so Thank you. to Prajnaparamita homage to that perfection of wisdom.

[02:08]

There you go, my friend. Okay. I've done it both ways. I thought people were going to help me with this. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it's just nice to hear one voice. Okay. So... Promise to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light and from everyone, a triple world, she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray from it.

[03:20]

The perfection of wisdom of the Buddha sets in motion the wheel of the dharma. When practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita, perceive that all five skandhas, in their own being, are empty and well. all suffering, O Shariputra. Form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, perceptions, formations, consciousness, O Shariputra, are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease.

[04:26]

Therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, Consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes until no realm of mind. Consciousness, and also no extinction of it until There is also no extinction of it, no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain. A bodhisattva depends on prajna, parinita, and the mind is no hindrance without any hindrance. Apart from every purported view, one dwells in nirvana.

[05:29]

In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on prajna, paravita, and the three unsurpassed. Therefore know the prajna paramita is the great transcendent mantra, is the very bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra. So proclaim the Prajna Paramita Mantra Proclaim the mantra that says GATE GATE PARA GATE PASANGATE BODHISATVA So I wanted to clear something up.

[07:03]

I made an announcement tonight in the Zen Dojo about passing out sutra books. And someone said, well, why do we have to do that when some people know it and we know they know it? And my first response is, well, it's doing something completely. So it's just part of the form. And you never know when somebody might want to use it. And in fact, in a lot of places, whether they know it or not. So most places, so if you go some other place, get your suture book and hold it up. It's not because they don't know it. So on chanting, if you've ever done any singing in groups, if you were a singer, like let's say you went to Julia's summer and you said, Boy, I went to your concert and I could hear your voice.

[08:04]

She would not feel so complimented by that. Because part of singing together is about blending and actually not being able to pick out any one person's voice. And I know I tend to put myself out there maybe more than I need to. So I think sometimes I don't blend so well. And I try to. But that's part of it. So a lot of what chanting is about is actually listening. And listening for tone. So the Kokyo is actually setting the tone. And sometimes it's a little bit too low, so someone might take a pitch above it. And sometimes it's too high. So wherever we land, try to just keep going and listen to where the group lands. as far as, listen also for the tempo that's being kept too.

[09:08]

I find in the morning that often people, some people are saying, now we open Buddha's robe, and some are going, now we open, and it's just not, people aren't listening to everybody else, so it's really important to listen when you're chanting. And you know, just like Zazen, chant from your belly, and try to keep your throat relaxed. And just some points, specific points about this chant. There's, when we get to, this used to be done, incidentally, just kind of interesting point on history. How much time do I have? Four more minutes. We used to do it with the mokugyo, the English with the mokugyo. So we used to actually go... So that was a different way.

[10:14]

Some places have gone back to using the mokugyo. So it was an interesting transition because Mel gave lecture after lecture on how to do this different way. That was kind of fun. So there's different places here where you want to stress that this makes it sound nice. So rather than just kind of doing the same kind of monotone, you can do, and kind of accentuate certain, it makes it sound a lot nicer. And then when you get to no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound. So we can work on that a little bit. And then at the end, there's some places they slow down on prajna, paramita, but that's not really our stop there.

[11:14]

So try not to do that. And then same with the end. Gaté, gaté, para, gaté, parasangaté, sagaté, gaté. Slow. You don't have to slow it down. Anyway, that's all I have to say. So it seems like the chanting should be lively and kind of upbeat. Brilliant. Brilliant and bouncy and not kind of solemn and, you know, keep the energy going. The question about the books, you know, at the end of the chant, it's all Buddhist ten directions, right? Now everybody puts, if they have a book, usually they put it down. And then if there's another chant, then that's when some of us need the books, right? So then we do the book. You put the book down. During All Buddhas Ten Directions, where do you hold the book up? Just hold it.

[12:14]

Just like this? People do it all different ways. Yeah, I think that's... People hold the book like this. I think it's unavoidable. People hold the book like this. Well, what is the right way? You have to put it down when you bow. So, at some point you have to... Only during All Buddhas, maybe. Or putting it down. It doesn't matter. But it does help with respect, because it's actually Buddha's teaching in book form, so it should never actually touch the floor. It could sit on a Zabuton, or on your chair, or on a cushion, but it shouldn't just be on the floor. And as Andrea said, in some places they hold, it's held even though it's not being used. Like the Kokyo in New York, at the Zen Center there, he used to hold it up, and he would just chant just like this with the book closed the whole time. And there's something about just holding up Buddha's teachings and just having it there as a visual presence and symbol, upright, and then just going right into it. That was really inspiring for me.

[13:16]

What I'd like to do that Mel does when he has a class series is just for a minute or two recap what was gone over previously to kind of get people up to speed who might not have been here and field maybe a question or two and then move on to the next place. So this is going to be a quick overview of an hour and a half last week. The Prajnaparamita literature is concerned with the cultivation of prajna, which is the wisdom of emptiness, and the realization of the interrelatedness of all phenomena. And the expression of prajna is karuna, which is a Pali word for compassion. The original schools of Buddhism, which are kind of under the umbrella now, we refer as Theravada or Hinayana, were interested or focused on the analytical or literal approach of Buddha's teaching and a very rationalistic look at the teaching.

[14:32]

And their thinking was somewhat dualistic, and it was concerned with the purity of the individual practitioner. And one of the things that we've benefited from their practices is mindfulness practices, because through the mindfulness practices of the older school of Buddhism, one is able to see the impermanence of all phenomena, which is a basic mark of existence. During the third council of students of the Buddha, some centuries after his passing, there was a dissension amongst the people and a number who were called the Mahasanghikas, who later formed the Mahayana or the school that we follow here called Zen, felt that some of the tenets of this arhat ideal or the older school of Buddhism were somewhat dubious and

[15:33]

For instance, the Arhats felt it was possible to have no more desires or you didn't need help from other people. And there were a number of things that were laid out. But the theme was that there was some feeling that there was more to Buddhism than what these people felt was sort of the central core. And the dissenters were expelled from this council. And this was right around the turn of the millennium. Paramita literature began to come to the fore. So there was a doctrine of emptiness, and like we chant daily here at the temple, within the Theravada tradition, but the elaboration of that doctrine was brought out by the Mahayana school. I handed out a list of the 100 dharmas that one of these older schools had outlined for people to look at just to see how analytical groups of people can be when given the opportunity.

[16:39]

The Prajnaparamita literature dates, like I said, around from the turn of the century, the oldest version being the 8,000 line version, which looks something like this. Although this doesn't look so old, it's actually the oldest text of Prajnaparamita literature. And in the years following, it was elaborated into a number of versions to 18,000 lines, 25,000 lines, 100,000 lines, and then also reduced to smaller versions, 2,500 lines, 700 lines, 300 lines, which is also known as the in the British Museum in England, and then finally the 25-line version, which is the Heart Sutra. And then in some traditions, just the letter A is considered the Heart Sutra, just the first syllable. In some sense, just breathing and just being present is the essence of the Heart Sutra or the interrelatedness of all phenomenon.

[17:50]

So those are sort of the expansions and the contractions of the literature. And a lot of that is due to culture. In India, there's a very elaborate culture and lots of layers and textures that's put on the literature, as well as the food. And in China, where Buddhism further developed, the feeling there is more in succinctness. And so the translators of this tradition condensed a lot of the teaching into smaller, more succinct recensions and that's what we've actually found that we're using these days is a Chinese translation of the Heart Sutra. And then there was a presentation of a scholar who felt that the Heart Sutra was actually a Chinese apocryphal text, that for legitimacy it has to come from the Buddha, it has to come from India, it has to come from the 5th century, or however you look at B.C.

[18:56]

and A.D. back then in India. But the style of the Heart Sutra, what's included and what's excluded, is actually more Chinese than Indian. And there's a theory that this monk from the 8th century or so in China Well, he definitely went back to India, but at Nalanda University, the famous university in India, which is associated with Nagarjuna, who was a compiler and synthesizer of the Prajnaparamita literature, he couldn't find a copy of the Heart Sutra there in Sanskrit, and he had his own copy in Chinese, and he translated one in the idea that the original literature is 8,000 lines Sanskrit, and then it went over the Silk Route into China, and that translation was made into Chinese, and then there was a more succinct version made, and then it went back to India.

[20:05]

That's one theory, and it actually seems to make sense when you read the article. And the history of the Buddhism in this literature is that originally it was Abhidharmak, which is this very analytical looking at the world and phenomena and describing it in minute detail right around the Buddha's life and shortly after his death. And then around the turn of the millennia, the consideration is called esoteric. And that dealt with the development of the wisdom literature, And Nagarjuna, as I said, was one of the people that elaborated on this teaching. And then the tantra from 500 to 1000 AD, which is associated most clearly with Tibet and Mongolia, and the tantric practices and Vajrayana teachings were focused on harmonizing with the cosmos through mantra and through mudra especially.

[21:17]

So when you assume the mudra for our sitting, even though they had that in They had some form of physical posture that you can see in the iconography in Buddhism. This is sort of a tantric device of harmonizing with the universe, and Mel talks about the cosmic mudra occasionally. It's not just a calming thing, there's something else that's unifying about it. And then in the chanting at the very end, which I'll talk about in the fourth class, the gate gate paragate was not part of the original literature. This is something that was added much later, and it owes that introduction to the Vajrayana or the Tantric side of Buddhist practice, which came later. There's a quote attributed to the Buddha, whatever is conducive to liberation and not to bondage, that is my teaching. That's a really important point, because there wasn't someone there with a tape recorder recording all of his words.

[22:24]

So the literature and the teaching was all handed down centuries after the Buddha passed away. But if what you're utilizing is conducive to liberation and sort of breaks the shackles of bondage, that's the Buddha's teaching. And it might not necessarily be the historical Buddha, the archetype of liberation. And that's the most important thing. To try to tie it down, that's sort of in the place of scholarship and, you know, is this right or wrong? But if you feel liberated, if there's liberation, true liberation from it, then it's Buddhist teaching. Well, A couple things came up from last week. One person had suggested that I take a little break every 20 minutes or so, so people could sit here for a minute and just try to absorb all this information and to sit with it.

[23:30]

I think that's a good idea, and I'll try to keep an eye on the clock to do that. And the other was, where does the Hymn of Prajnaparamita come from? And we talked a little bit about it. Right, well, here we go. On page 135. As I mentioned last week, this was the creation of the Prajnaparamita sculpture. which is even like a later development of the Prajnaparamita literature, is depicted in the image up there, that Rebecca Maeno made for our altar, was a response to the feminine presence, the need of a more feminine presence in our practice. And the hymn to Prajnaparamita, I heard many of you had never heard before, and that was because we only chanted on Monday morning, or recited on Monday morning, So this is a source for it, and Mel got it from chapter 7 of the 8,000-line version.

[24:33]

And bear in mind, I'm going to read this paragraph, and only bits and pieces were taken out from it for our literature here. uh... just i mentioned about the expansions and the contractions of the uh... original literature uh... if someone were to come to through the archives of berkeley's zen center a thousand years from now looking for uh... the buddhist teaching they would only find this this bit and not this bit and there'd be a question well what was the original well if this is conducive to our waking up this is good enough and uh... whether it's eight thousand lines or eight lines or one syllable uh... In one sense it doesn't really matter, but this is what we have and will enable us to see how over the years different groups of people extracted different things for their benefit and ultimately for everyone's benefit and leaving some other things out. Hymn to the Perfection of Wisdom.

[25:37]

The perfection of wisdom, O Lord, which is Shakyamuni Buddha, is the accomplishment of the cognition of the all-knowing. The perfection of wisdom is the state of all knowledge, the Buddha. So it is, Shariputra, as you say. Shariputra. The perfection of wisdom gives light, O Lord. I pay homage to the perfection of wisdom. She is worthy of homage. She is unstained. The entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light, and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness, and she leads away from the blinding darkness caused by the defilements and by wrong views. In her we can find shelter. Most excellent are her works. She makes us seek the safety of the wings of enlightenment. She brings light to the blind. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. She has gained the five eyes and she shows the path to all beings. She herself is an organ of vision.

[26:40]

She disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She does nothing about all dharmas. She guides to the path those who have strayed to a bad road. She is identical with all knowledge. She never produces any dharma because she has forsaken the residues relating to both kinds of coverings, those produced by defilement and those produced by the cognizable. She does not stop any dharma. Herself unstopped and unproduced is the perfection of wisdom. She is the mother of the bodhisattvas on account of the emptiness of her own marks. As a donor of the jewel of all the Buddha dharmas, she brings about the ten powers of a Buddha. She cannot be crushed. She protects the unprotected with the help of the four grounds of self-confidence. She is the antidote to birth and death. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, the Lords, sets in motion the wheel of the dharma.

[27:44]

So that's Kanzen's taking from the original literature of what we chant here. So some of it sounds familiar and some of it doesn't, but the feeling is certainly in the spirit of what we are talking about here. So now we, are there any questions at this point? So now we're gonna go through the Heart Sutra. First, the title. Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra. The word great here, another word for that is maha, like maha prajna, maha sattvas, maha pajapati. Maha has been explained to be like a circle, which includes everything.

[28:52]

And especially in Zen, there's the Enso, you see the circle, which is symbolic of everything, which includes everything. There's no boundary, there's no separation. In other words, you start right here. It's all included right here in this moment. Everything is me, since there is, in fact, is no boundary. We have to remember that this teaching is a central morsel of Buddhist teaching and each word is a reminder to bring us back to ourself for our own liberation. So it's a guide for us. A couple of metaphors that are quite used often in our literature. The universe is held in a mustard seed. The whole sky and moon is reflected in a dew drop. And the height of the moon is the depth of a dew drop.

[29:55]

And the dew drop, in fact, is impermanent. So everything is contained in this moment and things fall away and they're no more. And then there's something in the next moment. So that's a sense of the greatness of this teaching. wisdom uh... this isn't wisdom of accumulating knowledge uh... it's uh... prashna or actually more accurately pronounced prajna prajna uh... which uh... means there's no concept of dualities it's the wisdom of emptiness and the function or manifestation of this wisdom uh... is, for instance, heat in the body. A somewhat non-traditional view of prajna and karuna, or wisdom and compassion, is that when you're hot, you sweat.

[31:00]

And the sweat is a manifestation of the heat and the exhaustion that you feel, or that is felt. And there's no separation, there's no gap between the expression and the cause or what's generating that. So there's an expression, you know, when you're hungry, just eat, when you're tired, just sleep, and when you're hot, just sweat. So if you get in between that, it's just, geez, it's so hot, I'm so tired of the heat, or geez, I'm really hungry, that's the separation, and that's not prajna and karuna. being together as an expression of practice. But when you're just sweating, when you're just sitting there, that in fact is compassion, but not our typical idea of compassion or karuna, which is being nice and helping people who need help. But how often do we actually have the opportunity to help people?

[32:09]

It comes up from time to time and we can see when we meet someone and we just help them, that's an expression of compassion and there's a wisdom of seeing that there's no boundary between myself and this person and there's just help. we do all this stuff in retrospect looking at if we're thinking about it during the process there's that separation and while the person might benefit as a by your assistance it's not really practice in the in the true sense but there's lots of opportunities when you actually will feel this coming through you of this expression of wisdom with no gap. One way of looking at it is that you understand heat through sweat. If you think of it, what is heat? Well, heat is when your body temperature goes up to a certain degree and all the variables that we look at with our discursive mind. But through sweat and just being sweat is actually being most intimate with heat and the merging of those two things.

[33:19]

Not separate and it's unconditioned. you understand sorrow through tears. So when you cry, those tears and the feeling the water on your cheeks coming down because of the feeling of sorrow is a real intimate understanding and really being with pain and sorrow. These are, well, they can be everyday occurrences, but when it happens and you really feel that, you're really there with it, you've actually merged with circumstances and you are just there manifesting Buddha. That's really important to remember. Emptiness is another word for interrelatedness. It doesn't mean empty of... that there's no thing, but that it's related on everything else.

[34:22]

And I want to read something from commentary on the Heart Sutra about emptiness and this wisdom of emptiness which is Prajna. This is called being empty and being empty also means being full. The opposite is also included. This is called the non-duality of duality. If you say I am alive, I am dead is also included. If you say I am dead, I am alive is also included. Otherwise you fall into duality and you only see in a partial way. So this is one reason why the literature is somewhat cryptic because it's using the duality of words in a non-dual way. So, I was thinking about a shosan ceremony that took place about a year or so ago, where a woman asked Sojin Roshi, are you a lesbian?

[35:31]

And he said, yes. And my sort of partial mind said, well, he's not a lesbian because he's, I'm assuming, you know, as we all are thinking right now, married, da-da, da-da, da-da. And then when I read the material and his commentary, I realized that for him to be truly empty and a representative of Buddha, as a teacher of Buddhism, that would have to be included in his being. It doesn't manifest as lesbianism, but in order to be male, there has to be female. In order to be heterosexual, there has to be homosexuality. So it's all included in the one thing. But our typical way of thinking is partial and we kind of get stuck and we think, well, no, it can't be that way. And I am not professing that I have understood this whole concept either, but it's helpful from the standpoint that if I can remember to practice, I'm included in this with no boundary.

[36:37]

I also am a lesbian or I'm also Asian or whatever. there's an opportunity for me to just pause and think about other points of view. And I've tried to take that on as a practice, even though it's pretty difficult. And according to the wisdom literature, the fact is it's true, that everything is included in everything else. Beyond is the next word. And what is beyond? That's paramita. and the Paramita is the other shore. And in practice, quite often people think of sitting Zazen and gaining enlightenment and getting to the other shore and getting some other place, but we've just heard that everything is right here and it's all included right here and there's no boundary. So where is this other shore? Well, the other shore in fact is right here.

[37:38]

There is a a case in the literature about building a sanctuary, and the Buddha says, this looks like a good place to build a sanctuary. And Indra, the king of the gods, pulls out a blade of grass and plants it. And then the next line is, thus the sanctuary has been built. And what this symbolizes is that we don't have to go someplace else. We don't have to go to a monastery or build a sanctuary somewhere else. We actually can build it right here underneath our feet if we persevere through practice. Manjushri's sword is symbolized or represented with the kiyosaku in the zendo and when the monitor comes around and uses the kiyosaku the other shore is brought to us in living color and enriched dark sound.

[38:41]

Manjushri's sword is actually the sword of wisdom or prajna which cuts through our delusion and I'm sure we've all had the experience of either being struck or hearing the sound which dispels immediately our discursive thinking or dreams or whatever is going on and bringing us right to the present. So again, the Bodhisattva Manjushri and that sword is utilized to bring us right to this present moment. So this beyond practice is actually right here. It's not anywhere else. Yes, Charlie. It's a double-edged sword. Yeah. Meaning? Which, and do you know what that's? What the? Sharp on both sides. Right, so it kills and gives life.

[39:42]

No matter which way you swing it, it's still cutting. Right, it's a switch hitter so to speak. Yeah, it's a sword that kills and the sword that gives life. So it kills the moment of this delusion that we've fallen into and gives life to being present. which is a true sense of Manjushri's sword. It's not this punitive thing that is just killing or hurting people. Dogen has a line in the Ginjo Koan about the 10,000 dharmas advancing, realizing the self, which is in distinction to bringing the self forward to try to realize things. When we try to go someplace else, we tend to get lost, and often things are kind of... where there's a feeling that we're going somewhere, and also in relations with people, quite often people get kind of taken aback and kind of slip away a little bit from us.

[40:51]

So if we allow these 10,000 dharmas or phenomena to advance to us, our self is realized, our true self is realized, and the self of sort of equanimity and seeing quite clearly. And if you think for a moment anytime you've tried to go after something, Quite often that sort of sense of ego and the driving force, we don't get such a clear view. It's sort of tunnel vision. And if you sit, and that's one, the spirit of practice and sitting Sachine and that open feeling that we have, the interrelated feeling that we have, you almost don't have to do anything. Things just kind of happen and they unfold in their own time and in their own way. And that's one of the sort of sweet morsels of practice that that we had the opportunity to experience. Another basic tenet in Dogen's teaching is we're not practicing in order to get enlightened. That because we are enlightened, we are practicing.

[41:52]

And this is again in distinction to the older school of Buddhism, which was focused on purity. And while there's definitely something to be said to looking closely at the tenets of Buddhism and clearing the defilements and waking up to our transgressions, having bodhisattva ceremonies, It's not that we're ever going to get pure and clear of all this stuff and then become enlightened and wonderful human beings that actually within the muck of our practice is enlightenment. So out of the mud that the lotus is rooted in, we come out and flower. And Yasutani Roshi, who is an old teacher who passed away some years ago, came from Japan and had many students in this country, was quoted saying he finally understood sitting after about 35 years of zazen.

[42:55]

And none of us in this room have sat that long. And yet, after a while of sitting, we're not trying to get anywhere. We're not trying to get to beyond, to the other shore, that we're just sitting. And again, this is something that's realized quite often during Sashin, when we physically get worn down and our mental processes are kind of sort of, you know, just letting go and just letting be and just sitting there with the pain and not trying to get anywhere is actually a great realization and is very liberating. And it's a very different feeling than our initial stages of practice where we're sitting and have all sorts of ideas and we kind of squirm and kick around. Mel often says, we live, therefore we breathe. Because we're alive, we eat.

[44:00]

We don't eat to be alive. And again, this is another way of looking at this practice in enlightenment. Because we're here, we have these activities in our life. We're not doing something in order to get something else. here and not going to the other shore. Heart Sutra, the last two words, heart is the essence or the distillation of all these teachings. And as I said, the Prajnaparamita literature expanded quite largely to like 600 volumes of literature and lots of palm leaves, I think is what they used to write on, and then it was condensed down. And the smallest being just the letter A, just ah, or just breath, just exhalation as being the sort of distillation.

[45:08]

But that's not quite enough for most of us, so we actually have something a little larger to work with. which is what we're chanting. And sutra literally means ties together, like suture. And one way of looking at sutra is warp and woof, which is the workings of material. The vertical which I think is called the warp, is a constant backdrop in our life. And it's typically very strong. It's a stronger part of the two in the weave. And then the woof is the relative world. So we have the absolute or constant backdrop of warp, and then we have the relative world, which is ever-changing, and the woof, and those or the warp in the wolf meat.

[46:11]

That's what this sutra is. And lastly, before this break, the theme or the feeling for the Heart Sutra is that it's a debate or dialogue between Shariputra and Abhilokiteshvara. Shariputra was the in knowledge and kind of represents the older school of Buddhism. And while he was one of the Buddha's foremost disciples, the feeling in our literature is that he was a little self-assured and maybe a little stuck in that position. And that's the Hinayana line. And then the Mahayana line is an opportunity to sort of cut through his delusions and those attachments. And so this debate that goes on between them, basically Avalokiteshvara is kind of laying out what the teaching actually is.

[47:13]

Shariputra is humbled by it, even though it doesn't say it. You can imagine he's getting blown away by the Bodhisattva of Compassion there. So it's about 8.20. So the first line is, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. Avalokiteshvara doesn't figure prominently in the larger sutra, the larger versions. And this is, again, a question of some debate, but it's not so important to talk about the debate here, just to note that in this version Avalokiteshvara is quite prominent. And Avalokiteshvara is the embodiment of compassion. and the Buddha in a sense utilizes Avalokiteshvara to help Shariputra. In Crooked Cucumber, there's a story about Suzuki Roshi being admonished by his teacher in front of his sangha.

[48:25]

And the reason that was done was that Suzuki Roshi's teacher couldn't go to the sangha and show them a certain matter or detail of instruction, but his student was sort of was utilized in order for the whole Sangha to see how a particular form should be done. So this is another way of skillful means of using someone in a beneficial way for everybody rather than just talking to someone who might not be able to handle or grasp the particular instruction. Iconography on the altar is the Buddha on the eucalyptus stump and then Avalokiteshvara on the right side and Manjushri on the left side. And Avalokiteshvara is the embodiment of compassion and Manjushri is the embodiment of wisdom. And to have that balance between the two, it sits the Buddha in the middle.

[49:29]

And the Buddha doesn't have to do anything. The Buddha is just sitting there. And I remember Mel Luxury once saying, well, the Buddha doesn't have to do anything. He just sits there or she just sits there. But so in a sense, we just sit here. But then we actually go out and we're doing something. So are we manifesting wisdom or manifesting compassion? Well, hopefully the two are going together. Too much wisdom can be very cold and dry and analytical and not so helpful. Too much compassion can be very soft and kind of wimpy and without much substance. So it's really good to have a balance between those two. And when you look up at the altar, that's a reminder to have the balance between the two. uh... i would like to test for a speaks in abhi dharmic language which is the language of the older original schools of buddhism and shari putra's forte and he's using abhi dharmic language which is that the uh... language of the psychology of uh... of buddhism uh... talking about the uh... the scandals no eyes no ears no nose uh... suffering the uh... basic causes of uh... existence and non-existence uh... the uh... twelve-fold uh... cause of uh...

[50:44]

causation and dependent origination, all this stuff is very familiar to Shariputra. And again, this is skillful means because when you want to meet someone and merge with them, so there's no boundary between or no gap between you and the other person, you want to come to them on their terms. So the embodiment of compassion knows the language to use and is meeting Shariputra on his turf. The Bodhisattva is an enlightening being. Traditionally, for centuries, Bodhi, which means enlightenment, and Sattva is being, people looked at it as sort of a static thing, like an enlightened person. which is true in a sense, but a more recent rendition of Bodhisattva that Thomas Cleary used in his work is enlightening being with I-N-G and that has a much more dynamic feel to it and it's a way to remember that our practice is not static but dynamic and that we should be enlightening each other and waking up each other and moving with that and not resting on our laurels.

[52:08]

And this enlightening being of course is one who helps others Now the Mahayana The name Mahayana, which is a great yana or great vehicle, was created in a situation where they were dispelled or kicked out from this council back in the 3rd century B.C. There wasn't such a thing as Hinayana, like lesser vehicle, but the Mahayana people felt that their idea of what Buddha taught and wanted to propagate was a greater vehicle and a greater teaching for everybody, and that these people that were stuck back there we're the old school and the Hinayana, which is a lesser vehicle, and it's not so complimentary. So we don't say Mahayana and Hinayana so much. We try not to, but the term does come up. So try not to get too attached to that we're the great vehicle and the Hinayana practitioners who are the practitioners from Southeast Asia, mostly, and our Thai monk friends down the street are lesser vehicle people because they actually are really sweet.

[53:20]

practitioners down there, and they're very helpful. They loan us tables and chairs for the events here without any question at all, I'm sure. What do the lesser vehicle people call themselves? They call themselves... well, Theravada is sort of the... there are a number of schools of Buddhism, but Theravada is kind of the one that's lasted, right? I mean, that's pretty much what... Yeah, which is that Theravada literally translates as council of elders. So it's like the older... So they don't use the term? No, this is the Mahayana or the Zen people. Mahasayagikas... We don't. We try not to use it. We try not to use that term, but it does come up. As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of respect for the Theravada or the older school teaching. The mindfulness practices, as I said, are very important.

[54:23]

And Trungpa Rinpoche's layout of his Dharmadhatu centers was that the practice was Theravada first, Mahayana, and then Vajrayana. And some people say with the Vajrayana, it's just kind of a way of separating out and making them more special than the Mahayana. So these debates aren't so important. But what is important is to know that at the source, there is something to be valued from the conservative side of our practice. And conservative has sort of a bad rap, especially in Berkeley. But a friend of mine who who loves books and words, says conservative literally means conserve. So they're conserving the tradition, and that's a really important thing to remember, that conserving the tradition is what's really going on here. And while this is a story, In a sense, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, it's important to remember that they are no other than us.

[55:26]

These are aspects of ourselves. When we are compassionate, we in fact are Avalokiteshvara, and when we are enlightening beings, we are Bodhisattvas. And it's a catch-22, because when you talk about it, there's a sense of ego and self-flagellation, but it's good to have that in our in our mind, in the periphery, that we, in fact, are Abhidhakateshvara, we, in fact, are Bodhisattva. But don't let it get in the way of your practice. There are three kinds of gifts. There are material gifts. there's the gift of a know-how or dharma and then there's the gift of non-fear and these are progressively sort of greater degrees of value. And the gift of non-fear is what Avalokiteshvara's gift is to us.

[56:28]

And we actually quote that line, you know, no fears exist. When we have fears, we are not liberated. We're actually bound by some condition, which is keeping us from our full expression. So this gift of Avalokiteshvara is quite important and what he, she is giving us through this sutra. In line two, when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, my teacher in New York used to say, Avrilokiteshvara is purposely separating himself from everything. And the reason he's separating himself is because he can see that there is something going on here that needs help and to try to take care of that. So it's a little tricky. It's maybe this two-edged sword that Charlie was referring to.

[57:29]

When we actually merge with something, there is no sense of self or other. We're just being with someone. And one of the complaints that people have about Buddhists is that we're just sitting here doing nothing. So we're just meditating and we're just kind of staring at a wall and not doing anything in particular, but there is a value to being separate from things, from people, from circumstance, and to actually see, oh, there's something going on here, and this might need some help, and maybe I can offer some help or assistance. This is sort of the Everything is a little different side of practice. When Dogen came back from China to Japan, someone asked him, what did you learn? And he said, eyes horizontal, nose vertical. And what that means is eyes horizontal is everything is the same, nose vertical is everything's different. So if everything is just the same and we don't see the differences, we won't do anything.

[58:32]

If everything is all different and not the same, we'll just get very caught up in all these differences and we won't be able to rest. So somehow or another, we have to find that matrix or the place where the two meet. So, the idea that Avila Kiteshvar separates, that's seeing the differences and seeing where help is needed and then going to take care of that. When practicing deeply, another translation instead of practicing is being deep Prajnaparamita, or coursing in deep Prajnaparamita. Practicing has a feeling that is ongoing, that we're always practicing, we're always doing something, and it's sort of this active dynamic side of our practice. Coursing, it reminded me of in the Bodhisattva ceremony, it says,

[59:36]

I take refuge in Dharma, swimming in the merciful ocean of Buddha's way. So when you're actually in the ocean, you're immersed in the water, and you're just in the water and you're totally covered by it. Practicing sometimes has a feeling of separation, that I'm practicing something, I'm doing something. And you have to remember that our practice is actually merging with things. and deeply has a feeling of whole body, that it's not someone studying about this thing, but actually practicing it so intimately, and they're right in the deep thick of it, and they're immersed in it, and there's no separation between the task at hand and themselves. They've actually become, in this case, they've become compassion. There was a fellow that was wondering what Suzuki Roshi thought about when people were bowing out at the end of Zazen at the door there.

[60:48]

And when the person came up and bowed, Suzuki Roshi said, I think about emptiness. And the guy or woman, whoever it was, didn't ask him, you know, what do you think about it? This is just what came out. And when I heard that story, it made me feel that this was someone that was so intimate with the practice, and so intimate and aware of the interrelatedness of everything, and so connected with his students. The way to do that is to think about emptiness, to think about the interrelatedness and the way to think about it. Emptiness all the time is you would have to be immersed in practice 24 hours a day. So this is the aspiration that we have and we are reminded by that when we sit zazen and when we chant. Has anyone ever been chanting the Heart Sutra and gone off somewhere and then been reminded and come back to the chant, to the words?

[62:05]

Prajnaparamita is the hub by which all the other paramitas are expressed. There's dana paramita giving, there's virya paramita, these are all listed in the Buddhist tenets. Energy, there's Sheila, Morality of Precepts, Patience, Kshanti. dana meditation and prajna or wisdom but prajna paramita is the most important and it's the hub by which the others are expressed so when you're really in wisdom when you're really connected and see the interrelatedness of all things then dana naturally comes forth in giving there's a natural response to life of morality and following the precepts one typically has a lot of patience

[63:26]

and there's energy that's brought forth, and there's certainly a meditative aspect to one's life when you're immersed or coursing in prajna wisdom. I wanted to read a little bit from Thich Nhat Hanh's book, The Heart of Understanding, which is a nice commentary on the Heart Sutra. And he's talking about how things are interrelated and which is the central tenet of Buddhism and emptiness. As I said earlier, Mel just simply said emptiness means interrelatedness. If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in the 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.

[64:28]

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. Interbeing is a word that is not a dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix inter with the verb to be, we have a new verb, interbe. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper interare. If we look into the 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 sunshine. And so we know that the sunshine is also in the sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And 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 therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper.

[65:31]

And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here. Time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists with a sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. To be is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone, although we feel that sometimes. You have to inter-be with every other thing. The sheet of paper is because everything else is. I have to say I'm not a big fan of Thich Nhat Hanh, but this is a really great rendition of Emptiness that I really cherish and like to recite at this class.

[66:46]

From the Zen teaching of Wei Hai, who is the teacher of Matsu, who was a teacher of Wang Po, who was a teacher of Rinzai, or Lin Chi, comes his understanding of skandhas. He's from the 6th century or so. And also Wei Hai was responsible for the monastic rules in Zen monasteries. So he figures in pretty prominently in our literature, just manifesting a certain bearing. It's not another name for Pai Cheng? Yeah. What do you spell his name? H-U-I-H-A-I. yet by changing i think it's uh... well no no i'm sorry way high nothing somebody else what are these things which we call the five scandas the propensity to allow the forms we encountered to set their state upon us thereby arousing forms in our mind is called the scanda form as this leads to the perception the reception of the eight winds

[68:16]

which are the influences which fan the passions, gain and loss, defamation and eulogy, praise and ridicule, sorrow and joy, which encourage the piling up of wrong notions, sensations are aroused, and this is called the skanda of sensation. Thereupon the deluded mind takes to perceiving individual sensations and perception is aroused, and this is called the skanda of perception. This leads to the piling up of impulses based on likes and dislikes, and this is called the skanda of impulse or volition. Accordingly, within the undifferentiated substance error gives rise to the notion of plurality and countless attachments are formed. whereas false consciousness or wrong understanding arises. And this is called the skanda of consciousness. It is thus that we define the five skandas. So we can see just from the one place everything comes out and we're formed just by that original encounter.

[69:19]

What also struck me was this, in the first line, the propensity to allow the forms we encounter to set their stain upon us. There's a sense that we're unstained or untainted, and the hymn to Prashaparamita brings forth that sense of no stains can touch her, is what we're practicing, trying to be stainless, even though, in fact, we're constantly being stained. In the third line, which this was the introduction to, perceive that all five skandhas in their own being are empty. Now we take in the world through the five skandhas, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. and uh... when we can see directly through prashna uh... what these uh... what these skandhas are that they're fundamentally empty we in fact will be free from pain uh... the fact that we don't see them clearly uh... formations uh... uh... get a hold of us and stain us and then we have this sense of self and that's where the beginning of our suffering uh... comes from the uh...

[70:44]

When Zen Center first started in San Francisco, they put together a newsletter, and they wanted to title it something. So they asked Suzuki Roshi, and he penned a poem by Ru Xing, who was a teacher of Dogen Zenji in China. And the poem by Ru Xing is called The Wind Bell, and that's what the name of the newsletter is. And the poem goes something like this. The real body is a mouth hanging in emptiness. Whether the wind blows from the east, west, south or north, it joins the whole universe in chiming out prajna. So the emptiness that is hanging there, catching the wind, is somewhat like the kites that we see, or those little doormats that you will see by the entrances to people's houses.

[71:48]

And if, in fact, we're truly empty and our mouths are completely open, we can take in the various sensations and things that are in the world, but if we don't attach to them, we can respond with just ting ting, ting ting, without any sense of self. Quite often we get caught, our mouth closes, we sort of chew on things, and then we don't ting ting, we yell at people. We do all sorts of things where we don't actually meet them directly. Oh, wow. It's a different translation. Uh-huh. Overall. Thank you. Do you want me to read it? Yeah. The entire body is a mouth hanging in space, indifferent to which way the wind blows, east, west, south, or north.

[72:51]

All day long, the wind bell speaks of Prajnaparamita for everyone. Some day, maybe. That's great. Thank you. When we see the emptiness of the five skandhas, we're seeing directly the cause and conditions that create this notion of reality. And so what is it empty of? Empty doesn't mean nothing, it means empty of an inherent separate existence, an interrelated existence. The Chinese used to use the word ku. So when we chant, you'll hear the word ku, which means sky, the idea that the sky contains everything. And the skandhas, of course, are form, which is the four elements.

[73:56]

air, earth, fire, and wind. Thank you. Feelings, which are either positive, negative, or neutral. Perception, which is through the six senses that we have. Thoughts and philosophy is a perception. Mental formations, which are impulses or volitional actions. And then consciousness, which is this psychological realm, which is the six senses and ego. Boy, it's just a few minutes before nine. And we're only on line three. Well, we, I'd like to stop here and as much as I'd like to just keep going and going. And ask if there's a question or a comment or a thought to share.

[75:02]

Yes? Is there, are we back to back with another class? Because maybe we could extend the class provided... Oh, we don't get through. Oh, no, there's actually, the next class is not until Sojourn Roshi's class in the fall. So we could extend it if we don't get through. I will try to be a little more succinct. A little more Chinese, perhaps. Get through it. We'll see how it goes as the weeks go on. Thank you. Yes? When did this version that we chant Yes. Yeah, it was the fellow who went from China back to India. It's his version that we're chanting, and his name is Swan Tsang, and that's from the 7th century.

[76:03]

H-S-U-A-N, T-S-A-N-G. T-S... A-N-G. Yeah. And... I probably got that from Kahn's, I think probably from this book here. Did you make an English translation? Oh, well, the most recent one is probably Sojin Roshi and the group of people who are trying to get all the centers translating the same lines. So there's these translation conferences going on to try to get everybody on the same page, so to speak. So whatever temple you went to in America, you'd be chanting the same thing. Are we doing it? Don't tell anybody out there. Yeah. We're not going to change that again.

[77:05]

If you look through the book, the different translations, you'll see it's basically the same, but there's little different random words and all that. Yes, John? What are skandhas? The skandhas literally means heaps or aggregates, and it's how we take the world in. So the world of I, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. So they're like windows. So you have I, and you have an object, and then there's consciousness putting the two together, thinking it, and that's considered, that's like, I-consciousness. But the skanda is actually the thing that we possess that takes the world in. Ear takes in sound, nose, smell, tongue, taste, feeling, touch, and then thinking is considered a skanda too. Yes? Perhaps it's sort of intuitive or understood, right? I missed it when I was writing, but

[78:09]

The very word itself, heart, does it have specific connotations or is it just generally describing the tone of what this all is? Well, I just have it as the essence. are the essence. There may be certainly other readings of that. But given that it went as far as 100,000 lines to bring it down to 25, the people who put this together felt that this was the essence of the literature. Yeah. And heart is very vital and sort of central to our teaching. And the cultivation of wisdom is central to our teaching. So it's a way of looking at what we should place a lot of importance on. Just briefly, could you explain that?

[79:46]

Sure. Well, a couple of things. One is, we actually recite, when we pay the homages at the meal chant, we actually pay homage to just one sutra, and it's the Lotus Sutra. So that's actually recited here. Thank you. Yeah, Satarma Pundarika Sutra, so we do pay homage to that. When Buddhism was in decline in Japan during the Kamakura period in the 1100s or so, there were three teachers who felt that in order to revitalize Buddhism, they'd have to do something. Shinran or Honen felt that all was lost and the only way to get salvation and realization was to pray to Amida Buddha in the Pure Land and be reborn in the Pure Land in the Western Paradise. So their chant, their practice was chanting Amida Buddha's name. Nisharin felt that everything was contained in the Lotus Sutra and so all the study and effort should be put there and that was the Buddhist teaching was all contained right there and just to go whole hog with it and yes you too will be liberated.

[81:02]

Dogen felt that the essence of Buddhist teaching was zazen and so he emphasized sitting and through sitting the realization of relatedness of all phenomena through studying Lotus Sutra or the Pure Land practices. But when you study the self and see the emptiness of all skandhas, then you see the interrelatedness of all things and suffering is lessened or stopped. And that's how, at least my sense of it, how it all kind of It's easy. Zazen is a real simple practice and Dogen sort of, even though his writing is very flowery, really emphasized the simpleness of it all, the basicness of it all.

[82:02]

And the Lotus Sutra has lots of passages which can be helpful to us, but it takes, for me, a little more of a stretch to really get to what's being gotten at there. That's kind of how I get at it. I mean, Zen came many, many years after all this stuff was written down, and the lineage was created to some degree in some patches where there's a question of the lineage holders, and actually heroes of the lineage were created centuries later, or attributed to this person who's the father of the Soto school, and the Rinzai school and whatnot. All this was done later. So the founders of Zen went back and extracted certain things that they felt were important for an understanding of the teachings. So this is what we've got this time around.

[83:03]

And it seems to work. But thank you for that question and the others. Well, I'm on a caffeine buzz, so I could go forever. But we should stop now. And thank you for your questions and your practice. And feel free to interrupt me and ask a question or even make suggestions about how this is going. Because there are a lot of people here with different points of view and it's not just one way. Thank you for all your hard study and research.

[83:52]

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