Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website.
I just would like to welcome new people who've come today. Lena and Elvis and some people.
I haven't been here for a while, so welcome back.
And Nicole, good to see you. I think I've seen you around lately.
So here we are, this ground and cloud community, really wonderful. And I could really feel the connection and settledness, especially after the end of Sachin last Sunday.
So it's really great that Reverend Paula Lazars can take us into the Heart Sutra, the Heart of Emptiness.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Thank you, Hougetsu.
Okay, how's that everyone?
Okay.
Good morning everyone, both in the cloud and in the room.
So we're coming off of a five day meditation sashin that we did last week that commemorates Rahatu or the Buddha's Enlightenment day.
And within those five days, in the evening, we chanted a sutra called the Turning, Setting in Motion, the Wheel of the Dharma.
And I just wanted to touch upon that a little bit before we look at the Heart Sutra, because we also chanted the Heart Sutra every day during service.
And I wanted to look a little bit every at both of these teachings to kind of compare and contrast a little bit.
Now we know the sutra on Setting in Motion. The Wheel of Dharma is believed to be the Buddha's first teaching after he achieved enlightenment.
And this first teaching was given in the Deer park near Varanasi.
And in this teaching, in some ways, in comparison to some of the teachings we have in Zen, this teaching is very practical.
There's very clear instructions on what the Buddha, based on his enlightenment, felt that we as sentient beings should do.
Some of the concepts he brings forward in this teaching is that there is a middle way to eliminate the suffering that is life.
And he puts forth the Four Noble Truths that life is suffering.
Desire is the cause of that suffering.
A way exists to eliminate it. And that way is the Eightfold Path.
And according to the Buddha, that way being the middle way, meaning you shouldn't deny yourself to extremes to try and eliminate any suffering of the human existence.
But you also shouldn't overly indulge yourself to try and only please yourself in some way to eliminate human suffering.
It's important to find a place in the middle. And in this middle way you can find some relief.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: So.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: The Eightfold Path was right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness. And right wisdom or concentration.
Now, in this talk, I don't want to go into the Eightfold Path, but I'm just bringing out how it's listed because the language is pretty clear.
It's not very confusing that he's telling us this is the way.
And of course, if you're curious, you could delve further into each of those ways that it's listed in the Eightfold Path. And then the Buddha says that basically the suffering of this life is rooted in a few things, meaning we get sick, we age, and we die.
So, again, it's pretty clear what he's stating in this sutra. There's not a lot of abstraction there.
And then later on after he talks about all these very clear concepts, one of his, can't say, really, disciples, but one of his dharma brothers, let's say someone who was also pursuing his spiritual path, heard this talk and added to it that his. What he was thinking about, based on what the Buddha said is whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease.
And so this also was one of the first teachings on impermanence.
And the Buddha validated that Kannanda kind of knew what he was talking about.
So that's as much as I really want to say about this right in this moment.
And then, remember, the Buddha lived. It was believed he was born anywhere between 563 BCE to 480 BCE. Exact dates are not clear.
This is an awful long time ago.
I wanted to bring up that. Also an important thing to remember is that the Buddha taught according to his audience.
So the Buddha taught after his enlightenment. He was about 35 years old. He taught for about 50 more years. And his teachings could differ depending on who he was in front of. And this was, of course, the emergence of skillful means.
But oftentimes the Buddha's teaching would take on a different flavor.
So when he gave this first teaching, with its clarity, based on the audience in front of him, he felt this was the most skillful way for him to reach the audience that was there.
And I'm bringing that up because if you are completely immersed in Zen practice, you know that there are many teachings in Zen that have a much more abstract or esoteric feeling to them.
And some of the abstraction might not be appropriate for every audience, but it doesn't mean that it's not within all of the teachings.
They could go both ways, or it might be suitable for the audience, depending on who's in front of the teacher.
So just like not getting attached to permanence, we don't want to get attached to one teaching or another, because as we move throughout our practice in our life, there's a fluidity to it.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: So it really depends on who's in front of you and what's happening in that moment as the causes and conditions arise.
I'm also bringing that up because in the history of Buddhist practice, and especially now looking at Zen, it's believed that there are times where there is a fertile ground for certain concepts to be introduced to practice.
So if we look historically to Buddhist practice, now, we said the Buddha lived BCE a long time ago, but if we look to the Common era or the more modern era than that, when Bodhidharma traveled from India to China and started what was what eventually was called Zen Buddhism, that happened approximately 527 CE.
And it was said that when he came to China, Buddhism was already in China, but the ground was fertile for the Zen teachings that he gave the Chinese at that time.
And then moving forward, even the founder of our lineage, Dogen Zenji, he went to China to study Zen Buddhism, even though there was Buddhism in Japan, but he felt it was missing something.
So his search brought him to China.
He brought back Zen Buddhism in the early 1200s, in about 1228 CE.
And when that happened, it was said that the ground in Japan was fertile for that teaching to take hold.
So just bringing up again the differences in teachings at different times, and even if the same teaching is taught, something different might emerge from that teaching. So there's a lot of fluidity and a lot of play, and there's no fixed ideas in our practice about how things are supposed to be.
Okay. With that being said, I want to touch upon now, as we're moving into the Heart Sutra, I want to touch upon the concept of the two truths in Buddhism. And we've talked about this before, and you're going to hear it again, practicing Buddhism. But there is conventional truth and universal truth, the conventional truth being how we are experiencing our lives right now in this moment. Basically, in this room, in the rooms that everybody's in at home that you're here, you're sitting on something, you're surrounded by people that all have a name. It's very cold outside. It might be warm in your house, but this is a very concrete way of experiencing the world.
On the other side of that, on the universal side, there's an underlying truth or reality where all things are one. So even though we're experiencing the seat, the temperature, the person next to us, the person on the screen, in reality, there is no discrimination. There is no construction that we're actually all one and we're actually engaging with the same reality, even though it appears to us in our conventional truth that everything is different.
So our conventional truth, we take in the world through our senses, through this sense organism called a human being.
And this construction happens and in the universal truth, and they coexist together in time.
Everything is one without construction.
Our zazen practice helps us sit in the middle of both of them and get a sense of how they interact together.
Ideally, do we have an experience of that? Who knows? You know, that's why we're practicing.
So the Heart Sutra is considered a teaching on emptiness or sunyata, and it appeared in China in the early 6007 CE.
So a little bit after Bodhidharma came and Zen practice started.
And now I want to look specifically at the text now of the Heart Sutra. So everybody has a chant book behind them. If you could kind of grab that so you could follow along with me.
I took yours.
I know you don't need it.
Thank you, David. The page is number one, so. And thank you for asking. But now you understand the importance. It's number one in the chant book. But that's basically because we chanted an awful lot.
So we're not going to talk too much about the two individuals yet. But avalokitta, svara, bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajna paramita, it's another word for unsurpassed wisdom, clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty and thus relieved all suffering.
So skandhas are aggregates or clusters of groups that help us perceive conventional truth.
There's as mentioned, five. The first one is matter or form, and we already pointed at that. Your body, your senses, how you're perceiving things through those.
The second one is sensation, meaning the experience of feeling with this body. And then also you decide whether something is painful or pleasurable.
The third one is perception, meaning your eyes see light, your nose smells, your ears touch sound. I shouldn't say touch sound. Your ears hear sound, the tongue tastes, the mind spits out thoughts. The mind is considered in Buddhist practice, another sense, organ, just like touch. I know that's hard to think about, but don't get lost on that yet, because we're going to move on.
The fourth one is formation.
So the concepts and thoughts that arise based on the information your senses are taking in.
And then the last one is consciousness, meaning the awareness of this process happening.
So if we go back to the Heart Sutra, Avalokitesvara says all five skandhas are empty.
And then he tells the student who they are talking to.
Form does not differ from emptiness. Remember that first Skandha, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form.
Form itself is emptiness. Emptiness is self form. And then Avalakiteshvara goes on to list the other skandhas, or aggregates.
Sensations, perceptions, formations and consciousness are also like this Shariputra. All dharmas are marked by emptiness.
They neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.
So this line here, they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.
This touches on impermanence, which was part of the Buddha's first teaching brought up by his dharma brother.
So so far we have an archaic teaching built into this sutra about the five aggregates, the second one being impermanence.
As we go on, therefore, given emptiness, restating, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness.
And then it goes on to list the senses, eyes, ears, nose, tongue. And then the result of those senses, sound, smell, taste, touch, no object of mind, no realm of sight, no realm of mind, consciousness.
Now, in the next line, there is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance, neither old age and death.
So that brings up another archaic Buddhist teaching called dependent origination or codependent arising.
And it's believed in Theravada Buddhism or older Buddhism and teachings. You know, there's a lot of lists and there's a lot of things literally spelled out for you. Zen is not like that. Zen is an open field where you're encouraged to ask a lot of questions.
But this teaching here touches upon dependent origination, meaning nothing exists independently.
Causes and conditions affect the existence of everything that's happening.
So nothing comes out of a vacuum to exist.
In early Buddhism, there's 12 linked steps or stages.
That is a cycle of this dependent origination, the first one being ignorance, and then the next one from ignorance leads to what's called formation, and then formation leads to what's called consciousness, and so on and so forth until you get through all 12 again. Could be a whole nother dharma talk, but there's literally 12 steps, and guess what the last one is old age and death.
So that's the last of those 12 steps, independent origination.
So going back to the Heart Sutra, there is neither ignorance, that was the first one, nor extinction of ignorance, neither old age and death, that was the last one.
So this, these lines in the sutra encompass that archaic teaching.
And then we move on to no suffering, no cause. No cessation, no path. We already talked about that.
That's pretty clear. Just like the Four Noble Truths are clear.
This is talking about the Four Noble Truths and then no knowledge and no attainment. Because the promise of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path is that you will attain enlightenment.
So this is pointing to that with nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita, unsurpassed wisdom that arises from practice.
And thus the mind is without hindrance.
Without hindrance, there is no fear.
Honestly, guys, that is my favorite line in this sutra. And every time we chant and I get to it, I love the idea of like, I feel my whole body go without hindrance. There is no hindrance, you know, can you imagine really feeling in your life that there's nothing holding you back from who you completely are?
So this is the promise of this practice, right? And then if that's true, there's no fear.
So can you imagine really moving through our lives without any fear at all? Wouldn't that be something?
So I love that line because. Just that, that glimmer of promise.
But now we go on into another archaic teaching. Far beyond all inverted views. One realizes Nirvana, you know, inverted views. We really never talk about this in the modern era, at least in my experience of practice.
But old school Theravada, there's four inverted views.
Impermanence as permanence.
So we live in an impermanent situation when we believe somehow, some way, in some fashion, permanence does exist. That's an inverted view.
Suffering is bliss. And now I can see why, I think personally, why we don't talk about this too much is because it's really, culturally, I don't think we think in these ways anymore.
But suffering is bliss, meaning if you don't believe life is suffering, then you believe it's possible, it's bliss.
That's how I understand it, that, that the suffering is a small part of it, the bliss is a big part of it. And every time you suffer, well, you know, you just kind of get through it and you get back to the bliss part.
So the Buddha initially taught life is suffering.
So if you're saying life is bliss, then that's an inverted view according to Buddhist Theravada teachings.
And then non self as self is an inverted view, meaning there really is no actual construction of anything because things are constantly appearing based on causes and conditions which are constantly changing.
So if you believe there is some kind of self that you could touch, hang onto, squeeze, that's an inverted thought.
Because really we are all non self.
And you know, our timeline seems slow, but if we accelerated our lifetime timeline, then we could believe there's no self, right? Because that change would happen so fast. And we're constantly changing. We're not the same as we were even three months ago.
And now this one, I think is the most hard inverted view to understand. But the unattractive is attractive.
And the only thing that I understand about this is if you look at early Theravadan teachings, there is ways of working with the body as the body being something that is impermanent, but also looking at how repulsive the body can be in that impermanence.
For starters, as we move about our life, you know, the belching, the farting, the urinating, you know. I know, I know. See, that's what I mean. Like culturally, we don't really talk in this way and we don't think about the body in this way.
But not only that, the aging, you know, the aging. I mean, that your body just decays in front of you and then getting sick and, you know, anybody who's taking care of anyone who's sick, there are some very difficult things to look at when people get sick. And it could be stomach turning if you're on the front lines, depending on what the illness is seeing. Like, that breaks my heart just talking about it. So we don't talk about it, right? Because we like to pretend in our culture in this modern day that we're beautiful, we don't age. And even when we die, it's very controlled and everything's just nice and clean. And then we're putting a nice little neat box, you know, and then of course, dying itself. There are practices of sitting with decaying corpses back in Theravada Buddhism, bce so that we could actually realize that this is not an attractive state of being.
Okay, so that's an inverted view. And I think that one's the hardest one for us to kind of wrap our mind around. And I'm sure people who work with these could go even deeper with them on a more esoteric level. But I'm not there with these. I just remember kind of reading them in the beginning of my practice.
So the inverted views is talking about that kind of practice. So far beyond all inverted views, one realizes Nirvana. All Buddhas of past, present and future rely on prajna paramita. We always have to give a nod to our ancestors.
And that's. We all know that culturally, right? We came from somewhere and then of course, we want to give a nod to all the people practicing with us, because sangha is a very important part. It's part of the three jewels of our practice.
But then we also must remember the Buddhas of the future.
So what I like, and this is just me commenting on this, what I like about that concept and bowing itself, too. When you bow, you're not only bowing to the person in front of you, you're bowing to the people who came before, but you're also bowing to the people who will exist down the road.
So it really, from my personal opinion, it deconstructs time in that moment when you bow to someone, you're existing outside of the timeline because you're taking into account past, present, and future.
So I always love that when that happens, therefore know the prajna paramita is the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra. It goes on to expound on how wonderful it is, which removes all suffering and is true, not false, in case you had doubts after all of that. Therefore we proclaim the prajna paramita mantra, the mantra that says gate, gate, paragata, parasangate, Bodhi svaha, or gone, gone, gone utterly beyond Bodhi enlightenment, svaha.
So be it.
Okay, so when I first encountered this sutra, and again, we chanted a lot.
And even when we chant it now, I always feel it's kind of long.
But then when I was preparing this dharma talk, I was like, man, this actually is pretty short, you know, and it covers so much ground in such a short sutra.
You know, that's the nice thing about having the privilege of giving dharma talks, because it helps your own practice, because you have to investigate some of this stuff more deeply and then share it and then get feedback. So that helps all of us.
But I didn't realize either how many of the theravading teachings are in this sutra.
So we touched upon how zazen is our practical means of exploring the two truths concurrently.
Now I'm going back to where we started.
So turning the wheel of Dharma. The Buddha's first teaching again deals very much with our conventional truth. From my perspective, someone who's a scholar in that sutra could probably do a dharma talk on how it's actually very esoteric.
Okay, but I'm not that person.
The Heart Sutra deals more with the universal.
Why am I confident about that? Because it keeps talking about emptiness, and that's where the universal exists, because there's no constructions, there's no form, there's no discrimination.
So once again, zazen is our practice to unify these two truths. Now, our founder, Dogen Zenji, gives us a type of zazen called shinkantaza, which means just sitting, just sitting where you're at in the causes of. In the causes and conditions in that present moment with nothing else. And when I'm saying nothing else, well, we all know, because we do talk about this and we do use this as practice. We can have an object for our meditation.
In Zen practice, our go to is the breath, right? So if you're having a hard time sitting, the suggestion is, go to your breath. Go to the rhythm of your breath. Feel the sensation of your breath.
Sometimes people might have sounds as the focus of their meditation. If they're having a hard time settling.
Sometimes people might have a koan or a riddle, a Buddhist riddle that they like to turn over. And that is a type of practice. There's so many. There's hundreds of ways of engaging in practice.
Sometimes people will take a few lines of the sutra or chant the sutra while they're sitting as a means of practice.
But the one thing I like about Dogen and Shinkuntaza is he's saying we shouldn't do any of that. We should just sit.
We should just sit. So we have all these beautiful teachings surrounding our practice, but he's telling us when we sit, just sit.
So when do we get taught?
Well, we get taught when we chant, we get taught when we do the rituals. We. We engage with these teachings.
We're engaging with them when we're sitting in zazen, but on a deeper level that even with all these senses and all these ways of perceiving things, we don't clearly understand how we're engaging with this teaching, but we should just sit. And, you know, I like to stress that you still have to have faith, you know, so when you're sitting, you gotta have faith that it's working, it's happening, it's percolating.
And then when we chant, chant wholeheartedly, engage with the words wholeheartedly, and then let the zazen do the rest.
The Shinkantaza, the just sitting, do the rest when it's time to sit.
And, you know, because there is a. We have a habit of, as Westerners, of over intellectualizing everything. So that's one reason I like to bring that up.
So this teaching first appeared in China around the seventh century, in the 600s. It's based on a Sanskrit teaching on wisdom called the prajna paramita sutta. There's a long version that's about 8,000 lines. And there's also a Shorter version that's not that long, but not this short either.
It's believed the person who created this teaching, it was a Chinese monk named Xuanzang.
He knew Buddhist scriptures In the early 600s were incomplete at that time in China.
Remember, Zen was already in China.
So he went to India and he brought back about over 600 Sanskrit texts and over 1000 fascicles of scriptures. And then he worked on translating them into Chinese.
Him and some other people, I imagine.
So that's a little bit of the backstory on how it's believed this sutra came to exist.
But also, this sutra has some unique qualities. A lot of the teachings start with thus. I have heard an affirmation of what the teaching is going to be. This one does not.
Also, in the emptiness teachings in the canon, the Pali canon, and other teachings on emptiness, there is a different disciple who's usually present in the dialogue of the teaching, named Sabhuti.
So it's unusual that Shariputra appears in this teaching on emptiness and not Sabhouthi. And Sabhouthi was one of the ten major disciples surrounding the Buddha.
So that's another unusual thing about this teaching.
And then also, I guess Sabhuti was a major figure again in Buddha's discourses on emptiness.
And now, as far as Shariputra goes, he was the first of two top disciples of Buddha.
Shariputra's role was the systematization and analysis of the Buddha's teachings in the community and within his surrounding the Buddha.
The Buddhist canon often shows Shariputra asking the Buddha questions and entreating the Buddha to teach.
And then also Shariputra clarifies certain points and questions the disciples. That was also Shariputra's job.
In some cases, he does this seemingly to test the knowledge of the disciples around him. So he's kind of like, you know, it sounds like a frontman for the Buddha. You know, he's going to test. Who knows, like we talked about Buddha's skillful means, right? Maybe he sent him out as a. I'm just talking now as a test case, see where these guys are at. And then the Buddha might decide what he was going to teach. I'm making the Buddha seem more like us than he probably was, but that's okay.
The Buddha would often suggest a topic and have Shariputra elaborate and deliver a sermon on it or a teaching on it.
So that's all I wanted to say about this today. So I wanted to give you a little bit of the historical end of it on the back end.
And I also. Before we open the discussion about this, I want to start the discussion with a question for everybody.
Now, for those of you are sure who Avalokiteshvara is, Avalokiteshvara is a bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings, but they're not considered Buddhas.
What I've heard about bodhisattvas is they could exist in conventional truth and they could exist in universal truth, and they know which one they're existing in, but they don't necessarily exist in both of them at the same time with that awareness.
And the Buddhas do.
That's the only thing I've ever really heard about, like, because bodhisattvas are enlightened. Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion.
So it's the archetype that represents compassion, which I personally find interesting. Because if everything's empty and people don't suffer, what is there to be compassionate about?
But Avalikita Svara is the one giving this, teaching the Shariputra. So I wanted to ask you, why do you think Avalokitesvara is the one teaching Shariputra and not the Buddha?
And if you don't have an answer to that, that's fine, too. Please bring forth any questions or comments you might have.
So thank you very much, everybody for listening, and let's see what happens.
Yes, sir.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Jonathan, thank you for your talk.
[00:31:31] Speaker D: It was very interesting to hear. To answer your question, and I'm spitballing. Yeah, but I guess ending suffering is compassion. So it's sort of like, I don't know, a snake eating its tail kind of thing.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker D: But my question was about the extinction of ignorance. And my take on that is that that's knowledge. And I'm just wondering if I'm misunderstanding that or if that's maybe a thought.
I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: I think however you're taking it is fine.
But for me, when it's bringing up one concept and then the extinction of that concept, meaning that there are no concepts that exist, period, which is hard to understand.
So maybe sometimes it's better to think that means knowledge.
Maybe the knowledge is that you understand the experience of nothing actually having formations, you know? So here we go. Right.
Thank you.
[00:32:38] Speaker C: Jonathan, could you please state your question again?
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Oh, he didn't have a mic. Jonathan, there.
[00:32:46] Speaker D: You mean me or do you mean Paul?
[00:32:48] Speaker B: No, no, you.
[00:32:49] Speaker E: Paula. Paula.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Oh, yes, yes, Nicholas. The question is, why does Avalokiteshvara teach shariputra in this Sutra, because these are two players that you don't often see interacting in the teachings directly.
That was my question.
While you're thinking about that, Nicholas David Ray has a comment in the room.
[00:33:14] Speaker D: So, first off, thank you for that talk. I really appreciate it, and I love the Heart Sutra, and I'm grateful to have learned new things about it.
And I really resonate with the thing that you said about. About the verse that says, without hindrance, there is no fear, so. I know, I know. So when I came to this practice at the beginning of 2020, you know, life was falling apart. And the Heart Sutra. Chanting the Heart Sutra almost every morning on Zoom just.
It's not just a remedy for fear. It's a remedy for despair.
For me, it's a remedy. It's like, oh, oh, emptiness is really good news.
The news that all things are empty of separateness, that ignorance includes all the things that are not ignorance. And knowledge includes all the things that are not knowledge, you know, and the I includes all the things that are not the I. All of that.
In the journey to the west, when Xuanzang is making his trip to India, Guanyin actually appears to him and gives him the Heart Sutra. He's like, here, you're gonna need. You're gonna need this, buddy. Cause it's gonna be a long journey and you're gonna encounter a lot of things, but you're gonna be okay. Here's the Heart Sutra, you know, and I really, at the end when we, like, sing this. This mantra, this magic spell is so powerful, and you can't go wrong with it. It's that thing the heart wants to hear that, you know, it's really this message to the heart that it's actually okay.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Did Guan Yin tell him? Don't forget what I'm telling you.
And Guanyin is the Chinese name for avalakicha svara bodhisattva. If some of you aren't sure.
Indy.
[00:34:57] Speaker D: Thanks, Paula.
[00:34:59] Speaker E: When.
[00:34:59] Speaker D: When I read the Heart Sutra, what I. What kind of trips me up is the relationship between, like, 90% of the text and then the mantra at the end. And it's sort of like it's saying, this mantra is, you know, this is the unsurpassed mantra. But the mantra seems less like a teaching to me than everything that comes before it. And the mantra to me feels like more of. Like an expression of the state, you know, the realization of emptiness that the text is talking about. I don't know. I. I'M just not sort of not sure what to make of the mantra at the end.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: It sounds to me like you're on the right track.
A lot of the. The Sanskrit lines can also be considered as dharanis, which are words that have abstract or esoteric meaning, so are not supposed to be taken literally and are believed to touch upon things that are unexplainable and create an energetic field around practice.
So your sense of what it is, from my perspective, is spot on.
Then oftentimes, too, the sound of the words also creates that field.
As a side note, that's why sometimes we often will chant things in another language, like chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese, because it's believed that the sound of the Japanese syntax as you're chanting, it creates a different type of energetic field around that teaching and practice.
So you could believe that or not, but that's what I mean, you know, in practice, I still feel it requires a little bit of faith and a lot of experience.
Thanks, Andy.
Hi, Serena.
There you are.
It's so nice to see you. Serena.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Hi. Good morning.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Good morning, good morning.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Amazing dharma talk. It's so helpful and interesting. And I. I love the Heart Sutra.
And. And I. I feel like things that have been coming up for me lately in relationship to. Some of the things you're talking about is like, just like, training in Catholicism as a child that, like, attached. Like, when I think about my relationship to attachment, I'm like, very bad, very bad to have attachment. Shame, shame, shame. And then. But I realize so much about attachment and relationship to the Heart Sutras. For me, I think the fear comes first. And the fear is like this. The need, these, like, survival, you know, instincts that then attachment comes after the fear.
And so it's.
And it's helpful for me to see that these days that it's not just like the attachments aren't, you know, just like this obsessive thing of, like, getting more of what's good, you know, and avoiding bad feelings.
It's sort of more that, like, animal thing of, like, avoiding danger.
And so I've been kind of, like, deconstructing these ideas for myself lately. And I always get so much.
When I hear the Heart Sutra and when I say it, it's so incredibly soothing.
And then lately I've been kind of. Yeah. Turning it around that the fear is sort of before the attachment. And it's like, it's been. It's been helpful for me in my process. And I. And I don't know your question about Shariputra. And Avalok Kiteshvara. I. Yeah, it is really. It's. It's great to be reminded of, like, Quan Yin being Avalokiteshvara and that relationship that David just said. That's lovely information that I hadn't. I wasn't totally aware of.
But, yeah.
It's great to hear your talk today. Thank you.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Serena. You know, I think so. What I'm hearing. And I just want to say this too, like, on a practical level, like on a very practical level, about fear coming first and the attachment comes second. Like, I know you work for yourself, and so do I, right? But I didn't for, well, half of my life, I did not work for myself. I had regular jobs.
And when I decided to start working for myself, it was a test of my Buddhist practice for me, because I wanted to work for myself. But I was so afraid of not having that regular paycheck.
You know what I mean? I was so afraid of not having that permanence. And I'm like, well, and I do feel I was able to work for myself because my practice had flowered more and I could trust impermanence and not get attached and trust the causes and conditions happening and the universe actually being able to sustain me, you know? So I. That's what I heard when you were saying, like, the fear comes before the attachments.
That I'm like, yeah, that's what resonated for me when you said that.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: And ironically, you know, the.
He was like a prince, so he may not have had those fears.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. Ironically. I love that you said that, too, ironically.
Well, we'll be. Well, I'll be okay, David.
[00:40:51] Speaker E: Okay.
I was going to say one thing, but then I heard David and Serena talk, and now I got three things, so. Forgive me. I'll save the last question last.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: David.
[00:41:02] Speaker E: I think the thing about emptiness and fear, what I think about that is that if we have no judgment, the judgment is the cause of our fear. That's how I relate to it. And that I'm judging something bad that creates the fear. If I'm not judging it as bad, there is no fear. So the way to get rid of fear is to be emptiness, not to have any judgment.
Does that sound.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:30] Speaker E: And, Serena, about attachment, I think because we're fearful of something, you know, in our limbic, you know, our lizard brain, that's still part of our evolution, that we grab for things because we're fearful. I'm. I'm. I don't have enough, you know, I'm. I'M I'm endangered. And so we go out and grasp at things.
And that's, for me, that's how I see it. And I don't know if that's part of what you think is in a heart suit. Chapala, let's get your comments on what I just said. But also, I question that life is suffering. I think that life just is, and it contains suffering. It's not that life itself doesn't have to be suffering, it just contains it. Because we're.
We're judging all the time in a sense, or, you know, we're not. We're not in touch with the greater. With the universal truth. We're so bound in. In conventional truth that we. We suffer.
And so I. I want to get your take on that, too, about saying that. That life is suffering, saying that life contains suffering, rather than saying life is suffering.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, everyone's going to engage with the teachings based on who you are in this, in any given moment.
But for me, I'm an Eightfold Path girl.
I bring it up again and again. I came into Buddhist practice not because I wanted to sit on a cushion for hours, because I was incapable of sitting on a cushion for five minutes when I was exposed to Buddhist thought, but I literally looked at Buddhist thought because I heard the words, life is suffering. And then I heard the words, desire is the cause of all suffering. And I already had concluded that on my own before I knew there was someone like the Buddha who existed. So that has always resonated with me.
And for me, my practice starts there, but it doesn't mean that it starts there for everybody. I think Zen is proof that it doesn't personally.
Yeah, but it's all. It's all good. It's Howard.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: So I think it's about time for us to wrap up, so maybe we'll take one more. Did you have something, Howard?
[00:43:52] Speaker C: Just a comment, but we can move.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we'll.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: I was just gonna build on what David Ray had said about Journey to the West. And, you know, Sun Wukong is one of the big characters of it, and he's the monkey. And the monkey mind was sort of pre Journey to the west when it was written, but he is the monkey. He's bouncing all over the place. And Xuanzang and the Buddha and are like, what the hell is wrong with this guy? Like, but they believe in him and they trust that he's gonna figure it out.
And I remember just this anecdote. When I first came across the Heart Sutra, I was all. I was like, what the hell is this? This makes no sense. I got thrown in the deep end because of circumstances, and I was like, helping lead some practice stuff, chanting it and stuff. And I had this DePaul student come up to me and go, what. What is prajna paramita? And I. I don't know.
The Wikipedia article's pretty good.
But, like, the monkey mind started going. I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to know this. I'm supposed to know this thing. I'm supposed to do this. And so. Right.
[00:44:50] Speaker D: Like.
[00:44:50] Speaker C: But the harsucho is like, a nice encyclopedic reminder of, like, don't attach to this. Yeah, I don't got the answer for you here either. This is still better than the other stuff. But you still gotta sit. You still gotta pay attention. You still gotta, like, go with, don't know about what the hell is happening in your life and just meet it every time.
That's hard. So thank you for your talk. I love the hearts intro. It's a great reminder.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: So we'll chant the four Bodhisattva vows, and then after that, we'll have some announcements and talk about what's gonna happen next.
Beings are numberless, we vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: We realize that things are our lives.
We vow to freedom.
Conditions are inexhaustible.
We bout confusion.
Our gates are boundless.
We vow to enter them Festival we bound regulated being we bow to freedom.
The missions are inexhaustible.
We vow to them Our gates are boundless.
Breathe out to enter them without.
To be devised.
