Good morning. So this morning we're going to continue with the Heart Sutra commentary. So I'm going to just get us into it by reiterating a little bit up to where we are, which is not very far, which is good. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering. O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form.

[01:00]

The same is true of feelings, perceptions, mental formations, which sometimes is called impulses, and consciousness. So we've been talking about the five skandhas, and we're going to continue to talk about the five skandhas, Yesterday, Pozzan, just before we disbanded, suggested that, how does, it looks like on the page, that forms, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are kind of in a linear progression or something.

[02:08]

I don't know exactly what you meant by that, but I wanted to know how they work together. Is that what your question was? Yeah, how they work together rather than as separate things. Ah, yes. It's like yesterday, Jerry made this wonderful soup for lunch. I hope you remember it. It was memorable. It was all these vegetables in the soup, right? So when we look at all these vegetables in the soup, we do pick out various vegetables, but we say, this is soup. It's just a construct. Soup is just a construct. We call it soup, you know. The baby hasn't learned the construct yet, so he or she just goes, you know, doesn't know it's soup, but we think it's soup.

[03:10]

And the soup is only soup because of what it's constructed out of. The cake is called a confection. And the confection is only there because of the elements that are present in its construction. That's why it's called a confection. So, Hozon, who we call Hozon, this body that I'm looking at, called Hozon, is asking a question. So where does Hozon come from? And where does this question come from? So, Hozon, who we call hosan, sitting on a brown cushion, which is sitting on a construction made of wood called the tan, which is sitting on a construction called the zendo floor, which is sitting on a concrete pad called the foundation, sitting on the ground, which is called the earth.

[04:17]

So, Everything is constructed in that way. There's no such thing as a real house. The real house is the house, the foundation, is the house, the pillars, is the house, this house, and so forth. So everything can be taken apart. This is called analysis. So in the Buddhist teaching of Buddhism, there are two sides. One is analysis, and the other is synthesis. Synthesis is, I see Hosan sitting on his thong. That's synthesis. Everything is together, and then I'm analyzing all those parts. It's just one piece. But now we're asked to analyze the parts, forms, feelings, mental formations, and consciousness is all sitting there on a black cushion, on a brown cushion.

[05:21]

So how does it all go together? So I'm going to read you a little bit about this interesting conception. If I, you know, I had it here with, and there it is. Okay, the skandhas, and in Pali they're called the khandhas. Sanskrit usually has an S in front of things. So the five groups of existence, or they're called groups of clinging, or aggregates of clinging to objects.

[06:31]

And there are five aspects in which the Buddha has summed up all the physical and mental phenomena of existence. That's interesting. And which appear to the ignorant person as his ego or personality. That's what we commonly call ourself. So we're going to take it apart. The corporeality group, which is the form, the feeling group, the perception group, the mental formation group, and the consciousness group. Whatever there exists of corporeal things, that's the body, whether past, future, present or future, one's own or external, gross or subtle, lowly or lofty, far or near, all that belongs to the corporeality group. Whatever there exists of feeling, perception, mental formations, or consciousness, all that belongs to the consciousness group.

[07:36]

So, we say forms belong to consciousness. earth, water, fire, and air. Those are the divisions that were used in those days. And I think they're still valid. They don't explain everything. So, the body is form, and all the rest are mental. So, we have form, body, and mental. So, without the body, the rest don't exist. Nothing mentally exists without the body, right? The body can exist without the mentality, but that's when we call it brain dead. So that doesn't really count here. So sometimes we think of the body as the vehicle for the mind.

[08:40]

We do think that sometimes. And so we grow these big heads and small bodies. And it's kind of like in the evolution of, you know, we're really concerned with the evolution of people these days because you can create a person. That's a big step in evolution. It's possible to create a person. using various elements, of course. You don't create the elements, but you put them together in a certain way. So, eventually people get big heads and small bodies. That's already been pictured, you know, as the future. And little necks and stuff like that. So, you ever read Non-Sequitur? the cartoon in the Chronicle. And the smart little boy has a big head and a little neck, and he always answers everybody's questions accurately.

[09:45]

Anyway, so these are the divisions. There are various divisions in various groups. I'm not going to go into all that. So what is called individual existence is in reality nothing more than a process of those mental and physical phenomena. A process that since time immemorial has been going on, and that also after death will still continue for unthinkably long periods of time. So that's an interesting statement. It looks like reincarnation, but that's not what it means. These five groups, however, neither singly nor collectively constitute any self-dependent real ego entity or personality. Just a minute. Nor is there to be found any such entity apart from them. So, they don't add up to something substantial other than momentarily.

[10:49]

But apart from them, nothing exists. Here, the belief in such an ego entity or personality as real, in the ultimate sense, proves a mere illusion. And here's the poem. When all constituent parts are there, the designation cart is used. Just so, where the five groups exist, of living beings do we speak. So we're likened unto a card. Do you know Nagasena and King Melinda? This is a classic explanation. King Melinda was a kind of monarch just after Buddha's time, and Nagasena was a prominent monk. So the questions of King Melinda have been published, believe it or not.

[11:54]

And King Melinda keeps asking Nagasena about the Dharma, and Nagasena answers him. And King Melinda says, well, does a person, is there such a thing as reincarnation? And Nagasena explains it as it's neither, the person neither continues nor doesn't continue. Neither continues nor doesn't continue. So, I'm gonna skip there a little bit. So, I'm just going to skip down.

[12:58]

Suppose that a man who is not blind were to behold the many bubbles on the Ganges as they are driving along, and he could watch them and carefully examine them. After carefully examining them, however, they will appear to him empty, unreal, and unsubstantial. In exactly the same way does the monk behold all the corporeal phenomena, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, states of consciousness, whether they be of the past, present, or future, far or near, and he watches them and examines them carefully. And after carefully examining them, they appear to him empty, unreal, and unsubstantial. So this is what the Diamond Sutra says. It's interesting, the Pali, sutras actually are very much Mahayana. There's so much Mahayana there, and I think the Mahayana sutras are based on the Pali sutras, actually, to a large extent, only expanded.

[14:12]

So, I don't want to go through all these characteristics, but So, how do all these five skandhas work together? The text says that you cannot distinguish easily how these all work together, because when they start working together, they overlap in meaning and in function. And so, in order to, it's like, did you ever read an automobile manual that shows all the parts of an engine? Or a car? And there's an exploded view, which has all the nuts and bolts and everything. And that's how this is presented, as all the nuts and bolts of a human being.

[15:21]

form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. And so I'll attempt to put them together to see how they work together. But first we have to explain how they work and why they're, you know. We know about corporeality or the form. So feeling group, all feelings may, according to the nature, be classified in five kinds. Bodily feeling, which is agreeable, bodily feeling which is painful, bodily feeling which is mentally agreeable, bodily is the first one, mentally agreeable, and mentally painful, and bodily feeling which is indifferent.

[16:35]

So we sit here and we feel our body or we feel our emotions. Feelings go, express both emotions and bodily feelings, but everything is related to the body. All the other skandhas are related to the body. They're talking about how the body feels, how the body is perceived. and how the mental formations come up. It's the thinking, but it's all related to, sometimes it's not related. Mental formations can be independent of the body as far as their goal, their subject, objectivity.

[17:43]

So if I'm sitting here in the body I have to use these terms. Sitting here in the body, I'm feeling either painful or pleasant or indifferent. Those are the categories. So right now I'm feeling pleasant. And I'm seeing all of you, but I'm also aware of myself sitting here. That's my perception. I'm seeing Bruce falling asleep. So, watching Bruce fall asleep, various feelings come up.

[18:50]

in me. Should Bruce get more sleep? This morning, you know, when I'm sitting up here and I'm looking out here, I see everybody's fidgets and anticipations. I want to get up sometimes and just hit people. And I know you like that and I like it too, but I haven't explained that yet. So that's perception and feeling. Form, perception, and feeling working together. And then my mental states, my karmic mental formations which create karma, basically. And I'm trying not to create karma, so I'm not really judging him. I try not to judge Bruce as he's falling asleep because I know he works hard. And I fall asleep too. So when I think about that, I think, well, he's falling asleep and I don't like it, but I do that too.

[19:54]

So that's reflection, which is part of the whole thing. And then there's consciousness. So consciousness arises through the perceptions. without the form and without the feelings and mental constructions and perceptions. This is all taken in through the senses. The eye, the ear, the nose, the taste, and the touch. These are the doorways of perception. Everything that I cognize comes in through the five senses. The sixth sense is consciousness which differentiates between the various things I see here, taste, touch, and feel.

[21:02]

So that's going on, differentiating between all those what's coming in through these doors. But I can only concentrate on one, there's always one element that is chosen to concentrate on. So, if I see Bruce doing this, then the doorway of seeing is dominant. The doorway of hearing is not. The doorway of smelling, I don't smell him. I don't smell anything. Tasting, touching, those are not, those elements are not part of this. What is part of it is the seeing, which mingles in some way, or is supported,

[22:09]

in the realm of causation, it singles that out, and then consciousness goes in a certain direction. So, sometimes all of those elements are active at the same time, and sometimes they're not. But they're always present, potentially. to be active at the same time, but usually they don't, because our mind is selective. We're always selecting, and when we select one thing, we put everything else in the background. There's a kind of law about that, that when we select certain things to, objects to focus on, other things are in the background. So how they work together is a little bit mysterious.

[23:15]

It's like milk and water. Only a duck can separate milk from water. I heard that somewhere. I don't know if a duck can actually separate milk from water. But all these elements work, together, but it's hard to say which exactly is working when. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can determine that. But because each element, each skanda is supported by other skandas and by other elements as well, it's hard to separate it out. And that's what it says in the text. You can't really separate it out. Would you say then that the being of you and Bruce and Gary with the stick is the being of that moment that you are experiencing?

[24:20]

It's my world at that moment. Right. Yes, and that covers the whole universe. It's like my hand, you know. Here's my hand. If I hold it far away, I can see in perspective. But if I go like this, that's the whole world. And so you're moving forward as a being. Thank you. Well, I don't know if you want to extend it to that. When we talk about the cart, basically we're talking about the individual. I haven't thought about whether to extend that particular metaphor to anything else.

[25:27]

That metaphor is simply to illustrate how we're constructed, but not how phenomena is constructed. but phenomena is constructed the same way. Yeah, so if you want to say the cart is this triangle, you can use it in that way. Yeah, this triangle is this construction. But it's obvious that that's a construction. With a person, it's not so obvious that that's a construction because we think we are real. We think of ourselves as a real entity, but the analysis takes everything apart, and we see that it's simply a construct, and that's the point. Looking at things in a synthetical way, where everything is one,

[26:35]

then we're not concerned with the analysis. And we operate, we act in a way that takes for granted that everything is real, in a sense. So there are two truths. One is the sense of nothing is real, and the other side is everything is real. And neither one of them is real. In other words, it's important to get through what the sutra is telling us is from wisdom beyond wisdom. Beyond means, beyond the duality of wisdom and delusion. Beyond the duality of real and unreal. Oh, everything's real, everything's not real. And so every statement has to eat its opposite and include it.

[27:43]

And otherwise, we just keep falling back into the duality. And it sounds lofty to say everything is unreal or a human being is, has no self. But when I look at Bruce, I say, well, there's Bruce. You know, he has a self and we interact and I can ask him to wake up and all that. But actually, analytically, he's just a construction. So I don't think of him as an instruction. I think of him as somebody I'm relating to, right? But it's beyond both, beyond form and emptiness. It's gotta be beyond form and emptiness. Otherwise, it's always a duality. And that's exactly what the sutra is trying to bring forth, is bringing forth.

[28:46]

And that's why it's so hard to understand, because everything it says, it contradicts itself. But if we understand it, It's not a contradiction. It's just a contrast in diction. Okay. My name, calling you, not good. James. Yes. Yes. But the whole Christ-kind-of-thing and the analogy of the curse is based on the idea that you can infinitely subdivide things.

[30:23]

Until you can. Until you can. So how does that relate to this? Well, it's not talking about every physical object. I don't know. It's like dealing with a human being as being a construct. Yes. But it's the forms that we're talking about. The forms that we're talking about is solid, earth element, liquid, water, heat or fire, motion or wind.

[31:56]

And those are the elements that we're talking about. You can take all those elements and find the God particle, which can't be divided, right? Yeah, but we're not going that far. Well, because we're human beings and we're talking about what a human being is. That's all we're talking about. We're not talking about science. We're talking about what a human being, the constituents of a human being. a long time, but not as themselves.

[32:59]

Well, that's an interesting question, and it's always been a question. So let me say what I read to you before. What is called individual existence is in reality nothing but a mere process of those mental and physical phenomena. A process that since time immemorial has been going on and that also after death will still continue for unthinkably long periods of time.

[34:23]

These five groups, however, neither singly nor collectively constitute any self-dependent real ego entity. or personality, nor is there to be found any such entity apart from them. So I'm gonna read that to you again. The five groups, however, neither singly nor collectively constitute any self-dependent real entity, ego entity, or personality, nor is there to be found any such entity apart from them. Hence the belief in such an ego entity or personality as real, in the ultimate sense, proves a mere illusion. So when we say what goes on or what continues, when you eat an apple, you have an apple.

[35:27]

And then you take a bite of the apple, And as you take a bite of the apple and chew it, it changes. And as it goes down into your system, it deintegrates, disintegrates. And all of the elements of the apple do not disappear. They transform in a chemical way. So, But we don't say, we say the apple no longer exists, but something still exists, which is a product of the apple, even though the apple has no form left as an apple. So, but you can't say, you know, you can say there's no more apple, but then there's the memory of the apple. And the apple is a cause

[36:31]

for another condition. The disintegration of the apple and the elements of the apple extend life. When you eat an apple, the apple disappears, and its life of the apple is extended to you, who ate the apple. And then you eat the apple, and then you take a shit. And you say, boy, does that sting. But actually, that's life. Life stinks. Sorry. But that's how you nurture the earth. So everything is nurturing everything else. So your mom, her presence is still extant as something else. So everything belongs to everything else, and everything is nourishing everything, and everything is destroying everything.

[37:39]

Without destruction, destruction creates nourishment, and nourishment creates destruction. So this is how we have to understand our life. We love the baby, we love the, you know, this baby will someday die. Well, I don't want to think about that. But we have to think about that. Your children will die, but the life of the children will live. The life of your mother will live. Your mother is still alive, even though she's not. In that form, she's no longer with this society. your mother's energy is nourishing the world. Yes.

[39:05]

Right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Our usual logic doesn't cover it. I think, Alan, you have a hand up? Okay. Yes. Okay. Sue? For me, I really appreciate your explanation and discussion. The Heart Sutra, for me, is about freedom, choice, and intention. Yes. You know, at the end of the Heart Sutra is the mantra, gāte gāte, pāra gāte, pārasam gāte, It's the only sutra that we know about that has a mantra at the end, except for the shurangama mantra.

[40:21]

So maybe it's not the only one. But the shurangama mantra is a mantra in itself. But anyway, it's the mantra of our life. We have a few minutes. I always thought of Suzuki Roshi's life as a mantra. The mantra of our life is the true mantra, not just some word that you repeat over and over again. So this Abbot Obora in the tiger's cave is great commentary on the Heart Sutra, although you don't notice it because it's about daily activity.

[41:28]

Daily activity is actually the mantra of the Heart Sutra, how you actually live your life moment by moment as a mantra. So, He says, what is the wonderful power of the prajna wisdom? It is the great spiritual mantra, the radiant, uttermost, and peerless mantra. The mantra is a Sanskrit word which is usually translated as spell. That is literally, literally spell. In a spell, there is the feeling of something over and above the words. So it is that the term was used for the words of the Buddha which have inexhaustible depth of meaning in them. In each word of Buddha, there is a depth of meaning, and hence they felt them to be untranslatable. It was this natural, thus natural, the mantra of Dharani, as they're sometimes called, were never translated in transmission, but handed in their original form.

[42:33]

The power of the prajna wisdom is the great divine mantra. a profound and wonderful utterance of the Buddha. Then it is the great bright mantra like a bright mirror without a trace of mist. It is the peerless mantra, sublime are the words of the Buddha. It is a mantra without an equal, peerless and transcendent." So the great spiritual powers are spoken of as miracle working. To perform some extraordinary feat is commonly regarded as a manifestation of spiritual power, but surely it is not. To act from the wisdom of ultimate emptiness, namely to act with a heart empty, this is all spiritual power, and it is not what is called miracle. In the Shobo Genzo, Dogen says, The one of right wisdom is a Buddha, a patriarch, always manifesting, working with cloth or pail, presenting tea or taking tea.

[43:46]

It is a spiritual manifestation, a divine manifestation. What is called the great mantra is human affairs. Human affairs being the great mantra, the mantra is no other than a manifestation in human affairs. Human actions of ordinary life are burning incense, and reverent worship. The spiritual power of the mantra means to meet a person of right wisdom and serve that person. It is offering tea, taking tea. These are the forms of spiritual manifestation, and there is no special miracle beyond that. One thinks of the power of a mantra as something remote, but it is not so. The true spiritual power in offering a cup of tea to serve with one's whole heart in the wisdom of ultimate emptiness is the real miracle working. The mantra is human affairs, and the human action is burning incense and reverent worship morning and evening to serve your teacher in reference to the form of the mantra.

[44:50]

And now the great radiant mantra, without a speck of dust, bright like a mirror, the state of ultimate emptiness reflects everything. A mirror leaves nothing unreflected. If a beggar comes, it reflects the beggar. If a noble person comes, then the noble. Whatever the form, it reflects it. And this accommodation to any form is what is termed the bright mirror. Long ago, Zen master Seppo asked, what if you suddenly come upon a mirror? To which his disciple Gensho replied, into a hundred fragments. Smash it to pieces, was his reply. For while the heart is caught by something called a bright mirror, it has no real mirror. It is no real mirror at all. It happened a little time ago that a cabinet minister resigned and spoke of himself in the Chinese phrase, bright mirror, still water. Perhaps you'll remember the incident.

[45:55]

The meaning was that his heart was unmoved, that he felt like a mirror without a trace of clouding. It was like stilled water without a fleck on it, but no disturbance. That was what he seemed to be saying. But if all he meant was the bright mirror of stilled water, we may feel there was yet something lacking. Isn't there something lacking in a person who says he is a bright mirror in still water? If that is the sort of source, the sort of bright mirror in still water, then into a hundred fragments, until it is smashed up altogether, it is no real bright mirror. This point may be a little difficult to appreciate. When it is done, each fragment must itself be a mirror. The tiniest sliver must be a mirror. In truth, our bright mirrors have to become a hundred fragments." So, what is smashing the mirror? You know, people sometimes say, I've had this great, wonderful experience when I was in Zazen.

[46:57]

What do you think of that?" And so, of course, I don't say much. I don't deny the person's experience. That's a great experience. But if you stand up there holding your chest out saying, I just had a great experience and I must be enlightened, then that's total delusion. What you do with your great experience is Spread it, so that, spread it out by smashing your mirror. So that you're actually expressing, if the experience is genuine, then it should be expressed in every detail of your life. So that you don't recognize it anymore. That's called letting go of your enlightenment. If it's truly enlightenment, You can't shake it off, no matter what you do. So you don't have to do anything special, except that if it is genuine, life will tell you.

[48:10]

Everything will be reflected back to you. So if it's not genuine, people will hold their noses. If it is genuine, you don't have to do anything special or even think about it. If you try to maintain something, it won't work. It has to be diffused into all of your activities so that it's almost unrecognizable, but it supports everything. I can't help but, this metaphor or analogy is in my mind, of the harp in a room, in a foyer of marble. And as people come in and have their experience, the strings start to sing. And as other things happen, the strings continue to sing. And as they leave the room, the song goes on. So if I have a great enlightenment experience,

[49:17]

it makes the harp sing. It doesn't matter if anybody hears about it, yet the harp is singing. And we all hear that song or that reflection in the mirror. This is the alternative mirror, the harp. And so my sense of Descartes is all of us making the harp sing. And how we each approach it, if we approach it separately as, you know, we might plunk it, but if we are just empty beings, we affect the harp in such a way that it continues to sing and is harmonious and the analogy can only go so far. Yes. You know, we just do the work without expecting anything. Just do the work without expecting anything. And we don't know what the result of our activity actually is, or what the effect of our activity actually is.

[50:19]

But rest assured, it does have far-reaching effects. Is that in reference to our limited activity of practice or unlimited activity of our daily life? Yes, our limited activity of zazen has unlimited effect. I don't know if that's what you mean. was confirming or clarifying that the work is that we just do the work without... Yeah, without worrying about whether it's having a good effect or not.

[51:29]

And that you're working to our limited activity of... Yes, but... Activity always produces something. So this is, our activity doesn't produce anything tangible, but what it does produce is something intangible. But sometimes the intangible is tangible. Sometimes the tangible is intangible. But we're doing, people who just do work are sometimes noticed, but they always say,

[52:44]

I'm sorry, you know. Don't notice me, please. I just want to do my work. The scientists are like that sometimes, you know. They're shy little people who do great work. And it gets noticed, but they don't, you know. Oh, is that so? I have a quick question. When you were talking about the skandhas, there's the body and then the mental. The physical part and the mental part. So, when we say, how does that feel in your body, when someone makes an observation from a perception, a mental formation, a feeling and all that, is that just, is that to kind of bring the body and mind together? Is it just that, or what else is... We talk about body and mind, and it sounds like in order to analyze, we separate them. But actually, they're not separate. So when someone says, how does that feel in your body?

[53:47]

What's that text? How does that help us? Does it get us out of our mind? Like when people say, how's that in your body? What's it feel like in your body? Feelings and emotions determine what our body is going to feel like. Right. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions all determine how the body's gonna feel. They manipulate the body because they're all one piece. The body isn't just made up of those elements, but the body is made up of many different elements, which include thoughts, feelings, perception. It's all one piece, but we talk about it as if it's two different pieces in order to analyze So we talk about feelings as separate from perceptions, but actually they overlap.

[54:50]

They're not separate things. Even though they're separate elements, they don't occur without the rest of them being present. So consciousness is the same thing. We say eight consciousnesses, but it really means one level, There are eight levels of consciousness, right? So there are five levels, which include, which are just parts of the one, there's only one skanda, but we talk about it as five skandas. So the mind is actually a physical thing, which is what confuses, I mean, There is even what they call a second brain, which is a neural network around your chest cavity and in your gut, where you register neurologically emotion. So when someone says, how do you feel in your body?

[55:54]

We're actually directing more to the physiology of the feeling. Where is it happening in you? And by that you get a clue. And sometimes we act like a chicken with its head cut off. That's why we talk about various centers in our body. The heart center, the solar center, yeah. When you have a heartache, it's true. A heartache, yeah. It really hurts because of the neural network. Yes. There was a woman who used to practice here or in San Francisco. And when she was a young girl, she had a boyfriend and her father didn't like the boyfriend. And she said, well, I'm going to go out with my boyfriend anyway. And he had a heart attack and died in front of her.

[56:58]

So we're vulnerable beings and our emotions shape our physiology, definitely. Thoughts, emotions, we're all walking around in postures that are determined by how we think, feel, and act. That's why zazen is this posture that is not determined by all those dharmas. And that's why we have the possibility of sitting up straight, but we don't take the opportunity. because we're afraid to let go. We have a lot of fear about letting go. And that's the problem we have in Zazen. I mean, it's one of the problems that we have in Zazen, is the fear of letting go, so that we can actually sit up straight into our natural, uninfluenced posture.

[58:04]

They're no influence. They're just like little kids. They stand up straight, their lower back is forward, and they're running around like this. That's Zazen. Just sitting up straight, your lower back is forward, your sternum is raised after your head's up. They're running around like this. They're all doing Zazen. They're uninhibited. This is your uninhibited activity. So we should take advantage of it and not just, you know, oh, maybe this is a happy, you know, or we actually have a chance to free ourselves. So we should take advantage of that. If we take advantage, we need it.

[58:55]

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