Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to be doing two classes this week, one today and one the day after tomorrow. And what I'm hoping to cover, first one today, I want to talk about the ultimate truth. So I'll need your help. This is a very challenging course. And the more times I go into it and the more times I try to understand it and talk about it, the more it helps me. So, you know, your questions would be great. And anything you can do to, you know, say, well, what about that? I would appreciate doing this together. And then a day after tomorrow, I'm going to talk about the relative truth. So basically, these are the two truths which are very important to understand the Buddha's awakened insight. And they are much discussed throughout all Buddhist commentary, all the teachers, Zen masters, everybody has to deal with some understanding of the two truths.

[01:08]

Okay, so that's us two. We have to understand if we can, and it is challenging. And the reason I'm starting with the two truths is because this is a really essential problem for ethics. And... I'll talk a little bit about why that's so. So first of all, I wanted to tell you a joke that... Where's Muhammad? May I tell that joke? Thank you. He tells it better, as you can probably imagine. So the philosophers of religion were talking about the benefit they'd gotten from many years of studying religion academically. And one of them said, well, it's really helped me in preparing to die. And they said, well, how is that so? And he said, well, I realized I will not have to look up hermeneutical ever again. Did I get it?

[02:12]

That was a good joke. This is what he and I do in Dok San. So I did look up hermeneutical once again. And it has to do with studying texts and also studying ritual and studying all the elements of religious practice. Well, not just religious practice, but probably any cultural expression. And I thought I would offer some extra credit to any of you who would like to look up some of these philosophical terms that repeat again and again whenever you try to study the commentaries on Buddhist teaching, you will run into these particular words. And they're from, you know, philosophy. And so I thought, if you'd volunteer for one of them, next class, each of you who volunteers could give maybe a 30-second or one-minute explanation of these terms. So, do I have a volunteer for one of them?

[03:12]

Yeah. Okay, no. You volunteer first, then you get your term. Well, okay. Anyway, the first one is exegesis, closely attached with hermeneutical. You can put those two together because they kind of can be used, not exactly interchangeably. E-X-E-G-I-S-I-S. I always say exegesis. Exegesis. Exegesis, yeah. Exegesis and hermeneutical. All right, so next volunteer. Mary, did you want a volunteer? Yeah, good, okay. Epistemology. Anybody else? Yeah? Did you make sure you did? You started to. I saw that. Ontology. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Soteriology. Okay, two more. Realism. Heather, idealism. Okay, great. So this is a set of terms that...

[04:15]

Like I say, they appear over and over again. And each time I look them up, I go, oh, that's helpful. So they are helpful. If you can remember them, you're very lucky. But anyway, this is kind of structure of understanding. But oftentimes you start with vocabulary. So I want to start with some vocabulary for the two truths. And the vocabulary for these classes is basically, first one is emptiness. The next one is dependent co-arising, abbreviated as DCA, and a co-arising. Then there's the conventional truth, or conventional designations, CD's, conventional designations, relative truth, same thing, the ultimate truth, non-duality, also known as the middle way, majamaka, And then the two big schools that teach all of these, work with all of these concepts are majamaka, middle way, and yogachara.

[05:21]

So that's kind of it. That's the set of vocabulary that I'll be talking about. And again, please ask questions as I go through all of this. So my first question to you is like, why do we even bother studying all of this stuff? You know, because... Like we know, we have zazen. And we have oryoki and work meeting and bath time. I mean, this is kind of an option sitting here talking about this stuff. So why do we? Why would we bother? I think it's a real question for Zen students. So we have this instruction to just sit. That's it, just sit. And one thing I heard that was helpful is that when the practice is simple, explanation is extremely difficult.

[06:26]

So if I say just sit, would you explain to me why that works or how that, where it's affordable truths and where's the Buddhist teaching and what about emptiness? And you probably would just keep sitting. It's very hard to explain. If the explanation is simple, such as the Vajrayana, where everything is explained very thoroughly, step by step. First you study this, and you do [...] 100,000 of these, and they're very simple. Each one is simple. You do a bow, okay? Now do 100,000 bows. So the explanation is very simple, but the practice is difficult. There's a story I heard from someone who was in Trampa's group, um... It became a rather famous story. He went up to Trump after finishing the four nundro practices, the 100,000 C syllables, the 100,000 bows, the 100,000. There's four of these practices that you do. It takes most people a couple of years.

[07:28]

Some people kind of get into the athletics of it. So this man finished his 400,000s, and he went to Trump, and he said, okay, I've done it, but I don't get it. What did Trump say? Do it again. Yeah. Do it again. So don't ever tell anyone you don't get it. That's the lesson I learned. Okay. So I think it's good for us to have some kind of appreciation for what the different approaches are to method that I think most of us have some familiarity with the Vajrayana, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan practices, very beautiful. And if I ever want to study something, I read the Tibetan literature because it's beautifully organized. They really are scholars. They're serious doctors of philosophy. And so I heard this description of the two.

[08:33]

Some of you heard before, like just imagine there's two Coke machines. And one of them, it has an opaque front, and there's a slot for the coin, and then there's a place for the coke to come out. That's the Zen coke machine. And then the other one, the Bajrayana coke machine, has a clear glass front. And a place for the coin, and then a place for the coke comes out. At this one, you put the quarter in, and you get to watch what happens. You follow the track. You see the wheels turn, you see this happen, and you see the coke. pop into your hand. This one you put the quarter in and you wait. The end. Still waiting. So I want to propose actually that Soto Zen has found a way between these two extremes

[09:35]

of do everything, do nothing. And I think basically, I like this expression that I brought up in Sashin of memitsu no kafu, which means attention to fine detail. So in a way, we're kind of like coke machine mechanics, you know? We actually go into it, and we look inside, we try to understand it, we try to know how to repair it, we take care of our vehicles, we hope. We take care of our water, and so on and so forth. So I think our practice in this school of Zen is to attend to the details of everyday life very carefully. And there's a teaching from the Lotus Sutra that the Buddha is understood to have knowledge of all modes. Knowledge of all modes. And the way it's taught in the Lotus Sutra that you achieve knowledge of all modes is the first, there's two steps. The first step is you have to get rid of all the gunk that you've already stored in here. You know, we have a lot of karmic baggage that we are all carrying, and it's painful as we've been hearing from each other.

[10:39]

It's very painful, our old stories, things that happened to us. And it weighs on us when we remember those stories, you know, as though still happening. So part of the practice is to begin to free ourselves from the old karmic lines that run into our lives. And, you know, I have noticed in talking with people over the years, there seems to be a process that goes on for quite a while, maybe a few years, of emptying out, you know, of kind of purification. You sit and you have all those memories and little by little they begin to fade. I've even noticed that coming down here. I knew I was coming here for a purification process. And I've noticed it happening. I'm beginning to feel a lot lighter and cleared of a lot of stuff that I was caught up in when I was back at Greenwald. So that's step one, is empty, empty out.

[11:40]

And step two is fill up with the Buddha Dharma, with the teachings of the Buddha. So that becomes who you are. And then in the future, when you think about things, you'll be thinking about the Buddha Dharma. You'll remember your practice. You'll remember your vows. You'll remember the time you spent at Tassajara. You kind of substitute those old ideas, old views with these new ideas. So, you know, I was thinking, well, that's what they did with Mac. You know, they gave him charcoal and it cleaned him out. Another distinction which, just to jump the gun a little bit on epistemology, epistemology has to do with the difference between opinion and justifiable truth. Like, it's valid because you've actually gone through a process of coming to understand it. How do you know something? Well, it's just my opinion. That's not so strong. In fact, it's very weak.

[12:42]

In fact, it's best not to even be said in most cases. But what really is good is if you have justifiable evidence for what you think. You've actually thought it through. You've done the work of coming to your views. But then you don't hold them. It's like, this is my opinion, this is my view, and it's right. You know, that's not recommended. That leads, as the Buddhist said, to quarrels. Disagreement. Disagreement leads to fighting, and fighting leads to harm. So don't hold your views. You can have them. You know, I like to think of a butterfly in my hand. There's my view. I wish I could do that. And then here, let it go. But if you go like that, what happens to the butterfly? Yeah, yikes. You want my butterfly? I don't even want it. So harm. You do harm when you hold views. So this is a really important part of our practice, is how to keep letting go.

[13:43]

Keep releasing whatever it is you think you got. Let it go. Let it go. Opinions, and particularly opinions. Whatever you think is almost certainly wrong. But it doesn't mean, you know, you shouldn't think, or there's no choice about that. We keep thinking, but just don't buy it. It's like, no, I don't think so. I mean, I'm thinking it, but I don't buy it. I don't believe it. Belief is the linchpin to our liberation. I just don't believe it. It's not my truth. So I think it's important for us to, as sitters, to study the fact and know the fact that the Buddha wasn't just sitting there vacant. You know, he did all the jhanas. I mean, I brought that up during Sashin. He understood all of these fancy ways you could trip out and do stuff with your mind and travel the universe and all that.

[14:44]

He did cosmic consciousness. He did all that fun stuff. And then he said, this is not the way. It's fine. It's part of our natural endowment to be able to travel around like that. Our imagination is amazingly clever and can do almost anything. But it needs some training to be of any use. So he was training his mind, his imagination, to be useful. And what he used it for was to think about the nature of reality and... primarily about the nature of his mind. What is this thing that's going on here? This is turn the light around. What is it to think? Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? And as I asked you this morning, how do you think not thinking? This is our, you know, if you're sitting up there, hour after hour, you might consider how do you think not thinking? That's a pretty good use of your time. You might start to sweat.

[15:45]

Yikes. Try to catch it. And then you can see how you think. You think by trying to get a hold of something. You think by trying to grab a hold of an understanding. Well, that's how I think. I think like that. And is that uncomfortable? It sure is. It's painful. Well, there you go. You've got the first and second noble truth. So we want to bring our understanding of the Buddha's teaching into our practice. We're orthopractic. We do the same practice together, but we are not orthodox. We don't have the same understandings. But we have all the understandings available to us at our disposal to use as each of us finds most beneficial. Each one of you can find the way that works best for you. And that's a big freeway we're all on. It's lots of room for different ways. But basically we're heading toward what I've already experienced in this Sangha is a great deal of kindness. one another.

[16:48]

I mean, in a way, you know, this is it. I've never been anywhere better than this, ever. So, when the Buddha watched his mind and he saw thinking, what he saw was, you know, he was looking at an object, the star, the morning star, And he had some insight. What did he see? What was his insight about that object? So in a way, one way to think of it is that he saw that he, me, is here, here, and that is there, I think. That's how I think. Here and there. Here and there is a fundamental mechanism of storytelling. once upon a time, there was a Buddha and he sat under a tree and he saw a star over there. We require this here-there causality in order to tell stories about things.

[17:55]

And stories are both the most wonderful thing we do and the most horrible thing we do. So it depends what kind of story you're telling. So the Buddha told stories about being kind and being generous and so on. So we could I think we like that. We really like hearing that story. And I think we want to know how he got to be like that. How he knew that that was the way. How did he know that? So it has to do with how you think. How you're thinking. It's thinking. It's all about thinking. So... One of the things he talked about was something that I'm going to try to talk about myself, which is empty. So, if I hold up this thing and ask you, what does it mean if I tell you it's empty, what is the first thing you think?

[18:58]

It is not. That's true. I wish it were, because then you'd think it has nothing in it. It's empty. Unfortunately, it's not. It's not empty, but it is empty. And so, as a normal person, you think it's got nothing in it. Cup is empty. If I tell you the cup is empty, you think, I think, there's nothing in it. That's called conventional truth. There's nothing wrong with that. That's absolutely the right answer. However, as Buddhists, if I say to you, what does it mean when I tell you this cup is empty? Then what do you tell me? It's in permanent existence. What else do you know? Or what else can you think of? It's dependently co-arisen. It's devoid of self. No essential attributes. Pretty fancy thinking.

[20:02]

Pretty fancy thinking. And did you all just figure that out yourselves? Did you read it somewhere? Or heard it in a lecture or something? Somebody told you probably because it's not so obvious what emptiness means. So there's this term that appears again and again in the literature as well called upon analysis. The Buddha was analyzing the star. He was analyzing his mind. He was pondering, what is the true nature of this object, of that object in the sky? What's the true nature of it? And he came up with this understanding that it's empty of inherent existence. It's impermanent. It doesn't have any own being. So this is a result of really deep consideration. It's not the obvious answer. And that's the ultimate truth.

[21:04]

Requires analysis. We don't just kind of grab a hold of it and go, oh, that's pretty clear. I know what empty is. I can never remember what emptiness means. And this is 35 years into it. And I'm like, oh, God, I've got to look that up again. I've learned to say empty of a being, as some of you have. I can say that. But then I've got to really think through it. What does that mean is empty of only? So my thinking through it is what I'm going to offer you right now. And again, I had to go back over my notes and I had to kind of sit with myself and go like, am I sure? Do I dare? So please forgive me because I might get all confused. Okay. So what it means is something is empty. Whatever. Anything. So first of all, What is a phenomenon? Because we're always talking about phenomena. What is a phenomenon?

[22:05]

It's another vocabulary word for somebody. Does anybody know just offhand of what it means? Something you can perceive. Yeah, with your senses. So, phenomena are things you can perceive with your senses. What about concepts like trust? Are they not empty as well? You can perceive that with your mind consciousness. I know that's a tricky one. So basically there's six sense consciousnesses, the five usual ones, smell, taste, and then there's thought, mind consciousness. And each one of those specializes in particular phenomena. So we got a cup, right? And we say that it's empty. Now, there are three ways that we know that it's empty. Empty means no on being. On being means it's not independent.

[23:10]

It does not have its own independent existence outside of everything else. That's not so complicated. But how is that so? How do you explain that? So there are three ways to explain how this cup is dependent. for its existence on other things. The first way to explain it is by talking about what caused the cup. How did it come into being? So what caused the cup? The elements. Elements? What kind of elements? Well, we had glass and water and people who put it together. Yeah. Yeah. So all the elements of existence, temperature, clay, potters, glaze, everything you can name. that went into making this cup and the fact that the sun didn't go out that day and we still are alive on the planet and everything. So basically, this cup depends for its existence on everything.

[24:13]

So what's surrounding the dotted line is reality itself. And in order to get a cup, we have to do something really funny, which is number three here. I'm not going to tell you how to... So first of all, its causes and conditions bring you a cup, a phenomenon. So what's another way that it's dependent? What else is it dependent on? Well, that's number three. Language. Names. Number two, anyone want to guess on two views? Parts. Parts. He's been in my class at the later times. Parts. Okay, so parts. Some of you mentioned some of the parts, but if you took this cup and analyzed it, you could find silicon and you could find blah, blah, blah, water and all that stuff.

[25:24]

And how about if I took the cup and threw it on the ground? Where'd the cup go? Is that a cup? She's form. Did it change form? It's got a new name. Broken class. Broken class. Shards. We have a new vocabulary. We can change the name of it. It's not a cup anymore. Where's my cup? Oh, no. Shards. It's garbage. Junk. Cups go up. Just like us when you're gone, right? Corpse. And that's not mine. Okay, so... So here's the three ways you can explain to someone who asks you, what does it mean that something's dependent for its existence? It's dependent because of causes and conditions. It's dependent because of parts. It's made up of parts. It doesn't have its own existence. It's separate from its parts. No own existence separate from the causes and conditions. And the most important one for our study purposes is it has no own existence apart from our assigning it

[26:26]

A conventional name. Cup. And what makes this conventional? Can you say? Why is that a conventional? What does convention have to do with that? We keep emphasizing conventions. Agreements. Agreements. Agreements. By whom? Us. Us. We have a common perceived reality of this as a cup, even though it's compounded as a phenomenon. So it's easy just to label it as a cup. But who is it that can do that? Humans. I bet Hiro doesn't call it a cup when he's home. What do you call it? Which I want. So, English-speaking humans. Subsets, right? We are subsets. We have language that is based on agreement of some subset of us. So we think this is a cup because it's in English. So we have to think about that too. That's not a cup. That's not even a cup. Unless you're in English. So all of these things are conditional.

[27:29]

It's convention of some subset of people who agreed on what to call things. They pointed to that and they pointed to that and said, let's call that fire, let's call that girl, let's call that boy. And then we got stuck with these labels as if the labels are who we are. Person. American. Homosexual. African American. We've got some heavy-duty Legos that cause people a lot of pain. And those are just nice terms for those designations. We've got a lot of other names that aren't so nice. So this is a very dangerous element. Like I said, it can be for very, very good, beautiful poetry, and it can be to create help for one another and for living beings. Okay, so... That's what it means when we say the cup is empty of. So it's really good to memorize this particular phrase.

[28:32]

Empty of own being. Meaning separate existence. Isolate. You cannot isolate. You can only get a phenomenon by taking it out of reality. So I was going to suggest this to you as well. If I say the word reality, what does your mind do? Point to reality. Use your finger. You have to move really fast. Yeah. Reality. So your mind, is your mind kind of going to do a 360 spherical thing? Is it all around you? That word referred to something that is all-inclusive? Contemplate reality. That's cosmic consciousness. That's one of the genres. Reality. The whole thing. You can do it. Okay, now cut. Laser fire. So we pull an element out of reality by giving me the name.

[29:37]

And in thinking, we now have something that's separate. You separate it out of reality. Well, that's absurd. We can't do that. But we can think that. And that's why this is a trick. This is a trick that the mind plays. And it's a trick we need to understand. and to admire ourselves for. There's a story in the Sandhinyamotana Sutra, which is going to be on the reserve shield when I get back to you, meaning untying the knots. Untying the knots. It's fabulous and challenging, but not well worth the trouble. It's a Yogacara text, the sutra that upon which the Yogisara school is based. And in there, there's a story of the magician at the crossroads. And they're helping us to understand how this trick works. So the magician, this is the trick of the mind.

[30:40]

So the magician takes sticks and twigs and jewels and all kinds of valuable things and creates a magic spell that looks like elephants and giraffes. And tigers. And so the people from the village come by where he's standing, and what do they see? Elephants and giraffes. Yeah, elephants and giraffes and tigers. Right. What does the magician see? He sees the reality of, they see the illusion. What does the magician see? What does the magician see? He sees the people seeking delusion. Yeah, keep guessing. Yes, yes, elephants, giraffes, and tigers. But what does he know? It's a trick.

[31:41]

So you don't see something different. When you understand the true nature of reality, you don't see something like, woo, woo, woo, woo. I guess I have special vision. You see cups. But you know it's a trick. And you know how the trick works. This is how the trick works. So this is analysis. It's by a deep analysis of phenomena that you know the truth, the ultimate truth. Is that something you're going to not all of a sudden like, you know, during Zazen, you have one of those big Kensho things. Don't mistake that for understanding teenagehood of mind or the ultimate truth. Because what happens when it passes away and you want it back? Suffering. Suffering for life. Prison and being locked out of prison. I can't get back to odds.

[32:45]

Well, keep trying. But it's not where you really want to go. You really want to go right here to understand it. who you are, where you are. You understand the nature of Kento. What was that? There's lots written about it. You can find out what it was. That's not mysterious. There's a movie called The Mission. You remember The Mission with Albert De Niro? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So he's killed his brother in a jealous fit over a woman. And he's just... It's the worst. So he... punishes himself, puts himself in prison. This is in South America, at the time of the conquistadores. So he's a warrior. And so Apogne comes and says, well, you can repair your sin if you'll come with me and help save the native people who are being destroyed. So he's willing to go on this mission.

[33:47]

And he assigns himself the chore of carrying his armor in a net bag behind it. It's like a penance. So they're climbing this waterfall. It's an amazing scene. Going up this waterfall, he's got his armor in this net bag, and he's pulling it up, and it keeps threatening you to pull him down off this chasm. And he keeps struggling and struggling and struggling. Finally, he gets to the top, and he crawls up on the ground, and this native, Amazonian native, with this wonderful face paint, comes toward him with a knife, and you think, that's it. He's a goner. And the man takes the knife and slices the batik off. And you hear the armor going. That's Kensha. It's a great relief. Because you're letting go of your false self. You're carrying around all this time. It's just not true. But you haven't been able to get rid of it. It's your penance for something you never even did.

[34:51]

So when that relief happens, it seems like something really special. But actually, as Paul Disco said to me, it's not what you're going to get, it's what you're going to lose. It's going to make you feel better. Any questions so far? So I wanted to remind you, Greg. Oh, I'll get there. I promise. Oh, no. No, not today. I will get to the Skandas next week when I talk about the relative truth. But you know the Skandas. You know what they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to know where they fit. Well, they're alumni. Yeah. They fit as conditioned, apparently existent objects of awareness. So there are special, you know, practices that we do to break up the sense of a singularity called me, self.

[35:58]

So it's an analysis of the self into parts. You're not a singularity, you're five skandhas. And then there's a further division in the twelve ayatanas, which is just more complicated five skandhas. They add some more considerations. And then there's eighteen datus. So you can see all of this stuff in the Abhidharma. Or you can Google... Skandas. When you go somewhere else, they have that kind of stuff. Anyway, it's interesting. They're meditations. And they're empty, as we know. Then would you say that Kensho is having a different experience of phenomena, the perspective of phenomena shifting? I mean, is it penetrated inside into... What arise do you pass your way in phenomena? Is it the absence of phenomena? Like what? Depends on your kensho. Each one is like a snowflake.

[36:58]

And like somebody said, I keep looking at the star. I want to know what Chucky Moody made. He said, well, that was his enlightenment. Where's yours? And somebody else, it was a pebble hitting bamboo. So we have lots of enlightenment stories, but they're not the same. So only you know what warm water or cold water feels like. So only you know. what your experience is, and no one can tell you that it was right or wrong. You have to be convinced that what you know is valid, justifiable, and not just opinion. So it's really self-actualizing. Or no self-actualizing. There are no self-actualizing. No, no actualizing. Or all of that. It's all play. It's all play. So I wanted to just review quickly... You know, in the first seshing lectures, I was talking about the first turning of the wheel. So the Pali Canon teachings, Four Noble Truths, the Jhanas, the Fruits of the Homeless Life.

[37:59]

These are all, you know, just really easy to understand. They're very simple explanations of ways of practice. And that system of teaching, the Buddha gave first, that's called the first turning of the wheel. Okay? This is his first sermon. is called the first turning of the wheel. And the understanding that he was conveying to the students was that what he was talking about was real. That these are real things that you're studying. Eyes and ears and nose and all the senses are, it's just like I said, you know, what do you call it? When I say cup is empty, what do you think? You think there's nothing in the cup. When I say point to your eyes, you go, you know, nose. Like little babies, we teach that. And we don't say, well, you don't really have a nose. They don't get into that with two-year-olds, right? And so we're still carrying around that it's my nose and that's my eyes. It's real. It's real.

[39:01]

It's really me. It's really you. Yes, it's really me. So this is all kind of conventional truth in the sense that, and if you practice this way, you will become free of self-claiming. And the outcome of that, the goal of that practice is called a... Starts with a... Arhat. Arhat. An Arhat. You're free. You're done with it. You have no more self-clinging. You're done. You're out of here. You don't have to suffer anymore. No more samsara. Nirvana. Extinction. So that was a really desirable goal, as it probably is for some of us too. I mean, wouldn't that be nice just to get out of here? Have a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, a lot of heartbreak and all the stuff that we all know so well. So it has some attraction, extinction.

[40:02]

So that's the first turning. And the danger of this understanding is eternalism. Like, you really can get out of here forever. you really can be done. There really is such a thing as nirvana. A magical city. And you'll be happy and peaceful retreat. And so on. So, this is the danger. The extreme of eternalism. That there is such a possibility. There is something like that. There is. It's real. There really is a way out. And my children's book is called The Wisdom of No Escape. Why is that? Well, that's kind of a... That's the next stage. That's the second turn. So then we have the second turning of the wheel. And what is the second turning? Who is the person? What kind of a person is over here? One turner. Who?

[41:05]

Did you say somebody's name? I thought you said... You said what kind of person? Oh, I thought you said... Somebody... Turner. I thought they said... Arha, non-returner. No, this is a Bodhisattva. Those are all up here. There's once-returners, no-returners, never-returners. We call our volleyball team the never-returner. Bodhisattva. Okay, second turning. And what is the second turning? It's the Prajnaparamita literature. Wisdom beyond wisdom. And what does that say about eyes? No. No. Thank you. Ears? No. No. Gura? No. Calf? No. It's so... It's so no. And what do you think the danger of that is? Exactly. You got it all down.

[42:06]

Isn't. It's a danger. It's not what he's saying, but that's the danger. So these are the two dangers of these two turns. They're complementing each other. Is and isn't. You've almost got to balance. But the tendency, the human tendency, when you've got two things like that, isn't to stay in balance. It's to go, oops. It's to go out of balance. One way or the other. Lead too hard into eternalism or lead too hard into nihilism. You get stuck. So along comes the third turning up the wheel, which is the Sandhinyamrachana Sutra, the Yovashara, which basically is reintroducing conventional reality as extremely important. It doesn't go so far as to say it's real, but it's saying you really need to look at it. And I remember when we started studying the Sandi Nyarmotana Suju, because a lot of this stuff hadn't been translated before.

[43:09]

So there's a translation now that was done from the Tibetan that we got, I don't know, 10 years ago or something. And so, you know, Rep picked it up and started getting us to read it. And it was kind of torture because it's really hard. You really have to think. You have to do an analysis. of the conditioned and the unconditioned, therefore the conditioned isn't the unconditioned, because it's conditioned, you're going to go, it's very challenging. And at the same time, if you stick with it, you begin to get this, you know, this relationship between these two becomes more familiar, how you don't fall into one of the others so easily, because you've been working open about how not to do that. So this is the mind-only school. Yogacara, third turning of the wheel. And I'll be saying more about that as well. So I thought it's also interesting, too, another corrective that I was thinking about in terms of these eyes and no eyes.

[44:10]

Who is it that said, but I have eyes? Dongshan. Who's Dongshan? Yeah. Isn't that amazing? He said, I have eyes. What are you talking about? He's a little boy. And he hears the Heart Sutra. No eyes, no way, no nose. And he says to his teacher, but I have eyes. I think that's fabulous. So he is basically, and his teacher says, you're too smart for me. You know, you go see so-and-so. So the founder of our school is basically, you know, already has an intuition about this being of danger. He basically, Tozan leads us to attention to detail. There aren't any cars parked in the upper parking lot, but are you guys driving them too fast over the road? Do you know what happens to the suspension when you do count? I hope you'll find out, because we're on to you.

[45:19]

We're talking about you. Okay. So... Um... So... Dongshan, I have eyes, I have ears. Avoid the extremes by righting views. So, I like to think of, like, you know, the eightfold path that says right view, right intention, right speech, right... I've always thought that was a little static. So, personally, I like to say righting views, righting intention, righting conduct. Because it's not... I think the image, the best image I've come up with myself for practice is a seal on a ball. trying to balance you know it's always changing and you're always adjusting your response to conditions and conditions are constantly in flux so are you going to do the same thing every time so what's an appropriate response what was the buddhist teaching of a lifetime an appropriate response how do you know because it's based on conditions so this is a verb life is a verb it's not an out

[46:25]

We're not trying to get to some correct understanding and then hold it. We're always adjusting ourselves. Do you still understand it? How do you understand it now? So this is alive. We're alive. And we're moving. And our minds are moving. And so our job is to keep moving. Keep balancing. So this is learning the tricks of the trade. Reconciling dichotomies. There's a whole chapter in the Vimalakirti Sutra called The Reconciliation of Dichotomies, which is really a good read. If you wanted to read just one, it's on the reserve shelf. So it's a very short sutra. It's actually a wonderful sutra. It's got jokes in it, actually. The only ones I've ever heard of. Very funny things that the monks do, that this woman goddess does with the monks. She puts flower petals all over his robes, and he's trying to get them off because you're not supposed to decorate your okesa. And he's like horrified. And then she turns him into a woman.

[47:26]

Yeah. And then talk about horrified. He's like, I mean, that's the worst thing you could do is be anywhere near one, let alone be one. So, you know, this happens in this sutra. And then she turns him back into a man. And he's had a lesson about what's he thinking? What kind of reification of notions has he been into here labeling men and women as if they're true? You know, that's not the Buddha's teaching. So anyway, the Amalekirti Sutra is a fabulous text, and that chapter on reconciling the academies, all these different monks express different ways of understanding dualistic notions. They're just short sentences, but each one of them is quite brilliant. The final one is Manjushri is asked, well, how would you reconcile differences? Non-dual. How would you express non-duality? And Manjushri says, I would say nothing, I would make no statements, I would have no views, I would have no opinions. he says. And then they turn to Vimalakirti and they say, and what about you, Vimalakirti?

[48:30]

What would you say? And he maintains silence. Saying nothing at all. It's called the thunderous silence of Vimalakirti. So this is a study that we can do and it's very beneficial for us as students of the way to work that muscle of a non-dual I mentioned to you during Sashin that this new body of literature appeared in India. Probably, they don't really know where. It's interesting, the scholarship keeps changing, but I used to think it was northern India that the Prajnaparamita literature showed up, but now it's not really clear where it showed up. It was kind of a crystallization of this understanding based on the Buddhist teaching. And one of the things that I think is really important to recognize, that all the schools or sects of Buddhism authenticate themselves by referring to the Buddhist teaching.

[49:39]

So you don't just kind of make up something new without referencing the Four Noble Truths, the Abhidharma, the Pali Canon. So... That's their assignment. They have to figure out how to connect to what went before. So the Prajnaparamita literature, you can see the connection, really. It's sort of like the connection is opposition. If they say eyes, we say no eyes. That's a connection. It's still about eyes, the nature of eyes. So they're connecting, but they're turning. On the other hand, this thing that we do oftentimes, how about on the other hand? So they're working with dualism by turning these things, not getting stuck on one side or the other, nondelistic. So the Wisdom Beyond Wisdom literature, called the Prajnaparamita literature, is actually written material that showed up. They think that the first text was the 5000 line, which we have in the library, it's also on the reserve shelf.

[50:46]

If you read the first three or four pages of the 5,000 line, you get kind of a summary, pretty good summary. It's quite good. And it basically says, don't be afraid. This teaching may strike terror in your heart. Why? Because you may discover that you're not there in the way you think you are. And that's probably our greatest fear, is annihilation. as I said I think the last time I gave a class, that cookie cutter, that we're not really there, so we do a lot of hoarding and a lot of self-protection against this fear that really we don't exist. So if you begin to actually enter into the fact you really don't exist, which is what the Buddha taught, when the experience of non-existence often is accompanied by terror. So the Prajnaparamita says, you know, you have to be very brave. You have to put on the armor of the bodhisattva. You have to be willing to face facts with a lot of courage because this is scary.

[51:51]

So I once asked Reb about that. I said, what about the terror? And he said, you just have to get used to it. I think that's probably true. You have to get used to it. Because that's what's happening. The truth will set you free, but it'll also be something that you may, as Mel said, I noticed it. Greg has, what would Mel do on the door? What Mel said was, who told you enlightenment was something you were going to like? So, be warned. Is this encouraging? Yeah, yeah. Don't you think? No? I'm checking with you. What would Buddha do? What would Buddha do? So, you know, for our school, we're really interested in authentication as well. And I think the way we authenticate our practice is by mimicking the Buddha. We sit like the Buddha.

[52:52]

We dress like the Buddha. We eat out of the Buddha's bowls. We even say that. These are the Buddha's bowls. I'm going to eat out of the Buddha's bowls. So we are being, embodying the Buddha. This is our play. It's a theater. We are enacting Buddha Dharma Sangha. And, you know, I sit in a little seat that's separate from everybody else's. I have a gold, have you noticed my brown Zabutan? And the brown Zafu? It's the theater. We're playing that there's this icon, and I'm playing the icon, I'm on the seat, and you guys are, you know, there's the mountain and the clouds, and we are enacting the teaching stories from the old days. That's our shot at trying to figure it out. And we're studying the Buddhist teaching and we're trying our best to emulate how he behaved, how he walked, how he talked to people, his reputation in the world, you know, as being kind and intelligent.

[53:55]

So that's the Zen school. What would Buddha do? And This experimentation that's gone on through the centuries of different schools expressing their best shot at what the Buddha taught, you know, all of them are authenticating themselves by saying that we are basically reading and studying the Buddhavakana, the teaching of the word of the Buddha. This is Buddhavakana. Dogen is Buddhavakana. I bow for the Fukan Zazangi. I bow for the Ginjo Koan. I do full prostration as I would for a sutra of the Buddha himself. This is the word of the Buddha because the Buddha means awake. It doesn't mean a person. Buddha is not a person. Buddha is a quality. So being awake and being able to express understanding is buddhavakana.

[54:58]

That's the understanding of our school or of the Mahayana tradition. Otherwise, the texts were shut off thousands of years ago, and we have no business adding anything to it. Only the Pali Canon. And for the people who hold that view, it's only the Pali Canon that is the word of the Buddha, not the Mahayana Sutras. You will not find the Lotus Sutra, Prajnaparamita Sutras, the Abhatamsaka Sutra in the Pali Canon. They shut the door, I forget what century, but a long time ago. So, you know, our understanding is awakening is generative. It's passed on. That you can catch it. It's something that you can actually receive and then pass on yourself. That's the whole diagram of the lineage, the warm hand to warm hand, the ancestors that we chant. They all caught it and they passed it on generation after generation.

[56:03]

So... And again, authenticating, we refer back to the story of Sumedha, the Bodhisattva, who became the Buddha. So in order to validate that there's a Bodhisattva practice, what are we using? We're using the Pali Canon. Well, there's a story there about who? Shakyamuni Buddha, of all people. Who was the first Bodhisattva? Who did these Bodhisattva practices? So, you know, we're not just kind of making up this whole other category. We actually are looking at the Pali Canon for the source or for the authentication of the teachings. So one of the views of the Mahayana, what came to call itself the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle, is that the Bodhisattva path is superior because it arrives in Buddhahood to the Arhat path. So there was this thing that they did there, kind of put themselves up a little bit, and they referred to the Arhat path as the Hinayana.

[57:04]

or lesser vehicle because it's just you in your own car. The Mahayana is everybody in this great big car. That's kind of the idea there. It's like this is personal liberation, focus. This is all being focused. And so they use those terms. We don't use those terms so much anymore because it sounds like not politically correct to think of something being less than. It doesn't sound nice. So we've kind of done away with Hinayana. But If you see it in text, you don't have to take the modern offended view. You can actually understand this is about a different perspective on what does it mean to be on the Buddhist path. They're just talking to each other. They're brothers and sisters. A little family discussion going on. So from the Prajnaparamita 8000 line, they, the Arhats, make up their minds that one single self we shall tame. One single self we shall lead to nirvana.

[58:05]

A bodhisattva should certainly not in such a way train himself. On the contrary, she should train herself thus. My own self I will place in suchness, the true way of things. And so that all the world might be helped, I will place all beings into suchness. And I will lead to nirvana, the whole immeasurable world of beings. So that's the bodhisattva path. I will do this in order to lead all beings to freedom. That's my goal. Now I think it's maybe important to also recognize that we don't all start out wishing the welfare of everybody else ahead of ourselves. I mean another important principle is honesty. You know, I certainly did not wish liberation on everybody else ahead of myself.

[59:08]

I really wanted to be free. And I would have done just about anything to break out of the chain of suffering that I had created in my life. And that's what I was up to when I was down here. And I think I told you I had to, I didn't have to. I went to my teacher and confessed that. And, you know, I was crying because I said, I'm a Hanianist. I'm not my honest. I don't really care about anybody else. I want to get out of here, you know. I'm in so much pain. And he just said, thank you for your confession. But that's okay. I mean, that's the beginning of the path, is that you just, you want to make this great effort to be free. And as you proceed on the path, you begin to realize that your freedom is dependent on everyone else. You can't be free without everybody else. Wouldn't that be interesting, how that would work? I mean, you know, we're just going to, some of us are going to be free and then like, what are we going to do with everybody else who doesn't feel very good yet?

[60:09]

So sorry, sorry for you. That's not, doesn't feel nice. So I think we really do want to bring everyone in because their suffering is our suffering and there's no way that we don't know that. So the more you see that, the more the vow opens to include everybody. Okay, okay, yes, I do want everyone to. to be happy and free. And that's the deeper doubt. That deepens, you know, through your life. Hoping for the welfare of the world, the bodhisattva thinks to themself, let me undertake religious practice that I may bring welfare and happiness to all beings. And he sees the aggregates, the skandhas, I'm sorry, Greg left, as like a magic show, but does not wish to disown the aggregates. He sees the senses, the datus, as like a poisonous serpent, but does not wish to disown the senses. She sees sensory awareness, the ayatnas, as like an empty village, but she does not wish to disown sensory awareness.

[61:16]

So, you see the truth of the situation, but you're not trying to get out of it. You're willingly staying in the village where there's pain. and where there's sickness, and where there's aging and death. So you can be a benefit. And others will be a benefit to you, because it's also true for you. That's also what's going to happen to this body. It is aging, and it's going to be sick, and it's going to die. I'm grateful I live in community. I really am. We've accompanied many people through this process now. So by modeling this new version of Buddhism on the story of the Buddha's own life and on his teachings, enacting his life, enacting his teachings, this new tradition basically shifted its emphasis to the salvation of the world.

[62:18]

So the whole world became the venue for our vow. We want everyone in the world. and beyond, you know, whatever worlds there are, to be happy and free. I forget who was told me, I think maybe it was Sam, said, you know, you don't want to escape from the mess. In fact, you go like, you say like, what a mess, and I get to clean it up. Was that it? Something like that? It's a dirty job, and I get to do it. Yeah, it's a dirty job, and I get to do it. Yeah. That was a mug? Yeah, yeah. That's great. We should all have one of those. It's a really good mug. It's a dirty job, and I get to do it. I get to do it. Okay. So, not only do we want to dress like the Buddha and act like the Buddha, but we also want to think like the Buddha, and that's the part that's most probably challenging.

[63:22]

This has to do with understanding emptiness. It has to do with understanding the... noble truths and the two truths and so on and so forth. All those vocabulary words that I offered in the beginning. You know, we need to think. We need to study. We need to understand and to, you know, I wish we did what the Tibetans do. You know, they do debate and they kind of like slap their hands and they ask each other questions and say, no! And then they say, you know, that's right! So they really train each other in these understandings. You could do that. You could pair up and take something on. So how does a Buddha see the world? As stars, as a fault of vision, as a lamp, as a mock show, as dew drops or a bubble, as a dream, a lightning flash or a cloud. So does one view what's conditioned. Like a dream, like a magic show. Just like that.

[64:24]

Not to be... taken more seriously than it is. So there were many expressions of these teachings over the centuries that we now have. The Prajnaparamita literature, which, as I said, maybe the basic text was the 8,000 line. And from there, there are different kinds of elaborations. There was a 100,000 line. And then there's the 25,000. verse line, which is the Heart Sutra. Is it 25? Anyway. So the Heart Sutra is the distillation of the 8,000 line Prajnaparamita. So that's a Prajnaparamita text. And another one that you may know that we used to chant regularly is the Diamond Sutra. Beans, beans, there's no beans, therefore we call them beans. So that's another one. It's not too big. You can read it. It's very dense, but it's not very large. So you might check out the Diamond Sutra.

[65:26]

There's also the Lotus Sutra, which is very foundational to our tradition. The Vimalakirti Sutra I mentioned, and then the Avatamsaka Sutra. So these are the Mahayana Sutras, the primary base camp of our teaching in the Zen school. So if you want, that's kind of the ball you want to balance on. If you want to have that body of knowledge, then you might want to begin to fill your... intelligence, your awareness with some of these teachings. So they're familiar, like family. They become part of you. And you may not remember them. I met somebody, Charlie Picorni, who some of you may know. Does he come down here and teach sometime? Charlie Picorni memorized the Lotus Sutra. I know. I'm like, wow. And right now he's memorizing the, what's he memorizing? The Abhidharma Kosha verses. But, here's the catch.

[66:28]

I said to him, Charlie, do you still remember the Lotus Sutra? And he said, no. So, I think he just enjoys his mind, and that he can do this. It's kind of amazing. And I know that there have been, we do know that people can memorize huge amounts of stuff, and Charlie's just a living example of that. But that's something else. If you have one of those minds, that's filling your mind with the beautiful words. I couldn't do that. I can't memorize four lines. But to be able to memorize an entire sutra, if you have that way with yourself, if you are that kind of person, you know, an interesting thing to do. So I wanted to mention one more story from the Pali Canon, which has to do with the problem that occurred in the old wisdom world. schools where the sincere monks were practicing with all these categories of phenomena that there are eyes, there are ears, and they were basically training themselves to spot what are called dharmas.

[67:34]

Not kabovi dharmas, small d dharmas. These are the dharmas that are all marked by emptiness, is that correct? That's right. And in this one system, the system of dharmas, It was written and studied by the Sarvastavadans. Sarvastavadans means it does exist in this whole school. Sarvastavadans, they came up with this list of dharmas, 75 dharmas. And I actually have it, if anyone is interested, maybe I'll post it to you in the library. It's fascinating because it's all familiar stuff, like eyes and ears and nose and anger and lust and jealousy. There's nothing you don't have. It's the whole... and that's where they got them they studied themselves in meditation and they listed what they saw and they all agreed conventional designation these are the 75 dharmas that compose a human being and these are the ones that are wholesome and these are unwholesome and so do these and don't do these and you'll be fine so that was the practice separate the dharmas into wholesome and unwholesome and just be wholesome

[68:47]

And I think it works to some extent. It can really kind of be pretty good if you really work at it and you try doing things that are just in the good category. However, the problem with dharmas is the problem with the cup. Because dirt, which is the root of this, is like a mark of its own existence. So dharmas were considered separate. They had own being. Which is why we keep repeating this thing, no own being, no own being. Because they said, they being the early students of dharma, that they had own being. And that therefore you could separate them out. You could put the bad ones over here and the good ones over here. You could draw lines and isolate them, right? But even they started to question whether that was working. some of their guys were doing things.

[69:50]

They weren't all that nice. Getting angry, you know. One of the big citations in the scriptures had to do with sexuality. Like, what about when you're sleeping? And, you know, things happen when you're sleeping. Does that count? Are you pure? And one of the camps said, no, you're not. If you're dreaming and having those kinds of dreams, well then you haven't gotten anywhere with your renunciation practices. So there were a lot of A lot of criticisms, critique of this system. So, dharmas, not capital D. This is small d dharma. It's sometimes confusing because of those two terms being the same. Anyway, the problem with this is it became a very elaborate system of practices, of paths, of understandings, and so on and so forth. And instead of having gotten rid of this singularity called the which was the whole idea of, you know, me, what happened was they came up with a multiplicity that became the self.

[70:58]

So they reified, as if real, as if true, they grasped onto themselves as being a multiplicity rather than a singularity. Same problem. I'm just a swarm. But you still got the deep problem, you know? It's just, you know, kind of broken into, whoops, bubbles. So this is the kind of thing that they were trying to understand about, what's the problem here? I mean, that seemed to work to break this up, but then was that the end of the story? Was that the end of the line? And apparently not. If you're honest, you know, are you free? Is that freedom or is that just another kind of clinging? Clinging to your system of practice. Clinging to your understanding. Clinging to your purity. That's really tough. Is this the same danger that we face in our theater?

[72:02]

Sure. Yeah, you bet. That's why I like to call it theater. Otherwise, it's a Zendo. And people get very cranky. And not because they're mean. They just really believe it. That there's something... What did Bodhidharma say when the emperor asked him? What's the highest meaning of the holy truths? Vast emptiness. Nothing holy. So we have a tendency to reify holiness. And we can do it all kinds of ways. I respect the zendo. I respect the forms. I respect my robes. I respect priestcraft, ritual... with all my heart, I don't believe it. If I believed it, I should probably get another job. Because I think I would be dangerous. I think that's my thing. That's what I think.

[73:02]

I think it's really good to learn these teachings and to practice not falling for what you think is true, particularly about yourself. I think that's the whole point. So I think These things are to help us to become free. You know, if you just hang out in your jeans and you just don't, you know, drink beer and you never, I don't know, don't exercise or whatever, you'll get to look like what you might expect. You know? And you won't know anything. But if you really try and you really put all your heart into something, you'll begin to see the limitations of that something. Oh, that something isn't a something after all. There's no priest here. No more than there's a Fu or a Nancy or whatever. There never was, there never will be. And yet, you know, there's something. And I think the whole Buddhism is all about accounting for the something. If we've understood that it's empty of inherent existence and really reality can't be broken into parts, what's happening?

[74:08]

What's going on here? What is the something that we keep dealing with and arguing with and, you know, feeding? and all of that. What is this something here? So that's what these philosophical schools are trying to help us get the thinnest possible something we can get without eliminating it because then you've got realism. You've got to have a sort of something. So ritual's pretty good. It's kind of a something. I'm voting for that as a something that works for my life. And it's not mine. I didn't make it up Somebody told me where to buy this stuff. So I did. There you go. So the Buddha runs into Dikanaka, the skeptic. This is one of my very favorite stories. So the Blessed One was living in Rajagraha, and Dikanaka, the skeptic, went to him and exchanged greetings.

[75:12]

You know, Majanaka and skepticism are very close. If you've studied any skepticism, you'll see a really close resonance between these two ways of, you know, just, what is it called? Reductio absurdum. You just keep taking away the opponent's argument. But you don't put one down of your own. That's what Nagarjuna does. He objects to it. Anything is posited. He goes, no, I don't think so. So what do you say? He says, no, I don't say. So, the Blessed One was living at Rajagraha, and the skeptic went to him and exchanged greetings, and then the skeptic said, My theory and my view is this, Master Gautama, I have no liking for views. The Buddha replied, This view of yours, I have no liking for views. Have you no liking for that either? You get it? Yeah. So, what are you holding? This view of yours.

[76:14]

When one holds a view of any kind, this is the Buddha, there will be a clash with others who hold a differing view. When there are clashes, there are disputes. When there are disputes, there are quarrels. When there are quarrels, there is harm. When he or she sees that, she abandons that view without clinging to some other. As Dikanaka was considering this, his heart was liberated from taints through not clinging. Okay, maybe I'll stop there. Maybe I'll start with some questions if you have anything from today, and then I'll start to talk about the relative truth, which is the partner of this teaching. Thank you.

[77:03]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.89