(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - Okay, abundant treasures is the name of this. Because the name of a Buddha, we'll meet him later on in this talk. On these retreats, we've been looking at... One of the pivots is a text for the last three years. So two years ago, we looked at Shanti Deva's body child at time, and so that's the text we get our sevenfold picture from. Last year we looked at the Dharma Pata, see the talks and discussion groups. And this year we didn't invite lotus sutra. I think it was Dassney's suggestion, but we're gonna quickly open another track, another type of text. Now, I was reflecting on this, and it might be a Western Protestant way of looking at it, but to look at the defining text of a tradition. You know, when we take it down and put in this is the book of Buddhism and traditional Buddhist circle, well, we've got lots of books, you know, about Western ones of their book. And there's a ten seton to see that. But we could see each of these texts as defining a crucial, a cornerstone text and the three main traditions of Asian Buddhism. So the body tribe of Taira was, as a cornerstone of Indian Tibetan Buddhism, it was really important for Tibetan Buddhism. The Dharma Pata is like maybe the definitive one volume text of the Taira volumes. They're the southern Buddhism, what you call southern Buddhism. Now, how you look at sutra comes into it. So in Eastern Buddhism, China and Japan, it's the important text there. So by sheer coincidence, we've covered the major traditions of Eastern Buddhism. We've got about the history. It appeared, this book appeared in the first and second century CE in India. I was watching, I've got the DVDs of Michael Wirth's History of India. And I've seen that program here in Japan. It's so enthusiastic and excited about all different kinds of aspects of India. And he talks, he quotes Edward Edwin Givens on the second century, maybe being the happiest period in history. The west, the Loma Empire was its peak. Kagan Europe was like at its strongest and was vital to classical direction. India was really flowering, China was really flowering. And in India as well, there was a real flowering culture. The Buddhist culture sort of reaches its maturity at this time. So you've got in a way like, I suppose the collective mundane mind is catching up with the Buddhist vision. So you've got architecture developed. You get big institutions, you get to start the big industries in North India. You've got myth, you've got philosophy, you've got drama. All the things that Buddha didn't obtain to do, the generations have followed afterwards, just developed and developed and developed. And the whole research comes out of that. One of those texts, the book is Snowball. And there's something that's a kernel and it rolls through Buddhist chit-chat and Dharma discussion and everything. And it accumulates things too. If you look at the whole book, I find about five chapters at the end that have just joined into the party and hung on and then become adopted and been joined into the main text. So that's where it fits in. It's part of a Mahayana, part of the second big phase of Indian Buddhism developing in which in India itself was probably, this height of Buddhism was probably in the minority. There was a certain group of monks who were sort of going beyond the body of texts but they had a critique of established Buddhism that was going into the width of 500 years and moves into sort of adding on to that with these searches, these texts, developing and then being held up. That's quite important because for me, it's a quite lot of sutra and text beyond this category. But not to stand alone, you see sometimes in Japanese Buddhism you try to make, especially this text. The whole of Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist thought, Buddhist text, but how it works and it's what they're going to work and where it came from, is it sets on top of basic Buddhism. I always thought, I don't think it still does but Microsoft is it. Microsoft sets on top of M.S. doors so that might help me hear those computers about them. You know, if you're not the sub-starter, you don't have to hang on top. So you need your basic positionality, feel actioners, feel of life, spiral path as we see it in India. Maybe you get real grips all that and then you can understand this text. It's polemical, it's part of historical argument. But this argument, even Mahayana's a bit, saying we're better than what came before. We're better than the others. You imagine these monks who have the special text and they're those monks who don't follow that and go, "They're just deviating, you're following the wrong searches "and they're arguing back." Now this is better than what you've got and you are hining on it, you're less, you're degenerate, you are following a smaller path and this is bigger. When you read the text, you'll see this coming out, a certain argument and it's also very important that we don't get caught up in the argument. As Western Buddhists, we identify and we value the principles in what we find in Buddhism. We don't get involved in the problems that they get into, we don't have to get involved in the history. We don't have to get involved in the arguments of a carton which carton path, which is a big powerful debate and leader, which one is a real one because the moment it's two rivals and they're having a fight and a boy has a route sort of arguing over this as a one and a half billion what's the real estate? We don't have to get involved, we can just go back to going, what are the principles in the dark, you know? The arguments you have, the same tradition, between certain ingredients, that's not our argument, that's Chinese argument and Chinese culture. And this too and ending argument between the real Buddhism and what's not the old Buddhism and the new Buddhism and the bigger vision and everything. We dig into that and find common principles in it. But that's such a, rather than looking at, it talks with these three forms of enlightenment. Sharavika for Chaka Buddha and Buddha. And we look at these in that tradition, it would be, this is a lesser form, it's a greater form, it's a kind of historical argument. But for us, we get to the principle of, we can have a narrow way of looking at practice or we can have a bigger way. See that difference between this skill versus that skill that we get to a deeper principle that we can use and that we find useful. So the lotus sutra is, it's a rogue sutra, it doesn't behave itself. And it's, it doesn't fit into one of the scholars that I mean, it doesn't fit into what came before, it's a critique of what came before. And it doesn't fit into Mahayana proper either. It says dangerous things, just to sort of stir up things about, yeah? But it's like, you know, you're going to party some things a bit quiet, not even noise it up, that's what the Mahayana sutra is, yeah? The river rogue is misty-heaving and it comes out with things just to sort of, it wants to get the spirit of things, whoever's behind us wants to get the spirit. It's interesting, it's called a sutra, a discourse of the Buddha. But, if you have historical mind that we all do now, then you can't have seen it, it's later. So like, there may be a kernel in there that comes from past down orally from the time of the Buddha. But, it's not literally the literal, the documented words of the Buddha himself spoke two and a thousand years ago. It's like, it's coming from that same level of realization, same level of awakening. So in that sense, it comes from the level of awakening of the Buddha, you know? Traditionally though, this would be seen as being spoken by the Buddha. And all the arguments you've seen, traditional Japanese Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Indian Buddhism, you see this is actually spoken by the Buddha. We can't manage that, we sort of think. Hang on, this has come in later on, yeah? So a flowering is, it's something that's kind of a big flowery, a bit rich period of Indian culture and Indian Buddhism. It's when things start to get written, very different flavors from the earlier text, the Palakhan, and it's got this cadence of repetition that is an oral tradition. It sort of sounds odd until you sing it, you know? It's like a ballad. Why are there people who aren't talking over again? But if you actually see it loud, it works. This was written, it was designed, it evolved with people writing on their palm leaf, manuscripts, you know? You've got it on these old channels. The oldest core of it, every chapter, a little bit of hope, it's got prose, and then it's got poetry, repeating the same story, and it's got prose, and it's got poetry. It's got prose, it's got poetry. You find this earlier on in the Palakhan as well, but it's really developed and missed out, and it's like the verses were first, and there in the ordinary language, they kind of cracked it, they're kind of smoking, not quite the street language, so semi polite, but not too posh. That's the oldest thing. And then when a person got fancier, they'd translate it, or started to accumulate around the verses, which was an additional commentary, or restate in it in a different way, and classical Sanskrit, sort of, as it was when we were getting posh, it started to speak with life. I was speaking Latin or something, speaking high Latin, I want to make things sound very fancy and very respectable. So you get this text being the different forms of Indian language. There is no Sanskrit surviving in Nepal, and there's little temples and monasteries that go into Kathmandu, and you're in the old lanes, under all old doors, and you're finding ancient institutions, they're all married and they're all kind of like, communities, people living together, but you put a center for months, and this is the survivors of Indian Buddhism, and they've kept them, they have some ancient tags that go right by, all Buddhism. There's a version, I think it's an abbreviation, not like ours, but a separate division, in Kota, and in the Silk Route. So you're getting up into Central Asia. These steers, quite fascinating kingdoms, are used to exist in Oasis, on this big route, where silk went that way, and the Romans did a little struggle trying to sell things back to their names in the Chinese, but they were sold by glass. Glass would be taking a really precious glass. We'd taken all the across the desert and carnals, and enormous rich cities developed, and Buddhism, the whole Konsaboon really flourished out there. We don't know so much about that. Kota hadn't held out against it, and Muslims, I think, brushed it out of it in the text. For a hundred years, the king of Kotaans fought against it, and taken over. It gets into China, with several translations. Criminal Jiva was a famous translation. His translation to Chinese, I was going to ask you to say, "It's got an effect on Eastern Buddhism, "like the King James Bible has on English-speaking world." A full of quotes from King James, and he's throwing Shakespeare as well, but this text is important in China and in Japan. It's funny because it's the only bands who never make it in Britain, never make it in America, but they're claiming it's the big in Japan. So the list of lotus sutra is it's very in Japan. It doesn't seem to go all that important in India. Never made a mark here. Definitely didn't make a mark in Tibet. They're in the books. They're these big libraries in Tibet. It's got to be up in the dusty corner. They have ever talked about it. But in China in Japan, it gets there, and it gets top of the charts. The Kuma Jiva's translation somehow gets the poetry right, and those refined culture of Chinese are the very high demands of what you're going to listen to, 'cause that's what they go upon it. Chey, very important, Chinese teacher. He focuses a number of sutra, and from him, all the skills of Chinese in the mean, in Tibet and those around, Chinese in Japanese Buddhism, really sort of focused on this. Dogan, in Hakurin, major Japanese Zen teachers. Look at lotus, it was very important for them. This is quite interesting. Modern Western Zen tends to really treat Zen. It's not about books. It's about experience. But Zen tradition has a grounding in texts, and sutra, lotus sutra is one of them. In fact, Dogan, someone who's seen one of the scholars, I was wondering who's seen, but with Dogan, all the bits that look like mum will jumble and be called oras so Zen. You need a lotus sutra, it makes sense. Especially with, Dogan starts bending space and time, and he's basing this on what we find in the lotus sutra. So, Zen has a potential basis, same as all the other forms of Buddhism. These sutras are important as well to them. This is the name, sadharma pandarika, original Sanskrit name. So, we tend to short it down to pandarika sutra, lotus sutra, white lotus sutra. But the whole thing is sa, real, good, high, dharma, truth. So, it's real, good, fine, truth, yeah? Or it was called the real thing about that, yeah? It's the real thing. So, it's definitely, it's, it's having an argument, somebody's not agreeing with it. It says it's a pandarika with the Sanskrit. So many words for lotus s, isn't it, there's some, one try to do lotus, it can be a good part, yeah? There's one for, there's a part, so many other. Kamala, yeah, so this is the principle, it's mostly words for its little, Sanskrit is go many words for lotus. Sutra, this course of the Buddha, I've got into that, originally means thread, but when you see something in the Buddhist tradition of this sutra, it's taken as high as I thought, it goes back to the enlightened mind itself. So, it's the communication from enlightened mind, which is the real good fine truth of the white lotus. It's Mahayana, it's the great way the Mahayana emphasized, it's not just enough to get enlightened yourself, what enlightenment is, is enlightenment, awakening for the sake of all beings whatsoever. It's Mahay, in terms of profound, it's really deep, vast and great, and it's deep, it's vast and great, because it involves everybody, every blade of grass is involved in your practice, you're doing it for every being. The different Mahayana searches, there's scores and scores and scores, and you can fill the room properly. The major ones are the vast, they're big, they're like a log, yeah? He has a vast log. And during the years, like many users come and take bits of it, and if somebody takes a jug of the water and goes and mixes clay, and somebody else waters their garden with it, and somebody else waters cows, and somebody else mixes concrete, but the log is still full, yeah? The log is never depleted. It's like the white lotus litter, you have whole-school Japanese birds and meat-churn birds, and it comes out of the lotus litter. You have Bante's book and talks, but I've been finding ones in the net, Norman Fisher's got a series, which is alarmingly the same as Bante's book. You've got, on and on it goes. I think that hands got good. Whatever commentary you have on it, never exhausts the sutra. It's like a great poem, you know, joined down in the Shakespeare era, since I'm Scotland and Barre Henderson. You have centuries of criticism on it, but criticism never exhausts, it never explains the poem present, it never explains the poem, no matter how long it's taught, the poem's still beyond any explanation, it's still bigger. Same with a sutra, it's like it's never depleted. It's a door, yeah, but I've been reading it. I'm just going to run for the atmosphere, I've traveled up there a lot to a hospital in the air, to visit a mother who is in for two or three weeks. I'm just reading this sutra, and this can be slowly transported into a different state of mind. When you first come across the sutra, it's quite strange, it's quite different, I'll get into it in something a minute, but what happened was that something else happens, you go in through it into a bigger world, into a bigger perspective. It doesn't communicate facts, yeah. There's not much teaching, there's just lovely little bits, and there's one where someone who teaches this sutra should have the abode of the Buddha, the robe of the Buddha, and the seat of the Buddha, and it says that the abode of the Buddha is compassion, and the robe of the Buddha is gentleness and patience, and the seat of the Buddha is emptiness of all factors, emptiness of all experience. It's quite profound, there's teachings in there, but by and large what it's doing is communicating a vision, opening a door into a vision, into an environment, into a big mind. So I'm gonna go through you a bit about style, things I've noticed in style. At first point, a Mahayuna sutra is like a penguin. (laughing) Okay, now remember this, yeah. You get a penguin, you see them walk a bit in line, and it's really ungainly, isn't it? But then you see them in film, and then that little program is in the water, and it's beautiful, so the penguin makes sense, and it's only on it, which is in the water. So sutras like this, they read it like a modern novel, in it like a normal narrative novel. We get bored, yeah, 'cause it doesn't work with that, it doesn't structure it like that. If we read it like a textbook for information facts, we'll get frustrated, it doesn't work with that, yeah. I speak my lesson, but you might say, "Well, maybe it's more like a magical, realist novel." You know, he's like the Americans like that, but it's where strange things appear, and things break up. The other way of trying to break up this, closed, settled, sort of narrative of normal times for us, or like, was it post-modernist, meta narrative? 'Cause it's constantly talking about itself. It's constantly to see. - Japanese writer, Haruki Harukam, he does it. - Oh, he's got it from a lotus, sutras, then. - He's got it from a lotus. (laughing) - No one in Japan it can read, it's probably not really familiar with this text, so that's, that makes sense. And it's constantly referring to itself, and you're going, "We could use to reading books, "but we're used to the modern age." That's confusing, isn't it? It's like, "What are you talking about? "You're it!" (laughing) And it's breaking up a self-enclosed, sorted world in itself, starting to open it into something bigger, using those same techniques like the magic we always do, the post-modernist do. So what's its environment? Yeah, so the penguin is at home in the water, where's the sutra home? Two things, where it's a home. Meditation, as you go deep into meditation, the language is sutra, the way the sutra's written, what the sutra contains, starts to make more sense. As vast space is opening up, the Buddha shines light out from this point in his forehead, and it illuminates the universe out in this direction, and the whole world opens up, and you see all beings practicing the Dharma and doing this, and Buddha's teaching, and Buddha's passing it into death, out of honor, and the sutra's been built. It's this whole world opening up. Meditation starts itself moving to that, solids start opening up, boundaries become permeable. You sit in that little shit, it will hot out there, something like that. Well, the buyer, it wasn't the one thing with the shine room. It's not even an industry to get quite quite in the meditation. It's like the world's just appear in the vial. If I get in the vial, the size of the vial is just appear. And you just walk light, you just have to shine through it. Or matter where the world just turns into bow in this light, these experiences. And the sutra's filled with light. And flowers, beautiful things of beauty just shine and crawl into it. Fantastic beings. You'll get them in the meditation stream, which wondrous things popping up. Space and time being bent. The ordinary water will transform into precious substances. Mahayana sutra's loveless is up. Take a normal room and turn it into the seven precious substances in the barrel, and diamonds, and jewels, and gold, and silver, and moon stoner things with them. The other world, their environment is a hole in this picture. Devotion, color, myth, image, incense, beauty again. Jewels, precious substances, what purges are full on, they're reciting. There's a Chinese teacher, Chan, teacher, sort of, original Zen Buddhism. Chan, Chen Yan, is a modern writer. And there's a lot of good books on Buddhism. He talks about Chinese practice of upholding of sutra. What he did in this training, it was young, and he'd memorize text after text after text. He'd go and do the heart sutra at the beginning, go and memorize that, and then diamonds sutra. Then the really big ones, like white water sutra, and the confesses, you can never manage it, there's too much to it. But you'd memorize it. You'd do this thing, which is, you would prostrate, you'd have this ritual, this one, one ritual, take weeks, you would sit there, you stand up, you'd see the first word of the sutra, which in English would be bus, and then you'd prostrate, reciting, salutations to all the Buddhism boys that appear in the white water sutra. Then you'd go and see, half, that's the second word of the sutra. Then you'd do the same again, and you'd do it all for all 18,000 Chinese characters in the sutra. And you'd copy out, I've put a copy of traceable magazine, which has got a number of sutra, number of texts, number of articles on the water sutra. And they've got pictures in them, these beautiful, illustrated little paintings behind the picture, behind the text, and then a beautiful calligraphy down in top, people coughing out the whole sutra in the most beautiful way. And we're not going to prostrate that every word. (audience laughing) What we're going to do is have readings, we're going to have a go at this, see the sutra in more its own environment. So before the pictures each night, we're going to have a chunk reading of the sutra. And trying to get into that way of like, the usual thing about trying to graph the meaning, get the useful bits out of it. Just being in the environment, just going a walk in a tent and just letting it wash. This was designed, this was abbreviated by Chittapala this when we've got from the whole sutra, he took bits and edited it, and it was presented on an odd update down in Manchester, Birmingham, a little, in which it took three years to read it. And we all just sat in the room, and people would take Tom's reading, and went through the hall of this reading it out. And it's like, first of all I was going, I must pay attention, I must get it all in. And then I just go, you get bored with that, you can't take it all in. You just hang out, isn't it? Let it wash over you, and you come, and you go, and you come and you go, and it's like, it's like an artwork and environment, yeah, rather than a lovely object I can possess and take home and have started. Okay, more of its style, evoking abundance, in two ways I'm going to go into. Numbers, yeah, the lot of sutra plays messes with their minds with numbers, yeah, it loves this, there's a bit, I'll read this. So, moving through the sutra, there's lots of lovely parables, it'll begin in the next few days. And then suddenly in front of the bed, a stupendous size and significance, magnificence, sprang out out of the earth and came to rest suspended in mid-air above the assembly. The stupend was 500 Georgina's in height, and 250 Georgina's in width and depth. Now, a Georgina, this is an Indian precision slide, is about the average distance, Royal Army can march in a day. It comes from the word to yoke, to yoke up your dualock, you'd march it as far as it would go in a day and eat on yoke it. And that was how long that was. And it's, that's a bit vague, isn't it? But, it became more precise, it's something like eight miles. So, 500 is, 4000 miles high, and 250 Georgina's days, 2,000 miles wide. So, you've got a stupendous thing coming out later on in this sign, yeah. It was made of the seven treasures of gold, silver, lapis, lazuli, moonstone, agate, parallel and convenient. Being built with thousands of recesses, parakets and readings, it was splendidly adorned with countless canopy, streamers, flags, banners, all made with the seven precious substances. It was hung with the stones of jewels and Mary's of jewels, bells were suspended from it, the exquisite fragrance of the rare Tamil apatra, sandalwood, emanated from it, pervading the whole world. So, it's overloading, yeah, it's overloading with light. Okay, think of a jewel, now here's some more, and here's some more, and here's some more. And then, just when you've been knocked by that, you've been knocked by the smell as well. It's bringing a multi-dimensional, and the numbers, yeah, it just loves to mess with numbers. Indian bath, so I was watching a programme, I mean, that's me watching it on BBC Four. And when you see it, there was a mathematician going through extra mathematics, and there's a bit of an India. I was constantly getting it, got lost, and if he was trying to explain to me as simply as possible, and leaving its fibonage and going, "No, don't get it." That's not my field for mathematics. It's talking about Indian mathematics inventing nothing, inventing zero, and being really fascinated by zero and infinity, and the relation between them. All the normal stuff that you find is a Western way in and between. (laughing) There's something about this fascination in relation to infinity and zero was like the Indian mathematics, crony and gory. And this is just a great way to understand. So, I mean, nothing, everything, absolutely. In calculable thousands of millions of millions of us, some chaos, of time and space, you get a calculator and you go, right, what's a media, do you want to add up and see how big this thing actually is? Until you come to ask some chaos, it's just an inconceivable number, and you have to be a calculator. And what it's doing is just trying to, it reminds me of Phil Specter. Phil Specter made this wall of sound, right? In fact, a lot of recording now, music does this quite a lot, but he really made his breakthrough of adding lots of bits to make us sweet in music. And it just carried you away, wasn't it? The team that he do produced Tina Turner's River Deep Mountain High, right, that makes sense. And it's been stuck in my head ever since I was people at Brown. So, just saying about when I was a little girl and had a rag doll, quite okay, that's nice enough, but you just get carried away and you go, "Oh, go ahead." It's like, it's because Phil Specter's messing with his mind and he's building up a note here, a noise there, building in things and building up a big structure that overwhelms you and sweeps you away and gets stuck in your head for hours, now. Brian Wilson does it with good vibrations. I've got this in my eye, but if you want to hear it, this is proof. It needs to be learned from Phil Specter to build these things in order to sweep you and tell you over. And the citrus turns you that with numbers. When you come across these big numbers, the literal mind, the mind it contains and makes it okay has to go and it gets completely replaced by just this expansion, a scaleless size. And as well as numbers as the other thing, which is image, the image is full of moving from poverty to abundance. So you have somebody being poor, becoming rich, somebody, a landscape that's dry, becomes lush and fertile, a group of kids are poisoned, become healthy, and lots of jewels try to move with image and with Indian mathematics. It might not be our taste, isn't it? A dash, an automatic die, recently, but he grew up as parents, one of his parents was Indian, one of his parents was Western, and he grew up in between the two countries, and he also put up in my hands, such as it's a bit like what he called Punjabi Bling. When some of it's rich in India, they make the second homes and the gay-ish, gay-ish things and everything's shiny and chandelier everywhere, but so a Western taste might be not quite as this, but that's what it's trying to do with the planet, just communicate this abundance of soaring sweeping things. We start with Sutra and it opens. At one time when the Buddha was staying at Rajagliha, the city of royal palaces, he assembled in Mount Dredgerkutta, a great multitude of medium virtues, and all 12,000. All were a-hacks, faultless, their outflows exhausted, never-again subjects of declarations. Their minds freely attained what was to advantage, being emancipated from all bonds of existence, also assembled with 80,000 body samples, none of them ever addressing in the path the supreme perfect enlightenment. Explain to them a bit. Present also were Indra, king of the gods, with his 20,000 sons, as well as the eight Nagakins, four Kamnara kings, four Gandhava kings, four Ajaer kings, four Garuda kings, each with several hundreds of thousands of followers. And there was also King Ajata Satru, the son of Vaidiki, with several hundreds of thousands of followers. Each of these, after making a basis before the Buddha, withdrew and took a seat to one side. Now, I've been in Vulture Peak in the society of this room. (audience laughing) So, a clue is this Vulture Peak is not of this one. (audience laughing) We're not in Kansas anymore though, is it? (audience laughing) Just for the record, Nagakin, an endless king of the gods, we know that they're Davis, and Nagak is a great, powerful servant, being that lives under the ground. A Kamnara is a horse-headed banjo player. (audience laughing) I've seen a picture of one of them at Tibetan temple. The word means, what kind of man? Nagakinara is man, and Kim is, what is that? (audience laughing) Nagakinara is a celestial musician. They're quite lovely. They're quite detailed figures. They're quite powerful as well, but they're gonna fly in the air and they play music. You often get them dancing around the side of the Buddhas and drawings and paintings. And Ashera is like a god in a bad mood. It's kind of the anti-god is fighting against the gods. Even there, turned up. A Gerudo is a kind of part, eagle-park, human-park, something else, isn't it? So I was thinking of them. They're buying blessed, and they helped me in the air, but they couldn't help thinking of them, and then they'll fly into the garden. We're in that realm. We're in there. I'm a science fiction. Ajata Satchu is, we're back to Earth now. He's the local kind of the area, yeah. And on it goes, you've got the Aksus as well, later on. They're sort of forest beings. You know, little purple beans are living in trees, but not dry as a waste in one, but not unrelated, so forest spirits. That's spooky feeling you're up to the woods. You know, it's like, that's the start of the action, yeah. That's Maharagas, in fact. You're actually a newer computer, but I'd look it up. That's a giant serpent being god. So not only are you not on in Kansas anymore, you're in a sort of a world of imagination, a world of myth, and they've all turned up as well. You've got the normal world of the living, and Janice Satchu is following, and you've got all these extra beings as well. You're a donation. But science fiction, or magical realism, without any of the realism. (laughing) I've had to read this. I don't know if it will fit in. This is my real people in about scale and size. Ah, not to be cut off. Not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner, what is it? If not intensified sky, huddled through with birds, and deep with the winds of homecoming. Yeah, so that's really my real welcome. So, another thing about style is lots of parables, lots of stories, yeah. It's not giving you concepts. There's very few concepts in it, and where they are, they're just added in to make it officially Buddhist, yeah. What it's really working with is, it's working with concrete images. And a concrete image is more experiential. It engages more of us in a concept, isn't it? I just have to say, a burning house. You've all got a burning house, yeah. Very rich, isn't it? You've got a particular burning house. You've got a particular flames, where you do the same like, you know, the impermanence and substantiality and unsatisfactory as a condition of existence. You've got to work it, man. You've got to unpack it, but a burning house is straight in. A jewel sewn in a beggar's rag, hidden in a beggar's rag. You've got that. It's very strong, then you reach it. And it's working with you. So the next three days, we'll be going through particular parables and kind of getting into them. So some themes, the most common refrain I've found in reading the text is we have gained something that we've never had before. So Sarah Putra is the main monk, main follower of the Buddha. And the Buddha is telling him that there is more than what you've been practicing. I have been teaching him this so far and all that you can follow it. And he spends a lot of time explaining why he's done that. He is more than Shana Putra and his friends. His people he's practicing with. Say this, we have gained something that we've never had before. There's a lovely phrase, one of my favorites in here. We are greatly delighted. We have gained what we never had before. Suddenly we've had a teaching so rarely encountered, something that we never expected. We are profoundly fortunate to have gained great goodness and benefit and a measurably rare jewel, something unsought that came of itself. And I think that might affect me. Something that we never expected. That is a sign of growth. You get what you expected. You're still in the same. It's like you come into something new. You catch the rainbow, you know, a meditation. You discover what the bosom can offer. You meet somebody new and you gain what you never expected. Something completely new. And this is a very cornerstone of, I think, and Shana Putra's moving. He's moving from the sense of what Buddhism is. From self-emancipation, up to dedication for all beings, it's changing gear and just entirely new. And if I don't expect it to be that, it's the heart of my own. And the other bit of teaches is the one vehicle he teaches like, but it isn't all these little, this kind of enlightenment, that kind of enlightenment. It is this one vehicle, this one vehicle is vast, isn't it? Let all be free of doubt and perplexity, world-honored ones without exception teach this way. The one Buddha, Yana, the one Buddha vehicle. For all Buddhas take the one vow, this is the vow. The Buddha way, which I walk, I will universally cause all the living to attain the same way with me. For Buddhas and future ages proclaim hundreds, thousands, coates, another one of these norms numbers, of countless ways into the doctrine and reality that has bought the one vehicle. Another theme, the world that the Buddha's in and the teachings of the Buddha has, they'll expand it beyond its imagination, but the Buddha gets expanded as well. That is a bit big to get into properly in time with God, but the Buddha appears in such a, isn't just the wandering individual that you meet, if you go back in time, two and a half thousand years ago in North India. There's no historicals, you know, but the principle of Buddhahood. Now we, who's talking is the ever-present potential of awakening? We find this in earlier Buddhism in the Pali Canon. There's a talk on the Manchester Saint by Rodney Gooda and the Manchester Web Saint. It's about Parka-Techel Buddha, title is in. He talks about its lovely image of, in the Maapana Bhanas, it's at the end of the Buddha's life in the Pali Canon, the Buddha describes himself as being old, and his body is broken, like an old car held together with strain. And Arun is trying to give him a massage to release the Pali in the back. So you're getting this aging being whose length is the spring of the world, is just born down his body. Later on, a few pages later on, they have given him and Arun's a given cloths of gold, shining of the luster. That was a lovely suit or something, gold. It's a beautiful, shiny cloth. And the Buddha, Arun's a looks really shiny in her hand. The Buddha and the Buddha, it looks dull. (laughing) So these two signs of the Buddha is that the human being practising, working in the world, historical figure, and that's what the Buddha really is. It makes him so different from the monk that was sitting next to him and the blade for style. Isn't it like this infinite, this radiant, golden being? And it's that golden being that's speaking in this text. The word eternal never appears in the actual text, but it's used a lot in explaining it. But it's sort of, the Buddha is boundless. The Buddha is outside of the time. And the Buddha and the person you get once, like eternal, and final ordeal, in terms of teaching, in terms of the Buddha. It's not eternal as a continuous through time, the way that God would. It's just not grounded between the whole distinction that we have, a whole narrow framework of time and space, and like the mind is not contained by that. And then these we can get to that accurately. It is the word boundless, I think. The dar paris says, "Him in whom there is not that entangling, "in broiling craving to lead to any life. "Him the trackless Buddha of infinite range, "by which way will you lead them?" And the lotus search itself says, "A measurable are the world's heroes." That's the Buddha's. "None amongst men, "another world's heavenly creatures." That's the gods. You can fathom the Buddhas. It's as if eternal, as if. Prime module, but just by being boundless. Time and space are forms of limitation. The ways we perceive, not the way reality is. Big theme in the text is, as I've said earlier, expedient means, skillful means, yes? So the Buddha teaches according to needs. The dharma, reality, his vision of things, is inconceivable, it's boundless. But, we can't understand it. So the Buddha's just as good as what Terry Pratchett calls lies to children. And just explains things in the ways that we will understand. And this is Buddhism. That's all of Buddhism. Even like lotus search. But it's speaking things and very simple. Big terms of inner language you can understand. But then the lotus search is the Buddha's opening up and telling a better context, more open, more direct. Temporary measures, you can see the whole dharma as temporary measures. And then my favourite theme is all who practise are on the path. There's a quote from it. In fact, it's not from Chata Pala's theme. He's left this out. He's left my favourite out of this abbreviation. I must complain. But, or even if little children at play should collect sand to make a Buddha stupor, then persons such as these have all attained the Buddha way. Even if little children at play should use a piece of grass or root or brush or perhaps a fingernail to draw an image of a Buddha. Such persons as these, bits by bits, pile up merit and will become fully endowed with a mind and great compassion. They have all attained the Buddha way. So this is it. Or is it what we're used to get a talk called game on way to go? So the game is on. We are practising. It's not a hassle. It has begun. It's what, in Buddhist terms, what it's meant by this, be here now is like, do it. This is it. It started. This is very heartening, isn't it? Because it's like, you know, we are doing it. It is working. And if we keep all in, enlightenment is guaranteed. My favourite quote, isn't it? The Buddha dharma belongs to those who persevere. That's not a metro ceremony, isn't it? Oh, I've seen a metro service. This is as Buddhist as it gets. Somebody going up to the shrine, going up to the embodiment of the ideal, and offering power and sense. Kind of. That's it. You know? No matter how high he begins, our secret empowerment is going to get any more Buddhist than just making a move towards the Buddha, making a move towards living at a bit more or less ideal. And so just feel this. It's full of protections of enlightenment. Page after page after page. These monks have been practicing with their limited teachings being told. Here's a lot more to go, and you're going to do it. And I can see you becoming enlightened. It's telling them all that. So it's begun. It's not really here, so. This is very challenging as well. Here's a poem, "Coming Vark's Translation of a Bit of Rumi". These spiritual window shoppers. These spiritual window shoppers who idly ask, how much is that? Oh, I'm just looking. They handle a hundred items and put them down, shadows with no capital. What is spent in love and two eyes wet with weeping? But these walk into a shop, and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment, in that shop. Where did you go? Oh, nowhere. Where did you have to eat? Nothing much. Even if you don't know what you want, buy something to be part of an exchanging flow. Start a huge, foolish project. Like nowhere. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you. So, we handle a hundred items and put them down, shadows with no capital. So, this is it. We're on. We are as bruised as it gets, just to get more so. Next, no lost causes. I love this too. There's another bit of my favourite bits that Chitefal has left out of the radiation. The chapter 12, David Atta. David Atta, chapter. David Atta is the really bad guy who tries to kill the Buddha again and again. He calls out with them and tries to destroy them, but of course the Buddha doesn't. There's a lovely bit of drama goes through that a lot of Buddha's texts. Well, in this chapter, the Buddha describes David Atta becoming enlightened and being great friends in the past and helping each other. So, it's like even the baddest guy in Buddhism is going to get enlightened too. There's no lost causes. And then straight on after that is my very, very favourite image of an eight-year-old dragon girl. I'd love to get some of the drama and the comic version of this. So, at one point, my energy goes through the Bodhisattva wisdom rise up out of the ocean, and someone says, "Well, you've been there." He says, "I've been down in the nagas." He says, "The miraculous beings that live deep in the earth, deep under the water, the serpent beings, the powers of nature." But also, probably Indian culture, we've got to do the tribal peoples with it outside of being civilised. So, an Indian person would naturally see the nagas bangs around, the seria bangs. So, we'd see the barbarians and being very uncivilised and very posh, but it's not very good for Buddhism. But here's one thumbs up, eight years old, and my energy goes through and says, "This is my best pupil." This eight-year-old side girl, which an Indian Buddhism is pretty down, a child, and somebody who's not even human. In fact, the monastic rules, before your danger asks, "Are you a man? Are you a naga? Are you a seven being in the sky?" Because of this little question. "If you are out, but she's in." She's the best pupil of the belief that the wisdom. The child's picture is going, "My goodness, he's standing with open joys." And she goes, "Look at this." And pills out of dual watch the whole universe and offers it to the Buddha. Yeah? Obviously, the Buddha very quickly, so usually we made it take some enormous amount of time to build up capital to give. He just does it instantly. And she goes, "That was very quick." And she goes, "Watch this." And she turns into what he sat for, becomes a Buddha and starts teaching, instantly. And she goes, "Ah, it's not right. It took a bit of eons to become that." Yeah? And here's this, it's a, it's a, it's still, it's a manga drawing in my head of this. Let's go. The dual, of course, it's not literally the whole universe. It is, when you're whole hearted, when you're completely with something, that is the universe. When you're completely there, that is your whole world. Yeah? And she offers that, she offers completely her world, herself, and the whole body and the whole universe. That's my favourite bit. So it's unpredictable truth. It's a rogue sutra misbehaving again, yeah? All these terms, such as, you have to practice this long, you have to do this, you have to do that, yeah? Unpredict, people are unpredictable. Sutra's being unpredictable, because reality is unpredictable. People are unpredictable, and the town is never underestimate anybody. Breaking down more boundaries. So, in another big theme, getting there, getting near the end, they'll walk out. Yeah? Chartered picture persuades the Buddha at the start to explain this higher truth. So he sent them deep meditation. Somebody has to ask the Bodhisattva, "Where's the points going on?" He's about to teach the Bodhisattva sutra. And the Buddha says, "This is beyond anybody who can comprehend this. Let's all just upset people." And so he goes, "No, you must teach it." And the Buddha goes, "But it will touch consequences." People will react to it. And he goes, "No, you must teach it." And he says it three times. And if he asks the Buddha something three times, he just gives you, he's got bad news fighting, he asks them three times, you're going to get it, yeah? And he helps again again. So he does that. And he says, "But now the Buddha will reveal the mysterious, incomprehensible, profound, subtle and wonderful Dharma, the perfect truth and feel." And this is about to start 5,000 walk out. Monks, nuns, laymen, lay women in the lot. They'll just go out. Yeah? Because the sutra says, "The hotty spirits so enlarged that they imagined they had attained and understood what, in fact, they had not." So it's the other side. The sutra's given top of this boundless potential of a fuller life, a fuller understanding, a bigger vision. And the other side is how we limit that, how we close that. The limits we draw, we think we know it. There's any spiritual question we'll tell you. And when you think you know it, you've lost it. We mistake the partial that we've grasped for the complete that we'll never grasp in. But if used to be open to anything beyond our sounds, doesn't it? We go through a life with a kind of me-shaped pastry cutter, don't we? I mean, make it. That film, John Malkovich, isn't it? Where he goes into himself? Is it okay if you have to know the film? And the whole world's got John Malkovich faces on it. It's really sweet. Even dogs about John Malkovich. You see? You know that you know it. Yeah? There's a scariest film in the world. It's like the whole world is me and me-shaped and it's all about me, you know? Fundamentalism is about this. I've got it. This is it. That's it. I got it. And you just shut off anything beyond that. Literalism. Yeah? Flat arts and mentality. Take something literally lovely. That's a bit nice. I put all the property in it. I am what I am, which might be good for property. Not really good for practice inspiration. So we shut off the potential of the Dharma. Yeah? And therefore we shut off the potential of life. The Dharma is the way to life as it is. The way to life as it is lived truly. And what happens is for me, these people walk out. It's like, they've got it. They want no more. Yeah? And that's why in the Sutra, a Western mind looks a lot at the stuff of what happens. If you could, it sounds the Sutra. I've been thinking of this and I react to it and go, "Oh, this is blasphemy. I've got it at last. Here's what is blasphemy." But the Sutra is a gateway into the Dharma. Into this constant expansion. The growth itself. Which is life itself lived openly. If you shut off growth, if you shut off life, then you suffer. And just a lovely graphic way to spend more hours when you shut off. Not like, "Ah, you're blaspheming. So this is where you're going to hell." I was like, "You've shut off from life itself." And that is suffering. It's just put a very colorful way. So, my 26 years at the GBC, doing endless classes and seeing people start becoming. The meditation class is good for this because a very weak, clear floor, you start introducing the net above now. And usually the numbers go down. It's like, "Whoa!" It's like being in touch with how you actually feel. Valuing yourself. That's the hardest thing. Valuing others. Valuing your enemy. You don't have to like them. You don't have to prove all of them. And it's like, you can see, you'll be almost likely going for, I think we're going for the last thing, the last one. Run out of the door. But it's like, it's beyond calm, isn't it? It's beyond that lovely little picture of the blue sky in the head and making you stop thinking. It's like, you're going deeper into like, not escaping from it. So it's something you're not looking for. It's something which you did not expect. And your response is shut. It goes down. The bottom down is not bad in itself. I mean, all these limited reasons you wanted from the downline is not bad in itself, but it's limited. So it's three ways. I'm just going to finish with this. Three ways that we can, I've seen, like, we can shut down three of my favourite things. And then I'll go through points of discussion. We'll have a tea break, points of reflection discussion. And we could use these points of written up for reflecting on and discussing. So here we are. Here's my three favourite. Tying in with ethics, meditation from wisdom or action, meditation, imbues. It depends on putting it all around. Here we go. So action, ethics. It isn't about being bad. It's just about limiting our action of behaviour and taking Buddhism in terms of just going it alone, leaving out the collective dimension of practice. Leaving out anger. So I'm going to trick here, so I'm going to preach into the converted, because people do it alone, haven't turned up. You all are joining in with others. Probably redundant this whole bit, but I'll do anything. And it's very easy these days to be isolated. We can buy books, we can buy, we can watch things, listen things online. We don't think we have to meet up with actual other people. And we can kind of have a sort of practice unrelated to other actual people. Just three important ways that we relate Buddhism as a film practice relates directly with three other sorts of people, maybe practice complete. So one is relating to teachers. So looking to actually experience practitioners, and being open to learning from the contemporary mind, doesn't like that too much. It's like I'm doing myself. So it's like having that sort of, somebody who has more experience than practice than learning from. Very important rider with that is, you choose. The way of anybody that's got that tells all their credentials and goes, "You must follow me." That's like a cue for going at the other door. But you choose something. You think you have that receptivity to learning from them, not to them to be children. Next one is peers. The effort of your strength is the connection we have between others as just other practitioners. Friendship, mutual support, working together in our practice. And then, outwards to less experience, sort of doing our best, given their ability and given our available resources that we have, it's not like you should do so many things unless you happen, unless you happen. It's like we find our own way, our own style, our own ability, and within our limitations and commitments we have, but to help communicate the damage to others, to express compassion, and to give this abundance that we've got a taste of to the world. And it's not an option. It's part of our ordination in the F2BO. So, we've actually explicitly taken this on for our brains. We've taken on these commitments. And if we've asked for ordination, we've asked to take it on. And if we're interested in ordination, we're interested in asking to take it on. Because at our public ordination, we take three vows, exceptions vows. So we say, for the attainment of enlightenment, we accept this ordination. Doing this practice. Doing this being the order to gain enlightenment. With loyalty to my teachers, I accept this ordination. It's the first one. And harmony with friends and brethren, I accept this ordination. It's the second group. And for benefit of all beings, I accept this ordination. It's really the heart of what makes the WBO, and what makes the FBO. So, practice, that's, well, ethics action. We're relating, we've been living in the world, and relating in the world. This is a meditation, a practice. So, this is limiting our Buddhism to just one technique, which is usually the modern age, just meditation on its own. You have people who just want the limitation, and the rest is like, they do a select. They're just picking a mix out of this, please take it. Take it away. Christopher Titmus talks about, he's come from the passionate tradition. So, he's been a bit cheeky to what he's doing about it. And he's saying, so many birds have this onefold path of mindfulness. So, we've ate full path, which is a full comprehensive bundle of how to live a full Buddhist life. And a lot nowadays, people both have just the mindfulness one. It's number seven. And you get this, people engage with just meditation. They tend to have a limited shelf life, and their practice tends to die off. And even a meditation doesn't work after a while. A number of people are out of the speaker. They're quite a simple, narrow approach to meditation. Many people have just put a narrow approach to certain kind of practice. And you quite often say, not much is happening. I've lost the edge. Not much is going on anymore. It's getting a bit dull and a bit boring. So, you need future. You need work for the Dharma. You need study. You need spiritual friends. You need to talk about the Dharma. It's a bit like if you have the broader your band on your computer and connection with internet, the faster the connection, the faster the pages come up. People like the broader, the more your life's engaged with practice. People you'll go, the more inspired you'll be. The more you'll be engaged, you'll be opening into the abundant treasures. Rather than trying to squeeze the whole world through the tiny hole. And I wish something had seen the whole world through your soul. That doesn't mean that doesn't quite. It's a nice image. It's not quite relevant. You've broadband, faster connection. Remember that bit, that's fine. Third thing, views. So, once about 20, 30 years ago, there was more playing a limit. It's bringing a particular view to the Dharma, dancing a Dharma as itself. It used to be generally kind of religious comparison. So, you'd have a Christian view of Buddhism. Or this kind of view of Buddhism. That kind of view of Buddhism. Nowadays, that's much less. It's much less religion society. It's usually materialist, isn't it? It's just like living a world where it's just this sense of experience. It's just this immediate, lower mind. And this limits meditation. I mean, think recently why we're less and less taught. And less and less people experiencing the inner practice, deeper, meditative states. And I think it's because we've got a view which excludes higher states of mind. It excludes traditional legends of always talking about God realms and Heaven realms and vast universities up there. And with that kind of mind, it's quite easy to sit down and meditation. And you know that you're in the world that's much better than this particular experience. And you open up into the Deanna's. Which in Buddhism is a subjective experience of heavenly states. I was thinking like a traditional Christian who'd probably get into deeper meditation states better than a materialist Buddhist. Because they've got all these pictures of angels and Heavens and lovely higher realms. I was also thinking of Alastair Crowley in his friend Alan Bennett. We were out in the practice in the Salon in Burma. Alan Bennett became the most British Buddhist monk. And he came back and said, "Well, the most Buddhist practice communities in London." They were practising away. And Crowley's describing these really deep mental states. And I thought, "These are completely rotten." A bit unethical, "CAD," you know. And he's getting into really deep mental states. And I thought, "Well, they've been trained in what was called the "Oddle of Golden Dawn." Which one, they learned discipline. They learned to practice thoroughly. Whatever they were doing, the rituals. And they also learned a world of years. Cabbal, a real cabbal, not young Madonna stuff. But higher and higher realms, which is ten realms. And we're just doing the lowest number one. Material world is the lowest kind. So they've got this whole context, this whole set of views, way beyond this physical material world. And they've got a discipline to focus. So they sit down and bingo. Concentration. So, in the central premise, we've got reactions to Dava's, Maharagas, Kimonara's, Gandharva's, Yash's, all these lovely things. It will come out and be able to see where, like, "This is not my greatest fear in my limits." And the central will draw that out. So we can be interested to think about this. So, it's not about not having limits. That's unrealistic. It's like, "I don't feel limits. I don't have limits. I'm okay. We'll just come a cropper with that." So, it's being aware of our limits and being aware that the world is bigger than that. That the Dharma's bigger than that. It's about having an attitude to limits in context and much bigger picture. It's about seeing beyond that and seeing my limits and the bigger picture. It's about allowing the call of the Lotus Sutra. It's about healing the call of growth, of life itself. It's about being receptive to the abundant treasures that I've been talking about. There's something that we never expected. To gaining something that we never had before. To gaining something that Dharma has to offer. And to gaining something that life has to offer. Thank you. [applause] We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebutestaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
