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. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming this evening. Hello, Naomi. I don't know if you remember me from many years of occasionally dipping into your workshop, being interviewed by your wonderful workshop retreatants. And Paul, welcome back, welcome home. Leslie San is here as well. So this evening I'm going to talk a little bit about the Heart Sutra. And the Heart Sutra, for those of you who don't know, is a sutra that we chant most every day.

[01:06]

We chant it in Japanese, and then we also chant it in English at all three centers. And I don't think you really need to be that familiar with it to understand what I'm going to be talking about, at least I hope not. And maybe there'll be time for questions if you have questions at the end. So I just want to start with talking about maybe a person I would consider my first spiritual teacher who I never met. It was Mohandas Gandhi, or Mahatma Gandhi, the great-souled one. I came across his teachings when I was in college, and it was the first time I was really introduced to teachings of a different spiritual tradition. I was raised Roman Catholic. And I don't really know if I ever heard of Mohandas Gandhi until I was in university.

[02:10]

And I found out later on, I did a research paper on him. I learned a lot about his quest for independence from the British rule. colonial rule of the British Raj or regime. And it was years later that I found out that he was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's main influences in his own civil rights movement to uplift people of color in the United States. And all these years later, I still remember this one quote from from Mohandas Gandhi. I remember a few of them, but the one that really I think is very pertinent still today is this one that says, Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals.

[03:14]

So as we know, this is not really the state that the global society is in right now. There's been many wars that have been waged in the 77 years since Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated when he was 78 years old. And I feel that, and obviously there's many wars, unfortunately, that are raging now. Not only, you know, these external wars, but internal wars, right, our own internal skirmishes that are happening. So we have not yet established peace between countries, because we have yet to have this solid foundation of love between individuals. And I would take that a little one step further, if you will, and just add this other peace to it, which is, you know, this love between individuals rests on this inner peace within each person, right? So this inner peace equals outer peace, right? So our external world, collective external world, reflects our collective inner

[04:20]

internal psycho-emotional landscape. As some of you might know, Siddhartha, who before he was called the Buddha or the Awakened One, his name was Siddhartha, and he was born to a very wealthy clan in ancient India. And when he was 29 years old, he left his palace and his wife and young son and he went on a quest to end human suffering. That was his mission, to end human suffering in the here and now, amid the mud of our karmic conditioning, the mud of our suffering in the present moment. I mention that because from my reading, the Buddha didn't like to answer questions about why or about the afterlife. It was about how can we be free from what's arising, the suffering that's arising in this moment.

[05:20]

So the Buddha spent many years wandering through India in search of enlightenment. He practiced a lot of ascetic meditation and a lot of ascetic practices. so much so that he became emaciated, and the legend is that he was like surviving on one sesame seed a day. So finally, he decided that this ascetic way wasn't the way, and mastering all these yogic meditation, concentration meditation practices wasn't the way. He was exhausted, so he sits down underneath this bodhi tree or a ficus tree, and he says, I'm not moving. until I experience enlightenment, until I'm free. So I call this like an all-nighter. Those of us who are studying, I'm going to do this. I'm going to cram this night and learn everything I didn't learn during the rest of the semester at college, and then I'm going to pass. So he sat there pulling this all-nighter until he had many awakenings, and he experienced the cessation of suffering or nirvana.

[06:36]

So it'll come as no surprise that the Buddha taught meditation to his disciples as a way for them to experience liberation in the moment. Liberation in the middle of the mud of our lives, right? Not going somewhere else, being upright with what's arising and not moving away from it. So when the Buddha finally experienced the cessation of suffering or nirvana, he describes his enlightenment like this. I have found a nectar-like dharma, profound, peaceful, free from reference points, luminous, and unconditioned. I'll just read that one more time because it's so beautiful and it relaxes me just reading it. I have found a nectar-like dharma, profound, peaceful, free from reference points, luminous and unconditioned.

[07:41]

So I've never heard this description before until I read this book, which I highly recommend, called The Heart Attack Sutra by Karl Brunholtz. And the legend is that when this teaching was first offered, the Heart Sutra teaching was first offered, people in the audience in the assembly had heart attacks because it was so profound and so destabilizing. So to their egos, their sense of who they are, their solid sense of who they are. So what really stood out for me in this description is this phrase, free from reference points. So this seems kind of key to me that if nirvana is free from reference points, then perhaps investigating reference points and understanding what they are might be beneficial to liberating ourselves from some of the suffering that might arise So the Heart Sutra says this about nirvana. With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva, somebody who's dedicated to awakening and to helping others awaken in this lifetime, a bodhisattva relies on prajnaparamita.

[08:56]

As prajnaparamita, the way you can describe it with words is like a non-conceptual awareness, a non-dual, non-conceptual awareness. Kind of what the trees and the birds and the bees all have without trying. So with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on Prajnaparamita and thus the mind is without hindrance. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana. So when we realize nirvana, We realize nirvana by relying on Prajnaparamita, this practice of Prajnaparamita. And the first sentence of the Heart Sutra, the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra, is Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva. She is the Bodhisattva, the saint of compassion, who hears the cries of the world. When deeply practicing Prajnaparamita, so abiding, if you will, in this non-dual, non-conceptual,

[10:01]

clearly saw that all five aggregates, so we are comprised of these aggregates, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness, and form, this is form, that we're empty. Empty meaning that there's no abiding self, there's no permanent, independent, abiding heather. And thus relieved all suffering. So this prajnaparamita, helped the Avalokiteshara Bodhisattva to see that all these aggregates, who we are, who we think we are, are empty and relieved all suffering. So when we are able to experience a glimpse of this Prajnaparamita, this perfection of wisdom or insight, we might feel a little taste of what the birds and the trees and the creeks and the bees might feel. This non-separation from reality, from nature, from who they are, the essence of who they are.

[11:09]

Also, I think a couple of other translations of this one sentence might be helpful. So one scholar, Red Pine, points out, he translated it this way, the sentence. Without attainment, a bodhisattva takes refuge in prajnaparamita, and lives without walls of the mind, right? So the mind is no hindrance or the mind is without hindrance. Without the walls of the mind and thus without fears, right? So these walls are fears. So when we have no walls of mind, we have no fear. We see through delusions, this delusion of separation that I'm a separate independent heather, right? Another scholar translates it this way. A bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom or insight, dwells without thought coverings. In the absence of thought coverings, they have not been made to tremble, so they're no longer afraid, and they no longer can be upset.

[12:11]

So they've overcome this being upset, being afraid, and then they attain nirvana. So for me, I... I experience these thought coverings or walls of mind as reference points. Remember Buddha said that nirvana was nectar-like and it was free from reference points. It was unconditioned. I can't really explain any of that because I'm not the Buddha, but it sounds like a pretty sweet place to abide. These thought coverings are reference points. For me, I feel like one way that we can understand reference points as a sense of me. It can be a really strong sense of me. Like I'm Heather. I'm from outside of the Bronx. I was raised working class, Italian-American. I have no idea how I ended up here. Through a lot of suffering. That's how I got here. And so with these reference points, one way we can also define them is as emotionalized conceptualizations.

[13:21]

So if I really am strongly identified with being an Italian-American and somebody makes a slur against Italian-Americans, I might get really activated and angry because I think that's who I am. I'm sure we've all experienced that. I know I have. Maybe not so much about being Italian-American, but about other things. So these are concepts. Italian-American is a concept. Italian-American concept doesn't really care about itself. It's just a word. It doesn't have any meaning to it other than what I impute on to that. So the more identified we are, it becomes an emotionalized conceptualization. So the more we believe in these ideas of ourselves, these reference points, or these emotionalized conceptualizations, the more we can get activated when we feel disrespected or we feel that someone is... I guess poking fun at us, or our candidate doesn't win, right?

[14:27]

All that emotional activation that can happen is because we believe these reference points are who we are. And so what happens is we often move away from these reference points because they are suffering. Not that they just create suffering, but when we believe them, there's like an equal sign. They are suffering, right? So the belief in these reference points equals suffering. So we often, as a way to move away from the suffering, we usually externalize it. We project it on that other people are causing us this harm. And for somebody, they might not really care if you say anything negative about an Italian-American because that's not who they are. Somebody else might be really upset about it. So obviously, Italian-American is empty of any meaning other than what the person... projects onto it, right? That this is who I am and I need to defend it. So, and I'm probably telling this story because I never told it when I was here with Paul, when I was his head monk back in 2018.

[15:35]

So, he told me that, anyway, I won't tell you why he told me not to tell it, but I'm telling it now, Paul, so forgive me. So back when I was in third grade at St. Ursula's, which was a Roman Catholic grammar school in Mount Vernon, which is just outside the Bronx in New York. So this is in the 70s. My favorite third grade teacher gave me a perfect lesson about this. So she was... It was lunchtime, you know, recess, the bell, just like now when you're sitting zazen, there's a bell, there's a sense of freedom. I get to get out of here. So the bell rang for recess, and all my friends started following out of the door with their lunchboxes and their brown bags. And my teacher, my favorite teacher, Miss Joan Kopecky, I really loved her. She was so interested in helping us learn how to learn and study, and she just... was strict, but really also a fantastic teacher and very interested in helping us.

[16:39]

So I saw her with one of those little compact mirrors. I don't know if they're still popular nowadays, but she was putting on like some foundation, you know, like this. And since my mother really, and I don't have any older sisters, and my mother didn't really wear makeup, I was like, well, I was curious. I'm like, Ms. Kopecky, what are you doing? And she's like, well, I'm going to lunch, and I'm putting on some makeup. I was like, well, why are you putting on makeup if you're just going to lunch? And she says, well, I might meet Mr. Right at lunch. And I said, well, Mr. Right is dead. And then she smacked me. And I was stunned. As you can imagine, I'm only eight, right? I have no idea why she smacked me. and I was filled with this hot shame, and I ran out of the classroom. And as soon as I made that left turn down the hallway, of course, I flipped her off because she couldn't see me. That was the kind of child I was.

[17:42]

I was so enraged because I was accused of something which I don't even know what I was accused of because I was just an eight-year-old. I don't remember the rest of the day, but I do remember when I finally got home and I lived just down the street from the school. I told my mother what happened. And I think she was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I said, Mom, I told her the story, and I said, Mr. Wright is dead. And she looked at me like, Heather, you did not tell your teacher Mr. Wright is dead. I said, well, Orville and Wilbur Wright are dead, aren't they? And that's what our teacher told us. We talked about them at Kitty Hawk. They made that flying machine, and they're dead. And she started laughing, of course, because she was an adult and she misunderstood. She understood, you know, out of the mouths of babes. So she said, well, Heather, Miss Kopecky was putting on this makeup in hopes that she would find Mr. Wright at lunch or meet Mr. Wright.

[18:45]

And for her, Mr. Wright is like this idealized future husband, right? This ideal future husband is Mr. Wright. So... Of course, in my mind, at eight years old, I had never heard of that Mr. Wright. I only knew of Orville and Wilbur Wright. And I know that my mom went to school and she made Ms. Kopecky apologize to me. I don't remember any of that, but I do know that she was infuriated. She already didn't like Catholicism, so this was another nail in the coffin of all her many original sins. So... So I think the reason why Paul asked me not to tell the story is because it was practice period, and someone smacked me, and he felt, I think, it was a little too violent, if I remember our conversation about that. Because I also had told another story before that also had some sort of violence in it as well, so he said it was too much. So anyway, this is the story. So I mention it because, I think, I mention it because clearly...

[19:51]

Ms. Kopecky had this emotionalized conceptualization of this phrase, these two words, Mr. Right. That was a very strong narrative for her. That was a very strong reference point in the sense that at her age, I don't even know what she was. Maybe she was in her late 30s. When you're eight, everybody looks old, ancient, right? I'm sure she wasn't 57, which is how old I am. So she's probably in her 30s. And she probably internalized the story from her family, from society. It was the 70s. It was very patriarchal. And the sense of her being unworthy of finding this ideal future husband, this Mr. Right. So she had a lot of emotion, a lot of identity tied up in this story. And so when I said Mr. Right is dead, she got so activated by it that she wasn't able to stay with all those emotions if she even... probably didn't even experience them. She just instantly smacked me. So in Tibetan Buddhism, they call that shenpa, S-H-E-N-P-A.

[20:58]

It's like that moment right before you move away, you act away from that activation. So you might grab a cigarette, or you might watch television, or you might doom scroll, or some addictive pattern might show up in order to move away from all that suffering. So clearly she was... I mean, I don't know if she was suffering as much as I was. I mean, she did, after all, smack me. And, you know, eight-year-olds are really tiny. And so for me, it's also like my perception was not wrong and neither was hers, right? She had her own perception. I had my eight-year-old right perception. So... She obviously wasn't born with this emotionalized conceptualization, all the emotion she put into this phrase, Mr. Right. And it's a very heteronormative and a very patriarchal story as well, that she was going to be an old maid if she couldn't get married at a certain time, by a certain time.

[22:02]

So she carried this unexamined story of herself forward. and overlaid it on that present moment. This was one of her walls of mind, one of her thought coverings was this reference point of being an old maid. And this wall of mind, that made her feel very separate from herself, from me, and from the world around her, and her own true Buddha nature, this unconditioned, nectar-like, non-conceptual, non-dual awareness. So while I was thinking about this story, I thought about a beautiful example that came up when I was with one of my nieces a long time ago. So the question of who are we when we don't have these stories that we believe. And so it was back in Christmas time, and it was in New York, and my niece Frankie was about five, I think.

[23:08]

And I was reading this book, as aunts do, and she was sitting on the bed with me, and the book was about a snowman, of course, because it was Christmas. And in the two-page layout, there was the snowman with his stick fingers, and in the foreground, there was these mittens. And then in the next page, this little boy came through, and gave the mittens back to the snowman, put the mittens back on the snowman's branch, arms, or hands. And I said to Frankie, my niece, I was like, Frankie, would you give the snowman back his mittens if you came across them? I was trying to teach her a lesson about being generous and kind, or pointing out that lesson. And she just says, no. I was like, oh my gosh, she said, no, she's going to grow up to be a bratty, selfish kid. I can't believe this. I mean, I didn't say any of that to her, obviously. I was like, all right.

[24:09]

I just said, all right, well, why? Why wouldn't you give the mittens back to the snowman? And she says, I don't live in the book. I don't live in the book. All right, well, now I felt a little silly because that was definitely a much more wonderful way to view the universe. And so her perception of... I don't live in the book, silly Aunt Heather. So how could I give the mittens back to the snowman? All right. So fortunately, I didn't have a lot of emotionalized conceptualizations other than about me and my inability to have that kind of wonder-filled consciousness like my niece did in that moment, right? Because she didn't have the same kind of walls of mind as I did. She was at the stage where she thought she could live in the book. And therefore, if she's not in the book, she can't be helpful to the snowman.

[25:10]

So, you know, the children, they live, they dwell in this prajna paramita, right? This non-conceptual, non-dual awareness. And anybody who's been around them, you see this, right? Where they're trying to learn things and you watch their mind start discriminating, right? I remember once being with some of my young cousins, and everything was like a car. Everything was a car, because they don't really know. Tree's car, this is a car, that's a car. It takes a while for them to start to discriminate and know that a tire is part of a car, but it's not the whole car, and you can't drive a tire, but you have to drive the car. So it's just ways that children start to learn in a very helpful, obviously developmental way, who they are by what they aren't, right? And I also was reading that children, I don't know when they start to have a sense of a separate self, but when we're infants, we don't even know that our limbs are ours. It's just people who are taking care of us. It's just one big, beautiful, seems like one big, beautiful love fest, right?

[26:17]

It's just everybody's me. Me is everybody. There's no separation. I don't know what these cute little pudgy things are, but there they are, and I'm I'm moving them around. So for me, that feels like this Prajnaparamita. That's where children dwell, Prajnaparamita. They don't have this concrete sense of I, me, or mine, or that I can't live in a book. So now my niece Frankie will be 16 in June. So she obviously knows that she can't live in a book anymore. But in some ways, it's true that we do live in a book. So this is the book of me. It's a collection of stories or fantasies of who we think we are, who other people are, and how the world should be. It's kind of like a fairy tale of self. And these tales are belief systems. I've got to find Mr. Right, otherwise I'm going to be an old maid. And these belief systems are the reference points, or also like you could call them our egocentric karmic conditioning.

[27:21]

You know, karma means... cause and effect or action. So the karmic conditioning that we inherited from our parents and their parents and all the way back ad infinitum. So these fairy tales of who we are, these stories, when we're really identified with them, like I said, causes us to suffer. And really the goal of these stories is really to keep themselves alive. They continue to perpetuate themselves. And especially they continue to perpetuate themselves if our gaze is turned outward. And if we think that this person or this group of people are responsible for our suffering, which we're really obviously seeing quite a bit in our society now, how divisive our society is. That group of people, they're different from me. I'm right. They're wrong. And if they just went away and I don't care how you get rid of them, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be taken care of. and I'm going to be content. So those are all emotionalized conceptualizations.

[28:27]

Whatever labels, whatever concepts we want to put on people, it's just us imputing that onto them. There is no meaning on those labels. And those labels actually keep us separate. It keeps us separate when they concretize, when we really believe them, they keep it separate from getting to know people. We just use these handy labels And sometimes those labels are really disparaging and hurtful, as we know. So the more that we are stuck in this book of self, we often inhabit pretty much all the characters or us. We play out all the plot lines that our family and society say are how our lives should be. And then, like I said, we look outside for people or a group of people or circumstances to validate our reference points. And often if they don't validate our reference points, our ideas of who we are, then we get angry, we get activated again.

[29:35]

So this is where meditation comes in, right? Zazen, or seated meditation. So when we still our bodies in meditation, and for those of you who have not come to meditation yet, you might want to come join us. in the morning or in the evening. So when we're stilling the body in meditation, we start to cultivate an experiential knowledge of suffering. Because I know that we have this beautiful intellect, and we can say, oh yeah, I know what suffering is. But when we start to sit and watch the mind weave all of its stories, and we start to experience the contractions, these little selfings, emotionalized conceptualizations in the body, all these reference points, We often don't notice those until we stop. And we often don't notice the connection between the body and the mind, those stories and what's going on in our body, until the body is sitting still. So then we can become more intimate with what's going on with these reference points, with our sensations, our thoughts, our emotions.

[30:39]

Or as my teacher would say, like the emotion commotion or the emotion sensation. And if we pay really close attention, you know, we're following our breath, we're listening to the birds, we're, oh, being aware of some thoughts, feeling, oh, that causes some suffering, I feel angry, or there's sadness arising, or regret, or, ooh, that feels like shame. But we also, if we sit long enough, we get to experience the bliss, if you will, maybe it doesn't feel blissful at first, but we get to experience all of those things arising, and then they fall away, right? So whatever arises in mind consciousness falls away. It's impermanent, right? So everything that arises in our sense doors, including our thoughts, our mind is a sense door, thoughts are the objects of mind. They arise, they persist in this kind of, I go like this because persist doesn't mean that they're concrete. Persist means that they're moving.

[31:40]

It's a moving, it's flux, and then they fall away. So the more that we can stay still, the more intimate we can become with what's arising and slowly, gradually, we start to develop more spaciousness inside because we're able to withstand some of that psycho-emotional arising or suffering or activation. So my third grade teacher, she was insulted by me, right? She thought I was insulting her even though I had no idea that I was insulting her. So she... she really couldn't be with or maybe she didn't even notice what was going on for her because she smacked me so fast. So the more that we're able to be with what's arising, the suffering that's arising with us, we can start to pause before we act out, before we move away from that suffering. That's a little bit of liberation. There's a little bit of liberation. And I think zazen or seated meditation or walking meditation or meditation

[32:43]

Meditation when you're lying down or just brushing your teeth. You can bring that mindfulness into everyday activity. Just paying attention to the physicality of the present moment so that we can become intimate with what's going on for us and maybe cause ourselves less harm, be alleviated from some suffering and perhaps not harming other people. So I'm almost out of time. So I'll just say that in this book, the Heart Attack Sutra, Brunhall says that the reason that this prajna or non-conceptual, non-dual awareness is so threatening to our ego and our cherished belief systems is because it undermines our very notion of reality and the reference points upon which we build our world. So the Heart Sutra tells us that all these reference points, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our sensations, our mind, All that is empty of independent self.

[33:44]

It's arising in the moment and it's falling away. Arising in the moment, falling away. It's not who we are. And so the Heart Sutra says that all of these reference points, both the objects, these reference points that we're perceiving and the person perceiving them is always changing. And Brunholtz puts it this way. Not only is our perceiving mind dynamic, in that it changes from moment to moment, but the objects that we're perceiving are also changing moment by moment. Phenomena cannot be defined by themselves. We can't define ourselves in some concrete way. And when we do, that's emotionalized conceptualization. That's a reference point. Phenomena cannot be defined by themselves. Rather, we can only talk about them as complexes of mutual relationships with other phenomena. So a complex mutual relationship with all of you.

[34:47]

Did you all know that you're complexes of mutual relationships? And we're all here mutually relating. So it's not until we take that backward step, we turn our gaze inward when we're meditating or when we're brushing our teeth or when we're walking, that we start to build up the capacity to be stable, to stabilize what's going on in the mind because our body is still and we start to expand our ability to be with all the agitated energy that might be arising because someone has said something that might have hurt our feelings. So if we're able to witness and embody whatever's arising in our body, mind and heart with this non-judgmental awareness, this compassion, without creating a me, I'm Italian-American, I'm looking for Mr. Right, I'm an unworthy person because I can't find him, without creating this me out of what's arising in our bodies and minds, then the sense of a separate self starts to slowly fade away.

[35:48]

And that's like moment after moment. It's not like one, at least it isn't for me, one continuous experience of no self or nirvana. So these walls of mind start to dissolve. The idea of a perceiver and this perceived object starts to fall away. And by practicing meditation, it helps us to burn this book, this book of me and the flames of this prajna and the flames of non-dual, non-conceptual awareness. So there's no author, there's no characters, no plots, no words, no pages, no cover, and there's no binding. Then we're able to meet each other, meet ourselves, and meet each other in the perfection of each moment. And Suzuki Roshi puts it in his usual profound and poetic way. Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life.

[36:49]

Thank you very much. I don't think there's time for questions, but... If you see this mutual complex of relationships walking on the path tomorrow, you're welcome to ask me not so complex questions, but I'll be happy to respond. So thank you for your attention. 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. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[37:34]

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