Lankavatara 2:VII:1-10

*transcript generated by AI

Okie dokie.

So welcome everyone.

Delightful evening here in Columbia, hopefully you all are finding delight in whatever evening you are currently experiencing, ranging from bright warm sunny days to tornadoes and probably everything in between.

We’ll get there.

Oh, how did I get there?

Super great weather between like 2 and 4.

Very good time.

Yeah, see?

Permanence is swift.

Last week, we kind of paused from doing our deep dive textual study to get a little bit more into like foundations of the Oktarian perspective, which I’m really glad we did.

And before we get back into textual study with 2.7 here, which is a bear, I’m just going to say it right now, this particular section is fierce.

It’s got things.

But before we get into it, are there any overall Dharma questions?

Let’s prioritize any that are related to our study in our training period in the Bhagavat Tathagata Investigation of Consciousness as a Means of Liberation, but also if there’s a more general Dharma question that’s present or something like that, let’s take that before we get back into the text here.

That might include something in your life, too, because, you know, ultimately, this is about living life.

There was a lot.

I can’t hear you over the wind right now, so I’ll get you in and out while I can.

Okay.

Does it help if I talk louder?

Yes.

Okay.

Let me check and make sure that my microphone doesn’t turn down in addition to whatever weird thing that’s going on with the camera.

No.

Okay.

I was just talking quiet, apparently.

Very long preamble cut short.

Does anyone got any questions about the Dharma that they want to ask before we start the including life, how Dharma applies to life?

Okay, so I will say that that means that everyone’s life is in whatever position it’s in enough where those things aren’t critical.

So I do like to make sure that our practice day is very embedded in our life.

And for me, the Sutra study is embedded in my life, but I guess that it can be considered rather abstract, but it’s not.

So we want to make those connections.

Okay.

Well, let’s go ahead and dig into this next section here.

I read the section to you from Red Pine because his English is much prettier than mine, and I think facilitates a smoother or a nice glide into a meditative state.

But as I said before, his means of creating smooth English in a way kind of obscures some of what’s going on in the Chinese.

So my English is much less pretty, but hopefully it invites us or enables a stronger connection to the teaching in order for our insight practice.

That’s the hope, anyway.

If it’s not working, then let me know, because this takes me a really long time.

One quick side.

Yeah.

So this has been translated twice.

Well, obviously it’s been translated more than that, but from Indian to Chinese, or Sanskrit to Chinese, or Chinese to English.

So if we look at textual history, we are working from the Chinese Buddhist canon.

This is T670 in our catalog, which is Gunabhadra’s translation of a Sanskrit text.

Gunabhadra was around 380 when he was translating it.

The Sanskrit version of this, I believe, is no longer extant, or it’s only extant in part.

There’s another version that’s around 780 that I’ll probably translate when I’m retired, that is from a much more mature Sanskrit version that has much more exegetical framework.

It’s kind of like, oh, well, the first teaching was kind of rough, because it was just punching people in the face.

So what happens if we actually make it doctrinally coherent, and spell out some of the things?

It’s more like a scholarly work, right?

And that was by Shiksananda and Badan, who was very instrumental in the awakening of the faith, and wrote a beautiful commentary on the awakening of faith, which is another thing that I’d like to re-translate, because Dharuma, up there, he visited ZRS for a while, and I’m forgetting his English name, did a beautiful job, but it’s quite dated.

So I think it was in the 80s or early 90s, you know, just things have changed in Skagit.

Anyway, so yes, so we’re working from the same edition that Red Pine used, the Gunabhadra, which is about 300 CE.

Legend says that it’s the Lankaputra that Bodhidharma transmitted.

So Lankaputra came to China with the Lankaputra, probably the Sanskrit version that was transmitted, and Gunabhadra was translating that.

Now the timelines don’t match up, the mythopoetic excellence of that story falls apart under historical scrutiny.

But that’s why the Gunabhadra is preferred in Zen circles, as rare as it is to see people working directly with the text.

It’s rare to see people working directly with the text, because later Zen traditions subsumed the Yogachara teachings in its oral transmission, and as a rule, was bringing people in from Sutra study, who already had too much Sutra study, and was trying to like get them out of their heads, and get them into deep practice.

And so they stopped having people really read and study a lot of texts.

And they would just teach the stuff in Dharma talks and Doga San and San Zen, and they weren’t really doing a lot of textual study.

Because once you penetrate the Dharma, you fill up the Dharma eye, then you don’t need the Sutras.

So that’s kind of what Zen evolved into.

Meanwhile, concurrently, there was the Huayen Buddhism and Tiandai Buddhism, and these things remained or had a much more scholastic bent to them.

So a lot of what we retained from the Chinese culture and Chinese Sutra study was more preserved in these other sects.

But there was a lot of intersection.

And when you read like Huainan’s Platform Sutra and stuff like that, you see all of these teachings embedded in it, but given in an oral vernacular, as opposed to like a scholarly Sutra exploration.

And now it’s just rare because there are very few accent English versions, they’re really hard to work with.

And American Zen generally continues the anti-intellectual bent.

If you like contemporary teachers who do similar stuff, Rob Verbea with Soul Making and Seeing That Freeze is a modern expression of Yogachara and Insight.

So his work is very similar to what we’re doing here.

And you can also look at Tenshin Rev.

Anderson as the Third Turning, which is an excellent book.

He’s got some other books too.

He’s a very Yogachara and Zen kind of teacher.

But again, neither of them really teach directly from the Sutra.

It’s like they got this teaching, practiced it really deeply, and then turned around and used skillful means to support other people.

So that’s kind of the current landscape.

Sweet.

You know, I have a question.

Maybe this will be addressed in the more precise study, but, you know, you brought up before the notion of a coherence, that there was, I think you said you didn’t see a coherence in this red pot, the Chinese were more coherent, or what you were doing was more coherent.

And I’m just wondering, when I hear coherence, like when I read his or Mitchell’s, like to me a coherence is there’s a underlying theme, they are trying to create a poem or a story that gives a coherence, an overall message.

And in some interpretations, I hear it is more almost like literal, it’d be more true to the words, but then it seems kind of just patchy to me.

And so when you say coherence, like, am I thinking, are you thinking of something different or like, was it more, more, more literal to the word versus kind of giving it a poetic coherence?

Yeah, I don’t mean literary coherence.

I mean, philosophical, ontological, epistemological coherence as a system of training.

Ah, okay.

So it’s more true to the philosophy of what’s being tried to convey versus how, how it’s conveyed.

What do you mean by it’s?

The text.

The Chinese Lankavatara Sutra.

Or just the Lankavatara Sutra in general, like, like.

Yes.

The Lankavatara Sutra, for me, holds a position as the primary text of the Yogacara school that went through later development.

So the Yogacara text went through later development, but the Lankavatara is the core that holds the philosophy that became the Yogacara school.

I don’t know if I’m, Michael is.

I’m losing you.

Is it on my end?

Hello?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Matt Rothen?

Who’s.

What?

Is.

So can you get, is it, is he consistent?

I think, Michael, it’s your connection.

Umi, I’ve got you.

Okay.

Okay.

I’ll, I’ll let it go because it’s too disruptive.

So, ah, thank you.

Yeah.

Shoot me a question in an email and I’ll, I’ll fire it off to you.

Well, okay.

We’ll get it answered.

It’s a good question.

Okay.

Any, any other kind of preamble content before we dig in?

No?

Okay.

All right.

So one of the things that ended up coming up is that, uh, if you remember the very first talk we did about the long guitar, I was like, there’s this really tricky word or a sick set of words and Redfine kind of translates them all as projection.

I don’t know if you remember that.

If you do, great.

If you don’t, great.

But as I worked with this text and this section in particularly where it plays a central role, I went through consistently translating it as erroneous cognition to giving it different flavors based on the context it was in to finally going, none of them are adequate.

It just needs to be one shot and we need to figure out a different word because we’re not, when we talk about it, I don’t expect y’all to all of a sudden be able to speak Chinese.

So I’m going to read, but we need to get this concept in and no like English correlation captures enough of the essence for me to translate it.

So I’m kind of asking for your help on what we want to call it.

It’s the same word every time.

In Chinese it’s wanting, but Wang Xiang conceptually is extremely complicated.

And so this is the definition that I’ve come up with.

Wang Xiang refers to experiencing or perceiving delusive mental constructs arising from our karmically perfumed tendencies, which appear as subject object experience and are as a knockout in Japanese.

Okay.

So unless I’m like completely messing that up, are you referring to like in the practice?

So you’re seated in meditation.

Anyway, I haven’t had this experience personally, but they would be almost hallucinations, either auditory, visual.

No, no.

So that’s a different thing.

Okay.

This is basically saying like the way that you’re perceiving me right now is Wang Xiang.

The way that you’re perceiving me right now is a mental construct that arises from your karmically perfumed tendencies, meaning that you have a deep unconscious storehouse experience that seems a shape like mine and thinks human like.

And through your experience with me, associates me with the name Umi or Dan.

And here’s my voice and it registered as a separate person.

And so you are a subject and I am an object.

And you think that that’s real.

But that’s not real.

That’s basically a giant projection, like a hologram playing out in your mind.

Right.

I don’t have an English word for that.

The Matrix.

Yeah.

Right.

So are you looking for us to give you pointers on what word we would like you to use?

I’m just saying, as a group, we can come up with a term so that we don’t have to try and say Wang Xiang all the time.

I was going to say, why don’t we just, well, I can’t say it, but so, but why don’t we just use that?

Because that’s what the name that incorporates it all.

I mean, we could call it dog.

I kind of agree with Robin.

Honestly, like I’m used to enough reading words in other languages that don’t translate to English.

Okay.

Getting enough of a definition of it in English to go, oh, that’s that.

And calling that that thing because it doesn’t have a word in the language that I speak.

Okay.

That’s just me.

All right.

I echo the sentiment.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s like we have these attachments to the words in our language.

So sometimes it’s helpful to be introduced to a new word, new language that doesn’t have all these associations with it.

We’re also talking about the concept of, hey, this is a thing that you have a preconceived notion about that you’re attaching X, Y, and Z to is actually not the thing that it really actually is.

And we’re trying to do just that with the term.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, just leave the term.

If it was a language that was easier for us Americans to say, then I wouldn’t have been so worried about it but you guys to say one down is, you know, not not super kind, but one.

One.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s not that hard.

Okay.

Yeah, I’m just trying to be.

Right.

Okay, I’m also one of those like a English has entirely too many deficiencies.

According to me.

So I just want to, we’re going to use one job but it’s generally what’s also called projection like the whole notion of projecting anything.

Perception.

Yeah, well okay ish.

I’ll go with this.

Yeah, well, all the English words end up having some sort of nuanced problem.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, yeah, all the English words end up having some sort of nuanced problem.

Right.

So, so we just accept that and we can go with one sound because we need to investigate, because part of what I want to do is I want to have that be an open investigation for us.

Okay, because that I think will be liberating as we really investigate what because one sound is like the punchline of the yoga charn joe.

Right.

It’s like if you don’t get that, then you don’t actually know what the practice is liberated from.

And if we don’t take the easy way out and find close English analogs that leave out parts of the experience that we actually are missing critical parts of what we’re being liberated from in our training.

Right.

So that’s why I don’t think it’s okay to go with something that’s close enough.

Right.

Well, well, how would you describe what how would you describe what we’re being liberated from idea, or the, the, we are being liberated from the experience that our perceptions are somehow real and generated by external phenomena.

Okay.

Okay.

And again, not quite it.

Right.

Okay.

That’s, that’s a general that’s a shot that gives us a cone, that’s maybe at five degrees, which is, you know, when we’re 100 miles away.

That’s a lot of area.

But, but it’s at least in the, it’s at least five degrees in the right direction.

Okay.

Yes.

So when this section of the sutra opens Wang Xiang comes in right at the beginning, which is why we needed to do that.

It says furthermore Mahamati, which is a continuation from the previous chapter but that’s fine I don’t we don’t really need to do that connection right now.

When Wang Xiang of threefold existence suffering, ignorance craving karma and conditionality, Steve.

The illusion like realm manifested by one’s own mind is accordingly seen.

I will now explain.

Okay.

This is why I read red pots.

The English is just part it’s not actually choppy it’s just incredibly dense and tight.

Right.

So when Wang Xiang of threefold existence, suffering, see this threefold existence is like try loca.

The existence of being in the desire realm, which we’re in right now.

The existence of being informed meditation states, which is the first four jhanas, the existence of being in the formless jhanas states.

Right.

Basically, these are, these are realms that in the cosmology of the day, we’re taking as liberations.

Right.

So there’s, there’s even a model called the eight liberations, which maps to the eight jhanas, and the eight liberations are basically stepping through the jhanas.

Because he went to a teacher who taught up to the seventh jhana and said, that was motion.

That was liberation.

And we’re like, well, when I stopped doing that, I’m still here.

So how am I liberated?

So then he went to the next teacher who taught the next deepest jhana, which is the eight jhana, neither perception or non perception.

And that teacher said here, I’ve liberated you from the seven into this liberation of the eighth job.

And it was like, cool.

Yeah, but when I’m not doing that, I’m here.

So I wasn’t liberated.

It’s just a different form of mind constructed illusory experience.

Yeah, yeah.

And therefore there is suffering because there is continual rebirth, you’re, you go into this exalted state, and then you are reborn right here in this earth again.

Right.

Okay, so, so it was basically rejecting that hypothesis.

So the suffering of transitory migrating samsara state changes of existence, that’s dukkha, that’s suffering.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so those are all ones.

Yeah, those are all ways that our mind creates subject object perspectives that we take as real, but aren’t real.

Let’s take a look at the United States.

Yeah, you.

Microphone.

Electrical socket.

Okay, stay with me.

Right, because the system overall does not reject the fact that there is external stimulus that Jim that interacts.

But what it’s saying is that once job is when that stimulus interacts with our perfuming, and the perfuming is what creates our experience.

So it’s the interplay of these things that are, and it’s all happening in our mind.

So whatever we’re seeing out there whatever light bounces whatever out there that stimulates my retinas that goes into my brain is an electrical charge in my own mind that interacts with the human of my storehouse consciousness to create a mental experience that allows me to navigate the world.

Right.

Okay.

And we can’t take if we take that as real.

That weird shit happens, that’s not conducive to us being liberated.

Yeah.

Yes, so I, and when you read it the first time when we meditated what I came up with was, as you said it’s very dense, is that what you’re going to get now is I think the crux of that verse is that he was saying, no matter how you think about it, however you’re thinking about this, like just how we did isn’t the liberated state, no matter how nuanced and complex it is is you’re still off the mark.

I think that was the overall gist of that verse, if I can remember correctly.

In a certain way, yes.

But as we get through it corrects itself because we remember when we get through this right then it’s basically saying that after you’re done seeing through all that shit ignorance craving karma and conditionality seats which are all things that we get into later.

And the illusion like realm illusion like realm manifested by one’s own mind is accordingly seen.

This is the thing, the process doesn’t stop.

It’s like when we talked about the diamond, and the cloth, and the green cloth makes the diamond look like an emerald, and you go, Oh, look at that beautiful emerald, because you don’t understand that it’s a diamond and a green cloth separation.

Right.

So when you go oh that’s an emerald, that’s one job.

And you go, Oh, that looks like an emerald but it’s a diamond and a green cloth.

Now, the illusion like realm manifested by one’s own mind is accordingly seen the experience is still the same it’s still a diamond on a green cloth that you can go that’s an emerald, but now you’re smart.

Now you’re a thinker and you go.

That’s a diamond on a green cloth.

Now, that’s the liberation.

Okay, that’s a good enough.

That makes sense.

Okay.

So how do you acquire that missing.

Well, we’re going to acknowledge the diamond and the cloth, we’ve got the fundamental premise of what this verse is going to talk about we will we will go on.

So, the next thing that this does is it sets up some ways that we can be confused, and how they fail.

And we may not need to spend a lot of time on this but if you recognize yourself in these descriptions, then let’s work on it because these are specifically reputed.

So suppose there are shamans and brahmanas who claim that both seedless and seeded causes can give rise to effects.

Basically they’re saying that you could you could just hear a bell ring in your own mind, which you can, or I can ring a bell, which you can hear it, which you can’t, but in any case you saw me ring the bell.

Right.

So that’s a seeded cause and not seeded cause there’s a seed with an actual bell ringing and they’re seedless with just out of nothingness amount of bell sound emerges right or you get a phantom sound in your pocket or whatever.

Right.

Okay, so seedless and seedless causes are seeded and seedless causes give rise to effects, or that this is another fallacy, or that phenomena experiences and time endure.

Right.

Time exists.

Okay, there’s, there’s a persistence.

Or that arising and abiding depend on the skatus, skandhas, skandhas, and ayatanas, meaning that our experience that we’re having depends on, or is preceded by the five aggregates, the 18 realms of sensation like I, I object, I consciousness, or the ayatana which is just a special object.

Okay.

Right.

So basically they’re saying that if they assert this stuff.

Then it destroys the theory of annihilation.

And they’re taking an extreme view.

And they’re saying that nothing can happen.

If you haven’t like for example if you believe that an atom can never change.

Because that’s like the most solid the most basic fundamental thing in existence is out.

Then, what do you have, you just have a bunch of random atoms because they can’t change they can’t connect to each other they can’t create anything else they never go away, you have stasis.

Right, so things have to be destroyed in a way in order to change in order for there to be unfolding existence so it did not our reality denies the idea of this kind of continuity.

Got it.

Okay, so that.

No, I don’t think anyone suffers from that particular delusion.

And it just says, well, this doesn’t make any sense because if you just check into any of these things you can actually find any of these permanent phenomenon that don’t change.

You just look at anything long enough you’re going to recognize it.

Okay.

And so it says like okay so this is like a broken jar a broken jar can no longer serve as a jar sport sheets can make sprouts, thus, if the nature of the scoundrels doctors and I found it’s a cease presently cease or will cease once minds long term perceptions will not have a cause and they will not actually arise.

Similarly, if the pre condition for one’s young, is that we already have the five aggregates, we already have the 18 realms, we already have the 12 conditions or whatever you want to call in English.

Then we would say that the moment, any of those ceases, then everything.

Right.

Well, so for example, Michael.

If your ability.

Okay, so let’s say that if your ability to see color was taken from you.

Okay.

Would you are vision then cease.

No, right, no.

If you suddenly went blind so you completely lost the, the site aspect of some of the form of your scoundrels, you completely lost sight.

Would your volition, your consciousness, your feeling tone, or what’s the other one.

Thoughts, cease.

No, and I see what you’re getting at but I, I think that, if I get it, this is no, you’re always coming back to, you’re always coming back to conceptual understanding.

It seems like we’re no matter how you look at the, if you like if something ceases and you’re still there you’re back in the conceptual realm just as if you meditated deeply on these genres, and you come back and go I’m here.

Right.

So that’s how they discovered this truth right so that’s how that invalidated the previous frameworks of how consciousness works and how reality works.

These previous frameworks that the yoga charn school is invalidating.

We’re basically thoroughly investigated in deep meditation, and one by one disproven as causal basis basis for experience.

Right.

So if you’re, if you’re in the early days and the Buddha taught that the scoundrels were what created an eye and therefore because of scoundrels there’s a not so.

And then you’ve taken that wholeheartedly and you’ve reduced everything to saying that it’s because of the scoundrels that XYZ happens.

But when you actually investigate the scoundrels, they all fall apart, they don’t actually exist in deep meditation one by one you lose your awareness of the scoundrels, they don’t, they don’t persist, they are composite they’re made up of other things.

So they are not discrete entities, they are, they are subject object experiences, which are Wang Xia.

They can be perceived, because they can be perceived they aren’t you.

Okay.

Long stuff.

So it does this, it does this beautiful thing and it actually goes on to another, another thing, and I kind of want to get to a certain point to send you off for the week because I think it’s more fruitful than really dwelling on these wrong views.

But I also don’t want to skip stuff.

So it says mahamud, if one further claims that consciousness whether seated or seedless arises through the conjunctions of three conditions which are an object condition, a consciousness condition, and an immediately or a faculty condition and immediately antecedent condition, so something immediately preceding it, then turtles should grow hair and sand should produce oil.

And it’s basically saying that if all it takes is for there to be a thing, and a thing that can perceive it, and a directly proceeding moment, but basically anything can happen.

That is just chaos, and there’s no order there’s no structural progression there’s no karmic cause and effect.

Right.

Absurd, and everything becomes completely empty and without meaning, because anything can happen at any given time and there’s no cause there’s no condition there’s no, you know, which we know isn’t true.

Right.

We know that that isn’t true either.

Somehow there is some sort of karmic effect thing that we experience.

Right.

Okay.

So then basically says, if you use any of these things, the skandhas, the dhatus, the ayatollahs, the three conditions.

If you use any of these things, then go on to construct large elaborate philosophical training systems, then your whole premise is invalidated.

And then even then even your liberation, even the liberation that you proclaim to arrive at, because of this elaborate training method, because it is built on these fundamental misconceptions will never actually be liberating.

It’s just you having a better form of wangcha.

Yes, and that’s great.

I mean, I would wish that many more people would have better forms of their wangcha.

That would be great.

No, no problem there but it’s not really the liberation.

I’m guilty of that one.

We all are.

Right, and it’s just like, y’all are getting duped, and y’all think you know shit.

And then you go off and you get all like, I got to figure it out, and then people don’t know as much as you get sucked into it, and it’s just bad news bears.

And that continues to this day.

The Zen devil.

I know quite a few of those.

Maybe I am one and y’all need to get out of here.

Right.

So let me go on to the solution, and this is what I wanted to get to before we left for the day.

So here we are, we’re most of the way, we’re about halfway through this section, and we finally get to the solution.

And Mahaman, if certain Shramanas and Ramanas, the same people that we were talking about earlier, if they observe that self nature is like a drifting cloud, like a wheel of fire, meaning you don’t actually have a wheel of fire, you take fire and you spin it real fast and it looks like a wheel.

When you see a constellation in the sky, it’s not really there, it’s just making pictures out of stars.

Unborn.

I don’t really know what that one means, but it’s helpful.

Illusory, a mirage, a reflection of the moon in water, or a dream.

Such inner and outer experiences, manifestations of mind, are but the beginningless fabrications of Wang Xia, inseparable from one’s own mind.

So if we see that anything having a self nature is like this, is this type of illusory experience, and we recognize it, that it is a manifestation of my mind, inseparable from my own mind, now we’re in business.

Meaning that my mind is intrinsically tied into and interpenetrating with the experience that I am having.

The plain language version of that is that you cannot have an experience that you are not creating in your own mind.

And if you see that that whole process is actually fundamentally illusory, meaning it is not what it seems, meaning it is a set and sequence of things coming together to create a certain appearance of something happening, we’ve got some real potential for liberation.

What that liberation looks like is that when the Wang Xia, I don’t know if cause and condition sees it, when that erroneous, diluted, karmically perfumed perception gets broken down and seen through, then speech is speech.

Speech becomes speech.

And it’s like, you can say whatever you want to me, right?

And I’ll be like, okay, cool.

Right?

And I know that I’m creating the meaning in your speech.

I’m creating the meaning in your speech.

And so whatever my reaction to it is, like, okay, cool.

Right?

Speech is just speech.

Views are just views.

I have an opinion, you have an opinion.

Views are just views.

Cool.

Is that one good for you?

Great.

Run with it.

I don’t like that one.

I’m going to stay over here.

Views are just views.

I don’t got to fight with you about your views.

My opinion about your views is my Wang Xia, not your Wang Xia.

I don’t know your Wang Xia.

I only know my Wang Xia as an epistemology, as a way of knowing.

I only know what my mind has created in the circumstance.

So speech is just speech, simply speech.

Views are simply views.

So we become infinitely flexible in all of this stuff.

The storehouse consciousness establishes the body of reception within the domain of consciousness.

Okay.

This is where I really wanted to get to.

Grasping and grasping what is received and the one who grasps what is received are not establishing each other.

This is the realm of non-possession.

I’ll read it again.

I’ll break it down.

Free from arising, abiding, and ceasing, one’s mind arises according to the entrance of discernment.

Okay.

This will all be on the website.

So be able to go back and read it and record what we do.

But basically, we have within us a deep, latent, unconscious field of storehouse consciousness.

Alaya-Vijnana.

Okay.

This perfuming quality, this mind stream that is flowing through us, which has a collective and individual quality to it.

Okay.

Just to be clear, in the tradition, there’s a collective and individual quality for the Alaya-Vijnana.

Establishes the body of reception.

Okay.

That is what we can take in.

We can only take in what our Alaya-Vijnana has stored in it.

Otherwise, we just can’t see it.

Stuff just bounces off.

So what we can become conscious of is only what our storehouse consciousness has in it.

That’s part of why it’s so freaking important to spend time in Dharma study.

Because if you don’t get that stuff into your consciousness, you can never experience it.

That’s why it’s so important.

Why it’s given such high things to have spiritual friends.

To be in the presence of a teacher.

Because they put stuff in your storehouse consciousness that prepares you for liberation.

Right?

Can I interrupt?

Please, yes.

Is it possible to experience something but not recognize that you’ve experienced it?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

And then later on, something will fit in there.

And all of a sudden, it will pop up.

And you’ll be like, that’s what that was.

That’s the mechanism of that.

Okay.

So then, what we do with that or what happens with that is that grasping what is received, what is received comes into me.

Okay.

This is the experience I had.

And the I that is constructed in relationship to that grasping no longer have to be immediately dependent on each other.

Meaning that the I that shows up in this moment does not have to be generated by the stimulus that I receive.

Because I see through the process.

So I can insert some agency in the type of structure that I rely on to create my identity.

Distinct from what’s arising in my field of perception.

That’s why it’s called non-possession.

Because I do not take possession of anything I receive.

Then I’m not dependent on what I receive.

Therefore, I become things like non-reactive.

Compassionate.

Tolerant.

All of these attributes of Buddhas.

Spontaneously skillful.

Because I am not worried about continuing a continuity of an I that needs to persist in the face of changes and challenges to my identity.

Because when that stimulus comes in, it’s not mine.

Because there’s no one to possess.

Exactly.

But we have the experience of a possessor.

So we need to make sure that we honor that and work with the truth of the experience of being a subject.

Even though it’s a wangxiang to think that there is a subject and an object, right?

And that’s where one’s mind arises according to the entrance of discernment.

Okay?

So the way that we use our meditatively enhanced perception to discern what’s arising, to discern the clock from the gem, gives rise to the quality of mind that we’re experiencing in any given moment.

Gives rise to the way that the subject and the object interrelate to each other.

Gives rise to whether or not we’re an egotistical, reactive, hot mess living out childhood trauma or a fundamentally compassionate being capable of infinite skillful means.

Okay.

I went five minutes over already.

I apologize for keeping you past time.

But hopefully we got to the point where you could be like, I can play with that this week.

Questions?

Any questions, comments, reflections before we do go ahead and check in?

Well, I would just want to say that I think as you said, the Lankavatara Sutra is kind of the precursor to the whole argument for Zen, like getting simple.

But I would even say to the Rinzai Koan system is that the question, the whole prosaic, the whole rational mind is flipped up on its head saying, you’re not going to find it in that.

Ha ha ha ha.

And that’s where that absurdity comes.

Yes?

No?

Yes, in the sense that that’s the entry to liberation.

No, in the sense that that’s not where it stops.

Right.

And that’s where I struggle with what became the Rinzai Zen establishment, because it takes us to the realization that Wang Xiang is an unreliable fabrication, but it doesn’t really give us anything to put in its place.

But Wang Xiang does.

But the Lankavatara and the earlier Yogacara teachers do.

Yeah.

So the Wang Xiang is just, yeah, your view, the way you organize this in you, you do you.

Basically.

Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha.

It’s interesting that that wasn’t passed on.

Because I mean, chronologically, this came first.

Yeah.

It’s surprising that it didn’t make it into Chan, and then into Zen, and then into Rinzai.

So the earlier you go, the more in there it is.

So Huineng has a whole set of speeches on renunciation, and the power of vowing, and immediately changing oneself according to cutting off these delusions, and then stepping into Buddhahood immediately right now.

Huineng actually incorporates the whole arc.

By the time you get to Rinzai, and by the time you get to what Zen became in Japan, it pretty much all goes away.

And then you get to Hakuin, and Hakuin does a bit of a revival in post-Kensho integration.

That’s already several hundred years ago.

Right.

And that seems to have kind of faded out into a vague sense of a Buddha behaves this way.

Okay.

And using precepts, Koan, as a way to integrate insight into how we live our daily life.

But it ended up taking on kind of a moralistic framework about what we do and don’t do when we’re awake, which is different than getting into the architecture of how a moment experiences itself, and actually, you know, thoroughly penetrating the mind now.

Maybe there are Rinzai monasteries and Rinzai practitioners who are running around who do this whole arc, and they’re just not writing books and doing podcasts, and I just don’t know who they are.

Right.

And I will totally allow for the reality of there being fully awesome Rinzai Zen practitioners who absolutely jive with 100% with everything I’m saying and think my critique of their system is totally unfair.

I could be ignorant about what that looks like.

I just personally haven’t met those people, or in the literature.

And if anyone listens to this, and can call me on that, please send me an email at opendoorsen.org with that information so I can update my cart.

Let’s go ahead and do a closing check-in.

If anyone has to go right away, because we’re almost 10 minutes after, I respect that.

Please go ahead and check in first, and otherwise we’ll go around the map.

Rob and Michael, Ryan is up.

Okay.

Peaceful.

Peaceful and grateful.

Thank you, Umi, for leading this and for setting this up week after week.

I forget what that phrase is that everyone uses, like checking in or here or something like that.

I haven’t caught the rhythm yet with you guys, but what is that?

We just finished with I’m in.

I’m in.

That’s what it is.

Thank you.

That’s okay.

So I’m in.

Michael, checking in.

Gratitude, Umi, for your dedication to this study and synthesis.

Thank you.

And my clarity and my appreciation for kind of going back to myself 25 years ago and looking at this and bringing it now into a kind of more confident, secure mind.

And, yeah, just grateful to be here with you guys.

Thank you.

And I’m in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Robin, checking in on a highly eventful evening here.

And I am so grateful and pleased that I’m swimming.

I’m riding the Yogachara and I understand.

Yay.

Thank you, Umi, for being a fantastic teacher.

I’m in.

Thank you.

Ryan, checking in.

That sense of gratitude, curiosity.

Yeah.

So it was a lot to chew on.

It always makes me happy.

It gives me something to ponder.

So, yeah, with that, I’m in.

Thank you.

Let me check it in.

Once again, I’m grateful to be able to share in this project with you and for the accountability that keeps me struggling through Chinese texts from 1800 years ago that is like mind cripplingly difficult.

And the way that it, for me, it deepens, you know, like what I really love about what we’re doing here and having this on the calendar is that it’s driving my practice in a really real and intense way.

And, yeah, and I can never express my gratitude to you all for being here to keep this container alive for the impact of being able to share this, but also just for the fact that it really pushes me to practice really freaking hard and dig into stuff that I would probably go like, we’ll do that tomorrow.

Right.

Very much.

Okay.

Bye.

Have a great week.

See you guys.