Not necessary, but it's probably counterproductive. Zarinus Dalai Lama gave a five day... And the teaching consisted of him reading the entire text for five days. It was very long. meet every day several hours in the morning and then take a break and then several hours in the afternoon. Thousands of people came and he just read the text. Occasionally he would make a very slight comment and so you would think, you know, what's the point of that? Why would you go from traveling from far away wherever you lived in Nepal or something like that or Dharamsala to go to Bodh Gaya and hear Dalai Lama read this book that was generally available that you could buy and read yourself, but virtually no one there had a question like that.

[01:00]

It was perfectly obvious to them why you would do that, because you wanted to be there experiencing the text in that way in that situation. although I'm not the Dalai Lama, still, to experience the text together in the Buddhadharma Hall in the Zen Do, worthwhile, whether we think we understand it or not, and if you think you understand it, then probably. The point of the text, I think, why this perplexing dialogues and logical moves are relevant is because we all have a lot of assumptions about reality. we might not think that we do, we might think, well, I never thought about that, I never read any philosophy books, I never, I don't, I mean, I'm just doing my life, I don't have a whole bunch of ideas about it, but we all do have a tremendous amount of ideas about our lives, very developed, that we've unconsciously taken in from our families, our society, the structure of our language,

[02:20]

the structure of human thought and perception has created a whole powerful ideology that we all participate in, that conditions our whole way of approaching life. So everybody's a philosopher, even if you've never read a book of philosophy or thought about anything much. If you are a functioning human being in a culture, you're full of thoughts and ideas, which is okay, there's nothing wrong with thoughts and ideas, except if you have a whole structure of thoughts and ideas that tend toward suffering and not toward liberation, then this becomes a problem. And so this is the point of the Sutra, why it's so perplexing is because it's challenging some of the most basic human ideas that we all quite unconsciously hold. And so when we hear somebody violating those fundamental ideas it sounds bizarre, but the violation of those ideas, the pointing out that those fundamental ideas that we hold as human beings are not necessarily true.

[03:24]

And there's a whole other way of looking at the world. That's really the burden of all this stuff that the Sutra is putting out. So reviewing just a little bit from last time, what we were hearing was a very lengthy analysis of the process of perception. We found out that the sense organs don't actually sense anything. that the mind, which is involved in the process of perception clearly, isn't locatable anywhere, not inside, remember, not outside the body, not in between the body. The sense organs and the objects of the senses seem to be somehow independent and disconnected. And yet it seems as if all these things arising together, the sense organs, the objects, consciousness, make an occasion in which something is happening, even though we've been disabused of our whole usual, there's something over there, I'm hearing it, now I know it's there, I heard it with my mind, which is somehow inside my body here.

[04:45]

All of that seems to be now not at all true, and yet nevertheless there's no denying that something feels like it's going on. We seem to be here, we seem to be alive, we seem to be having human experience, whatever, however you define it or understand it, we seem to be having human experience. So what is it? Even when you sit in Zazen and if you are having a good day and the mind is very quiet and you're not producing a whole lot of thoughts about your problems or even your senses of who you are or what you are as a person and the mind is very, very quiet, I think you still have a feeling, no matter how subtle it might be, that there's someone there, that there's an observing consciousness. Even if the observing consciousness has very little to worry about, there seems to be still an observing consciousness.

[05:51]

So what about that? We ended last time with the story of the king, Prasenajit, who was aging and wondering about his aging body. Maybe you remember that passage. I think it's one of the clearest passages in the sutra for making the point, which is made over and over again in many, many ways. The king says, I'm not sure what will happen to this body. as the aging process continues. And there's many questions and answers about this. And the king explains that he's seen his life changing all along, and so he assumes that it will continue to change until finally the body dies. And the Buddha says, you should know there's something in the body that doesn't die. And the king says, oh, well, what could that be? And then the Buddha questions him about the act of seeing. And he says, is the act of seeing itself Not the organ of sight, not the object of sight, but the act of seeing.

[06:54]

Is the act of seeing something that has aged in your life? Has it become older now that you're as old as you are than it was when you were a child?" And he said, no. the body's older, the organ of sight is older, maybe not as acute as it was, the act of seeing itself hasn't changed. And the Buddha says, yes, that which does not wrinkle is not subject to change. He said the skin wrinkles, but the sense of seeing doesn't wrinkle. That which doesn't wrinkle and doesn't change is not subject to production or extinction, so that the experience of seeing is not inside the body, not outside the body, and yet it arises whenever they're seeing, and that experience of seeing, that consciousness that conditions that perception, is endurable, enduring, permanent. And so then the king says, oh, there'll be rebirth. So he's encouraged by this, because he realizes that even though the body

[07:55]

and all that's associated with the body, the memories and specific thoughts and so on, would pass away, there's something that arises in his mind and heart, moment after moment, that is much larger than that, that never was appeared, that never was created when his body came into this world, and so won't be destroyed when his body is destroyed. So that is continually transforming on and on and on and so this gives the king a kind of wonderful hope and new sense about his life. Consciousness abides. Consciousness continually unfolds. In the I'm sure many of you have studied one of the main ways in Buddhism of talking about the process of conscious experience, which is, in one way of looking at it, analyzed into five skandhas, or five heaps, five categories of activity.

[09:04]

The first one is form. which is manifested, really what form is, is manifested consciousness, consciousness that is made manifest in the so-called outer world. Form is that which is out there, as opposed to things like thought, perception, consciousness which is in here. So the outer world, the out there, is form. the first skanda, form is actually defined as that which can be changed, injured or dissolved and won't perish. Because you can grab a piece of material and it's always breakable. Even if it's hard to break, it's always breakable, that's its nature. But you can't grab a thought and break it. you couldn't do that. By the time you try to reach for it, it would be gone. It's not the kind of thing that you can grab and break.

[10:08]

So actually, only material things are breakable. The rest of it, although it flashes in and out, it's not breakable. So that's what defines material things, that they're breakable. And that includes the body. The body is actually a material thing. It's out there, our own body. Even though we say, this is me, this is my body, it's actually out there. as opposed to the feelings, thoughts, awareness, which we think of as being in here. So the first skanda is form, that which is out there as opposed to what is in here. The other four skandas are all about what's in here. The second one is called feeling, so that when something out there comes into contact with something in here, through a sense door, there's a kind of chemical reaction that happens within consciousness, there's a kind of a fusion that happens, and that's called feeling.

[11:10]

So it doesn't mean emotion per se, it just means literally like a chemical reaction with inside of consciousness, like when a match is struck and all of a sudden there's a light, you know, flares up. That's the second skanda, the skanda feeling. And then based on that combustion that happens within consciousness when the outside meets inside, then there's interpretation. What is that? And that's perception. We say, oh, I see fire. And perception always involves interpretation and some kind of language, even if it's not words. Some sort of language or image-making capacity is involved in the act of perception. And then, on the shoulders of that act, we then have we start strategizing about that thing we just interpreted and defined and brought to being in the world.

[12:12]

We start thinking, I like it, I don't like it, I wanna change it, I wanna get another one like that, I think if I put this together with that, I can make this. We have intentions, we have desires, likes, dislikes, strategies, manipulations based on that interpretation that came as a result of the combustion. So that's the fourth skanda, the skanda of activity. And then the fifth one is called consciousness, the field in which all of these transformations take place, and really the name of the process, the container for the whole process within awareness, within cognition, is called consciousness. So that's the way the activity of consciousness is generally understood in traditional Buddhism. Now the interesting thing about this is that usually what's really active in our lives is the fourth skanda and the third skanda. The interpreting and doing, dealing with, strategizing part of our activity is usually quite powerful.

[13:19]

So one doesn't notice particularly the field in which it unfolds, consciousness, nor even particularly does one notice the activity of the act of interpretation and perception that happens each and every moment when things are arising and passing away in our lives. And that's one of the nice things about practicing Zazen, because when you practice Zazen, you create a situation in which the foreskanda is going to become more quiet, because there's nothing to do. there's no need to create anything. Even when you go to sleep at night, the foreskanda is very active. As you're in your dreams and in your sleep, kind of figuring out how to position yourself in relation to the day that just passed, getting ready to sort of face the day that's coming, you're very active at night. But in Zazen, you really don't have to do that. So sometimes it happens that the foreskanda becomes quite settled.

[14:23]

And when that happens, the fifth skanda, especially in the third skanda, become more strong. So you can really appreciate and really focus in on and really sense the what's really going on in acts of perception and in consciousness itself. So that's why the theme of this sutra, and we'll get around to exactly how that works, but the theme of this sutra has to do with the practice that I just mentioned last time and encourage all of you to do while we're studying this sutra, the practice of listening. sitting in Zazen and calming yourself and turning the awareness to hearing sound, literal sound, and focusing as quietly as possible and as intently and acutely as possible on the act of perception of sound and the sphere of consciousness in which that takes place.

[15:25]

Because the point of the Sutra turns on that, particularly with sound, but also with other perceptions as well. So the point is that what Ananda, and I told you last time about why the sutra is being taught to Ananda, Ananda is very fixated on the teachings, on the understanding of the teachings, and hearing them, listening to them, and repeating them, but he hasn't really cultivated this increased brightness around the third and fifth skandhas. He hasn't really understood the actual nature of perception and consciousness, and that's why he is subject to the spell of Matangi. So this emphasis on cultivation you know, in sitting practice of the nature of perception and consciousness is really a big focus and something that the Sutra will tell us is transformative if we can really see at that point how mind unfolds.

[16:40]

Of course, sometimes I should mention when we sit in zazen, the fourth skanda doesn't calm down, right? Sometimes In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. I was going along fine, you know, I was perfectly happy and I sat down in Zazen and all of a sudden my mind was raging and all these thoughts and feelings and all these emotions were coming and everything. I didn't know that. Where did that come from? Zazen, I quit, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore. It causes all this to happen. But it's not that Zazen causes that to happen. It's that we've been fairly successful before we sat down in zazen in creating distractions in our minds from the tremendous activity of the four skandhas. We've masked it with other things. Then we sat down and we stopped actually doing things, put our hands down in our lap, and then all of that buildup of karma that was swirling around but unnoticed

[17:45]

suddenly comes up, and even though it's actually unpleasant to sit there with all that and you think, well, I'm wasting my time, I'm leaving, but actually it's really good because it does discharge and purify it, even though it's painful sometimes. I think when you get up from a time like that in zazen, you feel somewhat relieved, even though the experience might not have been pleasant. I thought I should say that in case Somebody might think, oh, I'm doing it all wrong, my four skandhas. And the reason why that would happen is just according to conditions. In other words, there's nobody to blame about this. We would naturally think, I'm doing it wrong, or there's something wrong with my zazen, that would be our natural way of thinking about it. But this has very little to do with it, in fact nothing at all. It has to do with conditions. If the conditions for the raging of the four skandhas would apply, then it would. if the conditions would not be there then it wouldn't. So it just happens one way or the other that way.

[18:48]

So that's the usual explanation of consciousness. Now what the Shurangama Sutra is doing is it's challenging that whole thing that I just explain, that we take for granted. I mean, more or less, we don't have to be heavy-duty Buddhists to appreciate that there is perception and all these things. But the Shurangama Sutra is proposing that this model is severely limited in some very important ways. And it's proposing that we question the distinction between the first and the second skandhas. In other words, that we really focus on the idea of inside and outside and see if that idea is absolutely an assumption in all of our acts of perception and thought.

[19:58]

We see if that idea actually holds up. That's why it's so perplexing, all these things that are being said, because That idea is just, of course, there's inside and outside. But the Sutra is casting doubt on that. And it's saying that exactly there, because we project an outside and an inside, with that projection comes our suffering. That's the most intimate cause of our suffering. everybody here I'm sure is familiar with the idea of projection. we think of projection, psychological projection, that I'm going to project my own fears and desires and problems and hopes onto that which I see happening in front of me. The people and the events that happen in front of me, I'm going to project my hopes and fears from my past onto that.

[21:01]

So even though maybe none of these things are going on, I certainly see that this is going on. And then I'm fundamentally confused about what is actually going on and so then I'm going to have a lot of problems in my life because I'm mistaken about what's happening. So we all agree that, yeah, that's no good, we should straighten that out and improve our view and go to therapy or have a greater self-awareness about our psychological patterns and so forth. But the Shurangama Sutra is saying that that level of projection is one thing, but that level of projection is based on a more fundamentally askew projection, which is a whole projection of the outward world as we see it. Even if we had all our psychological house in order and we had perfectly organized our family relationships and all of our lunacy and we had it all figured out and we passed our therapy with flying colors and they said, you should be the therapist now, you have everything figured out.

[22:14]

Even so, we would still be operating in a world of fundamental projection, because we project the actual world in a way that it isn't. And even though we might not have psychological issues, we would have the tremendous pain that comes from, in a sense, being, first of all, exiled from our body, because our body is out there to us in the way that we live in this world and exiled from the world. The pain of that separation and division would make for despair and suffering even if there were no psychological issues at all. So the good news is that you can save a lot of money on therapy because you don't have to really necessarily solve all those problems unless they're too terrible.

[23:17]

Because the point is not to psychological wholeness, but spiritual wholeness, to solve the fundamental projection. Then the rest of it, you can still be crazy and it's okay. It can be kind of like cute to be crazy. Because the psychological imbalances would be, the context to them would be totally flipped around. And so you could then be neurotic, but instead of being like a neurotic elephant or lion, you'd be a neurotic like kitty cat, a neurotic puppy dog. So you'd maybe chew a little furniture, but nothing too serious. So the Shurangama Sutra is telling us, when it comes down to it, things are happening. Yes, something is going on here, but Beyond that, everything is projection, confusion.

[24:26]

Just things are happening. That we like them, that we don't like them, that they're good, that they're bad, that they're this, that they're that, is already going too far and already creating the basis for suffering. Even saying that something is happening is going too far. I always, whenever I see Dalai Lama, I always am struck, if you have a chance to be in close quarters with him, in a discussion or something like that, I'm always struck by how he appears to me, at least the way it looks to me, he appears like an animal, in the sense that he has that same kind of attentiveness. You ever see an animal just attentive without judgment or making anything out of it, just looking, just there?

[25:32]

And he seems that way to me. He seems to have that kind of attention. It seems that his attentiveness is really very pure without too much interpretation or judgment. I think that's why he seems to have a lot of love, because that's what happens if you don't have a lot of judgment or discrimination, and just being there, just seeing what's there. So of course, Dalai Lama is not an animal, he's a human being with the same kind of human feelings that you and I have, and the same kind of reflective consciousness, the same kind of sense of I or me that you and I have, sense of an observing consciousness. But I think because of his practice and wholesome roots, like they say in the sutra, he maybe has less projection. than you and I have, so that there's more spaciousness, maybe, in the way that he can receive phenomena and more delight and attention.

[26:37]

Maybe he has more of a capacity, because of his practice, to allow consciousness to unfold in an unprejudiced way, without projecting an other. So probably he has more happiness in his life. So that's the hope, I think, the sense, the virtue of understanding the nature of consciousness in that way, and understanding it well enough to know our projections as projections, and therefore not be caught by them. And when we're not caught by them, there would be a tremendous reduction in the number of projections, because the projections that we reinforce, of course, continue and become more strong. So I'm saying all this because as we wade into the sutra and it gets kind of, you know, the way it gets, as you already know, you forget, like, what is all this about? And I just wanted to say that this is what I think is important about it.

[27:42]

So now I want to get to the text and I realized, I had a hard time this week trying to figure out what to bring to you, because I realized I have made a mistake trying to do something too big of a thing, it's just too small of a time. So I should really give maybe a one-year class on the Shurangama Sutra, but nobody would stand for that. So I think I will get it over with and do what I can. in a month just to give you a flavor for the sutra. And I think that in a way we can. kind of get the gist of it, and here are some of its most important passages. But keep in mind, this is really rushing through, it's hard for me to figure out what to leave in and what to leave out and make it seem at all coherent. But anyway, this is my attempt.

[28:44]

So I'm starting here somewhere after the story of the king. The Buddha says, the primary misconception about the mind and body is the false view that the mind dwells in the physical body, which we all actually think, even if you'd answer, no, I don't think the mind is in the body. Still though, you think, my mind, where am I? I'm here. So in a way we do believe that. You do not know that the physical body, as well as the mountains, the rivers, empty space and the great earth, all that which is out there, are all within the wonderful, bright, true mind, the mind of enlightenment.

[29:45]

It is like ignoring hundreds of thousands of clear, pure seas and taking notice of only a single bubble, seeing it as the entire ocean, as the whole expanse of great and small seas. We live in a world that's as big as this bubble, even though this bubble is floating on this gigantic sea, which we don't notice. And now we're screaming and crying for the lack of the sea, which we can't find inside the bubble, because it isn't inside the bubble. So that's what it's like. Then the Buddha, becoming a little strict, says, you people are doubly diluted among the diluted. So you're not only diluted, but you're diluted on top of your being diluted. Such inversion does not differ from that caused by my lower hand, which is an example that I've spared you of many pages before.

[30:47]

You are all very pitiable, he says to them. So this is a very important point that we have an inversion in our consciousness. We have the whole thing turned around backwards. So the bad news is it's backwards. That's pretty bad news. I mean it's exactly backwards. you know, exactly upside down and totally the wrong way. That's the bad news. The good news is it's the same thing. It's just turned backwards. In other words, we don't have to get another one and go somewhere else. It's the same thing. So that's good, right? All we have to do is turn it. We don't have to get another one. So it's good news and bad news. So this word inversion is very important. So having received the Buddha's compassionate rescue and profound instruction, Ananda burst into tears.

[31:50]

He was so happy to hear this. And he folded his hands and said to the Buddha, I have heard these wonderful sounds of the Buddha and have realized that the wonderful bright mind is fundamentally perfect. It is the permanently dwelling mind ground. So he's really thrilled about hearing this. In other words, he's already, it's turned around, but it's there, it's in him, it's what he is. He didn't know that. He thought he had to find something else. So he's weeping for joy. One of my theories is that all of Buddhism is reducible to taking refuge in the triple treasure, that there's nothing else to Buddhism but that. In other words, acknowledging one's own nature as Buddha, that there's nothing more, all the rest of it is all extra. The thing is that it's very hard to do that. You could say that, and we go to ceremonies and we say, I take refuge in Buddha, and we mean it in our hearts at the time we say it, but not really.

[33:00]

We haven't really acknowledged our nature. And that's all that we have to do, is acknowledge our nature. We have projected another nature onto ourselves, which is the opposite of what we really are, so we've turned it upside down. And we've said, I'm a separate poor soul, atomized from the world, born and dying. But it's not true. So Ananda, for a second, realizes his real nature as Buddha, and he weeps for joy. Then he says, an instant later, but now in awakening to the Dharma sounds that the Buddha is speaking, it is my conditioned mind which I use to contemplate them reverently. Having just obtained the mind, I do not acknowledge that it is the fundamental mind ground. So, I'm weak for joy and now I'm realizing that I'm just taking this and now I'm understanding it and making it into something, making it into something that I'm sticking inside my bubble.

[34:06]

And as soon as I obtain it and make your words into another object of my thought, I've just failed to acknowledge in that very act my own real nature. I pray that the Buddha will take pity on me and proclaim the perfect sound to pull out my doubts by the roots and enable me to return to the unsurpassed way." The Buddha told Ananda, you still listen to the Dharma with the conditioned mind and so the Dharma becomes conditioned as well. The Dharma is just another conditioned thing. because of your mind. No better or worse than a baseball game. We could all be listening to the baseball game right now, a very important Giants game. I wish I was actually listening to the very important Giants game.

[35:08]

But if we were, we would not be doing anything more or less profound than listening to the Shurangama Sutra if our minds as they are are conditioned and just making it into some other object in the world. So there's no big thing about Buddhism. It's just another thing out there. There's everything. There's this and that. The other thing is Buddhism. When it's conditioned, it's not a big thing, he's saying. So you just turn Buddhism into another conditioned thing and you do not attain the Dharma nature. It is like when someone points his finger at the moon to show it to someone else. guided by the finger, the person should see the moon. If he looks at the finger instead and mistakes it for the moon, he loses not only the moon but the finger. He can't see the finger because he's pretending it's the moon. So he misses the finger as well as the moon. So we're missing actually not only enlightenment but also this wonderful world that we're living in.

[36:13]

We're missing both. Why? Because he mistakes the pointing finger for the bright moon. If you take what distinguishes the sound of my speaking Dharma to be your mind, if you think, in other words, the distinguishing capacity to hear my words, if you think that that is the mind, then that mind itself apart from the sound which is distinguished should have a nature which makes distinctions. It is like the guest who lodges overnight at an inn. He stops temporarily and then goes on. He does not dwell there permanently, whereas the innkeeper does not go anywhere. He is the host of the inn. So if you think it's your mind that's hearing my words, then your mind must be like an innkeeper that's abiding and has the ability to make distinctions, even though different sounds are coming and going out of it.

[37:21]

Its distinction-making ability must abide. Likewise, if it is truly your mind, it does not go anywhere. However, this is not true. In the absence of sound, there is no discriminating nature of the mind. The discriminating nature of the mind only comes up when there's something to discriminate. When it's gone, there's no host in the end. Can you tell the reason why? This applies not only to sound but also to the other senses. Even when the making of distinctions is totally absent, when there is no form and no emptiness, the obscurity which Ghosali and others take to be the profound truth in the absence of causal conditions, the distinction-making nature ceases to exist. How can we say that the nature of your mind plays the part of host since everything perceived by it returns to something else?

[38:26]

Every sound returns to sound. Seeing object returns to seeing object. So where is the mind? Ananda said, if every state of our mind returns to something else as its cause, then why does the wonderful, bright, original mind mentioned by the Buddha return nowhere? I hold out the hope that the Buddha will shower us with such compassion as to enlighten us on this point. The Buddha said to Ananda, as you now see me, as you're sitting there looking at me, the essence of your seeing, in other words, the essence of the capacity to see, absent all your myriad projections of whatever your thoughts and feelings are about me that Buddha is saying, not to mention just the whole idea that I'm over there and you're over here, all of that aside, the essence of your seeing is fundamentally bright.

[39:33]

if the profound, bright, original mind is compared to the moon, the essence of your seeing is the second moon rather than its reflection. So this is the famous second moon that you might have heard about. So it's a little complicated metaphor. So you have three moons. You got the moon, you have down here in the lake a reflection of the moon in the water and then if you look at the moon and you can try this out sometime, if you look at the moon and press a finger on your eye and then for a few minutes there and you know hard enough to make a difference but not hurt yourself and then you take your finger off the eye you'll see two moons So, the essence of your seeing in all your perceptions, the naked perception, without projection, is the second moon.

[40:47]

It's not the same as the first moon, but it's not really different. I mean, it's just another image of the first moon. Down on the lake, the reflection of the moon has the same shape as the moon, it's an analog for the moon, but it's quite different from the second moon in the sky and certainly different from the first moon. So, the ordinary world of projected reality is the reflection of the moon on the lake. That's the world that we're living in. It's not absolutely different from the world of enlightenment, it's basically the same world except we see it reflected on the water and with all the lack of brilliance and dimension and so forth that that would indicate. If we could purify, through cultivation, our capacity for apprehending this world, then we would see the second moon.

[41:49]

The first moon which is not actually different from the second one, is not to be perceived by the human organism. It's dharmakaya, which is beyond perception. But really to perceive the world is virtually the same thing, as long as we realize that there's that gap. But it's quite different from the reflection. So that's what he's saying. Then, skipping a section, you all know the story about the two moons, about Yunyan and Dawu. It's case 21 of Shoyu Roku. Yunyan is sweeping the floor. They're old buddies, Yunnan and Dawu were good Dharma brothers and they were always quizzing each other on the Dharma and trying to help each other understand.

[42:50]

So Yunnan is sweeping busily and Dawu says to him, too busy. So we can all relate to that, right? It's a good case because everybody can relate to being too busy, that feeling. being too busy, overwhelmed. And Yunnan looks up at Dawu and he says, you should know there's one who isn't busy. I'm implying right here, there's one who isn't busy. And Dawu says, oh, you mean there are two moons? and Yunyan holds up the broom that he's been sweeping with and he says, which moon is this? So Yunyan has found a way within his activity, which looks like it's in the world of reflected reality, to experience

[43:56]

Real reality, even in the middle of that, even though he's sweeping and he's not meditating and all this, he's in activity, he's found a way to situate himself within pure perception, the two moons. And it's really in the middle of his activity, it's really just the full moon. So, going on, now there's an analysis here of the nature of seeing that I think, seeing, sight seeing, that's very funny, I think. This also is, a quotation from this section, I think I was telling you, appears as case 94 of the Blue Cliff Record. So here's how it goes. Ananda, all things near and far have the nature of things. Although each is distinctly different, they are seen with the same pure essence of seeing. So the essence of seeing is always the same, but there's a difference between different things that are seen.

[45:03]

Thus, all the categories of things have their individual distinctions But the seeing nature has no differences. This essential wonderful brightness is most certainly your seeing nature. So that's an astonishing thing to think about that. Where is enlightenment? Enlightenment is actually present in every act of perception. That the essence of every act of perception is enlightenment itself. It's an astonishing thing to think about that. Absolutely astonishing. So that's what he's saying here. Then he says, if seeing were a thing, which we sort of, in a way, take for granted, that's how we, we're seeing objectively because seeing is something. We're seeing something and seeing is something. If seeing were actually a thing, then you should be able to see my seeing, right?

[46:04]

But actually, you can't see anybody's seeing. We actually have no idea what anybody's seeing. We assume that people are seeing what we're seeing, but we don't really know. And you know, there could be somebody whose eyes are open, and you might think they're seeing something, but they're not seeing it. Sometimes if you sit in Zazen, you look at the wall, you ever notice that you don't see anything sometimes? Your eyes are open, but you don't see anything. If your consciousness is withdrawn powerfully enough from the object of sight, you don't see anything. But a person going by would never know that you weren't seeing anything. they would see your eyes open so they thought you were seeing something, because you can't see somebody seeing. It's funny, huh? Can't see seeing. If you say, you see my seeing, when we both look at the same thing, then when I'm not seeing, how come you can't see my not seeing? I told you it's funny.

[47:05]

If you do see my not seeing, it is clearly not the thing that I am not seeing. If, on the other hand, you do not see my not seeing, then it is clearly not a thing and how can you say it is not you? A little hard to follow, I admit, but seeing isn't a thing and can't be identified. Seeing seems to have, therefore, no way of connecting with the object of sight. And we can't tell if anybody else is seeing or not seeing, because we can't actually define or know what seeing is. Therefore, to say that we're seeing something outside is a completely fallacious notion. We can't say that the seeing that we're seeing is anything, we can only say that it's some experience that's going on inside of consciousness.

[48:15]

That's the only thing that we can really say with assurance. What is more, if you're seeing is a thing, things should also see you when you see them, because they're things. Seeing is a thing, like everything else, then things are seeing you, which maybe they are for all we know. Everything's looking at us. with substance and nature mixed up together, you and I and everyone in the world are no longer in order. In other words, if that were true, and seeing, which is nothing, and things, which are something, could somehow mix up together, which they can't, then the world begins to make no sense whatsoever. It would be like a Walt Disney cartoon where the walls start dancing and everything like that. So this is finally the proof that the Buddha has proven now that seeing and hearing and all the senses are not anything like we see they are.

[49:17]

They seem to be just transformations of consciousness and there's no way that we can ascertain their relationship to anything in the outside world. So he says later on, and this is the main point, if you can turn things around, remember he said it's all inverted, if you can turn it around, if you can see the nature of seeing and hearing and the nature of objects and stop this projection of an out there and an in here, which is fundamentally alienating ourselves from the world and from ourselves, our own body, which is ourself, which is the locus of all consciousness. If you can do that and see it as it is, then you are the same as the Buddha. With body and mind perfect and bright, you are an unmoving place of the way. And this is very much the same idea even though

[50:20]

He repudiated this sutra, as I told you last time. It's very much the same idea that Dogen expresses when he says, take the backward step and turn the light inwardly to illuminate the self. That is the same idea as this idea of turning around or inversion within perception. Later the Buddha says, Ananda, you have not yet understood that all the defiling objects that appear, they're defiling because we project them to be objects. You know, I was talking to Mel about this last week and he was saying that, he said, the Sukhiroshi's main teaching was that everything's alive. There are no objects. All these things that you hear about, you know, pay attention to your teacup and, you know, walk on the earth as if the earth were alive, which it is, it's about this.

[51:34]

The filing objects are objects because we think of things as objects, we kill them. These are just objects in the world, not necessary for me to love them because they're just objects. So that's why they're called defiling objects. You have not yet understood that all the defiling objects that appear, all the illusory ephemeral characteristics spring up in the very spot where they also come to an end. At the very same moment that these defiling objects appear, they also disappear. They are what is called illusory falseness, but their nature is in truth the bright substance of wonderful enlightenment. Thus it is throughout, up to the five skandhas and the six entrances, to the twelve places and the eighteen realms, which is all the different categories of consciousness and experience.

[52:37]

It's that way throughout all experience. The union and mixture of various causes and conditions account for their illusory and false existence and the separation and dispersion of the causes and conditions result in their illusory and false extinction. So objects don't really exist in the way that we think they exist, the causes and conditions that seem to bring them to be, as well as the causes and conditions falling away that seem to make them disappear, are all illusory. Who would have thought that production, extinction, coming and going are fundamentally the everlasting, wonderful light of the treasury of the Thus Come One, the unmoving, all-pervading perfection, the wonderful nature of true suchness. Indeed, who would have expected such a thing? That this very situation in which we find ourselves now and at all times, that so distinctly seems to be

[53:49]

a world of change and suffering, who would have thought that it is actually, in reality, the everlasting, wonderful light of the treasury of the Thus Come One, the unmoving, all-pervading perfection of the wonderful nature of true suchness. If within the true and permanent nature One seeks coming and going, confusion and enlightenment, or birth and death, there is nothing else, there is nothing that can be obtained. You can't find those things anywhere, only that wonderful brightness. Ananda, why do I say that the five skandhas are basically the wonderful nature of true suchness, the treasury of the thus-come-one? Ananda, consider this example. When a person who has pure, clear eyes looks at clear, bright emptiness, he sees nothing but clear emptiness, and he is quite certain that nothing exists within it.

[54:57]

So this is a person who is dwelling within the essence of seeing without objects. If for no apparent reason, for no apparent reason at all, the person does not move his eyes, the staring itself will cause fatigue and then of his own accord In other words, automatically, without any intention, he will see strange flowers in space and other unreal appearances that are wild and disordered. So, this is actually, you would miss it, but this is actually a very amazing passage. How did it happen? If all this really is bright, permanent, wonderful enlightenment,

[56:02]

Why are we all such a mess? Why are we so convinced that it's not? I mean, deeply convinced. If it's all so much there all the time, why are we so convinced otherwise? And he says, well, if the bright, original enlightenment just were there abiding in perception and consciousness, and it were there long enough for no apparent reason, nothing would have to happen, but after a while, illusion would just sort of spring up out of it. This thing about flowers in space, it's a translation, a Chinese conception of an Indian word that means basically an eye disease where you see things like floaters or something, little things in front of your eyes that aren't there.

[57:08]

So it's given as one of the main examples of seeing illusory things that aren't present. So this is saying that it's in the nature of the bright mind itself for no reason that we can discern. There's no devil or bad guy or we didn't make a mistake or do anything wrong. There's no fault here. It seems to be for some reason the nature of the Bright Enlightenment to abiding for some time just produce these kind of illusions that would then, once the first one is there, then it's easy to see how we have the present situation that we're living in in the world. Once that first illusion arises, confusion and separation within enlightenment, then the rest just follows one thing after another.

[58:16]

It's like the Big Bang. After the Big Bang happens and everything happens after that, why did the Big Bang happen though? And what happened, what was going on before the Big Bang? Nobody knows. In fact, by definition, one couldn't know. You could only get infinitesimally close to the moment of it, but you couldn't get at the place of it or before it. It's a very similar kind of idea here. And, you know, why was there the Big Bang? Nobody can say why that was, how that came about and what the causality of it was. It just was, it just is. So, in other words, the creation of the world that we live in of suffering is somehow inevitable and the path back is also inevitable. Yeah. Can I ask a question?

[59:20]

Yeah, maybe you better. I think it said that this is saying that all objects are illusions. Yeah. All the objects we see out here are illusions. Yeah, but not as opposed to real objects. Well, let me keep going. Yeah, okay. which implies that we're all seeing the same thing, even if what we see or are experiencing is very different. We're all having in common, we're all seeing that it had a cup with flowers on it, or whatever, which implies that there is something out there, that we're not just having our own separate illusions. It implies that there is an external, there is an object that's being perceived, and a connection between sight and the object. Yes, but we couldn't be having our separate illusions because our separation is just as erroneous as the object being outside.

[60:30]

So it's not proposing that each one of us is our own solipsistic little bubble and that there's no objects outside and everything is our dream because there's no separate me or you. There's only the bright enlightenment When you show a vase of flowers, we all see the vase of flowers, but we all see the vase of flowers reflected in the water. So naturally, we're all going to see the same thing and agree to it. But when it says all mind, you have to understand by mind here, not what we think of as mind. That's the problem. When we say mind, what we mean by mind is that which isn't matter. That's what we mean when we say mind. So already in our whole concept of the idea of mind, we've already got built into it the idea of separation. When the Sutra is talking about mind, it's not saying there's mind and matter. The Sutra actually means something different. That's the whole point. When the Sutra says mind, it means something different than what we mean when we say mind.

[61:37]

So we've carved out our whole way of looking at the world, even our way of speaking and understanding, is that we've carved out various territories that are separate from one another. And what this sutra is telling us is that that very way of looking at the world is the cause of our suffering and it's really a projection. After all that, now Purna is saying, if all the sense organs, sense objects, skandhas, places and realms that you have just now spent the last two months explaining to us, in all the world are the treasury of the thus come one, originally pure, as you've just proved, why do there suddenly arise the mountains, the rivers and the great earth? All conditioned appearances with cyclically change and flow end and then begin again.

[62:40]

So before he was saying, Ananda was asking why does illusion arise? And the Buddha said, well all of a sudden that just happens. Now they're saying, well then why are there objects? Just like you're saying, there certainly seem to be objects. How did that, if what you're saying is true, then why would there have been objects? It's like Heidegger's famous question, why is there anything? Wouldn't it be better if there was nothing? It would be a lot neater and that's all you would need. Why should there be anything? at all. That's what he's saying. Why is there anything? If this is true, then why aren't we all just sort of pulsing enlightenment? Why do we need ears and eyes and fingers and meteorites and tables and chairs and all this? Why? So, I only hope he will explain this, he says, and he bows and waits for the explanation. And Buddha says, well, all right, I'll explain this to you if you want me to.

[63:48]

That's what I'll do. And they all listened silently waiting for the Buddha's teaching. The Buddha said, have you not heard often the thus come one expound upon the wonderful light of the enlightened nature and the bright wonder of the fundamental enlightenment? Purna said, yes, more louder one, I have often heard the Buddha expound upon this subject. The Buddha said, you speak of the light of enlightenment, you see, the light of enlightenment, you speak of that. Is it that the nature of enlightenment is light, Or are you saying that enlightenment is initially without light and that then somebody comes along and brightens it up so that it's light?

[64:56]

Which are you saying? Is its nature light or is it sort of beyond light and then someone brightens it up and makes it light? Point of answers. It's an interesting thing that the idea of light, literal light, is used here over and over again, as you've been hearing, to describe enlightenment and it is astonishing how often in religious traditions the idea of light or a fulgence is used to describe the Absolute or the Divine. And light, of course, is this very strange, inexplicable phenomena, which although they explain it, they don't really. I mean, nobody can really explain light. It's a very strange sort of thing. I mean, it's not a thing or not a thing. Nobody really knows. But without light, imagine no light. Well, you can't imagine no light, because there would be no world. without light. So light somehow is the world.

[66:00]

It's like a paint of the world. Without the paint of light, there's no world. So anyway, what about that light? Buddha said, if the absence of light is called enlightenment, then there is no light whatever. The Buddha said, if there is no bright enlightenment without light added to it, then it is not enlightenment with it, and it is not light without it, the absence of light is not the still bright nature of enlightenment either. In other words, whatever you answer to that question, you're wrong, because it can't be. The nature of enlightenment, he says, It is false for you to make it bright enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that needs to be made bright.

[67:01]

For once that is done, an object is established because of this light. Once an object is falsely set up, you as a false subject come into being. So again, you could miss this, but what it's saying is, and it's hard to kind of grasp this, but in the midst of this perfect enlightenment that is the world, there is a shadow of a conception of light. Because enlightenment is light, but it's a kind of light that has no opposite, dark, to it. It's a light that includes dark. Within this perfect enlightenment there arises a shadow of a conception of light, which is different from dark, and as soon as that shadow of conception arises within enlightenment, it factors off a subject who is conceiving that conception, and then the whole world that we live in

[68:16]

evolves from that. As soon as there's that gap, everything flows from that. It's actually very much like, and when you think about it, really not any different from the whole old teaching in early Buddhism and throughout Buddhism about the twelvefold chain of causation, which begins with avidya, ignorance. Out of ignorance, it's almost like a primordial sense of imbalance within perfection, long before you can say that there's anything. There's some sort of a shade of imbalance, out of which comes karmic formations, a trajectory toward something happening. Because in enlightenment there's a profound stasis, there's nothing happening.

[69:21]

So it comes this very slight imbalance which causes a tendency towards something happening, and then out of that tendency towards something happening arises consciousness, out of consciousness arises the difference between consciousness and objects, then out of that arises the five sense organs, out of that arises a grasping and a clinging and then a suffering. That's the 12-fold chain of causation. This is very similar. All of a sudden, no apparent reason. Why did the big bang happen? All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, there was something was slightly leaning to the right or left, where everything before that was at perfect stasis. Nobody really knows why. But the interesting thing about it is that the result of that disaster was the production of, eventually, the consciousness that could reflect upon it and conceive of a way back.

[70:32]

which is not any great distance, but always present, because in the acts of consciousness in the present. So, it means that the human beings have a big job, in a sense, to restore the universal balance by completely acknowledging what we are. That's a good job to have, a big responsibility, but a wonderful possibility. So all of this that is, and that we might think of as being difficult or tragic, is a necessity and a joy. This is really the implication of the teaching of the sutra. Are you conducting music or are you thinking?

[71:39]

Are you wanting to say something? Well, I'm afraid that maybe you shouldn't because it's nine o'clock but maybe you could Well, I was reading your mind, I guess. Next week. I think we should end promptly. Again, I'm sorry that I didn't really think I would go on as long as I did. Oh well. Thank you for your attention very much.

[72:28]

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