I made 27 copies of this. And a lot of people here just took them, so it wasn't because you took them already. Or is it because you left them at home? I think if anything on top of that shoe rack is considered fair game to people, we have to consider that. That's right. Are there more copies on the shoe rack? Those are the ones that were on the shoe rack. The ones I put on the table. There's five in the Xerox. I'm just going to read a little something to start things off.

[01:02]

Oh. Can of love, of respect and of faith, remove the obstructing defilements and clear away all your taints. Listen to the perfect wisdom of the gentle Buddhas. taught for the wheel of the world for heroic spirits intended. Call forth as much as you can of love, of respect and of faith. Remove the obstructing defilements and clear away all your taints. Listen to the perfect wisdom of the gentle Buddhas, taught for the wheel of the world for heroic spirits intended. That's right. And now we'd all like to read together the first section, section one, the introduction from the printout. We're going to recite it together.

[02:08]

Thus have I heard at one time, the Lord dwelt at Rajagriha on the vulture peak. together with a great gathering of monks, with 1,250 monks, all of them arhats, their outflows dried up, undefiled, fully controlled, quite free in their hearts, well freed and wise, thoroughbreds, great serpents, their work done, their task accomplished, their burden laid down, their own will accomplished, with the fetters that bound them to becoming extinguished, their hearts well-freed by right understanding, in perfect control of their whole minds, with the exception of one single person, that is the Venerable Ananda. The Lord said to the Venerable Subhuti, elders, make it clear now, Subhuti, to the Bodhisattva

[03:10]

from perfect wisdom, how the bodhisattvas, the great beings, go forth into perfect wisdom. Thereupon, the Venerable Sariputra thought to himself, will that Venerable Subhuti, the elder, expand perfect wisdom of himself through the operation and force of his own power of revealing wisdom, or through the Buddha's might? The Venerable Suzuki, who knew through the Buddha's might that the Venerable Sariputra was in such wise discourse to him in his heart, said to the Venerable Sariputra, Whatever Venerable Sariputra the Lord's disciples teach, all that is known is the Tathagata's work. For in the Dharma demonstrated by the Tathagata, they train themselves. They realize its true nature. They hold it in mind. Thereafter, nothing that they teach contradicts the true nature of dharma. It is just an outpouring of the Tathagata's demonstration of dharma.

[04:17]

Whatever those sons of good family may expound as the nature of dharma, that they do not bring into contradiction with the actual nature of dharma. And Alan's just going to give a bit of background before we start trying to actually talk about perfect wisdom itself. Well this perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines or Prajnaparamita in 8,000 lines is really the heart and sort of marks the invention of Mahayana Buddhism It dwells on the virtuous qualities of the Bodhisattvas, implying that each of us has those qualities.

[05:18]

Or, actually, as the Chinese translation says, those qualities are the ones belonging to the mother of the Buddhas. And that's an image of Prajnaparamita. Do you want to give those out? We have copies which people can color themselves. Anyway, that's an image which I thought we could leave up there so that we can have that in mind. In a lot of ways, this is a devotional practice. So the more kinds of images and the more we can make these difficult words, concrete, the easier it'll be for us to work with it. So in this Prajnaparamita we'll come across what you know as the other paramitas or perfections, generosity, morality, patience, energy, and meditation.

[06:33]

and I won't go into that now, because we'll come across them, but all those are subsumed under the perfection of wisdom, which in this context is synonymous with emptiness, with shunyata. One of the things that I found interesting, and I've been thinking about this a lot, because as you'll see on Saturday, I've been thinking a lot about the Four Noble Truths, is that Kanze, whose translation it is that we're working with, refers to this literature as a restatement of the Four Noble Truths, or the Holy Truths, reinterpreted in the light of this central idea of emptiness. It puts a different slant.

[07:38]

It's helpful to me to think of the text in terms of the Four Noble Truths. It makes it a little more concrete and helps me to know a bit more how to work with it, practice with it. And it also throws an interesting light on the Four Noble Truths. I think we'll go into that. We'll probably get to that at some point in our discussions, but I wanted to say a little about the history of the sutra itself. So this is the earliest, the Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, is the earliest of this whole enormous Prajnaparamita literature that was mostly composed in India. Some of it, some of the commentary, was actually composed in China and Tibet. This text, as far as I can tell, was written somewhere between 100 BC and 180 in India.

[08:43]

So, already three, four hundred years after Shakyamuni Buddha. And as I said, it's the earliest of these texts. It was written in 32 chapters, and like many of the sutras, it was designated by the number of 32 syllable lines. They're written in a kind of metered line in Sanskrit. So there are 32 syllable lines or shlokas that make up the body of the text. And so there's roughly 8,000, I think about 8,400. through the original text.

[09:49]

And for the next six or seven hundred years, the related sutras went through an expansion and a contraction, sort of a whole cycle that ranged up to perfection of wisdom in a hundred thousand lines. And then it kind of wound its way back down to the perfection of wisdom, the text that consists of one syllable, which is the syllable AH. And that also is a complete statement of the Prajnaparamita. And included among these versions are the Diamond Sutra, which some of you may have read, and the Heart Sutra that we chant every day. That's a perfection of wisdom in 25 lines.

[10:55]

And the one that we're working with here, Kansa's version, is The text itself dates from roughly about 900 to 1100 A.D. from a Chinese text, but there's very close correspondence from the Chinese, the Tibetan, and the Sanskrit at that point, which suggests that by that point the text was more or less stable. But what he says is that probably the first chapters, which pretty much what we're going to be working with are the earliest and the most authentic from the earliest period, and the others are perhaps elaborations of them. And as I said, beyond that there is there are all these other Prajnabaharavita texts, and I invite you to take a look at some of them.

[12:04]

I think we have some of them here. And there also is just an enormous body of commentary, which I don't think we have very much of, but it exists. Unlike, some of you may have taken, did some of you take Meli's Course on the Lotus Sutra? Unlike a lot of the sutras, there aren't, especially the Mahayana sutras, some of them, the Lotus Sutra and the Avatamsaka Sutra, and some of the others are full of great miracles. And there aren't that many miracles here, actually. It's pretty, as these things go, fairly down to earth. Even the introduction, which, like most sutras, locates you where the Buddha was preaching here on Vulture Peak, which was one of the common places that he preached.

[13:13]

There are only these 1250 arhats and Ananda. you know, whereas, you know, often there are the 1,250 arhats, the 84,000 this, the 156,000 this, you know, and spinning out into infinity. And to me that's a, it's an interesting context because having just the arhats there, having just this limited number kind of undercuts this maybe unapproachable idea of the magic of it, or the unattainability of it. That the setting is very plain is a little encouraging to me. It makes me feel like, well, there's not magic here, and maybe we can learn to do this.

[14:20]

which is nice. It's particularly nice to have that encouragement because when I try to read text I have another impression entirely. But I think the implication is that the practice is not confined to some realm other than our lives. I think is really important. I think that has to do with the whole context of this development of Mahayana, which is a way of returning the practice back from some rarefied place where the only people who can practice it are monks and the only people who can practice it are those who have set aside all of the uh... any kind of defiled activities uh... and have studied the Abhidharma and are practicing the Abhidharma really uh... devotedly and are practicing all of the two hundred and twenty seven or how many uh... monastic rules

[15:42]

and this is a kind of case arguing for another kind of understanding. In the Theravada or Hinayana practice there's a notion of dharmas as distinctly divided between conditioned dharmas, which are kind of the mundane ones that we work with in our lives, and unconditioned ones, which is like nirvana. And they're kept quite separate, or they're seen as quite separate. And here, as you probably have seen from reading some of this, there is the constant relentless thrust that the unconditioned exists within the conditions at every moment.

[16:45]

And I think that's a lot of what we'll sort of be looking at as we go along, which means that we can practice it. We can practice it with all of our so-called defiled emotions and feelings. We can look at what's perfect in that, what's complete in that, and step back from those kinds of defilements. And to do that in our zazen, we do it in zazen whether we realize it or not. So that's some kind of very, very brief context of how I think about this. Now, actually we talked with, Reb Anderson was over yesterday and we were talking with him and one thing that he said was that this was kind of an antidote to the Abhidharma and that it spoke most loudly and most directly to people who had involved themselves most deeply

[18:08]

in the Abhidharma. Now, the Abhidharma is one of the three baskets, part of the Tripitaka, the basics of Buddhist literature. You have the Vinaya Pitaka, which is the monastic rules, the Sutta Pitaka, which is basically the word of the Buddha, and the Abhidharma, which is, I mean, you could call it psychological or commentary, but it's very detailed. And actually, Lori has... It's kind of analytical. Yeah. There are people who are interested later. We, I, I, Xeroxed off just a list of one of the Abhidharma lists of dharmas, just, it's not, you don't want to, this class isn't, we're not going to study Abhidharma, but just so you get an idea of what these guys were into. But if you do want to study Abhidharma, a few books to... On your free time. Right, on your free time, not on our time. There's, there's this book, Manual of Abhidharma, which I think is

[19:14]

in the library here. There's also Takakusu, Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy, which is quite good, tells you the different schools, including the Abhidharma schools. And also, just for basic technical background in Buddhism, I recommend this. This is also Kanze, Buddhist Thought in India. He's a kind of quirky guy, and none of these books are exactly easygoing, but they're good. There's a lot of useful stuff, particularly if you want to study this kind of technical side of Buddhism. And the more that you study it, the more you see the case that's being made in in the perfection of wisdom in all that literature, and you'll really see it a lot.

[20:18]

It'll help you to... you'll have a much better grasp of the Heart Sutra that we chant every day, which is really a crash course in the Mahayana approach to avidharma. There's a lot of stuff in the Heart Sutra. and in a much more condensed form than we'll study here. So that's something that you can look at and we'll come to it. And part of the argument that's being made is that even though in essence when sort of pushed to the wall the older schools of Buddhism will admit that these dharmas are empty, that they have no being of themselves, that they are in fact conditioned, made up of other causes and factors. For all practical purposes, they work with them and see them as having a kind of fundamental being.

[21:31]

And That's what the perfection of wisdom is arguing against. Maybe you could say it's like the pitfall of studying it so analytically is that you get to take it for real. Yeah. And once you begin to think of it as real, then it's very easy by extension to think of other things as real, like yourself or any of us. And then it's very easy from there to take a step towards identifying self and other. And at that point you have fallen hopelessly into dualistic thinking and you may as well give up. So this is a very consistent and insistent argument against it. And again, this is more of what we'll get into just the two characters We found these great visual aid, right?

[22:45]

Mostly we're gonna See these these two characters. I we should have found one of Ananda, but he doesn't really figure very much Yeah, these are the main guys Sabuti so Sabuti Which one is Subuddhi? This is Subuddhi. These are Japanese statues of him. Subuddhi is really a main figure in this, but not a main figure in the early sutras. He was one of the 80 great disciples of the Buddha. But, and he was known, actually in the past he was known mostly for dwelling in peace, for his practice of friendliness and loving kindness. And what Kanze says, and I take him with

[23:47]

a grain of salt. Kanzi said that friendliness and loving kindness were not really seen as virtues of the first rank. Now, that may have been because, from what I hear, they were not virtues that he practiced himself really deeply, but that also may be true. I mean, Subuti was definitely not a major figure in the earlier sutras. But here, he really is, he's the voice of, he gives voice to the Buddha's teaching. And, you know, in a very ultimate kind of teaching. Whereas in the earlier sutras, Shariputra was first among those who excelled in wisdom. And he figures quite prominently in most of the early sutras, in many of the early sutras. And if you've been reading, you can see here, he keeps trying, but doesn't get it.

[24:59]

You know, you can tell, his questions show that, you know, he doesn't really have this understanding and Suputi has to keep kind of giving him backhanded compliments, compliments that explain how he doesn't really understand things. So here, the wisdom that he excels in is kind of identified with this Abhidhamma school, with this kind of minute analysis of the dharmas and with a very detailed kind of understanding of conditioned reality, but not such a great understanding of how that conditioned reality is always interpenetrated by the unconditioned. So, sort of unwittingly, or perhaps, you know, it's his great gift to us as one of the

[26:12]

as one of the arhats to kind of become the vehicle for how we understand this identity of relative and absolute. So I think that's all I'm going to say by way of background. Okay. One thing I like about this picture of Sriputra is that he looks You know, this is an estimable guy. We're not supposed to feel like we're better, you know. He's the buffoon and we're better than him. We're supposed to, you know. So he's someone who practiced very diligently and very hard. I like this picture because when you read the sutra you get this kind of feeling. He's kind of like this straight man or something, you know. The Tommy Smothers or whatever, whichever one it was. So let's have some, we can have some, just a little bit of discussion about what Alan said. I have some things I want to say too. Sorry, thanks for all your good listening. We do want to sort of get a little background, sort of have us all to some place before we kind of dive into the actual sutra.

[27:20]

But I know it's always easy to listen to people expanding. So does anybody have any questions about what Alan brought up for me? It would appear that the Zen school and the Mahayana is all this whole thrust in emptiness. And I haven't done really any study of Theravada teaching yet. That's one of the marks of existence. So they must have it in some part of their literature. Well, they do. Yeah. Did you... I think that... Well, I did look for some. And if you look at You know, if you look at the early sutras and you look at the Buddhist words, you know, it's there. But I think that what happened over time was, particularly with the evolution of these Abhidharma schools, that

[28:26]

You know, one thing Rev was saying, and this is something that I've seen in Asia too, basically the teaching gets turned into dogma, you know, and you see there are the five skandhas, form, feeling, perceptions, and so on, and then there are the sense fields and the perceptions, and that things are taught in such a way that if you push the teachers, they will say, yes, they're empty. There's no question about that. But the thrust of the teaching is to learn this dogma. And it's just these things become reified. things, at least of the mind, and they're taught in that way. So that's the problem. There's not really a problem with the original doctrine, but it's more a problem in how things are taught.

[29:36]

So you said that around this 100 B.C., 100 A.D., the rise of Mahayana and the Heart Sutra, It's central teaching. I think that all along, it had to be in the Theravadin schools that have come up, particular teachers must have had a great understanding of emptiness because that's really the heart of Buddhism and the school wouldn't have survived. But in terms of, this is sort of like the stuck places, but then the Mahayanas have their stuck places too. So this is particularly addressing the stuck places of not so much, I don't know, I guess the Theravadin or the early schools, one of the things Rev said was, you know, it got to where it wasn't like, look at your experience. If you look at it, you'll see it's empty. It was like, it's empty, you know, and just memorize that, you know. And it sort of like not got out of the context of these dharmas are, you know, if you look at your experience, you'll see that it's made up of these hundred dharmas.

[30:40]

So this is just a little preview, but please look at your experience, you know. But I can see, you know, from talking to a lot of monks in Asia, that actually, well, I mean this is maybe the degenerate age, but I'll bet it wasn't a whole lot better at any other time, there are never a lot of great teachers. You know, there are never a lot of teachers who are going to really cut through that and point you back towards your experience. Like in all things, there's many teachers who will say, here's the book, open the book, memorize this. And that's a lot of what the monastic education is now. So it wouldn't surprise me that that would, at the very least, go through cycles. But it is all there. I mean, if you look at the doctrine of dependent origination from the very first teaching that Buddha did, that notion of emptiness is really there.

[31:54]

Thanks. Other questions? Okay, well, I'm going to go on to what I want to say, which is basically a couple things. One is, one of the things that I feel that this sutra brings up is fear. And, you know, you'll see over and over, a bodhisattva who does not become afraid when this deep perfection of wisdom is being taught should be known as someone who understands perfect wisdom. And I think, I just want to raise this issue, I don't have that much to say about it, but it's sort of like the fear of reality, when we actually see things as they really are, how out of control it is, and that that's scary for us, you know, and the fear that it's scary to take up a practice, which is kind of throwing yourself at something ungraspable continually.

[33:01]

where, you know, it's like, well, I'll practice good if you tell me what it is, but if you tell me that in each moment all beings get to decide together with everything else in the universe what good is at that time, and I'm just one small part of that, I can't handle that, that's too scary, too hard. So, and you know, as I was thinking about the class, you know, I thought about the fear that comes up that everybody else in the room understands it when you don't, which I think is might come up for some people, because this is really kind of not in the realm of conceptual understanding. It's continually eluding your conceptual understanding, and it's maybe directed toward people who were very much involved in analytical understanding, but it's sort of like constantly breaking it, or turning it, or throwing it apart. that when you get to that point where you feel like, oh, everybody else understands this, but I don't, or this is too scary, or this is too hard, that means you're actually seeing it for what it is, you know, so you know that that's a sign you're on the right track.

[34:18]

So, and the other thing, yeah. There's also that fear that comes when one thinks, especially in this society, here and today, that, you know, you assert yourself and don't let anybody take advantage of you and, you know, or else you get bowled over. You know, that kind of thing. And it's totally... To let that go is scary. Yeah, it's totally opposite from, you know, realizing that everybody's just whirling through We're all interrelated and that kind of stuff. So that's very opposite to our present life. And hopefully it's also the opposite of that, which is completely giving up and letting other people tell you what to do or something, you know? There's something in the middle there. I wanted to make a comment about Spirit too, because I only got through the first chapter, but I noticed that I had a question.

[35:23]

They brought up the fear, and then you just seemed to shift it in the background. You brought it into reality. You sort of brought up, hey, yeah, this is scary. And when they were going through this commentary, they sort of just skimmed over that, and I was really surprised, you know, they didn't actually expound on it a little bit more like you had. And also they almost seemed to make it so you wouldn't want to admit that you were, because that sort of like means you don't quite get it. I don't know what to say about that. Well, I think they come back to it in different places, and different texts expand on it. I mean, it's right there in the Heart Sutra as well. We chant that every day. And it's good to look at, you know, to think about what that fear is. And I also, you know, I've heard people, very rarely do you hear, you don't hear Mel lecture about it very often.

[36:27]

Because it's not his, I don't think it's his experience. but I remember Kategori Roshi lecturing about it and it's something very much, when he lectured about it, I really, I could hear it and understand it. It's something that you can watch in zazen, you know, you can watch yourself as you feel kind of your mind gets settled and more relaxed and less pinned to the various tethers that you use for reality. And sometimes you can feel something like your ego slipping away and there's a reflexive grasping, and you'll do something that will turn you back towards that out of fear.

[37:33]

And it may not be terror, or it might be terror, but when he said it, it made sense, and then I could watch it happen. And I think that that's very much what they're talking about in here. And bringing forth, you know, although, again, we don't want to say, okay, I'm scared, I've got to be patient or something. But just in the act of, oh, this is scary, or becoming aware of your fear, that's where the courage is. So it's not like countering the fear with courage, but just the awareness of the fear will allow the natural courage to arise, you know, like one of the I put some one-liners up here because one of the things that happens as you're reading it is it's talking all about how great the perfection of wisdom is and I would think, well, what is it again? I can't quite remember. So I put some like one-liners about the perfection of wisdom and one of them I think is, you know, nobody can do this practice unless you patiently accept the elusiveness of the Dharma.

[38:39]

So, you know, let's get that fear out there, let's look at it and let's let the patient acceptance arise from within. And I wanted to sort of along the same lines, you know. So if we're not trying to understand this conceptually, what are we trying to do? Because it's in English, you know. That's my question, because I've spent a lot of years going over complicated texts on other different subjects, many, many hours. And when I read a one-liner like the last one, if I can make it out quite without my glasses, When one trains oneself in this love... Lore. Lore. I'm putting my own stuff on it. One's intent on neither disturbing one's own peace or that of others. Okay, well, I misread it, but supposing it was that way. That strikes me, and it's enough for a long time.

[39:43]

Whereas when I opened this book, I think, why am I doing this? Yeah, uh-huh. Well, you get to those little nuts, you know, that last you for a long time. You have to keep going until you get to one, at least. Well, one thing I wanted to mention is this koan. I don't know if I can. I don't know the koan as a whole, but it's some conversation. I think it's with Deng Xiang. I can look it up if anybody really wants to know. But it's like the monk asked the teacher, you know, I've heard that the insentient beings expound the Dharma or something like that. how do you hear the sermon of the insentient beings? And the teacher says, do not hinder the one who hears it. So, part of what we're doing is, how do you understand this? Well, don't hinder the one who understands. So, even if you don't understand it, don't hinder the one that understands it. Okay? So, that's one thing. What? How do you hinder someone who understands it? By trying to understand it.

[40:46]

But, you know, by worrying about whether you understand it or not. By worrying about whether you understand it or not. So one of the things that we can do is just, that's why we'll do some reading aloud, and some other things. And we can share our experience in the week. Does anything happen where you felt like, wow, I didn't understand it, but I didn't hinder the one that understood. You know, whatever, we can see. what it means. But would that suggest that you don't, that it's not good to ask questions? No. You'll see these guys, they're talking, they're asking questions all the time. You kind of have to, that's the hard part, you have to, so what you're doing, you know, you're trying to bear it in mind, you're trying to course in perfect wisdom, bring it to heart, you know, take it to heart. align yourself with it, come near to it, are some of the things that we're trying to do instead of understand it. Instead of understand it or appropriate it. Right. Or take a hold of it.

[41:52]

Right. The language in here. Stand on it. Right. Stand on it. Sit on it. The language in here is very interesting and it's it's hard to get. What does coursing mean? What does appropriating mean? Appropriating means kind of taking something that doesn't belong to you, and making it your own. But this is not your own, actually. It's just there, and you can kind of, if you can course in it, like you can get out into the middle of the stream and swim in the stream, but you don't own the stream. So I did bring a couple little things for people who want to do some practice with their bodies instead of their minds. One is memorization. I really recommend memorization as an aid to practice. And I made little one paragraph things.

[42:54]

Some paragraphs are a little longer than others. And I'm hoping that people will pick one and memorize it. And then at the beginning of each class, we'll have a few people recite the ones. that they memorized. And if you know that this totally freaks you out, why don't you pick one, like the top sentence or one of the really short ones over there, because we don't want it to get too scary. So anyway, that's these. And these are all from the kanza. We're using the kanza translation. And I don't know if anybody saw Lex when he was here. He really loved what he did and was hoping that we were going to use that translation. I looked at that translation and I got upset in a way because I've studied this one quite a bit and he doesn't have any reference to where in the sutra he is. it's completely unscholarly and I had this idea that maybe when I did this I could go through and find the section in Lex's book that the memorization was so that you could go and look and compare the two translations and even if you wanted to make your own translation up but I just couldn't, I didn't get to it so if you want to do that please feel free, look for it in his book if anybody has it.

[44:11]

It's called Mother of the Buddhas and we have it It's more of a kind of meditation on it. He doesn't present it as a translation of it, per se. The language is really nice. Anyway, so that's why we're not using that, and I'm sorry if anybody was sort of thinking that this class was going to be like what he did when he was here or something. And the other thing is coloring. in the Prajnaparamita. And I've been doing a lot of coloring in the last couple of years, and I can tell you that it's one of the most peaceful activities you can do. As long as you don't sort of get into, oh, I'm not doing a good job or, you know, something like that. But it's really great. So I recommend. This could be one of those new, this could be like a new, you know, those Dover coloring books that they have. This would be like the Prajnaparamita coloring book where every page is just the same. The same. I think you can make a big, you know, mural or something with all our colored sons. What is different about this picture than the one before?

[45:15]

Nothing. Do you want to give those out or how do you do that? I'll let people come up, but please take a memorization and I really hope that if anybody knows that they're good at that, please try to be ready for the next class because we want to be able to get through everybody in the next four classes. Okay, let's see, I think there was a couple, was there one I think? Oh, I wanted to say, I didn't even think about this till we were reading together at the beginning, but I think especially for the women, but anybody, if you want to change the wording, either in the memorization or just as you're reading along to she or whatever, please do. So, any questions on so far? Is there a comparable experience in, let's say, Western civilization to people being on top of a mountain and having this kind of discourse?

[46:17]

Does anything like that happen now? What do you mean, does anything like that happen now? Well, I mean, people consider themselves, all of these people are arhats. Right. I can't even, I don't even know... ...talk to me when we were doing dishes. No, that's actually a serious point, actually. There are moments when all of us are arhats. I think that that's true. I do believe that. But I also... Every now and then, you may meet a saint or an arhat. They exist. I don't know how... I don't know if any of you feel that you've met a person like that.

[47:20]

I have. I'm sure of it. Has anybody had some experience like that with somebody that they would think of at that level? As a saint? As a saint or an arhat or somebody who's just, who's really pretty, that you just get the sense they are spiritually liberated. Which doesn't mean, actually, for the arhats, it's really interesting, arhats is a good example, arhats are not completely free from the realm of karma. Right? Well, one thing it says in here is that because they're afraid to re-enter birth and death, they're hemmed in by birth and death. So because they can't say, oh, you know, all beings, you know, I want to be there with everybody. I want to cross over the line at the same time everyone else does. They're like, I'm already across the line, and they're afraid to get back.

[48:23]

So they're caught by karma because of that. Right. So I would say, actually, I've met some bodhisattvas. And, I mean, I can name them. I mean, if you meet Maha Gosananda or you meet Thich Nhat Hanh, they move in some different way in the world. They still have personalities and probably some shortcomings and they may not be your idea of what the Buddha is, but I think that... I really believe there are people like that in the world, and that they weren't born that way. You know, that they... It was an act of transformation, an act of practice.

[49:29]

very diligent practice over a long period of time, very great suffering and compassion and wisdom that worked its transformation. And that's why it's really hopeful to me. I used to think, well, you had to be born this way, but if that's what you think, then why on earth would you go in the zendo? It doesn't make any sense. Dogen teaches that, well, maybe only one in 200 or it will be enlightened, but we should practice for its own sake. I'm not saying that I buy it, but that's what Dogen teaches. Well, that's one side. The gaining idea will not help you at all. I mean, you can have that gaining idea. That'll mostly stand in the way.

[50:30]

But the fact is, it's really encouraging when you meet somebody that you feel has some transcendent quality. I mean, basically, the thing that's amazing about it is that when you're around them, you feel good. It's as simple as that. When you're around them, you are much more in touch with that quality in yourself, even at the same time as you realize that you have great deficiencies. But you can set them aside to a degree. Did anyone here meet Suzuki Roshi? My sense from all the stories of Suzuki Roshi is that he was like that. And from meeting his son, Hoitsu, who I spent a lot of time with, I mean, you just, you feel great when you're around Hoitsu.

[51:36]

And that's just a really rare quality. And, you know, when I'm around Hoitsu and I feel great, you know, I feel like, gee, I'd like to be like that. you know, and I don't know if that's a gaining idea. I think it's a really good question, Kathy. I mean, you know, and that wasn't just, Dogen didn't just say, don't have a guinea idea, that was his koan, you know, why, how can, why do we have to do this practice if we're already enlightened? He was like obsessed with that or whatever, you know, not obsessed, but, so I think it's a really good question, because that's what this, you know, it's like, why do we have to keep doing, why don't we do anything? Why do we have to throw ourselves at the perfection of wisdom when we can't understand it? Why don't we just say, it's ungraspable, great, I'll go off and, you know, I mean, why do we have to do anything? I think it's just a good question. It's a daily thing. Why go to the Zen Doctrine if we don't believe that practice will lead, like you were suggesting, to realization?

[52:47]

But I think that even if we believe that practice leads to realization, there's some connection between practicing and realization. then, but we put that out of our minds and practice without any expectation or something like that. Or we see that it kind of muddies the water when we have too much, when we're too much, you know, because you don't want to be sitting in the zendo thinking, oh God, another lousy period of zazen where I didn't get it, you know, I can't get my mind to concentrate, you know. So, you know, you can see where the gaining the idea causes a problem too. Didn't Suzuki talk about Zazen is preparing the soil because the seeds are always falling, but if the soil isn't ready for it, then they won't grow. I hadn't heard that that sounds okay, but again, I mean all these things have their pitfalls if you get too attached to that way of

[53:56]

talking about it, because really it is just an act of reality to Siddhāsan, too. You're enacting it right then and there at that moment, and it's good to keep that side in mind, too. I think, for myself, I think total frustration and disillusionment is almost like, in some ways, the ideal state, because in that sense, when you really don't expect anything, but it's sort of an act of devotion, you know, practice. And I think that comes about after years of not getting anything from practice. I think that's one of the things they're talking about here too, I think. So, how did we go from Arhat to Bodhisattva? Well, I find that a little bit confusing. We can talk about that some more, because he does seem to be talking to these guys as if they're trying to be bodhisattvas too, as if they're training to be bodhisattvas even in their arhats.

[55:01]

Well he, they still come around to listen. Yeah. And here, you know, he's trying to get them to be bodhisattvas. So let's watch, let's keep our eye on that while we're reading along. So he's kind, he's directing them as arhats to expand their view. Right, he's preaching the bodhisattva path, which is a new path. You know, it hadn't been, there were bodhisattvas, but it hadn't been really preached before as an ideal. And, you know, that's all that's going on here. Right. And he's making a distinction between an arhat and a bodhisattva. Yeah, that comes up, yeah. Does anybody want to stretch their legs or anything, or should we just... This is great having two teenagers because you can go to the bathroom.

[56:02]

And let me tell you something, we already know we're not going to get through this book. So everybody, I hope, is not going to be disappointed about that. In fact, the way this is written, it's written in verse and then in text. We're just bypassing the verse, except for that one thing I read at the beginning, which we're going to Xerox and read that all together about, call forth as much as you can of love, respect, and faith. And we already know that we're not even going to try to get through except the first six chapters. So then that may still be too ambitious. But I think it's more important to give us all some way to keep studying this book on our own and read it, rather than try to cover the whole thing, you know? And so what we thought we would do is, and especially because, you know, Alan and I come to parts that we really don't understand at all, And we can do those together, but what we thought we'd do for starters is, you know, read like a paragraph or so that we find particularly intriguing or useful or thought-provoking or helpful, and then maybe we can discuss it if people want to, and if we don't, we'll go on to another paragraph.

[57:22]

So we've marked out a couple of those. we can, one thing that happened with Alan and I is I just, for some reason, I just love this book and I'll really love this section and then he'll say, well, what does he mean by that? And I'll, oh, I don't really know, but I just like it. So I've always liked this book, but it's very definitely a kind of devotional practice for me rather than trying to plummet steps. So I hope Alan and I provide a good counterpoint to each other because he's very conscientious and he doesn't want to try to teach something that he doesn't understand. Whereas I don't mind. Okay. So the first part I think we're going to do is on page 85 about a third of the way or even less than a quarter of the way down the page

[58:25]

It says, a bodhisattva who does not... So how do you want to do this, Alan? Should I just read it? I want you to read it. Okay. I want to ask people too, if there's anything you would rather do or see us do or you feel like we're talking too much or you want more participation, please let's, you know, let's just say so and we'll try to let the Dharma unfold all together instead of just... coming from us. Yeah, you can say so publicly, you can say so privately, you know. You can write it on graffiti. One thing that you might think about is that it's going to be hard to remember all this stuff as the months and years go by, but we chant the Heart Sutra every day, so if there's some way of sort of reminding us how this may or might connect to something that we're chanting. That's a good idea. If we can. That would be helpful. Okay. A bodhisattva who does not become afraid when this deep and perfect wisdom is being taught should be recognized as not lacking in perfect wisdom, as standing at the irreversible stage of a bodhisattva, standing firmly in consequence of not taking his stand anywhere.

[59:42]

Moreover, a bodhisattva who courses in perfect wisdom and develops it should not stand in form and so on, because when he stands in form, he courses in its formative influence and not in perfect wisdom. For while he courses in formative influences, he cannot gain perfect wisdom, nor exert himself upon it, nor to fulfill it. When she does not fulfill perfect wisdom, she cannot go forth to all knowledge, so long as she remains one who tries to appropriate the essentially elusive. That's about it, right? Well, right there, speaking of the Heart Sutra, this form et cetera, et cetera means the other skandhas, no forms, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness. So that's a very direct tie into that. In fact, I've read a lot of translations of the Heart Sutra that say, no form and so on.

[60:46]

You know, it used to puzzle me. So what comes up for me just now for the first time when I read this is, so how do we closely observe our experience of form without standing in form? Because we know we want to observe, we know we're supposed to observe sounds as they arise. Form is like your sense experience. Sight, sound, smells, tastes, touchables. Thoughts, too. No, not form. It's the form skanda. It's just your sense experience of the five senses. And the mental thing is in another skanda. Alan was just suggesting that when they say form, etc. They don't only mean form. They do mean it all. They mean perceptions, formations, connections. Right, they mean it all. But I think they mean you stand, when you're in form you don't, when you're stuck in form you course in formative influences.

[61:48]

When you're stuck in feeling, you're stuck in feeling influences. You're stuck in perceptions, you're stuck in perception influences. You know, feeling influences would also come through. It's feelings that are brought through the senses, but you're stuck in, oh, this is pleasurable, this is unpleasant, this is neutral. those are the key aspects of feeling. And each one has, you know, each skanda has its own set of distinctions, sets of dharmas that you can get stuck in. Right, so, go ahead. Well, I think part of it is that we have the judgments about each aspect of it, you know, this is good, this is bad, this is unbearable, this is bearable, and that goes, you know, this form, this sound is bad sound, this is, you know, we have feelings and thoughts about all of the sense, the sensual,

[63:02]

experiences. And I think it's about attachment being stuck in it. Things like when I hear a bird sound, I get stuck in identifying it. To the point where I can't, I mean, I really have to know what that is. And as my husband has said, you know, well, why can't you just depreciate them instead of, you know, going nuts with your field guides and sitting down and, you know, destroying the day, basically, trying to identify them. And I think that we all have our own little aspects of life where we get, as they say, hooked, you know, and completely attached into it. Well, let me say something about that. In terms of the skandhas, okay, there's a bird sound. And the feeling level of that, just like something happens and without even identifying what sense is being affected, you feel good.

[64:18]

Or it's a loud, screechy bird and you feel bad, and you don't even know that you're hearing. That's the first level. That's the feeling level. The perception level is that you are hearing something, that it's coming through your ears, and that this thing that's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral is something that you're hearing. And the formation level, which is the fourth skanda, is the one where you start thinking bird, or blue jay, or mockingbird, or something like that, where you start to have you have an identification and there's some act of will and some correlation in your mind.

[65:21]

So that's kind of one way that the skandhas work. And you can get stuck at any one of those levels. Any other thoughts on this or questions or thoughts on what it means to appropriate or not appropriate and essentially elusive? Yeah, that happens all the time for me in Zazen. Say I'm trying to concentrate on my breath or something. One of the things I'm really, I mean I was doing it for almost to try to seize hold of the experience of life breathing.

[66:22]

And to appropriate it, what I take that to mean is like, is the mind that says, or the things or whatever, what is this? And of course it's elusive. Like when your mind is going, what is this? What am I feeling? Then it's constantly eluding you. At least this is my experience. Well, actually, when you say that, I don't think having the question of what is this is so bad. That sounds pretty good to me. That sounds like pretty good Zazen. It's more like, oh, now I have my breath. I got all the way to 10. Oh, well, I... Now I'm in control of it. Or I wish I were in control and I've never made it to 10. I suppose one kind of grasping is trying to get to 10 or trying to bully yourself into concentrating.

[67:31]

And another kind of grasping, which is like, for example, one of the things you can do is count breath. Another thing you can do is just experience breath or follow breath or something. And so let's say you're just trying to follow breath. like a kind of knowing what it was, like a kind of having it clear, clearly perceiving breath. That's what I was trying to do. And that's like And so, that was grasping for something elusive, which, I mean, if I take their word for it, I don't have the experience of emptiness, but if I take their word for it, grasping breath is a futile effort because it's empty.

[68:39]

So, yeah. I think I know what appropriation, what this trying to appropriate the elusive is. No, you go ahead, then Mike. Go ahead. I think that the breath seems, the in and the out, is circular. So it's one full circle. And to me, that's how life is. We all have feelings, we all have these things going on. And so, there's no difference in one sense, you know. So there's not a you and there's not a me. I think, from my own experience, not with your path, but with my own suffering, at the end of that, it is teaching me that there's no you and no me.

[69:51]

And when you try to fix on that, you're trying to appropriate the essentially elusive. The distinction between us is essentially elusive, if there is one. That seems like that's the only solution to that whole thing. just before the next breath comes, there's a temptation to take the next breath. It's at that moment that I disappear sometimes. Right. In each one of those places, between the in-breaths and the out-breaths and the in-breaths, if you want to Think about it in a way, this is a conceptualization, but that's birth and death, right there.

[71:04]

And at the end of your out-breath, before there is an in-breath, then there is a moment of dying. But what's really interesting is who is breathing. because it's not something, with the exception of some very highly trained yogis, it's not something all that, it's not something volitional, you know, it's not something that you decide so much to do, you can postpone it, you can hold your breath, but sooner or later something is going to take a breath, and that is the non-appropriation, because that breath does not belong to you. And no matter what someone you think of as you decides to do, you can't hinder that breath, or in your moment of dying, of really dying, you can't

[72:24]

Make it come when it's time for it to stop. You can try. You can try to take it a little earlier or wait a little longer. Right. So do you actually experience... I mean, you get in touch with that fear sometimes when you're following your breath? Fear is not my main... Practice, I'm afraid to say. No, but that's a fear. It's, of course, I do have fear. So I think that'd be a really good place to look for... Because I think what this is really saying is, you know, when you read between the lines of form, that's where emptiness is. It's not like you get rid of the forms and then there's emptiness, but it's sort of like when you're kind of reading between the lines, you know, that's what we're trying to devote ourselves to here. So I think that would be a good place to try watching that spot. So do you believe that there is a birth and a death only at the body?

[73:31]

I mean, it would seem to me that the rest of it is just... that there is none. Well, when you say none, though, that kind of erases a whole... Not only the ego. I don't know. I wouldn't want to say one way or the other myself. I just... but I know what you're talking about. But I wouldn't want to say one or the other is... more or less true, because we do experience birth and death, you know? I mean, I don't find it helpful when I think about, when I worry that I would go crazy if my daughter died. I mean, there's a little bit of help in thinking there isn't really any birth and death, but, you know, it still would be a horrible thing. It wouldn't be. And, you know, it can't be erased by just saying it's not real or something. of all beings because of... Loss, inevitable loss, right?

[74:33]

Yes, exactly. But as for knowing where she comes from or where she might go or where we come from, where we might go, I haven't the slightest idea. And, you know, Buddhist doctrine It has a whole lot of teachings about this, but to me, the core teaching is to experience things. And so, until I actually experience it, I'm not willing to buy into any doctrine about rebirth or any of that. I'd like to stay away from it, actually, in discussing it. Mental formations. How far did you read here? I just read to as long as he remains one who tries to appropriate the essentially elusive.

[75:39]

We couldn't decide whether to bring up the Shreddick or the Wanderer. Well, I just think it's also interesting. Pretty much Debbie was saying a little further down, it says it is vast, noble, unlimited and steady. not shared by any of the disciples or Pratyekabuddhas. Right. And what they're talking about is, this concentrated insight of a Bodhisattva is called the non-appropriation of all dharmas. That's perfect wisdom. Perfect wisdom is the non-appropriation of all dharmas. So you're right up there against them, you're looking at them, you're aware of them, but you're not appropriating them. It's not like, oh, I'm not going to appropriate them, I'm just going to leave them over in the other room or something. Well, someone once said, Rev. once said that Einstein is like a Prachekabuddha. It's like someone who got there by themself and they don't really have anything to offer to help anybody else get there, but they got there.

[76:42]

A Prachekabuddha is like a Buddha who got enlightened on their own. Isn't that Prachekabuddha pretty close to an Arhat from the Mahayana standpoint? I get that feeling. Somebody who gets enlightened, but the rest of the world. Yeah, that's why they're lumped together here. I always sort of feel, yeah, it's not quite as negative. I mean, the disciple, you get the feeling they're not even there. But the Pratyekabuddha is there. They're just, they're all there by themselves, and they don't have any teaching about how to help anybody else get there. I don't know if there have ever been any actual people who referred to us. I mean, I'm not sure why they, they always talk, they always seem to bring, lump those two together. What does it mean by cannot be seized through a sign? How are they using sign? That's a good question. Let's read that sentence.

[77:46]

The state of all knowledge itself cannot be taken hold of I think that's really important. I don't know exactly what to say about it. I get the feeling that this thing about taking something as a sign is a real problem. My sense of that is, you know how they talk about things having marks? Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, and it's like conditions. It's almost like the unnameable, the unspeakable, unnameable Buddha dharma is like without any marks. It cannot be, you know, it's emptiness. It has no characteristics. That's my sense of it. And actually in here they go so far as to say that no dharma has, all dharmas have one mark, i.e.

[78:47]

no mark. It says that. So nothing can be seized through a sign. So it's maybe like with this list of Abhidharmas, it's like they were taking these things, instead of using them to unlock their experience, they were actually taking these things as signs, somehow. Sure. Well, believing in things, or basically thinking realistically, I think, you know, in Zen, somebody teaches, I don't know who it is, but it says, if you study one thing, completely, then you'll know all things. And I think that's like, because when you study any dharma, your breath, you know, a syllable, whatever, when you penetrate it, you see that, grasp its emptiness or perceive its emptiness, then you see that pervading all, all of the whole existence. I mean, that's my sense of it. I'd like to hear, you know,

[79:50]

as the weeks go by, if anybody did something that they realized was seizing, trying to seize something through a sign, because I think that's an important thing they're bringing up here, and that comes up again and again. He took the true nature of dharmas as his standard and resolutely believed in the signless, so that he did not take hold of any dharma nor apprehend any dharma which he could have appropriated or released. He did not even care about nirvana. So maybe one of the things that they tried to do was appropriate the good dharmas and release or get rid of the bad dharmas. Appropriate concentration and release lust or whatever. Or abandon lust. Well there are ways of practicing some of the insight schools will practice by noting the arising and falling away of these dharmas.

[81:03]

And again, they'll study lists. You'll study a list like this one that we handed out, and you will note hunger, shame, hatred, anger, you'll note these dharmas coming up and you'll note them because they're impermanent, you'll note them arising and you'll note them sort of falling away. And to me, I think it depends very much on your teacher If your understanding is good and your teacher is good, then you won't appropriate these dharmas.

[82:04]

You'll just note their impermanence and you'll note their conditionality. But sometimes you hear people talking about them and it's very much as if one person's anger is the same as another person's anger. That these dharmas have some quality, some mark that's identical, that's shared among all people. And it starts making them into having their own being. That's why it says even A little further on in this section here about Shrenika the Wanderer, a little further down the page, nor did he review that cognition with joyful zest and pleasure. Those are also dharmas, joyful zest and pleasure. He viewed it neither as inside form, etc., nor as outside, nor as both inside and outside, nor as other than form.

[83:15]

So he took the true nature of Dharma as his standards and resolutely believed in the signless. It's hard to practice that way. But it's what actually we're doing in Zazen all the time. in this practice that we do, we don't really name things. Our minds, we let thoughts and feelings arise and slip away as best we can without holding on to them. You know, sometimes we hold on to them, sometimes we think, sometimes we feel, you know, sometimes our legs hurt. But in the course of, I mean,

[84:23]

It's very rare that I can come out of a period of zazen and say, well, what was that zazen about? What was that zazen like? Because all these things have arisen and fallen away, and mostly we haven't attached to them. Speak for yourself. Well, often. But, I mean, sometimes we do, but less so for me than, you know, I could say more about my states of mind through the rest of the day. I mean, I could probably catalog the states of mind and the things that I attach to during the rest of the day much more easily than I can say what happened for the hour at the beginning of the morning.

[85:26]

And I think that's how we practice. And that's quite different than this practice of noting noting the dharmas. I mean, sometimes it can seem real sloppy, too. And it can be sloppy. And there's something real precise and disciplined about that other way of practicing. But I think it takes a lot of skill to guide someone through that kind of insight practice. It's hard to practice with the dharmas. with this kind of Abhidharva background. And yet it's valuable to know. I'm just trying to wonder about the people who haven't said anything. I just want to take a minute so that the people who just need a little bit more time before they blurt something out will allow you that time.

[86:28]

And if you don't blurt, that's fine too. I want to compare notes with you when you say what the period of Zazen is about. I can see, well, I will take Zazen when you sit all day, practically. I can see that about the early part, like the morning Zazens. I can see that. But I certainly don't experience that in the afternoon Zazens. And they're all about pains. And you wish it was a little bit more elusive, actually, at that point. So that's definitely so for me. Right. But the pain, yeah, you have all that pain, and then you do Kinhin, and then you sit down again. It hurts again. It hurts again, yeah.

[87:29]

Do you wait to see if it's going to hurt? Or do you bring it along all through kinhin? Right. So, you're not obsessing, it's just what's happening. You're not appropriating it, it's just what keeps arising at every moment. But it's true, it has a kind of, it has a character. And, you know, sometimes if I'm, you know, sometimes I cannot grasp that pain. Usually later in the, usually it takes several days of, you know, pretty fierce endurance to get, you know, to get to where I cannot clench on to the pain. But if the session goes on for a certain length of time, then there'll be some passing of it.

[88:31]

And I think that it's, it has to do with letting go more than it has to do with my knees feeling better. I don't know. Does that answer your? Doesn't exactly answer your question. There was no question, yeah, right. Well, do you want to, it's nine o'clock. Yeah, I guess we have to start. So there isn't really any assignment, but I just, I, you know, I would, I guess what I would like is if people would read through it to the point where they hit something that touches, that someone understands. Right. Or read through, read through it either something that you understand or something that you Yeah, we're reading. Right. And do your memorization and say it over several times a day.

[89:32]

Maybe not when you're driving. I was thinking about that. I was thinking one time I was doing some memorization and I was at Jamesburg and I crashed into the post and I had some feeling. Don't recite the Heart Sutra while you're driving. Yeah. But almost any other time. No more. Are you going to do one? Yeah, I'll do one. I think we should all do one. And there are a lot of people that haven't paid yet, so... And take a coloring if you're... if you think that would be... if you want to try to practice. We're going to try to practice with our bodies here. Ann, could you do a walk-up for me tonight? Because Alan's probably going to stay. I need to go liberate my babysitters. Is this night watch you're talking about? Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll see you next week.

[90:22]

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