Last week, at this time, the bombing of Baghdad had just started. We didn't have to talk last week. We just sat. Oh, we did a service. And then rang the bell and sat for a while. And so the violence has continued. I think last night at dinner somebody said to me something like, do you ever get tired of teaching Dharma? And I don't know what I said, but I'm not really tired tonight, but part of me feels like I should, you know, in some sense,

[01:04]

in one sense seems like overlooking something. It's kind of like I feel I should, you know, on your behalf I should like just follow the book and roll around and cry for a while. But then another part of me feels like, well, we've got to do the dishes and brush our teeth if we can. And for me, teaching and studying Dharma is like brushing my teeth. I'm trying to think if developing wisdom would be helpful.

[02:18]

Even though it's, you know, you might think, well, gee, are we going to be wise enough to stop this war in the next few days? Are we going to be wise enough to protect all these teenage boys? to bring up our tradition of teaching wisdom and compassion, even though in a sense I just feel like, you know, falling in love.

[03:20]

Which wouldn't be that bad actually, but I just get up again. for peace.

[05:13]

I would hesitate to do it, even though my attendants were encouraging me to. Then this woman always came up to me and said, shall we dance? So I did. I danced in my clogs. but I was going to introduce a little bit of context for you, which I think might be helpful. Here at Green Gulch, we're on a regular basis now chanting one of the chapters from the Mahayana scripture called the Sambhidhirmochana, which means sort of unraveling the thought, the scripture unraveling the thought, in other words, unraveling Buddha's thought, sort of disclosing

[06:20]

his thinking when he's teaching. That's part of what's going on in the sutra. And we're chanting, I think, chapter 7. And this chapter starts with a Bodhisattva asking the Buddha sort of what he's thinking about when he's teaching certain things. The Buddha taught in different ways at different person. But, sort of looking back on Buddha's teachings, some people now see that there was this kind of evolution of the Buddha Dharma. I thought I might mention that with the aid of my immanuensis. So, sometimes in this scripture we're studying, in the chapter we're studying, we're reciting now, maybe you could put on one, maybe like evenly spaced, like first

[07:23]

by the word first, the first turning of the wheel of Dharma, and then there's a second turning of the wheel of the Dharma, and then there's a third turning of the wheel of the Dharma. It's okay with me. That's fine. It's not what I get, not what I imagined, but it's fine. Anyway, there's these three turnings of the wheel, and in the first turning of the wheel, the Buddha taught about, he taught in such a way as to help people

[08:28]

that persons, people like us, don't have an inherent existence. He taught so that people would understand what he called the selflessness of the person. But he also taught that what we really have usually when we see feelings, ideas, emotions, consciousness. We have these things that are happening for us at the moment.

[09:33]

And he was saying that actually these things you can actually find and experience. But if you look at these, if you look at everything that you can experience, all the things that a person can be or experience. He said, these things you can find, these have their own characteristics. These feelings have their own characteristics. Emotions have their own characteristics. For example, anger has its own characteristics. Faith has its own characteristics. Concentration. Mindfulness. Faith. concentration, attention, nervousness, calm, all these psychophysical things, colors, all these things have their own characteristics and talk.

[10:39]

couldn't find a self that's outside of these things. And he got people to look at this, and they couldn't find a self inside or outside of these phenomena. So in this way they realized the self-essence of the person. Then he taught second wheel, and the second wheel taught. All those things which I told you you could find, all the elements of your experience, actually all of them, they actually don't have an inherent existence. They lack own Being. So even your feelings, your emotions, and your concentration and your agitation and your flexibility, your tightness, your pain and your pleasure, all these things, anything you experience, these things lack their own being, they lack inherent existence too.

[12:12]

Now he teaches So in Chapter 7, the Bodhisattva starts off by saying, you taught that all these elements, all these aggregates of experience have own characteristics. And I'm telling you the reason why he taught that, that they have own characteristics, I'm telling you now, the reason why he taught that was he wanted people to become free of the suffering which arises when you believe that your personality, that your personhood has a self. He wanted us to be free of that suffering, so he taught us to look at these elements, and by seeing these elements he could help us see that there was no self, really, other than these. And there wasn't no self, there was this thing within, so we became free of that suffering, that's why he taught it. But he also told us that these things that we could experience could be found, that they did exist, because he

[13:25]

felt that at that point in the teaching, if he would tell people that even these elements of existence lacked own being, that almost everyone would slip into nihilism and would say, there's no self of me and there's no self to anything, so what? Who cares? He didn't want the practitioners to give up practicing ethics and give up caring about phenomena of the world. He was okay with them if they of people, but not just about caring about the people. Who are combinations of these elements? The second turning of the wheel told the whole story, not the whole story, but told the ultimate story, namely everything, not just people, but all phenomena of lack of own being. However, this teaching, although it came later when people were more sophisticated, still had the possibility of being interpreted

[14:26]

taught that all dharma is lack of own being, and he said, well I had in mind three kinds of lack of own being. So in the first teaching he taught that persons lack own being, in the second teaching he taught that everything lacks own being, and in the third teaching he taught three types of lack of more sophisticated in a way, and protects us from taking a second teaching, a second wheel, turning in a nihilistic way. And the main thing that, well, the key thing that protects us from nihilism is the teaching of the three characters.

[15:37]

Character, their dependent character, which is dependent co-arising, That actually says, something does exist. Things do exist. And they exist in an other-dependent way. There's lack on being. Because every something depends on things other than itself. And it's nothing in addition to all the things it depends on. Now, in the sutra, Bodhisattva asked the Buddha what the Buddha had in mind when the Buddha did the second wheel-turning.

[16:55]

And when the Buddha was asked that question, the Buddha said, what the Buddha had in mind when teaching the second wheel-turning was the third wheel-turning. But actually, the Buddha also had the third wheel-turning in his mind when he taught the first wheel-turning. So when he first taught that things exist, and feelings exist, and colors exist, but selves of people don't. He had those three in mind then, too. And when he taught the second wheel, he had the three in mind, too. And when he taught the third wheel, he had the three in mind, and he explicitly disclosed and revealed them. That's to give you background. In the early teachings of the Buddha, he taught the Middle Way. In the early teachings he taught the Middle Way, which was, and the way he taught it originally was,

[17:59]

He also started by teaching dependent co-arising. And in the third teaching, he also starts by teaching dependent co-arising. In the first teaching, he teaches dependent co-arising or the other dependent character phenomena. He teaches it by telling people That depending upon, for example, ignorance, there's clinging. And depending on clinging, there's suffering. This is the first and second Noble Truth. That suffering, there's a truth of suffering, and there's a truth that suffering has an origin, and the origin of suffering is attachment and attachment. In other words, suffering depends on something. For example, it depends on attachment, it depends on ignorance. Suffering depends on something. Each independent co-arising. And we're also taught how things happen.

[19:15]

How do they happen? How does suffering happen? How does life happen? It happens. He did tell him, still the dependent co-arising was the way he introduced it, but then he told him that the elements of dependent co-arising are all empty. And that's the middle way, the second turning. The third turning, he also starts with the other dependent as a way to start the meditation. And then he tells us that our suffering arises first teaching, he actually let people, he didn't tell them, he didn't teach them that they're overlaying their fantasies on the dependent co-arising, he let them go ahead and do that.

[20:35]

Even while overlaying their fantasies on dependent co-arising, they could still become free. But still, we start by meditating on the pinnacle of arising. So that's basically what I want to talk about tonight with you, how to meditate on the pinnacle of arising. I just want to say a little bit about it. We had this ceremony the other morning where we planted seeds as a way of initiating the end of the ceremony, we dedicated the merit of the ceremony, but I thought that the echo says, the power of these living seeds, whose real nature, like our own and like the nature of the seeds, is in harmony

[22:14]

Remember that we do not understand how seeds grow, that the intelligence within these seeds, soil, water and sun, far surpasses our ability to explain and know. It is a mystery that we share with all life. May we labor in love with awareness So it says here, whose real nature, and that part of it I would disagree with, it's not exactly that the real nature of the seeds is their mysterious nature, it's one of the natures They have a fantasy nature, a dream nature.

[23:39]

And they have an ultimately true nature. An ultimately true nature for emptiness is that our dreams are really not in other dependent nature of the seeds. But we start by meditating the seeds. We start meditating on the mysterious nature means we start meditating by remembering that we do not know what the seeds are or how they grow. because of our fantasy.

[24:53]

Without fantasy we wouldn't be able to grow vegetables. But no problem, we have plenty of fantasy. The initiatory meditation in coming to understand what a seed is, what a plant is, what a flower is, what a person is, the initiatory meditation includes being aware that whatever you're looking at, whatever you're experiencing, whoever you're meeting, Start by meditating on the mysterious nature of this thing you're looking at, or this thing you're touching. Start with that. Start by saying, whatever this is, is beyond my fantasies about it. Whatever it is, is beyond my dream of it. And my dreams are what I think is happening. And I remember that as I begin to meditate on the Middle Way.

[25:55]

And I look up to where the etymologically mystery came. Its later etymology was a secret rite, but its early Greek meaning was initiation. So the deeper root is to close the eyes. So we begin meditating on the other dependent character by closing your eyes to what you're looking at. Closing your eyes to the way it appears because the way it appears is your dream of it. Your dream of it covers it. So you have to close your eyes to the dream And this is kind of a... If I try to meditate this way, I think I get a taste of humility.

[27:42]

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you are. However, I actually do know who you are. I do know what you are. However, I cover up what I know you are with my dreams of you. And I prefer my dreams of you over what I know you are. Because what I know you are, I can't talk about. I can't grab a hold of you and plant you. In order to get a hold of you and plant you, or eat you, or buy you, or sell you, or make friends with you, And so I'm into that, but I'm talking about initiating myself into the meditation on reality. Remembering that I'm obscuring, that the way you appear to me and what I'm thinking about you doesn't reach you.

[28:50]

This meditation Because when we relate to things in terms of our dreams of them, our behavior is non-virtuous. We're turning away from the way things are. So, maybe that's enough, because I said I wasn't going to say much. Yes? Whoever you are?

[29:54]

Any line. It is possible to practice virtuously with dream-like consciousness because we do have green dream-like consciousness, I mean, we keep dreaming. However, if you understand that things aren't what you're dreaming, that doesn't mean you're not still dreaming. So they were still dreaming. And so they dreamed that there was a self to a person.

[31:21]

It's like most people dream that there's a self of a person. The early Buddhists did too. But through this education, through this training process, they looked to see if they could find this self which they dreamed of. In the meantime, while they were looking for this Self, their behavior was changing and becoming more virtuous, but their virtue was to some extent undermined by their ignorance of the nature of reality. But they were trying to practice virtue, which is somewhat virtuous, even though, until you understand, you don't actually fully realize your virtue.

[32:27]

And even understanding the Pinnacle of Arising, your virtue is not completely realized until you understand emptiness. But if you don't even try to practice virtue, or you don't even want to practice virtue, because you don't think it's important because everything's empty, That would be another dream. That would be a dreaming of a misconception of selflessness. So dreaming of a misconception of selflessness is worse than dreaming of a misconception of self. You don't care. Nothing matters. Whereas in the beginning people believed in selves of persons and people believed in selves of precepts and people believed in selves of elements of experience, and so they suffered. And because they believed in the self of these things, and because somehow the Buddha was able to talk to them in certain ways that they could listen to, they started to listen to the teaching and look for the selves that they were believing in in the person.

[33:40]

But he didn't get them to look at the self of the precepts. They weren't ready to look at the self or the precepts and also continue to try to practice the precepts, care about the precepts, care about not killing. We didn't get them to look at that that precept also is actually, you know, beyond our dreams of what not killing is. So if people are trying to practice not killing and you tell them that really they're dealing with the dream of not killing, And there really is no... The idea of not killing really isn't in the actual activity of not killing. You might say, well, I don't care about not killing them. Then I guess whatever I do could be not killing, since not killing doesn't have an inherent nature. People weren't ready for that. So he didn't kill them. Later he said that he knew that alone, but it wasn't time to tell him.

[34:42]

But they could practice, they could try to practice the precepts. Because even at the ultimate level where the precepts are empty, the Buddha still comes and practices precepts in the world where precepts appear, where precepts exist and don't exist. He comes into the world where precepts exist and don't exist, where precepts are realized and not realized. He comes into that world and practices the precepts with people. even though the people don't understand yet the precepts. But they think the precepts exist, so they want to practice them. Or, they don't want to practice them, and if they don't want to practice them, then they think, I didn't practice them, and then they see what happens when you don't practice them according to your dream. So, it goes one way when you dream of practicing the precepts, and it goes another way when you dream of not practicing the precepts, and you're taught that.

[35:44]

Plus lots of other preparations occur. I'm not trying to control how these are going here because I don't think I can, but I particularly want to recommend questions about it doesn't reach it. Yes? Even what you just said? It doesn't reach it. Even though it does accurately correspond to it. But if my fantasy of it is a condition for its existence, then isn't my fantasy of it a constituent of it?

[37:06]

The things that something depends on are the constituents of it. I think constituents of it starts to again make it like a substantial thing. They're not as constituents. They're not really constituents, they're dependencies. It's a little bit different to depend on something than to say it's part of you. Because then there's like a you there, that's got these little things sticking to it. So constituent is a little different than depending on. So it's more like a condition for its existence but not... It's a character of its existence, a condition, but it's not it. If you say it's part of it, then you think there's a it, that's something other than the things it depends on.

[38:16]

You've got the it and then it's got these parts, rather than there's just the parts. But they're not really parts, they're dependencies, they're conditions. Conditions aren't really parts of it. and all their relationships. There's nothing in addition to that. Let's say he did, and then what would you say from that? That's a good question because the fantasy of something is one of its characteristics.

[39:33]

Okay? However, the fantasy of the thing cannot be found in the thing. So we can do that with some other things, but this is really the big one. Of all the things that a thing depends on, The most important one to realize is not part of it, is the fantasy. The fantasy is not part of the thing. Even though the fantasy helps us relate to the thing, you know, and talk about the thing. Well, the fantasy is ... First of all, it's ... It's dealing with what's happening, in terms of words and conceptual consciousness. It's dealing with things that way, and in terms of essences and attributes, so that we can talk about something.

[40:48]

That's the fantasy here that comes with everything that happens. There's other kinds of fantasies, but this is the fantasy that comes with each thing. Yeah, the imaginary nature of things is that which establishes things by names and symbols and names of conceptual consciousness in terms of essences and attributes, whereby we can make conventional designations about But now we're talking about the invitational. We're getting off into that, which is omnipresent, but I just want to remind you, I'd like you to learn how to meditate on the other dependent before you try to tackle this invitational, because the invitational is based on the other dependent.

[41:49]

And in order to really successfully study the other dependent process, it's good to be based in the mystery. If you try to go off and study the mystery, the fantasy aspect of experience before you're grounded in dependent co-arising, you will not be successful. So you can ask these questions, but I'm still trying to get people on board of how to meditate on the ever-dependent. But Rin's question was good because he pointed out sort of the reason for why these things aren't part of it. They're actually, when you look at things, you cannot find that in there. They're not there. However, even though these fantasies we have about phenomena are not in them, they're not part of them, they're not part of the other dependent, dependent co-arising aspect.

[43:00]

They are, however, part of the way we relate to things. And actually, when we overlay things with this imputation, So she asked, approaching meditation on the other dependent, is it discursive or is it possible to arrive at a non-discursive?

[44:04]

She's referring to what I said over and over, that training in tranquility is training in dispensing with discursive thought. If you give up discursive thought, the mind calms. So then she said, can you approach meditation on the other dependent in the Samatha way. Once you've realized Samatha, once you've given up discursive thought sufficiently, the fruit of that is that you're actually in a state of calm. The state of calm, however, is not itself giving up discursive thought. It's like, you know, by giving up discursive thought you sort of melt the butter. of the place and get ready to any moment to put it in the refrigerator and turn it into a nice cube or whatever shape, you know, you can be molded into, you know, a fish, a cube, a person, a man, a woman, a Zen student, whatever, you know, you're flexible and you're like buoyant and, you know, you're ready.

[45:24]

And you can use discursive thought and be a little bit calm or you can be If you get too calm, you can't use discursive thought. If you can get pretty darn calm, you can still use it. Discursive content would be like, Oh, you can say this is impermanent, that's fine too. But this teaching is not so much emphasizing other dependent phenomena. The other dependent character is also the impermanence of this thing. But you're not so much meditating on the impermanence, you're more meditating on that the thing depends on things other than itself. Now, when you meditate on how things depend on things other

[46:28]

When you learn, hear the teaching and think about the teaching, whatever you're looking at is something, it's a phenomenon that lacks self-production. It lacks the nature. It doesn't have its own nature producing itself. It doesn't produce its own nature and it doesn't have the nature of producing itself. It lacks that. You meditate on that, that will lead you to understand impermanence from the inside out. Rather than impermanent just by being told it's impermanent, he would see impermanence coming from the way things happen is why they're impermanent. So usually, you could say impermanence, but meditating both on his other dependence and his lack of self-production, these two dimensions of meditating and dependent co-arising are phenomena. It's not so much the moment, it all starts there.

[48:25]

The concept comes right along with it in the beginning. Yes, you can get engaged in it because you are engaged in it. You're using your conceptual activity to apply the teaching about the other dependent. You're using your conceptual activity to study the other dependent. Your conceptual activity is going on still. It doesn't stop. It's still going on. However, we're not talking about turning around and looking at the conceptual activity at this point. You're just letting your conceptual activity guide you into meditating on the other dependent character. You can also have conceptual activity, and you can use it in conjunction with the discursive instruction of giving up discursive thought.

[49:34]

So I say to you, if you give up discursive thought, the fruit of that will be tranquility. You can use that discursive thought and also the conceptual activity which makes it possible to understand that and apply it. You're using that, but actually that teaching, even though it's discursive, You're using the imputational, you're using the fantasy, you're using the dream. You're using the dream to apply yourself to look at the mystery. You're using the dream to apply yourself to meditate on the other dependent character. Okay? And you don't try to stop yourself from doing that, because that would be a dream of not dreaming. You just say, just admit it from the start, I'm dreaming. But don't emphasize that so much. Emphasize what you're dreaming of. Now you're dreaming of the other becoming character.

[50:37]

If you dream about this, if you have this dream, your behavior starts to change. And as your behavior starts to change, then you're getting ready to be able to look at the dream. Not stop the dream, but look at the dream. Will there be dreaming about the dream? Yes. If you can use dreaming about the dream, you can dream about the teaching about how to study the dream. There's a teaching coming to you discursively which you're going to dream about. And your dream about those dreams can be checked and see if you're dreaming correctly about these instructions about how to study the dreaming process. And by studying the dreaming process, you can understand the dreaming process. And when you understand the dreaming process, you're understanding the process of dreaming itself. And then you can see what it is you're dreaming of. And then you can look to see if you can find what you're dreaming of, and what's happening. But you're not ready for that, really, even though we're talking about it.

[51:39]

And when you're talking about it, it's part of the way you get ready for it. I wouldn't recommend anybody do that much right now. More try to like use your dreaming process to understand what I'm saying, and understand what you're saying, and try to direct yourself to meditate on the pinnacle arising. Well, I'm pretty careful of the word cause, because cause has the idea that it has within it the power to make the effect.

[52:51]

The dependency is a little bit different than cause. So, if you just take away the word cause, I think, then I can go along with this. Something depends on condition, and then what would you say? Well, I'm thinking... condition, it doesn't necessarily make it happen, it's just something that's required.

[54:38]

So I'm not ready for cause and effect myself. separate from the cause. And there would be this thing that wouldn't stand by itself separate from the cause. I don't want to go and I'm not going to, I don't want to go and get back into that corner. But if it's conditioned then I don't have the problem. Well, I'm talking about the other dependent character and I don't see the other dependent characters in effect. I don't see it that way.

[55:45]

So... The phenomena being what? It does, that's what I'm saying. The way I'm thinking of it. over to themselves. But I don't see if those things are causes. To call something a cause that can't make the thing happen by itself, I don't think is a cause. And if it can make, if one thing can make something else happen, then that thing must have that thing in it. So, I think the first character in the Middle-Earth Mythological Characters, the first verse, doesn't allow that there would be a cause. Excuse me, before I go on, I just want to say that your question, I feel, was, you know, not exactly meditating on the other dependent.

[57:05]

I feel like you're really looking at the mysterious side of the thing. I felt that your question was thinking about this process, rather than emphasizing that the other dependent character is beyond your thinking. What I'm saying is that, if you are studying the other dependent character, I'm trying to get you to remember that you're meditating on something that's beyond your thinking. So, use your thinking not in a way to figure out what it is, but in a way to try to tune into that it's beyond your thinking. I'm saying that the thing you're doing is more applicable to the dreaming process. There will come a time to do this analysis.

[58:16]

Right now, I think we're looking, I'm proposing we're looking at trying to be mindful that the other dependent character is beyond our thinking, to get used to a more humble approach to phenomena. Then later we can like be a little bit more, I don't know what, scientific in a way, analytic, in some ways less humble, more like, let's try to find something here. But now we're not trying to find anything because we know from the beginning we're just going to be finding our dreams. How can I use that to grow the brain?

[60:05]

What would I then do to be a better person? Well, one thing you might do is to realize that what you're doing is dreaming about your body. That's the first step. The second step is, now, what is beyond It's not that there's nothing there. There is something there.

[61:08]

Your dreams are based on your body. The other dependent body is the basis for your dreams. It's not that there's nothing there. And actually, you do know it. However, you don't know it in terms of, like, vertebrae and spine. having spines and arms and legs and stuff like that. So that's mindfulness in the body. Okay? Now, then, that's the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness in the body, like a body that's five foot something and a certain number of vertebrae and sitting on the sofa, that's unmindful of that. There's another body, however, sounds, taste, colors.

[62:44]

This is also your body. This is actually a more meditative body. However, we're still dreaming of that one too. The other dependent character of either this fantasy body or this more directly experienced body, both of them we're dreaming about. Meditating on the other dependent is to be aware that what's actually there is beyond these concepts. I believe you still do have these concepts. They're still bearing down, we're still laying them over. Well, excuse me, you just said, in some ways it's easier to fall into meditating on the imputational than the other dependent. In a sense, that's like a huge understatement.

[63:50]

Because what we're usually meditating on is the imputational. Basically, what we think is happening, it's not exactly a meditation, it is our happiness. What we're paying attention to almost our fantasies about other people. Our dreams is basically what we're looking at. But it's not looking at meditation unless we say, this is a dream. Then it starts to be meditation. And sometimes it is easier to do that. Just keep saying, this is a dream. This is a dream. But actually, what I'm recommending is instead of saying, this is a dream, actually start to allude to what what is beyond the dream, because this dream is based on that. Like I dream that I'm permanent, and I dream that you're permanent.

[64:56]

That's my easy habit. But for me to actually dream about now, what's beyond my dreams, this is a new thing. This is an initiation Closing my eyes to what I'm familiar with and dreaming of what's beyond my ideas. There's something there that's the basis of my dream in that vertical.

[66:30]

Which is the vertical. There's nothing about my dream as a vertebrate in the vertical. But that way of recognizing the conditions that make the vertebrae is not the conditions that make the vertebrae. That's your dream about it. But that's the way you do things, that what you think about the way they happen is the way they happen. And that's wrong. That's incorrect. But that's what we think. In other words, we think a dream is true. And it is easy to meditate on that dream, and it is easy to take it as true.

[67:33]

And so what I'm saying again and again, which is hard to get, because it is easy to think about the imputation, is to give that up just for a little while, and just say, do what we call non-thinking, which is not to disagree with the dream, but just say what's actually happening, which is the basis of this dream, It's not so much that you go around saying, there isn't Essences, there's Zathras and Zafras. What you do is you try to find out how you try to catch yourself at projecting an Essence in there, and then see if you can find it. But again, that's the next step.

[68:39]

The first step is, develop this different Essence. Laughter.

[69:43]

hahahahahaha Baha'u'llah. Fantasy.

[72:47]

The words are not fantasy. Yeah. Just like when you... Another way to talk about meditating on the other dependent is you're meditating on the beauty.

[73:51]

So like, everybody we meet, we just look at their beauty. But you can't see beauty. It's invisible. But you sense it. But of course what we usually do when we see beauty is we take the beauty as our ideas of what's happening. We take the beauty as as a concept that we're projecting onto the beauty. The beauty of things is their undependent nature. If more than calming and more than relaxing, your behavior becomes appropriate.

[75:27]

This meditation is not so intellectual. now and then if you want to, but you're kind of letting go of it because you're looking beyond the thinking about this, which is trying to figure out the right way that you go and so on. This type of meditation can be done in daily life.

[76:52]

The Samatha type of meditation is harder to do in daily life. It's harder actually like continually going beyond the discursive thought, not giving it up, but going beyond it, while you're still doing it, and you're using discursive thought to remind yourself to go beyond, or to look beyond, but not stop, not give it up.

[77:56]

Believing and believing my conceiving, believing my fantasies, that's going on too. I'm still totally hooked here. But I'm also simultaneously meditating on what's beyond being hooked. And though it's beyond, it's beyond, but it's also the basis of what we're hooked on. No, not quite. Concept is like words and concepts, words and symbols. Like blue, just the concept blue, or pain, the concept pain, or good, the concept good, which are also words. What I'm talking about is that you fantasize that these things apply to something.

[79:12]

And they do. But the fantasy doesn't. There's nothing in the thing. Yet often I'm gonna have this, I have this, not this concept. Those we don't have to worry about.

[80:42]

Those we don't have to care about. Those don't cause suffering. But again, the Chinese transcribers' reputation is questionable. It's irresistible. Yeah? Sort of back to what Grace brought in, if I'm sitting in a bathroom and my attention goes Now, are you recommending that I just stay with that thought, or I could go... Stay with what thought? This is beyond what I think about it. Stay with that thought? How will you stay with it? Just be mindful of it. Huh? Mindful of that teaching. Okay.

[81:45]

What comes to mind is, that's a thought which is a phenomenon, and so I could think this thought, So what you would.

[83:53]

projections itself. Can I say that again? Can I say that again? It sounds like what you call unutterable darkness is kind of like projections of self are light and groovy. A source of suffering, but they're familiar and cozy. What is in the basis of those projections doesn't have any of those nice lights on it. But we don't have to worry about that because we're seeing these nice self-projections because it doesn't have the nice light of self-projection.

[85:39]

So that's good. You're not really stuck. Pardon? Which is a nice bright thing, rather than what you really are, which is an unutterable darkness, relative to this nice comment that you have on yourself. So what you really are, is beyond your common intubator cell. It's not exactly darkness, it's only darkness vis-a-vis the most bright world of self-projections. So like, can you like, just simply open up to this area that's sort of like dark vis-a-vis the brightness, in other words, like close your I think extensions of the self which make possible all kinds of wonderful things like conversations.

[87:11]

So your feeling stuck is based on the way you are, but the way you are is free of being stuck. I'm sure there's many more wonderful questions right now, but it is getting to the witching hour and some people are like giving me a signal like they want to take a little nap. So if it's okay, perhaps we could take a little break now and reconvene at 10. May our intention equally benefit every being and place. With the true merit of Buddha's way, beings are numberless.

[88:20]

I vow to save them. Devotions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. The Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So next week and so on, I'll continue to try to work with you on how to meditate on a mystery, how to meditate on what is inconceivable,

[89:05]

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