I love to taste the truths of the Tantra's words. These, as you know from the course outline, which has been passed around, these first two classes are going to be on the Indian background. And then Alan, who is just very recently back from Thailand and not well with a stomach disorder, is going to give the next three classes. And then I'll give them on the Zen, on our Zen teachers, on our lineage. And then I'll give the last one, which will be on the Chinese lineage, that is. And I'll give the last one, which will be on the Japanese, Dogen and his precursors. Excuse me, I have just two more copies of the radio material I can give out to whoever came in late.

[01:02]

Okay, and we'll talk about, in a minute, we'll talk about... Anybody else? Yeah. Maybe you and Bob could share and then we'll have, hopefully, some more next week. So, we're going to begin with the Indian background, but I'd like to just begin with reading case number 25, a little of it, from The Gateless Gate, or as Dakin Roshi calls it, The Gateless Barrier. I've been reading through this, The Gateless Barrier, as I've been thinking about the class, and it's been wonderful to move back and forth. So this is case 25, Yangshan's sermon from the third seat. Yangshan dreams he went to Naitreya's realm and was led to the third seat. A senior monk struck the stand with a gavel and said, today the one in the third seat will preach.

[02:06]

Dhyan Shana rose, struck the stand with a gavel and said, the truth of the Mahayana is beyond the four propositions and transcends the hundred negations. Listen, listen. And then the comment, tell me, did he preach or not? If you open your mouth, you are lost. If you cannot speak, then it seems you are stumped. If you neither open your mouth nor keep it closed, you are 108,000 miles off. right? And then there is woman's verse. In broad daylight, under the blue sky, he preached a dream in a dream. Absurd, absurd, he deceived the whole community. So, the dream within the dream. As we were coming closer to this date, I had a dream.

[03:10]

And it was quite instructive. I dreamed that I'd been asked to sing the lead part in an oratorio. And I said, sure. And I first imagined it would be in a great kind of Carnegie Hall-like place. And then when I actually entered it, it was more like a school auditorium. And that felt better. And I went up. And it was just a little bit before it was to begin. And I was talking to the conductor, who was a really nice guy, and some other musicians. We had some strange sticks, implements, and the audience was there and it really, it felt friendly. And I kept thinking, gee. I really don't have a singing voice, and when you hear this kind of music, it's nice to enjoy the singer. And then they passed me what I was going to sing, and it was just words. It wasn't even music. And I thought, well, that doesn't matter too much, because I can't sightread that well anyway. And then I realized that whatever would happen, it would be friendly.

[04:12]

And it didn't matter that I wasn't such an expert and such a star. So that is exactly the way I want to present this class, that it's just an enormous amount of material. And I understand just very, very little of it. And so we all are going to be involved in working on it together. So, I have made these handouts and I just want to go down the list briefly. Also, the class outline, yes, you could begin by, I misspelled Alan's name because he's back from Japan and I'm a poor speller and it is the E on the end, not I, so we could do that And the list of readings got sort of bigger and bigger, but it was clear.

[05:26]

Hi, there's a seat over here and a chair. You can stand out of my comfort. We couldn't use books and so it just got bigger. So we have the class outline and then there's a resource and reading sheet and an end with the back of it being a list of the ancestors with dates, which we'll deal with when Alan's in Alan's talks. And then there's a sort of a historical map. It's crude, but At least, I do better with kind of crude maps when there are so many dates. So it's just to keep some orientation in that aspect. And then there is The Essentials of Mahayana. Quite a long passage from this book by Dumoulin.

[06:31]

This is a two-volume book, and it's a very clear kind of summary. What I am not going to do is try and lay out the full history of Mahayana. So, other people do that much better. Dumoulin does it well, and if you want even more depth, this is a really good book by Paul Williams. which has brief chapters on each of the major schools and really does get into the philosophy of each school. And this is the library copy. So, that's the academic background, and probably not so many of you have read it in the last week, but more of you can read it in the next week. And then, I did not include in the packet, but I have this Xerox of the Three Bodies of Buddha by Suzuki Roshi.

[07:36]

It was a lecture that he gave sometime in Kasahara. And we will talk about that a little bit more next week when we look at the Lotus Sutra. It's quite technical and I didn't pass it out to everybody because I really don't know. You know, some people, some of us really like to read and others don't. I'll leave a stack of that and you can take it if that's a topic that interests you. And then there is, maybe everybody got this or maybe not, this interbeing which is Thich Nhat Hanh's very lucid commentary on the Heart Sutra. And Fran used it in the last class, so some of you may have it. And some of you may have his book. So again, that will be an optional handout. Is that it? No, no. I'm talking about Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on it called Interbeing.

[08:39]

Is that it? Yeah, okay, that's it. And then we have... three excerpts from sutras that we'll be talking about. One from the Lotus Sutra, one from the Perfection of Wisdom, and one, which we will talk about next week, of Bodhidharma. So, I thought that the way we could engage with this enormous topic is by using specific texts and going over pieces of the text quite carefully, and also by themes, by keeping these themes in mind, and they will kind of turn over and over as we pursue this work together.

[09:40]

Now, the little papers are for you to write down answers to the following two questions. What is Buddhism and what is Zen? And you can write down your answers between now and the end of class. And we're not expecting very polished, complete answers. And if we do this again, we might do it again at the end of the class, at the end of the series, and see what we come up with. And so we can just keep thinking about that, too. We, all of us here, I think, are here because we practice seriously. And how do we connect our particular practice with the whole picture?

[10:48]

What is our dream of this great big dream? It's good to keep thinking about that. And to share it. So when you've written down your answers, you can just, well, we'll collect the papers at the end and don't let me forget that we're going to do that. More paper? Yes. Do you want the name? You can put your name or it can be anonymous. So, some time ago, a few years ago, I was at Black Oak when Thomas Cleary was giving a reading. He'd translated yet another book, and there was a stack of books on the table in front of him, this high, that he'd translated. And it was very impressive. And he said, he thought the most important thing anyone could do was to read the Sutras.

[11:56]

to just read the sutras. And that really resonated with me. We don't read the sutras much, and it's really incredible that we have this large, ancient body. And in my experience, it is wonderful to read them. We recently had Don Norman come, and we did the Atacama South Pacific. One gave a class on the Heart Sutra, and so little by little we're doing it. And I gave a class a while back on the Lotus Sutra. So I really hope that we can continue this work together and the reading together. Because the tradition says that there's something very direct and exciting and yogic about reading the sutras. You know, just the act of reading them stirs something big up. So this is a little start.

[13:00]

So the goal of this class is really to just pick up a little corner of the big piece and also to give us some background with our Chinese and Japanese ancestors. I find it very, very interesting and enlivening to read these cases and just relate backwards to where they might be coming from. You know, when you first hear a lot of these cases they're like little tiny clenched nuts and you just, you know, it's hard to get them apart and it's hard to get space enough to relate to them. But I hope that what we're doing, what we can do in the next two weeks is to just give enough background. All right, so I'm supposing that all of you have either took Fran's course or know just a little bit about the early teachings.

[14:54]

In Buddhism, we talk about all of the teachings being the Triptika, the three baskets, which are the Sutra, the Vinaya, the rules, and the Abhidharma. It's not clear at all when what we call the Mahayana began. And it seems to me that reading scholars who are writing most recently, it becomes less and less clear. And I read somewhere that the Mahayana actually may have begun in the first century after Buddha in some small way. But we now have a division between the Mahayana schools and what I will call the non-Mahayana schools, sometimes called the Hinayana or the lesser vehicle.

[15:58]

And now the non-Mahayana tradition continues in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia. and the Mahayana tradition in Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, China, Japan. So, one can see that although this talk about the Mahayana, when there's a tradition that is spread out over so many centuries, we usually think of the Mahayana having been written down sometime between 100 years for our era, sometime between 100 BCE and 500 CE. When there's a tradition that falls over so many centuries, so many countries, it's obviously not correct to take a kind of essentialist view of it.

[17:05]

It's just a kind of patchwork with a kind of of trend to it. You're using BCE as before? Before Common Era and CE as Common Era. CE. Is that the same as AD and BC? It's that same. It's non-sectarian. Exactly. Right. Right. And it was said that the the non-Mahayana sutras were the authentic words that came out of Buddha's mouth as were remembered by Ananda and as were written down three or four hundred years later. And that the Mahayana sutras from that point of view were inaccurate because they did not come out of the mouth of the historical Buddha. Well, probably all the sutras were written at about the same time, written down at about the same time.

[18:10]

The oral traditions lasted as long as they lasted, but the writing down was about the same time. So again, it becomes difficult to say, to be clear about what came first and what came second. So, what can we say about the Mahayana and the non-Mahayana? The central point of Buddhism is the Buddha's enlightenment. And that's kind of the great many-faceted jewel that we all have. What was Buddha's experience and what is our experience? How are we all now sitting in the lap of Buddha? This moment. So we have many teachings and many understandings of this experiential event.

[19:16]

And of course there's a great deal of disagreement. But there's also a great deal of tolerance. And traditionally, non-Mahayana and Mahayana monks have been able to live within one monastic institution. And there have not been wars, and there hasn't been a creed that people have lived and died for. Because the teaching is does depend on our experience and so experience is our experience is a value which is appreciated and within this big experience there is a tendency to on the one hand lean over towards a very extensive analytic codification of psychological experience, ethical experience, and philosophical experience.

[20:27]

And the Abhidharma, I don't know how many of you have looked at the Abhidharma with its lists and lists and lists, and the identification of every state of mind, and the evaluation of whether it is wholesome, unwholesome, neutral, and so on and so on. very, very complete and extensive maps. And then there's the other leaning, which is more of a tendency to go directly to the source, the intuitive, the direct kind of practice that is more intuition-based. This distinction is really put very neatly in the poem that the sixth ancestor wrote, we name, wrote on the wall of the monastery of the fifth ancestor. That's a story I know Alan will go into.

[21:29]

So I'm just going to read the poem, which is very familiar probably to most of you. The body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror. Movement by movement, wipe the mind carefully. Let there be no dust on it. That's the kind of Mahayana way. And then the sixth ancestor wrote, capped it, Bodhi really has no tree. The mirror has no stand. From the beginning, there's nothing at all. Where can any dust alight? So, here we have the Mahayana and the non-Mahayana tradition. And as we can see, one rests on the other, because you have to set it, having an intention, setting a goal, directing effort versus letting go, dropping off, falling back on beginner's mind, realizing the Bodhisattva effort.

[22:39]

understanding that practice and enlightenment are not different. So, in our Monday morning echo, we appreciate the arhats. Is it the 16? There are 16 practices. So, we appreciate the the slow, painstaking, intentional efforts are. And we also make an effort to take that lightly enough so that we can let it go. But the problem is, if the mirror has no stand and from beginning there's nothing at all, what's the teaching about? How do you teach from that point of view?

[23:43]

So I'd like to address that question through the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines, and you have that in a handout. I'll just say a little bit about this large sutra, or read about it. Religious people are inclined to attribute their holy scriptures to divine inspiration, and they do not like to think of them as a historical sequence of utterances made by fallible men. This is a commentary by Kansa. The faithful in India and the Buddhist world in general assume that all the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras are equally the word of the Buddha, more or less abbreviated according to the faculty of understanding of the people and their zeal and spiritual purity. The first was that in 8,000 lines, that's what this is an excerpt from, this was then expanded to 10,000 to 18,000 to 25,000 and 100,000 slokas, verses,

[24:49]

And after that, it was contracted to 2500, 700, 500, 300, the Diamond Sutra. The Diamond Sutra is considered within this potting. 150, the Heart Sutra, 25, and finally to one syllable, Ah. So, they are all anonymous and date between 500 and 700 CE. So, if you begin to feel confused about what is the Mahayana and you have come to the Berkeley Zen Center or other places and chanted the Heart Sutra 50 times, 100 times, more than that if you actually memorized it because you chanted it so much. The Heart Sutra, in fact, is the summary of the whole works It's the summary of the non-Mahayana.

[25:58]

It's the summary of the Mahayana. And it's good to realize that you know it. That you've heard it and you know the words. So if you forget things, you can kind of go back to it. And if you want more amplification of it, there's a very nice book called The Tiger's by Trevor Leggett, who's in the library, and there is this compendium of the Heart Sutra that has a number of translations and then a number of essays on it. So I'm not going to talk more about it because we do periodically give classes in it, but it's a familiar kind of entering point. Well, I'd like to begin by reading from this chapter one of the Perfection of Wisdom, which you all have.

[27:01]

I don't have it. Yes. You don't have it. The practice of the knowledge of all knowledge. Oh, sorry. The practice of the knowledge of all knowledge. said that the practice of knowledge of all modes is the supplementary stuff that you brought tonight to the people who picked up the their materials tonight of the potluck did not get that so well in that box to your left I think it's where Yeah. Oh, there's one more. Anyone else need one? Also on your piece of paper, if you are lacking a handout, you could write down that you're lacking the handout and I can make more.

[28:14]

How many people don't have these? Only one? Two. Okay. So, I'll just begin and go through it and make some remarks. This sutra begins the way they usually do. Thus I heard at one time. The Lord dwells at Rajagriha on the vulture peak, together with a great gathering of monks, with 12,500 monks, all of them arhats, their outflows dried up, undefiled, fully controlled, quite freed in their hearts, well freed and wise, thoroughbreds, great servants, their work done, their task accomplished, their burden laid down, their own wheel accomplished with the fetters that bound them to becoming extinguished,

[29:17]

their hearts well freed by right understanding, in perfect control of their whole minds, with the exception of a single person, that is the venerable Ananda. As you know, Ananda was the smart cousin of Buddha, whose memory was so good that he remembered everything, and that's, thus I have heard, the I is usually Ananda. But he, it took him some time to become enlightened, and it may be that Alan will go through that that little history. Makar Kshapa was the first, our first ancestor to be enlightened through transmission, through the little, the raising of the flower and the smile. And the next two characters we have, Subuti is the kind of lead disciple in this sutra.

[30:35]

He is known for his friendliness and compassion and has a special link with Maitreya. And his counterpart is Shariputra, who was the most skilled disciple in the Abhidharma. So, it's a little bit like the Heart Sutra. We have Shariputra, of course, in the Heart Sutra, is being instructed by Avalokiteshvara, by compassion, and it's a little bit the same here. The disciple who's foremost in friendliness is instructing the smartest. The Lord said to the venerable Subuti, make it clear now, Subuti, to the Bodhisattvas, the great beings, starting from perfect wisdom, how the bodhisattvas, the great beings, go forth in perfect wisdom. So, how are we going to take our stand in a place where there's no mirror, no stand, nothing there?

[31:39]

Whereupon the venerable Shariputra thought to himself, will that venerable subuti, the elder, expound perfect wisdom of himself through the operation and force of his own power of revealing wisdom, or through Buddha's might. The Venerable Subuti, who knew, through the Buddha's might, that the Venerable Shariputra was in such wise discoursing in his heart, said to the Venerable Shariputra, whatever Venerable Shariputra the Lord's disciples teach, all that is to be known as the Tathagata's work. For in the Dharma demonstrated by the Tathagata, they train themselves, they realize its true nature, they hold it in mind. Therefore, nothing that they teach contradicts the true nature of the Dharma. It is just an outpouring of the Tathagata's demonstration of Dharma. Whatever those sons of good family may expound is the nature of Dharma.

[32:43]

They do not bring into contradiction with the actual nature of the Dharma. So the whole teaching set up is a little bit different here. In the Pali Canon, the non-Mahayana Canon, everything that was spoken was spoken through Buddha's lips. But here it's spoken through Subuddhi, the disciple who is friendly and kind, but Sabuti is speaking Buddha's words. The boundaries are not clear. Sabuti is manifesting Buddha in a certain way. Speaking through Buddha's might. Now we have this word, the Tagatha, which It's a way of talking about the eternal Buddha. The Tathagata is one who has just come, or the one who has just gone, or the eternal Buddha, as opposed to the historical Buddha.

[33:55]

And it's a little... How's that opposed to the second Buddha? The seven Buddhas before Buddha are a manifestation of the eternal Buddha. That's another way of talking about him. And this is a theme that we'll come back to. I want to read a little bit about the coming and the goings of the Tathagatas. The Tathagatas certainly do not come from anywhere, nor do they go anywhere, because suchness does not move, and the Tathagata is suchness. Non-production does not come or go, and the Tathagata is non-production, and so on. Suchness has passed beyond counting, because it is not.

[35:04]

A man scorched by the heat of summer during the last month of summer at noon might see a mirage floating along and might run towards it and think, there I shall find some water and there I shall find something to drink. What do you think, son of a good family? Has that water come from anywhere or does that water go anywhere to the eastern great ocean or southern or northern or western? Somebody else says, no water exists in the mirage. How could its coming or going be conceived? That man is foolish and stupid. If I'm seeing a mirage, he forms the idea of water where there is no water. Water in its own being certainly does not exist in that mirage. And then the first narrator says, equally foolish are all those who adhere to the Tathagata through form and sound, and who in consequence imagine the coming or going of a Tathagata. For a Tathagata cannot be seen from his form body. The Dharma bodies are the Tathagatas and the real nature of Dharmas does not come and go.

[36:11]

There is no going or coming of the body of an elephant, horse, chariot or foot soldier which has been conjured up by a magician. Just so, there is neither coming nor going of the Tathagatas. A sleeping man might in his dreams see one Tathagata, two or three or up to a thousand or still more. On unwaking he would, however, no longer see even a single Tathagata. Where do you think, son of a good family, have these Tathagatas come from anywhere or gone anywhere? So, the extinction of self. Thereupon, the venerable Subhuti, by the Buddha's might, said to the Lord, the Lord has said, make it clear now, Subhuti, to the Bodhisattvas, the great beings, So you see, again, you have to kind of figure out who is it that's speaking? It's the Bodhi speaking, sort of, but it's also Buddha speaking.

[37:13]

Not entirely clear. The Lord has said, may it be clear now, Subuddhi, to the Bodhisattvas, the great beings, starting from perfect wisdom, how the Bodhisattvas, great beings, go forth in perfect wisdom. When one speaks of a Bodhisattva, What Dharma does that word, Bodhisattva, denote? I do not, O Lord, see the Dharma, Bodhisattva, nor a Dharma called perfect wisdom. Since I neither find nor apprehend nor see a Dharma, Bodhisattva, nor a perfect wisdom, what Bodhisattva shall I instruct and admonish in what perfect wisdom? And yet, O Lord, if when this is pointed out, a Bodhisattva's heart does not become cowed or stolid, does not despair or despond, if he does not turn away or become dejected, does not tremble, is not frightened or terrified, it is just this Bodhisattva, this great being who should be instructed in perfect wisdom. It is precisely this that should be recognized as the perfect wisdom of the Bodhisattva, as his instruction in perfect wisdom.

[38:21]

When he thus stands firm, that is his instruction and admonition. Moreover, when a bodhisattva courses in perfect wisdom and develops it, he should so train himself that he does not pride himself on that thought of enlightenment with which he has begun his career. And that thought is no thought, since its essential, original nature thought is transparently luminous. And then Shariputra says, that thought which is no thought, is that something which is? And Subuddhi replies, Does there exist or can one apprehend in this state of absence of thought either there is or there is not?" And Shari's Putra says, no, not that. So, we come back here to fear. Now in the Heart Sutra it says, without any hindrances, no fears exist.

[39:24]

I guess I want to talk first about this business about the thought, which is no thought. Is that something which is? No, we talked about, Franco, we talked about the middle way. The middle way of the historical Buddha was the way that was between asceticism and indulgence of the flesh. That's the middle way. In the Mahayana, things have evolved so the middle way is this business of form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Is this a thought which is no thought? Is that something that is? Razor's Edge that we live in. Case 33, there's a little poem about it.

[40:37]

Walking along the edge of a sword is the middle way, one way, talking about the middle way. Walking along the edge of a sword, running along the ridge of an iceberg, no steps, no ladders, jumping from the cliff with hands open. So, No wonder that the first discussion of the way of a bodhisattva is talked about in terms of fear. You know, as we let go of everything that we've learned and all our rules and all the old instructions, as we just let go, what is there left? Something perhaps that we can talk about in a few minutes.

[42:02]

So then Shariputra, this is what is called standing on emptiness or standing on shunyata. And did you talk about it in France class, when you talked about interbeing and being We just experienced it. You just experienced it. Good. Well, why don't you go on in that vein. Another way of talking about it is talking about interbeing. And that is the Bodhisattva vow, is the recognition of the fact of our interbeing. That is, there's no One can strive and strive for one's own clarity of mind, but that is not the whole picture.

[43:11]

The whole picture is our interbeing, our being together, and the lack of boundaries. So that suggests a whole different way of making our effort. And the way that we make our effort then is described by the four vows. We talked about that passage in Han's book about the paper and then the lumber person who, you know, harvested the wood and the sun or the clouds in the paper. Yeah. And we talked a little bit about how all that was interrelated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the philosophical way that it's interrelated. And then the ethical way it's interrelated is really most succinctly described in the Four Vows, in the psychological way in the Four Vows. So Shariputra says, well do you expound this Subhuti, you whom the Lord has declared to be the foremost of those who dwell in peace.

[44:53]

And for that reason, that is because he does not pride himself in that thought of enlightenment, should a Bodhisattva be considered as incapable of turning away from full enlightenment, and as one who will never cease from taking perfect wisdom to heart, Whether one wants to train on the level of a disciple, a Pracheka Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, one should listen to this perfection of wisdom, take it up, bear it in mind, study it, recite it, spread it among others, and in this very perfection of wisdom should one be trained and exert oneself. In this very perfection of wisdom should one be endowed with the skill and means to exert himself, with the aim of procuring all dharmas which constitute a Bodhisattva. In just this perfection of wisdom, all the dharmas which constitute a bodhisattva and in which he should be trained and exert himself are indicated in full detail. He who wants to train for full enlightenment should also listen, etc., to this perfection of wisdom. One who is endowed with skill and means should exert himself in just this perfection of wisdom with the aim of procuring all dharmas which constitute a Buddha

[46:03]

So we have this term, skill and means, upaya. Skill and means is the way that the Mahayana gets around the objection that this wasn't said by Buddha. the Pali Canon had just laid out all the Dharma and it's very clear and it's very well structured. And now this teaching via skill in means is something different. Nagarjuna who was the leader of another Mahayana school in the Jamukha, says, just as the grammarians make one read the grammar, the Buddha teaches the Dharma according to the tolerance of the disciples.

[47:19]

He teaches the Dharma to some people to refrain from sin, to some to accomplish virtue, to some to depend on dualism, and to some to be independent from dualism. Finally, to some, he teaches the profound, awe-inspiring practice of enlightenment, whose essence is compassion and voidness. So it is sometimes said that Buddha taught the first teachings to the disciples because they weren't ready to hear the full story. So we have the three vehicles of hearers, the disciples, sometimes they're called kuhir, the Pratyekabuddhas who have taught themselves. They are people, and we know them, people who are enlightened just by virtue of their own experience but aren't a member of any kind of school and lineage and can't teach very well. And then there are the Bodhisattvas who are disciples of the Eternal Buddha, of the Big Way.

[48:28]

of wisdom, is that a translation of Prajnaparamita? Yes, it is. The six paramitas are the way of Bodhisattva. And Prajnaparamita, I didn't look them up. I'm never going to look them up before this time. But they have to do with a bigger, I'm not going to remember them all. Dona. What is? Dona is the first one. Dona, giving. energy, yeah, you look it up, patience, concentration, and wisdom is the last, and they all depend on each other, and they are all manifestations of the Buddha nature, rather than being rules imposed from the outside for behavior, they are manifestations of the goodness of all beings. Another statement from the Gateless Barrier of the skillful meme is, present a sword if you meet a swordsman.

[50:13]

Don't offer a horn unless you meet a poet. When speaking, say one third of it. Don't give the whole thing at once. So the teaching is always geared precisely to the person who is receiving it, because there's an assumption of the common nature of the interbeing, there's a perception, there's an accurate perception of the interbeing. I have it here. Okay. Giving morality, patience, energy, and meditation, and wisdom. We forgot morality. Those are the six parameters. Sheila. Sheila. Morality. Donna, Sheila, Kshanti, Virya, and... Thank you.

[51:24]

Diana. All right, I want to get to the end of the next page and then we will have some discussion. So, Subuddhi says, I who do not find anything to correspond to the word Bodhisattva or to the word's perfect wisdom, which Bodhisattva should I then instruct and admonish in which perfect wisdom? It would surely be regrettable if I, unable to find the thing itself, should merely in words cause a bodhisattva to arise and to pass away. Moreover, what is thus designated is not continuous nor not continuous, not discontinuous nor not discontinuous. And why? Because it does not exist. That is why it is not continuous about nor not continuous, not continuous, nor not discontinuous. A bodhisattva who does not become afraid when this deep and perfect wisdom is being taught should be recognized as not lacking in perfect wisdom, as standing at the irreversible stage of a bodhisattva, standing firmly in consequence of not taking his stand anywhere.

[52:38]

Moreover, a bodhisattva who courses in perfect wisdom and develops it should not stand in form, etc. Because when he stands in form, he courses in its formative influence and not in perfect wisdom. But while he courses in its formative influence, he cannot gain perfect wisdom, nor exert himself upon it, nor fulfill it. When he does not fulfill perfect wisdom, he cannot go forth to all knowledge, so long as he remains one who tries to appropriate the essentially elusive For in perfect wisdom, form is not appropriated, but the non-appropriation of form, etc., is not form. And perfect wisdom also cannot be appropriated. It is thus that a bodhisattva should stand in this perfect wisdom. So it's sometimes said that a bodhisattva spends her life dedicated to the saving of all beings, even though she thoroughly understands there's no such thing as

[53:42]

saving and no such thing as beings. So we're also hearing all this business which comes to us very clearly as the value of not knowing the difficulty with knowing things and the value of not knowing. It is better to know nothing than to know something good. Or, as Suzuki Roshi would say, beginner's mind. There's nothing to clutter. You have a big rest from all the clutter. This concentrated insight of a bodhisattva is called the non-appropriation of all dharmas.

[54:45]

It is vast, noble, unlimited, and steady, and not shared by any of the disciples of Parcheka Buddhas. This state of all knowledge itself cannot be taken hold of because it cannot be seized through a sign. You know, Suzuki Roshi says it's better an expert is limited in what she knows. But when we are in the state of beginner's mind, there's no limitation. All dharmas are equal. And again, that's such a radical, radical statement for us, for people then. The Pali Canon talks about impermanence of dharmas, that everything is moving all the time, but they also talk about ultimate dharmas. There are four ultimate dharmas. There's citta, mind, and citta-sikha, mind-content, and there is form, rupa, and there's nirvana.

[55:52]

Those are ultimate dharmas. So there's the whole frame of wholesome and unwholesome states of mind, and so on. We need that. That's true in our lives. It's just, it's not the whole story. And just because, just because all these dharmas are based unemptiness, do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted or pure, so on and so on. Because they are empty of their essential being, this great hope, actually that's where our hope lies, a little bit further on it says,

[56:59]

in the conviction that all dharmas are non-attached, free from both attachment and non-attachment, in the conviction that all dharmas are essentially enlightenment, because they are all equally understood by Buddha cognition, from the emptiness, signlessness and wishlessness of all dharmas, in the conviction that all dharmas are essentially a healing medicine, because they are controlled by friendliness, in the conviction that all dharmas are dwellers in friendliness, dwellers in compassion, dwellers in sympathetic joy, dwellers in impartiality. Those, of course, are the four brahma viharas, the loving states that one could, from the non-mahayana tradition, one works one's way into these states of loving compassion. But here we're told that all dharmas, all dharmas are friendly.

[58:04]

All dharmas are essentially compassionate. Just because they have no form. They can partake in this general, what's later called buddha nature. It is a vast, noble, unlimited, and steady, not shared by any of the disciples or Pratyekabuddhas. The state of all knowledge itself cannot be taken hold of because it cannot be seized through a sign. If it could be seized through a sign, then Srenika, the wanderer, could not have gained faith in this, our religion. Srenika, the wanderer, believed resolutely in this cognition of the all-knowing. And as a faith wanderer, he entered on a cognition with a limited scope. He did not take hold of form, etc., nor did he review that cognition with joyful zest and pleasure.

[59:10]

He viewed it neither as inside form, nor as outside, nor as both inside and outside, nor as in any other than form. In this passage, in this scripture passage, Shrenika the Wanderer, as one who always resolutely believes in this cognition of the all-knowing, is called a fake follower. He took the true nature of the dharmas as his standard and resolutely believed in the Saimas, so that he did not take hold of any dharma, nor apprehend any dharma which he could have appropriated or released. He did not even care about Nirvana. Dali is exercising great skill and means for timefulness spell.

[60:14]

Did not even care about nirvana. Now nirvana, of course, is the goal of practice to reach the extinction of the greed, hate and delusion of the evil roots and to get off the wheel. And now we don't even care about it. In fact, we just give it away. It was said, finished is birth, lived is pure life, what should be done is, this is the Pali, from the Pali Canon on Nirvana, finished is birth, lived is pure life, what should be done is done, nothing more is left to be done. Just as the flame of a lamp goes out when the fuel ends, so is the dissolution of the mass of suffering." So, Bodhisattva is not trying to end her own suffering.

[61:27]

Bodhisattva expects suffering to continue. and so sees suffering as an opportunity. Whenever there is suffering, there is also a Bodhisattva. You know, there was, so, and Fran had the wheel of, the dependent origination wheel. In each of the five states, from the state of the gods to the state of the lowest hell, there was always a Bodhisattva. So, we meet are suffering with appreciation. And we know when we suffer, we know there is an opportunity for saving ourselves, for saving all beings. And so the suffering is not something which we want to end. The suffering is something which we want to sit in with that little smile.

[62:31]

that little smile. Somebody once said, I heard, he talked about the little smile and somebody said, but when I'm suffering I can't smile, it's hypocritical. He said, you should always be able to smile when you're suffering. That's the Bodhisattva way. So, I went a little too long, but you've got 20 minutes. And next time, I want us to read, to have read, the little parable from the Lotus Sutra. So we won't spend time reading it in class, but we can talk about it in class. And that's the faith side. Shrenika, the faith wanderer, came up here. But the Lotus Sutra is our devotional faith sutra. So I want to read something from that. And then we should move on. The people who picked up the original handout didn't get the new handout.

[63:38]

Let's take a deep breath. Are there any questions or comments? About the very last things that you were saying, the Bodhisattva no longer cares about nirvana. Is this a distinction between Mahayana and Hinayana? So Hinayana's aim is nirvana, and then you end. And the Mahayana, you want to go beyond that. Well, suppose that you're on the Bodhisattva path, will it just become apparent by the end that you want to return to save all beings? Should it then become revealed?

[64:40]

Is that what the Mahayanas are saying? Anyone want to respond to that? You know, I think the whole idea of a path kind of goes out the window, too. That It would be good to read something from the Lotus Sutra, because rather than a path, there's an event, a kind of boom. And it's a kind of boom event. But when? At the beginning, at the end, halfway around the whole thing. Anytime, every time, you know, before Buddha, after Buddha, there's just this event, which is just a kind of turning of a point of view. So that I'm understanding that everything is just taking place in the moment because there's no past, present, future.

[65:41]

All those structures just are convenient but not necessary. So in a certain way, this is my understanding of it anyway, that appreciation and contentment just grow. Someone else said something. Save all sentient beings and you will do that. Ask the question again.

[66:41]

If one follows the Bodhisattva path, and one is intending to be a non-Mahayanist, seeking nirvana, and one starts to achieve one's goal, it would then become apparent that one no longer needs nirvana, and should jump over the fence and become a Mahayanist, and say, I'll just hang out and save everyone, this is great. I suppose it's a chance. I suppose it's a chance. You know, again, it's a story about effort, a little bit. Your question has to do with effort, or it has to do with understanding? It has to do with understanding. They both sound like they require quite a bit of effort. Well, I guess the Mahayana sound like it requires more effort.

[67:46]

I guess it's a question of path. I mean, in our own practice, of course this question is about our own practice, I always wondered if I should use it as a check. Well, am I sitting here for myself or am I sitting here to save all beings? If any minute now I could reach nirvana and at that point, should I just go for it or should I? Am I doing it? Go for it. Save all beings. That sounds like very lively sounds, doesn't it? Quite wonderful lively sounds. But to avoid the conflict, she could sit just to sit. Yeah. That's what I think you seem to say. Just sit. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the most serious thing. So, what does all this have to do with Zen Buddhism?

[68:56]

Does it come out of the Mahayana? I don't know anything about this. Where does Zen come from? Yeah, the Mahayana or the non...? Yeah, well, it comes from both. It comes from both. As we begin reading these cases, there's reference to the Pali Canon and to the Mahayana. Because I thought, I was just trying to make a note that the Mahayana is predominant, is that right, in China and Japan? Yeah, yeah. If you read, did you get a chance to read the history, the Dumulai history? It'll become, I really haven't talked very much about the historical context, and that's in your handout. But the Zen business does not begin until... It will begin next week. In China, in the 6th century. That's where the Zen begins. because for me there's lots going on in my life where the idea of a smile is not a natural arising gesture or manifestation of what's going on inside.

[70:27]

And I think it's easy to get into sort of a self-judgment that I should be And I'm not quite sure what Thich Nhat Hanh's approach to practice is, where the smile comes from on a sort of a grander scale. I can see sort of the, you know, put a smiling face forward, you can see the effect of that when you, you know, interact with other people. I mean, that seems pretty straightforward, but there's lots of things going on where, you know, deep frowns, And they're very real, yeah. And I think, and is that Bodhisattva practice? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's razor's edge practice. That we're always, you know, Christians have a cross.

[71:33]

And we are always dealing with the part of the teaching that says, I alone am the world honored one. You know, that my experience is total and also we're dealing with the teaching that Buddha is manifested in every single thing every single event everywhere so somehow we're having to where that's our problem we're just at the center of those two ways of experiencing the world and when we fall either way off the razor's edge we've fallen and sooner or later we know we've fallen so we've come back and my understanding of that smile is that it's a kind of expression of the understanding of our balance and that is not to say that our experience isn't very real you know it may be

[72:46]

that when we dream at night, we dream real events and we wake up and say, you know, I met so and so and I was such and such a place and those events are real and we also know that the dream was a dream. That's... Are we in a dream or a burning house? Or what's the difference? Yes. I'd like to respond to what Ross brought up, because I have the same experience and often feel like, not so much that it's hypocritical, but more that I would be missing the sort of flavor, juiciness of the frown, like turning to a smile, you know, like missing what that real thing is. But when I was taught the practice of the half smile, which I'm sure many people here have practiced, It's the middle way. No big risk. What I was told is it has absolutely nothing to do with feeling like smiling.

[73:53]

That it's not about the emotion we usually think of smiling. And the image that we were given to work with, a lot of the images that we see on altars, some woman, I guess, had started practicing this on her own with no one telling her because she said I was just imitating the images that I saw. And they always have. They always have this, what seems to be a half smile, and I've always used it like a backward step. When you're in a situation, you're in a situation, and when you take a step back, you have another perspective, a more inclusive one, that usually contains the situation and the not-situation.

[75:08]

Margaret, to me it seems like the smile is like, as you step back, like you mentioned, the gratitude for the teacher. I don't know if I get it, but it's certainly one. We talked about the razor's edge. One side is the manifestation of human nature and everything. What's the other side? That one's, it's kind of the seriousness of the frown. That one's experience is, you are just immersed and grounded in your own experience. Thank you, that was helpful. If you want to pass up your little pieces of paper and we can read. Alright, here's a pretty good one.

[76:24]

You all see? It's a blank page. It's a circle, and then, number one, a circle, oh, Buddhism equals a circle, and Zen equals... It could be an initial down here. All right. Buddhism. A rather complete philosophical system that makes sense of the world we live in. Paraphrased in the Four Noble Truths and the system of ethics, or how to live in the world and gain an understanding of all this. Zen. Maybe don't think too much. Practice makes perfect, but don't count on it. What is Buddhism? Buddhism is a path to understanding reality. What is Zen? Zen is the practice of Buddhism. Do we have any more questions or responses?

[77:28]

Yeah? Yeah, how many sutras in Prajnaparamita are there? How many sutras are there? I don't know. Obviously there's the Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra and then there's the Diamond Sutra. I don't know of any other by name. Here it says Heart Sutra is the shortest of them. Oh, in the Heart Sutra. That's right. It's the shortest of the Sutras. Of the Protection of Wisdom Sutras, right. So that's three. Maybe, I don't know how many. The Lotus? No, the Lotus Sutra is separate. That's a different Sutra. Oh, it's a different one. But there are all these versions. There's eight, ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred. Yeah, and they're all compilations. What are the Pali Sutras, or the Pali Canons?

[78:29]

Well, that's the early teaching that's mostly in Pali rather than Sanskrit. And that's the one that comes from the... That Fran covered in the most traditional teaching that was taught by the historical Buddha. In his voice. In his voice, as recalled by Ananda. Yeah. And then the Mahayana has all these different speakers and disciples and stories. It's just much bigger and looser. What is Pali? Is it P-A-L-I? Uh-huh. It's religious. Well, both Sanskrit and Pali are religious languages. Neither was spoken in the vernacular. I think it was spoken back then. Back then. I mean, he wrote his vernacular name. Well, do people feel terribly confused, exhausted, and so on?

[79:40]

Not exhausted. Not exhausted. Properly confused. What do you think that we should have gotten out of tonight? Then we pass or fail. I don't know, maybe some new sense of question? Or old sense of question? Maybe our questions are somehow affected? I don't know. Well, I'll read a couple more, and then it's time. What is Buddhism? Just don't know. What is Zen? Just don't know with form. What is Buddhism?

[80:42]

Following, living the way of the Buddha. What is Zen? See the other side. Teachings of compassion and wisdom. What is Zen? Wordless teachings of voidness and compassion. There is some lovely calligraphy. Buddhism is a religious tradition. Zen is a particular Buddhist way of interpreting human life. Well, I think I'll stop here. And if you want to submit, we can read some more later, or maybe think of another question.

[81:44]

And if you want to submit more answers, you can. We have time. And if you'd like to submit a check to pay. The class is $30, and the Xerox machine is $2. And if you don't have it, Okay, and why don't we end with three repetitions of the three vows. Four. The four vows. Thank you. That's why they have these lists. Okay. Beings are numberless.

[82:19]

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