This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you all for being here. So, I wish to thank Nancy for the invitation and Kodo for helping. How's the sound? Sound okay? Wonderful. Okay. I'm so happy today to be able to begin your series. I understand that Zen Center will be doing a summer program on the three turnings of the wheel. So when Nancy asked me to give this talk, I said, well, that's kind of complicated. topic.

[01:01]

There's much to cover in that topic. So it's good that I'll be first. That way, either I'll set a usable overview of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma, or since I'm first, you can just put my talk aside and begin your regular program. She thought that was a good idea. So, I want to talk to you about the three turnings of the Dharma wheel. The three Dharma chakras. To say it in a nutshell, this is a scheme that was devised late in the history of Buddhism, actually. Some centuries after the Buddha was here. And it was devised as a way of talking about and reconciling.

[02:05]

Why it seemed to some that the Buddha had taught so many differing paths to Dharma. It became the Mayana's way of talking about the three major philosophical shifts in the Buddha's teachings. Now, first I want to begin by saying that after the Buddha passed away, there were no images of him. Kodo, are you getting those slides ready? Okay. For several centuries, and even until the present day in Southeast Asian Buddhism, the Buddha is represented by only footprints. We're going to see a slide of one of these. If you've traveled in Southeast Asian countries, then you've seen these footprints of the Buddha in various places.

[03:15]

You also see a wheel, if you'll notice, on the bottom, and a wheel in the center, and a wheel in between the footprints. But in Thai and Cambodian and Laotian Buddhist countries, Sri Lanka, Sri You'll often see the Buddha represented this way. He was here, but you can't see him. You can see the footprints, however, that he left. Okay, next slide, please. Much more common is seeing the Buddha represented by the wheel. The wheel of Dharma. A Dharma chakra. Now, this particular wheel that I'm showing is a wheel from Karnak, a 13th century Hindu temple in Orisha State. And I show it because it's such incredible detail, artistic detail.

[04:22]

And also to say that the wheel was a very important symbol pre-Buddhist days. It was important for the Jains. It was important for later Hindus, as this is a Hindu temple, the temple to the sun god in Orisha, and it's a Hindu temple. But you'll see that this wheel also has eight spokes. Please just look and count. Okay. Now, in most Mayana places, And the next slide I'm going to show, and that'll be the end of slides, I think. The next slide, please, Kodo, shows what you'll likely see if you enter a Tibetan monastery. Here is the Dharma chakra and the deer, representative of the deer park, where the Buddha set in motion the wheel of Dharma for the first time.

[05:24]

All the eight spokes. You see. Now why eight? We'll talk about that. Now can we just stop the slides? Take a good little deal and stop the slides. Okay, very good. I want to say a bit more about Huya. It's very powerful. I've indicated that more religions than just Buddhism use it as a potent symbol. Why? Well, it represents power in the ancient Indian world. You might recall that at the Buddha's birth, it was prophesied by some of the Brahmin soothsayers that the Buddha would either become a world monarch, a chakra vartan, lord of the wheel, or he would become a Buddha. Now, his father didn't want him to become a world. I mean, his father didn't want him to become a Buddha. And the soothsayers said to him,

[06:26]

The father said, well, how can I prevent him from becoming a Buddha? And they said, well, you can't let him see any suffering. If he doesn't see any suffering at all, he may grow up and become this world ruler. But the world rulers call it Chakravartin. Now, here's where it comes from. It comes from power and warfare. The wheels of the chariot that belonged to the world ruler touched the ground. Wherever they touched the ground, that ground became the territory of the monarch, unless you were willing to fight him for it. This was a conquering wheel. This was a powerful wheel, wielded by powerful kings. So what is the Buddha doing when he teaches his first sermon? He's actually showing a wheel that's more powerful than conquering.

[07:32]

He's showing a wheel that can liberate. The Buddha's first discourse, often translated first sermon, showing our Christian bias and roots, Western Buddhologists, first sermon. Well, the name of that sutra is... The Dharma Chakra Pravartana Sutra. The discourse setting in motion, Pravartana, turning it, turning it on the wheel chakra of the Dharma. So the Buddha's first discourse indicates that he is going to start in motion a different kind of wheel. And the implication is this wheel is more powerful. more far-reaching than the chakras of a chakra of art. So what does the Buddha talk about in that first turning of the wheel?

[08:36]

Just about everything we know about Buddhism. Spoken by Anand, who recited all the Buddha's sutra. The first sutra says, after saying, thus have I heard on a certain occasion when the Buddha was in the Deer Park at Ishiba Kana in Sarnath, he said to his first five disciples, O bhikkhus, these two extremes ought not to be followed by one who has entered the path. What extremes? The extreme of overindulgence and sense pleasures. and the extreme of overindulgence and self-mortification. Neither of these gives liberation, gives insight, or gives wisdom. And then he says, I, the Tathagata, having avoided these two extremes, have found liberation.

[09:39]

Then the next line says, the avoidance of these two extremes is the middle path. Thirdly, he gives a synonym, for the middle path. And the middle path, what is that? It is none other than the eightfold path. And so I got back to wheel. The eight spokes of that wheel that's representative of the Buddhist Dharma are representative of each of the eight guidelines, ethical guidelines, really. Right action, right speech, right concentration, right wisdom. The The eightfold path is represented by each of the spokes of the Dharma wheel. So how in the world, why are we talking about all the three Dharma wheels? Well, if you look at that first sermon, everything that the Buddha subsequently taught in his 45 years of teaching can be found in that first sermon.

[10:44]

The middle way, the middle path got refined over and over again. So that how should we view dharmas? We should view them as existing in a certain way, but not in the way that we perceive. So we don't want to bend too much to holding on, and we don't want to over-exaggerate when we see a thing and become attached to it. We don't want to underestimate a thing. And so develop hatred towards it. We need to see it in just the right way. Well, what I want to say is that everything that the Buddha spins out over the next 45 years, one can see in that first discourse. And then, of course, after he does the middle path in the Eightfold Way comes the Four Noble Truths. There is suffering. There is a cause of suffering. There is liberation from suffering, the end of it, and there's a path leading to the cessation of suffering.

[11:52]

And all the different meditative paths that have been developed in various countries over time can be found or subsumed under the path. So whether it's Zen or... whether it's one Buddhism or whether it's Thai Buddhism, whether you're talking about the countries and the cultures, there seem to be different meditative methods. That's all there are. And all of those meditative methods comprise the path as delineated in the Four Noble Truths in that very first discourse. So it's not only called, it's not only the name given to the first sutra, the Dharma Chakra Pravartana, Sutra, oh, that's the first turning. But these three turnings have to do with key text, philosophical text that become the foundation of the teaching, key foci, key methodologies that are focused on different things, focused on dharmas, focused on atman,

[13:08]

focused on shunyata. These make up the turnings. We shall go for it and see. The scheme that said there are three turnings of the term, you can imagine these were mayana, so it's later than that first cluster of teachings. And these teachings, as I said, could be found throughout the Buddha's teaching. Any Theravadan, and introduce that word, I know you know what it means, but it's used instead of saying Hinayana, which was a Maya in a way of classifying what had gone before it. We're the great vehicle. That was the lesser vehicle. So Theravada becomes sort of a generic name for all the early teachings of the Buddha, for all of it.

[14:14]

And there were very many schools of Buddhism. I didn't want to do that as a slide, but you should know that originally, originally, oh, this is a graphic that shows the early teachings schools of Buddhism, there were 18. A university professor once told me that if you wanted to study Zen Buddhism, excuse me, if you wanted to study Japanese Buddhism, one way of doing it was to talk about teachers and the specific sutra or meditative hook that they gave their students. And usually what you note over the course of history is that a certain teacher would streamline what was necessary to attain enlightenment.

[15:19]

That was a great clue about how to memorize, if you will, how the teachings changed. For example, one teacher might say, a Japanese teacher might say, liberation can be gained if you recite the Lotus Sutra. Another teacher would say, liberation can be gained if you recite one chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Another teacher would say, liberation can be gained if you recite one shloka of the Sutra. They would streamline. The great Zen master Dogen is renowned because of how he streamlined what was necessary to gain liberation through Zen. So do we need to sit with a kung ang, with a koan?

[16:20]

Dogen says, no, we just need to sit. That's a sort of streamlining, but of course it's much more complicated than that. But the string lining tells you the progress. In a similar way, the three turnings is a Mayana way of saying that early teaching of the Buddha and that early teaching that's encapsulated in all of the Theravada and Pali canon, that was an early teaching of the Buddha. But then there's a second turning. And the second turning is said to have happened centuries after the Buddha, but was brought to our attention by a Mahayana philosopher whom you all know as the great Nagarjuna. Now, there are many tales about Nagarjuna and how he came up.

[17:26]

with the so-called Prajnaparamita text. It said he went to the south. It said he went to the land of the Nagas. The Nagas were the keepers of wisdom, these serpentine beings who lived at the bottoms of the sea. Well, it said that Nagarjuna went to the land of the Nagas, And he conquered them, Arjuna. Oh, he was the conqueror of the Nagas, Naga Arjuna, Nagarjuna. And he wrestled from them this great cache of wisdom text. And those wisdom texts lay out for us all the ultimate. that which you can't go beyond, wisdom, prajna.

[18:27]

Oh, some pronounce that prajna. Prajna paramita. So there are said to be prajna paramita texts, and Edward Konza has translated them, and you can find lots of translations these days. Edward Konza made them popular in the West. So there are prajna paramita texts that are 100,000 shloka long, There are Pragnaparamita texts that are 25,000 verses long. There are the Pragnaparamita texts in 8,000 verses. Those in 300 verses, when you come to the most succinct, like the Diamond Sutras, in 300 shloka. And then the Heart Sutra, which is just, oh, a page long. The Heart of Pragnaparamita. And I like to tell students that when you go into a Mayana temple these days, even now, someone is tasked in that Mayana monastery or nunnery.

[19:38]

Their job is to constantly be reciting the Heart Sutra. Somewhere in that place, walked into a place, a Mayana place, a Japanese place in Hawaii. And I said, is there really someone here reciting the Heart Sutra continuously? And I said, would you take me to that person? And they told me, you know, there was someone reciting the Heart Sutra. This most succinct form. Now, what did Prabhupada Paramita texts teach that Nagarjuna found and came back with? Now, it said he went to the Naga lands. That also means... or some suggest, interpret, that he went to southern India. Where, in South India of Nagarjuna's day, there was not only a matriarchy, there were women leaders, women who had more influence on their husbands, women who practiced Buddhism as opposed to their husbands who practiced...

[20:50]

Hinduism after the Buddha. After the Buddha, Hinduism comes into being. Before that, it's called Brahmanism. It's a different religious tradition. At any rate, he went south, and what was happening in the southern states was also the Greeks were meeting there. The Greek philosophers were there at that time. And And so there is a cult in South India, many areas actually of South India, where Sophia cults are all, are in existence. So it could be that Nagarjuna went to Southern India at the time. We don't know. There's a lot of mythologies around it. Nagarjuna, who he was, how long he lived, for example. But it said he brought back this cache of texts that had never been seen before. And what is their subject matter?

[21:51]

Their subject matter is shunyata. Shunyata, emptiness, emptiness. We translate emptiness or voidness. Westerners do that, but what's really important is to know what is meant by the terms. What is something void of? What is something empty of? You know, it's not all despair, emptiness, loneliness, existentialism, none of that. It's a way of talking about all reality. And it's one of those foci that I mentioned earlier. This will get clearer, I hope, soon. So Nagarjuna's texts, those texts he brought back, were all about Shunyata. and emptiness, and how we as Buddhists could understand what was meant by shunyata, shunyata, you know? In some of the Theravadan texts, you find suture where a monk is saying to the Buddha, Lord Bhagavan, you talk so much, you say sunya, everything is sunya.

[23:02]

What does that mean, everything is sunya? And in the Theravadan texts, you have these... these sort of dialogues where the Buddha talks with King Melinda and he, you know, he says, is the chariot this part of it? And the king has to say no. And the Buddha, so this construction, deconstruction thing, he runs on King Melinda till finally King Melinda understands that we named something, but that name is not, that name is not the reality. Tikaha. Oh, that name is a, Part, it makes it up. But is there any such thing as that universal, that whole name? No, can't find it. Likewise, can't find the self. This was the Theravadan's, the early turning way of talking about sunnah. So I can say it, I think, clearer now. In Theravadan text,

[24:06]

even though some of them mention suna, sunya, the emphasis, and that's what the three turnings is about, the emphasis is on dharmas. Dharma, small d, means any experiential event. So it's not actually just a concrete thing. It's experiencing that concrete thing. But the fashioners of the three turnings says that the first turning folk, meaning Theravadans, had a misconception. They thought that some dharma, small d, were actually real reality out there in the world. because they were out there in the world, the Taravans turned their focus for gaining liberation on their Atmans.

[25:21]

In other words, don't deal with those things. Those Dharmas, they are there, but what's the meditative hook for us apart from the five aggregates? There is non-self. So the meditation hook for the Theravadan tradition, according to this schema, is Atmanaratnya. There is no self in the self. So going with these turnings, there are key texts. There are key philosophical views. There are key ontological views. For some, we're going to see that the third one doesn't recognize. ontology at all. And there are key meditative hooks. I hope I'm being clear if there'll be question and answer. So the Theravadan tradition says there are dharmas in the world.

[26:27]

Now, they're not dharmas like we might say, book, ball, this, that, or the other. In fact, the The different 18 schools had different numbers of Dhammas they recognized. I find that amazing, huh? This is a list of the 75 Dhammas of the Kusha school. The Kusha school means it's a school that takes as its chief book the Abhidharma Kosha of Asubandu. They recognize 75 Dhammas. Now, what are those dharmas like? One is mind. You know, so it's not a book and a ball. Another dharma is perception. Another dharma is idea. Another dharma is energy. Another dharma is belief. For this school, there were 75. For a school before it, there were 100.

[27:28]

And as you move through the different schools, the number of dharma's lessons. When you get to Nagarjuna, there aren't any more dharmas. All is shunya. And the meditative hook is both atmanayaratmia, there's no self in the self, and there is no self in any dharma whatsoever. That's when shunyata becomes blanket with the pragnaparamita text. Nagarjuna's take on the... On the Prajnaparamita text, which he brought back and he founded a school called Madhyamaka, his take was absolutely every karma is empty. Everyone. There is no exception to this. So Nagarjuna writes his own key philosophical text, Mula Madhyamaka Karakas, the verses on

[28:34]

the Matyamaka view. And it's a great text. The word shunyata is not mentioned anywhere and it's all about shunyata. It's brilliant. It's really exceptional. So the teaching of shunyata, what is that about? Tikaha. So we've had this, if you will, emphasis on dharmas, whether they're out there or they're in there, they're experiential. And then you have this second turning. Second turning is... Pranaparamita, and its offshoot, philosophical offshoot, Madhyamaka. I wrote about these turnings in my graduate dissertation, and the book that came out talking about them, this may be much clearer, I hope. Oh, the book came out in 1979, Columbia U Press, And this is what I said then.

[29:38]

So maybe I'll, at the second turning, I'll give you a gist of the whole, of the three turnings. Okay. I'm reading from pages 14, 15 to 16, just a little bit of them. My Yana Buddhism recognizes three so-called turnings of the wheel of Dharma. It is a phrase used to refer to the three divisions of the scripture, namely the early scriptures of the Hinayana, I said, the intermediate scripture, including the Pranaparamita literature and the Madhyamaka doctrine. And third, what is called by some scholars, I was refuting this, a kind of idealism. So some... Some Buddhologists refer to the three turnings trying to help us Western philosophers understand what they focused on. Call them, one, the turning of naive realism, two, the turning of criticism, meaning Nagarjuna, and three, the turning of idealism.

[30:47]

Now, my book was written to say, was a translation of a Sangha who founded the third so-called turning, Yogacara, to say a Sangha very well understood what was meant by Sunyata. So he wasn't reinstating, if you will, that mind is somehow more real than anything else. So I was trying to correct that view. So here we go. So I'll read one more paragraph from this. One might imagine that the three, as representing those stages of philosophical development within Buddhism, which took as their respective metaphysical foci, one, things, and here it's meant dharma in the broadest sense, as any phenomenon, fact, or event that can be perceived, known, or thought to have a separate existence, followed by two, a consuming interest in shunyata as the denial of thingness, dharma nairatmia.

[31:52]

That came along with the theory of non-self of dharmas, and a non-self of self. And lastly, the identification of these two. Identification of these two, that is the identification of things and voidness. So the first, there's an emphasis on things as though they're separate from I, consciousness, mind. Then there's this overwhelming, Emphasis on shunya, [...] shunya. And then there's a third turning. How after shunya, shunya, shunya do you get to something else? Well, you do with the third turning of the wheel, which is the school that based, just as Nagarjuna's was based on the Pranaparamita text, another school arises called Yogachar. And the Yogachar, oh,

[32:55]

reads that cunha a different way. Or it, if you will, changes the focus. So we've had, there are dharmas I'll focus on. Self is non-existent. I is non-existent. I is just made up. It's constructed of the five aggregates. My liberation will come when I see that apart from the five aggregates, there is no I. Then the second turning is Shunya, shunya, shunya. Well, then we get things like the heart of that second turning can be seen in the Heart Sutra. But the Heart Sutra is the quintessence of all the Pragna Paramitas texts. Well, what does it say? I tell students, it's important to see who's talking to one another in these sutras. Sorry for jamming so much in here. It's important who's speaking.

[33:57]

So in the Heart Sutra, what do you have? You have a conversation. Buddha's meditating as he always is. You have a conversation, however, in the Heart Sutra, just the most succinct, a conversation between Shariputra, who is representative of the Theravadan wise wisdom person, and Avilokiteshvara. or the Lord of Compassion. Mayana is about how compassion can temper this wisdom. So it's a conversation where Abhilokiteshwar watches the Buddha meditating, turns to Shariputra and says, this is how you should do it. Now what does he tell him? He tells him, Next sentence. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.

[35:01]

Form is no other than emptiness, and emptiness is no other than form. This is the pinnacle of Nagarjuna's... what Nagarjuna was basing his philosophy on. But that wasn't the emphasis. People who came to, who came after Nagarjuna, Buddhists, who came after Nagarjuna were left actually despairing. How can we carry on if everything is empty? If everything is empty. Then comes a song that 200 years after Nagarjuna, Asanga looks at the Heart Sutra and says, just as Zen masters say so easily, form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

[36:07]

The identification there is what's important. The identification of the two is what's important. back, if you will. It's like a cycle coming all the way around. The emphasis is not looking out, but it's looking in, in a different way. The Yogacarans, the Yogacarans say, we have to look within, and how do we reconcile that everything is empty? We look at it a different way. So Asanga says this, It's not idealism. It says that everything we take to be a dharma is first something that has come to our minds, to our consciousness.

[37:09]

This sounds so simple, but it took centuries. Yoga charns are saying we don't experience any of those dharmas directly. We experience them. experience them through the mind. And so the school becomes known as mind only. It's not about idealism. Asanga is saying, just as the early Buddhists were saying, we have experience with something. Maybe we see it. We see a pool of water. And he says, owing to our minds, we might see that as a cooling river. Birds might see that as a place to swoop down and have water. Some demons and hungry ghosts run away from that because they see it as only pus and blood. Asanga's saying, our minds change those things.

[38:15]

Quantum physics, that's all it was. Our minds change those things. Or the rope and the snake, if you will. I was scared when I thought it was a snake, but then I saw it was a rope and it's okay. Huh? A Sangha emphasizes that our minds are what, what tells us what we are seeing. And if we know that, oh, we can understand. And then all these meditations come out of that, too. It's called Yogachara, the way of the yogi. And so we can use our mind flexibly. So for Tantra, it was great. Yogachara, you know. Our minds tell us what we experience. Okay. That's Lama Tuttanyaji, let's say. We spend so much time... thinking about ourselves negatively, let's think about ourselves positively because our minds are so important in what we experience.

[39:24]

So that's a yoga chart and that was the third turning. Now, I've said all this to say to you, especially you Zen practitioners, I love it. Oh, that though the The Yogacharas came up with this threefold scheme, and they did so in two texts, one, the Lankapatara, and the other, the Samdhin Emotina Sutra, the unraveling the secrets. And in that Samdhin Emotina, which is so, so Pranaparamita is essential for Nagarjuna, right? Samdhin Emotina is essential for Asanga. And in the Samdhin Emotina Sutra, the unraveling the secrets, you have a monk saying to the Buddha, well, Well, sometimes you taught this Dharma theory, and at other times you taught this emptiness theory, and then sometimes you say, don't worry about it. Is my mind just feeble and weak as it is, no doubt?

[40:30]

But have you taught different things? In other words, this sutra is the locus for the Buddha saying, no, I've taught the same thing. I just taught it depending upon the listener's ability to understand. So, yes, I taught the Dharma theory for those who needed it. And it made them ethical, made them turn away from dharmas in the world, made them realize renunciation. He says this in the scripture. And made them realize renunciation and turn towards gaining wisdom through meditation. Atman-Daharatmi is saying that the self is not concrete. And then there were other people who had this fascination with dharmas, he says. And so to them I taught shunya, [...] shunya. So that they would give up their great attachment and attain liberation.

[41:32]

And so there were some who could, he said, and now I'm teaching this third teaching, which says dharmas and shunya are the same for those really, really wise ones. Now, this is what I'm trying to get to. So this scheme was developed first in this sutra called the Samdhani Namochena Sutra, and it was developed over time from the first century CE to the third century, the most complete. of it, 3rd century CE. So it's the latest text. And in the 12th century, Boudin, who was the redactor of the Tibetan canon, who gave us four ways of analyzing various tantras, Boudin says it so simply. These three churnings.

[42:32]

In one line, Boudin, who's written... the famous history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, Budun says, our teacher, the foremost of the Shakyas, endowed with the four miraculous powers, has taught us these things. Second sentence. He has revealed his doctrine in all of its three forms. And those three forms are the three turnings of the wheel of dharma. Dharma chakra. Well, that was within 12th, 13th century. But you, in the Chan Zen tradition, have the Tang philosopher, Qin Wang Wei Xin. Wei Xin said, in the 9th century, I hope some of you

[43:36]

will recognize his saying. Let me be sure I can read it correctly. Wei Xin said in the 9th century, Before I studied the classics of Zen, I looked at mountains just as mountains. But now that I've studied for more than 30 years, I see no mountains, no rivers. But now, oh, with my heart at peace, I once again see mountains as mountains, rivers as rivers. Now, The whole point of this talk is to say that there are philosophical, literary, and very poetic ways of talking about the three turnings of the Dharma wheel.

[44:51]

And this Zen poet captured it like this. There are mountains when I'm just beginning. But after studying, I see that there are no mountains. And then my heart is at peace. Because I see the mountains again. This is the three turnings. Shortcut. And it was 1967 before the Scottish folk singer Donovan was given that phrase. And he wrote a song. First there is a mountain. Then there isn't. Then there is. First there is a mountain. Then there isn't. Then there is. Those are the three turnings. First I see... Looks like a mountain. Concrete. It's a dharma. Then I hear shunyata, shunyata, shunyata. And I think, if I'm practicing correctly, there's no mountain. There is no mountain. But then I understand that the mountain and emptiness, that emptiness is the mountain's nature.

[45:56]

That there is no difference. That form is emptiness, and that very emptiness is form, and my heart is at peace. So, different skillful means for talking about all the three trainings, or the three, you know, what you emphasize in the Buddhist teaching. That's all. That's all. First there is a mountain, then there isn't. Then there is. Now, some of you have undoubtedly heard that phrase. Have you not? You might not have heard that 1967 Donovan song. My students say, who is that? But at any rate, oh, that's one way of encapsulating the whole of the Buddha's teachings. And I hope it's been helpful to you. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[47:18]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:21]

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