Only a Buddha and a Buddha

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The Lotus Sutra says that the desire to help beings open to Buddha's wisdom is the condition for Buddha's appearing in this world.

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in our in our our
huh
once again i
i say that the lotus sutra teaches that only a buddha
together with a buddha
ha
an exhaustively understands reality
and the lawsuit also
instructions how to see how to meet buddhas
and when meet put as is
to enter
into the practice of all
virtue
which means enter into the world of all beings
and practice there
with all the different
kinds of suffering
because that's where buddhists live
so you practice all virtues buddhist practice all virtues all virtues
the ways of relating to all different kinds of problems that's where they live
in the middle of all problems and a practice there so you also enter their in practice there and then be upright and honest and gentle and flexible
and harmonious and you will see the buddhas and when you see the buddha is a chance to meet the border and in meeting the buddha we understand
exhaustively sunday
reality
the lawsuit also says that
doe the one great cause a condition for the appearance of buddha's in the world
is a desire
two
basically help all beings
ha
open open and
see and awaken and enter into buddha's wisdom
and when you hear about the this desire to help beings
open sea awakened to and enter into but his wisdom is the caught that desires what makes would appear in the world you might wonder well i it someplace besides in the world
the answer is yes they are
right now
innumerable buddhas are with each of you
but there's not a new mobile buddhists appearing in this world
and each of you has innumerable relationships with innumerable beings but not all those relationships appear in the world the world we live in is a very
small version of our actual relationship with each other
our actual relationship is not a world
are you could say it's a it's buddhist world but it's not a world is not a confined world
our actual relationship is all the buddhas who are helping us but they're not in the world
they're actually the actuality of our relationship with each other
but but we also together can make worlds
and in those worlds we have these limited relationships and we suffer and so on and we can practice in the world of suffering and we can see the buddha in the world of suffering for practice properly and the buddha's can also appear in the world in a confined space where we can see them and then they teach us
how to see them even when they're not appearing
so right now we do not have the appearance of a buddha in the world we did some time ago but we still can can meet borders
still practicing in the world and a certain way
so buddhists can appear within the within our story of the world that we share
in simultaneously buddhists are with us in it
on on apparent way or not manifested way
they're hit there were there with us in the sense of our relationship with each other the totality of our relationship with each other that's what the way to boot or with us and they're actually trying to teach us
but if we don't practice in a certain way were close to the teaching which they're giving us
but if we're willing to live here and practice properly we opened to the teaching which is coming to us all the time
and so that's the story of a lotus sutra which connects to the story that i didn't tell you this morning
about
the passport office
are you ready for that story
simon the passport office
and i'm yeah
i'm in i'm not contain the whole story the passport office continue this part this is the part where i've just gone through innumerable labors
with the good as with a good spirit and appreciating my comrades
and the innumerable labors of getting a passport in san francisco and very good see lot of people helping me and i've got to the place where i actually have a little number actually yeah i have a number and if i wait when the number comes i get to actually go talk to somebody and they were
i mean they'll they'll make a rave is for it and then sometime later i'll be able to come and get it in a number i got was two hundred and sixty one
and i might have i might have
got it and that number i got was right after max brought me off mac was one of the people who helped me
i give me a ride from green gulch after i drove from the passport office
back to green gulch and then back to the passport office
anyway as i was as i'm after i got my number this young woman said me to have a number and i said yes she said what is it i says to sixty one says i have one eighty three
a solitary for five dollars
and i said
okay well let me let me go let me go back and ask if it's okay if i trade numbers with you and it just so happened that there was just a window there with nobody waiting in line when do i just come from and there was nobody there is very strange situation but there was nobody there so i went back to and i said can i
re numbers with this person and i said yes so i traded i went trade numbers and then i went and sat down the floor
this is no chairs and i waited for my number to come up he was like anything it would like one and i was like one thirty at that time
i this is like it about two o'clock in the afternoon i'd been nursed and seven except for the trip back to green gulch and so on and to walgreens and so on
and so this guy next to me and i'm reading a book about happiness
in this guy next to me says that's a good book
and
i don't know exactly the next part of the story but
for some reason or that he tells me
that are here
practices zen is a psychologist and he practices zen he said i i actually was a resident of the san francisco zen center for two years
and i said oh wow i've been resident for forty
and he said who are you
and i said rob anderson he said oh i know you
thank you for your teaching i really appreciate your teach you didn't recognize me so then he says to me to do you think
do you think
soto zen
has something to do with happiness
and i said
i think it's totally about happiness
and so anyway
that was that and i went to europe and i told people that story because i went to europe just a few days later as why needed the passport
and i told people in european i almost didn't come
because his passport problem and i told him the passport story but soto's is totally about happiness and somebody said is so doesn't also totally about unhappy a about sadness and i said totally it's totally my sadness to
so it's not exactly that i'm wrong when i say such as doesn't totally about happiness or that i'm wrong when i say it's totally about sadness really what it's about it's about being totally
it's about totality
happiness is about totality is about being total
so we have to practice of such a way that we opened to
totality
are being total and been told i'm also may be totally limited in this world in this suffering to be total about everything then we opened
the meeting the buddha and we opened to the happiness
i'm meeting the buddha and understanding the dharma
you have any questions or feedback at this time
about
this wonderful teaching of the lotus sutra
have any questions about
the totality of your life
yes

oh yeah
our can't constitutive
yeah
i love the same then
no they're not really the same that's why i think that's why i think buddhism that the i think that's why the lotus sutra teachers
that that the buddha
the the the buddha you see in the world is not the totality of the buddha
it's a ah
the buddhist totality but to tell transformed in such a way that people who do not recognize totality or who are close to totality can get some instruction
so totality allows itself to be in some sense defiled or corrupted into an appearance reality is not an appearance
but reality includes offline paris's reality is the way all the appearances work with things that do not appear not everything appears
all phenomena appear but not everything you know is a phenomenon
some relationships are not manifested
not all probabilities
manifest
so reality is not just appearance although all appearances
are are included in the totality
a reality
so
when there's an appearance like jesus christ appears in history or buddha appears in history as a person
and behave in a certain way these are appearances that are people are people are staying appearances
and what they take the appearance
as reality itself
that means that miss they're mistaking
a particularity with the totality

when we spent when we see easily when we see a particularity we're seeing a representation actually even of the particularity
we're seeing the rate we're seeing an appearance of the particularity so you are you people are particularity ease but you're not you're not appearances
but people look at you and they experience an appearance of you but you're not an appearance none of your appearances
you're like living you're living beings you're not appearances you not appearances are living beings even
however people can make you into an appearance
so the and as a part of the way relate to you
but they also relate to not through appearances and lots stimulate you in ways that aren't apparent and most of the ways we relate are not apparent
but we'd also like them a parents as to relate to that's part of the way were built
by all the other beings that we have many relationships with
but we usually take people as their appearance but they're not
and we take even and the boot is appear in the world so you can see them and we take the buddha's to be the appearance but the buddhas are saying to us this is not correct do not take me as your appearance
i'm well i'm i'm appearing to you so you can hear me say do not believe that i'm an appearance that's what the lotus sutra says in chapter sixteen i appear to you to help you i come so you can see me calm and i go so you can see me go that's useful to you but that's not what i'm really i'm i'm beyond my
my appearance and disappearance i'm actually all was here
but i'm not always here in a world
and you people are also not always here in a world
but in the water but in the world you come and go and that's that's part that's way to deal with
with it and so in order to see the truth you have to be willing to live in this difficult world where appearances and disappearances have to say yes i do want to live here with all my problems and also everybody else's problems because that's what the buddhism that's where the buddha's lived they don't just live in their own problems they live in everybody's problems
so that's what called practicing all virtues and then learn how to deal with that
and really gentle really gentle way and but not just gentle and also lazy
but gentle and present
an honest and courageous and all that
then you get to see the buddha not just the appearance of the buddha
and the buddha peers is a great love to see thanks for coming but you have to say this is great and then they go you say bye bye
but you don't see them coming and going because you
you know how to practice with them in a lot of practice like they do
that make less sense now
yes
the start that
plantation
about
think of it as expression infestation
because i have some conceptual difficulties
presentation
so i wanted to hear that more as
figures
you could see expressions are manifestation you could say a manifestation that's fine it's also fine because it says you know as manifest in the world or appear in the world
but also when we see it we see up we see a representation when we but there's something there and that that's supporting us pressure there's something there is supporting us to have it to make a representation without that
we'd be at a loss to make a representation even and that's something that is
that's something there
is it is basically not constitute it's it's real in reality
it's the it's the working of all things but
you know like i say a bell it's hard for a belt present to us the working of all things even though it is there so a person comes and as a special thing because we're persons to give us a tip about the working of all things
and so they manifest in that way because he because there's this wish
there's this wish that makes buddha's appear in the world where we can see them and make representations on them they they are lot day they allow himself to be up to be made into appearances
but if we didn't need that they wouldn't do it but we do need it so they do
and then when they do we can make a prick we can make representations or concepts about them
and
that's totally part of word they're perfectly willing to work with that and so we should be perfectly willing to work with that if we want to meet them
you know if you want to meet them we have to sort of go where they hang out and they hang out in the middle of
all the problems of life they're not they're that they're coming to do that to make the people who have got problems have a chance to open to the to the wisdom
but so there's something that there's something in the way things work that
is willing to be corrupted so that people can understand the way things work
which you know is a very positive way to look at reality that reality
somehow wants living things to know it
we want to know it but we have you know or the other projects in mind we can make it hard for us to know it
but reality doesn't hold it against us and keeps giving us chance it's doesn't hold us against it it it pressures us and gives us opportunities
it makes us uncomfortable if we don't know it and it gives us ways to know it and if we don't pick up in the ways to know it it keeps pressuring us to know it
some were servants of reality and realities a servant of us in a sense that it it is encouraging us to get to know it
and we are the ones and we want to know it because we sense that it that it will be happiness in where we know it and most people who seemed to him to people know what will best there are happy people
happy humans happy whatever's they don't have to they tried to be humans they're happy beings as other forms of being that could notice
as a trip it's a trip you
a trip yes oscar
we just pick up little i'm confused
yes
the phenomena the relationships that don't appear
day
not phenomena are they the causes and conditions that are on the scene that but
bring about phenomenon that we see the world
they're not they're not all the causes and conditions because lot of cause of the conditions are phenomenon
but present for the future
is
it is a is not really a phenomena you can't release can't really experience it and yet the present has a future something about the future but it's not really a phenomenon
the concept isn't just a concept know
well

it's something in addition to a concept
there's there's relationships in addition to concepts
can you give us an example
they also your past is a relationship that's in addition to the concept of the past
and your past as a condition for your present
our the past is a condition for that present
but some causes and conditions or phenomena
and probabilities are you know are not really manifested
most of the time most probabilities of what's going on or not do not manifest
but those probabilities are conditions for what does happen
there's possible and protestant probable worlds that do not appear
they do not allow themselves
to be made into appearances
things that don't happen exactly there's there's
there's a reality which isn't about happening which doesn't happen
happening is again that's something that depends heavily depend on conception happening arising and ceasing seems to depend on conception
but basically we don't the way we actually are is not something that arises and services
originally basically

and our problem is in the realm of
arising and ceasing that's where our problems are
and we're want to live there
where were you know then we can practice their in the rising we can practice in the realm or we suffer but also we were other people who have problems arising and ceasing are too not just our own
although our own is perfectly good place to work it just not
where does not open enough
and again i was going to say it's not broad enough but her own product problems are really very broad
because they're connected everybody else's problems but if we're closed other people's problems we think our problems
our up
unnecessarily
in a confined by are thinking
our closeness
okay so
when we see
is it is best
everyone's problem for reality
hey could you say again please
i'm not sure
so
the borders live hang out in in a place where are all all were all the problems are where everyone's problem right there actually nothing in addition to everybody's problems
and you're suggesting that we want to meet the borders
even though we may not his ranch suggested in turn you i just said if we want to meet the buddha's we have to enter into the not being anything in addition to everybody's problems
because that's what the buddha the buddha are just everybody's problems
it's all here
but all the people are problems are not everybody's problems
they are just just one or two people's problems or ten people's problems that's what that's what the people have problems have
and they think they're in addition to those one or two three people probably think they're in addition to their own problems
but the buddha's don't think they're in addition to our problems the buddhist don't think that way the buddhist are actually just all of our problems
but all of our problems are not just all of our problems all of our problems are also supporting everybody else's problems your problems are supporting my problems my problems is forty year problems the buddhas are everybody's problems there it's totality everybody's problems and nothing in addition
not something on top of all that sitting up on top of the totality of all beings problems they are just everybody's problems
so we should enter into everybody's problems and then learn to not be anything in addition to them because that's where buddha is then we meet than we meet pool
is that clear

it's hard for to be totally clear but it's it's you know it's it's not that far away just learn to be nothing in addition to oscars problems and also nothing in addition to anybody's problems
he get you get to be here you get to be here with us
that's as usual even though usually don't want to be here with us but
know are you going to be some of us but not all of us you get to be with all of us
and not be anything in addition to all of us including not been it is anything in addition to you
but most people think there's something in addition of themselves and other people
and buddha does not so if you can live with everybody
so there's nobody else
dan that border
and then you'll see buddha and in bhutto be kind of smiling as you now you get it right that you're nothing in addition to me and i'm not in addition to you and we're not in addition to them and they're not addition to us get it you law yeah i get it okay
i can you haven't fun right because you get to see the buddha's
yes
is unconditionally reality reality beyond so is a person
what would you say unconditional
again gotta be careful in the san conditional you know that you don't think that doesn't mean all the conditions that are possible so you got any kind of conditions conditional situation on conditional reality could mean all the conditional situations that taught all of them all them together plus all of them into relating that's unkind
national because there's no way to condition that because it's got all the conditions in it is what you mean by unconditional reality where this is reality the reality behind is not behind the aspects of reality that underlies appear that's the those it's not the reality underlines appearances the reality behind or
or were onto you haven't seen reality
however is the unseen reality personal is a personal the unseen reality person
ah well some people say transpersonal
a trans person who doesn't mean not personal it just means all the persons are included plus all the not persons are included
so persons include all humans or animals and any know any as a kind of sentient being is it gets to be a person so reality includes all the persons but the the totality of our persons isn't really a person exactly it's not with a person
but it's sort of a person so we caught a buddha one of the conservation so because you can put a face on it it'll allow you to wear face on it can put a persona
on this totality of all persons one of the conservation of india's stick religion is that you get a personal relationship with god as if there's somebody up there that can hear you can feel sorry know that kind of a personal thing
and i had thought that you don't have with with the perspective of buddhism but maybe you do make less when i'm this one i'm kind of grasping it is there is your way in which one can be personal with the transcendent reality that's beyond that that's not just
appearances yeah because you're a person so you get to personal
you always get to be personal that's you can keep doing that as long as we're support you do that when we don't support anymore you don't get to be anymore
but for wow you let to be a person and so this person can have a relationship with the totality of all beings
that's the buddha this person can relate to buddha and if you relate to boot and certain way
presume they're just one buddha
there's not person plus buddha but you still get to be a person
who's not could get to be a person practicing in such a way that there's one buddha person revering buddha they're just one buddha
so it's personal from your side from the other side it's all persons so one person can relate to all persons and then one person kind of disappeared in that are just all persons which is called one buddha
so you can keep being personal no problem was not going to take that away from you
it just that he's going to take away you being in addition to everybody else that gets taken away
are you get relieved of that with without
we say without moving a particle of your personal personhood get relief from them and then you opened this wonderful working among us
which is
basically trying to perform the same services
what you call you know dst or theistic religions that they're trying to help people
be happy and free and realized the truth
so truth uses all these different religions as ways to help people realize the truth get to know getting to know the truth the truth is trying to help us get to know it and we want to so it's basically we're on the same team as truth
have something of say we're on the side of the law
but we have no
some training to do so we stay with it moment by moment
and then we gradually become
since it's just a law
i'm just a buddha this one booed and one law one dharma
with the practice was it in order for to realize that of course authority that way but we have to practice to realize that
and the person gets to do that
so you know dog he says to study the buddha ways to study the person
yes max
i started a menu about christ consciousness me said he so similar to that sort of that there is emerging but you still use the word multiplicity he still retain
you seem non-duality but you also see multiplicities ways
what i've heard you say is kind of like it's almost like you disappear
christ consciousness
yeah i'm not saying you disappear i'm just saying you're not in addition to
the world anymore it's not the world plus you don't really disappear you're still you're still here it is to you're no longer separate from but you're always were connected to any way you no longer separate from your causes support
you never see that universitario that
illusion
either you don't see it or you do see it but if you do see a don't believe it
it's the believing it that's know really the source of our misery and fear

now that we're in addition to the universe
that's
are you know that were something on top of
a causal relationship with all things so it isn't that we don't see it we don't believe it
we saw it again then we wouldn't believe it so i just not seeing it isn't isn't all that good because i'm to somebody shows it to you again and you go for it and your back
her back in the ussr
what we went for someone
if you didn't see any more oh right this separation
that's fine but then what are you doing it what you gonna do
when did you see it going to believe it again
says better to like you'd still be seeing it and see that actually it's an illusion i understand why
then you can people can show you that
and will be able to keep it down on the farm
after you've seen the self

so not seeing the self
is what some people think that's really where it's at but it's really like when you see it you don't tense up
k poker we're taking you to the getting new quad is gonna be a trip
what we changed our my were no one can take you are going to shovel
oh geez you know you don't tense up or listen up around that kind of stuff
then you then but we have to we have to train ourselves to not tense up and loosen up around who was getting their head cut off like ah oh you know
so you have when you practice with all this stuff and try to be very very gentle and upright with it then you start opening up to who's doing what is not that big deal because we're all in this together
it's not that big a deal and that's how were booed is that right or just
okay then gecko
wow
ah i thank you offer coming i should such short notice to this little sitting today sorry we couldn't tear have one on august eleventh but that just not allowed
and so we'll have another one i'm
on september ninth
so
i hope you can come
and nice to have carlos here
here he practices as center long time go
and he's still here
it's very nice
may our intention