Although this koan is not really about the Trikaya, about the three bodies of Buddha, the question is put into perspective by the three bodies of Buddha. So maybe I should say something about the three bodies of Buddha. Yeah. Since some of you are leaving, Tomorrow, I guess, aren't you?

[01:01]

So I should try to say something about this, to give some shape to our speaking about the practice of Buddha. Yes, first I want to thank each of you, especially those who are leaving soon for coming this week. For it's not only wonderful to see you. And to get to know you better. And to have this opportunity to practice together.

[02:03]

But also you help us transform this funny, funky old building into a practice place. As we use it, and as each of us uses it, we transform it. So this question, among the three bodies of the Buddha, I asked you to make sense of it yourself first, from your own feeling for your body. And the question, which one does not fall into any category,

[03:04]

Yeah, what can I say? Arises from an awareness of the monk of the practice of Buddha nature. This monk, we can tell, feel, knows about the practice of Buddha nature. Denn dieser Mönch, das können wir sehen und fühlen, weiß etwas über die Praxis der Buddha-Natur. Und die Praxis der Buddha-Natur, das ist das Nicht-Auftauchen von Denkvorgängen. Now, the non-arising of cognition is something like not falling into any category.

[04:16]

Yeah. Now, when I say these things, I think, you know, I'm probably talking... as much to the floor and wall as I'm talking to you. Because the non-arising of cognition is a rather strange phenomenon. difficult to practice. And it's said that in practice the shift from our usual conceptual way of understanding is the most difficult shift of all in practice.

[05:24]

The shift to a non-conceptual, non-discriminative, non-arising of cognition. Okay, what's this all about? Yeah, well, it's actually a simplification of... A simplification? No, not a simplification. A... making an actualization of a rather subtle intuition. It's the actualization of a rather subtle intuition.

[06:26]

Now, I'm wondering if I can give you a feeling for this. It's realistic today, just in this short time. Now, we could... Well, let me mention, you know, this... Let's see, I have to remember. I can't remember right now. That will come back. So this koan is about how the phrase, I'm always close to this, is simultaneously the realization of the body which does not fall into any categories, and the practice of that realization, the practice to

[07:54]

that leads to that realization. And this is a parallel idea to both simultaneously womb and embryo. And parallel to the idea of original enlightenment. Now, believe it or not, I'm talking about something that's already part of your experience. I'm trying to figure out how to speak about it so you recognize that. We can understand the whole history of Buddhism as a history of the concept of the Buddha.

[09:28]

You have this guy who died. And he seems to have been truly one of the most extraordinary human beings that's ever been born. Yeah, but he was not a god. So he's not separate from us. And he tried to teach his disciples that what seemed extraordinary about him was that he saw, understood actuality as it is. Now, if I use terms like actuality as it is, enlightenment and so forth, they're metaphors or they're words that represent some much deeper reality.

[10:50]

actuality, then the words can cover. So I can say an experience of light. Or clarity, I could say lots of things. Yeah, but if I say actuality as it is, it's a pretty big phrase. And it points you in the right direction. And it's a phrase you can make use of. Actuality as it is. A-A-I-I. W-W-S-E. So you can go around saying A-A-I-I.

[12:23]

A-A-I-I. Yeah, and make it into a little letter mantra. I-I-I. And then you can turn it into a letter mantra. Yeah, so practice is like that. We try to take philosophical concepts and make it something our body can be present to. Like I'm always close to this. Always close to this. Yeah. So let's go back to the history of the concept of the Buddha. This Buddha dies. And yet he tries to teach the path of realization. He says there's nothing special about me.

[13:36]

He said that I realized actuality as it is. Okay, now, actuality as it is And the Buddha who realizes actuality as it is, is not a real distinction. I mean, if you're in love. Actuality as it is is, you know, maybe seems different. Things seem different. I don't know.

[14:41]

Not only does the one you love something unusual suddenly. You know, once they had college students look at a head and a Coke bottle in a box. This was an experiment. These were volunteers doing some kind of experiment. Yeah, and then they put in the next box a very large Coca-Cola bottle and a person's head. And people perceived the head got small. And they saw the Coca-Cola bottle as normal size. And they noticed one person.

[15:57]

He saw the Coca-Cola bottle huge and the head the same size. And they couldn't figure out why he was different than everybody else. And then they found out that the girl's head next to the Coca-Cola bottle was the girl he happened to be in love with. So then they studied other people like that, and if you were in love with a person, the head remained real and the Coca-Cola bottle got big. So if you weren't in love, the physical objects kept their reality, not the people. When you weren't in love.

[17:16]

Unfortunately, they found that after about two years, the Coca-Cola bottle got big. Two years after you fell in love. Yeah. So that love actuality seems to have worn off after a couple of years. But if someone's in love, the actuality that they see is... Not different than the actuality anybody else sees. It's the same actuality. But it's different than it was two weeks ago before you realized you were falling in love.

[18:21]

So the point is in this thing, it's not a real distinction between the Buddha's awareness of actuality and your awareness of actuality. It's the same actuality. The difference is the person in love is in a love actuality. And we might say in a parallel way the Buddha is in a compassion actuality. But say you felt I like the way the world is when I'm in love. But you don't want to fall in love twice a year or every two years.

[19:44]

Because it's not so good and you leave a lot of broken hearts around. So say instead of being addicted to falling in love, You said, this mind of falling in love rose from within me. Why isn't that always present in me? Why do I have to fall in love to realize this mind of mine? love or compassion.

[20:47]

Now, if you asked yourself that question, that's a fundamentally Buddhist question, Buddhist way of thinking. So for centuries, Buddhists have been asking this question. How do you look for the Buddha? How do you look for the Buddha? Mind of awareness of a Buddha. What is the awareness of actuality as it is, that is Buddha awareness?

[21:47]

What is the mind of awareness of actuality as it is? What is that mind? How can we realize it? It's not different in actuality as it is. And surprisingly, it's not that different from the mind of being in love. So you could describe Buddhism also as a kind of realization of the mind of being in love. Forgiving, accepting. aware in some kind of new way, some subtle way,

[23:07]

A feeling that everything is all right or okay or something as it is. There must be something good about the world if I can fall in love. There must be something good about the world if I can fall in Buddha. Yes, I'm trying to give you a sense of the territory here. So this is a shift from the historical Buddha or from a person who is some kind of unusual person and we can't be an unusual person to the qualities of a Buddha Now the emphasis was not in Buddhism.

[24:37]

The emphasis is not on, well, let's take a person who's in love. Maybe they are nicer to their mother and to dogs and cats. But in practice we don't say, okay, if you're nicer to your mother and to dogs and cats, you'll fall in love. So, but it is true, it's somewhat true, but if you're more compassionate, if you're more generous, it doesn't make you a Buddha. You have to look at the source of the compassion of the Buddha. So if you look at the source of the loving feeling of the person who's in love,

[25:43]

Yeah. It's the experience of falling in love. Okay. So the compassion of the Buddha arises from the experience of enlightenment. Yeah. results from the experience of enlightenment. Okay, are we all together so far? No. I'm saying the experience of enlightenment and the experience of falling in love are somehow analogous. So in Buddhist practice, you looked... So what was the source of a Buddha?

[27:10]

Enlightenment. But where is that enlightenment? What was the cause of the Buddha's enlightenment? The cause has to be the world as it is. So, the world as it actually is has to be the cause of enlightenment. So, how do we know the world as it actually is? In a way that causes enlightenment. Okay. So then through some centuries of reasoning about this, and studying the actual experience of realization,

[28:13]

The idea came up that, in fact, life itself is based on enlightenment. The way we actually exist is rooted in enlightenment. And that's called original enlightenment. And this term developed in Mahayana Buddhism. Okay. And Zen schools which overemphasize the experience of enlightenment are actually diverting from the basic Mahayana understanding of original enlightenment.

[29:34]

And I think we should emphasize original enlightenment in our practice more than the experience of enlightenment. As the experience of falling in love, while it teaches us a lot, we can understand it as being rooted in a more basic interest, love for the world. basic interest, love, interest and love for the world. Of course, I'm always watching Sophia. And, you know, I like the word interest.

[30:47]

Inter means between and est means is. So interest is the love for the in-betweenness. Interesse ist also die Liebe für dieses Zwischen. Sophia now has a love for the placemats on the table. She's interested in how they look. But she's much more interested in when you pick them up, they roll around and twist and everything. She thinks that's completely exciting. And while it present seems that 90% of her sense organs are...

[31:51]

located in her mouth these days. She loves the taste of every square centimeter of this mat. This is a kind of undiscriminating love. A profound interest in the world. I'm not kidding. I mean, we're motivated by some decision to stay alive. We can make it more conscious. And interest and caring for everything.

[33:10]

Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, but she cares. It's said the non-arising of cognition awakens us from our conceptual sleep. So pretty soon she's going to start learning concepts. That's a placemat. It's supposed to stay in place. And it, you know, keeps the table clean and you're not supposed to eat it.

[34:20]

That'll sort of put her to sleep in relation, she won't be in love with place bats anymore. Mm-hmm. Most of the possibilities of placemats will disappear. So it's thought that most of the possibilities of the world disappear once we look at everything through the net of conceptions. The usefulness of conceptions, but the dimming down of the world through conception. Okay. Now there's two main ways to practice this.

[35:35]

I don't have much time, so now I have to kind of like encapsulate this in some way. There are two ways to practice this sense of original enlightenment. One is through faith. And the adept way is through, for most people, it's faith. And the adept way is through the realization of the non-arising of cognition. Okay, now both are Pretty easy, actually.

[36:47]

And we can practice both. Why do I say they're easy? Well, we don't have a God. We have a Buddha. And even when the Buddha is understood in a God-like way, There's no outside to this world. So there's no way the Buddha's outside this world. So the Buddha has to be everything that is. There has to be somewhere in this inside which we are. Well, that's a great big idea.

[37:54]

Wie macht man nun aus dieser Idee etwas, das nicht nur eine Idee ist? The genius of Buddhist practice is to bring it into something you can actually do. You can actually realize the non-arising of cognition. It's like I said to you, you can actually be God or Jesus. So to study what it means to be someone like Jesus. And to be able to practice it in simple phrases, like I'm always close to this.

[39:03]

and to be able to practice it through simple phrases like I'm always close to this. It's an extraordinary genius to make this possible for us. A lot of people worked a long time to give us this gift. You try practicing with, I'm always close to this, with every perception, every conception, or have faith in original enlightenment. All right. Like you might have faith in, I can be in love.

[40:13]

I can be in love without an object of love. I can be in love when everything is the object of love. You can practice just a faith in, I can be in love when everything is the object of love. That faith, if you can get it, is a basic way of practicing. It's also identical to the practice of sudden enlightenment.

[41:21]

Enlightenment cannot be in the future. It always has to be present here. So the practice of sudden enlightenment is never putting enlightenment into the future. You do that in your mind, you're finished. You have to practice enlightenment here. Here cracked open. But if you never put enlightenment in the future, you're practicing the non-arising of cognition. As I say, when you go sunbathing, you're practicing often the non-arising of cognition.

[42:25]

That experience of being in a big space of sounds and so forth, half asleep, This is the non arising of cognition. The fundamental meditation experience, zazen experience is the non arising of cognition. And you can practice bare awareness or naked awareness where you just hear things, just see things without thinking about it. And if you get in the habit of that that leads to a more fundamental

[43:31]

non-arising of cognition. And the Buddha is defined as the non-arising of cognition. This is possible. It's not far away. We're always close to this. Thank you very much.

[44:11]

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