Well, I want to approach this subject, how the Buddha appears, rather carefully and slowly. Well, I mean, what could be a more important or extraordinary topic? Yeah. I mean, potentially so centrally and essentially important to us. Also so im Mittelpunkt und auch so essentiell für uns, dieses Thema. Ja, and at the same time how hard to deal with it, how hard to think about it it is. And in fact, we can look at the history of Buddhism as trying to deal with what the hell, I mean, excuse me, what the heck is Buddhism?

[01:16]

And I think, first of all, for us, we have to examine the automatic categories, conceptual categories we frame the question, the idea in. Yeah, I mean, we have some way of thinking about ourself and usually we we don't think we're in the same category with Buddha. Somehow it's almost impossible for us to not think of the Buddha in some God category.

[02:20]

And the whole subject in some sort of category of religion. And this puts us in a, gives us a problem. It's a problem. And if you allow these categories to rule how you think about the topic, you end up Well, not in an impossible place. But a place which, yeah, you have to accept Buddhism then as a religion. And as a religion, maybe you have access to this category, Buddha. And it's interesting to hear how I sound in German.

[03:24]

It sounds more interesting, complicated. Yeah. But if we want to look at this from the point of view of our own experience, to find ourselves in the same category, as the Buddha, then we really have to get rid of somehow the God and religion categories. Okay. So, you know, this evening we had a prologue day today.

[04:43]

Yeah, which we can just talk about anything, you know. We don't worry about the subject, the topic tonight. Yeah, and we ended up talking about this Do we need a category other than consciousness to explain and also to have contact with our actual experience? To explain and to have contact with our experience. Okay. And... As many of you know, I usually call these two categories of mind, awareness and consciousness.

[06:07]

But at least I think it's pretty clear we can say there's consciousness, there's at least two modes of knowing. One is consciousness and one is awareness. We don't have a name for it. Let's call it non-consciousness. Okay. Now, should we call this non-consciousness awareness for some reason? Yeah. Well, that's what we talked about. And this is not separate from the topic of how do we find the Buddha in our category. Okay, so instead of thinking of the Buddha as the Buddha,

[07:09]

Let's think of him, unfortunately, maybe, as a teacher. Let's call him the great teacher, a great teacher. Okay, he was a grossenlehrer. He was a great teacher. That's true. Okay. Plato was a great teacher. But no one says, how does Plato appear? No one A person can be a Platonist, but no one is a Plato. No one would say, well, you've been reading Plato for a long time. Are you a Plato yet? Well, actually, if you start putting it into categories that we can relate to, it starts looking ridiculous.

[08:26]

Have you had the Plato experience yet? Have you realized Plato-hood? How's your Plato-nature? Okay, so let's see if we can get this concept back into our own categories. Well, if we wanted to be Einstein... Wenn wir Einstein sein wollten... Well, you'd probably have to start with studying physics. Dann muss man vermutlich anfangen, Physik zu studieren. If you want to be Bach, you know, I'd like to be a Bachist. Wenn man Bach sein will und ich möchte gern ein Bachist sein... Yeah, you'd have to at least study music or know music.

[09:34]

Und dann müsstest du zumindest Musik studieren und Musik kennen... Or Rembrandt you have to paint. And Plato, do you need to be a philosopher? Well, I think in... Until the age of professional philosophy, philosophy was a way of being, not a way of thinking. But what did the Buddha do that's different? Or how did it happen that it's different? Well, one aspect, if we know that's similar, Plato had disciples. The Buddha had disciples. And we know that Socrates and Aristotle and Plato are all, you know, some kind of lineage. And so what's it mean to have disciples?

[10:46]

Yeah, there's a role. I mean, the word disciple has some, yeah, I think it's a good word in English at least. And I don't like students. It's he or she, your student. It feels like something childish. In English. But there is a generational type relationship. Aber es gibt so eine Beziehung, eine generationale Beziehung da, die möglicherweise in dem Wort disciple transportiert wird.

[11:50]

But in fact, we can understand it best if we think of it as partners. It's a kind of partnership in developing partnerships. Wisdom more. Understanding. And at least as it's come down to us, what the Buddha did and said, we know quite a bit about him. He seemed to have been an actual person. Who had troubles and enemies and you know, normal stuff. But first of all, he had disciples or partners.

[12:55]

So this isn't just the Buddha... knowing a lot and teaching a bunch of people. It's more something happens in the mutuality of practice that you can't separate the development from all the participants. So from the very beginning, the disciples are in the category of the Buddha. Now, as a teaching, this is simply a fact.

[14:10]

As in the later developments of Mahayana, where the Buddha becomes omniscient and cosmic and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, this sounds like a pretty big thing. You know, out of your eyebrows, golden lights appear in cosmic systems. You know, this is not in our usual category. but somehow actually historically This cosmic stuff brought it back into human categories. But maybe we can come to that tomorrow. So from everything we know about the actual historical Buddha, he didn't teach physics or some music.

[15:22]

He taught noticing how we exist. So here's a great teacher. who teaches us to notice how we exist. And he doesn't say you have to have some special knowledge, you just have to know how we actually exist. So it's open to everyone. Then it's this openness to everyone that is the basis for it developing into a religion. Now, how did this great teacher, the Buddha, called the Buddha, the awakened one, how did he awaken?

[16:48]

Well, he realized enlightenment. Well, the term enlightenment is a category with a lot of closed doors. Yeah, so let's call it he had a great intuition. Yeah, he had a great insight. Now you've all had intuitions and insights, so that's in your category too. But it seems like the teaching of Buddhism is that there was a really big intuition. The big intuition. Okay, so this great intuition... his teaching flows from.

[18:06]

Now, if he didn't have to study physics before, is there any accumulated knowledge from which this great intuition arose. And what we can understand from knowing something about the historical Buddha, and let me just say as a footnote, that in Zen, you can study Zen all your life and almost never hear anything about the historical Buddha. Yeah, except that the Yogacara school, which is the main school from which the

[19:13]

basic postures, mental and physical postures of Zen develop. Actually, say something like, assume, let's recapitulate the experience of the Buddha. I don't like the word recapitulate because it sounds like you're going to offer your head. Recapitulate. But anyway. So it's not like, say, Asanga is the 4th century CE, the Common Era. Asanga.

[20:35]

Asanga. We like the Buddhism of Asanga and his brother Vasubandhu. We like it. I'm just saying. You can think that way. Yeah, so let's start with 4th century Buddhism and and start practicing fourth century Buddhism. And with Asanga you have the development of the Yogacara school. But actually what Asanga says in the Yogacara school says, no, go back and start with the Buddhist practice. Okay, so in effect, although you don't hear about the historical Buddha in Zen much, Zen assumes in the way we practice Zazen and mindfulness that we are going to start as the Buddha started.

[21:52]

So the practice of Zen Buddhism is modeled on the Buddha's practice. So the archetype of the historical Buddha is not seen much in Zen teaching, but the practice... Maybe you're getting like me and you need a chair. Okay. We can get you a chair if you want.

[23:00]

That's okay. So it's not based on the archetype or the history of the Buddha, but rather based on what he did. So, in a way, we're... We are trying to start where the Buddha started with just sitting. Well, that's good. We can do that. But when is that great intuition going to come along? Where is the big insight? As I said often, you have to learn to wait. If you can really wait as if it will never come, maybe it then arrives. But many of you have tried that and still hasn't arrived.

[24:05]

I'm waiting as if it hasn't arrived and it hasn't arrived. So, you know... Okay. Well, the teaching of the Buddha, the teaching of the Sangha, let's put it that way, and the... what we know of the Buddha's life, say that this big insight, this big intuition he had, was based on accumulated knowledge of how we actually exist. Okay.

[25:11]

So let's take that. That sounds pretty good. Accumulated knowledge of how we actually exist. Now, But we all have accumulated knowledge. You're all somehow, you know, when I look at, you know, I sit somewhere like in a city. And here's all these people walking around. There are lots of them. I mean, that's us, you know. They all seem to find their way home. They all seem to eat three meals a day.

[26:12]

I mean, this is like a miracle. So they actually know quite a lot. I watched in the Crest Town, I watched the deer a lot. You know, they sort of survive in the winter, they eat, you know, they don't have a house, but they do pretty well. And they know something we don't. I couldn't live on that mountain in the winter with no house. But they couldn't live in Hanover without, you know, they wouldn't do very well in Hanover. Yeah. So we know something they don't. So we have a lot of accumulated knowledge that allows us to survive.

[27:21]

Now, why isn't this accumulated knowledge that allows you to function pretty well The accumulated knowledge that can be the basis for the big intuition. Okay, now through the experience of Buddhism, practitioners. It's clear that the accumulated knowledge we have isn't the basis for the big intuition, usually. So how do we accumulate knowledge that can be the basis for the big intuition.

[28:37]

Well, the experience of the Sangha over centuries has been through meditation and mindfulness. And through views and attitudes rooted in meditation and mindfulness. So even if you don't practice meditation and mindfulness much, you still have a chance if your views are rooted in meditation and mindfulness. And the experience of the Sangha over centuries, too, has been that the experience most of us accumulate as we develop and become adults, actually

[29:44]

blocks this great intuition. Okay. So if we use great teacher Plato or something as an example, And not that we want to become Plato. And he didn't present the teaching as inseparable from the way he lived. The Buddha's teaching is rooted in how he actually lived. And lived with others. So somehow, if we think of Buddha again, as just a teacher, a great teacher, and how it turned into can we be a Buddha instead of can we be a Plato?

[31:12]

Because the teaching emphasized that this is an activity. And if we participate in this activity of discovering how we actually exist, then the experience or what we mean by Buddha might appear to us. Okay. Again, let's go back to the beginning. We have this topic. We've got to start somewhere. So let's start with the topic. And so, I don't know, the topic's kind of random, but it's what has appeared. The topic's kind of random, but it's what has appeared.

[32:20]

Just like whatever appears. Let's look at what appears. So maybe we have to look at how things appear to us. Not only how the Buddha appears in the history of Buddhism, but how the Buddha appears in can appear to us. You closed it or you opened it? I closed it. Well, I think I've said enough.

[33:29]

Because I just want us to get started somehow tonight and for this weekend. And trying to approach this idea of Buddha appearing in our life and in the history of Buddhism as something that is in the category of our own experience, is in the category of our own activity, and is, by the time we reach the Zen school, is present already in our own activity. So it's still the fact in the praxis of Zen that you're a

[34:35]

accumulating experience through meditation and mindfulness of how we actually exist. Now you begin to have a conceptual framework or view, that we don't have to accumulate. It's already present. It's already present here in this room. It's already present in the experience of each of you. The disciple of Matsu. Matsu is one of the seminal then teachers. What does seminal mean? the source.

[36:02]

Yeah, and Wee Hai said, there is no need for the Buddha to seek the Buddha. And his teacher, Matsu, was famous for saying, this mind is Buddha. And in the next generation, Nan Chuan said, Tao or Zen or realization is ordinary mind. Okay, so this is something we have to also like, a way of also looking at how is this in our category? What is our mind? Yeah, that's hard to answer isn't it?

[37:16]

And it's the biggest big struggle in science today, cognitive science. No one knows what is mind. So maybe Matsu was just fooling us. This mind is Buddha, but you don't know what it is, so no problem. But it's still Matsu and Nanchuan and Huihai are all trying to get Buddha in our category while recognizing that the existence Ordinary experience most of us accumulate. It's laced with suffering. Yeah, interwoven with suffering. Okay, how are we going to make use of our ordinary experience?

[38:35]

Is this intuition or insight? Can it be that the teaching just comes from the big insight? If we imagine that's possible, intuition Are we ready to receive this big insight? Is it in this room? And if we do receive it, or maybe it's already here, but you're not receiving it? If you do receive it, how do you then mature it, bring it into your life. This is all the questions that The practice of Buddhism, rooted in our own experience, has struggled with for 2,500 years.

[39:44]

And we've got a weekend. But I think... If we can get this experience or this sense of the Buddha into our own category, we'll have accomplished a great deal this weekend. It probably will help us to see something about the struggle to get Buddha into the category of each of us. But it's a teaching that expresses a tremendous respect for each one of you.

[40:48]

A tremendous respect for each one of you. Yeah. Can we answer this respect? Okay.

[40:52]

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