Student experiences of reading the Diamond Sutra

The Alembic, 30 July, 2024.

Ken: As Kati reminded us, this is the penultimate class. And we have a lot to do. I’ll be checking with you about a number of things. I’ll do that at the end.

How many of you, if any, are reading the sutra on a daily basis? Well, that’s very encouraging. Say a couple of words about it.

Student: It’s entered a period where it felt kind of frustrating, I think, because there’s parts that I feel good about. And then there’s some parts in the middle where I’m just like, “What?”

Ken: Which translation are you reading?

Student: Red Pine and the Wong. Yeah, I switch back and forth.

Ken: Yeah, okay. Good. You’re reading it standing up?

Student: Yeah, yeah.

Ken: Good. Very good. Has there been any change over the last few weeks?

Student: Yeah, I think definitely parts that felt confusing before felt clearer. I’ve also randomly kind of checked in on, fire kasina concentration, and it’s the stability of a nimitta. I feel like it’s done something to my attention that has made it stable or more manageable somehow.

Ken: Yeah, it’s interesting that way, isn’t it? Yeah. It keeps throwing you into confusion, but somehow something emerges out of that.

Student: Yeah, I haven’t done the counterfactual experiment of some other practice, but yeah, I think it’s the sutra.

Ken: Very good. Who else. At the back there?

Student: Actually, my experience is somewhat similar in that I come to class with more resolve, go back and throughout the week, it varies in terms of it’s, you know, like, “Oh, am I doing this for another 45 minutes this morning?” Jesus.

Ken: And he’s not going to help you. [Laughter]

Student: And yet, I was just reflecting when you said your concentration practice … I do a 30 minute shamatha practice in the morning, and I do feel like I’ve made progress. I don’t know whether to attribute to the sutra or not, but definitely my relationship to the sutra, it seems to be evolving and different parts are becoming clearer, but like are settling in me and I know it. Like almost I can recite it at this point, so it feels in some ways like more familiar and less confusing that way. So it’s just kind of like it’s a companion.

Ken: Very good. Very good. Another person.

Student: My relationship definitely changed, I think in the first week and the second, I felt really miserable. It feels like I’m doing an assignment and I feel like I’m forced to do it, but I did it anyway. But recently I find I start to enjoy it, which I find amazing.

Ken: What do you enjoy about it?

Student: I don’t know, it’s like the whole experience, like listening to my own voice and just standing and just, I don’t know, just everything.

Ken: Okay.

Student: And I find, it’s no longer that, “Okay? I have to do it, I have to.” it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do it.” There is some shift which I find. That’s very interesting to me.

Ken: Would you say that the sutra is starting to speak to you?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Could you say more about that?

Student: I find during the day the phrases just pop up into my mind. I think in the first week I did the Red Pine and then later changed to A.F. Price. I think I like that one better and I find easier with that. And then I changed to Chinese, which is my native language, and I find the Chinese version speaks to me more after I read the English version.

Ken: It’s understandable.

Student: And I feel like I appreciate just like the sound and the language something and I feel differently, when I read English and when I read Chinese. It feels like it’s pointing to something, but with two directions.

Ken: Yes. And that’s exactly right. The Diamond Sutra is all about pointing, and I’m going to say a word about that. Okay? Thank you very much. Yes. You want to say something, please.

Student: A couple of things. I think different experiences at different points. One is there’s a paragraph I recently experienced more than the other. And it’s this paragraph: “The Buddha is the means of dharma. The Buddha is the means of dharma and dharma is the teacher’s body.” Thirty something chapter, and normally I’d recited and read it when I was 16 in Chinese version. And usually it’s like the four lines in Chinese pop in my head, and then followed by Red Pine’s. Another four lines.

Ken: Well, it’s the four lines towards the end of the sutra. Yeah. Oh very good. Okay.

Student: It’s page 54.

Ken: I’m sorry I didn’t bring any of my library with me today. I was kind of brain dead. However, I did finish the first draft of my own translation.

Student: So it’s 26. Chapter 26.

Ken: Yes, but in my own translation, I very skillfully left out the numbers. [Laughter] But I know of what you speak. I just have to … I got it. Yeah. “Whoever sees me, in form, whoever knows me from sound has practiced incorrectly. Such people do not see me.” That one?

Student: Yeah. In Red Pine’s version it’s the next three lines. That kind of …

Ken: What are the next three lines?

Student: “A Buddha is seen by means of the dharma. The dharma is the teacher’s body. The dharma itself isn’t known, nor can it be known.”

Ken: Yes. Buddha’s are seen through true experience. Guides are true presence. Guides is an epithet for buddha. Because true experience is not an object of knowing. It cannot be known by ordinary consciousness. Okay. Very good. So these you find, these speak to you.

Student: I think I’m experiencing more of this holding and how dharma speaks to me. It’s kind of shifting how I experience, whatever my experience is. It’s kind of hard to describe, but it’s like …

Ken: I think you did a very good job, just then. Thank you. Okay. So I very much appreciate that. I mean, basically all of you have been extremely good sports about this course, and I appreciate your efforts very much, and that some of you took my harebrained suggestion that you actually read the sutra every day. And that brings me a great joy, really. And to hear you describe the way that the sutra has moved in you, this is what I was pretty sure would happen, but I didn’t actually know. So it’s very nice to hear that. And the one point I think that I want to underline here is that in all four people who talked about their experience in reading the sutra. You notice this has not been a process of conceptual understanding. It’s a different kind of understanding. And there’s that different kind of understanding that the Diamond Sutra is directed at. That’s very important. So thank you very much all of you. Okay. Now, on our list of things.

Ah, yes. How many of you have your index cards with you? With your three questions. How are you doing on getting answers to those three questions? Because you only have tonight and next Tuesday to get those answers. So either you’re going to let me off extremely easily. Or I have to work really hard. How are you doing with that?

Student questions

Student: Well, for some of them I can Google and ask other people, but I still want to know what you’ll say.

Ken: Don’t give me one of those.

Student: So, how do we square the idea of not conceiving of beings, not bringing beings into existence with all of the deity practice stuff? That’s all kind of bringing it being into existence, isn’t it?

Ken: Oh, no, not at all. Good question. Let me pick that up later. Okay, then we’ll come back to this this evening in a couple of different ways. I can understand why that might cause a little bit of confusion. But I have some things to say about that. Okay.

Ken: Anybody else? Index cards? Yes. Index card questions. Because having questions—something I want you to think about seriously, whenever you go to a retreat or you go to a series of talks with a teacher—write down three questions and make sure you get answers to them. That way you’re getting actively involved. You’re not just sitting passively assuming that you know. And that may cause a little problem here and there, but that’s not going to hurt anybody.

Student: So, I guess the question would be, “How does a bodhisattva stand?” But to put it in my own words it would be, “How do I struggle less with myself and be more available to others?” And also, I know there’s no clear answer to that.

Ken: So. It’s like the man who goes to the doctor and says, “I just have this pain in my head.”

“Well, when did you get that pain?”

“When I hit myself on the head with a hammer.”

“Well, stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.”

It’s a very clear answer, right? So, I think it leads to another question. Can you stop struggling with yourself?

Student: At times.

Ken: But how do you do it?

Student: I stop, I guess. Yeah.

Ken: Do you stop?

Student: It stops.

Ken: Oh, that’s important. It stops. It’s not something that you do. Do you follow?

Student: Oh. Yeah. Which is why it kind of feels pointless to ask the question.

Ken: How did you go from that to, “It’s pointless”? I’m very interested in that.

Student: Because it feels like if I ask a question, I’m kind of asking for something I can do.

Ken: But you just said you can’t do it and you don’t do it.

Student: Yeah. So why do I ask the question?

Speaking from the heart

Ken: Well, you asked. Look at it this way, and tell me if this is fair. Sometimes the struggle just stops. I’m not quite sure what makes it stop, but I like it when it stops. It makes me more available to others. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. So I’m curious about how does the struggle stop, and is there anything I can do to help it to stop? Would that be a fair question?

Student: Sure.

Ken: Would you like to ask that question?

Student: I’ll go with that.

Ken: Okay. Go ahead.

Student: What makes the struggle stop? Is there anything I can do to help?

Ken: How does that feel?

Student: Yes. It feels a bit more …

Ken: Yeah. Right there. What’s that? There. Say it, or put it this way: let it speak.

Student: It feels more open if I say it like that, less controlling.

Ken: Okay. That’s a very important piece right there. But do you feel it right now?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Yeah. So what did you do?

Student: I don’t know. I don’t think I know.

Ken: I’m going to make a suggestion. You spoke from your heart.

Student: Yeah. Pretty. Pretty well, actually. Yeah.

Ken: It was a lucky guess.

Ken: I think you have an answer to your question.

Student: Yeah, yeah.I didn’t really expect that, but yeah. Thank you.

Ken: You’re welcome. One more back here.

Student: Right at the back. Blue shirt.

Ken: How come it’s always the same people? Let’s hear some …

Student: You need some other voices.

Ken: Please go ahead.

Working out at the spiritual gym

Student: What I have been doing for the past couple of weeks is reading the sutra before my morning meditation, and that has changed the experience. But the question more pointedly is, for actually many years I have had the experience, particularly in meditation of—this is hard to put into words. There’s a very subtle but clear preverbal. It’s not words. It’s more of a feeling. But it’s about an arising of an understanding. And what happens is—it hits like a force field and my body jerks. You know, actually, I want to know what that is, what is going on there. And what’s been happening has been happening more.

Ken: Is it disturbing?

Student: You mean in a negative fashion? No. It aroused me more than anything. It arouses a sense of intense curiosity. And it says, it’s … hard to put into words. Sometimes it feels like, “You’re not ready for this. You’re not ready for this particular understanding.” And at this point you’re thrown back. And my body and again …

Ken: You said, “You’re not ready for this understanding.” And then I didn’t catch the next part.

Student: And I’m thrown back. Yeah. The door closes. “You can’t come in.”

Ken: Okay. Thank you. This is a question about capacity. You need to go to the spiritual gym and workout.

Student: Spiritual?

Ken: Gym.

Student: I thought I was in one.

Ken: Well, a lot of people try to understand this. They try to understand the sutra. And I’m going to say more about this in a few minutes. But I think most of you by now are getting the idea that you cannot understand the sutra with the conceptual mind. It doesn’t make sense. You can construct a kind of logic out of it, but it loses its life, if you’re with me. Okay. However, we are so deeply conditioned to function only in the conceptual mind that any other way of knowing is weak. We don’t have—speaking metaphorically—the muscles for it. And when I was teaching, I would tell people, “You’re trying to understand mahamudra,” which is the equivalent. It’s a form of practice in my own training. It’s about direct awareness. You can’t understand mahamudra, and understanding mahamudra actually doesn’t help you practice it. Being able to sit and be present with the totality of one’s experience, that makes a difference. That’s a muscle we can develop. And the two practices that I gave at the beginning of this course, the five steps, is all about building capacity. It’s also about building some skills, but it’s a lot about building capacity. And then a different form of capacity, a different kind of capacity is that progressive opening. And if you do that, if you do both of those, whether you do them for a long period and then the other for a long period, or you do them alternating, it doesn’t really make much difference. And the other, a third method of building capacity and a very powerful method is prayer.

Praying to develop the ability to know, because it’s not—just from what you’ve said—you know it’s not about understanding, it’s about knowing. And so letting that, and this gentleman up here speaking from his heart, he moved into that. So prayer is a very powerful method here. So, any of those three methods or any combination of those three methods is going to be very, very helpful. And that is what I would encourage you to do. That’s what your practice is about. And you keep coming back to this. And keep moving in the direction that you’re already moving. Does that make sense to you?

Student: Yes it does.

Ken: One more index card question. Okay. Over here.

Find what works for you

Student: I haven’t been doing the reading, partly because I got the same reaction out of this that I do out of most sutra: depression, oppression and irritation. So I tend to read a little bit and go away. So, I’ve been enjoying your explanation. I’m really glad to not approach this with reason, because it’s obviously the wrong tool. The wrench didn’t fit really early on, so I put it down. Is there a way around it, or is this just going to be depressing, or do you have another idea?

Ken: Have any of you come across a site called despair.com? [Laughter] It I think it still exists, but they stole an idea that I had. I said I was going to explore building a business out of baking, making misfortune cookies. But anyway, the the reason I mentioned it is that they had these demotivational posters. So, one of them is … [unclear]. The one that I’m thinking of here—this is one of my favorite ones—”A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Nice motivational poster. The demotivational poster, it shows a bear in the middle of rapids and the stream, Alaska or somewhere, and there’s a salmon jumping right into its mouth. And the caption is “A journey of a thousand miles can end very, very badly.” [Laughter]

So the bad news is, we start out on this path. You have no idea where you’re going to end up. So you’ve got to come back to first principles. Why are you practicing?

Student: Through practice, I’ve gotten better and better at being both helpful and present and happy and making other people happy too. Okay, so through practice, I’ve gotten a lot better at those things and I’ve come a long ways through practices, just not sutrayana. That’s pretty much every time I read sutrayana, I get depressed.

Ken: What other sutras have you read?

Student: Various forms of the Prajnaparamita. Lotus Sutra. Bits and pieces. I basically avoid them, but they occasionally show up. And what I’ve learned to do is to push myself past my comfort zone. And that’s part of why …. why I’m here. This was a unique opportunity. I figured I’d just do this again, see how it went, and some portions of it were familiar.

Ken: This is something you’re going to have to decide yourself. One of my favorite sayings is a Sufi saying, “There are as many paths to God as there are souls in the universe.” And I know many, many people who really pushed in their practice, and they’ve got somewhere. And often they’ll describe it as making a breakthrough. And you may have heard this in terms of athletes and things like that, all the time. In my own case, and I’m speaking very personally here, I learned through rather painful experience that the operative syllable in the word breakthrough for me was break, not through. And so despite all of that encouragement and caution, just go through the pain, etc., that approach actually didn’t work for me at all. And I gave it up very reluctantly because I really thought, “Well, that’s what you’re meant to do.” And I did it like a snail. I don’t go very far any day. I just tended to keep going. So, I’m not going to encourage you to push at something that very quickly just pulls up a whole bunch of reactivity. If you feel that would be a fruitful way for you, and some people do, then please proceed. That’s on your own. You’re here, clearly out of some form of faith and trust and also appreciation, from what you’ve said.

So, find things that speak to you. And it may not be the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. They’re tough nuts, for a lot of different reasons. In fact, it may not be that kind of recitation or just reciting something, I don’t know. But find two or three practices that speak to you and that don’t immediately put … did you try either of those practices that I gave out at the beginning there?

Student: They’re very familiar to me as methods.

Ken: And you can work with those?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. Well they’re very sound. Then go with those and keep going with those because they will take you a very, very long way. Okay. But that’s what I mean about find things that speak to you that don’t make you feel like you’re the a brick wall, and the practice is the sledgehammer. That works for some people, but it didn’t work for me and it sounds like it doesn’t work for you either. Okay.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: You may be surprised. One day you’re going to pick up a sutra and go, “Oh, this is completely straightforward.”

Student: That happens?

Ken: All right. Now what’s next on my list here. Ah, yes. This is going to speak a little bit to your question.

Student: Maybe I can get into it in more depth.

Descriptions of the results of practice are not instructions

Ken: So, one of the most common mistakes made by people who enter the practice is hearing the description of the results of practice and taking them as instructions. How many of you have been a little bit upset about something and somebody says, “Just relax.” What happens when somebody says, “Just relax.” What was that?

Student: You didn’t.

Ken: You tense up. Why is that? It’s because relax is a result. On the other hand, if you’re upset about something and somebody comes up and says, “Take a breath, take a deep breath,” there might be a little bit of reaction. “That’s okay. And do that again. And again. Maybe do it three times.” What’s the result? You’re more relaxed. This is a very, very simple example, but I use it because I want to make clear the difference between a method and a result. This is probably the most common error I’ve run into.

And then I had an insight which once again made me feel that I qualified for the Darwin Awards. How many of you don’t know what the Darwin Awards are? The Darwin Awards are. for people whose stupidity is so great that it would be better if they exited from the gene pool. [Laughter] So focused on the pointing out aspect of the Diamond Sutra that I had missed, that it’s all about description and results. In other words, there’s almost not a word of instruction about how to practice in the Diamond Sutra. Now, I did have some inkling of that because I gave you those practices. This is going to help, but it really is about description and results. So all of you who find it frustrating or depressing or it doesn’t speak, or something like that, that’s perfectly understandable. It’s describing result. Now, this is very important, because as I said before, you can’t practice result. You’ll always end up in a mess. And this speaks to deity practice as well, because in a certain way, you’re making result the path of practice. So if you don’t do it the right way, you end up in a mess. Are you with me?

And I’ll say, “Do you have my book The Magic of Vajrayana? I think you’d better buy it. I meant to make a pitch on this a long time ago. There’s a little over 100 hardcover copies left on Amazon. And the hardcover copy is so much better. It’s going to last so much longer than the paperback. I really urge you to buy them. I lowered the price on it so it’s the same price as the paperback, but it’s The Magic of Vajrayana by yours truly. It will speak to a lot of the stuff that you have around your question. This is why I said to some of the other questions that have come up this evening, work those practices of the five-step practice, which is basically the Ananapansati Sutra, severely abbreviated. That expanding practice in which you’re just including more and more of your experience so that you’re eventually able to sit in the totality, the whole field of your experience.

These are methods that actually do something. They build rather than trying to go to the end of the line and just say, “Okay, I can just do this,” and it never works. So that’s one piece that I really wanted to underline and make sure that I didn’t forget to convey that perspective.

Our immersion in transactional thinking

Ken: And somewhat related to this is the whole context. I spent quite a bit of time talking about the Diamond Sutra in the first couple of classes we had, but I want to say a couple of other things here. It is hard to appreciate how completely immersed we are in transactional thinking. Everything is a quid pro quo. Now, a book that I brought in, I think in the second class, was Uchiyama and Dogen’s How to Cook Your Life. One of the things I like about that book is that Uchiyama makes it very, very clear distinction about the world in which transactions are possible, and the world in which transactions aren’t possible.

How many of you had one of these cookies before the class? Okay, so we’ll take you. I’d like you to share your experience with me. Oh, you’re being very selfish. Come on. You’ve already eaten the cookie. Why don’t you just share your experience with me?

Student: I don’t think words will capture it.

Ken: Well, don’t use words then.

Student: Stare at you really hard. I didn’t mean to stare … [unclear] remembering.

Ken: Are you telepathic or something?

Student: Not that I know of.

Ken: So why would staring … is that like men who stare at goats or something? How’s that going to help?

Student: You got a cookie right there.

Ken: Like I got a half eaten cookie right here. And it tasted very good. But I don’t think that’s your experience. You had your own experience. I want you to share your experience with me.

Student: That cookie in the corner of that couch.

Ken: Now you’re describing your experience. I want you to share your experience. You know, I mean, isn’t this what this part of the world is about? Sharing. Come on. Has the cat got your tongue? Come on.

Student: Miaow.

Ken: Shall I make it easy on you or harder?

Student: What do I need?

Ken: I don’t know, tell me.

Student: That’s probably good.

Ken: Okay, I’ll make it easier on you. Can you share your experience?

Student: No. No.

Ken: That’s correct. The world that we actually live in is the world we experience. We cannot share that with anybody. It’s not possible. The world in which transactions occur is a world we construct out of the world we experience. A different way of looking at things. Buddhism, buddhist practice is all about the world we experience. It’s not about the world of transactions. This is a really important point. To put it into a philosophical terminology, it’s epistemologically based. It’s not ontologically based. Buddhism is not concerned with what is. What the essence of something is. It’s concerned with how we experience things.

This gentleman over here said he struggles. He struggles in the world he experiences. There’s only one thing you can do to end the struggle of the world we experience, and that is to build the capacity and the skills to be able to experience everything that arises. And then it’s not necessary to struggle. That will have some effect on the way we relate in the world of transactions. Definitely. But I want to be really clear about this point. This is about how we experience the world, how we experience our life. And this is not something we can just share with other people the way we can … like say I share a cookie. It means I break a cookie and I give it to another person. We shared it. Share the experience of the cookie. That’s a little harder. It’s got me into terrible trouble.

I received an email—this is many years ago—saying that, “I’d like to invite you to participate in this movie that I’m making about the experience of the non-dual vision that is not limited to any culture.” Then I looked at the other people that were already enrolled in this project, and it was a pretty impressive list. I don’t know why he was asking me, and so I said, “Yes, I’m quite honored that you asked. But I think, just to be honest, what you take as a statement of fact, I take as a question.” That’s what I emailed.

The phone rang ten minutes later. “What do you mean?”

So we had a little conversation. I said, “Look, suppose we sat down for a slice of pie in a restaurant. And we both have strawberry pie. You take a bite of your pie, I take a bite of mine. How do we know that we have the same experience? Do we have the same experience? Can you compare it? Is there any way you can do that?”

“No.” he said.

“Well, you see my point,” I said. “So, that strawberry pie is about the non-dual vision that every culture embraces.”

“I don’t know.”

So, we ended the conversation there. And almost immediately there was an email saying, “Yes, you are right, you’re not suitable for this movie.”

So this is just an example of the difference between the transactional world in which we think we live, but we don’t actually, and the world of experience, in which often we don’t pay attention to the fact that we live there, but it’s actually the only place that we live. Yes.

Student: When I hear you saying the example with the strawberry pie. I wonder about how you think art relates to this. Like if someone makes a piece of art. I’m thinking as I’m hearing this, “Well, you can’t ever tell that two people experience the same art piece,” but at the same time, there is a sense of something more shared or something more in that direction.

Ken: You’re quite right. It’s not shared. Oh God, it’s so long ago now. I was working in Ottawa one summer. I’m Canadian and moved to America in the mid 80s. But I was working in Ottawa one summer and I had a friend who was an artist, and we went to the National Gallery and there were a lot of abstract, modern art paintings there. He showed me how to look at them because I didn’t know how to look at them then. And he wasn’t sharing his experience. He was showing me how to look at them so I could experience them. And then I could see some of the things that he talked about. And you’re quite right. There are certain pieces of art which are just fantastic. In the most unlikely place, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri there’s a statue of Avalokiteshvara that almost all of you have probably seen the picture of. But that’s where it is. It’s in the middle of America. It’s carved out of a single tree trunk, and it shows Avalokiteshvara in the posture of royal ease. And I was driving across the country about ten years ago, and I made a point of going through Kansas City, Missouri, because I wanted to see this piece. I didn’t have a lot of time. I spent about an hour with it, but I was in tears the whole time. It’s a phenomenal piece of art, and if any of you are serious about the Bodhisattva path, that is a pilgrimage place you have to go in my humble opinion. It’s just amazing. But that’s just my experience. No, I don’t know what you will experience when you go there. Maybe something similar, maybe something quite different. That’s what I mean. Is that clear? There’s other pieces of art there. There’s one of the Luohans there, the arhats just sitting in their meditations.

Student: Like when we’re sitting here and you’re asking someone about what they experienced and you’re comparing it to maybe what you’ve experienced, or to what you’ve seen other people experience. It seems like there’s a way of of knowing that—maybe shared is not the right word—but like knowing that there’s resonance, or knowing that there’s similarity, or knowing that there’s commonality or something.

Ken: Resonance, definitely. And yes, that’s very important. But what I want to emphasize here is we each live in a world of experience. We have this mystery of communication, which is wonderful and also infuriating sometimes. And we have this that we’re doing here where I’m talking. You’re listening. You ask me questions. You’re talking, I’m listening. And something seems to happen which we both find meaningful, let’s say. And how is that possible? Well, one comes up with all kinds of explanations for it, but they’re really beside the point. All of you are here. I’m here for the same reason. There’s something in the stuff that draws our attention, that excites some kind of yearning or interest or something in us, and we want to move into a deeper relationship with it. But as you’ve heard from people, people have very different experiences and very different experiences of the path, and that needs to be respected. Okay. That good enough?

Student: Good enough for me.

Ken: Back here.

Losing touch with the world we actually experience

Student: I’m understanding the two worlds you’re speaking of, but I don’t understand why you’re calling the constructed one transactional.

Ken: Can anybody take anything from the world you actually experience?

Student: No.

Ken: Okay. Can anybody take anything from the world you think you experience? Yes. There you are.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: Now, when we lose touch with the world we actually experience. We lose touch with meaning in our lives. And as you’ve probably read about, there is a kind of crisis of meaning in our culture at this point. This is one of the results of people spending all of their time in the world of transaction, the world where they’ve been stuck. They’ve lost touch with what is personally meaningful because they’ve lost touch with the world they themselves experience. This gentleman here very kindly moved into the world he actually experienced. And there the struggle stopped.

Student: Fair enough. Yeah.

Ken: When you moved right into that world. There the struggle stops. Meditation practice, to a very large extent, is about developing the skills and understanding and capabilities of being able to be in the world we actually experience. Because there the struggle stops. We have another question.

Student: I feel a little bit like a troll. Isn’t the world …

Ken: Feel a little bit like what?

Student: Like a troll with my question. Sorry. Isn’t the world we think we experience in the world we experience? Aren’t we experiencing the world we think we experience as the thoughts that we’re experiencing?

Ken: Yes, and we forget. It’s like silence and sound. That’s exactly right. It is in the world we experience. But we forget the other world. And so we think we only live in this one. In that sense, you’ve even reinforced my case. Your world is shrunk down to the world you think you experience. So you live in a world of ideas. This is exactly what the Diamond Sutra is trying to kick you out of.

Student: Can I include the world I think I experience in experience? Surely I’m not rejecting it, because that would be rejecting my experience.

Ken: No you can’t. You can’t get rid of it. But you can stop taking it as real.

Student: Yeah, that sounds cool.

Ken: What happened to the troll?

Student: That was her.

Ken: One of the consequences of losing touch with the world we actually experience is that we become very susceptible to experiencing loneliness. When you live in the world of transaction and you don’t have any, or you have little connection with the world you actually experience, you tend to feel lonely. One conclusion I’ve come to from thinking about this is that if you experience a lack of meaning in your life, it means you are not fully engaging your life. So look for the areas where you’re not engaging fully. See what happens. You may find that things suddenly become very meaningful. Just a thought. You can play with it. Okay, we’ve done that. Done that. Done that. Oh, good. Now we can go to the sutra.

Now, needless to say, we are not going to get through the whole sutra. We’re not going to cover all 32 chapters. So I’m going to deal with—how’re we doing for time? I’ve selected a few, and unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers in here. Does anybody have a copy of the Diamond Sutra? The Price with you? Which one is that? That’ll be good enough. May I borrow it? Thank you.

The Diamond Sutra chapter nine

Ken: This is chapter nine.

“Subhuti, what do you think? Do stream enters think, ‘I have attained the result stream enterer?’”

Subhuti replied, “No, indeed. Most Honored.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Most Honored, they have not not entered anything.”

Underline that please. “Because Most Honored, they have not entered anything.”

“Therefore, they are called stream enterers. They do not enter form, nor sound, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch, nor concept. Therefore they are called stream enterers. Most Honored, if a stream enterer were to think, ‘I have attained the result stream enterer,’ right there he or she engages a sense of self, engages being a sentient being, engages being a living being, engages being an individual being.”

So, stream enterer is the first of the four stages of arhatship, if I remember correctly. Again, I find the sutra quite fascinating because in Prince Wu’s chapter title it says, The attainments of the Four Lesser Vehicles. But in the sutra itself there is no mention of lesser vehicle. That was the perspective that became common a few centuries later. As I said, this is a transitional sutra. So these here are the four stages of arhatship. And the first one is stream enterer, and basically stream enter is some experience of emptiness, enough so that the system shifts, and it can’t go back to where it was. It’s an important experience. But what Subhuti is saying here is that when this experience arises, there is no experience of, “I am a stream enterer.” Why? Because you haven’t entered anything. It’s a way of talking about things. And this is again, the transition from the world of individual experience to the world of communication and transaction and all of that. We talk about these things, but the terminology we use, there isn’t some thing which they are. So, you have this experience, and you’re not the same. But the idea, “Oh, I’m a stream enterer” never occurs.

Now, here I’m going to make a note. The term dharmas, as I think I’ve mentioned before, has ten different meanings, and several of those meanings are used in the course of the sutra. Here, if it’s not translated—Red Pine and various other translators don’t translate, they just leave dharmas—so you’ve got to figure out which of those meanings it means. Most people, if they translate it into English, use the term phenomenon, which is basically a dualistic framework. It’s from Kant who derived it in turn from Descartes and so forth, the Cartesian dualism. And again, this is basically, what are things, how do things exist? This is ontology. Whereas we’re much more concerned with epistemology: how do I experience this? And it’s possible to come to a point where you experience things in such a way that the idea of things existing independently in their own right collapses. That’s what’s termed stream enterer, but you haven’t entered anything. If anything, you’ve exited something. I find this chapter just delightful. It goes on.

The Most Honored asked, “What do you think? Subhuti, [and I love the fact that Buddha is always asking, “What do you think? Subhuti?”] does a once returner think, ’I have attained the result once returner?’”

Now, there are long descriptions in the canonical texts about what a once returner is. Such a person has this attainment or this ability, or etc., and I can’t relate to most of them. Not sure I can relate to any of them. I much prefer Huineng’s description of the once returner, which is that through stream entry, you formed a relationship with your own experience, which is at least momentarily free of the conceptual mind. So there’s a natural clarity which you cannot put into words. And for different people here today, struggling to try to put it into words, because I’ve been pushing them a bit, but you can’t put it into words. And yet, in that absence of words, there is a clarity and a knowing. So that’s stream entry.

Once returner is, you fall out of it. And then you’re back into it. It doesn’t take you a long time to come back. You come back to it very quickly. No returner, the third stage is: it doesn’t fall out of your awareness. And then our arhatship is one step higher than that.

So the Most Honored asked, “What do you think Subhuti, does a once returner think, ‘I have attained the result once returner?'”

Subhuti replied, “No, indeed, Most Honored.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there is no such experience as being a once returner. Therefore, he or she is called a once returner.”

Do you follow this? There isn’t any such experience there, but the conventional designation of the person who has uncovered—I think, is the best term for that possibility—is they’re termed a once returner. And then he goes on.

Most Honored asked, “What do you think, Subhuti? Does a no returner think ‘I have attained the result, no returner?'”

Subhuti replied, “No, indeed, Most Honored.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there is no such experience as being a no returner, therefore, he or she is called a no returner.”

And it gets better.

Most Honored asked, “What do you think Subhuti? Does a foe defeater think, [this is my translation of arhant, arhat, or arahant, all forms arise in different books] ’I have attained the result foe defeater?’”

Subhuti replied, “No, indeed, Most Honored.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there is no such experience as being a foe defeater. Most Honored, if a foe defeater thinks, ‘I have attained the status of foe defeater,’ right there, he or she engages a sense of self, or he or she engages being a sentient being, engages being a living being, engages being an individual being.”

Once we fall into the conceptual mind then, “Yes, I am here, and there are other people here, and we’re all sentient beings, and we’re all living beings. We’re all individual beings.” This whole conceptual framework just forms, as was correctly pointed out, within our world of experience. But now we’re completely enchanted by this conceptual framework, and we forget that clear, empty, knowing that is our own experience. And again, it’s like silence and sound. When you hear a sound, we say, “The sound shattered the silence,” but it didn’t shatter anything. The silence didn’t go anywhere. It’s that the silence dropped out of our attention. All our attention went to the sound. That’s what happened. And then this next passage I just love.

“Most Honored, the Thus Come, the foe defeater, the full and complete Buddha [nothing elaborate about these titles] has declared that I am the foremost of those who dwell free of emotional reactions. [This is Subhuti talking.] And Most Honored, that I am indeed a foe defeater, free from reactive attraction. Most Honored, I do not think I am a foe defeater. Most Honored, if I were to think, ‘I have attained the status of foe defeater,’ the Thus Come would not declare to me, ‘Subhuti, son of a good family, you are the foremost of those who go free of emotional reactions, because you do not dwell on anything. Because you do not dwell on anything, you dwell free of emotional reactions.”

The wonderful irony here is that when you wake up, well, it’s like waking up in a dream. Nothing happens. You just experience things differently, that’s all. Now, that difference in experience is actually really important. At least I think so.

Student: A few other people too.

Ken: Because it makes all the difference in how we live our lives. But nothing happened. Nothing changed. And if you’re in a dream, you wake up. And the dream, you’re aware of the dream. All the appearance of the dream is still there. They don’t go away. That’s the same. You wake up in this life. Your life doesn’t go. It doesn’t solve any problems. Actually, it creates a whole bunch more problems. [Laughter] But there it is. And it’s a possibility that is available to every one of us. And it’s exactly analogous to silence and sound. Yes.

Student questions

Student: My first question on my index card was about how to know whether I was progressing, which you answered last week. And the second question was about whether confusion was part of that? And this morning in my shamatha practice, I was following this instruction where I let go of thoughts, let go of the sense of there being somebody meditating, going off any judgment or meditation or any effort at all. And it felt like somebody was blocking and tackling my mind until it was not there. And I feel like I’m slipping in and out of the same experience during this class. Like when you’re describing the sutra, it feels like confusion in some ways. Sometimes just like my mind gives up, or something like that.

Ken: And then there’s a moment of clarity or something? A moment you can’t describe?

Student: It’s a moment I can’t describe. Yeah, yeah.

Ken: Keep going. Okay.

Student: So the confusion is in some ways part of it.

Ken: It’s part of the process, definitely. Right?

Student: Right.

Ken: And that giving up, something let’s go inside.

Student: Yeah. It’s hard to talk about, I guess, I don’t know.

Ken: Keep going, keep going. Don’t try. Don’t try to conceptualize your experience.

Student: It’s so funny because it’s the not thinking that seems to be happening. But then I come back online trying to think … That’s why I can’t talk about it.

Ken: It’s insidious isn’t it.

Student: Yeah. And then there’s frustration, but yeah.

Ken: Yeah. This is why my father was so great. I gave him a copy of the commentary on the Diamond Sutra. This is when I was first involved in Buddhism. He said, “Ken, I don’t understand why you’re studying this. It says right here you cannot understand this.” [Laughter] That’s right. You, as you are ordinarily configured, cannot understand this. So it happens, and I’m being a little dramatic here. But it happens, and there’s this opening. And then there’s a part of you which is deeply habituated says, “Hold on, I don’t understand this.” And then it’s right up again.

Student: When you said it is about knowing versus understanding, would you say that love is that way?

Ken: Yeah. Isn’t it?.

Student: That was the first thing that came to mind.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: You’re welcome. There’s another question over here.

Student: It’s more a thought. When you mentioned how we cannot share our experience, something came to mind that resonated with me a lot. You can’t share your pain. You can’t share your happiness. You can’t share your joy. You can’t share your suffering. Yes, you can verbally share it. You can do this. But I think back on times where I try to make someone happy who’s not happy. And yeah, I’m happy, but I can’t necessarily make them happy even though I’m sharing it.

Ken: That’s true. And you can be with someone who is in pain, and when somebody is in pain, when we see somebody in pain, we often react. Our reaction is to feel pain. It’s not their pain. It’s a pain of our own reaction. If we can stand in our own pain and not be intimidated by it, and just let it be there, then you create the possibility of actually being with that other person’s pain. You’re not going to experience that thing, but you can be right there. And the presence, they will feel. They won’t feel as alone because they’ll be able to feel your presence. That’s very powerful. It’s the same with joy. That’s why it’s so important to celebrate victories or accomplishments. Take a child. They experience joy, and when their parents take joy in that, then it just opens. They just open up their being because they’re there.

Student: I didn’t think about moments where someone’s experiencing extreme pain and suffering. Is it necessary for you to experience pain, to be present for them?

Ken: Not necessarily. It depends on a lot of different factors. But what is necessary is that however you react to somebody else’s pain, you have to be able to stand in your reactions.

Student: Yeah, okay. Thank you.

What is the bodhisattva?

Ken: You’re welcome. Well, I’d like to get one more chapter done this evening, if that’s okay. I’ve got five listed. We’ll get one, probably. This, I think, is a very long chapter. It’s one of the longest ones. [Pause] No, let’s not do that one. What Is The Bodhisattva? I’ll give you a reference for it later. This starts off repeating what we found in chapter three.

Then Subhuti asked the Most Honored this question. “Most Honored, how does one who has correctly entered the way of the bodhisattva live, how does he or she practice, how does he or she take hold of mind?” The Most Honored replied, “Subhuti, for this, one who has correctly entered the way of the bodhisattva sets this intention, ‘I shall bring all sentient beings all the way to nirvana, to the vastness of nirvana in which no aggregate remains. Further, although I bring sentient beings beyond reckoning all the way across to nirvana, there is no sentient being that I bring all the way across to nirvana.'”

Now, that’s the compassion and emptiness aspect of the bodhisattva vow. We went over this in some detail before.

“Why is that?”

“Because, Subhuti, if a bodhisattva engages the idea of a sentient being, he or she should not be called a bodhisattva.”

Then it goes through the engaging a sentient being, living being, etc., those four views. And then Buddha asks:

“Subhuti, what do you think? Did the Thus Come [referring to himself] come to have from Thus Come Dipamkara any such experience as ‘supreme, pure, and complete awakening into full buddhahood?’”

The Venerable Subhuti replied to the Most Honored, “Most Honored, the Thus Come did not have from Thus Come Dipamkara any such experience as ‘supreme, pure and complete awakening into full buddhahood.”

Again, because in awakening, there isn’t anybody there to experience. It’s just there.

The Most Honored said to the Venerable Subhuti, “That is right, Subhuti. That is right. The Thus Come did not come to have from Thus Come Dipamkara any such experience as ‘supreme, pure and complete awakening into full buddhahood.’ If the Thus Come had such an experience, [and then goes on to say] Dipamkara would not have made the prophecy that I would one day be Buddha Shakyamuni.”

The next paragraph is the tricky part.

“Subhuti, if someone said that the Thus Come, the foe defeater, the full and complete Buddha, came to supreme full and complete awakening into utterly complete buddhahood, that would be misleading.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Subhuti, the Thus Come has no such experience as supreme full and complete awakening. Subhuti, any experience of thus come is utterly complete buddha, which is neither true nor false. Therefore, it is taught that all thus come experience is buddha experience.”

And what’s saying here is that when the conceptual mind is dropped, then whatever you experience, whatever experience arises, without the conceptual mind, it’s the same as what a buddha experiences. This is a very important principle in Mahayana that the experience of a first level bodhisattva of awakening is exactly the same as a buddha’s experience of awakening. What is the difference between a first level bodhisattva and a buddha? It’s the degree to which it has become the way that they live. The first level bodhisattvas only this much [gestures]. Eleventh level, which is buddhahood, it’s full and complete.

“Therefore, it is taught that all thus come experience is buddha experience. Subhuti, in so-called all experience there is no experience. Thus all experience is called buddha experience.”

Now what’s happening here, and why this sutra is very difficult to read is the way that the words are constructed. They’re alternating between referring to the world of transaction and the world without transaction. And this is why when you read the sutra, even though we may not understand that conceptually, there’s something in us that’s doing that switch, which is why the sutra, when we read it, can feel very confusing. But at the same time, something begins to open up in us, because the sutra is making a switch back and forth between these two. This is why I encourage you to read the sutra on a daily basis, because I thought it would help you. From those of you who have done it, it seems to have had some effect, which is great. I can tell you that translating this over the last few days has been a real scramble on the old mind. But I’m very, very glad to have done it. I had no idea that I was going to learn as much as I have from doing this, and I’m very grateful. Then let’s see if we can just squeeze one more in. So, this is towards the end of the sutra. The Thus Come Does Not Free Beings.

“Subhuti, what do you think? Does the Thus Come think, ‘I have freed sentient beings?’” Subhuti, do not look at it that way.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Subhuti, there are no sentient beings that the Thus Comes has freed.”

Now, do you feel the switch?

“Subhuti, if the Thus Come had freed sentient beings, right there the Thus Come has engaged a sense of self, engaged a sentient being, engaged a living being …”

Etc., etc. That’s in what I’m calling the transactional world—conceptual world, if you wish.

“Because Subhuti, the Thus Come has taught that what is called engaging a sense of self is without engaging, however spiritually immature people engage it. Subhuti, the Thus Come has taught that those so-called spiritually mature people are not people.”

Now, what’s important is that the switch is still going on here.

Understanding non-self

Ken: And one of the things that led me into this, which again, I’m very grateful for, was there are two ways of understanding non-self. And this is the final point I want to make this evening. There are two ways to understand non-self. One way is to say non-self means there isn’t a self. The other way is non-self means without a self. Now, what’s the difference there? What makes this glass, a glass?

Student: You’re saying that it’s a glass?

Student: It’s an agreed upon label.

Ken: So I can see through it. That it’s because I call it a glass, that it’s a glass?

Student: It’s an agreed upon label that everybody …

Ken: Agreed upon label. Okay. So what is the glass made of?

Student: Awareness.

Ken: Any piece of glass being a glass. So what’s this glass made of?

Student: Awareness.

Ken: There aren’t any answers to these questions. This person over here said it’s because we call it a glass. Well, this is exactly what Buddha is saying in the Diamond Sutra. These things are these things because we call them these things. There’s no thing that makes it what it is. So in that sense, it is without self. It isn’t that it doesn’t exist. It is without something that makes it what it is.

Thich Nhat Hahn’s way of getting it, and that’s why I switched the question to, What is this glass made of?” Thich Nhat Hanh would say, “It’s made of everything that isn’t this glass.” Which is to say, it is just part of this whole field of experience. And when I first heard Thich Nhat Hanh talking about that, I thought, “Oh, that’s very nice. That’s a subtle way of talking about interdependence.” But when I started reading the Diamond Sutra, I realized that he meant it actually at a much deeper level. And I think it’s a pretty good way of getting at what the Diamond Sutra is talking about.

Practice points

Ken: So, when you practice, don’t try to negate yourself. That’s not going to be fruitful. Number one, you’re trying to negate something that isn’t there. And you’re behaving a bit like Don Quixote and windmills. The best that will happen is that you will end up like a dog chasing its own tail, and you will collapse in exhaustion. That’s the best thing that will happen. The worst thing that happens is you’ll go insane, which has happened to more than a few people.

Let me finish the practice point. When you’re meditating, just go empty and practice from there. Just let everything drop, and practice from there. In the beginning, there won’t be much difference, but if you make a point of doing this on a regular basis, you’ll find that, “Okay, just everything drop,” and practice from there. In other words, you drop the whole struggle. And if, in the course of your period of practice you find yourself struggling, stop, let everything drop, and practice from there. This way of practicing is far more fruitful than trying to maintain something.

In the Tibetan tradition it’s said: short sessions, many of them. And when people would have trouble with their meditation practice, I would often say, “Okay, time for you to start practicing the one breath meditation.” And just finish the one breath meditation. And do it again. How many of you can do that? Is there anybody here who can’t do that one? That’s where you start. When you think you’ve got that reasonably, then you can try a two breath meditation. And once you’ve tried two or three, you’ll probably find that by the second or third, things have started up again. “Oh, time to go back to the one breath meditation.” This is how you practice. This is how you build capacity. So you practice going empty. Just letting things drop, even if it’s only for a short period of time. Do the same in your daily life. There are lots of opportunities. Whenever you go through a door, stop. Let everything drop, then knock on the door.

There are all kinds of opportunities you can do. So you build this habit of stopping, dropping, emptying. And from there going on with whatever you were going to do. This is how you learn to live without a sense of self. It’s not going to last very long. It doesn’t have to, but it’s going to open up a lot of possibilities. Okay. We’ve gone a little bit over. I think I’ve covered everything. Chandra Houston, who usually has the Tuesday evenings, asked me to say that she’d be coming back on August the 20th, I think.

And continuing this study, Mahayana mind training is a perfect adjunct to the Diamond Sutra. Even though it doesn’t talk about emptiness it’s all about emptiness. Mahayana mind training is about compassion.

The aspiration prayer

So, the last thing I need to do then is talk about the aspiration prayer. This is:

Awakening mind is precious.
May it arise where it has not arisen,
May not fade where it has arisen.
May ever grow and flourish.

Shantideva

I think this is from Shantideva, Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva. It’s a very famous verse. It’s very, very commonly repeated as an aspiration prayer in the Tibetan tradition, because it is about awakening mind or bodhicitta for the Sanskrit. You uncover this possibility and exactly what we’ve been talking about here, of yearning to free all beings from suffering at the same time in the world in which you experience there aren’t sentient beings, it’s just what arises in your experience. There’s not even a concept of sentient beings. And there’s something incredibly deep and moving about this. And it is that fusion of compassion and emptiness that is known as bodhicitta. It is discovering the jewel in the pile of mud. It’s one analogy for it.

May it arise, where it has not arisen. So those parts of our lives where it is not present, we pray that we aspire that it becomes accessible there. And those parts of our lives where it has arisen that it grow stronger. And where it has arisen may it not fade away. And then those parts of our lives where it is present, may it grow stronger until it becomes fully part of our lives. That’s what this aspiration is.

Now, there are many, many forms of aspiration. I’ve recently translated a prayer called Aspirations for Mahamudra, which is 25 verses of aspirations. And if you really want to get into aspirations, then you go to Shantideva. You’re giving expression to the kind of understanding or ability or attainment, if you wish, that you yourself aspire to. And by giving voice to this and expressing this, you’re actually opening up this possibility in yourself. And that’s the purpose of these aspiration prayers. So let’s read these three together now. Dedication and aspiration. And then next week we’ll talk about good fortune.

Goodness comes from this practice I’ve done.
Let me not hold it just in me
Let it spread to all that is known.
And awaken good throughout the world.

Awakening mind is precious.
May arise where it has not arisen.
May not fade where it has arisen.
May ever grow and flourish.

When everything is done. There is nothing to understand.
When everything is clear. There is nothing to explain.
When everything has its place, there is nothing to do.
May the joy of this way touch beings everywhere.

Contemporary Session Prayers

So I’ve given you a lot of suggestions today. Ways to strengthen your practice. Take two or three … [Unclear] them all. Take two or three that seem especially relevant to you, or speak to you, and work them over the next week. And don’t forget your index cards and your questions. You have one more chance. Good night. Thank you.