After such a chant, I really don't feel like I should say anything at all. We should just go back to the dendo. I think I'm kidding. I'm not. First of all, I'd like to welcome you to the intensive. We've all agreed together to make a kind of focused and sincere effort to maintain the Buddha Dharma during these next three weeks and study the self, study our self, study the self that for most of us, for all of us actually, gets us into such difficulty.

[01:06]

And the self that we're studying in particular, the one that gets us into that difficulty, is the one that thinks it's really in charge of everything, separate from everything, whole, right, and real. That self we call the small self because it's only half of the picture. The other half of the picture is the self that is this one life that we're all living together. We are that life. And if we can study the small self, the separate self, the self that's contracted and feels threatened by everything, then slowly we can forget that one, see through that one, and live in relation to everything, responding appropriately when asked, and when not asked, just being satisfied and settled in life just exactly the way it is.

[02:13]

I would suggest then for these three weeks that you consider taking on a practice that's radical, that's a little bit difficult, and that is true for any level of practitioner, whether we're just beginning or whether we are very familiar with all of the words that we're about to share. That practice is complete. and total renouncing of the self in every way that it comes up. Now, I'm not talking about beating yourself up and making judgments. I'm simply talking about noticing and watching very clearly whenever emotion thought comes up, just to say, thank you very much and come back to wholeheartedly doing whatever you're doing.

[03:19]

No past, no future, no nothing. And out of this no nothing, somehow, the miracle of our life, our shared experience, arises. Now, those of us who have done this practice know that my suggestion is not an easy one. I'm suggesting it anyway. But I am also suggesting that when we are not able to do that, that that is exactly when our study begins. We want to see really clearly the self that is arising at that moment through emotion.

[04:21]

If that's what you're studying, find out clearly what that is. Or a thought, a point of view, a sense of righteousness, a sense of jealousy, frustration, even joy and happiness. If you get caught or if you grab on to any state of mind or emotion thought, There is the contraction. And that's what you're watching for. How is it that we recreate, buy into, then defend and justify this sense of separation that causes us such suffering, which we do so habitually and so automatically? If that happened and we're caught, which happens all the time, what we do then is, if you can, we

[05:30]

hold that person with kindness and gentleness, dare I say love and acceptance, for exactly the one that is so frustrated with this study that they're ready to pick up the Xerox material and throw it across the room. That's the person that you care about deeply. So our radical practice, which I'm suggesting, for three weeks, for two weeks, for the day, for one period of zazen, first don't grasp anything any emotion thought anything that reifies the sense of separation that avoids relationship fundamentally and if you can't do that just simply watch what happens next okay the whole world arises

[06:53]

your particular world, the world of your particular suffering. Study that so well, so deeply, so thoroughly that you know it will not knock you around and you can then forget it. That's our job. So in order to do that, you need some intention to be really gentle with yourself. Because this kind of the self, the little self, does not want to be studied, doesn't like it, is embarrassed by it, and sometimes gets really upset with you. so upset that if you're not really stable, it will toss you right into hell and will be very happy about it because all the little self wants to do is to keep living, to keep existing.

[08:16]

It thinks it's very important and it is very important but not as important as it thinks. So when we start looking deeply and seriously, it will do whatever it can to distract you in any way it can. If that means making you think about the future or think about how bad you are or how much better you are than everybody else or the past or whatever it is, it will do that and it won't necessarily care how you end up. But the good news is that when we look very carefully and very gently at it, it is actually an emperor with no clothes. It's transparent and has no ground.

[09:21]

It's actually very timid, has no power. Only that we give it. And the way we give it is through grasping. So with that as an introduction, let us do some business. Let's pass out. We have four things to pass out. And I would like, if you don't mind, just the people who are actually in the intensive to take the handouts first. And then those of you who are not so in the intensive, but there are more of you here, I think, or maybe not. Then we'll just go ahead and xerox more if there aren't enough to go around. Okay, so you're going to have a xerox called the compendium, which is five translations of the main text that we're going to be doing.

[10:24]

You're going to be having the main text with commentary, Kalupahana. Oh, some of you have it already. Oh, for heaven's sakes. Oh, great. Okay, you're going to be having lots of toys here. Okay? The first thing you have are the 30 verses in compendium form. So there are five translations. Does everyone who needs them have that? Do we have any more? Just raise your hands and we'll pass out as many. Ah! That's how many people don't have them? Oh, for heaven's sakes. Then we're going to have... Catherine? Can we do this during work period, just Xerox the whole one? Okay, great. Yeah, let's have... How many people don't have them?

[11:28]

First of all, don't have the compendium. The five. We Xeroxed 30, so... So I don't know where they all are, but... No, that's it. That's a big weighted data. Okay, everyone who, the compendium, everyone who needs one, their hand was up or you have one. The next thing you need to have are, it's called the 30, Vasubandhu's 30 verses. This is the text that we're going to be studying, and it comes to you with commentary by Kalupahana, and it looks like that. All of you who do not have that, raise your hand. Okay, pass those out, and then we'll see. Are you counting?

[12:39]

Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, count. One, two, three, four, five, six. That's all? Just five? Great, we did better there. And the next thing you need looks like this very, very pretty page. This is really pretty. This is called the vocabulary. Okay? Everyone who doesn't have the vocabulary, please raise your hand. So tomorrow, or maybe even the next day, I'll wait until everybody has what they need, and then we'll go over these things together.

[13:42]

Yes, I have, I have. And then the next thing that you need, well, you don't really need this. This is just for people who want to continue study on their own. It's just a start, sort of. I mean, there's tons of material on this, but you have to kind of pick at lots of different things. So I just wrote down some things that some of it's a little scholarly, and some of it is for people who are beginners. And you can just go ahead and choose what you need. It's called... Summer Intensive 2002 Reading List. And the main text you have as the Vasubandhas 30 verses. So you don't have to worry. Everyone who doesn't have this, please raise your hand. No, that's okay. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. And while I'm at it, let me just say that the compendium has the 30 verses in a row at the front.

[14:57]

So maybe some of you thought you didn't have it. But if you have this that looks like this in the front, you have the compendium. Anyone else? Anyone else? Yeah, let me say that again, okay? Those of you who have this that looks like this, the 30 verses, okay? Does anybody not have this that's attached to the compendium? Those people, raise your hand. Are those the same amount of people? Are you the same people who thought you didn't have the compendium in the first place? Okay.

[16:03]

And then the one other business we have is, does anybody need a suture cloth, which is a cloth that covers the books in the study hall? So three, four, five. Carol, can you? And then please return those at the end of the intensive. They're blanches. So again, welcome to the intensive.

[17:44]

And thank you for coming and being with us. And here we go again. I just want to emphasize a little bit that the material that we're going to be studying is a little bit heady. And I don't really like talking about it very much unless it's in the context of a lot of sitting meditation, which it is here. So please, let's try to take whatever it is that we're studying and use that as a suggestion of a meditation technique. And again, if you have trouble with the material, that itself, that trouble itself is what you'll be studying. So the whole thing that we're going to be studying is not so much... itself important, but it's important as a tool for our own waking up and freedom. So the ways you can study it is either just plain old listening to it and letting it just flow through.

[18:51]

You can actually try to understand it and really get into it. You can, if it's frustrating for you, you can watch the frustration and the resistance You can use it as a mantra. You can use it as a meditation suggestion and so on. There are lots of different ways. The important thing in this class is not necessarily to understand intellectually what's happening, but rather to use whatever is coming up in you as the study. Can you hear with that? Is that okay? It's okay for me. I'm going to read something now from the Dhammapada.

[19:54]

The Dhammapada is a bunch of verses, not really said by the Buddha a long time ago, but certainly in his teaching. It's one of the very early writings, and it is part of the traditional canon. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If a person speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.

[20:55]

If a person speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows. Joy follows him as his own shadow. He insulted me. He hurt me. He defeated me. He robbed me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. He insulted me. He hurt me. He defeated me. He robbed me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. How can there be laughter? How can there be pleasure when the whole world is burning? When you are in deep darkness, will you not ask for a lamp? Consider this body, a painted puppet with jointed limbs, sometimes suffering and covered with ulcers, full of imaginings, never permanent, forever changing.

[21:58]

The glorious chariots of kings wear out and the body wears out and grows old, but the virtue of the good never grows old. If a person tries not to learn, she grows old just like an ox. Her body indeed grows old, but her wisdom does not grow. I have gone round in vain the cycles of many lives, ever striving to find the builder of the house of life and death. How great is the sorrow of life that must die. But now I have seen thee, house builder. Nevermore shalt thou build this house. The rafters of sins are broken, the ridgepole of ignorance destroyed. The fever of craving passed. Those who in their youth did not live in self-harmony and who did not gain the true treasures of life are later like long-legged old herons standing sad by a lake without fish.

[23:12]

Buddha in his teachings pointed all the time to ignorance and all the time to grasping because ignorant grasping is what builds this house. That's why we suggest for these next three weeks that you simply practice not grasping. That's all we need to know. So I have written on the board the Skandhas and the Nidanas. Can anyone tell me in English what the skandhas are? What's nama rupa in English? A faith form. What's vedana? What's sajna? Are these familiar?

[24:25]

Now, I don't mean familiar intellectually. No. Uh-uh. Have you investigated these? What's samskara? What? What? Mind out. What else? What's another word? What? No. What? No. What? No. No. What? Okay. This one is the big, I'm not going to tell you. What's this one? Okay. You guys are so funny. Now, this is great. This is really neat. Okay, look it.

[25:32]

The skandhas are... Now, wait a second. Let me ask you this. Is there something besides this? Let's find out what this is first. These skandhas are what we are. Now look what you guys left out. This is really interesting to me. This is really interesting. Right here, we're sitting there, and you know you have a form. You have experience of that. You don't let that off of the list. And you happen to know by intellectually, that sensation, do you spend a lot of time noticing sensation? That you feel hot, cold, or neutral, or uncomfortable? Do you? And perception, you know. I mean, you're seeing, hearing, so on, so on, so on, right? And then you skip all the way over to consciousness. Isn't that interesting? What in the world did you leave out? Okay, say that again.

[26:40]

Anybody? Mental formations. What gets us into trouble? Ideas. What else? Concepts. All the muck. This is the stuff of the muck. We left it out. We can call this... The traditional word is disposition, mental formations. You can say mental formations. You can say dispositions. You can say clashes. You can say motion thought. Isn't it interesting what we left out? Didn't I say that the self doesn't want to be looked at? I think I find that very interesting. Now, is there a number six?

[27:42]

This is really fun. Okay, look it. Form, sensation, perception, mental formations, emotion, thought, all of those. Consciousness. I love this. This is so great. Now, all the time we're thinking something, all the time we're thinking something, and yet there's nothing here that says. There's not a number six. Do you know what I'm going to put down here? Yeah. Self. It's not there. It's not listed. Why not? Should be, shouldn't it? I'm a me. You're a you. I know that, but look, it's not there. Yes? We could put concepts here. Sure. What is a self then?

[28:49]

Who said that? Are you sure? Do people actually believe that the self is just an idea? No, thank you very much. No, there's some people here who don't believe that. If you don't believe that, you might investigate. When you go down to sit, you know, see if you can find form. It'll be there. See if you can find sensation. Pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. See if you can find perception. That'll happen. See if you can find any of these through getting lost in these. Okay? These will be there. This will be there. See if you can find this. So this stuff is no good intellectually.

[29:57]

It's only useful if you actually have some real experience that it really isn't there, that number six is not there, not listed. Now, this is a description of kind of It's not static, but it's a category of stuff. This on this side is what this does. This is the active side. This shows us how we behave in the world. And I left off four things. Can you fill them in? Yeah, and that goes, I should have written them actually upside down. I should have write that in red. Okay, what are the other ones I left out? What?

[30:58]

Grasping, where does that go? What's another word for grasping? Attachment. Okay, what else is missing? What? Isn't that interesting? It doesn't come up very much in the Buddha Dharma. Almost any list. I don't think I've ever seen it. We have it. Action? What's another word for action? Karma. Karma, which is volitional. Volitional action is like... The key. Okay, and then what else? Aversion? Actually, you know, for Buddhism, aversion is actually kind of a sub-thing of grasping. That's the way I think about it.

[32:01]

But no, not there. Although, you know, in the wheel, the nidanas, the 12 nidanas, is actually the wheel of life. And in the wheel of life, in the middle of the wheel of life, The nidanas are on the outside. You know, you've seen this with this guy, this guy on top like that with these teeth. And then it's hands with claws, with really long nails go like that and holding it over the tummy. That's feet. These are the nadanas. And then over here, there are the six realms. And then in the middle, you have the three poisons, greed, hate, and delusion. So there's your hate. OK, we're still looking for one thing. Consciousness. So now we have a picture of who we are and how we behave.

[33:05]

And what we're going to study... Let me say one thing more about the nidanas. There are two ways of approaching the nidanas, for those of you who haven't heard this yet. Most of you are kind of familiar with this. One way is from the conventional view, and the other way is from the ultimate view. And we're not going to be ultimating for a while. The whole first half of Vassubandhasiddhi verses we're not going to be alternating. We're going to be conventionalizing, which means that the conventional way of viewing the pentacle rising is about dualistic consciousness, the duality of self and other, okay? So what this is describing right here is dualistic consciousness.

[34:11]

So I put the word the dhatus on the board because pretty soon we're going to be looking at the dhatus, which, just for a moment, is organ, field, and consciousness. There are 18 of them. So Vasubandhu, who was steeped in the Abhidharma, he wrote the Abhidharma Kosha, Vasyam, which we have some books back there in case you guys want to investigate this a little more. Abhidharma means, the word means highest. Abhidharma, Dhamma. Dhamma means teaching. Abhi means high, so highest. teaching, avidharma, kosha. Kosha means like womb or essence. And vasya means commentary. So our guy, Vasubandhu, wrote this commentary on the essence of the highest dharma.

[35:20]

And these, he was very, very steeped in these. And he was trying to help us be free of the duality of self and other, which the Buddha pointed to as the cause of our suffering. So grasping here based on dualistic consciousness molded by karma, by activity based on ignorance is what we have to investigate. This is from Samyutta Nikaya. This is the Buddha speaking.

[36:28]

Now I wonder, knowing in what way, seeing in what way, does one without delay put an end to leaking? Well then, knowing in what way, seeing in what way, does one without delay put an end to the leaking? There is the case where an uninstructed, run-of-the-mill person who has no regard for noble ones is not well-versed or disciplined in the Dhamma, who has no regard for people of integrity, is not well versed or disciplined in the Dhamma, assumes form to be the Self. That assumption is a fabrication. Now what is the cause? What is the origin?

[37:29]

What is the birth? What is the coming into existence of that fabrication? to an uninstructed, run-of-the-mill person, touched by that which is felt born of contact with ignorance, craving arises. Fabrication is born of that, and that fabrication is inconsistent and dependently co-risen. That craving, that feeling, that contact, that ignorance is inconsistent, fabricated, and dependently co-arisen. It is by knowing and seeing in this way that one without delay puts an end to the outflows. Vasubandhu honed in on this fabrication, this imputation of solidity of self and other, how it arises and how to be free of it.

[38:41]

And that's what the text is about. So, let's see, where should we go from there? I wanted now to go over the things that we handed out, but some of you don't have them, so... Okay, you can look on with the neighbor. So, those of you, please take a look at the vocabulary, and I'm not going to talk very much more about the Skandhas and the Nidanas, because... I'm not sure.

[39:42]

So please yourself be familiar with the vocabulary because we'll be using a lot of it and it'll be helpful to you. So you can see that the skandhas are there and also dependent co-rising in various ways, in the two ways. And also other words that you might pay some attention to in the beginning is alaya, the difference between awareness and dualistic consciousness. concept, manas, the non-natures, and the paratantra, parakalpada, and parinaspana, and that's plenty.

[41:05]

And then in terms of the compendium that have those translations, the translations that are most helpful, I think, are the Kalupahana translation, which you have, and then also the Kuchimutin translation. I don't know how you say his name, so I hope I'm not being Insulting the person, but that one. And then the Anikar is also good. You can see that those three are from the Sanskrit. And the ones that are from the Chinese are a little bit problematic in that they tend toward... Thinking of Vasubandhu as an idealist, thinking that his writing is about what the world is about rather than simply being a tool for us and describing something that happens that makes self and other.

[42:23]

Not that. No, the Sanskrit, yes, the Chinese... All right, I think that's enough. And then I want to end with reading you this part. Just to mention again before I read the last thing I want to read, the main thing, I think, if I'm too redundant, just someone tell me later.

[43:36]

But the main thing is to please go ahead and investigate. Don't leave it just words. So wherever it is that you are in your practice, that's what to do from now on. So for example, if you can really, if you are at this point, stable enough in your meditation that you can actually bring that during the day to watch where your self comes up and how you're holding and not hold on to it, do that. If where you're at is to see if you can simply find a self in any of these things, do that. If what you're going to be doing is watching where you get caught and you can practice some gentleness and compassion around that, do that. The fundamental instruction is to be present in zazen and in the rest of your daily life.

[44:39]

So whatever it is that prevents you from being present, clearly, that's what to investigate. Zazen instruction for Soto Zen Buddhism, the main instruction is to not do anything. And it takes a while to actually be able to not do anything because we feel like we have things to do in Zazen. But the truth of our situation is that we are this one life. and that there is actually nothing to do. There is only the small self getting in the way of that that gives us difficulty. So if you can sit there even in the midst of delusion and allow it to come up and let the mind of awareness that is our true nature

[45:47]

the bright, clear awareness that is behind and in the midst of all of the delusion. It's still there even when we're being tossed about. I'm going to read a little bit from The Beak of the Finch. According to present thinking, the departure of our own line began six or seven million years ago in the African savanna, when our ancestors switched from what is known in the jargon as braciation, swinging from tree branch to tree branch, to walking on the ground.

[47:01]

That change led to a cascade of adaptations. One of the first was the trick of rearing up and walking on our hind legs, which was one of the most striking shifts in anatomy you can see in evolutionary biology. Somewhere in this sequence of adaptations, perhaps at the very start of the brain's expansion, there occurred the heightening of consciousness. that we ourselves as members of the species consider distinctly human. It is this character, more than the thumb, the voice, the hind-legged stance, or the human face, that we feel sets us apart from other living things on the planet. To us, a man or a woman who has lost hands, legs, voice or even face is still a human being.

[48:04]

Our arrogance, think of ourselves as a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. Our gift of consciousness is a mystery, one of the greatest remaining mysteries in biology, but it is no more of a miracle than a beak, a feather, or a wing, and it is made by the modeling and molding of the same living clay through the same process. Why should we assume that consciousness is unique to our kind in anything but degree? It is our arrogance, Darwin wrote in his notebook. It is our admiration of ourselves. I would like to say that this consciousness that human beings are blessed with is sadly enough the very thing that separates us from all other creatures.

[49:14]

And this sense of separation, the sense of self and other, is the very thing that we're going to be studying. Vasubandhu helps us see how the sense of separation occurs naturally in our minds And if we can see clearly how it develops, then maybe we could not grab onto that sense, which is a useful sense of separation, but it isn't the deeper truth. And as we let go of that grasping and settle down into a place of oneness, then we could live easier with ourselves and everything else that we share this life with. Okay, thank you.

[50:13]

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