Good evening. So we're meeting in here with the chairs like this because for the last two days, a bunch of us have been sitting here talking about how to do these chants and what does it really mean in Japanese and Chinese. And so that one is now, you'll have to help me, Charlie, an unsurpassed. Yeah, it was. It's already like an unsurpassed something in wondrous dharma, profound and wondrous dharma. is rarely met with, we still have, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Now I can see and hear it, accept and maintain it. What's the last line? May all beings something about Buddha. Now we just said, what did we just say? We just said, I vow to taste the truth of the descendants' words.

[01:03]

There's nothing about tasting in there. Oh, I like that. Well, it's nice. It's one of those interpretive things that we're getting rid of. Is this new version going to supplant what we've been learning all along and memorizing? Yeah, everything you've ever memorized is now vivid. I had the impression that it was just going to be for when people of different sanghas got together. Well, there's an idea that people will try it out in their sanghas, too, and that if we come up with good enough versions, maybe we'll Paul be chanting so much. I like your version. I know. Don't get attached to it. I am. It's really amazing how it's been like this real struggle for everybody who's been sitting in this room to unattach themselves from the versions. And of course, none of us have memorized portions of Himalakirti, but just by looking at two different texts, except for Kevin, who is going to recite for us chapter six. Kevin, take it. No, no, oh well.

[02:03]

Okay, so. Charlie, would you please give us Malakirti's great statement from chapter nine? That was so good until you did. Great statement was silence, right? Thank you. Okay, so chapter 7 we did last time. Manjushri's always piping up, you know. Okay, so last time we went over chapter 7 and the goddess and I'm sure there are lots of questions and also there may be questions about chapters 1 through 6. So I thought tonight we'd kind of review a little and just allow questions to arise and If we have time, we'll go on to Chapter 8 a little bit, and maybe Chapter 9 a little bit, and then in two weeks, I hope we will get to Chapter 10, because there's some stuff in there that I think will be really neat if we talked about it.

[03:15]

So, last time we talked about Chapter 7, and generating the great love, and how does the bodhisattva generate love? for living beings who they consider, the Bodhisattva considers to be empty of any ultimate self. So how do you love imaginary beings and take care of them and console them and so forth and so on? And then there's this whole thing about the goddess and femininity and and Shariputra and how he sees and doesn't see things. So there's a lot of stuff in here, and we went over it, the whole thing, I think, fairly well last time. But questions, comments, or from anything before Chapter 7? Kevin. Well, I was reading a book the other night about how it's always brought up like ridiculous numbers, like 5,000 bodhisattvas sat in this room and things like that.

[04:40]

And I was thinking a lot about the idea of taking on a different form for the purpose of expedient means. Right. And what if... 500 of these bodhisattvas appear as flies. And 500 of these tiny little microorganisms in compost size. So maybe these numbers aren't so ridiculous. I was just thinking that. Well, I think this kind of teaching is an invitation to imagination and an invitation to see things in new ways. So to see these great numbers in terms of, well, flies or whatever. You said fly. Fly. But I think the point again, or one way to think about inconceivability is to, as I said at the end last time,

[05:51]

examine, unpack, let go of our usual conceptions. That doesn't mean that you get rid of in the sense of getting rid of or of the conventional world. So that's one of the points about Vimalakirti that he functions quite proficiently, quite well in totally conventional realms. And yet then he can manifest these amazing scenarios of all these huge thrones filling his room. So it's not a matter of, it's a matter of multiple realities or seeing many levels of reality. So you can, so if there's these huge numbers then we can see them as flies, we can see them as microorganisms, we can see them as galaxies. And You know, there's a way in which this might be kind of abstract and ethereal and irrelevant to us. So part of what I'd like to do and kind of want to see how we can discuss this, the stuff we've been studying tonight, on practical levels.

[07:03]

What are the practical implications of this? So what does this have to do with how we see, well, okay, one example is you know, the earth and the fields of Green Gulch, a square foot of soil, of earth, contains a huge number of microorganisms, actually, or not just microorganisms, but just organisms. Are some of you farm people who know about this? Matt, are you, or Elon? I think a quarter contains something like six billion microorganisms, about as many people as there are. A quarter? Like, yeah, a money piece. A quarter of soil? Well, a quarter if, yeah, that much soil contains about six billion. So that's a scientific fact that kind of stretches how we see numbers and the meaning of numbers. That's great, thank you. That's perfect.

[08:03]

So, okay, now how is that relevant to how to how we practice. I mean, if we talk about very large or very small realms, that's, somebody said last time something about the ordinary, that, or maybe that was somewhere else, but anyway, about the ordinary, our ordinary practice, we deal with kind of conventional reality. So how does, what does this have to do with taking care of our everyday life? Or does it? I want this to be a question. How do you imagine, having been exposed to the Malakirti's way of seeing things, how can you imagine applying that to, I won't say conventional, ordinary, you know, your everyday experiences? How does that affect knowing that about the ground that, well, for example, in India, monks were not supposed to do agriculture. because of all those microorganisms, and not just microorganisms, worms and other small creatures.

[09:09]

Because they would hurt them in farming? Mm-hmm. So farming was forbidden for monks. Of course, they could eat the fruits of other people's farming. Right. So, yeah, that's right. And then with vegetarianism, too, there were some regulations that you... There were various... variants of that. Some strict vegetarians with some rules said you could eat an animal that wasn't killed specifically for you. Anyway, there are ranges of ways of interpreting these things. So that's one realm. Just to give you an extreme example of somebody applying this, I heard of an American who was a Tibetan monk in Tibet who, because of his position of not hurting any beings, would not take medicine to destroy the bacteria that was in his system that was actually, you know, endangering his life.

[10:17]

And I'm not sure whether he actually ended up dying of that or not. But, you know, that's one kind of way to see other realms. So anyway, do any of you feel any resonances from that kind of thing, or from the story of the goddess and how she worked with Shariputra? That's another kind of way of upsetting our usual conceptions. How does seeing things in other ways affect how you practice? One of the things that comes up in here, I think the term was tolerance, the tolerance of inconceivability. part of inconceivability is that there are worlds that are so multiple that you can't expect one world to be consistent in terms of another world. So there's this tolerance that is necessary to cultivate so that you're not surprised by what comes up.

[11:21]

Well, I think that's true with with the goddess, with Shakyaputra and the goddess, I mean, to having, to have just identities changed kind of back, you know, back and forth real quickly like that and learning, just accepting that and working with that and seeing what that teaches you. Okay, how does that affect how you would interact with some other, so-called other person? Sure. Well, it's not something, you know, it's a matter of being able to enter in, to subjectively enter into another person's world without judging it or criticizing it, which means that you can't criticize and judge your own world. There has to be kind of whatever world is coming up, that another person is entering into. It's not like, and it's not like there's a sense of, oh, it's, this is her world or his world, and this is my world over here.

[12:33]

It's just one world coming up that we're, that three people are part of, and then, you know, the next moment, there's another world coming up, and maybe, you know, two people, and then another world, and maybe five people, or how many? And I think when we claim to ourselves My experience is when I cling to myself, this clinging is kind of an attachment to some kind of world that I think I'm carrying around. I don't know if that's kind of vague. No, that's good. Any responses to that or further? Well, it reminds me of a line in, I think, the Genjo Koan. I forget the context, but the line is, whole worlds are there. And what you were saying in some of the teaching of conceivability in the Sutra makes me think of that any time you look at another person or at a tiny amount of soil or at anything, whole worlds are there.

[13:43]

And normally we try to actually think one thing is there which we can identify with the concept. But I think you're very, I think your point is very right that if you can remember to, the whole worlds are in anything, you can step outside of yourself sometimes and not treat things in such a limited way. At least that's what I think. So you refer to patience, practice of patience as part of this. So this thing you were talking about, the patience with the fact of things not being produced, another way to think of that is patience with the fact that, with the reality that things are beyond our knowing.

[14:47]

of them. I mean, there are things we know, but they're beyond. But how does that work with the realms in which we do know? So we each think we know something about who we are and how the world is and how to get from here to the Zendo and so forth. One reaction to this reality might be a lot of anxiety. How do you practice so that you can actually have patience or tolerance or kind of feel at peace with this kind of uncertainty or this unknowability of the world or the multitude of knowabilities of the world? This is another practice question I think that comes out of this. One question that comes up, and I noticed it, and it's kind of rolled around a lot.

[15:53]

I mean, I noticed it tonight when you were speaking, is how to, partly how to remember it while I'm speaking, or when someone else is speaking, how to remember it. Because when you thanked Matt, it says, now here we have this scientific fact that blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was laughing at the word scientific fact, as if that Absolutely, immediately, I packaged it into a size and a, you know, fact and, oh, not only that, it had science to it. Like, what's the fact of the scientific fact? And so, you know, not only when I'm speaking, so of course I know that I'm saying what's really true, you know, somehow it's something that I assess, but much less when I'm listening to someone else. and remembering that and how to practice that even as you're speaking in some way.

[16:57]

It's like, you know, being silent can be just as narrow. Right, so there's that passage in the goddess chapter about where the Shariputra is impressed with the goddess and says, You know, how... It's on 59 in Thurman. How long has the elder been in liberation, essentially? She's more polite than that. Has the elder, Venerable Shariputra, been liberated for quite some time? At which Shariputra is kind of embarrassed and falls silent. And he talks about liberation being inexpressible or we could say reality being inexpressible. And the goddess talks about how even language is part of that reality.

[17:59]

So there's a way in which this unknowability is folded back into the ordinary again and again. The inconceivable is not something out there or very large or very small. The inconceivable is actually You know, how we imagine we know each other and how we imagine we know ourselves, too. So right in the ordinary there is this inconceivable. There's that dimension of this, too. So in a piece of soil. That's a silent heartland, in a way, to speak in. I have to really trust. There's a trust element, maybe, in our faith. that when you're speaking, when you're speaking and I'm listening, that we both got, you know, are embracing a mind. That's sort of why. And that is really sticky. You don't have, well, I like the thing you said about trust and faith, but that we are, we are, it's not that we are trusted embraces it.

[19:10]

somehow language embraces it. It's not that we are or are not embracing it. And Shariputra seems to me is nervous about giving the wrong answer. And the goddess is more like playing with how they're talking, in a sense. So even when we're tired and we're not sure of exactly what we're saying, in fact, we never maybe are completely. How do we still play with our perception, awareness, and how we know things, and who we are, and the other worlds, and who is the other person? And as Bob was saying, all the worlds that come up in any moment of consideration And how do we, instead of being intimidated by that, how do we see that that's liberation and just say, okay, let's play?

[20:18]

That's kind of, I think, where the goddess is coming from. Everybody's giving me the silence of a moment. Well, maybe we should just go back to the text and follow it from there. But does anybody else have anything? I thought last time that some people said they had questions about pieces of the text earlier on. Rain, did you have something in Chapter 5 or 6? Or 2 or 3 or 4? Okay, well, is everybody ready to go on from Chapter 7? I guess one thing I would say that has really gotten my attention is the footnote from Chapter 7, which refers to this idea of how do we cultivate the ultimate compassion, as opposed to just a warm feeling for the people that we know in our lives.

[21:36]

And this footnote is on page 126 of the Thurman, the very bottom. Bodhisattva's love is not merely commiseration, but a spontaneous overflow of his great joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality. And I think just the way that's expressed is so accessible. If it's as simple as that, and I think we've all felt great joy and relief in realizing the radiant nature of reality, even if it lasts for a fraction of a second, And there have been times when I've really been conscious of the gratitude I feel for this precious human birth, and it may come and go really quickly, but it gives me a preview of how it could be. And maybe we describe it as being in a good mood, but it can be so much more than that. And the idea of it overflowing, you know, maybe

[22:38]

When I'm feeling this, it's my experience, but it doesn't belong to me, this joyous overflow. So why hold on to it? Why not let it overflow from moment to moment to moment? It just sort of gave me the possibility that it could be that way always, and it's just right there. And also that what this sutra is calling the love of the bodhisattva, the non-sentimental compassion and great love of the bodhisattva, that's where it comes from. It comes out of this just immediate overflowing joy and relief in the radiant nature of reality. That's very well put. I think, as you say, Karen, we all have some sense of that. We've all experienced some moment of relief.

[23:41]

We also have experienced moments of suffering. So our sympathy for others, when we see others struggling with their sense of separation from self and other, when we see ourselves, parts of ourselves, struggling with that, just let this other side overflow. That's what's being talked about in a sense. So I think this is really a wonderful teaching and it changes in some ways how we think of love and affection and compassion and kindness and to have it come out of that just bubbling up of joy and relief rather than from wanting to grasp anything. Yes, Kenneth. regardless of reference chart

[25:00]

a female form, and then taking it away and saying, where is it? And I'll say, well, I didn't do it. I didn't change it. I didn't do this form. I didn't change it. I think that that was a pretty interesting realization that I don't think we really acknowledged. Yes, good. Thank you. Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways just taking without many stories in the sutra, some of which a number of which we've talked about, a number of which we haven't yet, but to look at it from a different angle. So what is this like for Shariputra along the way? What is Shariputra learning here? And also, what's it like from the goddess's point of view? And how is she enjoying, as you say, educating Shariputra or letting him see this? And what is it like for a sense of what is all happening in this room filled with beings? What is it like for all of the spirit beings, and for all the other bodhisattvas, and for the disciples, and for Malakirti to watch this wonderful drama played out? And what are they all learning, and how is it different?

[26:41]

And what are we learning by reading it, exactly? Maybe I'm confusing you. When he says, I need to make it, he was transformed, you know, sort of did this back and forth thing. And she said, what have you done? And he says, I need to make it or change it. Thinking about that, inserting our own life in any way, because it says, just so all things we need to make or change. But then it seems sort of like I got stuck in the realm of magic. I mean, because the goddess, Or something made it change. I mean, something created the perception of change. And it seems, the way it's written here, when I'm hearing these words, it was something outside of himself. Well, how could it be?

[27:43]

All things are neither made nor changed. I know, that's what I'm trying to... It's part of a larger system. on just one local aspect of that system? Well, the thing you brought up about magic, and so just the whole notion of magic, maybe we should look at that. And then the notion of agency, like external agency. From Shari Pooja's point of view, he's being acted on. He's being transformed. She did it. She did it, yeah. Or it's her fault. One can go do a lot of that. So one thing that occurs to me is that there are transformations. Now, some of you who are living at Green Gulch are Zen students and live in this funny semi-monastic community or whatever it is.

[28:47]

And a year ago or five years ago, you weren't that. Now, is that a transformation? Things happen in our lives that are transformations, too. Now, in what way is that magic? You get in a car and drive. I mean, that's okay. I already tried to work this through with technological examples, and let's put aside science. Just in terms of the ordinary events of our life, we meet people who we didn't know before, people who we were close to are suddenly not there. There are many things that happen that change. our deep sense of ourself. So are those magic? Do those happen from outside or inside? This little microcosm of Sariputra working on his relationship to gender is a very strong example, but how is that really different from the ways in which we are neither made nor changed?

[29:58]

How do you perceive it? Well, I think we can perceive it in many ways. Sometimes things seem to me like they're magical. Here we are sitting around this table talking about this strange stuff. This is kind of magical. In a way, this is very ordinary. We've been doing this on Tuesday nights for several weeks now. had it in our calendars, and some of us are here, and so here we are. It's nothing special. Isn't it kind of like the example of how firewood turns to ashes? That's what we say, but actually firewood is firewood and ashes is ashes. You know that? Is that a good example? Well, everything is just what it is. But firewood, the ashes don't go back to firewood. Yeah. So this is outside our ordinary realm of how the world works.

[31:11]

But even within our ordinary realm of how the world works, things happen that are unexpected. In fact, things never happen exactly the way we expect them. Well, in Sariputra, appearing one moment as a woman is really no more extraordinary than Sariputra appearing one moment in a male body, or the next moment in a male body again, and then one moment in a female body. I mean, I think that's part of what the Goddess is showing, that there is magic in each moment, that the way that things appear to be made and created is magical, that they are, in a sense, beyond being made or being created, and that's what Shakyamuni Buddha is not seeing. He's got this very logical approach. He thinks, later on, he says, Goddess, how soon will you attain the perfect enlightenment of Buddhahood? And she says, at such time as you, Elder, become endowed once more with the qualities of an ordinary individual, he thinks he's on this progressive path, this sensible, logical path to enlightenment.

[32:20]

Right, so he's actually, not only is he on the path, but he's actually succeeded. He's at the end of a particular, we might say, narrow path of great, great spiritual accomplishment, actually. I mean, Shakyamuni is the venerable one. He's worthy of veneration. But this is to show that there are, so I think this has something to say about our practice too and how we see our practice. Well, and I'm still wondering about this connection between ordinary realms and inconceivable realms and thinking that part of it is to be immersed completely in your experience and what you think is happening. You have to come up against the ends of that to have any to have that foothold taken away from you, to have any sense of the inconceivable. So you don't devalue your ordinary experience.

[33:28]

Instead, you throw yourself into it. This is what I think is happening right now. I think I'm walking to this end of, or a perception is arising of this. That's the only way I think that you can get any sort of sense of the limitations of perception and conception. So as you were saying that, I was reminded of Dogen's statement that probably you've all heard of, that to study the way is to study the self. So to gloss it in this context, to study the way is to study the ordinary self. To study our ordinary conception of who we are. But to study all the ways in which we are the self. And whenever they come up, including all the familiar ones. And to study those very thoroughly. And right out of that, when we study the self, we can forget our idea of self. We can forget our usual self. We can forget our conventional self.

[34:30]

We can forget our attachment to our idea of a self, and body and mind drop away. So in a sense, for Pashariputra, body dropped away, and suddenly he was not a man anymore. This is one aspect of this, I think. So to study the ordinary is to go beyond the ordinary. To see, as you were saying Karen, to really feel gratitude for this wonderful opportunity for being a human being and having this life and with all of the difficulties and troubles and problems and griefs and confusions and all of that. Here we are and we have a life to live and it's actually quite extraordinary. That kind of feeling. I think that the issue about this magical transformation of Shariputra, you had touched on it, that this is an omnipresent magic.

[35:41]

And explicitly within the sutra earlier, Mahalakirti was encouraging everybody to understand, well encouraging Manjushri, that the Bodhisattva would understand phenomena of this life as a magical apparition. And normally we have some sense, typically we have some sense that we're going around, that we're making our lives, that everything is eventuating on the basis of our activity and our intention and to the degree that we more or less successfully do the life that, become the person that we are attempting to do. And the goddess here is giving Shaliputra an object lesson in the gap between our notion of our life and what our life really is.

[36:47]

And although we have the pursuit deep we are, that this is all a magic show, this is all smoke and mirrors. Actually, in some sense, you are already having the experience because you're functioning from the illusion that you're making your life operational. It's just going to happen.

[37:59]

Whatever is happening, whatever we think of is happening. It's just happening independently of our intention and our will. Why do we usually only perceive that when things are going bad, badly? We think, oh, life is doing this to me, and it's out of my hands, out of control. But when things are going swell, we take credit. Not necessarily. Sometimes it's possible to... in a moment of creativity, for example, or when a song comes up, to feel like it comes up through you, but it's not... So that whole thing of agency, I mean, that's a different issue. A channeling. Yeah, like we're channeling in this class now. I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing that's going on in this sutra. In some other universe, somewhere else, there's another green gulch farm and people are talking about the sutra. And they may decide to come and hang out with us while we do it, too, and vice versa. And then there are all these different dimensions. And some of us might even be able to see them.

[39:00]

But this whole thing about agency, are we being acted on, or self-empowerment, or victimization? And that's a whole issue around this kind of thing of magic. And I think the basic practice is just to watch. how we make up the story of we're being acted on, or we make up the story of I've accomplished this, or whatever you think, just to see how we make up those stories. That's also another magic show. So the world just as it is is filled with these apparitions that we pin on the world. So just to be thoroughly stuck, just study, thoroughly study stuckness. I am. Great. I'll let you know. What's that Blake thing, if a fool persists in her folly?

[40:03]

No, but then there's also this other thing. She will become Manjushri. No. There's the other thing that Blake says, though, that anything that really fits what we're talking about, anything that can be, I forget the exact quote, but it's something like anything that can be imagined or anything that can be believed is an image of the truth or is an aspect of the truth. So, you know, we can also have fantasy and all kind of weird, you know, visions and so forth, and that's just what that is. And that's the level of reality that there is. So one whole issue which comes into this, which I think Shariputra's addressing is, well, how do we practice? What are the ethics of functioning in a magical world? So this whole thing about how do we generate great love? How do we console sick bodhisattvas? How do we console our friends who are stuck in stuckness?

[41:11]

How do we encourage each other? This is the practice of living in a magical world that's not what we think it is. It includes what we think it is. But suddenly, this room could be filled with huge chairs, or the power could go out, or it could start to rain, or who knows? And just one other thing. experiences, but we do transform, obviously in our experience, in our course of life, in a very strong way. The stages of life, for example, is an example of how we transform and it's clear, you know, if we step back from it at any given moment, we think that what's going on perhaps is

[42:21]

Some of us were little kids and then transformed into adolescents, transformed into young adults. Some of us are going through other transformations. And it is as if by magic. We don't necessarily have some sense of how we did this and how did we get into the form that we're in today. How did this happen? We say, how does it happen to us? But does it come from outside to us, or is it, you know, a seed of an apple tree makes apples, not plums. Apple trees, not plum trees. So whatever change we're going through is something that's coming from us. I don't know. Talking about magical, another way of talking about magical, you can talk about existence being magical and you can talk about existence being impermanent.

[43:45]

And that's kind of the same thing. We're in a stuck place, we see things as impermanent, but when that stuckness isn't, or when we can let go of the stuckness. not we can, but something, anywhere we can appreciate, when we appreciate the ephemeral transitory quality of things just coming up, that's when it's very magical. And that's also when you can fall in love with something, because you know that it's not going last, and then you're really aware of how precious it is, and once you're aware of how precious it is, you fall in love with it. So gratitude and appreciation. So how do we practice with that? Again, this is a wonderful text, and we're talking about this.

[44:48]

How do we practice with this? The example that's foremost to me after the last two days is the way we engage in practice activities or ritual. So we've been rewriting these spells that we have been saying for years and many of us have memorized and it's like suddenly this whole way of functioning. It's like if suddenly you were told that Zazen was something you did standing on your head and that that's the new Zazen. So we So to see the world, to see the whole world as ceremony or ritual, and then how do we not get caught by that? How are we willing to let go and let the ritual change? So you're gonna have to help me, Charlie. Instead of may our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way, the new version is may

[45:56]

It's been very intense, you know, we're like rewiring all the circuits in our... This is the original Chinese, Japanese and Sanskrit meanings re-translated into English, trying to rid ourselves of all the bad mistranslations we've been chanting for 20... years or 30 years. There's a few scholars in there who are kind of giving the right meaning and then there are these, sitting around this table have been all these practitioners from all these different centers from talking and trying to come to grips with, well, what's a nice way to say this, the chance will. and that is kind of beautiful, and that they can stand to change their chant to. It's like really this kind of rewiring, and it's pretty magical. So how do we, first of all, take on the ceremonies and rituals of our life, whatever they are?

[47:11]

How do we take our life, how do we practice the rituals of our life? How are we willing to, allow them to transform and watch the resistance and struggle with that. So in some ways for me, that's an example of practicing with magic, practicing with transformation and ephemerality. It's funny, we don't have the practice in our culture of memorizing very much and those of us who've been residents that have been on every morning and chanted certain chants or are familiar with certain, you know, we spent four hours on the four vowels trying to come up with new wording. And it's pretty close, isn't it? Do you remember? Oh, I found the other one now. Oh, please, you tell me. On the other hand, is a traditional spell that's just purely a spell, so most of these things like... Say that again, Charlie.

[48:35]

Would you chant it for us, please? Magic, watch this. Yeah, no, I'll come back to the Dharani, but just listen to this. Great. That's not bad, huh? Oh, and we changed... And we changed all... It's all Buddhas in throughout space and time. All honored ones. All honored ones. Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas, and the rest of it's the same. Wisdom, beyond wisdom, Mahaprajnaparamita. You got that one, right? It's like, wow, what a change. So little things like this. But these are particularly things that we focus on. To memorize something, it's not part of our culture, but for most of human history, everything was transmitted by oral transmission, by memorizing.

[49:48]

You know, most of human history there wasn't writing. Somehow people functioned and painted in caves and did all kinds of things before there was writing. And their brains were just as big as ours. They must have been doing something. And so a lot of them memorized. And we don't do that in our culture very much. Those of you who have memorized some chants have a sense of how that's imprinted in some way. I think there's a lot to do with, I mean, so the goddess and Shaiputra are playing with gender, but we're imprinted, you know, also deeply with these kinds of things that we chant. And what are other examples? Telephone numbers. How many of you know your own and other... Wait a second, I have to interrupt because you keep talking about memorization and yet I'm making a complete conversation right now. All these words I have memorized, their meanings I have a general understanding of memorized.

[50:53]

I have memorized how to open a door and close a door. Not that I always do it, because I practice it, but that's what practice is. I've memorized how many times I have to hit the basha on the one. So there's tons of linear memorization. I think what you're more referring to is these things that aren't necessary for life. No, I'm referring to those things, the things you were just talking about. How you go through a door. So much of it. So these are all the ways in which we're all imprinted. Gender. Gender. Race. Age. I think that what's changed is that way back in the time of Shakyamuni, there weren't cars. You didn't have to memorize how to drive a car. So instead of us memorizing how to chant the Dahi Shindirani, we're memorizing how to drive a car. Right, okay, yeah, so you were referring to my talking about modern times and comparing modern times and past times.

[51:53]

So I was just talking. Yeah, right. But they're relevant in terms of imprint. Well, I do know a little bit about it, but we'd have to go into it. He can stick the acupuncture needles right in there. For example, there are different organic structures in which that different information is processed. I mean, it is as different as different parts of your brain. But that aside, I think that we can assume that people in Shakyamuni's time and in time since then also may have learned highly complex motor skills. The automobile is not the first difficult or yoking activity. In a way. Camel. In a way. Right, riding a camel.

[52:57]

Have you ever heard of a car driver? I don't know. So what is a Daishin Dharani? Well, yeah, I forget where I was going with whatever I was saying, and so I'll just forget it. I don't know. Oh, no, the Daishin Dharani is, so of the different kinds of chants that we do here, there are Dharanis which are not English chants like the one that Charlie just did, but Sino-Japanese versions of Sanskrit, and they're supposed to have a certain effect based on the sound. And so they're not really, the meaning is totally, there is a meaning, but the meaning is not necessarily in the words. It's not translatable very much? Some of them are, some of the Sanskrit words have translatable meanings, like svaha means hurray, hail.

[53:59]

yahoo anyway and yeah well there's mantra in dharani but that's you know basically it's the same so gatte gatte paragatte parasamgate bodhisvaha I think it's directly uh it's like come all of you come or come all of you come over to the other side Hooray. That's one way to say it. Something like that, I don't remember. Gone, gone, gone beyond, altogether gone beyond, awakening, hooray. But also, there are meanings to those sounds which have nothing to do with any English cognitive words. And there are other Dharanis which have no sva, ha. They're just based on sounds. And the sounds, though, were developed by yogis meditating on sound to come forth with sounds that had a particular effect and a particular function to evoke particular mental states and samadhis and awarenesses. So there are some groups in America that have hymns based on dharanis that have very little to do with the dharani.

[55:09]

So anyway, to answer your question, Rain, we did not try to attempt to translate those dharani. But I think the point I was trying to make somewhere back there has to do with routine and memory and actually taking on our routines as practice and ceremony and celebration and magic. So there are kinds of dharani that we have from television commercials or from radio jingles or you know, popular songs. I mean there are litanies that we have, you know, if you sit for 40 minutes, maybe, you know, some phrase comes up from... It's horrible, isn't it? Sure. What was that? Good. Great. Thank you. Wonderful example. You can keep going on that song, too.

[56:09]

That was enough. Thank you. So, we have those circuits, you know. I mean, we do have all this stuff wired in, you know, and we do, you know, unless we're fortunate enough to be dyslexic, we, you know, have right and left and right, no. Anyway, we know just to stop at the red light and go at the green light. Plus, we have these aural incantations. So, I think the practice of magic has to do with taking it on. So we decide, OK, I'm going to go and sit zazen. And you can go and sit zazen because you think it's maybe helpful, or it's good therapy, or you'll feel a little calmer. You may. But in a sense, going to sit zazen is just like chanting. Could you chant that again? It's just like chanting may all beings, whatever it was that. Right, but there's a way in which to do something, there's a real subtle difference between celebrating something in ritual and one of the traditionalists of defilements or obstructions is attachment to rituals.

[57:30]

So we can kind of go through the motions, you know. give it a new freshness, at least temporarily, until it became stale again. Right. In the epilogue, he talks about two kinds of bodhisattvas. There's a kind of a beginner bodhisattva that's very enamored of literary phrases and how things are worded. It's real important. In this book, Bob? Yeah, it's on page 101. There's two gestures of a bodhisattva. Is this in the Thurman version? Yeah, this is Thurman. And the first gesture is to believe in all sorts of phrases and words, and the second gesture is to penetrate exactly the profound principle of the Dharma without being afraid. And the Chinese in this one, it's kind of... The first type loves varied phrases and literary embellishment. I mean, there's something of how memorization is real important.

[58:37]

He talks about, well, there's another thing here, the seal of Durrani as being kind of an agency of, it encourages memory to hold the teachings. Right, well, the other thing about Durrani is that there's specifically, And one of the ways that Dharani works, one of the points of Dharani is that they're specifically a tool of Bodhisattvas to develop memory, but also to develop capacities, other capacities to develop, to stretch one's abilities and effectiveness in sharing dharma, in expressing dharma, in opening up to dharma. So just to memorize gate, gate, paragate, that's a traditional tool of bodhisattvas. But I think it has something to do with this thing of taking on one's kind of intentionally celebrating taking on these realms where we do have these ruts and routines and unconscious rituals.

[59:53]

some of the sutras, there are lists of gathas and of mindfulness practices and walking. So in this center too, we walk through the door with the foot closest to the side of the door. And so just to walk through a door, you know, you can make that a mindfulness tool. Anytime you walk through a door is an opportunity to remember the Dharma or take a breath or... settle back down or whatever. And one can do that with, so this is one kind of way of practicing in this magical realm, is just to take on various things. So this isn't exactly what the goddess is pointing out to Shariputra, but I don't know, it came up for me in this, that we have so many assumptions about who we are, and part of that is wired into us on a much deeper than conceptual level. on this level of the things we chant or the things that we assume about the world.

[61:01]

And in terms of the Shariputra and the goddess, as I said last week, to imagine it in terms of race. I think that's another example where we can feel like really unsettled if suddenly, imagine this scene with, let's say, a white person and a black person, and suddenly they're switched, or an Asian person and an American person. I don't know if this is still prevalent, but there was the idea for a while that only Asians could be enlightened, that you have to really find an Asian teacher because they're really much more inscrutable. Anyway, we have all these ideas about the world, and this is really about letting go of that. I went with this section here about Charyaputra and the goddess, and then Matt was talking about Genjokon.

[62:10]

In Genjokon, there's a section about a delusion being going forward into and kind of grasping onto myriad things and then when we just forget ourselves then beings come forward and we just kind of enter into their world. You know, it's kind of interesting that it's like with the goddess Shariputra, and the goddess is kind of, it's easy to, I find it easy, at first I find it easy to discount it as being kind of a fairy tale that, you know, he's talking about Shariputra actually, Shariputra actually becoming a woman. But actually, we do this all the time when we project things onto each other. And the ability to, you know, to accept someone else's projection graciously and to work with it is kind of a magical reality.

[63:12]

And to to fight a projection, whether it's a projection that we think or allege is being projected onto us, or a projection that we're doing onto someone else, if we fight that, that becomes real painful. And it doesn't have a magical feeling to it. Yeah, and that's also the opportunity, the greatest opportunity to see oneself. to study oneself. In that situation? Yeah, so it's said in traditional teaching is that when you're wrongfully accused, that's when you realize yourself. When you're accused of something you didn't do, that's when all of the self that we think is the self comes up in defense of the self that's being unfairly attacked, accused. That can also happen when praise is lavished upon us, too.

[64:14]

Yeah, and we can grab on that or we can say, oh, is that me? You must be mistaken. Yeah, praise is called a thief in some of the old texts. A thief of what? A thief of what? Just a thief. It's stealing our practice. because then we can grab onto some self that's being praised. So, shall we go on to another chapter or does anybody else have anything else to say? We could do that. I started to read chapter eight though and gee, there's some good stuff in there. It's a shame to skip it over. But then we may never get to chapter 10. And here I had all these ideas about what things we should be doing. Who votes for chapter?

[65:21]

This is the way we've been functioning the last couple of days. Votes for chapter eight, votes for chapter nine. We've been choosing between different translations. Who wants to jump to chapter nine right now? Nobody. Nobody wants to hear about the great silence of Amalekirti? Chapter eight, who wants to go to chapter eight? Maybe nobody cares. Uh-huh. Okay. There's been a lot of opinions. Yeah. Can I make a last comment about chapter seven? We can keep talking about chapter seven until the end of the class as far as I'm concerned. There are just a couple of things that are stuck in my head. This one phrase, still, all things are neither made nor changed. And also, walking by our new pond, which has some calligraphy on it.

[66:21]

That's wonderful. Yeah, that's really stuck with me. I think it's, birth and death is serious business. Life is fleeting, gone. Awake, awake everyone. Don't waste this life. So I find it really interesting that Buddhism says both of these things at once. It says it's one thing, all things are neither made nor changed. Any sort of personal agency is highly dubious, if not outright delusion. And yet, what the Han is saying sounds like, act upon your agency, take it upon yourself to awaken yourself. And the Buddha's last word is, strive on rediligently. These two things in one, level seem to be quite opposed, but also that this helps me look at the difference between ordinary reality and inconceivable reality as being also the same, that in ways both of those things are the same thing. All things are neither made nor changed, but still, wake up.

[67:26]

And to me that means that I try to do something to wake up, or think that I'm trying to do something to wake up. You could turn that a little further. Because things are neither made nor changed, don't waste time. Wake up. To me, the two things are... Of course, we can see how they seem to be saying something different or opposite, almost even. But there's a way... Can you also see the way in which the fact that things are neither made nor changed, the fact that everything is unproduced, that it's all just this flow of the way it is, means that we should not waste time and value this life and wake up. Yeah. It means endless suffering, I think. Well, yeah, if you are continually stuck in thinking that things are made or changed.

[68:30]

Yeah, that thing about, something about the way you were saying that, Shariputra says, I neither made it nor did I change it. I don't think he's saying there is no change, but he's talking, so it's not that there is, just that one part of how you were saying that. All things are neither made nor changed, it's the next line. Okay, all things are neither made nor changed. Which doesn't necessarily mean that things don't change. I'm talking about things as if there's some sort of permanent substance that then goes through this transformation. And so it's like Nagarjuna saying that interdependence or emptiness makes possible the world. If it wasn't for the fact that things weren't permanent substances then there wouldn't be a world. Nothing could change. Because by definition there would be a permanent substance. It's not that there's not change, it's that things don't change.

[69:45]

Yeah, the language becomes so tricky, but the way things are is change, and that doesn't change. That's one way to say it. But maybe what it's pointing to is, I don't change things. Right, so there's the aspect of agency here. And is there, does it continue with that in Chapter 9, the attainments, the attainment of the tolerance of the birthlessness of things? That's what we're talking about. There's the entrance into non-duality. Well, let's jump to Chapter 9, because that was a great segue. Because intolerance is the key, it seems, of this. So, what's happening in Chapter 9, In a way, this story in Chapter 9 is pretty straightforward and we can tell it in one quick koan or we could study each one of the examples that are given at great length.

[70:49]

What's happening in chapter nine is that Vimalakirti introduces this kind of topic, this discussion or seminar, issue, good sirs, I wonder, anyway, please explain how the bodhisattvas enter the dharma door of non-duality. So another way to talk about the ways in which we get hung up is in terms of our attachments to duality. the ways in which we see things as separate, the way we see things as opposed to each other. So another way of talking about emptiness is non-duality, and Dogen talks about it all the time and kind of plays with it in this way. So all of these different bodhisattvas, and most of them are not known or noted bodhisattvas, and Watson has the names in English and Thurman in Sanskrit, but they all give examples of what was the key for them into entering into the gate of non-duality, of this kind of openness, non-dual awareness.

[72:06]

And they start with dualities. So there's all these different dualities and how they actually overcame that apparent Dichotomy. So the very first one is this example. Production and destruction are two. What is not produced and does not occur cannot be destroyed. So this is going back to this idea of things being in essence like apparitions. Production and destruction are two, so we usually think of things being produced and being destroyed. This is our idea of change, right? But what is not produced and does not occur cannot be destroyed. So this is exactly this, nothing is produced and nothing is made, nothing is changed, nothing is destroyed. Another way to talk about that is specifically about production and destruction is that everything just is in change.

[73:12]

So if we talk about one thing and separate it out, that's a defilement in a sense. Because everything is in total interrelationship, actually. You can't talk about one thing as if it existed separate from the whole universe, actually. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe somebody can. Can you tell me an example of something, anyone, that's a separate thing? Try it. Breaks the rules? Is that what you're saying? Something that breaks the rules? No, just a separate thing. That's separate. That is, in and of itself, something. By itself. Yeah, that would break the rules, right. But, you know, can you imagine something like that? What would it be? I don't know if you can imagine without having to try to do it because it's connected to your imagination.

[74:14]

Good, yeah. Right. Right, right. So that's what he's saying. What is not produced and does not occur cannot be destroyed. How can anything be destroyed? It's not produced and it doesn't occur as a separate thing. It can't be destroyed. Everything is changing but it's not destroyed. Thus the attainment of the tolerance of the birthlessness of things is the entrance into non-duality. So this very first Bodhisattva's example is one that's dear to this sutra because of this this practice of patience, the attainment of patience, of the birthlessness of things, the unfabricated quality of things, the unconditioned nature of things, which is one of the definitions of wisdom in some sutras, is this particular tolerance or patience. So for this bodhisattva, that attainment was the entrance into non-duality. When this bodhisattva dharma vikarvana, maybe somebody can check with me.

[75:21]

The very first one. Okay. So that bodhisattva's dharma freedom, vikarvana, yeah. So this bodhisattva dharma freedom had this attainment and then entered non-duality. I saw a hand somewhere. I want to ask you, this particular dharma, the non-tolerance of the birthlessness of dharmas, is a key issue that arises again in the Wayen and in the Lotus Sutra. And I'm wondering, this is an early Mahayana Sutra, is this the first occurrence that we Well, we don't know which sutras were written down first, actually. This is an early Mahayana sutra, but I've just been studying the Ten Stages Sutra, which is probably the earliest chapter of the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[76:29]

And in the section on the stage associated with wisdom, there's been a great deal of attention on this. And that sutra probably predates this. But we don't really know. I mean, the Indians didn't care about keeping track of historical records, and to what extent they did, it was all destroyed when they burnt down Nalanda, when the Islamic invaders burnt down Nalanda. That's okay. Anyway, so this is the first Bodhisattva's description of entrance into non-duality. Let's just read a few of them. Why don't we go around the room and just read, just take one Bodhisattva at a time. And let's look at some of these entries into non-duality. Karen? I'll start with the second one then. The Bodhisattva Sri Ganda declared, I and mine are two. If there is no presumption of a self, there will be no possessiveness. Thus the absence of presumption is the entrance into non-duality.

[77:32]

So this is the absence of presumption of a self. Self and possessiveness is seen as a duality. I and mine. Right. This is, I'm me, and this is my book. This is a basic duality. We've all got me and my stuff. It's real deep. I heard of an exercise that you can try and do and not use these two words in a sentence for five minutes. It's really, really hard. So I or mine? I be mine. my will, or my desires, or my brain, or my consciousness. It's kind of interesting, because you've run out of things to say. Well, you could just say will, desire, consciousness. I like to say this will, this desire. OK. So that's already kind of, so that's one side is to not identify with, but then the other side is to confess.

[78:36]

And part of this, I think, is that you confess that I actually do think it's my will, as if it could be your separate will that isn't influenced by Neil. It must have influenced your will at some point, right? I own it. It's so funny. It's like I'm separate from my will. I mean, we always chop up reality depending on what's convenient at the time. Sometimes I'm this whole body and mind. Sometimes I'm just the mind. Sometimes I'm one aspect of the mind. So this bodhisattva looked very closely at this issue of I, me, mine, and gave up, found an absence of presumption about this. So if there's no presumption of self, there's no possessiveness. If we don't assume that there's a separate me, then there's nothing to possess. So this is quite powerful, you know, to imagine that state and sustain such a state.

[79:41]

Or how long would a bodhisattva sustain that anyway? We can imagine that would be a pretty cool entry into non-duality. Sonia, would you read one for us? Sri Gupta declared, defilement and purification are two. When there is thorough knowledge of defilement, then there will be no conceit about purification. Path leading to the complete conquest of all conceit is the entrance into non-duality. Can you talk about that a little bit? Defilement and purification. Yeah, they're two. They're separate. They're different. This was very powerful, particularly in this context of this early Mahayana Sutra, and again, Shariputra and those Bodhisattvas were practicing trying to get rid of all their defilements, to let go of all desires, of all anger, of all the kleshas, I mean, it's a technical term, of all of the stains on one's personality, and to become pure, to be absent of all defilements, to be pure.

[81:00]

And so to try and purify is, in a sense, a very basic traditional mode of spiritual practice, to try and purify. And it's not just in Buddhism. Most of Japanese spirituality, Shinto, is about purification and many other traditions. And we all want to get rid of defilements. We want to be good, you know, nice and pure. Is there a knowledge of defilement? Uh-huh. Sounds like, I don't know. The translation that we use here is something like to study your karma. Right. To sit thoroughly in the middle of your karma. To really study the self. This is also about confession. To really avow our past harmful karma is the new term. Gee, to imagine completely conquering the conceit, to have no conceit about purification, to not have any desire to purify oneself or the world or anything, to have no idea about purifying, for some people that would be extremely powerful.

[82:20]

There's only one way to thoroughly know the file name. experience it? Yeah, so this... Well, the Likerti did. I mean, he went into the bars and the brothels and... But do you think he thoroughly experienced, thoroughly knew of defilement or was he just visiting? Just passing through. Well, there's the Genja Koan line by Dogen that deluded people are deluded about enlightenment. Enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions. That's a paraphrase, but to really see purification as other than defilement. So there are various traditional practice strategies within Buddhism, too, of getting rid of defilements. And when things get really serious, you can just, Rev was talking about this in the last session, to really crush your defilements, you know, to really squash, you know,

[83:24]

But then the other way is just to let go of them, or just to study them and allow them to let go of themselves. Anyway, this bodhisattva entered nonduality by conquering any conceit. I think the sense of study here is that it's like intimacy. your nature or why you've been doing, why you're stuck or that you've made that you didn't want to do it? Right, sure. It seems like you can intentionally pursue desire. You don't have to pursue it to study it. Right. I think what Charlie is saying is that pursuing it and trying to hold it, trying to do something, trying to manipulate, grasp it, is a way of avoiding actually being intimate with it. So it's the acquiescent mind is what you have when you... It's funny because there's a kind of irony in this to me because it talks about the conquest of conceit.

[85:07]

And I think that's a bit of a conceit there, but let's assume that this bodhisattva actually did that. The other way is just to acquiesce to to realize the acquiescent mind which then lets go of conceits about purification. We could look at...well, that's... That's true. Thank you. I apologize, Srikuta Bodhisattva. Right. Does somebody have Watson there on this one? It says, perception and non-perception form a dualism. Oh wait, no. Okay, next one. Defilement and purity form a dualism. But if one sees into the true nature of defilement, it is without the marks of purity, but leads into the extinction of all marks.

[86:09]

In this way, one enters the gate of non-dualism. Actually, this chapter is fairly different between Watson and Thurman. I looked at that. There are a number of places where it's quite different. That was extinction as opposed to conquest? Yeah. It leads into the extinction of all Marx. Which is a little less personal than conquest. Yeah. The extinction of all Marx. That's kind of interesting, too. Yeah, it's actually—it is interesting and it is different. This is from the Tibetan version, this is from the Chinese version. In terms of issues of translation, not only is the English translation different, but maybe the Tibetans translated it one way and the Chinese translated it another way. And in this translation conference we're doing, we have to consider sometimes whether the original Sanskrit meaning, the Chinese meaning,

[87:11]

the meaning in Japanese, and sometimes they're all a little different. So which way do we translate it into English? And fortunately, we have some very good scholars there who can tell us more or less what it meant in those different contexts. The point is, how do we practice with this? What's useful to us? How does this help us to awaken to our own deepest self and realize that overflowing radiance and joy and love for all the illusory beings. Kevin, would you like to be the next illusory being and be just another bodhisattva? I'm blanking. Bhadra Jyotish, maybe?

[88:14]

Anybody in Sanskrit? and no mental intensity. Thus the absence of mental intensity is the entrance into non-duality. That's interesting. He got rid of both distraction and attention. Do you see how this is a big issue though? Especially for those of us who are paying attention to what is our mental spiritual state. We feel we're either distracted or we're paying attention now, we're attentive, kind of calm and my mind is clear. Yes? Oh good, please. I think this is the same paragraph. Okay. In a different translation. The Bodhisattva Unblinking said, perception and non-perception form dualism.

[89:19]

But if dharmas are not perceived, then there is nothing to take a hold of. There will be no grasping, no rejection, no action, no volition in this way. That makes a lot more sense in some way. That's Watson? Yes. It's from the Chinese, yeah. So if distraction is equated with no perception, what are the two again? Perception and no perception? Perception and non-perception form a dualism. Yeah, so maybe, so non-perception as, distraction as non-perception of something and attention as perception of something. But there's a thing that is the object of that. It says when there's no thing imagined. So then perception and non-perception is irrelevant. So this is getting to it on quite a There's a kind of spiritual mental exercise involved in that too.

[90:29]

So one can look in front of you and not see table, microphone, people, chairs, but just see color or space or not grasp onto things visually. There are those kinds of perceptual exercises that one can do and it sounds like that's at least one interpretation of the practice he was doing to arrive at non-thingness of which to perceive or not perceive. And that would produce a certain, apparently produced a certain entry into non-duality. Does that make sense? So anyway, there are, there's this list of various dualities that all the bodhisattvas, that these different bodhisattvas report. And some of them are quite wonderful and interesting and worthy of meditation and study. And you can take each one of them as a meditation instruction.

[91:32]

And it's a little bit after nine, so we could either tell the story of the climax of this now or wait two weeks. Is everybody willing to wait two weeks? Next week there is no class. The week after that will be our last class and we'll start with the end of this chapter of the entry into non-duality and Manjushree and Damalakirti's response. And we can either spend the entire class on that or we can go on to chapter 10 and if you Would like to read chapter 10, you're welcome to. Charlie, can you read this?

[92:39]

It's the page that I wrote upside down on. Great. May this merit extend universally to all, so that we, together with all living beings, realize the Buddha way. May this merit extend universally to all, so that we, together with all living beings, realize the Buddha way. Be. Let's do the four vows now. I'll do the, do it and you can recite after me or we'll do it together afterwards. Living beings are numberless. Living beings are numberless. I vow to free them. I vow to free them.

[93:41]

Delusions are inexhaustible. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. I vow to enter them. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. I vow to realize it. Oh, you're right. It's right. It was infinite. Living beings are infinite. I knew there was one change. The original text says living beings. Shujo, it's not sentient beings actually there's a different word for sentient beings and we had a long discussion so that took four you'll notice it's not so different from what we what you're used to chanting those of you who are who are brainwashed and indoctrinated in the chanting the four vows it's not very different it took us four hours to come up with that not very different though

[94:59]

When are we going to start incorporating these new versions? Oh, who knows. I don't know. I'm just memorizing them now. I mean, if I should stop… Oh, no, no. Keep going. No, no. Learn the old ones first. It'll make it more… It's like new technology, you know. We'll give you the upgrade later on, you know. Thanks.

[95:16]

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