Dear Madhyamikans, Yogacarans, and Tathagata-garbh-ites,
Well, I was going to make a longer reading this week, but the two pages entitled "Madhyamika, Yogacara, and Tathagata-garbha" are so dense that I thought we might spend this week just on that and the short Heart Sutra discussion (from p. 31 to top of page 35, stopping before "The Buddha Way: Dogen Zenji's Teachings")
Okumura Roshi hurries quickly through the "Big 3" Mahayana Buddhist philosophical traditions, and I think it is a little hard to follow because it is so short. So, I thought to add a couple of comments here.
The second sentence of the Genjo he references is the following, in boldface:
The first sentence is basically a world of seeming opposites. This is generally considered an incomplete or ignorant view. So, in this view, we have ignorance vs. enlightenment, practice (to achieve enlightenment), life vs. death, buddhas and ignorant ordinary beings. However in the second sentence, all those opposites are dropped into the blender of "emptiness" and vanish as separate things and poles. (We will see that, in sentence three, the separate things reappear, but now seen to be simultaneously empty too, so not quite the same as they were viewed in sentence one. )
The three schools, Madhyamika, Yogacara, and Tathagata-garbha, offer three takes on what is "emptiness" and how it works. Some people say that they are very different schools, but I myself have never had much trouble to harmonize their views, and I find them complementary of each other.
The first school is the Madhyamika, centered around the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. His writings (most famously the Mulamadhyamakakarika) basically present logical arguments why everything ... and I mean everything! ... is empty of separate self existence. The solid chair you are sitting on is not really there as a "chair," and neither are you, and both vanish into the puree cycle of the blender.
The Yogacara (or "mind only" school) might be thought of as Buddhist psychologists who developed a system (quite ahead of its time in some ways, rather fanciful in other ways) for how we develop a sense of "self," come to see the world as separate from our "self," and how the Karmic "seeds" of our good and bad actions are stored until they come to fruit as good and bad effects in this or future lives. The seed "storehouse" stores these seeds, and they somehow get passed on to future lives (that is the "fanciful" part, if you ask me). The "ahead of its time" part is the Yogacara idea that is surprisingly close to modern understanding of the human mind, namely, data enters our senses (sight, hearing, taste, etc.), and a part of our mind (called "manas") identifies separate things in the "puree," and separates our separate sense of "myself" standing apart from those things which are your "not myself." In turn, this causes the sixth consciousness, the "mano-vijinana," which is basically our ordinary, day to day, psychology of living in the world so created of "me vs. not me," "me and you and the other guy," "good and bad" "win and lose" "life and death" and all the other things and opposites.
The Tathagata-garbha teachings might basically be summarized as "we are already Buddha deep down, but just don't really know that, and rarely live like so." Part of that may involve our being the "puree" of reality, but we don't know so and just feel like those limited and frustrated "myselfs" of the "me vs. not me" mano-vijinana world.
Basically, most Zen folks believe in some versions of all of the above.
Okumura then ties much of the above in with the Heart Sutra (the Sutra which we chant at the start of our weekly Treeleaf Zazenkai and many other times. It is the most common Sutra to study and chant in Zen and other places too including Tibetan Buddhism).
Okumura Roshi discusses the five "skandhas" which is very similar to the Yogacara system of how we mentally create a world of ideas and judgments of separate things by, for example, the senses receiving some data from whatever material is outside us, and then turning that into a world of things which we categorize, label, judge and react to between our ears. The Heart Sutra does not reject the truth of that system, but also says that we should toss it into the blender "puree" with everything else (Okumura Roshi notes that early Buddhists said that the "skandhas" were not part of the "puree," but the Mahayanists said that they were too). Likewise for many other Buddhist teachings (like the Four Noble Truths and others) which, while true in one sense, also get tossed into the puree. The good news is that, by doing, so, we actually escape from the "Suffering" that the Four Noble Truths were worried about, e.g, when our self gets tossed in the soup, as well as concepts such as "death," we just escape from all the frustrations of being a separate self, including fear of death. By doing so, we actually accomplish the liberation that the Four Noble Truths was talking about!
The "puree" is liberating because it is the "separate self" which is always bumping into, feeling threatened by, feeling it lacks etc. all the "other/not myself" world. In turn, becoming the "soup" means that there are not "two" to bump and have conflict in such way.
QUESTION - Do you see how your mind may be creating, right now, most aspects of your experience of this world of things and events because the names and images of the same are imposed between your ears? (I like to give the example of how you see a "chair," but an ant crawling across it does not know it is a "chair," and a space alien without legs coming to earth might not see it as anything but a raw shape. So, you actual turn a group of atoms into "chair" in your mind because you associate a certain shape with a function and then a name, thus creating a "chair" thing from the raw shape. You might see a "blue" chair, but the chair is not "blue." Instead, there is a group of atoms in a certain shape releasing photons of a certain frequency. It is your eyes that reacts to the photons, and the brain which then creates a mental image and "inner movie" which experiences that frequency of photons as "blue." However, really, there is no "blue" apart from that).
- Do you see how learning to toss yourself and all the things in the world into the "Puree" of Emptiness would be liberating?
- Do you have some sense about transcending death via the "puree" of emptiness?
Gassho, J
STLah
Well, I was going to make a longer reading this week, but the two pages entitled "Madhyamika, Yogacara, and Tathagata-garbha" are so dense that I thought we might spend this week just on that and the short Heart Sutra discussion (from p. 31 to top of page 35, stopping before "The Buddha Way: Dogen Zenji's Teachings")
Okumura Roshi hurries quickly through the "Big 3" Mahayana Buddhist philosophical traditions, and I think it is a little hard to follow because it is so short. So, I thought to add a couple of comments here.
The second sentence of the Genjo he references is the following, in boldface:
(1) When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and
realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.
(2) When the ten thousand dharmas are without [fixed] self, there is
no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no living beings, no
birth and no death.
(3) Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of ]
abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and
realization, living beings and buddhas.
(4) Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even
though we dislike them
realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.
(2) When the ten thousand dharmas are without [fixed] self, there is
no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no living beings, no
birth and no death.
(3) Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of ]
abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and
realization, living beings and buddhas.
(4) Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even
though we dislike them
The three schools, Madhyamika, Yogacara, and Tathagata-garbha, offer three takes on what is "emptiness" and how it works. Some people say that they are very different schools, but I myself have never had much trouble to harmonize their views, and I find them complementary of each other.
The first school is the Madhyamika, centered around the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. His writings (most famously the Mulamadhyamakakarika) basically present logical arguments why everything ... and I mean everything! ... is empty of separate self existence. The solid chair you are sitting on is not really there as a "chair," and neither are you, and both vanish into the puree cycle of the blender.
The Yogacara (or "mind only" school) might be thought of as Buddhist psychologists who developed a system (quite ahead of its time in some ways, rather fanciful in other ways) for how we develop a sense of "self," come to see the world as separate from our "self," and how the Karmic "seeds" of our good and bad actions are stored until they come to fruit as good and bad effects in this or future lives. The seed "storehouse" stores these seeds, and they somehow get passed on to future lives (that is the "fanciful" part, if you ask me). The "ahead of its time" part is the Yogacara idea that is surprisingly close to modern understanding of the human mind, namely, data enters our senses (sight, hearing, taste, etc.), and a part of our mind (called "manas") identifies separate things in the "puree," and separates our separate sense of "myself" standing apart from those things which are your "not myself." In turn, this causes the sixth consciousness, the "mano-vijinana," which is basically our ordinary, day to day, psychology of living in the world so created of "me vs. not me," "me and you and the other guy," "good and bad" "win and lose" "life and death" and all the other things and opposites.
The Tathagata-garbha teachings might basically be summarized as "we are already Buddha deep down, but just don't really know that, and rarely live like so." Part of that may involve our being the "puree" of reality, but we don't know so and just feel like those limited and frustrated "myselfs" of the "me vs. not me" mano-vijinana world.
Basically, most Zen folks believe in some versions of all of the above.
Okumura then ties much of the above in with the Heart Sutra (the Sutra which we chant at the start of our weekly Treeleaf Zazenkai and many other times. It is the most common Sutra to study and chant in Zen and other places too including Tibetan Buddhism).
Okumura Roshi discusses the five "skandhas" which is very similar to the Yogacara system of how we mentally create a world of ideas and judgments of separate things by, for example, the senses receiving some data from whatever material is outside us, and then turning that into a world of things which we categorize, label, judge and react to between our ears. The Heart Sutra does not reject the truth of that system, but also says that we should toss it into the blender "puree" with everything else (Okumura Roshi notes that early Buddhists said that the "skandhas" were not part of the "puree," but the Mahayanists said that they were too). Likewise for many other Buddhist teachings (like the Four Noble Truths and others) which, while true in one sense, also get tossed into the puree. The good news is that, by doing, so, we actually escape from the "Suffering" that the Four Noble Truths were worried about, e.g, when our self gets tossed in the soup, as well as concepts such as "death," we just escape from all the frustrations of being a separate self, including fear of death. By doing so, we actually accomplish the liberation that the Four Noble Truths was talking about!
The "puree" is liberating because it is the "separate self" which is always bumping into, feeling threatened by, feeling it lacks etc. all the "other/not myself" world. In turn, becoming the "soup" means that there are not "two" to bump and have conflict in such way.
QUESTION - Do you see how your mind may be creating, right now, most aspects of your experience of this world of things and events because the names and images of the same are imposed between your ears? (I like to give the example of how you see a "chair," but an ant crawling across it does not know it is a "chair," and a space alien without legs coming to earth might not see it as anything but a raw shape. So, you actual turn a group of atoms into "chair" in your mind because you associate a certain shape with a function and then a name, thus creating a "chair" thing from the raw shape. You might see a "blue" chair, but the chair is not "blue." Instead, there is a group of atoms in a certain shape releasing photons of a certain frequency. It is your eyes that reacts to the photons, and the brain which then creates a mental image and "inner movie" which experiences that frequency of photons as "blue." However, really, there is no "blue" apart from that).
- Do you see how learning to toss yourself and all the things in the world into the "Puree" of Emptiness would be liberating?
- Do you have some sense about transcending death via the "puree" of emptiness?
Gassho, J
STLah
I don't know how to approach it after trying to absorb everything else... Maybe tossing myself and all things into the "Puree" of Emptiness will rid me of the delicately-pieced-together-idea of death that I hold onto so tightly, which will then allow me to transcend death? I think I need to chew on this more. I am still thinking about having "freedom from attachments," and maybe that includes an attachment to death as well? 
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