I am bound to face the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good evening, everybody. Well, so continuing with our reading of the Shurangama Sutra,

[01:07]

and I was just thinking today that I think what I'm going to do is continue studying this in the fall, because Fu called me up and asked me if I would give a class in the fall. If you remember, in the beginning of the class I was sort of wondering what I was trying to do here. Was I trying to hit a few highlights and breeze through the sutra in a few weeks, or was I going to launch into a longer project of going slowly through the sutra and trying to do the whole thing? So I think what I decided to do is sort of neither one of those two, but just go through the sutra, read all of it, and just go through it steadily, and go through it in this series of classes and then resume in September to early October and see how far we get. If we don't get through the whole thing, it doesn't matter, but that way we can settle into it,

[02:11]

at least I can settle into it and not worry about what I'm doing. So that's the way I'm thinking about it now. So my method of studying it is just to... I'm just reading it through. I read as far as I can in a sitting before class and then come in and I figure out where we left off last time and just start from there. And then in my reading, if there's parts that I feel like it would be fine to skip, we'll just skip those parts. When I go over them in the class, I'll say, well, let's skip the next ten pages. I will read all of it, but we don't need to do every line. So that's my method. And I still haven't had a chance to look at the Buddhist Bible version of the sutra, but now Mipham said she got a copy from the library, so I will between now and next time. But I think that actually it doesn't matter all that much. There's a passage in here that talks about listening to sutras.

[03:15]

So when we get to that passage, we'll realize that it doesn't really matter all that much if we have copies of the text or read the text or not. That's really kind of like not that important. Anyway, where we left off last time, according to my note, was this whole passage, which is a really wonderful passage, and we studied it during the practice period, about King Prasenajit, remember, getting old and in dialogue with the Buddha, discovering that although his body is old, the consciousness of seeing itself is not any older now, and that he's 62 than it was when he was young. And he realized that the concluding passage of that whole trope was the king heard these words, believed them, and realized that when the life of this body is finished, there will be rebirth. He and the entire Great Assembly were greatly delighted

[04:19]

at having obtained what they never had before. And that's where we left off last time. So we'll just start from there. Ananda then arose from his seat, made obeisance to the Buddha, put his palms together, knelt on both knees, and said to the Buddha, World Honored One, if this seeing and hearing are indeed neither produced nor extinguished, as the Buddha just proved in discussing King Prasenajit's seeing, why did the World Honored One refer to us as people who have lost their true natures and who go about things in an upside-down way? I hope the World Honored One will give rise to great compassion and wash my dust and defilement away. Since the consciousness in which we're all participating

[05:23]

is the pure, bright, perfect consciousness, why is it that we're messed up? Which you just said, what happened there? Because we don't obviously live our lives basking in the glow of Buddha consciousness. So what has gone wrong here? Ananda doubtfully says, please help. Then the Thus Come One let his golden arm fall so that his wheeled fingers pointed downward. That's why he did this. And showing Ananda, he said, you see my mudra hand. Is it right side up or upside down? Because Ananda's question was literally, why are we upside down? Now Ananda, is my hand right side up or upside down? Ananda said, living beings in the world take it to be upside down.

[06:24]

I do not know what is right side up and what is upside down. The Buddha said to Ananda, if people of the world take this as upside down, what do people of the world take to be right side up? Ananda said, they call it right side up when the Thus Come One raises his arm with the fingers of his tula cotton hand pointing upward in the air. That's right side up. According to conventional understanding, this is called right side up, this is called upside down. By the way, tula cotton, I don't know. I don't know what. Cotton picking hands. And usually Master Hua has an explanation for everything and often has six or seven different Chinese legends regarding that thing. In this case, he doesn't even say, I don't know what this is, he just doesn't say anything.

[07:27]

So he doesn't tell us. I looked it up in the dictionary and the dictionary just tells us that there's two cities, one in Mexico and the other one somewhere else in Italy or something named Tula, neither one of which have anything particularly to do with cotton. So I don't really know. I'm sure that I restrain myself from pulling out all my books and looking up the 32 marks of Buddha and the 80 minor marks and figuring out which one he's translating here by tula cotton because I know where that would have led. So you see how 30 years of practice and I'm really getting, finally I'm getting this down. I didn't do that, so the result is I can't tell you what tula cotton. But that's not the point, of course. The point is the world says this is upright side up and this is upside down. The Buddha then held up his hand and said,

[08:28]

worldly people are doubly deluded when they discriminate between an upright and an inverted hand. In the same way they will differentiate between your body, Ananda, and the thus come one's pure Dharma body and will say that the thus come one's body is one of right and universal knowledge while your body is upside down. This may seem strange to us, but in Buddhism, in Buddhist way of looking at things, the very body of the Buddha is said to be a transformed body. This is the whole thing about the Sambhogakaya body. Don't forget, you know, in Western thought we many, many generations ago figured out that there's this huge gulf between body and mind, right?

[09:30]

Never the twain shall meet. So we don't necessarily expect great religious sages to have anything different about their body. It's their mind and spirit that we think is really great. Well, in Buddhism, mind and spirit and body are not two different things. So throughout Buddhist thought and the whole reason for Buddhist iconography is the idea that the Buddha's body is a transfigured body and that also is connected to trance states, the idea that you see the body and experience the body with a rarefied sensation in trance states. So the idea is that it's taken as axiomatic that the Buddha's body is not the same as my body and your body. Our bodies are defiled, upside down bodies. The Buddha's body is a special sort of transcendent body. So the Buddha is now saying when people say this is right side up and that's upside down, that's a ridiculous idea and it's no more reasonable than to say

[10:35]

my body as my Buddha body is different from your body. My body is right side up and your body is upside down which would have been the conventional idea that people would have said, well I'm only a human being but the Buddha is not considered to be a human being. The Buddha is like another kind of a creature transformed. So that's ridiculous. That view which Buddhists would have held people reading this sutra would have taken it that way. No, no, that's a ridiculous idea. But examine your bodies and the Buddha's closely for this upside downness. What exactly does the term upside down refer to? Thereupon Ananda and the entire Great Assembly were dazed and they stared unblinking at the Buddha. They did not know in what way their bodies and minds were upside down.

[11:37]

The Buddha's compassion arose and he took pity on Ananda and on all in the Great Assembly and he spoke to the Great Assembly in a voice that swept over them like the ocean tide. All of you good people I have often said that form and mind in all conditions as well as dharmas pertaining to the mind all the conditioned dharmas are manifestations of the mind only. Your bodies and your minds all appear within the wonder of the bright, true, essential, wonderful mind. So it's a little tricky what is meant by this and I'll read it in a moment Master Hua's commentary because it doesn't mean that

[12:43]

the whole world is in our mind because when we say our mind what we're talking about is our mental discriminatory mind. The activity of mind, right? Thinking, feelings, sensations everything we know of mind. So if we say the whole world is nothing but mind only we think I'm thinking up the world. But remember that by mind the Buddha is not talking about the activities of mind and this is the burden of this argument that goes on now for a hundred pages is for the Buddha to distinguish between what he's talking about as mind and what we usually mean by mind. But last time, if you remember, Daigon astutely pointed out that this is a very tricky business because if Buddha is saying there's another big mind and it's not our mind then he's talking about a god. So you'll see as this thing unfolds that the Buddha is saying that this big mind

[13:45]

and Suzuki Roshi uses that term for the same thing this big mind is not something different from the activities of mind but it's not the activities of mind either. And this is where we get into the whole paradoxical language of Zen and other mind only schools because either way you're incorrect. So keep in mind when he says the whole world is mind only he doesn't mean simply this because your body and all bodies appear within the wonder of the bright, true, essential wonderful mind. And now here's what Master Hua says about this. His comment on the words all are manifestations of the mind only. He says all dharmas are produced from conditions and do not extend beyond the manifestation of a single thought

[14:46]

of the true mind. From where do all dharmas, the mountains, the rivers, the great earth the vegetation and all the myriad appearances come into being? They come forth from minds. All the myriad things are contained within the mind. It is not that these things contain the mind but rather the opposite. Absolutely everything in the environment both natural and man-made is contained in a single thought of the mind and all are produced from the mind. If you recognize your original true mind all these things cease to exist. Which is to say not that everything's wiped out and there's blankness but that you recognize that all things are empty of separate substantial existence and you're free of them. So even though everything's going on you recognize that that which is going on is not really existing in the way that you thought it was. So then I'll go on just a little bit longer and then I'm assuming that there's

[15:49]

things to discuss about all this, bring out the implications of it. Why do I say the Buddha goes on, why do I say that you have lost track of what is fundamentally wonderful in you, the perfect wonderful bright mind and that in the midst of your bright and enlightened nature you mistake the false for the real because of ignorance and delusion? So he answers the question this way. So this maybe this sounds kind of familiar. It's not that different from Dogen's question that we're all familiar with. Why is it that if we're already Buddhas, we're already enlightened? Why do we have to practice? Why is it that we're not happy and not living in wholeness and enlightenment if that's actually our nature? Which is exactly what the Buddha is saying here, that your mind is enlightenment and yet you're upside down. How do we get that way

[16:50]

Nanda says. And the Buddha says, mental dimness turns into dull emptiness. This emptiness in the dimness unites with darkness to become form. Stimulated by false thinking, the form takes the shape of a body. As causal conditions come together, there are perpetual internal disturbances which tend to gallop outside. Such inner disturbances are often mistaken for the nature of mind. So this basically is the same thing as the twelvefold chain of causation. That's basically what he's saying. He's saying that it's like the perfect, pristine bright Buddha mind which makes no distinctions and discriminations somehow something is off balance

[17:53]

in the middle of it. Something very subtle. And then in another translation, I think it's Luke's translation which talks about I don't know where he gets this because it's not translated this way here. Maybe it's another passage. Anyway, the brightness of the mind which is a brightness that transcends brightness and darkness becomes more bright. Brightness is added to that brightness so that it becomes distinguished as brightness. And then from there, everything unfolds. So the original ignorance primordial ignorance, and you could read this as it's traditional in a double way. One way is as the beginning of time and the beginning of this universe. You could read it as the beginning of one's own journey through lifetimes and you can also read it as the moment by moment

[18:57]

process of mind being created and passing away on each moment. But the process is basically somehow this energy of darkness ignorance seems to be nobody knows how or why, and this is not explained seems to be part of the enlightened mind. And then because of that original primordial tendency, this is pre-forec... there's even consciousness. Because of that tendency the energy develops further and it's called karmic formations and the karmic formations create consciousness. Now there's consciousness. From this original, you might say very slight imbalance or darkness

[19:58]

or whatever you want to call it, in the middle of perfect mind evolves more energy and that energy evolves into consciousness consciousness evolves into the distinction between matter and mind. That evolves... once that occurs then there's contact once matter and mind are distinguished then a world appears and there's contact with that world and then once there's contact there's immediately feeling, reaction to the object that's contacted and then once there's reaction there's craving, once there's craving there's grasping, once there's grasping there's the desire for the ongoingness of life and then once there's the desire for the ongoingness of life there's birth. And then once there's birth there's death. So this is the... and I always tell the story probably many of you have heard it before

[20:59]

that one college professor that I had teaching Buddhism would always say, like a little kind of college professor type of joke, you know, he would say what does Buddhism say is the cause of death? And of course everybody would raise their hand and come up with all these ideas about the cause of death and he would amaze everybody by saying well according to Buddhism the cause of death is birth which is really true when you think about it, you know. All other causes of death are incidental. The basic cause of death is birth. Without birth there's no death and with birth there's certain death. So I was telling this story when I was in Vancouver last week and one of my people that was in the retreat there was a physician and she was saying I think next time I sign a death certificate I'm going to put down cause of... because you have to put cause of death and how long that condition persisted and so forth

[21:59]

say like you say cancer, you know, eight years or whatever so I'm going to say birth, cause of death, birth and then how long they had the condition I'll put down the patient's age. I said you ought to do that and let me know what happens but that is how it works in the 12-fold chain. So in other words how did we get upside down? Why is it that even though we are in fact living in the midst of enlightenment that the nature of our consciousness which is the perfect enlightened mind is consciousness itself which enables us to see and hear and smell and all that that is we're swimming around in Buddha's mind this is the fact of the matter and yet we're upside down, why is it that we're confused and then Buddha's response to that is because

[23:00]

in the middle of that enlightened mind there's something in there he calls it here a dullness, a darkness that pushes out and then one thing leads to another and it evolves into this confusion which is not really a bad thing because it's the nature of that consciousness to evolve in this way it's not a mistake, it's the nature of that consciousness to reverse, to create a kind of reversion that we end up confused and therefore have this wonderful task of finding our way back to wholeness which is the job of our human life so it just so happens that in the last couple of days I have had beautiful encounters with people who are facing the end of their life

[24:01]

and this is when this whole thing becomes very relevant because in both cases the people say this is terrible to me life is running around doing things and being with my family and being active and everything and now I'm losing all that, I can barely get out of bed and I'm depressed, I'm not in the mood to see anybody and all that and I think I want to kill myself because what am I doing, what's the point of being alive which is a very good conventional view but in the light of, if you think about this teaching here even now and all the time we have the capacity to quiet the mind and have a feeling for this big enlightened consciousness that the Buddha is speaking of and I think that and I was talking about this a lot in the training period of Tassajara

[25:04]

the practice period about the meditation of quieting yourself enough so that you can actually meditate on and with your acts of perception so that when you see something and you hear something to be aware that this is the activity of Buddha's big consciousness and usually we're too busy to be that sensitive to our sensual activity, but when you're close to death this becomes central to your life because you can't run around to all the stuff that the rest of us are doing and that the rest of us naturally have to do because we're at that stage of life when of course we're active and we're creating the world, right? So that's the great adventure, right, is when you get to that time in your life to draw inward and to look, to see seeing and hear hearing and think thinking and open up your life

[26:07]

return home in that way so I was trying to talk these people into that I don't know if I was successful, don't kill yourself don't do it, please because this is what's given to you now this is your life now this is the possibility that's before you use it for healing, use it for awakening see what you can see of advantage in it because this is how your life is now of course you can see it the other way, what a tragedy it is it is a tragedy too but can't you see it this way too and not feel like you have to be in anguish and kill yourself all your life you've changed, right? you're not the same as you were when you were 3 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 so naturally you're going to change more and eventually everybody's life turns out to be only consciousness for a minute and then no consciousness so I think this is the secret of zazen

[27:10]

zazen is nothing but consciousness it's just turning around and resting in consciousness itself rather than in the objects of consciousness so anyway that's what he's saying maybe that's a good place to stop is there anything to bring up or say? I was reading a biography of Dependence of the Parvo she was an English woman who went and lived in a cave she was here you know she was a friend of Helen what's Helen's last name? Helen Appell had studied with her and invited her to come here she was a wonderful lady she's not too old, 3 years ago does anybody remember that? 3 or 4 years ago well anyway, in the book she's talking with some people about meditation

[28:11]

they're talking about how you don't identify with the thoughts that come into your head and she said, don't even identify with the knower with the person with the consciousness that knows so what's left? just consciousness with no one to identify with right? yeah could you speak a little bit about interrupting this causal 12 link chain so it doesn't happen in everyone yes well interrupting the 12 link chain the classical teaching goes that each one of the links is reversed and therefore the chain is unbroken and liberation ensues and

[29:14]

so there's two levels one level is in the place where the chain is weakest not that it's weakest maybe but the place where we have the most ability to work with it is in the realm of grasping and craving because the original ignorance and so forth and karmic energy and consciousness this is already if we're alive, this has already taken place we can't reverse that but we can be sensitive in the area of craving and grasping and if we can let go of craving and grasping then we bring things to rest but then again we wouldn't crave and grasp if we understood the nature of mind and the nature of reality so I think there's two tracks to practicing one is taking care of acts of body, speech and mind

[30:18]

so that we reduce craving which means greed, anger, hatred, desire so that there's more presence of mind there instead of blind passion and at the same time the other track that we work on understanding the nature of mind so that those things don't arise in the first place so so the feeling and contact is there some consciousness to be brought? yeah, yeah in all this, of course, the practice of awareness to pay attention to what's going on paying attention and letting go when you really look at your mind you see how every moment you're always grabbing on grabbing, grabbing with every act of perception there's a grabbing so you try to be aware in your conduct and in your activity and try to let go

[31:18]

it's a very subtle thing, of course, to let go moment after moment even at times when you don't even realize you're clinging but that's why meditation practice is necessary because meditation practice can help you to see through and it can also help you to have the capacity to let go so that's the effort that we make mhm? I don't think I said that, I didn't mean that if I said it reducing the blind desire maybe that's what I, what did I say? What did I mean? somebody knows what I mean yeah to reduce craving, yeah no, no, no although that might be a good sort of learning device at times but it's not a solution so that, you know, like, what's her name again?

[32:22]

this woman? Tenzin Palmo goes into a cave for a number of years and I think that the spirit of doing that is not the world is doomed, I'm going to a cave it's the only place you can think straight but rather for training, you know, so that I can try to understand this for temporarily I'm going to withdraw myself and go into a cave she's not living in a cave now, she travels all over and does things you never, by the way, imagine that this was a woman who spent 15, 20 years in a cave when you talk to her, she's like totally straightforward simple, sweet woman you know I mean, she's quite balanced, of course but she doesn't seem, you know, like stars in her eyes or something like that and we do that too, right? We do sashins or practice periods or something like that temporarily, so that we can understand yeah was there something else that you, what did you have behind that question just practically speaking, you know, it sometimes helps

[33:35]

I guess Suzuki Roshi talks about simplifying yeah yeah, it's not a bad idea but like I say, I don't think that the Buddha is saying here, or that it's suggested in the tradition that that's an expedient means reducing the activity, it's not the ultimate ultimately what it's about because even in the midst of much activity we have to be able to keep our balance if that's what's going wrong for us you were saying, Norman, that all acts of perception have grasping in them or grabbing and I'm sitting here looking at this basket and thinking now I'm just simply looking at the basket and seeing the basket where is the grasping here well in the Buddhist analysis of perception in order to identify something

[34:39]

as an object a thing in the world the mind has to and this is actually I think pretty close to the scientific analysis of perception too the mind has to create an image of the object there's a contact between the organ and the object and then out of that contact the mind creates an image of the object and then names it, and then we can say I saw the basket and the idea is that in the act of creating an image and of naming it there's a subtle form of clinging there even though we don't experience desire or craving or hatred or anything like that as soon as we name something in that way there's some degree of clinging and that's what is meant because maybe you have had the experience it's kind of an unusual experience but it happens actually all the time where you're actually looking at something and you don't see it like when you're doing zazen you're looking at the wall actually most of the time you don't see the wall

[35:42]

or maybe you've had the experience of where you're sitting in a room and there's a sound going and you don't hear it and all of a sudden you hear it, like the frogs and you realize, jeez, I was sitting there for half an hour and I literally did not hear it wasn't even like I didn't pay attention to it it was like I actually didn't hear that sound even though the ear was clearly vibrating and all that but I didn't hear it, and what you mean by that is you didn't turn your attention to it and name it and create out of this physical activity an event called the sound of a frog so the idea is that that creation of that event already has a subtle form of clinging well I think the idea is that there is a way of living so that you don't do that I think from my perspective it's a little theoretical in the sense that

[36:44]

in Buddhism I confess my ignorance here, but my understanding is that in Buddhism the idea of the Buddha is the limit of possible reality possible perceived reality so the Buddha lives in that world lives in a world where he somehow contrives to hear frogs and all that and not have that kind of clinging but for the rest of us the effort is to reduce it knowing that our job is still to live in the world as is and not to live in a rarefied world what we want to do is understand the process of clinging and by understanding it reduce it greatly and even as Bodhisattvas embrace a certain amount of clinging so as to remain in the world but on an ideal basis the Buddha is the limit of that that's what I would understand, the Buddha theoretically sees things

[37:47]

differently than we see things without the clinging without the graviness in our acts of perception that's what I would understand but check out, ask somebody wiser than I and see what they say about that, because it's a deep matter I'm not sure that my understanding is good Jeff, and then back to Nancy Well, when you're talking about the sum of naming isn't it kind of like the Daoist concept if you name something, you're limiting it to just that and that the clinging is the separation that we're no longer realizing how connected we are to the basket we're connected to everything the clinging comes because we feel incomplete I just now created a basket and it's not me so I'm incomplete, I'm alienated now from this world and I need to reach out and grab it and bring it into myself

[38:50]

of course I can never really do that so I'm doomed to a kind of unhappiness but like you say, if we understood the true nature of mind we would see that the basket and myself are one and the same activity, and there's no need to reach out and grab that basket it's already in mind exactly, Nancy With the babies we're constantly when you're walking and they're recognizing things and there's name recognition it's so exciting what are we doing? Well, like I said before this process of being turned upside down is not a tragedy it is already it seems to be the case that it's in the nature of enlightenment this big enlightened mind to evolve in this upside down way

[39:52]

so that we can have the job of returning so no, it would be sort of literally you'd think, oh yeah, well hearing this now I'm not going to tell my child the name of anything in fact, when I see a bird, I'm going to say that's a dog just to counteract anything to the contrary so that's it I'm going to really train the child by the way, this reminds me did I tell you about this program I saw on TV about the wild child who didn't have language? Completely fascinating thing there's two famous cases of this one was the one that was made into a movie by Francois Truffaut which you probably know about which is based on a true story about a French child they found him in the woods and he couldn't talk but there was another case of this in America I think in the 70s of a girl who was so badly abused and locked up in a room she never learned language

[40:53]

and in both cases, one thing that I found totally fascinating was the fact that neither one of these children had apparently, neither one of these children had the ordinary human sensation of hot or cold isn't that something? Like this kid, this French kid, there's a scene in the movie he would go out into the snow and he would take off all his clothes and leap around in the snow and bury himself in the snow and have no sense that it was cold at all and the girl, the American girl they were teaching her, she came to live in a family and they were teaching her how to do things in the regular world so they were teaching her how to take a shower and she would turn on the cold water or the hot water and get in the shower ice cold or scalding hot would have no effect on her she didn't say but she didn't like, you know, any one of us

[41:58]

you would think that something like the sensation of hot or cold would have nothing to do with language or conceptualization but this is how deep it goes but animals certainly react to hot yeah, animals do and not that they figured out why that's the case, but it was very striking and they noticed, the scientists, that both of them had that and their speculation was that for human beings anyway the sensation of hot and cold is to a great extent learned, it's linguistically based so the point is that in order to be a human being, functioning in the world that exists we have to go down this road and so the more that we have an understanding of this and an appreciation of this I feel the more that when we teach our children

[42:59]

and nobody's teaching their children that strategically or consciously we're doing it in a very natural way but I think that the more we understand these things, the more in the very act of teaching our children language we will be teaching them less grabbiness if we're less grabby in our own use of language but we have to go down that road that's the human journey this is not a mistake, reality is not a mistake reality is reality, and from our point of view that's where he starts off is this upside down or is this right side up from your point of view, you may think that this is right side up and upside down but from my point of view, it isn't upside down or right side up and even now that you're miserable and running around and suffering from my point of view, it's not so it's only from our point of view so this is our journey, to develop the mind and then to recognize suffering and then come back, and that's not a tragedy

[44:03]

that's a beautiful thing and this is the thing, we have to see the beauty of all that including all the bad parts, the parts we don't like even the parts that we work very hard to eliminate, like violence injustice, actually in the end we have to see that as part of the plan too and we have to see our working against that as part of the plan so this is a profound kind of a thing the implications that we might draw from it are not as they would seem on the surface when Buddha talked of his dullness in the enlightened consciousness is this dullness always constantly pushing us away from our task trying to get back to home or is it is it creating a balance

[45:04]

or is it always there or once you get back home you stay there well, it's the shape of every moment so every moment this comes up and every moment it has within it its own return so our job is to understand the process and to get on the enlightenment train which is leaving from the station every minute instead of the other train that we're usually getting on yeah I was thinking that maybe we need to really throw ourselves into human activity in order to experience this one of the things that I'm thinking of is Helen Keller's experience of language of Anne Sullivan running her hand under water and writing out water and Helen Keller suddenly getting it that this word actually was this substance

[46:06]

running over her hand and she was ecstatic when she finally got it it seems to me that there's a way in which even this process of naming which does create craving is also enlightened activity yeah, that's what I'm saying and one of the things that I was thinking is you mentioned a couple of times that playing the baby, not to know it as a basket yeah, right there's a line from the Four Quartets I think something goes like without the still point there would be no dance and there was only the dance that's kind of like this I think we can only see the still point while we're dancing yeah, because exactly there is no still point outside of the dance there's only the dance that's why we have to do the dance we have to learn this process we have to create this world in order to redeem it to use that kind of language

[47:07]

we're stepping on too many feet sensitivity to our partners yeah, right let's have a few more comments and then we'll go on and see because it does develop further quite a bit you want to make a comment? I remember in Genesis how Adam names the animals and it seemed to me that there's this aspect of protection that can transform the queen in that story yeah, well it's interesting because in that story at least the way that we have all the way that those words have been translated from the original languages it's always translated as that Adam was in charge and had dominion over the other creatures but I suspect that if you were a good philologist oh, that's great, thanks I think they do go brighter

[48:11]

I think they do oh, there you go it goes with the switch my guess is that if you went back to those passages with a good philological dictionary you could translate them you may find that those words aren't exactly the way that we've understood them it may be that that, you know the idea is not, when we name the world we could view it as, now that I understand basket now I have control over that basket now I'm in charge of that basket now I can get that basket to do what I want it to do you could look at the world in that way but that's where the clinging would really be maximal or you could look at it as, just like we were just saying a minute ago in my understanding of this as a basket

[49:11]

there's the dance there's the cooperation, there's the co-creation of the world I'm created just as much as the basket is in that moment but I personally believe that all the creatures on the planet have a job that's particular to them, and I think that language and this kind of practice that we're doing, is our job so there is a unique I think there is a unique human capacity and unique human mission I don't think it's superior, but it's unique and every creature has a unique mission so I think that I would say that, my guess is if you went in there with a philological dictionary in this point of view you could easily see a way to understand those kind of passages as more like, God said to Adam you have a unique mission, because you have human consciousness and you need to now do that mission but we received it as, you now dominate the planet

[50:18]

so go ahead and do it and that's what happened that was probably a good thing but we can't do it that way anymore, now we understand better so somebody needs to go re-translate that Bible and do a better job for our time ok, let's go on a little bit and then, yes, the internal disturbances which tend to gallop outside this means like, raging desire violence, confusion, anger, hatred tend to gallop outside yeah, well that means looking outside oneself right, satisfactions whose fault is it, who did this to me get them yeah, I was telling you about the two people who were facing death one of the people is

[51:18]

full of, this is the big thing full of bitterness and anger against the person in her life who did she feels great wrong to her well, there's a big connection between the certainty that this person is to blame for her messed up life there's a big connection between that and her feeling like now my life is over, I want to kill myself so the idea, well maybe you can see that differently, maybe that's what you can do at this time in your life, even though you can't go to the mall or drive your car, you can soften your heart, and wouldn't that be great so then the text goes on you do not know that the physical body as well as the mountains, the rivers empty sky and the great earth are all within the wonderful bright mind it is like ignoring hundreds of thousands of clear pure seas and taking notion of only a single bubble

[52:19]

seeing it as the entire ocean as the whole expanse of great and small seas so that's what we do, we take our little bubble of consciousness which is after all, what is the bubble on the ocean the bubble is the ocean, it's not a separate thing the ocean is producing a bubble right here so we take that bubble as everything, the whole world ignoring this vast big ocean you people are doubly deluded among the deluded such inversion does not differ from that caused by my lowered hand the thus come one says you are most pitiable the Buddha says having received the Buddha's compassionate rescue and profound instruction Ananda's tears fell and he folded his hands and said to the Buddha I have heard these wonderful sounds of the Buddha and have realized that the wonderful bright mind is fundamentally perfect

[53:22]

it is the permanently dwelling mind ground but see Ananda in the sutra is very funny, he's always got a problem but he says but now in awakening to the dharma sounds that the Buddha is speaking and this is what I was saying before about why you don't need to copy the sutra but now in awakening to the dharma sounds that the Buddha is speaking it is my conditioned mind which I use to contemplate them reverently having just obtained the mind I do not acknowledge that it is the fundamental mind ground I pray that the Buddha will take pity on me and proclaim the perfect sound to pull out my doubts by the roots and enable me to return to the unsurpassed way so remember Ananda remember in the beginning I was talking about the virtues

[54:22]

of Ananda's non-enlightenment now Ananda loves the teaching he is really into the doctrine this is why it is a good thing that is true because therefore he remembered it all and passed it on but the problem is because he is attached to the doctrine because he is attached to his mind this little bubble mind hearing the words of the sutra and remembering them and learning them he is thrilled with the words of the sutra but because of that it is his conditioned mind which I am using to contemplate your words and because of that even though you have just given me pretty clear the teaching here and I understand it but I do not acknowledge that it is the fundamental mind ground because of attachment to the teachings

[55:27]

because of attachment to the conceptual mind's understanding of the teachings so in a funny way this word acknowledge sometimes I talk a lot about this that it isn't that we have to understand the teachings or learn the teachings or even have some meditative insight into the teachings or something like that all of that is Ananda's territory and he does understand the teachings and he does remember them it is great, right? but he doesn't acknowledge that his mind is the big Buddha mind he doesn't acknowledge himself as Buddha so in Buddhism there is really only one practice which is the practice of taking refuge and the practice of taking refuge is to actually acknowledge

[56:30]

that you are Buddha and the you that is Buddha is non-different not a separate being from everything else so to acknowledge that you are joined the you that really counts the you whose life is not diminished when your body is falling apart and all that but the real you, you acknowledge and that you is non-different from the rest of the world to acknowledge that and to truly make that the ground and basis of your life is to take refuge in the triple treasure and that is the thing that Ananda can't do because he is so interested in the teachings he goes out and buys a copy of the Shurangama Sutra, all 19 volumes, like me but he doesn't acknowledge that this is so I get it, I understand it Buddha but I understand it with my conditioned mind and so therefore I am not acknowledging it can you help me out here

[57:34]

the Buddha told Ananda you still listen to the Dharma with the conditioned mind and so the Dharma becomes conditioned as well you have made the Dharma into something conditioned because you have approached it with your conditioned mind and so you do not obtain the Dharma nature it is like when someone points his finger at the moon to show it to someone else the famous thing in Zen comes from here, finger pointing at the moon I have a little painting, a little Zen guy with a big belly, pointing at the moon so guided by the finger that person should see the moon if he looks at the finger instead and mistakes it for the moon he loses not only the moon but the finger also why?

[58:45]

because he mistakes the pointing finger for the bright moon so getting back to the discussion we had a moment ago when you realize that the word water has to do with that funny substance which is the only actual real liquid on the planet isn't that funny? when you see that that naming is a finger and not the moon then you take joy and delight in that because what that is is you now have deepened your relationship to water by knowing it's water this is why it's so delightful when the baby knows the name of something why it's so thrilling because the baby is making a powerful relationship to that thing now when you do the next thing and you say oh it's water, now I can control that now I've got that under my thumb now I can do something with that

[59:47]

now I'm in charge because I have the number of water I've got your number now then you're not seeing the finger you've gone beyond the finger and you're not seeing the finger or the moon does that make sense what I'm saying? so it's interesting, not only do you lose the moon because there's something about a finger that's also enlightenment it's not like the moon is enlightenment, the finger isn't as long as you keep it straight when you look at the finger and say wow, you think of it as the moon then you're mixed up not only does he lose the finger but he also fails to recognize light and darkness why? he mistakes the substance of the finger for the bright nature of the moon and so he does not understand the two natures of light and darkness the same is true of you if you take what distinguishes the sound of my speaking to be your mind then the mind itself

[60:48]

in other words, if you take your conditioned understanding of my words about Dharma to be the Dharma, the big mind and not just some conditioned words you're understanding if you take the sound of my speaking Dharma to be your mind, then that mind itself apart from the sound which is distinguished should have a nature which makes distinctions it is like the guest who lodges overnight at an inn he stops temporarily and then goes on he does not dwell there permanently whereas the innkeeper does not go anywhere he is the host of the inn we talked about this, the host and guest this is the original host and guest in a minute, the famous saying about the two moons also is from the sutra, we're going to see that one in a minute so he's now going to this is the beginning of an argument where he's going to show Ananda that it can't be, that that which his conditioned mind understands can't be this teaching

[61:51]

because if the conditioned mind if the mind that I'm speaking of was subject to being understood by the conditioned mind then it would be conditioned itself it itself would be subject to this kind of limitation and distinction so he's going to say this mind is like the host who never leaves, who always is there not like the guest who goes from inn to inn likewise, if it is truly your mind it does not go anywhere, just like the host however, in the absence of sound it has no discriminating nature of its own can you tell the reason why? this then applies not only to this distinguishing of sound in distinguishing my appearance there is no distinction making nature apart from the mark of form thus, even when the making of distinctions is totally absent when there is no form and no emptiness the obscurity which Gosali and the others take to be the profound truth in the absence of causal conditions

[62:52]

the distinction making nature ceases to exist so, this is a little bit complicated it seems but it's not that hard to understand what he's saying is that if I can get this straight this mind and my distinction making limited mind are one and the same when conditions arise to cause my mind to make distinctions this big mind makes that happen responds to those conditions so my eye is here, my attention is in front of me, I see a person big mind appears as that perception however, if my eye is closed and I'm asleep and there's no person there there's no stimulation big mind doesn't exist in that way at all

[63:54]

so this big consciousness depends on us and creatures to manifest it and yet it's not limited to that so this is kind of that's what I was saying earlier it's different from the big consciousness is different from my mind and also not different from my mind because without my mind it doesn't go somewhere else and it's oh, it's over there, let's go get it and bring it over here and stick it in my mind so it can make me see, because it isn't anywhere else once those conditions are absent this big consciousness can't be said to be anywhere it's discriminating capacity comes from the conditions that cause it to make distinctions so Goshali and the others talk about, posit some kind of

[64:58]

other reality, which exists even when it's not activated the Buddha said there is no such place, there is no such thing this only exists when it's activated and yet it's not identical to that moment of activation let's see go a little bit further and then I'll stop and we'll discuss how can we say that the nature of your mind plays the part of host since everything perceived by it returns to something else Ananda said if every state of our mind returns to something else as its cause then why does the wonderful, bright, original mind mentioned by the Buddha return nowhere I hold out the hope that the Buddha will shower us with such compassion as to enlighten us on this point the Buddha said to Ananda

[66:01]

as you now see me the essence of your seeing is fundamentally bright if the profound, bright, original mind is compared to the moon the essence of your seeing is the second moon rather than its reflection so there's the second there's one who isn't busy oh, then there's two moons which moon is this? so, this here gets into the eight consciousnesses teaching of the mind-only school and I'm not sure that I entirely understand this but and I'll read you a second the comment of Master Hua and we'll stop there and I'm not sure that that will make it clear either but what's being said here is that the Dharmakaya, the true reality

[67:04]

is the moon when you look at the moon and you press your eye finger on your eye and then you look at the moon again like I just did it with that light there then you see two moons because you pressed your finger on your eye you see two moons one moon is not the reflection of the other there is, you can look at the lake and see the reflection of the lake of the moon and the lake, right? but that reflection of the moon and the lake is of a different order of reality from this second moon so it's a tricky thing here because the second moon is basically our experience of our purified experience of reality when we become enlightened Buddhas we will see the second moon, the eighth consciousness and somehow the Dharmakaya

[68:06]

what's being said here is that the Dharmakaya the true reality is not that moon but it's close and then the ordinary defiled world of sense perception is the reflection of the moon so the ultimate is the moon still named the moon? yeah, but it's, in other words, the second moon so that explains how the Buddha goes around in the world and apparently lives in the same world that we live in but instead of seeing a reflection of the moon, he sees the second moon it's a purified world we see the reflection of the moon, which is not the moon and yet it is the moon because no moon, there's no reflection so this is a very subtle kind of thing so we're all seeing the moon nobody with perceptual apparatus is seeing the actual moon but because the actual moon

[69:09]

the trouble with the analogy is it makes it seem as if the actual moon exists somewhere else besides the second moon and besides the reflection but what's being said is that the second moon doesn't exist anywhere else and yet, even the purified Buddha view of the world is the second moon it's it but it's not the dharmakaya, because by definition the dharmakaya, truth, reality, body can't be seen so in a way, you could say the moon is dharmakaya the second moon is sambhogakaya the reflection that we see is the nirmanakaya but let me just read Master Hua's commentary there and then we'll discuss a little bit and we'll end let's see if this helps at all the essence of your seeing which sees my 32 hallmarks and 80 subtle characteristics has the basic characteristic of clarity

[70:10]

but, and then he quotes the sutra, if the profound, bright and original mind is compared to the moon, the essence of your seeing is the second moon rather than its reflection the essence of seeing is basically the eighth consciousness which is called the mind king the alaya the seeing of the mind king can go to the side of the good or it can go to the side of the bad if it ascends, it penetrates through to Buddha nature if it descends it penetrates through into the seventh consciousness which is ego consciousness manas, my, me consciousness and the idea in mind only practice the idea is that through meditation practice they say turn around that's why the upside down imagery is used because the idea is that the alaya is turned backwards or upside down

[71:12]

and therefore it's descending to the seventh consciousness it descends to ego and attachment to the world and if you turn it around or right side up then it will ascend to enlightenment and ego will be purified and the world becomes a Buddha land so if it ascends it penetrates through to the Buddha nature if it descends it penetrates through into the seventh consciousness although the substance of the eighth consciousness is not in itself our true mind because it's the second moon our true mind is contained within the eighth consciousness which is very weird so don't make a mistake here and think that by saying the essence of seeing is not the wonderfully essential bright mind the Buddha does not dare recognize it as the true mind either the essence of seeing is the true mind the Buddha has already proved this the seeing which sees is the true mind but it is like a second moon, not like the moon's reflection

[72:13]

how is this? If you press against your eye you'll see two moons, but those two moons are one moon the one real moon, not a reflection like the moon seen in water the Buddha is saying that the eighth consciousness, the mind king is the basic substance of our true mind you should not mistakenly think that the eighth consciousness is not the true mind so it is and it isn't the second moon is not different from the first moon and yet it is different from the first moon so anyway, I don't know how much that helps there but something else what was it? maybe that's enough from the text for tonight I'm aware of the fact that it's a little hard going in a way you can bog down reading this stuff and better to take it in small doses and chew on it well

[73:14]

rather than sit down and read a hundred pages but I think there's a virtue in unearthing this material it is important so the broom so there's one who isn't busy there's one who's too busy there's one who isn't busy oh then there's two moons so up to there we're in the realm of this sutra these doctrines that's pre-Zen then when the broom is held up and the question is raised, what moon is this? that's Zen practice that's why we don't have to worry so much about whether we

[74:14]

are expert on the ins and outs of this kind of doctrine because the important thing is that we live our lives with the question what moon is this? or we could say the question, who is this? or what is this? or how is reality now? and that question always puts us face to face with what's in front of us and concretely what our life is and Zen is action, right? Zen is bringing your life to bear in your activity and finding in the mundane regular stuff the depth the deepest possible depth of our living in the activity and if you're somebody who can't walk around anymore then that activity is looking at the ceiling of your hospital room if you're able-bodied and you're doing things then that activity is looking into the eyes of your baby

[75:16]

digging a hole installing a dance floor whatever you do and you find that in the middle of your activity all of a sudden maybe you recollect yourself and you find there it's all there everything is there, it's right there so this constant and of course then when you say, oh I get it now when I kind of do this, it's going to be right there because it's just constantly asking the question constantly freshening up what am I now, what is this now and never answering the question maybe in a moment you answer the question but then you throw that away and it's a question again so that's the way Zen takes this and brings it into the activity of life and I think that if you think about what the sutra is really talking about that's what it wants us to do I think anyway, so last comments we have a few minutes anyway

[76:20]

it sounds to me like this is an epistemological argument totally and there's always a hang up in the epistemological argument in that you're using terms to define reality in terms of its own argument, which is words yeah, right so it doesn't get to the ontological basis of what being is it only gets to the basis of how we define something that's very satisfying the problem is that it still seems to reify concepts into something solid yeah, well it could have that we just read a passage where Ananda says basically I understand this and I just reified it into a solid concept just like you're saying so we have to grab the broom time and time again but the thing about ontology is that ontology kind of begs the question of epistemology because you discuss reality

[77:25]

and you say reality looks like this and then somebody says well how do you know and you say well because of my apparatus and they say what's the nature of your apparatus, how does it work and then you have to talk about that and that is the job of definitely in a way you could say that the teachings on emptiness and the Madhyamaka position is not ontology but anti-ontology the Buddha was an anti-ontologist he thought that metaphysics was the problem so the Buddhist metaphysics is a classical exactly an anti-metaphysics but where does that leave you that leaves you with a very good theory of the nature of reality that's no doubt true but not a way to realize it so then in order to realize it you have to worry about body and mind so then the job of the Yogacara schools, the mind only schools is to discuss epistemology so if somebody says well is Buddhism an epistemology

[78:29]

or metaphysics, well the answer is the Madhyamaka school is an anti-metaphysics and the mind only schools are basically when you come down to it an anti-epistemology an undoing of ratification of epistemologies but it is that way and like I say the Shurangama Sutra is not a required class but I have a taste for these things up to a point so when you read these volumes and when you have this dialogue in this verbiage of ontology epistemology do you still have to come back to that circle that much of this is about faith that you would call a faith statement I think so but you can't define it as a faith statement because once you put no I agree

[79:29]

but in Dharma faith is I think it's true that some forms of Christianity have a doctrine of faith because they have an external deity that deity can confer a kind of grace which creates a spontaneous faith we are touched from above in Dharma at least in Zen Dharma my personal and I've said this many times to you and others that it's really about faith but the faith is not because we are touched from above the faith is a byproduct of our practice of our activity of practice so we do the practice not to accumulate knowledge and log on hours on the cushion and this and that but because that is the activity

[80:31]

that comes out of our faith and it's the activity that deepens and strengthens our faith so sitting in this room and jawing about the Asurangama Sutra is a practice that we're doing it's just a practice that we're doing to me it's like doing Zazen practice when you do Zazen practice you don't think maybe you do, maybe you have a little calendar and you notch off would it be interesting actually we could get somebody to do this when they first come we say we were hoping that you would be somebody who would practice for 30 or 40 years and that during that time you would have a little handheld computer maybe and log in every hour that you sit and see how many you can accumulate in a lifetime that would be interesting of course we think it's kind of ridiculous in a way in other words what I'm trying to say is we don't think that's the point of doing Zazen to see how many hours we can accumulate

[81:31]

nor is it the point in doing this kind of activity to see how many sutras we can read and how many doctrines we can be expert at it's a practice, it's part of our practice and hopefully, I really hope that this practice increases, deepens and strengthens our faith rather than the reverse which is also possible I don't want that kind of responsibility so tell me it isn't so don't tell me, maybe you better not tell me that's the idea though so that's why you don't need to buy a copy of the sutra you just need to come and pay attention and appreciate the Dharma and everybody will take away exactly what they need maybe if we have six classes one person will remember one thing

[82:32]

maybe somebody will remember nothing other than the feeling of the room and the feeling of shared goodwill maybe somebody else will remember two things that are totally different from the one thing the first person remembered and that's what we're here for so, thank you for bringing us back to that point there is a very interesting exercise that you can do to find out the power of what names are and that is to point very quickly to objects that don't use the word for it for example, pencil, hand, love and see what it does to your mind and how jumbled and what pain actually occurs as you do that it becomes very disturbing and you actually lose balance as you do it or repeating a word over and over again

[83:35]

until it loses all of its labor I think that's like a theater game, isn't it? I think I've done that in some kind of theater workshop did Johnstone do that one? theater sports it's very interesting to see do you know how to do it? maybe we should do it sometime you point as fast as you can to objects but instead of saying floor, ceiling, light and so on there are other nouns don't you get a group of people and you walk around the room so you're all milling around the room pretty soon you have to sit down we should do that in the classroom very quickly you lose your balance but it's also freeing

[84:37]

if you think about it you can practice ahead of time but the game is to see how difficult it is to find a word for something spontaneously that is not the name that is not the name that we get I got a headache just thinking about that we do have class a week from today is that right? is that right? I think so so we're going to have now every Tuesday right? until it ends and this was the Tuesday we weren't sure fortunately I had something to do this weekend and it was cancelled I'm so much happier being here than going back to Canada again I was going to go back to Canada again but I didn't, so I'm much better off

[85:48]

May our intention

[85:52]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ