So welcome to all the visitors, guests, thank you for coming. You're coming in the middle of a very lengthy study of a Chinese Buddhist sutra called the Shurangama Sutra. It's very difficult to understand and explain, so I'm not going to try to summarize the three and a half volumes that we've already studied. So I don't know if this will be of any interest to you at all, but anyway hopefully I'll tell a few jokes or something like that and it will be entertaining. This is a sutra of the mind-only school, of consciousness-only school of Buddhism, and in effect is telling us

[01:01]

that although we have a fairly narrow view of what human consciousness is and what human life is, we're wrong. And actually it's very large, limitless, and indescribable, and you can't even say it is or it isn't, or that it both is and isn't, or neither is nor isn't, because it's completely beyond anything that we can speak about. And yet even though this is true, the thing is that this entire hugeness of existence, non-existence, is manifest in every act of perception and thought, except that we misunderstand our own acts of perception and thought and therefore are actively involved in taking this huge thing, which it's not even right to say it's

[02:03]

huge, because that's already making it too small. And we're, due to long habit, we are by our acts of consciousness, perception and thought and so forth, taking this thing and reducing it down to something called human life as we know it, in which we feel like we're born and we're going to die, we're separate from other creatures, etc., etc., etc., all the whole mess that is the suffering of human life. We have created that by taking this vast thing that appears through all our acts of senses, of the senses and the mind, and reducing it down, so that our job is to reverse this process, which is so habitual with all human beings, and see the vastness of consciousness itself. So that's what, basically in a word, the entire seven volumes of the Shurangama Sutra is saying, more or less like that. And there's a lot of detail about the yoga of perception

[03:10]

and so forth and so on, and that's the part we're going to look at tonight, I think, if I remember correctly. So last time we were talking about, and usually the way the class proceeds is I just read some of the sutra and make some comments and like that, so that's what I'm going to do. I think we were reading this part last time. Yeah, we were talking about, I remember the different organs, those of you who were here last time, a small number of you lost in the sea of other people, wherever you are. We might remember, if you remember anything at all about what we were talking about last time. The different sense organs, there was an analysis of the six sense organs, and in Buddhism there are six sense organs, not five. The sixth one being the mind itself, which cognizes thought,

[04:12]

just as the eyes cognize visual objects and the ears cognize auditory objects, the mind cognizes thoughts. So there's six senses, and each of these senses was analyzed for its capacity. It's a very strange and bizarre passage that we really couldn't quite understand, but the burden of it seemed to be that some of the sense organs were better than others, in terms of their ability to see through into reality, if once turned around, some were better than others. But the idea was that you had to stop chasing the object on the other end of the sense apparatus, you had to stop chasing the object and instead turn the sense around to see its root, so that you could open up consciousness. So it says here, accordingly extract one organ from adhesion, adhesion meaning being stuck on the objects. And sometimes the image I use to speak about this is that we have little hands,

[05:17]

imagine a little hand inside of your eye, to take sight as an example. And when you look around the room, your little hand inside your eye is grabbing stuff. You can maybe feel this kind of thing sometimes, when you look at how you're, it's almost like we look at the world like this, we're kind of like grabbing things with our eyes, rather than having some centeredness on ourselves and letting objects come and go, we're grabbing with our eyes. So extract one organ from adhesion, from this grabbiness, free it and subdue it at its inner core. Once subdued, it will return to inherent truth and radiate its innate brilliance. So the idea is that you don't have to do something about this, rather you have to undo something. You don't have to take your ordinary sense organ, in this case the eye, let's say, and make it into radiant brilliance. All you have to do is stop chasing

[06:21]

after things that are outside, and just when you cut off that adhesion and that grabbiness, then automatically the consciousness that flows through the eye out to the world will return to inherent truth and radiate its innate brilliance. When that brilliance shines forth, the remaining five adhesions will be free to accomplish total liberation. So he was saying earlier that if you just take one of the six senses and you can find freedom in that one sense, then the other senses would automatically be free. Do not follow the knowing and seeing that arise from the objects before you. True brightness does not comply with the sense organs, yet lodged at the organs is the revelation of the brightness that permits the mutual functioning of the six organs. So in many, and I'm going to skip a long passage here, but in many of these

[07:21]

passages of the Sutra, the point is made that what we see as perception, the eye organ touching an object and creating a consciousness of that object, is again, as I was saying earlier, a very small part of what's really going on. In fact, consciousness is a brilliant flow, and once we let go of objects and let go of this kind of looking, that flow will come forth, because consciousness itself, as it truly is, is what is meant by the term Buddha, or the brilliance of Buddha. So I skipped a little passage there. Then Ananda, after your organs are completely free, you will glow with an inner light. All the ephemeral defiling objects in the material world will thereupon change their appearance, like ice which is melted by hot liquid. I think we talked about this last time and I quoted Ahako and Zenji's Song of Zazen, where he says, ordinary beings and Buddhas are analogous to

[08:30]

ice and water. They're the same substance. There's really no difference between ordinary beings and Buddha, just like there's really no difference between ice and water. Ice and water are the same, just under different conditions, water seizes up and becomes ice, and it's a very good analogy because in the case of a Buddha, life flows freely and it takes the shape of whatever container it flows into. It goes according to natural law, moving, clear, refreshing. In the case of sentient beings, it's frozen, stiff, rigid, easily chipped, and so forth, like us. So this case is the same here. Once you go through this process of letting go of outside objects in that way, then the world will change its appearance from being harsh and hard-edged and everything is out to get us and making a problem for us.

[09:31]

Stop looking like that and we'll see the world as a beautiful flow, everything moving together in a kind of a perfect harmony, and our ideas of how things aren't working for us and so forth and so on will be seen to be fictions. In response to your mind, things of the world will transform and become knowledge and awareness which is unsurpassed enlightenment. Then again, I have to skip pages because otherwise it would take forever, so I'm skipping parts that seem to be getting to the highlights. Now, the form of the sutra, as we remarked last week, is that in the beginning of the sutra, Ananda, a spell was cast on Ananda by a prostitute who had fallen in love. Ananda is Buddha's loyal

[10:38]

disciple and a monk who has taken a vow never to engage in any kind of sexual conduct whatsoever. A prostitute falls in love with him because Ananda is a very handsome and personable fellow, so she has a mother who's a sorceress and causes a spell to be cast on Ananda, and he's just about to lose his monastic vows when the Buddha, through his omniscience, says, I'm telling you this, I'm listening to it through your ears, I'm thinking it sounds like a comic book cartoon, but I can't help it, this is what it says. The Buddha, through his omniscience, sees that this is going on and he says, I see that Ananda would not have been subject to this spell if he only really understood the nature of his senses, that's why this whole thing is being taught, for Ananda's benefit. So he makes a special magical formula which he recites and he tells one of his disciples to go

[11:44]

to Ananda and recites the formula, instantaneously flying through space, saves Ananda from this terrible fate, which somebody else might think is not so terrible, but for Ananda it's pretty bad in his position. So then Buddha then proceeds to say, Ananda, you would not have been subject to that kind of thing if you only would have understood the real nature of the senses, and so forth, and then teaches seven volumes of Shurangama Sutra. Anyway, what happens is he teaches a certain part of this, and then to Ananda, Ananda's saying, ah yes, I understand, I understand, and then that part ends, and then Ananda says, but you know there's one thing I don't understand, and then he brings up another question, and then the Buddha goes on again for another 30 or 40 pages. So now we've come to one of those parts. Ananda says, if the seeing and hearing are apart from light and darkness, movement and stillness, and penetration and obstruction, and are ultimately devoid of substance, they are then like thoughts apart from sense objects. They

[12:48]

do not exist at all. What that says is that, in case you didn't understand that, which is very likely actually, what that's saying is that the Buddha has just taught Ananda that the consciousness itself is something bigger than objects, bigger than light and darkness, and so forth. So Ananda has heard that and said, okay good, now I understand that. But if that's true, Buddha, how can what is ultimately destroyed, meaning limited consciousness, sight consciousness for example, which Buddha has just said doesn't really exist, it's a fiction, we've only made this small thing out of something big, as I said before, how can what is ultimately destroyed be a cause by which one cultivates in the hope of obtaining the fruition of the thus come one seven-fold permanent abode? In other words, you've just explained to me that sight and all the other senses are kind of fictional reductions, but yet you also said that through meditating on

[13:52]

these senses we can achieve enlightenment. How could it be that this thing which you just explained to me doesn't really exist can be the source of our practice to realize the limitless? World Honored One, when it is apart from light and darkness, the seeing is ultimately empty, just as when there is no sense object, the essence of thought is extinguished. I go back and forth in circles, minutely searching, and basically there is no such thing as my mind or its objects. Just what should be used to seek the unsurpassed enlightenment? And he goes on and ends his speech with, and I hope that you will instruct us, those of us who are confused in this way, please help us, O Buddha, and Buddha says, Ananda, you have studied and learned much, but you have not yet really understood. When the true inversion manifests, you really cannot recognize it yet. The true inversion, turning around, this is the basic,

[14:59]

again I'm repeating what the sutra itself repeats many, many times, that what we need to do is shine our light inwardly, instead of grabbing the world with our senses, and therefore making the world be inexorably separate from ourselves. We have to reverse that and shine the light back inside and recognize that we are complete in all our acts of consciousness and the world is not elsewhere, the world is in the consciousness itself. So you don't yet recognize that, Ananda. Lest your sincerity and faith remain insufficient, I will try to make use of an ordinary happening to dispel your doubts. And then here comes this wonderful little demonstration that I really think is nice, I like it very much. Then the Buddha says to Rahula, who is his son and one of his disciples, go ring a bell, would you? And strike

[16:03]

it. And Rahula strikes the bell and he says to Ananda, Ananda did you hear that bell? And Ananda and the members of the Great Assembly all say, we heard it. Then the bell stopped and the Buddha said, do you hear it now? And they all said, we do not hear it. Then Rahula struck the bell again and the Buddha asked, do you hear it now? And they all said, we hear it. The Buddha asked, what do you hear and what do you not hear? And Ananda and the members of the Great Assembly all said to the Buddha, when the bell is rung, we hear it. Once the sound of the bell ceases so that even its echo fades away, we do not hear it. So far, makes sense, right? Then the Buddha had Rahula strike the bell again and he asked Ananda,

[17:10]

is there sound now? And Ananda said, there is sound. After a short time the sound ceased and the Buddha again asked, is there a sound now? And Ananda and everybody else said, no, there is no sound. After a moment Rahula again struck the bell and the Buddha asked again, is there sound now? Ananda and the Great Assembly said together, there is sound. The Buddha asked Ananda, what is meant by sound and what is meant by no sound? Ananda and the Great Assembly told the Buddha, when the bell is struck, there is sound. Once the sound ceases and even the echo fades away, there is said to be no sound. So, right? Would you say the same? I would. So, we're just like Ananda. The Buddha said to Ananda and the Great Assembly, why are you inconsistent in what you say? What?

[18:16]

Inconsistent? What do you mean, Buddha? That's just what the Great Assembly said, just like we would say. And the Buddha explained, when I asked you if it was your hearing, you said it was your hearing. Then, when I asked you if it was sound, you said it was sound. I cannot ascertain from your answers if it is hearing or if it is sound. Isn't that inconsistent? Ananda, when the sound is gone without an echo, you say there is no hearing. If there were really no hearing, the hearing nature would be extinguished. It would be just like dead wood. If then the bell were sounded again, how would you know? What you know to be there or not there is the defiling object of sound. But could… Sound. Snoring. Perfect. No, this is very good. If you snore again,

[19:27]

we will all become enlightened on hearing that sound. Excellent. So, everybody, pay close attention. Listen, see if you can hear. And then if she snores, I'll say, do you hear a sound or not? So, what you know to be there or not is the defiling object of sound. But could the hearing nature be there or not be there depending on your perception of its being there or not? If the hearing could really not be there, what would perceive that it was not? So, Ananda, the sounds that you hear are what are subject to production and extinction, not your hearing. The arising and cessation of sounds cause your hearing nature to be as if there or not there. So, now, what this is saying is that sound is an object outside of our

[20:31]

consciousness and ear, right? Sound is sometimes there's sound and sometimes there's not. This is not… I don't say… I'm not saying this is logical. I'm just telling you what it says here in the sutra. You have to just accept it or not. However, the consciousness of hearing sometimes is activated by a sound and not activated when there's no sound, right? So, that's why when there's a sound, we say, I hear something. When there's no sound, we say, I don't hear it. But what he's saying is that the consciousness of hearing is always there, whether or not it's activated. Your consciousness, whether or not it's called up into your awareness by an object, is always there. Earlier, there was a very similar argument when the Buddha encountered a king. And the king, you elder hostile folks would appreciate this. I'm not so far away from you in age, so I appreciate it myself. When the king was old, not so old

[21:38]

really, but old. And he was saying, I'm old. My bones are getting creaky. I used to be younger. And he has this long discussion with the Buddha about this aging. And the Buddha says, okay, now how old is your sight itself, your seeing? How old is your seeing itself? And through dialogue, he gets the king to see that the seeing itself of the king, now his eyes might not be as good as they once were and so forth, but the seeing itself hasn't aged at all. So, I'm trying to distinguish between the organ of hearing and the organ of seeing might be with age a little bit not as good as it once was. But the experience, the consciousness of hearing and seeing is exactly the same now, however old you are, as it was when you were a baby. Because consciousness is a kind

[22:40]

of, he's saying in this sutra, consciousness is a kind of permanent, not to be described, animation of our lives. And it doesn't age. It doesn't come, it doesn't go, and it doesn't age. And you can't say that it is or it isn't. So, this is a very important point because this consciousness that animates our lives, that enables us to see and hear and so on, that is actually working within every act of seeing and hearing and speaking and so on and so forth, this consciousness is beyond the category of existence, non-existence. So, this is very important because what that means is that this consciousness transcends life and death, even when the small consciousness that we know about is gone. And we're, people in the world say, whoops, person's dead. Actually, the big consciousness

[23:46]

that flows through us is still there. So, we've lost our temporary body and organs, but we've actually entered the bigger flow of consciousness. So, that's what, that's the implications of what he's saying here. And we can train in this by relating differently to our acts of perception. Instead of grabbing out to a world that is a projection of our minds, which is really true, you know, according to physics and psychology and brain science and so forth, it's obvious that, as I've said before in the class, the world that we live in is a projection of our own sense apparatus. Not that the world doesn't exist, but the physical human world that we live in is created by the human sensory apparatus, because like a little bug lives in a different world, right? And a bird lives in a different world, and an amoeba lives in a different world, and a bacteria

[24:47]

lives in a different world. They see a different world, that the world is not, they don't have, there's no chairs and tables in a bacterial world. There isn't. They don't exist in a bacterial world, you know, and so forth. So, our world, it really is a projection of our minds. However, we become a prisoner of this projection. We become very unhappy, because the projection's not working out the way we want it to work out. You know, like, I wasn't supposed to get old like this. My body doesn't work. That wasn't my plan. What's going on here? So, in other words, it's okay that the world's a projection, but that becomes a problem for us, and we suffer for that. So, this sutra is asking us, recognize that the world is a projection. Return, understand the nature of your own consciousness, and then you really, really will be fearless, and will be able to have happiness, recognizing that contained in all your acts of perception is this vastness. So, yeah. Yes? So, the example of the bell and the song.

[25:50]

Yes. It may also mean that we sometimes assume that there is no awareness, because nothing's activated. Right. But it's always there. Exactly. And we try, like, to be aware by trying to activate the awareness. Right. But it's always there. Right. Right. And it gives many examples of sleeping, when you're sleeping. I think pretty soon here in the sutra, there's an individual who's sleeping, and they're hearing a sound in their sleep, and that sound, as I'm sure many of you have had this experience, you probably have it all the time, when your alarm clock goes off in the morning, and you're having a dream, and what a coincidence, in the dream, there's a sound. Your mind, you know. So, here you are, you're sleeping, and your sense apparatus is not working, and yet it is working. So, it's always there, whether there's an object or not, even when you're unconscious, the consciousness is there. So, going on here, Buddha says,

[26:54]

you are so upside down, Ananda, that you mistake sound for hearing. No wonder you are so confused, that you take what is everlasting for what is annihilated. You think that the hearing consciousness, which is always present, disappears when the sound is gone. That's how stupid you are. Shame on you. Oh yeah, then it's just this part here, just the part I just mentioned. Consider someone who falls asleep when they're napping. Somebody's pounding clothes, or pounding rice in the household while he's sleeping, and then in the dream, the person hears the sound of beating and pounding, and takes it for something else, perhaps for the striking of a drum, or the ringing of a bell. In the dream, he wonders why the bell sounds like stone or wood, and so on. That's an illustration of the fact that even though you're unconscious, the hearing still operates. So, even though she was snoring a minute ago, she was taking in everything that I was saying,

[27:55]

probably in a much more significant way than if she had been conscious. Okay, so how could the person wake up and remember this if the hearing wasn't always there? See, and then just like I was saying, even when your body is gone, and your light and life move on, in other words, when your life is finished, how could this nature leave you? See, how could this consciousness? So, the point is that through your practice, and this is how we practice, you know, as you know, we sit every day in meditation, and we have long retreats sometimes, and so on, and we really train our mind and our heart and our spirit in meditation practice. And when we do this, this becomes a very, very deep part of our lives. The feeling and the sense of life, the feeling for life that comes when you do daily meditation

[29:01]

practice over many, many years, very intensively, you then begin to have this feeling about consciousness that he's talking about here. You know then that the consciousness that right now is animates your life, never leaves you, even when you leave this life behind. So, you get a kind of confidence, a confident feeling from that. But because living beings, from time without beginning, have pursued forms and sounds, and have followed their thoughts as they turn and flow, just like we do, isn't that what we do? From beginningless time, we pursue forms and sounds, and we follow our thoughts as they turn and flow. They still, we still, because we do that, we still are not enlightened to the purity, wonder, and permanence of our consciousness. We do not accord with what is eternal, but chase after things which are subject to production and extinction. Because of this,

[30:06]

we are born again and again, and become mixed with defilement as they flow and turn. But if they reject production and extinction, and uphold true permanence, an everlasting light will appear. And with that, the sense organs, defiling objects in consciousness will disappear. The appearance of thought becomes defilement, the emotions of the consciousness become dirtiness. If you stay far away from these two, then your Dharma-I will accordingly become pure and bright. How could you fail to accomplish unsurpassed knowledge and enlightenment? So, this sounds a little drastic, and I would say that, of course, it sounds like somehow we're supposed to zone out, you know, into some other universe. But I would say, in practical terms, that we recognize, you know, there's the relative, this is talking about the absolute nature of the

[31:09]

relative world. So, in actual, practically speaking, we recognize within the ordinary relative world, this absolute, everlasting quality. We don't seek to make our minds into a big blank or something, where the world will disappear. But we understand that the world is, in a way, already disappeared, just the way it is. Because we understand that there's no object outside the mind to seek. So, because of that, there's a kind of calmness with what comes and goes. And this is very practical, because, as we all know, everything is impermanent. Everything comes and goes, all mental states, all acts of perception, all relationships, the body itself, the mind itself, comes and goes. If we take those objects that are impermanent to be the only thing that matters to us, and there isn't anything else, then, of course, ultimately our life is one

[32:09]

of disappointment. Because no matter how much we try to shore ourselves up against the loss of all these things, we will definitely suffer these losses on a regular basis. And so, it really just is good, very good insurance policy to recognize that that which in our very lives is deeper and wider than that is something that we should spend some time and some energy in our lives cultivating a relationship with that. And this is, I don't know, many of our visitors tonight may do no spiritual practice or many kinds of spiritual practice. This is the essence, I think, of all spiritual practice, regardless of the tradition, is that we would turn our life in the direction of something that's broader and bigger than just that which comes and goes, something eternal, some larger, wider space. So, anyway, let's see now, I'll skip some now.

[33:12]

Yes, now we come to the next part about the knots, very famous section here. Let me see. Most of the Mahayana sutras are full of very supernatural parts. So, I'll read you one of those little parts. It seems like one of the things that Buddhists do is rub the crown of their disciples' heads with their hand as a kind of gesture of loving-kindness and maybe to knock some sense into their heads. So, this, the Buddha did this, he rubbed the crown of Ananda's head with his

[34:22]

Jambudanda purple golden bright hand. Buddha has a colorful hand. Instantaneously, all the Buddha lands in the ten directions quaked in six ways, which they usually do whenever something really good is about to happen. And then Buddha's as numerous as fine motes of dust, each one dwelling in his own respective world. He emitted a precious light from the crown of his head. So, you get the picture now, he's rubbing the head and then all of a sudden the world quakes and appears all over as many as there are motes of dust, little Buddhas. And each little Buddha has a whole world that's operating with that Buddha. And each little Buddha is shooting out a light ray from his head. It's very psychedelic, don't you think? At one and the same time, their light went from their own countries to the Jada Grove, which is where this sutra is taking place, Buddhists teaching this sutra in

[35:28]

the Jada Grove. So, all these Buddhists from everywhere shot that ray of light into the Jada Grove and it all came onto the crown of the Buddha's head, who's speaking this sutra. And all in the great assembly obtained what they had never obtained before, which means that they all became enlightened on this point that the Buddha is telling them. And then all they heard, all these Buddhas that are numerous as the fine motes of dust throughout the ten directions, in other words, infinite motes of dust in ten directions, they all heard the Buddhas speaking to Ananda, each one moving his mouth, but it was only one voice speaking to Ananda. And here's what they said, Good indeed, Ananda. Very good. You wish to recognize your innate ignorance that causes

[36:35]

you to turn on the wheel, meaning the wheel of birth and death and suffering. The origin of the knot of birth and death is simply your six sense organs and nothing else. That's what's causing your suffering and your restlessness ever and forever and ever through the realm of birth and death. It's just this knot of the six sense organs. You want to understand unsurpassed Bodhi, enlightenment, so that you can quickly realize bliss, liberation, tranquility and wonderful permanence. It too is your six sense organs and nothing else. Isn't that something? The cause of all the misery in the world is the six sense organs and nothing

[37:42]

else. And the way to end all that misery is the six sense organs and nothing else. So Ananda heard this, but even though all these Buddhas were saying it all at the same time, he didn't understand. So he bowed his head and he said to the Buddha, how can what causes me to revolve in the cycle of birth and death and what enables me to gain bliss and wonderful permanence be the six sense organs in both cases and nothing else? How can that be? The Buddha said to Ananda, the six sense organs and the objects, in other words the organ and the object, are of the same source. The bonds and the release are not two.

[38:42]

So the human problem is that I'm over here and you're over there. That's the human problem, right? I want food and there's no food. I'm lonely and everybody's elsewhere. We live in a world of exile, right? The world is somewhere else. We're always, our whole life long, we're trying to reach out and get something to complete ourselves and we get all kinds of things. We really work hard to get all kinds of things to complete ourselves, but it never quite works out. If you really think deeply about it, you really have to admit, I think, this is my experience, it doesn't quite work out. And what the Buddha is saying here is the reason why it doesn't quite work out is because it wasn't true in the first place. As long as you project the world outside of yourself, other than you, you will never be able to close the gap

[39:47]

between yourself and the world. And you'll always be looking for, it'll always be, you know, it's like that paradox, you know, you can reduce it by half, but then it's still there, and you reduce it by half, and no matter how many halves, the gap is still there. And the thing is that it's not so to begin with. The world and yourself are not two different things. Consciousness is one. You are consciousness. The world is consciousness. The sense organ and the sense object are not two different things. The nature of consciousness is empty and false. The consciousness that tells us that we're here and you're there is really empty and false. It is like flowers in space, meaning something like floaters in your eyes. It looks like things are there, floating in front of your eyes, but there's nothing there. The appearance and the perception, both devoid of a nature, support each other like intertwining

[40:50]

reeds. Therefore, you now base your knowledge on awareness and perception, but that is fundamental ignorance. The absence of a view regarding awareness and perception is nirvana. That's pretty good, huh? The absence of a view. You now base your knowledge on awareness and perception, but that is fundamental ignorance. The absence of a view regarding awareness and perception is nirvana. Most of our experience of the world is conceptual. Mostly, we are interpreting a world in our minds. Even if you never read a book and you never heard of Descartes or Kant or anybody like that, if you grew up in a human culture, you're already a philosopher.

[41:52]

You have learned, when you learn language, how to experience the world by defining it and conceptualizing it in your own mind. So you have a belief system buried within your acts of perception that is putting you, holding the world at arm's length from you and making you unhappy because you're at arm's length from the world and now you're reaching out. Our whole lives are spent reaching out, reaching out. In other words, not believing that story, having no view at all. In other words, letting acts of perception come and go without being caught by the view that's culturally determined. That's nirvana. That's nirvana. And in order to come to that, you have to meditate on the senses. The next part of the sutra is how to meditate on the senses. It goes through each and every sense and talks about how to meditate on it. To let go of a view in regard to awareness

[42:57]

and perception, that is nirvana. And then the World Honored One, Buddha, said all this again in poetry. And then I'll skip that part because it's repeating the same thing. And I think that that is how the first the next of this volume, volume five ends, I think. Whoops, not quite. So, the sixth sense consciousness, therefore, we have to focus on that, how we perceive the world. We have to untie those knots. And he says you should select an organ. Earlier he talked about different organs. Select a good organ that's really good and then meditate on that and reverse

[44:02]

this. Now, at the risk of really being terribly boring, I think I'm going to go over this in the commentary. I've been reading to you from the sutra itself. I keep saying it's seven volumes long. It really isn't seven volumes long. It's really maybe two volumes long. But the other five volumes are commentary. And I've been giving my own personal commentary. I haven't been reading the commentary of Master Hua. But in this case, I think I will, because here Master Hua is talking about, it's a little technical, but he's talking about the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness, the eight consciousnesses, and how they relate to the five skandhas.

[45:03]

So, I know that some of you, some very small minority of those in the room, are interested in this. So, for your benefit, I'm going to see if I can limit myself to about ten minutes to go through this. There are eight consciousnesses. The eighth consciousness is called the alaya vijnana or the storehouse consciousness. This is very close to how things really are, but not quite. The analogy is given, when you look up at the sky and you see the moon, then you stick your finger on your eyeball, and you look again, and lo and behold, there's two moons. Does that make sense? One of them is the real moon and the other one is totally identical to the real moon and depends on it. It's just that it's an illusion, right? That's the eighth consciousness. The real moon is not an object of consciousness at all. The real moon is beyond being an object of

[46:22]

consciousness. Nobody can say, oh, reality, yes, I saw that yesterday, as if it were a thing that you saw like a movie or something. Reality isn't like that. Reality is beyond any cognition, any consciousness. But, if you poke your eye, you see something. So the eighth consciousness is pretty good, pretty authentic, but not quite it. So that's the eighth consciousness, the alaya vijnana. The seventh consciousness is called the…pass away in the mind. Even if we lose our coherent sense of ego, the mind still works, right? It produces things, they pass away, except we have no organizing principle. Like if somebody has Alzheimer's disease or something like that, the mind, things come and go in the mind, but it's disturbing because they have no organizing principle, right? So the mind functions, thoughts appear and so forth, but they're organized by ego, and the source of them is the alaya. So the sixth consciousness is mental consciousness,

[47:25]

and the other five consciousnesses go along with the other five senses – eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. So that's the eighth body, meaning touch. So five sense consciousnesses, mind, ego, and alaya. Those are the eight consciousnesses. Could you describe the alaya again? Alaya is the storehouse consciousness. It's the trans…it's bigger than ego. Some people have said that it's very similar to what Jung meant by the…what did he call it? The… Collective. Collective unconscious, yeah, the collective unconscious. And how did you say it relates to… It's the storehouse of all images and everything in the mind, where seeds, impressions from our experiences go into there and come up later on as memories and dreams and so forth. I'm sorry, what were you saying? How does it relate to the… Ego? Sixth and seventh. Well, it is the source of all of the experience, and out of it comes…we put into it goes

[48:34]

the impressions that the six consciousnesses experience, and it provides the images and the basic material for us to perceive the world. And so we have…because of the eighth consciousness we can perceive the world, and then we…things happen, and we have experiences and perceptions, and those perceptions go back into the eighth consciousness, and then more arises. So it's kind of a bigger consciousness than our personal consciousness, but it speaks…our personal consciousness is in dialogue with it. So the seventh consciousness of ego is in dialogue with it. So the ego is a kind of a go-between between the eighth consciousness and the mind. It organizes our experience and it magnifies our experience by going back and forth from small self to a larger reality. Okay? Close enough. I probably didn't…I probably don't understand it that well myself, so

[49:34]

then…so that's one…that's a map of consciousness. Then there's the five skandhas, which is form, physical reality, feelings, sensations, our initial reactions to what we see in front of us, form, feelings, perceptions, which was conceptualizations when we define something. We feel it, we sense it, then we define it, and then we want to grab it or run away from it. That's the fourth skandha of formations. And the fifth skandha is consciousness. So I'm going to just read this part of the commentary where he talks about the relationship between the eight consciousnesses and the five skandhas. But the source of the eighth consciousness, which is founded on ignorance that creates production and extinction, is the nature of the treasury of the Buddha, which is not subject to production or extinction. So as I said before,

[50:41]

the source of the eighth consciousness, which is basically confusion, is the real moon. Relying on truth, a falseness arises, and the Buddha changes into the eighth consciousness, the storehouse consciousness. The eighth consciousness is the basis for the existence of the five skandhas, form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. Starting with the skandha of consciousness, one progresses to the skandha of activity or formations. This is the seventh consciousness, the manas consciousness, also called the transmitting consciousness. So he says that for those of you, again, interested in this kind of technical stuff, the seventh consciousness is the equivalent of the fourth skandha, the skandha of formations.

[51:42]

The ego consciousness, the I consciousness, comes to being when we reach out and try to manipulate the world, which ultimately we fail at. So this is also called the transmitting consciousness. This consciousness transmits messages from the sixth consciousness to the eighth consciousness. It forms the activity or formations skandha. The next skandha is that of perception. This is the sixth consciousness, the mind consciousness. The feeling skandha is the first five consciousnesses of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. So there's this kind of correspondence between... This is the part I wanted to share with you, those of you who study this stuff. The alaya vijnana, the eighth consciousness, is the basis of the five skandhas.

[52:50]

The seventh consciousness corresponds to the fourth skandha formations. The sixth consciousness, the manas consciousness, corresponds to perception, and the first five corresponds to feeling. And then he says that in each of these five skandhas, excuse me, in four of the five skandhas there's one knot, and in the skandha of form, the first skandha, there's two knots, because form, physical matter, has more... There's a big difference between physical matter and consciousness. Physical things are not fundamentally different from consciousness according to the Buddhist analysis of reality. Basically what it says is physical reality is virtually the same as mental or psychic reality, except that it's a lot slower.

[53:59]

It's as if the body is a very slow thought, which is so slow that it takes on what appears to be another form entirely, but it's really not categorically different, which, again, you know, modern physics sort of corroborates this, because it says that matter can be released into energy, right? You can take a piece of matter and basically make it into a non-physical force, and energy goes through our brains, right? Like I was talking to this guy, a fascinating conversation with this guy who was an electrician, and he was saying that, you know, all about electricity... I was trying... To this day I still don't understand, you know, what electricity is. But one thing I found out from him is that nobody... You know how they say you make electricity? Well, nobody makes electricity, actually. Electricity is always there. You just sort of like get to where you can get at it and use it, but it's there all the time.

[55:04]

So nothing is used up when you make electricity. If you burn coal, you know, the coal is used up. But if you make electricity like you make it with a copper wire and a magnet, and you can make all the electricity you ever want to make, and it won't use up the copper wire or the magnet, because you're not making anything. It's very strange. Well, the same electricity that goes through the copper magnet and all this is what makes your brain work. There's electrical impulses going on in your brain, right? So you can take matter and turn it into that, whatever that is, because there isn't any fundamental difference between the consciousness that moves through your brain and matter itself. But because matter is so much slower... Because matter is so much slower, it seems to be different. That's why matter has two knots.

[56:14]

In other words, the point is that if you insult me, I will get very upset about that. However, if you don't feed me for two weeks, I'll get very upset. Right? You want to change my consciousness? Don't feed me for two weeks, and believe me, I'll have a different state of mind two weeks later. Right? So in other words, it's harder to break... We're very convinced. The body is convincing, right? Thoughts are convincing, but the body is even more convincing. So in order to break our attachment and our confusion about our own body, this is a big deal. So there's two knots. That's the whole point. There's two knots there. Everything else, there's one knot, but the body has two knots. Okay, well, ten minutes. That was ten minutes. Okay. So the Buddha then says, all of this is extremely subtle, and that's why I seldom mention it.

[57:26]

Which is true. With your own mind, you grasp at your own mind. What is not illusory, you turn into illusion. If you don't grasp, there is no non-illusion. If even non-illusion does not arise, how can illusory dharmas be established? This is called the wonderful lotus flower, the regal Vajra gem of enlightenment. So, then volume four ends with this. When Ananda and the Great Assembly heard the unsurpassed compassionate instruction of the Buddha, this harmonious and brilliant verse, with its clear and penetrating wonderful principles, their hearts and eyes were opened. And they exclaimed that dharma such as this had never been before.

[58:37]

And that's the end of the fourth volume. So, in the fifth volume, uh, however, you'll all be hard to know that the class ends tonight. This is the last class, and you're just going to have to wait. It's going to be a real cliffhanger. You're just going to have to wait until we have another class sometime. I'm actually sort of, I'm actually sort of casting around for a place where they want to study this sutra again, anywhere. You know, churches, synagogues, anywhere. Then Ananda says, you know, this happens all the time. It's getting to be,

[59:41]

really funny. And Ananda says, well, you know, Buddha, I still don't quite understand how this works. It's about the ninth time that he's exclaimed how wonderful the teaching was, and everything was perfect and great, and he really understood everything. But then he says, but you know, Buddha, I still, I still have not understood the sequence for releasing the knots such that when the six are untied, the one is gone also. Just like you said before, I didn't quite get that part. So, I'm hoping that you would be so compassionate, and once again, take pity on me and the rest of us in the assembly, and not only us, but those in the future who are going to need to hear about this, and bestow on us the sounds of the Dharma, and wash away our heavy confusion. Would you do

[60:43]

that? So, the Buddha basically got himself ready, and he said, well, I'll see what I can do. And it tells us, it was given to the Buddha at that time by a God who flew down from the heavens and gave him this cloth. So, now you picture this. The Buddha's just been handed this cloth, beautiful cloth. Ananda has asked him to explain further. So, now the Buddha's going to do another demonstration, just like the one with the bell, which was perfectly clear, and we got that one, right? Now he's got another one. So, he takes the cloth, and he ties it into a knot, right? Perfectly good cloth, no knots in it, he ties it into a knot. What is this called? And Ananda and the entire assembly, like in third grade, you know, say, it's a knot, Buddha!

[61:48]

Fine. Then, he takes the cloth, and he ties another knot. What is this? It too is called a knot, Buddha! And he does this several more times, until there's now six knots in the cloth of layered flowers. We all know what the six knots are, right? We know. And each one he held up, and he said, what is this? And each time they all said, it is a knot. Then the Buddha said to Ananda, when I first tied the cloth, you called it a knot. Since the cloth of layered flowers is basically a single strip, how can you call the second and third ties knots as well? Ananda said to the Buddha, well, this cloth of woven layered flowers is just one piece, but as I consider it, when the Thus Come One makes one tie, it is called a knot.

[62:54]

If he were to make a hundred ties, they would be called a hundred knots. How much the more so with this cloth, which has exactly six knots, not seven or five. Why does the Thus Come One allow me to call only the first tie a knot, and not the second or third ties? The Buddha wants to say that only the first one is called a knot, the other ones are not knots. The Buddha told Ananda, you know that this precious cloth of flowers is basically one strip. You're getting the analogy, right? There's one consciousness, and it's tied into six knots, so that we experience, to hear something is quite a different thing from seeing something, which is quite a different thing from tasting something. These are different consciousnesses, but they're all just knots in one cloth of awareness, of consciousness, of cognizance. So you know that this precious cloth of flowers is basically one strip,

[63:56]

but when I made six ties in it, you said it had six knots, but as you carefully consider this, you will see that the substance of the cloth is the same. It is the knots that make the difference. What do you think? The first knot I tied was called number one. Continuing until I come to the sixth knot as I now tie it, is it also number one? No. Six knots, says Ananda. The sixth knot can never be called number one. In all my lives of learning, with all my understanding, how could I now confuse the names of six knots? In other words, Buddha, I don't care what you say. I know that this is six different knots. And the Buddha says, okay, the six knots are not the same, but consider their origin. They are created from the one cloth to confuse their order will not do. Your sixth sense organs are also like this.

[64:59]

So then the Buddha says, now you really don't like having these knots. I know that. So you want to untie them. How do you do that? So Ananda said, as long as these knots remain, there will be grounds for argument about what is and what is not. It is funny. Their very existence will lead to such distinctions as this knot not being that knot and that knot not being this one. In other words, the whole world is one, as Dogen says, the whole world is one bright pearl of perfection. But we divide it up into Czechoslovakia and Romania and New York City and you and me and old and young and tall and short and eyes and nose.

[66:08]

And then from that comes tremendous amounts of trouble. But if on this day I were to tie or untie all these knots so that no knots remain, then there would be no this and no that. So when there's no knots and it's only one cloth, there is no distinction. There will not even be something called one. How much the less can there be six? The Buddha said, when the six are untied, the one is gone. That's the point. Because from beginningless time your mind and nature have been made wild and rebellious, you have produced false knowledge and false views. This conceptualization that I was talking about before. This falseness continues to arise without respite and the wearisomeness of these views bring about objective dust, defilement, and so on and so on.

[67:14]

Everything in the world, the mountains, the rivers and the great earth, as well as birth, death, and nirvana, all is just the upside down appearance of flowers in the air. All these distinctions are all just knots. Then the Buddha then takes one of the knots and he pulls on the right hand side of it and he says, am I going to get the knot untied this way? No, you're just going to make it tighter if you pull on that side. He pulls on the other side, am I going to get it untied this way? No, no, it will only be tighter. You must untie the knots from their center. Ananda says to Buddha, then they will become undone. And that's true, right? If you yank on a big knot and you're pulling hard on one strand of it, that's not going to tie. You pull hard on the other. You have to go right in the middle, loosen everything up. So that's how you have to untie these knots.

[68:18]

Ananda, the Buddha dharma, I explain, arises from causes and conditions. But that is not to grasp at the mixing and uniting of course appearances in the world. The Buddha understands all worldly and world transcending dharmas and knows their fundamental causes and what conditions bring them into being. And then he says, I know how many, the Buddha's omniscient, I know how many drops of rain there are here and why the pine tree is straight and why the manzanita bush is twisted and so forth and so on. I know why the goose is white and why the crow is black. In other words, I know the causes and conditions and the reasons of the world. But that's not important. The main thing is that if the knots of the sense organs are removed, then the defiling, all these appearances and distinctions are seen to be without real substance. So we misunderstand each other, we hurt each other, right? Because of our

[69:27]

distinction and difference. But if we can untie the knots of our senses, we will see that there is nothing there separating us. And so we cannot be hurt and wounded by the world. All this ceases to be. So then the Buddha says, can these knots be untied all at the same time? No, they can be untied one at a time. So then he goes on. Now, let's see. So the Buddha basically explains all this about the senses and the knots, and then everybody's very happy. And they say, we are so happy and our bodies and minds are illuminated

[70:30]

and we are free from obstructions. We have understood the meaning of the ending of the six and the one. Still though, we have not yet totally incorporated this understanding into our lives. Yes. He did say that. No. It seems like two different things, doesn't it? Now here he's saying untie them all in turn. But I would interpret it like this. He's saying that the first one you untie opens the gateway, and you have to do all the other ones. But really, once you do the first one, the rest of them are easy. That's what I think, because it does seem contradictory.

[71:33]

Anyway, so they're all very happy and they say, we never imagined that we could meet with the Buddha in such a close relationship. They're so happy. They really adore the Buddha, and they're so happy that they can be so close to the Buddha. We are like lost infants who have suddenly found their compassionate mother. So, but would you give us one final instruction, and tell us exactly how to do this work of untying the knots. And the Buddha then, and this is where we will end, because now comes the very final famous part, where 25 different, in answer to the question of how, what's the secret, you know, this is the cliffhanging part. So that all of you, I have no doubt, the next time I'm

[72:41]

teaching a class in the Shurangama Sutra, wherever it may be, it may be in a distant state, even in another world system, but I have no doubt that all of you will want to come. And many of you will be there, because it's so exciting, this idea that the next thing the Buddha is going to talk about is how to do this. And he's not, he doesn't explain this himself. He gathers around him 25 of his greatest disciples, and each one stands up and says, this is the way to do it. And each one has a different approach. So, but the reason why this part is so wonderful is that those of you who are residents of Green Gulch know very well one of these 25 stories, because one of them is, I forget the guy's name, but the bath house Bodhisattva. When you go to use the bathrooms over here, you ever see that little picture of the 16 Bodhisattvas? You can all go look at this. You ever see that picture, that you bow and alter? There's a picture of 16

[73:46]

Bodhisattvas in the bath. And that's a Bodhisattva who stands up at this point in the sutra and says that my method for achieving enlightenment is taking a bath. Because when I go in the bath water, I meditate on the sense of touch, and I am awakened when I recognize the empty nature of the sense of touch. When I recognize that the sense of touch is not outside of myself, there's no outside and no inside, but right here in the sensation of touch, I find the empty nature of touch, and therefore my whole consciousness is illuminated. Each one of these 25 is bringing up a different aspect of sensory experience and talking about how to reverse the sensory experience. So in this case, this Bodhisattva does it by going in the bath, and so that's why in Zen temples they have that picture of the Bodhisattva. They have it also at Tassajara.

[74:47]

So that's why it's interesting to us, because we know about that. So you go look at the picture again, and now from now on, everybody, when you look at that picture, you remember the Shurangama Sutra, and you remember that. When you go take a shower, but the rest of you probably take showers too, right? Sometimes, yeah. Or baths. When you take a shower in a bath, I would invite all of you to pay very close attention to the sensation of touch. And then when you feel the sensation of touch, focus your mind on that sensation, and feel it as it really is, without having your mind be dull thinking about something else, which one often is when you're taking a shower, you're not thinking about something else. But really focus your mind on the sense of the feeling of the water touching the skin, and try to quiet your mind, and really pay absolutely the most close attention

[75:53]

you ever can pay in the present moment of sensation of touch. And I actually, I think I can go out in a limb and guarantee you that if you can do that, you will become enlightened. I think that you will, if you can just really focus your attention fully, nothing else left over, and turn the mind around on a sense of touch. So now you learn a really good Buddhist practice, taking a shower, or a bath. These monks, they talk about it, what a wonderful practice it is. And so that's why, you see, all acts of the sensory acts are potential moments of awakening. If you really are present, totally, utterly present, in hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling,

[76:54]

or touch, or even reading a poem, thinking a beautiful thought in the mind, if you can really be fully there without having the mind making commentary, explanation, complaints, congratulations, you know, all these things, but just being there with the six sense experiences, then you can truly turn the mind back to limitless consciousness. That's what this is really telling us about. And that's why, you know, in Zen places, there's so much, we hope anyway, attention to detail. That's why we take care of our little black cushion, because we recognize that in touching the black cushion, and lifting it, and feeling the heft of it, we are participating in the fullness of consciousness that goes beyond life and

[78:02]

death. Every act of every day is that. And the practice of religion is not in any way limited to those specific religious exercises that we can call religious exercises or religious things. It's every moment of consciousness, recognizing the source of all of consciousness, seeing its true source, and seeing the limitless nature of all of our acts, this is the secret, you know, of all spiritual practice, I think. So that's the teaching of the Shurangama Sutra. So this is the end of our, yes, almost the end. There's a water shortage here at Greenville, so the enlightenment's going to have to take five minutes. Is that really true? Well, don't you know what, fortunately, it only takes a moment. It only takes a moment, literally a moment. So it doesn't really make any difference, you know, how much water

[79:04]

we have or don't have. So this is the end of our, I think, the third round of four or five classes, or the second or third? I think the third. And I have no idea when I will conclude the sutra, but I will have a class sometime, somewhere, and go through the rest of it. So for those who have come tonight, you've been very, very patient and have listened. I appreciate your listening to all of this. And obviously you've learned quite a bit of Buddhism already because you understood everything. It was great, you know, so I appreciate that. And the rest of you who have been sitting through the four classes, thank you for your indulgence, and we'll see you again.

[79:56]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ