It's a funny evening. We're waiting to hear whether Bush has decided to accept this. The Russians, the Iraqis have agreed on Gorbachev's proposal. We heard that. And we're waiting to hear whether we're going to agree. So we can hope. And actually, What I would like to talk about today is in that realm, I'd like to have a chance to discuss how we practice with the Heart Sutra and to look at how we grapple with the question of good and evil. or good and bad, or like and dislike. But it sort of comes down most graphically as good and evil, I think.

[01:08]

And I think one of the readings from Thich Nhat Hanh is really about that, and also something else that we can read from the tiger's cave. But let's start by reading the Sutra. Mahaprajna-paramita-hrdaya-sutra. Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajna-paramita, perceived that all Vaiskandhas in their own being are empty, was saved from all suffering. O Sariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. are not tainted or pure, do not increase nor decrease.

[02:23]

Therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness the Bodhisattva depends on prajñāpāramitā, and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. In the three worlds, all Buddhists depend on prajñāpāramitā and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.

[03:31]

Therefore, know that prajñāpāramitā is the great transcendental mantra, which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the prajna paramita mantra. Proclaim the mantra that says, Well, in about the last seven minutes of last Thursday, I zoomed through a lot of stuff really quick. And I'm happy to spend some more time talking about some of that or answering questions that came up. Why don't you just play the same take a little slower?

[04:32]

Do you want me to do that? Go over some of the... I would like to hear that again. Let me go through it a little slower. And I asked you all to think about what is emptiness is for. So maybe we'll go through some of these. What I was basically trying to lay out some of the Buddhist concepts that are embedded in the text. We talked about the paramitas and the skandhas. Andrea and Judy gave kind of a brief synopsis about that.

[05:37]

And, you know, we don't have a lot of opportunities, it's a short class, we don't have a lot of opportunity to go into these things in depth, but I recommend that if you have curiosity about these concepts that there's lots of ways that you can pursue understanding them and finding out more about the in sort of basic Buddhism. On the other hand, you have to remember that what the sutra is telling you all the time is to let go of these things, that they are in fact empty. If you take a concept and you think that it's really a concept and it really has some life of its own, and you form some attachment to that concept, you're already veering off from the way. You're veering off from being in the present moment, being in your experience.

[06:38]

So it's important to understand what these concepts are because they're part of the fundamentals of our teaching. But more fundamental is not to attach to any of them. So we talked about the skandhas, which are form, feelings. Form is anything physical. Feelings being just basically pain. Things that we find pleasurable, things we find unpleasant, and things that we find neutral. Perceptions or conceptions is when we start to name that experience. When we take some sensation and give it a name, like cold, or hot, or ice cream, or music, that begins to, you form a conception.

[07:56]

And then formations is the fourth skanda, which is sort of the emotional construct or the psychological construct that we build around the form, the feeling, and the perception. So in other words, if I smell that incense, if I'm walking Say if I was walking by the street someplace, and I smelled that incense, at first it would just be a smell. Then I would identify it as incense, and then it would carry me back here. The emotional, psychological construct that I would have would You know, it would take my mind back to someplace else. It would remind me of something, for instance. And that's just one example of the kind of formations, mental formations, you can make. And then the last skanda is

[09:11]

consciousness. It's kind of the organ or the vehicle that allows us to discriminate between objects. It also implies will or volition. So on the It's something that flows through and enables all of these other processes to take place. So that's very briefly something about skandhas. As I said, we could get into all these things in great detail. Is there any particular order to these, or are they all basically interdependent? You know, no one skanda stands apart from any other.

[10:13]

I mean, it seems at first that you're building something. Yeah, but you're not really. What you have is one physical skanda and four mental skandas. That's one way to think of it. Form is a physical skanda. It's actually your body. The things that you feel and hold, they have some existence. You could call them as having existence in the physical realm. But if there were no vijnana, consciousness, that underlies all of this, then it's your consciousness that makes this into a form, that perceives it as a form, that without consciousness you wouldn't be perceiving a body.

[11:14]

You wouldn't have anything that you could call an existence. So it really is the interrelationship of all of them. I say form stands apart on one side of some spectrum that I can't quite name. Vijnana or consciousness stands apart because it flows through all of them. But traditionally, if you look at a chart of dharmas, there are a lot of dharmas in the realm of form. Or there's a bunch that are in the realm of form and then there are others that are categorized as mental. Does that answer your question? Consciousness is... Well, I understand consciousness as the formations.

[12:18]

I have that problem. You what? I think I understand what is meant by consciousness. What I have more problem with is what is meant by formations, which in the other translation is impulses. And I understand as maybe untranslatable from Sanskrit. Yeah, let me see what they... The word is actually, yeah, which I always take with a grain of salt or a grain of sand. Rice. Grain of rice. Probably doesn't say anything. I have rice on my shirt.

[13:21]

I'm finding it. Ah, here we go. Well, impulses or... Actually, this is kind of interesting. Impulses or formations is a none-too-satisfactory rendering of samskara, literally, together-makers. The term includes all active dispositions, tendencies, impulses, volitions, strivings, whether conscious or repressed. whereas consciousness is just the awareness of something. So it's somehow more ambiguous? Yeah. Less defined? I think it is less defined, but I think the implication is that using consciousness as a tool, it's a together maker.

[14:24]

It puts one experience together with another. It takes it takes your conceptions and and kind of matches them up It's basically a mechanism, but it doesn't exist as separate from conscious nurse or separate from Yeah, I think that's a that's a good that's a good name for it Okay now Later on we get to, therefore in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness. There we have the skandhas. Then we have no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. So those, from the no eyes, and then no color. You see there's a correspondence. The eyes are the organs and the color are the objects.

[15:30]

These are called the sense fields or in Sanskrit, ayatanas. Can you put those things in a skanda relationship? They are all in the form skanda. except for consciousness and mind. But I mean, going through eyes or form, what is color? Is that an impulse? Well, color is... No, it's not an impulse. It's a... It's a sense object. It's outside... It's outside the realm of... of form, it's in the realm of consciousness. This is really complicated. I'm not great at laying it out, but there is not a one-to-one correspondence. These are different systems that don't link up exactly. So then you have no realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness.

[16:41]

Now these are all in the realm of consciousness. These are the consciousness of sight, the process of sight, the process of hearing, the process of smelling, of taste, etc. And these are eighteen dhatus, or fields, which include the six senses, the six sense objects, and the six consciousnesses. So there you have all of it together. So those are also two, what whoever composed this is doing, or what Avalokitesvara is doing, is he's laying out, or she is laying out, all of these different kind of systems of Buddhist analysis. Now, It's interesting, I was just reading, there was a newsletter from the Chan Center in New York, where Master Sheng Yen teaches, and he had a lecture about, he said it was about the sight, the sense of sight, sense of sight and sense of taste.

[18:04]

And he said, well, when we taste something, where is it exactly? It's not exactly in the object, and it's not exactly in our tongue, and it's not exactly in the consciousness. All three of these things have to meet in order to have something that comes out tasting like an orange. The tongue itself has no taste. nor does the orange itself have any taste, nor does the consciousness have anything that you would call taste, but when they interact, and there you have sort of these senses, objects, and consciousness interacting, it's sort of a model for the interpenetration of all life, so that

[19:08]

This individual life doesn't exist. Something that we call tasting like an orange doesn't exist but in the coming together of these processes. So it's a dynamic process. So then to go on a little, we have no ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death. And that's just kind of an abridged version of the twelvefold chain of causation, which leads from ignorance to birth and old age and death. It's the cycle that's constantly being turned by our ignorance that we're caught in, in this life, and that we hope to be free from.

[20:24]

Except for the bodhisattva vow, we're only going to be free when all of us are free together. And we could talk for weeks about the chain of causation. But I think I want to leave that there, not get into it too much. Then no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. Those are the four noble truths. People see that? It's that, I mean, so you have life is suffering, the origination of suffering is desire. There is a way to cease suffering and desire, and that way is the Eightfold Path.

[21:30]

So again, it's like taking all of this, I mean that's like really pretty basic stuff and it's just saying if you attach to any of this, basically you're going to get thrown back into the realm of suffering. And the Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita, and the mind is no hindrance. That's a very ambiguous kind of translation. The word hindrance is really, it's a translation of the Sanskrit word nivarana, which is like thought covering. But this translation is that the mind is no hindrance, the mind doesn't get in your way.

[22:39]

But you can also think the mind has no hindrance. In other words, there is nothing really that will stand in your way. And these hindrances, there are five of them traditionally and they are lust, hatred or anger, torpor or sloth, laziness, worry or restlessness, Mel calls it hurry and flurry I think. And the last one is skeptical doubt. So these are thought coverings. I wonder what Kansa says about these thought coverings.

[23:39]

I sort of like that idea. I mean, I don't like it, but it's like, I think of it as kind of like going through your mental life with gloves on or with like some thick thing over your head that doesn't allow you to see things, or like with dirty glasses, you know, it doesn't allow you to see things as they are. Therefore, O Śāriputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought coverings.

[24:43]

That's poetic. Yeah, it's really beautiful, isn't it? But he who is without thought-carbons... But the next... somehow the next sentence is really is really important one to me without any hindrance no fears exist that's really that's like the most somehow one of the most encouraging and hopeful parts of the of the sutra to me that if you can let go of these if you can let go of these thought coverings or hindrances then your fear this disappears. We can talk about that more.

[25:46]

There's something I want to read from Abbot O'Borough about that. And then, far from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. So, of course, there's a list of perverted views, right? And those perverted views are the source of, they're another way of kind of diagramming ignorance. They really describe ignorance, the various manifestations of ignorance that plague us. So there are four basic perverted views. One is to see permanence in what is not permanent, In other words, to think that there is something that just continues to exist that doesn't change.

[26:49]

The next one is basically to seek ease in what is bound up with suffering. In other words, in our passions, in the things that we desire, in the things we think will make us happy. And then the third one is to seek selfhood in what has no self. In other words, to think of yourself as truly existing as something that some of these are, that one is very close and parallel to number one. Selfhood and permanence are very, to my mind, they're close conceptually, not exactly the same.

[27:54]

You can split hairs about them, but they're very close. You know, if you think of of your, you may not think of yourself, of your life as permanent, and still you can have some hope that there is something, there is some self, that even though your body may grow old and weak in one way or another, that you have this self that is unchanging. And that's one of the perverted views. And then the fourth one is delighting in what is repulsive. That is perverted. And that's very much closed, that's very much kind of parallel. I think essentially there were three originally and that one was added and I'm not sure what the

[28:59]

it sounds a bit more judgmental than the other three. It also sounds very close to me, to number two, to seek ease in what is bound up with suffering. So I can't delineate for you right now what the shade of difference in meaning is, but it's very strong, to seek delight in what is repulsive. It's judgmental because how do you define repulsive? Different people define it differently. Something relevant. Right. But there... I think it essentially means the body. Hmm. I mean, maybe not your body. There are some, you know, there are traditional meditations. of non-attachment where I think it's in the mindfulness sutra.

[30:10]

I have notes for this someplace else. Again, I wonder if he's talking about that. Yeah, isn't that thing you're so perceiving, this bag of bile? Right. Bones and... The charnel ground. Everything. That's in the set of the time. Norman was very funny when he told us about this one. But that is the practice, that you would go, you know, first you would go and you'd sit with someone who is very ill, old and very ill. Then you'd go and you would sit with a body that has just died.

[31:12]

Then you would go and you would find a body that has been decaying for a week. Then you would go and you would sit. I'm sure around here you could find them. Around here it's hard. It'd be hard. I think in the Buddha's time maybe it wasn't so hard. And then you would go and you would sit with a body that was decaying for a long time and then you would sit with a corpse that was just bones and it turned to dust. And you would understand that that is your body you know that that's the course of our life and if you attach to this thing that you know and in one sense it's repulsive but in another sense it's just this is the process of our lives as long as we're on the wheel of birth and death you know and it's it's not so much fun

[32:19]

A lot of people are really delighting in that. It's kind of repulsive to me. Would that be an example of it? I think so, yeah. I think that's an example. That's definitely an example. That's another aspect of delighting in what is repulsive. There's something. And I think all the other views enter in. You know, the idea of finding permanence the idea of finding self in what has no self you know you think and the idea of finding ease in what is bound up with suffering we think if we could only get all this stuff cleared out of the way if we could get rid of Saddam Hussein then everything would be great if we could get rid of you know all of these uh... republican guards that are in the that are in the trenches there what? Republican guards that are in the trenches.

[33:32]

They were democratic. Then we could then we could get to Saddam Hussein and then and then everything will be okay without seeing that there are you know there are ripples and you know that that will spread endlessly from whatever action we take Yeah, or if you, you know, if I could only make enough money, you know, I'd be, I'd have everything I want and I would be happy. Well, that's kind of that whole basis of this war is going on, you know. If only we have it all, we'll be happy. Right, and also that we used to have it all, and we want to have it all again, but we never did. Saddam's got a stranglehold on our lifeline. That kind of metaphor. History will prove us correct.

[34:33]

It seems to me then these four perverted views are really sort of two pairs. It looks like that to me. One seeing permanence outside of ourselves or in ourselves and then one seeking ease outside of ourselves or in ourselves. Right, I think that's right. I'm sorry, could you say that again? One and three, you know, seeing permanence outside, and then three is like seeing permanence inside. Two is seeking ease or pleasure outside of ourselves, and four would be seeking that ease inside our body. Thanks. It wasn't a general fear that didn't exist, but a specific fear.

[35:39]

Well, I think that there is another list, you know. I mean, all of these Buddhist lists are They're mnemonic devices so that it would be easy to remember the Buddha's teaching. You know, there's eight this, and there's five this, and there's sixteen this. So these are useful tools, but they don't always translate so literally. I mean, they're not or is completely inclusive. So there's a list of fears, which are kind of interesting. There's the fear of death, the fear of pain, the fear of loss of reputation, the fear of loss of livelihood, and the fear of speaking in public.

[36:41]

I didn't make up this list. What? Yes, absolutely. What? Yeah. I mean, I've thought about it a lot. Since we're speaking in public. I mean, how did it make it on this top five list, you know? Because they had to give money more in tax. Right. It's tied up with fear of loss of reputation. That's right. Loss of life. But, you know, I know from my own experience, I've been a musician for a long time, and I remember when I was young, it was impossible for me to look at people in an audience and talk to them.

[37:48]

I mean, it just, my body started to shake, you know, or, and then gradually I could talk, but I could only talk, since the audience was here, I would talk to somebody who was next to me in the band. And it was really, I had to people had to tell me to do it, kind of make me do it, and I had to train myself to do it. And you can, you know, you can do it. But I, you know, I've seen it again and again. I think that it is a big fear. The fear of being shamed, I think, is I think it's really, speaking in public is, to me, it's like a subset of loss of reputation or fear of loss of reputation. But I think maybe it's a very heavy one. My brother's terrified of speaking at meetings or in public.

[38:49]

There are a lot of people like that. It's not so unusual. There was some poll I read about that's like the top fear. I think it's almost above the fear of death, the fear of public speaking, in this country anyway. That's interesting. But actually, the way I think of this, I'm not so crazy about this list. I think of it more, I remember a lecture, I may have talked about this before, that Katagiri Roshi gave, where he talked about when you're sitting zazen,

[39:51]

As you sit, and your thoughts move slower, and your mind really settles down, sometimes you can perceive yourself reaching a place where, reaching an egoless place. And right there, you have a choice. And most people, often when we feel ourselves reaching that place, we veer away from it. We turn away from it out of fear. I think it's out of fear. One way that I think of it is to relate it back to emptiness, which is where where I wanted to come back to is that we think of emptiness as the void. That it's close to death.

[40:58]

And we think of emptiness as there's something there. There's some nothing there. And it really scares us because we think if we become, if we lose our ego, if we just let go, then We don't have our life anymore. And since our life is all that we know, it's very scary. So I bet that many of you have had this experience. And if you think about it as it's happening, you can notice it. I never thought about it quite in that way. And after Katagiri Roshi talked about it, I actually even have experienced it. I just felt, you know, especially during sasheen where your concentration is very great and your samadhi can be very strong, and when you feel yourself reaching some more, some deeper place,

[42:08]

I often turn myself back. I'll think of something or I'll ask myself a question and I'll turn away from it. And I think it's out of fear. So that's more... Has anyone ever experienced that? with it, but by merely having the thought of staying with it, you lose it. So, I mean, it's just, it's very, very non-directive. Right. You don't really have control, because it's arising from something that is beyond words and beyond your control. So I've learned not to tell myself to stay I think you're afraid of losing yourself. You're afraid of what happens when you just lose control.

[43:14]

That you may not come back or you may die. You don't even know what it is. It's wordless. But it relates to our habit of clinging to ourself or our thought of our lives. That is our habit. So it's the fear of letting go of that. uh... now it can it'll if that's what wants to happen that's what'll happen and i think that by bringing yourself in proximity with this with that fear again and again uh... that's that's part of our training in zazen i think that's why we it's we sit so we don't sit to attain anything or to accomplish anything but the more we sit uh... bit by bit we do let go of some things we let go of these attachments we let go of of the idea of form of feelings perceptions and we can let go of these of these fears uh... that's the incredibly like encouraging thing about the heart sutra to me and it's it's really uh...

[44:30]

If you think about all these various things it's telling you to let go of, it can help you. I mean, you don't have to think of them during zazen, but you can think of them during your daily life. When things come up, you can think about, well, what is this fear? What do I have at stake in this situation? Like I was talking about in the first class where I got that Denver boot put on my car. And I wanted, it's like every bit of me wanted to be rude and angry to that guy. And I just thought, well, why? So I think that the more we sit with these feelings and the more we have some ability to reflect on them before we're driven by them, then more chance we have of letting go of all these concepts in a really deep way.

[45:43]

While we're on that, do you think it's valid to take a feeling like that, like fear, or the feeling of anger you had towards those people in the junkyard, wherever it was, you know, the booze people, and take that feeling of anger and just kind of say, I don't have to feel this towards you, If you can do that, that's good. Push it aside, so to speak. Yeah, I think that's good. Which is what we chant every Monday morning, is the Metta Sutra, the Loving-Kindness Sutra, is you begin by feeling love for I'm not sure where you've been, but feeling love for yourself. I think that's where you begin. Feeling affection for yourself. Then you feel this love that you have for someone who's very close to you.

[46:46]

Someone, your parents, or your child, or your husband or wife. Then you try to cultivate that feeling for someone that you don't know. you know, someone that you just might encounter or pass in the street, and you get to the point where you sort of build up these practices, bit by bit, to where you can offer that feeling to someone that you would consider your enemy. And that's really difficult. But that's a very traditional practice. And you can practice that. I think a lot of us try to practice that in different ways. And sometimes we can do it and sometimes we screw up. The context of that practice is to end up what? Connected.

[47:50]

More compassionate or is there something else? way, an effort, a way to achieve emptiness. Yeah, I think it's to achieve emptiness. And where I was going a little bit with it was, if you were to replace this hatred with love towards someone else, and what would you replace the fear with if you're going to work with that when it comes up? If you suppose you have this fear that comes up and you say, I'm going to kind of grab the fear and turn it into something else. What would you turn it into? A feeling of safety or something? Perhaps what I tend to do when I feel a fear is to try to really locate where the fear is. First, I try to locate it in my body. If I'm having a strong feeling, chances are there's some place in my body that is really resonating with that feeling. And I try to find it there.

[48:55]

But mentally, I guess I try to think, What is going on here? What is it that I'm really scared of? Am I scared of losing myself? Am I scared of... I mean, it's almost always something on this list. Pain or loss of reputation. In fact, it's most always pain or loss of reputation. to say it without a context is to present something that could also be an attachment. So you ask yourself, why is love, or this practice that you just described, a better way of living, of learning, than hate?

[50:10]

And we certainly see lots of people in a practice of hate, and you I would suppose the answer to that would be that ultimately hate is a totally closing in and hardening of this concept of the self and defending it, where there is love as an extension and a breaking down and a dissolving of the barrier and the ultimate. The ultimate result of this is this kind of likeness of being that one would achieve that way. So it's not as if we I think I always shy away from the sense of, you know, we want to be lovey-dovey. And I just don't believe in that. And so that's kind of the way I have to put that argument, that what you just said, that's what I understand. Don't, though, we keep hearing our teachers say, you know, dance with your fear or your hate.

[51:11]

You know, look at it carefully. I don't think it's, you know, saying, ooh, you know, I'm gonna, By magic, you know, and by reading little guest poems, turn it into love, but it really means some kind of knowing it in order to transform it, doesn't it? Right. You can't just... Well... What else you could answer? Well, Mel says shine a light on it many times. Yeah. I think he uses it every now and then. raised by my mother and father who were born and raised in Japan, they always gave me the interpretation that always be aware, you know, don't be a nincompoop and totally unaware, you know. Always be grateful. If somebody, you know, moves a little bit, thank you very much, you know, and this kind of thing.

[52:17]

And somehow, rather than using the word love, appreciate what that person does. He gave you a nice smile, or he's taking the Denver boot off of your tire, you know. He didn't. Well, that's another useful way of looking at it. There's no one way of looking at these things. There's no one way to practice with all this stuff. There are different practices that you can take up. At some moment, you may have no choice but to be angry. You may have no choice but to be afraid. Actually, I'd like to read something.

[53:18]

This is from the Tiger's Cave, from this commentary on the Heart Sutra by Abbot Oboro. I really love this book. What is that book? It's called the Tiger's Cave. Oh no, now it's called The Second Zen Reader. It used to be Tiger's Cave. The Bodhisattva Spirit. The Bodhisattva Spirit is different. It's different from what was above. In the midst of desire and grasping, which we cannot do away with however much we try, in the midst of our deluded thoughts and ideas, we are to try to discover the world of release. Day and night, our desire and clinging make us alternate between joy and sorrow, laughter and tears. If there is something within reach, I want to get it. But for all my efforts, I cannot. In this state of desire and clutching, let me discover the true world of release. It is through the existence of this very desire and grasping, or rather, through the gradual coming to see that the character of this desire and grasping is the character of myself also, that I can come to discover release.

[54:39]

And having discovered it, to taste it, and then to continue to practice in faith. This is the spirit of bodhisattva. The life of desire and clinging is that all the time, though I think I will not get angry, anger arises. I think I will not say stupid things, yet they come out. It is possible for us to see every moment in the deep passions which are the basis of life, our own true form. The deeper the desire and grasping, the more deeply can be experienced the absolutely unconditioned. The spirit of the bodhisattva is to find life at the heart of desire and grasping, not for himself alone. He jumps into the blood-stained wheel of clinging to life in order to rescue all living beings. Whether it is the true spirit of the bodhisattva I know not, but I find that so long as there is security and health and the environment is not too disturbed, I have obtained peace. My present state is secure.

[55:42]

There is no great disturbing passion. There do not seem to be karma actions inspired by passion. And yet, the desire and clutching for life is a terrible thing. I catch a bit of a cold and go to bed. Someone says, Come now, you are in bed with a cold. How about thinking of the grace of the Buddha? but my head is throbbing with pain. What do you mean? This is no time for thinking about the Buddha. My head hurts and I have nothing left to think with. When we face the moment of death with the convulsions and clutching for air, can we then sweep away the desire and the hanging on to life? It is said that a certain Zen priest at the moment of his death gave a traditional cry of Zen illumination. But then another one is reported to have said, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Someone has well said on this, I suppose it is all right for a Zen priest to go on playing his part right to the death. But for myself, I find that I don't want to die has more of a human flavor about it.

[56:45]

One may be able to die with a great Zen cry, or one may not. But after all, in the I don't want to die, is in the very thought, realizing that the character of the desire is the character of oneself also. In that last thought, I verily believe there is a world of release. I realize I have read this before. That's really one of my favorite parts of this book. I find it so... It really gets my mind thinking about what is my life, you know?

[57:51]

We always... These desires and ideas, it's like we always want to get rid of them. And we think that, you know, if we only do zazen well enough, we'll stop thinking, we'll stop having these desires. But he's saying, no, this is just, this is the nature of human life. That as long as you're living a human life, you're going to have this, you're going to have these desires. And there's no way to let go of them. And that in fact, It's quite wonderful to have them. But you can find some kind of release in them, and that's hard. I mean, I don't know if... I mean, he even says the worse they are, the better it is. Right. Or the more opportunity there is. hard to, I get it for a second, but then it goes away.

[58:59]

What did he mean when he said the more desires you have, the better it is? I don't say better, but he says, he doesn't say better. More opportunities. He says the deeper you have, the more opportunities, yeah. Yeah, true. Let's see. Read that again. The deeper the desire and grasping, the more deeply can be experienced the absolutely unconditioned. I have to take this somewhat on faith, I'm afraid. I don't know if people have any experience of that that they want to share. I just think there's an awful lot of Taking things to the extreme is very much part of the Zen tradition.

[60:14]

There's a sense about it, if you're familiar with a lot of Beethoven, especially some of his late works, late quartets and stuff, that a grappling with leading to a real kind of serenity and peace that you have to kind of dive in and just use your whole guts and everything in order really to get to that. What I got from what you just read was that if you take two people and one person you know, things don't bother them so much and they go through life and everything's okay. There's not a whole lot going on, but if you have a person who just has all this stuff that they have to work with, I think that they're going to understand and have the opportunity to examine more anger and all this stuff.

[61:25]

But, I mean, you can't have love for that, I don't think. You can't. I think you don't I think that here, anger arises in zazen, and it's this contained place, so you can be really angry in the zendo. You can be really, really angry in there, and it's contained, and it's okay. I am kind of a suspect of this changing or transforming angry feelings good feelings. I mean, I think that you are going to get angry and that it probably is appropriate sometimes, but I think the problem is when you're kind of, when one is lashing out or using that anger to get your way or get what you want. But I think unless you really look at that and really let it come up, at least for me,

[62:32]

I think you don't learn anything. Or until I let my anger arise, I didn't learn anything about it or have any understanding of what it was about. I think it's tricky because the Heart Sutra it's advocating, it's telling you how to be a bodhisattva. It's telling you what the life of bodhisattva is like. Which means each time these feelings, these thoughts, these things arise and you attach to them, let go of them. But, what Avatambora is saying, and the Heart Sutra is saying too, I mean the reason it brings up all these things, it has to tell you that they don't exist because we feel with every ounce of our being that they do exist.

[63:50]

you know, we really believe in our bodies, we believe in our thoughts, we believe in our fears, we believe in our hindrances, we believe in all these problems, and it's just bringing up, it's constantly bringing up the other side, and we believe, I have eyes, and ears, and nose, and tongue, I believe that all those things, I have all those things, and of course I do, and so do you. And it's just bringing a smack up against that other side where we have to... So I don't know what happens when you have an affirmation and a negation that meet. What do you get when they meet? Do you get an affirmation or do you get a negation? Maybe a little abstract. Well, it's not one, it's not two.

[64:53]

And big mind contains small mind, so it's both. No matter how perfect our understanding of the Dharma is, we're still going to get angry, because we're human beings. The trick is not to get attached. Even for one second. I was going to say, I think it's different levels of understanding. levels of reality. What is? Well, the physical processes, the sense processes, and the emptiness of them. I mean, they're both true, as in paradise, but because they're on different levels of understanding and reality. Most people, or a lot of people, you know, just are experiencing on the level of where the sense perceptions are, and without the understanding of what is meant here by emptiness.

[66:18]

Yeah, I think most people go, our habits are to think that things exist, and that things are real, and to think that our feelings are real. But isn't that the nature of human beings? I mean, we can't help it, right? We can't really do... I mean, I get what this is saying, but that's the nature of human beings, and we're human beings, and so we're always going to have that. Right. I think it's true. But if we become bodhisattvas, then we wouldn't have to be caught in that. Right, and I think that's what practice is about. But, I mean, you can't say this doesn't exist when you're first letting it exist. You can't say there's only love and never hate. I mean, it's just, you can't, I don't think you can just, I mean, one can't do that. It just doesn't happen. in Hindu terms, work with a little bit.

[67:25]

And I said, I didn't, I wasn't giving him a lot of soppy feelings or anything, you know, I'm feeling, I love everybody, I love this guy. But I was directing some, you know, feeling of benevolence or at least indifferent, you know, more like benevolence, a little bit of benevolence towards him. And I was amazed in my own experience how quickly the hatred just disappeared. Well, that can happen. And I was concerned about the, you know, being inauthentic and repression of course, you know, that's... I just had the experience really strongly that the hate just disappeared. Sounds like you looked at your hate from the other side. I mean, that's... I just worked with it, I didn't... Yeah, but you perceived that you could work with it, which is to understand... Yes, exactly. And that is, I think, the difference between sort of seeing things as hierarchical, when you think that there is this absolute consciousness and then less importance, which I have a little bit of trouble with, the notion that I've heard Nell express, you know, that as soon as you open your mouth, you're in the dream, and that actually silences the reality and that perception.

[68:36]

And I like better the notion of the other side, which is not hierarchical, but vertical. And so you can, if you're conscious of the fact that in life you're also got one foot in the grave, you know, you It's not denying life. something what Andrea was saying before that I wanted to get back to.

[69:38]

I think it had to do with, well, he talks about it, you know, he said, as long as our lives are not too disturbed and we have some of the things that we want and everything is going along well, we can be very, we can, you know, feel like everything's going along very well and we're being very non-discriminating. you know, but we don't stay there, we don't ever stay there. And I think that sometimes people see Zen practice as like this attempt to smooth everything over. And I guess I don't think of it that way. I think it's a way to really just accept all these feelings, all these dharmas as they arise, and just have some opportunity, the idea of emptiness allows some opportunity for stepping back to look at them.

[70:42]

I mean, it's really nice when things go along very smoothly. But they change like that. I mean, I've had about four experiences of that in the last two weeks. You know, and basically our life here My life here is pretty nice. It's very nice to be living here. It's very nice to have this wonderful little family. But all of a sudden, an interaction with somebody or the war or something at work turns it around so quickly. It makes what you thought was a pillar or a foundation for you all of a sudden seems like just shifting sand. But don't you think your practice allows you to live with shifting sand better than it did when you didn't have it?

[71:43]

No, I do think that. It doesn't stop the sand doesn't know it really is and it doesn't affect the outside world still springing up But actually it does affect the outside world So I mean it doesn't control the outside world But it affects the outside world Like I can't control things that that happen to me but if I'm able to stay with my feelings and stay with an idea of emptiness, then at least I have a chance of not making it worse. I think in certain situations that's the best that you can hope for. You have a bad situation. You have no choice. This is what the universe is giving you right now. you know, there are some kinds of people and I have a strong tendency in this direction, you know, if you fall down in a puddle of mud, you know, you can get up and walk away, you know, and go brush yourself off or get some new clothes or you can lie in that puddle of mud and say, I'm in mud!

[73:07]

I'm rolling around in mud! You know, and just really get caught in there, you know, because the reality is so jolting and horrible to you. And that's my habit. And I feel that if I fall down, sometimes, now the practice, a practice of emptiness allows me a moment of perception So I can just stop myself just before I'm about to do my habit of writhing around in the mud. And that's really useful. It doesn't stop pain. It doesn't stop anger. It doesn't stop growing old, disease. But it enables you to carry some thread of your life

[74:09]

through that. And also, when you see that there's this interconnectedness with other people, that also really can affect what you do. You know, when I saw that guy in the parking lot who put the Buddha in my car, it's like, I am connected with him at this moment, even though I'm really pissed off. But why is it, why should I want to make him feel as bad as I feel? And I know that at another time in my life, in one way or another, I would have gone for the jugular veins. I didn't have the leisure to step back. And I think that the leisure to step back is a habit of stepping back that's developed.

[75:18]

It's another habit that you train to do. You train yourself to see emptiness. And training yourself to see emptiness is practicing wisdom. You know, in the Heart Sutra, you'll notice there is a word that is completely missing from the Heart Sutra, which is compassion. The word compassion never appears in this sutra. And Avalokitesvara, you know, who is the embodiment of compassion, never talks about it. he or she talks only... they're not practicing compassion, they're practicing... Avalokiteshvara is practicing prajna, he's practicing wisdom. And so practicing wisdom of the sort that's being laid out here, that's how Avalokiteshvara

[76:28]

can manifest compassion. So they're not apart. We think of them as different attributes and again in other Buddhist systems you have Manjushri who is the manifestation of wisdom, carries a sword and then you have Avalokiteshvara who hears the cries of the world but in this sutra they're really merged that the way Avalokiteshvara can sit and hear and see the suffering of the world and can act, can be there with all their beings is because Avalokiteshvara has this has the ability to recognize his or her own emptiness and to step back, so that in each of these situations, when something terrible is going on, Avalokiteshvara doesn't have to fear about loss, doesn't have to worry about loss of reputation, doesn't worry about pain, doesn't worry about death, even though all those things may in fact come.

[77:55]

Now that might be a place to stop for the evening. Are there other thoughts or questions? We have a few minutes. Yes, what about that which is emptiness? Who has an idea? You brought it up. That's pretty close to how I think about it.

[80:48]

I think that that side, the emptiness is warm side, is to remind us that It's hard when you're dealing with this sort of non-dualistic language, because language is so much... When we think form is emptiness, then there's something in my mind that's just like this big black hole, you know? But in fact, emptiness is form. There is no black hole, that the emptiness is kind of not a part from all of these things interacting, that they all are interacting. So in fact, instead of having a big black hole, you have this universe where things are dynamically changing and moving and interacting all the time. So that's why you've got to be careful about all these negations.

[81:53]

Because, I mean, I don't know what they mean in Sanskrit, what the implication of a negation is. But, you know, they have, with our language it has certain implications. It means that these things are non-existent. But the sutra balances it. Then it has the affirmation. Right. And then they get you with the transcendence. Right, right. So, it all works out. So, was I saying, was that pretty close to what, was that close to what you were saying? Was that a similar? What you said, what you said? What I said. Yeah. It's really hard to think about this stuff. Well, I just read this book. It's a profile of a quantum physicist. John Stuart Bell is a famous guy.

[82:54]

Somebody asked him about all these books. Is Buddhism like quantum physics? He says, of course not. That's stupid. Quantum physicists like myself work at a very small level. very little things, you know. He says, I'm not a Buddhist, but my understanding of Buddhism, it's a view of all reality, not just a little localized, brief reality. And I found that very helpful in understanding a lot of this stuff. because I was sort of caught up in those sorts of correspondences that are very, very popular now. Well, they're fun to think about. Well, that's right. They were fun to think about, but I mean, it's almost, it was so liberating to hear a guy who really knew something about quantum physics and contributed to the field in a significant way saying, no, it's apples and bananas.

[84:08]

Or it's nuts and bananas. It's not even fruit. I had a question about emptiness. Is it drawing this famous distinction between concepts and experience that people do in California? Is emptiness a kind of experience that you have, and it's a kind of thing that becomes a part of the blood and bones of you, and kind of becomes a part of your life? I don't know. I'm from New York. Slide away from that one. I don't know.

[85:13]

They don't. But I do know that if... And when he does, he won't tell you. Right. I do know that if you think about, if you... You don't want to get caught on the idea of emptiness. But you can do, you know, you can do the practices that are laid out Zazen is an emptiness practice. So the question is always, what form is emptiness and what is emptiness' form? How are these things interrelating? So I can't tell you whether it's an actual experience or not. really, very long ago that I was picking up all the plums that are going to be out there very soon. Right, again.

[86:13]

Just filling up our lives. And I'm looking at these plum blossoms, you know, and they're about two years later. They're all gone. All the blossoms are on the ground. I'm looking at the ground, I'm seeing plums, you know. And I'm taking form and emptiness, and emptiness in a form, and here it comes. Blap, you know, it's just. Blap. Blap is, yeah. It's right on the ground. Yeah, right and and after a while if you've been practicing for a while In one place like here It starts to blur together. I mean for me Like I can't believe the plum blossoms are out again, and I can't believe the plums plums are out again and this year I actually noticed the Blossoms, you know, I just noticed the buds I think it was like the first time ever that I really noticed the buds before I know it before the blossoms were out you know, I felt really it was Really powerful to notice that but you just see these this cycle And it's a very short cycle it's a lot shorter than our lives but

[87:24]

Well, let's stop there. And let's do the two readings. I'd like to talk about that stuff. Do the two readings in the packet next week. And we'll continue a sort of related discussion about attachment and aversion.

[87:50]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ