Heart Sutra An Explanation of the Inconceivable Emptiness by Cheok, Vincent 2011 [As explained to Julie Boon] Lesson 1 - Heart

rt Sutra The Heart Sutra is the shortest Sutra and yet it represents in short-hand all the secret spiritual knowledge you need to know about in Buddhist Dharma. In fact the 1st paragraph sums it all up When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound Prajna Paramita, he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they are all empty, and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty. Prajna Paramita stands for Wisdom Boundary but take it as saying wisdom beyond the beyond or ultimate wisdom of spiritual reality. Five Skandhas represent [1] Form [2] Feeling [3] Perception [4] Mental Formation resulting in Action [5] Consciousness (which is best understood as sense of self-ego or relating everything to your self). Of course the Sutra presumes that you are spiritually ready to practise prajna or wisdom meditation. When is one ready to cultivate or practise spiritual wisdom? This is a million dollar question! The answer depends on what you have been like in your millions of prior existences in this world of samsara or world of cause and effect! Morality and meditation and wisdom are the three elements of the person who has awakened spiritually and ready for cultivation. I can vouch however that you are ready because you have a good spiritual caring heart. In Buddhism when we talk of spiritually good we do not talk of love as in Christianity but of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is sort of kindness in a loving way without emotional attachment and with compassion but without any sense of pity. There is sort of no object [patient or donee] of that loving care [loving kindness] nor a subject [doctor or donor]. When you are illuminated [i.e. spiritual analysis] as to the inherent characteristic of one skandha you are simultaneously illuminated as to the other four skandhas. Normally, we first approach our wisdom cultivation meditating on Form. If you then see that Form is empty, then it also follows that the other skandhas would also be empty. Empty does not mean empty but what in Hokkien we say boh tuei or in Cantonese moh liew - no foundation or nothing underneath or no permanent substrate. That will do for Lesson 1, even though I am actually shortcutting the teachings for you, as much as I can Lesson 2 - Heart Sutra Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 1

Let us continue with our Buddhist tutorial in Chow Kit Road style. In Buddhist tutorials we sort of keep repeating the same concepts by looking at the same thing again and again or by looking at it from a different perspective. We have to acquire a certain skill to look at things from various myriad perspective; in particular a broad perspective or a helicopter view. I mention this because it is a critical part of spiritual wisdom that we are able to see and be open to many perspectives. The mountain looks different from different directions and different facets. This ability to see things from a thousand perspectives is like Guanyin seeing things with a thousand eyes and listening with a thousand ears and feeling with a thousand hearts. It is all about spiritual experiencing. Spiritual wisdom has nothing to do with worldly wisdom. It is to do with being able to experience things with spiritual insight. Until you can see things from various myriad perspectives you cannot be said to see beyond ordinary seeing. Ultimately this particular skill is required to enable you to see the relativity, the interdependency, the interpenetration etc of all things to see that the world as we know it is just based on conceptions based on perceptions based on sensations i.e. we have no further direct evidence of phenomena beyond our sense of being. In Chow Kit Road terms it is like saying everything thing you see is like food one mans food is another mans poison. Every object is perceived subjectively and in that sense all things are relative. It goes without saying, and I will be reminding you, again and again, that you have to remove your self-ego. There should be no I or Me or Mine; for otherwise you will and can only see one perspective yours! In Lesson 1, I mentioned certain keywords or concepts. The 1st thing was that Guanyin was doing Prajna [wisdom] Paramita, which is sort of wisdom meditation. Paramita means perfection. However think of it as if it means perimeter like the finishing line or the achievement mark or boundary, like the top of the scale. You want to acquire wisdom beyond the beyond! There are 6 Paramitas to perfect in Bodhisattva practice; but we will come to that in a separate tutorial from now. But, the main Paramita to perfect is Wisdom. The 2nd thing was about the three-pronged attribute you need to perfect Morality, Meditation and Wisdom. As I suggested, we talk about these as if they were different components but they are really aspects of the same essence of perfection of the Bodhisattva practice. In a Chow Kit Road way we can look at these three elements or components as Ethics, Willpower and Mindfulness. The cultivation of these three attributes determine whether you are going to succeed in your Buddhist Practice to achieve Enlightenment. This is because of the Immutable Law of Karma or Cause and Effect. Your ethics impact on what your karmic consequences and circumstances will be. Your will-power determines what you do in terms of ethics. Your mindfulness in controlling your will-power as to what you do depends on your wisdom as to working out the karmic residual of your deeds before you commit the deeds. The 3rd point is about Emptiness as in Boh Tuei in Chow Kit Road Hokkien slang. We will come back to Emptiness again and again; because Emptiness is Transcendental Wisdom. At the end of the day, Buddhist practice of Enlightenment is about the provocation of thought and refection and contemplation about Emptiness. I will elaborate more in future tutorials on this difficult topic.

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So I close Lesson 2 by telling you in Chow Kit Road style about Katak Dibawah Tempurong Frog under the Coconut Shell. Imagine that we are like frogs under the coconut shell. We see and understand what is within the coconut shell. The 3 holes in the ceiling of the coconut shell represent Morality, Meditation and Wisdom; that is the spiritual portal to the world outside the coconut shell. Of course the inter-dimensional reality is not like that; but this is the provisional stage from which we gather our thoughts and wisdom to finding out the key to the portal to take us into the other dimension. Straight away, you know that Buddhism is not a religion, because God does not come into the picture; otherwise you will end up with simple faith in a God to take you out of the coconut shell. Neither is Buddhism about atheism, about there is no God; for you will just continue to stay as a frog and not wonder about what is beyond the coconut shell! So Buddhism is not about salvation or tidak apa [do not care] type attitude. So, you are not caught with being good for fear of God and leaving everything to God to save you or doing bad and whatever you like because there is no fear of God. The starting point in Buddhist practice is letting go; i.e. letting go in a spiritual sense letting go of the concept of self-ego; in fact letting go of all worldly or conventional concepts and knowledge and in this sense also letting go of human philosophical concepts of eternalism or nihilism; letting go of thoughts of whether there is God or whether there is no God. Enlightenment is about letting go and travelling light to be able to move spiritually, astral-ly and transcendentally, going beyond the beyond, to the inconceivable and the ungraspable in human worldly knowledge! End of lesson 2. Lesson 3 Heart Sutra In this lesson I will touch further on 2 things [1] Letting Go and [2] Emptiness, at least start to discuss this strange and difficult concept. Letting Go When we say spiritually to let go it must be in a spiritually meaningful way, towards Enlightenment. In fact, the next Buddha to be, the Laughing Buddha or Matreiya Buddha, has as the main maxim for his teachings the words Let Go. Let us get to the point straight away, and spell out what letting go is not about. Letting Go is not about is about running away from the world, running away from life, it is not about having no joy or pleasure, food, no belongings or wealth or sex or friends or enemies or work or activity. Buddha found out the hard way. He was emaciated as a mendicant to the point that he was just skin and bones and almost naked with a dirty rag as a loincloth! Not quite spiritual but close to spiritual is giving your heart away when you fall in love. That is letting go in a romantic sense; letting go with your heart. Enlightenment is letting go with your spiritual or wisdom mind. Spiritual wisdom wise, letting go means not clinging or lusting or craving or longing or wanting to possess or be attached to your ego, your self or worldly things, tangible or intangible. You have to physically live and be in this world but spiritually you are not of Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 3

this world, or you should be above it or hovering above the chaos. In Chow Kit Road terms, when you are part of a quarrelsome family with all its bickering and in-fighting, you are still a part of the family but you are not embroiled in the intrigue and the back stabbing. You develop a certain tolerance or leeway, and that is the sense of letting go that we are talking about. You give away a part of your singularity without losing it to the plurality that you are an intrinsic and inseparable part of. You can be rich but you do not have to be attached or to desperately cling to your wealth. You can be beautiful but you do not have to be Adonis-like vain. You can be fit and well but must not assume that sickness or calamity will never befall you. You can enjoy life but must not assume that you will never die or never grow old. You must start taking a realistic perspective; that life is transient, that you are mortal, that you start to die the day you were born, that eventually you have to let go of everything when you die. So, why not start to learn to let go now, so that you might age or die gracefully? We will in time get to discuss the immutable law of karma or cause and effect; and you will then understand that in Buddhism, the fear is not of death, but the fear of rebirth; the fear of being still caught in the world of samsara, of cycles of endless existences, depending on karmic consequences, some good, some bad, to be born only to die. This is what is meant by suffering in a Buddhist sense. Nivarna is when you are no longer reborn, and therefore suffering has ceased. But do not fear! We will in finality find out from the Heart Sutra that this is all a matter of perception! Glance quickly at the 3rd paragraph of the Heart Sutra where it says Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or Dharmas; no field of the eyes up to and including no field of mind consciousness; and no ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death. There is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, and no Way, and no understanding and no attaining. In Lesson 2 we discussed Morality, Meditation and Wisdom or in modern parlance Ethics, Will-power and Mindfulness. You cannot have will-power to control your mind if you cannot let go of lust, craving and longing and clinging. In Chow Kit Road terms, you cannot be kind, charitable and forgiving, if you cannot or do not have the ability to let go. Charity is the 1st of the Six Paramitas that I hinted upon in last lesson. Morality, Meditation and Wisdom are part of the Six Paramitas. The remaining two are Forbearance [or Patience] (in Chow Kit Road terms do not get angry or irritated) and Assiduousness (Hard Work). In Chinese culture, after filial piety, the next most important attribute is hard work. Remember the Hokkien song I Pia Chia A Nyah You must give it a try to succeed where we are told that 30% is based on ones karma and 70% is based on hard work! Now, you can see the Buddhist elements in that song! When it comes to letting go what is critically important for Buddhist spiritual cultivation and contemplation is this let go of your view, your opinion or your worldly or conventional knowledge. Have an open mind. Be like an empty cup ready to receive tea coffee, milk or wine or whatever. If the cup of your mind is full of worldly Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 4

knowledge or wisdom, you cannot be open to spiritual wisdom. If your cup is full to the brim with coffee and you have this self attachment to coffee and drink only coffee you are not going to receive any new type of drink. Having an entrenched or opinionated selfego or pre-notion is therefore an obstruction to Buddhist spiritual cultivation and contemplation. A spiritual mind is therefore a universal mind and not an individual mind. It sees things from a thousand perspectives. It sees beyond seeing. It sees the rose in the garden from the point of view of the gardener, the bee, the butterfly, the dog, the sun, the moon and the stars. That is speaking extrinsically! Intrinsically, the spiritual mind would see the rose, in a similar manner to one seeing the essence of water as also ice and steam. The spiritual mind is an unbiased mind. It sees or experiences but does not draw judgements or search for the rhyme or reason. In Chow Kit Road terms, we see the yin and yang in everything; nothing is absolute in the human worldly mortal realm. Nothing is permanent; all is coming and going. This has become part of Chinese customary etiquette oou lai, oou keeh coming and going we receive and we give. Please move away from clever self analysis. Do not say my spiritual mind. It is not your mind! A mind with an ego cannot be a spiritual mind. That is why in Zen meditation we say No Mind or Never You Mind. When you start analysing, there is somebody or a self that is analysing! So, no analysing! Just experience! Just be like the gardener, the bee, the butterfly, the dog, the sun, the moon and the stars, all at the same time. The spiritual mind just simply contemplates and reflects on the experience; just like drinking Chinese tea with Bak Kut Teh and watching the world go by at dawn. You are just a fly on the wall. In Chow Kit Road terms, be like a nobody going nowhere, just like a poor old Chinese man sitting in the Hainanese coffee shop watching the world go by. You have to train yourself in this letting go. In practical terms you should get to a stage where when you do tai-chi, you go through the rhythmic sequence but you are not conscious of the actual movements; you are lost in the rhythmic sequence! When you walk, you walk, when you talk, you talk, when you sit, you sit, when you sleep you sleep. You do not say or feel or is conscious that you are walking or talking or sitting or sleeping! When you throw $2 into the beggars bowl, and you are thinking, I am throwing $2 into the beggars bowl; you are not letting go of self or ego! Emptiness I described how the Buddha was emaciated to the point that he was just skin and bones and almost naked with a dirty rag as a loincloth! He was saved by a village girl who gave him some rice water [what we call chuk suei or rice porridge water in Cantonese]. On that night Buddha went through the 4 Watches of the night. He went into concentrated meditation, transcending level by level, higher and higher, under the Bodhi-tree, till he became enlightened, when he sighted the morning star. Why did the Buddha become fully enlightened when at the end of the 4th Watch he sighted the morning star? We will analyse this at a future date. The short answer for the moment is that, among other things, the morning star dawned on him [through his wisdom eyes] that the morning star was empty or boh liaw [just a mirage]! What I wish to impress on you at this point in time Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 5

is that understanding and realising Emptiness resulted in the Buddhas Enlightenment. You might ask why then that the Buddha did not preach about Emptiness right from the start, instead of the 4 Noble Truths of Suffering? The simple answer is that he knew that one must have spiritual wisdom to understand Emptiness. Reading the sutra or just listening will not be sufficient. Something has to click in terms of spiritual insight. If you were to read the Chinese version of the Heart Sutra, you will find that the preamble refers to Guanyin meditating by the seashore and listening to the sounds of the waves as they came, crashed and then ebbed away. Through her wisdom ears, Guanyin understood and realised that the sounds of the waves were empty or boh liaw [just a mirage]! I suppose that one could have come to the same conclusion with wisdom eyes looking at the waves coming, crashing and ebbing away. However, Guanyin prefers this approach listening to sounds, which is an intangible form, with her wisdom ears, rather than seeing with the wisdom eyes. To each, therefore, his or her own. The advantage of sound is that we can hear the sound even though we cannot see it. In a cosmic sense, going beyond sight, Guanyins technique is supreme; and this is borne out in the Surangama Sutra and the Lotus Sutra. Even Bodhisattva Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom attests to this fact. We will continue with the discourse on Emptiness in future lessons. Enlightenment comes from Letting Go and understanding the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness. Lesson 4 - Heart Sutra In Lesson 3 we were discussing Letting Go and Emptiness. These are or will be our main pointers together with Morality, Meditation and Wisdom. The reason we do our tutorials this way is because Buddhist practice is a cultivation of spiritual wisdom. It is not like worldly knowledge and scientific analysis. Words must therefore be kept to a minimum for your spiritual insight requires you to have spiritual eyes and ears and a heart of loving-kindness to have spiritual awareness. It is not about memorising words or worldly knowledge or theory. You realise Enlightenment or should I say that the awareness just comes like a flash of lightning. Therefore, Enlightenment is not something that you attain or achieve or acquire. It is like a spiritual intangible diamond that is in you or which is you in your transcendental sub-consciousness, but somehow, because of delusion or afflictions you cannot or do not realise it or are aware of it. To facilitate future discussions, I would like to link Morality, Meditation and Wisdom to three related concepts or marks. 1st, we shall link morality with suffering. This is fairly obvious, for if you do bad things you are going to suffer under the immutable law of karma or cause and effect. Traditionally, ignorance is linked to suffering. People hate to be told at the very start of a new course that they are ignorant and deluded. When Buddha said these to the illiterate peasants of his era, it was accepted as a matter of fact or course without offence or feeling of insult. Moreover, in my Chow Kit Road way of thinking, ignorance and delusion impact equally on all the three components of Morality, Meditation and Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 6

Wisdom. Eventually, we will get to the stage where we realise that ignorance or delusion are also empty and therefore that all three components in Morality, Meditation and Wisdom are also in fact empty. There will be a time and place in future tutorials to talk of ignorance and delusion, when we are better equipped mentally to accommodate the literal meaning; albeit that the spiritual meaning means something else entirely. Traditionally, when we begin the Middle Path [just assume for the time being that it means take no sides in any argument or discussion] of Buddhist Practice, we turn the Bodhi [Enlightenment] wheel by having as the 1st Discourse, the sermon about the 4 Noble Truths about Suffering. In my opinion, that was the proper approach 2,500 years ago. Modern times are so drastically different; we are no longer all illiterate peasants. Most new Buddhists are not suffering. You will by now have possibly noted that I am taking the approach of the next Buddha to be, Maitreya Buddha; that of Letting Go of self-ego and worldly conventions. 2nd, we shall link meditation with impermanence. The reason for this is that it is hard as humans who cling on to life and worldly possessions to appreciate that all phenomena is impermanent. However it is fairly obvious in meditation that we can have only one thought at any one time in our mind; and that the thoughts come and go, one after another; they appear like a bubble and then they burst, and just disappear when the next thought comes through in quick succession. It is easy to appreciate that our thoughts are impermanent. If our thoughts are impermanent it is then an easy step to realising that all perceptions and conceptions of phenomena are also impermanent because they are or were all perceived or conceived mentally through the mind! 3rd, we shall link wisdom with no self-ego. I have already explained why this is so in Lesson 3. Refresh yourself by reading Lesson 3 again. You cannot have spiritual wisdom if you have a self-ego and accordingly you can never realise Enlightenment if you have the mark of a self-ego! If you do not or must not have a self-ego, it follows that Buddhism is not a religion. A Buddhist is not a theist [believer in God] or atheist [non-believer in God] or an agnostic [sort of sitting on the fence claiming God is too difficult a concept for humans]. Buddhism is none of these things! Buddha did not discuss God. Buddha did not preach salvation. When you do not discuss God why should you discuss salvation; for they are inter-linked! Nivarna does not mean salvation. Nivarna is the state when you are free from suffering; but this was only a provisional expedient teaching medium that Buddha used. The Heart Sutra clearly states that in the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness, there is no suffering and no Nivarna! Browse through the Heart Sutra quickly at this juncture. Do this often to get the feel of the gist of its message. Teaching about suffering and indeed the immutable law of karma or cause and effect is just a provisional step towards the understanding of what Emptiness is or means. Nonetheless, to reiterate, besides suffering as a mark, Buddha also said there are the marks of impermanence and of no self or no soul or no ego. Please refer back to the previous paragraph above. All Buddha ever said was that he has been enlightened to the cause and the bringing to an end the cyclical state of human suffering. Buddha did not claim that he would or could be a saviour of souls! When Buddha said that everyone could be enlightened like him; Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 7

that enlightenment is not an attainment or achievement or the transformation to the form or entity of a supernal or heavenly being. To be enlightened in the sense of being like a Buddha is just a reflection of your state of being [in a verbal or adverbial sense]. Buddha is not something that is tangible or permanent. It is just a state of being! Enlightenment is just a realisation. It is like the realisation that you were or are a baby, a teenager or an adult or an old man. You realise it and you move on. The realisation is in the past. Once you realised it, it is gone, it is no longer permanent like a sports trophy! In Buddhism your worldly self is in spiritual terms a sentient being [being not as a noun but as a verb or adverb as a state of awareness or existence]. It is only a composite being [adverb] of awareness of existence; but note: it is empty of a permanent substrate of a self. We will expand on this notion of Emptiness in more and more detail, as we progress along in these tutorials. So Buddhism is not a religion; and Buddha is not a God. Buddha is just an enlightened being [again in the adverbial sense]. Buddha is just like a reflection of an experience of realisation. Buddha is his own Enlightenment and not Enlightenment per se!; and definitely, not your Enlightenment! Bodhi is Enlightenment. In fact, in Zen meditation, you must kill Buddha if he is blocking your mind. If the Buddha in your mind tells you that he can wee for you, kill him, you must wee yourself to understand the Tao of Weeing. Your true Buddhist mind understands that when you sifu worship or kowtow to the wooden Buddha statue in meditation; it is because you see or imagine or picture Buddha there. It is all in your mind. But, if you stop seeing him there, you can throw the wooden statue in the fire; if you are running out of firewood and you are freezing to death. If you think like that, you have the right spiritual perception of not clinging or grasping at anything, least of all yourself. Remember Matreiya Buddhas catch phrase Let Go! It is then a small transcendental step to seeing Buddha everywhere, within and without. Then, you no longer have a clinging worldly mind. If you are restricted to seeing Buddha only in a wooden statue; you are a long way from spiritual awakening! The essence of Buddha, more specifically, the essence of Bodhi [Enlightenment] is to be or can be found in everything or anything, good or bad, ugly or beautiful that enhances your spiritual awareness, and draws you closer to Enlightenment. Thus, the emaciated bag of bones of an African child with a pot-belly and running nose and blowflies hovering over the skull of his head could be a Buddha. The lovely butterfly in Chuan Tzus Butterfly Dream could be a Buddha. The cadaver of the dead dog in my childhood memoirs could have been a Buddha. How else would I explain my spiritual awakening at the age of 5 years of age! That is all for Lesson 4 which was mainly to clear misconceptions about Buddha and Buddhism; so we do not have false hopes or expectations, going ahead; and to prepare for the serious groundwork to understanding the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness. Lesson 5 Heart Sutra In Lesson 4 we linked the 3 Marks [Suffering, Impermanence and No-Self] to the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom]. I mentioned that in the past the teaching of Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 8

Buddhism was inevitably based on Suffering and that suffering was due to ignorance or delusion. The usual starting point [for Theravada Buddhism rather than Zen Mahayana] is the 4 Noble Truths which say: 1. Life is suffering [which should really say unsatisfactory because you are never happy or satisfied and because you can be impoverished, get sick, get old and die]. 2. The cause of suffering is ignorance [or delusion] [here ignorance and delusion mean more than stupidity; in spiritual terms it means clinging to life or to the false notion of a self]. 3. There can be an end to suffering [which should really say answer or remedy or proper understanding or liberation to suffering]. 4. The 8-Fold Noble Path leads to the end of suffering [here liberation or release might be a more appropriate term we will deal with the 8-Fold Noble Path in a later lesson]. I mentioned that ignorance or delusion impacts equally on the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom]. In fact ignorance or delusion is only one of the 3 Obstacles to the Buddhist Practice of Morality, Meditation and Wisdom. I will now discuss the 3 Obstacles because you need to have these indicators of the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom] and the 3 Marks [Suffering, Impermanence and No-Self] and the 3 Obstacles inter-linked in your mind to fully understand Emptiness [within which is comprised the 3 Universal Laws of the Ultimate Reality; all of which will be revealed in due course and in good time we have to in Chow Kit Road terms chit poh kia chit poh and siew sim, bun bun lai]. The 3 Obstacles are Attachment, Aversion and Ignorance or Delusion. Under Attachment we can insert craving, clinging, grasping, greed, gluttony, possessiveness, desire, lust etc. Under Aversion we can insert hate, anger, jealousy, despise, envy and what we say in Hokkien boh kum guan etc. Under Ignorance or Delusion we can insert delusion of self, of ego, of superiority, of power and status, of wealth, of being better or cleverer or stronger or prettier, of invincibility, of never going to die or of being bitter with fate or with God; as if God was so inequitable as to make one man rich and another poor or one woman beautiful and another ugly. Broadly speaking, both Attachment and Aversion can be included on Ignorance or Delusion. In fact, everything we meditate on in Buddhist Practice may be said to come under the scope of Ignorance or Delusion. This is why Buddha based his teachings on Ignorance or Delusion, as the cause of Suffering! In fact Enlightenment is, simply put, about removing Ignorance or Delusion. I want you to think spiritually and see behind the words and the meaning of the 3 Obstacles. Here is the hint whatever the word, whatever the emotion, whatever the Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 9

perception, how do you visualise the raison dtre? What were or are the means you used? The answer is - they all come down to your senses and your mind Contemplate on this point! As this is the key! It all comes down to your senses and your mind! This is the key or the essence to the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom].

Lesson 6 Heart Sutra In Lesson 5, I finished with this paragraph I want you to think spiritually and see behind the words and the meaning of the 3 Obstacles. Here is the hint whatever the word, whatever the emotion, whatever the perception, how do you visualise the raison dtre? What were or are the means you used? The answer is - they all come down to your senses and your mind Contemplate on this point! As this is the key! It all comes down to your senses and your mind! This is the key or the essence to the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom]. Everything you perceive or conceive as a sentient being [may I remind you, that this is in an adverbial sense] comes down to your senses and your mind. Contemplate on this for the moment. Do not proceed until you grasp this indisputable fact. For, without your senses and your mind you are dead to the world; just as the world is dead to you! Your 5 basic senses are what make you see, hear, touch [feel], smell and taste and your mind is your 6th sense. These are what Buddhists refer to as the 6 entrances or gateways to be guarded against thieves and intruders, when you practise the 3 Practices [Morality, Meditation and Wisdom]. You control these 6 entrances or gateways in terms of Morality by controlling what you say or do. For you cannot escape the immutable law of cause and effect and karma. You control these 6 entrances or gateways in terms of Meditation by controlling each thought as it arises as to whether you allow that particular thought to proceed to a deed or action i.e. what you say or do. By inference, the senses are subservient to the mind. As a provisional step we say senses and mind, but as we progress higher in spiritual practice, we know and get to what in Buddhism we describe as the Mind Only School. However, as we progress even further, we will come to the realisation that Mind Only itself is a provisional stage. We have to get to the ultimate stage where there is no mind and where mind itself, is empty. For, if each and every thought, comes and goes, and there is nothing permanent left of its trace; therefore, even the perceived mind is empty, as would be the object and subject of the perception. Please note we are not talking of empty as of space or empty as if you did not see, hear or feel. No, here we are talking of Emptiness in a spiritual sense, as in boh tuei in Chow Kit Road terms, as in there is no permanent substrate, as in a lightning flash and then it is gone, like you experience your childhood, then it is gone, like the 1st time you fell in love, then it is gone, like when you have an orgasm, then it is gone. At this point, I wish to drop a hint or a word indicator. I wish to plant this seed in your mind. Think about this word and what it means and keep it always at the back of your mind experience [and I am talking of Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 10

the verb or the adverbial sense]. As a Buddhist you have to float like air, move like the breeze, flow like the stream and accommodate like the soil [take whatever comes your way or is thrown at you]. Our Bodhi [Enlightened] nature is selfless and free and unchanging and unborn and uncreated like that. Enlightenment is just selfrealisation or self-awareness of ones innate Bodhi nature. Finally, you control these 6 entrances or gateways in terms of Wisdom by being the master strategist behind the Meditation that is controlling each thought as it arises as to whether you allow that particular thought to proceed to a deed or action i.e. what you say or do. In simple terms, Wisdom tells what is good or bad. It is of course more than that. You do not tell a widow at her husbands funeral that he was a crook and deserve to die! Wisdom is not simply about knowing right from wrong; but knowing when to open your mouth and when it is best to be silent. Wisdom also knows or is also about knowing when right can be wrong and wrong can be right! How do you get this spiritual wisdom? Let me take you back to Lesson 2. In Lesson 2, I said this about having a thousand perspectives or a universal perspective of things Ultimately this particular skill is required to enable you to see the relativity, the interdependency, the interpenetration etc of all things to see that the world as we know it is just based on conceptions based on perceptions based on sensations i.e. we have no further direct evidence of phenomena beyond our sense of being. That basically sums up how you have spiritual wisdom. You must have a universal perspective. You must lose or forgo your self and your ego, to lose your individual worldly, conventional perspective. Your mind should be a no personal mind; that has no me or no mine or no I. Your self should be selfless. In your spiritual cultivation you transcend beyond your worldly self so that in spirit you are selfless. It is this no mind, no mine, no-self or selfless universal non-individualistic perspective that enables us to see reality for what it truly is. This spiritual insight arises when you are free from the delusion of grandeur of self and free from begrudging others, creatures, big and small, their equal place in the sun. Your mind is no longer afflicted and blurred or veiled by the 3 Obstacles. It is no longer an individual worldly, conventional mind. It is a universal cosmic mind. Only a universal mind can understand universal compassion and loving-kindness. Only a universal mind can have a helicopter view and see the trees from the forest. Only a universal mind can understand that only universal salvation makes sense and individual salvation does not; in Buddhist jargon this is expressed as The Vows of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. We are universally one in all and all in one! Unless you are spiritually awakened, or has numinous awareness, albeit, in a basic provisional sense; you will not be able to make sense or head or tail out of any Buddhist discourse or sermon or scripture. You will be marooned in mindless meditation under a coconut tree, or a hermit in aimless circumambulation of sacred stupas or mountains or a mendicant monk running away from instead of living and facing reality. These people are only chasing shadows! They might benefit in terms of reducing bad karmic residue but they are nowhere near Enlightenment!

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That is why, I have left it to this point to introduce Buddhist fundamental or basic concepts; that would normally be the first things they teach you, like they would you teach you alphabets or the multiplication tables, at Primary School. 5 Precepts [for Lay Persons] 8 for those who have taken the Bodhisattva Vows Do not kill Do not steal Do not lie or cheat Do not have immoral sex Do not be intoxicated or gluttony Do not be a slave to your senses [craving, clinging, possessing or hedonistic indulgence] Do not narcissistic or crave to being idolised When you have a universal mind, instead of an individualistic mind with a self-ego, you can see straight away the raison dtre for these precepts. The more important lesson here is that in terms of the immutable law of cause and effect, it impacts on your karma. Good begets good; and bad begets bad! 8-Fold Noble Path Right Understanding Right Thought Right Speech Right Action Right Livelihood Right Effort Right Mindfulness Right Focus or Concentration We may come back to this with greater detail at a later date. For the moment, again here, the focus is on how you behave or conduct your life, in terms of the immutable law of Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 12

cause and effect, and how it impacts on your karma. Right Mindfulness and Right Focus or Concentration however impact on your Meditation and Wisdom. The techniques of meditation [the main one is Vipassana Meditation] are themselves a complicated subject. It is something I will not deal with in these tutorials, as this have to be taught one to one and face to face. 12 Causal Links Ignorance Mental formation Consciousness Name and Form Six Senses Contact Feeling Craving Clinging Becoming Birth Old Age and Death, Grief, Lamentation, Pain, Sorrow and Despair This is a detailed outline of the cause and effect link of our existence of being in a Buddhist sense. It tells us that out of delusion or ignorance, we perceive and conceive, and through a domino effect, we end up with our existence of birth and death of being. Do not worry too much about this, for, if you cheat-read ahead, the Heart Sutra, you will note that this so-called provisional lesson of 12 causal links are all empty no ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death.. It is just an experiential thing. The being experiencing it, is just a sentient being that is adverbially empty! What is real however is only the experience of the karmic consequences of the immutable law of cause and effect and karma. Lesson 7 Heart Sutra On 15/7/11 you wrote, among other things Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 13

Hi Vincent, As I have started reading the lessons you sent me, I am surprise at how difficult it was to learn about Buddhism. I am taking the approach of what you said, chi poh kia chit poh and siew sim, bun bun lai. I am very sceptical of the word "siew sim" ( xiuxing). .. Please continue sending me the lessons, I appreciate very much your teaching. Julie I replied Julie, We are still at the preparatory stage. So we will stay put for a little while. Maybe you can start asking questions, because it may get more difficult ahead. So far, it is about spiritually letting go of self-ego and worldly matters at the spiritual level; even though at the human being level you still have your worldly self etc. At this early stage you sort of have 2 hats; you wear your worldly hat when you are doing worldly things and you wear your spiritual hat when you do spiritual things. As you progress you sort of wear both hats at the same time, and then towards the end you drop your worldly hat and just have your spiritual hat on. Vince Cheok 15/7/2011. It is very important for me to remind you again that Bodhi or Enlightenment has to be self-realised. On one hand it is not about achievement or attainment; for what is there to achieve and attain when you already have it? You already have Bodhi but you are just not aware that you do. On the other hand it cannot be learned or taught, as it has nothing to do with worldly knowledge. When the blind man can suddenly see; how can that be learned or taught? Did you learn or were you taught to see? So, it is the same with spiritual insight. So, if you are reading my tutorials, and studying them and analysing them, you are unconsciously impeding your Buddhist practice. You are conventionally worldly practising and not spiritually practising! Do not study, do not analyse. Just reflect, contemplate and let go. In Chow Kit Road terms pang suk keeh. When you are going beyond the beyond; when you are entering into the inconceivable and the ungraspable; when you are travelling astrally or spiritually, why are you still using worldly transportation? Before the light in Enlightenment can spiritually glow; you have to lighten the load in your life and in your mind; you have to stop the clinging and the grasping to your self, your ego and your attachment to worldly things, the very basis or source of ignorance or delusion. So first cultivate spiritually how to lighten in Enlightenment before you hope to see the light in Enlightenment. Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 14

In my closing paragraph in Lesson 6, I hinted on the coming and going or the endless cycles of cause and effect of the 12 Causal Links as experiential by an adverbial sentient being. Take good time to ponder and reflect and contemplate and meditate on this point. All will be clear soon, on this point. I think, much earlier, in Lesson 3, I alluded to the spiritual mind, a mind without a self-ego which just simply contemplates and reflects on the experience. I have underlined reflects, just so that you will implant this in your sub-consciousness. Just like Enlightenment, the words reflection [and, in due course reflectivity] and experiential are key words to a correct successful Buddhist practice. Remember, there are no nouns; just verbs and adverbs in Enlightenment, Reflection [or Reflectivity] or Experience. This is because everything is coming and going there is no lingering permanent entity or substrate! It is fleeting as in experiencing; it cannot be grasped or captured physically or mentally, beyond the moment of the experience! Having the illusion of the ego of self is the source of ignorance or delusion that keeps us entrapped in the world of samsara, the world of karma and of cause and effect. Bodhi or Enlightenment and Reflection and Experience are not things that can be acquired or attained by the individual human worldly body or mind! When you do things from the perspective of either your individual body or mind you are still having an ego of self the very basis or source of ignorance or delusion. You are a universal sentient being; at one and several with the universe. Just as an instrument to assist you in your visualisation of the concept of Emptiness [in the adverbial experiential sense], I want you to relive your childhood enthralment and thrill with the kaleidoscope. The word kaleidoscope comes from the Greek words for kalos [beautiful or good] and eidos [forms or images]. If you still have a kaleidoscope, there is no harm, in enjoying your childhood again. Go on, play with it! In Buddhist terms what we have is a mandala in the kaleidoscopic image, or a mandala making device. The mandala is a key Buddhist practice tool for the Tibetan Buddhists. We are here however doing it the Chow Kit Road short cut way. Instead of taking 4 weeks to draw and paint a mandala and then erase it, to reflect on how all forms or phenomena are impermanent and empty; we can just keep changing the mandala on the kaleidoscope repetitively. You may not realise it yet, but graphically in a spiritual sense, Ultimate Reality is like a mandala. In the meantime, reflect on the different mandalas as you turn or twirl on the kaleidoscope. Reflect on what you see. Notice that the forms are never the same, how no matter how chaotic the mandalas are, there is harmony? Notice how there is a constant mass or energy or scope; even though the imagery or format changes? Notice how things appear to increase or decrease or change but in reality the totality has not changed? Now, let us take our 1st step to understanding Emptiness which is the secret to Enlightenment. As with the customary routine, I will attempt to explain the spiritual Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 15

or the amorphous emptiness of, behind or in form, space and time and in fact of or in the mind [which is what the 5 Skandhas ( form, feeling, cognition, mental formation and consciousness) of the Heart Sutra are all about]; as all the preceding 3 components of form, space and time are perceived or conceived in your mind. In Lesson 3, I mentioned how Buddha saw the morning star at the 4th Watch and then he realised that the star was empty! Why dont we start from this base, from the vantage point of the Bodhi Tree where Buddha realised his Enlightenment? When you see a star, the star you see is in fact not really there! It is, in a sense, a spiritual illusion. What you see is from many thousands of light years in the past. So, in this sense, the form of the star you see is empty! You are only clutching at a phantom, an illusion, a mirage! The form you see is in the past! When Guanyin got enlightened, when she heard the sound of the waves at the seashore; she also realised that what she heard was from the past! If you had radio-scopic or radar ears, you will know this is true. When astronomers are listening for the Big Bang, they are listening to something now, which emanated in the past! When you hear what I say, you are in fact hearing what I said in the recent past. In fact, when you see me, you are in fact seeing me from the past! We say past, present or future in the relative sense and not in the absolute sense. It is relative in two senses. Firstly, it is relative in the sense as against each other. Secondly, it is past, present or future from the point of view or perspective of the perceiver; because time cannot be measured in absolute terms. We say 2011 AD, and we measure time conveniently either based on the Earths revolution around the Sun or the Moons revolution around the Earth; so time is measured by reference to something else; not as time as time in its own inherent absolute sense. Further, time is elastic, according to the perceiver; for a lover waiting for her lover, five minutes is a very long time. When the dentist is drilling your teeth, 1 minute is like forever! If you believe Einstein, then time in terms of dimension, can even warp or bend so that it can interpenetrate different time zones [refer M theory or String Theory]. It is sufficient however if you can understand that time is relative and that if you freeze a particular perspective like a time slot; you will see the past, present and future, all, in the same frame. It is easier to understand or perceive the past and present; but the future is also spiritually there in the face of a baby or young child; just that when you get to realise it the future has become the past; that is the nature of our or the fleeting experience. So in a very broad sense, everything is already past when we become conscious of it. It is empty in the sense that we experience it, but we cannot physically grasp or capture it. Also, with a bit of further spiritual understanding you will realise that anything that exists, because it is dependent on something else has no independent existence; and in that sense it is also empty. This leads us to the emptiness of form and also the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination, which is the basis for the Law of karma or Cause and Effect. We will do that in the next lesson. Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 16

Lesson 8 Heart Sutra Just as a refresher from Lesson 7, we were therein, discussing the fact that whatever we are conscious of, these are things in the past. You do not need me to spoon-feed you to tell you that in what you see and what you hear and what you taste and what you smell and what you touch; it takes some time for your 5 senses and your brain to work things out cognitively. That is why when you take cognisance you are having cognisance of things in the past! In Buddhist tutorials, we always seem to go 1 step forward and then 2 steps back. There is a good reason for this. Human nature is very hard to change. People just cannot let go of self; just cannot lose their self-consciousness. That is why the constant reminders or tirades of letting go. In Zen meditation, the Zen master will even whack you constantly. In the temple you might be assigned to sweep the temple grounds for years until, the Abbott is happy that you have lost consciousness of self. I have a kind heart. I will just keep repeating myself ad nausem and just irritate you; for I know from my own personal experience, that you are still clinging to you and your personal mind, instead of putting on your universal, unattached, no self-ego mind and being selfless in disposition. When I say that one has to awaken to spiritual Enlightenment, I was only speaking provisionally, that is, as a manner of speaking. There is no way of establishing whether one is awakened and enlightened. All we can say, as an outsider looking on, is that, an enlightened person shows traces of wisdom and compassion; but only the enlightened person will know himself. Only that enlightened person knows whether he has gone beyond the beyond and has entered the inconceivable. Aside from that, there is no apparent change. For, whether you are enlightened or not, whether you are spiritual or worldly, good or bad, young or old, you carry on with the visages and vagaries of life. You still need to live life, you need to live to live, you have to eat and sleep. Life carries on, just like the moon at night outside your window. However, the significance and the meaning of life are quite different. Wisdom and compassion bring serenity and calmness, that makes the brilliance of the moon brighter, that makes the flowers in bloom prettier and the friendships you have more steadfast and resilient. Life is more profound when you have spiritual wisdom. In Chow Kit Road terms you actually achieve nothing in Enlightenment. Your life goes on. It is just that nothing troubles you anymore. In Zen jargon, you have tamed or subdued the monkey in your mind; which is just a nice way of saying that you have tamed the monkey in you. This is one of the Buddhist spiritual aspects of The Journey West. Sunwukong, the Monkey, represents the man in us in his egoistic self and arrogance, and Tripitaka, the Monk represents the man that we could be when we realise Enlightenment. Imagine, all these years, all these childhood memories, we were thinking that The Journey West was about kungfu fighting! Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 17

When I say that you seek Enlightenment through understanding Emptiness; again I am speaking provisionally. Since Enlightenment itself is empty, because there is no permanent entity that realises or is being enlightened; nor is Enlightenment something that can be grasped or captured; how can we say that we seek Enlightenment in anything at all? In spiritual terms, that is the beauty of Enlightenment. That is why it is so perfect; because there is no Enlightenment to be attained at all [in a worldly sense], you are then able to realise Enlightenment spiritually. If Enlightenment were to be a worldly achievement, than it can never be a spiritual realisation. It is in that sense that Enlightenment is self realisation and not self attainment or self achievement. So, when the Buddhist Scriptures say that there are 37 Elements of the Way [ranging from goodness to meditation to mindfulness] to practise towards Enlightenment, it is also just a manner of expression; for in fact, every breath you take, every move you make, every thought you have, everything, is possibly an element or catalyst towards Enlightenment. In Jesuit Catholic terms, we have the expression See everything in God and God in everything. In Buddhist Enlightenment terms, we say See Dharma in all the dharmas or in Chow Kit Road terms, [objectively and not subjectively] observe and reflect on and from your experience of life. Let us continue from where we left off in Lesson 7. The form that you are, that I am, that which you already see in me, that is from the past, and therefore empty; would or should have already hinted to you that you too are empty. However, let us prove beyond spiritual doubt that you really do not have a self or ego; that you are an illusory, phantom of a sentient being [in the adverbial sense]. First let us start off with the simple example of form in the shape of a box, any box, a shoe box or a photocopying paper carton box, it does not really matter. The 1st thing you will notice, even with worldly wisdom rather than spiritual wisdom, is that the box is empty. This is really provisional emptiness. We shall call this provisional emptiness space. If only I have the time tell you [hilariously of course by way of satire] how, for many years, I was stuck in limbo and in the doldrums, all mentally tied up in twisted knots and utterly confused and just about a breath away from going berserk; when I was told again and again that the box was empty and therefore form was empty and therefore all phenomena was empty! At the end of the day, I am giving you these tutorials, because we are both in our sunset years, and I do not want you to suffer the same frustration and or worse, possibly go mad in seeking Enlightenment. All these multitudes of Buddhist monks out there practising Zen and yet not having any Zen of wisdom; instead of moving their mind in meditation, they comatose their mind, they chant incessantly until they are like intoxicated with opiate, and think that is Enlightenment! In Chow Kit Road Hokkien we say Tuck See Chek i.e. reading dead books.

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However, we are all university educated with multiple degrees; so let me jump a few steps ahead of myself to get this science lesson out of the way. In Buddhist scriptures, whether in Chinese or in English, the word Emptiness is used freely and liberally; which means that you get totally confused if you take Emptiness as meaning void as in space. Later when you come across a Zen master who says that there are 40 forms of Emptiness, then you virtually shit in your pants, because the Oxford Dictionary does not give you 40 meanings of Emptiness. Then you know you have [in the Western sense] hit the brick wall; but in the Buddhist sense you have encountered Zen. To enter into the inconceivable you have to think of the inconceivable; and that is Zen. That is why the 1st story you are told in Zen is of Buddha showing a flower to the congregation and only one disciple smiled and leaned over to take the flower. Only that one disciple knew that in his hand Buddha had the entire cosmos [spiritually speaking of course] at his fingertips. Only in Zen are you asked how you hit a wall in the dark or about the sound of one hand clapping! Now, let us get back to the science lesson. Form qua form is form; space qua space is space. But space is also a type of form. But space is only space in a provisional sense; for space is not empty form but actually form that we cannot see with the human eyes, In the emptiness of space there are intangible forms of energy and other dark matter. Then, we have space, as in the time dimension, that we discussed in the last lesson. What has this science lesson taught you, or alluded you to, so far? Well, it tells us that the frontier of science is limited by our perception or worldly knowledge. We provisionally thought that space was empty, but space is not empty but is an intangible or invisible form. Mind you, it cannot be claimed that Buddha was a scientist, but he came to the conclusion, albeit in a spiritual way, that when time has an ego of self it becomes the past [history] and that when space has an ego of self it becomes form. Today, we are approaching this discussion of Emptiness [also it would be good for you to understand that Buddhism like other philosophical practices should be subjected to the rigueur of science] from the direction of worldly science. So, moving from space to form, let us discuss why form is also empty. Here we have to resort to going down level by level microscopically speaking until we cannot zoom down further, and have to extrapolate beyond, due to our present level of scientific knowledge. Take the human body; zoom it down to your guts or any organ, what do you see? You are beginning to see that the kaleidoscopic mandala of life starts to change. There are cosmos within a cosmos; each level that you zoom down to. Notice the coming and going! Notice the impermanence! Cells are born and cells die! Assuming that you have gone beyond the DNA, the atoms, and now you are at the stage of quarks and strings of energy. What can we conclude? There is no permanent entity of a self of an ego. We have travelled through the provisional emptiness of form, that is space; but beyond that, what we thought was empty was still form in an intangible sense of quarks and strings; but

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further beyond that, there seem to be an infinite Emptiness behind the provisional emptiness of space. Please pay attention and think carefully now, and we are still talking science! Remember space is also synonymous with time [refer String Theory]. This endless infinite divisibility of matter, when translated or extrapolated into the time dimension sense, means there can be no perceivable beginning nor ending to time. There can be no perceivable beginning nor is there an ending to this kaleidoscope we are in. There can be no creation [Adam and Eve, 2 cows, 2 donkeys, the Tree of knowledge among some palm trees etc] or God [looking like an Old Italian man] as Christians conceive or perceive. Buddhists do not discuss God but they leave that possibility open; but only in an experiential sense; like Enlightenment and Dharma are. God as God is pertinent to any practising Buddhist in that you hope to realise Gods fatherly guiding presence in you. Let us revert to our Buddhist tutorial about form, hopefully, with the full benefit of our scientific aside above. Let us continue where we left off regarding the box. We can see with the box that the form of the box can only be perceived because of the space [the provisional concept of Emptiness]. In fact we cannot perceive the space within the box without the form of the box! In a broad sense this can be said to explain that form is emptiness and emptiness is form in terms of the Heart Sutra. This is outright foolishness! Yes, the space defines the form of the box, and its size and scope; and the box defines the space within and without the box. But the spiritual or Buddhist idea of Emptiness is in the relationship; what the Chinese refer to as the yin and yang aspects. What is within worldly perception and conception and what the Buddhists call the Doctrine of Duality or Relativity, comes down to yin and yang. The Emptiness in a Buddhist sense is the yin and yang aspect of the form of the box and the space within and without the box. The yin is empty [cannot exist] without the yang and vice versa. The male cannot exist without the female. You cannot perceive light without darkness. You cannot tell what is good without knowing what is bad. You cannot tell what is rich without knowing what it is like to be poor. Relativity can only be seen through this Buddhist concept of Emptiness. Relativity implies an absence of a permanent absolute; that everything in experiential existence is relative in characteristic or mark or distinction by relation or in respect to another We have touched on and in later tutorials come back to another perspective of relativity, that of the subjective perspective of the perceiver; which gives another type of Emptiness. You can see that the number of types of Emptiness keeps on growing as we are continuing with our discourse. We will stop here and continue in the next lesson, progressing from a box to a chariot or maybe a house and more aspects of Emptiness; perhaps that very important aspect of Emptiness being the reason for form; whether form is life or existence or just coming and going. Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 20

If I am proceeding too fast, let me know, for understanding Emptiness is to understand Ultimate Reality and is the realisation of Enlightenment.

Lesson 9 Heart Sutra From your email, I am glad that you were able to establish that your current difficulty in practice was what I suggested - that you were trying to analyse the tutorials like a science lesson; and that you were having difficulty in "letting go" or "pang suk keeh" of your self, even though you closed your eyes to yourself. This "letting go" or "pang suk keeh" of your self, is what is most insurmountable in Buddhist practice. You have to realise Enlightenment, but you have to do it as if you are not your self. This self that possesses us, our body, our mind; that does all the clinging and grasping and attachment and discriminatory loving and hating, wanting and detesting, just will not let go that easily! Be patient! You have already taken the preliminary steps to letting go. It starts with filial piety. Giving like necessity begins at home. You learn to give and surrender your self unconditionally as a parent out of parental. In return the child gives and surrenders his or her self unconditionally to his or her parents, out of filial piety. You must have also given and surrendered your self, when you fell in love? Now that you are caring for handicapped children, is not that letting go of your self? When you let go in Buddhist terms, you do it out of loving-kindness and compassion to understand how you can release yourself and others from the perceived suffering of existence in the world of samsara. After letting go of your self, you will still have the difficulty of stopping yourself from analysing and thinking like a worldly conventional human being. This part is truly difficult when [as a human being] you have to think like a sentient being i.e. just like, all the other creatures, big and small, under the Sun. You need to have a universal cosmic mind. To understand Emptiness you must be able to appreciate the relativity in perception i.e. you must be able to see a flower not as a flower from only the human point of view, but from the view of the butterfly, the bee, the bird, the caterpillar, the raindrop, the Sun, the plant virus etc. We see cow-dung as cow-dung or shit or even fertilizer; but how does the blowfly see it? The Enlightenment that is Emptiness or the Dharma or the Buddha must be the same whether it is seen by a sentient being in the shape and form of a butterfly, a blowfly, a kangaroo or a human being? Maybe when you read the tutorials, just pretend that you are a butterfly! Let me quote what is said in the Vimalakirti Sutra about getting rid of this human being and I mentality The Dharma [Ultimate Reality] knows nothing of living [human] beings, because it is removed from the defilements of such concepts as living beings. The Dharma knows nothing of I because it is removed from the defilements of such concepts as I. It knows nothing of life span, because it knows nothing of birth and death. It knows nothing of individuality, because it is cut off from consideration of past Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 21

and future lives. The Dharma is forever still and serene, because it has wiped out all characteristics. The Dharma is without characteristics, because it is without anything that can be perceived. So, when you practise, let go of self; and more importantly, there are no human beings or Buddhas. The expression human beings or Buddhas is used here in the sense of a noun, as a permanent entity. Human beings and Buddhas are real only in an adverbial sense as bundles of transient reflections of composite experience, like a kaleidoscopic mandala. Your experience is actually the experience of a composite of cosmos of cosmos of beings, as we shall see later in this Lesson 9. In Lesson 8, we were well into the 1st phase of discussing that part of the Heart Sutra that goes Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. Once we understand and accept that form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. we can then apply the same analysis to feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness. This is because you see form, have feeling, have cognition, have volition through mental formation and have consciousness through your 5 senses and your mind. Remember what I said in Lesson 6? I said Everything you perceive or conceive as a sentient being [may I remind you, that this is in an adverbial sense] comes down to your senses and your mind. Contemplate on this for the moment. Do not proceed until you grasp this indisputable fact. For, without your senses and your mind you are dead to the world; just as the world is dead to you! Your 5 basic senses are what make you see, hear, touch [feel], smell and taste and your mind is your 6th sense. If mental perception and conception of form is empty, then a fortiori all related mental perceptions and conceptions and indeed the [individual, worldly, self-egoistic] mind is also empty. In short, the subjective relative mind, dependent on a false self-ego of being, would also be empty like the false self-ego of a being. In fact Emptiness is everywhere we turn, yet we cannot see it; we have to realise it through Enlightenment. At this stage you might ask me how about the universal selfless mind [the mind of a thousand perspectives, the same universal mind of all sentient beings, the same mind of all creatures big and small under the sun]? All I will say at this stage is that a self-egoistic mind is no mind, because there is no permanent self or soul or other entity, the very subject matter or topic that we are discussing herein. The form that we have taken to be our self is empty! However there is an element, behind the provisional form that we have called a universal mind as a matter of convenience, that represents universal consciousness that has no self-consciousness or in fact any consciousness of being. We will find out what that is at the end of this series of tutorials. All will be revealed! Let us upgrade from a box to a chariot. The chariot was the example given by Nagasena, the learned Buddhist monk and philosopher, in his Debate with King Milinda. Basically we call a chariot, a chariot by its form and function; you have the carriage, the wheels, the spokes and the various bolts and nuts. But is the chariot the whole body or is it the composite of its various parts? So, by analysis, a chariot is not to be seen be a unitary and homogenous whole entity. It is composed of various individual parts. By deduction or extrapolation, it can be seen, that just like the whole, even these individual parts are not seen to be permanent entities ultimately in their own right. In Buddhist jargon, we say Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 22

that through penetrative wisdom, we see that the chariot is empty because the whole and the individual parts, in the yin and yang of things, are seen to be dependent, conditional and relative. The chariot is in its whole as well as in its individual parts. It is one and several. This feature or characteristic of one in all and many in one is found in all phenomena. So, in a Buddhist sense, we have arrived at the emptiness of the form of human body without having the benefit of scientific knowledge 2,500 years ago! By the same logical analysis, but this time in terms of function, we can see that arising from the inherent Emptiness of the chariot, we have utility; in other words we have being and life! Think deeply on this! Please! Otherwise, you will not appreciate the miracle and the wonder that is Emptiness. The Emptiness behind Emptiness comes back as Form, as life! You are not flogging a dead horse after all! Understanding Emptiness is not a stupid, academic, wasteful, futile pursuit after all. It might be so in a worldly sense; but in a spiritual sense; you are entering into the inconceivable! If you did not have a blank page, would you be able to write poetry on it? Emptiness is like that. If it were not for the emptiness of relativity would we able to have the shades and contrasts and diversity and moods around us. If it were not for the emptiness of a permanent self, and of nothing being fixed and absolute, would we have the seasons and the cycles of life? If things were permanent and absolute, where is the hope that we can change; where is the hope for the Christians to find salvation and hope for the Buddhists to realise Enlightenment? When we change, we have to first change our mind, we have to first empty our mind. In emptying we are letting go; in letting go ignorance and delusion bit by bit, we lighten ourselves of more spiritual garbage [ignorance and delusion] and allow the light to shine through from within. That, my friend, is Enlightenment. Emptiness is Enlightenment! Time for a summing up. You will note that this Emptiness is a constant, despite its many facets, from different angles, that it is just in the backdrop, mysterious and yet present. You cannot say that it arises or that it ceases. You cannot say that it does not impact on or is it affected by the coming and going and the changing kaleidoscopic mandalas. You cannot say that it [as a constant backdrop] is increasing or decreasing. You get discrete parts like a seed, soil, water, air and sunlight and voila, you have a germinating sprout. Out of the Emptiness of the various forms you suddenly have life! Do not bother telling me that there is inherent latent or innate life in the seed; or else I will refer you back to the science lesson back in Lesson 8, back to DNA and quarks and the String Theory. Here we are only dealing with life in an experiential sense. If in Buddhist terms you are just an adverbial sentient being experiencing the past; you are falling back or retracting from your lessons to date if you start thinking that the sprout like any other form or phenomena is not empty of self. Just steady and comfort yourself, get back on track, when you see the sprout you are seeing the past and therefore it is just an illusion, a figment of your imagination. The sprouting or the birthing had already taken place in the past. It is therefore empty in your present. This is what emptiness is!

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The issue is not whether there was a sprouting of life; but whether that sprouting can be permanently grasped or captured! As we speak, the sprout could now be already a climbing vine or a bean stalk! The relevant lesson at this point from the example of the sprout is about causes and conditions. All phenomena that we see, the coming and going that we see, the birth and death that we see, the impermanence and the continuing changes that we see, the seasons and cycle of life that we see; they are all based on cause and conditions. Everything that exists dependent on something else (combination of causes and conditions) does not really exists and therefore it is empty. It has no dependent being and does not exist self-sustaining by itself. In its transient dependent state of coming and going, it is just a fleeting experience, like a bubble in the foam. This sums up the Buddhist Doctrine of Interdependent Origination; which as we have just been discussing, is another perspective of Emptiness. Once we begin to see in our daily experience, the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination, and the dependent, conditioned and relative nature of all phenomena we will begin to realise the Ultimate Truth of Emptiness. In Buddhist jargon, if the creation of a single thing, like the sprout, necessarily involved all the factors of causes and conditions around it; this in turn interweaves and interconnects with all the things in the neighbourhood of the sprout [as they are all in the same eco-environment] and the web or net just widens, just like inter-locking circles. If you take a helicopter view, you end up with an ever-changing kaleidoscopic mandala, which we discussed in Lesson 7. Earlier I mentioned the feature or characteristic of one in all and many in one that is found in all phenomena. When we combine that characteristic with the interweaving and interlocking and inter-penetration of factors [causes and conditions] across all phenomena. We arrive at what is described as the Brahma Jewelled Net in the Avatamsaka Sutra. For our purposes, I have simplified this by portraying it as the ever-changing kaleidoscopic mandala. The Law of Karma or Cause and Effect is just a modified or simplified version of the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination. In greater detail, the Law of Karma or Cause and Effect, should be better expressed as the Law of Causes and Conditions and Effect and Consequence. Thus, in terms of practical illustration, we can follow through in terms of cause and effect, the production of bread from the planting of wheat or the making of wine from the planting of grape vines. However these are Buddhist tutorials, so let us get back to matters or examples that are directly linked to the words of the Heart Sutra. Let us revise on the teachings of the Buddha from this point of cause and effect; since Buddha said that the Law of Karma or Cause and Effect is immutable. Let me draw attention first, that if the Law of Karma or Cause and Effect is immutable, then the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination is immutable and thereby the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness is immutable! Buddhas 1st Turning of the Wheel was the Four Noble Truths, which we discussed in Lesson 5. You will note how it is expressed in reverse order; effect then the cause, as if in medical diagnosis [1] the effect of suffering [2] the cause of suffering [3] the end of suffering and [4] the path to the end of suffering. Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 24

In Lesson 6 we briefly discussed the 5 senses and the mind and the 5 or 8 Precepts and Eight-fold Noble Path. Basically the 5 senses and the mind are the 6 entrances or gateways that impact on our behaviour or conduct in the karmic or cause and effect sense. The 5 senses and the mind and their 6 sense-objects [form, sound, scent, taste, touch and mind-consciousness object] and their 6 mental perceptions are known together as the 18 Sense Realm. The 18 Sense Realm is comprised in the 12 Causal Links that we briefly discussed in Lesson 6. In terms of cause and effect, we can restructure the 12 Causal Links as follows 12 Causal Links Causes Defilements Ignorance, Craving, Clinging Causes Actions Mental formation [Volition], Becoming Effects Sufferings Consciousness, Name and Form, Six Senses, Contact, Feeling, Birth, Old Age and Death [Grief, Lamentation, Pain, Sorrow and Despair] We speak of cause and effect, but remember that we are here referring to cause and effect when there is Ignorance, Craving, Clinging, Mental formation [Volition] and Becoming. These are attributes associated with a self-egoistic mind; associated with a self and an ego. I have hinted many times that the self-egoistic mind is an illusory mind. It is empty of self. There is no permanent substrate. In Chow Kit Road Hokkien boh tuei or no foundation. In the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness, this illusory mind and the illusory being of self behind it do not exist. If this illusory mind is extinguished, the attached wrongdoings or sufferings also do not exist in Ultimate Reality. You can only be caught up with them if you are still in the loop or the web of the false ego or self and does still within the catch of the net of the immutable Law of Karma or Cause and Effect! This takes us back a full circle. The afflicted mind [that is the 5 senses and the mind and the 18 Sense Realm] is responsible for getting us into this dilemma. Therefore, how we deal with or manage our afflicted mind determines how we extricate ourselves from this karmic entrapment. This bit of discussion here would be easier if you are a photographer or have background in physics or medicine in the area of optics. If you do not, just think of your mind as an android computerised camera. Just imagine also you are the top range model, with full range capacities in sensing and analysis of data like R2D2 in Star Wars! The knowing or the knowledge within this afflicted worldly self-egoistic mind, as in sensing, perceiving, Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 25

conceiving, inferencing, surmising, testifying, evaluating, analysing, approving, appraising, comparing or certifying, is interdependent on the subject and the object of the sensation, perception, conception etc. and also mutually conditioned by the subject and the object and the sensation, perception, conception etc. And, by extension, so are the cause and effect of the consequences of the sensation, perception, conception etc., they too are interdependent and relative to the subject and the object and the sensation, perception, conception etc. Thus, knowledge and the Law of karma or Cause and Effect also lack self-existence and are therefore empty. Sorry! Did not realise that todays tutorial went over the 3 page limit! I have a simple rule, going back to my days as a tutor at University that, after 3 pages, the students lose concentration.
Lesson 10 Heart Sutra I was perusing Lesson 9 and came to the realisation that I have come to the conclusion in terms of Emptiness as far as the actual wording Heart Sutra is concerned. The Heart Sutra assumes that the Buddhist practitioner would, upon realising that form is emptiness, as well as anything perceived or conceived by the mind, because there is no self to have the related sensation, perception or conception. What I intend to do in this tutorial is to sum up the tutorials to date by reference to the various paragraphs of the Heart Sutra. I will however provide extension tutorials to take our discussion of Emptiness beyond the Heart Sutra. I am sure you want to know what the exact nature of this Ultimate Reality of Emptiness might be. What is behind this backdrop of Emptiness? We will deal with that aspect in the next tutorial. Let us close or end our tutorials as far as the Heart Sutra is concerned. Let me reword the Heart Sutra with accompanying comments in this summary. I noted that the version of the Heart Sutra that I sent you at the commencement of the tutorials was an Americanised version, not quite suited to way of expression.

HEART SUTRA When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was coursing in the deep Prajna Paramita, He perceived that all Five Skandhas [form, feeling, cognition, mental formation [volition] and consciousness] are empty. Thus, he overcame all ills and suffering.

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O Sariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from form. Form is emptiness and the emptiness is form; the same is true for feeling, cognition, mental formation [volition] and consciousness. [To cut it short, from our tutorials to date, everything that is based on conceptions based on perceptions based on sensations of the self-egoistic mind is empty. Obviously, if what is based or subject to self as the foundation, and the foundation of self is found to be empty, then what relies on self is also empty.] Sariputra, the characteristics of the emptiness of all dharmas are non-arising, nonceasing, non-defiled, non-pure, non-increasing, non-decreasing. [This goes back to Emptiness as the constant backdrop. See Lesson 9 You will note that this Emptiness is a constant, despite its many facets, from different angles, that it is just in the backdrop, mysterious and yet present. You cannot say that it arises or that it ceases. You cannot say that it does not impact on or is it affected by the coming and going and the changing kaleidoscopic mandalas. You cannot say that it (as a constant backdrop) is increasing or decreasing.] Therefore, in the emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, mental formation [volition] or consciousness; [If there is no permanent self, there is no permanent form, feeling, cognition, mental formation [volition] or consciousness. There is just that fleeting experience which is nonetheless real like a dream is real; but not permanent like a dream is not permanent.] No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind; no form, sound, smell, taste, touch, mind-object, or eye field until we come to no field of mind consciousness; [This refers to the 18 Senses Realm - that it is also imaginary and empty.] No ignorance or also no ending of ignorance, until we come to no old age and death and no ending of old age and death. [This refers to the 12 Causal Links - that it is also imaginary and empty.] Also, there is no truth of suffering, of the cause of suffering, of the cessation of suffering, or of the [Eight-fold Noble] Path. [This refers to the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Noble Path - that they are also imaginary and empty.] There is no wisdom, and there is no attainment [of wisdom] whatsoever. [This refers to the 6 Paramitas which we dealt with in Lesson 3 which can be summed up under Wisdom; we seek wisdom or enlightenment, but really they cannot be acquired or attained!]

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Because there is nothing to be attained, the Bodhisattva, relying on the Prajna Paramita has no obstruction in his mind. [Once you have no self consciousness, where then is the seeking or desire or craving or fear of or by a self. In fact, from out tutorials, we can see that there is no perceived permanent eternal self that is born or dies! It is just a fleeting transient experiential or sentient, composite, one in all and many in one, kaleidoscopic mandala being] Because there is no obstruction, he has no fear; [Who is it or is there to do the fearing?] And, thus, he passes far beyond confused imagination [He is now serene and calm.] And reaches Ultimate Nivarna. [This means release from suffering.] The Buddhas of the past, present and future, also relying on the Prajna Paramita, have attained Supreme Enlightenment. [Enlightenment is realising that Ultimate Reality is Emptiness.] Therefore, the Prajna Paramita is the great magic spell, the spell of illumination, the supreme spell, the incomparable spell, which can truly protect one from all suffering without fail. Hence he uttered the spell of the Prajna Paramita, saying: Gat Gat Paragat Parasamgat, Bodhi Svaha! [Gone! Gone! Gone Beyond! Gone Beyond the Beyond! Enlightenment Hail!] I will end this tutorial here so that the formal sessions on the Heart sutra can finish here. The next lesson is an extension and involves Zen and discussion on technical more complicated discourses. Lesson 11 Heart Sutra This is the start of the extension tutorial on Emptiness. In Lesson 3, I mentioned that I was basing my tutorials on the letting go technique preferred by Bodhisattva Maitreya, the next Buddha to be. In the extension tutorial or tutorials I will be referring to the Doctrine of Consciousness Only [the Yogacara School; you can read about this in the Lankavatara Sutra], developed by him, which relates to the mental states beyond the selfegoistic worldly mind, sort of to the sub-conscious. Further, there will be a lot of Zen! Why Zen? Zen takes your query directly to the source! You have to fly up to the sky to meet the clouds that block your view!

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Let us get straight to what our objective is in this extension course. In Lesson 10, I commented as follows - Sariputra, the characteristics of the emptiness of all dharmas are non-arising, non-ceasing, non-defiled, non-pure, non-increasing, non-decreasing. [This goes back to Emptiness as the constant backdrop. See Lesson 9 You will note that this Emptiness is a constant, despite its many facets, from different angles, that it is just in the backdrop, mysterious and yet present. You cannot say that it arises or that it ceases. You cannot say that it does not impact on or is it affected by the coming and going and the changing kaleidoscopic mandalas. You cannot say that it (as a constant backdrop) is increasing or decreasing.] This backdrop of the Emptiness that is neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing is what we wish to investigate further. What exactly is this Emptiness that is neither coming nor going, is not subject to relativity, is not subject to the Doctrine of Interdependent Origination, is not subject to the Immutable Law of Karma or Cause and Effect? In Zen terms, who is this? Who can be without thought? Who can be without birth? What is this who is uncreated and unborn? Master Tung Shan posed this Zen question Today when I strolled along the water, I found myself mirrored in it. The reflection was me, but I was not the reflection Now, let us get back to Lesson 7, where we discussed the fact that what you see is only an image, only an illusion, only a phantom from the past. The star or the moon you see is not in the instant present, but in the instant past! The moon you see in your worldly mind is just a reflection, just like the reflection of the moon on the water. When you see the reflection of the moon on the water it is just a reflection of a reflection; if you know what I mean? Please stay at this point, and do not proceed, till you understand this strange, but true situation! Are you ready? The Heart Sutra ends with the mantra Gat Gat Paragat Parasamgat, Bodhi Svaha! i.e. Gone! Gone! Gone Beyond! Gone Beyond the Beyond! Enlightenment Hail! Let us rephrase the mantra as follows: From: Gone! Gone Beyond! Gone Beyond the Beyond. To: See! See Beyond! See Beyond the Beyond! I am doing a shortcut. If I were to instruct you directly from what Buddha said in the Surangama Sutra, I would have to quote ad verbatim as follows You should also know that when your (absolute) seeing perceives the Essence of Seeing, the former is not the latter, which still differs from it; how can your (false) seeing reach that (absolute) Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 29

seeing? Master Han Shan translated this dictum as When seeing (perceives) seeing, seeing is not seeing, (for) seeing strays from seeing; seeing cannot reach it. Buddha in the Surangama Sutra actually used the moon in a 2-tier approach It is like a second moon which is neither the real moon nor its shadow. Why? Because the sight of this second moon is an illusory creation. So wise people should not say that this illusion is or is not form or that it exists apart from seeing or non-seeing. Buddha was of course [in the Surangama Sutra] explaining the relativity and interdependency and inter-connectivity, among or between the subject and object and the consciousnessfield; and thereby all was illusion. Do not attempt to read the Surangama Sutra until you can confidently say that you understand the Heart Sutra fully. If you understand the Heart Sutra [and the Diamond sutra and the Platform Sutra of the 6th Patriarch], then the Surangama Sutra [and the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Vimalakirti Sutra] will take you to the real heart of [Zen Mahayana] Buddhism I have borrowed and modified it to a 3-tier approach to suit my shortcut Zen-style method. Let us apply this technique to the above example of the moon. When you see the reflection of the moon on the water it is the 3rd reflection. You see beyond that to get to the 2nd reflection the reflection of the past moon in your mind. You see beyond the beyond, if you were to see the moon instantaneously, if you had the ability to do so, to get to the 1st reflection [here we used it spiritually, to mean emanation or transformation or contemplation or arising of thought]. The moon plays a major role in Buddhist teachings, rituals and in folklore. In Buddhist scriptures, a common expression is that of mistaking the finger pointing to the moon, for the moon. In the Buddhist practice context, it is more about mistaking the Buddha as the deity or the Path or the Way or as the fruit of Enlightenment; instead of Buddha as being the Teacher, the doctor, the guide, the signpost or the raft to take you to the other shore. Once you get across, you are supposed to abandoned the raft. The crude form of expressing this meaning is the illustration that I cited of killing the Buddha in your mind, if he is blocking your meditation. In Buddhist rituals we have the various holy and vegetarian days based on the new or full moon or the lunar calendar. In your case, being a Guanyin devotee, there will be 2 dedicated holy days for Guanyin her Birthday (19th day of the 2nd lunar month) and her Enlightenment Day (19th day of the 6th lunar month). Even the Chinese Calendar with its 12 astrological animals is partly of Buddhist origin. In terms of Buddhist moon folklore, I have extracted this from Wikipedia In the Buddhist aajtaka (Jataka Tale 316), a monkey, an otter, a jackal, and a rabbit resolved to practice charity on the day of the full moon (Uposatha), believing a demonstration of great virtue would earn a great reward. When an old man begged for food, the monkey gathered fruits from the trees and the otter collected fish, while the jackal wrongfully pilfered a lizard and a pot of milk-curd. The rabbit, who knew only how to gather grass, instead offered its own body, throwing itself into a fire the man had built. The rabbit, however, was not burnt. The old man revealed himself to be akra and, touched by the rabbit's virtue, drew the likeness of the rabbit on the moon for all to see. It Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 30

is said the lunar image is still draped in the smoke that rose when the rabbit cast itself into the fire. Do not however get hung up or too fascinated with the moon! The moon, like anything else, even if it were the Buddha instead of the moon, is just a tool or a raft or a contemplative or meditation device of convenience. See, I was testing you. The Zen approach does not want you to think or analyse. Zen just wants you to reflect and not think or analyse! The Zen topic or subject is not the focus of the reflection or contemplation! Here, my shortcut is to instil in you, that the focus is on the optics; on the reflection, on the reflectivity, on the house of mirrors, on the illusory reflections of these mirrors. Whether the mirror were the water, in your eyes, in your mind or on your sub-consciousness; think optics, think reflection and think reflectivity. Unless you think in terms of reflections, you cannot imagine your being as an experience of fleeting, transient reflections, that come and go. Zen also wants you to think without a self, to think with a universal cosmic mind and not with an individual worldly human mind. The truth or the Ultimate Reality should be the same for a human being, a bullfrog or a cockroach! The truth or the Ultimate Reality should impact equally on them all; and with equanimity like the Sun or the Rain. Unless you have such a cosmic universal equanimity in your perspective, in your experiencing, how can you see the truth or the Ultimate Reality? Do you want some Zen training or illustrations? Zen questions are called koan. Remember do not focus on the subject and do not use human worldly logic! A typical koan is What is the sound of one hand clapping? When you have no self and you do not have a human mind; 2 hands clapping would represent duality and relativity, resulting in the phenomenon of clapping. With 1 hand, there will be no duality and therefore no creation of phenomenon. Another koan is - What is hitting a wall in the darkness? Again, with no self and no human mind, darkness represents ignorance or delusion. With no delusion, there might be no wall, and thereby, no fear of the darkness or the wall. Let us revert to our earlier 3-tier approach of - See! See Beyond! See Beyond the Beyond! Let us refer to a historical koan that the 6th Patriarch personally gave the answer to [refer to the Platform Sutra of the 6th Patriarch]. Two monks were arguing as to what moved, in relation to a flag fluttering in the wind. Our [i.e. the 6th Patriarchs] answer or solution using the 3-tier approach is or will be - See! [The flag moving], See Beyond! [The wind moving the flag], See Beyond the Beyond! [The mind moved, so that you can see the flag fluttering!]. This 3-tier approach leads us in a convoluted way to Bodhisattva Maitreyas Consciousness Only Doctrine. Remember our 5 senses and our worldly mind which is Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 31

the 6th sense? Going backwards progressively, behind each mirror, taking the worldly mind as the 1st reflection, as the 6th Consciousness, the Yogacara School has added as the 2nd insight reflection, the 7th Consciousness, being the Self-Ego or DiscriminatingMind Consciousness; and as the 3rd insight reflection, the 8th Consciousness , i.e. the Alaya Consciousness or in English, the Storehouse Consciousness. Let us sum up our position regarding this Yogacara School of thought - See! [the worldly mind], See Beyond! [the 7th Consciousness, being the Self-Ego or Discriminating-Mind Consciousness], See Beyond the Beyond! [the 8th Consciousness, i.e. the Alaya Consciousness or in English, the Storehouse Consciousness]. In the Surangama Sutra, Buddha said he was reluctant to teach the Alaya Consciousness or the Storehouse Consciousness, for he feared that people might mistaken it for the self or the soul as the Hindus did and do. We will now discuss why. But to do so, we need to back track ourselves back to the moon as a contemplative tool. We will use as the tutorial exercise, the koan You can recognise the image in the mirror; but can you grasp the moon in the water? This is called grasping the moon from the water. It should be easy now that you are an expert on the 3-tier approach? No! Well, well, then you need to revise on the tutorials? It is really quite simple. The hint is that with your self consciousness, you recognise your image in the mirror; but when you are selfless can you grasp what the moon in the water is? Anyway, the point I was more interested in, is that you appreciate that all experiences are like reflections off mirrors; like refractions and fractals in scientific sense. In other words, the moon that we see, is no different from the reflection of the moon in the water. In this context, there are or were just different mirrors in this Brahma Jewelled Net of Mirrored Jewels. In terms of your worldly mind, the 7th Consciousness [or the Self-Ego or Discriminating-Mind Consciousness] and the 8th Consciousness [or the Alaya Consciousness or Storehouse Consciousness], together reflecting the totality of what you see, hear, feel etc., what are they reflecting? The answer our sense of experience! However, if each thought and each experience is transient, is there anything in the subconsciousness of the mind that transcends transience? We can easily discount the worldly mind or the 7th Consciousness [or the Self-Ego or Discriminating-Mind] because we have proven that a mind that changes or discriminates or has self-ego is empty and impermanent. We know that the 7th Consciousness is the source of clinging and grasping and the origin of false self-ego. The 8th Consciousness or Alaya Consciousness through the Self-Ego or Discriminating 7th Consciousness evolves into the 6 empirical sense-consciousnesses. By deduction, through the elimination of any discrimination through the 7th Consciousness, then the 8th Consciousness or Alaya Consciousness, if in its original state, would or must be intrinsically pure, and free from the phenomenal world of samsara? Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 32

Earlier I quoted what Buddha said in the Surangama Sutra [see above] You should also know that when your (absolute) seeing perceives the Essence of Seeing, the former is not the latter, which still differs from it; how can your (false) seeing reach that (absolute) seeing? Using the 3-tier approach, this can be phrased as - See! [False Seeing with the Senses and the Mind], See Beyond! [the Essence of Seeing], See Beyond the Beyond! [Absolute Seeing]. Now, let us combine this with the 3-tier approach that we have formatted for the Bodhisattva Maitreyas Consciousness Only Doctrine - we then have - See! [False Seeing with the Senses and the Mind] = [worldly mind], See Beyond! [the Essence of Seeing] = [7th Consciousness or the Self-Ego or Discriminating-Mind], See Beyond the Beyond! [Absolute Seeing] = [8th Consciousness or Alaya Consciousness]. We now have to investigate this Alaya Consciousness that might be mistaken for a self or soul; and by deduction the Absolute Seeing or Ultimate Reality, i.e. if it were not mistaken for a self or soul. This Alaya Consciousness has at the same time the potential for both samsara and nirvana. There is in this Alaya Consciousness, an aspect that is transient reflection, but also, at the same time, an aspect that is unchanging reflectivity that is unbiased, impartial, non-discriminating and truly independent in its equanimity. This reflectivity reflects the reflections of the transient fleeting experience, good or bad. This reflectivity is something aside from and independent of the 5 senses that makes up the wilful, fickle, monkey of the worldly mind, and the Discriminating SelfEgo of the 7th Consciousness. It is this reflectivity that is unbiased, impartial, nondiscriminating and truly independent in its equanimity that is your portal to understanding the Emptiness of Ultimate Reality! We will take a break to contemplate. Take note! All references to meditation or contemplation or reflection and other Buddhist cultivation and practice come down to this portal of reflectivity in your Alaya Consciousness, in the inner recesses of your transient impermanent mind! In your stream of continuing existences of experiences, this reflectivity is moving along as a backdrop in the stream, not born and yet not not born, neither defiled nor pure! Think and wonder! This reflectivity is unborn, uncreated, non-abiding, non-participating, non-increasing, non-decreasing, non-clinging, nongrasping, non-judgmental, it is selfless! It is thusness of no self-consciousness! It is what it is; but is not self-conscious of what it is! Thus in the Alaya Consciousness, we have reflectivity itself which is innate and still and non-abiding and unconditional and not subject to coming or going or causes and conditions; and, also the reflecting or the reflections of the monkey of the worldly mind and the Discriminating SelfEgo of the 7th Consciousness. It is in the latter sense that the Alaya Consciousness is the Storehouse Consciousness. Note that it does not store in the storing sense, but in the reflecting or reflection sense; the causes and conditions once triggered are reflected or deflected in like in the Law of Newtonian Physics of action and reaction, of the Vincent Cheok 2011 Page 33

balls on a snooker table; until the energy is expended, in this spiritual context the karmic energy or karmic residue. This thin veil like demarcation line between the Ultimate Reality of reflectivity and the perceived reality of karmic reflections bouncing off mirrors, can be best understood by referring to Chuan Tzus Butterfly Dream. The Ultimate Reality of the reflectivity is like the kaleidoscope instrument or entity or person or God or the Transcendental Buddhas or whatever that is sleeping in quiet repose and not abiding in anything. The perceived Karmic Reality is like in having a dream and being in that dream; albeit the perceived real reflections, are being [adverbial sense] like the kaleidoscopic mandalas of the sleeping kaleidoscope! The reflections within this dream dimension, that are self-oriented, persist in the world of samsara, i.e. the world of the immutable Law of Karma or Cause or Effect; and in which the Terrestrial Buddhas also appear. I reiterate that Cause and Effect is just the causes and conditions of karmic experience, no more than a spiritual version of bouncing balls in snooker! In the selfless dimension of this dream you have the world of the Buddhist Pure Lands, like Amitabha Buddha Western Pure Land [a bit like a Catholic Purgatory] and the Celestial Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, like Avalokitevara or Guanyin and Manjushri [Bodhisattva of Wisdom]. Well, that is it Julie! There is nothing more that I can add as a humble lay Buddhist. All I can say is that if you fully understand these tutorials you can start reading any and all the Buddhist scriptures in total confidence. That is my assurance or guarantee. Why? You might ask? How can I give this assurance? Trust me! The moon will now appear brighter, be more significant and will be more profound. You will not be the same anymore, when you see a flag fluttering in the wind, when you hear the waves splashing on the seashore, when you see a man with one arm, when the lights go out in the cinema before the film starts, when you see a butterfly, when you see a patch of cow dung; and most of all when you dream. There is no Enlightenment and never claim Enlightenment! Why? Ask yourself whether you still dream? You can never be enlightened when you still dream. Buddhas never dream. That is the true awareness and non-abiding and non-moving. That is why all comes down to - Morality [Good begets Good and Bad begets Bad], Meditation [Concentration, Willpower] and Wisdom [No Delusion, No ignorance]. So if you now know that in Ultimate Reality there are no living beings or [terrestrial or celestial] Buddhas and no birth and no death; and that rebirths and sufferings of samsara are only in the perceived karmic dream dimension; why should you have any fear? Just have the Wisdom to Meditate or Concentrate on your Morality to reach the Nirvana of End of Sufferings!

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Vince Cheok

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