The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddha sets in motion the wheel of the Dharma. Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, when practicing

[01:06]

Far and beta perceive that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and what's saved from all suffering, O Shariputra, differs from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease, therefore in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formation, No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind, consciousness, no ignorance, and also no extinction of it until no old age and death and also no extinction of it.

[02:29]

No bad, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain. A Bodhisattva depends on Prajna. A Paralita in the mind is no hindrance. Far apart from every purview One dwells in nirvana in the three worlds All who does depend on Vrajna, Paramita And attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment Therefore know that Vrajna, Paramita Is the great transcendent mantra Is the great void mantra Is the atlas mantra the supreme mantra which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the Prajna Paralita mantra.

[03:36]

Proclaim the mantra that says, gati, gati, para gati, parasam gati, bodhisattva. This is the fifth and most likely the last session.

[04:43]

I'm going to go over quickly what we did last week, which was line 12 through 22, and then field any questions that people may have, and then just go on to the end after that. Line 12, are not tainted nor pure. Line 13, do not increase nor decrease. These are, Avalokiteshvara is talking about in the realm of emptiness. And he's talking about dharmas. Having talked about skandhas prior to that, now he's talking about dharmas. And in the world of emptiness, these dharmas don't appear or disappear. They're not tainted, nor are they pure. This is in the realm before we have concepts of pure or impure, or appearing and disappearing.

[05:55]

And a way of looking at that, for instance, is food, that in one moment it is sustenance, in the next moment it becomes compost. for us, so this shows how transitory things in fact are. But in each moment there is something to experience and to feel, but as far as a realm of a continuum, this is not what we're striving to achieve. put into words. It's just what's happening in this moment. Things are just as they are. And not tainted nor pure is a response to the older school of Buddhism where there was a practice of purity and purifying the practitioner and by doing so

[07:08]

the idea was nirvana would be realized, that by purifying the one's self through following the precepts very literally, the idea of samsara, which is this realm of defilements, would be diminished or in fact extinguished, and then what would rise up would be, or what would be expressed would be this arhat ideal. And nirvana, by the way, literally means blown out, like a candle is extinguished. So, for instance, when we're sitting, we have pain in our knees. In the moment, there's just pain. If you think about it, increasing or decreasing experience of each moment, there's just this pain without qualifying it in any way. Samsara and nirvana are kind of seen as one thing, and you're just experiencing painful legs.

[08:17]

There's just painful legs. But when we separate from that and say, oh, my legs hurt, oh, my legs are hurting more, within a period of zazen or just in a few moments, that separation is causing suffering. Line 14, therefore an emptiness, no form, and then 15 goes through the various skandhas, feelings, no perceptions, formations, and consciousness is It's not that they don't exist, but know as an expression of interrelatedness that there's no inherent form, no substantial form, and there's no feeling by itself, but they're all actually interconnected. These skandhas are interconnected and they form our personality. Um...

[09:24]

If we hear a sound of a motorcycle, there's just a moment of pure experience of just that sound. But what comes up with that are the other skandhas. We form the sound of the motorcycle in our mind. That's a motorcycle distinguishing it from a car or a bicycle. We have feelings about the sound. We perceive them through our ear sense. we form concepts about them, like, I don't want it, I don't like that sound, or I do like that sound, or imagine all sorts of things, this whole realm of psychology. And then we have our mind consciousness, which is sort of coordinating all of these things going on. So we can see that there's nothing that operates independently.

[10:57]

So they're all interrelated. And some people certainly are more kind of lean on the sight or the perception side or the form side of things, but they all come together when you really look at them closely. Line 17, no color, sound, smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mine. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. These are talking about that we have our senses. and we have the objects of perception, and then we have consciousness that puts it all together that forms a reality. So again, the no doesn't mean that there's no consciousness or no object of mind, but it's interrelated. I'm sure you all had experiences of looking at someone, having a conversation with them, and then our mind goes somewhere else.

[12:00]

They're still talking, but we've lost consciousness of, for a moment, between our ears and what's being said and putting together this conversation. So, you really see that you can only do one thing at a time as far as applying full attention. But there is something going on. You can hear the background sound, but to really be present, it's really a practice of one thing. Line 19, no ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death. and also no extinction of it, is talking about the 12 links of causation, which is basic Buddhism. The links of the twelve links of causation depict how life

[13:11]

comes to be through ignorance or blindness, comes forming things in consciousness through the skandhas. We have contact with something, there's craving and clinging, and then there's the birth of something, and then it has its life, and then there's death, and then it just goes around and around and around. But in between each of these links is emptiness, and it's within that space of emptiness that you see the interrelationship between each of these links. And when you see that, you can, according to Buddhist teaching, and this goes way back to the early Buddhists, you can actually reverse this wheel of life. So before there is, instead of going in a forward direction, giving birth to things, I need to refer to my little cheat sheet because I always lose track here.

[14:29]

Before there's actual contact you can see the six senses that create this contact and before the contact there's a naming and forming of this object because there's consciousness which is putting together the object and through your senses and the mind, and before the consciousness, there's volitional action, which is moving toward something, which in this case is just being oriented toward this cup of water. So I realize that's really too succinct. an explanation, but the gist of it is that it's bear attention and watching our thoughts, because as our thoughts arise, if we carry it further and not go back to this zazen and following breath and posture, we find ourselves not being really present with our sitting, but have created some kind of fantasy about some future thing or reverie about the past.

[15:49]

And both those directions is going to cause suffering or pain or some sorrow. So if we can just really be present without moving into those dramatic directions, we can lessen our suffering. Lines. 21, no suffering, no origination, no stopping, and no path, is a restatement of the Four Noble Truths. For instance, the first one, there's always going to be pain or discomfort, but when we practice selflessness, the pain becomes more expansive.

[16:51]

If it's egocentric or self-centered pain, then it becomes very restricted, and you can feel that, for instance, in Zazen. that if you really get into the pain in your knees or your back or your mind or whatever, it's not very expansive. There's actually a tension that builds up. So Mel's always encouraging us to let go of the pain and just sit there and be. And if we're fortunate enough, you actually feel a release of this pain and a kind of an expansiveness that goes out into the universe. It goes back and forth, of course, during a period of Zazen. But when you have a taste of that, you really can see that Mel's instruction is really on the money. a few years ago I was thinking about something and it was really painful and it was this self-centered thing and I just couldn't get it out of my mind and I was just sitting Zazen and it was just

[18:00]

it was very difficult just sitting there. And it was, I didn't have any room for anybody else in my life. It was, there was a room full of people in the Zendo, but it was just like, well, they're there, but I'm just in this thing. And then a little time lapsed and there was this change where I still felt this, I was still connected to this, this thought and it was, it was still, you know, difficult, but it had transformed and actually there was this feeling that well there's this pain, there's experience of pain and also these other people are experiencing pain whatever it happens to be in their life and we're all kind of doing this thing together and it really was an eye-opener and there wasn't any particular practice I did to make that happen, it was like a little switch to say, oh, like so.

[19:03]

It was just, as Mel says, just sitting through it and getting hopefully a little glimpse of less self-centered suffering and pain. And to look at these Four Noble Truths through emptiness, when Avalokiteshvara sees the ill of the world or the suffering of the world, he just saw the skandhas. He didn't see a person there. He just saw this collection of aggregates, form, feeling, perceptions, and so on, that comprise a human being. And it wasn't a personal thing, that actually beings don't exist. in emptiness. And as the Sixth Ancestor said, save the beings in your own mind. It's not someone out there that's being saved. And the second noble truth of craving or this cause of ill will is the craving is through the skandhas.

[20:10]

So if we actually see that the skandhas are empty, which was talked about earlier in the sutra, there can be no more craving or this origination of suffering. And then the third noble truth of stopping or cessation, how can we stop something that in fact never existed? All this of course is based on the original premise that things are empty and that you've experienced that. And then lastly, that there's no path means that we're already here in Prajnaparamita, that we've already crossed over and there's no other place to go but right here. And let's see, line 22, with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita, with nothing to attain means that cause and effect are in fact one thing and you can't really separate them out.

[21:11]

There's not just cause and it goes back to beginningless beginning. So even though we want to attain enlightenment, in Dogen's teaching, practice and enlightenment are one thing, that we practice and then we realize enlightenment. Form and emptiness are one thing. Emptiness is expressed through the world of form, so we don't attain the world of form, it's just they're very intimately connected and they cannot be separated out, except when we talk about one thing or the other. the other thing. As Mel said in a commentary, enlightenment emanates from this activity of practice, but there's no special color or shape from it. There is an effect, but it's no special expression, there's no special form it takes, it's always changing.

[22:15]

So this first part of the sutra is describing the nature of prajna or wisdom of emptiness or interrelatedness. And now we're going to talk about what one does with this practice as a bodhisattva. Are there any questions? I think we have to form a sub-community. Well, we were talking about lessening our suffering, but if dharmas don't increase or decrease, then what are you talking about? Well, we... Does anyone have a thought on that? Don't be shy. In emptiness, they... to not increase or decrease.

[23:18]

And your question is, what is lessening suffering? Well, when lessening our suffering is brought up, it sounds like there's something not right with what's happening right now. when practicing the wisdom of emptiness, I don't know, it seems like, for me anyway, it seems like one just has to open up to whatever's happening right now and not think about increasing or decreasing or suffering. Well, when we open up to things, then there's no longer this separation and we experience the interrelatedness of it. For instance, when we suffer and we separate from things, typically the question is, why me?

[24:31]

why not someone else or and it typically is something outside of ourself so we open up to this to the suffering we no longer have that question or if the question might be there but it's not of of paramount importance we're just experiencing the pure nature of suffering. And when we do that, we hopefully can see our participation and how that's been created and exacerbated through our, you know, craving mind and whatnot. And there's liberation in that because we see the causes and conditions which have brought it on. And the idea of lessening suffering is by seeing the the causing conditions that brought it on, we can make an effort not to bring so much of that back onto ourself. But we still do.

[25:38]

And all this is what human beings seem to be wired to do, to go toward the warmth, toward the light, and to be comfortable. I'm struggling with this. Yeah. Because I think experiencing pure existence is why me. You know, it's like not thinking, well, don't say why me, or I shouldn't say why me, or why me. It's like, why me is experiencing pure existence or experiencing suffering. Sorry, maybe it's in there. Well, no, it's like, there's this story of the fellow who was shot by the arrow, and he You know, there was this pain, but then he started talking about, well, why did someone shoot this arrow at me?

[26:43]

And he just looked at the arrow and figured out who designed the arrow and what kind of poison was in it. And he suffered more and more and more. And the Buddha told this story that, you know, when there's pain, you deal with the pain directly. You take the arrow out. You don't talk about the why. And as my friend in New York used to say, you know, why not you? When I would complain about my pain, you know? There's a certain inevitability about things. And actually, it comes up in line 25. No fears exist, and hopefully it'll shed a little light on the question. But it's a good question. We all have that same question. You know, why am I going through all this shit? Well, but I don't necessarily think that we stop, When we practice that we stop going through, I mean, I certainly haven't stopped going through all this shit.

[27:46]

Do you say, you know what I mean? Do you go through less? Well, yeah, but, um, it doesn't, I want to say, it's not like, um, like the whiny's ever go away, or suffering ever goes. I mean, there's always going to be suffering. Um, Right, there's always going to be pain, there's not necessarily always going to be suffering. Otherwise, we should take up another practice. Or not take up another practice, but that's what the teaching is, that there is a way of lessening our suffering and just experiencing pain. Yes? justice to them and i don't know gene and uh... and i'm not sure uh... it was uh... that that diagram i was looking at and i think i thought it was it was you know it's exactly about the eight the nine levels of consciousness i'm thinking of it right now because i like the part where it said the eighth level of consciousness which is memory or where the seeds of experience are is the bridge between the seventh

[29:08]

or delusion, and the ninth, and truth. And I guess for me, it's that each moment, remembering the last moment, sometimes there is a change in this moment. And recognizing that something has changed often makes a difference for me. Yeah, I think my comment is just another way of saying that, which is, When you say, why me? The way I think about it is, why me? And that will be revealed. And it is then a process of just observing. I mean, certainly in my experience, the suffering moves along. has some meaning that is revealed, not in any particularly specific, concrete way, but in a larger, connected way.

[30:23]

I have nothing else I want to say, but I do. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not like, you know, you just release everybody from my level. You release it from your suffering? It just sounds too much like a step thing. Like you practice and then there aren't any more walking, and then you're living in emptiness. I don't think that's it. There's all this stuff going on. There's all this suffering. There's all these sounds. There's all this stuff going on. The ground is emptiness, so it doesn't really matter what happens, whether you're having pain or whether you're... That's right. It doesn't matter. That's what I mean. It's not like you get to emptiness by something or other. It's already there. It's there all the time. It's there all the time, but until we realize that, we take it personally. That's why we say the Y. But after a while, it's not personal anymore.

[31:27]

Right. I mean, non-attachment. That's what, to me, that's what Satsang teaches. It teaches non-attachment. Maybe it teaches attachment to posture and breathing, but it teaches non-attachment to everything else. But you can't be attached to posture and breathing, because that's always changing. Right. That's a big job. We all know that. But it doesn't matter even if you're attached to your posture and breathing. No, but... It doesn't seem too right. But if it doesn't matter, then there's no suffering. It's when we think it matters. Suffering is what matters. Suffering matters? No, suffering is the sense that it matters. You said it comes to the point where all this stuff happens, but it doesn't matter. Well, then you're not suffering, because you're not attached to it and you're not resisting. It doesn't matter. It happens. And also no extinction of it, which means it's there, but we're not caught by it.

[32:58]

It's interrelated, and we're a part of it, but it doesn't actually go away, which again is a response to the older school of Buddhism saying that actually it could all be extinguished and it wouldn't exist anymore. Okay. Line 24 starts a description of how Bodhisattva functions. A bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Dependent isn't such a great word here. I like to think of a bodhisattva is supported by prajnaparamita, is affirmed by prajnaparamita, or nourished by prajnaparamita.

[34:05]

Mel once said that prajnaparamita was actually food. for bodhisattvas. The prajnaparamita is the hub or the center of the six paramitas. Through the bodhisattva practice, through the paramitas, There's dana, or giving, and you give by letting go through zazen, and you also let go of money on the street if you're giving it to people, but in zazen, there's just letting go of self. The shila paramita, or discipline, which is an aspect of the enlightened life and following the precepts. Kshanti is the patience paramita, and anyone knows that it takes a lot of patience to practice. And seeing things as it is, not expecting anything different, different takes a lot of patience because we tend to want things to be different and then we get very impatient when things in fact are not different.

[35:17]

So Bodhisattva practices things as it is. Viriya Paramita or effort, Avalokiteshvara is exerting effort by doing Prajna Paramita or practicing Prajna Paramita. It's not a passive practice. And then the Samadhi Paramita is concentration, which of course is required for us to practice because when we're not concentrated, we're not really there. So these are the Paramitas that the Bodhisattva is nourishing. practice with them. And a really great book that describes most of this, pardon me, is Trungpa Rinpoche's Meditation in Action, which I highly recommend. I haven't read the Akin Roshi Practice of Perfection, but I'm sure that's pretty good too. And the mind is no hindrance. The mind is what, the mind, the sort of collective mind that we call us or me can be a hindrance because we think of ourselves in a certain way and if we're not happy we tend to form some barrier or thing that's causing our unhappiness and it becomes a hindrance.

[36:48]

The five hindrances that are sort of basic to Buddhism are lustful desire, ill will or anger, so that's the idea of attraction and aversion, sloth and torpor, which is being sluggish and kind of flat, and then restlessness and weary and flurry, which is a sort of uneasiness, and then skeptical doubt. So those are the five hindrances. Skeptical doubt is, it's okay to doubt, to question, but it's, just being too skeptical and all that is, You can never really settle if you're too skeptical. There has to be a certain amount of faith in order to carry on in practice. And in our meal chant, we talk about the natural order of mind, and again, the natural order of mind is free from hindrance.

[37:57]

There's no merit accrued because the natural order of mind is revealed as just what is in fact happening. we're not getting anything and we're seeing things as they are and no fear exists because what we've seen by virtue of looking closely at our actions through the 12 causal links and looking at the Four Noble Truths and the other tenets of Buddhism that we've been talking about, we actually see a certain inevitability about our life. It's not like fatalistic, like we can't change it, but you see the cause and conditions that have kind of brought you to this place, and it's inevitable. And we typically have fears about things because we're not sure what's going to happen in the future. But when we take care of our life moment by moment, no fears exist because we don't worry about what's going to happen in the future.

[39:06]

Suzuki Roshi says it's a Theravada practice with Mahayana mind. Theravada practice, moment by moment, mindfulness and awareness with Mahayana mind, seeing the interrelatedness of all things and just being taken care of by Buddha. not the historical Buddha, but just Buddha as the enlightened life. And there's a fearlessness, there's a fearless quality of the teachers that we have come to know through their books or through dokasans and meetings with them. And that lightness and fearlessness that they're manifesting is just living right completely in the moment without worrying about the future. It doesn't mean not having any thoughts about the future, concern about the future, but just being really, really present. Without any hindrance, no fears exist.

[40:13]

Far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. I talked about the five hindrances. We also have the three poisons, which are greed, ill will and delusion. Greed or grasping is transformed into giving. Ill will or pushing away is transformed into metta or loving kindness. And then the realm of delusion is transformed into seeing things quite clearly. And when that happens, there is no longer any anxiety. There's just a very easy flow of things, and as Gene was talking about, the consciousnesses, the ego consciousness is no longer trying to dictate how things are going to be coming into this alaya consciousness or storage of experiences.

[41:20]

It's just there as a conveyor, just passing things, coming and going. You know, if you're thirsty, you drink. If you're hungry, you eat. You're no longer saying, I want to eat this, or this food tastes horrible, or I'm really tired. It's just the experience of what's going on, and it's a flow between these eight or nine consciousnesses, depending on how you look at it. I have here, I'm not sure where I got it, the wave sees itself as water. I talked earlier about the wave being and its form out of emptiness, we typically see it separate, but when the wave or the expression sees itself as just part of this one thing, or the lotus coming out of the mud, you know, flowering out of this murky water, you see the connection between the two, and there is

[42:22]

no hindrance, and there's a lighter life and an enlightened life. Far from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. The perverted views, there's perverted views before enlightenment and then what happens after enlightenment. The four perverted views are belief in permanence, belief that we can find bliss, belief that an I exists, and that we can find purity. After enlightenment or after we're awake, there is belief in impermanence and we see things as constantly changing. We realize that existence is painful and that we should give up trying to find bliss.

[43:35]

We realize that there is no I or no self and that the I, in fact, doesn't exist. And then lastly, that nothing is pure. that we should give up our search for finding purity. Or as Nidhi Kirti says, find the purity within the impurity. Find, you know, no self in self. Oh, good. How do I get to it? In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on Prajnaparamita and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. The three worlds are the world of past, present, and future. And that in fact is us, the three times past, present, and future.

[44:39]

There's just this present moment, you can't grasp the past and you can't grasp the future, but when we talk about past, present, and future, or we talk about the ten directions, that's just talking about everything, you know, from beginningless beginning to endless end, and ten directions all around. But, you know, in this moment where we're just right here, all the 10 directions are here, come from this point, and all the times, past, present, and future stem from this point. So all Buddhists depend on Prajnaparamita or rely on Prajnaparamita. There's three types of practitioners. There's the Sravakas and the Pratyekabuddhas and the Bodhisattvas. The Sravakas were the people who gained enlightenment just by hearing the Buddha's teaching.

[45:47]

And the Pratyekabuddhas are the practitioners who had a solitary practice and they were interested pretty much just in their own enlightenment. and they were concerned just with their selves. And it's only the bodhisattvas who realize complete, perfect enlightenment. Saying stuff like this obviously has a charge around it and kind of tends to lift up this Mahayana practice to up here and kind of downplays or doesn't show such good light onto the other practitioners because actually we do wake up from time to time and we are shravakas. And there are times that we, in fact, have sort of a Pratyekabuddha practice where we're sort of concerned just in solitary existence and just waking up and practicing for ourselves.

[46:52]

But this teaching is for all beings. It's the Bodhisattva ideal. And so for this complete, perfect enlightenment, only Bodhisattva Bodhisattvas will realize it through their practice of Prajnaparamita, which is seeing the wisdom of interrelatedness. Because if you really see the wisdom of interrelatedness, there's no way you can just be practicing for yourself. So, line 29 again is that the Bodhisattva attains... Actually, I just noticed this.

[47:59]

Talking about Bodhisattva practice earlier, Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita and then In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on Prajnaparamita and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. And another word for unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment is Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, which is the enlightenment that Shakyamuni Buddha experienced under the bow tree. And supposedly only he could experience that kind of enlightenment. I'm not sure what's... how that figures into this whole thing. I think we can just strive to wake up and whatever we want to call our enlightenment, we can call it. But... Well... Actually, I guess what it means, I think about this for a second, is the unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment that someone experiences is there's no one there experiencing it.

[49:25]

And it transcends what a Buddha or transcends a Bodhisattva, it transcends gender. pure experience of of interrelatedness of of all of all things and the Nirmanakaya Buddha or a Shakyamuni Buddha or Ross or and Is is a Buddha in that complete perfect enlightenment. But in our practice, we have to do something. And so we become bodhisattvas by going out and actually seeing what help needs to take place, and we do that. And you can't do that just sitting on your cushion, just being Buddha. You actually do that in an active role of being a Bodhisattva. So as Mel said, the Buddha is on the altar there, symbolizing just

[50:30]

completeness as it is, but the action that this Buddha takes is in the realm of Bodhisattva practice and there's a wisdom side on one side of the altar and the compassion side on the other side of the altar. So that's my hunch why Buddhas are mentioned here and not Bodhisattvas. Line 30, therefore know the Prajnaparamita is the great transcendent mantra, the great bright mantra, the utmost mantra, the supreme mantra, which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. This mantra is not included in the longer version of the Prajnaparamita literature, which is the oldest earlier came much later.

[51:34]

So this was a later addition to this text and it incorporates tantric elements to the Sutra and the tantric practices that were something that came about after the Mahayana of the millennia, in like seven, eight hundred or so, in Tibet and Mongolia, where mantras were used as a way of harmonizing with the universe. We don't have mantras in our practice as such, like the Tibetan practitioners do, or the Vajrayana practitioners do, but we can look at breath as mantra. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. Mantra literally is a, well, Kansa, who did the most translations of this literature, considers mantra as a spell.

[52:48]

And there's a transformative quality to a syllable or a sound, and it's used to penetrate to the essence of things. It's hard to talk about pure experience, but when you actually are in pure experience, you can feel it with your whole body-mind. When we breathe and we're really attentive to our breathing through whatever is going on in our being, the breath becomes this harmonizing tool. that if there's, for instance, pain in our knees, you know, breathing into our knees and just maintaining breath actually softens that pain in that it harmonizes this sense of self and this person and the experiencer of the pain and the condition that's causing this pain, like, I don't want to be in a sashim or

[54:06]

there and just being with it actually acts as a mantra and it's a constant thing that we have in our being. It's just a matter of tapping into that. There was a scholar that I mentioned earlier, I think it was in the first class, that considered this sutra not really a sutra or an actual teaching from Shakyamuni Buddha, but a Dharani scripture. And a Dharani is something that we chant that doesn't have a literal translation, but it's something that can be memorized and chanted over and over again like a mantra. realize our true nature and some of the side effects of that is calming and grounding and feeling ourselves, really feeling our presence and our interrelatedness in the universe.

[55:21]

And Mel talked about this I think on Saturday about That's why we chant after we sit zazen, that we build up energy through our sitting practice and then we express it when we chant. And when the chanting is really on, you can feel the energy in the room and the interest relatedness of all the bells, all the instruments, and all the different tones of voice that are there, and it really comes together at the very end during the gāte gāte pāre gāte line in our chant, and it really harmonizes things. Ross? Yes. I don't know if we use mantras or not in our practice.

[56:25]

It might be just a word difference, but I know I've read about wado, which is turning word phrases, that I know is definitely used in our practice. Because Bekaroshi gives them out. I mean, it might be things like, just now is enough. already connected. Uh huh. Things like that. And the term is wado, it's like a Chinese? Yeah, I think it's Chinese for turning word phrase. Uh huh. Which is, can be used, you know, starting with breathing practice. Yeah. Uh huh. So it might be just a different, slightly turned on the word mantra. Yeah. Or a Chinese word. Yeah, it's short enough that it can actually be used as a regular thing, like with your breath. I like, why not me?

[57:26]

I wanted to read a lecture from Mel back in 83 entitled The Heart Sutra and the Mantra of Our Life. Well, that's pretty self-explanatory. I used to think of Suzuki Roshi's life as a mantra. We tend to think of a mantra as a phrase which we repeat over and over again. Sometimes people ask, can you give me a mantra, something to repeat over and over again to evoke or to maintain a certain concentrated or pure state? But when I observed Suzuki Roshi, it seemed to me that the way he lived his life as a was a mantra. His life had a very obvious form.

[58:27]

Every day at the old Sokoji Temple at Bush Street, I would see him enter the zendo from his office and light the incense, sit zazen, and do service. Every day he did the same thing, which was amazing to me. I had never seen anyone do that kind of activity before. His life was devoted to sitting zazen, bowing, lighting incense, and the various other things that he did. When there were so many other things to do in the world, here was this person simply doing these things over and over again every day. And he had been doing them over and over every day for most of his life. I never thought of myself doing anything like that in what seemed like such a narrowly disciplined way. of life, so I was impressed by it. After a while it occurred to me that his life was a mantra. Every day he had these tasks that he would do. He was always concentrated and went about his activity in a light and easy manner.

[59:32]

Somehow it was not just repetitive, it was a dynamic that was always producing light. One way to produce energy is to have something going around and around in a circular path. If you hook up a conductor to that energy producer, the energy flows from it as a dynamo. That's why he had so much spiritual power. The lines that are essentially adjectives about this mantra, therefore know that Prajnaparamita is the great transcendent mantra, the great bright mantra, the utmost mantra, the supreme mantra, are simply just praising this mantra as the best thing going, and that there in fact is nothing higher.

[60:49]

And it's able to relieve all suffering. And it's true, not false. Now, let's see. Now, what's true and what's not false? The idea that... that there's a veiled truth and an absolute truth that typically things are veiled or are covered up, and we think of them as true. But what's being talked about here is the ultimate truth, the truth of pain and lessening, or truth of suffering and lessening suffering. And this mantra, in fact, is going to help us do that. So proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra.

[61:59]

Proclaim the mantra that says, Gatte Gatte Paragatte Parasam Gatte Bodhisvaha. Gatte Gatte is gone, gone, completely gone. and gone from suffering to liberation. So this is at the end of what our practice has been. So we've gone from suffering to liberation, from forgetfulness to mindfulness, and we've gone from the other shore to this shore. Everyone gone, bodhisattva. is awakened. Bodhi literally means awake and Svaha is a way of saying hallelujah.

[63:02]

The Brahmin priests back in the Buddhist times would typically use this term Svaha. And in the tantric system Svaha is reserved for addressing a female deity. They call female deities Svaha. Svaha. Is that what you mean? Addressing one, like Svaha. How are you today? Yeah. So... It's about a quarter of nine or so. I've got a recapitulation of five weeks of Heart Sutra class that I could kind of read through, kind of tell us, remind us where we've been, that I'd like to read as kind of a cliff note of this whole thing.

[64:13]

The Prajnaparamita literature is concerned with the cultivation of Prajna, which is the wisdom or understanding of interrelatedness, and bringing forth compassion as its active principle. The literature was an expression of the Mahayana movement at the turn of the millennia, and the Bodhisattva ideal was set in contrast to the Arhat ideal of the Theravada tradition. The abhidharmic practices of analysis of dharmas was questioned and restated by Avilokiteshvara to Shariputra, who was foremost in wisdom. These dharmas were shown not to have a separate substantial reality, but rather existed as a temporary reality through a complex interrelatedness of the five skandhas, which comprise our personality. And they too did not have a separate reality. now, and the term emptiness essentially is interrelatedness.

[65:25]

Form is emptiness. Wave is water. Water is wave. Suffering is lessened. Pain and pleasure, as well as other dualities, simply are relative dualities. One arises because of the other's existence. You can't have one without the other. Pain exists because pleasure exists. We sit in emptiness as Buddhas, but as Bodhisattvas, we respond to suffering, seeing the emptiness of all five skandhas, and take care of what has to be taken care of. And in the realm of emptiness, there's no qualifiers. There's no Four Noble Truths, no Eightfold Path, no Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. We can't attach, in fact, to anything. We use things and we move on. And when the Buddha died, somewhat like what Reb ends his lectures with, he said, I haven't uttered a word. And there's a line in the Bodhisattva ceremony, you know, without fear, one goes along together with the Buddhas.

[66:34]

And mantra is continuous practice. So, in the remaining minutes, if anyone would like to share a comment or a question, or just sit. Is this emptiness? It was. Well, Rosa, I want to thank you very much. It was really a great pleasure to receive your teaching. Thank you for your support. It's nice to be acknowledged and I feel fortunate to have a venue to be able to do it in a real

[67:42]

in a clearly seen way. And I thank you for that. And also, we have to remember that we all are making our contributions. Some are not as visible. But at the Founders Ceremony, we say to all the cooperating founders, both hidden and revealed, who have made this practice place possible, So Ross is revealed for five weeks teaching a class and there's each one of us supporting the practice. Yeah, well, I was telling a few people that last time I did this, a couple years ago, it was done in four sessions and there was all this cross-talk.

[69:01]

The only thing different this time was that, because we didn't have that hymn to Prajnaparamita a few years ago, so that was added into the commentary part of the class. But it seemed to go on a lot more, and I guess it was just more information that had kind of accumulated to share. So it feels good. And it's like anything, the more one practices, the easier it becomes. And I think my favorite thing is to sleep or prepare for sleep. As I lay my head down on the pillow and let go of everything, as Mel says, it's that point in your day when you just let go and it just feels so great. And my second favorite thing is talking about Dharma. And not necessarily in this kind of venue. Actually, I like it. I think I prefer a more informal setting.

[70:05]

But I have an opportunity to do that and with people who want to share that and offer their support and questions. It really works both ways and that's where I feel really encouraged in my practice. You know, we sit We sit alone and we draw encouragement from our practice and we feel support through the Sangha and the collective energy of chanting and sweeping the sidewalks and doing Sushina and whatnot. But the opportunity to be in this venue and really, because it's like preaching to the converted, as a friend of mine says, everyone's here because they want to be here. They're not, you know, you're not getting credit. There's no merit, you know, whatnot. So, um, uh, it's a really wonderful thing and really rare too. So it, uh, it's really, uh, recharges my batteries.

[71:10]

Thank you. your process. I mean, I see all these little notes, and they're not scribbled notes. They're written with need. And I'm curious about the process by which you came up with this written material. Was it all in a period of time before this? Was this a culmination of various things?

[72:14]

how it evolved. I thought I'd get everything I needed on this piece of paper. So it is kind of very small, scribbled little notes on each line. And I was using my Teacher New York's commentary on the Heart Sutra, which I felt was enough. But after a while, I realized there wasn't enough room to fit everything on it. And so then I started reading a few books that Mel had recommended, and then I realized that I had to get it down on paper. And I don't have a computer, so I had to take my time and write really neatly. And I like things sort of perfect and right angled and tied together without anything extra. So I did that the first time and everything was really kind of set. And I think that's why the class went so quickly the first time, the four sessions. Also, as part of my sort of allowing people to go on too long and not really having a sense of kind of control and getting through what I needed to get through, so I kind of tightened things up this time around.

[73:32]

So for this time, we needed someone to teach a class because there really wasn't anything going on after Mel's, let's see, Mel's did his class and Maylee did her class, as I recall, and that was, then there was like this long sort of desert. And so, as class coordinator, I was asking people, we teach a class, and people weren't coming forward. And Nancy had a great suggestion for a class, but no one sees the opportunity, which was, what's the origin of the various chants that we do, right? I think was the question. So, okay, well, if not who, but me, if not who. now, but when, right? So, I'd already done my homework, so I figured it would be really easy to do. I'd already done it before. And so, by this time, my notes, I couldn't get to my neat little tied-up notes. I wound up having other experiences of things that I wanted to include.

[74:36]

And I'm also very sentimental, so I didn't want to throw away my old notes. So my friend had given me a bunch of Post-its from when his business moved. So now I have these little Post-its to add to it on top of my old notes. And then I think Mel probably knew that this class was coming up because from last year's time in North Carolina, the newsletter is now publishing his commentary. So I asked Bob Zepernick to run me a copy of all that and so that put all that together and Grace had encouraged me after she attended class to Speak more from my own experience versus just using Mel and Dogen and all these you know all of our ancestors as a way of Sort of validate authenticating the commentary rather than just trust myself in the process.

[75:43]

And of course, you all would raise a question if things sounded really out there. And you've done it a couple of times, and it made me think about what I had said and how to do my homework and respond to people outside of class. rethinking through what question was raised. So I started doing that and I mentioned, I talked about that once in lecture on Saturday about just speaking from what my experience was and realizing while I did that, checking for sort of self-centeredness and arrogance and all of that. as well as realizing that it was just my own experience, there was no way that I could really convey what went on with me at this point of realization or that point of realization. And it really became clear to me that we're really on our own with each other, supporting each other.

[76:48]

We're really on our own to come to that place of seeing why I'm suffering. And all that really became an opportunity for my own But it's familiar and I like things that are fairly easy. So even though it's difficult to express, explain all this stuff, um, it's not what we chant every day. And, um, it's, um, as Mel says, you know, if someone bumps into you on the street and says, you know, where the five skandhas are, you should know that. And, um, if you don't, you should find out what they are. And, um, there's something to be said for that.

[77:48]

Bob Paulson used to live here, put together the basic Buddhist tenets in a kind of an unedited form. And then when he left, I kind of took it upon myself to put that together into like a simple little cheat sheet for people. And I think it's the most popular handout on the shelf there, because it just explains everything. And I didn't have to do a whole lot. I mean, Bob had really done a bunch of the work. I just did the circle at the bottom for the 12 links. We're in a unique position because we're not in a monastery where we all know this stuff. We're practicing together. We're actually in the world trying to practice monastic practice in the world and encountering people who have no sense of what the hell practice is. So what can we do to share that with others?

[78:54]

So this basic teaching is something that we can share with people. Kastanahashi is going to teach a class on calligraphy in October, and that's another opportunity to express our true nature with brush and ink. I don't know if there'll be much talking, it'll probably be a lot more doing, but it should be a really nice class. Mel will be teaching a class sometime in September. The topic, I'm not sure, but it should run through a practice period. Well, thank you all once again for everything and see you in the Zendo.

[79:53]

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