from last night. Last night I talked about the first four lines of the Bhakti Sutra and explained about Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva and how the Sutra came, the stage setting for the Sutra and what it means to practice deeply the Prajnaparamita. and that Avalokiteshvara perceived that all the five skandhas in their own being are emptying and explaining that the five skandhas were safe in all suffering. Now the sutra is going to talk about that it needs to be safe in all suffering. So the second part, actually The first part is the title. The second part is what I did last night.

[01:06]

The third section is the four profundities, which characterize the Heart Sutra, where Avalokiteśvara is talking to Shariputra. As you remember, Buddha said, Avalokiteśvara, you have my permission to teach So, please, do so. So, Avalokiteshvara says, 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. The same is true of the other four skandhas. Remember what they are. feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. So, here we have form and emptiness.

[02:15]

This is about form and emptiness. The world of form is called samsara in Buddhism. And the world of emptiness is called nirvana in Buddhism. But emptiness, in the old dualistic way of thinking in Buddhism, the monks sometimes got off thinking that in order to enter nirvana, they had to do away with samsara, because nirvana is the escape from the world of suffering, which is the form world. So Shakyamuni Buddha said this world of form, this world of samsara, is the realm of suffering. And in order to escape, or in order to be free from the world of suffering, you enter nirvana.

[03:27]

So they equated nirvana with escape from samsara. And one of the purposes, actually the main purpose of this Prajnaparamita Sutras is to clarify the difference and the sameness of samsara and nirvana, of form and emptiness. So here, Shariputra is talking to, I mean, Avalokiteshvara is talking to Shariputra, who is an arhat, one of Buddha's disciples, who thinks that nirvana is separate from samsara. That in order to escape from suffering, you have to escape from this world.

[04:29]

So, Avalokiteshvara says, Shariputra form, or samsara, does not differ from emptiness or nirvana. That's the major teaching. They're not different. In other words, you can't escape from suffering by escaping from this world, by withdrawing from the world. You can have a different kind of life. a very rarefied kind of life. And there were many meditation practices in which the monks would, you know, the eight jhanas, or the nine jhanas, which are meditation practices which were pre-Buddhist, actually, in which the highest jhana was just like being dead, except that there was still life. But one always has to return to the world.

[05:34]

You can't stay there. So it's not a real escape. But they practiced to see how far they could escape. You know, how, to what extreme they could escape from the suffering of the world. But they realized that you can't escape from suffering by escaping from the world. There's no place to go. No matter how far out in the woods you get, you can't escape, you never can escape from yourself. As we say, wherever you are, there you find yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. So then he explains it to me a little bit. He says, emptiness does not differ from form. Emptiness in Mahayana,

[06:37]

It doesn't mean without, it's without. Usually, emptiness means empty of something. But as we explained before, empty, all the fires found us are empty, means interdependent, means empty of own being, right? That nothing has its substantial existence independently. Everything exists dependently on something else, on everything else, actually. Everyone's life depends on everything in the universe. And everything in the universe depends on everything else in the universe. So that each thing, each existence, each temporary existence of which everything is, depends on all the things in the universe that are not it. So it says, emptiness does not differ from form.

[07:47]

Form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. In other words, this glass of water, although it seems full, is really empty. But it's not that it doesn't have any water in it. It also has ice. It's full of water and ice. it's empty of its own being. So, in order for me to quench my thirst, I'm dependent on this cup. And this cup is dependent on a manufacturer, even though it seems to have its own existence. It does exist as a vessel But that's just the name we give it. It fills its function when it has something in it.

[08:47]

And then I drink it, and that's a cup of water. So, in order for it to be a cup of water, it has to be drunk. It can be a cup of water, but in order to fulfill its function as a cup of water, I have to drink it. And then it's fully functioning. And so it's dependent on my drinking it. I've heard emptiness defined as things being as they are. And I'm wondering how that has to do with the way you're talking about emptiness. As it is. Everything is just exactly as it is. That has two aspects. One aspect of as it is means that this particular form on this particular moment is complete and perfect just as it is.

[10:00]

And even though we say it seeks a progress in time, Still, this particular moment, let me say, this particular situation is in its dharma position. We haven't talked about dharmas yet. But everything, each thing is called a dharma. And each dharma has a dharma position on any particular moment in time, just as it is. The other aspect of Just As It Is is that what a thing's absolute nature is, is Buddha nature, which doesn't come or go, or stand still. Buddha nature is indescribable. And the only way to say anything about it is that it's such.

[11:07]

It's such as it is. It has its suchness. which is indescribable. So at any one moment, any dharma is residing in this dharma position which will never happen again. And one side of this nature is absolute Buddha nature, which doesn't come and go. And the other side is that it's a momentary flash of existence. So that is a thing, just as it is. It's an expression of buddhimitra as a momentary flash of existence. How did that happen to you, this code of infinite existence?

[12:09]

is dependent on everything else for its existence. Like you are a flash. You are just like this. Your life is like this. And it depends on everything else for its existence. And when you say everything else, but everything else is just one being. So everything implies things, right? And things implies division, multiplicity. But what are things multiplied from? They're multiplied from zero. So zero is a circle. It's one thing, one complete thing. So when we say emptiness, emptiness is one complete This is the cosmic mudra that we use when we sit dozen.

[13:17]

This means form is emptiness. And this one complete whole being, as soon as there is a movement, it divides into countless parts. Maybe it's like the domino effect. One thing moves and then everything moves. And then we have the dynamic realm of form. But the dynamic realm of form is still just this one entire being. But what we see is just the movement. Our perception, our usual mode of perception is to just see the dynamics of movement.

[14:22]

We don't perceive the dynamics of stillness, unless we sit zazen. Zazen is the dynamics of stillness. So within all the tremendous movement of the universe, Everything is completely still. And it's just as it is. So then he says, it's like he says, that which is form is emptiness. and that which is emptiness forms. The very form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form. You can talk about emptiness and you can talk about form as if they were two different things. But the siddhas think they're actually not two different things. Even though we divide, our conceptual faculty divides in order to explain it to ourselves.

[15:35]

So in order to explain it to ourselves, we have to create a model. And in Buddhism, we're always creating these models. And we should be careful not to take the models for the thing. Because no matter what you say, it's always on the side of form. But form itself is emptiness, so it's OK. It's like, the easy illustration is like the water and the waves. Emptiness is like the ocean. The great ocean. And the waves are the activity of the ocean. That's form. All of the various forms. And the activity of the ocean is... The waves are just the ocean. They're just the ocean in movement, the ocean in motion.

[16:43]

But the ocean, as it gets deeper, gets more still all the time. And on the surface, there's turbulence. So most of our life is lived on the edge of the ocean, on the surface of the ocean, in great turbulence. And zazen is to go down into the depths of the ocean. So in Zazen we don't make progress in a linear way. We just hopefully go deeper and deeper into that ocean of stillness. But we don't escape from form when we do that. So The significant restatement of Buddha's teaching in the first century was that samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara.

[17:56]

This is the Mahayana standpoint. That in order to reach nirvana or live in nirvana, you don't escape from samsara. that you find nirvana within samsara, within it. The life of ordinary life is where nirvana is to be brought forth or lived. So nirvana has various meanings, subtle meanings. literally it means to blow out the light. But you can construe that in many different ways. And the Guineanists construed it as blowing out the light is extinction.

[18:57]

So that they wanted to live their life in such a way to reduce it less, more and more to a kind of purity so that in the cycle of birth and death they would no longer be born into the world. That was the goal, to no longer be finally birthed in the world of samsara. Because they felt that when one leaves the world, through after this particular life cycle, that the karmic impressions, the dynamic of one's karmic life continues, and along with consciousness, and the

[20:07]

seeds of the Alaya Vijnana and seeks another birth. And this spirit finds its, locates its new parents and injects itself just at the moment of copulation and is reborn into another, the next life. That's just theory, which a lot of people I would say that a lot of people found the wrong parents. I don't know if they made a mistake or what. Well, anyway, that's the kind of belief system. If you look at it in a deeper way, we say that it's in a scientific way, I know nothing about science, but in a scientific way, energy is not lost.

[21:24]

And in whatever, this could go like that, that energy continues in some way. All the energy in the world is continuing in some way and is influencing So everything is continually influencing everything else, and the energy goes on infinitely. So the energy of each one of us, after this particular life cycle, continues in some way to influence. It's called action influence. Karmic action influence. And the Buddhists say that That karmic action influence influences our new birth. But it's not necessarily a human birth. Just, it influences creative arising in samsara.

[22:29]

We don't know how, but it's logical that it does that. Some people have theories about how, and they believe their theories. But I listen to all their theories, and I don't either believe or disbelieve any of them. I just listen. And sometimes it sounds pretty good, sometimes it sounds pretty bad. So I will tell you about some of these theories, but I don't say that I necessarily believe them or disbelieve them. But to me, the action influence of our volition Abolitional life does have influence and it's called rebirth rather than reincarnation. Reincarnation is an old Indian theory which the Buddhists, some Buddhists took up and incorporated into Buddhism.

[23:32]

But rebirth is more of a kind of broad way of defining or thinking about the action influence. And so you can think about it in various ways, and you can think about it scientifically. Buddhism has no quarrel with science. Science may have some quarrel with Buddhism. You know, scientists say, well, the theory of reincarnation is really unscientific, you know. And they're true. It's true. It's not. reincarnation seems rather impossible to me, but rebirth or action influence and the implications of that open up all kinds of things, ways of thinking about how life continues. So I won't say anything concrete about that. To me it's just all wide open.

[24:36]

But the old monks felt that They would no longer be reborn into this world if they separated, if they got rid of samsara in order to get inside Nirvana. Religion tends to do this. This is one of the problems with religion, when it becomes dualistic. All religions are like this. You leave earth behind and go to heaven. That's Christianity. Actually, in Zen, we create our own heaven and hell. Heaven and hell are something are states that we create right here. And so we're not really so concerned about what happens afterwards. According to first theory, you know, when you die, whatever it is that your state of mind is when you die is very important because that will determine your karmic influence into the next

[25:38]

So, whether that's true or not, the way you live your life here determines what happens next anyway, right? From moment to moment, the way you live your life determines what will happen the next moment, or the next day, or the next year. So our life is actually self-creating, and our volitional action is a primary cause, The secondary causes that mingle with our life, moment to moment, are what makes things happen in our life. So it's just like a bean. A bean is a primary cause for beanstalk. But until you put it into the ground and water it, which is a secondary cause, and sunshine, which is a secondary cause, and all those elements which stimulate the bean to grow, all together create the beanstalk.

[26:50]

So the primary cause and the secondary causes are all necessary. And primary cause is our volitional action. Secondary causes are those secondary actions which create something, make something happen. So the way we live our life determines the way it will go. And if you look at where your life is now, you can see that the problems you have are caused by, created by, what you did in the past. Even though we may not believe it. It's true. So life is self-creating. That's what we say. It's self-creating and it's also created by conditions. The way we meet conditions. and respond to conditions. So, if there is something in our life after this particular cycle, how we live our life depends, the result will be how we live our life now, anyway.

[28:02]

So, no need to worry. All you have to do is do the best you can here. Anyway, and just trust that that will have some effect in the future. But if you have some idea about what will happen, you're probably wrong. It's just a view. Just another view. Just another idea. I will go to heaven, or I will go to hell. How do you know? You know? Just a view. Someone said so. The priest told me. So, the Mahayana said, form is emptiness, samsara is nirvana. In other words, nirvana is how we live in freedom now.

[29:05]

Then there's parinirvana. Parinirvana means after, like Buddha, when Buddha died, he went into Parinirvana, meaning all of the, he would never return again. But does anything come or go? If this particular world is connected to all other worlds, And if every particle of dust is connected to every other particle of dust, where is it going to go or come to? So, the problem we have is that we're in this particular form. I talked about this last night. We're in this particular form and we don't want to lose this form because it's very precious to us. We make every effort to live a kind of safe life, even knowing that the life cycle will be over at some point, at which point we don't know.

[30:17]

Things like that. So, how to find our freedom, which is nidvana, within samsara? That's the Mahayana practice. not by eliminating one or the other, but by finding or discovering how to live this life with perfect freedom within the suffering life. So I'm sorry. How to... I don't like the word escape. Escape doesn't sound good to me. But how to find our freedom within our suffering universe, suffering world of human beings. And how to help others to do that as well.

[31:21]

And that's the practice of non-duality. The practice of duality is that samsara is bad and nirvana is good. That's duality. The practice of non-duality is samsara is samsara and nirvana is nirvana, and they're like this. So form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. You can't divide them. Yes? precepts to practice in samsara so much. Actually, I don't think that samsara is true. You what? Well, since we have precepts to exist in a guide to how to live in samsara to realize nirvana, we can't do whatever we want to do. Right. That's right. Some aspects of samsara seem to me that actually they're not nirvana.

[32:28]

They might be nirvana, but they're not physical. Even though, in a non-dualistic way, samsara is nirvana, nirvana is samsara. So there are various levels of precepts. That's a whole other discussion. But I will just say this. There are three levels of precepts. One is the Hinayana level, which is literally, don't kill. Literally, don't steal. And then there is the non-dual level of precepts, which there's no way that life can be killed. There's no way that anything can be taken. And in between is the Bodhisattva precepts, which is knowing that nothing can be killed, and knowing that you shouldn't kill anything.

[33:42]

You live your life in between those two aspects, making a decision on each moment as to how to do something. Following the precepts is a living, organic process. It's not following rules by rote. But it's understanding the two aspects of the foundation. Don't do this, don't do that. If you follow this literally, you can do that, but it's dualistic. And in our practice, to follow precepts, literally, is heretical. And to just think that whatever you do is okay because it doesn't matter anyway, it's heretical. That's Charles Manson.

[34:45]

So, in a sense, Manson is right, except that he's only half right. He's dualistic, because he thinks that Whatever you do is okay. That's not right, but it's a half-truth. So, whatever you do is okay, but you better do the right thing. So there's right and wrong as well as non-duality. There's duality within non-duality. So, you know, Whatever happens is correct. Whatever happens in this world is right, is okay, because it happens. But, according to human society, there's good and there's bad. And we have to pay attention to human society, because if you just let everything go as it goes, there's suffering.

[35:59]

So we have to make rules and we have to abide by those rules as a society. So there's absolute truth and then there's societal truth. And societal truth has to exist within absolute truth. And so you have to understand both in order to really understand the precepts. It also feels to me that If you look at the absolute truth from a self-centered point of view, or the relative truth from a self-centered point of view, then that's also, that's how you defile everything. That's dualistic. Right. And that if all activity is sort of entered into from the feeling that everything that is connected to you, and actually it is all one being, And if you cannot be self-centered about it, then you have to include all the human activity and all the activity of the universe in yourself.

[37:09]

So you're the universe as well as the universe is the universe. And in that way, this duality, it's not quite so stark. It becomes a more cellular experience. Well, it's a non-dual duality. But this idea that I will get enlightened and then I'll help everybody else doesn't really work because it keeps splitting a person away from the One. Right. So a truly enlightened person doesn't think about helping others. But whatever that person does is helpful to others. So, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true of feelings. Feelings do not differ from emptiness.

[38:12]

Emptiness does not differ from feelings. Perceptions, when it goes through the five skandhas, that's what is the same. And consciousness does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from consciousness. Emptiness means interdependence. If you think of when the word emptiness comes up in Buddhism, just think of interdependence, which means that there's no inherent existence. And all the forms are imputed forms rather than inherent forms. But all these forms are the forms of emptiness, or the forms of one enormous being, which is far more enormous than we can ever imagine, and far smaller than we can ever imagine.

[39:32]

And large and small are just relative concepts. So we say everything is equal. Nobody said, well, but this glass of water is small and this room is big, right? But those are just comparative values. They're not real values. Because this glass of water is not big or small. And the room is not big or small. The room is just what it is, suchness. The glass of water is just what it is, suchness. So when we compare things, we say, well, this is this and compare it to that. But everything has its own absolute value, as well as its comparative value. And its absolute value is its suchness. So, an elephant is equal to a mouse.

[40:37]

A mouse is equal to an elephant in its absolute value. Comparatively, looking from the mouse's point of view, the elephant is big. And from the elephant's point of view, the mouse is small. But from the ant's point of view, the mouse is enormous. You see these little, cute little bugs, you know, walking along the leaf, and then you see a blow-up of it, and it's monsters, you know. praying on this other little thing. And as we were talking about it at lunch, it was an interesting conversation about lunch. I remember it was breakfast. The distance between atoms is like, if you were the size, if you could actually visualize, see an atom, the distance between atoms is like the distance between planets in the universe. So there's a lot of space.

[41:38]

And everything has its absolute value. And we always judge things according to their relative value. This is our dualistic mind. Our dualistic mind is always discriminating. We have to discriminate, of course. And we have to judge things comparatively. But we lose the sense of equality when we do that. So as well as big judging or as well as comparing everything, we also have to see everything's absolute value, which is everything has Buddha nature. Everything is of the same nature. And so we take care of everything, realizing the absolute value of anything, as well as the comparative values.

[42:44]

Yes? I wonder if emptiness is the best translation of whatever. To me it's... Well, it's not, no. Because it's very disturbing, and I've had a lot of trouble with that word, emptiness. Well, if you think of it as independence. So it's simply imperative? No. Shunya. Shunya is the Sanskrit. All things are shunya. It's not such. No, it's emptiness. Void. Void is another term. But none of our terms, none of our English terms, are exactly equivalent, so to say. emptiness and realize that it's not accurate to do. And so we accept that and use the term emptiness. And we know that it doesn't mean what the English equivalent is.

[43:51]

So we accept that. And if someone says, well, what does emptiness mean? We say, it means independence. Nothing has its own separate existence, and exists dependently. It's called dependent origination. And that's another part of this whole thing, is the cycle of dependent origination, which is talked about later on. Everything arises dependently, depending on something else. Nothing arises independently. There's no thing in this world that arises independently. Everything arises dependent on something else. And that's the power of emptiness. Through the power of emptiness, everything arises dependently on something else.

[44:55]

So, emptiness means all-encompassing. or full actually. So when you say emptiness in Buddhadharma, it also means fullness. Completely emptiness, completely full at the same time. And then we have the duality of emptiness and fullness.

[45:27]

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