[opened the talk by reading Dalai Lama's Essence of the Heart Sutra p. 35-39 - anyone feel like typing that up?].

I had a dream last night about meeting a man by coincidence. I was at the side of the road trying to fix a flat tire on my bike but the hole was too big. And the man I met was saying hello and that he had the same kind of bike – what a coincidence! And we got to talking in the dream and it was clear he held many similar attitudes about life as well. There was a wonderful sense of connection and affinity. The man mentioned that he had recently been able to purchase a vacation house on Samish Island for instance but when I asked him about it he expressed great regret that somehow in the purchase of that place he’d upset a friend he cared deeply about. And so we had much in common – gender, attitudes, possessions, values about friendship.

But the feeling of affinity in the dream was so much deeper than just a sum of similarities. There was a sense of belonging together in a certain way. That affinity for others is more than just the sum of the overlaps in our personal Venn diagrams of interests and passions.

In his essays Robert Aitken roshi says the Japanese word for this kind of deep affinity is “nen” which is the feeling expressed in our short Sino-Japanese chant Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo. We chant “cho nen kan ze on, bo nen Kanzeon, nen en ju shin ki, nen ne fu ri shin” In the morning I feel affinity with Kanzeon, in the evening I feel affinity with with Kanzeon, my thoughts and attentions  are always with this affinity with compassion and connection.

The character nen is 念which has the heart-mind radical and means attention, desire, thought, feeling, idea, and wish. It’s used in the ordinary word for thought but I think in our sutra we can assume a deeper meaning. So rolling all of those English concepts together maybe we have something like “deep yearning for connection” and this is a beautiful thing but letting go of it is also beautiful.

When I was looking the character up in the dictionary I learned that the absence of nen, unen (無念) is a Buddhist term for freedom from obstructive thoughts.  And this is what the Heart Sutra is all about. So we connect through our affinity and our thinking and our concepts but when we let them go we are truly connected. Unen maybe could be translated as “going beyond affinity.”

(Nen in the online dictionary: http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E5%BF%B5 )

And so in my dream the vehicle to connection with my new friend were some of the concepts we see as solid and divided from other concepts. He liked this bike, not that bike. He cared about friends’ feelings. He was this gender, not that gender. And yet the feeling of affinity was so much deeper than these flimsy concepts.

When Avalokitesvara looks deeply into her moment by moment experience she sees that everything that’s arising is empty. The implication is “empty of own-being” two technical Buddhist terms together.  Empty meaning not bound, not limited to, own-being meaning separate and divided. So all experience – every thing, every concept, every thought, every feeling is boundless. It’s an entry point and it’s own release.

When Avalokitesvara goes on to elaborate further that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” we see this dynamic especially once we realize that the sutra is abbreviating here. This entire pattern needs to be repeated:

Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form.

It says so more clearly in our current translation than the previous one actually:

Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.

That’s saying “repeat this process of investigation with the other skandhas” although our current translation has an unusual translation for the second skandha of vedanā as “sensations” which is maybe better than “feelings” but still not quite right.

After I awoke from my dream it occurred to me that “leanings” might be a better translation for vedanā because it’s the sense of how the mind leans into the pleasant and away from the unpleasant, but it really might be one where we just learn a Sanskrit term. Our practice is a bit of a pastiche of language because we are in the middle of a great turning of the Way right here in North America in the 21st century so naturally it’s a bit jumbled up as we try to understand it all.

So:

Vedanā does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from vedanā. Vedanā itself is emptiness, emptiness itself vedanā.

Or maybe if we use “preferences” for vedanā  which is combining vedanā  with the way we elaborate on that sense of pleasant/unpleasant with our thinking and actions :

Preferences do not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from preferences. Preferences themselves are emptiness, emptiness itself is preferences.

That’s surprising isn’t it? We know that our preferences cause suffering very experientially every day if we study our experience honestly. This endless trying to get what we want on gross and subtle levels all the time has us stuck and bound up. And so there’s a part of us that wants to get rid of our preferences and enter some kind of pure liberated state that’s free of preferences. And at the same time there’s part of us who is totally committed to our preferences and cursing at that ascetic impulse to be free of them.

The Heart Sutra seems to be saying that neither is helpful. That we can enter into emptiness through our preferences and if we open our eyes we can see emptiness expressed right in the middle of our preferences.

This sutra is a deep expression of the non-dual teachings that Zen explores. Right in the middle of the trouble there is peace.  One does not preclude the other. This is the non-separation of samsara and nirvana. The teaching here is that preference and concepts are vehicles not problems. Not to be ignored but not to be taken too seriously or reified either. Entering into experience deeply on every breath is the sense here. Experience with it’s full content – the peaceful breath with the judgmental thought – both co-arising just as conditions call for.

The idea here is that the path it truly right in front of us all the time. That we are stepping into that which is arising now – that this is our way. That we can’t push our way into some idea of a beautiful spiritual reality that’s different from what’s right here, right now. And that strangely peaceful liberation is in this entering into, this willingness to fully feel what really is happening. The non-separation of suffering and peace is the root of this teaching.

And since emptiness has this sense of no-boundaries, or the fluidity of separation, we can also translate it as boundless or boundlessness.

So let’s play with the Heart Sutra’s phrase using boundlessness as our translation of shunyata, which is usually emptiness, and the fourth skandha of samskāra which is a kind of catch all for all kinds of thinking and volitional impulses and memories and ideas that we put together to create concepts about the world. Of the five it’s the most technical and complicated of the skandhas.  The usual translation into English is “mental formations” – the thoughts and thought-assemblies which we put together and take to be reality in a certain way. In Cognitive Psychology they are really interested in that process of putting thoughts together and the way we attach new learning to existing structures that we already have.  But let’s simplify into something that has more resonance. Let’s just say translate samskāra  as thought. And a powerful tool we have here is that after we’ve practiced for a while we can start to identify thoughts coming and going in the mind.

So those two changes give us:

Thinking is boundless, boundlessness is thinking. Thought does not differ from boundlessness, boundlessness does not differ from thought. Boundlessness itself is thought, thought itself is boundless.

So when we see and practice with thought as thought the sutra encourages us to notice thinking with a different attitude. To explore the boundless nature of thinking itself – these thoughts which seem to have a discrete quality – if it’s this it’s not that – a kind of dualistic, separating nature, actually are not that way at all. Actually they are an expression of the boundless nature of reality and that this collection of experienced I call me is that way too. Boundless, limitless, vast. Containing everything and not separate from anything.

And in Buddhist psychology they don’t separate emotion from thought particularly so you could take your favorite emotion and pop it in there too:

Sorrow is boundless, boundlessness is sorrow. Sorrow does not differ from boundlessness, boundlessness does not differ from sorrow. Boundlessness itself is sorrow, sorrow itself is boundless.

That puts a bit of space and perspective around the thought or emotion doesn’t it? Less of a sense of being bound by our thinking, our sorrow, our emotion. That these things are a kind of messenger from beyond as Rumi says:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi ~
(The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)

And then we return to this sense of separation from each other. And that wonderful sense of connection and affinity that arises sometimes.  When we feel some affinity with someone we may assume it to be based on common interests or some separate discrete something – gender, ideology, preferences, whatever it is, we can practice exploring the way that’s just a kind of mental short cut for our total affinity and connection with everyone and everything.

It’s like Walt Whitman felt in writing  Song of Myself, which actually a long poem – we should read the whole thing sometimes not just grab little quotes out of the work to make a point and in my notes to this talk online I include a link to it:

http://www.daypoems.net/plainpoems/1900.html

It would be great to read the whole poem out loud to yourself. Go for it as a kind of practice in American Dharma – takes 10 minutes or so.

Here’s section 51 towards the end of the poem which interestingly uses “emptied” as a verb. And Walt Whitman is part of what is sometimes called the American Enlightenment right? So these teachings of the Heart Sutra are not something Asian and special, they are part of our human birthright. They are a kind of pointing to the Heart of the Matter that is deeply universal and yet so easily forgotten.

The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

Home practice ideas:

1) chant the mantra 21 times during home practice after making offerings

2) journaling on feeling your way into troublesome patterns of thought and emotion as the path, what does that feel like? how does that arise during the day? what does it feel like when you turn away from these things vs. entering into them?

3) Just keep practicing – it’s practice period!

I was at the side of the road trying to fix a flat tire but the hole was too big. And the man I met was saying hello and that he had the same kind of bike – what a coincidence! And we got to talking in the dream and it was clear he held many similar attitudes about life as well. There was a wonderful sense of connection and affinity. The man mentioned that he had recently been able to purchase a vacation house on Samish Island for instance but when I asked him about it he expressed great regret that somehow in the purchase of that place he’d upset a friend he cared deeply about. And so we had much in common – gender, attitudes, possessions, values about friendship. But the feeling of affinity in the dream was so much deeper than just a sum of similarities. There was a sense of belonging together in a certain way. That affinity for others is more than just the sum of the overlaps in our personal Venn diagrams of interests and passions.

In his essays Robert Aitken roshi says the Japanese word for this kind of deep affinity is “nen” which is the feeling expressed in our short Sino-Japanese chant Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo. We chant “cho nen kan ze on, bo nen Kanzeon, nen en ju shin ki, nen ne fu ri shin” In the morning I feel affinity with Kanzeon, in the evening I feel affinity with with Kanzeon, my thoughts and attentions.

The character nen is 念 which has the heart-mind radical and means attention, desire, thought, feeling, idea, and wish. It’s used in the ordinary word for thought but I think in our sutra we can assume a deeper meaning. So rolling all of those English concepts together maybe we have something like “deep yearning for connection” and this is a beautiful thing but letting go of it is also beautiful. When I was looking the character up in the dictionary I learned that the absence of nen, unen (無念) is a Buddhist term for freedom from obstructive thoughts.  Which is what the Heart Sutra is all about. So we connect through our affinity and our thinking and our concepts but when we let them go we are truly connected.

(Nen in the online dictionary: http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E5%BF%B5 )

And so in my dream the vehicle to connection with my new friend were some of the concepts we see as solid and divided from other concepts. He liked this bike, not that bike. He cared about friends’ feelings. He was this gender, not that gender. And yet the feeling of affinity was so much deeper than these flimsy concepts.

When Avalokitesvara looks deeply into her moment by moment experience she sees that everything that’s arising is empty. This implication is “empty of own-being” two technical Buddhist terms together.  Empty meaning not bound, not limited to, own-being being separate and divided. So all experience – every thing, every concept, every thought, every feeling is boundless. It’s an entry point and it’s own release.

When Avalokitesvara goes on to elaborate further that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” we see this dynamic especially once we realize that the sutra is abbreviating here. This entire pattern needs to be repeated:

Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form.

It says so more clearly in our current translation than the previous one actually:

Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.

That’s saying “repeat this process of investigation with the other skandhas” although our current translation has an unusual translation for the second skandha of vedanā as “sensations” which is maybe better than “feelings” but still not quite right. After I awoke from my dream it occurred to me that “leanings” though a little odd sounding might be a better translation for vedana because it’s the sense of how the mind leans into the pleasant and away from the the unpleasant, but it really might be one where we just learn a sanskirt term. Our practice is a bit of a pastiche of language really.

So:

Vedanā does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from vedanā. Vedanā itself is emptiness, emptiness itself vedanā.

Or maybe if we use “preferences” for vedanā  which is combining vedanā  with the way we elaborate on that sense of pleasant/unpleasant with our thinking and actions it’s more helpful:

Preferences do not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from preferences. Preferences themselves are emptiness, emptiness itself is preferences.

That’s surprising isn’t it? We know that our preferences cause suffering very experientially every day if we study our experience honestly. This endless trying to get what we want on gross and subtle levels all the time has us stuck and bound up. And so there’s a part of us that wants to get rid of our preferences and enter some kind of pure liberated state that’s free of preferences. And at the same time there’s part of us who is totally committed to our preferences and cursing at that ascetic impulse to be free of them.

The Heart Sutra seems to be saying that neither is helpful. That we can enter into emptiness through our preferences and if we open our eyes we can see emptiness expressed right in the middle of our preferences.

This sutra is a deep expression of the non-dual teachings that Zen explores. That right in the middle of the trouble there is peace. The non-separation of samsara and nirvana. That preference and concepts are vehicles not problems. Not to be ignored but not to be taken to reified either. Entering into experience deeply on every breath is the sense here. Carried there by what’s arising now not by some kind of pushing our way into some idea of a beautiful spiritual reality that’s different from what’s right here, right now.

Since emptiness has this sense of no-boundaries, or the fluidity of separation, we can also translate it as boundless or boundlessness.

So let’s play with the Heart Sutra’s phrase using boundlessness and the fourth skandha of samskāra which is a kind of catch all for all kinds of thinking and volitional impulses and thoughts that we put together to create concepts about the world – the usual translation into English is “mental formations” – the thoughts and thought-assemblies which we make and take to be reality in a certain way. Let’s just say thoughts because in our practice we can identify thoughts coming and going.

Thinking is boundless, boundlessness is thinking. Thought does not differ from boundlessness, boundlessness does not differ from thought. Boundlessness itself is thought, thought itself boundless.

So when we see and practice with thought the sutra encourages us to notice thinking with a different attitude. To explore the boundless nature of thinking itself – these thoughts which seem to have a discrete quality – if it’s this it’s not that – a kind of dualistic, separating nature, actually are not that way at all. Actually they are an expression of the boundless nature of reality and that this collection of experienced I call me is that way too. Boundless, limitless, vast. Containing everything and not separate from anything.

So when we feel some affinity with somehow that seems to be based on common interests or some separate discrete something – gender, ideology, preferences, whatever it is, we can practice exploring the way that’s just a kind of mental short cut for our total affinity and connection with everyone and everything.

It’s like Walt Whitman felt in writing  Song of Myself, which actually a long poem – we should read the whole thing sometimes not just grab little quotes out of the work to make a point and in my notes to this talk online I include a link to it:
http://www.daypoems.net/plainpoems/1900.html

It would be great to read the whole poem out loud to yourself.

Here’s section 51 towards the end of the poem which interestingly uses “emptied” as a verb. And Walt Whitman part of what is sometimes called the American Enlightenment right? So these teachings are not something Asian and special, they are part of our human birthright.

The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. 

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) 

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) 

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab. 

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me? 

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

And from 9:30am to noon we will enjoy our new monthly work practice morning on the 3rd Saturday morning of the month – working together is a wonderful part of the Zen tradition.

Practice Period
Is under way but it’s not too late to dip in. Most events are just show up, but the 3-day Sesshin March 1-4 with Tim and Norman is now full but you can sign up for the waiting list.

There are open events during the final weekend (Dharma Talk Saturday morning, and the closing ceremony on Sunday) you can still attend.

Tim is posting talks and notes regularly to the practice period teachings page.

I’m on the mend and will be able to get back into things in the next few days.

In the meantime if you didn’t see the talk on the Extraordinary in the Ordinary from last Saturday you might enjoy it.

I also do plan to post more of my notes and thoughts about emptiness and the Heart Sutra here.

thanks for all,
Tim

The notes here are a reasonable brief impression of what I spoke about but the recorded talk is much more filled out. Enjoy.

Vulnerability, numbing, feeling separate. Studying the emptiness of the boundaries between things in our Heart Sutra studies. Studying with the support of meditation the flow of our moment to moment experience. SO much richness there beyond our ideas and opinions of what’s happening.

Summarize Brene Brown’s work – vulnerability and celebrating the ordinary, that our desire to be extra-ordinary is a great cause of suffering and masking our actual experience which is never good enough.

WWU Student Meditation Club visit

Riding down the hill and seeing the wonderful treatment of William Carlos Williams’ poem

so much depends
Upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

So wonderful that is there. A piece of public art on the side of an apartment building that I have no idea who created. The poem rendered over a nice painting the scene Williams is describing. There is so much around us that is truly delightful.

WCW was a family doctor. Practiced 40 years in Rutherford, New Jersey. The locals never really knowing he was a major American poet.

Found poetry in the ordinary – his patients and their struggles.

From the Poetry Foundation’s biography

Beginning with his internship in the decrepit “Hell’s Kitchen” area of New York City and throughout his forty years of private practice in Rutherford, Williams heard the “inarticulate poems” of his patients. As a doctor, his “medical badge,” as he called it, permitted him “to follow the poor defeated body into those gulfs and grottos…, to be present at deaths and births, at the tormented battles between daughter and diabolic mother.” From these moments, poetry developed: “it has fluttered before me for a moment, a phrase which I quickly write down on anything at hand, any piece of paper I can grab.” Some of his poems were born on prescription blanks, others typed in a few spare minutes between patient visits. Williams’s work, however, did more than fuel his poetry: it allowed him “to write what he chose, free from any kind of financial or political pressure. From the beginning,” disclosed Linda Wagner, “he understood the tradeoffs: he would have less time to write; he would need more physical stamina than people with only one occupation…. [He] was willing to live the kind of rushed existence that would be necessary, crowding two full lifetimes into one,… learning from the first and then understanding through the second.” There is little doubt that he succeeded in both: Richard Ellman and Robert O’Clair called him “the most important literary doctor since Chekov.”

Williams’s deep sense of humanity pervaded both his work in medicine and his writings. “He loved being a doctor, making house calls, and talking to people,” his wife, Flossie, fondly recollected. Perhaps a less subjective appraisal came from Webster Schott, who defined Williams as “an immensely complicated man: energetic, compassionate, socially conscious, depressive, urbane, provincial, tough, fastidious, capricious, independent, dedicated, completely responsive…. He was the complete human being, and all of the qualities of his personality were fused in his writings.” And, as Randall Jarrell pointed out, it is precisely in his written work where Williams demonstrates that “he feels, not just says, that the differences between men are less important than their similarities—that he and you and I, together, are the Little Men.”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-carlos-williams

Sadly he wasn’t all that happy later in his career. He felt completely overshadowed by some of his peers, especially T.S. Eliot who’s publication of The Waste Land in 1922 WCW called a “atom bomb” dropped on modern poetry.  A little more from the Poetry Foundation biography which quotes WCW’s own biography

As he explained in his Autobiography, “I felt at once that it had set me back twenty years and I’m sure it did. Critically, Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt we were on a point to escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself—rooted in the locality which should give it fruit.” Not only did Williams feel threatened by Eliot’s success, but also by the attention The Waste Land received. As Karl Shapiro pointed out, “he was left high and dry: Pound, who was virtually the co-author of Eliot’s poems, and Marianne Moore were now polarized to Eliot. Williams felt this and would feel it for another twenty years. His own poetry would have to progress against the growing orthodoxy of Eliot criticism.” But while the Eliot wave undoubtedly sank his spirits, at the same time it buoyed his determination: “It was a shock to me that he was so tremendously successful,” Williams admitted. “My contemporaries flocked to him—away from what I wanted. It forced me to be successful.”

And this makes me think of a Zen story. About bridges.

Blue Cliff Record Case 52: Joshu’s Stone Bridge

A monk asked Joshu,
"For a long time, the stone bridge of Joshu [1] has echoed in my ears.
But now that I've come here, I just see a log bridge."
Joshu said,
"You simply see a log bridge; you don't see the stone bridge yet."
The monk said,
"What is the stone bridge?"
Joshu said,
"It lets donkeys cross, it lets horses cross."

We want the fancy stone bridge – in others, in ourselves, we don’t appreciate the log bridge. Or we see one as the other.

Another story in the commentary to the case:

One day when Zhaozhou was sweeping the floor, a monk asked, "Teacher, you are a man of knowledge - why is there dust?" 

Zhaozhou said, "It's something that comes from the outside." 

Again the monk asked, "In a purse and clean monastery, why is there dust?" 

Zhaozhou replied, "There's another bit."

This longer for better, for shinier. Can we celebrate the ordinary? Can we be grateful for what we have. For family. For health. For being alive. For nature.

One last story from Zhaozhou on being present for the ordinary:

A monk told Joshu: `I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.'

Joshu asked: `Have you eaten your rice porridge?'

Joshu said: `Then you had better wash your bowl.'

And a few quotations from other poems of William Carlos Williams, the whole poems being a bit long for the occasion:

	“As the rain falls
	so does
	your love 

	bathe every
	open
	object of the world”
	― William Carlos Williams

And sometimes just the ordinary is enough, just enough.

	“This is Just to Say 

	I have eaten
	the plums
	that were in
	the icebox 

	and which
	you were probably
	saving
	for breakfast 

	Forgive me
	they were delicious
	so sweet
	and so cold”

This required a full lecture just to start to unpack. We talked about bodhisattvas, about Avalokitesvara  the Bodhisattva of compassion, about the five aggregates and about emptiness.

I closed with a love song by Tracy Chapman because the more you think about what they mean by “emptiness” the more you realize it’s about love and connection, but a deep love and connection unbound by personality and concept. It sounds cold and well, empty, at first but it’s a problem in translation that it seems that way.

I’ll add some notes later, but mostly this talk was unscripted so I don’t know how much help my notes will be but I’ll paste some in soon.

It’s a 37 minute guided meditation which can be done sitting or lying down.

enjoy,
Tim

Click here for the link to it on EDZ website but the play link above should also work:

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajña paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.

So we need to find out about these aggregates and what it means to say they are empty.

Preparing for the 2nd seminar I am working with two resources online as well as my big pile of books. If you have time to take a look you might appreciate these as well:

• The WikiPedia article on the five skandhas is quite well done and seems to be accurate. Touches on Theravadin, Mahayana, and Vajrayana perspectives – the three major “vehicles” in Buddhism
• A Pali Canon Study Guide on the Skandhas – Back to our friend Thanissaro Bhikku – he creates study guides on the Access to Insight website with a long introduction by him followed by quotations from the Pali canon in support. Since the Heart Sutra is here riffing on and extending a teaching of early Buddhism (the five skandhas) it’s good to see how practitioners in that tradition see them.

Welcome everyone. Our topic for this practice period seminar is a big one, and I hope a central one for all of us. What is the heart of the matter? What is the most important thing? What is truly central to our lives?

As the center of this exploration we’ll take up a study of the Heart Sutra – a short Buddhist text chanted daily in thousands of centers all around the world. We chant it here a few times a week. But I hope this seminar can be more for us than an academic inquiry into this odd little text from the Buddhist tradition. We are practicing in a tradition and I do think knowing something about that tradition is helpful but there is a bigger dimension to this question of the sutra at the heart of our lives than just learning more about this aspect of the Zen and Mahayana Buddhist tradition.

Let’s recite the Heart Sutra now a bit slower than usual and in usual speaking voice:

Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajña paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. 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.

Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight … no realm of mind consciousness.

There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance… neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.

With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajña paramita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.

All buddhas of past, present, and future rely on prajña paramita and thereby attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.

Therefore, know the prajña paramita as the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra, the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which removes all suffering and is true, not false.

Therefore we proclaim the prajña paramita mantra, the mantra that says: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”

The human mind and culture is so complex and yet in a way so definite and constrained. We think we know who we are, we know who the others are, we know our history, we know our limitations, we know what we like and what we don’t like, we know what’s wrong with the world. We know what’s right and what’s not so great about this or that branch of Buddhism and maybe we know something about other faiths too.

And even more basic knowledge is worth considering. We know that this is wood, and the walls are a kind of creamy off-white.

We know so much. We say “knowledge is power” and “knowledge will set us free” and yet is that the whole story? Is that really how it is? All of this stuff that we know is it really so? Or is it also in some ways a kind of limitation on our living in this world. Is our knowledge a simplification in a way also? Can our knowledge also be limiting to us? Is our knowing and sureness and right-ness in some ways like ropes that bind us into a particular position.

The root questions in Buddhism are always: what’s really happening and what helps?

What is our actual lived experience as apposed to our idea of what’s happening? And as we investigate that we see some trouble. Some difficulty. Some pain. Some confusion. Maybe a little more than we bargained for or quite wanted to see. Here is the first ennobling truth Buddha taught at the very beginning. Suffering or dis-ease is to be fully understood.

Sometimes we say “The first noble truth is life is suffering” but that’s a bit of a shorthand that’s a little off the mark. The Buddha didn’t say that. Actually what he said is that a life based on clinging is suffering and that there’s clinging baked into the way we understand our life. I don’t want to spend too much time on the first noble truth today but we’ll come back to it. The point for today is that this suffering arises from a deeply held view. From the way we know who and what we are. But we can understand our life in a different way, that’s the good news.

The confusion can be understood. It can be seen. We have that capacity as human beings. We have that courage. To see clearly what is our experience. To notice the various social and psychological filters and blocks and little by little to let them go. The ways we don’t want to see what’s really happening. We ways we might base our lives on a fantasy of some kind.

And once we see more clearly it’s possible to do something skillful. Something accurate and helpful. Meditation practice makes it more possible for us to get accurate feedback from our life. To have the inner space to see more clearly. And then we can see it can get better. What reduces suffering and increases contented joy? There are many famous examples of people asking the Buddha questions about why and he wouldn’t answer those questions. He was interested in how. How do we practice? How do we wake up from the dream of being separate, being alone, believing too strongly in our idea of this small confused person?

This poem by the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott somehow speaks to this question of the heart of the matter:

Love After Love

the time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

That one’s often quoted in Dharma talks, here’s another that speaks to this in another way:

Dark August

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.

Derek Walcott

Our central text in considering the Heart of the Matter is the Heart Sutra. Like all of our Buddhist texts these words have travelled long and far over time and through languages and cultures. We think the Heart Sutra was originally composed in Sanskrit in Northern India sometime around 300 AD when Buddhism was one of the dominant practices of the area – a time when there were large Buddhist Universities, many monks and nuns, and in the culture at large had a deeply imbued sense of Buddhist practice and the merit and value of both practicing for yourself and support others, especially the monastic sangha, in their practice. Indian Buddhist teachers brought these teachings to Tibetan maybe around 500 AD and Chinese pilgrims brought them to China by about 600 AD. And the Heart Sutra teachings were brought to Japan soon after that. And then the Heart Sutra was brought to America in the 1950′s by Japanese Zen monks – chanting it at first in the Sino-Japanese style that’s also in our chant books, starting sometime in the 1960s and 1970s translations into English started being made and also used liturgically for chanting.

So over all of these centuries these teachings moved around and as they crossed each cultural barrier they were translated. But translation is not a neutral act. Subtle teachings about wisdom can’t just be translated word for word from one language to another. Even manuals for electronic gadgets and coffee makers are hard to translate as we’ve seen, all the more so a text on how to wake up to the wisdom that runs through all things.

So the Heart Sutra’s journey is full of stories. Maybe all wisdom is bound up in stories. We want wisdom to be pure and free of the bother of messy human stories I think, but that doesn’t seem to be how it is. Maybe all is story. We swim in a sea of stories, as Salman Rushdie got in a little hot water pointing out. So we might as well learn how to swim and enjoy the warm and the cold water as we float along through the currents. As we think about our lives and inquire into what the heart of the matter is maybe that’s also chiefly stories, do you think so?

Let’s pause and reflect a minute about our own story. Is there wisdom there? Foolishness? What is our story?

Most of the stories of thousands of years of practicing with the heart sutra are lost, but a few we still know. I’ll try to highlight a few of them as go along in our journey. Because these are real people trying to understand something about their lives. They are just like us. Just like us.

Today I’ll mention a bit about Xuanzang, the Chinese pilgrim who’s translation of the Heart Sutra is the translation lineage that came down to us. Kaz Tanahashi does a wonderful job telling this story so I’ll read from an unpublished manuscript of his that I somehow ended up with on my computer:

The principal Chinese version … is by Xuanzang of the seventh-century, CE. (His name is also spelled Hsüan-tsang, Hiuen-tsiang, Hiuen-tsiang, Yüan-tsang, or Xuanzhuang.)

Consisting of two hundred sixty ideographs, the Xuanzang version is the shortest of all extant Chinese translations of the sutra. It is regarded as supreme in its clarity, economy, and poetic beauty. It is commonly chanted in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Consequently, Buddhist groups in the Western world founded by East Asian teachers rely on the Xuanzang version.

The Heart Sutra’s story weaves through the life and work of this ancient Chinese monk, Xuanzang. Our source is a biography by Xuanzang’s disciple Huili, who also edited many of his translations. After Huili’s death, Yancong, another student, completed the biography. Titled Biography of the Tripitaka Dharma Master of the Da Ci’en Monastery of Great Tang, it is regarded as the most detailed and accurate biography of Xuanzang.

Here, in brief, is his story:

In 629 CE, the twenty-seven-year-old Xuanzang broke the Chinese imperial prohibition on traveling abroad and set off on a journey westward for India in search of authentic dharma. As fellow monks wanting to travel with him had given up on traveling with him, he was alone on the road.

While crossing the Gobi Desert, facing tremendous hardships, Xuanzang was said to have been surrounded by grotesque evil spirits. Again and again, he invoked the name of his guardian deity, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, but the spirits kept moving around him. Finally, as he fervently chanted the Heart Sutra, the spirits were driven away.

The version he chanted had a special meaning to him: There was a poor monk in Shu, or Sichuan (the western part of China), who had festering sores all over his body. Pitying his sickness and stained clothes, the young Xuanzang took him to a local temple, and found money there for food and clothes. The sick monk taught Xuanzang the Heart Sutra as a token of his gratitude. Xuanzang continued to chant and study it for years.

Xuanzang impressed kings of the Central Asian countries—Turfan, Kuci, Samalkand, and Kapisi—with his profound knowledge of scriptures. He gave dharma discourses and gained patronage to further his travels. After a three- year journey, miraculously escaping various dangers—enduring a heavy snowstorm on a steep mountain, getting lost in the wilderness, and attacks by bandits—he arrived at the Nalanda Monastery in the kingdom of Magadha, northeastern India.

Buddhism was flourishing, and Nalanda was the center of Buddhist studies with over ten thousand students. Xuanzang met the renowned master Shilabhadra, then said to have been one hundred-six years old. Three years before, Shilabhadra had had unbearable pains in his limbs, and wanted to end his life by fasting. But Manjushri Bodhisattva, deity of wisdom, appeared to him, and said that a Chinese monk was on his way to study with him. From that moment, Shilabhadra’s pains went away. Seeing Xuanzang, he recognized him as the monk he had awaited.

Xuanzang listened to the master’s lectures, in the company of thousands of other students. Studying various Buddhist texts and the Sanskrit language at Nalanda for five years, Xuanzang came to be recognized as an outstanding student and dharma teacher.

After visiting Buddhist sites and giving discourses in the eastern, southern, and western kingdoms of India, he returned to Chang’an, China’s capital, in 645, bringing back Buddhist images and scriptures. It had been an eighteen-year journey.

Instead of punishing Xuanzang for disobeying his edict, Emperor Tai, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, praised him for his courage and achievement. That same year, the emperor assisted Xuanzang in launching a national project to translate Sanskrit scriptures into Chinese. Tai gave Xuanzang a temple called the Hongfu Monastery in Chang’an and many assistants, including twelve monk-scholars checking translations for accuracy, and others to help with editing. Xuanzang dictated his translations from the original texts.

In 646, he completed a report to the emperor about the topography, history, customs, and politics of the places in Central Asia and India he had visited. His twelve-scroll work, Regions West to Great Tang, was the most extensive and detailed book of geographical descriptions that had ever been written.

The popular epic Journey to the West by Wu Chengen of the sixteenth century—stories of a monk guarded by a super-powered monkey, boar warriors, and a river monster—is based on Xuanzang’s writing. In 648 Emperor Tai asked Xuanzang to take an official position. Xuanzang declined, saying that his life’s mission was to clarify the Buddha’s dharma. Tai was impressed with Xuanzang’s determination. In the same year, the emperor wrote an introduction to Xuanzang’s translation of the sutras under the title: “Great Tang’s Three-Basket Sacred Teaching.”

(The Buddhist canon is called the Tripitaka or Three Baskets. The “baskets” or “collections” consist of sutras, precepts, and later scholars’ treatises. One who has mastered the entire scripture is called a Tripitaka dharma teacher, or simply Tripitaka. That was our translator Xuanzang’s title.)

An admirer of the fourth-century calligrapher Wang Xizhi, Emperor Tai made an extensive effort to collect and study Xizhi’s masterpieces. Monk Huairen spent over twenty years assembling samples of Xizhi’s handwritten ideographs to fit into the texts of the emperor’s introduction to the canon, as well as the Xuanzang translation of the Heart Sutra. Huairen patched together brushwork of the Calligraphy Sage, and had the texts carved onto a stone monument.

This artwork is still regarded as one of the best samples of classical Chinese calligraphy.

In 648, the Crown Prince became a senior monk at the Da Ci’en Monastery in Chang’an, which then became the center for Xuanzang’s translation work.

Soon after that, according to Huili’s biography of Xuanzang, Emperor Tai became gravely ill and asked Xuanzang to be near him at the Cuiwei Palace on Zhongnan Mountains, in the south of the capital city. Although Huili did not mention it, a later record says that Xuanzang translated the Heart Sutra at the palace on the twenty-fourth day of the fifth month of 649; Monk Zhiren transcribed it.

Tai passed away three days later. The Crown Prince ascended the throne as Emperor Gao. Xuanzang spent two years translating the most comprehensive collection of the Prajna Paramita literature, from 200,000 Sanskrit lines into six hundred scrolls—the largest Buddhist scripture ever. (A “line” is thirty-two Sanskrit syllables.)

On completing the translation of the Maha Prajna Prajna Paramita Sutra in 663, he exclaimed: “This sutra pacifies the nation. It is a great treasure of the world. This completion is to be celebrated by everyone in the sangha!” He was sixty-two years old.

He asked one of his students to count the texts he had translated; the result was seventy-four texts in 1,338 scrolls. This surpassed his great predecessor Kumarajiva’s seventy-three texts in 383 scrolls. (A scroll, or fascicle, is a chapter-length text bound in a separate volume.)

Xuanzang passed away in 664. It is said that over one million people bowed at his coffin, and over thirty thousand people stayed overnight at his tomb. Emperor Gao said in grief, “We have lost our national treasure.”

 There are several recent books about Xuanzang actually and many more stories about him and his travels. We certainly should know about him just as we know about Marco Polo as one of the great travelers of the ancient world. And actually I guess now they think substantial portions of Marco Polo’s journals were made up by him later when he was in prison back in Italy – I think so far Xuanzang’s account has held us pretty well.

As Kaz’s telling mentions the Heart Sutra is part of a much larger literature. A very short summary of sorts of this literature called the Prajna Paramita literature. You probably recognize that term from chanting the sutra. Prajna Paramita. Maha prajna paramita. Maha means “great” – so we end every ritual pretty much with those closing words, that prajna paramita is a great thing.

Prajñaparamita has been translated to English as ‘Perfect Wisdom’ – but perfect is a little misleading for us with our tendency towards perfectionism. We have such a sense of holding something in a particular position of improving things and seeking the perfect version of something. Sometimes Prajnaparamita is translated as “wisdom beyond wisdom” as we do when we chant the title of the sutra in our services.

Jña is a verb meaning to know or understand. Pra is an intensifier. Hence, Prajña means – something like knowledge but deeper than knowledge, so: wisdom, but active, “deeply knowing” might be better than “wisdom” which we think of as a noun. We can have wisdom, but we do “deep knowing”.

There are two etymologies for the word paramita. The first comes from the word parama meaning “highest”, “most distant”, “most excellent”. Thus “that of which there is nothing superior in this world is said to be excellent (parama); the excellence of wisdom is the perfection of wisdom”.

In the second etymology, paramita is divided into para and mita. Para means “beyond” or “the other shore”, and mita means “that which has arrived”, or “that which goes”. So in this reading prajñaparamita means the unsurpassed wisdom which delivers beings to the other shore. Thus it is the highest wisdom in Buddhism because of its ability to deliver one to the other shore; i.e. realization, by means of the contemplating and meditating on it. So this is wisdom as a verb, that’s really important.

And perhaps because paramita has a feminine ending in Sanskrit we end up with an embodiment of this wisdom as a kind of deity or a bodhisattva, it’s not clear how this came about but the religious impulse to create archetypes and embodiments is strong and really kind of beautiful. So we have in our chant books this hymn also – let’s chant this slowly and kind of sing it a bit with a feeling of warmth:

Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom, the lovely, the holy. The Perfection of Wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken, and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own-being of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The Perfection of Wisdom of the buddhas sets in motion the wheel of dharma.

 We’ll talk in another class a bit about where that hymn comes from. There’s a bit longer version in one of the prajna paramita sutras which I think you’ll really appreciate.

And there is a whole list of practices of the bodhisattvas which are modified with this word paramita. We also have dana paramita – the perfection of generosity. The shorter list of 6 paramitas also includes patience, precepts practice, energy and forebearance, concentration, and meditation itself.

So we have two totally non-western words that get rendered usually as “perfection of wisdom” but both “perfection” and “wisdom” may lead to some trouble for us. So coming into something like this it’s probably smart to spend a little time exploring the biases and frameworks we’re bringing with us on the journey.

[break into pairs: short discussion - what is "wisdom" and what would "perfect wisdom" be?]

Thich Naht Hahn in his lovely little book about the Heart Sutra (which turns out to have been edited by Peter Levitt! So maybe part of it’s charm is through his work) has a nice section on how he thinks about prajna paramita:

Perfect Understanding is prajnaparamita. The word “wisdom” is usually used to translate prajna, but I think that wisdom is somehow not able to convey the meaning. Understanding is like water flowing in a stream. Wisdom and knowledge are solid and can block our understanding. In Buddhism knowledge is regarded as an obstacle for understanding. If we take something to be truth, we may cling to it so much that even if the truth comes and knocks at our door, we won’t want to let it in. We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge the way we climb up a ladder. If we are on the fifth rung and think that we are very high, there is no hope for us to step up to the sixth. We must learn to transcend our own views. Understanding, like water, can flow, can penetrate. Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block our understanding.

Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of Understanding, p. 8

Wisdom in English has this meaning according to the dictionary:

wisdom. noun.

1. the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.

2. scholarly knowledge or learning: the wisdom of the schools.

3. wise sayings or teachings; precepts.

4. a wise act or saying.

Which references of course the English word “wise” – here’s the dictionary on wise which is an adjective

wise. adjective

1. having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right; possessing discernment, judgment, or discretion.

2. characterized by or showing such power; judicious or prudent: a wise decision.

3. possessed of or characterized by scholarly knowledge or learning; learned; erudite: wise in the law.

4. having knowledge or information as to facts, circumstances, etc.: We are wiser for their explanations.

A very significant thing here is that wisdom in English is a noun, and yet Buddhist wisdom, prajnaparamita is definitely a verb. And yet it’s not exactly something to do. An investigation. The process of understanding.

And wisdom refers in English to one who is wise. So wise is an adjective and refers to a state or quality of a person. So again sometime a bit more fixed than Thich Naht Hahn’s flowing water. In English wisdom is something you possess. And we hear people looking at wisdom and a kind of spiritual attainment in that way – usually that it’s something someone else has and you don’t, right?

And so this sutra, this teaching, that’s in the middle of the question “what is the heart of the matter?” right away is encouraging a certain attitude. A certain fluidity. Bringing up some doubts about how we view ourself and others. That wisdom isn’t a thing you can possess and get more of. Something more here like entering more fully into the flow – letting go of knowledge maybe, or maybe using knowledge more skillfully as a tool to be held so lightly. To lightly.

I was quoting Thanissaro Bhikkhu a bit on Saturday about wisdom. He’s a reliable source for study about the earlier form of Buddhism that’s usually called Theravada now. Sometimes you see the term “hinayana” which is a prejorative meaning “lesser vehicle” that is better not to use. You can read Thanissaro’s writings quite extensively on a website called accesstoinsight.org – he’s a smart American scholar and a deep and committed monk who trained in Thailand and now has a community outside San Diego. He is also friendly with our Insight roommates here in the Dharma Hall and does weekend study retreats here in this very room every couple of years that are well worth going to.

Thanissaro says Buddha’s wisdom is practical and completely based on causes and results, to watch out that we don’t get too heady and philosophical about it. Thanissaro is a bit critical actually of the Mahayana idea of emptiness which as we’ll see is the real basis for prajnaparamita. And I appreciate and learn from his criticism actually. It’s really helpful to have a wise critic in a neighboring tradition.

I’ll put a link to his essay on wisdom and emptiness called “The Integrity of Emptiness” onto the website, it’s long and worth reading and the gist is this: If an attitude or action leads to less suffering and more joy, it’s wise. Period. And here an attitude is actually a mental action. So it’s all about action and the results from actions. Wisdom is a lived experience. He uses the example of being addicted to alcohol in his essay:

What’s striking about this standard for wisdom is how direct and down to earth it is. This might come as a surprise, for most of us don’t think of Buddhist wisdom as so commonsensical and straightforward. Instead, the phrase “Buddhist wisdom” conjures up teachings more abstract and paradoxical, flying in the face of common sense — emptiness being a prime example. Emptiness, we’re told, means that nothing has any inherent existence. In other words, on an ultimate level, things aren’t what we conventionally think of as “things.” They’re processes that are in no way separate from all the other processes on which they depend. This is a philosophically sophisticated idea that’s fascinating to ponder, but it doesn’t provide much obvious help in getting you up early on a cold morning to meditate nor in convincing you to give up a destructive addiction.

For example, if you’re addicted to alcohol, it’s not because you feel that the alcohol has any inherent existence. It’s because, in your calculation, the immediate pleasure derived from the alcohol outweighs the long-term damage it’s doing to your life. This is a general principle: attachment and addiction are not metaphysical problems. They’re tactical ones. We’re attached to things and actions, not because of what we think they are, but because of what we think they can do for our happiness. If we keep overestimating the pleasure and underestimating the pain they bring, we stay attached to them regardless of what, in an ultimate sense, we understand them to be.

[from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/integrityofemptiness.html ]

And so wisdom has a basis in clear seeing of our actual experience in this view. That if we really feel the damage a choice like drinking too much alcohol, if we really experience that deeply without distortion, then when the desire to drink arises this counterweight of experience is the actualization of wisdom. We can see the desire arising, we can feel the effects drinking will bring, and we make a choice. To there’s a real process here, a practice, and a basis in experience not in ideas and philosophies.

Psychologists who study addiction and addicted people themselves might see more nuances and twists and turns to addiction but the basic point is pretty well valid. Don’t make this into something complicated. You make choices, there are effects. You may feel the effect or block or deny that experience in some way. And it’s wise to use the actual effects of actions as a guide to which actions to take. Or put another way it’s pretty stupid to make our choices just based on our opinions of what’s supposed to happen. You can’t argue with that, and we shouldn’t just take this as another nice idea but really explore directly in our lives. What happens? What choices do we make? What are the results? How did it really feel.

So that’s really good I think. And yet there are some deeper, maybe you could say philosophical, dimensions to the way wisdom is explored in prajnaparamita that are maybe a little harder to put into words. That maybe can only be thought about symbolically or poetically, or are beyond thought and concept all together.

Some of these dimensions are accessed less with rationality than with silence, perhaps with devotion, with exploring our lives through the aegis of different practices that might make a little less obvious sense than the side Thanissaro is bringing up here.

So I have a few suggestions for ways you might start to explore prajnaparamita this next week, try one of more of these:

1) chant the heart sutra every day with a ritual framework of some kind – offer incense at an altar and bow maybe. You might also add a devotional dedication which you could write yourself of use the Hymn to the Perfection of Wisdom that’s in our chant books. This might look like this: at a quiet time of the day go to an altar, offer incense, to three bows, chant the heart sutra and then the hymn or just a simple dedication like “With gratitude to Buddha’s and ancestors I have offered incense and chanted the Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra. May all beings awaken to the Buddha Way.”

2) write a few free poem about the flow of experience every day, or at least once or twice before our next seminar. Just sit down and start writing, try your best not to feel bound by some idea of what poetry is or doing a good job. I did this and I’ll close with it so you can see it doesn’t have to be lovely wise poetry with carefully constructed images and symbolism and all that, just an expression of this flow of life.

3) you might see about getting ahold of one of the 3 books on the heart sutra I recommend or another one you run across. Call up Village Books or order online. It’s really surprising how quickly you can get ahold of just about any book these days. I am not sure if they are in the library. And take up the practice of study, I’ll say more about the practice of study next week maybe. But just reading a section or two and letting the words sink in. Not reading too much in one sitting or trying to hard to make sense of it all, something like that. And paying attention not just to what the thinking mind thinks it’s learning but also to the overall feeling of your being before, during, and after you study. Study has many effects – not just intellectual learning. It’s quite fascinating really.

4) and it almost goes without saying that regular meditation practice is the root cause of the wisdom of prajnaparamita. So see if you can sit at home and with a sangha this next week. Just sit and let everything go. Don’t try to do anything. Just be present. Practice the gentle return to the feeling of the breathing in the body or do whatever the simplest most direct practice you know is. Wisdom is not elaborate. It’s just this. Sometimes elaborate can help us, but my suggestion is to be simple in your practice these weeks. Return to the essence of just being alive.

Okay, here’s my odd little flow of consciousness poem. Which now I re-read it got a little preachy and discursive and philosophical but the mind does that doesn’t it? Maybe the next run at this I can stay closer to something less heady, or not. Who knows how the mind works. So to release yourself from perfectionism on that level too, just write something if you want to take up this means of exploration. I’ll close with that and open the floor for any comments or thoughts.

Emptiness Poem 1

Reaching out for the heart of the matter.
Looking under stones, and beside parked cars.
The arm extended, the hand open, the mouth slightly parted.

Wishing we were in the mountains, or at least
on vacation.

Holding on, letting go. This and that. The world divided.

A woman walking home after dropping the kids at school - love and steadiness in her step. The ordinariness of that right-ness goes unremarked by the commuters passing by.

The dams removed from the river. Even before the biologists are ready the fish start returning - "it's game on!"

Home to the quiet of the house, so many different kinds of silence.
The mind insisting it's time to get busy.
Okay then, get busy, be busy, move fast.

But a stillness right there, none the less, or just less, or not having a quantity or a verb or even a way of saying anything at all?

This day, is this the day? This hour? This minute? How fine does it go?

Can we be satisfied? No, can I be satisfied? No, can there just be satisfaction?

Meanwhile the world goes, the rain moves across landscapes. The soft pebbles of the rain. The warm body that loves what it loves. A poem or a teaching or some sense of connection to that bigger something flits through the mind. Into the gaps between emails, between worries, between thoughts.

Avalokita can face the dharmas, she never turns away, she hears the cries and wields her thousand arms helps without thinking of helping. Saves without thinking of saving. Just there for us.

How we can love one who loves us without making us into something, into someone. And yet, how we long for a love that tells us we are someone...special - even though we know that's not...quite...right.

And the Buddha, is he our father? Our teacher? Is he the wind? Or the rain? We would prefer him to be the sun. Why say that he is a "he" though - doesn't that limit the proposition?

Language is all we have it seems. Rusty tools in an old wooden toolbox made by hand by someone's grandfather long before there was a Home Depot selling toolboxes made by plastic mold machines - or is that just romanticizing - is older better? Is newer better? Is better better?

And so easily the mind wanders off. Distracted by the toolbox and the tools and unable to lift a finger when suffering reels us in, caught on a straight hook, wriggling to our death by distraction in the wealthiest country in the world. All of us in the top 1% really it turns out but we don't appreciate this - wishing for more or that it was more fair at least or that we could live on less, but anyway wishing for a different life.

And we have these teachings. Or these teachings have us now. This dharma staff is in our hands and we can't let it go. Our responsibility to carry on and to own all of the twisted karma and to be the caretakers of this wisdom medicine in case it can help. Not distracted by our own limitation - or idea of limitation, who knows if there is any such thing. What is there here that could be limited anyway?

So we just do our best.

To return,
To the heart.
Of the matter.