I vow to taste the truth of the Tatva-sutra. Evening. A few visitors tonight, it looks like. Work week. What? Work week. Oh, work week. Oh, that's nice. And a handful of others. The Shurangama-sutra is wearing people out. Excuse me for being late, sorry. And for those of you who are visiting, I apologize in advance for the... we're in the middle of something here and we won't, you know, go back and explain or anything, but hopefully... I don't know how much sense it will make to you, but we're having fun.

[01:03]

So we have one more class, right, next week. So I want to basically start on the third volume in the Master Hua translation, which I think should coincide with the handout that you got. But before I get there, I want to just back up a little bit, because we sort of stopped before reaching the end of the second volume, and there are a few small but important points that I think it's important to bring out, otherwise it'll be harder to make sense of the next part. So remember, in the first volume, I mean, in the part, not the first, the second volume, the part we've been reading, the Buddha's engaged in a long dialogue with Ananda about

[02:10]

the nature of seeing. And basically, all the views that Ananda comes up with, the Buddha shows, are wrong. Because Ananda... The Buddha's trying to tell Ananda that the act of seeing is not a thing, it's not... And furthermore, that it can't even be said to exist or not exist. And Ananda always, like any of us would, he hears that and he says, oh yes, well then, what about this? And every time he says something else, he's always positing seeing as something, as a thing. And Buddha always disabuses him of this notion, and then he comes back with something else, and that also needs to be let go of. So of course, the next step will be for Buddha to say, what is the nature of seeing?

[03:16]

Now that he's refuted all possible notions, he'll then say what it is. And seeing stands for all the sense acts, not just seeing. So, let's see. So I'm going to just pick up a few little bits here that I think are important. One point, there's a little dialogue with Manjushri. And here, in the middle of that dialogue, I'm coming in. The Buddha told Manjushri and the Great Assembly, to the thus come ones and the great bodhisattvas of the ten directions who dwell in this samadhi, seeing, and the conditions of seeing, as well as the characteristics of thought, and it seems as if Master Hua, when he uses the word

[04:23]

thought, he's referring to perception. I think that's how he translates it, because perception in Buddhism, in the Buddhist analysis of perception, perception is a species of thought. Perception is not an immediate physical act. Perception is a designation projected onto an inchoate physical act that doesn't really register as anything until you say, it's this. So that's why it's not far-fetched to translate perception as thought, but it's a little misleading. So anyway, I'll repeat. The Buddha told Manjushri and the Great Assembly, to the thus come ones and the great bodhisattvas of the ten directions who dwell in this samadhi, seeing, and the conditions of seeing, as well as the characteristics of thought, are like flowers in space, fundamentally non-existent.

[05:27]

And flowers in space is a very famous example that's used over and over again in Buddhism, and it refers to an eye disease that I think people still get nowadays, called floaters. People get that, where you see things in the air floating by, but they're not there, there's nothing there, it's something you see because of a fault of the eye. So that's what this flowers in space refers to, some sort of an illusory thing that flies by your eye that isn't actually there at all. So, in other words, the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas who understand this essence of reality that I'm talking about, the Buddha says, those people see and know that seeing, the act of

[06:33]

seeing and the act of perception, are like floaters in space, they're fundamentally non-existent. Everything that we see is false, not really existent. This seeing and its conditions, the Buddha goes on, are originally the wonderful, pure, bright substance of bodhi. How can one speak of is and is not? So, what we see, literally, the world that we live in, the world that we perceive, is actually an illusion. It's like those little floaters. We see them, but we know when we see them that they're not really anything out there. If we try to grab them, of course, we can't grab them because they're not there. And yet, we have the experience of their being there, but we know that they're an illusion.

[07:36]

There's many other examples that are often given, like a magician who conjures up an image and all those similes that are given in the Diamond Sutra, a bubble, a flash of lightning and so forth and so on. So everything in this world is like that. It's not really existing, but it's real nature, the real nature of these things, and of course we don't know that. We take these things, not to be floaters going across the screen, but real, existing things. But they're not. What they really are is the wonderful, pure, bright substance of enlightenment. How can one speak of is and is not? So this bright substance of enlightenment defies our usual categories of something existing or not existing. It's not like that. It's not something that either exists or doesn't exist. We can't say it exists or doesn't exist. Manjushri, I now ask you, take yourself as an example, Manjushri.

[08:38]

Is there still another Manjushri? Is there a Manjushri who is and a Manjushri who is not? So it is, World Honored One, I am truly Manjushri. There is no Manjushri who is. Why? If there were still another Manjushri who is Manjushri, there would be two Manjushris. The Manjushri and the Manjushri who is Manjushri. But it is not that I am not Manjushri. In fact, neither of the two characteristics is and is not exist. So this seems odd, you know, expression, but it's pointing out the obvious fact that there is a difference between the, you know, we would call it, the technical term in Buddhism is the suchness of something, just the isness of something, the actual being of it there, and our imputed concept called it is or it is not, that we have about everything in our

[09:44]

world, we have a conceptual grasping of it. Manjushri, in any of us, as a living being, actually is something other than the idea that we then impute to it, it exists or it doesn't exist. So, the idea of something existing or not existing is something extra, added on top of the actual isness of things. The Buddha said, this is not only the case with the seeing, the basic substance of wonderful bodhi, enlightenment, but also with emptiness and mundane objects. They are basically the projections or manifestations of the wonderful brightness of unsurpassed enlightenment, the pure, perfect, true mind. They are falsely taken to be form and emptiness, as well as hearing and seeing. Just as with the second moon, remember the second moon, the one moon, you look at the

[10:47]

moon in the sky, you put your finger on your eye and you look at it, now there's two moons. Just as with the second moon, which one is the moon and which one is not the moon? Manjushri, there is only one true moon and within it, there is not a moon that is or a moon that is not. So, remember that the second moon, in the analysis of the eight consciousnesses, the moon is the dharmakaya, true aspect of things, which is not perceivable. The second moon is the perceivable world, as seen in true perception by a Buddha. It makes no sense to say one of these is the real moon and one of them isn't the real moon. There is no question of is or isn't, there's really only one moon.

[11:49]

Even though we are only seeing the second moon, to distinguish the second moon from the first moon is just a conceptual convenience. What are you saying, the perception of the Buddha, the second moon, the perception of the Buddha, not our normal, not our normal perception is the reflection, remember? The reflection in the water of the moon. The Buddha's perception of the world is the same world that we see, except the Buddha, it gets, we'll illuminate this point a little further on, in a very important way, a very, really important point, what the difference is. Because even the Buddha's perception is false.

[12:51]

Because the dharmakaya, true aspect of the world, is not perceivable. But, the second moon that the Buddha sees, which is the one, but that moon, you can't really say that it's different, you can't really say it's different from the other moon. To say that it is, to make that distinction, is to be already adding too much. So you can't say it is and you can't say it's not the same or different. So, with the true essence, the wonderful, enlightened, bright nature, you can get beyond trying to point out or not point out. You see, in our grasping to try to find out which of these two moons is real, we're still

[13:57]

trying to point something out and possess something. There's still some attachment there. When you see the true essence, the wonderful, enlightened, bright nature, then the paradox of it, the seemingly logical contradiction of it, is a non-problem. We don't need to point something out or not point something out. We don't need to know something or not know something. Okay, so, I just wanted to quote that passage just for this point about, you can't say it is or it is not. Okay, then, another passage later on that's also important. Now, many things between the passage I just read you and this one, there's many bends in the road, which I won't go into, but this is in the context of a discussion about the

[14:59]

falseness of individual karma and collective karma. The Buddha now is telling Ananda here that the view that we have of individual karma and of collective karma is not correct. And he explains here, and in the process of doing so, makes a really important point. Ananda, in the case of a living being's false view of individual karma, by which she sees the appearance of a circular reflection around the lamp. The appearance seems to be a state, but in the end, what is seen comes into being because of the cataracts on the eyes. This, he's discussing an example of a person who has cataracts on their eyes, and then they go into a room and they see a lamp. Because of the cataracts on the eyes, they see a red glow around this lamp. And the Buddha's saying, now, where does this red glow come from?

[16:02]

Does it come from the cataracts, does it come from the lamp, where does it come from? What is seen comes into being because of the cataracts on the eyes, he's saying. The cataracts are the result of the weariness of the seeing, rather than the products of form. However, the essence of seeing, which perceives the cataracts, it's free from all diseases and defects. For example, you now use your eyes to look at the mountains, the rivers, the countries and all the living beings, and they are all brought about by the disease of your seeing, contracted since time without beginning. So the glow that you see around the lamp is not the fault of the lamp, it's not due to the lamp, it's due to the cataracts on your eyes, which distorts things, has nothing to do with the things themselves.

[17:02]

And we are all looking at this world just like a person with cataracts on our eyes, seeing it in a distorted way. We're seeing something and it has a relationship to the actual thing itself, but it's distorted because of the cataracts on our eyes. Seeing and the conditions of seeing seem to manifest what is before you, seem to. Originally, my enlightenment is bright. The seeing and conditions arise from the cataracts. Realize that the seeing arises from the cataracts, the enlightened condition of the basically enlightened bright mind has no cataracts. That which is aware of the faulty awareness is not diseased. It is the true perception of seeing. How can you continue to speak of feeling, hearing, knowing and seeing?

[18:10]

So, well, I'll just read the last part. Therefore you now see me and yourself and the world and all the ten kinds of living beings because of a disease in the seeing. What is aware of the disease is not diseased. The true essential seeing by nature has no disease. Therefore, it is called not seeing or therefore it is not called seeing. It's the same difference, more or less. So, what this is saying, as I understand it, is that it's not that we could see differently than with the cataracts on our eyes seeing this false distorted world. We couldn't see it differently because that is our human perceptual apparatus karmically given to us from time immemorial. As long as we're human, we will see the world in this way.

[19:19]

That's the human condition. Enlightenment is simply knowing that. Not seeing the world in a different way, but understanding and being aware of the cataracts on the eyes. That which is aware of the cataracts on the eyes is not diseased by cataracts on the eyes. So just standing in the awareness of this, he's saying here, that's why he says seeing true seeing cannot be called seeing. It's really called not seeing because you understand that seeing is inaccurate and you see with the awareness that the seeing that you're seeing is inaccurate and that's accurate. That's an accurate understanding, right? So that's really true. That's really clear. And I'll just read you Master Hua's comment to this.

[20:21]

That which is aware of the faulty awareness is not diseased. It is the true perception of seeing. This is the same as the doctrine that when your seeing sees your seeing, the seeing is not the seeing, which was an earlier statement in the Suna Sutra. Your awareness that the eyes are sick is not itself a defective awareness, right? When you're aware of the actual condition of the human perception, then that's not an illusion. That's really true. It is your genuine awareness, the genuine seeing of your seeing essence. Having a defective awareness is like being in water and not seeing the water. A creature submerged in water does not notice the water. It is only when it is no longer in water that it sees water as water. What is apart from the water and able to see it as water is the genuine basic enlightenment, the enlightened seeing, which is aware of the disease, is not the seeing that functions

[21:24]

with a defect. Only when you are separate from the defect can you know of it. This is the real seeing. How can you continue to speak of feeling, hearing, knowing and seeing? Why do you still want to remain within these faculties and make distinctions and seek? This is the seeing. What other seeing are you looking for? That's Master Hua commenting on that. I don't know if I can remember my question. How will we know when we're aware of the defect in our metaphorical category? How will we know? Well, that's awakening. We'll know. Because we'll have a feeling of knowing that that's so. We'll have a feeling of knowing that we're... And you know the good way to tell, we have a very good little internal gauge that makes it very clear. Because when we're suffering, because we're not getting what we want and so forth and so on and so on,

[22:27]

then we know we're not seeing. Then it's pretty clear. Because we're free. If we know that, then what is there to be upset about? Right? Because we understand that all the things that upset us in our lives, we're basically being upset on the basis of something that isn't there. And so, when we have a serenity about what happens, then we know that we're not caught by the illusion of the world as we think it is, as we project it to be. That's how we can tell. To me, that's a very beautiful answer. And I'm wondering also, do we have to be beyond, outside the cycle of life and death, where we can understand this and where we are now in this life? Well, this sutra is spoken from the Bodhisattva perspective, because of compassion remaining in this world with an altruistic motive.

[23:31]

Yeah, not wanting to set everything aside and find serenity. And this is why the teaching here is, not that we should aspire to a condition of seeing truly. Not that. But rather that we should only recognize the actual condition of seeing in a false way, and that when we understand the true condition, that that's truth, and we're liberated, but still in the world. So that's what's being said. It's a very, you know, I think that on a subtle level, I remember when we were in Tassajara, I was talking about this sutra, and I had a good way of explaining it, I thought, was that there's little hands inside your eyes. Maybe you, I know like Charlotte Silver, who's a wonderful teacher,

[24:37]

sometimes she did some exercises trying to point out the way that you have hands inside your eyes, and when you look, you're grabbing things, you're grabbing things with your eyes, and the rest of your senses as well, but particularly with the eyes, it seems like in our culture we're very oriented in that way, so we're grabbing things with our eyes. And it's a different experience, not to grab things with the eyes, but just to let what comes to sight come, and not feel that we have to grab it and somehow lock onto it, but just let things come and go with all the senses. And I think there's that kind of experience, which is different from the usual way of grabbing things with our eyes, or the opposite, defending ourselves against things with our eyes, or with our body language, or with our senses, and so on. So this is really a different way of, when we recognize that we are concocting a world of suffering with our senses, on a very subtle level, I think many of us are familiar with the gross,

[25:43]

more gross levels of creating suffering, we know about that, so we can work with that, but on a more subtle level, there is the fact that just the act of perception is already the creation of suffering, that's what this is telling us, that the act of perception itself is already the creation of suffering, and once we know that, and we're aware of it on this very deep psychophysical level, and we let go on that level, it's not that we're seeing a different world or living in a different world, we're just not getting caught by the world in the same way. When you talk about not grabbing with our eyes, it's like walking through this room, and if you're not grabbing with your eyes, does that mean you're actually not naming the people, or you're naming them, you're seeing them, man, woman, people you know, people you don't know, or it's just the fact of seeing humans are grabbing. I think it's a very subtle point, because I don't think that the experience is all that different,

[26:43]

of grabbing or not grabbing. I think it's maybe more of a sense of... Well, like another metaphor that's used classically, which I know you're familiar with, is outflows. When you're grabbing, there's outflows, which means that you're not... you're almost like flying out of yourself, looking, and then I always use the example of that guy in Catch-22, for whom everything is either a feather in his cap or a black eye. The whole world, there's only two possibilities. Everything that happens, it's either a feather in his cap or a black eye. And that's how we are. We walk into a room and automatically, we're thinking, OK, is this good for me or bad for me? I mean, we don't think that thought, literally, but there's that feeling of beholding ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is more like a kind of feeling of centeredness, to use that expression, centeredness and ease,

[27:44]

and a free-flowing of perception. You might still say that's a man, that's a woman, that's this person or that person, but without anything extra besides just the flow of perceptual experience, which is all false, and you know it's all false, and that's why you're not attached to it. That's why you don't walk into the room feeling defensive or trying to figure out, now how do I position myself now in relation to all of this? Which is what the human beings do. That's our karma. It's a big, heavy karma in that direction, because of evolution and just being separate beings in the world and all that we have to accomplish to get through the day. Naturally, we live that way. But this would be... You're stepping back where you don't have outflows in relationship to your outflows. Yeah. And not judging them. Yes, right. So yeah, where the old-school classical Buddhism might say, dry up the outflows, don't have outflows. Here, the teaching of this sutra would be more like,

[28:49]

recognize the outflows as outflows, truly and deeply, and then that's all you need to do. Because ultimately, it really is true that in classical Buddhism, ultimately the goal is to pass away. As in all religions, right? That's the goal, right? Is to pass away peacefully. Go to heaven or something like that, go to nirvana. Somebody was telling me that they had the experience of being really happy, which was an unusual state for this particular person. Seldom was happy. So he had a time when he was really feeling happy, and just well-being and just wonderful. And then he said, and then I had the thought, I wish I was dead. And he said, I thought that was really weird, I can't even be happy or something.

[29:51]

I said, no, I didn't think that was really weird. I said, it seems like to me that's very natural that in the state of happiness you'd say, the only thing better than this would be to be dead. Completely free of all... This is so wonderful, the next thing would be to disappear. Right? So that's the great goal of many religious systems, the ultimate disappearance from this world of difficulty. But in the light of the Sutra, this is not the idea. The idea is to remain in the world of difficulty, understanding it as the world of difficulty, and therefore being liberated from it. And proceeding along with an altruistic hope to benefit others against all the odds. You're saying therefore being liberated from it, that upon recognition of the outflow, to me there is suffering. The outflow of suffering.

[30:53]

Maybe there's not, maybe it's just awareness of the original suffering that gives the outflow. Yeah, of course there's such a thing as, on a common sense everyday level, you're making a mess of things, and then you realize, oh Jesus, look at me, I'm making a mess of things. Now you're twice as miserable, right? But this Sutra is talking about something somewhat different from that. Because I would say that, when that's your experience, you're not really seeing that you're making a mess of things, as it really is. You're just adding more trouble on top of trouble. If you're aware of the outflow, you're aware that you're judging everything. Yeah, exactly, you're blaming yourself in this case. You're aware your judgment is blaming yourself. That's additional suffering. If you really are aware of the nature of suffering and perception,

[31:58]

there's no judgment in that, there's a letting go. Where there's judgment, there's always false perception. Because you think there's somebody there to judge, and you think there's somebody there to be judged. Both of those propositions are not really true. So when you recognize that, then there's no problem, right? There's no judging. There's only the recognition of what is, in which there is no problem. Yeah. Yeah. It was something so different. I was just really, really struggling. And then I noticed finally, not of my own doing, but some part of me felt like I didn't want any resolution, and I could feel something arising here,

[32:59]

and something arising here, and I could feel the most, which is to get the peace that I wasn't trying to go with this or that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, just willing to have it be what it is. So anyway, I wanted to just put those two little parts out, because they'll connect up as we go along. this should be more or less where your handout starts. So the Buddha goes on now. Ananda, you had not yet understood that all the defiling objects that appear, all the illusory ephemeral characteristics

[34:02]

spring up in the very spot where they also come to an end. They are what is called illusory and false, but their nature is in truth the bright substance of wonderful enlightenment. All the defiling objects that appear, all the illusory ephemeral characteristics spring up in the very spot where they also come to an end. They are what is called illusory falseness, but their nature is in truth the bright substance of wonderful enlightenment. So this is really kind of like the crux of the matter of the whole sutra. So I often think of this point that everything, even afflictive states of mind truly do contain

[35:03]

right in the middle of themselves their own enlightenment because of impermanence. Everything arises up and you don't really have to worry because it's going to go. Everything takes care of itself in that way. And right where it comes, that's exactly where it goes in the same spot. So when afflictive emotion arises, what happens is that we forget that that's so and then we grab a hold of the moment of afflictive emotion and then by the energy of our grabbing a hold of that moment of afflictive emotion we create another moment of afflictive emotion. The first moment of afflictive emotion really did pass away and found its own nirvana and peacefulness except while that was going on we were grabbing a hold of it and pushing a momentum into the next moment creating another moment of the same state of mind

[36:03]

and on and on. If only we could realize that afflictive states of mind contain their own antidote within them, in their very impermanence that's what's being said here. So moment after moment the illusory, defective dust-like world arises and it contains its own solution as it passes away and it is a false and confused world. This is just like the Bible. The world is a fallen world. The world is a fallen world and it's our karma to live in a fallen world but that fallen world by virtue of its coming up and falling is already redeemed in the very fallenness of it because its fundamental nature is of the nature of bright, wonderful enlightenment which is indefinable. We can't say it is

[37:05]

as we just discovered in our study a moment ago. We can't say that it is or is not. We can't name it or define it and yet that is the fundamental essence of this illusory, essentially painful and difficult world. Thus it is throughout up to the five skandhas and the six sense doors to the twelve ayatanas and the eighteen dhatus, the union and mixture of various causes and conditions account for their illusory and false existence and the separation and dispersion of the causes and conditions result in their illusory and false extinction. So the five skandhas, the six sense doors, the twelve ayatanas and the eighteen dhatus which are different ways of describing all of human experience

[38:07]

human subjective experience is included in those categories of Buddhist analysis of mind All those elements in the Buddhist analysis of mind all of them everywhere throughout all of this, any corner that you want to look at of human experience, the same thing happens illusory things rise up when causes and conditions conspire it will produce a moment of this world and when causes and conditions disperse that moment, that illusory false moment of the world will disperse and that's how it is folks that's how it is, all throughout who would have thought that production, extinction coming and going who would have thought that production, extinction

[39:11]

coming and going are fundamentally the everlasting, wonderful light of the treasury of the Buddha the unmoving, all pervading perfection the wonderful nature of true suchness who would have ever expected that who would have thunk that yeah who would have thought, I have to read that again it's such a nice idea you see this is of course some Buddhists would say what? the Buddha taught everything is impermanent what everlasting true perfection are you talking about here, this is blasphemy this is anti-Buddhism here but the Buddha would reply I think, in light of this sutra, the Buddha would say well it's true, that in the past I did speak only of impermanence

[40:12]

and nirvana and that's because that's what you were ready to hear have you ever noticed that you only should tell people what they're ready to hear have you ever noticed that like I have a certain situation now that I'm chewing on where it's impossible to tell somebody something I mean not to say that you tell only people what they want to hear no, sometimes you do have to tell people unpleasant things but is there any point in telling someone an unpleasant thing that you know they won't hear and they will not in any way make use of it all that they'll do is create further afflictive emotion some certain percentage of which will be directed at you so is that worthwhile and one has to really think about this so the Buddha said, I knew at the time that if I told you about this, your hair would stand on end and you would run screaming out of the room Norman? yes does that point come up anywhere else

[41:16]

in the sutra you mean not in this sutra I'm thinking back on what you said about the sutra begin with which it really isn't a sutra it was created to seem like a sutra and so if well no, it really is a sutra but it wasn't really written in India in fact I was just recalling a passage from Dogen where Dogen asks Rujing he talks about the sutra Dogen does and he said, I read the Shurangama Sutra and it sounded funny to me so to that point it's not a true sutra the Lotus Sutra says that too though you're only rated here I gave you this much, this is all you're rated right, the Lotus Sutra says that too the Lotus Sutra teaching is not so dissimilar I was wondering if it was not being knowledgeable in the Lotus Sutra

[42:20]

whether that point about it being a seeming contradiction to what I said before might have been a way of insinuating something in the creation of the sutra in China to appear to be an earlier one and bringing that point in because there was revisionist well I think it's pretty clear that the sutra was written in China and not India, scholars say now that it was a later development and I couldn't be authoritative on this point but I don't believe that there's anything in the sutra that is not good sound Buddhist perspectives which can be found in other sutras as well it's just that it's a little bit of a Chinese style going about it and flavor yeah, that's what I would say but the whole thing about this thing about permanent, eternal and all that is mentioned in many sutras, not just the Shurangama Sutra

[43:22]

like you say, the Lotus Sutra in effect is saying the same thing and with the same rationale that well before you were only ready to hear about impermanence but you see, now Daigon's not here tonight so he's not raising the Daigon point but it's a very important point that you have to understand when we say this to realize that this wonderful nature everlasting wonderful light of the treasury of the Buddha, the unmoving all-pervading perfection wonderful nature of true suchness that this is not existing somewhere else other than here this is not some, like heaven or something like that or some other being or other realm that is more perfect than this one it's that these words are used to describe this very realm in which we are living except that we don't see it that way we don't recognize its actual quality

[44:24]

so if we impute to this perfection and everlastingness, substance existence, separateness, distinction then we're just mistaking it it's beyond all those categories so this is as good as it gets? yeah, if only we could see what it was it would be as good as it gets well do it for now do good here and now this world is the other world the only place that there is so Norman, even though we're talking about the permanent essence of mind it's not at all separate from the impermanence of phenomena exactly the impermanence of phenomena is just a description

[45:26]

it's a way of looking at phenomena when you really see phenomena as impermanent, you see the same as seeing it as eternal and I think we discussed before the fact that this is how we can face death recognizing that in death there's no loss there's just transformation there's just entering this bigger space which doesn't exist anywhere else but right now in our very body and mind yeah, like I put this I don't know I'm doing as many of you know, I'm doing versions of the Psalms my own versions the latest one I did, I translated

[46:27]

this is pretty much what it says it uses the word glory but glory means fire, light so I said like, and after I die I will return to the bright fire which has always been burning in the middle of my life so then there's a feeling of and then there's the famous story of Suzuki Roshi on his deathbed this is where we'll meet again and that circle stands for that circle, that Zen circle stands for this mind that the Buddha's talking about here this complete, eternal, permanent, perfect mind which is not anywhere else but right here so

[47:28]

who would have thought that production, extinction, coming and going are fundamentally the everlasting, wonderful light of the treasury of the Buddha the unmoving, all-pervading perfection the wonderful nature of true substance if within the true and permanent nature one seeks coming and going, confusion and enlightenment or birth and death, there is nothing that can be obtained so this is beyond the category of enlightenment enlightenment is just some dream of the opposite of confusion another state, we're projecting another state we imagine that we could enter, called enlightenment but that's just a projection of our minds this is beyond that, any of those projections there's nothing that can be obtained it's all already there Ananda consider this example

[48:30]

when a person who has pure, clear eyes looks at clear, bright emptiness that person sees nothing but clear emptiness and is quite certain that nothing exists within it if for no apparent reason and that's a very important point for no apparent reason the person does not move her eyes, the staring will cause fatigue, and then of the person's own accord he will see strange flowers in space there comes those flowers again and other unreal appearances that are wild and disordered you should know that it is the same with the skanda of form so now begins a very long part and we'll go over some of it, and I think most of it

[49:31]

we probably will skip in which, remember in the beginning, the Buddha said it is the same with the five skandas the six sense doors the twelve ayatanas and the eighteen tattus now, in a very systematic way the sutra is going to go through each and every one of those the five skandas, the six and so on in turn, analyzing each one in more or less the same way, and pointing out that each one is an illusion false, unreal, even though its essence and substance is enlightenment itself or bodhi, awakening itself so here it starts with the first one the skanda of form, the physical world if a person has pure clear eyes this is a metaphor for the bodhi, the pure awakening if that person looks at

[50:31]

emptiness and that's the nature of the world, as it really is so this is in the beginning of the world before anything arises that the pure emptiness is seen with nothing else within it but then, for no apparent reason and this is sort of like there is no explanation no one knows I think the idea is that it is not knowable how it is that out of this perfect perception arises the illusion of the world nobody knows so for no apparent reason the person does not move the eyes so spontaneously after a while, in other words

[51:32]

for no apparent reason strange flowers appear because the eyes get tired or something strange flowers appear and other wild and disordered appearances that are not real start appearing that's how it is with the physical world so that's like the creation story according to Buddhism first, there is perfection and clarity, which is empty space nothingness although nothingness is negative it's beyond positive or negative or something or nothing this kind of perfect unknowableness completion and so on somehow, for no apparent reason but other than seemingly as a function of that perfection so it isn't really a mistake

[52:35]

that this would happen or like whoops it isn't like that it's like this perfect unknowableness brightness somehow, we don't know how or why it's within its nature to produce this illusory world it does, just like the eyes eventually fatigue and start seeing things though there's nothing there to see that's how it is with this world, this physical world Ananda, the strange flowers come neither from emptiness nor from the eyes the reason for this, Ananda, is that if the flowers were to come from emptiness now here's this Shurangama Sutra logic which is very weird let's just bear with it and see what it says if the flowers were to come from emptiness

[53:36]

they would return from emptiness they would return to emptiness you have to accept that, that's axiomatic if they were to come from emptiness because they're the essence of emptiness they arrive out of emptiness and then they would go back to emptiness if there is a coming out and a going in then the space would not be empty and if emptiness were not empty then it could not contain the appearance of the arisal and extinction of the flowers just as Ananda's body cannot contain another Ananda so that's proven that the flowers did not come from the emptiness so these flowers appear in the world they don't come from the emptiness and they don't come from the eyes why don't they come from the emptiness?

[54:38]

well, they don't come from the emptiness because if they came out of the emptiness and returned to the emptiness then the emptiness wouldn't be empty there'd be something in it, right? these flowers that came out of the emptiness that's logical, right? if they came out of the emptiness they must have been inside the emptiness if they were inside the emptiness then the emptiness wouldn't be empty and if the emptiness weren't empty then it could not contain the appearance of the arisal and extinction of the flowers just as Ananda's body cannot contain another so it's kind of like a little bit like catch-22 logic they can't come out of the emptiness because if they came out of the emptiness the emptiness wouldn't be empty and if the emptiness were not empty then it wouldn't be able to contain these things

[55:41]

because it's not empty it's a little bit, you know what I mean? no, I think it's like a via negativa here he's saying it doesn't come from the emptiness and it doesn't come from the eyes it doesn't come from anywhere it just is yeah yeah, it is except, of course, in theistic creation we know where it all comes from God well, you don't ask that yeah, well, I know so that's why in the end it really does amount to the same thing, I think personally but I mean, that's the difference this just says that out of this condition things evolve and arise, we don't know how or why from emptiness however, but

[56:42]

if you think, oh yeah, I get it, emptiness, there's this emptiness and out of the emptiness comes this something it's not like that, that's what he's just now saying it's not like that, because it doesn't make sense that it could be like that it doesn't come from the emptiness then you say, well if it doesn't come from the emptiness it must come from the eyes but then he says, if the flowers were to come from the eyes they would return to the eyes that which comes from something returns to that something because it has that essence then he says, if the nature of the flowers were to come from the eyes it would be endowed with the faculty of seeing it comes from the eyes and anything that would come from the eyes would have that quality of the eyes that the eyes have, which is the quality of seeing if it could see then, when it left the eyes it would become flowers in space and when it returned, it should see the eyes because it has the nature of seeing if it did not see, then when it left the eyes

[57:46]

it would obscure emptiness when it returned, it would obscure the eyes so it's hard to understand this kind of logic I don't know if the translation is accurate or helpful or what so I'll try to see if I can understand it with you if the flowers so if these flowers are empty so now we have just established, they don't come from the emptiness that wouldn't work out so now they come from the eyes well no, they can't come from the eyes either because if they came from the eyes, they would have the faculty of seeing like anything that would come from the eyes would and if they could see then this something would come out of the eyes would become the flowers in space would then return and see the eyes if it did not see, then when it left the eyes

[58:48]

it would obscure emptiness it wouldn't have a seeing essence so the emptiness would be obscured and when it returned, if it did see when it returned, it would obscure the eyes so I'm not sure I quite understand that the burden of it is it's hard to buy this logic personally but the point is that he wants to tell us whether we can believe his reasoning he's telling us that this is like the world that we know about the world didn't come from the emptiness and it didn't come from our perceptual organs moreover when you see the flowers your eyes should not be obscured

[59:49]

so why is it that the eyes are said to be pure and bright when they see clear emptiness therefore you should know that the skanda of form is empty and false because it neither depends on causes and conditions for existence nor is spontaneous in nature so this is the formula that's repeated for all the skandas and six sense doors and so on and the burden of the argument is it's an argument by reputation by pointing out the contradiction in the assertion and it wants to say that the world as we know it there's only two logical possibilities either the world is created from causes and conditions or it's not and what this is saying is both those things are not so it's not created from causes and conditions and it's not created spontaneously

[60:50]

so it's a mystery it sort of appears independent of causes and conditions and also independent of spontaneity so let me just finish this the logic of it is kind of the same logic that was invented by Nagarjuna in the emptiness sutras and treatises basically what this logic does is it goes and it takes any concept any assertion that you would make whether it's a Buddhist doctrinal assertion or any other assertion and it pierces to the heart of that assertion and basically shows that the assertion itself is self-contradictory therefore can't be true and it doesn't posit anything that is true as an alternative so the burden of it is basically

[61:54]

that all conceptual descriptions are self-contradictory so the one that I remember if I'm remembering this correctly is if there is how does it go let me think so you reduce something down to its absolute smallest possible entity an entity of which there can be nothing smaller right so now you take two of these entities and you're going to relate them to each other well if they could touch one another there must be a part of one that's touching a part of the other right well if there was a part of one that was touching the other and it's the smallest possible thing that there is

[62:57]

it doesn't have any parts it's the only part there is, is that thing itself so if one thing is touching another it must be the other thing because it can't have one part that's overlapping see what I'm saying if they're in contact they must be the same thing yeah so but yeah so therefore what with water yeah right something like that yeah although I can't remember what I said yeah it's terrifying to have said so many things in the past you said this it was why if you touched the bottom of your ladle on the top of the soup it won't drip when you're serving yeah anyway that wasn't very good

[63:58]

I have to think about this more but anyway you get the idea that it proves the impossibility of two things being in relation to one another if two things could ever be in relation to one another they would be the same thing because everything is made up of indivisible smallest parts right built up into something so anyway we have to go back and study Nagarjuna one of these days this is the basic idea this is the basic sort of logical move and yeah that's true I think it's really so whether or not we can figure out, piece out the argument that's being made here it's really so so this is not denying that there are causes and conditions no we know that there are causes and conditions that cause things to arise things to arise right we know that however the point is that the arising of things in this world as they are

[64:58]

is not explained by those causes and conditions those causes and conditions don't contain the thing that arises out of them and don't really explain that it arises that's the idea everything is sort of off the charts nothing is explainable and reducible to the causes and conditions behind it even though the causes and conditions just like we were saying before like in the analysis earlier of the King Prasenajit's sight it had to be that the eye organ was there and it had to be that the object of seeing was there but the sight that arose out of that was not contained in either one of those remember my example of taking a corpse you take a corpse with two good eyes that if you transplanted the eyes into a living person they would work and you prop the corpse up in front of the Ganges river and you say look there's an eye there's a river

[65:58]

so why doesn't it see anything because those causes and conditions although those causes and conditions of eye and object of sight must be present in order for there to be sight they're not sufficient the sight is somehow extra and not definable that's the idea and the same thing here first Mia had her hand up did I take away what you were thinking I don't know if this is relevant anymore it seems like his logic was basically being accurate about that not seeing deconstructing everything it's basically deconstructionism and I'm thinking about towards the beginning of his writing on the Middle Way he said something about conditions

[66:59]

and J. Garfield gave a really simple example that might be helpful as far as just thinking about it in a straightforward way like the earth not coming out of emptiness he said that if you ask a farmer will a plant grow out of its seed the farmer will say yeah, of course but if you say where in that seed you find the potential for that plant for the essence of the plant then they might think you're crazy you can't find the potential so he's talking about there not being any essences at that point you can't find it anywhere and it's also not just depending on co-arising it's a good example though because you have to have the seed and you have to put it in soil and there has to be water and there has to be sun and then there will be a plant but seed plus

[68:03]

soil plus water plus sun doesn't equal a plant a plant is like people here can testify it's kind of like a miracle it's completely off the charts that a plant would grow out of that and that's why I think gardeners and farmers like their work because they're in the middle of a mystery all the time why would that thing grow you have to understand the conditions as much as you can cooperate and act to make those conditions come together but you can't say I grew this so it's the same kind of thing and all the difference is that it's an unhappy gardener who thinks that they're growing the plants it's a happy gardener who understands that they're cooperating

[69:05]

with the mysterious essence of life and that's the choice that we're given in our life we can either think that we're in control of an essential world which is then going to immediately be the cause of our oppression or we can imagine that we're cooperating with life which we can't possibly understand or control or know but only manifest and that's a very different life from the other one so thank you for saving me there that was a little conceited, I appreciate it I'll do something nice for you some day this is probably a rehash of the same thing what it sounds like to me is that when all these causes and conditions come together something that comes out of that is something entirely new which couldn't even be predicted and you couldn't go backwards from that thing that was created

[70:08]

and divided into all those conditions you could examine all the causes and conditions and you wouldn't find in those causes and conditions any of the thing that was produced just like the seed if you look for like say you have an 8 foot corn plant if you take apart the seed you don't find any corn plant, you take apart the sun the soil, nowhere in there is there any grain of this corn plant at all and yet those conditions have to be present so it's unpredictable in a way, I mean it's predictable because we know it's a corn seed but it's not really predictable it's always a miracle that it would come up so the world really is in that way mysterious and our assertions about it and our concepts about it are quite crude in comparison with the

[71:11]

incredible virtuosity of the world and multiplicity but we persist in believing in our concepts as if they really did explain the world and they really did make sense of it we've talked in the previous class sequence about the powers of 10 oh yeah, it turns out Kathy has that film oh good, you should show it here sometimes yeah we should show it sometimes, it's a great film and from what we're talking about, the direction now seems to be I'm not sure whether it's I've been kind of zooming in trying to look at the deconstruction aspect but going out, I was thinking about other previous exchanges regarding innumerable efforts have brought us this food it's not just this, but then you think how it goes out and out and out to all of what has contributed to the fact that you have this bowl of food in front of you

[72:15]

from what we're talking about now turn around and then take it back out exponentially yeah, the ripple effect I'm just looking into this seed and plant example more if you look at the seed we can't actually see the plant but now we can look into the seed really deeply, we see there's a genetic code there couldn't we say that was an essence of the plant that we can look at that code and be like oh, this is a seed that's going to make a corn plant if we provide the right conditions for it so in that sense does a seed contain the essence of what it's going to produce not really, because the I don't really understand these things very well or at all

[73:15]

but I think that the genetic code is not a substance, it's a piece of information so it's not the substance of the corn plant so we can read the code and we can understand the information that it gives and so we can make predictions based on it but the code itself doesn't produce the what produces it is all the conditions that have to come to bear so this is what the sutra is saying it's not in the conditions the world is a fluid basically it's saying the world is the unfolding of enlightenment and we can't reduce it to something that our minds can conceptualize and the effort to do that is the cause of our suffering that's basically what the sutra is telling us

[74:19]

so I think that of course even though we're always getting more and more refined information about the world and so on I think that it never really explains why that plant grows out of that seed it tells you a lot of stuff which is useful to know but it doesn't really ever say why that happens or exactly how that happens that's what I think but my knowledge of these things is quite limited but it does seem as if science is not at one time maybe it appeared as if science was going to explain away any need for the spirit in human life and certainly I think science has been very successful in explaining away disproving fairly conclusively that the world was not made in six days or something like that at least not six days as we understand it today so that's pretty clear but in fact

[75:22]

science has only returned us to the mystery it seems like there was recently a big cover story on one of the news weeklies about all these scientists who were either they were clergy people or they were very religious or they had given up science for religion interviewing them all about how science and religion were so much in accord that the mechanistic the increase in scientific information seems to have increased the mystery of the world rather than decreased it because at one time it looked like well we'll figure out the world is a big clock it's a big machine we'll figure out how to work it I think now there's an acknowledgement that there's no end to what we can figure out and we will never figure out what life is and if we ever did

[76:25]

what would we be? would we be human anymore? taking the example of the discussion about the DNA just now it sort of says that the DNA is not the plant but can't we also say that that's another example of well you can't say that it is and you can't say that it isn't yeah that's right if we were to say there's a plant outside of the DNA some other thing is the plant, the DNA no you're right it's not that it's it's not the plant nor that it is the plant that's right well well I don't know if any of us are any smarter now than we were at 7.30 but I do know that it's a wonderful thing that you could sit around

[77:29]

for an hour and a half and wonder about all this and think about it and remember that you don't really know about the most important things you really don't know so I think there's some virtue in that I think there's some virtue in that so thank you all for engaging with me in this useless but somewhat amusing endeavor and we'll do it one more oh yeah oh that's nice well there you go, that's time well spent we have to go back to the mystery it didn't seem to me how to use the word mystery yeah but I think even in the other

[78:47]

other things we're studying we keep returning to this place of mystery yeah well I think it's in recognition of the self-contradictory limitations of our conceptualization in recognition that how that is mystery I guess yeah in other words when we come to the end that is what mystery is, right? it's coming to the end of what we can think about and what we can know and recognizing that the world is bigger than what we can know and what our concepts will reach and appreciating that that's so because more or less we go through our days without recognizing that our days are quite conceptually driven we have objectives and we have things we're trying to do and we have strategies and we're figuring things out and we have to do that but at the same time we can't leave a little bit of space a hole in that conceptual tunnel where we can kind of peer out the corner of our eye and see that there's more to what's going on

[79:51]

than our agenda well this is what we hope so we stop everything once in a while and we just contemplate this mystery but then we want to train ourselves so that we don't really forget that it's always that way, not just when we sit here and talk but it's always that way all the time and we want to find a way to live so that we don't forget that it's sort of like there's a little bit of a very subtle glow around the edges of everything and we would like to be able to remember that that's so and not get so swept up in our conceptual lives that we totally forget maybe we can think of our conceptual lives as an excuse for being here so that we can be looking at the others yeah Pooh has on a couple of occasions recently quoted an exchange between Stephen Hawking and an interviewer asking Hawking if he's a happy man

[80:53]

and his response was yes and the person was kind of surprised and said, how can that be and I can't remember the adjective that was used but Hawking responded, because I'm something curious deeply curious because I'm deeply curious and that's why he thought he was a happy man consistent with it seeking and being alive endlessly exploring that's right no end to it okay, thank you

[81:31]

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