I've been talking about the 100 dharmas of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, and I'm going to continue to do that, but I'm going to also give you a synopsis so that you will understand what I'm talking about. Every time I give this talk, I talk about the whole thing, even though my talk is just about one section. So every time I talk about it, you get the whole thing and can understand it more and more, hopefully. Reiteration is one of the Buddhist mnemonic devices.

[01:20]

If you read the old Pali Sutras, they get very tedious because they repeat over and over, because in order to learn the doctrines, so it's very repetitive and that leads to absorbing. So at the risk of repeating myself over and over, I think we absorb it better to do that, this kind of thing which is just learning something. beyond learning, something beyond learning, going into your true nature and bringing something forth, bringing your true self forth.

[02:21]

But learning is also important, that's the other side. So it's good to know something about Buddhism while you're practicing Buddhism, what their effort was and what they discovered and how they characterized it and how they expressed it. So the Yogacara school was an Indian school and in conjunction with the Madhyamaka school, which Madhyamaka school called the Middle Way. Nagarjuna's school, Madhyamaka school which reduced all rational logical conclusions to zero and the Yogacara school which kind of

[03:30]

which is the school of consciousness, study of consciousness, and the two schools complement each other. Maybe you could say that in a simplistic way It's like the middle way between being and non-being, between existence and non-existence. You know, the schools of Buddhism, there were 18 schools of Buddhism, I didn't plan to say this, but there were 18 schools of Buddhism before the first century, after Buddha. And principally, there were the schools of ends and non-ends. Ends means existence.

[04:36]

Do things exist or not? Well, one school said, well, things exist. The other school said, things don't exist. These are very real philosophical questions. And if they do exist, how do they exist? if they don't exist, how come we see them? So Nagarjuna's school was a school of middle way, neither existence nor non-existence, or within existence is non-existence, within non-existence is existence. So this is where the Prajnaparamita comes forth from Nagarjuna. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. That which is form is empty. That which is emptiness is form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.

[05:43]

So forms, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are called the five skandhas. And the five skandhas, the elements of the five skandhas are called the dharmas. So there are form dharmas, there are feeling dharmas, perception dharmas, mental formation dharmas, which are called karmic dharmas, and consciousness dharmas. So when we study the hundred dharmas of the Yogacara school, this is what we're studying, the hundred dharmas which are the elements of the five skandhas, which I just reiterated or iterated. So the Yogacara school

[06:54]

Yoga Chara means the practice of yoga or the practice of meditation, so the Yoga Chara School emphasized meditation and seeing into one's own nature through meditation, and they developed, deepened the psychological study, which was formed in Buddhist time, and they deepened and developed the psychological study. So the dharmas, the hundred dharmas, you could say everything is a dharma. Dharma means a thing. It also means, with a capital D, means the truth or Buddha's teaching or reality. But dharma with a small d means things. So this is a dharma, this is a dharma, everything is a dharma, but in order to study the human being, which is what Buddhism is about, to study the dharma is to study the self.

[08:06]

So to study the self means to study the dharmas that pertain or that form the psychophysical constituents of the human being. So one school had 75 dharmas. This school has 100 dharmas. And these dharmas are the physical dharmas, the constituents of the physical body, and the psychological dharmas, psycho-physical. So how do we study the person? Through the dharmas. So we have 100 dharmas of that Yogacara school that we're studying, which is a commentary by Master Vasubandhu, who we're all familiar with because we chant his name every day, mostly every day, as one of the ancestors.

[09:08]

The form dharmas are the dharmas of the body, eye, ear, nose, and so forth. And then there are, we haven't gotten to that yet, and then there are the feeling dharmas, which means sensations, the way we feel both physically and psychologically or emotionally. And then perception dharmas, which is the mechanism by which we see the world and perceive. And then are the mental formations. Formations in the Heart Sutra means mental formations. There are 51 mental formations and these are dharmas which are wholesome, dharmas which are unwholesome, neither wholesome nor unwholesome, and some that are indeterminate, don't fall into one category or another, but are constituents of our psycho makeup.

[10:41]

And these are the dharmas which create karma, and I'll go through the list a little bit and then there's consciousness, the dharmas of consciousness. The dharmas of consciousness are the eight levels of consciousness, those are the consciousness dharmas, the storehouse consciousness which has all the seeds which is triggered by our actions and continues to create either good situations or bad situations depending on our actions. So we say that human being is self-creating. That's very interesting. You know, we say, most religions will say there's a deity which is the creator.

[11:51]

But in Buddhism, we say each one of us is self-creating. Through our own actions, we create our own development. And you may say, well, what about before you were born? For Buddhism, there's no beginning or end. So the end of one event is the beginning of another event. I'm not going to say reincarnation or anything like that, but the beginning, the end of one event is the beginning of another event. events or just dharmas are rolling along continually reinventing something or re-establishing existences.

[13:07]

The important aspects here are the eight levels of consciousness, which is awareness and includes ego as the seventh level of consciousness, and the 51 mental dharmas with which we create ourselves, actually, with which we create a self. So these are the 51 self-creating dharmas. So the mind dharmas very complex. I'm not going to talk about those, but I'm just going to go through, but I will just read through just to orient us.

[14:25]

there are the eight mind dharmas which is consciousness basically, eight levels of consciousness, then there are dharmas which are interactive with the mind, those are the 51 karmic creating dharmas, then there are the form dharmas which are the body, and then the dharmas which are not interactive with the mind, and then there are the unconditioned dharmas So eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, mind consciousness, ego consciousness called manas, and alaya consciousness which is the storehouse, those are the eight levels of consciousness. Then the dharmas which are attention, contact, feeling, conceptualization, deliberation, and then five particular states are desire, resolution, recollection, concentration, and judgment.

[15:54]

And then there are the wholesome dharmas, which lead to wholesome states. Faith, vigor, shame and remorse, absence of greed, absence of anger, absence of stupidity, renunciation and non-harming. These are the wholesome dharmas. Not so many, actually. There are many more unwholesome dharmas. So the six fundamental afflictions, which are unwholesome, they're called afflictions, greed, anger, stupidity, arrogance, doubt and improper views. then there are 20 derivative afflictions from those which are wrath, hatred, rage, covering, deceit, flattery, conceit, harming, jealousy, stinginess, lack of shame and lack of remorse. So I went through all these dharmas there are eight major great afflictions which are lack of faith, laziness, laxness, torpor, restlessness, distraction, improper knowledge, and scatteredness.

[17:00]

So I talked about those. So now there are four which are called unfixed, which neither fall into one side or another. They can be they don't have a fixed position, and there are four of them. One is called sleep, and one is called regret, examination and investigation. I'll explain what they are. This is where we stopped, and this is what I'm going to talk about today. So I kind of brought us up to where we are. Sleep, is an unfixed dharma. In other words, everybody has to sleep, right? Just sleep. No problem. It's a dharma because it's part of our psychic life.

[18:04]

but it can be beneficial if you get, I like to get eight hours of sleep, but I rarely do, you know, so I'm always a little bit sleepy, but we should get sleep, you know? Before you sit sushin, you should go to bed early, which is really hard, but you should, and then you feel nice and refreshed. But sleep can also be an unwholesome dharma, You know, it can be a way out, you know. If you're faced with something that you don't like, it's easy to kind of feel sleepy. Or if you are faced with a text that's difficult to read, you know, it's a way out. I remember at Tassajara, before we had electricity, we only had kerosene lamps for years and years and we'd have study period in the morning after zazen, before breakfast, and we have the kerosene lamps and everybody would go,

[19:19]

So, but sleeping is a kind of torpor, you know. There are reports of these old Zen masters who never slept, or if they did sleep, they'd sleep sitting up and they have a meditation chin rest. I have one actually. I should use it, but it's a little too short for me. It's made for somebody that's about 5'2", you know, Japanese. Sekito, I think, never sat, didn't sleep, lying down, and there are a number of Chinese Zen teachers, Zen Interesting name, Never Lay on Side was his name.

[20:29]

So being awake, you know, or being upright was their practice 24 hours a day. And there are people who do that in America. that little box. It's kind of like a steam box. They sit up in it. Even if the head falls to one side or the other, the body is sitting up. So I don't recommend that myself. I don't think I could do that. So sleep can go either way. It can be beneficial, just neutral, you know, but beneficial, or it can be something to be, it can carry you off, and we can use it as an excuse, you know, to not do something. So then there's regret, and regret

[21:37]

something that we did do. So if we regret something that we did, that may be good. If we regret something that we didn't do, well that's okay too. But the problem is regret can be a good dharma, a wholesome dharma, but it can also hold us back, you know, depression, and to self-flagellation, you know, we can beat ourselves with regret, and then it's not helpful. I think, you know, when we do something wrong, we just acknowledge it, we may regret it, that's good, go in the right direction.

[22:44]

If we hang on to regret, it holds us back. And then the next two are examination and investigation. These are vittarka and vichara, is what is described as like a bee. A bee flying to a flower is examination. The bee decides, oh there's a flower and he buzzes toward it and then investigation is the bee buzzing around the flower. investigating it. So one is called access and the other is called something else called arrival.

[23:55]

So access is like examination, it's more cursory, and then investigation is where you go deeply in to something and investigate it thoroughly. It's unfixed. If you don't examine something, not so good. So examining is good, you know. Examining and investigating is good. But sometimes if we examine and investigate too much, we get stuck in examining and investigating. hard to get on with what we're doing. There's the perennial student who is in college for 20 years working on the PhD. So, you know, get it done and get on with your life.

[25:04]

So, but investigation and examination are like discursive thinking. So discursive thinking is important, but in Dharma, we have to get beyond discursive thinking. To really locate our true self, we have to get beyond discursive thinking. So these are helpful dharmas. but they can go either way. There's a very interesting story, a Zen story, which probably most everybody's familiar with. You know the story of Zuigan. Zuigan calls himself, calls Master. The priest Juyen, who in Japanese is Zuigan,

[26:13]

called master to himself every day and then answered himself, yes. This is kind of investigation, right, an examination. But it's not to see how you are exactly, it's more like not straying from his myself calling myself. Who's calling who? Who is addressing who? Who's examining who? He says, when he would say, be aware, then he would say, And then he would reply, OK.

[27:19]

Don't be deceived by others. And then he would say, no, no, I won't. But here, others means himself. Don't be deceived by yourself. Mostly, we're deceived by ourselves. We may think that we're deceived by others, but it's our own self-deception. mostly our own ignorance and our own unwillingness to see or to understand our own mind. So Master Mouman comments and he says, ìO Julian buys himself and sells himself. He brings forth lots of angel faces and demon masks and plays with them.

[28:25]

Why? Look, one kind calls and one kind answers. One kind is aware and one kind will not be deceived by others. If you still cling to understanding, you're in trouble. If you try to imitate Zhuyuan, your discernment is altogether that of a fox. So we have to, each one, be authentic. How do you follow in the footsteps of the old masters? You can't imitate them. So what do you do? We can't imitate them, can't do that, you know, if you simply imitate it's not your own authentic self, but you can be inspired by their spirit, that's Zen practice. We're inspired by the spirit of the old masters, but we don't imitate them, so each one has to find our own true voice

[29:33]

This is investigation. Examination and investigation. So he says to himself every day, Master. So who is he addressing when he says Master? And then he says, yes. Who's answering? And then he says, be aware. And then he replies and says, yes. Don't be deceived by others. How do you not be deceived by others? Only when you're empty can you not be deceived by others.

[30:45]

If you want something, you can be deceived. If you have a desire for something, you can be deceived. You can deceive yourself. That's what happens. We deceive ourselves. Okay, boom, because even though we know better. So then he says, no, I won't. Then Uman's verse says, students of the way do not know the truth. They only know their deluded consciousness up to now. This is the source of endless birth and death. The fool calls it the original self.

[31:47]

This is an interesting poem. Students of the way don't know the truth. They only know their own deluded consciousness up to now. Deluded consciousness means manas or the ego or the false sense of self. So what we perceive as the delusive dharmas, the way I feel, the way I think, that's what we say is myself. If I, you know, point to yourself, well, yourself at any one moment is these feelings and these thoughts and this body. But these thoughts are constantly changing, the feelings are constantly changing, the body's constantly changing.

[32:57]

Where is the self? Which is the one that's not changing? Then he says, this is the source of endless birth and death. The source of endless birth and death. So a birth and death is something that happens on each moment. And what is it that's born and dies? What's born and dies is the self that we identify as myself. The feeling of I am. Whatever dharmas are arising at that moment is what we say is myself. This is how a self arises, and then the self dies, and then the self is born, then the self is died moment after moment.

[34:07]

It's what we call the birth and death of the ego. Because within all the dharmas, there's nothing that can be identified as a self. But we invent a self where there is no self. And we say, this is me. Me is just a convenient term that we use to identify the five streams. The five streams are form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, the karmic dharmas, and consciousness. There are the five streams, but within the five streams, there is no actual self. So the self is born and dies on each moment. This is what he means by endless birth and death. And the fool calls it the original self.

[35:12]

So it's important to go beyond this made-up self. What is the original self? So this is the study of Buddhadharma. What is the original self? So Zui Gan is constantly addressing this. Don't let me fall into the sleep or the dream of delusion. When we sit Zazen, Zazen is called waking up. We fall into the dream, and then you realize you're in the dream, and then you let go of the dream, and you wake up to this. Then you dream, and then you realize that you're dreaming, and then you wake up.

[36:21]

and then you dream again. A thousand times during a period of zazen, you recognize that you're dreaming, hopefully, and then you let go of the dream and you wake up. This is Zuigan waking up. Each one of us is Zuigan sitting zazen. Don't be fooled by that dream. Wake up. Okay. Wake up. Okay. Wake up. Okay. It's called investigation. Examination and investigation. So, that's zazen. Examination and investigation. But simply in order to stay awake. stay open and awake and unassuming and letting go of the invented self, letting go of the manas, the seventh level of consciousness which is the big troublemaker, creates karma.

[37:44]

then it's hard to get untangled, you know. We just had our Bodhisattva ceremony and we begin the Bodhisattva ceremony, all my ancient twisted karma. I like tangled better than twisted because it's all the entanglement of the way we get ourselves entangled, you know, it's like the examination, you know, they examined the tar pit by putting their foot in it and then they investigated it further to their demise because they couldn't get out of the tar. That's why the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles is this wonderful treasure trove of dinosaurs because they go in and take a drink but they couldn't get out. bad karma. Do you have any question?

[39:01]

Yes, Paul? You said that Zen practice is to find our I remember Norman, in his last talk, talked about how the true nature is compared to like the real moon. You can't really see the real moon. What you see is a reflection. That's the best you can do, to see what is like a reflection of the moon. What is that? What's other words for that besides the reflection of the moon? What is it we actually can experience or know about our true nature? the true nature, so to speak, is formless, right? But the way to see, so you can't see the true nature which is formless because it has no form, but the form of that formlessness is form.

[40:04]

So you investigate formlessness through form, forms in their own nature are empty. So in Zazen you can let go of a lot, of creating a self, you don't have to create a self in Zazen, and all the psychological elements still there. So we don't leave the body in order to find emptiness. We find emptiness within the body, within the thoughts, within the feelings is where you find emptiness.

[41:07]

And so when we think of emptiness as a form, you can't find it. It's like chasing the moon. You can chase the moon. I remember Suzuki Goji saying, if you try to grab a hold of the tail of a comet, people will pity you. So in order to study the nature, reality, study forms, and then you see that all forms are empty. Empty means no inherent existence. It doesn't mean they're not here. Everything is here, you know, and the reality is that everything is here. The unreality is everything has no inherent nature of its own. so everything is one piece, all the things, all the dharmas are one dharma and the one dharma and all the pieces are the pieces of the one dharma.

[42:18]

Ganto and Seppo I know the story, but whether or not the characterization is right. Ganto, we're talking about a mirror. What do you do when you have a clear mirror? Clear mirror means, you know, reality or emptiness. The mirror reflects everything just as it is, without bias. That's reality. can't see, that's what we can't see so well is reality or the unbiased mind, because the mind is always dividing and making preferences and discriminations, so it's hard to see. But then the mirror must be very precious, right?

[43:21]

So he said, what does one do Cepo says, smash it into a thousand pieces. So smash it into a thousand pieces means here we have the one dharma of the precious mirror. Smash it into a thousand pieces and you have a thousand dharmas. Each dharma though reflects the whole thing. So in order to investigate the mirror, each little piece of mirror is a whole mirror in itself. If you want to investigate something, just go into one thing thoroughly. That's practice, to investigate one thing thoroughly. Just do one thing thoroughly. And that includes everything. So each mirror is the whole mirror. Each particle of the mirror is the whole mirror.

[44:25]

This is also called Indra's net. Each part of the mirror is the whole mirror. When you look at a house, you see the whole house. But when you walk inside, there's the roof and the doors and the walls and so forth. you say, well there's the door and there's the floor and there's the roof and there's the ridge pole, but nevertheless when you point to any one of those parts you say, there's the house. The ridge pole is the whole house, it's all connected. Without the ridge pole there's no house. So every piece is the whole thing. That's why we appreciate everything as the whole thing. That's why you can bow to dogs and cats. Because when you're bowing to dogs and cats, you're bowing to the whole, to everything.

[45:29]

We bow to our cushion. We're bowing to everyone that came before us who sat on a cushion. And then you turn around and you bow outward and you bow to the whole universe. But it's simply just a simple act. So Soto Zen is characterized by being very careful with things. very respectful and careful of things. I remember when I was one day with Suzuki Roshi and somebody had brought him a bowl, a very nice bowl from Korea or something, and he was passing it around for people to see.

[46:36]

And then I picked it up to look at it. He said, you don't pick up something to look like this and look at it. You put it down on the mat and look at it. You don't pick it up and look at it. You put it down on the mat and then look at it so that you treat it so respectfully that there's no way that you can drop it. That was actually the essence that characterized his practice and the practice of Soto Zen. Very careful, you know, to take care of things. Because each thing that you take care of is a piece of that mirror, a sliver of that mirror. Well, the mental formations are the dharmas that are wholesome and unwholesome.

[47:54]

I went through that. Those are mental formations. The wholesome dharmas are mental formations. The fundamental afflictions are mental formations. The 20 derivative afflictions are mental formations. And then the intermediate grades, and even the four unfixed ones, which I talked about today, are mental formations. After that comes the form dharmas. which I'll talk about, but not today. The form dharmas are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, forms, sounds, smells, flavors, objects of touch and dharmas pertaining to form. So it's the tangibles, body tangibles.

[49:06]

I don't know what time I'm supposed to quit here, but probably now.

[49:13]

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