Revealing the Intention of the Buddha

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Samdhinirmochana Mahayana Sutra Chapter 1

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ham radio
ha i see the credit
you people are here for the first time this morning
welcome to know about
and i'm concerned
and for you and for the people who have come here before
because our various causes and conditions have brought me to a place where i wish to start talking about
eh
inconceivably conceivably wonderful
buddha's teaching
which i have been studying for some time
and which i've been discussing for some time
but i now feel that i should come back and start over again and at least go to the beginning parts of this magnificent scripture again and i felt
the maybe this is a good venue for it
handy current painter yeah
so on
one person says bring it on but i'm aware that some other people has i see it coming they may say wait a minute i'm not ready for this
this great teaching
i feel i made a good too
mighty prepare the ground for the planting
have these seeds and i have the intention to continue to talk about this subject or until i get until we get through chapter four
the name of the sutra i in sanskrit is

aria hall yeah sunday near more china nama mahayana sutra
we often people say the shorter version which is some dinner much on a search up
which can be translated into english as the scripture
are revealing or high on tying or unlocking
intention
nearly the scripture on unlocking the intention and the intention is in this case the intention of the buddha
when teaching center is trying to show us what the what the buddha in his
intending to do when the buddha speaks to people
and so
that's the name of the sutra and i heard about this sutra ah for about fifteen years before i was able to read it in english
i heard it referred to and i i sense that a lot of the things i was interested in the buddhist teaching in the tradition of of the my on a lot of his teachings were inspired by this text but it wasn't an english yet
and i thought it was a french saw was starting to make the arrangements to have it translated from from french into english
and then
ah it was published
and nineteen ninety five in english and actually then
soon after it was published in english twice more so i think between about ninety five and ninety seven to we had got three translations of this surgery so we studied the three translations for a number of years

ha
yeah i feel like i'm i'm wanting to prepare the ground and the ground damned wanted to prepares his the ground of your hearts
i want to talk with you and interact with you
ah to test whether your hearts are open to this teaching i don't want to offer it to you
and tell your hearts are open to it because i don't want you to miss the first word
oh however i may not be able to
satisfy my desire
i may have to start discussing the suture before everybody's hearts open to it
who see
so a part of this would be for me to explore with you
this issue of what is the relationship between is between recalls zazen sitting meditation in the zen school was a relationship between that
and the sutras
ramayana sectors in particular the great vehicle teachings for bodhisattvas
what's the relationship between sizing or one relationship that a suzuki roshi spoken of is that zazen is the key which opens
this great teachings
but if you go to these teachings
sort of with his eyes and heart
they opened the open for you
one way to put it that he spoke of
that are zazen or zen practice is the key to these great teachers
and there was the practice or particular are sitting practice prepares us
to receive these teachings and let them enter our life
he also said that zazen
is
he said something like zazen is a tenderizer
zazen tenderize us
i have that experience with myself and other people that
if we sit together and we sit still and quiet
for a while
we become more and more tender
ah you know i often say that at the beginning of a long setting if i would if i rejected was pastures
sometimes i find their backs on how kind of resistant and hard
their backs
almost tell me sometimes don't touch me or i don't want to move or leave me alone
little bit or you know i can't move i gotta i gotta stay in this position otherwise i'm will be able to survive paris kind of toughness i feel at the beginning of the settings
but after several days i feel the backs the bodies of this of the centers of the meditators have become tender
i'm like okay okay you're welcome
i often also use example of if you go to a dry plant and you pour water on it is sometimes just rock and cannot particular potted plant the poor water on it ah the watch the water be
beads on the surface or runs off
but if you spray it
listen water
mine just a bit of humidity it it moistens a surface and gradually the surface becomes moist and could do it again it becomes more moist and i can describe moist if you pour the water on the water just goes right in
so i'm trying to moisten the the ground here
auspiciously
you have been sitting ah for a number of hours already so you're probably a little tenderized by the sitting
he may be even tender enough to be open to me talking about you becoming more tender

auspiciously someone came to talk to me this morning and set i asked her how she was feeling as she said she was feeling
tender
and
when i opened this sutra a day or so ago
i found this piece of paper in it from previous note side had the suture in it
and the notes were from a time when i went to texas and talked about the sutra
in a note on this sort the heading of this page of notes says ways of tenderizing
texas tough guys
and i'm looking at the westbound tough guy spinoff not going to start not ten and top guys ways of tendering taxes toffees
toffees
not to say people in texas and more tough than other places
but most places people are a little bit tough
people in our in this world of suffering
people can like put on some leather or something so some protection from
you walk in the ground we wear a leather on our feet sometimes
but we sometimes do that with our heart to
we sometimes put on some leather or or yeah put on some leather

does that have a friend of mine actually a friend of mine
who is actually ordained as a zen priest and i talk about him in the
in the book being upright
after he was ordained as as and pasties he served took off his robes and stop practicing and he became a drug dealer
dealing cocaine among other things and he also started using of cocaine
and i watched him i watched his like i watched his skin turn to leather
i could just see him getting harder and harder
ah more and more up
a protected from the suffering of this world
he must i love wearing leather jackets to but there were there were like like a symbol of his one has happened to his heart his heart had gotten like tanned and hardened with the drugs and with the selling the drugs
hardening himself and selling other people's things to harden themselves
do this world

huh
why read the note here like years ago on a rota this is great vehicle teachings for the body sanford
when we read them
when i wrote when i've read them they actually helped me get in touch with my resistance
or my toughness
it seems like in a way you know
in some sense you can see they have a teaching but in some sense what with the way their conveyed his is like is kind of like well you try to are you trying to get anything out of the scripture are you reading this by any chance to get anything
because if you are well i will will give you some stuff but probably not what you're looking for and you want to keep reading if you're not gonna get anything
and if you do keep reading we're going to keep offer you the chance to keep reading without getting anything is to make sure that you're not trying to get anything
one keep reading somewhere and get and husband's more time not getting anything
one now see later close the book see later
and i did that with a number of my on scriptures they don't literally say that but they gave me some stuff which i wasn't looking for him which i did not find interesting or informative
so i just saw this is not very interesting i'm not getting anything how this is is like boring
boring as a form of resistance to what's happening this morning
so but i in my case i closed the book
some of these my on researchers i close them
and i i didn't close them like i'm never going to read this again is closed my know i didn't force myself to get going because i was resisting i didn't say keep going even though you're resisting
again how is i resisting i was resisting by being bored and i was also resisting by trying to get something and i wasn't getting anything so i wasn't interested
but i had the kind of intention while i'll come back later maybe
because some of these scriptures i've heard were so important that i
i thought i eventually are probably
come back
and in all cases i did come back
and sometimes when i came back i read while close it again
and then sometimes i ah
came back again and open them closer came back again and then i opened gonna open them the time came when i wasn't resisting anymore
the resistance and i'd become tender
i became ready and the sutra
the surgery the sutra
i took me away and i took the sutra where we we went away together
but i didn't push myself
against my resistance to continue i honored my resistance
and i didn't resist my existence even i was resisting the the sutra
i did but i did keep coming back again and again
i am now when i was talking this person about to
tenderizing i thought for tenderizer so what's i couldn't even watch what's the opposite of tender what's tough right
so like it will need if is tough it's hard to bite into it when you're tenderizer than you is it easy to bite into it
and since some of you are vegetarians i won't go too much further on this image maybe i could use
collard greens
so we had collard greens are going on the other night beautiful organic collard greens got grown and gringotts farm
and they were i tough in a way because you couldn't actually it was very difficult unless you are really what's the word or not unless you really bit hard and energetically was hard actually to bite through them
they were not exactly like leather but sort of
like thin leather
and someone says that you know if you cook them with some lard
they for the tender but we are using use large green gulch
so that we are with these
with the tough collard greens now the advantage of tough is that you get to to a lot
susan it's not you know
toughness is not a bad thing is just something
to tenderize by chewing in some cases
or the case dip it in lard
in case massage it
our pour olive oil on it
lot of possibilities right
or cook it more heat and time
so here we have time i'm times being offered to tenderize you to get you ready for this sutra
and i'm speaking oil on you
and i'm giving you feet
to see if your hearts can become so tender that you're ready for here let your whether you're ready for
whatever
another policy that i often recommend is if you don't understand something or if you're still resisting some teaching memorize it
it can still be resisting it that memorize it and as you learn it by heart
oftentimes your heart will open to it
when i read poetry myself usually i resist poetry in other words i don't understand it somehow i died just some i'm just not able to just walk up to a poem usually
and just like let it in
but if i memorize it in the process of memorization my heart opens to it
the time when i can sometimes sharapova poem the first time
an open to it is when somebody reserve particularly if the author reads it
then i sometimes the first time i hear it my heart opens with the aid of the hotter
when it be nice to hear shakespeare read his place to us

huh
huh
the morning breeze correct
the tree is tenderly
the trembling trees embrace the breeze tanned early
when i came walking by and lost in
so
hey
are we would you say
tell the truth pretty mean
as i did it on his soul
okay

oh
homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas
thus i am heard at one time an the bog alon was dwelling in innumerable palace array is with supreme brilliant
since of the seven precious substances emanating grade rays of light that suffused innumerable universal

these palaces were well appointed
well proportioned
in two distinctive sections
by architectural genius
it was a limitless in reach and impeded and unimpeded mandela's the sphere of activity completely transcending the three worldly realms arisen from the root of supreme
virtue that transcends the world this palace was characterized by perfect wisdom the knowledge of one who has mastery
the abode of the to targeters was attended by a community
of innumerable body surface
it was alive with unlimited numbers of
davis
unlimited numbers of divine beings
naga is rockshox gandharva as i sure as garuda as came naar as mobile as humans and non-humans
this were in the assembly around the buddha
who's pastor
yes they are
the buddha was intended by a community are very big community what was in the community well innumerable bodhisattvas great magnificent compassionate
wise beings innumerable ones were in the community what else is in the community
innumerable
divine beings what else in august what er nog as
ha
naga as are snake a like beings who live in the realm of the water
so buddhism with this when these booties are talking when these booties are teaching this sutra
the in the community around them are serpent like beings who dwell in the realm of water
also yorkshire's around them what are shes yorkshire shards are powerful beings
sometimes magnificent sometimes malignant who live in the earth and in the air and in lower realms buddha is the community that's around these buddhist has these yok in it powerful
beings to know about the powerful beings that live in the air
sometimes
sometimes munificent and sometimes malignant
viruses
for example viruses living in the air and in the earth did they live on air and an earth
apparently are they beneficence
sometimes what we are
we humans here today we have viruses in our genetic code
reticle retroviruses
aids is a retrovirus
but we also have other retroviruses have become part of our code and reproduce and make us what we are part of what we are is the is because our part of our genes are by old the old time viruses
ancient viruses that are in our bodies which no longer live in the planet except in our bodies
and they make us what we are we are built on viruses which the the beneficence of the by viruses has made us able to hear the dharma
there are hot there are however other viruses both regular and retro that are malignant to us that can kill us however if they're smart viruses they will not kill us off because we are their host so are surrounded by some building viruses who keep us around and others step
how can like suicidal viruses they live in the air and an earth and they're in the buddhist community
there are innumerable types a powerful beings living in the air and an earth as surround the buddhist teaching
the community around the buddha is a big
the buddha welcomed everyone to the dharma
just like we
welcome retroviruses into our body to cause our evolution
maybe they make us sick for a while but then we evolve positively
they make us able
to be better body surface
gandharva is gandharva as gandharva is our celestial musicians who live in the air
gandharva means i believe smell eater
the they eat smells and they play music for us when we're in celestial moods
and also according to certain mythology in india and buddhism picked us up in the process of being reborn
human beings are get involved with gandharva is
hmm
we take the we are
they they are part of their part of the way we imagine ourselves came to birth
they're part of the imagine a imaginative process of the consciousness of the birth consciousness
you can read about this new hybridoma culture chapter four
chevy three
i'm serious yeah
when when when a mother and father were the male and female get together
gandharva is
are there
hovering above the birth
choosing the interested in the sexual process and having a preference for one parent over the other and then that causes the birth consciousness and that that that form of relationship of being in touch with the birth opportunity is called sometimes called a gandharva
and there are right now gandharva study around this room
but nobody seemed to be having
offering the opportunity right now
so they probably should go to some other abode
i know the company gandharva stop being a narbonne become tick human birth
are you using the they could be if it if it's over it was over male no animals
huh
this is a story
ah next as a next is
ah next is which one it next is a sure as which sure it means that aren't day hostile assures our cause sometimes called fighting demons are fighting gods
they are what caught they are
their opponents
of the gods they were caught they are they and they wage constant war with the divine beings out of envy
for the bliss of divine beings
ah you know
the a and the the generals you know like julius caesar something julius caesar i ever say what maybe was like a a sure
but are know exactly
but some people are envious of the bliss of divine beings and they're very powerful and they actually almost get there by power
instead of getting into divine realms which are usually you get when you get in his by practicing catholics and concentration
that can give rise to divine forms of existence
and our founder in history shakyamuni buddha was able to actually enter those realms and teach divine beings
he actually
and after after realizing the way realizing the dharma in the evening after the human monks went to bed he would receive divine beings and teach them dharma
and there's some beings who are actually opposing that route and trying to attain know based on i can be the bliss of these beings
there in the boot is assembly
a to the scripture which you may be starting to develop some resistance towards
next comes the maharajas they are large belly demons shaped like boys
who are lords of the soil
and as their i die i got this image of this this this this person who is in one of the early star wars pictures he looks like a huge fat
he offers a name
jabba the hutt yeah something like java the hut he's like the lord of the soil sort of disney the lord of the underground yeah something like that job at the hot favourite buddha's during the buddha's or assemblies lords of the soil or there was also this movie many years ago about this huge underground worm don't
come up out of the ground physical
what
do yeah like do yeah it's like a things in do but the animal wouldn't call do right
the a sandwich
you know sand sandworms
sandworms the sides of of locum of trains you know
so there in the assembly of the buddha to come to hear the dharma
big assembly
these or maharajas and in key nars are what to call the animal that the greek animal that's half man half horse
sent are here center yeah so there are hours there
i don't know if they went from buddhist assembly over to over to greece or came from grace over for the talks are know anyway centers
and then they were non-humans
non-humans or is it i think it refers to generally speaking ah
ghosts their ghosts come to buddhist talks and what it goes
why was ejected ghosts are
things that ghosts are things that are dependently color eyes all this is that mentioned are things that dependently colorize arise
but i didn't mention the dependent core well actually i did sort of mentioned independent or arising of assures assures are powerful beings who feel jealous who feel envy of divine bliss
who feel envy of the bliss of yogic attainment and don't want to practice yoga they just want to get the bliss and i think that they can use power so that combinations at ten core arising of the phenomena called a shura
and the dependent core rising or ghost is when there's an experience
that you don't fully live
i'm not saying every single time but when we haven't experienced like right now for example
and we don't fully experience it
that to be the conditions for the arising of a ghost of this experience
if you do a period of meditation and you don't practice it wholeheartedly
he gives rise to a kind of ghostly specter of an unloved period of meditation so in that since we are haunted
by a history by our history
the moments we haven't lived fully
and the buddha's assembly welcomes all these ghosts who have not who are representing our are unfulfilled experience aren't fulfilled life welcoming them to come to the dharma so that they can be fulfilled and released
and then as most malignant spirits and
that topic i was i'll talk about later but then we all these beings are in the assembly for the buddhist teaching of this cetera
innumerable of innumerable of each type
steadfast due to great bliss and joy
in the taste of dharma
now who is that that steadfast this is is is the buddha
the bhagavan is one of the epithets for buddha
does ten traditional epithets for buddha one of them as bhagavan which means something like
what does it mean
i think it means a person
worthy of respect
because they have
destroyed all illusion and
ben rid of all defilements
that's a bhagavan so this bhagavan i think his steadfast due to the bliss and joy of tasting
the truth
the dharma the teaching
the law of the universe

when i joined them buddha in
dharma lunch
tasting the dharma
the bliss and time that sustains us to be steadfast
okay and now also this book is enduring
enduring enduring an order to bring about the welfare of century bags enduring enduring the world of suffering enduring the pain that the buddha feels for our pain because the buddha loves us and indoors that pain happily
the buddha's live
in order to bring welfare to all sentient beings and they endure in order to do so and they are requested to endure in order to do so
free of all harm
of defilements and of afflictions
completely free from all demons who are in the assembly and welcome to be there

surpassing all patterns
a raid through blessings of the togheter
emancipated through great mindfulness intelligence and realization
they are support of the great state of peace and penetrating awareness
entered through the great door of liberation
enter to the great doors of a liberation
emptiness silas and wishlists
or emptiness sinuses and wish listless they enter liberation to these doors
this pattern is adorned with
boundless masses of excellent qualities
and with great
sovereign jeweled lotuses
where tuning a nod to the bhagavan
who are were paying homage to at the beginning of the sutra
the bhagavan was endowed with a mind of good understanding and did not possess the to behaviors
and the to behaviors are the behavior of being obstructed by defilements and being obstructed by in being instructed to a ammunitions
the to omniscience
the to have no instruction to have no resistance to omniscience
perfectly adorned with the teachings of of sinuses
abiding the way a buddha abides
this magallon
at the center of this teaching seen his abiding the way
a buddha abides
sinuses

ah it's the way that the signs of things
do not reached the thing
it's the way you it's the way although you you can experience something without a sign that's the way were built you meet somebody
and your mind makes a sign of them and you apprehend the sign in our to perceive them
you you make us you make you make things that that aren't objects into objects so that you can have so that the objects can be of your subject
you make these an objects that you can be a subject and you can't be a some similar objects so you want to sit here in the universe with are objects you make the universe into a wide variety of subjects and and in that process you mind put signs on things and the sign you put on things is the main point you used
to get ahold of this thing as an object
this is our normal this is our normal process of perception in order to perceive we have to distort the world a little bit now the world is asking us to do that so it can have a relationship with us everybody is asking you to do that to them so they can have a relationship or to even though there's a problem because
you're putting a sign on them
so you can get a hold of him and bring them into your consciousness which is called perception
so it's a way for us to relate and we're doing that but now now the were able to do that now we have to understand how these signs
or not the person that we made into an object by putting a sign on them
so once were engaged than we have to give it up
now that were engaged to be married we have to give up our spouse
because holding on to the sign distorts the relationship
killing under the sign with tend to think that the sign is actually the person
so people are not actually objects people are perfectly good people
but they're also perfectly inconceivable and ungraspable which is kind of useless to us so we make them
into objects through signing them
and then we can engage with them and know them in this
perceptual way which involves this distortion then we then went to on we start working to relate to them
like buddhists do
and that's why we're here you by buddha's so we can learn how to ah
be absorbing the teaching of sinuses
and when we hear the teaching of timelessness we might have some resistance to it and we can talk about the resistance to that teaching her be nice but also want to mention that the next it's not even a semi-colon it's a com according to this translation
perfectly absorbed in the teaching of sinuses abiding in the way of a buddha or buys and of course how does a buddha abide you all know that right a buddha advised by not abiding the abode of the buddha is no abode
and again as someone said to me this morning it's good to have no abode
and i said yeah it is isn't it
it's good to have no abode
and if you if you can abide by not having any abiding you're abiding like a buddha and that will help you be absorbed in the teaching of sinuses and the teaching of sinuses will help you abide the way a buddha abides because buddhists are absorbed in the teaching of say
homelessness and they do not abide and in this way
they can really help others
and
since we have a tendency to abide not in sinuses not not to be not absorbed in sinuses but can be absorbed his signs
as our tendency to be absorbed in signs and i say tendency but it's a it's a pretty strong tendency it's almost like the way the way things usually are like almost like the way things almost always are it's like kind of like yeah suffering
so even though abiding and signs is suffering an affliction
what you read about it earlier
even so we resist the teaching of timelessness because it's unfamiliar and what will happen to us without signs i'd rather not find out i might turn into a
what is it some of the other people in the assembly
why this thing called get that the the word
not same room now the guy and juggernaut
you might turn into job in a hut
and then you have to and then you have to happy and then you have to go to miami to get liposuction
right so you know
who knows what will happen to those who actually opened to seamlessness
does the teaching of stylishness
which
allows us if we opened to it and are georgian it to abide the way of buddha abides how do they bite know by no abiding our and have resistance of that too
what happened to me if i don't abide
what will happen to me if i don't dwell in my friends
and my enemies what will happen if i don't dwell i don't know i might not be able to ah have lunch
well
i think this is an excellent place for me to stop
with
remembering me remembering and you remembering
let the buddhas are absorbed in the teaching of sinuses and they abide the way a buddha buys a buddha buys in by not abiding which is a same as absorbing the teaching of sinuses surrounded by a great assembly of beings who are
heavily into signs
and are coming to learn from the buddha how to receive the teaching of sinuses and abide together with the buddha in a way of buddha abides this is a good place to stop and remember this precious teaching
and and then we can keep to and continue indefinitely discussing what is the teaching of signed business and what is no abode
what is it what is know about
some people think it's eight friars lane
is it because there's some people think
some people think it's a nonprofit buddhist temple
some people think it's the way buddha abides but no matter what anybody thinks
all those ways of thinking are just mental projections onto the most wonderful thing of no abode
and so now we have a chance to have lunch at know abode
isn't that great

anybody doesn't think it's great as welcome to stay anyway
and all sorts of basic principle of buddha dharma that
there's lunch before and after enlightenment
may our in tangier