The Saturday morning discussions for LFBCS students started again at 9:00 am, January 21, 2023, on the title of the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra with the third of many sessions on “Prajna,” one of the most important and central features of the entire sutra. We started the questions for Lesson 4 on the three kinds of prajna and will continue at the same time on January 28. This is a long and dense part of the text that generated considerable discussion and will probably requiring more sessions.
Using Nagarjuna’s Commentary on the Prajna Paramita Sutra, the Maha-Prajna-Paramita Sastra, we studied the preliminary translation that the temple has of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III’s Imparting the Absolute Truth through the Heart Sutra. We know that all people have Buddha Nature or the dharmakaya or mind of the Tathagatas and we also know that we cannot use that mind because it is covered by our karmic hindrances that we have created out of our ignorance since beginningless time. We are studying our Buddha Master’s teaching on how we can escape our ignorance and realize the true essential nature of the Buddhas and leave samsara. We want this so that we can help all other living beings also achieve liberation and we learn that we must first focus on our own cultivation so as to become good persons who can realize the truth of prajna. We will continue our study next Saturday, by learning the basic concepts and principles that must be known to achieve our goals of freedom and how to manifest the principles of intrinsic-reality prajna and not fall in to the frightening state of either of the two extremes.
However, before we go deeper, we will look at the major aspect of our Mahamudra of Liberation practice, the “Shifting the Mind” practice. Anyone attending next Saturday’s session is asked to take a fresh look at our Buddha Master’s The Supreme and Unsurpassable Mahamudra of Liberation as we will share our practice and insight into that powerful Dharma. Please read or listen to the “Verses Explaining Phenomena” part of The Supreme and Unsurpassable Mahamudra of Liberation. Remember that the Buddha Master tells us to “Apply the Shifting the Mind Practice to fathom the meaning of every sentence of the Verses Explaining Phenomena. Understand, penetrate, and deeply examine the verses. If your ability to realize and awaken is insufficient to comprehend the Verses Explaining Phenomena, then in your daily life you should help your karmic conditions by adding to your study the Commentary on the Heart Sutra by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, composed of more than 300,000 Chinese characters; the Mind-Ground Dharma Method; A Monk Expounds the Absolute Truth to a Layperson; and the Sutra on Definitive Truth. Apply the Shifting the Mind Practice to comprehend these texts and gain a more experiential understanding. Surely and naturally, you will experience unlimited beneficial effects from it.” The Commentary on the Heart Sutra mentioned here formed the foundation for the Buddha Master’s Imparting the Absolute Truth through the Heart Sutra.
Those who are enrolled in either the Buddhist Studies or Xiuxing Seminary programs can still register for the class and watch videos of today’s and other sessions as well as download all the questions for DCB121 “Imparting the Absolute Truth through the Heart Sutra: Forwards, Introductions, & Title.” Please note that the questions for Lesson 4 have been revised to include more questions and revise a few of the ones we had. We will also revisit the last few questions from last week concerning the role that “language” plays in realizing emptiness even though we now know that “anything expressed with language is devoid of prajna” and realizing prajna is essential to everything else. Understanding this part of the text is very important for us to be able to probe even deeper.
January 14, 2023: for article on Lesson 3B (140-156) and HERE for recording of that class.
January 07, 2023: for article on Lesson 3A (118-139) and HERE for recording of that class.
December 17, 2022: for article on Lesson 2 (82-117) and HERE for the recording of that class.
December 10, 2022: for article on Lesson 1 (54-81) and HERE for the video recording of that class.
December 03, 2022: for article on Lesson 0B (28-53) and HERE for the video recording of that class.
November 26, 2022: article on 0A (1-27) and HERE for the video recording of that class.
November 21, 2022: for earlier article introducing Lesson 0A.
I am continuing to work on the new course, “C41-Three Principal Stages or Paths of Buddhist Practice,” which I hope to have ready very soon. I have found that this is very helpful in penetrating the meaning of the prajna material. I have created a graphic to show how Je Tsongkapa understood the paths and their progression and linked it to some of the teachings of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III on these topics–at least the ones that we have preliminary translations available for. CLICK to view.
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