I have a text here which is a text published by the Yoga Room. It says, Zen Meditation on Mind, Emotion and Feelings. And I'd like to sort of expand that to Zen Meditation on Mind, consciousness, emotions, feeling, and self. As we often say in the Zen school, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To meditate on the Buddha way is to meditate on the self. to learn the way a Buddha is to learn the self.

[01:09]

So I have this thought in what I think is consciousness. And in this consciousness there is me or I that has the thought. One of the thoughts that I have in consciousness is that consciousness always has a self living in it. I mentioned that to you last week. Remember? I'm open for feedback on that. I often say to people, people come to see me, especially lately, because I'm in a practice period. So a lot of people come to me and sit in front of me and I say to them stuff like, how's life?

[02:30]

and it looks like a conscious mind receives my question and then that conscious mind often says something back to me. I also often say to people, how's consciousness? And I think I mentioned last week also that I asked our friend Fred Murat, how's consciousness? And he said, full of tiredness. There's other responses like, you know, fine, confused, Sad?

[03:40]

Frightening? Frightened? Full of fear? Or fearful? Angry? So I ask people, how is consciousness? They sometimes say that. Also today somebody said to me, I said, how is consciousness? And I think he said, it's the way I know," or, it's what I know. I wasn't sure what he said, but I thought both, either way that was, both were both answers that a lot of people could give. Consciousness is the, how is consciousness? It's the way I know. It's the manner of knowing. It's the situation of knowing. Another answer is, it's the space of knowing.

[04:51]

How's consciousness? It's the space of knowing. How's consciousness? There's knowing in it. Someone might look, or rather they might be observing and notice that there's knowing. How's consciousness? There's a self there, or there's a self here. So I offer you one of the reasons why the study of the way of enlightenment is said to be the study of the self, because if you study the self and understand the self, you become free of the dream of self. Self is kind of a dream process. It's a cognitive process of various images

[05:52]

that appear in kind of a false way. Self is a process, and when that process is functioning in a living being, we have consciousness. I'm not sure it always happens that when there's a self-process, there's consciousness. But when there's consciousness, there's a self-process. See the difference? It's possible that somebody would have a self-process, but something's faulty about it, and it isn't it isn't developed enough to establish consciousness. But if there's consciousness, consciousness needs a self, and usually self has a consciousness, but I'm proposing consciousness always has a self. And again, a lot of people wish that they could get a consciousness without it, but such consciousnesses, I would say, to use the word consciousness, would just say it's not available. Let's just accept the consciousness that has a self because if we then study that one, it's possible to understand the self correctly and be free of the suffering that comes with misunderstanding it.

[07:04]

The basic misunderstanding of the self process is that it's not a process. It's a thing. It's not a causal process. It's an independent thing. this mistake is kind of, it's not, you could say, innate, but if it's not innate, the seeds for it are innate, and by the time you're not too old, it's established. For example, I talk about this little girl. I can watch her. It's been quite a while since, quite a while ago, she had this sense that she was she, and she was not me, that quite a while she could say, I did it. I did it. And I wouldn't argue with her and say, I did it. I wouldn't do that.

[08:08]

Not just because I'm afraid of what she would do to me, but I don't feel like it's not time to question this opinion that she did it. Or to ask her, what do you mean you did it? But tonight, and from now on, I kind of want to ask you, if you say, I did it, I'm going to ask you, what is that I that did it? Is it a process? And what's involved in the process? If it's not a process, let's look at that. in the consciousness that I might call this consciousness, there is a thought to tell you a story about the origins of consciousness. But there's also the idea that I could pretend to be polite and ask you if you'd like to hear it. I got some laughs.

[09:14]

I got to go for it. I got a thumbs up. What did you say? Yes, please. Okay. Is that enough? Ready, Lois? What did you say? I don't need to, but maybe I need to because Kim asked me to. As a favor to Kim. Why not? Yeah. It's why not rather than whatever. So here's a story that once upon a time there's a body. And the body, the body somehow, some bodies have what are called sense organs.

[10:17]

I don't know if there's any bodies that don't have sense organs, but some do. In the context of a body, there sometimes is these things called sense organs. The parts of the body that sense data. something usually inside the body or at least in or on the surface of the body or inside the surface of the body that are sensitive to things in the body and also sensitive to things outside the body. Okay? That's a story that the bodies sometimes are like that. And the next thing is that sometimes when those bodies sometimes the interaction between those bodies, between those sense organs and sense field, between these physical sense organs and physical bodies, the interaction between them and sense data like colors and sounds and smells and tastes and tangibles, that interaction becomes what we call consciousness.

[11:30]

Sometimes in the teachings of the Buddhists, he had this term called the 12 doors, which is short for the 12 doors of consciousness, the 12 doors of arrival. the arrival or the arising of consciousness at these 12 doors. And the doors are an interface, are combinations. There's 12 elements and there's six different kinds of combinations. There's sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation and electromagnetic radiation of a certain type, for example, humans. For humans, electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength interacts with a certain part of the body, and that interaction gives rise to mind, which is sometimes called consciousness, but I would actually, yeah.

[12:43]

I'll stop there. And actually, it can give rise to consciousness in which there's mind that has self. But also, there can be an interaction between the sense organs and the environment at another level where there's mind but not self. consciousness. So I'll take a step back and I'll say those sense doors are sense doors for consciousness, but I'm going to take a step back to say that there's an interaction between the sense organs in the body and the environment at a level that's mind but not yet consciousness because It's mind in the sense that certain kinds of calculations are going on in the body relative to and involved with the sense interactions with the environment. For example, an example might be helpful.

[13:47]

In human beings, we have this part of our body which we call the eye organ or called the eyeball. And in the eyeball, part of the eyeball is a sensitive tissue called the retina. You could also say that part of the function of the eye includes the lens and so on. But in particular, I want to emphasize the retina, which is the sensitive part. Yeah, it's the sensitive part. The lenses can be shaped differently, but they're shaped by muscles. I don't know if the muscles around the eye are part of the eye. I don't know what people are saying. But I think the key part, the key sensitive part, of the eye capacity is this retina which responds to the light.

[14:55]

I don't think the muscle responds to the light. I think that the muscles respond to signals from someplace else after the retina responds to the light. So I'm just saying about the retina now. The retina has, I think I've heard, has about a million cells. I just heard that. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's 900,000 or 42,000. I don't know. But I've heard it have a million. And the light comes in and touches some part of that surface. And coming from the retina are not a million sense lines, but I think maybe about 10%. as many communication lines come from the retina as sense cells in the retina. So lots of retinal cells are collected into one conduit of information.

[15:56]

And then those conduits of information, which summarize a bunch of different cells, which kind of like summarize, that physically summarize lots of different information, they send messages which are summarized again into smaller units of message sending. And these calculations, these are calculations that the body's making. These are summaries and categories that the body is physically making. This is not yet consciousness, but it's doing work like we are familiar with in consciousness. The body is physically making categories about information coming in, and then that goes to what we call the brain, which is actually part of the eye is part of the brain, part of the brain is the eye, and the eye is part of the brain.

[17:01]

But it isn't just that information touches the thing and that information comes down. Calculations and reworking of the material happens for various purposes of making possible to make images. But this is not yet I'll calculate, this is not yet necessarily mind. It's not yet mind necessarily. Somehow another step has to happen to make it mind. Actually, maybe I should take a step back and say when When this information gets processed in such a way that the body then makes images out of this information, then maybe we still have something that's quite familiar as mind. But I would say it's not consciousness because these images, although they're there, they're physical images in the body,

[18:04]

and they're operated on by the body and they're communicated among the body, these images made out of physical data, the images do not yet appear to the organism. But they're being worked within the organism in various patterns. The next step is the mind conjures up consciousness. And in consciousness, there's the appearance of things. And one more thing I would say is that this process of sensitivity to the environment and so on is that the sense organs create these images which are about the body. the part of the body creates information about the body in service of the body.

[19:12]

And this information about the body in service of the body is in response to the environment. And then, when the mind creates the consciousness, there is a self as an object and a self as a knower. And there is a body that appears in consciousness which is an appearance which is about the body and is considered to be the body. But it's actually an image which is about the body. Just like the information that's flowing in the organism is about the body. for the sake of the body. So in consciousness we have, in some sense, two levels of self.

[20:20]

First level of self, and this is a little bit difficult to say, is the level of the self observing objects but also the level of a self which can be observed. And then there's another level of self based on the first level of self which is the self as knower. Both of these are processes. They're not fixed things but they may appear like fixed things. one of these levels of self is easier to see.

[21:25]

The first one is easier to see than the second one. The self as object is a little bit easier to observe, to be aware of, to know, than the self as knower. the feeling of self, the feeling that somebody owns what's appearing in consciousness, the feeling of ownership of the body that's appearing in consciousness is easier to see than the sense of knowing of this. Sometimes you do know one and sometimes you don't know, but there's always a feeling that somebody's there.

[22:26]

So that's my introductory comments. And I want to say one more thing, but I want to wait a little bit before I say it. So please remind me of the other thing I want to say, but I don't want to mix it in yet with what I've said so far. I'd like to ask you if you have any questions about this story about consciousness. And I also mentioned, I guess I'll say also that for some of you who weren't here last week, that the Buddhist tradition teaches that there's two layers of mind. I just talked about two layers of self in consciousness. There's another layer of mind which isn't conscious, but it is cognitive process, it does do calculations, and it has the power to support and conjure up consciousness.

[23:33]

It is basically the support, the ongoing support, and the causal process which makes consciousness. And it's called unconscious. We can call it unconscious. Unconscious cognitive activity, which, as I also gestured, when I move my hands like this, I'm not consciously figuring out how to move these fingers. I don't know how to do this. I can tell you that I don't know how to move these fingers like this. I mean, I can say, move the finger, move that, put the hands up and move the fingers. But now that I'm here, I don't know how to make them do this dance. Say, well, do you know how to like move one finger? Well, you know, I can kind of trick myself and say, yes, I know how to move my right index finger. Is this the index finger? I knew how to move it forward. And I can also do this thing my grandson taught me, which is sideways.

[24:37]

But really, I don't know how to do that consciously. And certainly something like this, I can't figure out how to put these fingers together like that, take them apart. I cannot figure that out consciously. And I don't have to even look at it for it to happen. There's a communication between my conscious mind and my unconscious mind. My conscious mind can request my unconscious mind to figure out how to move my hands in various ways. I would suggest, I mean, I have no skills like this, but that a skilled pianist says, would you please play this sonata now? And then the unconscious plays it. The conscious is there saying, keep it up. The conscious mind cannot remember. Look at these little kids. You see these little kids doing that thing? Those little kids cannot think how to do that. They cannot think that. How do they do that? How can their hands do that?

[25:40]

Well, because they consciously went to their piano lessons and they did these exercises over and over. And every time they moved their fingers consciously, their fingers moved in some way, which wasn't what they consciously intended. But still the consequence of lots of thinking to move the fingers has an effect on the unconscious processes so that their finger movements evolve in relationship with their conscious activity. So they learn how to practice the piano, how to play the piano in consciousness. Consciousness is where we learn to play the piano. It's where we learn to speak languages. But our ability to speak is not coming from the conscious. It's coming from the results of our conscious activity, which transform the unconscious processes, which perform the... We do not consciously figure out how to move our tongue, you know, up and around in our teeth and so on to make the sounds of a language.

[26:49]

We try, and there's an effect, and people make faces at us and stuff and say, no, no, not that way. And they record what we say and laugh at it and think it's cute. We pick all that up in consciousness. That has effects in the unconscious process. And the unconscious process makes us able to speak a language quite well. But we do not, I do not, And I don't think you do either. I do not know how my years of English practice are making it possible for me to speak English. I can't see how. I can't see what makes me able to do that. And I don't know anybody that can. As a matter of fact, some very thoughtful people say it is not possible. But you can learn English. and you learn it by doing certain exercises in consciousness which transform the unconscious processes and gradually the unconscious processes make possible for you to speak English.

[27:52]

And in consciousness you can see yourself do it, but you don't know how you do it. Similarly, with learning about mind, same process. We can try to learn how, But it's not just in consciousness that we're going to understand it. We're going to understand it by, in consciousness, talking about it. We don't talk in the unconscious. We talk in the conscious. By talking about it, by using words in a certain way, we transform the unconscious to understand, for example, talk, which means to understand consciousness, which means to understand self. So there's two levels of consciousness. The unconscious creates the conscious. The conscious transforms the unconscious, which then creates the conscious. And so part of the Buddhist practice is to somehow send a message to conscious minds because the unconscious can't really understand the language.

[28:56]

Although it picks up the sound waves and so on, it then supports a mind which can convert these sound waves into language In the language, there can be learning of the teachings which transform the unconscious and which makes a new consciousness. So they mutually create each other, mutually support each other, mutually transform each other. And the unconscious doesn't really suffer the way the conscious does. The unconscious doesn't have a self. The unconscious is not afraid, although it's calculating all the stuff that's happening to the body when there's fear. It's figuring out what to do in response to the fear that's in consciousness. And it's then generating all kinds of other information and emotions into the conscious space. And then that, when it appears in the conscious space, that again feeds back to the unconscious.

[29:58]

But it doesn't have... and it doesn't have time, and nothing appears there. There's not a world there, but there's a sense that there's a world. There's the There's a map of the world that doesn't appear in the unconscious. There's a map of the world that does appear in consciousness. There's a map of it in the unconscious. And there's a map of the body to support the image of the body in consciousness. And there's a relationship between the image of the body, the picture about the body in consciousness, and another representation of the body in the unconscious. And both those levels of body representation, one that doesn't appear and the other one which is a physical image in the unconscious, both of them are about the body. Neither of them are the body, and the body supports them, and both of them serve the body quite well often.

[31:07]

Also, you do not have to have consciousness to live. You can be alive without consciousness. But still, the point of consciousness is for the sake of the body and the life. It augments, it gives various advantages. The basic advantage is it gives a place to learn. So I was about done and I said all that, so excuse me. And I still haven't mentioned the other thing I wanted to say. Yes, Lois? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I would say that you can have bodies and then at a certain level, and then you can have organisms that don't have sense organs, really, and then you can have more articulated sense organs, and those bodies have, those sense organs serve the bodies in ways that organisms that don't have sense organs cannot be served.

[32:24]

And those beings have certain advantages over the ones that don't have it. And for example, neurons are body organs, but their main function is to inform other parts of the body about what's going on in the body. They're servants. And also neurons don't reproduce. Neurons are not trying to reproduce. Most of the cells are into like living on. Neurons are more like, they're very similar to other cells, but they're mostly as servants to influence and inform other ones. And the mind is, in some sense, closely related to the neuronal function. But not just the neuronal function, because it's like the other cells. All the cells give rise to the body. But the mental function Yeah, all the cells give rise to the body, and all the body cells give rise to mind.

[33:29]

I would say yes, it is. I would say in the unconscious there are seeds or prototypes for images. There aren't really images appearing in the unconscious, but the seeds for images, the teaching is that the seeds for all the images are in the unconscious. And seeds for images, images are categories. Just like in some sense, if you have a million cent organs in the retina and you have 100,000 nerve fibers coming out, in a sense what's coming to the nerve fibers are images, are an image or a concept of 10 times their number of cells. Does that make sense? each one is representing 10 cells or 100 cells. So what's being sent about these different cells is not all those different pieces of information, but a concept about them all.

[34:52]

Like, this one information line is a concept for a bunch of other stuff. Concepts categorize things. Concepts, you know, working back down, concepts simplify or impoverish the information. Concepts are impoverished versions of information. Telegramic? Are telegrams Yeah. Well, they're telegrams, but telegrams could be not, you know, like if you have an idea or an image, you could telegram it, and it would be the same size image when it got to the other side. But if you, the body actually is impoverishing the input for the sake of efficiency. So you don't have the retina coming all the way to the brain. You don't have a million cells with a million lines into the brain.

[35:57]

I mean, the brain can handle a lot, But each eye doesn't send a million information lines into the brain. By the time it gets to the brain, it has been categorized down. And the brain makes an image of all that information. But right away, the way the body's built, the way the sense organs are built, is they simplify a lot of information into, like, basically on or off. When this one's on, that's the concept of this one. From this part, from this general area of the eye, all this stuff comes down this tube. From this area, all this comes down this tube. But it's been simplified, and it gets simplified again and again So the body is actually conceptualizing or categorizing, and then when it gets to the brain, it's dealing with categories, and then it makes an image for itself.

[37:02]

And then the body has these images, and then it works with the images, and the mind works these images. All this happens now, all the time, with us, unconsciously. and it's stored in the body. The cognitive processes share the advantages and the risks of the body. The body supports the unconscious cognitive processes which come up from the body and make the consciousness and also absorb conscious activity and are transformed by it, this cognitive field is closely connected to the body and shares the advantages of the body, life, and the risks, death. Or, you know, like now I watch my speech, which is a miracle,

[38:07]

I'm amazed that I can talk the way I do, but I also watch that as my body changes, my speech changes. So my unconscious is changing with my body. As my body changes, my unconscious is not able any longer to perform this amazing thing called speech. I cannot actually speak consciously. I'm not doing the consciousness. I'm not doing the speech consciously. I cannot figure out how to move my tongue like this. and form these words like this. And of course, the faster I go, the more clear it is to me that I couldn't. Yeah. Yes. Just on the last point, you're saying you're not consciously . There's some intention you have. Yeah, right.

[39:12]

So, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm trying to say yes to you. I'm consciously wanting to say yes, but I cannot consciously figure out how to say yes. The actual, this, I don't know how to do what I'm doing right now, but I'm telling myself to do it, and the cognitive unconscious process is saying, okay, your good boy will do that for you. Not always will they do what I say, but... Yeah, yeah, I don't and I do. I know how to command it. I know how to command it. And once it gets started, but once it gets rolling, I'm no longer commanding each step. And if I slow down, the more you slow down, the more you would seem like you have a chance to control it or will it.

[40:14]

There is overt will in this consciousness, and there's covert will down lower. And the covert will will let the overt— the overt will is useful. The covert will will let the overt will have its way sometimes. And other times it doesn't let it have its way, and sometimes it makes it think it did have its way. because it doesn't want the overt will area to break down or quit because it's a good workspace which serves the lower levels. Just like the body doesn't want the cognitive processes to break down, so it keeps maintaining what they need. So you're right, it's kind of like there's a dualism in what I say. Yes? I would say it includes it in the sense that I'm saying that the cognitive processes which support and create conscious processes are body-based.

[41:16]

And all the complexities of the body are feeding and cared for by unconscious cognitive processes. Unconscious cognitive processes are in cooperation with the body, including the different parts of the brain. Yes. Buddhism doesn't actually say which parts of the body It doesn't talk so much about where in the body the sensitivity called the eye organ is, although it knows that it's around this eye organ. But the eye sensitivity is not the same as the physical thing. The eye sensitivity is this ability to respond, which is located. So just in terms of the sense organs, if so-called modern science says that the sense organs are located, Buddhism would agree. And maybe modern science would say that the scent organs, the location of them, the structure of them is such and such.

[42:41]

Buddhism doesn't specify that, but the sensitivity of them is what the organ is. So I think that the articulation is articulation of the body, right? Which supports cognitive processes. I don't see any problem between This mapping cognitive processes related to the body, I don't see any problem in that vis-a-vis Buddhist teaching. And I don't see any problem of mapping unconscious cognitive processes relative to conscious processes. Yes? Thank you. My second question was, how old is this particular thing? The teaching of the two levels of consciousness in the Buddhist tradition, some people would say it's about 1700 years old.

[43:46]

Those who articulated the teaching 1700 years ago some of the leaders felt that the Buddha was talking about that, but that his audience was not sophisticated enough at the time, so he didn't unfold that teaching fully 2,500 years ago. But development 700 years after the Buddha passed away, particularly in the Mahayana studies of consciousness feel that the seeds for the discoveries and the theories that they derived at 1700 years ago were present in the Buddha's early teachings because they feel that they are the Buddha's disciple. And what they discovered in their analysis and study of the mind they feel was congruent with and deepening of the understandings that were present at the time of the Buddha, unfolding and advancing the understanding of what Buddha's first teachings were about the nature of self.

[45:01]

So the Buddha did say, when people misunderstand the self, they grasp it. When they grasp it, they suffer. So we have this conscious space where there's Objects are appearing as feelings, emotions, and so on, and consciousness. And there's a sense of self and a sense of grasping, this is the problem, this is where suffering is. Understanding this, the Buddha taught, is freedom from suffering. And then the articulation of the different levels of consciousness the unconscious process, and then the active conscious processes which are supported by it. That was brought forth in the third and fourth century by Asanga, the great Bodhisattva Asanga, and his brother, Vasubandhu. And some other people wrote scriptures before that, but we don't know who wrote them.

[46:05]

They don't have authors. The author's supposed to be Buddha, but we don't know. And then as I said last week, Freud discovered the unconscious not so long ago in the West. Maybe he heard something about Buddhism and didn't say. We don't know. Yes? . The way I'm using consciousness, I'm saying, I'm using consciousness for where things appear, you know, and where there's some knowledge of them. It seems that mammals do have a sense of self. It seems like that.

[47:09]

They seem to have a consciousness where there's fear and anger and possessiveness. Dogs seem to be very much into possessiveness. My food. Cats also. My food. My master. You know? And there seems to be tremendous nervous energy around my barking and it seems to, it looks like, you know, and some people say this is anthropomorphizing, but I would say it's more like consciousizing. That many mammals, I think, have consciousness and a self. So I shouldn't say and a self, have self-consciousness. Many dogs are self-consciousness and self-centered. Cats are too, it seems. Bears are. Deer are. Seems that they are. and they do act like it.

[48:10]

Dogs dream, and in their dreams they get angry and scared. It seems like they're acting very much like the children next to them when they're asleep. So yeah, I think dogs have Buddha nature. Well, I would say yes and no. We'll see about that. Do humans have Buddha nature? Yes and no. We'll see about that. So I just want to say the second thing before the evening's out, and that is I would like you to look into the place where there seems to be somebody there and ask in that space, what's the most important thing in life? What's the most important, what's the deepest wish in that space? What's the ultimate concern in that space where there seems to be somebody there?

[49:15]

That's a question which I would like you to work on. And I'd like to hear what you find in that space. I'd like to ask the question and see if there's a response. And then if you get a response, ask again and see if you get the same response or a similar response. And just keep asking and find out what's in there. Was there? Yes, Sarah, and then Charlie, and then Linda. So you started to say that it studies a way to study yourself. And you were talking about describing the self as a story about what the self is. Would you say it's more like a kind of a field of that life? Is it sort of more like? It's more like a point of view.

[50:18]

I don't think it is an organ of perception. It's a point of view, and I would say it's a feeling. Well, yeah, it's... In the conscious space, as I also mentioned last week, the things that are appearing, the contents of consciousness which are known, they're easier to see than the sense of knowing. The feeling of knowing is very close to the feeling of a knower. There's a feeling that there's a knower there. That's the self as knower. and the things it knows are easier to see, so that's subtle. And also the sense that the self is an object, that there's somebody there. There's a feeling there's somebody there, which is easier to spot than there's a sense of knowing that somebody's there and knowing the contents. Like, for example, if something scary happens, it's very easy to see the scary thing.

[51:29]

It's not so easy at that moment to see, oh, there's somebody here. who's afraid of that thing. The thing is easier to see than the fear of it. So there's the thing, which is gross. Less gross or more subtle is the feeling of fear. And then more subtle is, I'm afraid. Because you can see people that are, they see something frightening and they don't know they're afraid even. So if you don't know you're afraid, it's hard to know that you're afraid. But they're acting like they see this thing and they're acting like they're afraid, but they don't notice they're afraid. It's a step deeper when you say, oh, fear, I'm afraid. And also, I'm aware that I'm afraid. There's an awareness that I'm afraid. So subtle, less subtle, less subtle, less subtle, or gross, less gross, less gross, less gross.

[52:31]

And that's part of the reason why we recommend calming down, because when you're calm, it's easier to see. There's the content. Oh, yeah. And there's a sense that somebody's here. And there's a sense of owning that content, but not owning that content. Well, look, that's what I heard as a self. I connect. So calming down makes it easier to observe the self and also to see that this self is a process. Yes? Can you describe again or a little more in what space you want to ask this question? Well, usually I would just say to people, what's the most important thing? In this class I'm saying, how's consciousness? Okay? Somebody else say, how's consciousness? I'm saying that to you. How's consciousness?

[53:33]

Yeah. So, even though it's busy, I still have a question for you. And that question will be difficult to see the answer to if you're busy. Okay? Not impossible, but even though you're busy, I want to have another job to add to all that's going on there, okay? On top of everything else or in the midst of everything else, because I think this question can be asked. During all the things you're doing, you can still ask this question. It's just, it's harder to hear the answer when you're really busy. But I'm still asking you, in that space where you're busy, see, I asked him how it was. Fred said, tired. Charlie says, busy. He's not so tired. He's going to get tired eventually, but right now it's busy. And still I say to you, in that space where there was an observation of busy and where there was somebody there in the busyness, And some of the busyness was his and some of it wasn't.

[54:37]

In that place, put the question, what's the most important thing in life? You can also say, what's the most important thing in my life? If I say to people, what's the most important thing in life? I want them to know I'm not asking what other people think. I want to know in that place where there's a self, what seems like the most important thing. It's redundant, actually, to say what's the most important thing in your life when I say that to you. But I mean that in your life. In other words, in the space where you are, what's the most important thing there? I'm asking you that because if you can answer that question, that will help the study a lot. I do. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear before. I would say... Oh, oh, oh.

[55:41]

Well, it is. It is bigger than the self. The self is created by the cognitive unconscious, which in a sense is bigger than this. The self process is a small process compared to the other processes. It's just a little thing on top of this huge ocean of processes. But it is the process which occurs in the learning space. I cannot ask your cognitive unconscious what's most important to it. So if you're in dreamless sleep and I speak quietly and say, Charlie, what's the most important thing in your life? Even if I say, Charlie, the cognitive unconscious might hear, Charlie, okay. When we hear Charlie, we should wake him up and recreate. This is a message for consciousness. So if I say, Charlie, the first thing your cognitive unconscious might do is create

[56:43]

Now, an image, which has nothing to do with Reb talking to him, you know, it might be that you're flying through the sky and a beautiful lady is saying, Charlie, you know, and then it's pretty exciting. So you wake up and you find out it's just me asking you a Zen question, you know. But it's also possible that if I was whispering in your ear, the dream might come up of, oh, there's a Zen teacher talking to me. That might happen. And you might say, how wonderful, I'm having a dream about Zen instead of those other ones. And then you wake up and then I'm there. That could happen. But like I told you that story, I was in the meditation hall, you know, And I was sitting and a little bird was on my shoulder. Did I tell you that story? Yes, I'm sitting in meditation and a little bird's on my shoulder. I said, wow, a little bird's on my shoulder. And then I saw the stick. We used to carry the stick in the meditation hall.

[57:47]

When people were sleeping, we put the stick on their shoulder, which is like, hello, wake up. I'm going to give you a little tap now. Oftentimes when people put the stick on people's shoulders, the people think, I wasn't asleep. You know, what are you doing putting it on my shoulder? I'm not asleep. The person thinks they're asleep, but the person receiving the stick doesn't think so. But when I thought there was a bird on my shoulder, which seemed perfectly reasonable, and then I looked and saw the stick, I said, oh, I guess I was asleep. And I might have been dreaming before the tap was on there, too. I might have been dreaming that I was, you know, a Zen master or something. And then I dreamed that there was a bird on my shoulder. And then I thought, oh, it's a stick. And I didn't argue. I didn't say, I wasn't asleep. I was pretty clear I was. Another time I was sitting... And I was looking out, I was playing the part of head monk, and I was looking out and there was a person carrying a stick in front of me.

[58:52]

I saw he was walking down the aisle carrying the stick. And then I saw him jump to the end of the room And being somewhat clever guy, I realized, oh, I guess I must be asleep. But it looked like he jumped 40 feet. He was there, it's like, you know, and then he was 40 feet away. So I put this, and the next thing he was 40 feet away, I constructed this jump. It could have also been zoop, but there was no zoop in between. It was just here and here, so it's like... So again, I thought I could conclude, I don't think he did that. I think probably I missed out on something. So I feel that this teaching I'm giving you helps me ask you the question, which is a very important question, helps me ask you in a way that you know where to look. You understand, I'm looking into my consciousness

[59:56]

That's where I'm going to get an answer. But the answer is not a small answer because if you get an answer in there, the next moment when you ask, another answer comes, which might be quite different because the answer is being fed by your body and your cognitive unprocessed. And then it comes into your consciousness. So if you ask again, you won't necessarily get the same answer. But if you keep asking and you keep getting the same answer, that means that your body and your history and your whole body and mind are in support of what's appearing in consciousness. Because it's in consciousness that you're going to get your orientation and then you're going to try to line up other conscious activity with that. And that's going to be possible because your unconscious is supporting it. And so part of your unconsciousness is making a busyness in there, but it doesn't mean you can't ask this question and get an answer. But you might say, I think maybe I'm going to just give up busyness for just a little while so I can answer this question.

[61:01]

So I'm thinking, that's why I'm asking you this question, because I think with this teaching, you'll have a better understanding of the process that you're involved in, of asking the question in consciousness and seeing what answer appears in consciousness, but understanding you're consulting more than consciousness with this question. Because when you think, what is the most important thing in my life? That thought, that conscious thought, transforms your unconscious. Every conscious thought transforms your unconscious. And before you ask that question, that question has never transformed your consciousness. I've said other things to you which when you heard them and you thought those things, those transformed your consciousness too. And maybe those other things I taught you transformed your consciousness so when you ask this one, it will transform your consciousness to give you a good answer. An answer that will really help you orient all your conscious activity. In other words, all your activity in the place where somebody's there and somebody happens to be

[62:08]

me, or the I. So I feel this is a better way to ask the question, to ask the person, how is your consciousness? Busy. Okay. What in that place, what is the most important thing? And then understand that that's where the question is delivered, that's where I want to hear the answer, but it's going to bring your whole body in line. Because my experience is people answer it and the next day it's different. But gradually they find the center of gravity of that answer, which means your body's cooperating with this program of finding out what it is. This is also another way to say this is finding out what your faith is. It's in you. I'm not telling you what it should be. It's in you. I want you to look in your consciousness Another thing I just want to say is that in a book recently published by Rod Mill Press, we have one of the directors of Rod Mill Press here, it's called The Third Turning of the Wheel.

[63:17]

You don't have to get the book, I'll just give you a quote. It's a quote by D.H. Lawrence and he says, this is what I know about my conscious self. It's like a clearing in the middle of a dark forest. It's a clearing in the middle of a dark forest of unconscious process. It's surrounded by a huge, uncognitive field. And it's a little clearing. And then he said, and sometimes deities come out of the forest into the opening for a while, and then they go back. And these deities are things like knowing how to ride a bicycle. So right now, here we are sitting here, right? And this is a little clearing in the middle of a dark forest. But we can go outside, if there's a bicycle, we can take a hold of the bicycle and get on, and a deity comes out of the dark forest and pedals the bicycle for us.

[64:26]

Right now, you cannot see how to ride a bicycle here. You cannot. It's impossible until you get your hands on the bicycle. But if you've trained over and over consciously, that skill is in your body. And when you first get on, if you haven't been on one for a while, the deity is going to be a little shaky. And then as you bike the bicycle more, more and more deities come out to help you ride the bicycle. And after you ride for a while, the deities go back. And you don't notice them anymore coming. So actually a deity has come out of the forest and asked you this question. I'm not the deity. The deity has come out into my consciousness and I'm on the behalf of this divine surround of life, which is your body, my body, our bodies communicating with each other in a living field.

[65:30]

All these calculations in unconscious are not separate. These unconscious processes do not separate themselves from other unconscious processes. All this is leading to this question, which is trying to now clarify that will help study the self. Even if the answer isn't, I would like to study the self and understand the self and realize the Buddha way. Even if that isn't the answer, which is the right answer, by the way, It's really how would you put it, your way, not my way. It's in you. It's in me. It's in us. I told this to somebody who's been wasting his life, not wasting it, been spinning his wheels for years. Every time I talk to him, he still doesn't know what he wants to do. And I keep saying, you've got to find out what you want to do. He said, should I go online and talk to some vocational guidance people? I said, they can't tell you what you want.

[66:33]

A man once said to me, to answer the question of what you really want will not be arrived at by discursive thinking. Excuse me. To answer the question of what you want in the midst of evolving contingencies will not be answered by discursive thought. If you're doing a math problem, the contingencies maybe don't evolve for a while, they're set. Maybe you can figure things out there. But in your own body, things are evolving so that the self is so dynamic. The self is so dynamic. It's a dynamic process. You cannot figure out what you want by using your thinking. You're actually in the field of thinking, the busy field of thinking. You can't figure it out. but you can ask and the answer will come. And somebody said, what do you do in the meantime? He says, suffer.

[67:36]

Because before we find it, it's painful. And then after you find it, it's painful, but now you know what you want. And you can line up the stuff in the conscious field to serve this thing which you found, which is representing your whole life. and studying, and I've given you this background story because the background story, I hope, will help you ask questions and talk to me so that you'll understand how the self is a process. It's not sitting all by itself. It's body-based, it's unconscious process-based, it's forest-based. The light is based in the dark forest, and the dark forest is based in the body, and the body is in communication with all other bodies in an inconceivable way. And that's where our deep intention is coming from. So this may help you understand that what we're looking for now is to study something that's a complex process, and we really understand it's a process that will refute our tendency to think that the self is a fixed thing.

[68:53]

and can be grasped, which is incorrect, but it has to be refuted by study. Yes? Okay. Unconscious? It's a cognitive process where lots of calculations are going on. It's a realm of cognition that's in communication with what we call consciousness. So activity in consciousness transforms it. it is in close relationship and receptive to the conscious processes. It absorbs their activity, but it absorbs them into a non-conscious place. So a place that's dark from the point of view of where there's no object's appearance. There's a realm of cognitive activity which absorbs the activity in the realm of appearances into a realm

[69:59]

where there aren't appearances and there isn't a self. And then that realm, the cognitive realm, is also in close communication in the other direction with the consciousness and supports the creation of active consciousness, of karmic consciousness. So the karmic consciousness and the unconscious are very similar but different. They're very close but different. And the cognitive process is very close but different from the body. It's actually the consequences of the body's categorical nature. There's something about the body that is very similar to the cognitive processes, and then there's something about consciousness which is similar to unconscious processes. So the seeds of consciousness are in the unconsciousness, and the seeds of cognition are in the body, and the seeds of the body are in the universe. The way the body is put together, the body was put together by the universe, right?

[71:08]

You all know that. There's something about the universe that made a body. The universe is a biological process that made bodies. But before it made bodies, it was biological. and then it made bodies, and then bodies made minds, and then minds made consciousness, and then consciousness knew something, which unconscious processes don't know. They're aware. Bodies are not aware by themselves, but they're intimately related with cognitive processes which also aren't aware, but which then support consciousness. So body doesn't go directly into consciousness. It's intermediate level of mind. So it's mind, consciousness, self. Self, consciousness, mind, body, biological universe. And there's bodies without limit.

[72:13]

and that so there's also the whole thing is turned around so there's a mind without limit which we enter into by becoming free of consciousness we realize what's called the Buddha mind which includes all this and it's not caught by any of it but in order to conjure up this wonderful process of cognitive and conscious evolution there was some drawbacks in that this kind of maybe, I don't know if it's necessary, but anyway it did happen, that clinging happened and suffering happened, so then compassion happened and so on. So wisdom in this process requires compassion towards the sticking point in the process. There isn't so much need for compassion to the unconscious process. The dark forest doesn't really need compassion. The deities are kind of okay. But in consciousness, in order to understand the self, we've got to bring up a lot of compassion in the field of consciousness to help us study the self.

[73:19]

Because it's busy there, right? And it's turbulent. As I mentioned to you before, one of the characteristics of this conscious field is giddiness, right? You heard that before, right? Did you? Yeah. So one of the characteristics of consciousness is that it's giddy. And giddy means excited to the point of distraction or disorientation. So if you wish to focus on something in karmic consciousness, it's hard because it's busy and giddy. But it's not impossible to calm down there in the midst of the giddiness and study the self. But it's hard. So that's why we need a lot of practices in this space so we can study this giddy situation, which I am very happy to study with you. So I'll come here again next week. I hope you will. Thank you very much for your brilliant attention.

[74:25]

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