Is there anyone else who needed a copy of the text? I have a couple more. Everyone else have one? Yeah, but mine's missing one page. Yes, they're missing one. Mine wasn't one. Missing a page, really? Yes. Page. Oh, no, I think it was missing a page. Yeah, I skipped. Oh, are we getting fired? I wonder if... Well, it's kind of like the readers are just... It's too bad. They added a bridge. Right. Okay. Good evening. Good evening. Rocks of Glass. Um, okay. Well, I've been thinking about the Heart Sutra all week.

[01:02]

I noticed some people are actually using their chant books in the zendo, which is good. I've been trying to do it. It's actually pretty neat to do it. And also, it means you have to figure out how you handle the book again, which is good. I don't know if people have been working with the, uh... That person is obviously working with the mantra. I don't know if anyone's working with the mantra, but actually, I'd like to just remind you to keep that in mind, and if you feel like it, and work with it, and work with it in your breathing. And maybe we'll talk about it in the last class. what I'd like to do tonight, let's read the Heart Sutra, and then we can read these Heart Sutra Valentines, and then I think discuss some of the notion of emptiness in the context of dharmas.

[02:20]

The Heart Sutra itself is kind of a crash course in Mahayana Buddhism, or actually in Buddhism. and uh maybe we'll i think the stuff that uh uh andrea and judy are going to present will uh we'll touch on some of that and i will i can go briefly through some of the things and i'll probably raise more questions than it will answer but that's that's okay and we can start thinking about how this really applies to uh our everyday life so let's start maha-prajna-paramita-vidaya-sutra. ablokitesvara bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the prajna-paramita, perceive that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and must fade from all suffering.

[03:23]

O Sarvegupta, 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 feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. O Charlotte Buddha, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear or disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase or decrease. Therefore, in emptiness, no form of feelings, no perceptions, no formations, No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No color, no sound, no smell, little taste, no touch, no object of mind. No realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness. With no ignorance and also no extinction of it. Until no old age and death and also no extinction of it.

[04:25]

of all and no attainment, with nothing to attain. 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 Buddhas depend on prajñāpāramitā and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore, know that prajñāpāramitā is a very transcendent mantra. It is a great, bright mantra. It is the utmost mantra. It is the supreme mantra, which is able to relieve all suffering, and it is true, not false. So proclaim the prajñāpāramitā mantra. Proclaim the mantra that says, gāte gāte hāra gāte hārasangate bodhisattva. Ross, can you reach the bell?

[05:39]

Here it is. Well, I think maybe let's start by reading these and I'm not sure if we're going to discuss them or not, but let's just read them. I can just start and we can go around the room. Within, without. Not with help.

[06:44]

I think that would be the nicest valentine I ever got. Did you notice the way that works? Yeah. There's a form of emptiness, fun out there. Oh. Alan's Alan. That's pretty good. You know actually that's my buddhist name is actually Kushiki, which is emptiness, empty form, or formless form. That's another one of Nell's little jokes. He's trying to tell me something. If I find it, I'll get it. That's great. This is a poem by Emily Dickinson, or part of one. I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb when one who died for truth was laying in an adjoining room.

[07:48]

He questioned softly, why I failed. For beauty, I replied, and I, for truth, themselves are one. We brethren are, he said. And so, as kinsmen met at night, we talked between the rooms until the moss had reached our lips and covered up our names." This is a beautiful poem. Now, I don't have to do a commentary. You don't have to do an analysis. A Valentine's Day poem for Greg Hendricks. Long before the Plymouth Barracuda, a question begins the Great Heart Sutra with a mantra supreme like a boat in a stream. Do you get it now, O Shariputra?" Want to hear it again?

[08:52]

Long before the Plymouth Barracuda, a question begins the Great Heart Sutra with the mantra supreme like a boat in a stream. Do you get it now, O Shariputra? You should have found the next newsletter, Alan. That's good, yeah. Hold on, I'll get it after. Pink concrete cries, plum blossoms let go. Very nice. This one is from my friend Carol. She won't mind me reading it, I'm sure. Beautiful card. It says, Gatte, Gatte, Paragatte, and so forth.

[10:00]

Those who have practiced Buddhism must deeply, deeply feel the passing nature of things and have faith in karma. The heart which feels the passing nature of things is called the Bodhi heart. I know she'll like this. Tell me, do you get one? Oh, you can get one of these. It's okay. It doesn't matter. Go ahead. This one's with the ring. It's really pretty. It says, Happy Valentine's Day from your secret Skanda. Friendship is the gift that we give ourselves.

[11:02]

And is this, I'm not sure if this is just kind of a wrapping. contributing to Agnes' features. Okay, it says two images for or of Agnes. One, walking up a hill I come upon a large flowering quince. The flowers be startling orange in the last light and many birds The bush is filled with birds, small, round-bellied with a hint of blue, chittering among the blossoms, intent upon their work. They pay me absolutely no heed as I peer into thorny branches.

[12:08]

Shall I filch a stem? Try to carry this brightness home? Not today. Number two. A picture of you in another time and culture, an abyss surrounded by manuscripts in Greek in Latin, free now to study and write after a life of managing the monastery holdings, the gardens, the kitchen, and the sewing rooms, mediating disputes and living in community. Some of that seeking is here, I think. Odd birds, though we are, I appreciate your seriousness and steadiness in questions, especially the ones I don't know I need to ask until you give them voice." Beautiful. Sailing beyond the shore, beyond the sea, beyond the sun, into an unknown land, invisible reality, awakening at last, Svaha. Nice.

[13:12]

Sailing beyond the shore, beyond the sea, beyond the sun, into an unknown land, invisible reality, awakening at last, Svaha. Working with clay in the evening after school, a potter's wheel is turning. Sure hands shape like clay with complete attention. perfect. Ringing a bell on Tuesday morning, a mind is turning, a hand hesitates, a moment makes five. Each ring is different, each sound is perfect.

[14:21]

I thought you'd like that. John, did you want to read that one that you got? This is a little gatha that my teacher taught me when I was about eight years old. May the wisdom of the All-Compassionate One so shine upon our hearts and minds that the mist of error and foolish vanity of self may be dispelled. So shall we understand the changing nature of existence and reach spiritual peace. Well, gee, that was quite wonderful. Apologies to people who didn't get valentines.

[15:24]

I'm sure we all love you. Maybe people will show up in the next week or so. Well, that actually really sets a good tone for some of the stuff we're going to talk about today. Where we kind of left off last week was with the idea of emptiness as renunciation and renunciation or negation. And I think that that's only part of the story. That's one side of it. And the other side is an affirmation.

[16:28]

And I think we need to kind of remember that. But it's good to start by having some idea of what it is exactly that we're renouncing, or that we're advised in the Heart Sutra to renounce. And this is some of the stuff of basic Buddhism. And a good place to start, actually, let's go back to the title of the Heart Sutra. And before we get into into a discussion of the dharmas. Well, the Paramitas are dharmas. All things are dharmas. And what the Heart Sutra is saying is that all dharmas are basically, they have no being on their own. It's perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty.

[17:34]

And we'll talk about what the skandhas are. But all the dharmas are empty. But I think we need to look a little at what some of these dharmas are. So maybe Andrea could talk briefly about the Paramitas. Alan suggested that I read Meditation on Action, so that was one book that I could get this from. And I started reading it and it was, I enjoyed it and actually that was one of first books I ever met here, but it was, I felt like it was lengthier and not as succinct as what I got out of the Eastern philosophy and religions encyclopedia. And this is exactly what it says. Parmitas, also known as the six perfections.

[18:39]

The definition of parmitas that this particular encyclopedia has given is that which has reached the other shore, or the transcendental. The parmitas are the virtues perfected by Bodhisattva in the course of his or her development, if all goes well. So the six ones are Dana, Paramita, which means generosity. Sila or Shila, I'm not sure the pronunciation, which is discipline. Shanti, Paramita, which is patience. Virya, is that how you say that one too? Paramita is energy, exertion or effort. Jnana parmita is meditation.

[19:42]

Prajna parmita is wisdom. So those are the six. Now I'll just give you a brief description of them, or more descriptions. Dhana is spiritual and or material giving or generosity, being compassionate and kind and not keeping accumulated merit to oneself, but rather dedicating it to the liberation of all beings. Sila or Shila, proper behavior conducive to the eradication of all passions and securing of a favorable rebirth for the sake of liberating all beings. Shanti, patience and tolerance that arise from insight that all the problems of beings have causes.

[20:45]

Virya, resolute effort that does not permit itself to be diverted by anything. Jhana, meditation as a way of cutting through ego And if not experiencing oneself as separate from other beings, encourage that realization of supreme wisdom. Sila is often translated as morality or precepts, basically. The precept part of our practice is really Sila or Amitā. It's important to realize that these Paramitas are not like what the Bodhisattvas practice. They're what we practice as Bodhisattvas. And each one of us has our strengths and weaknesses. Some people, like for me, the practice of Kshanti, patience, that's a really hard one.

[21:56]

And some of them are easy, and they balance each other in different ways. But what flows through them, the foundation of them, is Prajna. If you take away Prajna, from each of these so-called perfections, then they're just sort of abstract practices. So you need this wisdom that sees the interpenetration of all things and the interpenetration of all these paramitas in order to be able to practice them in a full way in your life, so that they have some meaning. I mean, it's easy to be... You could say you're practicing dana. It's easy to be generous and to give things away.

[23:00]

But it's also very easy to give things away with the idea, conscious or not, of, what am I going to get back? And it's easy to practice virya, which is vigor or energy, by just, you know, I mean some of us just have all this incredible energy and we don't exactly know where it's channeled. You know, it could go into any kind of activity, good or bad. But if you have virya that's tempered, if you apply that energy to your meditation and it's tempered by morality and a generous spirit, then, for example, those elements coming together, they create wisdom and also they're supported by wisdom. Each one of these is a topic we could go into in very great detail.

[24:07]

I'm not sure how much you want to go into it here, Are there questions or things that people want to bring up? Well, I didn't understand what you meant by it's not what the bodhisattvas practice, but it's what we practice as bodhisattvas. What I meant is that you're a bodhisattva. Yeah. What about the other bodhisattvas that don't practice? Who are they? the other bodhisattvas don't practice this way. Like who? Well, I don't know. I'm trying to understand you. Sounds to me like you're trying to pick a fight. No, I'm not. I understood you to say, Alan, that it's not something that bodhisattvas, something in the clouds practice. It's what we here on this earth practice. We try to practice. This is what we try to practice.

[25:07]

when we take the Bodhisattva vows. When you take the vows, you know, you take the four vows after lecture, those are Bodhisattva vows. You take the Bodhisattva precepts on the full moon ceremony. So, it's a way of practicing. Now, the purpose of this practice is uh... basically to see things as they are before you know it which which other guys i don't know if you refer to it yet he said these are not the practices of the police uh... all the practices of us yes but it's right well with the police the police have a lot of a look at this part of the samanthabhadra Tens of thousands of, you know, arhats, enlightened beings, who, uh... They were in at the beginning.

[26:14]

Right, they were there at the beginning, right. But I'm not really... well this is an interesting question and for me in a sense they're important to me and in another sense they're not important at all because I'm mostly concerned with how we live our lives and how we relate to them and if I start thinking of them as beings to revere putting them outside myself, then all of a sudden I am practicing a religion that is outside of myself.

[27:20]

Whereas if I keep turning inward to look at how these beings are modeled on kind of the muck in nature of my own life, then that's the way I try to think of them. And traditionally, each one of these Bodhisattvas has been identified especially with one of these paramitas? Some of them are, yeah. Some of them are, but then there's also thousands of others. Right. You know, if you start reading the Lotus Sutra or any of the old sutras, you'll see there there just are these incredible Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with endless long names and each one of them represents a specific quality or a specific ability and I guess the way that I think of that is you can think of it as representing a specific psychological aspect.

[28:27]

I don't know, how do other people think about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas? I think I get what you were talking about because I think my personal experience is I read in all these books about the bodhisattva this and the bodhisattva that and the buddha this and the buddha that and it's like there are these other people that you don't see walking around on the street. I think that's what... I think I get what you mean about that. But I don't think of them as people who are walking necessarily through the gate here people at thrifting. Because in the books that I read, they're portrayed as something extraordinary. more glorious than they are.

[29:37]

And the nice thing about now is that it's pretty well-established. And we, in fact, can sort of rest assured that we don't have to get into all the flowery talk and Zen sort of stripped it all away. You know, we can actually sort of see these flowery images as Charlie, Alan, and Ewan. Anybody else? Robert Aiken. I was just reading a little bit of Mind of Clever last night, and he sort of said that in there, his Roshi would use the term Bodhisattva, sort of like, you know, like ladies and gentlemen. Right. Or address the crowd. Just sort of address the crowd and say, well, Bodhisattvas, you know, here we are again. That was Nogen Senzaki, I think. He would just... That's where it started. I was just going to say that in the Pure Land sect, the Jodo Shinshu sect, there's never correlation or mentioning of good evening bodhisattvas or that kind of thing or having a bodhisattva ceremony.

[30:40]

And so I think when the Zen tradition addresses every person who's striving as a bodhisattva, it's very encouraging. It's very, very nice that everyone has a seed of Buddhahood within him. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. I think that's really the point of it. You know, even though I think that Jodo Shinshu still actually has the same point in a lot of ways, that you do a practice and you realize your true nature. Yeah, but how many people realize that? Well, I don't know. Most people don't. They just say, oh yeah, those are the Bodhisattvas. Yeah, he's a Bodhisattva, but us commoners aren't because we can't ever But the point of Zen, and I think the point of the Heart Sutra, is that you can do it right now.

[31:42]

All you have to do is let go of the concepts that you have. And so the Paramitas are ways of... they're tools. They're ways of... they're not rules. They're ways of practicing that are helpful to you because they'll put you on the path where you can see uh... where you can see things as they are but no one of them by itself is going to do the trick we've been a system separation of those police because when we get to the historical you know, all of these practices. Because you said those guys don't have to practice, don't practice this way. That's what I didn't understand. It's certainly the historical Buddha. I probably misspoke myself. Well, it's, it's, I figured, it's sort of suggestive.

[32:45]

But I think they all do practice this way. I think, you know, the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas do the same practice. And I think that essentially they do the same practice as we are. And the idea of the Bodhisattva, in fact, which is the wonderful idea of Mahayana Buddhism, is that the Bodhisattva keeps returning. They return to this life of suffering, to a life where they are born and die. out of compassion for all beings. But, you know, in other forms of Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism, there isn't so much the notion of, there are bodhisattvas, but there's not so much the notion of a bodhisattva way. So the bodhisattva way is not like just, it's not so much that just out of the great generosity of their hearts, they decide they're not going to leave

[33:52]

the wheel of birth and death, it's that in the concept, in the idea of the complete interpenetration and complete interdependence of all beings and all things, they can't leave this wheel. That there's no way that they can opt out if they're still suffering in the universe. It defines them. Their compassion defines them. Right. So, it's tricky. You know, we take these bodhisattva vows, but the vows are not rules. They're intentions. And we break them all the time. and so for for speaking for myself I break them all the time and so it's something to keep returning to as a way of practicing but I don't have any choice but to keep returning to to my own suffering and but still there is some non bodhisattvic part of my mind and actually I'm probably thinking it's still

[35:12]

My suffering is that sometimes I'd like to get out of a situation. Suffering is precisely in the act of clinging or of pushing away, and we'll read a little bit later, the hardest thing to understand is exactly how the workings of desire reveal your enlightened mind. and why the bodhisattva keeps returning to this realm of desire.

[36:14]

It's not that the bodhisattva sets him or herself apart from desire, they put themselves right in the middle of desire, right in the mud of it. And that's a That's really the point of, when we go through some of this material from the tiger's cave, that's the point that Obora is bringing up over and over and over again. And that's really the everyday part of our practice, that if we think of it as something really rarified and refined, then we're we're creating some mental idea that's very apart from just the everyday things that transpire in our lives. And I'm sure that each of us has a million stories about this. Well, I think energy, I mean, you can see it around you with people.

[37:34]

I mean, not just in practice, but in all kinds of situations, people that you work with, people that you see in different kinds of circumstances. There are some people who will throw themselves into something with a kind of energy or vigor. And it's not so much. It's just something that's coming out of them It's not They don't always choose to do that. It just could be something in their nature and Other people may move very slowly or hesitantly and perhaps measure out their energies more, you know, just in smaller measures. Do you follow what I'm saying? Yeah, I just sort of felt like maybe there was something a little more arcane than this.

[38:41]

I don't think so. I don't think so. Well, all of the paramitas are transcendent actions. So we're speaking in terms of everyday, mundane, as we know and recognize. But the quality that is not mentioned is that they are indeed transcendent. So they're beyond. And that certainly applies to the energy. I don't know what a transcendent action is. Well, you know the definition of transcendent. I don't know what it is either. I don't understand what that means. Well, it's not mundane. Effort is not mundane. Well, that's sort of effort. Effortless effort. Non-attached effort. It's not opposite of mundane. I don't know, I just heard this Joseph Campbell thing I couldn't leave from, and he just said, well, look at the word beyond. I mean, there are just so many different things that don't explain and that just the word beyond just says the essence of transcendedness that we just can't, can't, can't.

[39:46]

Yeah, it's something that's beyond words. It's right, we haven't talked about it. We've been talking about this in a more mundane sense. And I think that Zen tends to emphasize the mundane part leaving the transcendent part kind of unspoken about. Well, it'll take care of itself. Well, you know, in a way it will take care of itself, but in another way it will take care of itself differently if you have an intention. And, you know, we have the intention to sit. We have the intention to breathe. If we don't have that intention to follow our breath, our minds can be all over the map. So we keep bringing ourselves back to this intention. And I think the same thing is true with practicing the paramitas. That some of them, each of us has these, as aspects of our lives, these paramitas in different quantities, in different balances.

[40:58]

So, if we feel that we're weak in some area, then we might form an intention to practice more strongly in that area. You know, to practice more strongly patience or to put more energy into it. And in that sense, it is mundane. And I don't know any other way of reaching the transcendent but through everyday life and everyday practice. But the idea is to to see things clearly as they are which we have yet to get at a description of how that is but that's that is the idea uh... you know there's a when you there's a saying when you begin to practice mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers and after

[42:02]

practicing for a while mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. And then when you see things clearly as they are, mountains again are mountains and rivers are rivers. But it's important to understand that the mountains that are mountains at the beginning is not exactly the same as the mountains that are mountains at the end. You know, your understanding you're seeing these things really clearly. I was talking to Lori about some of my questions about form as emptiness and emptiness as form this evening. And she dragged out this book about this thick of teachings on emptiness, this Tibetan book that she had looked at. And she read me a passage that said, certain yogis believe that when you practice, when you make an effort to see emptiness really clearly, then you lose your ability to see conventional objects clearly.

[43:19]

And when you make an effort to see conventional objects really clearly, then you lose your ability to see emptiness clearly. a Buddhist believes that the more clearly you see emptiness, the more clearly you see conventional objects, and the more clearly you see conventional objects, the more clearly you see emptiness. And this gets into a discussion of what form is emptiness and emptiness is form means. I'd just like to remind you, actually, the way the text reads, Form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form. And the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. That means feelings are emptiness. Emptiness is feelings.

[44:21]

Perceptions are emptiness. Emptiness is perceptions. And then, Avalokiteshvara ties it up by saying, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. I have a question about the translation, because I have another paper that I got here some years ago that had, I think, impulses for formations. Yeah. And it seems to me that formations is kind of redundant, because you've already got form, whereas impulses... Well, it means... Psychologically, anyway, how do you... It means something... Why did they change it? It's mental formations. Do you want to say something about it? So that's considered a better translation than impulse? Yeah, actually, Mel changed it somewhere, somewhere a couple of years ago. Oh, so formations are supposed to be mental formations and form is supposed to be... This might be the appropriate moment to hear from Judy Smith, who was reading about the skandhas.

[45:38]

Yes, and the more I read about skandhas, the more confusing it gets. So these are the five skandhas, form, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. Well, one thing, I was talking to Mellon Dokes on Tuesday, and one thing he said was that the Heart Sutra was written kind of as a criticism of the Abhidharma. And, not saying that we have a mind, they're the five constituents of personality as it appears within each of ourselves. And, the five sandhas define the limits of the basis of grasping after a self, and grasping what we tend to think of as belonging to the self. and they include anything and everything we might grasp at or see that as ourself or as belonging to ourself or concerning ourselves.

[46:41]

So, basically there's a lot of stuff on this. Form is the first one, and it's the material, anything that's material or solid, and it's particularly associated with the body, whereas the other correspondents are associated more with the mind. And I'm not sure, I was working out of three books, and I'm not sure where I got this, which book I got this out of, but what this said was that form is what remains of a person or a thing after the subtraction of the mental or moral qualities. And I like that because it's just kind of, you know, the basic, just what's there without, you know, all of the stuff that we attach to it. Yeah. Form is the physical side of things, what remains of a person or a thing after the subtraction of their mental or moral qualities.

[47:47]

So it's just kind of, you know, that what is. The packaging. Yeah. I like that, it really makes sense to me, and what happens is we respond to form with the six senses, and the next four skandhas are those that are associated more with the mind. Feelings, which can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and they're more fundamental than just pure sensation. are the way we develop a relation to things that's positive or negative or neutral. And then from feelings we move into perceptions and there are six perceptions which correspond to the six sense organs. And the perceptions are based on that which manifests through the form and through the feelings we have about the form also.

[48:51]

Well, it manifests by form and feelings, and it's also that which doesn't, which is not manifested by form and feelings. And the perceptions seem to be where we get into ego involvement. And that Trungpa elaborated a lot more on the ego involvement of perceptions and then impulses or mental formations. are all of our active dispositions, our tendencies, our volitions, strivings, emotions, everything conscious or not conscious. And it's what allows the ego to gather territory, to have more substance and mind-body patterns that have different emotional qualities. and the Abhidharma break some... Did anybody take Thursday morning Abhidharma class where it was broken into like those 51 emotional qualities?

[49:54]

I mean, they get really detailed in it. It was too much for me. I didn't even want to tackle that part. Judy, can you define Abhidharma? What does that mean? Abhidharma is like... Don't ask me. Abhidharma is, one way of thinking of it is like Buddhist psychology. It's a way of analyzing all of the dharmas, or it identifies a whole system of dharmas and then classifies it. And it's really a psychological system. And it's very much the operative psychological system of of one school of Buddhism that was sort of taken on by Mahayana. And when I was at Tassajara, we would get into these arguments with Rev. Anderson. Rev. Anderson is really into teaching the Abhidharma.

[50:55]

And what he says is, well, the Abhidharma, this is Buddhism. And you have to know this in order to know what it is that you're negating. if you're going to call yourself a Buddhist. But Zen kind of cuts through all that. And we don't talk about the Abhidharma very much here. And I'm not particularly sure that we have to talk about the Abhidharma very much. So a surgeon doesn't think so? No, he really doesn't think so. I'm with him. Is it A-B-B-E-Y? No, it's A-B-H-I. Oh, Abhi. But it's one of the three baskets of the Tripitaka, which is the total works of the founding works of Buddhism, one basket is the Sutras, we talked about this last week, and the other basket is the Vinaya, which are the rules for conduct and for monks' life, and the third is the Abhidharma, which is kind of the commentary and psychological analysis of the Sutras.

[52:22]

That's basically what it is. I really don't want to get into it too far. But we'll get into it. Before tonight ends, I will run through kind of the Abhidharmic aspects of the Heart Sutra, and that will leave us actually the last two classes for really talking about how we work with this. It would be good to get this material, just to get it out, and you can think about it, and look into it more if it interests you, and then we see where to, you know, how we really practice with the Heart Sutra. But, go on. Okay, so anyway, that's, um, I just talked about mental formations, or Empathicism. It used to be The fifth one is consciousness, and Trungpa referred to this as being the most important and also the most elusive of the five skandhas. The other four are said to depend on consciousness, and consciousness is articulated and intelligent. It helps us, well, it determines what is good, bad, right, wrong.

[53:32]

You know, it kind of defines our morals. So that's what I got. And I tried to keep it as brief as I could. That's good. Another way to think about these briefly, to go over them, is we have form. Form, you know what it is. Feelings are just like the bare feeling. And then the next one is perceptions or conceptions is already the realm in which we take the feeling and we give it a name. And we make a concept about what it is. And then formations, mental formations, is what we do with that object, kind of how we start to think about it. And then the last one is... the last one is consciousness which is really it's elusive because it flows through uh... the other three mental formations and also uh... the other three mental skandhas and also has an element of uh... volition or will to it uh... and it's really it's really hard to uh... it's really hard to grasp the other the other three mental ones that i find easier to think about and i've been uh... we've been talking

[55:17]

at home and we've been kind of, we have this little laboratory animal in our house for the formation of Skandhas, this little baby. And when Sylvie was born, basically you could just see the feelings. And that didn't last very long. You just see the feelings, you could just see, I like this, I'm content, or I don't like this and I cry, or I have a neutral feeling and I'm just kind of spaced out. You know, it's okay, it's not so bad, it's not so good. But very quickly, within a couple of weeks, she knows what the things are that she likes. Now her name for the breast or the bottle may not be language as as we know it but it still is it is language as it's discriminating uh... is discriminating consciousness and so she starts to put a name to the things or have a conception of the things that that she likes the things that she doesn't like and then the other things with the things are neutral and probably don't have much of a name for uh... and then

[56:41]

gradually, she's building up, you can see the building up of these mental formations, you know, it's like if Lori, you know, when she went out to Zazen tonight, after a little while, you could still be figured out that she wasn't there, you know, and it wasn't that there was anything in particular that she needed that I couldn't give her. But emotionally, she starts to make some kind of construction about her relationship with her mother and feeling like she needs this object to complete herself. Now, this is very simplistic. But you can see it, you can really see it developing. And it's just so amazing, that's why to me it's really incredible. I just saw my friend Jerry, my friends Jerry and Leslie just had a baby.

[57:44]

And each time you see one of these one or two or three day old babies, it's like our only opportunity for seeing a being that is without most of this other stuff. And it's quite astonishing, it's really pretty alien. you know, but incredibly moving. So we've sort of been looking at that. But it's important to remember that all five of these skandhas in their own being are empty. Do people have a sense of what that means? Tell us, Charlie. Well, like everything else, I don't know about Ford, but I can talk about the rest of them, that they have no life outside their interconnectedness.

[58:53]

Emptiness, to me, is the merging, the interconnectedness of dharmas, one to all the other, and all the other to one. So when it says they're empty of their own being, it's sort of like, well, I don't want to say that. It's sort of, you can't think about them in isolation. from everything else. They have a codependent status. In the way that the figure and the ground have a codependent status. That's figure-ground, you know, in graphic representation. There's always this problem. Like, what is the ground and what is the figure? Well, you can't have a figure without ground, and you can't have ground without a figure.

[60:00]

Or you can't have light without darkness. So, that's my understanding. Why do you think it's difficult to find the emptiness in form? Well, because I... of physics, and I think about a form as space, and I've yet to really decide in my own mind whether, you know, space is geometry, or space is that which objects appear in, or, you know, space is an object itself. I mean, I really didn't know about this stuff at all. So I can't. say with the assurity that I have in my own mind about form the way I can with the others.

[61:01]

And that's following on with what Judy says, like form is the package and these other things are the product. You didn't say it that way. That's my job. I understood it. Don't you think that's why that difficulty of dealing with that is that you have this whole separate section It says, that deals with form as emptiness before, then it goes on to say, well all five skandhas are empty. But you've got that almost repetitive. It does not, right, it is. Because it is hard for us to deal with that. Yeah, because it seems just so concrete to us. But I think the sutra means exactly what it says. I think so, yeah. I think, you know, form is emptiness, perceived. No, it really is. The true reality of these things are that they are the same. Well, I think one way that you can look at it, here's something we call a book.

[62:06]

What is the bookness of it? Each book has a cover. it has pages, it has chapters, and if it didn't have a cover, and it didn't have this glue along the binding, you could have a bunch of pages, right? But he wouldn't call it a book. And so the book is interdependent on the pages and on the glue as cover and if you had also if you had blank if you had blank pages well nowadays they sell these blank books you know but you wouldn't think you wouldn't think of it but they sell blank books to fill up with ink But you wouldn't, if somebody tried, if somebody put on the, if you went into a bookstore and they had like shelves and shelves of like these blank books, you know, they wouldn't sell very many of them. They wouldn't be what most people considered as books.

[63:08]

So, the book is empty of itself and its own being. It is dependent on all of these other elements. And Thich Nhat Hanh actually takes it, takes it much, much further, you know. Well, that too, but also, if you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without rain, the trees cannot grow. And without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without the sunshine. And so we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper.

[64:10]

The paper and the sunshine inter-are. If we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we can see and we can see, we know that the logger cannot exist, oh, and we can see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread. And so on. So in that sense, form is empty of its own being. You know, he's just saying, I mean, that's very accessible to me, at least. I understand it the way he lays it out there. And it makes it somehow easier to understand something like the Flower Garland Sutra, you know, where you have all the parasols and the jeweled temples, and within the eye of Buddha, there's 10,000 universes, each with a zillion

[65:20]

Galaxies and buddhist dancing. I never am and you know just just like the barbershop So I mean, and I just you know what I read stuff like that. I just zone out right just can't handle it, but It's just just a couple of jumps away from from his construct I think he tries to stay more in the realm of things that we experience. Yes, right. One that I heard that was debated that was really accessible to me was, I was listening to this tape on the radio, and it was one of Melf's machine tapes, I think, and it was some color... On the radio? No, I had it on my... I was playing it in my car. Yeah, and it was on the radio I was on my tape and it was about I always forget the details But it was some monk and somehow he had injured his foot, and it was bleeding and he went like oh What is hurting?

[66:34]

I'm I'm you know there's something hurting you know it was this is the split from his body and the totality and it was that transcendent thing and But he was aware of the form, and he remembered, something's hurting. But who's hurting? What's hurting? And I really liked that, just his awareness of the form, and that it was hurting, and it was bleeding, and yet, that he was interconnected. That just seemed like an excellent thing that we could kind of grasp, if we could also grasp being out of... I don't know, if we were more enlightened, we could grasp that. Why do you say it's too accessible? You both agree. She started, but you agree. Well, I mean, anybody could agree. It makes you think you get it. Yeah, and that's not it at all. That's not it, to my way of thinking. That's very nice, but that's

[67:35]

It's not just ecology, it's just a string of causation and practical. What I want to say is that any fool could put that list together, but I do not wish to speak so bluntly. Well, it's transcendental. I mean, you do not get form is the same as emptiness by talking about it. Or writing about it. Thinking or writing of the long line of causation, how things, how it's all, you know. Wait, wait, wait.

[68:41]

Let her speak. She started it. Go ahead. You started it. Well, we talked about it once in the morning discussion. Infinite labor has brought us to this school. And infinite labor has brought each of us here. And everything through that interconnection. But still, somehow that is more accessible. And for me, it's almost suspect. than all those buddhas dancing on each other's eyes. Because somehow I feel like my mind needs to be blown. And if I think about that long enough, that might blow my mind, say, the same way some music does. Yeah, but that isn't it either. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. Why not make sense? That's just some sort of... Romantic Transcendentalist Transcendentalist of the music line You know the psilocybin one or whatever it is.

[69:46]

This one Is a little bit different because it's not It's not something you just go out and have It's like Mel says once you realize You got it. It's gone. I mean, so it's not Like, I'm listening to the music and it isn't great. And that's when I hesitate to talk about these experiences. But you mentioned in your prologue to this whole course that you might mention something about personal experience. Yeah, definitely. Now that I've dug myself into this hole, I guess I'll have to... Favor us, Charlie. Say something, right? But... My understanding of this has certainly helped a great deal through whatever minor insights that I've had.

[70:54]

The suspension of linear time emptiness. In a way, all those things really are the same thing, but I couldn't put a word on it. I think that we ought to leave to speech what belongs to of speech, we ought to leave to silence. And I think that it's true that what Dick Nothan describes is not what we experience after four or five days of sashimi.

[71:57]

But it is something you can experience by picking a book off a shelf and reading it. And I think we have to kind of, you know, sort of accept the packaging, you know. I mean, this is the way the concept is. And sure, it's not everything. you know, sometimes I can experience space as being solid, but it's not solid. And so, why should I sit here and tell you about how I've experienced space being solid, when in fact, we can talk about other concepts that really are lined up intellectually, that work in an intellectual way. And I mean, I think that, you know, it's a great little idea. But when you get down to it, then you're going to end up with things like, well, yes means no, right? non-dualistic language in which you say something which you really intend is something completely different. We have these definitions which we all understand. So you get caught in language.

[72:58]

And I just think we ought to try and find out how can we talk about form and emptiness in a way that means something real. And then accept that that's a limit. what I'd like to do in the last few minutes, but I think we're going to come back to this. And I think the burning question behind this has to do with clinging. It has to do with desire and aversion. And that's what I'd like to come back to next week, because if we really understood, if we actualize in our life that form is emptiness, whatever that means, and emptiness is form, then we wouldn't keep getting caught in this cycle of clinging, and we wouldn't be suffering as we are.

[74:11]

This is abstract, and I'd like to make it concrete next week. But I wanted to just go quickly through what's being negated here. So the text of the sutra is not quite as abstract and full of language as it seems. And this is going to be really fast. So, we've gone through this goddess, and then it's Oshariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. And he lists, he then lists a bunch of dharmas. And he lists, therefore, in emptiness no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations of consciousness, there you have the skandhas. Then he says, 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.

[75:19]

This is another Hinayana or Theravada system which is called the ayatmas or the the fields. It's all of our sense organs plus the organ of consciousness. And then he talks about no color, no sound, etc. These are the sense fields. So you have the organs that see things, and then you have the objects outside that are And then, no realm of eyes, and in another translation it says, no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness. So that means no realm of eyes, no realm of ears, no realm of nose, which is kind of the consciousness, the part of your brain that processes sight, that takes the object and is translated through the organ into the brain.

[76:33]

uh... and so on uh... and there's there's eighteen of those is that there's the uh... is important the object in the consciousness these are all this year this is all of the garment material until no one of my consciousness no ignorance and also no extinction no extinction of it until no old age and death and also no extinction of it So no ignorance and no extinction of it until no old age and death and also no extinction of it. This is the wheel of causation or the wheel of life. And that's a really key concept where you go through ignorance to be reborn. and then you go through all these other stages, and we could get into that if we wanted to.

[77:35]

But that's, it's like another, this sutra is taking these basic Buddhist concepts and just slashing them down. So it takes, so we've gotten rid of the skandhas, we've gotten rid of the elements, we've gotten rid of the fields, we've gotten rid of the consciousness, we've gotten rid of the wheel of life, and then, we can actually, the next thing you get rid of is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. Does anyone know what that is? That's the Four Noble Truths? That's right. I get it. Right. So then you take the Four Noble Truths, let's get rid of that. No cognition, and also no attainment. No attainment means no realization, no enlightenment, no becoming a bodhisattva or a buddha. With nothing to attain, the bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. With nothing to attain, with no gaining thought, the bodhisattva is just seeing things as they are, empty and interdependent.

[78:48]

uh... and then i mean right now without names and numbers right without without having to have somewhere back there actually uh... we're going to find that if i did next next week there is this big chart of dormis uh... i don't know if they use that to be used in that thursday morning class of the peer constructions uh... right so uh... so actually The next sentence, which is a really important one for me, without any hindrance, no fears exist. And I would like to come back and talk about that, because our clinging is rooted in, or our fear is rooted in our clinging, and our clinging is rooted in our fear. Our fear of letting go, our fear of really experiencing things as they are, because all of our conditioning is opposed to that. And so then you get this affirmation, without any hindrance no fears exist.

[79:57]

So you're moving from this really kind of intellectual slash and burn to a more positive place. First, without any hindrance, no fears exist. Ah, well it's not so bad after all. And far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. It's getting to look better and better. What it's based on, what it depends on. Right, it depends on Prajnaparamita. It depends on seeing things just as they are, as seeing them empty. Everywhere you look, you're looking through things to understand that they are completely independent, they are completely interdependent. and also seeing this interdependence, seeing emptiness as form, which is a whole other question I'd like you to think about for next week. Actually, I'll remind you at the end of this.

[81:00]

And then you get you're getting into the Prajnaparamita mantra. So you go, this, you can think of this as sort of the stages of practice, particularly of, and it's really appropriate to a Zen student, I think, you know, that it begins with this tremendous, deep and, you know, this kind of fathomless questioning and doubt, where you doubt everything. You know, we come into this practice thinking, and our Western mind, but it clearly is true of Eastern minds as well, think that there are things that are real. My soul is real. My brain is real. My body is real. My car is real. You know, you think all these things are real, and when you launch into practice, the practice is like really expressing this great doubt.

[82:01]

And from that doubt, out of that doubt and out of the practice, you begin to find something that you can count on, which is your way of seeing how things interpenetrate. And it begins to take a little feel more, you begin to feel that you can move more freely in your life. So it becomes more affirming. And then by the end, you know, you're proclaiming this mantra, Gathe, Gathe, Par, Gathe, Parasamkhate, Bodhisattva. It's like, hallelujah, you know. So I think maybe we'll stop there. But what I'd like you to think about You can think about any of the stuff that you have questions on. Any of this more technical stuff, and we can talk about that. So please think about questions. But what I'd like you to think about, and to start off the discussion next week, is what does... We talked a little about form as emptiness. I'd like you to think about, what does emptiness as form mean?

[83:07]

Because it's a lot more slippery, I think. It also, they really go hand in hand. That if you're just looking at, I think there's a way in which it's easy to see form as emptiness. It's easy to see it intellectually. But if you pair it with emptiness as form, then you have a big question. So maybe try to think about that for next week. OK? Thank you.

[83:38]

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