I didn't plan to spend quite so much time on confession when I first started talking about it. Is that a confession? One of the reasons for me talking about it again today, I think, discussing with you again today is because I keep... I keep getting new layers of it. It's a very deep practice, which really keeps impressing me. Thinking about it myself, but also people coming and talking to me about it and unloading and unpackaging other aspects of it that are just so interesting to me that I You know, sometimes could you go really deep?

[01:01]

You sleep deep rather than go far sometimes. So if you can stand, spend more time with me. I also, as I mentioned to someone, I, first, when I was attracted to Zen practice, the word confession had, like, It just wasn't even in my vocabulary, really, as a practice. I didn't see, it just didn't dawn on me that it would be part of Zen practice. I had a very simplistic view of it when I arrived. Basically, it was just sitting. And by developing the sitting practice, one would become, hopefully, a bodhisattva. But the aspect of confession was really The word was not, and when I got to Zen Zen Zen Zen, it didn't appear to me to either.

[02:02]

People weren't talking about confession. After several years of being at Zen Zen Zen, we started to do the Bodhisattva ceremony. But even then, the confession was, you know, just everybody at all age interested karma, chanting together. It didn't really come across as a Is it like daily practice or hourly practice or minute-by-minute practice? But then, you know, at a certain point, Katagiri Roshi said to me one time, he said, I'm really becoming impressed how important confession practice is for Dogen Zenji. And when he said that, I thought, hmm, I was doubly impressed. First, I was impressed that he was impressed. Because it was like, the tone of his mentioning that was like, he was kind of surprised himself to be concerned about this.

[03:08]

Like, he hadn't thought of this. And he, at that time, had been practicing Zen as a priest for, I don't know, maybe at that point, 30 years. And it seemed like a fresh kind of insight. And then I also thought Dogen's energy was really concerned with confession. I didn't know him talking about that that much. And if you look over the ocean of Dogen's teachings, you don't find him talking a lot about confession. But some of the things he says about confession, I'm very strong. And in particular, again, although I was ordained 26 years ago, when I was ordained, somehow the confession power of the ordination didn't really strike home to me. But then as I did more ordinations, I read the ordination ceremonies over and over and over, and it gradually dawned on me that in the ordination ceremony it says, after the confession it says, It says, will you continue this pure practice of confession from now on and even after attaining Buddhahood?

[04:22]

And then the Lord needs to say, yes, I will. I say, what, you know, no problem admitting that, right? Does that mean then that a Buddha would practice confession? Don't we think, I thought, I guess I thought, well, a Buddha wouldn't practice confession because they'd have nothing to confess. Isn't that idea floating around there somewhere? We, non-Buddhas, you know, or we, potential Buddhas, we have things to confess, but would a Buddha have to confess? After attaining Buddhahood, couldn't you stop confessing because you wouldn't have anything to say? So the idea gradually came up in my mind, well, maybe an enlightened person would have something to confess. Maybe enlightenment is not about being perfect and never making any mistakes. Maybe enlightenment is about noticing your mistakes.

[05:24]

Maybe delusion is about making mistakes and not noticing them. Maybe delusion is about thinking you're not making mistakes and having nothing to confess because you're perfect. Maybe that's delusion. And in fact, Dogen says that in the Deja poem. Buddhists are those who are greatly awakened about delusion and not other people's delusion, necessarily. particularly their own, they are awakened in the midst of and about delusion. Not by correspondence course, but actually right in their face. They notice delusion and they are awakened about it. And how do you get awakened about delusion? Well, the first step in getting awakened about delusion is... Well, I don't know if it's the first step, but one step in getting awakened by delusion is to notice it and admit it.

[06:28]

It's hard to look at it and see what it is if you can't admit it. So Buddhists, I gradually came to see, are living in the midst of the world of delusion, but they notice the delusion, they admit the delusion, they see it for what it is, and they wake up to what it is. and waking up to what delusion is is called liberation from delusion. They notice self-delusion. They acknowledge self-delusion. They examine self-delusion. They see self-delusion for what it is, as a delusion, and they wake up from that dream. And there are Buddhas who... Oh, and sentient beings, so that's what a Buddha is. A Buddha is somebody who's awakened about delusion. The topic of thinking of looking at a delusion and they wake up to it. What are sentient beings? What are regular sentient beings, ordinary people?

[07:32]

They are people who have delusions. They're deluded about enlightenment. Buddhists are awakened about delusion. Other people are deluded about awakening. So when we think that we have no problems, this is a delusion about awakening. We think awakening, we think we're perfect. That moment we are what is called ascension being, and we need somebody to save us. And the person who can save us is someone who can help us notice our delusion. And as I also mentioned to you, my experience of people who have really been practicing a long time is they're people who seem to be able to notice their faults and their shortcomings, not people who can't notice them and won't notice them and suggest that they don't have any.

[08:35]

So, in a kind of a, what do you call it, the Buddha way, kind of one way to condense the description of the Buddha way is, again by the ceremony, invoke, call forth from within and without the presence and compassion of all beings. Then, renounce the world. Which means, you know, be upright and stop meddling to what's happening. In other words, develop the kind of attitude by which you can see what's going on. Then, since you can see what's going on now, you will notice that you have something to confess. As soon as you're like... One of the main affairs we have, one of the main worries that I have, is to mess with my experience in such a way as to not notice delusion.

[09:54]

To mess with my experience so that I notice reality. So I walk around all day for seeing realities, right? Because I attribute reality to everything I see. This is how I mess with my experience. I convert my experience, my perceptions into realities. This is called worldly affairs. This is a worldly thing to do, is to make your perceptions into reality. So when you renounce the world, you don't stop that process. You keep thinking that what you think is true. probably continue that, but you renounce. You relinquish that worldly activity. In other words, you renounce your experience, which means you renounce making your experience a reality. So then you can see. And when you see, you only have something to confess. So the next thing is to confess. So renunciation, renouncing worldly affairs, and then confession.

[11:02]

And those two go back and forth. They cycle back and forth. Just let me say the next step. And the next step is, you take refuge in Buddha. Another way to say it is, the next step is, you wake up. So the basic process is, settle yourself. Not settle yourself, and you can settle yourself in a big way. Usually when people first settle themselves, they settle themselves into a little section of themselves, into a tiny little compartment of themselves. They don't settle themselves into their non-virtual, you know, into a recognition of their total activity. They just take a little part of themselves that they can face now, a fairly comfortable, fairly decent aspect of themselves, and they settle there, which is fine, but she's stuck.

[12:03]

But that's not who we are. That's only a little part of ourselves, so you can't wake up from them. What you have to do is take away your blinders by renunciation, and then see yourself. And then admit yourself. And then settle there. Then you've got all the information about yourself. And if you settle there and not running away from that, then when you settle into that, then all you've got to do is Take a slightly different perspective on it and you'll wake up. Just a slight change of perspective and you'll be awakened. And you'll be awakened not about some kind of dream about yourself, not about some kind of nice version of yourself, but the fully confessed human being. That's a very sharp version of Buddhist practice.

[13:06]

And then once awakened, then all these other body self-precepts come in, are immediately manifest, and can be discussed in a path for eternity. But that's basically the whole state right there. Confession. Well, first of all, compassion, renunciation, confession, and wisdom. Okay. Now, there was a question. I was going to ask if Suzuki Roshi ever spoke about compassion to you. Did he? Yeah, like, yeah. He did it. He did confess. Now, here they go. Like I said, at one time, he was walking out. I was the dean of the city center, and he was going out to the movies.

[14:09]

He walked by and confessed that he was going out to the movies and said, I'm going to this other. He told me about what he was going to do. I'm not a great evil, but anyway, he told me. He revealed himself to me. Another time, he had... This is probably some kind of terrible thing, but anyway, he had some fish. He needs some fish. When he lived in Japan, he lived in a fishing town, and he ate plenty of fish while he lived there. I also went out to restaurants with him and had fish with him, but he didn't seem to be And he didn't, I mean, that didn't seem to be such a big issue. But if he did have fish one time, he needs a Ryo Kimbo. He told me that. He confessed that. And he was ashamed of that. And the occasion for confessing it was that he had lost the very whole that he had of fish in.

[15:13]

I was looking all over for it. And he said to me that maybe the reason why he lost it was because he had fish in. And he was a little ashamed of that. And he told me, Anyway, he disclosed a lot of his formulas. Little things, you know. And he would sometimes point out to me... things that he wanted me to work out, so he sometimes confessed to me, just kidding. I also told you one time, I told you some of you that he was going to take a piece of paper, use an envelope, and he wrote these, you know, I think it was five, arrows like this on a piece of paper and then wrote some Chinese character sounds underneath it and he pointed to the tall arrow and he said we don't have this one which he meant we don't have one aspect of our behavior that stands up above the others like you'd be really good at one thing which is again a kind of like a sense of confession you know

[16:35]

You don't like it to be like a really good med-taker. And then forget about that you're not so good as a dishwasher, you're not so good as a husband or a wife, you're not so good as a... You work on all aspects of yourself. That's part of what it is, Pastor Jones, is it brings your consciousness up so that you don't really think that you're so hot anymore in some area. Does that make sense? And then he wrote down an example for me to consider. There's some area that I wasn't working on that he wanted me to work out now. So, yeah, I think he did confess, and again, he confessed to, like, his kids, you know. He spoke to the fuck, but... Alex? I saw the question when you were talking about worldly affairs. Yes. You said that even when you confess that you make your perceptions into reality, that you might sort of leave them.

[17:43]

Yeah, in other words, you might continue to do that thing of converting your perceptions into reality, but you basically see If that's causing you problems, go around thinking what you think is truth. You see it as a problem, so you want to renounce it. That's the same as wanting to renounce your mind. Renounce body and mind. Drop body and mind means drop the meddling to your body and mind. Drop attachment to your body. Thinking that our thoughts are true is an attachment to our truth. We think our thoughts are not attachment to truth, it's attachment to the truth we attribute to our thoughts. So people want to know, what's delusion? And very simplifying delusions, delusions are whatever you can prove. It's not delusion just to perceive blue. But here somebody comes up to me and says,

[18:47]

You know, that's not really blue. And I really think, well, it is blue. I mean, what can I say? I'm right. There's not that much to argue about. It is blue. I mean, of course you could call it some of the names, some of the languages are basically, I know the truth of the color of that thing. That certainty of what I see and what I understand is true. We have that quite often. Those are the delusions. And it isn't that you can stop your mind from perceiving, we don't want to do that, that would be deadly, unhealthy. And it isn't even that you want to stop yourself from attributing reality to things, you just want to give it up and become free. Actually, if you meditate, you will eventually see that your perceptions and the attribution of reality to them actually co-exist, but they're not necessarily both on the left.

[19:56]

You can get to the point where you can see there's my perception of blue and there's the attribution of reality to my perception of blue. And even when you see them as separate, you're liberated. Usually they're confused because we don't look carefully. And actually, even when I hold my hands up like this, if you look at this arrangement from the side, you know, if you look at it like that, then they're compounded, they're confused, you see? But if you look at it from this angle, they're separate. So, even while you're confusing reality, or overlapping reality upon your... perceptions, if you meditate on it, and first of all, if you admit it, and you realize that if you just turn, if you just turn a little bit, or they would turn a little bit, you could see that actually they're separate. That's the key, is that if you can admit it, it can shift, you know, shift and see, oh my God, Blue Jay's talking about these monsters.

[21:01]

I have a perception of them as monsters, but that's not real. that reality at Qur'an was a separate thing. It's just a story about blue jays, that they keep my bag much and that they need to be used up like that. Yes? You know, I've always had trouble with this argument, and I think part of the problem is, your first example, you used the word perception. Yes. And you talked about the color blue. Yes. And that's a visual injury. The second one, you talked about a blue jay being a monster. Yes. To me, that's not a perception, that's an opinion that you formulate. Uh-huh. When someone uses the word perception, I think of the sense perceptions. Odour, sight, hearing. And so this art has always seemed a little slippery to me. How are we really responsible for what we see or what we hear? Or what we feel? What I'm proposing to you is that when I see

[22:14]

When I see that black sweater, I see it as a black sweater, that means I see it as a word. I'm not talking about sense perception. Sense perception I do not know about. Sense perception is unknown to me consciously. It happens all the time, but it's not in the realm of objective knowledge. When I have objective knowledge of the color of your sweater and call it black, it's a concept. It's an opinion. just like the opinion of blue jays are monsters. They're both opinions. So what I'm saying is about opinions, judgments. So when I say perception, I mean conscious, you know, objective perception, which is conceptual. Okay? I'm not talking about sense perception. Because there, since we don't have objective knowledge, we can't attribute reality to it. So that level of perception is free of this of worldly affairs. I want to ask again about this teaching of Buddhas are enlightened about delusion.

[23:27]

Yes. And somehow it's always seemed rather facile, and I would say, sentient beings are deluded about enlightenment. When you said that Buddhas are not perfect, What is their activity? What is their diluted activity? And are there consequences? This is an area that I don't understand. It kind of stops, I should try to stop us from idealizing who it is perhaps, but somehow I get very lost in this area. I don't know if I said that, but I don't want to say Buddha isn't perfect. What I meant to say was, what Paul said was, enlightenment is not about being perfect, enlightenment is about waking up about what's happened. It's about waking up about delusion. All we need to wake up to, all we really need to wake up about is, according to Buddha, all we need to wake up about is delusion.

[24:28]

All the Buddha is concerned with is people suffering. They may suffer because of delusion. So the cause of suffering and delusion. So if you understand delusion, there will be the end of suffering. So awakening is primarily about, not about not having a delusion or craving. First of all, because at some point, if you are caught up in delusion or craving, it's causing suffering. At that point, anyway, you think it's there. And therefore he suffered. At some point, as I said, while the donkey is still there, you have to find a horse. Before the donkey leaves, you have to see that it's a horse. Before the delusion leaves, you have to see that there's nothing to it. It isn't that you see the delusion as enlightenment, you see the delusion as dependently co-arisen.

[25:30]

If you can see how your delusions and your cravings dependently co-arise, then it's suffering a thing. And there are no chronic consequences to that deluded moment or... No, there are. To all the learning moments, there are karmic consequences. It's just that after that, If you then can now see future perceptions, depending on what you call arisen, then it's not that there aren't consequences. Karma is no longer seen, no longer acted upon. You don't want to see the world that way. So in that sense, that practice frees us from karma. It doesn't stop the results from past karma, though. You don't necessarily like... that the past karma still unfolds itself according to its rules. But it is, in a sense, possible that these people who have this insight become like, they become almost like perfect after years of applying this vision to their habits.

[26:40]

So like, you know, So the person actually has to change after their vision changes over the years. But the vision can happen before there's much change in their personality. And in terms of the path of practice, there is this path where you first take Resolution Buddha, really, and your vision changes, you get this different perspective. At that point, we still may have a full set of habits which were accumulated while you still believed in the reality of self. Those habits are still there, which are brought right up to the present level of establishment. And they've been operating under the auspices of self-thinking all those years. But then, and that path where you start to see is called the path of insight. the darshan environment. Then from then on you enter into what's called the bhavana mark, which bhavana means being, bhavana means bring into being.

[27:42]

So then you take your insight and you apply all these habits. So then these habits appear. Okay? These habits appear, these habits appear. You notice them, you confess them, and you see them with your, with your, you know, your refuge out, your Buddha eye, and they drop. They drop. And you bring your insight into being by exposing these habits which have accumulated for a long time. You expose these habits to this vision, you expose these habits to this vision, and gradually you become free of the habits too. So then after a certain point, you look like a different type of person. But when the first person first has insight, they can walk out the door, and this is, you know, Zen stories about this person goes to the Zen teacher, has an insight, and the teacher says, fine. And sometimes the teachers even tell other monks that the person had an insight. And then they watch the person do these things, and they say, how could he have insight and still do these things?

[28:43]

Because the insight does not immediately evaporate these habits. However, the insight can be applied to all these habits. Once you see the emptiness of one thing, you can use that vision to empty everything. But you have to bring, you have to apply it to these individual things, and mostly apply it to your habits. And you can see, oh, I see how that comes together that I do that. So, do you want to have open discussion? Or do you want to be presented with you? Is that right? No?

[29:46]

That's confession, right? Take it from various angles. Yeah, that's confession, right. We're seeing it from a hand angle and admitting that angle. I saw... I saw the video, which I thought was very good. I don't recommend him, but anyway. And fortunately or unfortunately, I can't remember the name of it. But anyway. It's starring one of our great actors, who has never won an Academy Award, Albert Finney. Albert Finney. Albert Finney has done on his own. Deserves one. He deserves one. Maybe he never did one job at Academy Award for that one. He's done so many great jobs. He did a great job in this one, too. He plays classics professor at an English press school. Mr. Browning? Mr. Browning, yeah.

[30:50]

The Browning Affair? Browning version. Browning version. Well, the Browning version. Now I understand the story. The Browning version. Browning version of... of Agamemnon, Aeschylus' play, Agamemnon, the Brownie version, that the boy gave him. Anyway, it's about a classics professor. And he's a person who has a gift of a great love for the classics. And he's being sort of forced into retirement. And... But he has his gift, you know, and he has his genius, which he demonstrates in his classroom. You hear him reading the text and, of course, there's music in the background. Basically, it's so beautiful, this reading he does.

[31:53]

And the boys hate him. And also they are totally, you know, they see the beauty, he shows them the beauty of Elpis, of the classics. Anyway, the climax of the movie is that he's making his parting speech and he starts out by kind of like talking about, you know, he's got his cars and stuff like that. And then finally puts him away and walks down to the podium, along the voice, and says... This was going to be something for you. We're studying classics. This was actually filmed at my school. He was called the Hitler of the Fourth... What? Lower Fifth... He was called the Hitler of the Lower Fifth. The Lower Fifth is a certain level of prep school.

[32:56]

He was called Hitler of the Lower Fifth, and he never told him. He never heard into his face because they were all so afraid of him. His class had very good discipline. And like the rest of the school, they're all over the place, you know, really screwing up everywhere, but it's such a good, his class. And just as he quit, he heard this rumor about him stuff, which he heard him. Anyway, he came down among the boys and he said, you know, after saying how important he thought the class was this way, he said, I tried, you know, I gave my life to teach this, but I failed. Because, you know, I wasn't kind. You know, I deserved the, I deserved being called Hitler in the lower fifth. And he confessed, you know. And he confessed and he confessed. And none of that. But boys, he was a grumpy old man, you know. And these boys helped him. Four boys came to him and tipped him off in various ways to who he was.

[34:03]

And just the great teacher, you know, people went... But when he came down and confessed, he completed the picture of a man... And he confessed, and they didn't disagree with him either. They didn't disagree, no, no, no. They just said, oh, no, no, no, no. Everything he confessed, they said, I think, kind of like, they didn't give God a goal like this, but they saw that he was, he was settling into who he was, and who his thunderous was. The person who retired before him was a great prick-a-star, and they hooted for that guy. They just went nuts for that guy. This was just very solemn appreciation for the whole story. But he was helped, you know. he got reflection to complete his picture of himself.

[35:06]

And he settled into it, and he confessed it. And so it was just a great thing when a person finally becomes himself. And this is very hard for us to do to be ourselves. So he got a lot of help. from the other side of the story, from the boy side. The old man, he got helping boys that have finished the story. So, basically, you know, this taking refuge in Buddha is not something I can do, not something you can do, not something we can do. It's just something that is given to us, that change of perspective happens to us when we're here. And it happens to us all the time, but it really counts when it happens to the whole person rather than a part of the person, a fully confessed person.

[36:07]

So when we fully confess, that itself is redemption, which dawns on us and is realized when the subtle person Just shifts perspective slightly. That's technology, I believe. There's, you know, there's a really, there's, again, I don't recommend this, I do not recommend this, but there's an article in the New Yorker, you know, it's called How to Make a Nazi. No. And it's about this man who tells the story of how he became a neo-Nazi in Germany. And it tells about this horrible situation. There are Nazis in Germany now. And they're doing Nazi stuff, just like, you know. They're doing regular, they're doing the same stuff they did in 1920.

[37:08]

They're doing it now. And he talks about how he became one. And he talks, and he confesses the stuff he did. The point I want to bring your attention to is that the thing that saved him was he spent some time with a French journalist. Filmmaker. Filmmaker. And so he was telling this, he was confessing, he was telling this filmmaker you know, about the thing and making a film about the movement, right? And he was professing to this guy. I don't know what this guy was doing, but basically this guy was listening, you know, and mirroring him. But still, you know, he was coming back at a slightly different angle.

[38:10]

And he started to see himself through that mirror a little bit. And he started to see how totally ridiculous what he was doing was. Ridiculous, to say the least. Ridiculous. But beyond being cruel, because he wanted to be cruel. Beyond being cruel, just ridiculous, cowardly, etc. Through that reflection. Through that change of perspective of seeing himself from the outside. He was in his little group, you know, this little hate group. hate Jews, [...] you know. He's in here in all this, you know, feeding on hate Jews, hate Jews. And then step outside and look at it to see how ridiculous it is, you know. Being in East Berlin, right, communist East Berlin, hate Jews, hate Jews, hate Jews, in the dark, you know. Can't go to West Berlin even, right? Hate, hate, hate, little, little inside, that kind of world, you know. Then he went to Paris, you know, and walked around to Paris, you know, where there's Arabs, Jews, blacks, Vietnamese, white, green, all these different people mixing together.

[39:23]

When you go to a restaurant, you know, an Arab comes and serves you some tea, you know, gives you some milk, gives you a coffee for free when you don't have it. And you start to see where you were from that perspective, and you see how stupid it is. Or some people, you know, or some people have the other problem. They're all sitting here about how they look from the outside, you know. And then they need to confess, I'm all, that they're worried about what other people think of them all the time. They're all doing what other people think. So he was the self, what he called the self-inflation. We Nazis know what's best for the world, you know. The other side is being concerned with everybody else and forgetting about your self-selfish, always being concerned with the outside. Then you need to confess that, that that reflected and look back inside. So it's not so much that you should be looking this way or that way. It's that you have to change your perspective. It's the change that enlightens.

[40:25]

But the change doesn't count if you're not home. And coming home is difficult to come all the way home to admit how human we are. I could say how bad we are, but just how human we are. How limited we are, but how in a big way we're limited, in such a complex way, not limited in little ways, but limited in many, many, many ways, to admit that. And then again, to practice renunciation so you can see clearly your limitation, not be hedging on it or not blowing it up bigger or pushing it down, but really settling and feel your humanness. You know, just really feel it and view it. Then you're set, you're ready.

[41:28]

Now, one other thing I want to mention in the ordination ceremony, something happens after confession, which again is kind of like a symbol for something. After the ordination ceremony, after the confession, what happens in the beginning ceremony? Anointment. Water is sprinkled on you. And what kind of water is sprinkled on you? It's the wisdom water. You confess to our knee, it's wisdom water sprinkled on her. This ordinary human being, it's sprinkled with wisdom water. And that's what happens now. I also want to tell you something.

[42:31]

It's kind of esoteric. But, you know, it's out there, so... And it is that as part of making this water into wisdom waters is to take a leaf and put it in the water and touch it in three places. And those three places and those three dots symbolize... I laugh because they symbolize... a very difficult to understand central teaching of what's called Mahayamaka philosophy. There are three schools, or maybe six schools in Asia, based on one verse by Nagarjuna. And his fundamental verses are in the middle way. And that verse is chapter 24, verse number 18.

[43:37]

And I'll just tell you now, and if possible, we'll study this more later. We'll get more into dependent colorizing, but these three dots are dependent colorizing, ampleness, and conventional, conventional designation. These are the three dots. Pentacle arising, emptiness, and conventional designation. It first says that whatever dependently co-arises, and there is nothing that doesn't dependently co-arise, or everything, but when things dependently co-arise, they are emptiness.

[44:44]

And if you can witness things dependently co-arise, you see that you realize they're emptiness. And then it says, unclearly it says, That being a conventional designation, namely, conventional designation means a verbal description. That being a conventional designation is the middle way. And by saying that, Nagarjuna doesn't tell us whether he's talking about dependent core arising or emptiness. In other words, dependent core arising is just a conventional designation, but also so is emptiness. Dependent core arising, what dependent core arises just being a conventional designation is empty, but also emptiness being just a conventional designation is also empty.

[45:54]

That is the middle way. So the wisdom water is to be anointed by the understanding of the middle way. The wisdom water is understanding the middle way. It's understanding the relationship between convention, dependent core, rising, and emptiness, and that that relationship is the middle way. This is what anoints us. After we confess, after you confess, then you're liberated by wisdom. And I've been holding back to talk about the pandemic while rising for a while until we talk about this difficult settling work so that you'd be grounded and compassionate enough with yourself and grounded enough so that you could hear about this kind of teaching without getting

[46:57]

I'm kind of waiting for Norman in his presentation to get to presenting the perfection of wisdom. So after grounding yourself in the practices of giving, of conscientiousness and mindfulness and patience, and enthusiasm and concentration, after doing those practices, we may be ready to look at the perfection of wisdom. And the perfection of wisdom is the study of the pentacle arising. And the study of the pentacle arising is the door to realizing emptiness. And understanding the relationship between emptiness and the pentacle arising is the middle way. I'm not too worried about you getting too excited yet, because you haven't heard too much good news.

[48:07]

This is potentially very exciting stuff, because it explains that it explains the nitty-gritty of redemption. It shows you, actually, the inner workings of liberation. You said before renunciation, compassion, and wisdom is compassion. What do you mean by that? Well, no. You could have, for example, you could have the spirit of awakening. You could, like... You could really feel your own pain and really sense other pain and really want to help other beings before yourself and want to devote your life to that. You could still be meddling with everything that's happening in a certain extent. You wouldn't be meddling in a way of denying pain.

[49:15]

That's the way you're meddling. But you could still not practice renunciation here, even though you had to weigh in the... the Bodhi Chitta in your heart. Even if the Bodhi Chitta has a wig in your heart, you might not be practicing meditation. And you might not be practicing confession. That's why, first, it's all based on compassion. And then renunciation and confession deepen the compassion. Practicing conscientiousness, and uphanded mindfulness is part of confession. If you don't take the support yourself of precepts, you may not notice that you're violent. If you don't make a commitment to them, then you may violate them, but you may not even notice. So by committing yourself to pay attention and be conscientious, again, you start noticing much more mistakes.

[50:19]

That's for a lot of people that don't want to receive a precept because they're afraid they drive themselves nuts. Because, you know, if I take these precepts, I might not be able to follow them and then I'll feel bad all the time. That's why you need to practice patience. Right after you get into conscientiousness and alertness and mindfulness, you need to practice patience to soothe yourself with all the errors you notice you're making. You need to kind of like make yourself comfortable with your... with your mistakes, not comfortable like they're okay, but comfortable with the pain of noticing your errors, comfortable with your shame. Okay, one of the big things I want to introduce to you, for you to chill on for the rest of your life, what I mentioned before, and that is four afflictions. four afflictions that come with having a belief in independent self.

[51:31]

If you make these things up today, I'll speak in English. Four afflictions are self ignorance, Self-view, self-pride, arrogance, and self-love. Self-love. Why would I say self-esteem? That's what we all needed. Let's talk about this, shall we? Let's talk about this. It's a really important... That's why I say esteem rather than love. Hectic pole. Pole are important words to use in relationship to self. These are called afflictions. And as soon as, like in a child, as soon as the sense of self, of an independent self, is formed,

[52:40]

These four afflictions arise right away, pretty much non-optionally, and they pretty much continue from there on until you witness the dependency or arising of the self. In other words, witness that the self doesn't have an independent existence, it arises in dependence on everything. And everything else arises in dependence on the self, too. It's not just that the Self arises codependently with the mountains and the rivers and all beings. All beings arise and arise in codependence with the Self. The Self is well-situated. Not in its independence, however. In its independence it's really just a delusion. And that's why we're so anxious about it, because we know the independent self is very vulnerable to destruction.

[53:45]

That's why we don't want to admit our independence. Because we know it's dangerous to be independent, very dangerous. The safe thing is to be a codependently arisen self. That's the same as liberation. Anyway, these four afflictions accompany it. Self-ignorance means Two things it means is that you ignore the self. In other words, you don't look at it. You don't look to see what it is. You just say, okay, I got one, fine. It is independent, and it has self nature, and it's this and not that, and that's enough. I'm not going to look to check to see if that's right. If you actually turn around and look at yourself, you find that it's actually kind of hard to find, and it's changing all the time. So, this seeing an independent self goes with, almost by definition, not looking at it, because it's hard to keep seeing an independent self and look at it at the same time, so ignoring it goes very nicely with having an independent self.

[54:51]

Not only do we not ignore it, I mean, not only do we not look at it, naturally, but also now we see everything from that point of view, and we project it on everything. So then we see everybody else as the independent self. And we see people as all independent. We see windows as all independent. Hawks as all independent. Mountains as independent. Everything's like sitting right in this self-existent thing. And we see cause and effect as self-existent. So one of Nagarjuna's main things is to actually go down and look how we see causation through the projection of self-view. And he dismantles that. The other thing that comes with the self, in some way, rightly speaking, if you can add an independent thing in the universe, something that existed all by itself, wouldn't it be like super special? Like something all by itself that existed just by its own oldness. If there was such a thing, wouldn't that be astoundingly fantastic?

[55:57]

And that's self-pride. And not only that, but there's some pride in the general neighborhood of being a human being and having objective consciousness. A great thing has happened in the history of the universe. It's been a great accomplishment. And somebody wants to cash in on this too. But there's some place to be signed. You know, who's going to collect for all humanity? Who's going to collect for great evolution? How about giving it to somebody? That's the self. So there's self-pride. Or here it is. And then there's self-esteem. We love this little creature. It's precious. It's independently existing. We love it. We do esteem. Okay? Okay. Now, Vasubanthi who says so, okay, because Vasubanthi says so, that's why, you know, anyway. Vasubanthi says so, the ancestors have witnessed this through their vision, these collections, and they also say that these collections are hidden, hard to see, usually people don't know about.

[57:08]

They act from them, but don't very often turn around and identify them. So I propose that I, and reflected by these four, maybe somebody else's. Now, the other thing about this is, so now there's discussion of self-esteem and all that, the arrogance, okay? So, now, I think it was enough, maybe you can ask your question, if you have some questions now, about self-esteem. self-esteem is good, right? Trying to get people to have self-esteem, right? They say, I got self-esteem, I'm a nobody, and so we try to build self-esteem. In my view, the reason for building self-esteem into people, why it's good, is because people have self-esteem deep down, and it's good if they admit it. It's natural and dominant in a person to have self-esteem.

[58:10]

That's why it's good to bring it out. Self-esteem is something that we've asked from when we were young, unless we're beaten up real early. And acting from self-esteem, acting from self-pride, we are gently or not gently encouraged to knock it off. And some of us, we have our various ways of adapting to the encouragement that civilization offers for us to pretend as though we don't have self-esteem or have it on certain occasions when a lot of it. And we aren't carried it. somebody else is, but we're not. Now, fundamentally, isn't self-esteem good? Well, I would say it's not so much that it's good, because in some sense it's based on delusion. What you're esteeming is this wonderful idea that someone could exist by yourself. And if that were the case, you wouldn't love it. It would be, like I say, a fantastic thing.

[59:11]

But it turns out there isn't such a thing, really. When you love the self, actually, you could love it as something that was produced or created through relationship with all things. So that also is something you would love. If you love that, it wouldn't be loving self-esteem, it would be loving the independently co-arisen self. And that is the self, actually, that if we love that one, we don't get in trouble for. That's the self which is supported by all beings, not the self that has to protect us. But when the self first appears as an independent being, that one is afflicted by us and the self more slowly, the independent self. If you can meditate on them and realize that this is not a independent self and love that self, then people won't have some problems. But we have to, in order to see the dependent core is the self, we have to see the self which we don't think dependent core rises first.

[60:12]

That's the, so they talk about negating the self in some text. Self, the self is negating. Self is negating is not the dependent core is the self. It's the self that exists independently, not through dependent orders. That self is negated. But it isn't negated like kicked in the butt. It's negated by meditating on it until you see the causes and conditions. Now, would you like to have a discussion? Which type of discussion do you want to have for the next 25 minutes? Do you want to break up and die out for a little while and discuss and report back? Or do you want to have open discussion? There are people who want to have open discussion to raise their hands. That's the majority. Okay, so let's have open discussion for a while. And then maybe... I hope you talk about this, babe. I'd like feedback now. Comments, questions. Yes. All of you. I'm hearing what you've just been saying about the self and following it pretty well, but I also have these paradoxes running around in my head related to it on these conflicting ideas of self-esteem, you know, whether it's a good thing, which usually it has seemed to be

[61:40]

a good thing to me. And then, you know, just the life experience, you know, that gain of self-esteem in places where I lacked it, you know, felt like, oh, this was... I figured something out here. And also the term codependent, even, and the other... connotation, I'm always passionate about it for the modern psychological connotation. And so whenever I have these kind of paradoxes running around in my head, I know there's something I'm not quite seeing, but that it's very clear. And it's pretty, I mean, because the argument you made is so clear about that the codependently arisen self is maybe more rightly the true self, but then I was thinking of all other places, which I did, caught in the code of kind of some relationships and whatnot, and now that we're just somewhat disruptive or sort of

[62:46]

thinking to myself, hmm, this is really a little boring. Yeah, well, by using, for example, by confessing, if you can, you can't, you're not supposed to confess before you actually see a thing. Don't confess in theory. You know, okay, I'm a bad person. I mean, probably I am, so I just confess. People say, well, what do you mean? Tell us more. They appreciate the offer, but then they want to say, what do you mean by baptism? Did you kiss me? So, just to sort of say, okay, I have self-esteem and blah, blah, I admit it. No, no, do you really feel it? Do you really feel self-esteem? It's not baptism. It's not baptism. It's an affliction only in the sense that it's an emotion that is something that arises in conjunction with a delusion. But if you don't admit the self-esteem, then it's going to be hard for you to find the self which dependently correlates the self.

[63:50]

If you don't admit self-esteem, then the self that you're dealing with is this codependent self rather than an independently co-arisen self. Got it? If you can't get in touch with your self-esteem and... I'm getting really clear on it and admit it. Then you can't see the self. Then you're kind of like, your self's over here and you're kind of a little bit over here. I'm not, you know. That self which isn't fully admitted, which doesn't admit her self-esteem, that is the codependent self. That's the self that doesn't have the right to express yourself. That's the self versus... Pardon? In the modern, you know, current use of codependency. The current use of codependency is backpedaling, you know, I'll recognize you, you don't have to recognize me.

[64:54]

You can express yourself, you can be what's called the actor-outer, and I'll just sort of help take care of you. The trade-off will be, maybe I could control you even if I can't do what I wouldn't. Because I don't really have that much self-esteem. So I'm self-deflated, goes with me being a cult. Right? Self-deflation, not admitting my self-esteem, and codependence. Particularly the cult part of the codependence, rather than the addict. One's addicted to expressing herself. The other one's addicted to being the one who takes care of her, tries to control the other one, and isn't really there. It isn't really expressing herself. It isn't really home. Admitting self-esteem is part of coming home and being a human. Rather than sort of like, well, they've got self-esteem and they're arrogant, but I'm not.

[65:57]

I don't have that problem. I'm not addicted. But if you can admit self-esteem, what are you going to have self-esteem about? I mean, real self-esteem is about a real guy who's got a nice mustache and twingly eyes. A real person who's really there, and he's collecting on this self-esteem. And he feels it, and he likes it, and he loves the guy. And he doesn't look very carefully at who it is. You start to find the actual... pristine, perfectly self-existent self. That's the one that you have to, that's the way you see the dependent core rising. If you don't admit that one, then you're codependent. If you admit it, then you can meditate and realize codependent rising. You can't be liberated from your neighbor, you know, from your neighbor, from being somewhere near in the neighborhood of yourself.

[67:01]

You've got to be liberated on the spot of being who you are. So self-manifesting and getting in touch with self-esteem is essential. So you have to love yourself in order to become liberated from yourself. But not overdo it, you know, either. Not become totally narcissistic. So if you don't get any feedback, so the boys can't come and tell you to confess. You have to be somewhat open to feedback in order to, like, not overdo it. You can, like, what do you call it? You can kind of, like, be off to the side of yourself, or you can be, like, totally plunged into yourself so darkly that you can't even see the total ratio of yourself. You have to balance this too. That's why you have to practice renunciation. in order to make it clear so you can actually admit just exactly how self-esteemless you are. Just precisely, the precise quality of your arrogance, the precise quality of the way you project self and everything, and exactly how you don't look at yourself.

[68:05]

And how it is that your self exists very pristinely and clearly when you don't look at it, and when you do look at it, it starts to get foggy. It starts to become, it turns from being a thing by itself into being, conditions, and it starts to become everything. You can't get a hold of it, but it doesn't evaporate either. It's a causal nexus. And we're proud. You can't emit your pride for it. You're off to the side. You can't see it. You can't become free. So those words, as you said, when you have paradoxes, it's often that you're close to the turning point of the issue. But think about the self, watch the codependence going with the lack of self-esteem and watch how the self-esteem brings you into focus on independence and study independence to see if it holds up.

[69:06]

I have a question about this. You said something about the real self is the self that develops with understanding the codependent arising or dependent co-arising. Is that what you said? Yeah, basically. Yeah. So in other words, as I understand what you're saying, that if the self develops in relationship to others, other beings, other whatevers, then that is the real self. And it's the self that develops without this relationship that is the false self, the narcissistic self, the encrusted self. It's the narcissistic self or the devalued self. Or the devalued self. Anyways, it's the self that is the source of self-clinging and pain and everything else.

[70:08]

In fact, the self does evolve through relationships. In fact, it does. Yeah. So all we have to do is turn around and notice the relationships through which it forms. The self of all the history, you know, in a context. If you turn around and look at that, you're on the road to liberation. But you have to look at the one that has developed. And that one is, you have to confess yourself You have to confess this person to be there, to actually have the real person to feel it. And then supposing that the self that you have did not arise through relationship, which is very common for you. And suppose that you have a self that you don't see arose that way. Or that you had to find a self somewhere, right? That you didn't have the opportunity. But that's the kind of relationships you had. Of course.

[71:11]

Of course. So, in other words, this other self, this false self, this disturbed self, this deranged self, or whatever you would speak of it is in Buddhist terms. In Buddhist terms, we just say, The independently existing self. Okay, the independently existing self. Supposing that you do have that, how do you get yourself out of that? How does Buddhism help you to get out of that? First of all, bring great compassion. But how do you get compassion if you... If you have that... If you are... I'm trying to avoid using psychological terms, but I'll take on the seat. Supposing that you are narcissistic and that you are cursed to love only that which cannot love you. And you can't feel any pain? Well, I imagine, you know, knife wounds, but... If you can't feel any pain...

[72:15]

What needs to be done is, somehow, somebody has to have the skill, and I understand this is very difficult as a team. Someone has to have the skill and the compassion to help you surface your pain. And you may have all this tremendous, tremendous defense against living your pain. So it takes a lot of work to work with narcissistic people who didn't feel their pain. So that's the key, the feeling of pain. That's the first thing, the pain. Once you start feeling pain, then compassion can start developing. Once compassion starts developing, then you can sort of consider the possibility of just an enunciation, confession, and then once you confess your narcissism, then you can look at what you're narcissistic about and start to say, oh, It's really nice that he's helping me be narcissistic through this various, you know, through my childhood and blah, blah, blah, and history of the world and bringing this and everything. I got to be this thing.

[73:17]

And then he starts to gradually come to this. And you have to potentially change your perspective in the way you know. But it's very hard to get started, even, in a case like that. Very hard. I've heard how hard it is. Yes. What I think about, what I thought about what you talked about was blue is a certain frequency of energy waves that cause. And in my brain, the way it's organized, we've decided that has the name blue. So when someone says, when that's blue, I have confidence that I see blue as everybody else sees.

[74:20]

And the person says, that's green, it's not blue. Yes. I just walk away and say, well, they're not right. And let it go. It's not a concept. I don't know why there was a concept. I said, that's just a concept. I got confused that time. It's not a concept. That's, that's, [...] that's what I'm saying to you, okay? I'm saying that there is sense perception, and sense perception, for example, one of the forms of sense perception is that we respond, we have tissues in our body that respond to electromagnetic radiation, a sort of wavelength, okay? range of wavelengths. And then some of the shorter ones are the ultraviolet and blue.

[75:26]

So we have places that respond to that. Chemical reactions happen in our body in relationship to that kind of energy. And When that reaction happens, they're actually the consciousness in the body of that kind of stimulation. What I'm saying to you is that we do not have objective knowledge of those experiences, even though we're conscious, it's not objective consciousness. So there is that kind of consciousness which we operate on, but we don't know about. And other animals operate on that level and they don't know about it either. It's not known as object. It's not known as external. It's not identified as something. But we have evolved into also being able to convert sensory experience into concepts. And when we can convert a sensory input into a concept, make a concept object in our mind, then we can be aware of it as an external object.

[76:28]

So I have a concept of blue? Yes, and a word for it, too. And therefore, we can know it objectively. Without a word for blue, we do not have objective knowledge as I'm proposing to. And in the realm of objective knowledge and concepts, As soon as human beings can do that, can make things external, at that moment is the birth of the individual self. Because in order to have self, you have to be able to make other. So self is born right at that time when the human being was able to have things considered to be external to themselves. It's not external to yourself. You're experiencing this thing in your body. So we can imagine that it's outside of us. And therefore, I can imagine that you're outside of myself, so I'm inside. So the sense of self arises at the same time as this great evolutionary breakthrough in human history of being able to think of things as external.

[77:35]

Things that you're actually in your body, that you're actually experiencing, that aren't there anymore. You say they're out there. We do that. And so I can also say you're out there in cinema. The ways of animating it. Pardon? The ways, when I'm not, when I don't have any sense of what I'm happy, but the fact is that they are coming at. Yes, all the times. All the time. And you're responding to it all the time. So am I. Also the sound waves. We're dancing, you know, physically with this stuff all day long. It's just that at that level, we're not all day long thinking. That level of consciousness, we're not thinking that these things are external, because when we're touched, they're not external. Then we are touched. It's like, this is not external, I just, I affect it. This is the dance I'm doing. It's not an external thing. But we have been able to now think that this is external. What's happening here is external. In other words, my perceptions are actually up there. That what I think of you is not just what I think of you, but what you are. And you're there, and I'm here, and then there's self, and then there's pride and so on.

[78:40]

I've had a bunch of ideas related to this coward thing. Well, good. We'll be talking about that later, because don't you like it, okay? Okay, sure. And I walk with your discusses in your groups. Well, I want to talk with you together, as you have this question. Yes. Is it natural for... anyone to arrive at a dependent coerrism self? Or is there something we come to later in a sequence that do all of us instead start with an independent concept of self? And then at some point it comes to change. We move ourselves slightly, then we get a new perspective. And we decide, oh, I don't want that anymore. So I'm going to trade it in on a better model, which is the dependent coerrism self. In my experience, it is natural. What is natural is to create the independent, self-existent self.

[79:43]

That's our natural tendency. It's silly, but we naturally do it. And it works really nicely and we have a lot of fun. Many people will play that game with us. Not too many people will play the game of looking at the self with us. We won't get paid for it. We won't get famous for it. You actually eventually could get famous for it. But anyway, initially, it's a kind of hard work to turn around and look at yourself because there's pain all around that stupid existing self. So most people that I know have a hard time looking at the self, and I haven't heard of anybody who, you know, who had been able to stumble upon this dependent core-risen self without making some effort to kind of inhabit his body and mind in a very upright, detached fashion. So, Buddhism is dedicated to help us discover the dependent core-risen in myself, because it doesn't seem to come spontaneously without some kind of practice. And even the practice that is offered is very difficult.

[80:47]

So, This very conventional designation, is that? Did you say that that's verbal description? Yeah. Consexualization? Yeah, so I'm proposing to you that, you know, I'm proposing to you that we live in this soup, cosmic soup, you know, and we're sensitive to it, okay? and that in order to pull some segment out of what's happening out and identify it, we need to put a word on it. Without putting a word on things, they're just out there affecting us, but they're not coming in these little compartments that are useful to human beings. But given our present state of development, in order to identify things like identify the knees and the raven trees and pain and pleasure, in order to identify them, you can feel pain without identifying it. You can feel blue, experience blue, without identifying. But to identify them, you have to say blue or pain or knees.

[81:51]

So if everything that is happening before arises, a part of the wake [...] of the wake. So the touchstone of the pinnacle arising is that it means a word. Are you saying that in order to... And also emptiness, which is realized through understanding the pinnacle arising thing, that's also a word. So emptiness is also not... And that's the middle way. That's the middle way. That protects us from making emptiness and the pinnacle arising into these lofty realities separate from conventionality. So that the world of ordinary experience and the world of liberation are non-lual. The world of me being a human being and having problems is non-lual with the world of me dependently co-arising through my problems.

[82:55]

So it's the... In an astronomical way, those two worlds are united. And also they're different. We know that the world of suffering is the world of suffering and the world of liberation is the world of liberation. But how do they get together? They get together because of the fact that they're the same. But they're also different. So we need to recognize they're different and also they're the same. This karga is the most famous teaching about how to bring the worlds of pain and the world of liberation together. In other words, how to Not deny pain, but be liberated by this particular form. It requires that we admit our pain and admit the cause of the pain. Language isn't really invented from us. No. It turns out to be this great side effect. And then the Buddha, when the Buddha was awake, among all the things that Buddha chose to literate people, language is one thing he chose.

[84:08]

He decided to talk. At first he thought, it won't do any good to talk. He said, go ahead. And he decided to talk. So language was not invented to put us into bondage either, but it does. Language makes us so we can identify our experience of putting identities all over the place, and that turned out that that backfired in some way and caused us to bondage. Language is also how you untie that and release. Language is bondage and language is release. We use the same thing that puts us into prison to get us out of prison. Exactly. But yeah, first of all, the relationship we do have is that we're proud of our language, we're proud we can talk, we're proud that we can say I, and use that word to identify this thing in the middle of total... cosmic, cause and effect, manifold, that we can identify an I and other, self and other, you and me.

[85:10]

We can do that with language in this whole thing, and we're proud of that. It's a great accomplishment, and it is. But we have to now become liberated from our great attainment by admitting what we've done. And there's pain in association. That's why we have to practice patience, because it takes patience in order to settle into this place. When you start confessing, there's pain involved in confession. It hurts to be the just self. If we can choose not to, we might choose not to, but we don't have the option. The self is born before we have a chance to decide whether we want it. The independent self appears, the misconstruction of it or the misconstruing of it appeared before we have a chance to say what we're not asked beforehand whether we want to have the individual self or not. And if a bodhisattva was asked, a bodhisattva would say, I will take the individual self because that's the only way I can help people is to have that problem that they have.

[86:11]

So bodhisattvas come into individual selves and take that pain on them. These two people have never asked a question. Yes? So are you saying that if we didn't have a language, that we would realize that we are defending the color, isn't it? No. No. I'm not saying that. I'm saying if we don't have a language... we would never construct the self-identity, the kind of self-identity we wouldn't need to practice Buddhism. Right. Because we wouldn't be suffering because of self-cleaning and everything. If we were just operating on the level of not having self and others to be separated, we wouldn't be suffering so much. We would think we wouldn't act like any operators and all the problems wouldn't even occur.

[87:14]

So we wouldn't need Buddha's teaching and so forth. We would just be animals with the organic phenomenon on the planet and living a life. And lucky for it. And have the joy and pain of birth and death. like dogs and cats, monk lions and redwood trees and mums and rivers, and close to that same thing. But we wouldn't have an independent self. Therefore, we wouldn't have to turn around and analyze it. We wouldn't have those four afflictions if we didn't have a sense of independence zone. So we wouldn't have all of our problems. We wouldn't need Buddhism. We wouldn't need Buddha's teaching of dependent core rising to free us from our sense of independence. And we use language as the way to create identity. is a word for our name. It's called George. You can see that conception itself is an energy.

[88:17]

I mean, in particular, it's disturbing. It disturbs my harmony. It does. And it's slightly less disturbing than the ramification of itself. And actually, I feel that My theory is about how this is all really good for you, is that I think the disturbance caused by conception, that that will disturb us somewhat. But I think it wouldn't disturb us enough to practice. So we had this additional disturbance, which is caused by himself three. A combination of the two is enough to get us to go away. The good side of something is that it gets to turn around and witness what's going on. You say that without having some students, you wouldn't feel alive. It's like you got to drop the dark side. No. You know, I think when you say you wouldn't feel alive. Yeah, it seems to me. You wouldn't feel alive. Yeah.

[89:18]

Like some say dogs and cats don't feel alive. Yeah. We're the only ones that can feel alive. You know, they're still alive, and they're really good at it, right? If you're like, they're alive, right? But they don't feel alive. We're the only ones that can feel alive. That's our problem and our gift, you know, like, what is it? Pascal said, we're the only ones, you know, all the plants and animals live and die. We're the only ones who know it. And that's our, that's our gift. And that's our torture. What? What's going on back there? Just sighing in a room.

[90:11]

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