And this is also taking refuge in the Buddha. So when I feel that, I can begin to feel it in you too. Because it's happening in you, you may not be noticing it. So if I, when I begin to notice it in you, when I feel its possibility in you, I'm taking refuge in you as Sangha. And this is again, as I said earlier today, this is not community. This is recognizing in ourselves phenomena, self and others. As Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

[01:10]

So in this sense, you know, there's a tradition actually, when any four people who are practicing get together, a Sangha appears. And those four people or more constitute a Sangha. And they can use a monastery or a temple or a room like this. But they can't sell the monastery. Because this monastery belongs to the Sangha of the four quarters in past, present and future. So there's two definitions, traditional definitions here of Sangha. One is the multi-generational Sangha which develops a monastery or temple for many generations.

[02:21]

And the four or more people who get together, or it's okay if it's three, but let's say four or more, with a feeling of this non-graspable feeling, with this profound feeling of connectedness, of being in a spacious mind together. Again, this feeling of uniqueness. And this being unique, it flows in all directions and keeps reappearing.

[03:22]

And we let each person unfold in us or we feel the possibility of that. So if I have this feeling for you, say, you're sitting in front of me, I have to use you as an example. And if you have this feeling to some degree for me, not only am I seeing you in my perceptions, But my own mind, I'm seeing my own mind arise through you. And you're seeing your own mind arise through being here too. And that feeling of your mind and my mind uniquely touching now, And all of us all at once having this feeling,

[04:30]

And when you can remember this sometimes, and when you can taste this sometimes, when it informs you to see all of this as our true human body, this is Sangha. That's enough, I think. So maybe if you'd be willing, we could sit for a few minutes. Accepting your posture and being informed by an ideal posture.

[06:52]

Accepting our dis-ease And yet knowing we can feel a deeper ease. Knowing our sense of identity can rest in our breath and body. And phenomena. Even when it jumps back to our thinking. Knowing the exotic beauty of this uniqueness.

[08:21]

Even when we habitually see it as permanent. Repetitious. or always repeating. The more we feel this, the more we create the possibility that Buddha will appear.

[10:22]

And this is Sangha creating the possibility that Buddha may appear. And that is Sangha, to create the possibility that a Buddha can come. Thank you for translating.

[12:34]

Okay. Thank you. Ich habe diese Konferenz begonnen mit den Worten verehrter Mitglieder des Sangha. Ich möchte das heute wiederholen. Dear members of the Sangha, then I think I said, dear ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, and today I add, dear friends. We have had a very tight time in one and a half days. We have heard one teaching of the Buddha again and again, that everything is temporary. And look, it even applies to this conference. It has hardly started, it is already over. And there are two things to do. A short look back. I also said yesterday that it was thank you.

[13:35]

I do it again today. But today you know more why I said thank you yesterday. And today you know more if you also have this feeling. And I noticed relatively late that this thank you also has a lot to do with the topic. because we talked a lot about Sangha, but that this event could take place was, I say it in quotation marks, also a product of Sangha. Because, to refer to Freiburg here, About 30 practitioners from 10 different communities gathered together. No, it wasn't that hard, it was easy, I heard. And they set up this event. So also a practical example of what Sangha does and achieves.

[14:36]

Therefore, thank you. The second point is a look forward. Transcendence means that one is over. And the next one starts. And that's why I have the note in my hand. I'm sorry, but that's life. If you haven't had enough of the one and a half days and have become a little addicted, you can continue to practice. You will now get a tip here, because one of the communities here from Freiburg has offered to do something tomorrow. At 2 p.m. there will be another introduction to the meditation practice of Master Ren Depop Sanim. He is the head of the Lotus Sangha of European Social Buddhism. Dharmasasanga is located, hopefully I can read this correctly, Satiusstraße, is that correct, 104, no, 101, if you want, please at 14 o'clock. Then something very simple, if you drive to Schneverdingen tomorrow, on a motorbike, and you can take something with you, you would like to report to the Radmark-Koscher stand, and maybe there is a short agreement there.

[15:50]

Das waren jetzt Buddha-Lehren, ganz abstrakt und ganz konkret. Ich weiß nicht, ob es irgendwie zusammenpasst. Anders habe ich es nicht hingekriegt. Ich sage nochmal Dankeschön, dass Sie da waren. Und ich wünsche Ihnen einen guten Nachhauseweg. Und nochmal, nicht alles gleich vergessen, wenn wir hier über die Schwelle treten, sondern mindestens abwarten, bis wir beim Auto sind. Dann gute Nacht und kommen Sie gut nach Hause. I can get up if you want. Good evening. I am very pleased to introduce Baker Roshi. He is the line holder of the famous Suzuki Roshi, who wrote the book Zen Spirit, Beginner Spirit. In the 70s, especially in the USA, he was very active.

[16:52]

And we have a teacher here who comes from a very authentic line. Becker-Roschi has founded a center in Colorado in the USA, but also the Johanneshof here in the vicinity, not even an hour's drive from Freiburg. It is a center in which he now lives, works, practices, studies and spends half a year a year with his students. And therefore, especially for the Freiburgers, also an offer to have a master here in their vicinity. Ulrike Greenway, who will translate for you tonight, also has some brochures about this farm with her. And if you are interested in Belkaroshi's work, you can turn to them afterwards. I wish you a nice evening. Well, I'm honored to be here speaking for the German Buddhist Union.

[18:31]

And to be here with so many friends. And Alfred Weil and others, Doris. And especially Ulrike. And I'm also a little ashamed or embarrassed because I've been doing this 40 years. And I have very, not much, some small experience to offer you. At the same time, we Westerners have to find ways to share our practice with each other. And of course that's the purpose of the German Buddhist Union.

[19:40]

But then I think of... you know, these great Buddhist teachers who lived in the past. And I believe that practice does evolve. And one of the reasons in Zen we don't do guided meditation is because we don't want to direct where your meditation goes.

[20:46]

We want to create the conditions for your practice, but your practice is something you discover for yourself. Zen's view is that Buddhism is not the truth. It's a means to come to know the truth. And it's up to you to find, to know the truth for yourself. So if Buddhism is evolving and is, as I said this morning, multi-generational, a teaching not just one person can develop, but it is... developed and carried and evolves over generations?

[21:51]

Then what's the difference between us and, say, the great Tang and Sun dynasty teachers? Whose practice and teaching developed the koans, the way Zen brought Indian Buddhism together. And when you really take these as teaching literature, for me anyway, the most extraordinary religious or spiritual literature I know, So what made these folks back there in the Tang and Sung dynasty so extraordinary?

[22:55]

I don't think it was, of course it has something to do with the historical period. But I don't think it's just because they were extraordinary individuals. But I think it's because they created a mutually realized practice. So in other words, My definition again is Buddhism as a multi-generational and mutually realized practice. I mean, there's a vertical lineage through time and a horizontal lineage at any moment. And that horizontal lineage is Sangha.

[24:13]

Sangha is a Buddha field. Sangha is the craft and conditions of practice. The craft and conditions of practice that make enlightenment possible. And also that make enlightenment noticeable. Because in fact many seemingly ordinary experiences we have are enlightenment experiences. And we don't, our attention isn't developed enough. Our practice, our body and mind is not developed enough. To let these experiences blossom in us. So, Sangha is the craft and condition of practice that makes enlightenment more likely or possible and more noticeable and that matures original enlightenment initial enlightenment

[25:42]

This initial enlightenment and the transforming enlightenment. And tonight we're talking about Sangha, so I won't explain what those different ways of looking at enlightenment are. Now again, as I said this morning, I see Sangha as our intuitive longing for friendship. For a field in which we can bring forth our deepest request. Yeah, and that's in us, but it's also a human field. Now, whenever you have a term, like Sangha is a term, a Buddhist term, in Buddha's time, it just meant a political group.

[27:02]

They are trade guilds. And religious groups. But, you know, if you're, say, a farmer, you discuss what is it to farm. If you're in a university, you discuss what is... what is a university? What are we doing? And the German Buddhist Union is also, we're discussing, what is Buddhism here in the West and in German-speaking countries? So if you start out with a term, but it develops to have a very particular meaning in the situation in which it develops.

[28:23]

So Sangha, how are we going to define it? And I think first we have to look at it in its three-foldness. It's part of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And you can't really understand Sangha without understanding it in relationship to Buddha and Dharma. And what is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? It's what we take refuge in. or that we find ourselves in accord with.

[29:23]

Now why do we take refuge, let's use the word refuge in Buddha Dharma Sangha, because we can't take refuge in other things. To take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha is one of the ways a stream enterer is defined. And a stream enterer is one who no longer acts through, believes in a permanent or inherent self. Now, most of us intellectually don't think the self is permanent. But if I ask you to bring your attention to your breath, You can do that very easily.

[30:47]

All of you right now can bring your attention to your breath. It's one of the easiest things in the world to do. But to do it for the next hour? For the rest of your lifetime? This is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Why is this? It's quite interesting actually. It's so easy and so difficult to continue. Well, what we've done when we brought our attention to our breath, and attention is when we bring our attention to our breath, we're bringing our mind to our breath. And what have we really brought?

[31:56]

We've brought our sense of location to our breath. And we feel located. Oh, yeah, I'm right here in my breath. But moments later, we're in our thinking. And what have we done? We brought our sense of location, but we haven't brought our sense of identity to our breath. The Buddha was asked, who are you? And he said, awake. So if your sense of identity is with your breath, if someone asked you, who are you? You'd say breath.

[32:57]

And really it's that simple. So the challenge is to bring our sense of location and our sense of identity to our breath. And our body and phenomena. So we're not trying to get rid of thinking, but we're trying to stop identifying with thinking. So now, no matter how thoroughly you believe that The world is impermanent and the self is impermanent. As long as your sense of location keeps jumping back to your thinking, it means you think your sense of identity, your sense of identity is your thinking, your story. Yourself. So you're in effect functioning through the sense of a permanent self.

[34:27]

So being a stream entrant and really being free of functioning through a permanent self is a big step. So we know that we know, if you've been familiar with Buddhism at all, or just think about things, that everything is changing and impermanent. So how are you going to... Yeah, okay, we can't take refuge in everything that's changing. And the word Dharma means that which holds. But how do we take... What holds? What can we take refuge in? So the... idea of Sangha is what we can take refuge in.

[35:40]

Okay. Now one of the truisms of Buddhism is that there's nothing outside the system. Whatever is here is here. So what's here? Yeah, I'm looking at you. You look nice actually. Yeah. And when I look, I divide things up. I have a foreground and background. And these distinctions are very basic to consciousness. When you teach babies to infants to children to count one, two, three, four, or do their alphabet, you're teaching them to make distinctions, to put things in here and there categories.

[36:44]

So this making distinctions is very basic to what we call consciousness. And this SCI part actually means to cut. So there's this undivided world, but we divide it. So Buddhism says, let's be very careful how we divide it. Let's divide it so that we can practice. And let's divide it so that we can discover its undividedness as well. Now to come to the point where I can look at whatever is in front of me and see it both as undivided and divided.

[38:13]

It means I have to have come to some ease in myself. And that may be the first that happens when we start to meditate. Here you are sitting still. There's nothing to do. And yet there's some dis-ease. Physical restlessness and mental restlessness. And also there's a certain distrust and It's hard to just trust how we exist.

[39:14]

Trust how the world appears. If we can trust how the world appears, we can take refuge in it. So let's imagine you've come to some ease and you've come to some trust in how everything appears. And there's also a beauty in the way everything appears. I mean, unfortunately, we don't have some kind of special god or something. We just have what appears. So somehow this also has to be as special as any god.

[40:16]

This mystery of what appears. Now it sounds maybe kind of corny, but yes, in fact, it's a mystery that there's anything at all. So how am I going to divide this mystery up? Well, what's here? Well, there's a witnessing. I'm witnessing. There's a witnessing function. And there's phenomena. There's stuff. And there's people.

[41:27]

That's one way to divide it. There's other ways. Phenomena, witnessing, and people. Phenomena, witnessing, and people. That covers everything. Phenomena, witnessing, and people. And of course animals, but I'm including them. Let's say sentience. Now what are, these are, we can understand these as also Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. How do we transform or find ourselves this witnessing as Buddha? And how do we find Dharma as phenomena as Dharma? And how do we find people, other people, all people as Sangha.

[42:45]

Yeah. So let me try to give you a sense of what a practice Buddha is. Okay, I'm sitting in this posture. I'm rather used to it and like it. It's not absolutely necessary to practice. I like to see my two friends here sitting in this posture there. But mindfulness is the most basic practice in Buddhism. But this sitting posture is a kind of condensed mindfulness. And it allows you to discover stillness. Because if I'm trying to observe that, it's very hard to observe it if it keeps moving.

[43:52]

And if I'm moving too, it really is hard to observe. Now, one of the truisms of yogic practice is that all mental phenomena has a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. And the mind is slipperier than the body. So it's easier to still the body than the mind. So if you learn to sit still as a shortcut to practice, Then you can begin to, at least your body is still and you can begin to observe the mind.

[44:54]

And you can begin to see the structure of the mind. How the mind takes form as it arises. And the stillness of the body begins to draw out the stillness of the mind. And you can begin finally at some point alchemically stillness of body and mind come together. body and mind are not two body and mind are not one it's a relationship you cultivate okay i'm sitting in this posture and i have to accept my posture Just the way it is, I don't sit very well, but as well as I can.

[46:05]

But also I'm informed by Buddha's posture. I don't sit as well as that statue. But Buddha's posture is informing me. Also, although I'm accepting my posture as it is, that acceptance is also informed by trying to sit in a very specific way, acupuncture-like detail. you can't actually separate my posture from my being informed by the ideal posture. So do you see there's a kind of dialogue between accepting my posture and being informed by the ideal posture? That also corresponds to the practice of what we call in Buddhism maximal greatness.

[47:20]

In other words, I may know that I'm... Trying to speak clearly. But I know that I could speak more clearly. That informs my speaking. I know that I'm calm sometimes and distracted sometimes. And I know I could be perhaps more calm, less distracted. That kind of dialogue is a dynamic of finding the sense of Buddha in yourself.

[48:25]

I mean, on the one hand you accept yourself. On the other hand you have a feeling for how you'd like a human being to be. How you wish some human being on the planet was, is. Yeah, so you accept yourself and you're informed by how you wish human beings and even yourself could be. And that's part of what I meant by a practice Buddha. And also there's a kind of spaciousness. One thing that happens when you sit Yeah, it's that sometimes you feel you don't know where your boundaries are.

[49:41]

The way your consciousness divides things, let's go. And your mental body image, which is simultaneous with your physical body. And it lets go and you begin to feel a profound spaciousness and connectedness. I think everyone who meditates even a little bit has this feeling occasionally. Even not knowing where your thumbs are. Where are they? They're about a mile apart. This is actually a taste of the Dharmakaya. You're moving into a more undivided way of experiencing yourself.

[50:58]

So you're discovering everything is... This is an inner movement in practice. Okay, now, I'm not going to talk as long as Sogyal did last night. I'll try to finish in a while. I mean, I probably should talk as long as he did, but I won't. Okay, a feeling for Dharma. as practice. Dharma means the smallest unit of experience. A person is not a dharma, but my Momentary perception of you is a dharma.

[52:09]

The five skandhas are dharmas. How do you identify dharmas? Each. Something that the smallest unit you can feel. And I always suggest you find it by noticing what nourishes you. If in each thing you do you find nourishment, you're probably in touch with the dharmic aspect of things. Or when you find you do each thing completely. Say going upstairs, each step is complete. You don't have any sense of going somewhere else.

[53:11]

Each breath is complete. I pick up this bell. I do it in a way that feels complete. My hand goes to it. I feel the coolness of it. Pick it up, I hold it here. Although, even though if I do it quickly, it still has several separate aspects. Each is a dharma. And I can find some rest, ease and completeness in that. And if on each moment I find a certain arrival or completeness At the end of a year, I'm going to feel more complete.

[54:19]

These things are quite simple. Not so easy to do. But first you have to have the vision of the possibility. And the And the intention. And another aspect of Dharma is the field of mind itself. Okay, I'm looking at you. But looking at you, I also feel and see my own mind looking at you. That's dharma. I don't just see the contents of mind, I see the field of mind. So if I look at this bell, We could say a bell arising mind appears.

[55:36]

And if I look at any one of you, a mind particular to you appears. And when you can bring your attention and let it rest on whatever you look at, And your mind isn't collapsing all the time and running back into your past, present, future thinking. You can actually rest your mind in the presence of the present. Or the present not as a container, but just presence. In which things are emerging. Everything changing means everything is also unfolding. There's an unfolding whenever I look at anything.

[56:37]

So anything you look at points or hear or smell, points to mind itself as well as to what you're seeing or hearing or feeling. Now, if we know that everything is impermanent, you then also know everything is absolutely unique. And again, if you don't experience everything as and absolutely unique. In fact, you're functioning through an idea of permanence. So, here we are. This is an absolutely unique moment. Not special, not ordinary, it's just unique.

[58:18]

And it's completely different moment after moment. And if some other person comes in, the whole room changes slightly. If one of you changes your posture, the whole room changes slightly. So in this room, there's a non-graspable feeling. A feeling that accompanies all mental phenomena, sentient physical and mental phenomena. It hasn't taken the form of emotions. And you can't grasp it. If you try to think about it, it's gone. But in fact, it's the most actual thing that's happening here.

[59:26]

And it's loaded with information. So that non-graspable uniqueness is also dharma. Now Sangha. Sangha is when we take refuge in Buddha and Dharma. When we take refuge in or find ourselves in accord with this spaciousness. And it's interesting that when we do in a more sustained way, not find our Sense of identity in our thinking.

[60:42]

But our sense of identity or continuity. Because identity is also a sense of continuity from moment to moment. We begin to find our continuity in our breath. and in our body, and in phenomena as Dharma, and in the field of mind itself, we are now taking refuge in Dharma. When we can have this spacious feeling, And there's some sustenance and continuity to it. It begins to collect happiness. as Sogyal said last night we feel happy for no reason there's actually a term for that it's called non-referential joy nothing good happened but you just feel a kind of gratitude or joy rising

[62:10]

And this experience particularly starts filling the body and perceptions when we have this spacious feeling. It's like the more we have this spacious feeling,

[62:26]

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