Good morning. We're talking this week about the background awareness, the ultimate universal awareness of the truth body, the reality body, the dharmakaya of Buddha. as described in the Maha Parinirvana Sutra, and particularly the teaching that we chant in the Kanzeon, the Enmei Jyukuken Angyo, in the line, Jo Raku Ga Jo, permanence, joy or bliss, self and purity. So in Sachin, as we gather the mind, as we settle into sitting like Buddha, sitting as Buddha, allowing Buddha to be present as we settle into upright sitting and enjoying our breath and taking refuge in Buddha,

[01:26]

What the Buddha we take refuge in is actually this Dharmakaya Buddha, this Buddha as the nature of everything. So, as we've been saying, Dogen, our Soto founder, talks about studying the way of studying the self. Of course, we first need to learn that there's no self, or there's no self like the self that we think is our self, or that we tell stories about the self, or that we identify as the self. So, non-self is this basic Buddhist teaching. But here, in this sutra of what the Buddha says just before he's going to pass away in Tiruvannamalai, in the Mahayana version of that, he talks about the ultimate teaching being actually that

[02:40]

And there is permanence, and there is constancy, and there is joy in the ultimate reality, and there is self. So he's not talking about the self that we think of when we identify ourself, or the self that people usually think of, or the worldly self. He's talking about this greater self. So again, Buddha, what is Buddha? What is Buddha? What is Buddha? Chow Chow said, the cypress tree in the yard. Somebody said here, well, what about the wooden,

[03:41]

floor here. Maybe the question is, what isn't Buddha? So studying this ultimate self, this ultimate joy that is the nature of all things, the unconditioned nature of all things, Then we kind of get a glimpse of, out of the, you know, a little bit of something we taste in the third bowl or we smell out of the corner of our eye or whatever. Something in, in, as we settle for five days or however long you're here in Szechin. This background, awareness, because it's about awareness.

[04:53]

Not self-consciousness, but not ego-consciousness, but this true consciousness, this true reality, this true self. But that's not separate from non-self. from the emptiness of usual ideas of self. So we live both in this ultimate reality. And all of you have some sense of that or else you wouldn't be here. And yet there's also gun violence and sadness and loss and climate breakdown and all that stuff, cruelty, we know that that world exists too.

[06:03]

So our practice is, how do we hold all of this together? hearing about Joe Rakugadjo in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra is not to forget the life of Chicago and the world, but there's something more. So studying the self, studying this ultimate self, allows something more. So we're settling into this practice of saschihin every day. Each day, five days. Each day is the first day, really. Each day is the fifth day, really. Here we are.

[07:06]

And again, to read this summary of what the Mahaparinirvana Sutra says about this, the nirvana of the Buddha, which he's about to enter as he passes away, is not about suffering, impermanence, impurity, and no-self, but it's the Buddha realm, the Buddhadhatu. which is blissful, permanent, pure, and endowed with true self. This primordial existent reality that's only temporarily obscured by defilements. When that nirvana and Buddha realm are finally recognized, Buddhahood is achieved. And the Buddha reveals in this sutra the existence of this nirvana to the bodhisattvas. to us doing this Bodhisattva practice, this same practice. Because the Buddha realm is present within all sentient beings, it doesn't exist somewhere else.

[08:17]

It doesn't exist only up in the Himalayas or on some mountain in California or Wisconsin or wherever. Because this Buddhadhatu or Buddha realm is present within all sentient beings, these four qualities are therefore found not simply in the Buddha but in all beings. This implies that the Buddha and all beings are endowed with self. in direct contradiction to the usual Buddhist doctrine of anatman, or no-self. In this sutra, the teaching of no-self is described as a conventional truth. When the Buddha said that there was no-self, what he actually meant was that there is no mundane, conditional self among the aggregates, or skandhas. The Buddha's true teaching, as revealed at the time of his nirvana, is that there is a great self, or true self, which is the Buddha realm in all beings. So sitting on our cushion, it's not about that we need to think about this.

[09:27]

This is not in the realm of thinking, this other awareness. Well, maybe it includes thinking, but what is it to settle into? Buddha's body, Buddha's posture, uprightness, relaxed uprightness. What is that about? So again, to read some passages from this Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says to the Bodhisattva Kashyapa, who's inquiring about all this, the body of a Tathagata, of a Vasakamana, of a Buddha, is a permanently abiding body, an indestructible body, an adamantine body.

[10:30]

It is not a body sustained by food of any sort. In other words, it is a dharma body. So this is this teaching of the dharmakaya. You know, there's, it's not explicit in this sutra, it developed later, but there's this teaching again about the three bodies, the nirmanakaya, which is the body of some person or being, incarnate body, like Shakyamuni who lived, the Shakyamuni who lived in northern India, northeastern India. 2,500 years ago, but we could say the names of the Buddhas, the Buddhas and ancestors and the women ancestors we will chant in midday service. These are also in the realms of nirmanakaya, of Buddha ancestors who keep alive. this practice for beings, generation after generation. That's one kind of Buddha.

[11:32]

There's also Sambhogakaya, which is, you know, there's not just three kinds of Buddha. There's Buddhas, you know, in the Flower Ornament Sutra there, it says that there are innumerable Buddhas on the tip of each blade of grass, and on the tip of the staff there are innumerable Buddhas. There are many Buddhas everywhere. In each atom, many Buddhas, it says. So, these are all ways of talking about something, about reality, or one way of seeing reality, or maybe there are multiple realities. But how do we practice with this is the point for us as Zen people. What is the practice of this? So reaching some understanding of all of these philosophies is not the point. How does this help us to practice? How does this help us to find our way to enjoy our life, to take on our life?

[12:40]

So it says a little further on from what I quoted, that to talk it's a body is a body and it's not a body. So our usual idea of our body is, you know, one thing. So Western medicine teaches us many things about our body. Tom, who was here yesterday, does Chinese medicine and that teaches us different things about our body. There are many different ways to see what this body is. But the sutra says that the Tathagata body, the Buddha body, is a body and is not a body. It was not born and it will not cease to exist. the Buddha body. It does not learn and it does not practice.

[13:45]

It is immeasurable and boundless. It leaves no footprints." So here we're reading about traces and footprints. It does not discern things and it has no forms to discern. It is utterly pure. Maybe what is utterly pure is vanishing in the air before we even say anything about it. It has no movement. It is neither passive nor active. It is non-abiding and non-becoming. It is unflavored and unmixed. It was not created. It is not conditioned. It has no karma and no karmic fruit. It does not move. So this is talking about this ultimate Buddha body. It does not disappear. It is not a thought, nor is it a number. It is inconceivable, and it will always be inconceivable. It has no consciousness in the usual sense. So again, this is talking about this ultimate aspect of Buddha and this Buddha body.

[14:50]

And again, all the Zen koans really come down to what is Buddha? And our practice comes down to what is Buddha? And what is it we take refuge in when we sit like Buddha for five days or one day or one period? What is it we're turning towards? And here it's saying that it's not created, it doesn't move, it doesn't disappear. It is not a thought nor is it a number. It is inconceivable and it will always be inconceivable. We can't get a hold of it. So anything I say or you say or you hear about it, it's not quite it. And yet, there's something Some reason why all of you are here today. You all showed up because there's something that you're turning to, that you're taking refuge in, that is meaningful. that is not part of the world of loss and gain, life and death, success and failure, achievement, grades, usual evaluations of right and wrong.

[16:24]

It goes beyond all of that stuff that we learned in grade school. Excuse me, Matt, I know that that's not all that you teach in grade school. It is inconceivable and will always be inconceivable. It has no consciousness in the usual sense. That's not to say it doesn't have consciousness. Its thoughts are impartial, neither separate nor not separate. It is not and it is. It has neither coming nor going, and yet it does come and go. It cannot be destroyed, damaged, removed, or cut off. This Buddha body does not come into existence, and it does not go out of existence. It does not dominate, and yet it is dominant. It is not being and it is not non-being. It is not realized and it is not observed.

[17:30]

It cannot be put into words, and yet it is not non-linguistic. It is neither definite nor indefinite. It cannot be seen, yet it is clearly visible. It can't be seen, yet we all, you know, we've all tasted it. It is without any location, and yet it is located. It is without any residence, and yet it resides. It is without darkness and without light. It has no quiescence, and yet it is calm and quiescent. It possesses nothing. It does not receive, and it does not give. It's beyond that. It is pure and without stain. It has no disputes, having cut off disputation. It resides without any place of residence. It neither takes nor falls into samsaric existence. It is neither a dharma nor a non-dharma. It is neither a field of merit nor not a field of merit. There is no exhausting it.

[18:31]

It cannot be exhausted and it is totally separate from all ways of being exhausted. It is empty and yet dissociated from emptiness. Although it does not permanently reside anywhere, there is no cessation of its thought stream. It has no stains. It goes on like that. So this dharmakaya body, this ultimate body of Buddha that is invoked by the Buddha by Shakyamuni before, and this whole long sutra is what the Buddha talks about to his disciples before he's passing away into nirvana. He also says, the body of a Tathāgata accomplishes merit that is thus beyond measure.

[19:50]

There is one who fully understands this, yet there is no one who does not understand this. There is no one who sees it, yet there is no one who does not see it. It is neither created nor uncreated. It is neither worldly nor unworldly. So in terms of our bodhisattva practice then, this aspect of the Buddha, which is the aspect of the Buddha we take refuge in, that we turn to, that we allow to be present when we sit like Buddha, when we inhale and exhale and allow this upright, relaxed sitting to be present in us accomplishes immeasurable merit.

[20:58]

So how do we apply that to the other reality where there is no self, where there is suffering, aside from this ultimate joy, where there is this illusion of self, and then the knowledge that that's not self, where there is impurity. This is holding both holding all of that is maybe the work of Bodhisattvas, because we are in that world too. But in this session I want to present this deeper reality. And we have an opportunity, period after period,

[22:07]

Well, it's not that there's something we need to do, or get, or obtain, or see, or understand, because none of those things are, it's not about any of those things. And yet, I want to share this message from this sutra of this ultimate, true body of Buddha, the aspect of Buddha that we take refuge in. So, last week, a week before this session, I tried to introduce a modern way of talking about this, and I want to present this today not as science, but as a kind of metaphor for Dharmakaya, but it is a scientific paper

[23:11]

And I'm going to just read little bits of it from the Neuroquantology Journal. So some of you have heard me talk about this before, and some of you haven't. It's a technical scientific kind of physics paper, physics and mathematics paper, called Consciousness in the Universe is Scale-Invariant and Implies an Event Horizon of the Human Brain. So this is about, really it's about, I think it's a metaphor for what Ramakaita is about. It's about this consciousness or awareness that is the nature of everything. but from a modern scientific perspective. So I'm just going to read parts of it. Again, not to try, not as a scientific verification of the dharmakaya, because we don't need that, but just as a way of, as a kind of metaphor for talking about this underlying ultimate universal awareness that we could call dharma body.

[24:26]

So it starts, I'm just going to read some excerpts. This is from the abstract. It says, our brain is not a standalone information processing organ. It acts as the central part of our integral nervous system with recurrent information exchange with the entire organism and the cosmos. In this study, the brain is conceived to be embedded in a holographic structured field that interacts with resonant sensitive structures. in the various cell types in our body. And it talks about our brain being connected to a field-receptive mental workspace. So that's an interesting, different way of talking about our mind. It's a mental workspace. And it talks about a universal information matrix, a supposed implicate order, as well as a spectrum of space-time theories that exist in current physics, the presence of a field-receptive resonant workspace associated with

[25:39]

but not reducible to our brain, may provide an interpretation framework for widely reported but poorly understood transpersonal conscious states and algorithmic origin of life. It also points out the deep connection of mankind with the cosmos and our major responsibility for the future of our planet. So partly I like this paper just because there's a bodhisattva aspect implied. So I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning and end of the paper. It's a long paper. And some of you I've sent. copies of it, too. And if you're interested, I can send it to you. But it's very dense in any way. Consciousness can be defined as a state of a semi-stable system that has developed in a cooperative and cyclic operating mode so that it has become causally self-observant. Thereby, it cannot only predict aspects of the local environment,

[26:44]

but also can integrate memorized information and future-directed projections into a personal worldview that serves individual survival, development, and social communication. That's a different way of talking about self-awareness than we usually have. And this paper proposes an even wider context for consciousness in which our individual mind is seen as part of a larger universal consciousness being instrumental in the entire fabric of reality. That's what the Dharmakaya is about. That awareness, including our limited awareness, is connected with the entire fabric of reality. Dharmakaya is not just a human function. Dharmakaya, body of Buddha. So it says, consciousness, therefore, is not only a human faculty, it implies a reflective state that both involves information integration as well as subjectively feeling of past and future events.

[27:52]

It requires a greater complexity of life systems to deal with the requirement of multitasking and ecological maintenance. So, yeah. ecological maintenance and multitasking, concerns of all of us. So there's a lot more in this paper, and it gets into toroidal geometry and posits that information is a kind of part of the physical reality of the world and, but I'll just read a little bit from the ending. The central postulate of the present paper in this respect is that consciousness can be regarded as the most basic building block of nature and consequently is present at all levels of the fabric of reality.

[28:54]

So this is radically not, radically other than the idea that the world is made of material stuff. This is that our awareness itself is what it's all about. And that's what our practice is about too. How does our awareness change things? Through deep insights, contemplations, meditation, and reasoning, we can recognize some intrinsic aspects of such an all-embracing universal consciousness. However, our limited minds, being individual parts of the cosmic consciousness, operate in time-space-energy constraints and inner conditioning that only partly can reflect the true nature of reality. So this is an important aspect of a lot of Zen teaching, to recognize the limitations of our own limited human consciousness.

[30:03]

As Dogen says, for example, in Genjokulung, when we go out in the middle of an ocean or in the middle of Lake Michigan, it looks round. We don't see the shoreline. We don't see the particular aspects of the details of the shoreline. We think it's all just round. Or when we think of the water in Lake Michigan, we think of it one way as human beings, but fish see it another way. And hungry ghosts see it a different way, and dragons see it another way. So we have our own particular way of seeing all of it. And so, yes, our limited minds being individual parts of the cosmic consciousness, as they call it, operate in time-space-energy constraints and inner conditioning that only partly can reflect the true nature of reality. In spite of this handicap to go on, humanity should realize that faithful honoring of such a connecting principle may provide a potential to preserve our precious planet and guarantee a real future for mankind.

[31:11]

So that's hopeful. Again, I'm presenting this now just as a kind of metaphor, a modern metaphor for talking about the Dharmakaya, for talking about this background awareness that is, according to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the true reality of our life and our world. So. all of these teachings are not, you know, these are not abstract principles that we have to believe or disbelieve or have some understanding of. What does this say to our actual engagement in our lives, to our practice of awareness, to our practice of caring about our lives and the world?

[32:26]

How does this, what does this imply for our practice this week of just sitting, inhaling, exhaling, hopefully inhaling again, settling into the limited awareness on our seat, which is deeply connected to this unlimited awareness of the Dharmakaya. that we can kind of get a little sense of, a little taste of. How does that taste of the universal help inform how we live, help inform our reality, help support us to respond to the difficulties of the conventional world which we also live in.

[33:29]

So we come to Sangha, to spiritual community, taking refuge in Sangha, in Dharma, in truth and reality and the teaching of it, and in Buddha. And we sit upright and relaxed and breathe and allow Buddha to be on our seat. Well, who is she? Who is this Buddha? How does she express herself? And again, many Buddhas. Buddhas everywhere. And the Dharmakaya, maybe, is a way of talking about all of it.

[35:01]

And as the sutra said, the dharmakaya accomplishes immeasurable merit. Well, maybe to spend five days or five months or whatever totally merging with the dharmakaya would produce such merit that it would, you know, solve the problems of the world, I don't know, or one of the problems of the world. Eliminate guns from Chicago. Just that. I don't know. Maybe that's not the point. We live in a world where there is grasping, and anger, and hatred, and confusion, and so forth, and old age, sickness, and death. And here's the Buddha, Shakyamuni, in this story, getting ready to pass away.

[36:20]

And yet, he says, no, the Buddha doesn't die. The Buddha is permanent. The Buddha is everything. And his disciples are saying, no, please don't go. Don't go. We want to hear more. And he's saying, you can't get rid of Buddha. So we're doing this strange practice, just sitting together, supporting each other to just sit together for five days or as long as you're here. Settling into some version of Buddha body. So part of Jaya Raka Gaja is that it's joyful.

[37:29]

We all know that the world includes dukkha, includes suffering and loss and so forth, but can we also find that there is something joyful about Just the fact that here we are, together. You all look so grim. That's better. A few smiles. And you know, it hurts in your hip or your knees or your shoulders or, you know, we sit with that pain and we can let it go or, you know, you shouldn't indulge it too much, but, you know, take care of yourself through the day.

[38:41]

Take care of yourself through this life. take care of each other. Somehow, here we are, we have the opportunity to do this strange, wonderful practice of just enjoying Buddha body together. So, thank you all for being here.

[39:19]

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