Good evening. I can hear myself. That's good. Yeah, it should work for me too. Well, this is our second class, and we got, I'll just go over it a little bit, to reiterate what we talked about last time. I talked about the larger framework of the sutra, how it's a little drama, put into the form of a drama, where Buddha is asking Avalokiteshvara to explain the Prajnaparamita to Sariputra,

[01:27]

who is one of the Buddha's 16 most prominent students. We call them the 16 arhats, and their followers who attained the supreme attainment of arhatship, of which Shariputra was the foremost in intellect. in investigation of the dharmas. And the Abhidhamma comes down through his lineage according to legend. So the Abhidhamma is the study of the dharmas and the analytical study of Buddhism.

[02:33]

You know, that side of Buddhism is very analytical, as I explained last time, I think I did, or at least I mentioned that last time. Whereas Zen is very intuitive. Zen is the other side, the intuitive side. Abhidhamma is the analytical side. So it's good for Zen students to have studied Abhidhamma. Although when you start to read the Abhidhamma, originally the way it's laid out is in metric form, so to be chanted. So it keeps repeating itself over and over again. and it becomes kind of boring. A lot of us Abhidhamma suttas can be reduced down to a very few pages if you took out some of the repetitions.

[03:34]

But the repetitions are important in the old days for people to chant. In a way, I mentioned that the Prajnaparamita literature was called The Second Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma by Vajrasattva. And it's a kind of critique, I don't want to say a criticism, but it's critical of the Abhidharmic approach There's also a Mahayana Abhidhamma as well as a Hinayana Abhidhamma. But the critical approach was basically about the existence of dharmas, the existence or emptiness of dharmas.

[04:45]

So when we talk about the five skandhas being empty, and what are the five skandhas. I didn't talk too much about the content of the five skandhas, but I want to do that tonight, talk a bit more about the five skandhas and about the dharmas. The five skandhas form feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. These are five categories, also called five streams or five pillars. or five heaps, you know, I like to do it heaps, because it doesn't mean anything, but the five streams which contain all of the elements of what we call a person. The form element, the feeling, the perceptive element, mental formation element, and consciousness element.

[05:49]

So these are the five general categories. And then the dharmas are all arranged according to those, a breakdown, the elements that make up the five skandhas. And I'll give you an overview of the dharmas that we're talking about. I have to be careful that when I'm talking about the Dharmas that I don't get caught in too much explanation because it's a whole area of study by itself. We understand that, it's not so hard to understand the Skanda form, People tend to agree on what the skanda of form is. People tend to agree on what the skanda of feelings are. And people tend to pretty much agree on perception and on consciousness.

[07:03]

But the fourth skanda, samskara, is open to lots of different interpretations. And I'm surprised that so many scholars have so many different interpretations of what the fourth skanda is. But for me, and my research, which is not scholarly, but it seems to be the most fitting, is that the skanda of mental formations is correct. because it takes into consideration all of the mental dharmas. Someone described it as memory. Well, memory is included. Many of the descriptions are included in the mind dharmas. And so mental formations

[08:09]

are the dharmas which create karma, and they're related to the various levels of consciousness. So I want to talk about the fourth skanda, which is called samskara. And I'm just going to go through the list of dharmas which belong to that skanda. Are you ready? There are 100. The Sarvastivadins had a list of 75. The Yogacaras had a list of 100 dharmas. Don't write this down. I'll just give you a list. So the dharmas are arranged in categories in order to study them.

[09:19]

And there are dharmas that are somewhat independent and there are dharmas that are interactive with each other. There are mind dharmas, there are dharmas which are interactive with the mind, there are form dharmas, and dharmas which are not interactive with the mind, and there are unconditioned dharmas, which are various forms of nirvana. So the various levels of consciousness are also dharmas. And if you're familiar with the eight levels of consciousness, These eight levels are also considered dharmas. So the mind dharmas include the ear consciousness, the eye consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness, and the body consciousness, and the mind consciousness, and the manas consciousness, and the alaya consciousness.

[10:25]

So those levels of consciousness are also considered dharmas. Actually, in a general sense, everything is a dharma. But these particular dharmas are technically... It's not there, it's me. I'm moving around too much. The dharmas that are associated with a human being So there are five, I'll just cut it down to the five universally interactive dharmas are attention, contact, feeling, conceptualization, and deliberation. And all these dharmas arise together in one state of consciousness. In other words, when a state of consciousness is there, these five dharmas are present. attention, contact, feeling, conceptualization, and deliberation. And then there are five particular states.

[11:33]

These are associated with good and evil. Good and evil begin with these states. And they're individual and not necessarily connected. Desire. resolution, recollection, concentration, and judgment. And then 11 wholesome dharmas are faith, vigor, shame, remorse, absence of greed, absence of anger, and absence of stupidity or understanding. So it's interesting that it's a negative positive. Absence of greed would be generosity, absence of anger is goodwill, and absence of stupidity is understanding. So I don't know, there is a reason for these absences as being the positive side of good dharmas, wholesome dharmas.

[12:40]

And then there's light, there are various, you know, whoever translates the lists has their own uses their own terms. So there are different terms that people use. So light ease is like composure. Non-laxness is like vigilance, renunciation, and non-harming, ahimsa. And then there are six fundamental afflictions, which are characterized by grasping. Greed, anger, delusion or stupidity, arrogance or conceit, doubt and improper views. And then there are 20 derivative afflictions which are derived from those six. They are wrath, hatred, rage, covering, deceit, flattery, conceit, harming, jealousy, stinginess, lack of shame and lack of remorse.

[13:50]

And then there are eight major grade afflictions. Lack of faith, laziness, laxness, torpor, restlessness, distraction, improper knowledge, and scatteredness. And there are four which are unfixed. In other words, they're neither good nor bad. Sleep, regret, examination, and investigation. And then there are form dharmas. The Dharma is a form. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, form, sound, smells, flavors, and objects of touch. And then there are various Dharmas pertaining to form, which are the Dharma is not interactive with the mind. Attainment, life, faculty, generic, similarity, dissimilar, blah, blah, blah. So I don't want to go through all of them, but you get the picture of what what dharmas are. They're all the psychic and physical particulars of our mind and body.

[14:58]

And this is what the four skandhas is, basically. The interaction and the actions of these dharmas which, when combining with causes and conditions, create karma. So, the fifth skanda is consciousness. And there are various ways of studying consciousness. But for Mahayana, Consciousness is studied usually as the eight levels of consciousness. And I've talked about that quite a bit in the past.

[16:00]

The five sense consciousnesses, which are through the doors of perception, Consciousness like awareness, right? So, awareness through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body. And then there's the sixth consciousness, which is mind consciousness, which discriminates between the levels of sense, in order to separate them. So consciousness allows for seeing. The sixth consciousness allows for sight, allows for hearing, and so forth. It doesn't mix them up. It also thinks.

[17:02]

But it only thinks, the thinking faculty of the sixth consciousness is not associated with the ego. It's simply thinking in interactivity with the sense consciousnesses and makes decisions and so forth. It's a little tricky as to the interaction between the sixth and the seventh. But I'm going to skip to the eighth consciousness, which is the storehouse consciousness, the alaya vijnana, which is the memory bank. And it's fairly neutral, but it stores memory, but it also stores seeds. So every time we do something, Every time we have an action or a thought, a seed is planted in the alaya vijnana for future growth.

[18:10]

And when the seeds are watered by future, by present activity, they sprout. And then we have what we call habit energy. And we keep feeding the, we keep planting more seeds through our activity and watering those seeds through our activity so that we have what we call conditioning, conditioned activity. And these, when the conditions are right, the seeds sprout and conditions our thinking. And then the seventh consciousness, called manas, is the conveyor. It has a function called the conveyor between the alaya consciousness and the sixth consciousness, which thinks but is not self-consciousness.

[19:21]

Seventh consciousness is called self-consciousness. So we've located, the Buddhists located the ego. What is ego? It's the sixth consciousness, the seventh consciousness. Because the seventh consciousness thinks that it thinks, and that's the problem. It's the thinking consciousness which creates thoughts out of the raw material supplied by the alaya and the world around us. And it gives us the sense of me, myself, and I. So this is called the false self-consciousness, called deluded consciousness, because delusion is in thinking that the five skandhas are a person, are a self, mistakes the five skandhas of the self.

[20:26]

When a seventh consciousness is simply conveying messages back and forth between the alaya and the mind consciousness, it's functioning without a self, without being an imposter, without creating a self, actually. But when the seventh consciousness starts to think independently, It creates a self, creates that illusion of a self. So I often think of, I like to describe the seven consciousness as the office boy, who when the boss is out, sits in the boss's seat, puts his feet up on the desk, opens the drawer and takes out the boss's cigar from the boss's cigar box, puts it between his teeth and lights it, and pretends that he's the boss.

[21:35]

So this is called egocentricity or self-centeredness. And this is called separation or discriminating mind. The seventh consciousness is discriminating mind based on self-centeredness. The sixth consciousness discriminates, but it's not discriminating mind based on self-centeredness. That's why it's not ego. Ego is a funny word. The sixth consciousness is not creating a self because it's simply functioning, as it's supposed to, whereas the seventh consciousness is our bugaboo. It's like that sense of ... it's the self-builder.

[22:43]

And all those unwholesome dharmas flow from the seventh consciousness, because greed, ill will, and delusion are its characteristics. So Buddhists are always trying to deal with that seventh consciousness. Seven Consciousness Manas, it blocks Prajna from arising. Prajna is our fundamental wisdom. So as long as, when there's no grasping no clinging, no greed, no ill will, no delusion, then that self does not arise.

[23:49]

We can say that person is selfless, their activity is selfless, and their actions are enlightened actions. So in Buddhism, we're always being encouraged to let go of greed, ill will, and delusion, because these are the ego builders. They cause a lot of problems. They create unwholesome karma and inflame manas, which is the seventh level of consciousness. But when that manas is simply deflated and just doing its function, then everything goes very smoothly.

[24:53]

And there's, this is the self that's not, then there's the self that's not a self. But we're very driven by our, We're all driven by ego. That's why it's so difficult, you know. Life is so difficult because we're all driven by ego. So, there's a problem in Buddhism around the first century was the problem of form and emptiness. The early Buddhists, there were 18 schools of Buddhism, and each school had a little different interpretation of what the Dharma was.

[26:07]

and especially around this idea of dharmas. And the Savastavadins, who lived in Kashmir, were a very powerful sect, and they saw the emptiness of the person. but they didn't recognize the emptiness of the dharmas. In other words, they recognized the emptiness of the skandhas and the no-self of the person, but they were attached to the idea that dharmas were real. Sarva Dharma. Sarvastavadis. Sarva Dharma means the reality of dharmas. The school of the reality of dharmas.

[27:11]

The dharmas, they felt, were the building blocks, of course, for our actions, which they are. But they did not recognize the emptiness of the dharmas. So the Heart Sutra is talking about the emptiness of the dharmas. O Shariputra, five skandhas in their own being are empty. And the same is true of the dharmas. All dharmas are also empty in their own being. So this word, own being, is very important. because un-being means inherent existence. Tibetans usually use the term inherent existence. Dharmas do not have inherent existence.

[28:15]

So emptiness means various things. There are 16 or 18 meanings of the word emptiness, which I gave you. I put the sheet out there in the bulletin board. I don't know if you picked them up or not. But it's a list of the explanation by Sukhayan of the meaning of the 18 dharmas. There's also another list, which I'm going to give you next time, which is 16 meanings of emptiness in Tibetan text, which has a little different explanation. So the sutra says, O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness, and that which is emptiness is form. The same is true of feelings. The same is true of perceptions. The same is true of impulses.

[29:17]

And the same is true of consciousness. Impulses is one of the terms that we used to use. for mental formations, and we changed it to mental formations. That kind of impulse is, I think, included in mental formations. So, O Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. Okay, all dharmas are marked. So, what is a mark? I think I talked about that last time. A mark is a characteristic The main characteristic of heat is fire, or fire is heat. The main characteristic of water is wet. The main characteristic of earth is solidity. And the main characteristic of air is ethereal, whatever that means, ether.

[30:20]

But the main characteristic of all dharmas is shunya, emptiness. So this is taking it one big step further, because we characterize everything, all dharmas, through their marks. through their characteristics. So this radical pronunciation, all dharmas are marked with, not just marked with, but the mark of all dharmas is emptiness. The main characteristic of all dharmas is emptiness. So if you say, You can say the main characteristic of water is emptiness. The secondary characteristic of water is wetness.

[31:25]

The main characteristic of fire is emptiness. The secondary characteristic of fire is heat. But heat is also emptiness. All Dharma, everything, is emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is within. We talk about the two things. We talk about the characteristics on one hand, the forms on one hand, and the emptiness on the other hand. But that's just to talk about something. If we want to talk about my hand, we can talk about the characteristics of five fingers on the hand, so putting all the little dharmas in there, but really it's just one piece called hand.

[32:34]

But then there are, at the same time, characteristics So it's important to understand, to recognize the existence of things, even though the existence of everything is emptiness. So really nothing has its own characteristic. I mean, it's all inherent reality. So you say, well, things are not real, right? Well, yes, they are. There's, you know, rocks and stuff and my hand. I feel this and that. Of course, this is real, right? The real world. But the real world is really the unreal world. And the unreal world is the real world. We talk about the four upside-down views, perverted. Actually, the inverted.

[33:38]

Perverted is not quite right, because they're topsy-turvy, upside-down views. What we think is real is not real. It's an upside-down view. And what we call pleasure is really pain. Not vice versa, necessarily. And what we call good is really not necessarily good. So we have these inverted views, but we have to understand at this point that there are two levels of reality, the two truths, as it's called. There's a basic Madhyamaka teaching of the two truths. the relative truth and the absolute truth. So the relative truth is the truth of interdependence, the dependent nature of things.

[34:48]

We say emptiness, one meaning of emptiness is called interdependence, because nothing has its own inherent reality, everything arises interdependently with all other things. So whatever arises is dependent on the whole universe. You can't really take a piece out of the universe or it would collapse. Things would get moved around, but you can't disappear something. You can disappear something, but it simply appears in another form, because it's one piece. The universe is one piece. And it keeps transforming continuously. So this is one meaning of emptiness.

[35:55]

And it's the meaning of emptiness that's easiest to understand. That's why I like to use that. explanation of emptiness, the interdependence of everything, because nothing exists by itself. But at the same time, there are rocks, trees, people, animals, and so forth. So the truth of dependent origination or interdependence is the relative truth. And the truth of emptiness is the absolute truth. So nothing really exists. When you say it doesn't exist, that's what's meant. If you stick to doesn't exist,

[36:59]

then you fall into the error of emptiness. And if you think the things really do exist independently, then you fall into the error of existence. So, it's yes, but. Do things exist? Yes, but. Do they not exist? Yes, but. So if you try to pin it down to one side or the other, you fall into duality. This is what I mean by non-duality. Non-duality means not falling into one side or the other. Whatever exists also is empty. And whatever is empty is existence, so you cannot separate them.

[38:05]

So empty doesn't mean nothing there, of course. It's simply the basic reality of everything. Without emptiness, things don't exist. Space is a kind of metaphor for emptiness. But space is also on this side, on the form side. But it's used as a metaphor for emptiness. You have to remember, so when we talk about space as empty, you have to see it in a metaphorical sense and not in an absolute sense. But it's a convenient way of speaking about emptiness. There's a saying, you know, when you don't see the sky, when you look at the sky and there's nothing, of course, there's always something, but, okay, as space, you don't recognize what it is until the bird flies across the sky.

[39:24]

When the bird flies across the sky, then you see the sky. Then you realize, oh, there's the sky. So that's a kind of metaphor for emptiness is recognized through form. If we want to understand what is emptiness, we have to study emptiness through form, because this is the world of form. This is where we live, and we also have to study emptiness through duality. We're always talking about non-duality, but we also have to pay attention to duality. So whatever we say yes about is also no. Whatever we say no about, it's yes. So yes is no, and no is yes, and yes is yes, and no and no is no. If you fall into one side or the other, you create a problem.

[40:25]

You can't get it. But at the same time, yes is yes, and no is no. Form is form. Emptiness is emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. So it's time to take one minute break without talking. You might find it interesting to just look at the list of 18 emptinesses and 18 characteristics of emptiness. So here is the list. Now who's the spy?

[41:26]

Sokoyan Sasaki. Sokoyan Sasaki was probably the first Zen teacher in America who actually he came in the 30s to the first Zen Institute in New York and Mary Farkas was the person who took care of that place and He's a very eloquent teacher, Rinzai-style teacher. So in his introduction he says, The 18 shunyatas, or emptinesses, is a stiff lecture.

[42:32]

I have been teaching for six years in New York, 1936. And this is the first time I'm speaking about them. These emptinesses are explained by Shakyamuni Buddha and the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. In this sutra, the Buddha said to his disciple Shariputra, oh, Shariputra, If you wish to stay within the 18 shunyatas, practice Prajnaparamita. Emptiness, which is the keystone of Buddhism, is the conclusion of this sutra. In it, the Buddha was said to have practiced Prajnaparamita for eight years, and now we have 600 volumes of what happened. I hope you will understand this lecture is really only for an audience that is expert in Buddhism. So his explanations are very interesting, but I'm not going to read them. I'm just going to read them. They take too long. So he says, the first is, inside is empty.

[43:36]

Outside is empty. Inside and outside are empty. Emptiness is empty. The great elements are empty. Reality is empty. Creative purpose is empty. Purposelessness is empty. The conclusion is empty. The beginningless is empty. Undoing phenomena is empty. Your own nature is empty. All existence is empty. One's own appearance is empty. The ungraspable is empty. Non-existence is empty. Existence is empty. And then there's a mistake. He said non-existence is empty a second time. But actually what he meant was non-existing existence is empty. So non-existing existence is empty. It sounds like a sophism. In India, In one of the philosophies, they had, is there such a thing as a non-cow?

[44:51]

And this was a problem for philosophy. Is there such a thing as a non-cow? And it was considered a non-question. But there's a reason. for this, because since we're talking about emptiness, this statement is important. So I'm giving you this stuff so you can study it, and then if you have any question about it, we can discuss it. And as a matter of fact, if you have any question about what I'm talking about, now is the time to raise your hand. Michael? Maybe I know it under a different name.

[46:01]

Well, no, it wouldn't be. Well... Oh yeah, improper views. Well, I did find that. One of the words in it was knowledge. It was implying improper knowledge or fake knowledge, something like that. Oh yeah, improper knowledge. Oh yeah, improper knowledge means sticking to literalness. That's very interesting. Words point to something, but if you stick to the words, then you often lose the meaning.

[47:42]

And this is very true in Zen. In science, it's important to stick to the words. But even then, you know, people, I think it's like getting caught by words and then quoting words without understanding the meaning. which would be improper knowledge. Sticking to dogmatic opinions, actually. Sticking to dogmatic opinions. Yeah. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. What did I say it was?

[48:45]

Form and emptiness. Oh, the problem of form and emptiness. Yes, but my question is, if you're here to say that it's a problem for Buddhism then, is there something you can say is a problem for Buddhism now? Well, I think that there are a lot of problems. Not so much, interesting, you know, those were problems of a doctrine, you know. I think that maybe Not all Buddhists are really concerned with the same problems. I think that the Theravadins have their problems, the Mahayanas have their problems, the Zen people have their problems, the Tibetans have their problems. I think that the problems are not all the same, although there may be problems that are common to all. But I think, I'm not sure that there are problems of doctrine exactly.

[49:51]

There are problems of society or lay and monastic or something like that. Problems of superstition versus reality. I think that may be one. in Buddhism, maybe that's a good one. Because in the past, 2500 years or so, there's been a lot of accretions attaching to it, like a ship with barnacles. And every once in a while the hull has to go into dry dock and you have to take all the barnacles off so that the ship will move smoothly through the water and won't get eaten up by the worms.

[50:52]

So Buddhism gets, you know, I think all religions are dragging along accretions and false beliefs and superstitions and dogmatic, what did you call it? Dogmatic, sticking to dogma. So this is a big, I think this is the big problem for all religions and Buddhism too. What's real? What's dogma? What's And how to separate all, how to prune the tree so that it can actually grow. I've thought that for many, many years.

[51:54]

How do you prune the tree so that it will, and prune it down enough so that it will grow and remain healthy and not too complex. Do you think any of these long lists of categories that you've been reading out could be barnacles? Well, they are the characteristics of you. Says who? Says me. Why would you argue with this? Tell me what the characteristics are. I could. No. I mean, just for an example, this isn't answering your question, but when you said there are the unconditioned formals, and they are the different types of Nirvana, I thought, now that's really going too far.

[53:05]

Or you could make other lists, you know, That's a good point, because the two main characteristics of nirvana are nirvana with remainder and nirvana without remainder. And these are very ancient categories. But they're not necessarily dharmas that are agreed upon by all Mahayanists, although the rest of them are simply dharmas which are characteristics of all the five skandhas, whereas the unconditioned dharmas are dharmas which are controversial.

[54:10]

That's true. That's a good point. There is no boss. That's very important. You know, if you, there's a kind of poem which I have to paraphrase, but there is no, things, phenomena simply roll along. through causes and conditions without a creator. And they're rolling along as self-creating.

[55:11]

So this is karma. Karma means self-creating, basically, because the result of karma is our volitional action, which deposit seeds in the alaya, which in the action sprouts the seeds, which deposits the seeds, which sprouts the seeds, which deposits the seeds, and habit energy keeps going on, and we create, we're self-creating beings. We are actually self-creating beings. So this is a whole other study of how beings are created through karmic activity. Now, when the karmic activity is no longer, this is the one viewpoint, that when the karmic activity is no longer active, then

[56:23]

That's a kind of release from suffering. Create, stop creating karma. So that's the hard part, is how do we, it's possible to get out of the wheel of karma. And that's what Buddhism is about, is that it's possible. Whereas in Buddhist time, there were the philosophers who believed various things, but one of their beliefs was that everything is preordained, or karma cannot be escaped from because it just keeps going on. But Buddha said, not so. Karma, it's possible to get off of the wheel, or it's possible to be free from the wheel, let's say.

[57:31]

And that's called Buddhist practice, is how to be free. Getting off the wheel, the extreme idea is extinction. But that's the Mahayana escape from that understanding, because that's an extreme understanding. How do you get free from karma within karma? In other words, within your life, how do you find the freedom, rather than reducing your life to zero, or the unconditioned, nirvana? So, and this is what the tiger, this is what Abbot O'Borah is talking about in the tiger's cave. All the time, he's talking about how to find release within, how you find your freedom within your life, without annihilation.

[58:36]

Through, how you find release through your suffering, with your mistakes, with your problems. How do you realize nirvana within samsara? How do you find the unconditioned within the conditioned? Somebody way in the back. I can't see. You have to speak real loud. What about them? What are the fourth skanda? The fourth skanda is mental formations. Oh yeah, someone said, people use various terms to distinguish this skanda.

[59:44]

Somebody used the term memory. That's what I said, as a designation for the fourth skanda, instead of mental formations. Kate? Your discussion of the seventh consciousness and manas, all of that, I honestly think my head could kill me and go on. Well, our head does kill us and go on. Sometimes it chokes us. I want to know what is the relationship of consciousness

[60:47]

There are, so there's body, mind, ears, what is it, eye, ears, nose, body, tongue, and mind. And then there's the consciousness, right? That allows me to see, to understand what I'm seeing. But then there's a consciousness behind that. There's various levels, a lot of levels of consciousness. But there's no relationship. Between consciousness... And emptiness. There's no relationship. There's no relationship of emptiness to anything, because emptiness is what the thing is. All forms of consciousness are emptiness. They are emptiness. Relationship presupposes two things. In order to have a relation, you have to have two things. I see what you're saying. Yeah. So who knows emptiness?

[61:51]

Who knows emptiness? Yes, the answer is in the question. Who knows emptiness? So who? Dogen uses this term. Who? In place of somebody. So are you saying emptiness knows itself? Emptiness knows itself, yes. That's right. Emptiness, Tsingtao was a disciple of Kumarajiva, who did the present translation into Chinese of the Heart Sutra. And he wrote a treatise called Prajna is Not Knowledge. Prajna is Not Knowledge. Knowing knows.

[62:55]

Knowing knows. Also, seeing sees. Hearing hears. Tasting tastes. But we say, I hear, I smell, I taste. So are all of those gates to emptiness? In other words, it's not just the perceiving whatever I do. So is emptiness able to come to itself through any of those gates? Yeah, well, coming to itself, yes, it's the way we think, see how we think. We're thinking of emptiness as a thing. Emptiness, it's like Inside is empty means one's supreme spirit, the highest spirit of an individual, that individual spirit is empty.

[64:07]

According to Buddhism, the inside has six ayatanas, or entrances, five entrances from the outside to the inside. In other words, those entrances are our senses, right? Okay, five internal senses to the outside, to objects. Five entrances from the outside to the inside. These entrances are the five senses, and one more, hidden inside, that's mind consciousness. So altogether there are six senses, and inside is the highest supreme spirit. All are empty, which means there is no ego in it. For example, the I has no ego. There's no master in it. The air has no spiritual center, and the rest of the senses have no spiritual centers. So people think the one inner sense is the king, think it belongs to you. We Buddhists do not think it is an individual spirit. You think it is yours, but from the Buddhist standpoint, it is no one's. It is consciousness, and consciousness is not yourself.

[65:10]

There is no consciousness which is called you or I, so inside is empty. There's no you or I. We're just seeing things, hearing things, tasting things, thinking things. But there's no thinker. There's no taster. There's no seer. And this is called zazen. This is what you experience in zazen. We say, I am sitting zazen. No. They're just painful legs on a black cushion, sitting in Zazen. But as soon as you say I, you create a problem. So we let go of that. We let go of that concept of I when we sit in Zazen.

[66:11]

It gives us a wonderful opportunity to let go of the sense of I, me and mine. Not my pain, it's just that some painful feeling is happening. But as soon as we identify it as me and mine, we have a problem. And we don't know how subtle the mind is. Subtle mind is so subtle that it will create this problem over and over again. Because it's so hard to let go of me and mine. Really hard to let go. So eyes are empty, ears are empty, hearing is empty, seeing is empty, feeling is empty. Pleasure is empty, pain is empty, and yet they are all what they are. As long as we don't attach them to a self, we can enjoy them all. Not enjoy is a funny word, but accept them all, live them all according to what they are, and not exaggerate them, not cling to them.

[67:20]

It's hard not to cling to things that we like. So we like to cling to what we like and like to push away what we don't like. So that creates this problem. Yeah. It means different things. There are two basic meanings. There are a lot of meanings, just like there are a lot of meanings of emptiness. But Dharma, in a big, in a capital D, means the teaching, the truth, reality. In a Dharma with a small d means all the characteristics. So there are two different meanings, small d and capital D. The Buddha Dharma, you know, is capital D, and it's all those little dharmas.

[68:35]

You said there was no loss, but somehow there's this way-seeking mind, and this thing that comes and sits on the black cushion. You know, no boss means no self that is a boss. The self that is a boss is not a self. There's direction. There is direction. Say Buddha seeks Buddha, right? Buddha seeks Buddha. I'm not, I don't seek Buddha. Buddha seeks Buddha, so Buddha's the boss. As long as we let Buddha be the boss, then that's way-seeking mind. So we're both ordinary and Buddha. There is no reason then to ask why we were created, or why we have a calling, or why are we here?

[70:07]

How does Buddhism answer why are we here? You can ask those questions, but those are not questions that Buddha thought were relevant. Right. Buddha was not talking about why are we here, but how are we here? Why are we here is not a Zen question. Why is this happening to me? How do I do this? How do I understand it? Or how to do something, given that you are here? Having to do with the moment. how to do something. The why question is endless.

[71:11]

If you want to investigate why something, because since all things are created through karmic, pretty much through karmic activity, there's no end to investigating that. Absolutely no end. It's endless. It's like your ancestry or something. It's endless. You can investigate it, but you can't get back to Adam. Why? That's the investigation by some people, but it's not necessarily relevant to Buddhism. It's not, it's OK. It's just, it's not what Buddhism is about. Right. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So, coming back to the question you put at this point, we're all sitting, people, we're sitting here in a Zen, though, right?

[72:19]

We're sort of like, those of us who are sitting here would sort of be brought here, or bring here. We probably all have our own reasons why we're here. Right. So if we strip all that away, right, this idea that there is no thinker there or no actor trying to do something, what does Buddhism sort of call the intention or this urge that brings us here? That's Buddha's activity. So Buddha's activity takes the place of my activity. In other words, being Buddha-centered instead of self-centered is simply a switch. It's called revolving, parvirtti, revolving, so that Buddha-centered takes the place of self-centered.

[73:26]

So your actions come from your Buddha mind, which is not self-centered mind. So from the Mahayana's perspective, this idea that at the end of the road you'll be able to get off the wheel, right? The Mahayana is saying, what can you really get out of that wheel? And coming with the Bodhisattva notion, you need to get off the wheel without bringing all your brothers and sisters Well that's right, so the thought of not doing that and engaging in selfless activity of encouraging others or helping others to realization is actually getting off the wheel.

[74:27]

So, you know, getting off the wheel is not a literal thing. If you understand it literally, then you can create another problem. Well, I'm trying to get off this wheel, you know. To get off the wheel means to go with the wheel. To get out of pain means to go with the pain. To get out of suffering means to go with the suffering. As long as you try to extract yourself, you create more suffering. I always like to think of it, I use it as a kind of model. I don't know if you've been to Chinatown, but when I was a kid, there were these little finger things, you put your fingers in, and then you try to get your fingers out, and it just squeezes. The more you try to get your fingers out, the more you get caught. That's kind of like trying to escape, you know, trying to escape from suffering or escape from anything.

[75:32]

You just create more of a problem, get tighter, caught more tightly. So how do you let go and be with what's there? And that's, it's more like letting go and being with what's present. and not being caught by that. In Sazen, you experience this profound stillness. Instead of trying to escape from your pain, you enter this profound stillness, in which you can simply exist with whatever is there, and then you feel this release. Yeah.

[76:33]

Yeah. That's why Bodhisattva is here. Well, people have various reasons for why we're here, you know, the various meanings to why we're here, but I agree with you. That's for Bodhisattva has kind of solved that problem. True. You said, instead of thinking, I am Siddhic Zazen, then think painful legs and black cushion. Don't hang on to the words, please. Yeah, right. So, you said the I is the problem. So, my question is, is legs a problem, or is cushion a problem? The I is a problem. So, the other things aren't? They're a problem. They can be a problem, but they're not the same kind of problem. Is Buddha a problem? Oh yeah. Buddha is a big problem. Because Buddha blocks our ego.

[77:38]

Oh. Buddha is the biggest problem of all. Because Buddha challenges our ego. You're talking about Buddha like, you know, something real there. Yeah! See, Buddha's not just a celestial being, you know. Buddha's you! Right there! I thought I was a problem! Yeah, Buddha's a problem! You're Buddha and you're a problem at the same time. Because not only are you Buddha, but you're also Linda. So, sometimes Linda leads, sometimes Buddha leads. And then when Buddha is Linda, Linda is Buddha, no problem. Buddha and Linda are the same thing.

[78:46]

Buddha and Linda are the same thing. I can't hear you. How far back? Oh, okay. Well, all forms are the forms of emptiness. Emptiness is expressed as form. So this is emptiness.

[79:48]

This form is emptiness.

[79:50]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ