Archive Result

212

20110416GRCHHS1

Transcriber: Hartmut

00:00

I don’t know how many times I have heard this introduction. Anyway, it is very kind of you and thank you all for coming here today in Chicago. I have been here in Chicago a number of times, actually over 20 years many times. We have a lot of good old friends. I do remember the first time I was here I Chicago, it was at some kind of ecumenical center called Oasis. Brenda and Rocky where there, Barry Clark and Jane Conright (?). Since then we have been in Chicago in and out and on and off. But many of you continued to follow the path that I bring in. Our core group not only in Chicago, but throughout the whole United States includes a number of you. Many of you have been driving to Ann Arbor almost every weekend for about a year or two. Many of you came later and followed this path continuously. When you look back it is almost 25 years, which is a quarter of a century. So I hope that spending a quarter of a century on the path has made a difference in your life. Not only just a difference, but a real improvement. Spiritual improvement is not measured in terms of how rich you become, nor how efficient you become.

It is in terms of how much you have reduced your negative emotions and how much you have gained positivity within you. This is how we measure. Knowledge is one thing, but not the main thing. Personality is. Many of us have very strong emotions. Sometimes they completely take over. I do not know whether it is due to getting old or due to your spiritual development, or due to maturity, when you look at that we are much better, for sure. You realize yourself and we can also see. I am talking about those of us who have been doing this right from the beginning and those who have come afterwards and are still continuously coming.

The purpose here is to improve yourself. Improvement or betterment of the individual is debatable. You can argue that “I am better, because I am richer.” Or “I am better because I am more aware.” What we are really looking for is as person who has become kinder, gentler, more caring, more loving, more compassionate and working more towards becoming fully enlightened. That is difficult to measure. It is only known to the individual alone, but it is the most important point. As a matter of fact it is the only purpose of Buddha’s teaching that comes through the Tibetan tradition. Buddha’s teaching is something wonderful. We all know and I don’t have to repeat. If you don’t think it is wonderful you wouldn’t be here today. That’s why it is a really great thing. Perhaps one of the best things – or maybe the best thing – that ever happened to mankind is the appearance of the Buddha. Buddha’s path is something wonderful. It is huge and it is vast. True, the traditional teachers will say it is like an ocean, huge and deep. Yet it is very comprehensible to an intelligent individual such as yourselves. Very comprehensible. That is something wonderful.

0:10

What is the goal and purpose? What can you gain? What is the negativity that blocks you from achieving that goal? How can you get rid of it or avoid it? Why do we have that? How do we overcome it? That is really Buddhism. In one way it is vast, complicated and there are so many different types of practices. There are yellow, green, red, white, blue and God knows what – or rainbow ones too. But on the other hand it is simple, straight forward and it really depends a) on the individual who practices and b) on the spiritual guide who guides you and sees how the individual can comprehend all of it. It is not that complicated and sophisticated – nothing. It is very simple and straightforward. We may see yellow Budddhism and red Buddhism. I am not talking about yellow hats and red hats among the Tibetan Buddhism. I am talking about the Buddhism that comes through South- East Asia. Those monks wear big, completely yellow robes. In Tibet traditionally, every monk wears red robes. Nowadays they put yellow on top of red. So now it is orange Buddhism. Then there are many more different dresses and costumes, black, blue or green. But the bottom line is that Buddha himself and the early Indian saints and scholars have identified two major categories.

One is called the bigger vehicle, the Mahayana. The other is called the smaller vehicle, hinayana. These are the two Buddhist traditions known for over 2000 years. During the Buddha’s period 2600 years ago Buddha himself has given so many different teachings. His teachings were not like those of today. Today we organize and advertise and you come here and I come in. Buddha’s teachings happened very differently. He went round wherever he was and then incidents took place. People asked questions about them and Buddha gave answers. Mostly Buddha’s teachings came in that form, rather than organized teachings like we have today. There were organized teachings too though. When Buddha gave teachings on tantra it was in a very organized manner. The place was very definite, the retinue was definite, who could listen was limited and very exclusive. Buddha gave vajrayana teachings in a limited way, very exclusive and it remains exclusive and we began to call it secret teachings. They are not necessarily that secret as we may think, but it is rather exclusive. Even Buddha himself performed them in the physical appearance of various yidams who are the principals of their respective mandalas. He created the mandalas themselves and shown it and dissolved them. To follow his footsteps we do create mandalas and let the people enter into the mandala and then we pack them up, just like Buddha dissolved them. There are only a few that have been left open. The rest of the mandalas Buddha taught on, gave guidance and then he closed them. So it has become very exclusive.

The Buddhism that comes through Tibet is vajrayana Buddhism, whether or not you like to acknowledge. That goes for everybody, they all have it all, unless you are pure sutrayana or hinayana. People in hinayana don’t like that term at all, because hina in Sanskrit means small. Nobody likes to be small. Everybody would like to be big. Everyone likes a Cadillac or Lincoln, not a Chevy.

So basically there is Mahayana and hinayana. The hinayana is basically discipline oriented. If you look at carefully the teachings and practitioners are very well disciplined. They say if you have obsession, don’t entertain it. Don’t look at it. Look the other way. Look at the wall. Don’t move. Don’t think about it.

0:21

If you are angry, don’t look at the person you are angry with. Don’t think about it. Don’t develop your anger. Shut it out. If you have hatred think that it is meaningless and useless and forget it. Get out of there. We used to say “Get over it.” The practitioners are very nice and wonderful. There are the monks of the Theravadan tradition. I should say monks and nuns. It used to be all about monks, but now we have monks and nuns. I think it is good. The monks and nuns are very well behaved and kind. At least they act like it, with a little humble gesture. The disciplined practice it the major practice. That is not put up. It is not show biz. The practitioner forces themselves not to entertain the negative emotions, but not look at them and avoid them. They are so disciplined that even physically they don’t look around much. It is almost like training horses by using blinders, so that they can’t look this and that way, but only straight ahead. That’s how you train horses.

Just like that, we discipline our mind. Why do you need discipline? That is important. It is not for fun to have that discipline. It is not to make yourself look holy. The whole purpose is to prevent the negative emotions to influence the individual and perform negative actions, which lead to negative karma, which gives negative consequences. Our difficulties and sufferings, mental or physical or emotional, for ourselves and people around us, family members and so on, common or individual, are negative karmic consequences. Buddha’s way to overcome them on the theravadan level is, if you don’t like the consequences, don’t engage in them. Don’t entertain them. Do not create them at all. If you don’t create them, there is no continuation. Whatever negative karma you have, try to get rid of it by purification. Even when talking about discipline, they don’t just say get rid of it, but tell you how you can get rid of it – through purification.

In Buddhism two things are very important, purification on the one hand and collecting positive deeds on the other hand. That is common to Theravada and Mahayana everywhere. You get rid of negativities through purification and build up positive karma through hard work. In the Tibetan tradition they call that tsoh sa dib ja. Tso sa means accumulation of merit. Whether you call it merit or not, it is positive karma. We can give it different technical names and make ourselves more confused, but it is positive karma, such as not killing, not stealing, not having sexual misconduct, not lying, not cheating, not creating schisms, not being mean and harmful. Basically we are talking about the 10 non-virtues, three by body, four by speech and three by mind. These are the 10 non-virtues, negativities or wrong doings. In simple, straight good old American language we call those “sins”. That’s it. Buddhists don’t like to call them sins, but it doesn’t matter. Sin is sin and God is God, male or female, doesn’t matter. Sins or negative deeds – whatever you call it, but that’s what it is.

The moment sin grows within you, you become impure and the consequences are harmful, hurting beings, yourself and others. They are capable of bringing consequences of suffering. That is the definition for sins. They moment they grow within the person it makes them impure.

0:30

I am not talking about mystical impure or pure. I am talking about unhappy and happy, about peace and harmony that you enjoy within your life and what disturbs that. Earlier Tibetan teachers gave the example of a clean clear glass of water. The glass and the water are clean. When you look at it you see it is pure and clean. When the Indians eat food they put their finger in there. The moment that happens the water becomes murky. That is not pure and not clean. That’s what the negative emotions do with your mind. Your mind is like a clean-clear glass of pure water. The moment the negative sins touch it and influence it and make it impure. I am not talking about the mystical part of purity and contamination. It is simple and straight forward. What does that do? The water become impure and not drinkable. Most probably, if you used your own finger and didn’t touch anything except your own mouth, then even if the water is mixed up with some food some people still drink it. But not being clean is not good. That’s what the negativities do to our mind. Without them it is clean-clear like crystal. The consequence of that murky mind is to have negative karmic results. That becomes our target. That’s what we have to avoid.

(sorry, I am coughing, that’s because I ate an almond and some of its skin is stuck in my throat. In 1987 I had an operation that removed everything available in there so I don’t have that palate and if I am not careful some skin gets stuck there.)

That is the definition of negativity. You can watch and judge yourself, whether any thoughts or actions are negative or positive. Basically we all know that anger, hatred, obsession and jealousy are negative emotions. But when we get that within ourselves, when our mind is totally influenced by them, then it is very difficult to know. We have very strong denial, saying, “Not me” and when we get angry we say it is not anger but “skillful means” or whatever you want to call it. We go even to that extent, which shows how strong that is within us – all negativities, not just anger or hatred, but also obsession, sexual misconduct, lying and all of them. We are very good to make excuses and cover it up by all means. The more you are involved in the spiritual path the cleverer you can become in covering them up. We know that when politicians try to cover up misdeeds someone is good at exposing them and trying to cover them up makes it look even worse. It becomes much worse than what it really is. The same thing happens with the spiritual people too. We have funny excuses like “It is my own development” or “it is skillful means” or “crazy wisdom”. By doing that we are just cheating ourselves. There only very, very few people who are the level of true crazy wisdom. You cannot deny it is there, but there are only very, very few people who that applies to. In the whole history you can probably count 84 of them. They are known as the 80 Indian mahasiddhas plus 4 Tibetan ones. That is over the history of 2600 years. So it is very rare. But our negative emotions are so powerful. We are very good at making up excuses.

0:42

Buddha did not give us the job to expose ourselves or others. But it is not right to hide that within us and mislead people. But we do that at whatever level we are. And then you are misleading yourself. If you are with a group of three, you are misleading yourself and two others. If you are in a group of 10 you are misleading 10, if you are with 100, you are misleading 100, if 1000, then 1000, if a million you are misleading a million. That’s why Buddha says this is one of the huge negativities. He said that the footprint of the elephant is so big that it makes a huge impact. The foot prints of dogs and cats and smaller animals can’t be that deep. That means if I have a number of people looking at me and leading and guiding them it will affect many, not only me. It will make a big impact. The bigger you become the bigger the impact you make. So you have to become more aware and more careful.

All of those negativities are rooted in only one. The different aspects are hatred, anger, obsession and jealousy and so on. But they are all rooted in one emotion. That very emotion is actually a mixture of fear and confusion. Because of fear and confusion it perceives things wrongly. When you look back at the traditional Indian language, which was translated into Tibetan, it is (Skt: avidya) - ma rigpa. It means not seeing, not knowing, ignorance, stupidity – all kinds of things. Actually it means an emotion which is direct opposite to wisdom. We say in Tibetan:

Rig pa ye she kyi gen da. So ma rig pa is the direct opponent of wisdom, the exact other side of the coin. Ma rig pa is fear – oriented confusion. What does that do? It influences all our mind, our thoughts, ideas, everything. By nature it is confusion. It makes the individual confused.

0:50

That very negative emotion sometimes we see as ourselves. We perceive that as ourselves. It is interesting, isn’t it? The word we use in Tibetan is ngar dzin. Nga means self and nga-r becomes “to me” and dzin really stands for perceiving. So we perceive that as “me”. Sometimes we begin to ask ourselves “who am I?” Then we have something to perceive, saying “that is me.” But what we perceive is that confused state, that very emotion, whether it has form or identity or not. We perceive that as “me”.

That very “me” that we perceive is the exact opponent of wisdom. Basically we need to understand that much. If we do we have something basic to hold and identify as ignorance, that very mind, self-identified for ourselves. It is what we identify ourselves with right now and that is the opponent of wisdom. It is the ignorance within ourselves. If that is ignorance and if that is “me” and my nature, almost nature, then it becomes a confused state. It not confused like when people get old and senile or sick or their sugar or blood pressure is high or low. That is very gross confusion. This is the confusion that identifies as intelligence. It comes across almost like total knowledge within us. In true reality it is confused. It takes time for us to understand that - as we say, “it turns out that I was confused.” We don’t get that easily. We keep on thinking that our way of perceiving is right. It seems right, it looks nice and we give ourselves ten different reasons why we are right until we really see it and then we have to say, “Oh, it turns out I was wrong. I was confused.”

This negative root emotion called ma rig pa or ignorance is not just ignorance. It presents to us as something extremely intelligent, clever, witty, intelligent. The Buddha labeled that as ignorance and that is our target of negation. We want to negate that from our system.

1:00

My subject today is the Heart Sutra. Between wisdom and compassion it is part of the wisdom aspect.

(20 min break at that point)

1:04

Welcome back everybody. We have just described ignorance as the direct opposite of wisdom.

Earlier I said that there is two things we do: purification and accumulation of positive karma. Normally it is called accumulation of merit, but it is almost the same as positive karma. The best ways to get both of these are wisdom and compassion. I give you a little example.

What is the best way to accumulate good karma? What is the best way to purify negative karma?

In terms of compassion Shantideva, the great early Indian mahapandit said in his bodhisattvacharyavatara:

By the power of developing bodhimind, (the ultimate, unlimited, unconditional compassion and love), no matter who you are, even a little creature, you will be known as a child of Buddha and become an object of worship by everyone.

That much positive karma you can gain by developing compassion and love. There is an even better quote and explanation from Shantideva’s bodhisattvacharyavatara, but this one has popped up in my head, so I used that.

In terms of purification, normally it is said that the Vajrasattva recitation is the very specific Buddha for this very specific purpose, specialized in purification with his 100 syllable mantra. You say the mantra and meditate on Vajrasattva and that is definitely true.

But from the angle of compassion and love, Shantideva says in the bodhisattvacharyavatara

Dig pa tob gye shin tu mi se pa

De ne dzo pai jang chub se men pa

Ge zhen kang gi si gen nam par gyu...

Such a powerful negativity cannot be destroyed

By any other means except this very compassion and love

So compassion/ love is definitely one of the main keys for purification and one of the main keys for the accumulation of merit.

Likewise wisdom. Compassion is so powerful, but it is not the direct opponent of ignorance. It doesn’t challenge ignorance as directly as wisdom does. Nagarjuna is one of the Buddhist forerunners out of the 8 ornaments and excellences and one of the 2 banner holders of the Mahayana together with Asanga. Actually the quote that is popping up in my head could also be by his disciple Aryadeva. He said,

Te tsom sö pa sam che ja

Si pa hri bur che pa gyur

Developing doubt alone

Will tear samsara into pieces.

It is probably from Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses. Just developing doubt alone, forget about understanding and perfection and realization, but simply rising a doubt alone tears samsara into pieces.

1:12

If doubt alone can tear samsara into pieces and is so powerful in destroying the negative emotions, then how much more if the wisdom really works. You will be removing the red carpet from under the feet of ignorance. You will make ignorance collapse. That’s why the root of samsara is ignorance. The direct opponent of that is wisdom.

Buddhism gives you the analogy of the poison tree. If you want to destroy the poison tree, you don’t just keep on cutting the leaves and branches, but you get at the root and remove it. If the root is removed, then all the branches, leaves, flowers and fruits all will die. So that is the work of wisdom.

Wisdom in Buddhist understanding is the wisdom of emptiness. That word is a little strange for us. Void – empty – it is not necessarily a welcoming sound. That wisdom here, as I said, is the direct opponent of ignorance, which is the confused nature. When you get out of the confusion you have developed wisdom. That is the simple way to look at, rather than getting wisdom within you and then chasing something called ignorance out of your system. We do that very often. We do rituals to chase evil out of our system and so on. Sometimes that is helpful too. But really, you should see the confusion as part of our mind. The thing that most influences our mind is that confused nature. When that is resolves, when the confusion clears, that itself is the wisdom actually. Describing it as the direct opponent of ignorance sounds a bit like having a war. Then one is going to hit the other, but that’s not how it works. It is simply clearing the confusion. When that is cleared you have the wisdom. It is not something that you pick up and put inside of you, but it is something that gradually comes and clears the confusion.

1.17

The whole idea of this is based on the Buddha’s experience and his teaching comes from this. This type of teaching is called “profound”. Profound and vast, are they different things? I don’t English very well, but for me profound means deep teachings. My understanding is that profound is deep and vast is going into the variety.

The wisdom teachings are profound teachings. Both, the vast and the profound, are absolutely necessary to complete our spiritual path, to fulfill our purposes.

One early Indian master Chandrakirti, either one of Aryadeva’s disciples or a little later, gave an example. Many of these Indian earlier masters had a specialized subject. Chandrikirti specialized on wisdom. He looked through all the Buddha’s teachings of the wisdom aspect.

When I say “looking through”, the normal western understanding of the term and the spiritual practitioner’s point of view are slightly different. We normally understand it as doing research. Even within research there are different perspectives.

Art students have their own way of doing research and science students do a different kind of research. Art students read books, get ideas and different opinions, then write something, contrasting different views. Then they draw conclusions or not or propose your own new theory. Scientists do research by experimenting. I did that when I was a kid. I put some yellow color and red color together and mixed them up and was so surprised that it became orange! Spiritual people do research in both ways. First they look at the different views and points of earlier and today’s scholars. Without the scholar’s views you don’t have the vast aspects. The vast aspects will become only knowledge and that is not good enough for us. It is good and necessary but not enough. We need to experiment because we have to make sure it is working. That is practice. Knowledge plus practice is what I mean by “looking through”. It is not just reading or thinking about it. That’s not enough.

Chandrakirti looked through Nagarjuna’s ideas and writings and then experimented. Then he started making explanations of Nagarjuna’s explanations of his root text on wisdom. Nagarjuna’s text is almost like a synopsis. Chandrakirti tried to explain this in two ways. One is from the words – point of view, the other from the meaning – point of view. He wrote two famous texts in India at that time. One was called “Explaining Nagarjuna’s synopsis on the words”, meaning discussing the direct words, what they say and mean. The other is commenting on the intended meaning of Nagarjuna’s root text. He called the book “Following the Middle Path”. Nagarjuna’s book is called “Middle Path” (Skt: Madhyamaka). Chandrakirti’s commentary on that is called Madhyamakavatara – meaning “Following or Explaining the Middle Path”.

1:25

Chandrakirti’s text says in the conclusion of one the chapters

Kun dzob de nyi sho yang gap o she gyu wa

Nam pai gyel po te ne kye wö gom ba yi

Dün do da nig e wai lung gi shu dob gyi

Gyal way yön ten gya tso bar du sho nu dro

This is one of the textbooks we memorize. It says in that quote that if a powerful bird needs to cross the ocean it requires two wings, the relative and the absolute wing. The relative wing is compassion and love. The absolute wing is wisdom. If you don’t have two wings you will not be able to cross the ocean. Likewise, the individual needs to cut across samsara. Samsara is suffering and nirvana is peace – this is one of the four Buddhist slogans. The individual is expected to cross samsara and needs the two wings of compassion and wisdoms. Without the two wings you won’t go straight but circle, but like the Australian boomerangs that when you throw them come back.

Both are the real essence, particularly on the Mahayana path. Both mahayhana and Theravada have one wisdom. Mahayana does not have a special wisdom. Vajrayana is definitely part of Mahayana. If Mahayana in general does not have a special wisdom, vajrayana won’t have it either. If varjayana has it, Mahayana has it too. Mahayana is divided into its sutra aspects and tantra aspects. In America people talk about the three vehicles in terms of hinayana, Mahayana and vajrayana. Traditionally, the Buddhist teachings explain the three vehicles or yanas as sravakayana, pratyekayana and buddhayana.

1:30

Sravakas are the buddha’s disciples. Sravakas and pratyekas are considered part of the hinayana path and the buddhayana is Mahayana. That’s why it has bodhimind. The goal of the buddhayana is to become a Buddha. Sravaka – and Pratyeka yana is for liberating yourself from samsara. Nirvana is the goal. Samsara is suffering, nirvana is peace. So you move yourself from one to the others. You don’t physically move; your mind state is what moves from here to there. This is how the Buddhist yanas or vehicles or paths work. They tell you what to do. In Mahayana love and compassion is much stronger than in Theravada. But wisdom is the same, whether in Theravada, to cut samsara, or in Mahayana, to become a Buddha. Both are the same wisdom. Wisdom is introduced to us by Buddha through his own personal experience of development. Buddha needed compassion and wisdom to become a Buddha. Buddha’s teaching, i.e Buddhism, is nothing more than his own personal experience, which he shared with us, the followers. Followers of Buddha are those who admire him and think that he has done something great for himself and others. That does not mean that they have to take the label of “Buddhist”. Label is just label. It really doesn’t mean much. It is not that important. Actually at the wisdom level they tell you that all labels are false labels, because we are confused. Those who give the labels are confused. They give you confused messages. That’s what normally happens. Everything coming from a confused person is also confused. You may not be quite clear, even if you are not very confused. So whatever you say or do is confused. Even if you try to make it absolutely clear it becomes confused. Somehow our mental influence gets in there. We may try to be more polite or more straight forward or some thoughts will come and interrupt and the message will get confused.

Sometimes we very definitely send confused messages, because we ourselves don’t want to say what we really think. We sugarcoat it. Many of the pills we take are sugarcoated. They are bitter pills covered with a sweet layer. The person won’t know. When it is in the mouth they will only taste sugar and when it goes down they don’t know. That’s how we think. I am quite sure. Otherwise, why make sugarcoated pills?

It is a confused mind. When the confused mind clears it becomes single-pointed clarity. We reach a non-dual state. We talk a lot about dualism and non-dualism. For us spiritual people, one of our big subjects is non-dualism. Dual means two. In the non-dual state there are no two things. Single-pointedness means there is no double vision. It is a single vision, single thought, single focus. Wisdom is a single-pointed, non-dual mind. Until wisdom is developed enough we have dualistic minds. That’s what we call a confused state.

Actual Heart Sutra Teaching

Without single-pointed wisdom the confused state cannot be cleared. That’s why it is extremely important and a must. That’s why Buddha gave this particular teaching. Buddha himself didn’t say the Heart Sutra from his own mouth. He had a gathering at a place called Vulture’s Peak. I am sure many of you went there. It is in Rajgriha. Vulture’s Peak is gyal po kap.

The text starts with gya kar ke du – meaning “In Indian language”. Our translation says: In Sanskrit.

I am sure I have seen and read it, but never paid attention. About 4 days ago I was reading something. A very famous 17th century Amdo lama called Gunthang Jambelyang wrote a commentary on Abhisamayalankara. Every Tibetan book that is translated from an Indian text says “In Indian language”. We call India gya kar. Tibetans call China dzina in written language. I don’t know why. Nobody else calls it that. In spoken language China is gya nak. So both India and China are gya. But one is kar – as in white and the other is nak as in black. Gunthang says that this is because Tibet is remotely located in the mountains, where there are no vast planes. Gya can mean 100 but also vast. So here it refers to vast, open plain fields. So both, China and India, are open plain fields, with the Himalayas in the middle. India to the south is open and China to the north east is open. One is a white open field, the other a black open field. Why white? Gunthang says that in India people wear white dresses and put on black hats when mourning. In Indian culture I think they do that. And in China people normally wear black dresses and put on white caps when mourning. That’s how they say that white and black came into the Tibetan language originally. Only day before yesterday I noticed. We don’t normally look that deeply. But Gunthang said it. But think about it: Chinese wear dark dresses, because it makes them cooler. In the daoist system, when there is a death ceremony, everybody puts on a white cap.

1:44

So it’s not just blab la. They had reasons why they named the countries that way. I just thought about it when saying “In Indian language” – gya kar ke du. We are talking about a 1000 year old culture. I don’t think many Tibetans have seen India or China. Most didn’t see even beyond the next village and it was a really big deal to go to Central Tibet. It meant years of preparation and years of journey. But somehow that’s how the names for India – gya kar and China - gya na came in.

Why is this teaching called Heart Sutra? Again this is culture. They should have called it “Brain Sutra”. It is the brain we are talking about according to western understanding. But in traditional cultures the mind and mental activities are at the heart level. That is the eastern understanding. In the west, people think that the mind and mental functions are located at the brain. Buddha’s teachings on emptiness are all in the wisdom sutras. Prajnaparamita is known in the west as “Transcendental Wisdom”. The Hindu-based TM is transcendental meditation. But the Hindu and Buddhist way of presentation of what and where and how you are transcending may be different. The difference is about the existence or non-existence of the atman. That became the great unsettled debate between Nagarjuna and Shankaracharya and also the thoughts and schools of early Indian Buddhist schools, these Buddhist tenets are divided into four categories and the non-buddhist schools were divided into five categories. The basic difference that really remains is the existence of non existence of the atman. Responding to the hindu point of view in Buddhism an-atman (or non-atman) is the emptiness of self. Right from the beginning I talked from that level. So Buddhism talks about selflessness. But selflessness and non-selfishness are two different things. Here I mean selflessness in the sense of the non-existence of atman. That is the difference between Shankaracharya and Nagarjuna and that is the basis of wisdom.

The point is at the basis of philosophy. You can leave philosophy to the philosophers and let them sort it out and not bother. But as practitioners, when we do the experiment as individual spiritual practitioners, it does matter. For us, we cannot just leave it as philosophical problems. Whatever the philosophy presents we have to understand and then meditate on. We need to gain experience of it. Basically there is a difference.

1:52

Many times we say “there is no difference, everything is the same.” Yes, it is true, we are all spiritual practitioners and we are not materialistic persons. We don’t consider matter the most important, but mind. From that angle it is the same thing. But there is a difference between Hinduism and Buddhism. Good hindu philosophers think that Buddhism is a part of Hinduism. That’s true. Buddhism is born out of Hinduism. Also the Sikh religion is born out of Hinduism. These are the people who wear the turbans. Today they refer to themselves as living in Khalistan and this and that thing, but it is part of Hinduism. And Hinduism is very peace-loving. Then the muslims came and beat up the hindus all the time. Then the Sikh gurus decided that a militant arm of Hinduism was needed. And they decided not to call it the militant part of Hinduism, because hind means peace-loving. You can’t have militant peace-lovers. So they decided to call it Sikhism. 10 Sikh gurus came and the Sikh tradition was formed in order to protect Hindu practitioners. So when the Muslims came to beat up the Hindus the Sikhs would mount their horses and carry knives and challenge them. That’s how it went traditionally. But now they understand themselves as Sikh, not Hindus.

And we are doing the same. We say we are Buddhists, not Hindus. True, but Buddhism did come out of Hinduism. We have to acknowledge that. Buddhologists all say, “Buddhism came out of Buddha”. But Buddha came out of the Hindu spiritual path. I don’t mean that all Buddhists are Hindus and it is not the case that there is no difference. There is a difference, but not that much difference. It is philosophical and therefore on the level of wisdom. So selflessness is the issue. Shankaracharya and others say that there is the atman deep inside of the person. Nagarjuna follows Buddha’s point and says wisdom is the non-existence of that self and that considering that as existent is the confused, dualistic state of mind. That is the point.

Presenting that whole idea is prajna or jnana in Indian language and it means wisdom. Paramita means perfection. So the whole title is:

In Sanskrit: Bhagavati prajnaparmita hridaya – In Tibetan (pö ke du) chom den de ma sherab kyi pha röl du chin pai nying po

So prajnaparamita is the wisdom I was talking about. Bhagavan is in Tibetan chom den de.

Chom – who destroyed all evil forces

Den - who has obtained all qualities

That is the meaning of bhagavan. So if Rajneesh has these qualities then he is Bhagavan. That word is accepted in the original Sanskrit and Pali terminology to identify the perfection of a spiritually developed person. It refers to somebody who has perfected the spiritual path. This goes also into Bhagavad-gita. Then it gets confused in the Hindu-Buddhist mythological stories. They are like biblical stories. I cannot compare these exactly, because I don’t know the other side. So the Hindu-Buddhist mythological deities are also known as Bhagans and Bhagavatis. To avoid confusion the “n” is added after bhagava, making it bhagavan, which makes it past tense. In Tibetan that is expressed in the last syllable de, making it chom den de. Buddhists try to show that as Buddha, but the language is the same. It is means perfection.

2:01 Here it is bhagavati – prajnaparamita - transcendental wisdom. That is the title of the Heart Sutra. So this morning we got as far as the title. That’s it. Bhagavati is the feminine form of bhagavan. We say for example om chom den de ma dor je phag mo la chag tsal hum hum phat. [om namo bhagavati vajravarahi bam hum hum phat – om I prostrate to the Bhagavati Vajravarahi bam hum hum phat]

So we got as far as the first line, the title:

In Sanskrit: Bhagavati prajnaparmita hridaya – In Tibetan (pö ke du) chom den de ma sherab kyi pha röl du chin pai nying po

So we did the title. So let’s stop here and then we will do the whole thing in the afternoon.

2:04