I want so much to enter into this space of, let's call it connectivity. Connectivity, is es nicht? Connectedness? Connectedness, yes. That connectivity is certainly said for a good reason, something different than connectedness. Well, say it any way you like. Anyway, I want so much to enter into this connectivity with you that we could call Buddha. And yeah, I know something about how to do it. But that doesn't mean we can do it. And I also know almost all of you for years and years.

[01:26]

It's embarrassing. It's a great pleasure too. But I'm faced with that I don't get enough time to spend with you. Yeah, and seeing so many of you all at once, I think, well, I could spend an hour with you and an hour with you. No, I don't have that many hours. Now, if we were going to... we're able to spend more time together. Lock the doors. This is our host here, Heinrich von Hanover.

[02:30]

Anyway, if we could lock the doors and just stay here for a while, then I could practice with you Interactively, very slowly. And I'd like to go slowly. Because any aspect of the teaching thoroughly entered enters into all the teaching. But I know that most of us enter in part way and then we start debating. So assuming that after you leave you'll start debating with yourself if this makes sense and here's the problem and blah, blah, blah.

[03:42]

Now then I feel I can't just go into one or two points very carefully. So I also have to go into all the ways you might debate with yourself, or as many as I can imagine, all the ways you might debate with yourself over the next weeks, months, years. So how between now and tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, can I go into this thoroughly enough? And also touch on some of the points you will debate with yourself.

[04:50]

Yeah, and that's the problem for me with doing seminars, actually. I feel I can't do it to... well enough for you. Yeah, so it's, you know, I've been doing this for decades. You'd think I'd have it down pat. But it's always a challenge for me to wonder how to do, how to... Yeah. enter into this practice with you. And particularly this essential point of what is Buddha or how does the Buddha appear.

[06:17]

And if it can appear, how does it appear? Okay. Okay? So far, so good. So good. Yeah, even the word appear, how does the Buddha appear? It means, implicit in it, that it can appear in your life, in your experience. Yeah, and has it already?

[07:22]

Or does it? How can it be part of our experience, what we experience, what appears? This is, yeah, this is, maybe we could call this about the turning point question that makes Buddhism what it is. You know, many years ago when I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, he presented the teaching of the Trikaya, the three bodies of Buddha. And this was a life-opening presentation for me. Life-opening because partly the door to religion and spiritual life had been firmly closed in my life.

[08:44]

I mean, you know, I somehow feel I confess I was I've always been an even aggressive atheist. I don't know why, but the idea of believing in anything outside my experience seemed... Ridiculous. Maybe it started when I realized there wasn't a Santa Claus. What else are they fooling me about? Because Christmas is one of the nicer times of the year, and it turned out to be based on, yeah, a wonderful idea, but still something...

[10:01]

faults in the middle of it. So I never went in churches. Unless I had a girlfriend who was Catholic. And I'd go to service or something. Yeah. So the whole idea of religion was just an area of God that was closed to me. I saw no way to enter it except by giving up how I knew the world. I mean, how I knew the world was obviously, like all of us, through my experience.

[11:07]

Yeah, I liked my mother and father, but, you know, I saw also that... They're just guys. I mean, people. Yeah, so I, you know, I didn't believe in, you know, Unless I experienced it, I didn't believe it, whether it was my parents or the educational system or whatever. Yeah, I never thought of this as a problem, but just the way it is. Okay, so then I, you know... happened to meet Suzuki Roshi.

[12:16]

Partly through samurai movies. And he was one of the more unsamurai-like Zen masters. Harry said he was like a rose, a beautiful rose, except there were a lot of thorns, you know. There, too. He actually grew up in samurai times. I mean, it wasn't modern Japan where he really grew up. And he would sometimes use examples like, well, you know, some people do get their heads cut off with swords. It does happen. Well, not in my experience. Um... Yeah, I was at a... Actually, I met Sukershi, I was at a bookstore with a friend of mine, a painter.

[13:39]

And for some reason I was explaining to this guy about this samurai movie I'd seen. I don't know what possessed me, but I raised my imaginary sword Let out a big shout. And in the middle of my sword of nothingness, this guy, George Fields, said, you should meet Suzuki Roshi. And in the middle of that, this guy, George Fields, said, you should meet Suzuki Roshi. Anyway, so I went that night to his lecture instead of to a samurai movie with my friend. And from then on I went regularly. He was what he was teaching.

[14:49]

He was the teaching. That's part of the point I made last night, trying to look at why we don't want to be Plato, but we want to be Buddha. Because the Buddha is even from earliest times several things at once. Yeah, he's a human being. And we know quite a bit about actually his problems. And as I said last night, he had Some people didn't like the way he taught, left, and so forth. And he had physical problems, infirmities, and so forth. He had physical problems, infirmities.

[15:59]

But at the same time, he began to be seen also as an ideal human being. Right, I mean, probably during his lifetime, but right after his lifetime, he began to be someone people turned to, well, somewhere between taking refuge in or solace in or And the background of the word worship worship is worthy, to be worthy of and to turn toward what is worthy. But at the center of Buddhism is not really about our sense, at least in English, of worship.

[17:22]

Much more to take refuge in. But refuge is also such a It sounds like you're in trouble and you go to somebody who's stronger. It's not really that feeling. Sort of like you can't deal with the world through raining too hard, so you go in out of the rain. But we don't have words for the territory of refuge, worship in Buddhism. So I would suggest that you try to find not in German words or English words,

[18:41]

what you feel. But to just look at how you want to feel. How do you want to feel toward someone you respect? If you're quite young, maybe you almost worship some archetypal human being. Or maybe you go to some important person in your life for refuge, but in the sense of mutual understanding of acceptance.

[19:45]

So if our idea is to want to be accepted by someone we care about, admire. This gives us a territory we can experience, have a feeling for. And imagine, you know, as I said, imagine there's an ideal human being out there somewhere.

[20:49]

And I think as a child we want our parents to be ideal human beings. And as the kids get older they start accepting you as they... The kids often accept your problem, your... limitations of their parents, yeah, their acceptance of their parents often includes Understanding, accepting, they're getting angry and fighting with their spouse and so forth. So they practice some kind of, yeah, I would say ideally or in fact, A deep, loving acceptance.

[21:50]

Deep, loving, forgiving acceptance. Yeah, now, this is like doing to others as you have them doing to you. This is like do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the main thing Christianity teaches to kids in America. If you would like to have loving, forgiving acceptance, Start practicing it. So I think the sense that we'd like some kind of ideal human to be out there is probably in deep in all of us.

[22:51]

And I think that the wish that there is a loving, accepting, ideal being out there is a wish that is in all of us. Yes. I mean, I think as we grow up, we hope we meet a really nice teacher, a good teacher, a beautiful partner to marry, etc. And we have to be realistic and accept the way we are, actually, most of us. But the turn in Buddhism would be, you really want an ideal human being to be out there somewhere. And some point you recognize, if I want some person to be like that out there, I have to be that person.

[24:24]

So Buddhism turns on that kind of point when you recognize, if you want a Buddha to exist, where's the responsibility lie? Not in finding him or her, but being. That shift is at the center of what Buddhism is about. And while there's not a single... The three treasures are... Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha. Yeah. So, yeah, I went to this after I've been practicing with Sukershi for I don't know how long, a year or something like that.

[25:36]

He gave a lecture about the three bodies, the trikaya. The dharmakaya, the sambhogakaya, and the nirmanakaya. And probably... sometime today or tomorrow I should go, I should present this teaching myself for you. Although it's implied in everything I'm talking about. So here, why this was opened Doors in my life that I didn't know had been closed until then. Yeah, it was that... suddenly this concept of some god-like person was presented by Sukhriyashi in categories I could relate to.

[26:52]

My previous relationship to religion was transcendental. Transcendental in English means to cross over by leaping beyond. And it basically means in English something that's not part of this world, that's separate from this world. So outside my experience. Now, of course, there's much teaching about Buddhism, which is outside our experience, in Buddhism, of what is outside our experience.

[28:00]

But this is outside of our experience for different reasons than transcendental. I mean, the word to use for Buddha in this sense is immanence or immanental, there's no such word, but, you know, an immanental Buddha. It's not... beyond this world, it's in this world, within this world. So suddenly what had been closed off to me, because it seemed to be outside this world, Suzuki Roshi brought into this world. Now, did he bring it into my experience?

[29:09]

Well, he basically brought it into my experience in the sense that it was clear that through meditation and mindfulness practice I could extend my experience to these three bodies. So what I said last night was I talked about categories. How can we bring the Buddha into categories that we can experience? And that's what I'd like to try to do today and tomorrow. Make clear that the Buddha is in your own categories.

[30:25]

Or is in categories that are accessible to you. This has to be true or otherwise Buddhism has no meaning. So I think it's time for the break category, not the Buddha category. You've been sitting quite a long time in this Buddha posture. Thanks for translating. You're welcome. Thank you.

[30:59]

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