Good morning. So this morning, if we could start with the definitions that people agreed to take, that would be good. I think I have epistemology. I think that was Mary. Yeah. Okay. Epistemology. From the Greek. Logos. Discovery. Epistem. Knowledge. The theory or science that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limit of knowledge. The act or state of knowledge. It's how we know. How we know. Okay. And it's knowledge that as opposed to knowledge how. So it's not knowledge of how to do things. Knowledge that. Okay. Okay. That's number one. Soteriology.

[01:03]

I don't remember who took soteriology. It's also from the Greek, it's called soteria. Everybody speak up if you can, because I'm not sure everyone can hear on the other side of the room. From the Greek, it's soteria, which means salvation. So it means pertaining to salvation, or the doctrine of salvation. And then the sub-definition was kind of interesting. Discourse on health, or the science of preserving. Health? Health. Oh, being healthy. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Realism. Who is realism? Realism, in common usage, is a tendency to face facts and be practical rather than imaginary or visionary. And then philosophy, in medieval philosophy, is that universals have objective reality. Universals being... They pertain to the entirety, totality, or wholeness thing, but are not limited or restricted. Those things have objective reality.

[02:06]

Is there an example of one of those? God. And then the second philosophical definition is about the existence of material objects, that material objects exist independently in themselves, apart from our consciousness itself. Thank you. How about idealism? So this is contrasted to the theory of realism. Idealism is any of various systems of thoughts in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind. This is all sounding kind of familiar in terms of Buddhist, what the Buddhists are playing with and trying to work with. These are all Western philosophical terms. Humans have been trying to figure this all out for some time.

[03:07]

Anyway, it's good to have the common vocabulary, I find. Let's see. Oh, the best one of all. Hermeneutics. Exegesis. Well, this is thanks to our theologian, We're back. Jesus to draw meaning from texts. And there are two basic forms. Scholastic, studying the history, sociology, and anthropological factors surrounding a text to give it deeper meaning. Like, what was the social implications of a woman searching for the mustard seed that would have been obvious to people in ancient India, but not so obvious to us. And the liturgical, drawing meaning from from a text and applying it to situations relevant to the reader and audience, like what does the woman searching for the mustard seed have to say about our modern belief that everyone is happy. And then hermeneutical or hermeneutics, from the word Hermes, messenger of the gods, it is the study of humanity's relationship with God, truth or meaning.

[04:20]

Due to the centuries of Protestant pregnancy and religious studies, where the text of the Bible is seen as the ultimate medium between God and humans, hermeneutics can also come to refer simply to the study of sacred paths. Great, thank you. Thank you very much, all of you. I found another one while I was reading, pedagogical. Pedagogical, which, you know, certainly I've seen it before. Pedagogy refers to teaching. But it's interesting because the root of the word, ped, is foot. It was a Greek slave who walked a child to school. So bringing the child to be educated, which came to mean eduko, to bring out knowledge from a child, to draw out their understanding. So all of these terms became kind of interwoven. So today I want to talk about the two truths. So last time I was talking primarily about one of the two truths, which is the ultimate truth, the teaching of emptiness in our tradition.

[05:30]

And I think we're familiar with this teaching of the ultimate truth, probably mostly through recitation of the Heart Sutra every day. Form is not different than emptiness. So we got that. That's the ultimate truth. Form is not different. than emptiness. And this is a really significant understanding that I think we are called on to try to understand. But what does it go on to say? What's the next line? O Shariputra, emptiness does not differ from form and And formed is not different from emptiness. So they're being exchanged here, right? Form and emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. So how's that helpful? What's that do for us?

[06:31]

So these are the two truths, you know, that are being put side by side and called two different things for pedagogical reasons to help us to learn something. They're walking us by the hand. to try and help us learn something about the nature of reality. And the example I kept using, which unfortunately again isn't empty, is the empty cup. Cup is empty. Emptiness is form. The cup is empty. Form is emptiness. Depends on how you understand it. Same sentence, the cup is empty. The cup is empty. So what's the difference? This is all based on the Buddha's awakened insight, which he said, I can't explain this. I can't explain to you what's the difference between the cup is empty and the cup is empty. He was reluctant to try to explain it. It just seemed too hard to understand.

[07:33]

Fortunately, he was not impeached. He was implored to please teach, and he did. We have all these wonderful words, not only coming from The Buddha directly, so we understand, you know, written down many hundreds of years later, but we understand it as the Buddha's teaching, but also all those who followed who had the Buddha's insight and said, well, here's another way to think about this. Here's another way to think about this. Using the text, the basic spiritual text, the liturgy, and then expounding on that through the commentarial tradition. So we have a whole... long several thousand years of enlightened beings looking at these teachings of the Buddha and saying, oh, well, here's another way to explain that. Here's another way to explain that. So there's kind of these progressions, or you could say, toward more sophistication to the point where nowadays modern philosophers are very interested in Buddhist teaching, in philosophers like Nagarjuna.

[08:36]

In fact, I'm going to say a little bit about this book, which... I love, I love this book. So if you want it, you can get it on Amazon and you will love it too. It's called Moon Shadows, conventional truth in Buddhist philosophy written by the cowherds, not cowards, cowherds, who are a group of Buddhist philosophers from around the world who've been collaborating via the internet, wonderful thing, on their understanding of conventional reality through Buddhist teaching and Buddhist philosophy, Chandrakirti, Nagarjuna, and so on. And very, actually, not easy to read, but well written. So if you spend time with it, it's easy to read, eventually. You just have to go over it a few times. Anyway, the moon's shadow. There had two earlier books that this group or some subset of them wrote. The first one was called The Finger Pointing at the Moon.

[09:39]

So this is the conventional designations, words, pointing at that thing that's getting fuller up in the sky. You know, if you look at that and you say moon, you kind of get it that they're two different phenomena in a way, or are they? Is the word moon and that thing up in the sky, are they two different things? Are they the same? You know, this is the two truths appearing right there in your very own mind, in your very own perceptions. Is the word moon the same as the moon? I keep saying moon right now. Where's the moon? I can even, I have an image of it too. So is that the moon? Anyway, these are the questions that we're turning and are trying to understand reality. You know, trying to understand what's going on here. So... So what difference does it make? Why do we care? You know, that's kind of part of what I want to get to in this morning's talk.

[10:40]

I was thinking about the relationship between form and emptiness, and I got this image of a yo-yo. You know, like form is you got the yo-yo in your hand, and you throw it down, and you can kind of walk the dog for a little bit there, experience emptiness. Can you stay there? got to bring it back up again, right? So we have some relationship to these two elements that form side, conventional designations, language, and then silence. Non-imaginative wisdom, which is considered essential for understanding Buddha's insight. Nothing is happening. But you got to bring it back up. You can't stay there. You can reflect back once you have this experience of walking the dog, of stopping, but you can't live there. It's not a habitable place.

[11:43]

Nagarjuna spoke from, well, he went to the top of the mountain where all things drop away, but he didn't speak from there. He had to come back down to talk, to write, to eat, to be human. We have this relationship both experientially and in terms of our teachings of trying to understand how these two both experiences and conceptual understandings work together. It's a dance of form and emptiness, emptiness and form and so on. Is that a concept of having to come back from the top of a mountain, just a conceptual understanding? Absolutely. So is going to the top of the mountain. One we're having right now. Even if we've been there. Or wish we could. Whatever. Yeah. Well, that's one school. Concept only. That's the Yogacara.

[12:44]

That's all you're going to get. Wherever you go. You're just another concept. How do you know you were anywhere if you didn't have a concept about it when you were there? Of nothing at all. So these are all part of trying to turn these issues and these experiences into language. So I want to share some citations that I was going to bring up two days ago about the emptiness teachings, but I didn't have time. So these are somewhat seminal. A couple from the 8,000 line, Prajnaparamita Sutra, and then also from Nagarjuna. So I would like to suggest that while you listen to these texts, that you begin for yourself to see how they're designed to help you see the workings of construction as your mind constructs images.

[13:45]

Be like, go to a construction site and stand at the fence and watch them building something there. It's like, this is the process, the first step. in coming to some realization of what the Buddha is talking about, is watch how your mind constructs images, or sentences, or thoughts, or perceptions, or belief systems, or opinions, or whatever you've got going on in there. How does the mind do that? So this is the construction site. And we can, to some extent, be witness. I mean, I think we all experience that. You know, I was sitting in a session one time and it was like fourth day or something. I'm just sitting there minding my business and I'm going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then this voice comes in from, I was going to say God knows where, comes in, big male voice, and it says, who are you talking to? It's the last time I've heard from that guy. But anyway, who are you talking to?

[14:48]

And sure enough, I'm talking away, and somebody's listening and commenting and going, well, that's stupid. And he's like, well, I wasn't that stupid. We've got this little puppet theater going on in here. So pay attention to the puppet theater. Who are you talking to when you're talking away in your mind? Who's listening to the one who's talking? It's all very fascinating. Don't get too caught up in it, but just pay attention. Bear noting. Wow, this is amazing. Every one of you is amazing. And only you know how amazing you are. So the point of this is to free us from attachment to the products of our construction. And we're very attached to these brilliant ideas that we have and opinions. That's the problem. is cutting ourselves free, perhaps by being so curious and interested in it that we become dispassionate about it. We're just more like going to the zoo, you know? Like, wow, look at that one, look at that one.

[15:49]

So you're not so identified with the products of your imagination. You can step back a little bit and just get a little bit of space. One of the things my therapists just say to me is like, you've got to get some space around that stuff. You're all contracted in there about that thing that somebody said to you that made you mad. Spaciousness. Not the thing doesn't go away. That thing was still there. But there was more room around it. Some room for consideration. And being considerate. Which is another part of this whole story. How do you be considerate? When I take offense, I give offense. Guaranteed. So what is that? How can I... Pay more attention and work with my own having been offended, you know? What can I do there? That's where it starts. The war of the world starts right there. Am I being offended? So, now, regrettably, when we become detached from views, among them that we need to become detached from are Buddhist views.

[16:54]

Wholesome, unwholesome, nirvana, enlightenment. priests, lay people, all of it. It's all got to go. You can't just like, well, I'm going to keep these and I'm going to get rid of all of those. It's pretty much all or nothing. If you're not attached to views, you're not attached to any of the constructs in your mind, no matter how precious they are. That was the original effort was to sort them out and keep just the pure good ones, the golden views over here in a special drawer and then all the bad ones you would exile somewhere. I don't know where. But it doesn't work. So it's got to be all or nothing. Okay. So there's danger there. Maybe you can hear that. If we're going to throw out all the Buddhist views and not be attached to them, isn't that become kind of like a free-for-all? It's okay. Then what's wrong with killing, stealing, lying? So this is one reason I'm bringing these things up in the context of the theme for the practice period is the precepts because

[17:59]

Zen is kind of famous for being precept light, you know? It's like, you know, I mean, what's the big whoop? I had a friend who was, I was a member of a United Religions Initiative group in the Bay Area, so we were from all over the world, different religions, Muslims and Hindus, and Theravadan monk, who was a Westerner, He's the guy who bowed all the way up the Highway 1. Nice guy. And Lutherans and everything. And one of the people was talking about having gone to Japan and seen some Buddhist monks who were smoking and drinking sake and laughing really loud. And he said it was just kind of disgusting to him. And I was really getting hurt because it might have been Soto Zen monks. I don't know. Anyway, I was really feeling like, oh, I feel so bad about hearing this, you know?

[19:01]

And then I thought, well, having judgments about people isn't a precept, is a precept violation, you know? So then I was doing the same thing. Well, who are you to judge? Our monks, you know? So you can watch really carefully how you do your own thing in trying to make yourself right and others wrong. So this person was doing that, and then I did the same thing, you know? Just a little seesaw of who's right and who's wrong here. Well, nobody. Let's just be nice about it. Let's be generous. Maybe that guy's got a nicotine habit and he's an alcoholic. I mean, I don't know. He needs treatment, not criticism. So anyway, these are problems we have. These are dangers in the emptiness teachings is that we can get estranged from ethics. Okay. So let's see.

[20:04]

So basically there's really nothing that we can think that has inherent existence. You know, it's all, anything you think is empty of inherent existence by virtue of being dependently co-arisen. Depends on a brain that's working. It depends on a body that's got a brain. It depends on your parents having fallen in love. made you, and all of these things, right? So you just have that thought, but it's not existent. It's just a fly through. It's just an appearance, brief appearance, and then it's gone. It has no inherent existence. It's not, you can't get a hold of your thoughts. You could try. You can try. You know, I said, grasping is an interesting idea in Buddhism, but have you ever grasped anything? Can you grasp anything? I don't think you can. And you can try. See if you can hold on to anything. So the idea that things exist, you know, in and of themselves is just a trick that the mind is playing on itself.

[21:09]

And then it's a trick that all of us are playing on one another. So it's a collective trick and it's also a personal trick. And that's the spell that's been cast that we are trying to break through, you know, snap out of it. And that was illustrated, I thought the story from the Sandi Nirmachana Sutra is a good illustration of this about the giraffes and the tigers and so on that are conjured up from sticks and twigs. What does the magician see? Same thing that we see, but knowing it's a trick. So we're the magicians, and our job is to know that it's a trick. What's happening is a trick. I'm doing a trick right now. It's a trick. And it doesn't mean we try to do bad tricks. You know, it's nice to be skillful at your tricks. But just know that it's a trick. It's a play. So even though the Buddha said that his realization was inconceivable, cannot be conceived of, he did not say it was inaccessible.

[22:16]

We are the true nature of reality. We're already there. We already got it. We're already whatever we're looking for, like a cat with its tail. We're already it. We just can't catch it. It never will. It's just a little too short, that tail. But around and around we go, trying to find out who we are. And here we are, trying to find out who we are. We're not fast enough. We'll never get there. So the Buddha made a pathway using words to help us to navigate this thing that we will never know. So he didn't just say, well, good luck, I hope you find it. He said, do this, do this, do this, do this. And he used language, he used words, conventional designations to create the path, to create a way of practice. So...

[23:19]

And if you follow that path, what you will find, he says, is profound, peaceful, free from reference points, luminous and unconditioned. Top of the mountain. So these are lines from the 8,000 line Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. These are words created by the Buddha, said by the Buddha, as a pathway to the top of the mountain. Okay? So this is a, you know, or like breadcrumbs into the forest. Okay? So, no wisdom can we get hold of, no highest perfection, no bodhisattva, no thought of enlightenment either. When told of this, if not bewildered and in no way anxious, a bodhisattva courses in the Buddha's wisdom. So if you're willing to go up the mountain on that kind of instruction, that's the bodhisattva. It's like, Already you've been warned.

[24:25]

And yet, O Lord, if when this is pointed out, a Bodhisattva's heart does not become cowed nor stolid, does not despair nor despond, if she does not turn away or become dejected, does not tremble, is not frightened or terrified, it is just this Bodhisattva, this great being, who should be instructed in perfect wisdom. This caution is from the 8,000 line. It's the vertex for the Heart Sutra. This stuff is dangerous because it can scare you really badly. Terror, terror, the word terror. As you get closer and closer to the realization of no self and no objects, just your imaginary flitting concepts only, It can be quite frightening because we actually have a lot of confidence, some of us, in the reality of our thoughts and of our own bodies, of our existence. And we cling to it. I don't want to die.

[25:28]

It's like, who is that who's crying? You can't die. You're not here. You weren't born. Relax. Whatever. Anyway... In form, in feeling, perception, impulse and consciousness, nowhere in them does she find a place to rest on. These are the five skandhas. Nowhere in there will you find a place to rest. Without a home, they wander. Dharmas never hold them, nor do they grasp at dharmas. The Buddha's enlightenment they are bound to gain. So, you know, this is just the first and second noble truth. Your suffering is caused by grabbing a hold of dharmas that you can't get a hold of. This is suffering. But what about, I want just one of those? Can I just have one dharma? Please? You know, so we're grasping, we're trying to grab a hold of ideas or people or things or love or money or whatever.

[26:29]

It's like our whole culture is being driven by grabbing. And we're being, we were taught to grab from when we were really, get A's, you know, be the smartest kid in your class. And then you'll get a great job and make lots of money and have a big house to die in. So the third and fourth noble truth is cessation of suffering is caused by conventional reality leading us to cessation of suffering. He taught us a conventional path. He said, what are your views? What's your intention? How is your speech going? How are you behaving? What's your conduct? What's your livelihood? He didn't say, just sit there and blank out. That's not the cessation of suffering. Cessation of suffering is how you live your life. What kind of person are you? Your suffering is caused by...

[27:30]

ignorant belief in yourself as a person so why don't you be a nice person and enjoy that life and then begin to see how even that has to go but it's an easier place to go from than the one where you're just basically under the rocks unwilling to even emerge can't emerge whatever that's called hell the only good thing about hell is that you're highly motivated to get out of there Unlike heaven, where you just as soon stay forever. So neither of those are recommended for practice. Human realm. Where's the... Aaron, where is it? Yeah, the human realm is the one that's recommended. It's the one of the six. Thank you very much, Rue. It's actually Green Gulch Farm, in case you're wondering where to go next after Tassajara. Sarah Tashkar told me to recruit while I was down here, so you all have heard it. There's a long list.

[28:34]

Yeah, it's going to be right by the door. Whoops. How'd you get in here? There's a what? There's a sign-on bonus. There is. Yeah. And you know what it's made out of, don't you? Emptiness. That's right. Okay. All right. So, emptiness. Emptiness teachings are by design, are designed to pull the conceptual rugs out from under our feet. One after the other. You got a concept, gone, gone, gone. So how it is that monastic institutions and practices manage to continue over these centuries under the umbrella of these teachings is probably the greatest Mahayana miracle of them all. Why would anyone want to do this if there's nothing to get out of it? You don't believe it, right? They're just tricking me. I'm going to get something. Yeah.

[29:37]

That's why you're here. Okay. I guess this is what you're going to get next. No, I'm kidding. No, I'm not. It's true, isn't it? The ultimate truth. It's the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is there is simply no such thing as ultimate reality to which the ultimate truth can apply, and therefore the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. And that's the truth. The ultimate truth. And the sooner we get rid of any other kind of thinking, the better off we will be. No thought will hold them, these bodhisattvas. Nowhere does he or she find a place to rest. No ultimate truth to rely on. Nothing to rely on. So Mahayana is basically a big disillusionment machine. As these conceptual bubbles fly by, the teachings pop them one after the other.

[30:43]

Reb called this anti-reification campaign, basically. And reification is another great word. I looked that one up. I think we all said last time it means to make things real, and it's true. And the word re is Latin for thing. Thinging. Your thinking is thinking. You're thinking by thinking. Making things as if they're real, as if you could hold them, have them, possess them. gasping. So anti-reification campaign. So I want to read another bubble-popping sutra from the 8,000 Lions. Subhuti, the foremost of the wise, says, Even nirvana, I say, is like a magical illusion, is like a dream. How much more so anything else? To which the gods respond in shock. Even Nirvana, venerable Subuti, you say, is like an illusion, is like a dream?

[31:47]

Subuti replies, Even if, perchance, there could be anything more distinguished than Nirvana, of that too, I say, it is like an illusion. It is like a dream. So according to Nagarjuna, who is known as the second Buddha, the teaching of emptiness is not a view. It's not a doctrine. It's not a teaching. It's basically a therapeutic device, a pushpin for popping conceptual bubbles. It's like a tool. And once you arrive, if you do, at the level at which there are no more conceptual bubbles arising in your mind, then there is nothing to say at all. Vimalakirti is sundering silence. Except for... Sumedha's vow. Sumedha made a vow. Vow means word. He gave his word that he would remain in samsara until all beings were saved.

[32:54]

And that vow resulted in Shakyamuni Buddha coming into the world. So there is nothing to say. That's the truth. And yet, Shakyamuni Buddha... And Nagarjuna and Dongshan and Huinong, same guy. No, different. Tozan and Suzuki Roshi kept talking. They kept writing. They kept expressing what cannot be said. Why? For the benefit of suffering beings. Out of the kindness. Kindly bent to ease. They knew better, but they went ahead anyway. There's the first koan in the Book of Serenity, which you may know. I was going to mention it in the session as well, that the World Honored One gets up on the seat, in the high seat, to give a talk. And Manjushri points, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, points at the World Honored One and says, Clearly observe, the dharma of the king of the dharma is thus, pointing at the Buddha.

[34:02]

What did the Buddha do? Got down off the seat. Where does the verse go? Anybody remember the verse just later on? Nothing can be done about Manjushri. Yeah, that's the kicker, but what's the first three lines? Reality. Can you see it? That's right. Did everyone hear that? No. Would you say it louder? Do you want me to say it into the mic? That's right. The unique breeze of reality. The unique breeze of reality can you see. Continuously creation runs from moon and shuttle, creating the ancient brocade. Continuously creation runs from moon and shuttle. Incorporating new forms of inspiration, creating the ancient brocade. Yeah, yeah. So... Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle.

[35:04]

Creating the ancient brocades. Creating the ancient brocades. Incorporating, as we are right now, the forms of spring. Have you seen it? Clearly, have you seen the forms of spring? Are you being blown away? We're incorporating. We're coming out of the rains and into the green and the corporate, you know? I mean, it's happening. Creation herself. That's it. That's what's... Our life is that. The birds, my God, it's happening. Right here. But... Nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. He pointed at the Buddha. Is that the Buddha? Buddha didn't like that, I think. Don't you point at me. Where are you going to point for Buddha, for awakening? Where is it? Is it out there? Is it that person? Is that guy? Is it this whole thing? Creation itself. Buddha. Don't point. He has to point. That's his job. He's the bodhisattva of wisdom. So these guys have to point at something or else we're just going to wander around going like, what's spring?

[36:10]

What's spring? I don't know what's spring. We don't know what we're doing. We're just going to be bumping into walls because we don't know how to see or how to hear or how to taste or touch or love. So the wonderful gift of leaking by speaking to us. is what the bodhisattvas have vowed to do. Speech, vow. Your vow is your speech. What you have to say. Conventionally speaking, pointing is a little rude, though, isn't it? Terribly rude. Terribly rude. That's why we're pointing at you right now. Shuso. So how do we do this, you know? Because as the magicians and musicians, either way, we're going to have to live with what we create. What our trances produce, we have to live in them and listen to them. So we're all going to die of carbon poisoning. Not just the guys with the coal plants.

[37:13]

We're all going down. And they too. But maybe they haven't heard the news yet. Your grandchildren aren't going to be able to breathe. Do you guys care? So it's, you know, all for one, one for all. And we have to understand that. And that's part of our mission is to help people understand we're not separate. You can't go hide somewhere in a mansion and be separate from the air that you've poisoned. It won't work. So, you know, we have a job here. You each have a job. Get the word out. That's your vow. So here's the way that we make these creations. as magicians. This is the formula for creation, and that's called the relative truth. Heather was saying, you're gonna teach the relative truth? Oh, how boring. Didn't you say something like that? Or like, oh no, not that again. And I thought, yeah, that's how we feel about it. It was private, it was private, but be careful what you tell me in private, because I don't believe in confidentiality.

[38:17]

It's a conscious construction only. There's microphones everywhere. No, that's not true. If you tell me, keep it secret, I will. Okay. So, first of all, what is truth? What is truth? I look that word up, too. It's really fun to look up words. And it's so fast. You just push your Google button in. You stopped this big book and I'd have to look through it and I'd get distracted by other words and never get anywhere. Okay. So what is truth? Truth is truth. Like I plight my truth. It means my faithfulness, my loyalty. Isn't that lovely? I plight thee my truth. I tell you my truth. I'm being faithful to what I actually believe is coming from here. Truth. And in Sanskrit, the word is satya.

[39:25]

What's really interesting about this word is that it has two meanings in Sanskrit. One of them is satya can refer to a true statement, like something you say that can be argued as true or false. So you could have a true statement or you could have a false statement. There's a unicorn running through here. There's not a unicorn running through here. So one's true, one's false. And we make this discernment all the time. This is true concerning objects, reality. So this is more like concepts. And what's interesting about this is throughout the history of Buddhism, Nobody went back and asked the original people speaking Sanskrit, is there just one of these that makes the most sense in terms of Buddhism?

[40:31]

Because throughout the history of Buddhism in relation to truths, these two things have been interchanged. So we have something like conventional truth, and then we also hear about conventional reality. Conventional truth refers to conventional reality. Ultimate truth refers to ultimate reality, as if there were an object of that statement. So we've got to kind of figure this out. And that's what the philosophers have been doing, trying to figure out, is there an object to that statement? Is it mind-only idealism? Or is it realism? Objects are real. It doesn't matter what you think of them. They're out there existing. Mars is up there in the sky somewhere, right now. It's true. So this is the play of the two truths. And this is also why this book is wonderful, because all the stuff I'm going to say to you right now is from Moonshadows. And I found it so helpful in terms of my own confusion about the interchange of the, is it the thing I'm seeing that's actually where I'm going to look for the truth?

[41:36]

Or is it the way I'm seeing? How I see? Yeah. Is the mind only school actually saying things are not real, or are they saying neither real nor not real? I think they're saying it's just a mere concept. And that few will stop at mere concept. But it's just merely a concept. It's all you ever have is a concept. I think they're more of idealists than they are... It's not fleshing out Nagarjuna? They're not following Nagarjuna? Well, ultimately, they say your concepts are empty of inherent existence. That that mere concept, which is all you'll ever have, is empty of inherent existence. So it goes to... So they are... They are faithful to the emptiness teachings, but they're considered below the Majamaka teachings in terms of how the Tibetans, you know, categorize the highest teachings of Majamaka, where you don't get to have a mind at the end of the tunnel. But Yuritara historically comes after. It does, but it's then, you know, Majamakans say, you're just fooling around.

[42:39]

It's a lower understanding, mind only. It was later development. But, you know, so the Dalai Lama will say, well, the highest understanding is the Majamaka. But Yokachara is good. You should check that out. You should really understand that, too, because it's very helpful. But it's not the ultimate understanding. Okay, so statements, these are also called truth bearers. If you have a true statement, you know, it bears the truth. So these things are like you can have a pot or water, a dog. All of those things are real objects. So that we're really talking about things that we think of as real conventionally. We do think of these things as real. We treat them as if they're real. And then we say things about them using true statements or false statements.

[43:44]

So originally, satya originally was used in the very earliest commentarial traditions of Buddhism after the Buddha had died. And all they had left when he died were the sutras, his many, many diverse lectures that he gave to very diverse audiences. So he talked to farmers, he talked to noblemen, and he'd say different things. And it was no systematic presentation of his teaching. So it was just a bunch of stuff all over the place for 45 years or whatever it was. So the scholars, you know, that's frustrating to some people, like librarians, they don't like that. They want to have a collection that makes sense, and you can find things based on categories. So the commentary, first commentarial, or scholars of Buddhism, created what's called the Abhidharma, which is basically a list of categories. of what the Buddha taught. So they pulled all these different things out. There were repeated patterns in various lectures, and they put them all in nice little lists and categories, and you can run through them all.

[44:52]

They didn't add too much in terms of theory of being or that kind of stuff. Mostly they were concerned with making sure they got everything into order, like a card catalog, what the Buddha taught. This is the third basket. If you know the word Tripitaka, do you all know the word Tripitaka? Three baskets. Try. Baskets Pitaka. Remember Pitaka? I used to live here. And so there were three baskets, literally woven baskets, in which the first one, they put the sutras. The second one, they put the vinya, the discipline, rules of discipline. And the third one, they put the abhidharma. Oh, bye. So this is the third basket, and the three baskets are in the polycanon. They have these three baskets. So you can read about those, all three. So the whole issue is about the relationship between mind and objects.

[46:00]

And I thought I would also read you a Zen version of this question. These koans are completely related to... you know, these major questions from historical questions. And where is it? It's on page 140. Okay, this is Jiangshan. And the koan is called Mind and Environment. Mind and Environment, okay? Mind and Environment. The ocean is the world of dragons. Disappearing and appearing, they sport serenely. What might that be referring to? Where's the world of dragons? Yeah, don't you think? Imagination. The world of dragons disappearing and appearing, they sport serenely. Pretty peaceful up there.

[47:01]

The sky is the home of cranes. They fly and they call freely. Why does the exhausted fish stop in the shoals and a sluggish bird rest in the reeds? We get pooped. What happens there when you just lose your energy, you know? Is there any way to figure gain and loss? So here's the koan. Yangshan asked a monk, where are you from? The monk said, from Yu province. Yangshan said, do you think of that place? The monk said, I always think of it. Yangshan said, the thinker is the mind and the thought of is the environment. Therein are mountains and rivers and land masses and buildings, towers, halls and chambers, people, animals and so forth. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Are there so many things there? The monk said, when I get there, I don't see any existence at all.

[48:03]

Yangshan said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. You get a lot of faith when you get there to the top of the mountain. You get faith in the Buddhist teaching and the possibility of enlightenment. But you might get stuck there in the stage of faith. The monk said, don't you have any particular way of guidance? Can you help me? Yangshan said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take a seat and wear the robe, and after this, see on your own. Threw him back in the water. Good luck. Good luck, monks. You know, figure it out. You have to figure it out. turn the light around, and then turn it back around again. What are these appearances? How does it work? How do we understand it? And how do the great teachers help us to explain this to them?

[49:07]

That's what they were working on, these guys. That's when Nagarjuna and everyone else was trying to figure out the same questions that we have. Each of us has. Yikes! Thank you. A little table. I need a bigger table. All right. Okay. Yes. So what would you say that is the, not the purpose, but what would you, what do you do? What is the request to do with these teachings, right? You know, there's this idea that the Buddha went before us, tried out all these things and said, well, that was not so good, not so helpful. Don't do that, y'all. Do this other thing. Try this other thing. But can you really learn any things from just hearing somebody say, I tried that, it didn't work? Or did you have to go through all that? You know, and I feel like you get this totally mixed message where they're like, I don't know, don't go Siazza for your whole life because you're going to try to find something in the tripped out rounds of 1 a.m.

[50:14]

or something. Don't do that because I did it. It didn't work. But maybe you should try it because we all did it. You know, like hear that and you're like, what am I supposed to do with that? There's... Well, who gets to decide? I'm sorry, Lauren. That's not right. It's up to you. That's what Yangshan said. You're on your own. See you on your own. But it is, isn't it? Because it's like if I tell you what to do and you do it and it doesn't work out, well, who are you going to blame? The Buddha. Thank you. That's very kind of you. We can all blame the Buddha. Or we can bow to the Buddha and say, thank you, boss. We're trying. We're doing our best here. Just like cowherds. So these guys call themselves cowherds. Even women in cowherds need conventional knowledge in order to live, in order to have babies and feed their babies. And cowherds need to know how to care for cows. It's not an insult to say you're a cowherd or a woman. It's a very high esteemed.

[51:14]

Conventional truth is highly esteemed. And that's what we need to recapture. And that's what this does. He says, you guys are all fooling around there. I shouldn't tell this story. I'm going to. I was sitting with these scholars, because we've got this wonderful scholar coming to Green Gulch. Green Gulch, who's from UC Berkeley, right across the bay. And he... This has all been a message from your sponsor, to tell you the truth. So anyway, his name's Bob Scharf. He's wonderful. And he was staying with us. And we were, all of us, like Rab and Jiryu and all these really wonderful, serious monks who I adore. I've been with forever. and they were talking about what brought them to practice, and it was like the teaching of the holiness and the ultimate reality, and they were going on, and I was sitting there eating my dinner, and then I said, you know, I think what it was for me was the really cute guys with the shaved heads.

[52:18]

And they looked at me like Philistine, you know, and I thought, but then they laughed, and I thought, you know, don't leave out below the neck, guys and girls. Don't believe out what draws you anywhere you go and what you love and what you want. Let's remember it's a whole body thing here. And that, yeah, there was something really cute about those guys with their shaved heads and their black clothes. And I thought, I'd kind of like to live there with them. They look really interesting. And they are. And they're wonderful. And so let's make sure we include all of ourselves and what it means to practice together. Thank you. Anyway, was that recorded? Probably was. Oh, just kidding. Just kidding. Would you? Get back on your good side. Yeah, exactly. Okay. The koan. Contradictory statements. Okay, so that was the first reason for the two truths had to do with the Buddha said contradictory things in the early sutras.

[53:25]

For example... For example, he said that there's no self. Right? There's the trouble with front and back. He said there's no self. And where did he say that? About six. All right, we all have heard that one, right? Buddha said, those who go by names, who go by concepts, are subject to the reign of death. She who discerns the naming process does not suppose that one who names exists. No such case exists for her in truth, whereby one could say, he is this or he is that. So it's no persons, it's all names, don't fall for it, no concepts. And then the Buddha says, well, there was a person born who came to the world to help other people, and he goes on and on about people. So, you know, there's this big question, well, how come he's talking about people when he just said there's no such thing, and anybody who falls for that is wrong.

[54:35]

You know, it's just dreaming. Do you see the problem? So that's just one example. He said many contradictory things. So what they did with that was say, well, there's two kinds of truths. There's the ultimate truth, which has to do with reality itself. There are no persons. That's the higher truth. And then there's the provisional truth, which has to do with helping people understand how to get to the ultimate truth. And that kind of truth requires interpretation. So they have these two terms for these kinds of truths. And you'll see these when you read about Buddhism, too. One of them is called Netartha, definitive teachings. about this is ultimate truth. And then there's nearta, meaning provisional teachings. So that was the origin of the teaching of the two truths.

[55:35]

Just started with that. Pretty simple. Just so the Buddha didn't look like he was inconsistent, or he was contradicting himself. This is the ultimate truth. Yeah, and provisional. Or requiring interpretation. Or conventional. Conventional truth and ultimate truth. Now, philosophers don't really ever stop philosophizing. So they moved on from here to make even more sophisticated cases for the difference between these two truths. One of the places where this contradiction shows up in the Buddha is in the Dhammapada, which you may all be familiar with, where he does talk about his self. And having already said there's only this flux of mental events and so on, and then he's talking about this self who practices in such and such a way.

[56:40]

So the Pali Canon then explains this here. So you can look at the citation in the Pali Canon to help you understand what's going on. It says, the fact the mind is said to be the agent of control by the Buddha. It says, I control your mind, right? As if you got such a thing. So the Buddha says, there's an agent of control, the mind, is so that those who are attached to the view of the self will on another occasion eliminate their imaginary grasping at the self. So it's a setup to get them ready to drop it. First you see it, then you don't. So this is skillful means. From the point of view of interpretive meaning, that is conventionality, the mind is taught to be the self. So you practice with the mind. But not ultimately. There is no mind. No mind, no Buddha. So one of the ways that Yogacara and the Majamaka have been characterized, I think I may have said this in here, the Yogacara, there's a little verse that says, when the babies are crying, this very mind is Buddha.

[57:55]

Are you suffering? You're miserable? That's Buddha. When the babies stop crying, get real serious. No mind, no Buddha. Drop it. Serious. You can't have that either. So that's the Majamaka. No mind, no Buddha. This very mind is Buddha, Yogacara. It's a little more compassionate, actually. I think Majamaka is a little hard to take, actually, the Heart Sutra. Somebody said, that's the Heart Sutra? So we put the loving kindness in there so people would stop saying, where's the compassion in Zen? And I said, well, it's here from the Pali Canon. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So far, so good?

[59:01]

Yeah. Do I? I think they're complementary in terms of benefit to me, personally. I was only a Madomican, not that I knew it, I couldn't have said that, but I only had listened to the Heart Sutra and took inspiration from the emptiness, the possibility of emptiness as being nothing. Very appealing. And I liked that. So I kind of lived in that little bubble of I knew what nothing was, or I knew what emptiness was, and it kind of took, I mean, one of the problems with that, it's called the Zen sickness, is that you get this little bubble around you, and then all that stuff that used to come in on you doesn't. You're kind of like, kind of in a karma-free zone.

[60:01]

It just doesn't hit you. It doesn't hit you. It doesn't affect you. I'm so sorry you're having trouble with me. It's your problem, not mine. I'm in the karma-free zone. And so it's very hard to penetrate that bubble because it's so nice. You're kind of done with a certain kind of suffering, but it's another imaginary state, and you can get frozen in there, and it's really kind of deadly. So unfortunately, guess what happens when the bubble pops? All of them come in at once. All of those things you've been keeping out. You know, like St. Sebastian. Have you ever seen images of St. Sebastian full of arrows? Who's that? What happened? What happened? Here I am. Missed me. Kidding.

[61:03]

No, you have to deal. You have to go back over and say you're sorry and say, well, I didn't mean to say it that way. You have to learn some skills and how to be with other people rather than just back off. You know, so, I mean, if this happens, if it pops, you're back at work. You have to go to work again. Get back on the social skills course and all that sort of stuff. Learn how to have conflict resolution, all the stuff that we're training here. We didn't used to learn that stuff. Did we care about conflict? No. Go to the Zendo. Don't talk. How helpful is that for the undercutting of a sense of self? What's that? It's perfect. Yeah. Bye-bye. But it's a no-self concept. It's a concept.

[62:05]

Yogacara concept only, which is why Yogacara, I think, was invaluable, because it comes in. I remember Rep started teaching the Sandi Nirmartana Sutra, and I'm walking up toward my house with him, and I'm saying, you know, this teaching is really weird, because I'm starting to be interested in my thinking again. And I hadn't paid much attention to my own thinking. And it's mind-only, so, well, what is that? And so it was kind of like a coming back home... to the person and the thoughts that the person was having, which I don't feel that the emptiness teachings invites you to do. I think the emptiness teachings invite you to just cut it off. Stop it. Stop it. Back to the koan. Goes back to the koan. That's right. That's exactly right. It's exactly right. He's basically denying, he's basically just coming straight from emptiness and saying none of that exists. but that's a denial actually of conventional reality. Yes, yes. And so why we have those two figures on the altar, I always appreciate when I go up there, there's the Buddha, you know, stone.

[63:11]

And then there's this gilded Manjushu with the sword, you know, like, what are you thinking, you know? Just don't fall for it. Whatever it is, let it go, let it go. Don't think you can have that outcome there. They're really a great team, those two figures. When you said before that it was a real selfist concept, so in the bubble, isn't that just an experience of real self? Is that necessarily, is it always a conceptualization of what's going on? Yeah, it is anyway. When you were conceiving that you were a girl going to third grade, conceptual, they convinced you it was true. Miss you, you're a girl. All kinds of things. When I was the Tenzo here, there was a young man who was unhappy. And he was on my crew. My crew. He was on the crew.

[64:13]

And whatever I said to him, he would get angry. And I just, I thought, you know, maybe I'm not saying it right or something. And then I thought, maybe I'll ask him why he's so angry at me. And so we went out back there behind the kitchen. And I said, how come you get so angry whenever I speak to you? I couldn't believe what he said. He said, I don't like taking orders from women. And I said, you think I'm a woman? I'd been sitting up there a little too long by then. It's a concept. A woman is a concept, which you will discover. And a man is a concept. I don't want to leave you guys out. It's a concept. You can't find it. You can't find woman. They're relational terms based on if there weren't any men, would there be any women? No. You wouldn't need a word for something else. So it's all about relationships. These are relative terms. Conventional.

[65:14]

They can't be true because you can't find the referent. What determines a male? We know it's no longer just some kind of physiological thing. We know that it's also... how you think of yourself. I mean, there's 18 different ways you can think of yourself now. Thank God. You don't have to pick one or the other. And if you pick the wrong one, we're going to torture you. It's like, no, you can go ahead. Whatever. You tell me what you are. And it will be a concept, whatever it is. Actually, I didn't even ask a question. Yes, you did. I heard it. Well, it seems like the Buddha says here, you know, the dropping away of... The reference point. Yeah. You know what you're saying, you know, you're only slow in comparison to somebody who's fast. Yeah. So in the bubble, I mean, the reference point of self seems to be reduced, and therefore there's less selfing arising. So are you saying that, I mean, you're saying that the only way to reflect back on that is actually a conceptual reflection.

[66:22]

But there can be a direct experience of no self. And then there's conceptualization. Direct experience is questioned, if there's any such thing as a direct experience. In some schools, it's mediated by concepts. You don't have direct experience. And if you did have direct experience, let's say the eye has a direct experience of color. The eye does not know color until the concept comes, oh, that's green. The only thing that you know is that, oh, that's green. I does not know that it's green, although it perceives green. Say concepts don't arise. Huh? Say concepts aren't arising as you see a form, but there's no... How do you know? The argument is, it's a concept. Whatever you know is a concept. If you don't know it, you ain't there. And if you ain't there... What can you say?

[67:23]

Okay, so as I said, the philosophers started to have a lot of fun with this idea of these two truths. It's actually very beneficial that this was divided. This word meant two things. Actually, it turns out to be very beneficial. It didn't lock Buddhist philosophy into one side or the other. So they got to play with which is it. Is it mind only? Is it object only? Is it both? Is it neither? Okay. So I want to read to you one of the most important sets of verses in all of Buddhist history as far as we're concerned as Mahayanists. And this is from Nagarjuna's Mula Mahjamaka Karakas, meaning the verses on the middle way. Mahjamaka, Mula Mahjamaka Karakas verses. And this is chapter 24. called The Examination of the Four Noble Truths. Truth.

[68:25]

Four Noble Truths. He's going right after the most important teaching in all of Buddhism, which is from the Buddha's first sermon, when he taught the Four Noble Truths. Okay. And Nagarjuna is working this problem. All right? So this is not complicated, but it's... Well, you'll hear. It's amazing. So this is considered the philosophical heart of Nagarjuna's teaching about the relationship between the ultimate and the conditional for the relative truth. The Buddhist teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths. A truth of worldly convention, an empty cup, and an ultimate truth, an empty cup. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. So it's very important. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.

[69:34]

Can't say anything. Right? So you have to have a foundation in conventional truth. In order to signify, signify point, finger pointing at the moon, in order to signify the ultimate truth, you need to use conventional truth. Without a foundation of conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Pedagogy. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved. So you can't get out of here without going through there, that door. So here's a cautionary note. By a misperception of emptiness, a person of little understanding is destroyed, like a snake incorrectly seized or like a spell incorrectly cast. For that reason, that the Dharma is deep and difficult to understand and to learn, the Buddha's mind despaired of being able to teach it. For whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear.

[70:37]

For whom emptiness is not clear, Nothing becomes clear. If you perceive the existence of all things in terms of an essence, own being, sva-baha, you know, sva-baha, sva-baha, if you think there's an own being, an essential being to whatever it is you perceive, then this perception of all things will be without the perception of causes and conditions. You'll think they're independent. You will not perceive that they're dependently co-arisen. You will think that this thing exists without silicon and heat and glass makers and so on. You'll just think that this is your cup. Stop right there. It's my cup. My cup. This perception of all things will be without the perception of causes and conditions, without the perception of interdependence. Without effects and cause, without agent and action, and without conditions and arising and ceasing, will be rendered impossible.

[71:47]

So if you don't see the dependent core arising, then you don't see causes and conditions. You don't see how things come into being, how they arise and how they cease. None of that will be available to you. In other words, you will not be able to see the laws of karma, which is what that illustrates on the wall. You won't care about that. you won't learn what the 12-fold chain is or how it works. Because, you know, it's not important. Because you're not seeing that it's important, how important it is. And this is the most important line in his entire, you know, opus. Whatever is dependently co-arisen, whatever is dependently co-arisen, and we're talking about phenomena, Is there anything that's not dependently co-arisen? Want to guess? No. Okay, whatever, so everything. Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness.

[72:52]

That explanation being a dependent... I'm going to use CD, conventional designation, is itself the middle way, non-dual. That's the thing we're after, non-duality. That's what the Buddha saw when he saw the star. He didn't say, I see nothing. He said, I saw the star. I saw the star, and I knew what it meant. It meant dependent co-arising. and it meant emptiness of inherent existence, and I'm telling you that through conventional designations, and that itself is the non-dual nature of reality. This is a nice, wonderful little package here. These four points, like baseball, are considered to be the most profound understanding, and this is Nagarjuna's primary verse. And I think what's interesting to your question about Yogacara Majamaka,

[74:05]

without... Machamaca can leave you over here without listening to the fact that we're talking and thinking in order to understand reality. You can leave out conventional designations, which is what I had been doing. And when I heard this verse, I was like, what? What do you mean conventional designations? You know, like cheese and automobiles and... I mean, what is this? What do you mean, I have to leave that stuff in there? I don't want that stuff in there. But you leave that stuff out and you've got this thing again. You've got this problem. So the whole world comes back in with this equation. You can't leave anything out. This is it. We're there. We're doing it right now. This is the dance and it has all of the ways that we know the world included. It's a beautiful equation. It's kind of like Einstein, you know. So, one more time. Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness.

[75:11]

The only way you'll get emptiness is to explain it. That explanation, being a dependent designation, using language, is itself the middle way, non-dual understanding. Because you just understood it. There you go. We state, whatever is dependently co-arisen, That is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, dimensional designation, is itself the middle way between the extremes that there is something and there isn't something. Buddha's first sermon. So, he gives us his... Let me finish reading this. Something that is not dependently arisen, such a thing does not exist. Therefore, a non-empty thing does not exist. Whoever sees dependent arising also sees suffering and its arising and its cessation as well as the path because that's the clockwork of the mind.

[76:15]

When you see dependent co-arising, when you see how the world works, you see the source of suffering, you see the cessation of suffering, and you see the causes and conditions for suffering and how it all can end because you can see how it all began. So we want to study the clockwork. of the mind, which is what the Buddha was studying under the tree. He was watching how this sequence created the world with his thinking. And then he ran it backwards and the world disappeared. And then he ran it forward and it came back. And he did that over and over again, back and forth. Samsara nirvana. Samsara nirvana. Until he knew. And then he told us about this. So one thing that he's saying is that you can't get one without the other. You can't get one of these without the other one. They are two sides of the same coin.

[77:16]

And you can't separate the relative truth from the conventional truth except by conventional language. The only way I can separate them is they're separate. They're not the same. They're really different. And the reason that's so sneaky is that we use language and we forget that we're using language and we just think we're talking about the thing we're talking about. And he has a verse about that too. He says, you're like a man who's mounted his horse, his dependency on language, on words. You got your horse and you forgot your horse. You forgot that you're losing language and words and concepts to move through the world, the world of your own creation. We're just galloping along, using concepts and language, and we forget that we're using concepts and language, and we get all caught up in the concepts and language. Right? Don't you think so? Ian? It seems to me that this formula, the larger, includes in it already a which part of understanding.

[78:21]

Where do you see that? If... If the possible destinations are the middle way, it sounds like he's not discarding them. No. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. Not at all. This is the formula. I was discarding them. I was testifying to not discarding them as much as forgetting my horse. I forgot my horse. How am I going through the world? Talking. You know? Walking. Forgetting. And all these things that we do, we sort of forget ourselves. We forget our horse. This is why this is so brilliant. It brings you right back into your life. No escape. Wisdom of no escape. What did it brought you back into your life? That verse. So you were just in your little bubble and that verse meant something to you? Yeah. It was shocking. And disappointing. There was.

[79:24]

I was like, no, no, I don't want all that stuff. No. No, it did something. It just couldn't. It's like, you know, you have these little insights all the time, right? You saw something you didn't see when you were in high school, right? That's why you're sitting here wearing a rock suit. You've seen things. And I saw something that I had never seen during my practice. And so then it was like, oh, my God. It was a big something. You know, major, a major omission. So it was like a kind of thunderbolt. Not in like a, oh, yay. I mean, I didn't faint or anything, but I just had to really keep thinking about it. And going back to this verse and going back to, you know, I asked my teacher to write that verse out for me and I've got it on a little shikishi. Because that really meant, it really meant something. It was like a linchpin to some way that I was way off base. in my own estimation. Like you said, see you on your own.

[80:24]

See you on your own. Was there another hand? Several. Yes, Kogan. Yeah, I was thinking about the third nature, three natures, perfect nature. Yes, mm-hmm. I was wondering, because I saw you got a line between the Yogachara side and the Banyamaka side. So is that third nature kind of, is that where Yogachara veers away from the dependently arisen nature? rhetoric? So, I mean, or, because I feel like if there was, if the perfect nature was also dependably and risen, then why is there three nations? Why aren't there just two? Well, it's how you see it. It's like this difference between your concept of what's, of reality. Like, are you seeing it correctly or incorrectly? And Paranishmana is the correct view of reality where the convention, do you all know what he's talking about, three nations? Probably not. Some of you do. Anyway, so there's imputational. There's dependent coerizing, all the stuff that you're looking at right now.

[81:28]

That's everything. Even before you pull it out using words. It's just kind of what's happening. The bubbling up. And then there's the imputational, which is how you pull something out. My cup. I'm imputing my cup on this dependently coerisen thingy. Even thingy is going too far. If I give it a name, if I impute, meaning put into, my notion about this, I am now giving it an identity that separates it from dependent core rising. The inconceivability of dependent core rising, I cannot get a hold of dependent core rising. It's just what's happening, reality itself. Okay, now I take my little brain, my little mind, and I suck this out and call it a cup. That's imputational. What we tend to do, our mistake is that we glue these together and we look at the world through the imputational Kogan. I don't see Dependent Core Rising.

[82:31]

I see Kogan, Andrew, you know. I pull you out through my glasses of imputation. But... The true seeing, what he's talking about, is the third view, which is the actual truth of the matter, is these two are not connected. The Panic Core Rising and my imputation do not touch each other. They're two different things. This one does not actually see what it thinks it sees. They're free. So that's the ultimate understanding. And it's similar to saying they're empty of inherent existence. They're empty of imputing my notions on them. So Yogacara uses that mechanism to arrive at emptiness. And the Majamakans don't bother. They just slap you with it. You know, his thing is pull the rug out, pull the rug out.

[83:36]

I have no view, Nagarjuna says, I have no view. This is not a view. This is not a teaching. This is not a theory. This is the end of theories. This is just a method for pulling whatever you've got, pull it out, including Yogacara. So that would be why Yogacara couldn't really stand up to Amajamakan. But they're still very useful because it's a good mechanism for understanding how the mind is creating this fantasy of things. Could you help me relate the language we've been using today to some of the poetry of the early Chan masters who say things like the nature of delusion is self-enlightened. So it might apply to the example you just said where the imputation doesn't touch dependent co-arising. They might say the imputation itself is dependent co-arising. Yeah, that any phenomena is empty of inherent existence. So that thing, what was the thing you just said?

[84:37]

No, before you said the poem. Oh, the delusion itself is... Oh, okay. Yeah. So, you know, it's like delusion is empty of inherent existence. That's ultimate truth. If you don't see that delusion is empty of inherent existence, that's delusion. So it's there in the same spot. Delusion and enlightenment are both located on this thing. This is it. You don't get another it. It's not behind here. See, that's the big mistake with emptiness. People think it's hiding behind here. Empty. Like you're going to get rid of all this stuff and you're going to find emptiness behind stage. And then you're going to go back there and live happily ever after. Sorry. This is it. This is empty. This is empty. This is empty. Phenomena are empty. There's no kind of vague something or another thing. We're whirling around. That's the trouble with Buddha nature. It kind of ends up being this kind of vague something or another swirling around like a big soup broth.

[85:38]

And then everything's showing up in that. And then you just kind of identify with the broth instead of with the chunks. But we only have chunks. We only have chunks that we can identify with. And only through chunks can you understand emptiness. It's a quality of, like they use the example of the white shell. It's a quality of phenomena. Emptiness is a quality of phenomena. I've got another line for you to help with that. And then we'll stop because I think we should do some more zazen probably and get our heads cooled off here. Talk about the horse. We got your horse. One temptation is to think that the two truths are either identical, just one truth, or entirely different. But another temptation that I think we all have fallen into is to think that the ultimate truth is a better truth than the conventional truth, which is the point they're making in this book.

[86:47]

It's like, you don't have a better truth to work with here. You're going to have to work with conventional truth, whether you like it or not. Not liking is also conventional. So this is not higher. Ultimate truth is not a higher truth. It's not a better truth. So that's one mistake. So I think the most important point I'm trying to make in bringing all of this up is that we as Buddhists need to take the conventional seriously. And why? Because that's where the precepts are. They're conventional truths. As Dogen says, you know, when he reads off his sutras, I mean, his precepts, it's like, there's no killing. There's no stealing. There's no, you know, that's really good. That's really helpful. Except that there is killing and stealing and lying and sexualizing and intoxicating. And if we don't take that seriously, we can actually become, you know, nihilists.

[87:49]

And nihilists don't necessarily behave all that well. Because why should they? What difference does it make? So, and now if you're well-behaving, Neil, it's fine. You got your own religion. You can go that way and everything else. But if you really want to understand the Buddhist precepts and the Buddhist teaching, then you're going to have to come to grips with the seriousness of the conventional truth, which is really what they're saying is all you got to work with. So, let's see. That was... Where's that thing? I wanted to read you. Okay, so Nagarjuna is second century, and then in the seventh century, this is 500 years later, there's a teacher named Chandrakirti.

[88:51]

You may know that name, may not, but anyway, Chandrakirti is also Majomakan. scholar of Nagarjuna. So he wrote a text called the Majamaka Vadara, which is kind of awesome, but you have to work up to it. And he said, all things bear two natures. So now they're talking about objects having two natures. So the cup has two natures, which is kind of what I've been saying. It's a cup and it's empty. It's a cup and it's empty. It has two things about the cup. One is its emptiness and one is it doesn't have any water in it. All things bear two natures constituted through correct and false views. So false view is the cup doesn't have any water in it. That's just not true. It's a false view. Conventionally it's true. Ultimately it's just nonsense. The object of those who see correctly is said to be reality.

[89:56]

The emptiness of the cup. And the object of those who see falsely is said to be conventional existence. The cup doesn't have any water in it. So they're making now a distinction. Now you've got two things going. You've got the mind, the concepts of the enlightened one see objects correctly. Concepts of the foolish common people That's us. See objects incorrectly. However, it's still true, even though it's false. It's not ultimately true, but it's true conventionally. And that's the thing we're needing to work with, is what is true conventionally and what is not true conventionally. So that's bringing everything over to the side of foolish common people, us. really need to know and discern the difference between conventionally false and conventionally true, between right and wrong, wholesome, unwholesome, and so on. And we need to discern and choose which one we're going to enact.

[91:00]

Our karma means action. How are you going to act? You have to discern with the common mind that we have. And until we believe we're enlightened Buddhas and we're only seeing emptiness wherever we look, right up until then, we have to make this discernment. about truth in a conventional sense. So for Majomakans, a conventional designation is not just a teaching device for a skillful means to reach the ultimate truth. I'm sorry, you just have to do this in order to get to there. But rather, it's the only basis for ultimate truth. The only basis for ultimate truth is conventional. There's no other place to look. Right? That's what I've been saying. So, ultimate truth captures the deepest and final way in which conventional objects exist. Upon analysis of this object, you will know the ultimate truth about this object.

[92:04]

That's the only way. There's no other access to ultimate truth except through conventional truth. Yeah. That's not Janaka? That's, yeah, that's Nagarjuna. I thought you were saying that Madhyamaka does always acknowledge the conventional treatment and the dangers of it. It's the danger. He's not saying that. Okay. Nagarjuna doesn't say that. He's interpreted that way. Okay. Amputina's teachings are, it's a misinterpretation of Madhyamaka. He's accused of being a nihilist. And if you read him carefully, he's not. And he keeps saying, I'm not. I'm not a nihilist. In fact, if your version of reality that there are essences to things and there's essences to the precepts and they really are real precepts and so on, if that was true, there wouldn't be any possibility of change. You couldn't go from being an unenlightened person to an enlightened person because essentially you're unenlightened and you can't become enlightened because that would mean they would have to change. So he's making this case, really profound case, against the assertion

[93:13]

by the realists that there are real things over here that we have to take seriously. He's saying, if you do that, you're just freezing reality. Philosophically, you can't really do it because that's not what's happening. But you're thinking you can. And that kind of thinking is delusion. But if you read him, you'll see that he's not doing that. In fact, he's the opposite. He's promoting conventional truth. And yet the only way we can gain insight is through reasoning and language. So right back on the horse. Nagarjuna argues that understanding the ultimate nature of things is dependent entirely on understanding the truth. And this is the last thing I'm going to say. Here's his quote. Just as sweetness is the nature of sugar and hotness the nature of fire, so we assert that the nature of things is emptiness. Reality is not to be seen as something different than conventionalities. Conventionalities are described as emptiness, and just emptiness is the conventional because neither occurs without the other.

[94:21]

Can't get one without the other. Okay? So, accomplishing the goal, awakening, depends on conventional designations, depends on the path. And it depends on understanding the true nature of conventional reality. That is enlightenment. So no matter which way you look, you're not going to get away from conventional reality. And this is good. This is good because we're already there. So next time I'm going to talk about the 12-fold chain because this is how Buddha explained conventional reality. This is the story of how it is our minds make up things, you know, conventionally. So I'll be going through the six center slices of the pizza pie there are basically the six realms. And there was a period of time in Japan, which is a wonderful kind of hotbed of belief in the literal meaning of this diagram.

[95:34]

They actually thought that It explained everything about the world. So in terms of karma, if you were born with a leg missing or you were born with any kind of problem with your body, it was karma. It was easy to understand. It's just your karma. You did something bad in a former life. And if you became the king, well, it's just your karma. So everything literally was interpreted through this wheel. And it's fascinating to study Japanese history in that time. There's a book called The Karma of Words. because it helps us to see what happens when this becomes a literal understanding. Anyway, I'm going to bring that up next time and talk about the 12-fold chain. If you have a chance to preview that a little bit, it would maybe make it easier to enter into the discussion. So thank you all very much for your attention.

[96:30]

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