Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / A Buddhist’s Response to Global Crises - Part 1
Transcript
- 0:04Welcome to the Buddhistiches Tor Berlin podcast.
- 0:08Here we share talks and reflections from our Buddhist
- 0:11centre in Berlin, exploring themes such as meditation,
- 0:16ethics and the path of awakening
- 0:20We are part. Of the Sri Ratna Buddhist
- 0:22community and our talks are offered freely in a spirit of
- 0:26generosity. We hope this episode supports
- 0:30your practice and your life. So great to see so many people
- 0:40here today. I want to talk about a Buddhist
- 0:44response to global crises. And I was walking over here this
- 0:48morning thinking, why have I chosen to address this as a
- 0:53topic or choose this as a topic?
- 0:56And I've chosen the words carefully there.
- 0:58So it's a Buddhist with an apostrophe S response to global
- 1:04crises. So I'm not, I'm not presenting a
- 1:12Buddhist's perspective. And that Buddhist is me,
- 1:16obviously. So I'm going to be talking about
- 1:23And I feel, I'll be honest, I feel quite challenged, not just
- 1:29not just about talking about that, but about really looking
- 1:37So the last 24 hours or so as I've been thinking about what to
- 1:45So I don't know how well I can
- 1:52but I will do my best, and hopefully it will be helpful to
- 1:56you just to hear a Buddhist's perspective on what I'm calling
- 2:02global crises. And to be honest, even though
- 2:05there's a reluctance in me to address this, I can't see how
- 2:11not to do that. I can't see a case for avoiding
- 2:17talking about how I, as a Buddhist, am responding to the
- 2:22things that I see around me. It doesn't seem to be a valid
- 2:27option to pretend like certain
- 2:32speak about Buddhism in a way that is kind of independent of
- 2:39that. Of course, I can see there's a
- 2:41reason why we don't often directly address certain world
- 2:45events at a Buddhist centre, because we have a fidelity to
- 2:49our own tradition and to an uncompromising Buddhist stance
- 2:55on how to approach life. So if we lean too much into
- 2:59always addressing things that are going on in the outside
- 3:03world, if we lean too much in that direction, maybe we begin
- 3:07to lose what a Buddhist perspective is in the 1st place.
- 3:12If we don't lean enough into global events and the effects of
- 3:19global events and actions that
- 3:23Buddhism if it doesn't come into
- 3:28So that's my hope today, is that
- 3:32perspective, we're neither avoiding nor losing that
- 3:38Buddhist perspective. OK, so where I want to start is
- 3:48to, I'll start where I want to
- 3:53to go in and unfold more fully, which is to talk about
- 3:57compassion. So compassion.
- 4:00And as soon as I say the word,
- 4:05for you. So we all have a certain idea
- 4:08about what compassion is, what
- 4:14And it's it's a common word, isn't it?
- 4:17You hear it, I wouldn't say everywhere, but you hear it a
- 4:22lot these days. So it's not just a Buddhist
- 4:26term, obviously it's something
- 4:31all kinds of compassion based therapies and other things that
- 4:36are using that word as the defining aspect of a particular
- 4:41approach to life. In Buddhism, compassion, it's a
- 4:46translation of the word Karanar.
- 4:49Compassion is Karanar and it's definitely got a specific
- 4:54meaning when we use the term in Buddhism, it is means something
- 5:00specific. So what I, what I would like to
- 5:05invite you to do or request that we all try to do is just to
- 5:24just for the next hour. And if at the end of the hour
- 5:28you think, no, I'm not on board with this Buddhist perspective
- 5:33Just go back to what you thought before.
- 5:35But can we just have a kind of, we use this term beginner's
- 5:40mind, don't we? So it's good to have a
- 5:43beginner's mind when you approach meditation.
- 5:44Can we have a beginner's mind to what compassion might be in a
- 5:50Buddhist context? And just to help us with that,
- 5:58story, a favorite one of mine from the Buddhist tradition.
- 6:02So the poem is a poem of Sangarachito.
- 6:07Yep. There is a picture of him on the
- 6:17And I think probably when probably around this time when
- 6:27a poem called The Unseen Flower.
- 6:31And the Unseen flower goes like this.
- 6:36Compassion is far more than an
- 6:43It's something that springs up
- 6:51Something that springs up in the
- 6:55not there, so that you do not know anything about it.
- 7:01Nobody, in fact, knows anything about it.
- 7:05If they knew it, it would not be
- 7:11But they can only smell the scent of the unseen flower as it
- 7:16blooms in the heart of the void.
- 7:20I'll do that again because I tripped up.
- 7:26Compassion is far more than an emotion.
- 7:30It's something that springs up in the emptiness when you
- 7:36yourself are not there, so that you do not know anything about
- 7:44about it. If they knew it, it would not be
- 7:53scent of the unseen flower as it blooms in the heart of the void.
- 8:08compassion with feeling or with emotion.
- 8:13I like that the poem is is broadening our horizons on what
- 8:16compassion is. So it's more than just something
- 8:19that we feel. It's more than just an emotion.
- 8:23And then we get into quite mysterious territory, don't we?
- 8:26Because it's something that springs up in the emptiness,
- 8:30whatever that is, when we are not there.
- 8:34So it's not an emotion exclusively and it's not
- 8:39something that we can possess.
- 8:43even know anything about, is how
- 8:48poem. And the image there of the
- 8:54scent, the smell of the unseen flower, a flower that we can't
- 9:04So that's the poem. And the other is a story.
- 9:09So this comes from early Buddhism in China, so Chan
- 9:12Buddhism in China. And it's the story of the the
- 9:18well became an enlightened master called Lin Qi.
- 9:21And Lin Qi, when he was still an enlightened practice in
- 9:26Buddhism, as as much as he could, he went to his teacher
- 9:30who I think was called Huang PO and apologies for my Chinese
- 9:35pronunciation. He goes to his teacher Huang PO,
- 9:41And Huang PO picks up a stick and hits him over the head and
- 9:53Second time he gets hit on the head, he says love please, what
- 9:59is the essence of Buddhism? And for 1/3 time the stick hits
- 10:04him over the head. So he's obviously quite confused
- 10:15and visit another teacher instead.
- 10:17And he goes to another teacher and he says, I've been asking my
- 10:27And three times he's hit me on the head.
- 10:30And the other teacher says to him, don't you realise he's
- 10:35showing you great compassion? And Lin Qi suddenly awakens.
- 10:43So then he goes back to his monastery, to his original
- 10:49teacher. And the teacher watches him
- 10:52coming from the distance. And then he says to him, ah,
- 10:55you've come back to pull the tigers whiskers.
- 10:58And Lin Qi just shouts, and then the master goes, I can see that
- 11:05you've become enlightened. Yeah, weird, right?
- 11:15What does all that mean? I'm, I'm not going to try to
- 11:21unpack what I think that means. But what's interesting to me is
- 11:25that the the second teacher points out, but actually the
- 11:30three blows with the stick was the teacher being compassionate.
- 11:36like crazy. And bear in mind this is
- 11:41culturally specific. So if anybody around here hits
- 11:44anybody else, you're going to jail, not enlightenment.
- 11:48So for us that doesn't work. But in that culture and at that
- 11:53time, that whole thing of using a stick, that meant something.
- 11:58So the story is telling us that compassion takes forms that we
- 12:02might never be able to understand on a rational kind of
- 12:07basis. Anyway, that's all just to open
- 12:13up this question of what? What is compassion really?
- 12:16Yeah. Can we, as I say, just just put
- 12:20aside what we might already think?
- 12:22I've been trying this week to put aside what I already think
- 12:25about it, and those two things
- 12:30I'll just let that sink in a moment.
- 12:38OK, so another story, and this
- 12:45to use just to help open up. Well, OK, what is a Buddhist
- 12:49perspective on compassion? And how might that be an
- 12:55adequate response, Or how might we discover in that an adequate
- 12:58response? How might I, sorry, I'm trying
- 13:01to keep it personal, use this kind of material for finding an
- 13:07effective response to the world.
- 13:10And this is the story of a bodhisattva.
- 13:16So a bodhisattva is a being. So a sattva is a being who is
- 13:23interested only in bodhi or enlightenment, not just for
- 13:27their own sake, but for the sake of all living beings, all life.
- 13:34So this Bodhisattva's name is
- 13:38Avalo Kateshvara. So some of you will be very
- 13:41familiar with Avalo Kateshvara
- 13:48But the story goes that Avalo Kateshvara, he saw the suffering
- 13:54of the world, and he made a vow to his teacher that he would do
- 14:00everything he could to alleviate
- 14:05Yeah, that was his great wish,
- 14:12And then we're told in the story
- 14:16six realms of Sansara. So sangsara is the Buddhist term
- 14:21for the world, the world that we
- 14:25And it's said that it has six different realms or levels.
- 14:30Without going too much into the cosmology, basically it means
- 14:33he went everywhere. Yeah, shorthand.
- 14:37He went everywhere and he went
- 14:44to free themselves from suffering.
- 14:49The story tells us that he he used 84,000 different teachings,
- 14:55all of them contained within his
- 15:00So he went round, travelled round, teaching everybody the
- 15:03Dharma and then finally he went to Tibet.
- 15:08This is a story coming from the Tibetan tradition.
- 15:12So he went to Tibet, and it says
- 15:16nation from the peak of Red Mountain, he had a vision of
- 15:19countless beings burning alive
- 15:25Witnessing the misery of these
- 15:32Still, Havelu Kateshwara went among the Tibetans and taught
- 15:36them the mantra on Manipad Mehung, pronouncing the words of
- 15:41the Dharma with infinite compassion.
- 15:45Then he entered the meditation
- 15:50enlightenment, making a long and
- 15:55misery of beings and bring them to happiness.
- 15:59Exhausted by his efforts, he entered into meditation.
- 16:04But then for a second time, he
- 16:09That's Tibet. And he saw that he'd not helped
- 16:12even 100th of the beings of the Land of Snow to enter the bliss
- 16:17of liberation. He was seized by bitter sorrow,
- 16:24and for an instant the thought
- 16:31What's the use? I can do nothing for them.
- 16:36It's better if I just be happy
- 16:45So we're just pause there. It's not the end of the story,
- 16:51but I just want to pause there.
- 16:53And yeah, speak more personally and say that I can really.
- 16:57I mean, I've heard this story probably hundreds of times, but
- 17:01sometimes when you hear a story hundreds of times, the 101st
- 17:06first time is the time it hits, isn't it?
- 17:09And this week, the story really hit me for that reason, for this
- 17:21point? Yeah.
- 17:22And I've been reflecting myself.
- 17:25I haven't travelled everywhere. I haven't taught 84,000
- 17:29different Dharma teachings, but I've done this for 15 years.
- 17:34It's 15 years this year that I discovered Buddhism, started to
- 17:39see that it was having an effect on my life, and decided
- 17:43to commit my life to it and to share it with other people.
- 17:48And as I've said before, I can see that it's affected my life
- 18:03Buddhism I've been able to have a positive influence on other
- 18:06people around me. Not always, and you know, I have
- 18:14I can acknowledge that and I can see that.
- 18:17But when I look further and when I look out on the world, I see
- 18:27It's one thing after another, one bad news story, 1 tragedy
- 18:32after another. And sometimes, I'll be honest, I
- 18:37Like, is it working? Is it really working?
- 18:44And at those times, I think, well, what else could I do?
- 18:51I think maybe I should do something else.
- 18:55Maybe I should go off and, I don't know, take some kind of
- 19:01more direct action in relation to things I see around me.
- 19:05Maybe I should learn some other skill.
- 19:08Maybe I should become a doctor or something like that.
- 19:13It's a bit late, but anyway, I could do that.
- 19:18I could try and do that. And other times I just think I
- 19:26acknowledge it. And as a desire just to close
- 19:30down, I suppose, turn off and turn away or my this is probably
- 19:51just encountered. If someone's saying something
- 19:55bad is happening or is going to happen, can I find the piece of
- 19:59news that says, actually, it's not all that bad?
- 20:02It's it's not that bad. Again, I'm just going to pause.
- 20:13I mean, I feel myself that in
- 20:15speaking like this, there's a wait.
- 20:17And I appreciate it's heavy stuff.
- 20:20And you can probably all relate to that, too, that we see
- 20:24things, don't we? And it's difficult, to put it
- 20:31mildly. Yeah.
- 20:34So those questions come up, and they still come up for me. 15
- 20:38years of Buddhism hasn't cured
- 20:43choosing to live my life in relation to what I see happening
- 20:47around me. However, I can say as well that
- 20:53through Buddhism, over the years
- 20:58and explore another way of coming into relationship to what
- 21:03I'm calling global crises. Things that I see that I don't
- 21:08like, things that I see that I
- 21:11wish were not happening. So that's what I want to try to
- 21:17explore. What is this alternative to
- 21:21shutting down and blocking out
- 21:28horrified state where I feel anxious about doing something
- 21:33better or more effective? And I'm not, just to be clear,
- 21:38I'm not criticizing anybody who decides to turn away from
- 21:44things or do something direct and take some kind of action.
- 21:51I've, I'm not, this is not a critique and I'm not going to
- 21:54try and tell you what to do. So don't don't kind of worry
- 21:58that that's where this is going.
- 22:01But I just want to share with you how I am seeing those two
- 22:06tendencies in myself. And I've been exploring where do
- 22:14can find another way of approaching life that I think is
- 22:18more effective. So to open that up, I've got
- 22:26here a passage from the biography of James Hillman.
- 22:30People are aware of James Hillman, it seems.
- 22:34No one said did that when I said have a look at Tetra.
- 22:43Yeah. So James Hillman's an American.
- 22:46I was an American Psycho,
- 22:49psychologist, psychotherapist.
- 22:54Switzerland. And yeah, went off in a slightly
- 22:59different direction. And this is a part in the
- 23:03biography where in the early 90s
- 23:09men, getting men together, talking about what does it
- 23:12really mean to be a man? How do we get beyond
- 23:16stereotypical ideas about masculinity and some of the
- 23:21issues that men were facing at
- 23:24And at the end of the conference
- 23:29an essay about what the conference was for.
- 23:33And this is an extract from that
- 23:40The question that we began with,
- 23:43again, is what is the conference about?
- 23:47What are we here for? And I think what we are here
- 23:54about, what we are about is the broken heart and whether we feel
- 24:07marriages, the deaths in the family, the Vietnam War, our
- 24:13relationship with our fathers, there's a broken heart.
- 24:18And it's the broken heart of America.
- 24:22It's the broken heart of our society.
- 24:26I don't think that we should talk about the healing of the
- 24:33broken heart, but to realise that it is there and that is
- 24:39what love is really all about. That's where love comes in,
- 24:47through the broken heart. Heartbreak is what it's all
- 24:52about. Heartbreak.
- 24:55What has happened here in the conference, it means is the
- 25:04experiencing of the heartbreak of America.
- 25:07This has been something different than an experience.
- 25:12We've been inside the heartbreak of America.
- 25:15It has been personal. We each have our own piece of
- 25:21that heartbreak, but we also are the heartbreak broken, our
- 25:25hearts broken and the heart of the country broken into
- 25:32fragments, which we call neighborhoods, ethnic colours
- 25:36and so on. OK.
- 25:46And then he goes on. And what has happened here has
- 26:01Maybe each of us as embodied ego people have not all met, but the
- 26:12It doesn't mean that they love each other.
- 26:16It doesn't mean that they all dance together because they've
- 26:28complacent or self content that isn't feeling, that is broken.
- 26:39So what I want to leave with is not healing.
- 26:44I want to leave with that awareness of heartbreak.
- 26:48And I thank you for making me feel that intensely.
- 26:58So it's quite, I mean, it's challenging to read that out
- 27:13loud. Probably it's challenging to
- 27:18hear that he's quite, he's quite polemical.
- 27:23If you read any James Hillman, if people have a certain idea
- 27:27about something, he comes at it from the other angle.
- 27:31So presumably he's challenging there a narrative around how we
- 27:34need to heal heartbreak by saying no, we need to feel
- 27:38heartbreak. Yeah.
- 27:39And I think there's something in that perspective that is very
- 27:45Buddhist, actually. So let me just try to get into
- 28:11tragedy, I can see how it is like an arrow, isn't it?
- 28:18Some, oh, microphone? Something comes in and it it
- 28:22wounds. Yeah.
- 28:24I feel that heartbreak that he's talking about.
- 28:27But very quickly my response to that is to try not to feel is to
- 28:54And that's why I go into the shutting down, turning away,
- 29:00turning off or into the anxiety, the questioning, the doubt and
- 29:11situation, to fix the pain. Yeah.
- 29:15And that's completely understandable.
- 29:16I understand why I do that, and I understand why we all probably
- 29:39feel and to be with the heartbreak in his words, the
- 29:47pain, the difficulty, the initial experience of that,
- 29:52rather than jumping into some kind of fix.
- 29:56And I find that really challenging.
- 29:59I'll just be honest about it. I find that really challenging.
- 30:04But like I said, I think
- 30:06Buddhism is also pointing us in that direction too.
- 30:12So heartbreak is James Hillman's
- 30:15Buddhism speaks about ducker. So Ducker, which often, I mean,
- 30:21it gets translated as unsatisfactoriness and you can
- 30:25see why because it's trying to
- 30:29experience that we find in any
- 30:33Dhaka. But often it's also translated
- 30:37as suffering, which I think in
- 30:40today is a more effective translation.
- 30:45So Buddhism is trying to get us to recognise over and over and
- 30:49over again that life includes suffering.
- 30:59And it's obvious, like intellectually, of course it
- 31:01does. We can all agree on that.
- 31:05But on a deeper level, on a, on a heart level, to accept that
- 31:09truth and that life involves suffering is very, very
- 31:16difficult. I think.
- 31:22I mean, it would even go as far as we could even go as far as
- 31:25to say that suffering in a sense is the world.
- 31:29It's not to say that the world
- 31:33and pleasurable, because it is.
- 31:35But like I said before, this term, Sansara, and which is
- 31:40broken up into these six realms in the cosmology Sansara, I
- 31:45think it literally means something like swirling around
- 31:52Sansara, the world that we experience is a kind of turning
- 31:58and are being blown about and made uncomfortable.
- 32:03It's unsatisfactory. It doesn't offer the
- 32:07satisfaction and pleasure all the time without some kind of
- 32:12painful experience too. But then we heap on top of that
- 32:19painful experience more painful experience by going into
- 32:23unconscious habits and reactions.
- 32:26So what the Buddha taught is that if we can turn towards the
- 32:34suffering, if we can allow ourselves to feel it, something
- 32:39else begins to happen. So OK, there's there's the
- 32:44heartbreak of seeing things that we find difficult, but something
- 32:54break as well. Maybe the first thing or the
- 33:00first reflection I've got is that what begins to break the
- 33:04more I unable to look kind of look suffering in the face, so
- 33:21You know that there's the attitude that I can have when
- 33:26something happens that I don't like is that it shouldn't be
- 33:29happening. But Buddhism teaches us that.
- 33:34But this is what happens. Life does include painful
- 33:38experience, and if we try to avoid that, all our strategies
- 33:49If we drop the avoidance strategies, still there's pain
- 34:00So we can have all kinds of
- 34:04emotional responses to that and reactions to that, whether it
- 34:08is anxiety, sadness, turning away, shutting down, getting
- 34:14angry, and that's all fine. It's like understandable, but I,
- 34:19I keep seeing myself, the one response that I keep having that
- 34:24really I shouldn't be having is surprise and shock.
- 34:31Like how many times do I have to
- 34:35is, This is what happens. This is how this is what a human
- 34:41experience includes. So I think the more I'm able to
- 34:47look and to witness, the more that unhelpful view that it
- 34:54shouldn't be happening begins to
- 35:03So that's, that's the first thing I wanted to share in
- 35:06relation to that. And the the first challenge I'm
- 35:08trying to meet continually. But then I think further than
- 35:14that, the next thing that also
- 35:20stay with the heartbreak, I'll
- 35:27Maybe there's less surprise because OK, this is part of
- 35:30life. Can I take that truth on board?
- 35:34But then something else also begins to break or has to break.
- 35:41And the thing that has to break,
- 35:51this, sorry. The, the other thing that begins
- 35:54to be revealed is not just the
- 36:00part of life, but also what begins to breakthrough, let's
- 36:04say is the cause why that's the case, why suffering happens.
- 36:15So this is the Buddha's second
- 36:17You'd probably see I'm, I'm borrowing from that.
- 36:20So the first noble truth is that
- 36:23Duka is part of life. The second noble truth is that
- 36:28the cause of that duka is to use
- 36:34trishna, which we translate as
- 36:39So the cause of suffering is craving.
- 36:47So, so that's the traditional language.
- 36:49The problem with talking in terms of craving, at least in my
- 36:52mind, the association is always to do with kind of sugary food
- 36:56or something. It's giving away my character
- 37:02defects. So I, I've been in my own mind
- 37:08this week just trying to put that aside and see, well,
- 37:10actually, what? Well, what's that about?
- 37:13What is craving about? And what I've landed on is this
- 37:16notion of, let's let's just call
- 37:21The cause of suffering is self
- 37:29real and independent identity centre.
- 37:35So I don't want to get too metaphysical with this other
- 37:39than to say that I, I do believe
- 37:44suffering. Because if I feel myself to have
- 37:48this fixed, independent existence in here, then that
- 37:56immediately puts me up against
- 38:01Yeah, which I either want to be included in my identity centre
- 38:08or I want. And therefore comes all the
- 38:12wishing and pulling in and wanting to hold on and all the
- 38:20pushing away, all the resistance, all the anger, all
- 38:24the desire to be rid of also comes in through that identity
- 38:31centre. And it's it's normal.
- 38:36That is also part of being human.
- 38:38It's even necessary, isn't it?
- 38:42development as an individual, we
- 38:47of self and identity, and the exploration of that in a human
- 38:52life is really important. And when we haven't had that,
- 38:56actually that can be a cause of suffering.
- 38:59So often it needs to be developed fully, but to go
- 39:04beyond suffering and to really
- 39:09suffering also means beginning
- 39:13that and to see beyond that self
- 39:18centeredness, which I'm sure. All of us in the.
- 39:21Room are trying to do in some way so I'm not lecturing you as
- 39:26if you don't know this, but you can.
- 39:30See how that creates the? Problem.
- 39:31Because that's for me as an individual setting, that whole
- 39:38swirling about Sansara in motion
- 39:42the situation, other people are doing that too.
- 39:46We expand that out onto the level of a group of people.
- 39:51So we don't just have I and you,
- 39:58And that's where all war comes
- 40:03All abuse, all violence, all these things that we see kicking
- 40:08off around the world, it's a kind of kicking.
- 40:12Off of this core. Issue at the heart of
- 40:15everything. So that has got to break.
- 40:23Something in that has got to break and break down.
- 40:30And that's what that's what happens.
- 40:32In the story, so in the Have a
- 40:37the point where he looks out and
- 40:41Doesn't seem to be making any difference.
- 40:44What if I just look after myself?
- 40:47Yeah, so there's a self centred doubt.
- 40:51And thought that. Comes up in his mind now when he
- 40:55started out on his quest, let's call it, he made a vow to his
- 41:00teacher that if he ever had a single selfish thought, may he
- 41:06be smashed into 1000 pieces. So he has the selfish thought.
- 41:11What's the use? Wouldn't it be better if I just
- 41:13looked after myself? And he breaks, he breaks open
- 41:18into 1000 pieces with a great cry of anguish.
- 41:25So you could say symbolically there we have an example of that
- 41:31breaking, that in his case like final trace means high level
- 41:37final trace. That single selfish thought is
- 41:40the breaking of his whole self
- 41:47All the things he was doing was great, but there was some
- 41:51obstacle in the way and it was
- 41:56perception, self identity was getting in the way.
- 41:59And that breaks open into 1000
- 42:05I also think that's what. Happens when the master hits Lin
- 42:10Qi three times, not immediately because he doesn't see it, but
- 42:14when the other teacher says, oh,
- 42:17compassion, it's because the hit
- 42:24breakthrough his wrong. Idea.
- 42:28About himself as somehow being
- 42:35his question about the essence
- 42:39that he would have no so the masters trying to break that out
- 42:47with. Him in his.
- 42:48Ancient Chinese Buddhist way, Yeah, the poem also.
- 42:57The poem tells us compassion is that which springs up in the
- 43:01emptiness when you yourself are not there so.
- 43:06That you don't know anything. About it, nobody knows anything
- 43:10about it because that little poor little identity centre in
- 43:16me and in all of us, it's really
- 43:21But it can't know has to go, has
- 43:29These three. Things.
- 43:32Tell us that the poem. And the stories are telling us
- 43:35is that if that breaks up or breaks down, or if there's a
- 43:41breakthrough, then something else can emerge, something else
- 43:47comes through. So in the poem.
- 43:50That is what. Compassion is and, and it's.
- 43:53Described as the. Scent of the unseen flower.
- 43:57In Ling Chi's case, it's the shout.
- 44:02That's what breaks. Through.
- 44:05And his shout, I'm echoing like 1000 odd years later.
- 44:11It's still in the air, isn't it?
- 44:13Something else broke through at that point.
- 44:15That meant in 2026, in Kreutzberg of all places, the
- 44:21shout is ringing out in the Have a Look at Teshra story.
- 44:27He's broken into 1000 pieces. And what happens?
- 44:30Amitabha, the Buddha, his teacher, who is infinite light.
- 44:34So let's not think of some
- 44:36figure appearing infinite light which expands everywhere and
- 44:43bathes the whole world in love
- 44:50him back together again, but this time with 1000 arms and 11
- 44:54heads, so that he can really manifest.
- 45:00And bring compassion. Into the world.
- 45:04So what they're all telling? Us is that if we can drop that
- 45:08self centredness, self identity,
- 45:16in that it's not that we can't
- 45:21in that has been somehow fixed, then something else can emerge.
- 45:25And what that is we can't say.
- 45:29Have a look at Tetra. We can depict it with 1000 arms
- 45:33and 11 heads. We can call it the scent of the
- 45:36unseen flower, we can call it compassion, but we don't know
- 45:40what that is, what that would look like.
- 45:49Stomach rumbling. Critical moment.
- 45:56So just let that sink in a moment.
- 46:08So one of. The I won't go into.
- 46:12This too much but. One of the things that, or let's
- 46:15say one of the ways in which the
- 46:20described, is that it is in some
- 46:26Unbiased. So it doesn't.
- 46:28Pick sides doesn't move in One
- 46:34It can go anywhere. It's free.
- 46:37The word is a parinehita. Parinehita.
- 46:43Yeah, something like that. Check it in a dictionary.
- 46:48So how compassion manifests in
- 46:56we don't know what that would look like because it could go in
- 46:59any direction, it could take any
- 47:04We might think that compassion
- 47:07and form, but actually what the Buddhist tradition says is no,
- 47:11it could take any form. This is why I don't want to
- 47:15criticize how anyone else is responding to things, because we
- 47:20don't know, right? So it could be that in response
- 47:25to some crisis, someone does take direct action.
- 47:33Out of compassion, direct action
- 47:36Did you see the the Buddhist who
- 47:41recently? I mean, that was quite direct,
- 47:48and it got lots of attention and raised the profile of peace
- 47:52in the world, which is great. Somebody else's response,
- 47:57genuinely compassionate response, might have been to go
- 48:01into retreat for three years and we could say, well, that's
- 48:09manifesting through that particular person.
- 48:12So the question is. Not necessarily the form it
- 48:18takes, but the quality of it and where it's coming from.
- 48:22And is it coming from some kind of expression of self?
- 48:28And self. Identity.
- 48:30Or is it coming out of allowing something else through the other
- 48:37Paranehita, if I'm saying it correctly, is translated as the
- 48:43wishless SO. Not having a.
- 48:46Wish. And again, this is really
- 48:48challenging because the implication is that Avila
- 48:52Kateshwara doesn't wish for anything but abides in a
- 48:58wishless state. So not wishing for particular
- 49:02outcomes. Like that's really hard, isn't
- 49:09I want the talk to go well, I want people to get something
- 49:13from it. I don't want them to challenge
- 49:20So all these wishes, imagine if none of that was coming and you
- 49:25were able just to be at peace in this wishless state.
- 49:30So that means letting go of all. Expectations of particular
- 49:36outcomes to any of our actions and other people's actions.
- 49:42The paradox is have a look at Teshwaru's wishless abiding in
- 49:52that image, in the palms of his hands, he's holding a jewel.
- 49:57And that is the Chintamani. Which gets described as the wish
- 50:08letting. Go of all wishes.
- 50:11For particular outcomes which might just look like
- 50:15indifference actually allows the single wish to manifest.
- 50:20It's another way you could talk about compassion and that.
- 50:25Wish that single. Wish that goes beyond all wishes
- 50:32That single wish is the wish for the liberation of all beings
- 50:38from self centeredness, the freedom.
- 50:41From that imagine. Imagine a world where that just
- 50:46wasn't kicking in and coming into play.
- 50:51So I I I'm going. To wrap up now, but I.
- 51:02Like I'm just exploring this like.
- 51:04I said I'm not. Have a look at Tesh for a sat
- 51:08here in disguise saying all this stuff.
- 51:11Shanti Deva has this line in in his like 9th century I think or
- 51:198th century Indian monk. He has this way of describing
- 51:23how he's come into contact himself with this great wish,
- 51:28real compassion, he says. It's like a blind man staggering
- 51:44I I. Find myself.
- 51:46Staggering around in the heap of rubbish and I wouldn't say I
- 51:51have the jewel, but somehow I believe it's in there.
- 51:56I at least believe it's in there.
- 51:58Yeah. And if I can just keep going and
- 52:07towards looking, seeing the nature of suffering and how it
- 52:17something else to emerge. I, I really believe that that is
- 52:27And I can't convince you of that.
- 52:30I can't. I've not got any clever argument
- 52:35It's just something we try out. And see.
- 52:40But I feel there's been enough glimpses of that to convince me
- 52:44to keep going. I'll finish there.
- 52:48Thank you. Thank you for listening.
- 53:01If you enjoyed this talk, you are warmly invited to visit
- 53:05Buddhisticious Tour Berlin in Kreutzberg.
- 53:07We offer meditation, Dharma talks, and courses that support
- 53:12practice in everyday life. You'll find more information in
- 53:17the episode description.