Good morning. Is it on? Yes? Can you hear back there? It's warm. So today I want to continue talking about the Heart Sutra. I gave a talk before the Aspects of Practice on the Heart Sutra, and I just got through the first paragraph, so I wanted to continue. But since it's been such a long time, I thought I would do a recap, and hopefully I'll get past the recap. Otherwise, like Mel always says, we always end up talking about the same thing.

[01:07]

But it's always different. A little bit different. But as we know, it's a very rich, very dense sutra. It's very condensed. When we sit in zazen, our energy is very condensed. galaxies form around a middle point and all the energy gets condensed and then that's the Sun. When Zazen sort of condenses our energy, concentrates our energy in a similar way, that lights up our inner light, or it generates heat. Though we're always sweating. So the Heart Sutra is very condensed, and the whole sutra in the end is condensed in the mantra, gāte gāte pāra gāte pārasam gāte bodhisattva.

[02:20]

And so it's sort of in the Mahayana spirit of expressing the Dharma in a way that is very readily accessible right now. And sort of bring this huge ocean, swallowing this huge ocean of wisdom into this just one gulp, which is the Heart Sutra, the heart of wisdom. So the original Sutra has 600 volumes. It's the largest literature. So for a tradition, a religion that really emphasizes going beyond words and language, it's pretty verbose. So in Christianity or Judaism where God is the verb, you would understand that the verb is emphasized.

[03:31]

Anyway, so it's condensed into this one sutra that we chant every day. We chant it in the morning and we chant it in the afternoon. And basically it's the mantra of our lives. It's the early Indian Mahayana version of Dogon's Genja Koan. It's the mantra of our life. And it has very different meanings in the Mahayana teaching, because it means Buddha itself, suchness. It's a state of mind. It's a word. It's an incantation. It's also thought of as a spell. It's also thought of as a deity, a feminine deity.

[04:33]

Prajnaparamita. So it has all those different forms in the Mahayana literature. So the Prajnaparamita was developed between 200 BC and 400 of the Common Era, and it's considered a second turning of the dharma wheel. So it's kind of like the gospel. If the ancient Buddhism is, this is from a Christian point of view, of course, the ancient Buddhism is the Torah, the Mahayana is the gospel. But actually, each tradition has these two different forms of the teaching. In Zen, we also have square Zen and beat Zen. We also have Hinayana and Mahayana and Zen in the Torah. You also have the lower Torah and the higher Torah, and the same with the Gospel.

[05:39]

So it's actually true of any teaching. But in any case, it expresses the second turning of Buddhist teaching. So prajna is wisdom and we say wisdom beyond wisdom because it's wisdom of emptiness, wisdom of emptiness beyond anything we can say about wisdom or anything that we can understand about wisdom with our intellect. And that's why the sutra is sort of very impenetrable. When we first approach it, it seems very, it's difficult to understand. They're kind of letters of emptiness, and it's hard to fathom. So it's wisdom of emptiness without any fixed definition of what it is, and yet it encompasses the whole universe.

[06:49]

So all phenomena, all dharmas, all skandhas, is the Prajnaparamita, but given that each thing that comprises the universe is empty in its own being, then it doesn't have a fixed definition and it is defined by the context and by the interaction and interdependence of dharmas. So it's wisdom applied to circumstances. Wisdom in action. There's four actually traditional wisdoms in Buddhism. The wisdom of seeing things as they are. The wisdom of seeing everything as being the same. The wisdom of seeing everything as being different. And is it same or different, right?

[07:54]

There's a wisdom of difference and there's a wisdom of sameness. And then there's a wisdom of action, of manifesting wisdom in action according to the circumstances in the here and now. That's why I'm sort of in, I'm a psychologist, and in the field of therapy, they're trying to come up with sort of plans, managed care plans for therapy, you know, that everybody would do the same thing. And it's impossible to do the same thing because every person is different. Every situation is different. We are different at every moment. And the client is different at every moment. So you just have to manifest wisdom according to the circumstance at that moment. And you can't package it and sell it. Wisdom is also described as the lovely and the noble and the noble mother of all Buddhists.

[09:09]

It's the wisdom of compassion, because it's a wisdom of emptiness. But the emptiness of feelings is compassion. The emptiness of thought, the mind without thought coverings, attachment to this idea of self or this idea of object is compassion. So emptiness itself is compassion. If compassion is a feeling, it is the feeling of emptiness. And, you know, a noble mother is wise because she sees beyond her own needs, sees the needs of her child beyond her own needs. If you just see the needs of your child through the lens of your needs, then that's not very wise.

[10:19]

Or your own wants and desires. And you even help them, even if they're not being very nice to you. But compassion also needs wisdom, as we all know. because their sentimentality is not true compassion. It looks like compassion, but it isn't. So compassion also needs wisdom, and wisdom is usually described as a sword. Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, carries a sword, and that's cutting of attachment, of entanglements. So compassion also needs to be expressed through wisdom, otherwise it's sentimentality. So therefore, we have the heart of wisdom. of the Prajnaparamita, the wisdom of the heart. So in the sutra, Shariputra asked the Buddha, how does one course or practice with wisdom?

[11:34]

Let's say it says, and it says, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita perceived, So the Buddha is in Buddha's Samadhi at Vulture Peak. And so he's in a state of Gathe, Gathe, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhisvaha. And so he doesn't want to say anything. So he asks Avalokitesvara, to explain to Shariputra the Mahayana nature of understanding of wisdom. Shariputra is the arahat of the old ancient Buddhism who was excelled in the understanding of Abhidhamma.

[12:35]

And Abhidhamma is sort of the first form of Buddhist psychology. And so this Buddha now is expounding the Mahayana understanding of Abhidhamma. And he asks Avalokiteshvara to explain it to him. So Buddha doesn't want to explain the unexplainable, but Avalokiteshvara will, out of compassion. So again, that also stresses the fact that in Buddhism, wisdom is the wisdom of the heart because Avalokitesvara is the manifestation of it. And we have to have wisdom to realize that compassion or real love or an empty heart is the most important thing, more than knowledge.

[13:44]

We can have a lot of knowledge and a lot of hours of meditation, but if we don't have compassion, we have nothing, in the bad sense. We also have emptiness. So in It's the thought coverings in our mind and the feelings, the objects in our mind and the feelings linked to these objects that cover our compassion and that make us relate to people in a conditioned kind of way based on those mental objects that we have. So we're relating to each other through these mental objects which are the imagined nature that we construct. And that imagined nature that we construct through our mental objects obstructs our nature or the nature of interdependence.

[14:54]

So the practice of non-attachment or no-mind, of letting go of the fixed ideas in our minds, is how we open up our hearts. and then we can greet each other truly and truly meet. So then the sutra says, Avalokiteshvara when practicing the Prajnaparamita perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was safe from all suffering. In the practice of Zazen, we have the experience of form and of emptiness, of samadhi, of calm mind, but we also experience the skandhas. And the skandhas are the basic elements of self.

[16:06]

And they include, as we know, but I'll go over them just for the sake to remind you and for people who haven't heard this before, perceptions and sensations, impulses, desires, the impulse to do something, the desire for a particular object, and mental formations. And mental formations are the kind of projects that we have, the purposes and volitions. I want to do this in the future, I want to do that. This worked, this didn't work. I'm going to try this, you know, this angle, this time, maybe be more successful and so on. So this is kind of the scheming and the planning that takes place in our mind. And we often do that in Zazen too. Then we have the body with its various functions. with its various parts, feet, legs, arms, fingers, head, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, so on.

[17:19]

Then we have feelings, and the feelings are pleasant, or they're unpleasant, or they're neutral. And then the fifth skanda is consciousness. and consciousness also has various levels that we experience in meditation. So we have pure awareness. In pure awareness, we don't interpret what the meaning of various perceptions are. And we have self-consciousness, the idea we have about ourselves, We have our analytical consciousness, which is our reasoning, our thinking mind, logical, language, and so on. And then we have memory.

[18:24]

Memory is also a form of consciousness. So in their own being are empty means that in addition to the skandhas, there's no inherent self. So we're a bundle of body and consciousness and feelings and sensations. And beyond this, there's no self. So when we say, well, is there a self or there isn't a self? Well, the self is the skandhas. But if we make something additional to the skandhas, if we make a self out of the skandhas, then we cause suffering. And if we don't make a self out of the skandhas, we just notice, this is thinking, this is perceiving, this is sensation, this is a thought I have about who I am,

[19:36]

but it's just a thought. This is a thought I have of who such a person is. This is a feeling, you know, anger, joy, anxiety, whatever it may be, but we don't add anything extra to it, then we don't create suffering out of the skandhas. And we don't turn them into volitional thought formations, don't feed the the feelings or the thinking, particularly when we're talking about the poisons. So if we have anger, one thing is to have anger as a feeling. Another thing is to turn anger into hate. And our mind is kind of a machinery for turning anger into hate. And if we're not careful, we're always, you know, generating this originating hate from anger by reinforcing the ideas that we have about why we're angry.

[20:50]

Who are we angry at? And then we're caught by the anger. So, then the Sutra says, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness form. And the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. And so each one of the skandhas, so you could also, we also understand, Form is emptiness, feelings are emptiness, emptiness are feelings, perceptions are emptiness, emptiness are perceptions, and so on and so forth with each one of the skandhas.

[21:51]

And since form is also the body, in Buddhism form is also the body. So form is body and it's also matter. and the body is matter. So we say the body is emptiness and emptiness is the body, right? And this has been very well worked out by a lot of people, you know, that if you look at matter and you go into the subatomic realm, what you find is emptiness and energy. And that field of emptiness and energy is what we experience in Zazen. So we take the form, this posture of the body, and we experience this field, this cosmic field.

[22:58]

The whole universe is in this posture. Buddha's body, or the body of Buddha, So we also say in emptiness we drop the body, Dogen says, to drop body and mind. So in Zazen we also drop the body. We're fully in the body, mindfulness of the body, but also mindfulness without the body, dropping the body. And this dropping the body is like harmonious functioning. It's like a little bit like the, you know, the second wind that athletes get. I don't know if you ever had that experience. You just, you know, you're running and you're tired and you're exhausted. And if you push yourself through a certain point, then you go beyond the body into this field of

[24:10]

have gone beyond. And then the body is sort of functioning in harmony by itself. The body is also empty because it's always changing. It's always changing, it's impermanent. So the cells are always regenerating. Our experience of our body is always changing. We also experience that in Zazen. And it's just energy in constant motion. I remember doing a shosan ceremony.

[25:12]

I asked Mel, what is unborn vitality? So he had been talking about vitality. So I asked him, what is unborn vitality? And his reply was Mexican jumping beans. Mexican jumping beans. It's pretty good. So this is this jostling of energy, and that's what the universe is. It's constant jostling, and that's what we're all doing with each other. We're constantly jostling and gravitating around each other. And at the same time, there's a point of perfect stillness in that great movement. I keep putting my glasses on, but they keep, how do you say it in English?

[26:21]

Fogging. So I can't see, I'll just give up. Okay, then, you know, the sutra gets to a point where it gets a little bit technical. When it gets into fine points of Abhidharma, And so in order to understand it, it's so condensed that then you have to understand the whole history of Abhidhamma and Buddhist thought, which can get a little bit dense. But basically, in Abhidhamma, there are conditioned and unconditioned dharmas. And conditioned dharmas are dharmas that have marks that define them as one thing and not another.

[27:24]

They don't have a self, but they have a relative identity as form. So what we call our self, for example, is a relative identity as form. So we all have a name, right? And the name is sort of what identifies, gives us a relative identity as form. That's our self. as a conditioned dharma. You were John, not Robert and not Mary. And you were named so and so by such and such a, by your parents for such and such a reason and so on. So that's a conditioned dharma. So, and the same is true of of eyes and face and hair and height. We all have a height, a color of hair, color of eyes, and so on and so forth. Those are all conditioned dharmas. And the Sandokai that we recite says, fire is hot, water is wet, earth is solid, wind moves.

[28:31]

This is the mark. So the mark of fire is heat. The mark of water is that it's wet. The mark of earth is that it's solid. The mark of wind is that it moves. These are all the conditioned dharmas. Whereas the unconditioned is marked with emptiness. So all dharmas are marked with emptiness. So it's empty of differentiating marks. So whereas for the Abhidharma, the conditioned dharmas have the three marks of existence, which is impermanence, suffering, and no self. Whereas the unconditioned was permanent, free of suffering, and also had the mark of emptiness, of self. But Abhidhamma has the conditioned dharmas are produced and tainted, whereas the unconditioned dharmas are stopped, extinguished, and pure.

[29:34]

So it's dualistic teaching. There are dharmas that are tainted, there are dharmas that are pure. So the Mahayana says, it's the teaching of non-duality, says that all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They're not produced, they're not stopped, they're not tainted, they're not pure. They do not increase with fullness or completion or do not decrease with emptiness or with lack. So emptiness and fullness is the same thing. It's not that you're empty and then you get full by degrees. Or if you take fullness by degrees, then you're empty. There's no increase or decrease. And then it goes on

[30:38]

to negate basically everything under the sun. And this is where a lot of us have a lot of problems because it's so negative. A lot of people say, boy, Zen is so negative. Buddhism is so negative. No, no, no, no, no. Everything is no. Everything is negated, taken away. But as we know, the not of no, the not of no or of negation in the sutra is not the opposite of yes or of affirmation. The same with emptiness. Emptiness is not the opposite of fullness. So usually we understand emptiness as nothingness and nothingness and nonexistence the opposite of existence and so on. But emptiness is both absence and presence.

[31:43]

So what is the presence of emptiness? If it's not a negation, then what is the presence of emptiness? And that's the famous koan, what is it? About what you say. So if the sutra says something about what emptiness is, if you're gonna say something, so you can say it's the gate of compassion. What is the function of emptiness? How does it manifest as a presence? Well, as wisdom, according to circumstances, as compassion, and sometimes it's called the gate of repose and bliss. But why do we emphasize so much on emptiness? Why not say, like other forms of spirituality, just talk about serenity or repose or bliss

[32:50]

light, and so on and so forth, because ultimately, repose and bliss and light are empty in their own being. There's nothing. They're empty of differentiating marks, ultimately. So the forms, feelings, consciousness, and the senses by which we constantly are constructing our world that we live in reinforce the view that the world is outside of us as an object. So because the feelings and forms, the forms that we see, the feelings that we have, the consciousness that we have, the senses that we experience, seeing, hearing, touching, so on, reinforce the view that the world is there outside of us as an object.

[33:53]

So to correct this view of ignorance, the Heart Sutra takes everything away. So this is the negation, the great negation. is to correct this view that the world is outside of us in some way. So it represents all the list of dharmas, the five skandhas, the six sense organs, and the six sense objects. Right? Awesome. also known as the 12 sense fields. The six sense organs in the six sense objects are known as the 12 sense fields. The objects of mind that it mentions are the objects that we perceive through consciousness, feelings, perceptions, impulses, matter, space, and nirvana. These are all the objects of mind. And the sutra

[34:56]

also negates all the consciousness corresponding to the senses and the objects of the senses. Then it goes on to negate the twelve links in the chain of causation. So this is like extremely, you know, just packing it all in, you know, in one, the whole universe, you know, the whole universe of Buddhism, not to say the whole universe packed into this, you know, one paragraph. So the 12 links involved in the chain of causation, which is part of the chain of dependent origination, which is part of the original Dharma of the Buddha, and it lists ignorance first. And ignorance is ignorance that we ignore that the world is already ourself, or that the world is not mine, but the world is mind.

[35:59]

See, when we say the world is mind, it's because there's a separation between subject and object. The world is over there, we're over here, and we want something from that world, so we have craving. We want something from that world because we see it as separate from us, and therefore there's something out there that we don't have and we want. But if it's already our mind, if the world is our mind, then everything is included and then we have everything that we need. And then craving is stopped. So it mentions ignorance and then it jumps to old age and death and says there's no extinction of either ignorance or death. And we can't extinguish ignorance, so it sort of denies the extinction of ignorance.

[37:07]

Because if we extinguished ignorance, there wouldn't be any birth or world to speak of. It's just that we have a misunderstanding about the nature of the world. but we can't extinguish the world. Otherwise, that's the nihilistic teaching. And we don't try to extinguish death either, like live eternally, you know, like find some way the elixir for eternal life, right? Always finding, you know, the pharaohs, we're trying to find the elixir for eternal life, right? And You know, so we all have this fantasy of wanting to live forever, which is an attempt to deny death. So we don't deny death either, but we also say that it doesn't end with death.

[38:18]

There's no beginning and no end. So the eternal life is the life of Buddha beyond birth and death. within birth and death. So we fully die knowing that we're not really dying and we weren't really born. Then the sutra negates the four noble truths of life is suffering, the cause or origination of suffering and craving, the stopping or cessation of craving in nirvana, and the path of the Eightfold Noble Path. So why would the Mahayana teaching negate the Four Noble Path? And we chant this every day. But we also have an appreciation for the Eightfold Noble Path, and we have an appreciation for the Four Noble Truths.

[39:28]

And we often give classes on them. But the Sutra is actually negating the Four Noble Truths. So why does it do that? Why does the Sutra negate the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path? So if suffering, the first noble truth is life is suffering. Some people say, well, couldn't you say life is joy? Why are you saying life is suffering? Couldn't you just as well say life is joy? That's a very common Jewish critique of Buddhism. You know? Jews are always joyful and dancing, you know, and it's expressive and devotional and all that, you know, and it's like, seems to be a contrast to this kind of bummer Buddhism, you know.

[40:38]

It's like life is suffering. You guys are always so serious, you know, and sitting like a statue, like a stone, why don't you, you know, get up and dance a little bit. So actually, it's true. So that's the counterside of the First Noble Truth. So you could just as well say, life is suffering, or you could say, life is joy. Because the suffering is created by this illusion of self that we create, that doesn't exist. We create, we self-create our own suffering through how we get attached to various mental objects and ideas, and then feelings follow from that, and then craving follows from that, and then contact follows from that, and then we create, we recreate situations that only reinforce the feelings and the thoughts, and then we're caught in the wheel of samsara and the wheel of karma.

[41:39]

But it's all a mental construction that really doesn't exist, right? So the guru that just laughs or says, be happy, that's the other side. And what that means is, well, yeah, life is suffering, but it's all self-created. So that's the big joke. And humor actually has that function. Humor has the function of let's laugh at ourselves. And often the best comedians are the ones that can laugh at themselves. Because they're laughing at themselves, they're laughing at this construction of self, which is funny. It's really funny, but it's really sad too. It's so funny and yet so sad. We suffer so much and go over the same things and the same problems and so on and so forth.

[42:43]

And when you hear the stories of people suffering and how they kind of recreate the suffering and repeat their traumas and find the same problems in relationships, that's the nature of karma. We're all doing that to some degree or another. But we have to repeat it with a difference. And that difference is the difference that makes the difference is the wisdom of emptiness or of nirvana. Meaning, yes, you know, there is this karma, there is this construction of self, but it's not so serious. You know, it's just something that we're creating. And because of that, it's already empty. And then when we realize that it's already empty, then we can find some release within it. You find the unconditioned within the conditioned. So it's not like, you know, we're always going to be happy. And this is, you know, I'm going to kind of end with this.

[43:44]

It's already 11.05, but it goes on further on to talk about the perverted views. And what are these perverted views? And it's not what you think, you know. So you think it's some horrible, you know, some horrible idea or practice. But actually, no, the four perverted views are that we all want to have a permanent, joyous state of bliss and happiness. And so that's considered, for the Mahayana, that's considered a perverted view. because it doesn't exist. There's no nirvana outside of samsara. There's no unconditioned outside conditioned existence. So right within samsara, right within delusion, right within conditioned existence, we have to find release and nirvana.

[44:53]

And the sutra's showing us that the release comes from realizing that all these things are empty in their own being. So even though they have a conditioned existence as form, as a feeling, as a perception, as a particular problem with a particular person, which is conditioning our situation at that moment, at the same time within that very situation, the situation is empty. So So if we want the four perversions, we want to have ease without pain. We want to have joy without anxiety. But the way of the Bodhisattva is the gate of non-duality. So we find release in letting go of this perverted view of just wanting to have this kind of enlightenment experience as somewhat separate from our ordinary existence.

[46:00]

It's within the ordinary existence. These two are not two. So it's 11.10 and I think Malcolm is ready with the beater already, but maybe we missed a little bit of time for some questions, comments. Yes. I've been grappling with the word empty or emptiness for years now. Could you attempt to either change the word to something else or explain it in a sentence? I don't know. I'm having a very hard time. Well, it has no differentiating mark, so there's no way of explaining it. That's why, you know, it has no differentiating mark, so there's no way of explaining it. That's precisely the point. And that's why Nagarjuna chose the word empty and said emptiness is empty. But what is it?

[47:01]

That's the koan. We sit saazen to understand that. It is something. But what will you say? Yeah, but... But you have an experience and understanding of emptiness, and so do I. Now, you may not know that you know, though. But you know. Yes? I can say, well, as well. You're blowing my mind. and the unconditioned dharmas, and that this is a discussion within the Adhidharma, is that it? Yes. And the Heart Sutra is like trying, is like addressing that discussion and saying, really, that distinction doesn't... Doesn't apply, exactly.

[48:03]

Okay. So, there, and I don't, but I don't understand what the unconditioned dharmas are in the first place, or what that is. Oh, the unconditioned dharmas is like the perverted views. You know, it's like there is this nirvana which is permanent, which is a blissful self, which is always joyful and full of light and so on and so forth. That's the idea of the unconditioned by the Abhidharma. And so the Mahayana is saying that all dharmas are marked with emptiness. So the uncondition is fully expressed in the whole universe. Yes? My question is about identity. And I know when we're growing up, it's important for us to create our identity.

[49:04]

And if we don't create our identity, we have identity crisis. And yet, it seems like what you're talking about is that that identity is empty. And yet, as children and as we're growing up, if somehow we don't acquire that kind of identity, then we'll have disassociation. For many of us, we have drug trips where we've lost that. My question is that it seems like it's important to create that for ourselves, but it seems like as we get older, or what you're talking about is that eventually we start dropping that identity. It's necessary to have it, but it's also... And in being Ed, you're interdependent with all the conditions, all your past generations that come to fruition in Ed.

[50:20]

That's your relative identity as form. But at the same time, what is Ed? That's your unconditioned nature. Yes? I want to piggyback on that. The Mahayana teaching says, you know, there's something that, you know, you can't get rid of something that didn't exist to begin with. It's just that what the self is, is the structure of interdependence. The skandhas, that is the self. We already have a self. The ego interferes with ourselves. The coherence of our self is given by the interdependence and by the skandhas. And the ego that we insert on top interferes with that coherence, and that's why we feel divided. When we release the ego that we impose on the skandhas, then the coherence of ourselves, of our experience, is given by interdependence.

[51:26]

Feelings, perceptions, sensations, body, and so on and so forth. That is our self as form. Yes? It just occurred to me, this problem of self, this problem of awareness, discomfort. So for us this seems to be compounded because we're aware of it and we try to compensate by devising ways to mitigate those things and also by longing for these perfections. But it occurred to me that what we call ego or

[52:33]

I tend to think as an organizing principle of mine, which organizes a lot of what you might call urges or drives or whatever wishes. Right, but the organizing principle is the net. Is the what? The net. Net. The net. the net of dharmas, the interdependent nature of all beings. That's what gives us our cohesion. It's not our ego that does that. We'd like to claim it for ourselves, but it's really not ourselves that does it. I don't. What I'm saying, what I mean to get at is that according to Mahayana, I mean, in sort of the old terms. Oddly enough, this, what we call, Michael, ego itself is emptiness.

[53:41]

Or emptiness is, in other words, ego is one manifestation of emptiness. Well, we get lost in the meaning of the words, you know. then we get lost in the meaning of the words. You can say, you can call your relative identity as form. You could call it, you know, your true self, subject, ego. You can choose whatever word you want for it. But as long as you realize that that in itself is empty, and what's functioning is big mind. That's what's functioning. And if we get out of the way, then we can function well. if we put, you know, we put stuff on top of it, then, you know, our body doesn't work that well, our mind doesn't work that well, you know. It's not saying that you can or even should be completely rid of, it's not even possible to be completely rid of these conditioned elements.

[54:50]

All the net is conditioned existence. Big mind is conditioned existence. The nature of big mind is the unconditioned. But all big minds condition existence, not bad. It's the nature of form, nature of matter, nature of universe, so on. Thank you.

[55:23]

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