Insights of Buddhism talk 7/21/24 & 8/18/24
Small vehicle (Working it out for myself) Buddhism.
“This prepared the Buddha’s students for the wider view.”
1. Insight into impermanence: “Changing, changing, changing.”
2. Insight into impurity: “5 desires driving the car. Keep the precepts and your true nature drives the car! Good cause = good result.”
3. Insight into nonself: “Stillness, extinction, nirvana, emptiness. Find a good way to a place of complete stillness and bliss.” The end of Hinayana teaching.
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Big vehicle (Working it out for everyone) Buddhism.
“This practice is not only for me!…plus this “me” does not exist separately”
1. Insight into the existence and nonexistence of the Dharmas. This teaching starts with emptiness! “Your substance and universe are the same substance and this substance is empty. (of any selfnature.) It cannot DO anything. If you attain that, you attain that substance can actually do everything.”
2. Insight into the fact that there are no external tangible characteristics and that all is emptiness. “All name and form are created by thinking. Attached to our thinking we suffer when name and form change.” We must perceive that names and forms of this universal substance are completely empty.
3. Insight into existence, emptiness, and the Middle Way. “The absolute is always complete. The Path of Emptiness.” Our thinking makes “I am” - this is our fundamental delusion. I am makes, “I am not!” If we have this, we believe that we are not complete.”
4. Insight into the true aspect of all phenomena. “Everything is empty. This emptiness is itself the absolute. Everything is the truth. Complete World. Truth World. The wall is white.” It’s a case of both/and. Hinayana teaching is correct; Mahayana teaching is correct. This is like a PhD course. But how do we make this truth Function?
5. Insight into the mutual interpenetration of all phenomena. Space! We use everything! When happiness appears, we use that to help all beings. When suffering appears, we can use suffering to help other beings. Because all these “things” are empty, and this emptiness is our originally compassionate nature. Everything co-exists with no hinderance. We use everything to help. When we don’t hold anything in our mind whatever appears cannot touch us.
6. Insight which sees that phenomena themselves are the Absolute. “We must attain that all things are the absolute, just as they are with no hinderance. Then your action is Great Love, Great Compassion for all beings. There is no “I.” Understanding this intellectually or academically cannot help you. Some attainment is necessary.”
All notes taken from:
“The Compass of Zen” Pg. 115- 123 written by Zen Master Seung Sahn
Edited by Hyon Gak Sunim, copyright 1997, Kwan Um School of Zen.