I vow to take you to the left of Takatan's ruins. Sorry for being late. Our reading of the Shurangama Sutra. Last time, we were starting on Volume 4 in this Master Hua's translation.

[01:01]

And the volume begins with, I mean, and also I reviewed, remember, the other volumes. This volume begins with, remember the whole Sutra up to now has been a dialogue between the Buddha and Ananda about the nature of consciousness. much detailed argument about where the Buddha is constantly trying to show Ananda that all ideas, concepts about the mind are incorrect, including that the mind exists, doesn't exist, it has a location, and so on and so on. And then he reveals, by the end of their conversation, that the world as it is, is actually the pure mind of Buddha, which can't be said to exist or not exist, and so forth and so on. Then, in the beginning of Volume 4, there's another interlocutor, the monk, the Bodhisattva Purna, who asks the Buddha two questions.

[02:14]

First of all, he asks him, if the world really is the pure mind of Buddha, as you say, then why did the world come to be? I mean, why did it mess itself up? Why did the pure mind of Buddha mess itself up by being the world? Why didn't it just remain in this pure and wonderful state? Because, you know, the world is full of suffering and imbalance and disharmony. Why did that happen? And then we talked about that at length last time, if you recall, where I was saying that it was the only place that I was aware of in Buddhism where there actually was a kind of an effort to discuss metaphysics, how the world was created, how it came to be and why, out of mind, how mind transformed. Remember, there was this very funny, and it's hard to understand and appreciate, partly because of translation problems, partly because I think that that passage in the sutra is based more on Chinese philosophy,

[03:20]

maybe Confucianist or Taoist philosophy, than it is on Buddhist philosophy. And I remember Daigon sitting in the front last time and he said, that's so Chinese, when I was reading that part. But it has somehow, if you remember, it's this funny thing where, you know, somehow enlightenment, which is in this sutra, enlightenment, consciousness and light itself are all conflated in some way. And so the idea was that the bright enlightenment of the pure-minded Buddha somehow or other had light or brightness added to it. It was a kind of a brightness that was neither brightness nor darkness, and it had brightness added to it, almost like the shadow of a concept of perfection or brightness. And then from that little shadow, that little gap, evolved. And then there's this very long passage about all the different kinds of matter,

[04:22]

physical creation of the world and matter, how metal came to be and mountains came to be because of this kind of imbalance, and rivers because of that kind of imbalance. And then it went into the human evolution and talked about the twelvefold chain of causation. I remember we talked about how the person in the in-between realm goes to the, sees a speck of light in the darkness and it goes in that direction toward the speck of light. And that's the place where intercourse is occurring between the parents and is born. And then attachment and round and round and round, and the whole world comes out of that. So that was the first question, and we went over that. And the second question was, earlier Buddha had said that each of the elements was perfect and all-pervasive. How could the elements be pervasive? How could each element contain everything? And Buddha then answers that question. We won't read that part tonight. But then the next question that Purna asks, and that's where we'll start, is,

[05:24]

he says to the Buddha, well, now, taking this analogy, since the perfect mind of Buddha in the original primordial past, that perfect mind gave rise to this world with all of its suffering, then it stands to reason that you, Buddha, having now achieved in enlightenment that perfect mind, why don't you then evolve into imperfection from enlightenment? So in other words, what good is enlightenment then, to make this kind of mess? Why don't you then have in your mind all various impurities, just as the world evolved out of that enlightenment into impurities? So we'll start there, and we'll read about Buddha's answer to that, and Purna's question. So Purna said, if this wonderful enlightenment, this basic miraculous enlightened brightness, which is neither greater than nor less than the mind of the thus-come-one, abruptly brings forth the mountains, the rivers, and the great earth, and all conditioned appearances,

[06:34]

then, now that the thus-come-one, which is a translation for Tathagata, as you all know, and also, by the way, it's translated usually as thus-come-one, but it also means the one who has thus gone, comes and goes, thus. So this is in contrast to an earlier Buddhism, when the epithet for the Buddha was the conqueror of death, or the one who had gone to nirvana. Now the Buddha is the one who comes, you see, comes into the world, rather than the one who leaves. The Buddha is the one who comes and goes in the world. Is that a Mahayana? Yeah, that's a Mahayana. Yeah, it's a Mahayana development. I think, like almost all the Mahayanaistic developments, the term, I'm sure, existed in the earlier sutras, but it wasn't emphasized, and the Mahayanists emphasized it very strongly.

[07:35]

Anyway, then, now that the thus-come-one has attained the wonderful, empty, bright enlightenment, will the mountains, the rivers, the great earth, and all conditioned, natural, habitual outflows arise again? The Buddha said to Purna, Consider, for example, a person who has become confused in a village, mistaking south for north. Is this confusion the result of confusion or of awareness? So this is a little strange, you know. Is confusion the result of its... confusion? Something must be wrong with the translation. A person is confused. Where does their confusion come from? Does it come from some sort of way of being mixed up or some sort of way of being clear? Purna said, this person's confusion is the result neither of confusion nor of awareness. Why? Confusion is fundamentally baseless. Confusion is just a mistaken... there's no reality to it.

[08:38]

It's just a mistake. So how could it arise because of confusion? Because there's no such thing as confusion, really. It's just truth that went a little screwy. It's not really anything in and of itself. So it couldn't have arisen from confusion. And it couldn't have arisen from awareness either, because how could awareness, which means clarity, produce confusion? So it didn't come from either confusion or awareness. This is another example of a kind of cockeyed logic that to me seems really weird in the sutra, but it's sort of taken on face value. The Buddha said, if a person who is aware points out the way to the person who is in the midst of confusion and makes that person aware, then do you suppose, Purna, that once the person is over his confusion he could lose his sense of direction again in that village? Well, I think he could, but...

[09:42]

No, he can't. Somehow it's understood. Once you're confused and you're walking around and you think this is north and that's south, and somebody says, no, no, that's north and that's south, you can never again be confused on that point. I myself am confused. Somebody can tell me and I'll still be confused, or later on be confused again, but somehow, logically, they're telling us, no, no, once you're straightened out, you're never confused again. Purna, the vascana ones of the ten directions are the same way. It's an analogy. Confusion is groundless and ultimately empty in nature. There had basically been no confusion. It merely seemed as if there was confusion. And it seemed as if there was confusion and enlightenment. When the delusion about confusion and enlightenment is ended, enlightenment does not give rise to confusion. So that's like us.

[10:44]

We think that we're confused, that we really feel as if our mind needs to be fixed, that it's messed up and needs to be fixed. But really, it's not. Really, there is no reality to the confusion of our minds. When our mistaken idea that there is a reality to our confusion is removed from us, then we see that both enlightenment and confusion are just terminology and they don't really make any difference. And once we see that, we can never be confused again. Can you say that again? I don't know if I can or not. Our perception, we think, we're convinced, you know, my mind is really kind of messed up. I really don't see clearly and I'm unhappy as a result of that. And so I really need to do something about this

[11:46]

and go from a state of confusion, which is something very real to me, to a state of clarity where I will be much more happy and everything will go better. That's how we look at it. But the argument is that, in fact, the state of confusion doesn't really exist. It's just an idea that you have. Your mind is actually not really confused. It's just a thought that you have. Do you think it is? It's not. Once you recognize the real nature of your mind, there's no substance, there's no reality to this thought that we have that our mind is confused. Once we recognize that that is the case, then we see that all our ideas of confusion and enlightenment are really just very flimsy ideas. And once we see that for ourselves, we can never be confused again. That's what this message is. That sounds so strange. Isn't that confusion?

[12:47]

If you think that something is in one way and then it turns out it's not. Of course it doesn't have any base or reality to it. It's just confusion. Right. In other words, what you're saying is what's the point of saying that? It's still confusion. The idea is that our attachment, what we see as a psychological problem I'm confused, is actually a metaphysical problem. Not that I'm confused, it's that I'm not actually seeing the nature of mind. That's the point. Once I see the nature of mind, then I recognize that all my ideas about confusion or clarity are just quite flimsy. On a superficial level, there's confusion and clarity and I'm wrapped up in that.

[13:48]

And that's my problem. I'm rooting around on that level mad at myself for being so confused and working very hard to get the clarity on this psychological level. But if I only realize that it has nothing to do with any of that, that all I really need to do is go to a lower level and see the nature of mind for what it is, this whole thing evaporates. And I can't be confused ever again. Or enlightened. Both those things are meaningless. I just am abiding in the real nature of mind. And when I am abiding in the real nature of mind, there is no confusion. So of course, here in the Sutra, at this part here, it's just stated. And you might think, well, so what do I do about that? But later on in the Sutra, and the point of it all is that it implies, and it doesn't really go into details, although other texts do, but it implies that one should meditate on the nature of mind.

[14:49]

And through the meditation on the nature of mind and actually experiencing the real nature of mind, you dispel the clarity. And then you don't need to worry about all these different ways of gradually getting from confusion to enlightenment by cultivating this and doing that and so forth. That's basically the idea. Does that make sense? Yes. If we come back to the man that's lost in the village, I guess it doesn't matter where he goes. That's the meaning? If we come back to the man that's lost in the village, he's confused because he thinks it matters where he goes. It doesn't matter. I guess you could put it that way. I think the analogy is a little weak to me in terms of what he's truly trying to say here, but I guess that is the idea that wherever he goes, he's going the right way. He's no longer capable of being lost. Because there's no right way. So it's always the right way. So, anyway, that's what he says about...

[15:54]

Then he gives another analogy. In case that analogy wasn't confusing. There's another one. It is also like a person with an eye ailment. Over and over again they say this in the sutras. You've heard it before, I'm sure. The person with an eye ailment sees floaters and cross their flowers in space. Duggan calls them flowers of emptiness. If he gets rid of his eye ailment, the flowers in space will disappear. If he were so stupid as to quickly return to the spot where the flowers disappeared and wait for them to reappear, would you consider that person to be stupid or smart? And Purna said, Originally there really weren't any flowers in space. It was as though a falseness in the seeing... It was through a falseness in the seeing that they were produced and extinguished. To see the disappearance of the flowers in space is already upside down. To wait for them to reappear is sheer madness. Why bother to determine further

[16:58]

if such a person is stupid or smart? So it's the same kind of idea. There was never any confusion in their mind to begin with. It was just like the flowers in the sky that looked like they were there, but they really weren't. So there's nothing there to see. The Buddha said, Since you explain it that way, why do you ask if the wonderful, enlightened, bright emptiness can once again give rise to the mountains, rivers, and the great earth? In other words, that's the end of that. Now you understand. Now it makes sense. Then he gives a few more analogies, but we will forego them and skip a bit. Now he's come back to the idea, the Buddha is still preaching here, and he's come back to the idea that the world is nothing other than the fundamental perfect mind. And this passage is really kind of great.

[18:01]

Here's one where he kind of lays it all out in an interesting way. The treasury of the thus come one is the fundamental, wonderful, perfect mind. It is the It is not the mind. He says it's not the mind. It is not the mind, nor emptiness, nor earth, nor water, nor wind, nor fire. It is not the eyes, nor the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, or the mind. It is not form, nor sound, smells, tastes, object of touch, or dharmas. It is not the realm of eye consciousness, nor any other, up to and including the realm of mind consciousness. It is not understanding, nor ignorance, nor the ending of understanding or ignorance, nor any other, up to and including old age and death, and the ending of old age and death. Just like the heart system. It is not suffering, nor accumulation,

[19:02]

nor extinction, nor the path. It is neither knowing nor attaining. So far, just like the heart system. Then he goes on from there, though. It is not dana, nor sila, nor virya, nor kshanti, nor dhyana, nor prajna, nor paramita. Prajnaparamita. In other words, it's not the six paramitas. Either. The heart system doesn't say that part. Because all the other parts, actually, are kind of a negation of the path of the old school. Right? The Four Noble Truths and all that. And you could read the Heart Sutra and you could say, well, this is kind of showing the emptiness of the Hinayana school's teaching. But when you think about it, it doesn't necessarily mention the Mahayanaistic practices. But here it says also, the six paramitas, which are Mahayana practices, they're also empty.

[20:03]

Nor any other. It is not the tathagata, nor the arhats, nor samyaksambodhi, nor parinirvana, nor permanence, nor bliss, nor true self, nor purity. Therefore, it is neither mundane nor transcendental, since the treasury of the thus-come-one is the fundamental brightness of the wonderful mind. But then he says, it is the mind, it is emptiness, it is earth, it is water, it is wind, it is fire, it is the eyes, it is the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind. It is form, it is sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch and dharmas. It is the realm of eye consciousness and so forth, up to and including the realm of mind consciousness. It is understanding and ignorance, and the ending of understanding and ignorance, and so forth, up to and including old age and death, and the ending of old age and death. It is suffering, it is accumulation, and so on, and so on, and so on. It is both mundane and transcendental, since the treasury of the thus-come-one is the wonderful

[21:07]

brightness of the fundamental mind. It is apart from is and is not. It is identical with is and is not. How can living beings in the three realms of existence on a level of worldliness and the sound hearers and those enlightened to conditions on a level of transcendence, in other words, how can all the different kinds of practitioners make suppositions about the Supreme Bodhi of the thus-come-one with the mind that they know of, or enter the knowledge and vision of the Buddha through the medium of worldly language and expression? By those words, which are, of course, entirely self-contradictory and self-canceling,

[22:11]

wiping away any kind of... Because even the Heart Sutra seems to hold in our minds the concept of negation, the concept of emptiness. We could say, well, the Heart Sutra teaches that eyes, ears, nose, the Four Noble Truths, and so on, all these things are empty. So we could think about that, that things are empty. We have a conceptual appreciation of that. So here, that concept is set forth, and then the opposite concept is set forth as a simultaneous truth, canceling out the first concept. So, it is apart from is and is not. Well, right there, we're already confused. You can't say it is, and you can't say it isn't. But also it's identical with is and is not. So in other words, to say it's apart from is and is not is to say that it's

[23:15]

inconceivable in some way, because as far as we can conceive, something either is or it isn't. There's no sort of, like, in-between. But as soon as we start to conceptualize that, then he says it is identical with is and is not, simultaneously. Then he says, as we've already gathered, you can't really understand this with your mind. The mind you know of, anyway, which is the only mind that we have, the one we know of, implying, of course, that we also have another mind that we don't know of. But with the mind that we know of, how could we possibly understand it? And how could we possibly think about it and discuss it through the ordinary medium of language and expression? For example, flutes, flutes and guitars can make wonderful sounds. But if there are no skilled fingers to play them,

[24:15]

their music will never come forth. You and all living beings are the same way. The precious, enlightened mind is perfect in everyone. Thus I press my finger upon it and the ocean impression emits light. You move your mind and the weary sub-defilements spring up. So, it is because you do not diligently seek the unsurpassed enlightened way, but are fond of the lesser vehicle and are satisfied with little attainment. So, the perfect reality of Buddhahood is there all the time. But we are making efforts with the mind that we know of and with our speech and our language and our understanding. And on that level

[25:16]

and with those tools, we'll never be able to understand it. And we don't have aspirations beyond that level. So we should have aspirations beyond that level in order to reach this understanding which is a non-understanding so that we can be free of our confusion. OK, skipping forward a bit. So, this then would naturally beg the question, the next question that Purna asks, which is well, if we are

[26:19]

these perfect lutes and flutes and guitars, only we are not able to make music because of our delusion, why? How did that get there? In a way, these questions are all kind of repetitive in a way. They're all kind of similar, almost the same question, but it's a little bit different. So, Purna says, I venture to ask the thus come one why all living beings exist in falseness and conceal their own wonderful brightness so that they keep drowning in this deluge of suffering. So why don't we get it? It's there. In a way, this is like a maddening situation that's being depicted here. Before, we were actually feeling like, well, OK, it makes sense. I'm deluded. I could get enlightened. These are the things I have to do to get there. I'm used to that. I've done other things in my life where I can learn something and get there, so now

[27:21]

I can do this too. That makes sense to me. But now, this thing is being depicted here where it's maddeningly easy and impossible at the same time because we're already there. Our nature is already the pure nature of Buddha. We're swimming in this world that's all in Buddha's mind. And yet, we don't experience that, and seemingly anything that we could use to understand it and experience it won't help us. So now what are we supposed to do? And how did we get into this situation? So that's basically Purna's question. The Buddha said to Purna, although you have cast off doubts, because Purna is supposed to be here a very advanced practitioner of high attainment, but he doesn't get this truth that's being spoken in the Surya Veda Sutra. Although you have cast off doubts, you still have not ended residual delusions. I will now

[28:25]

employ a worldly event in questioning you. He then tells him a story about Yajna Datta, which maybe some of you know. I forget how the story goes. It's not told very well in this Sutra here, or at least in this translation. But it's the guy who thought he didn't have a head. He woke up one morning and he thought he didn't have a head. Yeah, there's a mirror. So, have you not heard of Yajna Datta and Srivasti, who on impulse one morning held a mirror to his face and fell in love with the head in the mirror? He gazed at the eyes and eyebrows but got angry because he could not see his own face. It doesn't quite make sense, but I guess the idea is that he looked in the mirror and he saw his face in the mirror and then he thought that the face was over there and not on top of his own head. So he thought his head was gone. And he decided that he must be a ghost, and having lost all his bearings, he ran madly out. What do you think? What did this

[29:26]

person set out on a mad chase? Why did this person set out on a mad chase for no reason? So the analogy is clear. It's like us. We think we have enlightenment. We think we don't have any enlightenment because we looked in the mirror and saw a reflected world and so we don't know that we're already enlightened. So, it's more like that. That person was insane with no other reason. And the Buddha said, What reason can you give for calling false the wonderful, enlightened, bright perfection, the fundamentally perfect, bright wonder? If there is a reason, then how can you say it is false? All your own false thinking becomes, in turn, the cause for more. So that's the kind of initial mistake. The wonderful, enlightened, bright perfection is there in front of us, and we mistake it.

[30:27]

We don't recognize it's there. And out of that initial falseness, that false thinking becomes, in turn, the cause for more. From confusion, you accumulate confusion through kalpa after kalpa. Although the Buddha is aware of it, he cannot counteract it. Even the Buddha can't help us. That mistake of mistaking ... It's as if, from way back in our karmic stream, we, instead of looking, instead of feeling and appreciating our actual head, our own actual enlightened nature, we turned our attention outward and looked at the mirror instead of only an image. And because of that, and believed that that image was real, and didn't really feel our own head being on top of our shoulders, and because we made that initial

[31:29]

mistake ... But it ... ... You have to bring it with me when I go But it's very hard to figure it out. You have to be very smart to, like, do anything anyway. Um ... Yeah, but the main point of that is that that mistake is not a real mistake. It's not a real cause, because there's nothing substantial in it. So it's inherent within the sense organs and the wisdom. Yeah, but behind that inherent division within the sense organs is this mistake that we're speaking of, which is not a substantial mistake, it's a mistake that, in a sense, was never

[32:32]

really made. Because right now, right now, I think the fundamental idea here is that consciousness itself is the perfect mind of Buddha. Consciousness itself is the Tathagata, and since we're conscious beings, since our perception, what fuels it, what makes it work, is consciousness. And that consciousness already is now Buddha. It's not that it was Buddha a long time ago and we messed it up and it's not Buddha anymore, we have to do something to get back there. It's that even right now, it's Buddha now, but we mistake it for something else. And that's why he says it's not real, it's not really a cause, because a cause means something happened and something changed and transformed, but this didn't change, it never changed. The only thing that changed was our idea of it, our view of it. So the radical thing of the sutra is just simply saying that our only problem is simply that

[33:39]

we have the wrong idea about who we think we are, who we are. There isn't any actual… See, and earlier Buddhism really did say that there was a kind of change in our mind stream, a karmic change, and it was real, and we had to do things to counteract that karmic change. This is saying, no, that's really not true, that at any moment, if we just could see that truth of what our mind really is, we would already avoid all this. So let's see, when one realizes that confusion has no cause, you see, has no real cause, the falseness becomes baseless, it just blows away automatically. Since it never arose, why would you hope for its extinction, right? Since there never was a problem, why would you hope for nirvana, the coming to rest of causes and conditions?

[34:40]

Since these causes and conditions never really arose, in fact, why would you worry about that they would pass away? One who obtains bodhi, who gets enlightened, is like a person who awakens to realize the events of a dream. Even though his mind is awake and clear, he cannot get hold of the things in the dream and physically display them. So all the things, you wake up from a dream, like I said this a couple weeks ago, you wake up from a dream and all the problems you had in the dream just disappear, you don't have to solve them. And you can't even, waking up from the dream, you can't even, like if somebody was chasing you with a big axe, you know, when you wake up you can't find the person who was chasing you. They're not under the covers, they're not under the bed, you know, they aren't anywhere. You can't find those people anywhere, because they weren't real, they were only dream characters. So then he just again ties this to yajna-dhata in his head.

[35:51]

Purna, falseness, is the same way. It was ignorance, you know, is the same way. How can it really exist? All you need to do is not follow discriminations. So when the mind makes discriminations, perceptions, not to follow them, not to chase after them, not to believe in their fundamental reality, because none of the three causes arises when the three conditions of the three continuities of the world, living beings, and karmic retribution are cut off, then the madness of the yajna-dhata in your mind will cease of itself, and just that ceasing is bodhi. The supreme bright mind originally pervades the dharma realm. It is not something obtained from anyone else. Why then labor and toil with marrow and joint to cultivate and be certified?

[37:05]

So I'm just thinking, I want to pause for a moment here and sort of figure out, as we always have to think about, what does this actually have to do with anything? How does this really relate to our practice and the everyday issues that we confront and that we're trying to work with in our life? Well I think the main thing is that, maybe you have noticed that when you feel delusion and enlightenment, or let's even say delusion and clarity really exist, and you're in delusion and you're working for clarity, a lot of times the main effect of that kind of thinking is to really reify and firm up the idea that you are really deluded, you really are confused.

[38:15]

So paradoxically, while you're working toward clearing up your confusion, you're actually strengthening your confusion, because you really believe it's really real. And you can become quite confined and attached within your spiritual practice, because you're accumulating more goodies and trying to get better and so forth and so on. And really, Dogen's whole theory of zazen is that you don't try to do anything, that although you gently bring the mind to focus on the breath and the posture, you don't do that with the idea that the mind needs to be focused with the breath and the posture so you can get somewhere with that. You do that just as a way of tuning yourself with faith in the idea that, basically Dogen's zazen is based on a faith in the idea of this sutra, which is that your mind is already as it is, bright awakened, and that you really just need to recognize that and have faith

[39:19]

in that. And technically, in meditation practice, to bring the mind, to pull the mind off of discriminations and thoughts and perceptions, and just bring it to the present moment, and then as in Dogen's line, which is to drop body and mind in the present moment, is really the same thing that the sutra is talking about. To drop body and mind in the present moment is to see, or touch bodily, the fact that the mind really is already awakening, and it neither is nor isn't. So you don't get up and say, gee, I saw my mind really was awakening, because that's just an experience. But to abide in the reality of the bright enlightenment of the mind, to know that that's really true, to have faith in that. So practically speaking, what it really comes down to is having faith in that, and living your life the best you can, trying to do good and avoid evil and all this.

[40:21]

But not with the idea that it's a desperate struggle to come up to the heights of enlightenment and improve from the mess you're in, but rather with a kind of serenity that your life is a gift. If you have consciousness, it's a gift, and it's already perfect. So there's a kind of sense of ease and joy in activity, when you have a practice that's based on this kind of understanding. So there's really no clinging, and there's no clinging particularly to perceptions and thoughts. Because one time I remember, I think it was at Tassajara when I was down there, I don't know how I got into this idea of, I just saw I had this image of little hands inside your eyes. I guess I was studying the hands and eyes koan or something, it has nothing to do with this, but it made me think of that.

[41:21]

Like as if your eyes have little fingers in there, and whenever you see things you grab onto them. That's what perception is, and the same with your ears and nose and your mind also, your thoughts. You grab onto things. And you don't have perceptions within serenity and peacefulness. And there's a way actually of abiding in your perceptions in that way, with less grabbiness in your perceptions. There's a way of, maybe if you do intensive meditation practice like in Sashin, you can feel that. Where because you're sitting so much and not focusing on your perceptions, you're not really called on to do anything about your perceptions in Sashin most of the time. So they come and go more easily, and you're more withdrawing into just the brightness of consciousness. And then there's a more softness, I don't know if you've ever noticed, a softness to

[42:24]

the way things are, including what arises in your own mind. And the world seems a little more soft and a little more pliable, and a little bit less jagged and coming toward you, and you have to grab it or manipulate it, things just sort of flow. And you do have more of the feeling that the inside and the outside are not so separate. And there's less grabbiness in perception, in acts of perception. So I think that this is what it's talking about, and we'll hear what it says. Do not follow discrimination, because when you don't follow discrimination, when you really don't any longer validate a separation between yourself and the world and validate that the inside and outside world is over against you, that has to be somehow defended against or manipulated in order to get through the day, then the conditions that create that confusion are dissolved, and there's an ease in your living.

[43:28]

Can you tell me to understand some mind states where people are called upon to do actions that we would think would be wrong doing, such as hearing a voice that says, you are to kill someone, you are to kill someone, you are to kill someone, how do you understand that kind of mind state within that? Well, that is, in the bright mind of enlightenment, right action is natural. So if someone hears a voice that tells them to kill someone, a compelling voice, and they a powerful karmic occlusion in that person's mind stream, causing them to do wrong and to suffer the consequences of that wrong. Now, even there, ultimately, that's still Buddha's mind acting out.

[44:39]

Even though we're human beings, so on a human level, it's a terrible tragedy, and we grieve over that tragedy. In a wider scope, it's part of the picture of the universe. It's part of the destiny of those souls, so to speak, to have suffered through that tragedy. To say that doesn't mean that you accept it in the sense of your casual, oh, well that's what happened, so what? Or you don't take measures to prevent such things, and certainly, if there's a person abroad, you know, who hears voices and kills people, such a person should be removed from society so that they don't do that again. Personally, I see no call for killing that person, you know, because that's not a right action, to kill anyone. But certainly to remove them from society so that they can't do further harm, which

[45:41]

would be harm to themselves as well as another, is the compassionate thing to do. And if these kind of karmic occlusions appear in our world as mental illness of some kind, you know, the person is ill, you keep them away from society as long as they are ill, and in most of those cases, the person is ill for the rest of their life. So that's how I feel about those things, you know, and yeah, obviously, I mean, in a way, on some kind of, it's a funny thing, it's not, I mean, if you sort of like remove yourself from a moment from ordinary human civilization, there isn't any action, there isn't, it doesn't appear to be any sort of objective reason why it isn't okay to just go around killing everybody. You know, at one time, probably people did that, you know, human beings just went around

[46:45]

and killed people whenever they got angry or whenever they wanted to take what the other person had. But somehow, our mind is a fine idea. So the person who, I mean, it seems so common, I read about it in the papers all the time, people doing stuff like that, killing people and chopping them up into little pieces like these people did over here lately, threw them in a lake. How could they do that? You know, it seems unimaginable, but they did it. So obviously, there's something terribly wrong with those people, you know, there's something that went off, you know, in their minds to enable them to do that. So I think, you know, the feeling that one has is of compassion, that this is a human being who, in a way, became less than a human being because of some terrible illness of

[47:47]

some sort or another, and they need to be taken away from communication with other people and protected from doing that kind of thing again, and hopefully they can find some kind of healing, because the rest of their life, they are always going to be the person who did that, and they can never escape from that. Is this sort of thought arising in your mind now? No. Well, in a way, yes, because it's all the Enlightened One, in a way, yes, but obviously, when we look at it on the relative level, we have to say, this person is not an Enlightened Buddha on the relative level, this person is a deluded human being. It can't be, that sort of thing can't be. No, a Buddha can't have that kind of thought, because the precepts are seen to be the shape

[48:48]

of the mind of Buddha, not a set of strictures, be a good boy, you know, but this is the way that you behave, this is the way that you live in awakening, it's a natural, spontaneous, joyful expression of your life, is to be kind and not to harm and so forth. It's also, you know, when you're speaking of relative, it's important to remember that one out of every one hundred people is schizophrenic, and that it is an organic illness. I mean, any society, whether it's Eskimo, Polynesian, or American, that one out of a hundred people is schizophrenic. That's amazing, I've never heard of that, that's really amazing, 1% of the population. 1%, in any population, anywhere in the world. I've never heard of that. So, it's a constant. Yeah. So that's a chemical imbalance, an organic disease. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So... Would you say that there really are enlightened minds?

[49:50]

I mean, or that there are rather enlightened actions? It seems to me that, I mean, it's easier for me to understand it's enlightened actions, rather than enlightened minds. Yeah, I agree with you. Because I think that the whole of Buddhist thought militates against the idea that there's some reified, ongoing, personal mind. Right. There's only enlightened activity arising and passing away. In a person, looking like it's in a person, or between people, or in a society, or in a group, or in a moment. But yeah, there isn't such a thing as this person is an enlightened person. And that's, in case within that body is some little mechanism that's a perfectly running

[50:52]

clock. It doesn't make mistakes. It's like atomic. But it's used sort of as a conversational expediency. Yeah, yeah. It has more reality than any other form. Yeah. You know, it's conversational. But there's not really enlightened actions either, right? We can't point to something and say, that kind of activity is enlightened activity. Yeah. I mean, there's moments that arise. You could say that that's an enlightened mind in that moment, that's an enlightened action in that moment, and then it's gone. And then it's gone, right. Then there's nothing left to point to and say that. Right. Yeah, I think so. In the light of this sutra, the idea of being able to describe and identify any kind of enlightenment seems impossible in the light of this sutra. I'd like to go back a little bit to where Prana asked, why don't we just get it?

[52:00]

I didn't quite get a clear answer in my own mind about why we don't just get it, you know, this maddening experience of, because we already are there, and yet we don't quite, obviously we could just choose to be enlightened, we could just say, okay, let's do that. And what was the answer? Well, the answer was, isn't that where he referred to the Yajna Datta story? And he said that because of this one mistake, then there were many, you know, many kalpas worth of added confusion based on that, so that the habit became very strong. Oh. But there never is a reason given anywhere that I can ever see for why that one mistake came to be, other than the fact that it seems to be somehow, by implication, embedded in the nature of consciousness itself that such a thing would happen.

[53:02]

I mean, it seems like a great question to me. Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. You could just say, okay, if we're all enlightened. Yeah, well, it's Dogen's question too, right? Dogen's question. Yeah, but then he's saying, well, don't do anything about it, maybe just sit quietly, don't strive to be enlightened. It just stresses us out. Right. Right. But the more that you study the sutra, so to speak, in the broadest sense of that, in other words, return to this idea that this is the nature of your mind, that the nature of your mind is Tathagata, the more you return to that and the more you practice based on that, practice with that, with faith in that, the more, just like the man who was lost in

[54:06]

the village and was set straight, the more you realize whatever way you're going is the right way. So, in other words, the question of how did I get messed up evaporates, because what is just is, and it's not messed up or not messed up, it's not Buddha or non-Buddha. You know? I think little by little one comes to that feeling, I would say. Let's see, go on a little bit. So just the ceasing of that madness, just the gradual ceasing of the madness of Yajna Tathagata is itself bodhi. Not something extra added to your mind, but just the recognition that you have had all

[55:07]

along, but you thought you didn't. Just that recognition is bodhi. The supreme, pure, bright mind originally pervades the dharma realm. It is not something obtained from anyone else. Why then labor and toil with narrow enjoyment to cultivate and be certified? So, in other words, enjoy your practice. Don't labor and toil and think that you have to do something, this and that. Just enjoy your practice. Just practice because it's a great thing to do. It's the most fun thing that there is, and it's the most natural thing for a human being, so just enjoy it and don't think that you are trying to get anywhere. This is, and then it gives another analogy, it's like a person with a wish-fulfilling pearl sewn in his clothing, and he doesn't know it. And he roams abroad in a state of poverty, begging for food and always on the move.

[56:07]

Although he is indeed destitute, the pearl is never lost. So all along he's got this pearl. It's like a Lotus Sutra story. And suddenly a wise person shows him the pearl. All his wishes are fulfilled. He obtains great wealth, and he realizes that the pearl did not come from somewhere outside. It was his all along. So now I'm going to skip. There's a long discussion here of causes and conditions. One of the asserted points in the Sutras is that all reality comes from causes and conditions. Nothing arises spontaneously of its own. This is like a basic Buddhism 101. But here in this Sutra, both are denied and both are affirmed. So it's sort of, once again, confounding normative Buddhist doctrine.

[57:14]

Then Ananda comes back, and the story gets kind of fun again. With Ananda and his whole problem. The Buddha begins to refer again to the original story that started this whole Sutra. If you remember, I think I talked about it last week, about Ananda's going into the prostitute's house. And this is how the whole Sutra started. Buddha had to send a mantra over to the prostitute's house with Manjushri to clear up Ananda's problem. So now Buddha addresses Ananda, and he says, Why did you have to wait for me to use the spiritual mantra of the Buddha's summit? That's the name of the mantra. The fire of lust in Matangi's daughter's heart died instantly.

[58:20]

Matangi's daughter was the prostitute who was in love with Ananda. So when I sent this mantra and she heard it, the fire of lust in her heart died instantly, and she attained the position of Ananagama, which is one of the four fruits of enlightenment. Now she is one of a vigorous group in my Dharma assembly. The river of love and attachment and clinging dried up in her, and she was able to set you free, he said to Ananda. So now we're finding out, we didn't know this before, but now we found out that Matangi's daughter, far from being some sort of an evil Tantrist, actually, in that moment of hearing that mantra, she turned out to be a great Buddhist among the Great Assembly, and actually had a higher attainment than Ananda. Therefore, Ananda, your ability to keep in mind the thus-come-ones wonderful secret teachings of eon after eon

[59:22]

is not as good as a single day of no-outflow cultivation that is intent upon getting far away from the two-worldly sufferings of attachment and aversion. So this is a criticism of Ananda, who is always, Ananda is sort of like greedy for the teachings, and always wants to hear more teachings and learn more, and Buddha is saying, well, you know, that's fine and good, but not nearly as good. Even doing this for eons is not as good as a single day of no-outflow cultivation, which goes beyond aversion, equanimity, this kind of equanimity, no grabby eyes, just being equanimous with what occurs. That's the important thing. In Matangi's daughter, a former prostitute, attachment and desire were dispelled by the spiritual power of the mantra. Now her name is Bhiksuni nature. So she's even a Bhiksuni now. She and Mahula's mother, Yasodhara,

[60:25]

which is a funny way to put it, because that's his former wife, who he refers to as his son's mother, both became aware of their past causes. Incidentally, here, one of the features of this commentary is that often Master Hua tells some very outrageous Chinese legendary stories and different things from the sutras. If you read this, it's quite funny, because he's a monk, you know, and so to him, as he comments on this, one of the worst things, he goes on and on at length about what a losing proposition it is to be involved in any kind of romance. Just totally forget about it. You can't practice, if you would ever have a girlfriend or boyfriend or get married or anything like that, forget it. It's poison, it just ruins your life. So, of course, how could it be that Buddha himself engaged in this?

[61:34]

That doesn't sound right. So here he says, well, that never really happened. Because what really happened, he says, is that although Buddha was married, he says, and I don't know whether he's getting this from Chinese... I never heard about this. There's various redactions of the Vinaya, you know, and the stories of Buddha's life are wildly different in the various redactions. So I suppose maybe he's... This might be what it says in the Sarasvati Vinaya, I don't know. But he says, Buddha and Yasodhara were... They had a chaste marriage. They did not have any sexual relations. And although Yasodhara got pregnant, it was not because of sexual relations. It was because Buddha pointed to her belly. He went like this. And she got pregnant. Immaculate conception. Right. Well, sort of, you know. Sort of, yeah. Immaculate conception.

[62:35]

And here he says, here's the way he... This is how Master Hua talks. He tells this. He says, this may sound like a myth. But this is actually how it is recorded in the Buddha Sutras. You may want to figure out how she could get pregnant just by having him point at her. But you'll find it's an inconceivable and ineffable state of affairs. A lie. Yeah, true. So anyway... So, back to the Sutra. She and Rahula's mother, Yasodhara, both became aware of their past causes. And knew that for many kalpas, they had endured the suffering of greed and attachment. Because they single-mindedly became permeated with the cultivation of the goodness of no outflows, means no graviness in perception, they were both freed from their bonds and received predictions of enlightenment.

[63:36]

He was tempted to sleep with the prostitute, Matangi's daughter. In fact, he would not have been susceptible to that spell if he weren't given to looking and thinking about all these pretty girls. So he had that in his mind already, and that's why he was subject to the spell. So the Buddha is now criticizing him for that. Why then do you cheat yourself and still remain caught up in looking and listening? And that means... Sexuality is just, really, when you think about it, the extreme case of graviness in the eyes. That's the extreme case of that. If you look at a beautiful sunset, you don't try to grab it or something, because you know it's very far away, and if you did grab it, it would be hot. So you don't try. But if you look at a beautiful member who is a sexual object for you,

[64:41]

there's something in you that gets tempted to go in that direction. It's similar with food. You look at food, you're tempted to eat it. Sexuality is an extreme case of that which happens all the time. Any time with any one of your senses you experience something pleasant or unpleasant, there's some kind of an impulse to either move away from it or go toward it. And that's the problem. You want instead to have no outflows, which means equanimity, to allow that perception to be there and allow it to go away when it goes away and not be immediately bamboozled by it to the point where you're running around in circles. In the case of sexuality, there can be many problems and complications and difficulties that can come on that. So, anyway, Ananda heard what the Buddha said there, and his doubts, and everybody in the assembly, their doubts and delusions were dispelled.

[65:45]

Their minds were awakened to the actual appearance. They experienced light ease, both physically and mentally, and they obtained what they had never had before. So they entered into beautiful states of bliss concentration when they heard this teaching of the Buddha. And then they wept and they bowed to the Buddha. This is what Ananda did. He placed his palms together and he said to the Buddha, The unsurpassed, great, compassionate, pure and precious King has instructed me well, so that by means of these various causes and conditions, expedience and encouragement, all of us who were immersed in the sea of suffering have escaped it. And then he says more about how great it all is. And then he knows all about how the enlightened, bright mind pervades the ten directions and includes, thus come one, all the lands of the ten directions

[66:48]

and the pure, precious adornments of the wonderfully enlightened King. So, he says, but... So now I understand that, but all this time I've been practicing based on erudition, and study and knowing things. And we can include there, you know, not just studying books, but anything in practice that we would accumulate knowledge of. You know, ritual or... I don't know what. Zazen itself. Being very good in Zazen. Sitting longer and harder than anybody else and all this. That's what I always thought was the way to do it, you know. And now you've told me that that's really not the way. And I feel now like a wanderer who suddenly encounters a reigning king who bestows upon him an elegant house. That's how I feel. You've given me this wonderful gift.

[67:53]

It feels like an elegant house, a mansion, but I can't find the door to get into it. I only hope that... It's hard to say the thus-come-one, isn't it? I only hope the thus-come-one will not withhold his great compassion in instructing those of us in the Assembly who are covered over by darkness so that we may renounce the small vehicle and attain at least the thus-come-one nirvana without residue, the fundamental path of resolve, and that he will enable those who still must study to know how to subdue the age-old seeking of advantage from conditions to obtain Dharani and to enter into the knowledge and vision of the Buddha. And having said this, he made full prostration, and together with the members of the Assembly, he single-mindedly awaited the Buddha's compassionate instruction.

[68:56]

Now the Buddha is going to tell him how to find the door to this mansion. Why do you suppose he said, renounce the small vehicle? Well, because in most of the Mahayana Sutras... We have to, at this time in history here, express our dismay and embarrassment over such a kind of statement which the Mahayana Sutras are full of, because the Mahayana Sutras have a polemical element to them. Right. The Sutras were clearly written after the time of Buddha, and they were trying to say that they were Buddha's own words. And they were initially swimming upstream against the more traditional texts. So they almost always included some disparaging remarks about those old texts, and well, of course they had those, but that wasn't really as good as this, and these old practitioners... So the so-called Hinayana practitioners

[70:00]

were set up as kind of straw men. In these Sutras they were always wrong, and always limited in their understanding, and that sort of thing. And if you understand it that way, that's okay. I've noticed that this is a literary device in almost all religious texts. You paint a picture of the other guy. These people say this. Well, that's wrong. This is really right. So those people are always the ones who are wrong. But those people aren't anybody, actually, other than somebody you make up in the Sutra to distinguish, you know, this is what we're saying, and how do you know it's what we're saying? Because that's what they're saying. But the trouble is that when you read it, they seem to be talking about people like Ajahn Amaro, my dear friend, who practices up the road, and people like that who are very sound Buddhist practitioners, and it just won't do to think

[71:01]

this Sutra is telling us that Ajahn Amaro is full of baloney and the way that he understands Buddhadharma is wrong. You know, we can't really look at it that way. Especially, you know, nowadays with the world, everybody living together in one big world apartment building next door to each other and everything like that, we have to get along with our neighbors, even if we didn't believe that they were good people. But actually we do. So it is embarrassing that they... But certainly in the context of the Sutra, the idea is that it was just that kind of limited understanding, just that understanding that there's a point A and a point B, there's a mistake and a correct, you know, and all that. Just that understanding is our problem. And what we need to do is recognize that our mind is already the mind of Buddha. That's what this Sutra is talking about. So naturally we need to go beyond that view that tells us that there's enlightenment and delusion

[72:03]

and that those things are really real and different from one another. We have to go beyond that view. And that's identified with the small vehicle practitioners. Anyway, I think it's a lovely place to stop, just as we're standing outside the door to the mansion, and the Buddha is about to launch into what turns out to be a relatively complicated and hard-to-understand, lengthy disquisition about how to practice this. So, can I borrow that pencil so I can kind of mark where we left off? Thank you. Yeah, I'm thinking of the teachings of Longbo, that book. Yeah, that's what it's called, the teachings of Longbo, and he constantly refers to the Hinayana and the lesser vehicle. Right. Everything is the lesser vehicle.

[73:03]

Right, right. Anyway, the intention is pretty clear. Yeah. And, you know, one thing that seems clear now is that within a given school, there's always the lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle. So it's not like Theravada Buddhism, for example, is the lesser vehicle, and Zen is the greater vehicle. But you can find in the Theravada school adherence of the lesser vehicle, and also adherence of the greater vehicle. And you can find in the Zen school adherence of the lesser vehicle and adherence of the greater vehicle. There are lineages and traditions and individuals who have this kind of a wide view that this sutra evidences a kind of confidence in Buddha nature, an easygoing feeling about the practice. Not to say that there's not effort, strong effort,

[74:04]

but not narrow-minded effort. An effort that's based on real confidence in all the practitioners and confidence in the world and confidence in Buddha nature. You find that in Theravada lineages and in Zen lineages. And you also find in Theravada lineages sort of people who are very sour about everybody in the Zen, though, and everybody's practice is no good, and they have to do much better, and they're really bad people and they've got to improve, you know. And you find the same thing in Zen places, too, sometimes. So it's more of a spirit rather than something that is characteristic of a particular school. And I think that's true in all religious practice. There's always, religious practice always has one extreme and the other. One extreme being very narrow-minded and rule-bound and all this kind of thing versus a more open-minded and broader approach, and then everything in between. And each side has its advantages and disadvantages. So, yeah.

[75:05]

Can we kind of trace a lot of this back to matters more politic, where, say, in Ceylon or someplace where one school is trying to get state support or get more support from government and the people or the villagers or whatever, and so, by necessity, they're saying, well, of course, you should support us because these guys are on the wrong track. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. And that just kind of grows them. Yeah, I'm sure. And I'm sure that even the composition of these sutras is not entirely free of that sort of thing as well. Yeah, but I mean, I think that with all that, there is definitely a... something that's being taught in the sutra, which is very vital and important. I think that that's really true. A vision, you know, a sense of vision of what consciousness is, what the mind is, what the world is, that's a very powerful vision. And no doubt, one of the...

[76:09]

the vision of this sutra is one of the underpinnings of the Zen approach to Buddhism. You know, that's why, as I've said at the beginning, why I got into studying it is because I found so many references, direct and indirect, to it in the Blue Cliff Record, that I realized that the Chan masters of the Tang and some dynasties were definitely reading this sutra. It was very important to them. And so it's really a foundation for Dogen's practice and for our own practice. This is really, when you think about it, this basically, the teaching of this sutra, is really the basic theory behind Shikantaza. That's what Shikantaza is, turning the mind around and seeing the enlightened nature of the mind as the mind withdraws from perception. That's what the backward step is, after all. Dogen's backward step is really turning the mind around and seeing how the whole world, inside and out,

[77:09]

is a creation of consciousness. So it's a very important text for us. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you.

[77:25]

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