There are three kinds or three levels of insight that are often spoken of in Buddhist teachings. There are three levels of pranayama. When I say insight, sometimes pranayama is translated as... How is it usually translated? Wisdom. Are you familiar with this word? This Sanskrit word? Pranayama. P-I-J-N-A. It's put on top of the A. Pranayama. Put it over the N. Put it on top of the N. Pranayama. Do you know that word? Yes. You pronounce it P-I-J-N-A rather than P-I-J-N-A. P-I-J-N-A? OK. P-I-J-N-A? Either way. OK. What if you say P-I-J-N-A rather than P-I-J-N-A?

[01:03]

The accent on the second syllable. Yeah, that's the way I heard it. P-I-J-N-A. You say P-I-J-N-A P-I-J-N-A rather than P-I-J-N-A P-I-J-N-A. Now. [...] I don't know if it's right. Anyway. So this word often translated wisdom. Wisdom's not so good. Wisdom is more related to the word, to words like witness. Wisdom is more related to wisdom, to witness. But N-Y-A is more related to, N-Y-A is related to know. Gnosis. Greek word gnosis. It's an Indo-Iranian root.

[02:06]

N-Y-A. N-Y-A. Gnosis. Gnosis. And so know. And the pra in front of the N-Y-A. So from N-Y-A you make many words, Sanskrit words. Like you would make N-Y-A-N-A. N-Y-A-N-A means knowledge. N-Y-A. N-Y-A-N-A. J-N-A-N-N-A. And the pra means, the pra prefix means to, it's an intensifying prefix. It means to drive to the point and go beyond. Intensively reach some place but don't stop there, keep going. So pra has a feeling of, you know, not just going forward, like the pra or pro, pro and pra, going forward.

[03:12]

But pra also has this meaning of going beyond. So pra-nya means a kind of knowing that reaches to something and penetrates it and keeps going. Okay? So insight is still not dynamic enough. The wisdom is maybe too static. Insight at least has the point of in, that the sight goes in, penetration. But maybe ongoing insight, or insight ongoing, or something like that, or going insight, that does it too much. So there's three kinds of pra-nya that are usually spoken of. In Sanskrit they're called shritamaya pra-nya, cintamaya pra-nya, and bhavanamaya pra-nya.

[04:15]

Cintamaya, excuse me, shritamaya means to hear. Shritamaya means hear. So the first kind of insight is insight that comes on the occasion of hearing. But hearing is just a shorthand for hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting. In other words, insight that comes from reading, from hearing, from seeing, from smelling, from touching and tasting the dharma. In other words, all the kinds of information you can get about the teaching through your senses from outside. All that you can receive from teachers, from books, from Buddhist statues, from temple architecture, all that you can bring in. Sometimes they say the usual way of learning, of studying Buddhist texts, is to first memorize,

[05:28]

and then to clarify all the terms, get all the definitions and etymologies correct, and all the information and the correlations between the words in the text. And then reflect on these, on what you've received, and then meditate with it. So the first stage of taking in all the information you can about the text, hearing all that you can about it, getting all the terms clarified, getting as much information as you can from the outside, when that reaches a climax such that you have insight, the maximum insight you can achieve through receiving from the outside, this is called the Shrutamaya Prajna, Prajna by means of, insight by means of, the outsider, through the sense organs. Yes? That second word, Shrutamaya, what does it mean? Maya means, I believe, abandoning.

[06:32]

Maya? Maya, M-A-Y-I, Shrutamaya Prajna. And Citta, Citta is related to words like, a Sanskrit word, Citta, which means thought, or consciousness, or through thinking. Once you've received all you can from the outside, then you turn, and you can turn over, and reflect on, and interrelate in your mind what you've received with all the other things that you've learned. So you take in some piece of teaching, as much as you can, and you fit it into the overall picture of your practice. You try to understand how it relates to your daily life, how it relates to your Zazen, how it relates to study, how it relates to helping people. You try to see it in terms of the overall architecture of the path. You see it in place, how it relates to all the different aspects of the teaching. And when you've seen all the possible relationships of this teaching

[07:40]

which you've received, and you've turned them over in your mind like this, when you can't think of anything more about it, except just to be it, then we say that's the Prajna, or insight, which comes through actual cultivation, or through the body, or through meditation. Bhavanamaya Prajna. And then everything you are will give rise to this kind of insight. And then this insight can be brought back out through the thinking, and then back out into the five senses, and back and forth. So, for example, here tonight, I've just told you about these three levels of insight, but they all come to you, first of all,

[08:41]

even though I'm talking about three levels of insight, they come to you first of all, through the first level. And if we keep talking about it long enough, you probably would be able to have some insight based on what we talk about here. So, last night, particularly we talked about the basic term of a special transmission outside the scriptures. And... So, I tried to tell, I tried with my voice, to tell you, to give you more information about this term, so that you could then work with it yourself. And then we talked about the next section, we found that the next section was related to the first section.

[09:45]

Do you remember? About that? And... And then I also looked at some other sections of the whole Jyoti, for example, section 5 and section 34. And I found a number of sections will help to clarify this first section we discussed, section 2. So, what I'd like to do is to kind of... if it's OK with you, to, in a sense, take this one teaching, this one term, this one expression, this special transmission outside the scripture, and try to weave in other sections to that, so that you can make a kind of fabric with it. You can try to make this as a central organizing principle

[10:47]

to work with the rest, any other sections in the text. So, if it's... Well, I may say some things now, so... You may think I'm repeating myself. You may think I'm saying something that I've said before. So, now I shall say it again. Do you allow me to say it again? OK. Then, we have these two sides. One side is the... the side we called last night, the side of receiving the teaching. The other side is the side of maintaining the teaching. These two are the actual characteristics of a Buddhist teacher,

[11:50]

to receive and maintain. The receiving side can also be called the side of discipline. The side of discipline. Becoming a disciple. A disciple in both the sense of the English word disciple, as a discipline, but also a disciple in the sense of, like we talk about, shravaka. A listener. OK? So, shravaka, you see, is related to shruta. Shravaka means a listener. Related to shruta, fear. So, on one side we have the side of loyalty, the side of listening, the side of the disciple, the disciplined side, the loyal side, the innocent side. OK?

[12:51]

In Sanskrit, we talk about a certain kind of noble person who has actually entered Buddhist practice, and we speak of the type of person who has... Shaiksha. Shaiksha. S with a slash over the top. A-I-K-S-A. Shaiksha. Shaiksha means... it also sounds like shravaka, but instead of meaning one who listens, it means one who is under discipline. Shaik. Shaiksh. Shaiksh means under discipline. Shaiksha. It's one who is under discipline. OK? So that's the one side. Now, this side is also, we talked about, it's the kind of easy side, the safe side, the sure side, the harmless side. People, because it's safe and sure

[14:02]

and harmless and loyal and legal and lawful, such people might... if they only do that side, they may be... well, they don't have to worry too much. They feel pretty safe. Now, the other side is the side which we can call... Ashaksha, which means not under discipline, beyond discipline, free of discipline, no longer under discipline. But it is those who have been previously under discipline. They have been under discipline, they have become the disciple, and now they go beyond it. And this is the side

[15:03]

which is not so loyal, but more devoted. They've gone beyond the description. And they don't feel so safe. This side doesn't feel so safe. And because they don't feel so safe and secure, and because they know they're doing something that's never been done before, they're very... to do it right, they're very careful. And they're overly... they have to be very devoted in order to do these new things. So that was the... that's the side we call maintaining. And this is actually the work of a Bodhisattva. This is not a listener anymore. Instead of listening to the teaching,

[16:08]

and receiving the teaching by listening, by discipline, and practicing through discipline, now the person acts more from listening, not to the teaching, but to all sentient beings. Now the cries of suffering creatures evoke the response. Instead of receiving the words and the sounds and the shapes of Buddha, by which the person can become a disciple, now the person, now the student, responds out of the cries of suffering creatures. And this is the actual maintaining of the teaching. So again, on one side we have we have the expression in Buddhism, in Chinese Buddhism, four-character expression. First character means to go up,

[17:12]

and second character means to attain. So, one character means one side is to go up and attain. The other side is to come down and transform. It's a circle actually. On one side you go up and attain, the other side you come down and transform. So, the coming down and transforming means that the enlightened one, the disciple, is now coming down, changing, letting the teaching be corrupted in order to transform in order to convert living beings. Convert them to what? Convert them to go up and attain. And then later come down and transform. Buddha is not something

[18:15]

that just goes up and attains. Buddha is not, and even Buddha is not even a person who comes down and transforms people. It's not Buddha. It's not like Buddha comes down from the mountain and then transforms people. When Buddha comes down the mountain after going up the mountain and attaining, when Buddha walks down the mountain, it's when the beings are transformed that the Buddha appears. Does that make sense to you? Do you see the difference? It's not like this enlightened person walking down the hill who is a Buddha. It's an enlightened person, but they're not a Buddha yet. They're not a Buddha until other living beings are converted. Then the Buddha appears. That's the side of maintaining. When the Buddha goes up,

[19:17]

when the student goes up and attains, he or she becomes a disciple. When they come down and help, when they come down and change into whatever is useful to people, and people are transformed, that's maintaining. And that's beyond discipline. The disciple is not limited by discipline in order to help people. So that's kind of the view of philosophy. Any comments about this? Well, I'd like to skip Section 4 for now and go to Section 5. So Section 5,

[20:32]

let me read what I have here and then somebody else can read what you have there. This translation says, Dogen asked, When a student disciplines himself to pursue the Way, is there a mental and physical attitude she must learn? So again, when a student disciplines, when you discipline, when you become a disciple, when you receive the teaching, is there some physical and mental attitude or posture or deportment that you should learn? And of course, the answer is yes. Before we're doing talks, we can say that. So he's asking about this first side, right? And then Ru Jing replies,

[21:37]

When the first patriarch came from India, the Buddha Dharma entered China. How can there be no body and mind of the Buddha Dharma? When you first form the determination to seek enlightenment through discipline, then you do the following things. So, again, what they're saying here is when you first form the determination to practice through discipline, then you do these things. If you want to become a disciple, you do these things. If you want to receive, you do these things. These things will help you receive, inherit, OK? Any questions about that? In other words,

[22:38]

going back to what I said earlier, the teaching is, you first receive it through your senses, then you turn it over in your mind, and then you manifest it in your body, you manifest it in your actual heart, your actual presence, your actual life. So, here, Ru Jing is also saying, the teaching must come down to your body and voice, to your body and mind. You must manifest it in yourself. And to do these things, we'll do that. In other words, it won't be just intellectual receiving of the teaching if you do these practices. But, again, this number four, or number five here, this is putting electroids in the heads of monkeys and shock them and things like that. Or even, this one psychologist trained this monster monkey,

[23:42]

made this one mother monkey go crazy, and then turned her loose on her own babies. So she takes her own babies and smashes their heads on the ground with cages, rubs their heads, their crushed heads, back and forth on the floor. And the psychologist said, talks about how disgusting the behavior of these animals is, that they're trained to do this by raising them in isolation from all other animals, without their own mother, and so on. So, some psychologists are, for, I guess, for some benefit, they hope that human beings are putting animals through these kinds of, these kinds of realms of hell. And so this group's trying to get them to stop this. So they go to see these, these people at these primate labs, and this one man went there to see them, and he just said he had no effect, he had no effect.

[24:43]

And the people thought, well, they have their job, and they're trained, and they're trying to do their best, and they hope it helps people, and so on and so forth. And, so, yeah. He didn't listen to them. But what I felt when I was talking to this person who's doing work against animal liberation, he is concerned about animals. He really is. But, he is not sufficiently concerned with other areas of suffering beings. And because he's not, he lacks enough authority for those people that are working on animals to pay any attention to him. Because they have some sense of, they're trying to take care of something, too. But this man,

[25:45]

he's not a good man, but he's not, he does not have a wide enough concern for all the different kinds of human suffering. Not to mention animal suffering, plant suffering. But he does not have a wide enough concern for different types of human suffering in order that when he meets people, people that are mutilating some forms of sentient beings, the fact that those people take care of their own kids, that this psychologist, maybe he really takes care of his children, and makes sure that they don't get too little to eat, or get sick. Maybe he's worrying about his kids all the time and taking good care of them. And just that gives him authority, some authority. So, if the man who takes care of his wife so well, then he doesn't, you know, he doesn't have much to say. The people who have authority

[26:50]

are those who have the widest concern. Well, not just concerned about old people dying of cancer, not just concerned about drug addicts, not just concerned about money-grubbing businessmen, not just concerned about teenagers, not just concerned about babies, not just concerned about dogs, and so on and so on and so on and so on. Not just their own wife, not just other people's wives, not just people that are practicing Zazen, not just people that are practicing Kingi. All different kinds of beings. These people, when they ask somebody, when they talk to somebody who's torturing somebody, they are listened to. And one of the main reasons why they're listened to is because they are frugal. And they don't come on with a sense of,

[27:50]

I'm doing this one thing, I'm doing this thing, and this thing I'm doing is trying to fix up what you're doing. I'm working on animal liberation and you're torturing animals. If that happens, it's either a battle or there's no, you can't talk to them on that score. If you care about animals and someone's torturing an animal, I would suggest to you that if you want him, if you want to go over there and ask him, what are you doing to the animal? What gives you authority in some other area that will be useful in this case? If you're concerned for some other area, so that you're concerned that people wear seatbelts, maybe what gives you authority

[28:53]

with this person who's torturing animals? Do you understand that? Does that make sense to you? So moral authority comes from the breadth of your suffering. And when you have wide suffering and you're not just, when you have wide concern for suffering beings, then nothing about you stands out very much. You're not a crusader for this or for that. So if someone's not taking care of something,

[29:54]

you don't stand out as a representative of their antithesis. But in the area where they're taking care of things too, you're with them, you're one of them. You join and support them. And then it spreads into the area where they're not paying attention. So, you know, some people who are mutilating animals may be very concerned, they're probably often concerned with making sure that the area around their house in the suburbs is not developed. They want to keep it green so that people keep the fresh air out in the suburbs where they live. Which is a perfectly good thing to be concerned about. And you should be able to say, yes, I'm going to keep the air clean. And let's try to control the emissions from these various

[30:55]

combustion systems. You care about that and you join with them there. Now some people, of course, would say, these people are doing this terrible thing over here and over here they're trying to basically take care of themselves. But there's some merit in that. And if you can appreciate that, plus you have many other areas that you're concerned with, then they can change. So if somebody's working on, you know, in the arms business, you can start off by saying thank you for preventing a nuclear war up until now. We all are trying not to have a nuclear war. And the people who are in the nuclear war machine, that's what they think they're trying to do too.

[31:55]

And they've succeeded so far. So we should congratulate them for that and then go on from there. Now what should we do now that we have that established? Okay. And this then leads

[33:07]

into another section, which I think we can brush and we can touch upon tonight. And that is what here would be 36, and so there must maybe be 33. No? It's 32. Here. Yeah, it's 32.

[34:09]

Here's 32. Here's 36. So may I read this one? Now Rudjain taught one day, all of the sitting in his asana of the arhats, the arhats are the shravakas, the disciples, and the pratyekabuddhas transcends attachment. It lacks great compassion. Therefore, it is not identical with the sitting in meditation of the Buddhas and ancestors. Who consider great compassion first, whereby they save all sentient beings? The Hindu heretics also practice sitting meditation. Heretics, however, always retain the three evils, namely attachment, perverse views, arrogance. Therefore,

[35:14]

their sitting in meditation is eternally different from that of the Buddhas and ancestors. Among the shravakas, among the disciples, there is also the practice of sitting in meditation. However, the shravakas rarely possess compassion. Their self-propheting wisdom does not necessarily allow them to penetrate the true characteristic marks of all phenomena. They improve themselves in such a way that all the seeds of Buddhahood are crushed. Therefore, their sitting in meditation is eternally different from that of the Buddhas and ancestors. In their sitting in meditation, the Buddhas and ancestors wish to gather the entire Buddha Dharma from the first developing of the mind of the formless mind. Thus, all sentient beings are neither forgotten nor abandoned. Their compassionate thought

[36:17]

is always extended even to insects. They transfer their every merit to the salvation of all sentient beings, determined to save them all. For this reason, the Buddhas and ancestors always sit in meditation and pursue the way in the realm of desire. Regarding Jambudvipa as the only region in the realm of desire, they cultivate all merits and attain meekness of mind. Dogen then asked, What is the attainment of meekness of mind? Rujing replied, The will of the Buddhas and ancestors to drop body and mind is meekness of mind. This is the seal put upon the mind of the Buddhas and ancestors. Dogen made six marks. Now,

[37:19]

the central point here that I'd like to emphasize is that Buddhas and ancestors are always sitting and pursuing the way in the realm of desire. The realm of desire is the English translation of the Sanskrit word Kamadattu. Kamadattu. Do you know Kamadattu? Have you heard the expression three worlds? Three worlds are Kamadattu, Rupadattu, and Arupadattu. All experience that human beings can have comes under these all worldly experience and can be categorized in these three worlds. Kama means sex. Have you heard

[38:22]

the Kama Sutra? The Sutra of Sex. Kamadattu is the realm of the five senses. And not only the five senses, but the realm of sex. Sometimes it's called also the realm where food is taken by the mouthfuls. The other realm, the next realm, is called the Rupadattu which means, rupa means material but in this sense it means refined or basic material. And the Rupadattu which is another sphere of existence which we can enter into through meditations, there's no longer spoons or moths. There's still colors, smells, tastes, there's still five senses, but there's no composite forms like tape recorders, glasses, lamps, chairs, people, breasts,

[39:23]

babies, milk. These things don't exist. But there are forms. And then another realm is called the Aripadattu which means there's no form, there's only mental phenomena. This can also be entered into by various transmittal meditations. The Kamadattu is composed of basically six realms. The Rupadattu is composed of one realm, basically, and the Aripadattu is composed of one realm. The Rupadattu, the Kamadattu has what we call the realm of the humans, the realm of the gods or devas, the hell realms or the realms of extreme isolation, the animal realm, hungry ghost realm, and the titan realm. Are you familiar with those six worlds? Human, god,

[40:24]

god or divine, infernal, hungry ghost, animal, and titan. For us, the human realm is the center of these six. In the human realm, there are, according to the usual Buddhist mythology, four continents. In the center of the human realm is Mount Sumeru. And there's four continents, one, two, three, four. In the south continent is called Jambudvipa. In the south continent is where practice is optimum. The human type of existence can exist in all

[41:25]

four continents. But in the south continent it's most most auspicious. And the reason why it's most auspicious is not because it's I don't know what you might think auspicious means, but the reason why it's auspicious is because Jambudvipa is the place that has the most as optimal connections with all the other continents and with all the other realms. Jambudvipa is the center of the Kamadhatu. And the Kamadhatu is the center of gravity of the three worlds. The higher realms can be entered into through trances, but when the trances elapse, the beings come back down to the Kamadhatu.

[42:26]

So Buddhists sit at the center of the lowest and the highest. But they sit sort of down at the bottom. Like we say the lotus grows up out of the muddy water. The Buddhists sit in the middle of the mud. They don't sit in the worst place. They don't sit in the best place. They sit in the place that's connected to the worst and the best. They sit at the focus of all sentient beings. They sit at the place which is the closest to all of them. So they could be if they move over this way a little bit, they would be closer to those people over there but they'd be farther from these people over here. And similarly if they move over this way they'd be closer to these people

[43:28]

but farther than these people. There's a place where they're closest to all. That's the place they sit. It's the place of greatest intensity in terms of awareness of suffering creatures. That's where they sit. And they organize their life so that they can find themselves at that focal center of suffering and it's there that they mature. And it's there that the supple mind is developed. And it's there that they can totally exert the first noble truth namely life is suffering. There they can

[44:29]

completely understand it. So that's section 36 here and 32 there and next tomorrow I'd like to talk more about what this place that Buddhists are always sitting what the place is like and how we can create that place how we can organize our life to put ourselves in that place where Buddhists sit how we can find that place how we can guide ourselves to that place so we can sit where Buddhists sit what that place is like how we can do it with our body in our own body and how we can do it in our own society

[45:29]

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