By going in chronological order, we are now somewhere around case 20 in this class here, right? We've been working on case 19 for a while, haven't we? So now case 20, or I'll pass it out anyway. How many of you people are guest students? You're a guest and a person. I don't know if we have enough of those to go around. If we don't, we can make more. And maybe the people who don't live here can have first choice, and the people who live here can get copies later if you need them. Oops.

[01:03]

Well, you don't need it here. It's OK. This way. Marianne, your wife is trying to help you. How are we doing? Did you get one to see? Are we short? How many people didn't get one that need one?

[02:08]

How are we doing now? Everybody have one that needs one? Okay. I might say some introductory remarks about studying these stories. Let's see, what can I say? Well, studying these stories is something we do here on Monday nights, and also you can study them throughout the week.

[03:29]

and beyond the class. And these stories are like anything, any little piece of experience or reality that you pick up in your life. You can pick it up at various levels according to your mind. And whatever level you pick it up at, the other levels are there too. But you may or may not appreciate these other levels going on. Everything has all these levels going on, and these stories, just like everything else, relate to all these different realms of our existence.

[04:38]

The difference between these stories and some other stories that we run into is that these stories have been related to on all these levels many times. where some stories have yet to be related to on all these levels. Some of the stories from our daily life may not have been fully developed yet, but these stories, maybe I can't even say these stories have been fully developed, but they certainly have been developed. And there's been, people have looked at them from lots of different points of view over centuries. I heard a rumor from someone that there are people who take this class who don't understand what these stories are about. And that some people are afraid, even afraid to speak in class or don't even come to class because they're afraid I'll call on them. And they don't want to have me call on them because they don't understand.

[05:43]

And they're kind of, would be embarrassed if I called on them and they wouldn't be able to say what this was about. So that's part of what's going on in this class is a lot of people in class are not here because they're afraid to come. Or there's some people in class who are afraid I'm going to call on them and ask them what this is all about. So part of this class is about, this class is partly about fear. and several different types of fear. Fear of losing our reputation, fear of speaking in front of a group, fear of losing our minds, fear of perhaps even losing our livelihood, if we work for Zen Center, and fear of death. Some people are afraid of dying in this class.

[06:44]

And just, it actually turns out that traditionally there are those five types of fear. Did you learn them? You did? Good. Well, fear of death, that's kind of the main one, you know. Fear of public speaking, fear of speaking in front of a group, and a large, usually spoken of as fear of speaking in front of the Great Assembly. which means usually we're not afraid to speak in front of a bunch of people we know really well, even if there's a hundred of them. We know them all and know that they'll all like us. But to speak in front of a large group, there's probably several people who you don't know and you don't know what they're going to do or what they're going to think or if they're going to understand you or what. And that's one of the situations that human beings become afraid. Another fear is fear of loss of your reputation. Another fear is fear of loss of livelihood. Another fear is fear of loss of your mind, or losing control of your mind.

[07:51]

And those are five, right? And they all come up in this class for good reason. Yeah. In the grab bag this weekend, Alan Boyd reports that fear of speaking in public is the number one phobia. It's frequently a kind of phobia. Yeah. Usually if I tell people these five fears, when I say fear of speaking in front of a large group, people go, oh, what? A lot of times they're surprised by that one. It is kind of surprising. And then you can think, well, there's some other fears, but I don't know, are there any other fears? Think about it. That's pretty good, actually. Because fear of losing control of your mind catches a lot of stuff. All these, I think, recently occurred to me that all these five fears are really fear of losing yourself, what they're about. And so this class is a class, in a sense, where we're actually kind of like studying what the self is.

[08:53]

That's what this class is about, to try to study what the self is. And also to, in the process, forget about it, actually. To study it so deeply that you go right through it. So it's natural that various fears would come up in conjunction of a real study like that. And in some ways, if you never get afraid in this class, maybe you're, you know, not... noticing some of the dangers to your attachment to yourself that are implied by not only these stories, but the group setting here. Even so, even though there is this problem, that's what makes this class wonderful, is that we're actually dealing with some real emotional issues right in the class. I mean, it really does make a difference whether you talk or not, and when you talk, as soon as you speak, you do enter into another realm. So it really, that's part of what makes this class alive.

[09:57]

But also, in one sense, I can say you don't really have to worry about it. You actually are completely safe. Completely safe. So on one side, I'm happy that people are are able to become aware of their fears in this class, and I can at the same time tell you that they're all really irrational. Because you are safe here, you're not going to... you're not going to lose your mind. You'll maybe get a new one that you never saw before, which surprises you and amazes you, but you're not going to lose your mind, you're just going to... your mind's going to change, and so on. You're not going to lose your job and you're not going to lose your reputation. That stuff happens naturally, you know, anyway, all the time. But you might die. You might die, yes. However, that's happening all the time anyway. All those things will happen, but you don't need to be afraid of what I'm saying. You're actually safe. You're safe.

[11:01]

Because all those things are happening all the time anyway. Okay, so in this case, as I said, there's many levels to approach this material, and just like there's many levels to approach a relationship with another person or with yourself. In any relationship we're dealing with each other, each of us have histories, and as Nietzsche said, anything that has a history you can't define. And in Sanskrit, I've heard that they don't really have definitions for words. They just have a constellation of associations. So in a way, you know, you can't really define a person. You can't really define what Buddhist precepts are, what the stories are, because they have histories.

[12:06]

So part of what we do here is study the histories of these stories, to some extent, and also reveal our own histories. That's part of what's going on here. But it's not just history, it's history to sort of like, and not history, and we don't tell these histories to define the story, but rather to bring in various elements to the story. Not to try to get a hold of the story, but actually to try to realize how ungraspable the story is. That these stories are basically just light, is what they are. They're light that's delivered to us in the form of words. So with that introduction, look at the introduction. The profound talk entering into noumenon decides three and weeds out four.

[13:19]

The great way to the capital goes seven ways across eight ways, and across eight ways, up and down. Suddenly, if you can open your mouth and explain fully, take steps and walk, then you can hang your bowl and bag up high and break your staff. But tell me, who is this? For now, I'll just say that this introduction, by coincidence, I didn't think of it, but this introduction is kind of the same thing I was just saying. And... Maybe later we can go into how that's so, if you want to. I'd like to go right into the story and say that Di Cang asked Fa Yan, where are you going? And Fa Yan said, around on pilgrimage.

[14:22]

And Di Cang said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? And Fa Yan said, I don't know. Di Cang says, not knowing is nearest. And there's not a blackboard here, so I can't write the Chinese characters on the blackboard. I could write them on a piece of paper, though. If somebody wants me to write on the back of their paper. Does anybody have a marker? Okay, well, here's the first character. The characters that I'm going to write are a character which is translated here as nearest.

[15:24]

Actually, I didn't write it big enough. Two characters mean nearest, and the top one means nearest. means intimacy, or close, like in a family. This character here means the relationship between a mother and a child, or parent and child. So close that there's almost no separation at all. And next character means to cut. And this character cut, by the way, if you'd like to write the character for one, and then this character for cut, one and this character cut, what do you think that means? Half? Well, that's a good guess. Two, that's another good guess. It means not one. It means everything.

[16:35]

One cut means everything. Japanese is isai, i, one, sai, cut. One cut means everything. In other words, with one cut, you get it all. Whatever it is that you can get with one cut, that's everything. So this is intimate cut. An intimate cut is translated here as nearness. It can also be translated as intimacy or closeness. having intimate connections or sometimes translated as to the point. There's some people here who are in a class in San Francisco and we talked quite a bit about this word the other night. This issue of being close. And one of the people in class asked about... He said, well, you know, it seems like in Zen they're always talking about intimacy and how it seems like they think it's a good thing.

[17:38]

But actually, he says, intimacy is kind of obnoxious. This guy's a great devil's advocate. And in a way, it's true that intimacy, that in Zen is considered to be considered to be good, or actually sort of the whole point of the whole thing. But it's also kind of obnoxious. Or in another part of this text, case 98, There's a little quote which says, why is it that something like this closeness is heart-rending if you seek it outside?

[18:48]

Why is it that the ultimate closeness seems almost like enmity, seems almost like fighting? The ultimate closeness is almost like fighting. So on the psychological level what's being proposed here is that there's something called not knowing which is the most intimate situation. So right off I can say that one of the things that's most obnoxious to us is not knowing. That's why some people don't like this class because they don't know what's going on. But there's something quite intimate about going to a class where you don't know what's going on. The Stephanie's New Yorker cartoon that I read was this man and woman are sitting in their house in some big city and the man's looking out the window and he said, just think, right now as we sit here, somewhere, someplace, something's happening.

[20:07]

So, it also occurs to me, maybe this class is an emperor's clothes kind of situation where, where if you, except it's reversed, whereas if you say you know something, you have to leave the class. That's not true. It's okay to know things because not knowing is not like not knowing in the usual way. It means that your ordinary knowing is still going on but somehow it doesn't seem to quite make the... doesn't seem to be sufficient. And that's kind of an uncomfortable, unusual situation for us to be in. And I like the idea of these stories that the more you study them the more you realize how vast they are. They don't get smaller, they get bigger. And the funny thing is that they get bigger the more concentrated you get. The more you get concentrated on the story, the vaster what's evolved becomes.

[21:26]

So this not knowing is, this is part of what we'll be studying in this story. The main characters in this story are Di Cang and Fa Yan. Di Cang literally means, Di means earth and Cang means storehouse or womb. In Japanese it's pronounced Jizo. So, like those statues in the Garden of Green Gulch, and that big, that beautiful standing monk statue that used to be in the Zendo's, now in the tea house, that monk is called Ditsang in Chinese, or Jizo in Japanese. And he's the enlightening being of the earth womb, enlightening being. So Ditsang is earth?

[22:32]

Di is earth, tsang is womb. Like in Shobo Genzo, the storehouse of the true eyes of the Dharma, that's zo, means womb or storehouse. So this is earth womb, the enlightenment worker, the enlightenment, lightning being earth womb, di tsang. And the name of the temple that this monk, Ditsang, was the abbot of was called Ditsang Monastery or Ditsang Temple. So he's called by the name of his temple, Ditsang. He's also called Lohan for another temple that he was abbot of. He's also the main character in Case 12. where he talks about planting the fields and eating rice. And Fa Yan, in this story, and he are also in dialogue in that story, or in commentary of that story.

[23:36]

Fa Yan means, Fa means Dharma or truth, and Yan means I. So his name is Dharma I, or Truth I, or I of Truth. uh... his teachers beats on but he himself by and was much more famous because he founded one of the five schools of chinese and so we have here to very important that figures in history of them and historic in case twelve in this story are interrelated The way the story in Case 12 is told is that this man Fa Yan, this monk Fa Yan, and three of his friends were traveling in south central China around this, near this, one of those big lakes. Yes, they have a couple of really big lakes in China, and they were traveling near this one lake in the south.

[24:44]

And... As a matter of fact, a big province where there's lots of Zen monasteries is called South of the Lake, and then another province where there's also lots of Zen temples is called North of the Lake. They were traveling around there, and then it was snowing and raining and so on, and the streams were swollen, and they came ashore and sought shelter in this Ditsang temple, and that's where they met this man. And one version of this story is that when they first arrived, Di Cang asked Fa Yan where he was going, and Fa Yan said, on pilgrimage, and he said, what is pilgrimage? And Fa Yan said, I don't know. And Di Cang said, not knowing is most intimate. But in this version, there was a previous story in case 12, and this story here happened later, when he had already studied with him for a long time. So here,

[25:48]

the not knowing is the same not knowing as in the story I told you before, in a sense, but this is the not knowing that he says after studying for many years with him. And I guess we may understand or we may consider the possibility that he's saying not knowing and he really is, he really has realized and become comfortable with this not knowing. That when he says, I don't know, He's really settled there. And he's not any longer, well, he's just completely integrated with this way of being. It'd be a positive not knowing instead of negative not knowing.

[27:05]

Yes, this not knowing is a positive. This not knowing refers to... It's a nickname. It's just a word for something. I think what it's a word for is... What it's... He says, what's pilgrimage? So he's asking, what kind of, what is pilgrimage, right? In other words, what is walk, what is to walk Buddha's path, what does it mean to walk Buddha's way? What does it mean to walk the way of awakening? And the monk says, I don't know. So, the middle way is to avoid any extremes in terms of what you know or don't know. I could say, yes. What is pilgrimage?

[28:10]

Yes, that's right. You could say, what is pilgrimage? And you could say, yes. This is like that, no, I don't know. Yes, uh-huh, right. This is, I don't know, pilgrimage. echo a very famous statement. Yeah, right. Historical precedent. Right, case two of this collection. Case two, where the emperor says to Bodhidharma, what is the meaning of the highest truth? And Bodhidharma says, vast emptiness, no holy, And Emperor says, who is this facing me? And Bodhidharma says, don't know, or I don't know. I looked up the word intimacy, but I don't remember what it says. It probably doesn't say, I don't know. It probably just says, don't know. Usually in Chinese, it's sort of emphatic to say, I. If you say, don't know, that means somebody asked you, who are you?

[29:18]

You don't usually say, I don't know. You just say, don't know. So there's the founding comment of Zen in China, don't know, and here it is again. What is pilgrimage? What is the Buddha way? Don't know or I don't know. And this is most intimate. So, yes. In relationship to what you were saying about his class and about fears, there's a reason that don't know seems also to be related to trust. Yes. Yes. Right. Yes. Feels like they're letting down the fences. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes. When I first read it, when I picked it up, it just sort of said, Zazen.

[30:19]

The story said Zazen? Zazen. Right? Not knowing is nearest. Some people would say, well, how do you sit zazen? And someone might say, just don't know, right? Or someone else would say, how do you sit zazen? Or how should I practice zazen? You say, practice zazen. But how? Practice zazen. But I want to know how. I want to know how. I want to know how. Practice zazen. Or how. Or what. So how can we encourage each other to walk the path admitting that we're human beings and human beings want to know.

[31:23]

how to do it, and you want to have some kind of like sense of whether they're doing it right or wrong. This is normal for human beings. And that's another case, case 19 of the book of, the book, The Gateless Gate. What is the Buddha way? Everyday mind is the way, your ordinary human mind. How do you know whether you're doing it right or not. How do you know whether you're doing it right or not? And the teacher says, it's not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is just a state of delusion. Not knowing is just some kind of blankness of consciousness. But that not knowing is not this not knowing. That kind of knowing is the opposite of knowing. This not knowing is between those two extremes.

[32:25]

It's just the path. It's the path of no doubt. The path of trust. I keep thinking of turning away and touching are both wrong. Yeah, right. Turning away and touching are both wrong. Touching is like knowing. Turning away is like the opposite of knowing. Neither one of them make. But do we trust that walking ahead in this state is good enough? Meanwhile, the mind that's knowing things keeps cooking away. Somebody keeps knowing things all the time. That's not going to stop. You're going to know these kinds of things. And also, the practice of mindfulness should be uninterrupted. And mindfulness is fundamentally mindfulness of the process of knowing.

[33:26]

And you shouldn't pretend as though your mind doesn't go ahead knowing things. Matter of fact, you should keep track of and admit how your mind is knowing things. Because it does keep knowing things. That knowing process keeps going on. Which is also the process that keeps creating subject-object separation and so on. And a self. That's going to keep going on. However, that's just ordinary human delusion. And there's another way which is simultaneous with it, which doesn't need to know anything, which doesn't need to get caught up in that process. Yes. If Vajrayana, I don't know, is the child of Bodhidharma, I just don't know. I don't understand why Dizang has to add not knowing his nearest. If they both simultaneously understand and settle into that I don't know, is this a fundamental don't know for the Dharma?

[34:36]

Is it for us that Dizang adds not knowing his nearest? It's for us, and it's for Dayan, and it's for Dizang. Because as I've mentioned before, you may know something. Because in this story, one way to read the story is, Fa Yun is at peace with the path of ungrasping. He's at peace with neither touching nor turning away. He's at peace with the middle way. And he goes to his teacher and says, The teacher says, where are you going? And he says, I'm going on pilgrimage. He's at peace with this. And his teacher says, what is it? What is Buddhism? I don't know. He's saying, I've realized this. But what comes to my mind is it takes two to conceive Buddhism.

[35:40]

Conceptions are not made by us individually. We make conceptions together. And whenever we realize something, the nature of our psyche is that when someone else reflects it and recognizes it, we know it more deeply. that the knowing we have, even if we have practiced a long time and we are settled in mindfulness of the world of knowing, and certainty and fearlessness in the world of not knowing, and we're completely at peace, avoiding grabbing extremes, even then, still, To present that and get it reflected by another person, our understanding then becomes independent. Until we present our understanding to another, we do not yet have independence.

[36:44]

We must, through our connection with another, realize the independence of our position, of our path. So he must do this. And he needs it. Fa Yan needs it. And Di Cang needs it because he also needs it in order to be the teacher of his student. And he also did that for us thousands of years later. They knew that if they really did it, it would have a chance to reproduce itself again and again. When I say it takes two to conceive... We sometimes say that, you know, you might think of making a baby, right? But in terms of making conceptions, concepts, concepts are not made by one person. Concepts are community events and or social events. And that community production of concepts is part of what's going on in the psychological background of this story, which we can get into later, but I'll just tell that to you now.

[37:46]

Concepts are not made individually. Concepts are made by at least two. What is made individually? What is the thing you made by yourself that no one else needs to help you with or can help you with? What's that? Huh? What? No, concepts are delusion. Yeah. Huh? Projection. Projection of what? Spirit. Huh? Self. Self. Experience. Feelings. Feelings. Feelings? Well... Nothing at all. Maybe nothing at all. What's nothing at all? What you can produce by yourself. Yeah, you can produce nothing at all yourself, and what is that nothing at all that you produce by yourself? No. You don't produce the whole world by yourself. You don't produce your history by yourself.

[38:47]

The thing you produce by yourself is, well, one way to put it in terms of what we're talking about, the thing you produce by yourself is grasping of extremes. That's what you produce by yourself. Or, the thing you produce by yourself is the belief in the inherent existence of things. That's what you produce by yourself. You don't do that with other people. You take responsibility for that. You take responsibility for that. That's what you take responsibility for. But you do not have to take responsibility for the entire conceptual framework of the universe which we make together and which are the objects of our knowing. That we make together. And the fact that we make them together is why they're empty. But we make them together. We make them together. We do not, however, we individually make up our belief that these things exist independent. That nobody does with us, and nobody else can share that with us, even though we all do it exactly the same way. Yes? You mean like, we don't, in a way, we're not responsible for all these things that we have, but we're responsible for whether we play with them?

[39:51]

Right, exactly. For example, unicorn, okay, is a concept that a lot of us have, right? Do you have the concept of unicorn available to you? So do I. This is something we all made together, right? Now, most of us do not believe that unicorns actually inherently exist. But if you did believe that unicorns inherently exist, that they really exist, that they belong in a category of existence, then that would be something which you do yourself. Nobody does that with you. However, actually most of us put unicorns in another category of existence, don't we? Most of us think unicorns do not exist. And that, most of you are doing, as soon as you hear unicorn, you put it in a category of an imaginary thing. In other words, you think it doesn't exist. That you do by yourself. The not knowing is to see how we do, how we are involved as a group.

[41:03]

You know, I'm out of Seymour. but other people were telling me it doesn't exist. So, isn't that influencing my belief system? If you saw a unicorn? What I'm saying to you is... If I didn't have anyone else to check out that concept with, I would be convinced that it did exist. What I'm saying to you is that you would not ever see a unicorn before you had a concept of it. Just like, for example, most... I like the example of... I've been told that there are 7 million colors which we can see, that we can directly experience. 7 million. In other words, there's a range of 7 million variations in wavelength that affect our equipment. There's more than 7 million wavelengths. But there's 7 million that we're sensitive to with our eyes. And we can respond differently to 7 million.

[42:05]

But nobody can see 7 million colors because nobody has 7 million concepts for colors. And some people see 200 colors, and other people see 13 or 9. Just like Eskimos can see 30 kinds of snow, but we can't. They actually see 30 kinds of snow, and we can't. They have a word for every one of them. No, it's only because they have 30 words that they can see 30 kinds of snow. And when little Eskimos can't see 30 kinds of snow. When they're little, they don't see 30 kinds of snow. They see some smaller number kinds of snow. I don't know how many they see, but by the time they're adults, they can see more kinds of snow. And when we were little, we couldn't see unicorns. We learned to see unicorns. I don't know what age we learned, but somewhere along the way we learned. Unicorns are not inherently given to us, but there are some concepts which are. Basic ones.

[43:08]

And you and I did not make these concepts by ourselves. They are communally made and also because of that we can have discourse about them and we can adjust them. We can change our concepts by discussion with other concepts. We can modify our concepts of things. I always use the concept of Abraham Lincoln. We have different versions of Abraham Lincoln. We can share the concept and we can modify it right here in this room now. Just like you can modify history. History is something we make together. It's not something you make by yourself. Are you saying that there's no such thing as an original thought? Am I saying that? No, I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is that in terms of what you know, you always deal in terms of concepts which predate this moment of knowing.

[44:13]

That's what's the problem of the realm of knowing, is that you always select these concepts as the object of what you know. So you never see in the realm of knowing any colors before you've got names for them. You see them all in the realm of nothing. You see them all in the realm of direct experience. This is in many respects true, that we learn how to see and how to perceive the world through language and through the sharing of concepts. But that wouldn't explain how language and concepts arise. There presumably is some form of perception and knowing that arises before

[45:25]

concepts arise and gives birth to concepts. And not everybody has all of those experiences independently or originally, but someone did someone. Someone did what someone? someone had a perception and developed knowledge, and knowledge, or entered into a state of knowing and developed the language to express that perception and that knowledge, which then became shared with other people. And the language for it enabled a larger group of people to share the perception and knowledge. But they don't occur a priori. So there must be, I think, logically, there must be some experience that precedes the language. I think there is experience that precedes the language.

[46:27]

And then I think there's even experience which precedes being aware of some object. And I think that my story would be the story I would make from the other stories I've heard would be at some point somebody saw an object. And that was a big moment for that somebody. Big mistake, big moment. And I'm suggesting that once the object was seen, that then by the very fact that the object was seen, the subject was created. And then I would also suggest the story that this subject then needed the object to turn around and look back at it.

[47:30]

or whether it needed it or not, that when the object did turn around and look back at the subject, and the subject then even thought that the object that was looking at it was another subject, that that made a very important step further. And on top of that, that this externalized version, that this externalized subject-object game, is actually now... the same story that was happening before this in the dark, when these subjects and objects were touching each other and were very intimate with each other, but they didn't know it. So somebody first, I guess, managed to sort of look at, somehow separate herself or himself from somebody else in that soup, There was probably that first step. But then that somebody, in order to play out the fullness of the darkness in the light, started wanting the other person to look back.

[48:37]

And then there was two of them. And I think that's what made the concept. And then that's what they got the word for. To celebrate that looking back and forth. Is that what happened in the garden? I don't know. Now the trick, and then the additional thing is, in this story, is that in the thing we didn't do by ourselves, what we did individually was we started to imagine that there was some inherent, existent thing on one side or the other of this thing, or that the separation was real. I think that that's contained within the story you just told. that arises at the moment that you say someone saw an object. So I don't have any problem with that story of the birth of language.

[49:38]

which I think that that's what a story is. That's the birth of language and the birth of the conceptual universe and the birth of subject and object. Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that [...] moment is exactly the same moment as the discovery of every concept and the arising of every form of new knowledge. At some point, with a certain amount of equipment, somebody can have a new perception independent of... of the immediate sharing of another person and reify that and develop a new linguistic convention to identify it and say, hey, Mo, look at what happens when your sled runs over the snow like that. See the way it packs down like that? That's different from the other kinds of identification of snow.

[50:41]

When it does something like that, that's special. That's month. you know, and that person creates it and shares it. I say that's not a concept until it's shared. I say that's not a concept until somebody else is involved in making it. but we can talk about that because Jordan's extremely excited. I won't keep you waiting any longer. Yes. One of these things in a very special moment we just call a big digression. What do you want to do, talk about the case? Yeah. I haven't, I've been sort of like, first I fell asleep. And then I woke up. Jordan, you're saying we were digressing? Yes, yes. You're talking to us, you have your psychological states, and we were digressing. Is this how, what type of conversation you have with you to save all beings? It seemed to me a little...

[51:42]

a little off the point of saving all beings. Well, what is on the point of saving all beings? Please show us. What's on the point, huh? I don't know. Yes, Andy? The prior state, prior to concept, when there is the soup you were talking about before perception, that intimacy. Yeah. Seems to me it breaks through. The intimacy, that intimacy breaks through? Yeah, it breaks through. in between concepts. And that's the place of saving all beings, it seems to me.

[52:48]

There's nothing to do, but I mean, it's like that's part, it seems to me that's part of human experience. Yeah, it is part of human experience, and it's going on all the time. But it seems also very valuable without clinging to it. It's very valuable even if you do cling to it. It's not, well, you can say valuable, but anyway, whatever you call it anyway, it's what's happening all the time. But also what's happening all the time is that we're separating ourselves from each other. Yes. So both of those are going on all the time. Yes. And then the five skandhas talk about this, right? Mm-hmm. One feeling, perception, and then what's the other two? I see consciousness. Consciousness. And... um formations various kinds of formations greed hate and delusion for example well maybe there's a way to remember before the five skandhas uh well you already remember before the five skandhas but the thing is about you can't you can't know that realm no but it's there i mean it's there right that's right so we can like um

[54:02]

Maybe learn to live from there and then maybe all beings could be saved. Learn to live from there? We already are living from there. We're living from there all the time, believe me. But all beings are not being saved, it seems. Oh, that's right, too. We are always living from that place. From that place before words. We're always living from there. All the time, every moment we're living from there. And is it possible to be aware of that? You cannot be aware of it in the realm of knowing. You never can you know it. Being aware is better than knowing, is it? It actually is awareness. It's a type of awareness. But it's not an awareness that has objects which are seen as separate from subjects. It's that kind of awareness. Is that the difference between awareness and knowing? Yeah, it's an awareness that doesn't have knowing. Right. Yeah, so that's like what I'm reaching for.

[55:04]

Don't reach for it. Because if you try to reach for it, you'll just fool yourself. Because the one who's reaching for it is the one who knows things. And that doesn't work. It doesn't work. So then coming back is just practicing. Coming back is just practicing? Coming back, what do you mean by coming back? Coming back to one's senses prior to the five skandhas. You don't have to come back to it. It's already happening right now. You don't have to worry about that. That's taken care of. No problem. It's there. It's there, just clicking away. Every moment. The problem is me. Huh? The problem is me, exactly. If you could figure out what me was... Well, there isn't any. Yeah, but if you could figure out what isn't any meant... You can't find meaning there because there's... Yes, you can find... That's exactly where you find meaning. You find meaning... The place you find meaning is at me. Buddhism turns on me. That's where it turns. That's the key. The key of Buddhism is me, is the self.

[56:06]

But that's delusion. That's right. The key to Buddhism is delusion. Buddha happens on delusion. Being aware of delusion is where Buddhism is realized. I'd like to offer a different interpretation. Excuse me, by the way, that's the answer to your question, Jordan, about what it has to do with saving all sentient beings. This class is about delusion. Yes. Andy? Can I just, you know, about the Eskimos? I think it's an old wives' tale that they have 30 words of snow. In fact, they just have one word, and then they say fluffy and shiny or wet and heavy. Right. Just like we do, in fact. Right. So that's kind of it. Thank you. Andy? I'd like to propose a different interpretation.

[57:10]

I'm sorry. You cannot propose other interpretations. But you can talk about a different case if you'd like to. Okay. When Dizan says, not knowing is nearest, I'd like to propose that another interpretation of that might be that Fa Yan had a tremendous awakening experience, and as in the Aptu Saka Sutra, it says, the Dharma was inconceivable. The Dharma is inconceivable. Yes. He had that awakening experience, recognized the inconceivability of the Dharma in that experience, and when someone asked him,

[58:16]

about the dharma, you said, I don't know. Right. As a matter of fact, the character for, one of the, the character that's often translated as inconceivable is can't know. Rather than don't know. Don't know is like this character in Fu, which means don't do something. Another character is this thing, this character like this, which means, pronounced ka, which means can't or won't. I don't know which one he said there, but not knowing could also be said to be inconceivable. He said, what is, what is, what is pilgrimage? It's inconceivable. The Buddhist way, the Buddhist way is actually inconceivable. But again, inconceivable does not mean any way that you think about what inconceivable is. All the different ways that we conceive of what inconceivable is, that's not what's meant by inconceivable.

[59:24]

The inconceivable way could be totally conceivable. It could be like this, completely like right there in every way that you conceive of. It could be both, and it would be mistaken to call it either conceivable or inconceivable. Right. So that's one way to hear this story, and I think that's kind of like the central meaning of this story, is that this is a story of enlightenment all the way through, and that's what they're talking about. This is a Buddha talking to a Buddha, and a Buddha says to a Buddha... Where are you going? And where do Buddhas go? They go on pilgrimage. Okay, what's a pilgrimage? You ask a Buddha what's a pilgrimage, what do they say? They say it's inconceivable. Or I, the human being over here, this human being who's into knowing things, because Buddhas are human beings who are into knowing things. Just like you and me. Buddhas are into knowing. They don't stop, they don't give up the knowing equipment. They don't go back to a state when they didn't have knowing.

[60:24]

That's going on all the time with Buddhas, that's going on all the time with everybody. They've got that, we've got that. They've got knowing going, okay? So they say, as for this equipment, it doesn't apply. And that's coming from Buddha. So the difference between coming from Buddha and coming from not Buddha is when Buddha says it, it comes from certainty and settledness in being a human being. And in fact, just saying... I don't know. In fact, that's true, or it's inconceivable. As soon as you said it, it's already crossed over from the Buddha to the person. It's not quite there, but as close as you can see it. Is that another...? It didn't really cross over. The Buddha came from the person. But as soon as it's said, it's already in the phenomenal, in the relative, and therefore not absolute. It's like you can't really say anything. I mean, you're a good respondent to this question. You can't respond.

[61:25]

As soon as you've responded, you've already gotten into relative, and there's nothing to say. Is that what he says, not knowing his nearest? Because to me, nearest sounds like close, but not what? No, I think nearest means, I guess, intimate. The nature of the situation is that what Buddha has to do with, Buddha is not something you find separate from the relative world. That's the absolute world. So it's not that what he said is anything. So as soon as he says anything, well, that's a relative thing. Yes, that's true. But that's not the problem. No, there's no problem in what I'm saying. It's just that as soon as... It's like you can talk all around it. There's nothing right there. There's nothing that you can really put a finger to. And that's the trick of Buddhism, I think, is to talk around it, which is unknown. To say anything about it is good as long as it's not mistaken with it.

[62:31]

Yeah. It's good as long as you don't mistake it with it. But also it's even better as long as you don't think there's an it that it's not mistaken with. Criminal nature. Yes, you can. But after you don't anymore, then you do again. You come back to visit because of the vow of our Buddha nature. We come back into criminal activity again. Sala Steinbach got ordained, you know, and I wrote on the back of her the back of her rock suit, that the unconcerned surrenderer seeks a criminal name. So I went over to her after the wedding, after the nomination, and to explain to her what is said on the back of her rock suit.

[63:40]

And I translated for her, after she introduced me to her father, Judge So-and-so. He was having quite a time talking about this recurrent entrance and desire to enter into criminal behavior. Well, actually, it's criminal name, first of all, right? Criminal name. And then you're caught and released. Because, again, release is only possible when you're caught. So there is a state which is always present, which is a state of suchness, which is precisely what's happening. And if you don't have anything other than what's happening, if you surrender to what's happening, you're the unconcerned surrenderer. There's not producing a single thought.

[64:41]

There is a level of our consciousness which is totally non-criminal. non-criminal, which is so non-criminal that even criminal activity can happen. And there's somebody who completely surrenders to that unconcernedly and is so purely just being a criminal that there's no thought. There's just the suchness of criminality. And that is always possible, always happening, and that's not anything. However, we don't even let that go, whether it's criminality or real kindness or whatever it is. We always want to muck it up a little bit, because when we are mucked up, then we can be caught, and when we are caught, we can realize Buddhahood. We must be caught in order to liberate all beings, because all beings are caught. But there is a possibility of stopping that stuff.

[65:47]

That's part of the process, is stopping. And stopping is not something you do. Everything always has a stopped nature. The stopped nature of things is just the way they are. It's always going on. And even... In the level of consciousness which is prior to conception, and the level of consciousness post-conception, in other words, conceptual consciousness, which has subject and object, and belief in inherent existence and all that, and the misery that comes with it, that level of consciousness has a suchness. And the level of consciousness which does not separate into subject and object has a suchness. All realms have suchness. All things are as they are, and are thus liberated from themselves. But we don't stop there. We enter into biasness and we get caught for it. But at the moment we're caught, as we enter from suchness, we are liberated with all beings.

[66:51]

And somehow things are always caught in their suchness and always liberated in their suchness, but the suchness of things must come into the world, into the yucky world. It must. In order to realize the meaning of suchness, the usefulness of suchness. And it's heart-rending if it's a little bit outside. And as you get close to it, it's almost like a war. It's almost like, almost make you sick to your stomach. Well, not almost. It does make you kind of sick to your stomach as you descend into the yuckiness of it. But that's where Buddha lives. That's where we need Buddha. It's so alive there, too. It's so alive. So in a way you have to touch all that form completely.

[67:58]

Yes. And I spend a lot of time creating a formless thing that is a repository of it. But it feels better to kind of lie against it perfectly, like have a perfect match with the form that feels like suchness. But it takes a lot of letting go in my mind to do that. Yeah. And the main way to let go is to admit how caught you are. And once you completely admit how caught you are, then you realize suchness. And then you have to get, you have to mess around with that. Yes? Is caught this attributing inherent resistance? Is that the same thing as caught?

[68:59]

Is caught attributing? No. Caught's what happens to you after you attribute inherent resistance. If you don't attribute... Attributing inherent existence is the seeking a criminal name, is messing around with not producing a single thought, is, you know, a slight flinching from suchness. That's not going to co... That's not co-active? No, it's not. Well, in a sense, no, there's a result of that. There's a consequence of that. And that consequence is being caught. What do you think? That try not to is a consequence of this earlier thing of attributing inherent existence, which is so subtle, you know, because that's, again, something which each of us has to spot ourselves and we can't really talk to anybody else about.

[70:03]

I'm talking to you about it, but the thing I'm playing with you around is concepts. But these concepts can help us guide ourselves to catch ourselves in the act of doing the one great sin which each of us do on our own and which we are uniquely responsible for, and that is attributing inherent existence from here onto what we're experiencing. What we experience is something we make together. We conceive the world together. But the believing in it and the attaching to it, nobody else does that for you, even though everybody does it the same way. Are there only two choices, attributing inherent existence or not? I mean, do you bend every experience into one or the other? There's not really a choice about attributing inherent existence or not. Basically, you do constantly attribute inherent existence. For now. What about the unicorn? The example of the unicorn? Yes. Are things you think or imagine, are you attributing inherent existence to those imaginary things as well?

[71:07]

Yes, you do. You do. But the way you do it is you use the inherent existence version of not existing. Ah, okay. Okay. That's one of the forms of it. Yes? The Buddha nature that you say is with us all the time, isn't that that place that we're not ever attributing inherent existence to anything? It's always there in us? No. Buddha nature goes right down into the attributing of inherent existence. The Buddha nature is like totally fearless. It goes into the deepest sin. It goes right in there and makes the deepest sin the brightest light. That's the Buddha nature. He doesn't like to say, no, I'm not, that's, I don't do that. Basically, for all... That light is the non-attributing existence. No, it's not. It's not, that ain't the light.

[72:09]

The light is that... Well, this is a multidimensional light. The light is that attributing inherent existence to things is attributing inherent existence, and that's part of the light of Buddha. When the light of Buddha comes to attributing inherent existence, guess what that is? Attributing inherent existence. When the light of Buddha comes to concepts which are the objects of knowledge, guess what Buddha calls that? Concepts which are the object of knowledge. And what does it see those concepts as? As things which are conditioned by the cosmos, which are the products of all of our activity and so on, with various stories of how that happened. Buddha sees that. But that ain't all Buddha sees. Buddha also sees how much these are going on, And Buddha also sees that these two things are never contaminated by each other. That one is one and the other is other. And that also Buddha is not something in addition to that. Buddha is simply the fact that those two things never touch each other.

[73:12]

But Buddha is not... Buddha is not another thing over here called not attributing inherent existence. There's not like attributing inherent existence, concepts of knowledge, and then another thing called not attributing inherent existence. There's not such a thing. That would be a real fancy concept which we just created just now. This is one of the fanciest concepts you people have seen today. Did you see it? Did you see that concept? Couldn't quite see it. See, now that's an example of a concept. See, the fact that she can't see it, that's not a concept for her yet, if she's telling the truth. Here's the concept. That there's this Buddha nature, this thing called, there's something, which we can call Buddha nature, which doesn't attribute inherent existence to things. Okay? Something. And I'm saying that for the psyche, there is attributing inherent existence, there's that reality, there is conceptual reality,

[74:14]

objects, okay? And then there's the fact that they're separate. There's not an additional thing. But if you imagined another thing that was up here not getting involved in attributing inherent existence, then you could say, but this thing knows objects, does it? Or not? Or is it just the pure not getting involved in attributing inherent existence? That would be an example of another concept which is now dawning on you. Is it coming in? Another concept. It's not... That is not... That's not the Buddha nature. But the fact that that's a concept and can now be an object of our communal discourse and is not for some people, that's part of our reality. And these are the things we know. And we don't know them until we have a concept to play with. The Buddha nature is the fact that these two are separate. Always. Always. And whether this ever stops, whether this attributing inherent existence ever stops or not, basically, I would say it's not really such a big issue whether it stops, because it goes on so much that basically we might as well assume it's constant.

[75:27]

And even if it didn't, so what? What if you got a break and there was just conceptual consciousness going on? So what? What would that be like? I'll tell you what it would be like. Guess what it would be like? What do you think that'd be like? I won't tell you. You just tell me. What would it be like, just conceptual existence without attributing inherent existence? What would it be like? What? Contemplation. What? The rock operatami. The rock operatami? Okay, what would the rock operatami be without attributing any inherent existence to it? What would that be? Boring. Boring. Boring. Try boring. Worse than boring. Dead. Dead. Dead. Not life. Not human life, anyway. Ice. But anyway, it's not a problem. Everybody's got this. Because there's a lie. Got those two.

[76:28]

This is not Buddha nature. This is not possible. This would just be pure. Now, it is possible to have some people who are conceptual to take concepts and build concepts, you know, mathematics. But all the way along the way, these mathematicians are attributing inherent existence in their minds. The Buddha nature is the fact that these are separated. That is how you're constantly released. That's bliss, the fact that these are separated. And there's another level of existence below that, which is also going on simultaneously, where we don't have concepts, and therefore you don't have attributing inherent existence. This is also a big chunk of our biology. That's going on all the time too. That's like just sitting there to be kind of like inundate this other realm as soon as you realize these are separated. That's why the bliss is sort of like just waiting to gush forth into the realm which says these two are mixed up. So the Buddha nature is this whole smear of our life but the place it turns is

[77:37]

right here on the self around in here. The place where the whole thing turns around and integrates itself is on the self thing. Self, self, self. Self is this inherent existence business. So how do you know all this? By studying, and studying, and studying, and talking, [...] and thinking, and thinking, and looking, and looking, and looking, and thinking, and talking. Just wondering. Non-stop talk. I'm talking constantly. So if we talk as much as you, will we know as much? What are you saying? I'm blushing. Aren't I? Would you call that a blush? I don't know.

[78:39]

That was card blushing. Did someone have their hand raised? Yes? Yeah, I have one quick question. You mentioned everyone creates this together. Creates what together? Concepts. Yes. Can that be equated with dependent co-arising? Yes. Not the totality of dependent co-arising. Okay. That's the dependently co-arisen conceptual reality. All right. That's a dependently co-arisen realm of knowing, which is where we're trapped. We're trapped in the realm of knowing, which is the realm of self. That's why self is the place where we turn around and get released. And we achieve integration, release from that realm, and integration with the realm that doesn't have a self there. But it's got a lot of shit in it. got the consequences of all the selfish things we've done are in there.

[79:50]

But it's our life. Take it. Yes? Is knowing that much grasping and is that bad? Or do you want it just now? Can you say it again, please? My understanding of knowing is kind of hold on to it and separation and grasping. It is like that. We want to know all the time. We are just... We want to know. Why? Yeah. It is... Well, because it's like a... It's like a... You know, it's like a... It's a step forward into complexity, and it's a way to... to celebrate the darkness... It brings darkness into light. It's another dimension of the possibilities of creation and of biological functioning, to know things, to be aware of something outside yourself.

[81:01]

And it also sets up this possibility of this fantastic thing called reintegration and liberation, from being trapped by the trouble you get into from that thing. So it sets up all these dramas. All dramas come from this place. So we should become talkative, dramatic beings. And Zen stories are about these talkative, dramatic beings. So what happens next in their relationship after this? I don't know. But I can tell you that I think that they've been very close for a long time at the time this story happens. Another version is that this happens early and then they study together with each other for a long time. As if it's no longer student-teacher.

[82:09]

It's always student-teacher, but the equality is established in this story. which makes them both happy. Here's a line in a commentary in the story of number 12, where it says, without going outside the gate, I knew the whole world. What is that gate? Another version of it is something like, without going outside the shop that the wheels of the cart fit in the tracks. Like you can build something inside of a shop that will work some other place without even having to go out and testing it. Is that similar kind of thing?

[83:10]

And that's part of the scariness of the path is that we don't know if we will be able to work in our daily life if we go this way. How will it work? We want some kind of way of checking beforehand that it's going to work out there tomorrow or in such and such a situation. We don't trust dependent co-arising. We don't trust that focusing on how things happen is the best way to take care of our life. But in fact, the proposal here is that it actually takes care of it better to give up this kind of controlling approach, that you'll be in better shape to handle it if you come empty-handed. The unconcerned surrenderer literally means the person who surrenders to having nothing. That person seeks a criminal name. In other words, that person goes forth in the world to put it to a test to see if you can actually go up to somebody completely naked, exposed, with nothing, and cope.

[84:23]

So once you get to this place of not knowing, then the world just gives you everything you need to do to develop that insight. It gives you all these opportunities, all these It just inundates you with possibilities and chances and tests. Yeah, it's like beginner's mind, except this is beginner's mind which you really feel settled in. It's going back, but it is like going back to the beginning where you don't. So please read this case. There's commentary now, and there's more delusions for you to cope with in the commentary. See if you can enter the commentary in the verse, and next week we'll talk about the commentary in the verse. You can bring your stuff. I hope you have a really nice pilgrimage. Why?

[85:31]

Why do I hope that? Because I'm just like you. You can believe that? Huh?

[85:47]

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