Good evening, everybody. Part of my practice is making contact with each and every one of you, visually as well as verbally, and the interconnections in between those two. tonight we're on line twelve and i'm going to do a quick review of line three through eleven and then field any questions that people might have uh... from the previous weeks and weeks if something should come up or has come up for you guys uh... starting with line three perceive that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering uh... perceived is seeing or noting and that the five skandhas, which are the five windows that we, how we take the world in through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and the coordinating mind or consciousness,

[01:02]

that those five aspects of ourselves in their own being, which is seeing them for what they are, are empty. Those five skandhas are what form our personality, and everyone's personality is a little bit different. They've been formed differently. So the movie Rashomon is a good cinematic example of different perceptions of reality from three points of view of the same incident. For all you film buffs, these own beings are empty, and empty simply means interrelatedness, and that there's not an inherent thing or fixed in any of those skandhas, but they're all interrelated. And we're saved from all suffering. Saved from all suffering means that it no longer needs to suffer, because by seeing that they're empty and it's not an inherent realness to them, which is what's causing our suffering, because we see them as real and we're clinging to them and things naturally fade, no longer the person has to suffer.

[02:13]

Oshariputra, 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 and consciousness. Shariputra was the Buddhist disciple who was foremost in wisdom, and because he was a disciple of the Buddha, that time in Buddhist development is the Abhidharmic phase, which is the phase in Buddhism where there there was a close examination of dharmas and the dharmas were thought to be real but the self was considered to be unreal and this is Hinayana or Theravada practice and this sutra is a sort of a document of a debate between Avilokiteshvara who represents the Mahayana ideal of Bodhisattva versus the Arhat ideal of the older school

[03:16]

And Avalokiteshvara is going to sort of shake up Shariputra's ideas about things that are real and give us sort of a larger view of reality. And form does not differ from emptiness and so on and so forth. Form is the world of particulars and emptiness is the world of sameness. We see the world of emptiness through form. In Zazen, we can feel the interrelatedness of all beings. And in our life, if we have a practice life outside the Zendo, you can feel the interrelatedness of all things, but you can't really talk about it. What we talk about and experience and share with others is the world of form. And that's the world of dualism and duality. So we're always talking about something else, which is considered a second principle in Buddhism.

[04:24]

There's first principle, which is a direct experience, and then second principle, which is talking about it in one way or another, or depicting it visually through calligraphy or whatnot. And while there tends to be an emphasis on direct experience, of great importance is talking about it and being able to convey the experience to another, even to oneself, as we reflect on our own practice and having a venue to talk about it in Dōkasan. or in class is something legitimate way to kind of test out our understanding. Some people tend to be too scholarly and they don't have the experience of emptiness, but they have a very good understanding of Buddhism. And then there are people who are who focus on sitting and are concentrated in practice, but it's difficult for them to articulate what their experience is.

[05:30]

And what we try to do here at BZC is a little of both. The important thing in our practice, of course, is zazen. But talking about it and exploring these concepts are important. try to keep that in mind as we practice. It's easier to see that form is emptiness, but a little bit more difficult to see emptiness as form. But the gist of these four or five lines is that we don't cling to one side or another. There's There is a tendency for people to say, well, everything is just one, and not pay attention to the particulars. And somehow, we have to kind of hold both of those, the world of particulars and the world of oneness, or is represented in one of the pieces of liturgy, not one and not two.

[06:41]

Oshari Putra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear. Prior to this there was a getting the skandhas in the view and the skandhas are the way we take in the world. So if we see that the skandhas are empty of an inherent self then we can see that when we take the world in through these empty skandhas also true will be the dharmas of the things that are being taken in. And if you think that the skandhas are fixed or real, that's going to alter your view of reality, whatever dharma you happen to be paying attention to. So, Again, the older school of Buddhism tended to focus on the dharmas as real, and the idea that if you looked at them closely enough, you would come to the sense that the self is not real or fixed.

[07:57]

Whereas in our practice here we focus on the self and seeing that as unreal or not fixed, excuse me, then by extension the world that is informing us or that we're relating to is also not real. So it's a slightly different emphasis on where you kind of pay your attention to practice. and that they do not appear nor disappear. Things are in a constant flow. And all this is in emptiness. When we see through the eyes of emptiness, we see things as not appearing or disappearing. For instance, we can attribute a birth date for each one of us. You think, well, this is when I began, was on this particular day. And then one can look at a little further back to the moment of conception and say, well, is that when I appeared or is that when I began this time around?

[09:03]

And if you look a little further back, you can think about when your mother and father united and conceived you. And then you can think a little further back to the moment when they got together. and as a couple and then you can think back a little further and think about the time when they themselves were conceived and came into the world so you can see it goes back very very far and when you think in those terms not only about your own existence but each and every dharma or thing that we have in our universe we can see that it is infinite And nothing has a, while we can talk conventionally or provisionally that this has an existence, it was born at this point and died at this point, actually things are constantly changing. And no birth and no death, it's just the eternal now.

[10:06]

Another way of looking at form and emptiness is that the world of form is the world of uh... mom momentariness that what's happening right now and the road emptiness is this uh... uh... sort of continuum or the uh... eternal through the so the internal present and uh... and that's really this is horizontal aspect and the vertical aspect and where the two meet is where our practices in each moment there's this sort of business world of continuity and the world of what's arising in this moment and each moment there's a uh... In fact, those two are present. So that pretty much brings us up to tonight. Are there any questions from the last weeks? Okay.

[11:26]

Oh. Oh, behind John's head. You know, you were talking about emptiness as being interrelatedness, and at the same time you're talking about emptiness as being a sense of continuity, a continuous present. I just happened to open a book after getting stuck in traffic the other day, that Rational Zen book. And one of the little things in there, interesting, when I opened the book, totally by chance it was talking about pebbles and tiles. Nothing by chance. Pebbles and tiles, right? So it said, you know, consider pebbles and tiles and consider what it is that manifests thus.

[12:31]

I mean, I could find it in the book. So, would you say that emptiness is that which manifests thus? Well, no, because any concept of emptiness is not going to be it. So, well, thus, that's the word. But I think thus, in this case, meant in pebbles and tiles. Tiles, right. Yeah, and pebbles or tiles are another way of expressing, Yeah, right. And the Tathagata is the thus come one, so out of emptiness thus comes Tathagata, the Buddha, who's a conglomeration of pebbles and tiles. Yeah. Could you say that quote again about the pebbles and tiles? Well, it's in that book. It says something about, you know, the national teacher came along and said something about pebbles and tiles, right?

[13:37]

And it was, consider what it is that manifests thus, meaning in pebbles and tiles. Would you consider what it is that manifests thus? Yeah. Thank you. Line 12, in emptiness, things are not tainted nor pure. In line 13, they do not increase nor decrease. Tainted and pure, this is another well, attack is too strong a word, but another question about the older school of Buddhism's practice of purifying.

[14:41]

They're feeling that the monk could purify themselves through various practices and clear away the defilements, and by getting rid of samsara or the world of taints, they could reach nirvana and become arhats. And in our practice, we take the whole world in, including samsara. We don't try to get rid of samsara. So if there's pain in the legs, we just sit. There's just pain in legs. And do not increase or decrease is somewhat similar to does not appear nor disappear. And as far as what is tainted and what is pure, we have something that we eat called food. And then we put it in the compost, what's left over, and then it goes back into the ground.

[15:47]

And if you kind of look at it, it doesn't look like food at a certain point, but it is just, in fact, what it is. And it's just this sort of continuous process, and it's really hard to know when is it food and when is it not food. You know, when is it pure, when is it not pure? someone inadvertently had thrown the gruel out after sashimi into the compost bin. And there were a couple of people that were running around trying to save it. And they were trying to get to the center of this blob of compost in the compost bin of this really great tasting gruel that Greg had made on Saturday. And it was sort of comical. the sense of urgency in the person's face of wanting to save it, and knowing how good it tasted, and then all around it were all these, you know, worms and things and whatnot. But, you know, in that mixture there was no taint and no purity.

[16:48]

What happened? It became food for somebody. Yeah, unless food for thought, I don't know. So we have these dualities, we have pure and impure, we have Buddha, the enlightened one, and we have Mara, the tempter. And I've heard it said that we need Mara, the tempter, the one who tempts us with things in order for there to be a Buddha. Nothing exists in isolation. There's always something in relation to something else, which is basic emptiness. So it's not that we should embrace Mara or embrace the the defilements, but we look at them inclusively, that in fact we are them. Quite often when there's a major sort of heinous crime committed, when there's talks in the Zendo, the lecturer will often say, you know, to look at the murder within each one of us or the

[18:07]

the various things that people do that make the headlines. And at first when I heard that, I would be kind of a little put off, like, what do you mean, you know, the murder or the... the not-so-nice person. But when you look really closely at oneself, you can see the seeds of that anger or hatred or blindness in each one of us. And that's really very close to what our practice is. Or that is, in fact, what our practice is, to see that we, in fact, are composed of all these things. And what manifests is Buddha. and Buddha is not separate from these other blindnesses or taints. nice metaphor about, and do not increase or decrease, that when we look at the moon, which symbolizes enlightenment in our tradition when we read about it in imagery,

[19:43]

uh... enlightenment doesn't increase or decrease like this is always there but we always see it partially it's either hidden by by clouds or there's different uh... times of the uh... of the month where it's uh... it's crested or uh... or shadowed by the uh... by the earth but actually if you look really really close you can see the uh... the full circle of the moon even with the uh... with the shadow line 14, therefore in emptiness no form, and then in line 15 it goes through the other skandhas, no feelings, perceptions, formations or consciousness. I'm going to read a little bit from the Middle-Language Discourses of the Buddha, which is an old Pali text, just so people can get a sense of the language and the time, and that our liturgy actually has roots from the early days.

[21:14]

Another word for skanda is aggregate. And this is a Buddha talking. Ananda, there are these five aggregates afflicted by clinging in regard to which a bhikkhu or monk should abide contemplating rise and fall thus, arising and passing away. Such is material form. Such is arising. It's arising. Such is disappearance. Such is feeling. Such is arising. Such is disappearance. Such is perception. Such is arising. Such is disappearance. Such are formations. such their arising, such their disappearance. Such is consciousness, such its arising, such its disappearance. When he abides contemplating rise and fall in these five aggregates affected by clinging, the conceit I am based on these five aggregates affected by clinging is abandoned in him.

[22:21]

When that is so, That Bhikkhu understands the conceit I am based on these five aggregates affected by clinging is abandoned in me. In that way, he has full awareness of that. So this, as I mentioned earlier, is a focus on the the world of dharmas, and by looking closely at them and seeing that they arise and they pass away, that they're impermanent, that if you don't cling to them, then you no longer are so-called real, that things are just constantly changing. But in the moment of their arising, we see them as, here I am, like Mel often talks, Mel on a few occasions over the years I've been here has talked about a car truly is not a car until you get inside and turn the key and drive it. So that's sort of a modern day version of what I just read from the old text.

[23:24]

A pencil isn't a pencil until you pick it up and use it. I know some of you are thinking, well, what's a pencil, you know? And it's like, they're like that. Well, it's something there, it's true. It's a potential pencil. Potential pencil. There's the is-ness of saying, N-E-S-S, so there's a pencil-ness, and you actually feel it by experiencing it by the subject, ourselves, and the object, picking the two together. And any of the driving or writing or whatever that you really experience and it really comes to life, but it's constantly changing. And similarly with the meal, you know, we eat the food and we meet the food and there's a validation that there's this and other, but actually what's going on is just the the mastication and digestion taste and it's shat or pissed out and put into the compost and it's just the next thing. Don't do that yet.

[24:28]

It's interesting that Mel never mentions ice cream in that context. Why do you think that's interesting? Another name for the Heart Sutra is the Sutra of Negation, or Mu, which is from the first case, the Mumonkan. And it doesn't mean that there's no feeling, that there's no, like capital N-O, there are no feelings, there are no perceptions or formations, etc.

[25:33]

But there's no fixed feeling or fixed perception and that the that there's, in fact, like shikkan, which means just, and taza, sitting, so it's like shikkan feelings or shikkan perceptions or shikkan formations, that there's just the experience through the five skandhas for what they are that we are, in fact, experiencing. So, for instance, there's no There is pain in legs, and that's in fact just the form in emptiness, the form being in our mind that there's pain or that there's a physical feeling in our body of the experience of pain, but it's just sitting and just pain. And I talked a little bit about this last week, that when we're sitting and we're experiencing either physical pain or emotional pain in emptiness without separating and labeling it as good or bad and just the experience that is Buddha manifesting in that moment.

[26:57]

What we typically do is separate out from that and start qualifying in some way and distance ourselves from the experience and then it's no longer no feeling no perception it's feelings and perceptions and I don't like it and I want to get out of here. The Sixth Ancestor said that in emptiness there is no ignorant person or enlightened person. And for me that's quite... uh... liberating uh... in the world of particulars the world of form we have smart people and not so smart people or at least our labels that we have that but in the world of emptiness uh... there's each person just manifesting who they are completely and uh... uh... i've talked to a few people outside of class and there's a uh... i've heard uh...

[28:01]

appreciation for the effort that I've made, for the homework I've done, and at the same time, for themselves, not feeling so good that they need to study more, they haven't learned all this stuff. I just want to reiterate that we're all learning together, and I like to think of not only this class, but just life in general, with the Six Ancestors' encouragement that in this world of emptiness, there's no smart people and no ignorant people. There's in a different place on the continuum. And of course, we all have our virtues and our strengths and our weaknesses. And when I read Crooked Cucumber, I thought about that a lot with these new students that Suzuki Hiroshi had under his robe, that each one manifested in a certain way that had his attributes.

[29:09]

And it would be very easy, and that's kind of our knee-jerk reaction to, kind of label and say this student is sharper or the fast horse, this one's not quite so sharp, this one's got this taint or that taint. But actually there are all these flowers in the garden and each one has a different scent and a different color and a different shape. In line 16, there's no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. These are the six sense organs. I'd like to read from another one of the older sutras. The Buddha talks a little bit about this. and this is called the Honeyball Sutta.

[30:20]

When there is no I, no form, and no I-consciousness, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of contact. When there is no manifestation of contact, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of feeling. When there is no manifestation of feeling, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of perception. When there is no manifestation of perception, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of thinking. When there is no manifestation of thinking, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of being beset by perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation. In other words, suffering. When there's no ear, no sound, and no ear consciousness, et cetera, as I mentioned before, it goes with the eye. When there's no nose, no odor, and no nose consciousness, just as before. When there's no tongue, no flavor, no tongue consciousness. When there is no body, no tangible and no body consciousness, when there is no mind, no mind object and no mind consciousness, it is impossible to point out the manifestation of being beset by perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation.

[31:35]

And at the very end, the reason why they give the, how the title Honeyball came about, When this was said, the Venerable Ananda said to the Blessed One, that's the Buddha, Venerable Sir, just as if a man exhausted by hunger and weakness came upon a honey ball, in the course of eating it, he would find a sweet, delectable flavor. So too, Venerable Sir, any able-minded bhikkhu, in the course of scrutinizing with wisdom the meaning of this discourse on the Dharma, would find satisfaction and confidence of mind. Venerable Sir, you may remember this discourse on the Dhamma as the honey ball discourse. A little morsel of food for us to think about. I wonder what a honey ball is. I mean, they're probably a sun plant or something.

[32:44]

Yeah, probably so. But, um, you think about it. The next line is, we talk about the sense objects. There's no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. And then in line 18, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness. And this is attending to basic Buddhism of the 18 dhatus, which is how we take in the world completely. We have eye, which is a sense, and then we have the object, and then we have consciousness,

[33:47]

which makes this a cup of water. And you have to have all three in order for something to exist. And the Dhatu is a place that this is happening. And that's where Trungpa Rinpoche got the name Dharma Dhatu. It's like a place of practice. And so in emptiness, there's none of these. And again, this is something that was going back to the old schools that said that these things, in fact, were real. There's a consciousness, an eye, an object. And in fact, there's no fixed eye and no fixed consciousness and no fixed cup. And just as each moment, there's a different sense of what this cup is, or what this pencil is, or, and by extension, who I am. It's constantly changing. This looks like a good place to stop for a break for about five minutes or so, about halfway through.

[35:09]

So people want to do that break thing. If we look at these 18 dhatus as our reality, which is ever changing and not fixed, then we can we can talk and live like the Buddhists in our literature. Suzuki Yoshi said, he was holding up his eyeglasses and said, I'm borrowing these glasses. When I first read that, I said, well, who's he borrowing from? Who's he borrowing those glasses from? But what he's talking about is that realizing completely that there's truly no one there. The borrowing is just, they're just being used in this I have this experience with money quite often because I work retail and I see money coming in and money going out and uh... especially where i work with is quite a a wide range of uh... uh... classes of people who typically would not be uh... sort of sitting down at the same table uh... over a cup of coffee uh... one person will come in and pay for something within a couple one dollar bills and another person will come in uh... and their change will be the same dollar bills and i kind of feel this

[36:45]

energy of the money from the first person going out to the other person. And you can see that just in your own life. If you happen to, say, go to laundromats and you're using laundromats where other people are running clothes through the machines or walking through or parking lots and spaces. We're just borrowing this parking spot and the car goes and then a bicycle goes or it's empty for a while. These things are constantly changing. And using this language of borrowing things and things are constantly just kind of going, coming through me and I'm just a conduit for the next moment will reinforce this idea that that this is just emptiness and manifesting moment by moment as Buddha. Line 19 is, no ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death.

[38:02]

This is the 12 links of causation, which again is basic Buddhism. and uh... the uh... uh... i think he testified saying that this uh... empty and there's nothing uh... fixed uh... there and um... uh... the older school of buddhism felt that you could actually go backwards uh... through this uh... uh... these links causations and get and uh... find liberation and uh... It goes somewhat back to what I was reading earlier, that before old age and death there's birth, and before birth there's becoming. So, for instance, this is This is becoming, okay? I'm holding this cup of water.

[39:05]

And just before that, there's grasping, which is going to the cup of water. And before that, there's thirst, which is this desire or wanting something. And then before that, there's feelings of wanting a cup of water. Before that, there's actual contact of seeing it or hearing water coming down through a faucet. Before that, there's the six senses, which is how we take in the world. Before that, there's name and form, which is when we name things and give them some sense of form. Before that, there's consciousness, which is this whole sort of mental apparatus that puts us all together. And before that, there's volitional action of just kind of a an impulse and before that is ignorance. which gets back to your question about what is ignorance. So the Theravada school felt that if you really look minutely at your actions and your relationship to the various dharmas, you can look really closely and see at what point suffering would be created, which typically is at the point of contact.

[40:15]

As soon as there's contact with something, there's going to be clinging and things just kind of spiral out. So you have to watch yourself very, very closely. I remember once in the port some years ago there was a Theravada monk from Burma and he was sitting down and I can't remember who it was. I want to say Meili but she probably would know better because she was taking his class but there was a woman that approached him and just wanted to like touch his shoulder to sort of make contact with him because they were talking about some point and he just kind of went like this because he didn't because his vows of like of no contact was arising in him. So I thought that was quite odd, but then as I began studying the 12 Links of Causation, I realized that his practice was eliminating suffering at the point of contact, and that's a really hard thing to do. And we all work with that, training our mind. And we sit zazen and we fall into reveries or fantasies about past or future events, and then we're suffering.

[41:24]

So how do we bring ourselves back before that arises and just get to the neutral? That's right Mm-hmm there is yeah Yeah, we're just sitting still and there's all kinds of contact going on right in our in our minds Yeah, it's endless where we can where we can begin practicing I line 20 right after that, and also no extinction of it.

[42:27]

And what that's getting to is that even though there's no 12 links of causation, there's also no extinction of it. These things, this is just how we see the world and how we go through our lives. So it's not like it's not there. It's this middle path between between nihilism and eternalism, between nothingness and everythingness. And this is, in fact, where we are in the middle right there, practicing. Line 21 is a restatement of the Four Noble Truths. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, and no path. Well, but Ross, isn't it a negation of the Formal Cultures? It says, no path, no stop.

[43:28]

Hold that thought. Hold that question. I'm sorry. OK. One more time. Isn't it a negation of the Formal Cultures? It says, no suffering, no origination, no stop. Yes, it's a negation of the Four Noble Truths, but a restatement in a sort of a grander scheme of things. So it's, just as before, it says, and also no extinction of it, that it's another way of looking at that. There is, well, the Sutra is about liberation and lessening our suffering. and a guide to realizing that. So there's pain, but there's no suffering. There's origination or the beginning, but where is that beginning? In the moment of, in the realization of emptiness, there are none of these things, because these are all dualities.

[44:47]

These are all things that we provisionally say, you know, there is a path, there is different forms, there are the skandhas, there are all these things that we've been talking about, but in emptiness, there's none of this. So how do we practice that there's none of this and yet we in fact are experiencing a birth of something and that we can stop something after it's been birthed, some sense of life and that there's no path, that there's no right livelihood or right speech. What do you think is being gotten at there. Well, I think what it's saying is that the foreign obituaries are empty, in the sense that it's not this thing to hang on to.

[45:56]

So, it's empty of reality, that it's not really saying forget the Four Noble Truths, but it's also saying not to collect the Four Noble Truths, not to take them as, not to be treated as really substantial. Just say no to thoughts. Yes, no. Did you want to say something? Well, it kind of reminds me of the Diamond Sutra, and in the Diamond Sutra there's this way that things are presented where they say, oh, I can't think of a good example because I can't remember it, but let's just use suffering.

[46:57]

They're talking and saying, oh, oh, there is no suffering. And why do we think that there is no suffering and on and on? There is no suffering. And that is why we call it suffering. Or it's like always the opposite, to try and explain it. And it's kind of tricky, but that's what it reminds me of. I'm just going to go with my thoughts. Well, just to respond to that, the opposite is always included whenever something is said, because nothing exists in a vacuum. So to say that there's no suffering is kind of an anecdote to suffering. It's not that there's There's no path. Well, there's a path, but there's also no path. It's not just... There has to be the opposite in order for what's being spoken of to exist.

[48:09]

Because nothing is by itself. Which I think is kind of what you were getting at. Thank you. Yeah. And then... in relation to a self, and if a self states or states the Four Noble Truths, and the Four Noble Truths are probably invalid because the self that states them is invalid? Yeah. There's that aspect of it. And also, I'm just, wouldn't it be also getting at, with freedom from self, those things also don't exist? Or no? But they don't exist in the way I think that we typically think of them because we can't feel.

[49:14]

We can feel suffering. We can feel causes of suffering. We can feel the cessation of suffering. We can feel the cessation of suffering through the eightfold path. There is something there that can be experienced, but as soon as we bring forward the sense of self and start talking about it, it's invalid from reality's point of view, that it's not true. But there is someone there that experiences it, and that's sort of the you know, thoughts without a thinker. Who is it that is experiencing these thoughts? Or who is it that is experiencing the cessation of suffering through no contact? So the thing still is there, it's just that the quality or the value of it is shifted. As Charlie said, you know, even after you're enlightened, you still like ice cream.

[50:23]

Or there's something... Mel said it. Right, you said it about Mel. I said that Mel seldom talks about the non-duality of ice cream. But I want to get back to Rashomon, because actually it's a story told from the four perspectives. The fourth one is the medium that goes into a trance and gives a, whatever, mystical, transcendental interpretation of the facts. Thank you. Please, these things in this line, separating origination stuff from the past, Those are all dependent upon the assumption of all your existence. Of a self?

[51:25]

Yeah. None of these exist in this instant. Nothing exists. But none of these exist in this separate instance. That's right. In this moment, they don't exist. But if we think of them in this sort of continuum, there's this way of looking at it. And while the Buddha was talking about this moment, in this instance, what he was, you know, he's the great doctor and he's prescribing a way of dealing with suffering. But his way was kind of laid out in a real in a linear way for his followers to follow. One of the sort of twists of Zen practice is that contained within that linear way of dealing with a student's suffering, the teacher is just like holding up a fist or shouting or using a stick or turning and facing the wall.

[52:29]

All those things contain the Four Noble Truths, but the expression of them is very different than the Buddhist time. But that would be more of sort of doing a comparative between the Buddhism and Zen and how Zen came out of Buddhism, but it's a different expression. So when Mel encourages us just to sit through the pain, unsaid is, or implied is, when you just sit there and let painful legs be painful legs and drop the self, there will be less suffering and there'll just be pain. But as a Zen teacher, it doesn't all get sort of explained out or laid out, but there's the implication that these Four Noble Truths are there. Yet in this moment, there's just, ow.

[53:34]

In the next moment, there's, I don't wanna suffer, I don't like this pain. So, I was talking to someone about the differences between sitting zazen for 40 minutes and sitting sashim. And to address Nancy's question about that the Four Noble Truths exist but there's no fixed entity at each of those Four Truths, is that sitting for 40 minutes quite often it's not long enough to really experience all of these things in their true sense. But sitting for a sasheen, sitting all day, or sitting for a five-day sasheen, the self wears down, and then we do get a taste of the Four Noble Truths as a way of explaining our life, and especially the path as a way of lessening suffering.

[54:51]

It's difficult, but it's difficult to kind of speed up in a 40 minute period to do that. In fact, I think sometimes, of course, it does happen during Sashin too, that it sometimes has the opposite effect, that there's There's only a little block of time to sit fast and to try to end my suffering. And I think about, you know, okay, there's... the eight folds of the path that I'm trying to remember as I practice there, and it kind of works against itself. The practice is a practice of a lifetime, and we can stretch out a little bit more during the session and feel that suffering lessen a bit. line twenty-two well line twenty uh... after the four noble truths is no cognition and also no attainment and with nothing to attain a bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita uh... in emptiness there's no cognition and also no attainment so there's uh... typically when we cognize things we think of something as

[56:41]

There's me and I'm cognizing or thinking of something. And in emptiness, there's a relationship between me and this other thing, or you and me and you and this other thing. And there's no longer this sense of thinking about this thing. And because there's this merging of self and object, there's no longer any attainment. And again, this is a addressing this practice of purification and attaining arhatship or attaining something that we practice, even though we do practice typically to attain peace of mind and lessen our suffering and meet people or whatever our reason for coming to practice is, ultimately or fundamentally there actually is nothing to attain and it takes probably 30 years of striving or more to realize that there's nothing to attain, which is kind of a funny paradox.

[57:46]

But that seems to be how it works. And with nothing to attain also looks at is addressing cause and effect. We typically look at things that there's a cause and by virtue of this cause, it has an effect. with nothing to attain is looking at cause and effect as one thing. And at the same time, it's also not one and not two. Typically, we think of one thing causes something else, and it's a very linear sort of thing to get back to what Sue was talking about. But in this moment of non-attainment, there's just this. And we can look back sort of discursively or cognizing however you want to say it, at the cause and effects that have brought us to this moment. But in this moment, all that stuff is transcended. Up to this point, the sutra has been describing what prajna is, or the wisdom of emptiness, and then from here on down, it's talking about what one does with this prajna, and the one is bodhisattva, which is the archetype in the Mahayana vehicle.

[59:11]

So this, in line 24, yes? Before you go ahead, can I ask a question? Yes, please. The no cognition, no attainment. Cognition seems to come from out of left field. I mean, everything else, all the other lists are explainable in terms of they come from the skandhas, they come from the chain of dependent origination, but there are pieces of Abhidharma that are being addressed. And then there's cognition. Uh-huh. Can you give us some context from why did they pick cognition to stick in here? Well, there's the... I think of it as... Well, all of this is about mind and how our mind works. And there's the five skandhas and the... or which are also the consciousnesses when they're put together with their objects.

[60:15]

And then there's the mind, which coordinates all that, or ego consciousness, which I look at as a sort of cognizer of things. And that's right in between the skandhas and how we take the world in, and the alaya consciousness, which is a sort of bed of seeds of thought. And as thoughts arise, they go through this ego consciousness and down through the skandhas and out into the world. And it goes both ways, where the world is received through the skandhas, through this ego consciousness up to the alaya consciousness. And through our practice of sitting, when there's realization, that ego consciousness turns into this mirror wisdom consciousness. And as a mirror, we just see the world without labeling it or separating from it and things flow between these two areas quite easily.

[61:18]

More often than not, they don't flow and there's this ego there that gets in the way and sort of separates things out and kind of regulates how things come and go. And that's this whole world of cognition, at least as I see it. It's intimately tied up with ego and how we think. Do you have maybe a response or maybe another way of kind of looking at that? No, that's very helpful. That's quite helpful, thank you. Excuse me, Bruce, what is the line of consciousness? The alaya consciousness is a model of how we think and how we as human beings take in the world. It's considered the storehouse consciousness of all previous

[62:19]

Thoughts and activities are stored in these little seeds called bija and the seeds are are sprouted and They're watered by our ego, you know, we have an idea of this person walking down the street for instance and Then a whole reality is formed just from our watering that that seed And in practice, what we're trying to do in this realization of this great mirror wisdom is seeds come forth, but we're not putting any labels on them. It's like, you know, Joko Beck says, you look out the train window and you don't look out and see what's coming down the track or what passed by, but you just see the scenery of your life without labeling it. And then the seeds are not watered and there's no longer any sprouts forming new realities or false realities. So it's sort of this, you know, bed of seeds that we each have and we can experience them quite intimately throughout the day, especially during Zazen.

[63:35]

I mean, that's like a really clear place where life is kind of stripped away and we're just sitting there and out of nowhere comes like all of this, all of this stuff. Kelly? Yeah, maybe one way to describe that is that we have this sort of model of the world In our heads so we can think of you know We can imagine being in New York. Oh, yeah great. Oh We could you know go down to the airport and Buy a ticket and actually go there, but without having any direction picture all these different things that have some reality to them also. I mean, I guess I'm just trying to say a little bit about what this Storehouse Consciousness might be.

[64:35]

Right. Well, there's a seed of, like, you bite into a bagel and then the seed of New York comes up, like, oh, bagels in New York, and then then a train of thoughts happen and these are thoughts coming up from this alaya consciousness but they've been planted there, they've been put there from previous experiences of either physically being in New York or hearing stories about New York or what have you and then if you in fact follow this out and go to the airport or fly to New York then through your five skandhas you'll be taking more in and storing them in this consciousness here, so next time you bite into a bagel, there'll be even more things to think about. So the best thing is not to go to New York, just stay put, okay? So what is the good thing to do when you bite into a bagel?

[65:39]

The reveries and things like that come, but you just bite into the bagel, and there's just the... No Lakshmi. Yeah, no Lakshmi, right. Yeah, there's just a pure experience, but we live a life of pure experience, and then it's flavored or colored or... tainted, though that has a whole charge around it, with all of our previous experiences and associations with that. But if we see the five skandhas as empty, then we realize that those experiences, this mind consciousness is empty and it's just interrelated with the experience of biting in the bagel and the associations of memories of all that sort of stuff. And if you look at, I was involved in the world of advertising for a while, and marketing, that whole world is filled with associations of things, and they just kind of play on that. So Buddhists would not make great marketers, because they're just kind of working on, you know... I know, I know.

[66:46]

It's all a risk. In other scriptures, they call them samskaras, you know, the impressions that are on your own consciousness, that you have these associations and you sort of just keep building on the story. And society's perception of reality is that everybody agrees on certain things too. It's not just your own little story you're making up. Everybody's making up a story together. And so everybody agrees that the same thing is existing in front of them. And it just goes on and on. I was thinking about what you were saying, when you see something and you have these associations, I'm sure everybody's had these moments where they see an object and they can't name it. I mean, it's like, and it really is, you know, it really kind of freaks you out because you can't define it. You see this object and you can't associate it with anything. I mean, there are moments like that, which is a great moment, but because you're conditioned a certain way, it's like you really want to name that thing so you can understand what's in front of you.

[67:49]

Yeah, it's encoded. Yeah, and there's this expression in our tradition, you know, not knowing is nearest. It's, um, there's that moment before we name things, and that's why they say children are so fresh, because they haven't named things, they're just open and they're experiencing things. But as adults, how do we, how do we work with, with that? And, um, I understand that is, that we, um, we, it's okay to name things, but not to cling to it. So how do, how can we practice being open to new, you know, bija, or seeds, if you will, of experience coming into something that's very familiar? And that's like, um, Yeah, because naming is a form of cleaning. I mean, it really is. It leads, yeah, it leads to that. But we also have to identify things, and we're living in this world of relativity, and we have to see, well, you know, a car is this sort of shape and form and texture and color and sound and all that, and also it can kill you if you're not careful, you know, walking across the street. So... How... Yeah. Cross.

[68:50]

Yes. Oh, it's many because it's about five and nine and before going into what bodhisattvas do, we need to talk about the wisdom side of what prajna is. Yes. Just trying to make sure I understand what I'm thinking about this along the right track. So with no cognition, it's somewhat the what can happen when the past starts to come up is it can obliterate the possibility of seeing what is happening right now and it seems for me that the danger with going into cognition and letting the past arise and then not seeing the difference between it and the present is you can go into making assumptions and these concepts do come up about what's the stories that you think are happening, which you may have no idea whatsoever whether they are or not.

[70:01]

The present stories that come up? Well, you have an idea because it's what's happening, but the way that we understand these present stories is going to be influenced by the past experiences. So it's not like you go brain dead and just everything is new and fresh and I don't remember the past. I think a lot about just people and relationships and how I'm conditioned to think a certain way when I meet a particular person I have a history with, whatever it happens to be, and to try to remain fresh with that person and just be open to what they're offering. uh... in that uh... in that moment and it's always changing and uh... i think it's impossible to uh... not have any any reference for past experience but somehow another that's there in the uh... in the container as a reference for what's memory and something that will trigger off things from before and then you can actually catch yourself seeing am I drawing a lot from memory or is it just this moment that's presenting something that's causing either some aversion or attraction given that the neutral feeling doesn't really matter so much because that doesn't cause so much suffering.

[71:27]

I think about Mel often when he's responding to questioners on Saturday, and there's a predictability to the questioner's question, the tone and what they're inquiring about, and it really seems to me and feels that he's just really being open to that person. each time. I'm thinking about certain people that ask the same kind of questions that don't have the... It's really difficult to find a succinct answer, and they just kind of maybe want to just... They want to kind of sort out in their mind what this idea is that's being presented at lecture. No names, no. And I can't even think of myself and my questions, which is very predictable, and how I kind of approach the approach him in that way. It's really admirable because most of the time we don't do that.

[72:35]

We've already kind of put up our barriers and our judgments about people and things before we've actually met them. And if we're truly empty, we can actually meet them intimately and be surprised and live in harmony with them. So cognition is there, it's just the clinging to the thinking and not allowing the thoughts to sort of come and go freely that is a big cause of our suffering. We're going to kill each other.

[73:38]

We as humanity, or we as density? Our society thinks about physicians as those people who takes away pain. But in fact, it's not pain that we want taken away. It's suffering that we want taken away. Suffering is like a big portion of pain. If you just have pain, then it's just pain. You're not suffering. There's two kinds of pain. Forget about suffering. There's pain and there's wanting to get rid of the pain. think so yeah but so we go to a physician

[75:16]

but we're getting down to the root of it. There always will be pain, that's sort of basic truth, right? Where sin should be? Well, we're... I'm not happy now. It's nine o'clock and while this is the four sessions that were set up for a class, we're not done with the Heart Sutra. The next class that's scheduled to be taught is sometime in September that Sojourner Roshi will be doing. So there's time for more classes. more than happy to continue with anybody who would like to continue with me to talk about what the Heart Sutra means to them.

[76:44]

And if you have other commitments because you schedule your life as such for just the four weeks, certainly it's okay not to attend, but I'll be here next Thursday and whoever shows up will continue.

[77:03]

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