Yes, I'm going to speak in English. Roshi Baker, who's a very dear friend of mine, is going to also speak in English. And both of us are going to be translated in German. And this time I've asked my friend Zahir Rose, who's president of Zenith, to translate for me. No? Nobody can hear me? Can you hear me? Does that say yes or no? No, they say louder. Well, to start with, I'd like to say these are one hour and a half, an hour of very precious moments. We would like to take advantage of every minute to share an exchange between two perspectives that I feel are complementary rather than contradictory.

[01:12]

We want to approach it by sharing our experiences rather than having a controversy about the differences in the theories. Also, Pierre will speak English this time, because also Baker Roshi speaks in English and they have a thought exchange with each other and of course have to understand each other. So I will try to translate Pierre and he would like to point out that these one and a half hours for a very, very valuable time of the exchange of thoughts between the two traditions. And that you have decided beforehand not to have a discussion, but a real togetherness. Baker Roshi, yesterday you, Richard, yesterday you said something which really struck me very deeply when you said that you consider Buddhism as a language which gets you somewhere, and I feel that that is also true of Sufism.

[02:27]

And maybe we're approaching things from different angles, and we have to start learning each other's language to be able to communicate. Let me say something, some introductory remarks first for a moment. Yesterday, Pierre Vilayat Khan and I had a small press conference. And the question came up of, what do I think of these conferences? And what I said was, can you hear okay in the back?

[03:43]

Okay, because from here it's very echoey. What I said was, in order for a world society to develop, we need to create an evolved public space. And much of the world doesn't have public space. And the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union don't have much public space at all. So I see these conferences as a creation of an evolution of public space. And I think it's quite remarkable in the world, actually, that Pierre Vilayat Khan and I are sitting down to talk about something we don't know quite what.

[04:45]

And I think it's quite remarkable in the world that Pierre Vilayat Khan and I are sitting down to talk about something we don't know quite what. And I think each of us has to be in our home-based practice. And that's the way each person can enter the practice and the teaching. But at the level of the vision of the world and of other people, these teachings have to come more and more together. And of the various traditions that are meeting in this sort of together way in this conference, everyone says, what shall we talk about? because there's no tradition of our trying to find a way to talk about something that's very similar and yet the language is different.

[06:07]

So I see this as an attempt for me to bring into my life, into my heart, the practice and language of Sufism. Yes, obviously we have to start by our own real experience rather than talking about the teaching or the tradition because whatever we say is only useful to you if it has some meaning for you in your lives. Yes. I have often been accused of being a cryptic Buddhist, I don't know whether Richard has been accused of being a pro-soupy, but... He said I was converted the other day.

[07:24]

You can imagine how very interested I've been in trying to compare the two in the light of my own experience And I found that at first they seemed to be absolutely opposite, and the deeper I went, the more I found similarities between them. Nicht zuerst die Lehren ansehe, sie aussehen wie von Sufismus und Buddhismus, wie völlige Gegensätze. Aber je tiefer ich in die Erfahrung hineingehe, je mehr sehe ich die Gemeinsamkeiten in beiden. I would like to, if possible, follow some kind of sequence of stages in our conversation so that they're not too random, and therefore I would like to follow the stages of satipatthana and vipassana as we find them in traditional Buddhism.

[08:42]

First of all, let me say that we all, I mean, if you are here at all, It's because I'm sure that you have in you a need to find freedom from conditioning, from the impact of the environment, so that you can be really creative and therefore find your real self. Der Grund, warum ihr alle hier seid, etwas damit zu tun hat, dass ihr Freiheit finden wollt, Freiheit von Vorbedingungen, Freiheit vom Einfluss der Umwelt, um euer wirkliches Wesen zu finden. On the other hand, I think that if you're here too, it's because you attach some value to your involvement in life with people, to accomplish things, to share in the goodies that the world has to offer, and also in the culture that has developed in the course of the centuries on our planet.

[09:57]

Und ich bin sicher, ihr seid auch deshalb hier, weil ihr mit anderen teilen wollt, weil ihr Wert auf das Leben, auf das Sozialleben legt. And of course, it's possible that you will be pulled in two directions unless you find a way of reconciling these two. Und natürlich ist es möglich, dass diese beiden Richtungen gegeneinander, auseinander gehen, es sei denn, wir finden einen Weg, sie zusammenzubringen. So I used to think that Buddhism was the way of the ascetic and Sufism was the way of the knight who is in the world and yet not of the world. But I realize that that's an absolute misconception and that in fact you find both of them, these attitudes, in Buddhism and also in Sufism.

[11:02]

don't know much about Zen, so I'm very interested in exchanging views with Beggar Roshi. But in Tibetan Buddhism, the thing that strikes me is to incorporate, to embody states of consciousness or states of awareness right into one's body. Both Sufism and Buddhism share roots in India. But Buddhism developed out into East Asia, China, Japan, Tibet. And Sufism developed along the line that runs from India through the Near East into Europe.

[12:20]

So I think in sharing roots, there's a territory for common communication. But Zen Buddhism developed primarily out of Buddhism in China. And so the emphasis in, well, in China there was an emphasis prior to Buddhism through Confucianism and Taoism on this actual everyday life. and your specific body being the entire territory of spiritual possibilities.

[13:31]

It's the scene of your lived life and the scene of all the possibilities of your lived life. So using the idea of knighthood, you might say that Zen Buddhists in that sense are warriors of consciousness. Of consciousness and awareness. And... Peer mentioned the Satipatthana, the four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness is how you are present in the immediate present. And how you know what's going on in the immediate present. And so the foundations of mindfulness are to be, it's translated usually like to be mindful of your feelings.

[14:53]

And to be mindful of your body. But it actually means something more like to be body full of your body. To know your body first through your mind and then to begin to have your body know itself. So you're not always translating things into mental formations and thoughts. So this is part of the practice of finding out how you actually exist right now through consciousness. And as consciousness arising from your body itself. Yes.

[16:05]

When I study satipatthana in the light of Sufism, then I must say, I don't want to say I'm critical, but I see a lot of differences there because in the satipatthana practices, you, that is your, well, what is your consciousness, what is your body, etc., at least there seems to me to be an objectivity in satipatthana, that is, you watch your body detachedly without identification with the body, and then you watch your mind, and then you watch your personality, you watch your emotions, you watch your personality. Up to that point, There's a great difference between Buddhism and Sufism because who is you who is watching your body? from the point of view of, but when it comes to vipassana, which is the jhanas of Buddhism, then I find a great similarity between Buddhism and Sufism, because Buddha says consciousness is carried beyond the point where it is acting as a personal consciousness, and then that is exactly Sufism.

[17:29]

If you want, I'll translate it in German. [...] then Buddhism and Sufism seem to be very different, because one should look at one's body very objectively without identifying with it. and then his thoughts, and then his emotions, and then his personality. And that is of course quite different from the Sufi perception, because basically the Sufi perception is

[18:34]

Es heißt, wie alles aussieht aus dem göttlichen Standpunkt. Das heißt, das Gegenteil, die Gegenpol von seinem persönlichen Standpunkt aus gesehen. Aber sobald wir weiter nach vorne treten in die Vipassana Janas, Okay. Aren't you glad you're not sitting here? Pierre Villayat has just pointed to the major difference between Buddhism and, as far as I know, most other teachings and religions.

[19:51]

And what I'm wondering is, can these two visions be usefully brought together? Would it be possible to conceive of a new age Buddhism where one starts with Vipassana and ends with Satipatthana? Why not? Okay. Okay. Now, the... Buddhism assumes that the view you have of the world affects your inner stability. So I have to say something about how Buddhism views the world.

[21:10]

Buddhism, I'm trying to think of words. Usually it's called form and emptiness. Now, Buddhism doesn't think there's any oneness out there. There's an experience of oneness, but that experience of oneness doesn't mean there's oneness. No dogma. I agree. Experience. No dogma. So we say in Buddhism, not one, not two. Now, not two is not the same as oneness. Because we really have a pulse between not one, not two.

[22:30]

If you say it's one, no, it's not quite right, it's two. If you say it's two, not quite right, it's one. So neither one is right, it's a pulse. The way one of the Zen teachers says it is, one has many kinds. Two is not a duality. Okay, so Let's not use the terms form and emptiness. You bring my interrupting and saying, I love to have my mind befuddled by Zen paradox. Thank you.

[23:35]

You know, the translation of the word paradox is sophistry, which may be one of the origins of the word Sufism. What is this? Sophistry. Sophistry. Sophistication and sophistry. I want to avoid thought. Sorry. OK. So yes. Not one, not two is a very fundamental paradox, but we're barely getting started in paradoxes. I agree with you, totally. I mean, our life is founded, founded and co-founded, confounded in mystery. And paradoxes are as close as we can get, at least in Buddhism, to these things.

[24:54]

Okay, so let's use the terms, instead of form and emptiness, let's use the terms the divided world and the indivisible world. So Buddhism, the teaching of emptiness is the teaching of approaching the indivisible world. So when we practice the foundations of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, the very basic question that's been debated for many centuries in all the Buddhist schools is who is observing? And Buddhism says that, for instance, we use the Satipatthana as an example.

[26:11]

You use the observer to begin your practice. And the observer observes. I talked about this a little yesterday, I'm sorry, with some of you. The observer, say, observes this hand. And you bring your attention to this hand. Your consciousness to this hand. And then, at some point, if you also see the hand as empty, The consciousness of the hand arises. So it's not just the observer bringing consciousness to the hand, the hand itself is consciousness.

[27:17]

At that point you turn over consciousness to what I call awareness, which is an ocean, and the waves are consciousness. And then your hand arises, then awareness arises from your hand. And that awareness is everything. And so you use the observer consciousness to transform consciousness into awareness and disappear into awareness. Yes. Well, in that sense, of course, Sufism is absolutely agrees totally with what you're saying the total interdependence of consciousness and the body and the mind and the personality whereas if you start with satipatthana such as it's taught

[28:51]

such as my sources of knowledge about Satipatthana are, there's a contrast between consciousness and that which is, let's say, the observer, and that which is observed. Whereas for Sufism, of course, it's all one. But I also agree with you about, let's come back a little bit, let's move back a few steps. When you spoke about it's not one, and not many. It hits right into the heart of Sufism in as much as one of the bases of Sufism is la ilaha illallah. That means it's all one being. And it is true that from one point of view, it's all one, as scientists say, it is all one undividable reality, indivisible reality. But If that was so, we would not have a personal individuality, and therefore we are both somehow like a vortex that does not have any frontier, any boundary, and we're also like a cell that is able to make choices and therefore has some individual initiative.

[30:10]

Soll ich das so übersetzen? Ja. Ja, also treten wir einigen Schritten zurück, ja. Weil ich bin erst ganz einverstanden mit das, was Becker Rüschi sagt, über das Eine und das Manifaltige. Weil... Of course, unity is the deepest root of Sufism in the formula la ilaha illa la hu. That means there is only one reality. And it is also one of the words of modern physics. The whole universe is an indivisible reality. But on the other hand, if everything were only one, then we would be like a cube that has no limit, and part of it would be the whole.

[31:17]

And we are that too, partly. But if we were that way, then we wouldn't have any individuality. So we are both, for example, like a circle, a circle that has no boundaries, and also we are an individuality that prepares something very special, because you have a choice. Ibn Arabi says, know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God. Ibn Arabi said, . So we totally agree there. What you said about the interdependence of consciousness and matter, I must say, strikes me very deeply. and evokes all kinds of thoughts which I'd like to cogitate further. Das, was Sie sagen über die, also, mit einbezogenheit zwischen Bewusstsein und Materie zum Beispiel, das berührt mir sehr, also sehr bedeutsam für mich, und ich würde natürlich sehr weiter darüber denken,

[32:41]

There's a word of the Tibetans, the body is a wonderful instrument in which to experience realization so long as you transform the body. And there's no doubt that the act of consciousness has an impact upon the body. You know, there's a Zen practice which the Sufis use also. Supposing that you look at, say, a vase, a vase, a flower vase, for 20 minutes without moving your glance. And then after that, you start looking around.

[33:44]

That vase will seem to be floating in the air in comparison with the environment. Es gibt eine Zen-Übung, das die Sufis auch machen. Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie nehmen ein Objekt und Sie schauen es so an, dass Sie bewegen Ihren Blick nicht. 20 Minuten. Und nachher schauen Sie die Umgebung Und dann auf einmal scheint es, dass diese Vase schwebt in Luft und es scheint ganz andersartig zu sein als die Umgebung. And that is because somehow you have got into the veseness of the vase, the thatness, that word tat, the thatness of the vase behind the appearance. Der Grund ist, dass man ist reingekommen in das So-Sein von dieser Vase anstatt wie er erscheint durch ihr Auge.

[34:50]

Yeah. Well, it's actually quite hard for, it's easier for you to hear than for me, because there's so much echo, it's very difficult for me to hear. So if you will start telling me what he says, then we can... But I think I have a general idea of what he said. But I think I have a general idea of what he said. So let me stay with this point of the observer and consciousness arising. And who is observing? I think Kant says that what is essential to a human being is the integrity and continuity of self over time.

[36:07]

The integrity and the continuity of self over time. And St. Augustine says, we grab self, we grasp self as time. We grasp time as self. These are definitely not the view of Buddhism. Not the view of Buddhism. And that goes against most common sense. Because it makes common sense that the integrity and continuity of self over time is what gives us our identity and mental health.

[37:13]

But the whole shift in Buddhism, in Mahayana and Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, is to grasp space as self, not time as self. So, many of the practices of Zen, including the Satipatthanas and the Phorjanas, is to create the stability that allows you to find an existence without grasping time as self. Now, thought is discontinuous. And it's the discontinuity of thought which causes our suffering. But it's the discontinuity of thought which also allows us to change our mind.

[38:35]

If you always had one thought, you couldn't change your mind. So the observer in Buddhism is possible because we can change our mind. Okay, so the emphasis in practice is to move from the discontinuity of thought ...which has the quality of sequentiality and time... ...to move to the one taste, that's a technical term, one taste of awareness which... has the characteristics of space.

[39:45]

So when you practice with one thought, as you do sometimes in Buddhism, or one mantra, you're attempting to make the shift from the divided world to the undivided world. From consciousness to awareness. Because if you stay with one thought over and over again, where you stay with concentrating on the base and practices of direct perception, A continuous thought is not supported by consciousness.

[40:46]

Consciousness is like a liquid, perhaps. To try to create an image, you can get hold of this. Like a plane. Okay. Right now, I'd like to use liquids. is like a liquid which has a certain viscosity and temperature and so forth. And certain things will float in it. And certain things won't float in it. And when you put... But awareness has a different viscosity and ability, right? Right? For example, dreams float more easily in awareness than they float in consciousness. When you try to bring a dream into consciousness, it falls apart. Samadhi will exist in awareness, but it won't come into consciousness.

[42:13]

But you can surround consciousness with samadhi, but consciousness itself is a divided world. Samadhi is an undivided world. So when you practice with a one word or one phrase again, the more you do that in your consciousness, at some point your consciousness won't support it and you shift into awareness. Then the observer disappears or shifts to another kind of observer. And so the ability to, through the discontinuity of thought, to realize the shift, the movement of the observer, the movement of how you locate yourself, And to have that observer disappear into the larger awareness that includes you and me and all of us in this phenomenal world,

[43:27]

This ability of the mover to observe and disappear is called wisdom. In the practice terms of Buddhism, that's what wisdom at its core means. You can hear me? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, I hope you can hear me now because I've turned the microphone, don't you? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we're talking to each other instead of... Well, of course, it's just a joke, you know, but... Jokes sometimes illuminate the mind. Richard, so don't take it personally. Richard, you're talking about the...

[44:41]

stability of the mind, but your mind is moving at the rate of a galloping horse, and I have difficulty in following it, and I think both of us do, but I've tried to gather some of the points that you've been saying, and so once more I'll have to retract step by step. So, Richard, also nimm es nicht übel, es ist nur ein Witz, aber Sie sprechen von der Stille der Gedanken, aber Ihre Gedanken First of all, I really admire you Buddhists for being able to do away with the concept of God so conveniently by talking about an observer beyond the personal observer.

[46:00]

And really, I think that we mean the same thing. I am full of admiration for your Buddhists who achieve to present what we Sufis describe as God in a way without using the concept of God. But I can see that it's because of Buddha's great concern about talking from experience rather than setting a dogma.

[47:02]

My father does throw light on this in Sufism when he says, we often... confuse our concept of God with God. We say God and we mean our concept of God and we think that we mean God. So it's more convenient if one does not use that word. Es geht leichter, wenn man diese Wort nicht gebraucht. But I was wondering, well, I still have to follow many of your thoughts, but I was wondering whether Mahayana recognizes this quotation of Buddha when he says, monks, there is a refuge from all of this.

[48:26]

that is from the process of becoming, and so on, so forth, and so on. An unborn, unbecome, and so on. You know the passage, I'm sure. And when one says there is, it's a credo. Yeah. Ich frage Beke Roshi, wie er denkt, über einen Satz, das wird sehr oft zitiert, von, wo Buddha gesagt hat, Mönche, es gibt einen Zuflucht aus das Alles. So that is a credo, isn't it? There is. Or do you think that that is a wrong quotation? There is an unborn, unbecoming, and so on, and that is the refuge from all this.

[49:30]

Yes. Okay. The unborn and unbecoming and timeless is emptiness. Is emptiness. I wonder whether that emptiness isn't the ultimate fullness. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yes. Anyway, emptiness, which is characterized as being like space, is unconditioned, it's unborn, it doesn't change. And this isn't just an idea, it's an actual way you begin to find your own momentariness in the world. So you make this shift into the undivided world.

[50:46]

Which is characterized by radiance and bliss. And this is realized as a presence that you feel and arises in everything around you. And we could say this radiance and bliss that arises through the realization of the undivided world. Through the taste and presence. First you maybe just have taste of the presence of this undivided world. But that presence, that radiance and bliss of the undivided world that is realized through the practice of emptiness could also be understood as a god if you wanted to, I suppose. You don't have to do that.

[51:51]

But maybe the difference would be, because I think those practitioners, those adepts of any religion who get that far, though it's not very far away, it's right here, Their existence in this, their swimming in this, is pretty much the same as I see looking at somebody like Pierre. At the same time, in Buddhism, it's directionless. It's directionless. It's without direction. It's not out there. It's not coming toward us. Though the initial experiences of it in the first few years of practice when you begin to feel this

[53:09]

Sometimes it feels like it's coming to you powerfully from outside. Sometimes it feels like it's arising within you and extending to everything. But when that realization is stabilized, it arises equally everywhere from each of you all at once. And that's one of the meanings of and experience of that each one of you is already Buddha. You just haven't yet taken the trouble to notice it. Or you don't know quite yet how to notice. And that's also the understanding that everything in its all-at-onceness is also Buddha. And this Buddha is not exactly emptiness, but a presence which we participate in.

[54:46]

And that we open our heart into. and our compassion into. But perhaps we probably don't open our heart into it as well as the Sufis do. Okay. Well, what you call Buddha, the Sufis... Let me... Yes, Dr. Roshi, your thoughts are very provoking, thought-provoking. I'm sorry it's just going to be so short. We should have a whole weekend or even a week to really go into deeply, but we will. We're both planning to live to 120, so we have time. Mine was 84, but I'll try to increase it. But actually, what you call Buddha, we call, the Sufis would call God.

[55:50]

So it doesn't matter what the name is, I think. I think, in fact, when you say Buddha, you really mean the Tathagata. And that means that means the one who has become thus. I must say that many of the things that you're saying, of course, we experience in our way, and we're using, as you say, a different language. And, of course, I experience it as something that is welling up from inside. And you're saying that it comes from outside and inside, and perhaps that is true. But it's true that when one thinks of oneself as a vortex, and then one experiences a void inside oneself, and then there seems to be something welling up in that void, from that void, and manifesting itself in a concrete way at the surface. So does Fr. Michel Rosessen So, Richard, I believe that we think very similarly and we have similar experiences.

[56:58]

And what you call Buddha, I believe that is what the Sufis call God. But the word is not so important. But I believe in Buddhism, one would rather say Tathagata, because the word Tathagata means so. so sein anstatt er oder sie, nicht wahr? Also etwas ganz neutral und so weiter. Ich muss sagen, dass ich erfahre dasselbe als das, wovon wir sprechen, dass etwas sich ganz spontan aufhebt. For me, that which emerges is what I would call creativity that is totally spontaneous.

[58:02]

And I think that explains those words ex nihilo in the Catholic Church. What appears here is very spontaneous and new. And that is what the Catholic Church calls ex nihilo, out of nothing. It rises out of nothing. And that is creativity. This morning, we were experiencing, you're talking about time, and as I say, your thoughts are very thought-provoking, because we have a lot of thoughts about time in Sufism. That's what they say about time. It's very important to us, because we Sufis also have a lot of thoughts about time, or also time. The Sufis make a difference between the moment and the instant.

[59:10]

So in the moment, the past still lives and the future is kind of present. So there's a kind of overlap. There's no point at which the past is broken off and the future starts. So in an moment, es gibt ein Überschneiden zwischen der Vergangenheit und der Zukunft. Whereas the instant breaks the sequence of the past and the future, that is the causal change. Der Augenblick bricht der Werdeprozess, das heißt der Reihenfolge von der Vergangenheit in Zukunft, also der Kausalität, der Kausalitätsketter. And I think that is what Buddha means in the last Arubhajana.

[60:21]

He says, it is the end of the determined. In the last Arubhajana in Buddhism, it says, . Forbidding. The end of the forbidding. And you see, creativity, for something to be creative, it must free itself from the conditioning of the past, for a creative person to be... And Prigozhin now, in physics, in the Welt der Physik, Prigozhin introduced a whole new concept in physics, The other thing that strikes me is the difference between when you're referring to space and you're referring to time. And you see, Descartes, the distinction that Descartes makes between spirit and matter is based upon space, whereas the difference that the Hindus make between Purusha and Prakriti is based upon time.

[61:42]

The difference that Descartes makes between spirit and matter is based on space. And the contrast that the Hindus make between Purusha and Prakriti is also based on time. For example, the body is Prakriti because it is bound in... It changes because it is... it is passing, it is perishable, it is a continuity in change. In fact, I like that word that you used. And the mind is also a continuity in change, and the extraordinary thing, and that you must understand, for Eastern thought, if you want to understand Eastern thought, consciousness

[62:44]

is not a stable reality. It's not eternal. Buddha says it is a flame that burns. It can only continue to burn if there's a log. Then you have to think about it when you try to understand the Eastern thought. Consciousness is also for the Eastern thought And so you're speaking about a level of reality beyond consciousness, which the Sufis call intelligence, . and you call awareness. So it's just a question of language, because ultimately you're quite right in saying that At the level of consciousness, one experiences a divisible world, a world that can be thought of as being composed of discrete units.

[63:57]

Whereas in the view of intelligence, one grasps the unity behind it all. Shall I say something? Yes, of course. I feel in Pir Vilayat Khan and myself doing this, is that we are giving you examples of our spiritual and personal and religious language. And I think since both Sufism and Zen Buddhism are practices, they're not just philosophies, This language arises from practice and experience.

[65:04]

And to be valid has to be corroborated, has to find itself again in practice. But the language of practice can also help you get a feeling for what you're doing and to corroborate it for yourself. Because I feel that the danger about just getting oneself into the practice without having a view of what lies beyond what one has experienced so far will hold one in one's own individual vantage point.

[66:14]

Wenn man nur sich begründet, also seine Darstellung begründet auf eine Praxis in der Meditation, man lässt sich sehr leicht eingrenzen, begrenzen oder einsperren in sein Perspektiv. wenn man nicht etwas ahnt von weiterer Perspektive. That is why I find that there is some usefulness in this this concept of God as being the opposite pole, so that one is always... it is God who is discovering himself, him, herself, through us. I have to be careful with my words now. A feminine revolution. So, darum sehe ich, dass es hat doch eine Bedeutung, also es ist doch hilfreich, dass man sich einen Platz gibt für den anderen Pol als seinen persönlichen Pol, den entgegenen Pol, das man nennt Gott.

[67:35]

Weil die Sufis werden sagen, es ist Gott, der entdeckt sich selbst, It is God who discovers himself through us. And furthermore, God discovers himself through our discovery of God through us. This is Sufism. These are small words. These are the words of Ibn Abi. And I find it very useful to have this antinomy between God and man. I mean human beings, sorry. I find it nice to have this polarity between God and man.

[68:40]

because otherwise, when one speaks about experience, one tends to think about it in terms of one's personal experience. When one speaks from an experience, one tends to speak from one's personal experience. It's always healthy to... Think that one is the eyes through which God sees, or one is an extension of the divine sight, the divine glance. Es ist sehr hilfreich, immer zu denken, ich bin eine Weiterführung von der göttlichen Blick, anstatt dass man denkt, ich erfahre das selber, also unabhängig von der letzten Realität. Well, I would say that at least from the point of view of Zen practice, when we're talking about the language of Buddhism, is that you want what, you know, first of all, you get to know your own personal language and you should study your own personal views of the world.

[69:44]

And then you listen to the views, the language of some teaching, like Buddhism or Sufism. And that language of a spiritual teaching which has been created by many generations can speak very directly to your own language. And I would suggest that as you create your own spiritual language from one or more traditions, you keep grounding that and corroborating that in your actual experience. And you try to find an integrity within the language itself.

[71:04]

If you develop a spiritual language which has an interior integrity, then you can begin to conclude spiritual understandings from other traditions. If you just have a little of this and a little of this and you don't actually see how it works together, it'll cause actually some tension in you, though you might have fun. Now let me say something a little bit about the idea of Buddha in Buddhism. There's the historical Buddha, who was an actual person who realized enlightenment and this teaching. But then we say there were Buddhas before that Buddha.

[72:20]

To emphasize this is not an event in time, it's an event in you. Now a second understanding of Buddha. Which is when you are practicing meditation or beginning to have mindfulness as your air throughout your daily life, throughout the 24. We begin to experience what we call the bliss body or the bliss body, the energy body, the space, anyway, let's just say the bliss body. Now that bliss body is understood because it's not exactly you. It's understood as a manifestation of Buddha in you.

[73:33]

It's a kind of Buddha. We call it the Sambhogakaya Buddha. And then when you realize your daily life more and more coming out of this bliss body than out of your personal history body, If you did that fully, that would be called the Nirmanakaya Buddha, which is again the historical Buddha. Now, the term for Buddha that Pierre Vallecan brought up, which was the Tathagata, Now this is the biggest idea of Buddha altogether. And it means the one who comes and goes in thusness. Now thusness technically means non-conceptual perception of the world. In other words, the usual Western logic is the logic of the excluded middle.

[74:59]

It's either this or it's that. But you could say Buddhist logic is the logic of the included middle. It's not this, it's not that. Not one, not two. And the more you feel that, you're not perceiving things conceptually. And you may find you suddenly shift to a non-conceptual way of perceiving that I can't explain because I'm using concepts. But I can hint at it and try to give you the feeling of it. So non-conceptual mind, when you shift to that mind... Buddhism, by the way, is the teaching of many selves, not one self. So when you shift a non-conceptual mind, the way you perceive things we call thusness.

[76:13]

And then that thusness you're participating in is the Tathagata Garbha, the Tathagata. When it's called the Tathagata Garbha, which means the womb of thusness, it means when you can exist swimming in this undivided world, That you can relate to the undivided dimension of your friend. This is the womb of thusness and it's very creative. It's the way the world arises on each moment.

[77:13]

Das ist die Art und Weise, wie die Welt in jedem Moment entsteht. Now, one last thing relating to the points that Pirvayat Khan brought up. Noch ein letztes, und ich möchte da Bezug nehmen auf das, was Pirvayat gesagt hat. Now, early Buddhism emphasized karma. Und im frühen Buddhismus wurde karma betont. And karma emphasizes the interdependence of everything. And it's first understood historically as the sequential cause and effect arising of the world. And then it becomes as the teaching becomes more subtle it becomes the simultaneous arising of the world that's also non-sequential. And as that became more the case, there was a shift, and this is the shift between Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. It became a shift from karma to dharma.

[78:26]

Both are still there, but now the emphasis is on Dharma. And Dharma emphasizes not the interconnectedness of each moment, but the absolute independence of each moment. So from the point of view of karma, you perceive the interrelationships, the interdependence of each thing. And from the point of view of Dharma, you emphasize the instantaneousness, the instant of each thing, as absolutely independent and merging into emptiness. And in that way, if you also... Practice returning to your source of thought so you're at the source of how you arise.

[80:03]

And you're practicing in this momentariness, you're practicing in the present of the present. So this is what the teaching of Dharma means as a practice, balanced in the background by karma, the interdependence. So the bodhisattva is one who lives with one foot in the undivided world. One foot in the divided world. One hand in karma and one hand in dharma. This is to live in thusness where there's a pulse between the divided world and the undivided world.

[81:03]

So this is another idea of Buddha. Well, for the Sufis, of course, the word Buddha immediately suggests a person having lived at a certain moment And also, in the perspective of Islam, of course, there's a great concern about any form of idolatry, so that's the reason why I use the word tathagata, which is so neutral, whereas as soon as you use the word Buddha, then you seem to be referring to a person, although I know that you're not.

[82:11]

From the perspective of the Sufis, of course, we have a difficulty when you mention a name, for example Buddha, because it is a person who, at least an aspect of a person who may be eternal, but who lived on earth for a certain time. And of course, in Islam, of course, one is very careful with all forms of idolatry. That's the reason why I love the word Tadakata much more, of course, because it's very personal. But I wish we had more time to develop just the very question that you started to speak about, which was exactly what I was going to ask you about. Namely, the celestial spheres, I would say the parallels between the teachings of the Sufis and the teachings of the Buddhists about the celestial spheres.

[83:32]

There's no doubt that the step which leads one towards even the slightest sense of what one refers to as the heavenly spheres is realizing, becoming aware of the subtle body behind the physical body. Also, ich würde sagen, der erste Schritt, der uns ermöglicht, um überhaupt eine Behauptung zu haben von dem, was die himmlischen Sphären bedeuten, wäre, dass man fängt an, um etwas zu spüren von seinem subtilen Körper. The Sufis attach a lot of importance to this. Ibn Arabi speaks about that which transpires behind that which appears. And so when we're looking at a person, we generally see their physical appearance.

[84:51]

But there's a Sufi technique that consists in offsetting your glance so that you're able to grasp that which transpires behind that which appears. And when one does that, then, of course, one is just in a state of ecstasy because one discovers so much beauty. And then one... Dass er erfährt, dass man in ein Zuschauen von Ekstase, weil man sieht, dass alles so schön ist. And so it's not surprising that we're disappointed with ourselves and the world because we only see that which appears. Es ist nicht erstaunlich, dass wir sind enttäuscht durch das, was wir erfahrenes Leben oder von uns selbst, weil wir sehen nur das, was erscheint.

[85:56]

And that's why Jalal ad-Din Rumi said, if only you could see yourself through my eyes, you would realize how beautiful you are. And that's why Jalal ad-Din Rumi said, if you could see yourself through my eyes, you would see how beautiful you are. But anyway, what I want to say is that for... I want to stress the importance of embodying states of consciousness. Ich würde sehr gern unterstreichen, wie wichtig es ist, um seinen Zustand zu verkörpern, not just in one's physical body, nicht nur in seinen physischen Körper, but really starts in the higher bodies and moves down. Es fängt an wirklich in die höheren, And Baker Roshi referred to the body of bliss, Anandamaya Kosha, is that right?

[87:01]

Well, that's the Hindu word, Anandamaya Kosha. Sambhogakaya. And the Sufis have a word for that. It's the world of splendor. And for the Sufis, behind all that we see, the reality behind this is not limited by form, and therefore pure splendor. It becomes beauty in form. For the Sufis, hinter das alles liegt eine Realität, der an und für sich keine Form hat, und doch wunderbar ist natürlich, dass es der Welt herum, und das gestaltet in Formen, And so if one is free from determinism, from conditioning, or in the measure in which one is free from conditioning, one is able to work

[88:03]

upon one's being at those different levels. Buddha speaks about uncoupling the root of one's being from that part which is transient. And this is exactly what we find in Sufism. Von das, was davon erscheint. For example, the trunk of a tree. Imagine that one cuts the tree down until it remains a stump. And then a new tree grows. Well, is it a new tree or is it the same tree that grows again? Stellen Sie sich vor, ein Baum, dann schneidet es, und dann erscheint ein Baum, der sieht ganz anders aus.

[89:24]

Ist es der selbe Baum oder ein anderer? And so there is that aspect of ourselves that is transient, and then there is a way of identifying oneself with that aspect of oneself which you call undivided, which is the root of one's being. And that is the way in which one has access. This is the way in which one has access in the heavenly spheres, in the heavenly spheres. I'm afraid that we have to end here. Although I don't see all the heavenly spirits the Sufis do, I do see your subtle bodies. You see me what? I see your subtle bodies, and it's wonderful. And I see yours, too. Well, thank you. Thank you.

[90:17]

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