Well, actually, it is very difficult to be down to earth when you are thinking of the Buddha (laughter). If you want to be down to earth, let's take the Ten Paramis and then we will see how little down to earth he was. Actually, when you think of the Paramis, can you imagine a person perfect in Equanimity? That's pretty hard; it's out of this world. A person perfect in Patience? A person perfect in Wisdom? To understand everything about the nature of this existence? The nature of the cycle of birth and death, and the way out of this cycle of birth and death?
If we actually do try to contemplate what this really means, we may come up with some superlatives in our mind. If it feels too far away then it's a bit like when we begin contemplating compassion and we are far away from people and not able to get close enough to come to this feeling of compassion. So in order to get a bit closer to feeling these superlatives we have to actually take from what we know of theses Paramis. How difficult it is sometimes for us to develop them and manifest them in our normal life, and then think of someone who may be perfect in this. Allow ourselves to get a little bit closer to this human being who was able to perfect these Paramis and to be able to understand the Four Noble Truths and teach them experientially.
In order to get closer to the Dhamma, from what I know the Dhamma acts as our guide, shows us how to purify our mind, leads us inward to be seen here and now, so that we gradually may understand the truth within ourselves. Seems to be pretty down to earth to me, as in the here and now.
The Sangha, yes, sometimes these stories are pretty incredible about the Sangha. Such as the story of Kisagotami, one talk with the Buddha and she's a stream enterer. But I guess it must have been pretty good Kamma to be born during the time of the Buddha. So maybe they had higher Paramis. We don't have to believe all the supernatural stories, they may have been elaborated, but if we get to understand somewhat the message it is illustrating, for instance the story of Kisagotami, we formulated this idea of the D/D from this story. Seeing what it is the Buddha is teaching, what method the Buddha is teaching here that helps to bring right understanding and let go of Dukkha. Taking from some of the stories of the Sangha and trying to understand what is the Buddha teaching, and what is he getting these people to do? Opening up to the universality of death in the Kisagotami story.
There is another story where he had someone contemplate a lotus flower. This person was very attached to the beauty of lotus flowers and had to contemplate the different stages of beauty, decaying and dying. So we take from these stories the techniques that the Buddha gave us and we try to remember how these were ordinary people and that the Buddha sparked their human potential. Because they were born at the time of the Buddha, the Buddha knew what techniques would enlighten them. Apparently this was one of the Buddha's powers, to know exactly what technique would enlighten them. We don't have that power so we give you a lot of techniques.