Well, good evening again, everyone. A few years ago, Alan and Laurie taught a class on the Prajnaparamita in 8,000 lines. And I thought it would be nice to teach a class on the Heart Sutra. which is a condensation of that literature that we chant every day. And while I have a presentation prepared and I've taken notes and done readings and all that, I encourage people to ask questions. I don't pretend to be the teacher here at Berkeley Zen Center. I'm teaching a class. And the best I can, I will respond to you and your questions. And if you're not satisfied, ask more.

[01:04]

And I would encourage, to some degree, some dialogue between different people. But we all should be careful to maintain the space that we have here and try to keep the level of discussion appropriate to what we're trying to do. The Prajnaparamita Sutra is concerned with the cultivation of prajna, which is wisdom, prajna, wisdom of emptiness, and the realization of the interrelatedness of all phenomenon. From prajna, or direct experience of this wisdom, karuna comes forth, and karuna is the Pali term for compassion.

[02:07]

So what we're doing in our practice is cultivating wisdom, practicing to see directly, have direct insight, and from that we will hopefully manifest some form of compassion for ourselves and others. And it's all about lessening suffering, not getting rid of pain, but just lessening suffering. And when we have the opportunity to see wisdom and experience emptiness, we will see the interrelatedness of all phenomena. And we all have probably had experiences of that, touches of that. One of my favorite lines in the chanting that we do here is the line, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[03:33]

And that's a direct experience of tasting. So what I have here is one of my favorite food items. Seedless grapes. and pick one and we all will eat them at the same time. So be patient and hold on to the grapes. This is grape wisdom. This is grape wisdom beyond wisdom. Well, we'll have to deal with that when it comes, right? And let's sit for a few minutes while the grapes pass. You can look at your grape, feel its texture, temperature, smell it.

[05:31]

1-2-3 Well, we all just had an experience of tasting truth. The quiet that we are trying to cultivate enables us to taste more directly and see and experience more directly. And that's what Prajnaparamita is all about.

[07:48]

I came across some liner notes of a CD of mine, Bill Evans' Trio, that I wanted to start the class off with. I'm not going to read the whole liner notes, but a part really struck me, given there's going to be a lot of talking going on here. The writer of the liner notes was trying to capture the essence of Bill Evans and his piano playing. And he was recounting an interview that took place, this is like back in 1960. In one, Bill was talking about Zen, and it had led to some accurate insights into jazz. Evan said, actually I'm not interested in Zen that much as a philosophy nor in joining any movements.

[09:01]

I don't pretend to understand it. I just find it comforting and very similar to jazz. Like jazz, you can't explain it to anyone without losing the experience. It's got to be experience because it's feeling, not words. Words are the children of reason and therefore can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling. And the gentleman who wrote the letter notes, please come in. Have a great. says, In listening to the present album, I find myself so absorbed that consciousness of my body disappears and I become as one large ear, equipped only with the psyche.

[10:04]

I am not aware of the act of listening. I am suffused by the music and become one with the music. Evan's comment, its feeling has never been more graphically presented. So we're going to be talking and using lots of words, but try to remember the taste of the grape through all this talk. What you have in front of you are two sheets of paper. One is the Heart Sutra that we chant, and the other is a list of the 100 dharmas, or 100 realities, that the older school of Buddhism had laid out for study. And we'll be talking a little bit about that. The Heart Sutra, I put numbers down each line so when we are discussing it I'll be referring to lines and then we'll all be on the same track.

[11:44]

So try to bring your notes to the Heart Sutra to class each time. Before going line by line I want to give a a little perspective, a little sense of history about the time in India when Buddhism had already been around for a while, when the Prajnaparamita literature was coming into vogue. There are a number of terms about the older school of Buddhism. Hinayana, which is a somewhat derogatory term meaning lesser vehicle, was created by a group of people who call themselves the Mahayana, which is a greater vehicle. Since that doesn't feel right, I'm going to be using the term older school or Theravada, which is the school of Buddhism that absorbed a lot of the original schools. That's the older or original school. The original schools of Buddhism were analytical, literal, and rational.

[12:50]

The chart there points out a hundred things which they deemed as real to the world. They felt that while the self, the person, the individual, was empty or insubstantial, that these dharmas were actually real. And there's something to be said for listing out all these various phenomena in the world and calling them real, studying them. At that time, there were two of the three baskets, the Tripitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, which is the Buddha's teachings written down, and the Vinaya Pitaka, which were the rules of the monks. And those are the two baskets that the Buddhists used to study Buddhadharma, the Buddha's teaching, and then they followed these rules.

[13:58]

Later on, the third basket, or the Abhidharma, which is the Buddhist psychology, was put forth, and that was considered sort of the rounding out of this whole teaching. The older school doesn't use that so much. They pretty much focus on the rules and the Buddhist teaching, but the psychology that the Abhidharma consists of filled an area of the teaching that was in need of exploration. The older school's ideal of a monk or student was someone called an arhat. And an arhat was an individual who studied the Buddhist teaching and learned all the rules and practiced in a way consistent with those teachings, and at some point was enlightened, had finished their work on this earthly plane, and they were sort of done with it.

[15:16]

That's called the Arhat ideal. After the Buddha had passed away, there were a number of councils where the Buddhists would get together and try to recount what the Buddha's teachings actually were. And at the third council, which was about the fourth or third century before the Common Era, there were a number of people who challenged this idea of an arhat being completely done with their work on this earthly plane. And these dissenters were expelled from the group. And this group of people were called the Mahasangikas. And this group of people were part of the original older school, but they later developed into the Mahayana, which is what the Zen school is derived from. And their dissension was based on a few things that they felt the Arhats were still tainted by and were still kind of covered by their early existence that made them not finished with their practice.

[16:33]

They said they still had desires and that they could be helped by other people still. They could recite mantras for help and they can still have doubts and they're still not free from ignorance. Well, anyway, it was just a matter of opinion, and a group of people felt no, another group felt yes, and that's when they split. Now, the importance of being a literal analyst and having all these dharmas itemized is that, and of course, you have to remember, they didn't have all the distractions that we have today, so they had a lot of time to think about this stuff, is that they could become very mindful in their actions and ways of being and really looking at what was out before them. Now the Mahayana group felt that not only were the

[17:40]

was the self insubstantial or empty, but also all these dharmas and things didn't exist either. So that was quite a revolutionary thought after many, many, many years of saying these things were real. So they said nothing is real. Everything is interrelated. So it's the sense of reality is that things are real in relation to something else. That's the definition of emptiness, that things are interrelated, things are empty, which means that they're full of everything. Can I make a comment or a question? Yeah. I find the term, just to say that they're not real, is a little confusing. I mean, I think that my understanding, and please disagree with me if you do, but is that It's not that the selflessness doesn't exist, it's that it's not permanent and it's not fixed.

[18:47]

Which I think, to me, seems different from saying it's not real. What do you think? That feels right. Yes, Robin? It's not real. So that's what they mean when they say it's not real. It's changeable, it's going to, there's a beginning and an end to it. And therefore it really doesn't exist. And that's what they mean when they say it's not real. So I see, so you're saying that real means eternal. I see. Yeah, and the teaching is about lessening suffering. So when, while, when you say this is, something isn't real, then what is it when somebody gets hit by a car? I mean, there's something there. So there's this momentary reality, moment by moment, this is real, passes away, the next moment, and because there's nothing fixed, the impermanence and the changeability of all phenomena is in fact what is real, and that's the only thing that we can count on, is that there's a constant flux and change of things which will become more clear as we actually go into the text.

[20:06]

So, thank you. The rise of the Mahayana, which was around the turn of the millennia, was a developed and organic process. the teaching had already been pretty much set with the Vinaya Pitaka and the Sutra Pitaka, but this later development and looking at Abhidharma's study, how the mind works, and the revolutionary aspect of practice caused a lot of thinking. those days and actually a number of people commented around the turn of the millennia with Jesus and other traditions where there was just a lot going on in the world. The Mahayana group posed that the Bodhisattva was the ideal to strive for and the Bodhisattva ideal

[21:36]

is someone who postpones their own enlightenment to help others across and let other people go ahead of them into the world of enlightenment. Can you elaborate on that? What does it mean to postpone your enlightenment? What it means is we all have to work to save ourselves and the people who were practicing back then originally were working on that track, working to lessen suffering and save themselves.

[22:41]

And in the Mahayana literature, there is talk of the Sravakas and the Pracheka Buddhas and then the Bodhisattvas. The Sravakas were individuals who became enlightened just upon hearing the Buddha's words. and the Pratyekabuddhas were individuals who were just concerned with their own enlightenment. The Bodhisattva was an individual who was an enlightening being, was someone who was bringing enlightenment with all sentient beings. When one is feeling good enlightened, less burdened. While there's a feeling of comfort or ease, the fact is around you there's still suffering. So if you become sensitive to the world and you feel easy, what arises when you see and feel the suffering around you?

[23:49]

Well, the Prajnaparamita literature posits that when you feel not separate from all beings and you experience suffering of another, you're experiencing it to yourself also. And naturally you want to help and lessen the other being's suffering. So when you have an experience of that, It's difficult to sit back on your laurels and just let the world take care of itself. That's my take on the difference between the two. Now, the monks down the street at the Thai Buddhist temple, I wouldn't say are practicing an arhat ideal, but they're practicing the older school of Buddhism. And they're really nice guys, and they're very helpful to people. If you walk down there, they're typically very friendly. So I wouldn't say that they're only interested in themselves, which is sort of a misunderstanding of the older school of Buddhism.

[25:03]

But what we... Yes. Also, was it not in the beginning that Karavadins were monastic and they lived in monastic communities and sort of isolated from society and were trying to reconstruct and preserve the teachings of the Buddha in the cloister, so to speak? And then the Mahayanas said, well now wait a minute, when Buddha was alive, he went out and preached the Dharma to the masses, and isn't that part of the ideal as well? And so they were more interested in, or became interested in, taking the Dharma to the people, so to speak, and not isolating themselves as the Theravadins had done.

[26:12]

And in that sense, they talk about saving all sentient beings, meaning spreading the Dharma to people who haven't heard it or who could profit by hearing it. Except that monks live off the laity and the exchange is that the laity supports the monks and the monks provide the teachings, as I understand it. Right, in the older school and what happened in China was that the monks realized that they had to take care of themselves and not isolate so much, even all the while the persecutions were going on there. But as it's practiced here at Berkeley Zen Center, obviously we're out in the world working and sharing the Dharma with whoever will hear. And it is a very different thing than what goes on down the street where the monks are supported by the laity. The fact is, we're all supported by each other, which is something that will come up also when we get to the Sutra.

[27:15]

I think where my question comes from is that my partner actually is a scholar of Buddhism, and she practices a different kind of Buddhism, and she has said to me several times that the Zen notion of what Buddha is, or what a Buddha is, is different from most kinds of Buddhism. it's not typical and that sort of the American Zen take is even sort of more different. And I don't have enough, I'm not enough of a scholar and I don't have enough background to really understand what that statement means because my exposure is to the American Zen. So I'm just trying to understand what Well, it will get little bits and pieces as we move along here. The older school of Buddhism felt that, not that the Buddha was a god, but when one was taking refuge in Buddha, they were taking refuge to the individual.

[28:33]

the individual Buddha as far as someone who brought these teachings to save all beings, which is an important thing and a certain amount of reverence which has relevance to our practice. But what we do here, which is Mahayana teaching, is we're taking refuge in Buddha nature, and not to the individual. And at the altar, there's an image of the Buddha. We aren't bowing to him, or that old piece of paper that's been wrapped up and formed into a Buddha. We're bowing to what that image represents, which is Buddha nature. I'm not sure I see that distinction. When the Buddha was going to pass away, he told his disciples not to make any images of him for fear of people worshipping him as some kind of god. And they didn't have any images for quite a few hundred years.

[29:35]

And they started making symbols of the Buddha, and then they started making images. So it's very easy to get caught up in this personage and bowing to him. But what we try to do here, and this is basically my own exposure to Zen is a couple years in New York and all the Zen 10 years here at Berkeley, is that we are practicing to wake up to ourselves and the Buddha within us, not the Buddha out there. It's all about no gap, enclosing separation between us, self and other, which is how we can save all beings because we're saving ourself. we can bow to this image as bowing to ourself. And the one thing that became really clear to me in studying for this class is that Zen really requires a stretch, a real stretch, physical stretch when you're sitting. your back is up, you're pushing up towards the ceiling and your buttocks are going down to the core of the earth and it's just this stretch and opening up physically and then in our minds trying to grasp it all.

[30:49]

And I don't pretend to understand all of it but that's the teaching for us to stretch to and try to understand. The Prajnaparamita text originated with this group, the Mahasanghikas, and the oldest one is the 8,000 line version which dates to about 100 BCE. And this was considered the second turning of the Dharma wheel after the Four Noble Truths were taught. Both were presented by the Buddha that was held on Vulture Peak. And they've been elaborations from that 8,000 line version to 18, 25, and 100,000 lines. A total of 27 Prajnaparamitas are in existence in different languages. 27. They're in different languages. And if it's not obvious now, there wasn't a tape recorder at the Buddhist lectures.

[32:00]

And all these various versions going through different cultures and time were different Buddhist practitioners elaborating on the basic theme of the teaching. But what we have to remember, even though it's been created, organic as I mentioned earlier, what's very important to remember is that the people that were creating it were in a way celebrating the Buddhist teaching through their own experience and understanding of lessening suffering. In the other direction, the Prajnaparamita literature condensed, and there was the Diamond Sutra, which is also known as the Perfection of Wisdom in 300 Lines, which dates to 68 AD, and this actually happens to be the oldest book in existence, and it's in the British Museum.

[33:01]

I was at the museum, but I wasn't into Buddhism then, so I never saw it, but they say it's there. And the Diamond Sutra focuses on intuition rather than logical intelligence. And this is kind of getting at what we're talking about here with our teaching and our practice, more an intuitive thing as opposed to logic. The Heart Sutra is shorter still, and it dates from the 7th century. Edward Kansa, who did a lot of the English translations of the Prajnaparamita literature, broke up this evolution of the literature into the Abhidharmic phase from Buddha's death to about the first century, the Esoteric phase from the second to the fifth century AD, which was the development of Prajna wisdom, and the last phase, which was Tantra from 500 to 1000 AD, which is the Vajrayana practices of harmonizing with the cosmos.

[34:07]

The last line in the Heart Sutra that we chant, was not in the original Prajnaparamita literature. This was added later during this tantric phase. There are some schools that feel just the first letter, A, for Avalokiteshvara is the essence of the Heart Sutra. And when you sit, there's breath and just that one syllable, one sound, one feeling, and everything kind of can come together in that moment. Our liturgy would be a lot shorter if we only had to do ah. But it's pretty short as it is. Line 37. Proclaim, so proclaim. A mantra.

[35:10]

A mantra is the 38 to 41. So they're not in it, originally. It must have been a different line 37. Yes, it probably was. in the Prajnaparamita literature in general? I haven't studied the 8,000-line version of the larger versions. For me, those lines so proclaim is consistent with the celebration. And in some of the sutras, there's these bodhisattvas that are like saying, get ready to listen, here's the Buddha, he's going to tell you the truth.

[36:19]

And it's in the Koan literature, there's this famous... Mantra, I guess that's the problem for me. They're asking for a proclamation of a mantra, but the mantra wasn't there. Right, this is something to add later. There's apparently a scholarly article written by, I'll have to bring a copy of it to the class if you want, that argues that this sutra was actually invented by the Chinese and parts of it were taken out of the original sutra and the beginnings and endings were added later by the Chinese. So line 29. Well, whenever. It's a good question, wondering where all this comes from and what I want to try to do is address the questions and also not go off into the realm of speculation because that's unfortunately where we would be if we tried to figure it all out.

[37:23]

But it's a good question. And the original Sanskrit stuff, a lot of that is lost. It was put together through different languages, and it's the Chinese Heart Sutra of the 7th century that we have as a... The mantra, the chant, right? That's early in Buddhism? Well, 7th century is the earliest one that we have. And lastly, we have the Prajnaparamita as a goddess holding the text of the literature and having a hand up as a in a way of teaching and presenting the literature and of course people who are familiar with our Zen Do know that Rebecca Maino made a Prajnaparamita image that sits there and that's the visual symbol of the Yeah, this picture is a sculpture that's someplace in Indonesia.

[38:29]

Is she a Hindu deity as well? Prajnaparamita? Well, there's a lot of Hindu... over there in that part of the world but it's uh... you know buddhism came out you know the buddha was a hindu he came out of that that culture he didn't he wasn't inventing buddhism that came later so a lot of the uh... the deities the symbols and all that stuff came out of the hindu uh... tradition but uh... one important thing to remember also in our teaching here is that uh... i haven't studied hinduism uh... the uh... All these symbols and manifestations are manifestations of inside us. It's not this God that's on an elephant that's riding around out there. Now there are people that believe that, there are traditions and all that, that use that as a way of teaching, but for our purposes here, Samantabhadra, Avalokiteshvara, all these various, Prajnaparamita, all these symbols are reminders of what's inherent in us.

[39:36]

Really important. What?

[41:13]

Yes. Well yeah, the sitting posture alone is not something that the Buddha invented. It totally predated him. The Heart Sutra, as we know, doesn't have a lot of embellishments. It's hard to understand, but it doesn't have the embellishments or the hosts of bodhisattvas and gods and goddesses and all that that are found in the other sutras. There's just 1,250 arhats in the literature, and Ananda, who was the Buddha's attendant, who wasn't an arhat at that time. there aren't any miracles that are being performed. And actually, when you get down to it, it's a reflection of our practice that ordinary life isn't miraculous enough. There's a line in the Sandokai that we recite on Tuesdays, ordinary life fits the absolute as a box and its lid.

[42:22]

In the second century, there was a gentleman by the name of Nagarjuna, and he wrote a commentary on the Prajnaparamita literature, which was a fuller development of the doctrine of emptiness, or shunyata. Oh, by the way, if people want to stretch or move around, it's perfectly okay. I thought that the doctrine of emptiness and all this stuff was just in the Mahayana, but I found some passages in here, which is the Majjhima Nikaya, which is part of the old Pali Canon, or the original text of Buddhism, that makes references to emptiness and shunyata. that I wanted just to read to you for two reasons. One, to remind us all that the Zen people did not invent emptiness, that it actually goes back to basic Buddhism and Buddhist teaching.

[43:29]

And number two, a sense of the language and the way that things were presented back then. It sounds a little bit like, I remember reading the Declaration of Independence or something Ananda. There are these five aggregates affected by clinging in regard to which a bhikkhu or monk should abide contemplating rise and fall thus. Such is material form. Such is arising. Such is disappearance. Such is feeling. Such is arising. Such is disappearance. Such is perception. Such is arising. Such is disappearance. Such are formations. such their arising, such their disappearance. Such is consciousness, such its arising, such its disappearance.

[44:33]

When he abides contemplating rise and fall in these five aggregates affected by clinging, the conceit I am based on these five aggregates affected by clinging is abandoned in him. When that is so, that bhikkhu understands the conceit I am based on these five aggregates affected by clinging is abandoned in me. In that way he has full awareness of that. So the basic teaching was there. What the Mahayana school did through Nagarjuna's commentary and subsequent teaching in the lineage was to elaborate on this doctrine of emptiness. Nagarjuna didn't advance a theory of reality, he just disproved those already in vogue with his dialectic.

[45:37]

The dialectic that Nagarjuna developed was a further development of the Mahasanghika philosophy in Prajnaparamita literature. His commentary was entitled Vidyamaka Sastra, named after the Buddhist teaching of the Middle Path, Vidyamaka Pratipada. Nagarjuna's middle position was not the older school's ethical not taking too much or too little food, neither sleeping too much or too little, but a metaphysical rejection of extreme alternatives. And this, again, is reminiscent of our practice here, where Mel keeps encouraging us to not go to extremes and to just find your way in the practice. We do have guidelines. We have a way of conducting ourselves here in the temple and out in the world, but there's not these hard and steadfast rules, and we have to find it ourselves.

[46:45]

that place right in the middle. And what's middle for one person might not necessarily be the middle for another. But we're eschewing the extremes. The middle of what? So we're going to go into the teaching now. And the first bit will be the title, Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra. Now great here is maha.

[47:50]

Now it doesn't mean great like fantastic or really pretty or up on a pedestal. It includes everything. There's no boundary or separation. In India, where this teaching came from, they used circles. And the circle connotes everything, the full spectrum. Typically when we look at a circle we think of zero or nothing or like a fence and there's something inside the circle, something outside the circle. When I was studying this I remembered geometry, we have these two circles and you have this part that intersects and there's a little bit that's shared between them. But we have to remember that this teaching is a teaching of no separation and lessening suffering. And this Maha means great, this great means Maha.

[49:01]

There's expressions, the universe can be seen in the mustard seed. Dogen Zenji, a 13th century Japanese Zen master, wrote a fascicle and within it he said, the whole sky and moon is reflected in a dew drop. And the height of the moon is contained within the depth of the dew drop. So if you think about that and you think about our posture, of reaching up and going down to the center of the earth and everything is contained in there, that gives us a sense of how great this teaching actually is. And the idea of a dew drop is also, I think, relevant because dew is very impermanent. It's there and it evaporates. And if you look really closely at a dew drop or a raindrop, you can actually see quite a lot.

[50:13]

And I'm not talking on this sort of metaphysical plane. I mean, just like a little mirror. I mean, you can actually see quite a lot in that little dew drop. Metaphysical stuff comes later. The next word, wisdom. is prajna wisdom. This isn't the wisdom of intelligence or how much you know, what kind of degree you have. It's the wisdom of emptiness. There's no concept of dualities. Another word for wisdom is understanding. So we could call this a great understanding beyond understanding, Heart Sutra. Thich Nhat Hanh felt that wisdom feels kind of static, there's like this block called wisdom and it doesn't grow. Whereas understanding, we're always learning and coming to understand more things with our life, so actually that feels maybe a bit more appropriate for our practice, understanding.

[51:20]

I just dropped a pedal in. When you prefer the word understanding because it has that dynamic quality and growing and whatever, that puts me back in a sense of something that can accrete and get bigger. And my thought was that maybe it's just the great understanding is that as an absolute moment when there's no more to realize. I guess every day we understand deeper and embrace this more, but the real understanding that we're talking about is that illumination where you directly experience that everything is one, and then there's nothing else to understand. That's right. Yeah, that's a good point. facets of the older school was by studying the many, studying these hundred dharmas, they would come to understand the one. And what we do in Zen practice is we study the one in order to understand the many.

[52:38]

In the end, the end result is there's great understanding of the world, but there's just different means of getting to that practice. So we study the one in order to understand or realize the many. And of course, the one that we study is Zazen. We study and practice and orient ourselves toward emptiness, which contains everything. How do you deal with separations such as birth? Well, that's not really a separation. And we're going to be talking about that online. We have to wait. Yeah. What line is it? Oh, yeah, I got some stars by this one, it's really good right around there. 1920, yeah, it's a good point. Yes, but just to answer your question right now as it arises, the child is one with the mother, and at birth there is a separation, there is a break, and what we're doing in our practice is trying to find that connection.

[53:58]

to that universality, that oneness that we experience as a fetus. And numerous people have commented that for Sheen, these longer sittings that we do here, there's a certain womb-like quality to the practice, and that's getting back to no separation. No, we didn't. Now, to be in a world where there's no concept of dualities, we're just experiencing things. There's just pure experience. And so we sit zazen, there's pain. When we are in a hot room, there's sweat.

[55:05]

But before we comment on our discomfort, there's just that experience of ... or whatever it happens to be. And that ... and this is sort of that reaching place in our practice, that in fact, that's wisdom. That's Prajna wisdom. Because that is really understanding heat. that's really understanding pain without the commentary on it, just experiencing whatever it is that's arising. The commentary afterwards serves a certain purpose. That's not prajna, that's something else. My teacher in New York used to say that sweat is compassion. And the heat, the feeling that causes that is wisdom.

[56:10]

And there's no separation. There's heat, you feel hot, and the body naturally sweats, emanates out that fluid. Because if you're sweating, there's got to be heat. So that's wisdom. Sorry? Or great anxiety. Or great anxiety. Well, that's commentary. But there is something when we have discomfort, we start getting, there might be some tension in the shoulders. Now, without the comment on it, that tension is compassion. That tension is the body's direct response to some feeling inside. It's not compassion like helping people. It's a different way of using that word. So when Mel says often what Suzuki Roshi said, you know, be careful of enlightenment, you might not like it.

[57:13]

I think that's what he's talking about. That there might be discomfort. There might be these various things that we weren't planning on getting. But if there's no separation between the wisdom of the experience and the arising or the expression of that, that non-dual place is enlightenment, is nirvana. And when we look at it, we might not like it. But that, of course, is extra. The next word is beyond. Paramita, which means at the other shore. Now, where is this other shore? Uh, now most of us, perhaps all of us that came to this practice thinking, well, if I sit long enough, I'm going to start feeling better and I'm going to reach this other shore of comfort.

[58:21]

I certainly felt that. What the literature is teaching us is that the other shore is right here, and there's no other place to go. Yes? Mel, one time, said, put it, and he probably says this to everybody, but if you're rowing the raft wholeheartedly and completely right now, that is the other shore. There isn't. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it really hit me. There is no other shore. It's here. You're rowing the raft. And whatever you're doing, if you're right there, that's where the shore is. Let's have the grapes go this way. And you can eat it when you get it. In fact, you can take two, it looks like there's enough for two. Param, yeah. Well, perfection, entomologically, I don't have it down, but it's, what did you just say?

[59:29]

Perfection? Perfection, yeah. Perfection of wisdom, the perfection of giving, all these things. What is that perfection that we are trying to get? As I said, we are trying to, we're defined as perfection when we get to the other shore, but the perfection is right here in our practice, in what we're doing. I see, so there are two different ways of how this wisdom is going to be. Yeah, I mean, we call it the perfection of wisdom, but My sense of it is this other shore, other place gone beyond that we will get to at the very end of the chant. Why did they talk about it when there's no the other shore? Well, it's sort of a metaphor. There must be a sense of relief, like deliverance or something. Well yeah, that's what we're here for, right?

[60:42]

You want to have some relief? Deliverance, yeah. There's a story of these two monks that were carrying This one monk found this woman that wanted to get across this stream, and he asked if she'd like a ride, and she said yes, and he carried her over to the other shore, and then put her down, and she went her way, and the two monks went that way. The other monk who was very into the Vinaya and the rules, which is, pardon, you don't touch women. It's a very sexist tradition back in the old days. The monk who carried the woman across said, well, you're still carrying her. I left her at the shore. So again, it's sort of a metaphor for our practice that there is this other shore, this place we want to reach, but the reality is there's no place to go and it's right here.

[61:43]

As Mel says, the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step right here. I read about it. you might do that. A monk gave a talk here some time ago, and he had a teaching stick, and he held the stick up, and he said, this is what our practice is about. It's sitting up straight.

[62:44]

And he went like this. He says, we fall down, and we get back up. and he was like rotating the stick, you know, back and forth. It was just a simple little gesture, but that's in fact what our life is about. We're always trying to maintain this upright, perfect posture, and we constantly are adjusting ourselves, and we have to find that place where we're comfortable with these various adjustments. So we do go down these various paths, and at some point hopefully we wake up and see that, oh, look where I am, and we get back up. So I think if you see a lot of evil, then you will get back on track. If you are blind to the evil, then that's where a lot of problems can start. Well, one way of getting to the other shore is in the hands of Manjushri.

[63:47]

Manjushri is a Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and Manjushri's symbol or tool is the sword. And this sword is represented in our Zendo as a Kiyosaku, which is the waking stick that people go around and use on request to wake people up. And if anyone has been in the Zendo when the stick has gone around, even if you are not being struck yourself, the feeling is waking up. The whole room wakes up in this moment when that stick is hit. The first time that I was here, Mel was going around with the Kiyosaki, and I heard this walking, and I looked around, and I saw him, and I turned back to stare at the wall, and all he did was, at that point there, was just hit his hand with the stick.

[64:57]

He didn't hit anybody that particular time. He just hit his hand with the stick. And it just came to me now that he didn't have to hit anybody. hitting himself, he hit everybody in the room, and everybody just... It's really quite something. So anyway, on the altar... In the Zendo, we have Arilokiteshvara, or Quan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion on one side, and Manjushri on the left. I encourage people, when you're in the Zendo, before Zazen or maybe after Zazen, you can go up to the altar and look and see these images. These images are representative of us and our various manifestations. You'll see a little scepter in Manjushri's hands, and that's going to cut through our delusions and feeling separate. elbows and not make a lot of noise. Well that's that's well it's a Japanese flavor to our practice and also to keep the germs from spreading.

[66:04]

But the noise making is that the same thing? Oh I think I think the noise can be I think hearing someone sneeze or or lots of things that go on in this endo is quite quite a wakening experience. A really important facet to our practice here came to us from Dogen Zenji, who I mentioned a moment ago. One of his teachings was practice is enlightenment, enlightenment is practice. And this was revolutionary given that many, many people feel that we practice and practice and practice and get rid of defilements and kind of clean up our act and then we become, we're primed up and we're ready, we get enlightened. Well, his take on the Dharma was practice is enlightenment and That's hard for me quite often to realize.

[67:13]

But again, getting back to this kiyosaku and that there's no other shore to go to, the shore is right here on the cushion, that it all comes together. And in fact, there is enlightenment in that moment. There is no separation in that moment of whack. I remember years ago hearing a teaching where the two sides, the duality of our life is put together when we gassho. And there's a certain oneness that we come together when we bow. And this is just like the whack, not as loud, but just as effective. I just thought of something about... It's this idea that practice and enlightenment are identical. you say revolutionary. It occurs to me that in sort of the Theravadan view, I remember recently reading something by Aya Khema, who's a Theravadan teacher, on meditation and her idea was very much there were a number of different kinds of techniques to do in meditation and her point was very clearly that meditation is a means to an

[68:27]

so is a Buddhist idea in many kinds of Buddhism, is that we have all this accumulated karma from lifetime after lifetime, and then we have to clean out all of our karma and get rid of it, and then we're a Buddha. So maybe the idea about practice is that you're practicing and practicing and practicing to get rid of your karma, and not until you have exhausted all of your negative karma can you actually be Buddha. And that's why Dogen was so sort of revolutionary to say, It's already right here. Right. Well, you can't get rid of your karma. You have your karma. As Mel said in the lecture once, I have my karma and you have your karma and we can't exchange it. Well, presumably the Buddha stopped creating new karma. When we sit Zazen, we're not creating karma. In the purest sense of the word, during Zazen, we're not creating karma. I'm just thinking about sort of what the traditional is. Right, well actually what's really helpful I think is to mention Suzuki Roshi's comment about practice which is Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind.

[69:42]

So this is Hinayana practice, yes of course we're all sitting here and it feels good, there's a certain calmness of mind, we sort out our life. things aren't making sense. So yeah, there is a sort of a literal sort of step-by-step practice, but ultimately it's all transcended in the moment, which is the Mahayana mind thing of sort of merging of these dualities. So our practice is sort of holding that paradox. Also, I think if we talk about practicing in order to sort of get rid of defilements and all that stuff, we start getting attached, and it's important not to cling to anything at all, even about getting rid of defilements, because when we still have these defilements, it just gets really frustrating, and you just get really mad. So my last line here, or next to last line, maybe, next to last line on this beyond business is, after a while, just sitting, not trying to param, not trying to get to the other shore.

[70:46]

At a certain point in our practice, we're just sitting, and we're not trying to do anything, because as long as you're trying to do something, forget about it. Yeah, I think this is where Zen probably differs from other schools of thought. But then also, the Queen of Enlightenment can come at any moment. I mean, you can you can be enlightened the first day you practice. It's kind of like the notion of grace. I mean, it could happen at any time. It doesn't come after you've sat for 20 years. Although it might. Although it might. Yeah, right. But it also might, suddenly you might wake up tomorrow. Let's hope so. yeah and what and you know Mel talks often about this where and try to get some places like we have pain in our legs I don't want this pain in my legs and I would sit hard and try to get rid of it but at a certain point when you just accept it

[71:57]

there is a release, and there's not any more suffering. There's just the phenomenon of what's going on in your body and your mind, but we're not trying to get anywhere, and that's sort of a capsule of our wider practice of not trying to get anywhere. That poem of James Kenny's, that wonderful, wonderful poem, laid down the burden of wanting things to be different. Right. Yeah, that's a tough one. But yeah, that's what we're trying to do. And yes, I was going to say that in the first and second paragraph of the Sutra, that is giving us the direction or showing us how to lay down the burden. Right now it's still kind of abstract. That's right.

[73:18]

Yeah. I agree with you. That's why I brought this in. We could have a class just on the older school of Buddhism and how they taught. It just feels like people are kind of, maybe I could pull these oppositions together. I don't see it as an opposition. No. Well, I think Siddhartha Guruji said it best, because he's including both Hinayana practice and Mahayana mind. Another favorite expression of Nell's is, we live, therefore we breathe. We're not breathing in order to live. And again, this is the idea that we're already living, and breath is a manifestation of that. We're at the other shore. Heart. Great wisdom beyond wisdom, heart. Heart is the essence.

[75:05]

It's a distillation of the larger recensions. As I said, the sutra expanded into 100,000 lines. I did read the 8,000-line version some years ago, and when Alan and Laurie taught the class, they would bring up bits and pieces that you could see were part of this Heart Sutra. But for us, not that the other stuff is extraneous, but the Heart Sutra here is the essence of the teaching, the way that it's going to enable us to see the nature of suffering. And Sutra literally means ties together. And the warp and woof are the symbol here. That's fabric for those who might not know. The warp and woof is a fabric of our life.

[76:10]

There's, let's see, which one is the strong vertical? Is that the wolf or the wolf? It's the wolf. Thank you. I need to have that answered. So this is this strong part of the fabric of our life. It goes vertically, up and down. And in a way, we can look at it as even, without any distinctions. Strong, it holds the fabric together. Now the woof is the part that goes in and out. It's typically, it might, and again, technically I don't know about fabric and material making and such, but it's not as strong as the vertical. But it has all the textures and colors. And this is what our life is about. There's this strong centering peace in our life and then there's all these relatives.

[77:16]

So there's this absolute and the relative coming together here. Various colors, textures, scenery, it's always changing. And the matrix of these two is where we practice. That's always the case. There's the absolute and the relative coming together in each moment and that's where we practice. The Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra. What this sutra is, is actually a, well, it's a debate of sorts, even though Shariputra is not talking, it's Abhilokiteshvara who is expressing or explaining to him what the nature of existence is and the nature of suffering. But it is a Mahayana text.

[78:18]

And what it's proposing is sort of undoing the traditional way of thinking of Buddhists from the early days. And we're going to see that toward the middle of the sutra, not at the beginning, because Buddhism shared the Four Noble Truths and the basic teachings. But as I mentioned earlier about the Hundred Dharmas, the older schools feeling that these things had a certain independent reality, that this teaching is going to undo that. And that's where the debate quality of this teaching comes in. I want to talk a little bit more about Shariputra later, but just so you know now, Shariputra was one of the 80 great disciples of the Buddha.

[79:24]

And each of these disciples had a particular specialty. And his specialty was wisdom. And he knew Buddhist wisdom and the wisdom teachings. And people would typically go to him to get the answers if the Buddha wasn't around. And so, Abhilokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. And the Buddha is speaking through Abhilokiteshvara, this compassionate being, to show Shariputra that while yes, what you understand of my teaching is true, there is something more there that I want to tell you.

[80:27]

the magical part of this sutra. As I said, there wasn't someone there writing all this stuff down, but the way it's created, you can see that there's a lot more to it, there's a lot more richness to having this being called Quan Yin or Avalokiteshvara, this bodhisattva, this being that wants to help, who's very compassionate, being directed through Buddha to this really sincere monk, you know, one of the big 80 there in the sangha, to help him understand even more. What comes clear is, as I said, the teaching is not erroneous, the older teaching is not erroneous, but from the Mahayana point of view it was provisional, and that a lot of the teaching in the Heart Sutra is a restatement of the original teaching, which again goes back to Suzuki Roshi's line,

[81:38]

So we're still practicing, we're still sitting Zazen, but with a slightly different take on these old teachings. This book, this list, this list comes from emptiness. It comes from... It's not a print book. The author is Chaka Kusu, who was a Japanese scholar living in Hawaii, and he taught about the various schools of Buddhism there, and somehow or another he was contracted to write a book on it. And so he listed all the major schools in Japan that were maintaining the

[82:43]

the Chinese Buddhist schools that survived in Japan. Of course, a lot of them died out. You know, I can't think of the title of the book. Yeah, I'll bring the book. I think it's Fundamentals of... Oh, you got it? Oh, good. Yeah, it's quite a good book. Yes? You may have already said this, but there's so much that you're saying. What was Avalokiteshvara's specialty? Oh, Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Oh, I knew that. Right. Shariputra's specialty was wisdom. He was a monk in the Buddha Sangha. Avalokiteshvara was Indian. And when that ideal went to Eastern Asia, he was transformed into Quan Yin, who tends to be a more feminine aspect.

[83:56]

And just for information, wisdom is considered feminine and compassion is considered masculine. Is that right? I think so. Wisdom is considered a sort of a passive. Actually, the Western thought thinks the other way around. Sophia is wisdom in Greek. And Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom. I don't know if it's the same wisdom, but anyway, for what it's worth. If she never acted on it, how could anyone know she was wise? Right, well that's why you have to have both. See, the wisdom and the compassion, and I want to... It's nine o'clock, so I want to end here. I'll be mentioning this point a little later.

[84:59]

Again, this is something that Mel said some time ago in lecture. He was pointing to the Buddha on the altar, and he says, the Buddha doesn't have to do anything. The Buddha is just sitting there. That's the absolute. Okay, so the Buddha's sitting there, in the incense bowls, and on one side is Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, and the other side is Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. And it's through the balance and harmony of wisdom and compassion that one becomes a Buddha. And those are the active principles, the things that manifest, the form side of our practice. The emptiness side, the absolute side, is just sitting there. And when we sit Zazen, that's what we're doing. We're just all lined up little Buddhas. Don't spread it around. Thank you all for your questions and insights and helping everybody here learn a little bit more about the Heart Sutra.

[86:10]

One thing that Mel said recently that I really liked when people were trying to pin him on who's an enlightened person, you know, it's the people wearing brown robes, the people wearing raka-sus, or whatever, and dharma transmission, all that stuff. And what he said was really helpful to me. He says, it's not an indiv... because he said, you know, sometimes this person who's supposed to be enlightened, who's wearing a brown robe or whatever, doesn't seem to be acting so enlightened. What he said was, it's a sangha that's enlightened. It's a sangha practice. And collectively, we're all enlightening each other. And that's... a really important part of our practice as we continue to practice together. So it doesn't matter what color robe or no robe, that we're all just sitting together. So thank you all. And the class is being taped, so if you guys have to miss one or more sessions, there'll be tapes available for people to listen to.

[87:12]

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