This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So nice to hear that big bell and know I'm at the city center. So this is Wisdom Week for those of you who've been joining us for the intensive. I want to begin with a poem. It's called Zazen on Qingting Mountain. The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

[01:03]

This poem is by Li Po, and it was written in the 8th century at a time when Zen was becoming the dominant Buddhist tradition in China. And as you all know, poems may evoke in us images and feelings of experiences that we already know, and in this case, the experience of Shikantaza, Silent City. wherein only the mountain remains. So as many of you are aware, this is the second week of our three-week intensive with Gil Fransdal, Paul Haller, and myself, that we are not only calling, but discovering to be the harmony of Zen and Vipassana. During this intensive, we structured our conversations around Buddhist teaching of the three-fold training. So there's ethics, concentration and wisdom. Last week we focused on methods and teachings for the practices of concentration, samadhi.

[02:07]

This week we've been focusing on the wisdom teachings, prajna, and next week on ethical training, shila or precepts. So I'll begin this evening by proposing that wisdom is the key to harmonizing, not just Zen and Vipassana, but all the many parts of our life which we imagine are separate or distant or even perhaps lost forever you know like our childhoods or our dreams of wealth or of eternal love which when translated into buddhist terms are the dreams of suffering and a wish for the suffering to end which dreaming alone might not make it so suffering from very mild to catastrophic has been and will be persistent and universal in our lives as we grow older we grow ill and we die and although in this post-modern era we have discovered many different ways to lessen that suffering to numb the pain and albeit temporarily to save our lives from bad weather diseases and bad luck and yet as the buddha clearly knew

[03:21]

For himself, suffering only truly ends when we awaken from the dream of a separate self. That inborn and deep-seated belief in being single, so to speak, as if being single were even possible. So the Buddha's enlightened vision as he gazed at the morning star was the collapse of his singularity, or from another point of view, the birth of himself, of his true self. as entirely whole, entirely connected to everything and everyone, the birth of his great belonging, but not just for him, for all of us as well. After his awakening, there's another story that I've always liked from the early teachings about an encounter that the Buddha had with a traveler on the road who was struck by the appearance of this newly awakened being. He said to the Buddha, Are you a god? The Buddha said, no.

[04:22]

A water spirit? No. An angel? No. A ghost? No. Are you a human being? No. Then, noble sir, what indeed are you? The Buddha replied, I am awake. So it seems to me that the difference in language, ritual, and iconography of religious traditions, Zen and Vipassana, for instance, becomes literally a moot point in the silent illumination of an awakened experience and in the presence of an awakened one. And yet the outcome of our own spiritual search depends entirely on what it is we think we see in the image of an awakened being. Whether we see someone who's really different from ourselves or who's the same as ourselves. Or perhaps we just take a quick look and keep on walking. So each of these responses is the beginning of our own personal journey.

[05:25]

And for those who choose the path of awakening, the movement is toward an ever deeper understanding of just what it is that we see, which, as it turns out, is just what we are. I found it really interesting that Gil, Paul, and I had all connected as young adults to the image of a Buddha in the teachings of Suzuki Roshi. And for me, at least, also to the picture of him on the back cover of Zen Mind Beginners Mind, which is the same picture that I bow to every morning as I make the rounds of all the altars at Green Gulch Farm. First, I started the Founders Hall, Suzuki Roshi, and then to the bathhouse, the kitchen, and to the protector deity, And then finally into the Zendo, where I have a lot of time and a lot of space to remember, once again, just how it is that I got here in the first place. So here's another story about that. Once upon a time, long, long ago, while sitting in the Zendo of the Page Street building, my teacher at the time, Richard Baker Roshi, entered the room with a special guest, Dr. Gregory Bateson.

[06:40]

who was a well-regarded thinker and author of his day, and who on the fifth day of our seventh day's machine proceeded to tell us a story. He said, I just received news that scientists have finally created a computer that thinks like a human. And to test this computer, they asked it a simple question. Do you think like a human? The computer word... as they did in those days, and then printed out its response on a long sheet of paper. That reminds me of a story. So, there it is. Our profound teachings of inspired wisdom are stories. They're just-so stories that have been told again and again out of respect and devotion to the Buddha and to what we think he said. So whether we're chanting or memorizing or writing out these in many languages, these stories, they have been carried for several thousand years by sincere practitioners, you know, through the desert, across the ocean.

[07:48]

And then, so we here could hear them. We could learn them and we could practice them. And if all goes well, we can even teach them to others. So the story I'm going to talk about this evening is from our most precious of wisdom teachings, the Heart Sutra, which is one of the more challenging texts in all of Buddhist literature, and particularly famous for this mysterious phrase, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, which is itself a condensed kind of expose of the two truths, which I was talking about the other morning on Tuesday. those of you in the intensive. So basically, the two truths teaches us that all things, all things, all forms, all feelings, perceptions, impulses, and thoughts are empty of some unchanging essence, of some inherently separate and isolated existence.

[08:50]

This doctrine is both startling and it's comforting at the same time. So before I go any further, I would like to invite all of you to sit comfortably yourselves as we have been learning to do these past days from our dear teachers, Gil and Paul. And if you can, my effort to say something about this text, I hope you'll enjoy. I'm grateful for your patience and for whatever questions you might have. So for those of you who are not familiar with the Heart Sutra, I think there's a copy of it in the chat box. Is that right? Did that happen? There's a link coming just momentarily. Great. Thank you so much, Koro. So I'll give you just a moment to open that if you would like to. Some of you know the Heart Sutra, so you can just chant by heart. I'm going to chant it with you. And for those of you who know it, since all of you will be muted, so you don't need to worry about being exuberant.

[09:54]

So please feel free to chant as loudly as you like. And for those of you who don't know the Heart Sutra, you're so welcome to join us in chanting. And you too, please be as enthusiastic as you like to. No one can make a mistake. So without a doubt, some embodied experience of this particular text allows a kind of understanding it is truly hard to understand, which I think is one of the many things that this sutra has set out to do. So I'm going to begin by chanting the title, and then I will hit the Mukugyo, and you all please join me in chanting along. Great wisdom, beyond wisdom, hearts it draws. Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva when deeply practicing kashnaparamita.

[11:00]

Five aggregates are empty and thus relieved. All suffering charikutra form does not differ from... Emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness. Emptiness itself forms sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this. Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness. They neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure. nor decrease therefore given emptiness there is no form no sensation no perception no formation no consciousness no eyes no ears no nose no tongue no body no mind no sight no sound no smell no taste no touch no object of mind no realm of sight no realm of mind consciousness there is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance

[12:05]

Neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death. No suffering, no cessation, no path, no knowledge and no attainment. With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita. And thus the mind is without hindrance, without hindrance. There is no fear far beyond all inverted use. One realizes there. All Buddhas of past, present, and future rely on Prajnaparamita and thereby attain and surpass complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore know that Prajnaparamita has a great miraculous mantra, a great mantra, the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which removes all suffering and is true. Therefore, we proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra, the mantra that says, Gathe, Gathe, Paragathe, Parasam Gathe, Bodhisattva.

[13:24]

feel like a kind of cleanse when I chant the Heart Sutra. I'm really looking forward to when we can all go back and the Zen don't chant together. We've done a little bit of it at Green Lodge, but yeah, soon, soon, maybe all of you as well. So the title of this sutra in Sanskrit is Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra. Maha is great, Prajna, wisdom, paramita beyond, and Hridaya's heart. Sutra is sutra. So Prajnaparamita means wisdom beyond wisdom and refers to a kind of knowing or understanding that is beyond that of our ordinary wisdom and is synonymous with Buddhahood. So the perfection of this wisdom also refers to a knowledge through both our hearts and our minds of emptiness. So for those of you already familiar with the Heart Sutra, you have undoubtedly noticed that The emptiness is one of the two big words that come out, jump out from this text.

[14:33]

The other big word is no. So those two words are major signposts on the way to Buddha's understanding of reality. In order to understand how that's so, we begin our practice of understanding of wisdom by turning towards something that we already think that we know. We turn toward ourself. So some of you I know are familiar with the Zen saying by our Japanese founder, Dogen Zenji, that to study the Buddha way is to study the self, which sounds pretty easy until we start to do it. And yet we can think of studying the self, the one that we think we are, as a kind of prime directive for the practice of Buddhism, and also as the entry gate to an understanding of emptiness. wherein the one that's standing at the gate is not the one that I call Buddha, it's the one that I call me. The Buddha was also studying himself as he sat there under the Bodhi tree, his mind and his body, his feelings, his perceptions, and his impulses to do things, and all of which became parts of the Heart Sutra.

[15:47]

So this instruction to study the self requires of us, as it did for him, What I propose is a prerequisite for engagement with this great mystery of our life. And that prerequisite, I would say, is a deep curiosity akin to a kind of sense of wonder or a sense of awe about who we are and where we are and what are we supposed to do now that we're here. And by here, I do mean on this planet, planet Earth, which already is amazing enough. But I also mean that very spot of earth where each of you is sitting right now. In a book called awe, the delights and dangers of our 11th emotion, a neuropsychologist by the name of Paul Persall defines awe as an overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness.

[16:48]

An overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness. Wisdom beyond wisdom. So I wanted to invite you all to think of a time in your past when you were in a state of awe. A time when you were kind of stopped in your tracks by someone or something that was either totally awesome. Or perhaps totally awful. And as you reflect on that time, if you can, try to remember the effect that that time had on your body. Or is even having right now. So I'll give us all a few minutes to, or not minutes, maybe a minute, to think about that. What was that time when I was in awe? Well, those experiences for a student of the Buddhist teaching can lead us to a life-altering direction, the direction of awakening.

[18:17]

It's very likely that it's just such a moment that took place when the Buddha looked up at the star mourning of his awakening. And that breathtaking moment for which he said later that I and the entire universe are awakened at the very same time. Total connection, total belonging. So once we recognize in ourself that deep curiosity, which is akin to our sense of awe or sense of wonder, I think that's when we're ready to study and to learn, you know, just about anything, as it turns out. In the case of this evening, maybe we can learn a little bit about the Heart Sutra. And in order to support you who are new to this teaching, I want to share with you what the Buddha said about how we humans learn things in just about anything. how we learn language and music and science, or in this case, as students of the Heart Sutra, how we learn what it means to wake up. So there are three stages involved in how we learn.

[19:21]

Paul talked about these one morning. The first stage is called Shrutamai Prajna, meaning this kind of everyday sort of learning that comes from hearing a teaching like the Heart Sutra. Shrutta means to hear. So this way of learning, a kind of minor form of wisdom, is characterized by ideas like, well, I know what that means, or I understand that, or I know who I am, along with the presumption that what I think is actually true. So this type of knowing the Buddha called imaginative wisdom, what we imagine to be so. And the second kind of learning is called jintamai prajna, the wisdom that comes from studying reality itself. And this is represented by the image of a sword to be used as a ritual weapon for cutting through delusions and cutting through stories. And in particular, the story such as I know what that means, or I know who I am.

[20:21]

So this second type of learning is characterized by the idea that I don't know. I don't know. And the result of our study and reflection from looking at and trying to understand the inconceivability of our actual experience in the world when only the mountain remains. And such a kind of experience is that we think of when we think of awe. And in those states, words for the most part are not only useless, they're completely unnecessary. So this type of wisdom the Buddha also called non-imaginative wisdom, or not imagining. Wisdom that is beyond what we can imagine or think. It's this wisdom, beyond wisdom, that the Heart Sutra is challenging us to experience over and over again. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, and so on.

[21:24]

There's a graphic image of these three types of learning, which I have found very helpful, in which the first type is represented by a person standing at the base of a mountain and gazing up toward the summit. So this is imaginary wisdom. You're imagining awakening or imagining enlightenment, and then based on your imagination, you undertake some arduous journey to find it. When the person arrives at the top of the mountain, by means of non-imaginative wisdom, all notions of getting somewhere quite naturally just drop away. No attainment, with nothing to attain, as it says in the Heart Sutra. And although when you reach the top of the mountain, you may wish to remain there for quite a while, in rapture, at the wonder of it all, the top of the mountain is not a place where we can stay for very long. So in the final wisdom, called subsequent or following non-imagination, the person comes back down from the mountaintop.

[22:30]

reentering the village or the marketplace out of compassion for the people at the bottom who are still gazing up at the summit or who haven't even noticed that there's a mountain there to be climbed. So this third type of wisdom is called bhavanamai prajna, the wisdom of becoming the dharma, represented by the cosmic mudra, the two hands of the seated bodhisattva, such as the goddess Prajnaparamita, who by virtue of her wisdom, known as the mother of all the Buddhas. So this third and ultimate type of wisdom is understood as a direct insight into the true nature of all phenomena as empty of inherent existence. Direct insight into the true nature of all phenomena is empty of inherent existence, including emptiness itself. So that experience at the top of the mountain is followed by an ever deeper and fuller understanding in which both our imaginative worlds and the world beyond our imagination are clearly seen for what they really are.

[23:39]

And that is not two, not separate, just as plainly as the nose is on our face, which is exactly where our nose has been all along. So we could say that this third type of wisdom is characterized by a way of knowing that does not include the sense of a person who knows. You know, the eye is no longer of any importance, is no longer experienced as separate from what is known. Only the mountain remains. So just as the awakened one, who is now called the Buddha, understood for himself when he said, I and all beings are enlightened at the same time, He knew that I in all beings was a single word. It wasn't two things. There was no separate self. There was no separate world. Just knowing, you know, just wisdom. Just this is it. So this kind of awesome knowing, the result of awesome experience, takes us beyond language, beyond concepts, and therefore is very difficult to put into words.

[24:47]

So in fact, it took many years for the Buddha to articulate the teachings of awakening in a way that would be accessible to humans that he so dearly loved. And some of the words that he used crystallized over centuries into this enigmatic Heart Sutra, which, like the word enigmatic itself, means and is in fact a puzzle. And as a puzzle, the Heart Sutra can be taken apart and then it can be put back together again or not. I think really what it does is take us apart, which I think is its purpose, the purpose of this teaching. No eyes, no ears, no nose. There's a famous story about Zen master Dongshan, Tozan Ryokai, who's the founder of our school, Soto Zen. When he was a little boy, he was being tutored by a teacher who recited the Heart Sutra. When he came to the point where it says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, the boy felt his face with his hands and he said, but I have eyes, I have ears, I have a nose and a tongue.

[25:55]

Why does this scripture say they don't exist? Well, his tutor was rather amazed and he said, I'm not your teacher. And then he took him to a Zen master who initiated him as a fully ordained monk. So this is our challenge too. How do we understand the seemingly nonsensical teaching of the Heart Sutra? A sutra in which the main message appearing again and again is this word no. Not only in regard to our thoughts and concepts, but also our perceptions. You know, how we see, how we smell and taste and touch and feel. What we consider to be the world around us, outside of us. What we've been taught is the real world. In order to study the Heart Sutra as a teaching device, it's very useful to provide some kind of context for it. Where did it come from? Why do we Zen Buddhists value it so highly as to be chanting it every day? Well, as with all the teachings in the Buddhist tradition, the Heart Sutra has its origins in the story of the Buddhist enlightenment, a story that models for us humans a path leading to this amazing possibility of

[27:09]

waking up and yet there's a catch you know there's always a catch the catch being enlightenment itself or as dear mel weitzman who has now sadly passed away once said to us as new students who told you enlightenment was something that you were going to like so the catch is that if you stay with it you know with these teachings such as the heart sutra And with the sitting and with the life of a community, of whatever choosing, whatever your choosing is, these lovely stories begin to turn into the truth of our own life. There are our own skin and our own eyeballs and our hearts and our minds and our longings. So it doesn't take too long before we begin to notice how great the difference is between what we think of ourselves and what we imagine enlightenment might be. The difference has sometimes been described as the difference between a painting or a carving of a dragon and the real thing.

[28:12]

And here's another story about that. Long ago, there lived a woman who loved dragons all around her house. She had paper dragons and stone dragons, dragon kites, dragon silverware, T-shirts and coffee mugs. And then one day... The true dragon heard about this woman and flew down to pay her a visit, thinking how thrilled she'd be to meet the real thing. But instead, as soon as the dragon poked his head into her house, the woman ran screaming down the road. So once the true dragon or reality itself starts affecting our personal life, we too may become very frightened and try to run away. And I think that's normal. The trouble is that no matter how fast or far we run, the truth of our life just keeps running right alongside, poking its nose into our house and asking, are you tired yet? So for those of us undertaking a study of ourselves through the Zen tradition, spending time sitting together in the Zendo is a pretty good way to stop running away from ourselves.

[29:20]

And for those of you living out on your own, the same opportunity to study applies right in your home. Because really all we're doing by sitting still and silently for a time is allowing whatever is chasing us to catch up with us for a while. You know, for better or worse. Awful or awesome. The Heart Sutra is really nothing less than the howl of the true dragon. Approaching our doors with vigor and with persistence. Trying with all of its great and fierce power to arouse us from our dreaming. The true dragon represents ultimate truth. The paper dragons, the word dragon, and all the images of dragons represent the relative truth. In studying the Heart Sutra, in particular, this curious repeated word no, which appears over and over again, we're invited to experience in ourselves the two dragons. You know, the one of our dreams and the one that's breathing in and out through our own nostrils.

[30:22]

I mentioned that Noah is a teaching device, but then teaching for what? The what is how we have come to see the world, ourselves, and how we rather firmly believe that what we see, what we think, is true. I'm over here, and you all are over there, and there's some kind of invisible wall that keeps separating us from one another. The very wall that the Buddha dissolved when he became free. And the reason that was possible is because there is no wall. There is no suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no knowledge, and no attainment with nothing to attain. And most importantly of all, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with you. It's that realization that made the Buddha so very happy. So to end, here's another poem. This one by Ehe Dogen Zenji. in honor of his own realization of emptiness. This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful.

[31:29]

What dream walkers we humans become. Awakened, I hear the one true thing. Black rain on the roof of Fukakusa Temple. This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful. What dream walkers we humans become. Awakened, I hear the one true thing, black rain on the roof of Fukakusa Temple. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[32:32]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.5