Good evening. I'm talking this month about the Lotus Sutra in two weeks, two weeks from tonight. Gene Reeves is going to be here as a guest speaker. His new translation of the Lotus Sutra is quite wonderful and he's a pretty well-known scholar, lives in Japan now most of the time, used to teach at UC Divinity School. Anyway, he'll be here to talk in two weeks about the Lotus Sutra and I'm talking, giving some background talks about the Lotus Sutra starting yesterday and continuing tonight. The Lotus Sutra is arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, in China, and even more so in Japan. It's usually associated in Japan with the Nichiren school, which chants the name of

[01:03]

the Lotus Sutra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or homage to the Lotus Sutra. But it was also the main, the foremost scripture of the Tendai school, out of which came not just Nichiren, but Pure Land and Zen, and Dogen, founder of the Seto Zen tradition we follow here. Also Hakuin, who was the creator of the modern Rinzai Zen practice, both highly esteem the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra is kind of a funny text in a lot of ways. I want to talk about one particular story from it tonight. But the chant we just did about the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha, I'm going to talk about more next Monday night. You can see from that chant that this is a text that appeals to the imagination that is not in tune with our usual Western literal way of thinking.

[02:11]

In some ways, we think of Zen as kind of down-to-earth, just sit and face the wall, face yourself, very matter-of-fact, study the self, see how it is to be present in this body and mind, very kind of practical, empirical teaching in a way, and practice. That's true. That is an important side of our practice. The Lotus Sutra challenges us, though, to bring our imagination to our practice and to our life. And the Lotus Sutra is particularly challenging in terms of presenting a view of what Buddha is, what awakening is, that doesn't fit with our usual way of thinking. Maybe even more so now in modern times than it was challenging in medieval times for Dogen. And yet, in other ways, it actually

[03:15]

fits very well with modern physics and modern environmental thought. Anyway, one of these main stories in the Sutra that I want to talk about tonight has to do with a Buddha that shows up in the Lotus Sutra from a very distant place and time. So, the Lotus Sutra is supposedly one of the last teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha on Vulture Peak in northern India. And it's in Chapter 11, and he's been, well, there are many, I mentioned yesterday, some of the many parables that are in the Lotus Sutra. There are many stories, and they're challenging stories to us. But this one particularly, as the Buddha was teaching, another Buddha appears. So, I'll

[04:20]

read a little bit from G. Reeves' translation. At that time, a stupa of the seven precious materials, 500 leagues high and 250 leagues wide and deep, sprang up from the earth in front of the Buddha and stood in mid-air. It was decorated with all kinds of valuable things. And it goes on to describe some of those in the ways that the Mahayana Sutras do. But first of all, a little bit about what the idea of a stupa is. A stupa is a place where relics of a Buddha are placed. And there's some question about this now, but at least until recently, there was some idea that Mahayana Buddhism, the Bodhisattva Way, started around stupas where many laypeople came as pilgrims. So, one of the main practices in

[05:23]

all of Asian Buddhism, actually, is to go to sacred places, to go visit great sites of natural beauty, to go visit mountains that have spiritual power, to go to the places where there are great historical temples or where the founding teachers of Buddhism taught. And often at these places, there is a stupa. And when Cos was here a few months ago, he talked about King Ashoka, the great Indian king who sent relics of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni throughout Asia. And so, there's some of those in California now. I had a chance to see some of them. Who knows if they're actually bones from the historical Buddha from 2,500 years ago. One of the temples I lived next to in Kyoto for a couple of years had a stupa, actually in the form of a pagoda. So, many of you have seen pictures of pagodas. That's the East Asian version of a stupa. But this was a stupa or a pagoda for Manjushri,

[06:29]

the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who is sitting in front of Shakyamuni on our altar. And of course, he's not a historical person. So, this idea of a place where something of the Buddha is present as a place to pilgrimage to is very important in Asian Buddhism. So, in this part of the sutra, a stupa, a very large, beautiful, precious stupa springs up from the earth in front of Shakyamuni Buddha and stands in midair. Then, skipping a little bit, from the midst of this treasure stupa came a loud voice of praise saying, well done, well done, world-honored Shakyamuni. For the sake of the Great Assembly, you are able to teach the wondrous Dharma Flower Sutra of Great Impartial Wisdom, the Dharma by which Bodhisattvas are taught and which Buddhists protect and keep in mind.

[07:30]

It is just as you say, world-honored Shakyamuni. All that you say is true. So, one of the Bodhisattvas hanging out in this assembly, listening to the Buddha teach the Lotus Sutra, asks, where did this great, wonderful treasure stupa come from? Why did it spring out of the earth? And what is this voice? So, the Buddha says, in this treasure stupa, there is the whole body of a Tathagata, of a Buddha. Once in the past, innumerable tens of millions of billions of countless worlds to the east, in a land named Treasure Purity, there was a Buddha named Abundant Treasures. When that Buddha was originally practicing the Bodhisattva way, he made a great vow saying, after I become a Buddha and then pass away into extinction,

[08:32]

if there is a place in any land in the universe where the Dharma Flower Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, is taught, in order that I may listen to it, my stupa will appear there, bearing testimony to the sutra and praising it, saying, well done. And then the Buddha goes on to say that this came to pass, that this Buddha named Abundant Treasures became a Buddha and passed away. And now, whenever the Lotus Sutra is preached, he goes to, he shows up in his stupa to hear it and to praise the Buddha for preaching it. This is told right in this text called the Lotus Sutra. So there's something very, very funny going on here. And I think it has something to do with something deep about our practice. So I'll come to that, but I want to continue the story a little. This Bodhisattva who was in attendance on Shakyamuni Buddha says,

[09:36]

World Honored One, we want to see this Buddha's body. So this stupa is floating in midair and Shakyamuni tells them that this is the stupa, the relics of the Buddha, Abundant Treasures, from the ancient past. So one of the points about the story is just that in these, in this Mahayana world, in the world of a Bodhisattva, there are many Buddhas. There are Buddhas in all directions, in different world systems, different galaxies, and there are Buddhas in the past, there will be Buddhas in the future. So prior to the story in this Lotus Sutra, the Buddha has been telling some of his disciples, Jim, in the future, in such and such a world, in the distant, distant future, you will be the Buddha so-and-so, and so forth. So this idea of Buddhas in many places, this idea of Buddhas in many worlds, throughout space and time, as we chant. So the Buddha responded to the Bodhisattva saying, who had said that we want to see this Buddha's

[10:44]

body, Shakyamuni Buddha said, this Buddha, Abundant Treasures, has taken a profound vow, saying, when my treasure stupa appears in the presence of one of the Buddhas, so that I can hear the Dharma Flower Sutra, if someone wants me to show my body to the four groups, this is monks and nuns and laymen and laywomen, let the Buddhas who are embodiments of that Buddha and are preaching the Dharma in the worlds of the ten directions return together and assemble in one place, then my body will appear. So okay, here we have another aspect of Buddha, that according to this idea and this Lotus Sutra, the Buddha who is preaching the Lotus Sutra, in this case, Shakyamuni Buddha, has various Buddhas who are embodiments of that Buddha, embodiment bodies, emanation bodies, who are in many worlds, sharing the Dharma, helping beings to enter into the path of awakening.

[11:48]

And so this Bodhisattva says to the Buddha, World Honored One, we would also like to see the Buddhas who embody you and worship and make offerings to them. And part of how these Mahayana Sutras work is there's all of this flowery imagery, and I'm just skipping some of that to give you the kind of basic story. But here, the Buddha then emitted a beam of light from his tathagata, emitted a beam of light from his tuft of white hair, which is part of what a Buddha has, sometimes called the third eye, and emits a beam of light, immediately making visible all the Buddhas in five million billion myriads of lands to the east, as many as sands of the Ganges. All those lands have crystals for their ground and were adorned with jeweled trees and jeweled robes, and it goes on to describe how wonderful they are. Then each of the Buddhas in the ten directions, who were emanations, embodiments of Shakyamuni

[12:50]

Buddha, spoke to their multitudes of Bodhisattvas saying, good sons and daughters, now we have to go to Shakyamuni Buddha's world and make offerings to the treasure of the great tathagata abundant treasure. So there's a long section there which describes all these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas showing up to make offerings to abundant treasure Buddha. Skipping ahead, then Shakyamuni Buddha, seeing the Buddhas who embodied him, assembled together, each seated on a lion throne and hearing that those Buddhas all wanted the treasure store to be opened, immediately got up from his seat and went up into the air. Sometimes maybe this sort of happens in the Zen. Somebody kind of lifts up off their seat a little bit. But anyway, all four groups stood up, put their palms together and gazed at the Buddha in rapt attention. Wouldn't you? Then Shakyamuni Buddha opened the door of the stupa of the seven precious materials with the fingers of his right

[13:52]

hand. From this stupa there came a great sound, like the withdrawing of the bar when the gate to a great city is opened. Suddenly the whole congregation saw the Buddha abundant treasures on a lion's seat in the treasure stupa with his whole body in one piece, sitting as though he were in meditation. And they heard him say, well done, well done Shakyamuni Buddha. You have preached this Dharma flower sutra gladly, which is what I have come to this place to hear. And it goes on that all of the assembly were made offerings and were very excited about this, of course, as you can imagine. And then abundant treasures Buddha offered half a seat within the treasure stupa to Shakyamuni Buddha saying, Shakyamuni Buddha, take the seat. And then Shakyamuni Buddha entered the stupa, took half the seat and sat with folded legs. Seeing the two Buddhas sitting with folded

[14:55]

legs on the lion's seat of the stupa of the seven precious merit materials, those in the great assembly then thought, the Buddhas are sitting high and far away. It would be good if the Tathagatas would use their divine powers to enable all of us to be up in the air. Immediately Shakyamuni Buddha used his divine powers to bring all of the great assembly to where he was up in the air. In a loud voice he addressed all the four groups saying, who was able to teach the wonderful Dharma flower sutra everywhere throughout this world? Now indeed is the time. Before long, the Buddha Tathagata Shakyamuni himself will enter nirvana so that it will last forever. The Buddha wants to entrust this wonderful Dharma flower sutra to someone. So that leads into another part of the story. But okay, what's going on here? Well, one thing is that you have these two Buddhas sitting next to each other sharing their seat. Sometimes you see images of Buddhas where there are two Buddhas sitting together.

[15:57]

You may see that sometimes. That's about this sutra. That's about the story of the Buddha and the Buddha Shakyamuni, our Buddha, and this ancient Buddha, abundant treasures who shows up whenever the Lotus Sutra is preached. It says so right in the Lotus Sutra. There's many ways in which this story is very weird. But just the first part of it is that here's two Buddhas sitting, sharing their seat. And this is sort of a model in our Zen tradition for the teacher sharing his seat with the shuso, the head monk in a practice period, or in Dharma transmission. It's related to that too. This idea of Buddhas sharing their seat and teaching together comes from this story in the Lotus Sutra. And the other part is that they're floating in midair. And through most of the... I forget now if it's chapter 22 or somewhere in

[17:03]

there. But for most of the Lotus Sutra, the whole thing happens with everyone floating in midair. So the rest of the sutra proceeds with the Buddha preaching from his seat next to abundant treasures. At some point, he comes down from there and abundant treasures goes away. So this is called the assembly in midair. And a large section of the sutra happens like that. So, again, this is not our usual way of thinking about the teaching or the practice or even the Bodhisattva way. This is very challenging to our imagination. And yet, again, this sutra was the most important in Japan, maybe less so later on for the Pure Land School. But Dogen treasured it and refers to it often. Hakuin called it the king of all sutras in the Minzai tradition. The other part of it, the part of it that I want to talk about most though, and we can talk about

[18:07]

these images of this other Buddha and the two Buddhas sitting together in the whole assembly floating in midair. Well, I'll just say about that. Shall I? Well, okay, I started to. There are times when I'm sitting here and just enjoying the assembly sitting in this wonderful still new zendo. And it feels like we're kind of, you know, cushions floating. Of course, we have a floor, fortunately, for us to do kin-en on. But anyway, there's a way in which our presumption that this floor is really here is just that. It's part of the conventional world that we rely on in our usual way of thinking. Anyway, putting that aside, what does it mean that there is this Buddha who was awakened, who was followed the Bodhisattva way and was awakened and became a Buddha long, long ago in the distant past in a galaxy far, far away.

[19:11]

And he always shows up to hear the Lotus Sutra. And it says so right in the Lotus Sutra. So this text has this very strange self-referential or self-reflexive quality. There are other sutras and other texts, spiritual texts, that talk about the text itself and say, you know, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras also say that it's good to remember this text and copy it and share it with others. The Lotus Sutra goes, you know, does that in a way that's far beyond all the other texts, though. Again, the Lotus Sutra is taught, a large part of the Lotus Sutra is Buddha saying, well, who's going to keep alive this Lotus Sutra in the distant future, evil age? Which, you know, many of us who love the Lotus Sutra identify with this,

[20:14]

oh, this is the time. Nichiren thought he was a reincarnation of one of the bodhisattvas I'll talk about next week. But what is going on in this text that is sort of talking about itself as, you know, that which needs to be kept alive? And part of what needs to be kept alive is it's talking about itself. To me, it's a little bit, maybe some of you know the picture by Escher where there's two hands with pens and they're each drawing the other hand. It's a little bit like that. This abundant treasures Buddha comes from a distant land in the future to hear this sutra, which talks about him coming from a distant land in the future, to hear the Lotus Sutra whenever it's preached, in which it talks about him coming to hear the Lotus Sutra whenever it's preached.

[21:18]

There's something very strange that goes on in the Lotus Sutra. Now, it's not some scholars have said, well, there's no real teaching there. It's just a preamble to something that never happens. Well, there's a teaching in this sutra, but it's not something that we can so easily get a hold of. Of course, the image of the lotus itself is that out of the mud grows this beautiful, wonderful lotus. And out of the mud of our karma, out of the difficulty of greed, hate and delusion, out of the suffering of our lives and our troubled world, this is where awakening blooms. This lotus is a very powerful image. And then here's this ancient Buddha in a stupa, you know, he's sort of passed away. And yet he speaks. He says, good job, Shakyamuni, you're preaching the Lotus Sutra. And I always show up whenever you do that.

[22:22]

A lot of ways of thinking about that. But I want to point to something that, to me, relates to what our Zazen practice is about. So I talked yesterday about skillful means or modes or the ways in which in some way all of the different practices we might do, not just our formal sitting meditation, but taking care of family and friends, taking care of our work situation, washing the dishes, taking out the garbage. Everything we do is a practice, this part can be a practice, this part of this single purpose of the Buddha to help everyone enter into awakening.

[23:34]

And yet here, there's a kind of way in which each thing that happens in and of itself is valuable. Shakyamuni preaching the Lotus Sutra is valuable. And this Buddha abundant treasure shows up to testify to that. So this is from a very fine Buddhist scholar named William O'Fleury, he says, the narratives of the Lotus Sutra are not a means to an end beyond themselves. Their concrete mode of expression is not chaff to be dispensed with in order to attain a more abstract, rational, or spiritual truth. The Lotus Sutra is unequivocal on this point. One may seek in every one of the 10 directions, but will find no mode other than the Buddha's. This accounts for what may seem to be an inordinate amount of praise directed by the sutra toward itself. It also implies that within the sutra, there is an unmistakable philosophical move,

[24:40]

opposite to Plato's in the Republic, a move to affirm the complete reality of the world. Of concrete phenomena, in spite of the fact that they are impermanent. So here's this stupa of this ancient Buddha abundant treasure showing up praising the Lotus Sutra, which is this text in which this ancient Buddha abundant treasure shows up to praise the Lotus Sutra. And in some ways, this points to a kind of radical non-dualism that's at the heart of our practice, and at the heart of Dogen's teaching. This is not about something else. The Lotus Sutra itself is the Lotus Sutra talking about the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra itself is the Lotus Sutra talking about the Lotus Sutra. Our zazen refers to itself. It's not about something else. Of course, everything that

[25:44]

you might think of as other than zazen is present on your cushion, on your sitting. And yet that's the point. It's not other than just this. Can we find a way of being, a way of seeing, a way of inhaling and exhaling that is just, hooray, this is zazen? Which is saying, hooray, this is zazen, as the heart of our zazen. It's not about something else. It's just this. Our life itself. Just this, isn't it? So in the example of the Lotus Sutra, which again, you know, is filled with these many stories and really challenges our imagination. We can't quite grasp, you know, this Buddha showing up to praise the sutra, which is about the Buddha showing up to praise the sutra. It's elusive, and yet it's not about something else. It's just the sutra.

[26:50]

This is why in Nichiren Buddhism, for example, their practice is just to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Homage to this wondrous dharma, blossom, Lotus Sutra. Dogen praised the Lotus Sutra extravagantly and cited it more than any other sutra. And his way of practicing that was just sit. And his way of practicing that was just sit. Like abundant treasures in a stupa. Or like Shakyamuni Buddha, welcoming abundant treasures. Just sit. Here we are. Now that may seem like it's irrelevant to, you know, the suffering of the world. The point of this is that this is the heart of all the modes.

[27:54]

And it includes all the modes. So all of the things that each of you do in your life, as expressions of your life, as your life itself, they're not separate from your life. They are your life. On Monday night, when you come here, it's sazen. But tomorrow during the day, when you're, whatever your regular task is, that's it. Can we say yes to all of it? Good job, Shakyamuni. Good work. Yes, this is the Lotus Sutra. There are probably many other ways to understand and imagine aspects of what is going on in this story. And, you know, it's weird and strange and challenging and not, you know, something that,

[29:00]

well, anyway, it's not like any other spiritual text that I know of. You know, chapter 11 through chapter, whatever it is, 22, the whole assembly, the whole sutra is happening, floating in midair. And Shakyamuni is sitting in this old stupa next to this ancient Buddha, who apparently, you know, I don't know if he's mummified or whatever, it's his relics. And yet he speaks and says, good job, Shakyamuni. So this is what this Lotus Sutra is about, that it's not somewhere else. The meaning of the Lotus Sutra is this. Of course, I invite you, when Gene Reeves is here in a couple of weeks, to ask him what he would say is the meaning of the Lotus Sutra. And we'll be sitting next to each other. We'll be doing the talk.

[30:06]

So, I'll stop now, but I invite your comments, questions, responses, imaginings. Oh, guess who's up? Well done. You know, I'm a sutra jockey. Most people know this by now. But the Lotus Sutra has been a tough one for me because of this praising of itself, praising of itself, but, yeah, now I like it. Now I'm like, oh, now I see what, you know, it's because you can read this and chant it and be involved in it for years. It's this kind of, you know, teetering on the edge of it. So, you know. When I came in today, I was offered a sack of potatoes. Ah, great.

[31:07]

To enjoy for your seat. Good luck. And I offered some illegally burned CD shirts in return. But I love this offering constantly. Like something cool happens and everybody's like running to offer jewels, incense, flowers. I wish we did this. You know, in Asia you actually do. You can buy tons of jasmine wreaths and tons of garlands that they're selling on the street because you just, like, offer them up in a variety of places. And I think maybe we do this for each other. Yeah, I like the unhesitating quality of it. You know, I'm not even ashamed, you know. It's like I got a sack of teals. They were purple. It's like, all right. Yeah, making offerings is the heart of this too, I guess. Yes. And, you know, there are half a dozen other good translations, but I really, you know, I was amazed when I started reading Jean's translation.

[32:11]

Before I knew whose it was, I was asked to look at it and I thought we had plenty of good translations. But anyway, I recommend it. Jim? I was trying to partially come up with the memorandum of some totally separate Christian tradition post-perfect, where there's a notion that God is there when he's not there. That the hidden God, the God of hide and seek, who reveals himself when he wants to and the rest of the time you're out of luck.

[33:15]

And here there is this notion, at least, that God is there when he's okay or not. That Buddha is there or not as he assumes him and as soon as the person is leaving. Yeah, part of the idea of skillful modes is that Buddha and Bodhisattvas appear in whatever way is helpful to different kinds of beings. And then there's this thing about time that's in here too, that here's this Buddha from this ancient past showing up again and again whenever the Lotus Sutra is preached. And going back to what Hokusai was saying about having trouble with this Lotus, with reading this text, I think most Zen students do at first.

[34:21]

And then I remember, and I'll talk about this Sunday after next, the time when half of the assembly at San Francisco Zen Center walked out of the Buddha Hall in the middle of morning service because of the Lotus Sutra. So this is challenging. The great, great Rinzai Master Hakuin, who founded modern Rinzai Zen, when he was a young monk, read the Lotus Sutra and said, oh, this is just fantasies, it's not important. And then after he'd had many satori's, awakenings, he, you know, in his 50s I think, read it again and said, oh yes, now I get it, this is the king of the sutra. So I think a lot of Buddhist texts are like that. We struggle with them. And it's okay if you don't, you don't have to like the Lotus Sutra, you don't even have to read it. But I wanted this month, in preparation for Jeans coming, to kind of introduce you to

[35:23]

some aspects of it and, you know, pick up on it as you wish. Other comments? It's okay, you don't have to, you know, like any particular text. Yes? I personally confess that I started reading the Lotus Sutra like three times and never finished it. But is Shakyamuni the creator, like the original author of this sutra? Because I thought when you were talking about that ancient Buddha that, you know, that he was teaching it in his lifetime, and it's obviously been taught in the past. There's a formula for sutras.

[36:25]

They begin, I don't know, usually it used to be translated, thus have I heard at one time. What does Jean do at the beginning of that? I'm curious now as a translator. At one time the Buddha was saying, oh, this is what I heard. At one time the Buddha was saying it, Rajagriha on Holy Eagle Peak. The sutra, a sutra by definition is something spoken by the Buddha. That's the idea of it. And usually in the Pali Canon, the early Theravada text, that means Shakyamuni Buddha lived 400 some BC in northern India. They revised when they think he lived, but recently. But in this world of the Bodhisattva, there are Buddhas before Buddha. So when we chant the names of the Buddhas and ancestors, there are seven Buddhas before Buddha. There's this way, what does Buddha mean? This is in some ways the fundamental question.

[37:26]

The fundamental question. All of you are here because you are concerned about the quality of your life, about spiritual practice, spiritual, you know, something. So what is Buddha? And what the Mahayana Sutras say is that, yeah, there's this guy in our history that started Buddhism in northern India. But Buddha is a quality and there have been many Buddhas and there will be many Buddhas and there are many Buddhas in many directions. And it's, you know, I keep waiting for George Lucas or Spielberg or somebody to do the Lotus Flower and Sutra and they're not ready yet, unfortunately. Yeah. And their special effects are pretty good. But anyway, it's. So, yeah, Shakyamuni Buddha is the author of the sutra, and yet this sutra, particularly

[38:32]

whenever he says it, this ancient Buddha shows up. How does that? So that's why I laughed at your question, because what does it mean that someone is the author of a text like this? We have this idea of so-and-so wrote this text. This was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva. That's the translation into Chinese that all the English translations are based on. But where does this come from? This ancient Buddha vowed that he would not become a Buddha unless he could go and praise the Lotus Sutra whenever it was preached. So it must have been preached back then. He must have heard of it. Our sense, our usual sense of what the world is, what reality is, what time is, what our life is, gets turned inside out by this kind of stuff. And that's scary and challenging sometimes. So it's OK if you don't want to read the Lotus Sutra. You know, it's not required. You can be a very good Zen student and just pretend you never heard about this sutra.

[39:34]

And yet there's something here. Again, it's really the core of all Japanese Buddhism in so many ways, historically, philosophically. Maybe it's just enough to hear that it points towards some opening of what it is that we think Buddha is. It goes beyond how we usually think of Buddha or anything else. And that it's OK. And that it's wonderful. And that it means there are abundant treasures. Yes, Nancy? It seems like it just encourages us to think outside the box. By just opening the box, in this instance, it sort of encourages you to think outside the box in all sorts of other situations. It doesn't really tell you what's outside the box. And, yes, yes, and what's outside the box is exactly inside the box too.

[40:42]

It's not about going somewhere else. Right now is outside the box. Here. This body-mind on your cushion or chair right now is much more amazing than we usually, than our usual human conceptualization allows us to get. Yes, Jim? It seems again like it's like the Möbius strip of time model. Here's this text. And within the text, the text is being preached. Yes. And the text that's being preached is the one that's talking about the text being preached. And also notions of time sequence.

[41:44]

Again, it's a bit like the Christian movement. Was it before? It was, I think. The whole notion of time is being changed. Yes. And, yes, twice you brought up Christian analogies. And I think from the perspective of skillful means and skillful modes and seeing, you know, I mean, this is a Zen Buddhist center, but Buddhism isn't the point of Buddhism. The point of Buddhism is that there isn't any Buddhism. And that, you know, whatever path anyone takes, as long as it helps relieve suffering and entering into the process of awakening, that's what this is. Yes, please.

[42:46]

I actually had a hard time reading sutras. And I wonder if maybe you could talk a little bit about, I guess there was, I can't remember who said it, but Zen is beyond sutras, beyond verbs. Oh, yeah. And kind of the, for me, the danger of kind of over intellectualizing through the sutras and how you can make it accurate and read the sutras without falling into illiteracy. Yes, good. Very good. Thank you for the question. Yeah, this is foundational to Zen. It's attributed to Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, who lived around 500 or 600. But I don't, there's no record of it actually appearing in print until like maybe the 1000s. But the idea that Zen is beyond, direct pointing to the mind, beyond words and letters is a kind of old Chan slogan. And it's very, thank you for that question.

[43:50]

It's very important to talking about sutras. Part of what, well, Zen emphasizes our own personal experience. We sit on our cushion. We feel what it's like to be this person. We face the wall. We face ourselves. We see this body and its sensations, this mind and its thoughts. It's about direct personal experience. Not getting caught by words or letters is how I would gloss that. Dogen particularly talks about the Zazen way to study words and letters. That, as you say, to study the sutra and over intellectualize it and then make it into some formula that then, oh, that explains everything and I can just, you know. So in some ways, you know, you might, we might criticize Nichiren Buddhism for just saying Nam-myoho-renki-kyo. But they also study the sutra and study themselves. It's a skillful means towards that. The point though is not to get caught by the words and letters.

[44:54]

So what, so Dogen talks a lot about how to read and study. And the way to do that is exactly how we do Zazen. It's not about something else. So if we think, so it's pretty common to come to meditation practice wanting something. Peace of mind, settling, calm, clarity, to relieve, reduce stress, you know, some benefit. And those things may happen. But in Dogen's Zazen, the point is just to sit, that our idea or expectation of some outcome is not the point. And it's not what the outcome is going to be. Our expectation is never what actually happens. Just to, so just like I was talking about the sutra itself being about itself and our Zazen being about our Zazen. Dogen talks about studying, not to learn something or get something or reach some understanding,

[45:58]

but just as a way of appreciating our own experience. So again, the studying of the Lotus Sutra should point you back to, I don't know about the should, but anyway, it can point us back to something that we can't really articulate but something that we can recognize about our own experience. That's the way to read this. And if it doesn't do that, forget about it. Come back to it, you know, in a few years or whatever. And it may never do it for you. And that's why there are many different sutras. And the idea of skillful modes in the Lotus Sutra is that take what works for you. Take what helps you really appreciate the experience of this person on your cushion. That spirit is fine. It's okay to read sutras and read Zen teachings. It's okay to do that as long as you're not trying to get something else from them, as long as it's just a way of appreciating Zazen.

[47:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_49.5