Is there anyone else who needed a copy of the, of the, basically the text? I have a couple more. Everyone else have one? Yeah, but mine's missing one page. Yes, they're missing one, but mine's missing one. Missing a page, really? Yes. Oh, no, no, no, I think it was missing a page. I was getting excited, I wanted to fuck, and then I kind of hate it. Well, it's kind of like the reader's digestion. It's too bad, it's true. It's getting easier. It's the best version. They edited a bridge. Right. Okay. Good evening. Good evening, David. Ah. Yeah. Raksuglas. Um, okay. Well, I've been thinking about the Heart Sutra. All week I noticed some people are actually using their their chant books in the in the zendo Which is good.

[01:04]

I've been trying to do it. It's actually pretty it's it's neat to do it and also it means you sort of You have to figure out how you handle the book again, which is good I don't know if people have been Working with the That person is obviously working with the mantra. I don't know if anyone's working with the mantra. But actually, I'd like to just remind you to keep that in mind. And if you feel like it, and work with it, and work with it in your breathing. And maybe we'll talk about it in the last class. I don't really want to get into it now and what that's been like. what I'd like to do tonight, let's read the Heart Sutra, and then we can read these Heart Sutra Valentines, and then I think discuss

[02:06]

some of the notion of emptiness in the context of dharmas. The Heart Sutra itself is kind of a crash course in Mahayana Buddhism, or actually in Buddhism. I think the stuff that Andrea and Judy are going to present, we'll touch on some of that. And I can go briefly through some of the things, and I'll probably raise more questions than it will answer, but that's okay. And we can start thinking about how this really applies to our everyday life. So let's start by Maha Prajnaparamita Vidaya Sutra. No realm of eyes until no realm of mind-consciousness.

[04:16]

Far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in Nirvana. In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on Prasanna-paramita and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore, know that Prasanna-paramita is a very transcendent mantra. It is a great, bright mantra. It is the utmost mantra. It is the supreme mantra, Can you reach the bell? Oh, here it is. Well, I think maybe let's start by reading these, and I'm not sure

[06:07]

If we're going to discuss them or not, but let's just read them. I can just start and we can go around the room. Within, without, not withheld. I think that would be the nicest valentine I ever got. Did you notice the way he works on you? There's a form of emptiness or pun on there. That's pretty good. You know, actually, my Buddhist name is actually Pushiki, which is This is a poem by Emily Dickinson, or part of one.

[07:46]

I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb when one who died for truth was laying in an adjoining room. He questioned softly, why I failed. For beauty, I replied, and I, for truth, themselves are one. We brethren are, he said. And so, as kinsmen met at night, we talked between the rooms until the moss had reached our lips and covered up our names. Wow. That is a beautiful poem. No, I don't have to do a commentary. You don't have to do an analysis. A Valentine's Day poem for Greg Hendricks. Long before the Plymouth Barracuda, a question begins the Great Heart Sutra with a mantra supreme like a boat in a stream.

[08:49]

Do you get it now, O Shariputra? Long before the Plymouth Barracuda, a question begins the Great Heart Sutra with the mantra supreme like a boat in a stream. Do you get it now, O Shariputra? You should have found the next newsletter, Alan. That's good, yeah. Hold on, I'll get it after. Okay. Oh, how nice. Pink concrete cries. Plum blossoms let go. Very beautiful. Very nice. The empty heart. This one is from my friend Carol.

[09:55]

She won't mind me reading it, I'm sure. Beautiful card. What does it say on the front? It says, Gatte, Gatte, Paragatte, and so forth. Those who have practiced Buddhism must deeply, deeply feel the passing nature of things and have faith in karma. The heart which feels the passing nature of things is called the Bodhi heart. Go again. I know she'll like this. Tell me, do you get one? Oh, you can be puppies. That's it. That's it? Go ahead. This one's my favorite. It says, Happy Valentine's Day from your secret Skanda.

[11:10]

And then friendship is the gift that we give ourselves. Okay, it says two images for or of Agnes 1. Walking up a hill, I come upon a large flowery quince. The flowers be startling orange in the last light, and many birds. The bush is filled with birds, small, round-bellied, with a hint of blue, chittering among the blossoms, intent upon their work.

[12:18]

They pay me absolutely no heed as I peer into thorny branches. Shall I filch a stem? Try to carry this brightness home? Not today. Number two. A picture of you in another time and culture, an abyss surrounded by manuscripts in Greek, in Latin, free now to study and write after a life of managing the monastery holdings, the gardens, the kitchen, and the sewing rooms, mediating disputes and living in community. Some of that seeking is here, I think. Odd birds, though we are, I appreciate your seriousness and steadiness in questions, especially the ones I don't know I need to ask until you give them voice. Beautiful. Sailing beyond the shore, beyond the sea, beyond the sun, into an unknown land, invisible reality, awakening at last, Svaha.

[13:24]

Sailing, beyond the shore, beyond the sea, beyond the sun, into an unknown land, invisible reality, awakening at last, Svaha. I'm going to lift him down. I'm going to lift him down. Well, there are a lot of people... I don't have one. There are a lot of people that want to hear something. They're obviously running away. Otter's wheel is turning. Sure hands shape wet clay with complete attention. Each cup is different. Each cup is perfect. Ringing a bell on Tuesday morning. A mind is turning. A hand hesitates. A moment sneaks by. Each ring is different.

[14:35]

Do you want to read that one that you got? This is a little gatha that my teacher taught me when I was about eight years old. May the wisdom of the All-Compassionate One so shine upon our hearts and minds that the mist of error and foolish vanity of self may be dispelled. So shall we understand the changing nature of existence and reach spiritual peace. Wow. Gee. That was quite wonderful. I'm sure we all love you. Maybe people will show up in the next week or so with Christmas cards.

[15:56]

It's President's Day. Right, President's Day cards. today. Where we kind of left off last week was with the idea of emptiness as renunciation, and renunciation or negation, and I think that that's only part of the story. That's one side of it. And the other side is an affirmation. And I think we need to kind of remember that.

[16:57]

But it's good to start by having some idea of what it is exactly that we're renouncing, or that we're advised in the Heart Sutra to renounce. And this is some of the stuff of basic Buddhism. And a good place to start actually, let's go back to the title of the Heart Sutra. And before we get into into a discussion of the dharmas. Well, the Paramitas are dharmas. All things are dharmas. And what the Heart Sutra is saying is that all dharmas are basically, they have no being on their own. It's perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty.

[17:59]

And we'll talk about what the skandhas are. But all the dharmas are empty. But I think we need to look a little at what some of these dharmas are. So maybe Andrea could talk briefly about the Paramitas. Alan suggested that I read Meditation on Action, or said that was one book that I could get these from. And I started reading it and it was, I enjoyed it and actually I learned it was one of the first books I ever read here, but it was, I felt like it was lengthier and not as succinct as what I got out of the Eastern Philosophy and Religions encyclopedia. And this is exactly what it says. Parmitas, also known as the six perfections.

[19:06]

The definition of parmitas that this particular encyclopedia has given is that which has reached the other shore, or the transcendental. The parmitas are the virtues perfected by Bodhisattva in the course of his or her development, if all goes well. So the six ones are Dana, Paramita, which means generosity. Sila or Sheila, I'm not sure the pronunciation, which is discipline. Shanti, Paramita, which is patience. Virya, is that how you say that? Paramita is energy exertion or effort. Jnana parmita is meditation.

[20:11]

Prajna parmita is wisdom. So those are the six. Now I'll just give you a brief description of them or more descriptions. Dhana is spiritual and or material giving or generosity, being compassionate and kind and not keeping accumulated merit to oneself, but rather dedicating it to the liberation of all beings. Sila or Shila, proper behavior conducive to the eradication of all passions and securing of a favorable rebirth for the sake of liberating all beings. Shanti, patience and tolerance that arise from insight that all the problems of beings have causes.

[21:16]

Virya, resolute effort that does not permit itself to be diverted by anything. Jhana, meditation as a way of cutting through ego and if not experiencing oneself as separate from other beings, and Krishna, realization of supreme wisdom. Sila is often translated as morality, or precepts, basically. The precept part of our practice is really Sila, or Amita. It's important to realize that these Paramitas are not like what the Bodhisattvas practice. They're what we practice as Bodhisattvas. And each one of us has our strengths and weaknesses. You know, some people, like for me, the practice of Kshanti, patience, is really, that's a really hard one.

[22:29]

And some of them, some of them are easy, and some of them, and they're all, they balance each other in different ways, but what flows through them, the The foundation of them is prajna. If you take away prajna from each of these so-called perfections, then they're just sort of abstract practices. So you need this wisdom that sees the interpenetration of all things and the interpenetration of all these paramitas in order to be able to practice them in a full way in your life so that they have some meaning. I mean it's easy to be, you could say you're practicing dana, it's easy to be generous and to give things away, but if you're

[23:36]

But it's also very easy to give things away with the idea, conscious or not, of, what am I going to get back? And it's easy to practice virya, which is vigor or energy, by just, you know, I mean, some of us just have all this incredible energy, and we don't exactly know where it's channeled. You know, it could go into any kind of activity, good or bad. But if you have virya, energy to your meditation and it's tempered by morality and a generous spirit, then, I mean, for example, those elements coming together, they create wisdom and also they're supported by wisdom. Each one of these is a very, is a topic we could go into.

[24:39]

very great detail. I'm not sure how much you want to go into it here. Are there questions or things that people want to bring up? Well, I didn't understand what you meant by, it's not what the bodhisattvas practice, but it's what we practice as bodhisattvas. What I meant is that you're a bodhisattva. Yeah. What about the other Bodhisattvas that don't practice? Who are they? Sounds to me like you're trying to pick a fight. No, no, no. I understood you to say, Alan, it's not something that Bodhisattva's something in the clouds practice. It's what we here in this earth practice.

[25:44]

We try to practice. This is what we try to practice. when we take the Bodhisattva vows. When you take the vows, you know, you take the four vows after lecture, those are Bodhisattva vows. You take the Bodhisattva precepts on the full moon ceremony. So, it's a way of practicing. Now, the purpose of this practice is basically to see things as they are. But who are these other guys that don't practice this way? Which other guys? I don't know. You referred to them. I did? Yeah, you said... Right. Well, who were the Bodhisattvas? The Bodhisattvas? Well, Avalokiteshvara, Samantabhadra, tens of thousands of, you know, arhats, enlightened beings who, uh, uh... They were in at the beginning.

[26:56]

Right, they were there at the beginning, right. But I'm not really... Well, this is an interesting question. For me, in a sense they're important to me, and in another sense they're not important at all. Because I'm mostly concerned with how we live our lives and how we relate to them. And if I start thinking of them as beings to revere, putting them outside myself, then all of a sudden I am practicing a religion that is outside of myself.

[28:05]

Whereas if I keep turning inward to look at how these beings are modeled on the muck and nature of my own life, then that's the way I try to think of them. And traditionally, each one of these bodhisattvas has been identified especially with one of these paramitas? Some of them are, yeah. Some of them are, but then there's also thousands of others. Right. you know if you start reading the Lotus Sutra or any of the old sutras you'll see they're just these incredible Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with endless long names and each one of them represents a specific quality or a specific ability and I guess the way that I think of that is you can think of it as representing a specific

[29:10]

you know, psychological aspect. I don't know, how do other people think about Buddhas and bodhisattvas? I think I get what you were talking about because I think my personal experience is I read in all these books about the bodhisattvas and the bodhisattvas and the buddhas and the buddhas and it's like there are these other people that you don't see walking around on the street. I don't think of them as people walking necessarily through the gate here, people at Thrifty. Because in the books that I read, they're portrayed as something extraordinary. Robert Aiken.

[30:50]

I was just reading a little bit of Mind of Clever last night, and he sort of said that in there, his Roshi would use the term Bodhisattva, sort of like, you know, like ladies and gentlemen. Right. Or address the crowd. Just sort of address the crowd and say, well, Bodhisattvas, you know, here we are again. That was Nogen Senzaki, I think. He would just That's where we started. I was just going to say that in the Pure Land sect, the Jodo Shinshu sect, there's never a correlation or mentioning of good evening bodhisattvas or that kind of thing or having a bodhisattva ceremony. And so I think when the Zen tradition addresses every person who's striving as a bodhisattva, it's very encouraging. It's very, very nice. of Buddhahood within him. Yeah, I think that's really the point of it. And, you know, even though I think that Jodo Shinshu still actually has the same point in a lot of ways, that you do a practice and you realize your true nature.

[32:12]

Yeah, but how many people realize that? Well, I don't know. Most people don't. They just say, oh yeah, those are the Bodhisattvas. Yeah, he's a Bodhisattva, but us commoners aren't, because we can't ever attain it. But the point of Zen and I think the point of the Heart Sutra is that you can do it right now. All you have to do is let go of the concepts that you have. And so the Paramitas are ways of... they're tools. They're ways of... they're not rules. They're ways of practicing that are helpful to you because they'll put you on the path where you can see where you can see things as they are. But no one of them by itself is going to do the trick. Were you going to say something? Well, I'm still just sort of stuck in this separation of those Bodhisattvas.

[33:15]

Because when we get to the historical Buddha, I mean, doesn't he practice through this, you know, all these practices? Because you said those guys That's what I didn't understand. It's certainly the historical Buddha. I probably misspoke myself. But I think they all do practice this way. I think, you know, the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas do the same practice. And I think that essentially they do the same practice as we are. And the idea of the Bodhisattva, in fact, which is the wonderful idea of Mahayana Buddhism, is that the Bodhisattva keeps returning. They return to this life of suffering, to a life where they are born and die out of compassion for all beings.

[34:24]

But, you know, in other forms of Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism, there isn't so much the notion of, there are bodhisattvas, but there's not so much the notion of a bodhisattva way. So the bodhisattva way is not like just It's not so much that just out of the great generosity of their hearts they decide they're not going to leave the wheel of birth and death. It's that in the concept, in the idea of the complete interpenetration and complete interdependence of all beings and all things, they can't leave this wheel. that uh... there's no way that they can opt out if they're still suffering in the in in the universe so finds right their compassion to find right so it's tricky you know we take these well bodhisattva back valves but the valves are not uh... rules their uh... their intentions

[35:39]

and we break them all the time. And so for, speaking for myself, I break them all the time. And so it's something to keep returning to as a way of practicing, but I don't have any choice but to keep returning to my own suffering. But still, there is some non-Bodhisattvic part of my mind. Actually, I'm probably thinking, it's still, my suffering is that sometimes I'd like to get out of a situation. Suffering is precisely in the act of clinging or of pushing away.

[36:49]

And we'll read a little bit later, the hardest thing to understand is exactly how the workings of desire reveal you reveal your enlightened mind. And the Bodhisattva keeps returning to this realm of desire. Sometimes the Bodhisattva sets him or herself apart from desire. They put themselves right in the middle of desire, right in the mud of it. And that's a That's really the point of, when we go through some of this material from the Tiger's Cave, that's the point that Obora is bringing up over and over and over again. And that's really the everyday part of our practice, that if we think of it as something really rarified and refined, then we're

[38:03]

we're creating some mental idea that's very apart from just the everyday things that transpire in our lives. And I'm sure that each of us have a million stories about this. Well, I think energy, I mean, you can see it around you with people. I mean, not just in practice, but in all kinds of situations, people that you work with, people that you see in different kinds of circumstances. There are some people who will throw themselves into something with a kind of energy or vigor.

[39:04]

And it's not so much, it's just something that's coming out of them. It's not, they don't always choose to do that, it just could be something in their nature. And other people may move very slowly or hesitantly and perhaps measure out their energies more, you know, just in smaller measures. Do you follow what I'm saying? Yeah, I just sort of felt like maybe there was something a little more arcane than this. I don't think so. Well, all of the paramitas are transcendent actions. So we're speaking in terms of everyday, mundane, as we know and recognize. But the quality that has not been mentioned is that they are indeed transcendent.

[40:06]

So they're beyond. And that certainly applies to the energy that's developed. I don't know what a transcendent action is. Well, you know the definition of transcendent. I don't know what it is either. No, not really. I don't understand what that means. Well, it's not mundane. Effort is not mundane. Well, that's sort of effort. Effortless effort. Non-attached effort. I just heard this Joseph Campbell thing I couldn't leave from, and he just said, well, look at the word beyond. I mean, there are just so many different things that don't explain, and just the word beyond just says the essence of transcendedness, that we just can't, can't, can't. Yeah, it's something that's beyond words. And that's right, we haven't talked about it, we've been talking about this in a more mundane sense, and I think that Zen tends to emphasize the mundane part, leaving the transcendent part kind of unspoken about.

[41:18]

Well, it'll take care of itself. Well, you know, in a way it will take care of itself, but in another way it will take care of itself differently if you have an intention. And we have the intention to sit. We have the intention to breathe. If we don't have that intention to follow our breath, our minds can be all over the map. So we keep bringing ourselves back to this intention. And I think the same thing is true with practicing the Paramitas. that some of them, each of us has these, as aspects of our lives, these paramitas in different quantities, in different balances. So, if we feel that we're weak in some area, then we might form an intention to practice more strongly in that area, to practice more strongly patience or to put more energy into it.

[42:28]

And in that sense, it is mundane. And I don't know any other way of reaching the transcendent but through everyday life and everyday practice. But the idea is to see things clearly as they are, which we have yet to get at a description of how that is. But that is the idea. There's a saying, when you begin to practice mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, And after practicing for a while, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. And then, when you see things clearly as they are, mountains again are mountains and rivers are rivers.

[43:30]

But it's important to understand that the mountains that are mountains at the beginning is not exactly the same as the mountains that are mountains at the end. You're understanding, you're seeing these things really clearly. I was talking with Lori about Some of my questions about form is emptiness, and emptiness is form, this evening. And she dragged out this book about this thick of teachings on emptiness, this Tibetan book, that she had looked at. And she read me a passage that said, certain yogis believe that when you practice When you make an effort to see emptiness really clearly, then you lose your ability to see conventional objects clearly.

[44:35]

And when you make an effort to see conventional objects really clearly, then you lose your ability to see emptiness clearly. A Buddhist believes that the more clearly you see emptiness, the more clearly you see conventional objects, and the more clearly you see conventional objects, the more clearly you see emptiness. And this gets into a discussion of what form is emptiness and emptiness is form means. I'd just like to remind you, actually, the way the text reads, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form. And the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness.

[45:35]

That means feelings are emptiness. Emptiness is feelings. Perceptions are emptiness. Emptiness is perceptions. And then, Avalokiteshvara ties it up by saying, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. I have a question about the translation, because I have another paper that I got here some years ago that had, I think, impulses for formations. And it seems to me that formations is kind of redundant, because you've already got form, whereas impulses Well, it means... Psychologically, anyway, how do you... It means something... Why did they change it? It's mental formations. Do you want to say something about it? So that's considered a better translation than impulse? Yeah, actually, Mill changed it somewhere a couple of years ago. Also formations are supposed to be mental formations and form is supposed to be... This might be the appropriate moment to hear from Judy Smith.

[46:55]

who was reading about the skandhas. Yes, and the more I read about skandhas, the more confusing it gets. So these are the five skandhas, form, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. Well, one thing, I was talking to Mellon Doakes on Tuesday, and one thing he said was that the Heart Sutra was written kind of as a criticism of the Abhidharma. Not saying that the Abhidharma was wrong, but saying that it just didn't form what we know as being our body and our mind. They're the five constituents of personality as it appears within each of ourselves. And the five skandhas define the limits of the basis of grasping after a self and grasping what we tend to think of as belonging to self. And they include anything and everything we might grasp at or seize at as our self or as belonging to our self or concerning our self.

[48:08]

So basically there's a lot of stuff in Skanda's. Form is the first one and it's the material. Anything that's material or solid. And it's particularly associated with the body, whereas the other correspondents are associated more with the mind. I was working out of three books, and I'm not sure which book I got this out of, but what this said was that form is what remains of a person or a thing after the subtraction of the mental or moral qualities. And I liked that because it's just kind of, you know, the basic, just what's there without, you know, all of the stuff that we attach to it. Can you say that again? Yeah. Form is the physical side of things, what remains of a person or a thing after the subtraction of their mental or moral qualities.

[49:16]

So it's just kind of, you know, that what is. The package. Yeah. I like that. It really made sense to me. And what happens is we respond to form with the six senses. And the next four skandhas are those that are associated more with the mind. Feelings, which can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And they're more fundamental than just, you know, pure sensation. It's the way we develop a relation to things that's positive or negative or neutral. And then from feelings we move into perceptions. And there's six perceptions which correspond to the six sense organs. And the perceptions are based on that which manifests through the form and through the feelings we have about the form.

[50:19]

Also, well, it manifests by form and feelings and it's also that which doesn't, which is not manifested by form and feelings. And the perceptions seem to be where we get into ego involvement. And that Trungpa elaborated a lot more on the ego involvement perceptions, and then impulses or mental formations are all of our active dispositions, our tendencies, our volitions, strivings, emotions, everything conscious or not conscious. And it's what allows the ego to gather territory, to have more substance and mind-body patterns that have different emotional qualities. and the Abhidharma breaks some... Did anybody take the Thursday morning Abhidharma class where it was broken into like those 51 emotional qualities?

[51:26]

I mean, they get really detailed in it. It was too much for me. I didn't even want to tackle that part. Judy, can you define Abhidharma? What does that mean? Abhidharma is like Don't ask me. Abhidharma is, one way of thinking of it is like Buddhist psychology. It's a way of analyzing all of the dharmas or it identifies a whole system of dharmas and then classifies it. And it's really a psychological system. And it was very much kind of the operative psychological system of one school of Buddhism. that was sort of taken on by Mahayana and it's when I was at Tassajara we would get into these arguments with Reb.

[52:27]

Reb Anderson is really into teaching the Abhidharma and you know what he says is well the Abhidharma this is Buddhism you know and you have to know this in order to know what it is that you're negating if you're going to call yourself a Buddhist. But Zen kind of cuts through all that. And we don't talk about the Abhidharma very much here. And I'm not particularly sure that we have to talk about the Abhidharma very much. So a surgeon doesn't think so? No, he really doesn't think so. I'm with him. Is it A-H-I-R-E? What? Like A-B-B-E-Y? No, it's A-B-H-I-R-E. Oh, A-B-H-I-R-E. It's the least aesthetic, almost. Right. Oh, it's very technical, and very detailed. Right, it's very Hindu.

[53:28]

But it's one of the three baskets of the Tripitaka, which is the total works of the founding works of Buddhism. One basket is the sutras, We talked about this last week. The other basket is the Vinaya, which are the rules for conduct and for a monk's life. And the third is the Abhidharma, which is kind of the commentary and psychological analysis of the sutras. So, that's basically what it is. I really don't want to get into it too far. But we're going to have to. We'll get into it. Before tonight ends, I'll run through kind of the Abhidharmic aspects of the Heart Sutra, and that'll leave us actually the last two classes for really talking about how we work with this. It would be good to get this material, just to get it out, and you can think about it and look into it more if it interests you, and then we see where to, you know, how we really practice with the Heart Sutra, but go on.

[54:39]

I just talked about mental formations or impulses as it used to be. The fifth one is consciousness. Trungpa referred to this as being the most important and also the most elusive of the five skandhas. The other four are said to depend on consciousness. Consciousness is articulated and intelligent. Well, it determines what is good, bad, right, wrong. You know, it kind of defines our morals. So, that's what I got, and I tried to keep it as brief as I could. That's good. Another way to think about these briefly, to go over those, we have form, form you know what it is, feelings, or just like the bare feeling, and then the next one is perceptions or conceptions, is already the realm in which we take the feeling and we give it a name.

[55:49]

And we make a concept about what it is. And then formations, mental formations, is what we do with that object, kind of how we start to think about it. And then the last one is... the last one is consciousness which is really it's elusive because it flows through uh... the other three mental formations and also uh... the other three mental skandhas and also has an element of uh... volition or will to it uh... and it's really it's really hard to uh... it's really hard to grasp the other the other three mental ones that i find easier to think about and i've been

[56:58]

we've been talking at home and we've been, kind of, we have this little laboratory animal in our house for the formation of Skandhas, this little baby. And, you know, when Sylvie was born, you know, basically, you could just see the feelings. And that didn't last very long. You just see the feelings, you could just see I like this, I'm content, or I don't like this and I cry, or I have a neutral feeling and I'm just kind of spaced out. It's okay, it's not so bad, it's not so good. But very quickly, within a couple of weeks, she knows what the things are that she likes. Now, her name for the breast or the bottle may not be language as we know it, but it still is language, because it's discriminating consciousness.

[58:09]

And so she starts to put a name to the things, or have a conception of the things that she likes, the things that she doesn't like, and then there are the other things, the things that are neutral and probably don't have much of a name for. And then gradually, she's building up, you can see the building up of these mental formations, you know, it's like if Lori, you know, when she went out to Zazen tonight, after a little while, Sylvie figured out that she wasn't there, you know, and it wasn't that there was anything in particular that she needed that I couldn't give her. But emotionally, she starts to make some kind of construction about her relationship with her mother and feeling like she needs this object to complete herself.

[59:19]

Now, this is very simplistic. But you can see it. You can really see it developing. And it's just so amazing. That's why, to me, it's really incredible. I just saw my friends Jerry and Leslie just had a baby. And each time you see one of these one or two or three day old babies, it's like our only opportunity for seeing a being that is without most of this other stuff. And it's it's quite astonishing. It's really pretty alien, you know, but but incredibly moving So it's just we've sort of been looking at that But it's important to remember that All five of these skandhas I in their own being are empty. Do people have a sense of what that means? Yeah.

[60:24]

Tell us, Charlie. Well, like everything else, I don't know about four, but I can talk about the rest of them, that they have no life emptiness to me is the merging, the interconnectedness of dharmas, one to all the other, and all the other to one. So when it says they're empty of their own being, it's sort of like It's sort of you can't think about them in isolation from everything else.

[61:24]

They have a codependent status. They have a codependent status in the way that the figure and the ground have a codependent status. That's figure ground, you know, in graphic representation. Like, what is the ground and what is the figure? Well, you can't have a figure without ground, and you can't have ground without a figure. Or you can't have light without darkness. So that's my understanding. Why do you think it's difficult to define the emptiness in form? Well, because I... of physics, and I think about form as space, and I've yet to really decide in my own mind whether, you know, space is geometry, or space is that which objects appear in, or, you know, space is an object itself.

[62:43]

I mean, I really didn't know about this stuff So I can't say with the surety that I have in my own mind about form the way I can with the others. And that's following on with what Judy says, like form is the package and these other things are the product. He didn't say it that way. I understood it. Don't you think that's why that difficulty of dealing with that? is that you have this whole separate section here that deals with formless emptiness. And then it goes on to say, well, all five skandhas are empty. But you've got that almost repetitive. It does not write. It is. Because it is hard for us to deal with that. Yeah, because it seems just so concrete to us. But I think the sutra means exactly what it says.

[63:44]

I think so, yes. you know, form is emptiness. It's perceived. No, it really is. The true reality of these things are that they are the same. Well, I think, you know, one way that you can look at it, here's something we call a book. Now, what is the bookness of it? Each book has a cover, it has pages, it has chapters, and if it didn't have a cover, and it didn't have this glue along the binding, you could have a bunch of pages, right? But he wouldn't call it a book. And so the book is interdependent on the pages, and on the glue, and on its cover, and also if you had blank pages, uh... well nowadays they sell these blank books you know but uh... you wouldn't think of it uh... but they sell blank books to fill up with ink uh... but you wouldn't if somebody tried if somebody put on the if you went into a bookstore and they had like shelves and shelves of like these blank books you know they wouldn't sell very many of them they wouldn't be what most people considered as books so the book

[65:13]

is empty of itself and its own being. It is dependent on all of these other elements. And Thich Nhat Hanh actually takes it much, much further. Well, that too. But also, if you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without rain, the trees cannot grow. And without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without the sunshine. And so we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are.

[66:17]

If we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we can see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread. And so on. So in that sense, form is empty of its own being. You know, I was just thinking, I mean, that's very accessible to me, at least. I understand it the way he lays it out there. And it makes it somehow easier to understand something like the flower garland sutra, you know, where you have all the parasols and the jeweled temples and And within the eye of Buddha, there's 10,000 universes, each with a gazillion galaxies, and Buddha's dancing on every arm, and you know, it's like the barbershop mirror sort of thing.

[67:36]

So I mean, and I just, you know, when I read stuff like that, I just zone out. I just can't handle it. But, it's just, Just a couple of jumps away from his construct of the sunlight. You open up the book and there's the sun. I think he tries to stay more in the realm of things that we experience. Yes, right. And so it was too accessible. One that I heard that was debated that was really accessible to me was, I was listening to this tape on the radio, and it was one of Melvis' Sheen tapes, I think, and it was of some kind... On the radio? No, I had it on my... I was playing it in my car, but the tapes were here. You know, I mean, I wasn't playing it, it's just on the radio. There was a tape, what do you know? Who knows? Yeah, and it was on my tape, and it was about, I always forget the details, but it was some monk, and somehow he had injured his foot, and it was bleeding, and he went like, ooh, what is hurting?

[68:42]

I'm, you know, there's something hurting, you know, and it was the split from his body and the totality, and it was that transcendent thing, but he was aware of the form, and he went, something's hurting, but who's hurting? What's hurting? I really like that, his awareness of the form and that it was hurting and it was bleeding, and yet that he was interconnected. That just seemed like an excellent thing that we could kind of grasp, if we could also grasp being out of... I don't know, if we were more enlightened, we could grasp that, I guess. Why do you say it's too accessible? We both agree. You said it. She started it, but you agreed. Well, I mean, anybody could... It makes you think you get it. Yeah, and that's not it at all. That's not it, to my way of thinking.

[69:45]

That's very nice, but that's... Ecology is not... It's not just ecology, it's just a string of... Yeah, of causation and practical. What I want to say is that any fool could put that list together, but I do not wish to speak so bluntly and to speak disrespectfully of what he is saying. I think the problem might be that it feels very linear to us, and that's what bugs me about it. It makes very clear, perfect sense and all that, but we talk about You know, if the practice in a sense is not linear, it's sort of cyclical or circular, or even without any sort of idea of that. Well, it's transcendental. I mean, you do not get form is the same as emptiness by talking about it. Or writing about it.

[70:46]

Or by thinking or writing of the long line of causation, how things were, how it's all, you know. What's so many? Yes, please. Wait. Wait. Wait. Let her speak. She started it. Go ahead, you started it. Well, we talked about it once in Money, More, and Discussion, when we were talking about infinite labors brought us to this world. And infinite labors brought each of us here. And everything. It's really that interconnectedness. But still, somehow, that is more accessible. Right. And for me, it's almost suspect. than all those buddhas dancing on each other's eyes. Because somehow I feel like my mind needs to be blown. And if I think about that long enough, that might blow my mind, say, the same way some music does. Yeah, but that isn't it either.

[71:47]

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. Why not make sense? That's just some sort of romantic transcendence. Transcendentalism the music one You know the psilocybin one or whatever it is, but this one Is a little bit different because it's not It's not something you just go and have It's like Mel says once you realize You got it. It's gone. I mean, so it's not Like, I'm listening to the music and isn't it great? And that's what I... I hesitate to talk about these experiences, but you mentioned in your prologue to this whole course that you might mention something about a personal experience. Yeah, definitely. And now that I've dug myself in this hole, I guess I'll have to... Favor us, Charlie. Say something, right?

[72:49]

But, um... My understanding of this has certainly helped a great deal through whatever minor insights that I've had. The suspension of linear time and overwhelming sense of the beauty of nature, those sorts of experiences help me understand really what compassion is, what interconnectedness is, what emptiness is. In a way, all those things really are the same thing, but I couldn't put a word on it.

[73:50]

Well, I guess not right now. We lost the train of thought. I think that we ought to leave to speech what belongs to speech and what doesn't belong to speech we ought to leave to silence. And I think that it's true that what Thich Nhat Hanh describes is not what we experience after four or five days of Sachine. But it is something you can experience by picking a book off a shelf and reading it. And I think we have to kind of, you know, sort of accept the packaging, you know. I mean, this is the way the concept is, and sure, it's not everything, but... you know, sometimes I can experience space as being solid, but it's not solid. And so why should I sit here and tell you about how I've experienced space being solid, when in fact we can talk about the other concepts that really are lined up intellectually, that work in an intellectual way.

[74:56]

And I mean, I think that, you know, it's a great little idea, you know, but when you get down to it, then you're going to end up with things like, well, yes, non-dualistic language in which you say something which you really intend is something completely different. We have these definitions which we all understand. So you get caught in language and I just think we ought to try and find out how can we talk about form and emptiness in a way that means something real and then accept that that's a limit. Well, what I'd like to do in the last few minutes, but I think we're going to come back to this, and I think the burning question behind this has to do with clinging.

[76:06]

It has to do with desire and aversion. And that's what I'd like to come back to next week, because if we really understood, if we actualize in our life the form is emptiness, whatever that means, and emptiness is form, then we wouldn't keep getting caught in this cycle of clinging, and we wouldn't be suffering as we are. This is abstract, and I'd like to make it concrete next week. But I wanted to just go quickly through what's being negated here, so the text of the sutra is not quite as abstract and full of language as it seems. and this is going to be really fast.

[77:22]

So we've gone through the skandhas, and then it's Oshariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. And he then lists a bunch of dharmas. And he lists, therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations of consciousness. There you have the skandhas. Then he says, 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. This is another Hinayana or Theravada system which is called the ayatanas or the fields. It's all of our sense organs plus the organ of consciousness. And then he talks about no color, no sound, etc.

[78:27]

These are the sense fields. So you have the organs that see things, and then you have the objects outside that are seen, and then no realm of eyes. And in another translation it says, no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of blind consciousness. So that means no realm of eyes, no realm of ears, no realm of nose, which is kind of the consciousness, the part of your brain that processes sight, that takes the object and is translated through the organ into the brain, and so on. There's 18 of those. There's the organ, the object, and the consciousness. This is all Abhidharmic material.

[79:28]

Until no realm of mind consciousness, no ignorance and also no extinction of it, no old age and death and also no extinction of it, no suffering, So no ignorance and no extinction of it until no old age and death and also no extinction of it. This is the wheel of causation or the wheel of life. And that's a really key concept where you go through ignorance to be reborn. and then you go through all these other stages, and we could get into that if we wanted to, but that's, it's like another, this sutra is taking these basic Buddhist concepts and just slashing them down. So we've gotten rid of the skandhas, we've gotten rid of the elements, we've gotten rid of the fields, we've gotten rid of the consciousness, we've gotten rid of the wheel of life, and then, actually, the next thing you get rid of is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path.

[80:41]

Does anyone know what that is? The Four Noble Truths? That's right. So then you take the Four Noble Truths, let's get rid of that. no cognition and also no attainment. No attainment means no realization, no enlightenment, no becoming a bodhisattva or a Buddha. With nothing to attain, the bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. With nothing to attain, with no thought, with no gaining thought, the Bodhisattva is just seeing things as they are, empty and interdependent. Right. Without names and numbers. Right. Without having to have... Somewhere back there, actually, if we can find it next week, there is this big chart of dharmas.

[81:50]

I don't know if they use that. Did they use that in that Thursday morning class? The peer construction stuff. Right. So, actually, The next sentence is a really important one for me. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. And I would like to come back and talk about that because our clinging is rooted in Our fear is rooted in our clinging, and our clinging is rooted in our fear, our fear of letting go, our fear of really experiencing things as they are, because all of our conditioning is opposed to that. So then you get this affirmation, without any hindrance, no fears exist. So you're moving from this really kind of intellectual slash and burn to a more positive place.

[82:59]

First, without any hindrance, no fears exist. Ah, it was not so bad after all. And far apart from every perverted view, one dwells in nirvana. It's getting to look better and better. It's like getting clothed. Well, it's based on what it depends on. Right. It depends on Prajnaparamita. It depends on seeing things just as they are, as seeing them empty. Everywhere you look, you're looking through things to understand that they are completely independent, they are completely interdependent. and also seeing this interdependence, seeing emptiness as form, which is a whole other question I'd like you to think about for next week. Actually, I'll remind you at the end of this. And then you get you get into the Prajnaparamita mantra. So you go, you can think of this as sort of the stages of practice, particularly of, and it's really appropriate to a Zen student, I think, that it begins with this tremendous, deep, and this kind of fathomless questioning and doubt, where you doubt everything.

[84:20]

We come into this practice thinking, and our Western mind, but it clearly is true of Eastern minds as well, think that there are things that are real. My soul is real. My brain is real. My body is real. My car is real. My job is real. Maybe my job is not real. You know, you think all these things are real, and when you launch into practice, the practice is really expressing this great doubt. And from that doubt, out of that doubt and out of the practice, you begin to find something that you can count on, which is your way of seeing how things interpenetrate. And it begins to take a little of the weight off. And it begins to feel more you begin to feel that you can move more freely in your life, so it becomes more affirming.

[85:23]

And then, by the end, you know, you're proclaiming this mantra, Gathe, gate, par, gate, parsim, gate, bodhisattva, it's like, hallelujah, you know. So, I think, maybe we'll stop there, but what I'd like you to think about You can think about any of the stuff that you have questions on, any of this more technical stuff, and we can talk about that. So please think about questions. But what I'd like you to think about, and to start off the discussion next week, is what does... We talked a little about form as emptiness. I'd like you to think about, what does emptiness as form mean? Because it's a lot more slippery, I think. And it also, they really go hand in hand. I think there's a way in which it's easy to see form as emptiness. It's easy to see it intellectually.

[86:26]

But if you pair it with emptiness as form, then you have a big question. So maybe try to think about that for next week. Okay?

[86:37]

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