I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. So, Mary Lee. Very good stew. Two homework assignments. My bride. I'm going to do a piece of performance art. going to cry. Let's let the audience. This is Mary Lee's homework, piece of performance Do you want to get thoughts from the audience?

[02:21]

Do you want to give us the actors, the directors, thoughts? Isn't it in keeping with Zen not to say anything about it? Yes, but it's not in keeping with art. Well, maybe in keeping with art, but not without a criticism. But then you're on the middle path. Olga? When I took Vicky, she was looking at all this horrible news, and she was really... you know, disappointed, and blase, and then all of this. See, I was hoping that she had the Robert Thurman interview, and that she was going to show that, and she was going to smile, or she was going to have something on her teeth. Did you notice what was there?

[03:23]

Huh? Did you notice what was there? I didn't understand the other newspaper. We had two different newspapers. Oh, yeah. Well, that's really important to know what that newspaper was. It's a newspaper of good news. Oh, good news? Yeah. Oh, it's just something about bad news. It wasn't very good. Yes. Well, the World Times, the good news newspaper. All right. It's good news about what's happening in Barclay. Well, I think we needed that commentary. I guess if you didn't read. Well, I guess it was hard to see, it was hard to know what to pick out of all of the... Yeah, right. And the good news, newspaper, is not in, somehow, it doesn't, it's not a big print.

[04:26]

Well, I saw that. What one person can do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. You've had a record already published paper? Uh-huh. The good news. The best good news around the world? Yeah. And then on the back of it was reviews of these, you know, books like, you know, American Heroes, right? Whereas the back of this inner paper was Macy's. That's my mind. That's what I look at every morning at five, all the advertisements. It was Robert Thurman. The new politics in Europe. The spirit of Europe describes itself as being neither left nor right, but uplifted forward and outward. So let's put it as a message. Very in keeping with the subject.

[05:31]

Thank you. Does anybody else have any? I found a book that I've missed for a long time. The public library and art room in Berkeley used to have it. And somebody It disappeared from the public library. And I didn't take it, though I would have loved to. I always feel like there's somebody who's going to steal it. It should have been me. But when we've been talking about these multiple bodhisattvas and buddhas, I've always been taken by this practice of reproducing the same image over and over, sometimes in printing or sometimes in drawing. And when we got to the family, when I started reading about the family of Buddhas, I found this book and I bought it today by accident and I immediately ran down to the Xerox machine.

[06:39]

And this is also over and over again, but it's Fudo. It's Fudo Myo. And I'd been thinking a lot about, is it Catherine who talked about the story with the rope and the Bodhisattva? Yes. Yes, I couldn't remember if it was Catherine or Catherine. But when she was talking about it, I thought about Fudomyo, who's, you know, this tough savior, and he carries a rope, and also a sword, but he's for people who don't want to be enlightened. or saved, and he goes out with this rope and throws it out. Sometimes it has a hook and sometimes, I don't know how, but I thought about that rope and that connection, and Boudreau and this little rope. Do you want to pass them? They're not so easy to see. But this just went on and on and on for pages.

[07:55]

Well, that is like the Sutra. Thank you. Well, tonight, we got a little rushed last week and we didn't talk so much about this this chair and throne episode in Chapter 6 in the Inconceivable Liberation. And I would just like to suggest that that's really quite a wonderful metaphor. You know, when Shariputra has this small worry about, is there going to be a chair? And then the Bodhisattva And then he was scolded for that. And then Bodhisattva provided thrones, tall, spacious and beautiful.

[09:02]

And we sort of skimmed over that. But the whole motif of how do you sit? What do you sit on? What is your condition? your status when you sit is really something to consider as you read this passage. You know, we can sit in a very small way, be kind of hemmed in by our tired posture, by the multitude of our somewhat oppressive and constrictive thoughts. And we can also sit in the middle of our room in on a great throne now we have that's also a way that we sit as described more fully we can sit in a very open way that includes everything so that's it's a nice image the image of the chair and then the thrones that in fact

[10:10]

do include everything. A person, a bodhisattva sitting on one of these enormous thrones is everywhere. I also found that there's some humor to this also. I mean, I thought it was rather amusing that he was asking, well, you know, where's everybody going to sit? I mean, you're worrying about the chairs and then, you know, a few minutes later you're in these incredible It's also very sober, but it's amusing. Did you come here for the sake of the jar, or did you come here for the sake of a chair? And then he repeats it with food, so there must be some relationship between the food and the jar. We're not going to read it, but chapter 10 is the feast brought about by the emanated incarnation, and it's a similar story about, well, are we going to get anything to eat here?

[11:16]

A small-minded request, which ends up in this miraculous feast. It's the theme of the sutra is to the extraordinary and ordinary and to take our ways of sitting and eating and so on and push at the way we think of them and allow us to investigate how we do these things. The next chapter, the family, we're going to do the goddess and the family of the Tartartas, and the family of the Tartartas is more about that. So, this tonight and next week, it will be nice because the themes now have all been introduced, I think, and what we're going to be reading about is the elaboration on the themes. How many people were at my talk when I talked about the goddess? Oh, OK.

[12:19]

I can do it again. OK. Well, this is quite a chapter. So now we have the big players. We have Manjusri and Vimalakirti. And so Vimalakirti is asking, getting down to the core of the heavy stuff. And so Vimalakirti, Manjusri asks Vimalakirti, good sir, how should a bodhisattva regard all beings? And what follows is quite a lovely paragraph about transiency and impermanence. Manjushri, a Bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise man regards the reflection of the moon in water, or as magicians regard men created by magic.

[13:25]

He should regard them as being like a face in a mirror, like the water of a mirage, like the sound of an echo, like a mass of clouds in the sky, like the previous moment of a ball of foam. Like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble in the water. Like a sprout from a rotten seed. Like the fun of games for one who wishes to die. Like the perception of color in one blind from birth. Like the tracks of a bird in the sky, like the erection of a eunuch, like the pregnancy of a barren woman, like fire burning without fuel, like the reincarnation of one who has attained ultimate liberation.

[14:36]

It's an interesting last line because I don't quite get the last line. No, these are paradox, I mean... Yes, they are, but in theory, from the Mahayana point, I don't want to get hung up on this, but from the Mahayana point of view, the Bodhisattva is always volunteering to reincarnate again and again, even though... Anyway, so this wonderful Bodhisattva imagination, how do we... Let's not take our lives so seriously and so personally. Let's find some more space and perhaps even enjoy transiency. It's all about the transient. This whole sutra is full of jokes. Yes, yes, yes. It does have that quality of playful humor.

[15:44]

It's not like you want to study impermanence, go to a graveyard and look at the rotting bodies. The mood is very different. I mean, it's pretty hard to think about the erection of the eunuch. Yeah, and rather fun. I think it leads you into... Not if you're the eunuch. So, with that passage about transiency in mind, I'd just like to read a little bit from Suzuki Roshi. Wherever we go, this teaching is true. This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness. Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self. In fact, the self nature of each existence is nothing but change itself.

[16:49]

the self-nature of all existence. The self-nature of all existence is change itself. There is no special separate self-nature for each existence. This is also called the teaching of nirvana. When we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana. So I think that this passage on transiency and impermanency is leading in this direction. And then Manjushri asks the obvious and difficult question. Noble Sir, if a Bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love towards them?

[17:55]

So, yeah? I just think it's a really interesting question. It's a good question. Isn't it? A very good question. It's why it's kind of like, what's the point? That's right. Maybe his question is coming from a more nihilistic or just what... It's coming from the extreme wisdom side. It's just all the appearance of a bubble before it's a bubble, you know, just nothing, next to nothing. So then, where does compassionate heart come? Very good question. So Vimalakirti replies, Manjushri, when a Bodhisattva considers all living beings, he thinks, in this way he thinks, just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings, thereby, He generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. The love that is peaceful because free from grasping. The love that is not feverish because free from passions.

[18:59]

The love that accords with reality because it is equanimous in all three times. The love that is without conflict because free of the violence of the passions. The love that is non-dual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal. The love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate, ultimate. The love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature. The love that is even, its aspirations being equal. The saint's love that has eliminated its enemy. The bodhisattva's love that continually develops living beings. The Tathagata's love that understands reality. The Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep. The love that is giving because it bestows the gift of Dharma free from the tight fist of the bad teacher.

[20:04]

And we're coming to the Paramitas now. The love that is morality, because it improves immoral living beings. The love that is tolerance, because it protects both self and others. The love that is effort, because it takes responsibility for all living beings. The love that is contemplation, because it refrains from indulgence in tastes. The love that is wisdom, because it causes attainment at the proper time. The love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of the Buddha. Such Manjushri is the great love of a Bodhisattva. And Thurman is translating Mahamaitri as love. Maitri is friendliness, so great friendliness, that quality as love.

[21:09]

So does that answer the question? It doesn't answer the question. Well this question is going to be, I think this is the question that the rest of the sutra is going to point at in a lot of different ways. And what it's describing is the transformation of a sentient being into a Bodhisattva. How do we transform the neuroses and the passions and all of the stuff that we're made of, all the very human stuff, How does that, what is the work that gradually filters that so that we are in the world and know the world intimately and are also free?

[22:31]

So we're always practicing with this quality of love or maha, maitri, maitri, M-A-I. Is that maitri or maitri? Is he saying that generating the great love towards all living beings is not so much connected with seeing their transitory nature and emptiness and so on, but it's a It's just part of being an enlightened being. I mean, it doesn't come out of the realization that everything is empty. It comes out of... It comes out of something... It comes out of a kind of a bigger realization than that and it... Well, it comes out of a very non... a profoundly non-attached realization. Yeah. Yeah.

[23:38]

Yeah, which is that release from the overflowing personal attachment. Yes. I've understood it when I think that the experience that we have in our human existence of love is like only what we can translate in our limited experience. And that in being in the bodhisattva experience, one is in the love. I mean, in the experience that we describe so limitedly as love.

[24:39]

And so, in going from one state to another, there's not a loss of love because of seeing the transience. There's actually an increase because you're in the primary experience rather than being in the translation of it. Yeah. Someone says that love is just attention. Attention? Yeah. So that one is freed to give complete attention. And when you give a complete attention to anything, a great deal happens. Good news of the world. You think about that and being with a child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a very profound question for us to keep.

[25:47]

And then there's some dialogue about the great compassion of a bodhisattva. And then, as usual, because it's a very lofty dialogue and fairly abstract, and ends, therefore, all things stand on the root, which is baseless. And we're kind of there, dangling in the air. So now, a certain goddess appears. And... Thurman suggests that she made, as goddess made, the Prajnaparamita in sort of a casual dress. Thereupon a certain goddess who lived in that house, having heard this teaching of the Dharma, of the great Bodhisattvas, and being delighted and pleased, and overjoyed, manifested herself in a material body.

[26:57]

and showered the great spiritual heroes, the Bodhisattvas and the great disciples, with heavenly flowers. When the flowers fell on the bodies of the Bodhisattvas, they fell off on the floor. But when they fell on the bodies of the great disciples, they stuck to them and did not fall. The great disciples shook the flowers and even tried to use their magical powers, but the flowers would not shake off. And then the goddess said to the venerable Shariputra, Reverend Shariputra, why do you shake these flowers? And Shariputra replied, Goddess, these flowers are not proper for the religious persons and so we are trying to shake them off. The Goddess said, do not say that, Reverend Shariputra. Why? These flowers are proper indeed. Why? Such flowers have neither a constructional thought nor discrimination. But the elder Shariputra has both constructual thought and discrimination. and so on.

[27:58]

Reverend Shariputra, see how these flowers do not stick to the bodies of these great spiritual heroes, the Bodhisattva. This is because they have eliminated constructural thoughts and discriminations. And a little more lecture. And then the Venerable Shariputra said to the Goddess, Goddess, how long have you been in this house? And the Goddess replied, I've been here as long as the elder has been in liberation." And Shariputra, a little bit like Winnie the Pooh, says, have you been in this house for quite a long time? And the goddess said, has the elder been in liberation for quite some time? At that, the elder Shariputra fell silent. So here we have a little preview, because in the next chapter there's going to be Malakirti's silence, and there's quite a difference in the quality of silence.

[29:02]

And the goddess is not going to let him get away with it. Could you describe constructive? Constructual? Well, it's just the way we make our world. You know, if we construct our world according, it's our self-habit at work. It's our self-habit, it's our social habit, it's everything that we're immersed in. It's what these three pictures are talking about. You know, when we first, we see the world, we see mountains, and we know there are mountains and rivers, and we know that, and we're clear about it, and we know that we come here at 7.30 and et cetera, et cetera. The world has some good order to it, And then the second, when mountains are not mountains, so on, when we're beginning to get some real feel of interdependence and transiency and the slipperiness of things, and maybe begin to feel a little bit weird, or even if we go into it enough, crazy, because our constructual thinking is being challenged.

[30:22]

That's what it's... And then, perhaps reaching the condition of a bodhisattva, who has... who's just there, who's just paying attention, who doesn't have ideas. You know, I read... And there's an essay about a man who had been blind since he was about three. Virgil. Virgil. I gave a talk about that a while back, too. It was a wonderful example. And then he was able, he had these cataracts removed, and he was able to see, except he really couldn't see the way everyone else saw, because we all had constructed, we had all put everything together in a certain way and actually had conceptualized the way we see things, although we don't think that, we just look at them and that's how they look, but he was unable to do it and so it made his life very difficult, but it was just so interesting to read this and to me it was a very clear example of how we construct our world in a very literal way.

[31:38]

Yeah, he'd been blind, he was more than 50 and not in good health and he'd been blind since he was 5 or 6. And so he just had lost all that construction. Finally he died. He could not stand seeing. He was too old to learn. It's a very fundamental process. Thurman talks about it as our software. It's programmed in. The goddess won't let him be silent. Elder, you are the foremost of the wise.

[32:40]

Why do you not speak? Now, when it's your turn, do not answer. Now, when it is your turn, you do not answer the question. And then he falls back on the party line. Since liberation is inexpressible, goddess, I do not know what to say. And then she scolds him again, because there's no difference between speech and non-speech. Therefore, Reverend Shariputra, do not point to liberation by abandoning speech. Why? The holy liberation is the equality of all things. Goddess, is not liberation the freedom from desire, hatred, and folly? That's the Theravadan position. That's the old position. You restrain from. You move back from. And the Goddess says, liberation is freedom from desire, hatred, and folly. That is the teaching of the excessively proud.

[33:43]

But those free of pride are taught that the very nature of desire, hatred, and folly is in itself liberation. Now we're coming to the really... It's the really hard stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So these flowers have stuck to the disciples who have believed that freedom is, the liberation is the freedom from desire, hatred, and follow. They thought that they knew what they were doing. They thought that they had a pretty good map of development, spiritual development, and they were following it, and they were doing pretty well. And so the flowers stuck. That was the only way to liberation.

[34:52]

Yes. Right. Right. So... But those free of pride are taught that the very nature of desire, hatred and folly itself is liberation. So... I'm getting stuck on the word nature, the very nature. Well, you know, there are three marks of existence. Everything has something to do with suffering, or essentially being, existence. Everything has something to do with suffering. something to do with impermanence and nothing has its own nature. That is, everything is, it's our delusive thinking that makes us say that a thing has its own nature and is thereby different, separate.

[36:02]

And yet things do have their own identity. even though they're interdependent in the Sandokai. What do we say? What do we say in the Sandokai? Independent yet... Independent yet interdependent, I'm not saying. its own place, or each form has its own... That's right. Everything is interdependent. Each form keeps its own place. Yeah. But part of the nature of each thing is the interdependence. Is its emptiness. Interdependence. That's right. Yeah. And, yeah, yeah, right. That's what it says it is. I mean, I started to think about this.

[37:15]

Oh yes, you know, there's all this emptiness and we're just this collection of things, you know, that disappears from moment to moment. But there is an organizing principle. And its name is Catherine Pounce. So, but to think of that as just an organizing principle, Yes. Yeah. It'd be fine if I answered the phone that way at work. We're going to miss you, Principal Grant. Especially considering your job. Well, yes. I was just going to piggyback on that. Somebody's answering machine identifies the speaker as a carbon-based life form. Those free of pride are taught that the very nature of desire, hatred, and folly itself is liberation.

[38:25]

And let's just keep that sentence on page 60 going. And then there's more talk. And then this kind of Shariputra and the goddess, Shariputra trying to figure out this goddess, what's going on. And then the goddess emphasizes her abilities by producing eight miracles in the house. golden hue shines so brightly and whoever enters this house is no longer troubled by his passions and so on. Always inexhaustible treasures and so on. So now Shariputra is pretty firmly impressed with the goddess and her ability.

[39:29]

She's leading him on. She's engaging in serious, skillful means here with Shariputra. And she says at the end of describing these miracles, Reverend Shariputra, these eight strange and wonderful things are seen in this house. Who then, seeing such inconceivable things, would believe the teachings of the disciples? Shariputra is a disciple. So she's really, she's moving in on him. So finally, he asks the question that has probably been troubling him for some time. God is, what prevents you from transforming yourself out of your female state? Now the disciples were convinced that in order to reach real attainment, you had to be in the male form. There were various stories of really advanced women sort of quickly zapping into the form of a man so that they could complete the story.

[40:36]

Why was that? There's a little bit of conceptual thinking on that. Cultural, conceptual thinking. I can understand the hormonal cycles that women go through, the impermanence of that. There are a lot of feminist critiques of Buddhism. The inferior position of women is pretty much there from the very beginning. They're the temptresses. It was liberated for its time in that economically women So within this historical setting. Did Buddha recognize women as people?

[41:39]

No. It's a long story. I don't want to get into it right now. But it's good work. I'll walk out. But he did later, didn't he? Well, he allowed them gradually. It's the only time in his life that he changed his mind. First he said that women could not be nuns, and then when the aunt who raised him pleaded, and he said no twice the third time, he said yes. But even so, then the women had to have many more rules than the men, and the youngest monk always would take precedent over the oldest nun. So anyway, what prevents you, goddess, from transforming out of your female state? So the goddess says, although I have sought my female state these 12 years, I have not yet found it. Reverend Shariputra, if a magician were to incarnate a woman by magic, would you ask her, what prevents you from transforming yourself out of your female state?

[42:49]

Shariputra says, no. Such a woman would not really exist, so what would there be to transform? The goddess says, just so, Reverend Shariputra, all things do not really exist. Now, would you think, what prevents one whose nature is that of a magical incarnation from transforming herself out of her female state? So this is sort of the answer that's given even, I've heard it given very recently, when women say, well, we should have female figures in the altar, or the language in the sutra should be changed, which it has been. Often the response is, well, you know, gender's not very important. Gender's just, you know, is gender real? It's all just, of this temporary condition sort of thing. So, in a certain way, that's true, but the goddess is not going to leave it at that.

[43:54]

Thereupon the goddess employed her magical power to cause the elder Shariputra to appear in her form and to cause herself to appear in his form. Then the goddess transformed into Shariputra said to Shariputra, transformed into a goddess. Reverend Shariputra, what prevents you from transforming yourself out of your female state? And Shariputra transformed into the goddess replied, I no longer appear in the form of a male. My body has changed into the body of a woman. I do not know what to transform. So his self-habit has been blasted And he's in total confusion. And the goddess continued, if the elder could again change out of the female state, then all women could change out of their female states.

[44:55]

And so on and so on. And there's a discussion about that. It says here too, with this in mind, the Buddha said, in all things, there is neither male nor female. Yeah. So why would the woman discriminate against? Yeah, why be? So, again, that's a nice example of really going deeply. You can play around and talk about interdependence, but when your sense, when your flesh and blood sense of yourself begins to change, whether it's a gender transformation or

[46:00]

or illness or some kind of sudden understanding or even a realization of aging. It's a very profound experience. Are we ready to move on to Chapter 8? Family of the Protagonist. Now this is, this chapter is, it's a very rich one. And it's kind of the point of how this sutra is about lay practice. How we take on the hugeness of the Bodhisattva practice into the world of lay people.

[47:07]

So, it's still Manjusri and Vimalakirti. Manjusri asks, saying, Noble Sir, how does the Bodhisattva follow the way to attain the qualities of the Buddha? And Vimalakirti replies, Manjusri, when the Bodhisattva follows the wrong way, he follows the way to attain the qualities of the Buddha. So this theme about finding liberation in the very nature of desire, hatred and folly, this is what this chapter is going to be about. When the Bodhisattva follows the wrong way, he follows the way to attain the quality of Buddha. Then Manjushri asked, well how does the Bodhisattva follow the wrong way? And now we're going to get a big discourse on the teachings of dichotomy.

[48:16]

Vimalakirti replied, even should he enact the five deadly sins He feels no malice, violence, or hate. Even should he go into the hells, he remains free of all the taint of passions. Even should he go into the states of animals, he remains free of darkness and ignorance. When he goes into the states of the Asuras, jealous gods, he remains free of pride, conceit, and arrogance. When he goes into the realm of the Lord of Death, He accumulates the stores of merit and wisdom. When he goes into the states of motionless and immateriality, he does not dissolve therein. He may follow the ways of desire, yet he stays free of attachments to the enjoyments of desires. He may follow the ways of hatred, yet he feels no anger to any living being. he may follow the ways of the father, yet he is ever conscious with the wisdom of firm understanding, and so on.

[49:28]

So, this is lay practice, that there is nowhere you cannot go. And in fact, the more skillful you are, the wider your field, That seems, I mean, following the way of hatred. I don't know, it sounds like... Is it true, practicing the way of hatred? Well, it's not, it doesn't say that. It doesn't say that. Even should he go into the hells, he remains free of the taint of passions. That is, this business of, he goes, he's clean.

[50:31]

There's no flowers sticking. There's attention. and non-attachment, wherever he goes, wherever she goes. But where it mentions the way of hatred, that seems to have a different quality from the example you just gave. Yes, yes, they're not... I don't remember exactly what it said. He may follow the ways of hatred, yet he feels no anger. So how do you follow the ways of hatred? Maybe a soldier in war? But that wouldn't be... it's a total contradiction. If he may follow the ways of folly, yet he is never conscious with the wisdom... yet he is always conscious with the wisdom of firm understanding. Well, you know, sometimes we have the experience of...

[51:33]

being really angry, and I'm really angry. I also know that I'm angry. And I manage not to act it out. But then you're not following the way of hatred. Maybe it's a translation thing. Yeah, maybe it's translation. Maybe it means more like being in the realm of? Well, you know, like the five deadly sins, because I'm having trouble with this too. Like, even should he enact the five deadly sins, he feels no malice, violence, or hate. And those are like killing your mother, and killing your father, and very, like they list them in the back, and the numbers. And that, it's just very, there's a certain, something about embodiment, you know, like doing something that Like you're present, but, and you do an action, but then somehow you don't, it sounds like maybe you don't really mean it, or, I mean, I am having trouble with it too.

[52:48]

You're not carried, well, you're not carried away by it. Now Rebecca called, this is very tantric. You know, tantra means continuity. This all has, and Thurman says that the Vimalakirti Sutra and a poem coming up in this chapter he calls the first tantra poem. You know how Tibetans incorporate these wrathful deities. It's interesting that you mentioned Tibetan, because as you were reading, I was thinking, Chökyam Trungpa, coming in drunk, but being perfectly clear and brilliant. And also being drunk. And also dying of alcoholism. Yeah, it's a good, because it's not comfortable. For?

[53:52]

I don't know what it was for him, but it's not comfortable for us. Well, and following the ways of desire but staying free of attachment can sometimes look like using people. Yeah, that is all. There's a very nice translation by Glassman and Rick Field of part of Gauguin's Instruction to the Tenso in his latest Tricycle. It's talking about the cook. That's a chapter on transformation. Cooking, like life, is about transformation. When we cook, we work directly with the elemental forces of fire and heat, water, metal, and clay. We put the lid on the pot and wait for the fire to transform the rice. Or we mix the bread with the yeast and put it in the oven to bake.

[54:58]

There is something hidden almost magical about it. This kind of transformation involves a certain amount of faith. It's dexterous work. We work hard to prepare the food. We wash the rice, knead the bread, break the eggs, keep the parameters and the precepts. Well, do we keep the parameters and the precepts? Interesting. We measure the ingredients carefully. We mix, stir, blend, but then we have to wait. We have to let the fire and water transform the food we've prepared. We also have to keep an eye on things. We have to be aware of what is going on. The Zen cook, the old adage, a watch pot never boils is only half true. We leave the lid in the pot most of the time, but we also lift the lid every once in a while to taste the food. The Zen cook follows the middle way.

[55:59]

We have faith that the soup is coming along, but we still have to check now and then. The accomplished Zen cook is something of an alchemist. He or she can transform poisons into virtues. The Zen cook doesn't do this by adding a secret ingredient, but by leaving something out. The Zen cook leaves out attachment to self. For example, anger is considered a poison when it's self-motivated and self-centered. But take that attachment to the self out of anger and the same emotion becomes the fierce energy of determination, which is a very positive force. Take the self-centered aspect out of greed and it becomes the desire to help. Drop the self-orientation from ignorance and it becomes a state of unknowing that allows new things to rise. So I think that this is talking... Maybe these two texts are talking about the same thing, I think.

[57:13]

But it's often not comfortable, and it's very mixed up, and it's risky. Very easy to misuse it. That's why all this enormous insistence on the paramitas and doing the meticulous character work. In some previous chapter it was said that the Bodhisattva could come back and do acts that to us might appear to be evil, but we're not. Yeah, we're going to get more of that. We're going to get more of that. And again, we went into a long discussion of this, you know, sort of paradoxical situation, how the Bodhisattva could do this and yet not be doing it at the same time.

[58:23]

Not be doing evil, although it seemed to be evil. Right. And that was a quality of the Bodhisattva, that perhaps, unless seeing it through the mind of the Bodhisattva, it's hard to grasp from the mind of it. Yes, our ethical mind is disturbed. So all these dichotomies. And then this also on page 65, a kind of social dichotomy or something.

[59:25]

He may follow the ways of the poor, yet he holds in his hand a jewel of inexhaustible wealth. He may follow the way of cripples, yet he is beautiful and well adorned with auspicious signs and marks. He may follow the ways of those of lowly birth, yet through his accumulation of the stores of merit and wisdom he is born in the family of the Tagata. He may follow the ways of the weak and ugly and wretched, yet he is beautiful to look upon, and his body is like that of a Narayana." So what is the family? Himalakirti said that the crown prince of Manjushri Manjusri, what is the family of the Tathagatas? Manjusri replied, Noble Sir, the family of the Tathagatas consists of all basic egoism, of ignorance and the thirst for existence, of lust, hate and folly, of the four misapprehensions, the five obscurations, and so on, of nine causes of irritation, the past of ten deadly sins.

[60:44]

Such is the family of the Tathagata, In short, noble sir, the 62 kinds of convictions constitute the family of the tautographist. Got that last week, the 62 wrong convictions of the family of the tautographer. So it's just being rubbed in. And then, Manjushri, with what in mind Do you say so in Manjushri's Noble Serve, one who stays in the fixed determination? It just goes on. Now is this what you were talking about, Noble Serve? Flowers like the blue lotus, the red lotus, and the white lotus, on page 66, and the water lily, and the moon lily, do not grow in the dry ground in the wilderness, but do grow in swamps and mud banks?

[61:45]

Maybe. Just so the Buddha qualities do not grow in living beings certainly destined for the uncreated, but do grow in these living beings who are like swamps and mud banks of passion. Likewise, the seeds do not grow in the sky, but do grow in the earth. So the Buddha qualities do not grow in those determined for the absolute, but do grow in those who conceive the spirit of enlightenment after having produced a Sumeru-like mountain of egotistic views. That is, those of us who are the most deluded may well turn out to be the most enlightened. Then there's hope. That's right. That's right. But you don't get enlightened by just playing safe. You know, that's sort of a Shariputra model and it's not working with this one. that playing safe does not get it.

[62:55]

You mean by being so... By just being careful. Virtuous. By being virtuous. By being careful. By, in a major way, trying not to make mistakes. Impulsive. Yeah. That whole... By being restrained. you know, all that stuff, that's not going to get it. Repression. Yeah, yeah. This is also, again, the Mahayana practice. Yes, it is. It's the political practice. Always, right. It was the first thing that Pramila Kirti had said to him while he was sitting under the tree, saying, you don't meditate So, then the elder Mahakasyapa applauded the crown prince Manjushri.

[63:58]

Good, good Manjushri, this is well spoken, this is right. The passions do indeed constitute the family of the Tathagatas. So, now we come to this poem, which actually is a very famous poem, and which Thurman calls the first tantric poem. Of the true Bodhisattvas, the mother is the transcendence of wisdom. The father is the skill and liberative technique. The leaders are born of such parents. So this is sort of in a new key, this poem. It's not... It's devotional.

[64:58]

The mother is the transcendence of wisdom. I'm sort of getting tired, so let me just read a lovely echo about the transcendence wisdom, Prajnaparamita, who sits in our altar statue, Rebecca Mae, because we needed a female statue in our altar. And this echo homage to the Prajnaparamita is read at Tassajara, and it was taken out of the longer Prajnaparamita. So this is also tantric because it's the female and the male principle. The female, the, Prajnaparamita is the mother of the gods, and the male, upaya, are skillful means. So it's the,

[66:03]

and it's the means to use. Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light. And from everyone in the triple world, she removes darkness. Most excellent are her words. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken, and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, the Lords, sets in motion the wheel of the dharma." So, Whose poem is that? It's a Prajnaparamita.

[67:15]

It's from the Prajna, longer Prajnaparamita Sutra. Who knows? Maybe. I don't know. I could never find out who translated it. Dan Welch took it. I think. I don't know. Finally. So, um... That's the Bodhisattva's mother. And then the father is the skill and means, upaya. And the Bodhisattvas are born of these two, skillful means and the wisdom. Their wife is the joy and the dharma, love and compassion of their daughters, the dharma and the truth of their sons, and their home is deep thought on voidness. So the Bodhisattva family is that the family attachment is to all people.

[68:25]

And all the passions are their disciples. Now that's again, that's interesting that the passions are the disciples, the passions are the liberating places. All the passions are their disciples, controlled at will. Their friends are the aids to enlightenment, thereby they realize supreme enlightenment. Their companions, ever with them, are the six transcendences, paramitas. Their consorts are the means of unification, their music is the teaching of the Dharma, So this is the fruit, this poem is describing the fruit of transformation of the Bodhisattva, the sentient being to the Bodhisattva transformation and it's describing the Bodhisattva vision.

[69:31]

It's describing the third little painting of when after you've gone through the first two stages, you're home again. And mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. You're completely at home. And then, because this is a lay teaching, Their ornaments are described, the auspicious signs. Their wealth, so all these aspects of our being in the world, our ornaments, our wealth, so on, their wealth is the holy dharma, their business is its teaching, their great income is pure practice, and it is dedicated to supreme enlightenment.

[70:37]

consists of the four contemplations. Its spread is the pure livelihood. Their food is the ambrosia of the teachings and their drink is the juice of liberation. Their bath is pure aspiration. Morality, their hunger, their perfume. When Robert Thurman was talking about this in his class, he was encouraging people to encourage their own imagination. Like as from chair to throne. Can you imagine yourself sitting on your black cushion in the Zen Dhal, on your throne? Can you imagine yourself climbing into bed at night, the bed being the great field of Bodhisattva contemplation, which you will slip into, I see, as sleep comes. Now, can you just keep reframing your routine experiences in a much larger way?

[71:52]

I remember once sitting in Zen meditation, in this chair actually, and it was late afternoon, it was like open period, and the sun was Yeah, all bodhisattvas coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we can keep our eyes and hearts open for all of this experience. They manifest birth voluntarily. Yet they are not born, nor do they originate. They shine in all the fields of the Buddhas, just like the rising sun.

[72:55]

I miss this spontaneous activity of this third stage. Though they worship Buddhas by the millions with every conceivable offering, they never dwell upon the least difference between Buddhas. They journey through all Buddha fields in order to bring benefit to living beings. Yet they see those fields as just like empty space, free from any conceptual notions of living beings. The fearless Bodhisattvas can manifest all in a single instant the forms and sounds and manners of behavior of all living beings. So, here they are, everywhere, amongst us, all the time, and just no space between, no otherness, exactly here. Although they recognize the deeds of Maras, they can get along even with these Maras, for even such activities may be manifested by those perfected in

[74:12]

liberative technique. So they, remember there was that, we read it very quickly on page 38 in the chapter about the Bodhisattva's reluctance, but there was the Bodhisattva who encountered the goddesses, Mara, with the goddesses, and took the goddesses away from Mara, and then gave them back, enlightened them, So the Bodhisattva who recognized Mara very quickly and knew Mara very thoroughly and knew exactly how to deal with him, her. They play with illusory manifestations in order to develop living beings, showing themselves to be old or sick. even manifesting their own deaths.

[75:14]

What does that mean? Well, you never know what they're going to look like. You know? It may be a person dying. Or the drunk on the subway. Or the drunk on the subway. That's right. That's right. And in the older sutras, there were the 32 auspicious marks of a Buddha, and they were impressive, you know. glowings and glitterings and largenesses and so on. So this is again, this is taking all that away and going in exactly the opposite direction. They demonstrate the burning of the earth in the consuming flames of the world's ends. in order to demonstrate impermanence to living beings with the notion of permanence.

[76:18]

There again, that's pretty strong. They demonstrate the burning of the earth and the consuming flames of the world's end. You know, we who've been living with the possibility of some kind of nuclear holocaust. Is this Bodhisattvas at work? I think I really thought quite a lot about this and decided that the way I see it is not that they, the bodhisattvas, would be burning the earth, but that if, when the earth burns, they will be there and they will be pointing out that it too is a teaching. As we all go up in flames, you're being taught, you're being taught. Or it could just mean they conjure it up, you know, they demonstrate.

[77:24]

There was the monks, the famous monks who burned themselves. The immolations, you mean the political protests? During the Vietnam War. Right. That certainly was a great I can't remember which emperor it was that was just really into art and building beautiful palaces. I mean, it sounds like a fairy tale, but it happened. And there was massive famine and plague, I guess, I think the 11th century in Japan. But somehow it started with this thing that they do every year in Japan. Outside of Kyoto on the mountain of burning this huge

[78:28]

character Dai. And what is Dai? Well, like Dai Shin. Great, great, great. So it's, it's like, while it's only the side of the mountain, but it's also like the, you know, the ultimate great conflagration that it represents. As I understand it, but it started way back as a protest So maybe it's Buddha's sacrifice that they're making that path. And then some passages. It's a very beautiful poem. I was just reading it again today. For all the things they give. By devoting themselves as monks to all the strange sects of the world, they develop all those beings who have attached themselves to dogmatic views. That's a pretty nice way of being a religious person.

[79:38]

During the short eons of famine, they become food and drink. Having first alleviated thirst and hunger, they teach the Dharma to living beings. A good social message. First things first. And then this very famous verse, in order to help living beings they voluntarily descend into the hells which are attached to all the inconceivable Buddha fields. Well, that sort of sums up this confusion of the Mahayana ethics. In order to help the living beings, they voluntarily descend into the hells which are attached to all the inconceivable Buddha fields. Everything is a Buddha field. Maybe that's what it means in that early part about following the way of this and that and the other thing, that they do it in order to set an example even in that realm.

[80:56]

Right. Right. Following Nina's question. Yeah. Yeah. Do they actually follow the way of folly? They take the way of folly, but demonstrate whatever... That's good. Yes. In order to... They take that way in order to teach liberation in the midst of it. They manifest their lives in all the species of the animal kingdom. They display sensual enjoyment to the worldlings and trances to the meditative. They completely conquer the maras and allow them no chance to prevail. They intentionally become courtesans in order to win men over and then, having caught them with the hook of desire, they establish them in Buddha-nosis. So, that's it.

[82:05]

That's the family of the tatagatums. It keeps us all a bit tired and overwhelmed. perhaps inspired. It's a really, it's a very difficult teaching. And it has to sort of sink into you.

[83:09]

I'm visiting a friend once a week in jail who, she was one of the protesters, the two people hit, struck a trident missile on August 9th in a Lockheed factory. And then prayed and chanted Isaiah. turning swords into plowshares. And they have been in jail since, and they were just sentenced last week, and in fact will have a total of only 10 months in jail, which is pretty good. They have, I think, a wonderful judge. So I've been visiting Susan every week, and she's very Christian. This plowshares action is a very Catholic Christian. And she's also been studying Buddhism for some time. And some bodhisattva, you can only get books in that jail, you can only get books if they've been sent by the publishers.

[84:21]

And somebody put together 25 books from Parallax Press. So she's got a nice library of Thich Nhat Hanh, even though she's only logged five books in her cell at one time. And she is in a semi-lockdown. She's in her cell for 19 hours a day. And so she's been reading a lot of Buddhism. and meditating quite a lot and doing a lot of walking meditation. When I saw her yesterday, she said, you know, the thing is that when I meditate a lot, I'm more disturbed, that I get angrier, that my skin is thinner. And here I am in this place, it's a very paranoid setting, and people are really unkind.

[85:22]

and the guards are really unkind. And there was somebody who had oral surgery and the stitches came out and she just had to wait a week for her next appointment with no pain pills, you know, that sort of thing. So, you know, and here's Susan meditating and opening up, which most people do in a monastic setting. in this jail. And she's a very strong and stable person. So she does it. But she said, what can I do about my anger? And so that's been her question, what can I do about my anger? And from a Christian point of view, anger is not good. And you do acts like getting a trident with a hammer out of love, not out of anger.

[86:27]

And when anger comes up, it's pretty threatening. And somehow it's very difficult to... It was our first period of not communicating with each other very well, when I started talking about My feeling that anger, it's not that anger is bad, but it's more how you use it, whether you use it skillfully or unskillfully. And that was very hard. I mean, we just didn't connect very well. That piece you quoted about anger in your magazine article. I sent her that today. Right. That's right. That's right. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. When they talk about anger, greed, and pollution, those three are the food for transformation.

[87:34]

And I always think of them as being instantly transformed, not that you transform anger so that you never have it. But isn't anger what is transformed to energy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I certainly feel, I couldn't say that I do things out of love. I feel as if the mixture of my motives is so impenetrable that I don't know what's there. And I know that anger motivates me a lot to do things that I'm glad I do. But there's a difference between reacting out of anger without thinking, and using anger as a motivation for an action that is thought. That's right. I mean, I think that's part of... That's right. That's the Bodhisattva transformation.

[88:34]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's really, and it's thought Well, I think that we do, we transform, anger gets... If we give anger proper attention, if we recognize it, and notice it, and know that it's anger, and let it go, and recognize it again, that's the transforming work. But it has its own life. kind of take the teeth out of it you know you know the sharpness of it and then you just have this wave of something to use yeah yeah yeah but for me like anger I mean it's it can be really uncomfortable sometimes because if I'm if I'm really if it's if I feel like I'm gripped by it or I'm gripping it I mean if I'm

[89:50]

if I don't have some non-attachment, if I'm really hooked in here, it's extremely uncomfortable. And so it just gives them to try and get a little distance on it so that I can, you know, so it can actually be useful. Yeah, if you can detach it from its object. But anger is so connective. When I was working for the county as a family therapist, there would be families who would be solidly connected by their anger. You know, they would never leave one another. Because they were so angry. Well, I think it's time to stop.

[90:36]

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