It's almost like a prose poem about his time spent in the conservation camp. And right at the end of the war, for about a year. And it's, well, you know, the words, I can't express what he went through after he left Brooklyn. He said, if you've got a body well, it's going to get hurt. But the fact that you have this, you have the location, you have a, we are affected, his safe body, is, you take something like that, and I was talking about the dentist's office, going to the doctor and so on, with the kids. The fact that we have this, the fear about being hurt and so on, and the fear around deprivation and all, in this book, is, you know, brought to, you know, it's a horrific

[01:18]

description of what a man can be done, since we have these bodies that are, that's painful beyond your imagination. So, further on in the Heart Sutra, it says, so we have this fear, you know, we actually have fear, and maybe some of you have these, due to your personal mysteries and so forth, fears about, or thoughts, floating anxieties, or dreams, or whatever about, if you were in this horrible situation, would you be able to survive, or how would you be able to handle it, and these kinds of things I know go on for me. And then in the Heart Sutra, you come to a part where it says, And the mind is no hindrance, without any hindrance, no fears exist.

[02:19]

Without any hindrance, no fears exist. And the mind is no hindrance, without any hindrance, no fears exist. And what the mind, what's being, the translation, what's translated as the mind is no hindrance is actually, in the Sanskrit, it's citta-avarana, or thought coverings, thought coverings. So, this is, in Buddhism there's three coverings, which are like osculations or clouds in front of the reality. Do you understand? That's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, quite a bit. Quite a bit. The thought coverings, the coverings, there's three conditioners, three coverings. There's practical coverings, or karma-avarana. There's klesha, or moral, or klesha-avarana, or moral is one way of translating coverings.

[03:34]

And then the third one is jnana-avarana, or cognition coverings. And these all are what, these coverings are kind of what cover up your ability to see things as they are. So that the karma-avarana, so without, without, and these are hindrances, osculations and hindrances. So, when you see, the whole Heart Sutra is about seeing into the reality of the past non-physical reality, and also it's about a fantasy of owning, and when you see this, that the mind is no hindrance, these coverings are not a hindrance anymore, and therefore no fears exist. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. I wanted to say a little bit about these coverings. Karma-avarana is what, through your own deeds of, your ancient twisted karma, your own deeds

[04:40]

through the past of greed, hate and illusion, what the fruit of those deeds comes up in your circumstances, in here and now. And there are certain circumstances which are really not very conducive to practicing or hearing the Dharma at all, or understanding the truth, or there are some circumstances like I'm the homeless, you know, I drive back and forth a certain route, back to Guerrero, and there's this one homeless person I see on occasion, all bundled up, you know, on these steps, you realize these steps are all bundled up with scarves and newspapers and all sorts of stuff, and that situation is not very conducive. He needs, I think it's a he actually, I'm not sure, there are certain basic things that are necessary in order, first for him to be able to hear, he or she needs food, places

[05:46]

to sleep, clothing, medical care, all sorts of other things, and this is, this is the karmic circumstances, and these will be a hindrance, this kind of thing will be a hindrance to your own seeing into the nature of reality. The klesha-avarana are things like greed, hate and illusion, envy, restlessness, lack of trust, there's a whole list of things that actually, if you have those kinds of, those are what's covered in envy, for example, it's very hard to see into the nature of the emptiness of some other person when you want their car, you know, or their boyfriend or their girlfriend or whatever it is, there's, the opportunity doesn't arise when you're caught in that kind of thinking for the emptiness of, the emptiness of that very envy, or rest,

[06:49]

that's where you put your awareness. So those things become these coverings, you know, like clouds. And the third one, jnana-avarana, is basically the covering that, what we usually see in our usual way of looking at reality is that there are subjects and objects, and that those are both entities apart from each other and separated, subject over here and object over there. That in itself, according to Buddha's understanding, which is an understanding out of meditation, it's not a theory, kind of like a philosophical theory, it's a yogic truth that comes out of meditation experience, that there is no subject and object. So that, the fact that we see subjects and objects all over the place, you know, bowing over here and Buddha knows you, are seen that in itself is jnana-avarana, it's a covering,

[07:51]

a cognition covering, but we don't see that there actually is subjectless subject, or object, that there isn't objects and subjects, there's just subject, if there's just subject then it's suchness, if there's just object then it's thought only. So that's what Buddhism says is reality, but we have this covering of jnana-avarana, j-n-e-y, that j-n-a comes up a lot in Sanskrit terms, it's the same as gnosis, g-n-o, that same Sanskrit tradition. So we have these coverings. So the mind is no hindrance, this is what the teaching of the High Supreme is, the mind is no hindrance, and without any hindrance all fears exist. Somehow reading Primal Gandhi, reading about Auschwitz, you know, actually, I've been trying to save Anne Frank and John

[08:56]

Lamarck and other people for years, you know, Primal Gandhi actually in some way saved himself through his, what I think actually is his awareness of detail, and he never dropped, he felt he had to tell the story, and that was something that kept him going actually, the need to tell the story of what happened. And he tells the story without hate, without revenge, without, he tells it in a kind of neutral way so that you can be the judge of it. Anyway, so the fear, no fears exist, this fear that we live with, that I live with day in and day out of my own destruction, or the destruction of those not in the destruction of the world. So anyway, to hear that it's like a very, without, the mind is no hindrance,

[10:07]

without any hindrance no fears exist, is a very, it's like some soothing, it's very soothing, and not only soothing, it relieves some deep suffering. So then, I've got all these images going on in my mind, for example, I need to read, I was reading this book about an Alaskan girl, this is a midnight story, who lived with the wolves, and they took care of her, and she had her needle, and her ulo, which was her little knife, which were her two survival items, and at one point her knapsack was taken by this kind of lone wolf, and what she had lost that was most important to her was her ulo, this knife, and her needle. And in Primo Levi, having a needle and thread was extraordinarily important to him, to mend

[11:07]

your shoes, to mend, somehow that image of, down to the absolute basics of the needle, and how we are, you know, I've got the sun mask, so anyway, why I brought that up, the seeing into the five skies as empty, or your own self as empty, this is a discovery, this is discoveries go away, like clouds away from the sun, so that's a discovery, and this is something I just thought I'd say, which I'm so happy to share with you about nirvana, the word nirvana, one of the roots, this is according to Dr. Konza, who's a scholar who passed away in the perfection of wisdom literature, and in this book he was saying nirvana, one of the roots of nirvana, which means cover, so nirvana has to do with the ultimate kind

[12:13]

of unobstructed and uncovered freedom. When this thought comes, karma, klesha, and nirvana, these coverings I disbursed, so it wasn't wrong, that's the meaning, and those coverings necessarily, by their very definition, imply the selfhood, having envy or greed or aggression, so it has to do with thinking there is a self over here, a self that needs to have stuff that, and same with karmic conditions, seeing into your own karmic conditions, having that hindrance implies the belief in selfhood, of self, so by seeing into the emptiness of self, all these things kind of are uncovered, and what you're left with is no fear, no trembling,

[13:13]

and far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana, which is the hearts of your people. So anyway, that's what I wanted to talk about today, and I don't feel like I need some kind of happy ending, so maybe you're asking, well, so what? So basically, this insight into the emptiness of the five skandhas comes through one's own awareness, and practice, and sitting, and if you're not sitting, you can start by these promises that I gave you for children of understanding, seeing that everyone has the same fears that

[14:19]

you do, and understanding where they're coming from, and out of that will come compassion for them, and so what you end up doing is you act in the world as you would if you understood that the five skandhas are empty. You act out of compassion. Even though the five skandhas are empty, there are no self and others, just so you can help all living beings, even though no living beings exist. So whether or not you've had that insight or not, you can still practice helping all living beings right now. So the promise of offering joy to one person in the morning, and in the evening, or one person in the afternoon, I thought about that when I was thinking how I described that to the kids, and I'm afraid that's 365 days a year that you can really do that year after

[15:20]

year, as you're studying right now. So, thank you very much. May our intention equate with your entry.

[15:38]

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