Between, I think, Spirit Rock here, like this, or Vishpashna, is this the exact same Vishpashna that you talk about in this particular sutra? Yeah. I can't speak for Spirit Rock, but I think sometimes they would say, you know, it's a vipassana group. Is that fair to say it's a vipassana meditation center? And I don't know, however, how much emphasis they're putting on shamatha at Spirit Rock. But I think some... Some people who are teaching so-called Vipassana in the West from the Theravada tradition do not emphasize Samatha too much. And there is a kind of, what's the word, I don't know if I would go so far as to say controversy, but from a long time ago there's the

[01:12]

called the dry insight people and the wet insight people. And so the dry insight people are the people who say, you can go into insight practice without developing the concentration practices. And the wet insight people are the ones who say you have to do a lot of concentration work together to have insight. And so one of the main texts in the Theravada tradition, the most popular text, is called the Disuddhimagga. And it's laid out in three sections. The first section is on precepts or ethical discipline. The second section on samadhi and the jhanas, or jhanas. And the third section on pañña, wisdom. And some people say you can go from the first section on the precepts to the third section.

[02:17]

You don't have to get into the samadhi section. But other people would say you have to practice samadhi before developing insight. And that's the tranquility part. That's the tranquility part. You could go straight into Vispasana without tranquility? Well, you know, it's hard to say. It's hard to say that that ever happens, that someone has insight without shamatha. It's hard to evaluate. If you look at the story of the Buddha, when he met his first students, those five people, and he had face-to-face meeting with them, and he taught them dharma, he taught them insight work. He gave them wisdom teachings in the first scripture.

[03:18]

However, the people he was talking to were highly developed tranquility people. These were people who had concentration skills comparable to the Buddha. So he didn't have to teach them concentration practices. They already knew how to do them and they probably were in a state of concentration when he gave them the teachings. And then there's other cases too where Buddha actually, many cases where the Buddha met lay people who are not professional yogis maybe, but he saw them and he thought they were ready for the insight teaching. Now it doesn't say, there's some debate then about whether they were actually in the state of shamatha when he met them. And so the Sambhinirmocana Sutra is saying if you're doing insight meditation and you have not yet attained a state of samatha, it's not insight. It's an intensified effort concordant with insight.

[04:19]

It may be the same words of the instruction, but it's saying it won't be insight if you don't have tranquility. There's some difference of opinion here. And then there's many Zen stories where a monk is walking around, meets a Zen teacher. The Zen teacher has this meeting with him, this face-to-face meeting, and the Zen teacher gives him a teaching, and the person wakes up. But then people could say, well, the person was in a state of tranquility. They just didn't tell you that the person did his tranquility meditation, then he entered into tranquility, and then he went to see the Zen teacher. They just don't tell you that part. But in actual practice, you have many cases where people are studying Zen or some other form of the Buddha Dharma, but studying Zen in particular, they go see the teacher, the teacher says, go back and sit some more. They come see the teacher, the teacher says, go back and sit some more. And then finally they get concentrated enough so the teacher gives them a teaching and it sinks in.

[05:22]

It precipitates insight. Some people are maybe concentrated, are in a state of tranquility, even though they didn't consciously, explicitly do any kind of shamatha practice where they gave up discursive thought. But people sometimes do give up discursive thought kind of naturally or effortlessly. Like I say, if you're tightrope walking, especially if you're not very good at tightrope walking, if you're up on the rope, you're not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. And if you're not very good at tightrope walking, you cannot afford to think of anything other than balancing. But you're not necessarily trying to give up discursive thought. explicitly, but in fact you are trying to give up discursive thoughts so you can concentrate on balance. And you may notice that if you do think about anything, like is anybody looking, you lose your balance.

[06:28]

Does that make sense? So I kind of feel that in some ways it doesn't make any sense, that to me, I shouldn't say it doesn't make any sense, but to me it doesn't really make much sense that you could have insight if you haven't realized a stable mind. Because, you know, you're just too stiff and stable and flexible. It's hard to let the mind take in this teaching which is going to transform your whole perspective if you're not relaxed and calm. But some people are relaxed and calm, but they don't really know about anything, some technical shamatha practice. But somehow being a carpenter or being an acrobat or being, and Buddha uses examples, carpenters, acrobats, potters, butchers, people who are doing concentrated work, especially physical work, are often people who are, when they get into it, they're not actually in discursive thought.

[07:32]

and they're in a state of ease and flexibility with their job, and they're enjoying their job, and they're actually in a joyful samadhi of work. And then Buddha gives examples of what these people do. So, but again, I don't know exactly how they teach at Spirit Rock, so some of you maybe know whether they give Chamatha instructions there or not. Anybody know? Yes? They don't call it shamatha, but they have, in the past few years, given more instruction and concentration in samadhi. Uh-huh. And you studied with Ayakima for a while, right? And she put a lot of emphasis on shamatha and dhyanas. And she was from the Theravada tradition. So I think, actually, if I'm not... I think I've heard that in Burma they put more emphasis on tranquility meditation in the Vipassana tradition in Burma, and that in Thailand maybe less.

[08:39]

And what's his name? Goenka seems to put a lot of emphasis on concentration. So there's variation, you know, among the traditions. Okay, is that enough on that? Yes? Can you relate what you're saying to a story you've told in the past about a Tibetan master coming here and asking you what you teach, and you said, we teach Samadhi. And he said, oh my goodness, we don't teach that until quite late. I think it appears in your book, too. It's a little bit different. It's a little bit different. I think he said something like, what is the object in your meditation? And I said, we practice objectless meditation. And he said, oh, in our tradition, that's done quite late, after lots of preparation. So in some sense we start out with objectless meditation in a sense right away in Soto Zen.

[09:48]

Talking about it anyway. But how many people are actually able to do it, that's another matter. Because I think what it says in the sutra we're reading is that you know, tells you how to practice shamatha, tells you how to practice vipassana, and then it tells you that when they're joined, that then you enter into one-pointedness of mind, and when you enter into one-pointedness of mind, you realize the teaching of cognition only. You realize that the object of meditation is cognition only. But this isn't a state of samadhi. And realizing that the object is cognition only is realizing that it's not an object. That objectless meditation is when you realize that the object is not separate from the subject. So in that time, in some sense, there's just an object, but there's no subject looking at it, so there's no object.

[10:52]

But that's rather advanced, that realization, but it's only, you know, but it's right at the beginning of Chapter 8. After only a page or two, you're getting exposed to this teaching. However, somehow you had to have teachings about how to get yourself into not only tranquility, but how to join the tranquility with insight. So you'd have to have insight instruction too, and then how do you do your insight and tranquility simultaneously so that they're actually compatible? And that's actually, not too many Zen students are actually able to do objectless meditation or actually able to realize objectless meditation. And also, I think in Tibetan tradition, there's lots of other preliminary meditations on compassion and so on that are done, I think, in a more explicit way you can go to a Zen center and you do all these things that they would do in the Vajrayana tradition, but you might not even notice that you're doing them.

[12:02]

Partly because a lot of them you do just before you eat. And who cares what you're saying as you're waiting for the food, right? But like we now, we practice confession, we take refuge, and things like that, we pay homages to the Buddhas, and we say the names of Buddhas, and we do all those things, which are practices, if you look at the tradition from the Avatamsaka Sutra and also in Tibetan Buddhism, there's practices of purification, practices of worship, things like that, that you do to warm up to practicing concentration. And people say, why don't we do those practices? Well, we do, but... A lot of Zen students don't even notice that we're practicing worship by saying homage to the such and such. When you say the name of the Buddha, it's a worship practice and it's a purification practice. But we don't say worship and purification so much.

[13:04]

But the same practice in another tradition is listed under the purification and the worship and taking refuge and stuff like that. A lot of the practices which are in lots of texts, which meditators would read and then they would do all these preparations themselves, a lot of those preparations in Zen are done by the doshi. So you all go sit and the doshi goes around and offers incense all over the temple. But in the textbooks on meditation sometimes part of the meditation practice is that the yogi goes around and offers incense at various altars in a mandala as a preparation for the meditation. Whereas in this tradition, And also in Tentai, I noticed, the doshi does that for the sangha. So the whole sangha goes and sits while the doshi is walking around in the mandala of the temple offering incense and doing mantras and stuff and making bows and stuff like that on behalf of the whole sangha.

[14:13]

So the sangha doesn't even realize it. Most of the sangha doesn't know what altruistic person is going to and doesn't know the chant and they aren't doing the bowing and stuff like that. But, you know, from the point of view of objectless meditation, it's okay if only one person does it on behalf of the whole group because there's no separation. But if you read those texts, you think, geez, that's a lot of work or whatever, you know. We don't do that, but we do. You know? But we do it the strange way of having one person and the attendant do it on behalf of everybody. Yes. I have two questions that might be related, but I'm not sure. One is, I was meditating and everything turned black.

[15:18]

If you can... And then I started squinting in order to see, to get my vision back. Yes. And I was wondering if you can talk about it, in order to... Something to explain the phenomena, or... Is that expected? There is nothing there. I mean, it was less than a few seconds. If you can talk about it. And the other question is... I mean, I took what you proposed in the class and tried to look who is this watcher. I mean, and I don't know if it was the right time or whatever, if I had enough concentration, but I couldn't find anything. So I assume that I'm not supposed to find anything, or I'm not looking good enough, well enough.

[16:25]

So if you can... Those are two separate topics, Maggie. You were looking for something and you were not able to... Not something, I was trying to look backwards. Yes. To see who is this that is observing. And in a way, if I have cognition, understanding of the topic... it was cognition trying to look for what is watching or who is watching and not find any object that cognition can grasp. Yes. Yeah, they're somewhat different. In one case, it seems like you're talking about that you are experiencing something unusual. For me? Yeah, for you, right. So usually you can see some light or some colors, right, when you look. I did not see colors. I mean... Usually you can see some colors. Normally, yes. Yeah. So not to be able to see any colors except black is kind of unusual for you, right?

[17:31]

Unless... When the eyes are open, yes. Yeah. So... So that's... This is kind of... You're talking about this is a very unusual experience for you and for probably most people here. They don't often have that experience. So it's an unusual experience. Yes. And... But people sometimes, other people who are meditating, have unusual experiences like this. So then the question is, what do we do with an unusual experience? And, well, if we're practicing tranquility, we do pretty much the same thing with an unusual experience as we do with the usual experience, which is... Well, not just stay with what is, but, well, you sort of just stay with what is, but also don't talk about what, don't have a conversation with yourself about what to do about what is. That would be what you would do if you were doing tranquility training. If you're already tranquil, okay, and then something unusual happens, then you might say, like,

[18:38]

Is there some sense that this darkness is separate from the awareness of the darkness? I've heard a teaching that this darkness is the mind appearing as darkness. The teaching is that the object is the mind appearing to itself as an object. The mind is generated in such a way that the things it knows seem to be separate from itself. That's the way the mind is. So you could apply that teaching to that if you wanted to. Or even before applying that teaching, you could say, is there a sense here that this darkness is separate from the awareness of the darkness? And it's kind of interesting, and that relates to your other question, is that if you turn the light around, now we're talking about light, if you turn the light around and look back and you don't find anything, that's kind of like darkness too.

[19:53]

Except you don't see darkness, you just can't find anything. However, When you initially do that, it's not really the same as insight, because although you don't find anything, you still might not be convinced that you'll never be able to find anything. I have an intellectual understanding of it, but my mind, or the mind, is still trying to look for and find something. Right, so if the mind is still trying to look for... There's sometimes when you look for something and you don't find it and you stop looking because you know that if you can't find it here, it won't be anywhere. I often use the example of mathematics. If you prove something for one example, it doesn't mean that another example won't work. You have to do some kind of reasoning to convince yourself that other examples besides the ones you're testing out won't work.

[20:58]

So if you look for something that may not be sufficient to convince yourself you can't find it. But in this case the initial instruction was not so much an insight instruction but another version of shamatha. Which is one way of talking about shamatha is you look at things and then you give up thinking about them. Another way is that you look at the mind, which is always there whenever you know anything, not the mind that's thinking something. And that goes with the instruction of turning the light around, which is a little trickier in a way, but quite immediate. Because if you're looking for the mind that's thinking, if you're looking for the thinking mind, looking back at the mind that thinks rather than looking at what the mind's thinking about? Usually we're looking at what the mind thinks about, like you think about black or something.

[22:03]

Yeah, I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I was just... Well, I know you weren't. Well, you sort of were, you were looking for the awareness, weren't you? I thought you turned the light around to look at the awareness. I thought that's what you said. I don't know exactly what I was looking for. I was just looking to see... Well, again, if you're not sure what you're looking for, then it's very easy not to find it. And even if you're not sure what you're looking for and you do find something, you don't know if that's what you're looking for because you never were that clear. But if you're looking for the thinking mind, you won't be able to find that. And there's a way, and you can prove that to yourself that you won't be able to find it. But in the process of not finding it, if you're really just looking for it, before you say whether you find it or not, that actually is very similar to giving up discursive thought. And that gives you a feeling for how difficult it is to give up discursive thought because people have a hard time looking at the mind that thinks because they can't find it and they're not used to not finding something and not used to

[23:14]

And not finding something when you're not used to not finding something is very similar to giving up discursive thought. In other words, you're not used to really giving up discursive thought. To actually not be able to get hold of any discourse is a rather unusual experience. And if you turn the light around, there's kind of an abrupt dropping off. of finding your discursive mind. And that's kind of hard for people, I find. They get kind of a burning sensation in some place in their mind or get kind of sick. because it's actually a sudden taste of giving up discursive thought. And it may be easier to do it gradually. Gradually means I'm trying to give up discursive thought, but as you see right now, I'm not giving it up because I'm talking about how hard it is. But I like the idea of it, but actually I don't have to really... I haven't even got into it yet, and this is quite comfortable. But imagine what it would be like if I stopped this completely and just...

[24:17]

I mean real silence. That would really be something. I can imagine that would be a big shock if I actually shut up for a little while. I mean totally went quiet. But I don't have that problem. Whereas without trying to shut up, if you just turn around and look at them, try to find your thinking mind, there won't be any talking in that except, where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Okay, stop saying that and now look. There's no talk in there when you look that way. And it's kind of a shock. But if you can actually keep looking that way, your mind will be transformed. Not just turned around, but transformed. And then when it's transformed, then you can transform it again and again through further meditations. Yes? Yes. I have the experience that when I try to practice that there is often a moment where there's always this background noise in my head, of course not the noise, but I see this really quick, rapid, enormous amount of thoughts just going by like this.

[25:42]

And so there is something that's observing that. Something is observing that, yeah? But to me, that quivering you were doing with your hand, that reminds me, what do you think that reminds me of? Huh? Exactly. Flaming chickens. Flaming chickens. It's a secret. The Flaming Chickens is a secret. But it's okay. The buzz is okay. Discursive thought. That buzzing is discursive thought. That discursive thought. That disturbance that's always around the neighborhood. Not always, but that disturbance there is a discursive thought. That tension in the system.

[26:44]

And if you give it up, this whole situation starts calming down without trying to push it away. And when you start calming down, maybe you feel more clearly the irritating, disturbing quality of discursive thought in its very subtle version rather than big chunky words and sentences and stuff. But just the mind sort of watching this buzzing is enough, enough to still sense it. So maybe that's pretty close to, and maybe that buzzing won't be so difficult to give up as some kind of like interesting dialogue or conversation. So maybe you actually got close to giving up discursive thought because the big chunky stuff isn't there and you're just down to the buzzing. And then if you can just relax with the buzzing, you're getting really quiet. Again, as you get quieter, then you notice more subtle buzzings. And then you let go of those, you get quieter, and then even a more subtle buzzing.

[27:51]

But you can get quite concentrated without the buzzing being completely silenced. And being fairly quiet is often sufficient just to enter into this tranquility, which becomes quite serviceable before there's no buzzing whatsoever. Yes and yes and yes. Speaking of buzzing, occasionally I have ringing in the ears. That's thirty years of being around heavy equipment. Is that discursive thought? Even though it's not voice, but it's sound. You know, it's there in the mind. I kind of feel like it's not discursive thought. I think it's more like, it's sometimes, it's not so much the background noise of your mind, I think, but more the background noise of your, you know, your blood in your ear. Right? I think so. I don't think it's discursive thought.

[28:56]

Yes? May I ask two questions? Two? There's one. There's one. You get one more. Would you speak about applied thoughts and sustained thoughts? Applied and sustained? Yeah. That sort of was two also. So applied, the Sanskrit for this is vittarka. and sustained is vichara. And vichara actually is also sometimes translated as discursive. And these two are very important in developing concentration.

[30:03]

So actually vitarka means like to apply the mind to to the breath, or apply the mind to the instruction of giving up discursive thought. Apply the mind to various concentration instructions or images. You can apply the mind to the image of a Buddha. You can look at a statue of a Buddha or a painting of a Buddha or Bodhisattvas and apply your mind to that shape. and you use it to actually clearly put your mind on the shape or a circle, that's vittarka, application of mind. And then the vichara is actually a little discursive where you actually vibrate a little bit, like this buzzing, you vibrate a little bit with the object of meditation.

[31:11]

And you use those actually, you use those two aspects of mind to, well actually they're being used in applying themselves. You apply yourself to the instruction to apply the mind and you vibrate a little bit or a little discursive to make the instruction into a coherent sentence, for example. So at the beginning of meditation you're still using these two types of thought to concentrate. and then you use them as fully as you can on the meditation. So you actually use discursive thought, you completely use up discursive thought on giving up discursive thought. So you apply your mind to the instruction, giving up discursive thought, or you apply your mind to the image of the breath, or the image of the posture, or the image of a Buddha, Or you apply your mind, you can also apply your mind to loving-kindness meditation.

[32:16]

But of course loving-kindness meditation being maybe sometimes several sentences, you apply your mind, you vittarka your mind to the sentence, may all beings be happy, for example, and live in peace. You apply yourself to that and then you use vichara to be able to say the sentence. But then you totally, you put all your vichara into the meditation. And all your vittarka into the meditation, so you're totally zapped onto the meditation object. And also you use all your discursive thought on the meditation object. So, and again, I like to give up discursive thought. You would use all your discursive thought on, I like to give up discursive thought. And when you totally exhaust the vittarka and vichara, in a sense, the discursive thought is pretty much stopped. And also the application of mind to the object is stopped.

[33:23]

At that point, you've entered into a deep state of concentration. At that point, you wouldn't be able to understand any further instructions. So when they're thoroughly exhausted, you've actually entered into the first jhana. Well, some people might say suppressed, but in the process of suppressing it, you're totally exhausting them. But you could also use those two dharmas to try to suppress those two dharmas. You could apply yourself to the idea of suppressing applied thought, and you could apply yourself to the idea of suppressing sustained thought, and you could use sustained thought on the using up of those two things, suppressing them. So exhausting and suppressing are somewhat related in this context. All these words are just ways to get the person into a state of trance, you know.

[34:28]

And when you actually get in the state of trance, you've gone beyond basic shamatha. Even before exhausting these two, even before exhausting applied thought and discursive thought or sustained thought, you still could be quite tranquil. And if you were tranquil... in a state of Samatha, and he still hadn't been exhausted, then in that state of tranquility you could understand speech. So in some ways, in terms of moving from tranquility to insight work, it's in some ways better not to completely suppress these two by going into a trance. because in the trance you wouldn't be able to have speech because speech depends on these two. So these two are used to get into trance, and they're also used to speak.

[35:30]

And when you use them completely to get into a trance, you won't be able to talk anymore, and you also wouldn't be able to understand speech. Okay? And now the sutra, what does the sutra say? The part we just said we did today at noon service, didn't we? Did it say apply thought and sustain thought? Is that what it said? Is that the language at service today? Okay. So that's what they were talking about in a new service. They were talking about these two. They were talking about some states have both, some states have one, some states have none. Some states have both. Some states have applied thought and not sustained. Some states have sustained but not applied, and some states have neither. But didn't they say it a little differently? Why does it say alternatively? Yeah, I think it says analysis and conceptualization.

[36:33]

Where did you get this applied thought and sustained thought? Where did you get that? Oh, you got it from Jhana Meditation. Okay, so in this translation that you did at noon service today, in this text, instead of saying applied thought and sustained thought, they say, conceptual and analytical? I think that's what it is. Yeah. And that is the talk of the child. Yeah. So what we chatted today at noon service relates to Mahin's question. And where it had those four alternatives of when you have the conceptual and the analytical, they're talking about when you have vittarka and vichara, or just vittarka and not vichara, or just vichara and not vittarka, or neither. So we just talked about that today in the sutra. It's on page four, right to this point. Vittarka is the conceptual?

[37:39]

I think so, yeah. So in other words, you're applying your mind to the concept. And the other, you're being a little analytical, you know. Okay? And then when you do insight work, you want both of them, particularly you need the vichara to do insight work. You need it. Jeff? I just want to see if this is... If you have an object... The image of the object is not the object. That's sort of back in Gunakara. Yeah, sort of, right. But the... I don't know if Gunakara makes that point. But that's something we've discussed. Yes, right. When you look at objects... Well, actually, when you look at an object in direct perception, you're seeing the object. But, as I mentioned, direct perception happens just in a very tiny, rapidly changing moment, and very few people actually are aware of the momentary direct perception of an object.

[38:53]

What most people are aware of is a conceptualization of the sense perception of an object. And that usually happens when you have an object that appears, although it's changing, that there's, for example, some continuity or a series of colors appearing to you. And you could have many colors appearing to you in a very short time. But a series of similar colors And then that's followed by a mind consciousness. And then after this series of, a continuous series of sense perceptions in sort of a similar realm, like a color, and of a similar radiation wavelength, that's followed by a mind consciousness, which also very few people are aware of, that one flash of mind consciousness. But that sets up the possibility, all that, to generate a conceptual cognition.

[39:58]

And that's what we actually experience. But the conceptual cognition is mediated by an image, and the image that mediates the sense object is not the object, of course. But we confuse it with the object. However, we're finally conscious of the color after all that. And some yogis are concentrated enough so they can actually see the actual instantaneous. And Buddha was one of them. So in his enlightenment experience, he was actually seeing instantaneous perceptions of things like past lives. So the awareness of the object is not separate from the mind. Yeah, in either case, both conceptual and direct perception. Yes. the object, the image of the object is not the object, but the awareness of the object is not separate from the mind. Well, also, the image of the object is not separate from the mind either. Okay. But the image of the object also usually looks like it's separate from the awareness.

[41:04]

Like you have an image of me right now, probably. Yeah. And it may seem like the image is out there separate from your awareness of the image. But it's not. the thing that creates a sense of distance or separation is also a thought construction. As a matter of fact, the thought construction is laminated to the image. But even in the realm of direct sense perception, there's also the sense that the awareness and the sense object are separate. And they're not. They're not different beings. When you speak of awareness of the object, are you talking about, it's not the image of the object that you're aware of? Pardon? When we speak of awareness, are we talking about the image of the object or the object or both? Are we talking of awareness?

[42:10]

Yes. It sounds like when you're talking about awareness, so far you're just talking about awareness. But awareness is... The object is not separate from the mind. That's right. The object is not separate from the awareness. And it's interesting to me that in Chinese they have this... I think it's this way. I can't remember exactly. I can't remember the characters. But anyway, character X. We'll never know. Just make one up. So this character is either this. This character means to think. And then this character goes with two other characters, and one of them is like this.

[43:27]

And the other one is... So this means thinking. And this means thinking. Okay? And this is a passive marker. And you put the passive marker with thinking and it means that which is thought of. And then you put this character which means active or ability. So this is the ability to think. or the activity of thinking. But they're just two different versions of the thinking. One aspect of thinking is that which is thought of. The other aspect of thinking is the ability to think of. But they're both dimensions of the same phenomena called thinking. You have thinking of something.

[44:41]

And the thing you're thinking of seems like it's separate from the ability to think of it. And that takes us back to this instruction that we mentioned just a minute ago with Yosi. So the teacher says to the monk, that which is thought of, this, that's the environment. The ability to think is the mind. But although this is called mind and it's called environment, they're actually, the environment is the passive aspect of mind, and the mind, in this case, is the active aspect of mind. So then he gives the instruction, turn the mind around, reverse your thinking, and think of the ability to think. So the monk then starts looking not at that which is thought of, but he makes that which is thought of the ability to think of.

[45:50]

So when he does that, then he says, now what do you see? He said, I can't find anything. Because you can't find the ability to think, although you can be aware of it. So anyway, that relates to, I think... I was just trying to get that story off the head. That's case 32 of the Book of Serenity, by the way. Yes? I was trying to get the mistake of mistaking the image for the object and then putting that into the same story as this awareness is the same thing as the object, or not the same thing. No, that's a different thing. Taking the image for the object is a mistake that's characteristic of all conceptual cognitions. They all make that mistake. And even if you have a correct perception, like if you have a conceptual cognition that phenomena are impermanent, which is correct, it's not a misconception, it's a correct perception, but it's mistaken because your conceptual understanding that phenomena are impermanent, you understand the impermanence of things,

[47:06]

originally through the concept of impermanence. Whenever you're looking at compounded phenomena, you're looking at impermanent phenomena. But even though you're looking at impermanent phenomena, you don't see impermanence. Impermanence is a concept. When you first understand impermanence, which is correct, things are impermanent and they all have that general characteristic. So then you're seeing impermanence when you understand it. However, the image you have of impermanence by which you correctly understand that things are impermanent, you're confused with the impermanent thing. You confuse the image of impermanence with the impermanent thing. So you're mistaken in that you think the image of impermanence is the impermanence of the thing, but it's not. You think that the impermanence of the impermanent thing is the impermanent thing, but it's not. You can eventually have a direct perception of impermanence, but you originally wake up to it through conceptual cognition of it, which is mistaken.

[48:24]

But the mistake of confusing the image you have of something with the thing is different from the mistake of the thing seeming like it's out there separately. that sense of out there separateness is also an image, but that image is wrong, always. But it's not a mistake to have a concept of me or an image of me by which you see me. That's not wrong. I am Reb, right? However, I'm not out here separate from you. That image you have of me, the imaginary separation, that's wrong. The imaginary reb, that's, you know, you're correctly applying the imaginary reb to this person. Imaginary reb can be applied to me, even though, of course, it's not me. But it's properly put on me. But the separate reb is not properly put on me, or on anything.

[49:27]

There's two different mistakes. One is seeing something that's not there, is there, and the other is seeing something that is there, but through the mediation of an image. So my separation, if you see a separation, that's not there, that's mistaken. But your image of me is correctly applied to me. For just a second, do you think it's okay if we keep going? I don't know if there's anyone who's not here. There is someone who's not here. You should know that one. Is that clear, Jeff? It's getting clearer? It just seems like this mistake of awareness, I think the term awareness and thinking is, I'm trying to understand what that means.

[50:30]

Well, in this particular case, it says thinking, okay? But you wouldn't have to say thinking. You could also just say mind. This is the character that they used in the story. But you could also, I think, go like this. It might be okay just to go like this and just put the character from mind out here. Just have mind instead of thinking. So there's that which mind thinks of, that which mind is aware of, and then there's the ability to be aware. The same could apply there. So mind in this teaching has two aspects, an active aspect and a passive aspect. And part of us is passive. The world makes us. And part of us is active, we make the world. So we are both, we are like that too. But now I think it's time to go to the Zendo. Thanks for dropping by. Let's just see ourselves to the Zendo.

[51:38]

Yeah, and it's not too long since it's late. In the next few units, it was placed perfectly done, and set a period.

[51:50]

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