Bill Powell continues the exploration of The Platform Sutra, with a focus on our vows.

Full Transcript

Class on the Platform Sutra and we're going to hand it over to Bill now. Thank you.

Okay, thank you everyone. Yes, it's the last class but I think if you get the message that I want to get across today it's just the beginning of the Six Patriarch Sutra. I'm trying to unlock what I see as a key to making sense of most of the sections in the Sutra and each one, if one thinks about it very much in terms of this single key, opens it up to a lot of new questions and possibilities. So I think one can keep going through this, in fact I know that's what's happened in my case. It continues to elaborate itself as I look at it again and again.

In any case, the situation that we have at this point after three sessions is that we've gone through most of the text and it's been obvious that what Huineng is doing or the authors of the text is doing is looking at the tradition in China up until this point and possibly back into India as well but primarily China. What has China received? What do the Chinese understand and how do they present the Buddhist path, the Buddha way in China? How do they practice the Buddha way in China? And so it's the received teachings. This is what they've got from India and this is how they've worked it into their own cultural system and Huineng says quite clearly, you've all misunderstood. Let me straighten you out. There's only one thing you need to do and that's to see your original nature.

But to say that to practicing Buddhists who've been doing this now for, well not individuals, but it's been going on for 700 years in China, a lot longer than it has in the United States for the West. So give us a break. It will take us a while to get there I think. But I think we're moving faster. But we're nowhere near yet.

So anyway, what he's saying is, okay, let's get down to brass tacks. This is what it's about. And if you see it this way, everything else will fall into place, not necessarily conceptually, but in terms of your own practice and understanding of the teaching without words.

Now one has to keep in mind that at this time in China when the text was produced, there was no printing. They were copied texts. So much of the practice of this text was memorization and other texts. So when we talk about a teaching outside of words, they literally mean the spoken word in most cases, even though it's written down. In most cases, people don't have copies of the written text because it has to be written. So it's not a good practice.

808 AD was when the first printed text appeared in China. And of all texts in China, the first text was, does anybody know what the first text was? The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text. The Buddhists felt the need to publish, to get this spread out in China. And so they came up with the technology of printing. This is what, how many years before Gutenberg, about 600, 700 years before Gutenberg. Am I right about that? Well, it doesn't matter. It's well before Gutenberg.

So that's the kind of text they're dealing with, is an oral text and one that they can refer to in monasteries. So what the key is then, as I say, I think this is the key, is seeing that his message it's imperative that we see our original nature, that everyone see their original nature. And that original nature he makes clear is what we call the Buddha nature. But that's just a word for the original nature. But then we go on to define that.

So resting on this platform of written teachings. It's a convenient device for bringing a point after point. It's not, it's fine to say, okay, now just be yourself and look at your nature. But because we have 600 years of tradition, it provides a foundation on which to consider where we don't understand, where we may have misunderstood and where we can understand more fully.

So why so many examples, many of these practices we don't do today. So why even read about these? It seems to be when I look at these, many of them are correctives to our impressions of what the Buddha's teachings are. And so it seems to be when I look at these, many of them are correctives to our impressions of what the practice is and what our understanding is. Even if we don't practice them this way today, it raises questions about our own practice and our own understanding of Buddha's practice, the Buddha way. So I think it's very valuable to look at the Lotus Sutra, for example, which we normally don't do in terms of how that could be understood more fully, or Vimalakirti or any of the other sutras he brings up.

So that's why I think it's valuable to read all of the sections and cases. So to narrow the focus for this session, instead of covering the entire text, which I have the inclination to do and knowing that it's absolutely impossible, I decided the most useful way to do this would be to focus on the Three Pillars, because it kind of collects each of these notions. There's much more that could be studied, but the Three Pillars will give us a good sense, I think, of what the entire text is about.

So let's look at the first page, which is Shenxiu's Three Pillars. And if somebody could load that up, whoever's in charge of texts. I think that's Huineng's Three Principles. Now, is this it? This is it. Very, very good. Thank you. Can everybody see it? Oh, you can't hear. So I will assume everyone sees this. I see it. Okay.

So as you remember, Shenxiu was the person who wrote the first poem on the wall, to which Huineng responded with his poems, his three poems. So this is probably the most educated and well-known Zen Buddhist figure in China at the time. Huineng doesn't really become known very much at all for another 30 years after that the poetry was written.

So this is one of Shenxiu's students who goes to visit Huineng at his center at Cao Xi and says, I'm coming from Shenxiu's place and I want to know how you teach the Three Pillars. And Huineng asks him, well, tell me how Shenxiu teaches the Three Pillars. And he teaches essentially exactly the same statement that's in the Dharmapada. And that goes back to India 600, 700 years earlier. It's part of the mainstream tradition. It's the most common representation of the Three Pillars in mainstream Buddhism at this time and even today. You'll hear this as a description of the Three Pillars.

So it's very simple. Master Shenxiu says, not committing evil is morality, doing good is wisdom, and purifying one's thoughts is meditation. And then that's all the information we get on that.

So if you've read this section, you'll see that Huineng says, well, that's very good. I think that's very well done. But I have a different way of looking at it. Of course, he has a different way of looking at every one of these things. And consider that his response in terms of our understanding of ethics and morality, one of our primary concerns in the second decade, third decade of the 21st century, we're very interested in ethics and practice ethics. But he doesn't talk about practice. He says it's being free from error. That's what, when your mind is free from error, this is morality.

So well, obviously, he's going to develop this. But he's obviously changing the direction that one goes to look at morality and ethics, free from error, what constitutes free from error. When the land of your mind is free from confusion, this is meditation. When the land of your own mind is free of ignorance, that should be this, not thought. This is the wisdom of your own nature. There we go, right at the beginning, your own nature, the foundation of all of this is your own nature. And that's the wisdom that he's going to work towards. So we'll be looking at that more detail later.

And he even drives the point in, in the next paragraph, I've skipped a few of the lines, but the next paragraph, our nature is free from error. It's free from confusion, and it's free from ignorance. Prajna shines in every thought and is forever free of attributes. Attributes. What is there to differentiate? Our nature is something we cultivate directly. It doesn't have any intervening stages. So we don't differentiate any.

When we talk about morality, which is the next thing we'll talk about, we'll get into what he means by differentiate and why there are no stages. But the foundation for the three pillars, all of them, is the understanding of one's own nature. And that's an individual practice. It's not a community practice. So when we look at the practice of morality in the tradition, we'll see that it originates in a different place with a different intention. We know this changing the direction dramatically, refocusing attention on original nature. And I'll open this up to your comments after we look at the first one.

Let's take a look at, well, keep in mind too, yeah, the first one, which will be morality. Yeah, morality. No, wisdom. No, morality. No, wisdom. So the question is, what is one's original nature? And he gets to that. And what is morality? What is wisdom? His definition is for wisdom is very brief. In section 26, prajna is wisdom. Wisdom is prajna. He's taking the Indian term. But it can't be practiced because it has no form. And this is the underlying caveat of everything he has to say. Everything is formless. His approach to all of these is they can't be defined in terms of black and white, differentiations, good and bad, and so on. They're all formless. Prajna is formless.

And it becomes a little bit more clear when he gets into a further discussion of prajna, what he means by prajna is formless and as something that can't be practiced. So the order of the sutra then starts with conferring the refuges and the repentances. It moves to the diamond sutra, the first printed text in the world, actually. And that's the discussion of prajna, paramita. So we've jumped to his follow-up to his conferral of the precepts.

And I think this is an incredibly interesting statement about the paramita. What does it mean? Paramita usually just means the ultimate going beyond. And of course, he takes it to one of the teachings in the early mainstream text. It leads to the other shore. Now we all know what the other shore is. That's nirvana. So it's the wisdom that leads to a liberation in the Mahayana context or nirvana in the original context, in the early context. And later on in Huineng, he equates nirvana with liberation. He takes it out of the earlier context and says there's no difference between nirvana and liberation.

So it leads to the other shore. But what does he mean by that? Because he doesn't mean we get to liberation or nirvana, at least not in the conventional sense of either one of those. What does getting to the other shore mean? It means it transcends birth and death. That sounds like nirvana. But he says we don't have to wait for nirvana. When we are free of objects, there is no birth or death, like when a river flows on forever. So we say this leads to the other shore. You're not getting to the other shore. You're flowing along in the river the whole time. You never get to the other shore. The other shore is the river. It's the flow.

And later he says those who realize this teaching realize, I love this too, realize the teaching of prajna and the practice of the practice of prajna. What's the practice of the practice of prajna? I'm not going to try and get into that.

So the two terms that are important here, and this I see as my role is to do to the extent that it's possible, is kind of clarify some of the terms he's using. The objects is a technical term that he's extracted from the abhidharma in the early discussions of the texts. And the objects are literally the six senses and the six objects. So it's sense data. So when one is free of sense data, the objects, there is no birth or death, like when a river flows on from ever, forever. So that's something we have to get into as well, how is one free from objects? And that's what will come up in practice, in meditation, and in morality.

But the practice then is formless because it relies on the teaching of prajna. And if you see into your own nature, the practice will follow. And it has no form. It can't be outlined in specific prohibitions or imperatives. It takes place automatically. It flows out of prajna.

And the term realize is the one that when I first started reading about Zen is the Japanese word satori. And I thought that was the end all. I thought that was it. That satori and then you could, you were perfect. But until you did, you were just working to get it. So that's, I think, where a lot of people in China started as well. Later on, it's defined satori was defined as seeing into your nature, kensho. But as it developed in China and Japan, that was just the beginning of practice, seeing into one's nature. So satori wasn't the ultimate end, the way it was treated, at least in China and Japan after that.

So I'm going to go into one more and then I'm going to see if you have any questions or any reactions to this understanding of wisdom. No thought. That seems to be the essence of what Huineng is getting at as prajna. And he defines no thought. This is, Dogen does this too. It's a kind of rhetorical approach that Zen Buddhists seem to do. They take a phrase, no thought, and then they divide it into pieces and define each piece separately, often with no relation to the other part of what they just said. And then redefine. And then they provide a definition for the other part of the thing that used to be together, no thought.

So no, he says, if we look more deeply at no, what it really means is the negation of dualities and affliction. And that's the Diamond Sutra. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. They're not dualities. They appear to be a duality, but they're the same thing. So they're one thing. Thought is the thought about original nature of reality. Reality is the body of thought and thought is the function of reality. Non-dualism. He's immediately thrown thought into the non-dualistic.

But when your nature gives rise to thought, even though you sense something, remain free and unafflicted by the world of objects. So he's acknowledging our existence in the conventional world. We sense thought, but it's his approach to thought that changes it into the Prajnaparamita, which is that you don't let that thought become attached or frozen, obstructed by sense data.

And thought in Chinese and Japanese is Nian. And as you know from the Kannon Sutra or Arani, I can't remember what the end is. Thought, thought of Avalokiteshvara is what it means there. And thought after thought is Nian-nian. And those are thoughts that are unobstructed. As long as Nian follows Nian, follows Nian, follows Nian, one is free of obstructions and one is not attached to the objects of thought. So that's the way I think Huineng is presenting this idea.

And reality you'll be familiar with as suchness. Red Pine translates it as reality, which is useful. I think it was a good translation. But in the past and in many other texts, it's often translated as suchness or true suchness. So reality is true suchness. True suchness is reality.

So any questions at this point or comments on this approach? It's a very straightforward definition of prajna or explanation of prajna without going into any depth. Anyone who wishes to jump in, just do.

Okay. This is terrific and clarifies amazing amount. I want to raise something that is, I think, probably unresolvable that we talk about a lot, at least I've heard a lot of talk in Zen circles, which is that we say all things are Buddha nature. All things are Buddha nature. And all things are original nature. And my understanding is that is what he says, or even maybe that he in a sense originated that conception. But I think that's wonderful. But it seems to be making original nature you know, better than it would appear to be if everything is original nature. And so obviously, here I am in a practice which is devoted to original nature and teaches that all things are original nature. And that's I guess that's a comment for me. Because I believe that I practice like I believe that I suppose. But looking at the world and saying everything is original nature as described in this text and many others seems to me at least open to argument. So I throw that out.

I don't know that it can be resolved. But at least for me, it's a koan, which I certainly haven't resolved. But I sort of act like I pretend that yes, of course, all things are original nature, empty of you name it, therefore empty of everything I see around me. Or not everything but a whole lot of the things around me don't seem like Buddha nature, as I want to see it. So anyway, I just throw that out.

I would point out that you're not the only Buddhist who raised that question. Because that's exactly what I think karma laxha was talking about when she was talking about Buddha nature. And even the sixth patriarch says this later. I'll call him Huineng, says later on, even uses the word seed at one point. And once you're going to link your contains the seed. And so yeah, there's a lot of funky stuff going on out there that doesn't seem like Buddha nature. Exactly. I mean, the Buddha nature as the seed of enlightenment and all that is no problem. That is obvious. I have no problem with that at all.

Hosan, Alan Sennke, who hopefully will come here at some point, raised that. Forget whether with me and Doug or just with everyone, he said, you know, I have real trouble with that. And so I guess it's a koan for him. He said something like Mahayana texts make these extravagant, wonderful claims, but he's not utterly convinced that they're utterly true based on his experience. So I just think that's out there. And I don't know what to do about it. But there it is.

The original nature goes back to the Buddha nature and idea in the Nirvana Sutra. All beings have Buddha nature. So it goes back quite a ways, but Huineng is taking it to an extreme point because he's trying to be honest in a way, I suppose. That's the positive way to look at this. If you're going to be non-dualistic and non-differentiating, you have to include anger, passion, the other things in there and somehow work them into Buddha nature.

Well, from the point of view of non-differentiation and the point of view of Buddha nature being everything out there, you'd have to. If Buddha nature is the whole mass, then anger and such are, that's fine. Of course, they're part of it. So I'm all mixed up. But it comes up later with there's emptiness and then there's old thoughts like the Alaya Vijnana, the storehouse consciousness. Exactly. There's another of the bodies of Buddha. And then the purified storehouse consciousness is the Buddha body. And that was an argument in India. And half of the Buddhists said no. When you get rid of the Alaya Vijnana, there is nothing. And the Chinese Buddhists said, no, there's a pure mind when you get rid of it.

So the Chinese kind of introduced the positive component. There's still something there and it's the pure mind. That is emptiness. And so there was an argument. There were two major schools in India argued about that very point. But the Chinese were the first that said, wait, there is a purified storehouse. There were some Indians who said that as well, but the Chinese really liked that idea. That was much more encouraging to them.

I mentioned Mencius last time. We're innately good. We have an innate sense of what is right and wrong and what is wise and not wise. And we're all potential sages, so it's kind of rooted in China. Not that the Indians didn't have similar ideas, but the Chinese took to that idea.

Anyone else have a comment on that particular notion of wisdom? You have Doug, Doug and Tim. Go ahead, Tim.

Tim: I was just looking for something of a clarification when you were talking about the Paramita. Would it be that instead of being an entity floating in the stream, striving to reach the other shore, that you were saying more is better to become the stream?

Bill: Yes, and not better to become the stream. That's the only thing you can do. It's the only reality that exists. There is no other shore. There is no destination. The destination is the process, and that's not a destination because you never arrive. You're in the flow of thoughts, right? And that's the liberation. That's a simplification, an incredible simplification.

You'll notice that these, particularly this text and some of the earlier ones, flow comes back again and again to be in the stream. And when I talked about a Tao and the definition of Tao, it's a course, it's an activity, it's being on course. It's not a thing. It's a process. So to follow the Tao is to be on course and not to arrive at the ultimate conclusion of the course.

It's like a compass. We never go up to the positive minerals wherever they are that attract the needle, but the needle guides us. And we stay on course because of the needle. It's not about arriving at the source of the needle's magnetism. That's just the way it works with it. That was an example that came out in discussions of Taoist notions of the Tao. But I think the Tao Buddhists picked up on that as well and applied that to their understanding of Buddhism. And I'm sure that's what Huineng is talking about. The flow of thoughts. Well, I'm not sure, but that's my opinion about what he's talking about. Does that help?

Tim: Very good. Thank you.

Bill: So shall we move on to... Doug, I think he wants to have a... Someone else have a comment?

Doug: Doug here. Hi Bill.

Bill: Hi. Oh, Doug.

Doug: The statement I'm struck with is... It's just what you've been talking about, about the stream of thoughts, but that thoughts are the function of reality. So that was worth pondering. Just that... Thoughts. Usually it's like, well, let's quench our thoughts or let's calm our thoughts or let's direct our thoughts. But actually the thoughts... function. Well, anyway, can you talk about that? That little phrase.

Bill: Is that Jiro I see sitting there?

Jiro: It is.

Bill: Good to meet you, Jiro. I keep hearing about you. So... Body and function. This is Huineng's method and actually a Chinese style of analyzing data to get rid of duality. They're the same thing. One is whether you're looking at the function or you're looking at the substance. Substance of reality is the dharmata, complete totality of reality. And if we look at that, that's the substance. When we look at how it manifests itself, we see its function. Or we are aware of its function or we're involved in its function. But they're not different things. The substance has a function and the function simply is the manifestation of the substance.

And that'll come up... That's where when we get to morality, that's where Huineng really drives that nail into the coffin. By using the three bodies of the Buddha to illustrate that. But we'll leave that till then. Yeah, let's come back to that in morality. Because when we get to the dharma body, that's essentially what he's saying about the dharma body. And the other two bodies as they relate to the dharma body. So he's using three points on that one. Not just two. But we'll get to that.

Yeah, that's... Your question brings up what I think is one of the hallmarks of Chinese analysis of non-duality. That is a kind of reaction to the Diamond Sutra and the Prajnaparamita. But also was latent in Taoist practice, Taoist texts as well. Not only latent, it was explicit. Not two. Of course, then the Buddha said not one either. But that's another point. We won't go there yet. Yeah, thank you for that question. And let's come back to that in morality, Sheila. Any other comments?

Okay, on to morality. That's another page. That's the morality page. That's still wisdom. Good. Thank you.

So this is what Huineng does after he's described his life. He confers the refuges. And there's something ironic about him saying, I confer the refuges because he goes on to say, you already have them. I can't... What's he doing conferring them? You already have them. The refuges are all present in your body, in this material body. So the notion of conferences is not problematic. It's an interesting kind of wiggle in what's going on here.

Now, as you remember, the sutra is introduced by describing the audience, and it's a large body of monks and lay people. And my impression is this sutra is directed primarily at lay Buddhists, but includes monks as well, monastics. But the language is intended, I think, to make sense and to be used in the presence of a lay Buddhist community. And that was important in China, because so many of the people who were attracted to Buddhism were not monastics. So many of the illiterate community and even if you include Huineng, the illiterate community were attracted to this.

So formless, the word xiang is an interesting term because it has a variety of denotations and major significance in this context when we're talking about no form. What I'm saying is what formless, a form is a distinguishing attribute. And this was an essential component in Indian philosophy. That there were essences and they had attributes. And we understand the essence by its attributes. And we can distinguish between different essences in terms of their attributes. So attributes are secondary to the essence. They're the equivalent of a soul that the Buddhists have done away with or a self, or at least address as something that is an illusion.

So Red Pine translates this most of the time as form. But I think it's really useful to think of it in terms of the attributes that allow us to distinguish sense data and to evaluate sense data. This is a good sense data. This is a bad sense data. This blue is simply an attribute of something, the sky. And the argument here is that Huineng is continuing is to separate sky from its attribute is an illusion. It can't be done. We can try to. And then we dilute ourselves by trying to differentiate, create differentiations. And we block ourselves from going on. It's one of the obstructions of thought.

Now a lot of meditation practices, and in fact mainstream meditation practices, were to identify thoughts, to evaluate them in terms of their quality. Are they good, bad, or neutral? And then to dismiss them. Huineng seems to be going beyond this. He sees that as a cause that results in an effect, cause and effect. And he's also doing away with cause and effect, or at least attempting to. Cause is effect. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. There's no difference. So formless is a powerful term that Huineng uses throughout this text.

The other point that I would make about the refuges is, I think it's obvious to you and to Susan, most of all who chants this every Wednesday. She never says in my own, in this material body. Huineng adds that. He's added that to the refuges. The material body is the term for material that Red Pine is translating is rupa. Form. The form body, the body that is seen and its rupa appears in the first distinction that the Abhidharma makes between nama rupa. Nama is thought and consciousness and mind. And rupa is the material body.

So when he's talking about material body, he's talking about the illusory thing that we associate with our body, the material substance, which is simply one of the skandhas as he begins to break them up later on, or as Buddhist teaching brought, broke it up later on. So this is the conventional body, the body that we usually attach our greatest attribute, greatest sense of reality to is the material body. And so, Huineng makes sure that each one of the refuges can be found within our material body, which I like the way, Huineng, Red Pine translates this, he says, the material body is only an inn, we can't stay there. It's not us. We pass through the inn.

So each one of the three refuges should be seen, should be understood in the context of one's material body. That's what Huineng is emphasizing. Later on, he describes the body in terms of the three, the three kaya, the three bodies of the Buddha. These are three different ways in which the Buddha manifests himself, themselves. Maybe benten them is the new word for that.

The Dharma body in the three bodies system is the body of truth, reality. It's inexpressible, it's non-graspable. And this comes back to Doug's question about what that, that essence is, the essence is the Dharma body. It contains everything. And the way the Chinese say this, it contains the 10,000 things. And it is like the alaya vijnana, the storehouse consciousness, probably develops out of that idea.

The Chan Buddhists and mainstream Buddhists tend not to represent the Dharma body in terms of any image, but an image does creep in, in China. And the image is Vairocana Buddha. And if you've seen statues, these tend to be found in esoteric monasteries and temples. There's a picture of a very Buddha-like figure, holding his single finger, and you can't see me doing this, but holding his single finger in his wrist, in his hand. And he sits on top of a very large globe. And the globe is covered with tiny Buddha images. And these are the 10,000 Dharmas. So it represents it visually in terms of one Buddha who sits on top of, who contains all of these 10,000 Buddhas, smaller Buddhas. And to emphasize that, he holds the mudra of the single object.

So the substance is single. The teaching is singular. There are no dualities within the substance. But there is passion and dispassion. Seems like a duality. But observed within the context of formlessness or lack of distinguishing characteristics, they have the same existing nature. Passion has the same nature as dispassion. It's impermanent. It's not self. And it is the source of pain, suffering. It grows out of impermanence. The three marks are the characteristic. So the characteristics, when one views it within the Dharma body, they contain their marks, if there are marks, are the same. They're all empty.

So all of this is the kind of intellectual breakdown of what he's talking about. It can be represented as an image of Vairocana sitting on top of a ball containing images of the 10,000 Buddhas, although there's probably only several hundred on the ball. It can be represented by Huineng as the reality of one's original nature. And that's where he's going. It's in the body. The original body, the 10,000 Dharmas, the 10,000 Buddhas, exist as one Buddha, the Dharma nature, the Dharma body, which in the context of Chan and Zen is ineffable. It's the reality without distinctions. It's the single reality of everything. That's part of the objective of wisdom, is to see the original body as the Dharma body.

But he doesn't leave it at that. He goes on to the transformation body. Notice he starts with the Dharma body. When we chant the three refuges, we start with the Buddha body. So he's reversed the order. He's changed the order. And I think there may be some significance to this. He doesn't explain why. So I leave that to everyone else to try and why does he start with the Dharma body rather than the Buddha body? Because he gets to the Buddha body at the end.

But let's go to the transformation body. That's the second body. This is the realization that if we don't think, that we think, that when we think, we transform ourselves. Thoughts are the nature of our original nature. That is our original nature. Thinking. If we didn't think, our nature would be empty. And that empty usually sounds good in Buddhism. In this case, it's not a positive thing. It's what Huineng goes on to describe later on as being dead. When we don't think, we're dead. So thoughts are innate. They're part of our original nature. And they manifest themselves constantly. Through our thoughts, our words, and our deeds, they're manifested in the experience of thought and in words and deeds.

So in the traditional, the mainstream Buddhism, Buddhist systems, the transformation body is what we see when we see images of like Avalokiteshvara. They look like they're princes or princesses or royalty. They're a body that has that their bodhisattvas essentially that stay in the world and teach and talk and act. And it's the transformation that comes out of the Dharma body. Huineng actually says this. The source of these transformations in our thinking is the Dharma body in our own body. And the transformations take place in our own body. And he takes a very radical position. This is what the Sangha is. We think of the Sangha as in a very conventional sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think Huineng would say there's nothing wrong with that. But to see it in terms of one's original nature is to practice pra

Don't think about what has passed. Keep thinking about what is next when your thought is always good. This is called the realization body. So right away we've been told there's no good and bad and no duality. In jumps good. I'll let you deal with that. But I think a revealing comment that I'll point to, let me point to a revealing comment. He said, when ordinary beings have a good thought, they're Buddhas. When Buddhas have a bad thought, they're ordinary beings. He also says at another place that passions and afflictions are the gateway to wisdom. So yes, they exist in the Dharma body, but they're the basis, the entry that we take to wisdom and liberation. So in that case, what is good is also bad. What is bad is also good. Buddhas contain bad when they have an evil thought and vice versa. That's the way Huineng presents it. And I'll leave you to deal with the implications of that.

And open it to your response to this passage. I would point out this raises serious questions about what's going on in the West today in thinking about morality. It potentially leads to an ambivalence about what is moral and attempting to define morality in terms of specific practices. Specific prohibitions. And it becomes a kind of... Well, I leave it at that. I think that's part of the problem we're fighting through in the West today, is understanding what morality means in the context of Zen particularly.

Most of the mainstream Buddhist traditions are quite clear about what morality is. It starts without killing, without lying, without it, and so on. And this in fact, by the way, when a monk went into a monastery, even today, but you can trace this back as far as the 12th century, it starts with... It begins with the three refuges in the traditional sense. It then goes to the first five vows of the ten precepts. And this goes in stages. You start with the three refuges. The next step in a monk's process within the monastery are the five precepts. And then the monk takes the ten precepts and then the 253 precepts of the Vinaya. And these are rules and regulations for managing the monastery, basically. They're not ultimate in themselves.

So by... I'll add an interpretation of why the Dharma body comes first. Huineng says we start with the Dharma body. We don't start with the rules. We don't start with the lowest level. We start with the highest level because there's no distinction. And I think that has sometimes resulted in a problem. And that the lay people... This is a lay group, the Huineng is talking to, and he's conferring these on this lay group. And he's saying you have the Dharma body within you, which makes sense, within what he's saying. But that's usually the last stage that a monk will get to in their meditation practice. And seeing the last stage, seeing into that part, it comes later. And that's probably the argument in many, or the position in many other of the Buddhist paths that exist.

Huineng is taking his lay people right to the final place, not the final place, but to a kind of ultimate, if not the end, that the Buddhist tradition is normally seen as the stages in practice, the 10th Bhoomi, the 10th level. And I find that fascinating. And something to another koan, Joel, to think about arriving at the ultimate in your first conferral of the precepts. That's pretty much the argument that Huineng is pushing, I think. But I leave it up to you. Go ahead. Sorry to talk too much.

Very simple. My understanding, traditional three bodies, Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya, which I have difficulty in understanding. But and then Huineng mixes it up and I get totally confused. So, you know, I think it just very basically and kind of rigidly helped me to start and then let go of the rigidity is like, what are the three for Huineng? And what are the three traditional ones? And what do they mean? And how do they relate?

The Dharma bodies or the Dharma bodies? Yeah, like I have Dharmakaya, which I basically, you know, kind of emptiness and stuff. Sambhogakaya is and then Nirmanakaya would be, you know, Shakyamuni Buddha. And Sambhogakaya would be like the hardest and most interesting mixing those up. I mean, you know, so a material body and all the fancy stuff merges and acts in the world. So that's my really probably all wrong understanding of the traditional three bodies. And but I get totally mixed up in like how that relates to Huineng's understanding of the three bodies.

So, so what he's trying to do is to take when I say receive teachings, one of the received teachings are the three bodies. Yeah. From India, he's taking something that had never been put together before. Why call the refuges the three bodies? They don't normally relate to each other. You don't see them each together.

Well, that's another thing. Yeah, it seemed the three bodies and the three pure precepts are pretty much kind of the same thing or at least very much analogous.

Well, that's what Huineng says. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, good. So that I get. I mean, that seems to be exactly what I understand him to be saying. So anyway, my understanding of the traditional one is starting with the fanciest one, ending with the simplest one, and the middle one is kind of mixing those two up, which is the hard thing to do. And so what's Huineng's order?

You know, later on in this same, right after this, section 23, he goes back to the order that we usually chant. Yeah, right. Right. So he and you are trying to mix this up totally, which is awfully Buddhist of you.

Well, I'm just telling you what I think. He's trying to mess this up. He's messing with our minds, and I think that's a good thing.

Oh, absolutely. And it's good to deal with being totally confused. So he succeeded in my case.

Well, I think it's a thought experiment. It's what Dogen does often as well. Let's know in this case, take something that hasn't normally been conjoined and put it together and see where that takes us in terms of the single teaching. And it's an interesting exercise beyond the fact it may simply be, I won't say a skillful means because Huineng doesn't accept the notion of skillful means.

Really?

Yeah. He says, when we get later in the text, when he's talking about the Lotus Sutra, he said, no, there's only one teaching. It's not the three vehicles. There's only one teaching. And that's not dualistic. There is no cause for an effect, cause and effect occur simultaneously. So therefore, you can't call one the cause and the other effect because they're simultaneous. As Doug asked, the function and the substance, they're the same thing. The cause and the effect happen simultaneously. Meditation is wisdom. Wisdom is meditation. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. One doesn't lead to the other. You can't say you start with meditation and you arrive at wisdom.

Yeah. It seems like a bit like Uji. Like in the moment, you have life and death and you can't tell them apart in a sense. And so here, cause and effect. I mean, both cause and effect are contained in the single kind of infinitesimal moment, inherently.

So I think what Huineng is pushing the lake, his lay audience and his monastics to do is to think in these terms, to stop thinking in conventional terms. Conventional terms work fine much of the time. And in fact, in the monasteries in the Song dynasty, the 13th, 12th and 3rd century, they were thinking in conventional terms. At the same time, they were thinking in Zen terms. So they were practicing conventional vinyas within the monastery. These are so-called Zen or Chan monasteries, the public monasteries. But they're also thinking of these practices in the terms that Huineng is presenting to you. It's a mental practice and it creates a positioning in one's approach to meditation, which is where we're going next. I'm sorry, Emi, did you have something you wanted to say? Sorry to jump in there.

Good, thank you. No, thanks. I really like the change of order. I really like that he brought up the dharma body first, because I see it as he's putting, well, I'm going to say ownership back on who we are and our thoughts. And one thing Buddhism doesn't talk about really is the way we think about it. Or maybe it's just me, but our emotions. So if we are manifesting our lives and our bodies, then as the truth, let's start with the dharma body. Even though, I mean, there might not be a start, but then we are going to transform. And then we're going to realize, I mean, if it's going to happen like that, it might not. But I just like the mix-up. I think it's kind of healthy for me to look at it this way. And also, because I might not want to attain Buddhahood so much. I might not see Buddhahood as something to attain, because I can look at my own thoughts more. I guess. I think. Thank you. Those are just my thoughts.

Yeah, I think that that's a nice way to look at this arrangement of the refuges. Not a nice way. It's a very productive way to look at that and understand the relationship of passions and anger to enlightenment and liberation. And something we talk about a lot, to accept your passion, to accept your failings and so on. This puts it in a kind of a very traditional Buddhist context. So you take the tradition of the three bodies and you say, but wait a minute, all of those three bodies are in your material body right now. You don't have to go anywhere. And this, when he gets to the Pure Land, he said, you don't have to go to the Pure Land. It's already in your body. The three Buddhas are in your body.

So then the problem that people have, well, how come this came up? Somebody said, you know, I can't, Joel brought this up. So I've got this stuff in there. And how can that be a Buddha body? Because there's stuff going on in there that doesn't seem right. So that's it is a koan. It's a way to think, not to arrive necessarily, but to think.

Just to add a little bit that's been coming up for me is that this is, you know, for me, I can't not see, maybe this is my own delusion, but the pairing of Shen-xiu, is that how you say his name?

Yes, good.

Shen-xiu and Huineng. It seems like they're a pair. It seems like they can't be separated either. And that their teachings are working off each other. And that Huineng's teachings of just see your true nature and the Dharma and the Buddha bodies will emerge from that, which is sort of like the understanding of the truth. And then, and yet from our deluded, you know, small selves, it's hard to see that or feel that, you know, feel have that experience. And it seems like Shen-xiu offers some skillful means, you know, even though Huineng's saying there's no skillful means. He's offering this practice within the context of understanding that the Buddha nature is always already within us, that true nature is already within us. We can use these practices to realize that it's not getting somewhere per se, you know, it's not going somewhere somewhere other than where we are. But it's about, you know, at least from my, from my deluded space right here, it's helpful. It's helpful to have some guidance towards that realization. And Huineng just throws us into the deep end. And that's great too, because it's also realizing that that's there. It's not someplace to get. But you kind of coming back to our, you know, ordinary small mind, it sometimes seems, you know, it's, it seems vast, the vast space between that realization and where we are in our daily lives. So I just keep seeing them as, you know, it's like one doesn't exist without the other, or the teachings are kind of just work together and feed off of each other.

So yeah, I think that's a wonderful way to put it. I couldn't agree more, except I don't think we're deluded. We have an original nature that's, yes, we have, some of us are deluded. I'm feeling very deluded much of the time, but in any case, yeah, I think that's it. He does throw us into the deep end, but when he doesn't have Shen-xiu to do that, he has his monks bring it up for him. You notice he talked, someone asks him about the Pure Land. Someone asks, one of his visitors asked him about the other one. There's always this raft that's floating on top of the river that we depend on, and Huineng keeps pulling us off the raft into the stream. So he brings the raft up, and without the raft, there's no, it doesn't happen. It's what makes it happen. It's how one understands what Huineng is getting at, because we know what the original position is, or that raft is giving us some solace. We can stay on top of this, this water and not drown in emptiness. And still, it's what allows Huineng to go ahead and pull us off and say, yes, you can. You can get in the stream. And if you understand that raft in a different way, the Lotus Sutra or the Pure Land, or the three bodies of the Buddha, and pull it into your own original nature, and practice with that understanding, that's a very effective skill in me, which he denies.

Well, and it kind of brings, comes back to the question of morality. You know, when we, you know, there can be a lot of misuse of, and I think that's a very misuse of, and abuse of power and authority or position, if we are, if we just go around and say, well, I'm just, I'm the Buddha. I can do whatever I want. You know, I have true, my pure nature, my nature is pure. And so that's coming from a misunderstanding. Of the teachings. And so I think that those, again, pairing those, the skillful means with the understanding can help guide the morality to what Huineng is really pointing at, rather than what our small selves or small mind want to think is moral or just.

Yeah, that's a very good point. And actually, Huineng's a little, he's critical of Tiantai, but Tiantai actually laid out pretty much what you're saying. Zhiyi and his followers. The practice of good is contained in evil, evil is contained in good, only comes at the end of a very long tradition of step-by-step progress. And understanding by the time you get to that, it doesn't become anti-normative. It's a way of organizing thoughts in your body as you meditate and as you practice. And that meditation, that's the real target that we need to get to because that's where all that happens. Sitting, walking, sleeping, all the rest.

But people have raised questions about this. The morality becoming anti-normative right at the beginning is a little bit dangerous. And boy, those of us who grew up in Berkeley in the 60s saw that, hey, I'm enlightened. Whatever happens, happens. Amen. Mel must have dealt with that all the time. And it's very appealing. It was really part of our culture in the 60s. We're free from the conventions of our parents and our society. Oh, and here's somebody in China who said the same thing. It's even more true. And boy, did we get off on the wrong track. A lot of us did. I did.

So let's go into the meditation. And because I, how are we doing? We are running out of time. I know Toho has something that she wants to say. Do you want to take her question first?

Yes. Okay. Go ahead, Susan. No, you're still muted.

Thank you. Hi, Toho.

Hi. I'm really enjoying this. I love that the image of the raft and that sense of that you just mentioned, and the way to balance these ideas so that we are stepping into this world too. So I haven't gotten past the sangha, the change of, to me, a change of focus as to what is sangha, because there's been no mention that I see here yet of what, well, what you were calling anti-normative of what is the role of our typical understanding of the sangha. What is the role of what we, is that term store consciousness that was thrown out? Because I look at that in terms as collective consciousness. So where's the group here? Where's the culture? Where's the society? Everything so far that I've, the way I've looked at it is our practice. When we get to meditation, we're then looking at our individual practice. And when I looked at our traditional ways of looking at the Buddha Dharma Sangha, it was including our obligations as a member of society. So I wanted to hear a bit about that and how we look at store consciousness, not just our

She's out there in that larger group context. And the other, I wanted to ask real quickly. I don't know how to spell Vairocana. The Buddha. Vairocana. Can you spell it? V-A-I-R-O-C-A-N-A. Okay. Yeah. So I want to look that up because the visual image is just extraordinary. And the mudra is extraordinary. So I want to look that up. Am I making sense of my- Absolutely. Yeah. Very much so, I think.

The Quan Yin, Kha Nung, is the kind of Sambhogakaya present. We, in fact, in the earlier text describing the Sambhogakaya, it said we look at somebody and we see a human being. Those who've attained a level of realization see the Sambhogakaya as ornate, as the images we see in temples and so on. So it's a conceptual vision of the Sambhogakaya. They look normal. But the important thing is, you said, where is the community?

One of the dangers in- One of the problems for me and I think others with Huineng is he's focusing on the storehouse consciousness through- He was heavily influenced by the Lankavatara and storehouse notions. There's consciousness only and our consciousness is our consciousness. Connected to other people. But look when he gets to the Bodhisattva vows to save all beings. We don't need to save all beings. They have to save themselves. They already have the Buddha nature within them. It sounds- It's shocking. That's not what Avalokiteshvara is about.

So yeah, that's an issue. I think if one reads it in the context of the collective, the consciousness, alaya vijnana, that seems to be influencing his position. And again, I think it's something that one arrives at eventually. It's not easy to get to that experience of the Dharmakaya. It's there, which is not there all the time. Huineng says, one good thought and you're there. One bad thought and you're in hell. So it's a flow. It's changing. It's transforming all the time.

But the Sambhogakaya, let's go back to the Sambhogakaya. It emerges from the Dharmakaya. It's the same body, but it's the body that acts, speaks, and thinks in our world. Now, could we go on to say, even though Huineng might not like this, that that action is a skill and means that the bodhisattva who knows the Dharmakaya still acts in the common world, in the everyday world with skillful teachings. That's a problem, I think, for Huineng. But that's the way I think I might interpret that.

And thinking of the sangha as what's inside ourselves with no sense of the outside world is again, I think part of this is this alaya vijnana. The entire world exists within our mind. That's what the Dharmakaya is. It includes the entire world. So when I said the key is if you start to think about the world, if you start with the seeing one's original nature, that is the Dharmakaya. And that includes all beings, even though it's in your mind. And because it's in your mind, it includes all beings. That's how you include all beings, because you have them in your mind. You hold them in your mind. And when you see them, you don't see them once, but they're there. I'm feeding my own reading into this. That's the way I read what we've been looking at. But exactly your question. Sounds very solipsistic and almost selfish in some cases. But be that as it may, that's where we are.

So I just want to jump in and be mindful of the time. We're over time, but I'm willing to stay. If other people are willing to stay, if Bill's willing to continue. But I also want to give some space for people who need to leave. You know, a very important part of this is meditation. That really is the cap. And so what I'm thinking is rather than trying to do it in five or ten minutes, we put it in about 15 minutes next time. Okay. And stay with it. Keep this in. It leads into Dongshan in interesting ways.

What is interesting is Huineng was not so influential in the 12th century when Dongshan and all of the other Zen teachers begin to emerge. Huineng comes back in after the 12th and 13th century. So the relationship isn't as strong. But I think the meditation system that we see evolving through Dongshan and Linqi Rinzai and eventually to Hakuin. Hakuin is a major practicer of Huineng's teaching. Much later on, we'll see the tendrils reaching back into Huineng.

But from now on, and incidentally, meditation is important because the word drops out of the language. It leaves for the next two centuries. They don't talk about meditation that much. They're meditating. We know they're meditating, but they're not talking about it because Huineng has laid such a heavy trip on it. And it becomes cancel culture. If you talk about meditation, you're falling into the old trap of if I meditate, I'll get wisdom and enlightenment. So people stayed away from it, but you can see it under the surface in the 12th and 13th century when it begins to come back in.

So it's interesting. Zen, for a period of about 200 years, avoided the term. The word is ding, to settle. That's what meditation is, to settle the mind. It's like shamatha, calming. And they try and stay away from that. And what we'll see, this is a preview of coming attractions, is social interactions are where the original nature manifests itself. Hence, encounter dialogues. That's where original nature manifests itself. And that's what we'll see in Dongshan. But meditation is important, even though Dongshan won't talk about it either. But we really need to touch it.

Well, we do because so much of our life here is meditation. So if we don't talk about how he was dealing with it, we're missing a crucial point, I think. So I'll bring that back in next week with a brief entry into Dongshan.

Bob? Yeah, since you've talked about the sentient beings have to save themselves, and we're going to end this week on the Platform Sutra, I've been puzzled by Kobun's book on the Platform Sutra. It's available at Jikoji. He says, sentient beings are infinite. They will save themselves. Desires are infinite. They will reach an end by themselves. The dharmas are infinite, so there is learning and study. Buddha's way is not above, so it is always accomplished. This is completely different than the vows we do. And so you're saying that that's Katagiri or Kobun? It's Kobun. Kobun, I think that's Huineng. You? What he just said. It's already there. Our desires are what leads to liberation. Is that the right way to read that? I don't know how to read it. I just saw this this week, and it threw me. So I'll leave that up to anybody who's read this, Kobun's take on the Platform Sutra. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, I agree, Bill, that it's like what Huineng is saying, too, that beings will save themselves. Desires extinguish of themselves on the path. And most of all, the Buddha way, there's a lot to study, so get to it.

So does that mean in two weeks you're going to be talking about this meditation again? Yes. Good. All right, so maybe we should do the closing chant. And say goodbye for today, and we'll pick it up in two weeks. That sound good. So, Joel, do you want to do the merit and the dedication of merit and then the vows? And Bill, will you do them? Yeah, Bill does the vows, and I can do the, I think that's the usual. Yeah, we do it in English and then we do it in Japanese. First English, then Japanese, then English. Okay, so if it can be on the screen. Yeah. So what vows are you going to do, Bill? Huineng's or Kobun's or Asanga? No, it's not the precepts. It's what we say in Asanga. Infinite beings are infinite. You know, Emmy, do you have that on your screen? I don't have it on mine. I can do it without. I'm going to look quickly. I don't think that I do. I'm sorry. I didn't pull it up. No. And we might want to stop the recording. I'm just thinking. I could say we vaguely make up.