Good day, good morning, good afternoon. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do today. Roshi's voice is gone. There you go. Now you're back. Yes, right. You're back. I can hear you now. Yes. I was asked both in Europe and here in Colorado to talk about the three mysteries of a Buddha.

[01:21]

And these are not mysteries that have to be solved or explained, but these are... Excuse me, I lost you. These are mysteries that are... but mysteries that are used, that should be used. This is something like a title for the Buddha. This is like my old friend Russell sitting in front of me.

[02:37]

How would it be if I were to talk about the three mysteries of Russell? I've known Russell for decades, but if I were to say the three mysteries of Russell, then I would have to think about it. What is that actually? What are his three mysteries or five or ten? to awaken the three mysteries, our feeling for awakening a Buddha in this life.

[03:40]

Then the commentary on these three mysteries becomes as much as body-speech, the body-speech and the spirit of a Buddha. And then you have to ask yourself the question, body, speech and spirit, well, I see a body here and I speak too and my spirit seems to work too. What is mysterious about it? And of course, in a certain way, it's all mysterious. Even medical science can only partially explain the body scientifically, or has only partially researched the body so far.

[05:09]

And yet these are pretty common, ordinary words to describe the activity of our lives. Warum bewegst du deinen Körper nicht rüber auf diesen Stuhl und schaust, ob er da besser hinpasst? Wir benutzen die Worte auf diese Art und Weise, aber warum sind diese Worte in Beziehung zu einem Buddha ein Mysterium? Because Buddhism basically assumes that we actually don't know what's going on here, Buddhism also assumes that everything is in a certain way a mystery. And to continue to work with this researchable title, these three mysteries of a Buddha.

[06:34]

In order to continue with this, three more hints are being presented or shown, namely these three words mudra, mantra and mandala. And with all this it's about moving you to explore, not just thinking whether you can understand it or not, but to explore whether this idea of the mysteries of a Buddha can be present in your daily life. And that implies that there is no language and no culture in which we could simply find words for what the three mysteries of a Buddha could be.

[08:17]

To give the Buddha this title, the three mysteries of a Buddha, also calls us to explore for ourselves the mystery of our own body or our own language, of what we say. The challenge in such a title, namely the title of the mysteries of a Buddha, is that you explore your own experience beyond or outside the categories of the language.

[09:37]

Okay, that's good. Should I translate that? Also mir gefällt es zu sehen wie du da drüben auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks sitzt und übersetzt weil das Übersetzen selbst auch ein Mysterium ist. I can imagine, I'm not a translator myself, I can only speak one language. But I imagine that a translator or a translator always finds that it is not quite possible to transport something from one language into the other. Somehow something is always missing or something is always lost.

[10:49]

And And when I look at you, I can see that you are standing between these two languages, German and English. And of course I always have this difficulty when I try to translate East Asian yogic contexts and concepts into Western contexts and concepts.

[11:51]

But when the translator, in this case Nicole, sees this borderline between the two languages, then you can perhaps also feel for yourself that you can actually have the feeling, oh, actually there is something like a boundary between the words that I find to describe my experience and the experience itself. Und wenn du aufmerksam bist, dann kannst du manchmal vielleicht finden, dass du das Gefühl hast, dass jetzt deine Erfahrung von den Worten eingefangen wird oder covered by, von den Worten abgedeckt wird.

[13:28]

But when your body, your spirit and your language, your speech, are overwhelmed by a field of attention, then you can perhaps notice that it is something like a border mystery, a mystery that lies at the border, in the middle of your own experience, namely between what you actually feel, experience and the descriptions of your experience. Let me now at least temporarily shift our attention from the three mysteries of the Buddha to the mystery of this choice that just recently took place here in America, which has followed the whole world.

[15:18]

Jeder weiß, dass eine einzelne Stimme nicht zählt, keinen Unterschied macht. In einer Wahl mit Millionen von Stimmen, da ist eine Stimme zählt nicht. But when this single voice is accompanied by the mantra that every voice counts. And now I have already spoken for eons of Sundays about spiritual attitudes. Also dieses Mantra oder dieser Wendesatz, dass jede Stimme zählt, das ist das, was ich meine mit einer geistigen Haltung.

[16:48]

And one thing I would say is that spiritual healing is actually something quite common, something that we often use in our daily lives. If you choose, then you let your choice, which is accompanied by the mantra or the spiritual attitude that every voice counts. And if you do that, then you stand in this long queue with a distance of one and a half meters between the people who are all over America.

[18:13]

You stand there in the middle of the rain and do it. And that is the motivation from this mantra that ensures that you stay there even in the rain. The spiritual attitude, the mantra that every voice counts, transforms your individual voice into all voices. Again, the spiritual attitude that every voice counts transforms your individual voice into an example for all voices.

[19:19]

Du hörst in der sogenannten Lügenpresse der liberalen Medien, dass jede Stimme zählt und dass wir genau das tun werden. Jede Stimme zählt. Und das ist so etwas wie der allgemeine Aufruf der Demokratie. But when we talk about demagogues, for example, a demagogue could say, he could say, yes, we should only count the voices that I like. And that is actually also something mysterious, namely that you can create a single voice, that you can create a mantra, a turning point, that transforms your single voice into an example for all voices.

[21:07]

So let me go back to this very first example, this first manifestation of Zazen as the spiritual attitude, don't move. And the point that I have always pointed out is that if the physical attitude of the Zazen is not accompanied by the spiritual attitude, don't move, then Zazen is quite less effective. If we now take the image of the waves and apply it to the image of the zazen and the spiritual hold, don't move.

[22:36]

then every single sasen in which you do not move is an example or a manifestation for the spirit of a Buddha. The indestructible spirit of a Buddha. Also nochmal, in anderen Worten, jedes Sazen, in dem du dich nicht bewegst, in dem du praktizierst, bewege dich nicht, wird zu einer Wahl, einer Stimme für den Geist eines Buddhas. And then I translate it like this, and this is important, that you make yourself with every sasen to this voice, to a voice for this sasen to become an example for the indestructible spirit of a Buddha.

[24:36]

Suzuki Roshi has every lecture in the 60s, after he said all these things that none of us was familiar with, he always ended the lectures with the question, do you understand that? And that too became a kind of mantra, where I asked myself, do I understand that now? No idea, I'm in the middle anyway. Es gibt zwei große Fragen, würde ich sagen, in der späteren Entwicklung der Madhyamaka-Lehre im... What did you say?

[25:55]

Ninth century? Im späten neunten Jahrhundert. Und es... It seems like it's a long time ago. It's not really, but it seems so. As you can imagine, they lived in something like a data-less time in China, a data-dark time. Es gab keine Archäologie, es gab keinen globalen Zeitrahmen oder ein globales Zeitverständnis.

[26:58]

Es gab keine gelehrte Geschichte und so weiter. There were sutras, so there were these texts that were thoroughly, very precisely translated by something like thinking communities of monks. But still, it seems as if it's all been a long time ago. The one was in India and who knows when that was exactly and so on. You don't know exactly in such a data-free time. And so this shift has happened to the question, can what we call a Buddha, can that be present in our lives or is what we call Buddha already part of our own experience?

[28:38]

And that too is already a mystery. Welche Art von Erfahrung ist das, mit der wir, weiß ich nicht, werden wir mit der geboren oder können wir die entwickeln? Welche Art von Erfahrung ist das, die die Erfahrung eines Buddhas sein könnte? And And at the same time we asked ourselves the question, okay, but in the sutras there is something, there is a teaching and we have received this teaching.

[29:49]

And then the question arises, how can this received teaching, how was it passed on and how can it be passed on from the past to students in the future? And let's keep it very simple. If the Buddha is awakened, then the spirit of awakening is probably renewed in every moment. And what would such a renewed spirit be?

[30:52]

A spirit that is fresh and unique at every moment. And a spirit that is open to what is fresh and unique again. What would such a spirit be like? One way to describe it, as I did a few Sundays ago, is to talk about the uncut land of the living. To be in a spirit that is in every moment new, erwacht für diesen Augenblick. Da ist das Gefühl, und um immer wieder zurückzukommen auf das, was ich den Pfad aufeinanderfolgender Momente nenne,

[31:59]

It is the journey of successive moments that enables you to develop a spirit that is actually new in each of these successive moments. So it is this journey that enables you to develop it. Wenn du so etwas wie Verzweiflung oder Entmutigung erfährst, was das bedeutet, ist, dass dein Bezugspunkt Identität ist und nicht Lebendigkeit. And if you notice that, then you can start to shift your reference point from there, so that you have the feeling, okay, just this vitality, now the vitality feels like this.

[34:01]

And your reference point becomes this uncarted land of vitality. And that doesn't mean that you have to ignore what you feel, for example. Thank you. And this is my attempt here in this 21st century to see what the spirit of a Buddha can be, to try to find words for it. As we can imagine this with a child, the uncut land of the living and the uncut field of the living and the potential.

[35:21]

This can be accessible to us and is actually our experience or should be ours or could be our experience. Und jetzt kommen wir damit wieder zurück zu dem Feld des Geistes, frei von den Inhalten des Geistes. Und was ist eine Darmatur, ein Darmator zu dem Feld des Geistes? Maybe there is a dharma window in this dharma door to the field of the spirit. Many people have such an experience that they roughly codify or describe, oh, okay, there was a samadhi or a feeling of deep silence and the moment I think that, this silence disappears.

[36:58]

Zum Beispiel, dass ich zehn Minuten lang in dieser einen Sazen-Periode am vierten Tag des Sashins, zehn Minuten lang keine Gedanken hatte, bis ich bemerkt habe, dass ich keine Gedanken habe und dann ist das Gefühl wieder verschwunden. Das ist die Erfahrung von Anfängern oder von beginnenden Praktizierenden und eine ernstzunehmende Erfahrung von beginnenden Praktizierenden. Ein... A more mature practitioner can, and there are different forms of samadhi, but a more mature practitioner can perceive that he or she is in this feeling of samadhi or has this feeling.

[38:21]

Ab einem bestimmten Punkt kann man spüren, dass dieses Gefühl, dieses samadische Gefühl, den Körper ausfüllt. Und man kann das bemerken, ohne dass es dabei verschwindet. Und das könnten wir eine initiatorische Bezeichnung a yogic ability, a guiding, initiatory yogic ability. And I have now represented this metaphorically as if we were looking through the Dharma window in the Dharma door to the field of the spirit. What is, I think, the most basic experience for this Dharma door into the field of the spirit?

[39:53]

This is the practice of what is simply called equality. the simultaneous appearance of spirit and object of the spirit. I see this empty staff that was given to me, which always follows both gravitation and my hand, It's a kind of equality that always follows the gravitation and that's why this band is attached to it.

[41:04]

But if it is always there as a physical object, then at the same time it also appears in my experience, in the spirit of my experience. So you notice the object. I don't know if there's even a proper English word for this here. You notice the object and then you notice the field of the spirit in which this object appears. Und jetzt bemerkst du die Gewohnheit oder die Weisheitsabsicht, bei jeder Erscheinung für das Feld des Geistes zu stimmen, dich für das Feld des Geistes zu entscheiden.

[42:35]

Und jetzt denk dran, jede Stimme zählt. And you just get used to it as part of this thread of successive moments, that you choose everything that appears, with every appearance, for the field of the spirit, you decide for the field of the spirit. When I hold these two things up and hold them in the camera or in the sound field, one is the empty stick and the other is the glass water. Und dennoch gibt es hier eine Erfahrung von Gleichheit, weil Geist Teil sowohl der Erfahrung von dem Leerstab ist, als auch von der Erfahrung des Wasserglases.

[44:04]

And after a while you get a feeling for it. You get a feeling for equality that is independent of the object you look at or of the object that appears in your senses. After a while, this becomes the realization of this practice or this feeling that we call equality. After a while, everything that you perceive, everything that you see is accompanied. from an always the same feeling, from which you feel that the quality is such a feeling of spirit, that is accompanied by everything.

[45:20]

Und wenn du einmal die yogische Fähigkeit entwickelt hast, dieses Gefühl von Gleichheit, das immer da ist, zu bemerken, unabhängig von den Inhalten des Geistes, und du dieses Gefühl immer aufrechterhalten kannst, dann hast du das Feld des Geistes verwirklicht. For some reason, at the beginning of this lecture, I knew that this had to be a gradual approach to get closer to a certain clarity. And I decided not to try to close everything down and make it complete, but to just talk and stop talking when my time is up.

[46:49]

But I'll leave a few teasers now. Namely, now you can perhaps develop a feeling for what it could mean to pass on this feeling of the vigilance of a Buddha to others. And maybe you can see why this is being encrypted or described as a transmission from spirit to spirit, outside of writing and language.

[48:02]

This is not just a press release from the Zen. but it is a real description of transmission. The transmission from the field of the spirit to the field of the spirit. And the last teaser. I have never talked about teasers before. I have the word on your website that you use it somewhere. And actually, I wanted to talk about your experience of the resolution of dualism, about the increase of the resolution.

[49:22]

So if you zoom in on the details of your experience, I wanted to talk about the way you use the word zept. Without explaining, it's difficult to translate. How you talk about it, but I don't have time for that now. I talked about what I just said last Wednesday in the talk here in Crestone. It's the fourth I counted. Every word counts, yes. Yeah. And the fourth teaser is why a mudra is perhaps an access to the body as a mystery of a Buddha.

[50:58]

And this word, which one are you now at? Mantra, right? Did you say that? Yeah. Okay. Okay, and why a statement or a statement, and I really like Heidegger's approach, which speaks about how it is when the language produces the language, or a language that, like, I don't know how Heidegger says it in German, but where the language from the Not in a meaningful way for me. Yeah. Yes.

[52:36]

So mantra becomes a word for the... Mantra wird ein Wort für den allgemeinen Ausspruch davon, was ein Buddha sagt. Und Mandala. And a mandala is a voice for the world of a Buddha. It doesn't take away the mystery, but you use these things to explore our shared mystery with each other.

[54:05]

It's fine. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Thank you very much. Danke. Danke. So let me say about the time for reconvening. It's five to five now in our time. Yeah. Yeah, we all think your limit isn't 40 minutes. That's just you thinking that, but let's keep it there. Okay, so let's meet in 15 minutes from now. Is that okay, Roshi? At 10 past, 10 after. Also, wir lassen es wieder treffen um 10 nach deutscher Zeit, 10 nach 5.

[55:13]

Dankeschön. Ciao. Did you listen to it in the end? Sorry? Did you listen to it? Yes, but... Didn't you understand it too? No, not at all. But not much of the whole day. In the meantime, I was also thinking about the fact that I'm still pretty busy here for the first 10-15 minutes and I just missed the connection, but I didn't want to understand it at all. Oh really? But the picture with which every voice counts, that was totally enlightening, wasn't it? That was totally easy. Yes, but I'll say it like this, beyond that. But I found most things until the end, when he, after that, for me at least, what he did at the very end, these four teasers, he was so excited.

[56:09]

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