I was thinking that it might be good to start on the Thirty Verses again, the famous work on the nature of mind by Vasubandhu.
Verse 20 of the Thirty Verses says, Whatever thought through which an object is thought of as a substance, that indeed is a fabrication. It is not evident.
Whatever kind of thought is used to imagine that something has substance, that thought is totally constructed. The imagining of substance has no basis. This particular way of thinking applies to what we think about the Thirty Verses as a text also.
This morning on the way to the zendo, Zori seemed to be hurt. Either his body, his feelings or his mind was hurt. Did you hear him crying? I thought maybe Sanchi hurt him. I wasn't sure, but Zori was running down the stairs from the zendo and Sanchi was running along the deck. Zori was crying and Sanchi wasn't crying at all. So I got the impression that Sanchi had in some way hurt Zori’s feelings. This was just a thought I had, but I didn’t attribute substance to the thought. I don't believe that there is a reality; that thought represents reality, it is just something that my mind conjured up.
Q: After you had that thought, did you think “this is not reality?”
Tenshin Anderson: No, because that would be another kind of substantiation; then I would believe that. It's just that there is nothing to it, there is no basis. I couldn't really see in the dark what happened. It looked like maybe Zori was in ecstasy. I don't know. If I did more research on this and got more data, then I would say “well it is true,” that there is substance to the thought that Sanchi hurt Zori or there is substance to the thought that Zori has been hurt. There is the thought that Zori has been hurt or there is the thought that I have been hurt. A dependently co-arisen thought: "I have pain." But the thought that there is substance and reality to “I have pain,” that this is substantial reality— that is what verse 21 is talking about.
Taiyo Lipscomb: I was wondering what the experiential difference would be if your thought had substance to it.
TA: I could have gotten angry at Steven for letting his dog run on the deck. I could have gotten upset with Sanchi. Once substance is attributed, then the dispositions go “klunk.” They come into place and then you're done for.
TL: That is what I wondered. The dispositions come into play when you give substance?
TA: They come into play and you create more dispositions when you attribute substance. Obsessions come into play and so on.
Now I want to stop and apply this to the Thirty Verses itself before you ask more questions.
I know that people have certain opinions and perceptions about the Thirty Verses. I've seen various people running around crying, thinking that the Thirty Verses is mean or that Vasubandhu is on some kind of trip. I heard somebody said that they thought that the Thirty Verses is very dry.
I propose that this text is about the Buddha extending his hand to you through Vasubandhu. It's just Buddha's hand, it is not anything more than that. If you take this hand, join hands with it and go for a walk, you will get to see things that you have never seen before. You'll see what Buddha sees. Along the way many things will happen to you and you will have various perceptions and finally you will get to see in a completely fresh way.
When I was young I used to have the experience of remembering some things but other people would have a different memory. For example, I would say that such and such happened or I saw such and such a thing, and someone would say, “No it didn't.” In those days I thought that what I experienced was something that really happened, rather than simply something that I perceived. So I used to do this thing that I called the "Burma Shave technique."
When I was a kid there were Burma Shave signs along the highway. They were advertisements, one word at a time on not very big posters. You would see one word and then you drive a little further and see another word and so on; something like, “If - you -want - a - good - shave - use - Burma - Shave.” They rhymed, so you could remember the order.
My method of getting someone to remember what I remembered was like driving down the road. You'd see something and say to your friend a little while later, “You know back at that gas station where that bus was parked and those people with those dogs were running around?” and your friend would say, “We didn't go by a gas station.” If they said they didn't see a gas station there isn't much to talk about but if they say there wasn't a gas station, you might say, “I beg to differ, there was and there is a gas station unless they just destroyed it after we left.”
I would say, “If you don’t remember the gas station, do you remember Omaha?” They'd say, “No, I don't remember Omaha.” Then “Well do you remember Minneapolis, where we started?” “Yes, I remember Minneapolis.” “Do you remember Sioux City?” “Yes.” “Do you remember after Sioux City we went over a river?” “Yes.” “Do you remember what happened after that?” “No, I don't. What happened?” “Do you remember those hills?” “Yes.” “Do you remember what happened when we got to the top of those hills?” “No.” “Do you remember that big church on top of that hill?” “Oh yeah, that's right.” “And after we went down the hill do you remember that there were some lights out in the distance?” “Oh, yeah.” “Do you remember that that's Omaha?” “Oh yeah, that's Omaha.” So now you have Omaha. “Then when we were coming out of Omaha do you remember that there was that big sign advertising the Black Hills?” “Yeah.” “Then do you remember the gas station that came right after that?” “Oh yeah, there was a gas station!”
If the person will join your hand and go through your scenario, if they can tune in to your reality, you can connect them to a reality that they never experienced before.
This text is like that. If you can somehow, find something in here that you can identify with, step by step you can let this text take you to some place you haven’t been before. It’s an experience like you ordinarily have but it’s an experience where erroneous imaginations cease. That is where this text is walking. It's taking us for a walk into our experience which is free of the substantiation referred to in verse 20.
The poem I read last night in the Zendo came to mind:

The mind is seething, there is great pain. Somehow it has turned cold.
The blue mountains grow more vast and more blue.
The autumn waterfalls are louder.
I take my cane and go out the gate for a walk.
I can hear the last crickets singing in the chilly evening.
I am happy.
The rays of the setting sun shine through the evening smoke that hovers over our village.
I throw back my head, drunk with beauty and sing the Willow Song at the top of my lungs.

When I hear that I think, “Yes, here it's turned cold, the blue mountains are getting vaster and more blue and the autumn waterfalls are louder,” and I think that also applies to the social experience at Tassajara. The blue mountains are getting more vast, the autumn waterfalls are getting louder. Part of what is going on here is this text, but primarily it's that your experience is that autumn waterfalls are getting louder. The question I hear from people, who don't necessarily know that they are talking about the Thirty Verses, is “Can we allow these autumn waterfalls to get louder? Can we allow the blue mountains to get more vast and more blue? Can we allow it to turn cold? Can we allow life? Can we allow the people in this valley to manifest as they are?” We can, if we can simply witness, like Wang Wei did, that “it has turned cold.” Period. Not “it has turned cold,” and then put verse 20's substantiation on top of it. You may say, “Hey wait a minute, we can't have this happening, this is too much.” That's saying that we can't accept life being as it is, so we enshroud it with substantiation.
Verse 21 is: A dependently co-arisen event and experience, “it has turned cold” is life manifesting now. If it’s free of substantiation, this is called “the accomplished.” That is the thrust of verse 21.
A dependent self-nature is a thought that has arisen depending upon conditions.
“It has turned cold” is an example of that. “The blue mountains grow more vast and more blue. The autumn waterfalls are louder.” Human beings at Tassajara are expressing themselves in various ways. Then what does the poet do? He says “I take my cane and I go out the gate for a walk” in this world. Then he says “I can hear the last crickets singing in the chilly evening.”
To this he says, “I am happy.” What is he happy about? In effect, he is happy about verse 21. He is happy about a dependently co-arisen last singing of the crickets in the chilly evening air. Do you hear the last singing of the crickets in the chilly evening air? Sometimes it is the last singing of an old friend in the autumn air. Just that. No substance attributed here. He says “I am happy.” He continues to observe what is happening. Even though he is happy he doesn’t just sink down in his happiness and curl up in a ball and hide. He keeps walking, facing this dependently co-arisen phenomenon and that’s it. He keeps doing it. He says “the last rays of the setting sun shine through the smoke that hovers over the village.” It’s a Chinese village, and it is sunset and he is up in the hills a little bit above the village and there is smoke coming up. The trees have dropped their leaves, it’s gray, it’s getting dark, there is a little sun coming in and there is smoke.
I thought “Pollution! Way back in the Tang Dynasty!” Then I thought, sometimes at Tassajara people light fires in the evening and there is smoke in the valley. Then you think “Pollution! Smoke in this pristine wilderness!” If the parikalpita svabhaba, the attribution of substance happens, you’re going to get upset about the pollution. Maybe you’ll criticize the people who have lit fires and are polluting the air. Of course when you’re happy, you’ll find out that you’re the one who lit the fires. When you wake up you’ll find that out. If you don’t, you’ll think that somebody else lit the fires and is causing the problem. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t reduce the amount of pollution in the atmosphere. Maybe we should. But you don’t have to get angry at the “bad people” in order to improve the air quality. The best way to improve the air quality is to realize that you are polluting it, that I’m polluting it. Then I won’t be self righteous in my clean air activity.
This is Wang Wei, a great Chinese Buddhist poet. His happiness is based on the perception of the insubstantial, dependently co-arisen objects. That is what happiness is based on. The knowledge of the Buddha is based on insubstantial, dependently co-produced experiences. It’s called “being based on emptiness.” This doesn’t mean “nothing.” It just means that everything that you're aware of, all your experiences have no substance because they are conjured up by such complex causes and conditions. That is the basis of the Buddha’s happiness, of Wang Wei’s happiness, of our happiness.
Vasubandhu could say, “Why don’t you people just observe that all your experiences are dependently co-produced and watch to see if you can see just that, and not let this substance-attributing, this substance-imagining side of mind, infect it.” Regain this purely dependently co-arisen experience which has no substance in itself either. Retrieve that pure experience from this self-projecting, substance-attributing activity of mind. That is what he is saying in this verse. It is what is implied here. The rest of the text is his way of holding your hand to take you to that experience.
I jumped a little ahead and we skipped a very important verse, verse 19. An example of that verse would be: “It has turned cold, smoke over the village,” and so on. As you start to study this, various things will come up in you, so I wanted to move ahead to take the view of the accomplished, which as Mr. Kalupahana (the Buddhist scholar and translator of the Thirty Verses) says, is an epistemological achievement. It’s an achievement of a new epistemology. It’s an achievement of a new understanding of what your experience is based on. Vasubandhu is taking your hand and trying to take you to this achievement of a new understanding of what is at the basis of your experience.
It’s a rough trip sometimes. There is smoke in the air, it is cold, the waterfalls are sometimes really noisy. Your fingers are getting numb, your toes are getting numb, and it’s sad sometimes. You can barely stand to hear those last crickets. You can barely stand to say awake because reality is right in your face and you are scared to death. You know if you go to sleep you’ll get a chance to survive and keep holding on to that attributing practice which keeps making you miserable. So if you can just stay asleep you’ll be able to stay miserable. At least get indoors and turn the lights on and forget about this cold autumn air. Now we can have some questions.
Q: I just want a word clarified. What is “epistemology”?
TA: Epistemology is a philosophical enterprise. The way I'm using it here is not in the sense of philosophizing, but in the sense that everybody has an implicit epistemology. In other words, everybody has some understanding, some position regarding the basis of their perceptions. For example, you think that they are real or they are illusory. You think that they are absolute or conjured up. For most people, the result of their epistemology is that they are miserable. Buddha’s epistemology is that at the basis of all your experience are insubstantial objects. They are insubstantial because they are dependently co-produced. You can’t experience the “substance” of the thing; that is pure imagining—verse 20. But you can have an experience of a dependently co-arisen thing.
Experiences are based on dependently co-arisen paratantra. “Paratantra” means depending on other. We can have those experiences. They are based on something that arrives from something other than itself. Since it depends on other things, it doesn’t have inherent nature. It is insubstantial. That is the basis of our experience. Then we have imaginings that those experiences are substantial and that calls into play a different epistemology, which is the epistemology of bondage, of obsession and dispositions.
I was just talking to someone about the word “obsession.” Many people want to become free of their obsessions. You can even have an obsession about becoming free of obsessions. There are some practices of meditation that are obsessive. The root of the word obsession is “to sit on.” It is from the past participle of a word which means to sit. It’s the state of having accomplished sitting before something. The old meaning is kind of interesting. It is the state of being beset or actuated by a devil or evil spirit. To sit before the devil. Demons are always out there and you sit before them. The more modern meaning of ‘obsession’ is a compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often with symptoms of anxiety. Or it can be the compulsive idea or emotion at the center of such a preoccupation. So the obsession can be the object which causes you to be compulsively fixated on it or it can be the fixation. The same pertains to the word ‘compulsion.’ In modern psychology, ‘compulsion’ means an irresistible impulse to think about something or to do something. The compulsion is also the thing that you are irresistibly drawn to think about or do. It’s the action or it’s the impulse to do it.
We want to become free of these obsessions and compulsions. Sometimes certain meditation practices are used obsessively or compulsively —to meditate on posture or on breathing in order to become free from other obsessions and compulsions. It’s okay as a warm up. But what I am recommending is different. It is to be upright with obsessions. If you want to do something about an obsession, you might just try to randomly do whatever comes to mind. This is actually what you will do. To be fixated on the idea of a particular obsession-removal program, of course, is an obsession. It also will become an obsession when you can’t stop yourself from doing it. In other words, you can’t stop yourself from doing something to get rid of your obsession. But maybe you can develop an obsession-removal program but be relaxed about it and not have a compulsive feeling to do it. You could say “Let’s experiment this week with having an obsession-removal program. Let’s just do it for a few minutes, but be relaxed about it.” Then it’s not really an obsession, it’s just like playing golf. If you get fixated on it, it can become an obsession. It’s the fixation and the compulsion to have the fixation that are the problem.
Uprightness in the midst of the obsession could reveal to you where the obsession is coming from. It’s coming from an idea, which you may or may not be aware that you have, that whatever you are working on has some substance. My usual recommendation is that rather than telling yourself that this stuff doesn’t have any substance, that these are all insubstantially, co-dependently arising phenomena, it is better to catch yourself at the fact that you are attributing substance to things. If you are, you should admit it. You shouldn’t pretend that you are not, by saying some other noise over here which becomes another obsession which you have to do because you don’t want to admit what you are doing. It’s better to just admit what is happening because what is happening is that you are doing this obsession on top of what you need to see. What you need to see is your experience which you are now obsessing about. There is an actual experience that you are obsessing about.
Sala Steinbach: Can you give more examples of when substance is being attributed to a dependently co-arisen event? I still am not hearing the distinction.
TA: Rather than give more examples it would probably better to go back and go over the same examples more thoroughly. So, are there any experiences you have had lately.....well maybe you don’t want to say. Maybe somebody did something recently that you really have trouble accepting; you actually are judging it.
Somebody said to me recently that there were two ways or two minds that she identified in her body. One way was judging and the other way was letting it be. Really letting it be, means what verse 21 is about, the dependently co-arisen, without judging on top of it, without saying “this is existent, this is how to accomplish proper attitude.” To let it be, to really let somebody be. Sometimes you think you’re letting them be but actually you are putting on top of them “I like them.” You do like them. Your experience is “I like her.” That’s just a dependently co-produced thing which I didn’t even know about until she took her glasses off. When I saw her without her glasses on, it happened and I liked it. If I attribute substance to that, I feel like “well I’m allowing that.” But I’m not allowing it.
When you first see the person and you like it, at that time of that experience, if there is not any attribution of substance to it, you just have a pleasant experience of looking at somebody’s face, that’s letting it be. If you attribute substance to something which you find pleasant, you think that you are letting it be. “I’m just letting her be cute.” But I’m not just letting her be cute. I am actually attributing substance to it but I didn’t notice it. Why didn’t I notice it? Because attributing substance to something that I’m finding pleasant doesn’t hurt much. It’s very subtle. Do you see the difference between enjoying a pretty face and attributing substance to a pretty face? “It’s a pretty face plus she is my friend.” So you don’t notice.
Take the other case, where you make a judgment against the person. Then you have an experience of unpleasantness. That in itself is just unpleasant, like “it has turned cold.” You can say “it has turned cold, my fingers hurt. Zori’s crying. I’m worried about him and I’m happy.” If it has turned cold and I attribute substance to it, I’m not happy. It becomes very painful when I judge and attribute substance to my judgments. If it is a pleasant sensation, a pleasant judgment, and I attribute substance to it, my mind has to be very subtle to notice this that gives me pain too. OK? Just sit with this for a second.
This comes back to allowing or letting it be. So I refer you to any experiences that you have had recently, where you had trouble really allowing something to be. Where you had trouble allowing the cold or the heat, or you had trouble allowing a person to be the way this person was. Perhaps you had trouble allowing and accepting this manifestation of life, which means having trouble allowing the way the experience was for you when you perceived the person that way. Allowing your pain.
So I refer you to that experience. Can you just say “It has turned bitter cold. It has turned very hot,” just that? Can you notice when you say “No, we can’t allow this. I can’t allow this and I hope that we can’t allow it, so you’ll help me not allow it?” When has that happened recently? Has it happened that something has come to you and you say “I’m having trouble allowing that, which makes me feel like this”? Look there. That’s where you’ll find the dependently co-arisen. Not in the absence of the constructed substance. Then maybe you can find, maybe you even have an example of some time when you had an experience in the absence of "the previous one," i.e, mental fabrication of substance, and how then there was the accomplished. The same phenomenon but a new basis under it. Instead of a rock foundation, now it is floating on water and it’s moving.
These examples are very close. If you got the bad example, the good example, the happy examples are right near by. It’s like a mountain being on a rock foundation or a mountain being on water. When the mountains are on rocks, you are unhappy. When the mountains are on water, you are happy. When “it has turned cold” is on the water, you’re happy.
This is like when they asked Yunmen, “Where are all the Buddhas born?” He said “Eastern mountains move on the water.” Dogen Zenji says, at the base of the mountains there is always water but you have to walk all the way to the bottom of that mountain. You have to walk to the bottom of this dependently co-arisen event. As you walk down the mountain, that’s called studying dependent co-arising.
As you walk down the mountain of “it has turned cold,” the autumn waterfalls are louder. You walk down that mountain. You start walking down and you say “the autumn waterfalls.” Then—“they are louder and they hurt me” and so on. You thoroughly experience the autumn waterfalls and at the bottom, there may be something really surprising.
There is a rock-like quality of our experience and at the bottom of that rock-like quality is water and there the rock-like quality moves. That’s where Buddhas are born. That is not where they do all their work. Sometimes they run back up in the mountains to help people and encourage them to come down. But they are born at the place where the solidity melts. Where verse 20 falls off of verse 21. That is where they are born. Once they are born, you can get around a little bit more.
Are there any questions before I go on?
Q: Sounds like what you are talking about is that place on the twelve fold chain of causation between feeling and craving, is that right?
TA: Yes. It’s like Wang Wei’s “it has turned cold.” If you can say that, you’ll be able to say “it has turned cold.” See if you can say that like Wang Wei said it. See if you can say “it has turned cold” and take your cane and go for a walk. See if you can do that and watch these things happen, if you can let the cold be and see if you are happy. If you can’t let it be, notice how you don’t, and notice what you do with the cold so that it is hard to just let it be.
This is another instruction of how to be upright with these experiences. The words “it has turned cold” are said by someone because something has happened. Even while you repeat or consider the words now, it has turned cold. Before you say that, something happened that can lead you to say that it has turned cold. Probably what has happened is ‘C-O-L-D’ or ‘ouch’ or ‘yikes’ or something like that. Something happened there. At that time, try to be upright. Watch the moment of cold, watch the moment of physical pain. Watch the moment of getting overwhelmed. Watch the moment of someone saying something that hurts you. Watch that moment for the place which is right there where the word “cold” doesn’t reach, where the word “pain” doesn’t reach. Don’t deny the pain but just be present enough and balanced enough so you have a chance to see more deeply and to practice uprightness.
I want to echo these words from verse 30: This indeed is the realm free from influxes, it is unthinkable, wholesome and stable. It is the serene body of release.’ That is what we are talking about. You can start practicing verse 30 while you’re meditating on verses 21, 22, and 23. This is the realm free from influxes. Free of influxes means all these words that are flying around you—pain, pleasure, cold—all these words and all these judgments too. They are flying around, they don’t get into someplace. There is a place that is free from these inputs and outflows. This place is unthinkable. You can’t think of this place. I’m talking about it now, but this is just like holding your hand to take a walk someplace, the place where it has turned cold. You can’t think, you can’t obsess, you can’t think even a little bit, but you can’t not think either. There’s no conceivable method you can use to get to this place that is not someplace else. What you do is be upright. In other words what you do is—not-moving, not-doing. This is being stable. It’s unthinkable.
While you’re studying this material keep not moving, being very very stable. Don’t think yourself into that stability. This is not a stability that you can think yourself into. It’s an unthinkable stability. Even when you think “I’m unstable,” that stability doesn’t say, “wait a minute, don’t bad mouth me.” It smiles no matter what you say. It’s just really serene and stable, it’s unthinkable. This is the serene body of release being talked about. This is the way to hold Vasubandhu’s hands.
When you study this text and you have judgments like “dry,” just keep holding the text’s hands and be upright. That’s all you have to do. If you can do it with the text you may be able to do it with daily life experiences. Just hold her hand for a moment and be upright and then this will take you into this place, this realm free from outflows.
The emphasis of this text is to try to actually revamp and get a new basis for your understanding of your experience. It’s not exactly an introverted text because it’s dealing with objects a lot—how you get the sense of objects out there. However, a lot of introverted work needs to happen and I think that what part of this text is saying is if you can first revamp the way you understand the basis and reality level of your experience then we can talk about what to do. I think that there is a kind of anxiety or uncertainty among us about whether being upright will be enough for us to respond appropriately to the myriad moral dilemmas of our life.
So what is being proposed here is why don’t you just go and find this place and then see how you behave. Let’s not talk about that right now. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when we realize this place, that the precepts just naturally flow from us, rather than our reaching over there and looking at the precepts and checking with them all the time? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if once we realize this new basis our behavior was just like the Buddha’s?
Verse 22: Thus it, the accomplished, should be declared as neither identical nor different from the dependent, like impermanence and so on. When that, the dependent is not perceived, this too is not perceived.
As you see from his commentary (The Principles of Buddhist Psychology, p. 206), Professor Kalupahana makes a big deal about the past participle. The past participle typically expresses a completed action. It is interesting to notice some other participles in our practice. There is a verb called bodhi. Bodhi means wake up. It’s from bud which means awake and the past participle of bodhi is Buddha. Buddha is the accomplishment of bodhi. We also have these other wonderful things—sunya, and sunyata; empty and emptiness. Then you have anitya and anityata. Anitya is the impermanent. So you can perceive impermanent things, you can observe what is impermanent. Based on observing what’s impermanent you can realize, you can accomplish something called impermanence. Impermanence is also an epistemological achievement. In other words, you can observe these impermanent things and observe those impermanent things and you could still hold on to the epistemological view that this person is a jerk—forever. “This person is permanently a jerk.” You wouldn't have realized impermanence.
For centuries men have held the view that women are inferior. They have tenaciously held the position that women are inferior, because they are afraid of what women really are. They haven’t studied thoroughly when they do that. People can hold to their opinion about something and think that’s the same thing as it was before, even though they have seen things change. But by intensely studying how things change, and being upright, it is possible to realize a new basis for understanding. Then you don't have to remember things like “Things are impermanent.”
Remembering that things are impermanent is an obsession. It’s like the other one which comes more naturally, which is remembering that they are permanent. Remembering that things are impermanent is an obsession that you might adopt to cure yourself of the bad effects of remembering that things are permanent. But if you study impermanence enough, you could realize a new way of being. When you are that way, when you realize this new way of being called impermanence, you realize a new life and this is where peace is born. Peace is born from this new way of understanding what your experiences are based on. Your experiences are based on constantly changing impermanent things and this is when you are peaceful.
Wendy Lewis: I have a sense of always having seen the world as impermanent. I grew up in a situation that was unreliable, so I keep questioning this view of impermanence. I see it as “cold.” I wonder if you can shed some light there?
TA: My first reaction to your seeing it as “cold” is that this is an example of not seeing impermanence. That is how you keep this changing stuff under control. Putting it under the heading of “cold” is one of the ways to do it. There are other ways to do it, but that is the way you use. Very few children who live in an environment that is unpredictable and undependable are ready to be upright with it. To deliberately expose children to impermanence is not necessarily good. Since they aren’t able to be upright, what they tend to do is to rigidify even more. They throw a kind of cast onto the system to protect themselves from the actual unpredictability of phenomena. Today, when you hear some kids talking about chrome and fabrics, they aren’t talking about remodeling their cars, they are talking about coffins. This is a reaction to a very harsh exposure beyond their ability; they react by making something permanent. So to warm up to this practice it will require considerable encouragement for a person who has been abused and offered meditation challenges ahead of their time.
There are two ways to resist a meditation practice. One is to call it names like cold, dry, abstract, whatever you don’t like. The other way is to say this is really the hottest stuff in town and the Thirty Verses is totally cool. You should just say “It has turned cold.” That’s it. The Thirty Verses is the Thirty Verses and that’s enough. Because of your background certain things seem “cold” to you. You may be able to catch this bias, as you just did, which is good. As soon as you notice that bias, examine it, examine that word “cold” and in that examination you’ll protect the warmth. You’ll bring yourself back in line.
This is not necessarily to like meditation. Liking meditation is leaning the other way. The proper attitude towards the impermanent is uprightness, which is not to like meditating on impermanence. That is an outflow. It’s not to dislike it. If you notice the outflows, by examining these outflows, you come back in line. As soon as you spot an outflow you’re upright. Unless you haven’t thoroughly admitted the outflows. As soon as you’ve completely said “this is an outflow” and in precisely in what way it’s an outflow, you are back in line again. That is the way to study whatever it is, in this case the impermanent.
WL: I was reading the other day and I just wanted to die. I think that part of it was because it does require looking at the way I look at things and it’s not that it is uncomfortable, but that the flow of warmth is frightening or something or...
TA: That is part of holding Vasubandhu’s hand. You’re going to feel these outflows one way or the other and then you examine the outflow and then you’re back on the path again. Then you’re off and examining the outflow and you’re back on again. To notice the influx carefully brings you into the realm where there aren’t any influxes. To notice opinions and judgments and thinking as such and to let it go at that bring you back in the realm of the unthinkable rather than thinking. You’re back in stability
Christina Lehnherr: We often talk about objects and not attributing substance to something that we externalize, so I realized that my dispositions or my reactions are also co-dependently arisen. If something happens and I attribute substance and then have all these reactions then, instead of trying to scrape the substance off from the object I can actually turn and see what’s happening in myself; that it’s dependently co-arisen. It’s not me having a bad disposition. It’s loosening it up and making it less cold by not judging that but that is also happening right now when that is where it has moved to and I can apply this whole teaching to that. That's different from the way I approached it before–attributing substance to dispositions, attributing substance to karma.
TA: You spotted that you were actually attributing substance to dispositions. In fact, one of the problems with dispositions is that we attribute substance to them. So if you attribute substance to the dispositions wouldn’t you want to get rid of them? Really substantial, customary modes and fixed ways! So it is pretty hard. If these habits are substantial and disposition of habits are solid, then it is pretty hard not to become obsessive about them, which is exactly how they are born. So you have to be upright with the experience of attributing substance to the dispositions or attributing substance to the obsessions.
The parallel thing in this case is we don’t have the past participle thing. We have the past participle but it is not operating on an original verb. Parinispana —the accomplished—is not the past participle of paratantra—the dependently co-arisen. The realization of sunyata is based on observing the interdependent lack of inherent existence of things. The realization of peace which comes from realizing the state of impermanence, comes from studying the impermanent. The accomplishment, the serene body of release comes in relationship to studying the dependently co-arisen. So it’s a past participle. I appreciate Mr. Kalupahana emphasizing that this is not an absolute reality. This is just something which is accomplished in relationship to something else. The accomplished is the accomplished in relationship to the dependently co-arisen. You’ve got to have a dependently co-arisen experience to have the accomplishment of this very subtle non-discriminating wisdom, like impermanence and so on.
Vasubandhu goes on to say, if you don’t have the dependently co-arisen experience then you don’t have the other one. If the dependent is not perceived then the accomplished is not perceived.
The accomplishment is not the same as the dependent, but it is not different from it either because you cannot have one without the other. So the karmically created or the dependently co-arisen is the content of non-discriminating wisdom. It’s inseparable from it, but it’s not identical to it. If it were identical to it, then the attribution of substance to the dependently co-arisen that comes from the self-projecting nature of mind would automatically slough off. But the dependently co-arisen is not protected. It lets itself be abused and co-opted. The fact that is so is also part of non-discriminating wisdom.
Q: This sounds like that line in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
TA: Yes, it’s just like that. Form is a dependently co-arisen thing, so are feelings, perceptions, formations and consciousness. All these things are dependently co-arisen and so the accomplishment of this new understanding is not the same as them and it is not different.
GM: I hear you saying something a little bit different than “form is emptiness.” I hear you saying something like “form, also emptiness.”
TA: Well, you know that phrase is problematical. The Chinese says shiki soku ze ku, “form immediately is emptiness.” It’s not exactly “equals.” It’s like when you have form you have emptiness but they are not identical there either. When it says “form is not different from emptiness,” that’s right but it’s not identical either. It doesn’t say that though. I think that part is implied by the soku which means “immediately.” There is no separation but they are not identical. Form is not emptiness, it is neither identical nor different.
That is why it is very important, if you want to realize emptiness, to meditate on form and feelings, perceptions and all these formations, all these dispositions. They are the basis and what you need to do is somehow let them be cured of their infection from this substance producing thing. The Heart Sutra doesn't talk about this overlay of phenomena. It talks about the phenomena after they have been saved. It’s the vision of Avalokitesvara after she understands. She doesn’t talk about what it is like before. Hearing about what it is like afterwards sounds kind of cold. The Heart Sutra sounds cold; it is a heartless sutra. So we need this other-dependent. All of our experiences have an opportunity to reveal the other-dependent to us completely free from this imposition of substance on them.
There is pain around judging our experiences when these judgments are taken to be real. Judgments themselves are dependently co-arisen. “It has turned cold” is a judgment. When Wang Wei said it, it was free from attribution of substance. When he said “it has turned cold,” that was non-discriminating wisdom, which made him happy and made him able to sing in his decrepitude.
Last night I said “I take my staff and go out for a walk,” but actually I like the cane. Even when you are a wimp and falling down you can still do this meditation, even when you need a cane to go on this walk. You can use whatever you need to take this walk and see and make this judgment. When this judgment is free from the imagined nature, free from erroneous imaginations, free from attribution of substance, then you are happy making judgments. You can actually sit there and just judge away. When you judge and your judgment carries erroneous imaginations along with it, then judgment is very painful.
Many Zen students hate their judging side. But you can’t get rid of your judging side. That’s part of what feeling is. Every moment you’re judging. But judging which is free of erroneous imagination is happiness. It’s just the wonder of life judging or the wonder of you judging somebody judging you, or even the wonder of you judging somebody who is judging you with erroneous imaginations in their mind. They are judging you and they believe the reality of what they are judging and you judge that. You can judge that without believing in your judgment as something substantial; just see it as something that comes up whenever people judge you.
When people compliment me, I always come up with the judgment: “great!” It’s a disposition, an obsessive reaction. It’s automatic. I can’t help but have this fixed idea that it is good. I wish I didn’t sometimes. Why do I always glow when they say “That was wonderful?” I notice that it is a well-established obsession that every time they give me certain kinds of compliments with a certain look on their face, I always get this warm feeling. If I believe that this is real, I actually say, “I’m not happy. I feel like a puppet.” It gets really tiresome because every time it happens there is an outflow. If it happens once, fine, but if it happens fifteen times in a day, you notice that you get tired out or inflated. It is not the realm free of outflows. There are outflows every time I think that this is real.
If they say “that’s wonderful,” or if they insult or criticize me, and there is no energy increase or decrease, this is the realm of stability, free from influxes and outflows. If I notice outflows or if there aren’t any, then I am happy when they are insulting me or when they are praising me. Either way, I take my cane and go out for a walk. If I am Wang Wei, if I am walking this path with Vasubandhu, I just keep processing, keep going forth, studying no matter what they say. Everything that happens you study and you notice your energy increases or decreases around that stuff,
Ninen Kutchins: Did you say that judging is feeling?
Feeling is judging, judging is feeling. Feeling is a mental judgment, like positive, negative and neutral. This is the way I use the Abhidharma word “vedana.” The second skandha is judging, evaluation. Is it painful, is it pleasurable, is it neutral? Those are the feelings that are talked about in this text.
I don’t understand Wang Wei as saying he has a positive feeling at that time. He might, but that is not the point. The point is, “it has turned cold, I’m getting old, I need a cane. The autumn waterfalls are penetrating my poor little eardrums. These mountains are getting more vast, they are kind of scary. They are beautiful but they are also kind of scary, they loom up there and get dark.” You can dread this valley as it gets colder and colder and darker and darker. You can have a negative sensation here in this valley and when that negative sensation is just a negative sensation you are a happy camper.
NK: Why the word “happy?”
TA: OK, how about the word “joyful.” He is obsessed. “I am happy!” Every time he has an experience and the experience is free of attribution of substance he just freaks out and starts singing. He can’t help it!
Somebody told me that when she got free of her obsession she felt good. It is tricky you know. I don’t think that this freedom feels good. You might feel good, you might feel bad. It is not a conscious thing—this serene body of release. It is not consciousness, but it doesn’t happen some place else from consciousness. It leaves no traces in consciousness. That is why you aren’t necessarily having a positive sensation at the time of the experience of suchness. You might have a negative sensation. Usually the first time people have these experiences they have negative sensations. When you are having a positive sensation of this experience you might not notice it. When you have a negative sensation and you are very happy, you think “What? How come?”
I remember the first practice period here. It rained all the time and the food wasn’t good and we were afraid that things were going to end any minute. The kerosene lamps were getting darker, toilet paper was running out. We were suffering, and we thought it was because it was cold and wet and damp. We were walking around like zombies. Everybody was very slow, really down, cold, dark. It was wonderful. We didn’t have a teacher to bother us, to tell us to be more or less depressed than we were, or even to be just like we were. We were miserable because of all that stuff. But we thought the reason why we were miserable was because of that stuff. I was very surprised one day when I was totally not miserable and nothing had changed. I said “Well how come? Where did this come from?” I still don’t know where it came from, but I realized that it wasn’t because of the circumstances that I was happy. It definitely was not because I was cold, it was dark and the food was running out and these people were the way they were. That was not what was making me happy. I also realized that it wasn’t because of the circumstances that I was unhappy before. But before that, I did think that was why I was unhappy.