I'd like to try to just give some presentation without questions and then have questions. See how that works. One thing I wanted to say is that, which I said before I think, is that in the history of the development of Buddhist thought, in the history of the development of Buddhist thought, the presentation by Nagarjuna of the Madhyamaka, which means middle way more or less, teaching, came first and then the Yogacara teaching came after that, so Nagarjuna lived in the second century and Vasubandhu and Asanga lived in the fourth and up till

[01:06]

the fifth century. But in terms of the ascendancy of ultimacy of teachings, it's the opposite, it's the reverse of the historical order, in other words, the ultimate teaching came first in history and then it was followed by a less ultimate teaching, the Yogacara. So in that sense, the Yogacara position, you might say, doesn't really hold up in the analysis, it's just a story, it's just in some sense a presentation of reality which

[02:13]

is constructed in order to help people and finally there's really nothing to it. However, in studying something that's set up like this and discovering what it really is, one can still realize liberation and realize the Buddhist teaching. So in some sense, anything you work on, anything you have to work on, will be a story. And, as it says in case 37 of the Book of Serenity, living beings just have karmic

[03:16]

consciousness, boundless, limitless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on. So what we have to work with as living beings is a consciousness which is conjured up by cause and effect, it's unclear, that's all we've got, and there's no fundamental reality to it. Dogen Zenji says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. There really is no such thing. He's saying that to study the Buddha way is to study something which really doesn't exist, and that to study something that doesn't really exist, of course, the thorough study

[04:20]

of something that really doesn't exist would be that you'd forget it, and to forget what doesn't really exist is to be awakened by everything. But most people will not forget what doesn't exist unless they study what doesn't exist into the ground. You study what doesn't exist very thoroughly and use the rationality of our mind to look at it from all different angles. You can then use that delusion, constructed version of reality, you can use it as a topic to realize the way. So then it also says that Buddhas are those who are greatly awakened by delusion. So, this story of the Yogacara is a story of the arising of the illusion, the believing

[05:29]

in it and making it into delusion, how that traps us, and how we can, by studying this process, reverse the process and release ourselves from delusion. But the whole story itself has no ultimate existence. Now sometimes in the history of Buddhism, especially before the Yogacara, when they presented very similar material to this, they said that actually this stuff really did exist. I think part of the reason they did that was because they were afraid people wouldn't study it. If they said, well we're going to tell you right off, this is just all made up. So they actually said that these teachings about the psychological processes of perception and all that, and the stories about karma, that this stuff really had a, what do you call it, a dravya, a dravya-sat, a substantial truth.

[06:32]

And in the Abhidharma system as taught by Vasubandhu, at various points where he's kind of picking at the earlier Abhidharmas in his book, Abhidharmas in the books, he presses them and presses them and finally they say, okay, okay, there really is a such thing. We just had to say so to make our system work. So, in order to present something sometimes you have to sort of say, well let's just pretend like this exists. If you don't, it's hard for people to follow it. So they tentatively put something out there which is called Prajnapati, which is related to Visnapati. Visnapati means just a concept, Prajnapati means just something set up for a little while, a fruitful fiction.

[07:34]

So hopefully these teachings are fruitful fictions, but actually any fiction could be fruitful. And I used to not like to read historical novels or romantic history or whatever, because I thought it would corrupt my sense of real historical material, but I realized that in some ways it's better to read romantic history because then you know it's fiction, whereas when you read a supposedly history book you think it's true. So in some sense the Yogacara teaching, as you understand, is romantic history or a dramatic and romantic presentation of the origins of consciousness. Unfortunately, the way he puts it is not very romantic, so you have to be encouraged to

[08:37]

read this. I had some quote by Wallace Stevens, which I usually have in my notebook on 30 verses, but I think I put it in another file, but anyway, it's a wonderful story about recognizing and owning up to and committing yourself to fiction. So I'd like to create a little dream here, a little construction of reality, go through this again. So we have somehow this phenomena of sense consciousness occurring, there's five sense consciousnesses, and then a sixth consciousness, the mind consciousness, which works with these five, and when this sixth works with the five then the five can be known, and the products

[09:45]

of the five can be known. Without the sixth consciousness the functioning of the five is direct experience, direct conscious experience, but you don't know anything. The sixth can know, so the material of the sense consciousnesses is presented to this mind consciousness, this mano vijnana, okay, it's impressed by the data from the sense consciousness, however, part of the price of knowledge is the activity of reflection or thinking, and that activity is called manas, or in early Buddhist teaching, manodhatu,

[10:49]

in the Yogacara it's called manas. Actually in early Buddhism too it's also called manas sometimes, but it's called manodhatu, it's not called mano vijnana. So in order for this mano vijnana, this mind consciousness to now know or to be an instrument of knowing to aid the sense consciousnesses, it has to have reflection, and the manodhatu or the manas provides that reflective capacity, but that reflective capacity is always egocentric. So the mind consciousness, in order to perform its function of knowing, has to hang out with this egocentric mental activity, the egocentric thinking activity.

[11:53]

So because of that, mind consciousness gets defiled by egocentricity. How it sees is influenced by these afflictions of self-centeredness. Then what it sees, having been influenced by self-centeredness, that is an event which leaves an impression, and that impression is laid down in a subconscious called alaya-vijnana. Then that impression of this knowing which has been influenced by self-centeredness,

[12:57]

which is associated with the reflective capacity which makes possible knowledge, that defiled impression of the sense data is then laid down in the subconscious, the deep subconscious of alaya. This is how information comes in, is known, and then leaves an impression in our stream of consciousness. So by this means, you see, what comes in never gets to come in and just be stored straight on, it always gets mixed in with the program, with the establishment, with the self. We never just let anything in, we always chew it up and make it into something like what we had before, and particularly the chewing up is self-oriented.

[13:58]

So everything gets somewhat converted and so distorted versions of the input get stored in our subconscious. That's how stuff comes in. Now, before anything comes, how about the basic stance and point of view here? Well you got this consciousness again, you got these sense consciousness and also the mind consciousness. The mind consciousness is the way it gets information and how the information it gets is distorted, I've just described. But it is also associated with lots of dispositions which are in its subconscious that are maturing

[15:02]

up through it, so you have this capacity to know or this facility of knowing, but it never comes up by itself, it always comes up with a bunch of dispositions or mental factors, and the list of possible mental factors can be found in the presentation of the possible contents of what's called the Dharmadhatu. And in a given moment of consciousness where we know something, a whole bunch of mental factors are also present there. And the Yogacara presentation is that the ones that will be present along with this knowing capacity, the ones that will be manifesting and present with it and thereby provide the context in which you experience something will be supposedly the ones that are matured

[16:10]

up out of the unconscious. So the unconscious then now was the place you laid down previous impressions, but now the unconscious is exuding or emanating certain of its potential elements are coming up and being presented with the knowing. So from the inside, before the data comes in, in a sense, not before but sort of the receptive stance of the knower, is that the knowing capacity is there but it's also accompanied by whatever the unconscious has exuded to be now up in the level with sort of simultaneous manifesting with the knowing capacity. And there's no control over this, this is all resultant.

[17:13]

Now the resultant, a lie is called the resultant, the unconscious is called the resultant, but the resultant also produces some fresh manifested material to go along with the level of conscious activity. Now that layer, which is the mind-consciousness layer, that layer, there's some things which unconsciousness is always exuding, every moment exudes, so to speak, and gives. It's never without, this mind-consciousness is never without concentration, samadhi, it's never without contact, it's never without feeling, it's never without attention, it's never without decision, various mental factors which we can go into to some extent, but there's certain ones called the universals that always come up with it. Then there's some wholesome factors which sometimes come up and sometimes don't. There's unwholesome factors which sometimes come up and sometimes don't.

[18:19]

There's defiling, primary defiling ones and secondary defiling ones which sometimes come up and sometimes don't. And they all come up out of this deep unconscious where the impressions of things like that that have happened in the past are laid down, and then at a certain time these impressions then can be activated and come up again and be part of the present experience. And then you have the knowing with some complement of these activated versions of past experiences accompanying the basic mindset with which now the new data will come in and the new data will then be again infected and defiled by the egocentric sense. So distorted information is coming in and it's met by a knowing capacity which is accompanied by a constantly varied complement of past impressions and dispositions which have been

[19:22]

coughed up to accompany the sense of the experience. And this kind of process is going round and round constantly. Every moment there's a knowing capacity that comes up with this accompaniment, it never comes up by itself, it always comes up with certain ones plus some others. It's always varying, even if it has constants, but the constants are always also in a context so the way they function is different depending on what arises with them. So the knowing comes up with a constantly changing environment and that situation of the knowing and the constantly changing environment now is exposed to new material coming in which is always pre-processed by egotism and then that interaction produces another set of impressions which are laid down and then mixed in with the other parts and the next moment a new set is exuded which comes up simultaneously with the new knowing capacity,

[20:25]

the new information coming in and the new reflecting which makes it possible to know in the new defiling in this process, this is the process. And some people get sick when they hear this, but remember you're getting sick when you hear a story, don't hold on to this story, it's just a story and for some reason or this story has been told over and over in the Buddhist tradition and the story itself does not stay the same. It was never told before like I just told it. Nobody ever heard this Buddhist story quite this way. Even though I was repeating what I heard myself say and when I said it because I heard somebody else say it and so on, even though it's oral tradition being repeated it's never the same. So the tradition of this story is changing just like your mind is changing and even though this isn't true, the way you work with this material we can discuss.

[21:32]

So some of you say to me, like Stephen said to me, is the sense object to the sense consciousness the way the mind object is to the mind consciousness? He said that to me. So he was expressing the way his mind was working with this story, okay? He was expressing how his critical faculties and analytic powers were working with material he heard, a story he heard, then my critical capacities then listened to his and responded and so on and so forth. And as we get this material out more and more and we converse and we express our understanding of it, other people then can help us hone our understanding and back and forth our understanding of this material can get clearer and clearer and we can finally prove and disprove

[22:34]

different parts of it, which understanding is valid, which one is invalid and so on and so forth. Then, when you learn how to do this, you can turn around and look inside and do the same thing inside. You can learn how to establish validity with externally set up presentations of reality and then you can look inside where you've got another reality which you believe in to some extent, which parts are valid to which parts are invalid, you apply the same process and you do, you will apply the same process. If you're thinking, if your work externally is foggy and confused then the way you work with your internal situation will be foggy and confused. If your work with external discussions of confusion and illusions and stories is confused then that would be the way you work inside. So, by getting more and more clear about how we work with this teaching, we will then

[23:38]

be able to do the same inside. So one advantage of Yogacara is that it presents a story about consciousness so that then the way you work with that external story in this world can be applied to the internal story of consciousness. Like I was in one of the teas the other day, I was talking about golf and tennis, and in golf you know, what little I know about it is one of the main principles of golf is keep your eye on the ball and another principle is keep your feet on the ground, so that's an interesting practice to do with feet and eyes and balls and turf, but from the point of view of liberation of sentient beings, the important thing about that is how you would apply that principle to your own experience.

[24:39]

The story of golf, I mean, the way you apply yourself to the story of golf will have applications to the way you apply yourself to the rest of your life, however, it may be difficult to translate, but it does get translated. I think tennis is in some ways more dynamic because you're playing somebody else, another person, and one of the rules there is when you're playing tennis keep your eye on the ball also, not on the person. Some people, some great tennis players, all they got to do is stand up and the other person just won't ever see the ball. All they got to do is hit the ball over the net and the other person just won't completely miss the ball because they're just looking at the person, like, God, look at that, there's Steffi Graf. I mean, a lot of people have seen tennis balls, but who's ever seen Steffi Graf, or Martina,

[25:45]

whatever her name is? What's her name? Nava? Nava Chalovale. Nava Chalovale. Played tennis for a long time, now you can play with Martina, so you just watch Martina and the balls, you don't watch the ball, that's what she counts on, you know, that people watch her, not the ball, then she can win continuously. You can't return them anyway. See? See, when you're playing with Martina, you say, I can't return them anyway, so you give up, because you're looking at the person, right? Because you're looking at the person, you give up. In the same way with your own experiences, because you're looking at anger, you give up. Because you're looking at a monster, you give up. You don't look at what you're seeing, you look at the monster, so then you punch it, or you run away. So the way you play, if you can play tennis and not get distracted by the other player,

[26:47]

not look at the player but look at the ball, because in the end it's a ball you have to return. You don't have to return the other player, you don't have to return the people in the stands, you don't have to return your racket, you don't have to return your tennis shoes, all you got to do is get the ball back over, that's the game. Now if you don't want to play that game, you can play the game of looking at the other person, that's nice, and that's another way to play it. That's the way my daughter, this is her birthday, that's the way my daughter played baseball. She played baseball, pulling the bat like this and looking at the boys in the dugout. So, you know, that's what she concentrated on, and it worked pretty well, actually. But it had nothing to do with this ball coming by, except that once in a while she got hit by it and had to walk on the base. But if you concentrate on the ball and you actually see the ball, then you can return the ball because if you concentrate on the ball, I don't mean to contradict you, it gets very big, so you cannot miss it. It comes up to you and says, please hit me.

[27:50]

You know, you're the one person who gives me full attention. Everybody else is looking at those tennis stars. Please, relate to me. You're my choice. You're the one I've been waiting for to hit me. It's because of your devotion to the ball. And there's lots of excuses for why you don't look at the ball, right? Like a big tennis star, or golf's a good example because there's not somebody else there. In golf, there's somebody else. It's yourself. Because there's the ball and then there's you hitting it, right? So you want to watch yourself hit the ball. So the ball's down there, so you watch yourself. Oh, there I am. There's the club. Ooh, it's a nice one. Now, I've got to make sure that club gets down to the ball, so I'll keep my eye on it. There, I got to the ball. But of course, that doesn't work very well unless you stop at the ball. If you bring the club right down and touch the ball, then it's okay. But if you want to hit it, you have to have some swing. If you look at the club, you're not using the swing.

[28:54]

The swing is not you looking at it. So anyway, in that case too, you don't trust what the instruction is. Is this right? It's right. So, all right, so that's that. Now, did you get ... I did that story now and I'll do it one more time. Coming in. Sense data. In order to be known, you have this mind consciousness. It can know. The reason why it can know and the other ones can't is it has this reflecting capacity. It can think. The thinking capacity is Manas. However, Manas, being such an important thing, being such a wonderful thing,

[29:55]

being the thing that makes possible objective knowledge, it says, hey, this is the center of objective knowledge. So it's ego-centered. That ego-centric pride at being so important, at accomplishing this great task in this moment, distorts and converts what's coming in, which hits the mind consciousness. The mind consciousness then has an experience of the ego defiled distorted thing and that's what it knows. That creates an impression. That knowledge creates an impression which is laid down right away. Now, at that same time that it took this stuff in, it had a certain context and that context was created by the maturing of the dispositions which were created by the impressions left by past experiences.

[30:57]

Past distorted experiences. So what's coming up is distorted. What's coming up to create the context in this frame of mind is distorted and what's coming in is being distorted. That's the process. So now I can read the text and see if this text is saying the same thing, basically. Whatever indeed is a variety of ideas of self and elements that prevails, that occurs in the transformation of consciousness, such transformation is threefold, namely the resultant, what is called mentation, what is called thinking, as well as the concept of the object. Herein the consciousness called alaya, with all its seeds, is what we call the resultant.

[31:59]

It is unidentified in terms of concepts of object and location and has always possessed of activities such as contact, attention, feeling, perception, volition, I would say samadhi, decision. So it always has feeling. Feeling is threefold. However, in this case, as you'll see in the next paragraph, next verse, although feeling can potentially be threefold, in this situation it's only onefold. But this is basically positive, negative and neutral feelings. This is the second skanda. In other words, in every moment of consciousness there's a judgment, there's a capacity to judge, and in active consciousness it is judging and it says this is positive, negative or neutral. There's always contact,

[33:03]

which means that the consciousness is in contact with its causes, and particularly its pivotal causes are organ and object. Perception, which is called samyak, can also be called conception, volition. Volition is actually the definition of thinking. Volition is not thinking. Volition is the definition of thinking. Attention, whatever has been chosen by another dharma, which is always present, called decision, or averting the consciousness. Consciousness averts to some object within its potential field of objects. It averts to one of them. That always happens. The consciousness has lots of possible objects available to it in the universe.

[34:08]

It chooses one, it turns towards one. That happens every moment. And then once it chooses the object, the consciousness in a sense bends or warps itself over towards the concept and it focuses on it. So decision, bending the mind and concentration are always present. These things are happening in alaya too. They also leave impressions. The seeds for them are in the unconscious also. In this context of alaya, the neutral feeling is uninterrupted and not defined. And so are contact and so on. And it proceeds like the current of a stream. If dissipation occurs in our hot ship, associated with this process and depending upon it

[35:12]

occurs another consciousness called manas, which is of the nature of the mind. It's the nature of thinking. Meditation means thinking. Maybe before we go to the next one I'll stop and don't talk about the next one yet. Any questions so far on this first part? Jack? Volition, you said, I believe was the definition of thinking. Yeah. So you already had thinking before we got to meditation. No, I didn't say it was thinking. It was a definition of thinking. Did you notice that? Yeah. This is called a difference. The actual activity of thinking is this reflecting. But the definition of thinking is the volition.

[36:17]

The Sanskrit word for that is, not very good blackboard, cetana. Cetana is the word for volition or also impulse. Okay. This is also one definition I heard in this book, the synergy of the consciousness. So it's the synergy of all the dispositions that arise with the capacity of discrimination and knowing. In the Chinese, at least one of the main ways it's now been done is they have a Chinese character which they use. This is the character they use for cetana.

[37:23]

And the character is sometimes translated. Well, actually no, it doesn't usually get translated by itself. This character with I think this character. I forgot how to write Ryo. Hachi-san, how do you write Ryo? Like this? No. Like this? No, I forgot. Ryo. Thank you. So this character, this character they use for translating cetana which means volition. This character means measure or calculate. Putting the word measure and calculate together with

[38:27]

this word for volition or the definition of thinking. The combination means thinking. So, what thinking is, is a combination of reflection and some pattern. Pattern. And this compound is nice because the top part is a character also which means rice paddy. It's a shape of a rice paddy, a pattern. And the bottom part is mind. So, the volition in mind is a pattern of mind. Volition means the way a mind seems to be going is a pattern in the mind. I sometimes use the expression the watershed of mind. Mind has a certain pattern, a certain shape. If you looked at mind, you try to figure out where does this, if you poured water over the mind, where would the water run?

[39:29]

Or where does the mind seem to be going? Like if you see my body and I'm going like this, you know, where do I seem to be going? Do I seem to be going that way or that way? I seem to be going that way, right? But actually I'm not going that way, I look like I'm going that way. Do I look like I'm going that way? No. I look like I'm going that way. That's the, what do you call it, that's the volition of my body at that time. That's the sort of impulse of my body as I seem to be going that way. You put that impulse, that impulse of appearance, that shape, that pattern together with reflection and that's thinking. So chaitanya is the definition, defines the type of thinking that will happen. Could you please repeat what does it mean, the second kanji? This one? It means measure. Measure? To measure or calculate.

[40:31]

I can't see very well. And every moment of consciousness, every set of dispositions will have a shape. You can't see very well? Come over and look at it. What's the radical for heart? Radical for heart, this one. Okay. I see. Okay. Disposition, same as mental consciousness. Any changes? No. Samskaras, you know the fourth skanda, the fourth skanda is called samskara skanda, which is sometimes translated, it literally means things that are made, stuff that's made. So the samskaras, the word samskara is the fourth skanda, and in a given moment of experience, there's five skandas, right? The fourth skanda is the samskara skanda, and in the samskara skanda, basically, you have all that stuff in the dharmadhatu. You have all those dispositions, all those things that are made.

[41:39]

How are they made? They're made by the activity of taking stuff in, messing with it, and then creating a sense of self, and then thinking the self does stuff, and that creates samskaras, which are then laid down in the alaya, and then the samskaras come back up in the next moment, some of them come back up in the next moment, according to the process of maturation, they come up and accompany the next experience, where again, stuff's taken in, reflected, and thereby defiled by the egocentricness. Then, because of egocentricness, there's also the idea that this person, this being, can do something, which creates karmic formations, and that's one of the main ways that the defiling activity of egocentricness happens, is that what is a process, as you see, a very complex, many-dimensional, mutuality type of ... everything's very mutual, you know? Everything's very mutual.

[42:41]

So you can say consciousness never ... the knowing capacity never arises by itself, it always comes up with a bunch of stuff. It always comes up with a decision, with concentration, with leaning, with feeling, with a pattern, with contact. All this stuff comes up with it. It never comes up by itself. So it never comes up by itself, and they never come up without it. It never comes up without them, but they never come up without it. So it causes them, and they cause it. Plus, they don't want to cause it to arise, because as soon as they come up, it must come up. And it causes them to arise, because every time it comes up, they come up, but also the quality of what it is, is affected by each one of those Presence, but the way they are also is affected by all the others. So it's a very multi-dimensional thing that's happening here. All this stuff is coming together to make this thing happen, but because of this self that arises with the reflecting capacity,

[43:42]

it gets to be like, I'm doing this. First of all, I'm thinking this. I'm angry, and now I'm going to punch, or now I'm going to grab, or now I'm going to say. That's karma. So, that way of seeing things also, that way of being, also creates what's called karmic stuff, and that gets laid down in a lie. And it also has a certain patterning effect, which then that pattern gets brought up again, reflected, and then that pattern that comes up, whatever it is, which is constantly changing, that becomes a definition of what is then called thinking, which this person does, and then this person acts upon this thinking. Okay, so this is a question time, even though I'm talking. You were next, I think. And then Alan. Yes?

[44:44]

I'd like to go back a little bit to the tennis ball thing. Yes. Because I understand in tennis, keeping your eye on the ball, but I don't understand when you get into like inside, internal consciousness. Outside of the tennis ball, I don't get it. I don't understand keeping your eye on the ball. Well, if you practice trying to keep your eye on the ball in tennis, what you find out is you don't. Right? Well, I don't... Well... Hopefully you find that out because you don't. No, you don't. You look at a lot of other stuff, too. And you have various... Depending on who you're playing with, you have a whole different, you know... Given different people playing tennis with you, you have a different take on the game, which shows you're not just looking at the tennis ball. But it also sometimes helps to know who you're playing with in the game because it is sometimes relevant to know... See what I mean? That's the way you think. That's the way you think.

[45:46]

You don't really keep your eye on the ball. That's what I just told you, you see? No, even if you keep your eye on the ball, even though, say, you know your opponent has a weak backhand, you can hit the ball that you're keeping your eye on. See? You don't keep your... You do not follow the instruction of keeping your eye on the ball. You're looking at the person because you think it's good to look at the person. No, I'm not talking about looking at her. Well, you're taking the person into account. You're thinking of the person. And you think it's good to think of the person. Not necessarily. I just want to know how all this applies to... I'm telling you how it applies. I'll do it one more time. The name of the game is look at the ball. And you're not telling me... And I said, if you do that, you say, you don't see how it applies to yourself. I want to see what the ball is other than outside of the analogy of tennis. What's the ball and what is the analogy? You see? And this is the same thing people do in study of doctrinal presentation. They don't want to look at the doctrine itself. They want to look at a bunch of other stuff.

[46:48]

You have to concentrate on the ball. The ball in tennis is the ball. That's right, but tennis... No, but we have to... Don't you... I don't want to talk to you anymore. I'll talk to the other people. What people do when they're playing tennis is look at something besides the ball. Now, if I tell you to look at your breath or study the functioning of manas, you will... If I say, look at manas, how it functions or something like that, you will do the same thing that you do and I give you the instruction on looking at the ball. You won't look at that. You will look at a bunch of other stuff and you'll have reasons for why you look at the other stuff. So the extent to which you will not follow the instruction in tennis and you have all these good reasons for not following the instruction in tennis and to the extent that you will not follow the instruction in golf, you will transfer that same lack of faith to your analysis of your internal states. If I say, just concentrate on your breath

[47:49]

or just concentrate on your posture or just, you know, think not thinking, whatever the instruction is, to the extent that you will not follow instruction externally in a dialogue or whatever, you will also transfer that same lack of faith inwardly. That's why it's good to talk to people outside because I find out then that you refuse to follow the ball because you think... And there's excuses and then you also have excuses where I don't know what the ball is. I mean, are you talking about the breath? Are you talking about... I'm talking about... I was talking to you about the ball, the tennis ball. That's what I was talking to you about. And you started talking about the person and giving me excuses for why you should think of the person. Outside of that, I guess my real... what I intended to ask you was that I wasn't getting it on this level of tennis and there is this practice. Are we talking about... And I'm saying to you that

[48:52]

if you can't get it on the level of tennis, you won't be able to get it on the level of golf or meditation or anything else. And that response is part of it. Your faith is breaking down right now. I just... I understand the concept of keeping your eye on the ball. You do? Uh-huh. Okay. And... And I said to you that if you try to practice that, what you will find out is that you do not keep your eye on the ball. That's what I said. So, if you do that practice of keeping your eye on the ball in tennis, you will notice that you don't. So, if I tell you to keep your eye on your breath or if I tell you to meditate on pain, or if I tell you to be aware of the reflecting capacity of your mind, or if I tell you to watch the dispositions that are arising, anything I tell you,

[49:52]

you won't do it. Something else will happen. And that's how, if you practice tennis, you could apply what you don't... the way you don't follow the rules in tennis, or the instructions in tennis, the same level of lack of concentration you would apply inwardly. The ball... The ball in this... In this thing, what's the ball in this text? The three transformations of consciousness is one ball. Another ball is can you watch how the sense of self is born constantly? The self is the ball. That's another ball. Concentrate on the self. Right? The afflictions. Can be the ball. You should decide. You get to decide. You're actually the coach. You're actually the player. The game is constantly redefined. You can decide what you're going to concentrate on. But, you will notice that you can't.

[50:56]

And that will be part of, you know, your inefficiency in your study. That's why it's somewhat useful to externalize this process. If I say, oh, go read a book on such and such, you may read it, but unless you externalize your study and tell me what you're thinking or tell somebody what you're thinking, you can't necessarily find out that you're not paying attention to what you're thinking. That you're not paying attention to what you're studying. That actually, you're just... You're playing tennis, but you're not following the instruction. You're studying the self, but you're not looking at the self. You're looking at the other. Or you're confusing the other for the self, or you're confusing the self for the other. And you're getting no feedback on that, so you're not really playing the game. But if you can play the game externally, and you can demonstrate that actually you're following the instruction of keeping your eye on the ball, and you're not thinking about the other player at all, then the teacher might say, now look at the other player, or whatever,

[51:58]

and don't look at the ball anymore. And now go back to looking at the ball, or whatever, you know. But if you can follow that instruction externally, and you can see that you're doing it externally, then you can follow internal instruction. But I cannot, myself, and almost no one else can help you with your following internal instructions, unless you talk to them, and they can see how you follow external instructions, and you can see how you follow external instructions. So do you actually watch the self all the time? Do you see it? Are you looking for it? What have you found out? Have you found the afflictions that accompany it? Can you see how your self defiles everything you take in? Can you observe these things? Have you decided to look at that or not? Can you see how the other defines the self? Are you watching these kinds of things? Which one are you watching? Are you experiencing the psychophysical effects of the interaction between self and other?

[53:00]

Can you experience the gain and loss of energy around the interface between self and other? Do you experience the interface between self and other? All these kinds of... Hm? What? No. It's on tape. It's on... Yeah, I can slow down. Sure, I can slow down. So who... I think Alan was next. And I don't know who was next, but maybe Albert and John, and then Roberto, and then Michelle, and Taiyo, something like that. In terms of keeping one's eye on the ball, you put something in here that I didn't find in the text about samadhi always being present. Yeah. My experience is that samadhi is not always present. And that's what I think of

[54:04]

when I think of... May I just say the definition of samadhi is citta eka gata, which means the one-pointedness of the consciousness. Consciousness is always one-pointed because it is always focused on the object of that moment. However, if you think in terms of memory images and so on and so forth, which we usually do, which is also part of what is necessary for thinking in terms of karma, then you notice, because of memory impressions, because you're seeing one thing lays down an impression and then comes up later, and seeing another thing creates an impression, gets laid down and comes up later, you can create a sense of memory and feel like you look at the different moments of concentration and you notice your mind jumping from one thing to another. Okay? So then you say, my mind is not concentrated because I'm thinking of the tractor, now I'm thinking of your face, now I'm thinking of your tongue, now I'm thinking of Christina moving, now I'm listening to my voice, so my mind is actually jumping all over the place.

[55:05]

But actually, in a moment of experience, it doesn't jump anywhere. It just has that experience and it's completely concentrated. So samadhi is actually an ever-present quality of mind. However, if you entertain a stream of your memory and your version of history, your version of history may be that I'm not concentrated, that I'm distracted, I'm jumping from one thing to another. That can be your story that you tell. But that's not this concentration, that's a story about your concentration, made up of momentary events where you were concentrated. So the first definition of samadhi, the one that's in here that's always present, is that the mind is always focused on its object. It's never distracted and sort of paying attention to what it's paying attention to. It's always paying attention to that. However, there's also two other meanings of samadhi, at least. One of them is the practice to develop a sense that you're concentrated, to develop an appreciation of your concentration. So then you willfully,

[56:05]

obsessively, and compulsively choose some topic and try to bring your mind back by that karmic act of choosing a concentration object. The effect of that karmic act, which is then done over and over again, that will to concentrate on one thing, you keep coming back to your breath or something or your posture or your cutting vegetables. You keep coming back again and again and you have a feeling like, oh, there's some ongoing concentration here. So then that starts to overcome the sense of jumping from thing to thing. After a while you feel like, hey, I am concentrated. That's another meaning of samadhi. And that meaning of samadhi, sometimes people feel like, well, I do have that or I don't have that. But that feeling of samadhi, that practice of samadhi, that cultivation of samadhi, that type of thing, a concentration practice, is really, I would say, just to help you appreciate the actual stability of your mind that you already have, that is always there. In other words, that kind of concentration practice has helped you to appreciate

[57:07]

the nature of your mind. So like I said before, I tried to get myself under control, and I did. But all I got myself under control, I still didn't appreciate that actually my mind was always calm before I got myself under control. The reason for samadhi practice in that sense of cultivation, of stability, is so that you can believe deeply and experience deeply what you believe, that the mind is imperturbable. Always. It's never moving because if it moves it's two different experiences. And the third meaning of samadhi is that you absorb yourself in some teaching or some reality. Like the samadhi of some vision, or the samadhi of some kind of faith practice, or the samadhi of meditating on the mind where alaya is dissipated. Absorbing yourself in the consciousness

[58:10]

where alaya is dissipated, absorbing yourself in the mind of an arhat, that's another kind of samadhi. The only difference I hear is... I think the difference is that the samadhi in the last case, you basically have realized samadhi and you no longer have to work to get yourself concentrated. You just immediately look at something and you're concentrated. In other words, you've realized the mind is concentrated, you no longer have to cultivate the realization. You no longer have to cultivate concentration, you have realized concentration. You didn't create concentration. The mind is naturally concentrated. You realize it and you use that concentrated quality of mind to look at everything. So you look at things and there's stability in your vision. Then you take that concentration and you apply it to some meditation topic, some insight topic which you have either had the insight or wish to develop the insight on. That's why some realization

[59:12]

of the stabilization of mind is very helpful if you're going to enter into the realm of the 30 verses or the realm of a story, a Zen story, a sports story or a story of your relationship to somebody else. In other words, the self-fulfilling samadhi. If you're going to go into the self-fulfilling samadhi, the self-fulfilling samadhi is not just like, hey, here I am. It's not like that. It's like, hey, here I am and there she is and there he is and we're interacting and it's really a mess and I have all these feelings. The self-fulfilling samadhi has got demons and terrible things happening and wonderful things happening. All this stuff is happening very rapidly changing. That's the world of self and other. And it's really alive when the self is really pressing you and scaring you and exciting you and you're noticing all this up and down and stuff. So when you enter that realm you know it's good if you're very stable. So each little facet of it you can see with stability. So even though this person

[60:12]

is going, you actually see nothing's moving. So you can absorb into the meditation of how it is that this person seems to be moving and gyrating and you have all these effects happening to you. This person's obnoxiousness is actually fulfilling a sense of self. You can see that when you're stable. That's why you practice uprightness. Uprightness is the gate that you enter into this dynamic study. Uprightness is the gate that you enter into studying what doesn't really exist. And what doesn't really exist is self and other, basically. What doesn't really exist is me and the ball. That doesn't exist. But that's a very scary situation. Me and the ball and everything that comes with that. It's very scary. There's big bucks riding on this interaction. This is not something to joke about. Okay? But if you have uprightness

[61:13]

and stability you can enter into that dynamic and stay present and do pretty well. And then we have various levels of championships for who can be most upright in certain dynamic situations. And the more you enter into certain dynamic situations like that of appearances which don't really exist the more skillful you get. And you mostly get skillful by noticing your mistakes. You notice how you lose it. How you lose confidence in your stability. You know, I got myself under control. I told you that story. But the time when I really realized the stability of mind was when I was offering incense one time. I washed my hand, moved through space and put the incense in in the Kaisando at Zen Center. And I noticed that nothing moved. It wasn't that I got myself to not move and to concentrate on something. I realized

[62:14]

even in the midst of movement that there was stillness. So that you can enter into a dynamic dance with other beings and still feel stillness all the way through. Then you use that samadhi, that presence, that uprightness to meditate on the relationship between yourself and incense, between yourself and your friends, between yourself and balls. Then you can learn the nature of what seems to be self and other. Which in movement is another kind of self and other. This place and that place and that place and that place creates movement. So those are the three kinds of samadhi. The first kind of samadhi is always present. It's a universal quality of consciousness. If it's happening, if there is consciousness, it's concentrated. He doesn't mention it here. I don't know why. He mentioned it in his other book. Can we air?

[63:14]

We can air and err also. Okay, next question, I think, was John Berlow. Yeah, I wanted to ask whether in the Yogacara story or some other Buddhist epistemological story, there's any idea of temporal sequence of reflection, the reflective capacity and then the accompaniment of the dispositions. That is, is it possible and also is it then possible to kind of intervene the mind to kind of see what's being reflected before the dispositions arise. That was, I think, Robert asked a question something like this the other day. So now it's, you hear this question, it's about temporal sequence. All right? Temporal sequence, temporal sequence has no temporal sequence is taught by the Buddha.

[64:15]

There's no such thing as temporal sequence. There is, the only way you can experience temporal sequence would be in the present. There's no way to experience two different moments at once. It's a story I just told you. Okay? However, although, since I said there's no way to do it, it's a story that has nothing into it, into itself and no one disagrees with it that I know. You can experience two moments at once by definition. So there can't be temporal sequence. You have one experience, it changes, you have another experience. And you use a series of experiences to create a temporal sequence. You build, but the way you do that is these temporal, these events, these experiences get laid down in a lie and then a lie pops up a sequence. So in the present you look one, two, three, there's a sequence, time, temporality is something you experience in the present. The history of the universe

[65:15]

is something you speak about now. The historian expounds the history of the cosmos. They've got it right here. And there's lawfulness, karmic lawfulness about how you can do that. And your access, you know, your concentration on that process will reveal to you the inner workings of sequential processes, but they're not actual. Right. But they're lawful. So, even though they're not actual, is there a story about the arising of reflective consciousness and their, and its accompaniment by disposition that appears sequential in this, in this Holy Gopichara theory? And is there a way of working with that to help kind of free you from those dispositions? One of the main dispositions is that there is a sequence. Okay?

[66:16]

That's one of the dispositions. And that disposition, that there's a sequential temporality gets projected onto current events as a distorting factor. Okay? Actually, whatever happens, all the things that happen in our experience are always simultaneous. However, it is important that in our simultaneous experience, which is the only kind we've got, all the elements, there is the experience of history. Okay? And the appearance of history, the disposition of the experience of history in the present has no temporal relationship in terms of sequence to the experience of that history. So, the arising of reflection, the defiling activity, the creation of dispositions, and the laying down of dispositions. Okay? That seems like a sequence. First there's subconscious.

[67:16]

Then there's the arising out of the subconscious of the reflecting capacity. The reflecting capacity then reflects some one of those seeds which has matured from the unconscious. It reflects it. The mind knows it. In association with this reflection, the sense of self is born. It defiles the impression that the mind knows. This, all this, creates an impression which is laid back down in the consciousness. That happens, all that's simultaneous. The history of the universe is simultaneous with itself. This is supposedly a liberating vision. If you analyze this and analyze how you don't believe it, if you can isolate how you don't believe this story and then investigate your reasons for not believing it and see if they actually hold up and either establish that they do or that they don't, then you'll do the same thing to your own experience and you will stop being caught by sequential time. And when you stop being caught by sequential time, you'll stop being caught by karma.

[68:18]

You'll stop being caught by the definition of action because the definition of action is this seems to be going somewhere. There seems to be a sequence here. See it? You'll stop being caught by the illusion of sequence. Even when somebody says 1, 2, 3, 4, you'll see that they're saying that actually right now. Because you can't say 1, 2, 3, 4 right now but you can vision, you can see 1, 2, 3, 4 in a flash of experience. You can't say 1, 2, 3, 4. That takes several experiences. Many experiences just happened when I did that. But in each one, you can encapsulate much more than that, much more of a sequence in that the mind has concepts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and larger numbers and we can go for it and grab them right at that. Want to pull the whole thing in like that or part of it or twice it and so on. It all happens in the present. If you can catch that and catch that you don't believe that and analyze your disbelief and analyze your belief, then you get freed

[69:20]

from the sense of sequential time which means you get freed from karma. So our practice is a practice which is basically testifying to freedom from karma because we do something that has no sequentiality on it. We sit but not because of the effect it has. Of course we want to be happy. You know. We want to even be happier than we are now. Okay, fine. We want other people to be happy. Fine. The way to be happy is to be free from the idea of some later happiness and also free from present happiness. Don't do things even to get present happiness. Do things to do things. This is an act which is free from karma if you actually practice that way. If you actually can sit for only one reason and that is to sit four zazen that saves all sentient beings because sentient beings are chained to sequential temporality

[70:21]

which is you do zazen and then you get happy or whatever, you know. Has that cartoon of that guy sitting with the cellular phone on the tongue? The cartoons tell you, you know. You don't get anything out of it. That's a joke, right? But then to dedicate your whole life to a joke. That's even more of a joke. But it's liberating. It liberates you from sadness which you had before you laughed. So to just sit for no other reason than to sit is a testimony to that I don't believe in sequential time. I don't believe in karma. I don't think it's real. Now, I haven't actually analyzed that and discussed that and had a direct insight into the stupidity of karma. I haven't done that yet. But in the meantime, I'm going to do a practice

[71:21]

which I would do if I did understand that. Namely, just sitting. Namely, doing something for no karmic advantage. And this will give you a great karmic advantage because it will give you the greatest karmic advantage of all and that is it will free you from karma as soon as you do it, on the spot, you'll be freed from karma. And you won't get anything out of it which is exactly the proof that you're freed from karma. If you get anything out of it, it's more karma. See, I think Roberto and then Taiyo, was that it? No, Michel, Taiyo? This probably should be kind of towards the end of the class now, I think. The kitchen seems to be leaving. Did you hear what he said?

[72:28]

So the instruction is look at the ball and he says I don't look at the ball because that's just the nature of the way I am. Right, and I'm not going to look at it if you tell me to look at the ball or whoever, you know. Yes, right. So if you give me a different instruction or if I give myself a different instruction I'll check myself. Yes. Yes. Tell us about it. Tell us. We're waiting for this instruction. Would that eventually lead me to see that I'm not the name of the game is to not look at the person, not look at the whatever, but to look at the ball. Wilson? It might. Would I exhaust myself doing a bunch of this stuff before I realize that what I need to do is look at the ball? Yes, you might. It might be that. Or can you trick me into somehow looking at the ball? Okay. This is good, Steve. This shows you how you can use

[73:30]

something external like that. The process is pervasive, you know. So if you said, I don't want to look at the ball. I want to look at the girls. Okay. We say, okay. Look at the girls. Then I watch you, you know. You look at the girls. But pretty soon you start looking at the boys. Roberto! You said you wanted to look at the girls. I know, but I got bored. I want to look at the boys a little bit because then when I look back at the girls it's more interesting. Actually, you start looking at the ball. Roberto, you're supposed to look at the girls. You said you want to look at the girls. I know, but I I'm not looking at the girls. Well, what's the reason? And you said, well and he probably has lots of reasons why he starts looking at the girls and looking at the rackets and looking at the gift shop. You know. Lots of reasons. Then we start analyzing those reasons and we find out that you don't even believe in those reasons. And so on and so forth. And finally you might come back to look at the ball, but even when you get back and decide okay, now I see you're right. I should look at the ball. Even when you get back there you still have all these distractions from looking at the ball. But if we talk about them

[74:30]

if we examine all your distractions and how you keep veering away from veering away from what you agree would be a good idea or some people come and say look, I don't know anything about tennis. You tell me what to look at. I'll do whatever you say. You're the coach. Say, look at the ball. I really trust you. I'll do that. And you don't. Say, why aren't you? You say, well, blah, blah, blah, blah. You said that and I said, didn't you say you'd do whatever I said? I did, but there was a really good reason why I didn't. I thought there was an exception. So I didn't. Well, let's look at that exception. They say, well, I guess that wasn't actually a good exception. No, I agree. You're right. Let's go back to that. Now we could also say after a while you say, no, you're wrong. Okay, you get to choose now. This is what I do with law students. They say, no, I don't want to practice that way. Okay, let's do it your way then. What is it? The road? The road to wisdom is the path of excess. The road of excess is the path to the palace of wisdom. If you choose a really bad thing and you really stay on that road it'll work out. That's why you can become enlightened by studying the wrong thing.

[75:32]

You can study something wrong and we can become enlightened. Okay, in the process we will examine all the variations. And if we examine the variations that will protect the process of goodness and illumination. So it doesn't really matter what you pick. In the end, if you're thorough enough you can pick anything. But, I thought that was a good instruction to keep your eye on the ball in tennis. But, you know, we could choose something else. We would get enlightened no matter what we chose. However, you might not ever be a good tennis player if you don't concentrate on the ball. But you might become a great Buddha by concentrating on the grass. Or the net. Or the judges. Or the TV announcers. Anything you choose, once we agree on that, then that's it and then we can learn from there. It doesn't matter. The process of study can use anything as its topic. And in some ways it's good to use something wrong. That's known to be wrong.

[76:34]

And then you say, well, why? Because then you're always with the question, why are we studying something that's known to be wrong? Why don't we study what's right? Well, we'll do that later. You know? And so there's the Madhyamaka. But the Madhyamaka doesn't give you anything. It's right because it doesn't give you anything. So maybe at a later part of the practice period we'll study that. And that's definitely right. And then we'll be studying the truth. Okay? But the same processes of analysis and watching ourself that we apply when we're studying the false will apply. So it won't be a waste of time. We may not even have to study the Madhyamaka. We may just discover it in the midst of our work here because, in fact, it is in this text. It's implied there. So, I don't want to lose the kitchen people, but maybe if you can be short. Michelle? I think it's pretty basic. In the story that you told of the process, are all three transformations represented? Transformation of consciousness? Because I'm missing...

[77:36]

Yes. Where was it? She said, in the story I told her, all three transformations are represented. So... Here's the concept of the object. The concept of the object is the concept of the object is that what's reflected by the activity of Manas is external. Therefore, it can be known. Nothing can be known to consciousness unless it's external to it. So it has to be... it has to be reflected. And Charlie Bacorni, I heard, asked a question, which Galen was supposed to ask me, and she did, about whether when this thing is reflected, whether it has to be what? Labeled? In order to be known? Huh? What? Labeled. So, is what's reflected out there... This is a big one. I'll leave you with this because it'll make you nervous. By the way, she says she... Actually, I'll be able to talk to her and say she... This... Whatever is reflected out there in order to be known has to be external, but again, it's external, but it's also a concept of the object, right? A concept is a label.

[78:36]

A concept is a label for something. Something's happening and you pull up a label out of your... out of a laya, which is not the thing that's happening. You pull up a label and put the label out there. The label is what gets reflected. It's a concept. A concept is a label, like... Abraham Lincoln is a label for a whole bunch of stuff. Right? All this stuff you call Abraham Lincoln. It's a label for this... all this stuff. It's not the stuff, but all this stuff stimulates you to say Abraham Lincoln. It's a label. Abraham Lincoln is a concept. It's a visual, verbal, mental concept for a bunch of stuff. So, in fact, whatever you know has to be a word or language because it's a symbol for something. Whatever you know is a symbol for something else. So, everything is language that you know. And that stimulates people

[79:38]

to say that. Tayo? You keep using the phrase the reflections are laid down. Yes. What causes it to be laid down? How does that occur? Well, he says, what causes them to be laid down? Another way to put it is that there isn't like a... We don't have like... I haven't heard about something in the mind which goes over there, grabs the impression, walks over a lie and slaps it on there. It's a lie's ability to catch that all, you could say. Whenever... See, a lie is proposed as something which embraces its subconscious, but it sort of catches all this stuff. So, this stuff sort of by gravity falls down to a lie or a lie just somehow can can embrace this stuff. There isn't another function called laying down. Okay, so that's the process a lie is doing. What's the process? Well, we're calling it laying down. In other words, that seems to be a significant part of what's happening. It lays down, it comes up later and it's defiling

[80:38]

what's going on. It's giving us a distorted view. Yeah, but I don't yet feel ready to say that a lie has this activity called pulling it down to itself or chucking it up. Well, I'm wondering what that activity is. Whatever that is that brings it that... It's the activity... I don't know, if you want to call it activity then it's the activity of getting laid down and the activity of maturing and rising up. Is there a better way to say that then? I understand you're saying well, I don't want to say... Is there a better way to say that? Maybe a better way to say it is not so much in terms of laying it down or pulling it up, but just that a lie can be a basis or it can be what is laid down upon. So you can meditate on that. That's a very potentially useful meditation to meditate on the dynamic between something that gets laid down upon and something that's the basis

[81:38]

for things. So the activity of reflection uses a lie as its base and all these dispositions have a lie as their base but a lie is also something that gets laid down upon. So there's a dynamic there between being laid down upon and being a basis for. In other words, of receiving the impressions and then once receiving the impressions being a ground from which people can step forward into delusion. That's another dynamic you can meditate on. Maybe that saves you from trying to figure out how this stuff gets down here pulled up. Now, the problem is if we leave the kitchen out if we keep asking these questions, you see, I don't like to do that. So I think... We can't leave them out, they already left. Yeah, that's right. Listen to the tape of the last, you know, ten minutes. Okay, we should set a time limit here. It's now 10. We should decide

[82:39]

we're going to talk... Should we go a little longer? Do you want to stop? How many of you want to stop? Okay, let's stop. There's no end to this. Believe me. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. May our intention equally treat every human face with the true merit of this way.

[83:15]

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