Last week I kind of emphasized the perspective, some of the perspectives of early Zen teachers who were cautioning people, number one, about, not caution, concerned about not falling into stages. So lots of stages and steps in this picture we just looked at. So the Zen... The early Zen ancestors were very concerned about not getting stuck in stages or getting, you know, greedier about these stages. And even some Chinese masters who taught these stages still try to emphasize that this presentation doesn't have to be seen as gradual. Like, if you watch a child grow up, you can see the child gradually growing up.

[01:04]

But you can also view the child in each moment as realizing what they are, realizing what they are, realizing what they are, and they keep changing. And it's possible to impute onto this being, which then changes, and then so on, a gradual process of maturing. But it's also possible to see that every stage this being is realizing itself, realizing itself, realizing itself. And there's no superiority over later realizations in comparison to earlier realizations. So I think a lot of it's easy to see that a one-and-a-half-year-old is not inferior to a two-year-old. They're both wonderful stages of life.

[02:07]

But each one is like fully, fully wondrous, inconceivably beautiful in itself. But we can put this together with our mind and make it into a gradual process or even into better and worse. Like, I like the one and a half year old better than the two year old or something like that. Or I like the baby more than the teenager or something like that. And I'm not saying teenagers are better than babies, but I've heard that if a parent loses a teenager, the psychological trauma is greater than if they lose a baby, even though they may hate the teenager they lost. Biologically speaking, to lose a matured offspring is like it really totally trashes your nervous system.

[03:10]

And it's the greatest insult that finally the whole thing has reached its fruition and then you lose it. It's very terrible. So teenagers are not less good than these beautiful babies, even though they're covered with pimples. you know, psychic disturbances. They're equally beautiful from the point of view of the mind which doesn't impute discriminations and hold on beings. So part of the way I'm thinking about the Zen practice is that it conveys to us a confidence in the non-duality of Buddhas and sentient beings. And with the confidence of the resource of that non-duality, we feel great.

[04:16]

And we're even interested then to practice this extremely challenging bodhisattva path. Without the kind of encouragement, if you start getting into the details of what's required here, a lot of people just might throw up their hands and say, I give up, I don't want to be a bodhisattva, it's just too hard. Just like some people throw up their hands when they find out how difficult it is in Zen to just accept non-duality. In other words, accept what's going on. and without meddling with it. So practicing not defiling things is pretty difficult, and also practicing this bodhisattva path as laid out here is difficult. So we do need to have the inspiration and, you know, we do need a lot of inspiration to practice Zen.

[05:17]

And if we're going to practice bodhisattva way without going to the Zen gate, we'd have to get our inspiration somewhere else, which again comes from this wonderful thing called bodhicitta, that you actually wish to follow this course. Now I spent a little bit of time with you looking at the yoga of compassion. And if you're practicing Zen and you're practicing not defiling your true nature, Then you can also practice at the same time, of course, compassion and train yourself at compassion. And so I mentioned that before and talked a little bit about that before.

[06:25]

That's an ongoing part of the practice. It isn't that you do that practice and stop when the bodhicitta arises. Of course, that practice is included in the means later. But any questions on the initial training in compassion, in the yoga of compassion? Any questions on that this time? And then the next one, the yoga, bodhicitta. So there's a yoga practice there in the sense of being one-pointed about this mind, if it has arisen. Caring for, constantly caring for the bodhicitta, just as you constantly care for compassion, step by step.

[07:29]

Never feeling separate from it. In other words, always thinking about Buddha. Always thinking about Buddha. The arising of bodhicitta, in some sense, it arises spontaneously, but sometimes it's said to be arise spontaneously when we meet Buddha face to face. So meeting Buddha face-to-face, we wish to become Buddha for the welfare of all beings, and then we continue to think about that all the time. And the meeting with Buddha face-to-face in the past, present, or future, again, really encourages us to keep thinking about Buddha, to keep thinking about Supreme Perfect Enlightenment to just think about this one thing.

[08:47]

So that's one way, another way to understand Judy's one-finger Zen is just always think of Buddha. Always think of Buddha. No matter what people say. Remember Buddha and Buddhadharma. So this is part of the yoga. of bodhicitta. Another part of the yoga of bodhicitta is to practice compassion, to practice skill and means which develop bodhicitta. And then the other part of practicing and protecting bodhicitta, caring for bodhicitta besides thinking about it, is to move on to the next stage, which is developing wisdom, because wisdom is the unsurpassable protector of the bodhicitta. I'm just trying to emphasize in the sense of meditating on it, meditating on compassion and also uniting with it, and also point out that this is a yoga practice.

[10:14]

and eventually enter into the samadhi of yoga, or practice samadhi, the samadhi of yoga, the samadhi of compassion, and also in practicing samadhi, that you're always inviting and accepting Buddha's compassion into your samadhi. So that's, you're practicing the samadhi in the form of yoga, I mean yoga in the form of samadhi, okay? And then in addition, you dedicate your samadhi to compassion, you welcome compassion into your samadhi, and you also vow and hope that compassion will emerge from the samadhi while you're sitting, but also in all activity that follows from the samadhi. This is the kind of yoga that I just mentioned. Okay? It's a type of yoga. I'm trying to get us used to using yoga in some sense in a wider way than we're used to.

[11:28]

I think a lot of people feel that it is a cognate with the Indo-European root, yoke. So yoga has two possible etymologies. One is to yoke, to unite, to join. So one meaning of it is to join the mind, which means to heal the mind, make it whole again, but also join the practices of joining sentient beings and Buddhas. They're already joined, and mind's already joined, but because of ignorance, because of ignoring this joinedness, this is enjoying our innate yogic state, We need to practice yoga to return to Buddha, to return to the non-duality of our life in Buddha, to return to the non-duality of mind and object. So the yoga practices, in a sense, are the things which revitalize and reestablish non-duality.

[12:40]

So samadhi, in some sense, is the highest form of yoga. I mean, I say in some sense, in many yoga systems, samadhi is the final form of yoga. But even hatha yoga, I think ha and tha mean right and left nostril. So hatha yoga also means to unite the two sides of your breathing process. which are usually kind of like split for most people, even though of course they are basically united. So we actually have to do exercises with our body and breath to like bring our two nostrils sort of into harmony again, and that's part of what Hatha Yoga is about, and that is the foundation for doing the same thing with our mind.

[13:43]

Okay, and then the next part is about these three kinds of wisdom, these three ways that wisdom arises. And the first one is kind of, I guess, simpler. Just like this class, in a sense, is an example of working on wisdom through listening and studying together questions and answers. And, you know, you may actually sometimes experience that you come to a class and you And you listen for a while and you don't understand and then you listen a while longer and suddenly you change, you know, something arises in you and you understand something which you didn't understand a few minutes before even though you kind of wanted to and you were kind of following along but you didn't get it and suddenly, boom, you get it and you're a new person.

[14:55]

You'd be a new person anyway, but you're a new person with... your mind has been transformed, actually, and you can actually experience that. The next kind of wisdom comes through analysis, and this type of work is somewhat unfamiliar in most Zen centers, even in this Zen center. So here we have our critical faculties come to bear. Now, I'm not saying that no critical activity would occur in the earlier stage where you're where you're hearing the teaching and maybe wondering.

[15:58]

For example, you might wonder about some of these same points that I mentioned here under the second kind of wisdom. In other words, you might wonder when you're hearing a teaching whether it's an interpretable teaching or a definitive teaching. And you might ask that and find out that it was an interpretable or a definitive teaching. And matter of fact, you probably would need to learn what interpretable and definitive teachings are. So then after you learn that, you yourself could analyze the teaching, some teaching you're looking at, according to that. Okay? So here we are. I guess we should do that. I don't know if we should, but we could do that now. If you're ready. Yeah. Okay. Well, so there's these two types of teachings.

[17:05]

One type of teaching, in a sense, is it's closely related to what we usually would call conventional truth. That's the interpretable or implicit truth. So if you look at the Buddha's early teachings, he talked about stories like, well, I did this and I did that, and I went here and I went that, or the farmer did this and the farmer did that, and he told a lot of stories. And then occasionally, not too often, he would mention that... This is not actually Dharma, what he said there. It's more just accommodation to conventional language so people can understand the principle he's trying to demonstrate by the example.

[18:06]

When he would criticize in that way, the criticism actually is rather definitive. The criticism is that talking this way about me doing such and such a thing, there actually was no me there doing it, but I talked that way so that people could understand what I was trying to, you know, some principle I was trying to teach. Most teachings... Most Buddhist teachings are of the interpretable type. The non-interpretable type are the teachings of selflessness, teachings of emptiness.

[19:11]

They're definitive. They're explicitly what they're saying. What they're saying is actually what they are. But the other ones are saying that things are a certain way, but actually that's interpretable. In other words, you can say, well, they're saying this this way, but actually it doesn't really mean that they're that way. This is just the way they appear to be. Mm-hmm. A lot of it is. It says, you know, there are egg-born and so on and so forth, but then it doesn't say... It doesn't say that... That's an interpretable teaching, that there's egg-born, moisture-born, womb-born, and spontaneously-born.

[20:13]

That's interpretable. The teachings that there's rebirth is interpretable. Even teachings of karma, which are so important in Buddhism, to set the stage for our practice, so we can live together and practice together. We have to have these conventional teachings about karma and rebirth, but they're interpretable. But when they say harmonies of Buddha fields are interpretable, so when they say harmonies of Buddha fields, harmonies of Buddha fields, there's no harmonies of Buddha field how they're taught by the Tathagata. That part's definitive. Therefore we say harmonies of Buddha fields. Therefore we speak an interpretable language. The same with merit. Merit is interpretable. So all these skill and means that are part of the bodhisattva's religious practice, they're basically in the realm of the interpretable.

[21:23]

That's why they have to be under the guidance of the definitive understanding, the wisdom of definitive truth, of definitive meaning, so that we don't get misled by these practices of virtue. But definitive meaning without an interpretable meaning would be pointless. It would be inaccessible. There'd be no way to talk to beings. So we need both. We need to keep aware of which one we're looking at. And the definitive and also interpretable source for this teaching of definitive and interpretable is the Sambhinirmocana Sutra. Sambhinirmocana Sutra. Do you all have reading lists?

[22:25]

Okay, it's right at the top of the reading list under the Indian sources. Sambhinirmocana Sutra. So there's three English translations available now. Are they all in the library? Yeah. And we have a blackboard. And there's probably some chalk around here somewhere, I bet. There used to be a lot of chalk, but now I don't see any chalk anymore. Okay. And then there used to be... There still is a box, but... See that box? And now? Do you want me to write something anymore, Chana? Okay, I won't then. My handwriting is not that interesting.

[23:25]

Okay? So, we're looking at the second type of wisdom, all right? Yes? I just want to check, when you said talking, if there's something new there, then that would be the interpretable? Yeah, right. Yes, yes? The four levels of samadhi, atma, jnana, interpretable? Yes. Are the four levels interpretable? Definitely. Go ahead. Those are not definitive teachings. What's the percentage in Dogen? I would say there's more definitive working through what he's doing, I would say, in such a way as to cause more havoc with the conventional.

[24:50]

than sometimes what you see in Shakyamuni's teaching because I guess Dogen feels people can stand it now. But the interpret, the definitive is working in Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching but he's just deciding to put it out the the definitive is working through his teaching but he's deciding to put out lots of interpretable teachings partly because he's just starting out with these people right they never seen anything like this before so he's he's being easy on them but after uh 1700 years Dogen can let loose a little bit more and let the definitive cause certain havoc with the interpretable. But unless Dogen is directly talking about emptiness, he's also working with the interpretable. But in some sense, he has certain creative license at that point in history that makes you feel like you're not reading conventional speech.

[25:51]

So it seems more difficult in a way than the Buddha's teaching, in a way. Yes? Do I mean that isn't skillful means? Well, the talk... The actual talk is skillful means. So the actual language that the definitive is presented in is interpretable in its skill and means. But the actual definitive meaning is not skill and means. It's realization. So it's actually definitive realization. It's emptiness itself we're talking about. It's not a mental construct. Mental constructs are interpretable you can interpret the word emptiness. So, when you're reading, even reading teachings about emptiness, you should, you have to like tell the difference between the word and the emptiness.

[26:59]

The emptiness is the definitive meaning, not the word emptiness. Is the realization of emptiness and the linguistic description of emptiness separate? Yes. Well, not separate. No, not separate, no. So they're empty. They're dependent on each other. They're dependent on each other, I would say. But emptiness is not a linguistic construct. It's not a mental construct. But you can have a mental construct pointing to the ultimate. How can something be definitive but also dependent? That's the middle way. It's definitive and it's dependent.

[28:02]

The emptiness is not compounded It's not uncompounded. It's not non-existence and it's non-existence. Now, it is the lack of inherent existence, but the lack of inherent existence is not non-existent, nor is it existent. But if you make emptiness exist, then its existence will be interpretable. Now another part of this, so this kind of wisdom, this kind of analysis, again will be that you're actually doing this work yourself. And another part of this work, which the bodhisattvas do inwardly in this phase of wisdom,

[29:10]

is they understand the various Buddhist schools. Fortunately, all you've got to do is understand four of them. But they have some sub-schools. So that's also part of this type of wisdom. In order to do that analysis of the different schools, you have to also probably learn in school about the different schools. And the four schools are something which I can tell you about when you're ready. Maybe someday you'll be ready. I'm not in a hurry. Yes? Yes? What's the point? The point is so that you can use them and also transcend them.

[30:26]

And they're useful because they help you understand because they liberate you. So each one liberates you from a lesser understanding. Okay? So each school, the first school is a Buddhist school. It liberates you from an understanding which isn't as sophisticated as the basic Buddhist position. on certain kinds of reality. So lesser understandings, or you could say greater ignorances, you're relieved of, first of all, at the level of hearing and studying, and second of all, at the level of actually contemplating and analyzing in your own mind. And then finally, at the level of yogic mental one-pointedness with this teaching. And then the next stage will liberate you from the previous stage, which liberates you from all the other ones.

[31:32]

And then the third stage will liberate you from the second, and then the fourth stage will liberate you from all the previous ones. And finally, you know, you have been liberated from all ignorance. So that's what schools are for. So can you just jump into the fourth one? Well, in some sense, in some sense, that's part of what I think... the Zen school and Mahamudra in the Vajrayana tradition, that's part of what Zen is trying to do, is that you jump into the fourth, okay? So that you can enter into, for example, the Heroic March Samadhi, which is the Samadhi of the Buddha. So you can jump right into Buddha's mind. Buddha has no problem of us entering and realizing the Buddha mind. It's not like you haven't done your homework, can't come in here. No, you're already in there.

[32:34]

It's fine to realize it. And once you're in that samadhi, you immediately understand all the teachings. Okay? But then, after that's happened and you're in the fourth, then you might want to understand how useful the previous three are. Because the fourth is... A lot of people can't get liberated from the previous ones or the ones before them by the fourth. If you tell them about the fourth, they just go, weird. Or if they would get excited about it, they wouldn't be ready for it. So it is possible that someone might be ready for the fourth. But then even that person still as a bodhisattva wants to understand the earlier ones because that person wants to know how to help people who aren't ready for the fourth. So you still have to go back and learn all of them. even though you might be able to jump right in.

[33:39]

And also when you understand the fourth, you also understand the previous ones are right there too. They didn't go anywhere. It's just that they've been transcended. You see their limits and you're no longer holding to them. They are rafts which you used and which you know how to use later if anybody needs them. Is that all? Or Rosie? The other Rosie? Well, maybe not. Oh, okay. How did it get answered? Well, I was thinking that some of the work of analysis and the work of understanding is intellectual, and I was wondering if that isn't so, and if that had to do with some of these earlier schoolwork and stages and... Yes, that's what this is about.

[34:40]

These three levels of wisdom, in a sense, the first two are intellectual. The first one is intellectual, like between you and your teacher, between you and the scriptures. You read the scripture, you look in the glossary, you learn the words, you study, you express your understanding, you get feedback, you ask questions, blah, blah, blah. That's intellectual work. The next level is also intellectual, but now, no teacher, no book, just inside. You're like, kind of like, you're really like, you're like, you can work on this stuff yourself all the time. It's, you know, it's portable. So it's, you know, it's deeper. And... This has to be inward, which I'll just tell you a little bit right now. This has to be inward because later in the meditation phase of wisdom, after you develop calm, then part of your work of observing objects is that you now are going to do the same work you did

[35:53]

in inner pondering intellectually about these different schools and these different, you know, teachings of how to liberate beings from various levels of ignorance, you're going to be doing that in a state of mental one-pointedness. So you're going to go over the same territory that you did in the third kind of wisdom. You're now going to do it, excuse me, in the second kind of wisdom. You're going to take what you learned there and what you learned how to ponder and reflect on and analyze there, but now you're going to do the analysis in a state of Samadhi. The first time you did Samadhi, you did the analysis, it was intellectual, sort of in your street clothes. Now you're going to be in your yogi clothes. So it's going to be much deeper. But you sort of need to learn how to do this in a class, and then by thinking about it by yourself, so that when you actually go into tranquility and concentration, you've already learned this, so stuff can be brought up in a state of concentration easily.

[36:57]

You mean you deliberately bring it up? You deliberately bring it up. So that you, well, you know, this is like, just like magic, you know, you're going to become these schools without any attachment to them. You're going to become the unattached carrier of all these teachings. They're going to be like, you're going to be, like, it's going to be part of your nervous system now with no attachment to it. And just, and also... This is also connected with these other practices which aren't so intellectual. They're somewhat intellectual. I mean, there has to be some intellect to figure out where to, you know, give the person the oatmeal. That's somewhat intellectual. The person says, oatmeal, please. That's, you know, you understand what they mean. That's somewhat intellectual. It's also somewhat interpretable. That's not a definitive kind of interaction. Okay? But it's somewhat intellectual.

[37:58]

But it's also mostly like feeling, probably. Okay? An emotion, the emotion of joy, of giving. I would say the means are more emotional and feeling. And the intellect is serving it. Well, hopefully serving it and guiding it. And you're developing your intellect over on the side of the wisdom. And finally making your insight... And finally joining your intellect into a state of mental stabilization. So your intellect is like really peace... It's your high energy intellectual activity while being calm. High level... intellectual intensity with stability and ease and flexibility and non-attachment and non-duality.

[38:59]

So now this is really like... Now this is a wonderful conveyor for these teachings, not to mention that this wisdom then can also be used to guide all the virtues. And the virtues give energy and enthusiasm to the practice of the wisdoms. Yes, Lynn and then Emmanuel. I didn't really speak of them yet. I said I would at some point if you want me to. But, you know, it's a big step to start speaking of them, and you may not want to in this lifetime. Yes? That was kind of like Suki lifetime. Did I miss something? No, you didn't. I didn't talk about the four schools. But I could just quickly say at the end, and then if you want to, we can go into some detail later. But I didn't actually mention them because I just thought, you know, that would be taking a big step deeper into the third type of, the second type of wisdom, the wisdom arisen from intellectual analysis of the teachings.

[40:19]

The reason I ask that question is that this is something the Buddha often has to know. Right. I'm recommending it over the long haul. If you want to be a Buddha, if you want to be a Buddha, and if you'd like to be a Buddha sort of on a par with the one we have in this world system, then you might want to be able to convey at least all the wonderful teachings that the Buddha and his disciples came up with, right? And they came up with these four wonderful schools with, as I mentioned, a number of subsets, which are very interesting, I think. And these subsets are actually subsets of ways of understanding reality. They're actually subsets of wisdom, subsets of insight. So, if you want to be a Buddha, then gradually you would come to realize, well, you want to learn all the different kinds of samadhis that the Buddha learned, well, all the different jhanas, well, all the different kinds of giving, well, all the different kinds of patience, well, all the different kinds of indulgence, well,

[41:33]

Then little by little you say, okay, well, I'll work on the samadhis now. Do you want to learn all the different levels of epistemological transcendence that the Buddha had? You say, well, what's the first one? So yeah, I'm trying to be gentle here about bringing up the scope. That's why I'm saying we need to practice sort of not getting stuck in the stages, otherwise when we hear about the stages we can either get really excited and then poop out quite quickly, or we can get really scared about how difficult it would be to embark on this exhaustive training course. That's why I kind of want you to, like, beg me to do this before I do it. Emanuel, I think, was next. What kind of fortune to this type of work be done in conjunction with me and whatever comes fully with the body and mind?

[42:50]

Well, if you want to be a bodhisattva by any chance, then as a bodhisattva you maybe make a vow that you would like to save all sentient beings and that the Dharma gates are boundless and you would like to enter them all. And then you might say, by the way, now that I've agreed on entering these Dharma gates, what are they again? You say, well, some of them are like skill and means. And then you might say, well, what are the skill and means? And I say, would you please just stop for a second? And you say, yes. Are you relaxed, Emmanuel? And you say, totally. I'm so relaxed. It's wonderful. And I still want to hear about these skill and means. And I say, well, a person who's giving, you say, great, how do we do it? I say, are you still relaxed? You say, yeah. So you're joyful and you start practicing giving, but you're still relaxed. And you say, this is fantastic.

[43:58]

I'm relaxed. Actually, I don't have to be tense to give. It's wonderful. I'm just giving myself left and right. It's just great. So actually, this being relaxed, meeting whatever comes with relaxation, actually should help you practice giving, make it flow more nicely and more steadily without lots of outflows. But some people might be practicing meeting whatever comes with complete relaxation. They're trying to practice that way, but they haven't yet said, I want to be a bodhisattva, so they haven't yet heard about these practices. But if they do want to be a bodhisattva, then this practice goes very nicely to facilitate these. Because that practice actually is, in a sense, has a feeling of wisdom because you're relaxed about these practices. In other words, you have no sense of getting a hold of them, you know. That practice helps you keep purified as you move along. And still you can develop your wisdom more, endlessly, of course, but they should go nicely together.

[45:02]

And the proportion is that basically the one should be there, I would say, with all the others. So you should continue this basic practice all the time. That was pretty good. That was nice begging. Yeah. That was good. She wants to hear about the four schools. Can I just mention a little bit to her? I'd like to hear all four. Okay. I'll just mention the names of the four schools. Maybe I'll even give you a little handout on them. Are you relaxed? Are you relaxed? All right, good. In fact, can we stay in your chair? Good. So the four schools are, well, the Vaibhashika or the Sarvastavadana, and the Satrantika, and the Yogacara, and the Madhyamaka. Those are the four schools.

[46:05]

Well, the first one, I gave it two names. What was the second after that? Satrantika. Sa? Saultrantika. Sa? Sa? Saultrantika. Okay, and some of you know for a few years I taught Abhidharma here at Zen Center. I still study Abhidharma. I've been studying Abhidharma for 33 years. And Abhidharma, for example, is very closely connected to those first two schools. So, one name of the first school is Vibhashika. Vibhashika, and it gets its name, the name Vibhashika.

[47:07]

Can you read it? Can you see the letters? Huh? So, the, sorry, it comes from Vibhasha. Vibhasha. You heard of Vibhashibhutsu? Huh? This is different. Vibhasha is sometimes also called the Mahavibhasha. The Vibhasha is a very big commentary on all the basic Abhidharma books in Sanskrit. So there was a school which specialized on that huge commentary on the seven Sanskrit Abhidharma books. And Abhidharma is the scholastic summary of all the Buddhist doctrines. of the early Buddhist doctrine. So the way the early Buddhists scholastically systematized the Buddhist teaching was called Abhidharma, and the Vibhasha or Mahavibhasha was the big commentary on that.

[48:20]

And there was a school which specialized on that text, so they were called Vibhashika. go from Vibhasha to Vibhashika, means of the Vibhasha. Okay? This goes also sometimes called the Sarvastivadan. Sarvasti Vada. Sarva means all. Asti means exist and vada means school. It's the school that everything exists. In other words, it's a realist school. Okay? So I'll stop there. This is just going to be an introduction, okay? So that's the first school. It is like, it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful system. It's the most, the Savastavadan philosophical presentation is the most sophisticated of all Buddhism, actually.

[49:25]

Very brilliant scholastic rendition of the Buddha's teaching, interpreted from the point of view of realism, which I can go into what that means later, if you want to. The next school, number two, is Satrantika. S-A-U-S-A-U-P-R-A-N-T-I-K-A. Sautrantika. And that comes from sutra. So sutra, sutra, and of the sutra, sautra. So Sautrantika are the people of the sutra. So the Sautrantika criticized the Vaibhashikas. So it's a critical, it's a criticism of their realistic position. So the second school transcends the first.

[50:27]

And the text that I often was teaching at Zen Center was called the Abhidharma Kosha Bhasha. And Abhidharma Kosha Bhasha It is a text which was, I'll tell you later. But anyway, that was the text, and that text is Vasubandhu's text, where he takes the Sautrantika position and criticizes the Vibhashika position, where he shows the transcendence of the early form of Buddhist scholasticism in his text. He didn't actually start the school, but that school was living in his time, and he took the point of view of that school and applied it and used it to criticize the earlier school. The third school, and these schools are considered the schools of what we call the individual vehicle or the Shravakayana, the vehicle of those who listen. The first two are the individual vehicle or Shravakayana schools.

[51:35]

And starting with number three, you have the Mahayana philosophy schools. And the first one, and number three is listed as number three because in terms of epistemological transcendence, it transcends number two. So it's called the Yogacara. Now, all schools of Buddhism, of course, can be called Yogacara because all schools of Buddhism are Yogacara, which means path of yoga. But this school got that name. It's also sometimes called mind-only school. So this school then transcends the previous one, and then the fourth school is called the Madhyamaka school. or the school of the middle way, and that school transcends the Yogacara school.

[52:39]

So this is a process of epistemological transcendence. Nagarjuna was the fourth one? Is Nagarjuna the fourth one? He's considered the founder of the fourth school. although the Prajnaparamita literature really teaches this position. But in terms of the school, he sort of is the founder of the fourth school of philosophy. So this transition here is one of transcendence of epistemological positions. Epistemology means the study or science or understanding of the ground of knowledge. So prior to the Vibhashika position, there's lots of other epistemologies that it transcended, according to the Buddhist story anyway. But each one of these first three presented an epistemology, in other words, a basis upon which you can have knowledge.

[53:42]

The fourth one took away all the basis upon which you can have knowledge. That's why, historically speaking, the third school came after the fourth one, because the fourth one removed all the basis of knowledge of the previous forms of Buddhism, but it's too big a jump, so the third one came in there and offered a transitional phase. Yes, Todd? Where do devotional Buddhism and Tantra fit in? Can we even consider it school? Tantra and the devotional aspects of Tantra, okay? Both devotional Buddhism, Pure Land or whatever. Well, Pure Land and Tantra are very close, pretty much the same thing in my view. I mean, the same gesture, which is a gesture of devotion, but also a visualization and creating alternative universes. That's what they're about. But Pure Land as a school of Mahayana Buddhism and Tantra as a school of Mahayana Buddhism, all those practices that they do and all those visualizations they do are really just warm-ups for the ultimate teaching of Madhyamaka.

[54:53]

But they also, those bodhisattvas who take those roots also still need to understand the earlier stages. So part of devotion is to be a philosopher. But some people don't need to do as much devotion before they start looking at emptiness. But if you look at all the devotional practices of all the different school forms of Mahayana Buddhism, as they progress, they finally all wind up looking at the same thing. Because all the Mahayana schools the realization, this third point here, it is realization of the definitive, ultimate truth. But in the earlier phases, it may look like, you know, the devotions, you may see some devotions in tantra, pure land, but also in Zen, you may see some devotions where you don't see much sign of emptiness. Now, we have devotion here of chanting the Heart Sutra every day. So there the devotion is, devotion towards the sutra about emptiness. But some of the people who are devoted to chanting that sutra are not looking at emptiness while they're chanting it.

[56:02]

I mean, they've confessed that to me. But, you know, they're warming up to it, right? And that's a devotional practice that they're doing, of reciting a text. But they still haven't actually brought the emptiness into view. Okay? So, anyway, there's lots of devotional practices in Zen, like cleaning toilets, cooking dinner, following the schedule, serving other beings. All that stuff can be done on a devotional basis. But still, there comes a time for wisdom. And then all the schools of Mahayana Buddhism come to the same wisdom. They all agree. In that sense, Nagarjuna is everybody's friend in Mahayana Buddhism. But a lot of people are postponing the meeting until they get a bit more grounded. So those are the four schools. And if you want to go into a little bit more detail.

[57:08]

Now, like I say, the first school, the first school we could spend many years studying the Abhidharma Kosha. So I feel it's a little out of scale here for this practice period. But I at least can mention to you, if you want to, a tiny bit about what's involved there. You know, at least in the level of what epistemology is the Abhidharma Kosha criticizing? So what are the different epistemologies? In other words, what do people think is the basis for our experience in the different schools? That may be... would be give you a feeling, a little bit more feeling for what it is that the bodhisattva is like working to transcend. And what do those transcend? And how, what are the benefits of epistemological transcendence? Well, I'll just tell you beforehand that benefits are liberation from your attachment to the previous ground.

[58:08]

So it's kind of like getting more and more subtle attachments until finally you give it all up and look at the ultimate. So that's the second kind of wisdom, all this type of work. In the second type of wisdom, you would actually have learned this stuff and be contemplating it. You could walk around and check out which epistemology you're working on you know, and, you know, and you could, like, transcend it and move on as you move around. And as you listen to people, you could hear what epistemology they were saying, and you could, like, talk to them about the epistemology that they're holding, and in terms of the epistemology that they're holding, show them this other one, and then they could see how this other one was cooler and how it relieved them of a lot of tension. But you... in order to communicate with them, to show them this superior position, you have to talk to them in terms of the position they have.

[59:14]

I mean, you don't have to, but that's usually the skillful way to do it. You know, speak their language, and then say, okay, and now look at this, and then they can see it, so then they can move up. But you need to sort of be able to carry it yourself in order to do that, and then now with that, But then to take this finally then into the next phase of, you know, samadhi would be, so that would be sort of like what we could work on. Now the other possibility is that, which we haven't done yet in this practice period, is talk a little bit about or spend the rest of the practice period on the first aspect of developing the third type of wisdom, which is developing mental stabilization. But I think probably what I'll do is I'll probably bring up a little of that on...

[60:21]

Saturday, the mental stabilization stuff, because I don't think you want to wait much longer to hear about that, some of you, right? So we'll work on that on Saturday a little bit, but the funny thing is, surprise of surprises to a lot of people, is that actually to move over into insight in the Mahayana, in order to actually do the inside work of a bodhisattva, it involves learning these schools. Because again, in order to help people become free of their ignorance, ignorance means free of their ignoring the highest truth, they have to like, you have to understand the truth that they're working with and see how it relates to other truths and then show them you know, that there's a more sophisticated and helpful way to see it, and let them move out of there, up and up to the highest truth.

[61:28]

And it turns out that these people here, these Buddhists, think that they pretty much mapped out all the different positions. There's pre-Buddhist ones which I won't even talk to you about yet. But they've pretty much got all the different positions that people can take mapped out, so once you learn them, when you meet somebody and say, oh, that's where you are, okay, and you can talk to them about that because you know what that position is. Matter of fact, you can teach a class in that position, which is probably really interesting, too, because that position transcends earlier positions, so it's got a lot of merit. And so on, you know, so it's actually, and this is part of the reason why bodhisattva practices diligence is because you actually love to study this stuff. You have to like work yourself up into a calm froth. about understanding, you know, where people are philosophically, you know? And then, like, guiding them into awareness of their philosophical position and its limitations and showing them the next logical step.

[62:31]

And then helping them make the step and then helping them move beyond that. This is part of the way bodhisattvas work to liberate beings. And, of course, the key thing is that the bodhisattva doesn't really think that there's somebody else there. Because otherwise you get tired of these other people. Yes? Is everybody somewhere philosophically, even if they don't know it? Yeah. The Buddha is a philosopher too. Just that the Buddha knows all these philosophies, including the highest one. And when you know the highest one, you have no attachment to any of them. But even though you have no attachment to them, you have a rafting company, right? You have all these raft rentals here. You know which rafts for which rivers. Don't use that raft for this river. Use this one. And this is a good raft for you. And then you can... The Buddha knows them all, has no attachment to people stealing his rafts.

[63:32]

He gives them away. Huh? Gives them away. But some people don't want him to give them away because they say, if he gives them, there must be something wrong. But if I stole it, it might be good. So anyway, the Buddha is a philosopher. The Buddha... The Buddha is not really a philosopher, but the Buddha... to communicate with people. And it turns out philosophy has something to do with truth. So he understood the truth and then he used philosophy and psychology and yoga to help people get there. And so... It's getting kind of late, so maybe we should stop, don't you think? Yeah. That's why you always keep working on compassion, you know.

[64:38]

Work on compassion in bodhicitta because otherwise, you know, you might not remember that you want to be a bodhisattva.

[64:48]

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