Good evening and welcome, everyone. I want to continue speaking about something I was talking about yesterday morning. Several of you were here, and I'm going to review a little bit of what I said yesterday, which has to do with the Mahayana Buddhist sutras, the scriptures of the bodhisattvas, the enlightened beings. which is the background very much of our Zen practice. And really it's Azen. And I want to talk about this worldview and how strange it is. And I want to talk about it in connection with some of the strangeness of some aspect of modern science. So some disclaimers first.

[01:07]

Well, OK, first I'm going to just say that this, in some ways, has to do with this Jewel Meru Samadhi, Precious Meru Samadhi, that we just chanted. Because I've been writing about this and this dharma of suchness that Dongchuan talks about. Just almost finished the chapter of my Dongchuan book on this text. thinking about this suchness and what is this and what does it have to do with our practice and how do we practice this. And also, I talk often about Dogen and this strange sentence in one of his first writings about the meaning of zazen when one person sits, displays buddha mudra with their whole body and mind for even a little while He says in the Self-Fulfillment Samadhi, all of space becomes enlightened.

[02:12]

And so what does this mean? Well, this relates to self and environment and our interconnectedness with everything. And anyway, zazen and our practice, of course, has to do with believing suffering beings and awakening and our connection with all beings. of course, finding our own personal inner calm and settledness and settling and this ongoing process of that. But it's also about something much deeper, which we can't completely understand. And Dogen says that, and the Bodhisattva Sutras say that in many, many ways. Yet, this is so important to our practice. And I think it's not something that is part of how we think of Zen practice in the West, mostly.

[03:17]

It's there in all of Asia, just in terms of the context of going to temples in Asia and seeing all these Buddhist images and all the imagery that's part of Asian Buddhist culture. So I started yesterday by, yesterday I talked about some of the, a number of the images about this in some of the Mahayana Sutras, the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, and the Flower Ornament Sutra, so I'm going to mention a few of those. But I also want to connect this up today with modern, current, theoretical physics, which, so here's a bunch of disclaimers. I don't understand physics at all. I'm reading a few things about it and just starting to read, and some of you understand this much better than I do, and, you know, maybe in, you know,

[04:22]

several months or six months, I could do a much more coherent talk about this. I keep reading this stuff. And yet, just some of the stuff that I've come across is so interesting in the way that it seems to me to connect up with some of these images of, you could say, cosmology or worldview in the Mahayana Sutras that I thought I'd say something about. see what any of you have to say. So the other disclaimer is that since I've been studying this, or trying to read about this a little bit, I seem to come across physicists. There's a few of them down in Hyde Park at the group that Myosan leads. I was there last Wednesday. Anyway, there was a fellow who's started sitting there, he was a graduate student or something there, and said he does cosmology, but he studies the background of radiation from the Big Bang, but he does it as an astronomer anyway.

[05:39]

Most people I've encountered who do physics do much more practical things than this theoretical stuff. Anyway, OK, disclaimers aside. So, just a sampling of what the sutras say about this suchness, this inconceivability, or thusness, this quality of reality. So, for example, just a few examples. In the Malakirti Sutra, the sutra about the great enlightened layman from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago, more enlightened than all of the monk disciples of the Buddha. There are many amazing things that happen in that scripture, but one of the things that happens in that and many other Bodhisattvas, excuse me, scriptures, is that there are all these Bodhisattvas who come from, quote unquote, different world systems, from various,

[06:47]

Buddha fields, great distances away, vast distances away from this. And what does that mean? Does that mean from different galaxies or planets or solar systems? Well, that's maybe one way to understand it, but I think there's something else going on. There's one story where the Buddha from a different distance There's huge numbers of, you know, if you crush all the atoms in all the worlds between this world and that Buddha field and drop one atom every, you know, every million whatever's between there and now, that's how far away it is or something like that. There's these huge distances in space and time that are depicted in these sutras. Anyway, so there's the bodhisattvas who come from there to hear Shakyamuni or to see Vimalakirti in this sutra.

[07:54]

And the Buddha in that world system says, look, when you get there, don't be disrespectful to those bodhisattvas, even though they're really puny, even though they're really tiny, because, you know, they live in the Saha world. and which is our Buddha field, which is the world of endurance. So they're very advanced bodhisattvas. They seem tiny, not so radiant or anything, but they really have to practice hard because it's a very difficult world to practice in. And there are other things they talk about. They talk about all the different ways that Buddhas and all these different Buddha fields teach Some of them teach by talking, like some of us do. And some of them teach by just lights emanating from their body. And some of them teach by silence. And some of them teach with fragrances. They emanate various fragrances. And the assembly studies the Dharma by studying the different fragrances.

[09:00]

So there's all different kinds of ways. And then there's this thing about The Malakirti himself, I'll just read to you this little bit. Within these inconceivable realms, as described or demonstrated by the Malakirti, Bodhisattvas can place the vast cosmic king of mountains, Mount Sumeru, into a mustard sea without shrinking the mountain or expanding the sea. The Bodhisattva in this realm can pour all the oceans into a pore of her skin without disturbing any of the fish or other creatures dwelling in the ocean. A bodhisattva living in the inconceivable may pick up a whole galaxy in his hand, toss it like a boomerang around the universe, then put it back in its place, without disturbing any of the beings therein. These maneuvers can be seen by the affected beings, but only by those who will be inspired and led into training in the bodhisattva disciplines by witnessing these miracles.

[10:00]

So, there's all this strange stuff in the Gunsama, and there are all these different Buddha fields, and all these different worlds. Well, okay, here's, so one of the things I'm reading is a book by this fellow, Brian Green, who's a physicist, and he's into string theory, and he's written a number of supposedly readable books, like The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, and I'm reading his most recent, Hidden in Reality. parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos. And he says, talking about, he says that basically that all of the different strands, quantum mechanics and string theory and all the different versions of modern theoretical physics lead to multiple universes, or parallel universes.

[11:03]

that the word universe used to mean everything that there is. But now, in terms of modern theoretical physics, there are multiple universes. So he says, just a couple of quotes, sometimes universe still connotes absolutely everything. Sometimes it refers only to those parts of everything that someone such as you or I could, in principle, have access to. Sometimes it's applied to separate realms, ones that are partly or fully, temporarily or permanently, inaccessible to us. In this sense, the word relegates our universe to membership in a large, perhaps infinitely large, collection. In some, the parallel universe talks about parallel universes. So he talks about the many major developments in fundamental theoretical physics, relativistic physics, quantum physics, cosmological physics, unified physics, computational physics, all have led us to consider one or another variety of parallel universes.

[12:04]

and they each envision our universe as part of an unexpectedly larger whole, but the complexion of that whole and the nature of the member universes differ sharply among them. In some, the parallel universes are separated from us by enormous stretches of space or time. In others, they're hovering millimeters away. In others, still, the very notion of their location proves parochial, devoid of meaning. A similar range of possibilities manifest in the laws governing the parallel universes. So, you know, the point of looking at this is not that we should try to escape to some more pleasant universe where John Lennon is still writing his songs or something. But, you know, how does this, the fact of, you know, all these different worlds, I mean, in the Bodhisattva scriptures there and somehow there's a connection.

[13:09]

So I don't know, I'm just, I don't have, I don't know what any of this means. I'm just, you know, wondering out loud, but there seems to be that in this, in these scriptures that are the basis of our practice, and again, it's not about escaping to some other universe is about what is this reality, what are the possibilities, what are the options for our being helpful in this situation, in this world, and what does it mean that there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in other dimensions, or, I don't know, we're connected to them somehow. And somehow here's this physicist talking about these parallel universes. So I don't know. I'm not trying to say that one confirms the other or vice versa.

[14:11]

We don't need to do that. But anyway, there's some interesting echoes. So just a few more things. Well, you know, there's space and there's time. So, well, there's so many interesting things about what these physicists are saying. Well, I've talked sometimes about Dogen's teaching about being time. that time is moving in many directions. Duncan, the founder of Shoto Zen in the 13th century Japan, who I talk about a lot, says that time doesn't exist as some external container. The time is our time, that we are time. that time moves from past to future, from future to past, from present to present, and that our sense of time is... Time is really us.

[15:22]

And we know that time is... There is clock time, there is... you know, this idea of conventional time, but also, how long was the period of this lesson today, Dave? 35 minutes. So, for some of you it may have felt like it went on forever, you know, you just were sure that Devon had fallen asleep. For some of you it may have gone like that, and, you know, the same 35 minutes may Sometimes, some days may even seem very long, some days go by like that. So our sense of time has to do with us and our activity and our awareness. So we actually know that. Anyway, here's something about Einstein's connection with dark entity and time. Again, this is from Brian Beard. Of the many things Einstein's work revealed, the fluidity of time is the hardest to grasp.

[16:28]

Whereas everyday experience convinces us, he says, that there is an objective concept of time's passage, relativity shows this to be an artifact of life at slow speeds and weak gravity. move near life speed, or immerse yourself in a powerful gravitational field, and the familiar universal conception of time will evaporate. If you're rushing past me, things I insist happen at the same moment will appear to you to have occurred at different moments. This isn't evidence of a magician's trickery or hypnotist's deception. The passage of time depends on the particular trajectory followed, in fact, the experience of the measured. So this is in terms of physics. He goes on to talk about they're not sure now whether the universe is finite or infinite, or various universes are finite or infinite. So he says, much as Hamlet famously declares, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself

[17:33]

a king of infinite space, each of the bubble universes... So one of the ways they talk about multiple universes is bubble universes within a wider field. So anyway, each of the bubble universes appears to have finite spatial extent when examined from the outside, but infinite spatial extent when examined from the inside. That's a marvelous realization. Infinite spatial extent is just what we need for a quilted parallel universe. So we can meld the quilted multiverse into the inflationary sport. So he goes into various different versions of universes and multiverses. The extreme disparity between the outsider's and insider's perspectives arise because they have vastly different conceptions of time. Although the point is far from obvious, we'll now see that what appears as endless time to an outsider appears as endless space at each moment of time to an insider. Anyway, I don't know, this is even maybe wilder than some of the Mahayana sutras.

[18:41]

Oh, and just about parallel universes, just another little tidbit. The best available cosmologic theory for explaining the best available cosmological data leads us to think of ourselves as occupying one of a vast inflationary system of parallel universes, each of which harbors its own vast collection of quilted parallel universes. Cutting-edge research yields a cosmos in which there are not only parallel universes, but but parallel, parallel universes. It suggests that reality is not only expansive, but abundantly expansive. So, you know, the connection really is, well, what is reality? And what does that mean to us? And again, this can, you know, this is theoretical physics and it can sound very theoretical, but somehow I have this feeling that Just hearing about this stuff, and hearing about these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in different Buddha fields somewhere, somehow, can give us a kind of sense of different possibilities.

[20:03]

Because it's so easy now in our world to feel overwhelmed, or like there's so many problems, And yet, we don't know what's going on. And I think that maybe is a good thing. Maybe there are more possibilities than we can imagine. So, going back to the Mahayana stories, in the Flower Ornament Sutra, which is, a very vast sutra with all kinds of wild stuff in it, but it includes things like the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, or universally good, entering a samadhi or meditation concentration called the Lion Emerging Samadhi,

[21:06]

which reveals to all the assembled bodhisattvas the vast array of Buddhas, lands, enlightening beings, powers of samadhis and manifestations of teachings from past, present and future that all exist within the oceanic Buddha lands on a single heritage and on every heritage. So, you know, this is not just a physics in multiple universes. This is from the Bodhisattva scriptures, that in each hair-tip there are these vast arrays of Bodhisattvas in multiple Buddha-fields, Buddhas, and they say that is true in the Sutra also in terms of on the tip of every blade of grass. And then there's this other one, and I'm going to spend a little more time with this. This is also from the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra. And this is from a chapter called The Meditation of Samantabhadra, or the Bodhisattva Universally Good.

[22:13]

And this is the samadhi called The Eminent Body of the Illuminator of Blessness. We were just chanting about blessings, the Dharma and blessings. So this Samadhi is described as being in all awakened ones, available to all Buddhas, and as containing all worlds in the universe. I guess by that it means all the universes. And as producing all other concentration states, or all other Samadhis. It contains the teachings and liberations of all Buddhas and the knowledge of all bodhisattvas and develops enlightened virtues and vows. So it says, at the time that Samantabhadra entered this samadhi of the immanent body of the illuminator Augustus, he saw vast numbers of Buddhas in multitudinous worlds in all directions.

[23:14]

And he also saw Buddhas within every atom in all of those realms. I can't imagine how to visualize that. I don't think George Lucas could even envision that. In front of each one of those Buddhas sat other Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas, who immediately also entered into the samadhi of the immanent body of the illuminator of blessings. So again, this is from one of these great Mahayana sutras. The Buddhas in all the myriad realms thereupon praised each Samantabhadra Bodhisattva for their great enlightening abilities fostered by the power of the cosmic absolute Dharmakaya Buddha, Vairochana. Then the Buddhas bestowed upon every Samantabhadra omniscient knowledge of all the different worlds and their workings and their appropriate enlightening teachings. And then something happens after that, and I'm going to shift to something described in Modern Physics that just kind of is interesting.

[24:33]

It sounded sort of similar. This is from Brian Greene's description of what he calls the inflationary multiverse, which is one of the kinds of multiple. Multiverse is a kind of multiple universe. And this is a continuation of something where he has an image of, it's an analogy of Cartman. Do any of you know South Park? This is a cartoon figure from South Park, Cartman. Anyway, I'm going to ask this little boy. right on a mountaintop, offered an analogy to an inflation field harboring significant potential energy and negative pressure. So there's all this weird stuff. There's inflationary cosmology, there's repulsive as well as attractive gravity. I don't understand either, but it's just all this strange stuff.

[25:37]

It's even maybe stranger than the stuff in the Mahayana sutras. But anyway, it says, whereas carbon was perched on a single mountaintop, the inflation field had a value at each point in space. The theory posits that the inflation field starts off with the same value at each location within an initial region, and so we'd achieve a more faithful rendering of the science If we imagine something a little odd, numerous Cartman clones perched on numerous, closely packed, identical mountaintops throughout spatial expanse. So I'm sorry, that reminded me of all these Samantabhadra bodhisattvas throughout the universe, and I'm OK. And then it goes into quantum theory. I mean, you know, on one level, Zazen is really simple, okay?

[26:41]

You just sit. You don't have to, you know, you can forget about all this stuff, forget about this, everything I'm saying tonight, but it's just, I don't know, I just felt like talking about it. Anyway, in this, where I left off in terms of Samantha Barber's vision of the, you know, immanent body of the illuminator of vastness where he'd seen all these different worlds where there was Samantabhadra Bodhisattva sitting there like little cartons. When this had transpired in each of the many worlds and in all of the atoms in each of those worlds, all of the Buddhas reached out with their right hands and patted each of the Samantabhadras in all the realms on their head. This amazing mind-boggling scene is the content of this primary samadhi of Samantabhadra. As Samantabhadra arose from the Samadhi, all of the universal virtue Bodhisattvas arose in every world, and all of the worlds trembled. Gentle rains of beautiful clouds and jewels, many with specific described qualities, then fell profusely upon all Bodhisattvas everywhere, bestowing enlightened knowledge, techniques for teaching, and its fundamental illumination.

[27:53]

So anyway, I don't know if any of that is useful, but it just seems to me that what we get from these Bodhisattva scriptures that are kind of the background, you know, you can decide how far back you want them to be, but they're the background of our satsang practice. This practice of just sitting, settling down, being present, and As we do this regular sitting practice, we start to get a sense of how deeply interconnected we are to things. And the point of our practice, of course, is to express our awareness in the world for the sake of all beings. So we also have the bodhisattva precepts and practices to help us be helpful in the world, to be aware in the world. But just this sense of how strange and dynamic a reality we exist in, I think, gives us a wider sense of possibilities.

[29:13]

And that it's not realistic to feel overwhelmed by the difficulties of the world, because we don't really know all that there is about what's going on in our own lives, as well as in people around us. Anyway, I find having a sense of this, you know, maybe I don't want to study too much more about this because it's, maybe it's not, maybe I don't need to know too much about it, but just having a sense of it. Probably I'll look at it a little bit more, but having a sense of this and having a sense of these visions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in all these different Buddha fields, maybe they're very distant, but they also, they come and hang out here. They're somehow connected to us, with us. Anyway, that's all I'm going to say.

[30:25]

Comments, responses, questions, corrections for those of you who know about physics. Please feel free. I heard the idea of the inflationary universe, and I really like that from the Buddhist perspective too, because it's like, in that way, we're all, no matter where we are, at the center of the universe. So it's really like, wow, how amazing and powerful is that? Yeah, this idea of interconnectedness, which is so important on so many levels. It's important in terms of thinking about the environment and those of us who are concerned about climate change and so forth and how we are connected.

[31:31]

But it's not just in terms of the reality we see. And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't, that we have to take care of the reality we see. But also, it's not just that these bodhisattvas are on some other planet. They're also in other dimensions right here in this room, maybe. I don't know. But this interconnectedness is really deep and strange. I can imagine that some people feel like this is irrelevant or not so helpful. It's possible, too. Jeremy? So maybe I could try to unpack a little bit. Try my best. Jeremy knows about physics.

[32:33]

I try not to know. I think it's best not to know. Well, I think it's best not to know, too. But I don't know more than you don't know. So I think what I hear you saying is you're asking us to kind of soften our hardened knowing mind and kind of consider the possibility, the wider possibilities that are available to us and to use that as a help to keep us nice and bendable. to keep our minds available to consider all the options we have. Yes. Good. Yes. I think that this stuff can help you for sure. And I think one of the difficulties I have personally is I get intoxicated easily with this kind of stuff because I try to be too intellectual about it.

[33:44]

That's one way to get intoxicated. If you read Flower Ornament Sutra particularly, for some people, it's full of all these visions and all this flowery stuff. And if you try and figure it out, it doesn't help. But if you just read it and just imagine the stuff, you can get really blissed out. So there's that kind of intoxication, too. So I think physics maybe can do that in one way, but the Mahayana sutras also can be very intoxicating. And that's not the point. It's not about escaping from the difficulties of our everyday reality. It's about opening up a space, a wider space in which to, as you said, in which to I remember yesterday, during your job talk, you were talking about this similar stuff.

[34:50]

And you referred to Men in Black as one of your favorite Buddhist movies. Yes. I was thinking, what is he talking about? I've never heard of it referred to that way before. And then I remember at the very end, there was that scene where... Well, you don't want to give this away to people who haven't seen it. But the scene at the very end is very much Huayen Buddhist, very much about the Flower Ornament Sutra. So I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen that movie. But yeah, the scene at the very end, that's just one of the aspects of that movie. So maybe everybody here, is there anybody here? OK, so let's not talk about it too much. I don't want to spoil it. But Men in Black is my favorite American Buddhist movie, yeah. Highly recommend. In many ways, it's a good thing. There's lots of dharma in it. It's similarly about training successors amongst other things.

[35:49]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v005
@Score_83.78