Do you understand that instruction above having breakfast and washing your bowls? Having breakfast? The way I mean it, having breakfast means take in, eat your spirit. Eat your body, awareness of your body. your breath, of course, any emotions or your self-concepts or judgments or come up. Just take the neck, chew them up, and swallow them. And then, as you exhale, wash it all away. Okay? Does that mean anything? You know, you know, when you say, hey, that's not that you kind of yourself, you really would say, oh, you know, how much can I take up

[01:19]

I don't think it comes to our culture today, our way they are. They're all up, not bad. I don't think it's ever in the world. She said she might think she was doing this, but in actuality she might be just dreaming. Probably you're just dreaming.

[02:46]

It's pretty likely that you're just dreaming. But you don't have to be judging that you're dreaming or not dreaming. If you say you're dreaming, that's another dream. If you say you're not dreaming, that's another dream. Your judgments are dreams too. But in fact, you do think you have a certain kind of experience. And even though it may be a dream, you don't think you're going to dream in two dreams. You think you're going to dream in this dream. So your dreams are the ones you're having. You don't have to worry about whether they're dreaming or not. All you need to do is, as you breathe in, just be aware of the body you think you have. It's a dream body, but it's this dream. And you're learning from this dream.

[03:51]

There's some reason for this dream. And then, Whatever dream it is, whether it really was true or not, if it's true, you also wash it away. If it's a dream, you wash it away. But that's not the whole story. What are you saying, the standards of the dream from non-dream? What's the difference between a dream and non-dream? Being awake, I said. Knowing, being aware that you're dreaming is not a dream. And when I say, and I'm not dreaming necessarily like judging my thing, this is a dream. But, for example, if you think that your dreams are true, being aware that you think the dream is true, that's not a dream. And also being aware that Thinking your dreams are truth or reality, noticing how that works, and seeing how that works, and noticing that that causes problems, that's not a dream.

[05:02]

That's a universal insight. So it's a higher level of self-consciousness? It's a higher level of self-consciousness to notice anxiety that results from thinking that you're separate from that noise out there in the next room. And so that's a dream when and not a dream under what conditions? Well, having no experience at all isn't a dream. That's not a dream. But dream means that you're conjuring it up. That it only has reality in you, for you. That its reality is mostly for you. That it's coming from your own imagination.

[06:05]

So I've been using the noise from the other room as an experience. How would one perceive it, and you would call it a dream, and how would someone else perceive it, or someone perceives it at a different time and it would not be a dream? I'm fuzzy on that. Any perception that we have is a dream. So the noise is a dream? You know, what you're calling the noise You're calling that noise a noise. You're calling that a noise. And it's a dream. My experience of it, is that a thing? Your experience of it, if you have some experience of it that's not your dream, then that experience you don't know. So if something happens to us, it gives us sound, it affects us. And if we, the direct experience, unmediated by our dreaming apparatus, by our imagination, we have such experiences, but we don't know them.

[07:24]

So are you saying what the person, how the person interprets the noise of the dream, or the actual... The interpretation is a dream. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That we call... that we are affected by some sound in the so-called next room, which also, I'm imagining there's a next room there. And we say, well, yes, you know, they didn't take the rest of the building off. But I'm still imagining, I'm sitting here imagining that room over there. I have no data coming in. You know, you can say, well, there's something about that wall there that makes me feel like that beam goes back farther, and there's another building over, the building goes on, there's another room over there, and they're having a ballet class in there. And someone may say, no, it's not a ballet class, it's a tap dancing class, or something like that. But basically, whatever is going on on the other side of the door, I don't know what it is, but I can easily imagine what's going on on the other side of the door without... So to mix metaphors, the pebble drops in the pond, and then all the mental ripples that come off of that are not real or green.

[08:33]

In other words, the associations and so on. But the dropping in the water is an experience? I mean, it's a... Well, I got lost by the analogy, but anyway, things happen to us that directly affect us in a sensory way. So you hear the noise, and then there are mental associations and conjuring of, you know, maybe it's a palace, maybe it's an anthill. You're affected by a sound. And then you look inside yourself to come up with your guess about what it is. But first you might say, it's music, and later you say, no, it's a truck. Or like at Tassajara in the mountains there, in the winter we hear a lot of Tibetan shanning coming out of the river. We really do. I mean, you know, we know it's not, that there's not like... a bunch of Tibetan monks in the stream chanting, though it really sounds just like that. We also hear bells ringing in the stream. And we know it's not true, but sometimes we actually think, my God, there actually is Tibetan chanting going on in the stream.

[09:41]

I mean, and then we think, no. And then we think, yes. But we also think when we hear something, we hear, we think it's a stream. And sometimes we think, oh, no, it's the wind. Like, I was just on Esalen today, and I heard a sound, I thought it was the wind, but no, it was the ocean. But it didn't sound like the ocean, it was too much like a wind sound, so I thought it was, maybe it was the wind. Anyway, I'm not going to just sit there and have something happen to me and know about it without interpreting it. I'm not going to know anything that I don't interpret it. No knowledge is going to come to me without me eating it, chewing it up, digesting it, converting it into what I think it is. Therefore, it's my dream about what happened. It's got some relationship to what happened, but everybody has a different dream. When we hear the same sound, we all have a different dream. And then, now that, But we believe that that sound, or that thing we're dreaming of, we believe is separate from ourselves.

[10:49]

And we believe it really is separate. And we may or may not believe that we're right about the perception. Now, we know sometimes we hear sounds, and sometimes we think it's a bus, and really it's a tractor, or really it's some kid screaming. We know that. But one thing we're sure of is that we're separate from the sound. That's a dream, too. So we dream on all these levels. We dream in the sense of interpreting everything that happens in terms of our own images that we come up with in our own mind. And we can close our eyes and go to sleep and keep dreaming just like we do with our eyes open. Yeah. When you say that we're not separate from, you don't mind my shouting at you, apparently the heart you hear. If we're not separate, you say, now, Obviously, on a physical level, that appears to be that the sound is separate from me.

[11:52]

On a perceptual level, is it on a perceptual level you're talking that it's my interpretation of the sound or the actual sound? So there it is, you said. On a physical level, it appears that the sound is separate. But if the sound was separate, it would have no effect on you. It only has effect on you when it touches you. Well, if the... Two things that struck together to make the sound are over here. I'm over here. We're connected. And it would appear that we're connected by vibration. But when you hear the sound, the two things that are touching are air and your eardrum. The sound is not some other place. It's your eardrum moving. It's actually not the sound at all. What's happening is that your eardrum moves and pushes something inside your ear. That's what you're calling the sound. But actually, you're talking about your own ear. It's not the sound anymore. The sound, sound, whatever the sound is, doesn't happen before it hits your ear. The sound is just what we call sound.

[12:54]

You could say, is it sound? Sound is air being compressed and decompressed. It doesn't make any sound until it hits something that it moves that's alive. It's not sound before that, you could say. It's not like it's whizzing through the air, this compression of stuff is sound. It's air. But that is waved in the air. It's not sound until it hits a living beat. You could say. And even when it hits you, it's not the air and the thing over there that's doing it. It's something inside your own ear that's moving around, and it presses some things and causes the nerve to go off, and then inside you say it's a sound. That's true for the sound, but for the two things that were struck, they would appear to be different, not connected. Well, when you look at those, you're over there looking at them, and you watch the two things hit. Then there's light hitting you. And that light, when it hits you, is not separate from you.

[13:59]

So it's happening to you. It's in you. And you're saying it's over there. You see, you really do believe these things are separate from you. We really do think that things are separate from us. And yet, if they're separate, how would we know about them? If they hit an oscilloscope, You know, are they separate from the oscilloscope? And if you look at the oscilloscope and the light bounces off the oscilloscope and hits your eye, we have these interpretations. But are these separations really substantial? Can you actually establish them? Well, yes, you can. And that's your delusion. You actually believe in a separation. I just, uh, I just did, um, I just came from a workshop at Esseline, which I had to leave early to come here because I didn't schedule any other. Anyway, it was about a, it was, it's a workshop of these four groups called Four Winds, which live in the Tassajara Mountains, which is Tassajara, Esseline, a Christian monastery that's on the coast, and Native American group that's in the mountains.

[15:10]

And at the beginning, one of the people in the group said, that these four groups are connected by nature. And I heard that as, first of all, I heard it as, there's nature, you know, like these mountains and the rivers, that connect these four places, right? But then I also heard it as, we are connected by nature. Our nature is that we're connected. But I also heard, also those four places are separated by nature. It's like mountains and rivers between them. And also we are human beings, we are separated by nature. Our human nature is that we are separated from each other and from everything. That's our human nature. Okay? And also nature, mountains and rivers separate us. Our nature is that we are by nature, we are connected and our nature is that we are by nature separated. The separate part is our imagination. The connected part is not our imagination.

[16:13]

We don't imagine that we're connected. Reality is not that those things are out there. And yet, it is true that we keep thinking that things are out there. And not only do we think they're out there, but we think it's true. We think it's true enough so that we basically are willing to risk major investments of our time, energy, and life in the belief that these things out there are separate. Other animals do not think that things are separate from themselves. A deer sees another deer, and if they're two males at a certain time of year, they run into each other. Boom. If it's a male and female, They run into each other, boom. If it was another time of year, they run away from each other, zip zip.

[17:17]

But they don't think, she's separate from me. They don't think that. I don't know. I see no evidence they think that. I have no evidence they think that. And I don't know if anybody else has any evidence that they think that. If a deer sees a predator, it runs, because it knows that... Yeah, if a female sees a male at certain times of year, she runs. But you don't have to think it's separate to run from it. For example, you can touch a hot stove and you don't have to think it's separate to take your hand off. You don't have to. It's not necessary. You can or you do not. But as you know from an example, sometimes you think it's separate and sometimes you don't. But before you figure out whether it's separate or not, you take your hand away. There's a certain level of instinct where we're like animals, where before we imagine something's external to us, we act. Usually, we act from our imagination that things are separate from us.

[18:17]

And you can do scientific experiments if you wanted to prove somehow that actually something's separate from us. But the more experiments you do, the more you prove that nothing's separate from you. Because why would you be so interested to establish something separate from you if it was? How would you even know about it or care about it? We are by nature separated. It is our nature to feel separated. That's the human thing. It is our nature to think things are external to us that we're perceiving, that we know about. But if they were separate from us, we wouldn't know about them. As a matter of fact, most of the stuff we think is separate from us is actually inside of our own mind. We're coming up with our own interpretation, which is not separate from us. My interpretation of you is not you. What I think about you is not you. It's what I think.

[19:20]

You don't know anything about that. You don't have anything to do with it. But if that were the case, then we'd be separate. Oh. Well, you're saying that there's something about me that you don't know about. You have a mother, a baby inside a mother. Are they separate? You can say they are if you want to, but the baby's inside the mother imagining that it's separate from the mother. No, they don't do that yet. The mother's inside thinking the baby's separate from her. Does she do that? Maybe. She kind of doesn't, though. She kind of feels like it's not separate. I mean, on some basic level, she feels like the baby's not separate. Then it comes out of the body. Then does it become separate? She kind of feels like it's not separate. And the baby doesn't think it's separate yet. But at a certain point, the baby starts thinking it's separate. It thinks it owns the mother, but it thinks it's separate. It learns how to think that way.

[20:23]

We can be very close to each other, be totally touching, totally together, and think we're separate. We can also be at a great distance from each other, so-called, and not think we're separate. What we're talking about is that we think we're separate. And we think that's really what's happening. And that's delusion. That's the dream. That's the real dream. That's the problematic dream. And we do this, but deer don't, as far as I can tell. They just look there and they see something, but they don't say that's external. And they're built to respond to what they see in various ways. If they see us, they move away. If they see another deer, they move towards, according to various policies. It's not an issue for a deer. It's not an issue because they don't think that way. They don't think trees, people, and other deer are separate from me. They don't act like they think that way. And therefore, they don't have a self.

[21:24]

And therefore, they don't think of themselves in isolation from everything else. And therefore, they don't have anxiety. They just have instant. We also have that level of functioning, which is not a problem. And there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, you know, directly. But we can work on our delusion system. We can do that. We can notice how it works. We can notice how it causes trouble. We can notice how it causes anxiety. And we can notice how it gives rise to fear. We can notice how it gets rise to anger and attachment. We can notice how anger and attachment cause problems. You can notice all this. And part of the reason why we can notice all this is the same equipment that causes the problem can be used to solve the problem, to study the problem. The disease can also be the medicine. once it's diagnosed by the processes which gave rise to it.

[22:30]

And the message from Buddha is that there can be an end to this problem, that this whole thing can be worked out by awareness. But, you know, that thanks to you, we have a demonstration of the fact that we actually believe our perceptions, that you actually believe that there's things outside yourself, that there actually are things touching each other that you're aware of, that you see, that are outside yourself. You're actually, like, making that case. Well, let me ask. One thing I don't understand is if you have two people independently diluted, Why are they not separate? They're not independently deluded. They're deluded in thinking that they're independently deluded. Or particularly thinking that the other one's deluded. Independently of them. But you cannot think of somebody else being deluded independently of yourself because you've just come up with that judgment.

[23:37]

There is no independent delusion. You say that who I am is not who you think I am. Right. Don't you think so? I'm not arguing. Wouldn't you imagine that who you are is not who I think you are? How are you going to go to the bathroom when you get home tonight if I don't think you'd do it? I'll work that out, thanks. No, really. You people, when you leave here, you live your lives. And I remember you, you know, during the week. You know, I think of you during the week. But you're not what I think you are. You're not. Once in a while I may think of you having lunch or something, but you're not having lunch when I never want to think you're having lunch, and you're never having what I think you're having. So why then are we not independent? Why then are we not separate if that's the case? Why are we not separate if that's the case? Correct. I mean, that to me is that's a statement in favor of separation. So you really do believe we're separate?

[24:40]

I'm just asking you to explain what you said. Well, do you really believe we're separate or not? You just got another argument for it. I certainly do agree that we are, put it in different language, conditioned by organs of perception and of sensibility. That there's nothing that we can know about that we can't see, hear, smell, taste, or take in by... some other ones. Yeah. And that whatever we do perceive... Can I corner you, please? Whatever we... Can you let me corner you? Philip, through your own good. I'd like to corner you into admitting that you really think we're separate. Because this argument you came up to prove that we're separate, it seemed like it wasn't coming from a person who thought we weren't. We just thought of that argument. It seemed like you think we are separate, and now you have an argument. I prefer to say that I'm open-minded on the issue.

[25:43]

Okay. So you're not sure that we're separate? I can see, on the one hand, that Who you are, as far as I'm concerned, is who I think you are or whom I perceive you to be. And that's about as far as it's ever going to go, as far as who you are as regards to me. This is clear to me. So it's clear to you that what you see over here is your own opinion. My own opinion and sensory perception. And your perception is that I'm suffering? Well, in the sense that you just said, you're who I think you are. This individual. Can we use that word? Sure. Well, if we're not separate, then we're not individual. No, if we're not separate, we're not individual, but we cannot be separate, and we can still think we're individuals.

[26:49]

We do think we're individuals, and our individuality is born from our perception. The way we perceive things gives rise to our individuality, but our individuality is simply something we imagine. Just like our death, is something we imagine. Actually, we have eternal life, and that's what we're here for. But we imagine ourselves as this little thing, and we imagine other people as these little things, and we imagine that we're separate, and in that world, we die. And we don't just die, but we get born, and we die, and we get born. That world is infinite misery. So the world of separation is the world of misery. And the world of belief, I mean the world of separation and believing that's the truth is the world where you die. In that world you die and I die. And to get reborn and die forever as long as that way in that world.

[27:51]

There's another world where we don't believe in these perceptions. We don't believe that these are reality. We just realize that we do think this way and we do believe in them. And by understanding that we believe in them and how that works, we see that this is all a dream. It's like totally a dream. But dreams are stimulated by something, right? You put somebody's hand and, you know, you tickle somebody at night and they dream something in relationship to that tickle. But what they dream has virtually nothing to do with the tickle. I mean, except that the tickle stimulated them. And then they interpret it as a grizzly bear or as a rocket ship or, you know, whatever. That's what's going on here too. We are living in some world which we know nothing about. We know nothing about it because it is a world that cannot be known. However, we also live in a world we do know, and we convert the actual world of whatever it is into the world we know, this little tiny world.

[28:53]

And in this little tiny world that we create, it's built in terms of things being separate. And in that world, we keep things that way. Because if we don't, the whole knowledge program goes flat. If we start to open up to the infinity of the context of our dreams, the dreams go kaput. They go flat. They get seen through. And that's called not the world of death. We don't die in that world. And we're not born in that world. And that's the world of infant bliss. Could you explain your statement that we are living in a world that cannot be known? Maybe this can't be explained, but it's a provocative statement. Well, again, you know, you just look at animals, they don't, they don't, I'm saying, that they don't conceptualize everything and they don't have objective knowledge. And yet they're living in that world.

[29:56]

We look at them and we say, well, they're deer. You know, they don't agree with our opinion about them. They're just whatever, I don't know what they're doing, but I know that whatever they're doing, I convert it into deer. They're shaped a certain way. That's what I do. But that's just because they're projected it back on here in a certain way and make images of them in a certain way. Frogs don't do that. Frogs don't see the same deer I see. Flies don't see that. It's just because I'm dope this way that I see the world that way. The world's not that way. What is this world of infinite bliss that you're thinking of? The world, he said, on the level of the shekel. I mean, what you're just speaking of is the world of a level of the dream that's inspired of the grizzly... I'm sorry, I didn't think about infinite bliss, but anyway. It's liberation. It's liberation from this little world where we're separate. And it's not just the separateness we're liberated from.

[30:58]

We're liberated from believing in our little reality. We're liberated from our own program. We are suffering because we're in this program. And the program we're in is a program of death and birth and death and birth. It is a program of misery. It is a miserable program. Okay? And we are totally cooperating with it by holding on to the very thing that makes it miserable, namely believing in our own perceptions. We believe we're separate, and because we're separate, we die. Because it is the very fact of thinking that death is separate from us which gives rise to the individual. The individual is born from the awareness of death as something external. When death isn't something external, there's no individual. And then there's no death either. Yes? It's because in the process of having objective knowledge, in order to have objective knowledge, the mind has to make an object and say it's external.

[32:06]

When the mind makes an object and says it's external, then when it looks at things like death, then the mind imagines that death is external too. which makes what's imagining it, the individual's imagining it, all the more precious and all the more individual, all the more, you know, having an end. And that, again, creates the sense of self. Once you have a sense of self and you realize how precious it is, then you really get into thinking this is something all by itself. And then you do, and that's your mode, and then you do that with every... Not so much trying to preserve it all that leads to that kind of behavior. You believe it is preserved. You believe it is an independent thing. You believe there's something which is independent of all the causes that give rise to it. You stop looking at the causes and look at the result. You stop looking at the death and you see the thing that death gives rise to, the self.

[33:08]

And then that sense of that there's something by itself keeps with you all the time and you're projected on everything you see. And you see everything as independent, whereas actually everything is a confluence of causes and conditions in a different kind of space. You're built for me because of certain causes and conditions just like that. If I see your causes and conditions, I see my own causes and conditions. If I see my own causes and conditions, I see you as causes and conditions. Then I realized there's nothing to separate us. We're both insubstantial, boundless creatures, and our causes and conditions are also bouncing off each other. I was going to tell a story, and I still will. It's a story from this Book of Serenity, it's case 37.

[34:10]

And it starts with a quote. One Zen student, actually a Zen teacher, asked another Zen teacher, who's his teacher. His name's Guishan. He asked Yangshan. This is case 37 of the Book of Serenity. He says, if someone suddenly said, and this is a quote from the scripture, all living beings just have active consciousness. boundless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on. How would you prove this in experience? So the Zen teacher says to a student, he says, if someone said to you that all living beings just have karmic consciousness, boundless and unclear, without any fundamental to rely on, how would you prove that in experience? Karmic consciousness means if the consciousness which is karmic means that you think that you can do something. That you think there's a you and that you can do something. That's what we call karma.

[35:15]

That's the world that creates, that's the mind and the type of consciousness which creates birth and death. That's the type of consciousness which creates misery. Okay? This consciousness is boundless. And it's unclear. And living beings only have that. Sentient beings, human beings, only have that kind of consciousness. And that kind of consciousness, you see, is named from thinking that you can do something. And of course, based on the basis of that is you think you're separate from other things. You're separate from your action. You're separate from other beings. We only have that. And it's boundless and unclear. And there's no, like, fundamental thing down there, like truth that you can rely on. It's just totally delusion. And not only that, but the delusion gets elaborated into actions based on the delusion. That's all we've got. That's the statement.

[36:18]

Okay? And then the teacher says, how would you test this? Test it means how would you see if the person's involved in karmic consciousness or is liberated from karmic consciousness. Because guess what enlightenment has its content? Enlightenment is something that happens to sentient beings, and when it happens to sentient beings, they become Buddhists. The contents of enlightenment is current consciousness. You can't have enlightenment separate from current consciousness. Because enlightenment is to wake up from the dream that you are an independent agent in this universe. And we think that way, and animals don't. And what do we see in nature? We see all these independent agents. We see the independent deer. We see this deer and that deer, and we see this deer walking and that deer walking.

[37:21]

We see these deer doing karmic consciousness. We see them doing stuff. We see the deer independently walking up a hill. We don't see the endless succession of deer which led to this deer walking up the hill. We don't see eons of evolution which let this deer. We don't see the earth that lets the deer walk up. We don't see the earth which lets the deer slip down. We don't see the stars. We don't see the water. We don't see the trees. We see an independent actor, a deer, walking up the hill, who's got an independent existence and uses it to do these actions. That's what we see, right? The deer doesn't think that. The deer, it doesn't think that way. The deer doesn't see things that way. We do. That's why I was saying this thing to you about a few weeks ago. If you look at the water and tell the fish that they're in a river and the river's flowing, the fish, they get really shocked. They don't think the river's flowing.

[38:21]

That's not what they think. And if beings in other realms told us what they see here, we would be shocked. Because we If they told us that we were all one being, we would be shocked. Anyway, this is sentient beings. Sentient beings are basically human beings, and sentient beings are the ones that can become Buddhists, and they become Buddhists by waking up to what the nature of karmic consciousness is. So, he said, how would you test it? So he says, okay, if someone comes, I would say to them, Hey, you. If she turns her head, I would say, what is it? If she hesitates, I would say, karmic consciousness is all you have.

[39:23]

It's boundless and unclear with no fundamentals you're alone. It doesn't say what would happen if you don't hesitate. If you don't hesitate, then you don't know what the person would do. When you say, hey, you, and the person turns their head, I'll tell you another story, which is followed up in this. One monk said to his Zen teacher, he said, the scripture says that the fundamental affliction of ignorance, or this karmic consciousness, this dualistic way of thinking of I'm separate from you, okay, that fundamental affliction of ignorance is itself... the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas. What is the immutable, unchangeable knowledge of all Buddhas? It is delusion. That's what their knowledge is. It's not like, it is delusion. That's the immutable, that is the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas, is delusion.

[40:27]

But it is delusion that has been awakened to. That's why they're Buddhists. They have awakened to delusion itself, to the fundamental affliction of ignorance itself. Awakening comes from that. That's what their knowledge is. And the monk says, this seems to be very, what did you say? This principle is most profound and mysterious, extremely difficult to comprehend. Well, I think you can agree with that. The teacher hardly says, I don't think it's so difficult. It's most distinctly clear, easy to understand. He said, watch this. So then he says, there's a young man sleeping nearby, and he says, hey, you. The young man turns, and he said, is this not the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? And then he says to the boy, what's Buddha? And the boy goes, the stone is off. He said, is this not the fundamental affliction of ignorance? They're right there together, and yet one is delusion and one's enlightenment.

[41:39]

Can you see the difference? What do you think a Buddha would do if you said, hey you? They just might go like this. Or they might say, I'm not going to turn my head, I'm a Buddha. They shouldn't be calling me, hey you. They should say, sir. Think a Buddha would say that? I don't think so. I think a Buddha would probably just tell, hmm? You know, if somebody else says, hey, you're in another direction, I'd probably go, hmm? And somebody else, you know, hmm? And you think, well, eventually I'd start thinking, what's going on? Are these people torturing me? Is this some kind of a trick that they're playing on me to test me? Think a Buddha would think that? No. Would a sentient faith think that? Yes. What's the difference? The Buddha is right there with the sentient beings going, why do they say, hey, you? Now they're saying it the other direction.

[42:39]

What's going on here? You know, who are those people anyway? I'm separate from you. Why are they criticizing me? Buddha's sitting right on top of the head all the time, just going with it. Waking up here, waking up here, waking up here. Buddha is liberated from our mind, which is going, why don't they call me sir? Why don't they call me man? And so, when you say, hey, you, to Buddha, Buddha goes like this. But so does this ancient being. What's the difference? There's no difference. However, if you say, what's Buddha to a Buddha, they don't get flustered. They don't get flustered, but sentient beings, especially if they're Zen students, they get flustered. They go, oh, yeah, I'm not supposed to answer the question. They say, hey, you, they just go. They say, ask them a question like, what is it? And they go, especially the Zen teacher asks, what happened?

[43:40]

When you say, hey, you, they just turn their head. They don't think, oh, somebody's separate from me. He's falling to me. I don't know what's going to happen now. They just turn their head. It's causes and conditions. That's all. That's enlightenment. The other one's illusion. They're inseparable. And even when there's the affliction of ignorance, enlightenment's right there. And even when there's enlightenment, affliction's there. Enlightenment doesn't need to be separate from affliction. And affliction is never abandoned by enlightenment. You don't have to stop holding on to the delusions you're believing. You don't have to stop believing in the truth. You don't have to stop yourself from being deluded. That's not necessary. All you've got to do is watch what's happening. As you watch what's happening, delusion spontaneously, in the end, there is no such thing as delusion.

[44:46]

Realizing that there's no such thing as delusion is enlightenment. But also, once there's no such thing as delusion, which is enlightenment, there's no such thing as enlightenment. When you study the situation thoroughly, there's no such thing as either one. There's no such thing. There's no such thing as anything. We don't seem to have a problem thinking that there's something. So when I tell you that, you can recover from what I just said. You can go right back and think that there's something. But there really isn't anything. However... To say that you don't imagine that there's things would also be not true. You do imagine, I do imagine things, but in a matter of time constantly, it is true that we are constantly imagining things that do not exist. I'm imagining you. What I imagine doesn't exist. I don't say you don't exist. I say what I'm imagining doesn't exist. It can only exist, it does, however,

[45:48]

It does happen that my imagination of you does happen. And your imagination of me does happen. It's true. And I that, but it's also true that we usually believe that our imagination is in reality outside of our imagination. When we imagine somebody is mean to us, we think that that meanness we imagine has some reality outside of our imagination, even though somebody else might think it was quite nice what they did. Even though someone else would see, they were actually just trying to be kind to you. And then sometimes we change our mind, and then we think that's... Because there's no such thing as anything you're separate from. Nothing's separate from anything else. The whole universe is connected. We are by nature. Nature connects all of us. There's nature between us that connects us all, and there's no break in that connection. And we are by nature also separate.

[46:52]

But it's by our nature that we're separate, and it's by our imagination of nature that we separate ourselves. This is what we're doing. We need to take a good seat and watch the ship. If you watch the show very clearly, and you can, and really give yourself to watching what you're doing and watching what you're creating, the whole thing can just turn around and you can see it from an entirely different point of view, which is not necessarily death reality. It doesn't get relieved from what you thought was reality. You get liberated. And when you get liberated, you can also get liberated from what you got liberated, from your liberation. Once you start turning, once you get liberated from this, you can get liberated from liberation. And getting liberated from liberation means you can come back right here and go ahead and view your previous program. And you can see people are separate again and so on and so forth, but you understand that you're in a dream.

[47:56]

And then you can, again, watch how you do it and get liberated from the dream again. and then get liberated from that and come back. So basically nothing changes except you're free. And you also don't need any kind of like changing yourself to make yourself free because if you do that's not freedom. But we do need to be at the place where we create the illusion because it's at that place that the world gets reversed. We do need to check out the problem. And we do need to watch the infinite causes which come to create it. And when we see them all, it drops away. When it drops away, we're not afraid for the whole world to come back again. But now we realize creation. It's just the same, but we understand. And the pain is gone.

[48:59]

But gone means free of it. Doesn't mean it doesn't come back again. It just comes back again. It is now wisdom and compassion that's here. Taking in what's happening and letting it go helps tune into the situation which causes the suffering and the situation which would be the site of liberation. Mountains and rivers are naturally intimate. You and I, you and all other sentient beings are naturally intimate. Enlightenment and delusion are naturally intimate. You are naturally intimate. You are naturally intimate with delusion. You are naturally intimate with me. You are naturally intimate with enlightenment. Because enlightenment and delusion are intimate. But if you don't realize that you're intimate with yourself, and you don't realize that you're intimate with delusion, then you won't be able to see that delusion is intimate with enlightenment.

[50:12]

Enlightenment is nothing at all, and neither is delusion. But delusion is what you think is something. And if you think enlightenment is something, then that's a delusion. And you can be intimate with the delusions you have about enlightenment, just like you can be intimate with your delusions about everything. Because you are intimate with your delusions, That's how they get to be your delusions, is that they're yours. They're your babies. You make them. They're happening right now. They're whatever you think is true. Don't you have your truth real close? And don't you think you're separate from other people? And doesn't that bother you? that we think we're separate. Because the fact that we think we're separate is exactly because we're connected. So it's a bittersweet thing. It's very dynamic.

[51:15]

And anxiety is not all bad. However, it could be dropped. You could get liberated from anxiety. And that's part of the reason why we kind of like it. Because it's also, when you start to feel anxiety, it's the harbinger of release. And the more thoroughly you feel anxiety, the closer you're getting to dropping it. Because the more thoroughly you feel it, the more thoroughly you're sensing the causes of it. The more you sense the causes of anxiety, the closer you are to seeing just the causes and you see the causes of it. There's no anxiety in addition to the causes of it. And evil Evil in this world, in Buddhism we say, avoid evil, don't do evil, do good and help people, help all beings.

[52:16]

Don't do evil, but don't do evil means, what don't do evil is, the causes of evil are don't do evil. The causes and conditions of evil are what we mean by avoiding evil. It isn't that you're here, evil's over there and you don't do it. It's just that there's evil and have all these causes and all these causes are what's happening and that's avoiding evil. Then you can just pick it up and set it down. You don't have to stay away from it. You don't have to carry it around. You can just play with it. causes and conditions are always there, and they are the avoiding of it. If you're into the causes and conditions of evil, you don't do it. And if you don't do evil, then spontaneously you do good. What you do when you see the causes and conditions of evil, when you see the causes and conditions of evil thoroughly, what you do will be good.

[53:16]

Because when you see the causes and conditions of evil, you won't be able to hold on to yourself anymore and no longer do things independently and then good will be done. But the key thing in practice that I've been not emphasizing tonight so much, which I want to again emphasize, is that in order to enter the realm of evil, of the appearance of evil, of the appearance of anxiety, of the appearance of separation, of the appearance of delusion. In order to enter those realms and sit there with that stuff and study it, we've got to get some help. We can't just make this another karmic trip that you do on your own personal power. So that's why I maybe say to you that our sitting practice is to be upright, but also it's an upright swing.

[54:32]

Have I said that to you? A sitting posture is an upright swing. Do you know what the word swing means? Is that okay? Is that right, Bill? Okay. And I said that to some non-native speakers recently, and I found out that it's a word that they usually don't know. And I recently found out the translation of it. in German is without power. Swoon means without power. So you sit with a sense of strength and uprightness, but also you have no power. In other words, you realize that you're sitting on the earth and the earth supports you. You're not sitting here on your own power. You're sitting here because the earth supports you and everything on earth supports you.

[55:36]

All living beings support you. It's with that kind of sense of support that you can enter the realm of delusion. It's to calm and have energy to look at the state. That's why you need to sit, really sit, really stand, and really feel your feet on the ground. Really touch the ground with your feet. Touch the ground so thoroughly. Touch the earth so completely that you give yourself to that touch entirely. When you give yourself to that touch entirely, when you give yourself in touch completely to that earth, the earth then completely touches you. And you feel that support, and then you can stand there, and you can face your delusion. But without giving yourself completely to what you're doing, you won't feel how everything's helping you do it. If you half-heartedly are present, then you don't feel how wholeheartedly you're supported.

[56:41]

And without wholehearted support from all beings, in other words, without surrender, then you're just going to make this study into another personal trip. But there needs to be personal effort because we do have strength. You do need to sit in your place. You need to focus. You know, the word focus means hearth. You need to know the word hearth, what hearth means. Hearth is like the stones around the fireplace in the kitchen. The Latin word focus means the heart of the house. You need to be You need to be around that warm focus of your life, wherever you are, sitting, standing, walking, you need to be there. And again, it's not a personal power trip to be there, because you are.

[57:44]

It's just simply what we call mindfulness. It's called giving up everything, but being who you are. and trusting deeply that where you are is the only place you can work and now is the only time you can work and if you do that wholeheartedly you will realize surrender too because you have surrendered all your you surrendered everything to where you are and by surrendering everything to where you are you surrendered everything to earth and then earth helps you everybody on earth helps you then you can do this work because this work is actually, in the end, to heal this sense of separation you have from all beings, to cure yourself of that disease and thereby be able to help others. But curing yourself of this disease does not mean you lose your ability to imagine and to think and to create a world like this.

[58:52]

It just means you're no longer tormented by it. And you're no longer choked and limited by your truth. You feel like you've been liberated from your truth and our truth and my truth and your truth is delusion. My truth will always be delusion. Your truth will always be delusion. But Buddha's truth is that if you study how it is that your truth is delusion, you will be liberated from your truth. You will be liberated from your truth. When you're liberated from your truth, your truth will no longer be a problem. Your truth will just be a mailing address for bliss. But if you hold your truth, then your truth is a prison. And that in holding your truth goes with a life of misery.

[59:58]

Dropping your truth and being liberated from your truth is a life of freedom. And it is possible, Buddha said, it's possible to be liberated from your truth. And again, your truth means delusion. It's a personal truth. And personal truth is a dream conjured up by your nervous system. And we can exchange delusions, no problem, no problem. And if we know we're exchanging delusions, we won't be fighting. We'll be having fun, learning about how deluded we are and how deluded our friends are. And the more we understand how deluded we are and how deluded our friends are, the more enlightened we are. And hopefully they're coming along with the joke.

[61:01]

But even if they don't, even if they sit there and you understand how deluded you are to think that they're deluded, and they're sitting there telling you that they're not deluded, even though you know you're deluded, and they're deluded, and they keep saying they're telling the truth, and they just don't get it at all, When you thoroughly get it, you'll be more skillful at helping them get it. Better jokes will come. More skillful, compassionate gymnastics will be manifested through your body until finally they realize that what they've got there is somebody who loves you so much that things must not be the way they think they are. Because even though I've got this truth and I think I'm swell and smart and so on, there's no reason why someone would love me as much as this person does, and so skillfully. And this person is telling me I'm deluded over and over. So what's going on? The way to crack through is by generosity.

[62:07]

That's the way to break through the... When people hold them, just keep giving and giving and giving. Eventually they'll clap and they'll submit. And they'll realize, maybe I don't have complete perfect enlightenment after all. And maybe my attitude has something to do with the misery I'm living in. It's possible. Yes. What was the relationship between what I feel when I listen to your talk and separation between something else and delusions of something else? And what I feel when I'm moving on and out saying to myself, I've got this washable, I've got this washable. How do you get those two? Because I feel it's something very difficult. But why don't you tell us about this different? When you are talking, as you have been talking, I'm able to think sacredness in some way, and if I'm coming across, I'd see sacredness as something else, something that you experience.

[63:19]

A lot of it, okay? Yes. But when I'm meditating, or trying to meditate, I'm not thinking of anything else along the box, and I try not to think of anything else to say to myself, and it feels to me like they're just... They're two different... I don't see how... That's a very good question. So what's happening here in this class is that, in one sense, I'm teaching you... What I'm mostly teaching you for the sitting itself is what's called stabilization practice. Or, you know, practice to stop your mind. Okay? So that's why I'm teaching you two things. One, I'm teaching you a kind of yogic practice to stop... is to stop yourself, to be at rest, to give yourself completely to sitting in a place or standing in place, okay? I'm trying to teach you to be upright and flexible. And I don't know if I said this to you last time, I think I did, that the being in his noble postures, okay, standing in a noble posture,

[64:31]

And standing means that you stand, you just stand to stand, you don't stand to get something. And you sit just to sit. And also, one way to help you sit just to sit is, as you're sitting, you just take in what's happening and then let it go. I give that instruction to help you just sit without any kind of idea of, well, what am I getting out of this? But you can also just take away that instruction. I give you no instruction. You just sit there. And all you sit for is to sit. And that's noble. Is that you're not sitting for some manipulative reason. You're not standing for some manipulative reason. You're just standing to stand. You're just living to live. You're not trying to get something out of your life. OK, that kind of sitting, that kind of standing is the entrance to the realm of where you start to see this dynamic of self and other dancing around.

[65:42]

And the world where you start seeing self and other dancing around is the world of contemplation. And when you see the world where self and other are doing this thing, where you're creating other and all that, when you study that thoroughly, this reversal occurs. So this study leads you to enter, first of all, to be present. Through that presence, enter into the world of dynamic cause and effect, to see the cause and effects, until finally that leads you into liberation. In the class, when I'm talking to you, I'm drilling you, I'm teaching you how to contemplate. The contemplation, however, is not something you should try to do. It's something which will naturally arise to you while you're sitting and isn't arising to you in a way that you recognize yet. But it will come up to you in your sitting, standing, walking and lying down. It will come up.

[66:45]

And part of the reason why it'll come up is because I'm saying these words to you and you're listening and it's impressing your mind. And now this stuff's in your head and it'll come back to you at the right time. And you're sitting. And also, in the middle of an argument, you'll think of something I said. Because you've listened to me for so many hours. In the middle of an argument, you'll realize, I actually think I'm right and she's wrong. You'll remember that. You'll say, so I think I'm not deluded and she is. Isn't that interesting? And I just heard the other night something about me being deluded too. Funny. I don't feel like that right now. I actually think I'm not deluded. I actually think I'm right and shit's wrong. Huh. And I'm having a problem. There's a fight going on here. I wonder what it'd be like if I, didn't that guy say that I'm deluded too? And didn't he tell me that I didn't think I was? And here I am thinking I'm not, just like he said I was.

[67:50]

And he said, that's delusion. that I think I'm right, and I think other people are wrong unless they agree with me. If they agree with me, they're right too, right? But if they don't agree with me, they're wrong, basically, unless I'm scared of them, and then I'll submit. But actually, I'm just submitting, and really I think they're wrong still. I'm afraid they're going to hurt me. Submission is not surrender. Surrender is necessary. Submission is a lie. Just being cowardly. Anyway, I'm training you at contemplation, and then the meditation before and after is creating a ground, I hope, where this contemplation will come up just at the right time. And also in your daily life, if you continue to practice the same kind of dignity when you're standing talking to somebody, if you stand there when you're talking to them, and you have breakfast and wash your bowl while you're talking to them,

[68:51]

that as you get into the talk with them, you start to notice it'll occur to you. This person, I think this person's not me. And you'll start to notice that makes you nervous. And what I'm saying to you very likely will start to appear to you. You'll start, and it's not that I'm hypnotizing you exactly, but it's that you will start to see, the teaching I'm giving you will start coming up when you're present. But if you're not present, it'll be less likely that you'll see this, that you'll hear these words come back to you, because if you're not present in these words come back to you, then these words will make you even more nervous. If you don't have a stable sitting posture or standing posture, then what I'm saying to you will make you feel even more unstable. But... If you're present, this stuff will come up to you and be useful to you, I think, because, again, it's the upright sitting that gets you to enter the self-awareness samadhi, the awareness of self and other.

[70:00]

And the awareness of self and other, or the awareness which leads up to you finally realizing that everything you ever are aware of is that you're receiving yourself, you're always enjoying yourself. And when you understand that, then you enter into enlightenment. The reason why we're uncomfortable looking at these other people is because we think we're not receiving ourself. Once you understand you're receiving yourself, you're adrenaline. And once you understand you're receiving yourself, you get liberated from receiving yourself. And you also get liberated from receiving the other. We never receive the other. We always convert the other. And there is another, but I don't know what it is. There are other people.

[71:02]

Because I know, you know, there are other people, but I don't know what they are. And I'm not going to ever receive them. I always convert them into me. But I can get liberated from that process. by studying how I do that process. And again, if you just be present where you are, you'll start seeing these things demonstrated to you. All the little animals will come and sit in front of you and talk to you and say, I'm a raccoon, I'm not you. And eventually you realize that that's what you think. You think raccoons aren't you. And you're scared of them. They're going to bite you. or they have rabies, and they often do, I understand. So be careful. But being afraid is not necessary. And being anxious, you can be liberated from anxiety, which means being liberated from your truth, and still have a proper relationship with raccoons.

[72:04]

Okay? That's a good question because this class has two different dimensions. One is I'm training you at contemplation. The other is I'm training you at stabilization. If you have contemplation without stabilization, the contemplation will not be affected. If you have stabilization, you naturally lead into contemplation. But I'm giving you lots of contemplation stuff in the middle of the class. And if it doesn't come up in your sitting before and after, if you just keep practicing in your daily life, if you sit zillions of hours in your daily life, both formally and informally, these teachings will come up to you in the world where you think you're dealing with somebody else. Until you enter the world where you realize you're never dealing with somebody else, you're all dealing with yourself. And when you realize that, you get liberated from the world where you're all dealing with yourself, and you enter the realm where there's no dealing with other or self, where the difference between the two drops away.

[73:10]

Okay? Say yes. Did you ever go backwards? Pardon? When you talked about how different self-evident falls away. Yes. Once that happens, nobody ever goes back? What do you mean nobody ever goes back? Do you ever go back to experiencing self-evident again? No, you can go back and experience self-evident. Okay. But if you have that liberation experience many, many times, even though you go back, after a while, it's like even when you go back, there's still, you don't fall for it at all. It's possible to be thoroughly enlightened. So that no matter what kind of, no matter how your mind's working, you never fall for it anyways. You're never tricked. In other words, you always understand it's delusion.

[74:13]

Because again, enlightenment is just to constantly be awakened from delusion. And to follow through and study one case of delusion thoroughly, which is enlightenment. The thorough study of one delusion is enlightenment. But then if another delusion comes up, which it will, because you've got the delusion equivalent, if you don't study the next one thoroughly, then it'll get you a little bit. But then finally when you study another one thoroughly, you will be released again. And you get more and more skillful until finally it's possible that every delusion that comes up, you immediately catch it and see it for what it is, enjoy it thoroughly with a nice delusion that's been created and experience liberation. So you just constantly more and more. So Buddhas are those who actually more often notice delusions than ordinary people, so-called Buddhas. Again, Buddha is to notice that you're deluded. So you're more enlightened as you more often notice that you're deluded. If during today you haven't noticed that you're deluded, then you're not very enlightened.

[75:19]

If you notice ten times, you're somewhat enlightened. If you notice a thousand times, you're more. If you notice virtually an infinite number of times, you're a fully enlightened Buddha. So you're in trouble if you haven't noticed that you're deluded some today. You shouldn't be scared. You're out to lunch. But every time you have noticed that you're deluded, there was some awakening. And sometimes, some delusions, like an old enemy or something, somebody you, just generally speaking, don't like, some of those times, when some of those get released, you really get a sense that something has changed. I actually no longer hate that person. I mean... All the things that led me to hate them are still there. And yet, somehow, it just doesn't work anymore.

[76:20]

I just somehow see something else now. I'm released from my hate. And it comes from noticing a lot about your hate for some time. Noticing... specifically what it is about that person. It's not you that's bugging you and it leads you to blah blah blah. The more you study it, force you to have you straffle and seeing this person in a very different way. That also happened with mosquitoes? So you won't mind inviting me? As I was talking to you, I was... So you won't mind inviting me? Well, that's another thing, minding them biting you. Hating them for biting you is one thing, minding them biting you is another. So that's not that you could change your attitude towards is the being bitten. Forget about what's biting you. Your attitude towards that could change also. Can you imagine how your attitude towards being bitten might change?

[77:28]

Well, you don't have to imagine. If you just keep studying being bitten, your attitude towards being bitten will change. So, but in Berkeley, they like the new mosquitoes, so you don't have that many opportunities. You should go to Castle R and sit out in the middle of the bay with all your clothes off, and then you have several thousand chances to study. Studying does not mean killing the insects while they're fighting. It means sitting there and feeling what it's like to be big. But I don't necessarily recommend that. I think if you just handle things one by one, as they come up, you'll have plenty of irritation. And that's the best, actually. What just comes up without sort of like going and looking at each other. When I was talking to you, the image of a blue jay came off my mind, because I don't have a vendetta against blue jays, but particularly at Tassajara, Green Goals, the blue jays, there's some there, but there's like, you know, there's like, I don't know what, 10 blue jays at Green Goals.

[78:44]

Tassajara, there's quite a few, and they're in a very condensed space, and that space is all usually close to people. And they really have a big impact on us, and they really push us a lot. And... So it's easy to feel that blue jays are rude and things like that. You know, and think, well, geez, it'd be better if they weren't here, you know, the birds would be happier and all that. It's easier to have those views, you know. Blue jays don't think that way, don't they? That's not their attitude. Cats don't think that way about blue jays. But that's sort of the way I did it. And some people hate blue jays more than me and less than me. But anyway, I didn't like blue jays. And one day I just, I saw a blue jay, you know. And it was in the middle of winter and I had all these heavy robes on. And I just looked, I just met the blue jay and he's sitting right in front of me. And he's sitting there and all puffed up, sort of shivering. And I just, you know, I just had to get a totally different attitude towards that blue jay.

[79:51]

I just dropped a whole lot. set of stuff, you know. But then, you know, when it gets warm and so on, and I'm sort of invading my daily lunch or whatever, I can look at them again in a certain way. But, again, if I really study what I'm doing, there's a chance that I'll be liberated from my attitude towards delusions. And that's the case with every person I meet and everything I meet. If I really pay attention, I sit here and really pay attention. I can get liberated from my point of view. And that's all you have to do, is get liberated from your point of view. And you don't have to, but you can't manipulate it. You've got to sit there and live with it. And so you've got to have a good seat where you get a lot of support, a lot of nurturing, all beings, so that you're not starving and running out of oxygen and so on while you're studying.

[80:56]

So basically, you've got to take good care of yourself and sit when you're sitting, stand when you're standing, walk when you're walking, lie down, really take good care of yourself, be very present, feel a lot of support, give a lot of support, be really there, and then watch the show. And if you watch it thoroughly, you'll understand, you'll see how this dynamic's going. And if you study this dynamic, And again, as you start to study dynamic, things get kind of like start getting wild, you know, and start seeing how it's going. Keep bringing your feet back to the ground. Keep bringing your butt back to the ground. Keep coming back to be present and stable so you don't get too excited as you start to watch the show. And then again, the show will come on. And if you keep going back and forth between being present and standing in these noble postures, getting the support, studying the show, back and forth, back and forth, eventually, you understand.

[81:58]

You understand how to be free of anxiety, fear, and birth, and death. But you need to really give yourself completely to where you are in order to get enough support to do your very heroic work. You know, you saw this movie called Little Buddha, right? And it was very dramatic scene of Buddhism-likeness. It was quite a scene. I mean, very dramatic. There is a heroic element to this. I mean, the world that we create is very dramatic. It's got real violence in it. Real fear. It's got, you know, real evil. All this stuff's really coming up. But if you stay right there with it, you can watch the causes of evil. You can see how evil's created, but you have to stay right there with it.

[83:03]

You can't, like, look away. You'll miss the show. You'll miss the lesson. Stay right with it. Keep breathing. Breathing in. Have the experience. Breathe out. Let it go. Breathe in. Have a breakfast. Breathe out. Wash your bowl. Breathe in lunch. Wash your bowl. Just stay there all the time. Even though it's difficult. Every moment of the day, wherever you are, Constantly notice this thing until finally you do not do any more calm. That's it. I'm not saying it's easy. I never said it was easy. I just said it. I just suggested it. As someone said when I talk like this, they say, he's just talking to himself. Even though I'm just talking to myself, there's no excuse for you not to do it.

[84:05]

So we have a little bit of time left in our life in this class. So let's try not to waste it.

[84:24]

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