I vow to teach the truth and not to try to cast regrets. Tonight, I'm going to take up the subject of the Drakaya, or the three bodies of Buddha. And in Wang Mulan, I mean, along the line, it's page 58. And when it's at John, it's section 20. What? Section 20, not page 20. Section 20. You have to speak up a little bit. Section 20. It doesn't matter. I'm the only one. The whole thing. The whole thing. No, you don't have to repeat it, but you can speak louder. OK. Did you hear about the Trikaya?

[01:00]

Yeah. Tell me where you left off. Tell me where you left off. Page 58 in Long Luang, and section 20 in Wing, Sit, Chan, and in Zamposki. Because Wing, Sit, Chan, Zamposki are somewhat similar texts. Section 20. Oh, that's it? That's Jan Polsky. Oh, wow. May 41. And you have Lisa Chan, right? Yes. Section 20. Between us. What do you have in between? Between us, we have all three. Good. But I got page 49. Well, that's because your book is different than mine. It's give or take a few pages, right? Well, I'll tell you where we start. Can you still not hear me?

[02:02]

I'm not saying anything. Very difficult. I'm not the only one. I'm going to stand up. If anyone can't hear, you can come up closer. Can you hear that? So this starts where we left off last time. And he says, having cleared up this point, let each of us take refuge in the three gems within our mind. Within, we should control our mind, and without, we should be respectful toward others. This is the way to take refuge within ourselves. the new passion stage starts.

[03:05]

Learned audience, since all of you have taken the threefold guidance, I'm going to speak to you on the trikaya, the three bodies. You don't see that? Yeah, 53 in recent edition. Okay. I'm going to speak to you on the three, the trikaya, the three bodies of the Buddha, of our essence of mind. So he doesn't say, of the Buddha, and leave it there. He says, the Buddha of our essence of mind, because he keeps saying that Buddha's not outside of essence of mind. No, I'm sorry. And his whole emphasis is on, yes. If you say, in wu-mu-mu, I'm going to speak to you on the trikaya, the three bodies of the Buddha, of our essence of mind, so that you can see these three bodies

[04:14]

and realize clearly the essence of mind. Please listen carefully and repeat this after me. With our physical body, we take refuge in the pure dharmakaya, the essence body of Buddha. With our physical body, we take refuge in the perfect sambhogakaya, manifestation body of Buddha. With our physical body, we take refuge in the myriad nirmanakaya incarnation bodies of Buddha. Take refuge can also be said as return to. It means the same thing, actually. And return to is sometimes used instead of take refuge. And sometimes when in an ordination ceremony the Three Treasures, it will be worded as, return to, return to Buddha, return to Dharma, return to Sangha.

[05:44]

You mean Jyugai? Jyugai, yeah. Sometimes. Instead of take refuge. I think in Los Angeles Zen Center they do it, they say that. So you can say it either way, actually. But here he's talking about taking refuge in the Trikaya, or returning to the Trikaya of our essence of mind. So when we have the meal chant, in the meal chant we say, we pay homage to Vairocana, Dharmakaya Buddha, Sambhogakaya, Lochana Buddha, Nirmanakaya, Shakyamuni Buddha. Vairochana is Dharmakaya. But I don't want to explain that right now. I'll get back to that.

[06:48]

I mean, I'll get forward to that. And then he says, learned audience, our physical body may be likened unto an inn or a temporary abode some place that a traveler is stopping at so we can't take refuge there so if you think about it you can't really take refuge in your physical body because physical body is only a temporary abode and every once in a while that comes up to us even though we tend to forget about it. So, when you think about, well, you know, everybody's going to die. What are we going to do? Except me. Except me, yeah. So, within our essence of mind, these trakaya of Buddha are to be found, and they are common to everybody.

[07:56]

Because the mind of an ordinary person labors under delusions, he knows not his own inner nature. And the result is that one ignores the trikāyā within oneself, erroneously believing that they are to be sought from without. So when we think about the trikāyā, you know, pay homage to the Pārājana Dhammakaya Buddha, it sounds like something out there, right? So that's what he's saying, is that it's not something out there. The traikāya is the traikāya of your own essence of mind. It's you. You are a traikāya. Your own traikāya. Please listen and I will show you that within yourself you will find the traikāya, which being the manifestation of the essence of mind, are not to be sought from without. And then he said, now what is the pure dharmakaya? He takes each one, one by one.

[09:00]

What is the pure dharmakaya? He said, our essence of mind is intrinsically pure. That's dharmakaya. Essence of mind is another term for dharmakaya. There are many terms for dharmakaya, depending on how you want to talk about it, because you really can't describe it. There are various terms used to talk about it, so essence of mind is one. All things are only its manifestations, and good deeds and evil deeds are only the result of good thoughts and evil thoughts respectively. Thus, within the essence of mind, all things are intrinsically pure, like the azure of the sky and the radiance of the sun and the moon, which when obscured by passing clouds, may appear as if their brightness had been dimmed. But as soon as the clouds are blown away, brightness reappears, and all objects are fully illuminated."

[10:03]

So he's talked about this before, right? He talks about it quite often, actually. He's bringing the same subject up over and over. But as soon as the clouds are blown away, brightness reappears, and all objects are fully illuminated. Learned audience, our evil habits may be likened under the clouds. while sagacity and wisdom, prajna, are the sun and the moon, respectively. When we attach ourselves to outer objects, our essence of mind is clouded by wanton thoughts which prevent our sagacity and wisdom from sending forth their light. But should we be fortunate enough to find learned and pious teachers to make known to us the orthodox dharma, then we may, with our own efforts, do away with ignorance and delusion so that we are enlightened both within and without, and the true nature of all things manifests itself within our essence of mind. So, dharmakāyas, you could call it latent consciousness, or limitless consciousness, or consciousness is limit to limited, actually.

[11:15]

Anything we call it limits it. Everything is its manifestation, even the clouds that obscure it are its manifestation. Okay, so you couldn't, you wouldn't exactly say it includes evil, but that evil is one of the manifestations. Everything is a manifestation of dharmakaya. So dharmakaya, evil, good and evil are human attributes. Dogs and cats don't think about good and evil. I think they don't think about good and evil. I think means limitation. So thinking is limiting, actually.

[12:15]

In order to mirror Dharmakaya, one has to stop the thinking mind. At least stop the attachment to the thinking, to thoughts, because any thought that one's mind is attached to will put a limitation on or will discriminate. So a thought is a discrimination, and discrimination is what limits understanding or experience of dharmakaya, because dharmakaya is limitless. And as soon as you think, you limit. Yeah? Is it possible to become so unattached to the mind that you can actually, in a few seconds, see like dozens of, say like thoughts, seem so clearly that they're almost more real than life?

[13:20]

to see and understand the fullness of each of these little thoughts or impressions or memories or whatever, in seconds, to see what's going on in here, to not impede the whole flow, and never reach out and just like grab something, just watch it. Yeah. Fully understand it. Well, whatever understand means. Stand under. full nature, like seeing... Well, yeah, right. True mind sees everything as it is. So, whatever as it is means. And that's, you might say, what is Buddhism, or what is Zen? One reply is to see as it is.

[14:22]

See everything clearly. If you say everything, then that's the limitation. But just to see as it is. To see as is. You can say that's one expression of what is in. Without coloring or discriminating or changing what you see by, through consciousness because whatever is seen is changed by consciousness in some way, transformed in some way by consciousness, affected in some way. So when, I think scientifically this is so, when you're studying something you actually creating some change, so to come into contact with something is to affect it.

[15:27]

Sometimes we don't think that we're affecting something, you know, but we're always affecting whatever it is. When we walk into the room, everybody's talking, they don't notice you, but you're affecting something in the room. process, which we call the essence. Well, yeah, essence maybe means essential, that which you can't do without, that which can't be done without. So, say it again. Are the three kāyas a modification or a dramatization of the essential?

[16:38]

Are they the same? Is the essential just a way of talking about what cannot be talked about, which is called essential? Yeah. Well, there are three ways of expressing, three expressions, but they're not three different things. As Tso Keong says, it's like three in one oil. went away all the three qualities. Is this the holy trinity of Buddhism? It is. It's not exactly like Christianity, but it's very close, interestingly enough. Dharmakaya is like the Father, and Sambhogakaya is like the Holy Ghost, maybe. I'm not sure what that is, but I've got a pretty good idea. nirmanakaya is like the sun, the transformation body.

[17:41]

So it's actually very similar. The difference, the great difference is that the Christianity doesn't have the four wisdoms which correspond to the dharma, the trikaya. and doesn't have the understanding of consciousness that Buddhism has. So next time I'm going to talk about the Trikaya and the Four Wisdoms and the Eight Consciousnesses and how those expressions of each other that. So latent consciousness is one way of saying it, because it means that anything can come out of dharmakaya.

[18:49]

That dharmakaya is the creative matrix which is beyond our ability, because our ability to understand is limited by our six senses. by what our six senses perceive and what thinking mind and our limited consciousness through thinking mind perceives or discerns it. So, the universe is what our mind can conceive. Our mind conceives of universe. But dharmakaya is both inside and outside of the universe. What do you mean by that? Both inside and outside? Well, inside means, for us, the universe is something that surrounds us.

[19:50]

That's just a concept. But Dharmakaya is not limited by our concept of universe. It's not limited by any concept. Whatever concept you can have, which is even beyond limitation, is still limited. So, but if I drink a glass of water, I know something about water, even though I don't know what water is. It sounds like you're talking about the real universe, which includes, you said that's an experience, it's not just the real universe, what we think of the real universe, but it includes everybody's consciousness too. Right. But when you say it's the latent consciousness, I keep thinking of an individual consciousness, and I always think of Dharmakaya as being, like I could say something like, How many dharmakāyas are there? Right. Well, dharmakāya divides itself. The expression of dharmakāya as consciousness is called sambhogakāya.

[20:58]

So that's where we're going, that's where we're heading. You think that was the Four Wisdoms and Four Noble Truths? No, not the Four Noble Truths. I'll talk about that next time. But if I have time, by the end of... if we end a little time, I'll talk about it a little bit. Okay, so this is what happens to those who have seen face-to-face the essence of mind, and this is what is called the pure dharmakaya of Buddha. Learned audience, to take refuge in a true Buddha is to take refuge in our own essence of mind. He who does so, one who does so, should remove from essence of mind the evil mind, the jealous mind, the flattering and crooked mind, egotism, deceit, and falsehood, contemptuousness, snobbishness, fallacious views, arrogance, and all other evils that may arise at any time." So, to take refuge in ourself is to be constantly on the alert for our own mistakes.

[22:08]

and to refrain from criticism of others' merits and faults." And, of course, this brings a great uproar from everyone. One who is humble and meek on all occasions and is polite to everybody... See, it's very simple. One who is humble and meek on all occasions and is polite to everybody has thoroughly realized their essence of mind. Isn't that simple? I just don't pick and choose. That's so simple. Yeah, believe it. I'll read that again. One who is humble and meek on all occasions and is polite to everybody, that means everybody, has thoroughly realized their essence of mind. Yes? You just reminded me of something I read in The Clouds of Unknowing. He described true humility. I don't know exactly how he described it, but it's something like to know yourself completely. So I think also when you look at humble and meek, you have to have some sort of context for what they actually are rather than our idea of them.

[23:17]

Yes, we haven't exaggerated. Some people have an exaggerated concept of what humble and meek means. But it means to have understanding. It means to stand under something. It means that you know that there's something more than you. And meek has come to mean like this, but not offensive. I'm not sure that meek is the right translation Um, polite, you know, I thought, well, maybe polite is a little, maybe not be the right translation. But it turns out, it comes up as polite in the other translations. So, but, uh, I think that we could probably find better terms, actually, uh, to describe.

[24:27]

Um, well, uh, you could say, um, polite, Respectful. I think respectful might be... Polite sounds like a mannerism. Or, you know... Is that the same as compassionate? Would that be compassionate and polite? Yeah, compassion would be... It would be expressing compassion. But... Considerate. You know, they are unassuming, I think would be, for me, I think maybe unassuming would be, you know, like taking something in without reacting to it, like the dog.

[25:38]

Not like the dog chasing after the end of the stick, but more like going right to the source of what's happening. I don't know if it's true or not, but is there a Christian teacher who talked about the etymology of the word meek? Yeah, disciplined. All these terms actually come from some, have good roots, and in the course of time they get perverted. So, yes. Could you, I'm caught by the saying, if you could talk a little more about the essence of mind in the sense that he says, You take refuge in your own essence of mind, and essence of mind is intrinsically pure. He also says you should remove from your essence of mind the evil mind, the jealous mind, so that apparently the essence of mind includes those things.

[26:49]

I mean in the sense that it includes everything, or how you remove something from the essence of mind? Well, supposing, you know, you have a sty on your eye, and it grows so big, you know, your eye gets shut, you know, so that sty is part of your body, right? It's not something separate from your body, and in order to see better, you do something about, you know, reducing it, right? Is that a good analogy? I don't know. It's not that the style is good or bad, it's just that you don't like it, and it obscures your ability to see clearly. Aren't we talking about the two truths?

[27:55]

The absolute and the relative? Isn't that what you're saying? Well, it's not what I said, but what do you mean? There's different levels of reality and on the absolute level there's... Yeah, well, of course. We're always talking about the two truths. On the absolute level, there's no good or bad or right or wrong, so forth. I think that's what we left off. That human... right and wrong, good and bad, evil and so forth, are human evaluations for the sake of our human life and human world. But on the absolute level, everything just happens. Things just happen the way they happen. Right? I mean, they just do. And every time you walk down the path, you're stepping on something, you know, and something just happens to it, you know.

[28:56]

From the point of view of what you're stepping on, something happened. So, but, you know, when the anteater sticks his nose in the anthill, you know, and all the ants, or the bear comes along and puts his hand in the beehive, you know, and destroys their world, it's, you know, to the bees, maybe it's evil, you know, evil thing. But to the bear, you know, it's honey. And to... to the world at large, it's just something that happened. So there are various perspectives. And to see everything as it is, is to take away all views, to not be stuck in views. But good and evil are human values.

[30:04]

But from the point of view of absolute reality, something happens. Things are happening. But it doesn't mean that from the point of view of human values that it's wrong to see it that way. It's right to see. for the point of view of human values. We have to be able to judge things through human values. I guess I just see that when he talks about essence of mind, he seems to be using a term that has to do with ultimate truth. Yes, of course, it's ultimate truth. Then he says remove the jealous mind and so on, and then it seems like he's talking about relative truth. Well, he's talking about both. But both within essence of mind, or essence of mind of God. Yeah, relative truth and absolute truth are not two different things. And nirvana and samsara too.

[31:10]

Yeah, nirvana and samsara. Looks like in that way. He's talking about it. Well, yes. He is talking about it. I mean, that is included, of course. You know, that's right. So, just to remove all these hindrances, is not just for the sake of the second truth, but it's also in order to allow absolute truth to influence relative truth. In other words, dharmakaya is a background for our daily life. I mean, background in the sense of it's always there, but what we're concentrated on is is the physical world. So, Sambhogakaya... Well, let's go on.

[32:13]

So, one who is humble and meek on all occasions and is polite to everyone has thoroughly realized essence of mind, so thoroughly that the path is free from further obstacles. And this is the way to take refuge in our self. And what is the perfect sambhogakaya? Sambhogakaya is like awakened consciousness. You might say dharmakaya is universal consciousness, beyond consciousness. Everything is a manifestation of dharmakaya, even though dharmakaya has its own attributes which are not dependent on our perceptions. So what is the perfect Sambhogakaya? Let us take the illustration of a lamp. Even as the light of a lamp can break up darkness, which has been there for a thousand years, so a spark of wisdom can do away with ignorance, which has lasted for ages. We need not bother about the past, for the past is gone and irrecoverable.

[33:19]

What demands our attention is the future and the present. So let our thoughts from kshana to kshana, kshana is a moment, from moment to moment be clear and round, and let us see face to face our essence of mind. Good and evil are opposite to each other, but their quintessence cannot be dualistic. This non-dualistic nature is called the true nature, the absolute reality, which can neither be contaminated by evil nor affected by good. This is what is called the Sambhogakaya of Buddha. One single evil thought from our essence of mind will spoil the good merits accumulated in eons of time, while a good thought from that same source can expiate all of our sins, though they may be as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges. To realize our own essence of mind from moment to moment without intermission until we attain supreme enlightenment so that we are perpetually in a state of right mindfulness is the Sambhogakaya.

[34:25]

In another place, he says, Sambhogakaya is our wisdom mind. And Sambhogakaya is the expression of consciousness, is Dharmakaya as it's expressed in our consciousness. In other words, we have what we call small mind and big mind. Small mind is like individual consciousness, and big mind is dharmakaya, or universal consciousness. And small mind, or individual mind, or limited mind, is an expression of dharmakaya. And the more open our mind is, the more dharmakaya is expressed.

[35:28]

It's like maybe the shutter of a camera or something, you know, you watch it open up and the bigger the aperture, the more light it lets in, or lets out. So, that's why he keeps saying, if you let go of these hindrances, more and more dharmakaya you have a bigger mind than you have now with all your hindrances. But we want to hold on to our hindrances. We're so, you know, fond of our hindrances. We fall in love with our hindrances, you know. I mean, we hold on to them so tight and it just keeps limiting our mind. So I keep saying, what is it that you want the most? What is it that you really want the most? And in our practice, what we should want, what we want you to want, is to let big mind in and have more desire for big mind than for our own reactive emotions.

[36:42]

So, it's difficult to give up our reactive emotions if there's nothing to replace them. That's the best we can do, you know, is fall into revenge or anger, ill will of various kinds, because it fills us. We feel fulfilled by that, although not completely and not really. You know, we don't feel so good afterward, but still it's fulfilling at the time. Self-defense. Actually, the way to really begin Zen practice is to give up all sense of self-defense and not have any views or opinions, to let go of all views and opinions and have nothing to stand on.

[37:50]

So I'll talk about nirmanakaya and then come back to what about sambhogakaya. Because sambhogakaya is in the middle between dharmakaya and nirmanakaya. So vairocana, in the meal chant we say vairocana dharmakaya, vairocana is in the Buddhist pantheon is the personification of Dharmakaya. The Buddha who sits in the center of the universe and all the other Adi-Buddhas, or all the other, excuse me, Dhyani-Buddhas are arranged around the Dharmak, the Vairochana Buddha. And Vairochana Buddha, it just emanates universal whatever it is.

[39:01]

I want to say energy, but... Could you say that it's a later adaptation of the old sword myth? Well, I think, yeah, probably so. I mean, it all comes out of Hinduism, you know, the Vedic, and I think, yeah. And Buddhist esoteric schools have developed this. And the Zen school, you know, in Japan, relied on the esoteric school for its buddhology. All of the rituals are not Zen at all. Zen has nothing, really. for Soto Zen in the century or so after Dogen, Keizan adapted a lot of the Shingon esoteric school ritual to Zen, Soto Zen.

[40:24]

So the Soto Zen ritual and services and chants and all that are mostly adaptations from the esoteric schools of Buddhism. And I'm pretty sure that's why we say the Dharmakaya Vairochana and the Sambhogakaya Lochana. Lochana is a little bit of a puzzle to me. Lochana, I've heard two different things. One is that Lochana is a manifestation of Amitabha, Amida Buddha. But if you look it up in the books, it says that Lokshana is a consort of Akshobhya Buddha. Each one of the Dhyani Buddhas has a consort which is the worldly aspect, the nirmanakaya aspect of the dharmakaya Buddha.

[41:35]

I'm a little uncertain as to the actual meaning of lochana in our meal chant. So then he talks about the nirmanakaya. He says, now what is the myriad nirmanakaya? When we subject ourselves to the least discrimination or particularization, transformation takes place. Otherwise, all things remain as void as space as they inherently are. That's an interesting thing to say. Nirmanakaya is the transformation body. In other words, this. This is the nirmanakaya, this body, which is continually transforming.

[42:41]

And as Sokhéon says, when we eat an onion, we become the onion. Or at least, the onion influence, we become onionized. The onion takes on some aspect of us and we take on some aspect of the onion. And we influence each other and transform each other. And this is true. We're continually meeting and transforming. We're transforming and being transformed constantly by whatever we eat, meet. The nirmanakaya is the transformation body. It's in constant flux and constant transformation and has no self. And as Daigon keeps saying tonight, continually transforming, right? Processing. Everything is in some kind of process of which we don't know the end or the beginning.

[43:48]

Although there are discernible beginnings and endings, you know? today and tomorrow are discernible beginnings, this morning and this evening and tonight are discernible beginnings and endings. And so we have days and years, or seconds, moments, hours, realms, and these are all provisional beginnings and endings. But as far as transformation goes, it's endless. And so we don't know where we're coming from and we don't know where we're going. And if we don't know where we're coming from and don't know where we're going, then we know where we're coming from and we know where we're going. If you know this thoroughly. The main thing is to know where we are. So we have to have some trust in the fact that there is no self and that there's only this constant transformation.

[45:05]

So he's saying, you know, we have to have faith in the three bodies, our own three bodies. Our immense Dharmakaya body, which is beyond our understanding, and our Sambhogakaya body, which is our intrinsic wisdom, which is covered over by discrimination, and our nirmanakaya body, which is what we call this person, that walks and talks and does these various things, that we talk about as our life. So, why sometimes is the sambhogakaya called the bliss body? Well, it's sometimes called the bliss body, and it's sometimes called the reward body,

[46:18]

The reward body, the bliss body. If you think about Dogen, he says, ji-ju-yu-samadhi. Our practice is the practice of ji-ju-yu-samadhi, which means self-joyous samadhi. Self-joyous or self-fulfilling samadhi. I think he's talking about our Sambhogakaya. body. When our mind is free from impediments, then prajna is allowed to come forth unhindered, and we just enjoy it. This is called enjoying yourself. Please enjoy yourself. Well, we do enjoy ourself when we feel fulfilled, or feel full of our true self.

[47:31]

You're full of yourself, but hopefully it's the true self, yes. Rob, did you want to say something? From the point of view of the Dharmakaya though, from the point of view of the universe, if you look at individual consciousnesses or whatever they are, experiences, and you ask this question, why would the universe want to experience itself? You want to look at it from a point of view, it would just seem kind of silly for the universe to want to fight itself, to experience itself in any way other than, just one way of putting it, to enjoy itself. Usually when I think about it, why would the universe want to experience itself? That's why thought is limiting. Because we think, well, why would the universe like to do that? But the universe is doing what it wants to do, you know? Including asking itself that question. Yeah, including you asking yourself that question. The universe is just doing what it wants to do.

[48:35]

But I don't know. See, that's why we say nothing's perfect, you know. And yet, everything is perfect. Everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be. It's just that from our point of view, he said, from the point of view of the dharmakaya, well, I'm glad that you have the point of view of the dharmakaya. Please, can I have some? But from this person's point of view, you know, we can think anything we want, and it's fine, but we shouldn't hang on to that because it's just a thought. Even a theory is just a thought, it's just somebody's thought. That's right, a theory is just somebody's thought. And sometimes it helps us to think about this, you know, but it's just a thought. That's why we sit zazen. This is a privilege, but I want to say a friend of mine has reworded Descartes to say,

[49:38]

I think, therefore, I am wrong. And I've always thought this was a really great thing that he said, and the reason I was talking to him about it, he said, well, he doesn't think it's actually right anymore. He thinks it's more like, I think, therefore, I err. I think, therefore, I was. Anyway, so, By dwelling our mind on good acts, here he goes again, see? He says this every time. By dwelling our mind on good acts, paradise appears. Dragons and snakes, oh, and by dwelling our mind on evil things, hell arises. So we make our own heaven and hell, is what he's saying. It looks like heaven and hell is out there, and we can't step into hellish situations, but we create them. Strictly speaking, we create our own mental states.

[50:47]

Mental states is what he's talking about. So if you look at the world, you can see how many really depraved states of mind there are in the world. And you wonder, you know, how can people be killing each other like this? I mean, it boggles the mind. I mean, you just wonder how people get into such dark, dark states of mind, that they want to kill everybody, you know, destroy and kill. And then you think, well, don't, you know, there are a lot of people in the world who are once children, don't they? And they all have children of their own. What are they telling their children, you know, when they go out and they kill so many people? just mind-boggling. Well, I guess that's what they teach their children. So it just keeps being perpetuated over and over again. And it's self-perpetuating.

[51:49]

Evil states of mind just create evil, evil situations. And it's very hard to maintain, it's really hard to maintain good states, healthy states of mind. So in a place like Tassajara, where you should at least make some effort, we have the opportunity. Anyway, yeah. I was going to a chiropractor for a long time with my neck injury, and he once said to me, you know, he said, we spend a lot of time dwelling on our pain. Try dwelling on what's good in your life. It doesn't mean you don't experience your pain, but it was really interesting to see well on what's good in your life. Well, I agree with that. I see so many people who, every little thing, you know, that happens to them is a kind of, you know, what's going on?

[53:01]

What's the matter? You know, it's kind of a catastrophe. dwelling on it, dwelling on it, dwelling on it, and the mind just becomes captivated by this little problem. I agree with that. To keep your mind on what's healthy, or what's... Well, anyway, that's a whole other subject, but it's a good one. how to let something go instead of holding on to it. Same thing, I mean, it's the same, you know, the body and the mind are not different, even though they're different aspects of the same thing, but holding on to anger and resentment and those states of mind is not different than hanging on to

[54:05]

things that happen to your body. So there are similar kinds of impediments, actually. And we cause ourself a lot of grief and trouble by dwelling, holding on. If you walk around and you stub your toe, you can sit down and kiss it and cry and get a band-aid and do all these things. Or you can just forget it and go on. That's true. Just forget it. Just forget it and go on. And two minutes later it's gone. I'd rather be kissing it. That's better. Kiss it and forget it. That's right. So by dwelling our mind on good acts, paradise appears, and dragons and snakes are the transformation of venomous hatred, while bodhisattvas are mercy personified.

[55:25]

So the upper regions are prajna-crystallized, while the underworld is only another form assumed by ignorance and infatuation. Numerous indeed are the transformations of the essence of mind, So the transformations of the essence of mind. People under delusion awake not and understand not. Always they bend their minds on evil and, as a rule, practice evil. But should they turn their minds from evil to righteousness, even for a moment, prajna would instantly arise. This is what is called the nirmanakaya of the Buddha, of the essence of mind. And then he sums it up. He says, learn in audience the dharmakaya is intrinsically self-sufficient. So the Dharmakaya doesn't need us, but we need it. To see face-to-face from Krishna, from moment to moment, our own essence of mind is the Sambhogakaya of Buddha. To dwell our mind on the Sambhogakaya so that wisdom or prajna arises is the Nirmanakaya.

[56:30]

To attain enlightenment by our own efforts and to practice by ourself the goodness inherent in our essence of mind is a genuine case of taking refuge. Our physical body, consisting of flesh and skin, etc., is nothing more than a tenement for temporary use only. So we do not take refuge therein, but let us realize the Trikaya of our essence of mind, and we shall know the Buddha of our essence of mind." When he says a tenement, you know, a place, a temporary boat, sounds like it can be construed as there's a soul that travels from one tenement to another, which is a heretical view in Buddhism. In Buddhism, there is no soul that goes from one body to another, but he's using this in a kind of figurative way only. He's not putting that meaning into it. To come back to Sambhogakaya, Sambhogakaya is our wisdom mind, and is the mind of Prajna, and it's like it has two sides, our wisdom mind, our Sambhogakaya.

[57:54]

When wisdom mind I have to talk about the mirrors. I'll talk about it without talking about the mirror. Let me see if I can do that. And I'll just say what the four wisdoms are. The four wisdoms are the great round mirror wisdom. And the round mirror wisdom corresponds to dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the mirror mind which sees everything or which is non-discriminating.

[58:57]

and mirrors everything exactly as it is. And the next wisdom is the equality wisdom. And the equality wisdom sees everything as equal, sees the equality of everything. Water is just water wherever it is. Air is just air wherever it is. And fire is just fire wherever it is. And earth is just earth wherever it is. But all those elements have different manifestations. So when we look at something, look at the different manifestations,

[59:58]

All we see is the different manifestations, but we rarely see that everything is the same. If you look at the sand on the beach, you say, there's the sand, because you're so far away from the sand. It's hard to relate to the sand until you get down in it and start building castles and holes or burying yourself. And then you begin to see that all those little pieces of sand are individuals. But it's all sand. It's all the same. And actually, you know, we're all the same. Except when we get up close, you know, we see each one of us is completely different. But the equality wisdom is the wisdom that perceives everything as the same. and doesn't discriminate.

[61:00]

And that wisdom corresponds to Sambhogakaya. And the third wisdom is the discernment wisdom. It's called various things. There are various names. but discernment, wisdom which sees everything, which is self-consciousness, self-conscious wisdom, and sees the difference, all the differences between everything, and recognizes the individuality of each thing, but realizes the essence of the difference, In other words, when the discernment wisdom discerns something, it also recognizes the essence of mind of that individual thing.

[62:16]

It realizes who that, or what that individual thing is, and sees everything as itself. And the fourth one is the perfecting of action wisdom. What? Perfecting of action. The wisdom with which we enter the world and relate to things, and that's nirmanakaya. Also, the discernment wisdom and the perfecting of action wisdom are both nirmanakaya. They're both in the transformative realm. The dharmakaya is both transformative and not transformative.

[63:20]

The dharmakaya is transformative and also completely independent from transformation. It neither comes nor goes nor stays. It's beyond any of our evaluations. but it's completely involved with everything. So this is as close as the Buddhists come to the deity, is Dharmakaya. And people say that Buddhism doesn't believe in God, but actually, I don't think there's any place where Buddha says that. And Buddha sometimes... I've heard it said that Buddha neither affirmed nor denied a concept of God. But Buddhists don't use that model.

[64:29]

It's not a model that's used by Buddhists, but you can either use it or not use it. If you understand, if you're not attached to it as a model, you can use it as a descriptive term, actually. As long as you're not attached to it emotionally, this word is very charged to use a familiar term. And we have a lot of investment in that word But I think you can use the word as long as you don't have an emotional investment and you're using it in a descriptive way and not in a devotional way. How about this for metaphor? I think of this every morning when I wake up. You're in dreamless sleep. going on because you're going to wake up fresh.

[65:36]

I wake up, I come into my body, I yawn blissfully. And then I have to get up and find my shoes. So the second state, the yawn, is the sambhogakaya. And the third state is when I have to finally realize I've got a day to do, put on my shoes, I mean, you are moving through three stages of consciousness every day. Right, but all three stages of consciousness are present at the same time. I don't think you can separate. You do by experience. Yes, but you can say, it feels like. As long as you say, this feels like Samogakaya, this feels like Nirmalakaya, But to say this is, it is, but it includes the other two. Because nirmanakaya is also doing this.

[66:42]

3-in-1 oil. 3-in-1 oil. Oily. 3-in-1 oily. 3-in-1. It's a feeling to me like samadhi and prasad and precepts. A precept? Yes. Precepts are not limited to 10 or 16. Right. Tien, did you want to say something? Yeah, that's right. Right, so it's both nameable and unnameable. And all the names are not the true names. They're just indications. And Buddhism has the same thing, you know. Dharmakaya is just a name. And we say it's just a name. There's nothing sacred about names in Buddhism, except for the esoteric school, maybe.

[68:08]

For the zens, I don't think so. But, there's nothing unsacred. It's not sacred in that we're not attached to words. to concepts and terms, but everything is sacred. Even when you, you know, we say the whole world is the eye of the monk, where will you defecate? You know, Theravada Buddhism, there's that phrase, seeing the way. Seeing the way? Yeah, does that correlate to one of the Thai? Do you think it correlates? The way is the Tao path? Well, I think they have like five different levels of realization. I think the third one is called seeing the way.

[69:11]

I thought that maybe that fits in with Sambhogakaya. Oh, I see. Maybe so, yeah. I think that if it fit anywhere, it would fit in to Sambhogakaya as wisdom. Yeah. Yes. So, dharmakaya is mirror, right? The great round mirror, wisdom. And sambhogakaya mirrors dharmakaya. They mirror each other. And because there's nothing, dharmakaya is nothing, it's void, right? And sambhogakaya is wisdom. So, on one side, sambhogakaya mirrors dharmakaya, and on the other side, sambhogakaya mirrors nirmanakaya.

[70:18]

It's in the middle. The wisdom is in the middle between our own human wisdom is in between dharmakaya and... and it's kind of like the... you could say the connection between heaven and earth, or the middle ground between heaven and earth. And so that's why in zazen you don't exactly stop all thoughts, but you think not thinking. You think the thought of not thinking, because even the thought of not thinking is a thought, but it doesn't have an object. So, when we sit Zazen without, you know, fully present, right?

[71:22]

To sit Zazen is to be fully present, completely and fully present, with the whole body and mind dynamically present, facing Dharmakaya, mirroring Dharmakaya. And it's like two empty mirrors reflecting each other. What do you see? When two empty mirrors are reflecting each other, without coloring or conceptualizing. The mirror, doesn't conceptualize what it sees, it just reflects it. So whatever is on this mirror, mind, is reflected, but it's not conceptualized. As soon as you start to conceptualize, it's called thinking. So it's okay to have various objects floating across the mirror, and the mind mirror just sees them as it is. But it doesn't conceptualize and it doesn't discriminate.

[72:28]

And this is facing Dharmakaya. It's just communing with Dharmakaya. That's what zazen is. It's sambhogakaya communing with Dharmakaya. And on the other side, the mirror of sambhogakaya is reflecting nirmanakaya. In other words, the mirror mind is reflecting everything out here, on the activity side, on the mundane side, as it is, hopefully. If it really reflects as it is, then this is just the essence of mind everywhere. This is to begin continual communion with Essence of Mind, whether it's on this side, whether it's on the nirmanakaya side, or the dharmakaya side.

[73:38]

I just want to mislead myself, and I pretend that I will if you wouldn't insist. So, is it okay for me to think, or is it... Can my mind commune with dharmakaya even though it can never step outside of itself? Whether it's sambhogakaya, It's dharmakaya of your own essence of mind. What's there to step outside of? And he keeps bringing this back to us over and over again. It's of your own essence of mind. Every Buddha of your own essence of mind, this of your own essence of mind, that of There's nothing outside of one essence of mind. Why do you think it's so difficult for us to accept the dharmakaya but not so easy to accept the nirmanakaya?

[74:43]

Because some teachers are always talking about getting stuck in emptiness. Being stuck in emptiness, yes. Right. So why? Well, you know, people, you know, when you start to practice, you withdraw from the world. And withdrawing from the world in order to peek at the essence of mind, to get this, right, to commune with the essence of mind, you withdraw from the world. And then when we see our essence of mind face to face, we feel, well, that's enlightenment. You know, in the Sandokai, it said, that's not enlightenment either. That all is one, knowing that all is, realizing all is one is not yet enlightenment.

[75:44]

It's not, right? So the completion of enlightenment is to relate to nirmanakaya, is to emerge as Nirmanakaya Buddha in the world, and that's stepping off the 100-foot pole. There are other ways to express stepping off the 100-foot pole, but strictly speaking, it's not to stay in your ivory tower, you know, once you've found a safe place, not to stay in a safe place, but to venture out and test out your understanding in the marketplace. When we attain that, or when that happens, it's like we are mirroring the dharmakaya in our everyday life.

[76:47]

Yeah, that's right. So the dharmakaya, I mean the nirmanakaya, is also an expression of the dharmakaya. It's the dharmakaya expressed as nirmanakaya. So everything, you know, it's just the various manifestations of dharmakaya. Everything in this world, in this room, is manifestation in one way or another of the dharmakaya. It doesn't repeat itself. That's what's amazing. Nothing in this sambhogakaya world is repeated. It's all completely new creations. Amazing how many combinations there are. But they're all manifestations of dharmakaya. So what we see in front of us as nirmanakaya is actually dharmakaya expressed as nirmanakaya.

[77:52]

So that's why we combated the pillar or to cats and dogs, as Siddhartha says. Well, it doesn't matter, because whatever we're dealing with is dharmakaya. That's why, you know, in the wedding ceremony we say, we see each other as Buddha, not as Dick and Jane. You can see each other as Dick and Jane, but you should really see each other as Buddha. Treat each other as Buddha. Very hard to do. But right there, you know, it's a practice. This is the practice of marriage. Treat each other as Buddha, not just as, you know, Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane is Buddha. So marriage is a really hard practice. It might be rhetorical, but this whole discussion makes me think of Dogen's statement, when all sentient beings, Buddha nature or his Buddha nature.

[79:01]

He took that all sentient beings has Buddha nature out of it. Our Buddha nature, or just all sentient beings' Buddha nature. He eliminated the duality. When you read it in a language that doesn't have in and of and that doesn't have all those connecting terms so much, it's just sentient beings' Buddha. But that's right, the Nirvana Sutra says, which is where that statement is from, as you know, says all sentient beings have Buddha nature. But Dogen kind of put his twist on it, as he does on everything, and says all beings are Buddha nature, which eliminates the duality between having and not having, which means manifestations of dharmakaya. And Dogen actually doesn't, although Dogen seems to say things in a new way, he does say things really in a new and radical way, but he's not saying anything new.

[80:07]

He's just helping us to understand what's always been said, but in a way that first we don't understand and then we understand because he takes us through our dualistic He takes us through the mind of non-duality. That's what's so engaging and frustrating about Dogon. And we see how dualistic our mind is as soon as we start to study Dogon. You know, our mind just goes... The same thing with the koans, you know. We start doing the koans and the mind goes... And it shows us how dualistic our mind is. So that's kind of what's so nice about the koans and about Dogon. So maybe we can stop there. There's something I wanted to show you.

[81:29]

Well, maybe it's not. Now, in my book, on page 73, and I don't know what it is in the other one, wrong translation. My 58 is your 53? So my 73 would be your I don't think it's in the other translations. It's not in the other books. So, that's what we're going to study next time. What are the words? What? What are the words? had read the Lankavatara Sutra nearly a thousand times.

[82:35]

Oh, I see. Yeah? But he could not understand the meaning of the Trikaya and the Four Prajnas. Thereupon, he called on the ancestor for an interpretation. So, we'll continue with this in the same vein, and so you can study that. And the next time, if you want to have that, come on around. It's not very long, actually. Well, it's not in the original section. It's page 67. So I didn't bring into this talk about the eight consciousnesses, which also figures into this. And he doesn't talk about the eight consciousnesses. Yes, he does talk about them.

[83:36]

Anyway, I'll talk about that next time. And so that's very interesting. I think we studied that when we studied the five ranks for the people that were here when we did that, that was several years ago, last year, two years ago. Okay, so tomorrow, The day after tomorrow, I'm going to the city again. And I'll be back in about two weeks. And I'll be seeing Zazen and people there. I'll give them your regards. Give them your regards. And we'll have at least one more class before Sashim.

[84:31]

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