So I've been talking about the Heart Sutra, and today I'm going to start with, therefore, in emptiness, therefore is not necessary, but it's there. Kanze points this out as a kind of strange thing, In emptiness, there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no impulses. Impulses, we don't say that anymore, we say mental formations. No consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. no realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness, no ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death."

[01:06]

Well, no object of mine is going to go that far. So, in the realm of emptiness. So, emptiness, in this case, you can substitute the word interdependence. Emptiness means form, and it also means no form. So emptiness doesn't mean that nothing is there, but it also means that what is there is no thing. So we know that emptiness doesn't mean that there's nothing there. Sometimes people say, oh, nothingness. But it doesn't mean nothingness, because nothingness is somethingness.

[02:08]

And somethingness is nothingness, or no thingness. A thing is not a thing. Therefore, that which is no thing is a thing. It's thingness. So you can't get out of it, and at the same time, you can't stay in it. So this is the great koan of our life. Form is emptiness. Therefore in emptiness, no form, no feeling. These are the five skandhas again. And then it goes on to say there are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. no color, no sound, no smell, taste, touch, no object of mind. So if you've studied Abhidhamma or basic Buddhism, you know that the Buddhists analyze the six senses and their objects and their consciousnesses.

[03:25]

So altogether it's 18 elements or dharmas. So there's the eye and the nose and the ear and the tongue and the touch and the mind. These are the six senses. And in order for the eye to be an eye, it has to see. If it doesn't see, you can say, well, there is an eye, but it doesn't see. In order for the eye to actualize itself as eye, there has to be something seen. So that's the object of the eye. Whatever is seen is the object of the eye. And then, in order to have sight, there has to be consciousness. It has to be consciousness of what it's seeing.

[04:29]

So all three elements are necessary. So for the eye, there's the object of the eye and the consciousness of seeing. The eye actually doesn't see. The eye is just a, as we know, a shutter, like on a camera. And it has its function. And what's seen is an object in the mind. and the mind decides what it is it's seeing and creates the picture. Whether it's an accurate picture or not or how the mind decides what it is it's seeing and what the action is and what it means is purely mental. So we have a picture of reality. We create a picture of reality in the mind, but that's another story.

[05:34]

So the eye is an eye, the nose is a nose, but actually it's just a lump, you know, this thing. Right now, this particular one is kind of swollen up and a little fuzzy around the edges. I was looking at it in the mirror, you know, a little fuzzy. I can't quite tell exactly where the nose begins and ends and the cheek begins, you know, somewhere around there. But we just call it a cheek, you know, we call this a nose, but it's kind of a lump, you know. When it smells, when it's functioning, we call it a nose. But we give it its honorific anyway. Whether it's smelling or not, it's still a nose. We honor it as a nose. But this nose is not a nose.

[06:49]

Actually, I just call it a nose. We call it, and we agree that It's a nose. It's an agreed-upon truth. But I don't know what it is. It has its function. In order for it to be a nose, it has to smell something. It has to let in some fragrance. and then send messages to the brain which says, oh, that roast beef really smells good. But I won't eat it because I'm a vegetarian. Makes up a plan. So, in other words, the nose is dependent on consciousness.

[07:56]

And it's also dependent on an object. So the nose exists dependent on an object and consciousness directly. The eye depends on an object and consciousness. The touch depends on object and consciousness. Each of these senses depends on object and consciousness. So they're completely interdependent. So, a nose is not just a nose. The subject depends on the object, and object and subject arise together. Strictly speaking, the nose only arises when there's an object for it to sense. Otherwise, Even though it looks like a nose, it's not actually like a nose.

[09:00]

Just like your car is your car, your automobile, and it looks like a car and it has all the functioning ability of a car, but until you open the door, get in, put the key in and start the engine and move, does it become a car? When it functions, does its function, then it becomes what it is. So as Dogen says, The person gets into the boat, steps into the boat, raises the sail, and sails off. And then the boat becomes the boat. That's when the boat becomes the boat. That's when you become you and the boat becomes the boat. Subject and object become one thing. And life becomes life. But we are always dividing subject and object, and it's hard for us to get the concept sometimes that subject and object are not two.

[10:14]

They're two, and yet not two. The object is an object for the subject. Objects are only objects for subjects. So the word emptiness also means interdependence. Therefore, in interdependence, there is no eyes, no ears. So they only exist interdependently with other things. In interdependence, a nose is not a nose all by itself. It's only a nose in relation to the face and in relation to its object and its consciousness.

[11:16]

That's what it means. So it seems to be negating. This is the as I said once before, the Heart Sutra is the Sutra of Mu. Mu, and when we chant it, Mu, Mu, Myo, Yoga, Mu, Mu, Myojin, Mu, [...] Mu. Know this, know this, know this, know that. But as Joshu said, does the dog have the Buddha nature? Mu, meaning everything exists in interdependence. Thich Nhat Hanh uses the word inter-being, which is the same thing, but that's a nice way of also talking about it. Everything inter-bees, inter-is, and things inter-are. So no realm of eyes,

[12:26]

means sight objects, and no realm of mind consciousness means consciousness. So consciousness doesn't exist by itself, objects don't exist by themselves, and senses don't exist by themselves. They only arise up in interdependence. It needs all these interdependent activities to create something. And then, the Sutra goes on to say, no realm of eyes until no realm, no ignorance, and also no extinction of it until old age and death, and also no extinction of that This little sentence is talking about the 12-fold chain of causation, which is one of the principal doctrines of Buddhism.

[13:39]

When Shakyamuni Buddha gave his first sermon, he talked about the Four Noble Truths and the 12-fold chain of causation. So it's taking the 12-fold chain of causation and then talking about Four Noble Truths. So, Kanze says that the Heart Sutra is a re-establishment of the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths made clear and the 12-fold chain made clear. But it talks about the 12-fold chain. So I'll read both of those. No ignorance and also no extinction of it. See, it leaves out all the middle.

[14:41]

The Heart Sutra abbreviates. It talks about the first part and then it talks about the end. But it leaves out the middle. It doesn't discuss anything. It just mentions it. So, no ignorance and also no extinction of it. And also, No ignorance and also no extinction of it until no old age and death, which is the end of the 12-fold chain, if you can think of a circle as having an end, and also no extinction of it. And then no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. Those are the Four Noble Truths. So it's negating the 12-fold chain of causation and the Four Noble Truths, seemingly by saying no. But what it means is to see the twelvefold chain of causation and the four noble truths from the point of view of emptiness rather than from the point of view of duality.

[15:47]

By the time Buddhism had reached the first century, You know, there were 18 schools of Buddhism. There were more, but we count 18 because we have records of the thought and arguments and philosophy of these 18 schools. And they, you know, would take some philosophical or doctrinal standpoint, and argue with another school or other schools. They'd have arguments on maybe one or two points for a hundred years, or a couple of hundred years. But this kind of refined the Buddhist thought. People think, oh, Buddhists are arguing with each other? Eighteen schools arguing with each other? They did have big arguments.

[16:52]

But this is the way they refined and crystallized Buddhist understanding over a period of four or five hundred years, or longer, actually, up until the end of Buddhism in the 10th century in India, where it started to degenerate. But it was very vital at this time, because they were having these kinds of discussions about Buddhist understanding. And the Mahayana the middle way, the Madhyamaka, kind of came out of the Mahasamgaccha school, which is the closest to the refinement of Buddhism as we know it. So there were different ways of understanding Buddhist thought. And when

[17:55]

The Heart Sutra and the Prajnaparamita Sutras are talking about the 12-fold chain of causation instead of seeing it in a dualistic way. The Theravada is the one remaining school of the 18 schools. The one school from the 18 schools of Buddhism that still remains. And so we call it the Hinayana school. But we refer sometimes to the Theravada school as having these doctrines. But the old Theravada school, which represents a kind of Hinayana thought, small vehicle thought, viewed Buddha's understanding as annihilation.

[19:00]

If you could only annihilate the causes of suffering one by one, you'd end up with nothing, actually. You'd end up with... by... You'd end up, if you erased all the causes of suffering, which comes down to desire, and eliminated all the problems of desire, what you come down to is you don't do anything, right? And so the very kind of sterile Buddhism, very sterile kind of life that you would be living. So let me read to you the 12-fold chain of causation. Buddhists, pretty universally, don't think of life as being horizontal or vertical, but as being circular, so that

[20:15]

Wherever life starts, it goes around in a circle and comes back to itself, and this is called rebirth. Some Buddhists take it as reincarnation, but reincarnation and rebirth are not exactly the same, just like pain and suffering seem to be the same, but they're not. Pain is pain and suffering is suffering, and rebirth is rebirth, and reincarnation is reincarnation, even though one is taken for the other. But rebirth means that there's action influence. Every action has its influence in the world. And the action, the karmic activity of a person has consequences in the flow of life. So every action has its reaction and has its, establishes a new, every cause establishes a new condition.

[21:28]

Every condition establishes a new cause and on and on it goes. And this is, so the action influence of a person's life continues after our life stops. And what part of that continues is considered consciousness and the karmic life of the person, the actions of the person. And so that life somehow continues the cycle. So if you draw a line horizontally and you look at a person's life, birth, youth, middle life, old age and death, that's one half of the cycle and then it goes back around and the action influence somehow or another makes a circle and appears at birth again. Some people say, well, this is reincarnation.

[22:34]

But somehow, some part of that life force is reborn as another person or as somebody. I don't know if it's the same person or a different person. This is the generally accepted understanding by most Buddhists. And so, Buddha said, well, if you just stop these karmic actions And I read the action. But it's hard to tell on a circle where it starts. So it has to start somewhere, right? So they start with ignorance and dependent-related ignorance. And the next step is karmic formations.

[23:40]

And from karmic formations, on the basis of ignorance, We have karmic formations. On the basis of karmic formations is consciousness. On the basis of consciousness is name and form. On the basis of name and form are the six sense organs. On the basis of the six sense organs are contact, feeling, craving, grasping, existence, birth, aging and death. And then after aging and death, birth is next to aging and death. I don't want to get into this. This is a whole study by itself, of which Buddha said it's the most difficult thing to understand. But I just want to give you some understanding of that. So what the Buddha said is, if you eliminate aging and death, then you eliminate birth. If you eliminate birth, you eliminate existence.

[24:46]

If you eliminate existence, you eliminate grasping, craving, blah, blah, blah, all the way back to ignorance. So this is a kind of philosophy of eliminating rebirth, period. And so they said, well, Buddha's power nirvana means that Buddha will never appear again, you know, in a rebirth. But the Mahayana put that kind of understanding aside. Mahayana understanding is, you know, we say the Bodhisattva doesn't disappear into nirvana, but rather stays in the cycle of rebirth. forever until all sentient beings are saved. But what that means is that this nirvana of annihilation is dualistic.

[25:55]

And nirvana for the Mahayana does not mean extinction. But it means, rather than trying to eliminate all the causes of suffering, to actually be in suffering, to actually stay in the realm of suffering, and through suffering to find nirvana. Sorry. No cheap way out. to find our salvation within our problem. So, rather than eliminating the causes of suffering, which is a very noble thing to do, that all life is interdependent.

[27:02]

And when you realize the emptiness within the passions within the problems and to see them, to see all the emptiness of everything, that's the salvation. To find the salvation within the cycle of suffering rather than to eliminate all suffering. Because to eliminate all suffering in order to find nirvana is dualistic. And the Lotus Sutra, if you read the Lotus Sutra, there's a point where Buddha is giving a sermon to 500 arhats, or there are 500 arhats in the audience. And he's saying, up to now, what I have told you

[28:07]

about nirvana and so forth is just skillful means. Actually, you can't stop there. You can't... It's not what I... I've led you along this far through skillful means, but it's just a resting place. You really have to go further than this. And the 500 arhats are very indignant, and they all get up and left. Who was the leader of this rebellion? Well, they all... They just spontaneously... Yeah. Okay. Well, are they the terror bottoms? Well, they were arhats. At that time, there were no terror bottoms. They were just monks. Did the terror bottoms take the same point of view? I don't know who I'm talking to. Oh. Here's an object of mine.

[29:11]

There needs to be everything dependent on glasses. Yes? What was that again? The arhats who left, do the Theravadins have the same point of view? Oh. The Theravadins today still have the same point of view? I don't know what the Theravadins today think. You know, Buddhism is very different than The Buddhist schools are very different now than what they were, not in Buddha's time, after Buddha's time. The schools didn't form until after Buddha's time. So, in Buddha's time there were no schools. There were just, you know, Buddhist followers. And, of course, the Lotus Sutra just made up, you know. It's not like that actually happened. Excuse me, it may sound blasphemous, but It's just a story, you know, to illustrate a point. The Lotus Sutra is also propaganda, Mahayana propaganda to illustrate, you know, it's a tale to illustrate a point.

[30:25]

But I would say that probably there are Buddhists, to this day, probably in Southeast Asia who have that feeling, who have that understanding. The question might be that Arhat is the equivalent of a Hinayana saint. Yeah, it's a Hinayana saint. When I say Arhat, I mean Hinayana. Right. In the past two days, you've been talking about the first three stanzas? Well, sections. Sections. And I find it odd that in such a short, condensed sutra, 260 words, you spend about over a third of it on one idea and repeating it twice, three times, talking about the same thing.

[31:28]

And the balance of the sutra is so rich with all these other things. Why did they spend so much time Well, they repeated the whole thing. It's just different ways of talking about the whole thing. I mean, about the same thing. But literally, the first three sections are the same thing. It's not the same. It's not the same. Each section is different. It's the dialectics of emptiness from three, you know, different... The Sutra is talking about the same thing, but it's talking about it using all the examples of Buddhism, Buddhist doctrine. So it has to go through each one of the doctrines. Now it's talking about the 12-fold chain of causation as emptiness, and it's talking about the Four Noble Truths as emptiness.

[32:35]

Well, first we're talking about form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That's the four profundities. And then it's expressing the four profundities in the various doctrines of Buddhism. And it's very short. It's just that my lecture is very long. But actually, my lecture is really short. I wish that I'd had the seven days to talk about it. This is only my third talk, so I have to go through it rather quickly. So, I guess that's the reason. So then, it brings us back to the important aspect of neither

[34:23]

existence nor non-existence. We're always in the middle of, in the midst of neither existence nor non-existence. So, Heart Sutra really can't be explained, you know. It has to be understood intuitively. But, so I'm not really explaining it. I'm just giving us some way to think about it. Some way for us to get a toehold on it so that you understand what it's talking about. So maybe another term for emptiness would be neither existence nor non-existence. In that realm of neither the extreme of existence or the extreme of non-existence.

[35:28]

But not halfway in between. But it's still called the middle. Middle way. At the same time that we feel that there is this existence, it's already changed. It's already something else. So yes, it exists, and no, it doesn't exist. And within this transiency, we say transient, but at the same time, it's an eternal transiency, or it's an endless transiency.

[36:42]

So at the same time that we say everything is changing, at the same time, Everything is existing right here now. So, then he goes, then the sutra goes on to talk about suffering. Life is suffering. The origin of suffering is desire. There is a way to deal with it, to stop the suffering, And the way is the path. That's the Four Noble Truths. So here it says, there's no suffering in emptiness, no suffering, no origination of suffering, no stopping of suffering, and no path to lead us out of suffering. But it seems to be saying that these things are not, but what it means is,

[37:52]

They don't exist. They exist dependently. There's no absolute. They're dependently originated. They're dependently arising. and that suffering is actually nirvana. No is another word for nirvana, actually. Emptiness is another word for nirvana. So nirvana is a kind of constant

[38:56]

It's like when you're flying in an airplane, and it's a lot of clouds, and then suddenly there's a hole, and you see through the clouds, and you see, oh, there's nirvana. It's always been there. It's the steady state. But it's also the activity of life. Suffering is caused by desire. And the Arhats thought if you eliminate desire through the twelvefold chain of causation, backwards, then you have nirvana. But suffering is also nirvana. The life of suffering is also the life of nirvana. That's where we have to find our release.

[40:03]

So then it says, no cognition, also no attainment. Cognition means knowing, right? There's nothing to know. There's no nirvana to seek. You can't really seek nirvana, and you can't know it except through non-clinging. So what we study is non-clinging. In zazen, what we study is non-clinging. You sit in zazen, you have a lot of pain, and if you cling to the pain, You have suffering. If you let go of it, you have nirvana. Nirvana is there even if you cling to it, but you don't realize it. You choke it off because we have a dependency. A dependency chokes it off.

[41:20]

We're dependent on feeling good. The pain is there too. The pain is there too. You know, the three marks of existence are no self, no... No self, no permanence. Say it louder. No self, no permanence. No permanent, no self, and suffering within nirvana. The life of suffering is the life of nirvana. This painful life is also the nirvana life, life of nirvana. But because we want to escape from our suffering,

[42:24]

We can't see it. We also escape from nirvana because we try to escape from our suffering. It's really hard. I laugh. You know those Chinese baskets that you put your fingers in? The more you try to get out, the more they... It's exactly the same thing. I did that one time. We had a sashimi at Sokoji about 30 years ago. And Bishop Sumi was there. He was the bishop from Los Angeles. And I got this idea. I went to Chinatown during the noon break, and I got all these little baskets, and I put them in everybody's seat. And he picked his up, and what is this? He didn't get it, you know. That's very disappointing.

[43:27]

It's just some kind of a joke. He's a severe bishop, so that's a wild card. May I never be a bishop. So Sutra says, no cognition, also no attainment. There's nothing to attain, you know? There's no... Attainment is a non-attainment. We say attain enlightenment or something, but it's a non-attainment. It's just as Suzuki Roshi always say, resume your true nature. Resume, just come back to your true nature.

[44:28]

Settle down on yourself. Settle down on yourself with what you have, you know? And people were always wanting to, you know, get out of their problems. And if I could only solve this problem, I'd be okay, you know? And Suzuki Yoshi would say, well, the problem you have now is the problem you'll always have. If you're a weak person, you'll always be a weak person. If you're a strong person, you'll always be a strong person. And people would say, you mean, I can never be a strong person? But he would get people. stimulated. I'll show you.

[45:30]

And then he would also say, if you, the problem you have now may not be so bad, you know, if you eliminate the problem you have, then you just get another problem, which Maybe worse. So you might be thankful for the one that you have. You might think about that. He was always pointing us that what you have is what you have to work with. We want to eliminate our problem so that we'll have some relief. We don't have to work with this problem. I remember seeing a movie recently, on TV, documented, I can't remember this guy's name, but he was a famous black performer, and when he was a little kid, he was working in a mill, and he had his leg cut off.

[46:49]

I can't remember his name. tap dancer. And so he got a wooden leg. And he learned how to tap dance. And he became this very famous, well-known tap dancer in the 20s or 30s. Tappin' Joe, somebody or other, you know. And he was well-known in those days. Nobody knows him now. But he you know, performed everywhere. And he said, I'm so glad this happened to me. He says, otherwise I just would have been nobody, you know. And he said, every single day, you know, I just worked really hard. And his whole life was just, you know, devoted to doing this thing.

[47:51]

He was very happy. We thought, how can he be happy with only one leg? But we look around us and we see all these people have two legs and we say, how come they're so unhappy? How can you be so unhappy you have two legs? So, I have the answer. I don't have enough shoes. Time to go shopping. Not yet. That was actually Suzuki Roshi's whole teaching, was deal with the problem and be happy, be thankful for the problem you have, whatever that is, because that's how you will find your way with that problem, our original problem.

[49:10]

We have our original problem, then we have our little problems. We don't like, you know, to have to deal with our original problems. I mean, and it can kill us, you know. I remember my, Tatsugami Roshi was my teacher when I was shuso at Tatsuhara. And he used to smoke all the time. And all the time, I mean, he smoked all the time.

[50:16]

There was never a time when he didn't, except in the Zen Dojo when he was sitting exhausted. Other than that. And we used to sit around him, you know, doing, all morning. And he had this wonderful way of smoking. And people would sometimes criticize him and say, how can the Zen master smoke all the time? And he said, Well, you know you can get enlightened through smoking. And it's probably true. He died after that. What did he die of? Well, I don't know. Isn't the original problem death? Yeah, well, it's only a problem if you don't like it. Well, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is the only one that seems to like it.

[51:26]

She likes it. Well, it's only, you know, that's also a problem. You bet. You know, liking it and and not liking it are both a problem. That's the realm of desire. Clinging to death, you know, or drawing back from it. Those are both extremes. You know, wanting that, you know, thinking that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's not good or bad. It's just the thing. It's just the next thing. I was thinking about this through this lecture and you sort of came back to it. I'm wondering, it's really hard not to make things out of these dharmas and these states of mind.

[52:33]

And I was wondering, if these dharmas are interdependent, or they're composed of different factors and elements, what are the elements that create clinging? What is clinging? What are the constituent parts of clinging? What's the cause of desire? Ignorance. Ignorance is the cause of clinging, because not understanding the consequences of things, we go ahead and, you know,

[53:47]

As a baby, we don't see the consequences of fire. So we put our finger in the fire, right? But before that, you don't see what the problem is. You just put your finger in the fire. It's like the moth attracted to the moth and the flame, right? But then as we experiment with things, we learn. not to do that but there are subtle forms of fire and there are subtle forms of water you know there are subtle forms of ether and there are subtle forms of earth so these subtle forms are what we don't you know it takes us sometimes a long time to learn how not to be caught by the subtle forms.

[54:50]

And before we know it, we're already caught by them. It's not that they catch us, it's that we are attracted to certain things. It's like kids eat candy, you know? And they know it's not good for them, but that doesn't matter. And we're all attracted to candy, of one kind or another. So, self-control, And, you know, ignorance, those are forms of ignorance, is not knowing how to control ourself, not knowing how to... Is it possible to lead a calm, free life? Not completely. But it's possible to lead a life which is not collecting karma, which is not creating a lot of karma. But you still create some, no matter how hard you try.

[55:52]

Well yeah, there's always karma. But there's karma which is harmful, karma which is beneficial, and karma which is neutral. There is beneficial karma. Yeah. But that's just a sweeping statement. People make sweeping statements, but it doesn't mean every single thing. It just means the sources of karma.

[56:53]

In other words, I don't act in a way that creates clinging. But whatever we do, we're creating some kind of karma. I mean, every time we eat something, we create some kind of karma. There's a consequence to it. But they're not harmful consequences. So when he says, he's meaning, I've cut off the harmful aspects of my actions. Isn't that dualistic? To say these actions are equal and these are not. It seems like part of karma is accepting that some of your actions create harm and it's part of being alive.

[57:58]

Here's the problem. The dualistic part, that's right, is thinking that either things are pure or impure. So we also have to act dualistically at the right time. So to cut off karma means that we have a choice of whether to act dualistically or non-dualistically. And when we're acting dualistically on purpose, it's non-dualistic. Otherwise we couldn't do anything. How could you do anything? Does that still generate karma? Karma means volitional action.

[59:01]

That's the meaning of the word karma. Volitional action. So we're always doing a volitional action and sometimes we're doing an inadvertent action. But when we do something volitionally, that means with intention, it can be a good intention, or a bad intention, or a neutral intention. And the result of the karma is what you mean by karma. The result is either the fruit or the result. And the result has some fruit down the line, whatever we do. So we're always doing volitional actions. But when we act without ego, without always relating to everything as a self, then our actions are not egotistical, they're not so-called creating karma. But still, there's always some result to what we do.

[60:07]

Yeah, that's right. But ego actions are also intentional. They're both intentional. But one is intentionally egotistical, and the other is intentionally not egotistical. There's a difference between intentional and full attention. Oh, full attention. Yeah, full attention would be without ignorance. I wanted to know if you could say something about the harm of judgments, opinions, clinging

[60:57]

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