This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. The last two days we've been looking at some of these texts that I thought would be useful because you might run into them, like Bodhidharma's teaching. And the Heart Sutra you'll probably run into at some point. And now today the Diamond Sutra. Does anybody have any question about what we've done up to now or just off-the-wall question before we begin? The Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra, of course, is about the view of things, the view of anything from the point of view of not knowing. before, once you know, it becomes an object.

[01:04]

Prajnaparamita is the way, is the Sanskrit way of describing this state, this cultivation of cultivating the state before you know. And of course, in the sutras, the Prajnaparamita is also in the Heart Sutra and other sutras presented as a goddess who is the mother of all Buddhas. And so the Diamond Sutra is probably the most famous example of the Prajnaparamita. There's a seat right over here, Colleen. Right here. And... What? Oh, two seats. Oh. So when... when the Prajnaparamita teachings came to China, it was sort of piecemeal at the beginning, and then in the 7th century, Prajnaparamita, Shenzong brought back the entire Prajnaparamita canon and translated all 16 sutras or sermons.

[02:18]

And the Diamond Sutra is number 9. And the Diamond Sutra is... One of the most interesting, because it took me a long time to, and just by karmic coincidence, I was able to finally figure it out, because there are six different Chinese translations of the diamond. And I tried, I spent over a year trying to translate it by looking at all six and trying to come up with a composite, but it didn't make sense to me at all. And I said yesterday, I ran into this set of six volumes published by a Taiwanese Buddhist nun. And it was an analysis, word by word, phrase by phrase, line by line of the Diamond Sutra's Sanskrit text. I was able to read her Chinese and realized, finally discovered the meaning of the Diamond Sutra.

[03:23]

Because it's a Prajnaparamita text, everybody had told me, oh, it's about emptiness, you know, like the Heart Sutra, like all those Prajnaparamita texts. But it turns out the Diamond Sutra is not about emptiness at all. It's sort of just the opposite. It's about the Buddha. It's about the Buddha's real body. It's about what a Buddha does. How to become a Buddha. It's all about that Buddha body. Apparently, this became a subject of Indian sadhus in the Buddhist world at some point in time. Like, who was the real Buddha? The Buddha entered Nirvana. So what was the nature of that? And what is the nature of this enlightenment that we're supposed to be in quest of? And so the Diamond Sutra is sort of the Mahayana answer to that. set of questions and so that's why it's about the Buddha and what the Buddha does and you'll notice in the very beginning of the heart of the Diamond Sutra again like in the Heart Sutra I've worked to present the text as in a structure it's in four parts each part has eight subsections

[04:50]

And so in the very beginning, what does the Buddha do? The Buddha goes to town. It's sort of this sutra is supposed to, it's an example of what we do. And the Buddha picks up his begging bowl, goes to town, gets some food, comes back, eats it. And so the Buddha says, wow, I can't believe you did that. But it was such a blessing that you did that. and such a trust that we should receive this teaching. And that is the entire teaching of the Diamond Sutra. The Buddha went to town and came back and Sabuni saw that manifestation. And so this is an example of these, what these Buddhists came up with was the idea of three bodies. A Buddha has three bodies. What you see is the nirmanakai. Akaya means body in Sanskrit. And there's the Nirmanakaya, the manifestation body of a Buddha.

[05:53]

There's the Sambhogakaya, the realization body, whereby you realize enlightenment. And then there's enlightenment. And there's the Dharma with a capital D. And that's the Dharmakaya. And so this is the solution these Buddhists came up with for representing this conundrum of who the Buddha was. and why we should be interested in that. And so here we see Subuddhi going to town, Buddha going to town, coming back, and Subuddhi just seeing that and responding to that. As I told you yesterday, I was planning, when I came here, to translate the sutra that came before the Diamond Sutra. Because it explains why this is what's happening. In the beginning of the... The Eighth Sutra, called the Nagashiri Sutra, there's no English title for it, Nagashiri Sutra, it's about the same length as the diamond, maybe a few pages shorter.

[07:00]

At the beginning, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, he gets up, he picks up his beg evil, he goes to town to beg, and this other Bodhisattva named Nagashri stops and says, hey, what are you doing? And Madhya Sri says, I'm going to town to beg. And so Madhya Sri says, so you're still attached to that. And so the whole sutra is about the attachment to practice, the attachment to doing what you do. And of course, Madhya Sri answers it, you know, in terms of the teaching of Prajnaparamita. And, you know, begging is no begging, therefore we beg. So that's what precedes the Diamond Sutra. And so that's why at the beginning you see the Buddha doing this. And instead of somebody saying, what are you doing? The Buddha says, wow, I finally see what a Buddha does. He sees the manifestation of this practice that a Buddha does.

[08:02]

And so I'm just going to go through the first couple of things here. So one day before noon, the Bhagavan put on his patched robe. picked up his bowl, entered the capital of Sravasti for offerings. And it was by seeing this word offerings that I finally realized the meaning of the sutra. Because I translate a lot of poetry. And in poetry, words resonate like bells. And once you set up one resonation, there are other resonations in a good poem. And when I finally saw this word... Pinda means everything in Sanskrit. It means any entity. It means a handful of rice. It means a universe. It's any entity that you can conceive of is a pinda. And it's also the kind of entity that is a handful of rice that you receive if you're going begging.

[09:05]

After begging for food, eating this meal of rice... The Buddha returned from his daily realm, put his robe and bowl away, washed his feet, and sat down. After crossing his legs and adjusting his body, he turned his awareness to what was before him. The Sanskrit there is smirti upastana, and there were two smirtis and two subjects of contemplation or awareness at this time. Whenever you see that expression, it's always four subjects of awareness. It's the body... sensations, thoughts, and dharmas, which are an early, simpler version of what later became the Five Skandhas. So, on this occasion, the Venerable Sabuti, who is the highest of the Arhats surrounding the Buddha, and he's famous because he is free of passion, which is what Arhat means, no more passion. And he becomes a, what do you call it, a He's the straight man in this sutra.

[10:07]

And he represents free of passion, the ultimate goal of this early phase of Buddhism where the highest goal was to become an Arha. It was called the Shravaka path. Shravaka means someone who heard. Someone who heard the Buddha was called the Shravaka. And so the highest goal was to become an Arha. And Sabuti had reached this and defined as finally free of passion. Because you're free of passion, no more new karma, and thus you're destined for enlightenment. And he's a straight man because the Mahayana path has nothing to do with that. It's all about compassion. Not getting rid of something, it's about acquiring something in a sense, about compassion, not freedom from passion. And so I think that's why Sabuti is used here in the sutra just as Shariputra, the founder of the Abhidharma, was used in the Heart Sutra because the Heart Sutra is a critique of the Abhidharma.

[11:15]

So you take the most famous example of that, Shariputra, and you criticize it and show how it's a delusion. And so Sabuti plays the same role in this sutra. He's somebody who... who sees something, but he doesn't quite understand it because he doesn't practice the Bodhisattva path. He has practiced the Shravaka path. And so on this occasion, the Venerable Sabuti said, it is rare, Bhagavan, how the Tathagata blesses us. Again, he's just seen this. He's seen the Buddha go to town, seen him come back. He says, bless us with the best of blessings. Just the Buddha's example being itself the teaching. And entrusts us with the greatest entrusts, which is this this teaching, the Buddhist daily life. Even so, Bhagavan, if a noble son or daughter, and of course the sutra says noble son or daughter, it doesn't say a monk or a nun. But the sutra is addressed to everybody, especially to way people, not people who are just following this limited monastic, cloistered existence as a monk or a nun.

[12:26]

So if a noble son or daughter should set forth on the bodhisattva path, So not the shravaka path, but if they should go on the path you've taken, how should they stand or walk? How should they control their thoughts? But the Buddha can't help put that last question in there because that's what shravakas did. It was all about controlling your thoughts. I talked about the acquisition of knowledge and the knowledge of the mind and how the mind works was the goal of of early Buddhists and has felt that gave you freedom from this existence and allowed you to experience enlightenment or nirvana anyway. And so the Buddha answers, said, Sabuti, those who have set forth on the Bodhisattva path should give birth to this thought. So instead of telling Sabuti how he can control his thoughts, he says, you should give birth to this thought.

[13:27]

What thought? So he gives Sibutya a homeopathic remedy, not an allopathic one. He's not giving you an antibiotic. He's giving you some herbs. So however many beings there are in whatever realm of being one might conceive of, in the realm of complete nirvana, I shall liberate them all. And though I liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated. Why not? Sibutya Bodhisattva who perceives a being or a self with any spatial distinction among beings or existence or a life or a soul, a temporal distinction, cannot be called a bodhisattva. Moreover, sabuddhi, when bodhisattvas give, and so when you liberate somebody, this is, again, the paramitas, the six perfections or paramitas begin with giving. When you give a gift, and what is the greatest gift you can give?

[14:29]

is liberation. And so that's why the only gift discussed in Buddhist texts is the gift of liberation. So, moreover, Sabuti, when bodhisattvas give a gift, they should do so without being attached to an object. Why not, Sabuti, the body of merit? The body of merit of those who give a gift without being attached is not easy to measure. So what we've seen here is that Buddha is creating This is sort of an explanation of the interior experience of Buddhahood. Buddhahood begins with the realization body, the body that realizes the truth. And according to the sutra, that body is created the moment you vow to liberate all beings. That's it. The body will never be bigger or smaller.

[15:30]

once you vow to liberate all beings. The question is the realization of the realization body. That's what the sutra is all about. The sutra begins by telling you this punya skanda, this body of merit. Skanda means body. It was first used by the Jains. The Jains were the people who started using the word skanda. Skanda meant a tree trunk. And in early Buddhism, you often hear about the three skandhas of Buddhism, the three pillars of Buddhism, you know, meditation, morality, meditation, and wisdom. But the Buddha in this text uses the word punya skanda. So this is a special kind of pillar of her body. And it's made out of what? It's made out of punya, merit. Merit is what you get when you do something good. But this kind of punya is... has no limits because you're vowing to liberate all beings.

[16:33]

And so this is the body, this is what happened, the result of vowing, of taking this vow to liberate all beings. That's why I've given a little bit of a, you know, I have these in dark, bold type, I have these sort of, my little summary of each section. First you get the Buddha's example, then you get Subuni's question, the Buddha answers. And this is the result that you get if you practice like I do. You get this body of merit. And so the Buddha asks him, so can you see this body that is having vowed to liberate all beings, have acquired this incredible, this body of realization that I have, it's my body, can you see the Tathagata by means of any attributes that Tathagata possesses? And so the Buddha says... No Tathagata, the Tathagata cannot be seen by the position of attributes because what the Tathagata calls attributes are no attributes.

[17:34]

And the Buddha said, which is what people who were just beginning their study of the Sajjaparamita, that's as far as they got. And in the sutra that precedes this, the whole sutra is about this person trying to criticize Menjur Sri because all they can think of is, well, something doesn't exist because it doesn't exist. which is great in terms of cultivating non-attachment, but doesn't do anything for liberation. This is all about the positive aspects of practice, of becoming a Buddha. So, the Buddha said, since attributes are an illusion to Buddhi, and no attributes are no illusion, by means of attributes that are no attributes, the Tathagata can indeed be sick. So, in turn, Sabudhi's understanding on its head. And Sabuti then asked, Bhagavan, will there be beings in the future who believe these words? So Sabuti already realizes the teaching of this sutra is done.

[18:38]

It's over. The rest of the sutra is just expanding on the teaching. Will there be fearless bodhisattvas who planted auspicious roots before hundreds and thousands of Buddhas? In these words, they will obtain perfect clarity of mind. Again, realization, Sambhogakaya. So he's beginning to understand what the Buddha is doing, that he is witnessing the results of the Sambhogakaya manifested in the Buddhist Nermanakaya. So the Tathagata knows and sees that the Tathagata is aware of him, for they all produce and receive an infinite body of merit. This is because they do not perceive a self... Being a life or soul, nor a dharma must less know dharma. Theirs is a body beyond... Well, that's my little note. This is why I say a dharma is like a raft. If you should let go of dharmas, how much more so know dharmas. Those things I put in parentheses are just my little asides, like, you know, the Greek chorus or something, giving a little side of what's going on on stage.

[19:46]

And let's just do a little bit more before we... get into what's preceded here. So now the Buddha asks the Buddha about, or at least tells the Buddha in a sense, that where Buddha has come from. The Buddha asks the Buddha, did the Tathagata realize any such Dharma as enlightenment? Is this who I am? And does the Tathagata teach any such Dharma, the Nermanakaya? And so So these are the two bodies. Again, we're talking about three bodies throughout this sutra. Realization body, teaching body, the nirmanakaya is the teaching body. Realization is the sambhogakaya. And, of course, the teaching itself is the dharmakaya. To know about the dharma, the dharma realized and taught by the tatgata is incompensible, inexpressible, and neither dharma nor no dharma. Thus, sages arise from what is uncreated.

[20:47]

And I have a little word, sikh. Because, again, uncreated is not what the Dharma is about. Uncreated is a code word for the Abhidharma. Remember yesterday I said the matrix of the Abhidharma included 75 Dharmas. The mind is made of 75 realities. 75 Dharmas. Three of them are uncreated. Space, two kinds of nirvana. So Sabuti still thinks the Buddha is talking in Abhidharma terms and says, oh yeah, I can see the Buddhas come from what is created, one of these kinds of nirvana. So that's why I have a little sick there. Like he's still answering the Buddha as if he understands, but he doesn't understand. And finally, the Buddha tells him the origin, the real origin of Buddha is not from what is uncreated,

[21:50]

So to do so, he goes back to the gift and he says, Sabuti, if some noble son or daughter filled the billion worlds of this universe with the seven jewels and gave them to the Tathagatas, would their body of merit be great? Oh, it'd be great, Bhagavat, because what you said is a body of merit is said to be no body. Thus does the Tathagatas speak of a body of merit as a body of merit. So he's still trapped in this world of things as things, being no things. But the Buddha is trying to get him to go beyond that. He says, if instead this noble son or daughter grasped the one four-line gatha of this teaching, and if we go to number 26 here, we can see what he has in mind. The four-line gatha he has in mind. At the bottom of 26, you see, the Buddha then spoke this gatha, who looks for me in form, who seeks me in a voice, indulges in wasted effort, such people see me not.

[22:53]

So this is the teaching that the Buddha is teaching in this sutra, the real nature of a Buddha. And so he says, instead of donating all these jewels, if somebody just grasped and understood this gatha and explained it to others, their body of mirror would be infinitely greater. And how so? From this, from the teaching, from the dharmakaya, not from the uncreated dharma of nirvana, is born the unexcelled enlightenment of Tathagadas, the realization body. From this are born Buddhas, the nirmanakaya. And how so? And how so? Buddha dharma sabuddhi. Buddhadharmas are spoken of by the Tathagata as no Buddhadharmas. That's what they call Buddhadharmas. So it is the truth of the teaching that gives rise to the realization and the teacher. The teaching itself is no teaching.

[23:56]

So I want to stop right there because they've been rambling on and wonder have you run into anything that is especially puzzly? Again, the sutra is introducing this concept of three bodies that, unless you've been reading books about Buddhism, scholarly books, you probably wouldn't have run into this discussion of the Buddha's real nature and these three bodies. The Buddha as a teacher, the Buddha as experiencing enlightenment, realization, and the the nature of the realization or the teaching being the dharmakaya and using different words for those but they're all they're all combined in one thing so that's again this that's at stake in this teaching and the sutra we're gonna it goes on and on but i don't want to go too far because i know this is new language uh maybe uh new ideas

[25:11]

So the idea is, again, the Buddha is saying, the reason I became a Buddha is because I vowed to liberate all beings. And with that vow, I created this body of realization. Now, in the sutra, the Buddha will go on to say how he fully realized that body of realization. Because the moment you vowed to liberate all beings, you created the same body that the Buddha created. created, but you don't know it. You have no experience of the power, the vastness of that. The Buddha tells us later how he realized the extent of that body, and it's the understanding that nothing is born, of non-arising. The forbearance, it's called the forbearance shanti, the forbearance of non-arising. the ability to withstand the truth that nothing arises, that nothing is born.

[26:18]

And because nothing is born, nothing dies. And that's why nothing dies, because nothing is born. This is, of course, this can be a really difficult thing to understand and to accept. That's why it's called the forbearance, the kshanti. Forbearance being the third of the paramitas. So this sutra is basically about three different, three of the six paramitas. The first is giving and giving, giving the gift of liberation. The second is forbearance, the forbearance of non-arising. And the final one, the prajna paramita of wisdom. So, questions? I'll just keep reading. Yes. Could you say something about this concept of accumulating merit?

[27:24]

It doesn't seem like a very zen idea. No, it's not necessarily. But it's what everybody, not everybody, it's what a lot of people do. And I was mentioning this yesterday. The second thing a Chinese person, I only know China, the second thing a Chinese person does when they become wealthy is they wire it to the next, that wealth, to the next life. They transfer that wealth. They turn it, they go into a special place, like a bank, that has the routing numbers for the hereafter, and they can transfer that money to the next life. Of course, how they transfer it is by supporting the spiritual organizations. And so you gain merit by giving. And there's different ways of giving. And as a result, there are different results of giving.

[28:28]

And so you can give money to support an organization that is dedicated to spiritual... welfare of others. Certainly a lot of people have done that to make Tassajara possible. And their understanding might be limited to, like in China, usually when they give money, often it's so they'll have a better rebirth for their loved ones. First their loved ones, and then themselves. And so there's that understanding of merit. That by doing something, you're going to be better off in the next life. But this is, of course, giving something different. Yes? I don't know why I've had this thought before that including merit and skillful means are kind of collapsing together for me.

[29:31]

We're having to deal with that sense of continuity where there's no rising force, but at the same time they have to get it as liberation. I'm really talking off the top of my head. There's not much there either. Well, again, to answer the first question and yours, the gift here is liberation. To give the gift of liberation is not giving money. It's giving the gift of liberation. And how do you do that? By transmitting the teaching that promotes liberation. Yes, but generally speaking... Skillful means... Skillful means is really hard.

[30:40]

It's what practitioners do after they've been practicing a while to know what's skillful because that's why it's called skillful means. It's an expedient. And just as yesterday, the day before, I was saying that the success of Zen in China and the reason we have Zen today... is because the fourth patriarch came up with the idea of communal practice, which involved the killing of animals by farming. And so this was an example of skillful means. It's really hard at the beginning of your practice to know what would be a skillful means, because it's really hard to distinguish. We usually go according to a rule book. these are the rules of our sector and this is how we practice. And it takes somebody who's a teacher who's been in the practicing business for a while so they can say, well, you know, I don't have to follow the rule in this case because this will help the situation more by doing things this way.

[31:55]

Could a proving merit in the sense of giving a donation or something like that be a vehicle or stepping stone of opening out skillful means. Yes. Obviously, it does. We all practice skillful means. As we become more adept, our skillful means becomes more, we become physicians. First, we're using homemade remedies, you might say. Later, as we become more adept, we come up with really good solutions to problems that, uh, if you just use the standard solution would probably not help that much. Um, so, uh, anyway, that's why the gift involved in this case is in Buddhism, the highest gift you can give anybody. And it results not just in a better life, but in the end of life, because the absence of birth, um,

[33:03]

or be transcending birth, and thus transcending death, and being able to pass on that gift to others. Because otherwise we become so attached to things because of our sense of life and death. So anyway, that's why this idea that came up, developed in Mahayana Buddhism of this body, about how the Buddha became a Buddha through by being able to give the gift of liberation. And the last half of the sutra is all about what a Tathagata does. The first half is about bodhisattvas, about people like ourselves practicing and trying to be like them. And the last half of the sutra is about asking questions to Sabuni about This aspect of the Tathagata and that aspect of the Tathagata.

[34:03]

It's all about trying to encourage us to... We can, with a simple vow, realize, create the body that all Buddhists created. But it may take a while for us to realize the extent of that body. That's all we can do. That's what the sutra is saying. Yes? Yes. Yes, because again, the teaching, again, this is the Diamond Sutra's frame of reference, is that the teaching is a Dharmakaya. The teaching is the Buddha's real body. And so, the reason it's the teaching of the Buddha is that it's not a teaching. It's not limited by anything. It's not something you can grab hold of. It's just a name. That's all. So that's why there's all this negation in Mahayana, especially in these Prajnaparamita texts.

[35:13]

They're always worried that the audience may become attached to something, including the teaching itself. That's why the dharmas are no dharmas, and the Tathagata is no Tathagata. Yes. Yes. I don't know whether I could call it. Again, because they're trying not to. Knowledge is a problem. And. because then it creates a, it then becomes a teaching. Knowledge becomes a teaching, but the kind of knowledge, the Pajna Paramita is about pre-knowledge, about no knowledge. No knowledge gives rise to teaching which is no teaching.

[36:16]

Well, I'm not going to worry about this, but I just think it's kind of interesting. Like you said, there's so many books written about, you know, not Being attached to the knowledge. But how can you do that? How can you let go of something you've never felt? And I wonder if there's more like that. Well, that's why we have people like you. No, it's true. These are all just words. It's all about teaching. And people have to do that. Certain people become teachers. And then they have to negotiate this situation. And using expedient means. Sometimes what you want to give is a teaching. And sometimes you think people are too wrapped up in that teaching, then you want to give them a no teaching. Yes? I'm curious about your concept of karma.

[37:26]

I'm curious about How do you think of it? How do you think it was meant originally? How do you think of that? I think I have... My idea of karma is... is the mind right now. And the lack of the Tara, they presented in a slightly different language, but... For example, the mind right now is the alaya, the alaya vijnana, the repository consciousness. It's like this huge realm with a zillion seeds and different ones of those seeds sprouting all the time. And so this is my idea of karma, is that my mind is the result of my deeds, my thoughts. my actions, my words.

[38:28]

That's my idea of karma. And so my mind right now is the result of previous thoughts, previous deeds. And I have access to all that. And the alaka is about the transformation of that karma, transformation of the alaya into the womb of Buddhas, the Tathagatagarbha. So that... your thoughts and words and deeds that you performed in the past are constantly sprouting, remembering these traces of them, are coming to your consciousness. For someone who practices Prajna Paramita, these are all available as something a Buddha does. And so that's why the Diamond Sutra begins with... the Buddha accessing him, transforming his alaya into the Tathagatagarbha, I'm hungry. I think I'll go to town and I think I'll beg.

[39:30]

Because by begging, I give people the chance to earn merit. And then he comes back and the Buddha sees this take place and asks, how can I do that? That's my idea of karma, because I don't know about my last life. I don't know about any next life. All I know is right now. That's all I can be sure of. I'd like to just deal with what I can be sure of. I mean, everything else for me is are just words. Karma. But it's one also, but it makes us be better person. Just the awareness that we're responsible for who we are. And what happens around us in Bodhi Dharma's outline of practice that we looked at the other day. We see he divides all practice into different kinds of karma. What should we do when there's bad karma? That is when our perception of what's going on, especially to us, is something bad is happening.

[40:37]

And seeing that as that we're responsible for that. Because we see it as bad. And what do we do when good karma happens? When something good is happening? And the same thing. It's happening because we're responsible for it, but then it's going to fade. It'll rise, it'll fall, and so why be attached to that? And so maybe it's the best not to create any new karma. Maybe we've got enough karma going for us. So that's the third thing that Bodhidharma said. So why not just transform all of that into Buddha karma and practice the Prajnaparamita? Bodhidharma's outline of practice is about... Strictly about karma and doing what in the Lankavatara, remember Bodhidharma, the sutra he used was the Lankavatara to teach others. And the Lank is simply about taking the mind as we experience it this moment, tasting that mind, realizing who we are, the extent of that, and making it available as expedient means to give the gift of liberation to others.

[41:47]

That was really a long answer. Yes? When I hear, you know, I don't actually, like Sibuti, I don't see a difference between stopping, taking birth, you know, in the moment, stopping that chain, and then what you're describing as this transformation that you... that the alaya into the realm of Buddha seems like the same in terms of what I'm hearing. But I wondered if you could clarify the difference. What is it that Subuti thinks he understands and that the Buddha is sort of changing it or saying, oh, it's not this nirvana, it's this bodhisattva, this body of Buddha. Yeah. Because this nirvana was the goal of all early Buddhists.

[42:51]

Not only the Sarvasavadans that we heard about yesterday, but all of the early Buddhists saw nirvana as the goal, the cessation of suffering, to experience it as nirvana. One of the code words of the Mahayana, which differentiates it from the Theravadan tradition, And the other early sects of Buddhism is they put emphasis on enlightenment. Nirvana is just another delusion. It's just another temporary state from the point of view of the Mahayana. He seems like a strong man to me. Yeah, sure. Yeah, of course. They really are both beautiful teachings. I mean, I appreciate that then what the Mahayana reveals seems to me like maybe... possibly what the Theravada is also revealing in practice. Like I've met, you know, wonderful teachers in Theravada and Mahayana.

[43:54]

They seem to be doing the same thing. Yeah. They seem to be at peace. They seem to help others with teachings. Yeah, well then, again, these are just books with words. And often the people who write them are concerned that there are other people using words that lead to trouble. They lead to problems. And so I think they just, in the early, the Mahayana, when it developed, really saw a problem with the quest for nirvana and saw it as self-centered in an ironic way, rather than liberation for everybody. And that was one of the co- words of the early Mahayana and how it differentiated itself. It wasn't interested in this narrow path of freeing yourself from passion. That's why in the Diamond Sutra you'll see the Buddha talks about sacrificing yourself.

[45:03]

He uses that as an example. Imagine a perfect person and renouncing their self-existence, would their body of merit be great? No, no, it wouldn't be great because such a perfect person is not a person. Which is, again, he only understands the simple negation. But then he says, imagine though if a person taught a single gatha, grasped and taught a single gatha, would their body be even greater? Yes, yes, okay. He understands that the teaching is greater than somebody just becoming a perfect person free of passion. The word perfect person is by translation of purusha. Purusha means person. Even today you can use it in India. Purusha can mean a person. But in ancient India, purusha was the name of the greatest of all cosmic beings.

[46:12]

so when the Buddha in Diamond Sutra uses the word Purusha he's saying a perfect person it's the greatest of all persons so he's suggesting to this Buddha imagine somebody who has this incredible self would they be as great would their body of merit be as great as the person who just understands this teaching and gives this gift of liberation again The vow that begins the whole sutra, the vow of liberating all beings, is sort of how we do what the Buddha does. The sutra begins by just showing us what the Buddha does, and then it's all about how we can do that. So the Buddha asks, well, how did you do that? And so he has a limited understanding, and his understanding develops. He's certainly not a fool, but he's the representative of this other tradition that is... Not Mahayana. And that's not a bad thing.

[47:14]

Yes? Oh, wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, just... Well, it's true. The heart suture simply sets us up for using a mantra instead of a bunch of words. In a sense, it shows us the limit, the nature, and even the wrong understanding represented by these words. And then we're left with just a mantra. That's all we have. So... Instead of giving us a new set of words, a new philosophy, the Heart Sutra gets rid of that, everything. And just gives us this mantra, into the God, into the God, into the God beyond.

[48:19]

Go beyond words. And so the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra is the same thing. And we see that Gata that I pointed out, who looks for me in form, who tries to hear me in a voice, Such people see me not. And then, of course, we have the very famous gatha at the end of the Diamond Sutra that everybody often quotes, you know, you probably know that one, everything's like a bubble, a dream, a kind of... Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But oddly enough, oddly enough, This last gatha is not the teaching of the Diamond Sutra. It has nothing to do with the Diamond Sutra. It's really odd that that gatha and the last paragraph that precedes it were taken from Sutra number 8. Somebody really liked that last paragraph in Sutra number 8 and the gatha and put them at the end of the number 9, which is the Diamond Sutra.

[49:31]

Because... This gatha, which is a great gatha. Of course, everybody loves that flash of lightning and everything. But the Diamond Sutra is not about impermanence. It's just about the opposite, about the real body. But somebody really liked that last gatha and put it in there. But the gatha, I think that the Buddha is telling people they should memorize and teach is who looks for me in form, who seeks me in a voice. Such people see me not. And that's the Gatha that I think he had in mind. But as long as you've recited Gatha, you're teaching people expedient means, again. Anyway, Hugh, were you at a question? Yeah, so the answer to everybody yesterday, I heard from one teacher that, you know, actually asked the pre-question after the class. Yeah. To get more about how it was... I heard that it was actually traveled from Chinese to Sanskrit, and then brought it back to India or China.

[50:39]

Because the oldest part sutra in Chinese is actually older than what we have in Sanskrit today. But you think this was regenerated by Sanskrit. Yeah, I honestly do. The person who came up with that theory was Jean Nathier. And it's really an amazing theory. And she pulls together a whole bunch of things, but it doesn't make sense to me. And I've told her that and written about it. In my introduction to my Heart Sutra, I have my explanation of what happened. But the thing I don't mention in my introduction... Jan has never been able to figure out how to respond to it, is that the Heart Sutra is clearly an attack on the Servastavadans. And I went through that, and even the Japanese scholars agree that it was.

[51:45]

Everybody pretty much agrees. Well, if the Heart Sutra was an attack on the Servastavadans, and it was originally written in Chinese, and then translated into Sanskrit... Why was it written in Chinese when there never were any Servastavadans in China? Why would you go to that trouble if the Servastavadans school never existed in China? As I understand it, for any local text, the intention is to skillfully present for the people of the time. And so, it does seem feasible that one wouldn't be to be necessarily arguing with this. The verbosity, I mean, part of the argument is that there was such verbosity that the citrus were long and wordy and in some detail.

[52:56]

and that the Heart Sutra became a poetic synchronicity for an audience that was ready to hear it in that way. And that in maybe some, even with John Napier, but his own correction of it, Pasquale Mahdi, is that, well, that person, that translator who brought it back to China, was actually visited by a deity and out came, you know, these beautiful poetic words. So I feel like it's possible to, because we don't know, to hold all three of those possibilities together. Well, I was just on another thing. Another thing that Jan has never been able to respond to is that the Heart Sutra we have in Chinese, that was our, the first, the earliest Chinese edition we have that we know was written in China, actually, was in 645, written by Xuanzang, after he came back from India.

[54:08]

Well, Xuanzang's own biography, his own biography, and also written, we discovered a manuscript in the Dunhuang cave by his most famous disciple, saying, The reason he first experienced, I might say, enlightenment, his first experience of enlightenment was about 10 years before he went to India, when he was in the city of Chengdu, and he heard someone reciting the Art Sutra. So how do you answer a question like that? Well, Jan answers it by saying, well, you know, she says, well, then that's just... Not true, of course. And of course, any scholar can decide what evidence you want to accept and what evidence you want to deny. Anyway, I've argued this in my own introduction with Jan. Anyway, hers is a compelling argument. Hero is presenting it, and you've heard it from Kaz, and other people have accepted it.

[55:12]

No, I... No, I know. I've run into a number of people who've heard this argument. Again, it doesn't... Well, again, today we're doing the Diamond Sutra, but that's true. The Heart Sutra is something that some people following Jan's arguments believe was first compiled in China. But then, again, she can't explain why it's attacking Servastavadans and why... It was written by the first edition we have was by somebody who heard it being chanted before he ever went to India. And the main thing about it is it's a really powerful text. It's a lovely text. Whoever created it, whether it was Chinese, did a beautiful job of it because it's so succinct and so powerful. It really does justice to itself. Anyway, yes.

[56:15]

What? Of Daoist texts? Do I do them? Yeah. Just the Tao Te Ching. I've only translated the Tao Te Ching, but everybody who learns Chinese translates it to Tao Te Ching. It's not a difficult text to translate, or at least put words on a page. It's a tough one to understand. It's a lovely text. Nobody ever really mentions it, but the Tao Te Ching is one of the, maybe the earliest examples, at least it's one of the earliest examples we have of poetry. People never talk about it, but the Tao Te Ching is a beautiful poetic text. We don't get anything in Confucianism like that. Anyway. I practice the Buddhist tradition, so I feel competent, in a way, to deal with Buddhist texts.

[57:23]

I've never practiced Taoist meditations. You said about Prajni, it's pre-knowledge, and for me it's resonate very much with Taoism idea about darkness of all things which was before, which is before. Yes, you're right. And then you said the word xuan. in the first chapter the first verse of the Tao Te Ching the darkness beyond darkness the Tao Te Ching uses the moon as a symbol and advocates the cultivation of darkness whereas everybody was using the Yijing for example the Yijing emphasizes the cultivation of light that you want to be full you want as much success and safety in life as you can get. And the Tao Te Ching is about unsafety and no success, being a failure. It's about cultivating the darkness of the moon.

[58:26]

In fact, Lao Tzu lived in a state, a small state in China, controlled by the state of Zhu. The Zhu... leaders were members of the Miao, the San Miao, the San Miao minority in China. And the Miao word Tao meant darkness of the moon, the new moon. For a Miao person, the word Tao meant dark moon. And so Lao Tzu grew up in this state, so it's very... Noteworthy that his understanding of using this word Tao, he was aware of how other people were using it, like the Confucians and others. But his use of it has this special little tone to it.

[59:27]

It's all about failure. It's all about cultivating emptiness. It's about darkness, as you said. And darkness is very much like Prajna. Oh, yes. Yeah, just to sort of get back in a way to the Diamond Sutra. You said, you know, you never really had a teacher, a personal teacher. The sutras were your teachers and still are. I guess I'm curious if you could speak a little bit about the significance of engaging with these texts for your... your own practice i remember reading the introduction to your translation from the dhavan sutra and how it seemed like how i mean you spent years on it and it seemed like it's a really significant personal breakthrough for you to sort of finally feel like you understood it it was it is that's like an enigma for you yeah all the sutras are like that um you know like and did you say maybe a little bit about like just in general how do you see the significance of

[60:44]

for the importance of studying these texts for their own value. Yeah, when I read a sutra, obviously when I'm working on a sutra, I might spend days on a line. And I also use my meditation to help me with lines. I use it as I would meditating on a co-op. I just meditate on the line, give rise to the line. And it's just amazing how successful that technique is. And the line clarifies itself without any thought at all. I was going to mention, though, you know, sutras are just, I was thinking, back in the Ming Dynasty, there was a famous monk.

[61:45]

who lectured on the Lotus, he was supposed to give a lecture on the Lotus Sutra. He lectured every day on Wutai Shan, a very famous mountain in China. He lectured every day on Wutai Shan for six years and never got past the title. And so really that to me is what sutras are all about. You don't need to read the whole thing. Just read the title. And he saw everything you'd ever want in the Buddhist world in the title of the Lotus Sutra. And so when I do a sutra, it's like that. I just... It's like the Buddha is sitting and he's got this line. And I can spend all day with that line. And then, of course, I ended up spending years working on a text that somebody else could probably... Actually, when I was at Columbia, I studied Chinese... I had a classmate who was studying Chinese, a German guy.

[62:47]

And he translated the Diamond Sutra one weekend. And it took me about maybe four or five years. But, I mean, you could translate the words. But to me, the sutras, and that's why I told you, they've become my teacher. I've never found a better teacher than the sutras. I find everything I need there. take my time translating them. So, thanks for asking that question because I think it's important for people to know sutras are not you're not supposed to read them for information. If the translator has been worked on the text to, you know, spend some time on it, there should be something in the translation that gives you the feeling that you don't need to read. The whole paragraph. Think about the line. Or meditate on the line. Like a koan. That's what I do with the sutras.

[63:51]

It's just material. Great material to use for practice. That's what I do. I had the same experience with all the sutras. The Lanka too. The platform sutra. They're great repositories. The sutras are. but not to be studied in a, some people make, I think, the mistake of trying to look on them as repositories of Buddhism, as my aunt used to call it. Anyway, sorry for digressing. God, wasted the whole hour. Well, thank you very much for listening, and I hope to come back again someday, and we'll do something else some other time. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[64:55]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[65:05]

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