I presented the Heart Sutra for people, and as I speak with Malcolm, there's tapes of it from a couple of years ago, and I hope to replace those tapes with these tapes for a couple of reasons. The more you do something, the better you get at it, and we've also included a bit more liturgy with the Heart Sutra, which is the Hindu Prajnaparamita. We'll take a break about halfway through, about quarter after eight, and if you need to get up to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom, feel free to do so. It's formal and yet informal. It's okay. The fee for the class is $5 per session or $20 for the whole thing, and you can pay my dear assistant and comrade, Dolly, with that. and there'll be tapes for each class, so if you have to miss a class, you can hear it.

[01:05]

And either Dolly or myself will be holding on to the tape, and then you just contact one of us for it. I have done some research, and I'm going to present my sense of the Heart Sutra, what it means to me, and I've got a bunch of sources where I've tried to sort of back up or show another side of what's being presented from other traditions. And I really encourage people to ask questions. I don't pretend to know it all. And we all have our own understanding of the Heart Sutra. And we chant this thing, we chant the Heart Sutra every day. And as a practice, I try to

[02:09]

really chant with it and when I find myself spinning out on something else it's amazing. Somehow or another I've gotten down like five or six lines and not remembering what I was chanting and then I kind of come back to it. So perhaps as a practice we all can take it on to really chant when we chant for the four weeks and see how it feels and then we can bring that experience to these meetings and share them. I'd like to start each session by sitting for a minute and after that we'll chant the Heart Sutra and this time at least I'll hit the bells and if Dala you could be Kokyo and we'll do the Hymn to Prajnaparamita then go right into the Heart Sutra. So let's Here's one.

[03:12]

Yeah. We're going to sit for a minute. the lovely, the holy.

[05:40]

The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light, and from everyone in the 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. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, sets in motion the wheel of the dharma. Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the prajna paramita, perceive that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and what's saved from all suffering,

[06:57]

from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness form the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. O Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes, until no realm of mind, consciousness, no ignorance, and also no extinction of it, until no old age and death, and also no extinction of it, no suffering, no origination, no stopping,

[08:10]

Cognition also, no attainment with nothing to attain, a Bodhisattva who depends on Prajnaparamita. And the mind is no hindrance without any hindrance. No fears exist far apart from every perverted view. One dwells in nirvana in the three worlds. All Buddhas depend on Prajnaparamita. Therefore know the prajna paramita is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra, which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. Prajna Paramita Mantra.

[09:15]

Proclaim the mantra that says, gathe, gate, paragate, asangate, bodhisattva. I heard Rev. Anderson, who's the senior Dharma teacher over at the Zen Center, say that that's our favorite song. That's how he introduced it once, and I always kind of liked that. It's central to Zen, and our practice, and our life, and also, at the same time, we can say it in a light, yet respectful way, that it's our favorite song. Well, 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.

[11:01]

And the expression of prajna is karuna, or compassion. So that's the theme of this class, and the theme of our practice is cultivating prajna, which is wisdom or insight into the interrelatedness of all phenomena. And the expression is compassion, and compassion takes many forms. some of the sources that I use for the class, which I highly recommend you all to read and look at. One is Thich Nhat Hanh's book, which is The Heart of Understanding, which is a very simple yet complete text of the literature with his commentary. Edward Kansa, who's probably the foremost scholar and translator of the Prajnaparamita literature, and this book is called Simply Buddhist Wisdom Books, and it's the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra.

[12:12]

The Diamond Sutra is part of the greater Prajnaparamita literature. And it also is the oldest existing book that lives in the British Museum in London, dating from the 9th century. This book is not that old, though. This is a great book also called Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree by Bhikkhu Buddhadasa. Buddhadasa is a Thai monk and is in the Theravada tradition or the Hinayana tradition. And the monk, Santikara, who some of you may have seen here with the saffron robes, studied with him and has taken care of his monastery since Buddhadasa passed away. And while he's a Theravada teacher, there's a lot of Zen flavor to his understanding and the way he expresses it. And another book is called The Tiger's Cave, which

[13:29]

up in this area here somewhere or another. And the Tiger's Cave is a commentary by a Soto Zen priest from Japan that Mel likes an awful lot and that's also a good book. And we also have the good fortune to have starting not coincidentally, but interrelatedly, in our newsletter, an ongoing series of commentary on the Heart Sutra by our dear teacher, Sojin Roshi. And the whole commentary of the Heart Sutra has been bound and is in the library at some point. You can speak to Charlie Ware, the co-librarian, about its whereabouts, if it hasn't been checked out. It hasn't been fully welcomed yet, okay. But it's going to be serialized in the newsletter. So as the months go by, we'll get a little bits and pieces.

[14:31]

And that's, of course, also very good. I'd first like to start off with a historical context of where this literature comes from and in our practice. The original schools of Buddhism are the Theravada, what we call the Theravada schools. There were a number of Buddhist schools in India after the Buddha passed away in the 5th century or 4th century, depending how you look at it, B.C. And many of the schools died out. Some of the schools synthesized into a larger school. But in this day and age, we sort of collectively call them the Theravada, which is the school of elders.

[15:37]

And the school of elders were very analytical and literal in their understanding of Buddhism. And the way they looked at the world was very precise. and somewhat dualistic, but not dualistic in a negative way. It's really important for us to remember that the name Hinayana was put on, which means lesser vehicle, was created by the Mahayanas, which means greater vehicle. So that has a very dualistic feeling to it. But that was in response to a uh... being kicked out of a uh... a council of buddhist uh... practitioners and so they just call themselves the Mahayanas and the others were the lesser vehicle but the uh... the important thing to do uh... that we try to do as practitioners in this day and age is to draw on uh... what the Theravada teaching or the school of the elders uh... uh... sort of lay what kind of foundation they laid for us uh... that will help us with our practice

[16:46]

and thereby closing the gap between greater vehicle and lesser vehicle. Probably the most important thing that they provided to us were mindfulness practices. And the mindfulness practices that the Theravada, or the older school of Buddhist practitioners, laid out for us were used to orient the practitioner to contemplate the many aspects of impermanence. If you're not so mindful, you live in a dream world, and we are walking around and we're really not hip to what's going on. When you become mindful of something, you become much more intimate with it. You close the gap between yourself and it, and you can see how it changes. And when you see these changes happen, you see impermanence, and that's one of the marks of existence, along with suffering and that there's no soul.

[17:48]

So mindfulness practice is sort of basic Buddhism and something that we have to continue to do moment by moment and remind ourselves to bring our minds back to this moment. From Buddhadasa's book, he is equating mindfulness with wisdom. So as I said earlier, we're trying to cultivate prajna or wisdom. And he has a good explanation of how mindfulness puts us right in the heart of wisdom. And throughout these presentations, I'd like you all just to think about your own practice and what comes up for you and if things resonate for you. And if it seems important enough and feels like it would contribute to the group, please raise your hand and we'll take it.

[18:53]

all the while being mindful, that I have a lot of information to cover. But as it goes, as for concentration or collectedness, which is another name for samadhi, the void mind or empty mind has supreme samadhi. The superbly focused firmness of mind, a strained and uneven sort of concentration isn't the real thing. I should add, the little calligraphy right above the door as you go out the zendo translates as king of samadhis. It's Suzuki Roshi's calligraphy. Further, any kind of samadhi that aims at anything other than non-clinging to the five aggregates is wrong or perverted samadhi. You should be aware that there is both wrong samadhi and right samadhi. Only the mind that is void of grasping at the clinging to I and mind can have the true and perfect stability of correct concentration. One who has a void or empty mind always has correct samadhi.

[20:00]

The next practice is pana. That's a Sanskrit or Pali term. It means intuitive wisdom or prajna, the discernment of truth. Here we can see most clearly that knowing emptiness or shunyata, realizing voidness or being voidness itself, is the essence of wisdom. At the moment that the mind is void or empty, it is supremely keen and discerning. In contrast, when delusion and ignorance envelope and enter the mind, causing grasping at and clinging to things as self or possessions of the self, then there is supreme foolishness. If you think it is over, you will easily and clearly see for yourself that when delusion and ignorance have left the mind, there can be no foolishness. When the mind is void of foolishness, void of I and mine, there is perfect knowing, or prajna. So the wise say that shunyata, or emptiness, and pana, or prajna, mindfulness and wisdom, are one.

[21:09]

It's not that they are two similar things, they are one and the same thing. True or perfect prajna is voidness, absence of the delusion that foolishly clings. Once the mind is rid of delusion, it discovers its primal state, the true original mind, which is prajna. So, these Theravada practitioners, their ideal was called an arhat, and the arhat was an individual who worked on purifying themselves. They had a sense of things that were pure and things that were impure. And what we can gain from that is in the guidelines of our, say, the precepts, there's a way of framing our life and working in our life in such a way that we kind of stick to the literal sense of what's being taught by the Buddha.

[22:24]

So there's a literal world and then there's sort of this literal word and then the spirit of the word. And the arhats and the older schools tend to be more literal, which is kind of dry and cold and not too exciting or flowery, which kind of catches our attention. But it's important to have that side of practice be made aware of. So these arhats and other practitioners in those days, they met at these councils after the Buddha passed away to sort of collect his teaching and say, what would the Buddha really say, what's important, what should we pass on? And they felt that the teaching was aimed at this sort of cultivation of purity, and there were these certain standards that had to be maintained in order to be a Buddhist. And there were a number of councils after the Buddha died, and at the third council, which was around the fourth or third century before the Common Era, there were a bunch of dissenters who felt that there was more to what Buddha was teaching than what the arhats were claiming, or the people who were aspiring to arhatship.

[23:46]

And this group of dissenters were expelled from the council. And the group is known as the Mahasanghikas, M-A-H-S-A-N-G-H-I-K-A. And this group of people later formed the Mahayana, which is what the Zen school is a part of. And their ideal, as opposed to the Arhat, is the Bodhisattva. And the descent centered around the alleged purity of the arhat. And while the self-cultivation of these arhats was really important and admirable, given all the things that we could do in our life, which is not so pure, and why we're all here, because we're trying to cultivate some health in our life. Some of this stuff was a little dubious. For instance, there's a claim that the Arhats had no more desires, and the Mahasanghikas said, desires still arise.

[24:54]

The Arhats claimed that they didn't need anybody's help or didn't need to chant anything for help, and the Mahasanghikas said, you can still receive help from other people, and that's okay. and you can recite mantras and be helped by them. The Arhats said that they had no more doubts, and as we know, doubts arise, and we have faith and doubt constantly working within us. And the Arhats claimed that they were free from ignorance, which seems really kind of out there. And I'm reminded when I was studying this, at the end of the meal chant we say, practicing in muddy water with purity like a lotus. that little phrase or that little mantra if you will uh... really demonstrates how we as practitioners are still connected to the mud and to the mess and muck of our life and uh... we're rooted in that but there's this rising up out of but still seeing it for what it is and when we sit zazen as someone

[26:27]

claim just like a fountain, you're sitting upright and you're coming up and you're connected to the ground and you're connected or you're still aware of the muck and mire of your life. It's not something that you've gotten rid of or that is no longer with you. So these are like fundamental shifts in perspective of living your life. And no wonder the Arhats were really pissed off that these people were raising these questions. It really kind of undermined what they were putting forth. The Theravadins classified dharmas, or the various things in the world, as reality itself, while claiming that the self was insubstantial. And what I xeroxed here is a list of the hundred dharmas from the Hoso school, which is one of the older schools of Buddhism, and they claimed that those hundred things actually existed as entities.

[27:34]

And this class is not an examination of the various schools of Buddhism and exactly what they were talking about. But the reason I copied that, I wanted to show what people can really get into when they don't have a lot of it going on in their life. Not in a negative way, but if you think about how busy our lives are with so much going on, that the people that were practicing, it was pretty much a uh... a hermetic practice back in the old days and uh... you practicing caves and in forests and being very mindful of the various things that were arising in their mind and uh... they made lists of them as these things were actually real and uh... they should be admired or appreciated for what those things actually are and if you look at them and think about them there is some sense of reality to them that they actually do have some uh...

[28:38]

some substance to them. From our point of view, they're empty and they have no inherent substance. And that's, again, a place where we diverge from the older school. Around the turn of the millennium, almost 2,000 years ago now, there was this rise of Mahayana or greater vehicle practice. which disputed both the reality of these dharmas as well as saying that the individual was insubstantial. The three marks of existence are suffering or unsatisfactoriness, impermanence or things change and that there's no soul or self.

[29:39]

And what that means is there's no fixed self, there's no inherent self, there's no actual thing that you can say is the self. The Mahayanas took refuge in Buddha nature versus the historical Buddha. Now, you know, we take refuge in Buddha Dharma Sangha at the Bodhisattva ceremony and the marriage ceremony and the ordination ceremonies. While we have a reverence for the historical Buddha, for the teachings he presented to us, it's Buddha nature that we're taking refuge in. And when we bow toward the altar in the Zendo, we're not bowing to the craven image, we're bowing to what that image symbolizes. And that's really important. After the Buddha died, or before he died, he didn't want images made of himself.

[30:39]

And for a long while there were no images of him. And then slowly people needed things to remind themselves of him and what he stood for. There was like an empty pedestal where he would be, where you could imagine him sitting up on an altar. There were footprints and then images started coming. And of course there's this whole beautiful world of Buddhist art that represents who the Buddha was and what he stood for. But it's really important to remember that it's what he stood for and not him. And the older schools tend to think of him as this person and I wouldn't say deified because it isn't like that, but it's definitely a different feeling. A really good way to look at that, Mel often talks about the three bodies of Buddha.

[31:43]

We have the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. And the Dharmakaya is sort of the essence of Buddha that pervades everywhere, but it's ineffable. The Nirmanakaya Buddha is the historical Buddha, and it's each one of us in our various manifestations. And the Sambhogakaya Buddha is, if you will, kind of in the middle. It's the expression of the essence through a human form, if it happens to be a person, or in other ways, if you look at things in sort of a wider view. So that's kind of the spirit of Buddha and his teaching as it's represented in the three bodies. There's a great story in the Zen literature about this monk who was very cold, and he wound up taking a wooden statue of Buddha and burning it for heat.

[32:50]

And a literalist came up to him and said, how could you do such a thing? using what's at hand to make best use of it is probably the most important thing that we can do. And to be attached to Buddha as a person and the sacred images is one thing, but for life and sustaining life, burning the Buddha image, which is just a piece of wood after all, for heat to sustain life is more important. So again, this kind of reiterates the spirit of our practice. This isn't to say that someone from the older school wouldn't burn a Buddha image for heat, but it is in the Zen literature, and our literature is kind of filled with all this sort of iconoclastic behavior, which we've come to know and love so much. The Prajnaparamita texts originated with, as I said, the Mahasanghikas.

[33:51]

And the oldest version of that is the 8,000-line version, translated by Kansa, which dates from about 100 BCE, before the Common Era. And it's considered the second turning of the wheel. The first turning of the wheel was when the Buddha preached right after his enlightenment of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. So this is considered the second turning of the wheel. And the discourse was held on Vulture Peak, which is the same location as the first turning of the wheel. There have been elaborations on this teaching of 8,000 lines to 18,000 lines, 25,000 lines, 100,000 lines. There were a total of 27. As some of you may know, these words that were written down, were written down some years after the Buddha lived.

[34:54]

They were not written down while he lived. So again, it's the spirit of the teaching. So not to dispel any uh... admiration for teaching it's important to know that our lineage uh... goes back thousands of years and uh... it can be traced to people who carried the practice along it isn't a literal person to person to person that we can actually physically write down uh... as well as these various editions of this literature but what we can say is what the buddha said is that whatever i uh... whatever leads to the enlightenment and keeps us from bondage is my teaching. So whatever you derive that experience from is a teaching of Buddha. these various elaborations and condensations of the literature, I like to think of it as sort of artistic license.

[35:56]

People who were practicing Buddhism, and they elaborated in certain areas that they found to be maybe helpful to themselves, and maybe helpful to others, and they maybe deleted some stuff out too. So we're left to kind of wonder about all these additions, but the truth is still there if we put it into practice. The condensing of this 8,000-line version of the Prajnaparamita literature came down, as I said earlier, to the Diamond Sutra, which is also known as the Perfection of Wisdom in 300 lines. And it dates from 868, that book that's in the British Museum in London. Both the 8,000-line version, which is kind of the traditional or the original Prajnaparamita literature recension, as well as the Diamond Sutra, have a monk called Sabuti as the inquirer or the questioner.

[37:10]

The inquirer, the person who's asking the questions and the person who's responding or helping him kind of see who he is and see what the teaching is about, are two aspects of ourselves, the inquirer and the responder. So we often have questions about ourself, our relations with other people and other things. What is this? Why is that? And then hopefully with our practice, we have some clarity and some responses to that. So these are two aspects of ourselves. So the literature, even though it's thousands of years old, is relevant for our life today. And it's important to remember that not to be too attached to this old book, but to see it as a mirror of ourself and that we have these questions and we have some responses to these questions. put it into practice and see if in fact it works for us. The original literature, of course, was written in India. And the Indians, besides having a wonderful cuisine, food, tend to write in ways which are very elaborate and lots of layers and textures.

[38:25]

And a friend of mine said that the food actually reflects that, that the spicy food and the textures and flavor is really quite I wouldn't say unique, but when you taste Indian food, you really get a lot of that there. These elaborate descriptions are, again, somewhat like artistic license. But they're descriptive, and they can help us kind of appreciate what they were celebrating, because after all, the people that wrote this literature were celebrating enlightenment in the Buddhist teaching. So quite often, people who are celebratory are very effusive in their expression, so we have this literature to read and celebrate with them. In contrast to that, when Buddhism traveled across the Silk Road and went to a number of countries, in addition to China, the Chinese tend to be a bit more succinct.

[39:32]

So when they received this literature, the editions and editing started, and depending on who the editor was, things became less flowery and elaborate and became more succinct. The Heart Sutra that we chant is from a Chinese version by a monk named He Xuan Tsang, and he dates from the 7th century. An interesting thing happened. There were a number of pilgrims who went from China back to India to get the original teachings. It's kind of like in this country when these American beatniks and hippies wanted to go to Japan to get the real Buddhism. They didn't realize that it was right there. They didn't have to go back to the old country. But in any case, when he went to India, he went to Nalanda University, which was a Buddhist University in India that's associated with Nagarjuna, who dates from about 100 or so AD and who's a compiler and synthesizer of the Prajnaparamita literature.

[40:44]

He went there and he couldn't find any version of the Heart Sutra. which, according to the records, okay, so I'm just quoting what I've read. So this can be a little disturbing. Here's a central Buddhist teaching, and he can't find it at this Buddhist college in India. But he had a Chinese version of it. So, what he did was he translated his Chinese Heart Sutra into Sanskrit. Now it's possible, and our co-library can certainly verify, some of the books that are allegedly in our library are not here. That's correct. Right. And some that are here, are also here. Right. So, thank you for that, for the other side. So, for whatever reasons, he didn't find a copy of the Heart Sutra in India. It may have been checked out at the time, I don't know. Whatever the case, he translated his version into Sanskrit and then they had it there.

[41:50]

And this is referred to as a back translation. And Shannon Hickey, who attended my class a couple years ago, was kind enough to give me a study by a professor who did this whole big research on the Heart Sutra. And it's very long, but the essence of it is that it's There's a question, is the Heart Sutra apocryphal Chinese literature? And that it didn't actually, that it wasn't in India, that it was actually in China. And this person's theory is that there was this great bit of literature, this 100,000-line version in India, and then the Heart Sutra, I'm sorry, then it was translated into Chinese by Kumara Jiva in around the 5th century, 4th century AD in China. And then from that more succinct version, as I said, the Chinese tend to be a little more succinct heart sutra.

[42:51]

Then there, I mean, Prajnaparamita Sutra, there was a Chinese heart sutra created. And then the Chinese heart sutra was brought back to India and a Sanskrit heart sutra was made. So that's an interesting theory, how things came around. And depending if you tend to be on the faith side or the doubt and skeptical side of practice, you either continue practicing, or you say, this is just bogus, and I'm out of here. But I hope you stay with us. Does anyone wish to consider a break? Yeah. Yeah, as I turn the page, I see it's 8.15. So if people want to stretch their legs or remain sitting, it's OK. We'll take a break just for a second. You can either use the bathroom. Okay. Let's see. I found the other source for Harpsichord commentary, the Tiger's Cape.

[43:58]

So it is here in our library. Let's see. Edward Kansa, who did a lot of translation and commentary work on the Prajnaparamita literature, divided the history of it into three different phases. The first one was called the Abhidharmic phase, which was the analytical phase of Buddhism. And that was from the Buddha's death to the first century AD.

[45:01]

And we talked a little bit about the analyzing or the analytical, literal side of Buddhist practice. And the second phase was the development of wisdom. This isn't to say that wisdom wasn't inherent in the practice of the older school, but it really came into full flower during the second phase, and that's the rise of Mahayana. And the Two of the most important people during this phase were Nirgarjuna, who sort of synthesized the Prajnaparamita literature, and Vasubandhu, who was one of the co-founders of the Ideation School, which talks about the various consciousnesses that Mel often talks about in lecture. And if you notice during service in the zendo, the doshi or officiating priest bows at certain times after we do our nine bows or three bows.

[46:07]

And those bows are for particular personages who are very important in our literature. They bow during the seven Buddhas before Buddha, and then after Buddha they put their hands down and they stand up. And then the first bow is at Nagarjuna, which again is about 100 A.D. And, again, Nagarjuna is really important in our tradition. And then the second one is Vasubandhu. And then, of course, there are others along the way. So this was during the 2nd and 5th century, this rise of Mahayana. And then the third phase is the Tantra, which goes from 500 to about 1000 or so AD. And again, these are terms or things that one person put down, that people respect at Wakanda. Tibetan Buddhism began around 600 or 700 or so. The Buddhism came out of India up into Tibet, so it's consistent with that time frame.

[47:13]

And this was the rise of the Vajrayana. Yana means vehicle and Vajra is like the diamond thunderbolt. And what their emphasis was, or concern was, was harmonizing with the cosmos. Now, of course, Buddhists are trying to harmonize every moment, right? But what they worked on, or worked to develop, were a lot of mantra practices. So, at the end of our literature, we chant, gāte gāte pāra gāte pārasam gāte bodhisvaha. That wasn't in the original Prajnaparamita literature. This came much later. And again, the people who put this literature together drew on what was inspiring or important at the particular time, and they edited out other stuff. So this mantra was put in much later. Does it make it less bona fide?

[48:17]

are more bonafide. Well, it doesn't really matter, but it's what we chant. And interestingly enough, for me, when I, and maybe you guys have the same experience, when we're chanting, there's all these different pitches and levels and different tonalities of voice people chanting of the Heart Sutra. And some people know it by heart and some people don't and they chant along in the book. But at the very end, it all seems to come together and everybody kind of knows that gate, gate, paragate, and there's a certain feeling in the room during that time. Do other people feel that kind of experience? It's kind of like a harmonizing of the cosmos, like right there during that last line. So I'm glad it was added. It also has another significant aspect to it, which we'll get to at the end of the class when we actually go over that line. And lastly, the Prajnaparamita literature has been transformed into a visual image.

[49:31]

And the Prajnaparamita, which is up here, and which lives in, I think it's Borobudur in Indonesia, is a feminine image, and Rebecca Mayeno, who of course practices here, made a Prajnaparamita for our altar. And this image, people of course meditate on, and what she's holding is a Prajnaparamita literature. And while some people would think women or the feminine are the compassionate ones and men are the wisdom ones, so ones with insight and knowledge, in Buddhism, it's the exact, well, we actually hold both, right? The different aspects, but in our literature and in the iconography, it's the women who have the prajna

[50:38]

Yes? We do have an art book that doesn't circulate, but people might want to look at it on Barbador here. Oh yeah. And it's really quite spectacular. It's one of the most awe-inspiring blues temples in the world. I saw it the other night. Yeah, it's around here somewhere. This woman scholar that I referred to earlier, whose name is Jan Nettier, wrote this treatise on why this Heart Sutra might be apocryphal. And we have to actually look at what she's presenting and examine it for ourselves because in some ways things are not so consistent.

[52:00]

For instance, Typically, a sutra opens up, thus I have heard, which is Ananda, who was Buddha's cousin and lifelong attendant, who had this memory that recalled every word his cousin said, and so after the Buddha died, the monks asked him to repeat everything, and they wrote it all down, and that's how we have the Buddha's teaching today. So, thus have I heard is Ananda, and then he goes on with what he heard. But the Heart Sutra doesn't start off like that, so it's technically not a sutra in that regard. It also typically gives a location where this teaching of the Buddha was held in the Jetha Grove or on Vulture Peak or what have you, and there's no location. and the circumstances of the preaching, kind of what was going on at the time, if there was a war, if it was peaceful time or what have you.

[53:04]

It lacks a proper conclusion. Typically at the end of a sutra, all these people are enlightened and there's like this spontaneous sort of blissful feeling. There's flowers raining down from the heaven, Indra smiles, the king of the gods and all that. It doesn't have any of that either. And there's no appearance of the Buddha in the Heart Sutra. In the longer versions, at the end, it's written out that he says, well said, well said, like what this teaching has given us is true, and thank you for saying so. And the Prashant Paramita literature has limited examples of mantra formulas. And when they first appear, they're actually like Dharanis. Dharanis are untranslatable words. words or sounds that we chant, like the Shosaimyo Kichito Durrani or the Daihishin Durrani.

[54:18]

These mystical incantations have a certain power or feeling to them that we chant. to go back to the Tantra feeling of harmonizing with the cosmos, but the Prajnaparamita literature typically doesn't have that sort of thing. And at the end of this whole Heart Sutra, which is central to our teaching, there's this mantra, which is really inconsistent with the pattern. There's a a scholar named Fumi Masa, and this person's research led him to conclude that the Chinese Hsinching, H-S-I-N-C-H-I-N-G, which traditionally is rendered as Heart Sutra, should actually be understood as Durrani scripture. And again, this is just one person's idea, but I got to thinking about that, that Durrani is something that is chanted, and we benefit from it in ways which are fairly unquantifiable, but there is something that happens through chanting.

[55:36]

And if we don't, there's a, people were wanting to know what was being chanted when the chantings here at Zen Center were in Japanese. So the Heart Sutra was translated into English, then people got to understand what they were chanting. And there's a certain power to chanting just for the sake of chanting without trying to derive any meaning from the words. And that's sort of the feeling of Dharani. And Mel's often said, when people ask me, I don't understand what this means. What does this mean? What does that mean? That kind of gets into our sort of critical mind, which has a place in our life, but also there's a value to just chanting and just chanting every day and just expressing ourselves through the chant wholeheartedly, something actually happens. And that's what I think this scholar was getting at, Durrani scripture.

[56:42]

a text intended for recitation and not intended to represent the harder essence of the Prajnaparamita literature. And as I said before, the Buddha said, whatever is conducive to liberation and not to bondage, that is my teaching. And that helps us accept whatever comes our way. And people say, well, the flowers are my teacher, or gardening is my teacher, or soju is my teacher. Whatever helps you lessen your grasp on things, lessen your attachment, it is conducive to your waking up. is the Buddha's teaching, but not the historical Buddha, just Buddha as the essence of life. Lastly, in this sort of historical overview, I wanted to mention that Lots of Buddhist scriptures were coming out of India over the Silk Route into China in the early part of the first millennium.

[57:58]

A lot of the stuff. It was all new and the people were pretty excited about it and wanted to utilize it. a lot of it was getting translated and uh... commentaries were written down on it uh... on them and uh... they were groups of people who want to synthesize all these various uh... sutras and various buddhist teachings into some kind of cohesive unit that they could use to uh... help people and to teach people and uh... That tradition of synthesis in Japan is known as Tendai, the Tendai tradition. And they use sutra recitation, they use physical meditation, they use mantra. I don't know a whole lot about it, except that Dogen, sort of the founder of our modern day Zen, was ordained as a Tendai.

[59:03]

Tendai monk, and that was what was prevalent in his time in Japan. And lots of different practices that were put together. Also, a lot of the monks in China at the time stayed at Vinaya monasteries, and the Vinaya is the rules of Buddhism. And it's sort of a literal thing, what you do, what you don't do, how you wash your clothes, what kind of food to eat, when you eat, and all this sort of stuff. So these people who are doing these esoteric practices and synthesizing all these various practices were staying quite often in monasteries that were pretty much just kind of going by the rules, so to speak. And so there's lots of blending of different traditions there as this new tradition was being imported into China. And there were other people who were interested in just finding a one-practice system, something very simple, succinct, just a single thing just to do and to follow that through.

[60:12]

And there were numerous schools of Buddhism, and what came to A lot of these schools, of course, died out as the years went by. Other schools were incorporated into others, and things evolved. But in Japan, in the 13th century, around Dogen's time, Buddhism was somewhat in decline, and there was lots of chaos and confusion there. There were three people who decided to focus on a one-practice system to gain liberation. And the three people were Jodo, Nishiren, and Dogen. And Nishiren felt that all of Buddha's teaching was contained in the Lotus Sutra. And he felt that just chanting the Lotus Sutra was enough, and studying the Lotus Sutra was enough. And Meili, of course, taught a class on the Lotus Sutra not too long ago. Well, I didn't attend it.

[61:14]

From what I gather from people who did, there's a wealth of information and help in just chanting the Lotus Sutra and doing that practice. The Jodo sect of Buddhism is the Pure Land sect of Buddhism, and what Jodo felt and what Honin, the founder of that tradition, felt was that times are too tough here. There's no way you'll be able to do it on your own. And salvation and bliss and the realization of Buddhahood will only come in the Pure Land, in the Western Paradise. And by just chanting Amida Buddha's name over and over again, like a mantra, will enable you, hopefully, to be born into that other place. And so that was used as some sort of other power, is referred to as an other power practice. And it was like a mantra, and Amida Buddha is sort of the central figure in that. And then of course comes Dogen, who said that the true teaching of Buddha and what will help everyone is not other power, but self-power, cultivating self-power.

[62:27]

And the way you cultivate self-power most efficiently is through Zazen. So that was his push, was Zazen. So even though he was ordained as a Tendai monk and practiced all those teachings, he felt that Zen was really the way to go and that's what he followed through with to the end of his life. well that's twenty five hundred years of buddhism in forty five minutes uh... uh... right thank you yeah so now i'm uh... going to uh... start with the actual literature that we uh... we chant and uh...

[63:29]

talk a little bit about it. So first will be the Hymn to Prajnaparamita. There was no commentary on this that I followed, I just thought about it and put my thoughts down and I just want to share them with you and I'd like to hear any thoughts or feelings you have about it. We have about 20 minutes left. Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. For me, this sets a tone and a place of honor and respect to what we're about to chant and practice. The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light.

[64:32]

And from everyone in the triple world, she removes darkness. Mel often, actually he doesn't often talk about it, but when he says it and you know it's meant and it's helpful, I think of it as often because I think about it a lot. But on occasion he says, when we have fears, Some people run away from them, but what you want to do ultimately is to shine a light on your fear. Shine a light into the corner where your fear lies and see it for what it is, and then you can really deal with it directly. That's what our practice is about, dealing directly with our fears, our hopes, our aspirations, our fears, all the various things that come up for us. For me, this is giving us light to shine into the dark corners so we can see our life for what it is. And when it's illuminated, then you can really see it completely and then you can deal with it.

[65:36]

Until it's illuminated, we're kind of in a fog where it's kind of shadowy and it's really not so clear. As I said before, she is a source of light. Wisdom is feminine in this literature, and compassion is masculine. And for me, a source of light is a source of our inspiration. We chant this every day, and we're looking for some source, something to inspire us to come up from down, deep, up, and out so we can meet everyone and everything completely. And we're looking for a source, some kind of energy source, something to tap into that will enable us to do that. Even in adversity, where is the source of our inspiration? And the people who composed this literature felt that this literature will be the source if you really practice it wholeheartedly. And from everyone in the triple world, she removes darkness. Well, everyone means everybody.

[66:37]

So it's not, even though these are Buddhists that are practicing and Buddhists have the most affinity or feeling for this literature, it is for everybody. It's just a matter of hearing it. And the triple world is traditionally looked at as the past world, present world, and future world, or past, present, and future time. And also, the triple world can be looked at as the six realms of existence that we transmigrate through. And if you ever look at the Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life, you'll see these six realms of existence that we transmigrate through, and there's one right above the telephone there. And the six realms that we all transmigrate through are the And in each of these realms is depicted a Bodhisattva and the Bodhisattva is there to see us through this particular realm of existence and inspire us to wake up and to move on and not despair.

[67:39]

In each realm of existence there's a Bodhisattva. So there's always hope if we remember. In the six realms of existence, there's the heavenly realm, which everything is sort of blissful and godlike. There's a jealous god or fighting spirit realm, which are people who have been, they've experienced the heavenly realm, they want it, and they're out of it, and they want it. So they get, they're very jealous, and they fight amongst themselves. There's the human realm, which is the realm of desire and all the feelings and emotions and things that come up. And I might add the human realm is the only realm that we truly can wake up. The other realms are just there for us to experience, but it's truly as humans that we wake up. Which, again, is another bit of good news for us because we don't have to be gods to wake up. We can wake up with our quagmire of stuff that we're kind of born with and that we have to live through. And like in muddy water, we rise up out of it and flower.

[68:41]

So, as humans, there is hope. Those are the three upper realms. The three lower realms are the animal realm, the hell realm, and the hungry ghost realm. In the animal realm, it's just instinctual. If you ever feel like you're just an animal, you're just hungry and you want to eat, or you're craving sex, or whatever, this is sort of the animal realm coming through you, or you in the animal realm. In the hell realm, it's really bad and really painful. And there's various descriptions of what that's like. And the Buddhists have been really descriptive about the various things that happen to people that fall into the hell realm. But you don't have to read it. You actually have experienced the hell realm. And it's as awful as they say it is. Maybe it's worse than what they say it is. But anyway, there is the hell realm. And then there's the hungry ghost realm, which we tried to appease at the Sagaki ceremony at Halloween time in October.

[69:46]

and the hungry ghost realm are people who have large bellies with a huge appetite and needle-thin necks and they can't get enough of what they want and so they're just constantly hungry and it's pretty hellish. So those are the six realms that we all go through and we've all experienced them. We think we're on top of the world or we're underneath the world and no matter what, as I said, there's always There's always hope if we remember this practice. 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. Herself an organ of vision. She herself is a whole person. It's a whole being. It's not just with. I have some really great ideas about dispersing the gloom and darkness of delusion.

[70:49]

It's not that, it's her whole being. And that's again what our practice is, being wholehearted. She herself is an organ of vision, so she actually sees. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas. Dharmas are things, the things of the world. And having an own being, seeing own being is clearly seeing the inherent existence of each thing. Clearly seeing the inherent existence of each thing. for she does not stray from it. Because once you see it, you don't look back. You just stay with it. She maintains her intention. We have to maintain our intention in practice. And having seen this, there is, as I said, no turning back. Kanza says that first you get the skandhas in view, and then you get the dharmas in view. The skandhas are the way we'll be talking about it momentarily, well, probably next week, but the skandhas are the five aggregates or how we take the world in.

[71:53]

So once we clearly see those for what they are, then we can see dharmas for what they are, and that in fact is going to be our liberation. He says that to have the wisdom eye is to have nirvana as its object and is to remove the latent tendencies toward ignorance. In other words, no turning back. Okay. This is Kansa's commentary.

[72:56]

Since, however, Avalokiteshvara's wisdom is coupled with compassion, he does not become so entranced with and absorbed in the sight of Buddhas that he forgets everything else. He is thought of as a being who has made the great vow of a bodhisattva, I shall not enter final nirvana before all beings have been liberated. by entering their final nirvana, the Bodhisattva would completely cut himself off from the world and thereby abandon the beings in it to their fate. So what that is pointing to or addressing is that For seeing things for what they are clearly, you can see the suffering of the world, you can feel the suffering of the world, you can see the suffering of your friends and family, but you don't get caught up into the person or the personality of it, because as soon as you get caught up in that it's very easy to get distracted and you can kind of get brought down from it.

[74:02]

So some people might feel this is kind of not so compassionate because it has sort of a cold and distant view to it, but actually it seems to be the most healthy way of dealing with suffering. Because as we all know, when we get caught into other people's suffering, it's very easy to get caught in that drama and lose our own ground. and a loss. So as Buddhists, we need to maintain our ground and our footing and to really be present with the dealings with people and their suffering. And lastly, the perfection of wisdom of the Buddha sets in motion the wheel of the Dharma. sets in motion, has a feeling of an active practice. It's not static. We're just not sitting like bumps in a log staring at the wall, although we are actually sitting like bumps in a log staring at the wall. The compassionate side of the practice, the expressive side of the practice is actually an active side and moving things and engaging the world actively.

[75:06]

And the wheel of the dharma, the wheel or the dharma chakra, is a symbol of the teaching, is a visual symbol or reminder of the teaching. And there are eight spokes on it, which symbolize the eightfold path. And there's three aspects to the turning of the wheel. The first one, as I said, the Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, the Eight Spokes of the Wheel. And then the second was the rise of the Mahayana. And then the third symbol of the teaching is the Vajrayana, which is found in the Tibetan practices by and large. And in our practice, it would be the mantra practices that we have. So, we have about five minutes left, six minutes left or so. Is there anything that has come up for people that they'd like to ask or share that's relevant to your practice, what your experience has been through chanting the Heart Sutra and sitting?

[76:22]

what I've talked about, what I haven't talked about. Yes? Question. When do we chant the hymn to Prashna? That happens, I believe, just on Monday mornings. The Kokyo recites that. before we launch into our sutra. Is that? That's right, just Monday morning. It's in the sutra books on one of the pages, but that's the only time that we recite it. And that was added as well as the Prajnaparamita image that Rebecca made to bring a more feminine presence into our practice. It's been pretty much a male-dominated tradition for centuries, and so these are really two great examples of bringing the feminine in. Yes? You were saying there's no turning back. I heard you say that a couple of times. But you're saying after seeing Buddha, after experiencing nirvana, is that what you were talking about?

[77:37]

Because my question is, why isn't there any turning back? Well, there is turning back. I mean, people do turn back, and they stop practicing. But I think that when I'm reminded of when Mel came to sit, and he had kind of found what he was looking for, and it made so much sense to him that there was like no turning back, and that was sort of following the intention. It wasn't that he saw nirvana or bliss or whatever, but whatever it was resonated with him, and it was like, this makes sense. And everybody is at a different place with what makes sense or not. I mean, we have a faith and a doubt thing that we go back and forth on, and we all, I'm sure, have had doubts about this practice, legitimacy of practice, or legitimacy of myself being able to, you know, fulfill what the practice is presenting. But it's an individual question, and I'm somewhat of a zealot, and I really

[78:44]

I think that there's no turning back when you get a taste of it. But again, it really comes back to an individual question and all. Of course there is turning back. as Mel said, sometimes, he said on Saturday, you know, we have a bunch of people come for Zazen instruction every week, about, you know, three, four, twelve people, whatever, and maybe a few stay to continue practicing, and the ones who don't practice, they might not be ready yet. So it's like, when one's ready to practice, then it happens. Yeah. Sometimes I think of turning back as being, looking backwards, in a circumspect way. And where that leads my entire being, maybe to a bad place, enjoying the position of a fool.

[79:48]

But there's still suffering, and also stepping right into bad suffering through it, perhaps, you know. But feeling compelled. Well, there's a hindrance called skeptical doubt. It's okay to have doubt, but when it becomes skeptical or cynical or things are circumspect, it's a hindrance because it impedes our practice. And it's a way of looking at, well, what's that skepticism about? And you mentioned something, Something else in that? The fool, yeah, we have this line, practice as though like a fool, like an idiot. It doesn't mean to practice stupidly, it means to practice not knowing and being fresh and open like a simple person. Like a simple person, to be open and receptive to the teaching. Although we can act foolish and we can be foolish.

[80:57]

That happens. Quite often, at times, yes. Yeah, quite often. Yes, Greg? And then Anne. Oh, I'm sorry, Anne. Thanks, Fred. No, I just wondered, did you say where this Hymn to Prajnaparamita is from? I mean, is it part of, I don't think it's part, is it part of the whole Prajnaparamita? Well, it's somewhere, I mean, there's a, all it has in here, is homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. And then it goes into what we chant for the Heart Sutra. So it's part of the original. Part, yeah. Part of the original, but the actual translation and all of that is, I'd have to check, or you can check with Mel. No, I was just wondering, I guess I'd forgotten that this was part of the original Sutra. It's good.

[81:58]

Alan and Laurie actually taught a class on the 8,000 line version of the Heart Sutra and there's a tape of that and of course there's a book of it too and you can read that and you can see little bits and pieces of the Heart Sutra within that but there's lots of other things that are going on too. Great read Joe. Rusty, it looked like you were reading from notes. Are these notes written up any place? Let's see. These notes here are written up in this place, which is from a couple of years ago that I cherish, which I've just compiled just from all this study and stuff. Can they be written up in a place where we can have them? uh... yeah i mean i think i could uh... yeah i guess i could i could see rocks iraq simp uh... yet because there are some if you'd like to share uh... what what's uh... and i uh... that start off earlier uh... at five o'clock so i know it's uh... it's time to have it this penny of of mel's uh... lectures on the heart sutra is to be the newsletter so there's some

[83:16]

of that, that I've kind of augmented my notes from a couple years ago, some new insights that Mel has given me. And then my teacher in New York did a commentary on the Heart Sutra that I kind of grew from also. So it's a lot of stuff. It kind of reminds me of what Mel was saying, when you come, when he was lecturing during Sashin on the Genjo Koan, When you're far away from practice, you think there's nothing to learn or something, but when you get involved in practice, you realize it's bottomless, and it's like, it is bottomless, and at a certain point, you just have to say, you know, it's endless, and I can only kind of put together so much. So, that's my spiel. Well, thank you very much.

[84:09]

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