Good evening, everybody. Very nice to be here. I really like coming to the Berkeley Zen Center, my Dharma home, where I started practicing, although not in this location. So it feels just like coming home, and it's wonderful. Can you hear me okay? Yes? All right. I guess this is amplifying, or is this just recording? It's fine, okay. This will improve things. How's that? Yeah, that's better, I think. Well, we have four weeks to ruminate together about the Shurangama Sutra, which is a fairly complicated sutra, and so there's no way that we're going to go through the sutra and do justice to it in four weeks.

[01:20]

So think of it as a stroll through the precincts of the Shurangama Sutra, not really a thorough study of it. But maybe that's okay because it's possible that a thorough study of it would drive us all a little crazy. It's a pretty weird sutra actually. I'm not even sure about all the possible English translations that can be found, but I think that there are only two. One by Charles Luke, which I think is, my opinion is that it's not worth reading. because I tried to read it at first and I completely couldn't make any sense out of the sutra and I realized it was as much Charles Luke as it was me.

[02:30]

Then I picked up the translation by Master Hua from the Buddhist Text Translation Society and it's much better but it comes complete with Master Hua's commentary, which is extensive. So the sutra runs to eight volumes in his text and his commentary. His commentary is completely wacky and amusing because he often tells stories about Chinese ghosts and legends of all sorts. And also, you know, wonderful Chinese legendary mythical material about the Buddha and the Buddha's disciples and all kinds of things that probably don't exist anywhere else but in Chinese Buddhism. Maybe they exist, I don't know, in other traditions. But anyway, it's interesting, but it's quite long. So I'm not expecting... I don't even know if you can still get it. I'm not expecting anybody to get the eight-volume version and read it. Although, if somebody here were interested, it's worth it.

[03:34]

If you have a taste for this sort of thing. However, so the best bet is if you go and look at the Google search engine and you type in Shurangama Sutra, which is spelled S-U-R-A-N-G-A-M-A Sutra, two words, the first thing that will come up is the Buddhist text translation translation of the whole sutra, the whole text is online and you could actually print it out if you wanted to or print out portions of it. So at least you could peruse it and sort of look through it. So that's I think the best bet. I tried to call up the Buddhist Tech Society and see if you could get it, still get it. And some guy answered the phone and said, I'm not the Buddhist Tech Society. It was the number given in the book, you know. But it was somebody else, some private home. So I'm not sure whether you could still get it from them.

[04:37]

I got it a couple years ago. Do you know whether you can? I have a check with the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. Yeah, they have an outpost here in Berkeley. Yeah, and they would know for sure. Hung sure would know. So anyway, that's just a little bit about the text. It's also a dubious text in the sense that I think most scholars, it seems, would say that it's a spurious sutra, it's a counterfeit sutra. that it was not, you know, supposedly all sutras, you know, are to be official sutras, part of the canon, they're written originally in Pali or Sanskrit and they're translated into other languages, they may be read in Tibetan or Chinese, but the original language is Sanskrit or Pali. And so there are a lot of sutras that exist in Chinese and Tibetan and don't exist in Sanskrit or Pali.

[05:40]

And the idea is that texts were lost and that scholars sort of figure out that certainly it was written originally in Sanskrit or Pali and they have internal evidence for that and so forth and so on. In this case, Most scholars think that this was, although it's purported to have been written in Sanskrit originally, most scholars think that that's not really true. That the authors of the sutra just said that to make it sound good, but it wasn't really, it was written in China. I would find it extremely hard to believe that it was not written in China, that it was originally in Sanskrit. It does seem to me to be a counterfeit sutra. And Dogen's teacher, Jurcheng, said that, that it was a counterfeit sutra, and said it was the work of the devil and you should never read such things. And Dogen agreed with this, and Dogen didn't think that the Shurangama Sutra was a true sutra. Why did I get interested in studying the Shurangama Sutra?

[06:44]

Because I had given myself the assignment of lecturing on all 100 cases of the Blue Cliff Record, and in doing that I began to realize that there were many overt and hidden references to the Shurangama Sutra. In fact, if you look up the Blue Cliff Record, case number 94, is exactly a quotation from the Shurangama Sutra that's presented as a koan and there are a number of other places where in the commentary to the case the sutra is quoted and if you think about the kind of Buddhist teaching that stands behind the Zen Koan literature, to me there's no doubt at all that the early Chinese Zen teachers were studying the Shurangama Sutra and that their dialogues and their sense of the Buddhadharma very much was influenced by the Shurangama Sutra and that's how I got into studying it. and I have found it, as I say, supremely wacky, but also very rewarding.

[07:49]

One thing for those of you who are interested in this, I would recommend that the burden of the Sutra, the main point of the Sutra, is that you have to, as they say in the translation, they use the word cultivate, cultivate your heart and mind, that the Sutra is really taught by the Buddha to Ananda in response to Ananda's continued inability to really penetrate the truth of reality which he's unable to do because he's only thinking about the teachings and not really doing zazen enough. So the sutra is meant to be appreciated in the context of serious meditation practice and the meditation practice that would be the most suitable for appreciating this sutra and in other classes that I've given I usually sit with people for a half hour first but we don't have time in this class, so I'll just say that the practice that would really be beneficial and would really make you appreciate the teachings from the Sutra is the practice of listening, literally listening to sound, sitting on your cushion, settling your mind with your breath in the beginning of the period of Zazen, coming as quiet as you can, and then actually

[09:21]

opening up the whole body to the sounds outside of the body, in the room, outside the room, and just sitting there and listening without identifying, this is a bird, that's an airplane, I wonder where they're going, you know. and so forth. I don't like that there's an airplane while I'm talking or whatever kind of thoughts, but just listening to the fact of the sound, the fact of the hearing, making the mind quieter and quieter and more and more enriched with concentration as you're sitting and just listening. If you practice that way every day, just for the time that we're studying the Sutra together, I think you'll be able to appreciate the Sutra more because one of the key themes of the sutra is the nature of perception, particularly in relation to hearing. Hearing is much emphasized. The actual meaning and sense of what really happens when you listen, when you hear, is one of the themes of the sutra in a wonderful way.

[10:34]

So you'll appreciate it more if you do that practice, but everybody is doing whatever practice they're doing, so I just suggest this. So, to give some sort of background or sense of why, in terms of our own lives and actual practice, to give some sense of why the Sutra is important and which direction it's pointing us in, I will read you a poem. This poem is by W.S. Merwin. You spend so much of your time expecting to become someone else, always someone who will be different, someone to whom a moment, whatever moment it may be, at last has come and who has been met and transformed into no longer being you and so has forgotten you.

[11:41]

Meanwhile in your life, you hardly notice the world around you, lights changing, sirens dying along the buildings, your eyes intent on a sight you do not see yet, not yet there, as long as you are only yourself with whom, as you recall, you were never happy to be left alone for long. One more time, so you can get it. You spend so much of your time expecting to become someone else, always someone who will be different, someone to whom a moment, whatever moment it may be, at last has come and who has been met and transformed into no longer being you and so has forgotten you. Meanwhile, in your life, you hardly notice the world around you, lights changing, sirens dying along the buildings, your eyes intent on a sight you do not see yet, not yet there, as long as you are only yourself, with whom, as you recall, you were never happy to be left alone for long.

[13:02]

So, maybe you can relate to this poem. the sense of how it is that as persons, you know, we're never quite there with ourselves. We're always somehow deeply, you know, in our being a person, sort of waiting for the manifestation of that person that we're somehow not now being, but that we're really supposed to be being, though we're not yet. a little bit later, or after the therapy starts kicking in, or after I've done enough Zen, and so on, and so on, and so on. So not that we're going around thinking this, but you can relate to this because deep down there is that sense. And to me, what's important about it is that it just goes to show you what a shaky thing it is, being a person. It's basically a fundamentally unsound proposition.

[14:07]

It really is. The idea that we have of being a person in the way that we think of ourselves as being persons, no matter how much we could shore that person up and make that person have great accomplishments, be wonderful in a thousand ways, it is never quite enough to remove the fundamental feeling of the shakiness of being a person. Because if what we are is this person that starts from the top of the head and then goes down to the bottoms of the feet in space and in time starts on the day that we're born and ends on the day that we die, if that's the measure of the person that we are, then we're definitely in trouble. because this person actually has a limited scope. No matter what we do, it's never going to quite satisfy.

[15:13]

So there's always a little bit of thirsting, a little bit of longing, a little bit of this sensibility that maybe later, maybe sometime, if only all this. Human beings are the only creatures that can say, if only. So, being a person is a very shaky proposition, and exactly this is the point of the Shurangama Sutra. It's telling us that the conceptualization of being a person that we have, that it's this big and that long in time, is exactly incorrect. and that it's our firm sense that that is what we are and that we know the measure of ourselves in that way. It's our firm sense of that that is why we're never quite aligned with ourselves as who we are. And the sutra is saying by using a logic, an analysis,

[16:16]

which we may or may not think holds up, but the sutra seems to think that it holds up, points out at every turn how we misperceive, misunderstand, misapprehend the nature of our perception, the nature of our thought, the nature of what we actually are. So that's really what the sutra is doing in many, many ways. And it gets, at some points, somewhat hard to take and tedious maybe even as it goes on and on and on about all this. It's a sutra of the, by the way the word shurangama means the ultimate durability of all phenomena, the ultimate durability of all phenomena, which seems like if you know Buddhist practitioners at what? the ultimate durability of all phenomena. Don't we know, after all, that all things are impermanent? Isn't that like on the first page of the book?

[17:19]

Well, the Surangama Sutra actually refutes the Buddhist teaching that all things are impermanent and that they arise according to causes and conditions. The Sutra is at great pains and a great length to deny this teaching. Likewise, it denies the seeming alternative teaching that things are caused by God or some outside force, or they're uncaused. It also denies that. It doesn't exactly propound another position, but it refutes all of the normative Buddhist and non-Buddhist positions. And what it really comes down to is a notion that turns out to be, I think, quite similar to the kind of thing that you see in almost all mystical traditions, whether it's Buddhist tantra or Hindu tantra or Jewish mysticism or Christian mysticism or shamanistic kind of mysticism.

[18:32]

All those traditions kind of boil down to the idea that this reality that we see as an ordinary, debased, miserable suffering reality that we're madly trying to improve with our Buddhism and our Dharma and our psychology and whatever we can get to improve it isn't the way we think it is. It actually is a perfect shining realm of holiness if only we could figure out how to transform it and turn it around so that it can be what it actually is. All mystical traditions, I think, speak about this sort of magical transformation, and that's the purpose of ceremonials and rites and rituals, is to create in the space of the rite and ritual, and this is true in Native American rituals, Tantric rituals. In the ritual, you turn the world that seems this debased, ordinary, dim world into something bright and magical by the things that you do in the ritual or in your practice. So this is actually the perspective of the Shurangama Sutra in this sense.

[19:40]

It's really expressed in a really nice way, oddly enough, in this book called The Way of Man, a book written before the feminist time, The Way of Man, by Martin Buber, which comes out of Buber's study of the Hasidic one has to distinguish between the actual Hasidic movement in Judaism, whatever it may have been, and Boober's idea of Hasidism. So I don't know, this is Boober talking, I don't know what it has to do with actual Hasidism, but he says here, it's a beautiful description so I'm going to read you about a page of it. In most systems of belief the believer considers that he or she can achieve a perfect relationship to God by renouncing the world of the senses and overcoming natural being.

[20:42]

Not so the Chassid. Certainly cleaving unto God is to the Chassid the highest aim of the human person but to achieve it The Chassid is not required to abandon the external and internal reality of earthly being but to affirm it in its true God-oriented essence and thus so to transform it that it can be offered up to God. Chassidism is no pantheism. It teaches the absolute transcendence of God but as combined with God's conditioned imminence So it's not that God is the world, God is beyond the world and yet only appears, shining through the world. The Shurangama Sutra says virtually the same thing. It's not that consciousness is just the world, it's beyond the world and yet consciousness itself, Buddha mind itself, only shines through the activity of the senses.

[21:47]

Then the world is an irradiation of God, like an emanation, a beam of light from God. But as it is endowed with an independence of existence and striving, it is apt always and everywhere to form a crust around itself. This is the Qabbalistic idea of the world is full of divine sparks, nothing but divine sparks that's all covered over with a crust, a thin crust that's come onto it by virtue of our constant confusion and misapprehension. Exactly the same thing is said in an early Buddha Sutra in the Pali Canon where the Buddha says, this mind, O monks, is luminous, only it has been covered over by adventitious defilements from without. In other words, the nature of our mind is

[22:50]

But because of our endless confusion and running around grabbing everything or trying to grab everything that we never can quite grab and so we're always reaching for air. Because of that activity we've created a dimness, a shell of dimness around the luminous mind and here just the same way. The reality is an emanation from God only it's been covered over with a crust by human activity. Thus a divine spark lives in everything and being, but each such spark is enclosed by an isolating shell, only the human being. can liberate it and rejoin it with the origin by holding holy converse with the thing and using it in a holy manner, that is, so that the intention in doing so remains directed towards God's transcendence. Thus the divine eminence emerges from the exile of the shells. And the Kabbalistic idea is that the human being's job is to redeem the sparks, they say, from these shells.

[24:00]

and lift them up. But also in every human being is a force divine and in humans far more than in all other beings it can pervert itself. It can be misused by humans. This happens if instead of directing it toward its origin people allow it to run directionless and to seize at everything that offers itself to it instead of hallowing passion. We make it evil. But here, too, a way of redemption is open. The one who, with the entire force of his being, turns, turns around, reverses, like Dogon's, takes the backward step, the one who does that lives at this point, lives at this, his point of the universe, the divine imminence out of its debasement which he has caused. The task of every person according to the Hasidic teaching is to affirm for God's sake the world and the person himself or herself and by this very means to transform both.

[25:09]

So the task, the religious task is for each person to affirm for God's sake, in other words, not for the sake of oneself or of the world, but for God's sake, for the sake of Buddha mind, to affirm the world in oneself and by virtue of doing that to transform both. So this is pretty much, I think, in my opinion, nicely described here. the point of view of the Surangama Sutra, the burden of all of its logical activities and arguments and so forth and so on. So, after all that, finally we get to the sutra itself. There's always, as you know, in a sutra an occasion, that little story of some sort, a little frame around whatever philosophical teaching the sutra is given. The reason why this teaching is given at this time and this sutra is no exception to that.

[26:18]

So here's the story that is told. The Buddha was invited to a big banquet King Prasenajit, the local ruler, threw a big banquet and everybody came, the Buddha and all of his disciples, except for one, Ananda. Ananda was far away and he couldn't make it. Ananda was at that time while they were all in the banquet he was out begging. And he was very mindful of a teaching that the Buddha had just given the other day where he said, you know monks, when you go begging, it's no good to pick and choose the places where you're going to beg. You know, go to beg at the nice houses and then leave off the poor houses. You might think that you might be saying to yourself, well I'm leaving off the poor house because they don't have much to offer.

[27:22]

I wouldn't want to impose on their small amount of wealth. But really it's because you think you won't get anything good. So you really have to stop looking at it that way and you just have to beg at every single house regardless of what kind of house it is or how much they have or don't have. You're not supposed to discriminate. That's really the way you're supposed to practice begging. So Ananda, one thing about Ananda, he's a really good boy. In all the sutras, Ananda is really good. He always does the right thing. He's very thoughtful. He's completely dedicated to the Buddha and to doing the right thing. Very sincere person, Ananda. So he's thinking, OK, yeah, I'm going to really go to every house. No fooling around. I'm going to go to every house. And so the next house he goes to happens to be a house of prostitution. So he doesn't bat an eyelash, he goes right to the house of prostitution, knocks on the door and one of the prostitutes comes to the door and in the sutra it only says, the only name given for her is Matangi's daughter.

[28:28]

So Matangi's daughter comes to the door to offer something to Ananda. And the other thing about Ananda that you always must remember, a very important part about Ananda's character is Ananda is extremely attractive. very pleasing to look at, and because he's such a sweet person, it even makes him more attractive, because he's just sort of, Ananda's the kind of person that you see him and you just love him immediately. You want to take him home with you and never let him go, which is exactly how Matangi's daughter feels when she lays eyes on Ananda and that's it. She's madly in love with him. But of course, Ananda, being a good monk, he doesn't even think of such things. which she sees right away is the case. So she says, just a minute. She goes into the house and she goes to her mother, who's a sorceress. And she says to her, this is a terrible situation. I have fallen head over heels in love with this wonderful monk who's at the door.

[29:32]

But he has not the slightest bit of interest in me. Can't you do something? Is there some spell or something like that that you could cast over him to cause him to fall in love with me? And the mother says, well, all right. So she cooks up a spell and she zaps Ananda with this spell and immediately he falls in love with her, with the Matangi's daughter. He's completely, madly in love with her. And like in a trance, the two of them are sort of making their way inside the house of prostitution, upstairs into the bedroom where Ananda is now in the process of taking off his clothes while the Buddha is putting a piece of food in his mouth, notices this because of course the Buddha is clairvoyant. So he's eating there and he says, something terrible is about to happen to Ananda, because it's really a bad thing. You take monks' vows, it's not fooling around, it's really bad to break them. Very bad karma. So the Buddha sees this. Now, the Buddha is not only clairvoyant, but you have to also remember that the Buddha easily violates all space-time conventions.

[30:42]

But to you and I, maybe far away or long ago, this is meaningless to the Buddha. He just doesn't mean a thing. So anyway, the Buddha is quite, you know, the Buddha never gets alarmed exactly, but he sees this is not a good thing. So he says to Manjushri, who's sitting there at the banquet, Manjushri, as we're here eating, at this very moment, Ananda is about to make a big mistake. We need to help him. would you please go over there to this place where Matangi's daughter and Ananda are and apply as an antidote to this spell the Shurangama mantra so that Ananda can be saved from this awful consequence." So Manjushri zaps over there in less time than it takes for an instant to go by and he does. He applies the Shurangama mantra And Ananda sort of wakes up out of the spell and says, oh my gosh, what am I doing?

[31:46]

Excuse me, I didn't mean this. I hope you don't mind. And he races back to Srivasti to the Buddha. When he gets there, the Buddha says, Ananda, I see by this that's just happened that your appreciation of the real nature of reality is lacking. because if you really did appreciate the way things actually are, this spell of Matangi's mother would bounce off of you like rain falls off a duck. So you really are misinformed and you have misunderstandings and that's why I'm now going to speak the eight remaining volumes of the Shurangama Sutra, which she then does. all of which is leading up to the proper understanding for the recitation of the Shurangama mantra which will fix any kind of problem like that or any other problem that one might have from now until the end of eternity.

[32:50]

So it's important to recognize that this is the story that begins the sutra. Now, we have to think about this story a little bit. It's very important to appreciate what this story is telling us. First of all, on behalf of the Buddha and the other people who over the centuries have preserved this and other sutras, I apologize to all the women in the room for this very obvious misanthropic trope which you find in all Buddha sutras and all religious literature written by monastic males. for a very good reason, because one has a hard time dealing with one's own desire, you take vows to never manifest your sexual desire, then you don't even want to think it's there, so you blame it on somebody else.

[33:53]

So there's always the trope of the temptress woman, as you see throughout world monastic literature. But we're generous people, we can forgive them for that, it's okay. We'll go on to the more fundamental point that's being made here. You see, it's not that Matangi's daughter is some sort of evil person. In fact, so much is this the case that later on in the sutra, Matangi's daughter easily gets enlightened long before Ananda does. Because what happens is of course she follows Ananda. Ananda runs back to the Buddha, she goes along too and she knocks on the door to find Ananda and the Buddha comes to the door and there she is, face to face with the Buddha and she says, well I'm here looking for Ananda because I'm in love with Ananda. And the Buddha says something like, well, which part of Ananda are you in love with, his face? She's perplexed. He said, because if you are, you know, I could cut off his face and you could have it.

[34:56]

And they have a discussion like this that goes on for some time at which Matangi's daughter kind of realizes the actual nature of her love. And then instantly, as happened in those days, they had a very efficient method of ordination. Your hair would just fall out instantaneously and you would descend from the sky onto your body. That's what happened to her. Now we have to use much more crude methods. That's how they did it in those days. Anyway, she becomes a nun and then later on, several chapters later, she becomes awakened. And it says in the commentary that she was so easily converted and became awakened exactly because she had so much love for Ananda. So it wasn't a question that there was something wrong with her love and her desire, it was just a question of turning it and holding it in the proper way and then it gave rise to awakening.

[36:00]

So it's not that Matangi is a bad person. It's not that love is bad and desire is bad because after all love and desire are life, right? You get rid of love and you get rid of desire and the whole world becomes a cinder and an ash in a minute. The question is, How do you turn these things so that they become enlightenment itself instead of suffering and pain? As we all know, these emotions of love and desire easily become suffering and pain in a minute when they're perverse. So the question is not desire and so forth and so on. The question is the spell, you see, that we're all under the spell. of confused desire, confused attraction, confused grabbiness. So not to eliminate these things, this life force in us, but rather to break the spell, to hold in our minds rather than the spell of Muthungi's daughter, the spell of coercion and desire, the reality of the indestructibility of phenomena that the

[37:14]

So that's the foundational story of the sutra. Finally, I'll open up the text and read some parts. Yes? We're about halfway through the class. Do you want to consider taking a break? No, no. How can we take a break at a time like this? No, no. No breaks. Take a break if you want. I'll keep going on talking. If you want to stand up for something, you can. but I'm in my little spaceship here, you know, I'll never get out. If I stand up it'll take me an hour. Okay, so let's see. So the rest of that time I want to read from the sutra and talk a little bit about it. So Buddha now is going to show Ananda step-by-step how he's misperceiving reality.

[38:26]

So he says to Ananda, now let's begin like this Ananda, let me ask you and do answer truthfully, why was it in the first place the home life and come and follow me. What was it that made you decide to do that? Ananda said to the Buddha, I saw the Tathagata's 32 characteristics which were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable that his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal. So you all know about the Buddha's 32 characteristics, physical marks, you know, with the big ear lobes and kind of a tattoo on his hand of a wheel and different things, many marks. So Ananda took a look at the Buddha and saw these 32 marks and the shimmering beauty of the Buddha's person.

[39:30]

And I often thought to myself, he says, he goes on, that these characteristics cannot be born of debased desire and love. Why? The vapors of debased desire are coarse and murky. From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood which cannot give off such a magnificence, pure and brilliant concentration of purple golden light. And so I thirstily gazed upward, followed the Buddha and let the hair fall off my head. So looking at the Buddha I was convinced that this what I was seeing in front of me could not have been the result of ordinary debased desire. It must be some sort of transcendent quality and so I immediately went for that. So then the Buddha says,

[40:34]

Okay, at the time of that initial resolve, Ananda, which arose in you in response to the Tathagata's 32 characteristics. The Buddha always refers to himself in the third person somehow. What was it that saw those characteristics and who delighted in them? Ananda said, World Honored One, this is the way I experienced my delight. I used my mind and my eyes. Because my eyes saw the Tathagata's outstanding characteristics, my mind gave rise to delight. That is why I became resolved and wished to remove myself from birth and death, because of my eyes and my mind. The Buddha said to Ananda, It is as you say, that experience of delight actually occurs because of your mind and eyes. If you do not know where your mind and eyes are,

[41:43]

you will not be able to conquer the wearisome dust, meaning suffering and confusion, if you don't know where your eyes and mind are. For example, he says when a king's country is invaded by thieves and he sends out his troops to suppress and banish them, the troops must know where the thieves are. So where is your mind and where are your eyes? Buddha says, it is the fault of your mind and eyes that you flow and turn over and over in the wheel of becoming, in the wheel of suffering. So I'm asking you then, about your mind and eyes, where are they now? So Ananda says, hmm, well, Buddha, all the ten kinds of living beings in the world alike maintain, so not like, you know, he's such a nice sort of humble person, he would never say, well, I think, he says, everybody says, you know, all the people in the world all say, I'm just agreeing with everybody else, you know, I'm not making this up.

[42:50]

All the ten kinds of living beings in the world alike maintain that the conscious mind dwells within the body. And as I regard the Tathāgata's blue lotus flower eyes, they too are on the Buddha's face just like everybody else's eyes are on their face. So you ask me where's the mind? The mind is inside the body and the eyes are on the face. I mean, what are you asking Buddha? I mean, I don't get it. The Buddha says, You are now sitting in the Tathagata's lecture hall looking at the Jada Grove. Looking at the Jada Grove. Where is it, the Jada Grove, at present? Ananda says, World Honored One, this great, many-storied, pure lecture hall is in the garden of the benefactor of the solitary. At present, the Jada Grove is in fact outside the hall.

[43:52]

The hall is in the garden. So we're in the hall, outside the hall, that's where the garden is. Right? So Ananda Buddha says, as you are now in the hall, what do you see first? Well, Ananda says, World Honored One, here in the hall, I first see you, it's Tagata, because now it's like sitting in the audience looking to Tagata. Next I see the Great Assembly, all the people assembled there. And from there, as I gaze past all that outward, I see the grove and the garden. I'm So I can be inside here, but I can see in the distance because of that."

[45:18]

The Buddha said to Ananda, it is as you say. When one is in the lecture hall and the doors and windows are open wide, one can see far into the garden and grove. Could there be someone in the hall who does not see the Tathagata and yet sees outside the hall." In other words, could you see outside the hall but not see all that's inside the hall? Ananda answered, World Honored One, to be in the hall and not see the Tathagata and yet see the grove and the fountains outside, it's impossible. Ananda, you are like that too. Your mind is capable of understanding everything thoroughly. Now, if your present mind, which thoroughly understands everything, were in your body, as you just said it was, then you would be aware, first of all, of what is inside your body. If you were going to see outside, first you'd see inside, just like the same thing you just said.

[46:26]

Can there be living beings who first see inside their bodies before they observe things outside? Even if you cannot see your heart, liver, spleen and stomach, still the growing of your nails and hair, the twist of your sinews and the throb of your pulse should be clearly understood. If the mind is inside the body and the mind is what sees, then you should be able to see all that's inside your body, just like being in the room. You see everything inside and then you look outside. How could anybody inside the room See outside, but not see inside first, since inside is closer. You have to see through the inside to the outside. How come you don't see your spleen and your lungs and your heart and all that? And if you can't perceive what's inside, then how do you know you're perceiving anything outside? So Ananda, you're telling me these things, but you really don't know what you're talking about. You state the impossible when you say that the aware and knowing mind is in the body.

[47:28]

It's not in the body. then comes many, many pages where the Buddha shows in a similar fashion to Ananda that the mind that you say is in the body is also not outside the body, it's not in between the body and the outside. the mind is actually, you don't know where it is. You can't look, the mind doesn't seem to have any location and yet you say that you saw me and became interested in following the path because your mind somehow apprehended me but how could that be when there is no location for the mind? So Ananda is madly trying different options as to where the mind could be and how seeing could take place. And he finally says, well I know." He says, it's just that the mind doesn't, at first I thought that the mind sees, uses the eyes to see, but now I realize that the mind isn't located anywhere, so it must be that the eyes see.

[48:34]

The mind just knows and the eyes see. And then the Buddha says, supposing that the eyes can see, then when you were in a room, the doors should also be able to see. Because the eyes are in conjunction with the mind, so if the eyes in conjunction with the mind can see, then the doors which are also in conjunction with the seeing of the eyes, why can't they see? They can't see. But the real argument is a much better one, is this one. but their eyes are still intact, then they should be able to see, right? You could take somebody, their corpse laying there and put on a Seinfeld TV show, the corpse can't see the TV show. But if you took the eyes out of the corpse and put it in a person who didn't have an eye, the eye would work, because the eye is actually in good shape, fine, it works perfectly.

[49:42]

but the corpse can't see anything. So that shows you that it's not the eye that sees and it's not the mind either because you can't find the mind anywhere. So Ananda is really becoming perplexed. This whole idea upon which he bases his whole concept of reality and his whole way of being in the world about what his mind is and how his senses function is now being really messed up. Then later on he says to the Buddha, Well, let's see if I can find this part. I can't.

[50:48]

Anyway, the next part that I can't find says, supposing the nature of the mind must be something, so if you say that it has a substance, It's the substance that is either pervasive or not. Supposing it is a pervasive substance, the case is the same as before in the instance of pinching. If it was pervasive, if the mind was pervasive, not located anywhere in particular, but pervasive, then if you pinched your shoulder, you ought to be able to feel the pinch in your foot, and you can't, so the mind must not be pervasive. But if you say it's more than one substance, then you'd have two of you, or three of you, or four of you, depending on how many substances the mind was divided into. So he says, then the Tathagata at the end of this lengthy disquisition about seeing and the mind and sight and so forth, raised his golden arm and bent his five wheeled fingers as he asked Ananda, do you see?

[51:57]

Ananda said, I see. The Buddha said, what do you see? Ananda said, I see the Tathagata raise his arm and bend his fingers into a fist of light which dazzles my mind and eyes. The Buddha said, what do you see it with? Ananda said, the members of the Great Assembly and I each see it with our eyes. The Buddha said to Ananda, you have answered me by saying that the Tathagata bends his finger into a fist of light which dazzles your mind and eyes. Your eyes are able to see, but what is the mind that is dazzled by my fist? Ananda, now he thinks he's got it. Okay, the mind isn't located anywhere. It's not a substance. It's not the senses.

[52:57]

You're saying to me, where's the mind? Now I see that I use my mind to search for the answer to your question and it's precisely the ability to investigate, to try to perceive and discern that is the mind. That's what the mind is. The Buddha says, completely wrong. And Ananda, now he's really upset and he becomes startled. He leaps out of the seat and he puts his palms together and says to the Buddha, if that's not my mind, like that's my final position, I give up, I can't think of anything else. If it's not that, what is it? The Buddha said, It is your perception of false appearances based on external objects which deludes your true nature and has caused you from beginningless time to your present life to recognize a thief as your son, to lose your eternal source and to undergo the wheels turning."

[54:17]

Ananda said to the Buddha, World Honored One, I am the Buddha's favorite cousin. It is because my mind loved the Buddha that I was led to leave the home life. It is my mind that not only makes offerings to the Buddha, but also in passing through lands as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges River to serve all Buddhas and good, wise advisors, and marshalling great courage to practice every difficult aspect of the Dharma, I always use this mind, whatever it is, even though I don't know. Even if I'm slandering the Dharma and eternally withdrawing my good roots, it would still be because of this mind. If this is not my mind, then I have no mind. And if I have no mind, I'm the same as a clod of earth or a piece of wood because there is nothing that is apart from this awareness and knowing. Why do you say this is not my mind? I am startled and frightened and not one member of the Great Assembly is without doubt. We're all sitting here freaking out over this whole idea. I only hope that the World Honored One will regard us with great compassion and instruct those who have not yet understood."

[55:25]

And the Buddha did, he instructed them. The Tathagata has often said that all dharmas that arise are only manifestations of the mind. All causes and effects, the worlds, as many as fine motes of dust, come into being because of the mind." So what we call matter is not fundamentally different from mind. It's a sub-category of mind. What Buddha here means by mind is something that transcends the division that we make in Western thought between mind and matter. Everything in this world, including what we call material, comes to be because of the mind. Ananda, when all the things in the world, including blades of grass and strands of silk thread, are examined at their fundamental source, each is seen to have substance and a nature.

[56:32]

Even empty space has a name and an appearance. How much less could the clear, wonderful, pure, bright mind, the essence of all thought, itself be without substance? If you insist that the nature which knows and observes and is aware of distinctions is the then apart from all forms, smells, tastes and touches, apart from the workings of all the defiling objects, that mind should have its own complete nature." And so forth. So the Buddha is saying that your mistaken conceptions in a limited way about the mind is what has caused, exactly that, has caused the suffering and confusion that has, from time immemorial, made you run around in delusion. You need to understand the real nature of mind as brightness, like Buber was saying, as sparks, as luminous holiness.

[57:37]

So, I want to give you one last bit that I think is one of my favorite parts of the sutra, which I think, as I say, it's a little hard to do this because this is ongoing logical argument that goes on for volumes. It's hard to sort of tap into significant moments and make sense of it. This is one piece that I think does make sense as a unit in and of itself. Here there's a lengthy analysis. Now before in the first volume we saw a lengthy analysis of the process of seeing and a deconstruction of the whole idea of seeing and a statement that because of our constructing a sense of seeing and attaching to that construction we suffer. Now we have similarly an analysis of seeing from another perspective.

[58:41]

Here the king rises up in the assembly. King Prasenajit rises up and says to the Buddha, I am old now and I feel that I'm soon going to die and I'm confused about what's going to happen at that point. I've received various teachings about that and I don't really know what to think. Could you please say something to help me understand? The Buddha said to the great king, now I ask you, as it is now, is your physical body like a vajra, indestructible and living forever, or does it change and go bad? World Honored One, this body of mine will keep changing until it eventually becomes extinct. World Honored One, the Buddha said, Great King, you have not yet become extinct.

[59:46]

How do you know you will become extinct? That's true, you know. None of us has ever died, so why do we think we will? We don't really know, you know. How do you know that you will become extinct? World Honored One, although my impermanent, changing and decaying body has not yet become extinct, I observe it now and every passing thought fades away. Each new one fails to remain but gradually perishes like fire turning to ashes. This perishing without cease convinces me that this body will eventually become completely extinct." The Buddha said, so it is. Great King, at your present age, you are already old and declining. How do your appearance and complexion compare to when you were a youth? World Honored One, in the past, when I was young, my skin was moist and shining.

[60:49]

When I reached the prime of life, my blood and breath were full. But now, in my declining years, as I race into old age, which is the only way one gets there, racing, my form is withered and wizened and my spirit dull. My hair is white and my face is in wrinkles and I haven't much time remaining. How can I be compared to how I was when I was full of life? The Buddha said, Great King, your appearance should not decline so suddenly. The King said, World Honored One, that change has been a hidden transformation of which I honestly have not been aware. I have come to this gradually through the passing of winters and summers. How did it happen? In my twenties, I was still young, but my features had aged since the time I was ten. My 30s were a further decline from my 20s.

[61:54]

And now, at 62, I look back on my 50s as hale and hearty. I can relate to that. I remember when I became 30, I thought, oh boy, this is really getting serious now. Then when I was 40, I thought, oh, getting old, old. Now if I see somebody who's 40, I think, geez, 40, that's pretty good, you know, young, could do anything, anything could happen now. Now to me, like 50, that'd be nice to be 50, you know, pretty young. So he's thinking, yeah, when I was 50, I was like in the prime of life, you know. When you're 30, you think 50, geez, that's really old, 50. So World Honored One, I am contemplating these hidden transformations. although the changes wrought by this process of dying are evident throughout the decades.

[62:56]

I might consider them further in finer detail. These changes do not occur just in periods of twelve years. There are actually changes year by year. Not only are there yearly changes, there are also monthly transformations. Nor does it stop at monthly transformations. There are also differences day by day. Examining them closely, I find that moment after moment, thought after thought, they never stop. And that's how I know that my body will keep changing until it eventually becomes extinct. A long answer to the Buddha's question. The Buddha told the Great King, by watching the ceaseless changes of these transformations, you awaken and know of your extinctions. Extinction. So in other words, you told me, you know because you've observed all this. But, do you also know day by day, month by month, year by year, until you had reached 60. In thought after thought there has been change.

[63:58]

Yet, when you saw the Ganges River at the age of three, how was that act of seeing, that consciousness of seeing the Ganges River, different from seeing the Ganges River when you were 13? He's not asking about the Ganges River and how it looked. He's asking him about the experience of seeing. Was there any difference in the experience of seeing from the age of three to the age of 13? The king said, it was no different from when I was three. And even now, when I am 62, that's how old this old king is, 62. It is still no different. The Buddha said, now you are mournful that your hair is white and your face is wrinkled. in the same way that your face is definitely more wrinkled than it was in your youth, has the seeing with which you looked at the Ganges, the seeing itself.

[65:03]

Now he's not talking about the organ that sees, he's not talking about the object that is seen, because those have both changed. Ganges River probably looks different and the king certainly has already explained that he looks different. But the consciousness of seeing, the fact of seeing, an experience of seeing, even if his eyes went a little bad, you know, over the years, what about the experience itself of seeing, regardless of what's being seen, that experience, has that experience of seeing changed? So that it is old now, but was young when you looked at the river as a child in the past. The king said, no, world honored one. The Buddha said, Great King, your face is in wrinkles but the essential nature of your seeing has not wrinkled.

[66:04]

How could the essential nature of the consciousness of seeing wrinkle and degrade? What wrinkles is subject to change. What does not wrinkle does not change. what changes will become extinct, but what does not change is fundamentally free of production and extinction. How can it be subject to your birth and death? Furthermore, never mind, it refers to something I didn't tell you before. The king heard these words, believed them and realized that when the life of this body is finished, there will be rebirth. He and the entire Great Assembly were greatly delighted at having obtained what they never had before." So, you see we're living in this realm of the object, the perceiver and the object.

[67:18]

This is what we identify with, this is the world that we live in and that we validate and that we identify with. But the Buddhist point here is that in every act of perception and thought, because thought is a form of perception according to Buddhist analysis, so just another instance of perception, in every instance of consciousness, this consciousness that can't be located anywhere, cannot be identified with the organs of the body and the organs of perception and the physical and other objects of the world give occasion for the arising of this luminous consciousness that doesn't wrinkle, can't be located, never began and therefore can't end. That's actually what we are, most fundamentally.

[68:21]

So when he says rebirth he's not saying, King you're going to be reborn, some little birdie inside of you is going to fly out of you and fly into some other body, he's not saying that. He's saying this consciousness that articulates itself through the location of your being He's proven, I did not do a great job of proving it to you, but in the sutra the Buddha purports to be proving that the consciousness is not explained by the organ or the object or by any of our conceptions about it. That it's a totally undefinable, unlocatable, insubstantial, you can't even say it is or it isn't, kind of a thing. And that is actually what creates our life moment after moment. Without that, whatever it is, we're not here. And it's there in every moment of our experience.

[69:23]

It's actually there. It's like right there in the middle of every moment of our experience. And we're so sort of fixated on me and on that over there that we're actually not appreciating and noticing. And this is why it's very important to do Zazen or whatever your spiritual practice is, to do a practice that brings you, that sort of lets go with all of the usual ways of being a person, sort of abandons open oneself to this bigger ineffability and I think that this is what happens in zazen when you sit in zazen and really calm your mind you sort of quiet down the fourth skanda of grasping and you know doing you bring it to rest and then the fifth skanda, the skanda of consciousness

[70:28]

It's not exactly that you know something or you feel something because knowing and feeling after all is just grasping after objects, but rather that somehow the richness of consciousness, the valence of consciousness brightens up a little bit and in zazen it's as if with your very body you're touching this larger space in which we're held. That's why, as I said in the beginning, being a person is such a Because as long as you're just looking at this person and not looking at that which holds the person, not only holds it, but that which holds it manifests through the being the person moment after moment. If you're not aware of that and not letting that into your life and letting that into your sense of identity, then you're really doomed to vicissitudes of whatever happens to this little thing right over here. But when you open yourself to this larger capacity that is always functioning through you.

[71:37]

And through the process of doing Zazen and engaging in spiritual practice more and more and more, making it one's life project to more and more give yourself to that and become that and identify with that. Not denying, of course, the body and the mind and the personality and the history and so forth, not denying it. but not thinking that that's the whole story, realizing that that's just consciousness' way of appearing right here, now. If we were theists, or if we were Martin Buber, we might say, God made us to manifest God's Spirit in this particular way, and that's what we are, a vessel for that. So we use our individuality and our quirks and our lunacies and our funny business to do that work. So we actually don't have to, it's not about improving ourselves, you know practice is not a question of improving ourselves, making a better person, it's a question of totally recontextualizing the person.

[72:49]

King Prasenajit, he's really allowed by his Socratic dialogue here, the king, to radically recontextualize his life, so that now he has a measure of serenity as he faces his extinction, realizing that yes, definitely something will become extinct, but that which he most truly is won't become extinct. It never really started, so how could it end? So this is the main point of the Shurangama Sutra. It goes on and on from there in different interesting ways. I confess to you that I'm offering this class in the Shurangama Sutra for entirely selfish reason.

[73:55]

And the reason is because I've taught it from it before. Teaching is an exaggeration of what I'm doing here. I've read it with people before and I never finished it, so I want to finish it. And I realized that the only way that I'll finish it is if I give a class in it. So you're all here as an excuse for me to finish reading the Shurangama Sutra. So I'm probably going to race through the earlier volumes that I have read and spend more time on the later volumes that I haven't read. So I apologize for that and I hope you don't mind. You can always get your money back or something. Did they give you your money back around here? Did you pay any money? No? Hasn't happened yet. Okay well I'll end my overly long, I realize and I apologize, presentation for the Shurangama Sutra with a poem about the Shurangama Sutra which I wrote.

[75:06]

Memorized Phrases. How your self-referential and elongate my legs so I can race against the labyrinths of identity, victorious as ever with all the rest. Consciousness abounds, gushing forth everywhere into all the cracks of space, all the distances of perception. There's no one who knows this. only the is-ness of it all, and the forever solid, indelibly reverberating not." Once more. Memorized phrases. How your self-referential summations soothe my ears and elongate my legs so I can race against the labyrinths of identity, victorious as ever with all the rest.

[76:16]

The consciousness abounds, gushing forth everywhere into all the cracks of space, all the distances of perception. There's no one who knows this, only the is-ness of it all and the forever solid, indelibly reverberating not. That's N-O-T, not. I usually, if I do this sort of class, I tend to yak more in the first class than any of the other ones because I'm going over the background of the sutra and setting the stage and so on. So I promise that in the subsequent classes my general plan is to allow about half time for presentation and half time for discussion and dialogue. So I apologize for

[77:19]

being long-winded, but maybe you got a little nap out of it or something, I don't know. So, I guess that's all for tonight. Thank you. Four vows, do we chant? Or do we chant, may our intention... Okay.

[77:34]

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