Can everybody hear okay? Is this my as a microphone? Yeah, so you can hear Well, I'm very happy to be here over Berkeley Zen Center See everybody this is my Dharma home and many of you know I started practicing over here not at this location in the old location So I always feel like coming home to come back and be with you So as you all know we're gonna have a that I don't know forget what the title of this class is but We're gonna study sutras short sutras from what I call the old way the original probably original teachings of Buddha and we're going to have five classes but one very important note I've just realized the other day somebody called me up and told me that next Thursday, today's Thursday and next Thursday on the 19th of September Thich Nhat Hanh is giving a big public lecture here in Berkeley

[01:27]

So I thought that it would be, many of you would maybe want to attend that. So I was thinking, including me, I would like to attend it also. So I was thinking that maybe next Thursday we would not have class, and instead we would have the fifth class, I think, on October 17th, continuing one more Thursday past where we thought we would end, so that we could leave that Thursday, next Thursday, available for everybody who wants to attend the lecture of Thich Nhat Hanh, who's a great Dharma master of our time. So that's what we'll do. I checked with the people organizing the class and they thought that would be okay. So we will not meet next week. And if you should happen to have a friend or anybody knows of anybody who intends to take the class, who isn't here tonight, I hope they can get the message because it would be confusing for them to show up, you know, nobody's here.

[02:31]

So we will not meet next week, next Thursday night, but we'll meet for the four Thursday nights after that. So, I don't know what it is that you have in your possession exactly, but Some years ago, myself and some other colleagues at Zen Center participated in creating a kind of study curriculum for Zen Center, which would be not only a study of Zen texts per se, but a study of all of Buddhism that would be relevant to a Zen practitioner. So we thought that it would be very important for people who study Zen to know some basic teachings from the Pali Canon, that this was part of our practice as well. So we made a compendium of a selection of teachings from the Pali Canon.

[03:33]

Not necessarily the most important ones or the greatest ones, but the ones that we thought were important, knowing that there were many others that were important as well. so that we could create something that was doable for people to actually study. So we created this little book called Sutras from the Old Way. And I think what we have is, so I gave a copy of that text that, which is, you know, sutras and my little introductions to the different sutras. So you either have, some of you maybe would like to have the whole text. And I think the idea is if anybody wants that, you can pay to have it Xeroxed and copies will be available. And what I'm going to do, my plan for the class is simply to start at the beginning and sort of see how many of these things we can actually read and study without trying to hurry or get anywhere in particular, but just go through them one at a time at a good pace.

[04:35]

And, you know, we'll get as far as we get. And then for those of you who are interested, you can get the full text and read the rest of it. Most of the things that are in here are available either from published books that are available elsewhere, but it's a kind of a nice little handy way to have them. So that's the plan for the class. In the beginning, there's a an introduction to the selections that I want to read and comment on a little bit. It's fairly, fairly clear in itself. A text called Hokyoki, which is Dogen's, Dogen kept a journal when he was a young man studying in China.

[05:36]

He kept a journal of his studies with his teacher, and this is a quotation from that journal. He asked his teacher, what is dropping off body and mind? And as you remember, that was his great sort of catch word. When Dogen heard his teacher say, drop off body and mind, he had his awakening experience. So this phrase, dropping off body and mind, is a kind of a code for Dogen of, you know, the essence of the meaning of Buddhism or the essence of the meaning of Buddha's mind or teaching. So he asked his teacher, you know, what is dropping off body and mind? And the teacher said, Rijing said, dropping off body and mind is zazen. When you do just sitting, you are free from the five sense desires and the five hindrances. And I, meaning Dogen, asked, Is this freedom from the five sense desires and the five hindrances the same as what the sutra schools are talking about?

[06:41]

Does it mean that we are to be practitioners of both the greater and the lesser vehicles? Because, you know, Zen is famous for being, you know, not the lesser vehicle, not about the sutras and all this. So, he was astonished really to hear his teacher say that when you do zazen, this is already you know, the essence of Buddha's mind. This is not so hard for us to... we hear about this all the time, but it might be surprising to us to hear that that's the same thing as being free from the five sense desires and the five hindrances, which are categories that were taught in the old schools. So, he's saying, are we supposed to be not just Zen, but also practicing the old way? And the master said, descendants of ancestors, meaning Zen students, should not exclude the teachings of either vehicle. If students ignore the Tathagata's sacred teachings, how can they become the descendants of Buddha ancestors?

[07:47]

So, there are, and still are, some Zen people who advocate, forget studies, forget Buddhism, it's just the insight from the cushion. But Dogen wasn't one like that. He actually advocated studying Buddhism. He didn't even like to talk about Soto Zen or even Zen. He said, we're just doing Buddhism. We're just doing Buddhadharma. So he was advocated studying all of Buddhism. There's an interesting story also in Hokyoki, which this makes me think of, where he questions Rujing further on this point. And Rujing says something like, in other words, the relationship between the scriptures of Buddhism and Zen. And Ruijing says something like this. It's like a kingdom that is completely equipped with everything that it needs.

[08:55]

It has its roads, you know, the sewage system, the communication system, the tax collectors and the taxes and everything is there, you know, it's all there. But it doesn't have a king. And until the king arrives, the sovereignty of the nation is not awakened. It's just sort of all the stuff is there, but it's not really a nation until the king comes. Of course, this metaphor doesn't work so well for us, but imagine a medieval Japanese saying this metaphor. It would make sense to them. So in other words, It's not that Zen is something... because the king without the nation doesn't mean anything. But the nation without the king is not yet a sovereign nation. So the king is like the Zen insight and the nation is like the sutras. So it's not that Zen is something different from the sutras or obviates the sutras or the earlier teachings. or is better than them or different from them, it's that Zen is that which enlivens, wakes up, makes real the teachings.

[10:05]

Without the insight from the practice, from one's own practice, from one's own life, the teachings are just kind of laying there on the page as very nice ideas, but not really effective. and empowered ideas. So that's the way we want to read these texts, you know, not necessarily for their academic meaning or what is the doctrine or something like that, but what do they really tell us and how do they really enliven our practice, really enliven our lives. By the way, those of you who have attended a class with me before over here are familiar with my method, which is to say that I just yack on for a while until I get tired or somebody interrupts me. And then with questions or dialogue is certainly helpful. part of what we're doing. So I generally am covering a certain amount of material, putting out a certain amount of stuff, which maybe raises questions in your mind and then we can talk about that.

[11:06]

So, this is all to say that we have it on very good authority from Dogen, the founder of our school, that we really ought to be concerned about these things and studying these things. So, although we make an effort not to be caught in bound by the written versions of Buddhist teachings, we want to understand them personally through the process of our practice. We certainly don't disregard these teachings. A lot of times when you read these on your own I found that the old way sutras as it says here in the introduction are extremely compared to Zen understanding and Zen literature they're extremely you might say dualistic

[12:09]

you know, this is samsara, this is nirvana, this is no good, this is really good, you should get rid of this and go for that, and that usually involves, you know, really being, you know, a very good boy and a very good girl and not doing anything that, you know, that would get in the way of that. And sometimes the translations of the texts, particularly early translations, you know, emphasize that more than one needs to. So that sometimes it takes a little bit of interpretation or massaging to kind of get the point and not be put off by the surface of the meaning. And I try to do that, that's why I wrote little introductions to each sutra, so that to sort of point to the essence of it and hopefully getting my Zen readers of this text, you know, to be broad-minded in approaching it. So we have to do that as we go along, not get hung up on the surface.

[13:14]

In essence, in Mahayana, I believe, and many scholars agree, that the later developments of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism and Zen, are not really in any sense contradictory to these early teachings. They're simply developing and bringing out aspects of the teaching. Pretty much everything that you can find in Buddhism is really found in the early teachings, if not in explicit form, then in latent form. So there really aren't any true contradictions, I think, once you really kind of get below the surface and, you know, really see what the text is pointing toward. Then, I also say here that when you think about Zen in China, when Zen started in China, it was a movement, as it was in Japan as well, it was a movement among already experienced and developed monastics.

[14:30]

These were people who already had studied the teachings and mastered them and then were looking for this king, you know, to come in and arrive in the teachings for them and then in that sense, in that spirit, they took up Zen. But they already knew the teachings. When you read the stories of the Zen teachers of old, you might not get that. In fact, quite often, the stories seem to be saying, you know, it's not about the teachings. Because, you know, for people who already have mastered the teachings and understand them quite well and have studied them quite well, they're pointing to the fact that, you know, I spend a lot of time studying that, but it's really not about that. It's about something else. but they can say that having studied the teachings already, you know what I mean? Like the typical Zen story is the Zen story about the guy who, like this is Deshan's story, he's a great scholar of the Diamond Sutra, you know what I mean, and he's got a giant stack of Diamond Sutra translations on a big pack on his back and he's going to

[15:40]

He hears about these Zen guys who say that they don't need the sutras and he's going to show them up. So he goes hiking down 1,000 or 1,500 miles or so south to where the Zen guys are. And he, you know, of course ends up becoming awakened by his Zen teacher and then throwing away his sutras. So you read that story and, you know, the message seems to be, well, throw away the sutras. This stuff is not important. And this poor fellow is burdened by all of this. But you forget that he had them in the first place. He threw them away because he had them in the first place. So it's the same for us. We have to appreciate these early teachings, not stick to them, not be literal about them, and not look at them as in traditions that you know, ventilate the letter, because there are traditions in which scripture is the word of God, the word of the law.

[16:46]

In Buddhism, it's just Dharma talks, you know, for the benefit of yourself to practice. So without getting stuck on them, we can throw them away, but only after we've hauled them around on our back for a while. So this is time to load up our pack for five weeks. So, all that having been said, I thought we'd start at the beginning with the first sutra, the sutra on setting in motion the wheel of dharma. This sutra, this doesn't say this in the sutra, but I mentioned it in the introduction, that this, they say, is the first sermon that the Buddha gave after his awakening. And you all know the story, of course, that how the Buddha tried various ways to become free of birth and death.

[18:00]

And none of them worked. So he then remembered a very simple practice of sitting and breathing that he had spontaneously fallen into as a child sitting under a tree. And so, taking that simple practice of just mindfully breathing, he decided to sit under the Bodhi tree and determined not to get up until he was awakened. Just before that, the last practice that he had tried that was a failure, was ascetic practice. He had five companions and the six of them were doing all kinds of austerities in order to liberate themselves from birth and death. The Buddha finally felt this was not going to be effective and he gave it up. But the other five were continuing with it and they were very disgusted with the Buddha for having given this up. So they, you know, went away from him in a sort of fit of pique.

[19:08]

Well, after the Buddha became awakened, he was very happy about it, as you can imagine. And he figured, well, you know, I don't really need to do anything now. And furthermore, who would ever understand anyway what I've been through, what I've experienced here, so what would be the point? In other words, I have no personal need to tell anybody about this, plus they wouldn't understand, so I'm just going to enjoy myself and to walk up and down and see what happens next. So that's what he was doing until some gods came to him. and said, no, no, no, this is really important. We feel that you should spread the Dharma, you should spread the word. We feel that there will be others who can understand. And this really didn't occur to Buddha, so he turned on his clairvoyant powers. sort of sending out a searching beam all over the universe to see whether it was the case that there was anybody out there who could understand.

[20:14]

And lo and behold it turned out that there was a lot of potential in the five ascetics who had abandoned him. But they seemed to be on the point of being able to understand this that the Buddha had to teach. So he trundled off in search of them. He was going to tell him the good news. So on the way, this is the part that I love the most, on the way he ran into another monk, who was not the one he was looking for, but somebody else who was in the vicinity. The monk said, you know, hello, how are you, and what are you up to? And the Buddha sort of said something like, well, here I am, I'm the Buddha, I'm completely awakened, and I can tell you about it if you're interested. And the monk said, well, he said, that's very, very nice, thank you very much, goodbye, and kept going. Totally unimpressed with the Buddha and his enlightenment. I always thought that was a very salient detail in the story of the Buddha's life, that the first person he encountered after his awakening, other than gods, was this person who was completely unimpressed.

[21:29]

Of course, later texts were added which explained that this fellow came back later on and, you know, studied with the Buddha and became awakened, but I think that was an afterthought. At any rate, he finally did locate the five ascetics. And when they saw him coming, they were not happy because here was this fellow who had abandoned the pursuit of truth. He started eating food really bad. And not only was he eating food, but he was accepting this food from a young woman, looking at a young woman two strikes against him. Terrible, terrible person. They did not want to talk to him at all. But somehow he was compelling enough as he approached them that they kind of found themselves agreeing to listen to him. And so he began to talk to them. And this is what he said, the turning the wheel of the law sutra. So, or as it's translated here, setting in motion the wheel of dharma.

[22:31]

That's what I heard. As everyone here no doubt knows, that line is spoken by Ananda. Every Buddhist sutra begins with Ananda who remembered everything that the Buddha ever taught and recites it. So that's what I heard. Once, the blessed one, the Buddha, was staying in the deer park in Isipatana, near Varanasi. I was just telling, I'm not going to get too far. But anyway, I was just talking to a friend the other day who's about to go to India. I once went to India, and I went to this place. You can go there, maybe some of you have been there. The Deer Park, near outside of Arunasi, where there is a great stupa, one of the oldest of Buddhist stupas is there.

[23:40]

And you can actually go to the Deer Park, the place where the Buddha went after his awakening, and taught this sutra. And it is the same, the very place. You know, it's kind of amazing. And I'm not that sentimental myself, but somehow, I don't know what happened to me, but when I went outside Varanasi to the deer park and started circumambulating the great stupa at the deer park, I just burst into tears. It was such a wonderful thing to be in the deer park where this sutra was taught. It was quite odd because I was, you know, devotedly circumambulating this stupa for a very long time, crying the whole time, and it was very funny because I was being accompanied by several dozen children who were after me to give them something.

[24:47]

They're making fun of me the whole time. It's quite nice. Anyway, there in the deer park, the Buddha addressed the bhikkhus of the group of five. That means the five ascetics that I was mentioning. And this is what he said. There are two extremes which should not be followed, bhikkhus, by someone who has gone forth. That means, gone forth means gone forth into the religious life, given up worldly pursuits and seeking truth. Two extremes that should not be followed by such a person. One is devotion to pursuing sense pleasure, which is low, vulgar, worldly, ignoble, and produces no useful result. So, kind of excessive, you know, profligacy and hedonistic indulgence.

[25:54]

Although one has to think very closely about what would that be. And I think that the Buddha would draw the line of indulgence and profligacy somewhere far to the left or right or whatever of where we might draw it. Because I think the Buddha recognized that there is so much grabbiness, so much desire and thirsting and craving that even in very ordinary states of mind, even in very ordinary average everyday experience. So that kind of grabbiness, that kind of attachment, that kind of thirsting and craving within any sensual experience, not just over eating or over drinking or over indulging in this and that, but anytime you see or hear or taste or touch, if you are craving and grasping and pursuing that experience,

[27:03]

That's one extreme. The other extreme is the opposite of that. Devotion to self-denial. Now here he's telling this to the ascetics, right? They need to hear this. Maybe that's why, yeah. Question. Yeah. How do you find a line between basically being sex positive and overindulging? Being what? So-called overindulgence. They talk about overindulgence, sex craving, physical craving, and like that. And basically being sex positive. What is sex positive? I don't understand. You enjoy your body. Oh, I see. Well, I think you draw the line through your own experience by your mindfulness. You pay attention. And when you practice sitting, you become, I think, more sensitized to your own experience.

[28:07]

You begin to see kind of levels of your own experience that maybe weren't available before. And if you take that increased sensitivity and apply it to simply being aware of what's going on in your own experience, you begin to tell the difference between... you begin to see how subtle craving is. And you begin to see that craving and this kind of thirsting that he's talking about, the trouble with it is not that it's bad, you know, you shouldn't do it. The trouble with it is that it causes suffering. And you get to see how that unfolds. It becomes clear to you. Oh, I see. As soon as I have this kind of craving and grasping, very quickly after that, I have suffering. So I didn't really see it before, but now I see how unsuccessful and how kind of stupid, you know, the way that I've been conducting myself was. But, and this is the problem with the language of some of these texts, is that it can sound as if what's being advocated is a kind of self-denial, even though he's saying this sentence right here, that what's being advocated is a kind of self-denial or tremendous sort of discipline and restraint.

[29:21]

But no, I think what's being indicated is a kind of simple and quiet enjoyment of one's life, absent this kind of craving and grasping. And seeing the difference between, you know, it takes some subtlety. It actually takes some sensitivity to one's own experience. And I think some, realistically, some time and discipline of practice. Yeah. I think, you know, what one You know, one's pleasure in this or that is relative to one's own sensitivity, right? And one's own mind, one's own spirit. So, as you develop your mind and your spirit, you find ways of enjoying very simple things. And you realize that to crave and take more than is necessary is actually uncomfortable. Does that speak to what you're... Yeah.

[30:24]

So, one extreme is this craving for sense pleasures. And it doesn't produce a useful result. And the opposite is devotion to self-denial, which is painful, ignoble, and produces no useful result. Avoiding both these extremes, vikus, the mudra ray that a Tathagata has awakened to gives vision and insight knowledge and leads to peace, profound understanding, full realization and to Nibbana. So, in a way he's saying, you know, the one extreme is worldly life which is the pursuit of accumulation of stuff and experience the affirmation and building on desire, that will cause you suffering.

[31:26]

But the opposite of that, you treat into a religious life, which would be full of self-denial and the demonization of all those things, this would be the other extreme and that's not right either. What we're looking for, he says, is a kind of way of life that brings us pleasure in the sense of peacefulness. and stability and sustainability. That's the kind of life we're looking for and that's what I'm advocating. And again, you know, it's very important, you know, he didn't always speak of the Middle Way in this particular way, but I think he spoke of it initially because he was addressing these ascetics. Who exactly saw these two extremes? They demonized the world and they were trying to somehow mortify their flesh because it was somehow wrong or bad and he thought that was an extreme. So then of course it begs the question, what is the middle way? How do you do that?

[32:27]

How do you live that? So that's what it says next. And what is the middle way that a Tathagata has awakened to which gives vision and insight knowledge and leads to peace, profound understanding, full realization and to nirvana? Nirvana? It is the eightfold path. That is to say, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration, right collectiveness, which means concentration. This is the middle way that a Tathagata has awakened to. I'm not that big a fan of the word right here because it sort of evokes again the sense of sort of straight-lacedness, you know, kind of restraint to a fault. I think what this word actually means, although I can't remember right now the Pali word, what the word actually means is something like

[33:31]

attuned or aligned, not askew. If something is right, it means it's true, it's straightforward, it's, you know, it's at a, you know, just at the right angle, you know, a right angle is something that just cuts it just so. It's perfectly aligned and attuned. So, what this is saying is that the middle way requires a whole way of life which has many different aspects to it each aspect of which is striving one should strive in the course of each of those aspects for a kind of attunement where you're not lying to one side or the other you know you're not going because you can religious practice can be just another avenue for you know, greed and delusion and all the things that you can do in the world, you can do exactly the same in religious practice if you feel like it. And probably you will, because that's what comes naturally to all of us, right?

[34:34]

So, this is what he's saying, be a tool, be aligned with reality as it really is. Don't be fighting it. Align yourself with it. That's the way to be peaceful. That's the way to be happy. So, in your views, in the way that you look at things and understand things, you align and you attune your views away from selfishness, away from avoidance, and toward a kind of accurate and clear acceptance of what is. And then, when you have a view like that, then you will produce in your mind and heart will produce good intentions, the proper intentions based on accurate views. And when you have intentions that are in tune with what's best in you as a human being, the words that come out of your mouth will be helpful

[35:39]

and beautiful and not nasty and you know negative and then when you speak words like that you will then act it will inspire you toward action which is also attuned and aligned and when you have attuned and aligned action naturally you want to have a way of life a way of earning your daily alms you know that will be righteous and not harm others and so forth and then when you have all that taken care of then you'll want to make the right kind of effort to practice meditation and then you'll practice awareness in your daily life and that awareness we also take to your cushion where you'll be able to practice a strong concentration and that strong concentration will deepen your mind and deepen the subtlety of your understanding so that you will have views that are even more accurate and more aligned with the way things are, and then your intention will become even more deep when you have those kind of views and so on and on.

[36:42]

In other words, the eightfold path that he's programmed, that he's laying out here, is an endless program of going back and back and back to living your life with an ever greater degree of clarity and understanding and alignment with reality and with what is. So those are the eight practices he's telling these ascetics, which if you do them in the right attunement, then you'll be able to understand what I mean by the avoidance of these two extremes. Then, he now is going to teach here to the bhikkhus the first, this is the first formulation of the Four Noble Truths. Bhikkhus, there is a Noble Truth about dissatisfaction. And this famous dissatisfaction is translated many other ways. Usually suffering is usually the way that you hear it translated. The word dukkha is usually translated as suffering. So this is the first truth, is the recognition that all conditioned things have the nature of suffering.

[37:52]

he doesn't exactly spell that out here but in later sutras this becomes clear that he's not talking when he says the noble truth of dissatisfaction. What he means is that this is the nature of conditioned existence, not just things we don't like or that we would call, you know, in this world we would call certain things suffering and other things are not suffering. What he's saying is suffering is a lot more pervasive than you think it is. What I mean by this word dukkha, this sort of dissatisfaction, this sort of slightly off kilter, this sort of, even when things are going well, there's a little anxiety. Do you know that feeling? I can't believe things are going so well. What's going to happen next? You know, kind of feeling that one may have even when you don't even think such a thing. The anxiety that's sort of inherent in being, existing in a human world with an impermanent mind and body is what he means here. And then he gives a few really good instances of what he means by dissatisfaction or suffering.

[38:58]

Birth is a problem. It's true, you know, when you're already burned, you have many problems right away. And they continue. So even coming into the world in the first place is a problem. We know this because everybody who comes into the world starts crying immediately when they get there. Because it's a shock. It's a shock, you know. It's a big shock for everybody. And a trauma to come into the world after even floating around in space, you know, in this wonderful situation of total love and belonging and complete everything there. to all of a sudden somebody says, all right, now breathe. And don't stop until you die. This is a shock. It's a problem. It's a lot of work, you know. And then, plus, you know, and then, you know, now you're cast out of the Garden of Eden into a state of exile and you're wandering around and there's all kind of problems that make you go to school and this and that. You have to worry about relationships, and you've got to get a job, and everything, none of which was even a factor.

[40:03]

You didn't even think such thoughts before, and now you have all these problems, just by virtue of being born. If everything goes well, you have those problems. But then, if you're born, you've got to age. Aging is difficult. The older you get, different things start not working, and so forth. It's very hard. And then you have to die. All of these things are a consequence of being born. You know, people think, oh, she died of cancer. Well, that's not really true. She didn't die of cancer. She died of life. She would never burn. She wouldn't die. Cancer is only an incidental cause of death. The real cause of death is birth. So, this is all a big problem. Then there's sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair that comes into every human life no matter what. These things are also unpleasant and difficult.

[41:04]

Then all those times when you have to be associated with things you don't like. There are times when that which you do like very much you can't have, you're far away from. Not getting what you want is unpleasant. He doesn't mention this but also one could say sometimes getting what you want is also unpleasant sometimes. In brief, the five grasp aggregates are unsatisfactory. And this is what the grasp aggregates means, you. In other words, be a person with sense organs, a mind, emotions, impulses, an impermanent body. This situation is a drastically unworkable situation. beginning of wisdom, the beginning of happiness, the beginning of real pleasure, is the recognition of this. If you don't recognize this, you're already doomed.

[42:06]

Because then you're going to be looking for some sort of quick fix, you know, some sort of band-aid. And this is going to be your problem. You're going to be putting a band-aid on that which is a bigger wound than a band-aid can fix. And the more you keep doing that, your frustration is only going to grow as time goes on. At first you might think, oh good, I put the band-aid on, I feel much better now. But as time goes on, you know, it becomes, the wound is bigger and the band-aid is not working, and you become much more unhappy. So you first have to realize the fix you're in, as it really is. Then, next, This actually is set up kind of like a simple, most simple form of logic or almost like a medical diagnosis, you know. First of all, what is the disease? Then, obviously, what causes the disease?

[43:10]

Then, find a way to remove the cause. And then, there's health. So that's what, that's basically what the Four Noble Truths are saying. And the disease is conditioned existence as we know it. And our approach, our mindless approach to conditioned existence as we know it. So the second truth is the cause. What is the cause of this condition? It is desire, or I would say maybe better than desire, clinging, grasping, craving, endlessly wanting something more or different from what's there, which is the human, not only human, but all of life,

[44:12]

is like that, always. That's what moves us forward, right? Grasping and clinging and desiring something that isn't there. Now we're in bed, let's get up. Now we're up, let's go to sleep. Desire something. So this clinging, this craving and grasping, which gives rise to fresh birth, bound up with relish and passion, running here and there, delighting in this and that, Which might sound good, actually, to most of us. It's not so bad, you know. Relish is good. Passion, excellent. I like to travel. Delighted in this and that, why not? And he said, no, no, that, exactly, the point is that we like all of that. We think, we hear all that, we think, oh, that's really good. But that is the problem, is that we don't really understand the real nature, fundamental nature of our conditioned existence.

[45:14]

And so we're following our craving and our grasping and our desires for running around and delighting in this and that. This cloning, craving, And you know, notice he says, not only for life, but also for death. Because sometimes, this is the flip side of it, you know, we fall into despair, we want to die, we want to get out of this world. We want to leave, we want to get away from something in front of us. Extinction. is, you know, to jump off a bridge is sort of the ultimate way of, we think, of getting out of all this. But it's the same thing when you say, well, I'm just, I'm leaving this town. I've had enough, you know. I'm going away from this marriage. I've had enough. So we want to get things, but we also want to get rid of things. We want to go away from things. This kind of clinging, which can take either a positive or negative form,

[46:15]

That's the cause of suffering. Because there is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering. It is the complete fading away and cessation or the quieting, I would say, the quieting, the calming, the spaciousness that can surround this kind of clinging and desire. When that happens, it's abandonment and it's relinquishment. There's freedom. peace, ease, joy. That's possible. How? Then he repeats the Noble Eightfold Path, which he mentioned earlier. Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And then in this next section, the... Oh, that's the custom to take a break.

[47:26]

Yes, that's a good idea. I think we should definitely take a break. I think it's a good idea. Thank you. So we'll all stand up and stretch and take five. The answer to a question like that is always yes and no. I mean, of course, of course, the whole way of looking at life was different 2,500 years ago than the way that we look at life now. Of course, it was utterly and totally different. And so what the Buddha was trying to do was, you know, very, very different from the way we're, what we bring to our practice and what we're trying to accomplish in our practice. On the other hand, Human being is a human being and some things don't change. And so the restlessness of the human heart Well, it may look different and be called different things and seem quite different from a long time ago. Maybe that's one thing that's perennial, always the same, that the human heart is always restless and it's always looking for some way to find peace.

[48:36]

And in that sense, insofar as we're also restless and we're also trying to find peace, we're just like Buddha. We come to our cushions the same way that he came to his. Other people had hands up in the back. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, Norman, I remember your teaching me how to Yamsaka Sutra as if it were yesterday. Did I do it over here? No, you did it in Green Gorge. Oh yeah, Green Gorge. That class went on for three years. Right. And you both were in that class? Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I'm thinking of a distinction that I've heard between Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism And I'm wondering how it's related to the comments that you and Ross were exchanging.

[50:03]

I've heard it said that in Mahayana teaching it's presumed that we all have the light, that all we have to do is see it. But in the Pali way, there has to be a whole process of clearing and cultivating that it may be in there, but it's pretty deep. And unless you go through those steps, you can't really touch it. And if that has something to do with the comments you're making about intention being the most important thing versus the process and needing to practice. Well, did you all hear that? Yeah. Well, it's complicated by the fact that you can find, like one of the sutras that we're going to read, maybe the next one, is all about how literally it says the mind is light in the old way. It says the mind is light and it just gets covered up. So all we have to do is find the light, return to the light.

[51:05]

So you find that also in the old way. And you also find in Mahayana Buddhism plenty of expressions of the need to cultivate. Yes, of course, we do have the nature to be awakened. And all we have to do is align with that and know that. It may take a lot of effort to kind of make that alignment, right? There are schools of Mahayana Buddhism that believe that, you know, that are not so much oriented toward cultivation and practice that teach, for instance, that if you just recite the name of, you know, Amitabha Buddha and pray to Amitabha, then, you know, this will get it done, get the job done. But even there, you might have to chant quite a while. So, there's different... Personally, I... and I think a lot of contemporary practitioners and scholars are now wanting to really soften even to the point of abandoning the distinction between so-called Hinayana and Mahayana.

[52:25]

Of course, there are different schools with different, you know, following different textual traditions and so on. But I think that division, you know, Mahayana, Hinayana, as an oppositional kind of distinction is really not, doesn't really, never really did hold and certainly doesn't hold now. I think there were times in history when there was that kind of an idea. But I don't think it was ever historically, basically, based on anything historically important. And certainly nowadays, it really seems like a ridiculous thing. And you know, you see, in Western Buddhism, certainly many Theravada Buddhists talk about compassion and universal compassion, even talk about Bodhisattva vow, you know, I mean, and many of them are practicing engaged Buddhism, you know, and so forth. So I don't think that distinction really matters so much now. It's just different styles and different approaches.

[53:29]

But one big pot, I think, not two pots. That's my opinion. Well, let me just finish the ending of this. So, this last little paragraph after this, so the Buddha said this, gave this teaching, and the bhikkhus were really enthusiastic about it, and one of them, Kondana actually understood. Just hearing the Buddha's words, he went to the full level of understanding all twelve aspects of four truths. He understood completely. And this is the interesting part. What was his understanding? Whatever has the nature to arise, has the nature to cease. That was Kondana's insight on hearing and totally penetrating the Buddha's Four Noble Truths.

[54:40]

So for Kondana, it all came down to only that. So each of us, you see, may have another way of manifesting the Four Noble Truths that maybe have nothing to do with the Four Noble Truths, at least on the surface. and yet will contain the entire essence of the Four Noble Truths. And I think, you know, you could see, I think, maybe you can see that if you really and truly understood, moment after moment, that what has the nature of arising has the nature of ceasing. And that is the way it is, always, in this world. If you could understand that and embrace that, this really would be of suffering, the truth of the origination of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the whole path will be included in that recognition and the life that you would lead if you really understood that. Of course, we don't understand that every moment we think we're here forever, and we're desperately trying to make that so.

[55:42]

And it never is so, it never was so, and never will be so, but we're always trying to make it so, even though we don't think like that or know that. This last sentence really speaks to me of the whole confusion with words like cultivating intention because just those words of their own have a sense of grasping to them. And so the whole mind-body experience of Yeah, yeah. Right, so we have to keep that in mind and hear those words and understand those words in the light of non-grasping. And it is true that, I mean, that's the problem always. I mean, you know, Dogon gets around that problem by writing in such a way that there's nothing at all to grasp. So that's great, you know. We can't make that mistake, but then we might not know how to practice, you know. So then the Buddha makes the other mistake there.

[56:47]

He says, well, I'll just do this and practice that and this will happen. And then we say, yeah, but then I'll get all clingy and all graspy. He says, yeah, shut up and just do it. Yeah, so you're right. My thing is developmental. I use Wilbur's stages of development. And you know, at one point we are putting in tension and cultivating, but then there is a transition that happens where you let go. Right. So there's always effort. There's always some effort. So anyway, this last part basically says that when this happened, this was a big moment, because it was the moment when it was clear that there could be the ongoing tradition of Buddhism. Because if somebody, and people probably get enlightened all the time, but then nobody knows because they can't share. They can't make it into something that's shareable and musical for others. So this was the moment when Buddha found out that he had hit on a good way of sharing his experience and that someone else could actually understand it.

[57:53]

And so this was like a big moment throughout the various heavens in the last paragraphs. detail how the call went forth from one heaven to the next until it got all the way to the top heavens. All the gods were dancing and happy with joy because the Buddha had been successful in achieving awakening and sharing it with others. And then after that a whole establishment and community of practitioners sprang up. So any last questions or comments? How are we doing? Is this a good way to do this? Read the sutras? Yeah. Yes? Can you comment a little bit on the image of the wheel? The wheel? The wheel, which is an early image, and it was, I think, one or two or so that Dr. Murugan put us at the end of his life.

[58:55]

Well, people could carve an image of a wheel if they wanted to, but not a human figure, not a... So, and the wheel, and the 12 aspects of these four known truths, it seems to be, maybe that's a reference, the 12, that number 12, like 12 spokes, that number 12, which... but this idea of a wheel, or of a wheel rolling, I picture a wheel rolling by itself. Yeah, well, it's a nice image, I think, to refer to the teachings of the Buddha. A wheel is a circle, a circle is a kind of something that's complete. It's a what? Homely, yeah. And yet, you know, because I think of it as on its edge, rolling, but maybe that's, I mean, it's not a very, I don't know.

[60:14]

I mean, I'm trying to think. It is unique, I think, as an image. Yeah, it's like the Zen circle to it, you know? Teaching, you know? If you go to Thomas Merton's Hermitage, he has a big rude wooden cross, and at the bottom of it there's a wagon wheel, which he put there to symbolize his interest and love for the wheel of Dharma. Yeah, I think it is a very apt and wonderful image, an image of wholeness, completeness, you know, peacefulness. Well, maybe on that note we should chant and go away. Thank you very much for coming, I really appreciate it. Remember, we won't see each other next week, but the week after that, and we'll just continue with, I think the next Sutra is called the Finger Snap.

[61:17]

It's about the light within the mind. So if you have any hanging thoughts or questions about this sutra, because it is so important, don't feel shy that you can jot them down and bring them next time.

[61:34]

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