Good morning, and welcome to Saksin. For today and the next five days, I want to study with you a teaching from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Mahayana Sutra, about the passing away of the Buddha, or the the sutra that precedes his passing away into nirvana, and particularly the radical teaching that he presents, the Buddha presents there, that we will, that is invoked in the chant we'll do this evening, the Enmei Jukku Kanongyo, the short sutra for protecting life of the bodhisattva, of compassion, Kanzeyana Ravalakitesvara, who hears the sounds of the world, and in that chant, which we've done, many of you have done before it, there's one line that goes, Jo Raku Ga Jo.

[01:13]

This is from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra. is an extremely radical teaching from the perspective of Buddhism. Jo means permanence or constancy. Raku means bliss or joy. Ga means purity. Ga means self and jo means purity. So in this sutra, the Buddha says that the true teaching is permanence joy self impurity and some of you may recognize that this is different from the teachings you've heard in buddhism that there is impermanence and there is dukkha or suffering and there is non-self or anatman and that the world is characterized by impurity and the Buddha says that this is actually only a provisional teaching to dispel the usual human views of these which are

[02:26]

distorted and conditioned and not the true views of these. So I want to read passages about this from the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra this week and talk about this, and particularly in terms of the teaching of self that the Buddha gives, as opposed to non-self. So Dogen, the founder of our Soto Zen tradition in Japan in the 13th century says that to study the way is to study the self. So, Sashin is a wonderful opportunity to particularly focus on self and non-self and what is this self that the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, or it's commonly called the Nirvana Sutra, encourages, that the Buddha says is the true teaching there. So most Buddhist teaching is about deconstructing or undercutting our usual way of seeing things, and this is undercutting the usual Buddhist way of seeing things.

[03:41]

There is a self. Reality is about permanence and joy, not impermanence and suffering. So, you all know about impermanence. This is what we study in our Zazen, but particularly in Zazen, whether you're here for a day or for five days, is a chance to catch a glimpse at least of this deeper reality. And so this is an important sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, considered equal to the Lotus Sutra in the East Asian system from the Chianti and Tendai school of looking at the different sutras. And Dogen himself references this in his Buddha Nature essay in the beginning of that. And it's just recently been translated in a good translation by Mark Blum out in Berkeley.

[04:50]

Now it's out in Berkeley. So there's just this little section I want to read some excerpts from this week. and use this, of course, the point of studying any materials, Zen material or Sutra material is not to get some understanding of some philosophical teaching, but how does it support and encourage our practice? and we'll be sitting zazen more or less all day today, whether it's sitting zazen as we take meals or doing service or as we walk or anyway, during our temple cleaning. How do we see this self? So, So I want to dive into the sutra, but I've been talking the last couple of weeks about Dharmakaya.

[05:53]

So let me say a little bit about that first, because I think that's the context to understand or to hear about what this Buddha is saying, what Shakyamuni Buddha is saying in this sutra. So this is a teaching that developed Later in Mahayana Buddhism, in the Bodhisattva tradition, it's not mentioned explicitly in this sutra, but it goes back to India to the commentaries on the Prajnaparamita. Anyway, there will not be a test on any of this, but just to give you background. So, this question, what is Buddha? is fundamental to our whole tradition and to our practice. And it's the fundamental, it's the basic question in many of the Zen koans that come down to, well, what is Buddha?

[06:57]

And our practice is about that, too. We sit like Buddha. We do Zazen sitting upright, whether we're sitting cross-legged or kneeling or in a chair. We're sitting upright and relaxed, sitting like Buddha. But what Buddha is this? So, actually, when we take refuge in Buddha, we're taking refuge in the Dharmakaya Buddha, not the Nirmanakaya. The Nirmanakaya means the incarnated body of Buddha. So that's like Shakyamuni Buddha. who sits in the center of the meditation hall, the historical Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago. And the idea of this, of incarnated Buddhas, is that various people or maybe other beings actually have awakened.

[08:01]

Buddha just means the awakened ones. So in some ways, we're going to be chanting in our midday service the names of the Buddhas and ancestors and the names of women ancestors. And we could say that those are all nirmanakaya Buddhas. Those are incarnated Buddhas or particular historical people. Some of them are quasi-historical maybe, but they are incarnated people, the ones we chant to are human-type people. We don't have any octopuses or porpoises or trees in our specific lineage of ancestors, but anyway, these are beings who carried on the tradition, carried on this practice, so that now, here in the 21st century in Chicago, we can also do this practice of sitting like Buddha and becoming like Buddha and taking refuge

[09:04]

returning to Dharmakaya because of these Nirmanakaya Buddhas. So this way of talking, this is just a way of talking about what is Buddha. So there's three bodies of Buddha, they say. The Nirmanakaya is the incarnated body of Buddha. then there's the Sambhogakaya, which is the result of practice. And these are, I don't know, it's hard to say, literally the reward body of Buddha. These are beings in maybe in other dimensions or in spirit realms who are awakened and who can help, can assist us and can inspire us. Amida Buddha, who's the object of veneration in most of Japanese Buddhism, or the majority of Japanese Buddhism, or Yorai, Yakshin Yorai, the healing Buddha, or many other Buddhas.

[10:10]

Maybe we could say great bodhisattvas like Kanzeon or Sambhogakaya. But then there's Dharmakaya, which is what I think this teaching is about, that I want to explore this weak. Dharmakaya means the reality body of Buddha or the truth body of Buddha. This is Buddha as the whole phenomenal world, the whole universe. this universe and any other universes that the physicists can dream up or that might exist outside this universe if there is such a thing or inside this universe if there are other universes inside this universe or however you want to talk about that. Anyway, Dharmakaya is just, it could be talked about as the Buddhadhatu, the Buddha realm. Reality itself, the very fabric of reality as awakened So I've been talking about this the last couple of weeks. But just to repeat, the Dharmakaya is represented in images in Asia.

[11:19]

Levi, did you get to Nara when you were? So the Todaiji Great Buddha, the largest bronze statue in the world. is huge, and that's partly to represent, because it's a Dharmakaya, represents Dharmakaya Buddha, the Buddha that is everything in the whole universe. So it's this amazing, beautiful, but really large statue. I don't know, forget how tall it is, but the ears are eight feet long, to give you some example. And other Dharmakaya, other representatives of the Dharmakaya Buddha are sometimes have stars and planets and galaxies covering their body just to represent that they are the cosmos. So Dharmakaya Buddha is really when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, that's the Buddha we're taking refuge in. And Dogen and other Zen teachers say we are sitting so that our body, to allow our body to be Buddha's body.

[12:25]

and that's the Dharmakaya Buddha, this ultimate reality body of Buddha. So when we talk about this teaching of Jogaragu Gajo in this sutra, this is from the perspective of this ultimate body of Buddha. And although, just as a, for those of us who studied the Lotus Sutra two or three years ago, in this sutra also they talk about the inconceivable lifespan of Buddha. So there's this drama going on in the sutra where the Buddha is about to pass away into nirvana. and be free of conditioning. And all his disciples are, you know, even though they understand that the Buddha has this, they understand the Buddha has this inconceivable lifespan, like in the Lotus Sutra, but they're still, they don't want him to go.

[13:31]

They want him to stick around. So there's this tension around that. That's part of the drama. whatever, what drama there is in this sutra. So I just want to, I'll talk about that, all of that more, and how we may feel this in terms of our practice, but I want to just dive into reading some of the passages about this in this Nirvana Sutra. So the Buddha is speaking and he says there's this hidden treasury

[14:38]

And he talks about this hidden treasury as, he says, the dharma of liberation is not nirvana. The body of the Tathagata, the thus come one, the Buddha, is not nirvana. And the spiritual wisdom of Mahaprasna is also not nirvana. Each of these three dharmas is different. Each by itself is not nirvana. is because I am now settled in all three of these dharmas that for the sake of living beings I, so quote unquote, enter nirvana. So this entering nirvana, this idea of nirvana is kind of tricky. we've all heard of nirvana or maybe we've listened to uh... the group nirvana or whatever but uh... originally in early buddhism nirvana just meant cessation it meant getting free of the karma of conditioning of the wheel of birth and death of the cycle of rebirth uh... and uh...

[16:05]

I remember when I first started practicing with my first teacher, a Japanese Soto Zen priest. New York City, the Upper West Side, after a few months or so of regular sitting every day, I went and said, well, what is nirvana? How do I get to nirvana? And he said, when you die. So technically, nirvana is par-nirvana. Nirvana is what happens when you die. Nirvana is not something that you can You might be able to listen to nirvana, but you can't actually enter nirvana, except by what is called parinirvana, which is what this sutra is about, passing away from our realm of life and death. So the Buddha here says, the dharma of liberation, the reality of liberation.

[17:13]

That's not nirvana. The body of the Buddha, that's not nirvana. The spiritual wisdom of Mahaprajna is also not nirvana. each of these dharmas he says is different but each is not nirvana so nirvana again is just this passing away from birth and death nirvana literally means cessation and uh... so nirvana is contrasted with samsara and in early buddhism the idea was to get free from samsara free from uh... the rat race of suffering and fame and gain and loss and all of that. And really the only way to do that is through passing away in nirvana, which is what this sutra is about. And actually they talk of the dharmakaya, in the early teachings about the dharmakaya, the dharmakaya developed as a teaching

[18:13]

They talk about two kinds of dharmakaya. There was the essence body of dharmakaya and the wisdom body, which seems to me sort of related to what he's saying here. There's this liberation, and there's the body of the Tathagata, and then there's this spiritual wisdom of Mahaprasna, but those are all not nirvana. And then the, so, the various monks hearing this, they're all despondent because they know the Buddha's about to pass into nirvana, and they say, please explain to us, you have already explained the notions of impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self. So these are considered the foundations of Buddhism.

[19:14]

And here, the Buddha is about to say something radically different. So a little later on, the Buddha talks about He says that beings are blinded by defilement and ignorance. They create misconceptions in the form of inversions in their thinking. What is self, they reckon as non-self. What is constant or permanent, they reckon as impermanent. What is pure, they reckon as impure. And what is joyful, they reckon as painful. So these are these four basic teachings. Because living beings are deluded by the defilements, even if they recognize these as errors, they still do not comprehend what this means, just like intoxicated persons who perceive something to be spinning when it is not."

[20:20]

So this is when he provides this other alternate teaching about this. He says that our usual way of seeing this is an inversion of reality. He says self is what Buddha means, or to put it the other way around, Buddha means self. And he's not talking about the nirmanakaya, the incarnated body of Buddha, like Shakyamuni or Suzuki Roshi or somebody like that, which passes away. He's saying Buddha means self. Dharma body, the dharmakaya, he says permanence is what dharma body means. So the dharmakaya is permanent. Bliss is what nirvana means. So nirvana is just the reality that there is bliss from the point of view of this ultimate reality.

[21:36]

Purity is what dharma means. Oh monks, why do you say to have any perception of self reflects arrogance and pride and leads to transmigration and samsara? That's the usual way of talking about this. With that attitude, when you declare, I cultivate my perception of impermanent suffering and non-self, these three types of practice will have no real meaning. So, again, this is turning on its head our usual, the usual Buddhist teaching. So you may be upset to hear this. Some of you have practiced and studied non-self and impermanence and dukkha for a long time. So I'm sorry to do this to you. The Buddha continues, the mundane world contains permanence, bliss, self, and purity.

[22:40]

And the super mundane world also contains permanence, bliss, self, and purity. This is Jaya Raghugaja. And while these words in the context of the Dharma taught in the mundane world may have no meaning, in the context of the super mundane world, these words do have meaning. So, on this occasion of Rohatsu Sashin, celebrating Buddha's enlightenment, I'm choosing to talk about this ultimate, supramundane, Mark Blum translates it as, this ultimate reality. Why is this, the Buddha says, it is because people are affected by these four inversions that they do not understand the meaning of the Dharma taught in the mundane world. And what is the reason for that? It is because people in the mundane world are impacted by three inversions, perception, reflection, and theory.

[23:45]

So yeah, we've all got that. We have perception and we have various reflections and we have various theories about, you know, what's happening. And so they perceive impurity in what is pure. These errors are known as inversions. It is by means of them that written letters may function in the world, yet their true meanings remain unknown. What are these meanings? Non-self actually denotes samsara. So believing in non-self, he says, denotes samsara. Well, you know, and self denotes Tathagata, he says. I'm going to come back to that, because that's really what I think we can usefully focus on in Arzaz and in the Sashin. But he goes on to say, impermanence denotes Sravakas and Pratyekabuddhas, who are just studying but not really taking on the practice. Permanence denotes the dharma body of Tathagatas, that's the dharmakaya.

[24:50]

Pain or dukkha, suffering, denotes all other paths. Bliss or sukha, joy, denotes nirvana itself. Impurity denotes created dharmas, conditioned dharmas. Purity denotes the true teaching of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. So this is what he says about non-inversions. So... This is a challenging teaching for us. And I want to go back to this, what he says, that self, non-self is actually samsara, and self denotes Tathagata, the thus come one, the Buddha. I think we can only understand this if we have actually looked at non-self, because the self we usually think of as the self is not what he's calling self.

[25:51]

Part of our practice, or maybe the heart of our practice, as Dogen says, to study the way is to study the self, is to see that our usual idea, our usual notion of the self is diluted, is a confusion. The conventional, our conventional way of thinking of self, seeing self, perceiving self, that's where I'm gonna talk about non-self, is that we have this separate identity and we have stories about our personal history and we have identity cards and social security numbers and, I don't know, all kind of email addresses and, I don't know, all this stuff that we think of as the self.

[26:56]

That's not the self. That's not the self that he says is Buddha. So we need to study non-self, anatma. We need to cut through our conventional, mundane sense of self. Self as a separate subject, separate from objects out there. That's not the self that he says is Buddha. But it's deeply ingrained in how we think. So we... are, well, English and most other languages that I know of. There's subject, verb, object. There's self and other. There's stuff out there that we're verbing or trying not to be verbed by. There's this sense of separation. So yeah, so the Buddha taught non-self initially to get us free from that.

[27:58]

And all of you, even those of you who are fairly new to zazen, have done enough zazen to have a sense of that. That actually, that sense of separate self, that's not so helpful. It's not real, it's not true. So, okay, non-self. But here comes Buddha, as he's about to pass away into nirvana, saying, actually, That's just an expedient teaching. The true teaching is self and purity and bliss and permanence. Non-self denotes samsara. Non-self is the teaching we need when we're caught up in samsara. So the bodhisattva idea is that we, not that we check out into nirvana, but that we stay in samsara and we find our way of being there.

[29:13]

But here, here Buddha is saying self denotes Tathagata. So he's not talking about our usual sense of self, clearly. And he goes on to talk more about this as this sutra or this section of the sutra unfolds. When we take refuge in Dharmakaya, in ultimate reality, Buddha, we partake of, we take refuge in, we are connected to this ultimate self, which is not separate from anything. Right on your seat. Dharmakaya, the whole works, everything right there. So, I'm going to be going over all of this stuff throughout Sashin, but let's go a little further and see what comes up.

[30:30]

Well, he talks about teaching non-self. There's a long parable which I won't go into, but he compares himself, the Buddha does, to a physician. in a certain context, he says, as a healing, there is no self, there is no person or individual living being, lifespan, personality, observer, actor, or experiencer. And he says, the heterodox path affirms a self in the same manner as some infer literacy in the shape of letters incised into wood accidentally by insects. This is why the Tathagata proclaims non-self as part of his Buddhadharma. It is because I need to straighten out the thinking of living beings, because I'm aware of their situation, that I expound the absence of self. There are reasons why I also expound the presence of self, just like a skilled physician who is well aware that some teachings can be medicinal or non-medicinal.

[31:57]

Come back to this section. So talking about talking about the lifespan of the Tathagata, which is inconceivably long, talking about this, he says, talking to one of the Bodhisattvas, who asks these questions in the sutra, in Kashapa, not the same as Mahakashapa.

[33:05]

He says, the lifespans of everyone, humans, gods, and even those out in space, all eventually flow like great rivers into the ocean. That is the lifespan of the Tathagata. So this, He says you should understand the Buddha to be a permanently abiding Dharma, an immutable Dharma. He says that this body of the Tathagata, Shakyamuni, that you see now is only a transformational body. So, to go beyond that is to see that all bodies feed into, flow into, this ultimate body, which is the nirmanakaya, which is, I mean, which is the dharmakaya. All the different individual bodies flow into, he says, this permanent dharmakaya.

[34:07]

So in terms of our practice in zazen and how to look at this, How do we see, how do we get some glimpse of this deeper self, which the Buddha says is the reality of Buddha? So in our sitting, in our zazen, in sasheen, we do have to look at non-self.

[35:15]

How our ideas of self are not reality. So as we sit, thoughts and feelings come up. Our particular patterns of grasping and anger and confusion come up. This is non-self. This is the self that is not what the Buddha is talking about. And yet, when we allow whatever it is that's on your seat to settle in this body, breathing, returning to awareness, the awareness we have through our human perceptions, we can start to get some taste of something deeper.

[36:23]

of some self that's not just about me and myself. How do we take refuge in that, in this ultimate universal awareness that we are also part of, or that is completely us. When we take refuge in awakening, Buddha and the awakened one, when we take refuge in reality, dharma, when we take refuge in community, which is the community not only of our sangha of practice here this week, that but also the sangha of

[37:51]

all beings, the Sangha of everything your eyes have ever seen, everything your ears have ever heard, everything that your consciousness has ever thought, and everything else. This isn't something to figure out or understand, but how do we find some deep trust in reality? And as we sit period after period, of course, the problems in, you know, your life this week, this year, you know, will arise. the problems in our world this week, this year also, you know, may come to awareness.

[39:01]

But how do we allow this dharmakaya reality to also or not also underlying all of that. It's hard to talk about this. Maybe it's impossible to talk about this. So I'm going to read something from the end of this section, rather than save it for the last day of Sashin. I'll just read a section here.

[40:14]

were a Tathagata to appear in the world and thoroughly explain to living beings the ordinary worldly teaching as well as the extraordinary transcendent teaching, it would enable Bodhisattvas to follow him and preach these things on their own. Once those Bodhisattva Mahasattvas obtain this most excellent wisdom, they would go on to bring an incalculable number of other living beings to where they too obtain the unsurpassed timeless ambrosia of the Dharma, that is, the permanence, bliss, self and purity of a Tathagata, of a Buddha. This is what I mean when I say that the Tathagata is permanent and immutable, which is not the permanent dharma meant when a common ordinary or ignorant person refers to Brahma or other deities. When someone invokes permanent dharma in the way I am speaking of here, it calls forth the Tathagata and not any other dharma. You should understand the Tathagata body in this way. Good men and good women should always focus their thoughts on cultivating understanding of these two words.

[41:15]

The Buddha permanently abides. The meaning of my nirvana, so this is all happening in the context of Shakyamuni is about to pass away into nirvana. The meaning of my nirvana is none other than the dharma nature or natural condition, dharmata, of all Buddhas. The body of a Tathagata is a permanently abiding body, an indestructible body, an adamantine body. It is not a body sustained by food of any sort. In other words, it is a dharma body. So this is talking about the unconditioned nature of ultimate reality. The body of a Tathagata accomplishes merit that is thus beyond measure.

[42:16]

So this is not just some, I mean, this may sound very abstract and irrelevant, but it's also talking about how to see this, I'll say, dharmakaya reality, how to feel this and feel the benefit of it. and by giving a summary of this teaching from Donald Lopez and Robert Buswell. In this sutra, the four so-called right views of suffering, impermanence, impurity, and no-self are proclaimed to be erroneous when describing the Buddha, his nirvana, and the Buddha realm, the Buddhadhatu. These instead are said to be, in fact, blissful, permanent, pure, and endowed with self. The nirvana of the Buddha is instead eternal, pure, blissful and endowed with self, a primordially existent reality that is only temporarily obscured by the kleshas, by our defilements.

[43:37]

When that nirvana and Buddha realm are finally recognized, Buddhahood is then achieved. The Buddha reveals the existence of this nirvana to Bodhisattva, so that's what's happening in this passage of the sutra. Because the Buddha realm, the Buddhadhatu, is present within all sentient beings, these four qualities are therefore found, not simply in the Buddha, but in all beings. This implies, therefore, that the Buddha and all beings are endowed with self. this ultimate self, in direct contradiction to the usual Buddhist doctrine of no-self. When the Buddha said there was no self, what he actually meant was that there was no mundane conditioned self among the skandhas. The Buddha's choose teaching as revealed at the time of his nirvana is that there is a great self, or a true self, which is the Buddha realm in all beings. So anyway, this is not how we usually think of the Dharma or practice or how we've been taught to think about it.

[44:51]

So this is a very strange and radical teaching, and yet it's something that we've chanted many times. We'll chant it again this afternoon. So, we'll have time for discussion of this this afternoon, but if anyone has any immediate comment or question or response. Yes, Brandon. One said, the duty is not to be this or that, just to be. The second thing is not to be consciousness, or in this case, the Dharmakaya. Okay, yeah.

[45:59]

We are caught up in language and beyond that is this reality. Thank you. Yes, Gershon. Can I give an email announcement? Please. It is the cold and flu season and many of us, including myself, are sneezing and coughing and it's crazy that you sneeze. You pinch your sleeve and it And that is exactly a demonstration of how we take care of the dharmakaya. So the dharmakaya is everything and we each are a particular expression of that. So the Soto Zen teaching is about this taking care of the particular in the context of seeing this ultimate universal dharmakaya reality.

[47:02]

which I'm trying to speak about and trying to share practice of this week. And the practice of it is be careful when you have to cough or sneeze. So thank you all very much. We'll close with the four bodhisattva vows.

[47:23]

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