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Buddhist Gate · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:09
Thank you, Donna, Sarah, for a very lovely introduction and I'm
0:18
very glad to be back at the famous Saturday class here at
0:26
the Buddhist Tour. I can't say that first name in
0:30
German. I've just got a real block.
0:31
We were sort of wondering about whether I need therapy or
0:33
something for that. But anyway, I'm not going to
0:36
embarrass everybody by trying to pronounce it, but it's very,
0:39
very good to be here with you this morning, to be back in
0:44
Berlin again. And I love the fact that this
0:50
what we call in England a Buddhist centre, it's called a
0:53
Buddhist gate, a tour. I think that's a wonderful
0:59
symbolism. There's a wonderful symbolism
1:01
there in, in, in Britain, we tend to call our Buddhist
1:04
centres Buddhist centres, you know, and you know, you get
1:09
garden centres in, in Britain and, and you know, you get all
1:13
sorts of centres and you know, you could start thinking, well,
1:16
the Buddhist centre is just like any other kind of centre.
1:22
Gate tour is so much more expressive.
1:25
And of course you get the gate symbolism very, very strongly in
1:32
in Buddhist tradition. I think I mentioned last time
1:36
you could you can see a traditional Buddhist gate
1:40
outside the Humboldt Forum. You can see the, the gate, a
1:44
complete replica beautifully made of one of the gates to the
1:48
great stupor, the great monument in India of, of, of the stupor
1:55
at Sanchi, which which houses the relics of, of the great
2:00
disciples of the two leading disciples of the Buddha, Sharif
2:04
Putra and Muhammad Kavyana. And you can, it's a wonderful,
2:08
wonderful carving covered with all sorts of different beings.
2:13
I still would like to go and do a puja down there sometime.
2:17
We'll do our own demonstration. We're going to a Buddhist puja
2:21
at that gate. I think that would be a
2:23
wonderful thing to do. We haven't done it yet, but
2:26
there's a little plea for you. I'd like to do that.
2:31
So good to have a Buddhist monument in a public space, A
2:35
gate, a gateway and and you get it in in Zen tradition you talk,
2:41
they talk about passing through gates usually to do with
2:45
different degrees of of, of wisdom.
2:48
You get the gateless gate very mysterious, A gateless gate and
2:52
entryway into things. So when I was pondering
2:55
yesterday, what was it last night, I can't remember or the
2:58
night before I was thinking about Gates.
3:00
I was suddenly reminded of being in Tate Modern in in London and
3:07
in quite a long time ago. And in in the room dedicated to
3:12
Mark Rothko's huge abstracts, these huge paintings, sort of
3:20
deep Reds and maroons and, you know, with these strange sort of
3:26
shapes, strange sort of almost silhouette type, dark grey
3:31
shapes, cloudy shapes on them. And I can remember spending a
3:34
lot of time in there many years ago actually, and having a sense
3:38
of being at gateways, being at thresholds, of course, to where
3:46
I didn't know. But it just seemed such a
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wonderful way of, well, that was way I was reading the painting.
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Perhaps it doesn't have that meaning at all, but that was the
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way I, I, I found myself reflecting up against these
4:02
great blocks of, of colour, great colour fields.
4:07
And, and, and there's always, I think with the gateway, that
4:10
sense of when you pass through it, you, you're, where are we
4:14
going? What's next?
4:17
It gateways are so transitional, aren't they?
4:20
You're passing from one state to another and that's why I think
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it's a good symbolism for a British centre to talk call to
4:31
call it a gateway. You've passed over a threshold,
4:36
you're into a different space. I mean, what I would hope for
4:41
people coming to any British centre, whether it's called a
4:45
gate or whether it's called a centre or whatever it's called,
4:48
that there's a sense that you're passing from one consciousness
4:52
to another, one state of being to another.
4:55
You're not just receiving instruction in particular
5:00
methods of meditation. You're not just listening to
5:06
explanations of Buddhist ideas. You're not just meeting friendly
5:10
people. You're moving into a different
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environment for a while, moving into a different environment
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with a different quality of consciousness and being.
5:22
That's what I would hope it would be a a a state in which
5:27
you find out more about yourself, more about other
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people, more about life itself. Perhaps you'd even experience it
5:37
as a sort of open dimension. Very famous Austrian 20th
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century scholar of Buddhism rendered the Buddhist notion of
5:48
Shunyutar, which is usually translated as emptiness or
5:51
voidness, very expressively as the open dimension of being
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lovely expression that in being, in experience, in life, there's
6:02
always an open dimension to discover something which isn't
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bounded, which is unbounded. And I would hope that coming
6:13
into the the gate here, you pass into a more unbounded space
6:20
where you, you have a, you have a sense of an opening.
6:23
What you do with that opening and what you discover in that
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opening, of course, is entirely up to you.
6:31
You know what you do do next. But perhaps it's also a place in
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which the usual, perhaps habitual or conditioned ways of
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being that we have are for a while suspended.
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Perhaps time and space and all of the things that we have
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involved in usual time and usual space are just suspended for a
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while. They're just absent and you can
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discover new things sometimes. I know for some people that
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coming into a Buddhist centre for the first time, coming,
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stepping across the threshold for the first, first time, as it
7:16
was for me, it can be ecstatic. First time I was in a Buddhist
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space, which was in a private house in a shrine room, but it
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was an ecstatic experience. I really felt some when I, when
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I was, yes, about 17, I felt something was really opening up
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in that space. Sometimes it can be a bit
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unnerving. You know quite not quite sure of
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your ground, not quite sure what's going on as you sit
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silently for 20 minutes looking at your breath.
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Or especially, perhaps when you're asked to cultivate loving
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kindness to an enemy that can be quite confronting and and
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unnerving because it's not what you usually do.
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You're going against perhaps the norms of of life going against
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what you're used to. So talking alike like this
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starts to remind me when I was thinking about this whole area
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of a very important Buddhist idea that is really taken up
8:19
strongly in Tibetan Buddhism, but which has great antiquity.
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Going back to Indian Buddhism. It's the notion of I'm going to
8:27
give you the Sanskrit of Unturabava.
8:31
Unturabava, which means between existences, between two
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existences, a space between two. Usually it it's described as the
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space between dying and being reborn, or rather entering into
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what we call re becoming in. In ancient Indian Buddhist
8:58
tradition, this was regarded as a sort of liminal space.
9:02
Everybody likes that word liminal.
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Apparently these days, this place where space where
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everything is open and you undergo all sorts of the
9:11
consciousness, undergoes all sorts of visionary experiences
9:15
before finding embodiment yet again.
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Tibetan Buddhism especially takes this up very, very
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vividly. They translate the term mantra
9:26
bhava as bardo bardo BARDO bardo between 2:00.
9:34
That's literally what it means the the in between the between
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2:00 and you might have heard of the so-called Tibetan Book of
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the dead. The actual real, the Tibetan
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word for this text. Actually, the Tibetan phrase for
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this text is liberation through hearing in the in between,
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liberation through listening in the in between state.
10:01
Because it's a book for somebody undergoing the after death
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process. They've died and the llama or
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the spiritual friend will read to them the instructions,
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whispering them into their into the person's ear.
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And in Buddhist tradition, there's this idea that the
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consciousness is still around after death, immediately after
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death. And it's very sensitive,
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incredibly open. So it needs a instruction
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because death is sort of catastrophic, isn't it?
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And very often the descriptions in in the body, they're,
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they're, they're sort of tragic comic because the, the person
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who's died doesn't think they're dead.
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And they're kind of looking at people who are beginning to
10:54
perform their death rites and so on.
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And they're saying, I'm here, what are you doing?
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Any case, you're doing it wrong because apparently after death
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you're hypersensitive and you're sort of all knowing briefly and,
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and you get really angry and the, and the, and the lama or
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the spiritual friend has said you have died, you've died,
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you've passed. You must find a path.
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Very interesting phrase they keep using.
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You must find a path. You must find a way through
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this. You need to remember your
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instructions that you learned in this life and it goes on taking
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them through the the visionary journey.
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It's an extraordinary text, a a a work of tremendous spiritual
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inspiration attributed to the great 8th century master Papa
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Sambava, the Lotus poem. And this notion of of being in
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an in between is extended beyond just the in between between
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death and taking rebirth. There are many different kinds
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of in betweens, but this particular tradition that comes
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from the school founded by Pam Masamu, the Myanmar school, the
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the school of the ancient ones, the Old Ones, recognises 6
12:16
particular in betweens. Very, very interesting teaching
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the six in betweens. There's the in between of, yes,
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dying and being reborn. There's the in between of
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reality after death. All the visions you undergo go.
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There's the in between of taking rebirth.
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There's the in between of deep meditation because in deep
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meditation you're between thoughts.
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Thoughts have vanished in deep meditation.
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So you're in this open space. I mean, some of you may be
12:52
practicing practice meditation for a while.
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You might have noticed sometimes that you become very deeply
12:59
absorbed and you suddenly realise you're not thinking.
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And although it's very pleasant and blissful, you might start to
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slightly panic because it's not normal, it's deliciously
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abnormal, but you can't handle it because you're not used to it
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and you want embodiment. So you need to learn how to work
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with that. Dream is also recognised as a
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bardo. This is incredibly significant
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because we all dream, don't we? We all fall asleep and in
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between sleeping and waking, many, many things take place.
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So that's seen as an in between. So all these in betweens are
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said to be spaces in which you can make real spiritual progress
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because a particular kind of set of habits have stopped, another
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set of habits haven't started up.
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So you're in this wonderfully open space.
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You know, I'm hoping in this, this morning, on these days you
14:08
come here, you're feeling you're in that open space.
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As I said at the beginning, some of you might have, might have
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heard about retreats. You know the centre here, the
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tour here organises weekend retreats and week long retreats.
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They can be experienced strongly as in betweens, because retreats
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are between periods of, as it were, let's call it ordinary
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life. And you go away, you know, with
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with with people. Very often you don't know that
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well, you enter into quite a different sort of programme of
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activities. So if a retreat comes up, do
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take the opportunity of of going.
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But then the the bardo that I particularly want to talk about
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is something even more familiar. It's called sometimes the
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birthplace bardo, probably best translated as the bardo of life.
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So this very life itself, from birth to death, is seen as an in
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between, as seen as a wonderfully open space in which
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to make real spiritual progress. I was saying the other night,
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and I probably said it here many times, that in Buddhist
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tradition, the human life, the human life form, the precious
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human life form, well, it is regarded as incredibly valuable,
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incredibly precious. Nowadays people love to
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denigrate human beings, don't they?
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We denigrate ourselves all over the place.
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We might do that sort of privately, having a lot of self
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loathing for all sorts of reasons.
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Or, you know, we, we worry about the planet and all the terrible
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things going on. And, you know, some people would
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like to sort of ban human beings, But the reason why we
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get into these messes is because we do not make the most of our
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human life. And making our most of our human
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life is not to do with having and getting and, you know,
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striving, you know, after material success and everything
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that goes with that. Making the most of our human
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life is entering into this life as an open dimension where you
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can transform yourself from an ordinary human being, wonderful
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though an ordinary human being is into nothing less than a
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Buddha, nothing less than an enlightened being.
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This is what the, the Buddhist tradition says, which is
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astonishing really. If you, if you've ever read
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anything about in Buddhism and you get a descriptions of
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enlightened beings and what they're like.
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The, the, the, the continuous undimmed awareness that they
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have constant mindfulness, naturally, natural awareness,
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natural compassion, natural contentment, natural bliss, all
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achieved as it were through engaging in spiritual practice.
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When you read these descriptions and then you're told actually
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you can become that. That's quite shocking.
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That is actually a possibility, a potential you can move in that
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direction. And Domazar has has told you
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I've been a bullies for a long time and I still believe that
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that that that that movement in that direction is the only thing
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worth doing. It's the only thing I want to
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do. But as I go on and as I get
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older and as powers as it were, go a bit dim, I realise that
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it's hard. It's hard, harder than I thought
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when I was a youngster. I thought I'd be pretty much
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enlightened after a few years, which is, which is a good
18:00
attitude to have. I think, you know, because you
18:02
really throw yourself at it. But as you go on, it becomes,
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you know, it becomes you. You have a more, perhaps a more,
18:11
perhaps a more sensible approach to these things.
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You're thinking more in terms of a, a slow dawning rather than a
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smash and grab raid on the Absolute, as our teacher once at
18:23
one time called it. But we have this potential.
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So I'm going to go through briefly the verse to do with
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this bardo of life, because in this tradition they have
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different root verses, essential verses which you recite to
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remind yourself of what you're supposed to be doing when you're
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in these spaces, when you're in these, in between, in these in
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between. So this first begins, oh, now
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when the bardo of life upon me is dawning.
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So you can say that every morning as you get up, Oh, now
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as the bardo of life upon me is dawning, here we are, we've
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arrived. Abandoning idleness, there being
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no idleness in a devotees life. So that's the immediate thing
19:23
you have to do. Idleness means here that you're
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not paying attention to what is important, to what is deeply
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meaningful. You're going to abandon that.
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You're going to wake up, you're going to enter into awareness.
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The devotee here means somebody dedicated to transforming
19:42
themselves into a Buddha, going onto that path.
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So oh now when the value of life upon me is dawning, abandoning
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idleness, there being no idleness in a devotees life, a
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devotee by definition is not idle, is not unaware, is is
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always wanting to stay aware and not distract themselves from the
20:09
practice of awareness. And then you get this other
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wonderful line entering into the reality undistractedly.
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What a line. You could just remember that
20:22
entering into the reality undistractedly.
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You know, you, if you're ever in doubt about what to do, just say
20:31
that to yourself. You know, sometimes, you know,
20:34
when we're in, perhaps especially when we're in
20:36
difficulty, you know, we, we distract ourselves from those
20:41
things. Perhaps when we're sick, when
20:43
we're, when there's great loss in our life or whatever it may
20:47
be, the last thing we want to do is to enter into the reality
20:51
undistractedly. You know, but Buddhist tradition
20:55
says there is nowhere else to practice.
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There isn't some Buddhist heaven or Buddhist theme park you can
21:05
go to. You have to enter into reality
21:08
undistractedly. The next line, I'm, I'm, I'll
21:12
mention it, but I'll, I'll, I'll come back to in a in a minute is
21:15
listening, reflecting and meditating.
21:19
Listening, reflecting and meditating, carrying onto the
21:24
path knowledge of the true nature of appearances and of
21:29
mind. So let's go into knowledge of
21:34
the true nature of appearances and of mind.
21:38
That's what we have to understand, listen to, reflect
21:43
upon, and meditate upon this this set.
21:48
Listening, reflecting, and meditating is a traditional way
21:52
of talking about developing wisdom.
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In Buddhist tradition, becoming enlightened is all about
21:59
developing wisdom, and wisdom is defined as seeing things with
22:05
your entire being, reality as it is, things as they really are,
22:11
and they use the language of listening, reflecting, and
22:14
meditating. Because wisdom comes in Buddhist
22:17
tradition first from hearing and really knowing as it is what the
22:25
great enlightened masters have to say about reality.
22:30
This is how you develop wisdom in Buddhist tradition.
22:33
So the Buddha teaches the way things are, you know, very, very
22:39
basically you can say he teaches if you want to really strip it
22:42
down, he teaches the impermanence of all things.
22:47
Everything arises and passes away, arises and passes away.
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Very easy to say, very easy apparently to to understand.
22:57
But that becomes in your Buddhist practice, the object of
23:03
your meditation, the object of your attention.
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So you hear the Buddha teaching that in so many different ways.
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You understand the different ways in which he's explaining
23:16
that. Then you reflect, Then you turn
23:19
that over in your mind in deep meditation throughout the day,
23:25
in coming into relationship with all the different things that
23:28
you do. Then you turn it, as they say,
23:31
into a living experience. It becomes your reality for it.
23:37
There's many, many different teachings, but I'm staying with
23:39
impermanence because it is so very simple.
23:42
And you see this reflected in the great teachers.
23:46
A very, very good example is, is the great Tibetan Yogi and
23:50
hermit Milarapa, you know, spending all his time, you know,
23:55
up in the Himalayas above the snow line, practicing all kinds
24:00
of meditation, many of them very esoteric meditations involving
24:05
breath control and the generation of inner heat,
24:09
visualizing all sorts of different deities arising and
24:12
passing away. But he describes an essential
24:18
realization. One day he lived on nothing but
24:23
nettle soup. He had one clay pot where he'd
24:28
cook his nettle soup, apparently very good for you, nettle soup,
24:32
very good for the blood and Miller wrappers, often depicted
24:36
with a sort of green tinge, A greeny blue tinge because of so
24:41
much nettle soup. And one day he he'd been
24:46
meditating for so long, he sort of even forgotten about his
24:50
nettle soup. And he went out with his bowl to
24:56
gather his his metal soup. And a wind came up.
25:00
He lost his robe. He lost his bowl.
25:03
His bowl broke. And in that moment he saw the
25:08
impermanence of all things. He also realised just how
25:13
incredibly attached he was to his bowl.
25:19
And he starts to praise his bowl as his guru.
25:22
And you have to understand, in this tradition, you know,
25:25
there's tremendous guru devotion.
25:27
I mean, Milareppa was utterly devoted to his teacher, Marpa,
25:30
because Malpa taught him the quick way to enlightenment.
25:35
Milareppa had had a very dark past.
25:38
Sometimes we can think we've had a dark past where Milareppa had
25:41
a very, very dark past. And in a way, he had only two
25:44
options. He was either going to go to
25:46
hell or he was going to gain enlightenment.
25:48
There was no in between in that sense.
25:52
But the pot breaks and he said, oh, you are my teacher.
25:58
You are my teacher. You are really showing me the
26:02
impermanence of all things, the insubstantiality of things that
26:06
you can't hold on to anything at all.
26:10
Nothing, not even a pot. I think in the there's an
26:15
English translation. I think it tries to get the
26:17
Tibetan across. It goes something like first
26:20
there was a pot, now there is not, first there was a part, now
26:25
there is not. And in that moment there's this
26:28
tremendous realisation. So this is a very good example
26:32
of of listening, reflecting and meditating in a very, very
26:36
simple way. He'd taken in the teachings of
26:40
all the masters, all sorts of teachings, probably quite
26:43
elaborate teachings. He'd reflected on those
26:46
teachings, meditated on those teachings.
26:49
Those teachings had informed all of his Buddhist practice, all of
26:53
his meditations, because all Buddhist practice is really
26:56
founded on the impermanence of things.
27:00
Sometimes when we talk about impermanence, we think of it
27:03
quite negatively. We think of loss and, and often,
27:08
very, very often the impermanence, especially when
27:11
it's the death of loved ones, you know, can be experienced
27:16
very catastrophically, can't it? And, and, and you can have this
27:19
sense of, you know, well, you have stuff and then it goes,
27:23
good times always turned into bad times.
27:26
But, but this tradition says, no, it's not just like that.
27:30
You can actually look at it the other way.
27:32
Yes, bad things pass away, good things arise.
27:37
The whole Buddhist path is founded on the fact that there
27:41
is this fluidity, there is this becoming.
27:45
You couldn't move in the direction of the Buddha unless
27:49
there was impermanence. If there was any element in life
27:53
that was fixed and unchanging, it would not be possible to
27:57
enter onto the path of transformation.
28:00
So this is what why it says listening, reflecting and
28:04
meditating, carrying onto the path, knowledge of the true
28:09
nature of appearances and of mind.
28:12
So you enter the Buddhist path with the knowledge that all
28:16
appearances, everything you see, all the people you see in this
28:20
room, this room itself, there is nothing substantial in any of
28:27
it, nothing substantial in me, nothing is substantial in you,
28:32
nothing substantial in the person next to you.
28:35
Everything arises and passes away.
28:37
So they love using imagery. Everything is like the
28:40
magician's illusion in Indian tradition.
28:44
They love this image. They go into it so much.
28:47
A magician turns up at the crossroads, says a few mantras,
28:50
creates a great scene of elephants in battle and
28:55
warriors, people killing each other.
28:58
But it's just a display. It's just an illusion.
29:01
It passes away. People are kind of shocked,
29:04
enthralled and everything else. Not that there is somebody
29:07
creating the display. In Buddhist tradition, you could
29:10
even say that our belief in the display is because of our own
29:14
desire to fix everything, to have everything.
29:18
Just So what we have to realise, there is this, this arising and
29:23
passing war. Another lovely images is of
29:27
rainbows. We've had some stupendous
29:29
rainbows in Berlin over the last couple of days.
29:33
Everything is like that. It's here for a while and it's
29:37
gone. It might seem that it's here for
29:40
a very long time, but things just arise and pass.
29:44
And the more we can, we can really surrender to this, really
29:50
take it in, the more effective can we be in our Buddhist
29:53
practice, in our path. You know, people have, you know,
29:57
people struggle. I know especially with things
30:00
like the metabavna, the loving kindness meditation, you know,
30:06
you can almost hear yourself saying to yourself, I'm not the
30:09
kind of person who loves people, you know, I'm not that kind of
30:15
person, you know, I'm like this. And this relationship is like
30:22
this is fixed. But the whole word bhavana gives
30:27
the light to that, which is one of the names for meditation.
30:31
Bhavana means making to become. There's this idea in Buddhist
30:37
tradition, this vision, if you like, that the Buddha has that
30:40
everything is malleable. Everything is like so much raw
30:43
material, so much clay, so much. What's it called?
30:48
Prima materia from The Alchemist.
30:50
Thank you, Pam Nasagra, that we're the prima materia.
30:53
We can reform and reshape ourselves.
30:56
It's not necessarily very easy, but it is possible.
31:00
You know, and I, I certainly know that, for example, that you
31:03
can change indifference into love, you can change hatred into
31:08
love, you can change arch enemies into good friends.
31:12
It happens because you're getting a a deeper sense that
31:18
everything is changed. Everything is flux.
31:21
So carrying onto the path knowledge, and by knowledge is
31:25
meant direct knowledge of the true nature of appearances and
31:30
of mind. Perhaps primary here is the
31:32
mind. The mind is infinitely malleable
31:36
according to Buddhist tradition, according to the Buddha.
31:40
And then the line comes. May the trikaya be realised.
31:47
The Trikaya. You're laughing because you're
31:52
wondering how I'm going to explain that.
31:54
I know, I know where you are. I can read your mind.
32:00
May the tree Kai be realised. Bit of Buddhist buddhology here.
32:05
So Kaya means can be translated as body.
32:08
Tree is 3. May the three bodies be
32:11
realised. Kaya is but it probably better
32:14
translated as dimensions as as in in in Buddhist tradition.
32:20
As time went on there was a lot of contemplation of the nature
32:24
of the Buddha. That's the way people really
32:28
started to understand or see the nature of enlightenment.
32:32
There must have there, there's, there's the Buddha's appearance.
32:36
Of course, people who knew the Buddha were around the Buddha,
32:39
and they they could see his human presence in very
32:45
particular human qualities fully expressed.
32:49
I mentioned mindfulness and loving kindness, compassion and
32:53
so forth, but they also noticed deeper mysteries, deeper
32:58
dimensions. And especially as people started
33:01
to meditate, they'd have deeper sort of visions into the nature
33:06
of, of the Buddha. So you get a dimension of, of
33:09
the Buddha, which is, we can only describe it as visionary.
33:14
You know, this is you, You might have come across images,
33:18
different images of, of, of, of, of Buddhist figures with
33:22
different colours, wonderful forms, red and blue and and so
33:27
on. I don't don't think we, well,
33:29
this one is a, a sort of glorified Buddha, if you like.
33:33
They're not, it's not deifying the Buddha or anything like
33:36
that. It's people having experience of
33:39
enlightenment as a sort of archetype, not in the
33:42
psychological sense, but in the transcendental sense.
33:45
This is called the Samboga Kaya, the body of mutual enjoyment,
33:51
the body of ecstasy, because it's experienced as incredibly
33:55
beautiful and, and a sense of tremendous transport and uplift.
34:01
When you when you encounter that dimension, the Buddhist physical
34:04
experience is called the Nimanakaya.
34:07
If you like the body of appearance, the one you actually
34:10
see before you. And then there's a third
34:13
dimension, which is called the Dharmakaya, which is the body or
34:17
the dimension of reality itself, which is inexpressible.
34:22
It's if you like Buddhahood in eternity, beyond time, beyond
34:27
space, vast, like the vastness of space, of sky.
34:33
Sometimes they give images, metaphors for these, these three
34:37
bodies. The Dharma Chiara is likened to
34:40
vast dimensionless space. The sun Burger Chiara is likened
34:46
to the sun illuminating that space and the Nirmala Kaia is
34:53
likened to the rain that falls, you know, bringing sustenance to
34:58
the earth because this is the, the, the dimension of the Buddha
35:01
that is in time and in, in relation to people.
35:06
But look at this verse. May the tree Kaia be realised.
35:12
May I transform this human frame into all that?
35:19
It's actually connected with body, speech, and mind.
35:25
In tantric Buddhism especially, they say don't think of the
35:28
body, speech, and mind as being bounded in any way.
35:33
The real nature of the body is actually the appearance of the
35:37
Buddha. That's the real nature of the
35:40
body. When you're enlightened, this
35:43
human presence will be nothing other than constant mindfulness
35:49
and great compassion. This is what this human presence
35:53
will be. The speech will be transformed
35:56
into visionary splendour and ecstasy, and the mind itself
36:03
will be dwelling constantly in the vastness of reality itself.
36:09
So this is what is open to us in in this very life.
36:16
It seems extraordinary, doesn't it?
36:17
But Buddhism doesn't really want to put any limit on the
36:22
possibilities of human unfoldment and development.
36:27
If you engage with the practices, if you engage with
36:30
the life, and especially if you enjoy the company of spiritual
36:35
friends, this is what can open up to you.
36:38
And you get glimpses even of these dimensions as as as you
36:42
practice. And then the final line goes
36:48
maybe the tree car since oh, how how does the last line go?
36:53
Someone tree car? Come on, Papa Sagara, help me
37:05
out here. Basically, the last line is
37:12
don't waste time. Don't idle away your your time
37:17
here in this life. Since the the human form is, is
37:22
is given only for a short time. Don't waste it.
37:26
Take up this opportunity right now.
37:30
One of the things that the the Buddhist tradition talks about,
37:33
they, they, they when they talk about the arrival into the human
37:37
realm, they say it's the the word they use is Shana.
37:42
This is a, the human life is khshana, which means a moment, a
37:49
moment. So a human life is made-up of
37:53
many, many moments. So don't waste any moment.
37:58
So I'll end with the verse. Maybe I'll even remember the
38:02
last line if I do the whole verse.
38:04
And perhaps you can meditate on this, you can take this away
38:08
with you, and you can make the most of your time in this bardo,
38:13
in this in between, in this room, in this tour over this
38:19
threshold, and in your life generally.
38:21
Oh, now, when the bardo of life upon me is dawning, abandoning
38:29
idleness, there being no idleness in a devotee's life,
38:35
entering into the reality undistractedly, listening,
38:41
reflecting and meditating, carrying onto the path knowledge
38:48
of the true nature of appearances and of mind.
38:52
May the tree Kaia be realised. Since the the the human form is
38:59
it with is obtained with great difficulty, may there be no time
39:04
or opportunity in which to idle it away.
39:09
It is of great importance that these root words be known.
39:16
Thank you.