Developing Powers of Unobstructed Reflection | Dr. Larry Ward

(Bell sounds)

(Bell sounds)

(Bell sounds)

Good morning

This talk, like all my other ones,
will not be very well organized,

but, um, it worked on me all night

(Laughter)

So, about 02:30 Peggy asked me
"Are you in pain?"

(Laughter)

So, I was makin— I was
literally making all these noises.

But—I haven't told her this—
but my noises where joy.

I was experiencing such happiness,

to have been blessed with the teaching
and practises of the Heart Sutra,

and I slowly—and after 25 years—I slowly
have started to understand the insight,

that brings us to the other shore,
as Thầy describes it,

and why that insight is holy,
is transformational.

But first, a footnote on hindrances.

(Laughter)

No, we could do the whole retreat on this.

This is part of the problem
in the Buddhist tradition.

Any topic you take,
you could like spend a year.

And, at the end of the year,
you still have more.

Er, it's that, to use a Magaret Mead term,
it's that thick, with richness, and, er, depth.

But here, the secret to working with the hindrances
is turning the hindrances in to a meditation practise,

not an enemy to be defeated,
but a human experience to be investigated,

or as Thích Nhất Hạnh would say to us,
meditation is about stopping, śamatha.

Sōtō Zen calls it serening, Serene Reflection,

and it's about looking deeply
as Thầy would say.

So, the practise here is
turning our experience of the hindrances,

and, you know, pick one
and practise with it for a week.

We were at, um, Plum Village
one year, long time ago,

and people asking Thầy

—Thích Nhất Hạnh—

about meditation and some of
their difficulties with meditation,

and one person said to Thầy:

"Thầy, my— my— I get so very bored
during my meditations."

And Thầy said, well,
"so sorry for you."

(Laughs)

(Laughter)

"I never get bored"

Why?

Because in addition to the calming,
and settling down, of śamatha,

meditators of thousands of years ago
chose topics to look deeply in to.

Actually if you go back
to the abhidharma period,

there were like 40 different meditations
a master would give a student

depending on what that student needed.

And I've been having some, urm,
invitations to do this with people

who are, er, in the last stages
or the first stages of passing over.

And, erm, which I did not volunteer for, erm,

but I am learning how to
create meditations for people

to help them ease their way in to what my native,
my Cheyenne native friend, says is to walk on.

To walk on gracefully,
and to walk on peacefully.

So the first thing about practising
with a hindrance in meditation

is to recognise—train yourself:
Tibetans call it mind training—

train your mind to recognise
the rising of a hindrance

and train your mind to recognise
the fading away of a hindrance.

And you're already training your mind
this way in your first meditation,

as you pay attention to your breath,
as it rises and fades away.

No, this is the Heart Sutra by the way.

Every— every cycle of breath
is the Heart Sutra.

Phenomena rises and disappears.

So even if you just sit for a fe—
ten minutes every morning.

Pay attention to the rising
and fading away of your breath,

in order to train yourself to become comfortable
with the rising and falling of everything.

And as you get more at ease

—I don't mean comfort
from a furniture point of view—

I mean deep ease, stability, solidity, with the
experience of the rising and falling of all things.

So this morning,
when I was walking over here,

I felt like a mighty elk,

then I took another step
and I felt like a mighty cloud,

and then a leaf, and then a mighty mountain,
and then a mighty rabbit.

Everywhere, everything I looked at,
turned in to mightyness.

(Laughter)

That's what the Heart Sutra
did to me overnight.

(Laughter)

And accept, be present
with the rising and falling,

and accept that it's rising,

don't deny, don't suppress,
don't push away,

and accept that it's fading.

But if you push away the arising,
the fading away you can't accept,

because you're giving
so much meaning to the arising.

It's a natural process,
this arising and fading away.

So becoming more comfortable, at ease,

and accepting what's happening
within us, and around us.

There are people in our society,
and societies across the world,

who are having difficulties with
the arising and fading of their societies,

as if that's not a natural thing.

One of the great teachings

—anybody who's involved in social change,
social action, cares about those kind of things—

I would refer you to study, and learn to practise,
the eight realisations of great beings,

which Thầy has translated.

Not many other people
have translated it, but there—

and the first realisation of great beings is that

no matter how fabulous,
how great, how stupendous,

a culture, a civilisation, an institution is,
it too rises and fades away,

and unless we can anchor ourselves
in to the actual experiences

we are having as human beings
we end up fighting and hating our life.

So investigate your hindrance, and investigate it

by learning to notice what happens semantically
in your body when the hindrance comes up.

So if anger comes up,
if the hindrance of anger comes up

or ill will comes up,
where do you feel that in your body?

Because it's most likely,
at least in my experience,

my body knows before my mind knows.

This is really helpful.

My body knows I'm upset
before it connects up here.

So with every hindrance,
and this can change all the time,

get really to—
get semantic with your practice,

not just intellectual.

I spent a year, last— two years ago,
working on the semantics of meditation practice.

Feel what's happening in your body,

and your body is so precious,
it's so full of information.

So physically, then notice
what energies get released

when that hindrance comes up.

And these can be
really different energies.

Emotional energies,
feelings, sadness, aversion,

but also notice this experience
of when a hindrance comes up in you,

you might have a feeling of rushing,
of wanting to move, or feeling of sinking.

And the more I practice
the more I'm starting to understand

some of the early Christian songs.

I was just thinking about sinking sand.

To know what is this experience of sinking
—I don't mean in Tai Chi—

I mean the experience
of feeling like you fell down a pit,

and you haven't hit the bottom yet,

and to know that experience
is just an experience.

Or being lifted, being elevated.

That hindrance you may discover elevates you,
and literally your body wants to move up.

And those kind of sensations,
and there are many more,

but to learn your body,
learn your own mind,

the practice of meditation is an invention
each one of us has to do for ourselves.

We get all this training,
and we get all this teaching,

so that we can create
the path of our own practice.

We cannot turn that over to someone else.

Monastics and temples
cannot do this for us.

One of Thích Nhất Hạnh's favorite quotes
about meditation,

comes I think from
Master Tang Hoi in Vietnam.

And once, once you understand
how your mind works,

and I would add your body works,
the practice gets easier.

This is coming home to yourself.

Really learning yourself, valuing,
appreciating the uniqueness of who you are,

and learning to practice
with that uniqueness,

rather than wishing
it was a different uniqueness.

You know, some of us are still
shopping around for ourselves.

(Laughter)

There's this giant mall, Discover Yourself,
but it's all out there,

it's all hanging on hangers,
on racks, with blinking lights.

You know there is something,
neuroscientifically we know,

in the human brain,
that likes shiny things.

(Slight laughter)

But that is not how you will discover
your mystery depth and greatness,

which is already inside of you,
hiding in your hindrance, disguised,

and cognitive, you know scientifically
if when I experience this,

I mentioned yesterday, having agitation
come up in me, around the election,

my body's experience of that agitation
lasted less than 30 seconds,

what lasted for hours (Laughter)
was my story about it,

and so to with all the hindrances.

Our cognitive process
sustains the hindrance.

You know you may be upset about stuff
that even never happened.

This is possible,
it's the nature of the mind.

They're stories.

I won't go in to, er,
'cause there isn't time,

in the African American experience
were whole communities of African Americans

where routed and burned to the ground,
and people killed, based on a lie,

about what happened,
and people believed it,

and then you went
in to emotional contagion.

But this is also an individual process,
not just a collective process,

of having our stories carry us
beyond any reality at all.

So notice your stories,

don't shut them down,
be curious about these stories.

Why am I telling myself this story?

Where could this possibly have come from?

What ancestor is whispering in my ear?

And motivation.

Is there a call to action,
out of your practice with your hindrance?

Is there a call to action?

In, on one of the, you know
what I talked from yesterday

is a collection and composite
of teachings and commentaries

from the Theravadan tradition,
all around the five hiderances,

which you can find in the
four foundations of mindfulness text,

is where the five hindrances
are first mentioned and talked about

by the Buddha.

The what?

And so one of them I read was
"Well, maybe you should take a nap"

Seems kind of mundane.

But sometimes that's what—
we need to just stop.

And one of the great things about a nap is that it
—snap—just stops the story from continuing.

It's like, er, getting that—
getting that actor off stage.

And last and most importantly to practice
non-identity making with your experience,

for example—and I'll come back to this

'cause this is all referred to in the Heart Sutra,
again and again in different ways—

but, um, this is my body,
this is Larry's body, but I am not this body,

these are Larry's eyes,
but I am not these eyes,

these are Larry's feet,
but I am not these feet,

and now I'm moving us
into the types of wisdom

that the Heart Sutra,
teachings and realizations, are rooted in,

and there's three kinds of wisdom
classically referred to,

in many Buddhist texts,
around the Heart Sutra.

In particular, and neurotic that I am,
I check this with the Chinese translation

and the Japanese translation,
the Heart Sutra, blah blah blah,

Theravadan commentaries,
and everybody said the same thing,

they just use a little bit
different language.

Three kinds of wisdom,
and I'll read them for you.

The first wisdom is mundane wisdom,
ordinary wisdom, everyday wisdom, functional wisdom,

and in the, in some of the sutras,
in commentaries,

you will find the word associated with this wisdom,

this mundane wisdom,

as the wisdom of the worldling.

You may have come across this
in some of your own study.

It is the wisdom of the world-ling,

the mind and the wisdom that perceives
everything as a separate self entity.

This is a bottle of Smart Water.

(Laughter)

Okay?

And in the world of the worldling,
in the mind of a worldling, this is Smart Water.

However, that's just the container
and the label on the container,

and actually this water
that's actually in this label,

comes from the sink in our bedroom.

(Laughter)

which I'm hoping is smart, but

(Laughter)

I'm not betting on it,
but it is nourishing.

So a worldling never
gets inside the bottle.

A worldling never asks Thầy's
favorite question: are you sure?

And there's many teachings
by many teachers in Buddhism,

both contemporary and early,

that talks about this mundane, worldly, worldling
paradigm is full of what's called cognitive error.

That is, perceiving the impermanent as permanent.

The second kind of wisdom

—and I put these in a circle
just to indicate they're not linear;

though there is a quality of practice
that can help; there is a journey here—

but I put these in a circle
to indicate they're inside of each other,

so if you find yourself, so, so,

when we get ready to catch our next flight
which goes to Mexico City for our retreat,

I want my pilot to be a worldling

(Laughter)

in his capacity
or her capacity to fly the plane.

I want them to be able to read
the instruments that direct us,

and guide us, and carry us,
to our next destination,

so this is not, does not mean, bad,
it just means limited understanding.

And the thing in Buddhist tradition is that
we are liberated through our understanding,

through our self-understanding,

and we practice
to gain that self-understanding,

that frees us from being confused
about the nature of phenomena.

The next level is called supra-mundane,
s-u-p-r-a mundane. Supra-mundane.

Wisdom transcends the mundane.

Wisdom that knows there's something that,
er, the bottle is a label, but there's something inside,

and here we are referring to
the mind of a bodhisattva,

and this is the mind

—I'm sure I'm not spelling that right,
comes from no sleep, but anyway—

the bodhisattva's mind understands,
begins to understand, emptiness,

and in the western world we have
misunderstood that one word in Buddhism

—I could just write a book;
well I think I did write one paper on this—

how misunderstood we were.

Emptiness in Buddhism,
it means fullness, not absence of.

It means full of.

So, Thầy would always have us practice,

when you say something is empty,
the next question is 'empty of what?'

So, then he would say, well, this cup is empty of,
well it's not empty of air, air's in here.

It's not empty of, er, coffee,
coffee is in here.

Then when I start to think about
where did my coffee come from?

How many people's lives are involved
in picking in the hills,

in the rain, up in the mountains,
and looking for shade trees

—I spent three years helping to build
coffee co-ops in the mountains of Jamaica;

I know what it takes—

so this cup is not empty, even if I
pour everything out, it's still full of air.

And what's in the air?
I mean you can keep going.

That's the Buddhist
understanding of emptiness.

And this is the beginning of
supra-mundane wisdom.

This is the beginning of wisdom

that can liberate us from the pain that comes from
thinking things are permanent, when they're not.

And my favorite thing to think
is permanent just now is moi,

(Laughter)

is me.

And, um, third level of wisdom here,
I love this old line, unsurpassed.

Unsurpassed.

This is the wisdom of a Buddha.

Unsurpassed.

And unsurpassed means we really—
we can't explain it.

There's no words for this.

Up here in the mundane wisdom,
there's language for things,

turn right, turn left, up, down,

you walk through the line for lunch or dinner,
there's little signs that say:

well this is chickpeas, and then here is potatoes,
that's the mundane wisdom.

That's fine. We need that
to be in this world and to function.

But our practice, once we have
the mundane wisdom on our plate, is to look deeper,

and to experience deeper,
and then taste the sunshine, and taste the rain,

and taste the open hearts
that prepared our food,

and the sweat and tears
that went in to the harvesting,

of what we eat, and so often
take for granted, where it comes from.

I want to thank our beloved friends
Shane and Emily

who came with us from Vashon Island,
where we now live.

Er, Emily is there filming me,
and there's Shane over there,

and they're sangha leaders on Vashon island.

Er, they're also, er, helping
Peggy and I be more organized.

(Laughter)

Ah, and so we're developing our lotus work,
and recording and starting to video

and soon we'll have a YouTube channel and all—
and so the teachings can get out.

This is not about us,
it's about getting the teachings out.

Um, so another way to describe
what we're talking about here

is the practice of the Heart Sutra invites us
to have right view about our ancestors.

What are the views
we have of our ancestors?

And most often,
and through no fault of our own,

our views and understanding of our ancestors
has been limited to the worldling, to the mundane level,

and so we see them
with all their warts

and failure and suffering
and pain and all the difficulties

which in the conventional and in the mundane world
is correct, kind of, sort of, almost correct.

We see them as separate selves,
with names, and this is a beautiful altar.

The next time you c—
and I, and I try to see every face every—

and feel some energy here,

and then next time when you come up here
look at it from the supra-mundane point of view,

of these faces.

I'll come back to that, again, in a moment.

But now I want to shift.

I want to say one more things
about the hindrances.

Ah, yes.

Yes, here it is.

So, continuing the same way,
there's a key word in, in, er, Buddhism,

which is referenced in the Heart Sutra,
saṅkhāra, that's the pali language for it.

It means 'mental formation',

so you might remember that line
in the Heart Sutra, of mental formation.

Now, as you, this is the second secret
to your hindrances, and your practice with them.

Please remember your hindrances
are not separate self entities.

They are not solid.
They are not permanent.

They are a container, a label,
for an experience you are having

as a Human being,

and that experience is a mental,
emotional, experience—a mental state—

it is not a newly constructed building.

It's so easy to think
our mental states of being are permanent.

One of the issues
across America today

is the remarkable and tragic increase
in suicide of people under 20.

It's true everywhere, across every group
of people, class, race, economics,

and when you talk to some of the young people
who knew their friends,

or who'd considered it themselves,

part of it is, they experience a mental state
as permanent and inescapable;

and this is global.

When I lived in Hong Kong,
and worked there for 5 or 6 years,

every year, when grades came out,

young people, who got Bs instead of As,
would kill themselves,

because they didn't
live up to the expectation.

They had this mental formation of perfection
that they did not live up to,

and the translation of this is: this refers
to an experience that's put together.

A mental formation
is an experience that is put together.

It is not a separate self entity.

It is made of all kinds of things
that came together, just like everything else.

A word from the Buddha about this,
his last words,

and there's several—of course—
versions of this,

and everything in Buddhism,
there's several versions of itself:

"Disciples, this I declare to you:

all conditioned things
are subject to disintegration"

(and you could put in parenthesis,
me included)

(Laughter)

"Strive untiringly
to work out your liberation"

To work out your insight.
To work out your breakthrough.

And the second aspect of mental formations
is called 'mental fabrications'.

And mental fabrications
are our participation in the formation.

So, I finally discovered that

my wife, my beloved wife,
cannot make me angry,

only I can make me angry.

What freedom! What freedom,

to realize I participate in creating
my own experience of being human.

Now, if I want this formation of

—let's say I have a mental formation
around sadness.

Some sadness came up for me

around the Emmett Till desecration
of the site where he was killed.

Erm, and I'm working on a poem for that,
but it isn't ready yet,

'cause I'm still practicing with it,
because I'm wading through formations,

like going through the jungle, I'm
remembering my own trips to Mississippi,

where I learned to practice non-fear.

So, as a human being, we have formations.

If you remember Thầy's teachings on selective watering,
you know, store consciousness and seeds.

We have seeds from our ancestors,
but not just ancestors we know, or think we know.

I have the advantage
of having no idea who my parents are,

and what that has meant for me
is there's a whole lot of stuff I didn't have to make up.

(Laughter)

I have absolutely no idea, nor do I care,
in the best sense of the word.

My sister and—every child in my family,
the four of us, are all adopted, by a fabulous family—

My sister and I who were the oldest
we had a conversation about this once:

should we try to find out who our parents were,
and we decided, this was at like, you know, 12, 13,

we decided no, we should focus
on being happy we were born,

and that we have a loving family
that has adopted us.

So, I've been in meetings
and conferences and retreats

where people are like consumed
with how imperfect their parents were.

Parents, can't live with 'em...

(Laughter)

can't live without 'em,

(Laughter)

that's my practice, it's that simple.

If you have children, teach them this,

(Laughter)

it'll save on therapy bills later.

(Laughter)

It's because we get caught in the mundane.

Wisdom, which is full of judgement,

and poor qualities of
discernment and discrimination.

That is, not discerning correctly,
or inclusively.

So, the family that adopted me,
I have practiced with them,

and so I knew, I know,
my adopted mother

who was part Cherokee,
part African American,

who's up here by the way.

This is Viola Paris,

and if I have one thing
that I'm envious about in my whole life

is, I think she she has one of
the two coolest names I've ever heard.

I would take her name if I could,
I think it's just so cool.

The second name is, of course,
Master Empty Cloud.

But she's just gorgeous.

She was 5 feet 9, truly compassionate,
and at church every Sunday

—we grew up in a Pentecostal church
my parents helped found—

my sister and I had worked out the timing for when
our mother would start dancing in church.

We could see it coming, right, it's like
"Ok, she's getting ready to blow".

(Laughter)

And it was always the energy of joy.

It was always the energy of vimukti, release.

She danced out her pain,
her sorrow, her frustration.

She danced out of the mundane wisdom,
in to emptiness.

Fine woman.

The Heart Sutra, and in some ways
the entire Buddhist tradition,

is designed to train us and encourage us to develop
what's called Perception of the Profound.

And that's what was happening
to me last night.

I had the honor of,
some of you know,

Brother Phap De,
also known as Brother Adrian,

who passed away recently

—he was a monastic at Deer Park Monastery—

but before he was a monastic at Deer Park,
Deer Park Monastery,

he was part of a lay practice community
that Peggy and I were a part of

in the hillside of Santa Barbara,

and it was in that lay practice environment
that he discovered his monastic calling.

Actually, we've had several people,
who've spent time with Peggy and I,

who then decided to become monastics

so Sister Chân Không was— called me and said,
"You know, you're sure a great recruiter".

(Laughter)

What a powerful calling, the monastic life, and it's not

—think of this as energy,
think of this as a response to society—

I am not going to live my life
in x paradigm,

I'm going to live my life as best I can
in a different kind of paradigm.

In the foundation of Buddhism

things were so restricted by class
and gender, in early India

—this may sound somewhat familiar—

so he created his own community.

It took some time,

but he was the first religious community
in India to accept untouchables.

I'm creating my own way, a society,

and I know this to be true because I lived,
and worked, in India for several years.

And when I ar—
people thought I was an untouchable

because the way you identify an untouchable
is they are people with darker skin.

So when I first arrived,
people would not wait on me,

some places wouldn't let me in,
'cause untouchables couldn't come in to that restaurant.

So, my practice, then

was to find untouchables on the street
and do prostrations in front of them,

and I did this all over Calcutta.

Same with beggars.

And word started to spread, around,

about this crazy black American,
bowing to everybody.

No, you don't get to bow
to me first, I get to bow to you.

Our practice is to transform
the fabric of our societies,

and just remember, it's an ongoing,
everlasting, process to do so.

There's never going to be
a perfect society.

William Irwin Thompson, who I've spent some time with,
MIT grad, in one of his great books

says every human invention
has a utopian flaw,

and to me, that utopian flaw
is because humans created it,

and that's OK, we just have to keep it up.

In Canada, coming up in September,
is a conference on mindful society,

so if you have
—in Toronto and Ottawa—

if you have friends there is a movement
afoot around this planet

shaping a whole new fabric of society.

Please do not believe what you see on
mainstream news as the state of the world

—that's the state of someones world,
it is not the state of The World.

Perceive the profound.

So, last night, I decided to give a little more
background on— that's in the Heart Sutra.

The Heart Sutra is a summary
of all the teachings of Buddhism,

in many many ways,

and there's a Sutra

—the people at the front desk in administration go
"you sure print strange things"—

(Laughter)

So, I was sitting there, I was like
"ah! it's time for the Sabba Sutta".

I thought about this two days ago
but it came back up last night

so that's why I'm going to
summarize it for you.

I'll read it and Sabba, this is translated
as the Sutra on the All.

I'll read to you the summary.

"Thus I have heard, at one time

the Buddha was staying at Anāthapiṇḍika's park
in the Jeta Grove, in Śravāsti.

Now at that time a famous brahman
approached the Buddha at his residence,

exchanged greetings, and sat down to one side
and said this to the Buddha:

'Gautama, it is says the all, you talk about the all,
what is meant by the all'.

The Buddha told the brahman:
'The all refers to 12 doors, namely,

eye and forms, ear and sounds,
nose and smells, tongue and taste,

body and touches,
and the mind and mind objects.

This is called the all.

If anyone where to
retort this, by saying:

"I reject this all,
that the recluse Gautama has proclaimed,

I now abandon it,
I am going to find another all"

that would merely be
one word against another.

When asked further:
did you find the other all?

"I did not" because it is outside
of our domain of experience.

Then the famous brahman,
having heard the Buddha's word

was happy and rejoiced,
and practiced with great respect.'

So that's one piece of this,
and then over the— over the next—

another iteration, of course,
adds in consciousness.

So, let me give you one ex—
and you've heard this,

it's in the Heart Sutra,
Thầy's talked about this a lot.

Here are our sense bases:
eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.

So, in the Indian understanding
of the sensory world

there are six, not five,
because the mind is a sense.

The mind itself is a sensory organ,

meaning it can be influenced,
it can be shaped, it can be impacted,

and this sense, when it comes in c—

when my eye sense comes in contact with a site,
a form, then eye consciousness is born.

Now Madison Avenue knows this.

Everywhere in the world we figure this out,

we don't call it this, but we know if images arise,
consciousness is triggered around that image.

So, there's the eye organ,

and when that eye organ comes in contact with a form,
or something visual, eye consciousness emerges in us.

And the same with ear.

The Quaker group is quite loud, I noticed,
so I've been working with my ear consciousness.

And they've been having a great time,
and laughter, and kids running around, and cool,

but I had to work with it,
because my ear was in contact with that sound,

and all of a sudden my ears got bigger
and I could hear more.

Ear consciousness.

So, eye consciousness, ear consciousness,
nose consciousness, taste/tongue consciousness,

and that's why in Buddhism
when it says "guard the sense doors"

it is asking us to pay attention
to what we are in contact with

because what we become in contact with
creates consciousness,

and consciousness leads us toward
a direction of our life force.

It's just brilliant, just amazing people
figured this out thousands of years ago.

And the practice here,
the challenge here for all of us, is

when we experience that connection between
our organ, our sense organ and object,

and the quality of consciousness that emerges,
is to grasp for that.

If we like it, if we like that—

if we like that tongue consciousness
it's easy to eat too much, or whatever,

but you understand that,

'cause some things I know
I can just like keep eating,

'cause it tastes good to me,
but it may not taste good to you.

Each one of us
has our own experience of this process.

The Buddha was an experientialist,
not a philosopher.

The teachings are all about
the experience of being human:

how do I experience my humanity, and

how do I practice with that humanity
in a way that frees me from suffering?

And by freeing from suffering,
we mean in Buddhism:

freedom from grasping,
freedom from clinging,

and freedom from attachment,
or freedom from holding on.

What is holding on?

My best image for that is going bowling,
and not letting go of the ball.

(Laughter)

You can do that if you want.

I see people do this
all the time with their life,

but when you and that ball
come in contact with those pins: suffering.

(Laughter)

So our practice is
to check in with ourselves.

Actually, the last thing, the last note in here
that I'll mention from this sutra,

the Venerable Maudgalyāyana, one of the early
famous monks, core monks in Buddhism,

asked the Buddha, where'd it go, ah,

"Maudgalyāyana asked the Buddha
'How is one awakened?'

The Buddha begins by answering that:

"One is awakened as one learns
that nothing is worth clinging to",

and this includes your hindrances,
and every other experience.

The Heart Sutra is a great teaching
about the phenomenal world, our experiences,

but the phenomenal world includes the tree,
and the rock, and the mountain, and the leaf,

and so when our beloved teacher Thầy says
"the leaf never dies" that's unsurpassed wisdom,

it's not ordinary wisdom,
it is not mundane wisdom,

and the Heart Sutra's encouraging us
in the path of realizing unsurpassed wisdom.

There's a song that's been bothering me.

I mean that positively
for the last couple of months,

and it's from my previous community,

and, er, a friend of my named Jim Bell,
was a native American pastor,

taught my community this song.

And so this has been
coming up, and coming up,

and I only can remember one line,
and another line, but thanks to Google...

(Laughter)

I was able to find it.

It's called Harvest Time,

and this is what we need to be doing
with our ancestors,

harvesting the very best,
that we've been given,

and discovering what
we have yet to harvest,

that we have forgotten about,
or we've been to angry or hurt to notice.

Now let's see if I can get a key
that won't destroy the room.

So as— relax— assume that
your ancestors are your working ground,

for being a marvelous human being,
a precious life,

and just take a minute with a few breaths
and ease your way in to that state,

of having a precious life.

The seed I have scattered
In springtime with weeping,

And watered with tears
And with dews from on high,

Another may shout
When the harvester’s reaping,

Shall gather my grain
In the sweet by and by.

Over and over, yes,
deeper and deeper

My heart is pierced through
With life's sorrowing cry,

But the tears of the sower
And songs of the reaper

Shall mingle together
In joy by and by.

Another may reap
What in springtime I've planted,

Another rejoice
In the fruit of my pain,

Not knowing my tears
When in summer I fainted

While toiling sad-hearted
In the sunshine and rain.

Over and over, yes,
deeper and deeper,

My heart is pierced through
With life's sorrowing cry,

But the tears of the sower
And songs of the reaper

Shall mingle together
In joy by and by.

I have to stand up for the next part
'cause that's what Jim would do,

and he was a tall native man.

His hands would be out like this.

The thorns will have choked
And the summers suns blasted

The most of the seed
Which in springtime I've sown,

But the Lord who has watched
While my weary toil lasted

Will give me a harvest
For what I have done.

Over and over, yes,
deeper and deeper,

My heart is pierced through
With life's sorrowing cry,

But the tears of the sower
And songs of the reaper

Shall mingle together
in joy by and by.

(Bell sounds)

I mentioned Phap Dhay,
who came to me last night.

I was in the hospital room
when we disconnected everything,

and the teaching of the Heart Sutra
was never clearer.

So I want to talk to you
about training ourselves

to be able to recognize our ancestors,
zen question, original face.

You heard this, when I studied Japanese,
practiced in China, in Taiwan,

this old question: what is—
what is your face before you were born?

And so my friend Phap Dhay,
and then recently last week

another sangha member in Seattle
who I was practicing with

to help her pass over
walked on,

she appeared last night.

So I'm making all these noises,
but it was joy.

The original face is not a question of what I looked like
when I came out of my mother's womb.

It's not a question of
the form and genetics of our ancestors.

It's not a question of
their pain and their suffering

and their skillfulness or un-skillfulness,

and you can go as far back as you want,

I really like it that
there's a picture of Lucy here.

I think everyone should get a picture of her
and put it up somewhere in your space,

otherwise you can get really confused,
about who and what we are.

The original face of our ancestors.

These are all clouds,
but our ancestors are the blue sky.

The original face of our ancestors
is a blue sky.

The rain. The wind.

I saw a picture once
from the Hubble telescope,

and I was working at a hospital
and we had just gone through a session

looking at, erm, some different pictures of genetics,

and I was like half-way, I was like speechless
when I saw a picture of— from the Hubble telescope

that looked exactly like the picture
of a gene formation I had just seen.

Original face.

Now we're starting to get there.

Our original face of our ancestors
is impermanence.

That's their original face.

They are phenomena that rise and fall,
come to be and come not to be.

Their original face is suchness itself.

I'm talking now about unsurpassed wisdom.

The emptiness of conditions and time and space
that gave form to our ancestors.

Oh, wow!

What a mystery! What a wonder!

Our original face, your original face,
will reveal itself to you any time,

when you are practicing
and that means living your life,

is what practicing means,
not just sitting on a cushion,

anytime when we are not
grasping, clinging, and attaching,

our original face is there
for us to behold.

Sister Chân Không has such a great name,
dharma name, True Emptiness.

And our own true emptiness
becomes available to us

as an experience that is deep and wide
and indescribable and vast and holy,

whenever we are able to
not grasp, not cling, or attach,

to making ourselves something
that we can't let go of.

So last night I felt like I
fell down the well of original face,

and the joy of not being confused
about my true nature.

You know the teachings given to the sick,
in the Plum Village chanting book,

and other forms of this,
where Thầy liked to talk about this often,

when the monks went to be
at the bedside of Anāthapiṇḍika,

the businessman,
who supported their early sangha,

and Sister Chân Không does such a beautiful job
of sharing this, erm, I— I am not caught in this body.

It's a lovely body
but I'm not caught in it,

I am not caught in these eyes, lovely eyes,
color, forms, sights, ears, sounds,

but I'm not caught in this phenomena,

and why am I not caught?
Because I am this phenomena.

And then the Buddhist tradition does something
I have yet to discover in other religious traditions.

The Buddhist tradition says
everything I just taught you

about perception of the profound,
and emptiness, and original face,

and non-grasping, and non-clinging,
and non-attachment, applies to me.

Gate gate para sam gate.

Where have your heard that, I mean, what!?

You— I mean I've been practicing this path

(Laughs)

and now you tell me it's just a path?

Not to be clung to,
not to be grasped after,

not to be attached to,
but to be participated in,

so that I can constantly rediscover and re-meet
the original face of my ancestors,

which is also my original face.

(Bell sounds)

(Bell sounds)