sign of dedication to this sutra. Again, you get double merit if you're a Giants fan. And one and a half, I guess, if you're an Oakland fan, since you still get to listen to the game. Well, last time we finished Chapter 21, and so there's, again, there are 32 chapters in the Diamond Sutra, because the Buddha's body, of course, the sutra, as I've been saying over and over, it's like a broken record, the sutra's about the Buddha's body, and there are 32 attributes that the Buddha the Buddhist body is noted for, so that's why there are 32 chapters. Some of the divisions are rather artificial and it's a sign, I think, that the man who made the divisions was determined to get 32. The Sanskrit, none of the Sanskrit texts have 32 divisions.

[01:04]

There are no chapter divisions. It's only this Chinese prince, the son of King Wu, the eldest son of King Wu, this man named Prince Xiaoming, who established the 32 divisions. but they're seen as being so appropriate that even all the people who now edit the Sanskrit texts always use his division. So even if you see a Sanskrit text today, it'll have these 32 divisions simply because this Chinese prince around 530 AD or so gave the text these divisions. Because he was a prince and he had a He cultivated the arts. He put together China's most famous literary anthology as well. And so he had a group of people around him that no doubt had included a few Indian monks. And so he apparently was aware that the sutra was about the Buddha's body, which is rather unusual because you don't get that picture from any of the Chinese commentators.

[02:11]

But I guess when you're the son of an emperor, you have access to people that ordinary monks don't. He died when he was 30 years old, or was it 31 years old? So fairly young. And he recited, he said the Diamond Sutra 10,000 times. That was sort of his sutra of choice. Anyway, we've been working our way through this body of the Buddha, these different 32 parts of the Buddha's body, and we just finished Chapter 21, so I'll read 22. Chapter 21 was about the Buddha teaching. says the Buddha said, Sabuddhi, what do you think? Does it occur to the Tathagata that I teach a Dharma? And he says, no, I don't, or it doesn't occur. In chapter 22, Sabuddhi says, what do you think? Did the Tathagata realize any such Dharma as unexcelled perfect enlightenment?

[03:15]

So you'll notice that ever since chapter 17, the focus of the sutra has changed. The first 16 chapters are about the Bodhisattva's acquisition of, you might say, Buddhahood, or the final understanding of the Bodhisattva, whereas the last 16 chapters are about once you understand this teaching, how do you manifest it to others? So in a sense, the last half of the Sutra is about Buddhahood or about skillful means. If you want to consider it as both parts about the Bodhisattva path, the first part is about the attainment of the the Bodhisattva goal, and then the second, or the path, and then the second part is about transmitting this path, this teaching to others. And so that's why you'll notice in these other chapters, the ones we're going to see today, the point of view is very different from the first part of the sutra.

[04:19]

The first part of the sutra, the point of view of the chapters is usually the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva should not do this, or should do this, or doesn't do this. And now these last chapters are all about the Buddha. They're all about... Yes? I don't know. Was there another... I think that's 18. Here, take mine. Oh, you have them? You have 22? Yeah, they're just short. They are, exactly, they're very short. That's why I thought I would digress a little bit since I know we can go through a bunch of these today. And so what I'll probably do today is try to get as close as I can to the end and then go over the whole sutra next week and try to put together all the different threads, but we might not get quite done today.

[05:25]

So what do you think? Did the Tathagata realize any such Dharma as unexcelled perfect enlightenment? Again, the point of view is, what is it like to be a Buddha? Who is this Tathagata? The Buddha is now concerned about this Dharma body of the Buddha and our access to understanding the real nature of the Tathagata. So did the Tathagata realize any such Dharma as unexcelled perfect enlightenment? The Venerable Subuddhi replied, no indeed, Bhagavan. The Tathagata did not realize any such dharma. Bhagavan has unexcelled perfect enlightenment. And the Buddha said, so it is, subhuti, so it is. The slightest dharma is neither obtained nor found therein. Thus is it called unexcelled perfect enlightenment. So this whole sutra is about, in a sense, there's an underlying theme that's never really discussed. It's the, what is a dharma? The Buddha never really tells us in this sutra, but whatever a dharma is, it's not there.

[06:32]

Of course, the Buddha was using the word dharma just in, I think, a general sense, as a perception of reality, of an entity that we might consider real. As Buddhism developed shortly after the Buddhist nirvana, the school arose in India called the Abhidharma school. which focused on reality in a way that was more analytical in approach and it identified 108, well different schools of the Abhidharma identified different numbers, but a hundred or so entities were called dharmas. And these dharmas all had to do with our sensations, objects of sensation, the organs of sensation, the mind, all these psychological entities, categories of the mind, and then of nirvana and space, and of course the Buddha's own dharma body. But these categories were developed much after the Buddha's time, and he doesn't seem to be using the word dharma in this analytical sense in this text.

[07:41]

He's just using it as a marker for anything that you might think of as real. Because the sutra, again, is about bodies, it's about entities, and the word dharma is just another word for anything that you might think is real, that could be considered an entity of reality, a piece of reality. So he says there's not the slightest And the Sanskrit word he uses here for slightest is anus, which is derived from anu. And anu is the Indian word or Sanskrit word for atom. There's not even an atom of a dharma, not even the smallest. The anu was the basic unit of Indian metaphysics. And they even divided the anu into a paramanu anu. They would divide it into even smaller categories, too. But the Buddha doesn't do that.

[08:42]

He just says that there's not even an atom of reality. And the slightest dharma is not obtained or found therein. Thus is it called unexcelled perfect enlightenment. And so the Buddha is talking now about the goal of the Bodhisattva path. But when you finally get to the enlightenment subhuti, you won't find anything there. Yes. So you said that the focus has changed from talking about Bodhisattvas to talking about Buddhas, but now I'm confused as to what the difference is. Well, we probably won't really get there for a few chapters yet, but the basic difference is that a bodhisattva is really unable to use dharmas skillfully. That dharmas tend to be obstacles to the bodhisattva, whereas for a Buddha, they're like playthings. or not really play things, but the Buddha uses dharmas as medicine, as tools to help liberate other people, whereas dharmas for the bodhisattva generally tend to be rafts.

[09:54]

They're like things that a bodhisattva is using to progress on a bodhisattva path, but they tend to become obstacles because there's a certain level at which we subscribe reality to that dharma. whereas the Buddha in fact in the next chapter actually will talk about this exact point that dharmas for the bodhisattva are obstacles and for the Buddha for someone at the end of the path they're auspicious dharmas, they're useful dharmas. This whole sutra is about the difference between a bodhisattva and a buddha. And there's really, the buddha wants to keep telling us that there isn't any difference. But it takes a long time to realize that there is no difference. That's why he keeps saying you're going to practice this dharma teaching. He keeps talking about this dharma teaching, but he says there's no dharma in this dharma teaching. Not even the least teeniest little dharma.

[10:58]

this um nothing nothing is found therein so i'll read chapter 23 because it sort of goes with 22 so furthermore subuddhi undifferentiated is this dharma in which nothing is differentiated thus is it called unexcelled perfect enlightenment So where the slightest dharma is not found therein and thus there's nothing differentiated in this dharma, in which nothing is differentiated. Without a self, so a self is not differentiated in it, without a being, without a life, it doesn't have a soul. Undifferentiated is this unexcelled perfect enlightenment. So the only way he can describe the dharma of enlightenment is that it's undifferentiated. Nothing can be distinguished or differentiated from it. But it's by means of which, by means of enlightenment, all auspicious dharmas are realized. So this is the point you were making, Jean, that it's after you attain enlightenment that you're able to use or realize all dharmas or see dharmas as auspicious.

[12:11]

as useful, whereas the bodhisattva would be more concerned with avoiding them, whereas a Buddha is more attracted to the use of, the consideration of a dharma as being useful in some way, to help in the liberation of others. So that's why he says, by means of which, by means of perfect enlightenment, all auspicious dharmas are realized. Of course, that means all inauspicious dharmas are also realized. the good and the bad dharmas, but he uses the word for auspicious, the Sanskrit is kushala, from the word kusha, which is, kusha is that grass, the kusha grass that in India that is, they use it in all the religious ceremonies, the Brahmins do, and the Buddha made, and the other monks in the Buddhist order used it for their meditation pillows. They sat on kusha grass. And so it leads to enlightenment.

[13:13]

Anything that's conducive. Yes. easily. Oh yes, yeah. It needs to cut. Yes, it is. It's that tall grass that grows with those big wavy, you know, like pampas grass. Yeah, some people could call it razor grass. In Taiwan, they call it razor grass because, yeah, if you just grab a bunch of it, ooh, and I've done that, you know, if you're climbing mountains and you slip and you grab some of this grass by mistake, you end up with this cuts all up and down. Yeah, so it is sharp. I have a on the same point of the difference between them. It sounds like the Bodhisattva, he's trying to say the Bodhisattvas are still on the path, as they say in some of the other sutras, the Bodhisattvas view dharmas but do not apprehend them. The Bodhisattva is in a sense avoiding a certain kind of entanglement or engagement with dharmas.

[14:16]

Buddha kind of so perfectly realizes that they're empty, that they can be used in any way that's appropriate. Right. That's what they're trying to do. Yeah, and I think that the Bodhisattva, this attitude, or that the Buddha subscribes or ascribes to the Bodhisattva is a little carryover of the attitude towards the Arhat, who is really avoiding dharmas. But in Chapter 5, where the Buddha kind of lays down what the teaching of the Sutra is, generate the thought of liberating all beings, even though no beings exist, it's kind of Right, but he doesn't know, the whole sutra is about trying to get this point across in a way that you can actually experience it. So he's been going over Subuddhi's experience of it, and then now lately, in the last few chapters, his own experience of it, and trying to get Subuddhi to reflect on what it's like to be a Buddha, and what the Buddha must think. And so he's using Subuddhi to sort of, as a means to bring out what he, what the Buddha himself sees about his own experience.

[15:24]

And that's why he says, so by means of this enlightenment, all auspicious dharmas are realized. And how so? But auspicious dharmas, subhuti, auspicious dharmas are spoken of by the Tathagata as no dharmas. That's what they called auspicious dharmas. So again, it's the same dialectic, but he just wants to keep reminding subhuti that, The dharmas that the Buddha plays around with are naturally empty, but that doesn't keep the Buddha from using them as auspicious dharmas. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And he's been using the same technique throughout the whole sutra.

[16:28]

And I think I said earlier that he apparently uses this technique because he doesn't want to use the word emptiness. that this logical technique is simply another way of saying the word emptiness, but without saying a word, without saying the word emptiness. Because Subuddhi, again, is the disciple who best understands emptiness, but his idea of emptiness is the idea of the Hinayana idea of emptiness, that everything is empty. because it has no self-nature. But that's so, that's as far as he gets, is that everything is empty. And that would be the idea that there are no mountains, that the mountains are empty. And the Buddha wants him to see that the mountains are the mountains there. And so that's why he uses this dialectic rather than trying to say, Sabuddhi, emptiness is not empty, or emptiness is empty of emptiness. which would also be confusing.

[17:31]

So he uses this technique to teach subhuti that emptiness is itself empty, but therefore everything as it is, as it is. And I think that maybe this sutra reflects the idea that at the time that he spoke it, he was already realized that people were becoming attached to the concept of emptiness. And in the Abhidharma, weren't the dharmas considered irreducible and not empty in themselves? It's like the atoms are real. Or is that not quite correct? I don't know. I would think that they would have to be selfless, without any self-nature. I don't know. I've never really studied why they came up with that idea of dharma and dharmas, because they must... There was a school of Buddhism that had a hundred dharmas I can't remember all the 100 in the list. I realize that, but I've never really thought about it much.

[18:59]

Would they therefore say that these things have a self-nature? Or no self-nature? They would probably have to have no self-nature. Otherwise, there's a self. I think there were schools... I thought that they were simply irreducible. They were real. Not all of them agreed that they were real. So it's like the chariot. The chariot doesn't exist because it's made of wheels and axles and spokes, but the wheels and axles and spokes exist. I see. I guess I have heard of that, but that was like 20 years ago when I first started studying Buddhism. I remember reading about that. Was it not the case at the time of the Buddha that a lot of the other Yeah, and it was. Many of the teachers he studied with, they cultivated different forms of nihilism, and that's what emptiness can represent, that sort of nihilistic attitude.

[20:11]

The Buddha was trying to teach this positive sense of emptiness, and that's why he uses this dialectic instead of the word emptiness. In other Prajnaparamita sutras, he uses the word emptiness. He does not use this dialectic. In fact, I've only seen this dialectic used extensively here in this sutra. It's like a pitcher. This is the forkball. He uses it in this game, in this technique. I've never seen it used anywhere else. He'll use it occasionally in a sutra, but this is the technique he comes back to again and again and again and again in the sutra. So he's trying to make a point, and the point is that emptiness is empty of emptiness and therefore not empty. And that's why he says the mountains are still the mountains. Yes? Many of the translations of the Diamond Sutra that I've seen, the very translator sort of has, giving his own viewpoint, kind of dead ends in spatiality emptiness, which is not the gist of it at all.

[21:28]

is the point of it, but a lot of them hold the sack there. As far as they, do you know what I mean? Yeah, that they think that emptiness refers to the emptiness in this room. Yeah, and even speaking of it like as far as atoms is still giving it a spatial connotation. Well, I guess that when the Buddha was talking, though, he did have an audience that included materialists as well. And that's why you get these terms in the Buddha Sutras, but you don't know that the Buddha is thinking materialistically or not. He's just trying to use the language of the times. Right, right. And I think of Adam at that point also as something that was indivisible. Yeah. I didn't understand Adam. They actually had the word anu, which meant atom, but even then, in the Buddha it uses the word paramanu anu, which means you can divide the atom by seven, by a factor of seven. Then that factor of seven, you can divide seven times again. And so they did have these categories of divisibility of even atoms, but... Yeah, I mean, that was like a lower pointer, but certainly not just

[22:43]

Right, he wasn't talking materialistically here. In fact, the sutra is about, I think at the very beginning I told you that the Buddha keeps coming back to, the sign that you're practicing this right is if you don't have these four ideas of self, being, life or soul. And the ideas of self and being are the most intrinsic, most basic elements of the spatial dimension. Our entire concept of space is built on the idea that we are real, that the self is real, and that others are. are real too. As soon as we have one, the self, then we have others. If we get rid of those, then our spatial dimension no longer is valid. There is no spatial dimension. And the same with life and soul on the temporal dimension. If there's no this life and next life or past life, then there's no temporal dimension. And so it's true, the Buddha's trying to make subhuti realize that you've got to get rid of space, get rid of time, and then you've got to get rid of mind.

[23:50]

because you've got to get rid of this third dimension. And again, I'm using the word dimension not in our normal sense of the three dimensions or whatever. The third dimension is the dimension of dharmas or mind objects. He says dharmas or no dharmas. It is sunyata or no emptiness or no emptiness. Mind objects would then be, if you have sense objects, like objects of feeling, sight, sound, so on, those things that impact, sort of physically, then mind objects would be ideas, concepts, that kind of thing, is that? Right, that's exactly what they are. Right. So he's really, Buddha's really talking Yes, but he also keeps coming back to the space-time objects too. The self, being, life, soul thing too.

[24:54]

What I get more here is talking about having any idea of these things is incorrect. Of being attached to an idea of them. Because at the same time, he's not saying there is no such thing as a being of light. Right. The mountain is still there, yes. So there is this, well, this, I don't know, maybe it's not quite the same, the sameness and difference is what I'm thinking of, that they're both real and not real. Dharmas. And it's a problem.

[25:55]

Keep that in mind. It is. Of course, that's why Buddhism is sort of not necessarily involves ... practice is not instantaneous. It's sort of like enlightenment. It's this long path, but once you're enlightened there's no path anymore. the idea that it took any time at all is irrelevant, not really meaningful. This whole process the Buddha's teaching in the sutra is a backwards path. It's actually, you think of a path that's going forward, well he's actually going backwards. back to where we began. He's going back to the self and this idea of space and time. But space and time, as he lets us know several places in the sutra, arise from dharmas. Our ideas of self, being, life, and soul arise from our attachment to dharmas or no dharmas. So it's really dharmas are the, the mind creates space and time, creates self and being. And he's going to tell us in chapter 28 that the final realization of the Bodhisattva is that there are no dharmas.

[27:04]

That dharmas never come into existence. The forbearance of birthlessness is what they call it. So there are no concepts, there are no dharmas. But if I've understood what you've said before, that's being a Mahayana sutra, that he is trying to avoid Subuddhi's nihilism, falling into, I don't know if it's nihilism or not, that's another term, but Arahant Bhupa, it's simply to be removed completely, dispelled completely from the larger human community and to sense of the teaching.

[28:17]

Well, the Buddha never really says anything bad about subuddhi's path. It's just, but it's not good. He never praises his path, you might say, because it doesn't help anybody, but he doesn't deny the validity of his path in terms of, okay, if you don't want to be reborn, then that's a good path if you don't want to be reborn. That's what Subuddhi is striving for, this arhat path that goes through these four stages in Chapter 9 where you finally reach the stage of no rebirth. Right. That there is no reincarnation. There's no birth, exactly. It's this idea that Subuddhi is trying to dam the river in a sense. The arhat path is to cut off rebirth or to sever your passion, to stop your desires, your passion, that which creates karma.

[29:27]

And then once you do this, you still have seven more lifetimes to live. That's the arhat idea. And that's why you go through these last four stages while you're waiting for this karma to work its way out and become detached from all these delusions that are associated with each of these stages. But all you're doing is freeing yourself from karma and thus entering nirvana. After you're completely freed of all this karma, then the only place to go is nirvana. But the Buddha's point in the sutra is you don't help anybody if that's your path. But he never says that this isn't the way it works. He's willing to let subhuti think that this is a valid path, that this is okay, you can become an arhat, you can be free of rebirth, and that's the way it works. But... Is he saying that there's something... Is he trying to... into a frame of mind where he can see that there is something to get to a stage of realization of no birth.

[30:50]

Yes. That's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to get Subuddhi to trade no rebirth for no birth. because no rebirth is about the future and no birth is about right now or the past, you could say, but there's no past. In fact, actually, I think he sort of encourages people to be reborn, in a sense, because you have to save all beings. Yeah, you have to save all. If you make this resolution to save all beings, then that includes beings in the future, although there are no beings and there can't be any beings and you can't liberate anybody because there's never been any beings, never will be any beings, but yet people are suffering and so you make this selfless vow to liberate all beings.

[31:54]

And again it's this reenactment of the myth of Purusha who creates the world out of his body as an act of sacrifice. And so the Buddha is encouraging the Bodhisattva to sort of to do that. Yes. Yeah, for all beings. Yeah. Yeah. The raft doesn't exist. Nothing else exists either that get on the raft. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This sort of leads me to this question of the raft. It's a raft for the Bodhisattvas. But for the Buddha, it's skillful means. Yes. And it should be for the Bodhisattva too. Because the Buddha, in the Sutra, the Buddha doesn't really draw any clear lines between the Bodhisattva and the Buddha. And I think the sutra is, he's trying to show Sabuddhi, because Sabuddhi asks at the beginning of the sutra, he says, how can we set forth on the Bodhisattva path? And as we get further and further closer to the end, we realize that we've already reached the end of the path.

[33:00]

Everybody's now at the end of the path, at the end of the sutra. And he's trying to let Subuddhi know there's no difference. Setting forth is being at the end of the path. Once you set forth, then there's nothing more to do. Once you make that vow to liberate all beings, then you and I are the same. We all have the same body. I know your body, he keeps saying. I know you. I can see your body. And he uses those words over and over. Let me read another one and we'll put more, another log on the fire here. I think, yeah, and so after he sort of, yeah, introduced the idea of, there's nothing, no dharmas in this, in enlightenment, but yet it gives rise to all auspicious dharmas. So it's again, Lao Tzu has this idea too that that which is alive has to come from that which is not alive.

[34:04]

Something comes from nothing. Something has to come from nothing. It can't come from something else or then we have to investigate where that other something is. And so eventually you have to find a point where something comes from nothing. The individual life comes from this dark womb, which just seems like empty, nothing, blackness, you know, nothingness. And that's where life comes from. And all these auspicious dharmas come from a place where there are no dharmas. There are no dharmas in enlightenment, and yet it's by means of enlightenment that we give birth to all these dharmas that help other people, other beings, and ourselves become enlightened. So then he says, moreover, Sabuddhi, if a man or woman brought together as many piles of the seven jewels, and here he actually uses the word piles, of the seven jewels, as all the Mount Sumeru's in the billion worlds of the universe and gave them as a gift to the Tathagatas, the Arhats, the fully enlightened ones.

[35:14]

And again, this idea of giving a gift, of making this big sacrifice. And a good son or daughter understood but a single four-line gatha of this dharma teaching and of the perfection of wisdom. And here he mentions by name the teaching only for the second time in the sutra. This is the last time he mentions it. and made it known, so it's also an indication that he's wrapping things up now. It's the end of the sutra. He mentioned this name of the sutra at the midway point, and now he's mentioning it near the end. And these people made it known to others, subhuti, their body of merit would be greater by more than a hundredfold, indeed, by an amount beyond comparison. So every time he starts talking about enlightenment, the realization of enlightenment and what enlightenment amounts to, he immediately talks about this body of merit again. I think it's six different times he talks about the creation of this body of merit.

[36:15]

It's only by, again, transmitting this teaching to others that you get this body of merit, which is exactly what he's talking about in the previous chapter when he says, It's from enlightenment that enlightenment gives rise to auspicious dharmas. And it's these auspicious dharmas that are the teaching that you transmit to others. and thus create this body of merit so now he's sort of fuzzing the line again between this body of merit and what it is and it would seem now that the emphasis is not on the reward body or the sambhogakaya now but on the dharma body that that the real body of merit of these bodhisattvas and buddhas is the dharma body, because it's the dharma, it's enlightenment that gives rise to all these auspicious dharmas and also this body of merit.

[37:16]

So again, it is like a shell game in this sutra with where you never really know sometimes which body he's talking about, but I'd say now he's getting, the emphasis seems to be more and more on the dharma body and about, yes, Punya, the Sanskrit word for Punya. Yeah, it doesn't really, Punya means merit, means that which is also, it's like Kushala, it means that which is auspicious. It has to do with future, which has some kind of, what shall I say, repercussions. It's karmic. It has the idea of good karma. And punya is also the name of this special plant, too, that they use in their religious ceremonies.

[38:20]

It's called holy basil. Tulasi is another Sanskrit word for it, or holy basil. Every Indian household, whenever they move, even today, the first thing you do is you plant some holy basil in your yard and you build it. Your shrine is surrounded by holy basil, by this plant, which is also called punya. So punya is sort of like the door. It's the door god to the future. to the sacred world. And so punya is this world. We say merit, but merit is what gains us access to the future. It makes our future possible. Without merit, we have no future. And sort of has that sort of meaning. It gives us a future, a projection. a projection into time, but of course the Buddha is talking about projection in no time, because he's going backwards, he's leaving time.

[39:25]

Let me add one more log, because we've just got the body of merit there burning brightly. And now in 25, the Buddha says, so what do you think? Does it occur to the Tathagata, I rescue beings? So once we have this body of merit in action, using these auspicious dharmas, this is what a Buddha does with these auspicious dharmas. So you rescue beings, you liberate beings. But does it occur to the Tathagata that I rescue beings? Surely, Subhuti, you should hold no such view. Why not? Subhuti, the being does not exist who is rescued by the Tathagata. Subhuti, if any being were rescued by the Tathagata, the Tathagata would be attached to itself. So the Buddha has used this logic earlier in the Sutra too. If X existed, I wouldn't talk about X. It's only because X doesn't exist that we're talking about X. So, if any being were rescued by the Tathagata, the Tathagata would be attached to a self.

[40:29]

He'd be attached to a being, attached to a life, attached to a soul. Attachment to a self, subhuti, is said by the Tathagata to be no attachment. because there's nothing to be attached to. Yet, and this is sort of, he's sort of making a sort of a sigh here, a Buddha sigh, and yet foolish people remain attached. and even though they're not attached. If they would see their attachment for what it is, it's not attached, they're not attached, and yet people remain attached. And foolish people, subhuti, as he says again, are said by the Tathagata to be no people. They're not even people, and yet they're foolish people. So this is probably the only place in the sutra where the Buddha really sighs about, ah, if people could only see things for what they are. And it's sort of these sort of statements that sort of encourage people in the Zen sect to say, well, enlightenment and delusion are the same thing. They're just the different sides of the same coin.

[41:33]

Foolish people and Buddhas are really the same thing. Any questions on all this? I'll read one more because it gets interesting here. We get a poem in chapter 26. Okay. Sabuddhi, what do you think? Can the Tathagata be seen by means of the possession of attributes? So again, now that he's rescuing beings, again, it's always good to stop just for a minute between these chapters to see the logical connection between each of these segments of his body. So now he's been rescuing beings. He's been using these auspicious dharmas in chapter 24. In chapter 25, he puts them to use to rescue beings, but there are no beings. And so, as a result of rescuing beings, you get all these attributes.

[42:36]

This is sort of what creates these different bodies of the Buddha. And so, that's why he asked Subuddhi, so what do you think? Can the Tathagata be seen by means of the possession of attributes? Sabuddhi says, No, indeed, Bhagavan, as I understand the meaning of what the Buddha says, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. The statement by Sabuddhi is as far as he's been able to understand the teaching of the Buddha. And the Buddha says, well done, Sabuddhi, well done. This is only the second time that the Buddha praises Sabuddhi in the entire sutra. So it is, Sabuddhi, it is as you claim, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. And of course, if you go back to Chapter 5, he says, �Well, wait a second, Sabuddhi. The Buddha can be seen by means of the possession of attributes. If you understand attributes, there's no attributes.� But the reason why the Buddha is saying this here is you have to understand that the Buddha is able to understand what Sabuddhi's own understanding is, and his statements reflect Sabuddhi's understanding.

[43:53]

And so he sees that subhuti has gained a certain level of perception here. And that's why he says the Buddha, the Tathagata, he goes along with subhuti and says the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. And why not? Because he knows that subhuti is just still focusing on the nirmanakaya, the physical body of the Buddha. And that's why he says, Sabuddhi, if the Tathagata could be seen by means of the possession of attributes, then a universal king would be a Tathagata. Hence, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. So the Buddha is actually, in a sense, the Buddha is giving up on Sabuddhi here. He's saying, well, I can see you're hopeless because I can see what you really understand is that the Tathagata still cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. So you must think that by these possession of attributes I'm talking about the physical body of the Buddha. And so he tries to say to the Buddha, to Subuddhi, he says, well, if you think that the physical body of the Buddha is the Buddha, well, then a universal king would be the Tathagata.

[45:03]

Therefore, that's why we can't see the Tathagata. Hence, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. Now, if the subhuti really understood what the Buddha is getting at, there should be some development in his understanding here, but there's absolutely zero understanding or development. And subhuti says, as I understand the meaning of what the Buddha says, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of the possession of attributes. He repeats word for word what he just said. So it's clear that what Subuddhi says above and what Subuddhi says below is Subuddhi has accepted this as his koan. That's all he can say. It's like, this is as much as I can possibly say about the Buddha's body. And he responds with, this is all I know, and this is all I can say about the Buddha's body, is that you can't see the Tathagata by means of the possession of attributes.

[46:05]

And... This is exactly what he said in Chapter 5. Right. He has not progressed at this point. That's what I'm saying, is that the Buddha, I think, is giving up on subhuti. Is that also why he praises subhuti? Well, that's his art, isn't it? He praises it. Well done, subhuti, well done. But all he's done is see that the Buddha is not the physical Buddha. But in chapter 5, Buddha had exactly the opposite. Yeah, well, there is one solution to this, and the solution could be that the Buddha sees, finally, that Subuddhi sees the mountain again. And in this chapter, that Subuddhi is looking at the mountain and just saying, that's not the mountain, but it's the mountain. And the Buddha can somehow see that. Because earlier, around Chapter 16 we saw some sort of subhūddhi, some sort of realization. In Chapter 14, right, he bursts, he cries, wipes his tears and says, I've never heard a teaching like this before.

[47:12]

But we really haven't gotten to the point where subhūddhi seems really clearly to understand what the Buddha is getting at. I really don't see a... But again, it's hard to explain what the Buddha is... why the Buddha praises Subuddhi if there hasn't been some development in his understanding. The only thing I can see is that the Buddha says... is praising him because he sees that the mountain is just a mountain again. Yes? I think one way to see this thing is that it's like a chess game. The Buddha knows the end of the game, move by move, back and forth. So it's just trajectory right along and at some point there's a shift in subhuti and the Buddha already saw the end of the game because he literally like long jams him into a position where he can't deny it anymore.

[48:17]

He just has the fortune of being the one that gets chosen for this spot. So, to try to figure out what move did he sort of drop his own personal viewpoint and see himself as another arising, it's just really hard to know, you know, what line it happens in. Yeah, you can't look back and find it. It's clear at the end, so it kind of is like a, it's kind of like a looped story. It was already there from the beginning. As you're looking at it yourself, it's just kind of dissipating away. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's pointing to your own, it's pointing to the own reading of it. Sort of, you know? Right. And somebody said earlier that, that, that, uh, that subhuti is just a straight man in the sutra. And, um, he's part, it's part of this routine that the Buddha has worked out with subhuti, where they, they, together, they, the sutra's for us.

[49:19]

You need subhuti, you need the, the, um, the embodiment of not looking like you don't understand it so that it can dissolve and then it just be united again. Never any separateness to begin with. non-physical signs, or, because I think it gets into this, it says, it's getting ready to say something about this, and I've lost track. It means qualities of attainment. See, the idea that the Buddhists had, that existed in the Buddhist audience, is that through this merit, it is like you get these merit badges. You get enough merit, then you get this body, and this body has, everybody is naturally going to think that, well, if you've got this body that's based upon all this merit, it's going to have these great attributes.

[50:26]

It's going to be just a great body, but naturally the attributes are spiritual, but still they're attributes. But they're still mental concepts. Exactly, they're still mental concepts. So whether you think of it as a physical body or a spiritual body or a non-body body, people are still associating concepts with it, sticking on concepts, and the Buddha doesn't want subhuti to be doing that. Yes, right, yeah, and he's setting him up for chapter 28 when we don't, when no dharmas arise. So in a sense the Buddha, the Buddha in a sense you could be say is contradicting himself but not at all because this is a dance or a chess game or it's the same move but it's in a different context. Yes? One last thing is a good way of looking at it is you can say that it's the, it depicts the belief that there is a

[51:34]

a truism platform, and then it demolishes the platformness of it. It shows how there can be no true platform. He's trying to point to it right on the fly. Yeah, there's nothing to stand on. Yeah, there's nothing to stand on, but to knock it down, you have to acknowledge that it appears to be there. Yeah. In other words, the subhuti just looks like something that thinks like that, you know what I mean? Yeah, well then... Yeah, or there's no subhuti. There's no subhuti. is what Buddha saw as his error.

[52:43]

Right, at the very beginning of the sutra, that's his explanation, is that things don't exist, aren't real, because they have no self-nature. It's this Hinayana view of emptiness. And that's why the whole sutra begins and goes off. It's not stating that here, is the key difference. It is, it is. And that's why the Buddha also doesn't feel compelled to say, but wait, you're wrong. Because subuddhi is just, is stating this contradictory koan that I can't see the possession of attributes that you possess. And that's why a Tathagata doesn't possess attributes. He's just saying that Saburi is able, I guess he's praising him because he made a gesture, it's sort of like in one of these martial arts matches where you're able to make a gesture that by means of which your opponent can't throw you. So he's made a statement which remains a balanced statement.

[53:46]

He doesn't unbalance himself by anything he says in that statement. if he would have added just a little bit more to it, maybe he would have unbalanced himself or exposed himself to, or exposed his own attachments or whatever. And that's why after the Buddhist talks, he says the same thing again. He says, I'll do it again. I'll say that same thing again. And that's all he says. So that's apparently, that encapsulates Sabuni's understanding of the sutra. And at the end the Buddha says, who looks for me in a body, who seeks me in a voice, indulges in wasted effort. Such people see me not. Well, that's a good question, and it's quite possible that it is the four-line gatha, because the sutra is about the Buddha's body. There's no doubt about it, that the Diamond Sutra is about the diamond body of the Buddha. So this could be the one who looks for me in a body, any body.

[54:52]

who seeks me in a voice, or a voice represents teaching, who thinks I'm in the teaching, indulges in wasted effort, such people see me not. Do we need to take a break? Okay, we'll be back for a few more chapters in just a second. Because that's the northern pronunciation of that. But if you go along the southern coast of China, they pronounce it bud. They say bud with a slight explosive at the end. But all the other Mandarin people say fo, which is completely divergent. So China's an example of that. It's the Manchu pronunciation that has become Mandarin, what we call Mandarin. It's just Manchu. It's the Manchu dialect applied to Chinese characters. And that's why the pronunciations that the Japanese have are often very close to how things were during the Tang Dynasty.

[55:54]

But as far as how Japanese Zen differs from Chan, I really don't know much about that. Just after traveling to Japan, though, you see, and then traveling to China, it's so different cultures. You know, it must have affected the way they did other things as well, certainly practicing Buddhism. I'm sure who came and spoke this morning was actually Chan. And if you go to the temple, not for a Buddhist monastery, it's very different than that temple. It's very early ornate. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Well, that's because that's not just the Chan, that's the Chinese. Yeah, just as the austerity of a Japanese temple is very evident from the time you go into it. Well, the Chinese, they love kitsch and stuff like that. Oh, I don't think, no.

[56:58]

No, that's just the wrong, I mean, no, everybody says Tao. Nobody says Tao. It's all Tao. But there are different ways to romanize it. Depending on your romanization system, it could be a D or a T. But the word Dao, everybody says Dao. It's always been Dao. And of course, there's an interesting linguistic thing about the word Dao, too, because Laozi was the man who made this word famous. Confucius used the word Dao too, but Laozi really made it famous with his Dao De Jing. And Laozi was from a state called the state of Chu, and the majority of the population in the state of Chu were made up of this tribe called the Miao. Today, the Chinese are called the Han. And in those days, the Miao and the Han didn't get along. And the Miao used to live along the Yellow River and the Han people had wars with the Miao and forced them into southern China.

[58:06]

And Lao Tzu was from the state of Chu, where the Miao were the major population. And the state of Chu was famous for its shamanistic practices and so forth. And anyways, Lao Tzu started writing this book called The Tao Te Ching. Well, it turns out that the Miao word for the moon is Tao. And to this day, they call the moon Tao. And it turns out also that the Sanskrit word for the dark moon is darsh. And also the Egyptian word for the dark moon is tath, which is linguistically cognate to da. It's the da sound. So you get all these linguistic affinities with this idea of moon and Tao. among the shamanistic lineage of peoples in Central Asia. I couldn't help myself. I was fascinated to learn that myself when I did this translation of the Tao Te Ching. Discovering that the word Dao meant moon was significant to me as discovering that the word Skanda meant body and that the body of merit was the key to understanding the Diamond Sutra and understanding that the Laozi's use of the word Dao meant dark moon was the key to understanding his take on the Dao.

[59:35]

And this whole book falls into place and all the images become very clear once you understand that he's just talking about the moon. He talks about the 30 spokes, you know, like the 30 lunar days. Anyway, I have a commentary that I published, a translation. You could buy a copy of that translation and I have some digressions about this. But today let's digress on a couple more of these chapters here. So we have the body of merit and we have the Buddha saying that you can't see, can you see my body and no it can't be seen because if you could see it then it'd be the same as the Universal King would be a Tathagata and of course the Universal King was the idea that when you're finally, when you've acquired these 32 merit badges And you work your way up to the 32nd heaven, because each time you get a merit badge, you get the badge in a heaven, one of these 32 heavens on the slopes of Mount Sumeru.

[60:44]

And you work your way up and get the 32nd merit badge. Then you're reborn in a physical body, but then you have your option of whether you're going to become a Tathagata or a universal king. And it could go either way. And of course, the Buddha's father was very concerned that he might just be a universal king. He didn't want him to be a Tathagata. He wanted him to be a universal king. And so he tried to shield him from the idea of pain and suffering. So that's why the Buddha introduces that there, is that even though after you've accumulated all these great merits and you're in your final rebirth, you're in your final life, you still can't see the real Tathagata, just by seeing these 32 attributes. And then so in chapter 27 then he gets down to the cause of all these attributes, the cause of being a Buddha. Yeah, four lines.

[61:51]

I'll read it. I don't have it memorized. Even though it's four lines, I have a very bad memory. Who looks for me in a body? Who seeks me in a voice? Indulges in wasted effort. Such people see me not. So, Kanta has another phrase there. There is another poem. From the Dharmashivamansiva Buddhas. Yes. I should have said something about that. Let me see what my note is on that. Where have I put that? I don't know whether I even brought that with me. No, no, you don't because see what I have, I brought some of my notes to get today. I printed out some of my notes, but just to summarize. Of the six Chinese translations, only one of them has the second poem.

[63:00]

Only one of them has it. And of the Sanskrit editions, only Kansi's has the second poem. And so, a lot of commentators feel the second poem was an addition. And normally, I don't mind that, but the thing that made up my mind that it was not meant to be included here is it uses two terms that are used nowhere else in the sutra. First of all, these two terms that appear nowhere else in the sutra and that the Buddha has been pussyfooting around all of this and trying not to use these words. And to use them now, I think, would be letting the cat out of the bag. And I think the cat's better in the bag. That's why I decided to leave out the second verse. And unfortunately, I can't find my notes about which versions, which editions have it and which editions don't.

[64:03]

But they're like divided. Half of the Sanskrit have it and half don't. And most of the Chinese don't. And Kumara Jiva, I'm going to forget. I don't think he has it either. And anyway, I left it out. But there is, yeah, you do have your option there of having two verses. And when I publish it, I'll publish it with the second verse in the notes, but just leave it out of the text. Also, that second verse is really hard to translate. It makes a really bad poem. I really, I worked on it and I could not, this first poem is just a lovely little thing. This works out beautifully. The second one was clumsy with words like the, with the dharma nature and stuff. Anyway, I'm, I'm. Yeah, I use that as a rule of thumb. Whenever I'm translating stuff and I translate and I don't translate a good poem, it doesn't make a good poem in English, I know I've misunderstood the poem.

[65:10]

That's when I go back and I always say, well, then I've got a problem with my understanding at the fault here, and not my ability to translate it into a poetry, but it's my ability to understand the thing in the first place that is creating a problem. Because usually, if it's, well, it depends upon, of course, you have to have a good poet to begin with. That isn't the Chinese or the Sanskrit. If you don't have that, then this logic doesn't work, or this technique. So, in Chapter 27, Sabuddhi, what do you think? Was it due to the possession of attributes that the Tathagata realized and excelled perfect enlightenment? So after I got, was it getting all these merit badges, doing all these wonderful things over all these lifetimes and getting these attributes, was that a cause of my enlightenment? Sabuddhi, you should hold no such view. and why not? Sabuddhi, it could not have been due to the possession of attributes that the Tathagata realized unexcelled perfect enlightenment.

[66:15]

So enlightenment is not caused. There is no cause of enlightenment. Again, the Buddha is going backwards. He's not going forwards in the terms of causation. Furthermore, Subuddhi, someone may claim, those who set forth on the Bodhisattva path announced the destruction or the end of some Dharma. Subuddhi, you should hold no such view, and why not? Those who set forth on the Bodhisattva path do not announce the destruction or the end of any Dharma. So, neither does anything lead to enlightenment, nor does anything obstruct enlightenment. That is, you don't have to get rid of anything. Enlightenment doesn't require the destruction of anything or the end of anything, because nothing is there. He's going to tell us that in the next chapter, but that's why he sets up the next chapter with this chapter by saying, nothing causes enlightenment, nothing obstructs enlightenment, and therefore nothing has to be gotten rid of.

[67:19]

there's nothing that you have to annihilate. And of course, this is sort of a pointed reference. The second part of this chapter is a pointed reference to subhuti, the arhat ideal that you have to get rid of things and suppress your passions and so forth, whereas the first part of the chapter is about the bodhisattva path, about people who go become bodhisattvas, things that they might think that they acquire something. and by acquiring, doing all this, getting this body of merit, you're somehow causing enlightenment. And so he wants to make it clear that this is not the case. You don't cause it, and you don't obstruct it. And you don't get rid of something and therefore make it possible for enlightenment to manifest itself. And that's why in the next chapter he said, yeah, yes, Gene? I was really taken with one speaker who got up there and sat on that same seat and introduced the word dis-en-darkenment.

[68:25]

What was it? Dis-en-darkenment as a preferable term to enlightenment. And I always thought, oh yes, that is it. Yeah. But it seems to be contradicting. A diss. It would be a diss, it would be a negativity. Well, we have to read the next chapter. Actually, the answer is in this next chapter. Actually, there's really no difference, really. But let's read this, then we'll come back to this. Furthermore, Sabuddhi, if a good son or daughter took as many worlds as there are grains of sand, the Ganges, and covered them with the seven jewels again and gave them as a gift to the Tathagatas, the Arhats, the fully enlightened ones, and a Bodhisattva, Well, this is the final, again, he's been building up to this point, the whole sutra, just to get to this point. And a bodhisattva gained an acceptance of the selfless, birthless nature of dharmas.

[69:28]

The body of merit produced as a result will be immeasurably, infinitely greater. This is the final stage of the bodhisattva. When people actually talk about stages, this is the final realization. The selfless, birthless nature of dharmas. And yet, Subuddhi, such a fearless bodhisattva would not obtain a body of merit. Of course, how could they? If all dharmas are birthless, how can a body of merit come into being? So that's why they would not obtain or not receive a body of merit. The venerable Subuddhi said, but surely, Bhagavan, surely such a bodhisattva would receive or obtain a body of merit. And the Buddha demonstrates how he uses words here. He says, well, okay, they would, subhuti, but without grasping it. That's called receiving it or obtaining the body of merit. So the Buddha does not try to slip away. say, well, no, I never said that.

[70:32]

But to show you that he uses words like rafts, like dharmas, and he says, well, okay, yeah, you would get a body of merit, okay. First he says, no, you won't get any body of merit, and then he admits, okay, you would get a body of merit, but I know that, but you don't know that, because if you knew that, you'd be grasping it. and that's why it's a body of merit because you don't grasp it but it's all based upon this selfless birthless nature of dharmas and so again this is the bodhisattva ends up going backwards to rather instead of cutting off birth so that there's no rebirth he goes to his realization leads him back to this nature of dharmas and so yeah I've been thinking a lot about this forbearance that you sort of brought up several times that this sutra has this emotional component and it's really about that you know the forbearance and

[71:40]

I don't know if it's using the word kshanti, but often times in Buddhism that really is talking about anger, something that makes you very angry, but it seems like the way you're talking about it, this is more of a fear thing. Maybe it's both. It is a little bit of both. That's why earlier in the Sutra the Buddha uses Kshanti in terms of anger. When the king cuts off parts of his body and he says, well, if I would have had any idea of self, I would have had an idea of anger. And so Kshanti is used to suppress anger. Yeah, I mean, I just somehow keep wondering about this. They're clearly saying that, you know, there is this insight you get to that affects you, you know, in a really strong way, it really makes you really mad, you know, that you get past your anger, you get past your fear, you get past a big emotional hurdle. Well, I'd say that to go past the anger is to get into the fear, that the anger is the initial reaction, that you're angry, that you're angry that somebody's cutting off your arm.

[72:48]

And after you're angry then you're afraid because now what am I? I don't have an arm, I'm an armless. And so I think fear is, the Buddha is building up in the sutra first by talking about anger and then talking about fear. But it's really the fear that is the terror of no dharmas, that nothing is real, that is really the hardest thing, and it's not anger. I don't think that you become angry when you confront this idea that there are no dharmas, because who can you be angry against, in a sense? But you can be terrorized by the idea which approaches on nihilism. Yes. Yeah, maybe you can imagine I can sort of imagine a place beyond that where maybe you've gotten past the fear, but this is still really annoying. There's no place to stand, nothing to hold on to. There's no space or time.

[73:50]

Right. And the only way to... and patience is the only... coding mechanism here. That's true. And that's why there's this dialectic, this other dialectic in the sutra between charity and forbearance going on in this. It's only through charity that forbearance becomes possible and vice versa. They are the left and right hand of the being who practices perfection of wisdom. You might say that the perfection of wisdom needs these two arms, otherwise you can't do anything with the wisdom, but you need charity and forbearance to put that perfection of wisdom into action. Yeah, so it's like in that initial statement of the teaching, which is that on the one hand, you know, I'm going to liberate all beings, on the other hand, there are no beings to liberate.

[74:51]

That balance is there. In that initial statement it is. The only way you can really accept no beings is to liberate them all. That's right, and that's why the whole sutra has been trying to get back to that initial resolution. The whole sutra is about that resolution, the importance, the necessity of it. That's how you liberate yourself is by liberating all beings. This has been coming up for several chapters for me, and it may be obvious, but it seems that part of what's being said around moving from the arhat or arhan viewpoint to no birth is if the arhat is attached to not being reborn, so they're trying to avoid that by all of their practices, that in a way they're also attached to suffering ending. And so that part of what I think it seems to me is, you know, is the other part of it then, is if a person is willing to accept that, that then they are, you know, they're willing to forbear giving up suffering, in a way, to me, and teach that to others.

[76:14]

And this may be obvious, but I've just been trying suffering. The word is never mentioned. Yeah, I was looking back and there was something about thinking about four light off and you know numbers and I started thinking about the four noble truths and suffering and then I began to wonder if there's a correlation between this you know very all of the emphasis on no rebirth but yet it's also you know giving up the idea that suffering will end. Right, it gives that idea up. Because the selfless, birthless nature of dharmas, dharmas don't come into existence, nor will they ever come into existence. Nothing is ever real, nor can it ever be real, and yet people are suffering, lots of beings are suffering. that's why the Bodhisattva despite, so in full knowledge that nothing is real, the Bodhisattva vows to save all those who suffer, in full knowledge that these foolish people are no people, they're not foolish and they're not people, but yet to not respond to them with charity, with this act of compassion, this offering of everything one has, one's own

[77:39]

which is what the Bodhisattva says, the Bodhisattva says, save all beings, no time limit, no space limit. So the Bodhisattva sort of swallows that contradiction. It is ironic, the Buddha never mentioned suffering. Yeah, I was looking back, I was recognizing that it really had not been mentioned. But the Sutra is basically about the Bodhisattva's reaction to suffering. I guess you could say that without even mentioning it, the Sutra is a reaction to suffering. Just like it's a reaction also, you could say it's a reaction to the idea of emptiness, without ever mentioning emptiness. So the Sutra is amazing from its literary standpoint in that it can respond to these things that it's responding to or the concepts and maybe that's why it doesn't because it doesn't want us to become attached to emptiness or to suffering.

[78:46]

Yeah, I can't believe sometimes what a lovely piece of work this is, this sutra is. That's why I couldn't believe that there are so many commentators who have sort of thrown up their hands with the sutra and said it's sort of just a patchwork of stray sayings. Kansi once thought that someone had dropped the sutra and then picked it up and put the pages back together in a different way. That's what he said once about this particular sutra. But anyway, it's very profound. The use of words is very careful. It's a carefully wrought work. And that's why I think it could easily have been a poem first before it was made into prose.

[79:50]

Yes? You said something about if you know it, you'll address it. What are you supposed to do with that? Well, that's why the Buddha says you liberate all beings. It's sort of this continual act of charity. If you're giving, you can't receive, in a sense. You know, it's Purusha, the being who dismembers his body and creates the world. There's nothing you can't grasp. Purusha couldn't grasp anything. because Kaprusha got rid of his body to create the world. He says, you get it, you get this body of merit, you become a Buddha, but there's nothing to get, there's nothing to hold on to, that's all. So it's okay to know it? Yes, to know it, yeah. And it's something to, just like you said last lecture about the thought and origins of thought, you can't get it, but you have to go for it.

[80:56]

Yeah. Also, what it says to me is that you won't feel it. In other words, you won't get it in that sense where you imagine if you were famous or something, you'd get famous. Right. You just would never know it. Right. You don't get that. Right. Again, he's now led us to the Dharma body and that's why there's nothing outside the Dharma body and nothing inside the Dharma body. There can't be any ... there's nobody taking pictures of you. The paparazzi, the dharma paparazzi. It's kind of like humility or courage, too, that you can point to someone else who has that, but I don't think we would ever think of that ourselves. We'd be the last to know. Right. Well, it's like, sorry, sort of like he's just talking about the approach to attainment, which looks Right, well so subhuti starts by seeing the Buddha doing all these things and say, I want to be just like you, and now the Buddha is taking us into his body and saying, this is how it looks if you're in here, by the way.

[82:07]

Yeah, yeah, that's why the sutra is about the Buddha's body and about the view and it takes the whole, yeah. understanding and realization has no indicatorship. Indicatorship of it is impossible. That's true, there's nothing, they don't mention anything as a goal here. And if somebody is seen as an enlightened individual, it's just a name. And all the more reason for the Buddha not to say, well, yes, Subhuti, now you've made it, and yes, now you're enlightened, because that would be to puncture the balloon here that the Buddha's been trying to blow up. I just want to say, I think the train has kind of lost, but if you receive the body of merit, you receive the door into the future, but if you're enlightened, there's only now, so there's no future. And if you're enlightened, and you see that we're all one, and you treat other people as yourself, which means they're enlightened just like you.

[83:16]

So that people are enlightened along with you, you can really see that they are all enlightened. Right. Yeah. This understanding underlies the Pure Land practice, too. Another Buddhist... Actually, that's an offshoot of it. That's one development of it, that everybody's enlightened and has already been enlightened by Amitabha's vow. Just like, here, we make this vow, we make this resolution. Well, Amitabha's already done this and therefore has created this Pure Land. And so we're already enlightened and we're already in the Pure Land. We just have to sort of realize it. The Pure Land teaching teaches this same thing, but they realize it's harder to realize this. So it's easier if you accept this on faith and just let yourself be reborn in the Pure Land.

[84:17]

then once you're reborn in the Pure Land then you understand that everything's already pure, but it's hard to understand that in Oakland, but in the Pure Land it's much easier. But we're getting to the very end of the Sutra here and we may want to do one more which is a chapter 29, which is a short one, but it sort of summarizes what the, again, the Buddha says, this is what it's like to be a Buddha. Furthermore, Sabuddhi, if anyone should claim that the Tathagata goes or comes, that is, goes means to go off to get some enlightenment or to go to some paradise. or to go into nirvana, or comes, which means to enter a world or appear in a world to teach other beings. So the Tathagata doesn't go or doesn't come, or stands or sits or lies on a bed.

[85:24]

Subhuti, they do not understand the meaning of my words. And why not, Subhuti, those who are called Tathagatas do not go anywhere, nor do they come from anywhere. thus are they called Tathagatas, arhants, fully enlightened ones. So again, the Buddha has been spending the whole sutra trying to lead us to his Dharma body, the Dharma body, because it's not necessarily his. And this is it. Now he tells us the Tathagata, I'm the Tathagata, I don't go anywhere, I don't come anywhere, I don't stand, I don't sit, I don't lie down on a bed. So the Buddha brings us, I have a little note here, let me see if it makes sense. From the very beginning of the sutra, the focus has been on the Buddha's body. In fact, the sutra can be read as a meditation on the Buddha's body. But to which body has the Buddha been referring? It sometimes seems like this is a shell game under which shell is the real Buddha now. As early as chapter 5, the Buddha tells us that the body he wants us to pay attention to is not the Buddha's physical body.

[86:32]

which is merely an apparition, but his reward body, which is a reflection of his selflessness. Meanwhile, the Buddha urges Subuddhi to cultivate his own reward body, which he calls his body of merit, by resolving to liberate all beings without being attached to any being or to any self. However, whilst selflessness is the necessary precursor to further progress on the path to Buddhahood, such selflessness itself turns out to be no self has ever existed, nor will one ever exist, nor does one now exist. Thus, the Buddha's reward body and the Bodhisattva's body of merit turn out to be no bodies, for they arise from this teaching and are subject to conditions. If we wish to follow in the Buddha's footsteps, we need to find the Buddha's unconditioned body, his Dharma body. In this chapter, the Buddha finally lifts the shell. So this is sort of the summary of the sutra in terms of the Buddhist body.

[87:35]

How are we doing for time? We have about 12 minutes. Oh, you're good. We could... You said that the Dharma body is the unconditioned body? Yes. I thought... Well, it's neither conditioned nor unconditioned. Oh, okay. Well, remember in Chapter 7, Subuddhi says, sages arise from the uncreated, from the unconditioned. He uses the same word, asamskrita, that which is unconditioned. He says, Buddhas come from the unconditioned, that the Buddhas are unconditioned. That's what he says, but it's only a half-truth, which is actually a falsehood. because in the Sutra with 8,000 lines, the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 lines, Subuddhi tells Sariputra, he says, oh, Buddhas, incidentally, don't come from the conditioned or the unconditioned. So in that Sutra, we see that Subuddhi has finally understood the teaching and that Buddhas are neither conditioned nor are they unconditioned, that they arise from neither one nor the other.

[88:46]

But in this sutra, he's attached to emptiness, the unconditioned, and therefore he thinks Buddhas come from the unconditioned. And the Buddha's been trying to divest him of this idea that Buddhas come from the unconditioned. And that, because he thinks that, Subuddhi thinks that this is just emptiness, another name for emptiness. Yeah. I wanted to ask one sort of small question. I guess it's the dharma body that is ... to understand that this is the unconditioned body. Is this also the body here? Yes. Well, you see, when you get to the dharma body, you get to all bodies. If you get to the nirmanakaya or these other bodies ... No, you get to all. I mean, you know, there wouldn't be any distinction, it would be undifferentiated.

[89:53]

Undifferentiated, as he says earlier, and it's from this undifferentiated dharma body that you get the auspicious dharmas. You know, it occurred to me that, you know, the Buddha, supposedly, is talking to someone in their framework which is whatever the Vedanta, you know, Veda teaching was at the time, the Indian... Right, yeah. ...what was going on there, but it would also come up in the, in the, what do you call it, the kind of mythic worldviews that they have of people coming from levels of this heaven and that, coming and going, and a kind of repeated circular round of things of, you know, greed, going and coming. And it's like, he seems, he's got a different take on it.

[90:55]

I mean, there's no, he said, the proposition of coming and coming doesn't come from anywhere or go anywhere, which is this unconditioned is, it seems. It doesn't, there's no way you can kind of grasp it intellectually, but he's saying there's no going to some some level of understanding, or level of the heavenly world, and then coming back in, you know, at a higher level, and then working your way up to the next one, and then coming back, it's kind of like this is a whole view that people have, because they've inherited it, they've grown up with it. I was thinking it was being like, if you were a Christian, And, yeah, but where did he really come from? And then you get into a whole... I mean, you could get into a very similar dialogue about there's what you see and there's the body, the body of Christ or the body of, you know, the real body or the... Well, I guess Christ could be... The ascended body or...

[92:18]

that kind of thing. Well maybe you could see that too, Christ as being the nirmanakaya, the projected body of God, God in the three-part, the Holy Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the Father being the dharmakaya, and the Holy Ghost being the sambhogakaya, the reward body, this bliss body. I think it would be a little a similar kind of trying to break through a, what I want to call a mythology, which is not, you know, if you have this idea of here's a real person, I mean, how do you explain that here's a real person who is not a person, or who is a divine person? You've got, I mean, there's this, something you can't explain right there. but you're trying to, you know, get someone to understand it.

[93:20]

I mean, I see the same sort of difficulty, or, you know, from Subuddhi's point of view. He's here with his, you know, with an educated, but... Literal? Well, maybe literal or conditioned view of how, you might say, the spiritual world works. Huh. Yeah. Well, he is using Subuti's product. Well the Sutra is responding to a given person's level of awareness, subhuti's understanding, and using him as representative. Subhuti is sort of used as the pinnacle for the arhat path and also for this representative teaching that tends to be nihilistic, that leads into emptiness that can easily become itself a problem.

[94:23]

attachment and addresses his teaching towards that. But somehow the unconditioned is not emptiness. From the Buddha's point of view, if you want to call it a point of view, but it's not from Subuddhi's. From Subuddhi's point of view it's definitely emptiness and the unconditioned are the same. and the Buddha wants him to steer the middle course between the unconditioned and the conditioned. That's why Subuddhi gets it in another sutra, I guess he got it, maybe later that night. But anyway, if we see in the Perfection of Wisdom, if you look in Chapter 2, Subuddhi has this conversation with Sariputra where he makes it very clear that he does get it and that he knows that the Buddha's dwell in neither the conditioned nor the unconditioned. But again, this sutra again brings in subhuti as the straight man, as the interlocutor, or whatever is the cause of this teaching, because so many people shared similar problems.

[95:34]

I have to say, I can see what you mean about how it's hard to see where he gets it, but You know the fact that he weeps and the fact that the sutra exists to me says that this is where he got it. Right. We just can't quite... figure out where it happened exactly. Maybe because we don't get it or something. But it just seems like it's got to be where he ... he must have gotten it. Yes, I agree, but we don't know where exactly. I've looked at it that way too and I can't see it, I can't find a point. If we could point to where it was, it would be your point. Yes, yes, you're right. I hope I can remember all this when I write my introduction. That's very good. It's all good. I mean, for a long time I didn't know. Someone finally said, you know, in koans, the reason why the koan is there is because the person had enlightenment experience then. I didn't realize that. I didn't know that. I just thought it was like a little story or something. Somebody made up a puzzle.

[96:36]

But I didn't really, I didn't always realize that it indicated some resolution or the story wouldn't have survived. I mean, that was the whole point. Well, yeah, and then the sutra you could say is that ... the whole sutra is this koan that ... it's a Sabuddhi's koan. It's actually up to the 32nd chapter where he states succinctly, sort of the answer to Sabuddhi's question, succinctly. It could have been after that point that Sabuddhi got it. That's true. After the sutra ends, right after, but right after. Yeah, it could be chapter 33. Yeah, yeah. the whole Vedic teaching structure is a very good one. You can look at it in a way as if it was a huge photograph, being seen, like the Buddha pulling away about 20 feet from it with this quote other, right? And they get closer and closer and closer to it until it's down to one single pixel, you know? And then, instead of looking at that, they're looking at the mechanism which is even

[97:44]

perceiving the vehicle. The light turns on itself, basically. It doesn't point away from anywhere, it points towards. And that's the birthless, selfless nature of all dharmas. Certainly there's no differentiation there anymore. It's the same if it's seen as such when the very vehicles of perception are seen as such. Certainly the photograph is not important anymore, the width and size of it and the scale of it. It's just another... Yeah, in other sutras the Buddha does use the same expressions you're using about the transcendence of the seer and the seen, but in this sutra he again has a different agenda, same agenda but a different literary linguistic approach to solving this problem. He tries to cure the patient with different medicines, that's why this dharma, he brings in the body of

[98:51]

Anyway, we've still got a couple chapters to finish. We're probably out of time for this week, so we only have three more chapters. What I thought we'd do next time is finish those up. They shouldn't take too long. try to figure out, and you can think about this yourself, how does the sutra all fit together and how can you put the sutra into a few words? If someone asks you, well, what's the meaning of the Diamond Sutra? Maybe we could all talk about what the meaning of the Diamond Sutra is and I could record your words. I will make attributions, of course. give your attributes. Yes? This sutra is more like psychological rather than philosophical.

[100:03]

Can you say that again? It's more aimed at an emotional liberation than a mental, logical liberation, because you can't get free of logic. Logic will just feed on itself, and that somehow through our emotional level allows us to break through these concepts out of which we've constructed the world and to which we're all attached, that these dharmas that have generated self and other and all this are these logical entities that if we try to get rid of them, it's like trying to get your hand off of some flypaper or something. You just get stuck to another piece of flypaper or whatever. And that somehow our emotional side It allows us to transcend our mind, sort of.

[101:10]

That's why he uses these emotional signs, like the subuddhi's tears, and the idea of fearlessness, and of forbearing this fear. I think what he's getting at in terms of the cycle, the value of a deeper level of our mind than we are aware of, because normally we think of our mind in terms of, especially nowadays, as like a computer, just being a bunch of entities, of bytes, whereas Buddha's saying our mind, that's not our mind, that's the mind of delusions, but our liberated mind is one that is based upon, well, I guess Christ's love, would be another way of looking at it too. It's just this openness, it's this gift to the creation of the world out of your own body. I think that's just why he emphasizes charity and forbearance throughout the sutra. Those are the only two things he talks about in terms of actual practice.

[102:11]

He doesn't talk about meditating or all this other stuff, just charity and Well, I guess that's a wrap for this week, but we'll finish up next week and please think about what the sutra means to you because I'd like people to sort of give me some ideas. Because sometimes, after you've been in the woods, you don't know how the forest looks anymore.

[102:39]

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