I'm always touched when someone decides to take the precepts. Even if it's taken 10 or 15 years to finish the raksha. Still, I'm maybe more touched now. Your intention has been clear for a long time. And they say, it's said in Buddhism that flower petals fall from the sky when someone takes the precepts. Why is it given such importance? And any practitioner's life, practice life, is based on discovering the power of and potentiality of these precepts.

[01:21]

Even though these precepts, really the content is not to kill a Buddhist, it's sort of common sense. You know, when you or someone drives down a country road in which there's no line drawn, which happens a lot in these roads above the Rhine, You have to drive kind of feeling out the space, what might be your lane. And you have to imagine how... how much you have to be to the right if a car comes from the other direction.

[02:43]

Now, traffic studies have shown that people drive more carefully and slowly down a road without a line. Verkehrsstudien haben gezeigt, dass Leute vorsichtiger und langsamer fahren, wenn eine Straße die Streifen in der Mitte nicht hat. When they do paint a line down the same road, people actually drive more swiftly and less carefully. And so I would say that when there's no line down the middle of the road, you may have an actual experiential feel that you're making space as you drive.

[03:53]

And you have to be careful about what kind of space, what shape of space you make. And if you can feel that just from my speaking, or if you're driving, that might give you a sense of what Buddhist yoga culture is. view, also quantum mechanics and so forth's view, that space is an interactional, interrelational phenomenon.

[04:56]

then maybe this can give you a taste of what this yogic-buddhist view, but also the view from quantum mechanics and so on, namely the view that space is an interaction, a phenomenon arising from a relationship. would point out many times in such situations, we're making space right now as how for now we're sitting and using this room. And my voice and what I'm saying is making a kind of mental space. And my voice and what I say creates a kind of mental or spiritual space.

[05:58]

And having a sense of that or believing that is one of the centers of Zen practice. And the precepts are kind of actually right speech. Right speech is understood in the Eightfold Path. So although the contents of the Buddhist precepts are just common sense really, how you understand the precepts conceptually and practice them is Buddhist. So, you know, when we, the rules for driving are, the word drive in English is rooted to a Germanic thing, meaning to urge someone to go forward.

[07:29]

So actually maybe the precepts are a kind of urge you to go forward in your life. And so treiben dich die Gelöbnisse vielleicht dazu an, in deinem Leben voranzuschreiten. Wie du darin voranschreiten kannst oder wie du fortfahren kannst, dein Leben zu leben. Now, the rules of driving all over the world, I've driven in lots of places, not everywhere, of course, but are pretty much universal, pretty much the same everywhere. And they're based on the conditions for driving.

[08:45]

And the precepts are intended to be, believed to be pretty close to universal. And based on the conditions for living. The shared conditions for living. And shared conditions because the experience is and understanding is that our shared life is a kind of living being. It is a living being. One moment. What was the first part?

[09:50]

Our shared life. Turns out I need also the second and third part. You were thinking of something else. Our shared life is a living being and actually a living being. And the precepts are considered kind of the veins, blood veins of this living being. So the precepts are, I mean the word precept is quite convenient, but kind of just coincidental. It means what you hold before.

[10:56]

Precept is hold or grasp. And the precepts are principles, not so much rules. And the precepts are principles, not so much rules. So principles, and excuse me, can I keep thinking of what words to use and how would they work in German? And I don't know, they'd work in German, I'm dependent, etc. So I think of the English words in a rather wide sense, wondering how they can be translated. And the word principle means first sources or first foundations. Und dieses Wort Prinzip bedeutet so etwas wie die ersten Quellen oder die ersten Grundlagen.

[12:12]

So we could translate these, taking the precepts, as the preceptual principles. Und wir könnten diese Gelöbnisse übersetzen als die gelobten Prinzipien, die Gelöbnisprinzipien. So what are the first foundations of your thinking? So the precepts, the Buddhist understanding of precepts are something you hold in mind You try to follow them, but the point is not to follow them, to hold in mind as a way of examining, discovering your behavior and the activity of living.

[13:12]

So the practice of the precepts is to inculcate them, absorb them enough that they're held in mind as principles of of behavior and thinking. So you want to study these principles, these perceptual principles, to make sure that you really feel they do make something close to universal sense.

[14:35]

And it's through that study and your absorbing these principles that they begin to affect and lead you in your activity and thinking. I take the precepts. I don't know how. maybe 60 years ago, I don't know, 55 years ago. And I still notice how they help me make certain discriminations about, well, what's the effect of doing this or doing that? So they're a kind of, as I said, right speech.

[15:47]

But then I have to say, you have to know something about how speech is understood in yogic Buddhist culture. We have these three words, body, speech and mind. And the and in there is a mistranslation. It's not body, speech and mind. It's body, speech, mind. Or it's bodily... Bridge, speech, mindergy.

[16:55]

Geistergy. Can I have some geistergy, please? It's, you know, because the dynamic and the energetic and rooted in activity the way words are in actual Buddhist teachings are just not translatable into the English words which represent separate entities. So thinking in yogic terms is a kind of, not a kind of, is energy. So right speech doesn't make sense unless you realize it's the energy of right speech.

[18:06]

And the word speech is code for bodily mind activity. So as body, it's like body is, affects the way body, the body affects the mind and the way the mind affects the body is through this articulation we call on the outside speech. And the way the body influences the spirit and the spirit influences the body, that takes place through this bridge-like activity that we call speech. So we could say the precepts... Articulated as speech.

[19:20]

So taking the precepts and outer speech that affects how you think and how you act. And how you think to yourself and about yourself, as we know, if you always think sort of negatively, I'm not good enough, hey, you end up not being good enough. And how you think to yourself and how you think to others, for example, if you constantly think, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, then you're surprisingly not good enough in the end. So right speech also means how you think about yourself. Rechte Rede bedeutet auch, wie du über dich selbst denkst. And recognizing that how you think about yourself, obviously, now we know psychology, etc., really affects and effects us.

[20:25]

And to recognize how much the way you think about yourself, and this is also understood nowadays in psychology, how much the way you think about yourself influences you and your... To affect is to feel. To effect is to make. So how it makes us feel and how it makes us as a person. I'm just guessing, that's your problem. Now another, so there's practice aspects and conceptual aspects of the precepts which make these common sense suggestions Buddhist. Yes, okay.

[21:28]

And the precepts are called the blood, perceptual blood lineage. Yeah, so what? How can the precepts be blood? So when you hear that phrase, which you wouldn't as a beginning practitioner, but once you've practiced a while, you hear that, or you take the precepts, you hear that. It behooves you. It benefits you. What was that? It makes you think about. It does make you think about and it also benefits you. what could this mean?

[22:53]

There's clearly a blood genetic lineage. And we can say there's tribal lineages and teaching lineages. But we wouldn't say blood-teaching lineages. We could, but we don't. Now, if that word is used, that's the word that's translated at least, And in that word is the assumption that we're a multi-generational being. Ralph's daughter is separate from her, from him. But it's still a kind of multi-generational being, the two of you.

[24:12]

And we're all a multi-generational being, actually. We could say humanity is a multigenerational being. So it has this conceptual idea of how are we all going to live together as one, in effect, interrelated beingness. Can you say again, interrelated beingness? Yeah, that's good. I mean, we have universal driving laws. So Buddhists assume we need some kind of universal living laws that are not too culturally inflected.

[25:21]

And that's why Buddhism assumes that we need something like general rules of life that are not too much colored by culture. And the prayers are not a teaching for Buddhists, but simply a healthy human understanding for everyone. But assuming that, clearly, whether you're Buddhist or not Buddhist, who cares? Actually, we're a living being taking new generational forms every moment. And that's the concept. I think you can get it, that we're a multi-generational being. And what it means, an experience of being alive is passed on generation after generation.

[26:44]

But at each moment, not just one generation, at each moment we're a multigenerational being. And the veins of that, at this moment, multigenerational being, are shared, the views of our shared living. And the vessels of it, the veins of it, how we are a generational being at every moment, are the veins of our shared life. So that's the concept.

[27:54]

And the practice is the feeling of it at each moment. Even that kind of ecstasy or bliss of it at each moment. That aside from this, the cultural differences and age differences and so forth, the way everybody feels in an emergency or a huge storm or something like that, There's a feel of being a shared living being in such emergencies often. And the precepts are meant in their universality, almost universality, are meant to open you to that shared resonant field of beingness.

[29:12]

So you don't have to wait for an emergency. Or enlightenment. The precepts carefully noticed can make us feel this bodhisattva connectivity with each other. So the precepts are, maybe flowers do fall when we take the precepts. Thank you, the five of you who are going to take the precepts. Which lets all of us take the precepts with you.

[30:32]

This many generational being we all are. Thank you. No, we won't.

[31:04]

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