The Bodhisattva and the Space Age

Transcript (PDF)

The Bodhisattva and the Space Age: The Great Idea in Our Time
Presented by Roger Weir
Sunday, September 12, 1982

Transcript:

From Mr. [Manly P.] Hall's personal collection available today. And we had selected it meticulously last week. And for some reason or other, last night we were unable to locate it. And further today unable to locate it. Very strange series of incidents. So, we have a surrogate scroll. Not quite as large, nor quite as elegant as the one that we had originally selected. And I invite you after the lecture to come up and view it – it's from Mr. Hall's personal collection. It is a scroll of the Goddess Guanyin, who is perhaps the most famous Bodhisattva in East Asia. And she is the graceful lady of the Orient. She's related in iconographical background to Isis in the ancient world. Or the Virgin Mary in our modern Western world.
Guanyin in the scroll has in one hand, a leafy green flower stock, which in many other versions has blossomed out into a chrysanthemum. Or more often a Lotus. And in the hand which she has extended, she has a flower vase. Long and elegant sort of a milky opalescence. From what she is pouring a milky fluid, which falls in the continuous waterfall down to a bubble at her feet. And usually the bubble is just suspended in space. And her feet have sandals which have cloud motifs on the base of them. So that we are given to understand that she stands beyond any gravitational exercise. Beyond any electromagnetic context which we might envision. And within the bubble is a child. And the child has its knees raised in a fetal position. And its hands are brought together in an adoration position – sort of the gassho. And the only difference from a fetal position is that the head is raised and craned backwards to look up at Guanyin. And the mouth is open in an adoration of sound. Or singing. Or cooing. Or in some metaphysical mantric posture.
This image was used without the Guanyin and with a difference within the posture of the baby as the last frame in a science fiction movie about 15 years ago called 2001. And at the end of that movie. I know it's astounding. At the end of the movie to be at home, the child within the bubble floats above the planet earth and in the hazy shine of the blue air fading into the dark depths of space, we see the face and posture of man born anew. And this was the image that Stanley Kubrick, the maker of the film and Arthur C. Clarke, the author of the screenplay, chose to exemplify the crucial final transformation of man in our time.
I think both Mr. Hall and I prefer the old Guanyin version where the child is actually not just a blank eyed baby. But is one full of adoration knowing it's origins and understanding that it's nurturing and fruition comes from a universal space mother who appears to our finite minds as a life-sustaining Goddess full of grace and beauty. And exemplifying compassion in its universal sense.
Where does all this come from? How is it that this wonderful insight and doctrine comes to have been expressed through every country in Asia? Is in fact the golden thread, the tie line, which unites all of the Asian traditions together. And seems to find some sympathetic reverberation in our time, separated so far in geographical distance. So far in cultural development. So distant in supposed purposes of life.
For this story we have to take ourselves and our imagination back to a time, about the time of the apostles in the West, 1st century A.D. and the scene is Northern India. There was, at that time, a very great King named Kanishka. And Kanishka was the founder of what is known in history as the Kushan empire. And the Kushan empire was an enormous construct. One of the largest empires of its time. Rivaling the Roman empire on one side and the Chinese Han empire on the other. Those three empires together, incidentally, girded the known world at that time. And only the Americas were excluded from the hegemony of those three civilizations.
Kanishka had spread the Kushan empire from its rude beginnings as a Chinese tribe in outer Mongolia. In Chinese, it's called the Yuezhi tribe. They had migrated through various internal pressures and desires into an area known as Kashmir. And they're in the Southern part of Kashmir, the Northern part of Pakistan today. At a city, which we call today Peshawar, they called Puruṣapura at that time, they founded the capital of the Kushan empire. And it stretched from South central India – Hyderabad and Mysore – all the way through India, through Pakistan, through Afghanistan, up into Karakum Desert. So-called Karakum because of the black sands there. It's today Chinese Turkistan or several of the Uzbek provinces of central Soviet Asia. And a stretch from the Bamiyan Valley, leading from Afghanistan into Persia, all the way to the sacred city of Patna on the Ganges [River], far over to East India.
All of this impact was controlled by one great king, who in 78 A.D. gathered together his mighty armies. Huge populations of elephants that were decorated with enormous pampas grass plumes. Huge carriages that were drawn by these elephants. Large series of mounted horsemen. An army of several hundred thousand persons. And in[?] great entourage and dignity and power, Kanishka surrounded the sacred city of Patna. Ringed it completely around several times and demanded from the residents of Patna their most sacred treasure. And to forestall any death upon his part or any violence on the account of his being, the most sacred treasure of Patna voluntarily walked out of the city and joined Kanishka's troop.
This was the Buddhist monk named Aśvaghoṣa. And Aśvaghoṣa with his little begging bowl and his saffron robe and bare head walked out of Patna. And the huge entourage of several hundred thousand turned and wheeled on its pinions and then huge clouds of conch shells blowing sound and dust and pageantry and regalia, Kanishka retreated back to his capital city of Peshawar with his treasure.
Why would a Buddhist monk, a single human being, be considered by so great a king of such a vast empire to be the greatest treasure? Aśvaghoṣa who became the author of a single little pamphlet – translated, its title, the Śraddhotpāda Mahāyāna Sutra, means the 'Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna'. And it was the beginning, the first great expression of the idea that Buddhism had changed. Had turned on its pinions, which had been the same for five- or six-hundred years. And had finally redirected itself from a religion which was concerned with passing on a sacred oral tradition of single self-salvation from one to another. Had transformed itself into a cosmic universal religion whose goal expressed in the name Mahāyāna, greater vehicle, was that no one should rest. No one should selfishly seek for their own salvation until all other beings in the universe had likewise been saved. And so, the transformation was from a personal salvation to one of universal salvation.
And the pinpoint upon which the fulcrum of that whole pivot turn was the monk Aśvaghoṣa. And in his slender pamphlet, the Śraddhotpāda Mahāyāna Sutra, a single phrase in the middle of it was the glint of that pinpoint of the fulcrum of the turning. And it was a phrase which included the word tathata. Tathata. And tathata in Sanskrit best translated into English means 'suchness'. Suchness. The entire quality of religious experience and its expression in human life and human aspiration from the individual to the cosmic turns about upon the understanding and the appreciation, that well-worn consideration of the meaning of tathata, 'suchness'.
And Aśvaghoṣa in the Awakening of Faith at the very beginning after he makes a homage to all those who have come before him, to the historical Buddha, to the continuing sanka or brotherhood or fellowship, and to the individual dharma that had been well-taught and preserve to his time, then explains himself eight reasons why he sought to write this document. He does not mention in the eight reasons that he was held captive, that he was a prisoner of Kanishka, because none of these were truthful reasons or motivations for Aśvaghoṣa. His truthful reasons were expressed in his document. And they were as follows. He wrote, and this is a translation from Columbia University Press.
Someone may ask the reasons why I was led to write this treatise. I reply: there are eight reasons. The first and the main reason is to cause men to free themselves from all sufferings and to gain the final bliss; it is not that I desire worldly fame, material profit, or respect and honor.
So, the first was so that human beings may cause themselves to be free from the world of sufferings, in Sanskrit, Saṃsāra. The second reason is that I wish to interpret the fundamental meaning of the teachings of the Buddha. And here, instead of using the word 'Buddha', Aśvaghoṣa used for the first time, another word. A word related to 'suchness'. A word related to the word tathata. He called the Buddha the Tathāgata. The Tathāgata, which is related in root to tathata. The Tathāgata means he who has gone. Or he who has tathata to the extent that it has saturated, totally, his being. And total suchness is one who has gone from this world of materiality and suffering. So that his second reason he wrote, "I wish to interpret the fundamental meaning of the Tathāgata so that men may understand them correctly and not be mistaken about them."
The third reason, very simple to enable those whose capacity for goodness had attained a sufficient maturity. Because goodness has to mature. It doesn't just occur; it must be nourished and it must grow. And those whose capacity for goodness had matured to a point where they could keep firm hold on an unretrogressive faith in the teachings of the great vehicle, the Mahāyāna.
In other words, by his time there was a sufficient population of persons, not just monks in a monastic community, but lay people everywhere in the world at large, in the material world. People for whom families and working were a normal daily procedure. But within home the capacity for goodness had matured to a sufficient extent that the greatest mind of his day turned his back on the monastic community, saw the presence of the emperor of the world empire of the Kushans as an opportunity to teach and present the larger doctrine. And that this population of lay persons had grown to such an extent by the time of the 1st century A.D. in India, that Aśvaghoṣa felt this was the third reason for writing the awakening of faith in the Mahāyāna.
His fourth reason was "to encourage those whose capacity for goodness is still slight to cultivate the faithful mind." That is for those who would like to have had the capacity for goodness and in some far intuition or in some secret purpose intuit. Or like to think that they would have that capacity but don't attribute to themselves. At least they could be encouraged to cultivate what Aśvaghoṣa calls the 'faithful mind'. The faithful mind. And there is a wonderful phrase at that time called bodhicitta, that is the seed of enlightenment is the desire for it. The expectation that one could really do it, the bodhicitta, the seed of the mind's idea that it could be done. Perhaps, after all, it's feasible. And this of course takes the fateful mind. The way of faith is always an integrated single way. Whereas the way of wisdom is always a highly differentiated capricious way.
His fifth reason was to show that expedient means or skillful means in Sanskrit. It's called upāya kaushalya, skillful means – knowing how to do it. The Greeks would have used that word techne – being technical about it, knowing how to actually specifically do it and redo it every time. In other words, there is a techne or a technological approach, skillful means, upāya kaushalya to spiritual growth. It isn't happenstance; it works exactly; it can be taught; it can be learned. So the fifth reason was to show that skillful means by which they may wipe away the hindrance of evil – the hindrance of an evil karma – to guard their minds well, to free themselves from stupidity and arrogance, and escape thus from the net.
His sixth reason was to reveal to them the practice of two interrelated methods. One was the practice of cessation. And the second was the practice of clear observation. Cessation and clear observation. The two practices braid together and form a unity. They in fact form the path of faith.
His seventh reason was to explain to them the wonderful expedient means of single-minded meditation so that they may be born in the presence of the Buddha and keep their minds fixed in an unretrogressive faith.
And his final reason, the eighth, was to point out to them the advantages of studying such a way and to encourage them to make the effort.
So those were the eight reasons that Aśvaghoṣa lists in the beginning. And as he turns from his introduction, his salutations, his reasons for writing, he immediately becomes involved in one of the great documents of the human spiritual civilization.
I've selected three paragraphs out of the work to stand as a tripod of insight for all. We have three or four translations of this. So you can at your own leisure inspect the document in English. There are many translations of it. The first and the best was done incidentally by D. T. Suzuki as a young man. He was brought to Chicago – a little town outside of Chicago, LaSalle, Illinois – by Dr. Paul Carus, which at that time was very much like Mr. Hall here at The Philosophical Research Society. They were encouraging persons from all over the world to study spiritual development. They had a library there. It was called – the publishing house was called The Open Court Publishing Company.
And D. T. Suzuki had been picked by his teacher Soyen Shaku Rōshi to represent Japan at The Open Court Publishing. And when he first went from Japan to Chicago, he was asked by his instructor, incidentally, to make sure that he had had his own first spiritual experience of depth. And D. T. Suzuki said that he struggled and struggled and the time got closer and closer, and he was unable to make his way. He felt that he had still not had an in-depth spiritual experience. So he made a pact with himself that he would either in three days have that experience or he would do away with himself. And of course, when given these conditions, the mind cooperates. And on the third day in the 11th hour he had his experience. His first experience as he would phrase it and did phrase it in his memoirs of satori. And he said, walking out of the little Zendo with his sandals on, he said for the first time he could see that all the trees were transparent. And then he noted that he was transparent too. And so his teacher let him come to the United States, to Chicago, to LaSalle, and one of the first things he translated was Aśvaghoṣa's Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna. That was about the turn of the century, about 1900, 1895 I think.
So Aśvaghoṣa then in three paragraphs from my selection to give you an idea of the direction and movement of the seminal work. And this work is the work upon which the notion of the Bodhisattva first finds a coherent expression. The first paragraph he's writing about the mind in terms of phenomenon. That the mind as a phenomenal occurrence as Alfred North Whitehead would say, there are processes and events, not things and rules. There are processes and events. And the mind is an event within a phenomenal process. Nothing less and nothing more than that.
Aśvaghoṣa writes, "the Mind as phenomena is grounded on ... what is called the Storehouse Consciousness." The Storehouse Consciousness. In Sanskrit it's called the ālaya-vijñāna. The Storehouse Consciousness. In that is the interface between neither birth nor death, which we would call in Buddhist terms nirvana. That which is neither birth nor death interfaces harmoniously with birth and death. So that nirvana – neither birth nor death – interfaces harmoniously with samsara – birth and death. So that the world of illusion and the world of beyond illusion interface and harmonize and produce a phenomenon as the Storehouse Consciousness, the ālaya-vijñāna. And the mind is a product of this.
And this consciousness has two aspects which embrace all states of existence and create all states of existence. They are: (1) the aspect of enlightenment, and (2) the aspect of non-enlightenment. So that out of all the universe of possibilities there are only two directions and purposes available out of this harmonious interfacing. One may either go towards birth and death illimitless. Or one may go towards enlightenment unlimited. Those are the only two possibilities. They're the only two interfaces. But there is such a complete confusion within the world of samsara that it seems that the thought of enlightenment must be the most difficult arcane, esoteric, act of all. But in fact, it is the natural complement, always occurring without any real effort at all to the world of samsara. That is the first paragraph from Aśvaghoṣa.
The second paragraph, the beginning statement on the practice of cessation. And remember, this was written about 78 A.D. Kanishka had taken Aśvaghoṣa from Patna. Had taken him all the way across to India, to Peshawar. And there to pride himself on his trophy he convened the fourth Buddhist council.
Now the first Buddhist council had been convened about a hundred years after the Buddha. They had brought together a number of monks and they had decided that since they were beginning to be the second and third, and perhaps even the fourth generation from the experience that they had better bring together all of the writings that they could remember and maybe jot them down a little bit. Just after the Buddha's parinirvana, there had been a gathering of monks under the senior monks, Kashyapa and so forth. And so a hundred years later they'd brought them together.
And then in the time of another great King named Ashoka there had been a third council. Now Ashoka had been influenced by Alexander the Great. Ashoka's family were the Mauryas. And the Maurya is a Royal family under, especially under Ashoka's father Chandragupta had witnessed the incursion of Alexander the Great's army into Northern India. In fact, not far from Peshawar at a place called Takṣaśilā called today Taxila. And there the wonderful undefeated Greek army of Alexander camped opposite a great Indian army. And the Buddhist wisemen and the Greek philosophers and the entourage of Alexander had a perfectly wonderful conversation through interpreters. And Alexander, who was possessed by the cosmic vision of the ecumene, the one world, realized that there was a meeting of the spirits there. And no need to force his armies further into India. In fact, they went South on the Indus river and back on a great pilgrimage through the Southern desert regions to Babylon where Alexander died.
The incursion of Alexander and his idea of a single world, the ecumene. His idea that man can be raised to a God-man. That human capacities are universal. Not only for organization in the larger external exoteric way, but the esoteric also that the individual can be raised to a cosmic universal level penetrated the original Buddhism. And the original doctrines in India and the next generation began to create for themselves an empire called the Mauryan empire. And Ashoka inherited it from his father Chandragupta. And it extended over most of the India of that day. Only the Southern tip and Ceylon were not included. All of what is today Burma and Afghanistan and Northern India, right up to the Pamir mountains.
In other words, Ashoka had made a pattern template of empire mirrored on Alexander's Greek empire. And Kanishka 300 years later had come back and filled that template again and extended it again. And when he extended the empire again on Ashoka's template, he also extended the religious ecumenicalism of Ashoka. And thus convened the fourth Buddhist council at Peshawar. It was a shock to many of the Southern Buddhists. They assumed that there would always be the tradition of the elders. That there would always be the disciples. And one apprenticed oneself as a novice, went through the monastic communities, took your place and in turn trained novices and disciples and so on throughout history.
So the convening of the fourth Buddhist council by Kanishka was countered by the Southern Buddhists in Sri Lanka, in Ceylon, and they convened a fourth Buddhist council and split the Buddhist religion in two. And the old path, the way of the elders, the Theravada, the way of the elders became distinct from then on from the tradition of the so-called in their terms, heretical sect of the Northern Buddhists.
And of course, those under Aśvaghoṣa saw that they were transforming the essential message from the discipleship to the universal message of all sentient beings. Whether they are here in this world, or in another world, or in another star system, or in another form other than the human form. All sentient beings no matter where they take rise and manifestation in the entire cosmos. The Buddhist term in the Mahāyāna is chiliocosm and sometimes trichiliocosm. And it means this vast enormity of time-space that is beyond any comprehension. In fact, just to note here, the lifetime span of a bodhisattva was said at that time to be three kalpas. And a kalpa being somewhere a billion and a hundred million years. A time cycle that allowed for an entire manifestation of a life form process to complete its entire spectrum and go from the amoeba all the way to the highest form, man if it is, and fall into disillusion and then come back. And all this would be a kalpa. And a bodhisattva's lifetime is three of these enormous kalpas. So they were five billion-year beings.
This enormity of mind put off and staggered the Southern Buddhist community and they retreated into making sure that the ancient canon was preserved. And so all the Sanskrit originals were at that time translated into Pali. Pali being the language of Sri Lanka – Ceylon at the time. And it's sort of Sanskrit with a Southern accent. Instead of Dharma, they say Dama, that sort of thing. Instead of Sutra, they say Suta. And so all the manuscripts were translated into Pali about that time. And those in fact are many of the originals that we have are not in Sanskrit. They were lost in the vicissitudes of history. But the old Pali canon is still preserved and preserved intact. We have, almost all of it. And in the original.
This fourth council was convened by Kanishka on behalf of Aśvaghoṣa and his Mahāyāna seed message. And the next two paragraphs are from the basic practices, which the two of them intertwined together made the straight and true way according to Aśvaghoṣa the 1st century A.D. The first was the practice of cessation. The second, the practice of clear observation. First cessation. He wrote,
Should there be a man who desires to practice 'cessation', he should stay in a quiet place and sit erect in an even temper. His attention should be focused, neither on breathing, nor on any form or color, nor on empty space, earth, water, fire, wind, nor even on what has been seen, heard, remembered, or conceived. All thoughts as soon as they are conjured up are to be discarded. And even the thought of discarding them is to be put away. For all things are essentially in the state of transcending thoughts and are not to be created from moment to moment nor to be extinguished from moment to moment; thus one is to conform to the essential nature of Reality through this practice of cessation. And it is not that he should first meditate on the objects of the senses in the external world and then negate them with his mind, the mind that has meditated on them. If the mind wanders away, it should be brought back and fixed in 'correct thought'.
And that's a quotation, "correct thought," thinking without thinking.
It should be understood that this 'correct thought' is the thought that whatever is is mind only, and that there is no external world of objects as conceived; even this mind is devoid of any marks of its own, which would indicate its substantiality. And therefore is not substantially conceivable at any such moment.
So that the mind and it's world exists only as long as we continue to be blinded by the sheen of it's imagery. And as long as we continue to use our intuition to piece together the glints of the sheen of the mind's activities we create a world. And any thought comes into this net and manifests itself – participates in this net. Whether it's thoughts for or against, or conversely, or obtusely, or reversely. Any kind of logical manipulation of the mind's processes will be included in the net. So that Aśvaghoṣa urges us to have the practice of cessation. Let's experience what actually happens in reality without the mind.
The second and related process was the practice of clear observation. And this is much related to the science of our day. The Greek word for science was episteme. And the episteme is the root of epistemology – the study of knowing, how we know, science is the study of how we know. What do we know? And we can apply it to the world of physics or chemistry or biology or space technology, whatever it is. Episteme is the knowing and the core of it, East and West, the practice of clear observation. What is it, exactly? Really? Where does it come from? Where does it go? And what does it do in between.
The practice of clear observation goes with the practice of cessation according to Aśvaghoṣa about 1900 years ago. "He who practices", he writes, "'clear observation' should observe that all conditioned phenomena in the world are unstationary and are subject to instantaneous transformation." All phenomena are subject to instantaneous transformation. It can happen at any time. There's a sense that every atomic and subatomic wavelet particle phenomena transforms instantly at any time. "...and destruction," they also pass out of materiality. "...that all activities of the mind arise and are extinguished from moment to moment; and that, therefore, all of these induce suffering…" because of the piecing together of a tale of the world, because of the fitting together of the puzzle of illusion and getting involved in extending those pieces in that puzzle. And those arguments and those desires and purposes from that ignorance, comes the world. And it all dissolves and falls apart because the connections, the interrelations, from moment to moment are fictitious. He says, they are all:
Subject to instantaneous transformation and destruction; that all activities of the mind arise and are extinguished from moment to moment; and that, therefore, all of these induce suffering. He should observe that all that had been conceived in the past [was as hazy as a dream, that all that is being conceived] in the present is like a flash of lightning, and that all that will be conceived in the future will be like clouds that rise up suddenly. He should also observe that the physical existences of all living beings in the world are impure and that among these various filthy things, there is not a single one that can be sought after with joy.

Not that the grain of what is not beautiful; not that the gown of the bodhisattva is not colorful. Filthy in the sense that it is impure because it is unreal. Does not hold up. Transforms instantaneously. Is brought into existence and destroyed. Constantly seething moving morass. And this is what he writes.
This was in the 1st century A.D. This was the beginning of the direction of the birth of the idea of the Mahāyāna, the great vehicle. And the protagonists in this great vehicle were the bodhisattvas. The bodhisattvas were the enlightenment beings. Those persons who had forgone their own enlightenment until all other sentient beings should be enlightened. No matter how long it took in terms of the material, phenomenal time- space. It actually took no time at all in terms of reality. And that the bodhisattva was not a person and individual as an egotistical phenomenon, or even a self phenomenon. Or even a not self phenomenon had transcended all of these polarities and particularly particular peculiarities. But at the same time had compassion for all individually. So that the notion of the bodhisattva in the Mahāyāna was from the beginning full of contradictions that were never hidden. They were always posted side by side. Always left clearly expressed. That one had no clear individuality and yet revered all clear individuality. That one had the capacity for universal enlightenment and would not go through with it until all had this.
These contradictory on the material phenomenal plane ideas were held in perfect sympathy. At the time of Aśvaghoṣa there began then to be a generation of persons who were not in the monastic orders. Who were lay persons much like ourselves. And in fact, one of the most famous of the Mahāyāna sutras called the Vimalakīrti Sutra was written within a generation of Aśvaghoṣa. About 110, 120, 130 A.D. About the time of Trajan or Hadrian in the Roman empire. About the same time as Tacitus' Histories. About the time that Justin Martyr would have been writing in Rome.
The Vimalakīrti Sutra has as its central hero, protagonists, not a monk but a layman. And in fact, the layman whose name is Yuima. Y-u-i-m-a. Yuima is portrayed in startling contrast to the monks. Including some of the most famous monks of the time. Including some of the great transcendental beings of the time. It's an interesting story. In the Vimalakīrti Sutra Yuima has suddenly taken ill. He is indisposed. And the Buddha hearing of this, for the Sutra assumes that this happened in the Buddha's time. And so the Buddha would like to know how Yuima is doing. And so he a monk to go and inquire after Yuima. And the monk says, honorable one, I beg not to be sent. The Buddha says, why is this? And he says, I've been to see Yuima, we always get into discussions and I always lose. And the practice at that time, of course, that when you lost a philosophic discussion with someone, a religious philosophic discussion, you became their student and he became your master. This was the old Upanishadic Sanskrit way.
So the Buddha finally turned to his chief disciple, a man named Saraputra. And he said Saraputra I think that you should go see Yuima. And Saraputra says, why not send Kashyapa? He's the oldest of us all. And so the Buddha says, well, Kashyapa will you go? And Kashyapa says, I, I really can't go. And the Buddha said, well, I'll have to hear your story. Why you can't go see this poor sick lay man. And Kashyapa says, sir, once I was there with my begging bowl. And as I was having my begging bowl filled across the way you Yuima, who was a very rich man, stepped across the street and chastised me for accepting food from only the poor. And said, why are you always taking from the poor? They can't afford this. Whereas the rich can afford it much better. And besides there's a hidden egotism here. You're thinking that you're giving the poor a chance for charity and you're setting yourself superior to them. You're really making yourself very, very fancy underneath it all by accepting the food from the poor. And Kahyapa says, by the time I was through, I almost left my begging bowl on the curb. I couldn't stand to eat the food. So the Budda says very well, we'll send someone else.
So he picked his most subtle disciple named Savuti. And he says, Savuti you go and check on Yuima. And Savuti said, honorable sir, I'm, I'm terribly sorry, but I have a very similar predicament as to Kashyapa. I was there with my begging bowl and Yuima finally convinced me that all things were just phantom existences and that everything was just names really. And that in fact, one day had to go beyond the arrangement of names beyond the normal logic of discourse, which we were even involved in at that time, the very thing to a sense of reality. And he said, I really got alarmed with what I was beginning to intuit. And I would rather not go.
And so the Buddha looking up and raising himself. Addressed himself to the future Buddha Maitreya. He said, will you go to interview this lay man? And by this time, of course it become a cause celeb. And Maitreya in the Tushita heaven discoursing on the life of non retrogression apologized. He said, even I cannot go see this lay man. This lay man is unbelievable. He's unbeatable. And he even appeared once here and the Tushita heaven and we had a discourse. And he prophesied that you, Shakimuni, would have enlightenment in just one lifetime. And he asked me what I have enlightenment in just one lifetime. And was that lifetime past lifetime? because if it was so it's past, it's gone. Would it be a future lifetime that was not yet manifest? So was it the present lifetime. And what in the present lifetime had substantiality to allow for you to exist to have enlightenment? And he said, by the time I was through, I was a little shaken myself.
So that poor Yuima, no one to visit him to see how his health was. Finally the great Bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjusri agreed to go. And collected among his entourage. This group of 8,000 Bodhisattvas. And 500 shrivakas or disciples and 200,000 Deva Lords. And this enormous cosmic entourage descended with Manjusri to the sick lay man Yuima. And Yuima had cleared out his house and had positioned himself and just his bedroom. In fact, the bedroom had been cleared out. And there's just one couch in there on which Yuima sick lay. And among the shrivakas was Savuti to see how Manjusri was going to handle this. So Manjusri came in and Yuima looked up and said, Oh Manjusri you are welcome indeed. But you're coming is no coming. And my seeing is no seeing. And Manjusri replied, you are right. You are a quite right. I come as if not coming. I depart as if not departing. For my coming is from nowhere and my departing is no wither. We talk of seeing each other and yet there is no seeing between us two. But let us put this matter aside for a while for I am here commissioned by the Buddha to inquire after your condition. Is it improving? How did you become ill? Are you cured? And Yuima, looking up from his couch, quite interested, says from folly, there is no desire. And this is the cause of my illness because all sentient beings are sick. I am sick. And when they are all cured of illnesses, I will be cured of my illness. A bodhisattva must assume a life of birth and death, a life in samsara for the sake of all beings. And as long as there is still birth and death, then there is my illness.
And of course, this is the great doctrine of the bodhisattvas transposed in one generation, from the brilliancy of a single monk Aśvaghoṣa to the personage of a layman completely outside of that tradition.
In fact, we notice in the Vimalakīrti Sutra, the first indication that those who were disciples in a strict, close minded linage order were exempt from even understanding what the world of reality was about. That there had been this transformation. That the achievement of a certain level of capacity had transformed the entire universe and that it was different. And those who had learned on old way before were indeed lost and baffled because everything was anew. Nothing had stayed the same. All transforms instantaneously. All passes in and out of existence. And we cannot cling even to the truth of the past, but must forever see it clearly anew.
So Saraputra, who was the chief disciple of the Buddha wonders how all this entourage is going to get into this 10 foot square bare room. Where are the chairs? And so Yuima hearing Saraputra murmur this, where the chair says? Did you come for the Dharma or did you come for a seat? And Saraputra is kind of embarrassed. And he says, well, I came for the Dharma of course. And Yuima says, well, seeking the Dharma consists of not seeking anything. Not getting attached. Not having hindrances. Not engendering contradictions or altercations. So let us ask Manjusri where can we get the best chairs? And Manjusri says, while there is a Buddha land way out over there that we can get the finest chairs. And so they bring in 32,000 chairs to Yuima's little 10 foot square room. And this barren room. And all of them are elaborate and ornamented high and broad. Fit for any august Bodhisattva. And all 8,000 of them come in to take their places, be seated. And the 200,000 deva Lords come in. And Saraputra is absolutely worried. He says, I just don't know. And this chair is shown to him and of course, it's too high. He can't climb up into it. And so he is staggered by this.
So, Saraputra realizing how small the room is where this entire crowd is asked to sit, wonders how it can be done. And as he's wondering that, as that thought occurs to him. As the thought of the contradiction of what is transpiring in The Mahāyāna occurs to that one greatly attained in the old way. He notices that there is a celestial maiden who is causing flowers to be showered and sprinkled and rained inside the room. And all the wonderful assemblage there, the 8,000 Bodhisattvas are sitting on their beautiful high ornate chairs and the flowers are just falling off them. And they're raining down. And Saraputra looks and the flowers are sticking to him and he's trying to brush them off. And the other shrivakas or disciples are trying to brush these flowers off. They're sticking to him. And he begins to talk to the Goddess. And the Goddess says to him, why, why do you wish to brush these flowers off you? And he replied and he said, well, this is not in accordance with the dignity of the Dharma. She says, don't say so. These flowers are free from discrimination. That is why they are falling off the bodhisattvas but they are clinging to you. These are wonderful flowers. These, these are cosmic flowers raining down blessing this situation. And here you are complaining and they're sticking to you because these are free from discrimination. So Saraputra says, how long have you been in room? And she says, as long as the length of your own emancipation.
And so the first appearance of our Goddess Guanyin, the gorgeous celestial maiden who rains the flowers and compassion down upon all beings in the phenomenal world. And they being the blossoms of non discrimination, free from it, are able to cascade beautifully and pass through the phenomenal existence.
Yuima then begins to have the end of the conversation and the sutra with Manjusri after this nice little talk between Saraputra and the celestial Goddess the sutra comes back. And all this time, Saraputra and Manjusri have been talking about universal cosmic design. And they have talked about a phrase, which includes the Sanskrit word advaita, non-duality. And have discussed how the world of reality is neither dual nor non-dual. That it transcends these categories, these capacities. And Manjusri on a great homage has explained this wonderful doctrine and then ask Yuima does he agree? And Yuima remains silent. And then Manjusri beams in great joy and says, well done Yuima, well done. Your silence has shown that you understand.
Then Saraputra who is by now completely out of the conversation. Doesn't understand Yuima's silence. Doesn't understand the transpiring dialogue, suddenly notices that he's hungry. And Yuima looking up says to Saraputra, he says food will be served to all. In fact, we have scouted the universe and we have the most succulent delectable meals for everyone. And Saraputra, wondering how all these Bodhisattvas and Devas and so forth could be seated now wonders how they could all be fed.
And in this confusion of the old way, The Vimalakīrti Sutra ends by all of the assembled Mahāyāna hosts, a sampling an infinitely infinitesimal amount of nourishment that is not even physically there. And is just referred to in the terms of from the fragrant Buddha land. And that the fragrance and the odor of the food, which is not there, waffs through this assemblage of the great Mahāyāna masters and passes on.
Thus The Vimalakīrti Sutra, followed very closely on the heels of The **inaudible word** Mahāyāna Sutra. And this penetration of the idea that enlightenment had transcended the old tradition. Had completely broken the bounds of form that had been given to it in the past. Had been venerated for five or 600 years, perhaps even close to 700 years, suddenly opened up. And the doctrine of tathata, of suchness, was joined by a doctrine of that which transcends all polarities. No longer participates in the normal polarized world phenomenon, but is in a reality beyond. And that this reality beyond is born, sort of from the swollenness of the illusion of phenomenal existence. Out of that swollenness, the inside of that is hollow. So that the complement to the swollen illusion of the universe being something or perhaps not something, inside was the hollow emptiness called in Sanskrit shunyata. Shunyata. And shunyata and tathata were brought together. The one from the practice of cessation, to see reality as it was in it's suchness. And the practice of clear observation to see that there was emptiness beyond all polarized, phenomenal or noumenal concepts. And that the emptiness and the suchness were brought together and braided together.
And this path, so difficult to conceive because it was not conceivable. So difficult to follow because it didn't lead anywhere, because it didn't come from anywhere, was promulgated about the 2nd century A.D. and brought together by one of the great minds of civilization. That man's name was Nagarjuna. And Nagarjuna was responsible for the introduction of the concept of zero into mathematics. That without zero, there is no tenable viable mathematical structure. And in fact, the shunyata of the Buddhists of that time later on became introduced and known. I think that the Arabic word for it was ṣafara. Out of which we get the Latin cipher, which means the not, the zero. It was only about the time that they were building the Gothic cathedrals, about the middle of the 12th century, that the notion of the cipher penetrated fully into Western Latin speaking Europe.
This not, this shunyata, this emptiness combined with the suchness of the tathata brought together the two possibilities that make up together the character of the bodhisattva. That enlightenment being who embodies beyond time space, the wisdom of emptiness and the compassion of suchness. Also because not limited by any contradictoriness whatsoever on any logical, plain realm whatsoever, penetrates through as a helper for a man who is trapped in the illusion of the net of his own mental worlds. And these helpers bring the nourishment, the milky opalescent nectar, to young man in his bubble, which will allow him to sound the gracefulness in resonance of his own being to burst that bubble and be born into freedom and reality. And to join the worlds of the Bodhisattvas.
This notion developed and grew. And very soon there was a movement of what that there must be a place, a realm, a Buddha land, a Western paradise, wherein man born from the bubble and freed from his illusion can then learn all of the exacting details by correct observation, clear observation, and by the practice of cessation. And can piece together then the world as it really is. That this Western paradise called Sukavati in Sanskrit became the home of the Amida Buddha. The Buddha who radiates out a golden light through time space. And the whole phenomenon of the Amida Buddha and his emanation of the, especially the great Bodhisattva of Guanyin, Guanyin in Japan, becomes the helper for human beings who are freed from the bubble of illusion, but yet have to learn all of the detailings of the natural world. Because those are the two tasks that are needed. Not just the perception of suchness, things as they are. But the understanding of all relationality is through wisdom. So that when man is born out of his bubble world, into the cosmos as a totality in a whole it is only then that he can begin to go to school for the very first time.
And all of the scrolls of the Amida Buddha, all of the complicated worlds, which are expressed there, show people on every level, studying, reading, listening to discourses, putting together all of the detailing. So that the paradise of the Amitaba Buddha is not one of just singing and mindlessness, but one of study and great erudition because the Bodhisattva ideal includes admissions. One must know it all. Every bit of it in all of its ramifications for all beings to learn.
These in fact are called the precious qualities. And I have here a couple of lines from a work called The Accumulation of Precious Qualities to give the universal application of this. "Forms are not wisdom nor has wisdom found in forms. In consciousness, perception, feeling or in will, they are not wisdom. And no wisdom is in them. Like space, it is without a break or crack." In other words, infinite universal space is the only quote metaphor that we could have to give us an idea of what reality actually is.
And later on, there is a simile of the cosmos and the accumulation of the precious qualities. And it runs like this. And this is a Bodhisattva argument. It runs, "Supported by space is air." So air is supported by space. "Supported by space is air. And by air the mass of water. And by the mass of water, this great Earth, this living world." So that the world, the Earth is supported by the water, that by the air and that by space. Illimitless.
"If the foundation of the enjoyment of the deeds of beings is thus established in space, how can one think of that object? Just so the Bodhisattva who is established in emptiness, manifests manifold and various works to beings in the world. And his vows and cognitions are a force which sustains beings. But he does not experience the blessed rest. For emptiness is not a place to stand on. At the same time when the wise and learned Bodhisattva courses, flows, courses in this most excellent quietude of the concentration on emptiness, during that time no sign shall be exalted. Nor should he stand in the signless for, he is one who courses calm and quiet beyond signs and beyond the signless."
This of course brings us closer to the imagery of our time. The imagery of man freeing himself, from what he considers to be the fetters of the world in a technological mode. Freeing himself to explore and expand. And as he does so, he finds himself, increasingly through the 70's and now into the 80's, increasingly faced with a conundrum, which has begun to occur again and again to sensitive beings. That it is one thing by the stretch of egotistical power force to extend man into an orbit around the earth. That can be done and has been done. Or even to push a material phenomenal time-space being to the moon. And that has been done, although not for some time now. And not by the Soviets who are not quite able spiritually to push as far as the United States. It's incapacitated to make that far of a leap spiritually from the Earth. And in fact, we see more and more that man is raising himself up on his tip toes only and still constrained. Because he still operates under the illusion that this is a universe of time and space. Of force and power. And actually that seems to not be the case.
That in fact, it seems to be more the flow of process and event of a transcendental spirituality. And that as we burst the bubble that had surrounded us and we, we find ourselves freed from that illusion, it is only then that we can begin to study and expand ourselves. And realize that the old expressions in the earliest writings of The Mahāyāna, which are actually contemporaneous with the same development, which was reflected in Alexandria in the West. Which came about the very same time as Ashoka's empire. Or represented in it's manifestation in the West, because the early gospels are exactly contemporaneous with Ashvaghosha. That all of these ideas are not alien at all to any beings on the surface of the globe. And that when we begin to expand our sense of phenomenal time-space, we experienced that giddiness of the mind, which shows that its capacities are no longer operative.

That it has finally come into a realm where the sheen of the inner surface of the bubble no longer makes a continuity. And whether the vicissitudes, vicissitudes of the particles and wave phenomenons of the inner atomic structure or the expanding vision of what size the universe is. And we realize that we are able to envision our sun is a grapefruit sized object. And that the nearest star is about Denver, Colorado. And that those stars several hundred million of them make one huge wheel, which takes 200,000 light years to make a revolution. And that that's just one part of a group of Island universes like this, the Andromeda and the Magellic clouds and the Milky way. And that that's just one particle in this enormous gulf between even those groupings of Island universities. So that we could just a few years ago, make a map, not of stars, but of galaxies. And on the Harvard map of galaxies, there are some 6 million galaxies pinpointed and dotted for us. Each one of the dots of lights representing groups of Island universes without end.

We began to realize that our capacities to be diluted are finally running dry. And we are finally beginning to wake up to the possibilities that there is a transcendental source of nourishment, which is universal. Which encourages us indeed to be born from that bubble. But at the same time, encourages us to understand that through study and excellence we may understand and participate. Not in phenomenal time-space but in reality as it is beyond.
Well, I guess they waved us on. So that's all for today. Thank you.
END OF RECORDING