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the Awakening of Faith says

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the Buddha and you are using the same mind

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last episode we finished the Lankavatara Sutra

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and left one question open

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if every seed in the alaya consciousness were purified

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and all the projections stopped

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what would be left

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the Lankavatara Sutra never answered that

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it only pointed in a direction

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the treatise we read today

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answers it for us

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hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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today we talk about the Awakening of Faith

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note this

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it is not a sutra

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it is a treatise

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a sutra is spoken by the Buddha

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a treatise is written by later thinkers

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first something interesting

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the author of this treatise

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is traditionally listed as Ashvaghosha

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an Indian master of the second century

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even earlier than Nagarjuna

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but in modern times

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the Japanese scholar Mochizuki Shinko first raised doubts

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later Paul Demieville and Walter Liebenthal did extensive research

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and found it was probably not written by an Indian

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but produced in China itself

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Paramartha supposedly translated a Sanskrit original in the year five fifty

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but that Sanskrit original has never been found

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this caused a real debate among Buddhist scholars

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some people feel

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that if it did not come from India

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its authority is diminished

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but my own view is the opposite

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whether an idea is right

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does not depend on the passport of the person who wrote it

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a math theorem does not change truth value with the nationality of who found it

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this treatise has circulated in China for almost fifteen hundred years

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and shaped the foundations of Huayan Chan and Tiantai

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Master Fazang wrote a full commentary on it

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if what it said were wrong

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fifteen hundred years of testing would have discarded it

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so today we will not fuss about who wrote it

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we only look at what it actually says

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what it says

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can be boiled down to four words

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one mind two gates

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let me start with an analogy

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have you ever gone diving in the sea

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once in Okinawa

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in the first seconds after I dove under

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I noticed something

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above the surface

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the wind and waves were strong

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the water kept churning

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but once I sank down

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about three or four meters

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everything went quiet

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it was still the same water

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but above it moves

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and below it is still

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the Awakening of Faith says

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your mind is like this too

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it is one mind

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but it has two gates

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the first is the gate of suchness

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the second is the gate of arising and ceasing

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what does the gate of suchness mean

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it means your mind has an aspect

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that neither arises nor ceases

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neither increases nor decreases

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is neither defiled nor pure

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whether you are happy or in pain right now

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whether you are meditating or scrolling your phone

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that aspect is always there

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and has never been damaged

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think of it as the depth of the sea

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no matter what storm blows on the surface

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the water below three meters never really moves

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this is the tathagatagarbha

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in its most distilled form in this treatise

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the second gate

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the gate of arising and ceasing

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means your mind has another aspect

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this aspect never stops changing

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thoughts pop up one after another

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emotions turn over like weather

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your likes dislikes judgments expectations

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are arising and ceasing every moment

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this aspect is where our old friend lives

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the alaya consciousness

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if you watched the two Lankavatara episodes

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you will remember

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it said tathagatagarbha and alaya are not two things

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but it said so rather indirectly

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like pointing at the moon and saying look that way

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the Awakening of Faith did something bolder

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it drew the whole structure out

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one mind

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two gates

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the two gates are not two different minds

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not one good and one bad system

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but two aspects of the same mind

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like waves on the surface and stillness at the bottom

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it is the same water

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the first time I read this

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I had a very strong feeling

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the concepts tangled together in the Lankavatara Sutra

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tathagatagarbha alaya awakening and nonawakening

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were like a knot of thread

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the Awakening of Faith spread them all out

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into a perfectly clear map

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let me use a modern analogy

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you have used noise canceling headphones right

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you put them on

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you turn on the noise canceling

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and the noise around you disappears

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but did the noise really disappear

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no

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the noise is still there

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you just cannot hear it

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what you hear is quiet

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that quiet is not nothing

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that quiet is what remains after the headphones filter the noise out

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now flip the metaphor around

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the gate of suchness is that quiet always there

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the gate of arising and ceasing is the noise

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thoughts emotions desires fears all mental activity

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your daily experience is all noise

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not because the quiet does not exist

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but because you never turned the noise canceling on

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practice

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is learning to press that button

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now you may have a question

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if suchness is always there

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why have I never felt it

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why is my head full of thoughts

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the Awakening of Faith answers with one word

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nonawakening

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nonawakening does not mean you are stupid

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or that you have not practiced enough

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it is a structural kind of covering

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this treatise describes a very fine process

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it says

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upon suchness

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there is a first movement

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this movement is called ignorance

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ignorance is not a separate force attacking you

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it is suchness itself stirring on the side of arising and ceasing

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just as seawater naturally raises waves

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no outside force is needed to push it

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once that movement starts

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it is like dominoes

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unfolding link by link

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the Awakening of Faith maps this unfolding in extreme detail

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first come three very subtle shifts

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the treatise calls them the three subtle marks

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the first is the mark of activity

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that first tiny stirring

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you cannot even notice it happening

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the second is the mark of the perceiver

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that stirring becomes an act of seeing a subject appears

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there is now a sense of someone looking

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the third is the mark of the perceived

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the object being seen appears an object arises

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there is now a world that is being seen

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did you notice

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subject and object do not appear at the same time

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first there is movement

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then there is seeing

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and only then the thing being seen

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this is the exact opposite of how it feels

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we assume the world is there first

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and then I go look at it

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the Awakening of Faith says it is not like that

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your seeing creates the thing that is seen

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this is the same logic as the seeing part and seen part in Yogacara

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if you watched our episodes on the Samdhinirmocana Sutra and the Cheng Weishi Lun

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you will see a very clear echo here

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then out of these three subtle shifts

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six coarser layers are born

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the treatise calls them the six coarse marks

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starting with discrimination you begin labeling what you see

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good bad liked disliked

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all the way to creating karma and suffering

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the whole engine of samsara

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starts up step by step just like that

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a viewer once asked me

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if we are originally buddhas

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if suchness is already there

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then where did the first delusion come from

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I thought about this for a long time

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at first I also thought it was a logical hole

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later I realized

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the question hides an assumption

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you assume everything must have a starting point

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a beginning implies a cause

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a cause implies a first cause

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but the Awakening of Faith answers

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beginningless

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there is no first cause

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when you dream

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when did the dream begin

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can you point to the first frame of it

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when you wake up and look back

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you can say I had a dream

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but you can never locate the moment it started on a timeline

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because a dream is not an event

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a dream is a state

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while you are in that state

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the dream exists

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when you wake

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the dream no longer exists

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ignorance works the same way

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you do not need to know when it began

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you only need to know how to wake up from the state

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and for that waking process

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the Awakening of Faith drew a very clear route

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it divides awakening into three levels

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the first is original awakening

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original awakening is what is always there behind the gate of suchness

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you do not need to create it

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and you cannot lose it

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it is like the stillness at the sea floor

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no matter how big the waves

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it is always there

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the second is initial awakening

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initial awakening is the first time you see through the waves

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and glimpse the sea floor

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maybe your thoughts stop for a few seconds in meditation

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maybe one evening you watch clouds on the horizon

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with nothing in your mind

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but you are very clearly present

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that presence is not thinking

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it is not emotion

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it is just quietly being there

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that is initial awakening

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then you keep practicing

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every time you wake up inside a thought

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every time you stand steady on a wave of emotion

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without being swept away

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initial and original awakening move a little closer

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until one day

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the two merge completely

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that is the third level

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final awakening

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final awakening is not gaining something new

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it is finally recognizing what was always there

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like someone wandering a long time in a dream

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who suddenly wakes

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and finds he never left the bed

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the relation between these three levels

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I can put in a modern metaphor

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have you ever used an old radio

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you turn the dial

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and it is all static

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but you know the station signal is always in the air

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original awakening is that signal always broadcasting

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whether or not you tune in

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it keeps transmitting

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initial awakening is the first time you hit the right frequency

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a clear voice suddenly comes out of the static

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maybe it is buried again a few seconds later

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but now you know that frequency is real

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final awakening is getting the antenna into the perfect position

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the static is completely gone

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the signal is crystal clear

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the signal never changed

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the antenna was never replaced

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the static simply stopped

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there is a deeper meaning here

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the Awakening of Faith says

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practice is not adding something to the mind

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and not cutting out the bad parts

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practice is letting the waves slowly settle

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the sea does not need repair

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the sea only needs the wind to stop

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when the wind stops completely

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you will find

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the surface looks just like the depths

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the waves are gone

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but the water remains

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and that water

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was the same water all along

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that is what the Buddha and you use the same mind really means

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not that you have potential and can polish yourself into a buddha

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but that

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the very mind you are using right now

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in its suchness aspect

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and the mind of a buddha

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are not different at all

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the only difference is whether waves are present

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now you can understand

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why this treatise had such huge influence in Chinese Buddhism

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Huayan says one is all

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one mind contains all phenomena

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the same underlying structure as one mind two gates

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Chan says point directly at the mind

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see your nature and become a buddha

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you do not need to look outside

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because buddha nature is the gate of suchness

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you only have to push it open

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Tiantai says three thousand worlds in one thought

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a single thought contains three thousand possibilities

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because every thought in the gate of arising and ceasing

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grows on the infinite ground of suchness

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one mind two gates is like an operating system

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and these three schools each ran different apps on it

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and if you think about it

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the Yogacara we covered earlier in this series

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has its place on this map too

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Yogacara spent enormous effort dissecting the arising and ceasing side

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how the eight consciousnesses work

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how the seeds churn

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how imagined clinging produces illusion

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Yogacara took that side apart with extreme precision

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the Awakening of Faith stands higher up

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it says

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after you finish taking that side apart

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do not forget

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there is another side

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that side does not need dissecting

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that side only needs to be seen

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finally I want to share my own experience

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when I meditate

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occasionally for a few seconds

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the thoughts stop

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but awareness stays

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that feeling is hard to describe

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it is not blankness

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it is not falling asleep

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and it is not some blazing mystical experience

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it is just quiet

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like standing three meters underwater

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where you can no longer hear the wind

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I used to make nothing of it

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I thought it was just a random gap

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that thoughts would refill in a few seconds

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after reading the Awakening of Faith

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I started seeing those seconds differently

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maybe it is not an accidental state

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maybe it is the other gate

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opening a crack now and then

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you do not have to believe this

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you only need next time you go quiet

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to notice in the gap between two thoughts

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whether something there is always present

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if you catch a glimpse

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you do not need to do anything

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you do not need to hold on to it

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you do not need to analyze it

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you do not need to label it

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you only need to know it is not an accident

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it is your other gate

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and it was always there

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the ambition of the whole Awakening of Faith

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is really to tell you one thing

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you are not missing anything

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what you are looking for

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has never left you

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it is not in the scriptures

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not in the temples

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not in any faraway place

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it is in the very mind you are using right now

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you have just been walking in and out of the arising and ceasing gate

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forgetting there is another gate to push open

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next episode

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we enter the Surangama Sutra

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it does two things

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first

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it unfolds the landscape behind the gate of suchness seven searches for the mind

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telling you where the mind is

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second

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it gives you a list of fifty illusions on the path

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each one can make you think you have arrived

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I am Leo Wang

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see you next episode