I vow to taste the truth of the Tantra's words. So, we're going to spend how many weeks? Four or five? Five. Five weeks reading the Avatamska Sutra. And we won't finish it in five weeks. I've been reading it on a three-year project of reading it. It's pretty long. It's in three volumes, and I made some selections from volume one. Did you all get the page numbers that I've selected? Some of it, I guess, has been Xeroxed, but not all of it. Let me just give you the page numbers. Oh, I see you have them written down in a little slip. Okay, great. So these are some selections I made for Volume 1.

[01:02]

Here are three volumes. Avatamsaka. A-V-A-T-A-M-S-A-K-A. Avatamsaka Sutra, often translated That's the Flower Garland Sutra. The translation I'm using is one of two English translations. This one's by Thomas Cleary. It's in three volumes, published by Shambhala, and now out of print. So it's pretty hard to find the actual text. Oh, I meant to... My plan was to bring... We have two copies of it at Green Gulch, and I was going to bring it, but I forgot.

[02:12]

So that's why we did some xeroxing, so that you'd have something to read and take in a whole new text. In a way, it doesn't matter if you read anything or not. I'm going to try to come in and give some introductory talk and go over the reading for that night, so that if you've read it, that's great. If you haven't read it, I'll be reading from it and going over it and talking about it. As I say, this is the second year of my three-year project to read it. Twelve weeks every year I read it and give a class. Two six-week classes at Green Gulch. This is the second set of twelve. We started with volume three because it's the most exciting. That's the one with the famous

[03:18]

Maitreya's Tower and the Pilgrimage of Sudhana. And then this year we're on Volume 1, which sets up various basic teachings that are referred to in Volume 3. And the next year we'll finish with Volume 2. So I want to say a bunch of stuff this week to introduce the sutra and give you an idea of where it's coming from. It's actually really hard to read the sutra in a way, really difficult, because it's really a unique document. I mean, I don't know, how many of you have read parts of or any of the sutra before? How many of you have read Mahayana Sutras before, the Lotus Sutra or the Prajnaparamita Sutras?

[04:27]

So the Mahayana Sutras, compared to the Pali Canon material, the Agamas or the Nikayas, is fairly ornate and far out and extravagant and poetic and expansive. But the Avatamska Sutra is that in spades. It sort of makes the other sutras seem tame by comparison. So when you're in the middle of one of these incredible chapters that goes on and on and on and on, repeating the same stuff over and over again in the most bizarre way, and you're scratching your head and wondering, what are they talking about? Are you lost in the recesses and labyrinths of some of these sentences, you wonder, you know, why did they write this, or what am I supposed to be getting out of it? So, I think that the sutra itself is itself a meditation.

[05:41]

To read the sutra is to practice a meditation. Although there are certain philosophical or doctrinal points that we can extract from the sutra, these are minor compared to just the sheer force of actually trying to read it, actually putting yourself in the mind of it and flowing with it. So I would say It's not really trying to give us doctrines or teach us something in particular. What it is, is it's changing our minds. It's actually a process. Reading the sutra is a process of changing our minds. Usually, we think of our minds as a given. you know, what we have, our mind is going in a certain way.

[06:47]

We remember yesterday it was sort of like that, a long time ago it was like that, and so that's me, right? This mind going in a certain way. We identify our mind and how it goes with ourself, and we take that as a given. And then we try to practice the Dharma with that as a given. But the whole premise, I would say, of Dharma practice is that you are not your mind, and that you can change your mind. If you couldn't change your mind, if you were this mind and that couldn't be changed, then there would be no reason. The Buddha would not have taught. There would be no point to it. So then you can say, well, now hold on a minute.

[07:48]

If you can change your mind, who is there changing that mind? Who is it that changes? If you look and you only see this ongoing mind, is there some other person there that's going to stand outside that mind and change that mind? Who would that be? When you look for that other person, it's more mind. going in the same way? And the answer to that is that there is in all of us at the bottom of or outside of or shot through this mind of ours that goes on propelled by karma habitually, there is underneath it or shot through it or around it or inside of it some kind of intention, some kind of vow or wish to become, we can say in terms of the sutra, to become enlightened for the benefit of all beings.

[09:00]

This is something that seems to be there in our mind, something that we may not be in touch with that often, but it's there, and it's that. welling up of that kind of intention or vow that propels us to change our mind. And this vow, this kind of heroic, really, intention is the cornerstone of Mahayana Buddhism and of this sutra as well. So this sutra is not describing you and I in our usual aspect of identity and body and thoughts and history and so on. But it's completely written from the point of view of this infinite intention that sort of comes up in the middle of our usual mind if we ever let it.

[10:10]

And in a way you could say, one way of looking at zazen is to see zazen as a way of shutting up long enough to let that intention come up and grab us, well up enough to grab us and begin manifesting in our life and we begin trusting it and acting on it. And even though mind is still going on in its habitual way, something else is now activated. We have another parallel or maybe even overriding intention in the middle of our lives. Now I know that we don't start out that way. I mean, I think that, you know, so this is Mahayana Buddhism, right? And I think we all start out as so-called Hinayana Buddhist practitioners. We all start out because of suffering, I think, really. That's not why we start out. We start out because we need to practice, because we have a headache or something, a problem, or we see problems elsewhere.

[11:15]

And this is a very personal thing for us, so we say, I'm driven to practice. And this is the motivation of so-called Hinayana motivation, old school motivation, to end suffering, to end my suffering, I begin to practice. But then as we sit and take up the practice out of this feeling, and we actually begin to clear up our suffering, little by little, maybe not in some super dramatic way, but little by little, you notice a clarification of one's problems and a sort of firming up of the ground on which you stand, then it begins to dawn on you, little by little, that, well, the job isn't over, really, and that fundamentally you can't really be straightened out and happy and whole, unless you begin to notice why you're connected. So you need to be concerned for everyone.

[12:21]

And finally, if this makes any sense to you at this point, you finally see that you need to be concerned, infinitely concerned, beyond space and time and what looks like the world as we see it, even to that extent, lifetime after lifetime, on an infinite scale, over a long period of time, you need to be concerned. this sort of creeps in. And part of how that evolves in your life is undergoing the kind of experience, the mind-stretching experience of putting your head in one of these sutras and just going along, whether you understand it or not, or it makes sense or not, or whether you can extract something out of it or not. So there's a lot of ways to read, right? And nowadays we have developed a way to read that is very pragmatic.

[13:24]

and instrumental. Give me the quickest information so that I can make a decision about whether to buy or sell, etc. But this is only one way to read, and there's also a way of reading with the heart, with the ear, instead of with the intelligence. So we have to read the sutra in that way, with the heart, with the ear. So the sutra presents a vision of reality, a sort of reality without the benefit of concepts of space and time. built into our mind is a concept of space and a concept of time.

[14:29]

Our whole language and our whole way of thought is based on that. So this sutra is proposing that this conceptual world, based on concepts of space and time, is only kind of a little slice of the actual universe. And the actual universe, by definition, in terms of our language, is inconceivable. Because in order for us to conceive of the actual universe, our conceptual apparatus only operates in terms of space-time concepts. So by definition, if we were to see beyond what looks like the world as it actually is to us, the appearance of this world, if we were to actually see beyond it, what we would be seeing is something inherently inconceivable to our minds. So the sutra is trying to talk about this inconceivable world, which of course is really impossible.

[15:31]

to do in language and in space-time conceptualizations. And so what it does is it's extravagantly sort of battering around at every point, battering the edges of our space-time concepts. And so that's one of the reasons why it's so darn hard to read, because it goes on and on. It'll start talking about, you know, the Buddha will shoot a beam of light from his forehead and it will go 10,000 worlds in this direction, and in each of those 10,000 worlds there are infinite numbers of atoms, and on each of those atoms there's a Buddha who's doing the same thing. A light ray is shooting from his eye in 10,000, you know, this kind of, your mind boggles with how does this work? So pretty soon you realize, well, it's inconceivable. This can't be. How can I think of this? I can't think of it. So the other day we had a

[16:32]

funeral ceremony at Green Gulch and in the funeral statement I said that this world is a window. This world that we live in is a window looking out into vast and inconceivable worlds. I think that that's true. You know this when you contemplate the beginning and end of human life, which is inconceivable. We don't know. How is it that a little smear of sperm and a little smear of egg, these little things How is it that this incredible thing happens out of that? It really doesn't. Scientifically, we say something, but then you say, but why does that happen?

[17:38]

No one knows. And when life ends, where does it go? It's inconceivable. We don't know the extent and the range of consciousness So the sutra is speaking to us from that place. So it's hard to understand in a way. In a way, it's basically not understandable. And the sutra will often say, after it goes into one of these amazing descriptions of endlessness that make the mind boggle, it will say, That, of course, is only a small part of what we're talking about here. In fact, we can't really say. So, 2,000 pages of this is an experience. So, you know, there's a...

[18:43]

One of the things that happened in Chinese Buddhism is that all these sutras were coming to China in the early days. we're trying to organize it all, trying to figure out how come there's this kind of sutra, and that kind of sutra, and this sort of sutra, and they say the opposite things, and the sort of it doesn't really make any sense. So they really tried various systems of systematizing all these sutras. They wanted to put it in a way that really added up and made sense. And so one of the systems in the Tendai, the Tiantai school of Buddhism in China, which was really a very great, impressive school, scholastically very impressive, and was transmitted to Japan. And out of that school, by the way, Dogen came, and all the great founders of Japanese Zen came out of the Tendai school.

[19:50]

And not only Zen, but all the major Buddhist sects in China came out of the Tendai school. Anyway, the Tendai school had a really interesting way of characterizing the sutras, and without going into the whole thing, of systematizing the sutras, without going into the whole thing, they said this, they said, but what happened was, the Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi tree, and immediately opened his mouth and started teaching. And he taught the Avatamsaka Sutra. But when the beings heard the Avatamsaka Sutra, they were dumbfounded and freaked out, because they couldn't make head or tail out of it, and it just really scared them and got them all upset. And that's when the Buddha said, well, no use teaching.

[20:54]

So he decided not to teach. And then later on, a few minutes later, when the gods and various humans came to him and said, you know, would you please teach and so on, he realized that he should make it, try again, make it more easier to understand. So he began, he sort of backed up ten steps and started teaching the Nikayas and the Agamas. Four Noble Truths, and the Five Skandhas, and the Twelvefold Noble Chain, and the Eightfold Path, and so on. So that it would be nice, well, let's just start from the beginning here, work our way up to this grand vision. So, actually, the setting of this 2,000 pages worth of the Sutra, it all takes place in about five minutes. after the Buddha becomes enlightened. So that's the setting. The Buddha is sitting under the Bodhi tree and he's speaking the sutra and it just goes on from there, thousands of pages.

[21:59]

So this is taken to be the most beautiful and enthusiastic and straightforward, in a way, of all the Buddha's teachings according to In other words, this is how it actually is. For purposes of explanation, we'll teach different sutras and so on, but this is how it actually is. As we all know, Shakyamuni Buddha was a human being who was a prince and so on and so forth. These different things happened. and practiced, and achieved enlightenment, and died, and left many teachings behind, and so forth. In the Nikayas and the Agamas, although the Buddha is considered to be a rare and in some ways a supernatural person,

[23:06]

He's also considered to be human. And at the end of his life, when he enters nirvana, he's gone. And he leaves teachings and his disciples carry on. So that's pretty straightforward. One of the most important things that the Mahayana does is say, he didn't really go anywhere. This is one of the main burdens of the Mahayana Sutras, is to say, well, this story about the Buddha, that he was a human being, and he lived and he did this and that, and then he died and he's gone, this was all just a performance for the benefit of beings to teach beings. In fact, the Buddha never went anywhere. The Buddha's still around, you know. And where is the Buddha? Well, the Buddha is coming up on our own lives. The Buddha is actually there in everything that we see around us. So the Mahayana Sutras, in effect, take the life of the Buddha and the notion of what the Buddha is and archetypify it.

[24:24]

And the Avatamsaka Sutra also does this in spades. It's as if what the Avatamsaka Sutra in effect says is that this story, you know, the Buddha was born a prince and left home and did various practices and was enlightened and taught beings and so on and so forth. This story is not the story of a person. This is the story of every atom of matter and consciousness everywhere. This is how consciousness evolves and matures itself and turns over and over again everywhere you look. So on each moment of our thought on each atom of physical matter. In fact, there's a Buddha realm.

[25:30]

In that Buddha realm, a Buddha is coming alive, achieving enlightenment, speaking to a large assembly, enlightening beings, purifying Buddha fields, and those Buddhas are going around and also teaching. And it's going on and over and over and over again. in the middle of the infinitely small and infinitely large, which in this universe of the Avatamska Sutra are contained within each other. The infinitely small contains the infinitely large, and the infinitely large contains the infinitely small. Each one, each atom of the universe on which this archetypical enactment is occurring constantly includes all the other ones. So there's a great proliferation of Buddhas, and there are whole chapters that only give names of all Buddhas, you know, hundreds and hundreds of names of Buddhas, only giving the names.

[26:37]

And, you know, one gets this feeling of... So that, you know, after you read the sutra, for instance, when you say, Beings are numberless, I vow to save them, You have a much more appreciative sense of where that's coming from. Another aspect of the sutra is, when you read the sutra, you will have a much greater appreciation for the nature of ceremonies in Zen Buddhism and other traditions of Buddhism. because this sutra will go on in extravagant length. For instance, the Buddha was sitting in such and such a seat, and the Great Enlightenment being so on, came forward and offered the Buddha as many jewels as there are atoms in 10,000 universes. He gave them that many jewels. And then he offered as many parasols and banners as there are atoms, as there are grains of sand in the River Ganges and so on.

[27:50]

All these offerings. Because making a part of this archetype, there are many parts to it. The Buddha is having a prediction made that they will become enlightened. The Buddha is making offerings to prior Buddhas. The Buddha is asking those prior Buddhas, please, to teach. Beseeching those prior Buddhas not to disappear and leave the world, but to come back over and over again. So there's a whole bunch of things that I'm not mentioning that are part of that archetype. And one of them, certainly, is offerings. So when we offer incense in the zendo, when we offer food and so on, these all come from the Avatamsaka Sutra and other Mahayana sutras and are really considered to be enactments of this. So when you put your head into a sutra like this and read it over and over again and immerse your body and mind in it, then you bring this to an offering of incense.

[28:54]

or an offering of food. Or, when you bow, of course, you're offering your whole body and mind. That's what bowing is. It's an offering. I now throw away, completely giving my entire body and mind to the Buddha, which is the nature of reality unfolding on each atom in the universe at every moment. I'm now completely giving up to that. yielding my small-minded concepts of who I am and of what this world is to that. That's what that act really is about. And we understand it with more depth the more that we understand these sutras and put our heads in these sutras, changing our minds. So that's another thing about the sutra. Sometimes this sutra has been used in the past as a source for visualization practices.

[29:58]

So even though in our tradition we don't do this much, other schools of Buddhism will. extracting from the sutra scenes that they will actually, in meditation, recreate in their mind. Scenes of offerings, scenes of Buddha's, you know, this kind of panoramic view of endless time and space of Buddha's constantly appearing and teaching and enlightening beings gathering around them in various assemblies. We can visualize and really unite our consciousness with this. So that's one way it's been used in the past. And another way it's been used is as a practice to recite. There are some schools of Buddhism that will do zazen for 90 days and then open up the Avatamska Sutra and read it for 90 days, and then do zazen for 90 days, and then read the Avatamska Sutra for 90 days, out loud.

[31:02]

So it's been used that way. And as I say, if we let it in to our mind, it will bring out and add this sort of heroic cosmic dimension to our practice, which I think is a really important part of it. Certainly, while the classical Zen literature It doesn't sound like this at all. In fact, it's almost the opposite of this. It is certainly based on this teaching. If you look at it philosophically, Zen comes from early Zen at the time of Bodhidharma, and the early ancestors rely on the Lankavatara Sutra, which is a sutra of the

[32:05]

consciousness-only schools of Buddhism. And then the Sixth Patriarch emphasizes the Diamond Sutra, which emphasizes the teachings of emptiness. But subsequent to that, the teachings of the Avatamsaka Sutra, with this notion of the whole universe in one thing, was extremely important in the development of the Zen literature and teaching. So, when Master Joshu says, have you eaten? Yes, please wash your bowls. This is what's implied. But when it said, what is Buddha? The cypress tree in the courtyard. all of this is implied. You see, in that moment of understanding, of unifying the mind with the cypress tree, with three pounds of flax, the whole universe is there.

[33:19]

So when we emphasize, let's do soji, let's take care of our zafu, let's clean the zendo, it's housekeeping, but it's also because The Zendo is a cosmic Buddha realm, and each particle of dust that we remove removes whole universes of grief and mess. And when we apply our full concentration to our bowl of cereal, nor our yoki meal, it's because the whole universe is there to be seen. So when Zen emphasizes the present moment, it's emphasizing not the present moment in this conceptual universe, but the present moment in this infinite, conceptionless, inconceivable universe.

[34:25]

And so the source for many of the seemingly paradoxical aspects of the Zen literature is here, in that we need to learn that we live in a conceptual universe, and we need to learn how to not be trapped by that, how not to have our concepts cloud our mind. So the Zen teachers are very fond of pointing out to us, you know, here's where you're stuck with concepts. So if you say, mind is Buddha, then the response is, no mind is Buddha. If you say, no mind is Buddha, the response may be, mind is Buddha. So keeping on your feet, keeping flexible You know, not being caught by your notions, whether they be ignorant notions or high class Zen notions, is what we need to do.

[35:38]

And this sutra is kind of the background for that. So, let's see what it says here. I'll just sort of give you the briefest of ideas about how the sutra begins and what happens. The first 200 or so pages, I think the first selection that I pulled out is Book Eight, the Four Holy Truths. That happens on page 276 of the first volume. Up until then, from page... Let's see, in this book, the actual text starts on page 55.

[36:40]

So from page 55 to 277, nothing really happens. No teaching is given or anything. It's just sort of... getting you warmed up, you know, kind of preparing you. So, it begins, book one is called The Wonderful Adornments of the Leaders of the World. And it begins, here's the beginning of the sutra. Thus have I heard, as all sutras begin, thus have I heard, at one time the Buddha was in the land of Magadha in a state of purity. at the sight of enlightenment having just realized true awareness." This is right in the middle, right at that moment. The ground was solid and firm, so far so good, right? Made of diamond, adorned with exquisite jeweled disks and myriad precious flowers with pure clear crystals.

[37:43]

The ocean of characteristics of the various colors appeared over an infinite extent. There were banners of precious stones constantly emitting shining light and producing beautiful sounds. This often happens. Stones and things produce sounds. Sometimes sounds will produce universes and worlds. Nets of myriad gems and garlands of exquisitely scented flowers hung all around. The finest jewels appeared spontaneously, raining inexhaustible quantities of gems and beautiful flowers all over the earth. There were rows of jewel trees, their branches and foliage lustrous and luxuriant. By the Buddha's spiritual power, he caused all the adornments of this enlightenment site to be reflected therein." So, you got that? There's all this stuff. But then there's this row of jewel trees. And in the jewels and the foliage of the jewel trees, the entire realm

[38:48]

which is diamond and jewel-like, and each one of those jewels is totally reflected, so each jewel shows the whole picture. Anyway, it goes on like that, and what happens for hundreds of pages is that it says, that's the Buddha, right? Then it says, always, you know, the traditional opening of every sutra is, thus have I heard, the Buddha was sitting here in such and so, and this was going on, and here's who else was there. And usually it just takes a few sentences to say there were a hundred bhikshus and a hundred bhiksunis and so many laymen and laywomen, and the king was there, or whatever. That's all it says, but in this sutra it actually tells you. See, the audience in this sutra is not bhikshus and bhiksunis, human beings. It's incredible Enlightening beings of various that are named each one is named and it tells you all about him or her and also gods and demons and all kinds of there are many categories of Supernatural beings Who are all here like there were innumerable Sun deities innumerable kings of the 33 heavens innumerable kings of the Suyama heavens and

[40:04]

innumerable Gandharva kings, innumerable Maharaja kings, Yaksha kings, great Naga kings, all these mythical three kinds of beings were there. And it'll say there are these great Naga kings and it'll list them all. So anyway, this goes on for hundreds of pages, telling you who was there. And after it describes all these people who were there, usually the boss of each one of the categories of people there stands up and recites a poem that maybe lasts for a couple of pages. So each of the kind of bosses of all these different kinds of beings, who would happen to be there at the time, gets up and recites a long poem. So, now you're reading all this and you're really getting, when's the, you know, now, see this is all by way of these people eulogizing the Buddha, who was about to teach at such an auspicious moment, that they have to get up and, you know, say how great it is. So anyway, then next thing is chapter book two. The book one is a hundred pages long, and it just says what I just told you, for a hundred pages. Very hard to read.

[41:07]

There is, however, a great feeling of accomplishment. If you can actually read the sutra, you will be one of only a very few Buddhists. just a lot of information. Does anything help? Well, it's not really information, you know. I think if you, I always feel cheered up. You know, my method of reading the sutra is, I always put on my raksu and I offer incense, you know, and I bow to the sutra and I start reading. And I just keep going. And when I'm finished, I always feel very uplifted and enthusiastic and, I mean, did I learn anything? I don't know. It just seems like a nice thing to do. No, but I don't try to get any information out of it. I mean, if you try to get information out of it, you would be defeated. I didn't mean information, but if you read something that supposedly has some grain of truth to it, there's a clearing that takes place while you're reading it.

[42:16]

You feel a little lighter, a little clearer. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. I'm questioning if that happened while you read those hundred pages. Yeah. Or did you feel weighted down? No, no, I felt that way. Although my conceptual mind was fairly confused, trying to keep track of all this stuff. But still, yeah, what you say is so. I did not, because of the limitations of Xeroxing, I did not suggest that we read in hundred page chapters. You know, that would have been too much, so I chose chapters that were less that way. But I wanted just to let you know that there are some chapters like that in here. So then after that, The next chapter is called The Appearance of the Buddha, which describes the extent of the universe and the context in which the Buddha is appearing.

[43:19]

That goes on for a long time. And then in Book Three, The Meditation of the Enlightened Being Universally Good, who is Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra is sort of the... See, the Buddhas are, in a certain way, ineffective. The Buddhas are in samadhi and they don't do anything. The enlightening beings, which is to say the bodhisattvas, are the active arm of the Buddhas. And one of the things that happens in the sutra is that you become very confused after a while as to, is there any difference between the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas? I mean, are they actually different kinds of beings? Are the Buddhas higher than the Bodhisattvas or lower than the Bodhisattvas? It gets very confused, especially when there are several chapters in which there are all these Bodhisattvas and all these Buddhas and they all have the same name. And they change names.

[44:25]

Anyway, Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas are almost interchangeable in a way, and the Bodhisattvas are actively moving and creating things. So in the various chapters and various sutras of different Bodhisattvas, are the kind of guardian deities of that sutra, like in the Heart Sutra. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva who speaks that sutra. Typically the Buddha doesn't say anything. The Buddha, by his spiritual power, causes somebody else to say something. So, Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva associated with this sutra. We say in the meal chant, homage to Samantabhadra, the shining practice bodhisattva, which means the activator of things. the activator, the energy bodhisattva, the activator of things in this world. So in the next book, Samantabhadra is asked, he enters into a deep concentration and he's asked, how does this world come to be and what does it look like?

[45:33]

And then he sets forth this truly outstanding description of the various universes which turn out to be floating on fragrant seas. There are these millions of fragrant seas, and on top of the fragrant seas, and they are kind of like at the bottom, and then stacked on top of the fragrant seas are various universes. way up high, on top of the fragrances, wherever you can see. We are living in one of those universes, which is something like the 20th universe, stacked on top of... I forget the name of which fragrance it is. Each one of these universes has a name, and our universe is called the Saha world. Saha means endurance. Don't you think that's a fitting name for our universe?

[46:38]

It's called endurance, because it's auspicious in that our universe has suffering in it, and difficulty, which is very good that it does, but it doesn't have too much. So it is possible to endure. the suffering of this universe. Other universes are nothing but suffering and it's impossible to practice there because it's non-durable. Other universes are full of bliss and it's also impossible to practice there because there's no incentive. So this universe, yeah. So is that just sort of an expanded thing of the six realms? Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, this goes on for a long time. description of the formation of the worlds and then a description of the flower bank world. And the flower bank ocean of worlds is the ocean of worlds in which our universe exists.

[47:42]

And it goes on like this just to give you a little sample. Above this Past as many worlds as atoms in a Buddha field is a world called polar mountain jewel light. Its Buddha is banner of inexhaustible jewel of truth. Above this, past as many worlds as atoms in a Buddha field is a world called myriad beautiful light beams. Its Buddha is great mass of flowers. Above this, past as many worlds as atoms in a Buddha field, is a world called Crystal Light Flower. Its Buddha is most independent of humans." That's the name, most independent of humans. Above this, past as many worlds as atoms in a Buddha field, is a world called Universal Sound. Its Buddha is omniscience, illumining everywhere. Above this, past as many worlds as atoms in a Buddha field, is a world called Great Tree Kinara Sound. Its Buddha is independent dragon with infinite virtues." So it goes on like that for a long time.

[48:46]

Then names, all the Buddhas, there's a whole chapter on just the names of the Buddhas. And finally, by Book Eight, on page 276, which is the first of the readings that I chose for us, we have the first teaching of the Buddha. which is the Four Holy Truths, just as Shakyamuni Buddha taught the Four Holy Truths in the beginning of his career, so in this inconceivable universe, Bhairavacana Buddha, who is Shakyamuni Buddha in his aspect of universality and inconceivable extension, Bhairavacana Buddha teaches about the Four Holy Truths So, this is kind of interesting. Is this where Samantabhadra and Vairagyani, is this where they enter in, so to speak?

[49:56]

Oh, you mean, is this the initial, well, you know, I couldn't tell you that exactly. Maybe, this is certainly the sutra that is associated with them most. But whether it's the first appearance of them in the literature, I actually don't know. Incidentally, I should say, just to be organized about this, I should say that the Avatamska Sutra, scholars don't know exactly when it was created, but probably somewhere around the first century A.D. The text does not exist, the whole text does not exist in Sanskrit. And so they don't know whether it ever did or not. It's possible that it was created in China. It existed in Tibetan and Chinese. So it could be that there was a Sanskrit text that was translated into Tibetan and Chinese, or it could be that the Chinese made it up.

[50:58]

Nobody knows for sure. The last chapter, which is called entry into the realm of reality, or entry into the Dharmadhatu, circulated as an independent sutra. And I think that one does exist in Sanskrit. That circulated as an independent sutra. It was translated. It still does exist in Sanskrit. And there's also a chapter which in various, there are various versions of the sutra, of course. And there's one chapter that is in this version of the sutra, it's in the second volume of the English translation, called the Ten Bodhisattva Bhumis, that also existed as an independent text. And it's clear that the sutra as we have it now is a stuck-together version of a whole bunch of different things put together. So anyway, I don't know whether I doubt that this is the first mention of Vairochana Buddha.

[52:00]

This is kind of an unfair question, but I'll ask it anyway. I'm sort of fascinated by what brought about the development of the Mahayana, because it seems like up to a certain point, Buddhism is developing very sort of logically or in some way that seems logical or following one point after another you know there's buddhist psychology there's the older sutras and all of a sudden there's the mahayana and it's just like there was an explosion and i'm kind of very curious about what could have happened to bring that about and anything that you might know about that Well, of course, nobody knows for sure, but there are various viewpoints on it. I've thought about this and here's what I think. I actually don't think that the malayana sort of exploded all of a sudden as a reaction to the other schools.

[53:10]

I think that after the Buddha passed away, there were different bunches of monks here and there, monks and nuns, and practitioners here and there, each group having its own characteristic, just like we have now. Different groups have different emphasis and characteristics. And I really think that there were always people who had a devotional and enthusiastic characteristic, and chafed at this ascetic feeling that was being put forward by other disciples of the Buddha. I think they also, probably a lot of people, felt like it was bad that there was such a big division between the monks and the lay people.

[54:14]

But really, there was no way for lay people to practice much. And I think that there was a sense in which the teaching was interpreted as a very kind of world-denying teaching. After all, it was about getting out of this world, right? Going to nirvana, going to complete extinction, getting rid of this massive suffering that is human life and being embodied is really a drag. But we can't jump off a bridge, because if we do that, we'll only come back and get another body and start all over again. So we have to fundamentally lose our body, and that's called going into Nirvana. I think a lot of people had trouble with this, right? I think, from the very beginning. And a lot of people, like I say, had some devotional feeling, wanted to worship the Buddha, wanted to have some more joyous sense of things, and so on. So I believe that this kind of tension in the Sangha existed from the very beginning. And maybe there were some... To tell you the truth, I actually feel as if there was a kind of evolutionary moment in human history, you know, a wave, an evolutionary wave, which mostly had to do with human beings suddenly feeling

[55:39]

Just the same way that in an individual's life, you know, one can go from worrying about one's own suffering to suddenly realizing that you're concerned for others, you know, and changing your practice in that way. I think this happened to human beings, that suddenly the nature of religious practice changed for people. And there was a strong feeling that it was about being concerned for others. This was a key cornerstone of it. And I think that same wave, to me, I believe anyway, broke on Buddhism as the Mahayana and broke in the rest of the world, the Christian part of the world, the Middle East, as Christianity. I think it's the same way, the same sense of universal love and not rule-bound, not the kind of openness and enthusiasm and sense of celebration and worship and concern for others.

[56:41]

suddenly came on people and then, boom, these people who all this time had these issues suddenly felt totally empowered and free to speak of them. And I think probably the Mayana Sutra, the earliest Mayana Sutras, I feel, could be as old as the Pali Canon, and scholars will say that. There's no reason to believe that, say, the earliest Mayana Sutras, like the Prajnaparamita, 8,000-line sutra and maybe the Lotus Sutra could be as old as many of the texts of the Pali Canon, which of course weren't written down until about 100 BC. And these other Mahayana sutras could be that old. So, those are some of the things. And there's nothing in the Mahayana sutras that is not also in The older teachings of the Buddha, it's just a matter of emphasis, different spin. Certainly the earliest Mahayana sutras are arguing strongly against the previous teachings, and it's a little embarrassing to read some of them.

[57:49]

I know when I give classes on some of them, I have to sort of apologize for the nasty way that the authors of these sutras are talking about so-called Hinayana practitioners, how stupid they are, how limited their understanding is, and so on. Anyway, it's interesting in the light of your question to look at this chapter, because you might wonder, you know, how would the Four Noble Truths be taught from the standpoint of the Avatamsaka Sutra? How would it be different from the way it's taught in the Agamas?

[58:54]

We all know the original statement of the Four Noble Truths. All conditioned existence is, by its nature, suffering. And there's a lot of kinds of suffering. You know about the different kinds of suffering, right? There's the suffering... Well, let's see. Let me just mention three kinds of suffering, in case you don't know about three kinds of suffering. I love to talk about suffering. It cheers me up. First there's the suffering of suffering, which everybody knows about. That's the one where you really know that you're suffering and you hate it. That's when you have a pain, either a mental or physical pain that won't go away and it's really disturbing you. Or emotional pain, like if you lose something or someone that you really want to be around, that's painful.

[59:58]

If you have to be next to something that you really hate, that's painful. And that's suffering. We all know about suffering. So that's called the suffering of suffering. That's the one that we all understand. The second one, because don't forget, the Buddha said that everything, without exception, in this world is suffering. things that are unpleasant, but everything is suffering. So the first kind of suffering is the obvious one, but the second kind is less obvious. This is the suffering of change. So because of the suffering of change, something that seems to be pleasant is actually not pleasant if we were to look a little more And why is it not pleasant? It's not pleasant because we will lose it. It will go away. So if we enjoy a beautiful moment of the sun setting, and we're very happy, look at how beautiful that is, actually, although we may experience it as pleasurable, in fact, it's not pleasurable because it's disappearing, it's going, and there'll be sadness for us, and it's going.

[61:13]

So you might say, well, why not enjoy it when it's here? Why be such a pessimist that you have to bring up that it's going to go away when you're right here enjoying it? And the Buddha would say, well, actually, it's not that it will go away later. It's that right in the middle of your pleasure, the feeling of loss is there. You just don't notice. enamored of your pleasure, that you're not looking, you don't see, that it's right there. It's not later coming, it's right there. Later it's obvious, but even now it's there if you look. So that's the suffering of change. And the third one is called all-pervasive suffering. And this one is more subtle still, because even the second one we can experience. We can eventually see that when we're sort of going for pleasures in a conditioned world, the meaning of this one.

[62:16]

And this is just that there is a fundamental frustration or discontent or unsatisfactoriness in every moment of consciousness. This is the fundamental nature of every moment of consciousness, is that it is fundamentally unsatisfactory. Always, you know. And whatever it is. And this is more difficult to see. So that's the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. And the second one, as we know, is the origination of suffering. Suffering originates in desire. Because of desire, suffering arises. There's desire on each moment. To have something, we can never really get it, so we suffer. And the third one is that there is cessation of suffering. Even though suffering pervades everywhere, And even though the cause of suffering is desire, which we can never get away from as long as we're alive, this is totally terrible.

[63:21]

It seems totally bleak. But then the third noble truth is there is an end to suffering. And the fourth noble truth is that there's a way to bring about the end to suffering, and that is the path. Working with our body, speech, and mind to redirect or change our mind in such a way that we have a complete reversal of mind so that we're no longer the victim of suffering and suffering can end. So this is the classical statement of the Four Noble Truths. Now you all know that the next statement of the Four Noble Truths that's important to think about is the statement made in the Heart Sutra. which is very brief, but really crucial. The Heart Sutra says there is no suffering, there is no origination, there is no cessation, and there is no path.

[64:28]

So this is the Heart Sutra teaching about the Four Noble Truths, that these Four Noble Truths fundamentally don't exist. If you set up these Noble Truths as understandable, graspable truths that we can base our life on and objectify, you will find that this can't be done, because when you look for the Noble Truths, you can't find them anywhere. They're only provisional understandings. You can't think of them as fundamental hard and fast truths. They're only language, in other words. The Four Noble Truths are only a way of talking. Why are they necessary? They're necessary to be formulated and to be spoken because of our minds.

[65:35]

Our minds are already talking, so we need turning words to free our minds. So we have the Four Noble Truths. So when the Heart Sutra says, there is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, what it's saying is, the Four Noble Truths are just talk. Don't hang your hat on the Four Noble Truths, otherwise you'll be hanging your hat on more suffering. So be careful. This is more subtle still. So how do you suppose the Avatamsaka Sutra would teach the Four Noble Truths. Well, the Avatamsaka Sutra teaches the Four Noble Truths from the standpoint of, number one, many worlds, and number two, names and concepts. Why are there so many worlds? Why is Avatamsa Ksitigarhi going on and on about these different worlds?

[66:38]

Why is there such a plethora of named practices and powers and stuff that these Bodhisattvas are going to accrue? What's the point of that? Why is because each being is many universes. Each being has a particular karmic situation that must be met by the teaching uniquely. So one of the main characteristics of the bodhisattvas, one of the main things that they have to develop is called omniscience, which means a universal openness and flexibility to respond to conditions as they appear. So this is what is meant by the many worlds. Every sentient being is a whole universe. There's an entirely unique dharma that it must be taught for each being. When they say appear, do they mean as they arise or as they seem?

[67:42]

I mean, I never quite get how appear means. Which meaning of appear? As they arise. So, Therefore, to set the Four Noble Truths up as this particular thing would be, from the standpoint of the Avatamsaka Sutra, not going nearly far enough. There's infinite Four Noble Truths, right? So that's what the Avatamsaka Sutra does. It teaches an infinite number of Four Noble Truths. And the way it does it, Oh, and what else did I say? Concepts and many worlds. So, names. The Avatamsaka Sutra is constantly recognizing that we live in a conceptual universe which is infinitely extensive because individuals are infinite and each one of us has infinite conceptual afflictions, right? The Avatamsaka Sutra, basically, many, many names are given in the sutra, each name being an antidote to a conceptual

[68:44]

difficulty raised by sentient beings. So here's how the sutra teaches. Basically what it does is, one important aspect of the sutra is, everything in this sutra has to be in terms of ten things. So you know there's an old teaching of the six paramitas, but in this sutra there can't be six paramitas, there have to be ten paramitas. So ten, because ten means infinity. That's why it's always ten. So sometimes you have to make up a few extra things to add to the list to make it ten. And sometimes you read the sutra and it's really, you know, you really say, that's what we do. I just had to add another one there just to make it ten. And I guess, you know, if you think about it a little bit, you know, ten is sort of one and zero, you know. And one and zero is like form emptiness or something, everything and nothing, unity and nothingness. And so maybe everything is included in that. So when they want to tell you that there are infinite statements of the Four Noble Truths, of course they can't write infinite words.

[69:52]

So they just indicate that by giving you ten words or ten groupings of something, which means infinite number. So basically you could say every chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra ends with the word et cetera, even though it's not stated. So what you have here is they give you ten, each one of the Four Noble Truths is given ten names in a particular world. And then there are ten worlds are given. So they'll say, for instance, In this chapter, Manjushri is speaking. This is all still happening, you know, while the Buddha is sitting on the enlightenment tree in that moment. Manjushri stands up and says, Children of Buddhas, the holy truth of suffering in this world, endurance, is sometimes called wrongdoing or oppression or change

[71:07]

or clinging to objects, or accumulation, or thorn stabbing, or dependence on the senses, or deceit, or the place of cancer, or ignorant action. The holy truth of the cause of the accumulation of suffering, and I think it's so funny, that they say the accumulation of suffering instead of the origination of suffering because, of course, the Avatamska Sutra, which piles world on top of world, naturally would talk about the accumulation of suffering rather than the origination of suffering. So that's how they state that truth. The holy truth of the accumulation of suffering in this world endurance may be called bondage or disintegration or attachment to goods or false consciousness, or pursuit and involvement, or conviction, or the web, or fancified conceptualizing, or following, or mixed-up faculties.

[72:26]

The Holy Truth, so that's the second one. Ten names for the second one. The Holy Truth of the extinction of suffering in this world endurance may be called non-contention, or freedom from defilement, or tranquility and dispassion, or signlessness, or deathlessness, or absence of inherent nature, or absence of hindrance or extinction, or essential reality, or abiding in one's own essence. The holy truth of the path to the extinction of suffering in this world, endurance, may be called the one vehicle, or progress toward serenity, or guidance, or ultimate freedom from discrimination, or equanimity, or putting down the burden, or

[73:31]

having no object of pursuit, or following the intent of the saint, or arhat, or the practice of sages, or ten treasuries. In this world, endurance, there are four quadrillion such names to express the Four Holy Truths in accord with the mentalities of sentient beings to cause them all to be harmonized and pacified. What in this world is called the holy truth of suffering is, in that world called secret teaching, a different world called, and again, the sense of striving and seeking, or not being emancipated, or the root of bondage, or doing what shouldn't be done, and so on.

[74:34]

So, it's a wonderful meditation, you know, if you want to understand the Four Truths, if you read each of these, and so there's ten, right, times ten, ten worlds, ten names, times four, because there's four truths. Four hundred names are given in this short chapter. Four hundred synonyms or names for the Four Normal Truths. And it's a wonderful meditation, you know, to read through this and savor and contemplate each one of these names. then you can understand much more widely and much more extensively what is meant by the Holy Truth of Suffering, the Truth of... so on, so... What is this thing in this chapter that's signed? Signed plus... what do they mean by that? That's important, yeah. Well, let's see. No, I know what you mean.

[75:40]

When you perceive something, what it actually is is fundamentally unknown. We don't know what it is, but your organ of perception touches something, and in that activity, something pops up, something moves. And then, out of that movement, still there's no perception at that moment. Then, our karma, our own inner propensity, reacts to that movement.

[76:49]

And out of that connection between the movement created by the organ and the object, combined with our inner propensity, our preconception, if you will, we create what's called, technically, a sign. Sounds very contemporary. Is it the same kind of thing? Yeah, that's right. It is very contemporary. It's astonishing. So a sign is created, and it's that sign that we perceive. So when this sutra is talking about our... So the world that we live in is a world of signs. Although, I mean, the word is nimitta, so I don't know if sign is a good... Maybe the reason why it sounds so contemporary is that the translator is hip and uses the word sign. Actually, to tell you the truth, I never heard any other part. I mean, even the older translations use the word sign.

[77:51]

So anyway, what we're living in is a universe in which we're all seeing signs. We're not seeing real. Yeah, not that we can see something else that's real, other than signs, because that's the way our minds work. So when he talks about the signless, that means beyond such signs and concepts. A sign is a concept, so we're living, we're seeing concepts. In other words, it's a way of apprehending, which is not in this category of signs, which is somehow gone. And the nature of such apprehending is non-apprehension. Because if we could apprehend something, it's immediately a sign. If we say, I am now apprehending reality signlessly, that would be a sign. So, therefore, it's inherently ungraspable and inconceivable.

[79:04]

And that's why the sutra is always going on and on, because we can't conceive of it. And as I said earlier, the Zen literature does the same thing, only from a completely different angle. Instead of using a whole bunch of words, they just use one word that is equally as ungraspable. kind of a difficulty with the idea of it being inconceivable. I mean, I understand the whole idea of, like, it sounds like what you were describing as far as the science being a product of our own karma that almost seems that we're ending up with our perception as an image of our own karma, I guess. But still, as far as, I mean, wouldn't enlightenment itself be a type of conception? But then wouldn't that be finally apprehending the reality? Well, no, because one goes beyond enlightenment.

[80:10]

If we apprehend reality through the eye of enlightenment and that's it, then we're simply smeared with the shit of enlightenment. And then we're no better off than we were before. Really, the understanding and practice has to do with not getting hung up on that. The Enlightenment, in the sense that we're talking about it now, is a kind of medicine to cure the disease, but then if we keep taking the medicine, the medicine instantly becomes another kind of disease. There's two pictures after the empty mirror. Right, I mean, returning to the ordinary. Yeah. Before we leave today, can you just say a little bit on how we should read this sutra?

[81:10]

That is, you've said it's very meditative, but you also discussed all the different kinds of ways that one could meditate through this sutra. I mean, one could read the I suppose, read 2,000 words without thinking about any one of them out loud, or one could probably read one of those words 2,000 times. What is the appropriate way for this class to read this? Well, two things. First of all, What I like to do in these Avatamska Sutras classes, and because this is the first week and I wanted to introduce the sutra, we're not doing it tonight, but hopefully we'll do it next week, is basically for the last 20 or 25 minutes of the class, to have a little recitation service. Which, the way we do it at Green Gulch is we stop talking and offer incense and bow three times.

[82:13]

and sit down and start at a certain page and read together. And then I bring a little bell and after a little while I strike the bell and then we stop and just breathe and start again. We do that for about 20-25 minutes just to get the feeling in our bodies. It's a really nice thing to do. So that's one thing you can do. Reading it on your own, I would recommend that you, the same way, that you, the same kind of spirit that you do Zazen, that you read the sutra that way. Literally, if you do Zazen, you know, bowing to your cushion or offering incense or whatever, that you do that. And open the sutra up and try to, you know, sit up straight and be aware. And try to read, you know, with your heart and your stomach. Just read along, as long as you can, you know, as much time as you have.

[83:16]

If we come across something like signless, we really shouldn't. I mean, this should pass through our minds just as thoughts do, as they do in science. Well, you could do it that way, or you could note it and ask it as a question in the class, or you could look it up if you want. But you wouldn't want to then stop and look it up, is what you're saying. You'd sort of want to keep reading and then... No, you could stop and look it up. You're not going to answer my question, are you? You're going to sort of say, you know, whatever is appropriate, do it, right? Well, no, I mean, that's what I do. I stop and look something up if I'm reading. You can do it that way. I'm just trying to answer your questions. So you can try different things. Beings are infinite in variety. Your way of reading the sutra might be a little different from mine, but what I do is, as I said before, I do kind of read straight through and try to, since I feel responsible to come to the class and say something, I'm a little more directed about trying to, I sort of try to figure out what's going on a little bit, you know, I confess.

[84:31]

And then I do look something up. Very often I find myself associating something with different texts here and there and thinking about it, looking something up and so forth. But, you know, some people say that Suzuki Roshi said, and this was, Fabiola will remember that this was, I'm quoting from our Shosan ceremony this morning at Green Gulch. Some people say that Suzuki Roshi said, If thoughts knock on the door, you can answer the door, but don't invite them in for tea. Do you hear that saying? It's a way of working with your thinking. So what I'm saying is, you can also invite them in for tea, but don't serve cookies.

[85:32]

So we don't have to be so strict about it. It's flexibility. Anything else? Do you know why there are so many images of these sort of crystalline gem images? I mean, there's the sort of flower images, but the flowers are sort of crystalline too. Is there some kind of reason for this? Is it because they're so rare that bringing them in there makes changes? It's such a hard-edged, reflective, sort of mirror, mirror, mirror kind of thing. Well, I always thought that this was because, for some reason, That was the Indian people's idea of what was really the most wonderful thing.

[86:46]

I mean, the Indian people, you never see, you know, there's a kind of otherworldly quality to all these sutras, you know, in the sense that, I mean, like the Chinese, you know, would not express it that way. I think they would express it in terms of a pine tree, you know, or a beautiful mountain peak. And so the Zen literature has a very different feel from this. And I think that this is foreign, it feels a little foreign to us. I think we have more our sense of nature. And this world is, that this world is a jewel, as it is, right? Whereas there's definitely something about the Indian sensibility that says that, you know, this world is really horrible and difficult and we need out of it, you know. And so if you're thinking of something really wonderful, you're thinking of, you know, things like jewels and sort of flowers are kind of like secret sort of spies, right, in this world, which suggest some escape, some other world, right? See a kind of beautifully cut ruby and stare at it and it looks like, wow, where did that come from?

[87:56]

Or look into a flower, you know, or a butterfly or something like that. So I think The Indians, that was just their idea. So, I mean, if we were going to write sutras, we would probably write them like that. It seems appropriate to the form of the work, though, with having all those facets, kind of crystalline structure. Something that's very hard, but also reflective and deep. Yes, certainly the image of a jewel reflecting everything is really important for the sutra. But it's true in all the Mahayana sutras, even the ones where that particular image doesn't particularly figure. Even there, there are always jewels and diamonds. The ground is made of a diamond. You think, wow, who wants to walk around on a diamond? The ground, you know, it slides around. But that was their idea.

[89:00]

And also, I mean like in the higher meditative states, there was the experience of sort of entering into rarefied realms in which the more gross elements of the realm of the senses were purified and disappeared. And that this was much more pleasurable. So for some of these meditators it was definitely the case that there was a higher and more satisfactory bliss-like existence in the higher realms in which there was no olfactory sense and the body was not stinky and so forth. So I think that in that experience also there was a kind of abstraction from the physical world. Whereas in the Zen schools, there was definitely a kind of further step taken, which was to see that these two worlds were not different.

[90:12]

So the Indians always tended to be, even though in Indian Buddhism, In the Mahayana Buddhism, there's clearly the notion that samsara and nirvana are one and the same thing. It says that. Still and all, sometimes you don't feel that way when you read these sutras. You feel like they're trying to create this other world. But it was up to the Chinese to take that really seriously. And I think nowadays it's also up to us to do that. That's the way it is. So, I will... Next time we'll maybe go on to Book 10, and Lightning Being asks for clarification, and try to

[91:17]

spend maybe one hour or so for going over the text and questions and whatnot. And then the last half hour or so, it's okay with you to do it that way, have an experience of chanting the sutra together, reciting it together. Excuse me, before we end, can I see a show of hands of people that need to set 0 on the steps. 1, 2, 3. OK. And those people that haven't paid, would they make that a check to PCC for $25 and give it to me? And also sign the list that's being circulated.

[92:06]

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