We have a person, and we have Buddha, and in between we have interdependence. In my mind, I see it something like this. Buddha. Buddha. So that what separates a Buddha and a person is how do you understand order and dependence. And if you deeply understand interdependence, you're a Buddha. Aren't you glad it's that simple? Get to work. So, if the Buddha and the person are joined through the Dharma, which is the understanding of interdependence, then the body of the Buddha is the Dharma.

[01:29]

when the person and the Buddha, so to speak, are united through this adjoint interdependence. Yes. Through an understanding and realization. Yes, of course. Through an understanding and realization of interdependence, of mutual conditions. Yes. The body of the Buddha is the Dharma. And Dharmakaya means the Dharma body. So this is one of the sources of the term Dharmakaya. Because once we have no longer the form body of the Buddha, we have the Dharma body of the Buddha. Diesmal haben wir also dann nicht länger den Formkörper des Buddha, sondern den Dharma-Körper des Buddha. So we have the form body from our parents.

[02:32]

Wir haben den Formkörper von unseren Eltern. This is not just a teaching or an idea or a belief. Es ist also nicht nur eine Lehre oder eine Vorstellung oder ein Glaube. It's to really enter into, to embody interdependence. is to generate a body not given to you by your parents. A body we can call the Dharmakaya. Okay. Thank you. What is the dynamic of the practice of interdependence?

[04:14]

The dynamic initiated by Nagarjuna is the equal and simultaneous application of the two truths. Die gleiche Anwendung der zwei Wahrheiten. Now, what are you doing when you do that? Was machst du de facto, wenn du das tust? You're taking away, you're subtracting permanence, inherence, and so forth, from each object. Then what does the Diamond Sutra say? The Bodhisattva has no idea of a self. The Bodhisattva has no idea of a person.

[05:19]

The Bodhisattva has no idea of a living being. The Bodhisattva has no idea of a lifespan. What are those four? They're implicit forms of permanence. The Dharmakaya arises when you subtract those four. The Dharmakorpa, I like that. Now, when you practice Zazen, now we're looking for the three bodies of Buddha in our ordinary experience, our practice experience.

[06:29]

Nun betrachten wir die drei Körper in unserer eigenen Praxiserfahrung. We're saying Buddha activity, but we could say Buddha inactivity. You know, Sophia said to... Marie-Louise and I the other day, you know, Buddhists, they're not real human beings. They're not real people. And we said, why is that? Because they don't do anything. They just sit and stand. Yeah. But I said, but they are doing something. They're in perfect equipoise. Oh, yeah. Equipoise means to be completely settled. Yeah. Zur Ruhe gekommen.

[07:44]

Not yet formed. So, This is a kind of activity. But it's an activity we can also call stillness. But there won't be stillness if there's an idea of a lifespan, self, person, living being. If you have an idea of a living being, this is not stillness. Each thing treated equally. Wenn du noch eine Vorstellung von einem lebenden Wesen hast, dann heißt es, nicht jedes Ding gleich zu behandeln. Now, you're going to have to work with these four, self, person, living being, etc., yourself. Du musst mit diesen vier, also Person, lebendes Wesen, Lifespan, etc., selber arbeiten. And it takes a while to notice.

[08:46]

Es braucht eine Weile, bis man das bemerkt. For instance, if I look out the window, It's still winter. Yeah, but the sun has this wonderful prescience of spring. And yeah, this is not new to me. I know this time of year and It's occasionally spring light days. And I know this is a living being. I know this as a living being. Because I've had this experience before. So I'm a living being in contrast to the day, which is just the occasion of the weather. But if I have an idea of a living being,

[09:48]

I'm somewhat separated from this somewhat comparative historical flow of this spring-like day. And I can feel that coming in. In a similar way I might feel I have a lifespan, I have a certain responsibility to do things in this particular life and so forth. I'm in the middle or toward the end of my life or something like that. Yeah, and it's, you know, I am, you know, I have a first cousin, first cousin, first cousin once removed. The child of my first cousin.

[11:03]

Who's a novelist. He's 20 in his 20s or so. And he wrote a novel which he writes extremely well. But he wrote from the inside, one of his protagonists that he writes from the inside of is a 50-year-old man. Just doesn't have the feeling of a 50-year-old man. He just doesn't know what it's like to feel 50. I mentioned this to him. He felt quite criticized. So there is a difference between being le carré, by the way.

[12:09]

He has a very good feeling for what it's like to be 50 or 60. So that's a feeling of a lifespan. But that's, can you imagine, having an experience with no sense of lifespan? No sense of a living being, of one who's lived a life. No sense of being a person among other persons. No sense of a subjective self. Imagine you could drop those things. As we drop the sense of permanence.

[13:13]

You know, I think you probably in your meditation do this sometimes. You probably barely notice it. And what these teachings do is they help you notice it and then increase the degree to which you can drop these things. Zazen does, I'd say, 55% of the work. But 45% is wisdom. If you have 45% without Zazen, you're just a scholar. So it's better to have a 55% practice and a 45% understanding. But if you have a 55% understanding, to make it 100%, you need the 45%. So enlightenment might bring you up to 55 or 60, but you still need practice and wisdom.

[14:32]

Okay, now, when you're practicing, The simultaneity of the two truths. Only seeming permanent. And eventually you feel exactly equally about each thing. You're painting it with the same brushstrokes of perception. When you experience the flower, the glass, the vase equally.

[15:38]

Dignaga says, you do not know, the Indian logician says, you do not know the reality of mind until the mind is free of concepts. So you're removing concepts. Subtracting concepts. When you experience everything equally, which means... Concepts have been peeled off, subtracted, etc. Release. What do we call that? Thusness. Simple word. In English, it's the same word as the. The?

[16:52]

Yeah. The book. The land. Also im Englischen ist es einfach auf das Buch, das Land. Yeah. So you have Cezanne paints the vase, the flower, and he's painting the the-ness, not so much a different object. Und Cezanne malt also dieses... Also, die Vase, das Objekt. In German it's difficult because we have different genders. Well, that's the French gave us no gender. Because when, as I had a whole discussion in the kitchen earlier, English is half French and half German.

[17:52]

Because of the Norman conquest. Yeah. And so German and English have different gender systems. And so English just said, to hell with it. We'll have only one the. Yeah. So English dropped gender. So, okay. Now, the word for thusness or suchness, sometimes translated, is tathata. Tathata. [...] Tathata means goodbye in English. Goodbye? Goodbye. Goodbye. Tathata. Tathata. I say Tathātā.

[19:01]

Okay. British English. Okay. The word for the Buddha is Tathāgata. In the Prajnaparamita, they almost never use the word Buddha. They use the word Tathagata. And they use the word Tathagata because the Tathagata is the Buddha as thusness. And thusness is the mind that is dropped, freed from, dropped and freed from. Comparisons, concepts, etc.

[20:05]

Okay. Now, when you're doing Zazen, and you have a feeling, beginners have it. You don't have to have much practice in doing Zazen. And you don't feel your body has boundaries anymore. You know, I sometimes joke, it's like when you have lost your thumbs. It's not so much a joke. You don't know where you're sitting there and you think, oh, my thumbs are supposed to be touching. Where the heck are my thumbs? Out there in space somewhere.

[21:06]

And then you kind of like... Yeah. Move them a little. What happens when you move them a little? You generate a thought body. As I've often shown you, you can confuse the thought body by doing this. Then someone asks you to... to move your particular finger. And it's hard to do because you're seeing your body from the outside and it's now mixed up. Yeah. So... If you drop your thought body, then you're moving them from inside.

[22:08]

But when you move them from outside, you get confused. Okay, so when you can't find your thumbs, You move them a little bit, and then you sort of know where they are, and then there seem to be about a mile apart, or a kilometer maybe in Germany, a different one. And you find them, and you bring them together. You have actually dropped your thought body. You recreate it a little bit to find your thumbs and then probably you drop it again. That's the Dharmakaya. It's not something you know, it's in your practice. Now there's the Dharmakaya The Trikaya developed through theories.

[23:25]

Developed through Buddhist theories. Is it or is it not? Did develop through Buddhist theories. The Dhammakaya, Trikaya, is developed through Buddhist theories. But it's actually rooted in our experience in Zazen. The theories came after the experience. But there were earlier theories. There was a two-body theory and a one-body, you know, various theories. And those theories were also related to practice, but they weren't as fully related to practice as the Trikaya. So if you're going to understand these things, mainly you want to understand it from examining your own practice. The theories are not to explain your practice, but to help you notice your practice.

[24:40]

Am I being fairly clear? Okay. Okay. Okay, so when interdependence, the practice of interdependence, results in the experience of You're in the process of generating the potential, the possibility, and the fact of a Buddha body activity. Okay, all right.

[25:56]

Now, you have the body, you are the body, rather, that is born from your parents and your culture. When you do meditation and mindfulness practice, you begin to give birth with the midwife of wisdom. the body of a Buddha. So what is the major idea in Yogacara Buddhism, which in Yogacara Buddhism is the major school behind Zen?

[26:56]

Tathagata thusness becomes Tathagata. And Tathagata is the body of the Buddha as Dharma. And then we have Tathagata Garba. Garba means both womb and embryo. When thusness is both the embryo and womb of the Buddha's body. So when you can really practice interdependence and embody interdependence in your activity of mind and body,

[27:59]

This is Tathātā, which then is also the basic condition of being a Buddha. Maybe I should use the word Buddhahood instead of Buddha-nature. Okay. So through the practice of zazen and mindfulness with the midwife of wisdom, durch die Praxis von Sasein und Achtsamkeit, mithilfe der Hebamme der Weisheit, you generate the Dharmakaya, erzeugt ihr und bringt hervor den Dharmakaya, which is the mind that's generated when you drop concepts.

[29:10]

Das, was der Geist wiederum ist, der erzeugt wird, wenn ihr drop concepts fallen lässt. Concepts of self, of a living being, of a lifespan, of a person among other persons. And when you drop your, what we call your body sheath or your thought body, Dogen calls this dropping body and mind. And this experience of dropping in body and mind comes rather along with Zazen practice. Particularly unstaged Zazen practice. So you don't go through stages and you don't do things in your zazen because that interferes with the development of the dhammakaya.

[30:17]

And this... midwifed birth of the Dharmakaya is deepened and supported by if in your daily activity you've also dropped concepts to the extent ideally that you abide in or reside in the Dharmakaya. In other words, the basic sense of where you're anchored. The basic sense of how you rest. Yeah. Roost. Yeah. It's not like a chicken roosting. Yeah. Maybe you end up with a Dharma egg. You're making me crazy.

[31:37]

No, you straighten out. You, the sense of the, this, no view, what word should I use? space-like concept-free body becomes present even in your activity. In a simple sense, as we said earlier, you see the the world that you function in as conventional. It's not what you identify with because you're resting in this sense of a concept-free body.

[32:38]

Now, Suzuki Roshi said, for example, in one of the quotations I think we can keep working with. When you find yourself alive without any part, any sense of time. When you feel yourself alive without Any sense of time. Wenn du fühlst, dass du lebendig bist, ohne ein Gefühl von Zeit. When you feel yourself alive in the smallest particles of time. Wenn du dich lebendig fühlst in den kleinsten Teilen von Zeit. The smallest particle of time, he says.

[33:40]

Er sagt, im kleinsten Teilchen von Zeit. This is Sazan. We can also say this is the Dharmakaya. To feel yourself alive without any idea of time. That's no lifespan, no living being. No, that doesn't mean you're not in time and you have a lifespan. But when your mind is free of those concepts, It doesn't mean that you don't have a life span and that you're not in time, but that your mind is free from these concepts. And so Kirschi puts it, when you feel alive in the smallest particle of time, that's like not time as continuity, time as kind of bubbles of space. This is the Dharmakaya. He also says, in each inhaling and exhaling.

[34:48]

There are innumerable units of time. You should be alive, he says, in each of these infinite Units of time. This is an experiential description of lessness. Now, if you even have a taste of this, if you have a taste of your thumbs not, you know, where are they? They're out there somewhere. Well, if you have the feeling of your body and mind drop away and there's just some kind of located but boundaryless presence. This is the Dharmakaya.

[35:49]

Now, From the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya is born. So it's not born from your birth body. It's born from the wisdom body of the Dharmakaya. So when you more commonly, usually, Experience the Dharmakaya body. The space-like, boundaryless body. It still has a sense of location. It's not over there. It's more or less where your physical body is.

[36:51]

But you can't say where it ends. The wall of the Zendo. Okay. Now, when that... How can I say it? When that gives rise to the body as known from the inside, we don't know the body. Usually our form body, our birth body, is known from the outside. And there seems to be an inside-outside relationship to the body. But when you experience your body from the inside out, and that's like, again, hearing your own hearing of the of a sound or of a bird.

[38:05]

When all, when your mentation and perceptual processes, sensorium, no longer project the world project from your perceptual experience to the outside world. All meditation and perceptual activity is felt from the inside. as it actually is anyway, every mentation and perceptual activity is felt from the inside. Yeah. This, more and more that this happens in a a pure sense without concepts, there's an arising of bliss, extraordinary bliss.

[39:20]

And this is called then, of course, the bliss body. It's also called the reward or merit body. And because it's the rewarder merit that arises through the practice of the midwife wisdom. So that's called the Sambhogakaya blood. And all bodhisattvas and statues are representations, almost all, of the Sambhogakaya body. And you not only have dropped the idea of a lifespan.

[40:32]

You feel ageless. You may even look younger or young. So the idealized possibilities of a body are kind of manifest in this Sambhogakaya body. So the idealization of the Buddha is not entirely separate from the actual experience of the Sambhogakaya body. Now, when you can bring and when you do bring that feeling into your daily life. That feeling that you've matured, first of all, through the simultaneous practice of the two truths.

[41:33]

One of the big shifts in One of the big shifts between Theravada or early Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism is that early Buddhism emphasizes the emptiness of the self. And Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the emptiness of the self and the emptiness of phenomena. When you have a practice of The simultaneous application of the two truths. And you're free from the sense of self or permanence or substance in the phenomenal world. And in your... practice as well, zazen practice as well, then this is the maturing of the Dharmakaya body.

[43:03]

Then when you've also then further matured and are quite familiar with the Sambhogakaya body, When you're in ordinary activity, ordinary activity no longer draws you into the birth body, the rupa body, because you've eliminated the sense of self and substance in the through the simultaneous practice of the two truths, so you can reside in the dharmakaya body in the midst of activity without problem, and this is called the nirmanakaya body. Now the manifestation of the Sambhogakaya body is how you mature adept practitioners.

[44:19]

In other words, ideally, a good teacher in Zazen and in the non-social body of a relationship with practitioners Is manifesting subtly the Sambhogakaya body. Because you're mutually practicing and there's a mutual Sambhogakaya resonance there. And it's through the nirmanakaya body that you, supposedly this is the idea, and I think it's true, that you mature people who don't practice.

[45:25]

Okay. Okay. the smallest particles of time which is easy to understand now You know, the remaining part of this extremely important day show is going to be stopped because we have to have lunch at 1 o'clock. My translator is about to disappear into a train. So, but I think I get, you know, we covered it pretty well. We covered it pretty well. Yeah.

[46:26]

I'd like to sit for an hour or so with you. Thanks a lot.

[46:34]

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