I'd like to come in the room and see you all sitting. And it makes me think I don't have to do everything. You can do it by yourself. Okay, so... Let me... read this to you in English first so you can look at the English. So you're at least familiar with the words. At least the words in English. The Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering.

[01:08]

Does anybody know English well enough to follow that or should we translate it? It helps to translate it? Okay. Avlokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when he deeply practiced the Vajra Paramita, he or she realized that all five skandhas are empty in their own way and were freed from all suffering. Okay, that's an extraordinary... Another seminar just appeared. Stay here. Yeah. Well, I think I'll read it through and then I'll come back and decide which of the things I should say something about. Oh, Shariputra, Form does not differ from emptiness.

[02:17]

Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. Okay, now, that explains what five skandhas are. Because the five skandhas, they are seen in there being empty, and form is the first of the five skandhas, where it says, O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. And the last line there is the remaining four, feeling, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.

[03:21]

The five skandhas are a name. Five skandhas are the Buddhist name for self which allows you to practice non-self. So, I'll come back. Oh, Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease. Therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no impulses, no consciousness. No eyes, no ears.

[04:42]

I'm showing off how much German I know. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mine, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of the mind. No level of the eyes until there is a level of mind consciousness.

[05:47]

No ignorance and also no elimination of this ignorance Didn't you translate more than that? Yes. One line more. One line more? No, one line more. Huh? One line. But the written is so strong, it just takes you to think. Yeah. I'm glad I knew what you were translating. Oh, I turned it down. No ignorance and also no extinction of it. Can you imagine that? No ignorance and also no extinction of it. What's that? Until no old age and death and also no extinction of that either. I'm sorry. Okay. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. no cognition, also no attainment.

[06:50]

You can go quickly ahead of me and I can follow you. With nothing to attain, the bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita and her mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Far apart from all and every perverted view, she dwells in nirvana.

[07:57]

These great bodhisattvas now are smart enough to be women. In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on prajnaparamita. and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore know the Prajnaparamita is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra. which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra. Proclaim the mantra that says, Okay, is that reasonably, unreasonably clear?

[09:15]

Could you translate the last line, please? It means gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond enlightenment. And svaha is a feminine evocative, meaning you, you know, you're out there. Now, does this feel pretty strange to anyone? Yes. I've only been chanting it every day for 30 years. It still seems strange to me. In what way does it seem strange to you?

[10:42]

The promise that is true, not false, and it relieves all suffering, that feels a little strange to me, the promise. You think there couldn't be such a thing? Only by chanting, I think that's a big promise. It's a big promise that when you chant that only through chanting this is going to happen. Who said about only through chanting? If you started chanting this night and day for the next ten years without interruption, it would probably end most suffering. If you did nothing else but that, you might cause a lot of suffering to your family and your friends. Yeah. Do anybody else have something to say about it?

[12:24]

When you look at it, it was actually rather negative. It's not, no, no, no, no. Mm-hmm. And apparently it went up to stop you taking the next step. Yeah, good. Why not? You know. You know. Okay, anybody else? Sarah, this is interesting. So this seems harder than what I talked about or more impenetrable than what I talked about last night and this morning? When you talk about this, you use so many pictures that are rather easy to grasp than this relatively abstract language.

[13:40]

So when I hear your pictures, I can paint them in my mind, and then I think I know what you are talking about. While when I read this text, I have no idea what it is all about. And all that comes up is fear. Does it scare anyone else? That's not German at all. One should say it in German. Yeah, why don't you say that in German? I think I've got a lot of the... ...the... ...the difference between living... Prajnaparamita Sutra, and read what D.K. Rinpoche said a few years ago. And when he talks about it, I get so many pictures of how I can look inside and understand what he is talking about. When I read this text, What do you think?

[14:49]

I think it needs all of the words that it's really, the emptiness is filled up. It's too many words. Yes. What words would you eliminate? All of them. Except the last line. That's actually, you can do that. If I eliminated all of them, you would even not know that the possibility or practice of something like emptiness exists. Well, this is what somebody chose for the title of this seminar. So I can actually not talk about the sutra much and talk... I mean, I cannot... We don't have to deal with the sutra.

[16:27]

I can deal with the sutra the way I've been dealing with it this morning and last night. Mm-hmm. No, this is the heart and mind teaching. I've actually taught this fairly successfully two or three times in Europe. Sometimes just sort of by accident. In other words, somebody wanted to chant it or something, so we chanted it and then people began asking me questions and pretty soon we really got into what it meant. So, I would like to give you a little bit of feeling for it as a text.

[17:48]

So that, well, I don't think this should all be easy. And the ability to read texts or to understand how to read texts is an important part of, you know, how to be alive, actually. And I think that if I say something about it, it will be, I hope it will be, plant some seeds which will be useful. Okay. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva, it means the bodhisattva who sees from on high. And bodhisattva means enlightenment stuff.

[19:03]

Enlightenment stuff. Enlightenment suchness person. Enlightenment suchness person. And prajnaparamita, as I explained, means wisdom that has gone beyond wisdom. Now the five skandhas is, this is form. And then you have some feeling about it. It's a nice stick or it's some kind of something. You have a general feeling and then you shape that feeling into a perception.

[20:04]

Then you do something with that perception. You put it into the overall patterning of your mind. and then you have some consciousness about it. Now this is the simple way in which, or one way to look at how consciousness is generated. Now practice consists of practicing the five skandhas, is to concentrate sometimes on just seeing form and trying to keep it from turning into feelings and perceptions, just as if you can see bare form. As if you could hold back the feelings for a while and just see form.

[21:07]

And then you release it and let feelings appear. And use lots of feelings about a presence that's there. Like the presence of the person across the room or across a restaurant who you can't see quite because your glasses aren't on. It's the presence the person has. That's feelings. And then you make it, you put your glasses on and it becomes a perception. And then you do something with that. You think, oh, that person's nice or not nice or something. That's the impulses. And it's also sometimes translated as confection or putting something.

[22:28]

It's what you make the gatherers. It's the point at which you gather the information into the conceptual framework of your mind. And then this little blip is like a bubble. It comes up, you know, like you bubble, it comes up from a glass of mineral water, pops up to the surface, goes... And it makes consciousness. So you have these bubbles coming up into your... all the time making consciousness. And when you practice the five skandhas, you begin to be able to track the bubbles. You can watch the bubble form at the bottom of the glass.

[23:33]

It starts to form and then says, hey, I'm a bubble. It says, hey, if I'm a bubble, I can float. Here I go. And then it releases itself and comes up. And then it hits the surface of the water and discovers it's empty. Gone. So if you practice five skandhas, you get into the habit of practicing the five skandhas, you begin to have a kind of craft-like feeling of how your consciousness, your states of mind are put together. For example, if I hit this bell, Now I announced to you I was going to hit the bell, so you already, you know, something's happening there.

[25:00]

So the announcement that I was going to hit the bell with one bubble. And the sound of the bell is another bubble. Can you just hear it and not think, oh, that's a bell or something like that? So just the form. Just immerse yourself in the form. And you can allow some feeling about the bell to appear. And you can allow some feeling about the bell to appear. But you can rest in the feeling and not go any further. And then you can turn into a perception, oh, that's a bell.

[26:12]

And then you can turn into a perception, oh, that's a bell. So you can stay right there for a bit, it's a bell. And the Roshi is hitting it. Now you're in the realm of impulses. Why did he hit the bell? Does it mean we're starting zazen? Those are perceptions that have turned into motivations or impulses. Then all of that together you can allow to happen simultaneously and that's consciousness. And you can say that you have, let's say, often a moment of difficulty is more vivid to study.

[27:29]

So you notice that this bell makes you feel anxious. And you can say to yourself, why does it make me feel anxious? Maybe it's because you're going to the Sashin next week and you think you're going to be hearing it for seven days. And you're not sure you can sit for seven days. So you hear this bell and it doesn't make you want to go to Sashin, it makes you want to go home. But you don't know quite why it makes you anxious, actually, perhaps. So you can begin to follow it back.

[28:43]

Did it make me anxious at the point of impulses? Or did it make me anxious at the moment of perception? Or before I even formed a perception was I anxious with the general feeling? And of course usually the degree of anxiety disappears as you go back toward the source or toward form itself. But the form itself may also cause you some anxiety. Or you may be generally in a bad state of mind, you know. So he perceived he, she, Avlokiteshvara. This is Avlokiteshvara. The feminized form is called in China, in Japan, Kannon or Kanzayon. So, when you... Kansiyon sees sees everything, everyone.

[30:04]

And what he saw when she saw was the five skandhas. And why did he only see five skandhas? Because everything in our human world that you can point out falls into the category of one of the five skandhas. There's nothing that you can point out, think of, that isn't one of the five skandhas. There's no idea of self in the five skandhas. Is that understandable? Yes, go ahead. There's no idea of self in the five skandhas. Form is not self.

[31:27]

Feelings is not self. Perceptions are not self. They may be shaped by have a shape within them that's self, but it's not self. And impulses, gatherers are not self. And consciousness is not self. Okay. So if you begin to practice seeing things, form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, you begin to be freer from the idea of self And freer in the way self operates, you function as a self.

[32:51]

And when you begin to start functioning, when the territory of your functioning is the five skandhas, that's a kind of self. Now, you may not want to carry this all as far as I'm talking about, but if you just remember the five skandhas, And begin to see if you can, you know, when something bothers you, I think that's the best time. Did it bother me when I first saw it? Did it bother me when I first felt something? Did it bother me when I first started thinking about it? Did it bother me when I started relating it to other things?

[34:09]

Like that. If you begin to do that you can pinpoint the trigger of something bothering you quite quickly. And when you are bothered by something, even if you can't find the trigger of it, It doesn't necessarily flood your whole territory of consciousness. Because you can see it's not in the realm of form or feelings, but maybe it's only in the realm of perceptions. So you can say to yourself, geez, I've had enough problems. I've had enough trouble with those thoughts.

[35:14]

I'll shift my attention to just seeing form to take a little vacation for a while from those thoughts. Do you begin to see why even in the beginning that Avalokiteshvara might be free from suffering? And then this guy, Mr. Avalokiteshvara, Miss Avalokiteshvara, She sees that everything that she looks at in all sentient beings in the whole planet are five skandhas. are the five skandhas, and they have no substantial identity, no substantial reality.

[36:41]

So she says, great, I'm on vacation. Then she can look at it and says, ah, form, feeling, perceptions. Oh, but I need a vacation. Empty. This is true So it's like I say you should practice with the mood of the day the mood of the day And then you should practice with the mood of yourself, the music of yourself. And then third practice to add to that is you can throw it all away. Yeah. So You can have it because it's not substantial.

[38:06]

Or there's no because. You can throw it all away. In the realm of because, you can't throw it away. So, it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that All that exists is throwing it away. The mood of the music, the mood of your day, the mood of yourself still exists. It means you can also have the feeling of throwing it away. So Dogen, who is the most well-known teacher in my lineage from Japan, who I have to remind you is right now, at this moment, in your lineage too,

[39:15]

Because I brought this ancient hose that the Buddha had been passing along from person to person. And Dogen back there is holding on to it, and the Buddha has the one end. And it's sort of like a garden hose and I'm lightly spraying water on you. The sweet Dharma water. Dogen says his central thing in practice is casting off body and mind. Now this is not just an idea or something philosophical, it's a tangible experience. Now if you can get free of always thinking things have meaning, And get rid of your self-importance.

[40:40]

I didn't say it was easy. But it can happen to you just sitting zazen. As a tangible experience, you may be sitting. Suddenly you don't know where your body is and you don't know where your mind is. You're vaguely aware someone's there, but you don't know who. That's the taste of casting off body and mind. If you went and said, no one's there, I don't know where my body is, I don't know where my mind is, I don't know where I am, and you leapt into that just to taste it, that's casting off body and mind.

[41:54]

You don't know whether you'll come back or not, though. You understood? Sort of. Okay. So in Ulrika this morning, you want to say how that experience started for you? When I walked... So this observation that I told you this morning, that my physical existence is greater than this body, I noticed that when Roshi came past me to sit down on his seat. Suddenly this feeling, now he really went through me. Now that's a hard thing to recognize because everything about ourselves tells us not to recognize such things, to just recognize this.

[42:58]

So just to recognize such a thing or say, what am I feeling? This is already a kind of courage and practice. It means her ordinary sense of body and mind is not what she thought. It's not only what she thought. Now if she says to herself, and this experience happens occasionally, And she casts off the idea of body and mind. Cast off, throw away.

[44:14]

This is the experience, Dogen says, is central to really beginning practice, casting off or throwing away body and mind. It doesn't mean you lose your body and mind It just means you have a more subtle and less mental idea of what body and mind is Now do you remember when I walked in the room in the morning And I started walking around between you and said, this is how I want to get to know you. I decided before the seminar started that I was going to come in and walk around the room on your extended bodies and see what happened.

[45:21]

I decided See if any of you could feel it. So when I walked behind her, she felt it. What do you think of that? Yes. Are you ready to imagine the world isn't quite what you think? It's easier than believing in God. So this sutra is sort of like trying to get you to let go of the usual way you think about yourself.

[46:46]

And so it says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes, no realm, etc. Because what we're talking about can't be known through your eyes, ears, nose, etc. So the sutra is saying, if you want to really study yourself, you can't only study yourself through eyes, ears, nose, etc. If you want a subtle study of yourself, it can't only be done through perception. Then what is left over if you don't do it through eyes, ears, nose, mouth? There's prajnaparamita, wisdom that's gone beyond wisdom. Wisdom that's gone beyond perception.

[48:09]

And how do you do that?

[48:12]

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