Somebody told me that, or somebody said, thanks for talking about the miniature golf course, until you said that I was really having a hard time. So last, I guess, did we have two causes already? Or three? So, you got a taste of the early, of the Abhidharma that came with the first turning of the Dharma wheel. The first turning of the Dharma wheel is not really the Abhidharma, it's the Buddha's first teaching, but the Abhidharma is the, you know, actually Abhidharma means, you know, highest Dharma that's often translated. The people who wrote the Abhidharma in some sense felt like they took the highest part of Buddha's teaching out of his massive presentation in the first turning.

[01:10]

They thought that some of the stories that the Buddha told in the first turning were wonderful, but they felt like they took the highest meaning out of all those stories, and that the Abhidharma was really the unique presentation of Buddha's unique teaching, particularly emphasizing the teaching not in terms of conventional world so much And so I think some of you did have kind of a hard time those first three weeks, and Abhidharma teachings, my experience is that they are difficult for most people to get into. They were difficult for me. I started studying them, I think in 1968, because I heard that they were really important.

[02:17]

But I quit after not too long, and then I started again in 1971 and started teaching classes in 72 and 73, or 73 I think, I started teaching classes on the Abhidharma to encourage me to study, which I did. And people, like in other classes too, in Koan classes too, but in Abhidharma classes people say, you know, when I study Abhidharma I don't get anything out of it, but when I come to class sometimes, in the class some meaning comes up. But still it's difficult material. It requires quite a bit of concentration to access It's meaning both concentration in the sense of concentrating on the work, on the text, thinking about it, meditating on it, but also being in a concentrated state, you know, being alert.

[03:23]

If you're sleepy and you study Abhidharma, you'll get maybe saliva on the text, or maybe a bump on your head. You sort of have to be kind of awake study this material because it's not very romantic or thrilling unless you're really concentrated. It has kind of like a Dharma protector around it that only those who are concentrated can get in. The price of admission is concentration. which is part of the reason why, you know, if we teach it during a practice period, particularly a practice period, Tathagatagarbha, where they don't have TV or movies, people actually have no choice but to study this and they actually start to open it up. And so last week I gave the example of you have a field

[04:32]

a field of grass, anyway a field of experience, but if you take a field of grass, if you put a miniature golf course on it, it gets people out there in the grass and they actually, they get familiar with the field by the structure of the course, of the golf course. The golf course is a way for them to course on the field. Or another way to put it is, if you put a template on the field, And again, the word for template comes from to carve out a space for study. So if you put people, or if we just simply look at our experience, we may not be able to sustain our attention to our experience without some template like somebody said, well why don't you look over here, come over here and let's look over in this whole section here, let's look over here, and then say okay, and we look.

[05:39]

Without that kind of thing, a lot of people have trouble actually examining the nature of the field. So the Buddha put down also the golf course or the study course, or the template, and then the Abhidharma systematized the different things. So, the main ones, the main templates, the most famous, are the skandhas, the ayatmas and the dhatus, or the aggregates, the doors of arising for consciousness and the spheres of experience. And then again, those are the templates, but then also in the Abhidharmakosha, for example, but the Buddha also, himself, and also in other Abhidharma works, they not only put down those templates, but then they tell you the relationship between the different parts of the template.

[06:43]

So you start cross-referencing and intensifying your intimacy with the field of experience. And you get really intimate with it, and then if somebody asks you, Is there a self there? You can say, you know, I haven't even been looking for the self, but I know from experience that there isn't a self any place on this field. And I know because I know this field. There's not a self here. Even if you weren't looking for one, if somebody asked you, did you see a self while you were doing it? No. Could it be there? Nope, because I know this place and there isn't a self. There's nothing in this field that exists. there's no person in this field, there's no personal experience, there's no personality that exists substantially of itself. I wasn't even looking, but now that you mention it, I know even without looking that it's not here, because I know this place. Just like if you know your bedroom and somebody says, is there a gorilla in the bedroom? You can say, nope.

[07:43]

Now, before you went in your bedroom, if somebody says, is there a gorilla in the bedroom? You say, okay, I'll go look. And you don't see one, but you might have to look for a long way to be sure. Are you sure? Maybe it's a tiny gorilla. Maybe it's a little toy gorilla. So then you just, could you help me look? So the Arboretum will help you look for this. of a self, and then you can prove them to yourself, you can verify the Buddhist teaching that there isn't a self in the field. So that's early Buddhism. There's a certain story I just told you about early Buddhism, and some of you had a difficult time hearing that story. And so that story has been told. Now, the next phase, in some sense, the next phase after that early turning happened, in terms of what most people see in Buddhist history, is what we call the arising of the Mahayana, of the universal vehicle.

[09:12]

But I'd just like to say, here's another story, is that the real heart of Mahayana is the spirit of enlightenment as love and compassion. That's the real heart of it, is the spirit of enlightenment as love and compassion. What it actually is, is the realization of emptiness or the realization of selflessness. But his heart is love and compassion. So the enlightened one, the Buddha, who realized selflessness, he taught his enlightenment as love and compassion.

[10:35]

That's what he taught. And everybody saw it and thought it was really groovy. But he also taught wisdom. I would say, if you look at his scriptures, although he was himself demonstrating wisdom and love and compassion all the time, and that was really the heart of what he was doing, was being loving and compassionate to all beings, most of his teachings are about helping people to have wisdom. You don't hear Buddha say compassion as much as you hear Buddha giving people ways of looking at experiences so that they can be wise in the early teachings. It doesn't say compassion that much. For example, you know, in the First Turning, the Sutra which is called the Setting the Dharma Wheel Turning, the First Sutra, we say, the word compassion does not appear there.

[11:48]

There's a word for middle way, which is another word for wisdom. There's teachings about Four Noble Truths, which are wisdom teachings. There's teachings about avoiding extremes. There's the Eightfold Path. But the Eightfold Path, of course, is the path of peace and harmony and compassion, but the word compassion does not appear in the Eightfold Path. Again, it's a template, it's a course, it's an analyzed course into eight dimensions, which go round and round. So, during the Buddha's life and after, it wasn't that easy for people to see, especially after when the Abhidharma emphasized the wisdom teachings. it's hard for people to see the compassion teachings in the wisdom teachings, especially when the compassion teachings are mostly being practiced and studied and taught in monasteries.

[12:58]

So the Mahayana, which was always being taught by Buddha, was kind of like lost or forgotten. even though it was really at the source of his teaching. It was his basic motivation all along, which is what drove him, this love and compassion is what drove him to attain wisdom and teach wisdom. So the Mahayana re-arose about 400 years after the Buddha. the causes and conditions changed such that the world was ready for this teaching. And the first way it appeared was as this Prajnaparamita literature, around the first century before the Common Era.

[14:06]

And these teachings, in a way, were teachings which took away the golf course, or took away the template. The template was very useful to attain wisdom, but people couldn't see the wisdom and compassion in the template, so they took the template away and said, hey, you don't have to be a scholar or a monk to practice the Buddha way. As a matter of fact, we're taking away all the stuff of the scholars. all the stuff that they know about and by which they attain wisdom, we're taking it away. We're taking away all these wonderful ways that they get intimate with experience and realize selflessness. So that everybody, actually now, can practice the Buddha way because it's the ground you're standing on. It's right here. You don't need anything to realize it.

[15:12]

So it becomes very accessible. and yet difficult to see at the same time. And then the great teacher Nagarjuna in the spirit of love and compassion comes and uses analysis to, you know, a person comes into the world and uses analysis again to remove, to deconstruct all the templates. And so for all those who have the templates, he takes them away and then they have become intimate with experience through these templates, through these courses of study. They actually have gotten intimate. And then he takes away the templates and leaves them to meet experience with no media. So they directly experience it, which again is more accessible and that way also doesn't obscure love and compassion.

[16:22]

And that's the second turning, which in a sense is the Mahayana anti-Abhidharma. So first there's the Abhidharma of individual liberation and it's the Abhidharma of individual liberation because, again, the wisdom teachings of the first turning made it hard for people to see that the Wisdom Teachings were Wisdom Teachings for universal liberation. They couldn't see that. So they saw them as Wisdom Teachings for individual liberation, and in fact they were that, but they were simultaneously Wisdom Teachings for universal liberation, but they couldn't see the universal liberation part. The second turning, for the sake of universal liberation, and re-establishing activating the spirit of love and compassion, they took away the Yagadharma, took away the miniature golf course, and took away Tiger Woods, and took away the golf pro, and in their place comes a Bodhisattva

[17:43]

who's demonstrating a liberation which is inconceivable, that there's no conceptual way to get it, and yet it is your current true nature. That's the second turning, and in this course we're not really going to primarily look at the second turning, although it's there all the time. and it was there while Buddha was doing the first turning. The second turning was there when the Buddha was doing the first turning. What we're going to study is Mahayana Yadav Dharma, which in Mahayana Yadav Dharma is the third turning. And the third turning is pointing out how the Mahayana was in the first turning. The third turning is pointing out how the spirit of love and compassion was in the first turning where it's hard to see. The third turning which brings the Mahayana Abhidharma, shows how the second turning is always in the first turning, and of course the second turning and the first turning are in the third turning.

[18:54]

So the third turning is where the Mahayana Abhidharma comes. So now we bring back the golf course, but in the spirit of the golf course having been taken away. We understand that the golf course really is just a setup. and we bring it back just as a setup. The first turning is deep. The second turning is most deep. The third turning is magnificent, because it shows by the profound aspect how magnificent the first teaching was. and also shows how magnificent the whole dependently co-arising world is. Without understanding the second turning, we don't see how magnificent the third turning is. But without the third turning, you may think, the big danger is you might think that taking away the golf course, taking away the template, you might slip into nihilism and think that Buddhism is very poor.

[20:00]

Buddhism has a very poor side. extremely poor side, for extremely poverty-stricken profundity, where there's nothing but emptiness, there's nothing but the ultimate truth, you can't find anything. But based on that, it then is even more wonderful and more magnificent than you can realize until you realize selflessness. So the third turning brings back all the stuff plus more. And part of what it brings back, an important part of what it brings back, but not the entirety of it, is this thing called Mahayana Abhidharma. The source of the Mahayana Abhidharma, or the sources of Mahayana Abhidharma, one of the main ones,

[21:06]

is the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra, which some of you have experience with and which I think maybe we'll have time to recite one of the chapters tonight. And again, I don't know who was the amanuensis of that. I don't know who wrote that down. I imagine that some amazing yogis who knew about early Avidharma and knew about the teachings which take away the Avidharma and then meditated in the space of understanding the early template of study and what it's like to deconstruct it, that they meditated and out of them came a new version of teachings, and then they wrote these down. I imagine that these beings actually had contact with some Buddha, not Shakyamuni Buddha, but some other Buddha that lived at their time in meditation, they had contact with that Buddha and that Buddha taught them.

[22:22]

Well, for example, it doesn't say Shakyamuni Buddha in the Samadhi Nirmala Some people might say it's Shakyamuni, but it doesn't say Shakyamuni, I don't think, anyplace. But the sutra is a sutra. In other words, the people who wrote it down were writing down what they heard from Buddha, the people, the Bodhisattvas who wrote it down. So that's one source of the Mahayana Abhidharma, this sutra, which is accepted. somehow has managed to be accepted by the Mahayana tradition. The same tradition that accepts as primary, the Prajnaparamita literature also accepts this sutra. But another important source for the Mahayana Abhidharma, again, you can see, you will be able to see, I think, Mahayana Abhidharma in the Swami Nirmocana Sutra.

[23:26]

and Samjnirmocha Sutra could be called the Sutra of Revealing or Unlocking the Intention, or Revealing or Untying or Exposing the Intention, and in parentheses, Of the Buddha's Teaching. The Chinese says it's teaching of disclosing or releasing the deep meaning, parentheses, of the Buddhist teaching. But the source I want to give you, I want to tell you stories about another source, a related source, a source which, yeah, a related source, is the Bodhisattva Maitreya, as the other source of the third turning. not necessarily another source, because maybe Maitreya is the one who wrote down the Sandhyamacana Sutra.

[24:33]

Maybe the Bodhisattva Maitreya, who will be the next Buddha after this world system is finished, maybe Maitreya wrote it down and brought it to this world and stuck it under the noses of yogis who could deal with it. Okay, get the picture? The next Buddha comes into this world and delivers a Sanskrit text to Buddhist yogis, yogis who know the first two turnings, yogis who are Mahayana devotees or other kinds of Bodhisattvas who have studied the first two turnings. They know about the first kind of Abhidharma and they know about the Prajnaparamita and Maitreya Bodhisattva, the future Buddha, brings them the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra and says, But these Bodhisattvas, I think, my feeling, my story I would tell tonight, is that they received this text before the birth of a person named Asanga.

[25:46]

And Asanga, in a way, is the human person, the historical person, who most set up the Mahayana Abhidharma. The historical person who we can point to most clearly as the one who, I should say, the historical person most responsible for bringing the Mahayana Abhidharma into this world. So the story is that he was born and that his mother was a Buddhist nun who felt like the Buddhadharma was not being properly understood. So he grew up with a mom, who was telling him that she didn't particularly like the way people were understanding Buddhadharma these days, and she wanted her boy to like set him straight. And she was a very nice mom, I guess, because he sort of said, okay, Ma, I'll do it. And so he first, actually, he was a member of what's called one of the sects of Buddhism which studied the Abhidharma, it's called Vasiputriyas,

[27:01]

and he was a member of that group and he became a great teacher of the first turning Abhidharma teachings. Then he became exposed to the Mahayana scriptures and he converted to the universal vehicle. But first he was a great teacher of the first-turning teachings, and particularly first-turning Abhidharma teachings. And then he got converted to Mahayana. And then, as the story goes, I mean, as the story I tell you goes, he thought, he agreed with his mom that people, generally speaking, in this pretty Buddhist country, this huge, fairly Buddhist country, there are many other religions, but Buddhism was very strong in India around the 4th century, and also India was like opening up, other conditions for India were coming together for a great cultural flowering, people were ready for this teaching now, they were ready for the early teaching, early Mahayana, now they're ready for another big step

[28:25]

It was a time like now, a time of great change and instability and creativity. And so a Sangha is born into this and twenty years later his mother has another student, another student of Dharma named Vasubandhu, who also takes up his mom's mission and he also becomes a great scholar of Abhidharma, of the first turning Abhidharma. So you have these two guys in the world now, one's 20 years older than the other, one gets converted to Mahayana first, and both of them are raised with the mission to be saviors of Buddhism, which their mom wants saved, and they both are up for that, but they first learned the basic Buddhism very well. One might say their mom must have been quite a Bodhisattva.

[29:32]

She gave up her monastic life to have these boys, and she had three actually, but these two are the most famous. The other was a rock star. So anyway, now back to Asanga, he's thinking, okay, number one, I think we need some help to bring up the compassion side of the Mahayana more. He feels that. he feels that the first turning teachings are, again, too vulnerable to nihilism, and that the message even there, even though the first turnings were coming out of compassion also, he felt that they could too easily be seen as nihilistic and undermine compassion.

[30:37]

Second, excuse me, second turning. Please correct me when I make mistakes. but he felt unable to himself perform this service, so he thought it would be good to invoke the presence of the future Buddha, who the future Buddha is living now, was living then and is still living now. The future Buddha is alive, according to Mahayana Buddhism, is living, and is living right nearby in another kind of way of being we call Tushita Heaven. But it doesn't have any distance from here, it's just another mode, and if you enter that mode you will meet Maitreya. So he wanted to meet Maitreya, Bodhisattva, and Maitreya is related to the word Maitri, which means love and kindness.

[31:43]

So Maitreya, the future Buddha, his name comes from love, his name means love, and he sometimes has a longer name, much longer name, one extension of his name is Maitreya Natta, which means love, which knows what's what, and can explain what's what in a way that's relevant to current times, and his name can be expanded from there quite indefinitely. But the shortest version is Maitreya and then there's Mighty, and then there's Maitreya, and then there's Maitreyanatha, Bodhisattva, Mahasattva. So a Sangha has this idea, after, as I say, already being very well educated and being a great teacher and becoming converted to Mahayana, he wants some help from this Bodhisattva, he wants this Bodhisattva to come and help him teach people, get people on track about what the Mahayana really is. So he starts meditating single-mindedly on manifesting the presence of Maitreya to teach him and the world.

[33:09]

And he does this for basically 12 years in either three, I think it's three sets of four or four sets of three. In other words, a three-year period. He started out thinking he was going to do a three-year period. Unsuccessful. and then he was going to quit because he couldn't see Maitreya manifest. So four times he started to quit or three times he started to quit, whether it's, I don't know, forgot. Does anybody know? Is it four periods of three or three periods of four? I think it's four periods of three. And then after 12 years he's completely spiritually Well, I don't know if it's spiritually. As a person, he's completely broken down. He's a total wreck as a person. Spiritually, he's actually just fine, but as a human being, he's pretty much a total wreck.

[34:12]

Totally discouraged, totally demoralized, and spiritually ripe. Sorry. I mean, I'm sorry that I haven't yet got as demoralized as he got. That's kind of a little project ahead of me. It's not funny. It really is. I just don't think it's funny yet. So anyway, he didn't think it was funny either. He thought it was not funny. Three years, [...] not funny. So now he's ready and he quits completely his whole trip. One story is the first town he came to after giving up trying to get Maitreya to come, he sees his dog. who is really suffering tremendously and got this big wound in her hip, or his hip, and it's all rotted away and putrid.

[35:27]

The maggots are trying to help, but anyway, still the dog is really having a hard time. And so he goes and tries to help the dog. And according to the story, one of the things he tries to do is get the maggots off. misguided. Maggots are the only helpful thing in the scene, but he thinks it will help to get the maggots off. There are two versions of the story. One version of the story is he gouges out a part of his thigh to feed the dog and then notices the maggots. Another version of the story is he notices the maggots but he doesn't want to hurt the maggots, because the maggots are suffering too. So he gouges out part of his thigh to get the maggots to come off onto the meat of his own thigh, but they won't come off. Which way do you like best? We got the thigh ripped apart.

[36:29]

Do you like the feeding the thigh to the dog and then noticing the maggots, or do you like feeding the meat to the maggots? Do you like it to the maggots? Okay, so he's feeding the thigh to the maggots, but they won't come off, or not all of them will come off. So then he thinks, maybe he can get them off with his tongue. So he gets down there, but as he gets closer, you know, it starts to smell really bad and he has to kind of like hold his nose and get down there and then when he's down there he notices that something funny is happening. The dog starts to look different and he sees that the dog is Maitreya Bodhisattva with this, you know, big rainbow aura, halo around him, and of course he's very overwhelmed with joy and prostrates himself to his teacher.

[37:38]

But then he kind of like gets, you know, he might say, starts breathing again and he says, I haven't asked you to come for 12 years, why did you make me do this for 12 years?" Maybe not that repetitively, but anyway. You dog! Anyway, Maitreya says, I've been with you the whole time. And Asanga just isn't convinced. So Maitreya says, I'll shrink myself down to a little glowing globe and you can take me to town and see if people can see me." Because Maitreya is love and only those who have great compassion can see him or her.

[38:49]

He didn't have enough compassion to see. He was meditating on compassion for 12 years, but he didn't have enough to see Maitreya, so I guess most of us also maybe don't have quite enough compassion to see Maitreya right now. But Maitreya, there's no question that the Mahayana teaching is Maitreya is like alive right now. Maitreya is not dead, Maitreya is alive, Maitreya is evolving and getting ready to take over as the next Buddha. So there is this Bodhisattva, Maitreya, who's going to be the next Buddha according to Shakyamuni Buddha and according to the Mahayana. He or she is alive. I don't know what form she's in because my compassion is not sufficient for me to see her or see him and tell you what gender, or how tall, or what color, or whatever. And I don't feel bad about that because a Sangha even

[39:56]

had to meditate 12 years to get his compassion to such a place that he could relate to this dog that way and therefore be able to see Maitreya. When we can stick our nose in a putrefied wound on an emaciated, totally obnoxious thing, then we can open to the kind of compassion which reveals the Bodhisattva of love. That's the story. That's the beginning of the story of a Sangha. That's the middle of the story of a Sangha. I told you the beginning. This great student, right? So he takes this little glowing ball of his master to town and shows it to the people, but the people, of course, they don't have sufficient compassion, so they just see this very obnoxious-looking monk carrying an even more obnoxious dog

[40:57]

and they're not very receptive. They don't see a great Bodhisattva carrying an even greater Bodhisattva. They see two very obnoxious creatures and they want him out of town, and so they leave town. And then Maitreya takes his disciple to this realm called Dashita Heaven, which is this nice It's actually a Dharma center, it's a Dharma study center of great joy. Buddhist heavens and maybe Christian heavens too are not the places where you go when you're done, they're places where you go and study, where it's easier to study, because there's lots of Bodhisattva tutors and stuff. So he goes there and he has this great teacher and no distractions and he spends and we don't know and again when you go to the time thing in these Dharma centers changes.

[41:59]

So he stayed there long enough to receive these five treatises and these five treatises are part of the causes and conditions of the birth of Mahayana Abhidharma. But they're not actually Mahayana Abhidharma texts. The Samyukta Murchana is the source of Mahayana Abhidharma, which predates the Sangha. The Sangha comes back with five texts from, can you believe this, five texts from whom? From Maitreya. And so they're not called Sutras, because they're not from the Buddha, they're from a Bodhisattva. So the author of these texts is a Bodhisattva. and the transcriber is another Bodhisattva, Sangha. So these five texts are called the five texts and the tradition is that these five texts are from the Bodhisattva Maitreya written down by the Bodhisattva Sangha.

[43:13]

And the Bodhisattva Sangha not only hung out with Maitreya but also wrote Abhidharma texts. before and after he met Maitreya. Actually, I don't know if he wrote Abhidharma texts before, but he was a master of Abhidharma before he met Maitreya, and afterwards he wrote the Mahayana Abhidharma texts, using Maitreya and the Samdhinirvachana Sutra. He clearly used the Samdhinirvachana Sutra, but also he used these other texts, and these five texts are By the way, I thought it was kind of apropos that at the beginning of class Linda Ruth erased the golf course. She erased the golf course of the early teaching and now we start putting stuff back. We've got the Prajnaparamita which protects us from clinging to the golf course and now we have From Maitreya, written down by a Sangha, we have Mahayana Sutra Alankara.

[44:22]

That's the first one. The next? M? Mahayana Sutra Alankara. So Mahayana is Mahayana, the universal vehicle. Sutra Alankara means ornament or adornment. So this text is the adornment of the Mahayana Sutras. So we have the Prajnaparamita Sutras, and by this time we have the Lotus Sutra, and the Avatamsaka Sutras started bubbling up out of the ground all over the place, and we have the Mahaparinirvana Sutra. So these Mahayana Sutras are coming up in the world, but they aren't understood properly. So a Sangha with the aid of the living Bodhisattva, next Buddha, brings us a little decoration to put on the Mahayana Sutras to help us understand it.

[45:25]

This is not the order necessarily. He was up there in Tushita Heaven, he came back and did five, but I don't know what order they came in. But I think this is a central one. And again, fortunately, we now have an English translation, two English translations of it. that came in the last few years. So you can read this and you can study this with me, because I'm reading and studying this, so that's your problem now. And the other one is called the Majjhanta-vibhanga. Majjhanta-vibhanga. Analysis of the middle between the extremes. This is the second text. Another one is called Abhisamaya, Alankara. Abhisamaya means liberation or high attainment of liberation.

[46:34]

And Alankara again, like in the previous one, means adornment. So this is an adornment or in a demonstration, an elucidation, or a teaching about liberation in the Mahayana. And another one's called Dharma, Dharmata, Vibhanga. And the other one's called Ratna, Gotra, Vibhanga. Ratna means jewel, Gotra means a lineage, family or matrix or womb of the jewels, and Vibhanga again is another analysis. So these are the five texts which Maitreya taught Asanga. So this person who is going to start the Mahayana Abhidharma also has this in his background, that he hung out with this Bodhisattva and brought these five texts on the Mahayana into the world.

[47:39]

And if you look at these texts and imagine what it would be like to have written those down, it's just, you know, totally overwhelming. Even take a peek at one of them. And he's not done. Then he goes on, after receiving these texts and bringing these texts into the world and writing them down, You know what, you could write these texts down, too. You can write them down. Actually, I don't know if the, I don't think the Dharma Dharmadasa Vibhanga has been translated in English yet. It is? So you can write that down. Mahayana Sutralankara's translated, you can write that down. Abhisamaya Lankara is translated, you can write that down. And Ratnagotra Vibhanga is translated, you can write that down. And Majjhanta Vibhanga is written down. You can write down these texts just like Asanga did, if you want to.

[48:44]

You can write them down, recite them, sing them, etc., just like Asanga did, except you won't be receiving them directly from Maitreya in Tushita Heaven. unless you happen to go to Tushita Heaven and get Maitreya to tell you those teachings again, which you're completely invited to do, if you have time. After this happens to him, after this happens to him, right, and I don't know how long this takes, like 10 seconds in Tushita Heaven, from our perspective, he goes away. But I'm sure, It seems to me that when he comes back down to earth, not so much down to earth, but yeah, into earth, which is the Kamadhatu, where you have like San Francisco, India, Iraq and Tibet, and Tokyo and Singapore, that world, you know, they used to have that too, same world.

[49:45]

In that world where there's like rickshaws and Cadillacs, they also have pencils and chalk and paper, so he wrote that down. in the world where there's paper and writing, he wrote these five down. Which, you know, a lot of other people have written that much, but anyway, he happened to be the first one to write this. Where did he get it? How could he write that stuff? And then he wrote commentaries on these, and then he wrote Mahayana Samgraha. I shouldn't say then. Maybe I won't say then. Maybe I'll say, and then he wrote Yogacara Bhumi, which means yoga, the course or the practice of yoga, Bhumi, the stages in the practice of yoga.

[50:47]

And there's two main sections of the Yogacara Bhumi. One section is called Shravaka Bhumi, and the other one's called Bodhisattva Bhumi. So this has two main sections. One section is on the stages of practice for the people who are practicing the path of individual liberation or individual enlightenment. And he teaches that. He's an expert on that. He teaches that, but he teaches that after he's received all this stuff from the future Buddha. So this is a bodhisattva who's spent time with the next Buddha, who is now teaching you about the individual vehicle. He doesn't say, I'm not going to talk about the individual vehicle anymore. That's not worth my time. Yeah? Can you? OK. Could you stand up, please?

[51:54]

You don't see why it wasn't obvious? Okay, well, I don't really know why it wasn't obvious either, but it seems to be not obvious, because they didn't really talk about it. It is, but they didn't say that in the early teachings. Later, the Bodhisattvas said what you just said would happen. The Bodhisattvas say when somebody attains the individual vehicle, they won't stop there. The Sravakas are a kind of a Bodhisattva, but they're a Bodhisattva on the Sravaka path. As they're on the Sravaka path, they're a Bodhisattva who hasn't yet opened up to the Bodhisattva vow. That's what the Bodhisattvas say about the Sravakas before they finish their path. Once they finish their path, they won't stop there, but it's the Bodhisattva literature that tells you that they won't stop there. Literature does not tell you they won't stop there, as far as I know.

[53:46]

But if anybody finds out in the early teachings where it explains how you get to be an Arhat, and then how you go from an Arhat to a Buddha, and how when you're heading to being Arhat, how you do not have the Bodhisattva vow, but when you get to be the Arhat, you take on the Bodhisattva vow, if anybody knows about that, let me know, but I haven't heard of it. So the Arhat, in the third turning teachings, for example, in the Samdhinirmocana Sutra, it explains that the Arhats have the same understanding as the Buddha, and the Bodhisattvas do also. Same understanding, but they have a different motivation. However, they won't stop. When they get to the point of understanding what the Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas understand, they won't stop there. They will eventually then open up to this whole new level of commitment. But that's what it says in the Mahayana Sutra. In the early teachings, the Buddha does not say, when you finish this course of arhatship, then you're going to start the Bodhisattva path.

[54:53]

Do you know of any place where it says that? But I agree with your reasoning, but your reasoning has been developed in the Mahayana Sutras. Nobody needs to tell you? Well, it may seem that way, but that's not what the teachings say. The teachings say, when you see the truth, then you can start receiving, then you can start really practicing. Then the Buddha can start giving you some work to do. So Asanga was already a great teacher. of the individual vehicle, but he didn't hear anything about these teachings in these sutras. What you see in the teachings which I just told you about would never appear before in the world. Nobody saw them before. And the person who received them was a person who was already very highly developed, who had finished the course of arahantship.

[55:59]

And then he brings all this stuff. What's this about? It's about to help people understand what it's like at the point that you say, wouldn't the person then open in compassion? Does that make sense to you? So you're saying, when they get to this point, wouldn't they become a Bodhisattva? Yes. But then you said something else, which I don't agree with. It's that nobody has to tell them anything. Even in the early, in the Sravaka Bhumi, the Sravaka Bhumi means the people who hear. The first path, they get to that place of understanding because they hear the teaching from the Buddha. They don't get there because nobody told them. Do you know it? Are you following that? You do not get to wisdom because nobody told you anything. Somebody did tell you something. and then you got wisdom. But now, to go from there, on the Bodhisattva path, you need Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to teach you more.

[57:03]

Seeing the truth is not sufficient to become a Buddha. The Buddha didn't just see the truth. The Buddha received tremendous amount of teachings. after seeing the truth. So I'm saying I disagree with the idea that once you see the truth, nobody needs to teach you anything. So anyway, he taught the path of the Shravaka, but in the context of being a Bodhisattva. And again, he didn't say, I'm not going to mention this because this is really a dead end. No, he very nicely explained the path of the individual vehicle, and then he also talked about the path of the Bodhisattva. This is the Bodhisattva Bhumi. And then he also wrote the Maha-Samgraha, which means, Samgraha means summary.

[58:15]

of the Mahayana, and the Mahayana Samgraha is a text which at the end it says, this is a text of Mahayana Abhidharma, and it is. This text is very much in accord with the Abhidharma teachings which you can see in the Samyukta Nirmachana Sutra, but developed very nicely. And here we have an actual straightforward Mahayana Abhidharma text, and then we have one more called, I don't know the initials of this, but Abhidharma Samgraha, Samuccaya, Compendium Abhidharma. So he wrote two books which are straightforward Abhidharma texts, but in the context of all his other Mahayana And we have these texts too.

[59:23]

Yogacara Bhumi. Is that in English? Bits and pieces. It's really big. Bits and pieces of this are in English. And this Mahayana Abhidharma is also called Yogacara. So Yogacara Bhumi, the stages of the path of yoga, it's also stages of the path of yoga within the Mahayana, and stages of the path of yoga within the individual vehicle. And then these Abhidharma teachings have teachings about stages of path, but they also have teachings which are simply teachings on the nature of mind and so on, and they're also teachings about ultimate truth, emptiness, but teaching emptiness as a pattern of consciousness. And also Vasubandhu, Asanga, teaches the three bodies of Buddha, the Dharma body, the truth body, the transformation body, and the reward body.

[60:37]

He teaches them in terms of Abhidharma, teaches them in terms of patterns of consciousness. So, yeah, but when the three bodies of Buddha are discussed in the second turning, they're discussed without telling us an Abhidharma teaching about how to understand what they are. They're taught without recourse to teachings about consciousness, whereas here, in Mahayana Samgraha, he actually teaches us about the three bodies of Buddha in Mahayana in terms of teachings about consciousness. After teaching about consciousness, then he teaches about these in terms of consciousness. So, what time is it? 8.40, wow. Okay, well, do you want to recite the sutra now or do you want to have a discussion? How many people want to recite the sutra?

[61:42]

How many people want to have a discussion? Huh? Well, we can do both. Those who want discussion, maybe those people have something to discuss. Is that by any chance the case? Yes? The Y? Yes. Yeah. Y, O, G, A. Does that sound familiar? Okay, got that one. That's easy, right? Isn't that interesting that Buddhists 1,600 years ago were talking about yoga, and they're using that word just like us? Yoga, and then chara, C-H, I mean C-A-R-A. Yeah, which means like, it's related to the word course, or means path, or course. the yoga course, right? And then Bhumi, B-H-U-M-I, Bhumi means ground or the different grounds that you stand on in the course of yoga.

[62:52]

Yogacara Bhumi. Did you get that? Yogacara Bhumi, and it's actually Yogacara Bhumi Shastra, because it's not a sutra, It's a treatise by a Bodhisattva, Maitreya written down by the Bodhisattva Asanga. Oh, no, excuse me. Maitreya didn't write this one. This is directly from Asanga. This is... Oh, and another story is that... Another story is that after Asanga came back from Tushita Heaven and he was teaching these five texts, he was having some difficulty, so he asked Maitreya to come down here rather than go back to Tushita Heaven. He asked Maitreya to come down to his temple at night when nobody was looking and teach him more. And then after further tutorials, he wrote the Yoga Charabhumi. Any other questions?

[63:57]

Our comments? Discussions? Yes? I was just wondering how it is that Vasubandhu is in our lineage. Yeah. And Asanga. Yeah, really kind of missing something there, right? A lot of people say, can we put an Asanga in there, please? I think it might be because of who Vasubandhu's teacher was and who Vasubandhu's student was. I think it's because there's a little bit more information about Vasubandhu's teacher other than Sangha and a little bit more information about who Vasubandhu's students were. Whereas Maitreya's, I mean, Sangha seems to be not so clear who his teacher was. We can't exactly put you-know-who in our lineage. It kind of like blows it apart a little bit to slip Maitreya in there. Yikes! How did he get in there? He's a little bit bigger than the other guys. because Maitreya really is kind of a Sangha's teacher more than anybody else.

[65:04]

Maybe that's what they did, maybe they thought, well, a Sangha is more important in a way, because he was Vasubandhu's teacher, maybe we should have a Sangha, Vasubandhu, blah, blah, blah. But who are you going to say is a Sangha's teacher? And to put a Buddha, a future Buddha in the lineage, kind of It's a little bit hard to handle conceptually, that may be the reason. Interesting question, interesting thought. I feel just really good thinking about this. Yes? So she says, besides discerning dharmas and meditating on emptiness, how much more can there be? How much more can there be?

[66:06]

There can be, I don't know, there can be compassion. which you didn't mention. And there can be all kinds of skill and means as part of that compassion, which aren't mentioned when you just say, discerning dharmas and discerning emptiness. But also the first turning teachings does not empty all of the elements of analysis. The Buddha did say in an early teaching, all dharmas are empty. But he didn't go through so exhaustively and say the skandhas are empty, the dhatus are empty, and also that sutra is not that important.

[67:07]

I mean, people don't sort of all talk about that sutra. There's a large and small sutra on emptiness in the Pali Canon, but it doesn't seem to have as much impact as, for example, the sutra on Four Foundations of Mindfulness or something. whereas in the arising of Mahayana, that type of teaching about the emptiness of all elements becomes just, you know, overwhelming. And then, after that, then that teaching is responded to by Asanga and Maitreya to make it protect that teaching, the second turning teaching, which more thoroughly empties, which empties the first teaching, and soften it and make it more gentle and accessible, and protect it from nihilism. So the protection of the teachings and realization of emptiness from being misunderstood is the third turning.

[68:15]

Anything else you want to bring up? Yes. [...] So it seems like, you know, that might be when to ask, well, you know, why are the people could see the Buddha and hear the teachings, but not make the connection between his ongoing demonstration of loving kindness and his words of wisdom? No, I think people definitely saw the Buddha's loving-kindness when they saw the Buddha. That's the first atraxism.

[69:19]

That was interpreted as, okay, so if you liberate yourself, then, as Marci was saying, you would maybe naturally follow from that liberation, this loving-kindness for all beings. Yes, definitely. didn't direct people to the complete understanding of the relation between the ten and the two pastimes. Or you could say that, that's possible. He raised a lot of stuff, but just addressing that one point, it may be that you could say there's a flaw in the template, because the template didn't strongly direct people towards compassion enough, didn't strongly enough direct people to Buddha's loving kindness and compassion. There was.

[70:28]

The Mahayana is saying that there was in the early teaching, that there was not only the teaching of loving-kindness, but there was also the teaching to remove the template. So the teachings, the Prajnaparamita teachings, were in Buddha's first teachings. So there's one story, he actually did teach those teachings. However, he didn't teach them to... this is one story, he didn't teach them to everybody, because some people, if they hear that teaching, they would become nihilistic. If they hear that teaching, they would not be able to devote themselves to the details, for example, of the precepts, because they would hear that the precepts are empty, of course. So why would they practice empty precepts, they might say. And if they have any doubt about practicing the precepts after they hear that the precepts are empty, they shouldn't have heard that teaching. Does that make sense? No? if you meet somebody and you see them practicing the precepts, or not even practicing the precepts, but you see them start practicing the precepts and then you start, you're talking to somebody and they overhear you talking to this person about the emptiness of all dharmas, including the precepts of course, because precepts are dharmas, and you notice they start smoking dope in the temple, then you say, you know, you shouldn't really be listening to that kind of teaching, you should be practicing the

[71:52]

And the person says, yeah, but all dharmas are empty, man. I say, get out. And he says, yeah, well getting out is empty, yeah, so get out. It is, that's right, but people who aren't ready to have the perfect understanding of emptiness shouldn't hear it. So Nagarjuna said that after he started teaching emptiness, he says, if you're not grounded and familiar with the conventional understanding, you shouldn't hear the teaching of emptiness. It's like handling a dangerous poisonous snake or a sharp sword, you shouldn't be dealing with it. So one story would be that the Buddha would see most people weren't ready to hear such a sophisticated teaching, so he didn't teach it to most people, but he taught it to some people. but he taught it to those people when the other people weren't listening, or he taught it simultaneously, though those who could hear it heard it, but he said it in such a way that those who weren't ready for it didn't hear it. That's one story. And those who could hear it transmitted it and he said, keep it on the QT.

[73:01]

Don't tell other people unless they prove to you that they really have a profound commitment and understanding of the precepts before you tell them about this. And when you teach them this, if they get shaky in their precept practice, tell them to knock off studying this stuff and go back to the precepts. That's one story. The other story is that the Buddha was teaching this material and the people who heard it wrote it down and hid it. And the story, Nagarjuna, he found these scriptures among the Nagas, Dharma protectors, who had been taking care of him for 400 years, not 400, for 600 years, and then he got them for him. That's another version of how these reappeared for Nagarjuna. But even before Nagarjuna, they appeared in the world. And another story would be that disciples of Buddha after about 400 years were able to enter into, they were well enough grounded, it was clear enough that Buddhism was like really into precepts.

[74:04]

All these monasteries, you know, all these monks getting kicked out of monasteries when they didn't follow the precepts. It was clear that they really were sincere about the precepts. Then in that context this Mahayana comes out, which takes the rug out of everything and they can continue to practice the way. and these Bodhisattvas are able now to receive these teachings which didn't appear before but they can receive them in meditation and put them out there and they sense that these are exactly the kind of teachings that are necessary to take away this heavily kind of elitist scholarly approach which is very effective but it's hard to present that at the same time you're presenting compassion teachings. These wisdom teachings in some sense make it hard to present the compassion teaching at the same time, because the wisdom teachings are basically taking away all these beings that you're being compassionate towards. But the other thing you said was maybe there's something wrong with the template, but it may be that the template was good enough for the people at the time, but later when their practice deteriorated, they needed a different template.

[75:19]

With the Buddha there, people understood, and so you didn't have to explain all this stuff. Just like with the Buddha there, At first, they didn't really need a lot of precepts. The first people that were with Buddha, Buddha did not teach precepts right away, he taught wisdom. But these five guides that were with him were right with him, you know, they weren't kind of like a fool around right in the presence of the Buddha. Just like at Tassajara, I remember, you know, there were some people who when they were near Suzuki Roshi, they were like these pure children, you know. they were soft and gentle and he looked at them and he said, �This is like Mr. Purity or Miss Purity.� And then so he would nominate these people who were close to him in which he saw how wonderful they were, he would nominate them for various monastic leadership positions and then people would say, �Rosie, this is not a good idea,� you know, and he would say, �Why not? They seem good to me.� He said, �Well, because they did satchinsaka.� He said, �They did?�

[76:20]

Yeah, when they get like 15 feet away from you, they start doing that stuff. They do? Oh, well then maybe they shouldn't be the director, or whatever. Not to say the directors were pure, but when you're near your teacher, you don't necessarily do heavy drugs. Maybe a little sugar, but you know. So when the Buddha was around, and everybody was like real near to her, Nobody was messing around. But when the Sangha got bigger, like some people were like hundreds of yards away, you know, in the big groups, and they were back there smoking dope, you know, and stuff like that, you know, doing all kinds of mean things to each other. And then somebody run up from far away, excuse me, Lord Buddha, somebody has a confession to make to you. Yes, okay, what? Baba, oh my God. Well, it's time to have some precepts. And before that time, I tell this story, the Buddha told the story to his monks.

[77:24]

He told them about these six Buddhas before Buddha, you know, that we chant, and he was explaining that three of them, all of them, you know, would just go out in the woods or whatever and they'd meet people and they'd go, hmm, want a little Dharma? And they'd say, yeah, and they'd give it to them and they'd wake up. They all had this ability to wake people up, not to say they woke up everybody they ever met, but When they saw somebody they thought was ripe, they would offer Dharma and these people would wake up. They'd just do the right thing for the right person or the right thing for the person. And they're all successful that way. They were Buddhas. But he said some of them had teachings which lasted for a short time and some of them had teachings which lasted for a long time. And Shariputra says, well, what's the difference between the ones that last a long time and the ones that last a short time? The Buddha said, well, the ones that last a short time are ones where they gave the teaching just person by person without giving them a kind of set of discipline around precepts. And the ones that last a long time had precept systems.

[78:24]

He said it's like if you take a bunch of sticks and balance them on each other, like in a tipi, and don't put a rope around them, after a while they fall down. But if you pile them up and put a rope around it, they're much more stable. That make sense? A tipi without any tie around it, that won't stay balanced for very long. Stay a little while, you can keep it up there, right? Maybe get a few knots holding them up together. But if you make a nice strong band about it, it's pretty stable, actually. So Shakyamuni says, well, let's have the precepts then, so your teaching will last a long time. And Shakyamuni said, the teacher will decide when the precepts are going to be given. and then he explained when he would give the precepts and he said when the group gets very big, when the group becomes very affluent and so on. When these conditions arise, then we'll need the precepts because I won't be able to keep track of everybody. And so when the group did get big, these infractions, these strange behaviors, they weren't infractions yet, these strange, unhelpful behaviors started to happen.

[79:30]

He heard about them, and he says, okay, I've got to have a precept against that. No, that's not... So they made... Then after that, they were making infractions of the precepts. So as the group got pretty big, they got pretty bad. But then they made precepts, so they got pretty good again. so on. So at first the teaching might have been just fine for the group, but it wasn't such that it protected against all the misunderstandings that would develop later as Buddhism took over most of India. So then Mahayana had to come and I would say rediscover the true spirit that was there before, but which they didn't have to be so clear about, because when you actually have the The Buddha doesn't have to say compassion is part of it. You can see it and you can feel it. And when you see it and feel it, you want to practice precepts quite naturally.

[80:31]

You don't even have to be told the precepts. You kind of know. It's kind of funny to be mean to the person next to you when you're with the Buddha. Does that make sense? Like you're kind of like, hi Buddha, I want to be nice to you, you're nice to me. Let's be mean to this person. This person is nice to you. I'm nice to you. You're nice to her. you're nice to me and I'm going to be mean to her and she's going to be mean to me." No, that doesn't make sense, right? If Buddha's nice to you and you're nice to Buddha and Buddha's nice to her and she's nice to Buddha, then you should be nice to each other, right? But if you get far enough away, well then we need a precept. Be as nice to the other people, treat the other people in the Sangha like you treat Buddha. That's what Buddha said, treat them like they're me. even if they're like sick and rotting and whatever. If they're Sangha members, take care of them as though you would take care of me." But he had to say that after they didn't. He didn't know they weren't going to take care of each other, but he didn't tell them to, so they didn't.

[81:35]

I mean, not that they always didn't, but when the Sangha got really big, he found people in the Sangha who weren't being taken care of. And he went back and said, how come you're not taking care of them? He said, well, you didn't tell us to. always when you find a monk who's like up at the verge of death, take care of him. Even if they're like really maggot-ridden. So I don't think, you know, it isn't necessarily a defect, it just wasn't necessary to tell people this stuff at first because of the presence of the teacher. But later, later it was. So those early monks, you know, had it good. It was nice at that time. It was really kind of a nice time there, to be there with Buddha. They were happy. And when he left, they weren't that happy. But he actually thought that would help for him to leave, so he left. Yes? the Zen Center being Mahayana, people are presented quite, maybe in the first day of the second turning.

[82:44]

How do you feel about that? I mean, it seems like it could be. I'm just wondering how you feel about that as a teaching or people should be presented actually at the first turning first. My experience is that the Heart Sutra isn't a problem until people actually start studying and understanding it. Because most people read it and they say, oh, all five skandhas are empty, but then they don't think, well, they don't have to practice the precepts. They just go... But if they actually start to understand this, as you start to understand the significance of all five skandhas are empty, then the danger starts to manifest. And people start getting scared at that point, when they actually start to understand what's being said there. Because at first when you understand emptiness, all five skandhas are empty, or form is emptiness, emptiness is form, I don't see that people immediately think that morality is not an issue when they hear that, but when they start to understand that, then that's when it really gets dangerous, when they actually start to understand a little bit.

[83:46]

Understanding it not at all, which is the way most people are for a long time, you know, here comes the heart suture again. But when you start to go, here comes the hard suiters, now I can do anything I want, because I understand emptiness. Then we got danger. And then the teacher says, okay, knock it off. So, in the knock it off, would it be good to go back to the precept study, or would it be good to move on to the third turning, get grounded? Go back to the precepts. Take two steps backward. Captain, may I? Yes, you may. Take two steps backward. I didn't say you could take two steps backward without asking me. That wasn't the two steps I meant. That actually was two steps to the side that you took there. In other words, enter discipline again, because you think you can do whatever you want now that you've heard about emptiness. It's like, how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've heard of emptiness? And the way you keep them down on the farm after they've heard emptiness is basically by being kind to them.

[85:02]

They'll stay and do the farm work instead of flying free beyond the precepts. If you're really nice to them, you know, they'll stay. So you have to be really kind to people and patient with them when they think they can do whatever they want. Now, you don't have to, but that encourages them to do the hard work of really getting grounded in the first turning. But now it's probably nine o'clock, right? Past nine o'clock. So next time maybe we'll start by reading the chapter five of the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra, in which you will see Mahayana Avidharma. You'll see, in the beginning you're going to see Mahayana Avidharma, which is going to sound a lot like the first turning, Abhidharma, with some alterations in terms of introducing the ālaya-vijñāna, and then at the end you're going to see the template taken away.

[86:08]

So we'll start with that. And actually, also maybe we could give you that chapter. It's a nice chapter. It's short and we can have it on one piece of paper. So maybe we could give people that chapter next week and they could take it home and do you know what with it. Chapter 5. I say, take it home and do you know what with it. And I said that in lecture one time to somebody and he thought I was telling him to do something obscene with it. But what I mean is, you can memorize it. if you want to. Chapter 5, Samyama Chana Sutra, about how bodhisattvas are wise with respect to mind, consciousness, and intellect.

[87:13]

How bodhisattvas are wise with respect to, in Sanskrit, what are those three things? Huh? Huh? Citta, manas, and vijnana. That's what they are. So it's straight Mahayana Abhidharma, but the thing that completes it is that when actually you can't find them anymore. In other words, you realize their emptiness. So once again, I just say that this Mahayana Abhidharma is not really different than the early one, except that there's a clear message that it's coming from the Bodhisattva of love. And so it doesn't say compassion all over the place, but it's written by a person who wrote all these texts about compassion and has all this relationship with the Bodhisattva of love.

[88:15]

So we need to keep in touch with that. That's really the essential thing that makes it Mahayana, is this thing. Marci is saying, wouldn't somebody on individual vehicle who has finished the course also have compassion for all beings? And I would say, yeah, they would have that. But the Shravakayana, as it's approaching that point, doesn't mention the vow to save all beings. But at the end of that course, you would realize that now you need to be a Bodhisattva. Now you need to move into applying your knowledge for the welfare of all beings. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[89:20]

Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become. Excuse me.

[90:26]

The instruction was the request was changed from be quiet to be completely silent. Okay. So now the Eno is saying, the Eno more harshly is saying, complete silence. The guest manager is saying, be considerate and gentle and kind. And I'm saying, would you please give me any feedback you'd like on this difficult course?

[90:52]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ