In talking about Buddhism in past seminars, I explained that it's absolutely fundamental
 to an understanding of Buddhism to recognize that its whole method of teaching is dialectic.
 That is to say, it consists of a dialogue between a teacher and a student. And the method
 of this dialogue is called upaya, that is to say, skillful means used by the teacher
 to bring about the enlightenment of the student. The word upaya meaning expert pedagogy in
 teaching but meaning deceit when used in a political context. And since Buddhism is a
 dialogue, what you ordinarily understand as the teachings of Buddhism are not the teachings
 of Buddhism, they are simply the opening gambit or the opening process of this dialogue. And
 the point being that Buddhism is not a teaching. Its essence consists in a certain kind of
 experience in a transformation of consciousness which is called awakening or enlightenment
 which involves our seeing through or transcending the hoax of being a separate ego. And so a
 Buddhist does not have the same tendency that a Christian has to want to find out what his
 faith is by going back to the most original sources. There has always been a tendency
 in Christianity to ask what did Jesus really teach? What is the pure New Testament? Uncorrupted
 by theologians and by scribes who inserted things into the mouth of the master. It does
 not occur to Buddhists to have this attitude because of this dialectic pattern. You see
 when you have an acorn, if it's a lively acorn, it grows into an oak and that's the way it
 should be. In other words, it should develop into something. And so Buddhism as it has
 developed since the days of the Buddha has gone a long way. It has become sometimes more
 complex, sometimes more simple. But it has changed radically because the seed which the
 Buddha planted was alive. Now for example, when we ask what are the Buddhist scriptures,
 you can get two answers to that question. In the Southern school there is a set of scriptures
 which are written in the Pali language, divided into three sections called the Tipitaka, which
 means the three baskets, because these palm leaf manuscripts on which the sutras were
 eventually written down were of course carried around in baskets. And three baskets of these
 palm leaf manuscript volumes comprise the Buddhist scriptures. But you must remember
 that in the evolution of these scriptures that the Buddha wrote nothing, nor did his
 immediate disciples. That's a very important thing to remember, that all Indian scriptures
 were for many centuries handed down orally. And so we have no clear guide as to their
 dates. Because when you hand down an oral tradition, you are not always likely to preserve
 certain historical landmarks. Supposing we're talking about a certain king, and the name
 of this king will mark a historical point. But in an oral tradition, the name of the
 king is likely to be changed every time the story is told, to correspond to the king then
 gaining. So in other words, things that do change, that have a historical rhythm like
 a succession of kings, they will be changed in handing down the oral tradition. But things
 that do not change, that is to say the essential principle of the doctrine, they won't be altered
 at all. So you must remember that the Buddhist scriptures were for some hundreds of years
 handed down orally before they were ever committed to writing. And that accounts for their monotonous
 form. That is why everything is numbered, why there are four noble truths, eight steps
 of the eightfold path, ten fetters, five skandhas, four brahma-viharas or meditation states, and
 so on and so on. Everything is put in numerical lists so as to be memorized easily. And so
 there are formulae which are constantly repeated, and this is supposed to aid the memory. Now
 then, it is obvious that those scriptures of the Pali Canon, when you really sit down
 and read them, you know that what has happened here is that partly they have a certain monotony
 due to mnemonic aids, but also that in the course of time before they were written down,
 many monks spent wet afternoons adding to them, and adding things in such a style that
 no inspired person could ever have said them. And they made commentaries upon commentaries
 upon commentaries, and lots of them had no sense of humor. I always loved the passage
 where the Buddha is giving instructions on the art of meditation, and he's describing
 a number of things on which one could concentrate. And there's a commentator making little notes
 on this, and so when he's made his list of things on which you could concentrate, like
 a square drawn on the ground, or the tip of your nose, or a leaf, or a stone, or anything,
 and then he says, "Or on anything!" And the commentator puts footnote, "But not any wicked
 thing." I mean, that's professional clergy for you.
 Well over. So this sort of thing has obviously happened. But you must remember that this
 is not, this accumulation, this attribution of one's own writings to the Buddha, is not
 done in a dishonest way. It would be dishonest today, with our standards of literary historicity
 and correctness. It would be very wrong of me to forge a document and pretend that it
 was written by some very venerable person, say by Dr. Suzuki or by Goethe. But centuries
 ago, both in the West and in the East, it was considered quite immoral to publish any
 book of wisdom under your own name, because you personally were not entitled to the possession
 of this knowledge. And that is why you always put on any book of wisdom the name of the
 real author, that is to say, the person who inspired you. So in this way it is highly
 doubtful if the book of the wisdom of Solomon, at least it's not only doubtful but it's perfectly
 certain that Solomon never wrote it, but that it was attributed to Solomon because Solomon
 was an archetype of the wise man. So in the same way, when for centuries various
 Buddhist monks and scholars wrote all kinds of sutras, scriptures, and ascribed them to
 the Buddha, they were being properly modest. They were saying, "These doctrines are not
 my doctrines. They are the doctrines that proceed from the Buddha in me, and therefore
 they should be ascribed to Buddha." And so over and above the Pali Canon, there is an
 enormous corpus of scriptures written originally in Sanskrit and subsequently translated into
 Chinese and Tibetan. We have very inadequate manuscripts of the original Sanskrit, but
 we have very complete Chinese and Tibetan translations. And so it is primarily from
 Chinese and Tibetan sources that we have the Mahayana Canon of the scriptures, over and
 above the Theravada Canon, which is written in the Pali language. Pali is a softened form
 of Sanskrit, whereas in Sanskrit one says nirvana, in Pali one says nibbana. Sanskrit
 says karma, Pali says kamma. Sanskrit says dharma, Pali says dhamma. It's a very similar
 language but it's softer in its speech, articulation. Now it's a general feeling among scholars
 of the West that the Pali scriptures are closer to the authentic teachings of the Buddha than
 the Sanskrit ones. And so with our Christian background and approach to scriptures in general,
 the West has built up a very strong, you might say, prejudice in favor of the authenticity
 of the Theravada tradition as against the Mahayana tradition. Whereas the Mahayanists
 put it this way, they say that they have a hierarchy of scriptures, one for very simple-minded
 people, the next they have about four grades, going progressively to the scriptures for
 the most intelligent people. And they say that the Buddha preached that to his intimate
 disciples first, and then slowly as he reached out from the most intimate group to others,
 he came down to what is now the Pali Canon, as the scriptures for the biggest dunderheads.
 But that, the ones that he preached first, were not revealed until long, long after his
 death. So they have no difficulty in making a consistent story about the fact that the
 scriptures in Sanskrit represent a level of the historical evolution of Buddhist ideas
 that from our point of view could not possibly have been attained in the Buddha's lifetime.
 But you see, they say, though the latest revealed was actually the first taught to the in-group.
 Well, you've got to make allowances for these differences in points of view, and not entirely
 project Western standards of historical and documentary criticism onto Buddhist scriptures,
 because as I said, it is in the essence of Buddhism to be a developing process, because
 it is a dialogue. So then, you can see the initial steps of the dialogue in our earliest,
 or presumed earliest, records of Buddhism, in the Four Noble Truths, where you have it
 put out that the problem which Buddhism faces is suffering. This word "dukkha", which we
 translate "suffering", is the opposite of "sukha". Sukha means what is sweet and delightful.
 Dukkha means the opposite, what is bitter and frustrating. And Mahayanists will explain
 that the Buddha always taught by a dialectical method, that is to say, when people were trying
 to make the goal of life the pursuit of sukha, that is to say, the pursuit of happiness,
 he counteracted this wrong view by teaching that life is essentially miserable. When people
 thought, for example, that there is a permanent and eternal self in each one of us, and clung
 to that self, the Buddha, in order to counteract this one-sided view, taught the other extreme
 doctrine that there is no fixed self in us, no ego. But a Mahayanist would always say,
 the truth is the middle way. Neither sukha nor dukkha, neither ātman nor anātman, self
 nor non-self. The whole point is like this. Once when R. H. Blythe was asked by some students,
 do you believe in God? He answered, if you do, I don't. If you don't, I do. And so in
 much the same way, all Buddhist pedagogics, teaching, is specifically addressed not to
 people in general, but to the individual who brings a problem. And wherever he seems to
 be over-emphasizing things in one way, the teacher over-emphasizes in the opposite way,
 so as to arrive at the middle way. So then, with this emphasis on life is suffering, it's
 simply saying, this is the problem we're dealing with. We hurt. We human beings feel pretty
 unfairly treated, because we are born into a world so arranged that the price that we
 pay for enjoying it, that is to say, for having sensitive bodies, is that these bodies are
 at the same time, because they are sensitive, capable of the most excruciating agonies.
 Isn't that a nasty trick to play on us? What are we going to do about it? This is the problem.
 So then when the Buddha says, "The cause of suffering is desire," trishna is our word
 thirst, and may perhaps be translated desire in a very general sense, or perhaps better,
 craving, clinging, grasping, something like that. He is saying, now, I'm going to make
 this suggestion. You suffer because you desire. Now supposing then you try not to desire,
 and see if by not desiring you can cease from suffering. Or you can put the same thing in
 another way. You can say to a person, "It's all in your mind. There is nothing either
 good or ill, but thinking makes it so." And therefore, if you can control your mind, you've
 nothing else that you need control. For example, you don't need to control the rain if you
 can control your mind. If you get wet, it's only your mind that makes you think it's uncomfortable
 to be wet. A person who's got good mental discipline can be perfectly happy wandering
 around in the rain. You don't need a fire if you've got good mind control, because if
 you've got ordinary bad mind control, when it gets cold, you start shivering. That's
 because you're putting up a resistance to the cold. You're fighting it. But don't fight
 it. Relax to the cold. And in other words, this is a matter of mental attitude, and then
 you'll be fine. Always control your mind. This is another way of approaching it, you
 see. Now then, as soon as the student begins to experiment with these things, he finds
 out that it's not so easy as it sounds. Not only is it very difficult not to desire, not
 only is it very difficult to control your mind, but there's something phony about the
 whole business. And this is what you're intended to discover. That namely, when you try to
 eliminate desire in order to escape from suffering, you desire to escape from suffering. You are
 desiring not to desire. In other words, I'm not merely playing with logic. I'm saying
 that a person who is escaping from reality will always feel the terror of it. It'll be
 like the hound of heaven that pursues him. And he's escaping in a way, even when he's
 trying not to escape. And it was this point, you see, that this method of teaching was
 supposed to educate from you, to draw out from you. Not by saying to anybody all this
 in the first place, but by making the experiment not to desire, or the experiment to control
 your mind thoroughly. This is the first step. To understand this, you must go through that,
 or some equivalent of it. So as to come to the point where you see you are involved in
 a vicious circle, that in trying to control your mind, the motivation, the reason for
 which you are doing it, is still clinging and grasping. There's still self-protection,
 is still lack of trust and love. So when this is understood, the student returns to the
 teacher and says, "Look, this is my difficulty. I cannot eliminate desire, because that itself,
 my effort to do so, is itself desire. I cannot eliminate selfishness, because my reasons
 for wanting to be unselfish are selfish." As one of the Chinese Buddhist classics puts
 it, "When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way." Now
 the right means are all the traditional disciplines, and you're going to use them, you see. You're
 going to practice Zazen or whatever, and make yourself into a Buddha. But you see, if you're
 not a Buddha in the first place, you can't become one, because you'll be the wrong man.
 You're using the right means, but because you're using them for a selfish intent, or
 a fearful intent, you're afraid of suffering and you don't like it and you want to get
 out of it, you want to escape. All these, you see, are the motivations which frustrate
 the right means. So one is meant to find that out. And so then, in the course of time, when
 all this was thoroughly explored by the Buddha's disciples, there developed a very evolved
 form of this whole technique of dialectic, which was called Madhyamika, M-A-D-H-Y-A-M-I-K-A.
 It means "the middle way." But it was a form of Buddhist practice and instruction developed
 by Nagarjuna, N-A-G-A-R-J-U-N-A, who lived approximately in 200 A.D.
 Nagarjuna's method is simply an extension and drawing to logical conclusions of the
 method of dialogue that already existed, except that Nagarjuna took it to an extreme. And
 his method is simply this. To undermine, to cast doubts on, any proposition to which his
 student will cling. To destroy all intellectual formulations and all concepts of the nature
 of reality or the nature of the self whatsoever. Now, you might think that that was simply
 a parlour game, a little intellectual exercise, but if you engaged in it, you would find it
 was absolutely terrifying. And you would feel yourself brought very close to the verge of
 madness, because a skilful teacher in this method reduces you to a shuddering state of
 total insecurity. I have watched this being done among people
 you would consider perfectly ordinary, normal Westerners, who thought they were getting
 involved in just a nice abstract intellectual discussion. But then finally the teacher,
 as the process goes on, discovers in the course of the discussion what are the fundamental
 premises to which every one of his students is clinging. What is the foundation of sanity?
 What do you base your life on? And when he has found out what that is for each student,
 he destroys it. He shows you that you can't found a way of life on that. That it leads
 you into all sorts of inconsistencies and foolishness. And the student turns back to
 the teacher and says, "Well, it's all very well for you to pull out all the carpets from
 under my feet. What would you propose instead?" And the teacher says, "I don't propose anything."
 He's no fool. He doesn't put up something to be knocked down. But you see, here are
 you. If you don't put up something to be knocked down, then you can't play ball with a teacher.
 And you may say, "Well, I don't need to." Then on the other hand, there's something
 nagging you inside telling you you do. And so you go and play ball with him and he keeps
 knocking it down. Whatever you propose, whatever you cling to. And this exercise produces in
 the individual a real traumatic state. People get acute anxiety. And you wouldn't think
 so because it's just seen as if it were nothing more than a discussion on a very intellectual
 and abstract level. But when it really gets down to it and you find that you don't have
 a single concept you can really trust, it's the heebie-jeebies. But you are preserved
 from insanity by the discipline, by the atmosphere set up by the teacher, and by the fact that
 he seems perfectly happy without anything in the way of a concept to cling on to. And
 the student looks at him and says, "He seems to be all right. Maybe I can be all right
 too." And this gives a certain confidence, a certain feeling that all is not mad because
 as the teacher, in his own way, is perfectly normal.


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.63 sec
Decoding  : 1.61 sec
Transcribe: 2359.49 sec
Total Time: 2361.73 sec