On Top of Mt. Lanka...

 ....With Ravana king, We listened to Buddha and Mahamati.

      They spoke of perceptions, that come from the mind 

      All kind of things, leaving other paths behind

      Mahamati asked questions, 'bout one hundred and eight

     When Buddha answered, world views did abate

      Red Pine did the translate from manuscripts three

      He stuck with Gunabhadra, before Bodhidharmeee

     Heard the Northern School,  Called him first Patriarch

     Surely such a thing stings r/zen's zenly heart

     Now here is the end of this poem you see

     Let's take a walk, have a talk with Lankavatareee 

 

     (i hope you sang that to On top of Spaghetti)

    I have been gone a little while. Bet no one missed me. I am unmissable. I have been messing around with the twitter stuff. Got caught up in all kinds of mean and nasty things to study and look at and see thru and all kinds of mental places to go visit.

Was fun.  Got boring. Got interrupted when I started to pick up the Lanka with some glint of seriousness.  I started about four weeks ago voice chatting once a week with someone from these illustrious halls, we are going thru this sutra. But I have been fairly dis-diligent. See I had somethings to work out by letting go of. And I think these things are the kinds of stuff that Buddha talks about.

  I really enjoy reading the sutras that I have so far looked at, I like the notion of this was a Buddha...a clear mind expressing it's explanation about how it's mind works.  Sometimes I feel like it is a bunch of  illogical couplets.  "There is no self because if there was a self then the realization that there is no self could not happen...." I mean something like that makes me wonder if it is a word con.

But then sometimes I stare at it long enough and I almost understand it like it was my own language.

My weekly study partner always wants to put  a zen master quote to it but  that losses me some. I read the words as zen master words breaking the non-it down into tiny pieces, where the zen master is the instant short and  snappy sweet version.  I don't know how to add a Foyan verse to Buddha explaining that all views are projections.They are saying the same thing.  I wonder if reading Sutras is what it would sound like to hear Foyan giving a dharma lecture. 

 I hope to make some posts occasionally as I go thru these Sutras, and attempt to focus on various moments that appeal to either some personal event or to garner insight and appropriate ZM quote finding group effort for broadening of discussion, or correction. But that is up to us. Here is an interesting section from the first chapter. The People and the Kings had just collectively witnessed the appearance of the buddha and all the buddha lands. But then it vanished.

38. And after they had spoken / these buddhas and
bodhisattvas vanished / only Ravana the yaksha remained /
standing inside his palace

 
39. He wondered what really happened / who spoke just now and who listened /      who saw and what was seen /and where did those cities and buddhas go:

40. ”Where did those cities go / those radiant
buddhas, those sugatas / were they a dream or an illusion /
or were they the work of gandharvas

41. Were they the result of cataract eyes / or was
what I saw a mirage / dream children of a barren woman /
the smoke and flames from a wheel of fire?

 
42. Such is the nature of things / the realm of nothing
but mind / this is something the foolish don’t know /
bewildered by false projections

 
43. There is no seer or anything seen / no speaker or
anything spoken / the appearance of buddhas and also
their teachings / are merely what we imagine

   44. Those who view such things as real / they don’t
see the Buddha / nor do those who imagine nothing / only
those who transform their existence    

        

         My name is IZM and I have a problem with adopting world views. It started the day I was born, but I only became responsible for it in my teens. You might not believe it but worldviews can be switched out like outfits. They can because they are not reality. They are the lens thru which you view reality, or translate it to yourself. I think that is somewhat of the thing Buddha is talking about in verse 44.  To transform your existence, that not viewing things as real and not imagining there is nothing, leaves you with the original  non-programmed mind.

        So what then would be the appearances of all that groovy stuff? Is it like a worldview?  A story or presentation of information that seems to cause all things to cascade into sensible understanding. One which in turn causes an altered mental relation to the projections one gives and receives. It can have many outcomes. It can be wonderful and full of truth, and fear, and plots. But it is the same as a mirage and not the original mind. So the reality is not like any of the projections we subject ourselves to. That is why the other paths, religions, philosophies cannot  get free from the projection or the having of the Worldviews. Because they become the happening of their projections. Think Part of the ship/Part of the crew.

It is like using the world view to define the internal self in relation to the "reality" presented or accepted. But the internal self  is....well here the Buddha will later on explain how it is not a self anyway so how could it be bound to any worldview. But I think that is later in the book.

Anyway. This is sorta how I tend to break things down. I told another user that I am not a translator that is a half truth I am desirous to paraphrase, is that not a form of translation?

As I mused over this first chapter I got to thinking how it is nearly like a manual on how to not get brainwashed. How to notice the subtle little place where you can tell that your own self view, being originally independent, is being encroached upon by the external. (or internal for that matter)

I also enjoyed this verse. 

" Who sees that the habit-energy of projections of the
beginning-less past is the cause of the three realms and who
understands that the tathagata stage is free from projections or
anything that arises, attains the personal realization of buddha
knowledge and effortless mastery over their own minds"

Well Alrighty then, I am not sure what more to say at this time. 

Thank you for reading. And tell me your favorite bits. Mind you, I am hardly familiar with only the first three chapters and ima wanna chew on them a while before I pick up the next one.

Oh Ps, I almost forgot, In chapter two there are the 108 questions of MahaMati. My initial take about them was this person has just stepped into the buddha zone, his mind was all in the oh ahh eee with this chance to ask some questions.  It is like what would you ask, how could you get your whole meaning in there? Do you really want to know or do you really just want to make sure that the Buddha knows?

Listen to the Zen Masters right, what is Buddha?  So, if you could ask Buddha questions, what is it that you really want to know? I tend to think of the questions as like those of a young child.

They don't want to know the science really. They want to build faith that what ever it is they want to know, it is known already by mom and dad.