I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Morning. Morning. Discussing Prajnaparamita literature is a little bit like trying to catch the wind in a paper sack or blowing bubbles and hanging them on your wall. I'll start with an anecdote. It might have some bearing on the Prajnaparamita. Sometime in the, this is from How to Raise an Ox.

[01:03]

It's a wonderful book, translated by Cook. There's a well-known magistrate whose name was Su Dong Po. Su Dong Po. He was a Confucian scholar, celebrated poet, calligrapher and magistrate appointed by the emperor to govern at least four provinces. So he was a big shot. This was in the Sung Dynasty. And at some point he took interest in studying Buddhism as well. He thought he'd also become an accomplished Buddhist and so because he had a photographic memory, he memorized like the Diamond Sutra from end to end.

[02:04]

And then he would go around to the various monasteries and question the monks on the sutras, Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra and so on. He'd say, you know, what is the beginning of the fourth passage? How does that go again? And of course the monk would go, huh? And he would, he would point a finger and ridicule the monks. You call yourself Zen students or you call yourself Dharma students and you haven't memorized this material. So he got the reputation to be called Mr. Scales. So he would, as he would inspect the, do his official duties in the provinces, as the story goes anyway, he would go and visit the various monks and do this in monasteries. So this kind of notorious reputation preceded him. But he got, after a while, he got kind of bored by doing this and began to lose interest in studying the Buddha Dharma.

[03:07]

And somebody mentioned there was this Zen priest monk that he might go visit and maybe could learn something new. So he did, but when he went there in his usual rather arrogant manner, instead of stopping at the gate, you know, the protocol is to stop outside the gate, hit the Han three times. Shikha comes and asks what you want and you make a request. You go in, respectfully sit facing the Buddha and wait for an audience with the Roshi. But he just rode his horse right into the courtyard. Didn't bother stopping, got off the horse, stomped into the Buddha hall with his shoes on maybe even, I don't know. Sat down with his back to the Buddha and waited for the teacher to come. Figured this would be an interesting encounter. The teacher, who was said to be not very small,

[04:13]

seven feet tall, actually was crouched over in a very humble and receptive manner because after all, these magistrates had incredible power. He said, do what do we owe this great honor, sir? The magistrate said, well, you know who I am? I'm called Mr. Scales. He said, no, I didn't know that. He said, you know why I'm called Mr. Scales? He said, no, please inform me. He said, because I go around weighing the understanding of the various teachers as to what the Buddha Dharma meant. And the Roshi went, ah! He said, how much does that weigh? At that moment, of course, Tsu Dang Po woke up. That is to say, he was startled out of his usual projected idea of what Buddhism was about. It had broken up that little game of his,

[05:15]

and he decided maybe he should take on the practice of the Buddha Dharma, which he did, and eventually became a disciple of one of the famous teachers. I forget whom. Does anybody remember that? Who it was? Anyway, he did progress in it, earned some humility. I think it's an interesting story in the light of what we're studying, because of our propensity to pick up a book or hear a teaching and reify it. Kind of what we used to say, laminate it and put it in your wallet and refer to it as something you can hang on to. But as we know, in the Prajnaparamita teachings, that's a big mistake. And so, when we study something like the Genjo Koan, which begins with the same teaching that the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra illustrate, as all things are the Buddha Dharma,

[06:19]

there is birth and death, there are teachers, there are enlightened and ascension beings, and so forth. And as all things, as the myriad things have no abiding self, there is no Buddha, no Dharma, no birth and death, and so forth. But the Buddha Dharma is jumping clear, therefore the many and the one. Therefore, again, thus, in attachment, flowers fall, in the version we'd spread. Another translation is, although we love the flowers, they die, although we hate them. The weeds grow. And so we're back where we started from, in the conventional world of this and that, self and other. Myself, maybe I'll tell you a story. I'd like to make this a little more personal, and then maybe we can have some discussion about this.

[07:23]

But, a few years ago, I had, I can remember exactly the place where a kind of understanding, or a kind of, I won't go so far as to call it a realization, but, a kind of shout like that struck me. And I was walking out here in the fields, taking a break in the afternoon, and it came to me, a very obvious notion, and at the same time a very surprising one, because it seemed to fly in the face of everything I've been studying, that I have always, always been here. And the thing about always, always having been here, is that I, always, and here, none of those three things could be finally posited in any way whatsoever, in any finally solid way. And yet, the experience of being, when you get down right to the ontological basis of your life,

[08:23]

is that you cannot remember a time you weren't here. Even though, the here, or the person that I remember, is constantly changing. You know, the other day I looked at a picture that somebody gave me of myself graduating from high school. I didn't recognize who that person was. Of course, I knew it was my picture. But if you had shown me that picture of somebody who 50 years ago had graduated from high school, I would say, I don't know who that person is. Yet, the subjective feeling at that time of who I was, is no different from the subjective feeling of being that I have at this moment, or at this time. So, I began to play a game with myself. And the game with myself is who am I apart from everything else that I could, you know, let's say there is a self and another. Let's play this game. And let's see if I can find a self that does not include or has anything to do with otherness. Of course, the first thing I realized is that even as I'm saying this,

[09:24]

I'm taking a breath and that every breath I take comes from that side. This is the near side, that's the far side, let's say, for the moment. I was taking a breath. The sun that falls on the earth and illuminates everything is seemingly out there. And yet, I can't see without it. I can't live without it. I can't grow without it. And, most importantly, every description, every verbal convention and description had been given to me. I wasn't born with a language. Somebody described, began to describe what the world was, beginning with mommy and daddy and hot, cold, and so forth. Very early period, we began to differentiate self from other in terms of

[10:24]

concepts. So the very description that I was making about this to myself was also dependently co-arisen, as we say. There was something that was provided from out there to something that I thought was over here. Now, long and short of that process of eliminating everything that I thought that was other, was that when I reach for myself, I come up with handfuls of you. Or, when I reach for what I call this side, all I come up with is that side. And so I could see, very clearly, anybody can see this, we all know this to some extent, I think, that there is no self that you can hold on to that is not co-arisen with everything else from moment to moment. And, the interesting thing is, although we have because of I won't talk about the process

[11:26]

of thinking at this moment, but anyway, we have something called memory. And that memory is something that is constantly arising in the present. Even reaching for the present moment, even reaching for this moment, where is it? I can't get hold of this moment. As soon as I think that this moment is such a thing as a present, I can't find it. I can't find the past, other than in memory, which is a kind of mindset based on linguistic conventions, feelings that arose with those linguistic conventions. And the future, of course, is something that, in the present moment, I think about, plan for, taking all that has been given to me from the past, project it out into the so-called future, and make my plans around that. But this experience, this existential experience of being, being now, which is a question of time, that experience as a subjective feeling has not

[12:26]

changed, you know, from the time I can remember being alive, quote, for all the changes, bodily changes, and for all the mindsets that I've gone through and so on, that has not changed. So this feeling that suddenly I have never been anywhere else but here, even though I can't find a me or a here, that experience abides. And that experience is not apart from the objects of my consciousness. So what does that mean? Does that mean that consciousness is a continual modification from moment to moment? Is there such a thing called consciousness over and apart from your experience of consciousness? And has not somebody or something always been experiencing what they call self and other in the world? Even though that person, that self, is a convention called David, you know, here I am, I'm called David, you know.

[13:27]

I used to be called Dave, then I became Daigon, you see. There is the world of the separate self in the conventional sense, and that's the world in which we operate. But I can't, aside from those conventions, I can't find a self that persists except for this feeling that I've always been here. The feeling that I've always been here then led to the feeling that what makes you think you won't always have this experience. It won't be you, maybe. You may even find yourself under some, what you call you, under some other being. But you, what you call you, is the consciousness that is always self-aware, that is always here, is always now, and is always being the self. That's a self-fulfilling awareness. Self-fulfilling samadhi is I think that realization. That realization is no different than Buddha's realization, I believe. As long as I don't call that

[14:29]

realization a specific, something specifically that I can hang on to, and around which I can form an identity, and I'll take the question of death at the same time. If you might have noticed that although everything objectively seems to grow, wither and die, that is always, always, always an object of consciousness. It is not a subjective realization. The death itself, dying is an experience. Death itself, we don't know. You don't know. All you know is the being of being here, and this being now. Whether you wake up from deep sleep at night when we know there's consciousness, after all the heart is going, you're breathing and so on, but you come out of deep sleep without any dreams, all you remember is before you went into that state. Suppose since time, and you can even use this expression, since time out of mind, from what we call lifetime to lifetime, from breath, this has been our experience. There has never been such a thing, therefore, as the past

[15:31]

or the future. There's always just now and this happening that we call, and then reify into various substantial states of being, of consciousness, and so forth, of the world. Anyway, that was my feeling at that time, and it became a kind of modus operandi for my practice, because even that event, that opening, that kind of a sudden flash, I couldn't hold on to. It wasn't that by which I could live, you see. I'd forget that. So when I began to read the Prajnaparamita, that there is no self other than the conventional self, and that it, in fact, it says in the Heart Sutra or in the Prajnaparamita literature something about this convention of language. Well,

[16:37]

if I can find it, maybe not, but... I thought I had it marked. There's a place in here, in this translation at least, where he says, all of these, the Buddha, the Dharma, the self, the other, are just linguistic conventions. Now, we know from the study of Nargajuna, early, many of you know all of this, but the early Buddhist philosopher Nargajuna wrote a very important work called the Mulamadhyamaka Kharikas, or the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. We think of the Middle Way sometimes as avoiding extremes of nihilism or eternalism or of self-degrading

[17:41]

ascetic practices and self-indulgence, but actually a more complicated and a more subtle version of that is by Nargajuna, the understanding that emptiness and the Middle Way and conventional reality are exactly the same thing. Not exactly the same thing, but that they co-arise together. And the most famous Kharika is from that, if I recall it, one of the translations correctly, goes like this. He said whatever arises is codependently arisen. Whatever codependently arises is said to be emptiness. That, meaning that which I just stated, that statement, being a being a conventional or being a um he didn't say conventional, being that being a well, let's say conventional

[18:42]

designation is itself the Middle Way. Is that clear? That's very, see, this is very difficult. Yeah. Whatever whatever is whatever arises and whatever arises said to co-arise. That's understood. You can't have one thing that's co-arisen, that's dependently co-arisen and something else that isn't. Everything is dependently co-arisen. Except maybe Nirvana. Well, anyway, we won't talk. Anything is conditioned. Almost all things are conditioned. And whatever is conditioned or dependently co-arisen is said to be empty of any self. That, which I have just stated, that that statement, being a conventional designation that is a linguistic convention is itself the Middle Way. In other words, how would you know? See, the thing is that we take these this idea of language, we hear

[19:45]

something, we write it down, we understand it that way, and then we put it out in front of us and grasp it and try to hang on. Take that understanding and project it onto phenomena and by the force of that projection respond to it accordingly. So we take something named, for example, I hear there's such a story called Buddhism. There's a story called Marxism. There's a story called Freudianism. The world according to I study this particular idea about what the world is and I react according to my understanding of that, which is a linguistic convention. But what the Prajnaparamita was essentially set up to help monks to become aware of is don't reify these teachings. What we've done from the moment that we were born is to take the understanding of what we think the world is, to break it up into discrete entities and then by responding to those entities with like and dislike with emotional reactivity

[20:47]

set up patterns of action in our life and we really get trapped by that. The same thing happens when we study religion. It's just a more subtle form of bondage and suffering that we engage in. So the interesting thing about Buddhist practice is that it self-obviates itself in time when you see through the fact that there is no such thing as the Buddha Dharma if we turn it into a thing and set it out in front of it and grasp it like anything else. However, we have no choice but to tell stories about it and make it into conventions and to understand that flow as the way to practice our life. That's what human beings do. That is the beauty of our life. That is the joy of our life. That is the joy of our practice is that when we understand this that it is ungraspable. That in any final and absolute way it is ineffable. That we cannot get hold of it and make it into something. Any more than we get

[21:48]

hold of this feeling that I mentioned about my life and make it into something other than conventions. But we don't remember that they're conventions. We think that as we say that they're built out of solid stone, you see. And so this teaching is to alert us to the fact that what is called the the golden chain to chain ourself with a golden chain of religious practice of some sort to free us from our bondage to conventional ideas that we reify or that we substantiate as absolute. Anyway, that's a story now. That's a story that at this moment I'm telling you. I might tell you and you might tell me a different story tomorrow and see. But that ability to do that, that flexibility

[22:49]

of our mind, of our of the evolution of human consciousness to evolve and split the vijnana, to split thought, you see. To set up a self and other. And then to find conventions of language around which we can explain that to one another. Constantly telling each other stories. What else do we ever do but tell each other stories? Personal little stories that we really get involved in. And that's what most of our dharmic practice is about. Our own little personal stories. But then we see that our personal stories can be transposed into a larger picture and so on. And that's what we hunger for. How do we fit into this thing? But my experience, you see, that I'm trying to get at and which cannot be got at, which cannot be understood other than by pointing to it with these words, is that I am the world honored one. You are. Who else could be the world honored

[23:50]

one but you and me? Each of us. How could it ever be different if I have always been here? This feeling that I've always been here. That everything comes forward to confirm that fact. And that I is nothing else but everything else coming up. Each one of us have that feeling that is given to each one of us. We make stories around that. What a beautiful thing to do as human beings. To have all this conflict, all these problems. It's no longer a problem then, you see. It's a dance that we can perform, play with one another. Set up ceremonies around rituals and so forth. The whole idea, I think, of Soto practice is to have rituals whereby we can see that our whole life is nothing but rituals. And then take those rituals that we do, the bowing and so on, and offer the merit. You know, the big question of merit in here. But the merit that we offer out

[24:50]

to the world is the merit of the appreciation that we have for the ineffable mystery, if you want to call it, of our being, of our life. And the joy, actually, that that evokes. Another way I would think of talking about this is the realization that I think any one of us have had at some time is that we've always, always, always been happy. And it doesn't have anything to do with being happy. Getting something you like for a little while, that wears out, then the next thing comes along and you're happy with that. You know, this being happy is the fact that everything that is coming forward to understand itself as me, as you, which is a really egotistical thing to say, in a sense, but everything coming forward to confirm the self, the big self, that way, is happiness. I think we realize

[25:52]

that this is a gift and that we're always in the midst of this gift, and at one time we wanted to get out of this dilemma that we're always here. As I said many times, beam me up, Captain Kirk, you know. I've had enough of this world. Stop it. I want to get off. I want to get to Nirvana. I want to get to a place where I don't have all this stuff to deal with. Until the moment we realize we've always been dealing with this stuff. What makes me think I won't always be doing it? Well, because this person is gone, that person is gone, this thing is gone. It's going to end for me. Oh, is it? How come you can't remember a time you weren't here? By here I don't mean necessarily in this. Any dimension you can remember. Maybe you're out there with three heads or something floating around in some other dimension. Millions of dimensions. This just happens to be one of them that we're focused in on. Obviously this world does not look the same to a chameleon that it looks to us, or even to a cat. This quantum swarm that is out here that we're making some sense of.

[26:52]

So I think that's the great gift of the Prajnaparamita is the realization of our life from that point that we can't get hold of it and yet here it is always, and subjectively it always feels the same, no matter how old you are or how you feel. Something is going through this. What is that something? I can't tell you. It's always going through it. There is a poem that I like to quote that I picked up from someone I think it was during a practice period I think Reb brought it up in fact or somebody brought it to Reb a few years ago in Tassajara. Wallace, I'll quote it for you if I can remember it correctly. It's a Wallace Stevens poem and it's called Snowman. You know that poem, Snowman. It's a wonderful poem. And it talks about the kind of mind we have to develop in which to deal with this with phenomena and as a phenomenon of subjectivity. And it goes something like

[27:57]

one must have one must have a mind of winter one must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees crusted with snow and have been cold a long time and have been cold a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the January sun and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind in the sound of a few leaves that is the sound of the land full of the same wind which is blowing in the same bare place for the listener who listens in the snow and nothing himself beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. The listener in the snow who beholds nothing that is not there all the phenomena we can see here and there and the nothing that is have to develop

[28:59]

the mind of winter the practice in which in the sound of the wind, in the feeling of the cold we don't project out this is miserable this is wonderful it was particularly appropriate in the middle of winter at Tassajara to have that poem especially in those days when there was no heat to develop the mind of winter became a bit of a joke and I happen to jot down because as I was thinking of this yesterday I heard a poem that David White was reciting, I was listening to some David White and TSL it has a situation of to reach a kind of simplicity in our life you know to practice so that we finally can drop away the superfluous things that we think we need that a poet needs or that a practitioner in our in our lineage might need

[30:00]

is a situation of complete simplicity costing not less than everything a situation of complete simplicity costing nothing less than everything now it seems you know by reading the especially the Zen literature that the question of how to practice with a kind of dual vision that is to see the co-arising of everything, the emptiness of things in the sense that they are free of our of our descriptions of them that we are absolutely separate at the same time I can't be you, you cannot be me you know and yet without you there's not a me and so forth and to see that at the same time to try to see the picture of the two faces in the wine goblet you know the space between

[31:01]

the it turns into you know that equivocal space where you see the two faces to see those two things at the same time is almost impossible but the practice it seems that we have to do is to develop a kind of dual vision at the moment that these things are arising and that we feel the mind going out and grasping the world and concept trying to hold on to some secure place in the karmic flow of things that we have to remind us to remember this mind to wonder and take a breath at that moment just wait this is what is arising this is what is happening but feel yourself contracting you know we talked yesterday we could feel when anger comes up this sense of I call it the sense of contraction you can feel everything going just densifying becoming you know become very sensitive to that physicality of experience that our practice is to be very much in tune with our bodies

[32:03]

and our mind so that as soon as we feel ourselves projecting an idea onto onto phenomena onto other people onto places and things and then reacting to the force of that experience in some positive or negative way reifying it substantiating it that we are we become really hip to the fact that we're doing that in the midst of it and we can't usually do that without lots of practice and even with lots of practice we can't do it very well um I'm trying to remember that story that um I wrote it down here somewhere oh yeah I think it's case 32 of the blue cliff record no of uh the uh um Shoku Roku the uh

[33:04]

book of serenity Guishan asked Yangshan if someone if someone suddenly said all sentient beings have active consciousness boundless and unclear with no fundamental to rely on how would you how would you prove this in experience if someone suddenly said to you all sentient beings have active consciousness boundless and unclear with no fundamental to rely on how would you how would you prove that in experience Yangshan said if a monk comes I say hey you and if he turns his head or her head I say what is it and if they hesitate I say not only is there active consciousness boundless and unclear they have no no fundamental to rely on so we have nothing but conscious karmic consciousness that's really all we have to work with and we have to realize that fact it's not that karmic consciousness

[34:06]

itself is so called buddha mind but we have to realize that karmic consciousness and the descriptions of the world and our predispositions with which we seem seemingly have come into the world as our physical propensities to think and feel in a certain way where somebody said to come out of the world as we're born to work with that and to see that language itself is a karmic activity and then not to get stuck by it and then there's another from the flower ornament sutra the fundamental affliction of ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of the buddhas, the fundamental affliction of ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of the buddhas to become hip, to become aware, to become knowledgeable about how we really act in terms of our karmic reactivity is to become familiar

[35:08]

with with the buddhadharma the last one I can't remember the whole I can only remember that I can't remember the whole case but the monk asked don't you remember that in the avatamsaka sutra they say the fundamental affliction of ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of all the buddhas the unchanging knowledge about the all buddhas the fundamental affliction of ignorance I don't know what a single thing is or how it came to be except as you describe it to me and that's only partial there's such a thing as ignorance thinking you understand what the world is and there's such a thing as divine ignorance realizing you don't know what a damn thing is ultimately those are not the same kind of ignorance

[36:09]

when we finally admit we do not know it's the most intimate place that we begin to work from I don't know it's different from just shredging off I don't know I don't care to know, I don't want to know, don't ask me it's not the same thing you know I'm I'm I'm running a lot of things together here I just wrote down as it occurred to me you know how are you going to talk about the Prasanna Pyramid, how are you going to talk about we can go over this sentence by sentence and discuss it and I think we'll open this up in a minute but I just wanted to throw out a few things to stimulate some conversation and maybe I have a few more notes that I wrote to myself that I could share with you oh yeah it's not

[37:13]

so much that separate self sense and the sense of others and so on is delusion that's an illusion what is delusion is to take that illusion for truth, for the absolute that's the delusion people think well there is no other, there is no self no, that's not what we understand the teachings are saying there is self and other we understand it conventionally and they come up together when the world is created, you're created when you're not here, where's the world but to take any aspect of that as something absolute, that is the delusion oh yeah and then the question of merit I wanted to get back to that in Indian philosophy in the Indian early Indian

[38:15]

view of things there had to be a path, there had to be a way and a method that was very very important and that by by by virtue of studying one's life and by virtue of the fact that one realized that all of that which comes up in one's phenomenal existence certainly could not have simply arisen out of what quote is called one lifetime or one span it followed that that if you're going to be here forever, lifetime after lifetime and that this is a world of suffering then whatever way that you can kind of grow through this process of suffering is to accumulate merits, a little bit like accumulating green stamps when you get enough of them you can hand them in and you can reach nirvana you can have a place where you're not going to come back where you're you're not going to suffer

[39:18]

in this particular dimension anymore so the idea of accumulating merit by doing good works is very big in the Indian tradition and was carried over into the Buddhist canon but in the Prajnaparamita literature the merit that is accumulated as we know from the beginning of Bodhidharma is not the kind of merit necessarily so much it's fine to do good deeds to build monasteries and train monks do good works, follow the precepts but the merit that is accumulated is the merit of realizing that there is nothing intrinsic in the world that is and to pass on to others, to awaken others to the fact that their suffering arises or is derived from there clinging to some aspect of of substantiating concepts of right and wrong, good and bad

[40:18]

by dividing the world up in such a way and to throw light onto that particular response that we have developed through evolution of dividing the world and to become aware of how we do that and to share that with other people to examine that together, to study that together there's merit in that in that it frees us the whole point of all of this teaching is soteriological in the sense that it's to free us from suffering what's the good of studying all of this if there isn't some aspect of salvation we call it salvation in Christianity but we call it enlightenment or freedom in the Buddhist tradition from suffering so the merit comes not so much from doing good works when Emperor Wu talked to Bodhidharma said I've set up all these these monasteries

[41:20]

and I've had teachers ordained and so on, what merit is in there and Bodhidharma said no merit and he was taken aback by that because that was the way people did things I would accumulate merit in the next lifetime I'd get a little better birth in each lifetime I'd get closer to the opportunity to become a Buddha but the aspect of the Bodhisattva teaching it's not that we had to become Bodhisattva first to become Buddha it's not even that we have Buddha nature but that we already are Buddha that was an enormous change enormous jump in the teaching something that we can attain that there's a self that's going to attain in some other lifetime but if we wake up to the fact that right now, what is this what is this arising right now what is this what is this is there going to be something different from this in some other lifetime what are we waiting for this is the gravy train, get on it you can't get off it anyway

[42:20]

try as you will so you might as well make the best of it but again here are words some vibrations are going on you hear these vibrations you respond to them you write them down, you put them but remember this is just a story another story, we're telling each other it's a good story, it's a beautiful story it has no absolute substance whatsoever the wondrous part is that we get together to talk about it put on robes and do that that's the wondrous aspect that here we are on a rainy day talking about this instead of figuring out how to get one up on somebody else we are after all called unsui aren't we monks are unsui clouds and water good day to see that all the water gets sucked up into the heavens and then it flows down

[43:22]

over the world like clouds we just float and dissipate like water we flow through the world and then even if that water that gets trapped in the back reaches and doesn't reach the ocean that's where the lotuses grow out of that mud so we are unsui cloud water people you can't get hold of it it just flows, consciousness just flows well I've managed now to get by 15 minutes by flapping my lips so we have another we have another 40 for some discussion that might be possible around this and as we have the discussion let's also be sensitive to the teaching that this is just a discussion anybody have any questions we could even go back to yesterday's topic

[44:23]

if you want anything that you want to bring up about the prajnaparamita literature just a basic question what is the seven gifts well there are seven precious jewels I think they're talking about there's gold, silver agates cornelia lapis those are five I can't remember the other two rubies I think is another one gold, silver lapis lazuli, coral, gems pearls pearls but maybe it's the seven ages of human beings how about that that's a good one, Shakespeare's seven ages where's Jeremy huh? where's Jeremy to illustrate that for us well the first age is what

[45:23]

the infant that pukes in its first year the infant mewing and puking in the nurse's arms right huh and then what is it the school boy that unwillingly with his satchel goes off like snail to school and then the lover like a furnace sign like a furnace writing an ode to his mistress's eyebrow I like that and then the soldier full of something and seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth and then the wise old judge full of wise saws he says and then the older person no longer fills out his pantaloons yeah and with childish treble I actually

[46:28]

believe that the content of the story is important and I've heard that it doesn't matter what the thought is that enlightenment is not dependent on a particular thought a particular concept a particular condition but I still believe that it's more helpful to be here listening to you than listening to another story it's helpful potentially for me to be able to see that the story is what do you think the content of the story is are you saying that one story is more important than another story I actually believe that well conventionally that's true absolutely it would be hard to make a case for that but in the conventional sense

[47:30]

which is the sense in which we live in society with one another I would agree with you but it's a matter of preference it's a matter of what feels right for you to overcome something that you feel is a problem and you go to somebody else and something arises to help you with the problem it seems natural and that's when I have some content to it so yeah I think this is I would rather be doing this right now than I think than something else that might simply keep me spinning my wheels and suffering in some sort of spirit but I don't know that is different from what we're talking about I think what we're talking about is that there is in the conventional world a self and other and a way of doing gradations of values and value systems

[48:31]

as long as we see that that's just what they are but what's more important is to see that it's empty at the same time if we can see it at the same time that they're empty that way we can really deal with the world without trying to hang on that way we can take care of the environment, we can take care of one another without expecting, without expectation well maybe it's harmful if the story is really interesting you know that's the other side of it, if it's a really interesting story then maybe it's trickier to let go of it's more likely it's more likely that if it feels good we'll hang on to it, well that's right if something feels good we pull it in if we don't like it we push it away, right? yeah well it is tricky, it's a tricky business we're dealing with, very slippery I'm chewing on something which feels very tricky too while you were talking I saw

[49:33]

these beautiful trees and I was thinking again these trees I thought they are so much themselves, they are just a tree I mean who knows whether that is true or not so just thinking they are just a tree, they are the way they are there seems to be no question they are, there was one word in my mind, they are so natural and then listening to what we were talking about it doesn't it feels like are we natural? sometimes it seems to be so difficult just to live so are we natural? is it natural the way we are? or why are we the way we are? it seems like there is a difference between us as humans and that tree

[50:33]

or isn't there a difference? are we the same? are we all natural? there is something for me, I'm chewing on it and again and again I encounter that question does it make sense for you? yeah of course, it makes sense well we have consciousness I mean we there is the some point in evolution right there was the division that took place in consciousness between self and other vijnana vijnana means division, two things happening the early teachings divided the primordial all the functions of consciousness in the primordial sense was called chitta and then there was a sense of separation at some point, nobody actually can know when but at some point there is a sense of in consciousness of self and other particularly human evolution and that

[51:36]

division which we call manas actually in tradition and then projecting an object is, there is a gap there is a kind of gap there in consciousness so that sense of not quite being at home in a world that we have divided is what is called the human dilemma is a feeling of dis-ease, that is basic suffering actually, dissatisfaction, stress anxiety, call it what you will we don't know what a tree feels, we don't know what trees feel they don't apparently have consciousness in the same sense that we do and they seem natural but it is natural that we have, for human beings, that we have this sense of dis-ease that's a natural part of our phenomena I think, and to have to deal

[52:37]

with that is to be a human being but we have to accept that what we try to do is get through our disease and either ignore it or our unease and ignore it and find some way of hiding from it through the senses through trying to delight the senses in some way, trying to fulfill self-fulfilling, to fulfill ourselves in some way, until we finally just give up the sense of self-fulfillment in that sense in the way of gratifying our senses whether it's intellectual or sensual take a deep breath, let it out, sit down and look at a wall and finally go, what is this dissatisfaction what is this anxiety I am feeling look at the trees flowers in the field they reap none, neither do they sow

[53:38]

yet your father feedeth him, how come that happens and I don't feel that way so that is the motive which has brought us to this place in time, to try to understand that, that's natural in human development that's the Buddha that's the bodhicitta, that's the start of the desire to understand to get to the bottom the root of our of our stress our anxiety Martha I think, I mean this is my explanation I hear myself up here waxing this way but you know, I don't know any more than you do, I mean this is just Martha It's so interesting for me at this point in my life, in practice because I'm finding that there's a kind of discouragement or flatness and I can feel it when I listen to you, that sort of edge of meaningless meaning

[54:38]

and I read a book over the holidays called The Gifts of the Jews of the tribe of Nomads that changed the way we feel and think and there's this extraordinary description of Abraham going into the desert and hearing the voice of God and there's centuries of them hearing the voice of God and I thought, yes! I want to hear the voice of God and I'm almost afraid to read the next book by this man, which is about Jesus Laughter There's that longing you know, somewhere for something that isn't empty of all existence and yet I also feel as we talk, that sort of saying yes so it's such an interesting internal thing for me I don't know Can I just add to that? I've been reading about Teresa of Avila and she has this relationship with God

[55:39]

that is just amazing and I wonder I've been wondering about this kind of emotional flatness that comes from for me, from looking at edging up to emptiness and then I thought maybe it's on the outskirts of equanimity, maybe it isn't flat maybe it's got potential to be equanimity and not just arid but it's really tempting to want to jump in there with those passionate relationships I said to Leah, I'm going to believe in God, I know he's empty but I think I'll just go back to my roots Laughter Laughter and yet as Norman says, this emptiness is love it is the greatest expression of love I wish brother David was sitting here right now well

[56:40]

the Tibetans would say that if you realize emptiness it's very blissful it really is I can't sit there I don't know why Laughter I really I think your question there's a couple of things that come up in my mind when I hear that, one is that yes, in this practice that we have in a sense imported as Christians and Jews that we reach a place where we've been conditioned willy nilly whether we believed in it or not, traditionally in our families about the ecstatic tradition of being fulfilled and to sound like Rumi for a change in our life, to realize that the world is the gift of God and that we as human beings have the responsibility of living in the sight of God and having dominion over all things

[57:41]

and so forth and I don't know that we've really come to grips with our psychological reality as Christians and Jews for the most part, and the Buddha Dharma, you know, and I think at some point in our practice, we're turned on in the beginning by it, but at some point it flattens out for us, it's because we're not getting something out of it in the way we'd hope to, in the way that people in our, maybe in our past, in our family seem to get from the traditional religions that we avoided, or at least many of us did, but also in practice there does come a point where, I don't mean the honeymoon period, that ends fairly early, but I mean that you go through this kind of increments of inspiration and plateaus and then there comes a place where it just seems to be flat, there's not much new, nothing that, you know, you've read it, you've heard it, you know it, but same stuff keeps coming up, how do I,

[58:42]

so I go and sit, and I remember what Trungpa Rinpoche said about that, he said, not until we really experience boredom and disappointment in our practice do we really begin to practice, at some point. I wonder if other people who have read this same book and haven't been practicing in another tradition for a long time were able to feel that same, yes, that Martha felt, you know, at hearing the voice of God. It's wonderful if you, yeah, I mean, do study it and do read the next book and do become a good Christian too. I don't think, we can become Christians in some sense, I think, you know. The follow-up book I read, which is, I really don't like the title, but the book is called One God Clapping, I think it is, and it's a biography written by Rabbi Luke, and he, of course, he's practiced right here in the northern and immersed himself in Zen Buddhism, and then found

[59:44]

his Judaism again and went to a medical school in New York City, and is now a rabbi of the temple in San Francisco, but he talks about those two things, and how the extraordinary foundations lay for him to actually reconnect with God in a certain way, and he still holds them both, you know, in his heart, so it's been a good anecdote. Yeah. You know, I have come full circle with this issue. About, um, about 16 years ago, I was sitting with a group, I helped start a group, it was a meditation group in the Methodist church, and then we started reading Buddhist books, and I took off, and became a Zen Buddhist, and ditched them, so to speak, but they kept praying for me, and I still have the ties with that church, and my husband keeps going to that church, and I

[60:45]

decided that I wanted to go back, and I go back to this small group, and I sit, I pray with five women, every Wednesday afternoon, and it's a weird experience, and it's good, I don't take communion, that's not for me, but it's interesting that I've gone back, but after a very long absence. Well, one of the things that, you know, I realized, was that, you know, I came up in a family that was kind of divided there, between Protestants and Catholics, and so the women went to church, Catholic women went to church, their husbands were kind of agnostics, stayed home, played cards, watched ball games, and so on, and I used to feel that going to church was a kind of way of just gaining consolation, because life is painful,

[61:45]

and there was a place where you could socialize, gain some consolation, and so forth, but I couldn't gain much consolation from Christianity when I tried to practice it, and what I liked about going into Buddhism is that from the beginning I dropped any idea of gaining some kind of consolation for my life out of it, I was willing finally to give up some consoling aspect of being, but I realize now that, at least as I was talking this morning, kind of the ecstatic sense of being here, now that there is a consolation in that, of always being here, and I don't feel like the Indian mind felt that the world is a terrible place and I want to get out of it, even though it is a terrible place, and gosh knows we all go through the hell realms in the world, still it is very much endemic to the Eastern mind, particularly in the subcontinent, that the world was you know, with their immense suffering over the millennia that they had suffered, even by Buddhist time,

[62:47]

that the world was a place that you wanted to get out of, but to find out that the world that I want to get out of is the very world that I am in, that that very world is also heaven, you know, heaven and earth are the same place, nirvana and samsara are, become co-extensive. Not only was it kind of consoling, but when I really experienced that in some sense in myself, I felt that I was at home at last, and that didn't matter whether I call it Christian or Jew or Buddhist, I was at home in this world, in this body, in this time, and I could be just myself, the crabby old guy that I am, you know, it was just fine, we all have our own differences. So, whatever brings us to that place, I think, and brings us into a place where we have some kind of loving heart, open heart to the world, that's what we want, isn't it? I mean, it doesn't matter how much I understand intellectually about this stuff, my loving heart, meaning an accepting heart, accepts things as they are. It means accepting

[63:49]

things as there are those things they can't accept. That's as they are, that's also as it is. I feel that way, when I read poetry sometimes, when I'm really moved by a deep poem, like I was with Wallace Stevens when I first heard it, it just knocks me over, it's like language, although it is a convention, it is the most wonderful convention that we've come up with as human beings, to give, as Shakespeare says, to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name, just that phrase alone, wow! Somebody said it that way, what a wonderful way to say it, you know, to give the airy nothingness a local habitation and a name. Man, I wish I, I mean, my heart goes, whoo! We all feel that. Sign me up! Yeah, sign me up. And yet the price we pay for applying a name is this bondage to value. Yep, that's right, at the same time, at the same time. So we're taking the name and going back to the airy nothingness. Yeah, that's right, take the name, and that airy nothing is just another name.

[64:50]

See? But it points to something that we all know in our heart, but you can't finally put it into words. Poets come closest, don't they? Poets come closest. Oh, painters too. Musicians. Musicians, artists. Art, art, art, art, art. Art and religion. I once asked, I once asked Mel, I said to Mel, I said, you know, I love art, art has always been kind of my religion life as well. It's very helpful and you feel kind of a spiritual dimension with it. But have you noticed, artists can't take care of themselves at all. He knew because he was an artist at that time, at one time. So they had to practice. I don't know if that's true, but at the time it seemed to be. But the point is, we can't think of ourselves as just artists or just Buddhists. So that's what we're trying to don't get stuck in being an artist or being a Buddhist. Those are functions. Somebody had a hand up. Yes. Sway. Thinking about

[65:53]

the feeling, physical feeling that arises in me when I practice Judaism and then often the physical feeling that arises in me sitting and trying to figure out if there's, you know, knowing trying to figure out if there's a difference between the feeling of deep love and the feeling of abiding in emptiness. If there's, and of course everyone has a different definition of what love is, and I'm not really talking about romantic love or self-cleaning love or the love of God. You know, is there really any difference? Well, if anything can take away that love, then there's a difference. If that love is just consciousness itself, is love, the world is nothing but love, everything that arises is the divine event, and that divine event cannot be pinned down, then what's the difference? I don't see it. Yes. It reminds me of the

[66:55]

car, and I'm so fond of, but I can't remember the exact words, you probably can, but the punchline is every day is a good day, no matter what's in it. Is that Yunmin? I think it's Yunmin. Don't call it the depth of the night. Somebody else can probably remember the preamble, but that's the punchline. Yep, every day is a good day. But, and, and, we have to be careful of getting stuck in good versus bad day. Well, I understand. Those are the chicken questions, you know, what happens if your friend is shot down, is that a good day? I'd like to ask Fu and Michael Friedman from yesterday's

[67:56]

story that Fu gave about the slapping, and that the angry person slapped the flower person the second time, and then Michael said, oh, so the flower person had a lot of, was it control? You didn't need to say that. He had a strong response. I think he used the word aggression. So, my question in regard to this is, did the angry person, was there a change? Unless this is the one who died. So you really don't know. I imagine he died of anger. But that's my imagination. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And what about

[68:57]

the flower person? What do I imagine he is? I imagine he's a computer programmer. He's got a tea set down his throat. I don't know. I just saw this, right? I just saw something and I interpreted it. I never asked either of them their experience of it, or maybe I did and I don't remember, because what I remember is my take on it. What I interpreted. I think the question comes from when there, if she had the opportunity to see the two parties involved in this through time, did the experience have any lasting effect? Or was it gone? On them or on who? Both. All three parties. Could she observe

[69:58]

was there any time, was there another practice period, another year, another five years to see if that dramatic of experience, whether it's a story or not, changed? The anger and the sweetness. Just to clarify, these were students here? It was Tassajara. Somebody smack somebody at Tassajara? Suburban. You know about suburban, right? Yeah. I don't know. I really don't. It's just a story, but it's not as dramatic, but there's the story of you know the guy chasing the sixth day shark, right? Where it turns also, and this guy was like a general or something.

[70:58]

He's come to take the ball. Get the rope. Do what you want and totally changes the guy's response. He couldn't do it. He couldn't lift the rope. And what? He asked him a question at that moment. What's that question he asked? The sixth day shark asked. He said, without thinking good or evil. Without thinking good or evil. What's your original face? At that moment. Without thinking good or evil. It's like stand in the corner and don't think of a white bear. Without thinking. Without thinking. How am I going to do that? How am I going to do that? I purposely didn't bring in any of the koans or anything. There's several koans that deal with with the material, the diamond Karasutra

[72:01]

that we're reading, but I think Norman is going to take those up. So I want to avoid bringing those into my discussion. I had something else I wanted to say but I think I forgot what it is. How did the tradition of picking out a passage at random and reading it and chanting it in unison, with everyone chanting a different page. Is that an old tradition? I don't know. I think we kind of made it up. I think in Japan, what I've heard is that they do this kind of thing with the sutra books. So they turn the sutras like they read them all in a sense by going like this. Exposing them. And I think somebody decided that reading

[73:02]

the diamond sutra randomly was kind of like that and we started doing it so it was ensign of tradition. And then I heard later that that was just us so you never find that somewhere else. But we kind of like it. It reminded me of Glenn Gould's Idea of North, which is a thing that he did that was this contrapuntal conversation making it like music. But all these different things that he recorded. That's what it reminded me of. Martha has one. So do you have it on a timer? How do you determine when to stop? The dawn. The dawn has a timer? The dawn looks at the evening. So anyway,

[74:05]

to look at the world as a description, as explanation, as more description and more explanation and then to see that those explanations and descriptions are just that. Except they're not just that because they don't come without being loaded with emotional content. Descriptions and explanations and discussion. But for me, once again, I just wanted to reiterate that the realization that language is a conventional designation and that from the beginning since the time before we can remember the world has been a description to us, something told to us. That those people that, although two people I'm told that cognitive scientists say that if two individuals were to be raised somehow without any other language, they would develop their own language but one would not. They would find a way to communicate

[75:06]

and would develop a sound system of designations, conventional designations by which to, according to the circumstances and conditions in which they're raised. I do remember an article several years ago in the New Yorker about somebody who had been blind. Remember that one? Very interesting. And how that person at the behest of his wife I believe it was found out that he could get his sight back but he had spent he had apparently seen before the conventional designations before language had become formed in his mind and the world he became blind and he functioned very well as a masseur and married and loved sports, listened to sports and so on, so he understood language and so on, but once he got his sight back, he could not correlate at all

[76:06]

the words with what was going on. He'd walk into a restaurant and bump into I mean he could not he could not, unless he shut his eyes manipulate in the world turn on the TV set of the football game, he could not understand what that was at all, could not see it could not put the concepts together with the sounds, would have to shut his eyes and just listen to it. I think eventually he died. In fact, it was a very tragic kind of situation. He just kind of went off his top which is interesting because we think there is a ready-made world, you see of the of the five skandhas, you know, that all we have to do is, there it is for us and all we need to do is plug in, but in fact, it is a co-arising event. When this arises, that arises. When the world arises language arises in the world, we begin to make sense of it. I did want to say one thing yesterday vis-a-vis the discussion about anger and so on. It was interesting, before Jonas Salk

[77:07]

died he said that you know, he said that the limbic system, the fight or flight response in us no longer serves us very well. It served us very well, the anger and so on that we felt and the fear that came up in the face of animals or predators that we were a good meal for predators and so on, but of course, some of that has been transposed into our aggression in the business world, in the world of competition to some extent, civilized to some degree. Huh? Sports. But that the next step in evolution would be wisdom. It was very interesting. He said the next step would be wisdom. I don't remember how he defined wisdom, but it was a knowledge of a more, you know, of an inward turning of understanding the nature of thought, the nature of how we build a world together in common and that would be the next, in the process of evolution that is definitely in the cards.

[78:09]

So, maybe our coming together here, sitting here, doing this is part of that whole process. I was thinking about that very thing when Mikhail was talking about the tree and how it's natural and are we also and it seems like we've evolved into ever more acutely self-conscious beings and so where does the, you know, if you look at just Darwinian evolution and you think well, where is it going to go from here and you hope that it's going to go somewhere that isn't going to just make us more and more and more self-conscious as we evolve and evolving into wisdom, what a great idea, I hope it's true. But it's not like we maybe evolved, it's that wisdom itself is already evolving. Yes? I just want to say how much I appreciate your talking about language and the social phenomenon of language because I feel like it's not very conscious and I would say growing up

[79:11]

I had no idea. Everything was very, you know, the word was the thing and there's no teaching in our culture that helps us. I just thought of sticks and stones can break my bone but probably it's the only teaching about language that I ever got and then I'm thinking also about as we teach the children language how vivid, how profound it feels for a child to learn a word and how we believe in that and we wait for that as the ultimate and, you know, this is the human illusion. The name of the game is the game of the name. So, we have to remember that. Laminate it, put it in your wallet and leave it there. But thank you, Emma. Yes, I have the same feeling of that. So, we only have about two minutes to go and maybe we can close with any final questions and then put our hands together and do our closing

[80:13]

words, verse. Maybe Norman will address this at some point but until he does, I keep reading the words son and daughter of good family. What does a good family mean? Well, one that obviously helped them to get in touch with the Buddha Dharma. But I don't know that it has any social implications. I don't know the exact translation. Ask Norman that when he comes. There is footnote to that in one of the translations you can look up the one that has the heart, the Diamond Sutra together with Huining's The Platform Sutra. It's in the library. There's a footnote on that in there. Did the Buddha welcome untouchables? Yeah. There was no class distinction. That's one of the reasons that he was considered a heretic. Thank you very much. May our hearts be

[81:18]

strengthened.

[81:19]

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