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. Good morning, wise and good friends. Lovely to see you all here. For anyone who doesn't know me, my name is Tenzin David Zimmerman. I serve as the head of practice here at City Center, also known as Beginner's Mind Temple. And I'd like to welcome all of you, whether or not this is your very first time or your 100,000th time. It's always a new beginning. So bring that mind forward in every moment. This morning in the courtyard just out here, we celebrated the vernal spring equinox And as you probably know, there are two equinoxes every year, one in March and one in September.

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And this is a time when the tilt of the Earth's axis is perpendicular to the sun's rays. And so the sun shines directly on the equator in such a way that there's an equal length of dark and light. night and day. And in the world in which it seems that so much is disturbingly out of balance that this time of year encourages us to return to balance, to realign ourselves with a sense of equanimity. And you could say the equinox encourages us to once again become upright. Sometimes we say in Zen to sit upright but also have your nose vertical and your eyes perpendicular.

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And in doing so, we can then move forward into luminous possibilities with a sense of composure and resilience and ease, maybe even joyful ease. So spring at this time reminds us of this particular capacity and the world, the way in which nature offers us these encouragements if we just stay open to them and keep listening and keep our eyes alert. So I'd like to begin with some wisdom from Zen's six Chinese ancestors. whose name is Wayne Nang, and this is a verse from a text called the Platform Sutra. He says, Good and wise friends, the capacity of the mind is great and far-reaching.

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It encompasses the Dharma realm. When functioning, it is clear and distinct, discerning and responsive. It knows all. All is the one mind. and the one mind is all. Things naturally come and go, but the essence of the mind is unimpeded. This is prajna. This is wisdom. Good and wise friends, prajna wisdom comes from one's own essential nature. It does not come from outside. Do not make the mistake of using will and intellect. It is called the natural workings of the true nature. When the true nature is true, or when the self nature is true, everything else is true. We are coming into the final week of a nine-week practice period.

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in which we have been studying a set of virtues known as the six perfections or six paramitas. And these perfections are transcendent qualities of an awakened being, a being that vows to awaken in order to relieve the suffering of all beings and in doing so illuminate the entire universe. The six particular bodhisattva trainings that we are studying are generosity, ethical behavior, patience, joyful energy, or sometimes called diligence or effort, meditation, sometimes called concentration, and wisdom. And so in our study together, we have finally arrived at the last perfection, that of prajna paramita, the perfection of wisdom. So this morning I'm going to attempt to say a few things about wisdom, about prajna.

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And I'm just going to warn you now, whatever I have to say is not going to reach it. It's a bit of a futile attempt here. And so you might as well just relax, sit back, just open up and receive whatever words come forward. And if they resonate, fine. And if they don't, let them wash through you. Because wisdom is not a matter of grabbing on to words, grabbing on to knowledge or information or anything a teacher or a book says in any way. So just allow it to all flow and rest in this moment as it is. So wisdom is considered the mother of Buddhas since it is wisdom that gives birth to enlightenment. and is wisdom that nourishes and sustains the Bodhisattva's compassionate involvement in the world on behalf of others. So it's wisdom that brings the other five perfections to fruition.

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And all the other paramitas, when they are fully practiced, are pervaded or infused with the perfection of Prajnaparamita by this spirit of wisdom. And that's why it's said that each of them is beyond, because that's what they are. They go beyond themselves with the way that prajna illuminates them. So in this way, each perfection, each practice becomes empty or is already empty and boundless, unlimited. And this boundlessness is the fruit of prajnaparamita. So when we practice and study wisdom beyond wisdom, we're able to see a boundless world in some way. And it's through wisdom that we see and embrace the whole of life, the whole diversity of life.

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So this is a calling forth of us, an invitation to embrace the fullness of life. Although Albert Einstein was not a Buddhist, he often said things that sounded to me a little bit like he was a closet Buddhist. Here's one of those things. A human being is part of a whole, called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. She experiences herself, her thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest. a kind of optical delusion of her consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few people near us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

[08:48]

widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. I think many of you might be familiar with another quip by Einstein that is often repeated. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. So we can conceive of... as a way of looking and seeing the world and its complicated beauty through a lens of wholeness. Seeing and experiencing the world not as a segregated collection of isolated beings and phenomena, but as a whole that's already complete and perfect. A unity of experience that's undivided, by the prison bars of our limited views, our concepts, and our personal desires.

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Another term for this wholeness is non-duality. And another term for non-duality, for the experience of non-duality, is Buddha nature, what Huenang called our true self nature. And I would like to suggest that this feeling of wholeness is the experience that is equivalent to the experience of emptiness in Buddhism. And that's a feeling, emptiness is simultaneously a feeling of boundlessness. In his recent translation of the Heart Sutra, Klaus Tanahashi actually uses the word boundless instead of emptiness to translate that particular word. He says, form is not separate from boundlessness, boundlessness not separate from form.

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Usually we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Boundlessness is the nature of all things. Boundlessness is the feeling of complete liberation from the smallness of this world that will, if you will, eat us alive with all its stressors, and pressures and demands and pains, unless we have a view beyond it, to stay in the world and yet have a view beyond it, beyond it in a way in which we go in it, through it, and beyond it. And furthermore, I want to suggest that this Feeling of wholeness and balancedness is actually a healing experience. And that's what we learn and feel when we practice Prajnaparamita. We learn what it means to heal our fragmentedness and become whole again.

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Not so much that we were ever actually broken, but our perception of who we are was broken. How do we readjust that perception? Now this full and healing vision of reality, of wholeness, isn't something that we need to think about or believe in or even have faith in, but it's something that we can develop by living. And we develop it, in this case, through the particular practices of the six paramitas, the six perfections. And particularly through the wholehearted engagement of the fifth paramita, jhana paramita, the practice of meditation and concentration. But as we practice all these paramitas, we are able to cultivate a constancy and a patience in the midst of everything else that's happening in our lives.

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And in doing so, we develop a vision that is radically inclusive. Radical inclusivity. And this vision of wholeness enables us to live with cheerfulness, love, and happiness, even in the midst of the most difficult times. So how then might we come to this vision and this experience of wholeness, this wisdom beyond wisdom, this boundless view? How might we perfect our seeing And what is it that gets in the way? Prajna is a Sanskrit word most often translated as wisdom. But it's a little closer in meaning to insights or discriminating knowledge or intuitive apprehension.

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And the dna part can be translated as consciousness, knowledge, or understanding. And the pra part is an intensifier which can be translated as higher or greater, supreme, premium, and also interestingly, being born or springing up, as if referring to a spontaneous type of knowing. So prajnaparamita literally means best knowledge or best knowing. And it's a knowing which is ultimately intuitive and spontaneous. coming from nowhere, if you will. So obviously we're not talking about wisdom as simply having a loss of knowledge or something that you're able to regurgitate in terms of having read a lot of scholarly text or technical facts.

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digesting them and then somehow spitting them out again, and therefore you're wise. That kind of knowledge is actually kind of static. And wisdom has a very dynamic quality to it. In one of the practice period teas, I believe last week, someone shared that their mother described the difference between knowledge and wisdom in this way. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. and wisdom is knowing not to use it in a fruit salad. And even knowing and being able to recite Dharma teachings with great facility isn't enough. This same student gave another wonderful example about practice orientation. He said, knowledge is knowing what the precepts are, and wisdom is knowing when to apply them. Knowledge is knowing what the precepts are and wisdom is knowing when to apply them.

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So we kind of get a glean from these examples how discriminating knowledge or discernment is a higher functioning capacity, one that's kind of organically grown and needs to be wielded judiciously. Prajna as discriminating knowledge leads to awareness that doesn't appropriate. it doesn't fixate on experience. Instead, a heart and mind that's informed by prajna, by wisdom, allows experiences to reside for a period of time, to pass through as they are, and not be grasped in any way. So essentially, this not fixing means that we don't relate to phenomenon or experience as separate, inherently existing objects. We don't fall into creating subject-object distinctions in which there is a subject, me, which interacts in some way with a separate object.

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You, for example, or this lectern, or the sound of the street, or the sensations that you're having in the moment. So the sixth paramita represents transcendent knowledge because it's a form of knowing or understanding in which there is no subject or object. There is no self or other dualism at all. You could actually say that this points even beyond the concept of non-duality. Non-duality does not even capture it. There is... a Buddhist tradition of iconography of Prajnaparamita, a number of ways that Prajnaparamita is depicted. And one of those ways is through a figure named Manjushri. And Manjushri is one of the oldest and most revered significant bodhisattvas in the Mahayana literature. And from early on came to symbolize the embodiment of transcendent wisdom.

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Manjushri's name in Sanskrit means gentle glory. Gentle glory. And it's a name that actually kind of belies his fiercelessness. There's a statue of Manjushri that sits down in the altar of the Zendo in most Zen temples. There's usually some expression or manifestation of Manjushri in the Zendo. And oftentimes, Manjushu is depicted as riding a lion, and with a sword in his hand, and it's raised as if about to strike in some way. And that's a powerful moment to see this figure as you walk into the Zendo, holding the sword, this frozen moment in which, you know, this... Precisely before his sword comes down in order to cut through our delusions, our self and our delusory thinking that we often engage in while we are sitting zazen.

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So it's this little tap on the shoulder sometimes that tells us to wake up. Are you asleep? And sometimes it's that fierce cutting through that asks you, who are you? Who do you think you are? Who are you beyond who you think you are? So swords, as you know, are kind of dangerous. And the fact that a sword stands in for wisdom points to the truth that a bit of knowledge is dangerous. And perhaps a lot of knowledge is even more dangerous. And perhaps not even just dangerous, but actually scary. why be afraid of wisdom? Why be afraid of a supreme knowledge? How is it that manjushu and wisdom are simultaneously intimidating and yet evocative of a certain fearlessness and a directedness that we all deeply admire and really wish to embody in some way?

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And I would suggest that wisdom is terrifying because it brings us face-to-face to our fundamental inherent emptiness, to the fundamental inherent emptiness of life. So experiencing Prajnaparamita, experiencing wisdom in some real way, undermines our habitual idea of who we are and how things work. In addition to a sword having... sharp edges. It also has a point. And this point can puncture. And one of the things that Manjushri's sword can do is puncture our cherished sense of self, kind of pop our bubble of delusions and self-containment. And in doing so, support us in letting go of all this hot air of our inflated egos, right?

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And sometimes you can sit in the Zen and just hear all that hot air just kind of being released. And that's a good thing, right? So obviously the concept of emptiness can be intimidating to us and we can get caught up in trying to figure out what it means. Emptiness is the usual translation of the Buddhist term shunyata and it refers to the fact that no thing, including human existence, has ultimate substantiality. Which in turn means that no thing or phenomenon is permanent.

[23:04]

And no thing is totally independent of everything else. In other words, emptiness in general defines how things exist. How things exist. Which is impermanently and relationally. So... Emptiness is best considered an adjective rather than a noun. Oftentimes we talk about emptiness as if it was a thing, a noun, but it's really not. Another of the ways of expressing this how is as having no self. So sometimes we say in Buddhism, nothing possesses its own being. And yet things exist just as they are. And they exist in dependence on everything else, on all the causes and conditions throughout time and space that are just now coming together and blossoming just this moment.

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In other words, everything in the world is interconnected and in constant flux. I often like to use the metaphor of water. consider that all of reality is a boundless, bottomless ocean. Topless, too. So everything is water. And every appearance in this ocean of water is simply a temporary momentary wave or current arising for a short period of time due to various causes and conditions. and then collapsing and falling back again into itself, into that from which it arose. From non-appearance to appearance to non-appearance again. Nothing has really changed in the midst of all that. It's still all water. It has always been water.

[25:14]

It will never be anything but water. So, a deep appreciation of this idea of emptiness, of impermanence, relationality, and no inherent self, thus saves us from the suffering caused by our egos, our attachments, and our resistance to change and loss. So it's important to remember that emptiness here does not refer to nothingness or to some kind of nihilistic view. Too often we misunderstand emptiness as either an exertion that things somehow don't exist at all or that there is some state or other place that we need to get to in order to become wise or empty or Buddha-like. And this is not the correct view of emptiness according to the teachings of the Dharma.

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Emptiness refers to the fact that ultimately our day-to-day experience and perception of reality is wrong. You just can't see things the way it is. Okay. That's what's happening. And reality is actually empty of many of the qualities that we normally assign to it. It's empty of all the labels and terms, the ideas that we are constantly imputing and affixing on it. So describing this non-dual experience in words, as I'm trying to do here, is not really possible because even words are based on a sense of duality and contrasts. So talking about wisdom is futile. I already warned you. I should have known better than even to get up here. But the teaching itself tells us that true wisdom is beyond words and concepts. So trying to explain experience, which contradicts our normal perception, is a bit like trying to explain colors to someone who was born blind.

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It's impossible to convey. And yet, while it might be better to remain in silence, as Katagiri says, we have to say something. We stay in silence on our cushions as we sit and then we get up and engage with the world. It's not that the silence that we were embodying on the cushion stops or goes away. It's still with us. It's just a matter of how do we carry it into the world and express it then, even in the midst of our speaking, even in the midst of having to use language to convey the inexpressible. So it's important not to get impatient with emptiness or with me trying to explain it in some way. Because actually emptiness is probably one of the most difficult concepts to actually grasp.

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We know we're told not to try to grasp it. But it's very important to try to understand what the Dharma is trying to tell us about selflessness. and emptiness. So we deeply study it for ourselves in our practice. And we study in a way that goes beyond the words of teachers and texts. We study emptiness of our being, the actual feeling of emptiness. How do you feel emptiness? What is the feeling of emptiness? Can you actually bear it when you discover when you touch it, can you bear being boundless? The whole body being and mind being without limit in some way. Here's a poem I recently came across that speaks to the futility of language and our intellect to try to express the essence of prajna.

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It's by Les Murray, who's a poet I'm not so familiar with. Everything except language knows the meaning of existence. Trees, planets, rivers, time, know nothing else. They express it moment by moment as the universe. Even this full of a body lives in it, in part, and would have full dignity within itself. but for the ignorant freedom of my talking mind. So, earth and nature and all of space and time, even this feeble temporary shell of a body, is already expressing wisdom with great clarity. Are we able to hear how the song of birds is prajna? How the sound of the wind is prajna.

[30:47]

I was thinking about this this morning as we were in the courtyard chanting the Heart Sutra. The Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra that talks about the emptiness of all things. And watching the birds flitter and chirp among the trees. Just this dance of emptiness around us and actually in us simultaneously calling to each other In some way. It was a beautiful song to listen to. Here's another poem that I think speaks to this point. It's by Mary Oliver. And it's titled, What is there beyond knowing? What is there beyond knowing that keeps calling to me? I can't turn in any direction, but it's there. I don't mean the leaves grip and shine, or even the thrush's silk song, but the far-off fires, for example, of the stars, heaven slowly turning theater of lights, or the wind playful with its breath, or time that's always rushing forward or standing still, in the same, what shall I say, moment?

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what I know I could put into a pack, as if it were bread and cheese and carried on one shoulder, important and honorable, but so small, while everything else continues unexplained and unexplainable. How wonderful it is to follow a thought quietly to its logical end. I have done this a few times. but mostly I just stand in the dark field, in the middle of the world, breathing in and out, in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name but breath and light, wind and rain. If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet. I simply go on drifting in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.

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This temple that we are in, as I mentioned at the beginning, is known as Beginner's Mind Temple. And it's a place where we are actively cultivating the practice of letting go of knowledge, letting go of trying to define and explain everything, and instead resound in this boundless, inexplicable wisdom of not knowing. But in actuality, the whole world is the true temple of beginner's mind. How are you practicing in that temple? To fully embrace the wisdom of not knowing or transcendent knowledge means that we are forever a beginner, one who is in constant state of discovery, of learning, one that never comes to an end point. Speaking to this particular point, Dale Wright, who is the author of the text that we have been studying on the six perfections, this practice period, says that authentic wisdom will lead us to recognize that in most situations we really do not know at all.

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if knowing means having a complete grasp of all dimensions. The wise person is more attentive to learning than to knowing. Whereas knowing is a fixed state beyond which one need not go, learning is an ongoing process, one that is never complete. For this reason, wisdom is not so much what is learned as it is, is the pattern and practice of learning, the exercise of care and thoughtfulness that compromise skillful learning. So how do we let go of our reliance on conceptual understanding to instead actively embrace the balanced experience of not knowing and the uncertainty that comes with it? and yet still live our lives with some measure of integrity, composure, and insight.

[35:45]

Dare Wright continues and advises us in this way. We can contemplate wisdom not as the end of uncertainty, but rather as a capacity to face uncertain and ambiguous situations with integrity, composure, and reflective insight. Wisdom, therefore, would need to be reconceived as a quality of character that prepares us to function with fine-tuned ethical sensibility in changing contexts of extensive complexity and nuance while still acknowledging our fallibility. So can we face uncertainty? in a way in which we have an inherent resilience and a flexibility. Knowing that despite our best efforts to control and set things in a certain way, we're going to fail.

[36:50]

We're going to make mistakes. We're not going to be able to hold on to things in any particular way. We're in this constant flux. And therefore, can we... continue this journey with a sense of inherent nobility, respecting our best efforts, really honoring our attempts at expressing this life as fully as we can, knowing that its expression is beyond anything we can say or do in any way. I wasn't sure how to end this Dharma talk. Maybe I'll take a leap. Can you hear emptiness now?

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Can you smell it? Can you taste it? Can you see it? Can you feel it in the pulse of your veins and body and heart and intestines? It's everywhere. You can't escape it. It is what you are. Can you give yourself over to it in some way? And can you give yourself over to the trees and the birds, to the sunlight, to the changing of the seasons, to this thing we call life and death. Surrender it all because it already holds you. You are already embraced in this wholeness of being.

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There really isn't much more to say. So, I'll give up trying to say something and just appreciate this capacity to be with each other in this way. of emptiness. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information please visit sfzc.org and click giving.

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May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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