Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / A Gate to the Buddha

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A Gate to the Buddha · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:10
I'm delighted to be back at the famous Saturday class at the
0:16
Buddhist Tour. I got it right that time.
0:19
OK, That's probably the last time I'm going to say it.
0:21
I don't know. I have a real block with that
0:23
word. There's some of something weird
0:25
going on there. But yes, really good be back at
0:29
this at this class, which seems to be fuller than last time I
0:34
was here and the last time I was here it was fuller than the time
0:37
before that. So it seems to be a thing that
0:41
that's happening here in in the tour.
0:44
And I was reflecting a bit on the fact that, I mean, all our
0:51
Buddhist centres are called Buddhist centres.
0:53
I think this is the only Buddhist centre in our Tree
0:57
Ratner Buddhist community. That's not called a centre, it's
1:01
called a gate, which I think, I think it's wonderful actually, I
1:05
think it's a really good way of describing what this place is
1:10
because you know, obviously a gate is a, is an entrance.
1:14
You know, you enter into something, you enter into a
1:18
place. And in the Buddhist tradition,
1:21
gates are, are very, very important.
1:25
You know literally that you can see a Buddhist gate down by the
1:29
Humboldt Forum. You have the, the, the, the, the
1:32
reproduction, a brilliant reproduction of one of the gates
1:35
that leads into the Sanchi stupor, the great stupor that
1:39
housed the relics of, or still now still houses the relics of
1:45
the Buddhist great disciples. So Ari Bandu and I have been
1:48
saying that we would go and do a puja down there sometimes.
1:52
You know, it would be good if there was a Buddhist
1:54
demonstration, a love demonstration, lots of, lots of
2:00
Buddhist devotion to, to that gate.
2:03
I think that would be a really wonderful thing to do sometime a
2:07
bit of meditation, that kind of thing.
2:09
It would be a really good example, I think of, of what
2:13
we're trying to do as a, as, as a community, really trying to
2:16
exemplify something. That's a dream I have.
2:19
But the, the, the metaphor of the gate can also be used as an
2:24
image for entering into enlightenment itself.
2:29
The, the, the, you have these three gateways to liberation, 3
2:34
gateways into enlightenment, which are known as the signless,
2:39
the wishless and the emptiness. That would make a really good
2:46
talk, but I'm not going to talk about that tonight, this
2:49
afternoon. But yes, the gateway and you've
2:52
entered into the gate. You've, even if this is your
2:55
first time, you've actually crossed a threshold into the
3:01
realm of the Buddha, into the realm of enlightenment, and
3:05
you're in the heart of the place where the gate has taken you to.
3:11
We're actually in the shrine room.
3:12
We have an image of the Buddha, the image, an image of the
3:17
Buddha meditating, and I like to think it's the image of the
3:21
Buddha meditating immediately after his supreme and perfect
3:27
enlightenment, completely absorbed in meditation.
3:29
And the images here are to remind us of what our ideals
3:34
are, what our spiritual ideals are, that that's why the image
3:40
of the Buddha is here to constantly remind us, the
3:43
community here, the Buddhist community here, that
3:47
enlightenment is a living principle in their lives.
3:52
And as it happens, just a few days ago we had the full moon of
3:57
Vaishakh, as it's called in, in, in India, in Sanskrit Vaishakh
4:03
or Pulnima. And that is traditionally the,
4:07
the time when the Buddha gained enlightenment.
4:09
So in India, it's a public holiday.
4:12
The, it's the, the to celebrate the Buddha's enlightenment.
4:14
My friends in India were sending me lots of messages to wish me
4:18
happy Vaishaka greetings. And tomorrow we're going to be
4:24
celebrating that day, just a few days late, but we're going to be
4:27
celebrating what we call Buddha Day.
4:29
We're going to be focusing on the Buddha's enlightenment and
4:33
I'm sure you'll be told invited to come and all that.
4:36
If you want to come to that. There's always an important
4:40
event in the Buddhist calendar. So I want to start with
4:45
enlightenment. I want to start with the Buddha
4:49
meditating. The Buddha was meditating under
4:53
a tree, under the Bodhi tree in what's now Bodhgaya in northern
4:58
India, under this this great tree.
5:02
And it's said that after his enlightenment, which can't
5:09
really be uttered because enlightenment is beyond the
5:14
sphere of thought, beyond subject and object, beyond
5:19
thinker and thought. So it's not something that you
5:22
can really utter. You can indicate it that you
5:25
can't utter it. But he had this period, the text
5:29
say, of sitting for different periods of seven days and seven
5:36
nights, unmoving in full Lotus, meditating, enjoying, tasting
5:45
the bliss of liberation, the bliss of liberation.
5:49
This is the kind of first picture that we have of the
5:54
newly enlightened Buddha just sitting there unmoving, in a
5:58
state of great bliss, unbounded bliss.
6:01
It's the bliss of liberation is the bliss without any boundary.
6:04
There is no boundary at all to his consciousness.
6:09
Tomorrow I'm going to do a little seminar on this where it
6:12
says that the Buddha's sphere, his consciousness is endless.
6:16
It's an unta. There's absolutely no blockage
6:21
in any direction. So it's blissful, it's free,
6:24
it's liberated. It's very important, I think
6:26
that that this blissful aspect of, of Buddhism is actually in
6:31
play all too often. I think the image of Buddhism
6:35
can be a bit stern, bit analytical.
6:38
I mean, the analytical side is there, the sober side is there.
6:42
But there's a very, very strong tradition of bliss of ecstasy
6:46
in, in Buddhist practice and certainly in Buddhist
6:50
realisation. There's of course a tremendous
6:55
release of energy in enlightenment, a tremendous
7:00
release of energy. Actually.
7:01
In some ways I, I think of the Buddhist enlightenment as
7:06
continuing to emanate. The energy, if you like, of the
7:10
Buddhist enlightenment of, of his wisdom, of his compassion of
7:14
all the qualities of Buddhahood is emanating and has continued
7:18
to emanate down the ages through all the sort of vicissitudes of
7:23
the ups and downs of, of Buddhist history and Buddhist
7:26
tradition. Actually, it, it has gone on, it
7:30
has gone on. It's here, you know, it's in the
7:33
West. The West is one of the places
7:36
where you've got strong Buddhist, well, you can't call
7:38
it Buddhist revival. And there's, there's a kind of
7:41
Buddhist past that we had that we don't know about, but there's
7:45
certainly a Buddhist eruption in the West.
7:48
And there is in Germany, there is in Berlin.
7:51
You know, there's, you know, there's, there's the energy of
7:54
enlightenment, the energy of the enlightened life that's in play.
7:59
The disciples of the Buddha are here in the community around the
8:04
Buddhist tour and, and you know, you're coming here and you're
8:09
experiencing that you're in touch with that with the people
8:13
here. So that energy is now, I
8:16
remember the first time I went to Bodgaya on pilgrimage where
8:19
the Buddha gained enlightenment, where you can see the a
8:23
descendant of the tree of enlightenment and there's a
8:26
great sort of tower, like a, what they call a stupor, where
8:29
the Mahabodi temple is the great, the temple of great
8:32
enlightenment, my sense. And in those days it wasn't as
8:36
busy as it is now. It was, it was quite shabby in
8:40
those days, which I really liked.
8:41
You know, I thought, oh, this is really good that, that the place
8:44
of the Buddha's enlightenment is, is really a bit shabby, a
8:47
bit rundown, but there was a lot of devotion Buddhists from all
8:53
over the world there. And I managed to do quite a lot
8:55
of meditation around this. The, the, the centre of things
9:00
and the sense I had was of a kind of, I can't describe it in
9:07
any other way as a sort of fountain of energy.
9:10
Fountain is a little bit that that's not quite right because
9:13
it was much more forceful than a fountain.
9:15
What was I, you know, a pouring out of energy out of the earth,
9:21
you know, affecting the atmosphere, affecting the
9:25
environment. And I could see why Buddhists
9:29
believe that, that this place was the Vadrasana, the diamond
9:35
throne, the adamantine throne, the unbreakable throne, the
9:39
centre of of even the centre of the universe.
9:43
You could see why they think that something happened here,
9:47
something happened in this place and it's going on.
9:51
The energy is in play. So I want to look at that.
9:59
How is it in play? What does it look like?
10:02
What does enlightenment look like?
10:03
I've already said that it's beyond language, beyond
10:06
description. So we've got some real problems
10:10
in how we talk about it, how we refer to it.
10:14
Fortunately, Enlightened from the Buddha onwards, enlightened
10:19
disciples of the Buddha have given us some information and I
10:23
think it's important that we look at the life of
10:26
enlightenment in terms of how that might apply to our lives
10:33
here and now. What would that look like?
10:36
So this is a bit of a, a tall order for me to, to go into this
10:40
for, for anybody. I'm going to borrow from the
10:46
tantric Buddhism, the the, the, a late development in, in, in
10:51
India that that was very influential in, in Tibet and
10:55
Japan, Tantric Buddhism, because they talk about a sort of
11:02
continuity between the unenlightened state and the
11:07
enlightened state. They even talk about a sort of
11:10
non duality between enlightenment and non
11:14
enlightenment. This is perilous material in
11:18
some ways because non duality is one of those sort of sexy things
11:22
that people, you know, subscribe to apps and with non duality
11:27
teachings, YouTube things and all that kind of stuff.
11:30
And a lot of non duality to my mind is really shallow and it's
11:34
entirely intellectual. It's not the true authentic
11:39
realisation of, of, of, of living your life fully and
11:44
completely in relationship to enlightenment.
11:47
So we've got to be careful with this language, but definitely
11:50
temporary. Buddhism talks about a
11:52
continuity between what you might call ordinary experience
11:57
and the experience of, of, of enlightenment.
12:00
And they do this particularly by talking about the five Guyanas.
12:07
These are the five Buddha wisdoms, the five transcendental
12:11
awarenesses. Again, it's very, very hard to
12:16
talk about this. We sometimes they're translated.
12:19
This is translated as wisdom or knowledge.
12:21
But the trouble is as soon as we think of wisdom and knowledge,
12:24
we think of someone here seeing something there.
12:28
We think of a cognition. But Kunyala wisdom for the
12:33
Buddha and for the Buddhist tradition doesn't operate within
12:37
that framework. It operates within an entirely
12:41
different framework, or mem framework, you could say.
12:46
So what one of the ways tantric Buddhism talks about this very,
12:49
very practically is to see, well, you have the Ginyana, you
12:53
have the the wisdom of of of which is associated with a
12:59
particular colour, a particular set of symbols, a particular
13:05
poison, even, you know, negative state, even associated with
13:11
animal seasons, times of year, attitudes there there you have
13:17
the continuity that helps you to relate to the wisdom.
13:21
So I want to to go through these and see if we can find a way of
13:27
seeing how enlightenment could be alive in our lives in, in, in
13:32
hopefully in a sort of fairly practical way.
13:34
Let's have a go. So the first wisdom I want to
13:39
talk about is what's known as the mirror like wisdom, the
13:44
wisdom that is like a great mirror, a mirror that just
13:48
reflects absolutely everything. So this is the first of the
13:54
wisdoms I want to get out. And it's good that it comes
13:56
first, because we need to see things clearly.
14:00
Enlightenment is actually defined as seeing things as they
14:05
really are, as simple as that. You know, when you've practiced
14:10
meditation very, very deeply, when you've practiced Buddhist
14:14
ethics very, very thoroughly, when you've been part of the
14:19
spiritual community for a very, very long time, when your
14:22
consciousness has been completely purified, you can
14:26
reflect what is. There's not going to be any sort
14:31
of projection onto other people and the world around you.
14:35
So you won't be seeing people in terms of, of, of what you want
14:39
from them, how you would like them to be, how you're most
14:44
insisting that they are, but which they can never be, which
14:48
leads to deep frustration. You see, then you see life as it
14:54
is. And of course, the this is where
14:56
the great teachings of the Buddha come in.
14:59
You see impermanence, you see insubstantiality.
15:03
You see that very, very clearly. And there's nothing in you that
15:07
sticks to what you're seeing. It's just as it is.
15:11
It could sound as though it's objective, but the trouble is
15:14
the word objective is a bit cold.
15:17
You don't see coldly, you just see clearly and, and there will
15:22
be warmth, there will be love, there will be, there will be,
15:25
there will be loving kindness, there will be, there will be
15:28
matter in that. In fact, the best way I think
15:31
you can see others clearly is if you dwell in loving kindness as
15:35
much as you possibly can, then you'll see others very, very
15:39
clearly because you're just stripping away.
15:41
You know all your subjective prejudice.
15:44
So first of all, there's this clear mirror like wisdom, and
15:49
this is associated with a blue Buddha, the symbol of this named
15:53
Akshobia, whose name means the immovable.
15:57
And he's associated with the East, he's associated with the
16:01
dawn. So the feel of the mirror, like
16:04
wisdom in some ways is, you know, sometimes at dawn, you
16:08
know, if if you're in the right mood, everything just seems
16:12
really pristine. You know, everything is just
16:15
very, very clear, kind of untouched.
16:19
I remember when I used to live in India, you know, kind of
16:22
crazy India. The dawns were fabulous before
16:25
anybody was around. I mean, even the Bombay streets,
16:29
you know, which could be pretty rough, even they had a kind of
16:33
pristine quality in that early dawn light.
16:37
Everything was clear before the kind of craziness of the
16:41
pollution and, you know, and everything else got going, got
16:45
going. There was just this, this
16:46
clarity so that that that's the kind of feel of, of the mirror,
16:51
like wisdom. It's also associated with
16:53
winter. If you can remember, winters
16:55
that are absolutely icy cold, there's just ice absolutely
17:01
everywhere, diamond like glinting in the sun.
17:04
So the quality of, of the mirror, like wisdom of Akshobia
17:08
is this absolute clarity and purity, absolute purity of
17:13
vision. Nothing is nothing is affecting
17:17
the purity of the vision. So that's the feel we need to
17:20
have for this, for this mirror like state, everything reflected
17:24
as it is. It's also very grounded because
17:28
it's associated with a mudra, a hand gesture, which is called
17:32
earth touching. You know that, you know, you're
17:35
really touching the earth. You're, you're not, you know,
17:38
getting ahead of yourself. You know, you're really
17:40
grounded. That's the fashionable word
17:42
these days, isn't it? It's overused, isn't it?
17:44
But it's more like the earth. And I remember, I remember
17:47
somebody I met a long, long time ago.
17:50
It was one of my teachers, teachers, Sangaraksha, our
17:52
founders, teachers named Chattrell Sanghi Doje, a great
17:57
lama, great new Mappa lama, one of the, the great meditators of,
18:02
of the age, you know, really one of the great ATI Yoga Zogchen
18:07
masters, non dual, all that pure awareness.
18:10
So I managed to find him, you know, rundown Monastery, you
18:17
know, just down from Darjeeling in Tiger Hill.
18:19
And I managed to find out he was there and I was taken to see and
18:25
he was sort of, at that time, this is a very, very high llama.
18:29
He was just staying in a kind of storeroom.
18:33
So I was taken to this storeroom filled with tankers and rupers.
18:37
It was like the monastery story when we had fantastic stuff.
18:40
You'd never, you'd never see it in an antique shop, just sort of
18:43
stacked. And he was sitting there with
18:46
another man. I don't know, they was giving
18:48
some esoteric teaching or something.
18:50
But he was just sitting on the ground by an open Brazier in
18:55
sort of rough wool robes. And it was like he was growing
18:58
out of the earth. He looked he looked so ordinary,
19:02
like a sort of night watchman or something like that, But the
19:06
earth was really coming across and I thought, well, my
19:09
goodness, you know, this is a man really into meditation.
19:12
You know, so often in the West, when people are into meditation,
19:16
they're they're away with the fairies, you know, they're
19:19
they're often on sort of, you know, you know, sky like trips,
19:23
you know, and they and they come crashing to earth, you know,
19:26
because it's often like that. I think in the West, you know,
19:28
people so sort of addicted to experience.
19:31
There's it's a sort of a boom and bust approach to spiritual
19:35
life, you know, where you, you have your ecstasies and then you
19:38
have your, your crashes. But it's not like that.
19:41
It's we've got to take a lead from this man, you know, growing
19:46
out of the earth deep meditator and actually start living in the
19:51
enlightened life needs to start with this clarity and this sense
19:56
of walking on the earth and being in very, very honest
20:00
connection with the world around us.
20:04
That's why that the animal associated with the mirror like
20:08
wisdom is the elephant. You know, it's that it's that
20:12
it's that it's that tough. If you like that, that
20:16
immovable. So that's the mirror like wisdom
20:20
to the extent that I can understand it and then?
20:24
Moving along, there's then the wisdom of sameness, the wisdom
20:29
of sameness, the summer to Gnana.
20:32
This is often translated as wisdom of equality, but I think
20:36
that's a bad translation. I think that's superficial.
20:39
Sameness is more profound. I think this, this wisdom is
20:46
seeing the same equality in everything, particularly in
20:52
everybody. You know, it's this deep, deep
20:56
sense of, if you like togetherness with the world
21:00
around you, very, very deep indeed.
21:04
And, and in terms of practice, this sameness quality, it's the,
21:09
it's, it's a very kind of human state.
21:12
It's that realisation that every other, well, let's just start
21:17
with human beings, but it extends further that to that, to
21:20
that to all life whatsoever. But we are all fundamentally the
21:25
same, you know, when you actually look into it, you know,
21:29
if we were to to, to, to go down deeply into our own longings,
21:35
our own motivations, we would probably see that actually I
21:40
just want to be happy. I don't quite know what that
21:44
would look like, but I want to be happy.
21:46
I want to be protected. I want to feel safe.
21:53
I don't want to suffer. I don't want to be frightened.
21:57
I'd like to be treated courteously.
22:00
I'd like to be treated well. All those things, all those
22:05
very, very basic things before the complexity of ambition takes
22:10
over, but getting down to a sort of deeper sort of sense of
22:15
oneself as a living being. And The thing is, when you start
22:18
doing that, you realise that each and every single human
22:23
being is exactly the same. There is no difference at all.
22:29
And that's what you're trying to realise in the Metapafner.
22:33
You know that, that that deep sameness.
22:35
And you know, in some practices they say, look, well, I'm not
22:40
special. There's another kind of problem
22:42
we have in the West. You know, the whole I'm a
22:44
special person complex, which can get mixed up in spiritual
22:49
life. You know, I'm, I'm that special
22:51
person. I'm that unique person who's
22:54
more enlightened than others, or I'm that unique person who, who,
22:57
who can't possibly live a spiritual life.
23:00
I, I am, I am the great Sinner. I am the great failure.
23:04
You can't help me. There's another kind of conceit.
23:07
It's, it's all different versions of conceit.
23:10
No, no, no, no. There is this profound sameness
23:15
between ourselves and other that that we're dissolving through
23:19
this kind of meditation. None of us are that special.
23:22
Or if you like, we're all special.
23:24
If you want to make it more positive so you get this
23:27
evenness of response. So this is the sameness Guyana
23:31
for a Buddha. This is how he naturally
23:34
experiences life. The Buddha himself said three
23:39
things shine equally down on all the sun, the moon and the
23:47
Buddha's teaching. I am not a bad teacher with a
23:52
tight fist who holds things back.
23:57
I give freely and openly to everybody appropriately, but to
24:03
everybody. So it's, it's the same response
24:08
to everybody. So this is very much associated
24:12
with generosity. The figure, the briller figure
24:15
associated with with with this Guyana is named Ratna Sambhava,
24:20
the jewel born or, or the one who produces jewels.
24:25
And he sits with this gesture with a completely open palm, you
24:32
know, indicating a complete openness of, of, of
24:36
communication, of generosity, of, of spirit.
24:39
There's no holding back. There's no doubt.
24:42
And, and yes, the image, the symbol for this Kinyana is the
24:47
jewel and abundance, you know, it's very much associated with
24:52
abundance yellow. It's great abundance and, and
24:57
the, and it's associated with the more, more like the middle
25:00
of the day when the sun's really shining and, and the time of
25:04
year is, is, is really, it's it's kind of summer.
25:09
But when things are really starting to produce, you know,
25:12
it's, it's wonderful fields of grain, it's fruits, it's the
25:19
cornucopia. It's this constant sense of
25:23
bounty and giving because you have this awareness of the
25:26
sameness of everybody. You can't not give and you're
25:30
not going to give just to to some person and not other
25:33
people. This group and not that group.
25:36
It's it's to whoever you, to whoever you meet, whoever you're
25:39
with. And there's a great sense of
25:42
pleasure and abundance in this. I think you know the well, the
25:49
image of this for me is my teacher is Sangaraksha.
25:52
When I was ordained when I was 19, he was wearing his yellow
25:56
robes. He had a kind of orange gold
25:59
Tibetan shirt on. In those days.
26:01
He had really long hair. And on this weekend, just a
26:05
weekend retreat, there was this, this natural giving.
26:10
He not only ordained myself and a very good friend of mine, he
26:14
led study throughout the weekend, LED all the rituals,
26:17
all the meditations, and there was this sense of ease.
26:22
But this is fun. This is the life.
26:26
You're not doing it for any other reason.
26:28
Then this is just a wonderful thing to do.
26:32
It's not, you're not doing it because people suffer not doing
26:36
it even to gain enlightenment. You're doing it because this is
26:41
what you do. This is the natural thing you
26:43
do. I was thinking when I, when I
26:45
was beginning to think about this talk this morning, you
26:48
know, why I, you know, why I got involved in all this and, and
26:52
why I lived this life, you know, Well, I can't say that I've done
26:56
it because I, you know, I, I was searching for, you know, I was
26:59
in pain or something like that, or I had a particular problem.
27:03
And, and if somebody were to ask me why do you meditate?
27:07
It's not to sort of cure anything.
27:10
I mean, there's a lot to cure. You know, I'm, you know, I've
27:13
got my issues, I've got ill will and all those things that I have
27:17
to deal with. So the metapavna to take that
27:19
practice is really important. But why, why I do the metapavna
27:23
is because I enjoy loving or to get to a point of loving.
27:30
So you do it for its own sake. So this wisdom, this wisdom of
27:34
the sameness of all things is, is this, it's just this
27:38
abundance. The Buddhas in light, the Buddha
27:40
didn't teach his Buddhism, his Dharma because of how can I say
27:47
because they, you know, people say, well, it's done out of
27:50
compassion. Well, in a sense it is, but he
27:52
does it because he wants to express.
27:55
He wants to express. There's this fullness within him
28:00
that needs expression that enriches the world, that adds to
28:05
the abundance of the world. So that's the summer to kunjana.
28:14
Alright, that's in a way a bit of a contrast because the next
28:19
Ghana is the next wisdom is called the wisdom of
28:23
particularity. It's often translated as the
28:27
discriminating wisdom, but the Sanskrit actually when you look
28:31
it up, it it it, it really emphasises more the
28:34
particularities of things. So in enlightenment, the
28:38
enlightened mind, the enlightened consciousness,
28:41
wisdom not only sees the sameness of everybody, but sees
28:45
their uniqueness, their, their, their real particular qualities,
28:50
their particular characters and delights in that, delights in
28:57
the differences between everybody and everything loves
29:01
that. There's a curious thing.
29:04
I, I think they go together, that when you, when you're able
29:07
to see the sameness of yourself and others, then you can really
29:11
rejoice in and delight in the particular virtues, the
29:15
particular qualities, the particular expressions of
29:19
someone's potentiality. And this particular wisdom is
29:24
associated with love. It's colour is red, rich Ruby
29:29
red. And the Buddha figure that it's
29:32
associated with is Amitabha, who's a red Buddha, the Buddha
29:37
of infinite light and infinite life, infinite creativity, you
29:41
could say. And this, the time of day of
29:46
this Guyana is sunset, you know, when the eyes, the the air is
29:51
going a wonderful sort of shade of red.
29:54
And when I lived in Bombay, I mean, OK, So what you like about
29:58
pollution, but I mean, sunsets are absolutely stunning.
30:02
I'm not saying, you know, there should be pollution.
30:04
So you have really good sunsets. But there was this, there was
30:08
this moment, you know, where, you know, sometimes I'd be
30:10
waiting for a bus at rush hour where because we're on the way
30:14
to give a talk somewhere. And, you know, you've got all
30:16
this madness of, of traffic. And then there's a certain
30:20
moment where the air, I mean, it's not just the sky, the air
30:25
goes red. I mean, absolutely astonishing.
30:28
And everything seems to be particular and everything looks
30:32
transfigured. I mean, things that you'd think
30:35
of as being ugly, they're just not ugly anymore.
30:37
They're absolutely astonishing. So it's very much associated
30:41
with love and red and, and meditation.
30:46
And the time of year of, of this, of this Ghyana is spring.
30:54
It's this time of year we're, we're in the, we're in the time
30:57
of the wisdom of particularity, if you like.
31:01
We're in the time of the Buddha of love.
31:04
It's, it's the time of he's associated with passion, with
31:08
raga, he's associated with the Lotus flower.
31:12
So we're in that time. And I think there's a sort of
31:14
relationship. You can see the continuity
31:17
between the experience of passion, you know, when you're
31:20
really in love with someone and the wisdom of particularity.
31:25
Do you remember being in love? Maybe some of you are in love
31:28
right now. I don't know.
31:29
But do you remember that feeling when you were in love?
31:31
Do you remember that thing? It's, you know, it's been a long
31:34
time for some of us, but do you remember that thing when you're
31:38
in love with somebody, the beloved, You love every detail,
31:42
don't you? Every last detail, You know, the
31:46
eyebrow, the eyes, you know, the, you know, the way they
31:51
move, you know, all that sort of thing is very, very particular.
31:55
And there's that loving attention on them.
31:58
Well, in enlightenment, that's for everybody.
32:02
That's for everything without that desire to possess, It's
32:07
that very, very fine appreciation of the
32:11
particularity of someone. Of course, what this means is
32:14
what what this leads to is incredibly good teaching,
32:19
incredibly good communicating, really appropriate to the person
32:24
you're talking to. When the bidder would walk into
32:28
a group of people, if he was giving a Dharma talk, you know,
32:31
there might be hundreds of people there.
32:34
He had a mind that would take in everybody, absolutely everybody
32:37
present, but he would, he would, he'd also have in mind
32:42
particular people and the, and the and the teaching would
32:47
direct to them. It would, it would have an
32:50
effect on them. Sometimes people who were, you
32:54
know, regarded as completely sort of untouchable by everybody
32:57
else. There's a famous story where a
33:00
leper turns up at an assembly. He, he doesn't know the Buddha's
33:04
teaching. He just turns up because he
33:06
thinks he's going to find food there.
33:09
And, and the Buddha surveys that group thinks him, he's really
33:14
going to get it. He's really going to understand
33:16
what I have to say. And he becomes a great disciple
33:19
of the Buddha. So that wisdom of particularity,
33:23
seeing people individually and clearly with love, with that
33:28
kind of quality of attention. And then the 4th of the wisdoms
33:35
is the all accomplishing wisdom. You could call this the wisdom
33:39
that acts, the wisdom that gets things done.
33:42
This is really important because sometimes if you're talking
33:45
about wisdom, you can disassociate it from action.
33:50
But for the Buddha and Buddhist tradition, if you are genuinely
33:54
a wise person, you do something, you actually do something, you
33:59
affect the world around you. I mean, it's, it's sort of
34:03
comparatively easy, you know, to, to, to have an understanding
34:09
and to talk about your understanding, you know, with
34:12
other people. But I think it's actually rare
34:14
when real understanding, which is real wisdom actually explodes
34:19
into action with others to do some good, you know, to really
34:25
bring some benefit into the world.
34:26
So this all accomplishing wisdom is associated with, it's
34:35
associated with air. I mean, one of the things I
34:38
haven't gone into into this talk is all the different elements.
34:41
It's associated with the wind element or the air element.
34:45
It's very, very appropriate. It's it's this movement, if you
34:49
like, that starts to affect people.
34:52
The better form that's associated with this wisdoms,
34:56
his name is a Moga city, which means the infallible success and
35:02
he's regarded as a very mysterious deep green figure.
35:07
And the whole idea of this wisdom, it's completely egoless.
35:12
This activity is it doesn't draw attention to itself.
35:17
It just moves through and effects people very, very
35:21
profoundly. You know, it's this, it's, it's
35:25
this natural, spontaneous, almost activity of the Buddha
35:30
to, to, to affect people. The, the, the, the time of day
35:35
this is, is associated with is midnight.
35:38
Sometimes this is called the sun at midnight.
35:42
You're in a world now of the union of opposites, a world of
35:46
activity and stillness. You know, the Buddha never moves
35:51
from his position of stillness. Even when he's walking through
35:55
the dust roads of India, of the forests of India, going into the
35:59
marketplaces in India to communicate to who he's with.
36:04
He never moves from that, from his meditation.
36:06
If you like his meditation and his activity are are one thing.
36:11
The time of year associated with this Guyana is kind of late
36:17
summer, early autumn. It's the far north.
36:22
It's forests. It's really, you know, those,
36:26
those forests. And it's kind of a bit steamy.
36:30
You know, the thunders coming, you can hear the sound of
36:34
Thunder. Everything is very, very rich
36:37
and there's a lot of mystery in the atmosphere.
36:41
This is the kind of quality of a Moga city.
36:44
It's sometimes said of this, of this kind of wisdom.
36:48
It's associated with a Zen tradition, the last of what are
36:52
called the ox herding pictures. It's called going into the
36:55
marketplace with bliss, bestowing hands.
37:00
And the image here is of an old man, a kind of old wandering
37:04
man, you know, very kind of lined, but chuckling, chuckling
37:09
away. He doesn't mind where he is.
37:11
He doesn't mind if he's among a load of butchers or if he's
37:16
among a load of intellectuals or if he's with religious people or
37:20
non religious people. The bliss bestowing hands are
37:24
there, you know, creating a different world for the people
37:28
that he's with. So the big point though, is that
37:32
if you're serious about the life of enlightenment, you're active.
37:36
You're active. I mean, that's one of the lovely
37:38
things about coming to Berlin and being with the community
37:42
around the centre about around the, around the gate is they're
37:46
active, you know, they're really trying to do something in terms
37:50
of, you know, bringing Buddhism into the world.
37:52
And what I like about it, kind of what I like about the, the,
37:56
this, this community generally, there are no gurus, there are no
38:01
kind of charismatic leaders. We, we're all incredibly
38:05
ordinary people, unbelievably ordinary people who just enjoy
38:10
what we're doing. And we want to kind of share it
38:12
with as many people as possible as unselfconsciously as possible
38:17
because, you know, we really believe in it.
38:20
We really believe that, that that what this life of
38:22
enlightenment can really do something to the world around
38:26
us. And finally, and then I'll end,
38:31
there's a wisdom that sort of gathers them all together.
38:35
This is called the wisdom of the Dharma datu, the wisdom of the
38:38
Dharma datu. This is very difficult to
38:41
explain. The Dharma Datu means that well,
38:45
it's everything. Datu here means something like
38:48
realm, cosmos. Dharma means truth or reality.
38:54
So this wisdom of the Dharma datu means that the enlightened
38:57
being sees reality everywhere. There isn't a sense of a kind of
39:02
Nirvana over there and a world here that's just not present.
39:08
The Buddha never moves from his enlightenment.
39:11
It's whatever he's doing, wherever he is.
39:14
It doesn't mean that an enlightened being is sort of
39:17
exempt from the ravages of of death and ageing and illness,
39:23
but his relationship with that is entirely different.
39:27
One of the most wonderful things you can read where you really do
39:30
get a kind of insight in what, into what enlightenment might be
39:34
like is when you read the the Last Days of the Buddha.
39:39
There's this incredible moment where he's in absolutely ghastly
39:43
pain. You know, he's 80, You know,
39:46
he's, he's got dysentery, he's got chronic back pain, He's
39:50
being overwhelmed by illness. And he decides I'm not, I'm not
39:54
ready yet. So he, he fights for life.
39:58
I'm not ready to leave yet because I want to do some last
40:02
teaching. I want to do a last tour.
40:04
You know, and he goes to actually a very, very kind of
40:06
out of the way place to do his last communicating.
40:10
And his great disciple Arlander is very distressed at the pain
40:14
he's in. And, you know, the Buddha
40:16
doesn't talk about it. He just, you know, gets a hold
40:19
of it and deals with it. But Arlander can see what's
40:22
going on and says, you know, it really distressed me.
40:27
And they have this conversation. And the Buddha said, well,
40:31
Arlander, look, I'm just like an old cart now.
40:35
I can only go along through being strapped up.
40:39
It's a wonderful description of being an old man.
40:42
You know, he, he, he's falling apart, but he's holding it
40:45
together. He said, the only time I don't
40:48
know pain is when I can enter the signless samadhi.
40:54
He has that. If you like that natural ease of
40:59
getting into deep meditation where if you like all the
41:02
features that would see things in terms of pain just dissolve
41:06
away, he can sort of retreat into a high consciousness.
41:09
But he said when I'm walking around, I'm always in pain.
41:13
But I I never lose mindfulness. I never lose awareness.
41:17
I never lose my purpose. And of course his purpose is
41:21
compassion. His purpose is to finally
41:24
communicate Buddhism to the people he's with, to bring
41:28
liberation to as many people as possible.
41:31
Even though there's pain. It's an incredible description
41:34
of, of enlightenment, those two aspects.
41:36
He can, he can be absorbed, but walking around when he's with
41:42
people that that, that, that pain is there.
41:45
But it doesn't define him in any way whatsoever.
41:48
And there's a teaching there for us.
41:51
You know, we have our ups and downs, don't we have our really
41:53
difficult periods, you know, individually difficulties maybe
41:59
with, with family members, loss, grief and, and friends and so
42:03
on. And people are very frightened
42:06
about the state of the world, lots of suffering in the world.
42:10
For Buddhist tradition, they would say, start seeing this as
42:14
the Dhamma datu and start by seeing absolutely everything as
42:19
the place of practice. You don't be defined by the
42:25
difficulties, the problems. Find a way of transforming that
42:30
through meeting it with some sense of the enlightened
42:33
consciousness, some sense, some little sense of not being
42:38
defined by by what's there and bringing something else into
42:42
play. That's another story.
42:44
That's for another talk where we could go through and select, you
42:48
know, all the different kind of problems we face and how we can
42:51
transform them and transmute them.
42:53
But they are there, they can be found.
42:56
So there we are. I think that's enough on my
43:01
attempt to to to talk about the enlightening life, the
43:04
enlightened life, living, living in relationship to the energy of
43:08
enlightenment. And I hope above all that it was
43:12
helpful to you. Thank you.