I wanted to mention that if you would like to read Shobo Genzo Shin Ka Fukutoku, which is the ungraspable mind, our mind cannot be grasped. And also the Shobo Genzo painting of a rice cake. Painting of a rice cake. What is it? Is that kabo? Gabyo. Gabyo. Those are kind of about these three characteristics of all phenomena. They're kind of a meditation on the same point that the sutra is making. They both, both fascicles feature, both fascicles feature this, the idea of the painting, of the image of a rice cake as one of the main themes.

[01:15]

And also, excuse the miscellaneous warm-up, the Susan Rice mentioned to me that she read that Shakyamuni Buddha, at the time of his enlightenment, was concentrating on his breathing. I hadn't heard that before. It didn't seem like he would be doing that at that time. So she showed me the place she read that in. it was a little different than that. It was that during the night of his awakening, he did do some trance practice. That's part of the ordinary story. He went into various trances, and he used one of the traditional trance objects, objects for trance meditation.

[02:27]

One of the traditional ones is is the breathing process. You can enter into full trance by concentrating on your breathing. You can practice mindfulness of breathing without intending to go into a trance, but you can also approach the breathing process in a trance-inducing way. So the breathing process can be an object of mindfulness. It's part of the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness in the body. So it's included there under mindfulness practice. So breath can be an object of mindfulness practice, which means it's an object of wisdom practice, or it can be an object of concentration, which can lead to full trance. Would you just say what you mean by trance? Trance is... The trance is the consequence of training yourself in a certain way of concentration with objects.

[03:31]

You actually go into another state of being where your psychophysical process is temporarily changed into another way of being. So you actually like In the first trance, for example, you no longer can... You can't speak English anymore. You can't speak any English. Or Italian either. The language-making, the language-putting-together function is set aside as you enter the trance. So you no longer see... compositional images like human faces and Cadillacs. You just see what we call fine material experiences. In other words, you experience colors, but not colors like put together into faces and architecture and so on.

[04:34]

So you actually enter into a different realm of experience because of that samadhi, that dhyana you entered into. And the difference between mindfulness practice and being mindful of the breathing and concentrating on the breathing is when you're concentrating on the breathing, it's an obsessive-compulsive activity. It's obsessive-compulsive. It's a wholesome obsessive-compulsive because you're meditating on your breath rather than on murdering somebody. and it calms you and actually projects you into a state where there's no painful experiences. In these trances, there's no painful experiences. Fundamental suffering is still there. In other words, you're still anxious, but you don't have any painful sensations. So the obsessive way of approaching breathing is like you're concentrating on your breathing and when other objects come up, you say, no way, Jose.

[05:36]

You know? And you get really kind of obsessive about it. I mean, I've told stories about I did that for a while. 30 years ago I did that. I got really strict with myself and I got very strict with myself in order to give myself to eschew, as they say, everything but the object of breathing. So you get kind of negative. You kind of say no to other sensations. Like, I mean no. Get back here and follow that breathing. Some people don't have to push that hard. They just really like breath. It's very natural. But some people... don't find that interesting, in order to, like, really focus on it, they have to get obsessive-compulsive, like, you know, obsessive-compulsive, like, you know, you try to keep your desk neat, and, like, if you don't, it's, like, a major trauma. That's obsessive, right?

[06:39]

Obsessive-compulsive. That's a compulsive, like, or if your mind starts thinking of certain things, you just totally freak, so you keep it on certain things, like constantly thinking of your shoelaces, you know? Yeah. Or constantly thinking of your mother in a suit, you know, or what is it? Step on a crack and break your mother's back, that kind of thing, you know? This kind of, that's obsessive. Alright? And by focusing on the breathing, you can get into a trance. The mindfulness of breathing is you're mindful of it when it's happening. Breathing in, you know you're breathing in. Breathing out, you know you're breathing out. Now the two can be yoked. You can be quite concentrated, but anyway, the Buddha was, if you want more details on that, we can do more later, but anyway, the Buddha was doing those trance practices the night of his death, the night of his awakening, and he went through trances and checked out some stuff in the trances, but at the time of awakening, he was no longer doing trance practice.

[07:46]

He was like seeing Cadillacs and stuff. the Cadillacs driving by, and then half Cadillacs, or whatever the things that they had at first hand were going by. He saw the Himalayas, you know. He saw trees. He saw the birdies, you know. And he saw the planets and the stars. And when he saw Venus, when he saw love, as an object, you know, he had a miracle of vision. that I've been talking about. He saw, he had a phenomenal experience of the morning star, the planet Venus, and he saw how the mind works at that moment. A miracle of vision he had. So anyway, he was practicing concentration through the early part of the night and into the early morning.

[08:47]

and he shifted out of that practice and went and was back in the world of composite objects and saw a composite object, and on that occasion he had a miracle of vision. He saw the truth. He saw the truth of suffering, the origins of suffering, the end of suffering, The truth he saw was the end of suffering. And he saw it looking at an object, having a sight sensory experience. And I looked up the... I did the research on miracle. And the research on miracle is... the root is to wonder at. Or the Latin root mirare means to wonder at and comes from the other Latin root miras, which means wonderful.

[09:52]

And it looks like maybe this is like a case where the Latin got affected by the German. I'm not sure. It says the suffixed form S-M-E-I-R-O, into Latin, get to be mirus, which means to wonder. But the root means to laugh or smile. And to German, is it German word? Germanic word. Huh? The root is S-M-E-I, and it means to laugh or smile at. It's like smirk, yeah. Smirk and smile. In Russian, it means to smile. Yeah. So, it comes into Latin, they drop the S, and it becomes miras, which means wonderful. But the... So it's related to marvelous, or marvel. It's related to mirror. And it's related to mirage.

[10:56]

Mirage. These are things which make us laugh and make us smile. Yeah, huh? Yes, right. Yeah, it's fabulous, you know, isn't it? It's a miracle of vision. Okay, and so let's see what to do next. I don't know. Maybe we could do this thing that's been sort of hanging in the balance, and that is... this issue of, we can start with, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there, is there a sound? And so, I would say, clearly, if no one's around, there is not a phenomenon of sound. Because phenomenon means not just the possibility

[11:57]

of a sensory experience, but the actual occurrence of a sensory experience directly relating to the sense organs. That's a phenomenon. Now, in the dictionary, the word sound has many meanings. One of the meanings of sound is a disturbance, a perturbation of a fluid. or a plastic or elastic solid. And the perturbation has a frequency of from 20 to 200,000 cycles per minute, or cycles per second, yeah. So a perturbation in a fluid of that frequency, which is capable of being impressed upon and perceived by an organ of sense, is a sound.

[13:04]

So a sound wave is also called a sound, even before it is a phenomenon. So by that definition of sound, If there were a... Forget about the tree, that makes things more complicated because the question is, are there any trees out there? Without anybody... Anyway, if there's some perturbation in a fluid and no sense organs are around, there could be, theoretically, a perturbation in the fluid. That could happen, but... it wouldn't be made into a perturbation of a fluid unless somebody was around to call it a perturbation of a fluid, of course. But there certainly could be the possibility of a perturbation of fluid which could be possibly perceived by a sense organ if the sense organ was there. But in the sense of a phenomenon, the other meaning of sound is something that actually is perceived by

[14:09]

a sense organ. That is the phenomenon of sound, and of course that can't happen if there's not a sense organ there. Okay? Any sense organ. Pardon? Yeah, right. So, because it goes up to 20,000, they're allowing dog sounds too. So we can hear, human beings can hear the lowest, I think the lowest level of sound we can hear. If we would hear any lower frequency than we do, we would not be able to hear any external objects because we would constantly be hearing ourself. Our ear stops at the frequency of our own body rhythms so that we can hear something besides ourself. So our body rhythms go from like, you know, I don't know, one or even less than one.

[15:13]

We have some rhythms that are less than one per second, right? So as you go down below 20, you start picking up the rhythms of our own body. So you start hearing your heart and stuff like that, and you wouldn't be able to, you'd be overwhelmed by your inner experience. So we cut it off at our own site, at our own frequencies, and move into other ones. And we go up to a certain degree. We go up quite a ways. but not nearly as far as, for example, dogs would pick up this whole range above us, and bees and ants and stuff like that. But we have a certain range, and those ranges are sound for us, but they allow in the dictionary anyway that it would be called the sound of another animal who had a higher range picked it up. And of course, we pick lower ranges than dogs do, because they have higher, different rhythms. Anyway, that's one meaning is a perturbation capable of being received. Another meaning is the actual occurrence of a reception, and that's a phenomenon.

[16:14]

Okay, yes? The suchness that you're talking about is in three characteristics that the same is clearly established. Yes. It sounds different than suchness that is... I missed what you said. Sounds... It's different to me because that thoroughly established has to have a cognizer. Right. That suchness. Since it's a characteristic of phenomenon. Right. From my understanding suchness that's ta-ta-ta that suchness is just the way phenomenon exists without having anyone realize it. Right, but you just used the word phenomena, okay?

[17:15]

And the definition of the word phenomena is an occurrence directly perceivable by sense organs. Okay, so how do we talk about things if we're talking about them being perceived, I mean not perceived, but as suchness? How do you talk about things that are not perceived? What word would you use? I would use words like dependable horizon. And I would also use words like emptiness and suchness. I understand you are, but you can't perceive suchness, it's suchness comes with phenomena. Now, do you want to talk about a suchness that doesn't come with phenomena? There ain't no such suchness.

[18:17]

No, I'm talking about the way things exist without a perceiver, without a Realizer. No things exist without a perceiver. The universe does not come in things So what can we call it when we're making a definition? You could call it a being if you want to. Let's think of... The nature. You could call it the nature. But suchness, the thoroughly established, is not something in addition to the mind. Right. It's not like take away mind and you've got suchness left over. Suchness is, the thoroughly established, is... the fact that the conceptual ingredient in a thing and the dependent co-arising of the thing, that they're not laminated.

[19:23]

It is the non-confusion of the imputational with the dependently co-arisen. That's suchness. But you take away the imputational, there's no suchness. Okay, so how would you define tagata without suchness? Because it is different than the thoroughly established suchness. Do you want to have two suchnesses? Tagata, from my understanding, is not the same as thoroughly established. If you don't want it to be the same as thoroughly established, let me know what you want it to be. where the thoroughly established, which is ultimate truth, thoroughly established is ultimate truth, it is the perfected, it is the ultimately true character of phenomena. This ultimate truth does not have a life outside of phenomena. If you want to talk about an ultimate truth that lives in some other universe from where there's phenomena, fine, but there's not two.

[20:30]

Two universes. Okay, but you're talking about this... Even still, when you're talking about this... whatever you call that faith, that in itself is a phenomenon. That still is an imputation, but you were talking about it... I'm just saying the dictionary said that. People say, if there's a tree falls in the forest... Okay, first of all, how do you get a tree in the forest? That's a thing. It requires imputation to have a tree. But I put aside the tree thing and just say the dictionary says that you can call a sound something that's capable of being perceived. So in Buddhism, we have people who talk about, in Buddhist psychology or Buddhist phenomenology, when you talk about a sensory experience, it takes three things. It takes many things, but it takes four things. It takes, basically... It takes a sense organ, a sense field, and when those two interact, when they touch, that's the next thing that's required, they have to touch, when they touch, when a sense field, like when a perturbation touches a sensitive tissue in the ear of a person, for example, that gives rise to sense consciousness, and when those two are like touching, you have the experience of hearing.

[22:00]

And to turn that into a phenomenon, you have to have mental imputation too. Okay? But theoretically, there are perturbations available to interact with sensitive living tissue to give rise to sense consciousnesses. But who knows if they're really out there prior to interacting with us. Yes? Yes? I didn't understand what you were saying. That is the power. If the human ear doesn't hear it, would it say, no, there was no sound?

[23:07]

No, I think you could say if another animal heard it, you could say there was a sound for that animal. So we can no longer say that. We can't say that the tree doesn't make a sound in the forest unless we qualify it so greatly. Or that the clock has a tick on the nut, right? No, we don't say it doesn't. You define that nobody's around, okay? That nothing's around. If you say nothing's around, that's the qualification of the story, right? But you said, for example, the clock does not tick. Let's stay on one thing at a time, okay? That's a different thing. So, first of all, trees, there aren't trees out in the forest without people. So you're getting, pardon? Woodpecker doesn't call that a tree. For the woodpecker, what the woodpecker is working with is not what we call a tree. What we call a tree, woodpecker doesn't know anything about. You know? Huh? What? He's disporting freely. He's disporting freely with... Well, we don't know what he's disporting freely with.

[24:13]

You look at him and you say, you're disporting freely with my tree. And the woodpecker says, you know, this is a shopping mall. And the shopping mall doesn't start where your tree starts. You know, this is a big shopping mall, and this is like, you know, a photography studio. So what, you know, like Dogen says, you know, you look at, we go up to the stream and we say, this is a flowing stream. The fish says, what are you talking about? This is a palace, you know. Somebody else says, this is a cesspool, you know. Depending on who's looking at it, it's different things. We say that forests have trees in them. But we, but worldly convention makes the trees. The forest does not come in tree packages if there aren't people there to put it that way. The trees don't think of it that way. Like, we see mushrooms coming up on the lawn. The mushrooms don't think that the mushrooms are coming up on the lawn.

[25:15]

The mushrooms are like underground, one big mass of mushroomness, of fungi, you know. And what we call mushrooms coming up, for them, are just like the hairs on their face. They don't think of that as the mushroom. That's not their point of view. They don't live in the same conventional world as us. They have a different conventional world from us. Theirs is total, ours is total. So that's why if you say a tree, you're already assuming that there's a thing called a tree out there prior to me saying it's a tree. But even if I say there's a perturbation, in the fluid. Already we're assuming the conventional world has been established. Okay, if it's been established, then even in the conventional world, unless there's an ear that hears this, that's impacted upon it and a consciousness arises, in the conventional world, by conventional language, that is not a phenomenon. And this relates to the clock.

[26:17]

That something could be going on and it could be a phenomena for you, but as soon as you stop having a sense consciousness arising in relationship to that sense field, that perturbation, as soon as you stop having an experience of it, the phenomena is no longer happening. Now you can say, how can we find out that maybe the perturbation goes on even when it's not a phenomena? Well, you could have a tape recorder going you know, and then the tape recorder could record, supposedly, that the ticking was going on, and then we started talking, and it starts recording our talking, and it continues to record the ticking, because the tape recorder doesn't have sense organs that switch from object to object. It ticks up the whole field. So then we say, now the tape recorder could have picked up that the ticking went on right while we were talking, even though we stopped hearing the ticking, and it was no longer a phenomena for us.

[27:19]

For us, the phenomena was our conversation, or your beautiful eyes, or whatever, you know. And I stopped hearing your voice, and I stopped hearing the ticking. They weren't phenomena for me anymore. There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them singing. I never heard them at all. Anyway, don't you... Listen, huh? Until. Until it was you. So anyway, the tape recorder records what was really going on, records the total complexity of the perturbations in the room. Picks up the ticking, picks up the talking, picks up the burping, picks up the wind in the trees and the birds, picks it all. So we can go listen to see whether the clock was ticking. But we don't know, huh? We have... No, no, you go back and you listen to the tape, but you have to go back and listen to see if it was ticking.

[28:25]

And until you find out it was ticking, you're assuming, unscientifically, that it was still ticking. Now you can say, well, we could also not record it, but go back and see if the clock moved ahead during that time. But the clock would have stopped functioning or gone fast. You don't know. To be scientific about it, we have to verify it, but as soon as we verify it, we're there. You are there. And then that becomes a phenomenon. So... You see, this is actually... this is actually closely related to this teaching because we actually think that that what we're the word we're saying actually holds up in dependent core arising so that if so if we take away the word dependent core arising we'll keep doing what it does for us when we have a word on it we actually think that way

[29:41]

So we think, oh, clock ticking. Bert, the clock stopped ticking. The whole thing, Bert. The whole experiment flopped. Can you hear? Okay, so we hear the ticking, right? Then we don't hear the ticking. All right? But we think, maybe, that the ticking kept going on. This poor little clock, you know, whatever it is, is not a clock. I don't know what it is, but I call it a clock. I make it a clock. For me, it's a clock. You know, fine. But what actually is happening here is not the word clock.

[30:50]

And it's not my idea. of the clock, including all the ideas I have about a clock. That is, the word clock, the touch of the clock, the smell of the clock, the temperature of the clock, my idea of how it works. All that is the clock for me. Now, if somebody opens it up and says, this clock looks like a little mechanical clock, but actually it's quartz. So then I feel, oh, I'm different. But anyway, for me... This phenomena clock, even though it might evolve, if I get more information, basically it's my imputational, my image of the clock is part of what I'm working with here. Without that, there's no phenomena clock. But there's also something more than my idea of the clock. Which, you know, is the reason why other animals and other people can use this opportunity to to come up with other ideas about what it is, and be just as well grounded in terms of having an experience.

[31:51]

But we think, I think, that whatever way this clock is for me, while I'm having experience of it, when I stop having experience of it, When it's no longer a sensory phenomenon, now it could be a mental phenomenon, when it's no longer a sensory phenomenon, when it's no longer a sensory phenomenon, I actually think that the dependent core arising of the clock is going on as it was when I had an imputation about it. In other words, I confuse the actual dependent core arising of the clock, which is inconceivable. with my imputation of it, which makes the inconceivable beauty of the clock, which is beyond all ideas of everything, but makes possible infinite ideas about the clock, I confuse that with my imputation, so that even when it's not around anymore, I think it's continuing to follow my ideas. That's what we do.

[32:55]

Isn't that amazing? How arrogant we are to think that our little words keep the inconceivable world in place even when we're not doing our thing to it. Now, people are raising their hands, but it's like not everybody gets to ask ten questions. Everybody gets to ask one, and then everybody gets to ask two, so I'm sorry. But that's why I think actually both these examples are really good because you can see that I can see I have that tendency. Or I used to. And it's quite common among people that lamination of the concept or the image to something beyond it. There is something beyond it which makes possible an experience. And to think that when you take it away from what's happening, that this thing keeps happening the way you thought it was. So that the clock keeps ticking when you're not around.

[33:57]

And somebody else doesn't keep the clock fixed. Enjo-san? What do clocks do in Japan? What do you call it? In English we say tick. What do you say? Chick. So... So the Japanese person thinks the clock's still ticking. The English speaker thinks it's ticking. What do Russians think? Huh? You know? Chick-chop. Chick-chop. And what do Spanish people think it's doing? Huh? Tick-tock. And what do French people think it's doing? Yeah. So which is it doing? And if you add them all together, do they encompass it? Rozzy, what do you think? It's fine that we do that, but we actually think, not just that that's what we think it's doing, we think that's how it's actually happening. And it's not really that way.

[35:01]

And to see that it's not... In other words, to see that this is the imputation and this is like this indescribable, inconceivable reality which avails itself to our imputations, very graciously, always. To see that they're separate is the thoroughly perfected quality of the phenomenon, which means that you don't know, really, you understand that you don't really know what's going on, you only know what you impute. That's all you know. Or you can also know what is really going on in a kind of plastic version of it by confusing it with the imputation. Pardon? Yeah. Those are the objects of awareness by which we have our phenomena. And aside from that, we don't know anything. But you can also have a miracle of vision where you can see Venus

[36:05]

that this idea of Venus and something about the pinnacle or rising of Venus come together and you have this phenomenon of Venus. We're all walking around this idea of Venus or morning star or a star or bright star and suddenly something happens and we say, here's a good opportunity to use bright star. And some of us know that this even have bright morning star. Some of us even have Venus. So we got all these concepts ready. something, the world's happening, and we sort of say, okay, boom. We got a phenomena, and the Buddha was able to see that they're not the same thing. In other words, he wasn't confused for a second there. And this, like, opened up the whole, you know, it opened up the truth. He set him free. Okay? So, let's see. You have Galen, Martha, I think you were next, actually. One, two, three, four, you had one, five, six, seven, eight, okay, and... So, I just... I'm thinking about teaching... Is that Riley consciousness basically required?

[37:21]

There's any more terms. Well, um... Mind has various capacities, you know, and sometimes if you have three words or one field, they're interchangeable in the sense that they're talking about the overall function of mentality or consciousness, but they actually also are different. So depending on how we define mind consciousness, like one of the chapters of the Sandhya Nirmacana Sutra is mind, consciousness and intellect. So the mind has a kind of like consciousness aspect where it kind of responds to and absorbs or registers everything that's going on for itself. The big sort of all-embracing quality of mind. It has a cutting kind of mind where it makes it possible to split part of itself off so it can be reflected, or a mirror-like quality of mind. And then it has the discriminating quality by which it can say, that thing is external.

[38:26]

That's the intellect, or the idea, the concept, that what we're aware of, which according to some teachings is actually our own mind that's been split off from itself, or a mirror in our mind that we're not saying now we can see something about the mind itself, then it's called external. So these different words do not necessarily mean the same thing. So with that in mind, the examples of the Shri Maturas, the Pā, basically what you're saying the teachings are trying to imply are mind and phenomena. Mind can't exist without phenomena, and phenomena can't exist without mind. They both have to arrive today? Yes. Okay. Okay, let's see, I think the next one was Gilman. I just want to say a quick thing about Fox. This French anthropologist went to study the New Era people and the elders met with him and he asked them lots of questions about their religious practices and they were very open and they answered everything.

[39:35]

And then at the end, he wanted to know if they had any questions for him about anything. And they asked very respectfully, what was the nature of the deity that he carries on his wrist and consults before he makes any important decision? Yeah. It's as though we think that the time actually refers to a reality. That that time is like a god to us, you know? We think time really exists. We have our idea of time But with our idea of time, time doesn't come in those packages. But we misconstrue the way things actually happen with time. And it's as though we really think time is true. And they probably don't have that concept.

[40:36]

So they don't have that problem. Yes, that is why. And that's why I do. Because I'm not fooled. Yehudah? It seems that the tenacity of the mental phenomenon adds to the confusion. Well, it doesn't add to it, it is the confusion. It is the confusion. That tenacity by which we hold... to our imagining as real. That tenacity is confusion. That's the basic confusion. You mentioned at the beginning of the last lecture, right at the beginning, about the senses and how the Buddha taught us to understand the senses.

[41:46]

And I was wondering at what rates, if the senses of the newborn child develop the same rate of hearing, of seeing, of touching, of the mental, do they develop at the same rate? I was wondering whether there's a relationship. I'd be happy to talk about that, but that would sort of take over the rest of the session and we'd never get to the other questions. But I just put in parentheses this thing, okay? I said before, I'll say a million times, words are how words, images, concepts, the imputational, are how we come into the world. They're how the world is created for us, they're how we create the world, and they're how we get involved with the world, and entangled with the world, and then our confusion of the word with creation causes this big problem.

[42:51]

But words are also how you disentangle from the word. The conventional words in the conventional world about how to meditate on the conventional world, those words can show you how to get out of the conventional world or disentangle with it. But another thing I would say is that the face The concept and the image of the face is particularly, for human beings, how we come into the world. And the face is particularly important of how we get out of the world. That's why we have this expression in Zen, face-to-face transmission. What? The face, the face, with a baby, the face is very important in how we come into the world. and get entangled with, and learn a language, and get entangled in the world. But the face is also very important of how you get out of the world and disentangle with the world.

[44:00]

And we have this expression in Zen called face-to-face transmission. Face-to-face transmission of liberation from the world. But the face appears in the world. The face gets you to come into the world, and by meditating on the face of the Buddha, you get out of the world. And the face of Buddha also talks. So words and faces are very important, and it has a lot to do with the baby. But I think this is another topic. We could have a whole class on that topic. But I have that. One of my notes here on conventional world is about face-to-face transmission. I'd say, who is next? I think Sarah is next. So it seems to me like there's two things. There's that green cloth, and I can look at that green cloth. I'm too hot. Can you see it? Where's that clock? I can look at that clock and I can assume that that's a clock and everybody, if I said anyone in the room, that's a clock, they go, that's a clock.

[45:12]

Or I could look at the clock and I could say, I think I'm going to say that's a clock because I need to talk about it. But I'm not going to assume that that is everybody else's experience. And even if I say that's a clock and they go, yeah, that's a clock, I'm going to assume I have no idea what that is. Which is conventional reality? Well, conventional reality is that if you say it's a clock, they agree, for starters. But in their agreeing, do we understand the dimension of reality understanding that we all have our own dimension of reality? No, because you can talk to people and find out that although they agreed that that was the right word, they feel differently about clocks than you do. Right. But their perception of it is quite different. But the thing about humans is that because we're so language-oriented, we're so highly developed, there is some shared... shared stuff because we work so much on language, and most of what is going on here is the subtlety of language, just like we've been working on some language here about what does sound mean, what's phenomena.

[46:21]

The more we work on language, the more conventional it is. We have a convention, right? And we come to an agreement about what these words mean, and then we have more and more agreement. However, this doesn't touch the inconceivability, the inconceivable reality of the phenomena that we're talking about. Doesn't touch it, never will, which is fine. Does it kind of hold it? Pardon? Does it kind of hold it? Like, we understand definitional language as it holds the inexpressibility of everybody's... That's the confusion, is that we think it does have, you know, we think that the word tree has a little bit more... relationship to the dependent core arising of the possibility of a tree than some other word does. Always coming up, every moment, and it's just a matter of accessing them with these imputations which precipitate out of the infinite possibilities of whatever you want to call it.

[47:30]

I'll put it on the So, let's see. I think Charlie and then, Charlie, who wants, Charlie and Steve, who wants an original? And Martha. Charlie and Martha and Steve and Jane and Bruce and... Sonya and... So, can you explain in terms of Ariana, how it's formed? This fusion thing is a condition for suffering. I mean, if you go by, according to Abhidhammi, there is a 12-hole chain, but is there some more direct way? A direct way? Yeah, with how that comes grasping, it seems so, at least the thing is, how does it work? Well, it's, you know, when there's this pinnacle arising of life and sensitivity,

[48:48]

a sensitive living being, which is totally interconnected with everything else, has no identity separate from its support from the whole universe, at a particular location, when that tissue, when that sensitive living tissue is touched by certain kinds of physicalities which are not alive, and don't have the potential for consciousness in themselves, When that touches it, consciousness arises. But actually the conscious doesn't necessarily belong to the sense organ. It's something that arises from the sense organ and the sense field interacting. So this is the birth of a consciousness. Now, as soon as there's some image of what's going on, immediately there's a word. And then there's immediately clean. And then there's, pardon? Because there's dualism, right.

[50:05]

That word naturally then makes self and other subject and object, and then there's immediately a clinging to the experience as the word. And then that's uncomfortable because it's not true. It disturbs the reality of the situation, which is something which is more than just the word, which has not created a sense of externality, an internality subject-object. Some kind of intuition? Well, because, well, you know... There's a constant feedback that things aren't going according to the way they would if that was so. People aren't behaving according to the way they would if they were what you thought they were. Aren't you constantly frustrated? And... Aren't you just not going quite the way... If you get detailed, there's constant frustration.

[51:09]

And also, because there's the idea of being turned inside and outside, then the outside... The inside's endangered. So, again, someone said, why would we turn away from... the interdependence of all this stuff in the first place. Why don't we just enjoy the fact that we can have an experience and appreciate its interdependence and not see subject and object as separate or the word and object creating a sense of self and other. Why do we turn away from the interdependent word and look at the world of duality? Why do we do that? I would say for power. social discourse arose among social animals. Our ancestors were social animals. They came up with words. At first, some people thought that they used words as a convenient way to groom each other.

[52:11]

Our early ancestors, they still, yeah, they still, what do you call it, among various apes, they spent about a third of their time grooming each other. It's partly to get the stuff off, you know, the license stuff. But it's also a way to keep in touch, you know, and say, you know, keep the social thing going. Because part of our thing is, part of the reason why we're so powerful is because we live in groups. In big groups, we can do things to protect ourselves and all that. But then within the group, there's different positions you get into in terms of reproductive possibilities. And then there was this breakthrough that this self-other thing was more powerful than this interdependent thing. Because then you can have your own little area here and your own stuff, which is external to you.

[53:14]

So power comes in and overcomes interdependence. And it's interesting, in the later part of the 18th, 19th century in Japan, A lot of Japanese people felt interdependent with China. A lot of Japanese people felt like we are Asian, Chinese people are Asian, we're one big Asian family. We're in a cooperative relationship. Buddhism actually taught them too, right? We're in cooperation with the Chinese people. But then there was a newspaper campaign. This is a story, right? Just a story. There was a newspaper campaign in Japan telling people that they should overlook their brotherhood and interdependence with their Chinese relatives because the Chinese weren't doing their job. So forget about this interdependence thing for now and realize we have to save China. So then you have the Sino-Japanese War. But it has to be justified in newspapers because people weren't naturally conducive to fighting the Chinese because they were kind of like their relatives, right?

[54:19]

You have to, like, for the sake of power, you can separate yourself, right? And, of course, the Nazis did that, too, and Americans do that, too. Everybody does that when you go to war, is to have to sort of, like, forget about interdependence and oneness of all life and respect for all beings. Forget about that right now. Now we have to sort of polarize And then when you polarize, you feel scared, and when you feel scared, you fight. And there's also maybe a desire for knowledge. Desire for knowledge, right. That's the Garden of Eden, right? But the desire for knowledge is you desire for the power of knowledge. So I think the early animals realized the power of having an idea of self and other. And now it's like go to him. So as soon as you have a sense of externality, you've got power. But also you've got fear, anxiety, fear, and so on and so forth. But you've got power. You give up love and interdependence and get power and fear.

[55:25]

But then you have drugs to take when you're afraid so you can go to war. Look at the stories of the early warriors. Mostly they got drunk before a battle because they were scared to death. They were scared to death. They knew that they were scared in those days. They didn't say, oh, we're not scared. We're not going to shoot like that. They were scared to death because they were in touch with that. The early, like, other, like big, ugly, monstrous other that they nicely created. you know, with their imputation of this is really what I think it is, over there. So then they were paralyzed by fear, couldn't sleep the night before the battle, so they generally got drunk. And then, okay, where are we going now? Michael? Michael? My question has to do with like the motivation, like when the scene is just the scene, what would cause like a theater to teach or an artist to want to do a painting or write a symphony or... So if you're in a state of the scene is just a theme, what would cause you to teach?

[56:45]

Like you're in a state where there's no here and there or in between and you're like cool, what would cause you to teach? Okay? In a state like that, you're like this. This is like also face-to-face transmission. So the Buddha is like, just like, there's no like, this is happening, but there's no like here and there, right? Same room, everybody's here, but there's not, I don't feel like I'm here and you're there. So I'm not scared of you. I'm not suffering because you're not over there to me. Okay? That's the way I am. Now, what would cause me to teach? Is I think, oh, I'll teach them? No, I don't think I'll teach them. What causes me to teach? Huh? You ask, and when you ask what happens to me, I go, you know? When you come up to me, you go, and you hear this knocking sound. Okay? That's teaching. Or you go up and you press on the Buddha's cheek, and it makes a dent.

[57:46]

That's teaching. You say, hi, this is you. That's it. You have seen somebody who doesn't any longer think you're separate from them respond to you from a place of non-separation and fearlessness and happiness. You see how they respond. Like that famous story, Case 37, in the Book of Serenity, right? They say, or there's two versions. One is, these two monks are talking, one monk says, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, it says that the basic affliction of ignorance, which is very related to this, that basic affliction where we confuse the conceptual with the truth of dependent core arising, that basic affliction is itself the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas.

[58:49]

It's Avatamsaka Sutra, but it's talking about the same place where the place where the affliction happens, actually the knowledge of the Buddha is right there. Namely, that the process of affliction is actually not happening. You follow that? The imputation of being confused with dependent core arising, actually that affliction, if you look at it carefully, what's actually going on there, it's not happening that way. And that's Buddhist knowledge is right there. So the fundamental affliction of ignorance, of ignoring that situation, not seeing it, that right there is what the Buddhists know about. All know about that. Immutable knowledge is right there. The monk said to the teacher, this seems really abstruse and difficult. And she says, well, I don't think so. Watch this. So there's this kid sleeping, young monk sleeping nearby, and he says, watch this. He says, hey, you, to the kid. So what does the kid do? The kid goes, just like a Buddha would. Say, hey, you, to Buddha. Except the Buddhas usually go like this. The whole body is like the swimmers, you know.

[59:58]

The Buddha. Stupid. Hello. Hello. So he says to the monk, hey you, the monk goes, is that not the immutable knowledge of Buddha? Then he says, what's Buddha? Is that not the fundamental reflection of ignorance? So, the first case, no separation. So the Buddha has no agenda to teach us. The Buddha wants us to be taught, wants us to learn, but they don't have any particular way of doing that. Which is a surprising thing about Buddhists, what they will teach. So I told you some stories about things that Suzuki Roshi taught me, and while he was teaching me, I thought, why is he teaching me this?

[61:04]

He could teach me some other more interesting Buddhist things. Teaching me to count people in Japanese, right? Why doesn't he teach me about Why is he teaching me to count people in Japanese? Well, I don't know. They just are like, there's him, there's me, and he starts teaching me that. So, when you have no attachments, which means you have no attachments, not because you're like doing everybody a favor, you know, and it's like not attaching to them. It's that you have no way to attach because there's nothing out there. There's no out there. So you can't attach. So when you have no attachments and people touch you, you respond. When people call you, you respond. When people exude orders, you respond. How do you respond? You have an experience, you see it for what it is, and there you are, and they see it. If they want to, they see it. Of course, they see that if they attack you, you respond differently than most other people. If they compliment you, you respond differently than most other people.

[62:06]

There's some difference sometimes. So they get to see how the person who has realized suchness acts. And sometimes they say, how come you act differently? And you say, well, because all phenomena lack inherent existence, have no arising, no ceasing, are quiet from the start, and fundamentally, inherently, nirvanic. All phenomena have three characteristics. you know, this stuff starts coming out. But, you know, not unless you knock on the door and open up the word thing, you know. Otherwise, they'll just sort of like, they just respond. And sometimes when I'm talking with you guys, you tell me about your practice, and I think, the thought crosses my mind, excuse me, good. I don't usually say it because I don't like that word. That's part of what's going on in me. I more feel like I want to say appropriate. It's not good or bad.

[63:07]

It's appropriate. So the Buddha doesn't teach good and the Buddha doesn't teach bad. The Buddha teaches appropriately. So one day it's this, the next day it's that. Because there's no here or there, the appropriate response comes. Okay? They have no way of knowing before you arrive what you're going to need. And you have no way of, you know, as you start to study more and you think of taking teaching positions and helping people, you think, geez, how am I going to learn all the stuff that people know? People need me to know. Well, you don't know. What you have to do is, like, you keep studying as best you can the Dharma, but when the person shows up, they'll draw it out of you. If you've learned this much Dharma... When they interact with you, if you're selfless, the exact right thing will come up for them. If you learn much more, the same exact right thing will come up.

[64:09]

But you'll be a different person, you'll be more educated, but still it will always be the right thing. For a child to answer your question appropriately will be different than for an adult. But both of them can teach you the Dharma. like also in case what is it case 56 no case 53 of the book of serenity there's a story in there about a wheelwright you know and who criticizes his lord and the lord says well you know what's going on you better say what's going on here so he says well I think of it in terms of my work now I make wheels So he talks about how he makes wheels. And there's the Dharma. Because he knows, but he only knows about wheels. So he tells about what it's like to make a wheel. Somebody else would tell you what it is to die and play the piano. This is what I mean. Get it? Somebody else would say, just a second, and come on and give you... Somebody else touches you, gives you a massage.

[65:19]

Somebody else cries. Each person has their way of giving it to you. And when you're unattached like that, because there's nothing to attach to, you always respond appropriately. That's what we're here for, to be like that. I think Steve's next, and then there was Jane, and who else? I see you now, and then Bruce, and then Mark. So I think James next. No, Steve is next. Steven and Jay. I'd like to talk more about the aspect of when we perceive things, just in phenomenal things, how just in that we also change the so-called outside world. You know, I'm thinking of things, you know, like, there's a review that a lot of things came up, like, imagine the descriptions of that, like that David James Duggan article, First Locking is a Blood Fortress, when I left here.

[66:31]

It's just, you know, and like Duggan talked about, you know, like, expounding Dharma through walls, tiles, and petals, and things like that. It seemed like in every act of perception, I mean, I don't know if that's spoken about too much, but we're you know, just a kind of a suspicion, something I'm, you know, going around that said that very action, I mean, it's a technical writing, but it has, it has an effect on us, but whether you know it or not, you're also having an effect on what we're calling the out there. That's a real big area where people are a lot of different directions, and it's a big question. How are you going to do it? Well, what I heard you saying was I translate it into this present conversation just for convenience to other people and that is if there's a phenomenon that means a phenomenon not just pure mental fabrication like now just for example I'm thinking of a moon that's made out of cheese right now but that's not a phenomenon except in the sense that it's a mental picture so for me it's a mental picture now it's gone

[67:43]

But for a phenomenon like a conventional reality that we can check up with each other, like a sound or something, the dependent co-arising of that phenomenon is the dependently co-arisen aspect of it and the imputational aspect of it. The principle of dependent co-arising is constant. The possibilities of everything happening is already there. That's constantly changing Possibilities are constantly changing, but at any given moment, there's a universe of possibilities for phenomena to arise. The actual dependent co-arising of phenomena is the interaction of the sense organ with the possibility and then the precipitation of the event. I understand your question to say is when that event phenomena is precipitated, then doesn't the conventional world change? Is that what you're saying? Yes, and it does. It does. It's one more contribution to the ongoing world.

[68:50]

And that world, now the dependent core rising of future events has been transformed by that precipitation of a phenomenon. The actuality of inconceivable dependent core rising has been transformed. Suchness hasn't been changed. But the possibility of the universe had been changed by this phenomenon, which would only happen by mental imputation. So conceptualization and imagination transform the possibilities of the world. Conception, conceiving, mental conceiving and physical conceiving, of course, conception, imagination, mental imputation, all this stuff transforms the actual creative possibilities of the universe. So we now know, of course, every time we come up with a concept that's been seen before, it changes the world a little bit by having one more example of that one, one more example of something we've already seen.

[69:58]

But sometimes we come up with new concepts, and that changes the conceptual world. But the actual world of dependent co-arising, the inconceivable world is also transformed by imagination. That's why it's good, actually, to use your imagination to create conceptual structures which you have a sense would be helpful to, you know, transform the possibilities of the universe. Now, if you could not only do that, but do it with wisdom, in other words, realizing that's all you're doing, and not confuse that with the possibilities, then I think your imagination is unleashed in a wise and beneficent way, and then you can even more nicely transform the possibilities for everybody else. So then everybody else is consulting a different universe to come up with their stuff. So there is that interplay. And that's why we not only need to be able to see

[71:02]

Affliction as based on confusion of word and creation. We also need to be really fluent and artistic and scientific about the imagination. We need to be scientists and artists in the realm of mental imputation too. Bodhisattvas study all the worldly phenomena They don't just like, what do you call it, have insight into suchness and then like not participate in the process that they now understand is separate from dependent core arising. They participate in the world of imagination fully while they also participate in the world of dependent core arising fully and they also participate in the world of the thoroughly established fully. But that looks like they're into... the names of the world.

[72:05]

They use dictionaries. They go to school. They teach physics. They study physics. They do paintings. They're interested in everything. Everything. And their interest transforms the possibilities for everybody else. Just like other people's interest is also transforming the possibilities, just that theirs is transforming in accordance with their understanding, with their wisdom. And this, I will get into more about talking about conventional truth, and how it actually is a certain kind of wisdom that transforms the world. But, let's go on to some more questions now. I think, let's see, Jane, anyone's next? So, Conventional reality?

[73:10]

Well, the word, the word dependent core rising is part of it. And yeah, an aspect of the conventional world is dependent on what arises, yes. Part of the conventional world is how it arises, through mutual dependence, yes. That's part of the conventional truth, truth of worldly convention, yes. And so, and that's why you would do the four things that were part of reality and you said, not self, F1. Say it again. The other day when you were saying what was part of conventional reality, impermanence and not-self. Impermanence and not-self, yeah. So I was confused. I didn't understand why not-self. Instead of that, I didn't understand why not-self would be in conventional reality.

[74:15]

I thought it would be in absolute reality. But if dependent co-arising is conventional reality, then... helps me understand why I not felt what all 50 of them. Okay. Yes. So she's saying, did you hear what she said? She's saying, I mentioned that part of conventional truth is that all phenomena are not sources of pleasure, but they're basically pain. In the conventional world, we're in the context of self and other, right? So all phenomena in the context of self and other are painful. Anxiety. Also, in the world of conventional truth, things appear and disappear. So they're impermanent. And they don't have inherent existence. They're empty, but they do appear. So part of conventional truth is you understand, the conventional truth you understand is things, although they don't have self, they do appear.

[75:22]

Now they appear because of error. Just saying there's not self and other? There is self and other. There is self and not self. Yeah. There is self and other. But still... There is self and other, okay? I mean, you see that. Yeah. And you see that that's not inherently true. I think so. You understand that? You don't think. You don't have a philosophical position that self and other are really separate and that you exist inherently by yourself. You don't have that philosophical position. You understand that's not true. Right. But you still do have language and you still do see this phenomenon of self and other and it's very distinct. That's the conventional world. And she's saying, which I agree, that no self sounds like ultimate truth. And it's true.

[76:24]

Ultimate truth is no self. But it's not the same to say that in conventional truth you actually see the no self of things. You don't necessarily see and realize that truth. But if you realize the truth of the conventional world, you realize that phenomena are empty. You have the wisdom of conventional world, it means that you understand that the things which appear and disappear are empty. It's just the wisdom. It's still not absolute reality. It's still not absolute, because in absolute reality, the difference breaks. The difference between conventional reality or conventional wisdom, the wisdom of conventional truth, is that in conventional truth, you see things appearing and disappearing. And you see they're empty. And you see they're suffering. You see they're impermanent. You see they're not sources of contentment.

[77:25]

You see that. But you still see the arising and ceasing, which is not ultimately true. In ultimate truth, you don't see things even happening. You also see the not-self, but you don't see not-self applying to things arising and ceasing. So in the self-fulfilling samadhi, let's say, so again, there are a lot of things in there, grass, trees. So is he referring to a state that's in conventional reality or absolute reality? It looks to me like, you know, for now, that maybe what he's seeing there is, you know, the wisdom of conventional truth.

[78:33]

It is wisdom. But it does seem to see things appearing and disappearing in this realm. Yeah, and how they're helping and how they're teaching each other and all that stuff. But when he says that, you know, the, what do you call it? I don't know. It was Max Bruce. Back to your earlier. I'm not sure what you're saying. The definition of sound is a perturbation of a fluid or an elastic solid of a certain frequency capable of being sensed by a sensor.

[79:39]

That's the contact, and then sense consciousness arises. You're mixing up touch and sound now. You just mixed up touch and sound. Did you mean to do that? I mean, perturbation, contacts, the sense of it. Contacts, for example, the eardrum? Yes. Yes? Okay. Consciousness. Air comes in these little packages and bumps the eardrum, yes. And that interaction gives rise sometimes, not always, to the ear consciousness, what we call the ear consciousness. So where does the naming function come up? So, do I say dog barking? The name comes up at this, you know, it's possible to have, in fact, your eardrum is vibrating and probably, you know, pretty almost non-stop probably, if you checked it.

[80:45]

But there's sometimes when you're not hearing anything consciously, but still it's vibrating and probably moving those little deals which are sending, which are touching nerves and sending impulses to the brain. But the brain may be busy doing, maybe busy with taking in things from all over the body and from all the other sense organs, okay? Sometimes some of these data get converted into concepts, and these concepts then get to be subjects of mind consciousness, and then we say sound, or we say sound of bird, and we say loud sound. At that time you know them. Before that they weren't conscious in terms of mentally conscious. there was sense consciousness, your body could respond, but you weren't aware of it. Our mind consciousness is what goes into a sense consciousness, that means names.

[81:51]

Yeah, the mind consciousness has this idea of names. It's like a super consciousness over our five sense consciousness. Yeah, exactly. And that has the idea of names for things. And it has the concept of externality. It creates with names and into an externality, it makes subject-object. And in that realm is where we experience what we call dukkha. We don't have dukkha in the other area, we just have positive and negative sensations, which we aren't aware of, but our body responds to and deals with all that. So in the realm of mental consciousness is where we have a sense of self and other, and where we get scared and Think of killing people, or think of becoming voice office, depending on how we work with the words up there. So when a dog barks and we name that, we're just actually experiencing part of our mind.

[82:54]

We're not really experiencing. That's right. If it was external, we wouldn't be able to experience it. Whenever you see some color, what you're seeing is your own brain functioning. The thing's not out there. It was out there. The lights that are out there have not reached you yet. You don't see those. It's like the stars we see now aren't there anymore. The colors you see aren't out there. They're in here. As a matter of fact, just I might parenthetically mention for further discussion, Another big topic is that you can't see light. If you actually have a light source shine directly in your eye, you don't see anything. Or if you even look at it from the side in a vacuum, you can't see the light. You only see the reflection of light in the thing that reflects off of it. Without it reflecting, you can't see it.

[83:55]

But even that thing out there, that's why we think it's out there, you know? Because we only see the light over there on the wall. Actually, it's here, but we can't see it. So we see the wall. So we think that part of the reason why we think the light's over there is because we only see it in reflection of objects. So we put those over there, and we have the light in our eye, but actually it's not even in our eye anymore, it's in our brain. And we have a way of putting it out there. Not only that, it's interesting to me, not only that, but actually what the eye sees is the wall upside down. But the brain puts it right side up. The reason why it's upside down is because we have this nice lens in here which turns it upside down. The image in our eye is the room upside down. And if you give people special glasses to turn the room right side up, in other words, have the image come in right side up, the way it seems to be to us, then they'll see it upside down.

[84:56]

for a while, and in their mind, the brain will switch it back again, and you'll have a right-side-up image in the eye, and the brain will see it right-side-up, even though it is right-side-up. But initially, it'd be upside-down, and then you take those glasses away, it'll see the weird, this is, that's the scary part, you start seeing the room upside-down. So you'd have to... This experiment could take care of people at that point. But after a while, the brain will switch it back around the other way. One might be worried about doing that experiment. I don't know. I don't know how long it takes. Takes two weeks? Within two weeks. But anyway, you don't see the light. You know? The light cannot see. And anyway, when you do see it... It's actually in your brain when you see it. You're actually experiencing your brain function telling you that you're seeing something outside. We have all this intellectual understanding of this process, and yet... We're geared not to understand it, otherwise we won't be able to be powerful.

[86:08]

If you understand the process, you won't be able to be powerful anymore. You'll just be a servant of power. Which is... Why did they... Well, I think there was something in the animal that had got it to the place where it got, such that it was interested primarily, its main agenda was, although unconsciously sometimes, was to reproduce. That's the main agenda of the animals, reproducing successfully. And And it turns out that some animals and some plants can reproduce without being out of touch with interdependence. They do okay. And actually, still, even there's some humans who can reproduce without being in touch with pentachorizing and truth. It is possible. Don't worry. Do you want to, you know, do you want to participate? A theory of what?

[87:13]

Yeah, it's just a theory. Right. It's just a theory. about why we switched from maybe a more interdependent view of things to this heavy-duty ignorance of our relationship with beings, even though, in some sense, human beings are particularly cooperative beings in a lot of ways with other humans. That's good. That part of our nature, too, is to be very cooperative and help each other. But then, now that we're helping each other, then it would be nice if everybody helped me, do my thing. So if there's some way to work that out, so that not only are we helping each other, but particularly you're helping me, rather than I'm helping you, then maybe I could have more babies that way. So, if everybody could watch my babies while I'm reproducing, that would be a good deal. Some animals even get that going. Some animals get other males to guard their kids while they go have more kids. Those males that are guarding, very helpful ones, they're not having any kids.

[88:16]

They think those are their kids. They trick them into thinking... So various things we do like that, and the idea of self was a great advance in this kind of, you know, making your situation of your genetics... And this is a theory, but I like it. But it's a theory about how we get screwed up. But I don't... And I think it's how to get unscrewed up is also a theory. And so the question is whether you're going to test it by doing the practices which say this is how to get unscrewed up. And maybe in the process of doing these practices you get unscrewed up, and maybe as you get unscrewed up, you'll enjoy some theories about how you got screwed up. But the important thing in Buddhism is, study the process of delusion, and you'll become Buddha. The process of delusion lately has been, look at how you impute your own idea of what's going on, your own concepts of what's going on, to a mysterious mystery. And if you could watch that process and see all the affliction around it and stay present with it, you uncover the mystery, the mystery of the pinnacle of rising, the mystery of conceptualization of all fantastic mysteries and how they work together in a non-interfering, non-confused way.

[89:37]

would be good. This is a theory. You can check it out. And some people checked it out and said, yeah, that was good. And then they told other people, and other people did it. So all these, like Dogen, for example, wrote these fascicles where he thinks this is a good thing to look at. Look at this. He says, investigate this. It'll be good. So I think maybe we will stop now. Is that okay? What? You don't want to stop? You want your question? Can she ask the question? She hasn't had a question? Is it okay? Okay, you get it. They let you. You'd like to know what? The Buddhist understanding of renunciation? The Buddhist understanding of renunciation? One example of renunciation is make your mind like a wall.

[90:59]

That's an example of renunciation. In other words, give up... Who was talking to me today about that? Who was talking to me about not activating your mind? What did you say? Oh, yeah. Anyway, you have this very stupid come up. You don't activate your mind around it. You don't say, you know, that's true, that's false. You know, that's me, that's not me. It is stupid. You renounce activating your mind around objects, or you still the mind around objects. Internally, you still the mind around objects. Your opinions of yourself, your judgments of yourself, The worldly thinking is this constant process of judgment and discrimination. Okay? That goes on. But at some level, you just leave it alone. Delusions continue to arise, but

[92:09]

Not delusions, but phenomena. This process in the conventional world keeps happening. Stuff keeps arising. Empty stuff keeps arising. Alright? And the renunciation is to renounce your activating your mind around them. Which means you renounce your concern for whether this is going to help you or not. That's one kind of that's a very deep inner yogic practice of renunciation of your usual hampering ways. If you can do that, and have this kind of mind, I always say, this is the gate to seeing the thoroughly established quality of phenomena. So the reward of renunciation is the miracle of vision, or the miracle of hearing, or the miracle of speaking. So another example of, what do you call it, renunciation is what Dogen calls non-thinking.

[93:13]

Non-thinking is renunciation in the midst of thinking. Pardon? Is there any correlation to exponential? Echo Hensho is to turn around from, yeah, Echo Hensho, to turn the light around means to turn the light around from the object and shine it back means instead of like messing with the object, look back at not messing with the object. Keep your eye on the person, on the one who's messing with things and keep him nice and quiet. Keep her nice and quiet. Okay, we know you can do something with this. Just take a break, okay? Just calm down. Just take it easy. It's all right. It's all right. Calm down. Sit down. Stupid, though. What about that?

[94:15]

Hey, that's not me. Calm down. Smart, smart. That's me. Right. Wrong. Wrong. Just turn the light back down. Keep the meditator cool. Just let it be. Be like a wall. Be like a wall. Be like a wall. Come on. Be like a wall. Be like a wall. Good wall. Good wall. Good wall. Renounce being human. Let go of it. Just be a wall. Let the hurt be the hurt. I mean, not let the hurt be hurt. Your question. What's your question, Susan? What's your question? It has to do with... By the way, I said, let the herd be the herd, but that's not really what he said. He said, in the herd there will be just the herd. He didn't say, let it. I said that, sorry. He just said, train yourself thus.

[95:16]

In the herd there will be just the herd. Not, in the herd I let the herd. Just in the herd there will be just the herd. Not, let it. The wall doesn't let us have lunch.

[95:27]

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