I've been proposing to you for some time that the meditation on the other-dependent character of phenomena, which is also meditation on the lack of own being in terms of self-production of phenomena, which you have now heard about through your chanting. The meditation on this other-powered nature of phenomena is the meditation which in the non-thinking. Our ancestors say that non-thinking is the essential art of Zazen, the essential art

[01:10]

of the sitting meditation of the Buddha. And bringing this sutra into the Zen world, I now say to you that meditation on the other-dependent character of phenomena, meditation on the dependent co-arising of phenomena, is also the essential art of sitting meditation of the Buddhas. It's not the whole, it's more the essential, or the initiation into the Buddha meditation. It's the fundamental, ongoing meditation. The world of dependent co-arising is not really a world yet.

[02:11]

The world of dependently co-arising events is beyond thinking, so meditation on dependent co-arising is a meditation in a realm beyond thinking. And this realm beyond thinking is the basis of our thinking. Our thinking arises and overlays the constant dependent co-arising. Our ancestor Dogen says that in this realm of dependent co-arising, beyond thinking,

[03:16]

there is someone. In this realm of dependent co-arising, beyond thinking, there is someone and there is something. And this someone sustains us. We're beyond thinking and yet there is someone there who sustains us. I remember one time Suzuki Roshi talked about, he kind of used this technique of, which some

[04:21]

of you probably will like because you'll think you'll be able to grasp this, of following your breath and then at the end of your exhale, just keep going beyond the end of the exhale. And he said it's like white paper. Just go into that light at the end of the exhale, beyond the thinking, beyond the thinking exhale. Reach the end of the thinking exhale and then jump beyond that into the white paper. And then he said, don't be afraid, Buddha will take care of you. Somebody will take care of you out there beyond the end of the breath, before the next inhale, before you even think, or after you give up thinking, that you're beyond the exhale.

[05:25]

Yeah, I thought some of you would like that. Now, in that realm beyond thinking, in the midst of the unspeakably dynamic dependent co-arising land, events have not yet, are not, and never will fall into the categories of existing really or not existing really. Things are happening, but it's too dynamic for them to fall into existence and non-existence. They're happening in a middle way. They happen, but in dependence. They don't exist really, they don't not exist really, they exist dependently.

[06:36]

Things are happening in that realm beyond thinking. They have not yet been categorized. They have not yet been conceptualized. They have not yet been designated. And therefore, they do not fall into the category of existing. And yet, there's someone there sustaining us, and this someone can talk. Although this someone doesn't fall into the category of existing, and I won't say she doesn't exist, this dependently existing someone can talk, and she says, I'm always clearly aware, and no verbal designations reach me.

[07:47]

You can't make me into non-existence, you can't make me into existence, because no words reach me. And yet, I'm clearly aware, and I'm acting, I'm practicing, meditating on the way things are happening beyond thinking. Although this meditation on the other-powered nature of phenomena, although this meditation on what's beyond thinking is enlightened activity, free of all obstructions to knowledge, it is a distinct act. There is acting there.

[08:51]

There is dependently co-arisen, inconceivable, ungraspable activity, and no obstructions to knowledge. But there's somebody there. Not the usual kind of somebody, not an identified somebody, but somebody. Buddha will take care of you. Buddha is there, and you don't know whether you're Buddha or not. And this somebody is there all the time, whether you're checking out the realm beyond thinking or not, this somebody is always with you. But when you go into the realm beyond thinking, you really need help, and it's there. When you're up in the usual world of thinking, you may not care whether anybody is there to sustain you, because your thinking is sustaining you.

[09:55]

Your thinking is creating things and destroying things. You're a busy boy, busy girl, so no problem. But when you're not even existing, you might like a partner. Actually, you have many partners. There's not just one Buddha there. Now again, in this meditation beyond thinking, this enlightened activity free of all obstructions to knowledge, means free of all those obstructions of knowledge, means free of the obstructions of knowledge by which you identify things and bring them into existence. So the obstructions of knowledge, which aren't there, are the very things which make things come into existence. So there's no conventional world in the world of dependent co-arising.

[10:55]

In order to have the conventional world, we have to invite the imputational into the realm of dependent co-arising, overlay it with a self, take a word, put it on it, and boom, something exists. And then also something else doesn't exist. And again, as I mentioned yesterday, to say that a thing, excuse me, to say that the identity of a thing is merely a verbal fact is to say that this thing is empty. To say that a thing, to say that the identity of a thing is merely a verbal fact

[12:06]

is what we mean by that thing being empty. What's the thing empty of? The thing is empty not of verbal fact. It's empty of an identity that's anything more than a verbal fact. We tend to think that things have identities that are something more than just a word. But a word is actually just a little thing you put over the big hole in the middle of the dependently co-arisen things that there are. And you can grab it. Again, what we mean by empty is not that the thing isn't there. When we say you're empty, or colors are empty, or feelings are empty, empty means that the thing is empty. It means that the identity of you, or the identity of the color, is nothing more than a verbal fact.

[13:12]

It doesn't mean the thing's not there. It just means that without the verbal fact the thing wouldn't have an identity. It would be there, but identity-less. You wouldn't be able to grasp it. However, you could dance with it in a kind of non-grasping way. You could live with it, be friends with it, and actually that's how we are living with things, beyond thinking. I just thought, I think, I don't know, that famous expression, at least the English translation of it, I think, therefore I am. Does anybody know what it is in French? What is it in Latin? Cogito ergo sum?

[14:14]

Cogito ergo sum? Yeah. Cogito ergo sum? Nice. I think, therefore I am. That's what this sutra's saying. Before you think, it's not that you're not there, it's not that I am not. You have to think also to be I am not, or you have to think in order to you are not. You have to think before not. But before you think, you're beyond thinking, of course. Before you think, you're the radiance of the Buddhas. You're the sparkle in Buddha's eye,

[15:17]

waiting to be born. How do you get born? I think, and boom, I am. However, although Buddha still loves you, you have just exiled yourself from the splendor of the sunflower. Because you gobbled up the unknown, you exiled yourself from the realm beyond thinking, where the practice of the Buddha is founded. So, Ken, we have to be very nice to ourselves, and I want to be very nice to you, very kind to you, so you will be up for

[16:19]

entering the realm of practice beyond your thinking. So you get to use your thinking to get to your meditation cushion, and once you get there, then go beyond your thinking. So, you get to study your conceptual grasping. How do you, do you remember how you know the conceptual grasping? Do you know how you know the character of conceptual grasping? How do you know that? What? What? Words connected with signs. That's how you know the imputational character, right? The conception. What? It's like a mark to tell you where to put the word. A little characteristic. So you can watch how you use the imputational character to get to your seat

[17:21]

and to get your body positioned, and then study that imputational character. Watch how you get to, you know, live with that, and watch how that makes you, like, I am a meditator, or I am sitting here, and study that, and this conception, studying this conceptual grasping, see how this conceptual grasping makes the other dependent things, makes the things beyond thinking come to be identified. So you know, you've heard that your body has an other dependent character. Notice how your mind makes the other dependent character be identified, known, and exist. Check it out. When you're ready. When will you be ready?

[18:22]

You'll be ready when you can sit beyond thinking about your sitting. When you can take care of your body well enough so that your body will let you take care of it beyond your thinking about taking care of it. Then, based on that meditation, you can then look to see how you can make something exist. Studying that is part of setting up the possibility of letting go of how you make things exist, or how your mind identifies and brings things into existence. Satsang with Mooji

[19:43]

Someone told me a story about this retreat, about how the first four days or so were... had lots of difficulties and feelings of being overwhelmed and harassed and afflicted by events. And then there was a letting go. And then he asked, any suggestions about how to proceed from here? And I said, well, I would suggest that you notice the the known or identified quality of the feeling overwhelmed and the known or identified quality of the letting go.

[20:52]

That letting go, the overwhelm seemed to exist and letting go seemed to exist. In both cases there was kind of like this verbal designation was possible because these things were identified. And they were identified because of this conceptual grasping. So check out the known, the identified feeling overwhelmed, feeling released. Check out the known and identified and existent body sitting. But then also hear the teaching of non-thinking and bring that to bear on

[21:54]

the identified and the known. Or take care of it in parallel. So you have your known body, your known release, your known difficulty, your identified and existent difficulties and releases. Parallel to that you have unknown, ungraspable, unidentified, beyond thinking, overwhelm and release. There really is a release that's the basis of the dream of release. It's just that you don't know that one. That one exists in an inconceivable realm of dependently co-arising release. So remember that one parallel to the one you can see and grasp.

[22:57]

In this text, in this teaching by Dogen about non-thinking, he brings up this thing about a carved dragon and a real dragon. And this image is from a story which many of you have heard before. It's a Chinese story about a Chinese gentleman who liked, who loved the image, the image, the concept of a dragon. His house was full of images of dragons. He had paintings of dragons. He had jade dragons. He had wood dragons. He had lapis lazuli dragons. He had coral dragons.

[24:05]

He loved the image of the dragon. One day, a dragon was flying over his house and saw all the images of dragons down there. And the dragon thought, he probably would like to meet a real dragon. So, he swooped down to visit. And when the man saw him, the man fainted. Fainted in fear and fright of the real dragon, the dragon beyond the image of dragon. We have this in case you haven't noticed, we have this very lovely image of Zen practice here. We have this beautiful image of

[25:06]

a seated Buddha. And you get to be ritually enacting this seated Buddha. Simultaneously with this image of the seated Buddha, which you can like ritually embody and think about and touch and see other examples of, walking around and sitting and on the altars. In addition to this, we also have a real sitting Buddha. The real sitting Buddha is beyond our image of it. And it's watching you and may come to visit. So be ready. Dogen says something like, in English translation, Don't

[26:09]

despise the carved dragon. Now some of you like the carved dragon, but now that you've heard it's a carved dragon, you might say, Oh, it's just a carved dragon. I don't like it. Don't despise the image of the dragon. Don't despise the dragon which has been brought into the realm of existence of the conventional world. Don't despise it. Don't despise the dragon that's based on conceptual grasping. Don't despise the dragon which is hiding the real dragon. Don't despise the dragon that you believe exists. Don't despise the dragon that you think is something more. Don't despise the dragon that you think has an identity which is something

[27:12]

more than the word dragon. Don't despise that dragon, just because that's what you think and makes that dragon that way. Don't despise it. Don't despise it. He says don't despise it. Get the picture? Don't despise it. He also says, don't esteem it. Don't value it. Don't do either. In other words, take care of it without despising it or esteeming it. Take care of this carved dragon, the one you can see. And he says, learn to love, learn to love the real dragon. Learn to love the dragon beyond your thinking. Learn to love, learn to love the sitting meditation beyond your thinking. Learn to love the other dependent sitting meditation which can't be grasped, but is the basis, the sponsor of the

[28:15]

carved sitting meditation. Don't despise your practice which is beyond your thinking, which is the basis of the practice which lives in the realm of your thinking. Don't despise it. Love the real dragon, and actually he doesn't say it, but learn, he says, learn to love the real dragon, and really he's also wanting you to learn to love the carved dragon. And learning to love the carved dragon means what? How do you learn to love the carved dragon? What? That would be good, but what's another way to learn to love the carved dragon? Study it. And how do you study it? Don't esteem it. Don't esteem it or despise it. The way to love the carved dragon is don't esteem it or despise it. That's the way to love things. Don't value them, don't devalue them. You've got other things to do besides valuing things and devaluing them.

[29:16]

What do you have to do with them? Love them. Loving things isn't valuing and devaluing. Loving things isn't measuring. As a matter of fact, you can't actually measure anything. That's a kind of unkindness that we do. We go around measuring people and ourselves. So don't... learn to love the real dragon and learn to love the carved dragon. Learn to love... means don't esteem or despise the meditation practice that you can see and grasp and think about and that exists. And don't esteem or despise the real dragon either. Don't esteem or despise the carved dragon. Become familiar with it, he says. Don't esteem or despise the dragon beyond your thinking. Become familiar with it. So please, I think you're already somewhat familiar

[30:19]

with the carved dragon. Now become more familiar and you'll become more familiar by being with it without esteeming and despising. In the realm of where you can grasp esteeming and despising, give them up and become familiar with the conceptual version, the existent version of your practice. Become familiar with it. Love it. Care for it. Study it. Do the same with the one beyond your thinking. Get familiar with the meditation practice beyond your thinking. Get familiar with the meditation practice which is inconceivable, which is the basis, which you're told now by the sutra, is the basis of the meditation practice which exists because of conventional designation, which exists

[31:19]

because of the imputational character being superimposed on it. Working with these two dragons is dropping off body and mind. If you just go in the realm beyond thinking, that's not dropping off body and mind because you wouldn't be able to go in the realm beyond body and mind or beyond thinking if you didn't have the one that was in thinking. You work with both of these together in this gung-fu, this concerted effort of working with both the real and the carved, loving both of them, getting familiar with both of them is studying the sitting meditation. This is the dropping off body and mind. Like the common phrase is you got to have a self

[32:19]

to let go of it. You got to have a self to realize the teaching of no self. You got to have body and mind in order to realize dropping off body and mind. You got to have sitting meditation to realize dropping off sitting meditation. You have to have Buddha to realize going beyond Buddha. And in the article called Ocean Seal Samadhi by Dogen Zenji, he says in the Ocean Seal Samadhi you have to swim on the surface of the ocean and at the same time walk on the bottom of the deepest ocean. So we swim on the surface of our Samadhi. We swim on the surface of our practice. Our nice,

[33:21]

cute little practice or whatever you want to say about it. You're right there on the surface at the same time your feet are on the bottom, the inconceivable bottom of the ocean of the practice. Everybody's practice is also an ocean. You have to walk on the bottom, inconceivable, unknowable, beyond your thinking. Way, way, way, way below your thinking. Get down there under the water of the ocean and touch your feet to the bottom while you're also on the surface. Don't just go to the bottom. Be on the surface at the same time. Of course the surface is based on the bottom. Okay.

[34:26]

Let's see. Behind Fu is what we call Nancy. You now exist. Could you speak up? Right. Pardon? Okay. I was speaking about the one who sustains us in non-thinking. I'm talking about the presence, the pure presence that lives beyond our thinking, that's aware but no words reach her. Yes? Can I talk about

[35:43]

all words reaching her? Could you talk about all words reaching her? Is it the same? Well, sort of. I mean, in the sense that she depends on all words but no one word identifies her. In that sense no words reach her. Just like we were saying yesterday or whenever that if you grasp some image or some mark of sitting you don't reach its principle. So if you had grasped some word by which you could identify this presence beyond thinking that wouldn't reach the principle of this dynamic meditation. But if you want to say all words, fine. Nobody can grasp all words. That'll leave her inconceivable.

[36:46]

Dump all words on her and she's lost. She still would be beyond thinking. However, even though she's buried in all the words in the universe, she's still there saying, didn't get me. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, she can hear all the words of the world. She can hear all the cries of the world. It's just that she hears them beyond her thinking about them.

[37:48]

So she has not yet put the cries of the world into existence in that realm. However, she can talk and people can hear her and if they want to, they can convert her speech into some conventional designation and then her speech will exist for them. And she can do that too because she also is on the surface of the water. Okay? You done? Yes, Reverend Schrader? The relationship between the basis and the verbal designation

[39:16]

is convention. So if I call you a frog, nobody sees a frog over there because it's not conventional to call you a frog. So we've worked out how to make things exist by putting certain words on images to make them exist. You are the referent to the word Nancy. The word Nancy refers to you. But, of course, everybody knows that you're not the word Nancy and the word Nancy isn't you. So like I say, I go outside now and say Nancy, she doesn't appear. But what we do think is and this is, I feel, although you may not agree that you're pointing to this, that we do think

[40:17]

that there's something about you that makes us choose the word Nancy. But that's not so. But thinking that there's something about you all by yourself, that makes it possible for me then to put the word Nancy on you and then you seem to exist. But actually, at that time I think there's something more to your existence or more to your identity as Nancy than just the word Nancy. But you're actually empty of that something more. You're empty of actually you're not empty of being the referent of the word Nancy. You're empty of your identity being anything more than the word Nancy. Your identity is just the word Nancy.

[41:19]

And we think there's something more to it than that. The way the cat catches the mouse without names is that the various conditions arise and the cat catches the mouse without names. That happens. But the way you make that exist is by projecting onto the situation some kind of essence and then making a conventional designation by which you identify cat catching mouse. That's how it exists. But before you do that the cat is catching the mouse but that event doesn't fall into the category of existence. It doesn't really exist. It exists in this other dependent way. There is no actual inherently existing cat catching the mouse. There is a dependently existing

[42:27]

cat dependently catching a dependently existing mouse. And that is beyond your thinking. That doesn't fall into the category of existence or non-existence. That's the middle way that the cat catches the mouse which is very difficult to grasp but you can realize it and that's called happiness. And that's called enlightenment. And that is always going on. It's just that we resist it because we want we're so familiar with the carved dragon we should get more familiar with the carved dragon and then we would be able to enter the realm of the cat catching the mouse still the same cat catching the same mouse but beyond your thinking about it. And therefore you would be able

[43:27]

to look at the cat catching the mouse without your mind believing that this belonged to the category of it exists. The Buddha taught at the beginning of his teaching these two extremes things exist or they don't. Avoiding these I teach the middle way. The cat catching the mouse I don't grasp the extreme of it existing and I don't say it doesn't exist. I say it exists in this interdependent other dependent way in a middle way and that is beyond my thinking. My thinking does not get it. My thinking does get the existence of the cat catching the mouse or the non-existence of the cat catching the mouse. That's my thinking makes those things come into existence. So you've got to stay on the surface of cat catching the mouse and if you're on the surface and there it exists, you've got to realize okay, now right there

[44:28]

that existence depends on this verbal designation. Without the verbal designation there would not be an existent cat catching an existent mouse. However, there would be a cat catching a mouse just not an existent one catching an existent one. It would be a middle way one catching a middle way one. The cat and the mouse would be demonstrating the Dharma to you at that time. John? I say again they exist in two ways. They exist dependently, which is the way they truly exist and they exist conventionally.

[45:29]

Existing conventionally means independence on verbal designation. And then they fall into the category of existence which is not dependent existence but real existence. Is that kind of the feeling around... That's kind of the feeling of non-thinking. Yes. Do you function in this digital world in the realm of non-thinking? Always? Is it possible to There are certain phases of this meditation where you probably should not be driving a car. Because for a second there

[46:35]

you wouldn't be able to see existent things. So part of the meditation process should be done when you're like just sitting still. So the consequences of entering the realm beyond thinking wherein you don't see identified things anymore. You actually don't see identified things. All day long anyway you are seeing unidentified things. You're seeing things as they just come to you in their unidentified form. The only way we identify things is with concepts. But you're also experiencing things directly all day long but not identifying them. Blue impacts you. You know it. And if I say, if you're taught to press one button when it's blue and another button when it's red, you can press the blue button when the blue hits you. But when it first hits you, you don't identify it. Which also means you hardly know it.

[47:36]

You want to really know it, then you say it's blue. Then we know now we're downtown. Now this is like it's existed. Now the blue exists. Before that the blue was dependently co-arising. So you do have this experience. Just a second, I just want to finish and say that when you first open up to beyond thinking, when you first enter into the realm of non-thinking, you're a little bit unfamiliar with an unidentified experience. You are having experiences which you always were experiencing, but now you're like you're meeting them without your imputational character coping with them and making them exist for you. At that first beginning, when you don't see existing things, you might think, when you don't see an existing road or an identified road, you might think there's no road. So you shouldn't be driving at that time. But after a while you can drive and

[48:37]

remember and understand that there's no identified road. There's just an other dependent road and you can drive down the other dependent road. In other words, you can drive down the middle road. But, you know, usually you learn this in the sitting meditation because if you go into the middle road at first and you start to think that there's no road there at all, the worst thing that has happened probably is that you'll drool or wet your pants. But you won't fall through the floor or run over anybody because you're sitting still. That's one of the advantages of being still when you change worlds. But after a while you can the Buddha can walk around and help people and Buddha usually is chauffeured, however. And there's plenty of chauffeurs around, right?

[49:39]

And you can teach the chauffeurs up to a certain point before they have to pull over. I think you're getting the idea of the meditation, I'd like you to park for the next phase. So you can't always do certain kinds of things when you first start learning this meditation, but after you get better at it, you can do ordinary activities in the world. And this meditation actually works this meditation on the other dependent works more naturally with the daily life than Samatha practice does. When you're doing Samatha practice, when you're training yourself in Samatha, it's more difficult to drive then than it is to like keep in mind the beyond thinking aspect of the driving. So, yes, I believe you're making that question. You're becoming more more familiar with the carved dragon and more familiar with the life

[50:41]

and everything. Yes. So you want to work with both simultaneously. That's really Buddhahood. But at the beginning, not the beginning, but for a lot of the practice, you have to switch back and forth. So you take care of the carved dragon and then you go over and say, Okay, now what's the dragon beyond my thinking? What's the dragon beyond my conceiving? What's the dragon beyond existence and non-existence? What's the Zen meditation beyond existence and non-existence? Look at that. Well, you know. Well, it's not exactly the conventional gets more virtuous. That's a nice question. It's not that the conventional gets more virtuous. Your actual other-dependently existing behavior becomes more virtuous. And, of course, that translates into

[51:41]

what you conceive of it as. Also, you conceive of it as more virtuous too because it should correspond, and it does. It's not that the conception is wrong, that you think something that's virtuous is not virtuous. It's just that you think something virtuous is your idea, an image of its virtue, which it's not. It's not just that. Its imputational character is that, but it has this wonderful other-dependent character which is much grander and radiant and fundamental and enlightening than our version of it. And in that realm of other-dependent the afflictive emotions are arising there based on that view. But if you meditate on the other-dependent, it does start to transform your behavior, and your behavior that's becoming transformed has other-dependent character as an imputational character. It has a character that's beyond your thinking and it has a character within your thinking.

[52:43]

So there's a real dragon version of your evolving virtue and there's a carved dragon version of your evolving virtue. So both develop. And if they don't, both develop, if only the other-dependent develops, then the type of conception you have is incorrect. You're off. You're wrong. Conception is always basically off because it kind of thinks that what's happening is what it thinks. But that's the way it's always off. Most of the time, actually, for an adult, it's on in terms of, you know, there is some correspondence. But sometimes there's no correspondence. I think you're next. I was wondering about the relationship of the dependent co-arising world and non-difference, or if there's some relationship there. Something you said earlier made me think that there's some kind of relationship between unity in that world and the difference we create when we

[53:45]

impute meanings and overlay that world with our thinking. Is that true? I don't quite understand your question yet. Whether the dependent co-arising world is about non-difference or unity. And we lose that as we impute difference and identity. It's not really about non-difference. Non-difference is more like a conceptual thing. There's no, like, non-difference out in there, in the interdependent. In a non-conceptual world, there isn't non-difference, but also there isn't difference. Thank you. I think he was referring to non-measuring

[54:48]

that you were talking about. Measuring or non-measuring? In the realm beyond thinking, you could say that there wouldn't be any measuring, but would you mean that measuring didn't exist there? If you did, that wouldn't be appropriate because existence and non-existence don't apply there. So there could be measuring. You could be measuring and there could be an inconceivable version of your measuring, which is that your measuring is other dependent phenomena. And you could be thinking there's a difference. That's a phenomena. And there's other dependent character of thinking that there's a difference. But the main thing that's happening there is that things are happening together with everything else only due to the power of or under the power of other things. That's what it's like there. So there could be measuring.

[55:50]

There could be anything. But it wouldn't be existing or not existing. Kind of a hard to grasp, huh? Yes? It's the first step. Yes?

[56:55]

Can you hear what he said? Did you hear what he said? I can't hear if you heard what he said. Who didn't? Over there. Okay, so he said, whatever is the object of purification of phenomena, that is the ultimate. Did you hear that? Whatever whatever is the object of observation whatever is the object of observation for purification of phenomena is the ultimate. Or the ultimate is the object of purification of phenomena. Okay? He's quoting that. Yes? There's no ultimate realm. There's no ultimate realm. Okay, so forget that part. Go on. The other dependent character is not

[58:07]

the or an object for purification of phenomena. It's not. That's right. Go on. Comma, it's an ultimate lack of own being. Yeah, so that's one of the more difficult parts of the Sutra. My experience is this is like the hardest thing so far in Chapter 7. So, the other dependent character is, has two kinds of lack of own being. The imputational character is or has one kind of lack of own being. And the ultimate or the thoroughly established character has one type of lack of own being. The other dependent character lacks own being in terms of production. It doesn't produce itself. It doesn't have the nature of producing itself, which you already understand that, right? It's produced by things other than itself.

[59:09]

So it does not have the nature of producing itself. That's its first kind of lack of own being. But it has a second kind which is called, quotes, an ultimate lack of own being. But what it means is it's an ultimate lack of own being in the sense that it lacks being the ultimate. It's not the ultimate. Right? Because it's not an object of purification. And that's what I was saying before is that Libby without a hat or Libby without a self or Libby without the imputational covering on her is like an other dependent phenomena seen without overlay of the imputational. But just seeing her without the imputational does not purify my mind of the misconception of self. What purifies it is to see the absence of the overlay. Not just to see her without the overlay

[60:11]

but to see the absence of the overlay. That's the object of purification. And that's one of the great things which, if you want to, we have a whole lecture on this point is that looking at the other dependent purified of this superimposition is not the object of purification. Pardon? Two reasons. One is that it starts to revolutionize your conduct. It starts the process of purifying your behavior and increasing your faith in the teaching and all that stuff. Removing obstructions. Make tremendous ethical progress by this meditation. The other reason is that this meditation is the basis to the other two meditations. You have to be grounded in the meditation

[61:12]

on the other dependent character which means you have to be meditating on the lack of own being in terms of production in order to do the meditation on the ultimate lack of own being. But not only that, but you need the additional information that not only are you meditating on the other dependent character which is beyond thinking, not only are you meditating on the way this thing lacks a nature of producing itself, but you also remember the teaching that this also lacks the ultimate. So you don't expect this to be the ultimate because you're told it isn't the ultimate, it's not the object. So because of that teaching you won't look to the other dependent as the conclusion of the Buddhist meditation course. You understand that you have to go further to see the absence of the imputation which makes possible a conventional world.

[62:12]

But also in order to do that you have to study the imputational because you have to know what it is that there ain't none of in it. So the other two meditations are based on this. This is the fundamental meditation. It's like, I don't know what, it's like, this is the body of the bull, you know, the meditation of the other dependent. And one horn is the imputational and the other horn is the ultimate. And the ultimate is when you look and you don't see the imputational. But you have to know what the imputational looks like. Maybe it's like a bull with one horn. First you find the bull and you ride the bull. Then you look around and say, hey, this bull's got a horn. Look at that horn sticking out there. Then you look over there and say, there ain't no horn over here. And then you stop believing in the first horn. Something like that.

[63:16]

But the object of meditation is like, hey, there's no horn here. And there really is no horn there. The body of the bull really isn't ever established as being our ideas of it by which we can make the bull exist and talk about it. But just looking at the bull without any imputation doesn't purify the mind. You have to say, okay, now I also know that I have a way or we have a way here to make this bull appear, to exist. And we know how to do that by imputing an essence to it, zapping a word onto it, and boom, we've got a world of a bull. I know how to do that. Now I'm going to look how I do that. I'm going to study how that happens. Okay, there it is. There's that old imputation. There's that conceptual grasping. It's a good friend. Here's the bull of my sitting. But that meditation works best

[64:19]

when you first of all initiate yourself into going beyond your thinking about this bull or beyond your thinking about this sitting or whatever the phenomenon is. That you get used to first of all juxtaposing the teaching with what you can see, with what you can think of, with what seems to exist. Bring the teaching of the way things really exist in this other dependent way to the way things appear to exist in this independent way. Then you're ready to study the dream of independence. As you get more familiar with that you're ready to now let go of it. And in the absence of strongly adhering to your ideas of things as what those things are, or how those things happen, really, you realize you know the thoroughly established, you realize the ultimate lack of own being, selflessness,

[65:19]

suchness. Okay? Does that make sense? Yeah, except it seems like one more thing that there ain't none of would be the object of observation. Well, let's see. It's not that there's no object of observation. Just like there's not that there's no other dependent phenomena. And it's also that there's not that there's no other imputational character. We don't say there's no imputational character. We don't say there's no other dependent character. And we don't say there ain't no ultimate character, or ultimate lack of own being, or thoroughly established character. We don't say there isn't. Okay? No, we don't really say there ain't. We just say that in the other dependent there's an absence of the imputational. It's only in the other dependent

[66:25]

that's not there. In other words, you are another dependent phenomena, and in you, there is nothing in you which my ideas of you correspond to. Although you do correspond to my ideas of you, there's nothing in you that corresponds to them, because you're just depending on everything other than my idea of you. You're empty means that your identity, which I can come up with, is nothing more than my word for you. That's the thing that there ain't none of. There ain't none of my idea of you in you. That's what you're empty of. You're empty of the imputational character. But it isn't that there's no imputational character. There is an imputational character. It dependently co-arises too. So the imputational character is a dependently co-arisen dream of something that doesn't dependently co-arise. Was that too fast? I can imagine. Did you have a question?

[67:28]

Still? Back to presence. Oh. Yes. She likes presence. Very nice. So, I mean, in terms of the line, I think it's what you said, that the meditation on not thinking could cease, and so when one meditates on not thinking and then can go on to thinking about not thinking, not wondering if the meditation on not thinking is the meditation to love and awareness of presence, that then supports the possibility of a Ganga. Is that the Ganga? Part of the Ganga

[68:30]

is developing, is entering into non-thinking. That's part of the Ganga. That's the foundation of the Ganga. So I think in a sense, this is another version. I said there was two reasons for why he teaches the meditation on other dependent first. One is that it's a basis for the other two meditations, and the other is that it develops virtue. But one of the virtues it develops is presence. The presence which will make possible the delicate work of studying the other two characters. If you try to study the other two characters without being grounded in meditation on other dependent, if you try to study thinking of not thinking, if you try to study thinking, and if you try to study thinking of not thinking, without being grounded in non-thinking, you probably won't have sufficient presence to pull it off. There won't be sufficient presence for it to be realized. And it's not just that you get that presence and then you stop meditating that way. You continue this meditation, which continues to be

[69:31]

the basis. So non-thinking is the basis for thinking, and non-thinking is the basis for thinking of not thinking. And meditation on the other dependent is the basis for meditation on the imputational and meditation on the ultimate. And presence is part of the virtue that develops when you bring this teaching of the other dependent nature of things to bear on things that seem to exist independently. So when you meet a person who seems to be out there on her own, or out there on his own, that's the way it appears to you, but you bring the teaching that this person also exists in a way that's beyond this version I have, and that develops your presence with the person. You're not so reactive then, in terms of the small scale version you have of them. Yes.

[70:33]

It's the basis of everything. Yeah, and the way to know is what? No, the way to know, no, presence? You don't get to know presence, sorry. You said there's some way to know, and the way to know is to put the imputational over it. That's how you know things. You don't get to know things, because in knowing, again, then the words start reaching it. If you want to know things, you've got to come out to the conventional world. There's a need to name. There's a need to name, right.

[71:36]

That's part of the gung fu. There's a need to name practice and sitting. We have to do that. We need the carved dragon. We should take care of the carved dragon. There's no meaning to the ultimate except the fact that it is the lack of the conventional in the other dependent, or it's a lack of the imputational in the other dependent. You know, they're all there working together. That's the gung fu. It isn't just that we just go out into the realm beyond non-thinking, that's it, where nothing's identified and we don't know identifiable things. It isn't just that. It's that we work with that in conjunction with where we do know things. So we have the carved dragon and the real dragon together. We have the conceptual version of our practice together with the non-conceptual version, and then working with these together we finally realize the way things are that purifies us of our misconceptions and then we're... the course has been completed.

[72:36]

There's lots of questions. Let's see. Libby and Sarah and Alindra and Yvonne and Joe. Is that it? Okay. Here we go. My question has to do with... Here we are in the world as a name. Yes. Here we are in the realm of identifiable things. Yeah. So... Where does the dream come from? That's what my question is like. An artist goes into a room and, you know, something comes up. From where does that come from? It comes from things other than itself. Do you want me to start listing things? The dreaming process is another other-dependent phenomena. There's more than one kind of dreams.

[73:42]

We're talking about, in this class, we're talking about a special dream. A special dream that makes possible things to appear to exist. It's a special dream. There's other kinds of dreams which don't serve that function. But this dream makes things identifiable. And that dream, that dreaming process, also is a dependent co-arising. It's a dependent co-arising of a dream that things don't exist interdependently. Where does that dream come from? Things other than itself. What are the things other than itself? In particular, the karmic history of the meditator. The fact that they've, you know, thought things before and acted upon them has led to now this other-dependent nature which is the basis of everything. And one of the things is the basis of. The other dependent is the basis also for the imputational. The imputational arises in dependence on

[74:44]

things other than itself. So there's various theories you can make about how humans have evolved such that they have language and have now have structures in their mind which are there before they even know words. And you can see, you know, you can see in children they have the language structure before they know the words. They're projecting onto things at a certain point. When they're first born it's kind of like things are a little blurry. But then you can see they start to isolate things in the field and then attribute some essence to it and then they can put the word mama on there. So this is, you know, a wonderful study for us to make a story of all the things that have come together to create this imputational function of our mind. But for short, we just remember it's another other-dependent phenomenon. If you want to understand it, if you do this meditation, you will someday see actually how the imputational came to arise.

[75:46]

And then you can tell the world what you see. Is that enough for that? Huh? Sarah? Yeah, thinking of not thinking is like thinking of the absence of thinking. It's like thinking of the absence of the imputational. In other words, actually seeing the absence of the imputational. Like in the realm of thinking to actually see there ain't no imputational here. That's meditation on the ultimate. At the beginning it's a conceptual process, right? The beginning of meditating on emptiness is conceptual, like I'm telling you. Here's a meditation on emptiness. What's the emptiness of Sarah? The emptiness of Sarah is that

[76:50]

Sarah's identity is nothing more than the word Sarah. That's what it means for Sarah to be empty. That's an instruction which you can meditate on conceptually. However, for that to really work, you need to be based in meditating on the non-thinking. You need to be like open to beyond thinking in order for that meditation to work. The foundation for the study of the ultimate is to be grounded in the conventional, and the conventional is grounded in the other dependent. So you need to do the other dependent meditation, then you move into the conventional, then you're ready for the ultimate. But thinking of not thinking is like meditation on emptiness, and thinking is like the imputational. So we study thinking of not thinking, which is studying meditation on emptiness, we study thinking, which is studying the imputational, and we study non-thinking, which is meditation on the other dependent. Those are three different meditations and they work together,

[77:51]

and the foundation of meditation is non-thinking. Is non-thinking the same as non-thinking? Yes. Yvonne? Pardon? No, anger can arise in the realm of non-thinking. No, things are arising and ceasing in the realm of non-thinking. It's just that they don't exist. Pardon? We didn't get there yet. We're still in the realm of non-thinking, okay? And we have a rising of anger. It has arisen. However, we have not identified it. It hasn't been identified. But it's coming up,

[78:55]

and here it is, and it's anger! But it's the anger that's beyond the thinking anger by which you can identify anger as anger. So it doesn't exist yet. You have the anger phenomena which is existing in a middle way. And you're meditating on... Yes? It wouldn't really what? It wouldn't hang out. Nothing's hanging out there. Things are just going... They kind of go... But actually, everything goes... This is what we call self-receiving and employing samadhi. Everything is received and then is given away. So anger comes and goes... Nobody can grasp it and nobody can identify it. No words reach this anger. This is in the realm of clearly aware, no words reach what's happening here. But anger can arise there and does arise there and ceases there.

[79:55]

Rises and ceases, rises and ceases, no hanging out. However, part of what you may be asking was if a person is doing this meditation, will anger arise in them? And yes, it could happen while you're doing this meditation. However, in this meditation you would not be able to identify the anger even though it's there. Somebody else who's not in the meditation may say, hey, you're angry. And when you're in this meditation, what would you say, Linnea? What would you say, Yvonne? When you're in this meditation and somebody says, Yvonne, you're angry, what would you say? What would you say, Yvonne? Well, you could say that, it's not real for me, that's not real for me. Or you also might say, could be,

[80:56]

who knows, something's coming, I don't know. In other words, when you're in this meditation, even if anger does arise in you, really, and Buddha could see it, and somebody else told you about it, you would respond to it virtuously. This accusation. Or you might go, I admit it, I'm angry. You're flexible, you're not like defensive in this meditation. Because you don't really like, you're not into like, things existing and non-existing. And middle way anger is not a problem. Alindra? Probably. But thinking, is there thinking going on in the other dependent state that rises and ceases, but that you don't grasp? Yes, thinking is arising in the realm of non-thinking.

[81:57]

As a matter of fact, all thinking does arise other-dependently. All thinking has other-dependent character. And you can meditate on the other-dependent character of thinking, it's just at that time you wouldn't be able to identify the thinking, but it would be the same thinking that later could be identified by the imputational. Everything is happening in the other-dependent realm. Nothing is excluded. The whole world is there, untouched. It's just that it's unidentified and not put into these extreme categories of existence. Things get put into extreme categories of existence when we project self on them. That's why the Buddha first taught these extremes as a way to get at no-self. Later he told, what I'm really trying to show you is the ultimate, the no-self. And giving you this training of staying away from the... if you can wean yourself of these extremes, you can start to move in on the ultimate purification, which is selflessness.

[82:58]

Is there... there's not a perception... No, this is the realm of perception. When you're meditating on the other-dependent, you're meditating in the realm of perception. When you see a color, basically that's a perception. Like I said, turn on a blue light, the person goes, they obviously saw the blue light. They had a perception of it. And if you say, what did you see? They might say, I don't know. How can you press that blue button then? Oh, I did? Wow. So you can perceive things, and you... before you conceive of things, you perceive them. And you can perceive... the other-dependent character of things is what we are perceiving. All day long we're perceiving the other-dependent character. But then we... we don't know about it because we overlay it so quickly, usually, but not always, with the conceptual. And that's what we are basically knowing. But there's other things we're experiencing

[84:04]

in a direct perception way, which we never know about, because they never get converted into our easily... you know... the things we're really taken by are these very bright, clear images that are conceptual consciousness. Conceptual consciousness doesn't directly know the other-dependent. But perceptual consciousness does. But that... in that realm of perception, you don't have things existing or identifiable. They get identified when you say it's blue, which is the most popular Buddhist color. Joe? I'm wondering about a method for... is a method for meditating on things other than to inquire into the nature of an object. Because, say, I pursue a tree...

[85:04]

Yes? And then I go closer to the tree and it looks different than I thought it did from afar. Does that help me to... That's more... that meditation is part of what we're doing, but that's more meditation on the surface, on the carved version of the tree. The other-dependent meditation is to... when you see the tree, before you move closer to it, you remember that this tree has a character which is beyond the way it appears to me now. And you can move closer now, and now it still has this character which is beyond. So you initiate yourself to wean yourself of just relating to things in terms of your thinking, which is training in non-thinking. That's the basic meditation. But later you can do these other kinds of... When it comes to meditating on the imputational, you can do all kinds of mind games with your thinking, moving closer and farther from objects and stuff. That is part of the... That's more studying the imputational,

[86:05]

which we have to do. We have to... It is easier, but it won't be successful unless it's based in this other meditation. So Buddha starts with the second one. He initially teaches his other dependent rather than... And look at Buddha's teaching. He taught the other dependent most of the way through his career, and very little did he teach people about how to meditate on actually linguistic imputation. It's much more sophisticated, even though it may seem easy to you. But to be successful at it, you need to be grounded in Buddha's teaching of dependent co-arising. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels in your thinking. You're not really understanding how your thinking works to create things to appear a certain way that they don't. Question from the audience

[87:20]

Well, not necessarily even to get beyond it, but maybe to accept that you can't get beyond it, but that there is something already about it that's beyond it, and that's this other character that you can't see. It has a mysterious aspect that is beyond your thinking. So don't try to get beyond your thinking, because then you'll get into a kind of thinking called beyond thinking. More like, just remember that already, while your thinking is going on, it has this other character. So I could say you have a mysterious or beyond thinking character, but if I think I got to that, then that's, again, that's sort of like gobbling up the unknown and exiling myself from it. So it's not like that. Give up that kind of activity in a certain way. Go to the bottom of it, that's beyond it, without tampering with the surface. Stay on the surface at the same time while you go beyond the surface, or go to the bottom. And when you do that, you'll feel different,

[88:25]

even though you weren't trying to make them feel different. You'll start to feel less ability to grasp because of this opening. It's getting kind of late, sir, so probably time to stop, don't you think? May our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of being left on Buddha's way. Beings are countless. I vow to save them. Delusions are impossible. I vow to end them. The dharma indicates our helpless.

[89:29]

I vow to end them. Buddha's ways are impossible. I vow to end them. I vow to end them.

[89:43]

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