but it represents some overarching kind of defining presence. Yeah, they're called Lung Wong or something in Taoist thinking. Lung Wong, yeah. Somebody said to me, they went to a concert in Basel the other day. No, not Basel. We went to a concert in Lucerne by some Chinese man called Sing-Song. It wasn't really Sing-Song, but he said, I said, really, his name was Sing-Song? No, it wasn't. But he was singing. Because at that time I'd been thinking about how Buddhism has to do with purity or purifying your situation.

[01:14]

And at that moment, about that time of my working with that idea, And in the time when I worked with this idea, Sukhiroshi said to me, dragons don't live in pure water. They need something to eat. They die in pure water. Okay, so here we have our school of fish again. Yeah, and they can't live in pure water. So they need other dead fish and other stuff. And they, in a sense, swimming together as a group, they make their own water. You might even be able to measure it as something different in temperature or something than the water outside the school of fish.

[02:31]

But in any case, this water they swim in As the same mysterious air these migrating birds fly in. And can navigate these immense distances. It's not an air we can navigate in. So how does, what I'm trying to get at here in a roundabout way, is how does the fish determine the water, the formation of the school?

[03:37]

So I'm using the image of us swimming in this human animate space. Well, there's a number of things which I think define this medium of the Sangha. One of them is emptiness. And that should have been on that other list. And one of the, in the Diamond Sutra, for instance, descriptions of emptiness is that the bodhisattva is free from any idea of self and free from any idea of a lifespan. And I think if you work with that, you can free of an idea of lifespan.

[04:52]

You can use that as an insight into the Diamond Sutra. This woman sitting on the bench definitely had an idea of lifespan. But she could stand up and walk across the plaza too with no idea of lifespan. And freedom from the idea of lifespan is also an expression of emptiness. And the Sangha is, we could say, those people who can be together without any feeling of lifespan. Without any comparisons like that. I'm here without any comparisons with you. The more I can withdraw comparisons, the more this is a sangha. A sangha we can take refuge in. And again, if we define sangha, it's not like a group of people who went to the movies.

[06:28]

But actually, even a group of people who went to the movies is not just a group of people who went to the movies. They liked the movie or they didn't. Some will recommend the movie to their friends and some won't. So you can't define really anything as just a group. So one of the, if you want to work with these prescriptive definitions, the Sangha is something you can take refuge in. So what I want to present now is this idea of what kind of water we swim in. I think the way to do that is to just present one of my favorite teachings. It's called the Brahma Vihara.

[07:29]

Which means to live like the gods. For the four divine states. And also called for immeasurables. They are, it's not like morality, but it's the medium of bodhisattvas swimming. Unlimited. Friendly. And somebody has told me that sometimes unlimited friendliness is not so friendly, but we should add kindness.

[08:51]

That's the same word in German. Would you stop being so unlimitedly friendly? But it also means unlimited kindness. Kindness and friendliness, there's only one word for it in German. Unlimited compassion. I like writing a little bit over and over again. So, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity.

[10:13]

Then you can add the paramitas and other teachings, but this is a good place to start. And of course, what we notice is it's pretty hard to be unlimitedly compassionate. But that doesn't stop you from wanting to be. Or to noticing when you're not. So again, this is a very basic practice. Essential to any realization. Any seeing things as they are. And what it does when you practice it? If I continue this idea of swimming, it gives you a medium in which to swim with other people.

[11:53]

Whenever you meet somebody, you've instilled in yourself or installed in yourself The positive value of being kind. And to having compassion. Which means to feel for and with another. To be willing to share their suffering. And carried to more depth means to be willing to change places with other people. If when you went into a hospital to see a friend, We'll say they had cancer.

[12:57]

And your without thinking feeling was, I wish I could trade places with him or her and let them live. That would be compassion. The willingness to trade places with others. Empathetic joy means you also feel the joy of others. And you encourage their and feel joy in their success. I have a good friend who's like that. He's so much like that, everyone wants to be his friend.

[13:58]

If I talk to him on the phone, you know, and whatever, I don't know how he does it, he psychs out exactly what might have been at some point during the last week or so since we spoke. Might have been a small success. In the middle of a pretty dismal two weeks, they said. And he seems to get completely excited about it. Oh, it is so wonderful that this happened, isn't it? Oh, I wish it had happened to me. He is a master of empathetic joy. And pretty soon I'm feeling so good I can't afford the phone bill.

[15:01]

Okay, and unlimited equanimity. Hmm? Really means acceptance. To abide in acceptance. To abide in not making differentiations. To accept everything as equal. So I suggest for your own good, your own health, that you take on the intention to live rightly in this way.

[16:16]

Again, it's not a matter of forcing something on yourself. It's a matter of having the insight or understanding that this creates the medium of Sangha. that the desire for things to be this way creates its possibility and allows each of us to begin to order and find clarity in our many emotions, feelings, and so forth.

[17:29]

It turns animate space with others. It's through equanimity, empathetic joy, etc., that the fish know how to swim together. And we find when we begin to practice these four simple things, kind of common sense, we almost continuously have the feeling people are giving us things. I said to somebody else the other day, it's amazing how much you're accomplishing. And they said, everyone is going out of their way to make it easy for me.

[18:30]

And I think that's a person who is practicing these things. They have the experience that everyone's going out of their way to make it easy for them. And you can feel when you're in this kind of, let's call it a root mind, For some reason, strangers sometimes will spontaneously smile at you. You don't know what you've done. You're just walking along. And it happens maybe four or five times in the middle of a block or two. And other times, it doesn't happen.

[19:42]

People look at you like they wouldn't like you if they had a chance not to. Thank you. So let's sit for a few minutes and then have a break. has more likelihood of happening.

[21:16]

You will notice that it's more likely when you're relaxed. And one of the definitions of zazen meditation is a movement into relaxation. So the more you can simply relax, inside and out, not worrying about when the period will end, etc., your functioning becomes more open and deep.

[22:35]

So practice functions through simple changes and attitudes. Like the experience of relaxation. and view and vision of acceptance. And the four unlimiteds are a form of relaxation.

[24:32]

You can't be kind without being relaxed. Something happens. Your immediate reaction is just to be kind. Or generous. Compassionate. Joyful. Accepting Generates another world.

[25:34]

And we start swimming in this unlimited sea. Perhaps as a shark or a minnow. Through this insight, you can keep swimming in this unlimited sea. You turn into a bodhisattva. Swimming in this medium makes a bodhisattva. Or a dragon. So let's take half an hour to, what, ten to five.

[27:57]

They left their clothes, so they're probably coming back. Angela is helping somebody. Oh, okay. I wish she's not here. And the person she's helping isn't here. In this kind of seminar we don't have time to discuss in detail each of your conversations. But I hope there's something you'd like to bring up that came from your seminars, from your groups. I didn't ring the bell for a while because you seem to be having such a good time.

[29:26]

Yes. A point in our group was that the things you wrote down on the flip chart should ideally really come from the body, from a more physical space than a mental space. That's what we discussed. Yeah, okay, good. There is an observation that, for example, when you stop sitting, there is a small moment when you take things in the room in a way that sometimes has something of it.

[30:34]

And we discussed the observation when we stop meditating or come out of meditation that sometimes it's this short moment where there's a realization coming from the space where these things come more from a physical space. One of the definitions of the realized Buddha body Eine der Definitionen von dem verwirklichten Buddha-Körper is when these arise spontaneously without effort. Okay, something else. I know that what's important is that which is understood but cannot be said.

[31:52]

But still, I would appreciate your... And still I would appreciate it if you say something. The development of the conversation was that we first We discussed in our group like first there was this distinction the people out there and we the sangha. Yes, this protected feeling... Protected?

[33:04]

this protected feeling we in the Sangha and this is a togetherness and you share something and then it's really difficult to go out to the so-called other people. And then that changed. And then all of a sudden the realization was, Sangha is just where I am or where we are, and what we often project to the so-called other people, that's just the same within the Sangha. I think that the result was that actually where I am and where my practice is, so because I always practice and stay on the ball, that's where I am at the end of the day.

[34:41]

The bottom line is where I am and where I practice at Sangha. It creates trust on a deep level. Yeah. I'm always so honored to be part of your practice. Here in Deutschland. So the basic question we're trying to answer, if there is enlightenment, How is that enlightenment possible?

[35:56]

We know enlightenment is possible. We know wisdom is possible. So these questions are working backwards from enlightenment. To what kind of world must this be if enlightenment is possible? If it's possible to have a human life that's as satisfying and joyful as one could imagine, How is that possible? And if we don't get into some... Yeah, we might recognize that it's yes, for some people it's possible, for others it's...

[37:17]

either unlikely or at least isn't the case. But it's clear that the function of wisdom is compassion. And it's the... It's the openness and dynamic. I wish there was a better word of compassion. Ist die Offenheit oder die Dynamik, ich wollte es geben, ein besseres Wort als Mitgefühl? Yeah, that makes, that is the source of wisdom and the expression of wisdom. Dass die Quelle und der Ausdruck der Weisheit ist. So then how can we imagine this world in which enlightenment and freedom from existential suffering is possible?

[38:31]

We can't really imagine it if we say that Some are, it's not possible, unless we can say it's possible for everyone. Or it's not just a kind of happy state. But it's the fundamental state of being. It is a profoundly optimistic teaching. Despite that it's rendering in the West it's about suffering and nihilism and emptiness and so forth. It assumes that Everything as it is is somehow beautiful and blissful.

[39:45]

So how can we know this in the way we conceive of the world? And how is how we conceive of the world part of this? Are you following what I'm saying? So phrases like this, you know, Ideas like this. Which is just a way to say that everything is changing. We know everything is changing. But it allows us to enter into this changing. When we look at it through these words, the changing is also, when you look at it, inter-depending.

[41:15]

I'm intentionally using the gerund ending because it's not interdependent, it's inter-depending. We are interdependent in our translation. But inter-depending is not enough because that's too much of some sort of surface exterior causality. So we need, when you look more carefully, we have to look at everything changing as also inter-penetrating.

[42:17]

One of the most profound examples of this in recent years that scientists tried to kind of say wasn't possible for a while. It's what's called Bell's theorem. We know about Bell's theorem. Basically it's to give you a short version when any quantum particle is involved in an action at its own level.

[43:40]

It forever remains instantaneously connected as part of the same system. Two quantum particles interrelate. And you separated them to the other end of the universe. And you affect one of them, the other one is instantaneously affected. separate them by what we can do in ordinary situations, by some miles. You affect one of them, it's charged, the other one's instantaneously affected. First people had a lot of problems with this because it means that information has to travel faster than light. Light is infinitely fast, you don't have a problem with it.

[44:47]

But light isn't instantly fast. And so it's clear, I think this has been now accepted, that at a microscopic level our universe is non-local. Now, one other way of explaining it is to assume... I hope nobody's in trouble. Or if they're in trouble, they're about to be saved. Okay. Those sirens are the sirens of compassion.

[45:48]

One way Another way of explaining it that makes the anomalies disappear is to assume a backward movement in time. Simultaneously, while there's a forward movement in time, there's a kind of Riptide, an undercurrent of a backward movement in time. A little bit as if you drop a stone in a pond.

[46:50]

The ripples spread out. If you could imagine that when you dropped a stone in a pond, At the moment you dropped it in the pond, ripples began at the end of the outskirts of this pond and moved inward. As if the outskirts of the pond instantly knew when you dropped the stone. If you conceive of it that way, then the anomalies disappear. But in any case, as I said earlier, how can it be that way? I know what I'm talking too long. The whole city begins ringing.

[48:03]

So, I mean, it is, I mean, if you stop, if you want to, how can this universe be non-local? But it seems to be so, at a microscopic level. But we're also microscopic, so. So we don't really understand how quantum reality as we know it works with our everyday local reality. But the intuitions that lead you to imagine a world that way I've been present in Buddhism for 2,000 years. These different terms are an attempt to

[49:04]

bring that intuition into our ordinary discourse and activity. In other words, if enlightenment exists, And if somehow whatever enlightenment is, is here, it can't be over there. If it's here, the here-ness has to be everything we are. Because it can't not be something we are not. So how do we bring everything we are into living with each other?

[50:24]

How do we bring everything we are into this water we swim in? Wie bringen wir alles, was wir sind, ein in dieses Wasser, in dem wir schwimmen? And how do we get the participation of everything that is? Und wie bringen wir alles das, was existiert, dazu, daran teilzunehmen? And what we also is. Und was wir auch sind. When Sukhreshi would say things like that, I'd say, no, Sukhreshi, you have to say what we are. And when Suzuki Roshi said something like that, I improved him and said, no, you have to say not what we are, but what we are. And he said, no, no, what we are. I think that is enough for today. That tomorrow we'll work backwards from enlightenment.

[51:33]

And maybe we'll discover ourselves on the verge of enlightenment. And you might guess that I would like to sit for a few minutes. But please, this evening, make our, your evening part of our weekend sangha by seeing if you can

[54:01]

uninterruptedly bring this vision into your life. At least touch it through this practice of adding nothing, subtracting nothing. And find out what kind of water, medium, you swim in. You must be cold.

[56:55]

You okay, love? Yeah. You haven't got a cold, I think, you've got? Do you think you've got a cold? That's what you were worried about yesterday. I'm sorry. Good to Morgan. Good Morgan. Yeah. Well, I've discovered the best way to get smiles when you walk through the streets is to look harmless and be carrying flowers. Everyone's going toward the church and I'm going away from it. But they think I'm going according. Courting means wooing a woman. And that's as good as going to church.

[57:59]

It was fun. I almost walked back and forth several times just to get some more smiles. This is a vase that Norbert and Angela put in my hotel room. So since I packed, it's unbelievable, and checked out this morning. I had to return their vase. Yeah. So what would you like to know about Buddha nature? Or what we spoke about yesterday.

[59:01]

And you didn't give me very good reports on your meetings. I haven't forgotten. So... Okay, so let's start. What would you like to say to begin with? I have a question related to our discussion in the group. Somebody said, I just now decide I practice unlimited friendliness. Just as my program. And then voices appeared saying that's probably not so easy.

[60:14]

one tries to go this way, to add nothing, so to be here, to add nothing, to do nothing away, to perceive what is, to accept what is, whether then not only these four, we know the behavior, then only grow. The question we had was when we just really practice not to add and not to subtract, whether this isn't the foundation from where these other four qualities, like these four immeasurables, can arise from. That's why I presented both yesterday. At least that's one of the reasons. There's ten directions in Buddhism.

[61:54]

North, south, east, west, south, east, etc. and up and down. And those are thought of moving toward you so that you're the center of the directions. So north isn't over there. North is coming toward you. It's just a different way of thinking about it. But it's a way of thinking that is essential to practice. And at the same time, some practice like these four unlimiteds, that we swim in as a bodhisattva practice, really are, it's about your willingness to be friendly, not your willing friendliness. Sometimes it's not appropriate to be friendly.

[63:16]

I'm not always friendly. Sometimes I can be a little bit tough. It's a big effort, but I try to do it. And I don't know what she's saying, but I hear something in her voice. And so it's understood that the bodhisattva or the person who takes on the vision of bodhisattva practice Now, I emphasized that there aren't entities, there's functions. So don't understand the Buddha as some historical person.

[64:17]

Or some great person. Yeah. If the Buddha is great, you should understand the Buddha as great within relationship to yourself. And there's several ways to understand that. And an important way, I think, the most useful way for us in general is understanding the Buddha as the functioning of, the function of a Buddha. You may not be, you're not the same as everyone else. Each of you is different. But your vow to practice and continue this practice is the same, can be the same.

[65:42]

So there can be the function of Buddha. You can function as a Buddha. So there's no such thing really as a Buddha. There's functioning as a Buddha. And each of you can do that. Each of you can achieve the functioning of a Buddha. I have a glass. Yes. So, these four unlimiteds you take on as a vision

[67:23]

As Wittgenstein said, the desire to live rightly. The clarity of his thinking was connected with not living rightly, but the desire to live rightly. I mean, when you, if you're in a troubled spot and you're willing to put the best face on it, make it look as good as possible even though it wasn't that good, It's a common thing we do. It's not quite living as a Buddha. If you desire to make it look better than it is, it's not too good.

[68:37]

But we can notice that we're doing that. And you can see if you can correct it. And that action is the same as I've been pointing out. When you notice you are making a distinction between self and other, There's Norbert. And he's bigger than me and younger than me. So then I can stop and say, oh, I can dissolve the distinctions. And when I notice I make such a comparison or distinction or say he's there, I'm here, every time I notice it, I can dissolve it. And that's what form is emptiness means.

[69:37]

Form and emptiness are The same thing. It's a bipolar relationship. It's empty, non-empty. And so it takes in our human world, we're not talking a kind of outer science now, In our human world, there's an apprehension of a perception of form. And at the same time, there can be the perception of the emptiness of form. And the perception of form gives you the opportunity to have the perception of the emptiness of form.

[70:55]

You can't, don't turn emptiness into generality. Oh, there's a big emptiness and then there's this form stuck in the middle of emptiness or something. That's the usual way we think because we think in entities. Okay. So this is a kind of vision you take on. And you radiate, you have the feeling of radiating these four unlimiteds in all ten directions. Now, I'm... I'm putting a number of things beside each other that don't exactly relate, but they're the same kind of categories.

[72:02]

One practice I've been giving you recently is to bring your attention and energy Equally to each moment. You don't say, oh, this is an interesting moment, I'll bring more energy and attention to it. Each moment you bring your attention and energy equally to it. That means there's a readiness to act. To bring your energy to each moment means to be, you don't nestle it, but there's a readiness to act. That's probably why the martial arts like this kind of practice. So in each of these there's a readiness to be friendly.

[73:11]

A readiness to be joyful. And that means in psychological terms that you've brought your personality Your personality is rooted in the present. Normally our personality is rooted in our past. Buddhist psychology would be to shift so that your personality is identical to the field of the present. It doesn't mean that you don't have a past. All your associations are present in the so-called Alaya Vishnana.

[74:11]

Yeah. But one of the... Oh, dear. I'm just trying to answer one question. I have a crisis. Okay. There's so much I have to say to explain a simple point. But it's essential to what I'm trying to do this weekend. Maybe I should go forward. But no one else will tell me anything about their group because it will lead into another such thing. It's like you turn on the tap and out comes a waterfall.

[75:36]

You might decide not to wash your face that morning. I've tried to speak about this again. There's several things I've been trying to speak about this summer in Europe. One is the cheerfulness of the sage. Or as Suzuki Roshi is saying, the last aspect of practice is the perfection of the personality. But it's also said that you can't practice until you have a healthy conscious disposition.

[76:41]

So we can try to understand the difference between these two. But let me just concentrate on the cheerfulness of the sage. But basically what has happened is the alaya-vijnana, the storehouse consciousness. In this I first talked about the summer in Austria. The alaya... When you... get so that you can stay with your breathing, so that your resting place is not in your thoughts.

[78:01]

When your resting place is in your thoughts, it means you find the continuity of the world in your thinking. And when your sense of continuity is in your thinking, from a Buddhist point of view, you're sort of condemned to mental space. And condemned to a world of interpretations based on your psychology. And you can just notice this for yourself. How do you check up on who you are and where you are? Almost always in your thinking.

[79:10]

Now, if you do martial arts or you do athletics, probably there's a time in which that's not the case. If you climb mountains, sheer cliffs, your personality has to be in the present. And that's probably why people do it. It's kind of exhilarating to be in the present. Yeah, if it's a thousand meters below you, it's a good inducement. But Buddhism says there's always a thousand meters below you. Otherwise you're going to fall into a kind of morass of... thinking your way out of things, into things, etc.

[80:17]

So the process of bringing your attention to your breath, one of its most important effects, Eventually, you rest in your breath and your body and the present phenomena. and not in your thoughts. And you don't keep going back to your thoughts. You go back to your thoughts when you care to think about something, solve some problem that requires analysis. But the who you are is not in your thoughts. Who you are is in the immediacy of what's going on around you.

[81:22]

And how you're functioning in that. And almost the necessity for a who disappears. The who that's functioning isn't necessary. It's an interruption of the functioning. And the being that functions is no longer necessary, it is almost an interruption of the function itself. If Steffi Graf is playing tennis and thinks, this is Steffi Graf going to return this serve, she's not doing too well. If a good tennis player would find that weakness very quickly. Yeah. So what happens?

[82:24]

Let me go back to another statement I've made a lot, Dignaga's statement, who lived 480 to 540, said that perception is knowing without conception. It's cognition without conception. A small statement like that is quite challenging. If you take it seriously, if you're satisfied with kind of letting such a statement amuse your intellect, Then I would have to be a better teacher. Or I have to get tougher. I'm afraid so many things I say amuse your intellect. And don't make you really practice. Okay. Can you imagine knowing or cognition without conception?

[83:58]

But when that occurs, and one of the main aspects of that is when you're in the embodied present, Und einer der Hauptaspekte davon ist, wenn ihr in der verkörperten Gegenwart seid, wenn ihr nicht in euren Gedanken seid als Kontinuität und eure Identität, und was dann passiert ist, dass Alaya Vishnana, dass er eine Art Speicherhaus ist, which is normally connected into us through its flow of associations, through the conceptual mental process. When you move, in effect, when you're in the embodied present, You move the alaya vijnana into the embodied present.

[85:18]

And it's a lit like you've opened the doors and windows of the warehouse. It's open to the air. It's open to the present. And it's constantly being stirred up by the wind and rain of the present moment. Then who you are is identified with the present, is functioning in the present. Now, late Buddhism assumes that you do this as part of adept practice. Part of this process is this practicing something like the Paramitas or at least Brahma Vihara.

[86:40]

Of committing yourself to this way of being. And noticing when you're not. But the intention to realize these four continues. And if your intention is there, you will find more and more opportunities where it's possible. werden sich euch mehr und mehr Gelegenheiten bieten, wo es möglich ist. Ihr fühlt euch einfach besser. Ihr fühlt euch klar von innen her. Und ihr werdet auch nicht mehr auf die gleiche Weise Karma produzieren.

[87:44]

It's like having the windows open in your life on a spring day. Okay, anybody else have something you'd like to bring up? Yes. Yeah. To these four measurables I have a question. It says four times before Unlimited. Unlimited Threatenment, Unlimited Compassion, Unlimited Conflict, Draw Unlimited, Unlimited. It doesn't mean, as you mentioned, be friendly, feel good and so on. It means be Unlimited. It's not a focus of these things. The focus is more on the unlimited than on the properties of the four different customers. One could already say that the demand could be as general as the unlimited.

[89:02]

Well, the four immeasurables, you know, the word that they share is the unlimited. So maybe what the emphasis are is not so much being friendly, compassionate, empathetic, and so forth. Maybe just be unlimited, period. Maybe that's what this aspect is here. You're thinking too much. You always like to change things. Unlimited. You don't think it's your own until you change it. I know him well, so... Why don't you just practice this and see what happens? I know you're smart, but it took a long time for people to figure this out.

[90:05]

And they were smart, too. And there might possibly be a reason they didn't just say, unlimited. Okay, now no one will ask a question of yours. Yesterday you talked about the root mind, and I understood it as something basic, something you get your energy from. And then you gave this example of the people sitting together and having this other state of consciousness, and to me that is something different. The basic of changing into a different consciousness, so maybe I could quite understand that. Deutsch, bitte. Yeah, I think you understood it pretty well, actually.

[91:14]

But you didn't understand that there's no contradiction. But I think it's useful probably that you noticed the potential contradiction. Because if you resolve now the contradiction, you understand both better. Okay, so I'll try to speak in a way that might resolve the contradiction. Yes. I also have an intellectual problem. Okay. I understand the difference being rooted in the present and being rooted in thinking. Just a different feeling. And so far I always thought perception itself is a concept, precisely the concept of evolution.

[92:50]

And then I get a kind of twist in my brain. How is perception the concept of evolution? The way my eye developed is the result of a long evolutionary process. So that is of course linked with an evolution of perception. Yeah, but how is that a concept right now? I don't have much choice as seeing the world in this particular way. I've just got this organ. And they're kind of pretty, too.

[94:02]

That's not an answer. That's not an answer. Oh, shucks. I mean, I grant that it is possible to drop these concepts, but I just wonder, you know, how? Yeah. Well, my point of my little joke was also to say your eyes are more than just something you see with. They have other qualities. Much of Buddhism is about how to know how to know the world more fully than the five physical senses presented to us.

[95:22]

And to know the world more fully than the senses presented to us, Okay. It's to first of all notice that the senses are presenting it to us more fully than conceptions.

[95:51]

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