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 morning. So today I'm going to begin with my favorite version. of the Buddha's enlightenment story, which I found years ago in a novel called The Lady of the Lotus. The main character in this novel is Prince Siddhartha's young wife, Yasodhara, who, having known her husband's tender heart since they were children playing together in the palace, has sent him off on his quest for the cessation of suffering. And six years later, or so the legend goes, On the morning of the Buddha's awakening, Yasodhara gives birth to their young son, Rahula, whose tiny face she recounts to him later, shone like the morning star.

[01:11]

So during those last seven days of her lengthy gestation, the very days that we are commemorating by sitting Rahatsu Sashim, the baby's father had remained undistracted in an upright seated position, despite the arrival, of a demon army, dancing maidens, and finally, the master of illusion himself, Mara, the evil one. So at that point in the story, the young man directly confronts the shadowy figure facing him across the meadow who has just threatened to kill him. "'You won't destroy me, deceiver,' says the prince, "'because I now know who I am and I know who you are.'" You don't know who I am, hisses the evil one. Oh, yes, I do, replies the prince. You are myself. And with that, Mara vanishes. So in other words, once the clouds of delusion have lifted, the light of awakening shines bright and clear.

[02:18]

Like the morning star, like Rahula's new baby face, and like the black rain on the roof of Fuka. temple. The young man is no longer sitting apart from the green mountains or the red flowers of the present moment. And from then on, he is known as a Buddha, one who is awakened from the dream of a separate self. The narrative of the Buddha's own awakening may help to clarify his teachings of later years, such as the one I read to you yesterday of Bahiya of the Bark Cloth. Train yourself thus, Bahiya, right here, right now, in the seen, just the seen, in the heard, just the heard, in the imagined, just the imagined, in the cognized, just the cognized, with no need for further elaborations, unless in doing so would be of help to you and to others.

[03:21]

So although no one is going to ever achieve mastery of the vast body of work called the Buddha Dharma, the sutras and the commentaries that followed in the wake of this young man's enlightenment, some of the efforts that have been made crystallized into systems of thought that have had a tremendous influence on our human culture for many, many centuries now. And one of those systems that I talked about, among those three of the three wheels, the three turnings, is the mind-only teaching, which is what I'm going to talk about for the next few days. Some of you were introduced to the mind-only teachings at Green Gulch earlier this year, and I think for others of you they may be still somewhat new. But either way, these teachings have been viewed as very important, enough so that for many centuries they have been taught, translated, and handed down. Even now they're taught in Buddhist universities and in monasteries, you know, to this very day. And because they are not so easy, unlike just sit, it takes a few repetitions to see their value for the work that we're doing here on the cushion.

[04:34]

When the founder of Zen, Bodhidharma, came to China from India, he reportedly said that the Lankavatar Sutra, a Yogacara text, was the only sutra, which explains why in the early Zen teachings, These texts are loaded with mind-only sayings. And when Bodhidharma in turn chose Hueco as his successor, he reportedly handed him a copy of the Lankavatara Sutra, saying, everything you need to know is in this text. So here's a quote from the introduction to the Lankavatara Sutra by Red Pine, who is a well-known translator of Buddhist texts. The Lankavatara Sutra... is the holy grail of Zen. Passed down from teacher to student, it covers all the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and yet contains but two teachings. One, that everything we perceive as being real is nothing but the perception of our own mind.

[05:42]

And two, that the understanding of this is something to be realized and experienced for oneself. cannot be expressed in mere words. In the words of a Chinese Zen master, these two teachings, first, that it's all in your mind, and second, now see that for yourself, are known as have a cup of tea, and now please taste the tea. So here's a taste from the first chapter of the Lankavatara Sutra, in which Ravana... the ten-headed king of Lanka, who is also the leader of an ancient Indian tribe called the Yakshas, has just beseeched Mahamati, one of the Buddha's disciples, to ask the Buddha to teach him the pathway to Buddhahood, beginning with a question about dharmas, those tiny constituents of reality that are said to divide both the world and the mind of the perceiver of the world into parts.

[06:46]

So basically what he's asking about is the first turning teachings, in particular the Abhidharma approach to liberation. So the Buddha responds by manifesting a kind of funhouse of illusion on a monumental scale. And then he finishes his response with a few words to help Ravana transcend both the dharmas, the elements of existence, and the non-dharmas, the illusion that there are such elements of existence, and then back onto his own undifferentiated and undifferentiating mind, the mind that cannot be broken into parts, except by thinking. So here's how the Buddha responds to this request by Ravana. The Buddha thereupon conjured mountains, peaks, covered with jewels, beautiful scenes of every sort, adorned with countless gems.

[07:50]

And on each jeweled covered peak, the Buddha himself could also be seen, and standing at his side, Ravana the Yaksha also appeared. Also the entire assembly was visible on each summit, and in every land another Buddha was present. And together with Ravana the king of Lanka, Its residents appeared as well, inside their conjured cities, gazing upon each other. It's like a house of mirrors. Other things also appeared, the products of the Buddha's power, Ashoka groves and sunlit forests, and none of them in any way different from the rest. And Mahamati as well on each peak, asking on behalf of the Yaksha king for the teaching of self-realization. on which the Buddhas all then spoke in countless voices. After they had spoken, these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas vanished. Only Ravana the Yaksha remained standing inside of his palace all alone.

[08:55]

He wondered what really had happened. Who spoke just now and who listened? Who saw and what was seen? And where did those cities and Buddhas go? Where did those cities go? Those radiant Buddhas, those Sugatas, were they a dream or an illusion? Or were they the work of the Gandharvas? The Gandharvas are the guardians of Soma, which is a hallucinogenic drink. Were they the result of cataracts in my eyes? Or was what I saw a mirage, a dream child of a barren woman, the smoke and flame from the wheel of fire? To which the Buddha responds, Such is the nature of things, Ravana, the realm of nothing but mind. This is something the foolish don't know. Bewildered by false projections, there is no seer or anything seen, no speaker or anything spoken. The appearance of Buddhas and also their teachings are merely what we imagine. Those who view such things as real, they don't see the Buddha, nor do those who imagine nothing.

[10:03]

only those who transform their own existence become free. With this, the Lord of Lanka felt an awakening and a transformation of his consciousness as he realized what appeared was nothing but the perceptions of his own mind, and he found himself in a realm free from such projections. So in brief, the Yogacara teachings that are laid out in this sutra provide a map of the mind, the one that I showed you in our class, our last class before the Sashin. So this map helps to explain how our unconscious conditioning formed into habits and preferences and prejudices and customs is carried, not only throughout our own lifetimes, but from generation to generation. helping to explain why oppressive systems of thought are so difficult for us to dismantle, even if each of us here in this room truly believed ourselves free of such toxic beliefs and behaviors.

[11:15]

Ignorance of how the mind works, of our unconscious conditioning, is at the beginning of the repeated cycle of suffering, the first step of the 12-fold chain, ignorance. And this is what the Buddha saw as he watched his own mind and this is what he taught to the end of his life. The concept of the unconscious has had a great influence on the Zen tradition in particular by helping us to discern just what is and isn't so and by seeing how our habits of mind on repeating themselves continuously despite whatever effort we consciously make to stop them. So the method developed by the Yogacara School for studying the workings of our mind was charted in the minds of our Buddhist ancestors. Minds, as it turns out, that are not one bit different than our own. So this morning I want to review again some of the vocabulary by which the Yogacara tradition has mapped the human mind.

[12:21]

The vocabulary... as you've already heard, isn't difficult, but I think it takes a while to remember where this teaching is pointing, and that is to the actual experience of having a mind, the horse that you're riding, of tasting the tea that is being served by our ancestors. This mapping, which hopefully you recall from the diagram in our class called the Eight Consciousness Model, it was the drawing up on my right side, taped to the door. The first five of the eight are the ones that we learned in the first few years of our life, corresponding to our five senses, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and bodily sensation. So that's five of the eight. These five senses are known as the gateways to awareness, through the body to the mind. The first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body. The body is always in the present moment.

[13:25]

So we even use expressions such as come to your senses or let's be sensible or it's just common sense when we talk about a reasoned baseline for human understanding and behavior. And yet common sense itself is a product of cultural conditioning which is an important thing to remember for those of us who are members of what has been the dominant culture for way too long. So in a slight rephrasing of the Diamond Sutra, by this cultural humiliation, we shall be liberated. So I did a little experiment with people at Green Gulch earlier this year, which I hoped made these five gateways a little more clear. And in order to do this experiment, we need to make use of what the mind-only model labels as the sixth sense consciousness. so the five senses and the sixth sense consciousness best known as conceptual awareness or awareness itself what you are aware with so you're welcome to try this experiment if you like this tasting right now as I walk through our six sense consciousnesses beginning with your eyes with seeing so

[14:49]

if you will place your awareness your sixth sense consciousness on what is visible around you you can turn your head if you like you can look up and down you can look to the side or straight ahead don't be afraid it's okay to move keeping your attention on what you see now choose a color particular color and see if you can find that color throughout the room. It's kind of hard in this beige and black. Yeah, pick black, that'll be easy. I see a little red over there. So you can pick a color, you can pick a shape, like round or square. Lots of squares. You can pick a type of material, such as wood. or glass, or paper, or cloth, or metal.

[15:52]

So this is the gateway of seeing. As with all of our senses, seeing is restless, like a hungry hound sniffing about in a dark forest. Which certainly, for the lifespan of our species, we mostly have been hungry hounds. And we still are. And yet somehow, at this point in our evolution, we have been trained to wait for the clackers before we eat. So now place your awareness on your ears, on listening. It might help to close your eyes if you like and then notice how many sounds you can simply hear, if any, without naming them or endeavoring to locate them anywhere. In the herd, just the herd. So I'm going to read while you're doing that a portion of the Suzuki Roshi lecture about sound that he gave on that Dharma talk from the third of the five ranks.

[17:00]

Even in our zazen, if you hear the bird sing outside, there's no distance between you and the bird. You actually are not hearing the bird. The bird is not anywhere special, not on a tree or across the stream or on the wall, you know. Sound, beautiful sound. You may say, that is bird. But it is not even a bird. Afterwards, you may say, that was a bird. It was very beautiful. But at that time, it was not even a bird. You don't even move. Just sound. This is the world of sound only. There is nothing but a sound. One sound. One sound of a bird. That is completely different than the sound you hear in terms of good and bad, or in terms of who made that sound. Do you understand the difference?

[18:03]

The difference between what you hear in everyday life, in the usual sense, and the things that you will hear in complete zazen. Just sitting. In the herd. Just the herd. So now you can shift your sixth sense of consciousness onto your nose. The perception of odor may not be anything very distinct. You might try smelling your hand or your clothing. So the gateway of smell becomes a lot more enlivened when food is on the way, for example, or when We smell smoke here in this tinderbox of a valley. Okay, then there's your tongue, tasting. And again, this one you might try when there's something to eat. The tongue is amazingly clever and versatile, all on its own.

[19:07]

How lucky for us. You might try paying attention to your tongue while you're eating. It's amazing what it's doing, all without any instruction whatsoever. moving the food around, avoiding getting caught in the teeth, swallowing, cleaning afterward, finding those little morsels up in your cheek. We depend on this clever tongue for a lot of things, including the words that I'm speaking right now. And then finally, your fifth sense consciousness is the sensations in your body, on your skin, your face, down your back, your legs, your breath, the pressure of your body on the floor, your knees on the floor or on your cushion. This is the gateway of the body. So this simple tour or exercise is possible because of your sixth sense consciousness, awareness itself, which can be rapidly redirected from one sensory experience to another,

[20:17]

from seeing to hearing to smelling to tasting and to feeling, and yet that is not its best trick. Its best trick is the ability to focus on what we are thinking, the messenger within, the gateway of thought. Once again, notice how this tradition is heavily focused on the actual experience that you're having in the present moment. In particular, how rapidly the human mind moves between the five senses and then on to the words that best apply to what you have just experienced. For example, it probably isn't very long after you hear a sound that the sixth sense consciousness redirects its attention to words, to giving names to that sound, like coughing, water flowing, hands clapping, foo talking, and so on. So for this few moments, just focus your attention on thinking.

[21:21]

And again, it might help to close your eyes. So not on the content of your thinking, you know, not what you're thinking, but on thinking itself. As in think not thinking. How do you do that? Non-thinking. As a silent flow of meaningless words. So I know all of this is deeply familiar to you. It's so familiar that pretty much we pay no attention to it at all. And all day long, our attention is moving about from our five senses to the ideas that we're having about them or simply to the ideas themselves in a seemingly endless stream of thought, a stream of consciousness, the clouds and an empty sky.

[22:28]

Or as Dogen laments in his poem, This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful. What dream walkers we humans become. Awakened, I hear the one true thing. Black rain on the roof of Fuka Kusa Temple. So again, these six sense consciousnesses working together as a set are what we commonly call our experience. those events or activities and thought processes throughout our daily lives of which we are aware, to which we say, I know, I know, I know that. As time went by, the Yogacara teaching masters deepened their understanding of their own mental experience and recognized that something was missing in their model of the human mind. And therefore, they added two more aspects of the mind, which they named the seventh and eighth consciousness.

[23:31]

And in many ways, these two are purely theoretical, and yet they help to explain a lot about what's going wrong in our human lives, in much the same way that modern psychotherapeutic models aim to do the same thing. The seventh consciousness, manas, the lover, is the one that thinks about the data that it receives from the sixth sense consciousness. Manas is also the one who mistakes the eighth consciousness, the alaya, for a self, the famous self that the Buddha said is a pure fantasy, and yet that exerts tremendous power over all of our lives, both for good and for ill. It's the storehouse consciousness, alaya, number eight of the eight, that carries our unconscious conditioning in the form of habits and preferences, prejudices, learned skills, and so on, that we call on each and every conscious moment to determine what to do, where to go, and who we do and don't like.

[24:40]

Swift. For example, I hate the color green. I love cantaloupe. I speak Japanese fluently. I play the flute. and so on. So where do we keep all of that knowledge and all of those preferences? In the storehouse consciousness. As I said in class, much like the iCloud or the Library of Congress, to be summoned as needed depending on the conditions in which we find ourselves. So why does all of this matter? It matters because we can change our unconscious conditioning. We can change through conscious choices that we make in each and every day. That's the teaching. That change happens in the mind and that you will never fix what's troubling you out there, though you may die trying. So this is the good news. We are not stuck in the same old habits of mind, but unless we know how the mind works, we won't know that there's a way out or how to find it.

[25:52]

So again, as I said in our last class, one common image for understanding how those changes take place is to imagine our conscious life as a gardener tending the garden and planting the seeds that will sprout and grow in the future, such as this afternoon or what we call tomorrow. If the gardener plants wholesome seeds, such as kindness, generosity, patience, and calm abiding, shamatha, then that's what happens in the garden. If the gardener plants seeds of anger, jealousy, greed, and prejudice, then the garden fills with the brambles and the fruit of disappointment, hatred, and regret. You've already heard the story about the two wolves fighting inside of grandfather, one kind and generous and the other angry and selfish. The question from his granddaughter being, which one will win? And grandfather answering, the one that I feed. And in a follow-up conversation with Emil about that story, we had both come up with a response to her concern about what would happen to the wolf we failed to feed.

[27:04]

What seemed likely to both of us was that the kind wolf would be sharing his food with his sibling, and that by feeding our generous spirit, everyone would benefit, especially those who had already been badly mistreated. I think we all know that hateful and angry thoughts and behaviors are nothing new among humans, which is why the Buddha taught the antidote to hatred during his lifetime over 2,500 years ago. This is nothing new. And yet we are the living inheritors, right this very day, of structural racism, of anti-Semitism, homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, and most recently, the upswing of hostility toward undocumented workers of all things. Whatever happened to gratitude? The only people in my life I've ever seen working are people who know how to work.

[28:08]

And most of them are speaking Spanish. Certainly in California. Whatever happened to gratitude? So we are the ones who must, as people of conscience, respond to the cries of this world. Respond to hating by not hating. How? By seeing how often hate arises in us. And then, by beginning to cross swords, as the Buddha did, with Mara, the master of illusion. Now Mara, by the way, particularly hates it when you smile kindly at him and refuse to move. drives him nuts. And then, once our struggle with illusion has ended and Mara has vanished, we can ask for help again and again from the goddess of compassion herself, who has been waiting patiently for the swordplay to end. Kuan Yin, responder to the cries of the world, is well-equipped with a number of heads and a thousand arms to assist in her mission of teaching compassion to us once we get up from the cushion.

[29:20]

So it occurred to me once that Kuan Yin is really the community itself, the eyes and arms of the Sangha, made up of any and all who are brave enough to turn first toward themselves and then back again toward those in our own families, our own towns, and in this world who are suffering from brutality of every kind. But also toward the suffering of those who out of the extremes of pain anger and ignorance have turned their own self-hatred on to others. As the Buddha said to Angulimala, the mass murderer who wore a necklace of a thousand fingers, you stop. And what's more, I think there really isn't any more time for us to wait. You know, I've said this over and over again. We only have today. And we only have each other. which is pretty good for a start.

[30:23]

So I thought I would end today by telling you this story of how Kuan Yin got all those extra body parts, and then by reciting for you my favorite love poem by Billy Collins. So this story is told in the complete tale of Kuan Yin and the Southern Seas, in which Kuan Yin has vowed to never rest until she has freed all sentient beings from samsara. a cycle of birth and death. Despite strenuous efforts, she soon realizes that there are still many unhappy beings yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, her head split into eleven pieces. The Buddha Amitabha, upon seeing her plight, gives her eleven new heads to help her continue to hear the cries of the world. Upon hearing those cries and comprehending them, Kuan Yin attempts to reach out to all those in need, but in doing so, her arms shatter into a thousand pieces.

[31:25]

Once more, Amitabha comes to her rescue with the gift of a new set of a thousand arms, each with a special implement or skill to aid her in the task of bringing relief to suffering beings everywhere. So we too can make good use of our many arms and our many ears and eyes to benefit this world in whatever way we can, you know, today. Aimless Love This morning, as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren. And later in the day, with a mouse, the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor's window, and later, for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle. This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts or unkind words, without suspicion or silence on the telephone.

[32:34]

The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap, and one hand on the wheel. No lust, no slam of the door, the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, and the highway that cuts across Florida. No waiting, no huffiness or rancor, just a twinge now and then for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water, and for the dead mouse still dressed in its light brown suit. but my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod ready for the next arrow. After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink, gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again.

[33:38]

as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone. Thank you very much. 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.

[34:09]

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