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Chan Meditation Center English Sunday Dharma Talk - The Heart of Chan: Exploring Mind via Mahaprajna Paramita -1 Talk By Gilbert Gutierrez
On September 20, 2020, at the Chan Meditation Center via Zoom, Master Gilbert delivered his first Dharma talk from a series of “The Heart of Chan.” This lecture is about the early development, theory, and history about Mahayana. It serves as an overture of what Gilbert is going to cover for the next few weeks: historically, doctrinally, and practice. Gilbert opened his lecture by telling the development of Mahayana practice, the largest of all the Buddhist sects nowadays, from Theravada to Vajrayana and Hinayana. There were many scriptures in terms of understanding how mind works. All of that progressed to the point of the study of emptiness, sunyata. He mentioned the sutras that go beyond the idea of emptiness such as the Tathagatagarbha Sutras and the Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar Sutra. In the opening to the Tathagatagarbha Sutras, it says that it’s this self-nature of mind that all beings possessed, rather than this idea that something separate. Even if we go back to 200 BC in the Salistamba Sutra (the Rice Stalk Sutra), it says that everything is connected, which run directly into Pratityasamutpada, causes and conditions never fail.
Gilbert said that Prajnaparamita is at the heart of Mahayana. "Pra" means "before" and "na" means "to know." So, Prajnaparamita means before knowing. Just like in Huatou, "what is my original face before I was born?" This is the wisdom that you're going for. As you begin to practice, it will give you an ability to see things a little bit different than you had seen before. He said that there are three types of wisdom: the first type is that everything is connected; the second type is that everything is impermanent; the third one is transcendent wisdom which is before anything, before conceptualization, and before conditioning. If you understand that, you won’t hold on to the broom with all the straw side. You just sweep in the proper way.
By using modern-day examples, Gilbert made his lecture easy and fun for the audience to capture concepts. For example, the Buddha said that everything is self-nature of mind, without the “it” in the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. Gibert then used the concept of microbe to explain the self-nature of mind. He said that the microbe was in the small toe and that it could not know the whole body. Likewise, we cannot know the Buddha Mind from being a microbe. There must be a transcendence there. When there's a transcendence, that little microbe constitutes the entire universe that we're in and beyond. It has access to the entire body and that is the transcendence here. Using it with the analogy of a body, what we're doing is we're saying. Also. Gilbert used the sandlot game to explain the different interpretations of certain points between Theravada and Mahayana. He thought that those points didn't represent a creation of a separate Dharma as much as a progression of the study of the Dharma that was already in the Theravada Nikayas.
Gilbert said that one of the last instructions Master Sheng Yen gave him was to study the Abhidharma. The term "abi-" means "highest." He said that when sitting to meditate, you see these things arising so you don't have a delusion about them. When getting up off your cushion and interacting with people, you know what's the likelihood of things happening. He said that this is Pratityasamutpada, causes and conditions never fail. That enables one to be able to see the appearances in an unbiased and undiscriminating way. He continued that the main proponent of the Abhidharma was Sariputra. Sariputra made the advancement in the Abhidharma that everything is real. But the Mahayanists said, "No, Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form." There is no reality or unreality. It goes back to the Madhyamika School that everything is empty. What the Mahayanaists are looking at is it's transcendent, not the words in the Heart Sutra. Gilbert said that you only get the skin of the Dharma if you try to interpret the Heart Sutra simply from the conceptual aspects of it.
Gilbert continued several sutras pertaining the Pratityasamutpada. He said that the Nikayas were just simply metaphors, similes, and short stories. The Salistamba Sutra (the Rice Stalk Sutra) emphasized that causes and conditions never fail. It begins to be a systematic approach to understanding how mind works. Vaipulya refers to the early nine Mahayana sutras and each one of those sutras was a complete system. For instance, if you studied Lankavatara or Lotus Sutra, you would be able to reach the heart of the practice. Although they came from different viewpoints, they were still all pointing to the essence of mind and to the nature of the mind. Thus, when we look at things, we see them very clearly that all things connected with Pratityasamutpada, causes and conditions. But as one looks at that, there was an absorption that mind absorbs you, not the other way around. Gilbert pointed out that in Abhidharma that was a problem with the Theravadins in terms of how they were looking at it. Although the Theravadans still had the idea of a transcendence to the idea of Nirvana, Mahayanists transcends the concepts by saying say that "there is no suffering, there's no attainment."
When explaining the reason why the Buddha didn’t know how to teach the Four Noble Truths, Gilbert used an interesting story of his son Ananda. When Ananda was in kindergarten, he told the kids in school, "you are an illusion. You don't exist. You are a phenomenon." The kids said, "I do exist!" "No, you don't exist." The principal told Gilbert that Ananda was scaring the students! Gilbert said that imagine that the Buddha was talking to these little kids, the Buddha could only talk about dependent origination, the 12 Nidanas.
It’s interesting that Gilbert also used modern day analogies-Rubik's Cube to explain further. He said that the Buddha gave us this Rubik's Cube to try to make it fit. The Buddha didn't give us the answer directly. We need to work this out and realized someday, "Wow! Out of all this mishmash, there are the patterns. Everything fits perfectly!” What we're looking at is what was in the Buddha's mind at that moment. Gilbert said that the Buddha did not present the final product; he presented the way in which one could work on it. Thus, as it went along, it was this progression of practice that perfected our approach. We cannot say that we perfected it completely because it continues subject to the interpretations via Dharma heirs and the causes and conditions that are presented at that time. The Buddha presented it in a way in which people can at least get the Rubik's Cube to start working on, and then realizing afterwards, "Well, this was just a game!" Gilbert continued that it is why one master said to his student, "Actually, I have nothing to teach you." And the young monk said, "Why am I learning from you?" And he said, "you're learning from me until you realize that I have nothing to teach you." This is important in terms of what was happening doctrinally with this. It’s in this way that we practice and study.
Finally, Gilbert told us the origin of the Heart Sutra. He said that the Buddha’s mother Santushita went to the Trayastrimsa heaven when she died. Later the Buddha went up to teach her Dharma and have Sariputra record what he taught her. Sariputra then used them for the basis of the Abhidharma. Gilber pointed out some interesting points from the Heart Sutra. Initially it was the Buddha who was talking to Sariputra, but that changed to Avalokitesvara, the Guanyin Bodhisattva. Why did the Buddha talk to Sariputra in the Heart Sutra? Because he’s one of the Theravadans. It was changed to Avalokitesvara, the essence there was that that Sariputra was being directed. Why is Avalokitesvara there? Because some essence of this Prajnaparamita is compassion. What Avalokitsvara represented was compassion. Gilbert also said that normally it would be Manjusri if it is about a wisdom sutra, but Manjusri was already on the Mahayanists’ side. Thus, from the presentation of Sariputra and "everything is real," there was the correction that "everything is fundamentally empty,” and this emptiness produces compassion.
This lecture drew my attention from the very beginning. Gilbert is a humorous yet serious Chan Master. Not only did he tell the Buddhism history, but he also used Tathagatagarbha Sutras and the Salistamba Sutra to show that everything is connected. He used modern-day analogies to explain complicated concepts for the audience to understand. This is an overview which enables us to get an idea of what was happening and to see the Heart Sutra in a different way. In the following lectures, Gilbert will continue leading us going back and forth from history, showing how Buddhism began to develop and where it was going up through today's understandings of that.
Note: Video link on Chan Meditation Center Facebook:
" The Heart of Chan: Exploring Mind via the Mahaprajna Paramita (4 talks in total)"
Video 1/4: https://fb.watch/v/2r7YffjPm/
Video 3/4 https://fb.watch/6EpZ3zmyw8/
@Wrote by Wen-Yi Lu