to that basic human stance. Am I doing something wrong here? No. A friend of mine... a Jesuit he studied in Japan William Johnson that's right he studied in Japan with a Zen master and then he went to the interview with the teacher and the teacher says how are you doing and he says well as a Christian I would say I'm sitting here in the presence of God on my cushion he said exactly this And the teacher said, that's good, that's good. Just keep sitting, and before you know it, God will have disappeared and only Johnson's son will be sitting there.

[50:34]

And he was not very happy. LAUGHTER And he said, you know, as a Christian, I would rather expect that I disappear and only God is there. And the Zen master said, that's right, just what I said. Buddhists have a great focus on suffering. And we embrace suffering, and we raise complex questions to upon, and your practice seems so simple and so based in joy. Should Nathan Buddhist be evaluated? I'm highly surprised. Because most of the time, it's the Christians who are much and much to...

[51:37]

preoccupied with suffering and pain and all that. And people say, look at the Buddhists, they have such a wonderful way of overcoming pain. But actually, the two meet. The two meet in that point where the Christ and the Bodhisattva meet. It was exhibited... at Middlebury College in Vermont, Christ and the Bodhisattva, and a big conference. And His Holiness Dalai Lama was also there for it, and so forth. So where these two meet. And here at Green Gulch, when the Dalai Lama came for the first time to the United States, I'm almost certain it was his first visit here, one of the very early ones, and he wasn't so surrounded by security. He just came to Green Gulch and was sitting with us in a small group, and somebody there asked him about the suffering.

[52:44]

And somebody said, pretty much with a slant against the Christian tradition, Your Holiness, these Christians have been mullering in suffering for 2,000 years. And Buddhists have such a wonderful way of overcoming suffering. And he was pretty strict and said, that's not the way to look at it, he said. Suffering is not overcome by leaving pain behind. Suffering is overcome by bearing pain for others. That's the bodhisattva ideal. And that is also, if you ask Christians, they would say, yeah, that is the real Christian thing. Not pain as something good in itself, but you can bear pain for others. And you need, in many cases, bear pain for others to bring about joy in the world.

[53:50]

And there's where the bodhisattva ideal is. and the Christ ideal meet. In David Wagner's poem, he says, you must treat it as a powerful stranger, ask permission to know it and know it. Can you say something about that permission? Maybe, thank you for this very good question, I haven't thought about it, but I'm always happy when I have to think about something that I haven't thought about. We can all think about it together. I think it expresses a great respect for the place, a great respect, just as the being present...

[55:00]

here and now expresses a great respect for the now, that you don't just take it for granted. So you're grateful for it. That means respect. It is something valuable for you. And so also, being wherever you are, asking permission to be known and puts you in a totally different relationship to the place where you are. I think it has to do with bowing to the cushion before you sit down. I think the key word would be respect. Respect for others. And respect means literally looking twice. Looking again. Not just... looking and thinking you have understood it. Look again, look again. And maybe that's what we are invited to do. Maybe you have a better idea.

[56:04]

Thank you. On the heels of that, I'm really interested in the idea of our story about whatever it is, like in the poem, the story about place versus something larger than our story. And I feel sometimes that there's a lot of pain that comes when we forget that it's our story about something and confuse it with that's the truth about that thing, rather than it's just my story. And there's probably more to know. And I'm just wondering, as I think about practice And by the way, thank you very much for bringing that practice. That part of that is to open the story a little bit and see more what, for example, in a cancer diagnosis one can be grateful for.

[57:11]

And it also seems to me that there is embedded in it some forgiveness as well. which is a very Christian concept in some way, but that your idea that if we miss this moment, we have another moment, is a kind of forgiveness. And I find that as we get older, we carry our stories with us, and sometimes those stories can be sources of shame and quite a burden, and that it's difficult for some and for me, let's say, to shed and forgive and really be in the next moment and let the story flow rather than holding the story as some kind of truth. Thank you.

[58:11]

How do we open our story to pain and forgiveness? When we are confronted with pain, it is very difficult to open ourselves to it, but it's necessary. And what helps us is looking back. Through the windshield, it looks unmanageable. But in the rear mirror, you can see you have been able with pain and not only been able with pain pain is worth pangs and brings about new things and brings about positive things and when you remember that when you remember it from your own past then in trust you can also go into this pain that awaits you now because you have learned from the past and going in trust is

[59:18]

with thrust into the pain means that you experience the pain with, I call it, with the grain. Like in a rough piece of wood, you can go with the grain and it's smooth and you can go against the grain and you get splinters in your fingers. So we can go with the pain or against the pain. Against the pain is called suffering. Suffering is optional. Pain is inevitable. And going with the pain, that means trusting. That's the important thing, the trust. You put trust into it and you go with the pain. Think of it as birth pangs. Think of it as bringing about something positive, something new. And then there was also a question about forgiveness.

[60:21]

There are many degrees of giving, many degrees of giving, but the most total giving is forgiven. That's why it has this little syllable for. In the Latin languages, it's still more obvious, perdonare, thoroughly given. It's the intensive of giving. And with this intensive giving goes also the most difficult taking. Give and take are always together. You can forgive, really forgive, only when you are I myself, from yourself you can forgive. The little ego cannot forgive. The little I cannot forgive. You have to be whole. I myself. And that means you forgive because you also take whatever is to be forgiven upon yourself.

[61:34]

It sounds so difficult that every time I say it, people can hardly believe it. But... But it's obvious because you can only forgive from the self, and my self is the self of everybody else who has done something wrong. So the I is the role that we play. It's the... is the script of our life. When we are conceived, we are born into this body, that means in this family, on this continent, in this culture, at this time, there's so much that's already given. We think we make our whole life. We are just actors that are playing a script that is given to us and we want to play it well. But the self is given this particular script and when our time is up, it's up. We hand the script back. Maybe we'll get another one from the self.

[62:38]

So from the self we must forgive. And that means we must really take upon ourselves whatever is to be forgiven. And then it's gone. It dissolves. This idea of the self... playing all these roles. In Austria, puppet theaters are very popular. And in our monastery, I spend a lot of time in an Austrian monastery these days. In our monastery, we have every month, we have a special liturgy, a special service for children. There are about 100 children in there. comes for that. And then afterwards, a puppet show. And the monks play these puppet shows. And it's one puppeteer that plays the princess and the crocodile. And it's oneself that plays all these many roles with many, many arms.

[63:42]

On every arm, it has another puppet. And when you remember that... and you happen to be the princess, you will forgive the crocodile because you forgive from down here. And there is no other way of forgiving than I know. Because everything else is just dispensing presidential pardon from up here. We have one or two more questions. I think they were over there. One or two. Yeah. Thank you for your talk. You mentioned fear in connection with who we are. And I wonder if you could just briefly give us a Christian and a Buddhist perspective of how to deal with fear, how to practice with fear, how to relieve our fear. How do we deal with fear? From a Christian and a Buddhist perspective. Yes.

[64:44]

We were talking about fear, and I think we found just one way of dealing with it. There wasn't a difference between the Buddhist perspective and the Christian perspective. But I will say what I remember, and then if there was a slight Buddhist chance, Paul will correct it. What we said about pain and suffering, that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional, can also be said about anxiety and fear. There's a parallel between the two. Anxiety is inevitable in life. The very word anxiety comes from angustia in Latin that means narrowness. And it's the narrowness of the birth canal. So every one of us, unless we happen to be cesarean babies, have gone through this original narrowness.

[65:47]

And that is awful. I'm speaking from experience. I can't remember it, but my mother told me she was in labor for more than 24 hours and I came with my right hand first. But we all go through some problems there. And it's life-giving. If you go with it, that is the point. If you go with it. And fear is going against the anxiety. They say, I don't want it, I don't want it. And courage or trust says it's necessary. I'll go through it. It doesn't take away the anxiety. Brave people are not free from anxiety.

[66:48]

Then they wouldn't be brave. The bravenness is exactly that you have the anxiety and still you go through it. There's a little ditty. by Pete Hine and it says, to be brave is to behave bravely when your heart is faint. Behave bravely when your heart is faint. That's to be brave. So you can be really brave only when you really ain't. You go with the grain and you trust and you go with the grain and So fear is what we want to avoid and overcome through courageous trust. And that is what Christians call faith, courageous trust in life. Faith is not believing this and this and this and this, a whole list. Faith is not believing something. That's a misunderstanding.

[67:50]

Faith is trust in life, trust in life. the mystery. Trust in God, if you want. Trust. And with trust, you can go through this anxiety, and that is courage. And with fear, it's the opposite of trust, and you go against the grain. Does that help? Or elicit further questions? Don't hesitate to ask a little more if necessary. No? It's okay? Thank you. There was one more question over there. I don't understand, I don't know much about Christianity, but I would really appreciate hearing your perspective on the nature of the soul in Christianity versus in Buddhism where we speak of no soul. Perspective of soul.

[68:51]

Soul. Is that it? I don't know why this happens, but so many of these important terms are so often misunderstood. Many people think, Christians and non-Christians, they think that the soul is some little somebody that's sitting inside, a little small and white. We hope it's white, and sometimes it gets a little stained. That's just a misunderstanding. In the Christian tradition, say in the Summa of St. Thomas, where the tradition is really rightly understood and explained,

[69:56]

The soul is defined as that which makes you, you. It's a bit complicated because the Latin definition is in two words, forma corporis. But that doesn't mean the form of the body. It means... The former in this context means what makes a thing itself. It is one of the four causes that Aristotle has there for a thing, the material, the efficient cause, how you have made it, what it's for, and what it is in itself. And this is what he calls the formal cause. And so... The best translation for pharmacoporists, that is the definition for soul, is what makes you, you?

[70:57]

In English it's helpful to say what makes somebody, somebody. Distinct from everybody else. Because it's the body that is in there. And behind this stands the understanding that it's only the body and everything that hangs together with the body, of course, that makes us different from one another. And that is our soul. Each one of us has the soul. And what makes us one is the self. So the self expresses itself in this body very differently from in this body and in every somebody differently. And that is what we call soul. It's not something. It's It's a statement about a fact. It's not a little something that you can find. What makes you you, that's not somebody else.

[72:00]

What makes you you, that is the soul. And we all experience that. After a long time, we can meet somebody, maybe at the class reunion, and we have skipped all these class reunions, and we see somebody from our... grade school, and all of a sudden, we recognize them. There is something that makes us, that's the soul. Nothing else. And I don't know how to contrast that with Buddhism, because I think the word soul is just happening in Buddhism. Do they speak of soul? No. But they have the term. of being completely what is in the individual sense. It's thought of more as an activity than an independent abiding existence.

[73:05]

And of course, soul is mostly used in the Christian context about the immortal soul. I think that's the big thing, that who you are, and that doesn't mean that you freeze it. It allows for this fluent reality that we have in Buddhism. It's not stressed in Christianity, but it's no contradiction. Just who you are, you are a process. We all know we are a process, a fixed, frozen entity. We are a process. And this process goes beyond time. That is the important thing. And we know it can go beyond time because we know things that are beyond time. We know the self. The self is not in place. It's not in time.

[74:06]

We know that. We can experience it. And so... The question is, what happens when your time is up? Now, in Christianity, for a long time, apparently, reincarnation was also considered, and it wasn't condemned. That is often a misunderstanding. Origen's writings, Origen was the one, a very early teacher, already in the third century, who was basing his thoughts partly on reincarnation. And he was a great, great theologian. And some of his writings were condemned as being not correct by the later developments. And among them happened to be this... reincarnation idea but that was condemned the writing was condemned that also contained this idea so explicitly condemned it never was and a very great theologian of the 20th century said I think in Christianity would say about reincarnation that it is Christ Christ

[75:34]

the Christ reality, the self, that continuously reincarnates in every body there is. It's quite acceptable. But the question is then, when my time is up, and Christians speak about that, so the final time that's up, so when you go into paranyavana, what happens then? We're just not... allowing for these other things, not thinking about them. Whenever our time is up, what happens when time is up? And then you are in the now, because the now is eternity. That's even the definition for eternity, the now. It's not in time. When you are in the now, when you are in eternity, it's who you are that is there. That whole process has harvested your whole life, your whole life story, into a realm that is beyond time and space.

[76:38]

That is the insight. And Rilke, the poet Rilke, expresses that in a very beautiful image. He says, we humans, we humans are the bees, the honeybees of the invisible. And we spend all our life harvesting the nectar of the visible... and smellable and hearable and tasteable and touchable, all that we can, the nectar of all that we can appreciate with our senses, we harvest that into the great golden honeycomb of the invisible. That great golden honeycomb of the invisible. And there it is, because all is always now. So anything that happens, even our Dharma talk now, It's always now. We can always go back to it. It will always be there. It was there before the beginning. And that is a consolation for people to think the best of me is not going to be lost.

[77:51]

It is. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[78:31]

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