I vow to taste the juice of the Tathagatas' words. Morning. Morning. This morning I thought that I would talk a little bit about the Prajnaparamita Sutra, what we commonly call the Heart Sutra, which we chant every time we have service. And it's well known to all Zen students, and probably not known at all to people who are not Zen students, or people who have not practiced. But even though we sometimes chant this sutra for years, we don't have much idea about what its meaning is.

[01:05]

So every once in a while, I have to refresh our understanding. And for those who have a good understanding and introduce some understanding to those who don't have any. Heart Sutra, we chant in English and also in Japanese. English version has several translations and the translation keeps changing because there's no really definitive translation. So Sutra goes something like, when Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was coursing in deeply in deep Prajnaparamita,

[02:12]

He saw that all the five skandhas in their own being were empty and were saved from all suffering. And then he talks to Shariputra and he says, Shariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That which is form is emptiness and that which is emptiness is form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste. This is the Sutra of Mu. Mu means no. It's the Sutra of Negation of all existence. but it's also the sutra which brings everything to life.

[03:16]

So, in order to get a little perspective on the sutra, there's a short Heart Sutra and there's the longer version. Actually, there are quite a few versions of the Heart Sutra. The very shortest version is the letter A. The Sanskrit letter A is the shortest version of the Heart Sutra. But in the version of the Heart Sutra which we chant, there's a little longer version which has an introduction. And the introduction says that when Lord Buddha was presiding over an assembly of bodhisattvas and monks and lay people and so forth, he was in samadhi or concentration called Deep Splendor.

[04:33]

And in this samadhi of Deep Splendor, the whole assembly was eliminated. And Shariputra, who was the Buddha's most intelligent disciple, asked this question of Avalokiteśvara. Avalokiteśvara of course is bodhisattva of compassion. And so there's this stage and on the stage is Buddha, Shariputra, and Avalokiteśvara. And they're putting on this little drama for us.

[05:37]

Buddha is sitting there in deep samadhi, a deep spender, lighting up the stage. And Shariputra, who is his leading disciple, is asking Avalokiteśvara, who is Bodhisattva, who embodies compassion. He says to Avalokiteśvara, how does a Bodhisattva course in Prajnaparamita, in the perfection of wisdom. And so, Avalokiteśvara, with Buddha's permission, says, well, Shariputra, and this is how the sutra starts, oh Shariputra, all five skandhas in their own being are empty.

[06:47]

When I was coursing in the deep prajnaparamita, I perceived that all five skandhas in their own being have no self-nature. And I realized how to get out of suffering. If we study Buddhism, we have some idea of what five skandhas are. Five skandhas. First skandha is form. Skandhas is a word meaning something like collection. Literally means heaps, but collection or arrangement of things. And our human being is arranged in five categories. And the five categories of a human arrangement is form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.

[08:05]

And he said, when I saw clearly through the wisdom of Prajna, I could see that all the five skandhas don't have any substantial base for their existence. They all depend on each other. Without consciousness, there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no mental formations. Nothing, no existent thing has its own being. This own being is very important to understand. It doesn't say that there is no form, or that there is no feeling, or that there is no perception, or mental formations or consciousness, but in their own being, they are empty.

[09:08]

Buddhist buzzword, but it's very important. Empty of own, because it means empty of own being, which implies that everything is interdependent. There's no thing. It doesn't depend on everything else for its existence. When we understand that nothing exists independently, even though everything seems to exist independently, then we have the possibility of being free from suffering mind. Mind which is engrossed in gain and loss.

[10:17]

In the Four Noble Truths, suffering is the first. Everything, all beings are subject to suffering, or disease, or uneasiness, or dissatisfaction with life. And the main cause is desire. Desire for which manifests as the desire to hang on to something and the desire to push something away. So the desire for grasping is, you could say, distraction. And the desire for pushing away is the desire to empty or to not have.

[11:34]

And in its extreme form, it would be the desire to do away with everything. So these are the two extremes. of desire. One is grasping and the other is aversion. And grasping in its extreme form is total distraction. And pushing away or negating in its extreme form is to have an empty mind. So, if you look at meditation or zazen, or Buddha's deep splendor samadhi, when Buddha was in his assembly, deep splendor samadhi was his condition.

[12:44]

This is the samadhi of no grasping and no aversion. not empty, not distracted. This is what we call komyo zo zamae. samadhi of radiant light. In this samadhi, Buddha is described as having a beam coming out of his forehead, which lights up all the worlds. And if you look at this Buddha, there's a little bead there. This is just a symbol, of course. We shouldn't take these things literally. Nevertheless, radiant light is our This radiant light samadhi, or deep splendor samadhi, is our deep true life, when it's not hindered by grasping and aversion.

[14:07]

in our daily life. It's the way we move through the world without falling into grasping the world or rejecting it. When we sit cross-legged, it's the samadhi of stillness. And when we move in the world, it's the samadhi of great activity. where there's no grasping and no rejection, yet we move with all things. These terms, you know, sound rather high-flown. Deep splendor. Radiant light. So,

[15:18]

we should be careful because actually they are our great treasure and true meaning. But better maybe to say nothing special. When Suzuki Roshi came to America, he said nothing special. even though his background is great luminosity. And if people talked about enlightenment, he said, nothing special. When we were dealing with this stuff in the early 60s, I remember reading the Heart Sutra and Suzuki Hiroshi was talking about nothing special and somewhere or another a match cover, a match book came out and on the cover it said, deep splendor is nothing special.

[16:36]

So even though our understanding and our practice is nothing special, we should realize something very deep and meaningful and then not worry about it too much. In other words, the jewel should be covered with dust. But nevertheless, we should be able to see the jewel or know it's there. So Buddha is present in this assembly in the Samadhi called Deep Splendor, which is also called Radiant Light, or it's also called Dropping Body and Mind, Body and Mind Dropped Off.

[18:18]

It's also called Sazen and Shikantaza. And it's not some exalted thing or state of some Buddha who's very distant. Sutra is talking about our condition, our body and mind. Sometimes we think Buddhas and sentient beings are two different things. But actually, it's important to understand that Buddhas and sentient beings are not two, not different. And when the sutras are talking about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the sutra is talking about ourself.

[19:20]

And language is most often metaphorical. So it's important for us to try to grasp or see through the written word to the meaning. And when we also give a lecture, you should look through the lecture to the meaning because words are only a vehicle for something. And reality, non-dualistic reality, is very hard to convey through words, because words are necessarily dualistic. So when Avalokiteshvara says, all the five skandhas in their own being are empty, Empty doesn't mean the opposite of full.

[20:27]

It doesn't mean that nothing is there. It means emptiness implies fullness. If there is emptiness, there has to be fullness. If there is good, there has to be bad. If there is right, there has to be wrong. All five skandhas are empty. means in their fullness, they're empty. But it doesn't mean annihilated. If Usually, we feel if you take everything away, you have nothing. But actually, if you take everything away, you have one thing.

[21:33]

If you take... Well, you can say, if you take everything away, you have no thing. But this no-thing is one thing, because only when you compare one thing to another do you have things. So in order for me to exist, everything else has to exist as well. In order for you to exist, everything else has to exist. But we all exist as one thing, because we're all empty, because everything is empty. There's only one thing, but that one thing has many facets, many reflections, infinite manifestations.

[22:49]

So Avalokiteshvara goes on to say, O Shariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That which is form is empty and that which is empty is form. The same is true of the feelings, not just form. The same is true of perceptions. The same is true of mental formations, thoughts. The same is true of consciousness or awareness. So emptiness, we can say, means interdependence.

[24:03]

In emptiness, there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions. The word no, as I said, this is the Sutra of Mu. You know the famous koan, A monk asked Joshu, does a dog have buddha nature? And being Chinese, Joshu said, Wu. Wu means no. In Japanese, translated as mu. And so Zen students are always going around saying, And mu means no. But we all know, I mean, a monk who asked Joshu, does the dog have buddha nature, knows that all things have buddha nature.

[25:11]

Buddha nature is the nature of everything. So the monk wasn't naive. He was just giving Joshu, asking him some deep question. Does the dog, everything has buddha nature, does the dog also have buddha nature? Joshu said, woo, moo, no. But no is not the opposite of yes. He could have said anything. because Joshu wasn't standing in the division of things. Another time a monk asked Joshu, does the dog have buddha nature? Joshu said yes, which was right.

[26:17]

So No. No, in this case, covers both existence and non-existence. Yes, covers both existence and non-existence. Further on, he says, therefore in emptiness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. He negates everything. He negates the Four Noble Truths. He negates the Eightfold Path. He negates all of the doctrines of Buddhism.

[27:27]

So Heart Sutra is the sutra of non-duality, the sutra which is expressing the non-duality of duality. So it's the sutra of negation. But in Buddhism, there are two things to be avoided. One is eternalism and the other is annihilationism. Things are neither eternal nor annihilated. So, in order to express neither eternal nor annihilated.

[28:35]

Avalokiteshvara speaks in this way. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. Tozang, famous teacher Tozang, when he was a boy, said to his teacher, How come the sutra says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind? When I have a nose, I have a tongue, I have a body. The teacher said, you'd better go see somebody else. So being able to speak non-dualistically, to express the non-dual reality of life, you can't do it in the normal way of speaking, because the normal way of speaking is always either the thing exists or it doesn't exist.

[29:49]

I mean, you know, right? It's either this or that. But actually, It's neither this nor that. It's neither existing nor not existing. Each one of us is neither existing nor not existing. Birth and death go together. We think of Birth is something that happens to us when we're quite young, and death that happens to us at some point. And this is the way we think about birth and death. But actually, birth and death are taking place moment by moment, together. As Sambhogakai says, like the foot before and the foot behind is walking.

[30:58]

This foot is going toward birth and this foot is dying, dead. This is left behind. Then this foot comes forward and this foot is left behind. So our life is like walking. One thing appearing and another left behind. Inhaling is coming to life, and exhaling is leaving it behind. So in each rhythm, each moment's rhythm, is birth and death. So birth and death is on various levels. On one level, it's coming to life, leaving behind, moment by moment.

[32:01]

And on another level, there's no birth, no death. Because there's really no one who is born and no one who dies. That's more on an absolute level. Five skandhas are all empty in their own being. There's only interdependence. Nevertheless, we feel like I feel like me and you feel like you and we all have names and we all have history and feelings and forms and perceptions and impulses. And we feel like somebody. So, since we do, we have to respect that and act out from that feeling.

[33:09]

But we should understand what's really happening. If we understand in our own way, no birth and no death, then we have freedom. And as our form changes, as this form changes, it transforms. we can go with it without grasping or rejecting. When we hold on to something that we want and can't have, then suffering arises.

[34:11]

And when we try to keep out what is inevitable to come in, Suffering arises. So who is it that suffers? And why? So this is our study. And this is what we deal with in Zazen. grasping and no rejection, then we can sit and express our true nature, which is basically radiant light, but it has no special shape or form.

[35:24]

identifiable mark, but it's everywhere. So this is a little of the gist of the Heart Sutra. Do you have any questions? And I don't annihilate it, but it goes, it changes.

[36:41]

And the same with the eternalism, even though a diamond is eternal. But in fact it's not, it started as something else and it will not be so. I guess, is that true? The concept exists because of the reality. Diamonds are just putty in the hands of time. Because nothing has its own being. You can say inherent existence. Inherent existence means that it exists in and for itself, by itself.

[37:48]

There's nothing that exists that way. So, there's only change. But there are causes and conditions which produce change. Everything that happens produces something else. produces an effect, which is producing more change and effect. But it's not chaotic exactly, from our point of view, because there are rules. Suzuki Roshi used to say, even though there's no substantial being, Nevertheless, there are rules. So everything goes according to the rules, or according to the laws. In physics, everything goes according to the laws of physics.

[38:54]

According to the rules, there's cause and effect, which produce other like things. But we have some ability to direct things, because we're thinking creatures. So we can make things move in certain ways. And that's called karma. Karma is the action that we do. We can do an action which creates so-called good karma, or action which creates bad karma. And whatever our actions are, that's the way things go for us. And then we reap the fruits of our actions. So people say, Well, it's the punishment of God, you know.

[40:07]

People interpret it various ways. I don't say that's wrong to say that, but we say it's karma. It's the result of our actions, either immediately or a little way down the line or a long way down the line. the result, we feel a result of what we do. So, that makes us careful, if we understand it, it makes us very careful of what we do, so that we don't create some problem for ourself in our direction. So, in the flux of life, we do create the way that our energy goes. But a basic way of thinking about rebirth is that there's action, influence.

[41:10]

In other words, all of our life activity is continually creating some result. And that result, even after the disintegration of the body and mind, it moves into influencing in some way, maybe influencing another birth of some kind. So, the way we act in this world actually influences the way the world goes. So, if we want to control the world, then we do it through the way we act. We want to make everybody else different. We think that's the way to control the world. In a way, I mean, that helps, but it doesn't help a lot, right? Fundamentally, we each have to act correctly, and then the world becomes influenced fundamentally.

[42:18]

And, you know, our genes are influenced by the way we do things, by the way we act and think and interact. It just occurred to me that when I thought about or chanted the Prajnaparamita Sutra, I think the form as emptiness has been felt most or tried to deal with. But it just occurred to me that it's the emptiness is form. It's form. That's right. That's the optimistic outlook. Emptiness is form. That's true. We always tend to think of the first one, you know. Form is emptiness. It's both. Yes, both.

[43:21]

Emptiness is form. Forms are the forms of emptiness. It's not like they're two different things. They're two sides of a coin. One side is form and the other side is emptiness, but it's one coin. You can't separate, even though you can say form is form and emptiness is emptiness. You have to be able to say that. I have a chaps of You were saying that eternalism and annihilationism are kinds of traps. Or traps, yeah. And I was asking whether there are any greater traps, whether there are any worse than non-eternalism and non-annihilationism. Oh, I see, yes.

[44:24]

You have to be very careful, whatever you say, because if you say non-eternalism, then you fall into a trap too. But me, is one worse than the other? Well, it's not a matter of better or worse. It's a matter of what's true. It's a matter of what's real. That's the point. So whatever we say is a trap. And so we must realize that. That's why Joshua says, does a dog have Buddha nature? Joshua says, move. He didn't say, well, you know. So that's right, in order to avoid falling into a trap, Joshua says, move. But he knows what he means. We say, just close your mouth and sit Zazen.

[45:27]

So those are just kind of arbitrary traps that you pick up. They're not? Well, they're only traps if we fall into them. I'm curious why you said Buddhism has these two traps rather than the two... No, I see. I didn't... I don't remember saying it that way. Maybe I did. I said two extremes. Oh, to avoid, right? To avoid falling into the trap, I guess, maybe, of nihilism or Eternalism. Because eternalism would presuppose that things will always exist the way they are. This is in Buddha's way of thinking. It means ultimately that everything will always exist the way it is. And some people believe heaven is like that.

[46:30]

Everything will return to earth exactly the way it is now. But does that mean night now or next moment? when I was a kid, or what moment will that be? Anyway, so to avoid eternalism, because eternalism means everything will be the same way it is now, which is impossible because everything is changing. There is no thing to be eternal. On the other hand, annihilation means nothing. No, you know, when we die, there's nothing. It's just dropping off the end of the earth. So those are the two extremes, which are dualistic. That's a dualistic conception, eternalism and annihilationism. But I mean, isn't it a trap to think everything's changing too?

[47:36]

Well, it's not as much of a trap as... So far we haven't been trapped in that one. You say that emptiness has its own aspects. Did I say that? Are you saying that? I thought that's what you said, the aspects of emptiness. What exactly did I say? I don't know, I'm so confused, I don't know. Did you say the forms of emptiness? Yeah, each thing, each existence is a form of emptiness. Well, if it's empty, how can it have form? I am interested in your thinking about change.

[48:47]

You were talking about people having the desire to change things. But it seems to me that the only thing we can change is ourselves, and that only with great difficulty, at least in my experience. You were talking of suffering being caused by desiring something that you are not entitled to have. Maybe I'm saying this incorrectly. I understand what you mean. And how this fits with the problem of trying to change the world, or trying to change the people around you, or even, for that matter, trying to change yourself. Right. That's really a good question. You know, to say that we shouldn't try to change ourself is to kind of give up, right?

[49:54]

Nevertheless, on the other hand, it's important to give up. And, you know, it's important to give up and put yourself in the hands of something bigger, right? Because when we try to change ourself, we're limiting our change to our idea. As long as we're limiting our change to an idea of what I want to be or how I think I should go or something like that, then the magnitude of our change goes as far as we can think about it, right? So if we really want to have something fundamental happen, we have to let go of everything. So change doesn't necessarily mean to kind of hammer out something, but to let go. And then when we let go, and return to our fundamental nature, so to speak, to use another buzzword, then we let the nature take care of it.

[50:55]

So that's why, you know, without trying to do something, nevertheless, you have to do something. You know, it's kind of in between doing and not doing. It's doing the appropriate thing, but actually letting the nature take care of it. directing yourself, what you do is direct yourself to the nature, to let the nature do that. And that's what Zazen is. It's like you really put your whole body and mind completely into this activity and let go. Without trying to do anything, without trying to change anything. And this transformation happens by itself. That's actually the most important thing. But we still have to do something.

[52:01]

But what we do is direct ourselves to it. But it does it. We don't do it. And without expecting anything, you just practice. There are various stories throughout Zen literature in which a teacher imparts teachings by hitting the student. Hitting the student? Yeah. What is the justification for that? No justification. Just hit. When a teacher hits the student, there's no teacher, there's no student, and there's no stick. This is the point.

[53:08]

Teacher hits the student at the right moment, and then everything disappears. It's like Gensha. Old Master Gensha, when he was, just before he put on his shoe, he stubbed his toe on a rock and it started bleeding. And he looked down at this bleeding toe and he said, how can this, neither myself or the rock or the blood exists. Who's feeling this pain? And another old master was sweeping the garden and a stone hit a piece of bamboo and went bang!

[54:21]

Like that. And everything disappeared. This whole mine opened up. So, sometimes the teacher, at the right moment, they go, and the student's mind will open up. So, 30 blows is considered a compliment. But actually, we're very restrained. You know, there are lots of teaching devices in the history of Zen, but we should be very careful not to use them as devices, in the same way that, you know, if you think, well, if you're a Zen master, then you should hit everybody. It's the same as saying, if you're a Zen student, you should be like so-and-so.

[55:25]

Every Zen student is different. Every teacher is different. Every way of teaching is different. So these stories are important because they're true stories and what they convey is truth. Sometimes it's good to hit somebody, but that doesn't mean that we go around hitting people. Joshu never hit anybody. He was too old. So he'll have to do everything with his mouth. Saying, Moo, is just the same as hitting the monk. So there's time and place for everything. Time and place, and situations.

[56:30]

Yes.

[56:41]

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